Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (17 page)

“
Y
ou have a visitor
, miss,” Octavia’s housekeeper said the next afternoon.

She wanted it to be Rafe. Of
course
she wanted it to be Rafe. She had thought of nothing else that day. She had considered going to him, like some lovelorn fool, and revealing herself to the whole house party for the chance to talk to him. She had thought of sending a note, but then Lucy would know for sure that Octavia and Rafe were working together.

Did he want to come to her as badly as she wanted to go to him? But if he wanted to, why hadn’t he? Had his promise to talk been exactly what she had accused it of being — a way to leave the room, then ruin her later?

She would make herself sick with those questions. “Who is it?” Octavia asked.

Lady Maidenstone stepped around the housekeeper and walked into the drawing room. “I beg your pardon for calling unannounced,” her grandfather’s widow said. “But I have business that has already waited far too long.”

“Would you care for tea?” Octavia asked, setting aside the novel she had tried, and failed, to read all afternoon.

“No. I must return to the abbey before the guests gather for dinner, and if it storms, I don’t wish to be caught in it.”

The air had felt still and muggy all afternoon, and clouds were piling on the horizon. Octavia dismissed the housekeeper, who shut the door behind her. “Please, my lady, be seated so we may conduct your business.”

In the aftermath of her lovemaking with Rafe, Octavia had spared little thought for the success — or failure — of their ghostly endeavor in the Maidenstone clearing the night before. But the worry had lingered at the back of her mind. She had expected Lucy to call on her today, not Lady Maidenstone.

She wasn’t stupid enough to confess anything. But Lady Maidenstone got straight to the point. “It was good that Lucy retired early last night,” she said. “She would have been horrified to see an antique dress dragged through a forest.”

“I beg your pardon?” Octavia asked, hoping she struck just the right note of confusion.

“Oh, let’s not play the fool with each other — I don’t have much time.” Lady Maidenstone looked at the clock, then back at Octavia. “Mind you, I thought it was an inspired touch. I’d heard growing whispers about the ghosts at Maidenstone Abbey over the past few days, but I hadn’t realized they were coming from Lord Rafael. The man is quite proficient with influencing groups and spreading rumors, isn’t he?”

The way Lady Maidenstone said it almost sounded like a judgment. Octavia was besotted enough to want to defend him, even though the assessment was entirely accurate.

She took a breath instead. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Five men left the party this morning. The prevailing conversation now is the question of whether Maidenstone Abbey is worth the tremendously high price of marrying any of you. Most men don’t want to introduce insanity and murder into their bloodlines, no matter how large the dowry.”

Octavia should have been elated, but she was mostly confused. She dropped the pretense of innocence. “Surely none of them were taken in by that charade?”

Lady Maidenstone snorted. “If they were, they were fools. You were obviously a living woman, although your face was obscured enough that no one recognized you.”

“Then why did you faint?”

“You needed a diversion to protect you. I went along to see what Lord Rafael had up his sleeve. But when I saw you enter the clearing wearing a dress that must have come from the attics, I knew I had to do something. Pretending to faint kept any of the men from chasing after the ‘ghost.’ You would have been thoroughly embarrassed if someone had caught you.”

“Does that matter to you? You and Lucy wouldn’t let me stay at Maidenstone even before the party started, and you’ve spied on me in my own house. I would think you would want me to be embarrassed.”

The countess shook her head. “I never thought you should have been excluded from the party. I gave in at first. But if you’re going to try to ruin it, and Lucy, from the outside, I think it’s better if you were closer at hand and easier for me to observe.”

“A shame, then, that I wasn’t invited.”

Lady Maidenstone paused. But she only hesitated a moment before she took a breath and said, “You were.”

“I beg your pardon?” Octavia said again.

