Olivia shook her head as she watched her secrets and lies unravel before her.
Lady Finch continued, “That you were able to convince Lord Finch to help you, I have no doubts. The man knew better than to return home empty-handed.”
“You’re confused, my lady,” Olivia told her. “Everyone knows that poor girl died aboard the
Bon Venture
with Lord Bradstone. I couldn’t be her.” Olivia sent a withering smile to Jemmy, hoping the young man would rise to her defense as he did when his mother became too overbearing.
But this time Jemmy shook his head, the disappointment in his eyes sending a river of guilt through Olivia’s heart. “Is it as mother claims? Is your real name Olivia Sutton?”
She bit her lip, unable to tell the truth but unwilling to lie to the young man who was like a beloved brother.
“Olivia,” Lady Finch said, in a voice so soft and maternal that it made both Jemmy and Olivia turn and stare. “When you came to my house, I wrote to your mother to confirm who you were.” The lady reached for her reticule, which was lying on the small Queen Anne table beside her. Opening the silk strings, she pulled out a letter and handed it to her.
Olivia’s fingers trembled as she took the missive, the tight, perfect handwriting which addressed it to
Evaline, Lady Finch, Finch Manor, Kent
only too familiar.
“You can read it or not.”
Olivia could well imagine what her mother had said. “I’d rather not. But if you knew who I was, why didn’t you turn me in?”
Lady Finch snorted. “You? A murderess? I hardly think so. These fools in town might have been chow headed enough to believe such rubbish, but not me. The facts never added up. My guess is Bradstone did it and left you to take the blame.” The lady paused. “So that is it—I can see it plainly on your face. That, my dear Olivia, is why you would never make a good murderess.” She sighed and brushed her hands over her skirt. “Now that we have that settled, why don’t you tell me what happened with that man? Does the bastard still live, or did your kind heart let him slip free once again?”
The watermark on the sheet of writing paper, Robert discovered the next morning, turned out to be the crest of the Finch family. Lord Finch and his invalid wife, he learned from his aunt, resided in a rambling manor a half-day’s ride from London.
According to Lady Bradstone, Lady Finch spent her time in the country doling out advice, wanted or not. Why, it was considered quite a boon to receive a letter of admonishment from the lady.
“I pity her abigail, though,” Lady Bradstone had confided over breakfast. “Mrs. Keates, I believe her name is. The poor woman is most likely chained to a desk day and night, copying and composing Evaline’s epistles.” Lady Bradstone sighed. “But I suppose for a widow there are worse ways to earn a living than writing a bitter old woman’s correspondence and listening to her endless nattering.”
Widow. Correspondence.
The words stabbed at his memory.
Suddenly Miss Sutton’s drab dress and ink-stained fingers made sense. Where better for an educated lady to hide than behind the weeds of a widow and in the secluded country house of an invalid lady whose company was sought by few?
Robert reasoned that his quarry couldn’t have returned to Finch Manor overnight, so that meant she had stayed in town. His aunt readily supplied the directions to the Finch’s London residence and then finished with an admonishment to avoid the young Mr. Reyburn—apparently he had turned out quite wild, and Lady Bradstone didn’t think he was appropriate company for a man of Robert’s rank and standing.
Unsuitable sons notwithstanding, Robert set out for the place at once.
Still, when he arrived at the fashionable address, he found himself at a loss as to what to do next.
The Marquis of Bradstone could hardly knock on the door and demand an audience with a lady’s companion. Nor could he do what he would do in Spain—break in and corner the unsuspecting girl and get the information he needed. If he were caught before he accomplished his mission, he would have a hard time explaining what a peer of the realm was doing housebreaking on a lark.
But he had to find some way to confirm that the Mrs. Keates who served Lady Finch was indeed Olivia Sutton.
Waving away his carriage, he set out on foot to make a survey of the perimeter of the house, eyeing the windows and various entrances and exits to gauge how many people it would take to watch the residence. Then he settled against a wall near the mews, hidden out of sight but within spying distance of what appeared to be the servants’ entrance.
