by Sara Ramsey
“Milk, no biscuits,” Octavia said. She was trying to be the woman Lord Rafael knew in London. If she had biscuits with her tea, she might remember the girl she had been.
Barker nodded and left. She returned the full force of her gaze to the man across from her. She leaned in, as though she had the most delicious secret to share with him — one that would change his life, if he let it.
Men couldn’t help but be lured in by that. He leaned forward. “And so, Madame Octavia. We don’t know precisely why I am here. But I want to know why you are here.”
She tilted her head, letting the anticipation build. “Here in Devonshire? My family has an estate. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it?”
He didn’t laugh. “Here, in this inn, at my table, preparing to drink my whisky.”
The innkeeper returned with a fresh glass and a promise that the tea would be out in a moment. She let Lord Rafael pour her two fingers of whisky. She took a sip before she responded. The whisky burned her throat, but the warmth gave her courage — reminded her of the woman she was in London. Madame Octavia drank whisky, even though Miss Briarley never would have tried the stuff.
When she judged that she’d let the right amount of silence build between them, she looked directly into his eyes. “I am going to destroy Lucretia Briarley and ruin her chances at marriage. And I need your help to do it.”
* * *
Was it ridiculous that he was disappointed?
If Octavia Briarley was there to see him, there could only be two reasons why. The first would be to make a preemptive offer for him — to suggest that they marry and try to win Maidenstone Abbey together.
That was pure foolishness. The other guests would come from the highest reaches of the ton. Octavia was too smart to throw her chances away on a second son before she met the other candidates.
The second option was that she was looking for a new protector. Rafe had considered that angle when Somerville had abandoned her. If he had offered to make her his mistress, he might have learned what he needed.
But again, that was foolishness. Octavia could command the highest possible price — carriages, houses, jewels, and every other gift that a protector could buy a mistress. Rafe didn’t want to waste his whole fortune on the extravagant demands of one of London’s top courtesans.
Still, when Octavia sipped his whisky and turned those dark eyes on him, he was willing to reconsider. And he’d been sure she was about to proposition him….
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
She leaned in even closer. “I’m going to destroy Lucretia,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Or at least make sure she doesn’t win Maidenstone.”
“I heard that. But why do you need my help?”
“I need an ally inside Maidenstone. Lucy won’t let me through the door and the servants are all loyal to her. I’ve been trying to get in for weeks and haven’t found a way. But you could help me to find the holes in her armor.”
Rafe frowned. “Are you not coming to the party?”
“I was not invited.”
She said it calmly, but he heard the bitterness in her voice. “I thought all living Briarleys were in competition for the estate.”
“They are. My grandfather’s will was clear on that. He didn’t strike me from the game despite my reputation.”
“Given how scandalous every other Briarley generation has been, I would have guessed he’d give you the estate because you ruined yourself.”
Perhaps it wasn’t polite to say that she was ruined. But Octavia laughed. “Grandfather loved me more because of my reputation, it’s true. He called me a bold, ruinous minx when I decided to become Somerville’s mistress. Then he hugged me rather than beating me. That didn’t sit well with Lucy.”
She sounded smug about that. He filed the tidbit away. “So why won’t you be at the house party?”
The innkeeper returned with their tea. He bustled around them, likely hoping to hear more, but neither of them spoke until he was gone. Then, as Octavia poured, she said, “Grandfather may have applauded my audacity, but he was devastated when my brother died. Julian was his sole surviving heir. He gave his blessing to my arrangement with Somerville, but that didn’t mean that he entirely forgave me for the indiscretion that led to Julian’s death.”
He took his cup from her, mulling over the possibilities. “If you were kept in the will, he must have meant for you to have as much of a chance at the inheritance as Lucretia does. Or the other cousin…what’s her name?”
He knew the name, but he didn’t want Octavia to know how much he had studied her. “Callista,” she said. “I haven’t seen her since we were children. The last report we had of her, she was living in Baltimore and managing her dead father’s shipping company. Not quite the thing, of course. But I’d rather see an American inherit than let Lucretia win.”
Rafe leaned back against the wall. The tea was a welcome change from the whisky. “So Lucretia didn’t invite you to the party and you want to destroy her. Is that the sum of it?”
Octavia nodded. “That’s the sum of it. I would murder her if I could, but it’s a messy business and I don’t want to risk ruining a dress.”
Her voice was entirely too light for what she was discussing — but then, she was anything but conventional. Rafe laughed.
And he felt his interest in her stir again.
He looked into her dark eyes and tried to remember that she was the enemy — or, at least, that she had made her bed with his enemy. “If I am to help you, I must know precisely what you would have me do and what you’re offering me in return. You said you could help me?”
“Is there a payment my lord would prefer?”
It was the kind of comment one might expect from a courtesan — pure sin, wrapped in the sultry silk of her voice. But while the undercurrent between them held a thread — multiple threads — of seduction, Rafe sensed a trap.
He had too much bitter experience in Spain to ignore the sensation that he was walking into an ambush.
“Not the kind of payment Somerville might have asked for,” he said.
