"Oh, very well." Phoebe folded her arms beneath her breasts. "Honestly, Gabriel, I do hope this is not an indication of how you intend to conduct yourself in the future. I do not want to be shut out of all the adventures."
He smiled faintly. "I give you my word, I shall endeavor to occupy you with other sorts of adventures, my dear."
"Hah."
He chuckled softly. "Trust me."
Phoebe pursed her lips. "You will need a cooperative bookshop owner."
"Yes."
"Someone who will be willing to go along with your scheme. Not every shopkeeper would want his establishment set up as a target for a thief."
Gabriel frowned thoughtfully. "True enough."
Phoebe paused delicately. "I have a suggestion."
He glanced at her curiously. "Yes?"
"Why don't you ask your publisher, Lacey, if he will let his bookshop be used for this purpose?"
"That old sot? I suppose he might be persuaded to go along with the scheme."
Phoebe slanted Gabriel an assessing look. "I am sure he could be persuaded."
"What makes you so certain of that, my dear?" Gabriel's eyes gleamed in the shadows.
Phoebe tore her gaze away from his and focused on her bare toes. "There is something I have not had an opportunity to explain, my lord."
"Is that so?" He crossed the room and wrapped one hand around the bedpost. "And what would that be?"
Phoebe cleared her throat, very conscious of him looming over her. "I kept meaning to tell you, but somehow the opportunity never arose."
"I cannot believe that, my sweet. We have had ample opportunity to discuss the most intimate matters."
"Yes, well, the truth is, I was not precisely certain how to bring up the subject. I knew you would not be pleased, you see. And the longer I kept it from you, the more I feared that you would think I had deliberately deceived you."
"Which you most certainly had."
"Not really. I just didn't mention the matter, if you see the difference. The thing is, you told me at the beginning you had a distaste for deception. And you already had such difficulty trusting me and it all got increasingly awkward. And on top of everything else I did not want my family to discover my secret and you have been on extremely close terms with them lately. You might have felt obliged to tell them what I was doing."
"Enough." Gabriel shut off the flow of words by clamping one hand gently over her mouth. "Suppose you allow me to make this latest confession easier for you, madam."
She gazed up at him over the edge of his hand and saw that his eyes were gleaming with laughter.
"Now, then." Gabriel removed his hand cautiously from her mouth. "Let us come at this from a slightly different tact. What do you think of The Reckless Venture, Madam Editor?"
"It is incredibly wonderful, my lord. I loved it. The first-print run will be at least fifteen thousand copies. And we shall increase the price, too," Phoebe said gleefully. "People will be standing in line outside of Lacey's shop to purchase it. All the circulating libraries will want copies. We shall make a fortune—" She broke off abruptly and stared at him in shock.
Gabriel leaned against the bedpost, folded his arms across his chest, and smiled his dangerous smile.
"You knew all along?" Phoebe asked weakly.
"Almost from the beginning."
"I see." She peered at him closely. She could read nothing in his expression. "Would you care to tell me precisely how annoyed you are to learn that I am your editor and publisher, my lord?"
"I believe I would rather show you."
He swooped down on her, tumbling her onto her back. He caught her up and rolled with her across the rumpled bed until she lay on top of him.
Phoebe was breathless. "I do hope you won't think you can use this technique in future to influence my opinion of your work."
"That depends. A desperate author will do almost anything to get his books published. Would this technique of influencing you be successful, do you think?"
"Very likely," Phoebe murmured.
"In that case, you may definitely expect me to use it frequently."
Chapter 22
A heavy fog shrouded London on the second night of the vigil outside Lacey's Bookshop. The gray tendrils drifted through the streets like an endless parade of ghosts. In the course of their passage they absorbed what little light was provided by the oil lamps that were mounted at intervals on iron stands. The new gas lights that illuminated Pall Mall and St. James had not yet been installed in this section of town.
Gabriel had no doubt that his decision to allow Phoebe to accompany him and Anthony while they kept their midnight watch was a serious error in judgment. But he had been unable to resist her logic or her unrelenting pleas. His lady was every bit as stubborn as he himself was. It was difficult to deny that she had a right to be present when he closed the trap around Neil Baxter.
At least he had succeeded in crushing her many and varied suggestions to use herself as bait, he
RECKLESS 357
thought. Some of her notions had been disconcertingly creative. But he had put a heavy, booted foot down on every one of them. He was not about to risk her neck to catch the son of a bitch who had caused all this trouble.
The compromise he and Phoebe had arrived at after numerous arguments, pleas, and impassioned speeches was that she would be allowed to watch events from the safety of the carriage.
He glanced at her now as she sat beside him in the darkened vehicle. Garbed in a black, hooded cloak, she looked as mysterious and ethereal as the fog. She was gazing intently at Lacey's Bookshop through a small gap in the curtains that covered the window.
Although she had been bubbling with excitement earlier in the evening when they had first parked the carriage on the side street, she had grown pensive during the last hour. She had done the same thing last night when they had waited in vain for Baxter to show. Gabriel wondered what she was thinking.
Some part of her, he suddenly realized, was destined to remain a mystery to him. Perhaps it was always that way between a man and a woman. Perhaps that was part of the magic. He only knew that no matter how many times he possessed Phoebe, no matter how often he laughed with her or quarreled with her, he would never learn all of her secrets. Even though he knew she was completely and irrevocably his, he also knew that she would remain forever his tantalizing, intriguing, intoxicating Veiled Lady.
He also knew with a deep sense of satisfaction that he could enjoy the occasional hint of the unknown in her because he trusted her as he had never trusted anyone else in his life. She would never leave him.
So be it, Gabriel thought. Every writer needed a muse. Phoebe would be his. She would also be his editor and publisher. That was a far more unsettling notion. But it would make for some interesting dinner table conversations, he reflected with a fleeting grin.
"Not having second thoughts about trapping Lancelot tonight, I trust," he said quietly, to break the long period of silence.
"No. I am convinced that Neil is everything you said he was and more."
"More?"
"I was not the only woman he deceived. He treated Alice very cruelly. He allowed her to believe in him when he had no intention of rescuing her from hell."
Gabriel could not think of anything to say to that. He briefly considered all the men who had cheerfully taken their pleasure from innumerable Alices and then abandoned them to the hellish life of a brothel. "He was a master of illusion."
"No, not a master," Phoebe said slowly. "He did not succeed in everything he attempted. He did not fool my father three years ago. Nor did he succeed in making me fall in love with him, although he tried. And he did not get away with piracy indefinitely."
"Most importantly he did not succeed in seducing you into believing that I was a bloodthirsty pirate who was only after your inheritance," Gabriel muttered.