Tempt the Devil (10 page)

If truth be told, he wasn't sure what he intended. He never wrangled over females. Not for the first time, he wondered why in God's name he set out on this wild goose chase. If she betrayed him, the liaison finished.

He hoped Olivia would rue the loss of her generous protector and repent her faithlessness. Although he had a gloomy suspicion she'd just shrug, smile, and go back to Lord Peregrine Montjoy, where she'd soon choose another fat-headed booby to make a fool of.

Just as she'd made a fool of the Earl of Erith.

Nobody made a fool of the Earl of Erith.

For the sake of his reputation as a cold-hearted, ruthless rake, he should return to London and begin arrangements to turf the trollop onto the streets. Serve her right if she returned from her rural idyll to find herself out on her elegant rump.

He cursed under his breath, clicked his tongue to his mount and chased the carriage into a thick wood.

 

Erith waited concealed in the shade of the trees and observed the unpretentious stone house Olivia had disappeared into an hour ago. The boredom of standing out here holding his horse almost quenched the scorching heat of his anger. Almost.

It was a sultry day and he was parched and hungry. He'd planned to share a lavish breakfast in the charming downstairs parlor in York Street. Instead he'd come all this way without so much as a flask of water, and he'd wager he'd swallowed every speck of dust between here and London.

He stroked the gray's velvety nose. “Not much longer, Bey. A bucket of water and some oats for you—and for me, a tankard of ale to wash down sirloin and potatoes.”

The horse's ears flickered. Erith hoped without optimism that he wasn't lying. When the coach had pulled up at this unimpressive dwelling, his every muscle had clenched as if he prepared for war. With violence coiling like an angry cobra in his gut, he'd waited to confront his rival.

But a woman in her forties and a man about ten years older had greeted Olivia with hugs and smiles and laughter. Even more surprising, the man was obviously a vicar. The significance of the church spire rising above the trees a short distance away had belatedly struck Erith

The knowledge that he acted like an utter blockhead left a nasty taste in his mouth. But still, stubbornly, he waited. Even though there had been no activity around the vicarage since Olivia and the couple went inside.

His horse's head drooped and Erith wasn't in much better state when the door to the house opened. Stiffening like a hound scenting a fox, he jerked into alertness. He inadvertently tugged on the reins twisted around one gloved hand. His mount snorted in protest, but the two people who left the vicarage were deep in conversation and didn't react to the noise.

At Olivia's side was a tall young man with black hair. Erith couldn't see the rapscallion's face because of the distance and the angle. But the youth wasn't dressed as a servant, and there was an obvious physical ease between him and his companion. She took his arm and laughed up at him, the delightful, traitorous sound drifting to where Erith seethed in the shadows.

Olivia carried the fiendishly complicated bonnet she'd worn leaving town, and she moved with a confidence that indicated complete relaxation. Even her walk was different. In London she sauntered with a self-conscious sway of the hips, as if she knew every man's eye was on her. Of course, every man's eye
was
on her, curse the jade's justified conceit.

Here she moved with the long easy stride of the born countrywoman. He'd always assumed she'd risen from Lon
don's gutters and gained her brilliant social polish on the way. Now he wondered if she originally came from a setting as rural as this. She wouldn't be the first country maiden brought to ruin amidst the whirl of the decadent capital. Somehow, though, it was hard to picture her as a foolish milkmaid or naive farmhand.

He dismissed the fleeting puzzle of her origins. What mattered was that she'd lied to the Earl of Erith, and he intended to exact recompense.

And try not to feel more of a bloody fool than he did already.

The woman and the youth walked around the side of the vicarage. Which was lucky because if either had looked up, they'd see Erith. He'd been too furious to consider concealing himself.

Without thinking what he'd do when he caught up with the lovers—for surely that's what they were—he surged in pursuit, tugging the horse after him.

The confounded rogue was noticeably younger than Olivia—perhaps she had a taste for fresher meat than her protectors. While the boy was as tall as a grown man, it was clear he had yet to develop into maturity. The shoulders were broad but the body was gangly, and his limbs had the awkward thinness of a half-grown stripling.

