by Jane Feather
Philip placed his hands on her shoulders, drawing her close to him. Then he cupped her chin in the palm of one hand and brought his mouth to hers.
Octavia told herself to respond. She would achieve nothing standing like a dummy waiting for it to be over. Closing her mind as tightly as she’d closed her eyes, she parted her lips. His tongue immediately accepted the invitation, and she could taste wine as the muscular presence explored her mouth. His hand dropped from her chin, slip-ping around her body, holding her tightly against him, and the hard bulge of his erection in his tight silk britches pressed against her belly.
Touch him. Explore his body. Maybe she could feel what she sought somewhere on his person.
She moved her own hands inside his coat, stroking and kneading as if with an answering urgency, sliding her hands around to his back, over his buttocks, feeling for a pocket. He groaned and his teeth closed abruptly on her bottom Hp. She tasted blood and instinctively tried to pull back. But he held her now with a powerful strength, crushing her against him so she could no longer insert her hands between their bodies. His ringers curled into the flesh of her hips with a bruising pressure, and she could sense the overpowering force of his arousal, hear it in the short moans against her mouth, feel it in the hot breath on her neck, the roughness of his hold, the ache in her compressed breasts.
She was suffocating in the heat of this passion, struggling like a bird in a trap. Faintly, she heard the door open. And then, after an infinitesimal pause, it closed again.
Octavia knew in her blood that Rupert had been there. Had returned from his errands. Had seen what was happening. Had quietly withdrawn because she was doing what she had agreed to do. She was seducing his enemy. Apparently it didn’t matter to him that the mouth that opened with such willing warmth beneath his own kisses was being ravished by a man he detested.
It didn’t matter to him. It couldn’t matter to him or he couldn’t tolerate it.
She struggled with a final desperation, and Philip Wyndham slowly drew back. “Why would you fight me? A minute ago you were as eager as I.” His face was flushed, his eyes excited, and Octavia flinched from the predator, red in tooth and claw.
“You frightened me,” she said with soft meekness, touching her swollen hp. “Such ardor, my lord. I confess … I’m not accustomed …” She turned away to hide the disgust she couldn’t keep from her eyes.
“Oh, that husband of yours lacks passion, does he?” The earl laughed, a grating sound that mingled contempt and self-congratulation. “My dear, I’ll show you what a man is capable of in these matters. You have passion in you, I could feel it. You need a man worthy of that passion. A man who can show you what desire is really like.”
“And you are such a man?”
“I believe so.” It was an assertion of such resounding complacence that Octavia, even through her disgust, wanted to laugh in astonishment. The vanity of the man. Did he really believe he could hold a candle to Rupert Warwick in anything?
“You must be gentle with me, my lord,” she said, keeping her face averted. “I beg you will excuse me now. I must compose myself before my husband returns.”
“Of course,” he said readily, as if it went without saying that a woman who’d just had the earth-shattering experience of kissing Philip Wyndham would need time to compose herself before she could face anyone else, let alone her husband. “Until later, my dear.” He brushed a hand down her back, allowed it to linger on her bottom. Then he was gone.
Shaking, Octavia turned back to the room. She examined herself in the glass. Her lips were swollen, her hair disarrayed. Her entire body felt sore, as if she’d been crushed by a python. Philip Wyndham’s willowy frame was deceptive. He was a powerful man.
She spun round as the door opened. Rupert closed the door and stood for a moment leaning against it, his expression impassive. “So you have begun,” he said.
“Apparently,” she responded in the same tone, picking up her discarded sherry glass and taking a sip that became a gulp. The wine stung her bitten lip.
“That’s good,” he stated, moving from the door to pour a glass for himself.
