Tempt the Devil (30 page)

Kylemore held his hand out to his wife. Sourly, Erith watched the naturalness with which Soraya accepted her husband's touch. It inevitably made him remember how Olivia spurned his hand in the hallway.

“I stand as your protector, Miss Raines,” Kylemore said gravely.

“She needs no protector,” Erith snapped. He was bitterly aware of the word's double meaning.

Kylemore sent him a stern look. “Nevertheless, I consider any insult to Miss Raines an insult to me.”

Soraya laughed softly and tugged at her husband's hand. “Come, my love. This isn't getting us anywhere.” She turned to Olivia. “We're only going to the morning room.”

“Thank you, your grace.” She managed a shaky smile.

Erith resented her air of a Christian martyr about to face the lions. Good God, she'd been a willing, even enthusiastic occupant of his bed for several weeks. She'd shared things with him she hadn't shared with anyone else.

She might deny she loved him, but now he saw her, doubts fled. She loved him, all right. It terrified the life out of her.

He was so busy studying his darling that he hardly noticed the spectacular duchess and her overbearing lout of a husband leave. His attention focused on the woman who remained alone on the sofa, chin up, eyes defiant, and cheeks shiny with drying tears.

Thoughtfully, he rubbed his hand over his jaw, feeling the scrape of his beard. Good God, he must look like the worst ruffian. It made him feel even more at a disadvantage.

How the Devil was he to proceed? The rest of his life hung upon this moment.

“You've been crying,” he said softly when they were alone.

She flushed with chagrin and looked away. “It means nothing.”

He rose with a sudden restless movement and shifted across to sit next to her. He reached to take her hand then remembered what had happened in the hallway and halted the gesture halfway.

Hell, what was wrong with him? He never felt uncertain, particularly with women.

But it had been such a long time since any one woman had mattered more than another.

And this one woman mattered more than his life.

He kept his voice low, unthreatening. “It means you're unhappy. I hate to think I've made you so, my love.”

She recoiled against the rich gold upholstery. “Don't call me that.”

“Whether I call you my love or not doesn't alter the truth, Olivia.”

Her hand formed a fist and she punched her thigh through her filmy blue skirts. “I don't want to be your love.”

Oh, yes, he believed that. Just as he believed she didn't want to love him. Although she did. With every second, he was more certain.

Desperately he sought for words to convince her to return to him. Even more important, to stay. “Don't make me live without you. I want you to be my lover. I want you to come to Vienna.”

Her lips pursed as though she tasted something sour. “And live as your mistress.”

It surprised him that she needed to spell out the arrangement.

“Of course. My precious mistress.” He had a sudden insight into what must worry her. “Are you concerned I'll stray? Surely you see those women were just an attempt to fill my empty life after Joanna died. It sounds coldhearted. It
was
coldhearted. But they didn't suffer for knowing me, and we always parted friends. I was faithful to Joanna. I'll be faithful to you. You have nothing to fear from other women.”

“I'm a harlot.”

His brows drew together. He couldn't see the point of this. He once believed that she suffered no guilt over what she'd done. Now he knew her well enough to realize her feelings about her profession were tangled and ambiguous.

“You were forced into this life.” His sincerity came from the depths of his soul. “Do you expect me to berate you for what you are? How can I? My own behavior hasn't been admirable.”

The hands twined in her lap tightened. She looked down at them from under her thick fringe of gold-tipped lashes. “Yet you believe without question that I'm not fit to associate with your daughter.” Her voice was very low and very sad.

He should have been prepared for the attack. The idea that a few sweet words and a promise of lifelong devotion on the Continent would win his case now seemed fatuous. A sinking feeling in the region of his gut told him that unless he was very careful, this was an argument he'd lose.

With disastrous consequences.

He fought to keep his voice quiet, reasonable, when what he wanted to do was snatch her up and kiss her senseless. But she was strong and clever, and unless he had her willing, he couldn't have her. He knew that in his bones.

