Once Tempted (15 page)

“Not with you,” she protested, trying to dig in her heels.

Robert appeared unmoved and didn’t stop his forward momentum down the stairs and out of the maze that comprised Chambley’s house. “A few minutes ago you couldn’t wait to leave and now you want to stay?”

“That was before I killed a man,” she offered, coming up with the only excuse she could think of other than the truth.

“You didn’t kill anyone. You only winged him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She glanced back up the stairs, where even now a tide of servants was rushing to the aid of their master. “I think his injury will be grave, for I’ve never missed.”

Robert made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat and reached over and took the still smoking weapon from her hand. “Unfortunately for us, you chose today to start. Now he’ll be able to raise the Watch, probably even the dead with all his caterwauling.”

“Still, perhaps we should call for a surgeon,” she said, trying to delay what she now saw was inevitable.

She’d tumbled out of Chambley’s prison into another.

“You’re coming with me,” he told her.

They ran out the front door, Robert brandishing her pistol at anyone who stepped in their path. Down into the street they went, where a carriage lurched forward to meet them.

Olivia looked up to see Aquiles’s grim face.

“I heard the shots. Is that bastard dead?” he asked.

Robert shook his head. “No.”

His servant uttered a curse in Spanish, the translation of which brought a blush to Olivia’s already flushed cheeks.

Without any ceremony, Olivia found herself hoisted inside and tossed into the nearest seat. Robert was no more than a hair’s breadth behind her, when Aquiles shouted at the horses and the carriage careened forward. The abrupt departure sent Olivia crashing into Robert.

Everywhere Olivia tried to find a handhold, she found nothing but the hard, unforgiving muscle of Robert’s body.

The man who had just saved her from death.

“Thank you,” she murmured as she righted herself by catching hold of his arm. His closeness made her breathe a little faster, her heart beat with an irrational flutter. “Thank you, sir, for saving my life,” she whispered.

He glanced down at her hand still resting on his arm. “You may not thank me later,” he said, with a wave of his hand that shook off her touch.

Feeling embarrassed by her heated response to him, she scrambled to the other side of the carriage, staring down at her tingling hands now primly folded in her lap.

Only then did she realize they were covered in blood.

Robert’s blood.

Her gaze flew up to him. Her mouth opened in a wide O at the red stain now spilling from his sleeve and soaking his jacket.

Obviously Chambley hadn’t missed his target.

“You’re hurt,” she managed to gasp, clambering back across the swaying carriage until she sat beside him.

His face was set in a granite fortitude. “It’s nothing.” He nodded at the ragged portion of his coat. “I’ll be fine, though this coat is probably done for.” His hard green eyes sparkled for a moment.

Despite his poor attempt at a jest, Olivia could see a wildness behind his gaze, an animal rage fighting against what must be searing pain. “You’ve been shot. You need to see a surgeon, a doctor.”

“If you’ve forgotten, you’ve just shot a man. A rather important one. The Watch, Bow Street, everyone will be looking for us. A doctor is a luxury we can ill-afford at the moment.” He made a couple of attempts to shrug out of his coat, but to no avail.

Olivia reached forward to help him, her heart hammering as she gently tried to ease off the tight-fitting coat without causing him any more pain than was necessary.

Once it was free, she saw only too clearly the ugly hole in his upper arm. She’d only seen one other such injury—on that night in Chambley’s library—and that experience hadn’t given her any better stomach for the horrors that a bullet could inflict on a man’s flesh.

She looked away for a moment, calming the rolling tide in her gut. Swallowing back the bile threatening to rise, she took a deep breath and ripped his shirt further, exposing his arm, which was bleeding at an alarming rate.

“Oh, dear,” she managed to whisper. “I’ll need to bind it.”

He was already tugging at his neckcloth. “Use this.”

She reached up and started to unwind the cloth. Her efforts brought her face to face with this stranger. This wary hero. She paused for a moment, staring into his pain-filled gaze. “Who are you?”

“Robert Danvers.” He looked down at the gaping wound in his arm. “Well, actually Major Robert Danvers, of Wellington’s private staff.”

“Still joking,” she said, trying to make light of the moment, as she finished unwinding the cravat. Carefully she wrapped the injury with the length of silk.

