Notorious

“I flatter myself that I was rather good,” she said. “I posed as a widow. I had many suitors.”

Dev could believe it. She was beautiful enough to tempt a saint and there was a knowing air to her, a sensual allure that was provocative enough to make any man want to please as well as possess her. Of course she would set her sights much higher than merely being a courtesan. That would have been a course from which she could never have regained respectability. Instead, as a beautiful widow she would have drawn suitors like moths to the flame. They would have begged for her notice. Only he knew the venal heart beneath her lovely facade.

“So you killed me off as well as yourself,” he said coldly. “How very tidy of you.”

“Oh, I never mentioned your name,” Susanna said. “No one ever asked about my first husband. I suppose that if they had I could have admitted to the annulment and painted our marriage as a youthful indiscretion.” She raised her brows as though inviting his congratulations. “Yes, it was a neat plan, was it not?”

“I’m still having trouble with the difference between a courtesan and a woman who buys herself a rich husband with her body,” Dev said.

Susanna shrugged, apparently indifferent to his disapproval. “You are too particular. We all use the advantages we are given.”

She had been given plenty, Dev thought grimly. That angel’s face, that lissome, lovely body—and a grasping nature that cared nothing for the pain she inflicted on others. It was a pity he had not been able to see past the obvious when they had first met but he had been a youth confronted by a beautiful girl. He had not been thinking with his head but with a different and far more basic part of his anatomy.

He felt cold at the sheer calculating callousness of Susanna’s plan. She had been an adventuress from the first. She had wed him, learned from him the arts she needed to please a man in bed and then left him to pursue bigger, richer prey. Armed with her annulment she would indeed be free to remarry. He could see how much the combination of her youth, beauty, wit, experience and the tiniest hint of a mysterious past might appeal to a wealthy older man. Hell, it was obvious that Fitz was already in thrall to her. Even he could barely look at her without wanting to plunder every inch of that exquisite, perfidious body, and he knew what a lying, conniving strumpet she was.

“You mistake if you think that you are not a whore,” he said. “You have whored yourself out for money whether it is by marriage or not.”

The candlelight shimmered on some expression in Susanna’s eyes that was, for one tiny second, utterly at odds with her brazen words. But then it was gone and all that was left was contempt.

“You should know, Devlin,” she said. “Are you not doing precisely the same thing, catching an heiress with your good looks and charm?” Her perfect brows arched. “If I am a whore, what does that make you?”

Dev took a furious step toward her—and stopped when he saw the triumph in her eyes. She was glad she had been able to goad him into near-indiscretion. He drew in a deep breath.

“You are also mistaken if you think you learned all there is to pleasure a man in one night at my hands,” he ground out. “But should you wish to extend your experience I am, of course, at your disposal.”

“As you were nine years ago.” She smiled, not one whit discomposed, as cool as spring water. “I thank you but there is no need. I have addressed the deficiencies in my education in the past few years.”

Dev was sure that she had. There had been her remarriage to Carew, who had presumably been an affluent baronet. Perhaps there had been other lovers as well, or even previous marriages. And now she truly was a rich widow and he suspected she was hunting another trophy. A marquis, perhaps …

He had been played. He had been used—comprehensively, ruthlessly. Susanna had seen him as a mere stepping-stone to better things. He, the fortune hunter, should appreciate her strategy. He did not.

Suddenly he could see Chessie’s hopes for the future vanishing like mist in the sun. He could see just how vulnerable both he and his sister were with no more than foothold in the ton. One false step, one piece of bad luck, could send them tumbling back into the void of poverty and despair that had been their childhood on the streets of Dublin. Dev had experienced both unimaginable wealth and abject poverty several times; as the son of a compulsive gambler he had known the extremes of rich and poor before he was barely out of short trousers. That fear, that knowledge, had driven him ever since. He could not permit Susanna to steal Chessie’s future or ruin his own plans. He would have to keep her close, watch her every move.

Susanna inclined her head to him with mock civility. “Good evening, Sir James,” she said. “I wish you good luck with your fortune hunting.”