“Olivia, you know as well as I how the world works. Probably better because you've suffered more from society's censure. I must put my daughter's welfare first. Perhaps because I've been such a selfish blackguard. Surely you can't expect anything else.”

The eyes she focused on him were dull with misery. He'd wished her anger gone, but this was worse.

“No, of course I don't
expect
anything else.”

He was seriously worried now. “What does that mean?”

She didn't answer immediately. Instead she stared into a shadowy corner. Her lush mouth was taut with distress.

He watched her so closely, he noticed her slender throat move as she swallowed. Her body vibrated tension. “My father was Sir Gerald Raines, a baronet with an estate outside Newbury.”

Her quiet words took a moment to sink in.

Shock at what she told him, lacerating pity at what she'd endured, jolted him. “My God. I knew you came from a good family. I had no idea you came from…”

“Your own class?” Her lips twisted in an acerbic smile that held no humor. “If my brother hadn't sold me, I'd indeed be a fit companion for your daughter.”

He frowned. “In my eyes, you are a fit companion for my daughter. Never confuse what I think with how society regards you.”

“You looked utterly sick when you saw me with Roma.”

“You know why.”

“Yes, sadly, I do.”

He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. Why did he feel he tried to conduct a conversation in a language he couldn't speak?

“Olivia, what are you trying to say? You know your background—even if more elevated than I suspected—has nothing to do with how I feel about you.”

“If my brother hadn't sold me to Lord Farnsworth after he'd offloaded every other scrap of his inheritance to feed his gambling, you and I would have known each other in a completely different context.”

He couldn't help it, whatever the risk. He reached out and untangled her twisting hands, taking one and holding it tight between both of his.

“It's too late for regrets, Olivia,” he said urgently. “You can't turn back the clock. By God, I'd call your brother out if he was still alive and put a bullet in his worthless carcass. But even if I did that, you couldn't reclaim the life you should have led. It's gone forever. Look toward a new life. With me.”

He thought she'd pull away, but she let her trembling hand rest in his. He felt the fine tremors run through her. A frantic pulse fluttered at the base of her pale throat.

“I know,” she said with such grief, his heart clenched. “But when I was a girl, I was the victim of a great injustice.”

“Yes, you were.” He curled his fingers around hers. He tried to infuse his warmth into her chilled flesh.

“Once, I could have looked as high as the Earl of Erith for a marriage partner.”

“But your life didn't…” All his words disintegrated to dust. He suddenly realized where this odd, difficult discussion led and a shard of ice pierced him. “Ah.”

“You keep telling me I'm magnificent and I'm wonderful and that you don't care what I've done. You say how you spoke to me yesterday means nothing and you respect and honor me as a woman.” The topaz eyes she leveled on him burned like fire. “Show me.”

“By marrying you.” The three stark words emerged as a death knell to his dearest hopes.

She didn't blink at the shocking suggestion, proving right his horrified guess about her completely unrealistic plan. “Yes.”

He sprang to his feet and looked at her with incredulous horror. “You're testing me. Just as you tested me when you tied me to your bed.”

“Perhaps.”

“You know this is impossible.” An inexorable chill crept over him.

“Is it?” With her free hand, she gestured around the library. “The Duke of Kylemore married Soraya.”

Kylemore was a damned fool.

Erith didn't say it aloud. She was tragically serious about this crackpot idea. He couldn't chance driving her away by dismissing it with the derision it deserved.

“Olivia, my darling, choose some other way for me to demonstrate my faith.”

She shook her head with a regretful moue of her lips. “There is no other way.”

In a burst of irritation, he swung away to face the book-lined wall. “You know I can't marry you. You've finally gone too far.”

His sudden emotion left her unmoved. Instead she spoke very evenly and with a conviction he couldn't doubt. “Then there can be nothing further between us.”

