Fool Me Twice

  Footsteps came thudding up. A footman grabbed Alastair’s elbow. “Your Lordship, he busted through—”

  Bertram leapt to his feet. “Are you deranged? Coming in here like this!”

  Deranged? Alastair choked down a black laugh. For two hours he’d waited in that empty flat, time crawling past, the door standing shut, listening for her footsteps. And perhaps, yes, in that slow crawl of time, he’d begun to lose pieces of himself, for sanity had supplied no solid reasons for her continued absence. She would not have run off; he’d given her no cause.

  Or had he?

  Since their conversation by the pond in Shepwich, she’d not seemed herself. Why had he not demanded, pressed her, for an explanation? Cowardice: he did not want to know what bothered her. He did not want to be forced to deny her the words she so clearly needed to hear. He could not love her. He could not keep her. In his old life, she would have had no place. In his new life . . . he had no faith in himself with which to make promises.

  But in this new life, he waited with his heart inching up his throat, with anxiety edging into anger as the minutes dragged onward. What strange hell was this, in which a man could not keep a woman, but found her absence so profoundly terrifying that his overriding instinct was to kill someone to ensure her safety?

  He withdrew his pistol from his jacket. “Deranged,” he said. “That’s a fine accusation from a man who would murder his daughter.”

  “What in God’s—” Bertram sucked in a breath and stepped sideways. “Not in front of my children!”

  Only then did Alastair notice the two young boys sitting cross-legged in the window seat, wide-eyed, a game of checkers forgotten between them.

  Their pale, stricken faces checked his rage for a single moment. And then it flamed hotter yet. “Would that your concern encompassed all of your children. What have you done with her?”

  Bertram looked over Alastair’s shoulder. “Take the boys away,” he said urgently to the footman.

  For a single dark moment Alastair contemplated forbidding it. Using the safety of these children as a barter for Olivia’s. “Perhaps it would edify them to learn what you truly are.”

  Bertram took a shaking breath. “Please.” He brought his hands together at his chest, clasping them into a prayerlike posture. “I have done nothing to her. Please, let them leave.”

  One of the boys whimpered.

  Alastair stepped aside to clear a path to the door. “Get them out.”

  The older one sprang to his feet and flew out. But the younger remained, his jaw squaring, a stubborn look that reminded Alastair, with a painful stab, of Olivia: what she must have looked like, as a child. “I won’t leave you!” the boy said to his father, who did not deserve such loyalty.

  Bertram knew that much, too. He made an angry sound. “Go now, I say!” He grabbed the boy, dragged him off the seat, and shoved him across the carpet toward the door.

  “This is about that woman, isn’t it!” The boy craned to look back at Alastair, a brown cowlick flopping across his eye. “She ruined our trip!”

  “What woman?” Alastair snapped.

  Bertram shot him a warning look. “Do not involve him in this.”

  He spoke grimly. “Ask him what he means.”

  Bertram paused in the doorway, every line of his body suggesting furious reluctance. Finally, he put his body between Alastair’s and his son’s, and knelt to say, “What woman? When did you see her?”

  The boy darted a glance between them. “Mummy said it was her fault we couldn’t go to Houghton today. But Mr. Moore said he would take care of her.” In a whisper, he added, “Mummy said not to tell you.”

  Bertram touched his son’s hair very gently. “It’s all right.” But when he closed the door, he laid his head against it a moment before turning. “I had no idea,” he began, but Alastair cut him off.

  “I am longing to kill you. I thought I knew the urge when we met at the club. Then I learned you had sent an assassin to throttle her.”

  Bertram came off the door. “In God’s name, man, you are raving! I have never lifted a hand against her! I have never once—”

  “No, you sent your man to do it—and today as well, it seems.” Alastair sighted the pistol, his vision seeming to telescope, so all he saw were Bertram’s lying, bloodshot eyes. “Such a pity that I will not shoot,” he said softly. “Provided you tell me, right now, where she is.”

