Don't Bargain with the Devil (4 page)

 

Not this time. Not if he could prevent it.

 

He strode into Rockhurst’s master bedchamber to find Gaspar, his aging mentor, unpacking the trunk and setting out the rest of Diego’s attire for the day with gnarled and twisted hands.

 

“Stop that,” Diego said, knowing how even such simple actions caused the man pain. “I can do it perfectly well myself.”

 

“If you don’t leave it to me,” Gaspar retorted, “the servants will suspect that I’m not what I seem. And you know how servants talk.”

 

Gritting his teeth, Diego threw the slippers onto the bed. “I suppose I do.”

 

Gaspar had chosen to play his valet on this extended trip to England because it better enabled them to gather information from the staffs of the households they watched. Still, Diego hated putting the old man in such a humiliating role, even if their success would benefit them both in the end.

 

Gaspar had been a talented magician until arthritis set in years ago, forcing him to give up the profession. Fortunately, by then, he had already begun training Diego in the conjurer’s art. Diego had become his whole family, since Gaspar had no one else to look after him—no wife or children or relations.

 

Exactly like Diego himself.

 

A shudder wracked him.
No, not me.
He was not meant for the rootless life of a performer. How his parents would have cringed to see what their only son had become. After what they had sacrificed, it was a mockery. He would not let their sacrifice be in vain.

 

He had been raised for something better, and he would take up his birthright again as soon as he and Gaspar found the Marqués de Parama’s granddaughter. Then he could honor the vow he’d made to his father to regain Arboleda and restore his family’s reputation and position. Gaspar would have a place of comfort in which to end his days. Diego could even marry and raise a family. He wanted none of this life for any wife or children of
his.

 

Walking to the window, Diego drew out the ivory ball he used for practice and manipulated it through his fingers as he surveyed the adjoining property. When he spotted two women talking on the steps, his heart began to pound.

 

Yes, it was long past time he married. He needed a woman of his own. Why else had he let that lovely female standing down there rattle him so badly?

 

The other woman didn’t interest him—he assumed she was “that red-haired virago who owns the school,” as Pritchard had described her. But Seńorita Schoolteacher…

 

An image of her stretched out on a bed of cherry blossoms flamed into his memory. He was not likely to forget
that
anytime soon. With her fine bosom rising and falling with each breath, her dark hair spread around her, she’d been a picture to fire any man’s blood. She had smiled in her slumber, her succulent mouth parting so temptingly that he had half considered playing the prince to her Sleeping Beauty and kissing her awake.

 

He should have done it. She might have slapped him for it, but it would have been worth the risk. Because her lush eyelashes had parted to reveal lovely hazel eyes, and in those first few moments, the look in those eyes had been utterly without guile or fear.

 

That had changed soon enough.

 

Even now, Seńorita Schoolteacher looked belligerent as she tucked a newspaper beneath her arm, then glanced up at his window. Though the sun glinting off the glass prevented her from seeing him, he jerked back.

 

Hostias,
he could not believe she was still rattling him.

 

Yet he had not rattled her in the least. He had used that “card behind the ear” maneuver a thousand times. It never failed to amuse the ladies and soften their tempers. Why had it not worked with her?

 

I can tell when a man is trying to turn me up sweet for his own purposes.

 

He grimaced. She had seen right through him. Women rarely did. It was irritating to have some twenty-year-old slip of a teacher do so—and intriguing, too. He seldom met women that perceptive. He was not certain what to make of it. What to make of her.

 

Thumbing his mustache, he watched as she gestured at Rockhurst. She was probably complaining about his lack of “propriety.”

 

He stiffened. If she hadn’t set off his temper, he might still be in the orchard with her, enjoying more than mere conversation. For a moment near the end, when a delicious smile had tugged at her lips and her eyes had grown suspiciously bright, he had been sure he had succeeded with her at last.

 

Until she had insulted him. Haughty female, citing the
English as the model of propriety. Like most English ladies, she had no idea what her countrymen were really like when their masks were off.

 

The next time he encountered Seńorita Schoolteacher, he would manage himself better. And her.

 

“So?” Gaspar asked. “What happened with the servant we saw from the window? And how did you acquire a pair of lady’s slippers?”

