Once Tempted (12 page)

“Oh, some business venture or other. Not that I have the wits for such matters.”

Finally, all the pieces fell into place. “Chambley,” he muttered. “He was involved the whole time.”

His aunt’s sharp ears picked up his words immediately. “Of course he was—that is why I thought nothing of letting him take your papers. And it is exactly why I held him at abeyance. I wanted to make sure you had gathered your wits about you before you started mixing with your old friends. Don’t frown at me so. I did it for your sake, so you wouldn’t have one of your
moments
in front of someone besides myself or Carlyle.”

“That was probably for the best,” he told her. “Perhaps I will pay Lord Chambley a call and settle this business once and for all, so it will no longer weigh so heavily on your mind.”

She smiled at this and poured him another cup of tea.

Yet what weighed on Robert’s mind wasn’t Chambley’s involvement with the King’s Ransom but his aunt’s other disclosure—of Chambley’s vow to see Miss Sutton brought to justice if she were ever found. It foretold an ominous future for the chit if Chambley managed to find her before Robert could extract what he needed from her.

And he doubted it would have anything to do with justice.

“My dearest Miss Sutton, it is good to see you well and alive. I had quite given up hope of ever seeing you again.” Lord Chambley sat well ensconced on the best chair in Lady Finch’s parlor. With his hands folded over his ample belly, he looked more like a concerned and relieved grandfather speaking to an errant child than the angry and belligerent government official she remembered.

“Thank you, my lord,” Olivia said. She hadn’t been convinced that approaching Lord Chambley, as Lady Finch had insisted, was the best course of action, but now, seeing his evident concern and sincerity, she felt almost foolish for having waited so long to divulge what she knew.

Yet the dying man’s words rang in her ears like a warning bell.
Give this to no one but Hobbe.

There is no damn Hobbe,
she told herself. He never existed. Not anywhere but in her imagination.

So then why did Robert Danvers’s face suddenly come to mind? His forceful presence, his cool reserve, his only too strong and masculine embrace—just exactly as she’d always envisioned Hobbe.

Oh, she was going mad when she started seeing heroes in men like Danvers—the conniving imposter!

“It is a miracle and a testament to your innocence and intelligence that you are hale and hearty,” Lord Chambley was saying. “But the keenest part is that you’ve finally come to your senses and are seeking my guidance.”

Olivia tried to set aside the niggling feelings of doubt creeping down her spine at his overly familiar sentiments. Shaking them off, she decided she’d become far too suspicious.

Lord Chambley was a highly placed official in the Foreign Office. He was a peer of the realm, regarded as a leading member of the House of Lords.

But then again, you were right to suspect something was amiss with that phony Bradstone,
that nagging little voice reminded her.

Olivia forced a smile on her face and tried to look contrite. “I am so sorry for any inconvenience I have caused you, my lord, or your office.”

He nodded at her and turned to Lady Finch. “This really is all my fault. I was far too severe with her that night. Probably frightened the poor girl out of her wits. Obviously left her with the wrong impression. Bravo to you, Lady Finch, for finally setting her to rights and bringing her back into the sanctity of society.”

“Yes, that is all well and good, Lord Chambley,” Lady Finch told him. “But what is to be done about the murder charge?”

Olivia held back a grin. Lady Finch wasn’t one to be bothered with the winding path of Lord Chambley’s political niceties. Leave it to her employer to get straight to the point.

Lord Chambley blustered for a moment at such a blunt and forthright request, then said, “If she can provide me with the information I want—I mean, that the Foreign Office is most desirous to obtain, then the gel can go free. I’ll see to it personally that all the charges are handled appropriately.”

Lady Finch nodded.

He turned to Olivia. “You do know what I mean by
the information,
don’t you?”

Something stayed her head from nodding, her lips from forming a “yes.”

Don’t tell him. Don’t give him any indication that you
have any due as to what he is asking. Save it for
him.

She nearly ground her teeth.

Him. Hobbe. Where was he? Her knight errant? Not sitting before her offering her amnesty. So why was she hesitating? Not even that
faux
Bradstone Robert Danvers had dangled such a boon before her.