  “Moore! Moore is not my man!” Bertram plowed his hands through his hair. “He has never been in my employ! He is my wife’s . . .” His hands dropped. He cast a blind, panicked look around the room. “My wife,” he repeated. He focused on Alastair. “I know where she is. Come—come with me at once!”

  * * *

  Olivia opened her eyes. The room danced crazily, chairs hopping from side to side, the carpet falling toward the ceiling. She closed her eyes. Her head throbbed. She could feel her heart jumping in her chest like a frightened rabbit.

  But somehow she was still not afraid.

  She opened her eyes again. Took a long breath of air that felt like liquid flame. Moore liked best to choke her. She felt surprised every time she regained consciousness, but he apparently had a talent, or a flaw: he had throttled her into fainting four times now, but had not yet managed to kill her.

  Then again, she hadn’t yet given him the answer he wanted.

  “Where is the register?” he asked.

  She squinted through the dimness of the room. She hoped it was dim; she did not remember him hurting her eyes. But her head pounded. She didn’t know why. Her memories felt jumbled. How long had she been sitting in this chair, her wrists tied behind her? She flexed her hands. Blood prickled painfully through her fingers.

  “Where is it?” A chair scraped, banged against the floor. He came toward her. Perhaps he’d never had a choice in being a thug. He looked born to the part: short, squat, thickly muscled, with grizzled hair shorn close around his square head. His eyes were an almost colorless gray.

  She was not stupid. She stared at him and did not answer.

  He knelt down before her, taking her jaw in a painful grip, as though muzzling a disobedient dog. She did not like to see him from so close. His skin was smooth, almost lineless, a strange contrast to his graying hair. She closed her eyes.

  His grip tightened. Pain formed a whimper in her throat. She did not loose it. She felt numb. It was strange, so strange, that she wasn’t yet afraid.

  “Don’t be stupid, girl.”

  She heard the puzzlement in his voice. He was a beast; he knew the smell of fear, and he recognized its absence, too. He understood her no better than she did.

  “Do you want to die?”

  She said nothing. A bell started ringing in the street outside, the kind used to alert passersby to animals being driven to market. They could not be in Mayfair. Livestock did not walk those streets.

  He let go of her. “Like your father.” He made a disgusted scoff. “Stupid, stupid as the day is long.”

  That idea pierced her strange remove. She could not let it stand. “Nothing like him,” she rasped.

  “Stupid!” He spat the word. “Bloody dog. She never should have married him.”

  Almost, she smiled. “On that, we agree.”

  He slapped her.

  She saw a star flash as her chair rocked backward. His hands bit into her arms, yanking her upright before the chair hit the ground.

  They stared at each other. She thought of the pistol she’d once possessed. She would have killed him, had she held it now. What had Alastair once said? It would not have troubled her conscience to have this man’s blood on her hands.

  “You needn’t be such a fool,” he said slowly. “You tell me where you keep the register, you give it to me, you can go.”

  He truly did think her an idiot.

  “She’ll not care what you do with yourself afterward,” he said.

  She swallowed. All her spit had dried up. Her mouth was as dry as dust.

&nbsp
; He pulled a face, then rose and walked across the room to pour himself a glass of water. His body was compact, his strides neat and athletic. He was ageless; he was the devil incarnate, perhaps.

  He turned back to study her, wiping water from his mouth with the back of his hand. His swallow was loud, satisfied. Taunting her. She rubbed her tongue along her front teeth and breathed deeply. It hurt.

  “My mistress has no ill will against you,” he said. “You understand? If you tell me where the register is, you need never see me again.”

  His mistress? “You . . .” She understood suddenly. He was not Bertram’s man, after all. He was Lady Bertram’s man. He worked for the woman she had approached this afternoon, thinking herself so cautious, so clever, in avoiding the main threat.

  A laugh sawed through her, hoarse, croaking. A mistake. His face tightened. He tossed aside the tin cup. It clattered against the wall. His neat strides ate up the floorboards; he approached, fist rising. “The next sound you make,” he said, “will be your confession, or your death rattle.”

