Captive (15 page)

“With net this flimsy,” he said, letting the gauze fall against her skin, “you’re liable to attract exactly the sort of loose fish you
don’t
want.”

His eyes were on hers again, but the disapproval she saw was not nearly so strong as the desire.

“A dress like this one …” he began.

He licked his lips, and her mouth went dry.

“Does it make me look beautiful, Lion?”

“It makes you look bed-able,” he corrected.

“Both will do to catch a husband, I think.”

“I don’t think—”

The Duke of Trent’s butler, an elderly gentleman named Stiles, for whom Charlotte had procured a better-fitting set of false teeth, announced, “His Grace, the Duke of Braddock,” without his wooden top teeth even once falling out and having to be pushed back into place. Charlotte gave him a broad smile, and he beamed back.

She held her breath as Braddock entered the drawing room, not sure what sort of fireworks might erupt when the duke finally entered the home of the man who had killed his brother.

The two men, both pinks of the
ton
, were a formidable sight when viewed together. Braddock was turned out in dark Spanish blue. Denbigh wore black. It was hard to admire them when they immediately faced off against each other like two stiff-legged barnyard dogs fighting over the same bitch.

“Denbigh,” the duke said.

“Braddock,” the earl answered.

They sounded perfectly civil.

Then Charlotte saw the tic in Braddock’s jaw, and the pulse pounding in Denbigh’s temple. Tension simmered under the surface and threatened to boil over.

“Shall we go?” Charlotte said, slipping her arm through Denbigh’s. “Stiles has my wrap by the door.”

Olivia quickly followed her lead, slipping her arm through Braddock’s. “Yes. Shall we?”

“My carriage is waiting,” Braddock said.

“So is mine,” Denbigh countered.

The two men stopped in their tracks, pulling both women to a stop beside them.

“My sister rides with me,” Denbigh said.

“I’ll be glad to take your ward with me in my carriage,” Braddock said, his lip curling cynically.

Even Charlotte recognized the folly in that.

“Why don’t we all go together in one carriage?” Olivia suggested.

“Mine will hold four comfortably,” Denbigh said.

“So will mine,” Braddock countered.

“Would you like to draw straws to see who wins?” Charlotte asked with a shake of her head at their ridiculous competition.

Neither man ceded the point. They glared at each other, shirt points high, shoulders back, neck hairs hackled.

“I think I feel a headache coming on,” Olivia said. “Perhaps I had better stay at home tonight.”

Braddock stood mute, but he was clearly disappointed. It was not the gentleman’s place to tell a lady she was lying to spare them all an uncomfortable situation.

Charlotte knew no such bounds. “Well, I don’t have a headache, and I’ve been looking forward to
the theater all week. If you don’t go, Livy, I shall have to stay home, too. Is there any possibility a little hartshorn might help?”

“Perhaps you would be more comfortable in your brother’s carriage,” Braddock said. He turned to Denbigh and continued in a dry voice, “If it is agreeable, Lady Olivia and I will be happy to join you and your ward for the ride to Covent Garden.”

Denbigh nodded. “It is.”

“Thank goodness that’s settled,” Charlotte said with a bright smile. “Shall we go?”

“Some hartshorn for Lady Olivia?” Braddock reminded Charlotte.

“Oh, yes,” Charlotte said, realizing the play must be acted to the finish before they could leave for the theater.

A footman was sent to find Lady Olivia’s maid, who located the hartshorn in her bedroom and gave it to the footman, who brought it down to Lady Olivia in the drawing room.

No one said a word while they waited.

All four heaved a silent sigh of relief once they were all seated in Denbigh’s carriage.

Sometime during the first act of
She Stoops to Conquer
, Olivia realized she really did have a headache. There was no way she could ask to leave; they had all come in one carriage. Even if she could have persuaded her brother to take her home without
creating another scene, she didn’t want to spoil Charlotte’s obvious enjoyment of the performance. So she suffered in silence.

She and Braddock were sitting in the two seats behind Denbigh and Charlotte in Braddock’s box, only because Charlotte had raced to the balcony rail the instant they arrived, enthralled by the glittering sights, and remained until the curtain came up.

