Charming the Devil (2 page)

“M
rs. Nettles, you say.”

“Yes,” Faye said, and almost managed a smile though the ballroom milled like a chaotic whirligig about her. “I believe I heard you speak of Lord Brendier’s death.”

The golden-haired gentleman raised his brows, rocking back on his heel to skim his gaze down the tangerine flow of her gown. “I am Lord Rennet, Baron of Siltberth, but all my corky friends call me Lord Rex.” He tilted toward her with a conspiratorial air. “What shall I call you, my dulcet dove?”

Every burning instinct demanded that Faye hit the pretty lord with a chair and make a dash for the nearest exit, but sometimes her instincts were wrong. They certainly had been with Tenning. For months without end she had believed he wanted the best for her. That he cherished her as a daughter of sorts. That he kept her locked away for her own protection. Perhaps she was equally mistaken this time. “Mrs. Nettles,” she said, and
he smiled jauntily as if she’d said something vastly amusing.

“So tell me, Mrs. Nettles, did
Mr.
Nettles accompany you?”

“No,” she said, and felt relief sluice through her; the truth was ever a balm for her nerves. “Lord Brendier…” she urged, impressing herself, if none other, with the steady, almost prissy sound of her own voice.

“Ahh yes. ’Tis a terrible tragedy. You know that his opponent, a Mr. Daimmen, I believe, died on the spot,” said Rennet. “I am still reeling from the news.”

Faye stilled the tremble of her hands, let the innocuous lies buffet her, and reminded herself that none knew her dark secrets. To those of the glittering
ton
she was naught but what she appeared to be. A wealthy widow, well dressed, perfectly coifed, refined. Her high-waisted lawn gown hid the unsteadiness of her knees just as effectively as the tulle lace above her bodice veiled the pounding of her heart. “You knew him well then?”

“Indeed, yes.” Rennet drank from the silver flask he had drawn from an inner pocket of his carefully fitted tailcoat. He was an attractive man, she supposed. Stylishly dressed and immaculately groomed. He was also a liar. Rich and shallow and terrifying. But who among this assemblage was not?

For a moment she was once again tempted to
scan the mob that crowded Mrs. Tell’s ballroom like burrowing ants, but she did not, for she was certain Rogan McBain had not yet come. She would notice his arrival, know him by the pewter brooch pinned to his lapel.

“We were dearest friends,” Rennet continued, but it was another lie. Faye felt it like a pinprick to her temple.

“You were present for the duel then?” she asked.

“For the duel? Indeed not,” he said, and executed a delicate shudder, which shook even his elegant hands. His hair was thick, golden, and carefully brushed away from his brow. His eyes were blue and bright and false. “Had I known his intent, I would surely have warned against such a bag of moonshine.”

“You think duels foolish things?” she asked.

“Lady Mullen—
Charlotte
—has proposed to do away with them forever.”

“Lady Mullen?”

“Surely you’ve heard the phrase, ‘mild as Mullen.’ ’Tis said she’s ever so kindly and quite pretty. But it’s her autumn fetes that have made her famous. They’re most instrumental in raising funds each year for the Foundling Hospital. At any rate, she abhors duels ever since her husband was killed some years ago.”

“Thus you abhor them, too?”

“Most certainly,” he said, then grinned sheep
ishly, flashing perfect teeth as he leaned infinitesimally nearer. “If you’re going to get yourself winged in the process.”

“So Lord Brendier was only struck in the…” she began, but suddenly her eyes caught a flash of metal. Or maybe it was more subliminal than that. Maybe she didn’t notice the man’s brooch at all. Maybe it was his eyes, as gray and somber as a wolf’s. Maybe it was his steely expression, or his clenched hands—or his sheer size!

He stood in the doorway, towering over his contemporaries, and there was nothing Faye could do but stare, breath caught in her throat, heart pounding like a trapped animal’s. And suddenly all her refinement, all her careful training sloughed away like water from a gargoyle’s roaring maw, and she was young again. Young and small, with Lucifer’s heavy footfalls pounding on the forest floor behind her.

She spun about, ready to flee, to run as she always had. To beg for forgiveness. But something caught her arm. She stifled a scream.

