Notorious
Notorious
Nicola Cornick
London, June 1816 'Devlin squared his shoulders and prepared to be introduced to the wife he had thought was dead.' Dangerously seductive and sinfully beautiful, Susanna Burney is society’s most sought-after matchbreaker. Paid by wealthy parents to part unsuitable couples, she’s never yet failed. Until her final assignment brings her face to face with the man who’d once taught her an intimate lesson in heartache…James Devlin has everything he’s always wanted: a title, a rich fiancée and a place in society. But the woman who’s just met his eyes across a crowded ballroom threatens it all. Not because she’d once claimed his heart but because the secrets she carries could cost him everything. Dev just might have to play Susanna at her own wicked game. Let the scandal of the season begin…
Nicola Cornick’s novels have received acclaim the world over
‘Cornick is first-class, Queen of her game.’
—Romance Junkies
‘A rising star of the Regency arena’
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for the SCANDALOUS WOMEN OF THE TON series
‘A riveting read’
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney on
Whisper of Scandal
‘One of the finest voices in historical romance’
—SingleTitles.com
‘Ethan Ryder (is) a bad boy to die for! A memorable story
of intense emotions, scandals, trust, betrayal and all-
encompassing love. A fresh and engrossing tale.’
—Romantic Times on One Wicked Sin
‘Historical romance at its very best is
written by Nicola Cornick.’
—Mary Gramlich, The Reading Reviewer
Acclaim for Nicola’s previous books
‘Witty banter, lively action and sizzling passion’
—Library Journal on Undoing of a Lady
‘RITA
Award-nominated Cornick deftly steeps her latest intriguingly complex Regency historical in a beguiling blend of danger and desire.’
—Booklist on Unmasked
Author Note
The Scandalous Women of the Ton are back! Or in this case, perhaps it should be the scandalous Men of the Ton …
James Devlin, cousin to Alex, the hero of Whisper of Scandal, has been one of London’s most shocking rakes. Now settled into a life of riches and respectability as the fiancé of a beautiful society heiress, Dev is terminally bored. Enter Caroline, Lady Carew, a woman with a mysterious past who knows enough about Dev to ruin his engagement and all his future prospects. But Lady Carew also has secrets to keep, for she is none other than a notorious match breaker, paid by rich parents to end unsuitable engagements …
Reading through the letters and accounts of the Regency period, I sometimes come across cases where fathers or trustees have paid off a man or a woman they consider unsuitable. Perhaps a son has fallen in love with a courtesan and wishes to marry her, or an heiress has taken a fancy to a poverty-stricken scoundrel and threatens to elope. In many instances, the parents or guardians are absolutely ruthless in removing the threat. In my imagination it was only a small step from there to the idea that a rich and determined parent might hire a heartbreaker to seduce their son away from his unsuitable fiancée. And so the idea for Notorious was born …
Notorious was huge fun to write and I very much hope that you enjoy it, too!
Nicola Cornick
Notorious
Nicola Cornick
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
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WHISPER OF SCANDAL
ONE WICKED SIN
MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT
Also available fromNicola Cornick
DECEIVED
LORD OF SCANDAL
UNMASKED
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS
THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT
THE UNDOING OF A LADY
DAUNTSEY PARK: THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
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SCANDALOUS WOMEN OF THE TON series:
DESIRED
FORBIDDEN
CHAPTER ONE
“He who does not burn with desire grows cold.”
—Seventeenth-century proverb
JAMES DEVLIN WAS TWENTY-SEVEN years old and he had everything that he had ever wanted. He had a place in society, he had a beautiful, rich fiancée and he had a title of his own. Yet on the night that his former wife walked back into his life after nine years absence he was bored; as bored as it was possible for a gentleman to be at a ton ball at the height of the London season.
It was another night of lavish excess and hollow entertainment. The Duke and Duchess of Alton threw the best parties in the ton, opulent, tasteful and frightfully exclusive. For Dev it was also another night of fetching lemonade for Emma when she became thirsty, of finding her fan when she misplaced it and of fawning on Emma’s mama, who could not stand him and probably did not even know his name although he had been betrothed to her daughter for two years. Once upon a time Dev had had to brave the elements on the rain-lashed deck of a ship of the line, scramble up rigging and fight for his life. Each day had brought new dangers, new excitement. It had only been two years but it felt like a century ago. These days he did nothing more dangerous than check the set of his coat and pass Emma her reticule.
“Jealous, Dev?” His sister Francesca put a hand on his sleeve and Dev realized that he had been frowning at Emma across the dance floor, glaring at her as she twirled through the steps of the waltz in the arms of her cousin Frederick Walters. Chessie was not the only one who had noticed his grim stance. He saw the sideways glances and covert amusement. Everyone thought that he was possessive, resentful of the time that Emma, a consummate flirt, lavished on other men. If he had been the jealous type he would have spent his days on the dueling field but the fact was that one had to care in order to be jealous and Dev had long ago realized that he did not care a jot if Emma flirted with every man in London.
He straightened up and smoothed the frown from his brow. “I’m not jealous in the least,” he said.
Chessie’s blue gaze appraised his face, looking for signs that he was trying to fool her. “It is no secret that the Earl and Countess of Brooke prefer Fred as a suitor for Emma,” she said.
Dev shrugged. “The Earl and Countess would prefer a distempered hound as a suitor for Emma but I am the one that Emma wants.”
“And Emma always gets what she wants.” There was the very faintest edge to Chessie’s voice now.
Dev shot his sister a look. Chessie had not yet got what she wanted and she had been waiting a long time. Fitzwilliam Alton, only son and heir to the Duke and Duchess, had been paying Chessie marked attention for some months. Such public notice could only end respectably in a proposal of marriage but so far Fitz had not declared himself and now the ton was starting to gossip. Society, Dev thought, had not been kind, talking scandal about him and Chessie in particular from the first. They had breeding of sorts, but precious little of it and no money. He had at least carved out something of a Navy career for himself before he had resorted to hunting a fortune. Chessie had had to make an impression through her beauty and her vivacious personality alone. It was always harder for a woman.
“You don’t like Emma,” Dev said now.
He felt rather than saw his sister’s scornful glance. “I don’t like what she has done to you,” she said. “You’ve become one of Emma’s pets, like that fluffy white dog or her bad-tempered monkey.”
Ouch.
“It’s a small price to pay for what I want,” Dev said.
Wealth. Status. He had hunted them for the last ten years. Born with nothing, he had no intention of going back to the poverty of his youth. Now everything was within his grasp and if that meant he had to be Emma’s lapdog for the rest of his life there were worse fates. Or so he told himself.
“You are no better,” he said to his sister, aware that he sounded perilously close to the tit for tat banter of their childhood. “You have caught yourself a marquis.”
Chessie flicked her fan in a gesture that conveyed total disdain. “Don’t be so vulgar, Dev. I am completely different from you. I may be a fortune hunter but at least I love Fitz. And anyway—” a tiny frown marred her brow “—I have not caught him yet.”
“He’ll propose soon,” Dev said. He had heard the trace of uncertainty in Chessie’s voice that revealed how wafer-thin was her confidence. He wanted to reassure her, even though he thought Fitzwilliam Alton nowhere near good enough for his sister. “Fitz loves you, too,” he said, hoping he was right. “He is only waiting for the right moment to tell his parents the news.”
“That will never happen,” Chessie said dryly.
“You must love Fitz very much to be prepared to endure the Duchess of Alton as a mother-in-law,” Dev said.
“And you must love Emma’s money very much to be prepared to endure the Countess of Brooke,” Chessie said.
“I do,” Dev said.
Chessie shook her head slightly. “It will not serve, Dev,” she said. “In the end you will hate her.”
“I’m sure you are right,” Dev said. “I already dislike her very much.”
“I meant Emma,” Chessie said, her eyes on the shifting patterns of the dance, “not her mother. Though if Emma becomes more like her mother as she grows older that will be hard to bear.”
Dev could not deny that it was not an appealing prospect.
“If Fitz becomes more like his mother you will have to squeeze money out of him like a lemon,” he said. The Duchess of Alton had a sour disposition and a mouth like the tightly drawn drawstring of a purse. It gave fair warning as to her character.
Chessie gave a spontaneous giggle. “Fitz will not become like his parents.” The laughter faded from her face and she fidgeted with the struts of her fan, her gloved fingers pulling at the lace. Lately, Dev thought, she seemed to have lost some of her sparkle. Now he could see her searching the crowded room for Fitz. She was wearing her heart on her sleeve. He felt a rush of protective concern. Chessie was pinning everything on the prospect of this betrothal and Fitz, genial enough, but arrogant and spoiled in equal measure, was aware of her regard and was toying with her reputation. Chessie deserved better than that. Dev clenched his fists at his sides. One step out of line and he would ram that silver spoon Fitz had been born with right down his throat.
“You look very fierce,” Chessie said, squeezing his arm.
“Sorry,” Dev said, smoothing out his expression again. He smiled at her. “We haven’t done badly,” he said, “for two penniless orphans from County Galway.”
Chessie did not reply and he saw that her gaze had returned to the waltz, which was now spinning to a triumphant climax. Fitz, tall, dark, distinguished, was at the far end of the room, almost lost in the shift and sway of the dancers. He was partnering a woman in a shimmering silver gauze gown, a woman who was also tall and dark. They looked magnificent together. Fitz had always had a weakness for a pretty face, just as his cousin Emma wanted a handsome trophy of a husband. But this woman was different from Fitz’s usual flirts and there was something about the way that she moved, the lilt and cadence of her steps that shot Dev through with recognition even though he could not see her face.
“Who is that?” he said, and his voice sounded a little hoarse. Something strange—premonition—was edging up his spine. He was the least superstitious of men yet he felt the cold air breathe gooseflesh along his skin even though the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ballroom was stiflingly hot.
He could see that Chessie felt something, too. She was strung as tight as violin, her face pale now. He saw a shiver rack her body.
“Someone rich,” she said bitterly. “Someone beautiful and eligible whom Fitz’s parents will have introduced to him tonight in order to distract him from me.”
“Nonsense,” Dev said bracingly. “She will be yet another horse-faced, inbred poor relation—”
“Dev,” Chessie reproved, as a dowager rustled past them on a wave of disapproval.
The music finished on a resounding flourish. There was a ripple of applause about the room. The pattern of dancers broke up. Fitz was escorting his partner across the floor toward them. Evidently he intended to introduce her to Chessie. Dev was not sure whether that reassured him or worried him.
“Dev!” Emma had also arrived, breathless and flushed by his side, dragging Freddie Walters with her by the hand. “Come and dance with me!”
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Dev did not respond immediately to Emma’s imperious demand. Instead he was watching the woman at Fitz’s side. She was not in the first flush of youth, closer perhaps to his age than Chessie’s. Age, or experience, or both, gave her an unconscious confidence. She walked with the same elegance that Dev had seen in her in the waltz, a fluid grace that was accentuated by the sinuous swirl of the silver gauze gown. It caressed her breasts and hips, wrapping itself about her like a lover’s kiss. There was not a man in the room, Dev thought, who was not staring at her, his mouth drying with lust, his mind a rampage of images as to what it would be like to unwrap that gown from those curves.
Or perhaps those were just his fantasies.
She was very pale with the kind of translucent skin dusted with freckles that was a feature of the Celtic races. The contrast between her vivid green eyes and her black hair was shocking, exhilarating. It made her look fragile and fey, like a kelpie or dryad, too exotic to be human. Her black curls were piled up on her head in a tumble of ringlets held by a dazzling diamond comb. Matching jewels sparkled about her slender neck and adorned her wrists. Not a poor relation then. She looked magnificent.
She also looked familiar.
Dev’s heart missed a beat then started to race. For a moment it felt as though everything had stopped; the music, the chatter, the breath in his body. For one long moment he could neither think nor speak.
It was almost ten years since he had seen Susanna Burney. His last memory of her was not one he was likely ever to forget: Susanna gloriously naked and fast asleep in the bed that they had shared for their brief, passionate wedding night. As he had blown out the guttering candle he had had no notion that he would never see her again.
In the morning she was gone, and with her his marriage. She had left him a note—it had all been a terrible mistake, she had said. She had begged him not to come after her, had said that she would sue for an annulment. Young and full of pride, angry, hurt and betrayed, he had let her go.
It had been two years later when he had returned from his first full tour of duty with the Royal Navy that he had reconsidered his abandonment of his wayward wife and had traveled to Scotland to find her again. He had told himself that it had been for curiosity’s sake alone and to ensure that their annulment had indeed been granted. He had plans for the future, ambitious ideas, and they did not involve the girl he had seduced, married on impulse and let go. Sweat broke out over his body now as he recalled knocking on the door of the rectory and confronting Susanna’s uncle and aunt. They had told him that Susanna was dead. He could recall the fierce punch of shock that had made a mockery of his bravado. He had cared for Susanna a great deal more than he had pretended.
Susanna Burney looked very much alive to him.
Anger and shock warred within him. He met her indifferent, unrecognizing gaze and a second wave of fury beat through him. She was pretending that she did not know him.
“Dev!” Emma was tugging on his hand, reclaiming his attention. A frown marred the pretty regularity of her features.
Emma, his rich, beautiful, well-connected fiancée …
Emma, the woman who was bringing him everything that he had ever wanted …
He had never told Emma about his first hasty, ill-fated marriage. There were many things that he had not told Emma. He had pretended that it was because all his past indiscretions were long gone, unimportant and forgotten, but the truth was that Emma was jealous and possessive and he could not predict how she would react to any revelation, and he did not want to put that to the test and endanger the entire house of cards he had built for himself—and for Chessie.
A cold prickle of tension edged its way down Dev’s spine. The damage that Susanna might do was incalculable. If she revealed even a hint of his past, Emma might break their engagement and everything he had worked for would be lost.
He watched as Susanna drew closer. Her hand was resting on Fitz’s arm in the most confiding gesture, their dark heads bent close together. She was smiling at Fitz as though he was the most fascinating man in the universe. Fitz, Dev thought, looked completely dazzled, flushing like a youth in the grip of his first infatuation.
Susanna looked up again and her gaze met Dev’s for one long, long moment. He could not read her expression. There was still no flicker of recognition in her eyes and no trace of nervousness in her manner.
Dev felt cold, very cold. He straightened, squared his shoulders and prepared to be introduced to the wife he had thought was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE DID NOT RECOGNIZE him until it was too late to run and equally impossible to hide. Not that hiding was her style.
The Duke and Duchess of Alton’s Midsummer Ball was the most terrible crush and the press of guests had obscured Susanna’s vision. The room was hot and airless, so noisy she could barely hear what Fitz was saying to her as he escorted her across the floor. Something about meeting some of his friends, she thought, which had been kind of him since she knew no one in London. And then the crowd had fallen back and she was looking at James Devlin and all the breath left her lungs in a rush and her head spun and she thought she might faint. It was only through sheer self-discipline that she did not.
Fitz had not noticed her discomfort. He was not, she thought, an observant man. Handsome, charming, spoiled, arrogant … She had ascertained all those facts about him within five minutes of their introduction. Within ten she had learned that he was devoted to his horses and his wine cellar. Within fifteen she had realized that he was susceptible to a beautiful woman, which would be useful since she was both beautiful and pledged to seduce him.
Fitz was still speaking as he drew her closer to the group of people about James Devlin. She had no idea what he was talking about; fortunately it seemed to require no reply on her part. All she could see was Devlin. All she was aware of was his height, the breadth of him and the coldness in his blue eyes as they rested on her with absolute disdain. She supposed she could not blame him for that. She was the one who had walked away from him, left him before the ink was dry on the marriage lines and whilst the bed was still warm from their lovemaking.
Susanna raised her chin and straightened her spine. She had been playing a part for so long that surely it could not be too difficult to wipe all expression from her face and conceal the fact that she was shaking inside. Yet it seemed inordinately hard to do. She let her gaze travel over Devlin again in slow appraisal. The calculated coolness of her stare was in direct contradiction to the nervous bumping of her heart against her ribs.
There was such authority and innate confidence about Devlin now, a poignant contrast to the dazzling youth of eighteen that she remembered so well. He had had brilliance and dash even at that age but there had been something eager and untried about him as well, as though the world, with its sharp edges, had not yet hardened his soul.
He had certainly filled out in the intervening years. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep. He was taller, more muscular, most definitely a man rather than a boy, and so handsome that he would have been within a hairsbreadth of looking pretty had it not been for the square jaw and high cheekbones that robbed his face of any softness at all. Susanna felt a sudden and totally unexpected pang that the boy she had known had grown into so formidable a man. She would never have guessed it. But she had made her choices years ago. It was far too late for regrets now. Life had taught her that regrets were no more than self-indulgence.
She saw the little blonde girl hanging on Devlin’s arm. That was one thing that had not changed then. Not that she cared a jot after nine years. But there had always been women hanging around James Devlin like bees to the honeypot. He knew he was handsome and he knew very well the effect that had on women. The arrogant self-assurance in the tilt of his head said so.
He was watching her. He had not taken his gaze from her from the moment that she had crossed the floor on Fitz’s arm. She risked meeting his eyes again and was almost scalded by the look she saw there. Instead of the indifference that she had expected she saw angry challenge and a turbulent sensual heat that seemed to call a response from so deep within her that she visibly shivered. Her stomach tumbled. The polished wood of the ballroom floor seemed to shift beneath her silver slippers. She could feel her racing heart accelerate still further and saw Devlin’s gaze shift to the hollow of her throat where a beautiful borrowed diamond drop rested on her frantic pulse. Suddenly Susanna’s skin felt hot and damp; she knew the color had come into her face, knew, too, that Devlin had seen the betraying glitter of the diamond as it moved in response to the hammer of her pulse. She saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile of masculine satisfaction that he had been able to discompose her. That was something else that had not changed then: his conceit.
She raised her chin and gave him a look of profound dislike spiced with defiance. Too much was at stake here for her to draw back now, though every instinct she possessed prompted her to flee.
The girl to Devlin’s left, the one to whom Fitz wanted to introduce her, was clearly Dev’s sister. They shared the same coloring and bone structure, the same blue eyes and tawny gold hair. Susanna caught her bottom lip briefly between her teeth. This was the girl the Duke and Duchess of Alton were employing her to separate from Fitz. This was the girl whose life she was to ruin, whose future husband she was to steal, whose world she would leave in tatters. What an utter, confounded nuisance that the woman the Duchess had referred to, dismissively, as “Fitz’s little fancy,” should turn out to be Devlin’s sister.
“Lady Carew.” Fitz, smiling, was drawing Devlin’s sister forward. “May I present to you Miss Francesca Devlin? Chessie, this is Caroline, Lady Carew, a friend of my parents who has recently come to London from Edinburgh.”
Susanna felt rather than saw Devlin stiffen as he heard her name but she forced herself not to look at him. Francesca Devlin curtsied very prettily. The candlelight picked out the strands of bronze and copper and gold in her hair. Her blue eyes were very warm, her greeting even warmer. Susanna admired her tactics. When a handsome, eligible marquis whom you have a fancy to marry introduces a beautiful woman to you, pretend to be delighted to make her acquaintance …
That one was straight out of the adventuress’s handbook. Under other circumstances, Susanna thought, she might have enjoyed befriending Miss Francesca Devlin, with whom she had more than a little in common. Unfortunately she was being paid a vast sum of money to inveigle herself into Fitz’s affections and get rid of Francesca for good, which was not a promising basis for a friendship.
James Devlin shifted at his sister’s side and Susanna met his eyes and saw naked antagonism there. Unlike Francesca he was not troubling to hide his hostility to her. Susanna felt the force of it ripple through her whole body. She supposed it was naive of her to imagine that Devlin would be indifferent to her sudden reappearance after an absence of nine long years. She had treated him badly; that was undeniable. He would want an explanation at the least, retribution at worst. Her mouth dried at the thought. Devlin was not a man one would want as an enemy—he was too forceful, too determined—and her position was very precarious indeed.
Devlin inclined his head to her as though he had read and understood her thoughts. There was an edge of cynical amusement to his antipathy, a curl to his lips that threw down a challenge to her. The dangerous light in his eyes warned her that whatever game she chose to play, he would match her. Match her and surpass her.
She saw Devlin cast his sister a glance and move a step closer to her as though offering silent moral support. Chessie shot him a smile that was for one unguarded moment full of affection and gratitude. So Devlin was a protective older brother, Susanna thought. That was exactly what she did not need when she was set on spoiling his sister’s life. Matters, complicated enough already, took a turn for the worse. Her heart sank lower toward her delicate embroidered satin slippers.
The other lady in the group, the little blonde, pushed forward in a flurry of blue silk and lace.
“You should have introduced me first, Fitz,” she said, pouting. “I am a lady!”
By name if not by nature, Susanna thought as Fitz, apologizing profusely, introduced the girl as his cousin Lady Emma Brooke and the other gentleman as the Honorable Frederick Walters. Susanna was sharply conscious of Devlin’s eyes upon her all the time, the narrow blue glitter of his gaze holding her captive. Emma dragged him forward like a trophy.
“This is my fiancé,” she said proudly, “Sir James Devlin.”
Fiancé.
Susanna’s heart jerked. She had known that Devlin had come into a title. But she had not known that he was betrothed.
Jealousy, sharp, dark and hot, stole her breath. She wondered why she had never imagined him wed before. The thought had never crossed her mind and yet in the nine years since they had parted he could have been married twice over, three times, six times like Henry VIII for all she knew.
Except for the small difficulty that he was still married to her.
She really should have told him that they were still wed. She should have told him long ago.
Susanna’s conscience, often troublesome, such a disadvantage to an adventuress, pricked her again. This, however, did not seem like the appropriate moment to break the news to Devlin, with his fiancée smiling at her with that possessive air and that warning glint in her eyes.
Susanna swallowed hard. She had intended to get an annulment within the first year of her marriage. She had written to Dev and promised him that she would. Then she had discovered that she was pregnant and her wedding ring and marriage lines had suddenly been the only thing standing between her and ruin. Alone and destitute, disowned by her family, she had clung to the very edge of respectability. And later, when she had remembered her pledge and had once again thought to end her marriage she had discovered that annulments, like many things in life, were both prodigiously expensive and a great deal more difficult to obtain than she had ever imagined. By then she had been spending every last penny she earned simply keeping body and soul together on the streets of Edinburgh. There was no cash to pay the lawyers. Sometimes she had barely managed to survive.
The memory of those dark days invaded Susanna’s mind and she felt the familiar panic and fear rise in her throat. Her palms felt slippery with sweat within the elegant lace of her evening gloves. The candles felt too hot, the ballroom stifling. Everyone was looking at her. With a great effort of will she pushed the memories away and smiled at Emma Brooke.
“You are to be congratulated on your betrothal, Lady Emma,” she said, “though not as much as Sir James is on his.”
There was a slight pause whilst Emma tried to work out if this was a compliment and, deciding that it was, beamed. Susanna saw Dev’s lips quirk into a smile.
“I am indeed the most fortunate of men,” he said smoothly. “And you, Lady Carew,” he added. There was a gleam of dark amusement in the depths of his eyes, shadowed by that ever-present anger. “It seems that you, too, must be congratulated, since the last time we met you were neither a lady nor were you called Caroline Carew, as I recall.”
His tone was very courteous, his words anything but. A little ripple went around the group. Susanna saw a sharpening of speculation in the women’s eyes and a different sort of interest in the men’s. No wonder. Dev had just implied she was an adventuress at best, a harlot masquerading as a lady at worst.
The moment spun out. Susanna knew she had a choice and she had to make her decision fast. She could pretend that Devlin had mistaken her identity. Or she could take the fight to him. It was risky to claim that she did not know him because Dev would probably see that as a challenge. He was that sort of man. It was equally perilous to engage with him because she was not sure that she could win. But it was certainly too late to feign indifference. Everyone was waiting to see how she would respond to Dev’s calculated remark.
“I am flattered that you claim to remember so much about me,” Susanna said lightly. “I had forgotten all about you.”
Dev’s smile deepened at the setdown. The look he gave her sent heat searing through her.
“Oh, I remember everything about you, Lady … Carew,” he said.
“You never knew everything about me, Sir James,” Susanna said.
Their gazes locked like the hiss of blades engaging. Susanna’s skin prickled with awareness. Too late to back down now …
“On the contrary,” Dev said. “I remember, for instance, the very last time we met.” There was a hint of devilry in his eyes. He was enjoying baiting her. Susanna saw it and felt a flare of anger.
Then her gaze fell on Emma’s furious, pouting face and her anger dissolved into relief. This was just for show on Dev’s part, to punish her for past sins and make her squirm. He had no intention of revealing the truth. It would damage him as much as it would her. Emma, she was already persuaded, was no meek and biddable betrothed. And Emma must surely hold the purse strings because Dev had never had any money at all.