It was clear Lion would rather Olivia and Braddock had been sitting in front, so he could keep an eye on them. Several anxious glances over his shoulder had so far sufficed to convince him that Braddock had no designs on her person.

“Is your headache worse?” the duke whispered in her ear.

“I only made it up,” she said.

“I have seen you twice wince when the crowd roared with laughter. If you did not have a headache before, I suspect you have one now. Am I right?”

What was the use of lying? She nodded.

“Come,” he said.

“But—”

He didn’t give her a choice. He took her firmly by the hand and led her from the box. To her surprise, Lion didn’t even look back. He was too busy trying to keep an exuberant Charlotte from leaning over the balcony rail to ogle those in the pit.

The duke laid her hand on his forearm and walked slowly down the hall, where it was surprisingly
quiet, and where the dim light was more soothing to her eyes.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “Perhaps it was all the noise and the smell of oranges from the pit.” Oranges were a popular refreshment at the theater, and the immense numbers of peeled fruit, combined with the smell of the unwashed masses, gave off a pungent aroma.

Braddock ignored that excuse and supplied the truth. “Perhaps it was the tension between myself and your brother.”

Olivia halted and looked up into the duke’s eyes. No one could really have eyes that blue. Braddock did. They crinkled at the corners in a marvelous spray of joy as he smiled.

“Have I grown two heads?” he asked.

Appalled that she had been caught staring, she lowered her gaze and said, “Your frankness surprised me.”

“It would be foolish to deny what any gudgeon could see. There’s no love lost between Denbigh and me. He killed my brother. If it were not for you …”

“You would kill mine?”

He pressed his lips flat, refusing to answer.

“I am glad, Your Grace,” she said, “if I am a reason to curtail your revenge. But …”

Olivia had not allowed herself to admit, until
this evening when she saw the two men together, how very dangerous it was to let herself love Braddock. There was no changing history. Denbigh had killed Lord James. That death would always lie between her family and Braddock.

It was possible, if she continued to see him, that the two men might make peace. Possible. But not probable. More likely, the enforced proximity would produce exactly the result Charlotte had predicted. Some day, when Olivia was not around, Braddock would throw a glove in Lion’s face. And one, or both men, would end up dead.

She opened her mouth to tell the duke she would no longer be at home to him if he came to see her at the house on Grosvenor Square in the future. She simply could not get the words to come out.

“Is something wrong, Lady Olivia?” the duke asked.

“It is only the headache.”

“Let me arrange for a hackney, and I will see you home.”

“I don’t think my brother—”

He put a fingertip to her lips. The touch was electrifying. She gasped, and he went still. She looked up into his eyes and saw surprise and … something else. The brief moment of doubt she had seen in his eyes was gone almost before she recognized it for what it was. Doubt about what? She
wondered. Too many things came to mind for comfort.

“It is improper for me to be with you unchaperoned,” she pointed out. “The gossips would tear us to bits if they discovered it.”

“Nothing will come amiss,” he said in a low, vibrant voice. “Trust me.”

Her heart ached with wanting to do exactly that. “Very well,” she said. “I must tell my brother I am leaving.”

“I will take care of that, as well,” he assured her.

He escorted her outside and settled her in a hackney he summoned with a wave of his hand. The ancient cab had cracked leather seats, rather than the plush upholstery she was used to, and it stank of unmentionable smells.

She wanted to change her mind, but the duke had gone back inside for a moment, and she was afraid to get out of the hackney and wait for him on the curb all by herself.

“I’ve left a note to be delivered to your brother at the interval,” the duke said as he joined her in the hackney. “With Lady Charlotte to keep him entertained, he’s not likely to notice you’re gone until then.”

Olivia worried that Denbigh would look sooner, discover her gone, and turn the theater upside down searching for her. Braddock’s unconcern helped her
to ignore her own misgivings. And with him beside her, the hackney did not seem as awful.

When she was finally alone with the duke in the darkened carriage, and they were driving along the streets of London toward their destination, she acknowledged the impropriety of the situation. It was easy to tell herself no one would ever know. But it was dangerous for both of them. The parson’s mousetrap would snap closed tight on Braddock if they were discovered alone together.

