by Darcy Burke
“Not one of the usual, ma’am. I didn’t recognize him.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Rand ought to have given you his name. You must ask next time.”
Nelly bobbed. “Yes, ma’am, and I would have done, but the man refused to give it. I know because I took a peek over the banister when I heard all the going-on. He’s sinful good-looking. But he didn’t come in a crested carriage or nothing that might give a clue as to who he is. I did try, ma’am.” Her pretty brown eyes shone with fear of reprisal and the thrill of a handsome stranger.
Elizabeth had taken her fill of handsome strangers. The bundle in her arms was the only male in her sphere now, and if the choice was between setting her son down so that she might nip at the lure of a mysterious caller and staying right where she was, there was no question. “Inform him that I am unavailable.”
“Do I ask him to return at a more opportune time?” A hopeful note in Nelly’s voice betrayed her new allegiance to the mystery man.
Elizabeth tucked Oliver’s swaddling more tightly around him. “I’m permanently unavailable to any man who expects me to dangle after him.” She ignored her maid’s titter of amusement. The girl was very young, not at all like the jaded maids Elizabeth was accustomed to. She was one of the girls Elizabeth had hired to attend her in Devon, where Oliver had been born. A more innocent staff had been required there, for Elizabeth had foolishly thought to escape her reputation and raise Oliver as the son of a brave captain who’d had the misfortune to perish at sea. Then Finn had arrived and importuned her to come back to London. She hadn’t had the heart to let Nelly go. Nelly had no family and no prospects. Elizabeth knew all too well the fate that awaited a girl who had no family, no prospects and no employer.
Minutes after her maid departed, the unmistakable cadence of masculine footfalls vibrated outside of the nursery door. Elizabeth frowned. There wasn’t time to set Oliver down before a solid rap against the frame caused her to startle. Even if there had been time, she wouldn’t have let her son out of her arms, not for a man. Especially not a rude one. How dare he barge in on her privacy after she’d already told him no?
Nelly’s pitiful protests were almost drowned out by Rand’s insistent demands that the man leave. A thunk against the door followed by a male grunt and Nelly’s screech caused Elizabeth to smirk in satisfaction. There was a reason her butler had the physique of a dockside worker. Let Rand see him out bodily, if that was what it took.
“Elizabeth,” a deep voice called through the wood paneling, “you have five seconds to make yourself presentable before I come through this door.”
She froze in her chair. It couldn’t be Lord Constantine. He’d already been paid.
“The devil you will,” Rand growled. “I have every intention of smashing your pretty face through this wall first.”
The door opened, followed by a man’s gloved hand reaching in. Then Lord Constantine himself ducked into the room, presumably avoiding Rand’s right hook, and slammed the door closed. “If this is what passes for hospitality around here…” he muttered, straightening his bottle green coat before he turned to her.
She remained seated, though her instinct told her to run. He posed no threat to her. Except, perhaps, the threat of a handsome near-stranger. He was sinful good-looking, to quote her maid, if one liked impossibly tall men with straight noses and a permanent furrow between their brows, which she very much did.
The door burst open and Rand’s burly build filled the frame. “I’m going to—”
Lord Constantine turned in place to face his opponent. He shook his head as if talking to a child. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“What the h—”
“It’s quite all right,” Elizabeth broke in before her butler could recover his wits and do actual, bodily harm to her guest. “Lord Constantine is the father of my child. I suppose that means I must see him on occasion, if only because I cannot legally keep him from seeing his son.” She gave her intruder a narrow smirk, sure now that she had nothing to fear from him. He’d won entry. Let him try for anything else.
If Rand’s wits had been addled by Lord Constantine’s tongue-in-cheek greeting, they positively scrambled at Elizabeth’s pronouncement. He stood upright, mouth agape, shoulders pulled back and hands fisted at his sides like the prizefighter he used to be. “Lord Constantine, madam—?”