Now all he needed was an informant. A greedy or indiscreet maid or footman he could bribe to give him more information about their mistress’s hired companion. And as luck would have it, a likely tattler came sneaking out the door.
A maid, he guessed, and from her furtive posture, obviously shirking her duties to run off on a clandestine rendezvous.
Just the perfect snitch. Guilt-ridden and afraid of being caught. And only too willing to share information to keep from being dismissed without references.
As he started after her, planning on catching the girl just out of sight of the house, he realized he’d been right all along that this was the perfect person to tell him about Mrs. Keates.
For as the woman turned the first corner, Robert caught a glimpse of red-gold hair peeking out from beneath her hood.
He smiled. If only his work in Iberia was this easy.
Olivia didn’t realize she’d been followed until she’d made it about halfway across the small park in the middle of the square and someone caught her by the arm. She first thought it was Jemmy, up and after her to offer his valiant assistance, but the moment her assailant spoke, she knew how wrong she’d been to leave the red-brick sanctuary of Lady Finch’s town house.
“Just a moment, Miss Sutton,” teased a deep, rich, all too haunting voice.
Robert.
How had he found her?
She froze for only a second, then whirled on him, her hand balled into a tight fist and aimed for his chin, while her foot went careening at his shin.
But to her dismay, the once fussy marquis easily sidestepped her booted assault and managed to catch her hand as it pummeled toward him. He moved so quickly and without so much as a ruffle to his badly tied cravat, that before she could blink, Olivia found herself trapped in his embrace, breathless and stunned by his fluid, graceful defense—as if he’d trained at Gentleman Jim’s side all his life.
The arms that now held her captive did so with a steely, taut certitude. She felt the unforgiving, stalwart muscles in his arm wound tightly around her back, while his hand rested just beneath her breast. He used neither hold to take advantage of his superior position, but at the same time he left her almost breathless with anticipation.
She was close enough to feel the heat of his body, the hammering of his heart. He might have moved with a languid, almost bored motion, but his body was responding with a very male awareness—as if being awakened from a long sleep and finding itself ravenous and only too willing to be sated with the nearest morsel.
And yet, he only held her, keeping whatever illicit desires he might have been feeling in check, maintaining his control with an exacting, almost noble reserve.
How could this be the same man she’d known?
Olivia tried once or twice to shrug herself free, but Robert’s unrelenting grasp told her he was not about to let go. Not yet.
Not until he gets what he wants.
Some things, she knew,
never
changed about a man.
Well, he was about to find out she had. The once innocent girl he’d taken advantage of wasn’t about to help him. Never again. Not to find his treasure. And certainly not to kill someone else.
One man’s blood on her hands was enough.
She struggled anew, though she knew her efforts were futile. His potent will wasn’t going to be conquered by her feeble attempts. And besides, it only made him tighten his grasp, pull their bodies closer together. Which, Olivia discovered, as her body brushed against his with an appreciation that verged on sinfulness, wasn’t a good thing.
“Are you done making a scene?” he asked.
She nodded and remained silent as he towed her over to a secluded corner, where thick rhododendrons grew to conceal anyone who wandered there. It was a romantic spot even in the dead of winter, with the smell of dew and grass competing with the dank London air, offering the illusion that one was standing in a romantic country glen.
A place designed for lovers.
But not for Olivia. And not with this man.
“Let me go,” she said, finally mustering the strength to shake him off. “You have no right to manhandle me so.”
“You tried to kill me last night, isn’t that reason enough?”
“Well, I missed. Consider it my coming home gift to you. Now leave me be.”
“I can’t. I need your help, Miss Sutton.”
There it was again. That formal tone to his voice.
Miss Sutton.
He said it as if they had just been introduced at an assembly and he was getting up the nerve to ask her to dance.
“If you think I will help you again, my lord, you are mistaken.” She started to step away.
His hand caught her again. “This time it is different.”
Different.
