Fool Me Twice (33 page)

By train, Allen’s End was only two-odd hours from London. Olivia remembered how this revelation had once amazed her. She had spent most her life watching her mother wait, pale and frustrated, for Bertram’s rare appearances—and when he’d arrived, how he had grumbled, what a fuss he had made, over the pains of the journey! Olivia had imagined Bertram like the Marco Polo of her picture books, and Allen’s End, the end of an English Silk Route, reached only after braving innumerable perils.

Even once she was older, she’d imagined that there must be more to the journey than the maps suggested. To a girl of fourteen or fifteen, after all, Allen’s End did
feel
like the end of the world—a place that time had abandoned, with London as distant as China.

But on a dreary evening seven years ago, she had boarded the train at half-past six. And at a quarter before nine that night, the conductor had announced Charing Cross. Olivia had been nursing enough determination and grief to carry her all the way to China, so her prompt arrival had left her vaguely disappointed.

Now she was making the journey in reverse, in a first-class compartment that Marwick had booked completely—for privacy, he’d said. That announcement had amply distracted her. She’d envisioned all manner of reasons he might require privacy for the journey, most of them torrid. Could one be ravished on a train? How would the mechanics work?

She’d rather looked forward to finding out. It had been somewhat anticlimactic to wake alone in the flat this morning, with no more evidence than a smudge of blood—hardly respectable even for a nosebleed—to prove what had happened last night. And in the morning light, after a solid, dreamless rest, she’d felt so much better, so much more herself, that all the mad events of yesterday—the ambush at the park; the hours in prison; Marwick’s rescue, and the strange, feverish hours that had followed; the feel of his skin against hers, and that shocking, complete possession—all of it seemed fantastical, half remembered, like a fading dream.

Only the small smudge of blood said otherwise.

When Marwick had finally appeared, she had expected . . . something, she wasn’t sure what, to have changed between them. But there’d barely been time to exchange greetings. He’d entered like a storm cloud, a valise in hand, which he’d opened to reveal a dress that she’d been forced, last week, to abandon, it having been in the possession of his laundress at the time of her flight.

“Change,” he’d said. “We have tickets for half past nine.” And any chance for revelations (to say nothing of shyness, or another go at debauchery) had been lost in the haste with which he’d hustled her into the coach, out through Charing Cross station, and onto the train.

Now Marwick sat across from her, making a silent perusal of the stack of newspapers he’d purchased on the platform, which somehow had kept him thoroughly absorbed for the last two hours, though she knew that in the normal course, it did not take him half that time to read every paper that London had to offer. He was deliberately ignoring her. Why? In her confusion, she could not quite find her bearings.

She stared at his hands.

Those same hands, long-fingered, rings gleaming (three of them now; they were, as she’d predicted, accumulating), were the same hands that had touched her last night. Those full lips (now pressed in a grim line, though a moment ago they had looked quite relaxed) had wandered over her body and spoken hushed, fervent words against her skin.
I would spend a thousand years here,
he’d said.

The memory made her breasts feel odd and tight, too full for her stays to contain. She took a deep breath.

He looked up.
“What?”

She gave him a guileless smile. “What do you mean,
what
?”

He looked pointedly back to his newspaper.

With a sigh, she looked out the window. The morning was gray and wet, and the constant drizzle made it look as though the marshy bogs were boiling. She felt his eyes on her. But when she glanced back, he was absorbed in the news.

She shifted in her seat, making the springs creak.

His eyes still on his reading, he slid a newspaper across the table toward her.

She had already tried to read one, but she had not been able to focus. Now, dutifully, she scanned the
headlines again, wondering at how little interest they stirred. It was not her way to look on tidings of national crises, of unrest in Afghanistan, of Russian threats and famine in Egypt, with the indifference of some vapid miss.

She frowned. Had he
done
something to her last night? She did not believe that a woman’s virtue lay in her physical integrity. But had he corrupted her somehow at the
mental
level? For all she could concentrate on was
him
.

