by Sara Bennett
“Rest or you may never walk again,” the doctor had told him with chilling bluntness.
“I’m sure you can get me on my feet again,” Nic retorted, gritting his teeth as the physician poked and prodded at him. “You’ve done it before.”
“I can only do so much, my lord. Your leg never set properly after you broke it the first time. I warned you then that if you didn’t go to London for the best possible treatment you’d always have trouble with it, but you chose to ignore my advice.”
“Yes, yes, so you’ve reminded me innumerable times before.”
“And you never take the slightest bit of notice. Well, this time, my lord, you will listen to me or I will wash my hands of you.”
Nic ground his teeth. Even he knew the doctor was right, but he hated to admit it. “I will take your advice and rest,” he bit out. “Now leave me alone, devil take you!”
“Very wise, my lord.” Unperturbed, the doctor gave him one more stern look, clicked his bag shut, and left.
After several dreary days confined to the house, Nic was finally allowed to begin to exercise. Just a few minutes at first, until now he could walk about the garden, with the help of his cane, and without having Abbot hovering over him like a demented nursemaid. It still hurt, of course. Sometimes the pain left him faint and his breathing ragged, but he refused to let it beat him. And he refused to contemplate turning down his invitation to this year’s demimonde ball, as Abbot was hinting he should.
They’d had another to-do earlier, before Abbot put him out there in the garden and left him to his own devices. Abbot seemed to be prone to the sulks these days, but Nic wasn’t going to let it spoil his day. He’d go to the ball and find some smiling beauty to take to Paris with him, and they would have a splendid romp.
Until it was time to come home again.
Nic’s mood turned even gloomier, and he sat contemplating his leg, and remembering the day he had broken his thigh bone. The pain had been excruciating. He remembered the doctor telling him to get specialist help in London, but at the time it’d been impossible to leave the castle. Even though he was damaged and in agony, there was no one else to take charge with his father dead and his mother half mad with grief. He shivered, as if a cloud had slid over the sun.
Those days were some of the worst ones of his life, and being here at the castle was a constant reminder. Another reason to get away as soon as possible.
The sound of voices drew his attention and he looked up. Abbot and two women were standing at the end of the long walk. As he watched, Abbot and one woman walked away, and after a moment’s hesitation, the second woman began to come toward him.
Nic shaded his eyes.
She wore a white dress that seemed to float about her slippered feet, and her parasol cast shadows but could not dim the glow of her golden hair. Or her beauty. She was a woman in a million, a rare jewel. She took his breath away, scattered his wits, and left him in a state of permanent arousal, and that was the problem.
Olivia Monteith was the very last person he wanted to see right now, when he was at his lowest ebb. He felt as if he’d already said good-bye and relegated her to the past, and that was where he expected her to stay. That was what he’d done last time he felt threatened by her, when they used to meet by the stepping stones—the day he’d looked at the child and seen the budding woman.
Now here she was, and the fact that the sight of her made his chest tighten and his pulse give a little jump angered him.
“Lord Lacey.” She’d stopped before him, and he noted the cautious expression in her eyes as she looked down at him, as if she suddenly sensed danger.
Good! Let her beware. Let her turn around and run home as fast as her legs could carry her. But Olivia being Olivia, she didn’t run away. She stood firm and said what she’d come to say.
“I’m so sorry to see you hurt,” she said. “Is there any—any lasting damage to your—your—”
“My leg?” he demanded, furious and not bothering to hide it. “Am I even more of a cripple than I was before? Don’t try and wrap it up nicely, Olivia, ask away. There’s nothing I love more than to discuss my physical infirmities.”
She glanced to one side—a gesture he’d noticed before when she was embarrassed or anxious. “Don’t be cross, Nic. I was worried. I couldn’t come before, but I’m here now.”
“I’m surprised the faithful Theodore isn’t here with you, just to make certain I don’t contaminate you.”
Her eyes widened, but before she could accuse him of being jealous, he gave her thoughts another direction.
“Or ravish you.”
“Estelle is with me.” She looked over her shoulder at the empty walk, gave a shrug. “Somewhere. I think she went off with Abbot.”
“Somewhere?” With a groan he covered his face with his hands. “You need her here, by your side, Olivia. You’re not a fool. Do you want your reputation to be ruined?”
“Nic…you’re in pain,” she said, “but I know you’d never hurt me. I trust you.”
There was no way to reply to a statement as ludicrous as that.
“How did you break your leg?” she went on, when it seemed he wasn’t going to try.
He nodded beyond her, toward the end of the long walk where the ruins of the old bailey wall still stood. “I was climbing and I fell.”
“You were climbing?” She stared wide-eyed.
“My father was an enthusiast and he taught me from a young age. He climbed in Wales and Derbyshire. I was never as good as he, but I could scale that wall well enough. The last time…well, I was upset and probably a little drunk. I took a misstep and fell. They wanted to send me to London but I refused. My father had just died and my mother needed me.”
“You pretend to be wicked, Nic, but at heart you are a good man.”
“Olivia, I’m not your knight in shining armor,” he growled, sinking lower in his chair.