“Mrs. Nettles,” Rennet said, and a modicum of sanity settled into her reeling brain. “Are you quite well?”

She nodded once, though every quivering instinct insisted that she escape. Sheer power of will allowed her to stay, though the nape of her neck was already damp with chilled perspiration. She should have thought to bring a handkerchief, but she had never yet remembered one, though she
perspired like a Thoroughbred when nervous.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Not a ghost. He was real. Would always be real. At least in her mind.

“You’re as pale as alum.”

Behind her, the bewigged orchestra played a sweeping waltz, but it only sounded discordant to her pounding head. Conversation swirled around her as elegant couples gossiped and conversed, flirted and lied.

She could feel the deceit boiling around her like acid.

Her captor tilted his golden head at her and smiled. “Perhaps you should lie down.”

Off to Faye’s left, a man bellowed a laugh. The noise sounded maniacal, echoing in her brain.

“There are empty beds aplenty above stairs,” he said, and winked. “Not that I would know.”

She’d been a fool to pretend she was prepared for this. A fool to pretend she would
ever
be prepared.

“Perhaps you are overwhelmed by my manly charms,” he said.

She should answer. That much she knew. She should smile, converse. Perhaps flirt a bit. It was far more likely she’d turn into a speckled rock and fall off the face of the earth.

Across the room, the giant stood alone, surveying the room. His eyes were deep-set and intense, his hair sable, his skin dark. And his body…Beneath the midnight green of his fitted coat, his
shoulders looked as wide as a carriage, his thighs as broad as cannons. How the devil had she ever thought she would be able to approach him?

Her captor laughed. The sound was happy, lighthearted.

She stifled a wince, knowing she should emulate that gaiety. Should laugh, tease,
lie.
She managed an arched brow. When scared witless, try haughty; it was, perhaps, Madeline’s most practical advice.

“Perchance some fresh air is in order,” Rennet said, and, clearing his throat, steered her toward the open double doors.

But just as she turned,
he
found her, speared her with his eyes, caught her. She felt the contact like a strike to her heart.

“Tell me, Mrs. Nettles, where
is
Mr. Nettles?” She heard Rennet’s words like nothing more than a mumble in her mind, for the giant Scot was watching her. Did he know she’d been sent to ferret out his secrets? Did he know already that she suspected him?

“Mrs. Nettles?”

“Yes?” She yanked her gaze from McBain and pulled her tattered decorum around her like a cloak.

“Your husband—”

“Is dead.” It was part of the story she’d been given. The story she’d painstakingly memorized. “Drowned.”

“I am—”

“Fell through the ice while returning to our modest but happy home in Imatra.”

Rennet drew a deep breath. They were still moving toward the doors. Beyond the arched portals, the darkness of the garden called to her. “So you’re a widow.”

Across the room, the giant stepped toward her.

Panic reared inside her, striking with flinty hooves, but Rennet had a hold on her arm, and she dare not bolt. Dare not cause trouble. Not again. Not after the oboist. But how was she supposed to know woodwinds would make such an ungodly racket when they were mysteriously flung into the percussionists behind them? She’d only been trying to escape a madman. Or perhaps he had just been a suitor. It was so demmed hard to tell.

“Here we are. Hold up now,” Rennet said, tugging her to a halt, and she managed, just barely, to remain where she was, for the greatest threat seemed to be behind her. The noise, the lies, the peopled, opulent ballroom looming like an ogre in the background.

Here, the gardens stretched quietly around her, garbed in vast, soothing darkness, dappled with compassion, imbued with hope. Faye filled her lungs and tugged her arm carefully from her self-appointed escort’s. The minty scent of pennyroyal calmed her, drew her in, enticed her to step deeper into the darkness, to drink in the night, to let it shiver across her senses. It was quiet here, away from the madness of the crowd. Thick,
contented hedges grew in a curved row. Blooming vines twined cozily over arched arbors, and potted palms stood sentry atop the stone wall to her right.

“Forgive me. I fear I’ve been quite rude,” said Rennet and eyeing her, took another sip from his flask. It gleamed dully in the moonlight. “I should have thought to bring you out of doors as soon as you began looking as if you were about to swoon.”

