The Sweetest Revenge

by Dawn Halliday

  He bowed his head.

  “Why?” she whispered, no longer bothering with her attempts to mask her Scottish accent. “Why did you hurt us?”

  And why, after all the pain he had caused, did every inch of her skin cry out for his touch?

  “I never meant to hurt anyone. Especially you.”

  “But you did.”

  And, glutton for punishment that she was, she still wanted him. Despite all the pain he had caused her and her friends, and who knew how many others.

  Her knees wobbled. The image of him bowing his head in shame swam before her eyes.

  Oh dear God.

  This was not what she had expected when she’d agreed to go along with Susan and Anna’s scheme. She had expected to calmly close the book on her heartbreak by discovering the true reasons behind his callous abandonment.

  She still didn’t know why he’d left her. But it didn’t matter, really, because against all reason, she wanted him.

  His voice was low, steady, and earnest, as earnest as he had sounded when he’d held her in his arms so many years ago. “I didn’t intend to hurt you. I wanted you, Belle. Just you.”

  Isabelle swallowed hard. She clenched her fists to keep her hands from reaching out toward him. What would she do? Slap him? Hold him?

  She was so confused. This raging desire, unbridled anger, desperate pain. All of it had been simmering within her for seven years, and now, seeing him again brought all the feelings to a boiling point, flooding through her veins and over her skin.

  She didn’t know what to do, to say. Her heart pounded. This was Leo. So close. Saying she was the only woman he’d ever wanted. She wanted to fall into his arms and curl up in the comfort of his embrace and forget everything in the world but him and how she knew he could make her feel.

  She closed her eyes and clenched her fists and fought that compulsion with every bit of strength she possessed.

  She won. Her raging need was under control. She’d turn on her heel and leave.

  She opened her eyes and saw him, tense and still on the edge of the chaise longue. Looking at her as if he could see through the blindfold.

  She lunged across the floor and knelt before him. Grabbing him behind his neck, she pulled him forward and pressed her lips to his.

  He tasted so good. So familiar. She kissed him hard, and he responded, his lips taking control, even though he couldn’t touch her.

  Anna. Susan.

  Guilt slammed into her with the force of a hurricane.

  Nay! She couldn’t do this—couldn’t make this mistake again. This time she had friends. She couldn’t betray them.

  Isabelle yanked herself away, stumbled to her feet, and fled, bending to grab her candle from the floor before charging through the door.

  Up the stairs to the ground floor. Up two more flights. The candle blew out somewhere along the way, and she stumbled along blindly.

  She was such a stupid fool.

  What would he think of her? Would he gloat? Would he see her for the besotted idiot she was? What would he say to Anna and Susan? Would they despise her when they found her out?

  She reeled to a halt at the sound of voices. It took her a moment to find her bearings, and then she realized she stood outside Susan’s bedchamber. A narrow strip of flickering light showed beneath the closed door.

  The voices had come from inside. At first, she heard only Susan and thought Anna or a servant must be in the bedchamber with her, but then she heard the low rumble of a man. An angry man.

  “When?”

  Susan responded, but her voice was too low for Isabelle to make sense of her words.

  “A week. No more.”

  Isabelle’s breath caught when she heard the man’s accent. Pierre.

  Susan said something noncommittal.

  “Damn it, I will not play this game with you. You take it too far.”

  “You will play.” Susan’s voice rose to an audible level, but she remained calm.

  “You push the limits, madame.”

  There was a long pause. Isabelle waited breathlessly, sinking deeper into the shadows when she heard rustling movement from within the room.

  “Viens ici,” Susan said finally, switching to husky French. From the sound of her voice, she was now closer to the door. “Viens, mon amour. Je te veux.”

  Come, my love. I want you.

  Isabelle heard the creak of a bed, then feminine laughter and more talking, the words too soft to decipher. Within moments, Susan was moaning, whispering in staccato French, words Isabelle recognized as “yes” and “more.”

