Notorious (7 page)

Dev sat back. “As you wish.” He smiled mockingly. “Running out on me so soon, Susanna? I had barely begun the seduction.” He held her gaze with his. In the darkness of the carriage her eyes were soft and dark now, unreadable.

“I believe I know your weakness now,” he said. “You pretend indifference to me but it is not true.”

“I believe your weakness is still vanity,” Susanna said coldly. “Good day, Sir James.” She opened the door and stepped down into the street. The carriage door banged shut behind her. Dev laughed aloud.

As the carriage moved off he caught a glimpse of her. She was standing at the side of the road looking fragile and in need of protection, like a fairy-tale princess turned out in the rain. Already two gentlemen were advancing on her, purposefully unfurling their umbrellas. Dev shook his head, a sardonic smile on his lips. Yet he was just as susceptible to Susanna’s wiles. He could still smell the scent of her skin and feel the warmth of her lips against his. It sharpened his desire and made him feel hollow with unfulfilled lust, even though he knew it for a sham. He had wanted to believe her honest and their passion unfeigned and when he had realized that it was all an act on her part he had felt a naive fool all over again. He had tried to prove Susanna’s weakness. Instead he had uncovered his own.

S
USANNA WALKED QUICKLY
along Ludgate Street and on down Ludgate Hill toward Holborn. Dark gray clouds chased overhead. The rain, light, summery but still penetratingly damp, lay slick on the road and spattered the shoulders of her pelisse. She knew she was going to look like a drowned rat by the time that she arrived home, the feather in her saucy bonnet drooping. She had had no desire to accept the offers of protection from either of the gentlemen who had come to her aid. She knew from experience that they would ask for something in return. As it was they had almost come to blows over assisting her; umbrellas at dawn. She really should not have been so hasty, leaping out of the hackney into the rain, but all she had wanted to do was escape from Dev’s provocation.

I believe I know your weakness…

It seemed impossible, foolish, infuriating that after all this time she should still be so vulnerable to Dev’s touch. She should be supremely indifferent to him after the passing of so many years and yet she was not. She was dangerously susceptible to him. Other men had touched her, kissed her occasionally
if she deemed it absolutely necessary for her work, but the experience had always left her indifferent. Yet it seemed that Dev need only look at her with that intensity that was all his own and her stomach would knot and her body tremble and she would be throwing herself at him with the same abandonment as the most hen-witted debutante. And how demeaning that was when he had toyed with her only to demonstrate her weakness to him. She pressed her fingers to her lips and felt a wave of heat engulf her from her toes upward. Oh, she was weak indeed. She had wanted to carry on kissing Dev forever, to surrender to that delicious pleasure, to feel his hands on her body and rediscover the joy she had found in his arms all those years before. She despised herself for that need. She had tried so hard to kill her love for Dev in the past. She was not going to falter now.

James Devlin. He was the thorn in her flesh. He was there at every turn. He would do all he could to thwart her plans to ensnare Fitz. Susanna wondered just how far Dev would go to stop her from ruining Chessie’s chances and shivered beneath the damp wool of her pelisse. The material felt clinging and cold.

In the beginning she had told herself that there would be nothing Dev could do to stop her. Now, less than a fortnight later, she was not so sure. It was true that he could not reveal the details of their previous relationship without harming his own engagement to Emma, but there was plenty else he could do and
she had a lowering suspicion that he would do it. She should never underestimate Dev. He was a dangerous adversary.

A faint, rueful smile touched her lips. Between them, Dev and his sister had certainly won this round. Francesca Devlin had blatantly stolen Fitz from beneath her nose and then Dev had stepped in to thwart her further. Here she was trudging home in the rain with no umbrella whilst Francesca was probably already ensconced in a booth at Gunters, sharing an ice with Fitz. Susanna’s mouth watered at the thought. She longed for an ice or a cream bun or even a bonbon. She needed something sweet to comfort her and reassure her that she would not fail, for the Duke and Duchess of Alton would be furious when they heard what had happened this morning. Some kind soul would be bound to tell them, Freddie Walters, probably. He was a poisonous creature and had been looking daggers at her ever since she had turned him down. Susanna sighed as the summer rain trickled beneath her bonnet and down her neck, plastering her hair wetly against her throat. Since her future livelihood depended upon pleasing the Duke and Duchess and on severing the connection between Fitz and Francesca entirely, she would have to raise her game.