Perhaps she was this scoundrel's keeper, just as he himself was hers.

He ground his teeth as he watched that long back in its plain black coat move away. What was she doing with this damned blackguard? She needed a man to satisfy her, not a calfling. There was too much woman in Olivia for a mere boy to match.

His free hand clenched into a fist as he imagined beating the youth into a pulp. He didn't have the faintest desire to hit Olivia. Instead, he wanted to fling her down on the ground, shove up her elegant skirts, and show her what she missed by holding out on the Earl of Erith.

A low feral growl emerged from his throat as he watched her reach up and place a quick kiss on the boy's cheek. He would have given her every ruby in Burma for one tenth of the genuine affection she showed that milksop.

Blast her to hell and back.

For lying to him. And for making him feel this way.

There was a pond behind the house where a few ducks swam without enthusiasm. More ducks snoozed on the bank. The youth led Olivia toward a weatherworn wooden bench. Erith growled again. The setting's pastoral perfection only increased his fury.

He hadn't fought a duel in years, had never challenged another man even in duels he had fought. But something in him howled for this young man's blood. Because he stole Olivia, and Olivia belonged to Erith.

The savage possessive hunger he'd felt the first time he saw Olivia Raines blasted him anew and jammed the breath in his throat. Through a red haze, he watched them sit down. The couple held hands and the innocent sweetness made him want to puke.

One last vestige of reason urged him to leave, to delay this confrontation until he was sure of control.

His horse had other ideas. The smell of water was too much to resist. The animal snorted and tossed its head to escape the restraint of the reins.

“Hell,” he muttered through his teeth as Olivia turned and caught him spying.

He felt like a beggar child outside a sweet shop. The pathetic image only stirred the roiling mixture of shame and anger in his gut. He sucked in a deep breath, which did nothing to calm his fury, and caught the troublesome nag's bridle, silently cursing the beast. With what he hoped was his usual assurance, he stepped forward.

“Olivia.” The word was a snarl.

The sun was in his eyes so it took him a few moments to register that, as she rose, she looked pale and frightened.

“Lord Erith, what are you doing here?” Her voice shook and she twined her hands together at her waist with an open nervousness he'd never seen in her before.

She should be nervous, the baggage. Let her see how nervous she felt when he called out her youthful lover and put a bullet in his skinny chest.

“It seemed the perfect day for a ride in the country,” he said silkily. He so obviously had the advantage, he could almost enjoy himself if not for the dogs of jealousy and disappointment howling inside him.

“You followed me.”

Her glare accused him of betrayal. What right had she to look at him like that? Treacherous slut.

“Yes.”

“You had no right.”

“I claim the right.” He moved closer to see the light in her lying eyes. He ignored his horse's stubborn yearning toward the pond.

“We had an arrangement.”

“We certainly did,” he snapped, looming over her. “Now if you please, we'll return to London and discuss the future of that…
arrangement
.”

“It has no future, my lord.” Her chill tone was more familiar than the husky, scared voice she'd used earlier.

Ah, she recovered her spirit. Good. He felt like a fight, and berating a woman who pretended fear offered no satisfaction. Now she faced him with her chin up and her backbone straight. Few men of his acquaintance would be so bold. She might be faithless, but she was undoubtedly brave. He quashed a twinge of reluctant approbation.

He grabbed her arm in its dark green, close-fitting sleeve. “We'll talk about that on our way back to London, madam.”

“Sir, unhand Miss Raines!” The stripling lurched forward and snatched at Erith's hand, trying to tug it from Olivia. “You have no call to treat a lady in this fashion!”

“For your own sake, I'd step away, boy,” Erith grated through clenched teeth.

“I'm no boy!” the youth retorted.

“Leo, stand back. This is between Lord Erith and myself,” Olivia said urgently.

“No, Miss Raines. This man is no gentleman.”

