My Surrender (20 page)

“Yes,” Charlotte answered and wished it was.

Comte St. Lyon’s castle, Scotland
August 9, 1806

I
T WASN’T UNTIL
L
IZETTE STOOD BACK
to admire her handiwork that the full impact of the gown Charlotte wore, with its extremely low décolletage and semitransparent material, hit the maid, rendering her momentarily speechless.

“Well?” Charlotte asked worriedly.

“You look…extremely…That is, you are…That gown is amazing,” Lizette finally managed.

Silently, she handed Charlotte the ivory-backed mirror, a completely unnecessary courtesy. Charlotte couldn’t have avoided her reflected image had she wanted to, not with that great monster of a mirror taking up half the wall. She took a little breath and turned, meeting her reflected gaze. Her eyes widened. Lizette was right, she did look amazing: amazingly brazen. Amazingly decadent. Amazingly provocative. But most of all, amazingly available.

The nearly translucent green silk fell in shimmering folds from just below the bodice hugging the very crest of her bosom, the merest scrap of satin figured over with little shimmering beads that winked in the light and caught the bullion gleams in her hazel eyes. Like moss swept by the current of a brook, the silky material slithered down her torso, revealing more than concealing the pale figure beneath. It was a courtesan’s gown, Ginny’s gown, quickly remade to fit Charlotte, a gown designed to entice and incite.

Charlotte’s gaze traveled to her reflected face, to the glistening pink lips and soft powdered blush staining the apples of her cheeks and then to the hair threaded with a bronze ribbon that escaped to trail provocatively down the nape of her neck. Not a whit of jewelry marred the smooth expanse of her throat, collarbone, or bosom. The only other garments she wore were the long, skintight gloves that covered her from fingertip to just past the crook of her arm. The combination of nearly naked breasts and primly covered palm, wrist, and forearm was especially provocative. As Ginny had said it would be.

A discreet knock sounded on the door. She started and looked at the mantle clock. Eight-thirty. Her knees began to shake.

“I can’t,” she whispered. She was a coward after all.

“Ma’am?” Lizette asked, her little face puckered with confusion.

She wasn’t ready. Not now, not yet. She had to put St. Lyon off, just for the night. Just one more night to accustom herself to the idea.

“I can’t…See to the footman, Lizette. Tell him I’m not ready. Tell him to wait. I…I don’t like this ribbon in my hair. I prefer a feather. Or flowers.”

Lizette blinked in confusion but went readily enough to the door and stepped into the hallway. Charlotte heard the sound of voices, the words, “a lady’s prerogative” and “a while yet” before her maid returned, closing the door behind her. Relief swept through her.

“Sit down, Miss Charlotte. I’ll make quick work of it.”

“No!” Charlotte snapped, then, more quietly, “No, Lizette. You must take your time. I must eradicate the memory of my disheveled appearance when I arrived and supplant it with a far more attractive one.”

She sat down on the divan.

This, Lizette understood. Like an artist who has been told to rework a masterpiece, she scowled and then, accepting the challenge, picked up a comb and brush. Twenty minutes later, having tried a black ostrich feather, a white ostrich feather, a rope of pearls, a tassel from the bed’s curtain, and various ribbons, she finally smiled.

“There.” She had clipped the tips from a dozen of the peacock feathers standing in the vases. These she had braided together with gold threads and woven cunningly through Charlotte’s cinnamon-colored locks. The iridescent purples, greens, and bronzes winked and flirted with each turn of Charlotte’s head.

“You’re a genius, Lizette,” Charlotte said, more thankful for the extra time than with the results of Lizette’s labor, as stunning as they were. There would be no time now for a tête-à-tête with St. Lyon. She smiled, immensely revitalized by the postponement of her private meeting with him.

“Feel more the thing now, don’t you, miss?” Lizette asked, nodding.

“Indeed, I do, Lizette,” she answered.

The company gathered in the great hall waiting to go into dinner consisted of fifteen men and four women. The men had dressed as carefully as if they were attending Almack’s Wednesday night ball while the women dressed not carefully at all but instead much in the same manner as Charlotte. In other words, like well-kept doxies. Charlotte wasted little time examining them, her attention surreptitiously fixed on St. Lyon. Would he be angry that she had already ignored his command?