The confusion in her voice was real this time. But Lady Maidenstone didn’t wince. Whatever her background had been, and whatever had happened in her marriage, she wasn’t the shrinking violet that Octavia had expected her to be. She looked Octavia directly in the eyes and said, “You were invited. Or, at least, Rothwell intended to invite you. He was going to call on you directly, but he didn’t do it before you left London. Lucy guessed all of that when you came to the abbey and asked why you weren’t included in the party. So when your mail was forwarded from London to Maidenstone, Lucy removed all letters from Rothwell before passing your mail on to you. Rothwell didn’t know where to find you, and Lucy assured him you had no intention of attending the party.”

She said it all so simply, as though a plot like that, which could change the lives of everyone associated with Maidenstone Abbey, could be summed up in a few emotionless sentences.

Octavia wasn’t emotionless. Her rage flared up so fast, so hot, that it burned away any capability for thought. Her face flushed with it. Her heart beat faster, ready to propel her into battle. She couldn’t breathe through the heat of it — it was like trying to breathe next to a blacksmith’s forge, as everything shimmered and spun around her.

“How dare she do this?” Octavia said. “How
dare
she?”

Octavia hadn’t realized that she was already on her feet until Lady Maidenstone jumped up to block her. “Take a moment and calm yourself before you do anything,” she said urgently.

Octavia stared her down. Lady Maidenstone was a couple of inches shorter than her, and her beautiful, ethereal face still looked impossibly young for the life she had led. But there was steel in her blue eyes, and she met Octavia’s gaze without flinching.

“Why did you tell me? And what do you want me to do with this information?”

“I told you because I could no longer keep the secret. It wasn’t fair to exclude you. Not that you’ll enjoy yourself if you come to the party — I doubt that the ladies will be particularly welcoming.”

Octavia shrugged. “I don’t have to marry a lady.”

Lady Maidenstone smiled. “I see why your grandfather loved you. He always enjoyed watching you make a spectacle.”

The worst of Octavia’s rage had burned itself out, but she was still beyond angry. And the mention of her grandfather was like scraping over a half-healed wound. She was suddenly angry at him as well — angry that he’d created a competition that could only throw Lucy and Octavia into conflict. Angry that he’d cared more about the Briarleys’ legacy of scandal than he had about protecting them.

But if she let her anger spill over to others who deserved it, there was no end to where that anger might go. Her grandfather, for letting her go to Somerville. Somerville, for making her think she was safe, and then pulling the rug out from under her. Julian, for letting his boyish pride get himself killed and ruining her in the process. Even Rafe…Rafe, whom she suspected she might be in very real danger with.

Her heart couldn’t bear it if he betrayed her like all the rest had.

Her emotions were running so high that she could catalogue that list of betrayals in the time it took a sane person to draw a breath. She tried to step around Lady Maidenstone. “Lucy will pay for this.”

Lady Maidenstone grabbed her arm. “I didn’t tell you so you could hurt her. I told you because your grandfather hoped that putting the two of you together like this would force you to reconcile.”

“He thought that making us compete for Maidenstone would bring us closer together?” Octavia laughed, making no attempt to hide her bitterness. “That’s lunacy.”

“Lunacy or not, we all must play the cards we’re dealt. I wanted to even the odds by letting you come to the party. But if you won’t protect Lucy for her own sake, you should protect her for yours.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Take a moment to think about your approach. If you storm over the Maidenstone Abbey right now and accost Lucy, you might succeed in harming her. You’ll certainly make it look like she doesn’t play fair. But you will convince everyone there that you’re the same as you always were — the bold, impetuous, uncontrollable girl who let herself be ruined.”

“They already believe it,” Octavia said with a shrug.

“Some of them do. But you have an opportunity that very few women ever get. They will have to acknowledge you at this party in case you’re the one who inherits. If you change enough minds, you could recover your place in society.”

Octavia must have looked stunned into obedience by that, because Lady Maidenstone finally dropped her arm. “I must go back to the abbey,” Lady Maidenstone said. “Dinner will be finished by seven, but I would not recommend arriving before then. In fact, I would recommend waiting until tomorrow.”