“Do you?” Dev said, politely incredulous.

She smiled. “About as much as you wish me luck with mine.”

Dev watched her walk away, her figure a silver flame in the sinuous dress, the diamonds sparkling in her hair and the heels of her silver embroidered slippers tapping on the floor.

Keep her close … In some ways it would be no hardship. In others it would be the most dangerous thing that he could do.

SUSANNA WAS STILL SHAKING as she climbed into the carriage. She did not expect Dev to come after her again—she had made very sure that he would not—but the antagonism of their encounter still beat through her blood with primitive force. It was impossible to believe that once upon a time she and Dev had made love with such exquisite tenderness. Now there was nothing left.

She remembered Dev’s bitter condemnation of her, the disgust in his eyes, and she felt shot through with regret. There had been no other way to drive him away from her. She could not afford for anyone to uncover the truth about her past, not now when so much was at stake. This was her last job. With the money the Duke and Duchess of Alton would be paying her for separating Fitz from Chessie she would at last have sufficient funds to settle her debts, return to Scotland and provide a home for her twin wards, Rory and Rose, the children of her best friend. The three of them needed to be together, to be a family once again as they had been in the beginning. Susanna’s heart ached with a sudden fierce pang that made her breath catch in her throat. She hated this life, hated playing a role, hated the deception and hated most of all the fact that there was no one who knew, no one she could confide in. She was on her own. She always had been, from the moment her aunt and uncle had thrown her out, pregnant, destitute, seventeen years old.

She touched the diamond necklace at her throat. They were borrowed plumes, like the carriage and the house in Curzon Street, the beautiful gown and the silver slippers. Nothing was real. She was a counterfeit lady, a Cinderella whose carefully constructed world might vanish in a puff of smoke if anyone found out the truth. She touched the dress gently, almost reverentially. When she had been selling such gowns for a living, her head spinning with tiredness from the long hours working in poor light, her fingers sore from the needle and cut by the thread, she had dreamed of wearing such a beautiful creation and being the belle of the ball. Tonight she had been that fairy-tale princess, yet beneath the layers of silk and lace she was still little Susanna Burney, a fraud who feared discovery.

Once again Dev’s face rose in her mind’s eye, hard, unyielding, his expression full of scorn. He was the one of whom she had to beware. If Dev had suspected for a moment that she had been thrown out onto the street, disowned, disinherited, abandoned, he would start to ask all the difficult questions she wanted to avoid. He would uncover her past and ruin the future that was so close within her grasp.

Susanna leaned her head back against the cushions of the seat and closed her eyes. If only … If only she had not run off to marry Dev secretly in the first and last impulsive action of her life. If only she had not had the idea of going to Lord Grant, Dev’s cousin, the next morning, to confess and ask for his support for them. If only she had not run back to the perceived security of her aunt and uncle’s house and had tried to pretend nothing had happened. If only she had not been pregnant with Dev’s child … One disastrous decision had set in train a course of events that had led to the poorhouse and to places in her own mind that were so full of despair that she never wanted to go there again. The tiny body of her child wrapped in its pitiful shroud, the words of the priest, the gray dawn mist creeping over the Edinburgh graveyard …

With a gasp of pain Susanna buried her face in her hands, then she let them fall and stared into the darkness, her eyes dry. She must never think of that again. Never. The dark clouds hovered like beating wings. She pushed them away, closing her eyes, breathing deeply, until she felt the panic subside and the calm seep back into her mind. She had lost her own daughter but she had Rory and Rose to care for and she clung to them with the fierceness of a tigress. She had given her word to their mother, there in the bitter dark chill of the poorhouse, in the cold hours before Flora’s death, and sometimes it seemed that the gift of the twins was both penitence and blessing to her. She had lost Maura but she could make amends now and she would never, ever let Rory and Rose down, which was why it was imperative that Dev must never learn the truth and scupper her plans.

