Tempted By Fire

by Thea Devine

  She supposed, later, that since both of those conditions seemed almost to be an impossibility, she might never have had to keep her promise to Therese, and then she had met Edythe Winslowe. Edythe had arrived one evening surrounded by a phalanx of admiring men who had set her to playing at the tables, funded solely by their generosity.

  Instantly, she had perceived that men were always generous to Winslowe and that here was a woman who could tell her exactly how to get on in this very perplexing world where style was everything and substance meaningless.

  She had chosen exactly right: Edythe was a Fashionable, and to be seen with her added immeasurably to a man's consequence. She had long line of attentive escorts begging for her favors, and when it all got to be too much, she invariably took herself down to Brighton and spent a few days squandering the money of one beau or another.

  It was deadly simple to become a Fashionable: one had only to flout convention and not be mealymouthed. One had to dress with distinction and preferably in an ostentatious way—which meant flaunting the body as well—and one must act as if nothing were amiss and accept all accolades and snide gossip with cool equanimity.

  "It really comes down to this," Edythe told her, "if one acts

  31

  self-assured, everyone will believe one is self-assured and will try to emulate you. Everyone is scared, my dear. When someone acts forcefully, he becomes the new paragon. And that is the secret. Always act as if you know what you are doing, even if you don't —and even if you are unsure of the consequences."

  Of course the consequences were the troubling part; Jainee was tutored in the implications of that as well: that Winslowe had many lovers and it was nothing to her how many men occupied her bed or whether they gossiped or not.

  "The fact is, the more they gossip, the more people pay attention to you," she elaborated. "One's moment in society is as brief as a throw of the dice, and how one gets along is equally as chancy. You make your moments, my dear Jainee, with style, dash, elan and some good nature, and you try to have some fun and some pleasure and not hurt too many people along the way."

  It sounded so easy —but Edythe had always made it sound easy, even from the first, and Jainee had taken all of her good advice, including a surname change to make her more acceptable to the patrons of the Alices.

  And since all the components of her somewhat nebulous plan were mere theory, she had never, barring her one unnerving night with Southam, had to deal with any problem like it since she had come to the Alices.

  On the other hand, she would be the only one involved should she find a way to implement her plan. And the only one hurt.

  But to take on Southam, especially in light of her previous experience, would be like taking on a monolith, a man equally as immovable and unknowable as any primordial statue.

  She was not afraid of him. No, she didn't think she was afraid of him. She had had her trial by fire and she had successfully vanquished him. And now she had seen him again, she could see that it was just as Edythe Winslowe had said: he was held in such esteem because he presented himself as a man to be respected and because no one knew what, if anything, went on in his private moments. He was powerful, always correct, ever honorable in all his dealings, it was said, and he was not a man to topple heel over head into any undertaking, either of the heart or the mind.

  The affair of the Emerlin girl was the sole exception and said to be the case of a man of a certain age becoming desperate to set

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  up his nursery. In truth, that had seemed to be the only answer for his uncharacteristic behavior. Or at least, so it was said.

  In any event, he was not an easy man to fathom; she could take no measure of the man from his presence at her table. He was as everyone said he was—cool and unflappable.

  And he had deliberately gone down ten thousand pounds to her.

  She felt suddenly as if fate had taken control. The thing was out of her hands completely. She knew, with no concrete evidence to support her feelings, that she had piqued Southam's interest, and that the moment was at hand to take control and make her decision.

  She turned to face Edythe Winslowe. "You are right, of course. Southam is the one. The plan will proceed."

  "You feel confident to take him on?"

  Jainee's eyes glittered at the thought. "A wonderful challenge of my abilities, madame. Your taste is impeccable as always."

  "I have never steered you wrong," Edythe Winslowe said, not without some satisfaction. She rose up to take her cape and draped it artfully around her shoulders. "Be guided by your good common sense as well, Jainee. Vengeance is sweet only when you do not have to grovel."

  "But no, madame," Jainee protested. "I plan only to kneel at the feet of a master and offer myself as the prize."

  Chapter Three

  He came again three nights later, and the first thing he saw as he entered the reception room was the tableau of the goddess dressed in gauzy blue presiding at the table in the center salon. She looked luminous, unearthly, and altogether too seductive.

  Seductive. He brushed away the sensation and handed off his greatcoat and deliberately sought the stairway to the upper floor where a variety of games were in play in the various rooms.

  He chose to sit in at the E.O. table where the wagering did not require the concentration of a card game, and laid a quick bet on the unlucky red number five, and lost that and ten more rounds in quick succession.

  Seductive. His reaction confounded him. Women were nothing to him; he could not afford to give away his heart or his emotions. Women were an evening's companion or an overnight convenience, Charlotte Emerlin notwithstanding.

  Women had tried their wiles on him; every well-heeled and pushy mother had displayed her daughter for seven ongoing seasons in the hopes of her attracting the reclusive and reluctant Southam.

