by Gaelen Foley
“Surely, my lord, you are jesting,” Alice forced out.
“He is in earnest,” Caro breathed, shaking her head. “I know that gleam in his eyes. He has some perverse devil flying around in his head and won’t be satisfied until he has gotten what he’s after.”
“Well?” he asked.
“This is absurd!” Alice shot to her feet in haughty indignation, but her eyes were indigo with fright; her ivory skin had paled. “Come, Caro. We are getting out of here.”
“Sit down, Miss Montague,” Lucien clipped out sternly. “You will not run away from this choice. You should be grateful I am willing to let one of you leave, for I am tempted to keep you both—but then, who would comfort poor little Harry?”
“Lucien, stop this.” Caro rose abruptly and scanned his face, trying to read him. “My child is sick. I must go to him.”
“Now you care?” He shook his head at her in contempt. “Speak to Alice. It is in her power to release you.”
“So, it is her you’re after. Lucien, she is a virgin.”
“And so she will remain, if she chooses.”
The lady in question let out a little gasp of alarm. “This conversation is most unseemly! My lord, you know full well you cannot keep either of us here against our will. It is practically kidnapping! We could have you arrested!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too alarmed, my dear.” Caro folded her arms over her chest and looked askance at her. “Lord Lucien is merely testing you. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. I daresay he wants to see if he can debauch you. This is what the fiend enjoys—poking, prodding people, trying to find out their weaknesses. He won’t go out of his way to harm you, but if you stumble, you are lost.”
“Now, now, my lady, aren’t you being a bit harsh?” he chided.
“I know why you are doing this,” Alice said in a shaky tone, taking a defiant step toward him. “To punish me for trespassing in the Grotto—but I’m not going to tell anyone about your filthy cult! Whom would I tell? I’d be ashamed even to mention it!”
“Why, I would never punish you for anything, Alice,” he replied in a reasonable tone. “Who am I to punish you? Your parent? Your husband?”
She blanched at the word. “You can’t make me stay here! Harry needs—”
“His mother.” He cut her off.
“He needs me, too!” She struggled visibly for calm. “My lord, if you are so fixed on a friendship, then, very well, you may call on me in London in the spring. . . .” Her voice trailed off at his dark, low laughter.
“That is hardly what I had in mind, ma chérie.”
“But I will be ruined!” she wailed.
“Now, now, my dear, there is no need to be melodramatic. Nobody is going to ruin you. I can boast a certain expertise in keeping secrets,” he said modestly. “No one will ever know you’re here. I give you my word.”
“Your word—Draco? Don’t make me laugh!” She pointed toward the door. “Those people in the hallway saw me. What if they go back to London and tell the whole world I’m here?”
“For one thing, they are not going back to London. They’re going their separate ways, back to their country houses—you know the ton is largely dispersed for the autumn. Secondly, even if they did recognize you, they don’t want their names mentioned any more than you do. We believe in secrecy here at Revell Court. You have nothing to fear.”
“Don’t do this, Lucien. I beg of you. You know it is impossible!”
“Why? Do you think I give a damn for Society’s strictures?” he asked sharply, suddenly losing patience as her obvious rejection cut through his facade. “Life is too bloody short to play by their rules. I take what I want, and I want you here. Now choose, damn it.”
She stood staring at him in shock. A helpless, bewildered look passed over her classical features.
He held her stare fiercely, willing her to remember how she had melted in his arms, how she had opened to his kiss. How she had tapped into her own fiery passion when she had begun kissing him back in sweet, aching need.
She turned away, pale and shaken, and marched toward the door. “I am going home to Harry, and you can’t stop me. Lady Glenwood, do please come along.”
“My men have their orders,” Lucien called after her, his body tensed with excitement. “They won’t let you pass without my permission.”
