Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (8 page)

She frowned as though trying to remember the night more clearly. “If that was the lie, then the truth was that you’re enamored with me.”

He nodded. “And so I’ll help you whether you can compensate me or not.”

That wasn’t necessarily the truth either. He was certainly attracted to her. He enjoyed conversing with her. And he would probably help her on her mad quest even if she couldn’t give him anything at all, merely because he was bored and would enjoy seeing whatever trouble she got up to. Not to mention the fact that it was the best chance he had to learn Somerville’s secrets.

But enamored? Enchanted? The feeling that he could love her, and the belief that it would all come out all right?

Rafe lived in the real world, not a fairy tale. And in the real world, passion faded and love didn’t last.

But he could almost forget that knowledge as she smiled. For a moment, she wasn’t Madame Octavia. She wasn’t trained by circumstance to play a role, the perfect fantasy for any man.

Her brown eyes sparkled over what they might accomplish together. Her lips parted, showing her teeth — a real smile, not the coy grin she’d used, unconsciously, when he had entered the room.

She was mischievous, and excited, and so bloody
happy
.

And so bloody young. And so bloody beautiful.

And so bloody not for him.

But she gathered herself together before she responded. He sensed wariness descend upon her. He wondered what she thought of love. Most women, when he hinted at such feelings, were only too happy to accept it at face value — to believe him, until he left them at the end of his mission.

Octavia’s experience was different, though, despite her youth. Her smile faded a little as caution replaced some of her excitement, but she still looked determined. “I cannot thank you enough,” she said. “I’ve no idea how to gain entrance to the abbey without help. And you are quite perfect for the task.”

The task
. He could remember that. He could remember that it was a task, not anything more than that. He could remember that she had asked for his help.

He could remember that he intended to use her for his own ends just as much as she intended to use him for hers.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked.

She looked over her shoulder to verify that no one was in earshot. They were safe, but she kept her voice low. “Lucy only does well when she is in control and everything is perfectly ordered. If I cause enough chaos at the party, she will break under the pressure. Then, when the suitors realize she’s more suited to hiding in her room than to entertaining them, they are likely to give up on her. It happened often during our debut season. She never received a single offer of marriage.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow. “That’s not very kind.”

“She deserves far worse,” Octavia said shortly. “I had thought of hiring a man to compromise her so that her reputation was as ruined as mine, but that was a step too far. Unless you think that’s a task you’d like to take on?”

“Absolutely not,” Rafe said.

“Then we must ruin the party. Lucy won’t win Maidenstone, but at least she’ll still have a future.”

“If she doesn’t marry, what happens to the estate?”

“There’s a chance that Callista will attend the party, but no one has seen her yet. That could be another payment for you — if Callista arrives, you should encourage one of your brothers to marry her while we remove Lucy from the race. I’d rather see her inherit than let Lucy win. But if it comes down to me and Lucy, and Lucy has proven herself unsuitable, Ferguson will be forced to reconsider my eligibility.”

“How do you propose to ruin the party?” Rafe asked.

“I had thought of poisoning the wells.”

He wanted to laugh, but he was afraid that she might be serious. “I shall endeavor not to cross you, if poison is your first thought.”

“Murder is a very Briarley occupation,” Octavia assured him earnestly. “If Ferguson had any sense, he would give the house to me. Many of my ancestors killed someone to guarantee their inheritance. My grandfather would be proud of me if I poisoned Lucy, I’m sure.”

“Be sure to tell me when to stop drinking the water. I quite like my organs to function as they should.”

Octavia grinned. For a moment, they weren’t discussing murder — they could have been discussing anything, or nothing, and he wouldn’t have registered the words. All the could see was her smile, and how eager she was.

She was going to ruin him, far more than he could ever ruin her.

“But poison won’t work,” she said, with a theatrical sigh of disappointment. “I cannot be the Maidenstone heiress if I’m executed at Newgate. We’ll have to be more subtle. Have you heard of Maidenstone’s ghosts?”

The locals wouldn’t talk about living Briarleys, but they were eager to talk about dead ones. He rolled his eyes. “Every story I’ve heard assures me that the abbey is rotten with them. Are they true?”

Octavia shrugged. “Grandfather swore they were, although I never saw any. But there are places in the abbey where I wouldn’t choose to go at night. And there have been enough murders committed there to field a battalion of ghosts.”

Rafe had seen plenty of death, but he’d never seen a ghost. “Assuming there are ghosts, which I doubt, how do you propose to use them? Is there some secret Briarley method of communicating with them?”

