A Little Deception (42 page)

He was looking at her as if he could not believe it.

“I can manage very well without Mr Kirkman and if you
choose to deny me my son on account of it, you are within your rights,” she
said coldly.

“And I can manage very well without you!”

The anger drained from her. Sorrow took its place.
They had once loved each other. It could have been so wonderful.

“Olivia.” There was so much pain invested in the word
she nearly wept. She kept her head averted.

After a silence he shrugged and there was a distance
to his tone as he said, “A boy needs a father.”

“Mr Petersham would have done just as well.”

Max gave a sardonic chuckle. “You really are trying to
live up to your reputation.”

She made her tone deliberately careless. “Since it was
only you I wanted—yet clearly it is impossible for us to live with the
uncomfortable truth between us—I no longer care what becomes of me. I
shall make a point of enjoying my road to eternal damnation.” She smiled
sweetly. “When your worthy Miss Hepworth becomes too tiresome you can look to
The
Tatler
for some diverting scandal about the latest exploits of the brazen
Lady Farquhar.”

Clearly he did not share her self-deprecating humour
for he said with a narrow look, “The future Viscount Farquhar will not be
brought up in such a manner. If you want to keep Julian, you forget yourself,
Olivia.”

She tensed as she registered his words exhaled on a
shuddering breath.

 
“At the
end of the week you shall marry Reverend Kirkman. He has been … good … to you.
You deserve each other.”

“Oh God,” she whispered, covering her face with her
hands. “Would you really condemn me to torment by
forcing
me to marry
the reverend? Just because he knows the worst of me? I am not
so
far
beyond redemption?”

“I have discovered too much, Olivia, to know what
alternative you have.”

She nearly choked on her anger. “You self-righteous
beast!” she cried, lunging at him with flailing fists. “You’re no better than
Lucien! I hate you!”

Caught by surprise as the glancing blow struck his
jaw, he gripped her wrists while pain tore behind his eyes.

“You hate
me
?” he repeated.

He could not believe it of her. What did she expect?
To allow her
carte blanche
to continue her reckless, ill-chosen path, dragging
Julian along with her?”

Wincing, he acknowledged his love for the boy. How
could he not? For more than a year they had been as close as father and son.

Her eyes were like blue thunder, her skin flushed and
her creamy flesh tantalisingly bared by her sumptuous, scandalous dress; he
thought he’d never wanted her so much.

But the price was too high. She would forever revel in
the power she had over him. He did not think his manhood could sustain a
lifetime of it.

She was straining across his lap as he caught her
wrists. Holding them above her head caused her body to sag into his. He closed
his eyes against the desire to place a kiss upon the flesh that swelled above
her low cut bodice; fought the raging impulses that rushed through his body as
anger faded beneath his yearning. Her hot breath on his cheek as he parried her
blows quickly fanned the flames into full blown desire.

For an instant she stilled. He opened his eyes in the
startled silence and saw that she felt it, too. She wilted in his embrace, her
face inches from his, her eyes dark pools of need.

The thread that connected their two hearts from the
moment they’d met tugged tighter. He was devastatingly aware of the soft
contours of her body and for a second he almost yielded.

Of all the women he’d known, none had the power to
stir his senses as the fascinating, faithless creature before him.

Common sense returned and he jerked back as if stung.

He turned his head away before the hurt and surprise
on her face could weave their spell upon his all too susceptible heart.

“We’re here,” he said as the horses turned into the
stable yard. With enormous effort he kept his voice neutral. “Kirkman is
waiting for you.”

She did not want to go. He knew he forced her against
her will; that he was abusing his power in this act of spite and
self-righteousness.

He didn’t care. If she hated him for it, all the
better. He didn’t know if he had the fortitude to hold out if it was any other
way.

Smoothing her dress she sat back in her seat, glaring
at him. “I had not known such a fine line existed between the affection you’ve
always extended towards me and” — she nearly choked on the words —
“the disgust you clearly feel for me now.”

When he didn’t answer she whispered after a silence,
“Could I change your mind?” Then, more desperately, “I do not wish to marry
Reverend Kirkman. Since I have made that plain, perhaps you’d like to know my
reasons.”

“I’m not interested in your reasons.” He knew he was
being childish and pig-headed but he wanted to hurt her. Humiliate her.

The carriage jerked to a halt and Max rose over her in the small space.
It was not a comforting thought that his domination and angry snarl: “Perhaps
confessing tonight’s little dalliance might ease your conscience” could only
remind her of Lucien. Yet perhaps Lucien’s behaviour was not so reprehensible
given all he had learned of Olivia.
 
Opening the door and jumping out onto the hay-strewn cobblestones he
added, “If you have one.”

‘Dramatic,
heartfelt and unusual!’ Eikli sweeps you away into a dangerous world where only
the most daring player wins love.’ – Best-selling romance writer, Anna
Campbell.

The following scene takes place when Sarah
demonstrates to her young charge, Caro, the power of deportment and
presentation as she adopts three different personas: the dowdy dormouse
performing at a musical recital, followed by the poised and confident
performer. Here she’s taking her performace to extremes.
 