“You came in earlier?” There was a slight tremor in her voice. Octavia took another gulp of wine, hoping that it would steady her, would smooth out this whirlpool of fear, bitter confusion, and resentment, bringing her once again into the calm waters of cold purpose, where Rupert Warwick swam with such single-minded deliberation.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I thought it politic to withdraw.” He kept his back to her as he sampled the sherry in his glass. He still had not mastered the wave of revulsion that had swept through him when he’d seen Octavia locked in his brother’s arms, and now the sight of her bruised hp and disheveled hair filled him with such a violent anger, it required all the control learned so painfully over the years to keep it from his face. It would do Octavia no good to know how he felt.
“You have another assignation?” he asked casually, turning back to the room.
“Not precisely. But I don’t imagine Wyndham will wait long before suggesting something.” Octavia felt as if she was being examined by a tutor on some work in progress. “I tried to feel if he had something hidden on his person, but I couldn’t find anything. It would help if I knew precisely what I was looking for,” she said, refilling her glass.
Rupert withdrew from his pocket a small silk pouch. He opened it and shook the contents on the table. “This is what you’re looking for.”
Octavia came over to the table. A tiny, intricately worked silver ring lay winking in a ray of pale sun.
“It’s so tiny,” she said, picking it up between finger and thumb. “Wyndham’s is identical?”
“Its pair.” He held out his palm for it and she dropped it into his hand. “There’s a mechanism that opens it … concealed in the eye of the bird … here it is.” He indicated a minute speck representing the eye of a delicately carved eagle. “It’s too small to be opened by human fingers; it requires a silver toothpick or the tip of a pair of compasses.”
“Scissors, perhaps?” She rummaged through a basket of embroidery silks and produced a small pair of scissors.
Rupert took them, inserting the tip of one blade in the eye. The tiny circle sprang open. “The ring in Wyndham’s possession locks into this one, forming a signet ring that would fit an adult’s finger,” he explained. “A slender finger,” he added unnecessarily.
“But what’s the significance?” Octavia gazed up at him in fascination, but his face, which had been open and receptive, closed at the question.
“You don’t need to know that.” He closed the ring and slipped it back into its pouch.
“Maybe not. But am I not entitled to?”
“How do you work that out?”
It was such a cold snub that she could think of nothing to say. She wasn’t entitled to anything, except what he’d promised her.
“Listen to me, Octavia.” His voice changed, became soft and almost cajoling. He took her hand and drew her to the sofa, where he sat down, pulling her down beside him.
“I cannot tell you more than I have without confusing the issues for you. If you know what lies between me and Philip Wyndham, you may let something slip, and if he has the faintest hint of the truth—a truth so fantastic he will at first believe it impossible—everything will be over. You can know at this stage only what you need to know. You must trust me in this, Octavia. When it’s all over, you will know everything. I promise you.”
Octavia and the world would know everything.
He caught her face between his hands, smiling at her as if he could smile away her hurt and frustration, smiling as if a smile could smooth away the evidence of his twin’s mouth on hers. He ran his fingers through the cluster of ringlets framing her face. “Trust me.”
“I do,” she said, wishing perversely that she didn’t. “But it’s very hard to work in the dark when you know everything there is to know about both of us. And why should you imagine I would let so
mething slip, anyway? Why don’t you trust me?”
Rupert sighed and his hands fell from her hair. “I wouldn’t trust anyone but myself to keep this secret, Octavia. But if you wish to withdraw from our contract, then I will accept that.”
“How could I do that?” she exclaimed in a fierce undertone. “You know that’s not possible. We’ve gone too far to pull back now.”
“I was hoping you would believe that,” he agreed gravely. “But understand this, Octavia. I am not forcing you.”
No, she thought bitterly. He wasn’t forcing her. But if she didn’t fulfill her side of the bargain, he wouldn’t fulfill his. And how could she choose to take her father and return to the grim, mean streets of Shoreditch, the daily terror of haunting the crowds with stealthy fingers? It had hardly been endurable before. Now it was unthinkable.
