TheCharmer (4 page)

"Prove it," Collis taunted with a gleam in his eyes. "Here and now. Prove that you deserve to be a Liar before me!"

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "I have nothing to prove to you, Collis Tremayne. To Kurt perhaps and certainly to his lordship—but I could quite happily go to my grave without knowing or caring for your opinion of me."

He came closer—a bit too close for her peace of mind—and smiled seductively at her. "So you aren't a bit curious?" His voice was soft and deep. Oh, she was curious all right. Curious about the way his taut skin rippled over his hard belly. The way his training trousers hung just a bit too low on his lean hips, showing that intriguing path of fine hairs that led—

"No," she blurted.

"I doubt that. Don't you want to find out who the best Liar is, once and for all?"

Rose knew who the best Liar was, but she didn't think it would do him any good for her to give in to his outrageous bullying. If he ever decided to give the club his all, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind who was the best Liar who had ever lived.

Yet in the past months, the seeds of hope that she had kept protected all those years had germinated into a bright-blooming pride. He was good, but maybe, just maybe, so was she.

He grinned at her hesitation. "I double-damn dare you."

The childish dare only spiked her new self-respect. She was not about to let an arrogant, light-minded lout like Collis Tremayne take that away from her.

She raised her chin and gazed at him, keeping her expression cool. "Very well, then, blueblood. Have at."

The sabers were first. Rose had chosen them, to Collis's surprise. But doubtless Rose was aware that she would only be able to defend against his strength while she was relatively fresh. There were less heavy weapons to tackle later.

Collis had to admit to some surprise that she'd taken him up on his challenge. Rose's usual response to his teasing was to toss her head and pretend disdain, all the while coloring slightly in her fair cheeks.

Yet she had called his bluff, and now he was going to have to defend his masculine honor with a bout of swordplay. If his fencing master could see him now, challenging a
girl
! Collis grinned as Rose tossed him his saber, hilt first. He caught it absently, the metal pommel cool in his hand, while he watched her assume a defensive stance.

"Don't take it too hard when you lose, Briar Rose," he teased. "I won't tell if you won't."

Her eyes narrowed. "All mouth and no trousers, Tremayne."

Oh, that did it. Collis stepped forward to sweep his blade whistling through the air. She raised hers to parry, and Collis saw her eyes widen as she felt the force of his strike.

He still felt somewhat clumsy with the saber without the use of his left arm for balance. In any case, this was no elegant fencing match. Liars were taught to use weapons solely to stop or kill. There were no rules but that of prevailing for the Crown. Although Rose was deadly quick, she was hardly a physical match for him.

Clumsy as his left arm might be, his right was as strong as it had ever been. He gave her no quarter, hacking at her with the dulled blade until she was very likely black-and-blue beneath the padded suit she'd donned. He finally hesitated mid-swing, beginning to feel sorry for her—

Until she disarmed him with a neat twist of her sword that pulled the sword hilt from his hand and sent his weapon spinning into the shadows. Collis froze in surprise, staring at his empty hand with jaw dropped.

Rose knew she ought to have moved in to riposte, but she only stood before him with blade sagging, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Kurt had shown her that trick only yesterday and she'd scarcely had the strength left to execute it after the pasting Collis had given her. He'd not given her an inch, openly using the advantage of his superior strength against her. She found herself obscurely hurt by that.

Rose went to the weapons rack to hang up her sword and kit. Only this morning she might have fetched Collis's to the rack as well, trying in some small way to lessen the sting of losing. Her shoulders straight despite her weariness, she turned to face him.

"Are we quite finished?"

He shoved his dark hair back with his good hand and grinned at her, his white teeth flashing in his tanned face. "What's the matter, Briar Rose? Worried you can't do it again?"

As quickly as the simmering anger within her came to a boil, Rose reached behind her to the rack and sent a throwing blade spinning through the air to thud quivering into the straw-filled mat between Collis's feet.

He jumped back, clapping his hand protectively before his groin. "Bloody hell!"

Kurt was going to glower frighteningly when he saw that slit in the canvas. He was a demon about the upkeep of the arena. Still, Collis's shock was worth every minute that she would spend repairing the mat. Her lips twitched at his defensive pose.

"I wasn't anywhere near the Etheridge jewels. Honestly, Collis, you
do
have delusions of grandeur, don't you?" She raised one eyebrow in a sterling imitation of Sir Raines's butler, Pearson. She knew Collis hated that, which was why she had practiced it before her mirror until she'd perfected it.

Collis saw that blasted eyebrow rise all right. He felt his face flush as he bent to pull the knife from the mat. "My turn to choose, Miss Thorn." He approached her slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. It was beneath him to enjoy that flicker of apprehension he saw there. Low and dishonorable.

But sweet.

He came so close that he could smell the subtle scent of her hair. Was that lavender? She didn't move a muscle as he reached behind her to hang up the knife. He smiled slowly. "And I choose…" He let his voice trail off to a whisper as he stepped closer still.

To his surprise, Rose didn't so much as twitch. Most women he knew would have giggled or quivered or otherwise reacted to him being so close. Rose, it appeared, was made of sterner stuff.

Rose steadied her nerves with all the will in her soul. She would not react, would not give the advantage. The
Wadsworth
men had done their worst and hadn't broken her. Collis Tremayne was a rank amateur in comparison.

Except for that tiny portion of her that quivered at his closeness, that noted the virile scent of well-warmed man, that longed to push that single dark lock back from his forehead, that was achingly aware of his near nakedness…

Rose pulled herself from that fruitless world of fantasy with an exertion of will. "Having trouble finishing a sentence, Tremayne?" She affected a bored tone. "Then again, the aristocracy doesn't precisely breed for brains, does it?"