  She closed her eyes. It must be death. There was no other way to explain her serenity.

  A splintering sound rent the air. Moore wheeled around. The door burst open.

  She realized then why she had not been afraid. She had known somehow that Alastair would come.

  He lunged for Moore, and his face was the face of the man who had closeted himself in a dark room to prevent murder, but now was in the light. His fury was quick, bare knuckled, graceless. He slammed his fist into Moore’s face, knocked him to the ground, and then stomped the man’s throat with his heel. Moore looked up, his expression one of mild surprise, like a man who expects rain and finds sunshine instead. Alastair knelt down and pummeled him again. Blood spattered. Moore’s heels scrambled on the floorboards. Wet, sick sounds rose. A crack like the snap of bone. Moore’s boots fell still. Alastair punched him again. And again. And again.

  “Alastair,” she said softly.

  He went still. So suddenly. The silence was shocking.

  He turned to her, droplets of blood sprayed across one high cheekbone. His blue eyes were wild. But they fixed on her.

  “Untie me,” she said.

  He rose stiffly. Walked around her. His hot fingers closed on her wrists. A groan came from Moore, and she sensed Alastair jerk.

  “He’s not getting up,” she said. Moore’s eyes had not opened. He lay insensate, his nose a pulp.

  The rope loosened. She pulled her hands into her lap, massaging them. They were beginning to shake. They felt very cold. She was cold all over.

  Alastair was in front of her. His hands on her shoulders. He was looking at her throat. Probably it was bruised. “Olivia,” he said. His gaze lifted. She looked into it and felt a strange jolt. She was shaking.

  He pulled her into his arms. He was so much warmer than she. Suddenly she was crying. Here was where she felt safe. She had not been afraid because she had known this would be the conclusion of it: she had known he would come. Here was safety, he was safety. She was safe.

  “You won’t keep me,” she whispered. She wasn’t his. His world had no place for her. How would she ever feel at home? Never, never again.

  She felt his hand brush up her back, along her cheek, feeling lightly, as though he feared to break her. “What?” he asked. “What did you say?”

  A deafening explosion. Alastair shoved her behind him. Pivoted.

  Moore’s chest was smoking.

  “He moved,” came a voice she knew too well. Disbelieving, she leaned around Alastair and saw Bertram in the doorway, still aiming his gun at Moore’s body.

  “He did not move,” she whispered.

  Bertram cast her a bleak look. “Perhaps not. But he would have, eventually.”

  “Yes,” Alastair said. “He would have.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The hotel suite at the top of the Savoy was the finest room Olivia had ever been in. She lay among piles of pillows, feeling dazed and slightly ridiculous, as the hotel doctor examined her, clucking and muttering. “A very bad business,” he said. “Footpads, in this area of town! I urge you, Your Grace, to report this to the police.”

  Alastair stood by the doorway. He’d been prowling the room as though in expectation of new threats popping out from the woodwork. “My cousin requires rest,” he said, clipped, “not some fruitless interrogation from a two-bit inspector. I trust I can depend on your discretion.”

  The doctor snapped upright, stripping off his stethoscope. He vented his offense by slamming his bag shut. “Naturally,” he said. “Mrs. Lewis’s name shall never cross my lips.”

  Once the door had closed, Olivia smiled. “Another alias,” she said. “How many more shall I collect, do you think?”

  Alastair sat on the very edge of the bed and looked at her. “No more, if I can help it.”

  She looked back at him, battling the warm flush of pleasure that wanted to creep through her. This sense of well-being was a trick of the tincture the doctor had given her for the pain in her throat. It made her sleepy, loose limbed, careless with details. She might mistake Alastair’s concern now, which was circumstantial, for lasting affection. Eternal affection. She might imagine, in this moment, that he meant to ensure she required no additional aliases by caring for her this way forever.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she asked. By agreement with Bertram, they had left him behind in Moore’s flat, so he might report to the police that his wife’s manservant had attempted to extort and then attack him.