“Y
ou're not being reasonable.” Julian whirled to face Olivia. His eyes blazed with rage and determination. And heaven help her, hurt bewilderment. It was the bewilderment that pierced her to the quick. “You ask too much.”

“I know.” She raised her chin and stared him down while misery howled inside her.

Of course he couldn't marry her.

He was the Earl of Erith and she was a notorious whore. The only future their world allowed them was the one he offered. Good Lord, Soraya was a duchess and society didn't accept her.

“If you know, why pursue this nonsensical course?” Julian still glared at her as if she'd gone mad. Perhaps she had.

She sucked in a shaky breath and sought words to explain. Knowing nothing would make him understand. “In every way except one, I'm an appropriate spouse for you. Even my barrenness isn't a problem, as you already have two healthy children.”

“I have two healthy children who don't need their father to create an almighty scandal by marrying his mistress.”

He was right, but that didn't stop his response scraping across nerves raw with grief. She blinked back bitter tears. During the long unhappy watches of the night, when she'd lain awake in the huge bedroom upstairs, she'd realized what she wanted. And she'd known what she wanted couldn't come to fruition. What she wanted never did, not since that black day when her contemptible brother had sold her.

She was unjust to demand such extravagant concessions from Julian. Her intelligence hadn't completely deserted her. But her torn, keening heart didn't heed logic or the demands of propriety. Her torn, keening heart would accept nothing less than marriage as unequivocal proof of what she meant to him. Yesterday, in her stung reaction to his cruel words, she'd thought he didn't love her. But calmer reflection today had brought the realization that of course he did. The question was whether he loved her enough.

Erith killed the dragons that ravaged her life and gave her a fairy-tale ending. Or else his love was as cheap and brittle as a china trinket won at a traveling fair.

“Fuck, Olivia,” he said under his breath, running his hand through his hair again. The profanity signaled how close he was to losing control. “Don't do this to me.”

“I have to.” As a girl, she'd been worthy to marry him. In her soul, she still was. Unless he recognized that fact without shame or demurral, they had nothing. “What my brother and Lord Farnsworth did to me was heinously wrong. In my way, I've sought revenge on men ever since. Then I met you. The first man I respected. The first man who matched me. You're as strong as I. Stronger.”

“No. Not stronger.” He stared at the floor and a muscle in his cheek flickered. His voice was muffled and his fists opened and closed at his sides as if he fought the urge to shake sense into her.

“You're the first lover I don't despise.”

“I am the first lover who made you feel anything.” He looked up, and she couldn't mistake the bone-deep wretchedness in his face. Nauseating remorse made her stomach churn. She wounded him and she hated it.

“Yes.” She admitted so much with that single word.

His voice was strained. “So you lied yesterday.”

“You'd hurt me. I wanted to hurt you back. It sounds childish.” She bit her lip then forced the necessary apology out. “I'm sorry.”

“And you love me.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Isn't that enough? I love you, you love me.” He cut the air with one hand as if canceling all her objections. “What does a damned piece of paper matter? There's nothing to stop us loving each other for the rest of our lives. You're throwing away paradise for want of a grand gesture you must know I can never make.”

“But perhaps the gesture's very grandeur is all that will convince me we truly have paradise,” she whispered in despair.

Guilt lashed her like a scourge. She loathed hurting him. But nothing, not even his visible agony, could shake her adamantine determination. Only this extravagant act would show her he believed she was worthy to stand at his side.

He dropped onto the sofa and seized her trembling hands, pressing them to his chest. Under her palms, his heart pounded with frenetic speed.

“Olivia, if it were just me, I'd do it. I'd do it tomorrow. But there's Roma and William.” His grip tightened almost to the point of pain. “And there's Joanna.”

She gave a low cry and tried to wrench free but he wouldn't let her go. “You think marrying me would sully her memory.”

“The world would see it so.” His flushed face was vivid with uncomprehending anger.

