Page 3 of How to Tempt An Earl (Wed Within a Year #2)

T he game was definitely on. Kieran’s gaze locked on the woman poised at the top of the stairs in the white gown, glossy chestnut tresses artfully pinned to show off a slim and elegant neck a swan would envy. She began her descent, her gaze meeting his with temerity. Perhaps she had the same goal in mind—to make a study of him even as he made a study of her. His grandfather’s informant cleaned up well, and she’d discarded the veil as he’d hoped. She began her progress down the stairs, the movement drawing his eyes to where the swish of skirts offered an occasional glimpse of well-turned ankles. A few more steps and he’d be able to see her face in detail.

Just three stairs to go before she reached him. He could truly see her now, unlike in the church. The green sash brought out the colour of her wide, beautiful eyes set beneath slim, dark, arched brows. A man could spin a million fantasies in that sea-glass gaze with its hint of mystery, its spark of intelligence and, he suspected, a host of other things. Perhaps she was not as innocent as he’d assumed at the church. There was a worldliness to her that was on better display without the veil, although he doubted she was more than three and twenty.

He wondered again who she might be to Roan—a paramour of some sort? He could certainly see the appeal. The fine bones of her face gave her an air of good breeding. The straight, narrow perfection of her nose, the defiant point of her chin, and the delicate curve of cheek and jaw complemented the steel that could exist in her gaze. And that mouth… One might argue that her mouth was the real treasure with its full lips that could just as easily offer a compelling pout as effectively as they offered an invitation to a kiss. If she was a mystery in muslin, she’d be pure seduction in satins and silks.

What an asset she’d have been to Roan, teasing men out of their secrets over supper.

She reached him at the bottom of the stairs and he offered his arm. ‘I am glad the dress fits,’ he said, then added with a charming wink, ‘and that you’ve discarded the veil. The ruse does not suit you.’ The ruse of young gentlewoman did, though. Or was it real? Dinner would tell. Eating often caught people out in subtle ways.

She cocked her head to glance up at him as they walked. ‘What makes you so sure it is a ruse?’

Kieran chuckled. The minx would hold her ground until the last. ‘Your hands gave you away.’

She made a pretty pout. He’d not been wrong about her mouth. ‘Surely you can do better than that? A ring or lack of one does not tell all. There can be several reasons why I didn’t have one on. Many widows take their rings off.’

‘The ring is too easy.’ Kieran reached for her hand and held it up between them. ‘There is no ring mark, no telltale signs there’s ever been a ring on your finger at any time.’ He let his eyes linger on her, let the timbre of his voice lower and quieten, allowing the lecture on observation to turn into something more seductive. ‘But then there is the issue of your skin. When I ran my thumb over your knuckles, your skin looked and felt smooth, supple—too youthful for a likely widow.’

‘Some women lose husbands young. Perhaps I married an elderly man.’ Her sea-glass eyes narrowed with the challenge and locked on his.

‘And suddenly found the need to deliver a warning about Cabot Roan? That makes little sense. Given the circumstances, your veil was a disguise only.’ They passed the dining room, dark and unlaid for supper. She arched a slim brow in question.

‘I thought we’d eat outside on the veranda. We have a bit of a garden out the back and it’s cooler than eating inside.’ Kieran gave a smile meant to charm. ‘Out of doors will also offer us privacy for all the things we have to talk about.’

‘Are we alone?’ she queried as he held open the French doors for her. ‘What about the two men from the drawing room?’

‘They’re gone, but the servants are here. You needn’t worry for your safety, if that is what you’re asking.’ But how telling that she might have reason to fear for it, to fear being alone with a man.

The servants had done well on short notice. A round wrought-iron garden table had been covered with a white cloth and a thick round candle had been set in the centre and lit, protected from any gentle breeze by a glass chimney. Champagne stood at the ready, cooled to perfection. He nodded to the footmen to bring up the meal and saw to the uncorking himself.

