Barbara Pierce (15 page)

The lying fiend!
Kilby fumed. He was only distantly acquainted with her, he had implied. He had not seen the lady in years.
Ha!
That rude woman had been his lover. How many other ladies that the duke considered his
distant
friend were present at the Sallises’ ball? she wondered. She took another retreating step. Jealousy was an ugly emotion. Kilby despised both Fayne and Mrs. Du Toy for evoking it within her.

“To be expected, the tragic death of his father has upset him.”

The other woman spoke. Kilby thought she heard her utter, “Solitea curse,” although she was not positive she had heard the woman correctly.

“Do not believe the gossips. The Carlisles never do. They are an amazingly arrogant clan,” Mrs. Du Toy said, laughing. “Then most dukes are. If Carlisle behaves himself this time, I might even let him convince me to become his duchess.”

Kilby had heard enough. She retraced her steps to the intersection and then continued straight down the unexplored hall. Even if Fayne had told her the truth about him not seeing Mrs. Du Toy in years, the widow had apparently made up for lost time after Kilby and Priddy departed Lord Guttrey’s house. His former mistress had lofty ambitions of becoming his duchess. She wondered if Fayne would be pleased by the news.

Kilby tried the first door on the right and discovered it was locked. The second closed door opened. She stepped inside, and not too soon, for she heard the voices of Mrs. Du Toy and her companion as they left the mirror room. Listening to their footfalls through the crack in the door, she finally allowed herself to breathe again when their voices faded off in the distance.

“Close the door, my lady of mystery.”

Kilby visibly started at the command. She turned around to see Lord Tulley sitting on an indigo and crimson striped sofa with a flask in his hand. The room she had stumbled into appeared to be a small parlor.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said, curtsying. “Forgive me for disturbing you. I thought I was alone.”

“Did you?” the man drawled lazily, urging her to sit beside him on the sofa. He tucked his flask in an inner pocket of his frock coat. “Earlier, I could not help but notice your keen regard while I sat contemplating my cards. I anticipated that a lady who watched a gentleman so boldly would also defy propriety by approaching me. When you did not, I decided to seek you out. I thought a private setting for our introduction would be more to your liking.”

She sat gingerly down on the sofa, keeping a respectable distance between them. His profile did not do Lord Tulley justice. Age had added lines around his murky blue eyes, but he still retained the handsomeness bestowed upon him in his youth. His dark brown hair on closer inspection was
feathered with fine strokes of silver. It did diminish her initial impression of his male beauty. Nevertheless, there was a hardness to his features that was absent at a distance.

“Lord Tulley—” she began.

“Ah, I see you are aware of who I am,” he said, pleased he had correctly deduced her interest. He also had not released her hand.

Kilby hastily nodded. “Yes. Since we are alone, permit me to introduce myself. I am Lady Kilby Fitchwolf. I was under the impression you knew my parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Nipping.”

The earl frowned upon hearing her parents’ titles. “Nipping.” He digested her revelation. Recognition sparked in his blue gaze. “You are Ermina’s daughter? I had not realized she had had a child.”

“Two daughters, actually.” Kilby fidgeted, wondering how she could extract her hand without offending the gentleman. “My sister Gypsy recently turned eight.” She doubted Lord Tulley would be interested in her family’s problems.

“Awful news about Ermina’s and your father’s deaths,” he murmured, coincidentally picking up her melancholy thoughts. “You and your sister have my condolences.” He bowed his head and tenderly caressed her hand.

Kilby shuddered, concealing the revulsion his light touch provoked. The heavy scent of the spirits he had been imbibing before her arrival had her nose wrinkling.

“If you know my name, then I can assume you are aware that I too have suffered an indisputable loss,” he said, his downcast gaze moving up the graceful line of her arm and lingering speculatively on her bodice.

Her expression softened with empathy. She understood loss intimately. “Forgive me if speaking of it has stirred your sorrow. Yes, I was told you lost your wife eight years ago.”

“Are we not a pair?” Lord Tulley laughed bitterly. Shaking his head, he said, “Two unhappy souls mourning what we cannot have, and refusing to accept solace when it is so sweetly offered.”