“You know I won’t wait that long, my lady,” Octavia said.

“I know. And please, call me Emma. We might have been friends if circumstances were different. Perhaps we could still be friends, if you play this new hand you’ve been dealt in a way that makes you acceptable again.”

“You are the strangest grandmother I’ve ever had, Emma.”

Lady Maidenstone laughed. “Grandmothers can be eccentric, can’t we? Eccentric enough to say that I still hope Lucy wins Maidenstone. She deserves it, much as you might think otherwise. But you also deserve a chance to make a different life for yourself. If you want it, of course.”

“Isn’t that what any ruined woman would want?” Octavia said.

Emma paused. Again, Octavia was struck by the wisdom in her eyes. “You had more freedom as Madame Octavia than I ever had as Lady Maidenstone,” she said. “If you become Miss Briarley again, you would have to give up your paramours. You can only regain respectability if you are completely, eternally above reproach. I would guess that sainthood doesn’t suit you.”

She said it like a compliment. Octavia shrugged. “I haven’t put much thought into rehabilitating my reputation. Briarleys aren’t known for good behavior.”

“Yes, I discovered that ages ago. But whether you aim to restore your reputation or whether you remain a courtesan, I’ll support you — for your grandfather’s sake, if nothing else.”

She took her leave then. Octavia should have immediately started thinking of ways to make Lucy pay for her latest betrayal.

But she couldn’t think of Lucy at the moment. Emma’s statement about sainthood stayed in her mind as she rang for Agnes. It burrowed its claws into her heart as she supervised the packing of her things. It shredded her stomach as she sent a servant to the abbey to borrow a carriage, and so she ignored the cook’s efforts and left her dinner untouched.

As the storm finally unleashed outside, the idea started digging into her soul.

She dashed for the carriage after her essentials had been loaded into it. The rest of her trunks could be brought over in the morning. Agnes rode with her, but the maid knew Octavia’s mood and kept her peace. Octavia rode in silence, tightly coiled, during the drive around Maidenstone Wood. It would have been safer to wait for morning. Horses didn’t like thunder and the driver must have been uncomfortable in the rain. But she couldn’t imagine spending another night at the hunting lodge now that she knew what she was in competition for.

She could be Miss Briarley again. She might even be able to win Maidenstone outright. If Callista married Thorington, Rothwell would disown her. And Rothwell surely wouldn’t be happy to learn that Lucy had stolen Octavia’s invitations and lied to him about her whereabouts.

She wouldn’t have to be a courtesan anymore. She wouldn’t have to choose a new protector or accept Somerville’s offer.

But she would have to be someone’s wife. And security, in that case, was a double-edged sword. A husband couldn’t divorce her or cast her aside in the same way that Somerville did. But she would also never have the freedom to leave him.

If she wanted to be Miss Briarley — if she wanted a chance to regain her reputation and win Maidenstone — the only way she could do it was if she behaved perfectly.

That meant finding a husband, not a lover. Rafe had been the best lover she could have asked for the night before. But she suspected, from the way he bolted afterward, that he was not husband material.

No matter what happened at the abbey, she had to remember that. If she wanted to inherit what was suddenly within her grasp, she had to stay away from Rafe. Perfectly behaved gentlewomen did not make love to rogues like him.

But was Maidenstone worth the price of perfect behavior?

R
ain beat
against the windows of the drawing room after dinner. Thunder rolled in the distance, rumbling like a war drum. Maidenstone’s ancient wings always felt eerie, but a summer storm made even the modern rooms into something that didn’t feel quite safe.

The party had quietly split overnight. From what Rafe could judge, half the crowd was unaware that anything had happened. He counted Thorington in that number. Thorington was too busy courting Callista, without acknowledging that he was courting her, to pay any attention to the other guests.