Susanna allowed her gaze to consider the extravagant embroidery on Dev’s white and gold waistcoat, the crisp quality of his linen and the unmistakable value of the diamond in his cravat pin. Then she let her eyes drift to Emma again. She saw Dev’s gaze follow her. She knew he understood.
Finally, she smiled. “Well,” she said, “I am sure you would not be so churlish as to bore everyone with the details, Sir James. There is nothing so tedious for others as old acquaintances harping on about past times.”
“Did you know one another in Ireland?” Emma had clearly had enough of their conversation. She pushed between them, looking from Dev to Susanna with ill-concealed jealousy. She made Ireland sound like the back of beyond, a place fit only to leave.
“We met briefly in Scotland,” Susanna said, “when Sir James was visiting his cousin Lord Grant one summer. It was a very long time ago.”
“But now we have the happy opportunity to renew our acquaintance.” The expression in Dev’s eyes was in direct contrast to the smoothness of his tone. “You must grant me the next dance, Lady Carew, so that we may talk about the past without boring our friends.”
In one sentence he had demolished her attempts to escape. Susanna mentally gritted her teeth. She recognized that determination in him. He had had the same single-mindedness at eighteen. He had seen something he wanted and he had taken it. She shivered.
“I have no desire to rake over the past,” she said. “I fear I am promised for the next, Sir James. You must excuse me.”
She turned pointedly to Fitz, allowing her fingers to brush his wrist in the lightest of gestures that nevertheless conveyed a hint of promise. She had almost forgotten about Fitz in the tumult of her feelings on seeing Devlin again. Already she had allowed herself to become distracted, which was not good enough when Fitz’s parents’ commission was all that stood between her and life on the London streets.
“Thank you for introducing me to your friends, my lord,” she said. “I hope we shall meet again soon.”
She scattered an impartial smile around the group, noting that Chessie’s response was a rather less than friendly nod and that Emma failed to acknowledge her at all. Fitz seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and kissed her hand with a gallantry that made Dev frown. Chessie turned away, as though she could not bear to watch Fitz’s attentiveness to another woman.
Susanna started to walk quickly toward the ballroom door. Now that she had escaped Dev her heart was bumping against her ribs in reaction and she felt breathless and shaky all over again. She needed somewhere quiet to go. She needed to think, to try to unravel the tangle of deceit and confusion she was suddenly caught up in.
“May I beg a dance later in the evening, Lady Carew?”
Freddie Walters was blocking her path, his gaze insolent, assessing her like a thoroughbred horse, his touch on her arm more than familiar. His tone said that he already knew everything he needed to know about her, that she was a widow of questionable morals who was probably not averse to a light love affair. The blatant disrespect in his manner set Susanna’s teeth on edge.
“Thank you, Mr. Walters,” she said, “but I have decided to go home. I have the headache.”
“A pity,” Walters murmured. “Perhaps I could call on you?”
“You’re making the lady’s headache worse, Walters.” It was Dev’s voice, cold with a hard edge. Susanna saw Walters’s eyes widen, then, as Dev made a sharp gesture, the other man scuttled off. Dev watched him out of earshot, then his gaze came back to Susanna’s face and fixed there. She had wanted to scuttle away, too, but she had the lowering thought that Dev would simply grab her if she tried to run out on him now. He did not appear to care much for the conventions of the ballroom since he had accosted her in the center of the floor.
“Thank you for your assistance,” she said coldly, “but it was quite unnecessary. I can look after myself.”
Dev smiled. “I am aware,” he said. His gaze, hard and appraising, traveled over her in a manner quite different from Walters’s blatant sexual calculation. It was thoughtful, measured and infinitely more disturbing.
“I was not trying to rescue you,” he added gently. “I wanted you to myself.”
His choice of words and the look in his eyes made Susanna quiver somewhere deep inside. He had removed the feeble threat that Walters posed only to replace it with something far more dangerous. Himself. He was confronting her here, in full view of the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s guests. It was audacious. It was impossible.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Susanna kept her voice steady. She had had nine years of learning how to protect herself. It had never been as difficult as it was now, trying to erect defenses against this man and his perceptive blue gaze and his forcefulness.
He laughed. “You can do better than that, Susanna. What the hell is going on?”
“I have no notion what you mean,” Susanna said. Her pulse was racing. She looked around but there was no refuge. She started to walk slowly to the side of the dance floor. Dev took her arm, adapting his long stride to her shorter steps. To an observer it would look as though they were doing what everyone else did between dances, strolling around the floor, chatting with the casual indifference of social acquaintances. Except that there was nothing casual in the touch of Dev’s hand.
“You owe me an explanation at the very least,” Dev said. “An apology, even—” his tone was sarcastic “—if that is not too much to expect.” For a moment Susanna saw something fierce in his eyes. A passing couple shot them a curious glance. They had caught the tone if not the content of Dev’s words and had sensed the tension in the air.
Susanna deployed her fan to shield her expression.
“It was a long time ago.” She aimed for disdain, cool and dismissive, and hit exactly the right note. “Yes, I left you, but surely you have managed to recover from the loss.” She paused, smiled. “Don’t tell me I broke your heart.”
She had provoked him on purpose and she expected him to tell her she had meant nothing to him. Instead she saw the heat and anger in his eyes intensify.
“I came back to find you,” he said, “two years later.”
Susanna almost dropped her fan. Two years. She had never known. She felt a mixture of bitterness and regret. It would have made no difference. Two years was far too late. It had been too late from the moment she had run away from him. She could see that now, with the benefit of hindsight. She could see all the mistakes she had made—see, too, how pointless it was to regret them almost a decade later.
“I only wished to ensure that our annulment had been granted.” Dev shot her a look, contemptuous, cold. “But when I called on your aunt and uncle they told me that you were dead.” He spoke through his teeth. “An overstatement of the facts, it would seem.”
Susanna was so shocked that she almost fell. For one long, terrifying moment the ballroom spun before her eyes, the music and voices fading, everything slipping away from her. She put out a hand and realized with blessed relief that they had reached the corner of the room and were standing beside one of the long, arched windows that opened onto the terrace. The cool pane of the glass was against her fingers and a breath of air stole into the overheated room.
She raised her eyes to Dev’s face. His expression was hard, his mouth a tight line. She could sense the elemental fury in him.
“Dead?” she whispered. It was true that her aunt and uncle had cast her out when she had fallen pregnant and refused to give up her child. She had been disowned, disinherited, dismissed. They had said she was dead to them. Evidently that was exactly what they had told everyone else, too.
The cold crept into her heart. Her family’s callous cruelty had almost destroyed her nine years before. Now she felt their malice touch her again. She had not thought they could hurt her anymore. She had been wrong.
Dev was still speaking. “Was it really necessary to go so far?” he was saying with biting anger. “It was not as though I wished for a reconciliation.”
He stopped. Susanna knew he was waiting for her reply but for a moment she could not find the words. There was so much to absorb, and so quickly; that he had come to find her, that her family had lied to him. It hurt much more than she would ever have anticipated.
“I …” Her chest was tight. She tried to breathe. She knew that she had to stop this now, before Dev realized that she had known nothing of her family’s shocking lies to him. Already he was getting too close. An instant’s slip on her part and she would give herself away. If he suspected the truth he would have endless questions for her; questions about the past, questions about what had happened to her and, more dangerous still, questions about her life now and why she was in London. She could tell him none of those things. She had to protect herself and her secrets at all costs or she would lose everything. Suddenly she was fiercely glad that she had never told him that their marriage had not been annulled. It could prove to be a useful weapon should she need to defend herself against him.
Susanna straightened, steadying herself. She drew in a deep breath, searching for the right words to drive Dev away from her. He forestalled her. His voice was thick and heavy with emotion, an emotion that even after the passage of nine years cut straight to the core of her and made her feel with an intensity she had not experienced in years.
“Hell and the devil, Susanna,” he burst out, “you were my wife, not some strumpet I had tumbled in a ditch! Don’t you owe me more than this? You walk out on me and then you ask your family to lie to me! Why would you do such a thing?”
There was such passion and honesty in his eyes. Susanna hated herself for what she was about to do, what she had to do in order to protect herself.
“I asked them to lie because I had to be sure to be rid of you,” she said. She made her voice light and uncaring. The words seemed to stick in her throat but she forced them out. She knew she had to finish this and make sure that Dev would hate her so much that he would never question her again. There was no other way.
“I wed you because I wanted you to rid me of the burden of my virginity,” she said. She dragged out a smile, made it vivid, convincing. She knew she was a good actress. She had had enough practice in those lean and bitter years after her family had disowned her, when her skill at dissembling was all that had stood between her and starvation.
“After one night of marriage I had everything I needed from you, Devlin,” she said. “I wanted to know about sex. You taught me.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was stony-faced, his jaw set hard as he listened to her cheapen the love they had shared. “It was delightful—” she gave a little shrug, matching the gesture to the dismissive tone of her voice “—but after I had seduced you I had no further use for you.”
That, she thought, should be enough to make him despise her. No man would accept such a blow to his pride. She turned to walk away.
Dev prevented her escape by the simple expedient of catching her wrist and drawing her close to him. Her body stirred to his touch, every fiber of her being waking to him as though they had never been apart. The color flooded her cheeks, heating her skin so that every inch of her felt alive and responsive as never before. She saw Dev’s gaze move over her slowly in precise and insolent appreciation of her state of arousal. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her gown. It had been chosen to ensnare Fitz, and for the first time that evening Susanna wished it was a little more demure. It felt as though the sweep of Dev’s eyes across the curves of her breasts was a sensual caress.
“A moment,” Dev said, and his voice was very soft amidst the hubbub of the ballroom, the tinkle of the music and the clamor of voices, soft but with an edge of steel. “This time you don’t walk away from me until I am ready, Susanna. This time you stay at my pleasure.”
CHAPTER THREE
DEV LOOKED AT HIS FORMER wife’s exquisite, defiant face and felt his temper soar dangerously again. She was damnably beautiful and his body reacted to the temptation she presented even as his mind dismissed her as the most conniving, duplicitous little harlot that had ever lived. He wanted to kiss her; to take that wide, sensuous mouth with his own, to bite down on the full lower lip and slide his tongue into her mouth and taste her again with all the explosive passion they had known before. He wanted to prove her indifference to him to be a sham. He wanted to strip the silver gown from her pale limbs and plunder her body ruthlessly until she was utterly quiescent in his arms.
It was hell being a reformed rake. He had given up other women when he had become betrothed to Emma but Dev knew that he was not really reformed at all. He might as well admit it. This dangerous attraction he had to Susanna was proof enough. Given half a chance, a quarter of a chance, he would like to ravish Susanna, to take her with merciless abandon and revel in the experience. Never had chastity seemed so unappealing an option. Never had his betrothal seemed so dull and colorless in contrast to the appeal of his treacherous former wife.
He could feel Susanna’s pulse hammering beneath his fingers. The silk of her glove gave her no protection from him. He knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And yet he was also ready to strangle her. Disloyal, deceitful Susanna Burney, who had seemed so radiantly innocent, had taken him royally for a fool. He had thought that he had seduced and wed a naive young girl. Instead she had been using him to gain a little worldly experience.
Dev exerted absolute self-discipline to keep himself under control. He felt a raw edge of anger as cutting as a blade. A moment before, when he had challenged Susanna about her family’s duplicity, he had felt a fleeting uncertainty. He had seen the shock in her eyes and thought that she must have been in ignorance of their vile pretence. Her mocking words had swiftly put paid to that idea. Instead of being a victim she had been at the heart of the plan to deceive him.
He looked at her. She was watching him and despite that fierce attraction that locked them together there was also a derisive glint in her green eyes. He wondered how it was possible to be so mistaken in a woman. The Susanna Burney he had known at eighteen had seemed so shy and sweet. It was difficult to see how she could have changed into this brazen creature. On the other hand he had to accept that it was almost ten years ago, he had been eighteen years old and perhaps not such a man of the world as he had liked to imagine. Doubtless he had been the one who was naive. His judgment had certainly been spectacularly flawed when it came to his adoring bride.
“There was no need to wed me if all you wanted was to be rid of your virginity,” he said grimly. “You should have told me. I would have been happy to oblige you—without the benefit of clergy.”
Their eyes tangled. He saw the sensual heat flare again in hers, turning them a darker green, bright as emeralds. In a split second he was transported from the bustling ballroom to the intimate darkness of their marriage bed. They had had one night only, one night of sweet desire and passion richer and deeper than his most vivid dreams. She had been the first and only woman he had loved. That sense of intimacy had been more frightening than the reckless pleasure he had found in her arms. That emotion had been strong and profound enough to bind him to her forever. Then she had run out on him the next day and ripped everything apart.
Now she stood looking at him with cool disdain, the desire banished from her eyes.
“You misunderstand,” she said. “Marriage was a necessity. I had no wish to be a whore.”
Dev looked her over with studied contempt. “In your case I am struggling to tell the difference,” he said.
Susanna’s eyes narrowed to an inimical gleam. “Then let me explain it to you,” she said. Dev watched her slender, gloved fingers trace a pattern on the windowpane. “It was so tediously dreary in my uncle’s house,” she said, “and we were poor and I did not care for it. I knew I was pretty and clever enough to seduce a rich man into marriage but I needed experience as well as beauty. No one was going to look twice at me buried away in that village, the dull schoolmaster’s little niece.” She moved slightly and the diamond necklace at her throat sparkled, rich and malevolent. “I was afraid that I would be stuck there forever, expiring with the boredom of it all.” Her hand moved to caress the glittering stones at her neck. “So I contrived a plan. To wed you, learn what I needed from you and then move on to better things.” Her gaze came up to meet his.
“You were no one, Devlin,” she said gently. “You had no money and precious few prospects. But I could see that you could be useful to me.” Her eyes were bright and hard. “I wanted to be young and beautiful and intriguing enough to lure a very rich man into marriage. It was not good enough to be a courtesan. I had to be respectable enough to catch a husband—” her luscious mouth turned up in a little, private smile “—but improper enough to know how to please him in bed.” She turned away from him so that all he could see was her reflection in the glass of the window and that lingering smile.
“I flatter myself that I was rather good,” she said. “I posed as a widow. I had many suitors.”
Dev could believe it. She was beautiful enough to tempt a saint and there was a knowing air to her, a sensual allure that was provocative enough to make any man want to please as well as possess her. Of course she would set her sights much higher than merely being a courtesan. That would have been a course from which she could never have regained respectability. Instead, as a beautiful widow she would have drawn suitors like moths to the flame. They would have begged for her notice. Only he knew the venal heart beneath her lovely facade.
“So you killed me off as well as yourself,” he said coldly. “How very tidy of you.”
“Oh, I never mentioned your name,” Susanna said. “No one ever asked about my first husband. I suppose that if they had I could have admitted to the annulment and painted our marriage as a youthful indiscretion.” She raised her brows as though inviting his congratulations. “Yes, it was a neat plan, was it not?”
“I’m still having trouble with the difference between a courtesan and a woman who buys herself a rich husband with her body,” Dev said.
Susanna shrugged, apparently indifferent to his disapproval. “You are too particular. We all use the advantages we are given.”
She had been given plenty, Dev thought grimly. That angel’s face, that lissome, lovely body—and a grasping nature that cared nothing for the pain she inflicted on others. It was a pity he had not been able to see past the obvious when they had first met but he had been a youth confronted by a beautiful girl. He had not been thinking with his head but with a different and far more basic part of his anatomy.
He felt cold at the sheer calculating callousness of Susanna’s plan. She had been an adventuress from the first. She had wed him, learned from him the arts she needed to please a man in bed and then left him to pursue bigger, richer prey. Armed with her annulment she would indeed be free to remarry. He could see how much the combination of her youth, beauty, wit, experience and the tiniest hint of a mysterious past might appeal to a wealthy older man. Hell, it was obvious that Fitz was already in thrall to her. Even he could barely look at her without wanting to plunder every inch of that exquisite, perfidious body, and he knew what a lying, conniving strumpet she was.
“You mistake if you think that you are not a whore,” he said. “You have whored yourself out for money whether it is by marriage or not.”
The candlelight shimmered on some expression in Susanna’s eyes that was, for one tiny second, utterly at odds with her brazen words. But then it was gone and all that was left was contempt.
“You should know, Devlin,” she said. “Are you not doing precisely the same thing, catching an heiress with your good looks and charm?” Her perfect brows arched. “If I am a whore, what does that make you?”
Dev took a furious step toward her—and stopped when he saw the triumph in her eyes. She was glad she had been able to goad him into near-indiscretion. He drew in a deep breath.
“You are also mistaken if you think you learned all there is to pleasure a man in one night at my hands,” he ground out. “But should you wish to extend your experience I am, of course, at your disposal.”
“As you were nine years ago.” She smiled, not one whit discomposed, as cool as spring water. “I thank you but there is no need. I have addressed the deficiencies in my education in the past few years.”
Dev was sure that she had. There had been her remarriage to Carew, who had presumably been an affluent baronet. Perhaps there had been other lovers as well, or even previous marriages. And now she truly was a rich widow and he suspected she was hunting another trophy. A marquis, perhaps …
He had been played. He had been used—comprehensively, ruthlessly. Susanna had seen him as a mere stepping-stone to better things. He, the fortune hunter, should appreciate her strategy. He did not.
Suddenly he could see Chessie’s hopes for the future vanishing like mist in the sun. He could see just how vulnerable both he and his sister were with no more than foothold in the ton. One false step, one piece of bad luck, could send them tumbling back into the void of poverty and despair that had been their childhood on the streets of Dublin. Dev had experienced both unimaginable wealth and abject poverty several times; as the son of a compulsive gambler he had known the extremes of rich and poor before he was barely out of short trousers. That fear, that knowledge, had driven him ever since. He could not permit Susanna to steal Chessie’s future or ruin his own plans. He would have to keep her close, watch her every move.
Susanna inclined her head to him with mock civility. “Good evening, Sir James,” she said. “I wish you good luck with your fortune hunting.”
“Do you?” Dev said, politely incredulous.
She smiled. “About as much as you wish me luck with mine.”
Dev watched her walk away, her figure a silver flame in the sinuous dress, the diamonds sparkling in her hair and the heels of her silver embroidered slippers tapping on the floor.
Keep her close … In some ways it would be no hardship. In others it would be the most dangerous thing that he could do.
SUSANNA WAS STILL SHAKING as she climbed into the carriage. She did not expect Dev to come after her again—she had made very sure that he would not—but the antagonism of their encounter still beat through her blood with primitive force. It was impossible to believe that once upon a time she and Dev had made love with such exquisite tenderness. Now there was nothing left.
She remembered Dev’s bitter condemnation of her, the disgust in his eyes, and she felt shot through with regret. There had been no other way to drive him away from her. She could not afford for anyone to uncover the truth about her past, not now when so much was at stake. This was her last job. With the money the Duke and Duchess of Alton would be paying her for separating Fitz from Chessie she would at last have sufficient funds to settle her debts, return to Scotland and provide a home for her twin wards, Rory and Rose, the children of her best friend. The three of them needed to be together, to be a family once again as they had been in the beginning. Susanna’s heart ached with a sudden fierce pang that made her breath catch in her throat. She hated this life, hated playing a role, hated the deception and hated most of all the fact that there was no one who knew, no one she could confide in. She was on her own. She always had been, from the moment her aunt and uncle had thrown her out, pregnant, destitute, seventeen years old.
She touched the diamond necklace at her throat. They were borrowed plumes, like the carriage and the house in Curzon Street, the beautiful gown and the silver slippers. Nothing was real. She was a counterfeit lady, a Cinderella whose carefully constructed world might vanish in a puff of smoke if anyone found out the truth. She touched the dress gently, almost reverentially. When she had been selling such gowns for a living, her head spinning with tiredness from the long hours working in poor light, her fingers sore from the needle and cut by the thread, she had dreamed of wearing such a beautiful creation and being the belle of the ball. Tonight she had been that fairy-tale princess, yet beneath the layers of silk and lace she was still little Susanna Burney, a fraud who feared discovery.
Once again Dev’s face rose in her mind’s eye, hard, unyielding, his expression full of scorn. He was the one of whom she had to beware. If Dev had suspected for a moment that she had been thrown out onto the street, disowned, disinherited, abandoned, he would start to ask all the difficult questions she wanted to avoid. He would uncover her past and ruin the future that was so close within her grasp.
Susanna leaned her head back against the cushions of the seat and closed her eyes. If only … If only she had not run off to marry Dev secretly in the first and last impulsive action of her life. If only she had not had the idea of going to Lord Grant, Dev’s cousin, the next morning, to confess and ask for his support for them. If only she had not run back to the perceived security of her aunt and uncle’s house and had tried to pretend nothing had happened. If only she had not been pregnant with Dev’s child … One disastrous decision had set in train a course of events that had led to the poorhouse and to places in her own mind that were so full of despair that she never wanted to go there again. The tiny body of her child wrapped in its pitiful shroud, the words of the priest, the gray dawn mist creeping over the Edinburgh graveyard …
With a gasp of pain Susanna buried her face in her hands, then she let them fall and stared into the darkness, her eyes dry. She must never think of that again. Never. The dark clouds hovered like beating wings. She pushed them away, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, until she felt the panic subside and the calm seep back into her mind. She had lost her own daughter but she had Rory and Rose to care for and she clung to them with the fierceness of a tigress. She had given her word to their mother, there in the bitter dark chill of the poorhouse, in the cold hours before Flora’s death, and sometimes it seemed that the gift of the twins was both penitence and blessing to her. She had lost Maura but she could make amends now and she would never, ever let Rory and Rose down, which was why it was imperative that Dev must never learn the truth and scupper her plans.
Sighing, she kicked off her pretty silver evening slippers and flexed her toes. Her feet ached. Cinderella’s slippers were all very well but they were not comfortable. Her headache, which had originally been an excuse to escape Frederick Walters’s importunities, was a reality now. All she wanted was to be home.
The carriage passed a group of young bucks noisily drinking and carousing in the street. Hot summer nights reminded Susanna of Edinburgh in the days when she had dragged herself out of the poorhouse to work as a tavern wench and ballad singer. She had such a checkered past, she thought, with a rueful smile. The tavern, the gown shop … It had been through good looks and sheer luck that she had fallen into her extraordinary work as a heartbreaker, paid by parents to ruin the unsuitable matches of their rich and titled offspring.
Susanna rubbed her temples where the diamond clasp was pulling her hair. The night had started so well. The Duke and Duchess of Alton had introduced her to Fitz and he had seemed intrigued by her and definitely more than a little interested in taking their acquaintance further. She had sparkled, flirted, playing the mysterious widow to perfection. She and Fitz had waltzed together and she had allowed him to hold her a little closer than convention dictated. Everything had been going smoothly. She had even started to plan the next step—another meeting with Fitz, one that would appear to happen quite by chance but would in fact be the result of the Duke and Duchess paying their son’s valet some extortionate amount to disclose the details of his master’s diary. That was how she was always one step ahead of the game; before she even met her victim—or her assignment as she preferred to think of him—she would know every last thing about him, his likes and dislikes, the places he frequented, his interests, his weaknesses. The weaknesses were especially useful, whether they were for women, gambling, drink or all of the above in combination. It was her tried and tested method. Size up the man, learn everything there was to know about him, flatter his opinions and mix in a touch of seduction. No one had been able to resist.
That was the way that the acquaintance should have gone with Fitzwilliam Alton. A chance encounter in the Park, an invitation to ride with him, the promise of a dance at the next ball, a little dalliance, until Fitz was dazzled, hers to command. If necessary she would go as far as a betrothal, before breaking it off with all due regret a month or so later. That was the way she had intended it, before James Devlin had appeared and threatened all her plans.
She thought of Dev, his blue eyes full of anger and loathing as he watched her.
A shiver racked her. She was sure that he had already worked out that she was intent on spoiling his sister’s plans to catch Fitz. He would assume that she wanted Fitz for herself, of course; it was most unlikely he would uncover the true nature of her work as a matchbreaker, for this was the first time she had come to London or worked in such exalted social circles. It was a risk, but she should be safe from exposure. Whether she was safe from Dev revealing the truth of their previous relationship was another matter but she guessed that he had no wish for his winsome heiress to know the truth. Lady Emma Brooke had not seemed a particularly pliable fiancée and she was surely the one with the money.
Which brought her back to the annulment. Guilt squirmed in her stomach again. She knew that she should have formally ended her marriage a long time ago. Once the Duke and Duchess’s commission was complete and she and Rory and Rose were safe, she would pay for the annulment and leave Dev free to wed Emma. He would never know.
