With an oath, the earl turned away, but the countess caught his arm so that he spun back to the painting. She pointed her finger, the rings on her elegant hand sparkling in the candlelight.
“Can none of our children content you? Look at Harry—the only one of all of us who is laughing! Your favorite son, with my hair and your eyes. Beautiful, faultless Harry! You don’t mention his marriage?”
The earl’s face seemed to have become spongy, as if his features had lost the bone beneath them.
“I won’t—” The earl choked on the words. “Henry is as good as dead to me, madam. And after such a foul mésalliance, do you think I shall let Joanna ruin herself? Oh, no! They shall marry. If Joanna is determined on a rake, she shall have one. But she has brought dishonor to this house. To elope is a scandal, even if he were a royal duke. I’m damned if I intend to act happy over it.”
He wrenched from her, and thumped away to disappear up the stairs.
Lady Acton stood alone in the echoing hall, gazing at the two youngest children in the portrait: John, a little lad in petticoats, grown into boyhood now and at Eton, and Milly, the baby.
Then she looked at Joanna and felt the familiar tug of the child who was most like her. Joanna was scowling, clutching a doll in one hand, which she dangled by its legs, and hanging onto Harry’s coattail with the other.
Stormy, difficult Joanna, who had just doomed herself to a loveless marriage with a man who would break her wild heart. There was no way out of it. Within two days, all of London would know that Lady Joanna Acton had brought shame and scandal to two of the greatest families in the land.
An immediate wedding was the only solution. Joanna must marry Quentin Mountfitchet without delay.
Lady Acton turned away from the portrait and climbed up the stairs after her husband. There was a great deal to discuss.
* * *
“Shall I kill him for you?”
Joanna’s mind seemed to blur into a horrified blankness as Quentin said the words.
The tall, black-visaged stranger, Quentin’s brother, Lord Tarrant, did not move. He leaned, still nonchalant, still smiling, with his back to the door.
His presence dominated the room.
He said nothing.
Her attention snapped back into focus. She stumbled away from Quentin to drop into the chair beside the fireplace, as if her legs could no longer hold her.
She felt faint, for heaven’s sake. She had never been weak, or had the megrims. What on earth was the matter with her?
Quentin stalked to the window and closed it.
“How noble! And how typical of you to disarm yourself before facing me. When you’re such a good shot it would be the action of a cad, wouldn’t it, to draw a pistol on your own brother? If you allowed your finger to tremble for an instant on that hair trigger I should be dead.”
“I’m glad that you know me so well,” the demon visitor said.
Quentin laughed. “Since my aim is less sure, I have no such scruples. When I point my weapon it might well go off, but the ball might not pierce your heart. I might shoot your arm, or your knee, or take off an ear quite by accident.”
He grinned and ran his left hand through his hair as he turned back to face Lord Tarrant.
“I wonder what portion of your anatomy you would miss the most?”
“Go ahead!” The visitor had not moved from his post at the door. “I’m an easy enough target.”
Joanna saw the reflection first: the sunlight glinting on the engraved metal of a small pocket pistol. Quentin held it steadily in his right hand with the barrel pointing directly at his brother’s heart.
He began to lower it slowly, one inch at a time.
“A bullet in the heart? In the ribs? In the belly? Or lower yet?”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “For God’s sake! Quentin!”
“He’s foxed, Lady Joanna.” The dark eyes seemed unconcerned, still relaxed. “Hadn’t you noticed? Your darling swain is barely in possession of his senses. What’s a little more murder and mayhem to a rake in his cups?”
Quentin smiled, still slowly lowering the barrel of the pistol.
“You should know, Fitzroy, all about murder and mayhem. Yet without your right arm, you would find it hard to practice that stunning swordsmanship. Without your knee, alas, no more dashing exploits on horseback. Without your ear? No more music and thus no more dancing, the gentle art that allows ladies to soften in your arms. For, of course, you know even more than I about being a rake, don’t you?”