‘I admit to enjoying chilled champagne in the summer,’ he said, pouring two glasses with precision. ‘A true connoisseur of the beverage might argue that I prefer it too cold, but I like the sharpness.’ He handed her a glass and set his aside to pull out her chair.

‘Is this to be interrogation by candlelight?’ She arranged her skirts and fixed him with a pretty smile that belied the nature of their relationship. Kieran wondered for a moment what the odds were that they were both playing the same game—seduction for information. Not that he meant to seduce her fully, but he was not opposed to cajoling and flirting to put someone at ease. He did it every night, whether in Mayfair’s ballrooms, or in the drawing room when gentlemen came to play cards.

Kieran took his own seat, flipping up the tails of his evening clothes. She was not the only one looking her best. Women responded to a well-groomed man. His first lover, an older woman in Venice, had explained it to him like this: if a man had the self-discipline to keep themselves up, perhaps it stood to reason that man also had the self-discipline to keep secrets. She’d not been wrong.

‘“Interrogation” implies we are at odds, which you have insisted we are not. You suggest we are allies, and allies do not interrogate one another. But I am no fool and I have questions before I risk the Horsemen with your information.’ He raised his flute. ‘Here’s to an evening of enlightenment. May we start the night as strangers and end as friends.’ Although, ‘friends’ was probably asking for too much. One did not really have ‘friends’ in his business.

They drank his toast and Kieran waited until the footmen had laid the cold summer repast before he began. They would serve themselves from now on to ensure privacy. ‘Shall I make up a plate for you?’ he offered, mentally wagering with himself that she would not want to be catered to, and he was right.

‘I can manage, thank you.’ They took a moment assembling their plates from the meat, cheese and bread on the tray set before them. Her plate was full, unlike most of the debutantes who ate on scale with the smallest of birds. She was hungry, then. The journey had taken a toll on her. Perhaps there’d not been finances enough to eat as often as she’d have liked. Kieran tucked the knowledge away.

‘There’s plenty in the kitchen. I can always call for more,’ he said, holding back a chuckle when she hesitated to take another piece of ham. Hunger was no laughing matter, and she’d had cause to know.

A pretty pink stained her cheek. ‘Travelling works up an appetite.’ Kieran gave her a smile and assembled a sandwich. ‘I trust you enjoyed the bath?’

‘You know I did. And the clothes and the maid as well. I didn’t tell her anything useful, though, if that’s what you were hoping for.’

She took a sip of her champagne, the candlelight picking out the hints of red in her chestnut hair, and Kieran was struck with the sudden wish to sit with her in a Parisian café, perhaps in the Latin Quarter, debating something, anything; or to walk the Seine at twilight and stop in one of the many turnouts on the bridges to view the river; to steal a long kiss. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose, this subtle flirting through argument, or if it came to her naturally.

He offered a grin in the wake of her cynicism and gave her a long study. ‘I cannot decide about you,’ he said at last. ‘Some moments I think you are an innocent caught in a very dangerous game you don’t know how to play.’

‘I am not na?ve .’

There was more chagrin than protest in her response. He’d insulted her. Kieran shook his head in disagreement. ‘Yes, you are. The widow’s ruse was na?ve. It was flimsy and it was never going to hold up under closer scrutiny—an amateur move, as was wanting to go back to your rooms. But let me finish; I was about to say, or perhaps you’re truly shrewd.’

He gave a cheeky grin meant to tease. ‘You do have moments of brilliance, like thinking I’d use the maid to spy on you. And,’ he drawled, flashing a boyish grin designed to charm, ‘your suspicion of comfort suggests you have a high degree of cognitive complexity; that you are able to see things from a variety of angles.’

She smiled a little at that, her armour cracking ever so slightly. He was getting to her at last—good. He wasn’t used to such resistance. Most women fell for his smile and trusted his eyes. For the most part, they could. He was no betrayer.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘So, have I earned your name? After all, I’ve let you into my home and exposed myself, in good faith that you do not come to do me harm.’

