Tempt the Devil

by Anna Campbell

  He tied Bey to a hitching post outside the kitchen. He heard clattering inside. The servants must be up.

  “Sir?”

  A young girl carrying a pitcher stared nervously at him. He couldn’t blame her. He imagined this secluded house had never before witnessed a wild-eyed and travel-worn earl at the door just as the sun crept above the horizon.

  At least he was no longer in his evening wear. After leaving Montjoy, he’d rushed home to change into clothing more suitable for a long ride through the night.

  Some faint spark of discretion stopped him from peremptorily demanding to see Olivia. “Is Mrs. Wentworth up yet?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Perhaps she’d do me the honor of an interview. Would you please tell her the Earl of Erith is here?”

  The girl paled and dropped into an awkward curtsy, clutching the rough white pitcher before her like a shield. “Aye, my lord. Right away, my lord. Perhaps you’d like to come inside and wait, my lord.”

  “Thank you.” Erith followed the girl into the kitchen then cooled his heels by the fire while she ran to fetch her mistress. At a worn deal table, a heavyset older woman kneaded bread for the household. She didn’t spare him a word, though she poured him a tankard of ale and passed it across without comment.

  He appreciated the gesture. He’d only picked at his hurried dinner the night before and he hadn’t stopped for refreshment since he’d discovered Olivia was missing.

  He struggled to master his impatience. The urge to rampage through this quiet household in search of his mistress was nigh overwhelming.

  He heard someone come in and looked up, expecting to see Olivia’s cousin. But instead he met the deep brown eyes of Leonidas Wentworth. Deep brown, perceptive, and bright with hostile suspicion.

  “Lord Erith,” he said flatly with a brief bow. He was dressed in a plain white shirt and buff breeches, and his long, elegant fingers were ink-stained.

  “Leo.” Erith leaped to his feet and shoved the empty tankard onto the table. “I hoped to see Mrs. Wentworth.”

  “She’s not dressed yet. She asked me to find out what you wanted. I was up studying.”

  “Ah, Oxford.”

  “Yes.” There was a pause, then the boy stood aside and gestured toward the door he’d just come through. “Step into the parlor. You won’t want to talk in the kitchen.”

  What Erith really wanted was to shake the boy until he handed over his mother. His real mother, not the woman who bore that title. Blood pounding with the frenzied need to find Olivia, Erith followed the lad through to a small but neat room that was dark and cold at that hour.

  Once inside, he whirled to face Leo. “Where is she?”

  The boy didn’t show any surprise or puzzlement. “I assume you refer to my godmother, Miss Raines?”

  “Of course I do. She’s not with Montjoy. Is she here?”

  “No.”

  Erith made a slashing gesture of dismissal. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’re welcome to search the house, my lord.” After weeks with Olivia, the irony was familiar. “It’s not as if we can stop you.”

  Erith realized he hectored the boy. It wasn’t Leo’s fault that Olivia had scarpered. He sucked in a deep breath and fought to seize hold of his rising temper. “I’m not here to bully you.”

  “Odd. That was exactly what I thought you intended, my lord.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No. She was here yesterday but hasn’t been back.” Realization dawned in Leo’s eyes. “She’s left you.”

  Erith ran a hand through his hair. It had been a long day leading into a long night, and he was exhausted and keyed up. Disappointment left a foul taste in his mouth. He knew Leo didn’t lie. Olivia hadn’t sought refuge with her cousin. He should have realized she wouldn’t. The possibility of tarring Leo’s reputation would be too great.

  “Yes.” His pride revolted at the bald admission.

  “Good.”

  Something in that stark response struck Erith as significant. He raised his head and looked searchingly at Leo. “You know, don’t you?”

  Leo moved across to lean against the mantel. With the curtains drawn and no fire, the room was too shadowy for Erith to read his expression with certainty. Nonetheless, something told him his guess was right.

  “That Miss Raines is my real mother? Of course I know.”

  “She thinks it’s a secret. When did you find out?”

