Some Enchanted Evening (31 page)

Brenda broke into his musing. "Oscar, you have a most peculiar smile on your face."

"Yes. Thank you. It is nice, isn't it?" He wasn't making sense, and carefully he placed his champagne glass on a tray. Perhaps he shouldn't have indulged in quite so much of the excellent beverage. "If you'll excuse me, I shall go and get some air."

Tugging at her gloves, she said, "I'll go with you."

"No!" he snapped. As she drew back, he softened his tone. "I mean, you can't come where I'm going, Brenda."

"Ah." She nodded wisely. "I hope you feel better when you return."

He wanted to correct her, but sometimes when Brenda looked at him, it was as if she saw more deeply into his soul than he wished.

So with a bow he escaped from the ballroom, arriving in the doorway in time to see Hepburn and Waldemar whisk around a corner toward the darkened center of the house. He followed their voices through the winding corridors, remaining back far enough that they were oblivious to his presence.

After all, they were not the only expert trackers here.

They ended up in Robert's candlelit study, and luckily for Ogley, that coarse imbecile Waldemar didn't quite shut the door behind them.

Their voices grew louder, but they weren't speaking to each other. They were speaking to someone else, someone who they were trying to bully.

Oh, this was very interesting. Ogley shifted closer.

Then he recognized a voice he hadn't heard for over a year. A voice he had hoped never to hear again.

Warm and womanly. Husky with the smoke of thin Spanish cigars. Heavily accented.
Carmen's voice
. "You tell me I cannot come to the ball, yet what reason have I to stay apart?"

In revulsion Ogley staggered back against the wall. He put his hand to his chest above his rapidly beating heart.

She blathered on. "I will go and speak to her, to his skinny, pale wife, and tell her what he has done to me."

As Ogley sneaked along the corridor until he could peek into the half-opened doorway, he tried to reassure himself.
She won't do it.
Then, remembering how she had looked, so sick and wild with grief, when he had told her he was returning to England and cared not a whit what happened to her or their child, he changed that to —
They won't let her do it.
But Hepburn and Waldemar despised him. Trying desperately to get his breath, he let his hand stray to the dagger he kept on him for just such an occasion as this.
I'll stop her.

It was her. She stood there in her azure strumpet gown, her black hair dressed in its familiar chignon, the inevitable lace mantilla draping her bare shoulders and partially swathing her face. The light was low, but he saw her pace in that patient, steady walk toward the desk where Hepburn stood, and Ogley wanted to run into the room, dagger lifted, and slash her to ribbons before she could destroy his life. Only one thing — no, two — kept him from it. Neither Waldemar nor Hepburn would allow him to bestow justice as it should be rendered.

"He left me with nothing. I am noble, but my family, they will have nothing to do with me because of my disgrace." Ogley heard a thump as Carmen pounded her chest with her fist. Melodramatic as always.

Damn her.

He wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead and tried to think. He had to
think
.

So it was true. Hepburn, that troublemaker, had brought her here.

"What will his skinny, pale wife say when I tell her how I wandered the countryside, my baby in my arms? His baby." Carmen's voice vibrated with passion.

And Ogley wanted to spit in disdain. Ridiculous, silly exaggeration, and so he would tell Brenda.

But he couldn't fool himself. If Carmen actually managed to get her claws into Brenda ... if she told her of their liaison, worse, of their child, he would be served with separation papers and left out in the cold to starve. Brenda adored him, but he never made the mistake of thinking she would put up with such a betrayal.

And she was a woman. She might take Carmen's side, say that if he was going to roger some dirty foreigner, he should have provided for her later. As if he should pay for services when he no longer received them!

Carmen's voice continued on and on, driving stakes into his head. "My little Anna has no papa. The other children make fun of her, they call her a bastard."

Brenda wanted his child. If she found out he had abandoned a daughter ... his armpits grew so wet they stained his uniform.

Carmen's voice lowered to a sad croon. "And sometimes my baby cries from hunger."

