Chapter Three

Oscar relished the daggers that his cunning little gambler's gaze hurled at him.

Though, unlike in Paris, the surrounding flesh wasn't painted and powdered to provide a wizened, masculine appearance. Gone

were the wiry eyebrows, the tawny wig, mustachios and beard. In their place was hair the color of sunlight spun into strands

of silk and a flawless complexion of the finest cream. And in the full light of day, her irises were so blue and fathomless

that they reminded him of the Aegean Sea.

In short, she had the face of an angel.

Well... almost.

The impish upward tilt at the corners of those eyes, along with a sinfully full mouth and a figure ripe with tantalizing curves,

all suggested that her beauty was a gift from both heaven and hell.

It was the latter that reminded him not to underestimate her.

Then again, he didn't require any reminder. Ever since this diabolical creature had disappeared into the night with his winnings,

leaving him at the mercy of Ladrón's blade against his throat, he'd thought of nothing else aside from ensuring that she paid.

And paid dearly.

If it hadn't been for the timely intervention of an old friend, both he and Cardew would have been killed. But his friend had helped them escape and flee to Marseille where they stole away on a cutter bound for Spain.

Along the way, rum and rage had loosened Oscar's tongue, and he'd let a few things slip. Not about a chit dressed as a man.

No, he'd never have survived the ribbing from that. However, he had mentioned a femme fatale who'd distracted him for an instant.

And he'd cursed her every day since she'd slipped through his fingers.

Listening to Oscar's slurred recitation, his friend had taken particular interest in the name Vandemere. He'd heard it mentioned

in passing during his life. Or rather, his other life. That was when he confessed that he'd been reared among the haut ton. Then he revealed his true identity as the second born son to the late Duke of Longhurst.

Oscar had been gobsmacked by the news. Even though he'd long suspected that there was more than met the eye with the devil-may-care

wastrel, who'd always managed to be in the right place at the right time, he had never thought of Rowan Warring as quality . A former military officer, perhaps. But the son of a duke? Never.

However, when Warring had explained that he knew of a family with a connection to Vandemere—a family whom he despised, incidentally—Oscar's

shock fell away as a plan began to form.

Suddenly, he'd known precisely how to repay Ladrón. And his friend had been more than happy to assist him with this charade.

Which brought Oscar here, pretending to be a long-lost viscount and Miss Honoria Hartley's betrothed. And he couldn't leave

until he had her right where he wanted her.

Even though Warring and Cardew had compiled enough documentation to add plausibility to his claim, Oscar needed this betrothal

to provide an aura of authenticity to this production.

Unfortunately and predictably, she wasn't making it easy.

She dug her fingernails into her palm to prevent him from slipping his ring onto her finger. Clenching her teeth, she hissed, "I never said yes ."

Undeterred, he stood and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "But we both know that it is more than a mere betrothal contract

that binds us. I can see it in your eyes that you feel it, too."

Murder. It was murder lurking in her eyes.

But this was hardly his first time being the recipient of such a look, so it didn't rattle him in the least. In fact, it only

made him more determined to earn every ounce of hatred she could dole out.

She tugged to extricate her hand. Though knowing she would likely dash away without a backward glance and run for the hills,

he was reluctant to release her. Instead, he threaded her arm through his and anchored her to his side like a besotted groom.

Then his audience glided into the room, smiles radiant, and Oscar knew that he'd just caught several fish in the same net.

Of course, he had no intention of continuing this ruse long enough to actually marry the trickster, but she didn't need to

know that. The fact that he could torment and blackmail her, while being safely hidden in the wilds of Lincolnshire away from

Ladrón, was simply icing on the cake.

"Dear me, where are my manners? I'm Lady Hartley. This"—she gestured with a graceful sweep of her arm to the grinning older

woman—"is the Countess Broadbent. The girl scribbling in her ledger is my youngest, Althea. But you likely already knew that.

Welcome to Hartley Hall, my lord. Oh, but that's far too formal. We will be family soon, after all. You may call me Roxana,

and we shall call you...?"

"Oscar," he said, because every good lie contained a kernel of truth.

Honoria's flaxen brows arched, her lips pursing with anticipatory triumph. "Oscar is an unexpected moniker for a name like yours."

"My mother always called me Oscar. Though, I imagine that with a name like Manford Octavius Rutherford Fairfax, it was just

easier."

For the second time that day, he saw her artful expression slip. It was the barest flicker of a frown and pucker of her brow,

but he saw it. And he flashed a grin. Ah, yes, my dear. I've done my research.