He moved the pistol down another inch. “Although if my hand should tremble in the next minute or so, that career also might be over for good.”
“Would that be enough atonement for Juanita?” Lord Tarrant said very softly.
Quentin tightened his fingers slightly. A lethal concentration came over his face.
Joanna’s momentary paralysis disappeared. She leaped at Quentin, wrenching at his sleeve. In the same instant Lord Tarrant threw himself violently to one side.
The pistol jerked. A bright flash, black smoke, and a deafening explosion roared in the small room.
She clung to Quentin’s arm.
In a blur of powerful movement, Tarrant had rolled, landed back on his feet, and closed the space between them.
She felt Quentin stagger as his brother slapped him hard across the face. The viscount was taller, more powerful, and Quentin crumbled, the pistol falling to the floor.
Steel clattered on wood, followed by a sickening thud as the brown curls hit the hard boards.
She fell with him, bruising her shin and her elbow.
“You’re a bloody fool, brother,” the demon’s voice said almost in her ear. “To drink so much damned cheap liquor.”
Ignoring Joanna, Lord Tarrant took his brother by his lapels and shook him.
She stared up at him. How fine and smooth his skin was, darkly shadowed at the clean jaw! She felt the most unholy impulse to reach up to mark it with her nails. The intensity of the feeling left her shaking.
Joanna sat up, instead, and looked at her escort. Quentin had passed out. He lay supine on the oak floorboards, breathing steadily, a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
Suppressing her confusion of emotions, she struggled to her feet and limped back to her chair.
Lord Tarrant stood up and dusted off his hands, still gazing down at his brother.
After a moment he picked up the pistol and thrust it into his own pocket.
“Was it your intention, Lady Joanna,” he asked quietly, “to get me killed?”
“For heaven’s sake,” she snapped. “It would seem to be you offering violence.”
He turned his head to look at her, his dark, piercing gaze emphasized by his strong brows and lush black lashes.
She met it with clear defiance, expecting to see a murderous rage in those handsome features, but her challenge dissolved into bewilderment. Lord Tarrant’s face was lit with a kind of desperate laughter, his gaze brilliant with awareness, his mouth curved by an amusement that seemed merely cruel.
Once again she had the odd sense that she was out of her depth, threatened, endangered more by this man than she had ever been by his brother, the infamous Quentin Mountfitchet.
“I trust you’re not seriously hurt?” he asked, still with that dark raillery in his eyes.
“Oh, good heavens, no! I’m fine. Or at least, as well as might be expected for someone who has just been cursed at, deafened by a pistol, thrown to the floor, and accused of abetting murder. May I assume Quentin will recover?”
“All too soon, I fear. How long has he been drinking?”
“Only three hours or so, since we’ve been here. And from the flask he had in his pocket as we drove, of course. Though I believe I would trust him more foxed than I would you sober. What a shame that he’s not much of a shot!”
“Oh, no, Lady Joanna,” Lord Tarrant said softly. “He was lying. Quentin is a dead shot, even three sheets to the wind.”
Joanna gazed at him in a kind of mesmerized horror. “And you goaded and challenged him unarmed? Did you know he had a pistol?”
“I thought it very likely.”
“Then you’re mad.”
“Am I?” he asked. “But you are the one who ran away with him.”
“And would have been thankful if you had refrained from interfering.”
Someone was pounding up the stairs leading to the room. Joanna turned away from Lord Tarrant, and drew herself up like a duchess, just as Miss Able had taught her.
“Perhaps while you are explaining all this to mine host, you would ask for tea to be sent up? Made with freshly boiling water, if he would be so kind.”
The innkeeper flung open the door. “My lords! I pray of you. This is a respectable house.”
Lord Tarrant laughed. He walked up and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder in a convincing imitation of casual camaraderie.
