Pain and deep mortification stared horrified at him through her maple-sugar eyes, and clung to him like a foul odor as he swiveled away from her cunning deceptions, grabbing his pants as he headed toward the door.
“Ravenscar, wait, please,” she pleaded behind him.
“No,” he rasped, grabbing the doorknob with a jerk. “You will remain locked in here until I have need of your mouth again.”
“No, Ravenscar!”
Harrison slammed the door shut behind him and locked it on Lia’s cry. Damn the bitch! Damn the sweet bitch to hell, he thought raggedly, as he stalked away.
Chapter Five
Several days later Harrison closely watched Drummond, his friend the Duke of Kittridge. They were sitting in Harrison’s cherry-wood study in his fashionable townhouse on Mayfair. He had just told Drummond of Lia’s capture.
“Hmm,” Drummond murmured as he rubbed a finger over his bottom lip and stared down into his half-filled glass of Scottish whiskey. “And you say that she is here now?” Drummond finished asking.
“Yes,” Harrison rasped, leaning back into his overstuffed leather chair to stare brooding at the fire popping amber sparks. “She will be down shortly so you may see for yourself. I just simply . . . ,” he faltered into silence.
“You simply wanted someone to tell you, someone who had worked closely with Lia, that this is in fact Lia. And further that her claim to have a twin sister is nonsense. And then perhaps that you have every right to perpetrate any vengeance upon her that you may wish . . . hmm.”
“Scoundrel,” Harrison hissed in irritation, throwing back his snifter of whiskey in one swallow. “I needed no one’s permission,” he finished on an angry rasp.
“Tell me, my dear friend, what have you done to the young woman already?” Drummond asked leaning forward with a piercing quality in his intelligent gray eyes.
“I have fucked her if that is what you mean,” Harrison whispered venomously. “And I intend to keep on fucking her until she is nothing but my sexual slave.”
Drummond’s silver-gray eyebrows arched. “Really, Ravenscar?”
Harrison only muttered as he rose to fix himself another whiskey with his back to Drummond, as he heard him say. “No assassin's bullet for justice. No guarded ride to the Gaol to await prosecution for treasonous acts. Hanging, I believe they call that,” Drummond drawled. “Nor even the more intimate justice of professional ruination.” Harrison grimaced as Drummond paused before saying, “But sex! My lethal and brilliant friend, has decided to reap his revenge by bedding the exquisite chit!”
“Damnation,” Harrison hissed, swiveling angrily to face Drummond, just as he heard.
“My Lord Ravenscar, you requested my presence?”
Lia was curtsying to him and Drummond, who had stood. Curtsying beautifully in the scandalous costume that he’d commanded she wear. It was simply indecent. Just a wisp of red silk from head to toe. He could clearly see the ebony shadow between her thighs and the outline of her jutting nipples. The costume was hedonistic. It was meant to debase and claim ownership. He could see Lia’s mortification in her scarlet cheeks and lowered head making him wonder yet again at what game she played.
The Lia he knew, only through several years of investigations compromising eyewitness accounts and detailed written accounts that Lia would have thrived on displaying herself this way. In fact she would have already been actively trying to seduce the only other man in the room beside himself with her barely clad body. She should be a scheming vixen trying to gain some upper hand. Any hand! Whereas this Lia was fighting not to cover her hands over the silhouette of her ebony-gilded cunt seen so clearly.
Tricks.
Damnation it had to be an act. “I am sure you remember, the Duke of Kittridge, . . . Lia,” Harrison finally rasped. He would not call her lady or mademoiselle or any other genteel reference, he argued with himself. “Refill his drink,” he finished with a harshly issued command.
“Y-Yes, my lord, . . . your grace,” she murmured faintly to both of them, coming forward hesitantly toward Drummond.
The firelight did wicked things to the red silk skimming along her ivory flesh, in curves and hollows of sleek femininity. She could well have been naked for all it covered her lush buttocks.
“My lady,” Drummond murmured with a slight bow as he offered his glass, then he turned an arched eyebrow to Harrison.