  “You needed a doctor,” he said flatly. “And rest. That wretched little flat on Brook Street would not do.”

  “You might have taken me back to your house, though.” It was becoming, in her mind, some sort of mythical place where she had once belonged, and by virtue of belonging to it, had belonged with him, too. She knew the realization should alarm her. But she felt too fuzzy, light and floating, to grasp the cause for concern.

  “I could have,” he said hesitantly. “But of course the staff would have . . . leapt to conclusions.”

  Yes, of course. They all thought her a thief. Had Alastair brought her back there, installed her in a bedroom, they would have assumed he was taking revenge in a very sordid way.

  She found she did not care. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a difference to me,” he said. “I will not have you looked at so.”

  She hesitated, puzzled, a little dumb. Her thoughts felt so mushy. “Looked at how?”

  “The way those shrews looked at you in the village.” His jaw made a hard square. “No one will ever look at you that way again.”

  A laugh tumbled from her. She touched her lips, surprised at the airy sound. “Oh, Alastair. That isn’t in your power.”

  “Isn’t it?” He gave her an inscrutable look. “I think it might be.”

  She caught her breath, wishing suddenly that she were sober. That her wits were sharp enough to untangle his meaning without her having to ask . . . “How?”

  A knock came at the door. He gave an irritated pull of his mouth and rose. “That will be Bertram.”

  She watched him walk through the door into the sitting room. Listened to the muffled exchange of masculine conversation. And then, after a minute, came the distinct sound of Alastair’s voice. “No,” he said. “You will not speak to her.”

  She pushed herself up. “Let him.”

  Alastair appeared in the doorway, face thunderous. “In your condition? Absolutely—”

  “I’m all right.” This was the best, the only condition in which to speak to Bertram. Everything seemed hazy, blurred around the edges. She did not want to remember this moment too clearly—the moment in which she saved Bertram from his just deserts. “Let him in,” she said again. “Really, Alastair . . . I do know what I’m doing.”

  His mouth made a flat line. He pivoted. “Five minutes,” he said.

  Such an autocrat! She might have smiled, only the sight of her father killed t
he urge. He looked exhausted, shadows beneath his eyes, like a man tortured by a secret he knew must emerge.

  He looked exactly as he should. She stared coldly as he approached.

  “I don’t . . .” He turned his hat in his hands. “I don’t know precisely what to say to you.”

  “What a surprise.”

  He grimaced. “I deserve that. But I—”

  “And more.” The doctor’s potion had not muted her emotions entirely. She felt anger, bright and burning. Perhaps it would never burn itself out. “You deserve far more than that. You owed my mother everything. She could have destroyed you. How she loved you enough not to do so, I will never understand.”

  His hat crumpled, the brim breaking. “I was twenty-two when I wed her. I understood nothing. Do you hear me? I was young and stupid, and wild—”

  “And so was she. But her love never wavered. You have more proof of that than any man alive.”

  He hung his head. She heard his unsteady breath. “Yes,” he said. “She was far better than I deserved.” He looked up again, and she saw pain in his face. It made her angrier. What right had he to feel pain? “I want you to know,” he said, “that I had no hand in Moore’s actions. He was my wife’s man—her bodyguard, from the time she was very young. And I think he must have been mad. I cannot believe my wife had any hand in what he did—”

  Alastair made a sharp, scornful noise. “That won’t fly.”

  Bertram rounded on him. “You don’t know her. She’s not a murderess.”

  “I don’t intend to know her,” Alastair said coldly. “You will make arrangements to ensure that I never do. Send her to an asylum. Or back to America—it makes no difference. But she will not remain in England.”

  “She’s the mother of my children!”

  “Three of them, at least,” Olivia said bitterly.

  That drew him back around, desperate now, pleading. “Olivia, I promise you—”

  She scoffed and glanced to Alastair, who shook his head in clear amazement. “I am not so desperate as to accept promises from you,” she said.

  “Besides,” Alastair added, “I doubt very much she will wish to stay, once her children are made bastards, and her marriage exposed as a bigamous sham.”