One corner of his mouth twitched at that. For a moment, she thought he might actually laugh. Then his expression returned to that sly, knowing smile that swayed so many women but only left her cold. Well, at least hardly warm at all. Mostly.

"I've an idea," he said. "Why don't you wrap your hands around my thick… hard…" He plucked a weapon from the rack. "Staff?"

Dancing back a few steps, he assumed attack position with a six-foot oak quarterstaff in his hands. Rose barely had time to fumble behind her for another before the swish of his first blow went over her head and glanced off her shoulder.

Numbness shot through her arm and she almost lost her grip on the staff. Unable to bring it up to block him, she took advantage of his next swing to duck beneath his outstretched arms and roll past him.

Of course, she couldn't pass up the chance to slap him across the backs of his knees with her own stick. His balance faltered, and he stumbled, although he did not go down.

Fry it, she should have hit him harder. Still, his stumble gave her the chance to stand matched against him, braced for attack, although her arm still tingled to the bone.

He was very good with the staff. This was one area where his wounded arm did not seem to hinder him at all. In fact, she had seen him turn to take a blow on that arm more than once, making his lack of sensation work to his advantage.

She hadn't a hope against him. The staff was not her best weapon against someone with longer reach and height—which included almost everyone.

The only way to win this was to back from his blows, making him waste strength until he slowed or made a mistake. The impact of stick on stick rang through the bones of her hands and arms as she tried to strategize. She only needed to be careful not to let him back her into a—

The rack of sparring dummies came up against her back. Bloody hell indeed. She twisted under Collis's unrelenting blows, trying to slip through the rack between the dummies. But some light-minded trainee had dressed the dummies in bits of stolen French uniforms. Rose's sleeve caught on the buttons of one jacket while her hair snagged in the pins holding the tattered epaulets in place. The rack of dummies came tumbling down.

Rose went with it. To add to her defeat, as she rolled into the disintegrating rack she felt Collis's staff give her a brisk wallop across her buttocks. "Point to me," he crowed.

As she sat up amid the wreckage, she wasn't sure what smarted more, her pride or her rear.

"Give up, O Thorny One?"

He was leaning on his staff like a shepherd with his crook, grinning at her. Rose felt her chest rising and falling like a bellows. Collis wasn't even breathing heavily.

The rat.

Part of Rose wanted to quit. Let him win, for what did it matter? His sort would always win in the end. Power and wealth won out, especially when paired with top-drawer lineage and dark-angel magnificence.

Then again, why should she let him win this? He'd been handed the world the moment he'd been born. Perhaps it was her turn.

"My turn." She stood and walked past him to the weapons rack. They'd used swords and staffs, and she didn't want to go hand-to-hand again. There were daggers aplenty, mostly dulled. The only weapons on the rack kept sharp were the small, gleaming throwing knives. Rose inserted her fingers between the hilts of the six remaining knives, lifting three in each hand like a circus showman. They were her best weapon and Kurt had taught her well.

She turned and nodded at Collis, her hands hidden at her sides. "Take a step to your left, if you please."

He only frowned at her.

She tilted her head and shrugged. "As you wish."

The knives flew past Collis with such rapidity that they thudded into the wall behind him with a sound like hail on the roof. After the first shining weapon had spun through the air between them, Collis had frozen. He had no choice but to trust to Rose's accuracy after he'd been too slow to realize he stood directly before the cork target mounted on the wall.

Come to think on it, it wasn't so alarming. Rose hadn't missed her target in a very long time. Collis knew if he turned now, he would see an outline of himself sketched in small, deadly knife hilts.

Instead of turning, he merely dropped his staff and took three steps directly backward until his back was pressed to the large target. Unlike the concentric circles on an archery target, this one was painted in the silhouette of a man with different regions labeled:

KILL, MAIM, and DISARM.

Rose had ignored those grim designations, as Collis could tell by the knife hilts that rode on both of his shoulders, astride his hips, and—oh,
hell
—snugly between his thighs.

Only five. He raised one hand to reach over his head. Six. He plucked the sixth knife from the cork to settle the blade between his fingertips.

Rose had never moved from before the weapons rack. She stood there with that blasted arch look upon her face and spread her arms like the target painted behind him.
I dare you
, that look said to Collis.

Unfortunately, he didn't dare. He wasn't bad with the knives, but at this distance he didn't have Rose's accuracy. To be honest, he'd never truly applied himself to the knives, concentrating instead on more manly pursuits like the sword and hand-to-hand. He actually wasn't all that accomplished with the staff, either. He'd simply bludgeoned Rose out of that match.

So, as much as he would love to send the knives whizzing past her to wipe that expression from her smug little features… he couldn't risk it.

He might want to kill her, but he didn't want to
kill
her. Instead, he turned at the last moment to send the knife into one of the wooden pillars that supported the school above them. They weren't much wider than Rose, so some accuracy was required. The hilt sank deep. "One."

He sent knives into the next four pillars as quickly as he could pluck them from the wall behind them. Not bad. His pride rising with every thud, he stopped to grin suggestively at Rose before pulling the last knife from between his legs.

She wasn't even watching. She stood with her arms folded, staring at the floor with a bored expression, twisting the toe of one shoe into the mat.

With a growl, Collis tossed the last knife, barely glancing at his target first. Then he looked quickly back in horror as his blade flew with perfect accuracy—

Into the rope that suspended the chandelier.

The chandelier that must weigh eighty stone in all.

The chandelier that hung high over the head of Rose, who was now bending to look at the floor.