“This is no joke, madame,” he said through gritted teeth as she made another pass. “I truly am here at the behest of Wellington.”

For a moment Olivia said nothing. Even if he was telling the truth, it was all so unbelievable. “You look just like him,” she said, breaking the strained silence between them.

“Bind it tighter,” he told her, nodding at her work. As she did his bidding and pulled the ends together, he said, “He was my cousin.”

“Distant, I would guess. Lord Bradstone would never have saved my life over his. But it does explain the differences between the two of you.” She finished the job by tying the ends into a sturdy knot and smiled weakly.

He studied her for a moment, his gaze searching. “What differences?”

What could she tell him—that his kiss had given him away? That it had touched her heart in a way she’d never thought possible? That he’d come to her rescue like the hero she’d spent countless nights imagining?

“The scar,” she said quickly, now wishing she hadn’t said anything. “Your hair. Your clothes. Lord Bradstone wouldn’t have been caught dead in that jacket or badly tied neckerchief.”

“You could say he almost was,” he joked. “A couple of inches more to the right, and Chambley would have put that bullet through my heart. My poor valet, he would never have been able to find work ever again after my disgraceful appearance at my demise.”

Olivia laughed despite herself. Though she didn’t see how he could make jokes, especially given how gray he was turning. His eyes started to close, and he leaned heavily against her. Oh, dear, what if he were to . . .  Her heart lurched at the thought of him dying. Of him leaving her alone . . .  once again.

He may not be her Hobbe, but he was the closest thing to a hero she’d ever found.

“We need to find you a surgeon,” she said.

“I need to find that blasted treasure,” he told her.

“It won’t do you any good if you are dead.”

He took a deep breath, as if trying to hold onto his composure. “Madame, without it, you and I are surely dead.”

Chapter 6

“W
hat the devil were you thinking, bringing her here?” Pymm asked, after his servant, a scrawny lad by the name of Cochrane, had been dispatched to fetch the local surgeon. “The Watch, Bow Street and every citizen in between is on the lookout for her and you.”

Robert held his ground, shaky though it was—his shoulder throbbing and his control wavering because of the tremendous loss of blood from Chambley’s poorly aimed shot.

“Look at you!” Pymm complained. “You know how much it is going to cost me to get everyone around here who’s seen you to forget this . . .  this . . .  sight.” He flapped his arms in despair.

So his coat and shirt were soaked in blood—he probably wasn’t the first poor sot to come slinking into Pymm’s neighborhood, battered and bleeding. And it hadn’t been his first choice to bring Olivia to Seven Dials either, but he knew of no other place where he could take the woman. Or any other place where his injuries could be tended without anyone asking for more than a handful of coins to look the other way.

“What would you have suggested I do?” he asked his unwilling host. “Go to Bradstone House, where the Watch was probably waiting for me? Or better yet, leave her at Chambley’s?”

Pymm nodded emphatically at this idea. “Yes. That’s it. You should have left her behind.” He glanced again at the closet door, where Olivia had started kicking the panel and calling out an ugly assortment of invectives. “We wouldn’t be in this mess if she weren’t such an uncooperative bit o’ muslin. This just proves my theory she’s a danger to every man she meets. She probably set the French after the
Bon Venture
after your cousin deserted her.”

Having seen the lady in action, Robert wouldn’t put it past her. But right now he needed Pymm’s help, and there was one sure way to guarantee it. “She knows where
it
is.”

Robert didn’t have to say what
it
was, for the light that blazed to life in Pymm’s beady gaze said only too clearly that they both understood what this meant.

The King’s Ransom.

“Where?” Pymm managed to whisper.

“I don’t know. She won’t say.”

“Why not? What does she want? Money? Amnesty? A nice cold dark cell in Newgate?” Pymm’s indignation that anyone would not immediately help their cause was almost comical, considering the first thing he’d done when his unwanted guests had arrived was demand that Olivia be locked in a windowless closet attached to the main room. And there she had remained secured for the past hour.

Of course, the
first
thing Robert had done before putting her in there had been to check within to make sure there were no other avenues of escape.

