The enchanting creature with the bright green eyes and curly red hair was Westby’s middle daughter. He had reasoned the youngest would be with her betrothed because, after all, the ball was being held in their honor. Also he remembered Meeks telling him she was a petite, fey-like creature with delicate features and fine, white-blonde hair. That eliminated the woman he had been holding in his arms only moments ago. The ample landscape of her curves he had cradled against him would never qualify her as “fairy-like.”
No. She was more like a siren, luring men to the promise of heaven with the sway of her wide hips and the temptation of ripe breasts ready for plucking.
She wasn’t the eldest, Tavis had rationalized through a hazy fog of lust, as he had stopped himself from burying his face in the thick red hair curling down and around Amelia’s shoulders. The eldest, he had recollected, was a stunning blonde. When he first came to Town, they had been introduced over a cutthroat game of cards. She had ice-blue eyes, shrewd and cunning, with a hard edge to them.
Amelia’s eyes were the rich green of a field newly carpeted in the springtime. Tavis drew in a deep breath and blew it out. Therefore, the delectable woman he had been lusting after in the stables and squiring about under the stars was the middle daughter, Lady Amelia Westby, the woman he was supposed to be meeting now.
“This is not how tonight was supposed to have gone!” he shouted to the night sky. His mission had been clear. Meet the girl to appease Westby. Break into the study to search for papers on his father and any other papers implicating Westby. Steal the horses Westby had taken from him. (That was not included in his mission, but Tavis reasoned he was owed something for his service to his country.) Leave. That was the mission. Nowhere in his plans did it include falling for the girl.
After everything he had endured these last several months, it was a slap in the face to feel intense attraction for Lady Amelia, the one woman who couldn’t tell a lie and who he needed to help bring down her traitorous father. He would do it, though; he would put his attraction for her aside to woo her and to gain the information he needed about her father. If the thought of losing her trust after he betrayed her left him with an uncomfortable feeling of guilt deep in his stomach, Tavis did his best to ignore it. After all, she was just a woman. There were plenty more out there eager for the attentions of a newly titled earl. He didn’t need Lady Amelia or her silky skin, pouty lips, or breasts to make a grown man weep.
An unbidden image of Lady Amelia’s face came to Tavis’s mind, and he remembered how lonely she looked when telling him about her appointment with the unknown Lord Stanton. She had sounded so sad, and Tavis realized how hard it must be for her to be so unusually cursed, to be forced to always tell the truth. He imagined the censure she had received over the years for this unique trait.
What must it be like to always be treated as an outsider by her peers?
Tavis didn’t have to think about it for very long. It was pure hell. After years of being treated as the bastard son of his father, he too knew the pain of being an outcast from one’s own family and situation in life. How could he even think of using Lady Amelia in such a way when she was so very much like him? No, he needed to consider some way to get the information he needed without using Lady Amelia.
Tavis reviewed his options and found none to fulfill this new requirement. Pulling out his pocket watch, he saw it was five minutes to midnight. A new idea started to form. In less than five minutes, Westby would be waiting for him in the ballroom, and the man’s study, the most likely location to look for the information he needed, would be empty. Tavis would find what he needed to complete his mission and be able to return home to begin his life of comfort and ease. Lady Amelia would be safe, and he would just forget her. Yes, it was a brilliant plan.
Enacting his plan immediately, he was unable to find anything. After a thorough search for hidden compartments in the desk and in the wall, Tavis was about to pry apart the floorboards when he heard someone approaching the main door of the study. Using the side door, Tavis slipped out into the adjoining library and into the main hallway, only to be greeted by Lord Westby.
“Lord Stanton!” boomed the familiar voice of Lord Westby. “How good of you to come to our little soirée!” He pumped Tavis’s hand in an enthusiastic greeting, squeezing a little too hard. “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he said with a hard edge to his voice. Tavis didn’t mistake his meaning.
“Yes, yes,” Tavis replied. “I became lost, I’m afraid, in the maze of rooms in your house.” He flashed him a cool smile. “But I’m here as requested, Westby.”
