One Night of Sin (33 page)

“Darling!” Lady Campion turned away from her idle study of the small framed watercolors on the wall and greeted him with a practiced smile. She held up her gloved hands coyly, presenting herself. “Surprise!”

Alec felt the blood turn to ice in his veins as the flush of lovemaking drained from his face. For a second he was utterly disoriented. And then a dangerous, churning wave of dark emotion rose within him.

What the hell was she doing here?

“Why, you rogue, aren’t you happy to see me?” she asked with playful indignation, cocking her whip hand on one lean hip.

Alec lost his voice.

If, in the past, running into the baroness at social functions had caused him mild embarrassment and uncomfortable sensations of guilty distaste, the sight of her now, under the circumstances, filled him with dread. If she learned about Becky—or worse, far worse, if Becky learned about her . . .

Alec swallowed hard, realizing, like a man cornered by a hungry tigress, he must make no sudden movements or he would be shredded limb from limb. His attachment to Becky, his need for her, had engendered this horrible Achilles’ heel. He must protect it. He must get Eva out of here. Pacifying her just a little, he recalled, was the swiftest way to get rid of her. Whatever happened, he must not arouse her suspicions.

Eva Campion had been unnaturally possessive over Alec from the day she first gained a measure of control over him through her gold. As many times and in as many ways as he had tried to tell her it was over between them, she just kept coming back every few months. Alec knew she would not take kindly to seeing her favorite hired stallion betrothed, of all things, to a beautiful girl so much younger and lovelier than she.

Indeed, if Eva found out about Becky, everyone in Society would also know within the hour, including Mikhail Kurkov. As for his future bride, Alec could not bear to think what she would say if she found out the truth. Especially now. Like this. She would probably retract her acceptance of his proposal. He would lose her.

He swallowed hard, able to do nothing with Eva standing there, staring expectantly at him, but to pray that Becky obeyed his orders in wifely fashion and stayed out of sight. Damn it, he should have told her while he’d had the chance. His conscience had plagued him to confess his past arrangement with the baroness—indeed, he knew that he would have to, in time—but he was already up to his eyeballs in complications right now. It had been more than he was ready to take on.

His main reaction, however, as he looked at Eva, standing in the parlor as if she owned it—as if she owned
him
—was cold anger.

Get her out of here before she ruins everything.

He was outraged that this snake dared invade his and Becky’s little private Eden, their holy ground. Lady Campion was poisonous.

Alec knew that better than most.

“To what do I owe this honor, my lady?” he asked in a wary drawl.

“Well! That’s not a very nice welcome for an old friend.” She glided over and presented one rouged, knife-hilt cheek for him to kiss.

Alec turned away, bristling with hostility. “Oh, so cruel darling?” she chided with a knowing smile and a hard gleam in her coal-black eyes. She tapped him lightly with her folded fan. “You know you’ve missed me. Why aren’t you staying in Black Lion Street with your idiotic friends?”

He sent her a warning glance from under his lashes.

“Ah, in a mood again, are you? I should have known. You’re so cute when you’re grouchy.” She pinched him playfully.

“What do you want?”

“The same thing I always want, darling. You!” she said with a bright, trilling laugh. “You’re going to the Lieven ball, of course? I need an escort. You may come by to pick me up at nine.”

He clenched his jaw and propped his hands on his waist, studying the carpet designs and willing himself not to throw her out bodily. “I thought you had a new—friend.”

“Oh, young Jason?” She gave a worldly little wave of her fan and sighed. “No. He was just a . . . snack. You, on the other hand, my lovely Lord Alec—” She flung herself down into the deep-cushioned sofa and put her feet up on the ottoman, heels crossed. “You are a connoisseur’s feast.”

Arching her back with a sinuous motion, she stretched like an expensive and pampered pet cat, then smiled at him and patted the spot on the sofa beside her.

Alec shook his head in answer to her invitation, slowly folding his arms across his chest.

She frowned. “Come over here. You
owe
me.”

He lifted his chin. “I paid that debt, as you’ll recall.”

“It’s paid when
I
say it’s paid, darling. Come, haven’t you missed me just a little?”

Why did she talk to him as though he were a baby or a favorite lapdog? How had he borne it all those weeks when he had been, for all intents and purposes, her sex slave? But then, he thought grimly, a man could withstand quite a lot when thugs working for a low-life East End moneylender threatened to cut off his balls.

“I hear you’re winning again,” she remarked with a glint in her dark eyes.

He watched her, on his guard, trying to listen to the far end of the house, where he hoped to God that Becky was engrossed in the task of whatever had to be done next to her pudding. “A bit.”

