Irresistible

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  He glanced at Claire. “Did he tell you about his mother? She was pregnant with him when she married my uncle. She was of good family, too, which makes it all the more surprising. She took a lover and got pregnant, and when her lover died she married my uncle and tried to pass the babe off as his, claiming he was a seven months’ child. She would have succeeded, too, if Hugh here hadn’t looked so much like his real father. The Lynes are all fair, you see. He’s the only blackbird in the bunch. My uncle suspected the truth because Hugh’s real father was his good friend, and he wore his wife down until at last she confessed. Then he spent the next few years beating her senseless, until at last she did the decent thing and died.”

  David glanced back at him again. His eyes were full of malice. “You were what, thirteen at the time, Hugh? What a tragedy.” He returned his attention to Claire. “My uncle would have disowned the bastard as well, but he couldn’t face labeling himself a fool and a cuckold so publicly. So what we have here is a usurper. Hugh here has no more right to call himself Duke of Richmond than you do. I should be the duke. He doesn’t have a drop of Lynes blood in his veins.”

  It had taken him a long time to come to terms with his family history, Hugh thought, but he finally had. To hear David relate it so mockingly would once have been more than he could bear, as David well knew. But Hugh was a man now, not the wild boy David had known, and while any mention of his mother, dead now these fifteen years, brought pain with it, talk of the circumstances of her life—and death—no longer filled him with blind rage. As for the duke—he no longer called him Father even in his thoughts—he’d died when Hugh was twenty-five. His last words to his heir had been to reiterate his belief that Hugh was not his son, and express his wish that Hugh meet with an untimely end before he could have a son of his own and thus return the title to the one who should rightfully hold it.

  David, in fact.

  Though Hugh had not admitted it even to himself for a long time, after the old duke had died he had done his best to make his ersatz father’s dying wish come true. From guilt, he supposed. Only in the last couple of years had he truly come to believe, deep inside, that he deserved to be alive.

  “Hugh,” Claire said, her voice a raspy whisper that both worried him and brought him back to the present immediately. She sounded as if her throat had been hurt—what had the bastard done to her while he, Hugh, had been knocked out? As myriad possibilities presented themselves, he felt his muscles tighten and bunch, and willed them to relax. Fury was a luxury he couldn’t afford at the moment. “David means to burn this house with us in it.”

  David smiled at Hugh.

  “Oh, I’m going to shoot you both in the head first, of course. I don’t believe in causing unnecessary suffering.” There was a mocking note to David’s voice. Then his gaze swung to Claire, and without warning he pointed the pistol at her smooth white forehead. Hugh felt his heart leap and his blood run cold. “You first. Stand up.”

  Hugh’s muscles tensed, and he prepared to do what he could. If he was lucky, that would be to hook David’s legs with his and knock him to the floor. It wouldn’t save their lives—the thug would probably shoot him within seconds, and if he didn’t, David, once he had recovered, surely would—but it was better than watching the woman he loved be shot before his eyes. With truly commendable self-control, Hugh held off, waiting for just the right moment, his eyes fixed on David’s trigger finger so intensely that he broke into a cold sweat, hoping that he would have some warning, enough warning, if David actually decided to pull the trigger. Even as he focused on David’s hand curling around the pistol, out of the corner of his eye he was aware of Claire, brave little thing that she was when cornered, as he knew from his own experience of cornering her, slowly standing up, giving David back icy stare for icy stare. Given David’s particular nature—he was the type who, as a child, had enjoyed pulling the wings off flies—that was definitely the wrong thing to do, though Hugh could not help but mentally salute her courage in doing it. He’d found her boldness charming. David would want to crush her until she whimpered at his feet.

  “David.” He said the name sharply, as a distraction. It worked, postponing the inevitable a little longer. His cousin looked at him, and the pistol lowered. Hugh let his breath out in a quiet, careful sigh. He felt like a condemned man who had just been given a reprieve. “Tell me something: Why are you doing this?”

