Once Tempted (6 page)

In his floundering wake hustled Lady Bradstone. She glanced first at Aquiles, whom she spared a disapproving sniff, and then at Robert.

“Gracious heavens!” she announced, her hands going to her ample hips. “Robert, you aren’t dressed. The first guests will be arriving in less than an hour, and you must be ready to greet all our friends.”

“My apologies,” Robert told her, bowing his head slightly. “I’m afraid I lost track of the time.”

“I can’t imagine why.” She sent another annoyed glance toward Aquiles, as if she blamed him for Robert’s tardiness. “But do hurry. Lady Colyer is bringing her daughter, and it would be so nice if you would make a good impression.”

At this blatant matchmaking, Aquiles started to chortle.

“Don’t you have some work to mind?” she shot at Robert’s batman. “Perhaps something useful?”

The man grinned. “I probably do.” He bobbed his head at her. “My lord. My lady,” he said, sending Lady Bradstone a saucy wink.

“That man is odious,” Lady Bradstone started in before Aquiles was even out of earshot. “He slinks about the house like a cat. I never know when he is going to turn up. It quite unnerves me. And I don’t like the way he leers at the younger maids. He should have been dismissed the day you returned and sent back to that Papist country of his.”

“He is in my employ,” Robert told her. They’d had this discussion before. “I will remind you again that he saved my life.”

She sighed loudly. “I suppose I should be grateful for that. Just see that he remembers his place.” Her hands, moving in nervous flutters, fussed over his still undonned evening clothes. “I’ll send Babbit in immediately. I don’t see how you thought you were going to get dressed with that pirate helping you.”

Robert forced a smile on his face. “Thank you, madam,” he told her, unable to drive the word “mother” past his lips. It was the one part of this deception he couldn’t condone. He only hoped she wouldn’t notice.

She did.

“Oh, Robert, you needn’t be so formal with me!” she scolded, hustling across the room and wrapping him into her soft embrace. “I am your mother.” She looked up at him, her brows creasing with a hint of worry. Reaching up, she brushed a stray lock of his hair out of his face. “You’ve changed. I blame those horrible Frenchies for locking you away all these years. But you’re home now, and you’ll be your old self in no time, my dearest boy.” She released him and left the room as she had arrived in a blowsy breeze of violet scent and fluttering lace.

Robert forced a more sincere smile on his face as she departed. Even if the lady wasn’t his mother, she was still his aunt and as such deserved a modicum of consideration.

He quickly set about getting himself dressed as best he could before Babbit arrived and went into a state over the condition of his now wrinkled shirt—a garment that would barely be seen beneath the acres of lace in his cravat and his waistcoat.

As he struggled into his coat, a garment that more resembled a strait jacket than what he would consider fashion, his thoughts turned back to finding Miss Sutton. Pymm’s description of the girl had been rather vague, fitting half the misses in London. Not overly pretty, plain features, hair the color of a farthing.

Still, despite this less than distinguishing description, someone had to know where the chit was—women didn’t just disappear into thin air. A man, now, that was entirely different—but a seventeen-year-old girl with no experience in the world? It was unfathomable that she could just vanish.

Then again, perhaps Aquiles was right. She might have met with foul play. There wasn’t any reason to believe that Bradstone wasn’t capable of having her removed from his path as well.

Behind him the door opened and closed quietly.

He paused for a moment, awaiting the impending explosion from his volatile valet, but none came.

“I’m almost ready, Babbit. You needn’t have bothered,” he told the man.

Then came a sound that Robert had heard too many times in his military career not to have it leave every hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

It was the defiant snap of a pistol being cocked.

It hadn’t been hard for Olivia to find Robert’s bedchamber.

Robert had sneaked her up to this very room at the height of a ball his mother had thrown not a month after their secret courtship had begun. She’d only too willingly allowed him to steal her away from the propriety of the crowded ballroom and into the solitude of his private sanctuary.