“Oh.” Eva gave him a rouged pout. “I guess that means you don’t need me anymore.”

He sent her a chilly smile. “Guess not.”

She got up from the sofa and sauntered toward him, folding her thin arms across her waist. “You know, I have the oddest feeling that you’re up to something, Alec.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Nobody sees you, except at the tables. You play as cautiously as an old granny now, they say.” She shook her head. “That’s not like you. They say you always quit without giving the other players a chance to win back any of their losses.”

“So, you’ve been checking up on me again. You know I hate that, Eva.”

“It’s only because I care.”

He narrowed his eyes in warning. How dare she claim to care about him after the way she had used him? Now that he knew what real caring was, her imitation of it sickened him. He turned away. Facing the empty fireplace, he ignored the insipid china figurines that adorned the white mantelpiece; instead, his gaze homed in on the gaudy Poseidon cup, an oversized porcelain goblet encrusted with countless tiny seashells.

It was kept on display beneath a bell jar to protect it from dust and careless hands, for it was so delicate. So easily broken, all of those little pink seashells held on with mere glue. It had to be kept under glass, he thought, for such fragile things could not withstand the callousness of the world. . . .

He closed his eyes as a tremor moved through him.
Oh, God,
how would Becky take the news when she learned he had been the ton’s most celebrated gigolo, and that everybody knew it except her? She would feel betrayed, she’d feel a fool. She would despise him. She—who had come to him a virgin.

“I’ve heard the most horrible rumor that you’ve turned into a monk,” Eva announced, breaking into his thoughts. “I know it sounds impossible, but that is what they’re saying!” she averred at Alec’s scowling glance. “Not a single one of my lady friends has enjoyed your company in weeks, and I know you hardly ever resort to whores. So, what’s afoot?”

He took a cool glance at the wall clock. “Dear me, I’m due to see the Regent in ten minutes. Sorry to cut this visit short, my lady, but I really must go.”

“Not until you tell me what’s going on, you rogue. You might be able to fool everyone else with your actor’s instincts, but I know you far too well.”

“You don’t know me at all, Eva,” he answered quietly. “You never have.”

She tilted her head. “Have you taken a mistress?”

Alec felt his patience running razor thin. “Either way, I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“My business? Darling, keeping track of who’s sleeping with whom is a national sport! And you—darling—well, if sex is our sport, then you are our Gentleman Jackson, reigning champion—”

“Do shut up!”

“Ah, there’s that spark,” she whispered, sidling up to him. “You were so cold, I feared it had been extinguished . . . perhaps from overuse.” She had always loved baiting him. Especially when he was tied up. It was a familiar game. The angrier she could make him, the more aroused she got. “What’s that I smell on you?” she whispered, moving around him, taking a whiff. “Smells like come, you naughty boy. Who have you been fucking?”

His tolerance snapped. He recoiled from her touch. “Get the hell out of here! I don’t want you anymore, Eva! Don’t you understand that?”

“What the hell,” she demanded, setting her gloved hand slowly on her hip, “has gotten into you?”

“I have,” replied a voice from the doorway behind him.

Becky’s voice, cool and even.

Alec flinched, and then his eyes drifted closed with a look of pain.
God, no. Why?

Too late. He lowered his head slowly as he felt his heart crumble. . . .

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

B
ecky leaned in the doorway, still rosy from Alec’s ravishing, and barefoot, her sandals dangling from her hand. She had left her pudding to cool and had headed for the bedchamber to clean herself up a bit after their oven-hot, sugarcoated lovemaking. Tiptoeing up the stairs outside the drawing room, mindful of Alec’s warning not to let herself be seen, she had heard a trill of sparkling feminine laughter and stopped in her tracks, frowning over her shoulder in the direction from which it had come. A girl who intended to marry the erstwhile captain of all London rakehells, after all, had to be ready for anything.
That doesn’t sound like his friends,
she had thought.

Well, then. Who was it?

Stunned by the fierce territorial instinct that flooded her veins, she had gone to investigate. What little she had heard of their conversation, she could make scant sense of and dared not try, lest she leap to some very bad, erroneous assumptions about her betrothed of less than an hour. That was no way to start their life together. Best to let Alec explain this to her himself. What she saw, by contrast, she liked even less.

His visitor was a slim brunette dressed in yellow. Becky had arrived in time to see the woman hanging all over him, though he held himself aloof from her as best he could. She was a glamorous-looking creature a few years older than he, and the diamond-studded bracelets she wore over her high, yellow gloves screamed obscene wealth. Her hair was short and chic, her features patrician, but her cosmetics could not hide a complexion roughened by dissipation.

The lady’s coiffed head whipped around toward the doorway when Becky spoke up; now, her brown, empty eyes narrowed.