A lady would have been offended. Even a courtesan might have scolded him for talking too bluntly. But it was a test — how did she feel about Somerville now that he had cast her off?
He didn’t see any anger in her eyes when he mentioned her former lover’s name. She smiled instead, with a quirk to it that said she found his comment amusing for reasons he didn’t understand. “I should hope you would use me differently than Somerville did.”
His instincts said he was closer to the key than he had ever been — that there was something in her relationship with Somerville that would give him everything he needed to destroy the man. But the hook wasn’t set. She might escape if he pulled her in too fast. “If not that, what do you intend to offer?”
“You said at Somerville’s that you wanted a seat in Parliament in the next election. I’m sure I could arrange it.”
He barely remembered saying that. But it was useful now. He smiled, ready to set the hook a little deeper. “That was the lie, as it turns out. You assumed otherwise, but you never asked.”
She frowned as though trying to remember the night more clearly. “If that was the lie, then the truth was that you’re enamored with me.”
He nodded. “And so I’ll help you whether you can compensate me or not.”
That wasn’t necessarily the truth either. He was certainly attracted to her. He enjoyed conversing with her. And he would probably help her on her mad quest even if she couldn’t give him anything at all, merely because he was bored and would enjoy seeing whatever trouble she got up to. Not to mention the fact that it was the best chance he had to learn Somerville’s secrets.
But enamored? Enchanted? The feeling that he could love her, and the belief that it would all come out all right?
Rafe lived in the real world, not a fairy tale. And in the real world, passion faded and love didn’t last.
But he could almos
t forget that knowledge as she smiled. For a moment, she wasn’t Madame Octavia. She wasn’t trained by circumstance to play a role, the perfect fantasy for any man.
Her brown eyes sparkled over what they might accomplish together. Her lips parted, showing her teeth — a real smile, not the coy grin she’d used, unconsciously, when he had entered the room.
She was mischievous, and excited, and so bloody happy.
And so bloody young. And so bloody beautiful.
And so bloody not for him.
But she gathered herself together before she responded. He sensed wariness descend upon her. He wondered what she thought of love. Most women, when he hinted at such feelings, were only too happy to accept it at face value — to believe him, until he left them at the end of his mission.
Octavia’s experience was different, though, despite her youth. Her smile faded a little as caution replaced some of her excitement, but she still looked determined. “I cannot thank you enough,” she said. “I’ve no idea how to gain entrance to the abbey without help. And you are quite perfect for the task.”
The task. He could remember that. He could remember that it was a task, not anything more than that. He could remember that she had asked for his help.
He could remember that he intended to use her for his own ends just as much as she intended to use him for hers.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked.
She looked over her shoulder to verify that no one was in earshot. They were safe, but she kept her voice low. “Lucy only does well when she is in control and everything is perfectly ordered. If I cause enough chaos at the party, she will break under the pressure. Then, when the suitors realize she’s more suited to hiding in her room than to entertaining them, they are likely to give up on her. It happened often during our debut season. She never received a single offer of marriage.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. “That’s not very kind.”
“She deserves far worse,” Octavia said shortly. “I had thought of hiring a man to compromise her so that her reputation was as ruined as mine, but that was a step too far. Unless you think that’s a task you’d like to take on?”
“Absolutely not,” Rafe said.
“Then we must ruin the party. Lucy won’t win Maidenstone, but at least she’ll still have a future.”
“If she doesn’t marry, what happens to the estate?”
“There’s a chance that Callista will attend the party, but no one has seen her yet. That could be another payment for you — if Callista arrives, you should encourage one of your brothers to marry her while we remove Lucy from the race. I’d rather see her inherit than let Lucy win. But if it comes down to me and Lucy, and Lucy has proven herself unsuitable, Ferguson will be forced to reconsider my eligibility.”
“How do you propose to ruin the party?” Rafe asked.
“I had thought of poisoning the wells.”
He wanted to laugh, but he was afraid that she might be serious. “I shall endeavor not to cross you, if poison is your first thought.”
“Murder is a very Briarley occupation,” Octavia assured him earnestly. “If Ferguson had any sense, he would give the house to me. Many of my ancestors killed someone to guarantee their inheritance. My grandfather would be proud of me if I poisoned Lucy, I’m sure.”
“Be sure to tell me when to stop drinking the water. I quite like my organs to function as they should.”
Octavia grinned. For a moment, they weren’t discussing murder — they could have been discussing anything, or nothing, and he wouldn’t have registered the words. All the could see was her smile, and how eager she was.
She was going to ruin him, far more than he could ever ruin her.
“But poison won’t work,” she said, with a theatrical sigh of disappointment. “I cannot be the Maidenstone heiress if I’m executed at Newgate. We’ll have to be more subtle. Have you heard of Maidenstone’s ghosts?”
The locals wouldn’t talk about living Briarleys, but they were eager to talk about dead ones. He rolled his eyes. “Every story I’ve heard assures me that the abbey is rotten with them. Are they true?”