Caro remained where she stood, studying him. Lucien merely flicked her a glance then followed his quarry out into the hallway. In truth, he could scarcely believe she had not yet said no. She had not refused outright nor immediately passed the task on to Caro, as he had half expected. Instead, Alice was fighting to avoid making any decision at all, as though, deep down, she knew that her own nature would compel her to do the honorable thing. In guarded fascination, he watched her slim figure as she strode down the flagged, shadowy corridor ahead of him toward the entrance hall. He restrained his pace to a casual saunter, trailing after her.
Alice, meanwhile, promptly found herself blocked at the front door by two of his black-coated guardsmen. “Let me out of here!” she yelled at them, but the men didn’t blink.
“Convinced?” Lucien inquired, joining her by the bottom of the staircase.
She spun around and glared at him, her fists balled at her sides. “If my brother were alive, he would call you out for this.”
“Life is for the living, chérie.”
She looked into his eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He tensed, feeling naked in her stare. It was unnerving how she seemed to pierce into the very core of him and take his measure. He deflected her searching gaze with his most arrogant smile. “Because it amuses me. Quit dodging the question, Alice. Caro or you?” He took out his fob watch and glanced at it; it was time to raise the stakes. “If I don’t have an answer in ten seconds, I shall keep you both and poor little Harry will have to suffer alone.”
“Go to the devil! I don’t have to listen to you!” She stalked down the other corridor, but once again, her way was blocked by his menacing guards. She turned around in wrath. “Call them off, Lucien.”
“No.”
“You can’t do this!”
“If you wanted the good twin, you should’ve gone to Damien’s house. Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“Caro!” Alice turned to her sister-in-law, who now joined them in the hallway. “The man is mad! He will not listen to reason! You must stay with him!”
Ah, here it comes, Lucien thought with a pang of disappointment behind his smirk.
“But you know Harry needs me, Alice. Isn’t that the reason you came here? I am his mother, and I should be with him.”
“Now you finally choose to care about him?” she cried.
“How dare you? I love my son! You’re the problem, Alice. You’re always coming between us!”
“Seven. Six,” he counted on, standing a small distance away.
Alice stared at the baroness in open-mouthed fury. “That’s rubbish! You run off and forget he exists. If it weren’t for me, that child would have no one but the servants.”
“Five, four . . .” If only someone had dared have this conversation with his mother when he was Harry’s age, Lucien mused sardonically. He and his brothers might have turned out so differently.
“It is disgraceful how you treat that child,” Alice went on. “Do you know how confused he is for days after you leave? If he starts crying, that’s when you run—but don’t you see, you’re the thing he’s crying for?” Her face tautened, as though she realized the significance of her words only as she uttered them.
Mesmerized by the play of warring emotions in her delicate face, Lucien slowed his counting. “Three . . .”
Caro stared at Alice, as well, then lowered her head and turned away. “Let me have my child to myself for once, and this time will be different, I promise you.”
“You promise me,” Alice echoed bitterly.
“Yes.”
“Two . . .”
There was a long
pause as Alice held her sister-in-law in a penetrating stare.
“One.” As Lucien snapped his fob watch closed, the small snick rang like a cannon’s boom in the palpable silence that had fallen over the corridor.
Lucien held his breath.
“Very well, then,” Alice said barely audibly. “I will be the one to stay.” With a tempestuous stare, she turned to him so suddenly that he hardly managed to hide his incredulity. “But if you lay a hand on me against my will, I will not hesitate to have you arrested and I shall press charges against you. If it is scandal that you crave, my lord, you shall have it.”
He shook himself out of his stunned astonishment as a dark, rich smile spread slowly across his face. His world had just been turned upside down, but his heart soared wildly like a Congreve rocket. Truly, he had found himself a worthy opponent. “I consider myself duly warned.”
“He does not fear the law,” Caro remarked, passing a scathing glance over him. “No, if he harms you, we won’t waste our breath telling the constable, my dear. We’ll tell Damien.”
