Betina Krahn (32 page)

And she finally understood the longing in her ladies’ wistful smiles.

Outside, Rupert Fitch shifted uncomfortably against the brick wall that surrounded the carriage court of Remington’s house. His shoulders ached with tension and his eyes burned from the strain of unblinking scrutiny. He had followed Antonia Paxton here almost an hour before and watched her disappear behind that formidable door. Every predatory nerve in his body was vibrating with the conviction that all his snooping and skulking was about to be rewarded with the juiciest of scandals. The lady’s late call on the Ladies’ Man was certain to prove a lover’s tryst.

Over the last two weeks he had cultivated something of an acquaintance with the cook of Paxton House, who had unwittingly supplied him with the hint of a developing attachment between the lord and the lady. This evening when he called at the kitchen door, he found Gertrude distressed, and he learned that something had happened between Lady Antonia and the earl that had sent the nobleman flying from the house that afternoon. And he hadn’t returned … not even for supper, which he was scheduled to help prepare. Fitch had pacified the anxious Gertrude with a wink and a flirtatious pat, then slipped away himself, wondering what it meant and where the earl might have gone. Then, as he emerged from the alley, he spotted Lady Antonia in a long cloak, hurrying stealthily toward the local cab stand.

Galvanized, he had given chase. And she had led him straight to the earl’s posh residence.

Some time later the earl himself arrived home in a rush, and Fitch now waited and watched, writing headlines in
his mind for the next edition, trying to decide how best to word it. He wanted to be the first thing Lady Antonia saw when she opened Remington Carr’s door the next morning. And he intended to be the one to break the scandalous news story that the stakes had just become intensely personal in the notorious Woman Wager.

Just as he was settling in for the long night ahead, a pair of cabs came rumbling down the dimly lit street. Something about them drew him upright on his seat. It was a moment before he realized what had tweaked his sense of expectation: they were slowing … stopping … at the earl’s house. Scrambling off the wall, he hurried toward the circular steps and crouched by the side, in the shadows.

The coach doors banged open and several figures tumbled out—men that Fitch recognized. Sir Albert Everstone, Lord Carter Woolworth, Lord Richard Searle, and Basil Trueblood were there, along with two others Fitch couldn’t place at first. As they staggered and lurched up the steps to the earl’s front door, he realized they had all been drinking heavily; some were positively stewed.

“Come on, Landon—open up!” Everstone demanded, pounding the side of a brawny fist against the door repeatedly.

“Come out an’ face us, you … dir-rty welsh-sher!” Trueblood yelled, shaking a fist.

“We come to s-settle th’ s-score, Landon! You owe us-s!” Woolworth yelled, adding his fist to Everstone’s, battering the door.

It was a veritable lynch mob, Fitch realized with shock that quickly turned to delight. Whatever it was about, it was a disastrous turn for the earl, and manna from heaven for a newshound like him! He instinctively snatched his pad from his pocket and began to scribble as he worked his way around the bottom of the steps to get closer.

The huge door opened and a blanched butler appeared
in the slice of interior light, protesting that the earl had retired for the evening and was not receiving visitors.

“Bloody hell ’e ain’t! He better s-see us-s, the bounder!” Everstone growled, shoving and strong-arming his way past the helpless houseman. The others surged into the entry hall after him, staggering to a halt and ignoring the butler’s outrage and his threats to call the constables if they didn’t leave at once.

“Where is ’e?” Woolworth shoved his face into the butler’s. “Where is the lous-sy cad?” Then he staggered back and called out, “La-andon—where are ya?”

“He’s abed, remember?” Searle said. “Retired a’ready.”

“Then, by gawd—we’ll wake ’im up!” Peckenpaugh declared, waving a fist.

Things were happening too fast to call for help. The invaders were suddenly headed for the staircase, and the butler rushed ahead of them to plant himself bodily on the bottom steps. Undaunted, they charged right into him and nearly bowled him over. He struggled to hold them back, pleading for them to stop, to consider the infamy of their actions. As a last resort he made an appeal to their gentlemanly code: “I beg you to cease, gentlemen—his lordship is not—
alone
!”