She didn’t give his question time to hang in the air. The less said in front of Nelly, the better. “You know Lord Constantine,” she said with a husky laugh, as though they had indeed been lovers once and perhaps still were. “He’s always had a way of seeing me, even when he shouldn’t. You may leave now, Rand. Nelly, fetch another rag. Oliver is feeling damp again.”
Lord Constantine flinched, presumably at the thought of a wet babe. She smiled to herself, enjoying his discomfort. He had, after all, barged in on her.
Then the door closed behind her maid and suddenly the room felt cramped. Not because a cradle, rocking chair and two chests of drawers took up much of the space in the room. She was very much alone with a man whose broad shoulders and fashionably mussed hair once could have made her whisper an indecent proposal into his ear.
She laughed to herself. She had whispered an indecent proposal into his ear. It simply hadn’t been the kind that made a man hard. The opposite, in fact. “Lord Constantine, how do you feel about becoming the father of my child?”
Looking at the tall, well-formed man in buff breeches and black boots, she still couldn’t quite believe he’d said yes. Though she’d approached him precisely because she knew enough about him to suspect he’d agree, he was still very much a stranger to her. She liked it that way. She didn’t need him here, in her nursery, invading her privacy. In fact, it violated the terms of their contract.
She arched a single brow at the handsome rogue who watched her with a wrinkled, slightly pained brow. “My lord, I pray you don’t mind my saying so, but there is nothing more I want in this world than for you to see yourself out of my house.”
His answering grin caused a little flip in her belly. She was a mother, not dead. And he was sinfully good-looking. “I’ll be delighted to do so, but first, I must insist Oliver accompany me when I do.” He had the gall to look sheepish as her world teetered at a ledge. “Father’s rights, and all that. You do know what I mean, I think—Elizabeth?”
Chapter Two
FOR A MAN BORN into a family of rakes, Con hadn’t quite managed to perfect his way with women. Elizabeth’s gray eyes went wide with fear, then crazed with an unholy light that caused him to step back. After escaping Captain Finn’s fists two nights before, Con was feeling a bit invincible. Her butler—if the ship-sized creature in her entry could be called such—had hardly fazed him. Regarding Elizabeth across the room now, however, his luck seemed to have run out. Slowly, mechanically, she rose and placed a baby into a cradle tucked into the corner of the room. More slowly still, she faced Con. Her pale features had taken on an uncanny brittleness he found terrifying. “I think perhaps we ought to take tea before we make any hasty decisions—” he began.
She took a small step forward, then another and another until she was at a full-fledged run. Her balled fists found his chest as she beat him with ineffective wallops that might have made him laugh except she was half-gurgling, half-screaming, “You monster! I will never give him up!”
He caught her wrists and held her apart from him so he could look into her eyes. Tendrils of dark brown hair wisped around her face, highlighting high cheekbones, full, generous lips and those gray eyes he found so startling. “Elizabeth! Be calm! Surely we can talk about this rationally. Don’t you trust me?”
No, of course she didn’t trust him. She’d paid him to lie to the entire ton. Still, he felt like that should count for something. They were now a team, weren’t they?
She stopped fighting long enough to hiss in his face. “You snake! We made a deal. You have no right to Oliver. No right at all.”
“Yes, but—”
&nb
sp; “You promised not to make any claim on him. You signed your name.”
“It’s not like what Finn wanted,” he said. What the devil was she so upset about? “I mean, it is like what Finn wanted, in that I need to see my son—”
“He’s not your son!” she shrieked.
The door burst open. Iron arms banded around him and the butler’s deep voice vibrated in his ear. “Let her go.”
“You, again?” Con sighed and dutifully released Elizabeth.
She hastily scrambled back. “You are heinous! I will never let you take him. Why would you even…” She brushed away a lock of chestnut-colored hair curling in her face. Her chest heaved and her cheeks flushed pink with fury. Again her fingers tucked the lock into place, but when a lone tear rolled down her cheek he knew the real reason why she’d raised her hand. She hastily rubbed the glistening trail away. New, fresh fury sparkled in her eyes. “I am done with crying. I am done, sir, with you. Leave. Now.”