“Certainly not,” she replied with a shudder. “And I’m not one of those pitiable damsels in distress.”
Something in her words and her manner caught his attention, lifting him from his gloomy self-pity. “So how do you see yourself?”
“A free, independent spirit.”
He showed his teeth. “I hate to burst your bubble, but there’s nothing independent about a woman of your class and situation. Eventually you will see that and settle down and do as you’re told.”
“Never!”
She sounded fierce and determined, and he wondered if she could manage to escape the bindings and chains her family and society had already fashioned to snare her. Not maliciously, perhaps, but nevertheless their rules and unspoken laws were meant to stop her from being exactly what she wanted to be: free.
Now that he understood her situation a little better, Nic wondered if that was why she had fixed her sights on him, as an antidote to Theodore. Well, if that was so, then he would have to do his best to disabuse her of her foolish belief.
“I turned my back on you before,” he said bluntly. “Would a man with a good heart do that?”
Olivia was making herself a comfortable seat on the grass beside his chair, her skirts drifting about her, her parasol rolling to one side on its fringed rim. She looked up, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“I mean those trysts you remember so fondly. Did you never wonder why I stopped coming?”
A cloud came into her eyes. “I wondered why. I visited the castle once, perhaps twice, but you were away. You were away a great deal. I suppose it occurred to me that my parents had discovered our meetings and warned you off. I resolved to wait until I was older and could do as I pleased. I told myself that if I still felt the same about you when I reached my majority, and you were still free, then I would make my feelings known to you.”
He gazed into her passionate upturned face for a long moment. There was such a look in her eyes. And he understood. He understood only too well. But understanding did not mean it was in his power, or his wish, to help her.
/> “Well now you know,” he said cruelly. “You bored me and I dropped you.” He moved to stand up and then gasped as the now-familiar agony enveloped his leg. For a moment black spots danced before his eyes, and it was all he could do to stop from crying out.
“Poor Nic.” Her soft voice came through the pain. As his head cleared, he found she was kneeling beside his chair, her arms about him, holding him, with his face pillowed against her breast.
“If this is a dream then it’s a good one,” he murmured, and sighed, beginning to enjoy himself despite his discomfort.
Olivia either didn’t hear him or believed his words were induced by his suffering. “Is there nothing they can do for your leg?” she said. “Surely, in this modern age of medicine and science, there is something.”
“It has been suggested I have it rebroken,” he replied, his voice muffled by her sweet, lush flesh. “However, I don’t fancy it.”
She shuddered and held him closer. “I wouldn’t fancy it, either, but if it was the only way to make things better…”
He could feel the beating of her heart. He wondered what she’d do if he unfastened her dress and unlaced her stays and began to fondle her in the way he wanted to. If he laid her down on the soft grass and lifted her skirts and used his tongue and fingers on her until she came. And then, when she was hot and wet and ready, he’d begin the long, slow dance of pleasure.
“Olivia,” he groaned.
“Poor Nic, is it so bad?” She was stroking his hair now. In another moment she’d be kissing his brow and he’d have her on his lap, with her legs in the air.
“Olivia, I may appear to be a helpless invalid but I am a virile man. If you don’t move away from me I will prove it to you.”
He sounded dangerous, and, startled, she leaned back. He could see she was flushed, tendrils of her hair loose about her face, and her blue eyes were brighter than ever.
Nic did the only thing he could do. He showed her just how much danger she was in.
“Give me your hand.”
It said much for her innocence that she immediately held out her hand. He took her fingers in his, and before she could struggle or protest, brought them down to the hard rod between his thighs and pressed them there.
“This is what you do to me,” he rasped.
Olivia stared into his eyes, her own perfectly round.
“Now run away, little girl, before you really are lost forever,” he added, for good measure.
She moved as if to do exactly that, but once more he’d underestimated her. Instead of snatching her hand away and running, she leaned against his shoulder and looked to where her hand lay beneath his. Her gaze slid to his again, before her long, dark lashes fluttered down, and slowly, tentatively, she began to explore the bulge in his trousers.
Her fingers stroked his shaft, closed around it, and he heard her breath quicken, as if she found him exciting and fascinating. His own chest was rising and falling heavily, his limbs like lead, all sensation focused on that cursed organ between his legs as she continued to fondle and pet it.
Had he really expected her to scream and flee in terror? Or faint in outrage? He was a fool; this was Olivia he was dealing with, the woman who’d jumped into the stream so that he could save her.
“Nic.” Her breath tickled his chin and her hair tickled his face. “I feel…I feel…”
Nic knew that if he turned his head he could find her mouth, and if he wanted, he could un-button his trousers and show her how to pleasure him like the most practiced whore. And suddenly he was sickened by himself.
“Enough,” he groaned, and pushed her away.
She fell back onto the grass, giving a little cry of hurt and surprise, and he had a glimpse of her stockings and petticoats before she pushed her skirts down again, and clambered to her feet.
“Go,” he said, turning his face away and refusing to look at her. “No more visits, no more games. This nonsense is over.”
“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” she cried. “Tell me what I did wrong. At least look at me!”
