The Diabolical Baron

by Mary Jo Putney

  Jessica followed his eyes and laughed. While she bent to scratch the cat’s head, he asked, “Will Linda approve of me?”

  She straightened with a chuckle. “I should think so—she has been after me to remarry for the last year. Her only requirement is that the man be able to buy her a pony.”

  “I think that can be arranged.” He was putting his arms around her again when a scream sounded from the armor room above them. Jason turned his head sharply, his ear now catching the metallic sounds he had overlooked while concentrating on Jessica.

  He stiffened and said tersely, “Swords.” He raced up the remaining stairs, Jessica a bare step behind him.

  * * * *

  The armor room had several lamps lit when Caroline reached it, but most of its great length was illuminated by the full moon. Suits of armor gleamed like silvery ghosts and the weapons mounted on the walls and cases shone from the shadows more like fairy ornaments than instruments of death.

  As she waited for Richard, she dreamily danced to the sounds of overheard music, her arms held out and her dress swirling softly round her ankles. Her only contribution to the ball arrangements had been ensuring a good orchestra. Though her feet moved to the waltz from below, her mind was weaving a new piece of music, a paean of joy tentatively titled “Wedding March.”

  A sound from the door caused her to run across the room, almost colliding with the unpleasant man from Wargrave Park. She gasped while he reached out a hand to steady her. He looked down in appreciation and said, “What a warm welcome, sweeting! Dare I hope it was for me?”

  “No! I was expecting someone else.” She moved away from him but he followed, staying uncomfortably close.

  She backed up nervously until a glass case displaying daggers blocked her retreat. He was so close she couldn’t move away. There was an unpleasant smell of alcohol on his breath as he lifted his hand, lightly touching her injured cheek.

  “You seem to be having an exciting night, sweeting. Is this from your so-respectable fiancé, or do you have another lover?”

  She shrank back against the case, trying to decide what to do. Reggie was as tall as Jason, with a raffish vitality that seemed infinitely more threatening.

  The shadow-filled room was suddenly too isolated. She abruptly appreciated why young girls were hedged about with chaperons. It was to protect them from men like this.

  She steadied her voice and said, “I am waiting for my fiancé.”

  Reggie raked his eyes over her insolently. She was really a taking little thing. Her sweet young breasts were half-uncovered by the dress, with a hint of other curves under the shimmering silk. She had been unconsciously sensuous when he watched her dancing and he was sure the look of angelic innocence hid a passionate nature.

  And she belonged to Radford...

  Reggie’s own life had been lived at the edge of society, with no solid position or fortune of his own. He had always resented Jason—his arrogance, his wealth, his calm sense of superiority. How delightful to taste something of the insufferable Radford’s.

  Besides, he thought the chit had probably been spreading her favors around or she wouldn’t look so much as if she’d just got out of bed. Perhaps she had.

  Bending over, he claimed her mouth. She was a delightful little armful. As she struggled against him, he moved forward, pinning her against the cabinet with the weight of his powerful body.

  Her struggles were arousing and he moved one hand down to grasp her soft breast while he parted her lips with his tongue. He was enjoying himself so much that he didn’t notice company had arrived until he was ripped from behind and torn away from Caroline.

  Reggie’s frustrated lust turned to a rage that redoubled when he saw his assailant was not Radford but Dalton, the placid nonentity who had been underfoot at Wargrave.

  What right had this peasant to interfere with him? He was the Earl of Wargrave! As he collided with the wall, the hand he threw out for balance touched the hilt of a mounted sword.

  After thousands of hours of practice and several duels, it came as naturally to his hand as the hammer to the carpenter. With a roar of fury. Reggie pulled the sword from its mount and lunged at his attacker.

  Dodging a thrust aimed at his heart, Richard came down on his damaged right leg at a twisting angle that made it give way under him. He fell to the floor as Caroline screamed his name and the relentless blade followed him. Cat-quick, he turned the fall into a tumbling roll that carried him to temporary safety.

