Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (7 page)

S
he knew
that he was shocked to see her. But he was too polished to let her see the shock for long. He gave her an easy smile. “Madame Octavia,” he said, bowing. “This is a surprise.”

It was almost a surprise to her as well. She needed an ally in her quest to destroy Lucy — and Lord Rafael was perfectly suited for that role. But she had debated for days whether to come to him — whether to risk making an alliance with him, when he could be as dangerous to her security as every other man had been. Her heart had risen into her throat as soon as she had seen him across the room. She might have turned around if she had thought he hadn’t seen her yet.

But she’d had weeks to make her plans. There was no way around the fact that Lord Rafael, as the only guest she could safely approach before the party, was vital to her schemes.

She dropped into the chair across from him without waiting for his invitation. “No more of a surprise than I had when I heard you and your family were in Salcombe. Why haven’t you called on me?”

He frowned. “Have you been at the abbey many days already?”

“No. But I’ve been at my brother’s former hunting lodge for ages. It isn’t so far from Salcombe that you couldn’t find me there.”

She was baiting him, testing to see how he might respond. She thought he might have looked chagrined, but it must have been a trick of the light as he took his seat across from her. When he looked up again, his smile was smooth.

And his grey eyes were far too amused.

“The innkeeper wouldn’t say a word of your whereabouts — only that you weren’t in your room at the abbey.”

Octavia already knew that Lord Rafael hadn’t learned her location, but she didn’t want him to know that she had spied on him. The innkeeper had told her that Lord Rafael was asking about her. She could have talked to him weeks before this night.

But she had waited until tonight — partially to make sure she knew what she needed from him, and partially because she suspected it would be a very, very dangerous idea to spend too much time with him before the party began. She couldn’t wait any longer, though. The party would start in the morning. And from what she’d learned during her attempts to infiltrate the house and the staff, she would lose access to Lord Rafael as soon as he crossed Maidenstone’s threshold.

The servants didn’t wish her harm. But they were also firm in following Lucy’s orders and keeping her out. Too many of the servants’ ancestors had learned, through bitter experience, not to double cross the Briarleys until it was clear that a new family member would be taking over the estate.

As long as Lucy was in charge, the servants wouldn’t let Octavia into the house. Octavia had tried sneaking in once, but Claxton had found her and escorted her out. She couldn’t buy their loyalty, either. Even Agnes, who was friendly with most of the staff, was barred from entering. Agnes had spent more time at the pub than she normally would have, gathering whatever information she could find, but the servants who visited the village on their half-days knew better than to tell Agnes any secrets or give her any help.

That meant Octavia needed to make an alliance with a guest. She needed someone inside Maidenstone who could let her through locked doors and pass rumors on to her.

Someone like Lord Rafael. But the way he looked at her, like she was a chicken who had unwittingly walked up to a fox, made her nervous.

She couldn’t give in to doubt now. “I suppose it’s true that I’m not at the abbey. But you know how it is in the country. The tenants and villagers are suspicious of outsiders.”

That, and she had ordered the innkeeper not to tell Lord Rafael or anyone else that she was in the neighborhood until she was ready to reveal her location. But they would have protected her even without that order, as long as helping her didn’t go against Lucy’s orders.

“So it seems that I never would have found you,” he said. “But the opera season is over anyway, and there are no entertainments in Salcombe that would tempt you to join me.”

The reference to what they might have done in London if she had stayed there — and if she hadn’t been so stupidly loyal to Somerville — made her a little wistful. “I hope there shall be more operas in the future. But I didn’t come to speak of that. I came to make you an offer.”

“I do not know whether to thank my fate or run from it.”

He drawled the words, but there was something in his tone that said he wasn’t making a jest. For a single moment, he looked at her as though she were a firing squad and he was a condemned man considering his last words.

But the moment passed, so quickly that she would forget about it until days later…forget the warning she should have seen, in favor of the story she wanted to believe.