A thread of fear vibrated in her spine like the plucked string of a harp, when the earl lifted his lowered gaze to her face. Not caring how he interpreted her actions, Kilby rose off the sofa, tugging her hand free from his grasp.

“Perhaps you misunderstand me, my lord.” She walked away from him, pretending to study one of the small paintings on the wall. “I am happy. While I might grieve for my loss, I continue to embrace life. That does not mean I have forgotten them.” She seized the moment to explain why she had sought him out. Being alone with Lord Tulley was disconcerting, and she wanted to leave him to his solitude. “It was why I had wanted to meet you. I was told that you knew my mother in her youth. I had hoped that you might share what you recall of the lady you knew.”

The earl had the stealth of a sleek jungle cat. Kilby stifled her squeak of surprise when she realized he was standing behind her. She turned, attempting to put a respectable distance between them. Her efforts found her flat against the wall with the earl holding her in place with his body.

Lord Tulley smiled; his eyes gleamed in anticipation of his nefarious intent. “Why discuss the past, my lady, when the present is so fascinating?”

Where has Kilby run off to?
Fayne wondered crossly for the thousandth time. The Sallises’ town house was too large for a cursory search. He stood on the second landing and peered up into the shadowy stairwell, wondering if Kilby had ventured upstairs. Before he left his friends, he had noted that Lady Quennell was still in the ballroom, chatting with several of her friends. Kilby would not have left the house without alerting her chaperone to her plans.

A muffled scraping sound overhead was his only warning of the impending disaster. He threw himself backward seconds before a large piece of plaster struck the railing he had been leaning over and shattered. His heart pounding, he glanced up at the blackness and then down at the broken remains of a muse’s face that had adorned the ceiling several stories higher.

A precise blow to the head, and that hunk of plaster might have killed me.

It was a sobering thought. “I wonder if Sallis knows his bloody house is falling apart!”

Staying clear of the stairs, Fayne continued toward the opposite side of the house, assuming Kilby was trying to put distance between them. It frustrated him that she refused to acknowledge the unbidden passion that electrified the air whenever they were in proximity of each other. Hell, he did not even need to see her. Fayne had reclined in his bed alone night after night, craving the violet-eyed witch. When the yearning overwhelmed him, he closed his hand around the rigid ache she had caused, stroking his cock until his seed pumped vigorously into his palm. It had been simple for him to conjure her beautiful face during that blinding moment of ecstasy, to imagine his straining cock was pumping into her wet, tight sheath.

Fayne cursed, forgetting the potency of his idle thoughts when they centered on Kilby. It was going to be awkward explaining away his arousal if someone happened upon him in the hall.

Just minutes earlier, he had nearly collided with Morrigan Du Toy and her friend. Like a thief, he had ducked into a shadowed corner and prayed he would escape unnoticed. The ladies had walked by him, gossiping about their hostess.

The hallway he now strode down split off to the right and left. Fayne heard a muffled thump coming from the left. Assuming he had nothing to lose, he headed for the
source of the sound. Perhaps Kilby was hiding from the women, too.

Opening the door, Fayne was unprepared for neither what he stumbled upon nor the eruption of the rage that had been simmering just below the surface. Inside the small parlor, an unidentified man had Kilby pinned against the opposite wall with her arms over her head. He seemed to be devouring her mouth as his hips rhythmically thrust against her.

Kilby moaned, and Fayne wanted to throttle her. The lady had been denying him for days, and yet she spread her thighs for this stranger. It was ridiculous to feel betrayed, but his feelings toward the deceitful bitch had never seemed rational. He wanted to tear the man off Kilby and demand explanations he never would have asked from his former lovers.

Kilby turned away from her lover and gasped. “My lord . . . please . . . let go!”

Glowering at the entwined couple, Fayne almost backed out of the room. The lady had made her choice. Carlisles never begged. However, her words echoed softly in his head.

Let go.

Fayne had held Kilby in his arms, tasted her desire. She might have told him to stop, but she had never begged him to let go of her. He marched up to the straining couple. If he was wrong about the situation, he was gentleman enough to apologize for his error. If her lover’s honor demanded satisfaction, Fayne would gladly put a bullet in the smug bastard’s chest.

Grabbing the man by the shoulder, Fayne pulled him away from Kilby. The man staggered out of reach. He collided with a chair and both went tumbling.

