Tempting the Wolf (5 page)

She gave him the smallest shrug. “I am the countess of Colline.” Not Fayette, alone and frightened in a world she could not understand.

“And never a cloud mars yer glorious sky?”

She lifted a hand, palm up, as if to agree.

“And what of the count?” His eyes gleamed as blue and bright as a summer lake. “Where is he?”

“One gray cloud,” she acquiesced evenly.

He watched her too intently, and he sat too close. ‘Twas surely not safe.

“I fear he died some years ago.”

“As unexpectedly as the gelding?”

She shot her gaze to him, breath held. But his expression was jovial. He was a pretty face with overestimated charms. Nothing more. No matter how her nerve endings sizzled with his nearness.

“I’ve no wish to discuss either,” she said.

He watched her in silence for a second. “Then what shall we speak of, lass?”

She was tired, exhausted really. “Are you so fond of your own voice that you cannot sit quietly for a spell?”

He laughed. “Mayhap Mr. Finnegan is luckier than I realized.”

She gave him the slightest edge of a scowl.

“Ye neglected the dance ye promised him,” he explained.

So he remembered her words and realized her lie. She must be rid of him, of course, and yet, if the truth be told, he intrigued her. “Are you saying I am difficult, sir?” she asked.

He smiled. “As are many fine things.”

“Flattery.” She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead and stared wide-eyed. “I fear my poor head shall begin to spin with such words from the Irish cur.”

“Hound,” he corrected and leaned back in his seat, watching her with a half smile. He had donned the costume of the
ton
—cutaway coat and dark breeches. But there was something different about the way he wore it, something not quite tamed,

“Shall I take that to mean I should keep me compliments to meself?” he asked.

“Not at all.” She could barely keep from fluttering her eyelashes. “I find them most exhilarating… if a bit unnerving.”

“Methinks ye have never been unnerved.”

He was wrong there, of course, and yet she could not help but give him the slightest smile.

“I but wonder, lass, why ye felt it necessary to rush from the Regent’s grand ball just to avoid the likes of me?”

“Avoid you?” she said and gave him an arch glance. “I fear you give yourself far too much importance, sir. ‘Twas simply that I had to leave unexpectedly as my head was beginning to ache.”

“Me apologies. I did not ken yer affliction. Come, I shall rub away the pain,” he said and suddenly he was on the seat beside her.

Terror pierced her like an arrow. She lurched past him, scurrying to the opposite side of the carriage where she huddled against the corner.

It took her one wild instant to realize he was watching her as if she’d suddenly sprouted fangs.

She straightened, reprimanding herself. What the devil was wrong with her? She knew far better than to scurry away like a flushed debutante. She was the countess of Colline. “I realize, Sir O’Banyon, that you are of Celtic ancestry,” she said, still breathing hard, still struggling for normalcy, for calm, “and not accustomed to the ways of civilized persons. But here in the cultivated world… we do not accost others without warning.”

His eyebrows were somewhere in his hairline. Perhaps, she thought, rather hazily, he was not accustomed to women scurrying from his path like harried rodents.

“Surely ye are na saying I am uncivilized,” he said.

She forced a prim smile and calmed her breathing. “Surely not.”

“What then?” he asked. “Is me cravat too wide? Me coat too long or is it another deadly fashion sin I have committed?”

“On the contrary, sir, you are perfectly attired.”

He lifted a hand. His fingers were long and tapered. There would be magic there. A common magic perhaps, but a magic just the same, and one she had not allowed herself for years out of count.

“Then what?” he asked.

“A wolf may wear a collar,” she said, “but he is still a wolf.”

For just a fraction of a second, the humor fled his eyes, replaced by something sharp and gleaming, but then he settled back against the cushion and perused her carefully. “Tell me of yerself, countess ofColline.”

She spread her gloved hands upon her lap. “What is there to tell, sir? I am what you see?”