“You should thank your fate, Lord Rafael,” she said. “If you’re here, it can only be because you or your brothers hope to win Maidenstone. And I can help you, if you agree to help me.”

Lord Rafael shrugged. He looked elegant, effortlessly so, even in a small inn far from the centers of power. “I can’t say why my family is here, Madame Octavia.”

“Keeping secrets?” She laughed. The flirtation began to come easier to her. She noticed the way his eyes shifted, momentarily, to her mouth. “You don’t have to pull the wool over me. There can be no other reason why you and your family would reside in Devonshire so long unless you intended to be made eligible for marriage licenses in the parish.”

Three weeks of residence in the locale for both the bride and groom was all that was necessary to get a marriage license from the local diocese without the delay of reading banns. It took a small fee, of course, but was far cheaper than a special license — and far easier to get quickly, since the local diocese in Exeter could be reached in a day and the special license could only come from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was the only reason why someone like Thorington would choose to reside somewhere like Salcombe for so long.

“I’m not keeping secrets,” Lord Rafael said. “It could very well be that Thorington intends to marry one of you, but he hasn’t told me his plans. I’m merely here to drink his whisky. If we adjourn to Maidenstone Abbey and I can drink from your grandfather’s wine cellar instead, all the better.”

He sipped his whisky as though to emphasize his point. Then he frowned. “Where have my manners gone? Would you care for a drink, Madame Octavia?”

A drink would only delay the inevitable. But the temporary courage it would give her might help. And she had been alone for weeks — an additional five minutes in Lord Rafael’s company was worth the delay. “I’ll happily take your drink, Lord Rafael.”

He signaled Barker. “A glass of sherry,” he said when the innkeeper reached them. “Unless the lady prefers champagne.”

The lady did prefer champagne, but Barker didn’t sell enough of it to keep the best stuff on hand. “Whisky,” she said smoothly. “And a cup of tea.”

“Two cups of tea,” Lord Rafael said. “And bring her a glass. She can drink as much of my bottle of whisky as she can hold.”

Barker followed this exchange with equal parts confusion and curiosity. “Yes, my lord. Do you still take milk, Miss Briarley? Or one of the wife’s biscuits?”

“Milk, no biscuits,” Octavia said. She was trying to be the woman Lord Rafael knew in London. If she had biscuits with her tea, she might remember the girl she had been.

Barker nodded and left. She returned the full force of her gaze to the man across from her. She leaned in, as though she had the most delicious secret to share with him — one that would change his life, if he let it.

Men couldn’t help but be lured in by that. He leaned forward. “And so, Madame Octavia. We don’t know precisely why I am here. But I want to know why
you
are here.”

She tilted her head, letting the anticipation build. “Here in Devonshire? My family has an estate. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”

He didn’t laugh. “Here, in this inn, at my table, preparing to drink my whisky.”

The innkeeper returned with a fresh glass and a promise that the tea would be out in a moment. She let Lord Rafael pour her two fingers of whisky. She took a sip before she responded. The whisky burned her throat, but the warmth gave her courage — reminded her of the woman she was in London. Madame Octavia drank whisky, even though Miss Briarley never would have tried the stuff.

When she judged that she’d let the right amount of silence build between them, she looked directly into his eyes. “I am going to destroy Lucretia Briarley and ruin her chances at marriage. And I need your help to do it.”

W
as
it ridiculous that he was disappointed?

If Octavia Briarley was there to see him, there could only be two reasons why. The first would be to make a preemptive offer for him — to suggest that they marry and try to win Maidenstone Abbey together.

That was pure foolishness. The other guests would come from the highest reaches of the ton. Octavia was too smart to throw her chances away on a second son before she met the other candidates.

The second option was that she was looking for a new protector. Rafe had considered that angle when Somerville had abandoned her. If he had offered to make her his mistress, he might have learned what he needed.

But again, that was foolishness. Octavia could command the highest possible price — carriages, houses, jewels, and every other gift that a protector could buy a mistress. Rafe didn’t want to waste his whole fortune on the extravagant demands of one of London’s top courtesans.

