The Wickedest Lord Alive (16 page)

Shock widened her thickly lashed eyes, but only for an instant.

Lightly, she said, “And here I’d thought we were going on so well.”

“Nevertheless, Madeleine,” he said, “it is over now.”

He had set her up in this house, paid her an extravagant allowance, settled her bills. He refused to feel guilty for ending it so abruptly. Madeleine was an old hand at this game. She knew the score.

“Of course.”

She turned away and her heavy black tresses fell forward, masking her profile as she bent to the fire. Straightening, she touched the lit taper to the end of the cigarillo, then drew on the cigarillo with slightly hollowed cheeks that evoked memories of other exotic acts she’d performed with that mouth. She threw the taper into the grate.

When she turned to face him again, she blew out a stream of smoke. She was perfectly composed, her aspect calm. Her hand, however, trembled slightly as she tapped ash from the cigarillo into a china dish.

He cocked his head, searching her face for some other manifestation of disturbed emotions. He found none.

Well, why should she repine? The agreement they’d made at the outset left her well provided for, but she liked the life of a courtesan, she’d told him.

It would not be long before she took another lover. She would flaunt Xavier’s rubies at the opera to show the level of her former protector’s appreciation. Other men would vie to become her next conquest. Madeleine could take her pick.

That he did not feel the slightest ounce of possessiveness toward her told him it was indeed time to call it a day. He owed it to her to make a clean, clear break. Nothing more.

Madeleine gestured to a pair of armchairs by the fire. Her voice, always husky, seemed to scrape. “Why don’t you sit down, my lord? We’ll take a glass of wine together. For old times’ sake.”

Still, she ignored the gift. That decided him against agreeing to her suggestion.

“Thank you, but I do not stay.”

She moved toward him, hips swaying seductively, but her smile was forced, her eyes watchful, wary. “One glass of wine, my lord. Surely you owe me that?”

He hesitated. Then he said, “Very well. But this is not the beginning of anything else, Madeleine.”

It seemed to him that she let out a long, measured breath. “Of course not.”

She turned away from him again to pour claret from a decanter into two glasses.

He accepted his with thanks, never taking his gaze from her. There was something about her manner that put his senses on alert. He set his glass on the table by his chair without tasting the wine.

“Tell me, Madeleine,” he said, “is something wrong?”

She put her glass down, also without taking a sip. She licked her lips, but forgot to be seductive about it. “Well, I … It is sudden, that is all. I suppose I am a little surprised.”

“Don’t make more of it than it was, Madeleine,” said Xavier. “You knew from the outset how it would be.”

“To be sure.” She put a hand to her loosely dressed hair and gave a self-conscious little laugh. “I must appear quite ridiculous to you.”

“Not at all,” he said, trying to make his tone gentle.

She licked her lips again, and it occurred to him that she seemed neither angry nor upset. She seemed nervous. Anxious. That wasn’t at all like Madeleine.

He tilted his head, studying her. Now, she had reanimated his interest, though not in a way that perhaps she might have desired.

She waved an elegant hand in the direction of his glass. “My lord, you do not drink. It is a very fine wine.”

Since he was the one to stock her cellars, she did not need to tell him that. In fact, as if she realized she’d said something inane, she colored and blinked rapidly, her regard sliding away from his.

Suddenly, he knew.

His insides turned to ice. Slowly, very slowly, he got to his feet.

At the look on his face, Madeleine’s poise deserted her. She shrank back in her chair, eyes fearful.

Without taking his gaze from hers, he reached for his wineglass. Softly, he said, “By God, I ought to force this down your throat.”

Any lingering doubt vanished as she turned stark white. “You wouldn’t.” She was panting with fear now.

Xavier set his jaw. “I will do precisely that if you don’t tell me who put you up to this.”

“No one. No one put me up to it.” She stared up at him, and there was something dogged and defiant in her expression that made him realize that even if the inspiration had not been hers, she would have taken some satisfaction in the execution.

“You lie.” The words were a panther’s purr.

Her throat convulsed as she swallowed hard. But the next second, her mouth contorted and she was laughing at him, a harsh, jangling sound.