“Beautiful, wealthy—so young and fair with form so soft and charm so rare?”

She was honestly surprised. “Poetry, Sir O’Banyon?”

“Yer own Lord Byron has been known to string a likely phrase.”

“I do not believe he is
my own
as you say.”

He leaned forward, light dancing in his eyes. “Where then were ye born, lass?”

She leaned back, breathless. “What bearing could that possibly have on the situation?”

“I but wonder. What were ye like as a wee lass? Do ye favor sweets? When ye sleep at night, of what do ye dream?”

They were but questions. Casually put forth and easy to answer. At least for most. But to her they were secrets long kept and carefully guarded, lest the truth spill forth and drown her in its dark tide.

She quieted her nerves and watched him. “If you are trying to seduce me, I fear your efforts are wasted.”

His eyes crinkled, as if he were smiling in his soul. “Because ye dunna like the look of me or because ye yet mourn the loss of yer bridegroom.”

She longed to tell him it was the former, but she would not tell an unbelievable lie, for it might well cast suspicion on the lies yet to be.

“Fishing for compliments, are you?” she asked instead.

He laughed. The deep rumble of his humor danced in the darkness between them. “Could ye blame me in these chilly waters, lass?”

“Indeed, I could. Besides, there might well be a score of excellent reasons to dislike you other than the shape of your nose or the angle of your jaw.”

“Name one then, lass.”

“Your tendency to pry into the affairs of others.”

He drew back in mock surprise. “Ye think me meddlesome?”

“And vain.”

“Nay.” He said as if wounded.

“So you do not think yourself superior to other men?”

“Well, aye,” he admitted. “But that hardly makes me vain. Only… perceptive.”

Perhaps she should have been insulted by his vanity. Instead, she found herself tempted to laugh.

“But alas, I dunna pretend to be superior in all things,” he assured her, barely sober.

“Oh? How big-hearted of you.”

“Aye, well…” He canted his head modestly. His single, golden braid fell across the stubbled slant of his jaw. “Size is na amongst those things.”

Antoinette willed back the rush of blood to her cheeks, but it was wasted effort. She could control much, but not the flush of embarrassment.

He watched her. Laughter flickered in his eyes. “Ye look all the more bonny when ye blush, lass,” he murmured, his deep burr softened as he leaned toward her.

“You should try it, if you’ve not forgotten how,” she suggested, and he laughed as he settled back against the cushions behind him again.

“Tell me, love, how long were ye wed?”

Love
. The word tripped so easily from his tongue. She held her hands still in her lap, refusing to fidget. “Not near long enough.”

“That much I guessed from yer high color. How did he die?”

“He became ill with consumption.”

“I am sorry,” he said, and his voice was, quite suddenly, filled with quiet earnestness.

She hadn’t expected pity. Nor sincerity. Indeed, she did not want it. “And what of you, O’Banyon, have you never wed?” she asked, her tone brusque. “Or perhaps you are bound to another even now.”

He watched her, his lips curved. “Do I look the sort to leave me bride while I philander with another?” he asked.

“Indeed, you look the sort to leave your bride with a passel of twelve while you philander with
many
others.”

She expected him to laugh. He did not.

“I knew ye to be aloof,” he said. “But I did not expect ye to be foolish.”

She blinked and raised a haughty brow. “I did not mean to wound you, sir. But you
are
known as the Irish Beast, are you not?”

“Hound,” he corrected. “And ye have na wounded me. Ye have only disappointed me.”

Some emotion twisted in her stomach. Some feeling she could not quite identify. Surely it could not be regret. This man meant nothing to her. He was there to make a conquest. Nothing more. She was sure of it. She had met a hundred others like him.

“What has made ye so cautious?” he asked.

She pursed her lips. Who was he to find fault with her? “Perhaps it is men like you,” she said.

He grinned, seeming to forgive her earlier statement. “So yer husband was handsome and charming and virile?”

