Lord of Fire (3 page)

“But, I—it’s not my fault, it’s his!”

“You are brazen, madam. Moreover, you are a fool.”

She whirled to Lucien with a frantic look. “Did you hear what he called me? You can’t let him speak to me like that!”

But Lucien’s only answer was a small, rather sinister laugh. He took another drink of his wine.

“What is going on here?” she demanded in a shaky voice.

“Caro, my heart, the man’s not a fool. There is something I neglected to tell you last night. Damien has been meaning to propose to you.”

Her jaw dropped. For a moment, she looked as though she couldn’t draw in a breath past the tight stays that pressed up the splendid globes of her breasts; then her stricken gaze flew to Damien’s. “Is this true?”

“I am sure there is no need to discuss it,” he growled.

“Is it?” she cried.

“I merely thought it would be helpful to give your child a father, since he lost his own.” Damien’s frosty glance swept her body, lingering at her hips. “Pity you are unable to temper your wantonness with a little discipline.” His angry gaze swung to Lucien. “A word with you, sir.”

“As you wish, brother.”

“Lucien—you can’t leave me!” She clutched at his arm quite without shame.

“Caro, my pet.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, then let it trail from his grasp as he moved away from her. “He’s right. I’m afraid you failed the test.”

“Test?”
Understanding flashed in her eyes, then rage. “You
fiend
! Bastard! Both of you! That’s what you are! A pair of bastards!”

“Why, everyone knows that,
ma chérie
,” Lucien said with smile. “Our mother was an even greater slut than you.”

With a wordless cry of fury, Caro hurled her empty wineglass at him, but he caught it out of the air with catlike reflexes, placed it gently on the tray of a passing waiter, and blew her a kiss from his white-gloved hand. Offering her a smooth, mocking bow, he turned and followed his brother out of the ballroom.

Despite their estrangement, the Knight twins fell naturally in stride with each other as they crossed the adjoining lounge and descended the grand staircase to the ground floor. People stared as they passed, but the twins were used to that reaction. They passed several of the luxuriously appointed refreshment salons, coming at last to the billiard room tucked away in the corner. When they stepped into this dim, oak-paneled male sanctuary, Damien cleared the room with a glower. Lucien held the door sardonically for the gentlemen who put out their cigars and hastened out, leaving a miasmic cloud of smoke drifting over the three pool tables.

Nodding to the last man to leave, Lucien glanced out the door and saw that Caro had followed them as far as the hallway. It seemed she didn’t dare come any closer. Her gloved fists were clenched at her sides. Her dark eyes snapped sparks. She pursed her red lips like she was trying not to scream obscenities at him. He laughed under his breath and shut the door more or less in her face. The most amusing thing about Lady Glenwood was that when he was done here, he had no doubt he could go back out and smooth things over with a few soft words and bring her to his villa for the party this weekend, just as they had previously planned—sick child or no. Caro was determined, after all, to find out if his gatherings at

Turning, he found Damien studying him, his shiny Hessian boots planted wide, his arms folded across his chest. The formidable colonel stroked his chin with a brooding air. On his guard, Lucien sauntered over to the nearest pool table, reaching across its green velvet surface to toy with the glossy black eight ball. He spun it like a top and watched it whirl under his white-gloved fingertip, like God in a sadistic mood, toying with the earth.
Where shall I send a famine, a plague?

“Didn’t we make a pact once never to let a woman come between us?” Damien asked.

“Why, yes, on our eighteenth birthday. I remember it well.”

“Do you?”

Damien waited for an explanation; Lucien let him wait.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” He looked innocently at his brother. “Oh, come, you can’t be serious.”

“You’re damned right I’m serious!”

Damien’s roars could make whole regiments quake in their boots, but Lucien merely sent him a long-suffering, rather bored look. “I cannot apologize when I am not sorry.”

Damien’s eyes narrowed to steel-gray slits. “Sometimes I think you are an evil man.”

Lucien laughed mildly.

“What kind of game are you playing now?” He took a step closer. “You’re up to something, and I want to know what it is. Give me a plain answer for once or I’ll flatten you. Damn it, Lucien, if you weren’t my brother, I would kill you for this.”

“Over Caro Montague?” he asked dubiously.

“You deliberately humiliated me.”

“I
saved
you from humiliation. You should be thanking me,” he retorted. “Now at least you know what your angel is made of. Jesus, I was trying to do you a favor.”

Damien snorted. “Admit it. You seduced Caro to get back at me. To even the score.”

Lucien paused, cast him a veiled look of warning. “Score?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. The title.”

“I don’t want your bloody title.” Lucien’s eyes flickered with gathering fire, but Damien ignored his words and charged on.