He came forth as the footman announced her name, his hand stretched out in welcome, his gaze bright with appreciation. She had made a name for herself in London as being outré; fashionably, naughtily, irrepressibly—and thus forgivably—outré. She had stepped well beyond that distinction this evening.

“My dear, you are exquisite,” he murmured as he raised her hands to his lips and brushed a kiss across her gloved knuckles. “But I am most sorry we did not have that little chat before dinner. And I fear you will be sor—”

“St. Lyon!” a peremptory voice interrupted whatever he had been about to say. St Lyon straightened as a powerful square of a man with a steel-colored frizz of hair chugged up to them. He was wearing some sort of military uniform with which Charlotte was unfamiliar. “I demand you introduce me to this magnificent lady at once.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” St. Lyon inclined his head. “May I present Miss Charlotte Nash? Miss Nash, Prince Rupreck Gulbran.”

Charlotte sank into a low curtsy as the grizzled block beamed. She had no sooner rose than she was being introduced to a half dozen others, men with strange accents and diverse manners, amongst them a middle-aged nabob, a fiery Italian princeling, a plump, dew-lapped Austrian without title but the manner of a king, and a thin, elderly Spaniard with the eyes of a poet. The women did not approach her and St. Lyon made no attempt to bring them together. Nor, Charlotte noted, did they associate much with one another.

This must be the way of courtesans, Charlotte realized, never to be certain of their welcome, always wary of other women as their rivals. She frowned, trying to shake off the dark thought that this could well be her world henceforth when she heard St. Lyon saying in a measured voice, “And here, my dear, is someone with whom I believe you are already acquainted.”

Puzzled, she turned around and found herself staring straight into Dand Ross’s burning eyes.

“We meet again, Charlotte.”

Her heart skittered in her throat and her lips parted with an involuntary welcome, a thrill of happiness suffusing her. But then she recalled herself, realizing where she was and by whom she stood, and a second later was glad she had not given away her feelings as the significance of Dand’s presence hit her.

He had let her come here, prepared to become St. Lyon’s mistress, without giving her the smallest hope that her sacrifice might not be necessary. He had lain with her, taken her maidenhead, and never told her that he had been granted entrée to St. Lyon’s inner circle and could accomplish the task of searching for the letter himself, without her having to prostitute herself.

How long had he been planning this? Had he already found the damn letter? Was she completely redundant here?

A worse thought invaded her mind, torturous and poisonous and horrible. Perhaps this had always been his plan, to use her as a diversion while he searched. To sell her virginity for a few uninterrupted hours?

The thought broke like glass inside, cutting painfully, leaving her flushed and breathless.

“Cat got your tongue, Charlotte?” Dand asked sardonically. The French accent he’d utilized in London was more pronounced, more aristocratic. He’d dressed more somberly, too, though the cut of his coat was even more exquisite than Ram’s purloined garments. His stocking was snowy and crisp, his cheeks and jaw shaved as smooth as marble.

He looked foreign, alien, and unfamiliar. The soft warmth she once found in his gaze no longer existed. The genial expression and the relaxed smile were all gone. A stranger stood before her.

For the first time Charlotte realized how hard the angle of his jaw was, how firm and cruel his lips, how hooded his eyes. Always before, laughter and irony had masked the essential ruthlessness of that handsome face. No longer. She saw the will that directed the ready smile, his capacity for pitilessness, perhaps even cruelty. And the scar on his cheek? It had never been caused by his falling from a tree.

Ginny had been right. The man she’d taken to her bed had been feral. And hadn’t he said himself that he would do whatever he deemed necessary to achieve his goal?

“Why is he here?” she heard herself demand and now Dand’s lips finally formed a smile. There was nothing pleasant in it. The expression in his eyes promised dire things—as if he was the one who’d been wronged! But then, that was the role he’d assumed, the cast-off, embittered lover. How could she have forgotten? And how could she have forgotten what an accomplished actor he was?

“Monsieur Andre Rousse is an emissary for certain exalted ecclesiastical principals,” St. Lyon replied, his watchful, slightly conciliatory manner making it abundantly clear that he knew the pair of them were reputed to have been lovers.