Nic forced himself to turn. She was flushed and upset, her eyes still bright with desire, or was it anger? He knew he’d been insane to let her imagine, even for a moment, that there might be something between them. He was insane to think he could frighten her away.
“Listen well, Miss Monteith.” He sounded implacable. “I will be leaving here in two weeks for the demimonde ball, where I’ll find some pretty dancer, and after that I’ll take her with me to Paris for plenty of sordid dissipation. That is my world, and it’s not for you.”
“Nic, how do you—”
But he wasn’t going to listen to her. “This is the last time you visit me. If you come again I will have Abbot throw you out.”
She glanced away, and seeing her parasol lying on the ground, bent to pick it up. Her hands twisted the stem.
“Good-bye, Lord Lacey,” she said at last, and if there was a faint tremble in her voice it was hardly noticeable. He watched as she turned and walked away, her back straight, and reached down to massage his aching leg.
You really are a bastard, Nic Lacey, he told himself. Couldn’t you have been nice to her? But it wasn’t possible to be nice to Olivia Monteith. She would consume him, he knew it, he’d known it the last time. She would destroy them both. In the long run it would cause far less pain and damage if he was mean to her. She didn’t realize it now but one day she would. She would see that she had had an extremely lucky escape from Wicked Nic Lacey.
Chapter 8
“I won’t cry, I will not cry,” Olivia murmured to herself as she walked through the garden, blind to the beauties of perennial borders with their swaying foxgloves, and pleached arches of pear trees, and climbing roses of extravagant blooms. He’d made her feel as if this was her fault, and she knew he’d planned it that way. But he couldn’t destroy the feelings she’d had when she’d touched him and seen the desire in his face and his eyes. Desire for her, whatever he tried to tell her.
She’d been so certain she could win him over, and she wondered now if it had been that very certainty that was her downfall. Had she gone about it all wrong? She had tried to persuade Nic to her point of view by being herself—respectable, innocent, wide-eyed. But he’d seen her as someone to be protected from his reputation, an untouchable creature, totally off limits. English society was very strict in its boundaries; it worshipped the purity of respectable womanhood. Nic might be a rake, but she did not think he would ever set out consciously to ruin an innocent young lady, no matter what he claimed to the contrary.
So, instead of seducing her, he’d been nobly protecting her.
Olivia needed to adjust her strategy. Husband hunting involved taking risks, and so far she had taken very few, and none of them particularly dangerous, no matter what Nic said. She’d always known he wouldn’t harm her, so where was the risk? If she wanted him then she must be prepared to throw caution to the winds.
Excitement gripped her. Yes, what she needed to do was shrug off the trappings of Miss Olivia Monteith and plunge into Nic’s world. She must mingle with the shadowy, disreputable women of the demimonde. She must show him that she wasn’t a statue on a pedestal, but a living, breathing woman, and that she was not untouchable where he was concerned. In fact she was very touchable indeed.
He wanted her. Now all she had to do was show him that it was all right to want her, to take her, and to love her. She was perfectly willing to go to Paris with him and be dissipated, in fact she would insist upon it. They could be happy together.
If only Nic would allow himself to be happy.
Her steps slowed and she stopped, staring blindly at a statue of Pan set in the midst of a lily pond. She still burned with the sensations he’d created, excitement and need and daring. Whenever she was with him she felt that, but more, she felt alive, so that the rest of her life became dull and flavorless by comparison. Not being with him was something she could not contemplate; not being with him made her
feel desperate.
“I will have him,” she breathed. “I love him!”
“I beg your pardon?”
The imperious voice came from right behind her. Olivia turned and found a woman in a black silk mourning dress, wearing a black bonnet with a black dyed ostrich feather on her head. Her face had once been beautiful, but time and grief had aged it, pulling her mouth down at the corners, and turning her youthful skin to the consistency of crepe. But her eyes, Olivia saw with a jolt of shock, were Nic’s eyes—dark and intense and passionate.
“Lady Lacey,” she said, recovering herself. “I’m sorry if I intruded upon your solitude. I didn’t realize—”
“Who are you? I did not know I had a visitor, and you certainly are not one of the gardeners.” Was there a twinkle of a smile in her dark eyes? It gave Olivia courage.
“I have been to call on your son, my lady.”
In an instant Lady Lacey’s expression had hardened, the smile quite gone. Her voice into even haughtier heights. “I do not believe it proper for a young lady to visit my son without a chaperone.”
“I have my maid…” Olivia glanced about, as if expecting Estelle to pop up from behind the shrubs. “And we are neighbors, my lady. I am Olivia Monteith.”
“Monteith? I have heard the name. Weren’t your family once our tenants? You had an elder sister—”
“My father is a businessman, my lady. A banker.” Olivia tried not to be annoyed by her attitude. “We haven’t been tenants of the Laceys for over fifty years.”
Lady Lacey dismissed that with a wave of her hand—the Monteiths might have risen in the world but they were evidently still beneath her notice. “You should go home, Miss Monteith. My son is not to be trusted with young women. You are not safe here.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady, but I disagree,” Olivia said, her voice calm, while inside anger was beginning to simmer on Nic’s behalf. “I trust your son and I feel perfectly safe with him. He would never hurt me.”