Once Tempted (16 page)

Robert shuddered.

Aquiles paused, needle in hand. “I haven’t even started yet. What are you shaking about for?” He nodded toward the decanter. “Take some of that. It will make you forget what I am about to do.”

Robert looked over at the needle and the black thread and then down at the ragged hole in his arm. He could barely think through the searing pain. And yet Olivia’s words rang in his ears, rising through the excruciating din.

I’ve never missed.

Hardly the confession of an innocent miss. But also the first bit of evidence he’d been looking for in what he considered his true reason for coming to London.

To finish the mission started by that ill-fated agent seven years ago—Orlando Danvers.

His brother.

Dead and gone these past seven years, but never forgotten. Robert’s youngest brother, the serious one, the one who’d longed to show his elder brothers that he too could carry out the family legacy of adventure.

He’d certainly had the bloodlines for it.

After Robert’s mother, Susannah, had died, his father, Lord Danvers, had been assigned to a posting in Spain. There he had met and eloped (once again) with Maria Elena, the fiery and outspoken daughter of a highly placed Spanish grandee who’d made a fortune in the New World in his youth. Once the scandal at this impetuous and impossible marriage had died down, Maria Elena’s relations had welcomed the Danvers children into their warm fold and given Robert and Colin the only family they had ever known, especially since the Danvers brood had grown to include two more sons, Raphael and Orlando.

Robert glanced over at the door to the closet, where Miss Sutton continued to pound and protest at her imprisonment.

The only witness to his brother’s murder and very possibly the one who pulled the trigger.

I’ve never missed.

Oh, if she only knew how those words damned her in his eyes.

But leave it to his canny servant to know exactly what he was thinking. “Bah!” Aquiles said. “She’s no killer.” The man stopped threading his needle for a moment. “Considering what that man told her about her father, yer lucky she didn’t shoot you first.”

Robert shook his head. “She didn’t kill me because she knows I’m not Bradstone.”

At this Pymm sputtered over his drink. “She knows what?” he managed to choke out.

“She guessed it this morning,” Robert admitted.

Pymm’s already ruddy face went to a mottled color of rage. “Oh, this is most impossible. Ruinous. How did she find out?” He paused for a moment. “You didn’t take her to your bed, did you?”

Robert flinched, less from Aquiles’s rough stitching than from Pymm’s perceptive inquiry.

“Does it matter?” He wasn’t about to confess that he had been kissing the woman suspected of murdering his brother. And worse still, that he’d enjoyed her traitorous lips more than he cared to admit.

“This might hurt ye a bit,” Aquiles warned.

A bit? Robert hadn’t even a second to brace himself as his devil of a servant pulled and knotted the thread, a hot blinding pain shooting through his chest and down his arm to his very fingertips.

For a moment, he sputtered over a curse, until Aquiles finished his work by pushing a glass of Pymm’s bitter brew into his hand and forcing him to take the measure in one hearty toss.

“There you are, lad,” his servant said, as he finished his work by adding the surgeon’s foul-smelling poultice to Robert’s shoulder and binding it there with a clean linen cloth. “Good as new.”

From the door of the closet, Miss Sutton’s pounding took on a new immediacy. “Let me out. I say, let me out immediately. There is something in here.” This was followed by a loud shriek and even more frantic hammering on the wooden panels.

“Damn rats,” Pymm muttered.

“She’s in there with rats?” Robert asked.

Pymm shrugged. “Better in there than out here.”

Robert turned to Aquiles. “Get her out.”

The moment the door opened, Miss Sutton came hauling into the dimly lit apartment as if her skirt were on fire. Inside the closet, a lone rat sat cowering in the corner.

Apparently even rodents feared the woman. And with good reason. She was a bossy shrew.

And she started right in. “How dare you lock me in that wretched hole, you—” Her harangue halted as her gaze locked onto the bandage over his shoulder. Her features whitened for a moment before she set her mouth in a grim line and marched over to his side. “Who tied this?” It was no mere question but an imperious demand.

“Well, I did, miss,” Aquiles said sheepishly.

“It will never stay put like this.” Without even so much as a by your leave, she set to work unwrapping Aquiles’s handiwork.