  Amazingly, by the time he regained his feet he had peeled off his coat and located the nearest sword. Hurling the coat away as he wrenched the weapon from the wall, he was barely able to put up a guard before his cousin was on him again.

  “Caro, get back!” he called out. She withdrew slowly, gripped by an irrational fear that if she turned away, Richard would be killed.

  Reggie’s murderous rage had nothing in common with the formality of a duel. He was in a fighting frenzy, beyond judgment or sportsmanship, and his boasts of fencing skill were founded on truth. His sword was a whirling dervish of lethal brilliance.

  The fight should have been over in seconds— except that Richard’s blade moved with equal brilliance, parrying every thrust and creating an impenetrable defense. His weapon was the rapier of an earlier century, longer and heavier than the small sword of his opponent, and the extra length helped counter his opponent’s greater reach.

  Outraged at seeing Caroline’s injured face and her struggle with Reggie, Richard fought with controlled virtuosity, icy cold in contrast to his cousin’s mindless rage. Half a head shorter and years younger than his furious opponent, he looked like a boyish David facing down Goliath.

  When Reggie swept forward in a devastating lunge that should have ended the fight on the spot, Richard retaliated with a masterful parry that locked their blades together, their corded muscles straining while they were held motionless face-to-face for a few moments of illusory peace.

  Richard said between gasping breaths, “You wanted to know what makes me angry? Now you have found out. I would have stopped you from hurting any woman, but because it was Caroline, I should kill you.”

  “Are you the lover the ice maiden awaited? How delightful! Then we must be fighting about who will have the privilege of first cuckolding Radford.”

  The suggestive laugh that accompanied the remark was the final straw—Richard exploded in an angry rush of thrusts and feints that slashed his cousin’s right forearm and forced him into a standing suit of fifteenth-century armor. It fell with a resounding crash, the helmet and gauntlets bouncing noisily away.

  Caroline whirled and ran to the door, hoping to find someone who could stop the battle before it was too late. Her flight drove her into Jason’s broad chest as he rushed in with Jessica right behind him. “Please,” she gasped, “stop them!”

  Jason’s experienced eye took the scene in at a glance. Anyone interfering would destroy the precarious balance between the two duelists and run the risk of death himself.

  He put an arm around Caroline to restrain her, reaching his other arm out to block Jessica’s precipitate entrance to the room. “Nothing can be done. Stay back here out of the way.”

  When Caroline frantically tried to tear away, he shook her and said fiercely, “Control yourself! If you distract your captain, you may be the death of him.”

  As the three of them watched frozen in their position by the door, Jason found himself detachedly admiring the skill of the antagonists. It was like an exotic dance, the flickering blades darting and retreating in graceful patterns that concealed the lethal consequences of a moment’s error.

  He had seen Davenport fight at one of the fashionable fencing salons and knew him to be one of the finest swordsmen in England. But Dalton was at least his match, and was slowly driving him back across the room.

  Reggie’s rage was fading as he fought desperately to survive, knowing instinctively that the deadly menace in his opponent’s eyes had been seen by few other men,
and those few were now dead.

  He’d forgotten that the mild-mannered man he had provoked was a warrior, honed by years of fighting. The casual malice of Reggie’s remark about Caroline had unleashed a demon of ferocity, and the death he had flirted with for years was on him. His blood and strength were ebbing from the slash on his arm, and the hilt of the sword was getting slippery.

  He gathered his fading strength into one last desperate attack, one he knew doomed to failure. With a snakelike movement too fast for the eye to follow, Dalton broke his attack and administered a wrenching blow that twisted the small sword from his grip and left his right wrist and hand numb.

  The rapier’s blade was at Reggie’s throat, as cold and steely gray as the merciless eyes that looked down its length. Reggie thought, with brief wistfulness, of the life that might have been his had he chosen differently, and prepared to die.

