Once Tempted (8 page)

Olivia closed her eyes and let out a long, frustrated sigh. How could a man have changed so much? Didn’t anyone else notice? She’d heard of his head injuries, but she suspected there was more to his changes than a good rap on the head could have provided.

And if that wasn’t enough, he had changed physically. His shoulders had broadened, his stance matured. There was something compelling about him, something that lit the ashes of her imagination as if they were dry kindling instead of cold dreams.

If it was possible, Robert had become even more masculine, more attractive, more desirable.

Desirable?

Her lashes sprang open, and she was about to borrow another of Jemmy’s expressions when she spied a small stain of light creeping through the racks of clothing.

Following it like a beacon, she pushed aside a selection of heavy, winter wool cloaks and found herself staring at what appeared to be the outline of another door. Catching up her valise with one hand, she felt around until she found the latch and ever so slowly twisted it.

The door opened, and inside the adjoining room a man let out a surprised squawk. Unlike the formidable Aquiles, this fellow was like a whisper of wind on a calm day. Spry, short, with thinning gray twists of oiled hair, he sprang from his chair, where he had been reading a book. “Dear me! Oh my!” he exclaimed. “Who are you?”

“Hired I was for the night,” she said, using her best country accent. “Got lost on the stairs looking for the necessary and a place to change into my workin’ apron. Don’t know how I ended up in the wrong place.” For effect, she hugged her small valise as if it contained the most valuable apron ever to grace Bradstone House.

The man frowned, then hustled forward. Grabbing her by the elbow, he shoved her toward a similar door on the other side of the narrow room. “Lost, indeed,” he said, propelling her out into the hallway. “That was his lordship’s room you so carelessly wandered into. He would be incensed if he discovered you in there.”

He’ll be even more angry when he finds me gone,
Olivia wanted to add.

Her unwitting rescuer shoved her out into the dark hallway. “Down this corridor are stairs that will lead you to the kitchen. Ask one of the girls there to show you the servants’ area.” He stuck his nose in the air and shut the door in her face.

Olivia smiled and followed the man’s instructions almost to the letter. When she got to the kitchens, she continued on by walking out the back door.

“You aren’t the only one with nine lives, my lord,” Olivia mused as she slipped into the darkness of the garden behind the house.

Grinning at the ease of her escape, she continued until she found herself on a nearby street corner. There she paused and looked out into the lonely and dangerous darkness of London, a single question begging to be answered.

What do I do now?

“Robert, do come here,” his aunt said, interrupting his conversation with a rather inane woman and her equally stupid daughter.

Lady Bradstone smiled broadly at his companions. “Lady Colyer, Miss Colyer, I see you have met my dearest son. I hope you are conspiring to steal his heart.” She patted the blushing girl on her arm with her fan.

Miss Colyer tittered nervously at such an intimation, while her mother beamed as if her daughter’s elevation to marchioness was nothing more than a formality at this point.

For a moment it struck him that the woman locked in his closet would never make such a nit of herself. Olivia Sutton captured a man’s attention with her vivacity, with her fierce independence, with her uncommon beauty. The
ton
might not have appreciated her lively coloring, but Robert had always had a weakness for redheads.

Besides, it was hard to forget a woman who would boldly enter your bedchamber and threaten to kill you. And that she hadn’t killed him made her all that much more a study in contradictions, unlike this transparent little fortune hunter before him.

“Do excuse me, ladies,” Robert said, offering a short bow and taking his aunt’s arm. “Duty calls.”

Lady Colyer tapped her fan on his other arm. “Perhaps my daughter and I can call on you later this week, my lord, so we can finish recounting for you our recent visit to Gravesly Manor. We haven’t even gotten to the description of the second drawing room yet.”

“I will be breathless until I hear all of it,” Robert told her. For a moment he almost wished Miss Sutton had finished him off. At least it would have given him a viable excuse for never having to listen to Lady Colyer’s shrill voice ever again. But given that he had Miss Sutton in his possession, he would soon be free of London and the Lady Colyers of the world.

With the other woman now out of earshot, his aunt added her own grating complaint. “Robert, didn’t we discuss this problem not four hours ago, and now here he is again.”

“Who, madame?”