“Don’t laugh,” she said. “I’m sure some ancestor thought there was. But we don’t have to work with real ghosts — fake ghosts will do the trick.”

“Are you planning to haunt Maidenstone?”

“Yes.”

At least she was direct about it. Rafe preferred his conspirators to be committed to their plans — he couldn’t work with others unless he knew they wouldn’t balk at a critical juncture.

He steepled his fingers under his chin. “How do you propose to do that?”

She pulled a list out of her reticule.

“The first rule of conspiracies is to leave nothing in writing,” he said mildly.

Octavia laughed. “I knew you were the right man for the job. I’ll burn the list when we’re done. Any other advice, my lord?”

“Carry on, Miss Briarley,” he said.

She stilled a little at that. He realized her name was a wound, and for once he regretted his words.

“Please, call me Octavia,” she said. “It’s easier.”

“Then you must call me Rafe,” he responded, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to use their given names with each other so soon. “I cannot possibly call you Octavia and insist on all the ‘my lords.’”

She grinned. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”

He still didn’t know her plan. The old public room, with its exposed beam ceiling and heavy tables, felt like the right sort of place for making some nefarious deal. Maidenstone Abbey awaited, with its legion of ancient rooms and dark secrets.

He never had fun on his missions. Satisfaction, perhaps. Pleasure, occasionally. But never fun.

With Octavia, though, he didn’t see how it was going to be any other way. They would enjoy working together, even as she used him to access Maidenstone and he used her to ruin Somerville.

The morality of that didn’t sit quite right with him. But he had lived in ambiguous situations for years. He swapped his tea for whisky again and reached for her list. “Let’s make our plans. We have a party to destroy.”

T
he next night
, Octavia smoothed her hands down her skirts. The sturdy walking dress was unlike anything she wore in London. But sneaking through Maidenstone Abbey’s vast attics and hidden passageways would destroy delicate muslin. She had borrowed the dress from her lady’s maid. Agnes was smart enough not to ask why Octavia wanted to disguise herself as a servant.

Octavia had a mission now. That mission did not require flirting, or a courtesan’s wardrobe.

She could remember that, couldn’t she?

She rubbed her clammy palms against her thighs again before pulling on her gloves and picking up her reticule. Rafe was supposed to collect her at any moment.

She hadn’t been so nervous since her debut. She supposed some nerves were natural. If she were caught at Maidenstone, it would be too mortifying for words.

But it wasn’t her upcoming criminal adventure that made her heart beat faster. It was her accomplice — and the knowledge that, for all the experience she’d gained in the last four years, she wasn’t sure she could handle Rafe.

She had thought she’d handled him the previous night. He would make an excellent accomplice. He had agreed to her plan and helped her to refine key points. He even seemed excited about it.

But she still didn’t quite understand why he wanted to help her. He claimed to be enamored with her — but that excuse didn’t hold water. An enamored man would have courted her, not helped her invade her childhood home.

And none of that had explained why she’d spent most of the night dreaming of the way he’d kissed her hand. He’d done it again at the end of the night, right before she’d left the pub. This time, in the darkened room, with the candles guttering and all the villagers gone, it had somehow felt even more erotic.

She’d looked into his eyes as he’d caressed her knuckles. The warm, dazed shock of connection had nothing to do with whisky. It was as though the touch of his lips on her skin — skin, this time, since she’d taken off her gloves — had sealed something between them that was bigger than the conspiracy they’d agreed to.

If that was the case, she might be in more danger from him than she ever would be sneaking around Maidenstone.

The drawing room clock tolled eleven o’clock as she walked down the stairs to the main floor. A rap sounded on the front door as she took the last stair, exactly on time. In London, one of her footmen would have answered the door, taken Rafe’s card, and settled him in the drawing room — perhaps the second-best drawing room — to wait for her.

This wasn’t London, though. This was a small hunting lodge in Devonshire, with a highly improper, secretly desperate hostess in charge of it. So she answered the door herself.

Rafe didn’t bow as a gentleman might have. He looked her up and down, holding his lamp up and examining her as though assessing a new recruit. He seemed more fascinated by her dress than he did with her figure. “You look better suited for adventuring than I expected,” he said.

“I grew up in Devonshire. I trust I still remember how to dress for a promenade in the country.”

His grey eyes sparkled. “I’d wager you haven’t promenaded in the country in ages. You stole the dress, didn’t you?”