She opened her reticule and took out a rather squashed pastry cake that she had purloined from the refreshment room at the ball. Her bag was full of crumbs. She had ruined more reticules this way than any other. She took a bite and felt instantly comforted as the sweet pastry melted on her tongue. Eating had always made her feel better whether she was hungry or not. She tended to eat as much as she could whenever food was laid out before her, a legacy of the time when she had not known where her next square meal would come from. It was surprising that she had not split her sensuous silver silk gown as a result.
Despite her attempts to push the past away, the memories rippled through her again: Dev holding her hand before the altar as the minister intoned the solemn words of the marriage service, Dev smiling at her as she stumbled a little over her vows in shyness and fear, even then expecting the church door to slam open and her uncle to march in to reclaim her. Dev’s touch had been reassuring and the warmth in his eyes had steadied her. She had felt loved and wanted for the first time in many long cold years.
For a second she was shot through with regret so sharp and poignant that it made her gasp. First love had been very sweet and innocent.
First love had been hopelessly naive.
Susanna turned her shoulder against the rich velvet cushions of the carriage and let the memories slip from her like sand running through the fingers. It was stupid and pointless to have regrets or to dwell on the past. What she had had with James Devlin had been a girl’s fantasy. Now he had nothing but contempt for her. And soon, if she were successful in her plan to take Fitz away from Francesca, Dev would hate her even more.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE HACKNEY CARRIAGE put Miss Francesca Devlin down in front of a set of anonymous rooms in Hemming Row. She stood on the cobbles feeling a little drunk with a mixture of guilt, fear and a giddy excitement that was making her head spin. This was a part of town she had visited for the first time only two weeks ago. It was an unfashionable quarter where she knew no one and no one knew her; that, she had been told, was the beauty of the place. Her reputation was quite safe. No one would ever know what she had done.
After her first visit she had promised herself that it was just the once and it would never happen again. She had gone through the motions of her daily life exactly as she had done before. Nothing was different. Yet everything was different.
The second summons had come this very night, at the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ball. Chessie had tucked the note into her reticule, hidden it beneath a white embroidered handkerchief and had spent the rest of the evening in an agony of impatience mixed with anticipation. She had known from the moment she unfolded the note that she would go. Like her brother she had inherited a streak of recklessness, a need to gamble, and this was the greatest game of her life. If she won she would secure everything that she had ever desired. If she lost … But she did not want to think about losing. Not tonight.
Gambling was in Chessie’s blood. Her childhood had been stalked by poverty, the furniture pawned to pay her father’s debts and no food on the table. Those moments had been interspersed with rare occasions when they had been so rich it seemed to Chessie that she could not quite believe the grandeur of it all. On one occasion her father had won so much that they had ridden around Dublin in a golden carriage pulled by two white horses like something from a fairy tale. That day she had eaten so much she had thought she would burst. She had gone to sleep between silken sheets and in the morning she had woken and the carriage and horses had gone and her mother was crying, and within a week the silken sheets had gone, too, and they were back to coarse blankets. And then when she was six, her father had died.
Through it all there had been Devlin, four years older than she, tough, protective, grown harder than any child should have to be, determined to defend her and his mother, too, no matter the cost. Chessie knew Dev had worked for them, had very probably begged, borrowed and stolen for them, too. It was Dev who, after their mother died, had gone to their cousin Alex Grant and made him take responsibility for them. The experience had bound them as close as a brother and sister could be. They had had no secrets—until now.
Chessie paused on the doorstep and almost ran back to the house in Bedford Street where Alex and Joanna thought that she was safely in her bed, back to the world she knew. Except that it was too late, for she had already taken the steps that would leave that world behind. She had done things that a fortnight ago she would not have dreamed of—gone out unchaperoned at night, traveled alone in a hackney carriage, things that other people did all the time but which were forbidden to a young girl of unimpeachable reputation. She smothered a laugh that had a wild edge to it. Young girls did not indulge in games of chance with a gentleman. Nor did they pay with their bodies when they lost.
The door opened silently to her knock and then he was drawing her into the candlelit room where the gaming table was already set up and the cards waiting. Chessie thought about winning and felt a rush of excitement that lit her blood like fire. Then she thought about losing and shivered with a different sort of excitement. He was kissing her already, with a passion that stoked her desires and soothed her fears. This could not be wrong because it felt right. Her gamble was not really on the cards but on love, and surely love conquered all. He released her; smiled.
“SHALL WE PLAY?” he said. “This is no place for a lady.” Susanna jumped and almost hit her head on the wooden rail of the stall. She had been kneeling in the straw to examine the horse that Fitz had picked out for her at the latest Tattersalls’ sale. Even at a distance she had known it was a poor choice. It looked beautiful with a shiny bay coat and bright eyes but its chest was a fraction too narrow and its legs just a little too short. Naturally she had not told Fitz any of those things. She had congratulated him on his judgment and had watched him preen.
Only a moment before, Susanna had been congratulating herself, too, silently applauding how well her plans were progressing. It had taken her four days only to gain Fitz’s undivided attention to the point that he was now probably prepared to buy her a horse never mind simply recommend one to her. He had already tried to buy her emeralds but Susanna knew exactly what he would expect in return for those and had refused them, prettily, regretfully but very finally. She had played the virtuous widow to perfection. Becoming Fitz’s mistress was definitely not part of the plan.
Instead she had treated Fitz as a friend, deferred to his opinion, leaned on his advice and flattered his judgment. He had helped her to buy a carriage and now a riding horse. They were using his parents’ money, but of course he was unaware of that. Susanna could see how much the role of confidant confused Fitz—he was not accustomed to viewing beautiful women in a capacity of friendship, not unless they had occupied his bed first. He was puzzled, bewildered and intrigued, which was exactly as Susanna wanted him to be. His parents were delighted to see their son so thoroughly distracted from his courtship of Francesca Devlin, which made them generous. All had been set fair, but she might have known that Dev would reappear to put a spoke in her wheel.
Susanna sat back on her heels. There was a pair of very elegant riding boots now in her line of vision, radiant with a champagne polish. Above those were muscular thighs encased in skintight pantaloons, and above that she dared not look. How tiresome to be kneeling in the Tattersalls’ straw at the feet of James Devlin.
“Mr. Tattersall welcomes ladies to his auctions,” she said, raising her gaze to meet Dev’s and trying to keep her eyes firmly focused on his face even though it gave her a crick in the neck to do so.
“The only females welcome here are the ones whose pedigrees are better than those of the horses,” Dev said. “Which rules you out, Lady Carew.”
He made no move to help her to her feet. Susanna was acutely aware of the prickling discomfort of the straw through the velvet skirts of her riding habit and the strong scent of horse that surrounded them. God forbid that the bay gelding would choose this moment to relieve itself.
For a second she thought she would be obliged to scramble up of her own accord, flushed, undignified and covered in hay, but then Dev leaned down and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet with rather more strength than finesse. The maneuver brought her into his arms for one brief moment and the scent of leather and cedar soap and fresh air on his skin overlaid that of horse and set Susanna’s senses awry. She could feel the hard muscle of his arm beneath the smooth blue superfine of his coat. He felt like a man whose body was in prime physical condition. Evidently waiting on Lady Emma must be more physically punishing than she had imagined.
Susanna experienced the oddest sensation, as though the layers of clothes between them had melted away and she was touching Dev’s bare flesh, warm and smooth under her fingers. Never had she been so acutely aware of a man and so swiftly, her defenses shattered by simple proximity. Her cheeks flaming, she freed herself hastily from Dev’s grip and saw him smile, that wicked, sardonic smile she remembered.
“Feeling the heat, Lady Carew?”
“Suffering as a result of your discourtesy,” Susanna snapped.
He raised a brow. “There was a time when you did not object to being held in my arms.” He straightened, driving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “But of course, I forgot—that was for educational purposes only, was it not?” His voice was heavily laced with irony. “That horse has a chest that’s too narrow and legs that are too short,” he added, running an eye over the bay in the box.
“I know,” Susanna said crossly. She dusted the palms of her gloves slightly self-consciously and started to pick the straw off her velvet riding skirts. “I suppose you are an expert on horseflesh?”
“Not particularly.” Dev’s admission surprised her. “Not all the Irish grow up in the country, able to whisper horses from birth.” His expression darkened. “I grew up on the streets of Dublin. The only horses there were drays and sad creatures pulling rich men’s carriages.”
Their eyes met and the breath caught in Susanna’s throat. Her heart skipped a beat, two. She thought how odd it was that life could still trick her after all she had experienced, that it could trip her up unexpectedly like a false step in the dark. She remembered being seventeen, lying in the summer grass with the stars whirling overhead and Dev turning away her questions about his childhood with light answers. She had not known anything about his early life other than that it had been poverty-stricken like her own. They had not talked much about anything, she thought now, with a sharp stab of regret. They had laughed together and had kissed with sweet urgency. They had both been so eager and so young.
“You never told me much about your childhood,” she said, and regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
Dev’s expression hardened into coldness. “That hardly matters now.”
Susanna winced at the rebuff and the sharp reminder that none of Dev’s life was any of her business now. He and Francesca had climbed high, she thought. She had known that Dev’s parents were impoverished gentry; for him to be betrothed to the daughter of an earl and for Chessie to aspire to marry a duke’s heir was fortune hunting of the highest order. Except that Chessie would not now be Duchess of Alton. It was her job to make sure of that.
Susanna felt a wayward pang of sympathy for Miss Francesca Devlin. Normally she was able to console herself that her assignments were better off separated from the object of their desire. The gentlemen she was engaged to lead astray were so often libertines or wastrels or simply weak-willed and unworthy. And it was true that she had no great opinion of Fitz, who seemed to embody all the vices of his class and none of the virtues: arrogance, self-centeredness and profligacy in just about everything. But even so, even if Francesca could do so much better than Fitz, Susanna admired her enterprise in trying to catch the heir to a dukedom. In some ways Francesca was an adventuress just as she was and it was a pity to ruin her chances.
Awkwardness hung in the air. Dev, whilst showing no desire to converse with her, also showed no inclination to leave. Across the yard Fitz was deep in conversation with Freddie Walters as they admired a glossy black hunter.
“Your sister does not accompany you today?” Susanna asked politely, slipping out of the stall.
Dev shook his head. “Francesca is shopping in Bond Street with our cousin Lady Grant. Some last-minute purchases for a ball tomorrow, I believe.”
“Lady Grant?” Susanna said. She could hear the odd note in her own voice and feel the sudden dryness in her throat.
Dev had heard her tone, too. He gave her a sharp look. “My cousin Alex remarried a couple of years ago,” he said. He paused. “You lived on Alex’s Scottish estate—presumably you knew he had lost his first wife?”
“No,” Susanna said. She could hear a rushing sound in her ears. For a second the sunlight seemed too bright and too hot, dazzling her. So Amelia Grant had died. Amelia, who had befriended her, advised her and ultimately ruined her future. But it was futile to blame Amelia for her own lack of courage. Lady Grant had merely played on fears that were already in her own mind. She had exploited Susanna’s youth and her weakness, that was true, but Susanna knew that the ultimate responsibility for running away from Devlin was hers and hers alone.
“I thought your aunt and uncle might have kept you informed of news from Balvenie,” Dev said.
“My aunt and uncle died a long time ago,” Susanna said.
Dev’s lips twisted. “Am I supposed to believe that, or will they resurrect as swiftly as you have?”
Susanna ignored him and turned away, stroking the silky neck of the gelding. “You have a sweet nature,” she said to the horse, “but I don’t think you would make a good mount.” The horse whickered softly, pressing its velvet nose into her gloved hand.
“Too lazy,” Dev concurred. “I suppose Fitz picked the horse out for you.” His gaze came to rest on her, bright and mocking. “He never sees beyond the obvious. For him it is all about show and he has as poor taste in horses as he has poor judgment of women.” He smiled. “Are you going to flatter him to the extent of paying good money for a bad horse?”
“Of course not,” Susanna said. Dev’s words had stung, as they had been meant to do. She could see the dislike in his eyes, chill and unyielding. Nothing could have made it clearer to her that it was far too late for regrets and far too late to go back. Dev believed her to be conniving and duplicitous, which was no great surprise since she had made sure he would believe it by spinning him a pack of lies.
For a moment she wanted to cry out to him that it had not been her fault, to take back all the things she had said three nights ago at the ball and pour out the truth. The strength of her impulse shook her deeply. But she could not do it. Whatever had been between them was dead and gone anyway and now she had a job to do, the only thing that stood between her and penury. She had not fought every inch of the way to save herself and the twins in order to throw it all away now. The thought of losing all she had worked for terrified her. Their lives were on a knife-edge as it was.
Nevertheless her heart shriveled, cold and tight, to see the contempt in Dev’s eyes. The only defense she had was to pretend he did not have the power to hurt her anymore.
“You have read the fortune-hunter’s rulebook, too,” she taunted. “You know full well I shall thank Fitz for choosing me such a fine beast and compliment him on his discernment whilst pleading my privilege as a female to change my mind and hold on to my money. My choice,” she added, “would be that mare over there.” She pointed to a spirited chestnut that was being shown around the ring.
“You have a good eye for quality.” Somehow Dev managed to make even that compliment sound like an insult. “Mares can be a handful,” he added, his gaze dwelling thoughtfully on her face. “But perhaps you are looking to ride something more exciting than a steady gelding this time?”
His meaning was crystal clear beneath the thin veneer of civility. Susanna’s gaze clashed with his and she saw the challenge in his eyes.
“I prefer a horse with spirit and attitude,” she said. “Whereas you—” she tilted her head thoughtfully, eyes narrowed on him “—would probably pick something as unsubtle as that stallion simply as a fashion accessory. All muscles and no brain.”
Dev gave a crack of laughter. “I wouldn’t throw away that much money on something that might kill me.”
“You have changed then,” Susanna said politely. Then added, as he raised his brows in quizzical challenge, “Wild-goose chases to Mexico in search of treasure, ludicrously dangerous missions for the British Navy, a preposterous voyage to the Arctic during which you boarded another ship as though you were a pirate …” She stopped as the look in his eyes turned to pure amusement.
“You have been following my career,” he murmured. “How flattering and unexpected. Could you not quite let me go, Susanna?”
Susanna had in fact followed every step of Devlin’s career but she did not want him to know that. It would only feed his conceit, as well as raising awkward questions about why she had cared, questions she could not and did not want to answer.
“I read the scandal sheets,” she said, shrugging. “They convinced me that you were as reckless as I had always believed you to be.”
“Reckless,” Dev said. There was an odd tone in his voice. “Yes, I have always been that, Susanna.”
At seventeen Susanna had loved that wildness in him, such a counterpoint to her staid and predictable life. She had been dazzled, blinded by the thrill of it all, swept away. Their secret meetings had been breathtakingly illicit. The risk had transfixed her. Even though a tiny, sensible part of her mind had argued that Dev was too handsome and too exciting ever to belong to her, she had wanted to believe that he could. Even though she had secretly suspected he had only proposed to her because he wanted to sleep with her, she had wanted to believe he truly loved her. For one brief day and night she had given herself up to pleasure, feeling alive for the first time in years, lit up with love and excitement. But in the morning had come the reckoning and after that she had paid and paid.
She swallowed what felt like a huge lump in her throat. It was too late now to regret her lack of courage or faith. She did not know why she should feel this misery, as though she had let something valuable slip away, because over the years Dev had surely proved himself exactly as irresponsible and rash and dangerous as she had known he would be.
“I am not Susanna anymore,” she said. “I am Caroline Carew, remember?”
Dev’s hand came out and caught her sleeve. She looked up, startled, to see the spark of pure anger in his eyes.
“So you jettisoned your name along with everything else,” he murmured. “You could not rid yourself of your old life fast enough, could you?”
Susanna shrugged. “One moves on from past mistakes. And Caroline is my middle name.” She paused. “I hope I can rely on you to remember that I am now Caroline Carew?”
For a long moment Dev looked into her eyes and Susanna almost flinched from the dark anger she saw there. Her heart was racing, her chest tight. Her skin prickled with awareness.
“I would hate you to think that you can rely on me for anything,” he said pleasantly. “Is not ambiguity the spice of life?”
“Servant, Devlin.” Fitz’s bored, aristocratic tones cut across them and Dev dropped Susanna’s arm as though it was a hot coal, straightened, turned and sketched Fitz a bow.
“Alton.” His voice was very cold.
Fitz’s gaze darted from him to Susanna’s face. She pressed her gloved hands together to prevent them from shaking. There was something about Devlin’s potent physical presence that got through to her every time. Over the years she had built up such a strong protective facade that she had thought it could withstand anything. Dev demolished it with one look or one touch.
“Lady Carew,” Dev said, and Susanna heard the emphasis he put on the name, “is trying to decide whether to accept your recommendation, Alton.”
Susanna saw the frown that touched Fitz’s forehead at the suggestion that his judgment of horseflesh might not be sound.
“He is a beautiful horse, my lord,” she said quickly, to repair the damage, “but I am in two minds—I can always hire a riding horse from the livery stables. Would it not be more fun to own a racehorse instead?”
She thought she heard Dev snort—but it could have been one of the horses. Fitz’s face cleared miraculously.
“A racehorse!” he said enthusiastically. “Capital idea, Lady Carew! Capital!”
“I am sure,” Susanna said, slipping her hand through his arm, “that it would be vastly exciting to watch it run—and to gamble on it, as well, of course.”
“Only if you are plump in the pocket,” Dev said dryly. His gaze traveled over her, lingering on the neat fit of her riding habit as it emphasized the lush curve of her breasts. “But I forgot—you are very well endowed, are you not, Lady Carew?”
His direct gaze brought the blood up into Susanna’s face. She could remember more than Dev’s gaze lingering on those curves.
“I do apologize for Devlin,” Fitz said. “His cousin sent him to Eton but education don’t make the man, I am sorry to say.”
“No, indeed,” Susanna said. Her gaze clashed with Dev’s cool blue one. “I am, as you say, endowed with many advantages that you lack, Sir James, including good manners.”
“Once a knave,” Dev murmured, without any hint of apology. There was a glimmer of wickedness in his eyes. “But you knew that about me already, Lady Carew. You know all my secrets.”
“I have no ambition to know anything about you, Sir James,” Susanna said coldly. Her heart was beating a warning; how much would he risk, how much would he reveal?
“You must think yourself fascinating indeed to make yourself the subject of the conversation,” she said.
She could see what Dev was trying to do: he wanted to suggest to Fitz that there was more to her than met the eye, that she had a checkered rather than a romantically mysterious past, that she had been his mistress, even. He wanted to imply that whilst she might be a rich widow now she was not the sort of person a marquis would marry, especially when there was the far more suitable virginal debutante Miss Francesca Devlin waiting patiently in the wings …
“Lady Emma not with you today, Devlin?” Fitz asked pointedly. He tightened his grip on Susanna’s arm. Susanna found she did not like it but resisted the urge to pull away, instead smiling sweetly at Fitz and moving close enough to brush her body against his.
“No,” Dev said. “Emma dislikes horses unless they are doing something functional such as pulling her carriage.” He bowed, a sardonic light lurking in his eyes. “I can see that I am de trop here. I will leave you to throw your money away on a racehorse, Lady Carew.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Susanna said. “Good day, Sir James.”
She could feel the tension in Fitz’s body as they stood together watching Dev stroll away.
“I say, Lady Carew,” Fitz said, turning to look down at her, “Devlin is most frightfully disrespectful to you. Are you sure there is nothing more between the two of you than old acquaintance?”
Mentally cursing Dev and his meddling, Susanna plastered on her most convincing smile. “I met Sir James on his cousin’s estate at Balvenie in Scotland when I was little more than a child, my lord,” she said. “I am afraid I did not like him and I made the mistake of letting it show. Even then Sir James was insufferably conceited and wanted all the ladies to fall at his feet. He has never forgiven me that I did not.”
She had not fallen at his feet; she had fallen into his bed. But Fitz was smiling, she saw with relief. “Grant’s estate, eh?” he said. “Sound fellow, Grant, but barely a feather to fly. The whole family is ramshackle. There’s no breeding to speak of and bad blood in the Devlin family.”
Susanna was surprised to hear him dismiss Chessie thus, especially when his attentions to her had been so marked and could surely have been nothing but honorable. But it augured well for her own plans. Chessie was as good as defeated already and none of Dev’s interference could change that.
She smiled prettily, squeezing Fitz’s arm. “I wonder if you have the time to accompany me to the wine merchant, my lord?” she said. “I require to purchase a special gift of champagne and I know you have a knowledge of the best vintage.”
Fitz looked gratified and Susanna, her gaze falling on one of the shovels used to clear out the horseboxes, wondered just how thickly she would have to lay on the flattery before he became suspicious of her. Dev’s stringent wit and intelligence would have demolished her in an instant but there seemed to be no limit to the Marquis of Alton’s self-regard.
“Delighted, Lady Carew,” Fitz said. “And afterward perhaps we may celebrate with a glass together, eh?” His smile was vulpine. “I should enjoy that a great deal, just the two of us.”
“That would be splendid, thank you,” Susanna murmured. “I very much appreciate having a friend to lean upon when I am so new to London.” She slipped her hand from Fitz’s arm and walked a little ahead of him so that he could appreciate the sway of her hips beneath the luxurious fall of the velvet riding habit. She could feel Fitz’s eyes on her—and sense, too, his frustration that once again she had taken a step back from the intimacy he was trying to create between them. Frustration bred eagerness, and that was exactly what she wanted from him. Smiling, she turned the corner of the yard and walked straight into Devlin, who was lounging against the doorway, an appreciative gleam in his eyes.
“Beautifully done, Susanna,” he whispered. His breath stirred the tendrils of hair that had escaped from beneath her hat. She felt them brush her cheek with the lightest caress. “What a lot of practice you must have had in the art of seduction.”
“Endless amounts,” Susanna agreed. She saw that Fitz had stopped for a final word with Richard Tattersall and cursed the delay. The last thing she wanted to do was reengage with Dev again and to give him another opportunity to undo all her good work.
“I thought that you had gone,” she seethed.
“Alas, I could not tear myself away,” Dev said. “I felt an almost overwhelming desire to see in action the methods employed by the modern adventuress.” He smiled straight into her eyes. “You are a consummate professional, Susanna.”
“And you are a damned nuisance,” Susanna snapped.
Dev kissed her fingers. She tried to withdraw her hand but he held her tight. His touch seared her even through the material of her glove. Her palm tingled.
“Choose another victim,” he murmured. “You could have anyone. Leave Fitz alone.”
“No,” Susanna said. “It is Fitz that I want.”
Something flared in Dev’s eyes, something dark and dangerous and hot. It held her captive whilst her pulse raced and her stomach tumbled.
“Liar,” he said. “It’s me that you still want.”
Susanna raised her chin. It might be true that she was still damnably susceptible to him but it was also time to give him a magnificent setdown. “You are mistaken, Sir James,” she said sweetly. “You are so conceited that you have come to believe yourself irresistible.” She flicked her hand from his grasp. “You might do very well for Lady Emma Brooke as she is clearly too young to know any better,” she continued. “But I assure you that rich widows can do a sight better than a penniless fortune hunter.”
“I did not mean that you wanted to marry me—again,” Dev said pleasantly. His gaze fell to her mouth, lingered there. “I meant that you wanted to—”
“To see the back of you,” Susanna said. “Very quickly. Don’t make trouble for me,” she added, “unless you wish me to do the same for you.”
Dev laughed. “I look forward to it.” He nodded to her. “Good luck, Lady Carew.”
“I don’t need luck,” Susanna said. “I have skill. Hurry back to your winsome heiress,” she added, “before some other unprincipled adventurer steals her from you.”
Dev nodded. “Advice from the best.” He bowed. “Your servant, Lady Carew.”
“I do not believe that for a moment,” Susanna said.
The laughter fled Dev’s eyes. “Once I was yours to command, Susanna,” he said. “All yours and no one else’s.” He raised a hand in farewell and walked away, leaving Susanna feeling shaken by a minor earthquake. For in that moment she knew Dev had spoken the truth. He had been hers and she had destroyed everything that had been between them and she would never have that again.
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE WAS NOTHING, DEV thought, quite like a group of ill-assorted people who did not enjoy one another’s company pretending to be having a marvelous time. It was raining, they were in St. Paul’s Cathedral and they were looking at tombs because Susanna had expressed a wish to see some of the more esoteric sights of London. Dev had wondered what the hell she was playing at—until he had overheard Fitz praising her for her intelligence as well as her beauty. Cunning jade. Fitz was pretty stupid himself, Dev thought, but he liked to consider himself cultured and what better way than to show the dazzling Lady Carew around this historic site that was the burial place of heroes.
