Tempt the Devil (23 page)

Her jaw took on a stubborn line, but at least she finally stood on her own two feet. She trembled with chagrin. “You wanted me to yield to you.”

“Never like this. Any yielding on your part was purely between us.”

He looked around and realized the crowd's interest was more virulent than ever. He had to do something to end this confounded embarrassing scene.

He raised his voice. “Miss Raines wishes to let you all know that after July she will no longer be gracing London's ballrooms. She has granted me the incomparable privilege of agreeing to travel as my companion to Vienna when I return to my posting.”

Shock whitened her face, leaving her eyes huge and startled. The subtle rouge stood out in two red lines along her cheekbones. He saw similar amazement on the faces around them. Immediately replaced by speculation and puzzlement and in Montjoy's case open distress.

Quicker minds would already question why she needed to make such a dramatic announcement of her intentions and why she'd looked like she was about to fall to her knees. Erith gritted his teeth with futile anger. There wasn't much he could do about it. The Vienna idea had been the only thing that dropped into his mind at the crucial moment.

Montjoy stared at her in consternation. “Olivia? What does this mean? Is it true?”

“N-No, Perry,” she stammered without shifting her bewildered focus from Erith's face.

“Yes,” he said implacably. “Now dance with me, Olivia. For Christ's sake, this bloody mess has gone far enough.”

Almost roughly, he dragged her into his arms. He lowered his voice, trying to shock her from her stasis. He was sick to his stomach at having to conduct his private life in full view.
Within the space of an hour he and Olivia had provided enough grist to keep the gossip mills grinding for weeks.

He wanted to grab her away from this decadent horde. He wanted her to himself. But a sudden departure would only worsen the scandal.

“If you're so keen to go on your knees to me, do it later when I can take advantage of your position,” he muttered furiously, at the end of his patience.

At his earthy suggestion, her eyes sparked gold fire and the blood returned to her cheeks. Satisfied he'd brought her back to herself, he whirled her through the heaving crowd and into the ballroom, where a waltz started.

L
ord Erith ushered Olivia into the candlelit bedroom. He closed the door and leaned back on it, folding his arms over his broad chest. He looked as indestructible as a basalt monolith.

Smothering her nerves under outrage, she whirled to face him. “You meant it when you made that wager.”

With jerky, violent movements she stripped off her long black gloves. She tossed them onto her dressing table, not caring if they knocked the porcelain pots of cosmetics to the floor.

She didn't even know why it was so important to fulfill the terms of his wager. Perhaps she needed to remind herself once and for all that the earl was a client and she his whore, paid to do his bidding.

When he prevented her proclaiming his victory, he'd changed the terms between them and left her thwarted and lost and helpless.

Words she hadn't applied to herself since she was fifteen.

Words she refused to apply to herself now.

“I meant I'd do anything to stop you walking out this door.” He stared at her under his heavy lids. His gaze revealed only a narrow glint of bright silver between thick lashes. “I still would.”

Her emotions snarled in an impossible tangle. Lately she didn't understand herself at all. And it was utterly Erith's fault. With futile vehemence, she wished she'd never met him.

She'd always thought she knew what he wanted. The acknowledgment of her surrender.

If he didn't want that, what did he want?

She could hardly bear to conjure an answer.

Olivia's belly cramped with rage. She was confused. She was frustrated. And beneath rage, confusion, and frustration, fear lurked like a cold whisper of coming winter.

Scowling, she began to pace the room, black silk skirts rustling around her. She was so stirred up, she had to move or she'd explode. “Stop it.”

He didn't straighten from his watchful slouch. “Stop what?”

“Saying things like that. Heartless rakes should be…heartless rakes.”

He didn't answer her. She came to a trembling halt and braced one shoulder against a bedpost, curling her hand around the polished wood. To calm the raging storm inside her, she sucked a deep breath through her teeth.

She'd felt powerful when she put on the magnificent ruby collar. She'd even felt powerful when she chose to kneel to him. After all, the decision was hers, and her obeisance reclaimed who she was. A proud woman wholly separate from this lover who refused to let her follow the tired, safe patterns of her existence.

“Last night—” She stopped. Discussing the glories of last night wasn't the best tactic to shore up her defenses.

For one blazing moment he met her eyes. Turmoil and de
termination darkened the gray. Then he sighed and studied the richly colored Turkish carpet at his feet as if it held the answer to the world's deepest questions.

Her fingers tightened convulsively around the tall mahogany column. “The arrangement was that I publicly acknowledged you as my master.”