Ogley couldn't stand it anymore. All those damned histrionics. Ridiculous, absurd melodrama. Slamming through the door, he pointed his finger at the three shocked faces turned to him. "You can't do this to me. I won't let you."

Carmen started toward him, hand raised, but Waldemar caught her arm. She turned on him like the virago she was, but Hepburn said, "Senorita, no! I will handle this."

Flipping out her fan, she held it in front of her face and flapped it in a fury while her amber eyes flashed with . . . how odd. Ogley had thought her eyes were a deep brown. But hell! What did the color of one woman's eyes, more or less, matter in the end? With a shrug that rudely dismissed her, he turned to Hepburn. Hepburn was the puppet master here. Only Hepburn mattered.

Hepburn gestured to Waldemar, who kept a hard grip on Carmen's arm and hustled her toward the door. Ogley stepped back, but her skirts brushed against his legs. A wave of perfume made of fresh flowers and sweet spices washed over him, and she hissed "
Bastardo"
in a venomous tone.

He swung after her, staring as Waldemar pushed her down the corridor, then turned back to Hepburn. "I demand to see Carmen alone."

"No. Oh, no." Hepburn laughed lightly, scornfully. "What are you going to do, kill her?"

And because the thought had crossed his mind, Ogley flushed an ugly red.

"No," Hepburn said, "I promised her that you're not going to see her alone and intimidate her. She wants to knock you off your pedestal with all these people watching, and I can't think of one reason why I shouldn't let her."

Ogley could feel the spit gathering at the corners of his lips and drying. "My wife."

"Will be shocked and stunned to hear that you kept a mistress, I'm sure."

"She'll understand." Ogley didn't convince even himself. And what if Carmen betrayed the truth about the real Hero of the Peninsula? It was bad enough to think of all the people who had gathered to honor him turning away. But for Brenda, who admired him, it would be a shock from which she would never recover. A shock from which his marriage would never recover. A shock from which his pocketbook ... it didn't bear thinking of.

"Mrs. Ogley will be more appalled and stunned to discover you ruined a young lady of good family." Hepburn hammered his words home. "That you lied to Carmen about being married, that you abandoned her with nothing for her efforts but an illegitimate child."

"It was only a daughter." Worthless things, daughters.

Hepburn tapped the edge of his desk. "You haven't given your wife a child, have you?"

Ogley swiped at the edges of his mouth, trying to make himself look suave and debonair when in fact he was desperate. Perhaps an appeal would help, man to man. "I would have left Carmen a stipend, but I don't hold the purse strings in the family. Every year I have to go to Brenda's father for an allowance. Surely you see I couldn't afford to pay Carmen."

Hepburn, that rich, noble swine, did not relent. "You could have given her the earnings off that book you published."

Ogley was trapped. Trapped by nothing more important than a little pussy taken because he wanted it. Taken what was rightfully his.

He went berserk with frustration. He slammed his fist into the wall, then cradled it under his arm as he paced in a froth of temper.

Hepburn stood immobile as if Ogley's fury impressed him not at all.

"Don't lie to me, Hepburn." Ogley pointed at him. "You set this up. You planned this ball especially with the view to ruin me."

Hepburn didn't deny it. The swine. The crazy, ungrateful swine.

Ogley raged toward him. "You envy me because I took your heroism and your exploits as my own."

"I don't give a damn whether anyone knows who really detonated the French ammunition depot. But I have something in common with Carmen,"

Spitefully Ogley said, "Yes, I screwed you both."

Hepburn didn't flinch. "Worse than that. You lied to me. You made a promise that you didn't keep."

For a moment Ogley didn't know what Hepburn was talking about. Then he remembered, and the light dawned. In an incredulous tone he said, "This is about Waldemar? You want me to release Waldemar?"

Hepburn inclined his head once, a gracious, righteous movement that made Ogley want to shoot him. "No. I don't want you to release him. You're going to give him everything you promised. A commendation for bravery in battle, and his freedom in perpetuity."