The second their gazes locked, Becky felt an instant overwhelming hostility that raised the hackles on her nape. “Won’t you introduce me to our guest, my lord?” she managed to ask in a tone that passed for politeness, folding her arms across her chest. She kept her chin high.

The woman recovered her artificial smile as Alec slowly turned around.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty boy,” the woman chided him in an airy tone. “So, this is what you’ve been hiding. Now I see why you’ve been trying to get rid of me ever since I walked in the door.” She slanted Becky a superior look and beckoned her in. “Well, come here, girl. Let us have a look at you.”

“Leave her alone, Eva,” Alec growled in a low tone fraught with hellfire.

Becky, far from intimidated by this “Eva” woman, summoned up an equally false, sugary smile, and accepted the invitation, sauntering proudly into the drawing room. Her heart was pounding and she barely knew where her own brazenness came from, but she could sense Alec’s seething anger and was more than willing to enter the fray on his behalf. As a gentleman, after all, there was not much he could do against a female.

“Why, she’s lovely,” Eva told Alec with a doting smile and little hateful sparks flying from her eyes. “Of course, you always did have an eye for beauty. Wherever did you find her, darling? The gutter?”

“Actually, it was Lord Draxinger’s doorstep,” Becky said sweetly, noting that Alec’s fists were clenched.

“Really?” Eva nodded to Alec. “Spirit, too. Enough to give some cheek to her betters. I’m impressed.”

“Leave us—Abby,” Alec forced out, his face pale, his mouth taut. His murderous stare was fixed on Eva, and his use of her alias alerted Becky to the fact that this woman could be dangerous.

But if Alec thought that she would leave him alone with this harpy, he still did not know the stuff that she was made of. She was nothing if not loyal.

“Abby, is it? But of course. What a common little name.” Eva let out another peal of brittle laughter that jangled like broken glass. “So, you have taken a mistress. Just as I suspected. You see? You cannot lie to me, darling. I know you too well.”

“Oh, I am not his mistress, ma’am,” Becky informed the lady with an angelic smile. “I am his fiancée.”

“Damn it, Becky,” he muttered under his breath at her bold revelation, but then horror at his own blunder flashed across his face.

“Becky?” Eva echoed. “I thought her name was Abby.”

Becky glanced uneasily at Alec, realizing this woman must have truly rattled him for him to have made such a slip.

“Her name is none of your concern,” he informed her, taking a menacing step toward the lady. “Go, Eva. You are on thin ice.”

“Isn’t the Regent waiting for you? Why don’t you run along and let little Precious and I have a nice long chat about all of your exciting skills.” She turned to Becky with a
tsk tsk
full of hollow sympathy. “Poor little thing. Is that what he told you—that he’d marry you? For shame, Alec, you heartless cad! This is a new low even for you.”

“She’s telling the truth, Eva,” he replied darkly. “Would you like an invitation to the wedding?”

Eva stared at him for a long moment. Smug as she was, she looked seriously shaken by his announcement. “Well!” she said at last, choking on her words a bit. “I certainly hope she knows what she’s getting into. What kind of slut you really are.”

At that, Becky reached for the long wooden pole used for opening and shutting the blinds on the high, arched windows, visions of candlesnuffers dancing in her head, but Alec saw her fingers graze it and shook his head sternly at her. She lowered her hand again with a scowl.

“I hope at the very least that you’ve told her about us,” Eva taunted him. “Or do you prefer that she find out from Society’s gossips?”

Becky glanced at Alec in question, though she was hardly inclined to believe a word out of that harpy’s painted mouth. He met her gaze at last. His expression was thoroughly remote; his eyes were the blue of storm-tossed seas. “Excuse us, please. Wait for me upstairs.”

She was taken aback by his request. “You want
me
to leave?”

He nodded, then jerked his head toward the door. “Go.”

She just stood there, staring at him in embarrassed confusion. “Why should I be the one to go? Tell
her
to leave—”

“Damn it, just do as I say for once!” he yelled at her so loudly that she jumped, her eyes widening in bewilderment.

“Oh, trouble in paradise, darlings?”

When Becky lingered a moment longer, angry, embarrassed by his outburst at her, and loath to abandon the field to a woman who was either an enemy, a very formidable rival, or both, Eva seized the opportunity to stick Alec with another verbal dagger. “Ask him how he paid back Mr. Dunmire, precious. Then you’ll see why I call him a slut. Because he is one—and damned good at it.”

“You bitch,” he spat.

“Alec?” Becky whispered.

He turned to her. “What are you still doing here?”

