If He's Tempted

by Hannah Howell

  Olympia held on tightly as Brant thrust into her again and again. It was a rough lovemaking, fierce and with little finesse, but her body had no complaint. The hunger within her was so fierce that she quickly began to feel that tightness inside her that told her bliss was just around the corner. She kissed him and a moment later cried out into his mouth as pleasure washed over her in hot waves. He joined her in that sweet place a heartbeat later.

  Brant carefully eased himself from her body and, still holding her in his arms, staggered over to the bed and fell onto it. He liked the feel of her soft laughter against his throat as she adjusted her position so that she was sprawled more comfortably on top of him. Olympia was the perfect lover, he mused. She matched his passion to perfection and was so free with her own that he still marveled over the fact that he was her first real lover.

  “Well, that was a fine celebration of a victory,” she said as she stroked his chest, idly wondering if she should undo his shirt so that she could feel his skin beneath her hands.

  “A worthy effort, but, perhaps, if we rest a little, we can try to surpass it.”

  The laughter bubbling up in Olympia’s throat suddenly vanished and a coldness swept over her. She stared at the headboard but did not really see it. What she saw was a terrified Agatha fighting an ugly old man. Behind them stood a smiling Lady Mallam with a nearly naked footman at her feet. And then, just as quickly as it came, the vision was gone. She sat up on Brant, fighting the dizziness that always accompanied the rare visions she had.

  “You now control all that happens with Agatha, correct?” she asked.

  Something in her voice caused him to tense and he gripped her hips a little more tightly. “Yes. Whatever my mother was negotiating with Minden is now null and void for no agreement can be made without my complete approval.”

  “And where is Agatha now?”

  “She was out riding with friends but might have returned home by now. Why?”

  Olympia leapt off him and grabbed her pantalets off the floor to slip them on. “You have to go back.”

  He stood up and began to redon his waistcoat. “Why? How do you know I have to go back?”

  “Occasionally, actually, rarely, I have a vision. Not like my cousin Chloe’s, of course, but quick, sharp pictures or even just a sharp demand that I do something or go somewhere. I just saw Agatha fighting with a nasty old man. Your mother was standing there watching, a smile on her face. And, for some odd reason, there was a big, somewhat handsome footman, kneeling at her feet.”

  He threw his coat on and started toward the door. His fear for his sister renewed. “It would be just like my mother to try to punish me by destroying Agatha.”

  Hurrying after him, Olympia said, “You took her power away and her symbol of her power, that damned house. She is probably trying to dim your victory over her.”

  Once in the hall, Olympia called for Pawl, Artemis, and Stefan. “Do not argue,” she said when Brant frowned. “You do not know what you might find when you return to that house. It would be wise to have someone at your back.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “And it would not hurt to have one of these as well,” said Pawl as he walked up and handed Brant a pistol.

  “Good man,” he murmured as he pocketed the gun but Pawl had already run out to call for a carriage. “Let us just pray we are not too late.” He looked at Olympia. “How soon do you see something before it actually happens?”

  “I have so few visions it is difficult to say. Not long, if I recall correctly. So, go, and this time bring Agatha back here.”

  “I will.”

  He would not leave the girl within a mile of his mother ever again. As he leapt into the carriage Pawl had already called for, and the others joined him, he cursed himself as an idiot. He should have known his mother would seek some revenge for what he had done. What better way to strike at him than to hurt the sister he had been trying so hard to save. His mother knew the house did not mean all that much to him.

  “You got this carriage quickly, Pawl,” he said, hoping talking would keep his mind from preying on all that could be happening to his baby sister. “They are usually a bit slower to answer a call.”

  “Did not call,” said Pawl and grinned. “Saw it sitting outside m’lady’s cousin’s house and told the man Sir Orion had told us to take it.”

  Artemis and Stefan laughed and Brant found he was able to smile. “I hope this Orion does not scold Olympia too much for this theft.”

  “Nay,” said Artemis, “especially not when he learns why we stole it.”

  And that quickly his mind returned to thinking on all that could be happening to Agatha. He was so tense by the time they reached the street where Mallam House was that his bones ached. Just as the carriage rolled to a halt behind another carriage parked before the house, Minden threw a screaming Agatha into the carriage and leapt in behind her. Brant leapt from his carriage but it was too late for the driver on the other one whipped up the horses and Minden’s carriage lurched into motion.

  Brant leapt up next to the driver of his carriage. “Follow them!”

  “’Tis dangerous to go that fast through these roads,” the man protested.

  “I will pay for any damage. Now, move!”

  “M’lord,” he began again.

  “Move now or I will kick you off this box and drive the cursed thing myself. That is my sister that swine has just run off with.”

  The driver did not argue anymore. Brant soon realized that, despite his hesitation, the man knew how to handle his team on the narrow roads and do so at high speed. From the look of the carriage they chased, Minden’s driver was not as skilled. Brant could only pray that his sister was not harmed during what was supposed to be her rescue.