  Seeming to lose interest in Claire for the nonce, David crossed the room to look down at him. He was dressed in a bottle-green coat and tan breeches, with his linen immaculate and not a hair out of place. Except for the pistol in his hand, he seemed completely as he usually did. There wasn’t even a mad glitter in his eyes to explain what was going on in his mind. He looked perfectly sane, perfectly normal.

  Perhaps he was. Hugh realized that this thought was scarier than the alternative.

  “Oh, how about—you were kissing my wife in the garden.”

  Obviously David, or one of his thugs, had been watching them. Hugh felt another stab of stark fear penetrate his careful calm, then realized that it was for Claire. He’d faced death himself many times, and never turned a hair. But he was terrified for Claire.

  “By the way, coz, I salute you for your address: You’ve been back in England for one month, and in that time you’ve managed to seduce my wife.”

  Hugh said nothing. He didn’t think that telling David the truth of how he and Claire had met would accomplish anything at the moment except to further enrage David. He blamed himself for this entire debacle. He should have been more careful. With him there, in a public place, he’d thought her safe. Who’d have thought that attackers might be waiting for her in Vauxhall Gardens?

  But this was not the time for self-recriminations. He had to focus if he had any chance at all of getting her out of there alive.

  “This isn’t about that.” Hugh said it with absolute certainty. His instinct was to stall for time, and he was a great believer in following his instincts. They had saved him more than once. Sooner or later, James would miss him—but of course, even then, even if it was sooner rather than later, James would have no way of knowing where he was. “You don’t care if she sleeps with me or fifty other men. You were trying to kill her long before tonight—you arranged the attack on her coach.”

  For a moment David simply stared at him. Then he gave a snort of laughter.

  “So well informed as you are,” he marveled. “I’m impressed, I must admit.” He glanced at Claire, who was still standing, leaning back against the night table now as if her legs had grown too weak from fear or trauma to support her, and his expression changed, turning openly cruel. “She’s quite a pretty thing, isn’t she? And she came with a nice dowry, too. But the money’s long since spent and the bloom is off the rose and you’ve informed me that you won’t bankroll me anymore, so I’ve had to make alternate arrangements. The original plan was simply to arrange an accident for her that would permit me to take a new wife with a new dowry—actually, the one I had in mind was a real heiress, the Chalmondley chit, you might have seen her around town, buck-toothed as a rabbit but father’s rich as Golden Ball—but Donen here and his band of incompetents let my wife escape. Imagine my surprise when she turned up unharmed. Nothing for it but to let the plan go fallow for a few months. A second accident right on the heels of the first would look too suspicious.”

  Donen? The leader of the band who had attacked Claire’s carriage with the intent of killing her? Hugh’s gaze slashed to him again. Silently he vowed vengeance. Marley had already felt his wrath. By now he should be in the custody of the Bow Street Runners—and this fellow would be lucky if he suffered a fate as benevolent as that.

  All at once Hugh became aware of a peculiar smell. A smell that didn’t belong in this long-closed room. An acrid smell. Hugh glanced in Claire’s direction. She was staring straight ahead with the utmost concentration—and then he saw, with a jumbled burst of shock at her audacity, pride at her courage and ingenuity, and
terror lest she be found out, that she was holding her bound hands over the candle flame, burning the rope in two.

  Such was the angle at which he lay that he could see what she was doing quite clearly. He didn’t think David could, or the thug at the door.

  But both of them could smell.

  David was saying something to Donen. Heart pounding like a drum, fear for Claire’s safety so tangible that it left a metallic taste in his mouth, Hugh didn’t catch quite what it was. Looking up at David as he finished speaking, Hugh hurried into speech.

  “We could come to an arrangement, you and I. You don’t want her, I do. Suppose I paid you to divorce her? Say, a hundred thousand pounds. That should set you up handsomely for some time to come, and you wouldn’t need to kill anyone.”