“No, it wasn't.” He made a slashing gesture with one hand and sent her a quelling glare. For the first time, his voice held a thread of temper. “Dear God, I can't remember the terms of that damned bet. I doubt we even got to specifics. I can't remember and I don't care. I certainly never demanded you on your knees in front of half bloody London. The collar was enough. More than enough.”

“You wanted my surrender,” she said stubbornly.

All day she'd berated herself for becoming so fatally vulnerable to a man. She knew men in all their selfishness and arrogance and weakness and unthinking cruelty. Erith at base was just the same as any other male.

She had spent every waking hour steeling herself against him.

Then he'd come to collect her for Perry's party. Without a peep of resistance, she'd immediately fallen prey to his attraction.

“Devil take it, stop talking about surrender,” Erith said. “This isn't a war between two feudal empires. It's a love affair, for pity's sake. I wanted the woman I desired to desire me. I wanted you to acknowledge the attraction between us. I wanted you to enjoy sex. Private goals, all of them.”

She flung away from the bed and resumed her pacing, trying to outrun what he said. “And what's all this nonsense about dragging me to Vienna? Are you mad?”

“It seems the obvious solution.” His brief flash of anger had vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Especially after last night.”

His calmness only fed her resentment. “Last night means nothing! We had a bargain which you're only too ready to
disregard when it doesn't suit you. I'm your mistress until you leave England. That's what we agreed before we embarked on this disaster of a liaison.”

“It's not a disaster.” He was so still, he could have been made of stone. “It's a miracle.”

With an ominous feeling tightening her chest, she came to quivering rest on the opposite side of the room. Her heart galloped with premonitory fear. Cold sweat prickled at her nape.

His expression became even graver. “And everything changed when I fell in love with you.”

 

Erith heard his words crash into the taut, combative silence. Olivia flinched as though he'd struck her. All trace of color fled her face so her remarkable bone structure seemed carved from cold marble.

“No…” she breathed in horror. “No, you can't. You don't mean it.”

Sharp pain stabbed his gut at her immediate denial. It had been so devilish hard to say the words.

She sidled away as though his love were a contagious disease. Only bumping into the wall behind her broke her retreat. She flattened her palms against the elegant blue and yellow stripes of the wallpaper.

“Of course I mean it.” He kept his voice soft. He didn't want to frighten her further.

Because fear was her principal response.

What the hell else had he imagined? That difficult, proud Olivia would throw herself into his arms with joyful abandon and tell him that she loved him back, that she wanted to stay with him forever?

Not in any real world he lived in.

In spite of his earlier avowal, he knew that this was indeed war between them. He'd just fired the first shot over her lines. He couldn't expect her to raise the white flag before any casualties had fallen.

Because he had no doubt she meant to fight him on this, fight as she'd never fought before.

Which didn't prevent her virulent rejection from making him feel like she'd stamped his heart to gory shreds beneath her heel.

Stubbornly, he refused to retract his declaration. He'd acknowledged his feelings unwillingly and painfully. He'd loved her well before he recognized the fact. After so many years running from any hint of powerful emotion, that wasn't surprising.

As he'd sat alone in the salon yesterday, waiting for Olivia to come home, before she tied him up like an animal, he'd reluctantly faced a number of inconvenient realities. Including the stark truth that he was hopelessly in love with his mistress.

Ever since he'd met Olivia, she'd created an unprecedented storm in his life. An agitated melee of reactions he hadn't suffered in years.

Desire. Jealousy. Anguish. Anger. Possessiveness. Tenderness. Passion. Joy.

Only love explained his extreme emotion during his precipitate ride to Kent. And after. When he'd fruitlessly burned to kill her tormenters. When he'd have taken every ounce of her pain on himself if it gave her one moment's ease.

Erith wasn't a stupid man. And he'd been in love before. He knew what this soul-deep level of turmoil signified.

Nothing but love could bring him to a pass where he was willing to surrender his dominance in the bedroom.

Nothing but love could make him open his vulnerable heart to her now.

She'd changed him forever. She'd revived a dead man, shown him the world still held hope and possibility.

He wanted her to become part of his life. Not just until July. Always.

“You love me, you say?” Her lips twisted in a cynical
smile, but the corners of her mouth quivered. “I've heard those words so often. Many men have imagined themselves in love with me.”

“That doesn't change how I feel.” Any anger at her jeering died when he saw how she trembled. The brilliant rubies and diamonds in the collar flashed and scintillated with the convulsive movement.

Bitter resentment glittered in her eyes. She continued in the same ugly, scoffing tone. “You just love the fact that you made me come when nobody else could. It feeds your unending vanity.”