Knights errant and phantom marquises. These were who she was trusting her life to. Ridiculous.

She took a deep breath. “I believe I can tell you everything you need to know, my lord,” she said. “In fact, I’ve even been able to do a little more research into this and have learned that
El
—”

“Ah, thorough to a fault, I see,” Lord Chambley chuckled, cutting her off. “Just like your father.”

This diverted Olivia’s attention utterly. Her father? No one ever mentioned him. Not since . . .  “You knew my father?”

“Yes, quite well. Sir John’s work was invaluable to his country—that is, until . . .”

She knew how the sentence was to be finished.

Until your father sold his talents to the Dutch and then hanged himself to avoid public censure.

Everyone sat for a few moments in uncomfortable silence until Lord Chambley brushed his hands over his lapels and said, “Now, there, let’s get on with our business. No need to dwell on the unhappy events of the past.” He drew a large breath into his barrel chest and let it out in a wheezy rush. “Now, what would you say to coming down to the Foreign Office with me and telling all this to my secretary. He can transcribe it into a working document for me to pass along to the correct authorities.”

“The Foreign Office,” Jemmy said in awed tones, finally unable to keep in line with his mother’s edict to remain silent. “I’d be more than happy to escort you, Olivia.”

“Completely unnecessary, young man,” Lord Chambley said. “Highly confidential matters of state. Besides, Miss Sutton will be more than safe with me. As if she were my own daughter.”

*    *    *    

Aquiles rushed through the front door of the Bradstone town house coming face to face with Carlyle’s blustered objections at his not using the servants’ entrance.

Robert, having just come down from his aunt’s suite, stepped into the middle of the fray—Carlyle insisting Aquiles leave and enter the house properly, and Aquiles telling the stiff English butler where he could go in his most colorful Spanish.

“It won’t happen again,” Robert promised Carlyle, while he hauled a spitting mad Aquiles off to a corner.

“Why aren’t you over at the Finches’?” he asked his servant in a low whisper.

Aquiles spat in Carlyle’s general direction and continued cursing in rapid Spanish until finally he said a coherent set of words that caught Robert’s attention.

“Chambley se hizo con ella.”
Chambley’s got her.

Robert’s hand balled into a fist.

The bastard had found her. And now he had her.

So it was only a matter of time before the unscrupulous man relieved the young woman of the information she possessed. And Robert doubted Lord Chambley had any qualms about how to carry out that deed.

Miss Sutton would be lucky to see another day.

Then again, he was talking about the same woman who had quite possibly murdered a Foreign Office agent. The same woman who’d allied herself with his treasonous cousin and attempted to steal a fortune in Spanish gold. The woman who not eighteen hours earlier had trained a pistol on him and vowed to shoot him if he didn’t do her bidding.

For a moment, Robert thought perhaps he should rush to warn Chambley what he was getting himself into.

Robert wasn’t too sure he knew himself what he was doing as he stalked out of the house—saving the vexing little minx from who knows what dangers—or saving her from herself.

Upstairs, Lady Bradstone watched Robert and his servant depart the house in a great hurry, as if the world depended upon their next course of action. A small sigh slipped from her lips as Robert’s tall figure finally strode out of sight. For a moment she stood in silence, her lips pursed and her thoughts taking a direction she didn’t want to hazard.

Robert will be fine,
she told herself. He is an intelligent man—very much like Papa. Yes, the Duke of Setchfield would have been proud of such a grandson, proud of his long lost namesake, she mused—that is, if he had lived long enough to find the forgiveness in his heart that it would have taken to bridge the family rifts.

The thought should have given her comfort, but instead it filled her with sadness. There were few who remembered her father as she did—unforgiving, cold, hard to please. Most chose instead to ignore those qualities, regarding his demeanor and extreme eccentricities as the right of nobility, just as they did with the obvious changes in Robert.

But then again, perhaps the alterations in Robert’s character weren’t as glaring to others as they were to a mother.