He struggled against his human restraints before giving up. It was a futile attempt to retain what little dignity he could muster, for fighting a man twice his mass only made him look silly. He had to make her understand, though. He needed her to cooperate, or at least stop attacking him. “I’m afraid you’ve put us both in a bind, you see,” he tried to explain. “I have a bad enough reputation as it is, so far as responsibility goes. I can’t let this baby be one more I ignore.”
The last of his breath whistled through his teeth as his captor cinched Con’s upper arms hard and fast enough to almost crack his ribs.
She stared at him incredulously. “You expect me to care about your reputation enough to hand over my son?”
It did sound foolish, the way she said it. Oliver wasn’t even his child. What did it matter if he ignored the boy for the rest of his life? Surely Con was old enough now to take his family’s disappointment in stride.
Her eyes narrowed. “This is about money. Ten thousand wasn’t enough? Well, I won’t be threatened. You won’t squeeze another shilling from me. I won’t have it—you can take your conniving, blackmailing ways and go hang.”
“All right, all right.” It wasn’t worth upsetting her any more than he already had. He didn’t even want children. Or a half-crazed woman with an unholy hatred of him—that was, in fact, one very good reason why he wasn’t married. He held up his hands as best he could, given his arms were trapped at his sides. “It was a stupid idea. I’ll go father my own by-blow and then take care of him.”
Her face went white. “How can you say such a thing? He’s an innocent baby. It’s not his fault he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
Maybe that had been too much. Con had nothing against bastards in general, Oliver in particular, or her, for that matter. Borrowing the baby for an afternoon was just an idea he’d had when his mother had looked at him with eyes filled with disappointment and a sad, brittle smile on her face.
“It was just for the afternoon,” he said suddenly, feeling terrible. He didn’t want to face his mother without his supposed baby, but he also wasn’t a giant cad like everyone seemed to think. “I shouldn’t have slighted your son. I’m sorry.”
“Just the afternoon.” Her voice dripped with disbelief.
No one trusted him anymore. His heels dragged along the carpet as the hulking butler forcibly heaved him from the room instead of setting him down. Con pulled an I suppose this is it face and attempted a shrug, but neither cracked Elizabeth’s pale, stony stare.
When he’d been dragged half the length of the hallway, he realized she thought he meant to take Oliver permanently. Nothing could have scared him to death more than the thought of being saddled with a motherless child. “Elizabeth!” he called down the hallway, “Elizabeth, I think you might have misunderstood me. Really, it was just for the afternoon. It’s about my mother, you see—”
The door slammed hard enough to rattle the portraits on the walls.
Well. That hadn’t gone quite the way he’d intended. His mother was going to be disappointed in him. Again.
At least things couldn’t get much worse.
***
She’d expected Nicholas. Or at least a fight from Nicholas. The Nicholas Finn she knew never walked away from a good row. In the three years on and off that she’d spent as his mistress, she’d learned precisely how far she could go without driving him to a physical response. Not that sex wasn’t a physical response, a form of punishment for riling him past reason, but he’d never laid a hand on her that she hadn’t secretly wanted.
Her mouth tasted sour now, thinking of his hands on her at all. What a fool she’d been.
She hadn’t expected Lord Constantine just now. And after he left, she knew better than to let her guard down again. She was more prepared to maintain her composure when Nicholas did arrive, shortly after Lord Constantine was tossed out on his backside. Literally tossed, for she’d enjoyed watching from the window as Rand had ejected him from her rented townhouse into the street.
Rand tapped lightly on her door to inform her of Nicholas’s arrival himself. Unlike with Lord Constantine, this time she did give Oliver to his nurse. Though Nicholas had never manhandled her, she couldn’t risk him taking her baby right from her arms.
She paused to check her reflection. The redness in her eyes couldn’t be helped, but she pinched her cheeks to restore some of her natural glow, and twirled her fingers through the curls framing her face to restore the carefully-tonged locks as best she could. Vanity was a courtesan’s primary weapon. Without it, she’d never be able to hold her head high enough to look down her nose at the men who sought to use her.