  The boy shrugged. “I’ve always known. My resemblance to Lord Peregrine is marked. And why else would such a man express interest in my welfare?”

  Erith didn’t correct the boy’s misconception about his parentage. It wasn’t his secret to share, and Leo was better off believing Montjoy his sire than the vile debaucher of children who actually had fathered him. “You don’t mind?”

  “No. I love them both.” Erith sourly noted that Leo spoke of love with an ease he certainly hadn’t inherited from Olivia. “They’ve done their best for me. And my adopted parents brought me up with affection and generosity.”

  “You’re proud of her,” Erith said with dawning recognition.

  Leo straightened to his full gangly height, and Erith felt his glare through the gloom. “Of course I’m proud of her. She’s a remarkable woman, whatever the world cares to say.”

  “Yes, she is. And she loves me.”

  “So you say.”

  “She’s told me.”

  Leo took a step closer and Erith at last saw his face. He looked unhappy. And shocked. “God help her.”

  “I want to take her to Vienna.”

  “Like a souvenir of your London trip?”

  The boy truly did have an acid tongue. Even if he hadn’t known Leo’s parentage, he’d have guessed after this interview.

  “You’re an insolent whelp,” he said without heat.

  “Are you going to challenge me?”

  “No. And don’t be so quick to offer a duel. It will break your mother’s heart if anything happens to you.”

  “Damn you, I think you’re going to break her heart.”

  “Not if I can help it.” He said it as a vow. “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “I can’t. She left here yesterday, and I have no idea of her life in London aside from what little gossip filters down to this backwater.” The boy smiled with gloating satisfaction. “It looks like she’s escaped you, my lord.”

  “Never,” Erith said with complete confidence, straightening as new determination bolstered him, beating back weariness and discouragement. “I’ll find her if it takes forever.”

  “Lord Erith? What brings you here at this hour?”

  Mary Wentworth had dressed with such haste that her hair looked likely to fall about her shoulders in a mass of graying brown. She bobbed a curtsy. Hard to believe this plain little sparrow was the glorious Olivia Raines’s cousin. Or had played a mother’s role convincingly to the handsome young man who stepped to her side to protect her from the big bad earl.

  “A mistake, Mrs. Wentworth,” he said with a bow. “I’d hoped to see Miss Raines.”

  “Olivia?” She appeared at a total loss. “She lives in London.”

  “So I gather.” His quarry, he bitterly suspected after his long and fruitless journey, was still in London. Although where? The urgent need to return to the capital and continue the search without delay built inside him. “I apologize for disturbing you.”

  “But why would you think she’s here?” The woman didn’t look like she meant to let it go.

  Leo put his hand on her arm. “Mother, it’s all right. Just a misunderstanding on his lordship’s part.”

  “But to come at such a time to look for my cousin…” Mrs. Wentworth frowned. “My husband is away from home or else I don’t know what he’d think.”

  Erith could already imagine the difficulties his wife’s relationship with London’s most notorious courtesan had caused the vicar. Although in his opinion, the man’s generosity in raisi
ng Leo as his own was the finest example of Christian charity he’d ever encountered.

  “I can only beg your forgiveness again and take my leave, madam.” He bowed once more and turned. His mind worked furiously on where Olivia could be. Montjoy was right. She’d gone to ground, Devil take it.

  “I’ll show you out.” It was Leo.

  “Thank you.”

  In unexpectedly companionable silence, they walked out to where Bey drank deeply from a bucket of water someone had given him.

  “He’s a magnificent beast,” Leo said, moving forward and stroking Bey’s powerful neck, not as glossy as usual after the dust of the road. His face was full of naked longing.

  “You can have him if you tell me where your mother is.” He’d gladly hand over his entire stable if it meant finding Olivia.

  Leo snatched his hand away. “I haven’t lied to you, Lord Erith. I don’t know where she is. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  The boy was extraordinarily brave. Few men would dare to speak to him so frankly. Leo was smart enough to recognize the earl was a powerful man, yet he defied Erith for his mother’s sake. Erith’s admiration for Olivia’s son grew. She was right to be so proud of him.