“Remind me what we are doing here again?” Chessie grumbed at him. “I was supposed to be attending Lady Astridge’s musicale this afternoon. Instead you bring me to this mausoleum so that I can watch Fitz dance attendance on Lady Carew.” Her pretty face screwed up into a tighter expression of disgust. “If I had wanted to torture myself I would have stayed at home and read an improving book.”
Dev drew his sister behind one of the huge pillars that supported the soaring roof. He wanted to tell her to stop being so childish and petulant, but he supposed she did have an excuse. For the last fortnight it seemed that Susanna’s name—or at least her assumed name—had been on everyone’s lips. The ton was full of the arrival of the beautiful, rich widow in their midst, the papers followed her every move, the London gown shops reportedly sent her dresses hoping she would wear them to the nightly balls she attended. And Fitz was now behaving as though he could not quite remember whom Chessie was, so dazzled was he by his new inamorata. To Chessie, fathoms deep in love with Fitz and now thwarted and ignored, it must be unbearable. Dev felt a pang of sympathy for his little sister, who had been so close to her fairy-tale betrothal and was now slighted. Chessie was pining visibly, losing weight, appearing thin and wan, all her vivacious sparkle lost. The ton was laughing at her. Emma had told Dev all about the gossip and had, he thought, derived a certain pleasure from doing so.
“We are here to thwart Lady Carew,” he said calmly, “and you will not do so by flouncing around like a child in a temper.”
A spark of interest came into Chessie’s eyes. “Tell me how I am to achieve that then,” she said.
“By being everything that Lady Carew is not,” Dev said.
Chessie’s mouth drooped. “You want me to be ugly and stupid? I cannot see how that will help.”
Dev stifled a grin. It was true that Susanna was both beautiful and intelligent and no matter how much he detested her it was pointless to deny it. Very few men would be indifferent to Susanna. Some might dislike her wit, but with them she would be clever enough to pretend to be stupid. It was difficult to identify her weakness but he was determined to find it. Find it and use it against her.
“You are younger than Lady Carew,” he said. “That will do for a start.”
Chessie arched her brows. “Is that the best we can do? I am a year or two younger?”
“Four years,” Dev said, without thinking.
Chessie frowned. “How do you know?” Her gaze was a little too penetrating for Dev’s liking. “Did you know her very well in Scotland?”
Intimately.
Dev glanced across to where Susanna was perusing her guidebook, head bent, a very pretty picture of beauty and scholarship combined. Superimposed on the image of the bluestocking was another, that of the wanton beauty who had lain in his arms for just one night. In the heat of their lovemaking her cool reserve had dissolved into the most fierce and passionate desire. She had refused him nothing and he, drunk with the need to possess her, had ravished every last exquisite inch of her. His body tightened on the thought and he slammed the memory back down into darkness where it belonged. Reigniting that flame, feeling himself burn again for her, was not something he could ever tolerate. He was in control now. He was not that headstrong boy who had fancied himself in love.
“Dev?” Chessie’s gaze had become even more quizzical.
Dev shrugged the question away. “I’m just guessing,” he said. “And she is a widow—”
“Which Fitz likes,” Chessie said gloomily. “He prefers the older, more sophisticated woman.”
“Only as a mistress, not as a wife,” Dev said.
Chessie sighed. “Do you think that all she wants is an affaire? Perhaps if I wait—”
“You’re too good to sit around waiting for Fitz whilst he takes another woman as a mistress,” Dev snapped. He felt very grim and it was not simply all the tombs that were lowering his mood. He knew Susanna had set her sights on Fitz and he was certain she was not simply interested in an affaire. Watching his former wife become Fitz’s mistress would have been bad enough, evoking in him the sort of primal anger that Dev did not want to examine too closely, but seeing her become Marchioness of Alton evoked an equally strong reaction in him compounded of the same white-hot possessiveness and a fury that Susanna could so easily, so carelessly, ruin Chessie’s hopes. He clenched his hands within the pockets of his coat. Possessiveness was misplaced when his short-lived marriage to Susanna was as dead as ashes. Fury would not help, either. Cold, hard calculation was what was needed now to stop Susanna in her tracks.
“Perhaps I could become Fitz’s mistress instead,” Chessie was saying. “Beat her to the job—”
Dev grabbed her. “Don’t even say that in jest, Chessie,” he said through his teeth.
For a second he saw fear reflected in Chessie’s eyes. Her eyes swam with tears. “It was only an idea—”
“A very bad one,” Dev said. He let her go; tried to lighten the mood. “Apart from anything else,” he said, “I would have to put a bullet through Fitz and then Emma wouldn’t want to marry me anymore.”
Chessie gave a little watery giggle. “That would be no loss other than in the financial sense.”
“I used to like Fitz,” Dev said, “before he started behaving like an ass.”
“That is because you and he had so much in common,” Chessie said with the sort of unflattering truth that only a sister could get away with. “You both like women and gambling and sport and drink. Or at least you used to,” she added. “When you were permitted to do so. Before Emma.”
“One thing I don’t like is sightseeing in a mausoleum,” Dev said. Susanna had wandered across the aisle now and was looking up at the mosaics that rioted across the cathedral’s dome. As he watched, a beam of watery sunlight cut through the gloom to pin her in a ray of light. She looked bright and ethereal, though anyone less like an angel would be difficult to imagine. Fitz, however, looked as though he had been struck by a vision.
“You should find someone else,” Dev said abruptly.
“It was difficult enough finding Fitz,” Chessie said. “Had you not noticed, Devlin, that I do not have suitors queuing up at the door?”
“You have a good dowry,” Dev said. Alex, their cousin, had put ten thousand pounds aside for Chessie’s future.
“A modest dowry,” Chessie corrected. “No one is going to take me for that when there are heiresses to catch. Not when I have no eligible connections.”
“You have me and Alex and Joanna,” Dev said.
“That,” Chessie said, “proves my point. No eligible connections and plenty of scandalous ones.”
Dev drew her hand through his arm. “Come along. I will distract Lady Carew whilst you ask Fitz a question about Restoration architecture or something.”
“Could you not do that permanently?” Chessie said hopefully. “Take Lady Carew away from Fitz, I mean. You could pretend to be in love with her. Or you could just seduce her. You used to be quite good at that sort of thing, so I heard.”
“That is not the sort of thing one wants one’s sister to hear,” Dev said. “Or to suggest, for that matter.”
“Don’t be stuffy,” Chessie said. “Do it for me.”
Seduce Susanna …
The temptation grabbed Dev like the grip of a vise. To pursue Susanna ruthlessly, to tumble her into his bed, to sate his desire in that cool, untouchable body … He had always wanted what he could not have. Already the lust drove him at the mere thought.
He took a deep breath and the carved faces of the cherubs on the tombs swam back into focus. This was, Dev thought, a most inappropriate place to harbor such carnal thoughts.
“It wouldn’t work,” he said. “Lady Carew is too clever—she would realize what I was about in a moment. And Emma would probably notice, too.”
“Where is Emma today?” Chessie said. “Usually she sticks to you like glue. It is very peaceful without her,” she added.
“Emma is at home with the earache,” Dev said. “Which is why, just this once, I can help you by distracting Lady Carew.”
“You will be the one with the earache when Emma hears of it,” Chessie said frankly. “And Freddie will make sure she does hear. He is a frightful gossip and malicious with it.” She looked at him. “Freddie will do all he can to spoil matters for you, you know. And he will do it for fun, no better reason.”
“I’ll talk Emma round,” Dev said.
“Your life’s work,” his sister said coolly. “That is your future, Devlin—charming Emma into good humor for the next forty years, all for the sake of her money.” She sailed across to where Fitz, Susanna and Freddie were gathered around the tomb of Sir Joshua Reynolds and slipped her hand through Fitz’s arm.
“I fear all this culture is giving me the headache, my lord,” she said. “It may well do for intellectuals like Lady Carew—” she shot Susanna a limpid smile “—but you know that I am not bookish. What do you say that we go to Gunters for refreshment instead?”
Dev grinned. There was something to be said for the direct approach and Chessie was, after all, only following his advice in being the opposite of Susanna. It had worked, too. Fitz was looking relieved at the prospect of escape and just for a second Susanna looked absolutely furious before she smoothed her irritation away and smiled in agreement with the plan. Chessie, having captured Fitz’s attention at last was hanging on like a limpet and when it looked as though Fitz were about to offer his other arm to Susanna, Dev stepped forward and placed himself between them.
“I see you have the guidebook, Lady Carew,” he said. “Can you tell me if Lord Nelson is buried here?”
Susanna was obliged to pause and Fitz and Chessie moved past them, walking together toward the door. They were already deep in conversation, Chessie smiling up at Fitz with sparkling eyes, all her vivacity apparently restored now that she had his attention.
In contrast, Susanna’s green eyes were bright with anger rather than pleasure as they contemplated Dev’s innocent expression.
“Lord Nelson is not only buried here,” she said politely, “but he is spinning in his grave at the thought that a former Naval captain might not know it.” She looked up at him, her body taut with annoyance, her tone fizzing with frustration. “You already knew the answer to that question, did you not, Sir James?”
“It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment,” Dev admitted, without a trace of apology. “I wanted to speak to you—”
“Again?” Susanna snapped. “I hardly flatter myself that you have an inclination for my company.”
“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to delay you,” Dev conceded.
His blunt honesty was rewarded with another glare.
“I am aware of that,” Susanna said. “I understand your strategy perfectly.”
She ignored the arm that he offered her and started to follow Fitz and Chessie toward the door. One of the guides was already running to call them a hackney. The fine weather had broken abruptly and the sky outside was now a dull, pale gray and rain dripped from the guttering to pool on the pavement outside the cathedral.
“I am afraid that you will have to share a carriage with me, Lady Carew,” Dev said, very politely, as Fitz helped Chessie up into the first vehicle. “Unless you would prefer to ride with Mr. Walters, of course?”
“Hobson’s choice,” Susanna said. The quick tap of the guidebook on the palm of her gloved hand betrayed her annoyance.
“Think of me as the lesser of two evils,” Dev said, smiling at her. “Unless,” he added, “you would prefer to walk to Berkeley Square in the rain? I regret I do not have an umbrella to offer you for protection.”
Susanna shot him an exasperated look.
“Try not to keep the horses standing,” Dev added as she hesitated.
Susanna gave an irritable sigh. “Oh, very well!” She accepted the hand Dev proffered to help her climb in, touching him with as much reluctance as though he had some contagious disease. Once inside the dark, poky interior, she released him abruptly and moved to the corner, as far away from him as possible. Dev sat opposite, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankle. His boots brushed the hem of her gown; Susanna moved her skirts aside with great deliberation as though he might contaminate her.
Dev smiled lazily at her through the darkness. “Fitz is easily distracted,” he said. “You are going to have to exert a greater hold on him if you wish to have his sole attention.”
Susanna turned her gaze on him. “Fitz is like a small child in a confectionery shop,” she said. She made no effort to hide her exasperation and Dev found he almost liked her for it. There was no artifice in her—no pretence that she had any regard for Fitz other than for his title, and Dev had a reluctant admiration for that honesty. If she had pretended to any affection for the Marquis he would have despised her hypocrisy.
“An apt metaphor,” he said. “Sweet and pretty confections do catch Fitz’s eye.” He allowed his gaze to travel over her appraisingly. “No doubt he sees you as a particularly nicely wrapped treat.”
“Well, he won’t be helping himself to this treat anytime soon,” Susanna snapped.
“I imagine not,” Dev said. “If you withhold your favors for a while you are likely to gain far more from him.”
That won him another flash of those vivid green eyes. “Thank you for the advice,” Susanna said. “I assure you I prize myself far too highly to become Fitz’s mistress too easily.” She turned her face away from him, gazing instead out of the grimy window at the rain-streaked streets. Her profile was exquisite beneath her saucy little feathered hat, eyelashes thick and black, the line of her cheek pure and sweet, her lips tilted always as though on the edge of a smile. A cluster of ebony curls nestled against her throat, so silky and black that Dev felt a physical urge to run his fingers through them to see if they were really as soft as they looked. It was extraordinary, he thought cynically, how someone as venal as Susanna Burney could look so alluring, extraordinary that her ruthlessness did not spill out in some way, spoiling the pretty picture of the captivating widow. Yet that, he supposed, was part of her skill. She did not attempt to compete with the innocence of debutantes. Her appeal lay in her sophistication and charm. In truth she was little different from a courtesan, a very high class, very talented, very beautiful courtesan, but available to the highest bidder all the same, as long as it was marriage he was offering.
“Do you intend to seduce Fitz into marriage?” he asked.
Her gaze came back to his face, mocking him. “What a very vulgar question, Sir James. I have no intention of answering.”
“As you have said yourself, a widow may use certain experience to her advantage.”
A smile touched Susanna’s lips beneath the shadow of the bonnet. “Very true,” she said. “Just as a rake may use his knowledge and skill to trap a debutante heiress.”
There was silence between them, thick and taut, in the dark, enclosed world of the hackney coach. The rain drummed hard on the roof. The wheels splashed through the puddles on the road outside.
“You’re staring,” Susanna said coolly. “Try the window instead.”
“I see London every day,” Dev said. “I was admiring you.”
Susanna laughed. “I doubt that very much.”
“I meant in the aesthetic sense,” Dev said. “You are very beautiful. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know,” he added.
“You can spare me the compliments,” Susanna said dismissively. She smoothed her skirt with a gloved hand. “I am quite comfortable with silence.”
“I was trying to play nicely,” Dev said.
She cast him another glance, disdainful. “I doubt you do anything nicely, Devlin.”
“I make love very nicely indeed,” Dev said. “Do you not remember?”
“No.” She turned her face away again so that he could not read her expression. Her voice was cold but Dev sensed some emotion beneath her words. Discomposure? Discomfort? Surely so experienced an adventuress as Susanna could not be embarrassed by a reference to their mutual past so perhaps she was simply annoyed to have given him the opportunity to raise the subject of their passionate, shameless lovemaking. He felt a sudden strong urge to bait her further.
“You must surely remember it,” he said. “You were as wild and wanton in your response to me as any woman I have ever met.”
For a moment he thought she would win the encounter simply by ignoring his provocation but this was too blatant for her to let it go. He saw her eyes flash as she rose to his challenge and felt a stab of triumph to be able to force a reaction from her.
“How sweet of you to recall it after all this time,” she said cuttingly. “But I am afraid that for me it was in no way memorable.”
Liar.
The word hung on the air between them. Dev saw a tinge of color sting her cheeks as though he had spoken aloud. He shifted on the seat, shrugging.
“Perhaps the experience has been superseded by so many others that your memory fails you,” he said politely.
She looked at him with contempt. “Perhaps you confuse my romantic past with your own, Devlin. I heard that you were scarcely fastidious in your choices before your engagement to Lady Emma. Quantity over quality was your motto, so I believe.”
Touché. He had indeed been an enthusiastic rakehell.
“Once again I am flattered by the attention you give to my life,” Dev said. “Are you very interested in my romantic career?”
“Of course not!” Susanna said. Her face was very pink now; hot, angry, animated.
“All evidence to the contrary,” Dev said. “It is perhaps an odd preoccupation for my former wife—”
“You always did have good opinion of yourself,” Susanna interrupted. “Or perhaps I mean a boundless conceit.”
“I plead guilty,” Dev said. “But there are some things at which I do excel.”
Susanna rolled her eyes. “Why do men feel the need to brag of their sexual prowess?”
“I could demonstrate my prowess rather than simply talk about it if you prefer,” Dev offered blandly.
Now it was Susanna’s smile that was edged with scorn, her eyes vivid with challenge. “You would try to seduce me? I don’t believe you would have the nerve, Devlin.”
Dev laughed. “It’s dangerous to dare me.”
Susanna shook her head. “You are all talk. You would not do anything to put your betrothal with Lady Emma at risk.”
“She wouldn’t know,” Dev said. He’d behaved like a monk for the past two years not, he was obliged to admit, for reasons of honor but simply because Emma would give him hell if she heard any rumors of infidelity. Emma would never tolerate the discreet liaisons with courtesans to which other wives and fiancées turned a blind eye. She was far too possessive. Her demand of fidelity was, Dev knew, nothing to do with her feelings but another sign that she had bought him and could dictate his behavior.
But Susanna was the one woman who could never betray him because he knew too many of her secrets.
The idea stole his breath. He liked it; he liked it far more than he ought. When Chessie had suggested earlier that he should try to take Susanna away from Fitz he had not entertained the idea seriously. Now he did. To make love to Susanna again, to uncover her body to his gaze and his touch, to press his lips to that silken skin, to taste her again and feel her response … His body hardened again at the mere thought of it.
“I would tell Lady Emma you tried to seduce me,” Susanna said, her words cutting through his most intimate fantasies.
“I know too much about you,” Dev said. “You’d never denounce me for fear I would betray you.”
Their eyes locked in mutual dislike and an equally blistering and sudden mutual desire. It seemed to heat the small dark carriage, scalding the air between them.
“You don’t like me,” Susanna said. There was a thread of something in her voice now that made Dev’s blood burn. She could deny an attraction to him for as long as she wished but he knew better. He had wanted her from the moment he had seen her walking across the ballroom toward him and he knew she felt the same.
“I don’t like you,” he agreed. “What is that to the purpose?”
“You would make love to a woman you don’t like simply to demonstrate to her what she has been missing?”
“I could do that, certainly,” Dev said. “But that is not how it would be with you, Susanna. I would make love to you because I want you and you would respond to me for the same reason.”
He saw the ripple of disquiet shiver along Susanna’s skin. She wanted to refute his words but something held her silent. Dev took her hand, peeling the silk glove from her fingers, tugging so that it came away and left her skin bare. Her hand lay in his now, gentle, warm and soft, all the things that Susanna was not. Dev brushed his lips against her fingers. He wanted to make her tremble. He wanted to prove to her that she was not indifferent to him, prove it so that she could never deny it again. He turned her hand over and pressed his lips to the pulse at her wrist. It was racing, yet her face was expressionless and her hand in his was quite still.
“You seem agitated,” he murmured against her palm.
“Not at all.” Her voice was cool. “I am merely curious to see how far you would take this charade.”
Dev licked her palm with one sly stroke of the tongue. Her skin was smooth; she tasted delicious, salt and sweet together, a taste that kicked his awareness of her up another notch.
“I’d take it much further than this,” he said. He released her and felt the frisson of relief that shook her. “I was only kissing your hand,” he said gently. “Did you like it?”
“No, I did not.” Her tone was firm but Dev had felt the tremor that coursed through her.
“Yet you are shaking,” he said.
He leaned across to touch the fall of ebony ringlets at her throat. Instantly her hair curled confidingly about his fingers, entrapping him in a sensual mesh. It felt more slippery than silk; the faintest scent of honey rose from the dark strands, teasing his nostrils, wrapping about his senses.
Beneath the tumble of curls, his knuckles grazed her throat, gentle against softer skin. Her breath caught, a tiny sound but enough to betray her. He traced the vulnerable hollow of her collarbone, then his fingers dropped lower to the rich lace that edged the neckline of her gown. He followed it down. The filigree lace was whiter than the creamy skin beneath, both framing and concealing the swell of her breasts, designed to incite carnal need whilst appearing irreproachably innocent.
A sudden fierce urge seized him to tear that lace aside and slide his hand beneath the silk of her gown, to cup her breast and feel the nipple harden against his palm. The game that had started as challenge and provocation had suddenly changed. Now he, for all his experience, was the one feeling as primed and lust-ridden as a youth and she looked as cool as spring water, only the flutter of her pulse and the shimmer of heat in her eyes betraying her desire.
He slid his index finger down to the valley between her breasts and felt her shiver under his touch. They were very close now. He could hear her quickened breathing and see the color that ran up under her skin, heating it from the inside out, stinging her pallor with arousal. Her lips were slightly parted and she bit down on her full lower lip and his body clenched. He knew nothing other than that he had to kiss her—he had to kiss her now—but he retained enough shreds of sanity to know that despite her apparent quiescence if he tried she would probably stab him with a hairpin.
He was not going to take that risk. Quick as a flash he wrapped the cord of her reticule about her wrists, binding them together. She gave a little gasp of shock but he held the thread tight, forcing her hands down and in her lap.
“I’m tying you up so you can’t hurt me,” he said. He scarcely recognized his voice, rough and hoarse with need.
She might bite him, of course, but he might enjoy that. That was a risk he was prepared to take.
He saw her eyes flash with fury but beneath the anger he also saw a reluctant fascination that made the hunger roar through him.
“You’re a brigand,” Susanna said. Her voice was not quite steady.
“A pirate,” Dev said. “You know it.” He tugged on the cord of the reticule. The movement jerked Susanna’s wrists and brought her closer to him. He bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Her lips were very lush and they trembled beneath his like a debutante receiving her first kiss. It felt unpracticed, uncertain, as though she had not kissed anyone for a very long time. Dev hesitated, completely thrown by her response. He had not for a moment supposed that she was an innocent. Her history contradicted it; she had denied it in her own words, and yet her lack of finesse spoke for itself. There was no pretence between them, either. It was as though the moment he had kissed her all the barriers between them had dissolved and there was no anger and no resentment left, nothing but longing and sweet, aching need. For a moment Dev felt swamped by dangerous emotion and then Susanna opened her lips beneath his and she tasted so shockingly familiar, so enticing, that his senses spun. He forgot everything, releasing the cord about her wrist so that he could draw her into his arms and kiss her with hunger and passion and an ever-deepening tenderness.
His tongue tangled with hers, coaxing it into a potently carnal dance. Desire leaped to greater desire within him like a fierce flame. Soon, he knew, he would be lost to everything other than the need to make love to Susanna here and now in a flea-infested hackney carriage in broad daylight on the streets of London. He struggled to remember that he could not yield to this seduction. He was supposed to be proving something to Susanna, not losing himself in her. Yet it seemed he could not resist. He did not want to need her but he could not help himself.
He brushed aside the ebony curls with fingers that shook, and pressed his lips to her throat. Her skin was cool beneath his touch and Dev felt like a starving man offered manna in the desert. His self-control hung by a thread. He slid the gown down a little and nipped at the curve of Susanna’s shoulder, biting softly, tasting her. The scent of honey was on her skin, faint and sweet. Dev had never eaten honey in his life but he wanted to eat it now. He wanted to lick her all over. He felt almost light-headed with the craving.
The bodice of Susanna’s gown rustled softly as it slipped another inch lower. Dev felt the filigree lace rough against his lips and Susanna’s breast soft beneath it, inciting him to rip the material away so that he could take her in his mouth. He groaned.
Susanna put one hand against his chest and pushed him away. Dev was so surprised that he let her go.
“Have you finished trying to make a point yet, Sir James?” She sounded slightly bored.
It took Dev a moment to cut through the clamor of his body and to focus. When he did, it was to see that Susanna was adjusting that provocative lace and was patting her hair back into place beneath the saucy bonnet, which had been knocked askew in their embrace. Her face was perfectly blank, pale, composed, the indifferent mask of a lady of fashion.
Shock and disbelief raked through Devlin that he should feel such an intensity of desire and, more disturbingly, such a treacherous sense of affinity with her when to Susanna it seemed it had been nothing but a dare.
“You were pretending?” he said.
Her green eyes were expressionless. If anything, she looked slightly puzzled. “Of course I was,” she said. “Weren’t you?”
“I …” There was an odd emptiness beneath Devlin’s heart. “That innocent response,” he said. His throat felt dry. “It was feigned?”
She smiled. It was a smile that made him feel a naive fool. “Men seem to like it,” she murmured.
“And you always give men what they want,” Dev said. He could feel the bitterness rising like bile in his throat.
“If it gains me what I want.”
Dev took her by the shoulders, searching her face for any clue that she lied, looking for even a hint that the storm of sensation that had racked him had touched her, too. She met his gaze defiantly.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You wanted me, too.”
Susanna shrugged and turned her face away from him.
“Your opinion is not important to me,” she said. “You were trying to prove a point. You failed.”
Dev let her go, sinking back onto the seat. The taut desire had drained from him now and he felt chilled and empty. Susanna’s words were no more than a salutary reminder of how cynical she had become.
“I find I would rather walk than suffer any more of your … conversation,” Susanna said. She rapped sharply on the roof of the carriage. The hackney jerked to a halt.