“And so I trust, sir. My brother imbibed a little too much of your excellent claret and has passed out. In falling, his pistol discharged accidentally. No one is hurt, but sadly there is a shocking hole in your plaster. I shall cover all of your expenses for repair and any inconvenience, of course. In the meantime . . .”
Coin flashed in his hand, which the innkeeper accepted with alacrity.
“It has caused a sad start to this lady, and she would like some tea, made with freshly boiling water.”
“In a warmed pot,” Joanna added.
She was far too hot, so she pulled off her pelisse and settled herself, with what she hoped was dignity, in the chair beside the fire.
Their host, his eyes round as he caught sight of the gentleman sprawled unconscious on the floor, bowed and stepped out.
Joanna watched silently as the demon lord caught Quentin around the shoulders and dragged him to the chaise longue at the side of the room. The heels of Quentin’s boots squeaked a little on the polished floor.
Lord Tarrant picked his brother up bodily and dropped him onto the plush surface of the couch. He did it easily, as if Quentin were no weight at all. He stood looking down at him, his dark brow still contracted.
“No doubt you see me as the malevolent spirit,” he said suddenly, “come to interrupt your escape into blissful matrimony. What on earth attracted you to the idea? Your bridegroom is totally sodden. Whether I had interfered or not, he would not have made it much farther today.”
Joanna stared up at him, her expression deliberately icy.
“We shall never know, shall we?” she said with emphasis. “Since you took it upon yourself to beat him into unconsciousness. And he is not my bridegroom.”
Lord Tarrant turned and strode across the room to stand over her. He was very tall.
Determined not to be intimidated, Joanna stood. She still had to look up into his face, and she was mystified by what she saw there: a derisive anger, with the dark shadow of something almost like despair.
“Oh, really?” he said quietly. “So you intended to live with my brother in sin? An earl’s daughter, a schoolgirl, not yet out, hopes to set up unlawful housekeeping with a drunken rake. How very bold and original of you!”
Joanna gazed stubbornly into his face.
“What can you know about me? Nothing! You understand nothing. Nothing at all!”
He stepped closer. Since the backs of her knees were against her chair, she could not move away without ducking or sitting down. Either movement seemed a concession of defeat, so Joanna stood her ground.
“I understand this much, Lady Joanna: that you spent the night unchaperoned in his company. And that you welcomed Quentin’s lecherous attentions in the full view of everyone in the coach yard without care for discretion or reputation.”
“Reputation?” Joanna said. “It won’t matter to me in the least.”
“Obviously not, since you arrived here like this at a common posting house, alone with him. How do you suppose the two earls will react, your father and mine?”
How very powerful he was, breathing strength and an easy athleticism! Joanna felt the force of it like a weight, pushing for her surrender.
“I have no idea how Lord Evenham will react, since I’ve never met him. As for my father? I don’t care. Neither my brothers, nor my sister Eleanor, married to please him. My father’s reaction was to swear to arrange every detail of my future, as if I alone can make up for all their transgressions. That’s why I’ve not made my debut in London society. Instead, he is determined to force me into a suitable marriage as soon as possible—the limp son of the Duke of May has been suggested—and I shall defy him over it just as they did. But I do not intend to become Quentin’s mistress.”
Lord Tarrant laughed. The rich sound transformed him from a merely dangerous demon into a fiendish one.
“Indeed? Then why did you kiss him?”
“I wanted to see what it would be like.”
“Dear God!” He was still standing very close. He laid one hand softly along her cheek. “And did you like it? Hardly a wise experiment!”
“Why? Because Quentin is a rake? Why are females denied all experience and kept at home like decorative ornaments, when gentlemen can plunge into the world to discover it for themselves? Don’t you think that the female sex has as much intelligence and as much talent? But how can any of it be developed, how can any of it grow into something real, if we aren’t allowed to make mistakes?”
He didn’t answer.
The warm, caressing touch at her jaw was insistently summoning agitation. She bit it back.
