To Desire a Devil (19 page)

“What is it?” she asked, not very graciously.

“Would you mind terribly going and seeing to Putley’s ruffled feathers? I know it’s a tiresome chore, but I’d rather not have
him tattling to my parents about this matter.”

“Oh, all right.” She glared at Lord Hope. “But I’ll have to leave you here with
him.
”

“I know.” Jeremy adopted an angelic expression that didn’t fool her for a moment. “I’d rather hoped to have a chat with the
viscount.”

“Humph,” she said. She stepped up to Lord Hope until they were nearly chin to chin—although she had to tilt hers quite far
up—and poked him in the chest with her forefinger.

“Ow,” said Lord Hope.

“If you lay a single finger on him,” she hissed into his face, “or overexcite him in any way, I’ll tear that silly earring
right out of your ear.”

Behind her, Jeremy went into peals of laughter, but she didn’t bother glancing at him again. She slammed the door behind her
and stomped off in search of Putley.

Men!

R
EYNAUD RUBBED THE
spot where Miss Corning had attempted to drill her forefinger through his breastbone. “I apologize.”

“’Tisn’t me who needs the apology,” the man in the bed said, still laughing. “I’ll give you a hint—her favorite flowers are
lily of the valley.”

“Are they?” Reynaud eyed the door speculatively. He hadn’t brought a woman flowers in eons, but the situation might very well
call for the formal English method of suing for peace from a lady. At the moment, though, he had other matters to settle.
He turned back to the man in the bed. “Battle wounds?”

“Blown off by cannon fire at Emsdorf on the Continent,” Oates said. His color was unnaturally high, as if he was feverish.
“Back in sixty.”

Reynaud nodded. He strolled to the table littered with medicine bottles of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a medicine in
the world that could put a man’s legs back on once lost. “Did she tell you I was with the Twenty-eighth Regiment of Foot in
the Colonies?”

“She did.” He laid his head back against the pillow as if exhausted. “I was in the Fifteenth Light Dragoons. Much more dashing
than a foot soldier—until, of course, one gets shot off one’s horse.”

“Battle is never as romantic as one thinks,” Reynaud said.

He remembered well his boyish romanticism of the army. It had died fast on the reality of rotten food, incompetent officers,
and boredom. His first skirmish had destroyed what little illusion still survived.

“Our regiment was newly formed,” Oates said, “and we hadn’t yet seen action. Many of the men were London tailors who’d been
on strike and had to join. We never stood a chance.”

“You were defeated there?”

Oates smiled bitterly. “Oh, no. We won the day. One hundred and twenty-five men killed in my regiment alone, over a hundred
horses dead, but we won the battle. I went down in our second charge.”

“I’m sorry.”

Oates shrugged. “You know as well as I the wages of war—perhaps more so than I.”

“I won’t debate the matter. I came for something else entirely.” Reynaud sat in the chair that was beside the bed. “What are
you to her?”

The other man arched his brows as if amused. “I’m Jeremy Oates, by the way.”

There was nothing for it but to stick out his hand. “Reynaud St. Aubyn.”

Oates took his hand and shook it, looking in his eyes as if searching for something. His fingers were as thin as twigs. “Pleased
to meet you.” The odd thing was he sounded sincere.

Reynaud took back his hand. “My question?”

Oates half smiled, his eyes closing as he lay against the pillows. “Childhood friends. I played hide-and-seek with her in
my family’s sitting room, helped her with her geography lessons, escorted her to her first ball.”

Reynaud felt a jolt somewhere in the region of his breastbone at the other man’s words. Perhaps it was the lingering aftereffects
of that sharp poke, but he rather thought it might be jealousy instead.

Jealousy. He’d never felt the emotion before.

True, he’d been enraged this morning to learn that Miss Corning had already left to visit her mysterious beau. He’d come here
at once with the intent to confront them and thrash the other man if necessary, but he hadn’t stopped to examine his emotions.
Mine,
his instinct had said, and so he’d acted on it without thought. The realization now that his reaction was emotional was an
unwelcome shock.