  Wax from the candle dish burned Isabelle’s hand. She switched hands and blew at her smarting palm, feeling awful for eavesdropping. She turned away from the sounds of lovemaking. Just down the hall, Isabelle paused in front of Anna’s door. No light or sounds emerged from inside. Anna might be sound asleep, but Isabelle doubted she was even here. She had probably stayed overnight with Lord Archer.

  She ought to feel appalled by what she had just heard in Susan’s room and by Anna spending the night with a man, but she was not. She was terribly envious. It seemed everyone had a warm body to take solace in tonight.

  She went into her room, let her wrap slide from her shoulders, and slipped under the covers of her chilly bed. She curled up on her side, hugging her knees to her chest.

  She wanted him. Despite what he’d done to her. To Susan and Anna and countless others. What kind of a person did it make her to want someone so morally corrupt? So bad?

  Her body didn’t care. It remembered him from seven years ago, and it ached for him now.

  His kiss had tasted like an elixir to every bad thing that had ever happened to her. It was a good thing she had caught herself in time—another moment and she would have been irrevocably lost.

  Perhaps she was lost anyhow.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Leo woke stiff and aching, freezing from head to toe. Since no sounds came from above, he assumed it must be early. The servants had not yet begun their morning duties.

  He lay in darkness. By now, he accepted this state dispassionately, for he knew Hercules would be in soon enough to light the lamp and remove his blindfold. Today he would scratch the fifth tally mark into the back of the chaise.

  He adjusted his blanket with his knee and shrugged his shoulders to his ears. The worst part about sleeping in this manner was the way Hercules tied his hands behind his back. Every morning, Leo awoke groggy and sore. In the afternoons after Hercules removed the blindfold and binding ropes, Leo resorted to taking long naps, finally achieving restful slumber, or as restful a slumber as could be achieved in this dungeon.

  So the nights were reserved for freezing cold, aching discomfort, tossing about, and thoughts he’d never had time to ponder in his dissolute life before imprisonment. Most of them included Belle.

  Belle had come to him last night. She had come close to him, touched him, pressed her lips against his. The memory of her visit made him restless, made him itch for his freedom. If he could move, he would go for a brisk walk. If he could move, he’d search every crevice of the house until he found her.

  The question that hung like a heavy, dull weight in his chest was what he would do with her when he found her.

  He could not fathom why she had come to him in the middle of the night, or whether the other ladies knew of her visit. Certainly if they did not, they would soon. Lady M seemed to be the type of woman who knew everything about what went on in her home.

  He was not pleased with himself. His reaction to her didn’t make logical sense. Instead of seducing her into trusting him and ultimately into releasing him, he had fallen into some sort of trance. He had forgotten about his predicament. Given the ability to see her, to touch her, he would have happily remained chained to the wall for life.

  He had behaved like a fool, and he didn’t know what Belle thought of him for it. Her strange, forceful kiss before she escaped confused him further. Was it meant to be some kind of torture, th
e same kind Mistress Jane seemed determined to inflict, to demonstrate her power over him? Or had it been an impulse, a sudden daring move, the kind of risk he knew the younger Belle would have taken?

  He needed to put an end to these obsessive thoughts, these memories, these reemerging feelings. He knew she was alive, and he was happy for it, but too much time had passed to hope they could rebuild something from the ashes of what they once had.

  She knew what he had become. Soon after her “death,” he’d met Philip Sutherland, the man who would become his comrade and mentor, in Cambridge. He’d poured out his grief to Sutherland, and the man had taken it upon himself to help Leo forget. Leo didn’t care about anything at that point, and he’d happily gone along with Sutherland’s plan for them to become the most dissolute rakehells in the country.

  Whereas his family had believed him too good for Belle once, now he knew without a doubt that she was too good for the likes of him.

  Eventually, the morning noises began overhead: squeaking floorboards, clanking pots and pans in the distant kitchen, muffled orders doled out and obeyed. Smells of sausages, ham, coffee, and baking bread wafted through the cracks in the cellar door. When the sounds and smells finally dwindled, the door to his cell opened with a creak, and he rose up on his elbow, stomach rumbling, to greet the Frenchman, hoping fervently for something better than gruel.