She merely looked at him and his heart turned over at the despairing recognition of reality in the tawny eyes. He could release her. A word would do it. And he could still pursue her vengeance. Hector Lacross and Dirk Rigby were begging on bended knees to fall into his trap. It would cost him nothing; indeed, it would afford him considerable satisfaction to bring about the downfall of such a pair of vicious and greedy rogues.
But then he thought of the years wandering in the wilderness, the years of hand-to-mouth existence in the capitals of Europe with the man whose name he now bore. The real Rupert Warwick had been a rogue in his own right, a renegade and a rebel who’d taken advantage of men’s greed and vanities—but never the frailties they couldn’t help—to keep himself and his young companion in funds.
Rupert Warwick had saved the young Cullum Wyndham from a miserable death in a hovel in Calais. He’d saved him from despair and taught him everything he knew. And he’d died in a drunken brawl in a tavern in Madrid. And on his deathbed he’d told his young friend to go home. To take back what was his. Because the life that Rupert Warwick had led was no life.
So Cullum had taken his mentor’s name and come home. And now he needed Octavia to enable him to be avenged … for Gervase, and for his own years in the wilderness.
He turned away from the mute appeal in her eyes. He knew she would do what she had to, because she always had. She was determined and courageous, and she would let neither of them down.
“Keep me informed of all your dealings with Wyndham,” he said in his customary cool tones. “I wish to know when and where you’ll be meeting with him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to keep an eye on you,” he said.
“You think he might hurt me?” There was an edge to the question.
“No. If I thought that, we would be doing things differently,” he returned patiently.
“But what if he catches me picking his pockets?”
Rupert frowned. “He must not do so. You’ve worked crowds throughout London and you’ve not been caught yet. Why should it happen now?”
Octavia shrugged. “There are always risks. And I’m out of practice.”
“Then you must perfect your skills,” he instructed briskly. “You must practice before you attempt anything.”
“And just how do you suggest I do that?” she demanded, even though she’d already come to the same conclusion and decided exactly what she should do.
“You could do a little light-fingering among our guests,” he suggested. “It would be simple enough to leave your pickings lying around afterward so it would look as if they’d been accidentally dropped or mislaid.”
“Oh,” Octavia said, nonplussed by this accurate rendering of her own plan.
“A good idea?” He raised an eyebrow.
How could she say it wasn’t when it had been her own? “It’ll serve, I suppose,” she said grudgingly. “Although stealing from one’s guests seems a bit much.”
“Borrowing,” he corrected gently. He took her face again and lightly brushed her mouth with his fingertip. “Go and wash your face and tidy your hair, sweeting. You’ll feel more like yourself.”
“Instead of like someone who’s been crushed in an unwelcome embrace?” She couldn’t help throwing it at him.
Rupert’s eyes went blank. “No one is forcing you,” he repeated. “You’ve had no difficulty with the idea before, why is it a problem now?”
It’s a problem because it doesn’t seem to matter to you what I have to do. It’s a problem because I am not a whore. When I agreed to seduce Philip Wyndham in cold blood, I didn’t know what it was to make love with you … when I am you and you are me. When we are one. That’s why it’s a problem.
But Octavia said none of this. She rose to her feet, smoothing down her skirt. “It isn’t, of course. I suppose I’m a little shaken … now that it’s begun.”
Rupert concealed his relief. “The sooner it begins, the sooner it will be over,” he said, getting up from the sofa with her. “I’ll go and visit your father. I found a copy of Xenophon’s Memorabilia in an old bookstore in Charing Cross. I think he might find it of interest.”
“You’re very considerate of my father.”
“Should I not be?” He looked puzzled.
Octavia shrugged slightly. “It surprises me.”
“You think me inconsiderate?” He frowned, looking both puzzled and dismayed.
“Single-minded.” She dropped him a half curtsy and left the drawing room.
Rupert gazed at the door she’d left slightly ajar. The scent of the orange flower water she used to rinse her hair still delicately perfumed the air.