  The berserker rage that had driven Richard for the last half of the fight burned out when he was within a second of slitting his cousin’s throat. Anger had been simmering inside him since he had heard why his parents left England.

  But that crime had been ably avenged by his father and had nothing to do with this man whose pale blue eyes were watching him steadily and without fear. Nor could any sword touch the grandfather who had disowned his own son.

  The fury triggered by Reggie’s actions had its roots far in the past. While his cousin would doubtless come to a bad end, he did not deserve to die for what he had done tonight.

  But though Richard could not kill him in cold blood, neither could he give Wargrave into his hands.

  As Richard’s newfound clarity of vision swept away his ghosts, he released the anger that had driven him and accepted the future he had tried to refuse. It was not chance that had brought him to Wargrave, and he could no longer deny the responsibilities laid on him.

  His breath came in great wrenching gasps from the exertion of the battle, but his voice resonated through the room as he said, “There are two important things you don’t know about me. One is that my father was a fencing master, and would never have let his son disgrace his teaching. And the other”—he drew a deep breath before he made the step from which there would be no turning back—”he was Julius Davenport.”

  The room had the same tense silence that falls when a bomb is ticking its way to explosion. Radford softly exclaimed, “Of course!” as one of the women inhaled sharply in shock.

  Richard held his cousin’s eye until, suddenly and inexplicably, Reggie burst into laughter. Richard withdrew the sword so there would be no accidental impaling, then dropped the point to the floor when it became clear that Reggie’s amusement was genuine, not a ploy.

  When his mirth subsided, he said, “If you’d become angry earlier, cousin, I might have recognized you as a Davenport. You have the family temper.”

  Richard’s voice was dry as he said, “You can judge from the results why I prefer to hang on to it.”

  “Very true. I have always assumed someone would eventually murder me, but I never thought it would be over a stolen kiss.”

  Richard’s voice was flinty. “And the marks on her face?”

  “Not made by me. It is my policy to persuade ladies by the power of my kisses. Beating them senseless is poor sport.”

  Still watching his cousin, Richard asked, “Is he telling the truth, Caroline?”

  “Yes.”

  Radford wouldn’t have struck her, so it must have been her father. Disturbed by the odd note in her voice, he glanced sharply over, then turned back to Reggie to settle things quickly. “Must I watch my back as long as you are alive?”

  Reggie looked offended. “Of course not. It would not be at all the thing to attempt to murder the head of the family.”

  At Richard’s pained expression, he said, “Like it or not, that is what the Earl of Wargrave is, my lord cousin. A stab in the back is not my style, and I have serious doubts about my ability to best you in a fair fight. Did your father ever run a shooting gallery?”

  At Richard’s nod, Reggie sighed dramatically. “Then there is no help for it. I shall not be able to kill you. Besides, if I tried and failed, you would almost certainly cut off my allowance.”

  Richard shook his head in disbelief, too drained to deal with his cousin’s frivolities. “You’d best get that arm taken care of.” He untied his loosened cravat for a bandage, only to have Jessica take it from him.

  “I’ll bind it up—I have had plenty of experience. Brace yourself, Mr. Davenport, I think this is going to hurt a lot.”

  Reggie’s dark face had a look of comic resignation as she started to remove his jacket preparatory to bandaging his arm. Clearly she was making no particular effort to minimize the pain.

  Richard turned and slowly walked to the doorway where Jason and Caroline still stood. He was limping heavily, his bad leg wrenched by the fall when Reggie first attacked him.

  Jason spoke first, clapping a hand on his left shoulder. “I should have known you sooner. Your father would sometimes give me rides on his horse when he found me wandering around the home wood. I was only five when he left, but I have always remembered him fondly.”

  Richard smiled briefly at the tribute, but his eyes were fixed on Caroline. She had had a difficult evening—starting as the reluctant guest of honor and going on to be bullied, beaten, and mauled. She had broken an engagement, been terrified that her beloved would be killed, and now found that that same lover was not who she thought.

