Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) Read online

  Rafe hadn’t had time to ask Anthony what his intentions were with Lady Maidenstone — not that it was Rafe’s responsibility to do so. But if Lady Maidenstone had sensed that something strange was happening and gone to the clearing specifically to spy on their efforts, that was an entirely different scenario than if she was there to enjoy Anthony’s company.

  The hunting lodge waited, dark and empty. They walked up the short set of steps to the front door together. Octavia pushed the door open, but she didn’t enter. Instead, she turned toward Rafe. Her shoulders were square and her bearing determined — but the look in her eyes said she expected to find death at dawn. “Lady Maidenstone will betray us in the morning, if she hasn’t already. But I still owe you my gratitude, my lord. I could not have made even this attempt without you.”

  “Are you so sure you’ve lost the war? Usually I would celebrate a victory like tonight’s.”

  She assessed him again. There was something fey and a little wild in her eyes, as though she had been touched too long by the fog in Maidenstone Wood. He wondered what she had thought about in those dark hours while she waited for him to bring their victims to the clearing. Did she dream of victory? Did she fear defeat? Had she kept calm by thinking of other things? Many men dreamed of home, or a lover, but Octavia wouldn’t find comfort in either of those memories.

  He realized, then, that he had expected her to be delighted with their success — to already be planning to poison the wells or cut Lucretia’s dresses to shreds. He had been eager to help her plot those things, for reasons that had nothing to do with his revenge against Somerville. None of it was likely to stop Lucretia from winning.

  But in Octavia’s company these last few days, for the first time that he could remember in ages, he had had fun.

  He didn’t mind if she was a little fey, a little wild. In the dark, influenced by all the memories of other nights spent slinking through enemy forests, Rafe felt a little wild himself.

  But he didn’t want Octavia to lose the spark of joy he’d seen in her so many times before — to already be planning for defeat, and a life spent warming others’ beds for protection and pretty dresses.

  Still, as Octavia’s mouth twisted, suddenly, into a secretive little smile that went straight to his gut, Rafe wondered again whether Fortune had chosen to reward him or crush him under the wheel. “If it’s celebration you suggest, my brave captain, it’s celebration we shall have. I know it’s unwise of me to ask when you’ve already turned me down once, but do you care to join me for a drink?”

  His mouth went dry. The threads between them were weaving together into something stronger — something that could bind. He should stop and say his farewells, giving up on his mission before he hurt her or she trapped him. She shouldn’t have given him that minxlike smile — wouldn’t have given it to him, if she knew that he was using her to defeat Somerville. Ultimately, threads could become ties, which could bind them together — or threads could become nooses. And if she ever discovered what he had drawn and how his caricatures had already affected her, she would hate him far more than she could ever love him.

  But her smile was all he could see. That damned drawling desire went through his ears and wrapped around his heart. He felt like a schoolboy again, hardening as he imagined stripping her out of that dress.

  Fortune sharpened her knives for the kill.

  Octavia extended her hand.

  He took it, hoping she didn’t notice that he had to clear his throat before he could respond. “I should be promoted to general after tonight’s escapade,” he said, as though she hadn’t affected him at all.

  She laughed. “Continue as you are, and you’ll be a field marshal by the end of the year.”

  By the end of the year, his mission would be over, Maidenstone Abbey’s fate would be settled, and there would be no reason for them to speak again.

  It was a terrible idea to continue. But tonight, he couldn’t walk away from her. He told himself that everything he was about to do was solely for the sake of his mission.

  Of all the people he lied to, Rafe was particularly skilled at lying to himself.

  He kissed her hand, brushing his lips over her knuckles. She didn’t wear gloves. He was glad for it. He loved that swift little gasp as he touched her. He never failed to draw a reaction from her — just as she never failed to draw a reaction from him.

  “I don’t think a promotion will be enough,” he said hoarsely.

  “No?”

  He turned her hand and pressed a kiss against her wrist. “No.”

  Her eyes closed. He saw the decision playing out over her face. On a regular mission, he would have helped her along, kissing her neck, whispering something sweet to help her make up her mind. He could seduce a woman in five languages, but it usually took no words at all.

  But he waited. He knew he had lied to himself about this being entirely about his mission. It mattered to him to know that she was making this decision entirely on her own — that she wanted him, regardless of whether or why he wanted her.

  Octavia opened her eyes. The certainty there shocked him more than anything else could have.

  “Have a drink with me,” she said. “And then we’ll see about your reward.”

  She drew him through the open door, closing it behind them.

  And Fortune smiled and stabbed him in the heart.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Octavia had caught a tiger by the tail. Now that she had him, what was she supposed to do with him?

  She started to lead him toward the drawing room and the decanters there, but Rafe grabbed her shoulders. “Slow down,” he murmured in her ear. “We have the whole night ahead of us.”

  Then he brushed her hair away from her neck. She’d removed her veil earlier and wound it around her reticule. When his lips grazed a pulse point, the bundle fell from her hand.

  “Rafe,” she said, reaching up to touch his face. He had shaved that morning, but the trace of new-grown beard felt dangerous.