Octavia believed he didn’t consider her feelings or her welfare. It was so far from the truth! She couldn’t know how he was racked by the prospect of what she must do. She couldn’t know, because he had gone to great pains to give the impression that it was a matter of indifference to him. Once it had been. But now that he knew Octavia, nothing to do with her could ever again be a matter of indifference to him.
Rupert paced the drawing room with long, angry strides, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t manipulating Octavia. She knew what she was getting into. She knew what she’d agreed to do. And she’d agreed of her own free will.
Or had she?
What about the first time … what about the drug concealed in the cloves sprinkled on the brandy punch? He hadn’t known her then. If he had, would he have done such a thing to her?
“Death and damnation!” he hissed through his teeth, his hands gripping the mantelpiece until his knuckles whitened. He fought to regain the cold, detached clarity of his purpose. It was done. The stone was rolling and would gather momentum. No one was hurt. Octavia would not be hurt. He swore a silent oath on Rupert Warwick’s grave that Octavia Morgan would never again be injured through his actions.
Calm once more, he left the drawing room and went to visit Oliver Morgan.
Chapter 13
The soft scents of spring were in the air, and Octavia paused to break off a twig of golden forsythia from a blazing bush beside the steps leading up to the front door. She was in a strange mood, excitement mingling with apprehension, and her blood moved restlessly in her veins.
She felt as she always felt after spending time with the Earl of Wyndham. She passed those hours on a mental knife edge, matching her wits against his in continual verbal fencing, fighting to keep her emotions hidden.
She flirted with Philip. She kissed him with every appearance of passion. She promised more but continued to withhold it. He was beginning to grow frustrated, but so far he’d played her game. And so far she’d failed to discover anything remotely resembling that tiny silk pouch that Rupert had shown her. It was so small, she knew that it would be hard to detect with a cursory brush of her fingers, and the time was fast approaching when she would have to steel herself to take the next step.
Somehow, somewhere, Octavia believed that there was a way to avoid that final surrender, if only she could come up with it
“Thank you, Griffin. Isn’t it a beautiful afternoon?” she greeted the butler as he bowed her into the hall.
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“Indeed, my lady.”
“Ask one of the footmen to cut some of that forsythia and put it in the salon for this evening,” she said, taking off her gloves. “It’s so lovely, but it won’t last for very long.”
“Yes, my lady.”
“In the copper jugs,” she added, going to the stairs. “Is his lordship within?”
“No, my lady. Lord Rupert went out about an hour ago. He said he would not be here for dinner.”
“Oh?” Octavia paused, one foot on the bottom step. Rupert had definitely been intending to dine at home; he’d asked the cook to prepare his favorite casserole of sweetbreads.
“Did he say where he was going, Griffin? Leave a message for me?”
“I don’t believe so, my lady. He had a visitor and left soon after.”
There was something in Griffin’s voice that seemed to imply doubt or disapproval about the visitor.
“What kind of a visitor?” She glanced at the butler over her shoulder.
“I couldn’t rightly say, my lady. Not a gentleman, I would have said. No, definitely not a gentleman.”
“I see. Thank you, Griffin.” Octavia continued up the stairs, a thoughtful frown creasing her brow. Ben. Perhaps it was Ben.
And what would bring Ben to Dover Street? Information that might be of interest to Lord Nick, of course. Rupert had mentioned a few days earlier that they were running low on funds. He hadn’t mentioned how he intended to repair the situation, and Octavia had simply assumed he would increase his gaming. But perhaps Lord Nick was taking to the road again.
In her bedchamber she went to the window, frowning down into the street, tapping a fingernail against her front teeth. Restless, nervous excitement still coursed through her veins.
She didn’t want to be sitting in Dover Street twiddling her thumbs while Rupert rode the highway across Putney Heath. He kept so much to himself, but this was something they could share. She enjoyed the fruits of the highwayman’s activities, so she should surely share the dangers … and the thrills.