  David looked at him and seemed to consider, then shook his head. Hugh already knew that it was a lost cause; David would have to be a fool to accept, and David, whatever else he was, was no fool. But providing a distraction was Hugh’s object, and as such his offer worked.

  “Now that is really very tempting, I must admit. But you and I both know that this has gone too far. In any case, tonight while I lurked among the bushes at Vauxhall Gardens I had a truly brilliant flash of inspiration. Why not kill you both? I would then be the fabulously wealthy Duke of Richmond, which by rights I should be anyway, and free of my unwanted wife, all in one stroke. It’s quite a neat plan. I’m actually very proud of it.”

  Claire’s shoulders seemed to slump, and then she sidled back toward the wall. David, focusing on him, didn’t appear to notice. The thug at the door seemed half asleep. Hugh was on pins and needles. Had she succeeded? He couldn’t tell.

  “You’ll never get away with it,” Hugh said.

  In truth, he realized, David might or might not. He was an obvious suspect, after all, but upon Hugh’s death he would become the Duke of Richmond, very powerful, very rich. It was Hugh’s experience that the authorities were careful to tread lightly where rich, powerful nobles were concerned. But whether David got away with it or not didn’t really matter, because once that became the question, he and Claire would be dead.

  “I think I will.” David glanced at Claire, then back at Hugh. He seemed to notice nothing amiss, while Hugh’s heart nearly stopped. “It was apparently quite obvious in the ballroom when you two first met at little Beth’s come-out that there was an attraction between you two. My mother remarked on it when she came to tell me that you had danced my wife right off the dance floor onto the terrace and would I please do something to control my wife before she embroiled us all in a dreadful scandal. Not terribly discreet, were you? Did you really think no one would notice? Then again, when you danced with her at Almack’s and afterward when you both disappeared at the same time, Mother said my wife’s behavior, and yours as well, was most shocking. Tonight, when I saw you kissing her, that popped into my head, and the whole plan came together like it was meant to be. Your reputation is such a help, you know: You are considered a notorious libertine. When your bodies are found, here is what will appear to have happened: You spirited my wife away from Vauxhall Gardens to this house—it’s the one in Curzon Street where you used to keep your mistresses, Hugh, don’t you recognize it?—which fortunately at the moment is empty. While you, vile seducer, are working your wicked wiles on her, the house catches fire with both of you, most unfortunately, inside. It burns to the ground; your bodies are charred beyond recognition—too charred for anyone to tell that you perished from a gunshot wound before the flames ever reached you.”

  A knock sounded at the door, interrupting. David glanced around. The thug—Donen—opened it. Another thug was outside. A strong smell wafted in through the open door. It took Hugh a second, but he recognized it: kerosene.

  David had ordered the house soaked with kerosene. Once lit, it would go up like dry tinder. The ensuing blaze would in all likelihood be hot enough to burn any bodies inside past recognition.

  “We be all set. Just give the word, and we’ll be strikin’ the match.”

  David nodded. “Go ahead. We’ll be right down.”

  He started walking toward the door. For one hope-filled moment, Hugh thought that he might actually be going to leave them, supposedly bound and helpless, to take their chances with the fire.

  Donen was still holding the door open, and as David passed him he glanced back at Hugh.

  “Duke of Richmond,” he said musingly. “It has a nice ring to it, does it not?”

  Then he walked past Donen into the hall.

  “Shoot them,” he said over his shoulder, and was gone.

  32

  As soon as she’d opened her eyes to see several of the men who had attacked her coach standing over her, Claire had known that they were going to try to kill her. They hadn’t succeeded the first time, and they’d come back to finish what they’d started. They were mostly all there: the leader, Donen, she’d heard him called; Briggs, whom she’d hit over the head with a chamber pot; and two others whose names she’d never heard. Marley, of the hounds, was the only one missing. It was her nightmare, and it was happening all over again.

  Then David had walked into the room, walked right up to her and hit her across the face with no warning at all, sending her reeling back against the wall, bumping her head, cutting her lip.

