Nicola Cornick – Notorious (страница 7)

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.