The Ravishing One (6 page)

But she, damn her, had drawn him back into their poisonous web and he resented it, almost as much as the regret with which he registered the fine lines at the corners of her magnificent eyes and the shadows beneath her cheekbones. He steeled himself against the unexpected compassion these signs of her weariness awoke.

She’d played havoc with a boy’s heart, a boy’s life. Common knowledge said it was not the first time she’d done so in her brief but lethal career. She played, now she must pay the price of her sport.

“I’ve brought you a memento,” he said.

A line of consternation appeared between the dark wings of her brows. “A memento?”

“Of a particularly successful seduction.”

“Thomas …” James laid a cautioning hand on his forearm. Thomas shook it off. James was in her thrall. ’Twas a fitting term, for couldn’t he himself feel the draw of her, the potent attraction she wielded with such blithe disregard?

“Here.” He dropped the bloodied blade on her lap, staining the fragile silk of her dressing gown. “You can add this to your collection.”

She looked down, instantly recoiling. He waited, the pulse beating thick and urgent in his veins. He could not see her expression. Her face remained bowed
over the blade, her hands arrested in the air above it, her tumbled locks masking her face.

“What is this?” she asked in a low, hoarse voice.

“By God, Thomas, you go too far!” James ground out.

“Do I?” His gaze slew to James, white-faced and trembling. “And here I’d thought
she’d
gone too far, for ’twas for her sake that the boy offered himself up in a demonstration of Tunbridge’s art. For her—”

“What boy?” Her head snapped up.

“Are there so many?” He smiled mirthlessly.

“What boy?”

“I’d best describe him lest you have forgotten his name,” he said. “A boy of eighteen years but looked less. Red-haired and fair-skinned—”

“Not Pip.” Her eyes looked stricken and for a moment his resolve wavered. But then, he remembered, she had an audience to woo.

“I see you do recall him. He’ll be gratified. Phillip Leighton. Pip. Not rich Pip, not powerful Pip, but as capable of love as any grown man. Indeed”—his gaze swept through the group of poseurs like the blade he’d so lately discarded—“more so. But then, the young love so ardently, so wholeheartedly, don’t they? So very, very foolishly.”

“Yes. They do,” she said quietly. “Or so I’ve been told. Where is he now? What happened?”

“Your name was being besmirched,” he said. “Pip would have none of it. The young fool challenged Tunbridge to a duel. Tunbridge accepted. They fought.
Young Pip, as you can see”—he looked tellingly at the bloodstained épée—“lost.”

“Is he dead? “

“Not yet. The blade pierced his breast but no vital organs.” The tension in her eased. She wasn’t going to get off so comfortably. “If he’s very lucky no nerves will have been severed and no infection will set in and he’ll live to learn a lesson from his ill-advised gallantry.”

“Perhaps we all will,” she said softly before raising accusing eyes. “And what of you? Apparently you have some feelings for … this lad. Were you his second? A man of your years playing second for a boy? Could you have not stopped it?”

“I knew nothing of the duel.” How dare she place the onus for Pip’s fate on him? “I heard the sound of the duel and followed it. It was done by the time I got there. Pip is not much of a swordsman.”

And having been stung by her inference that he had let the boy challenge and fight an opponent that Thomas knew to be superior, he repaid her in kind, by attacking. “When did
you
first come upon him? Pip, that is. You could have circumvented this then, by simply
letting the lad be
. He couldn’t have presented much of a challenge. Not for you.”

“No,” she said tautly. “No challenge at all.”

“ ’Sblood, man,” James burst out. “Continue and I’ll be forced to call you out myself!”

Fia put her hand down on the chair’s arm and pushed herself upright. The sword clattered to the floor, leaving a dark smear on her pale skirts.

The sharp sound shattered the shocked paralysis holding the other men in the room. The swarthy young man on the stool surged up and struck Thomas’s cheek.

“Name the place, sir!” he ground out.

“No.”

“Coward!” another gentleman spat.

The swarthy man’s jaw bulged in frustration. He raised his hand to deliver a backhanded blow to Thomas’s other cheek but Thomas caught his forearm, stopping him.

“Don’t do it,” Thomas advised coldly. “She’s not worth a broken wrist, let alone your life.” To emphasize his point he tightened his grip until he felt the man’s bones grind together.