“I see.” Her heart had begun pounding in her throat and her breath fell light and quick from her lips. How had he arrived here so quickly? How had he arranged an invitation? Ginny’s male associates had tried every way imaginable of securing a means into this gathering, but those attending had been closely vetted and their credentials well documented.

The evidence mounted that he had planned this all for a long time, well before she had sent for him to come to her bed. He’d used her. Just as she’d used him to rid herself of her virginity—at least, just as he
thought
she’d used him. She was ridiculously grateful for having maintained that lie.

Whatever her feelings for Dand, at least she had kept some scraps of her pride intact by keeping them from him. As far as he was concerned, they were both here for the same purpose—both of them coldly and calculatingly going about the business of spying, undeterred by sentiment and unmoved by frail emotion.

So it would be. So she would be. A tough little piece of work. She did not want anything from Dand Ross other than to know whether he’d already found the letter. If not, she would search for it herself as she had planned.

There were more important matters at stake than her pride. Or her heart.

“You look overset, Charlotte,” Dand murmured. “Quite pale. Are you unwell? Or is it my poor self that has you so at sixes and sevens?

“My poor darling.” His lids drooped over his dark gaze. “I would leave to spare you distress, but then, I can’t quite bring myself to care. I’m afraid you’re rather stuck with me.”

She kept mute, slaying him with her gaze. Then, lifting her chin without bothering to reply, she turned deliberately away from him and, with every appearance of indifference, publicly cut Dand dead. In spite of his virulent tone, she had understood the subtext of his little speech. He couldn’t leave because he hadn’t yet found the letter. At least now she knew.

St. Lyon fell into step beside her. “I am so sorry, my dear. I intended to warn you in my library beforehand.”

“No matter, Comte,” she assured him coolly. “Why and where and how Monsieur Rousse occupies himself does not in the least affect me.”

“Does it not?” the comte mused. “And here I thought you looked a great deal affected. You are magnificent in your scorn. No, my dear,” he said, shepherding her toward a punch bowl set on a table at the far end of the room, “I am afraid that you are very
much
affected. You still have strong emotions for this young man.”

She waited, knowing that to protest would only corroborate his belief.

“It is, of course, only to be expected. Women cannot heed what their minds, even so interesting and strong a mind as your own, tells them when their heart speaks.”

“My heart is not speaking,” she said stiffly.

“Perhaps not in the vocabulary of love, but it speaks of passion nonetheless. I can read it quite clearly in your eyes, your heightened color, the stiffness of your pose. I am a master of such language, my dear.” He was regarding her closely, almost eagerly, and Charlotte abruptly realized that he
wanted
her to feel something for Dand. Passion, if not affection.

Of course. Hadn’t Ginny made it perfectly clear that St. Lyon took his greatest satisfaction in seducing women already intimately involved with other men? She must be careful and she must be wise, perhaps even wise enough to circumvent the role she had set out to play. Everything she knew of St. Lyon confirmed him to be an arrogant man, proud of his sexual conquests, his identity profoundly tied up with his concept of himself as irresistible to women.

If St. Lyon thought she was still fighting a potent attraction to a past lover, pride alone would keep him from taking her to his bed until he was certain she could not resist him rather than seeking to eradicate the memory of another by using him as a substitute. Indeed, he would enjoy the challenge.

And while in the process of luring her to his bed, she might have time to search the castle and find the letter without having to compromise herself.

“How perceptive of you, Comte. I don’t suppose you know the receipt for some potion that could rid him from my memory?” She lifted one coppery brow.

“Ah,” he said. “You regret your association with Monsieur Rousse. You wish to turn back the clock, to be given the opportunity again to make certain significant choices.”

Damn.
She wanted him to see her as a courtesan, not a spoiled rich girl who sobbed into her pillows at night over the loss of her maidenhead. She gave him a catlike smile. “As much as I dislike having to contradict you, my dear Comte, I am afraid you have misread me. I do not regret the
association.
I regret Rousse.”

He laughed and handed her a cup of punch. “You are, as always, unexpectedly direct, Miss Nash. It is an aspect of your delightful personality I am determined to explore.”