“My husband was old and bitter and—” Dammit! She almost closed her eyes to her own foolishness, but she did not. Instead, she leaned back and exhaled slowly. She was almost home, and she would not make the mistake of being closeted alone with him again. “There you have it then, O’Banyon, the truth. Are you happy now?”

“Nay,” he said and his somber expression suggested that he spoke true. “Na if ye are na.”

She forced herself to breathe. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“In truth, lass, from the first I laid me eyes on ye, I could na seem to be elsewhere.”

She stared at him. How long had it been since she’d allowed herself to touch, to be human, to be alive, she wondered, but she gave herself a mental shake and laughed out loud. “Tell me, Irishman, do you practice these lines in the mirror so that you can spew them out to every passing maid?”

“Tell me, countess,” he said, propping his elbows on his knees to lean toward her, “do ye doubt every word ever spoken?”

“Just when they are issued from men such as yourself.”

He shook his head. The expression was almost sad. “Believe this, lass, ye have na met a man like meself,” he said and took her hand in his own.

She should have seen it coming, but she did not. Feelings burned like summer lightning, sizzling across her fingers, racing up her arm. She heard his sharp intake of breath. Or was it her own?

The carriage lurched beneath her, its wheels crunching gravel, but the sound was lost in his growl as he moved forward. And she almost did the same. Almost. But in the last second sanity was renewed. She jerked away, scrambling toward the door.

“
Cesses
!” she spat and fled, tumbling from her carriage and up the cobblestone walkway to Arborhill’s silent sanctity.

“Irish!” said the baroness, startled to see him.

O’Banyon smiled. Hiltsglen’s wee Fleurette couldn’t have looked more surprised if he’d been delivered atop her pickled mushrooms.

She stood in the doorway of her office, the cramped and busy space above Eddings Carriages, a company she had begun on her own and continued to supervise even after her marriage. The idea that her independence must gall the Black Celt’s old-world pride lifted O’Banyon’s spirits a notch.

“Baroness,” he said and reaching for her hand, kissed it.

Her eyes were narrowed when he straightened. “Killian isn’t here,” she said.

He stepped inside, crowding her back and closing the door behind him. “And what, lass, would lead ye to believe I have come to see the dark Celt?”

He moved toward the window. ‘Twas an intriguing spot here above the teeming city. London had grown a hundredfold since his last sojourn there, evolving into a snarled mass of growling humanity.

“If not Killian then what is your purpose?” she asked.

He turned, perusing her office. The new century had burst forth with a thousand clever gadgets that never ceased to fascinate him. “Mayhap I have come to seduce ye.”

The baroness stared at him for several long seconds, then settled loosely into a slat-backed chair and laughed out loud.

A tic of irritation niggled at him. “Ye find something amusing?”

“You mostly,” she said.

“Ahh.” Leave it to Hiltsglen to find himself a wife who did not appreciate good old Irish charm. “May I be asking why, then?”

“First,” she said, leaning forward to prop her hands on her much scarred desk, “despite evidence to the contrary, you do not seem to be a complete fool.”

He lifted a hand. “Ye are far too kind, me lady.”

She grinned a little, but there may have been a rather lethal light in her eyes. “If you so much as touched my skirt, Killian would have your head, but I’m sure you realize as much.”

He considered defending his masculine prowess as a warrior, but it hardly seemed worth the time. Hiltsglen was as big as a damned bastion and he’d have righteous indignation on his side. “And second?”

“I spoke to Lucy.”

He shook his head.

“Lady Anglehill.”

Her meaning dawned on him. It may be that he had acted less than casual when first he’d seen the countess of Colline depart the ball. “Ah.”

“Yes, ah. She said you shot out after Antoinette as if your breeches were on fire.”

“Yet with a good deal of dignity,” he said, but if truth be told, it had rather felt like his lower regions were ablaze.

She laughed. “Did you catch her?”