  “I mean her no harm.” Erith gathered Bey’s reins in one hand and lifted himself into the saddle

  Leo looked up at him with a grave expression that for once held no wariness or animosity. “Are you going to tell her I know she’s my mother?”

  Erith shook his head, automatically quieting Bey, who started to dance now he had a rider in the saddle. “It’s not for me to do that.”

  “But you think I should.”

  “She suffers from hiding the truth, and she does it for your sake.” Erith leaned forward to pat the restive horse’s neck. “Good day, Mr. Wentworth.”

  With a clatter of hooves, he wheeled Bey around and galloped out of the yard. He headed back to London, but where he looked for Olivia next, he had no bloody idea.

  Chapter 27

  Erith slammed the brass lion-headed knocker down on the immaculate black door of the huge mansion in Grosvenor Square. It was late. Too late for unannounced calls on people he barely knew.

  He ached with weariness and his heart was heavy with a bitter premonition of defeat. Inevitably the vile, helpless feeling in his gut reminded him of those gray, lost days after Joanna’s death.

  He’d loved two women in his life. Was fate cruel enough to steal both of them away?

  No, he damn well wouldn’t accept that.

  He’d had a hellish day, chasing Olivia across London. After all his frantic searching, he was no closer to finding her than he’d been at the start.

  For a woman of such spectacular beauty and widespread notoriety, his mistress disappeared with impressive effectiveness. Nobody had seen her. Nobody had any idea where she was or even where she might have gone.

  Everybody now knew she’d deserted the Earl of Erith and that he was frantic to get her back.

  He had seen the pity in men’s eyes when they learned that the notorious courtesan had abandoned yet another lover. Most of them assured him he had no chance now that she’d moved on. Once Olivia Raines said good-bye, she never looked back. It was part of her mystique.

  Erith had treated such ill-founded opinions with the scorn they deserved. Or he had. Until the uniformity of response started to chip away even his powerful self-confidence.

  Olivia had built a legendary and longstanding reputation out of deceiving her keepers. Her lack of sexual response was real, he knew, but her pretense at pleasure had fooled many men before him. As the day spiraled into an ordeal of sheer obstinacy and endurance, the disturbing possibility loomed that he’d been equally fooled.

  He loved her. She said she loved him.

  Devil take her, had she lied?

  As he asked without success at shops, at her friends’ houses, at any event he could barge his way into, it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain his optimism. He’d even sent his servants to check hotels and inns. Fruitlessly.

  She’d vanished as completely as a drift of smoke on a windy day.

  If Olivia set out to make him suffer for his arrogance and vanity, she succeeded mightily. His legendary pride shriveled to nothing.

  It was the middle of the night now. The dark hour when hope seemed out of reach. He’d run through every one of his sources and hadn’t found her. He had no blasted clue where to turn next.

  Except here.

  With furious demand, he banged the knocker again and heard the imperious sound echo inside.

  The door cracked open to a butler who had clearly dressed in a hurry. The man’s mouth gaped with shock to find a peer of the realm on the spotless front steps so late. “My lord?”

  After a day devoted to frantic searching, Erith’s clothes were rumpled and soiled and he badly needed a shave. If he’d thought about it, he would have stopped to tidy himself before he landed here. But he’d been so bloody desperate, even a moment’s delay had been torture.

  “Tell his grace the Earl of Erith wishes to see him.” He shouldered his way past the man, uncaring that he acted like a boor. After a moment’s resistance, the butler staggered back and allowed him into the shadowy hallway.

  “Who is it, Gaveston?”

  Erith glanced up to where a woman holding a candle stood on the curved staircase. Even in the half dark, even in his overwrought state, even with her heavily pregnant, she stole his breath. Her beauty was so perfect, it was almost unearthly.

  He struggled to regain some trace of address. Almost impossible when his life disintegrated to ruins around him.

