Once Tempted (14 page)

She continued on but was forced to stop at the next landing as two maids on the floor below passed by.

Her apparent disbelief that he possessed not an iota of honor stung. For a man who regarded his honor as impeccable, his integrity, his life blood, to have someone, especially a woman surrounded by treasonous circumstances, scoff at his intentions as anything less than noble was inconceivable. Her chiding tones got the better of him.

“What is the matter, Miss Sutton, wouldn’t Chambley cut you in for your fair share?” he asked, sidling up to her and ignoring her scowl at his unwanted presence.

“No.” She shoved her way past him and continued down the stairs. “He wants the entire thing for himself.”

“So Chambley intends to cheat you.”

“Cheat me—bah! He means to kill me.”

“Kill you?” He grinned at her. “What did you do? Shoot at him as well?”

She didn’t say a word at first. Then she cast a disgruntled look over her shoulder at him. “It seems his lordship is not so unlike everyone else who is mad to have
El Rescate.”
Her glance said only too clearly she included him in that greedy lot.

It tweaked his pride anew to have her think so little of his motives, but he had to admit he hadn’t given her any evidence to think otherwise.

They turned down another hall, only to find Lord Chambley’s burliest servant lounging near a doorway.

“Milo,” she whispered, obviously having met the brute earlier. Her softly muttered utterance carried louder than Robert was comfortable hearing, and Milo raised his lolling head to determine the source.

Damnation, he’d had enough of letting her lead the way, pistol or no. He caught her in his arms, one hand over her mouth and the other around her waist, and yanked her back around the corner and into the nearest room.

Her canine friend followed obediently, settling himself down on the nearest rug and looking at the pair of them expectantly, as if he couldn’t wait for the inevitable fireworks at this turn of events.

When Aquiles got the door closed behind them, Robert released his hand from her mouth.

“Unhand me!” she snapped, wrestling out of his arms and once again aiming her confounded pistol at him.

“You are going to listen to me,” he told her. “Whether you like it or not.”

She cocked one brow, as if to say whatever his case, she would find it sadly lacking in truth.

“Oh, let me guess,” she said. “You are here on a secret mission to recover The King’s Ransom. Probably sent by Wellington himself to see the treasure recovered for the good of the Spanish people and for the glory of England.”

“Well, yes, that’s exactly it,” he said, feeling a little let down to have his plans so completely exposed.

She threw up her hands. “Do you think I am such a simpleton to fall for such an idiotic story?”

“But it’s true,” he sputtered.

“Harumph!” she said, dismissing him with a wave of the pistol. “You can tell me whatever lies you like, Mr. Danvers, but at a time that is a little more convenient for me. Lord Chambley was called away, but there is no telling how long he will be gone. And I have every intention of being quite a ways from this house before he returns . . .  .” She let out a long sigh whichseemed to end her sentence with one very adamant thought.

And I’ll be gone from here without you.

“Oh, I have a feeling Lord Chambley will be delayed for some time,” he said as she beat a retreat toward the door.

She stopped and whirled around, pointing the pistol at him like an accusing finger. “You sent the note.”

He would have smiled if he hadn’t been staring down the barrel of that infernal piece. “And unfortunately Lord Chambley’s carriage is about to lose a wheel. Someone should have warned him before he got into such an unsafe conveyance.”

His self-satisfied answer obviously didn’t offer much merit for his case in her court as she set off again, muttering an expletive about his parentage that no decent lady should have ever been able to put together.

Somehow it only made him admire her more.

Outside the room, the house suddenly bustled with activity. And only too quickly they discovered why.

“Where is Milo?” Lord Chambley’s question boomed through the house. “Find him immediately. I want him to attend me upstairs with our guest.”

“So much for your note,” she shot over her shoulder at him.

Olivia counted silently to ten. How had she gotten into this mess? While her heart told her that Robert was the hero she’d been waiting for, experience made her wary of trusting him—no matter that he’d single-handedly saved her life by pulling her to safety from the window ledge. Or that he’d come to rescue her.