The two men made their way into the ballroom, and Tavis scanned the room, looking for a glimpse of Amelia’s bright red hair amidst the guests who had not yet gone in for dinner. In spite of his reluctance to use Lady Amelia to ferret out her father’s secrets, he was oddly excited at the prospect of seeing her again.
“Is she here?” he demanded, turning to address Westby, who had moved off slightly to take the arm of an attractive blonde woman, presumably Westby’s wife.
The lady, a petite creature of middling years and regal bearing, regarded him with a frank gaze, startling not for its intensity but because it was the same green he had so admired earlier this evening in the eyes of Lady Amelia Westby.
Westby cleared his throat and announced, “I would like to present to you my wife, Lady Westby.” The lady curtsied, and Tavis bowed, murmuring a subdued greeting to the woman whose daughter he had been imagining in many compromising positions.
“We are so pleased you could join us this evening,” Lady Westby cooed, holding out her hand for Tavis to kiss. Tavis took the proffered hand and bestowed a perfunctory kiss over her knuckles. She fluttered her lashes and smiled in genuine kindness.
“How could I refuse such an offer?” Tavis asked. “I admit I was reluctant at first. Your husband practically had to blackmail me into coming.” He hazarded a sly glance at Westby, who reddened and began to splutter indignantly. “Of course, what gentleman relishes the imminent end of his carefree bachelor days?” Tavis stifled a laugh as Lady Westby patted her husband on the back.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right, my lord,” she said, though her attention was focused on her husband’s unexplained fit of coughing.
“Ha, ha!” Westby clapped Tavis hard on the back. “You’re such a kidder, my lord.” Westby smiled to reassure his wife while keeping his hand clamped on Tavis’s shoulder in silent warning not to make any further allusions to their arrangement.
“What Lord Stanton surely meant was his reluctance to meet our Amelia before I tempted him with her many accomplishments and charms.” Westby squeezed Tavis’s shoulder and turned his hard, icy eyes toward him. “Isn’t that right, Lord Stanton?”
Tavis did not appreciate being manhandled, especially by a middle-aged traitor who bartered his daughter for the reluctant complicity of peers of the realm in his back alley dealings. When he turned to reply to Lord Westby, the light of battle had entered his eyes, and he bared his teeth in a gross imitation of a smile. Removing Westby’s hand from his shoulder, he applied more pressure than necessary to the older man’s hand. Tavis received not a small amount of satisfaction from the grimace of pain flashing across Westby’s face.
“Precisely, my lord,” Tavis replied.
Walking over to Lady Westby, who watched the interplay between her husband and Lord Tavis with confusion on her pretty face, Tavis offered his arm to the lady and flashed her a brilliant smile. “Will I have the pleasure of meeting Lady Amelia soon, my lady?”
She fluttered her free hand by her temple, patting the hair there. “Oh, she should be here any moment, my lord,” she tittered, her bright eyes scanning the room for signs of her daughter. “She was most anxious to meet you.”
Tavis remembered Amelia’s downcast eyes and the sad tilt to her mouth when she spoke of her meeting with Lord Stanton. Somehow he doubted she was eager to meet him. He also feared hurting her but saw no way around it.
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br /> “Lord Stanton?” a shrill feminine voice demanded, recalling him to his curious hostess on his arm. “I asked if you wanted to go in for dinner.”
“I would rather take a turn around the room with you, my lady, while we wait for your daughter. You can tell me all about her.” He winked, and Lady Westby tittered, while Lord Westby gritted his teeth in annoyance. “If she is as delightful as you, I shall be most pleased.” Arm in arm, Lord Stanton led Lady Westby around the ballroom, with Lord Westby watching from the side.
An hour later, Amelia had yet to appear, much to the aggravation and annoyance of his host and hostess, leaving Tavis to wonder at his role in her disappearance. Had she been scared off by their encounter in the stables? Had she been planning on meeting someone else all along and had gone off with this other man instead? Tavis felt his temper rising at that thought, but even in his extreme irritation he recognized it was nothing to the anger Westby displayed when Amelia failed to show. Tavis prayed Amelia was safely hidden away, at least until her father’s anger subsided.