“You are . . . ,” Harrison snapped harshly. “The same man who spanked his, now, wife’s naked bottom in the hallway of his country manor. Are you not?”
“Really, Harrison,” Drummond muttered irritably, making Harrison smile lethally in satisfaction of a point well taken. But Drummond continued. “I do however,
have
a wife now. One whom I love and who would not take kindly to my having viewed any other delectable feminine form but hers.”
Harrison dropped his chin to look down at Lia’s dark head from where she stood next to him trying to pour whiskey into Drummond’s glass. However, he could see that her hands were shaking too badly, and she was making a spilled mess of it. When he reached forward to take the decanter away from her, she cried out softly as though he might strike her as she stumbled back. It was then she looked up at him for the first time since entering the room. Her eyes were stormy with emotion. Fear, embarrassment, and some presence of deep yearning that held him arrested for long moments while he gazed into her dark brown irises.
“Yes, as I was saying,” Drummond murmured. “I cannot carry on a conversation with a half-dressed lady.”
Harrison reluctantly lifted his gaze and saw that Drummond had removed his black satin evening jacket and was even now placing it around Lia’s slender shoulders. She did not look at Drummond though but instead looked worriedly at him as though he would berate the gesture. She was afraid and timorous of him, and for a single moment he nearly went forward to put his arms around her in comfort. He simply could not overlook the guilelessness in her gaze. If she was acting, then he was a fool in compliance to her act!
“Keep it,” he uttered gruffly with a tilt of his head toward the jacket.
Lia’s slight grateful smile nearly undid him as did her liquid brown irises. “Thank you, my lord,” she whispered demurely, clutching the jacket tightly around her.
“And now, my lady, if you would not mind taking a seat. It seems you and I have some old adventures to reminisce upon,” Drummond murmured behind them.
Harrison watched as once again Lia looked to him for permission and the open submissiveness of the action strangely touched a suppressed dark ache deep inside him. It was a moment before he acquiesced with a nod, allowing her to follow Drummond to a chair. And then it was a moment before he followed as a chimera of lust warmed his blood at the knowledge of the control he had over this woman. A fact more blatantly tangible in Drummond’s presence, and an idea he had never fully considered the effect of before.
Of course he had dreamed of vengeance for two years since he’d been burned, and it was not until he had concluded that Lia Delconte was the traitor that he'd started to envision the methods of his revenge. At nights, in the haunting hours, under the influence of vast amounts of Scottish whiskey he would play idly over the many scenarios his revenge could take. Finally concluding the more personal the better.
Yet what he'd never considered until this moment, and his unexpected rise of passion which answered Rosebud’s call of submission to him, was that he could enjoy it. Nay, crave it. It felt as though he had a dark beast inside of him that rose upward ever more demanding to be acknowledged. And with his haunted past it might not be all that surprising. Who to trust? The person you commanded or the one that you gave a choice? Foolish question, he chided himself.
“I recall quite vividly when we first met,” Drummond said, drawing Harrison from his disturbing thoughts.
Chloe nervously fielded Lord Kittridge’s questions. She disliked Ravenscar’s deepening frown, yet she could not admit to things she did not know or things she did not do. She vainly tried not to declare outright that she was not Lia. Understanding that it would fuel Lord Ravenscar’s anger if she did. It was all very terrible and confusing because she did not know if she should pretend or not!
“This is getting us nowhere,” Ravenscar suddenly rasped in a low and harsh voice.
Chloe nearly jumped to stand . . . to flee, but managed to hold herself as she dipped her head forward. Then he was there with his big hands gripping her shoulders as he stood behind her. His voice was low and threatening when he spoke. “There
never
was a baby, was there?”
Buddha help her!
Chloe knew what he was saying. What he was threatening! She understood that if she did not admit she was Lia that-that he would not rescue Sebastian. How could she do this? How could she explain? The words stuck in her throat and felt like shards of glass when she gasped. “I-I
am
, Lia!”
Oh Buddha have mercy on her.
