Tempting a Devil (32 page)

Without thinking, she jerked her head away from his hateful touch. “No,” she said.

“No?” he asked in genuine confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I will marry you, but I will not lay with you ever again.” She spoke very clearly. He didn’t want her, just the money, and marriage alone would suffice for that.

“But you must,” he said simply. “An unconsummated marriage is not legal. Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t think I’ll give you the opportunity to seek an annulment, do you?”

She stared at him aghast and couldn’t keep the revulsion from her face. He saw it,
and he enjoyed it. “I liked that you were miserable,” he said with satisfaction. “A woman’s place is to please a man, not the other way around. Your enjoyment had absolutely nothing to do with our bedding.”

“Obviously,” she said stoically, while inside she was cringing. How would she get through it again? She’d sworn never, ever to do that. And now that she knew what it could be, what it was with Roger … she shuddered and her stomach heaved.

“I will enjoy keeping a baby in your belly,” he said, walking around the room, picking up objects and inspecting them before putting them back. “I’m sure it won’t be a problem to get you pregnant, as I’ve done it before, haven’t I?” He peeked coyly at her over his shoulder, as if expecting her to compliment his braggadocio. “And you do well enough on your knees that I can perform my husbandly duties on a fairly regular schedule.” He turned and pointed. “But don’t expect me to be faithful, my dear.” He preened in front of a dingy mirror. “My affections are quite popular among the ladies, don’t you know.”

“I will not lay with you,” she said, enunciating each word. “It is not necessary. I cannot prove the marriage unconsummated since I am not a virgin.”

He paused to consider her words, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. When I was fucking you at your husband’s request, you were a compliant, docile cow. Now look at you.” He held out his hand with a look of disgust. “No, I think you need the humiliation of it to be a biddable wife.”

He was on the far side of the room, behind the sofa. Harry rose and nonchalantly took a step toward the door. If she could escape to Covent Garden, she could fetch Roger. Faircloth wouldn’t hurt Mercy as long as he believed he needed him alive to get the
money. She had to believe that. To stay here and follow through with his schemes was madness. “I will be a biddable wife without it,” she promised, letting her fear slip into her voice.

“I doubt that,” Faircloth said. He looked up at her and frowned, noting her nearness to the door. Before he could react, she ran for the door and pulled it open. With a bellow of rage he came behind her. She’d barely dashed through the door when she was yanked off her feet by his hand in her skirt. She slammed against the floor, landing on her side and cracking her elbow on the wooden planks. She gasped and tried to roll away, but Faircloth kicked her in her side and hauled her to her feet by her hair.

“I think perhaps you need a lesson in humiliation now,” he hissed in her ear. She struggled against his hold but he ruthlessly dragged her back to the parlor and threw her on the sofa facedown. He sat on her back and she was helpless, unable to fight him, barely able to breathe. “I had a case of the French disease, you know,” he told her, his breathlessness a testament to how strongly she’d fought him, “about a year after leaving you and Mercer. Too much wine, women, and song, I suppose, with the money Mercer gave me to impregnate his breeder. Lucky for you it’s cleared up now.”

She renewed her struggles but he lay down full against her back, shoving his knees between hers, ripping her dress in the process. He put an arm against the back of her neck, forcing her face down into the sofa cushion. She no longer struggled, fighting just to breathe. She could hear him as he rustled with his clothing, squirming on top of her, and she knew what he was going to do. She simply shut down her mind and focused on breathing. If she survived this, she vowed to herself she would find a way to kill him.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Roger left his horse several doors down from Faircloth’s. He didn’t want to alert anyone to his arrival. He slunk behind a garden wall across the street from the row of flats where Faircloth lived. There were two fellows skulking about in the stairwell that led down to the kitchen near Faircloth’s door. They were half hidden in the shadows, but not well enough.

“I see two,” a voice said quietly behind Roger. He spun around and Wiley grinned at him in the dark. “You got here fast,” he said.

“I raced here when I got back to Manchester Square and found her gone,” Roger said incredulously. “How did you get here so quickly?”

Wiley frowned. “I was here already, keeping an eye on Faircloth. When they all showed up, I sent Bardsley and Chuckles to get you.”