  “You promised me a reward,” he said, his voice low and rumbly as he kissed her neck again. “But seeing your hair like this is the only gift I need.”

  He ran a hand through it, sifting through the mahogany waves. She arched back, loving the feel of his fingers — the thrill of knowing that he was the first man to touch her like this.

  He would be the first man to touch her. It shouldn’t have mattered. She could have slept with many men these past few years — she no longer had to think of her reputation, only of what might make her happy. But she was suddenly, fiercely, perhaps stupidly glad that it would be him.

  His hand slid up her back. His fingers caressed her scalp, so tender that she thought, for a moment, that she might cry. She suddenly remembered how he’d held her when she’d found Lucy’s shrine. He had made her feel safe then. He made her feel safe now, no matter how much uncertainty swirled around her.

  She had thought that the biggest danger would be in letting him make love to her. Their first kiss had already awoken something within her. She’d thought that her hunger for sex, once she knew exactly what it felt like, might be insatiable.

  But now, she realized that he was slowly, inexorably filling all the loneliest bits of her soul — those places that she hadn’t even noticed were empty. Lucy was lost to her. Somerville had been kind to her, but it had never been enough.

  Rafe could be enough, if she let him be.

  If he wanted to be.

  That question was far too dangerous to think about. She couldn’t do this if she had any hope of keeping him — not if she wanted to protect herself. He wouldn’t marry a ruined woman.

  And she didn’t think she could bear being Rafe’s mistress, paid and kept, but always knowing he could toss her out at any moment.

  So she wouldn’t let herself expect anything. This was a chance to see what lovemaking was all about before she made a decision about which protector she would take next. That experience was something she knew she wanted. Nothing
more than that.

  Her heart wanted more, but this time, her body won. His caresses were doing delightful things to her. She could focus on those for tonight. Tomorrow was soon enough to worry about the future.

  She turned to face him, sacrificing the feel of his hand in her hair for something better. She leaned up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

  He let her explore his mouth at her leisure. There was something heady about feeling like she was in command — and something equally heady about knowing he could strip that command from her at any moment. Like all the nights they’d spent together on her mission, the power shifted and flowed between them effortlessly. Like partners, not acquaintances.

  For now, it was her adventure. She nipped his bottom lip with her teeth. His mouth, when he finally opened for her, was warm and inviting — and not nearly as tinged by whisky as his appearance in the forest would have indicated. She sighed a little as their tongues met. Her body slowly started to relax — even as, deep within her, a warm, delicious heat started to build.

  “Careful, love,” he murmured after a few endless minutes. By then she was breathless, languid and on fire at the same time. “We’re not going to have time for the drink you promised me if you keep kissing me like that.”

  His voice was pure gravel. The warning felt like a dare.

  She responded by stripping his greatcoat off of him. He wore riding breeches and Hessians — not the usual evening attire, but he had skipped dinner at Maidenstone in favor of pursuing their schemes. Perhaps, unconsciously, he had dressed for battle.

  “Do you want a drink?” she asked, tugging at his cravat. “Or do you want to take me to bed?”

  He tilted her chin up. His eyes were full of devilry. She grinned, perhaps a little too dazzled by what she saw there. “We have all night,” he said.

  Then he kissed her, slowly, thoroughly. Her hand fisted in his cravat, pulling him closer, never wanting him to stop. Through her brocade prison, she felt him graze down her back, cupping her derriere.

  Maybe the first countess had killed herself out of frustration, if this dress had always come between her and her lover’s hands.

  Rafe’s touch was leisurely. But when he spoke again, there was tension in his voice. “We have all night,” he repeated. “But spending any of it doing anything but making love to you seems like a colossal mistake.”

  Her heart leapt. She shoved it aside with a brutal reminder that this was about now — not about the future.

  “Good,” she said, dropping her hand from his cravat to trail over the buttons of his jacket. “I don’t think I can sit in this dress anyway.”

  “Then we’ll have to get you out of it,” he murmured, kissing the side of her neck again. “Lead me to your bed, general.”

  She smiled, feeling wicked and wonderful. “I should court-martial you for trying to assume command, but I agree with your tactics.”

  He laughed against her skin. “I live to obey, Octavia.”

  How did he make her name sound like a caress? In another man’s mouth, her name sounded hard, like the Roman empress she was named after. But from him, it sounded like something else — like the woman she wanted to be, not the woman her ruin had forced her to become. A woman who could trust kisses and laughter. A woman who could find solace in someone else’s arms.

  The woman she wanted to be was on fire now, eager for this man with the easy laugh and steady gaze. But she was still the woman she had been. And that woman had a sudden flurry of doubt.

  “Why did you change your mind?” she asked.

  The moment darkened. He pulled away from her, frowning. She almost regretted asking the question. But she had to know.

  “Change my mind about what?”

  “About this,” she said, waving a hand between them. “Last night, you said you thought this was a bad idea.”

  He caressed her cheek. “I was wrong. This is the best idea.”

  If she were eighteen, she would have left it at that. But the woman she wanted to be wouldn’t allow herself to be used for someone else’s pleasure — not unless she knew exactly how the playing field was situated.

  “It is the best idea,” she said. “But I would still ask why you realized that now and not before.”