“Do you care so much for the world? You say you don't think of me as a whore, but every time you open your mouth, it's clear that's what you believe.”

“Just because I won't ruin my family by marrying you?” His body was rigid with resistance to what she said. “You wouldn't exact such a price. Not you. Not the woman who protected Leo all these years and loved Perry, knowing what he is. Not the woman who tried so hard to save Roma from scandal yesterday.”

“But I need to believe you think I'm worth the price,” she choked out. “Unless you're willing to give up the world for me, I don't want you.”

She flinched as his brows lowered in a furious scowl. “You're asking more than any man can give.”

Through tight lips, she forced out the difficult truth she knew he didn't want to hear. “Kylemore did it for Soraya.”

He made a frustrated sound deep in his throat. “All due respect to his grace, but we have to live in this world you're so eager to abandon. Or at least I do. I have work in Vienna.”

“Which you've grown tired of. I saw your face when we drove through those fields the other day, Julian. You were brought up a countryman. You're still a countryman at heart.”

“Perhaps. But that doesn't mean I can humiliate my children. Good God, Roma's about to make the most brilliant match of the season. How will her new family react if her father marries the queen of the demimonde?”

Of course she cared about his children and his reputation.
Above all, she cared about him.
The price of her demand—for him, for her, for those he loved—ripped at her anew. But still her heart refused to relinquish its stubborn crusade.

Blinking away tears no longer worked. One overflowed and trailed down her cheek. “And what about me, Julian?”

“Come to Vienna.” His grip on her hands softened, became a caress. “You'll be my wife in all but name, loved and safe
and protected under the law. I'll have contracts drawn up. Property. An annuity. You'll never want for anything.”

“Except for what I really want,” she said with arid desolation. “A man who tells me, tells the world, that I'm worthy of his love.”

“Don't smash what we have because you can't have everything.” His voice lowered and the deep timbre seeped into her bones. She adored his voice. How could she live without hearing it? “I'll love you to the end of my days but I can't change the past.”

She realized she leaned toward that honeyed baritone like a starving bird craning for a crumb from the hunter's hand. She jerked back, and this time he released her without protest.

She dashed the torrent of tears from her face, but more just fell to take the others' place. Damn Julian. Before she met him, she couldn't remember the last time she'd cried.

“I want my birthright,” she said doggedly, even while her traitorous heart whispered to accept the love he offered so freely. Accept, and forget that he failed her in this ultimate trial.

“At the cost of my children's happiness? I can't believe that of you, Olivia. I can't. I know you better than that.”

Every word he spoke flung her dreams further out of reach yet only made her blindly, unreasonably determined to hold her ground. She refused to settle for second best, now that she'd discovered a real, enduring love. If she let Julian treat her as second best, that's what she'd stay forever. In his mind and in hers. Living with that knowledge day after day would crush her. More, it would crush what they felt for each other.

“I don't want to cost anyone their happiness,” she said through numb lips. Why, dear Lord, did this have to be so hard? It was like flaying herself alive. “I only know I can't live in the shadows. I deserve better. Our love deserves better. Either you're proud to own me for the entire world to see, or you don't own me at all.”

“I won't respond to threats,” he snapped, stiffening with renewed rage.

“It's not a threat,” she said sadly. “If you can't offer me marriage as a mark of the honor with which you regard me, I won't stay with you.”

His eyes narrowed. “Damn you, Olivia, you know I can't do this.”

His biting anger didn't cow her. When she spoke again, her words rang with conviction. “I know you're the man I love and you can do anything. I know how clever you are, how resolute, how strong.” Her voice roughened with urgency. “If you want it enough, you can achieve this, Julian. Make it so your children don't suffer. Make it so we're happy. Make it so we're together.”

He shook his head with horrified disbelief. “You ask the impossible.”

“If you love me, you'll make it true.” She already knew her words fell on deaf ears. As they'd always been bound to. “I ask you to do the honorable thing.”