Sarah hurried down
the stairs to the large, lovely drawing room where Caro waited patiently. The
longer she spent at Larchfield, the more intrigued she became. Poor Caro. Even
running a comb through her hair must fill the girl with doubt as to whether she
was doing it to court admiration, or simply to get the knots out.

Well, this was
a great lesson in demonstrating the vast middle ground between being a self
conscious dormouse and a raging coquette — and it was fun!

Confidently she
threw open the door, boldly meeting Caro’s eyes above her ivory fan. Oh, she
knew how to use her eyes to great effect, and she did so now, playing to her
young charge as if Caro were the most handsome, gallant gentleman in a room
crowded with them.

“Since you have
asked me so charmingly to play for you, sir, how can I refuse?” she asked,
inclining her head coquettishly and sweeping Caro a smouldering look from
beneath downcast lashes. “
Any
requests from such a handsome gentleman,
will be happily acceded to.”

Caro’s eyes
widened at the double entendre though she stammered, obligingly, “Perhaps,
Miss, you would regale the company with
Over Yonder Mountain
?”

Sarah affected
a show of false modesty. “Oh, but you will think my singing very poor after
what you have already heard this evening.” With a dazzling smile she took a
deep breath so that the swell of her breasts could not fail to be admired above
the line of her low cut evening dress. “However, if you insist.” Sarah sank
gracefully onto the piano stool and began to sing in tune to the emotional
music.

Everything this
evening had been play acting. But this, her singing, was real, and her voice
was exquisite. She knew men found her attractive, but the many sincere
compliments she’d received on her voice were even more gratifying. She adored
music. Until now, she hadn’t realised how much she’d missed it in this sad,
songless house.

Soon Caro, who
Sarah knew worked hard to maintain a cynical exterior, was dashing tears away.

The strains of
the last chord drifted into nothing but Caro did not applaud; just stared at
her governess with wonder while Sarah was filled with a sudden sadness for the
home she had left behind, and the lovable, tyrannical father who would probably
be out of his mind with grief.

Footsteps
sounded from beyond the open French doors that led onto the terrace behind her.
Alarmed, Sarah half turned, then rose and stepped out from behind the piano
stool.

The footsteps
stopped. There was silence. Mr Hawthorne stood on the threshold to the garden,
his face blanched by moonlight. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

Sarah’s hand
went to her breast, as if to still her thundering heart. Her mouth went dry.

Passionless?
Had she once thought this man passionless?

The seconds
became an agony of eternity as she waited for him to come to her. She watched
the play of emotions roil in the tortured depths of his dark grey eyes. She
thought he looked like a man who’d found Nirvana and would risk his life to
cross the crocodile-infested raging torrent to lay claim to it.

In three
strides he’d closed the distance between them. Then she was in his embrace.
Thrown backwards over his arm, helpless and not wanting to be anything else,
his mouth came down, swiftly and all-consumingly, upon hers.

She did not
struggle. Objection was the last thing on her mind.

Breathing in
his familiar smell of sandalwood and leather, she twined her hands behind his
neck. She could feel the pounding of his heart beneath his waistcoat of watered
silk, his hard chest pressed against her breasts.

It was not a
gentle kiss; rather the kiss of a man who fears his chance may not come again
and wants to plunder what he can before all is taken away.

Sarah did not
need gentleness. With her mind in thrall to her body she surrendered herself
wholeheartedly. The redoubling of his passion signalled he’d registered her
enthusiasm.

Clearly, he
hadn’t registered her true identity.

Sarah wilted
with want, bent to his will, consumed by a primal determination to take
everything this fascinating man could give her before he realized his mistake.

She’d had many
admirers but as a young, unmarried woman she’d been kissed by only one man: her
fiancé. This was infinitely more exciting.

She arched her
back to achieve a more snug fit, and he responded, skimming his hand the length
of her body from cheek to thigh while his other arm bore the full weight of
her.

Waves of desire
hit her with increasing force, coursed hotly through her veins, and pooled in
her lower belly.

She gasped with
disappointment when his mouth left hers. Compensation was swift as he thrilled
her body with a feathered line of kisses down her throat. He trailed them over
her collar bones, tracing the contours of her cleavage before returning once
more to plunder her mouth.

She never
wanted him to stop. Arching deeper against him, she raked her hands through his
hair.

Then Caro
screamed.

Beverley Eikli wrote her first romance
when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page (p550!)
was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her romance-writing
career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.

After throwing in her job on South
Australia’s metropolitan daily
The Advertiser
to manage a luxury safari
lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley discovered a new world of
romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest
with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire.

Eighteen years later, after
exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s as an airborne
geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the French Guyanese
jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia living a more
conventional life with her husband and two daughters in a pretty country town
an hour north of Melbourne. She writes Regency Historical Intrigue as Beverley
Eikli and erotic historicals as Beverley Oakley.