“They got me. They failed to mention you were already here.” He was ridiculously glad to see the other man. “I sent them to fetch you and Hil.”

Wiley cursed. “Those two are going to be the death of us all,” he said, spitting on the ground in disgust. “We’ll be lucky if they make it to Hil’s.”

“What did you see?” Roger asked, turning back to the house. The two men were whispering furiously in the stairwell.

“He’s got ’em all right,” Wiley said unhappily. “Whiskers—Thom Baker by name—was carrying little Mercy, and Faircloth had Lady Mercer.”

“Had?” Roger asked, dreading the answer. “What condition was she in?”

“Fine, as far as I could tell,” Wiley told him. “She was walking and talking on her own, though Faircloth had ahold of her arm, dragging her inside. Been quiet ever since.”

Roger took the first solid breath he’d had since he pushed open the unlocked door at Manchester Square. “What about those two?” he asked, pointing to the stairwell. “How do we incapacitate them?”

“How do we what?” Wiley asked. “Christ Almighty. If you want to know how to get rid of ’em, we talk.”

“Talk?” Roger said incredulously. “They don’t look much as if they care for conversation.”

Wiley shrugged. “Don’t know ’em, but know the type. They’re here for the money. Don’t much care where it comes from, see? So if you offer them money, they’ll walk. They don’t really care what the whole thing is about.”

“And how am I supposed to offer them money I haven’t got?” Roger asked in exasperation. “Do you think I made a stop at the Bank of England on the way?”

Wiley sighed and reached into his waistcoat. He pulled out a stack of notes that made Roger’s eyes bulge. “What on earth?” he asked in a harsh whisper.

“A man’s got to be prepared,” Wiley told him, waving the money at him. “And I don’t have an account at the Bank of England.” He looked perturbed and then blurted out, “I’ve still got a bit of business going on, all right? Picked up my take tonight.”

“Quite frankly I don’t care where it came from,” Roger said honestly, “if it will help me get Harry and Mercy out of there.”

Wiley winked at him and then began to saunter across the street.

* * *

There was a pounding on the door and Faircloth hesitated above her. Harry’s vision was fading as she gasped into the sofa. She knew she was on the verge of unconsciousness because she couldn’t breathe properly, but she had a curious sense of disassociation from events. There was a crash and Faircloth hollering above her, tearing at her skirts, and then suddenly he was gone and she rolled off the sofa to the floor, where she lay gulping in great, huge breaths of precious, stale, smoke-filled air.

The noise finally drew her attention. Faircloth was fighting with someone … Roger. Oh, thank God, Roger had come. She sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The left one gave out, still aching from the fall she took on the stairs at Manchester Square. She ached all over, but grasped the edge of the sofa and pulled herself up to a standing position just in time to see Faircloth hit Roger on the shoulder with something, and Roger going down on one knee. Faircloth ran, but not out of the room. Instead he hurried past her to a small secretary in the corner and yanked something from a drawer.

It was a gun. “Roger!” she screamed, but she knew it was too late. As Faircloth aimed, she lurched toward him and the gun went off. She felt a stinging pain in her arm but ignored it and threw herself on Faircloth, slamming into him so hard, they both went down, falling too close to the fire. There was a sickening sound, like air in a tunnel, and then her skirt was aflame, leaping over to Faircloth’s lacy jacket cuff and up his arm.

“Harry!” Roger yelled, dragging her away from the fire and rolling her around on the carpet, his hands batting out the flames. Faircloth rose to his feet behind them, screaming as he tried to rip his burning clothes off. Roger tucked her face into his shoulder, holding her there. “Don’t look!” he shouted.

She didn’t.

* * *

Mercy slept beside her. She hadn’t let him out of her sight since Wiley had brought him down the stairs at Faircloth’s the night before. She’d tried to take him in her arms but couldn’t, so Wiley had ridden home in the carriage with them, holding Mercy next to her.

Roger sat beside the bed, watching them sleep, his hands shaking. He’d almost lost her. Not just to Faircloth’s machinations, but she’d almost died. The bullet she’d taken for him could have done it, or the fire. But from what she’d said, she’d been suffocating when Faircloth held her down on the sofa as he tried to rape her. The Godforsaken bastard probably wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late.

