Ah, two vices he adored, along with women, of course. Finally, he was beginning to like the hardheaded bastard a bit.
“Both,” he said mildly.
Tierney poured him a measure of amber liquid and presented a velvet-lined case bearing cheroots before serving himself as well. Silence reigned as they lit their cheroots and his host settled himself in his infinitely more comfortable-looking chair, thanks to the velvet cushion and back. The arms, however, were carved mahogany, a tusked wild boar represented on each.
Nando cast an acidic look in the direction of that seating instrument. “My goodness, you’ve had your likeness carved upon it.”
Unkind of him, he knew, but he’d been walking about with a nearly perpetual cockstand all day, and he was feeling positively bilious as a result.
“A gift from my beloved wife,” Tierney said smoothly. “Her Royal Highness informs me that the boar is a revered animal in her homeland.” He paused, puffing thoughtfully on his cheroot. “She also told me she rather thought it resembled you.”
Nando had taken a sip of his whisky and had to swallow with such haste that he nearly choked. The result was an indelicate, loud spluttering and a fine mist of Scots whisky raining on Tierney’s desk.
“So sorry, old chap. I say, you aren’t choking, are you?” Tierney asked with deceptive innocence and blatantly false concern.
“If you were in my homeland, I would have you jailed,” Nando rasped without heat, his voice scarcely more than a croak. “I’d send you a diet of nothing but pig snouts for two weeks, and I would give you the leaves of the Iccysle plant to wipe your arse.”
The Iccysle plant was native to Varros, and its deceptively inviting, lush greenery left anyone who touched it with a terrible, blistered rash.
“Fortunately, I have no notion of what the Iccy-lickle-whatnot plant is.” Tierney grinned. “Else I might consider that a threat.”
They locked narrowed stares for a moment. Nando gave in to temptation and took a long drag from his cheroot. It was excellent. Better than he’d expected.
He tipped his head back and exhaled a perfect ring of smoke, a trick he had learned long ago when he’d spent an indeterminate span of time at a seraglio during his more youthful and eventful travels.
“I’d never threaten you, Tierney.” He grinned. “Where else would I have my supper or a roof over my head since I’m not permitted to return to my own abode?”
The truth of it was, he could return any time he liked—he wasn’t being held against his will. But here he remained, bearing the insults of an English jackanapes. Sitting on a hard chair that was making his left arse cheek fall asleep. Suffering through the worst bout of unrelieved ballocks he had ever endured. His cock, now that he had allowed his mind to stray to the memory of Eleanora’s cunt gripping his finger, remained half erect despite his present position and although he was occupying a room with another man whom he didn’t particularly like.
“Indeed,” Tierney drawled, exhaling his own cloud of smoke as he lifted his whisky in a salute. “However, I do believe you may be closer to returning to your own town house, Highness.”
Highness. There it was again.
Nando sipped his whisky, telling himself to let the trivial insult go. “Oh?”
“My men and I have been making a great deal of inquiries, searching for anyone who may have been on the street the day you were shot,” Tierney said, his tone businesslike once more. “We have discovered three different people who recognized a man in a greatcoat bearing down upon you that day. They all vow that it was the man who also raised a flintlock pistol and fired a shot at you before disappearing into the crowds.”
This was news at last.
Nando’s spine stiffened. “Who?”
Tierney exhaled a plume of smoke. “Are you familiar with the Earl of Levering?”
Nando’s stomach clenched. The Earl of Levering. Damn the bastard to hell—he ought to have suspected the earl’s furious hunger for vengeance hadn’t been satisfied by Maxim’s coin.
Nando flashed a grim smile. “I happen to be more familiar with the Countess of Levering than with the earl.”
But Levering was no stranger to him after the man had caught Nando with his lusty countess. Lady Levering’s carnal appetite had been astoundingly immense and perverse even by Nando’s admittedly sordid standards, and although she had vowed that her husband would never know about their affair, her assurances had proved false.
Apparently, the bribe to avoid the duel hadn’t been nearly as successful as Nando and Maxim had believed.
Tierney’s mien was equally forbidding. “Good God, you’ve been bedding Lady Levering?”
Nando winced. “Our association is not a recent one. During my last trip to London, the countess and I enjoyed a brief entanglement that ended when her irate husband discovered us in an unfortunate state of dishabille.”
A nice way of saying he’d been fucking the countess’s mouth whilst she’d been on her knees, moaning around his cock.
The memory made Nando’s gut curdle now. What the devil had he been doing, shagging his way through London without a care for whom he bedded or why or what the consequences might be? The notion of making love to anyone other than Eleanora felt suddenly foreign and as appealing as a spoiled bowl of fish soup. She was his, the only woman for him, and the knowledge was as profound as it was undeniable.