  Confused, angry, and hurt, for the first time in her life Caroline Hanscombe smoldered.

  “Caro?” Richard asked tentatively.

  “There is no need for explanations, my lord,” she said with awful precision. “A man of your rank need not think anything of making a May game of foolish girls. There is little other sport in the country at this season.”

  Richard glanced at Jason. “If you will excuse us, I must talk to my fiancée or this engagement may be over before it begins.”

  “Quite right, my lord,” she said through gritted teeth. “I have broken one engagement this evening and am quite capable of breaking another.”

  The expression on her face was grim when he led her toward the far corner of the room—but she did not have to be forced to accompany him.

  Jason looked after the pair in bemusement. “Do you think he can talk her around?”

  Her nursing chores over, Jessica came to his side and replied, “I have no doubt whatsoever. She just needs to be reassured a bit. She’s had too many shocks tonight.” Her gaze moved to Reggie. “Can you make it back to Wargrave Park, or should we make up a bed for you here?”

  “I shall be quite all right. I have returned home in far worse case than this. Radford, is there an exit I can use without alarming your guests unduly?”

  “Down the stairs and around to the left. At the end of the passage is a door that will let you out near the stables. You’re sure you’re all right?”

  Reggie gave a sardonic smile. “I’m sorry to crush your hopes, but I’ll be perfectly sound in two or three days.”

  “You’ve a wicked tongue on you, Davenport.”

  “It will be the death of me yet. But not tonight,” With a self-mocking smile, he turned and disappeared down the staircase.

  Jessica shook her head after he left. “What an impossible man! But I’m glad Richard didn’t kill him.”

  “Quite right. It might have ruined the party still going on beneath our feet. I propose we finish the evening with no announcements whatsoever. Our mystified guests can learn what happened from the Gazette.”

  He reached out his arms and pulled her close. She gave a sigh of contentment and let her head rest against his shoulder for a moment while he stroked her back and dropped a light kiss on the top of her head.

  He felt like a settled married man. He felt wonderful.

  Jessica stepped back and shot an inscrutable green glance up through her lashes, then concentrated on straightening a nonexistent wrinkle in Jason’s
neck cloth. Her voice was muffled as she said, “I would like to ask you something before we go back downstairs.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, in spite of my rather lurid reputation, I have actually behaved with considerable propriety. The most outré thing I have ever done was kiss a man I wasn’t married to.”

  “And who might that have been?” he asked with a dangerous gleam.

  “You, of course!” She was still fiddling with his cravat, unable to meet his eyes. “I have always had a secret wish to do something wanton and profligate. If we are to be married in five days, I will have lost my opportunity forever. So-o-o ...” She stopped.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “So”—she gave him a glance that was half-mischief and half-shyness—”Do you think that tonight... ?”

  He shouted with laughter as he caught her meaning, then lifted her clear off the floor and whirled her around twice before depositing her down again. “You will keep me young forever, my darling minx.”

  He kissed her with a tenderness that rapidly escalated into passion. “It will be my very great pleasure to give you your wish tonight, my love,” he whispered huskily. “And every other night as long as we both shall live. Shall we go downstairs now and see if we can convince our guests to leave early?”

  She embraced him approvingly, only to be interrupted by a strangled squawk from the door. They both looked up, though Jason made no move to release her. “Good evening, George. Is the party going well?”

  George Fitzwilliam was watching them with inarticulate fascination. Finally he sputtered, “Lady Edgeware sent me to discover where you’d gotten to. Said there were rackety goings-on up here.”

  Jason smiled. “She must have heard the armor go over. Will you be the first to congratulate me? Mrs. Sterling has just agreed to make me the happiest of men.”

  “But... but... what about Miss Hanscombe?”

  “She has made other arrangements.” Jason’s eyes flickered toward the far corner of the room; then he took Jessica’s arm and headed toward the stairs. “May I congratulate you on your new team of horses?”