  That Charlotte Emerlin seemed to have succeeded was due solely to pure calculated necessity on his part, and eventually, sooner than later, he had handed her the ammunition with j which she could —she must—in good honor break the engagement. It had been a well done ruse and it had worked well: his reputation had not suffered, it had gained a new luster as he 34

  proceeded from the clubs of London and their excellently stocked bars and rash play to the more sedate environs of Brighton where a gutter urchin turned goddess now resided in a hell of her own making.

  It defied comprehension, and he wondered why he needed to understand it at all.

  "You like everything neatly pigeonholed," Jeremy had told him. "When everything is lined up just so, like ducks on a shoot, you then have the power of deciding how to proceed so that all the advantage is on your side."

  "Truly?" Nicholas had murmured, staring into the amber lights of the liquid in his cut glass goblet. "Then how do you account for the fact I paid out ten thousand pounds to the Alices last night?"

  "Not to mention my hundred quid," Jeremy reminded him. "I don't explain anything about you, Nicholas. You are a creation unto yourself. And you don't like to lose. Yet you spend hours of an evening deliberately losing. You never seek the company of women, yet you are planning to go back to the Alices to engage this woman once again. She is the only one I know who has bested you at least once, but there is something more to that story, I wager. No, Nick— no denials. I am not asking. I know what I know."

  "You are a damned good friend, Jeremy, but you must be guided by the principle that sometimes things are not what they seem," Nicholas cautioned him ever so gently.

  Jeremy's eyes flickered. "Don't try to smokescreen me, Nick. You are the most consistent person ever, and you are fallible as most men. This past year has proved it. You made a mistake with the goddess, you made a mistake with the Emerlin, and you have run amok at the gaming tables as well."

  "You have caught me out," Nicholas agreed smoothly, and too quickly, he thought on rethinking the evening later, "and for that reason I plan to spend another evening at the Alices."

  That bald statem
ent of intent left Jeremy with nothing to say, as he knew it would. Jeremy was too perceptive by half; it was damned wearisome taking Jeremy by the leading strings and pulling him off the path. 35

  But the die was cast and he was back at the Alices for that very reason. And the goddess was the furthest thing from his mind, now he was immersed in play.

  ******************

  "Do you know who is here?" Lady Truscott demanded in an undertone against Jainee's ear.

  "I saw him, madame. He made to go upstairs, but I am sure the Faro table will lure him before the evening is out."

  "Perhaps you should lure him," Lady Truscott whispered, and then discreetly withdrew from Jainee's side before she could respond to this outrageous suggestion.

  But she did not give Lady Truscott the satisfaction of detecting any visible movement of dissent. Nevertheless, her heartbeat accelerated and her limbs felt just a tremor of weakness at the thought of approaching Southam and tempting him into a game.

  But which game, she wondered, as she delicately slid the cards from their compartment and placed them one-two on the piles beside the box.

  She had dressed herself over these past nights with the express intent of captivating his interest and to advance her own program. Still, in the abstract, she did not feel any sense of danger. It was easy to sacrifice oneself to an idea, a promise. To do it in reality was another matter altogether and one she had wrestled with for these three days and nights.

  But now Southam had put in an appearance, there seemed to be an electric excitement in the air. It weighed on her. She felt it and she knew that in a very short few weeks, that atmosphere would dissipate with the oncoming London Season. The ton would depart Brighton and everything would slow down until the next time the Prince took it into his head to come down when he felt bored.

  And then she would be bored, and she didn't want —she didn't want ... a rebellious little thought snaked its way into her mind. She didn't want to be there when the fashionable crowd had gone.

  No! The notion was positively mutinous, especially because 36

  of what she felt she owed Lady Truscott. She didn't know where the thought had come from; she almost missed pulling a card because she was so distracted.

  How ungrateful would she be just to walk away from the Alices?

  You want to be in London this season coming, the traitorous little voice pursued her. You do not want to be here.

  But the real truth was, she didn't know where or what she wanted to be and she was so annoyed with herself for letting the idea get a grip on her thoughts that she motioned to another hostess to take her place because she could not concentrate on the game.

  Lady Truscott nodded approvingly from across the room as she relinquished her chair, and she motioned subtly toward the upper floor, as if to indicate that Southam had not returned downstairs since he had entered.

  She lifted her chin and went in the opposite direction, toward the dining room where supper was laid out. A small crowd of hungry pleasure seekers were helping themselves to the tempting array of viands on the tables.

  Everyone knew her. It took but a week for those who became instant habituιs to form an easy relationship with her. Everyone was aware of the tacit rules and everyone complied, except in the rare instance when Lady Truscott was the arbiter of a situation and someone like Southam was involved.

  Oh, but best not to think about that. She would not pursue Southam. She would wait until fate put him once again in her hands. She could handle him, cunning as he was. He was a true example of how the English revered outward appearances. It was even easy to enumerate why society fawned over the man—he had a great deal of countenance, forbidding though it was, a great deal of money, and an overall touch-me-not disdain that could only provoke society into wanting to do the exact opposite.