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Nicola Cornick
London, June 1816 'Devlin squared his shoulders and prepared to be introduced to the wife he had thought was dead.' Dangerously seductive and sinfully beautiful, Susanna Burney is society’s most sought-after matchbreaker. Paid by wealthy parents to part unsuitable couples, she’s never yet failed. Until her final assignment brings her face to face with the man who’d once taught her an intimate lesson in heartache…James Devlin has everything he’s always wanted: a title, a rich fiancée and a place in society. But the woman who’s just met his eyes across a crowded ballroom threatens it all. Not because she’d once claimed his heart but because the secrets she carries could cost him everything. Dev just might have to play Susanna at her own wicked game. Let the scandal of the season begin…
Nicola Cornick’s novels have received acclaim the world over
‘Cornick is first-class, Queen of her game.’
—Romance Junkies
‘A rising star of the Regency arena’
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for the SCANDALOUS WOMEN OF THE TON series
‘A riveting read’
—New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney on
Whisper of Scandal
‘One of the finest voices in historical romance’
—SingleTitles.com
‘Ethan Ryder (is) a bad boy to die for! A memorable story
of intense emotions, scandals, trust, betrayal and all-
encompassing love. A fresh and engrossing tale.’
—Romantic Times on One Wicked Sin
‘Historical romance at its very best is
written by Nicola Cornick.’
—Mary Gramlich, The Reading Reviewer
Acclaim for Nicola’s previous books
‘Witty banter, lively action and sizzling passion’
—Library Journal on Undoing of a Lady
‘RITA
Award-nominated Cornick deftly steeps her latest intriguingly complex Regency historical in a beguiling blend of danger and desire.’
—Booklist on Unmasked
Author Note
The Scandalous Women of the Ton are back! Or in this case, perhaps it should be the scandalous Men of the Ton …
James Devlin, cousin to Alex, the hero of Whisper of Scandal, has been one of London’s most shocking rakes. Now settled into a life of riches and respectability as the fiancé of a beautiful society heiress, Dev is terminally bored. Enter Caroline, Lady Carew, a woman with a mysterious past who knows enough about Dev to ruin his engagement and all his future prospects. But Lady Carew also has secrets to keep, for she is none other than a notorious match breaker, paid by rich parents to end unsuitable engagements …
Reading through the letters and accounts of the Regency period, I sometimes come across cases where fathers or trustees have paid off a man or a woman they consider unsuitable. Perhaps a son has fallen in love with a courtesan and wishes to marry her, or an heiress has taken a fancy to a poverty-stricken scoundrel and threatens to elope. In many instances, the parents or guardians are absolutely ruthless in removing the threat. In my imagination it was only a small step from there to the idea that a rich and determined parent might hire a heartbreaker to seduce their son away from his unsuitable fiancée. And so the idea for Notorious was born …
Notorious was huge fun to write and I very much hope that you enjoy it, too!
Nicola Cornick
Notorious
Nicola Cornick
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
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WHISPER OF SCANDAL
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MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT
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DECEIVED
LORD OF SCANDAL
UNMASKED
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS
THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT
THE UNDOING OF A LADY
DAUNTSEY PARK: THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
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DESIRED
FORBIDDEN
CHAPTER ONE
“He who does not burn with desire grows cold.”
—Seventeenth-century proverb
JAMES DEVLIN WAS TWENTY-SEVEN years old and he had everything that he had ever wanted. He had a place in society, he had a beautiful, rich fiancée and he had a title of his own. Yet on the night that his former wife walked back into his life after nine years absence he was bored; as bored as it was possible for a gentleman to be at a ton ball at the height of the London season.
It was another night of lavish excess and hollow entertainment. The Duke and Duchess of Alton threw the best parties in the ton, opulent, tasteful and frightfully exclusive. For Dev it was also another night of fetching lemonade for Emma when she became thirsty, of finding her fan when she misplaced it and of fawning on Emma’s mama, who could not stand him and probably did not even know his name although he had been betrothed to her daughter for two years. Once upon a time Dev had had to brave the elements on the rain-lashed deck of a ship of the line, scramble up rigging and fight for his life. Each day had brought new dangers, new excitement. It had only been two years but it felt like a century ago. These days he did nothing more dangerous than check the set of his coat and pass Emma her reticule.
“Jealous, Dev?” His sister Francesca put a hand on his sleeve and Dev realized that he had been frowning at Emma across the dance floor, glaring at her as she twirled through the steps of the waltz in the arms of her cousin Frederick Walters. Chessie was not the only one who had noticed his grim stance. He saw the sideways glances and covert amusement. Everyone thought that he was possessive, resentful of the time that Emma, a consummate flirt, lavished on other men. If he had been the jealous type he would have spent his days on the dueling field but the fact was that one had to care in order to be jealous and Dev had long ago realized that he did not care a jot if Emma flirted with every man in London.
He straightened up and smoothed the frown from his brow. “I’m not jealous in the least,” he said.
Chessie’s blue gaze appraised his face, looking for signs that he was trying to fool her. “It is no secret that the Earl and Countess of Brooke prefer Fred as a suitor for Emma,” she said.
Dev shrugged. “The Earl and Countess would prefer a distempered hound as a suitor for Emma but I am the one that Emma wants.”
“And Emma always gets what she wants.” There was the very faintest edge to Chessie’s voice now.
Dev shot his sister a look. Chessie had not yet got what she wanted and she had been waiting a long time. Fitzwilliam Alton, only son and heir to the Duke and Duchess, had been paying Chessie marked attention for some months. Such public notice could only end respectably in a proposal of marriage but so far Fitz had not declared himself and now the ton was starting to gossip. Society, Dev thought, had not been kind, talking scandal about him and Chessie in particular from the first. They had breeding of sorts, but precious little of it and no money. He had at least carved out something of a Navy career for himself before he had resorted to hunting a fortune. Chessie had had to make an impression through her beauty and her vivacious personality alone. It was always harder for a woman.
“You don’t like Emma,” Dev said now.
He felt rather than saw his sister’s scornful glance. “I don’t like what she has done to you,” she said. “You’ve become one of Emma’s pets, like that fluffy white dog or her bad-tempered monkey.”
Ouch.
“It’s a small price to pay for what I want,” Dev said.
Wealth. Status. He had hunted them for the last ten years. Born with nothing, he had no intention of going back to the poverty of his youth. Now everything was within his grasp and if that meant he had to be Emma’s lapdog for the rest of his life there were worse fates. Or so he told himself.
“You are no better,” he said to his sister, aware that he sounded perilously close to the tit for tat banter of their childhood. “You have caught yourself a marquis.”
Chessie flicked her fan in a gesture that conveyed total disdain. “Don’t be so vulgar, Dev. I am completely different from you. I may be a fortune hunter but at least I love Fitz. And anyway—” a tiny frown marred her brow “—I have not caught him yet.”
“He’ll propose soon,” Dev said. He had heard the trace of uncertainty in Chessie’s voice that revealed how wafer-thin was her confidence. He wanted to reassure her, even though he thought Fitzwilliam Alton nowhere near good enough for his sister. “Fitz loves you, too,” he said, hoping he was right. “He is only waiting for the right moment to tell his parents the news.”
“That will never happen,” Chessie said dryly.
“You must love Fitz very much to be prepared to endure the Duchess of Alton as a mother-in-law,” Dev said.
“And you must love Emma’s money very much to be prepared to endure the Countess of Brooke,” Chessie said.
“I do,” Dev said.
Chessie shook her head slightly. “It will not serve, Dev,” she said. “In the end you will hate her.”
“I’m sure you are right,” Dev said. “I already dislike her very much.”
“I meant Emma,” Chessie said, her eyes on the shifting patterns of the dance, “not her mother. Though if Emma becomes more like her mother as she grows older that will be hard to bear.”
Dev could not deny that it was not an appealing prospect.
“If Fitz becomes more like his mother you will have to squeeze money out of him like a lemon,” he said. The Duchess of Alton had a sour disposition and a mouth like the tightly drawn drawstring of a purse. It gave fair warning as to her character.
Chessie gave a spontaneous giggle. “Fitz will not become like his parents.” The laughter faded from her face and she fidgeted with the struts of her fan, her gloved fingers pulling at the lace. Lately, Dev thought, she seemed to have lost some of her sparkle. Now he could see her searching the crowded room for Fitz. She was wearing her heart on her sleeve. He felt a rush of protective concern. Chessie was pinning everything on the prospect of this betrothal and Fitz, genial enough, but arrogant and spoiled in equal measure, was aware of her regard and was toying with her reputation. Chessie deserved better than that. Dev clenched his fists at his sides. One step out of line and he would ram that silver spoon Fitz had been born with right down his throat.
“You look very fierce,” Chessie said, squeezing his arm.
“Sorry,” Dev said, smoothing out his expression again. He smiled at her. “We haven’t done badly,” he said, “for two penniless orphans from County Galway.”
Chessie did not reply and he saw that her gaze had returned to the waltz, which was now spinning to a triumphant climax. Fitz, tall, dark, distinguished, was at the far end of the room, almost lost in the shift and sway of the dancers. He was partnering a woman in a shimmering silver gauze gown, a woman who was also tall and dark. They looked magnificent together. Fitz had always had a weakness for a pretty face, just as his cousin Emma wanted a handsome trophy of a husband. But this woman was different from Fitz’s usual flirts and there was something about the way that she moved, the lilt and cadence of her steps that shot Dev through with recognition even though he could not see her face.
“Who is that?” he said, and his voice sounded a little hoarse. Something strange—premonition—was edging up his spine. He was the least superstitious of men yet he felt the cold air breathe gooseflesh along his skin even though the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ballroom was stiflingly hot.
He could see that Chessie felt something, too. She was strung as tight as violin, her face pale now. He saw a shiver rack her body.
“Someone rich,” she said bitterly. “Someone beautiful and eligible whom Fitz’s parents will have introduced to him tonight in order to distract him from me.”
“Nonsense,” Dev said bracingly. “She will be yet another horse-faced, inbred poor relation—”
“Dev,” Chessie reproved, as a dowager rustled past them on a wave of disapproval.
The music finished on a resounding flourish. There was a ripple of applause about the room. The pattern of dancers broke up. Fitz was escorting his partner across the floor toward them. Evidently he intended to introduce her to Chessie. Dev was not sure whether that reassured him or worried him.
“Dev!” Emma had also arrived, breathless and flushed by his side, dragging Freddie Walters with her by the hand. “Come and dance with me!”
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Dev did not respond immediately to Emma’s imperious demand. Instead he was watching the woman at Fitz’s side. She was not in the first flush of youth, closer perhaps to his age than Chessie’s. Age, or experience, or both, gave her an unconscious confidence. She walked with the same elegance that Dev had seen in her in the waltz, a fluid grace that was accentuated by the sinuous swirl of the silver gauze gown. It caressed her breasts and hips, wrapping itself about her like a lover’s kiss. There was not a man in the room, Dev thought, who was not staring at her, his mouth drying with lust, his mind a rampage of images as to what it would be like to unwrap that gown from those curves.
Or perhaps those were just his fantasies.
She was very pale with the kind of translucent skin dusted with freckles that was a feature of the Celtic races. The contrast between her vivid green eyes and her black hair was shocking, exhilarating. It made her look fragile and fey, like a kelpie or dryad, too exotic to be human. Her black curls were piled up on her head in a tumble of ringlets held by a dazzling diamond comb. Matching jewels sparkled about her slender neck and adorned her wrists. Not a poor relation then. She looked magnificent.
She also looked familiar.
Dev’s heart missed a beat then started to race. For a moment it felt as though everything had stopped; the music, the chatter, the breath in his body. For one long moment he could neither think nor speak.
It was almost ten years since he had seen Susanna Burney. His last memory of her was not one he was likely ever to forget: Susanna gloriously naked and fast asleep in the bed that they had shared for their brief, passionate wedding night. As he had blown out the guttering candle he had had no notion that he would never see her again.
In the morning she was gone, and with her his marriage. She had left him a note—it had all been a terrible mistake, she had said. She had begged him not to come after her, had said that she would sue for an annulment. Young and full of pride, angry, hurt and betrayed, he had let her go.
It had been two years later when he had returned from his first full tour of duty with the Royal Navy that he had reconsidered his abandonment of his wayward wife and had traveled to Scotland to find her again. He had told himself that it had been for curiosity’s sake alone and to ensure that their annulment had indeed been granted. He had plans for the future, ambitious ideas, and they did not involve the girl he had seduced, married on impulse and let go. Sweat broke out over his body now as he recalled knocking on the door of the rectory and confronting Susanna’s uncle and aunt. They had told him that Susanna was dead. He could recall the fierce punch of shock that had made a mockery of his bravado. He had cared for Susanna a great deal more than he had pretended.
Susanna Burney looked very much alive to him.
Anger and shock warred within him. He met her indifferent, unrecognizing gaze and a second wave of fury beat through him. She was pretending that she did not know him.
“Dev!” Emma was tugging on his hand, reclaiming his attention. A frown marred the pretty regularity of her features.
Emma, his rich, beautiful, well-connected fiancée …
Emma, the woman who was bringing him everything that he had ever wanted …
He had never told Emma about his first hasty, ill-fated marriage. There were many things that he had not told Emma. He had pretended that it was because all his past indiscretions were long gone, unimportant and forgotten, but the truth was that Emma was jealous and possessive and he could not predict how she would react to any revelation, and he did not want to put that to the test and endanger the entire house of cards he had built for himself—and for Chessie.
A cold prickle of tension edged its way down Dev’s spine. The damage that Susanna might do was incalculable. If she revealed even a hint of his past, Emma might break their engagement and everything he had worked for would be lost.
He watched as Susanna drew closer. Her hand was resting on Fitz’s arm in the most confiding gesture, their dark heads bent close together. She was smiling at Fitz as though he was the most fascinating man in the universe. Fitz, Dev thought, looked completely dazzled, flushing like a youth in the grip of his first infatuation.
Susanna looked up again and her gaze met Dev’s for one long, long moment. He could not read her expression. There was still no flicker of recognition in her eyes and no trace of nervousness in her manner.
Dev felt cold, very cold. He straightened, squared his shoulders and prepared to be introduced to the wife he had thought was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE DID NOT RECOGNIZE him until it was too late to run and equally impossible to hide. Not that hiding was her style.
The Duke and Duchess of Alton’s Midsummer Ball was the most terrible crush and the press of guests had obscured Susanna’s vision. The room was hot and airless, so noisy she could barely hear what Fitz was saying to her as he escorted her across the floor. Something about meeting some of his friends, she thought, which had been kind of him since she knew no one in London. And then the crowd had fallen back and she was looking at James Devlin and all the breath left her lungs in a rush and her head spun and she thought she might faint. It was only through sheer self-discipline that she did not.
Fitz had not noticed her discomfort. He was not, she thought, an observant man. Handsome, charming, spoiled, arrogant … She had ascertained all those facts about him within five minutes of their introduction. Within ten she had learned that he was devoted to his horses and his wine cellar. Within fifteen she had realized that he was susceptible to a beautiful woman, which would be useful since she was both beautiful and pledged to seduce him.
Fitz was still speaking as he drew her closer to the group of people about James Devlin. She had no idea what he was talking about; fortunately it seemed to require no reply on her part. All she could see was Devlin. All she was aware of was his height, the breadth of him and the coldness in his blue eyes as they rested on her with absolute disdain. She supposed she could not blame him for that. She was the one who had walked away from him, left him before the ink was dry on the marriage lines and whilst the bed was still warm from their lovemaking.
Susanna raised her chin and straightened her spine. She had been playing a part for so long that surely it could not be too difficult to wipe all expression from her face and conceal the fact that she was shaking inside. Yet it seemed inordinately hard to do. She let her gaze travel over Devlin again in slow appraisal. The calculated coolness of her stare was in direct contradiction to the nervous bumping of her heart against her ribs.
There was such authority and innate confidence about Devlin now, a poignant contrast to the dazzling youth of eighteen that she remembered so well. He had had brilliance and dash even at that age but there had been something eager and untried about him as well, as though the world, with its sharp edges, had not yet hardened his soul.
He had certainly filled out in the intervening years. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep. He was taller, more muscular, most definitely a man rather than a boy, and so handsome that he would have been within a hairsbreadth of looking pretty had it not been for the square jaw and high cheekbones that robbed his face of any softness at all. Susanna felt a sudden and totally unexpected pang that the boy she had known had grown into so formidable a man. She would never have guessed it. But she had made her choices years ago. It was far too late for regrets now. Life had taught her that regrets were no more than self-indulgence.
She saw the little blonde girl hanging on Devlin’s arm. That was one thing that had not changed then. Not that she cared a jot after nine years. But there had always been women hanging around James Devlin like bees to the honeypot. He knew he was handsome and he knew very well the effect that had on women. The arrogant self-assurance in the tilt of his head said so.
He was watching her. He had not taken his gaze from her from the moment that she had crossed the floor on Fitz’s arm. She risked meeting his eyes again and was almost scalded by the look she saw there. Instead of the indifference that she had expected she saw angry challenge and a turbulent sensual heat that seemed to call a response from so deep within her that she visibly shivered. Her stomach tumbled. The polished wood of the ballroom floor seemed to shift beneath her silver slippers. She could feel her racing heart accelerate still further and saw Devlin’s gaze shift to the hollow of her throat where a beautiful borrowed diamond drop rested on her frantic pulse. Suddenly Susanna’s skin felt hot and damp; she knew the color had come into her face, knew, too, that Devlin had seen the betraying glitter of the diamond as it moved in response to the hammer of her pulse. She saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile of masculine satisfaction that he had been able to discompose her. That was something else that had not changed then: his conceit.
She raised her chin and gave him a look of profound dislike spiced with defiance. Too much was at stake here for her to draw back now, though every instinct she possessed prompted her to flee.
The girl to Devlin’s left, the one to whom Fitz wanted to introduce her, was clearly Dev’s sister. They shared the same coloring and bone structure, the same blue eyes and tawny gold hair. Susanna caught her bottom lip briefly between her teeth. This was the girl the Duke and Duchess of Alton were employing her to separate from Fitz. This was the girl whose life she was to ruin, whose future husband she was to steal, whose world she would leave in tatters. What an utter, confounded nuisance that the woman the Duchess had referred to, dismissively, as “Fitz’s little fancy,” should turn out to be Devlin’s sister.
“Lady Carew.” Fitz, smiling, was drawing Devlin’s sister forward. “May I present to you Miss Francesca Devlin? Chessie, this is Caroline, Lady Carew, a friend of my parents who has recently come to London from Edinburgh.”
Susanna felt rather than saw Devlin stiffen as he heard her name but she forced herself not to look at him. Francesca Devlin curtsied very prettily. The candlelight picked out the strands of bronze and copper and gold in her hair. Her blue eyes were very warm, her greeting even warmer. Susanna admired her tactics. When a handsome, eligible marquis whom you have a fancy to marry introduces a beautiful woman to you, pretend to be delighted to make her acquaintance …
That one was straight out of the adventuress’s handbook. Under other circumstances, Susanna thought, she might have enjoyed befriending Miss Francesca Devlin, with whom she had more than a little in common. Unfortunately she was being paid a vast sum of money to inveigle herself into Fitz’s affections and get rid of Francesca for good, which was not a promising basis for a friendship.
James Devlin shifted at his sister’s side and Susanna met his eyes and saw naked antagonism there. Unlike Francesca he was not troubling to hide his hostility to her. Susanna felt the force of it ripple through her whole body. She supposed it was naive of her to imagine that Devlin would be indifferent to her sudden reappearance after an absence of nine long years. She had treated him badly; that was undeniable. He would want an explanation at the least, retribution at worst. Her mouth dried at the thought. Devlin was not a man one would want as an enemy—he was too forceful, too determined—and her position was very precarious indeed.
Devlin inclined his head to her as though he had read and understood her thoughts. There was an edge of cynical amusement to his antipathy, a curl to his lips that threw down a challenge to her. The dangerous light in his eyes warned her that whatever game she chose to play, he would match her. Match her and surpass her.
She saw Devlin cast his sister a glance and move a step closer to her as though offering silent moral support. Chessie shot him a smile that was for one unguarded moment full of affection and gratitude. So Devlin was a protective older brother, Susanna thought. That was exactly what she did not need when she was set on spoiling his sister’s life. Matters, complicated enough already, took a turn for the worse. Her heart sank lower toward her delicate embroidered satin slippers.
The other lady in the group, the little blonde, pushed forward in a flurry of blue silk and lace.
“You should have introduced me first, Fitz,” she said, pouting. “I am a lady!”
By name if not by nature, Susanna thought as Fitz, apologizing profusely, introduced the girl as his cousin Lady Emma Brooke and the other gentleman as the Honorable Frederick Walters. Susanna was sharply conscious of Devlin’s eyes upon her all the time, the narrow blue glitter of his gaze holding her captive. Emma dragged him forward like a trophy.
“This is my fiancé,” she said proudly, “Sir James Devlin.”
Fiancé.
Susanna’s heart jerked. She had known that Devlin had come into a title. But she had not known that he was betrothed.
Jealousy, sharp, dark and hot, stole her breath. She wondered why she had never imagined him wed before. The thought had never crossed her mind and yet in the nine years since they had parted he could have been married twice over, three times, six times like Henry VIII for all she knew.
Except for the small difficulty that he was still married to her.
She really should have told him that they were still wed. She should have told him long ago.
Susanna’s conscience, often troublesome, such a disadvantage to an adventuress, pricked her again. This, however, did not seem like the appropriate moment to break the news to Devlin, with his fiancée smiling at her with that possessive air and that warning glint in her eyes.
Susanna swallowed hard. She had intended to get an annulment within the first year of her marriage. She had written to Dev and promised him that she would. Then she had discovered that she was pregnant and her wedding ring and marriage lines had suddenly been the only thing standing between her and ruin. Alone and destitute, disowned by her family, she had clung to the very edge of respectability. And later, when she had remembered her pledge and had once again thought to end her marriage she had discovered that annulments, like many things in life, were both prodigiously expensive and a great deal more difficult to obtain than she had ever imagined. By then she had been spending every last penny she earned simply keeping body and soul together on the streets of Edinburgh. There was no cash to pay the lawyers. Sometimes she had barely managed to survive.
The memory of those dark days invaded Susanna’s mind and she felt the familiar panic and fear rise in her throat. Her palms felt slippery with sweat within the elegant lace of her evening gloves. The candles felt too hot, the ballroom stifling. Everyone was looking at her. With a great effort of will she pushed the memories away and smiled at Emma Brooke.
“You are to be congratulated on your betrothal, Lady Emma,” she said, “though not as much as Sir James is on his.”
There was a slight pause whilst Emma tried to work out if this was a compliment and, deciding that it was, beamed. Susanna saw Dev’s lips quirk into a smile.
“I am indeed the most fortunate of men,” he said smoothly. “And you, Lady Carew,” he added. There was a gleam of dark amusement in the depths of his eyes, shadowed by that ever-present anger. “It seems that you, too, must be congratulated, since the last time we met you were neither a lady nor were you called Caroline Carew, as I recall.”
His tone was very courteous, his words anything but. A little ripple went around the group. Susanna saw a sharpening of speculation in the women’s eyes and a different sort of interest in the men’s. No wonder. Dev had just implied she was an adventuress at best, a harlot masquerading as a lady at worst.
The moment spun out. Susanna knew she had a choice and she had to make her decision fast. She could pretend that Devlin had mistaken her identity. Or she could take the fight to him. It was risky to claim that she did not know him because Dev would probably see that as a challenge. He was that sort of man. It was equally perilous to engage with him because she was not sure that she could win. But it was certainly too late to feign indifference. Everyone was waiting to see how she would respond to Dev’s calculated remark.
“I am flattered that you claim to remember so much about me,” Susanna said lightly. “I had forgotten all about you.”
Dev’s smile deepened at the setdown. The look he gave her sent heat searing through her.
“Oh, I remember everything about you, Lady … Carew,” he said.
“You never knew everything about me, Sir James,” Susanna said.
Their gazes locked like the hiss of blades engaging. Susanna’s skin prickled with awareness. Too late to back down now …
“On the contrary,” Dev said. “I remember, for instance, the very last time we met.” There was a hint of devilry in his eyes. He was enjoying baiting her. Susanna saw it and felt a flare of anger.
Then her gaze fell on Emma’s furious, pouting face and her anger dissolved into relief. This was just for show on Dev’s part, to punish her for past sins and make her squirm. He had no intention of revealing the truth. It would damage him as much as it would her. Emma, she was already persuaded, was no meek and biddable betrothed. And Emma must surely hold the purse strings because Dev had never had any money at all.
Susanna allowed her gaze to consider the extravagant embroidery on Dev’s white and gold waistcoat, the crisp quality of his linen and the unmistakable value of the diamond in his cravat pin. Then she let her eyes drift to Emma again. She saw Dev’s gaze follow her. She knew he understood.