Giving his heartfelt regrets and a promise to return on the morrow, Tavis made a hasty departure from the house. He was more than anxious to leave and return home, but since his search of Westby’s study had yielded nothing, he needed to use Lady Amelia as originally planned. With any luck, she would be available tomorrow so he could begin the exciting yet distasteful business of seducing her. She would capitulate; they all did. It was not conceit; Tavis was simply good at his job. The question remaining was whether he could avoid falling further under her spell in the process.
He was rounding a corner to take the path back to the stables when he heard a commotion, almost as if someone were rattling branches against the side of the house. His ears perked, and he scanned the area for any disturbances. Aside from a cool breeze rustling the trees and bushes, there was nothing out of the ordinary to indicate any foul play, yet the noise continued.
“Bollocks!” He heard the soft whisper coming from…above? Tavis whipped his head back, and his jaw hung open in astonishment. For coming down the trellis was a nicely rounded arse that from this angle he could only surmise belonged to a woman. He watched her make her way down the trellis, using the open latticework like the rungs of a ladder. She had descended about three quarters of the way down when he saw her foot falter on one of the rungs. The woman grasped at the twining vines growing up the side of the house in a desperate attempt to regain her balance and stop her fall, but her hands slipped off the vines, and she pitched backwards.
Tavis had only a second to reach out his arms to break her fall before she crashed on top of him. They both landed with a thud on the hard earth. That is to say, Tavis landed on the hard earth, and the woman landed on his chest, the rounded flesh of her skirt-clad buttocks obstructing his breath.
“Are you unharmed?” a woman’s voice whispered, oddly enough not the voice of the woman who was sitting on him.
“Yes,” the mystery woman atop him whispered back, wiggling her buttocks over his face. “Something soft broke my fall.”
“Oh, good,” the other woman replied. Tavis heard a large thunk and felt a slight vibration in the ground next to him like something had been thrown out of the window to land there.
“Good luck, darling!” He heard a far-off click and assumed the other woman had leaned back in and closed the window behind her, because now all was silent. Except the pounding in his head from it hitting the ground.
He felt the woman moving around again, attempting to stand. She braced her hands on his chest, giving it an exploratory squeeze. And then she paused.
“Uh-oh.” She gulped. Her hands fluttered down his chest, over his stomach, and into dangerous areas below his waist.
“Good lord,” she whispered, now stroking the flesh on his thighs. “I think I’ve killed someone!” He felt her scramble off his body, and for the first time since she landed on him, he was able to take in a deep breath.
Tavis propped himself up on his elbows and tried to get a look at his assailant, but there was no light on this side of the house, and the moon was hiding behind a grove of trees. He sensed her near his left side and imagined she was working up the nerve to see if she had actually killed him or not.
Maybe wondering, too, how to finish the job.
Moving with a swiftness belying the pain he was in, he grabbed the woman by her arms and rolled her under him.
He tried to ascertain her features, but she must have had a cloak or other dark garment over her head concealing her face. “Who are you and what do you mean by nearly killing me?” Tavis growled to the struggling woman in his grasp.
She stilled. “T-Tavis?” a familiar voice whispered to him. “Is that you?”
He immediately released her arms and jumped away from her. She stood, too, and he watched in growing alarm as she pushed aside the hood that concealed her face. Now that she was uncovered, Tavis recognized the familiar red curls and pale features of the woman he had been struggling to put out of his mind.
“Amelia?” He stepped back to her. His hand seemed to take on a mind of its own, and he watched his fingers trace the smooth lines of her cheek. She turned her head to nuzzle into his hand, and when she placed a soft kiss there, he noticed an odd ache near the vicinity of his heart.
It was Amelia. The mystery woman who had nearly killed him when she landed on him was his Amelia. Tavis chuckled to himself. Twice in one night the damn chit has nearly killed me.
“It’s lucky I was there to break your fall, my lady. I would hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been here.” It was only then he took in her appearance. Unlike earlier this evening, when she had been bedecked in soft blue silk, she wore a dark, sturdy dress covered by a heavy traveling cloak. Tall leather boots completed her ensemble. And next to her on the ground was a medium-sized carpet bag.