“Do you mind?” Robert asked her. “What do you know of dressing wounds?”

“Enough,” she said through gritted teeth.

It was not the answer he wanted to hear. His hand shot up and caught her wrist. “Aquiles’s work is good enough for me.”

She stared at him for a moment with those compelling blue eyes of hers. Beneath his fingers, her pulse beat a wild tattoo, so alive and yet so fragile.

In a blink of an eye he wanted to trust her—trust her as he’d never trusted another human being. Yes, he trusted Aquiles, he even trusted Pymm, even if they didn’t see eye to eye on everything.

But this woman wanted him to trust her on a level that touched his heart. A connection born out of a kiss and pulling them together with intangible ribbons of fate.

Somewhere in between kissing her and watching her strike into action today at Chambley’s had left him intrigued.

More than intrigued, and damned if he understood the half of it. Her impassioned demeanor, the unending contradictions that encircled her, her fierce independence—they’d cast a net around him, ensnaring him. But there was also something about this woman that he’d never encountered before, like a far-off campfire on a moonless night. She offered both hope and a terrifying unknown.

Then, as if she too felt the strange bond between them and was unwilling to bind herself in its tangled web, she wrenched her arm free.

He had to wonder whether if he’d had the strength to stop her, if he would have let her go. He shook off the unthinkable notion and said curtly, “I’ve had worse injuries. I’ll be fine.”

She took another disdainful glance at Aquiles’s doctoring. “Good enough if you want to die from infection,” she sniffed. “I know what I am doing. I’ve tended more grievous injuries than this.”

Part of him wanted her to say she’d never seen anything so bad in her life, she’d never witnessed anything as foul as she’d seen today. He didn’t know why, barely understood it, but he wanted to believe this woman innocent of Orlando’s murder.

But he couldn’t stop replaying in his head what had happened just a few hours ago.

The report of Chambley’s pistol. The searing hot burn of lead as it passed through his shoulder.

He’d lain there, stunned and unable to move, seeing only Chambley’s wry grin as the man had reached for his second weapon. But beneath him, Olivia Sutton had struggled forth. She’d fought and clawed her way to her pistol, and once it had found its way into her capable grasp, she’d taken her shot at Chambley even as the man sought to consign Robert to hell.

She’d saved his life. This wanted murderess had saved his life as steadfastly and unhesitantly as it was said she killed his brother.

Now this woman was carefully unwinding the bandages over his wound with a practiced, gentle touch. When she got to the poultice, she dispatched the foulsmelling concoction without a second glance.

Her lips pursed as she eyed Aquiles’s needlework. “The stitching looks well enough.” She turned to his servant. “Is this your handiwork?”

Aquiles nodded.

“Did you heat the needle before you stitched him up?”

The man shook his head.

Olivia followed suit, shaking hers. “Fools. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a fever before morning. Lady Finch insists a heated needle makes a better stitch and doesn’t get infected as often.” She sighed. “You, there,” she said, snapping at Cochrane, who so far had remained tucked in a corner, taking in the proceedings with a practiced ear. “Go to the apothecary’s and fetch me the following items.” She ticked off a long list and turned to Robert. “From the looks of this place, he’ll need money.”

Robert nearly laughed at Pymm’s rather affronted look. He nodded toward his money pouch lying on the table. “Give him what he’ll need as long as you promise not to poison me with that witch’s brew.”

Now it was Olivia’s turn to look insulted. “If I wanted you dead, don’t you think I would have done it by now?”

Exactly his own question. Why had she saved him? But instead of asking, he shot back. “Oh, yes, better to let me live so you can prolong my misery.”

Olivia ignored him as she counted out the coins, adding a few more as an afterthought. “Tell the man you want fresh supplies,” she told the boy. “Nothing with mildew or dust. Tell him I’ll come down and discuss the matter if he sends inferior samples.”

The boy nodded, his eyes wide and his fingers clenched over the coins.

“Well, get on with you,” she told him.

Cochrane scrambled out of the apartment in the wake of her feminine tyranny.

“Now see here,” Pymm said, finally summoning up the words to confront her. “You are not in charge of this establishment. Quite the contrary, Miss Sutton. I’d say you’d be well served right back in the closet if you don’t—”

The man’s lofty orders came to a fast halt when the lady turned in his direction, her hard gaze seeming to pin him to the spot where he had once stood with such rabid assurance. “Who is this?” she asked Robert.

