Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

  "They are clamoring for introductions," Nicholas went on, ignoring the jibe.

  "No, that cannot be. It is Miss Mannion who commands such attention."

  "I think it is that dress, Diana—very definitely the garb of a goddess on the prowl."

  "And yet I sit in the shadows—"

  "In hiding, waiting to pounce."

  "Well then, let us chew over Miss Mannion for a while. She seems a meaty subject to me, my Lord."

  "Not nearly as succulent as you in that dress," Nicholas retorted, as several well-dressed young men elbowed their way into the box and gave him meaningful and faintly lascivious looks. "And here my point is proven. Miss Bowman, may I make you known to Messrs. Chevrington, Ottershaw, Tavender, Griswold—I believe you met Charles' mother this afternoon."

  She acknowledged them all gracefully, intensely aware of Nicholas' not disinterested scrutiny. How far could she go, she wondered.

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  how much charm could she lay on to make his lordship understand that she, of anyone, would never fall at his feet?

  Ah, but she hardly needed to do anything; his hot black eyes scorched her naked skin, and she felt there wasn't a man within the confines of that box seat who didn't admire the cut of her dress and that oval of bared bosom.

  Good, so much the better. Perhaps she ought to give reality to Southam's vision—that someone would claim her within the two weeks of her debut. It would be a fitting end to the adventure, to walk away on the arm of some desirable parti.

  These men were susceptible, more so than Southam, in any event. He looked anything but pleased at how alarmingly easy it was for her to attract all the eligible bucks within the vicinity.

  She liked the feeling of power it gave her: Lord Southam obviously did not. He allowed it, for a while, and she did not like the fact that he was orchestrating the procession of men into the box.

  But time would take care of that. The point was they all wanted to meet her, and he was angry enough to chew the scenery at that fact.

  "Don't make too much of it, my dear Diana," he cautioned her at one point when he had successfully cleared away yet another crowd of admiring exquisites. "Every new face is a novelty; they tire quickly."

  "You must know, my lord," Jainee said, slanting a malicious look at him. Thank heavens for fans—she flipped hers open and he only half caught the sweet malevolence in her expression. He thought he imagined it.

  And then he was sure he had not.

  He cursed her wicked tongue, but he knew she was no match for him.

  "Ah, here is Miss Mannion, come to rescue me for act two before boredom sets in." He rose up and took Miss Mannion's arm. "We shall meet again, Miss Bowman."

  "Shall we? I wouldn't have thought you had any interest in doing so at all," Jainee said blandly, forestalling the niceties he was about to heap all around her in the name of keeping up appearances.

  "You must never discourage a possible benefactor," Nicholas chided her gently.

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  "But there have been so many offers, my lord. I wouldn't miss yours in the least."

  "When I do offer it," Nicholas said stiffly, containing his anger at her positive impudence, "you will not miss it."

  "And meantime, there is Miss Mannion," Jainee said encouragingly, just loving the flaming exasperation in his eyes. She turned to Miss Mannion confidingly. "Did he offer to be your benefactor too?"

  "What is a benefactor?" Miss Mannion asked, slightly peeved that she could not understand what this unflatteringly tall brazen-mouthed unknown was talking about.

  "It is of no moment," Nicholas said, patting her gloved hand. "It has to do with the generosity—nay, let us say munificence, of those unwitting enough to take pity on those less fortunate than ourselves."

  "But then," Jainee put in quickly, lightly, before he could get away with such outrageousness, and before he could steer Miss Mannion out of earshot, "it could be said that / might be your benefactor, my lord."

  Even that positive overstatement did not faze him.

  "Were you rich enough," he retorted just so she could hear, "which is hardly likely when you consider the limited choice of ways in which you could possibly accomplish that. But you know that already, Diana," he added for good measure, not hiding the rising wrath in his expression as he turned away from her.

  "Perhaps I will be rich enough," she whispered, but he could not hear; her eyes followed the broad set of his shoulders as he exited from the box fairly pulling the bemused Miss Mannion along after him.

  Five minutes later, she saw him back in the orchestra, Miss Mannion by his side, and she clenched her hands in frustration and she did not know why.

  When the evening was finally over, she allowed Jeremy to drape the gauzy white shawl which matched her dress around her shoulders, and she meekly followed Lady Waynflete down the stairs and into the main reception hall where they would await the carriage.

  Jeremy, too, was silent. He was to go with them in his mother's carriage since he had come with Nick and Nick now had to escort

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  the everlasting Miss Mannion back home. He did not look happy about the arrangement and Jainee was keenly aware that his disapproval and her rather rude refusal to make conversation with him did not sit well with Lady Waynflete and those of her friends who stood with them awaiting the carriages.

  It couldn't be helped. She was simmering over her encounter with Nicholas Carradine, the high and mighty lord of benevolence, and she was furious that now, in the aftermath, she could think of a thousand things she could have said to him, all of which would have pulled his tether and choked him.

  No one knew better than she that there were no second chances. One play, one turn of the card. One wager. One win. One loss. That was the way. She had played this day's hand already and there was no going back.