Dev most certainly could not be permitted to outwit her again with his games of false seduction. He still had her glove. She ripped off the other one in a fit of annoyance. The pair had cost her ten shil
lings and she could not afford to waste money like that. So she was left with a ruined bonnet and half a pair of gloves. It seemed to sum up her morning.

By the time she reached Curzon Street she was indeed soaking wet and the bonnet’s feather was as drab as a pheasant caught in a thunderstorm. The deferential footman who opened the door to her smothered a grin to see it. Her maid, provided by the Duke and Duchess of Alton along with the house and all its contents and everything else, was less respectful.

“Heaven help us, milady,” she said, on seeing Susanna, “what’s become of you?”

“I was caught in the rain, Margery,” Susanna said. She put down her glove on top of the waterlogged hat. The maid’s brows shot up.

“You dropped a glove, as well?”

“I lost it somewhere along the way,” Susanna excused.

The maid gave her a hard stare. She was a young girl, thin, plain and practical. Susanna had liked her from the start. There was no artifice to Margery and a great deal of plain speaking.

“I’ll fetch some tea, milady,” Margery said. “Looks like you could do with it. There are some letters,” she added. “More invitations and the like. There’s no room on the mantelpiece. You’re the toast of London, madam.”

“I’d like some cake, as well, please, Margery,” Susanna said hastily. “Sponge. With cream and jam. Lots of it.”

She took the pile of cards from the shining walnut hall table and went into the drawing room, closing the door behind her. The room was small and as elegantly appointed as the rest of the house and as lacking in character. Pale sunlight dappled the thick carpet, chasing away the summer rain. The drapes stirred in a lazy breeze from the window. A vase of lilies sat on a table by the window. Susanna had not arranged them herself; she had absolutely no aptitude with the feminine arts. Like everything else in the house they were set dressing, the perfect background for the dazzling rich widow Lady Carew.

The toast of London… Susanna’s lips twisted into an ironic smile. If only they knew. Little Susanna Burney had been born in an Edinburgh tenement, given away by her mother when her father left to join the army and never returned. There had been too many mouths to feed and no money and she, the youngest and prettiest, had been given a new life with her childless aunt and uncle. A life she had thrown away when she had eloped with James Devlin. With a sigh Susanna dropped down into a deep Chippendale armchair. There was no trace of her personality in this house, no clue as to the real Susanna Burney. She kicked off her shoes and let her stockinged toes sink into the carpet. It felt deliciously soft and rich. She loved that feeling of opulence because beneath it was the memory of bare floors and cold stone and rain falling like tears. It did not feel so wrong to relish all this luxury when before she
had had so little. Sometimes, though, she was almost seduced into believing her own fairy tale.

From beneath the pile of invitations to balls, soirees and musical evenings, she extracted three letters. The top one, she knew, was from the schoolmaster with whom her young ward Rory McAlister lodged in Edinburgh. A shiver of fear racked her. No news about Rory was ever good. At fourteen, he was wild, ungovernable and not particularly given to study. Susanna had had to pay over the odds to persuade Dr. Murchison to take the boy into his family as well as to educate him but she had hoped—prayed—that living with a family might suit Rory better than being sent to boarding school. He had run away from his two previous schools.

Susanna paused, aware of a very strong urge to leave the letter unopened and put off the moment of truth. Rory and Rose… She loved the twins as fiercely as though they were her own, bound to them through a life forged in the struggle for survival and the promises she had made their mother as Flora McAlister had lain dying in the poorhouse. Flora had given her the gift of children after her loss and she would not fail them. Blinking back the sudden sting of tears she opened the letter.

Rory, Dr. Murchison wrote, more in sorrow than in anger, had run away again. After a week they had found him living rough on the streets of Edinburgh, filthy, hungry, furious but safe.

Susanna dropped the letter onto her lap and
pressed her fingers to her temples where a headache threatened. Rory thought he was tough and clever and able to take care of himself but he was only a boy. And he was such a dear boy and she loved him and knew he loved her, too, but at times like this she also knew she had not done enough to help him. She felt it deeply, miserably and with an aching heart. The guilt tugged at her, a sick feeling in her stomach. So many times she had tried to keep her small, inherited family together. It had proved impossible. She could not provide for the twins unless she worked and if she worked she could not keep them with her. She had tried so hard but hunger and fear had stalked her world. Twice she had been robbed of those who were most precious to her. First she had lost Devlin and then she had lost their child. Now she would do everything in her power to protect the twins and see that they were safe. And in a couple of months she would have completed her work and the Duke and Duchess of Alton would have paid her and she would at last be free to visit the twins and even possibly make a fresh start with them.

