The Problem with Seduction

Chapter Two

FOR A MAN BORN into a family of rakes, Con hadn’t quite managed to perfect his way with women. Elizabeth’s gray eyes went wide with fear, then crazed with an unholy light that caused him to step back. After escaping Captain Finn’s fists two nights before, Con was feeling a bit invincible. Her butler—if the ship-sized creature in her entry could be called such—had hardly fazed him. Regarding Elizabeth across the room now, however, his luck seemed to have run out. Slowly, mechanically, she rose and placed a baby into a cradle tucked into the corner of the room. More slowly still, she faced Con. Her pale features had taken on an uncanny brittleness he found terrifying. “I think perhaps we ought to take tea before we make any hasty decisions—” he began.

She took a small step forward, then another and another until she was at a full-fledged run. Her balled fists found his chest as she beat him with ineffective wallops that might have made him laugh except she was half-gurgling, half-screaming, “You monster! I will never give him up!”

He caught her wrists and held her apart from him so he could look into her eyes. Tendrils of dark brown hair wisped around her face, highlighting high cheekbones, full, generous lips and those gray eyes he found so startling. “Elizabeth! Be calm! Surely we can talk about this rationally. Don’t you trust me?”

No, of course she didn’t trust him. She’d paid him to lie to the entire ton. Still, he felt like that should count for something. They were now a team, weren’t they?

She stopped fighting long enough to hiss in his face. “You snake! We made a deal. You have no right to Oliver. No right at all.”

“Yes, but—”

“You promised not to make any claim on him. You signed your name.”

“It’s not like what Finn wanted,” he said. What the devil was she so upset about? “I mean, it is like what Finn wanted, in that I need to see my son—”

“He’s not your son!” she shrieked.

The door burst open. Iron arms banded around him and the butler’s deep voice vibrated in his ear. “Let her go.”

“You, again?” Con sighed and dutifully released Elizabeth.

She hastily scrambled back. “You are heinous! I will never let you take him. Why would you even…” She brushed away a lock of chestnut-colored hair curling in her face. Her chest heaved and her cheeks flushed pink with fury. Again her fingers tucked the lock into place, but when a lone tear rolled down her cheek he knew the real reason why she’d raised her hand. She hastily rubbed the glistening trail away. New, fresh fury sparkled in her eyes. “I am done with crying. I am done, sir, with you. Leave. Now.”

He struggled against his human restraints before giving up. It was a futile attempt to retain what little dignity he could muster, for fighting a man twice his mass only made him look silly. He had to make her understand, though. He needed her to cooperate, or at least stop attacking him. “I’m afraid you’ve put us both in a bind, you see,” he tried to explain. “I have a bad enough reputation as it is, so far as responsibility goes. I can’t let this baby be one more I ignore.”

The last of his breath whistled through his teeth as his captor cinched Con’s upper arms hard and fast enough to almost crack his ribs.

She stared at him incredulously. “You expect me to care about your reputation enough to hand over my son?”

It did sound foolish, the way she said it. Oliver wasn’t even his child. What did it matter if he ignored the boy for the rest of his life? Surely Con was old enough now to take his family’s disappointment in stride.

Her eyes narrowed. “This is about money. Ten thousand wasn’t enough? Well, I won’t be threatened. You won’t squeeze another shilling from me. I won’t have it—you can take your conniving, blackmailing ways and go hang.”

“All right, all right.” It wasn’t worth upsetting her any more than he already had. He didn’t even want children. Or a half-crazed woman with an unholy hatred of him—that was, in fact, one very good reason why he wasn’t married. He held up his hands as best he could, given his arms were trapped at his sides. “It was a stupid idea. I’ll go father my own by-blow and then take care of him.”

Her face went white. “How can you say such a thing? He’s an innocent baby. It’s not his fault he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”

Maybe that had been too much. Con had nothing against bastards in general, Oliver in particular, or her, for that matter. Borrowing the baby for an afternoon was just an idea he’d had when his mother had looked at him with eyes filled with disappointment and a sad, brittle smile on her face.

“It was just for the afternoon,” he said suddenly, feeling terrible. He didn’t want to face his mother without his supposed baby, but he also wasn’t a giant cad like everyone seemed to think. “I shouldn’t have slighted your son. I’m sorry.”