She gasped, putting her hand against her heart. “Never say you’d think such a thing of me.”

Rafe shook his head with mock disapproval. “You intend to destroy Lucretia and you’re willing to poison wells to do it. Stealing a dress is exactly the sort of petty crime I should have you arrested and transported for, before you fully become a murderess and a menace to the rest of us.”

“Promise you’ll transport me to the Caribbean, then. Australia is too far away for my delicate constitution.”

He appeared to give this serious consideration. She had to stop herself from giggling — she wasn’t fresh from the schoolroom, and she knew she couldn’t seem too impressed by him.

“No, I shan’t have you transported,” he finally said, as though giving her a reprieve. “How else am I to entertain myself while I am in Devonshire? Lucretia was on the verge of allowing Sir Percival Pickett to give a reading of his poetry when I escaped tonight.” He shuddered, as dramatic as any gesture she’d made. “Have you ever heard his poetry? It cannot be borne. I must make my bed with you, I fear.”

It was the sort of flirtatious double entendre she’d heard in London many times. But alone, and without the advantage of champagne in her veins, Octavia squirmed.

Octavia
never
squirmed.

“No bedmaking, my lord,” she said lightly. “Not until I’ve ruined Lucy.”

“You are determined to pursue a life of crime, aren’t you?”

“I’m no worse than you are.”

“No?” He arched an eyebrow. “I am an upstanding citizen.”

“An upstanding citizen who has become a devoted accomplice to my criminal actions, and for no better reason than because you are bored. It is so like an idle second son to get caught up in such nonsense.”

A shadow passed over his face. “I am particularly skilled at nonsense. I consider it a second son’s birthright.”

She regretted her words immediately. Rafe didn’t seem the type to be satisfied with a life of leisure. So she tittered, the kind of laugh men usually took at face value, the one she produced without thinking. “A skill for nonsense is precisely what I need at the moment. Shall we go to the abbey?”

He eyed her again, as though he wanted to say something else. But after a long silence, he nodded. “I’ve wanted nothing more, in my entire life, than to break into a house where I am already a guest. I should thank you again for giving me this opportunity.”

She laughed, this time in earnest. “Do not thank me yet. Let’s see whether we can find a way into the house before we celebrate.”

He gave her his arm. They walked through the woods together, mostly in silence. His lamp gave enough light to illuminate their path. As they walked, her anticipation grew. For the first time in four years, she felt like she might have actually found a way to pay Lucy back.

But when they reached the hedges where the forest gave way to Maidenstone’s vast ornamental gardens, she paused. Revenge was one thing. But it felt odd standing there, preparing to break into the house she loved more than anything as though she was a common thief.

“Is my lady ready for battle?” Rafe asked.

He would know what going into battle felt like. She felt small and stupid for even thinking to compare what they were about to do to the horrors he must have seen on the Peninsula.

Still, she felt dizzy. She wanted to do this — wanted to do it badly, if it meant that she could destroy Lucy’s chances.

But the formal gardens looked the same as they’d looked when she was younger. The legion of gardeners kept every shrub trimmed and every bed ruthlessly weeded. If time slipped away, and if this were dusk on another night, she and Lucy might have been returning to the house after a long ramble through Maidenstone Wood and an early supper with Julian in his hunting lodge.

The three of them had spent many nights together in that last year before Ava and Lucy’s debut, when the girls were allowed to attend private parties in the neighborhood and so joined Julian and his friends — with a maid to protect their reputations — for simple suppers or card games. Octavia hadn’t know, then, that it was the beginning of the end. She hadn’t known that her schoolgirl flirtation with Lord Chapman would turn, a year later, into an illicit kiss, sending Julian to his grave and Ava to her ruin.

Five years earlier, she had been seventeen, standing at the edge of the gardens and dreaming of the perfect life that awaited her.

She and Lucy had spent hours upon hours in the gardens during that last summer before their debuts. Lucy had turned eighteen in January and might have debuted then, but their grandfather had insisted that Lucy wait for Ava’s birthday in September before embarking on a London Season the following year. Lucy hadn’t seemed to mind. She was shy enough as it was, and claimed she wouldn’t have enjoyed the balls and soirees without Ava next to her. And Ava loved her grandfather well enough to stay, even though they could have gone to London when Ava was still seventeen.

So they had spent one final summer in Devonshire, dreaming of the future. They had both known, or guessed, that it was the last summer they would have together. After their debuts, at least one of them would likely marry and move into her own house.

Left unspoken was that it would likely be Ava who married first.