The dark man’s brows snapped together in startled pain. Helplessly he tried to yank free, but Thomas’s grip had been honed holding his own weight one-handed from a yardarm fifty feet abovedeck while he secured a sail with the other.

“I will not tolerate your insult of this lady!” the man panted, fear causing his voice to break.

“Thomas, desist!” James commanded as harsh exclamations erupted around them. Faces grew livid. Feet shifted.

“Stop it!” Fia’s voice rose above the rising clamor. “Let him go!”

Thomas turned on her with a snarl. “Don’t fret, madam. Your conscience will not be marred on my account.” He looked at the man twisting angrily in his grip. “You can call me out as many times as you like,
sir.” His gaze swept over the rest of them. “Any one of you can, but you won’t find any satisfaction. Not now, not ever. Enough blood has been spilled because of her and her own. And from the look of you pitiful fools”—he included James in his scathing scrutiny—“more will be. But not mine.
Never
mine.”

With a muttered oath, Thomas released the man’s wrist. He snatched it to his chest, backing away.

Thomas waited, sure the fool would retaliate. Thus he did not hear or see Fia move. But he felt her suddenly, close behind. He swung around. She stood less than an arm’s span away, her blue eyes brilliant and fierce and gorgeous.

“If
anyone
calls you out, Lord Donne, ’twill be me,” she promised in her low, vibrant voice.

“And that,” Thomas retorted as he turned his back on her and her coterie of sycophants and panderers, “is one challenge I might accept.”

He strode from her chamber and down the hallway. And so did not hear her whisper in a voice so low even those nearby did not make out her words,
“En garde!”

Chapter 4

H
ave the coach wait. I shan’t be long,” Fia said upon alighting from the carriage. “Gunna, if you would wait here, please.”

“But, lass,” Gunna protested sharply, her Highland accent further distorting the inflection her deformed jaw gave all her words. She disliked the thought of Fia opening herself to yet more rudeness. “If his family has been listening to all the gossipmongers, they might—”

“Please wait, Gunna.”

The tiger—a black lad of eight years with more snobbery than half the bucks in London—jumped from his post atop the back of the high-sprung carriage and scooted up the stairs to a modest front door. He sniffed, clearly disgruntled at knocking at so hopelessly
middling a sort of door. His rapping soon produced an answer.

“What? Who? Oh, my!”

A flustered-looking serving girl stood in the doorway, her jaw loosened in surprise at the ducal carriage at the curb—the carriage being on indefinite loan from Lord Stanley, one of Fia’s more distinguished admirers. The girl’s gaze slowly traveled to Lady Fia. “Oh, dear.”

“Tell your master Lady Fia is here to convey her concern and her sympathy for Master Leighton,” the tiger pronounced.

The girl bobbed her head, gulped, and backed hastily into the hallway. “Right away! If you’d be pleased to enter, I shall inform the family at once.”

“So certain I shall be admitted, then?” Gunna heard Fia murmur. The sad, ironic tone never revealed itself on Fia’s face, which remained composed as she mounted the few steps. But Gunna saw the rapid rise and fall of the black lace covering her bodice. The evidence of her fear and her refusal to show it caught at Gunna’s gruff heart. She offered up a hasty prayer that the Leightons would be kind.

A short time later Fia emerged from the house. Gunna glanced at the watch fob pinned to her bodice. Less than ten minutes. The fools had expelled her! The door to the carriage swung open and Fia entered. She did not meet Gunna’s eye.

“Did they disrespect ye, then? Ye didn’t care what the lot of them thought, now, did ye?” Gunna asked.

“They were surprised.”

“And the boy?”

Fia’s brilliant blue eyes rose. Gunna had once seen an iceberg. Deep within the heart of it, it had been so intense a blue it had seemed hot. Fia’s eyes were like that.

“He can move his hand and arm freely. But he’s very weak.” She offered no more.

“He was happy to see you, though.”

“Oh, yes. Most glad.”

“Then I’d say that’s all that matters,” Gunna said, pulling back the velvet drape covering the window as the driver called out to the horses and they lurched into motion.

She hated Fia’s life. Hated that each day Fia seemed to grow ever more inured to her role as a Jezebel. Only Gunna knew how much that role cost the lass and fretted over how much of her soul Fia had left to spend before she … Gunna scowled, refusing to let such thoughts take root.

“Ye’ll see the boy agin a few more times,” she muttered to herself. “Bring him a book, a lock of yer hair, and pet his hand. Soon enough he’ll be back at yer feet—”

“No.”