Finally, she smiled. “Well,” she said, “I am sure you would not be so churlish as to bore everyone with the details, Sir James. There is nothing so tedious for others as old acquaintances harping on about past times.”
“Did you know one another in Ireland?” Emma had clearly had enough of their conversation. She pushed between them, looking from Dev to Susanna with ill-concealed jealousy. She made Ireland sound like the back of beyond, a place fit only to leave.
“We met briefly in Scotland,” Susanna said, “when Sir James was visiting his cousin Lord Grant one summer. It was a very long time ago.”
“But now we have the happy opportunity to renew our acquaintance.” The expression in Dev’s eyes was in direct contrast to the smoothness of his tone. “You must grant me the next dance, Lady Carew, so that we may talk about the past without boring our friends.”
In one sentence he had demolished her attempts to escape. Susanna mentally gritted her teeth. She recognized that determination in him. He had had the same single-mindedness at eighteen. He had seen something he wanted and he had taken it. She shivered.
“I have no desire to rake over the past,” she said. “I fear I am promised for the next, Sir James. You must excuse me.”
She turned pointedly to Fitz, allowing her fingers to brush his wrist in the lightest of gestures that nevertheless conveyed a hint of promise. She had almost forgotten about Fitz in the tumult of her feelings on seeing Devlin again. Already she had allowed herself to become distracted, which was not good enough when Fitz’s parents’ commission was all that stood between her and life on the London streets.
“Thank you for introducing me to your friends, my lord,” she said. “I hope we shall meet again soon.”
She scattered an impartial smile around the group, noting that Chessie’s response was a rather less than friendly nod and that Emma failed to acknowledge her at all. Fitz seemed impervious to the strained atmosphere and kissed her hand with a gallantry that made Dev frown. Chessie turned away, as though she could not bear to watch Fitz’s attentiveness to another woman.
Susanna started to walk quickly toward the ballroom door. Now that she had escaped Dev her heart was bumping against her ribs in reaction and she felt breathless and shaky all over again. She needed somewhere quiet to go. She needed to think, to try to unravel the tangle of deceit and confusion she was suddenly caught up in.
“May I beg a dance later in the evening, Lady Carew?”
Freddie Walters was blocking her path, his gaze insolent, assessing her like a thoroughbred horse, his touch on her arm more than familiar. His tone said that he already knew everything he needed to know about her, that she was a widow of questionable morals who was probably not averse to a light love affair. The blatant disrespect in his manner set Susanna’s teeth on edge.
“Thank you, Mr. Walters,” she said, “but I have decided to go home. I have the headache.”
“A pity,” Walters murmured. “Perhaps I could call on you?”
“You’re making the lady’s headache worse, Walters.” It was Dev’s voice, cold with a hard edge. Susanna saw Walters’s eyes widen, then, as Dev made a sharp gesture, the other man scuttled off. Dev watched him out of earshot, then his gaze came back to Susanna’s face and fixed there. She had wanted to scuttle away, too, but she had the lowering thought that Dev would simply grab her if she tried to run out on him now. He did not appear to care much for the conventions of the ballroom since he had accosted her in the center of the floor.
“Thank you for your assistance,” she said coldly, “but it was quite unnecessary. I can look after myself.”
Dev smiled. “I am aware,” he said. His gaze, hard and appraising, traveled over her in a manner quite different from Walters’s blatant sexual calculation. It was thoughtful, measured and infinitely more disturbing.
“I was not trying to rescue you,” he added gently. “I wanted you to myself.”
His choice of words and the look in his eyes made Susanna quiver somewhere deep inside. He had removed the feeble threat that Walters posed only to replace it with something far more dangerous. Himself. He was confronting her here, in full view of the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s guests. It was audacious. It was impossible.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” Susanna kept her voice steady. She had had nine years of learning how to protect herself. It had never been as difficult as it was now, trying to erect defenses against this man and his perceptive blue gaze and his forcefulness.
He laughed. “You can do better than that, Susanna. What the hell is going on?”
“I have no notion what you mean,” Susanna said. Her pulse was racing. She looked around but there was no refuge. She started to walk slowly to the side of the dance floor. Dev took her arm, adapting his long stride to her shorter steps. To an observer it would look as though they were doing what everyone else did between dances, strolling around the floor, chatting with the casual indifference of social acquaintances. Except that there was nothing casual in the touch of Dev’s hand.
“You owe me an explanation at the very least,” Dev said. “An apology, even—” his tone was sarcastic “—if that is not too much to expect.” For a moment Susanna saw something fierce in his eyes. A passing couple shot them a curious glance. They had caught the tone if not the content of Dev’s words and had sensed the tension in the air.
Susanna deployed her fan to shield her expression.
“It was a long time ago.” She aimed for disdain, cool and dismissive, and hit exactly the right note. “Yes, I left you, but surely you have managed to recover from the loss.” She paused, smiled. “Don’t tell me I broke your heart.”
She had provoked him on purpose and she expected him to tell her she had meant nothing to him. Instead she saw the heat and anger in his eyes intensify.
“I came back to find you,” he said, “two years later.”
Susanna almost dropped her fan. Two years. She had never known. She felt a mixture of bitterness and regret. It would have made no difference. Two years was far too late. It had been too late from the moment she had run away from him. She could see that now, with the benefit of hindsight. She could see all the mistakes she had made—see, too, how pointless it was to regret them almost a decade later.
“I only wished to ensure that our annulment had been granted.” Dev shot her a look, contemptuous, cold. “But when I called on your aunt and uncle they told me that you were dead.” He spoke through his teeth. “An overstatement of the facts, it would seem.”
Susanna was so shocked that she almost fell. For one long, terrifying moment the ballroom spun before her eyes, the music and voices fading, everything slipping away from her. She put out a hand and realized with blessed relief that they had reached the corner of the room and were standing beside one of the long, arched windows that opened onto the terrace. The cool pane of the glass was against her fingers and a breath of air stole into the overheated room.
She raised her eyes to Dev’s face. His expression was hard, his mouth a tight line. She could sense the elemental fury in him.
“Dead?” she whispered. It was true that her aunt and uncle had cast her out when she had fallen pregnant and refused to give up her child. She had been disowned, disinherited, dismissed. They had said she was dead to them. Evidently that was exactly what they had told everyone else, too.
The cold crept into her heart. Her family’s callous cruelty had almost destroyed her nine years before. Now she felt their malice touch her again. She had not thought they could hurt her anymore. She had been wrong.
Dev was still speaking. “Was it really necessary to go so far?” he was saying with biting anger. “It was not as though I wished for a reconciliation.”
He stopped. Susanna knew he was waiting for her reply but for a moment she could not find the words. There was so much to absorb, and so quickly; that he had come to find her, that her family had lied to him. It hurt much more than she would ever have anticipated.
“I …” Her chest was tight. She tried to breathe. She knew that she had to stop this now, before Dev realized that she had known nothing of her family’s shocking lies to him. Already he was getting too close. An instant’s slip on her part and she would give herself away. If he suspected the truth he would have endless questions for her; questions about the past, questions about what had happened to her and, more dangerous still, questions about her life now and why she was in London. She could tell him none of those things. She had to protect herself and her secrets at all costs or she would lose everything. Suddenly she was fiercely glad that she had never told him that their marriage had not been annulled. It could prove to be a useful weapon should she need to defend herself against him.
Susanna straightened, steadying herself. She drew in a deep breath, searching for the right words to drive Dev away from her. He forestalled her. His voice was thick and heavy with emotion, an emotion that even after the passage of nine years cut straight to the core of her and made her feel with an intensity she had not experienced in years.
“Hell and the devil, Susanna,” he burst out, “you were my wife, not some strumpet I had tumbled in a ditch! Don’t you owe me more than this? You walk out on me and then you ask your family to lie to me! Why would you do such a thing?”
There was such passion and honesty in his eyes. Susanna hated herself for what she was about to do, what she had to do in order to protect herself.
“I asked them to lie because I had to be sure to be rid of you,” she said. She made her voice light and uncaring. The words seemed to stick in her throat but she forced them out. She knew she had to finish this and make sure that Dev would hate her so much that he would never question her again. There was no other way.
“I wed you because I wanted you to rid me of the burden of my virginity,” she said. She dragged out a smile, made it vivid, convincing. She knew she was a good actress. She had had enough practice in those lean and bitter years after her family had disowned her, when her skill at dissembling was all that had stood between her and starvation.
“After one night of marriage I had everything I needed from you, Devlin,” she said. “I wanted to know about sex. You taught me.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. He was stony-faced, his jaw set hard as he listened to her cheapen the love they had shared. “It was delightful—” she gave a little shrug, matching the gesture to the dismissive tone of her voice “—but after I had seduced you I had no further use for you.”
That, she thought, should be enough to make him despise her. No man would accept such a blow to his pride. She turned to walk away.
Dev prevented her escape by the simple expedient of catching her wrist and drawing her close to him. Her body stirred to his touch, every fiber of her being waking to him as though they had never been apart. The color flooded her cheeks, heating her skin so that every inch of her felt alive and responsive as never before. She saw Dev’s gaze move over her slowly in precise and insolent appreciation of her state of arousal. His gaze dropped to the neckline of her gown. It had been chosen to ensnare Fitz, and for the first time that evening Susanna wished it was a little more demure. It felt as though the sweep of Dev’s eyes across the curves of her breasts was a sensual caress.
“A moment,” Dev said, and his voice was very soft amidst the hubbub of the ballroom, the tinkle of the music and the clamor of voices, soft but with an edge of steel. “This time you don’t walk away from me until I am ready, Susanna. This time you stay at my pleasure.”
CHAPTER THREE
DEV LOOKED AT HIS FORMER wife’s exquisite, defiant face and felt his temper soar dangerously again. She was damnably beautiful and his body reacted to the temptation she presented even as his mind dismissed her as the most conniving, duplicitous little harlot that had ever lived. He wanted to kiss her; to take that wide, sensuous mouth with his own, to bite down on the full lower lip and slide his tongue into her mouth and taste her again with all the explosive passion they had known before. He wanted to prove her indifference to him to be a sham. He wanted to strip the silver gown from her pale limbs and plunder her body ruthlessly until she was utterly quiescent in his arms.
It was hell being a reformed rake. He had given up other women when he had become betrothed to Emma but Dev knew that he was not really reformed at all. He might as well admit it. This dangerous attraction he had to Susanna was proof enough. Given half a chance, a quarter of a chance, he would like to ravish Susanna, to take her with merciless abandon and revel in the experience. Never had chastity seemed so unappealing an option. Never had his betrothal seemed so dull and colorless in contrast to the appeal of his treacherous former wife.
He could feel Susanna’s pulse hammering beneath his fingers. The silk of her glove gave her no protection from him. He knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And yet he was also ready to strangle her. Disloyal, deceitful Susanna Burney, who had seemed so radiantly innocent, had taken him royally for a fool. He had thought that he had seduced and wed a naive young girl. Instead she had been using him to gain a little worldly experience.
Dev exerted absolute self-discipline to keep himself under control. He felt a raw edge of anger as cutting as a blade. A moment before, when he had challenged Susanna about her family’s duplicity, he had felt a fleeting uncertainty. He had seen the shock in her eyes and thought that she must have been in ignorance of their vile pretence. Her mocking words had swiftly put paid to that idea. Instead of being a victim she had been at the heart of the plan to deceive him.
He looked at her. She was watching him and despite that fierce attraction that locked them together there was also a derisive glint in her green eyes. He wondered how it was possible to be so mistaken in a woman. The Susanna Burney he had known at eighteen had seemed so shy and sweet. It was difficult to see how she could have changed into this brazen creature. On the other hand he had to accept that it was almost ten years ago, he had been eighteen years old and perhaps not such a man of the world as he had liked to imagine. Doubtless he had been the one who was naive. His judgment had certainly been spectacularly flawed when it came to his adoring bride.
“There was no need to wed me if all you wanted was to be rid of your virginity,” he said grimly. “You should have told me. I would have been happy to oblige you—without the benefit of clergy.”
Their eyes tangled. He saw the sensual heat flare again in hers, turning them a darker green, bright as emeralds. In a split second he was transported from the bustling ballroom to the intimate darkness of their marriage bed. They had had one night only, one night of sweet desire and passion richer and deeper than his most vivid dreams. She had been the first and only woman he had loved. That sense of intimacy had been more frightening than the reckless pleasure he had found in her arms. That emotion had been strong and profound enough to bind him to her forever. Then she had run out on him the next day and ripped everything apart.
Now she stood looking at him with cool disdain, the desire banished from her eyes.
“You misunderstand,” she said. “Marriage was a necessity. I had no wish to be a whore.”
Dev looked her over with studied contempt. “In your case I am struggling to tell the difference,” he said.
Susanna’s eyes narrowed to an inimical gleam. “Then let me explain it to you,” she said. Dev watched her slender, gloved fingers trace a pattern on the windowpane. “It was so tediously dreary in my uncle’s house,” she said, “and we were poor and I did not care for it. I knew I was pretty and clever enough to seduce a rich man into marriage but I needed experience as well as beauty. No one was going to look twice at me buried away in that village, the dull schoolmaster’s little niece.” She moved slightly and the diamond necklace at her throat sparkled, rich and malevolent. “I was afraid that I would be stuck there forever, expiring with the boredom of it all.” Her hand moved to caress the glittering stones at her neck. “So I contrived a plan. To wed you, learn what I needed from you and then move on to better things.” Her gaze came up to meet his.
“You were no one, Devlin,” she said gently. “You had no money and precious few prospects. But I could see that you could be useful to me.” Her eyes were bright and hard. “I wanted to be young and beautiful and intriguing enough to lure a very rich man into marriage. It was not good enough to be a courtesan. I had to be respectable enough to catch a husband—” her luscious mouth turned up in a little, private smile “—but improper enough to know how to please him in bed.” She turned away from him so that all he could see was her reflection in the glass of the window and that lingering smile.
“I flatter myself that I was rather good,” she said. “I posed as a widow. I had many suitors.”
Dev could believe it. She was beautiful enough to tempt a saint and there was a knowing air to her, a sensual allure that was provocative enough to make any man want to please as well as possess her. Of course she would set her sights much higher than merely being a courtesan. That would have been a course from which she could never have regained respectability. Instead, as a beautiful widow she would have drawn suitors like moths to the flame. They would have begged for her notice. Only he knew the venal heart beneath her lovely facade.
“So you killed me off as well as yourself,” he said coldly. “How very tidy of you.”
“Oh, I never mentioned your name,” Susanna said. “No one ever asked about my first husband. I suppose that if they had I could have admitted to the annulment and painted our marriage as a youthful indiscretion.” She raised her brows as though inviting his congratulations. “Yes, it was a neat plan, was it not?”
“I’m still having trouble with the difference between a courtesan and a woman who buys herself a rich husband with her body,” Dev said.
Susanna shrugged, apparently indifferent to his disapproval. “You are too particular. We all use the advantages we are given.”
She had been given plenty, Dev thought grimly. That angel’s face, that lissome, lovely body—and a grasping nature that cared nothing for the pain she inflicted on others. It was a pity he had not been able to see past the obvious when they had first met but he had been a youth confronted by a beautiful girl. He had not been thinking with his head but with a different and far more basic part of his anatomy.
He felt cold at the sheer calculating callousness of Susanna’s plan. She had been an adventuress from the first. She had wed him, learned from him the arts she needed to please a man in bed and then left him to pursue bigger, richer prey. Armed with her annulment she would indeed be free to remarry. He could see how much the combination of her youth, beauty, wit, experience and the tiniest hint of a mysterious past might appeal to a wealthy older man. Hell, it was obvious that Fitz was already in thrall to her. Even he could barely look at her without wanting to plunder every inch of that exquisite, perfidious body, and he knew what a lying, conniving strumpet she was.
“You mistake if you think that you are not a whore,” he said. “You have whored yourself out for money whether it is by marriage or not.”
The candlelight shimmered on some expression in Susanna’s eyes that was, for one tiny second, utterly at odds with her brazen words. But then it was gone and all that was left was contempt.
“You should know, Devlin,” she said. “Are you not doing precisely the same thing, catching an heiress with your good looks and charm?” Her perfect brows arched. “If I am a whore, what does that make you?”
Dev took a furious step toward her—and stopped when he saw the triumph in her eyes. She was glad she had been able to goad him into near-indiscretion. He drew in a deep breath.
“You are also mistaken if you think you learned all there is to pleasure a man in one night at my hands,” he ground out. “But should you wish to extend your experience I am, of course, at your disposal.”
“As you were nine years ago.” She smiled, not one whit discomposed, as cool as spring water. “I thank you but there is no need. I have addressed the deficiencies in my education in the past few years.”
Dev was sure that she had. There had been her remarriage to Carew, who had presumably been an affluent baronet. Perhaps there had been other lovers as well, or even previous marriages. And now she truly was a rich widow and he suspected she was hunting another trophy. A marquis, perhaps …
He had been played. He had been used—comprehensively, ruthlessly. Susanna had seen him as a mere stepping-stone to better things. He, the fortune hunter, should appreciate her strategy. He did not.
Suddenly he could see Chessie’s hopes for the future vanishing like mist in the sun. He could see just how vulnerable both he and his sister were with no more than foothold in the ton. One false step, one piece of bad luck, could send them tumbling back into the void of poverty and despair that had been their childhood on the streets of Dublin. Dev had experienced both unimaginable wealth and abject poverty several times; as the son of a compulsive gambler he had known the extremes of rich and poor before he was barely out of short trousers. That fear, that knowledge, had driven him ever since. He could not permit Susanna to steal Chessie’s future or ruin his own plans. He would have to keep her close, watch her every move.
Susanna inclined her head to him with mock civility. “Good evening, Sir James,” she said. “I wish you good luck with your fortune hunting.”
“Do you?” Dev said, politely incredulous.
She smiled. “About as much as you wish me luck with mine.”
Dev watched her walk away, her figure a silver flame in the sinuous dress, the diamonds sparkling in her hair and the heels of her silver embroidered slippers tapping on the floor.
Keep her close … In some ways it would be no hardship. In others it would be the most dangerous thing that he could do.
SUSANNA WAS STILL SHAKING as she climbed into the carriage. She did not expect Dev to come after her again—she had made very sure that he would not—but the antagonism of their encounter still beat through her blood with primitive force. It was impossible to believe that once upon a time she and Dev had made love with such exquisite tenderness. Now there was nothing left.
She remembered Dev’s bitter condemnation of her, the disgust in his eyes, and she felt shot through with regret. There had been no other way to drive him away from her. She could not afford for anyone to uncover the truth about her past, not now when so much was at stake. This was her last job. With the money the Duke and Duchess of Alton would be paying her for separating Fitz from Chessie she would at last have sufficient funds to settle her debts, return to Scotland and provide a home for her twin wards, Rory and Rose, the children of her best friend. The three of them needed to be together, to be a family once again as they had been in the beginning. Susanna’s heart ached with a sudden fierce pang that made her breath catch in her throat. She hated this life, hated playing a role, hated the deception and hated most of all the fact that there was no one who knew, no one she could confide in. She was on her own. She always had been, from the moment her aunt and uncle had thrown her out, pregnant, destitute, seventeen years old.
She touched the diamond necklace at her throat. They were borrowed plumes, like the carriage and the house in Curzon Street, the beautiful gown and the silver slippers. Nothing was real. She was a counterfeit lady, a Cinderella whose carefully constructed world might vanish in a puff of smoke if anyone found out the truth. She touched the dress gently, almost reverentially. When she had been selling such gowns for a living, her head spinning with tiredness from the long hours working in poor light, her fingers sore from the needle and cut by the thread, she had dreamed of wearing such a beautiful creation and being the belle of the ball. Tonight she had been that fairy-tale princess, yet beneath the layers of silk and lace she was still little Susanna Burney, a fraud who feared discovery.
Once again Dev’s face rose in her mind’s eye, hard, unyielding, his expression full of scorn. He was the one of whom she had to beware. If Dev had suspected for a moment that she had been thrown out onto the street, disowned, disinherited, abandoned, he would start to ask all the difficult questions she wanted to avoid. He would uncover her past and ruin the future that was so close within her grasp.
Susanna leaned her head back against the cushions of the seat and closed her eyes. If only … If only she had not run off to marry Dev secretly in the first and last impulsive action of her life. If only she had not had the idea of going to Lord Grant, Dev’s cousin, the next morning, to confess and ask for his support for them. If only she had not run back to the perceived security of her aunt and uncle’s house and had tried to pretend nothing had happened. If only she had not been pregnant with Dev’s child … One disastrous decision had set in train a course of events that had led to the poorhouse and to places in her own mind that were so full of despair that she never wanted to go there again. The tiny body of her child wrapped in its pitiful shroud, the words of the priest, the gray dawn mist creeping over the Edinburgh graveyard …
With a gasp of pain Susanna buried her face in her hands, then she let them fall and stared into the darkness, her eyes dry. She must never think of that again. Never. The dark clouds hovered like beating wings. She pushed them away, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, until she felt the panic subside and the calm seep back into her mind. She had lost her own daughter but she had Rory and Rose to care for and she clung to them with the fierceness of a tigress. She had given her word to their mother, there in the bitter dark chill of the poorhouse, in the cold hours before Flora’s death, and sometimes it seemed that the gift of the twins was both penitence and blessing to her. She had lost Maura but she could make amends now and she would never, ever let Rory and Rose down, which was why it was imperative that Dev must never learn the truth and scupper her plans.
Sighing, she kicked off her pretty silver evening slippers and flexed her toes. Her feet ached. Cinderella’s slippers were all very well but they were not comfortable. Her headache, which had originally been an excuse to escape Frederick Walters’s importunities, was a reality now. All she wanted was to be home.
The carriage passed a group of young bucks noisily drinking and carousing in the street. Hot summer nights reminded Susanna of Edinburgh in the days when she had dragged herself out of the poorhouse to work as a tavern wench and ballad singer. She had such a checkered past, she thought, with a rueful smile. The tavern, the gown shop … It had been through good looks and sheer luck that she had fallen into her extraordinary work as a heartbreaker, paid by parents to ruin the unsuitable matches of their rich and titled offspring.
Susanna rubbed her temples where the diamond clasp was pulling her hair. The night had started so well. The Duke and Duchess of Alton had introduced her to Fitz and he had seemed intrigued by her and definitely more than a little interested in taking their acquaintance further. She had sparkled, flirted, playing the mysterious widow to perfection. She and Fitz had waltzed together and she had allowed him to hold her a little closer than convention dictated. Everything had been going smoothly. She had even started to plan the next step—another meeting with Fitz, one that would appear to happen quite by chance but would in fact be the result of the Duke and Duchess paying their son’s valet some extortionate amount to disclose the details of his master’s diary. That was how she was always one step ahead of the game; before she even met her victim—or her assignment as she preferred to think of him—she would know every last thing about him, his likes and dislikes, the places he frequented, his interests, his weaknesses. The weaknesses were especially useful, whether they were for women, gambling, drink or all of the above in combination. It was her tried and tested method. Size up the man, learn everything there was to know about him, flatter his opinions and mix in a touch of seduction. No one had been able to resist.
That was the way that the acquaintance should have gone with Fitzwilliam Alton. A chance encounter in the Park, an invitation to ride with him, the promise of a dance at the next ball, a little dalliance, until Fitz was dazzled, hers to command. If necessary she would go as far as a betrothal, before breaking it off with all due regret a month or so later. That was the way she had intended it, before James Devlin had appeared and threatened all her plans.
She thought of Dev, his blue eyes full of anger and loathing as he watched her.
A shiver racked her. She was sure that he had already worked out that she was intent on spoiling his sister’s plans to catch Fitz. He would assume that she wanted Fitz for herself, of course; it was most unlikely he would uncover the true nature of her work as a matchbreaker, for this was the first time she had come to London or worked in such exalted social circles. It was a risk, but she should be safe from exposure. Whether she was safe from Dev revealing the truth of their previous relationship was another matter but she guessed that he had no wish for his winsome heiress to know the truth. Lady Emma Brooke had not seemed a particularly pliable fiancée and she was surely the one with the money.
Which brought her back to the annulment. Guilt squirmed in her stomach again. She knew that she should have formally ended her marriage a long time ago. Once the Duke and Duchess’s commission was complete and she and Rory and Rose were safe, she would pay for the annulment and leave Dev free to wed Emma. He would never know.
She opened her reticule and took out a rather squashed pastry cake that she had purloined from the refreshment room at the ball. Her bag was full of crumbs. She had ruined more reticules this way than any other. She took a bite and felt instantly comforted as the sweet pastry melted on her tongue. Eating had always made her feel better whether she was hungry or not. She tended to eat as much as she could whenever food was laid out before her, a legacy of the time when she had not known where her next square meal would come from. It was surprising that she had not split her sensuous silver silk gown as a result.
