Nicola Cornick Collection

by Nicola Cornick

  The curtain swept across to mark the interval and the chatter in the theater swelled to deafening proportions. Emma smiled prettily at him, her bad temper apparently banished. Fitz and Susanna did not appear to have noticed that the first act had ended, so engrossed were they in one another. Dev watched as Fitz bent forward to whisper in Susanna’s ear, so close it looked as though he was within an inch of kissing the delicate line of her throat above the ruby necklace. He paused there, allowing his breath to feather across her skin and stir the tendrils of hair by her ear. Dev felt the anger tighten inside him again like a taut rope. He watched as Susanna’s lips curved up in the most tantalizing smile. She half-turned her head so that Fitz caught the flirtatious edge of that smile and then she playfully pushed him away with her fan. Fitz snatched the fan from her hand then held it out of her reach as she laughingly tried to reclaim it. Dev wanted to punch him. He balled his fists at his sides. The ostentatious flirtations of the ton went on all the time but this one grated on his nerves. His frustrations were purely on Chessie’s behalf, of course, or so he told himself. He could see her chances of becoming Marchioness of Alton slipping away like water through the fingers and all because Susanna was a scheming hussy and Fitz was spoiled and arrogant and used to getting what he wanted.

  Susanna caught his gaze. Again she smiled, this time with mockery in the depths of her green eyes and Dev pointedly turned away. He wanted to strangle her, wanted it with a violence that was deeply disturbing. He was actually glad when Emma put a hand on his arm and very demurely asked him to escort her to speak with her friend Miss Daventry in the next box but one. They went out together and joined the crowds of theatergoers moving from box to box to greet their friends and acquaintances.

  Once, Dev remembered, this had been the part of the night that would appeal to him the most. Emma had introduced him to endless useful contacts, to a stratum of society that had once been out of his reach and had glittered and tempted him beyond all reason. He had been at the height of his celebrity when he had first met Emma, a hero returning from a treasure-hunting voyage to Mexico, the darling of society. He had relished the notoriety of his name and had used both his celebrity and Emma’s connections shamelessly to mountaineer up the ton. Susanna had been right to call him a fortune hunter. Not only had he sought money, he had sought advancement and all the advantages that his position could bring.

  Tonight, though, for the first time the process felt pointless and a dead bore. Perhaps it was because he was so close to achieving all he had ever wanted and so there was no element of challenge anymore. Dev thought about the future as Emma’s husband and this endless, elegantly monotonous round of life, season after season, year after year, with no real purpose at all, and found that he was almost yawning. He realized that the Dowager Lady Daventry was standing directly in front of him and turned the yawn into a bland smile.

  “Good evening, ma’am …” He took her hand, bowing with supreme elegance, pressing a kiss on her glove in an old-fashioned gesture of gallantry. The older ladies always liked that, complaining as they did about the lack of manners in the younger generation. Lady Daventry blushed and fluttered.

  “Emma, my dear,” she cooed, “you must snap up this young man in marriage at once before I elope with him myself!”

  Dev smiled mechanically and said all the right things as Emma dragged him from group to group, her hand feeling more and more like a manacle on his arm as they went along. This, he reminded himself, was one of the reasons he had proposed to her. She was beautiful, rich and well-connected and he …

  And he did not appear to care anymore.

  Dev froze where he stood. This, he reminded himself, was everything that he had ever wanted: money, success and status. And yes, he still wanted money, success, fame, status and all the trappings of wealth but as Emma tugged his arm again it felt as though the price was becoming extortionately high.

  “Dev! Dev!” Emma was whispering in his ear. At first Dev thought that she was trying to prompt him to respond to some urgent social inquiry, then he realized with shock and dawning horror that Emma had taken advantage of a brief moment’s privacy behind a marble pillar to press her body hotly against his and put her lips to his ear.