Honestly, she wasn’t convinced he’d come to rescue her at all. He’d probably just done all this because she was the key to finding
El Rescate del Rey.

Oh, he was no better than Bradstone—or Chambley, for that matter.

But her heart clamored a different argument, especially when he took her hand in his.

“Come along,” he told her. “We’re getting out of here.”

She turned around to find Robert’s servant already out the window, the pair having devised an impromptu rope with the window hangings.

Olivia backed away from him. There was no way she was going out another window.

“I think you are forgetting I have this.” She held up the pistol. If she was going out of this house, she’d make her escape in a more conventional route—like a highwayman, not like a chimney sweep.

“Would you put that fool thing away before you shoot yourself, or worse, me.” He reached out so quickly, she barely saw his arm move. And in a flash, he’d stripped the pistol from her hand and had it stuffed back into her valise. Taking up her battered bag, he pointed a finger at the open window. “Now quit being foolish and come along. It’s the only way,” He turned toward the window, as if she was just going to follow him because he’d said so.

’Twas almost laughable, but this was the way she’d always imagined Hobbe would sweep into her life—commanding and direct. Yet, while her heart hammered that this was the rescue she’d imagined and she should be throwing herself into his worthy and oh so capable arms, her previous experience with Lord Chambley’s windows and her cowardice over heights was too much for her to just give in to her foolish fantasies.

Racing to the door, she listened for half a second, and hearing nothing beyond the portal, she swung the door open.

From behind her came an outraged protest. “Olivia! No!”

As it turned out, her hero had been right and her escape turned out to be short-lived.

“Well, what a surprise to find you here, Bradstone,” Chambley drawled at Robert. “I should have recognized your ill-conceived bumbling on that wild-goose chase to Castlereagh. Lucky for me, I ended up going past his carriage not far from here, and we were able to complete our business without me having to go all the way over to his office.” Chambley pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at Robert.
“Partners
should trust one another, I’ve always thought, but apparently we don’t share that philosophy.”

He cocked the hammer back, aiming the weapon at Robert’s chest.

Before she realized what she was doing, Olivia surged between them. “Don’t kill him. I’ll give you what you want, just don’t kill him.” What the devil was she saying? Why was she protecting this man when Chambley had just said they were partners?

Chambley glanced over her shoulder at Robert, his lips curled in a sneer. “How do you keep convincing this chit that you care about her?” He then turned his gaze back to Olivia.
“Still
falling for his charms, my dear? Don’t you know he doesn’t care a whit for you? Never did, never will. Isn’t that right, Bradstone?” He took a step closer to her so that the muzzle of the gun rested between her breasts. “You’ve only been important to us for one thing—providing the whereabouts of the King’s Ransom.”

Olivia’s gaze narrowed. Chambley truly thought the man before him was the Marquis of Bradstone. The real Lord Bradstone.
So what if this Robert was telling the truth
?

“Let us go, and I’ll give you what you want,” she said, her mind awhirl.

“You’ll give me what I want? How kind of you,” he mocked. “But you don’t seem to realize I’m in no mood for bargaining. And as long as I hold this gun, you are in no position to do anything other than to tell me what I want.”

She stood her ground. “I won’t tell you a thing until you release him,” she said, nodding at Robert.

“Olivia—” Robert began to protest.

“Silence, Bradstone,” Chambley ordered. “You’d do well to remember Sir Sutton’s fate.”

“My father?” Olivia asked, an ominous chill running down her spine. “What has he to do with this?”

Chambley’s thick lips spread into a malevolent smile. “Your lover over there and I approached your father about joining our little venture, but he refused. Quite adamantly. Wouldn’t hear of stealing the missive, though it would have made him a wealthy man instead of the poor, misguided scholar that he was. How unfortunate for him that he didn’t see our offer as the opportunity that it was, eh, Bradstone?”

Robert said nothing.

“Perhaps if he’d agreed, those damning letters from the Dutch wouldn’t have been found in his possession.”

“You did that,” Olivia said.
“You
set him up as a traitor.”

“Of course I did. We both did,” Chambley said, nodding at Robert. “And still your sire refused to help us.”