He was slumped in his seat, the newspaper hitched at an angle that obscured his face. Frowning, she studied what she could see of him. His jacket fell open to show his flat belly beneath a pin-striped waistcoat. His trousers clung to his lean hips and the length of his muscled thighs, which had felt hard to the touch, and flexed so powerfully . . .

His thumb was stroking over the newsprint. This slow, idle stroke riveted her. He had been
inside
her.

And now he would not even look at her! Suddenly, she could not bear his aloofness. “Was I such a disappointment to you, then?”

His thumb stilled. “What?”

“Last night? Was I such a disappointment?”

The newspaper lowered, revealing his widened eyes.
“What?”

Perhaps
his
mind had been corrupted, too. “Your vocabulary seems much diminished this morning.”

He folded down the newspaper to reveal his whole face. He must have shaved while at his house this morning. His jaw looked clean and sharp against his tightly knotted tie. Her fingers itched to feel the temporary smoothness of his skin. “You’re making no sense,” he said levelly.

“Y
ou’re
behaving oddly all around. I believe I’m the one who should properly feel shy. I am the woman, after all.”

His jaw squared. He laid down the newspaper. “Don’t be ludicrous.”

That retort seemed somewhat more forceful than merited. She felt a glimmer of mischief. “You’re not feeling shy, are you?”

To her amazement—and, yes, her delight—the color rose in his face. “
Shy,
by God—”

“You’re avoiding my eyes,” she said. “You could not have hustled me out of that flat more quickly this morning. And now you’re refusing to have a conversation. Are you afraid that you disappointed
me
? For I assure you, it wouldn’t have been possible. I wasn’t expecting much—”

He made a choking sound.

“Oh, dear.” She reached for her discarded cup of tea, brought an hour ago by the obsequious conductor. “Would you like some of this? And don’t misunderstand me; it was quite nice. Last night, I mean.”

He pushed the cup away. “I don’t want any damned—” Teeth snapping together, he stared at her. “Are you needling me deliberately?”

“No.”
Perhaps.
“Only I’m simply wondering—”

He raked a hand through his hair, knocking off his top hat. “You are the most brazen, shameless . . .”

She stiffened.
Shameless,
was she? “Forgive me; am I meant to pretend it didn’t happen? Or simply that I didn’t like it?”

He froze, hand planted in his hair. Something else came into his face then, narrowing his eyes and lending him a predatory air; his nostrils flared, and a slight smile worked its way onto his mouth.

“No,” he said. “No need to pretend. I could feel how much you liked it.”

She felt overwarm, suddenly. “Well, then . . .”

“But it has not changed anything else.” He straightened and took up the newspaper again, staring at it—though not, she would wager, seeing a single word. “We will work together to undo Bertram. But that is all you may expect from me. You understand that, of course.”

It should not have stung. But some stupid, girlish, hopeless part of her
was
stung by his coldness—a very large part of her, in fact. Almost all of her.

Which in turn made her feel numb with horror.

What had she expected? That he would bemoan his own dishonor, and propose marriage? He never meant to marry again. And, even if he did mean to marry, what could he offer her? A dukedom, very well. She made a sour face at herself. But what she wanted was safety. A place to
belong.
Not a husband who would wake up one morning desiring to reclaim his old life, only to discover that he’d married a bastard who fit nowhere in the world to which he wished to return.

She wanted nothing from him. “I wouldn’t dare expect more,” she said coolly. “A man of your lofty position? Of your
marvelous
accomplishments? Why, I should count myself fortunate to have enjoyed your attentions for an hour.”

He looked up at her, frowning. “That is not what I meant.”

“Oh? Pray tell, what did you mean?”

He sat back, eyeing her. “I am not . . .” The quick pull of his mouth suggested frustration. “I am not in the market for a mistress.”

She made fists beneath the table. “How convenient, as I am
far
too accomplished for that position. Anyway, mistresses are made through repeated provisions of their services. And last night was a fluke.”

“Was it,” he said flatly.

