The Earl's Irresistible Challenge

by Lara Temple

  He was the one to raise his hands and she stopped again.

  ‘It ends here. We will not be chasing down any more vicars and widows, not even so you can grieve properly. You will have to find another way. You are no fool and you know your lists aren’t the real world, Olivia. What we saw today is the real world—people trying to go about their lives and mostly muddling through and making mistakes and living with them.’

  He breathed in, turning towards the window. ‘This is not what I want to deal with; I deal with men who know what they are doing and the prices they might pay for it. That is fair play. This...this was the equivalent of stepping on a kitten’s tail or penning a wolf in with a herd of sheep. There are repercussions to every step we take. For all we know even by visiting Mrs Eldritch in that little town where everyone is watching everyone we have done harm. This is the last time we play Bow Street Runner.’

  ‘But what am I to tell Mrs Payton?’

  ‘Good God, you tell her nothing, of course.’

  She knew it made no sense to argue with him, but she wanted, no, she needed him to understand. ‘How can I allow her to continue to believe Henry died in the arms of a courtesan? You don’t understand—that lie made Henry a stranger to his family. They not only lost the man they loved, but they lost him doubly. The way he died put everything into question. Not just their future, but their past, who they are. So, if I could, just a little, bring back who he was to them, even with his flaws, but who he really was, someone they recognise, then that is something. I don’t want to hurt anyone along the way, but I can’t help wanting to repay them.’

  ‘Do you honestly believe this will be an improvement on Marcia Pendle? Would you prefer to learn your husband had a relationship with a woman he had a tendre for twenty years ago and was meeting in secret for years? That he cared for so deeply he changed his life to be close to her? I doubt your godmother will find any solace in this revelation.’

  He was right again. The truth might, to a certain extent, relieve her own guilt and salvage her perception of Henry, but Mary would be devastated to learn it had not been merely a carnal connection, but something that transcended what she shared with her husband of almost thirty years. Lucas was right and the decent thing to do was stop before she caused even more damage. Her dreams of saving Henry were just that, dreams. And not just Henry—she would have to abandon her desire to be a saviour for Lucas. She was no knight in shining armour. Sir Olive-a-Dale couldn’t even save herself and shouldn’t that come first?

  ‘It is over, Olivia. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  I understand you are done with me and I don’t want you to leave. I know you will eventually, but not today.

  At least the shivering had stopped, but the darkness inside her was spreading. She sat, helpless and scared. Not of him, but of the distance forming between them. He was right to hate what they were doing and right to disdain her. Now he would leave, not like last time when he had been afraid of what he would find in himself, but because he disliked what he saw in both of them. She could not remedy that.

  Her eyes devoured his profile, its hard lines and the tension in his mouth. His words were calm, but now that he was no longer touching her she saw the tell-tale movement of his thumb over his knuckles. He was not calm.

  As if to confirm her realisation he shoved a hand through his hair, breathing deeply. She sat still, but her own hands prickled with the need to touch him, to relieve some of the barely leashed pressure inside him. She clasped them tight against the need to touch the hair he had disarranged. She remembered how it felt from the time he had kissed her, sliding against the soft skin between her fingers, silky and then feathering away against her palm. She shivered a little and before she could think she moved closer and took his hand, holding it between hers.

  ‘Careful, Olivia. I’ve expended my last ounce of nobility for the day. Don’t test me.’ His voice was flat, but hers shook a little as she answered.

  ‘I do not know what else to do.’

  He breathed in again and she waited for him to draw away, but his other hand closed over hers, larger and warmer, but still rigid.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything.’

  Yes, I do. I must stop you from leaving. I’m not ready yet. I never will be.

  ‘You must have had a very peculiar upbringing,’ he added, shaking his head.

  ‘Don’t make excuses for me.’