  The only question was how much time Southam would allow her to find her phantom of a father, and how much leeway he would give her before he claimed his rights under their bargain.

  She was ever the gambler's daughter, she thought mordantly, as she bid a cool good night to Jeremy. She was always looking to beat the odds and never, in the end, counting the cost.

  ******************

  But there was no cost to count here... yet. Southam had opened his purse unstintingly and given her a magnificent wardrobe and a beautiful, proper temporary home with Lady Waynflete, and a succession of elegant parties to look forward to.

  Maybe it was too much. Maybe, she thought, her tale of omission did not warrant this much largesse. Maybe she didn't think that Southam was that taken with her to lavish such generosity on her and ask nothing in return.

  Maybe the cost was too high.

  She didn't know, but she had the disquieting feeling that this evening's conversation was a prelude to all his demands. The man was a trader, after all, and she had had only one thing to barter in Brighton. The rules had not changed since just because she had taken on the coloration of his world: he would still want payment, pure and simple, and just in the way she could imagine.

  And so, because her thoughts were directly on the consequences

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  of her agreement with him, she was not unduly shocked to see him sitting in her bedroom when she finally opened the door.

  "My lord," she said coolly, and he would have been stunned to feel how furiously her heart was pounding when he was thinking what a cold customer she was after all.

  There was never a woman in his experience who was not discomposed (or pretended to be) on finding a man in her room who had not been invited there. He could have dealt with recriminations more easily than her calm acceptance of his presence as she slipped out of the little froth of a shawl that surrounded her shoulders and turned to face him.

  "You are not suited for the role of the piper," she said, reaching in her mind for something that would clarify why he was even there.

  "Oh, I think so, Diana. It must be obvious the time has come when you must pa
y."

  And so here it was, and oddly, she did not feel any shock at the notion that he had come to claim that which she had freely offered him the month before.

  Or perhaps her gambler's sense of timing was impeccable, and the discrepancies on which she had ruminated the moment before she entered the room had been so telling the conclusion was inescapable.

  Whatever it was, she felt calm and ready and a cool curiosity about what would follow, and she said, "Well—here I am, my lord."

  Her sang-froid positively floored him. At least he had expected her to beg. No, he wanted her to beg, he wanted to wipe that brassy confidence right off her mouth and out of her mind.

  He felt a galling rising rage that her composure gave her the upper hand of him, when she had already this day given him a tongue-lashing that would have laid a lesser man low.

  He cursed himself for characterizing her as a goddess: he ought to have known she would use the appellation against him. No, it was time to teach the huntress that she had been rightly cornered and she had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  He could even, did he wish, find some amusement in playing with her, now he had won the endgame.

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  But his vengeful feeling went even deeper than that. He wanted to master her, ride her, and to ever have her in his power where her viper tongue could not slash away at his very vitals.

  "And here am I, Diana," he said finally, "just waiting for you to fall into my arms."

  She felt a tremor go through her at his words, and she suddenly wasn't at all sure she could carry off this posture of complete indifference. But to show any emotion at all would be to give in to him, and she could see he was waiting to taste that victory.

  She lifted her chin. "Perhaps I am waiting for you to fall into mine," she said with the faintest trace of haughtiness in her tone, and it just galvanized him into wrathful action.

  She had known it would. He came across the room in five long strides and grasped her by the hair and pulled her to him tightly so that she could see every movement of his impatient lips breathing the words into her face: "I will reduce you to a beggar, huntress, before you taste freedom again; I will ruin you for any other man for that virulent tongue of yours, and I will pull you from your Olympus of sanctity by virtue of the fact / put you there. And now do you understand, Diana?" His hand tightened around her curls and the thread of pearls wound through them fell to the floor like a punctuation to his words. "Now?"

  "I understand," she whispered.

  "And you surrender, goddess, do you not, to a higher authority?"

  Never! she thought viciously, as she pushed at him and he pulled her even more closer to him. Damn, he was hurting her. "I never surrender," she hissed, wrenching her head in opposition to his inexorable tug toward him.

  "You dishonor your bargain, Diana," he said, abruptly releasing her. "You are free to go."

  "What?" This she had not expected.

  "You may go. Now. With the clothes on your back and with whatever is in your trunk. But you must leave now."

  She was tempted, she really was tempted.

  "Lady Waynflete will disown you as of this moment," he went on, his voice pleasant with malice. "No one will offer succor: they will to all intents and purposes never have met you. You will be

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  alone, and walking the streets, and perhaps that is as good as you deserve. It's really a choice, Diana. Submit there or surrender here. Only the outcome will be different."

  "And what makes you think I will not survive?" she demanded, fighting back the frisson of horror his words evoked. She had her strength, she had her skill. . .if he would wait until morning—no, she had not expected this, not in the least, even after all she had heard of his whims and caprice.

  He smiled, a not very pleasant smile at all.

  "That is no concern of mine, Miss Bowman—as of now."

  He walked to the door and opened it—and waited.

  It took her thirty seconds to decide, the gambler in her, the Therese in her, choosing the cutting edge of comfort over the cold and wretchedness of the streets and the sure slide to oblivion.