 

“As it happens, she wasn’t a servant but a teacher.”

 

“Then she’s no use to us,” Gaspar said dismissively.

 

“I do not agree. We need a source inside.” That was why he had hurried down in the midst of dressing—to see if the lovely woman lying in the grass might provide them an entrée to the school.

 

After tossing his practice ball onto the bed, Diego drew out the miniature given him by the
marqués
. As Diego stared at the serene face of a beautiful young Spanish woman dressed in an outmoded fashion, Gaspar muttered a curse. “Don Carlos’s granddaughter may not look like her mother, you know. She might resemble her father instead, and we have no miniature for him.”

 

“Or worst of all, she might look like her grandfather.”

 

They laughed. The
marqués
’s squinty eyes, bulbous nose, and sour mouth gave him the appearance of a very cranky toad. Diego could not fathom how the rich old grandee had spawned as lovely a creature as Dońa Catalina.

 

“Father or mother, it matters not,” he said. “Both are Spanish. The girl will surely stand out among these pasty-faced English.”

 

“Not even all of the Spanish look Spanish. Better not to rely on that image to find her.” Gaspar hung up one of Diego’s shirts. “I wouldn’t trust that teacher’s word,
either. Teachers must be discreet. Servants, however, can be bought.”

 

“Fine,” Diego said irritably. “Feel free to establish a connection with a servant if you think that’s best.
I
intend to work on the schoolteacher.”

 

He and Gaspar had perfected their technique during two months of trailing about Britain, pretending to seek out sites for a pleasure garden. First, locate the daughter of the next man on their list of soldiers who’d served in Gibraltar. Then glean whatever knowledge they could about the female from servants and acquaintances. Finally, insinuate themselves into the lady’s intimate circle to determine if she was the one they sought.

 

It had not helped that the
marqués
had given them so little information to go on. All he could tell them was that his granddaughter’s nurse had run off with a soldier from the Forty-second Regiment fifteen years ago, stealing his four-year-old granddaughter in the process. He’d had no name for the man, no description, and little description of the nurse. Only recently had he even learned that the nurse’s lover was an English soldier.

 

Diego and Gaspar had laboriously compiled a list of possible names. The four women they had already investigated had lacked backgrounds that fit the facts. Their sources had said that the daughter of the next soldier on their list was presently enrolled at Mrs. Harris’s School for Young Ladies.

 

Their sources had damned well better be right. He was tired of this madness.

 

With a flick of his fingers, Diego returned the miniature to his pocket. “I believe the teacher will be more useful for our purpose than any servant.”
Liar.
It had nothing to do with her usefulness. Diego was simply galled that he had not succeeded better with her. She had actually laughed at his compliments!

 

When Gaspar snorted, Diego turned to find the man watching him, eyes as sharp as ever. Gaspar pointed his chin at the window. “So, what’s her name?”

 

Diego gritted his teeth. “I did not…catch it.”

 

Understandably, Gaspar raised an eyebrow at that. Diego always “caught” people’s names. His memory for them was part of his appeal. The audience, particularly the ladies, loved it when he could call their names from the stage.

 

Yet he had not gained Seńorita Schoolteacher’s. Although he might have, if not for ending the conversation prematurely by losing his temper.

 

That, too, galled. He rarely lost control in such a manner. Rage was too volatile and dangerous an emotion to allow. Give it free rein, and you ended up dead, either at the hand of another or at the hand of the hangman.

 

Lately, however, his temper had been plaguing him. With each new failure to locate Don Carlos’s granddaughter, his anger grew a little more. If the ailing
marqués
died before Diego and Gaspar fulfilled their part of the bargain, they got nothing. So Seńorita Schoolteacher looking down her pretty nose at him and lecturing him about proprieties had provoked his temper more than usual.

 

“You will have to discover the woman’s name yourself,” Diego told Gaspar, “but that should not be too hard. How many teachers can there be in such a place?”

 

“What does she teach?” When Diego groaned, the old man laughed. “You didn’t get that either? I’ll have to find
out what this English paragon eats that makes her impervious to your attractions. She must be a rare bird indeed.”