He pulled an errant strand of her soft hair out of her eyelashes with his shaking hand, resisting the urge to touch the angry bruise on her cheek. Instead, he got up from the chair and wiped a hand over his sweating face. He never, ever wanted to see something like that again. When he’d seen the tableau that greeted him after he and Wiley together broke down Faircloth’s door, he’d been filled with a rage so profound that he’d wanted to kill. He’d tried, but Faircloth must have known this time he was fighting for his life. If it wasn’t for Harry, Roger would be dead right now.

“How is she?” Hil whispered from the bedroom doorway.

Roger motioned him out and then went to meet him in the hall. “Exhausted, sore. He beat her rather severely, and she has bruises, a swollen knee and elbow, and the gunshot wound, which was only a scratch, thank God.” He leaned weakly against the wall. “This is my fault.”

Hil shook his head. He looked as weary and guilt-ridden as Roger felt. “No, it is mine. I should have foreseen this. I met with him, I knew he was unbalanced. I should
have known his mental state would result in something desperate. But I wanted to do things Lady Mercer’s way. I didn’t want to get the authorities involved. And I wanted you to save the day. Although I assumed by marriage, not that you’d actually have to save her life.” He looked at Roger apologetically. “It was a dangerous and foolish mistake.”

“Yes, Machiavelli, it was,” Roger snapped. “The next time you want a fellow to marry a girl, just tell him. You and your matchmaking.”

“I will,” Hil promised.

“I’m glad you showed up when you did,” Roger conceded. “How’s Faircloth?”

“Burned, bitter, ranting,” Hil said tiredly. “His father came and got him after Lavender went around there. He’s going to nurse him back to health in time for the trial, I suppose.”

“Harry doesn’t want a trial and neither do I. She’s been through enough.”

“Agreed. I’ll talk with the authorities and with Faircloth’s father. I think I can get them all to agree to send him away, preferably to Botany Bay. If not, Canada perhaps, or America.”

“I pity those places,” Roger said grimly, “but not Faircloth. And the other one? The one who had Mercy?”

“Ran, as Wiley said. Offered no resistance, just took off. Lavender says we’ll probably never find him. He most likely left with the tide. How are you?”

“Furious. Guilty. Sore.” He put a hand to his shoulder and rotated it painfully. “He got me with a cane.”

“Sloppy fighting,” Hil admonished. “How did you let him get a cane?”

“I was too busy trying to see if Harry had started breathing again,” Roger said peevishly. He stood away from the wall. “Look, where’s Wiley? I owe him.”

“I have repaid him,” Hil said drily. “He informed me to the penny what you owed.”

Roger was glad for the laughter that prompted. “That’s fine, then. He’s a good one, Hil. You were right.”

“Of course I was,” Hil said. “Tonight was an unfortunate exception to that rule.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

Harry came awake slowly, luxuriating in the warm, soft covers of her bed. She started to roll over and was brought up short by aches and pains everywhere. “Oh,” she cried out with a hiss.

Immediately there was a hand on her forehead, brushing her hair back. “Are you all right?” Roger asked quietly.

She opened her eyes as he sat down on the bed beside her. He looked ragged. “How long have I been asleep?” she asked in dismay.

“Only a few hours,” Roger said, puzzled. “Why?”

“Well, you look as if you haven’t slept in days,” she chided him.

His grin was lopsided. “I haven’t, if you’ll remember correctly. Last night was supposed to be my night to catch up.”

She tried to sit up and Roger helped plump her pillows behind her back. She was so sore he had to practically lift her against them. “Where’s Mercy?” She actually wasn’t very worried. Roger was here and so she knew Mercy was safe.

“Wiley has him up in the nursery. He’s quite good with him. I suppose because he’s a father himself.”

“Sir Hilary told me. But he’s so young.”

“A very long story,” Roger said. “But Mercy is fine. We just didn’t want him to wake you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” Roger said at the same time, then looked surprised. “Why?”

“What for?” she asked at the same time. They both laughed. “You first,” she said.

“I’m sorry. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t left you and Mercy unprotected.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she declared, indignant on his behalf. “This entire episode was Faircloth’s fault. We should never have had to be protected in the first place.”