The shock of that news froze the lot of them in place for a moment. They gaped at each other, jaws slack and eyes widening. Then Sir Albert roared to life:

“Good God—he’s wi’ th’ Dragon, right now!”

In the warm, luxurious cocoon of Remington’s bed, Antonia lay in his arms, savoring the feeling of release that permeated her warm and glowing body. Her senses seemed cleansed and awakened, so that every color, every sound, every stroke of his hand seemed heightened. She had never felt so right, so at peace, in her life.

He raised onto one elbow beside her, looking down at her flushed breasts and tousled hair. Running his hand through her thick tresses, he smiled. “I can’t imagine that I ever thought of you as a fire-breathing dragon.”

“Ummm.” She reacted with a shiver, as if he’d stroked her physically, and responded by tightening her arms around him. “Is that why you waited so long to kiss me?”

He chuckled. “Undoubtedly. Every time I came near you, I could feel heat. I think I was afraid of getting burned.”

She laughed and pulled his head down to tease his lips, then joined their mouths, with her hunger rising in an open and possessive way she had never experienced before.

He read in her demanding kiss that the time had come, and he shifted his weight, settling the swollen ridge of his desire against her liquid heat. They moved together, exploring the rhythm of their bodies, the natural resonance of their movements. She scarcely felt it when he slipped a hand between them to unbutton his trousers and push them aside.

The first sound from outside went unnoticed. It was his house, his bed; nothing would disturb them here. But even as he fitted his body against hers and began the first, tentative motions of loving, the sound grew and soon was recognizable as voices. Neither Remington nor Antonia wanted to hear it. Neither wanted to return to reason and responsibility in order to deal with the world outside the circle of their arms.

When the door to the sitting room slammed open, Remington’s head snapped up, and he glanced toward the bedroom door in confusion. It was men’s voices, and as he listened, he realized that he recognized some of them. In one horrible instant he knew what was happening and met Antonia’s widened eyes with a look of compressed longing, dread, and searing regret.

He rolled from her and from the bed, fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. But before he reached the door, it burst open, and in a flash he was grappling with two men. Desperately, he fought to shove them back toward others who filled the doorway.

“What in bloody hell are you doing here?” he shouted furiously.

“Who’s that in yer bed, yer lordship?” one of the invaders snarled, craning his neck to get a look at her. “Look—he’s bedded down wi’ the Dragon, all right!”

“So that’s why you were so eager to be off—s-so you could be
on
, you traitor!”

“Get your stinking carcasses out of my bedchamber—out of my house!” Remington roared, wrestling them back, trying to get them away from her.

Antonia lurched up, clutching a sheet to her half-naked breasts, watching in horror as Remington battled several men back through the doorway. Beyond his straining form she glimpsed leering male faces that were drink-reddened and ugly.

“It’s her all right!” came a high, reedy voice that was terrifyingly familiar. “So—Lady Matrimonia—where’s your high an’ mighty airs now, eh?”

“Look at ’er—caught with her drawers down, in a man’s bed!” came another voice that she recalled but in her panicky state could not quite put a name to.

“Vicious bit of skirt—paradin’ around all holy and righteous, forcin’ men into marriage while she spreads her knees whenever she likes!”

“How does it feel, bein’ on the
receivin
’ end for a change, eh, milady?”

“You did a fine job of helpin’ us get our revenge, after all, Landon!”

Remington sent a fist plowing straight into the closest face, and the man fell back with a shocked cry of pain.
“You can’t do that!” another of them howled, and a scuffle broke out as he battered them back into the hall. Their drunken reactions were no match for his anger-fueled assault. He shoved one and gut-punched another, and with the belated help of Phipps and his valet Manley, sent the pack of rum-hounds reeling back along the gallery and down the main stairs.

Even after those vile, bloated faces were gone from the door, they remained in Antonia’s mind, scored deeply into her passion-stripped and vulnerable senses. She trembled as her recovering wits matched identities to the faces. Sir Albert Everstone. Margaret’s husband. Then she recognized Lord Richard Searle, whom she had matched with Daphne Elderston. And that thin, annoying voice—that was Alice Butterfield’s Mr. Trueblood. And the one Remington punched—Lord Carter Woolworth—was the husband of Elizabeth Audley, one of her more recent protégées.