Sighing, she kicked off her pretty silver evening slippers and flexed her toes. Her feet ached. Cinderella’s slippers were all very well but they were not comfortable. Her headache, which had originally been an excuse to escape Frederick Walters’s importunities, was a reality now. All she wanted was to be home.

The carriage passed a group of young bucks noisily drinking and carousing in the street. Hot summer nights reminded Susanna of Edinburgh in the days when she had dragged herself out of the poorhouse to work as a tavern wench and ballad singer. She had such a checkered past, she thought, with a rueful smile. The tavern, the gown shop … It had been through good looks and sheer luck that she had fallen into her extraordinary work as a heartbreaker, paid by parents to ruin the unsuitable matches of their rich and titled offspring.

Susanna rubbed her temples where the diamond clasp was pulling her hair. The night had started so well. The Duke and Duchess of Alton had introduced her to Fitz and he had seemed intrigued by her and definitely more than a little interested in taking their acquaintance further. She had sparkled, flirted, playing the mysterious widow to perfection. She and Fitz had waltzed together and she had allowed him to hold her a little closer than convention dictated. Everything had been going smoothly. She had even started to plan the next step—another meeting with Fitz, one that would appear to happen quite by chance but would in fact be the result of the Duke and Duchess paying their son’s valet some extortionate amount to disclose the details of his master’s diary. That was how she was always one step ahead of the game; before she even met her victim—or her assignment as she preferred to think of him—she would know every last thing about him, his likes and dislikes, the places he frequented, his interests, his weaknesses. The weaknesses were especially useful, whether they were for women, gambling, drink or all of the above in combination. It was her tried and tested method. Size up the man, learn everything there was to know about him, flatter his opinions and mix in a touch of seduction. No one had been able to resist.

That was the way that the acquaintance should have gone with Fitzwilliam Alton. A chance encounter in the Park, an invitation to ride with him, the promise of a dance at the next ball, a little dalliance, until Fitz was dazzled, hers to command. If necessary she would go as far as a betrothal, before breaking it off with all due regret a month or so later. That was the way she had intended it, before James Devlin had appeared and threatened all her plans.

She thought of Dev, his blue eyes full of anger and loathing as he watched her.

A shiver racked her. She was sure that he had already worked out that she was intent on spoiling his sister’s plans to catch Fitz. He would assume that she wanted Fitz for herself, of course; it was most unlikely he would uncover the true nature of her work as a matchbreaker, for this was the first time she had come to London or worked in such exalted social circles. It was a risk, but she should be safe from exposure. Whether she was safe from Dev revealing the truth of their previous relationship was another matter but she guessed that he had no wish for his winsome heiress to know the truth. Lady Emma Brooke had not seemed a particularly pliable fiancée and she was surely the one with the money.

Which brought her back to the annulment. Guilt squirmed in her stomach again. She knew that she should have formally ended her marriage a long time ago. Once the Duke and Duchess’s commission was complete and she and Rory and Rose were safe, she would pay for the annulment and leave Dev free to wed Emma. He would never know.

She opened her reticule and took out a rather squashed pastry cake that she had purloined from the refreshment room at the ball. Her bag was full of crumbs. She had ruined more reticules this way than any other. She took a bite and felt instantly comforted as the sweet pastry melted on her tongue. Eating had always made her feel better whether she was hungry or not. She tended to eat as much as she could whenever food was laid out before her, a legacy of the time when she had not known where her next square meal would come from. It was surprising that she had not split her sensuous silver silk gown as a result.

Despite her attempts to push the past away, the memories rippled through her again: Dev holding her hand before the altar as the minister intoned the solemn words of the marriage service, Dev smiling at her as she stumbled a little over her vows in shyness and fear, even then expecting the church door to slam open and her uncle to march in to reclaim her. Dev’s touch had been reassuring and the warmth in his eyes had steadied her. She had felt loved and wanted for the first time in many long cold years.

For a second she was shot through with regret so sharp and poignant that it made her gasp. First love had been very sweet and innocent.

First love had been hopelessly naive.