  “Come to me tonight,” she whispered. Her tongue darted wetly into his ear in what Dev could only assume was an innocent’s attempt to be erotic. “Meet me in the walled garden behind the house. I want you.” This last was accompanied by another thrust of her body against his.

  She released him as Freddie Walters approached, and spun away, throwing a little come-hither smile at him over her shoulder. Dev found himself unable to move for several seconds. Unless he had utterly misinterpreted the situation—and he could not see that it was open to a great deal of misunderstanding—his virginal fiancée had just propositioned him to seduce her.

  He waited to feel something. Triumph would be a good response; he had played a waiting game with Emma, treating her with the cut-glass respect that a sheltered heiress demanded. True, this had been more out of the knowledge that if he seduced Emma or eloped with her, her parents would in all probability cut her off without a penny and then he would be stuck with a spoiled brat of a wife and no money to soften the pain. But now she was trying to seduce him and Dev thought he could succumb gracefully, go to Emma’s parents and tell them that after two years of abstinence he and Emma had been carried away by their love for one another … He would press for the wedding to be held soon and he did not think at this stage, with Emma’s reputation at stake, Lord and Lady Brooke would cavil at his suggestion.

  There was only one drawback with this masterly plan.

  He did not want to do it.

  He felt not a flicker of desire for Emma and he was not even sure that he could seduce her if he wanted to.

  The sweat broke out on his forehead. He thought about ravishing Emma; thought about it in bright, vivid detail in the same way that he had remembered making love to Susanna. This time his body remained stubbornly unresponsive. He slammed his palm against the marble pillar in sheer exasperation. Hell and the devil, he was supposed to be a rake. This was a gift to him, the prize he had been waiting for. He should be primed and ready to exploit it, leap into the walled garden and ravish Emma in the gazebo or against a tree or on the garden bench or all three. He should make love to her until she was so swept away by sensual pleasure that she demanded to marry him there and then. He should be eager. Emma was, after all, deliciously pretty as well as being deliciously rich.

  He looked down. Nothing disturbed the smooth fit of his pantaloons. He was not eager. He was moribund.

  Another wave of unease assailed him. Suppose he was to press ahead with Emma’s seduction and when it came to the point, still he could not perform? He had never had that problem in his entire life. Or only once or twice when he had been too drunk. Sexual anxiety was hardly his style.

  The conclusion was inescapable. He did not want Emma. Not one whit; not at all. What he wanted …

  Something flickered across his line of vision, a woman in a gown of golden gauze that sheathed her body so tight and so close that he wanted to grab her and unwrap her like a gift, burying his face against her naked skin and inhaling her scent, tangling his fingers in her silky black hair and losing himself in her over and over again until they were both sated.

  His senses stirred. His body leaped to attention. He watched Susanna as she slipped from the room and away along the corridor, the golden gown shimmering like gossamer.

  He did not want Emma, his beautiful, rich, well-connected fiancée. He wanted Susanna, his beautiful, perfidious former wife.

  He was in deep trouble.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SUSANNA WAS TIRED. NEVER before had an assignment caused her as much trouble as Fitzwilliam Alton was doing. Normally she enjoyed the challenge, but now her head ached, her feet in their adorable golden slippers ached and, rather oddly, her heart felt as though it was aching, too. Fitz’s attentions were becoming very ma
rked, very quickly, which was going to be a problem. She wished he were not quite such a rake. Rakes were a great deal more difficult to control than other men. They required more effort, more careful handling and a great deal of fending off.

  Fitz’s purpose, Susanna knew perfectly well, was to lure her into his bed as soon as possible. The fact that she was, nominally at least, an acquaintance of his parents, would not stop him. It was a game they were playing, the courtship dance that he thought would end in a most satisfactory affaire and Susanna knew would not. Fitz was, she had divined, a man of very simple desires, and at the moment he desired her. He was also extremely indulged, pampered from birth, accustomed to having everything that he wanted served up to him on a plate.

  He would not be having her.