They were all men she had caught—
How does it feel to be on the receivin’ end?
—in the very same situation she was in now! She swayed from the force of the impact. They had each sat where she now did: in a bed, half-naked, burning with shame—
Caught with your drawers down in a man’s bed
—facing the same humiliation, feeling the same sickness inside. And it was
she
who had stood over their cowering forms and demanded that they pay for their pleasures for the rest of their lives. Now, craving vengeance, they had burst in on her and—
You did a fine job of helping us get our revenge, Landon
—

Her heart stopped. She couldn’t draw breath.

Revenge
. It was as if she had just fallen down a well; every part of her felt numbed and broken, crushed by the mounting realization that Remington had had a part in it. He had pursued, tempted, and seduced her … beguiled her into his house and into his bed. And then he had betrayed her into their hands. In the name of revenge.

Dearest God, it couldn’t be! She gasped at the pain that crushed through her chest, and clasped her heart with trembling hands. But it was. Every teasing look, every provocative remark, every sweet, incidental touch had been luring her to her ruin. Every smile, every caress, every kiss had been bait for his trap. And she had walked straight into it, knowing his contempt for women, knowing that he was trying to seduce her, and even knowing that he considered her the enemy.

He had betrayed her, but it was her own fault: for believing him … for trusting him.

For wanting him.

Remington raced back upstairs to find her sitting in the middle of his bed, holding her heart, her face desolate, her blue eyes filled with prisms of tears. As he stood there with his chest heaving, his first impulse was to murder half-a-dozen utterly spoiled and worthless excuses of British manhood. But his second, and more powerful, one was to pull her into his arms and comfort her, to take her shame onto his shoulders, to somehow right the wrong they—and he—had done her.

“Toni?” When her face turned to him, the impact of her misery took his breath. “God, Toni, I’m sorry—” He rounded the bedpost and climbed onto the bed, reaching for her.

She jolted to life and skittered back out of his reach, dislodging the tears. “Don’t touch me.”

“Antonia—” He climbed across the single imprint their joined bodies had left in the feather mattress, and she jerked back and slid from the bed.

“No!” Snatching up her petticoats, she fumbled blindly to step into them. “S-stay away from me.” All she could think was that she had to get away from this house and away from him. Her whole body trembled as she managed to blink away enough of the tears to see where to put her
feet. She jerked up one layer, then another, scarcely able to manage the simple ties and buttons.

“Antonia, please, it’s not what you think, I swear—”

“How would you know what I think?” she choked out, trying to right her skirt while searching frantically for her slippers. He tried to take her arm to make her look at him, but she gave his hands a panicky shove—“
No!
”—and grabbed her bodice from the floor, uncovering her slippers.

“You have every right to be angry, but at least let me try to explain. I had no idea they would come here tonight.”

She halted and looked at him with all the pain she was feeling compressed into one devastating word.

“
Liar
.”

Humiliating tears burned down her cheeks, and she bit her lip hard, concentrating on the pain to keep from breaking down. Shoving her feet into her shoes, she groped for the opening of her bodice with icy, unresponsive hands, then thrust her arms blindly into the bodice.

“Antonia—Toni—”

Something in his voice caused her to halt and look at him with all the devastation in her heart visible in her face.

“They
thanked
you.” It was part statement, part question … so full of pain and disbelief that it came out a hoarse whisper. “How could you?”

He bounded from the bed and she shrank back as if she expected him to strike her. That telling movement stopped him in his tracks. His hands curled into impotent fists and his face darkened as he stared at her anguished eyes.

“I never want to see you again … as long as I live,” she said, feeling the words turning like a knife in her own heart.

She located her cloak in the sitting room and managed to pull it around her shoulders. Fearing that he might come after her, she cast a glance over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of him standing near the bed, glowering. Her battered
heart felt as if it were collapsing inside her. It was all she could do to hold herself together as she rushed down the stairs.