  "What do you want me to do, my lord?"

  He closed the door slowly behind him. "You are most sensible, Diana."

  "It would be a wanton waste of money, my lord," she retorted, ever practical, but that view of the situation neither amused nor pleased him.

  Nevertheless, she had not yet bent to his will, and they both were aware of it. Only her pragmatic question lay between his power and her submission, and it took but a step to place him face to face with her where he could read everything she was thinking in her eyes and the quirk of her lips.

  The fire in the hearth, always laid early and lit by Marie, glowed against the rich satin of her gown. Two candlesticks on the mantel and two sconces on either side of the breastplate provided a seductive light by which to see her changeable eyes, provocative light by which to explore her mystery inch by luscious inch.

  But first she had to learn who possessed the power between them, and who must please whom. That first, the taming of her willful defiance; he felt the urgency of it grip his loins.

  He did not feel predisposed to be kind. "You will come to me, Diana."

  She felt that strong instinct of resistance, and she fought it. She had made the choice, the reasonable choice. Nothing could be worse than the streets, not even Southam's bed. "As you wish, my

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  lord."

  The tone was meek but the eyes, the eyes still dared him ... in the eyes raged all the defiance that he had forbidden to pass her lips, and he meant to crush the words in her mouth if she so much as made one sound.

  But it was the eyes—the blazing blue of her eyes, and the positive antagonism flaming there that goaded him beyond reason.

  He reached out and grasped the flap of material that hooked the ends of the oval design of the bodice together and he unfastened it. The flaps fell away and the narrow swell of material that covered her breasts slid downward now the oval did not hold it in place, and he very gently slid the rest over her breasts and her turgid nipples and bared them to his sight.

  "Yes, I thought you were naked beneath," he murmured, "and here you are, just a push and a pull away from having exposed yourself publicly to anyone's gaze. What a daring design, Diana. How well you wear it. But my innovation is much more provocative—and for my eyes only, Diana; that is understood? Move away from me now and let me look at you."

  She thought she would die. She thought she would kill him. Her whole body flooded with raw red shame that he had only to snap his fingers and she allowed him to bare her most intimate secrets without a fight.

  No fight in her body, her raw, treacherous, proud body. Oh no. Her body liked the idea of him looking at her. Her body liked the ravenous look in his enigmatic black eyes. Her body yearned for a man's touch. Her nipples, heated by his touch, were like two hard hot pebbles, demanding he take them and roll them in his fingers. She felt her body elongating, thrusting itself forward to display her breasts brazenly, wantonly; she watched his face as she moved around the room with candlelight and shadow molding her shape, hiding and revealing, caressing her nipples and throwing them into luscious relief against the colors in the room.

  She watched his face; not a muscle moved, only the banked fire in his eyes as she displayed herself with the insolence of a well-paid tart.

  Wasn't she?

  She watched those flat black eyes with the only emotion that

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  moved in him at that moment: the tormenting provocation of a woman flaunting her body.

  She watched his face, and she saw it at last—the unyielding fact that it was she who wielded the power by virtue of his enslavement to her nakedness.

  Her feeling of humiliation dissipated in an ecstasy of triumph. Here was the way to deal with the arrogant, worldly Lord Southam, and she was willing, very willing, and consumed by tantalizing luxurious feelings of power and the
idea that she could win after all.

  She turned her back to him, natively, instinctively, almost as if the thing that was feminine within her knew that she would en-flame him by merely concealing her nakedness from him, even for a moment.

  And she looked down at her breasts; how odd, how tight and taut and thrusting and round they were, how purely female and excitingly naked. She had never experienced anything like this before; her nakedness against the fullness and formality of her dress was ravishing, even to her. The hard peaks of her nipples fascinated her, and her opulent urge to push her breasts forward, almost like an offering to a god.

  Fanciful again. But the power she felt was real and it was connected to the temptation of her lushly rounded, hard-tipped breasts.

  "Diana . . ."

  She turned slowly, arching her back slightly to push her breasts forward still more, and she saw him lick his lips as she began to walk toward him.

  "My lord?" How far could she push him now that the power rested with her? The throbbing bulge between his legs was unmistakable, and she eyed it warily as she walked right up to him and deliberately leaned against him and rested the tips of her naked nipples against the fine cloth of his coat.

  She was like a child playing with fire; she was all smoldering heat and latent power, and she had no idea of a man's desire weighted against her fragile, seductive, all-enveloping body.

  He wanted to rip away her dress and take her, naked and unwilling, on the floor. He wanted to cup those luscious breasts in his

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  hands and imprint the weight into his palms forever. He wanted to taste the sweet succulence of her hot taut nipples and suck at them all night, all day, all year.

  He wanted ... he wanted . . . "Give me your mouth, Diana . . ." Yes, the hot honey of her mouth would salve his need; she lifted her chin and parted her lips and he took her savagely with the drive of his hunger; he invaded her mouth, and he wrapped his arms around the fullness of her buttocks and rammed himself against her, hot, hard, ready . . . ready—