She gave him a look of disbelief. ‘You do not strike me as a man who is ever truly at a disadvantage. You would not have brought me here if it didn’t also serve your purposes. I am the one who is exposed. I am in the belly of the whale here, adrift among strangers in a strange home.’

‘It seems to me that you’re in the belly of the whale wherever you go. Why so reticent? Surely you knew you’d have to give up a name at the very least? Understand this: whispers, rumours, the stuff of information, must be substantiated. The Horsemen cannot afford to follow every whiff of conspiracy and assassination that comes our way. It would make us nothing less than puppets to be jerked on the strings of others. Now, a name, if you please…’

* * *

He was not going to tolerate further refusal. Celeste could see it in the set of those broad shoulders beneath the dark evening jacket, the insistence that lingered unspoken in his gaze. He’d made his overtures and it was her turn to respond. She understood this dance. She understood, too, that she had an obligation to perform the steps. ‘I think if you knew who I was it may shade your attitude towards me and towards the information I’ve brought.’

‘Or perhaps towards my willingness to help you. Why don’t you try me and find out?’ Those dark eyes narrowed in contemplation and it was hard to look away. In fact, it had been hard to look away all night since the moment she’d descended the stairs. He cleaned up well—too well.

‘Yes, that, too, when it comes down to it. Your willingness to help would not go amiss.’ Why not admit it? He’d proven persuasive. His methods had been effective. The pull of his smiles and long, lingering gazes were more magnetic than she wanted him to realise.

She sighed and he refilled her glass. She’d only known this man for the span of an afternoon but she knew he was a protector. She wouldn’t mind using his protection a while longer—or his bathing chamber—but being a protector didn’t mean he wasn’t also dangerous in, oh, so many ways…starting with her champagne-imbued sensibilities.

In the end, it wasn’t the seductive niceties, the bath, the clothes, the food, the house or even those brown velvet eyes that made her decide. It was the simple words, ‘You’re safe here. More than safe, whoever you are. You don’t need to go back to him.’

She’d not been safe for years. The idea that she might be, could be, safe was more intoxicating than champagne to a woman who was alone and tired. Intoxicating enough that the words were out before she knew it.

‘My name is Celeste Sharpton. I’m the ward of Cabot Roan.’ She worried her lip and waited, waited for his vaunted promise of safety to disappear, waited for him to explode, waited for him to say he felt betrayed and that he’d let the enemy into his home. But the eruption didn’t come. There was only silence, punctuated by those dark eyes lingering on her while pieces fell into place behind them like a puzzle assembling itself.

When he did speak, it was not the rejection she’d expected. ‘I’m Kieran Parkhurst.’ A slow smile crossed his mouth. ‘I promised you a name for a name, did I not? Now you know I am a man of my word. If I say you’re safe here, you are.’ He poured more champagne, the summer night deepening around them. ‘Now we can have a real conversation. Bring your glass; let’s take a walk about the garden.’

She knew what came next: a game of questions. She took her glass in one hand and his arm with the other. She understood the reason they were leaving the table. He wanted complete privacy for this discussion…privacy for him or for her? He waited until they were on a gravel path, lit by tiny lanterns posted on rods that came out of the ground ankle-high, before launching his first question. ‘Why come forward now?’

‘Because I’d had enough, because I could and because I had to.’ She was honest enough to admit that if she hadn’t been suspected of eavesdropping the night she’d fled—an act of which she was absolutely guilty—she might not have found the courage to run, regardless of how much she’d wanted to. It had been the hardest decision she’d ever made to date. But it was perhaps also the most right.

‘Had to?’ he queried.

‘I’d been on my way to the music room for a shawl I’d left behind and Roan’s office door was ajar. I overheard him talking with our guests after supper. The temptation was too much to resist. They were discussing the Horsemen.’