  Minden’s driver did his best but disaster struck quickly. In turning a corner, the man judged wrong and Brant held his breath as the carriage teetered on two wheels and then fell over. He could hear Agatha screaming and watched as the horses dragged the tipped carriage a little ways farther before stopping. The fact that the driver had fallen off the box and the reins were no longer held in anyone’s hands may have helped that quick halt, Brant thought as, the moment his carriage stopped, he jumped to the ground.

  His driver, Pawl, and Olympia’s nephews were right behind him as he ran to the fallen carriage. “See how the driver is,” he told Pawl and then looked at his driver. “Can you do anything with the horses?”

  “Aye, m’lord,” the man said and hurried over to calm the frightened animals.

  Brant approached the fallen carriage slowly, Artemis and Stefan flanking him. The silence inside made him uneasy. Carriage accidents caused too many deaths for him not to be afraid for his sister. He was only a foot away when the door, now situated at the top of the turned-over carriage, opened and Minden scrambled out.

  Brant lunged forward but, for an aging roué, Minden proved very nimble and went down the other side of the carriage. He ran around it and saw Minden hobbling away. It was easy to catch him but, as he drew close, Brant was reluctant to touch the man. Minden could no longer hide that he had the pox. He looked wretched and unclean. Either he had been in such a hurry he had not bothered to try and hide the sores on his face or they were so bad now that he could not hide them any longer.

  “Give up, Minden,” he said.

  “I had a right to the girl. Your mother took good money for her and signed the betrothal papers,” the man said, looking all around him as if some magical doorway would open to help him escape.

  “My mother had no right to negotiate with you and well you know it. What? Did you think despoiling my young sister would cure you?” He could tell by the look that passed over the man’s ruined face that Minden had thought just that. “Idiot. All that would have happened would have been that you would have infected an innocent with your disease. I think the madness that comes with the rot has already seeped into your mind.”

  “It was worth a try.” Minden shrugged and then p
ulled out his pistol.

  Brant reached for his even though he knew he would not have time to pull it from his pocket and aim before Minden shot him. As he thought which was the best direction to move in, a shot rang out. Minden stood for a moment and then slowly collapsed on the ground. Brant saw Pawl standing behind the man with a pistol in his hand. He hurried over and took it from Pawl.

  “Best if we say I shot him,” he said and handed Pawl his unfired pistol.

  “It will certainly save me having to talk to a lot of folk. Your sister is fine. A few bruises and a few rips in her gown, but nothing else. Artemis and Stefan are keeping her behind the carriage so she cannot see this.”

  “Minden’s driver?”

  “Dead. Head split open when he hit the road. Making certain your sister cannot see that, either.”

  Brant saw Agatha standing between Olympia’s nephews, each boy speaking softly as they tried to ease her fear. She saw him and raced to his arms. For a moment, Brant just held her, thankful she had not been harmed. Once his own fear was calmed, he held her away from him and looked her over, seeing only what Pawl had said was there.

  “Did he touch you?” he asked her.

  “Not as I think you mean. He was so ill, Brant. Wretchedly ill. Each time he spoke you could nearly smell the rot inside him. Mother gave me to him anyway. He handed her a bank draft and she handed me to him.” She shook her head. “I do not know that woman,” she whispered.

  “Nor do I and that is probably a very good thing. Wait with the boys, Aggie,” he said quietly when he noticed a man with silver hair and an air of authority walking toward them.

  As Brant had expected, the man was a magistrate. Even more convenient for Brant the man had also seen everything from his window as he had struggled to dress. It meant he had seen who had shot Minden but he said nothing as Brant confessed to the shooting, just wrote it all down and then told him he was free to leave. As Brant walked to his carriage, he watched the magistrate touch Pawl’s arm, stopping Olympia’s cousin for a few words before smiling and letting Pawl go.

  “I do not wish to go home where our mother still is, Brant,” Agatha said the moment he climbed into the carriage.

  “I will take you to the Warren and soon I will take you out to Fieldgate if you like,” he said as he sat down next to her and put his arm around her.

  “I think I would like that,” she murmured and rested her head against his shoulder.

  Brant looked at Pawl. “What did the magistrate have to say to you?”

  Pawl smiled. “Asked me if I was ever a soldier. I said no and he said that was a shame as the military could use a man with such a good eye for shooting.”

  Shaking his head, Brant laughed. “I knew he had seen it all but when he never questioned my claim of having shot Minden, I assumed he was just going to let it stand.”

  “Why would it matter?” asked Agatha. “Minden was about to shoot you, was he not?”

  “Pawl is a servant,” Brant answered. “It should not matter but it does. Easier to try and just slip around it with a small lie.”

  The moment they reached the Warren, Brant handed the care of his sister over to Olympia. “I will need to go back to Mallam House. I have to make certain my mother does not slip free.”

  “What will happen to Mama?” asked Agatha from where she pressed close to Olympia, willing to accept the comfort she offered with an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

  “There is a lot that could be done. I was thinking the best would be to send her to the most remote of her dower lands with a few guards who can be trusted. I will make it clear to her that she must stay there and cease what she has been doing. If she breaks away or begins to play her vicious games again, I will see her punished as the criminal she is even if it sends her to the hangman.”