How foolish and headstrong she’d been that night. Believing his lies as he’d carried her across the threshold and set her down in a rush of silk and lace onto his bed. It had been there atop his downy coverlet that he’d declared his undying devotion for her. That since he’d met her, he’d spent nothing but lonely nights dreaming of her in that very bed . . .  and longing for the day when she would share it with him.

His earnest declaration, softly whispered endearments and a long, slow kiss had left Olivia believing in his dreams, and a few of her own.

And they all had to do with sharing his bed.

He’d kissed her again, this time, he confessed, to seal their love. And then he had done oh-so-much more. Not that she hadn’t been only too willing. She’d have given him anything that magical night.

And in a sense she had. They’d played a game of decoding and seduction. He’d given her a paper with an undecipherable message, and with each word she discovered, he rewarded her with kisses and promises until she’d untangled the entire message and he’d removed all her clothing.

Breathless from his touch and dizzy with his heady promises that one day very soon she’d be sharing this chamber with him as his marchioness, their ruinous play had continued until they were interrupted by his valet.

The memory of her idiotic indiscretion brought a blush of shame and regret to her cheeks. If only she’d seen through his deceptions. If only she’d realized that the Marquis of Bradstone had no intention of making her his bride.

Certainly not her, the bluestocking daughter of a disgraced knight.

If only she’d known that he’d had no intention of doing anything other than using her intellectual prowess and her oh-too-willing body for his nefarious purposes.

She shook off her memories and focused on the here and now. ’Twas time for the two things she’d been dreaming of since she’d learned Bradstone was alive.

Revenge and redemption.

Robert stood on the other side of the spacious room with what seemed like an acre of Turkish carpet between them. He remained in the shadows, outside the ring of light from the brace of candles on the desk, with his back to her.

She hadn’t remembered him being so tall or his shoulders as imposing.

When she’d cocked the pistol, he’d flinched. But now his stance seemed poised and ready—for death or action, she couldn’t tell.

Like Hobbe.

Egads, where had that stray thought come from? The marquis and Hobbe sharing any similarity? Never.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

That smooth voice. She’d heard it in her dreams, whispering to her from his watery grave. Now it called to her in real life, bringing forth the memory of that long-ago time when she’d fancied herself in love with him. And believed that he loved her. And trying now to edge its traitorous way back into her shuttered heart.

Remembering Robert’s true feelings for her, she steadied Jemmy’s wavering pistol, aiming it at his head.

She would have preferred to direct her shot at his heart, but she knew from experience he hadn’t one.

“Are you going to shoot, or must I die of boredom waiting for you to get your aim correct?” He stood there for another moment or so, then he slowly turned around in an easy, fluid motion.

His features remained much as the rest of him, concealed in the obscurity of his lair.

“Yes?” he asked, his tone almost blasé about finding a pistol bearing woman gracing his bedchamber.

Then again, this was the Marquis of Bradstone. Unrepentent rake. Despoiler of the innocent. Scenes like this probably happened on a regular basis.

He took a step toward her, bringing himself into the light and out of the darkness that had all but enveloped his face.

One elegant brow rose as he gazed at her. The sight of him after all these years caught her unawares. It was as if she were seventeen again, standing off to one side at Lady Bloomberg’s, a debutante of negligible connections and presence. And then he’d singled her out with just that look.

And yet this time there was something very different about the man. Something that left her breathless and trembling for reasons that had nothing to do with their tarnished past.

Before she could put a finger on what was so very wrong, in the blink of an eye, his features masked themselves with a practiced air, closing her off from any further scrutiny.

Though Olivia had seen much in that unguarded moment. Appraisal. A fleeting hint of appreciation. A startling maleness to his bold, raking assessment of her.

And something else. A revelation that hit her with a hot, searing shock, as if she’d been shot herself. He didn’t know who she was. He didn’t remember her.

Oh, she’d heard of his head injury, but she’d never thought that he wouldn’t remember
her.

It stung more handily than she cared to admit.

“Well?” His question hung in the air. And she knew what he wanted to know.

Was she going to kill him or not
? Her finger trembled over the trigger. She should pull it. She should send him back to his grave. She should repay the debt she owed that poor Spaniard for giving his life to save hers.

