The Wicked One (3 page)

She did not remove her hand.  He did not move his body.  For a long, charged moment they simply stared at each other, she on top, he on the bottom, neither willing to break eye contact first, neither willing to back down.

And then, despite herself, Eva's gaze flickered to that handsome, chiseled mouth still wearing its faint smile.  To her thumb, pressing into his throat.  How could she not admire him?  He would let her kill him before giving her the satisfaction of coughing, choking, or even letting his eyes water.

She was done here.  They had each won a round in this dangerous game of cat and mouse, but in the end the game would go to her.  She would have the last laugh.  Eva loosened her hold on him, but let her fingers remain on his throat, lightly stroking the angry red mark her thumb had left in lingering warning.

He lay half atop the pillow, his face mostly consumed by shadow — but she could see those devilish black eyes, glittering, watchful, appreciative . . .

Triumphant.

"Really, madam . . . had I known that being on top would convince you to stay, I would have suggested it far sooner."

Eva lost control of her temper.  Snarling, she tried to leap off the bed, but her foot tangled in the sheets and she crashed to the floor, arms flailing, one hand trying to break her fall.  The sheets went with her, and there — oh, thank God! — was her pistol, skittering across the cold, cold floor.

She snatched it up just as Blackheath leaped off the bed in pursuit, then she turned and fired.

The report cracked through the room.  She saw the aphrodisiac explode like a bottle of blood, and then real blood, the duke's blood, running down his leg as he staggered, took two desperate steps toward her, and fell, still pulling himself after her.

"
Eva-a-a-a!
he roared.

The game was over; there was no reason to remain.  Grabbing her canvas sack, Eva leaped to the window, shoved it wide —

And vanished.

Chapter 2

He gained his feet.

Lunged to the open window and leaned out, gripping the sill, the drapes blowing back past his thunderous face.

Nothing, except for a swinging rope and there, far below on the grass, movement; a moment later, he heard hoofbeats and she was gone.

The door burst open behind him.

"Your Grace!  I beg your pardon for disturbing you, but I could swear I just heard gunfire!  Are you all —"

Lucien turned from the window.

Phelps, his valet, took one look at the duke's leg — and, paling, leaned against the doorframe for support.  At a curt look from his master, he left the room and pounded down the stairs.

Wordlessly, Lucien moved to a chair, sat, and, reaching into a nearby drawer for a knife, proceeded to slice open the side of his breeches just above the knee.  A jagged shard of glass the length of his forefinger was deeply embedded in his outer thigh, protruding from the fabric.  Blood ran everywhere, pulsing down the leg of his breeches, overrunning the purplish blotches of the aphrodisiac like a rising flood.  Extracting his handkerchief, he gripped the wicked fragment and slowly began to pull, never flinching as the glass tore through muscle and skin on its way out, the tissue closing back around the shard as he gradually worked it free.

Blood welled more quickly now.  Red-hot pain blazed up his leg.  But it was his loins that were on fire.

Unquenchable, agonizing, fire.

He bent to retrieve his stock and was just tying it around his thigh over the wadded handkerchief when Phelps returned, one of the upstairs chambermaids in tow.

"Your Grace, I've sent a footman for the doctor.  The butler is on his way up, now."

But the maid was staring in horror at the duke's leg.  "Your Grace!  Lord save us, what 'appened to ye?"

"There was an intruder," Lucien murmured, gazing into the black rectangle of darkness into which the Comtesse de la Mouriére had disappeared.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Phelps gesture to the girl to get started on the broken glass and spilled liquid that littered the floor.  "Leave this," he added, "and go back to bed, both of you."

"An
intruder
?" the servants repeated, in surprise.

"But how on earth did he scale —" Phelps started, before another look from his master cut him short.

The duke got to his feet.  "Saddle Armageddon."

"But Your Grace, you — you're injured!"

"And call out the hounds.  Now."

Phelps looked about to protest; but he knew better than to question his master's orders, especially when the duke was in the sort of cold fury his set, hardened features currently proclaimed.  Bowing, he headed back downstairs to convey the orders, the frightened maid just behind him.  Lucien waited until they were gone, then he staggered out of the room and began his own painful journey down the tower's spiraling stone stairs.  He was halfway down when his sister, Lady Nerissa de Montforte, came charging up at the head of a column of alarmed servants, a hastily donned dressing gown around her willowy frame.

