by Gaelen Foley
“Yes, Mildred?” Aunt Augusta asked.
Dev gave the housekeeper a weary smile and nod in greeting.
“My lord,” Mrs. Rowland said fondly, sketching a heavy-limbed curtsy, then glanced at her employer again. “His Lordship’s staff has just arrived, and I’ve a question about their accommodations—as well as this evening’s supper,” she added meaningfully.
“Ah, I’m on my way!” The two old women exchanged a conspiratorial look and would no doubt soon be plotting to make his favorite dessert for him—it pleased them to treat him as if he were still nine years old—but that suited Dev quite well.
A moment of privacy with Miss Carlisle was all that he required. He would soon get to the bottom of this.
The girl seemed eager to flee. “Let me get your chair for you, ma’am.” She started to follow, but Aunt Augusta shooed her off.
“No need, dear. Children, I shall return in a trice.” Gripping the wheels, the dowager rolled her chair easily out of the parlor.
Immediately, Miss Carlisle mumbled some excuse, but Dev grabbed her arm as she tried to dart past him. “A moment of your time, mademoiselle!” He swung the door partly shut and met his captive’s look of alarm with a glower. “Whoever you are, you had better start talking. What in the hell is going on around here?”
She looked down slowly at his leather-gloved fingers wrapped around her elbow, then flicked a defiant glance back up to his face. “You are no longer among the heathens, Lord Strathmore. Pray, do not act like one.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
“I am not inclined to say anything until you unhand me. Do please try to calm down.”
“Calm down? I wrecked my carriage and nearly broke my neck—for what? My aunt is fine! There’s nothing wrong with her!”
“And is that not cause for rejoicing?”
“That is not the point.”
“No, my lord, that is precisely the point. Her Ladyship has more money than time. I care not what you do with the former, but pray, use the latter well.”
“How dare you take the high moral ground with me after sending me such a pack of lies?”
“I did not lie, sir. Not if you read my note closely—”
“Oh, but I did, my dear! Many times—before it dissolved to a pulp in my pocket, thanks to the snowstorm! ‘Come at once,’ you said. ‘If you love her, come at once.’ Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” He threw his hands up at his sides, presenting himself with an insolent glare. “Now, if it would not be too much trouble, perhaps you would not mind telling me why!”
Lizzie struggled to maintain her famous patience, perfectly willing to hold a civilized conversation with the man, but if he was going to behave like a domineering barbarian, it hardly encouraged her to cooperate. His grip around her elbow had not hurt, but it had offended her; freed now from his grasp, she rubbed her arm while shooting him a look of reproach. Deeming prudence the better part of valor, however, she took a step backwards just to be safe—then drew in her breath when he advanced.
She took another step back, sending him a vexed look of alarm.
“Tell me, my clever Miss Carlisle,” he asked in a rather sinister purr as he pressed his advantage, stalking her aggressively through the room. “Are you in the habit of deceiving my aunt as you did me?”
“Obviously, you have not heard a word I’ve said. I see there is no point in trying to reason with you in your present state.” She cleared her throat, determined to bring the situation under control, backing away as he advanced step by slow, tantalizing step. “Wh-why don’t you go upstairs, change out of your wet clothes, and have something to eat? Then perhaps you will be in a more receptive humor—”
“Don’t…manage me, little miss,” he taunted, just as she found her retreat blocked by the sofa behind her.
She blanched, bending back as he leaned closer, trapping her against the couch. Her heart pounded wildly.
All dressed in black and wickedly handsome, he loomed a foot taller than her, his shoulders so broad, she could no longer see the door behind him. She gasped and froze when he reached out and captured her chin between his black-gauntleted fingers, raising her face to inspect her.
She stared up at him, wide-eyed. A cynical smile full of menace and mockery curled one side of his lips as he studied her at close range, his pale eyes gleaming with dangerous intelligence.