“An associate of mine,” he told her.

“Harumph.” She cast another skeptical glance at Pymm. “Does he have a name?”

Robert nodded. “Miss Olivia Sutton, may I introduce to you Mr. Pymm. He may not be the most affectionate or gracious of hosts, but he is highly regarded in some circles.”

She made another skeptical noise. “And you expect me to trust him? I’ve seen weasels in henhouses with more apparent character.”

Robert eased himself up in his chair and grinned at Pymm. “Most would probably agree with you. But Wellington wouldn’t. He rather likes Mr. Pymm here.”

“Then I have to agree with Lady Finch,” Olivia said, her arms crossed over her chest, her scathing gaze flicking between Pymm and Robert.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“Arthur Wellesley is a horse’s ass.”

Olivia could tell that Lady Finch’s sentiment about Wellington was not shared by any of the other occupants in the room.

She was being bossy and outspoken in the extreme. A lesson she’d learned from Lady Finch in how to keep men off balance. Especially when she felt her own life had tipped upside down.

She’d quite possibly killed a man today and most likely would hang for her crime. At least this time she could comfort herself that she actually deserved the hangman’s noose.

Her stomach rolled again, and she struggled to remain calm. If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that she had to keep her wits about her and determine whose company she’d fallen into—and how she could escape them.

She was in a poor tenement, she knew that much, somewhere in a part of London she’d never seen before. Seven Dials, she guessed. With a trio of men she had no idea if she could trust.

But you can,
a small voice whispered to her.

The same voice that had urged her to stop Chambley from killing this enigmatic man before her.

Robert’s hand took hers again. “You reacted as Aquiles or I might have if we hadn’t been otherwise occupied. You did the right thing.”

“The right thing?” Pymm blustered. “What are you nattering about?”

Robert didn’t let go of her hand, his warm assurance compelling her to trust him. “She’s a little overwrought about Chambley.”

“Piffle,” Pymm declared. “The man should have been shot years ago. Too bad he still lives. You would have saved the Crown a pretty penny, what with not having to try and hang the bastard for treason.”

“My apologies,” she shot back. “That would have been quite a consolation when I was hanging at Tyburn to know I saved the Treasury money.”

“Both of you,” Robert said, “stop this useless bickering. Right now it matters not that Chambley was shot. What matters most is the information you have regarding
El Rescate del Rey.”

Pymm’s hands fluttered up and down like a hapless conductor. “Keep your voice down, you fool. Someone might hear you.”

Olivia watched them both and wondered not for the first time what their stake was in all this.

If only she knew who to trust.

Trust him.

This time she recognized the voice whispering to her. An echo from the past. The boy she’d held as he died reaching out over the years, with the same insistence in his voice as he’d had that night when he’d begged her to save his mission.

Find Hobbe,
he’d said. And yet she was no closer now to finding the elusive man than she had been that night.

“You can tell us where
it
is?” Mr. Pymm was asking.

Olivia held her tongue. She wasn’t about to divulge a word until she had a few matters straight with them. And even then she wasn’t convinced she’d reveal a word of what she knew. Especially since she wasn’t convinced any of them was capable of keeping any promise.

“I will not say a word to either of you while I am imprisoned in this house. When I am free and safe, then I may share what I might know.”

Pymm’s gaze rolled upward, and he made a rather rude noise in the back of his throat.

She ignored him. “There is one other condition.”

“Go on,” Robert said, over the choking and blustering noise emanating from Mr. Pymm.

“I must find someone. A man I heard mentioned that night. When I find him, then I will be able to finish all this business.”

“Now see here,” Pymm said, waggling his finger under her nose. “You are in no position to start bartering with us. Do you know who you’re speaking to?”

Olivia tried to keep her animosity in check. “From where I stand, I happen to be looking at a weasel of a man who locked me in a closet with rats and another who is parading about London pretending to be a man he isn’t, in the company of a pirate who looks capable of slitting throats for the fun of it.” She put her hands on her hips. “Not much to inspire confidence in a lady.”