Amazing the way ugly emotions could turn a beautiful face into something grotesque.

“Who, Madeleine?”

He didn’t want to touch her, could scarcely believe he’d been such a poor judge of character as to consort with this viper of a woman in the first place. But he’d do it. He must know if his suspicions were correct.

When her face hardened and her lips pressed together, he gripped her wrist and hauled her up. Clamping her against his chest with his forearm, he tilted his wineglass toward her now quivering mouth.

“Don’t make me go through with this,” he said in her ear, his voice cool and precise. “It is so very tempting to serve you as you would have served me.”

“No!” She struggled in his grip, her lips curled in a snarl. Wine spilled like droplets of blood on her smooth white breast.

Disgust for her and even more for himself rose within him. After all, he knew precisely who was behind this cowardly attack. He didn’t need to bully it from her.

“You repel me,” he said coldly, releasing her and setting the wineglass down with a deliberation that cost him dearly when he wanted to hurl its contents in her face. “I’ve given you everything you desired and more. And this is how you repay me.”

She laughed, but it was a dragging, hollow sound. “Oh, you are the consummate protector, my lord. I must own diamonds worth a king’s ransom by now.”

He said, “You’re not going to complain of my skills as a lover.” He didn’t know why the hell he cared.

“Oh, you can play a woman’s body like an instrument, my lord. But the truly great artist plays with
feeling
. And you have none.”

When he didn’t reply, she said in a tearing voice, “For pity’s sake, look at you! Someone who shared your bed for almost a year has tried to
poison
you, Steyne. And all you do is stand there like a marble statue. All haughty pride. All coldness and disdain. You won’t even prosecute me because it would hurt your pride for the world to know about this.”

In a subdued voice, she added, “You don’t even have enough passion in you to hurt me.”

The ice inside him seemed to expand until it made breathing difficult.

He needed to get out of there.

He indicated the package he’d brought with a flick of his hand. “Sell those,” he said to her. “Pack up your things and leave London. You are finished here.”

*   *   *

Parting from Mr. Allbright was every bit as bittersweet as Lizzie had expected. She’d made her rounds of the district in the preceding days, taking leave of the Minchins and the Tafts along with all the villagers and the surrounding gentry.

When she couldn’t eke out her farewells any longer, it was time for Lizzie to prepare herself finally for departure. She must grow accustomed to the idea that she would not return to Little Thurston to live. Yet everything that had occurred since Lord Steyne came back into her life seemed a blur of unreality.

Little Thurston and her friendships there were solid and real. This world she was about to enter took on the aspect of a land from a fairy tale. One full of forbidden, haunted forests and ogres who ate up innocent maidens for breakfast.

She saw with a pang that in his own heart, the vicar had parted from her already. His sister, Mrs. Payne, immediately took up the reins of the household as if they’d been left dangling since Mrs. Allbright’s demise. As if Lizzie did not exist.

“When was the last time you ate a square meal?” Mrs. Payne demanded of her brother. “You’re skin and bone, dear William, skin and bone.”

The lady eyed Lizzie askance, as if Lizzie had not tried her best to coax Mr. Allbright to eat, tempting his appetite by ordering his favorite dishes. But Lizzie knew—none better—the way heartache can turn the choicest morsels to ashes in one’s mouth. She had not liked to press the vicar too hard, much less bully him the way his sister did. She’d felt she’d not had the right.

But with a gleam of humor in the covert look he sent Lizzie, Mr. Allbright submitted to his sister’s hectoring. He ate. And Lizzie suffered the most shameful mix of gladness and misery at the sight.

She told herself she’d be easy now about the vicar’s well-being. Mrs. Payne might be abrasive; she might treat Lizzie herself as if she were a servant and an incompetent one, at that. But she had her brother’s best interests at heart. And due to her talent for hounding Mr. Allbright into submission, she seemed to succeed better in taking care of him than Lizzie ever could.

Relieved of that worry, Lizzie fretted over her future.

Her optimistic nature could not help but paint that future brightly, with her and the marquis a loving couple in the center of a big happy family, inhabiting Steyne’s country estate. The vision was so far from Steyne’s plans for them, it seemed impossible. And yet she wanted it.