The other half had heard about the ghost sighting in the Maidenstone clearing. Most of them shrugged it off as nonsense or were titillated by it. But several men had left that morning, taking their female relatives with them — not enough to depopulate the party, but enough that Lucretia and Lady Maidenstone, at least, must have noticed.

Rafe hadn’t seen Lady Maidenstone or had a chance to pry into why she had acted like she’d seen a real ghost the night before. But he agreed with Octavia — Lady Maidenstone was too sensible to have been taken in by Octavia’s disguise. In fact, no one should have been taken in by it. But Lady Maidenstone’s fainting spell kept anyone from questioning it. The people who had left that morning were not part of the group that had seen the “ghost” — but they had decided, based on those rumors, that Maidenstone wasn’t worth the price of marrying a Briarley.

He should have been pleased that their plan was working. But the storm matched his mood. The air was electric, possibly dangerous. He’d been a spy for too long to ignore his intuition.

Something was wrong. There was some clue that he had missed about Lucy and Lady Maidenstone’s behavior.

Rafe walked through the drawing rooms, stopping in front of the tray of decanters as though whisky was his only aim. The men had come from the dining room and gone in predictable patterns. Thorington had veered straight toward Callista. Anthony had gone for Lady Maidenstone — the widow was pretty and amusing, and Anthony liked blonde women with fragile features. Rafe doubted that Lady Maidenstone would take him into her bed, but they seemed to enjoy each other well enough.

He poured himself a glass, intending to join Anthony and Lady Maidenstone so that he could learn more about her involvement in the previous night’s ghost hunt. But there were other people in the crowd with agendas of their own.

Serena and Portia popped up suddenly on either side of him. “Rafe, we need a word,” Portia said.

A crack of thunder rattled the windows. A couple of ladies screamed, but he didn’t hear fear in their voices— they were playing the ninnies they were expected to play. Rafe eyed his sisters. “Is this the place for whatever you wish to discuss?”

“No,” Serena said. “But you did an admirable job of avoiding us today.”

Rafe should have observed the party that day, encouraging the spread of ghost stories and nudging individuals toward leaving. But he hadn’t had the stomach for it. He almost didn’t have the stomach for it tonight.

All he wanted was to go to Octavia. The temptation thrummed through him, matching the echo of thunder and pounding rain. Everything else, under the din of his need for her, sounded muted, unimportant.

He hadn’t lusted after a woman like this in ages. Perhaps not ever. He certainly hadn’t lusted after an inexperienced, wellborn lady….

Why in the
hell
was she a virgin?

Why had she pretended not to be?

And what was he going to do with that knowledge?

He had always been singleminded on missions and in conversations — he couldn’t afford to be distracted. But where his control usually felt like an iron gate between his mission and his other thoughts, memories of the previous night kept slipping through the cracks.

“I had other things to see to this afternoon,” he said to his sisters, hoping to quell them.

That was a lie. He’d spent the afternoon rambling along the cliffs, trying not to think of Octavia. More importantly, trying not to think of why he’d run away from her — and why, as soon as he’d left, he had immediately wanted to go back.

“Would those other things involve ghosts?” Portia asked.

“Or Briarley heiresses?” Serena added.

Briarley heiresses
. They saw Octavia as an heiress — perhaps believed that Rafe was attempting to woo her, and win her, before any of the other suitors found her.

A thought slipped through the cracks. If another suitor found her, would Octavia take that man’s offer?

“Neither of those conversations are appropriate,” Rafe said. “Don’t you want to cajole me into taking you to Brighton?”

Serena laughed. “We realized we can be far more useful here.”

Rafe sipped his whisky and said nothing. It didn’t do to encourage them.

Not that they needed encouragement. “If you and Thorington marry Briarleys, our family might have enough money that we don’t need to be so hasty in making matches. What can we do to help?” Portia asked.