“No gentleman, hmm?” Without releasing Olivia, Erith turned his attention on the stripling. And found himself looking into a face that was a mirror image of Lord Peregrine Montjoy's.

A
ll Erith's certainties dissolved in a shocked instant. A taste bitter as aloes flooded his mouth while his mind screamed astounded denial.

For an absurd moment he stood paralyzed, one hand on Olivia, one gripping the horse's reins, and the boy clutching his arm. Then he snatched violently away. Breathing hurt, as though someone had punched him hard in the gut.

The boy was still bristling. He stared down his nose at the much taller earl. The haughty expression was so familiar, it made Erith's heart contract in his chest.

“I demand satisfaction, sir. You've behaved as a complete boor. You will name your seconds.”

“Leo, no!” Olivia pushed herself in front of him, confirming what Erith already knew in his bones to be true. Her voice shook with urgency. “He doesn't mean it, Erith. He's only a child. You can't fight a child. I won't believe it of you. However angry you are, you won't do this. Not if you consider yourself a man of honor.”

“I'm not a child, Miss Raines!” the stripling spluttered, his clear olive complexion turning a mottled red as his anger focused briefly on Olivia.

“No, of course you're not.” Erith remembered with a pang how sensitive a boy's pride could be. And this boy with his courage and his bridling temper wasn't much younger than Erith had been when he married and had children of his own. “I hope you'll accept my unreserved apology.”

“Erith…” Olivia's mouth dropped open with amazement.

He briefly resented that she was surprised when reason ruled him. But the crazy yen for violence had evaporated the moment he'd seen the lad's face. What remained was a desperate craving for answers.

The boy wasn't mollified. “The apology should not be for me but for this lady, sir. She's the one you offended.”

“You're right,” Erith said smoothly. He turned and bowed to Olivia. “Your pardon, Miss Raines. I spoke out of turn.”

Gracious as a queen, she inclined her head. “I accept your apology, my lord.”

“My lord?” The boy looked taken aback. He must have missed what Olivia said when she gasped Erith's name.

Displeasure tautened Olivia's face, but Erith had placed her in a position where introductions were unavoidable. He refused to help her. His curiosity burned like a brand.

She gave a sigh. “Lord Erith, may I present my godson, Leonidas Wentworth?”

“Mr. Wentworth,” Erith said, even as his mind bounced the name around his acquaintance. He knew no Wentworths, but that hardly mattered. The boy's heritage was written in his features. No wonder Olivia kept him hidden in this backwater.

“Leo, this is a…a friend of mine, the Earl of Erith.”

“My lord.” Leonidas Wentworth performed a creditable if rather frosty bow. He was a graceful youth, Erith had already noticed. Of course with his parentage, he would be. “I've never met any of Miss Raines's London associates before. Apart from Lord Peregrine.”

Erith approved of the stiffness in his manner. It spoke to the boy's principles being more important to him than the chance to toady to a rich nobleman.

But youthful hauteur cracked as Leo glanced past the earl to the horse nosing without much interest at the thick grass. Erith had no trouble interpreting the longing that glowed in his thickly lashed dark eyes. The same thickly lashed dark eyes that had surveyed him with abhorrence in Lord Peregrine's London town house.

“Would you care to water Bey? The poor beast hasn't had a drink since leaving London.”

A smile lightened the boy's face. He truly was a beautiful youth. “I'd like nothing better, sir. Spanish, is he?”

Erith was impressed. The lad knew his horseflesh. “Yes. About ten years ago I imported a few Andalusians into my stud at Selden to strengthen the bloodlines. Bey's one of my first successes.”

Anger forgotten, Wentworth accepted the reins. With palpable delight, he led the horse to the pond.

“You shouldn't have followed me,” Olivia hissed under her breath as she stepped closer, although the boy was outside earshot of anything except the most vituperative shrieking. And Erith couldn't imagine his mistress descending to hysterics, however angry she was.

“No, I shouldn't,” he admitted.

“What were you thinking?” She vibrated like a struck tuning fork.