“You have no reason to resent me. Your fortunes are set now since Carnarthen left you the unentailed property. Frankly, I don’t fancy living on half pay for the rest of my days. I am accepting this earldom, and you’re just going to have to learn to live with it. Incidentally . . .” When he stopped mere inches from Lucien and stared coolly at him, it was like looking into a hostile mirror—the same black hair, the same haunted gray eyes. Both men were too hard and proud to admit that in their own separate ways, each had been left shattered by his experience of war.

“Yes?” Lucien asked prosaically.

“I hope you don’t plan on seducing every woman I take an interest in, because I won’t brush off an insult like this twice. Not even from you.”

For a long moment, Lucien stared at him, incredulous. “Did you just threaten me?”

Damien held his stare in granite stillness. Stunned, Lucien turned away in amazement. He ran his hand through his hair for a moment, at a loss, then began laughing, low and bitterly. “You glory-hound! I should have let you marry the slut and watched her cuckold you all over Town. Are we through here?”

Damien shrugged.

“Good.” With a lightninglike movement, Lucien rolled the eight ball at the other billiard balls. It struck them with a savage crack and sent them scattering, pell-mell, over the table, colored and striped, some crashing down into the pockets. He pivoted and stalked toward the door.

How fitting, that this was what his life had come to,
he thought acidly as he crossed the billiard room. For the past two and a half years, he had worked alone, changing identities like a shape-shifter each time he had moved on to a new assignment, drifting in and out of countless people’s lives like a ghost, never quite connecting. Now not even his twin brother knew him anymore—did not know him and did not want to know him, for he was a spy, a deceiver, a man without honor. A man who knew the rules of gentlemanly conduct and ignored them. Self-loathing pulsed through him, and despair. If Damien did not give a damn about him anymore, who ever would?
No one,
he realized, with an empty, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He was utterly alone.

“One more thing,” Damien called after him.

Lucien turned in formidable, elegant hauteur. “Yes?”

Damien lifted his chin. “I’ve been hearing odd rumors about you. Bizarre things.”

“Do tell.”

“People are saying you’ve resurrected our father’s old secret society. There is talk of . . . indecent goings-on at

“You don’t say,” he uttered blandly.

Damien searched his face. “Most people seem to think you’re merely having wild parties, but a few claim you’re involved in some kind of . . . pagan cult, along the lines of the old Hellfire Club.”

“How very interesting,” he purred.

“Is it true?”

Lucien merely slipped him a dark, jaded smile, turned, and strolled out of the room.

Morning sunlight gilded the Hampshire countryside with the mellow glow of autumn and streamed through the French windows of the cozy parlor at
Glenwood
Park
. Alice Montague picked a crumb of Harry’s breakfast muffin out of her hair with a slight frown and went on singing softly to the toddler, rocking him in her arms. She glanced restlessly out the bow window each time she paced across the room, for she expected Caro’s carriage any minute now. At least she hoped.

All week Harry had been uncharacteristically whiny and tired. Yesterday he had fallen asleep on the parlor floor with his thumb in his mouth and his blanket wrapped around him, while
Alice had sat intently sewing a new suit for the dashing Mr. Wembley, Harry’s jointed wooden doll. This morning at dawn, however, his old nurse’s warnings had proved correct. The diminutive Baron Glenwood had awakened the entire household with a wail of lordly ire—one fevered, angry, miserable little boy, covered in chicken pox.

Having itched and fussed and cried since breakfast, he dozed at last in
Alice’s arms with an air of defeat, his rose-petal cheek resting on her shoulder.

“Mama,” he bleated wearily, just as he had been doing all morning.

“She’s coming, my love,”
Alice whispered, hugging him. “She’s on her way. I promise.”

“Bumps.”

“Yes, I know you’ve got the bumps, lambkin. Everyone gets them. I had them too when I was your age.” Unfortunately, it was going to get worse before it got better.

“Three.”

“Yes, you are three. Such a clever boy.” She squeezed him gently, ignoring the strain in her back. He was too big for her to be carrying around like an infant; but he reverted to babyish ways when he was sick, and she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer without doing what she could to comfort him.

“Look!” Harry said suddenly, lifting his peach-fuzzed head and pointing over her shoulder at the window.

“What is it?”

“Mama!”

“Can it be?” she asked doubtfully. Walking over to the window,
Alice shifted him onto her hip and pushed the damask curtain aside.

Harry pointed his tiny finger in excitement, then looked into her eyes with his first wide smile of the day, showing his little white teeth. To
Alice, his smile was like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds. She gazed lovingly into his sky-blue eyes, ignoring the approaching carriage for the moment. When Harry smiled, he looked so much like her brother, Phillip, that it brought tears to her eyes.

“Mama! Mama!” he began shouting, kicking his legs violently as he craned his neck to look at the distant carriage.

“Didn’t I tell you she was coming?” she teased, hiding her relief, for the baroness was not the most dependable creature. Caro had a way of popping in and out of her child’s life as the whim struck her, but Alice had written to her three days ago warning her the boy was coming down with something.