Robert surged forward. “You bastard.”

Chambley swung the pistol toward him. “What, Bradstone? Don’t you want your little bit of muslin here to know your part in her father’s unfortunate demise? I don’t think she’ll mind much. After all, she did come running back to you like a bitch in heat. She appears to be as eager for you now as she was back then, eh, my good man?”

Olivia had never believed her father had committed the treasonous acts he’d been accused of, no more than she had thought him capable of such an unholy act as suicide.

“He didn’t hang himself,” she whispered. “You did it.”

“I had help,” he replied. “Didn’t I, Bradstone?”

Olivia struggled to catch her breath. Her father had been murdered. Betrayed by Bradstone and Chambley because he’d refused to aid them.

Suddenly her entire past was rewritten, and Bradstone’s betrayal became only that much more poisonous. It hadn’t been some twist of fate that had led the marquis to court her but part of a calculated plan.

And when they’d failed to gain her father’s support, they’d taken advantage of her naiveté and grief by sending the handsome and only too eligible Bradstone to ensnare her. While her mother had welcomed his advances toward her daughter because he was rich and titled, Olivia had been too inexperienced and blindly smitten to see the devilish truth.

But it was time for a measure of retribution. Bradstone may have already received his just due, but Chambley still lived. So she would give him what he so desperately wanted—The King’s Ransom. It was her only bargaining chip and a gamble she was willing to take. Not that any of her notes or the coded missive would be of help. For by the time he could find anyone to decipher her research—that is, if there was anyone capable of doing so—she and Robert would be well gone from here.

She hoped the riddle of
El Rescate
drove Chambley mad.

In the meantime, her plan would buy her life and time to determine whom she could trust. Or if she would ever trust another man again.

She snatched her satchel free from Robert’s grasp and tossed it down on the floor between her feet and Chambley’s. “Take it. All my notes are inside. Everything you want. The directions to the treasure, where it is buried, everything. They are yours, if you let us leave.”

Chambley eyed her. “You still want him? Didn’t you hear me, you numbwitted little fool? The man killed your father.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care. Just let us leave.”

Silence descended around them as Chambley considered her offer. Then he bent over and snatched up the bag and as he rose, he pointed the pistol at Olivia.

The next few moments replayed like the past. In an instant she thought she was back in the library with Bradstone and it was another man leaping forward to save her.

Even the voice sounded eerily the same.

“No!” Robert shouted, as he grabbed her, throwing her out of harm’s way.

The report sounded just the same to her ears, ringing forever and then suddenly stilled as she hit the floor hard, Robert’s body covering hers, shielding her from harm, sheltering her from Chambley’s evil intentions.

The dog that had followed her barked wildly, running in circles and howling at Chambley as if he were the devil himself.

“Shut up,” Chambley told it, stepping here and there away from its snapping teeth. “Shut up.” In his hasty movements, he kicked her valise toward her, and now it lay open, the butt of Jemmy’s other pistol poised and waiting for her.

Olivia took advantage of the man’s distracted attention and groped wildly for it, but Robert’s inert body held her pinned to the ground.

The gun was just a hair’s breadth out of reach, but still she struggled to get it, for she could see Chambley reaching into his coat.

Then as her hand closed over the butt, she saw out of the corner of her eye Chambley pulling out a second pistol and taking aim at them.

She didn’t think, rather she reacted, this time out of instinct more than the hatred burning through her. Her arm came up, her finger tugged the trigger, and a second shot exploded, this time felling Chambley.

She watched him whirl back and land in a heap at the base of the stairs.

The blast seemed to bring Robert to life. He struggled to his feet, sparing a glance at Chambley, then down at Olivia. “Are you hurt?” he asked her.

She shook her head, unable to take her eyes off Chambley. Her blazing need for revenge fled in the face of what she’d just done.

Dear God, she’d shot a man.

Chambley lay howling and writhing on the floor, clutching at his arm and cursing everyone in sight.

“We must get to the carriage,” Robert said, grabbing first her valise, then her hand, and towing her from the frightful scene.