  But the person who walked toward him was not Hercules; he recognized the difference immediately. Lack of sight heightened his other senses, and he could tell, just by the rhythm of the footfalls, that it was one of the ladies, and as she approached, he knew exactly which one it was.

  He clambered to his feet and bowed. “Good morning, Mistress Jane.”

  He hadn’t seen her alone since she’d left him hot and hard and aching for release. It seemed long ago. So much had changed since then.

  “It is a good morning,” she said brightly. “Very good indeed. Glorious, in fact. I am in such good humor this morning, Leo, that I have decided to indulge you.”

  Indulge me? Before he had time to ponder the meaning of that oblique statement, sounds of movement filled the cellar. People came in and out, something scraped along the stones, water poured. Mistress Jane moved away and murmured instructions. A bath? Would they allow him such a luxurious thing as a bath?

  Once again, Mistress Jane approached, speaking cheerfully. “First off, I will have you know that Hercules—very clever appellation, by the way, Leo—is standing at the door. I have given him instructions to wallop you over the skull if you move so much as a hair without my express permission. Do you understand?”

  Leo inclined his head. “Of course.”

  “You are beginning to smell ripe,” she continued, “so I have ordered you a bath. You will do exactly as I command, and I will wash you myself. Understand?”

  He did not trust Mistress Jane, but damned if he didn’t need to bathe. Before this ignominious kidnapping, he hadn’t gone a day without one in years, not since Brummell had begun to extol their virtues at White’s. Bathing refreshed him, cleared his mind, and seldom failed to bring him out of the various miserable physical conditions resulting from his excesses.

  “I understand.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Where is Belle this morning?” The words tumbled out of him before he could stop them.

  “Who is Belle?”

  Of course. Just like Lady M, she would pretend ignorance. “Oh, come now, Mistress Jane. I know Miss Juliette’s real name is Miss Isabelle Frasier.”

  Mistress Jane made a noncommittal noise in her throat.

  “Actually,” he said casually, “I would prefer her to bathe me.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see her.”

  “Why is that?”

  That stopped him short. How could he explain it? He couldn’t explain it to himself, much less to this strange, dangerous woman. If he shared his rioting emotions with her, she’d likely laugh in his face.

  He changed course. “How much longer do you intend to keep me here? Cellar life is proving deuced tiresome.”

  “You know the answer to that. As long as you need to be kept.”

  Her hands slipped beneath his shirt, hooked the waist of his trousers, and pulled them over his buttocks. He braced his body, suddenly oddly repulsed by the feel of her touching him.

  “You are playing with fire, madam.”

  She snickered, affected a coquettish tone. “Oh, dearest me. I am so very frightened. I’m all ashiver.”

  His trousers bunched around his shins. She snapped her fingers, and Hercules came with a key, unlocking his shackles for the first time since he’d arrived. Leo kicked off his trousers and rotated his feet one by one. Cool, soothing air whisked around his chafed ankles.

  Having no restraints after so many days gave him a small taste of freedom. He contemplated dodging Mistress Jane and trying to escape, somehow doing his best with Hercules and whatever other servants milled about. But without the use of his hands or his eyes? He sighed. He would get nowhere. He would not sacrifice his honor for impossible odds.

  She moved behind him, and her hands splayed low on his back, pushing him lightly forward.

  He tried not to think of his nakedness beneath his shirt. After all, this woman had seen him undressed before. Still, he could not help but wonder how Belle would feel about Mistress Jane seeing him like this, about Mistress Jane bathing him.

  “We will keep your shirt on. We mustn’t risk untying your hands to remove it.”

  “I will not try to escape.”

  She gave a harsh laugh. The pressure on his back increased, and he took a tentative, blind step forward.

  “Do you believe I would ever trust you, Leo? I’d rather put my trust in a thief or a murderer.”