  He pulled his hand from between hers and she tried not to cling to it, but he merely stripped off her glove and gently turned her hand palm up in his. He traced the stain of ink along her index finger and heat hissed up her arm, so vivid she thought she could hear it. The hairs on her arm rose in its path, all the way to her nape, reaching round to close a fist around her throat. It was all she could do not to visibly press her legs together as the flush of heat spread there as well.

  ‘Are your fingers ever free of ink?’ he asked. It was an innocent question, but either her internal fire or the rough gravel in his voice warped it in her mind. Still, she tried to answer it as given.

  ‘Rarely. Only when I run out of ink and must rely solely on pencils.’

  ‘You are no Lady Macbeth, scrubbing away at your sins.’

  ‘You’re wrong if you think I do any of this lightly, or that I don’t feel any guilt about my actions,’ she said, a little too fiercely, trying to pull away, but his hands closed hard around hers, gentling immediately as her resistance faded.

  ‘Oh, I know you do. I don’t think you do anything lightly. It would be far better if you did. But you are a very uncompromising person, Olivia. You want the world to work, but you have low expectations that it will do so of its own accord. Which means it must have worked very ill indeed for you in the past. I am glad this gives you some modicum of relief, but as you have just discovered it can fix nothing. Not in any meaningful way. You will have to face that you are only clinging to this so you can escape deciding where to go next. You’re running, Olivia. That’s all this is.’

  ‘Well, then so are you. Isn’t that what your whole life is about?’

  ‘The difference between us is that I embrace my running, I don’t try to put a grand name on it like seeking the truth or justice or redemption or any of that rot.’

  ‘You are right. I will stop.’

  She untangled her hands, raising his left hand to her cheek, turning her mouth to the warmth of his palm. She acted without thought, but the moment his skin brushed across her lips it took her over and she froze, everything froze.

  ‘Olivia. I warned you.’ His voice was low and tense, but as she felt the curtain fall on her time with him she knew she could not allow him to leave without at least... She tested it again, mapping his palm with her mouth, her breath coming back to warm her lips, slip between them and out again. At the juncture between his fingers she felt a mirrored shiver just at the same spot on her own hand, could almost see him bend his head to press his mouth just there. To taste... So she did, her tongue dipping into that V, gathering the sensation of the roughened pad at the base of his finger, then the sudden soft satin of the sheltered skin, the tension of the muscles and sinews...every surface had a different flavour of his taste. Musk, earth, life, something as familiar as her childhood, but wholly new.

  ‘Olivia. Hell and damnation, we cannot do this. Listen to me!’ His voice was harsh, but he did not pull away, his fingers even curved, slid over her lips, sending a shiver of heat and anticipation through her.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she whispered. And she was, to the tension in his hands, his voice. She felt it in every inch of her body, telling her to act, to grasp this, take what she wanted, to give... Without thought she caught the tip of his finger between her teeth and pressed gently. He groaned, dragging his hand away only to grasp her shoulders.

  ‘Listen to me. We cannot do this, not here, not now.’

  ‘
Then where and when? You said this is the end for you. There is no other time.’

  She didn’t know if it was courage or fear that made her act. She just knew she didn’t want him to leave. It no longer had to do with Henry Payton or his father. It was him. It was terrifying. She turned, half-rising on one knee, grabbed the lapel of his coat and canted her head to press her lips to his.

  He caught her arms above her elbows, as if to steady her or push her away, but she felt his indrawn breath against her mouth, a tremor in the convulsive tightening of his fingers on her arms. His lips were firm, but so smooth, like gliding over polished, sun-warmed marble. She pulled at them gently with her own, testing their pliancy, reminding herself how wonderful his kiss had been, how it lingered and taunted and plagued her since. It was impossible to consider he might leave. That this was, as he had said, the end.

  Don’t think, Olivia. Think, and he’ll leave.

  Her hands slid up, caught on the transition between his waistcoat and the linen cravat, softer and warm, her fingers just curving over the edge, poised to touch him. She softened her mouth against his and without conscious thought her tongue touched his upper lip, tasting and testing. Her fingers sought him, too, rose to curve over his neck, to his nape, everything inside her expanding, warming.