Chloe clutched her waist and winced at Ravenscar’s tightening fingers. She had to be plausible. She had no choice. “I’ve been v-very sick,” she lied, keeping her face lowered as hot tears stained her cheeks. “Before . . . after the baby. Opium,” she finally finished in an anguished whisper.
She prayed then for Sebastian and herself. She prayed that Ravenscar and Lord Kittridge would believe her. Prayed that the use of opium was enough of an excuse for her not being able to remember events that she was never going to have the answer to.
“Go
to my bedchamber now,” Ravenscar hissed suddenly.
Chloe flinched as she came to a panicked stand with Ravenscar pulling the evening jacket from her shoulders as she fled to the door. She wanted to scream about her baby, Sebastian. What would he do about that? But Ravenscar’s voice had sounded so ghostly and harsh.
Suddenly he was there grabbing her from behind and making her squeal in fright as he stopped her in the hallway outside the study door. His arm came roughly around her waist as he pulled her tightly, back against him. “
Strip
and wait for me on the bed,” he whispered harshly into her ear before he released her and she fled again.
Harrison watched Lia flee upstairs with the provocative shimmer of red silk clinging to her womanly curves. She was crying in tight frightened sobs. Opium? Sickness? He should be pleased. He should feel some type of justice or deep satisfaction. She had admitted it! She had admitted that she was Lia.
Yet all he felt was anger. It was a soul-drenching anger and he did not fully know its source. What the hell was happening to him? He had always been very cool and calculating, the master assassin with nerves of ice. However now he was . . .
now
he was passionately angry and he could not seem to control its thrumming fire through his blood.
“It appears that you have your answer, Harrison,” Drummond murmured, as he strode past him toward the door leading out of the townhouse. Harrison watched Drummond shrug into his greatcoat and pause at the door the butler had opened. “However, my friend, it truly escapes me as to the significance of this package our Lia . . . Chloe carried. Empty? A wrapped, empty box carried into the bowels of one of the worst sections of our city . . . most curious,” Drummond finished on a murmur just before he stepped through the entryway.
“Damnation,” Harrison hissed turning away from Drummond’s departure. The astute Lord Kittridge, his closest friend and a man with unnerving instincts and above average intelligence, did not believe the woman upstairs was Lia!
Chapter Six
Chloe was afraid not to lay naked on Lord Ravenscar’s bed waiting for him. Too weak and-and to her confused mortification, too excited. Excited in a sexual way. Reclining, waiting for him. What would he do to her this time? What would he command her to do? Her nipples were beaded tight into rosy jutting spikes and her womanhood ached.
“Sacred Buddha, what is happening to me?” she moaned, twisting her head against the soft bed quilt that she lay naked on.
Chloe heard him then, entering the room and she could not lay still because of the fear and excitement edged tight inside her. Heedlessly, she rolled her body and came up onto her knees dragging a corner of the bed quilt with her to cover some of her nudity.
“W-What of
my
b-baby?” she cried with chattering teeth.
Ravenscar continued to undress while advancing toward the bed and his onyx eyes were inky with emotion. Anger? Lust? Chloe scrambled backward as he tossed a small jar onto the bed, then he impatiently tugged his shirt over his head revealing his broad muscular chest and thrusting male organ. His shirt was the last piece of clothing to discard, his pants and boots had gone before!
“I have told you that I would retrieve this baby for you,” he rasped, reaching forward to tear the end of the bed quilt away from her.
Chloe squealed at the abruptness and exposure, then she gasped, “You will?”
Ravenscar came up onto the bed after her, and growled, “Unlike you, my ebony-gilded soullion, I rarely lie.” He was kneeling before her and he bent down to grab the small jar. “Now lay on your back,” he commanded.
What would he do?
Chloe wanted to plead with him, she wanted to beg him not to hurt her. But he had never hurt her before she claimed to be Lia. “Please,” she whispered.
“Now.”
Chloe flinched and quickly lay down before Ravenscar as though she were a slavish offering to him. “What will you do to me?” she asked anxiously.
Ravenscar opened the jar and she saw that it was rouge. Scarlet colored rouge? “You will find, Rosebud, that I will do anything to you that I desire.”