Gunna looked up, startled by Fia’s vehemence. Fia was shaking. Fia, her little statue, her sphinx. The old woman darted across the carriage and slid next to Fia, wrapping her arms around the girl’s taut form.

“No, I will not,” Fia said roughly. “I should never have befriended the boy. I should never have let him in when he came calling. But …”

“But what, Fia?” Gunna asked softly.

Fia turned. Raw vulnerability had whittled away much of the mask she habitually wore. Such pain. Such hurt. Gunna rocked her gently.

“It’s just that he reminded me so of Kay,” Fia whispered. “He treated me so naturally and I … missed that and so I … God help me … I encouraged him to visit.” She gave a little laugh, which was half a sob. “ ’Struth, I fear my selfishness might be his death!”

“Oh, my dear.”

“They didn’t want me in their house,” Fia said in a stark voice. “But they didn’t know how to ask me to leave. I shouldn’t have been there. I only brought embarrassment to them and false comfort to him.”

“There now,” Gunna said, stroking Fia’s midnight-hued hair. “He’s a boy and boys are always doing what they can to inspire their own deaths. Weren’t it you, it would be some other …” She faltered, looking for a word.

“Some other jade,” Fia finished.

“Some other woman,” Gunna corrected her.

“He
told me I should have left Pip alone.” Fia’s forehead had smoothed. Her face stilled. The last signs of her vulnerability disappeared and Gunna lamented their absence. It had been months since Gunna had witnessed some honest emotion in the girl. Each incident grew more rare. “He all but said that I couldn’t resist ensnaring every man I saw.”

“Who said this?” Gunna asked.

“Thomas Donne.”

Gunna’s breath caught. Years ago, Thomas Donne
had been Carr’s guest at Wanton’s Blush. He’d shown Fia an absentminded sort of courtesy and halting interest. Fia, young and achingly alone, had become smitten with the tall Scot. Small wonder. He’d been one of the few men she’d known who was neither a leering rake nor a scraping sycophant.

Her infatuation had ended abruptly. Gunna had never known what Thomas had done or said, but overnight Fia’s puppy love had turned into cold enmity. Fia had grown up after that. Before, her shell of cynical sophistication had been a thin one hiding a confused and passionate girl. After Thomas Donne, both the cynicism and worldliness had become real.

“Where did you see him?”

“He came to my rooms this morning. He confronted me.”

“Curse him for a righteous ass. He’s wrong.”

Fia lifted her head. Her eyes shimmered brightly, but her mouth was hard. “No. He is correct, Gunna. But being correct does not give Donne the right to judge me. His soul is easily as black as mine.”

Gunna scowled, confused.

“Remember when Ash was at Wanton’s Blush and Rhiannon Russell disappeared?” Fia asked tonelessly. “ ’Twas Thomas Donne who brought Ash the news that Rhiannon had left him and nearly broke Ash in that telling. He had something to do with it, I vow. I was there. I saw them, Carr and Ash and Thomas Donne. No bearer of hurt looked better pleased to be speaking than Thomas Donne.”

Gunna drew back. Thomas Donne had never seemed the sort to her to take pleasure in another’s anguish.

Fia straightened. Only her words betrayed the depth of the emotion driving her. “I swear, I’ll bring him to his knees before I’m done.”

Fia mounted the curving staircase to the second floor, passing a housemaid polishing the railing and a footman replacing the candles in the crystal chandelier. The shining silver bowl on the table at the top of the stairs held fresh red roses that filled the corridor with their exotic aroma. The landing window above sparkled. She barely noticed any of it.

She opened the door to her boudoir, where the new French style of decor found expression. A bombé-shaped chest stood against one wall, a new Meissen snuffbox had been added to the collection crowding its surface. Opposite this sat an inlaid dressing table, the mirror above draped in crimson damask. More deep crimson damask covered twin settees.

She walked across the room without feeling any pleasure in its beauty. None of it was hers. All of it, the town house, the furnishings, the decor, her clothing, the servants, and even the food, Carr had rented, bought, employed, provided for, and maintained. All for one purpose, to lure wealthy and well-connected suitors.

Fia pushed open the door that led from the boudoir to a small antechamber, where she went directly to a delicately fashioned writing desk. She stopped before it
and pulled out the gilt chair tucked beneath it. Despite her outward calm, her heart raced. She needed to be careful.