The mention of his honor-bound brother brought him up short. Lucien shot Caro a bristling scowl. An image of Damien’s hard, honest face flashed in his mind. He could almost hear his brother’s voice in his head. Don’t you dare keep that girl. You’ve proved your point; now let her go. Lucien knew that the imaginary order from his brother was the only decent thing to do. He might masquerade as “Draco,” but he knew right from wrong as well as Damien did. Yet the thought of losing Alice suddenly panicked him. How could he possibly let her go now that he knew she was the genuine article? The words to release her would not form on his tongue. He floundered, torn, his heart hammering in his chest.
Alice Montague was that rarest of flowers, a beautiful woman of integrity. Someone he might even be able to trust, in time. He had searched the world for such a creature. He had her in his grasp. How could he possibly let her slip through his fingers?
He could not. He could not help himself. By God, he was not letting her go. Exultation surged through his veins, but he had no idea what the hell he thought he was doing. This is foolishness, his better sense rebuked him. He had a job to do. Was not Claude Bardou alive and at large? She would only be a distraction.
But it was the news of Bardou’s resurrection and the horror of his own excruciating memories that had weakened Lucien, made him reach for the girl. He could no longer face it alone. From the moment he had looked into her heaven-blue eyes, he had been possessed by a burning neediness for something pure and good and clean. The only desperation that even came close to it had been the thirst he had suffered when Bardou’s men had denied him water for two days in that black hellhole.
He was no prisoner now. He was free to act, to save himself by whatever means availed—even if it meant damning himself, throwing what remained of his honor into the flames. Winning her, body and soul, would be worth it.
To assuage his conscience, he decided that if he could not do it in a week, he would let her go then. He was, of course, a shrewd enough negotiator to ask for much more than he really expected to get. “I will send her home in my carriage after a fortnight, quite unharmed.”
“Two weeks!” Alice gasped in horror. “Absolutely not! One day at the most!”
Lucien turned to her. “Ten days.”
“Two!”
“Oh, come. It will be fun, chérie. Stay for eight days.”
“Three, not an hour more!” she cried in fright.
“One week, then—and I won’t try very hard to seduce you,” he offered with a wicked half smile.
“A week?” Alice echoed, gazing at him in despair.
“You’d best take it, dear. When he puts his mind to it . . .” Caro sighed meaningfully.
Apparently incensed by her glib tone, Alice turned on her. “You find this all very amusing, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t ask you to come here. You shouldn’t have done it.”
Alice stared at her, clearly incredulous. “I came to help you!” she exclaimed in shock.
“Well, you only managed to embarrass us both.”
“How can you let him do this to me? You should be the one to stay!”
“Perhaps.” Caro glanced at the ceiling, as though choosing her words with care. “But frankly, Alice, as your elder and your chaperon, I find you lack a proper respect for me. It is extremely irritating, and I cannot think of a better person to teach you your place than Lucien Knight. I’m sick to death of you walking around putting on airs like some kind of plaster saint. You think you’re so much better than me, but we’ll see how high and mighty you are by the time he is through with you.”
“You—I—you’re worse than he is!”
“Am I? Well,” Caro said blandly, “let’s not forget who puts a roof over your head and food on your plate, sweet.” She glanced at Lucien. “As for you, darling, tinkering with people’s lives is one matter, but let us get one thing perfectly clear.”
“What is that, ma chérie?” he asked, turning to her with an expansive smile.
“If you send her back pregnant, you will marry her.”
His smile faded. His heartbeat roared in his ears. He stared intensely at Caro for a heartbeat, holding on hard to his facade of jaded nonchalance. “Fair enough,” he replied.
His lack of hesitation shocked him and apparently horrified Alice.
She gasped so hard he worried she’d faint. When he glanced cautiously at her, she spun around, picked up her skirts, and fled him, pounding up the stairs past the smirking portrait of the marquess, whose gray eyes, so like his own, seemed to dance with devilish congratulation, as if to say, Well done, my boy.