But for some unfathomable reason, her finger refused to move. Something about this entire situation, about the man before her seemed dead wrong.

And, she reasoned, she at least wanted him to know who was sending him back to hell.

“It’s been a long time, my lord.” Involuntarily she took a step toward him.

He didn’t move. “Am I supposed to know you?”

Of all the incredible gall. She took another step closer so she stood completely within the circle of light that now entwined them both. “Does that help?”

She wanted him to see that she wasn’t the same naive girl he’d used for his own ruinous ends.

What she hadn’t expected to discover by coming this close to him was that he had changed as well. Utterly. Completely.

If it was possible, his years of captivity had only made him that much more handsome. When she was seventeen, she’d been taken with his smooth, polished looks and elegant manners, but now, at four and twenty, she found herself breathless at the man he’d become.

The mocking and handsome features of her dreams were now hardened—there was even a jagged scar running along his jawline. The healed wound gave him a wicked, bounder type of mien. His black hair, before so meticulously coifed, was now styled in a restless sort of way that lent him a mysterious, careless quality that would draw women to him to untangle his secrets.

Including her.

No, don’t even think that
, Olivia told herself, taking a cautious step back into the safety of the shadows.
Don’t look at him.
There was something alluringly haphazard about this newfound Marquis of Bradstone that set warning bells clamoring in her heart.

As if he’d actually become the dangerous man of mystery and foreign intrigues she’d thought him to be all those years ago.

“Do I know you?” he asked again, this time the acrid annoyance in his voice all Bradstone, jarring her out of her unsettling reverie. “Because if you haven’t noticed, I will be required downstairs very soon, so if you are here to kill me, then aim straight and sure.” He paused, then opened his waistcoat and pushed aside his mangled cravat, clearing a path to his mythical heart. “Consider it a favor, for a bullet is certainly more humane than the torture her ladyship has planned for me and that mob of hers.” A lazy grin spread over his lips.

He chose a time like this to tease her? The Marquis of Bradstone she remembered had been cynical, sarcastic, even at times ironic, his witty remarks known to cut to the quick.

But teasing? Never.

A strange whisper of foreboding stole over her. She shook it off, telling herself that time changed everyone. Even the incorrigible.

With lazy, languid movements, he pulled his immaculate white shirt free so she could see clearly the muscled plains of his chest that was now her target. He patted his left breast and nodded at the pistol in her hand. “You’ve got it a little high. Try lowering it a bit, or you’re likely just to take off my ear, Miss . . .  Miss . . .”

Olivia’s anger seethed. This was all a joke to him! “How dare you—” she started to say, not sure what piqued her more—that he didn’t remember her or that he found the idea of a woman about to shoot him worthy of some bad jest. “I’ve spent the last seven years waiting for this moment, and I’ll not let you whitewash me with your newfound sense of ill humor.”

Seven years.

Her words hit their mark, for suddenly a hot, furious light blazed to life in his gaze.

Recognition . . .  and something else.

As if her need for revenge now belonged to him.

“Miss Sutton,” he breathed, his shoulders once again straightening into a taut line.

She cocked a brow at this sudden formality.

“Olivia,” he corrected himself.

“How kind of you to remember.”

“How could I forget
you
?” He smoothed his shirt back over his chest. “How have you been?”

The strained intimacy behind his question whispered over her. It was as if they had never met at all, and yet they had. More to the matter, Olivia certainly didn’t want to start trading reminiscences with him—he didn’t fare all that well in her version, and she certainly had no desire to hear his.

Instead she changed the subject. “I take it you never found your treasure?”

He cocked his head and eyed her anew. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re still alive.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked.

She smiled at him. Since the French hadn’t killed him, she’d half hoped that
El Rescate del Rey
would. That is, if he’d been able to find it. She hadn’t been completely disconnected from learned society at Finch Manor and had discovered a few scant bits about the ancient Spanish treasure from the texts she’d obtained through Lord Finch’s membership at a London lending library.