Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle Page A

wrought plans.
    Instead of being able to coerce her into revealing the information she held, he’d given himself away and in the bargain had found himself entangled with a tempting handful.
    He’d kissed women in the line of duty before—a ravishing countess in Madrid, whose husband was a French collaborator, a seductively practiced Italian woman, who’d been deserted in Portugal by one of Bonaparte’s cronies and was only too willing to trade her secrets—but none of their traitorous lips had ever coaxed him into forgetting his own raison d’être.
    But Olivia Sutton’s lips teased his mind to forget and his body to react with a primitive heat that burned away his usual cool detachment. This fire went far deeper than her chestnut hair and flashing eyes.
    Never had poison tasted so fine.
    How had this chit taken him so unawares? So utterly and completely in one kiss that he’d nearly overlooked the true reason he’d come to London?
    Then again, the little wench had known exactly what she’d been doing, he told himself. He’d sensed her confusion and then recognition immediately—and yet it had taken her nearly a minute more to wrench herself from his arms. And yet . . .
    There had been something completely innocent in her kiss—resistant, tentative, almost afraid. And her eyes, while they had flared with an untamed and heedless anger, they had also told him more than her indignation could—they’d also been relieved, stunned and only too curious as to who he was.
    That curiosity, he knew, was what he should fear the most. For a curious miss, especially one as intelligent as Miss Sutton, could prove dangerous. If she started asking questions, making inquiries, his deception would be ruined.
    But before he’d let that happen, he’d find a way to pry the secret of El Rescate del Rey from her lips, no matter what method of coercion he had to take.
    He could imagine what Pymm would suggest. Take the wench to your bed and be done with it.
    Robert shook off that thought immediately. Kissing the little termagant was one thing.
    Bedding her was an entirely different matter.
    One that appealed to him more than he cared to admit.
    “Damn her,” he muttered, as he marched down the street in a worse mood than he had been in last night when he’d discovered her missing from his room.
    “I beg your pardon,” huffed a matronly lady who was in the process of hustling her string of wide-eyed charges out of his foul path.
    Robert doffed his hat in a short bow, muttering a quick apology. If this were the Peninsula, he wouldn’t have any need for all these wretched formalities and deceptions. He’d haul the traitorous lady before a board of inquiry and wrench the information out of her.
    Unfortunately, the situation called for a slightly different tack. And if he was to play on an even field with Miss Sutton, then he needed to know a little more about her.
    And Robert knew exactly who could provide this invaluable intelligence.
    Striding up the steps of the Bradstone town house, he nodded at Carlyle and asked him, “Can you tell me where her ladyship is?”
    The man glanced over his shoulder at the clock ticking away on a shelf in the alcove. “Your mother should just be getting her morning repast in her suite,” he answered. He glanced at Robert’s wrinkled coat and neckerchief and then back out the door as if trying to determine if his eyes were deceiving him—that the Marquis of Bradstone had truly ventured out into London wearing such a poor ensemble.
    “Out taking a morning stroll,” Robert told him. Heading for the stairs, he made a parting comment before heading up to his aunt’s suite. “Never fear, Carlyle. I doubt anyone saw me.”
    “One can only hope, my lord,” the poor guardian of the Bradstone portals muttered.
     
    Robert had never ventured into his aunt’s private rooms and didn’t quite know what to expect as he tapped on the half-open door.
    “Robert, darling!” she cried out, waving her