  ‘Olivia.’ His voice was harsh, a warning, but one of his hands rose to curve about her nape as well and in the tension she felt the tearing forces inside him and for the first time she believed he meant what he said.

  He wanted her.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, leaning against him, forcing him to take her weight. His hand captured her waist, tugging her against him in time for her to feel the shudder run through him, the faint protesting groan that she felt more than heard. Her body arched into the hard planes of his body, sliding her fingers deeper into his hair, catching on the vulnerable indentation at his nape, threading through the silky midnight of his hair, much softer even than it looked. Everything about him was extremes, confusing, alluring, devastating.

  ‘Kiss me again, Lucas.’

  Finally he obeyed. He kissed her deeply, transforming her tentative caresses into a plundering exploration, his lips burning hers, his hands moving over her body as if plotting its downfall inch by agonised inch. Her skin itched and burned to be bared to his touch and, when his hands slid under her behind, raising her so that she straddled his legs, she arced her back, trying to move closer, to mould herself against him. He drew her lower lip between his, suckling it, his teeth scraping at it, his breath cooling and heating the pulsing, sensitised flesh. She moaned, her fingers pressing deeper into the warmth of his hair, begging for more.

  The swaying of the carriage around a corner rode her body hard against his and his fingers dug deep into her buttocks, his hips rising to press the hard muscles against where she was burning to feel him. She might be inexperienced, but she knew what that ridge of heat pressing against her meant. She remembered Bertram moving against her, grinding his hips against her thigh, his face red and heated. She had not liked it much then, it felt unconnected to her dreams of soft kisses, but now that sign of desire shot flame through her, focused all her senses on it—she wanted to feel it again, she wanted to bare it against her, feel it, possess it...him...

  She moaned, shifting and spreading her legs as much as her skirts allowed, trying to fit him against her. He groaned, too, grasping her hips and raising her off him, but he did not let her go, pulling her on to his lap and holding her close, his face buried in her hair.

  ‘This is madness. We are in a carriage, for heaven’s sake.’

  He sounded tortured and it finally penetrated enough for her to really look at him. His eyes were as dark as midnight and her heart stumbled as she absorbed the devastating mix of desire and contrition in them and the tension in the grooves that bracketed his mouth. She didn’t doubt he wanted to bed her, but then he had probably wanted to bed dozens of women. He was probably well trained at walking away from temptation when necessary. All too soon this would be over and she would be left with...what?

  She leaned her head against his shoulder, her hand against his chest. ‘Will you come to Spinner Street with me, Lucas? I shall think of something to tell Elspeth. Just for tonight. I’m not asking for anything else.’

  ‘You have no idea what you are asking for.’

  ‘Well, that is rather the point, isn’t it? I wish to find out and I would like you to show me. It is unfair of you to start this and then just leave me wondering. It is like being alight from within, like a hot air balloon, filling and rising, but not knowing which way to steer. I can’t imagine not knowing now. You must have had hundreds of women, why not one more?’

  He cupped her face and leaned his forehead against hers.

  ‘That is a gross exaggeration, but even then you aren’t one more woman, Olivia. You are not someone I wish to trifle with. You deserve better than...this. One day you will fall in love with some young man. Not your proper and boring Colin, but someone and then you might regret...’

  She pulled away and sat back in her corner. Her fingers shook as she refastened her pelisse.

  ‘Just tell me you don’t wish to, Lucas. Don’t start spouting mawkish nonsense you don’t even believe in.’

  ‘Olivia...’

  ‘No! I’m tired of being lectured about what is right for me and good for me. First my brothers and the Paytons and Elspeth and now you. I didn’t take it from them so I certainly shan’t from you. I decide what is right for me. You want to go, then go!’

  ‘Olivia, listen to me!’