“That pirate of yours. He is lurking about the ballroom in the most unfashionable manner.” She pointed her fan toward one of the doorways, where Aquiles towered over the guests like a draft horse amongst a herd of ponies. And by the way he was hopping from one foot to the other, he looked about as comfortable as one as well.

Something must be damned wrong for him to leave that
chit alone,
he thought. He could only imagine what trouble Miss Sutton was causing now.

“I thought I explained that it was imperative he be kept out of sight.” She shook her head. “He is frightening some of our more refined guests.”

Robert wanted to ask her who those might be, as he hadn’t met anyone who qualified for that distinction.

“Oh, please do something about him, Robert,” his aunt said in her most plaintive and trying voice. “You promised.”

“So I did, madame,” he told her. “And I will see to this indiscretion immediately.”

He crossed the room as quickly as he could, nodding to those who called out greetings or well-wishes and avoiding those who sought a more lengthy dialogue.

But one guest did manage to stop him.

Lord Chambley.

“Bradstone,” he said in greeting, as he stepped into Robert’s path and stopped his course cold. “We have unfinished business, you and I. You can’t continue to avoid me for much longer.”

Robert wasn’t too sure what he’d been doing to avoid the man, so he nodded in acknowledgment and said nothing.

“I will have an explanation,” Chambley said, his voice low and menacing.

“Now is neither the time nor the place,” Robert told him, adeptly sidestepping him and wondering at the man’s “business” interests with his cousin.

“Soon, Bradstone. Soon,” Lord Chambley called out after him.

When he reached Aquiles’s side, Robert asked, “Why aren’t you upstairs?”

Aquiles stared at the ground, his lips moving but no words coming out.

“Out with it, man. What has happened?”

“She’s vanished,” Aquiles stammered.

“What do you mean ‘vanished’?”

“Poof. Gone. Perhaps by the angels, I think,” he said.

Aquiles always liked to attribute anything that on the surface did not make sense to the mischievous actions of angels.

Robert sincerely doubted angels would dare meddle with that termagant they had corralled upstairs.

Leaning forward, Robert sniffed at Aquiles’s breath. Angels had a way of appearing to his servant when he’d been imbibing too much Madeira.

“I haven’t been drinking, if that is what you think,” the man protested. “I opened the door to check on the poor little thing because she had grown so quiet, and she was no more. You can come see for yourself.”

Robert did just that, and to his dismay discovered that Aquiles was right.

Miss Sutton had vanished.

As he stared into the empty dressing room, he used the same colorful oath she’d used earlier in the evening.

To his surprise, Babbitt poked his head out from between a pair of heavy winter cloaks. “My lord? Is that you?”

Robert strode forward, pulling the hapless valet out of his path, and stared at the second opening which led to Babbitt’s spartan quarters. “Where the hell did that door come from?”

“I believe, my lord, it has always been there,” a rather subdued Babbitt replied. The man paused for a moment, then suggested, “Perhaps with your injuries you forgot about it.”

“Yes, my injuries,” Robert answered as he retraced his steps back into his room, glancing this way and that.

He’d had her in his grasp and now he’d lost her. “Dammit!”

He’d all but forgotten about the valet when the man said in an anxious voice, “Is this about the girl?”

Robert swung around, his gaze pinning the little man to where he stood. “You saw her?”

“Yes,” Babbitt replied. He glanced nervously at Robert, then at Aquiles, then bucking up his thin shoulders, he made his report. “Cheeky thing. Irish most likely. Claiming she got lost on her way to the necessary. I suspect she was looking for items to supplement her wages for the evening. Those kind always do, steal that is. I doubt you’d find a trustworthy one in the entire country.”

Aquiles made a low, rude noise in the back of his throat.

Babbitt’s gaze fluttered over to the man. “Did I say something wrong?”

“My batman is half Irish.”

“Oh, my deepest regrets, Mr. Aquiles,” Babbit-squeaked. “Had I known about your unfortunate parentage, I wouldn’t have been so bold.”

Robert glanced away so as not to laugh out loud as Aquiles’s face turned a mottled shade of red.