He leveled a steely look on her. “You know what I was thinking. That you had a lover.”

“I told you I was faithful.”

“Women lie.”

“I don't.”

“Yes, you do.”

For an electric moment the memory of the last two nights, difficult, painful, compelling, rose between them. With vivid bitterness he remembered spending himself on the
sheets in great gasping spurts while she stretched, trembling and distraught, at his side.

Color flooded her cheeks much as it had flooded the boy's not so long ago. “You granted me complete independence of movement when I agreed to be your lover.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? I was jealous.”

Hell, he'd been mad with jealousy. The admission gnawed at him. Bewildered him. How had she brought him to such a peak of emotion when he discovered her leaving London, and even more when he caught her with Wentworth? She was merely a passing diversion during a brief sojourn in London. But when he thought she'd betrayed him, he had become a wild animal, ready to rend and claw and bite to keep what was his.

And he'd known her less than a week.

Would her fascination pall as familiarity grew? He had an ominous feeling that as time passed, he'd only become more entwined in the chains of attraction.

Just as quickly as Olivia's color had risen, it receded again. Clearly she recognized the shattering importance of what he'd just confessed. “I don't believe you.”

“I have trouble believing it myself.”

Her mouth flattened in an implacable line, and with an emphatic gesture, she brushed back a few loose strands of hair that came free around her cheeks. Even her hair was different here. Simpler. Looser. More becoming.

Her voice was still low. “Our affair can't continue, you realize? I will not be tracked or confined or spied upon.” She paused, and he realized she resented having to come down off her high horse to ask a favor. “My lord, I rely on your honor never to speak of what you've seen in this place.”

He gave a short, genuinely amused laugh. She really was used to leading a lover around by the nose. Sometimes he liked to oppose her just for the sake of watching her prickle. In this case, though, more was at stake than the seesawing game of dominance they played. “Oho, my lady, you're not getting out of things that easily.”

“My lord—”

“You can ‘my lord' me into the ground, Olivia. The formality changes nothing between us. It's too late to pretend we're little more than strangers.”

“We
are
little more than strangers,” she said sullenly.

“Intimate strangers, then.” He glanced over to where Wentworth fussed over the gray horse. “I'll fetch Bey, if that boy gives him back. I have my doubts. It looked like love at first sight.”

“What do you know of love?” she muttered, still simmering with hostility.

He reached out and touched her cheek briefly. “More than you'd think.”

Her lips parted with surprise.

He laughed again. “I know you believe I was brought up by wolves and I've been living like a wolf ever since. Sorry to disappoint you. I'm as human as anyone else.” Before she could muster any argument, he stepped past. “I'll go into the village. I assume there's one near the church and that it boasts an inn.”

“Yes, Wood End is on the other side of the trees.” Her voice took on a trace of satisfaction. “It's a sorry place. You won't like it.”

His smile was grim. “I'm not expecting to like it. I want somewhere to wait while you finish your visit. I take it you don't want to introduce your mad, bad lover to the good vicar and his wife.”

She became even paler. As before, he noticed that when her color fled, faint freckles formed a line across her cheekbones and nose. Like a ghost of the girl she'd once been. The girl he intended to discover, no matter how she tried to evade his questions.

“No. No, I don't want you to meet them.”

“Bring the carriage by the village on your way and we'll travel back to London together.”

“Wouldn't you rather ride?” she asked with a hint of desperation.

“No. I'd rather talk to you. There are things we need to discuss.”

“I don't agree.”

With another smile and a flourish of his blue coat, he sank down on the worn bench. He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, we can talk now. I'm at leisure.”

She cast him a killing look under her thick tawny lashes, but he knew that for once he had all the advantages. She'd want complete privacy for the coming interview, even if she intended to reveal nothing. His indiscreet questions could stir up trouble in this quiet retreat.

“I curse the day I met you,” she said, with real feeling. Her mouth was tense with displeasure and the small mole on her cheek stood out on her white skin like a dark beacon.