She was no fool, his beloved. And she knew where to stick the knife to inflict the most damage. Every cruel word felt like it sliced another layer of skin off his hide.

His heart beat with a crazy, wayward rhythm. He fought to keep his voice calm while chill anguish coiled in his belly. “You think I see myself as some rescuing knight and you as a helpless victim?”

“Don't you?

With an impatient movement, he tugged his tight black coat off and flung it over her dressing stool. He was so choked with emotion that its constriction was unbearable. “No.”

The simple answer seemed to leave her at a loss.

Oh, Olivia, my darling…

She hated him for stripping away her defenses. He recognized the safe cocoon numbness provided. Except eventually the heart trapped inside the sealed haven started to perish.

Not a trace of color remained in her lovely face. “I'm not staying,” she said through stiff lips.

“Yes, you are.” He began to unbutton his waistcoat. From somewhere certainty, slow and sweet as syrup, seeped into his veins. By heaven, he meant to win this battle. “If you really wanted to leave, you'd have done it days ago.”

“We had a wager.”

“Devil take it, you didn't stay because of a wager. You make a damned good show of caring about the bloody bet. A pity it doesn't convince. I doubt it even convinces you, although you certainly give it a good try.”

Her expression tightened at his scornful words. Grimly he waited for her to argue with his conclusions. Instead she raised her chin.

“If not for the wager, why am I here?” Sarcasm added a harsh edge to her voice. “For the sake of your
beaux yeux
?”

“I know why you stay.” He shucked the heavy French silk waistcoat off and tossed it after his coat. He breathed in, gathered all his courage. And took the greatest risk of all.
“You stay because you love me.”

She flung her head back and laughed. The sneering sound echoed around the room.

“Your conceit is beyond belief. I don't love men. I take them to my bed, I service them and I despise them.” All trace of amusement left her face and she regarded him as if she loathed him. “All of them.”

She was so hurt and so brave, and he wished to God he could make this easy for her. But it was impossible. If the way to her salvation meant she cut his heart to ribbons, well, so be it.

He desperately wanted to take her in his arms. But touching her now would be a huge mistake. She was strung so tightly, she might shatter if he pushed her too far.

“You don't despise Perry. You don't despise Leo.” He paused, watching uncertainty flicker in her beautiful eyes. “And you don't despise me.”

“Yes, I do,” she said without conviction.

“Liar.” He tugged his shirt over his head and let it drift to the ground.

“That's enough, Lord Erith.” She snatched up her skirts with a flourish and marched toward the door. She walked like a queen to the guillotine, proud, straight, defiant.

Lonely.

He caught her arm as she strutted past. He hated the pleading note that crept into his voice, but he couldn't help it. “Don't run away just because you're afraid, Olivia.”

“I'm not afraid!” she snapped, even as she quaked under his hand like a newborn foal. The eyes she focused on him were glassy with terror.

“Olivia, I'm afraid too.” His pride revolted at the admission. “Don't go.”

“No one will ever control me again,” she spat, trying to wrench away. “I will never place my fate in a man's hands. I swore that at fifteen, and it's a promise I'll never break.”

For a brief, brilliant moment, he'd thought he could find words to convince her to stay. He'd thought he could find words to make her admit what she felt.

But clearly and devastatingly for a man whose words were his currency, she wasn't listening.

Or there were no words.

Sorrow ate at his gut. He released her with a gesture of apology. He knew what freedom meant to her. He couldn't bring himself to curtail it.

Anyway, what would compulsion gain? He didn't want a reluctant lover. “Go, then,” he said hoarsely.

She settled a startled gaze on him. “You won't let me.”

“Of course I will. You're free.”

“Yes, I'm free.” She sounded ridiculously uncertain. Again Erith saw a trace of the girl she'd been before a cruel world crushed her innocence.

He stepped away from the door, his every dream crumbling to ruin. How bitter to remember that only seconds ago he'd thought to prevail against her anguish and fear.

Except she hadn't gone yet.

Nor, he realized with a sudden rally of hope, had she denied she loved him.

It took every shred of nerve to test his supposition. He leaned across and opened the door. “Good-bye, Olivia.”

“You insist on my complete surrender.”

He spoke with a hint of asperity. “Anyone looking at us would know I'm on my knees here, so any triumph is yours.”

“So I win if I leave?”

She willfully misunderstood him. Well, two could play at that game. He pushed the door wide. “If you believe that, go.”

Her eyes were blank as she stared at the gap in the doorway. Her face was stony. She looked like her soul had fled her body.

She took a step toward the door.