  “I say that upon my honor. As a gentleman.”

  “You are no gentleman.”

  He took another step forward and spoke softly. “Tell me what I have done to make you say that so confidently, Mistress Jane. Do not say I have harmed women. You can repeat it over and over, and still I won’t understand, because it is too vague. Tell me what I have done specifically, to you, to make you feel this way.”

  Her fingernails raked over his buttocks, and he took another step forward. His knees bumped the side of the bathtub.

  “Step in,” she ordered.

  Clumsily, he stepped over the lip of the bathtub. Hot water swirled around his calves.

  “Sit.”

  Without the use of his hands, sitting was an awkward proposition, but he managed to kneel and then twist himself so that he leaned back against the edge of the tub. The water rose to his chest, hot and soothing.

  Mistress Jane’s skirts rustled as she leaned beside the tub. “If I spoke in such specifics, you might remember me. Or you might not. But I am not silly enough to take the risk.”

  “Do you truly think so lowly of yourself to believe I might not remember having you?”

  “You have discarded many women. Why should you remember any of them?”

  He opened his mouth to inform her he had an excellent memory but closed it again. He could use this to his advantage.

  “I suppose I can’t remember all of them. But I do remember the ladies I’ve had more than once.”

  He was quite sure that Mistress Jane wasn’t one of them. Otherwise her voice would be familiar to him. He continued. “The brief liaisons, the singular nights of drunken revelry—well, I admit at times they blur in my mind.”

  She snorted. “Of course they do. Who could blame you, after all? Remembering all of us must pose quite a challenge. Of course, it is not even necessary to remember, is it?”

  “Indeed,” he agreed, allowing a hint of smugness to creep into his voice. He wanted to make her angry. Careless.

  She commenced a harsh scrubbing of his body. He sank back into the side of the tub, relishing the sting of the soapy cloth on his skin.

  “Do you know what happens to an unmarried lady when she is corru
pted, Leo?”

  Now they were getting somewhere.

  “I suppose that would depend on the lady’s position and who knows about her disgraced state,” he said smoothly, but as he spoke, he thought of Belle and how the whole world had learned of the taint Leo had placed on her. Her father had probably made her life a living hell. It wrenched his gut to think of what people might have said to her, of the names they might have called her. He took a shallow breath and tried to focus on Mistress Jane.

  “What if her disgraced state is discovered by her guardian, her father, specifically? What do you think happens then?”

  “If the man is intelligent and hopes to make her a good marriage, I imagine he’d keep his mouth shut.”

  “Even when her indiscretion is known to a great many people? What then?”

  Now he knew she must be talking about Belle. Unless…

  She took her time washing him. Starting at his toes, she had moved up his legs, skipping over the raw spots on his ankles, and now reached his thighs. His body tightened, remembering how her hands and mouth had worked him.

  God, he didn’t want her hands on him. Not today, not now, not when discovering her identity seemed a hair’s breadth away. Not when Belle still walked the earth; not when she was nearby, probably somewhere above him in this very house…

  But his cock didn’t seem to agree.

  “Perhaps you ought to wash my hair, Mistress Jane.”

  “If you like, Leo.” A smile laced her words. No doubt she saw the contours of his wayward shaft beneath his wet shirt.

  He sank backward to wet his hair and came up dripping, blowing water from his mouth. She moved behind him and sank soapy fingers into his hair.

  “To answer your question,” he said, “if the lady’s indiscretion is known to a great many people, I suppose she would be in an unpleasant predicament indeed.”

  Her nails grazed his scalp. “So, knowing this, Leo, when you put young ladies in this ‘unpleasant predicament,’ do you not feel any remorse about it?”

  His natural reaction would be to say he didn’t put young ladies in unpleasant predicaments, or at least he tried to avoid it at all costs. On his first day here, he had told his captors he never took virgins. They had known he was lying, of course, because of Belle. But other than Belle, and that one mistake a few years later, he had resolutely kept away from innocents.