Despite her attempts to push the past away, the memories rippled through her again: Dev holding her hand before the altar as the minister intoned the solemn words of the marriage service, Dev smiling at her as she stumbled a little over her vows in shyness and fear, even then expecting the church door to slam open and her uncle to march in to reclaim her. Dev’s touch had been reassuring and the warmth in his eyes had steadied her. She had felt loved and wanted for the first time in many long cold years.
For a second she was shot through with regret so sharp and poignant that it made her gasp. First love had been very sweet and innocent.
First love had been hopelessly naive.
Susanna turned her shoulder against the rich velvet cushions of the carriage and let the memories slip from her like sand running through the fingers. It was stupid and pointless to have regrets or to dwell on the past. What she had had with James Devlin had been a girl’s fantasy. Now he had nothing but contempt for her. And soon, if she were successful in her plan to take Fitz away from Francesca, Dev would hate her even more.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE HACKNEY CARRIAGE put Miss Francesca Devlin down in front of a set of anonymous rooms in Hemming Row. She stood on the cobbles feeling a little drunk with a mixture of guilt, fear and a giddy excitement that was making her head spin. This was a part of town she had visited for the first time only two weeks ago. It was an unfashionable quarter where she knew no one and no one knew her; that, she had been told, was the beauty of the place. Her reputation was quite safe. No one would ever know what she had done.
After her first visit she had promised herself that it was just the once and it would never happen again. She had gone through the motions of her daily life exactly as she had done before. Nothing was different. Yet everything was different.
The second summons had come this very night, at the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ball. Chessie had tucked the note into her reticule, hidden it beneath a white embroidered handkerchief and had spent the rest of the evening in an agony of impatience mixed with anticipation. She had known from the moment she unfolded the note that she would go. Like her brother she had inherited a streak of recklessness, a need to gamble, and this was the greatest game of her life. If she won she would secure everything that she had ever desired. If she lost … But she did not want to think about losing. Not tonight.
Gambling was in Chessie’s blood. Her childhood had been stalked by poverty, the furniture pawned to pay her father’s debts and no food on the table. Those moments had been interspersed with rare occasions when they had been so rich it seemed to Chessie that she could not quite believe the grandeur of it all. On one occasion her father had won so much that they had ridden around Dublin in a golden carriage pulled by two white horses like something from a fairy tale. That day she had eaten so much she had thought she would burst. She had gone to sleep between silken sheets and in the morning she had woken and the carriage and horses had gone and her mother was crying, and within a week the silken sheets had gone, too, and they were back to coarse blankets. And then when she was six, her father had died.
Through it all there had been Devlin, four years older than she, tough, protective, grown harder than any child should have to be, determined to defend her and his mother, too, no matter the cost. Chessie knew Dev had worked for them, had very probably begged, borrowed and stolen for them, too. It was Dev who, after their mother died, had gone to their cousin Alex Grant and made him take responsibility for them. The experience had bound them as close as a brother and sister could be. They had had no secrets—until now.
Chessie paused on the doorstep and almost ran back to the house in Bedford Street where Alex and Joanna thought that she was safely in her bed, back to the world she knew. Except that it was too late, for she had already taken the steps that would leave that world behind. She had done things that a fortnight ago she would not have dreamed of—gone out unchaperoned at night, traveled alone in a hackney carriage, things that other people did all the time but which were forbidden to a young girl of unimpeachable reputation. She smothered a laugh that had a wild edge to it. Young girls did not indulge in games of chance with a gentleman. Nor did they pay with their bodies when they lost.
The door opened silently to her knock and then he was drawing her into the candlelit room where the gaming table was already set up and the cards waiting. Chessie thought about winning and felt a rush of excitement that lit her blood like fire. Then she thought about losing and shivered with a different sort of excitement. He was kissing her already, with a passion that stoked her desires and soothed her fears. This could not be wrong because it felt right. Her gamble was not really on the cards but on love, and surely love conquered all. He released her; smiled.
“SHALL WE PLAY?” he said. “This is no place for a lady.” Susanna jumped and almost hit her head on the wooden rail of the stall. She had been kneeling in the straw to examine the horse that Fitz had picked out for her at the latest Tattersalls’ sale. Even at a distance she had known it was a poor choice. It looked beautiful with a shiny bay coat and bright eyes but its chest was a fraction too narrow and its legs just a little too short. Naturally she had not told Fitz any of those things. She had congratulated him on his judgment and had watched him preen.
Only a moment before, Susanna had been congratulating herself, too, silently applauding how well her plans were progressing. It had taken her four days only to gain Fitz’s undivided attention to the point that he was now probably prepared to buy her a horse never mind simply recommend one to her. He had already tried to buy her emeralds but Susanna knew exactly what he would expect in return for those and had refused them, prettily, regretfully but very finally. She had played the virtuous widow to perfection. Becoming Fitz’s mistress was definitely not part of the plan.
Instead she had treated Fitz as a friend, deferred to his opinion, leaned on his advice and flattered his judgment. He had helped her to buy a carriage and now a riding horse. They were using his parents’ money, but of course he was unaware of that. Susanna could see how much the role of confidant confused Fitz—he was not accustomed to viewing beautiful women in a capacity of friendship, not unless they had occupied his bed first. He was puzzled, bewildered and intrigued, which was exactly as Susanna wanted him to be. His parents were delighted to see their son so thoroughly distracted from his courtship of Francesca Devlin, which made them generous. All had been set fair, but she might have known that Dev would reappear to put a spoke in her wheel.
Susanna sat back on her heels. There was a pair of very elegant riding boots now in her line of vision, radiant with a champagne polish. Above those were muscular thighs encased in skintight pantaloons, and above that she dared not look. How tiresome to be kneeling in the Tattersalls’ straw at the feet of James Devlin.
“Mr. Tattersall welcomes ladies to his auctions,” she said, raising her gaze to meet Dev’s and trying to keep her eyes firmly focused on his face even though it gave her a crick in the neck to do so.
“The only females welcome here are the ones whose pedigrees are better than those of the horses,” Dev said. “Which rules you out, Lady Carew.”
He made no move to help her to her feet. Susanna was acutely aware of the prickling discomfort of the straw through the velvet skirts of her riding habit and the strong scent of horse that surrounded them. God forbid that the bay gelding would choose this moment to relieve itself.
For a second she thought she would be obliged to scramble up of her own accord, flushed, undignified and covered in hay, but then Dev leaned down and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet with rather more strength than finesse. The maneuver brought her into his arms for one brief moment and the scent of leather and cedar soap and fresh air on his skin overlaid that of horse and set Susanna’s senses awry. She could feel the hard muscle of his arm beneath the smooth blue superfine of his coat. He felt like a man whose body was in prime physical condition. Evidently waiting on Lady Emma must be more physically punishing than she had imagined.
Susanna experienced the oddest sensation, as though the layers of clothes between them had melted away and she was touching Dev’s bare flesh, warm and smooth under her fingers. Never had she been so acutely aware of a man and so swiftly, her defenses shattered by simple proximity. Her cheeks flaming, she freed herself hastily from Dev’s grip and saw him smile, that wicked, sardonic smile she remembered.
“Feeling the heat, Lady Carew?”
“Suffering as a result of your discourtesy,” Susanna snapped.
He raised a brow. “There was a time when you did not object to being held in my arms.” He straightened, driving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “But of course, I forgot—that was for educational purposes only, was it not?” His voice was heavily laced with irony. “That horse has a chest that’s too narrow and legs that are too short,” he added, running an eye over the bay in the box.
“I know,” Susanna said crossly. She dusted the palms of her gloves slightly self-consciously and started to pick the straw off her velvet riding skirts. “I suppose you are an expert on horseflesh?”
“Not particularly.” Dev’s admission surprised her. “Not all the Irish grow up in the country, able to whisper horses from birth.” His expression darkened. “I grew up on the streets of Dublin. The only horses there were drays and sad creatures pulling rich men’s carriages.”
Their eyes met and the breath caught in Susanna’s throat. Her heart skipped a beat, two. She thought how odd it was that life could still trick her after all she had experienced, that it could trip her up unexpectedly like a false step in the dark. She remembered being seventeen, lying in the summer grass with the stars whirling overhead and Dev turning away her questions about his childhood with light answers. She had not known anything about his early life other than that it had been poverty-stricken like her own. They had not talked much about anything, she thought now, with a sharp stab of regret. They had laughed together and had kissed with sweet urgency. They had both been so eager and so young.
“You never told me much about your childhood,” she said, and regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth.
Dev’s expression hardened into coldness. “That hardly matters now.”
Susanna winced at the rebuff and the sharp reminder that none of Dev’s life was any of her business now. He and Francesca had climbed high, she thought. She had known that Dev’s parents were impoverished gentry; for him to be betrothed to the daughter of an earl and for Chessie to aspire to marry a duke’s heir was fortune hunting of the highest order. Except that Chessie would not now be Duchess of Alton. It was her job to make sure of that.
Susanna felt a wayward pang of sympathy for Miss Francesca Devlin. Normally she was able to console herself that her assignments were better off separated from the object of their desire. The gentlemen she was engaged to lead astray were so often libertines or wastrels or simply weak-willed and unworthy. And it was true that she had no great opinion of Fitz, who seemed to embody all the vices of his class and none of the virtues: arrogance, self-centeredness and profligacy in just about everything. But even so, even if Francesca could do so much better than Fitz, Susanna admired her enterprise in trying to catch the heir to a dukedom. In some ways Francesca was an adventuress just as she was and it was a pity to ruin her chances.
Awkwardness hung in the air. Dev, whilst showing no desire to converse with her, also showed no inclination to leave. Across the yard Fitz was deep in conversation with Freddie Walters as they admired a glossy black hunter.
“Your sister does not accompany you today?” Susanna asked politely, slipping out of the stall.
Dev shook his head. “Francesca is shopping in Bond Street with our cousin Lady Grant. Some last-minute purchases for a ball tomorrow, I believe.”
“Lady Grant?” Susanna said. She could hear the odd note in her own voice and feel the sudden dryness in her throat.
Dev had heard her tone, too. He gave her a sharp look. “My cousin Alex remarried a couple of years ago,” he said. He paused. “You lived on Alex’s Scottish estate—presumably you knew he had lost his first wife?”
“No,” Susanna said. She could hear a rushing sound in her ears. For a second the sunlight seemed too bright and too hot, dazzling her. So Amelia Grant had died. Amelia, who had befriended her, advised her and ultimately ruined her future. But it was futile to blame Amelia for her own lack of courage. Lady Grant had merely played on fears that were already in her own mind. She had exploited Susanna’s youth and her weakness, that was true, but Susanna knew that the ultimate responsibility for running away from Devlin was hers and hers alone.
“I thought your aunt and uncle might have kept you informed of news from Balvenie,” Dev said.
“My aunt and uncle died a long time ago,” Susanna said.
Dev’s lips twisted. “Am I supposed to believe that, or will they resurrect as swiftly as you have?”
Susanna ignored him and turned away, stroking the silky neck of the gelding. “You have a sweet nature,” she said to the horse, “but I don’t think you would make a good mount.” The horse whickered softly, pressing its velvet nose into her gloved hand.
“Too lazy,” Dev concurred. “I suppose Fitz picked the horse out for you.” His gaze came to rest on her, bright and mocking. “He never sees beyond the obvious. For him it is all about show and he has as poor taste in horses as he has poor judgment of women.” He smiled. “Are you going to flatter him to the extent of paying good money for a bad horse?”
“Of course not,” Susanna said. Dev’s words had stung, as they had been meant to do. She could see the dislike in his eyes, chill and unyielding. Nothing could have made it clearer to her that it was far too late for regrets and far too late to go back. Dev believed her to be conniving and duplicitous, which was no great surprise since she had made sure he would believe it by spinning him a pack of lies.
For a moment she wanted to cry out to him that it had not been her fault, to take back all the things she had said three nights ago at the ball and pour out the truth. The strength of her impulse shook her deeply. But she could not do it. Whatever had been between them was dead and gone anyway and now she had a job to do, the only thing that stood between her and penury. She had not fought every inch of the way to save herself and the twins in order to throw it all away now. The thought of losing all she had worked for terrified her. Their lives were on a knife-edge as it was.
Nevertheless her heart shriveled, cold and tight, to see the contempt in Dev’s eyes. The only defense she had was to pretend he did not have the power to hurt her anymore.
“You have read the fortune-hunter’s rulebook, too,” she taunted. “You know full well I shall thank Fitz for choosing me such a fine beast and compliment him on his discernment whilst pleading my privilege as a female to change my mind and hold on to my money. My choice,” she added, “would be that mare over there.” She pointed to a spirited chestnut that was being shown around the ring.
“You have a good eye for quality.” Somehow Dev managed to make even that compliment sound like an insult. “Mares can be a handful,” he added, his gaze dwelling thoughtfully on her face. “But perhaps you are looking to ride something more exciting than a steady gelding this time?”
His meaning was crystal clear beneath the thin veneer of civility. Susanna’s gaze clashed with his and she saw the challenge in his eyes.
“I prefer a horse with spirit and attitude,” she said. “Whereas you—” she tilted her head thoughtfully, eyes narrowed on him “—would probably pick something as unsubtle as that stallion simply as a fashion accessory. All muscles and no brain.”
Dev gave a crack of laughter. “I wouldn’t throw away that much money on something that might kill me.”
“You have changed then,” Susanna said politely. Then added, as he raised his brows in quizzical challenge, “Wild-goose chases to Mexico in search of treasure, ludicrously dangerous missions for the British Navy, a preposterous voyage to the Arctic during which you boarded another ship as though you were a pirate …” She stopped as the look in his eyes turned to pure amusement.
“You have been following my career,” he murmured. “How flattering and unexpected. Could you not quite let me go, Susanna?”
Susanna had in fact followed every step of Devlin’s career but she did not want him to know that. It would only feed his conceit, as well as raising awkward questions about why she had cared, questions she could not and did not want to answer.
“I read the scandal sheets,” she said, shrugging. “They convinced me that you were as reckless as I had always believed you to be.”
“Reckless,” Dev said. There was an odd tone in his voice. “Yes, I have always been that, Susanna.”
At seventeen Susanna had loved that wildness in him, such a counterpoint to her staid and predictable life. She had been dazzled, blinded by the thrill of it all, swept away. Their secret meetings had been breathtakingly illicit. The risk had transfixed her. Even though a tiny, sensible part of her mind had argued that Dev was too handsome and too exciting ever to belong to her, she had wanted to believe that he could. Even though she had secretly suspected he had only proposed to her because he wanted to sleep with her, she had wanted to believe he truly loved her. For one brief day and night she had given herself up to pleasure, feeling alive for the first time in years, lit up with love and excitement. But in the morning had come the reckoning and after that she had paid and paid.
She swallowed what felt like a huge lump in her throat. It was too late now to regret her lack of courage or faith. She did not know why she should feel this misery, as though she had let something valuable slip away, because over the years Dev had surely proved himself exactly as irresponsible and rash and dangerous as she had known he would be.
“I am not Susanna anymore,” she said. “I am Caroline Carew, remember?”
Dev’s hand came out and caught her sleeve. She looked up, startled, to see the spark of pure anger in his eyes.
“So you jettisoned your name along with everything else,” he murmured. “You could not rid yourself of your old life fast enough, could you?”
Susanna shrugged. “One moves on from past mistakes. And Caroline is my middle name.” She paused. “I hope I can rely on you to remember that I am now Caroline Carew?”
For a long moment Dev looked into her eyes and Susanna almost flinched from the dark anger she saw there. Her heart was racing, her chest tight. Her skin prickled with awareness.
“I would hate you to think that you can rely on me for anything,” he said pleasantly. “Is not ambiguity the spice of life?”
“Servant, Devlin.” Fitz’s bored, aristocratic tones cut across them and Dev dropped Susanna’s arm as though it was a hot coal, straightened, turned and sketched Fitz a bow.
“Alton.” His voice was very cold.
Fitz’s gaze darted from him to Susanna’s face. She pressed her gloved hands together to prevent them from shaking. There was something about Devlin’s potent physical presence that got through to her every time. Over the years she had built up such a strong protective facade that she had thought it could withstand anything. Dev demolished it with one look or one touch.
“Lady Carew,” Dev said, and Susanna heard the emphasis he put on the name, “is trying to decide whether to accept your recommendation, Alton.”
Susanna saw the frown that touched Fitz’s forehead at the suggestion that his judgment of horseflesh might not be sound.
“He is a beautiful horse, my lord,” she said quickly, to repair the damage, “but I am in two minds—I can always hire a riding horse from the livery stables. Would it not be more fun to own a racehorse instead?”
She thought she heard Dev snort—but it could have been one of the horses. Fitz’s face cleared miraculously.
“A racehorse!” he said enthusiastically. “Capital idea, Lady Carew! Capital!”
“I am sure,” Susanna said, slipping her hand through his arm, “that it would be vastly exciting to watch it run—and to gamble on it, as well, of course.”
“Only if you are plump in the pocket,” Dev said dryly. His gaze traveled over her, lingering on the neat fit of her riding habit as it emphasized the lush curve of her breasts. “But I forgot—you are very well endowed, are you not, Lady Carew?”
His direct gaze brought the blood up into Susanna’s face. She could remember more than Dev’s gaze lingering on those curves.
“I do apologize for Devlin,” Fitz said. “His cousin sent him to Eton but education don’t make the man, I am sorry to say.”
“No, indeed,” Susanna said. Her gaze clashed with Dev’s cool blue one. “I am, as you say, endowed with many advantages that you lack, Sir James, including good manners.”
“Once a knave,” Dev murmured, without any hint of apology. There was a glimmer of wickedness in his eyes. “But you knew that about me already, Lady Carew. You know all my secrets.”
“I have no ambition to know anything about you, Sir James,” Susanna said coldly. Her heart was beating a warning; how much would he risk, how much would he reveal?
“You must think yourself fascinating indeed to make yourself the subject of the conversation,” she said.
She could see what Dev was trying to do: he wanted to suggest to Fitz that there was more to her than met the eye, that she had a checkered rather than a romantically mysterious past, that she had been his mistress, even. He wanted to imply that whilst she might be a rich widow now she was not the sort of person a marquis would marry, especially when there was the far more suitable virginal debutante Miss Francesca Devlin waiting patiently in the wings …
“Lady Emma not with you today, Devlin?” Fitz asked pointedly. He tightened his grip on Susanna’s arm. Susanna found she did not like it but resisted the urge to pull away, instead smiling sweetly at Fitz and moving close enough to brush her body against his.
“No,” Dev said. “Emma dislikes horses unless they are doing something functional such as pulling her carriage.” He bowed, a sardonic light lurking in his eyes. “I can see that I am de trop here. I will leave you to throw your money away on a racehorse, Lady Carew.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Susanna said. “Good day, Sir James.”
She could feel the tension in Fitz’s body as they stood together watching Dev stroll away.
“I say, Lady Carew,” Fitz said, turning to look down at her, “Devlin is most frightfully disrespectful to you. Are you sure there is nothing more between the two of you than old acquaintance?”
Mentally cursing Dev and his meddling, Susanna plastered on her most convincing smile. “I met Sir James on his cousin’s estate at Balvenie in Scotland when I was little more than a child, my lord,” she said. “I am afraid I did not like him and I made the mistake of letting it show. Even then Sir James was insufferably conceited and wanted all the ladies to fall at his feet. He has never forgiven me that I did not.”
She had not fallen at his feet; she had fallen into his bed. But Fitz was smiling, she saw with relief. “Grant’s estate, eh?” he said. “Sound fellow, Grant, but barely a feather to fly. The whole family is ramshackle. There’s no breeding to speak of and bad blood in the Devlin family.”
Susanna was surprised to hear him dismiss Chessie thus, especially when his attentions to her had been so marked and could surely have been nothing but honorable. But it augured well for her own plans. Chessie was as good as defeated already and none of Dev’s interference could change that.
She smiled prettily, squeezing Fitz’s arm. “I wonder if you have the time to accompany me to the wine merchant, my lord?” she said. “I require to purchase a special gift of champagne and I know you have a knowledge of the best vintage.”
Fitz looked gratified and Susanna, her gaze falling on one of the shovels used to clear out the horseboxes, wondered just how thickly she would have to lay on the flattery before he became suspicious of her. Dev’s stringent wit and intelligence would have demolished her in an instant but there seemed to be no limit to the Marquis of Alton’s self-regard.
“Delighted, Lady Carew,” Fitz said. “And afterward perhaps we may celebrate with a glass together, eh?” His smile was vulpine. “I should enjoy that a great deal, just the two of us.”
“That would be splendid, thank you,” Susanna murmured. “I very much appreciate having a friend to lean upon when I am so new to London.” She slipped her hand from Fitz’s arm and walked a little ahead of him so that he could appreciate the sway of her hips beneath the luxurious fall of the velvet riding habit. She could feel Fitz’s eyes on her—and sense, too, his frustration that once again she had taken a step back from the intimacy he was trying to create between them. Frustration bred eagerness, and that was exactly what she wanted from him. Smiling, she turned the corner of the yard and walked straight into Devlin, who was lounging against the doorway, an appreciative gleam in his eyes.
“Beautifully done, Susanna,” he whispered. His breath stirred the tendrils of hair that had escaped from beneath her hat. She felt them brush her cheek with the lightest caress. “What a lot of practice you must have had in the art of seduction.”
“Endless amounts,” Susanna agreed. She saw that Fitz had stopped for a final word with Richard Tattersall and cursed the delay. The last thing she wanted to do was reengage with Dev again and to give him another opportunity to undo all her good work.
“I thought that you had gone,” she seethed.
“Alas, I could not tear myself away,” Dev said. “I felt an almost overwhelming desire to see in action the methods employed by the modern adventuress.” He smiled straight into her eyes. “You are a consummate professional, Susanna.”
“And you are a damned nuisance,” Susanna snapped.
Dev kissed her fingers. She tried to withdraw her hand but he held her tight. His touch seared her even through the material of her glove. Her palm tingled.
“Choose another victim,” he murmured. “You could have anyone. Leave Fitz alone.”
“No,” Susanna said. “It is Fitz that I want.”
Something flared in Dev’s eyes, something dark and dangerous and hot. It held her captive whilst her pulse raced and her stomach tumbled.
“Liar,” he said. “It’s me that you still want.”
Susanna raised her chin. It might be true that she was still damnably susceptible to him but it was also time to give him a magnificent setdown. “You are mistaken, Sir James,” she said sweetly. “You are so conceited that you have come to believe yourself irresistible.” She flicked her hand from his grasp. “You might do very well for Lady Emma Brooke as she is clearly too young to know any better,” she continued. “But I assure you that rich widows can do a sight better than a penniless fortune hunter.”
“I did not mean that you wanted to marry me—again,” Dev said pleasantly. His gaze fell to her mouth, lingered there. “I meant that you wanted to—”
“To see the back of you,” Susanna said. “Very quickly. Don’t make trouble for me,” she added, “unless you wish me to do the same for you.”
Dev laughed. “I look forward to it.” He nodded to her. “Good luck, Lady Carew.”
“I don’t need luck,” Susanna said. “I have skill. Hurry back to your winsome heiress,” she added, “before some other unprincipled adventurer steals her from you.”
Dev nodded. “Advice from the best.” He bowed. “Your servant, Lady Carew.”
“I do not believe that for a moment,” Susanna said.
The laughter fled Dev’s eyes. “Once I was yours to command, Susanna,” he said. “All yours and no one else’s.” He raised a hand in farewell and walked away, leaving Susanna feeling shaken by a minor earthquake. For in that moment she knew Dev had spoken the truth. He had been hers and she had destroyed everything that had been between them and she would never have that again.
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE WAS NOTHING, DEV thought, quite like a group of ill-assorted people who did not enjoy one another’s company pretending to be having a marvelous time. It was raining, they were in St. Paul’s Cathedral and they were looking at tombs because Susanna had expressed a wish to see some of the more esoteric sights of London. Dev had wondered what the hell she was playing at—until he had overheard Fitz praising her for her intelligence as well as her beauty. Cunning jade. Fitz was pretty stupid himself, Dev thought, but he liked to consider himself cultured and what better way than to show the dazzling Lady Carew around this historic site that was the burial place of heroes.
“Remind me what we are doing here again?” Chessie grumbed at him. “I was supposed to be attending Lady Astridge’s musicale this afternoon. Instead you bring me to this mausoleum so that I can watch Fitz dance attendance on Lady Carew.” Her pretty face screwed up into a tighter expression of disgust. “If I had wanted to torture myself I would have stayed at home and read an improving book.”