Her hands shaking, she picked up the letter again. Although Dr. Murchison had covered the entire page there was little further news, but halfway down the tone of the letter changed. Rory, Dr. Murchison said, was a burden. It was with a heavy heart that he had to ask for more money for Rory’s keep as recompense, he wrote, for all the trouble the boy had caused.

In a fit of fury Susanna screwed the letter into a
ball, feeling the sharp corners dent her palm. At this rate all the money she had so carefully scraped together so that she and Rory and Rose might one day resume their family life would be whittled away on unscrupulous people who always wanted more and more and more.

Susanna ran an abstracted hand through her hair, scattering a few pins. She looked at the second letter. An uncomfortable instinct told her that it would not be good news. But she had always met trouble head-on so she opened it anyway.

It was not good news.

The moneylenders were enquiring, politely but firmly, whether she wished to extend her loan. She knew that if she did their terms, already extortionately high, would increase still further. But if she did not borrow she would not be able to pay the next installment of Rose’s school fees. Her headache increased like a knot tightening. She could feel the panic choking her throat.

The third letter was written in a hand that was unknown to her. She opened it carelessly with her thoughts still preoccupied by her financial troubles, perused it once with little concentration and then read it again with a sinking feeling of disbelief.

“I know who you really are.”

The letter slipped from her fingers and spun away across the carpet to flutter to a stop in a patch of sunlight. It was warm in the room now but Susanna felt cold and racked by shivers.

I know who you really are.

The words that no impostor ever wanted to read.

“Tea, milady. And lots of cake.” Margery had come in bearing a tray with a pretty china cup and matching pot. “You look proper moped, madam,” she added.

“I am,” Susanna said fervently.

“Money, I suppose,” Margery said. “Or a man. Or both,” she added. She looked around the drawing room, with the sun shining now on the beautifully polished furniture, picking out the rich colors in the thick rug before the marble fire.

“Just so as you know, ma’am,” she added, “I never was any good at pretending.”

“Oh, dear,” Susanna said, wondering what on earth was going to follow.

“All this is very pretty, ma’am,” Margery continued, “but the underwear that you were wearing when you arrived here had been darned over and over again and the soles of your shoes were almost worn through. You arrived on foot, carrying your own portmanteau and I know for a fact all this stuff—” her gesture encompassed the room again “—is a job lot bought by the lawyers. I just thought I would let you know that I knew, milady,” she finished.

“I see,” Susanna said slowly. She could not stop the smile that twitched her lips at her maid’s detective work. It seemed that her anonymous correspondent was not the only one who suspected her. “So
you think I may be poor,” she said. “An impostor, perhaps, pretending to be a rich widow?”

“I don’t know what you are, ma’am,” the maid said frankly, “but I used to work for Lady St. Severin, ma’am, who eloped with a French prisoner of war in a balloon. Nothing shocks me. And after her I went to work for Lady Grant’s sister Lady Darent, before Mr. Churchward requested me for this post.” She smiled. “I can keep a secret, ma’am,” she said, “but I just like to know what secret it is I am keeping, if you see what I mean.”

“Perfectly, thank you, Margery,” Susanna said. She paused, thinking of all that the maid had said, and how lonely it was to be a fraud with absolutely no one to talk to. She gestured to the tea tray. “If you would like to bring another cup, Margery,” she said slowly, “perhaps we could talk.”

The maid beamed and sped away and Susanna felt comforted. In her work she never confided in anyone, never trusted anyone with her secrets, but she felt she could trust the little maid who was so practical and outspoken.

Money or a man or both, Margery had said. Susanna rubbed the faint marks on her wrist, feeling again Dev’s fingers against her skin, his touch searing her. Blackmail and seduction… Surely, surely it could not be Devlin who had written that threatening note? He was the only one who knew her secrets. She knew that Dev was dangerous and unscrupulous, yet some stubborn instinct told her that he would not
stoop to such measures. Yet could she be sure? How far would Devlin go to defeat her and to get what he wanted? She had a frightening premonition that she was going to find out.

M
ISS
F
RANCESCA
D
EVLIN
stood in front of Mrs. Tong’s House of Pleasure and literally shivered in her satin slippers. She had never been to a place like this before. In the past few weeks her worldly experience had been extended beyond her wildest imaginings but there were still certain shreds of innocence left to her. Setting foot in a bawdy house would take her further than she had gone before.