Still, when Octavia sipped his whisky and turned those dark eyes on him, he was willing to reconsider. And he’d been sure she was about to proposition him….

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

She leaned in even closer. “I’m going to destroy Lucretia,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Or at least make sure she doesn’t win Maidenstone.”

“I heard that. But why do you need my help?”

“I need an ally inside Maidenstone. Lucy won’t let me through the door and the servants are all loyal to her. I’ve been trying to get in for weeks and haven’t found a way. But you could help me to find the holes in her armor.”

Rafe frowned. “Are you not coming to the party?”

“I was not invited.”

She said it calmly, but he heard the bitterness in her voice. “I thought all living Briarleys were in competition for the estate.”

“They are. My grandfather’s will was clear on that. He didn’t strike me from the game despite my reputation.”

“Given how scandalous every other Briarley generation has been, I would have guessed he’d give you the estate
because
you ruined yourself.”

Perhaps it wasn’t polite to say that she was ruined. But Octavia laughed. “Grandfather loved me more because of my reputation, it’s true. He called me a bold, ruinous minx when I decided to become Somerville’s mistress. Then he hugged me rather than beating me. That didn’t sit well with Lucy.”

She sounded smug about that. He filed the tidbit away. “So why won’t you be at the house party?”

The innkeeper returned with their tea. He bustled around them, likely hoping to hear more, but neither of them spoke until he was gone. Then, as Octavia poured, she said, “Grandfather may have applauded my audacity, but he was devastated when my brother died. Julian was his sole surviving heir. He gave his blessing to my arrangement with Somerville, but that didn’t mean that he entirely forgave me for the indiscretion that led to Julian’s death.”

He took his cup from her, mulling over the possibilities. “If you were kept in the will, he must have meant for you to have as much of a chance at the inheritance as Lucretia does. Or the other cousin…what’s her name?”

He knew the name, but he didn’t want Octavia to know how much he had studied her. “Callista,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since we were children. The last report we had of her, she was living in Baltimore and managing her dead father’s shipping company. Not quite the thing, of course. But I’d rather see an American inherit than let Lucretia win.”

Rafe leaned back against the wall. The tea was a welcome change from the whisky. “So Lucretia didn’t invite you to the party and you want to destroy her. Is that the sum of it?”

Octavia nodded. “That’s the sum of it. I would murder her if I could, but it’s a messy business and I don’t want to risk ruining a dress.”

Her voice was entirely too light for what she was discussing — but then, she was anything but conventional. Rafe laughed.

And he felt his interest in her stir again.

He looked into her dark eyes and tried to remember that she was the enemy — or, at least, that she had made her bed with his enemy. “If I am to help you, I must know precisely what you would have me do and what you’re offering me in return. You said you could help me?”

“Is there a payment my lord would prefer?”

It was the kind of comment one might expect from a courtesan — pure sin, wrapped in the sultry silk of her voice. But while the undercurrent between them held a thread — multiple threads — of seduction, Rafe sensed a trap.

He had too much bitter experience in Spain to ignore the sensation that he was walking into an ambush.

“Not the kind of payment Somerville might have asked for,” he said.

A lady would have been offended. Even a courtesan might have scolded him for talking too bluntly. But it was a test — how did she feel about Somerville now that he had cast her off?

He didn’t see any anger in her eyes when he mentioned her former lover’s name. She smiled instead, with a quirk to it that said she found his comment amusing for reasons he didn’t understand. “I should hope you would use me differently than Somerville did.”

His instincts said he was closer to the key than he had ever been — that there was something in her relationship with Somerville that would give him everything he needed to destroy the man. But the hook wasn’t set. She might escape if he pulled her in too fast. “If not that, what do you intend to offer?”

“You said at Somerville’s that you wanted a seat in Parliament in the next election. I’m sure I could arrange it.”

He barely remembered saying that. But it was useful now. He smiled, ready to set the hook a little deeper. “That was the lie, as it turns out. You assumed otherwise, but you never asked.”