“Just the afternoon.” Her voice dripped with disbelief.

No one trusted him anymore. His heels dragged along the carpet as the hulking butler forcibly heaved him from the room instead of setting him down. Con pulled an I suppose this is it face and attempted a shrug, but neither cracked Elizabeth’s pale, stony stare.

When he’d been dragged half the length of the hallway, he realized she thought he meant to take Oliver permanently. Nothing could have scared him to death more than the thought of being saddled with a motherless child. “Elizabeth!” he called down the hallway, “Elizabeth, I think you might have misunderstood me. Really, it was just for the afternoon. It’s about my mother, you see—”

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the portraits on the walls.

Well. That hadn’t gone quite the way he’d intended. His mother was going to be disappointed in him. Again.

At least things couldn’t get much worse.





She’d expected Nicholas. Or at least a fight from Nicholas. The Nicholas Finn she knew never walked away from a good row. In the three years on and off that she’d spent as his mistress, she’d learned precisely how far she could go without driving him to a physical response. Not that sex wasn’t a physical response, a form of punishment for riling him past reason, but he’d never laid a hand on her that she hadn’t secretly wanted.

Her mouth tasted sour now, thinking of his hands on her at all. What a fool she’d been.

She hadn’t expected Lord Constantine just now. And after he left, she knew better than to let her guard down again. She was more prepared to maintain her composure when Nicholas did arrive, shortly after Lord Constantine was tossed out on his backside. Literally tossed, for she’d enjoyed watching from the window as Rand had ejected him from her rented townhouse into the street.

Rand tapped lightly on her door to inform her of Nicholas’s arrival himself. Unlike with Lord Constantine, this time she did give Oliver to his nurse. Though Nicholas had never manhandled her, she couldn’t risk him taking her baby right from her arms.

She paused to check her reflection. The redness in her eyes couldn’t be helped, but she pinched her cheeks to restore some of her natural glow, and twirled her fingers through the curls framing her face to restore the carefully-tonged locks as best she could. Vanity was a courtesan’s primary weapon. Without it, she’d never be able to hold her head high enough to look down her nose at the men who sought to use her.

She made her way to the drawing room. The entire length of the house, she steeled herself against the man she was about to receive.

He stood in her vestibule, looking impatient. She paused at the foot of the stair. Once, her heart had seemed to stop every time she saw him. Nicholas Finn was tall, and possessed of the confidence found in a man who’d scrounged the money to buy a commission, then gone on to earn honors reserved for Britain’s finest men. His wavy brown hair appeared windblown, a careful effect he took pains to perfect. And he was handsome. Of all the men she’d taken into her bed, he’d been the one with the broadest shoulders, the most satisfying to pleasure, with the slightly-too-heavy weight of a man in good health and the strong hands of a skilled lover.

Now when she looked at him, she felt only her own revulsion.

Nicholas waved for her to precede him into her drawing room. Her spine stiffened. “This is my house,” she reminded him, angry that he would attempt to direct her in her own home.

He sighed. His fine brown eyes were weary. “Must you always think I’m out to get you? I merely came to discuss my son.”

She entered the drawing room and turned her back to him while she collected herself. He’d never loved her. Not even a little. “He’s not yours,” she lied.

It wasn’t that she wanted to keep Oliver from his father—the very thought made her want to weep, for she’d lived the last ten years of her own life without a word from her own father. But Nicholas had no use for her, the mother of his child, any more than he’d had use for her affection when it had been just the two of them. He’d been content to send her out on her ear almost the moment he had Oliver in his possession. He’d not even cared that she’d spent her first week after in a haze of grief, barely able lift herself from the lumpy mattress of a room she’d let above a common tavern. If he knew she’d been forced to return to Celeste’s cottage in Devon and the staff keeping house there, he’d never given an indication. He simply didn’t care about her.

The door closed behind them. It seated like the hollow thump in her chest. She didn’t turn to face him. How could she? He’d broken her heart. Taken her son without a single thought for the agony it would cause her—like having her own arm, or her very heart, ripped from her.