With her entire being, she wanted that vision to come true. And she was going to do everything in her power to make that happen.

On the day Lizzie left Little Thurston forever, the vicar took her hands in a strong clasp. “Be kind to him, Lizzie.”

“Yes. If he’ll let me,” she said with a wry smile.

He nodded as if he understood. “I think he is a man who has not known much kindness. But you will find a way.”

The vicar did not embrace her, for that was not his custom. But he stood outside the gate, watching as the carriage rattled down the lane. Her last sight of him was of his sister taking his arm and shepherding him back into the house.

Kindness
. Could the key to unlocking Lord Steyne’s heart be so simple? Lizzie squared her shoulders and looked toward her future. There was only one way to find out.

*   *   *

Lizzie refused to let herself be intimidated by Harcourt. She’d lived in a great house for the first seventeen years of her life. She knew how they operated.

But she had not been prepared for the sheer scale of the Duke of Montford’s principal seat. The closest she’d come to such grandeur was poring over engravings of the great French palace of Versailles.

A massive forecourt, paved in square flagstones, was embraced on three sides by an extravagant expanse of stone in a surprisingly harmonious mixture of the baroque and the neoclassical styles. A central carved pediment and impressive ionic columns lent the whole a deceptive air of elegant simplicity. Then the eye strayed to the east and west wings, with their pilasters and ornate statuary.

Lizzie wondered if living in such a great pile was as uncomfortable and inconvenient as she suspected it might be.

“Formidable, isn’t it?” she said to Clare, when her friend shrieked with a mixture of delight and dismay.

“Imagine growing up in such a place,” said Clare. “One might be lost and never found again.”

Aunt Sadie, unmoved by the astonishing edifice, said, “Be sure to compose yourself before we get down, Clare. You will only look like a yokel wandering around with your mouth agape.”

The comment was unusually astringent for Aunt Sadie. Lizzie wondered what could be amiss.

She could not help but wonder if Clare’s indiscreet conversation at Lady Chard’s was responsible for the slight pinch between Aunt Sadie’s eyebrows.

Lizzie had been obliged to suffer a most embarrassing lecture from Aunt Sadie about the sorts of attentions she must on no account encourage from Lord Steyne—or from any other man, for that matter. She had remained silent throughout, hoping to have the lesson over as soon as possible.

But Aunt Sadie seemed to feel the need to make up for the many years in which Lizzie had not had a worldly female to guide her. Eventually, goaded beyond endurance, Lizzie said, “Ma’am, I appreciate your concern, but truly, you need not trouble yourself. I’m well aware of the rules of proper behavior. I shall not break them.”

At least, technically she would not break them. A shiver of anticipation rippled down her spine. Steyne intended to seduce her. He’d stated it quite plainly. If she surrendered too soon, she might lose any hope of making their marriage something substantial and good.

The butler greeted them with the information that most of the party had traveled on an excursion for the day but were expected to arrive back shortly. A brisk, efficient housekeeper conducted them to their bedchambers and saw them settled.

Thankfully, Lizzie’s mountain of baggage had arrived sometime earlier. She would have to explain it all to Clare. There was no getting around the fact that even with the best will in the world, Mr. Allbright could not afford to outfit her the way Lord Steyne had.

Nor could she explain away the pretty maid who bobbed a curtsy to her as the housekeeper departed.

When the door closed behind the housekeeper, Lizzie said, “What is your name?”

“Beth, miss,” said the girl, bobbing another curtsy. “Or at least, the housekeeper said you ought to call me by my surname, which is Dart, because I’m a proper lady’s maid now.”

She had warm brown eyes and a mop of dark brown ringlets and was at least a head shorter than Lizzie, which was to say just the right height for a female.

The girl appeared quite a merry little soul and rather doubtful of being addressed in such an impersonal manner.

“What would you like to be called, just between us?” Lizzie said.

The maid dimpled. “Beth would be ever so much more friendly. But you mustn’t mind me, miss. I daresay I shall become accustomed to Dart.”

“Beth it shall be, just between us. When we are in company, I shall remember to call you Dart.”