"He's a thief. A damned beggar off the streets. A bastard who doesn't even know who his parents are." Ogley could scarcely credit such stupidity for a man of Hepburn's background. "He's nothing! You're an earl. Why do you even care?"

"Why ask now? You never did understand." And Hepburn looked aristocratic now, his nose wrinkling as if Ogley stank. He sneered at Ogley as if he knew something about decency that had escaped Ogley's attention.

"He saved your life. That's what you've been prattling about, isn't it? Didn't you save Waldemar's life? Eh? So you're even. He saved your life." Ogley snorted. "You're his superior. That's what he was supposed to do."

"Perhaps." Robert's gaze lingered on Ogley in a manner that conveyed Ogley's fate if he'd ever put himself in danger. "But I place a great value on my life nevertheless."

"Your price it too high. Not even your father cared about you. Do you know what he wrote to me when you came into my regiment?" Hepburn didn't show a sign of interest, but Ogley knew better. "He said you were his heir. He said you were worthless, that he bought you a commission to straighten you out, and that I was to do it using whatever means were necessary. He didn't care what I did to you. He didn't care if you died." The spittle formed at the corners of Ogley's mouth again, but he no longer cared. "You embarrassed him."

"Yes, I know. He thought I was worthless. He was wrong." Opening his desk, Hepburn pulled forth a paper covered over with writing. "Here it is. Waldemar's commendation and release from the army."

Hepburn really couldn't be bothered that his father had abandoned him to suffering and death, and that made Ogley all the angrier. Ogley's own family didn't believe him when he said he was the Hero of the Peninsula, and they had the proof in a leather-bound book. Their indifference made him furious, and Hepburn didn't care? Damn him to hell. Would Hepburn always be one step ahead?

Coolly Hepburn continued. "All you have to do is sign Waldemar's release and put your seal on it, and I'll pay Carmen what she needs to support herself and your daughter. I'll make sure Carmen never bothers you again — and you'll never have to beg your wife for support."

"How do I know Carmen won't return for me?" Ogley asked, savage with disappointment.

"Because I keep my word and I'll make sure she does too."

That was the truth. The ruthless blackguard believed in honor and loyalty, and he always kept his word. With a vicious curse Ogley pulled up a chair. Hepburn placed the inkwell at Ogley's elbow, pushed a pen into his hand. The pen trembled as Ogley dipped it into the ink, then stared at the inkwell and wondered what would happen if he knocked it over on the paper.

As if Hepburn read his mind, he informed him, "I have another agreement written up."

So with a vicious slash Ogley signed
Colonel Oscar Ogley
across the bottom of the commendation and discharge.

Hepburn splashed red wax beside his name.

Ogley pressed his ring into the wax.

Hepburn took the paper, folded it, and locked it in a drawer. And they were done.

Standing, Ogley leaned over the desk toward Hepburn and with malevolent purpose said, "I'll get even with you for this. Somehow I'll make you pay for this humiliation."

Hepburn was unimpressed. "I believe that's my line, spoken when I left Waldemar behind with you on the Peninsula. I was insane with rage then. Tonight has gone a long way toward soothing that rage." Hepburn leaned forward, pressed his face close to Ogley, and focused a venal intent on him that made Ogley draw back. "But we're known for going insane, we MacKenzies, when we're in a fury."

With a shock Ogley saw the blue fire in Hepburn's eyes. His eyes burned like the flames of hell, threatening Ogley with death and devastation.

"If I were you," Hepburn said, "I would call it even with the MacKenzies."

Ogley jerked back, horrified to see, for the first time, the real Hepburn. Hepburn
was
a madman, and Ogley was lucky to get away with his life.

A sound like cannon fire made him jump, and a shower of colored sparks rained down outside the window.

As calmly as if his ferocity had never been, Hepburn said, "The fireworks are starting. They're in your honor, Ogley. Go out and accept your accolades. After all, that hero's pedestal is already shaky under your feet. With a little push the marble could crumble around you." In a tone that sounded like kind advice he added, "Too many people know the truth. Be careful what you do. Be very, very careful."