“Indeed. It was a very difficult day. I was hardly myself. Having recovered my senses, I have lost interest in such business.”

His eyes narrowed. “Then perhaps I will arouse your interest again.”

A thrill pierced her. She resented it extremely. “But now the novelty is gone.”

Bracing his weight on one elbow, he leaned across the table. “We haven’t even begun, Olivia.”

There was a dark promise in his voice. It seemed to melt straight through her. She leaned in, scowling, until their noses nearly brushed. “Indeed? Then I must take lessons some other time, then. From someone
else
.”

“The hell you will.” His hand closed over her upper arm; he hauled her forward into a kiss—openmouthed, tongues tangling. Her eyes fluttered closed. All right, perhaps
once
more—

The bang of a door made her spring backward. “Station approaching,” the conductor said sourly, and the disapproval in his voice—he must have seen them kissing—was, Olivia thought, the perfect welcome home.

*  *  *

This morning, asleep in the dawn light, Olivia Holladay had looked no older than sixteen, and Alastair had risen from the bed on a revolted realization. He had ruined her. This girl who had managed to make her way in the world without falling prey to the thousand dangers that
beset a woman . . . he had ruined this girl, and he had no intention of saving her.

So what?
he had asked himself on his walk to the townhouse. This was, after all, part of being a villain. Villainy was not simply the red raging glory of inflicting well-deserved pain; it was also the curdling knowledge of having inflicted injustice. A villain simply did not
care.
Only the victims did.

But this victim did not appear to know she’d been sinned against. Indeed, she seemed made of some new substance, impossibly and unnaturally resilient, cooked up in a chemist’s basement against all laws of nature. On his return to the flat, she had greeted him far too cheerfully for a ruined woman. She had met his eyes without a blush, and now she’d harassed him for failing to do the same. Nothing he had done to her last night had eroded that uncanny self-possession that she had no right to possess. A bastard, a servant, a girl who changed names as easily as a hat.

He could not come to terms with her. Even now, as the train groaned to a stop, she sat glaring a challenge at him. How did she do it? He understood the source of his own assurance: his power was his armor. When he’d first walked back into his club, he’d felt its deadly potential as distinctly as the stiletto he’d carried in his jacket. But she, who had nothing, walked through the world with her chin held as high as his, and nothing seemed to shame her. How was it possible?

He knew why he wanted her. Just as an engineer coveted strange new devices, he wanted to strip her, disassemble her, study her parts, and make her secrets his own.

But hadn’t he done that last night? Yet he felt no closer to understanding her. All he seemed to have
gained was a deeper awareness of his own damnable fascination.

That fascination unnerved him. It exerted a compulsion toward her that felt far too much like all the things he’d done away with: obligation, duty, ideals . . .

She was a bastard and a liar. He owed her
nothing
.

And so, yes, he sat in silence, making no effort to put her at ease. But she didn’t require it anyway. What
did
she need from him? His coin, perhaps. Not much else.

He put that coin to use when they disembarked at the station. A fly would have sufficed for the half-hour’s trip into the village, but the only vehicle on rent was an ancient brougham, the interior of which smelled musty, reminiscent of Newgate. As they turned onto the road, he discovered that the springs, too, needed replacement; the coach rattled and bounced like a seesaw.

He forbade himself to watch her. But of course he did. As the coach passed over the first bridge, an ancient stone arch that seemed comically overstated for the trickle it traversed, he was watching closely enough to see her composure briefly falter. Her lips tightened. She went pale.

What was she looking at? He saw only a windmill on the distant grassy rise, and closer to hand, as they reached the other side of the bridge, a crumbling stone church, pockmarked by centuries of salted winds. The wheels found a rumbling purchase on cobblestone, and the whole coach began to vibrate.

“It’s not far now,” she said, lifting her voice. “Just around the second turn, past the apothecary.”

The village was predictably, tediously picturesque, a medley of Tudor-era shops and whitewashed cottages
tucked behind picket fences where, in spring, roses would bloom. Nobody seemed to be out.