“You are to be congratulated on your betrothal, Lady Emma,” she said, “though not as much as Sir James is on his.”
There was a slight pause whilst Emma tried to work out if this was a compliment and, deciding that it was, beamed. Susanna saw Dev’s lips quirk into a smile.
“I am indeed the most fortunate of men,” he said smoothly. “And you, Lady Carew,” he added. There was a gleam of dark amusement in the depths of his eyes, shadowed by that ever-present anger. “It seems that you, too, must be congratulated, since the last time we met you were neither a lady nor were you called Caroline Carew, as I recall.”
His tone was very courteous, his words anything but. A little ripple went around the group. Susanna saw a sharpening of speculation in the women’s eyes and a different sort of interest in the men’s. No wonder. Dev had just implied she was an adventuress at best, a harlot masquerading as a lady at worst.
The moment spun out. Susanna knew she had a choice and she had to make her decision fast. She could pretend that Devlin had mistaken her identity. Or she could take the fight to him. It was risky to claim that she did not know him because Dev would probably see that as a challenge. He was that sort of man. It was equally perilous to engage with him because she was not sure that she could win. But it was certainly too late to feign indifference. Everyone was waiting to see how she would respond to Dev’s calculated remark.
“I am flattered that you claim to remember so much about me,” Susanna said lightly. “I had forgotten all about you.”
Dev’s smile deepened at the setdown. The look he gave her sent heat searing through her.
“Oh, I remember everything about you, Lady … Carew,” he said.
“You never knew everything about me, Sir James,” Susanna said.
Their gazes locked like the hiss of blades engaging. Susanna’s skin prickled with awareness. Too late to back down now …
“On the contrary,” Dev said. “I remember, for instance, the very last time we met.” There was a hint of devilry in his eyes. He was enjoying baiting her. Susanna saw it and felt a flare of anger.
Then her gaze fell on Emma’s furious, pouting face and her anger dissolved into relief. This was just for show on Dev’s part, to punish her for past sins and make her squirm. He had no intention of revealing the truth. It would damage him as much as it would her. Emma, she was already persuaded, was no meek and biddable betrothed. And Emma must surely hold the purse strings because Dev had never had any money at all.
Susanna allowed her gaze to consider the extravagant embroidery on Dev’s white and gold waistcoat, the crisp quality of his linen and the unmistakable value of the diamond in his cravat pin. Then she let her eyes drift to Emma again. She saw Dev’s gaze follow her. She knew he understood.
Finally, she smiled. “Well,” she said, “I am sure you would not be so churlish as to bore everyone with the details, Sir James. There is nothing so tedious for others as old acquaintances harping on about past times.”
“Did you know one another in Ireland?” Emma had clearly had enough of their conversation. She pushed between them, looking from Dev to Susanna with ill-concealed jealousy. She made Ireland sound like the back of beyond, a place fit only to leave.
“We met briefly in Scotland,” Susanna said, “when Sir James was visiting his cousin Lord Grant one summer. It was a very long time ago.”
“But now we have the happy opportunity to renew our acquaintance.” The expression in Dev’s eyes was in direct contrast to the smoothness of his tone. “You must grant me the next dance, Lady Carew, so that we may talk about the past without boring our friends.”
In one sentence he had demolished her attempts to escape. Susanna mentally gritted her teeth. She recognized that determination in him. He had had the same single-mindedness at eighteen. He had seen something he wanted and he had taken it. She shivered.
“I have no desire to rake over the past,” she said. “I fear I am promised for the next, Sir James. You must excuse me.”
She turned pointedly to Fitz, allowing her fingers to brush his wrist in the lightest of gestures that nevertheless conveyed a hint of promise. She had almost forgotten about Fitz in the tumult of her feelings on seeing Devlin again. Already she had allowed herself to become distracted, which was not good enough when Fitz’s parents’ commission was all that stood between her and life on the London streets.
“Thank you for introducing me to your friends, my lord,” she said. “I hope we shall meet again soon.”
She scattered an impartial smile around the group, noting that Chessie’s response was a rather less than friendly nod and that Emma failed to acknowledge her at all. Fitz seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and kissed her hand with a gallantry that made Dev frown. Chessie turned away, as though she could not bear to watch Fitz’s attentiveness to another woman.
Susanna started to walk quickly toward the ballroom door. Now that she had escaped Dev her heart was bumping against her ribs in reaction and she felt breathless and shaky all over again. She needed somewhere quiet to go. She needed to think, to try to unravel the tangle of deceit and confusion she was suddenly caught up in.
“May I beg a dance later in the evening, Lady Carew?”
Freddie Walters was blocking her path, his gaze insolent, assessing her like a thoroughbred horse, his touch on her arm more than familiar. His tone said that he already knew everything he needed to know about her, that she was a widow of questionable morals who was probably not averse to a light love affair. The blatant disrespect in his manner set Susanna’s teeth on edge.
“Thank you, Mr. Walters,” she said, “but I have decided to go home. I have the headache.”
“A pity,” Walters murmured. “Perhaps I could call on you?”