Rafe looked past them to see who might be within earshot. The rooms were too crowded for real conversation. Ferguson, the Duke of Rothwell, had approached Thorington and Callista with an annoyed look, and their conversation looked like it would be interesting — Rafe read the currents in the room like a sailor might read the sea, and he noticed how the people around that trio turned to catch what they were saying while pretending to maintain their own chatter.

He nodded in their direction. “You should focus your efforts on Thorington. He needs your help more than I do.”

They glanced at the group. “Thorington should be doing more to befriend Ferguson,” Portia said. “The duke is quite charming to everyone else. He would give his blessing to Thorington and Callista if Thorington made any effort to make an alliance.”

“I doubt that,” Rafe said.

“Ferguson’s sisters say he is easy enough to manipulate, once you understand him,” Serena added.

“You should go manipulate him, then,” he said.

But he lost that gambit. Thorington, Callista, and Ferguson suddenly left the drawing room together, headed for the hallway.

“You cannot distract us that easily, brother,” Portia said. “And anyway, Thorington looks well and truly caught without needing our help. We can work on Ferguson’s acceptance of it later. You’re the one we’re concerned with.”

They didn’t know it, but they didn’t needed to meddle with him. A memory slipped through the cracks — Octavia, with her siren’s voice, telling him he would have to take payment from her body.

He took another sip of whisky and added another lock to the gate in his mind. The sisters claimed they couldn’t be easily distracted, but they usually could be if he encouraged them to bicker with each other. “Which of you has had better luck with the men here? Do you need me to talk to your possible suitors since Thorington is too busy trailing after Callista to notice what you’re getting up to?”

It was a clumsy attempt. He couldn’t think of anything better, not with the rain and Octavia’s voice in his head. Serena wasn’t fooled. “Where is she, Rafe? Why isn’t she here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Another memory. Octavia, with her hair tumbled over the pillows and her smile luring him in.

He drained his glass and poured another.

His sisters laughed. “At least tell us what really happened in the Maidenstone clearing last night,” Serena said. “You took us there. You owe us an explanation.”

Perhaps it was the burn of the whisky down his throat. Perhaps it was the thunder that shook his concentration. Perhaps it was that feeling he had in his bones — the feeling that something was wrong, that some unexpected force was about to strike.

He stared them down. “It’s not your bloody business.”

Their faces weren’t identical — they had different fathers and different features. But the surprised look was the same. Rafe never snapped at them. But he couldn’t answer any of their questions.

He needed to wait for the party to dwindle before leaving the drawing room. And anyway, he wasn’t sure if Octavia would want to see him. He also didn’t want to have the conversation he’d promised her. But he couldn’t stay away any longer. Maybe, if he saw her, he could exorcise her from his thoughts….

“I’m sorry,” he said. He usually didn’t apologize, either, but he didn’t want to hurt them. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s someplace I need to be.”

They were still shocked, but Serena straightened her spine. “You cannot avoid us forever, Rafe. Meet us in the morning to explain, or we’ll tell Thorington.”

“Telling tales on each other?” Rafe asked. “Not very sporting.”

Rafe didn’t want Thorington to know that the third Briarley heiress was nearby — or that Rafe had kept her a secret from everyone. His sisters likely guessed that. Portia smiled smugly. “Enjoy whoever it is you’re meeting with,” she said, in a voice that said she was thinking of secret romances and pretty fairytales. “But don’t try to avoid us tomorrow.”

He nodded curtly as he set aside his glass. He was already thinking, again, of Octavia, and whether it would be giving away too much to ride over to her in a storm like this — whether it would suggest feelings that he didn’t, or couldn’t, have.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to brave the storm. A collective gasp from the other drawing room drew his attention. With his previous observations, he would have guessed it had something to do with Thorington and Ferguson. But this gasp was more shocked — as though one of Maidenstone’s ghosts had returned to startle them.

Which, he supposed, was almost true.

Octavia stood in the doorway.