That must be what I heard hit the ground.
An uneasy suspicion took root in his mind.
She nodded and smiled shyly up at him. “I am glad it was you who found me, Tavis. Otherwise it might have been…awkward, explaining what I am doing here.”
“What are you doing here, my lady?” he asked, though he had a good idea he knew exactly what she was up to. Sneaking down the trellis in sturdy traveling clothes with a packed bag usually meant one thing, but he needed to hear her say it.
“I’ve come to run away with you, Mr. McGuire.” Her voice was soft but clear. There was no hesitation or embarrassment in her voice, and despite the darkness they were in, the whites of her eyes were trained unwaveringly on his face.
He blew out a big breath and cursed the Tavis of an hour ago who had blurted out his ill-conceived plan to have Amelia run away with him instead of meeting with Lord Stanton. His blood-deprived brain had most likely compromised his mission and the safety of Lady Amelia.
Tavis thought for a moment. But since Lord Stanton is actually me, she would still be marrying Lord Stanton if she runs away with Tavis McGuire, which was the original plan all along.
Brilliant! I didn’t compromise the mission after all. He would take Amelia away from Westby, find out what she knew, and locate the information he needed to complete his mission. Yes, it would work.
He thought a little bit more about the muddle he had created and decided he might have made things worse after all. However, if she runs away with Tavis McGuire, eventually she’ll discover he is Lord Stanton, er, I mean me. And then she’ll want to know why Tavis lied to her about who he, Lord Stanton, ah, I mean me, and he, uh, we were.
Good Christ, but his head hurt! Absently, he scrubbed his fingers through his hair. He felt a soft touch on his wrist and looked down in amazement at the slender fingers resting there, momentarily having forgotten Amelia’s presence before him.
“Tavis? Do you not want me to come away with you anymore?”
The moon chose this moment to peek out from behind the grove of trees, shedding enough light for Tavis to see the hurt swimming in Amelia’s wide, green eyes.
“No, Amelia. I do want you.” His throbbing body echoed that sentiment, but his conscience demanded he try one last time to dissuade her from coming with him. “But you know nothing of me. I could be anyone!”
She said not a word but only stood there with a wry expression on her face, and he realized he used the same words on her she had tried to use on him earlier in the evening when he had proposed the very same thing.
“I’ll take my chances, Tavis. I know enough to know I’ll be safe with you.”
The little chit thinks herself safe, does she? Tavis grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against his body. He leaned his head down for his lips to graze the sensitive flesh of her neck. Nibbling up the graceful column, he whispered in her ear, “You never know. I could be dangerous.” He felt her shiver and hoped he had succeeded in intimidating her enough that she would return to her room.
But she was bolder than he had given her credit for. Amelia twined her hands around his neck and pulled his head nearer her own. “I am not afraid of you, Tavis McGuire,” Amelia whispered. “And I already know you’re dangerous,” she said in a stronger voice meeting his hot, wicked gaze with her own.
Tavis groaned when plump lips clamped around the sensitive flesh of his earlobes. The sharp bite of her teeth as they grazed his flesh had him taut and hard within seconds, and when she nibbled her way down the corded muscles of his neck, he was helpless to stop the thick swelling of his flesh pushing against the tight confines of his breeches.
As he debated the merits of pushing her away from him versus rushing her back to the stables to finish what they had started earlier in the evening, her warm breath fanned his ear.
“In fact, I’m planning on it.”
Chapter 9
Several things became abundantly clear to Amelia the farther she and Tavis traveled from London. For one, she was not as good an equestrian as she had thought. Every muscle in her body ached, and she groaned as her bottom jostled about in her saddle. Since their late night escape from London, Tavis had ridden hard, insisting he wanted as much distance as possible between him and her father. Shifting on her saddle, she winced as tender muscles protested. “When I envisioned running away with you, Tavis McGuire,” she muttered under her breath, “it did not involve spending our days riding as if the hounds of hell were chasing us halfway across England.”
Little White Lies Page 7