He stared at her as if he hated her. “By making me dishonor everything else in my life.”

She looked away in swift shame. She wasn't a fool. Nothing could restore her innocence or social standing. But if Julian married her, against sense, self-interest, inclination even, she could trust him forever. She swallowed and spoke with difficulty. “If you feel like that, there's nothing more to be said.”

“So that's it?” he asked bleakly.

“Yes.”

In quivering misery, she waited for him to get up and leave, but instead he grabbed her arms and forced her to face him. Challenge sparked in his eyes.

“What about this?” he asked fiercely.

He wrenched her up and kissed her with unabashed hunger and anguish. She couldn't hide her swift and eager response.
It was the last time he'd touch her like this. She knew that in her soul.

His lips ground down on hers. He'd never kissed her so violently, not even at the heights of passion. She started to cry once more, helpless against the sorrow that held her in its talons.

“Oh, my love,” she moaned as he pushed her against the arm of the couch and clumsily shoved the blue dress up.

“Yes,” he breathed into her mouth.

Tragic to think how rare kisses had been in her life until she met him. Tragic to think how she'd miss his mouth on hers.

She didn't resist as he parted her legs and stroked her sex. Moisture bloomed and her belly clenched in swift response. How quickly he stirred her excitement. But every moment of pleasure shredded her heart. Until Erith, she'd never known this joy. After Erith, this joy would be forever denied to her.

His eyes were nearly black with desire and overmastering emotion. He trembled with desperate passion and a fierce need to persuade her with his body now words had failed. She knew why he did this. But as her own desire spiraled upward like flame, she couldn't summon the will to resist.

This was the last time.

His stare was unwavering. With deliberate slowness, he lifted his slick fingers and sucked them, savoring her with voluptuous pleasure. The sight of him tasting her so blatantly shocked her, made every muscle tighten, heated the blood in her veins to lava.

His silver eyes glinted with knowledge and unbearable need. He silently told her that both of them were prisoners to desire and she attempted escape at her peril.

“No,” she whimpered, even as she arched toward him in frenzied eagerness.

“Yes,” he said implacably. His hands were equally impla
cable as he hitched her hips high and dipped his head between her legs. He'd done this before, in those wild nights when she'd surrendered herself to love.

But something about his unhurried determination, the graceful lowering of his dark head, the hard purpose of his mouth at her core, made her shudder with new passion.

His tongue probed her sleek heat and then he took her in his mouth and sucked hard. Her body spasmed with dazzled delight and she shoved a shaking hand between her teeth to muffle her hoarse scream. She gave herself up to the blinding light. She wanted this one true love to explode to its end among the stars. When she closed her eyes, she saw radiant suns. Spinning. Dancing. Combusting. Sizzling pleasure struck her like summer lightning.

She still quaked when he began to lick her again. She was so sensitive that the faintest brush of his tongue built another climax.

This one hit hard enough to stop her heart. Without knowing what she did, her shaking hands buried themselves in his thick hair. Tears poured down her face and she bit down hard on her lower lip to stifle sobs of sorrow, cries of pleasure. A rhythmic growling sound emerged from her throat. Too soft to be heard outside the library but enough to inspire Julian to work his mouth in time with her moans.

Hold, release, hold, release.

Her hips moved toward him and back as they did when his member was buried deep in her. He gripped her thighs more firmly, parting them to give him greater access. His tongue penetrated her and her intimate muscles contracted to keep him there. Female musk surrounded them in a sensual cloud.

The climb to ecstasy started again. Before the quivering aftershocks from her previous climax subsided, his fiendishly adept mouth flung her back into a fiery sky.

“Julian!” Her voice cracked as she reached her shuddering peak. “Oh, Julian!”

She bowed up. Somewhere beyond the brilliant blaze of
sensation, like a shadow behind the sun, lurked the cruel knowledge that after the ecstasy came devastation.