 

“I did learn that she is twenty,” Diego shot back, annoyed. “That seems young for a teacher, so that is something to go on.
You
are the one who claims to be able to weasel information out of a stone. Why not put your talent to good use?”

 

“Don’t carp at me,” Gaspar grumbled. “I swear, you are as surly as a bear these days. And I know why.”

 

“Because we keep running into obstacles?”

 

“Because you need a woman, that’s why. How long has it been?”

 

“Not that long,” Diego lied.

 

“A year.” When Diego’s startled gaze shot to him, he said, “Yes, I have noticed. You ignore even the fine ladies who cast you come-hither looks, and you take no one to your room.”

 

“I have more important things on my mind these days than rutting.”

 

“Nonetheless, you should spend your pent-up energy on something besides work. Why not just tumble a whore and be done with it? It will do you good.”

 

“
Dios mio,
I do not
want
to tumble a whore!” he snapped. “I am sick of whores. For that matter, I am sick of fine ladies. They only wish to share my bed to say they have lain with the ‘great’ Diego Montalvo. Or to provoke their husbands.”

 

“You didn’t used to mind that.”

 

“I didn’t used to mind a great many things.” He threaded his fingers through his hair. “Plowing every field that came my way was fine when I was too young and stupid to know any better, but now I want…I want….”

 

He wanted so very much. He wanted to go home to Villafranca to blot out all memory of the charming trickster he had played for the past fifteen years. He wanted the life of dignity and honor that the English and French had stolen from him, the life he should have had. And that life did not include bedding whores.

 

“I know what you want,” Gaspar said softly. “But are you sure that having the
marqués
sign Arboleda back over to you will satisfy you? It’s been years since you lived there. You may find it isn’t the Eden you remember.”

 

“That does not matter.” Diego could hardly speak for the turmoil churning in his chest. “What kind of man would I be if I did not keep my vow to Father?”

 

“A sensible one, that’s what. When you promised him you’d restore it to what it once was, neither of you could have anticipated that your mother would have to sell the estate. You’ve done your best to fulfill his dying wish. Perhaps it’s time to let that dream pass.” Gaspar slid Diego’s shirts into the tallboy. “This life has its compensations, doesn’t it? Especially for a conjurer as talented as you.”

 

But its compensations paled beside his failure to accomplish his life’s dream. Gaspar did not understand that.

 

Gaspar turned for the door, then paused. “I almost forgot to tell you. Have you seen today’s
Times
?.

 

“Not yet. Why?”

 

Gaspar picked up a newspaper, opened it to a page, and shoved it under Diego’s nose. Diego read the headline, then read it again.

 

He shook the paper. “What is this?” Another obstacle, damn it.

 

Gaspar shrugged. “Perhaps Pritchard talked to the press.”

 

“But I only told Pritchard that nonsense to get him to lease us the place! If I had wanted the papers to know, I would have told them myself.” The press had its uses when advertising one’s appearances. But when trying to hide one’s true purpose, it could be damned inconvenient.

 

“We were free enough with the tale everywhere else—why should it make a difference here? No one will care.”

 

Diego scowled. “Are you mad? No one will care that a foreigner is building a garden of sin and iniquity next to a girls’ academy? Think, man. Would you send your gently bred daughter to a boarding school with a pleasure garden abutting the property? If the owner is wise, she will soon be up in arms over the prospect. If she is not already,” he added, remembering the newspaper he had seen in Seńorita Schoolteacher’s hand.

 

He picked up the ivory ball again, working it in a frenzy. “Damn the press. I have to cajole them into mentioning an upcoming performance, but tell one white lie to an idiot Englishman, and they blast the news everywhere.”

 

“You could deny it,” Gaspar suggested. “Offer them an interview. State that you are only here to plan a future tour of the country.”

 

Diego shook his head. “Pritchard will evict us if we change our tale. He only agreed to lease Rockhurst if I was reasonably interested in buying. No, we will have to find another way to lessen the damage. Perhaps if we live here quietly for a while before we begin asking our questions…” He paced the floor, still working the ivory ball. It helped him to think. “Then again…” His mind raced ahead, considering possibilities.