She offered no reply. But what he wouldn't give to be an earwig crawling around inside her skull to hear her every thought.

Likely what she wanted to say was unsuitable for polite society. Nevertheless, he relished watching her school her features,

hearing the faint creak of her molars grinding.

"Oscar's a fine name," Lady Hartley said, beaming as her gaze slid between the two of them as if they were standing before

an altar instead of beside a sofa. "And what does your family think of your sudden arrival after all this time?"

"I haven't been to the abbey yet."

When she gasped in response, he could see that he might have slipped down a notch in her esteem. And since being a convincingly

devoted fiancé, who was finally ready to come home to roost was part of his ruse, he had to think quick.

Lifting his shoulders in a sheepish shrug, he tucked his chin a fraction toward his chest in the universal sign of repentance.

"I suppose it was bad form. My only excuse is that, because of my father's estrangement from the family, I know naught of

them. We are all strangers. Whereas with your daughter, I feel as though I know her better than I know myself." He gazed at

Honoria adoringly, watching as shadows swept across her countenance like a black veil as she plotted his early demise. "As

if we'd met not long ago, perhaps somewhere in a courtyard, far from here and beneath a star-strewn sky..."

She growled.

Lady Broadbent laid a hand over her bosom and sighed. "How romantic. And here I was ready to whisk her away to London. 'Tis fortunate that you arrived when you did."

"Well, I had to ensure that she didn't dash off and marry someone else."

"I shouldn't be too worried. Miss Hartley has rejected dozens of proposals while waiting for you."

"Well, I'm grateful to hear that. When she'd professed as much in her letters, I admit that I thought she was gilding the

lily in order to make me jealous. After all, what is a man supposed to think when a woman talks incessantly of her own beauty?"

He made a dubious face, earning a snort of laughter from her sister. "But I knew that, even if she had the face of a baboon,

it wouldn't have mattered as long as she was my Honoria."

His captive cast him a tight smile. "For your information, the proposals run more in the vein of hundreds . I've rejected twelve this week alone."

"My darling, you needn't try so hard. I am here to stay. However, I realize my appearance came as quite the shock to you.

Therefore, I will bid you good-day and call on you after I'm settled at Dunnelocke Abbey." He bowed to each in turn. "Until

we meet again, my lady, Roxana, Miss Althea, and my steadfast Miss Hartley."

Honoria abruptly blinked away her seething glare an instant before turning to her mother and, with a beatific smile, said,

"I'll just walk him out."

Ever the gallant gentleman, he proffered his arm. She accepted but only to dig her fingernails into the woolen sleeve. Considering

his wardrobe was as thin as his pockets, he felt the bite of each manicured point.

As they stepped into the foyer, he noticed that the butler had recovered from his shock. Which was either a testament to his

stalwart nerves or to the fact that he'd had a good deal of practice with encountering ghosts beneath this roof.

Only time would tell. And as long as Oscar was safe from Ladrón, he had all the time in the world.

When the door closed behind them and they stood between the columns beneath the portico, he breathed in a deep, satisfying

breath. The warm summer air was clean, fresh and full of promise. "I think I'm going to like it here. Addlewick has already

proved vastly entertaining."

"You won't think so when my brother returns from London. He knows the truth and will do everything within his power to ensure

that you don't get away with this."

Oscar clucked his tongue. "It's quite interesting, the things one learns in seafaring cities about the men who sail on merchant

ships. I imagine there are sailors who'd rather not have their most diabolical secrets find their way home."

"Why, you despicable arse," she hissed, paling visibly. "How dare you threaten my family. I should have stabbed you when I

had the chance."

If he had a farthing for every time he'd heard those words... "Surely, you're not afraid of a little challenge, Signore?"

"Ha! You give yourself far too much credit. I break my fast on men like you."

She was so furious that she vibrated with it. An angel draped in tiers of quivering ruffles and puffed sleeves. And there

was just something about the way she stepped forward, shoulders back and eyes flashing, that brought out the devil in him.

So before he went to untether his horse, he leaned in close. "I'll return early on the morrow, then."

***

Oscar wasn't certain when his love affair with old houses began. Whether it was during his transient childhood or while roaming from place to place as a young man, he couldn't say. All he knew was that the more rambling, timeworn and augmented from generation to generation, the more he felt drawn to it. And Dunnelocke Abbey was no exception.

She was a sprawling gray-stone giantess, lounging on her side amid a verdant blanket of rolling hills with her head pillowed

on a thick fall of leafy wilderness, her feet tipping toward a lily pad–dappled lake. At her center, her hips rose three stories

and hosted a plethora of slender mullioned windows and a broad recessed doorway of weathered oak.