“You’re making the lady’s headache worse, Walters.” It was Dev’s voice, cold with a hard edge. Susanna saw Walters’s eyes widen, then, as Dev made a sharp gesture, the other man scuttled off. Dev watched him out of earshot, then his gaze came back to Susanna’s face and fixed there. She had wanted to scuttle away, too, but she had the lowering thought that Dev would simply grab her if she tried to run out on him now. He did not appear to care much for the conventions of the ballroom since he had accosted her in the center of the floor.
“Thank you for your assistance,” she said coldly, “but it was quite unnecessary. I can look after myself.”
Dev smiled. “I am aware,” he said. His gaze, hard and appraising, traveled over her in a manner quite different from Walters’s blatant sexual calculation. It was thoughtful, measured and infinitely more disturbing.
“I was not trying to rescue you,” he added gently. “I wanted you to myself.”
His choice of words and the look in his eyes made Susanna quiver somewhere deep inside. He had removed the feeble threat that Walters posed only to replace it with something far more dangerous. Himself. He was confronting her here, in full view of the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s guests. It was audacious. It was impossible.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Susanna kept her voice steady. She had had nine years of learning how to protect herself. It had never been as difficult as it was now, trying to erect defenses against this man and his perceptive blue gaze and his forcefulness.
He laughed. “You can do better than that, Susanna. What the hell is going on?”
“I have no notion what you mean,” Susanna said. Her pulse was racing. She looked around but there was no refuge. She started to walk slowly to the side of the dance floor. Dev took her arm, adapting his long stride to her shorter steps. To an observer it would look as though they were doing what everyone else did between dances, strolling around the floor, chatting with the casual indifference of social acquaintances. Except that there was nothing casual in the touch of Dev’s hand.
“You owe me an explanation at the very least,” Dev said. “An apology, even—” his tone was sarcastic “—if that is not too much to expect.” For a moment Susanna saw somethin
g fierce in his eyes. A passing couple shot them a curious glance. They had caught the tone if not the content of Dev’s words and had sensed the tension in the air.
Susanna deployed her fan to shield her expression.
“It was a long time ago.” She aimed for disdain, cool and dismissive, and hit exactly the right note. “Yes, I left you, but surely you have managed to recover from the loss.” She paused, smiled. “Don’t tell me I broke your heart.”
She had provoked him on purpose and she expected him to tell her she had meant nothing to him. Instead she saw the heat and anger in his eyes intensify.
“I came back to find you,” he said, “two years later.”
Susanna almost dropped her fan. Two years. She had never known. She felt a mixture of bitterness and regret. It would have made no difference. Two years was far too late. It had been too late from the moment she had run away from him. She could see that now, with the benefit of hindsight. She could see all the mistakes she had made—see, too, how pointless it was to regret them almost a decade later.
“I only wished to ensure that our annulment had been granted.” Dev shot her a look, contemptuous, cold. “But when I called on your aunt and uncle they told me that you were dead.” He spoke through his teeth. “An overstatement of the facts, it would seem.”
Susanna was so shocked that she almost fell. For one long, terrifying moment the ballroom spun before her eyes, the music and voices fading, everything slipping away from her. She put out a hand and realized with blessed relief that they had reached the corner of the room and were standing beside one of the long, arched windows that opened onto the terrace. The cool pane of the glass was against her fingers and a breath of air stole into the overheated room.
She raised her eyes to Dev’s face. His expression was hard, his mouth a tight line. She could sense the elemental fury in him.
“Dead?” she whispered. It was true that her aunt and uncle had cast her out when she had fallen pregnant and refused to give up her child. She had been disowned, disinherited, dismissed. They had said she was dead to them. Evidently that was exactly what they had told everyone else, too.
The cold crept into her heart. Her family’s callous cruelty had almost destroyed her nine years before. Now she felt their malice touch her again. She had not thought they could hurt her anymore. She had been wrong.
Dev was still speaking. “Was it really necessary to go so far?” he was saying with biting anger. “It was not as though I wished for a reconciliation.”
He stopped. Susanna knew he was waiting for her reply but for a moment she could not find the words. There was so much to absorb, and so quickly; that he had come to find her, that her family had lied to him. It hurt much more than she would ever have anticipated.
“I …” Her chest was tight. She tried to breathe. She knew that she had to stop this now, before Dev realized that she had known nothing of her family’s shocking lies to him. Already he was getting too close. An instant’s slip on her part and she would give herself away. If he suspected the truth he would have endless questions for her; questions about the past, questions about what had happened to her and, more dangerous still, questions about her life now and why she was in London. She could tell him none of those things. She had to protect herself and her secrets at all costs or she would lose everything. Suddenly she was fiercely glad that she had never told him that their marriage had not been annulled. It could prove to be a useful weapon should she need to defend herself against him.
Susanna straightened, steadying herself. She drew in a deep breath, searching for the right words to drive Dev away from her. He forestalled her. His voice was thick and heavy with emotion, an emotion that even after the passage of nine years cut straight to the core of her and made her feel with an intensity she had not experienced in years.