She made her way to the drawing room. The entire length of the house, she steeled herself against the man she was about to receive.
He stood in her vestibule, looking impatient. She paused at the foot of the stair. Once, her heart had seemed to stop every time she saw him. Nicholas Finn was tall, and possessed of the confidence found in a man who’d scrounged the money to buy a commission, then gone on to earn honors reserved for Britain’s finest men. His wavy brown hair appeared windblown, a careful effect he took pains to perfect. And he was handsome. Of all the men she’d taken into her bed, he’d been the one with the broadest shoulders, the most satisfying to pleasure, with the slightly-too-heavy weight of a man in good health and the strong hands of a skilled lover.
Now when she looked at him, she felt only her own revulsion.
Nicholas waved for her to precede him into her drawing room. Her spine stiffened. “This is my house,” she reminded him, angry that he would attempt to direct her in her own home.
He sighed. His fine brown eyes were weary. “Must you always think I’m out to get you? I merely came to discuss my son.”
She entered the drawing room and turned her back to him while she collected herself. He’d never loved her. Not even a little. “He’s not yours,” she lied.
It wasn’t that she wanted to keep Oliver from his father—the very thought made her want to weep, for she’d lived the last ten years of her own life without a word from her own father. But Nicholas had no use for her, the mother of his child, any more than he’d had use for her affection when it had been just the two of them. He’d been content to send her out on her ear almost the moment he had Oliver in his possession. He’d not even cared that she’d spent her first week after in a haze of grief, barely able lift herself from the lumpy mattress of a room she’d let above a common tavern. If he knew she’d been forced to return to Celeste’s cottage in Devon and the staff keeping house there, he’d never given an indication. He simply didn’t care about her.
The door closed behind them. It seated like the hollow thump in her chest. She didn’t turn to face him. How could she? He’d broken her heart. Taken her son without a single thought for the agony it would cause her—like having her own arm, or her very heart, ripped from her.
“Tell me it’s rubbish.” His voice was low. Not menacing. Hurt, possibly. As if it stung him to think she m
ight have taken another lover—but no. It was because he wanted Oliver. Wouldn’t accept that the boy was not his own. “I believed that cocky little whelp at first,” Nicholas said, “but I’ve had time to think about it. You wouldn’t have strayed. You were in love with me.”
Oh, she had been. She’d loved him so much she’d thought she would die from the pain of his betrayal. She waved her hand through the air, turning slowly toward him. “You had no loyalty from me.”
His eyes went cold. “We had an agreement. That included your chastity.”
“You never had sole claim on my time.”
She hated the way she sounded. Bitter.
He advanced two steps. “I paid for you. You had a legal obligation to me.”
“Even if you were in her arms?” Elizabeth couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice now. “You thought I would pine alone while you rolled around in some other woman’s bed?”
“It was my right.” He scowled. “Why else would I pay your rates?”
Because you loved me. A foolish thought to have. What made it all the worse, however, was that he was right. She had lain in her bed, night after night, wishing he would come to her. Hating that he’d taken another courtesan in his arms. Hating herself, for loving a man who could not have given his whole heart to her had he even wanted to.
“I should never have believed you were with him.” Nicholas muttered. He said him as though just thinking about Lord Constantine put a bad taste in his mouth. For one brief, stupid second, Elizabeth hoped he was jealous. “You never gave any indication…” He shook his head. He stared at the floor as if the world were shifting beneath his feet. Then his chin lifted until he was looking her full in the face again. What she saw there sent a chill through her entire body.
“That silly fop made me look like a fool in front of everyone. But…the thing of it is, Elizabeth, I don’t think he has the brains to have come up with such a devious plot. Lord Constantine is a puppy. A little boy hanging on his brothers’ coattails. You would never have turned to his bed, even if you had wanted to get me back.” Nicholas advanced one more step. It was enough to bring the masculine, heart-twistingly familiar smell of him near. “You panted after me for too long, Elizabeth. I cannot believe you would have strayed, even for one night.”