“Do you love her?” he asked.

“Yes,” Oates said simply. “With all my heart. But not, I believe, in the way you mean.”

Reynaud shifted in the chair, uncomfortable with his need to know exactly what the other man meant. “Explain.”

Oates smiled and Reynaud saw that he’d once been a handsome man before illness had carved lines of suffering into his face.
“Beatrice is dearer than any blood sister could ever be to me.”

Reynaud narrowed his eyes. The man might say his relationship with Miss Corning was fraternal, but she wasn’t in fact related.
How, then, could their friendship be as innocent as he claimed?

“So you wouldn’t have married her even if that hadn’t happened.” He jerked his chin at the other man’s missing legs.

Most would have taken offense, but Oates merely grinned. “No. Although Beatrice has brought up the idea of marriage to me
more than once.”

That was an unpleasant jolt. Reynaud straightened. “What?”

And Oates’s grin widened, making him realize he’d risen to the bait.

“What game are you playing?” Reynaud growled.

“A game of life and death and love and hate,” Oates replied softly.

“You’re babbling.”

“No.” The grin abruptly vanished. “I’m completely serious. You’ll take care of her.”

“What?” Reynaud frowned. Sometimes invalids became confused from the pain and the drugs they took to mask it. Was Oates floating
in some drug-induced haze?

“Promise you’ll take care of her,” the other man said, and although his voice was weak, his tone held the ghost of a good
officer’s command. “Beatrice is a special woman, someone to be cherished for herself. She wears a mask of practicality, but
underneath she’s a romantic and prone to heartbreak. Don’t break her heart. I won’t ask if you love her—I doubt you know yourself—but
promise me you’ll take care of her. See to it she’s happy every day of her life. Lay down your own life for her if need be.
Promise.”

And suddenly Reynaud understood. His emotions had blinded him to the reality that lay in front of him. He’d seen this look
in other men’s eyes before, and he knew damned well what it meant.

So he said simply and sincerely, “I swear on everything I hold dear that I’ll take care of her, keep her safe, and do my damnedest
to make her happy.”

Oates nodded. “I can ask for nothing more. Thank you.”

H
OW DARE HE?

Beatrice opened the front door of Jeremy’s town house and went outside for a badly needed breath of fresh air. She’d already
browbeaten Putley into keeping quiet about Lord Hope’s violent invasion of the house, but she was still dealing with her own
reaction to his suspicions. And what terrible suspicions they were! Insulting both to Jeremy and herself. When had she ever
given him cause to think her a wanton? And how he thought he could just barge in and dictate to her, she did not know.

Beatrice stamped her feet, both to keep warm and to emphasize her own anger.

There were three men loitering in the street below—two scrawny fellows in ragged brown coats and a taller man in black. The
taller man turned to look at the sound of her stamping. His right eye rolled to the corner of the socket, revealing rather
horribly the white membrane of the eyeball. She glanced quickly away from the poor man. She should go back inside, but she
was still angry. She wanted to be composed when next she saw Lord Hope—the better to tell him exactly what she thought of
him.

A brewer’s cart went by, rattling on the cobblestones, and one of the loitering men shouted something to the driver.

Behind her, the door opened so quickly she almost fell back in the house. Instead, strong hands caught her.

“I’ve been looking all over the house for you,” Lord Hope said. “What are you doing out here?”

She tried to pull away, but he held fast to her upper arms. “I wanted some air.”

He looked down at her disbelievingly, and she couldn’t help but notice how thickly his eyelashes rimmed his black eyes.

“In the cold?”

“I find it very
refreshing,
” she said, pulling at her arms again. “
Might
I have my person back?”

“No,” he muttered, turning to guide her down the steps, his hand still gripping one of her arms.

“What?” she demanded.