Susanna turned her shoulder against the rich velvet cushions of the carriage and let the memories slip from her like sand running through the fingers. It was stupid and pointless to have regrets or to dwell on the past. What she had had with James Devlin had been a girl’s fantasy. Now he had nothing but contempt for her. And soon, if she were successful in her plan to take Fitz away from Francesca, Dev would hate her even more.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HACKNEY CARRIAGE put Miss Francesca Devlin down in front of a set of anonymous rooms in Hemming Row. She stood on the cobbles feeling a little drunk with a mixture of guilt, fear and a giddy excitement that was making her head spin. This was a part of town she had visited for the first time only two weeks ago. It was an unfashionable quarter where she knew no one and no one knew her; that, she had been told, was the beauty of the place. Her reputation was quite safe. No one would ever know what she had done.

After her first visit she had promised herself that it was just the once and it would never happen again. She had gone through the motions of her daily life exactly as she had done before. Nothing was different. Yet everything was different.

The second summons had come this very night, at the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ball. Chessie had tucked the note into her reticule, hidden it beneath a white embroidered handkerchief and had spent the rest of the evening in an agony of impatience mixed with anticipation. She had known from the moment she unfolded the note that she would go. Like her brother she had inherited a streak of recklessness, a need to gamble, and this was the greatest game of her life. If she won she would secure everything that she had ever desired. If she lost … But she did not want to think about losing. Not tonight.

Gambling was in Chessie’s blood. Her childhood had been stalked by poverty, the furniture pawned to pay her father’s debts and no food on the table. Those moments had been interspersed with rare occasions when they had been so rich it seemed to Chessie that she could not quite believe the grandeur of it all. On one occasion her father had won so much that they had ridden around Dublin in a golden carriage pulled by two white horses like something from a fairy tale. That day she had eaten so much she had thought she would burst. She had gone to sleep between silken sheets and in the morning she had woken and the carriage and horses had gone and her mother was crying, and within a week the silken sheets had gone, too, and they were back to coarse blankets. And then when she was six, her father had died.

Through it all there had been Devlin, four years older than she, tough, protective, grown harder than any child should have to be, determined to defend her and his mother, too, no matter the cost. Chessie knew Dev had worked for them, had very probably begged, borrowed and stolen for them, too. It was Dev who, after their mother died, had gone to their cousin Alex Grant and made him take responsibility for them. The experience had bound them as close as a brother and sister could be. They had had no secrets—until now.

Chessie paused on the doorstep and almost ran back to the house in Bedford Street where Alex and Joanna thought that she was safely in her bed, back to the world she knew. Except that it was too late, for she had already taken the steps that would leave that world behind. She had done things that a fortnight ago she would not have dreamed of—gone out unchaperoned at night, traveled alone in a hackney carriage, things that other people did all the time but which were forbidden to a young girl of unimpeachable reputation. She smothered a laugh that had a wild edge to it. Young girls did not indulge in games of chance with a gentleman. Nor did they pay with their bodies when they lost.

The door opened silently to her knock and then he was drawing her into the candlelit room where the gaming table was already set up and the cards waiting. Chessie thought about winning and felt a rush of excitement that lit her blood like fire. Then she thought about losing and shivered with a different sort of excitement. He was kissing her already, with a passion that stoked her desires and soothed her fears. This could not be wrong because it felt right. Her gamble was not really on the cards but on love, and surely love conquered all. He released her; smiled.

“SHALL WE PLAY?” he said. “This is no place for a lady.” Susanna jumped and almost hit her head on the wooden rail of the stall. She had been kneeling in the straw to examine the horse that Fitz had picked out for her at the latest Tattersalls’ sale. Even at a distance she had known it was a poor choice. It looked beautiful with a shiny bay coat and bright eyes but its chest was a fraction too narrow and its legs just a little too short. Naturally she had not told Fitz any of those things. She had congratulated him on his judgment and had watched him preen.