“Hell and the devil, Susanna,” he burst out, “you were my wife, not some strumpet I had tumbled in a ditch! Don’t you owe me more than this? You walk out on me and then you ask your family to lie to me! Why would you do such a thing?”
There was such passion and honesty in his eyes. Susanna hated herself for what she was about to do, what she had to do in order to protect herself.
“I asked them to lie because I had to be sure to be rid of you,” she said. She made her voice light and uncaring. The words seemed to stick in her throat but she forced them out. She knew she had to finish this and make sure that Dev would hate her so much that he would never question her again. There was no other way.
“I wed you because I wanted you to rid me of the burden of my virginity,” she said. She dragged out a smile, made it vivid, convincing. She knew she was a good actress. She had had enough practice in those lean and bitter years after her family had disowned her, when her skill at dissembling was all that had stood between her and starvation.
“After one night of marriage I had everything I needed from you, Devlin,” she said. “I wanted to know about sex. You taught me.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was stony-faced, his jaw set hard as he listened to her cheapen the love they had shared. “It was delightful—” she gave a little shrug, matching the gesture to the dismissive tone of her voice “—but after I had seduced you I had no further use for you.”
That, she thought, should be enough to make him despise her. No man would accept such a blow to his pride. She turned to walk away.
Dev prevented her escape by the simple expedient of catching her wrist and drawing her close to him. Her body stirred to his touch, every fiber of her being waking to him as though they had never been apart. The color flooded her cheeks, heating her skin so that every inch of her felt alive and responsive as never before. She saw Dev’s gaze move over her slowly in precise and insolent appreciation of her state of arousal. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her gown. It had been chosen to ensnare Fitz, and for the first time that evening Susanna wished it was a little more demure. It felt as though the sweep of Dev’s eyes across the curves of her breasts was a sensual caress.
“A moment,” Dev said, and his voice was very soft amidst the hubbub of the ballroom, the tinkle of the music and the clamor of voices, soft but with an edge of steel. “This time you don’t walk away from me until I am ready, Susanna. This time you stay at my pleasure.”
CHAPTER THREE
DEV LOOKED AT HIS FORMER wife’s exquisite, defiant face and felt his temper soar dangerously again. She was damnably beautiful and his body reacted to the temptation she presented even as his mind dismissed her as the most conniving, duplicitous little harlot that had ever lived. He wanted to kiss her; to take that wide, sensuous mouth with his own, to bite down on the full lower lip and slide his tongue into her mouth and taste her again with all the explosive passion they had known before. He wanted to prove her indifference to him to be a sham. He wanted to strip the silver gown from her pale limbs and plunder her body ruthlessly until she was utterly quiescent in his arms.
It was hell being a reformed rake. He had given up other women when he had become betrothed to Emma but Dev knew that he was not really reformed at all. He might as well admit it. This dangerous attraction he had to Susanna was proof enough. Given half a chance, a quarter of a chance, he would like to ravish Susanna, to take her with merciless abandon and revel in the experience. Never had chastity seemed so unappealing an option. Never had his betrothal seemed so dull and colorless in contrast to the appeal of his treacherous former wife.
He could feel Susanna’s pulse hammering beneath his fingers. The silk of her glove gave her no protection from him. He knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And yet he was also ready to strangle her. Disloyal, deceitful Susanna Burney, who had seemed so radiantly innocent, had taken him royally for a fool. He had thought that he had seduced and wed a naive young girl. Instead she had been using him to gain a little worldly experience.
Dev exerted absolute self-discipline to keep himself under control. He felt a raw edge of anger as cutting as a blade. A m
oment before, when he had challenged Susanna about her family’s duplicity, he had felt a fleeting uncertainty. He had seen the shock in her eyes and thought that she must have been in ignorance of their vile pretence. Her mocking words had swiftly put paid to that idea. Instead of being a victim she had been at the heart of the plan to deceive him.
He looked at her. She was watching him and despite that fierce attraction that locked them together there was also a derisive glint in her green eyes. He wondered how it was possible to be so mistaken in a woman. The Susanna Burney he had known at eighteen had seemed so shy and sweet. It was difficult to see how she could have changed into this brazen creature. On the other hand he had to accept that it was almost ten years ago, he had been eighteen years old and perhaps not such a man of the world as he had liked to imagine. Doubtless he had been the one who was naive. His judgment had certainly been spectacularly flawed when it came to his adoring bride.
“There was no need to wed me if all you wanted was to be rid of your virginity,” he said grimly. “You should have told me. I would have been happy to oblige you—without the benefit of clergy.”
Their eyes tangled. He saw the sensual heat flare again in hers, turning them a darker green, bright as emeralds. In a split second he was transported from the bustling ballroom to the intimate darkness of their marriage bed. They had had one night only, one night of sweet desire and passion richer and deeper than his most vivid dreams. She had been the first and only woman he had loved. That sense of intimacy had been more frightening than the reckless pleasure he had found in her arms. That emotion had been strong and profound enough to bind him to her forever. Then she had run out on him the next day and ripped everything apart.
Now she stood looking at him with cool disdain, the desire banished from her eyes.
“You misunderstand,” she said. “Marriage was a necessity. I had no wish to be a whore.”
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