  “And would you? Really?”

  “If she does not stay where she is put and tries to return to what she has been doing here for years, yes. Without hesitation. I am offering her a comfortable prison. She would be wise to accept that.”

  She would, Olympia thought as she watched Brant leave, but Lady Letitia was not a woman who would accept her fall from power with dignity and grace. A chill of foreboding washed over her but she fought to ignore it. Olympia told herself it was just a fear of what Lady Mallam was, a cold, evil woman, and meant nothing. She turned her attention to Agatha.

  “Let us go to my bedchamber and you can have a bath,” she said as she walked the girl to the stairs.

  “Oh, yes, please, that man was diseased,” Agatha said and shuddered. “He had sores on his face and he smelled as if he was already dead but someone had forgotten to tell him to lie down.”

  Olympia bit back a grin. There was spirit in the girl. A little time without Lady Mallam looming over her and controlling her life, and the girl would quickly blossom into the woman she was meant to be.

  It took awhile to get Agatha clean enough for her own approval. Olympia understood. Even though the girl had not been raped, or even fondled, she had been in the presence of a man who planned to do both. Worse that man had been obviously diseased and anyone would want to be sure none of that infection had touched them. Olympia was not about to explain to the girl that touching was not the way one got a disease like Minden had, at least not simple touch such as a hand grabbing a clothed arm, which was apparently all he had done to Agatha.

  “So, Brant is now the true head of the house?” Agatha asked as Olympia helped her get dressed in an old gown of Olympia’s.

  “Yes, he has the papers all signed to prove it as well.”

  “I hope he chains her up somewhere.”

  “To your mother, being confined to the remote countryside, unable to rule over the society she lives and breathes for, will feel to her as if she has been chained.”

  “Good.”

  “It will certainly make life more peaceful.”

  “I think she was a very evil woman. I do not know all she did but I can guess. There were a lot of children that just disappeared while she had the rule over me.”

  “Did you tell Brant?” Olympia could not believe he would have ignored such a thing.

  “Yes, but I am now sure that all my letters to him were read and any that said anything Mother did not want known or did not like, were destroyed. I would get so hurt and be angry at Brant and he did not deserve it. It was all my mother’s doing.”

  There was such fury in the girl’s voice that Olympia wanted to hug her but knew that comforting words and touches would not cure it. Agatha had to mend her own heart. Time without her mother around would help tremendously. A firm but loving companion or governess would also help and she had a few people she would recommend to Brant when he returned.

  Just mentioning his name made her shiver but this time it was not from pleasure. Olympia paused in brushing Agatha’s hair and studied what she was feeling. The chill was not leaving, was only growing worse. The brush fell from Olympia’s hand as she realized what that meant. Lady Mallam was not done getting her revenge.

  Chapter 17

  “I want you, Pawl, to see to what servants are left and make certain none of them can come up behind me. And I think you can probably tell which one of those may or may not be worth keeping,” said Brant.

  “Aye.” Pawl nodded. “That I can do. Do we go in now?”

  Brant sighed as he stared at the front of the house, one he feared had been irrevocably tainted by his mother over the last few years. He would never know all that had gone on in that house or all that had been bought with money made by the selling of innocents. There had to be some way he could make it new again for it held a lot of the history of his family and he knew he would hate to give it up.

  “Yes, best we get this done with,” he finally said.

  Pawl, Artemis, and Stefan followed him into the house. Once inside the three of them went off to find whatever servants they could. Brant had to decide where his mother might be.

  “Her ladyship is in the drawing room.”<
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  He looked up to see the same young footman who had helped him before. “Have you been told to leave?” he asked, a little surprised for he was certain this was a good man and one he would not mind having in his service.

  “No, I was told to come down and go to the kitchens as I told the young man upstairs that there would be a few in there he would be wise to send packing.”

  “Go on then. The house will soon be mine alone again and you shall have a job if you wish it.”

  “That I do, m’lord. Have to help my family. Have eight siblings, I do.” He sauntered off to the kitchens, obviously more than ready to help in the weeding out of the bad from the good.

  Brant made his way to the drawing room. He stepped inside and saw his mother immediately. She stood by the window dressed in a lavender gown that must have cost more than many made in a year, even amongst the gentry. It was elegant, made of the best material and dripping with the most expensive of laces but all he saw was the misery of the children she had sold to pay for it. Just when had she begun to hate children, he wondered, for he had no other explanation for how she could treat the young and innocent as she had.

  “Mother, it is time,” he said.

  “Time for what, you ungrateful child?”

  There was no anger in her voice yet Brant was sure that she was viciously furious and that false calm made him uneasy. “For you to pack to go to your country house.”

  “You told me I had time to put my affairs in order.”

  “That was before you sold Agatha to Minden. You knew you had no right to do that, knew it went against all the legal papers I had said were right, yet you handed her over anyway.”

  “She is of an age to be wed and start bearing children.”

  “She is sixteen. Just. Minden was also diseased, riddled with the pox, and you knew that as well. You were selling her to a man who would begin to kill her with the first bedding.”