  “Your grace, I beg your indulgence for calling without warning.”

  Verity Kinmurrie, Duchess of Kylemore, once the famous courtesan Soraya, must have been preparing for bed. She was wrapped in a dark blue Chinese silk robe that did nothing to conceal her protruding belly. Her thick black hair was confined in a plait that curled across one shoulder.

  He’d only seen her once, years ago in Paris, when she was mistress to an elderly English baronet. He’d never forgotten her. No man ever did. The only woman who compared was the one he desperately hoped sought refuge in this house.

  “Who the hell is calling at this hour?” In his shirtsleeves and with his dark hair disheveled, the Duke of Kylemore stalked from the back of the house. Ink stains on his fingers indicated he’d been working.

  The marriage of these two a year ago had ignited a scandal that reached as far as Vienna. Hell, as far as Moscow, he’d guess. The Kylemores’ recent arrival in London for the duchess’s lying in fueled gossip that had hardly died down since their wedding.

  Most men in the ton were sick with envy that Kylemore had the gorgeous Soraya as a bedmate. Although none would face the world’s condemnation to marry their mistress and turn illicit passion into official matrimony.

  “I have no right to break in on you like this, your grace,” Erith said. Behind him, the butler closed the door and stood waiting for instructions.

  Kylemore loomed closer. “It’s Lord Erith, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Erith turned to the duchess, who had descended to the black and white tiles of the hall. Up close she was even more exquisite, with perfect white skin and rain-clear gray eyes. “Your grace, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Julian Southwood, the Earl of Erith.”

  “My lord.” Her voice was low and husky and she spoke with the clipped tones of the upper classes. Just as Olivia did.

  “Verity, there’s no reason for you to be up. I’ll see his lordship in the library.” Kylemore moved to his wife’s side, and Erith recognized the love that underlay his impatience.

  Then he recognized something else more significant.

  Neither was surprised to see him. Although they had never spoken to him before. Although it was well past midnight. Although he arrived unannounced and uninvited on their doorstep and forced his way into their house without permission.

  Blind certainty s
urged up. Every instinct went on animal alert. Olivia was near. He could almost smell her.

  “She’s here, isn’t she?” he said flatly.

  Her grace shot her husband a frantic glance that was a betrayal in itself, then looked at Erith. “I don’t—”

  “You know who I’m talking about,” Erith said, not caring if his tone was unsuitable for addressing a duke and his duchess. “I just want to talk to her.”

  “Verity, go upstairs to bed. The doctors say you need rest. My lord, the library, if you please.”

  Kylemore directed a cold look down his haughty nose. Unfortunately for him, Erith was at least an inch taller and in no mood to bow to ducal authority.

  “If I have to, I’ll tear this house apart to find her,” Erith said grimly.

  “Come back when you’ve learned some manners, man.” With a threatening movement, Kylemore stepped toward Erith.

  “Stop it, both of you.”

  Erith’s head jerked up and he focused on the woman who hovered in the shadows at the top of the staircase. The other two people with him became as nothing.

  “Olivia?” All his love and longing and anger invested the single word, turning it into a symphony of anguished yearning.

  “Yes.”

  The terse answer told him nothing, and he couldn’t see her face in the gloom. But as she slowly made her way downstairs, her reluctance was visible.

  She was dressed in a soft blue gown he hadn’t seen before. Her hair hung in a tawny curtain around her shoulders. As she came into the light, she looked pale and young and vulnerable. Although her jaw was set in a familiar stubborn line.

  Erith’s hands curled at his sides as he fought the impulse to grab her and take her back where she belonged. This was all wrong. She shouldn’t be here. She should be safe in his arms. She was his, damn it.

  Vaguely, Erith was aware of Kylemore speaking to the butler. “That will be all, Gaveston.”

  As the man melted away into the darkness, Erith moved in a daze across to the base of the stairs. Olivia was still a couple of steps above him but close enough for him to see tearstains marking her cheeks. She looked wan and unhappy. His gut clenched with regret and guilt.