Only a moment before, Susanna had been congratulating herself, too, silently applauding how well her plans were progressing. It had taken her four days only to gain Fitz’s undivided attention to the point that he was now probably prepared to buy her a horse never mind simply recommend one to her. He had already tried to buy her emeralds but Susanna knew exactly what he would expect in return for those and had refused them, prettily, regretfully but very finally. She had played the virtuous widow to perfection. Becoming Fitz’s mistress was definitely not part of the plan.

Instead she had treated Fitz as a friend, deferred to his opinion, leaned on his advice and flattered his judgment. He had helped her to buy a carriage and now a riding horse. They were using his parents’ money, but of course he was unaware of that. Susanna could see how much the role of confidant confused Fitz—he was not accustomed to viewing beautiful women in a capacity of friendship, not unless they had occupied his bed first. He was puzzled, bewildered and intrigued, which was exactly as Susanna wanted him to be. His parents were delighted to see their son so thoroughly distracted from his courtship of Francesca Devlin, which made them generous. All had been set fair, but she might have known that Dev would reappear to put a spoke in her wheel.

Susanna sat back on her heels. There was a pair of very elegant riding boots now in her line of vision, radiant with a champagne polish. Above those were muscular thighs encased in skintight pantaloons, and above that she dared not look. How tiresome to be kneeling in the Tattersalls’ straw at the feet of James Devlin.

“Mr. Tattersall welcomes ladies to his auctions,” she said, raising her gaze to meet Dev’s and trying to keep her eyes firmly focused on his face even though it gave her a crick in the neck to do so.

“The only females welcome here are the ones whose pedigrees are better than those of the horses,” Dev said. “Which rules you out, Lady Carew.”

He made no move to help her to her feet. Susanna was acutely aware of the prickling discomfort of the straw through the velvet skirts of her riding habit and the strong scent of horse that surrounded them. God forbid that the bay gelding would choose this moment to relieve itself.

For a second she thought she would be obliged to scramble up of her own accord, flushed, undignified and covered in hay, but then Dev leaned down and grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet with rather more strength than finesse. The maneuver brought her into his arms for one brief moment and the scent of leather and cedar soap and fresh air on his skin overlaid that of horse and set Susanna’s senses awry. She could feel the hard muscle of his arm beneath the smooth blue superfine of his coat. He felt like a man whose body was in prime physical condition. Evidently waiting on Lady Emma must be more physically punishing than she had imagined.

Susanna experienced the oddest sensation, as though the layers of clothes between them had melted away and she was touching Dev’s bare flesh, warm and smooth under her fingers. Never had she been so acutely aware of a man and so swiftly, her defenses shattered by simple proximity. Her cheeks flaming, she freed herself hastily from Dev’s grip and saw him smile, that wicked, sardonic smile she remembered.

“Feeling the heat, Lady Carew?”

“Suffering as a result of your discourtesy,” Susanna snapped.

He raised a brow. “There was a time when you did not object to being held in my arms.” He straightened, driving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “But of course, I forgot—that was for educational purposes only, was it not?” His voice was heavily laced with irony. “That horse has a chest that’s too narrow and legs that are too short,” he added, running an eye over the bay in the box.

“I know,” Susanna said crossly. She dusted the palms of her gloves slightly self-consciously and started to pick the straw off her velvet riding skirts. “I suppose you are an expert on horseflesh?”

“Not particularly.” Dev’s admission surprised her. “Not all the Irish grow up in the country, able to whisper horses from birth.” His expression darkened. “I grew up on the streets of Dublin. The only horses there were drays and sad creatures pulling rich men’s carriages.”

Their eyes met and the breath caught in Susanna’s throat. Her heart skipped a beat, two. She thought how odd it was that life could still trick her after all she had experienced, that it could trip her up unexpectedly like a false step in the dark. She remembered being seventeen, lying in the summer grass with the stars whirling overhead and Dev turning away her questions about his childhood with light answers. She had not known anything about his early life other than that it had been poverty-stricken like her own. They had not talked much about anything, she thought now, with a sharp stab of regret. They had laughed together and had kissed with sweet urgency. They had both been so eager and so young.