Her gaze fell on Susannah’s overturned portrait and she reached down to right it. Her sister’s lively eyes, dark hair and imperious airs stared forth. Reverently Lady Bradstone carried the portrait back to its place of honor beside her desk. She hung it and for a moment studied the smiling face before her.

“How like you, little sister, to send him to me when I needed him.” She reached out and brushed her fingertips over the oil and canvas version of her sister’s once soft cheek. “I’ll watch over him, Susannah. As if he were my own dear Robert. For you have given me something I have always dreamt of—a son I can be proud of. Your son.”

Chapter 5

O
livia strained against the ropes binding her to the straight-backed chair in Lord Chambley’s guest room.

Some guest room,
she thought, looking around the bare chamber. The only furnishings were the chair to which she was bound, a small desk and two other similarly uncomfortable chairs. She had no illusions about how the room had been used in the past, for a bloodstain partially covered by a thin rug revealed that she wasn’t the only one who found the room inhospitable.

She paused for a moment and tried to reason what she should do. Screaming would be useless—the servants were probably well paid to ignore such cries, and the next house was far enough away and separated by a high wall and a spacious garden that her laments would go unheard.

For the hundredth time, Olivia cursed herself for not listening to her instincts about Lord Chambley.

Having packed up her notes about The King’s Ransom, she and Lord Chambley had left in his carriage for the Foreign Office. When she alighted in the mews of Lord Chambley’s town house and not their intended destination, his burly footman, Milo, had quickly and efficiently caught her by the arms and dragged her up a set of backstairs before she could utter a complaint.

Chambley had planned his little guest suite well. Tucked up on the third floor of the house, it was high enough to preclude escape through the window and bare enough not to offer any aids in arming oneself against the formidable Milo, whom she now referred to as Ox.

As if she could have stopped him—it would have taken a cannon to bring the behemoth down. And apparently the man knew how to restrain a prisoner, for the ropes he’d tied around her wrists and feet resisted any efforts to wriggle a hand or foot loose.

The only bit of luck she’d gained in this latest tangle was that moments after Ox had hauled her up the numerous flights of stairs to the guest suite, another servant had come to fetch Lord Chambley.

“I’ve been directed to attend Lord Castlereagh immediately and will regrettably have to leave you, Miss Sutton,” he’d said, with his usual pompous air, snapping the note closed and tucking it into his waistcoat pocket. “Matters of state and all. I fear I might be a while, so you’ll have plenty of time to consider your fate. For when I return, I’ll be anxious to see if you are as forthcoming with the information I want as you were willing to give Bradstone all your charms—linguistically and otherwise.” His lips moved to a leer, and his gaze flitted over her as if he were considering whether or not to sample her charms.

“I won’t tell you anything,” she’d replied. “I’d rather die first.”

He’d come within a hair’s breadth of her, then his hand caught her hair and yanked her head back until she thought he meant to snap her neck. “You’ll tell me what I want to know, if only to die and release yourself from the pain my associate here is infamous for providing. That is unless you decide to become more willing and obliging with your information and favors . . .”

And with that ominous threat hanging like a storm cloud over the room, Chambley and Ox had left her alone. Well, not entirely alone. His lordship had been kind enough to leave one of his watchdogs curled up on the rug to keep an eye on her.

Every time she moved so much as to shiver in the freezing room, the ugly-looking wretch would curl its lips and growl at her. Olivia was no expert on hounds, but this brindled, wiry-haired fiend looked capable of chewing off her leg.

Cold, frightened and just plain mad at herself, Olivia gave her bindings a good tug and pull.

“Blast and drat,” she muttered, trying to find a way to free at least one of her hands. The ropes burned into her wrists, her skin raw from her exertions.

The dog sat up and looked at her, his eyes narrowed. He was large enough to be nearly eye to eye with her.

“Oh, go ahead. Take my toes or my ankles,” she told the great beast. “But I warn you they are as cold as ice and won’t give you much in the way of a warm meal.”

He cocked his head at her again and then trotted across the room, circling around her as if gauging which part of her would be the most tasty.