She glanced toward the lighted doorway behind her. No demons poured out to devour her. Indeed, the yawning entrance was empty, but that hardly meant she was safe. “I was not about to swoon.” Perhaps.

“Ahh, how disappointing,” he said. “I do so love to catch angels as they fall.”

Maybe McBain hadn’t even seen her. Perhaps he had been looking at another, and it was simply her own “highly developed survival skills,” as Madeline called them, that had made it seem as if he were bearing down on her like a wolf on its prey.

“That was a compliment,” Rennet said, and, grinning, bent slightly at the knees to look directly into her eyes. “Deserving of a smile. You
can
smile, can’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, and scowled a little, trying to remember what she had planned to ask Rennet should the opportunity present itself.

“Good.” His lips quirked up even more. He was probably charming, but she had known such
men in the past. Tenning had been as cultured as a pearl, lavishing her with gifts, with compliments. There was, after all, a reason for her fears; she wasn’t completely mad. Perhaps.

“I simply do
not,
” she said, and dared him to think her eccentric. Better that than the truth.

Rennet stared at her for a moment, then, “You don’t…smile.”

“Not generally.”

“How do you feel about laughter?”

It was often false and therefore made her head pound like a smithy’s rounding hammer. She knew it was strange. Good God, she knew
she
was strange. No one had to tell her. But they had. Though the vernacular changed: odd, gifted, magical. It all meant the same thing.

“So, you don’t smile, and you don’t laugh,” he surmised. “What
do
you do, then, Mrs. Nettles. When you are not setting men agog with your astounding beauty?”

“I…”
What? Tried to forget? Tried to remember? Tried to survive?
“I…read a good deal.”

“Read?” His brows were raised again, his lips quirked up in an expression that some might find beguiling. But she wasn’t beguiled. Terrified, maybe. A little nauseous. But definitely not beguiled.

“Yes.”

“And what does a rare beauty like you read? Sonnets to match your beautiful countenance?”

“The
Times
mostly,” she said and glanced
toward the house again, lest someone spurt from the doorway and pounce on her. “Politics. But journals too.”

“Journals.”

“Yes.” It was why she was here, after all. Why she had forced herself from Lavender House, her home, her sanctuary. Because there was evil. And perhaps Madeline was right. Perhaps she could make it better. Negate a bit of the sort of pain she herself had caused.

“What kind of journals?”

“Those regarding battles mostly,” she said, and glanced behind her once again.

“Ahh…” He laughed. “A bloodthirsty little pixie are you?”

She snapped her eyes to his. Wondering if he could somehow sense the truth in her. Wondering if he was right.

“Not at all,” she said, and hoped to God he couldn’t hear the terror in her voice. “I am merely interested in the goings-on of the world.”

“Good God, you’re not one of those dreaded bluestockings, are you?” he asked, drinking again, and at that, she almost
did
smile. For that was exactly what Les Chausettes were.

Of course, they were also witches.

“As I said, I’m merely interested,” she repeated.

“Well really, lovey, I would think you could find something more intriguing than all those ghastly battles.”

She raised a brow at him. “Such as?”

His grin cocked up. He reached for her hand. She was tempted to step back, but there would be little point. The stone wall was only inches away. She had nowhere to go, thus she stood very still, letting him encircle her cold fingers with the heat of his. “Are you certain you were once wed?”

“Why do you ask? What—” she began, but managed to stop herself. He was only teasing, after all. Thinking himself clever. Therefore, she must stick to the story she’d been told time and again: She was the widow of a wealthy merchant, now self-sufficient, able to make her own way in the world.

But there were days she could barely manage to piece together two coherent sentences. Today would not be one of those days though. It would not.

“Quite certain. He was called…” she began, but suddenly the fictional name was gone. Completely erased from her mind.

“Mr.
Nettles?” he guessed.

“Albert,” she said, remembering suddenly and managing to imbue her tone with a smidgen of wryness for his foolish wit.

He lifted her hand to his lips. Panic spurred through her as he kissed her knuckles, but she didn’t yank her arm away. Didn’t scream. Didn’t even kick him in the groin, though she had been trained to do just that should the situation call for it. Surely such restraint was a reason for some pride, but she could feel that restraint crumbling, and covered with words.