  ‘No!’

  He knocked on the carriage wall and it slowed.

  ‘Perhaps not here and not now, but you will listen to me and we will settle this once and for all. Tomorrow at noon I will come to Brook Street. Be there.’ He did not wait for her response, but opened the carriage door and disappeared into the gloom.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was a familiar sensation.

  In the rumble of noise that filled Haymarket Theatre Royal she looked up from her seat in Lady Westerby’s box and met Lucas’s gaze. He was standing in one of the scarlet-draped boxes opposite theirs with a group she recognised from Countess Lieven’s ball, several of whom wore elaborate foreign uniforms glittering with decorations and silk sashes. This time he bowed very slightly, but did not smile, and she was not certain that was an improvement on being utterly snubbed.

  She turned her attention to Lord Westerby, trying to subdue the burn of confused pain and resentment and confusion plaguing her. Lord Westerby was explaining the lyrics of the upcoming opera and she smiled and uttered something empty and tried to stop her hands from toying with her fan and her mind from acting like a barrel filled with billiard balls rolling down a hill—thoughts crashing and bouncing off each other and not one of them settling.

  What was she to do now? She could not return to Gillingham. And for all her brave words about marrying Colin, the mere thought of the enormity of that sacrifice sent her heart into a panic of rejection.

  Lucas, blast him, was right. She could not do it. Before she had met him...perhaps. Then, her naïve little mind regarded marriage to Colin as form of legal friendship that would be as much a haven for her as for Colin and the Paytons. Now the idea struck her as absurd, even cruel—both she and Colin deserved better. She would find some other means of helping the Paytons; she was nothing if not resourceful. Henry had made his choices and now she must make hers.

  If only she knew what they were.

  She refused to return to Guilford, either. The most logical choice would be to remain in London with Elspeth and enter society wholeheartedly. Have men dance attendance on her and vie for her favours and her fortune.

  Her eyes moved of their own volition back to the box opposite. A tall woman stood very close to Lucas, her fingertips almost brushing his sleeve and her hair so pale it shimmered like silver in
the light of the enormous chandeliers suspended above the pits. His profile was a sharp sketch against the curtains drawn away from the door to the box and he was smiling at the beauty. Black sludge threatened to overwhelm Olivia and she looked away, only to meet the gaze of a man looking directly at her. He might easily have been Lucas’s twin, but he wore his hair longer and she thought his eyes were lighter. This must be his brother Chase, she thought. As their eyes met he smiled, a wholehearted, direct grin. She was so surprised she smiled back.

  ‘Olivia. I am afraid I dropped my fan,’ Elspeth said sharply. ‘Do help me find it.’

  ‘Here you are, Cousin Elspeth.’

  As she handed her cousin the fan, Elspeth’s voice hissed in her ear.

  ‘Flirting with one Sinclair is bad enough, flirting with two of them is the definition of madness.’

  ‘Hush, the opera is beginning.’ Olivia admonished with much more composure than she felt.

  The cover of music did not bring the calm she hoped for, because nothing had prepared Olivia for Mozart. It was nothing like the modest concerts she had so loved in Gillingham. Those were like peeking into a window of a lovely home while being jostled by crowds on the pavement. This was to step into a new world and leave everything behind that was wrong. The future, her fears, her failures—all faded. She forgot all about proper posture and the edict of not displaying eagerness or emotion in society, and utterly ignored her host’s attempt to flirt with her under the cover of the music. She leaned forward and gave herself wholly to the magic. If she could have climbed out of the Westerbys’ box and curled up at the foot of the stage and wrapped herself in the music and begged them never to stop she would have. For the first time in weeks she felt simply, uncomplicatedly alive.

  In love.

  She did not look at Lucas, but she felt him. The music cleared the world of everything but him and the deep core of need inside her that reached out to him. It made everything so simple. It spoke for her, a love letter without words: it said everything she felt and would never say.