The light framed her, adding a burnished glow to her dark hair and a wild glint to her eyes. Her light pink dress was a shade a debutante might wear — but the cut was daring and the fabric was damp enough that it clung to her legs almost indecently.

Her body looked made for seduction. But her face looked made for murder. She swept a gaze over the assembled crowd. A hush descended on the drawing room. Everyone knew who she was — and those who didn’t were quickly informed, in the quietest whispers, by those who did.

She looked briefly, directly, at Rafe. She gave him only the slightest nod before continuing her slow survey of the room.

Thunder rumbled, matching the faster tempo of his heartbeat.

“That answers the question of where she is,” Serena murmured to Portia.

Rafe wanted to drag Octavia from the room. He wanted to ask why she was here. He wanted to gut the man nearest him, who must have said something inappropriate to elicit muffled, lewd chuckles from his companions.

He wanted to strip her out of that dress and make love to her again — better, this time, now that he knew to go slowly, to give her time to adjust to him and take more pleasure for herself.

But he’d been on missions that had gone badly before. He couldn’t do anything now, save for waiting it out and trying not to betray himself. He couldn’t reveal to anyone that he knew where Octavia had been.

And he couldn’t, yet, reveal to Octavia that he wanted to be nowhere as badly as he wanted to be next to her.

That thought startled him. He shoved it back behind the gate in his mind.

He retrieved his glass and splashed more whisky into it. He would be truly foxed, for once, if he wasn’t careful — but if he couldn’t go to Octavia, he needed a drink.

“Are you no longer meeting someone?” Serena asked innocently.

“Go to the devil,” Rafe said.

His sisters laughed. But they sounded sympathetic. And for once, so unexpectedly that he would have thanked them for it if he had thought to, they stopped meddling and left him alone.

Left him alone to observe the currents and the way the room adjusted to this new, extremely unexpected development.

Lucretia stood with Lady Maidenstone and Anthony. She had looked wan even before Octavia’s arrival. The party had taken a toll on her. She didn’t have Lady Maidenstone’s serenity or Callista’s joy to see her through the strain of what was, after all, a difficult situation. Rafe hadn’t paid much attention to her the past few days, other than to note any changes to her mood that might affect the party.

But he had observed her enough to know that the look on her face was unexpected. She wasn’t angry. He had missed the crucial moment when her face might have told him everything, since he had stared at Octavia like a lovelorn schoolboy rather than immediately assessing the room. But even though the first shock was over, her face was still too open to protect her.

She looked sad. Resigned, even. And, oddly, maybe even relieved.

Octavia walked straight toward her. Lucretia held still like a soldier facing an enemy charge — training and backbone overcoming the very obvious instinct to turn and flee. But her hands trembled. If she’d held a gun, she might not have been able to fire straight.

Octavia wouldn’t have had that problem. He could tell that she was angry, but she walked with a slow, measured tread across the drawing room. The crowds parted in front of her, yielding to her inexorable force.

“Lucretia,” she said, when she came to a stop in front of her. Her voice carried easily in the silence that had fallen over everyone else. “I apologize for my late arrival, but it seems that my invitation was lost. I hope you don’t mind that I’ve come to stay for the duration?”

Then she kissed Lucretia on the cheek. It might have been a cousinly gesture — to the assembled crowd, it looked friendly enough.

But Lucretia flinched as though she’d been struck. “When did you…?”

Lady Maidenstone laid a hand on Lucretia’s arm. Rafe hadn’t paid attention to the widow, but a glance told him that she wasn’t as surprised as she should have been by Octavia’s arrival. She said something to Lucretia, too low to be overheard.

Lucretia’s jaw set. Color returned to her cheeks. The switch from resignation to anger added life to her eyes. She wasn’t as dazzling as Octavia or as unconventionally charming as Callista, but she could be appealing when she wasn’t as withdrawn as she usually was.

“Welcome home, Octavia,” she said. “You’ll find your room in order.”