Lizzie felt absurdly faint, a trifle dizzy. He smelled of winter and leather, wet horse and warm, ruthless male. For a moment, she could only watch, transfixed, as an ice crystal melted off of his long, jet lashes with the throbbing heat of his body. Her mesmerized gaze tracked the droplet’s trickling course down the scratched side of his sculpted face to the corner of his hard, beautiful mouth. When he licked it away, she caught her breath abruptly, then looked away, jerking her face out of his light hold.
His velvety laughter at her electric reaction to him snapped her back to her senses. “Well, now that I’ve met you, I wish I had not written to you!” she muttered, looking away with a fierce blush. “If I had known you’d take such amusement in chasing me around the parlor, I wouldn’t have bothered, believe me!”
“Ah, but you did, chérie—you summoned me, and here I am. The question is, what are you going to do with me now?”
“You are indecent!” She slipped around the couch, putting the furniture between them. “I summoned you here for the sake of your aunt. Stop it!” she cried when he began to move around the couch, sauntering toward her again.
Miraculously, he obeyed.
Letting out a weary sigh, Lord Strathmore lowered his chin and clasped his hands behind his back, knitting his raven eyebrows together as he studied the floor. For a long moment, he was silent. “Your letter, Miss Carlisle, quite scared the hell out of me. No small feat. I confess, at the moment, I do not know what to believe. Is my aunt ill or no? Tell me—and by God, speak the truth.”
Somewhat reassured that the decadent nobleman was done playing with her for the moment, she shook her head earnestly. “All that ails Her Ladyship is loneliness, my lord. Is that so hard to understand? I do my best to entertain her, but I am not her flesh and blood. You are all she talks about. She misses you desperately—not that she’d ever complain. I’m sure you must realize this, and yet you ignore her.”
“I don’t ignore her!” A shadow of some dark emotion tautened his chiseled features. Perhaps it was guilt. “She is always in my thoughts.”
“I’m afraid that is not good enough,” she told him softly. “Good intentions cannot replace your spending time with her. If you could see how she sits here—at this table—playing solitaire for hours on end, day after day after day, with nothing to break the monotony but her weekly visits from the doctor—I can’t bear it!”
Her pained words hung on the silence as Devil Strathmore studied her in keen perception. “If my aunt is unhappy, you could have simply said that in your letter. You had no cause to lie to me.”
“I did not lie! Merely—exaggerated slightly—and if I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have paid any heed!”
“What makes you so sure?” he challenged her. “You never even gave me a chance.”
“What chance?” she cried, but flushed at the grain of truth in his accusation.
“Men like you don’t concern themselves with the health of their aged relatives.”
“Oh-ho, men like me? And what, pray tell, do you know about me?”
“More than you realize,” she bit out, her voice turning tight and prim.
“Like what?”
“I know of—of your travels. A-and your preference in tailors. And the fact that you have no head for three-card loo! Really, you must be the worst gambler on the planet!”
“And how, exactly, do you know that?” he asked with the most ominous arching of his eyebrow.
She stared at him in stubborn silence, cursing herself for saying too much.
“Miss Carlisle?” he prodded, folding his arms slowly
across his chest. “I’m waiting. Or shall I inform my aunt of your deception? A word from me, and she’ll throw you out on your sweet derriere, ma chérie.”
She bristled at his deliberately lewd threat. “Very well. You want an explanation, my lord? You shall have one!” Rattled now and dangerously angry, she pivoted with her chin high and marched out of his looming shadow to Her Ladyship’s desk. She glanced at the door to make sure they were still alone, reached into the desk with trembling hands, and returned with a stack of his bills. “Your aunt is the one who should be demanding an explanation, but since she will not, I will do it for her.”
He regarded her in suspicion as she strode back to him with a pile of his shameless bills in her hand.
“Explain these, if you can! Two hundred guineas for a diamond cravat pin?” She flicked the jeweler’s bill at him as if she were pitching cards. “Or this? A thousand guineas to Hoby’s for ten pairs of boots. Ten!” The cobbler’s bill bounced off his lean stomach and glided across the smooth surface of the nearby worktable. “Or Tattersall’s—fifteen hundred quid for a matched pair of Cleveland bays—never mind the dozen horses already languishing in your stable. Oh, but here is my favorite!” she exclaimed then quoted aloud from his scrawled note. “ ‘IOU—Strathmore agrees to pay Damage Randall twenty-five hundred quid for losses at three-card loo.’ Explain that, if you dare!”