Lucien couldn’t have agreed with him more. Caro gave him a disparaging look and walked away, calling her carriage, but Lucien slid his hands into his trouser pockets and peered uncertainly up the staircase in the direction Alice had gone, discreetly jubilant at his triumph and rather amazed, in all, that he had gotten away with it.
Chapter 5
Running all the way back to her room, Alice slammed the door, locked it, then further barricaded it with a wooden chair. Her heart thumping, she ran her hands through her hair and paced in agitation. This can’t be happening! What am I going to do?
“Damnation!” she cried, hot tears of fury rushing into her eyes. She stalked to her pillow and punched it in most unladylike wrath, half wishing it was Lucien Knight’s smug, handsome face. Cruel, ruthless, wicked man! Pacing a few times back and forth across the room, she finally stopped and rested her forehead against one of the bedposts, struggling for equilibrium. How could he do something so scandalous? But what else should she have expected from “Draco”? A thousand questions whirled through her mind. If you send her home pregnant, you will marry her. . . . Marry her . . . The dire words re-echoed in her mind like her death knell. Fair enough, he had dared to say. Fair enough! To whom? she thought furiously. She wanted to have a child someday, yes, but not with the prince of the underworld!
Hearing a carriage rattling over the cobbles below a few minutes later, she lifted her head and ran to the window, bracing her hands on the sill. With a stricken expression, she watched her carriage rolling away through the iron gates of Revell Court. Her driver, Mitchell, looked over his shoulder with a worried frown as he drove off. Alice tried waving to flag his attention, but he returned his gaze to the road before him. She could only wonder what fairy story that the traitor, Caro, would tell the servants to account for her absence.
She stared out the window in distress until the carriage had crossed the wooden bridge over the river and started up the hill, disappearing from view among the trees. When it had gone, she still stood there, slowly becoming aware of the profound silence of Revell Court, alone in its hidden valley. The guests had gone. The halls were quiet. The efficient army of servants moved soundlessly throughout the Tudor manor. Now it was only Lord Lucifer and her. A tremor ran through her. She looked around uneasily, rubbing her folded arms. How she m
issed Harry’s babbling. Even her nephew’s worst temper tantrum was preferable to this eerie stillness. She went over to the bed and sat down, leaning against the headboard. Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around her bent legs, resolved to stay in her room until that silver-eyed devil lost interest. With any luck, she could find some way to escape.
A sudden noise in the corridor made her gaze zoom to the door of her bedchamber. Her heart skipped a beat. Heavy footfalls pierced the deafening silence in a swift, relentless rhythm, approaching from down the hallway. So soon he comes. She knew she could not lock him out forever. She eased silently off of the bed, casting about for a weapon with which to defend her virtue, if need be. She tiptoed over to the hearth and picked up the fire poker, brandishing it, then crept over to the furniture-barred door as the footsteps drew nearer. She held her breath as he rapped softly on the door.
“Oh, Alice, my pet, come out and play,” he called urbanely.
She clutched the fire poker harder in her sweating hands. “Go away! I don’t want to see you!”
“Tut, tut, my dear, I know you are cross, but—”
“Cross?” she cried, taking an angry step toward the door, emboldened by the fact that he could not get to her, or if he did somehow, she would brain the cad. “Cross does not begin to describe my sentiments, Lucien Knight! What am I to think of you? One minute you are pointing a gun at me, the next you are reading me poetry!”
“But I thought you liked the poetry.”
“You know full well that is not the point. You usurp control of my life and expect me to swoon at your feet?”
“Why, swooning would be perfectly acceptable—”
“How dare you make a joke of this?” she roared, her face turning red with fury.
A pause.
She heard his vexed sigh. “Are you going to hide in there like a coward for the next week?” he inquired in a tone gone suddenly flat with boredom.
“I don’t care what you say, you odious cad. I am not staying here for a week.”