  Rafe paused. For once, there was no charming smile or glib response. Instead, finally, he said, “I cannot say goodbye to you yet, Octavia. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. And I think we’re both too honest, or at least too practical, to believe that the future will be full of rainbows and butterflies. But tonight…I was able to deny it last night. But I can’t deny you again.”

  He pulled her back into his arms, but it felt more like a hug than an amorous embrace. “Let’s have tonight,” he whispered into her hair. “But if you want me to stop, say the word and I’ll leave.”

  He was giving her the freedom of choice. In his arms, she knew she was exactly where she wanted to be.

  She also knew this would never, ever have happened if he knew she was a virgin. Gentlemen did not offer “tonight” to innocents — and if they did, they weren’t gentlemen.

  She couldn’t tell him. He probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. If he did, he might ask questions about Somerville that she couldn’t answer.

  Agnes had told her everything about the mechanics of the act years ago, when Octavia became Somerville’s mistress. Octavia had seen enough illicit couples at her parties to know a bit more than what Agnes had told her, but still, she was mostly in the dark.

  But Agnes had told her that enthusiasm pleased men more than experience. Octavia had no idea if that was true. She hoped it was, though — because while she had no experience, she had endless enthusiasm for Rafe.

  She pressed a kiss against his shoulder. “Tonight. Lucy may have us drawn and quartered in the morning, after all.”

  He laughed. “Don’t borrow trouble. I’m going to give you all the trouble you can handle.”

  He scooped her up in his arms. She shrieked as he tossed her over his shoulder. “What are you doing?” she demanded as her hair tumbled over her head and his arm wrapped around her thighs.

  “You look gorgeous in this dress, you know,” he said conversationally, walking toward the stairs. “I never had this fantasy before, but I’d rather like to be the dastardly pirate kidnapping the Virgin Queen.”

  She reminded herself that it was a reference to Queen Elizabeth, not that he’d guessed her secret. “I can still court-martial you.”

  “You won’t,” he said confidently. “After tonight, you’ll promote me.”

  “Aren’t you a confident beggar,” she said as he moved up the stairs.

  “I’ll let you turn me into a beggar another night. But this is my fantasy, your majesty. Tonight, it’s your turn.”

  She was entirely in over her head, but his voice was still full of humor and his arm was secure around her. She let go of the last of her doubts, let go of the woman she had forced herself to become.

  When he found her bedchamber and tossed her onto the bed, she laughed.

  “Kidnappings aren’t supposed to be fun,” Rafe said with a mock scowl.

  She raised herself up on her elbows, looking at him as though she were a queen in truth — captured, perhaps, but always regal. “My country won’t ransom me, you know. You’ll have to take whatever you can find on my body.”

  He grinned. “I would never let you go for money, love.”

  She almost wished he wouldn’t use the endearment.

  He moved away from the bed. Agnes had closed the curtains before she had left, but he threw them open again, letting the last of the moonlight filter in through the glass. “Not enough,” he muttered to himself.

  “Can I help….”

  He raised his hand, peremptorily, as though he really had kidnapped her. “Silence, wench.”

  She giggled.

  Rafe looked back at her and grinned. “That was too much, I know.”

  He found a lamp on her
dressing table and lit it. Then he lit the wall sconces and the candles on the mantel. When he returned to the foot of the bed, he stared down at her. He didn’t touch her, but she could very nearly feel his gaze as he looked over her. His smile was entirely wicked. “If you’re to be my payment, I want to see every inch of you.”

  She shivered. That, at least, was not an act.

  But she made a show of looking past him toward the clock on the mantel. “Do be quick about it, then,” she said, waving a hand. “I shan’t waste my sleep on a ruffian like you.”

  He laughed. “That’s the spirit, your majesty.”

  When they were flirting like this, she had no doubts at all. And so she was relaxed and eager with him, where another man might have made her nervous.

  He grabbed her ankles, pulling her toward him until her backside balanced right on the edge of the bed. “Don’t move,” he said when she reached down to adjust her skirts.

  He adjusted them instead, pushing them up slowly, revealing inch after inch of her stockings. He reached her garters, then looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Red, your majesty?” he asked, with an eyebrow raised in mock disapproval. “I never would have guessed you to be a wanton.”

  She couldn’t think of a response to that — not when he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, above the silk. She hadn’t known how sensitive she was there. He was only inches from her most private space — and she knew, from earlier, entirely personal discoveries that she was definitely sensitive there.

  He pooled her skirts around her waist. “Hold them up,” he ordered.

  Below the waist, she would be completely bared to him. She wasn’t nervous, but she couldn’t stop herself from blushing as she imagined how he saw her. He had gathered all the layers — the overskirt, padded underskirt, and chemise — leaving her in her stockings and shoes and nothing else.

  Her hands shook as she held her skirts where he’d told her to. He shrugged off his jacket like a man preparing for serious work. He tossed his waistcoat aside. In his white open-necked shirt and riding breeches, with his Hessians gleaming in the candlelight, he almost looked like the pirate he pretended to be. And the acres of brocade that pooled around her completed the picture — a queen about to be claimed by right of conquest.