But on one of those late summer evenings, walking back from Julian’s hunting lodge, Lucy’s silence had turned brooding.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Ava had said.

Walking side by side, Lucy’s bonnet was large enough to block Ava’s view of her face. But the angle told her that Lucy’s gaze was downcast, matching the slight slump to her usually-perfect shoulders.

“It’s nothing,” Lucy said.

Ava had had three glasses of champagne with Julian and Lord Chapman. She had discovered champagne that summer, and the lingering effervescence added too much mirth to her laugh. “It’s not nothing, cousin. What troubles you?”

Lucy mumbled something inaudible.

“What did you say?” Ava asked, touching Lucy’s arm.

Lucy shook her off. “It’s nothing,” she repeated.

Ava grabbed her and forced her to turn, like they were small children again rather than well-bred ladies. “You’ve grown more quiet by the day this summer. Don’t pretend like you haven’t — I know you too well. Is something amiss?”

In the twilight, Ava couldn’t say for sure, but Lucy’s dark eyes looked perilously close to tears. “I don’t want to go to London.”

Ava laughed again. “It’s ages before we’ll go to London. January, at the very earliest, and then only if Grandfather agrees to let us go in advance to buy new wardrobes.”

Lucy turned away. “Forget it. I said it’s nothing.”

“I am sorry I laughed,” Ava said, hoping she sounded contrite. “I understand if you don’t want to go.”

But she didn’t understand. She couldn’t come close to understanding, not at seventeen, with champagne and the lingering warmth of men’s laughter in her blood. Ava wanted all of that, as often as she could have it.

She had let Lucy walk away, not knowing, at the time, that they would never discuss it again — that Ava would never learn the real reason for Lucy’s reluctance, or what that might mean for their friendship.

Was that moment, in this same garden, the beginning of the end for them?

Now, five years later, Ava stood again in the thin strip of grass between the forest and the flowered paths, with a new future ahead of her. She was Madame Octavia now, and she’d had more than enough of champagne and men’s laughter — albeit not in the way she’d expected, at seventeen, when she had assumed that marriage would come with it.

What future did she want now?

And was there any way at all that she could have it?

Rafe cleared his throat. “Are you suddenly wishing I would go to the devil?”

She returned, fully, to the present, and this new evening, with this new companion. She smiled up at him. “Apologies, my lord — I was wool-gathering.”

“It happens to the best of us,” he said. “But focusing before the final charge into battle serves one better than daydreaming.”

Octavia laughed. “Sage advice, I’m sure. In truth, it seems I should give you a favor from my person and send you off into battle like the knights of old rather than going with you. You’re far more experienced than I.”

“A favor from your person?” he repeated, his eyebrows arching dramatically.

She swatted his hand. “You know that means a handkerchief. Perhaps a garter, if I were feeling particularly naughty.”

“If there is a time for naughtiness, it would be now. You are embarking on a life of criminal activity. Giving me your garter might be exactly the right way to put yourself in the proper frame of mind.”

His voice had turned flirtatious. She willed herself to ignore it. “A shame, then, that I borrowed a dress from my maid. Madame Octavia would
die
before giving you a favor made of homespun instead of silk.”

Rafe glanced down at her. Something in his eyes said he wouldn’t mind homespun if Madame Octavia came with it.

She shivered.

“Shall we storm the parapets, Octavia?”

She heard an odd note in his voice as he said her name. She shivered again.

He turned away, almost as though he knew he’d revealed too much. In London, he excelled at seeming relaxed, debauched, and possibly slightly depraved. But now, she began to wonder. There was a different energy to him tonight as he surveyed the landscape between them and the house. There was a
purpose
to his gaze, one too strong for him to entirely hide it behind an easy smile and a clever quip. The arm he had offered her was steady, somehow protective even though her hand rested lightly upon it. And when he spoke, his tone was still teasing — but there was steel behind it.

Which man was real, and which man was an act?

“Before we storm the parapets,” she said, “I would like to know your plan.”

He glanced at her again. “This is your adventure. You are in command.”

She liked the sound of that. But the thought of what she might command him to do — and the barest trace of illicit desire humming in her blood — suddenly made her blush.

If she were really a courtesan, she might have acted on that instinct. But she wasn’t — especially not here, on the edge of Maidenstone’s gardens, staring at the house that she was desperate to win back, with a man she wasn’t sure she could trust.

Octavia took a breath. “Then it’s time to break in to Maidenstone, my lord.”