He left his horse with a young stable hand wandering about. Then, reaching for the large iron ring on the door, he chuckled

to himself. For a grand old lady, she certainly had a scandalously placed knocker. But he doubted that the monks who'd once

lived there ever thought of this Romanesque beauty as a woman.

Even so, Oscar took special care in rapping on the door.

After a time, when no one answered, he rapped again. Left waiting, he wondered if all the inhabitants had gone out the backside

for a frolic or whatever aristocrats did to pass the time. Rapping a third time with more gusto, he offered a silent apology

to his new mistress for treating her most ill.

At last, the door opened, swinging so wide it took the hoary butler with it. The rawboned, liveried old fellow teetered off

balance. Then, facing the wrong direction, asked, "May I help you?"

"I feel as though that should be my question," Oscar muttered under his breath as he stepped across the threshold and tapped

the man on the shoulder. "Viscount Vandemere."

Turning around with a start, the man blinked a pair of cloudy blue eyes as if trying to bat away the mists. "I'm afraid not,

sir. There's been no viscount in residence for nigh on fifteen years now."

"What I mean to say is that I am Vandemere. Or rather, Manford Octavius Rutherford Fairfax," he said, unable to keep the syncopated rhythm from his delivery. But it was a substantial mouthful. One had to build up a rhythm to make it all the way to the end.

He was just reaching for a calling card when the manservant shuffled off, disappearing behind the door.

Curious, Oscar followed and watched as the man lifted a tarnished brass ear trumpet from a three-legged stool and summarily

held the small end of the funnel to his ear. Apparently, the butler was both blind and deaf.

So Oscar tucked the card back into the silver case he'd pinched in Prague and repeated himself. Thrice.

In the grueling moments of attempted conversation that followed, he learned that the butler's name was Algernon and that the

family was, indeed, out the backside. Or rather, having tea on the lawn. And after that inauspicious start, he followed the

butler through the entry hall.

But Oscar felt a twinge of disappointment as he took in the sights around him. He didn't know what he expected to find, but

it wasn't unpolished and chalky slabs of gray-stone tiles beneath his feet or barren ash-brick walls. Weren't these cloistered

monuments supposed to host elaborate tapestries, moldering paintings, threadbare rugs and gargantuan pieces of furniture that

could only be moved by an army of Romans?

But this? This was like walking through a mausoleum. The stale, musty odor in the air only substantiated that thought.

Where were the vases of flowers, clove-pricked orange pomanders and lingering aromas from the kitchen that brought a sense

of warmth and life to a home?

And for that matter, where were the candelabras, tea-stained doilies and pointless figurines? Even the erstwhile pickpocket

in him lamented over the lack of filchworthy bric-a-brac.

His disenchantment only grew as he passed a majestic marble staircase that swept upward from broad treads and curved in a perfect arc to the railed gallery overhead. The structure was doubtlessly designed to be admired as one would a nude sculpture of the female form. However, as he neared, he noted that some villain had marred all that devastating beauty by covering the gracefully curling banister and carved newel post with lacquer. Black lacquer. And, worse, they'd glopped it on with a heavy hand, leaving it to look as though the wood beneath were weeping in fat onyx tears.

Whoever it was deserved to be flogged.

If there was one thing he'd learned from Cardew, it was that a work of art was meant to be celebrated, not concealed.

Sidling up to Algernon, he nearly demanded to know who'd committed this atrocity. But then Oscar remembered that it wasn't

his concern. He wasn't the real Vandemere, and he wasn't here to stay. So he simply cast one more disparaging glance at the

desecrated staircase and walked on.

After traversing through a short corridor, he was surprised when it opened to a vast, airy chamber. The echoed clap of his

bootsteps reverberated up to the vaulted ceilings of the great hall where painted plaster was giving way in hollow blisters

from a faded fresco.

It took no leap of imagination to discern that, at one time, this must have been a sight to behold. He also pictured the walls

as they might have been, adorned with ornate tapestries providing a welcome warmth to these spartan surroundings.

The far end of the hall resembled a crossroads with arched passageways leading off toward additional wings of the house. Though,

from what he'd witnessed thus far, he shuddered to think what other profanities awaited to the north and south.

But that discovery would keep for another time because Algernon kept on a steady, plodding pace, and there was no point in

asking the fellow.

Toward the west end, an arched doorway stood open to a wedge of sunlight that gilded dust motes in the air. They descended three steps, the stone timeworn and silken-smooth, their centers as concave as pour spouts on an ewer. They were magnificent.