Babbit, obviously sensing his apology hadn’t made the right impression, tactfully changed the subject. “Did that wretched girl steal something, my lord? Did she disturb your belongings? For if she did, I blame myself. I should have searched her bag. I should have held her for the authorities. I should have—”

“Yes, Babbitt, duly noted,” Robert told the man. “I doubt she committed any nefarious deeds on your watch.”

The man preened at what he obviously perceived as a compliment from his employer.

Robert hadn’t meant it as one.

“Oh dear,” the valet exclaimed. “This room is quite disorderly. Allow me, sir.” He crossed the room and retrieved the crumpled sheet of paper Robert had begun to pen his confession on.

“Wait,” Robert told him. “I need that.”

The valet flinched at the sharp demand, then handed over the piece of paper with a martyred air about him.

“That will be all, Babbitt.”

The man left, albeit reluctantly, casting more than one speculative glance over his shoulder as he left the way he had arrived, through the closet.

Once he heard the second door pulled firmly closed, Robert began the task of smoothing out the paper. He recalled that when Miss Sutton had been ordering him to write his confession on the sheet, he had noticed something unusual about it. Now that he had it flat, he held it up to the candle still burning on his desk. “Look at this,” he said to Aquiles. “What do you make of that?”

The giant bent over and peered at the sheet. “A watermark?”

“Aye. A family crest of some kind. Could be a clue as to where that banshee has been hiding.”

“More like roosting,” Aquiles said, his eyes squinting to get a closer look. “It looks like a little sparrow, maybe?”

“That,” Robert said, “is a finch.”

With little money of her own and nowhere else to turn, Olivia hailed a hackney and set out for the Finch town house. With the family in the country, she could probably give the housekeeper, Mrs. Delaney, some believable excuse about coming to town for the night on an errand for her ladyship. She spent the ride over to the Mayfair address fashioning a reasonable one.

But her knock on the door was not answered by the housekeeper but by Addison, the butler from Finch Manor.

“Addison, what are you doing here?” she asked, almost afraid to enter the house.

“Awaiting you, Mrs. Keates.”

She stared at him, still stunned by his sudden appearance in town. The loyal family retainer would never leave her ladyship, let alone Finch Manor, not unless . . .

“Is that her, Addison?” Lady Finch’s voice called out from somewhere close by. “Bring that impossible girl to me immediately. And don’t let her get away.”

Olivia would have liked nothing more than to back down the steps and run, but Addison, true to his mistress’s edict, caught Olivia by the arm and pulled her into the house.

She couldn’t help wondering if perhaps she’d been a little too hasty in making her escape from Bradstone.

“There you are!” her ladyship said. “Do you know the fright you have given me?” She sat in a high-backed chair, not unlike the one she had at Finch Manor and used for interviewing—or rather, chastising the servants, Jemmy when he overspent his allowance, or Lord Finch when he spent too much time in his orchid house. Next to her, Jemmy sat in an equally formidable chair, his features pale and drawn.

“My lady, what are you doing here?” Olivia still couldn’t believe her employer had followed her to town—a place Evaline Reyburn, Lady Finch, hadn’t set foot in twenty years.

“Concern for me?” Lady Finch said. “Isn’t it a little too late for that when you nearly put me in my grave with vexation over your disappearance? How could you do this to me?”

Olivia shuffled a bit under the lady’s emotional outburst. “I’m sorry, my lady. It was just a bit of urgent business that came up. I didn’t want to worry you with my poor concerns.”

“Your poor concerns? Since when is confronting Lord Bradstone a poor concern?”

Olivia’s mouth dropped open at this, but she snapped it shut quickly and tried to brazen out a falsehood. “I don’t know what you mean. I have a cousin. Yes, a cousin. She is in dire financial circumstances. A widow, like me, without—”

“Olivia Sutton,” Lady Finch blurted out, halting the stumbling tale. “You have always been a poor liar. You were the first day you arrived with Lord Finch. A widow, indeed! When the entire town was talking of the murder at the Chambley ball and the disappearance of both Lord Bradstone and his paramour, Miss Sutton. How coincidental then that you turn up on my doorstep not two days later, calling yourself Juliet Keates, and claiming to be the woman I’d sent Lord Finch to fetch from town.
Her
name was Mary.”