by The Charmer
“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 sna
gged 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.
No time to cry out. No time to explain.
Collis flung himself across the room. Oh, God, he was too far away—
He took her to the mat in a ferocious tackle, rolling over and over with her in his arms. Behind them the giant oaken wheel crashed to the floor, sending up a whoosh of wind and hot spattering wax mingled with straw from the shredded matting, plunging them into total darkness.
Chapter Three
Rose couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see, couldn’t move. For a single second, her mind went circling in panic. Then she focused with a will.
She couldn’t see because the candles had gone out. Something heavy crashing to the floor—added to darkness permeated with the smell of smoking wick—equaled a narrow escape from Death by Chandelier. She’d been standing directly beneath the giant wheel if she recalled correctly.
Which meant that something had cut the rope.
Collis. And the reason she was lying here with the breath knocked from her lungs?
Collis. And the great warm weight that even now pinned her limbs to the floor?
Collis.
She forced her lungs to expand. The first painful breath was followed by another, less so. Above her she felt Collis sucking in a great lungful as well.
“Are you injured?” His breath brushed her face. His arms tightened around her, pressing her to his hard, bare chest.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think so.” Distracted, she realized that she seemed to be embracing him as well. Her arms were looped under his and her hands clasped the back of his broad shoulders. Broad naked shoulders.
His muscles flexed beneath her hands. Momentarily charmed, still dazed, Rose dug her fingertips lightly in response. He’s so strong. Holding me so close, as if I were as dear as dear could be.
Breathing still wasn’t easy. In fact, it was becoming more difficult by the moment. He covered her like a lover, with her breasts crushed against his broad chest and his knee pressed between her thighs. The firm pressure against her sensitive center made hot jolts of want shoot across her body.
When he shifted that knee slightly, she nearly whimpered at the sensation. Her thoughts faded for a moment as she merely felt. She felt her skin shimmer as the heat of his body penetrated her. In a moment she would puddle like melted wax beneath him. He smelled so good—man and sandalwood and just a hint of clean sweat.
Deep inside her a tiny voice sighed in pleasure. Don’t move.
Collis couldn’t move. Wouldn’t move. His senses were full of sweet aromas, warm sensations, and tiny breathless sighs. His arms were full of supple female.
She was lithe and strong beneath him, not limp and compliant. Firm and lively and very, very arousing. His arms tightened. For a moment he forgot everything but his arousal and the feel of her hands spread on his bare skin.
His breath mingled with hers as their lips hovered, not an inch apart. He could have her. He felt it in the way she lay open to him, the way the vee between her thighs was heating where his knee pressed. He could have her and it would be fast and hard and hurried and so very good.
They were already alone, already lying down, already in darkness….
She made a small noise. She writhed a bit in his arms. The squirm of her hips beneath him fired his erection further. He forgot his impairment, forgot that he couldn’t feel how tight he was—
“Squeezing me!” Her voice reached a squeak. His arms loosened instantly. With horror he realized that he was as hard as stone.
Over Rose Lacey!
Quickly h
e scrambled backward, his feet scuffling in the scattered straw. He stood slowly, his hands fisting and releasing. Think of cold water, man. Damp and snowy days when the fire only reaches so far and the water in the washbowl is like ice.
His towering erection began to subside. Thank God the room was dark, although he suddenly realized it wasn’t as dark as it had been. He blinked.
Rose was standing. “I can see you now. A candle must have survived, or perhaps a—” She stopped with a gasp. “Fire!”
Collis whirled to gaze at the wreckage in horror. She was right. The wax-soaked straw had smoldered under their inattention. Even as he watched, the tiny tongues of flame licked farther along the ruined mat as thickening smoke began to rise.
“Oh, God,” he breathed. Not a curse. A prayer.
There was no time to run three flights of stairs to wake the other students—no time to run for help at all. The desiccated straw would burn like—like straw.
They ran to the flames and began to stomp them, but they spread too fast.
“The kitchen,” Rose said. “Quickly—the pump!”
The school kitchen lay directly behind the arena. In a breath Rose and Collis were inside, fumbling in the dark. She pushed him to the left. “There, by the sink.”
He felt around frantically. He’d never stepped foot into this kitchen. Kitchens were for servants and—at Etheridge House—for stealing a late-night bite from the larder. Right now he was wishing mightily that he had lowered himself to step foot into the school kitchen.
He found the rigid metal handle of the pump. He knew how to use a pump, thank God. It was like the one in the stables, and he knew how to care for his own horse.
Below the spout he found a small pot full of water that likely always remained there, just as in the stables. He primed the pump with a careless splash and began pumping with all his might.
Rose bumped him, shoving a large pot beneath the stream of water that gushed from the spout. In an instant it was full and she replaced it with another. Without a word, she ran with the two full pots into the next room. Collis continued pumping with his deadened arm, watching it closely in the unfortunately increasing light flickering from the other room. Now he could smell smoke, even in here.