“You read my aunt’s mail?” he asked, staggered.
“A small transgression compared with yours! For shame, sir! You spend her money like there’s no tomorrow, but you can’t even be bothered to write her a letter now and then, let alone visit of your own free will! The measures I took were extreme, I admit, but a grown man should not need to be given such a jolt to remind him of his duty!”
He stared at her, looking flabbergasted. For a second, he opened his mouth as if to speak, then apparently thought better of it and snapped his jaw shut. “I am leaving,” he clipped out, “because I am a gentleman.”
“Ha!” she replied as Devil Strathmore pivoted and stalked out, his greatcoat swirling around him.
The door slammed, startling her. Lizzie blinked, suddenly realizing she had won their argument. Then she grinned. She twirled around on her heel, but the second she faced forward again, her heart racing, the first thing her gaze fixed upon was the trail of large, muddy footprints that Lord Strathmore had tracked across the floor.
Her smile of victory promptly went flat.
The big dark footprints seemed to mock her—the very symbol of the male race that went treading so carelessly over female hearts, not caring what kind of mess they left in their wake. But even more keenly, they vexed her because they brought into focus her own greatest flaw—her automatic impulse to bend down and start cleaning them up. She refused—aye, utterly, from the very depths of her soul.
Never again would she serve as doormat for any beautiful, highborn man. Those days were over.
Eyeing the doorway through which her mighty opponent had made his exit, she suddenly heard the dowager’s voice in the hallway. Rushing to gather up the bills she had flung at him, she quickly put them back in the drawer and sped away from the region of the desk mere seconds before Lady Strathmore rolled back into the parlor wearing a breezy smile.
“Devlin’s gone to clean himself up for supper, dear. I just saw him in the hall. Tut, tut, the poor thing. We’ll dine at half past five. I’ve arranged with Mrs. Rowland to make a floating island for dessert!” she added in a girlish whisper. “It’s his favorite. Isn’t he as handsome as I said?”
Lizzie’s eyes shot sparks, but she conceded the obvious in a mutter. “That he is, ma’am.”
“Is everything all right, dear? I thought I heard arguing coming from this room a moment ago.”
The question startled her, as did the shrewd look in the dowager’s blue eyes. Goodness, she had forgotten that Her Ladyship still had excellent hearing.
“No, ma’am. Everything is fine.” She forced a smile, but Lady Strathmore wasn’t fooled. She let out a knowing chuckle and clucked her tongue.
“Dear Lizzie, did Devil tease you about your gown?”
“A little,” she agreed. It was as good an excuse as any.
“Well, we shan’t give him cause to do so again, shall we?” Lady Strathmore’s managing smile broadened. “You have lots of pretty things from when you lived in London—you just never wear them. Tonight I expect you to dress for dinner, do you understand? And no house cap. That is an order.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She kept her chafing gaze down, but maybe her employer was right.
In her former, lifelong post as companion to the sparkling young Lady Jacinda Knight, Lizzie had attended enough Society ballrooms to know how to play the game; she had always simply chosen not to play it. But since she was even more certain of losing her job now that she had trounced Darling Dev—the male ego, after all, could not withstand such defeat without retaliation—why not go down in a blaze of glory?
Meanwhile, Lady Strathmore glanced sardonically at the big, dark footprints. “Dear me—ring for Margaret, Lizzie. I see my nephew has tracked mud through the house.” She looked up brightly. “Ah, well, boys will be boys. Mud or no, it’s still so nice to have a man around the house, don’t you think?”
Lizzie just looked at her.
“My own fault?” Dev bellowed as he dressed for dinner a while later in his usual quarters, a handsome bedchamber done in maroon, dark blue, and gilt. “What’s the matter with you, Ben? I can’t believe you’re taking her side! My curricle’s in splinters, I nearly cracked my head open, and it was all just a—a dirty trick!”