The Horsemen were mentioned often in the Roan household. It was no secret Roan found them to be the bane of his existence, regular spoilers of his plans. She’d come to romanticise the idea of knowing there were four horsemen out in the world riding for good against evil. By the time she was nineteen, she’d turned them into something idealistic, born from the mind of a lonely young girl surrounded by corruption in which she was an unwilling part. How many nights had she gone to bed wishing the Horsemen would rescue her, before she’d realised she would have to make her own rescue?

She chose her next words carefully. ‘They were toasting the hopeful demise of one of the Horsemen.’ She watched his strong jaw tighten; a tic jumped in his cheek. ‘Then they vowed to bring down the rest of you because of Amesbury’s death.’ She’d met the blond Duke once. She was not sorry he was dead. ‘Then Roan said he was going himself, that he wanted to be the one to pull the trigger.’ That was when a servant had come round the corner and seen her in the hallway. She’d moved on quickly but the servants were all loyal to Roan—frightened into it, but loyal, nonetheless. Her presence would be noted.

‘So, you just left, to warn us? Three men you don’t know?’ He knew how to probe, how to hunt motives.

‘Would you do less?’ she challenged. ‘They were laughing over the death of a Horseman, over the death of a human being. Death is not laughable. Deliberately taking a life is not laughable. It angered me. It reminded me that I was, in my own way, complicit in such behaviour if I stayed, if I did nothing.’

It had galvanised her into action along with the need to see to her own safety. Roan took punishment seriously and she knew its power for maintaining conformity among his ranks empirically.

‘I left for myself as well. I’d been wanting to leave for a while. I simply hadn’t been brave enough.’ She’d been paralysed by fear of failure and what would await her should her escape not be successful. Escapes were a sign of disloyalty. She’d failed a loyalty test to Roan before. She’d not been brave enough to face the consequences again. Fear had kept her rooted in place until that night when the need to protect herself had collided with the need to protect others.

Celeste let her fingers trail over leaves, a sweet fragrance releasing into the summer night. ‘Sometimes we can do for others what we can’t do for ourselves.’

‘And now here you are.’ Kieran was studying her intently, no doubt turning over each word in his sharp mind, mining each of them for more, reading between the lines in his search for understanding. ‘Is that the only secret you’ve come this far to impart?’

She’d not expected that. ‘Why do you think there’s more?’ But it was a weak defence to answer a question with a question.

He finished his glass. ‘Because you were his ward. You lived in his house at least part of the time. And because Roan coming after us is not entirely a surprise.’

‘But when , and that he is coming in person, most certainly is,’ she countered. She did not like him dismissing her warning as inconsequential.

‘Still, it’s a long way to come to tell us something we could guess. We already knew he was behind the bargain for arms,’ Kieran countered gently. ‘But, as you say, you also came for yourself.’

She faced him in the moonlight, letting him have full view of her seriousness. ‘Yes, I also came for myself. And I would go even further still to ensure my safety. If you’ve never been unsafe, you cannot possibly know how integral it is to one’s well-being, one’s ability to function, to live.’ She’d not even been safe with her lover, David, whom she’d thought would protect her unto death. She’d not known how to read men in those days. She was more cautious and more astute now. She understood what motivated them, that for them love was not a prized emotion to feel but a tool to wield.

He gave a nod of contrition. ‘My apologies. I did not mean to imply otherwise.’

No, but he’d certainly sensed there was more to tell, and his instincts had been right. But those things veered into the personal and she was not going to go down that path tonight.

‘I think there have been enough questions for one night,’ she said quickly when she saw he might ask another. ‘If you don’t mind, I would like to retire.’ She wondered if the card tables in the drawing room were full of men with secrets waiting to be revealed along with their hands.

He smiled as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘I’ll see you up.’ It was guardianship disguised as gallantry. He didn’t want her roaming the house on the way to her chambers. Fine; she would have other chances to have a look around, to work out Kieran Parkhurst. Tonight, she would allow herself the simple joys of a clean white nightgown and slipping between fresh sheets with a summer breeze ruffling the curtains. For tonight, she would be safe, and that would be enough.