She was so focused on the impropriety of riding home with Braddock unaccompanied, that she had entirely forgotten why custom decreed a lady must never be alone with a single gentleman. Braddock reminded her when he reached for her hand and held it warmly in his.

“This is … you should … I cannot …”

While she was busy concentrating on what he was doing with her hand, Braddock lowered his head and kissed her on the mouth. It was a bare meeting of lips, so fleeting that if she hadn’t seen the glitter of his blue eyes in the passing street lamps as he raised his head again, she would have thought she had imagined it.

Flustered, she turned her face to stare out the window. “You should not have done that,” she said, breathless and excited and horrified all at once.

“Why not?” he asked. “I wanted to taste your
lips to see if they could possibly be as sweet as the berries you must have pressed against them earlier this evening to make them so red.”

“Oh. It is only paint, Your Grace. Lady Charlotte—”

“You tasted of berries, I am sure.”

She turned to him with a protest on her lips and was caught by the force of his gaze trained on her face.

“Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said. “Let me see.”

She sat frozen like a rabbit, uncertain which way to bounce, as his head lowered and his lips claimed hers again.

She should have been ready. This time there had been no surprise about what he was going to do. But his second taste of her sent a frisson of feeling streaking through her even stronger than the first.

She knew she ought to pull away. She knew she ought to demand he take her home immediately. She knew she ought to keep her lips pressed tight against his exploring tongue.

But all the pent-up emotions she had stuffed down inside her for so many years cascaded over her like the rush of water over a broken dam. She moaned as she opened her mouth to him, a grating, carnal sound so foreign to her ears that she would have been mortified if she had been capable of rational thought at all.

His tongue was doing something to her, causing her body to draw up like a purse string inside. Her ears roared, and the blood pounded in the pulse at her throat as he nibbled gently at her lips, begging her to open to him.

She clasped her hands tightly in her lap to keep from reaching out to him. He had made no declaration. She was a fool to be doing even this much with him. But she could not stop herself.

She shivered at the sound he made, a raw, anguished groan, as he abandoned her mouth and drew away to stare down into her eyes. She felt herself quivering with expectation. She wanted him to kiss her again. Needed it. Craved it.

She saw he was tempted, that it would have taken only a slight move in his direction for him to take her in his arms and ravish her.

But the inhibitions of a lifetime were stronger than her newly awakened desire. She was a lady. Ladies did not throw themselves at gentlemen. She leaned back a bare fraction of an inch.

It was enough to break the spell.

She did not want the interlude to end. It was too close to what she had always imagined it might be like in her dreams—although her dreams did not hold a candle to the reality of being kissed by the duke.

“I had no idea I would feel so much,” she said in a halting voice.

“Nor did I,” he murmured.

The carriage came to a halt, and Olivia lifted the curtain and glanced out, expecting to see her grandfather’s house. The neighborhood was dark, the houses close set and narrow. Nothing was familiar. The door to the nearest house opened, and a butler stood framed in a square of light, waiting in expectation. Olivia wondered who he thought they were. Obviously some mistake had been made.

“Where are we?” she asked the duke. “Why have we stopped here?”

Lion snatched at the sleeve of Charlotte’s gauze dress to keep her from falling and felt the flimsy material tear free in his hand. He grabbed again, caught her elbow, and yanked her back from a certain fall to her death in the pit below. She was so caught up in the action on stage, she did not even notice the damage to her gown.

“Sit down,” he said in a deadly voice.

“But Lion, it’s all so exciting. I want to see everything. I want to feel everything.”

It was hard to deny her when she cajoled him so prettily. But he had to draw the line somewhere, or she really would end up on her head in the pit.

“If you would like, we will visit the pit during the interval,” he said. “But only if you promise to sit still for the rest of this act.”

“Oh, I will,” Charlotte promised. But she sat
on the edge of her seat, as close to the rail as she could get. A moment later she settled back fully in her chair and laid her hand on his sleeve to get his attention. “Lion,” she said.