  But she, she was not of this society, and she could not be fooled more than once either. She even thought there was a small part of her that wanted a little revenge for the shameful way he had sought to use her the time before. 37

  Swear to me ... on my dying body . . . The words were engraved in her consciousness and came to mind when she was most stressed, most in anguish. Therese had provided her with a clear mandate and no way to escape the ramifications.

  Southam it must be, and she knew she had decided this three days before, despite her initial trepidation. But it had occurred to her that this plan of offering herself to Southam was no more or less iniquitous than Caroline Murat offering to intercede for her with her brother, who had made it abundantly plain that he wanted her to share his bed.

  And Therese's words haunting her once again: "The best way to love them is to strike a bargain with them . . ." It was true; in this year of her arrival in England she had seen the evidence of the fact that a woman must not lose her heart and must keep her wits about her at all times.

  Within Lady Truscott's shelter, no less than three women over the course of a year had fallen in love, desperate love, unrequited love, punishing love. One had followed her lover-soldier to war; the other had not been able to make the lord of a noble house take notice of her and pined for him till this day; the third had been abused by a lover who had abandoned her and left her with a woman's price to pay.

  Wise Therese. A woman must pay. No man ever nursed a broken heart; there was always someone to pick up the pieces. How had Therese known that? It was not possible she could be so shrewd and so foolish.

  Her daughter was not foolish. Her daughter, Jainee often thought, had managed her mother and their life together very well. And she was not going to throw it away.

  Nor was she going to ignore her deathbed promise to Therese. She had gotten this far, and now the means were at hand to put her in a position to begin the search for her father and the child who was her half-brother.

  She smiled at a gentleman who had kindly offered to procure a plate of cold meat for her and nodded her assent.

  It struck her that life was a circle, a roulette wheel, if it came to that. One spun out one's life and one took chances and wherever the wheel stopped became the place 38

  from which one had to begin anew.

  Everyday there was a new chance and a new decision.

  Now she must take hers and make hers. Behind her, as she accepted the plate of food she did not wish to eat, she heard a stir, and whispered wash of sound, a name—his name.

  She set down the plate —she would be at a distinct disadvantage with something in her hands —and she turned slowly.

  There was Southam, tall, forbidding, dressed in his habitual severe black, framed in the doorway, his incisive gaze slashing through every last person in the room and finally coming to rest on her.

  ******************

  She was nothing less than Circe. For one infinitesimal moment, he was utterly transfixed by the sight of her.

  She was all in blue, as usual, gowned in evening dress that consisted of a silken tunic draped over an underdress of silver blue sarcenet that was caught between her breasts with a small round silver pin. Her hair was piled in artful disarray on her head and in her curls she wore a silver diadem with a blue stone embedded in the center point. Two broad silver bracelets surrounded her wrists to give her the contradictory aspect of a woman bound.

  His sense of that was emphasized by the fact she was no pocket venus. The goddess was unfashionably tall, a fact not obvious at the gaming table; the top of her lustrous head would graze his chin, and he could drown in those amused and knowing fiery blue eyes if he even gave into the compulsion of his curiosity.

  But he was never a man to do that. The woman, impressive though she was, was negligible to him. He had come for an evening's play, nothing more, and he disliked the bold look in her eyes that told him plainly that she, in spite of their brief past history, was not afraid of him.

  "Good evening, my lord."

  Yes, her head came right up to the underside of his jaw. Damn it.

  "Madame," he said dismissively. 39

&nb
sp; "I profess I am surprised you have returned so soon to the tables, my Lord."

  "You need not be," he said, and the reproof was that much more stinging for the mild tone of voice in which he uttered it.

  She was taken aback for a moment by his rudeness. But it was meaningless to her: she was the only one with nothing to lose. And he, from his guarded expression, did not wish to pursue any further conversation, and his insolence made her all the more determined to have at him in any way she could.

  "Then perhaps you would not be averse to another contest between us," she suggested, not backing off one inch as he expected she would.

  "I think not," he said curtly, hoping that this set-down would remove her from his path.

  She smiled and looked around at the small knot of people who were pretending to eat and covertly listening to this juicy exchange.

  "Well, I can perfectly understand that, my lord. You did sustain an amazing loss for an evening's play," she said kindly, her voice dripping with innuendo. She saw this tack take him by surprise. He had not expected retaliation, nor that she would turn the tables on him so neatly that he would look churlish.

  "I wish you luck this evening, my lord, and I hope you will do me the honor of playing at my table again —sometime." She gave him her most benign look, and she was overjoyed to see that her hesitation was not lost on him, nor the implication of what she was saying.

  The English were ever so —she could see he was intensely aware of those in the room and the fact that they had most likely and impolitely overheard the conversation. In that one moment, he had seen himself reduced in their eyes because of his reluctance to commit himself to play with her.

  And so, because appearances meant everything, he protested, "You mistake me, madame. I am always willing to play, even when I seem to be at a disadvantage."

  Oh, how he weighed his words for the eavesdropping dinner guests. He was a clever man, Southam; he hadn't expected to be backed into a corner by anyone, ever, least