  Her purpose was to fascinate Fitz but simultaneously thwart him. It was similar to the job of a juggler in a traveling circus, keeping all the balls in the air, not dropping a catch as she had done yesterday when Devlin had successfully distracted her. Susanna closed her eyes and pushed away the prickle of irritation that the memory had evoked. She could not allow Dev to get under her skin again. She had had to work very hard to make up the lost ground and gain this evening’s invitation.

  She had no intention of becoming Fitz’s mistress. She had absolutely no inclination to take him as a lover, and anyway this was business not pleasure; there would be a danger that her power over Fitz would wane if he sated his lust. He could easily turn back to the virginal charms of Miss Francesca Devlin and then all would be lost. She had to seduce him into marriage, not into her bed. The way she always worked was to extract the marriage proposal, accept gracefully and then, after a couple of months, ruefully confess that she had acted hastily, she had changed her mind, and it was all a mistake. It had worked successfully in the past and there was no reason to suppose that Fitz would not be the next victim of her carefully calculated heartbreak.

  Except that the fly in the ointment was Devlin. She did not want to admit to doubts but this was her most tricky case yet and conducting a flirtation with another man under Dev’s stony gaze was proving to be very difficult. Susanna sighed, pressing her fingers to her temple where her headache pounded. Really, Dev should bottle that stern disapproval and sell it to chaperons. He would make a fortune and then he would not need to tout himself around to rich heiresses.

  She watched Fitz from her seat. He had detoured from fetching her iced lemonade—which would be lukewarm by the time it reached her—in order to greet some family friends in the box opposite. Wherever he went the ladies fluttered for his attention like a host of brightly colored butterflies basking in the warmth of the sun. From the theater box he made his slow progress along the curving corridor back toward her. Now she could see that he had been waylaid by one of the demimonde’s most notorious courtesans; in a flicker of an eyelash he had leaned in to whisper something in her ear, the woman had nodded and moved on with a murmur of silken skirts. A cynical smile deepened on Susanna’s lips. Perhaps Fitz was cleverer than he seemed. He had certainly realized he would not be sharing her bed tonight and so had made other arrangements in order to satisfy his carnal desires.

  “I see that Fitz spurns your charms for those of Miss Kingston, Lady Carew.”

  The voice was familiar, annoying so. Susanna looked up. Dev was standing before her, looking supremely elegant in his slashed white and gold embroidered waistcoat and his pristine white linen and his diamonds so bright they almost dazzled. She had heard that when Dev had first returned to London from his seafaring adventures he had worn a pearl in his ear. The ladies had apparently adored it. He had toned down that extravagant excess now, or rather transmuted it into something more tasteful and expensive. But there was still an edge of flamboyance to him and in his eyes was more than a hint of the old piratical James Devlin, the man who had taken three enemy ships in one engagement, won a treasure chest in a game of chance and, if the rumors were true, seduced an admiral’s daughter up against the mainsail of his ship.

  She met the sardonic glint in his eyes. He took the empty seat beside her without asking permission.

  “Perhaps,” Dev continued, “your amatory skills are not quite as sophisticated as you imagine and Fitz is already bored with you?” He shifted. “If you would allow me to give you some advice, yesterday in the carriage you did kiss rather like an amateur—”

  “Pray keep your advice for someone who appreciates it,” Susanna said. She knew he was trying to provoke her and he was succeeding effortlessly. It seemed that anything Dev said to her cut straight through her defenses and set a barb in her heart. She was hurting somewhere and she neither liked it nor understood it.

  Dev smiled and shrugged. “Very well. We will change the subject. Fortune hunting can be so devilishly boring, do you not find?” He stretched out his long legs, casting her a sideways glance that was full of amusement. “You look blue-deviled. But then I am not surprised. I’m afraid that Fitz is not the sharpest blade. His conversation can lack sparkle.”

  “I am enjoying my evening,” Susanna said shortly.