That was an understatment. The urgency of his touch sent shock waves through her senses. He had never affected her thusly—the warmth of his fingers easily penetrating the wool of her sleeve, a heat filled with temptation. Before his touch had left her giddy and dizzy, but this man evoked nothing but the deepest, most alarming sense of longing within her.
How could he affect her so?
It certainly wasn’t something she hadn’t expected, to a certain degree, to feel in his presence—but this was an altogether new awareness of what it meant to be a woman alone with a man. A niggling sense that twisted inside her, begging to be released from that sheltered place in her heart, from the heat growing indecently between her thighs.
“Miss Sutton, countless lives are at stake.”
Even as she closed her eyes and struggled to ignore the way his voice curled around her shadowed feelings, he continued his appeal. “It is a matter of national importance. Only you can help. Please, I beg this one favor.”
Olivia’s lashes flung open. He’d have been better off if he’d left out the plea for King and country. She’d heard that lie from his lips before. Heard it and believed it.
But what stopped her was the fact that Robert, the Marquis of Bradstone, had just used the words “please” and “beg” in the same sentence.
Please?
Life in a French prison must have changed him more than she thought possible. Or made him a better liar.
She chose to believe the latter.
“You must help me . . . again,” he added hastily.
“Help you?” she managed to sputter through her outrage. “I would rather help the French.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “If you refuse to tell me what I need to know, you will be.”
“I doubt it is as dire as all that,” she shot back. “You probably dangled some enormous boon before that toady Corsican to let you go, and now you must provide it and hence your need once again for me.” She paused, waiting for him to admit the real truth behind his fervent appeals.
Yet as she stared at the set of his strong, scarred jaw, the hard gaze of his flint-green eyes, she found her breath stolen away. He wasn’t Bradstone anymore, certainly nothing like the man she remembered. This man was someone different, someone she wanted to trust, a man she wanted to believe in—with her heart and soul.
Like she’d always imagined she’d feel when she met Hobbe.
Oh, bloody hell,
she thought, using one of Jemmy’s more egregious curses. What the devil was she thinking? The man before her was the same greedy, evil fiend who’d taken the very heart of her innocence and trust as well as taken that poor boy’s life right before her eyes—not her mythical hero.
He wasn’t the man of her dreams. Certainly not her Hobbe.
“Tell me, my lord,” she asked, “what would you do with The King’s Ransom? Line your already rich pockets with the gold of the dead? Or would you return it to the Spanish people? See that it was used to free the Peninsula from tyranny, as it was originally intended?”
“And what if I said that is exactly what I intend to do with it?” His grip softened. “Since the look on your face clearly says you don’t believe me, then come with me and see for yourself.”
Come with me . . .
The invitation whispered at her soul and frightened her anew at his ability to so easily seduce her away from her chosen path.
Gone were his flowery declarations, the whispered devotions of love that sidestepped the truth. Olivia found herself almost welcoming his new approach, the open bluntness of his offer called to her in a way that his previous wordy and feigned professions had never stirred.
Go with him, indeed
! What the devil was she thinking? She’d rather go to hell. And she told him just that.
His jaw tightened at her rather forthright refusal, and his grip intensified. Then he yarded her into his grasp, pulling her close, so close she could smell the tang of his soap. No expensive perfumes for the marquis anymore, just plain bay rum soap.
The clean, masculine scent suited this new man only too well.
And even as her nose twitched with awareness, the rest of her senses awoke to him as well. Her legs were pressed to his, her breasts against his chest. He held her so intimately she found herself just inches from those mesmerizing eyes, those tantalizing lips.
Yet she didn’t remember feeling so eager in the marquis’s arms. It was as if someone else was holding her, awakening her heart for the first time, inflaming her senses with his understated, yet overwhelming, seductive charm.
Someone like Hobbe. But even as she tried to tell herself this new Bradstone, this very different man, was no knight in shining armor, she couldn’t help but lean closer to him—to discover what other secrets he was hiding.
He’d told her he needed her, and all she wanted to do was believe him. That he needed her. That he wanted to seal his new vows with a kiss from those lips.