  “That’s for making a fool out of me,” he’d said. She’d looked at him, hating him even as she wiped the blood from her mouth. And to her vast relief, fury had driven out fear. Her whole life she had been surrounded by evil, violent men. How ironic it was that, when she’d tried so hard to get the opposite, she’d ended up with a man as evil and violent as her father had been beneath his handsome, civilized facade?

  Hugh had been right. It was David who’d wanted her dead all along, David who’d hired the men to waylay her coach, David who was behind the attack in the garden tonight. But David didn’t know what she was made of. The only way she’d survived her girlhood intact was because, when her back was to the wall, she was willing to fight like a badger for her life.

  And her back was to the wall tonight.

  When Donen, with an evil smirk that promised retribution for her previous escape from him, had pulled her hands behind her back and tied them so tightly that her fingers went numb, she’d known she couldn’t expect any mercy at all from these merciless men.

  They all, every one of them, meant to see her dead.

  She meant to survive any way she could.

  Then they had carried Hugh into the room and dumped him on the floor without ceremony. After all, why worry about hurting a man they meant to kill?

  For a hideous moment she’d wondered if he was dead already, and had started forward with a cry. A hard swipe of Donen’s forearm had sent her reeling back against the wall. It had caught her across the throat, and sent her, choking and coughing, sliding down until she was all but sitting on the floor. Her eyes had never left Hugh, and it was with some relief that she had watched Briggs kneel beside him, tying his hands and legs with brutal efficiency.

  He was not dead, then. They would not have bothered to tie a dead man.

  Then David had come to stand over her. He was holding a pistol, and she’d almost been afraid. But then she remembered how he had hit her, and rage came flooding back to drive out fear. She welcomed the hot, fierce rush. It gave her strength and courage, both of which she would need to survive.

  Then Hugh had stirred, and David had left her to stand over him.

  Luckily, after that David had been far more concerned with Hugh than with her. She had taken stock of the situation and come up with the best plan she could devise, all the while listening to David baiting Hugh. She had known another sharp moment of fear when David had pointed the pistol at her forehead and ordered her to stand up. But then she had looked into his eyes and had seen how much he relished her fear, and she had stuffed it back down deep inside herself as she had learned to do with any and all unwanted emotions as a child. Standing tall, she had looked him
in the eye.

  Even as Hugh had drawn David’s attention to himself, she had seen the candle and known what she needed to do.

  Now, even as David’s order to shoot them still hung in the air and Donen closed the door, then took two steps inside the room to carry it out, Claire braced herself for action. Her skin tingled and burned from where the flame that had freed her wrists had singed it, but she barely felt the pain.

  The time had come to fight for her life. Her life, and Hugh’s.

  Hugh was lying on his side on the floor, staring grimly up at Donen. His muscles were tense. His head was several inches above the carpet, straining upward on his strong neck, and his shoulder seemed to be pressing hard into the floor, as if he would use it for leverage. His face was grim, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on Donen’s face.

  Donen, face contorted in a taunting smirk, lifted the pistol and aimed it at Hugh.

  Claire screamed.

  “Bloody ’ell!” Donen glanced up, startled, as the sound ricocheted through the room. The pistol jerked to one side. Then Hugh moved, whipping his bound legs across the floor like a bludgeon, catching Donen’s ankles and knocking his feet out from under him. With a bellow, Donen shot up in the air, hung suspended above the floor for the space of a couple of heartbeats, then came crashing down on his back. For a moment he simply lay there, stunned.

  The pistol made a beautiful somersault and landed on the bed.

  “Get it! Get the pistol.”

  Hugh’s command was unnecessary. Even as Claire dived for it, Hugh wriggled across the carpet like a snake, getting into position, turning onto his back. Then he lifted his legs high into the air and crashed his bound feet, with all the strength of his legs behind them, into Donen’s neck.

  The man made a harsh choking sound and seemed to convulse. Then he lay still.

  Pistol in hand, Claire scrambled off the bed and stood over Donen for a minute, looking down at him wide-eyed.