  “Of course you are.” Dev’s mouth twisted into a grin. “You invest a great deal of time, energy and patience in cultivating Fitz’s interest and then—” he snapped his fingers “—he throws you over for a courtesan.”

  “That does not trouble me,” Susanna said, entirely truthful.

  She felt Dev’s cool blue gaze search her face and wondered what he saw there. “No,” he said after a moment. There was a hint of a frown in his eyes. “I don’t believe it does. How singular.” His tone was pensive. “It can only mean that you do not care a rush for him.”

  Susanna gave a little shrug. She was not going to pretend to affection for Fitz that she did not feel. Dev would only call her on it. Annoyingly he seemed to understand her too well for her to dissemble.

  “A woman is setting herself up for disappointment if she expects fidelity from any man,” she said.

  Dev’s blue eyes were very bright, his expression impassive. “A somewhat negative philosophy,” he murmured.

  “A realistic one,” Susanna flashed back bitterly before she could help herself.

  “I am sorry you have found it so,” Dev said. “I had no idea that your late husband was a rake.” He paused. “Or do you speak of other lovers?”

  “I don’t wish to speak of any lovers,” Susanna snapped.

  Dev’s mouth twisted. “Well, at least you cannot reproach me,” he murmured. “You never gave me the chance to be unfaithful to you. You were gone too quickly from our marriage bed.”

  “I am not talking about us,” Susanna said. “Let us change the subject again. Did you enjoy the first half performance, Sir James?”

  “Oh, the performance was masterly,” Dev said. There was a hint of grimness in his tone now. “But I found little to enjoy in it.” He turned in the chair so that he was looking at her more directly and she felt his gaze very keenly on her face. “Or were you referring to the play?”

  “You are determined to quarrel with me tonight,” Susanna said.

  “Yes,” Dev agreed. “I suppose I am.” He laughed. “I thought your pretence of enthusiasm very well done when surely you must find the theater dull.”

  “I don’t know why you would think that,” Susanna said. She felt stung by his cynicism. “I love the theater. One can escape reality and lose oneself in a play—” She stopped abruptly, aware that she had given away more than she had intended and that Dev, always so sharp, had already spotted her slip.

  “How interesting,” he said slowly. “You have so much, Lady Carew. Why would you wish to escape? What would you wish to escape?”

  Their eyes met and held and once again, as at Tattersalls’, Susanna felt the elusive pull of affinity between them. She forced herself to look away and gave a little careless shrug.

  “Oh, I merely meant that I enjoy the playacting.”

  “Oh, well, I can see you would be drawn to that,” Dev said cynically. He relaxed back in his
seat. “Do you not prefer faster entertainments, though? The pursuit of young sprigs of the nobility, for a start?”

  “I never pursue more than one young sprig at once,” Susanna said. She felt relief that Dev had apparently been diverted from questioning her about her previous words at the same time as feeling a hollow sense of regret that she could not be honest with him. “Fitz is older than I am,” she added. “You make me sound as though I am trying to snatch him from the cradle.”

  “He may be older in years, perhaps,” Dev said, “but he is a lamb to the slaughter.”

  Susanna stifled a laugh. “How absurd you are. Fitz is no naive youth. He is a thorough-going, dangerous rake.”

  “Which evidently does not scare you.”

  Susanna shook her head. “I am far too old a hand to be frightened of a libertine,” she said.

  “Perhaps it is his bad reputation that attracts you? Oh, I forgot,” Dev said, with studied insolence, “your own lack of morals and principles should surely be enough for two.”

  The atmosphere in the theater, stiflingly hot on this humid summer night, seemed to freeze.

  “Do you have a point to make, Sir James?” Susanna asked frigidly.

  “Yes,” Dev said. “I find I have to be very plain with you.” He paused. “You are aware, I am sure, that Fitz is to marry my sister, Francesca?”

  His tone was even, with no trace of a threat, yet Susanna still shivered. She had known it would not take Dev long to warn her off openly and here it was, the moment she had been anticipating. She flicked him a look under her lashes.