She saw his bloody leg and stifled a scream.  "Lucien!"

"Go back to bed, Nerissa."

"What has happened?"

"I said, go back to bed."

She tried to block his way, to no avail.  Servants milled about, some running forward to assist him.  He waved them away, ordering them to search the grounds and calling for his hat and greatcoat.  He heard his orders being relayed, heard Phelps pleading with him to wait for the doctor, heard others vowing to rout and destroy the intruder:  "What did he look like?"  "Where did he go?"  "What should we do, Your Grace?"  But Lucien paid them no heed, gripping the stair rail with a clenched white hand as he staggered down the last few stairs, ignoring the confusion, ignoring his pain, ignoring, even, his sister as she flew after him and gripped his arm.

"You are
not
riding that beastly horse," she declared, as he shook her off and found his pace despite the pain biting at his thigh.

"I told you, go back to bed, Nerissa."

"You need a doctor!  You need stitches!  You need rest!"

They were downstairs now, moving at considerable speed across the Great Hall, where ancient suits of armor with slitted, visored eyes stared out across the torchlit gloom in silent disapproval.  Nerissa hurried after her brother.  An army of servants swarmed after both of them, desperate to keep their master from bringing more harm upon himself.  But Lucien only continued toward the great medieval door, leaving a trail of blood on the polished marbled floor.

He pulled it open and was gone.

~~~~

Eva de la Mouriére gave the hired horse her head, sending the grey mare flying across the downs.  It was starting to rain; she felt it stinging her face, dampening the mare's hide and bringing the mingled scents of horse sweat and wet leather up from the racing animal.  She knew Blackheath would not be far behind her.  He would never let her escape so easily, and indeed, she would be disappointed in him if he let her go without a fight.  Bunching the reins in one hand, she loosened her hair, reveling in the thought that he might chase her, but would never catch her.

She had won.

Won!

She laughed, letting the rainy wind catch her flying tresses, exhilarating in the power of the horse beneath her, the knowledge that she had bested the man who, according to popular opinion, could not be outfoxed.  Ah, revenge was sweet!  Never mind the sharpness of the stirrup irons against her bare and freezing feet; never mind the scraped knees and broken fingernails.  And never mind the loss of her boots, abandoned upon her hasty escape at the base of the tower where she'd left them earlier in order to scale the walls.

The prize was worth it.

And right now, that prize was safely tucked in her saddlebags.

Another peal of laughter escaped her.  How long would it take Blackheath to realize that this time,
she
had tricked
him
?  How soon before he found that the bottle she'd used for target practice contained no love potion at all, but the substitute that he himself had made — a substitute that had kept poor King Louis of France mated to a chamberpot for the better part of a day?

From far behind, she heard the distant baying of hounds.  They would never catch her now.  Whooping with delight, Eva sent the mare flying over a low brook and disappeared into the night.

~~~~

The search turned up nothing, of course.  The Duke of Blackheath sent the mighty Armageddon galloping over the downs and along the Ravenscombe road, following hounds whose excited baying dissolved into confused yaps and whimpers when they lost the scent near a coaching inn five miles south of Lambourn.

There, he pulled the black desert-bred stallion up short as the dogs milled about in confusion.  The innkeeper, summoned from his bed, came running out in his nightcap, bowing and scraping and, in response to the duke's terse queries, apologizing for his inability to help.  Lucien set his jaw.  The clever witch must have changed horses, he thought, allowing none of the frustrated fury that made his heart pound with something almost like violence to mar his expression.  He turned away and stared off into the darkness, ignoring the innkeeper's pathetic attempts to placate his anger.  There was no scent left to follow.

She was gone.

Disappeared into the night.

Even as he loathed her, he admired her.  Wanted her.  Craved her with every cell in his body.  His loins throbbed with unrequited lust.  His memory burned with the feel of her breast in his hand, the pliancy of her lips beneath his, those incredible, slanting green eyes, flame-red hair, and fatally beautiful smile.