Dev drew his sister behind one of the huge pillars that supported the soaring roof. He wanted to tell her to stop being so childish and petulant, but he supposed she did have an excuse. For the last fortnight it seemed that Susanna’s name—or at least her assumed name—had been on everyone’s lips. The ton was full of the arrival of the beautiful, rich widow in their midst, the papers followed her every move, the London gown shops reportedly sent her dresses hoping she would wear them to the nightly balls she attended. And Fitz was now behaving as though he could not quite remember whom Chessie was, so dazzled was he by his new inamorata. To Chessie, fathoms deep in love with Fitz and now thwarted and ignored, it must be unbearable. Dev felt a pang of sympathy for his little sister, who had been so close to her fairy-tale betrothal and was now slighted. Chessie was pining visibly, losing weight, appearing thin and wan, all her vivacious sparkle lost. The ton was laughing at her. Emma had told Dev all about the gossip and had, he thought, derived a certain pleasure from doing so.
“We are here to thwart Lady Carew,” he said calmly, “and you will not do so by flouncing around like a child in a temper.”
A spark of interest came into Chessie’s eyes. “Tell me how I am to achieve that then,” she said.
“By being everything that Lady Carew is not,” Dev said.
Chessie’s mouth drooped. “You want me to be ugly and stupid? I cannot see how that will help.”
Dev stifled a grin. It was true that Susanna was both beautiful and intelligent and no matter how much he detested her it was pointless to deny it. Very few men would be indifferent to Susanna. Some might dislike her wit, but with them she would be clever enough to pretend to be stupid. It was difficult to identify her weakness but he was determined to find it. Find it and use it against her.
“You are younger than Lady Carew,” he said. “That will do for a start.”
Chessie arched her brows. “Is that the best we can do? I am a year or two younger?”
“Four years,” Dev said, without thinking.
Chessie frowned. “How do you know?” Her gaze was a little too penetrating for Dev’s liking. “Did you know her very well in Scotland?”
Intimately.
Dev glanced across to where Susanna was perusing her guidebook, head bent, a very pretty picture of beauty and scholarship combined. Superimposed on the image of the bluestocking was another, that of the wanton beauty who had lain in his arms for just one night. In the heat of their lovemaking her cool reserve had dissolved into the most fierce and passionate desire. She had refused him nothing and he, drunk with the need to possess her, had ravished every last exquisite inch of her. His body tightened on the thought and he slammed the memory back down into darkness where it belonged. Reigniting that flame, feeling himself burn again for her, was not something he could ever tolerate. He was in control now. He was not that headstrong boy who had fancied himself in love.
“Dev?” Chessie’s gaze had become even more quizzical.
Dev shrugged the question away. “I’m just guessing,” he said. “And she is a widow—”
“Which Fitz likes,” Chessie said gloomily. “He prefers the older, more sophisticated woman.”
“Only as a mistress, not as a wife,” Dev said.
Chessie sighed. “Do you think that all she wants is an affaire? Perhaps if I wait—”
“You’re too good to sit around waiting for Fitz whilst he takes another woman as a mistress,” Dev snapped. He felt very grim and it was not simply all the tombs that were lowering his mood. He knew Susanna had set her sights on Fitz and he was certain she was not simply interested in an affaire. Watching his former wife become Fitz’s mistress would have been bad enough, evoking in him the sort of primal anger that Dev did not want to examine too closely, but seeing her become Marchioness of Alton evoked an equally strong reaction in him compounded of the same white-hot possessiveness and a fury that Susanna could so easily, so carelessly, ruin Chessie’s hopes. He clenched his hands within the pockets of his coat. Possessiveness was misplaced when his short-lived marriage to Susanna was as dead as ashes. Fury would not help, either. Cold, hard calculation was what was needed now to stop Susanna in her tracks.
“Perhaps I could become Fitz’s mistress instead,” Chessie was saying. “Beat her to the job—”
Dev grabbed her. “Don’t even say that in jest, Chessie,” he said through his teeth.
For a second he saw fear reflected in Chessie’s eyes. Her eyes swam with tears. “It was only an idea—”
“A very bad one,” Dev said. He let her go; tried to lighten the mood. “Apart from anything else,” he said, “I would have to put a bullet through Fitz and then Emma wouldn’t want to marry me anymore.”
Chessie gave a little watery giggle. “That would be no loss other than in the financial sense.”
“I used to like Fitz,” Dev said, “before he started behaving like an ass.”
“That is because you and he had so much in common,” Chessie said with the sort of unflattering truth that only a sister could get away with. “You both like women and gambling and sport and drink. Or at least you used to,” she added. “When you were permitted to do so. Before Emma.”
“One thing I don’t like is sightseeing in a mausoleum,” Dev said. Susanna had wandered across the aisle now and was looking up at the mosaics that rioted across the cathedral’s dome. As he watched, a beam of watery sunlight cut through the gloom to pin her in a ray of light. She looked bright and ethereal, though anyone less like an angel would be difficult to imagine. Fitz, however, looked as though he had been struck by a vision.
“You should find someone else,” Dev said abruptly.
“It was difficult enough finding Fitz,” Chessie said. “Had you not noticed, Devlin, that I do not have suitors queuing up at the door?”
“You have a good dowry,” Dev said. Alex, their cousin, had put ten thousand pounds aside for Chessie’s future.
“A modest dowry,” Chessie corrected. “No one is going to take me for that when there are heiresses to catch. Not when I have no eligible connections.”
“You have me and Alex and Joanna,” Dev said.
“That,” Chessie said, “proves my point. No eligible connections and plenty of scandalous ones.”
Dev drew her hand through his arm. “Come along. I will distract Lady Carew whilst you ask Fitz a question about Restoration architecture or something.”
“Could you not do that permanently?” Chessie said hopefully. “Take Lady Carew away from Fitz, I mean. You could pretend to be in love with her. Or you could just seduce her. You used to be quite good at that sort of thing, so I heard.”
“That is not the sort of thing one wants one’s sister to hear,” Dev said. “Or to suggest, for that matter.”
“Don’t be stuffy,” Chessie said. “Do it for me.”
Seduce Susanna …
The temptation grabbed Dev like the grip of a vise. To pursue Susanna ruthlessly, to tumble her into his bed, to sate his desire in that cool, untouchable body … He had always wanted what he could not have. Already the lust drove him at the mere thought.
He took a deep breath and the carved faces of the cherubs on the tombs swam back into focus. This was, Dev thought, a most inappropriate place to harbor such carnal thoughts.
“It wouldn’t work,” he said. “Lady Carew is too clever—she would realize what I was about in a moment. And Emma would probably notice, too.”
“Where is Emma today?” Chessie said. “Usually she sticks to you like glue. It is very peaceful without her,” she added.
“Emma is at home with the earache,” Dev said. “Which is why, just this once, I can help you by distracting Lady Carew.”
“You will be the one with the earache when Emma hears of it,” Chessie said frankly. “And Freddie will make sure she does hear. He is a frightful gossip and malicious with it.” She looked at him. “Freddie will do all he can to spoil matters for you, you know. And he will do it for fun, no better reason.”
“I’ll talk Emma round,” Dev said.
“Your life’s work,” his sister said coolly. “That is your future, Devlin—charming Emma into good humor for the next forty years, all for the sake of her money.” She sailed across to where Fitz, Susanna and Freddie were gathered around the tomb of Sir Joshua Reynolds and slipped her hand through Fitz’s arm.
“I fear all this culture is giving me the headache, my lord,” she said. “It may well do for intellectuals like Lady Carew—” she shot Susanna a limpid smile “—but you know that I am not bookish. What do you say that we go to Gunters for refreshment instead?”
Dev grinned. There was something to be said for the direct approach and Chessie was, after all, only following his advice in being the opposite of Susanna. It had worked, too. Fitz was looking relieved at the prospect of escape and just for a second Susanna looked absolutely furious before she smoothed her irritation away and smiled in agreement with the plan. Chessie, having captured Fitz’s attention at last was hanging on like a limpet and when it looked as though Fitz were about to offer his other arm to Susanna, Dev stepped forward and placed himself between them.
“I see you have the guidebook, Lady Carew,” he said. “Can you tell me if Lord Nelson is buried here?”
Susanna was obliged to pause and Fitz and Chessie moved past them, walking together toward the door. They were already deep in conversation, Chessie smiling up at Fitz with sparkling eyes, all her vivacity apparently restored now that she had his attention.
In contrast, Susanna’s green eyes were bright with anger rather than pleasure as they contemplated Dev’s innocent expression.
“Lord Nelson is not only buried here,” she said politely, “but he is spinning in his grave at the thought that a former Naval captain might not know it.” She looked up at him, her body taut with annoyance, her tone fizzing with frustration. “You already knew the answer to that question, did you not, Sir James?”
“It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment,” Dev admitted, without a trace of apology. “I wanted to speak to you—”
“Again?” Susanna snapped. “I hardly flatter myself that you have an inclination for my company.”
“Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I wanted to delay you,” Dev conceded.
His blunt honesty was rewarded with another glare.
“I am aware of that,” Susanna said. “I understand your strategy perfectly.”
She ignored the arm that he offered her and started to follow Fitz and Chessie toward the door. One of the guides was already running to call them a hackney. The fine weather had broken abruptly and the sky outside was now a dull, pale gray and rain dripped from the guttering to pool on the pavement outside the cathedral.
“I am afraid that you will have to share a carriage with me, Lady Carew,” Dev said, very politely, as Fitz helped Chessie up into the first vehicle. “Unless you would prefer to ride with Mr. Walters, of course?”
“Hobson’s choice,” Susanna said. The quick tap of the guidebook on the palm of her gloved hand betrayed her annoyance.
“Think of me as the lesser of two evils,” Dev said, smiling at her. “Unless,” he added, “you would prefer to walk to Berkeley Square in the rain? I regret I do not have an umbrella to offer you for protection.”
Susanna shot him an exasperated look.
“Try not to keep the horses standing,” Dev added as she hesitated.
Susanna gave an irritable sigh. “Oh, very well!” She accepted the hand Dev proffered to help her climb in, touching him with as much reluctance as though he had some contagious disease. Once inside the dark, poky interior, she released him abruptly and moved to the corner, as far away from him as possible. Dev sat opposite, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankle. His boots brushed the hem of her gown; Susanna moved her skirts aside with great deliberation as though he might contaminate her.
Dev smiled lazily at her through the darkness. “Fitz is easily distracted,” he said. “You are going to have to exert a greater hold on him if you wish to have his sole attention.”
Susanna turned her gaze on him. “Fitz is like a small child in a confectionery shop,” she said. She made no effort to hide her exasperation and Dev found he almost liked her for it. There was no artifice in her—no pretence that she had any regard for Fitz other than for his title, and Dev had a reluctant admiration for that honesty. If she had pretended to any affection for the Marquis he would have despised her hypocrisy.
“An apt metaphor,” he said. “Sweet and pretty confections do catch Fitz’s eye.” He allowed his gaze to travel over her appraisingly. “No doubt he sees you as a particularly nicely wrapped treat.”
“Well, he won’t be helping himself to this treat anytime soon,” Susanna snapped.
“I imagine not,” Dev said. “If you withhold your favors for a while you are likely to gain far more from him.”
That won him another flash of those vivid green eyes. “Thank you for the advice,” Susanna said. “I assure you I prize myself far too highly to become Fitz’s mistress too easily.” She turned her face away from him, gazing instead out of the grimy window at the rain-streaked streets. Her profile was exquisite beneath her saucy little feathered hat, eyelashes thick and black, the line of her cheek pure and sweet, her lips tilted always as though on the edge of a smile. A cluster of ebony curls nestled against her throat, so silky and black that Dev felt a physical urge to run his fingers through them to see if they were really as soft as they looked. It was extraordinary, he thought cynically, how someone as venal as Susanna Burney could look so alluring, extraordinary that her ruthlessness did not spill out in some way, spoiling the pretty picture of the captivating widow. Yet that, he supposed, was part of her skill. She did not attempt to compete with the innocence of debutantes. Her appeal lay in her sophistication and charm. In truth she was little different from a courtesan, a very high class, very talented, very beautiful courtesan, but available to the highest bidder all the same, as long as it was marriage he was offering.
“Do you intend to seduce Fitz into marriage?” he asked.
Her gaze came back to his face, mocking him. “What a very vulgar question, Sir James. I have no intention of answering.”
“As you have said yourself, a widow may use certain experience to her advantage.”
A smile touched Susanna’s lips beneath the shadow of the bonnet. “Very true,” she said. “Just as a rake may use his knowledge and skill to trap a debutante heiress.”
There was silence between them, thick and taut, in the dark, enclosed world of the hackney coach. The rain drummed hard on the roof. The wheels splashed through the puddles on the road outside.
“You’re staring,” Susanna said coolly. “Try the window instead.”
“I see London every day,” Dev said. “I was admiring you.”
Susanna laughed. “I doubt that very much.”
“I meant in the aesthetic sense,” Dev said. “You are very beautiful. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know,” he added.
“You can spare me the compliments,” Susanna said dismissively. She smoothed her skirt with a gloved hand. “I am quite comfortable with silence.”
“I was trying to play nicely,” Dev said.
She cast him another glance, disdainful. “I doubt you do anything nicely, Devlin.”
“I make love very nicely indeed,” Dev said. “Do you not remember?”
“No.” She turned her face away again so that he could not read her expression. Her voice was cold but Dev sensed some emotion beneath her words. Discomposure? Discomfort? Surely so experienced an adventuress as Susanna could not be embarrassed by a reference to their mutual past so perhaps she was simply annoyed to have given him the opportunity to raise the subject of their passionate, shameless lovemaking. He felt a sudden strong urge to bait her further.
“You must surely remember it,” he said. “You were as wild and wanton in your response to me as any woman I have ever met.”
For a moment he thought she would win the encounter simply by ignoring his provocation but this was too blatant for her to let it go. He saw her eyes flash as she rose to his challenge and felt a stab of triumph to be able to force a reaction from her.
“How sweet of you to recall it after all this time,” she said cuttingly. “But I am afraid that for me it was in no way memorable.”
Liar.
The word hung on the air between them. Dev saw a tinge of color sting her cheeks as though he had spoken aloud. He shifted on the seat, shrugging.
“Perhaps the experience has been superseded by so many others that your memory fails you,” he said politely.
She looked at him with contempt. “Perhaps you confuse my romantic past with your own, Devlin. I heard that you were scarcely fastidious in your choices before your engagement to Lady Emma. Quantity over quality was your motto, so I believe.”
Touché. He had indeed been an enthusiastic rakehell.
“Once again I am flattered by the attention you give to my life,” Dev said. “Are you very interested in my romantic career?”
“Of course not!” Susanna said. Her face was very pink now; hot, angry, animated.
“All evidence to the contrary,” Dev said. “It is perhaps an odd preoccupation for my former wife—”
“You always did have good opinion of yourself,” Susanna interrupted. “Or perhaps I mean a boundless conceit.”
“I plead guilty,” Dev said. “But there are some things at which I do excel.”
Susanna rolled her eyes. “Why do men feel the need to brag of their sexual prowess?”
“I could demonstrate my prowess rather than simply talk about it if you prefer,” Dev offered blandly.
Now it was Susanna’s smile that was edged with scorn, her eyes vivid with challenge. “You would try to seduce me? I don’t believe you would have the nerve, Devlin.”
Dev laughed. “It’s dangerous to dare me.”
Susanna shook her head. “You are all talk. You would not do anything to put your betrothal with Lady Emma at risk.”
“She wouldn’t know,” Dev said. He’d behaved like a monk for the past two years not, he was obliged to admit, for reasons of honor but simply because Emma would give him hell if she heard any rumors of infidelity. Emma would never tolerate the discreet liaisons with courtesans to which other wives and fiancées turned a blind eye. She was far too possessive. Her demand of fidelity was, Dev knew, nothing to do with her feelings but another sign that she had bought him and could dictate his behavior.
But Susanna was the one woman who could never betray him because he knew too many of her secrets.
The idea stole his breath. He liked it; he liked it far more than he ought. When Chessie had suggested earlier that he should try to take Susanna away from Fitz he had not entertained the idea seriously. Now he did. To make love to Susanna again, to uncover her body to his gaze and his touch, to press his lips to that silken skin, to taste her again and feel her response … His body hardened again at the mere thought of it.
“I would tell Lady Emma you tried to seduce me,” Susanna said, her words cutting through his most intimate fantasies.
“I know too much about you,” Dev said. “You’d never denounce me for fear I would betray you.”
Their eyes locked in mutual dislike and an equally blistering and sudden mutual desire. It seemed to heat the small dark carriage, scalding the air between them.
“You don’t like me,” Susanna said. There was a thread of something in her voice now that made Dev’s blood burn. She could deny an attraction to him for as long as she wished but he knew better. He had wanted her from the moment he had seen her walking across the ballroom toward him and he knew she felt the same.
“I don’t like you,” he agreed. “What is that to the purpose?”
“You would make love to a woman you don’t like simply to demonstrate to her what she has been missing?”
“I could do that, certainly,” Dev said. “But that is not how it would be with you, Susanna. I would make love to you because I want you and you would respond to me for the same reason.”
He saw the ripple of disquiet shiver along Susanna’s skin. She wanted to refute his words but something held her silent. Dev took her hand, peeling the silk glove from her fingers, tugging so that it came away and left her skin bare. Her hand lay in his now, gentle, warm and soft, all the things that Susanna was not. Dev brushed his lips against her fingers. He wanted to make her tremble. He wanted to prove to her that she was not indifferent to him, prove it so that she could never deny it again. He turned her hand over and pressed his lips to the pulse at her wrist. It was racing, yet her face was expressionless and her hand in his was quite still.
“You seem agitated,” he murmured against her palm.
“Not at all.” Her voice was cool. “I am merely curious to see how far you would take this charade.”
Dev licked her palm with one sly stroke of the tongue. Her skin was smooth; she tasted delicious, salt and sweet together, a taste that kicked his awareness of her up another notch.
“I’d take it much further than this,” he said. He released her and felt the frisson of relief that shook her. “I was only kissing your hand,” he said gently. “Did you like it?”
“No, I did not.” Her tone was firm but Dev had felt the tremor that coursed through her.
“Yet you are shaking,” he said.
He leaned across to touch the fall of ebony ringlets at her throat. Instantly her hair curled confidingly about his fingers, entrapping him in a sensual mesh. It felt more slippery than silk; the faintest scent of honey rose from the dark strands, teasing his nostrils, wrapping about his senses.
Beneath the tumble of curls, his knuckles grazed her throat, gentle against softer skin. Her breath caught, a tiny sound but enough to betray her. He traced the vulnerable hollow of her collarbone, then his fingers dropped lower to the rich lace that edged the neckline of her gown. He followed it down. The filigree lace was whiter than the creamy skin beneath, both framing and concealing the swell of her breasts, designed to incite carnal need whilst appearing irreproachably innocent.
A sudden fierce urge seized him to tear that lace aside and slide his hand beneath the silk of her gown, to cup her breast and feel the nipple harden against his palm. The game that had started as challenge and provocation had suddenly changed. Now he, for all his experience, was the one feeling as primed and lust-ridden as a youth and she looked as cool as spring water, only the flutter of her pulse and the shimmer of heat in her eyes betraying her desire.
He slid his index finger down to the valley between her breasts and felt her shiver under his touch. They were very close now. He could hear her quickened breathing and see the color that ran up under her skin, heating it from the inside out, stinging her pallor with arousal. Her lips were slightly parted and she bit down on her full lower lip and his body clenched. He knew nothing other than that he had to kiss her—he had to kiss her now—but he retained enough shreds of sanity to know that despite her apparent quiescence if he tried she would probably stab him with a hairpin.
He was not going to take that risk. Quick as a flash he wrapped the cord of her reticule about her wrists, binding them together. She gave a little gasp of shock but he held the thread tight, forcing her hands down and in her lap.
“I’m tying you up so you can’t hurt me,” he said. He scarcely recognized his voice, rough and hoarse with need.
She might bite him, of course, but he might enjoy that. That was a risk he was prepared to take.
He saw her eyes flash with fury but beneath the anger he also saw a reluctant fascination that made the hunger roar through him.
“You’re a brigand,” Susanna said. Her voice was not quite steady.
“A pirate,” Dev said. “You know it.” He tugged on the cord of the reticule. The movement jerked Susanna’s wrists and brought her closer to him. He bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Her lips were very lush and they trembled beneath his like a debutante receiving her first kiss. It felt unpracticed, uncertain, as though she had not kissed anyone for a very long time. Dev hesitated, completely thrown by her response. He had not for a moment supposed that she was an innocent. Her history contradicted it; she had denied it in her own words, and yet her lack of finesse spoke for itself. There was no pretence between them, either. It was as though the moment he had kissed her all the barriers between them had dissolved and there was no anger and no resentment left, nothing but longing and sweet, aching need. For a moment Dev felt swamped by dangerous emotion and then Susanna opened her lips beneath his and she tasted so shockingly familiar, so enticing, that his senses spun. He forgot everything, releasing the cord about her wrist so that he could draw her into his arms and kiss her with hunger and passion and an ever-deepening tenderness.
His tongue tangled with hers, coaxing it into a potently carnal dance. Desire leaped to greater desire within him like a fierce flame. Soon, he knew, he would be lost to everything other than the need to make love to Susanna here and now in a flea-infested hackney carriage in broad daylight on the streets of London. He struggled to remember that he could not yield to this seduction. He was supposed to be proving something to Susanna, not losing himself in her. Yet it seemed he could not resist. He did not want to need her but he could not help himself.
He brushed aside the ebony curls with fingers that shook, and pressed his lips to her throat. Her skin was cool beneath his touch and Dev felt like a starving man offered manna in the desert. His self-control hung by a thread. He slid the gown down a little and nipped at the curve of Susanna’s shoulder, biting softly, tasting her. The scent of honey was on her skin, faint and sweet. Dev had never eaten honey in his life but he wanted to eat it now. He wanted to lick her all over. He felt almost light-headed with the craving.
The bodice of Susanna’s gown rustled softly as it slipped another inch lower. Dev felt the filigree lace rough against his lips and Susanna’s breast soft beneath it, inciting him to rip the material away so that he could take her in his mouth. He groaned.
Susanna put one hand against his chest and pushed him away. Dev was so surprised that he let her go.
“Have you finished trying to make a point yet, Sir James?” She sounded slightly bored.
It took Dev a moment to cut through the clamor of his body and to focus. When he did, it was to see that Susanna was adjusting that provocative lace and was patting her hair back into place beneath the saucy bonnet, which had been knocked askew in their embrace. Her face was perfectly blank, pale, composed, the indifferent mask of a lady of fashion.
Shock and disbelief raked through Devlin that he should feel such an intensity of desire and, more disturbingly, such a treacherous sense of affinity with her when to Susanna it seemed it had been nothing but a dare.
“You were pretending?” he said.
Her green eyes were expressionless. If anything, she looked slightly puzzled. “Of course I was,” she said. “Weren’t you?”
“I …” There was an odd emptiness beneath Devlin’s heart. “That innocent response,” he said. His throat felt dry. “It was feigned?”
She smiled. It was a smile that made him feel a naive fool. “Men seem to like it,” she murmured.
“And you always give men what they want,” Dev said. He could feel the bitterness rising like bile in his throat.
“If it gains me what I want.”
Dev took her by the shoulders, searching her face for any clue that she lied, looking for even a hint that the storm of sensation that had racked him had touched her, too. She met his gaze defiantly.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You wanted me, too.”
Susanna shrugged and turned her face away from him.
“Your opinion is not important to me,” she said. “You were trying to prove a point. You failed.”
Dev let her go, sinking back onto the seat. The taut desire had drained from him now and he felt chilled and empty. Susanna’s words were no more than a salutary reminder of how cynical she had become.
“I find I would rather walk than suffer any more of your … conversation,” Susanna said. She rapped sharply on the roof of the carriage. The hackney jerked to a halt.
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Nicola Cornick
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: London, June 1816 ′Devlin squared his shoulders and prepared to be introduced to the wife he had thought was dead.′ Dangerously seductive and sinfully beautiful, Susanna Burney is society’s most sought-after matchbreaker. Paid by wealthy parents to part unsuitable couples, she’s never yet failed. Until her final assignment brings her face to face with the man who’d once taught her an intimate lesson in heartache…James Devlin has everything he’s always wanted: a title, a rich fiancée and a place in society. But the woman who’s just met his eyes across a crowded ballroom threatens it all. Not because she’d once claimed his heart but because the secrets she carries could cost him everything. Dev just might have to play Susanna at her own wicked game. Let the scandal of the season begin…