His other hand stroked her hair away from her ear, delicate, subtle, his fingers meeting at her sensitive nape, and staying there, moving softly.
She stood like a rock, staring up at him, while the ripples of sensation flowed out through her blood. His fingers stroked over the lobes of her ears and rubbed gently down the line of her throat to her pulse, beating wildly in its own rhythm of madness.
Joanna was trapped against the chair. She tried to move back, but her knees buckled and she was forced to catch his coat in her hands to prevent herself falling.
He was strong, and steady, and dangerous.
Her senses were filled with her awareness of him. His dark eyes with their fringe of long lashes. His masculine scent, of the wild woods and leather and horses. Both hands moved up her throat, over her chin, to brush gently at her cheek, one thumb caressing the corner of her mouth.
Joanna felt the warm, sweet trail of it, like a melody on her skin, promising strange and perilous delights.
“And what was it like?” he asked softly.
“An interesting experience.”
Her tone was biting. It took everything she had not to let it tremble instead.
“Interesting? How very clinical! But pray, don’t tell Quentin your assessment of his skills, will you? He would be mortally wounded that you were not more impressed. But then, how many dull kisses have you suffered as a basis for comparison, Lady Joanna?”
He smiled as he ran one finger slowly along the curve of her upper lip. Her soul flamed, a flare of desire, deep and urgent, imperious in its demand.
His eyes dilated into pools of black, as dark and deep and full of mystery as the mere at King’s Acton on a midsummer night. Without compunction, as if his blood burned in him like lava, he bent his head and kissed her.
Joanna forgot everything as she felt the angry, passionate tremble of her lips beneath his.
Had she invited this? Was this was she wanted?
She had no idea, but her body bent against his as his mouth compelled her response. An ocean roared in her ears, as if gale-force winds tore at her, tossed her like a boat helplessly on the white-topped waves.
Oh, this was not simple or merely agreeable!
It was searing, frightening, tyrannical in its dominance of her senses, a glorious blaze of sensation melting her to the very core. She wanted to rail at him, or tear him apart.
Yet she was melting, melting, like butter in the sun.
It wasn�
��t fair!
Something rattled at the door, followed by a sharp knock.
Lord Tarrant spun about, rage in every line of his taut body, his hands still gripping Joanna by the arms.
A maid stepped into the room carrying a tray with cups and a silver tea service. Precariously balancing the tray, she dropped a curtsy.
Joanna stared up at her captor, her lips bruised and her blood on fire.
The wild, high song of the Sirens echoed in her veins, waking her to something new and infinitely desirable, so that she would never be content again.
Why? Why had he done that to her?
“You ordered tea, my lord?” the maid asked nervously. “For your brother’s wife?”
“This lady is not his wife,” Lord Tarrant replied in chilling tones. “She is our sister.”
“No, she is not,” a man’s voice said from the open doorway. “She is mine.”
Chapter 4
The tones were flat, hard, and filled with a virulence that Joanna could hardly believe came from her brother. She watched him, tall and blond, step into the room.
Richard closed the door behind the fleeing maid. A deep line was etched between his brows. He was tired, obviously. It was a long ride from Acton Mead, and no doubt he had ridden fast on horseback as he had traveled so often in the Peninsula.
“What the devil fool start is this, Joanna?” he asked coldly, ignoring Lord Tarrant entirely. “Get your things together. I’m taking you home.”
She hated to wound him. Joanna loved Richard dearly. But she had no intention of being returned in disgrace to her family, or worse, to Miss Able’s Academy.
“I can’t come, Richard. I’m sorry.”
Viscount Tarrant had already released her. He leaned casually against the mantel. He was unarmed. Quentin’s pistol in his pocket had already been discharged, and he had earlier claimed to be carrying nothing to defend himself. Joanna had no doubt that her brother would be carrying a loaded weapon, but Richard would never shoot at an unarmed man.
Quite simply, Lord Lenwood had too much honor.
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