“Tell me it’s rubbish.” His voice was low. Not menacing. Hurt, possibly. As if it stung him to think she might have taken another lover—but no. It was because he wanted Oliver. Wouldn’t accept that the boy was not his own. “I believed that cocky little whelp at first,” Nicholas said, “but I’ve had time to think about it. You wouldn’t have strayed. You were in love with me.”

Oh, she had been. She’d loved him so much she’d thought she would die from the pain of his betrayal. She waved her hand through the air, turning slowly toward him. “You had no loyalty from me.”

His eyes went cold. “We had an agreement. That included your chastity.”

“You never had sole claim on my time.”

She hated the way she sounded. Bitter.

He advanced two steps. “I paid for you. You had a legal obligation to me.”

“Even if you were in her arms?” Elizabeth couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice now. “You thought I would pine alone while you rolled around in some other woman’s bed?”

“It was my right.” He scowled. “Why else would I pay your rates?”

Because you loved me. A foolish thought to have. What made it all the worse, however, was that he was right. She had lain in her bed, night after night, wishing he would come to her. Hating that he’d taken another courtesan in his arms. Hating herself, for loving a man who could not have given his whole heart to her had he even wanted to.

“I should never have believed you were with him.” Nicholas muttered. He said him as though just thinking about Lord Constantine put a bad taste in his mouth. For one brief, stupid second, Elizabeth hoped he was jealous. “You never gave any indication…” He shook his head. He stared at the floor as if the world were shifting beneath his feet. Then his chin lifted until he was looking her full in the face again. What she saw there sent a chill through her entire body.

“That silly fop made me look like a fool in front of everyone. But…the thing of it is, Elizabeth, I don’t think he has the brains to have come up with such a devious plot. Lord Constantine is a puppy. A little boy hanging on his brothers’ coattails. You would never have turned to his bed, even if you had wanted to get me back.” Nicholas advanced one more step. It was enough to bring the masculine, heart-twistingly familiar smell of him near. “You panted after me for too long, Elizabeth. I cannot believe you would have strayed, even for one night.”

She held her ground, but allowed her face to reveal all the years she’d spent pining after a man who’d never wanted her. “He was kind to me. I believed he might…”

Nicholas’s condescension dripped from his voice. “Never say you thought he loved you.”

But she’d struck something. He turned away, his broad shoulders sagging a fraction. Enough to make her think she’d drawn his attention to the one weakness that might have sent her into the arms of another.

“Of course I didn’t,” she scoffed, though the thought of a man telling her he loved her caused her chest to ache. “A man doesn’t fall in love simply because his prick finds solace. I believed he could come to love me, though. It was enough to bring us together…for the night.”

Nicholas froze. Then he drew himself up and faced her. “Was it worth it? Was cuckolding me worth your silly sentiments?”

Her laugh was brittle. “Only a wife can cuckold a man.”

Nicholas’s dark brow lowered as he scowled viciously. “Your tongue is as sharp as ever.”

At least he was no longer talking about Oliver or her heart. She thinned her lips in a satisfied smile. “Thank you.”

“My dearest Beth, what a smart mouth you have.” He bared his teeth in satisfaction when she flinched at his pet name for her. “I think you’re a lying little whore. A brilliant one. It would seem that my hands are tied for the moment. I have no proof that Oliver is my son, but you have thirty men who saw me stupidly accept the idea that Lord Constantine warmed your bed. Even I don’t know what to believe.” He loomed toward her. She didn’t retreat, for he’d only enjoy chasing her. “What could have drawn you to a boy, when you’ve had a man under your skirts?” He grasped her shoulders and pulled her to his body.

She recoiled. He’d taken her baby. Brutally, without so much as a good-bye. He’d been crass about his new conquests. Did he not know how thoroughly he’d hurt her with his philandering? Publicly? He’d never given her feelings the least bit of consideration, and now she was to melt into his arms in a state of passion?

Surprise crossed his features. Then they steeled. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it, Beth. I know you better than that. One day, you’ll remember you still love me. And then you will bring my son back. I want you to do it yourself.” With that, he released her and crossed the room to leave. At the door, he stopped long enough to glance at her over his shoulder. “I suggest you start remembering how good it used to be between us, because I am going to have my son back. A boy belongs with his father. There’ll be no rest for me until you’ve undone your mistake.”