“Well, you really shouldn’t have had four horses hitched to a vehicle meant only for two,” Ben chided.
“Especially with snow and ice on the roads. It was rather reckless.”
“Speed!” Dev said in exasperation as he wrenched on a pair of black trousers and angrily buttoned the falls. Elizabeth Carlisle might be in the right, but he sure as hell didn’t have to like it. Nor did he like recalling his hasty retreat from the parlor and the chagrin of knowing that a mere slip of a girl had kicked his arse. It was even worse than recalling the debacle of the accident.
At some point in the middle of the night, he had taken a curve too fast and hit a patch of ice. His light curricle had rolled. If he had not jumped clear of the crash at that precise moment, he probably would have been killed. After ascertaining that he was still alive with no broken bones, only a few cuts and scrapes from an ill-tempered bramble bush, he had had to work alone in the blackness of a winter night, pushing his battered curricle back up onto its broken wheels. Then he’d had to recapture the horses, who had fled in terror, dragging the broken whiffletree behind them. He had walked the team to the nearest livery stable, where he had been forced to answer a great many questions about the mishap and to pay a large sum for the supposed damage to the horses.
After dispatching a few hirelings to see to his broken-down curricle, he’d had to buy a mount to ride the rest of the way to his aunt’s house because the livery owner refused to rent him another horse—he was obviously too “careless” to be trusted.
Just another flaw to add to the roster of his faults that Lizzie Carlisle had so kindly endeavored to list for him.
“Smug, self-righteous little conniver—”
“If you’re so angry at the girl, why didn’t you speak out when you had the chance to inform your aunt of her deceit?” Ben asked, collecting the shaving accouterments from the side of the nickel-plated bathing-tub which Dev had just left and placed them back in the square, leather necessaire. He took Dev’s cologne out of the traveling box and handed it to him. “Could it be because, deep down, you know the girl is right?”
“Aunt Augusta has never complained of my treatment of her,” Dev huffed, but his cheeks flushed, for in truth, his anger at himself for neglecting his aunt equaled if not exceeded his indignation at having been so ill-used. He pulled the stopper out of the small, silver-braced bottle and
slapped on some of the cleanly pungent clove-and-rosemary water.
“True, Her Ladyship has always let you slide by on minimal effort,” Ben said mildly. “Apparently, Miss Carlisle is not so prepared to indulge you.”
“Judas,” Dev muttered, scowling as he gave the bottle back to his valet.
With a look of amusement, Ben put it away, closing the traveling box and flipping the brass latches once more. Then he took out a neatly pressed square of white muslin and began the intricate process of folding it for Dev’s cravat.
“Obaldeston,” Dev ordered. The knot style was his aunt’s favorite.
He bent slightly as Ben slipped the prepared cloth around his neck. Dev studied the white plaster ceiling as his valet worked his careful magic, then shook his head to himself, plagued by the memory of lucid gray eyes and soft charcoal lashes. What a maddening creature she was!
Most women blushed and fluttered and flipped their hair around him, but this one took dead aim at him with her frank, cool gaze and hit him right between the eyes with a wallop of honesty that he was in no mood to hear. Who did she think she was to judge him, to manipulate him, to heap him in guilt—even if he deserved it?
He quite believed he was still in shock. Nobody treated Devil Strathmore that way. “Where did she come from, that she must now plague me?” he wondered aloud as Ben finished tying the cravat and handed him his light-blue silk waistcoat. He slipped it on. “What the hell does she want?”
“Merely to teach you a lesson, I think.”
“A lesson, eh?” He sauntered away, buttoning his waistcoat and cuff links in front of the mirror. “Perhaps it’s time I taught her a thing or two.”
“What do you mean?” Ben asked uneasily, holding up Dev’s black tailcoat for him.
“Nobody makes a fool out of me. And I’ll tell you another thing.” He slipped his arm into the impeccably cut garment. “This little schemer has just thrown down the gauntlet to a foe she should have known better than to challenge.” Pulling on the formal evening jacket, Dev inspected himself in the mirror.
“You intend to have her dismissed?” Ben eyed him warily.