“I’m not letting you go,” he said. “Ever.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not meant to be,” he said maddeningly as they came to the street. “Where’s the damned carriage?”

“Around the corner; there’s no room for it to stop here. Are you bamming me about not letting me go?”

“I don’t make jokes.”

“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, rather too loudly. “Everyone makes jokes, even people with no sense
of humor like you.”

He yanked the arm he still held, making her bump into his chest. Hard.

“I assure you,” he snarled into her face, “that—”

But something odd happened then. She felt a shove from behind her, a sharp hit at her side. Lord Hope’s hands tightened painfully
on her arms, and she saw that he was glaring murderously over her shoulder.

“What—?” she began.

But he pushed her back and behind him, toward the house’s steps as he took his big knife out from under his coat. “Get inside!”

And she saw, horribly, that the three loitering men were advancing on him. Their leader—the man with the walleye—had a knife
in his hand, and there was blood on the blade.

Beatrice screamed.

“Get inside!” Lord Hope shouted again, and launched himself at the leader.

The big man lifted his bloody knife to strike the viscount. But Lord Hope caught his wrist, halting the blow, even as he slashed
at the man’s belly. The leader sucked in his belly and skipped back, his shirt and waistcoat in ribbons. A second man, hatless
and balding, wrapped his arms about Lord Hope from behind, imprisoning his upper arms. The walleyed man grinned and advanced
to strike again. The viscount grunted and wrenched his left arm free just in time, blocking the knife with his arm. The knife
blade sliced through his sleeve, and blood sprayed in a thin arc across the street.

Beatrice covered her mouth and sat suddenly on the town-house steps. Black dots swam in front of her eyes.

A man screamed and she looked up.

The balding man had fallen to the ground and was clutching his bloody side. Lord Hope was grappling with the leader again
while the third man raised his dagger behind the viscount’s back.

Beatrice tried to scream a warning but couldn’t. It was as if she were in a nightmare. Her throat worked, but no sound came.
She could only stare in horror.

The knife descended, but the leader stumbled back under Lord Hope’s ferocious attack, bringing the viscount with him, and
the knife missed. Lord Hope suddenly whirled, dragging the leader with him, and shoved the man into the attacker behind him.
Both men fell to the ground in a tangle of legs and arms. The leader was bleeding from a terrible cut to his head, and his
ear appeared to be dangling.

Lord Hope straightened and advanced on the fallen men with an intent, deadly stride, like a wolf sighting a wounded hare.
He wore a warlike grin as he came, savage and gleeful. His great knife was raised, its blade bloody now, too. His bared teeth
were white against his swarthy skin. The men on the ground looked more civilized than he.

And then as suddenly as it’d begun, it was over. The walleyed man and his cohort scrambled to their feet, caught the third
man with the bleeding side under his arms, and ducked across the street, nearly under the noses of a team of horses pulling
a heavy cart. The driver yelled abuse. Lord Hope took one running step as if tempted to give chase, but then he stopped himself.
He sheathed his knife with a disgusted look.

He turned to her, his expression still savage, but all Beatrice could see was his left hand, dripping blood to the ground.

“Why didn’t you go in the house?” he demanded.

She looked up dazedly. “What?”

“I gave you an order. Why the hell didn’t you follow it?”

His wound was all she could think about. She raised her own right hand to catch his. But something was wrong. Her hand was
already bloody.

“Beatrice!”

She frowned at her hand, confused. “Oh, blood.”

And then the world did a dizzying spin, and she knew no more.

“I am the Princess Serenity,” the lady said as Longsword set her on her feet. “My father is the king of this land, but there
is an evil witch who lives in the mountains near here. The witch told my father that if he did not pay her a yearly tribute,
she would destroy him and this kingdom. My father paid the tribute last year, but this year he refused. The witch sent that
dragon to steal my father and bring him to her. When I rode out with a party of knights to rescue my father, the dragon came
and killed all save myself.”