“Fayne, thank heavens!” Kilby sobbed, sagging against the wall. Her relief was so evident, he felt physically ill to realize that he had so badly misjudged her.

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head, too overcome to speak. Her hand went to her throat. The skin around her neck was reddened as if the man had been strangling her to gain her compliance.

Fayne was going to kill him. Hauling the man to his feet, he recognized Lord Tulley. The fact the earl seemed to match Kilby’s preference for an older lover only made Fayne want to punch the bastard harder.

“Fayne! No!” Kilby cried out.

It was the wrong thing to say. He slammed his fist into the earl’s jaw, sending the man sprawling. Fayne was mad at himself as much as he was at the earl for believing even for a minute that Kilby had chosen this man to be her lover. As for Tulley, he was the unfortunate focus of Fayne’s punishing ire.

“Get up!” he curtly ordered.

When Tulley tried to roll onto all fours, he kicked the man in the underbelly. The earl grunted, curling his knees into his chest. Nothing was going to save the man for touching Kilby.

He pulled the man up by his cravat. Using the fancy knot to hold him in place, Fayne repeatedly struck the man in the face until his fist was slick with blood. Tulley’s eyes rolled upward until only the white was showing. Distantly, he heard Kilby frantically calling to him.

“Stop! You are going to kill him!”

Fayne felt Kilby’s hand on his arm. He shrugged off her touch and dragged the earl to the door. “Tulley, can you hear me?” He impatiently slapped the man in the face to make certain he was paying attention.

“Yesh,” the man said, slurring the word.

Fayne kicked open the door with his foot. “Good. Consider yourself challenged. My seconds will call on you tomorrow.”

He threw the man out of the room, watching dispassionately as he crashed into the wall opposite the door. “Tulley,
do me the courtesy of not coming to your senses, and issuing an apology. If I hear word that you have linked Lady Kilby’s name to our regrettable disagreement, I will make certain the bullet I fire into your worthless body is positioned so that you languish for days in feverish agony. Do I make myself clear?”

At Tulley’s sluggish nod, Fayne said, “Good.”

He slammed the door and locked it. Pivoting slowly, Fayne confronted the lady who was determined to drive him mad. He took out his handkerchief and wiped Tulley’s blood from his hand. “Have I ever mentioned to you that your choice in lovers is atrocious?”

Dry-eyed, Kilby ignored his question. “Fayne, you cannot challenge him.”

“No?” He was rather skillful at evasion, too. “Then perhaps you should stop running away from what’s between us and choose me.”

“I beg of you, do not challenge Lord Tulley,” Kilby said, clutching his arm.

He moved away from her. “Do not dare defend the man to me!” Fayne paced in front of her, reminding her of a hungry lion in a cage. “He had you pressed against the wall. His hands were on your throat. Tulley had every intention of taking you by force. If I hadn’t found you—”

She crossed her arms over her chest and hugged herself. “Yet you did. Lord Tulley did not harm me. Please let it go.”

In mid-stride he switched directions and lunged for her. Kilby shrieked as he backed her against the wall. Earlier when they had spoken in the ballroom, she had sensed the dark, unpredictable emotions simmering beneath his affable mask. The earl’s attack had cracked his fragile veneer, placing her in a very precarious position.

“Have I misunderstood, Kilby?” Fayne held her against the wall with his body, calculatingly re-creating the scene
from which he had just rescued her. Gently, he placed his hand on her bruised throat. “Did I interrupt something you desired?”

“That is an outrageous suggestion!” she snapped, angry that he could believe she wanted the earl’s hands on her. Especially when she had been valiantly resisting Fayne. “I never encouraged Lord Tulley!”

“Are you so certain?” he asked, the hand at her throat tightening imperceptibly. “I have watched you for weeks, flitting from one gentleman to the next.”

She rolled her eyes at his reasoning. “As is every other unmarried lady this season. Lady Quennell has made no secret that she hopes to secure a match for me before I return to Ealkin. There is nothing criminal in my actions.”

“It depends on your perspective, I suppose,” Fayne conceded, curling his fingers against her throat and stroking her neck. “When you gaze at me through those haunting violet eyes, I see within them an unspoken promise.”