He let his smile widen. “Don't think if you're nice to me you'll cajole me into letting you off the hook.”

“I'm not a salmon, Erith,” she said icily. “I'll see you in the village in an hour. If you're not outside the inn, I'll leave without you. And you and your threats can go to Hades.”

With an irritated swish of her skirts, she stalked toward the rectory. Erith watched her go, as always admiring the subtle curves of her hips and the grace of her carriage. Annoyance added a swing to her gait. He liked it.

 

It was closer to an hour and a half later when the black coach pulled up outside the village's pathetic excuse for a hostelry. Olivia hadn't exaggerated when she'd called it a poor place. Erith had endured an awkward hour in the filthy taproom drinking watery beer while lumpen yokels stared at him in vacant wonder.

After the hour was up, he'd been pleased to go out and wait in the sunshine with Bey. Although the spectacular horse created even more stir among the locals than an earl had inside the dingy inn.

His discomfort wasn't purely a result of the unwelcome attention he received in the village. In this obscure corner of the
kingdom, the smells and sights and sounds of rural England surrounded him. On the ride down he'd been too angry to notice the burgeoning green around him. He hadn't been in the English countryside for years, probably since the days of his marriage. He'd forgotten the sweet, blossoming poignancy of spring. He'd forgotten how lush the fields were. He'd forgotten the rich smell of English crops growing in English soil.

As a young man he'd wanted nothing more than to run his estates and grow old on the lands his father bequeathed to him. Then Joanna died and his life twisted away from its safe, comfortable shape.

Strange, he hadn't realized how much he'd missed the familiar countryside. And he had missed it, with a depth of painful longing he only now recognized.

Olivia's coachman climbed down and fought his way through the crowd of filthy urchins to take Bey's reins. “Shall I tie him to the back of the carriage, my lord?”

“Yes.” Erith strode toward the vehicle. He'd thought he might have to trample the little ruffians, but they recognized his authority and swerved out of his way.

He swung the door open and climbed inside. As he'd expected, the conveyance was the latest word in luxury, from the ruby red Morocco leather seats to the tasseled silk cushions and gleaming wood fittings. He took his place with his back to the horses and looked speculatively across to where his mistress sat in mute elegance in the opposite corner.

After the bright sunlight outside, she was a creature of shadows. He felt her eyes on him as he settled, stretching his legs out across the well between the seats and resting his broad shoulders against the upholstery.

She was dressed for town again, in the fashionable bonnet and gloves. She seemed a subtly different woman from the virago who had confronted him beside the pond. But today he'd seen too much to believe that only the cold courtesan existed inside her.

For all Olivia's outward calm, he could smell the tension
under her sweet floral scent. She braced for his attack like a trapped antelope waiting for the lion to spring. The savage lurking inside him wanted nothing more than to seize her in his arms and kiss that stern mouth into softness. The enforced intimacy of the coach reminded him he was yet to lose himself in her spare, glorious body.

He tried to ignore the animal side of his nature. But it was difficult when she was so close.

“You're late,” he said, as much to pierce the silence as to chastise her.

“Yes.” Her voice was clipped. She was still angry. Perhaps even angrier than before, now that she didn't fear for Leonidas and there were no witnesses to their confrontation.

She didn't need to tell Erith that she'd deliberately delayed picking him up. Had she imagined if she was late, he'd go without her? What did the wench think? That his noble dignity wouldn't extend to waiting half an hour? She underestimated both his patience and his curiosity.

The carriage lurched into motion, and he watched her lift one slender arm to grip the leather strap for balance.

Aha, my lady, I'm going to put you off balance and keep you that way.

He spread his arms along the back of the seat, settling himself into the coach's rocking motion. His appearance of relaxation would rile her. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he read the cool rejection in her striking features.

The air was thick with everything unspoken between them. He had no difficulty divining Olivia's strategy. She meant to freeze him into silence and keep him that way until they reached London and the announcement she would remove herself to Lord Peregrine's town house forthwith. With perhaps one final plea to keep what he'd discovered today to himself.