Octavia shrugged. “Grandfather swore they were, although I never saw any. But there are places in the abbey where I wouldn’t choose to go at night. And there have been enough murders committed there to field a battalion of ghosts.”
Rafe had seen plenty of death, but he’d never seen a ghost. “Assuming there are ghosts, which I doubt, how do you propose to use them? Is there some secret Briarley method of communicating with them?”
“Don’t laugh,” she said. “I’m sure some ancestor thought there was. But we don’t have to work with real ghosts — fake ghosts will do the trick.”
“Are you planning to haunt Maidenstone?”
“Yes.”
At least she was direct about it. Rafe preferred his conspirators to be committed to their plans — he couldn’t work with others unless he knew they wouldn’t balk at a critical juncture.
He steepled his fingers under his chin. “How do you propose to do that?”
She pulled a list out of her reticule.
“The first rule of conspiracies is to leave nothing in writing,” he said mildly.
Octavia laughed. “I knew you were the right man for the job. I’ll burn the list when we’re done. Any other advice, my lord?”
“Carry on, Miss Briarley,” he said.
She stilled a little at that. He realized her name was a wound, and for once he regretted his words.
“Please, call me Octavia,” she said. “It’s easier.”
“Then you must call me Rafe,” he responded, as though it was the most natural thing in the world to use their given names with each other so soon. “I cannot possibly call you Octavia and insist on all the ‘my lords.’”
She grinned. “This is going to be fun, isn’t it?”
He still didn’t know her plan. The old public room, with its exposed beam ceiling and heavy tables, felt like the right sort of place for making some nefarious deal. Maidenstone Abbey awaited, with its legion of ancient rooms and dark secrets.
He never had fun on his missions. Satisfaction, perhaps. Pleasure, occasionally. But never fun.
With Octavia, though, he didn’t see how it was going to be any other way. They would enjoy working together, even as she used him to access Maidenstone and he used her to ruin Somerville.
The morality of that didn’t sit quite right with him. But he had lived in ambiguous situations for years. He swapped his tea for whisky again and reached for her list. “Let’s make our plans. We have a party to destroy.”
Chapter Seven
The next night, Octavia smoothed her hands down her skirts. The sturdy walking dress was unlike anything she wore in London. But sneaking through Maidenstone Abbey’s vast attics and hidden passageways would destroy delicate muslin. She had borrowed the dress from her lady’s maid. Agnes was smart enough not to ask why Octavia wanted to disguise herself as a servant.
Octavia had a mission now. That mission did not require flirting, or a courtesan’s wardrobe.
She could remember that, couldn’t she?
She rubbed her clammy palms against her thighs again before pulling on her gloves and picking up her reticule. Rafe was supposed to collect her at any moment.
She hadn’t been so nervous since her debut. She supposed some nerves were natural. If she were caught at Maidenstone, it would be too mortifying for words.
But it wasn’t her upcoming criminal adventure that made her heart beat faster. It was her accomplice — and the knowledge that, for all the experience she’d gained in the last four years, she wasn’t sure she could handle Rafe.
She had thought she’d handled him the previous night. He would make an excellent accomplice. He had agreed to her plan and helped her to refine key points. He even seemed excited about it.
But she still didn’t quite understand why he wanted to help her. He claimed to be enamored with her — but that excuse didn
’t hold water. An enamored man would have courted her, not helped her invade her childhood home.
And none of that had explained why she’d spent most of the night dreaming of the way he’d kissed her hand. He’d done it again at the end of the night, right before she’d left the pub. This time, in the darkened room, with the candles guttering and all the villagers gone, it had somehow felt even more erotic.
She’d looked into his eyes as he’d caressed her knuckles. The warm, dazed shock of connection had nothing to do with whisky. It was as though the touch of his lips on her skin — skin, this time, since she’d taken off her gloves — had sealed something between them that was bigger than the conspiracy they’d agreed to.
If that was the case, she might be in more danger from him than she ever would be sneaking around Maidenstone.
The drawing room clock tolled eleven o’clock as she walked down the stairs to the main floor. A rap sounded on the front door as she took the last stair, exactly on time. In London, one of her footmen would have answered the door, taken Rafe’s card, and settled him in the drawing room — perhaps the second-best drawing room — to wait for her.
This wasn’t London, though. This was a small hunting lodge in Devonshire, with a highly improper, secretly desperate hostess in charge of it. So she answered the door herself.
Rafe didn’t bow as a gentleman might have. He looked her up and down, holding his lamp up and examining her as though assessing a new recruit. He seemed more fascinated by her dress than he did with her figure. “You look better suited for adventuring than I expected,” he said.
“I grew up in Devonshire. I trust I still remember how to dress for a promenade in the country.”
His grey eyes sparkled. “I’d wager you haven’t promenaded in the country in ages. You stole the dress, didn’t you?”
She gasped, putting her hand against her heart. “Never say you’d think such a thing of me.”
Rafe shook his head with mock disapproval. “You intend to destroy Lucretia and you’re willing to poison wells to do it. Stealing a dress is exactly the sort of petty crime I should have you arrested and transported for, before you fully become a murderess and a menace to the rest of us.”