His baleful glower and Eva’s bright burst of laughter combined to unnerve her. Becky looked from one to the other, feeling unsure and outnumbered all of a sudden. These two might be well-matched as foes—or as something else that she didn’t want to think about—but it was obvious that she was in deep over her head.

Still taken aback by his harsh tone, she stared at him for a second in wounded reproach, then pivoted and left the room on legs that shook beneath her.

Distraught as he was over the question of how much Becky had heard, Alec could not believe he had slipped and used her real name in front of Eva. He was sickened by his blunder, allowing Eva to get to him.

This was no time to start making careless mistakes. The potential threat in his misstep now made it necessary for him to take some harsh, desperate, and possibly very ugly measures to repair the damage and ensure Becky’s safety.

Eva watched her rush out of the room, then turned to him with a look of condescending boredom. “You can’t be serious.”

He just looked at her, still deciding how far he was willing to go to protect his future bride.

“You truly mean to marry her?”

Certainly, he was prepared to lie.

“It’s unavoidable,” he said. Because he was a gentleman, and because she had saved his neck once, he gave the baroness one last chance to back away from danger unscathed. He made one last effort at diplomacy, though deep down he knew from experience that brute force was all she understood.

“Is she breeding?” she murmured suddenly. “Ah, so, that’s why you’ve been so assiduous in your efforts at the tables.” She tapped her folded fan thoughtfully against her chin. “You wanted to play, and now you must pay. Is that it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Oh, it’s too rich. Imagine! The captain of all London rakehells, to be a papa! And now you need money, don’t you, darling?” She moved closer, fingering the lapel of his coat. “How much? Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t want your help, Eva.” He grasped her wrist and plucked her hand off him. “All I want is your silence on the matter.”

“Why?”

“Well . . . because the young lady has a number of very protective menfolk in her family who will come after me if they find out I bedded her well before the ring was on her finger. It would be most inconvenient to have to kill them.”

Her painted lips quirked in a smile. “Yes, one ought not to kill one’s in-laws, as much as one might like to.”

“Exactly.” He set his revulsion aside to lift her gloved hand to his lips, then kissed it. “I knew you’d understand.”

Eva looked slightly mollified, but she had never been one to let opportunity pass her by. “Not so fast, my stallion.” She reached down boldly between his legs and cupped him through his clothes. “If you want my silence, it’ll cost you.” She caressed his cock. “God, I’ve missed you in my bed.”

Staring at her in taut anger, Alec tried to tolerate it, but he could not—not after today and the sublime lovemaking he had shared with Becky. His smooth mask of manipulation slipped as he broke away from her.

“God, you disgust me,” he ground out, turning his back to her as his heart pounded. He didn’t think he could get hard for her even if he wanted to. “I feel nothing for you but revulsion.”

He sensed her anger leap and heard it in her voice. “Strange, you found me quite attractive when you needed someone to pay off your debts. Then again, I knew you were only using me, you whore. Well, then, it seems all bets are off. What is her name, anyway, Becky or Abby?”

When Alec turned to her, his only answer was a hand around her throat as he shoved her hard against the wall. “Her name is none of your concern,” he whispered ferociously, holding her pinned there.

Real fear flooded Eva’s eyes as she dangled upon her toes, grasping at his hand while he squeezed just enough to show her how easily he could cut off her air.

“You’re—mad!” she gasped out.

“No. Quite the contrary. The game has changed, Eva,” he said, “and this time I make the rules. Do you understand?”

She choked, her face turning a fashionable shade of purplish scarlet.

“I tried to reason with you, but you always have to play your little games,” he said. “You may not value her life or mine, but what of your own?”

“Put—me—down!”

“Listen carefully. You never saw her. You’re good at keeping secrets. You’ve got plenty of them yourself. If you tell anyone you saw her here—if you breathe a word about that girl or the two of us to any living soul—I swear I will hunt you down and kill you, Eva,” he said slowly. “No jest. I know where you go. I know where you live. I still have a key to your town house, as you’ll recall. If you mention her presence here to anyone, I will come after you and cut your throat. And I won’t think twice about it.”

She fought him, trying to kick at him.

He was impervious.

“Let me go! You’re—bluffing. What of your fine honor?”

“She means more to me than honor.”

“You’d hang—for murder!”

“If anything happened to her, I would welcome the gallows. Don’t try me, Eva. Not unless you want to die.”

It was difficult to tell beneath the thick white rice-powder that coated her skin, but the red in her face was giving way now to purplish blue. She clawed at his wrist like a feral cat.

Alec tightened his grip ever so slightly. “You really don’t seem to be getting the message. Perhaps I should just squeeze a bit harder, kill you now, and dump your body in the sea?”