Olivia hadn’t gone in willingly, and even with the heavy door barred shut, she’d pounded and complained and cursed at her imprisonment without any sign of letting up—though in the last few minutes her tirade had dwindled to a muttering stream of curses as to his likely parentage.

“She claims she will not divulge a word,” Robert said.

Pymm sniffed at this. “I have some associates who could convince her to talk.”

He could well imagine Pymm’s associates and doubted even these masters of persuasion could get the lady to reveal anything.

Olivia Sutton was the most stubborn woman alive.

Just then the door to Pymm’s apartment sprang open.

Aquiles, who had until now appeared to be slumbering on a chair against the door to Olivia’s prison, sprang to life, pistol in hand, his black eyes blazing with the fury of Blackbeard’s ghost.

Cochrane’s eyes widened with fright, and his lips flapped with words they couldn’t summon forth.

Pymm shooed Aquiles back to his post. “What is it, boy? Where is Becker?”

The boy’s gaze never left Aquiles when he answered. “Sorry, sir, but Mr. Becker can’t come. Too many of the Watch and Runners skulking about, looking to find ’im,” he said, nodding toward Robert. The boy had not arrived entirely empty-handed though. He reached inside his ragged jacket and pulled out a packet. “Mr. Becker, sir, says this ought to set the gentleman to rights, iffin you can find someone to sew ’im up.”

Aquiles opened the boy’s offering. Inside lay clean linen cloths, a needle and black thread, along with a packet of some foul-smelling concoction.

“ ’E says you’re to make a poultice out of those,” the little urchin said, pointing at the folded paper. “And to bind it to the wound after yer done stitching the hole shut.” The boy rubbed at his nose. “Oh, and he wanted to know iffin you’d got the lead out of there.“

“Passed clean through,” Robert told him.

The boy nodded. “Good. ’E said iffin you hadn’t and couldn’t get it out, not to tell you that you’d likely die.” Cochrane shrugged and took up his post on a stool near the fireplace.

Pymm didn’t so much as take another breath before continuing his protest. “Runners? I detest those drunken sots. I won’t have them lurking about my business! Do you realize what this may cost me?” The man fidgeted about the small, cluttered apartment, adroitly sliding through the maze that made up the room—a couple of chairs scattered around a battered table, a long sideboard against the wall, topped with several half-filled or nearly empty decanters, an assortment of chipped cups and glasses, a plate and some cutlery. The far wall, if it could be called that considering the small space his apartment afforded, featured a fireplace and a small trundle bed tucked nearby. And everywhere there were piles of papers and notes and maps, as if all the secrets of the British Empire lay rotting in this godforsaken corner of Seven Dials.

Pymm, glass in hand, the contents slopping over the side and onto the much-stained carpet, stopped his pacing in front of Robert. “I can’t protect you now,” he said. “I won’t protect
her
.”

“No one is asking you to protect her,” Robert told him.
That was his job.

The ferocity of his conviction stopped him cold. He tried telling himself that Miss Sutton’s welfare was a matter of national importance—but in the last few hours he’d almost forgotten that. Forgotten the
real
reason he’d come to London. His resolve, his intentions, lost in the wake of her kiss and his own traitorous response to it.

“It’s not like she murdered Chambley,” he heard himself saying, defending the very woman he suspected of the worst kind of treachery. “Besides, you should be thankful. She stopped him from killing me.”

Pymm didn’t look all that indebted. “Shooting Chambley might have been a favor to those of us on the right side. Unfortunately there are too many people who view him as one of our allies. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Prince Regent has called for her arrest and following that, he’ll demand that you be brought to justice as well for your hand in all this.” Pymm eyed his nearly empty glass and frowned.

Ambling over to the battered sideboard, he poured himself a glass of the dark liquid. He tossed back his newly poured drink in one hearty gulp. Then, as if he finally remembered he had guests, he poured another glass and held it out for Aquiles, who paused in his ministrations to Robert’s shoulder long enough to partake of Pymm’s poor fare.

When Pymm held up another glass for Robert, he waved the offer off, his stomach turning at what he guessed were the contents of the decanter. Knowing their host and his parsimonious ways, he guessed that Pymm probably bought his private stock from the Rose and Lion.