His mood savage, he turned back towards the castle.

He would find her, by God, and when he did, he would have her.

~~~~

"I declare, Lucien, why you don't let Dr. Highworth do that is beyond my comprehension," scolded Nerissa as she tipped brandy into a glass and stood waiting while her brother pulled the last stitch through his own leg.  Upon returning, her brother had sent the doctor away, trimmed away the bloody flaps of his breeches, and proceeded to stitch the gaping flesh shut himself, his face like stone, no wince, no hiss of pain ever escaping his hard, set lips.  Nobody but Lucien could sew up his own flesh without fainting dead away on the floor.  Nobody but Lucien could do it without benefit fo spirits, laudanum, or even a grimace of pain.

"I thought I told you to go to bed."

"Now, Lucien, you know that there is no way I could sleep knowing you were racing about the countryside losing gallons of blood."

"It is hardly gallons, and now that I have returned, I think you should be in your own rooms, not mine.  This is inappropriate."

"You're my brother, for heaven's sake, not my betrothed."

"Ah, yes."  He looked up, his eyes glowing with banked anger — and something dark and calculating that immediately made her tense with wariness.  "Speaking of which, when are you and Perry going to announce your nuptials?"

Nerissa gaped, then hastily turned away, knowing her brother's all-seeing gaze had already caught her evasive gesture.  "I'll announce it when he asks me for his hand."

"I am tired of waiting for him to make up his mind."

"Come now, Lucien.  Surely you must know that Perry's young, and still has wild oats left to sow —"

"His fields were planted long ago.  He is the Earl of Brookhampton, and neither of you are getting any younger.  I will speak to him."

"You will not!"

"I will."

Nerissa's eyes flashed.  "I will not have you interfering in my life the way you did our brothers', Lucien!  You orchestrated Gareth's and Juliet's affairs so they had to get married.  You all but dragged Charles and Amy to the altar.  And I can't even begin to forgive you for your cunning in trapping Andrew and Celsie into wedlock.  Who gave you the right to play God?"  She shook her head.  "Oh, no.  I won't have you working Perry and me like puppets.  What is between us is our own business, not yours."

"As your brother and head of this family, any business of yours is also business of mine."

"And I will thank you to stay out of it!"

Black eyes, devoid of all expression, met angry ones of Wedgewood blue.

"Besides," Nerissa added, nervously fingering the lace at her elbow, "I'd sooner remain on the shelf than suffer one of your — your
manipulations
."

"I only manipulate people for their own good."

"For their own
good
?"

"Yes."

Her face flamed with anger.  "Why, that is the most arrogant remark I have ever heard!  I know my own good, Lucien, and I won't have you moving Perry and me about like pawns on a chessboard just to suit your own purposes!"

He only smiled as he finally set the needle aside and reached for the glass of brandy she still held, its stem perilously close to shattering in her clenched hand.  "Do give me that, my dear.  You are about to cut yourself."

Nerissa relinquished it, and watched as he downed the spirits in one fluid motion.  Despite his stony expression, she sensed a roiling fury beneath his still surface, a coiled, savage tension that boded ill.  Though she suspected it was directed at another — the intruder, no doubt — Nerissa didn't care to be the current focus of it when the true target was long out of reach.  Best to extricate herself from this situation before it deteriorated any further . . .

"Since you are in an obviously foul temper, I am going back to bed," she said with as much calm as she could muster.  "But I'll leave you with one last warning, Lucien.  I want you to stay out of my affairs.  Leave Perry and me alone."

He smiled, but it was a dark smile, and there was a calculating gleam in his eyes that Nerissa knew all too well.  "Of course, my dear.  Now go to bed.  You have had enough excitement for one evening, I think."

He stood, bowed, and saw her out of his chambers.

Lucien watched her go, his gaze hooded.  She was wary, now; nervous as a rabbit.  He had no intention of staying out of her affairs, of course.  And she was right:  He was in one hell of a foul temper, a temper that craved action, any action — but, having been thwarted, now growled and paced like a caged beast within him, demanding satisfaction.