But Oscar had no time to admire them before he found himself walking into a world of color, so bright and blinding that he

had to shield his eyes. It was as though he'd been walking through a gloomy charcoal sketch and stepped into an oil painting,

boasting a vibrant landscape of flowers, pruned shrubs and shade trees outlining a flat green carpet of lawn. Making it even

more picturesque was a wall of glossy, dark ivy climbing over ancient temple ruins in the distance.

Here, he thought, was where the current inhabitants of Dunnelocke Abbey truly lived, and he tucked that knowledge aside for

later.

Algernon continued to lead the way along a flagstone path, bordered by blue and red blossoms spilling from urns and the golden-tipped

tufts of tall grasses that sprouted up like fireworks exploding from the ground.

Around the corner, Oscar paused as two tents came into view. They flanked either side of the lawn, the sides tied to slender

wooden supports with alabaster drapes billowing like sails in the breeze. He spied the people sitting inside on cushioned

bronze chairs and chaise lounges, their attention on the pair playing lawn tennis on opposite sides of a low net.

From what Oscar had seen of the inside, he never would have imagined the inhabitants capable of taking part in a leisure activity.

Then again, three of the four women remained charcoal sketches, dressed all in black from hat to hem.

The fabled widows of Dunnelocke Abbey, he mused.

Warring had forewarned him that they would pose his greatest obstacle during this charade. Of the three elder sons who'd inherited the viscountcy, none had survived or left any legitimate issue. Their widows, however, had decided to stay, none of them willing to release whatever hold they had on the place. Or whatever hold the place had on them.

Even so, the juxtaposition of seeing them amid so much color made it appear as though an artist had left the painting partly

unfinished.

His approach apparently caught their eyes at the same time, for they all turned in unison. The widows and an older gentleman

in gray scrutinized him in return. A low hum of curious exchanges drifted on the breeze as they speculated on whether or not

anyone was expecting a caller.

But Algernon answered those queries in short order. His surprisingly resounding voice fell upon the tableau like a thunderclap.

"May I present Manford Octavius Rutherford Fairfax, the Right Honorable Viscount Vandemere."

Everyone fell silent. At the net, the ball fell with a muffled thud as the younger man in shirtsleeves and the blonde woman

in a yellow dress suddenly turned.

If Oscar had thought that his greeting from Honoria had been chilly, then this could have frozen the Thames.

The first of the black-draped widows to gasp was likely the eldest, if her grizzled and heavily browed countenance was any

indication. According to his research, she would be Alfreda, the widow of the eldest son, Sylvester, who'd died in an opium

den. Since then, she'd remarried the man in gray beside her, a Mr. Dudley Shellhorn. The two of them lived in the north wing,

along with his son from his first marriage, the young man in shirtsleeves at the net. Toby was, by all accounts, eighteen

and lacking the wits to attend university, or the money to buy a commission.

The second widow was sharp-angled and scowling. She looked as though her happiest moments were spent stirring a cauldron.

This was likely Millicent, widow of the second son, Hugh, who'd died rather mysteriously in a hunting accident while ensconced

with his mistress in the Highlands.

The third, and the only one who'd stood, must have been Babette. She bent over to shake out her skirts, offering more than a glimpse of her generous décolletage on display above the bodice of her form-flattering widow's weeds. Then, she gave him a saucy wink.

Voluptuous and flirtatious as a Titian-haired milkmaid, and likely only a handful of years his senior, she bounced across

the manicured lawn and wrapped him in a perfumed, exuberant embrace. "Welcome to the family, Manford. Oh, you don't mind if

I call you Mannie, do you? I always think that shortened names are so much more... familiar," she offered with another

squeeze, her hands sliding suggestively lower.

"Oscar," he corrected and politely extricated himself from her tentacles.

Babette was the second wife of the third son, Frederick, who'd died while in the throes of passion inside the carriage on

the way home from his brother's funeral. He'd been a viscount for less than a week.

It seemed that whoever held the title never lingered in the land of the living for too long.

Clearing his throat, Oscar addressed the party, including the lawn-tennis pair which he presumed were Shellhorn's son, Toby,

and Cleo Dunne, niece and only blood relative of the Dowager Viscountess Vandemere.

"I realize my arrival may seem rather unexpected, especially considering we've never met," he said. "But I hope that our reunion

will become a happy one in time."

Alfreda stood and crossed her arms. "You cannot honestly believe that we're simply going to take your word for it. Do you

have any idea how many would-be viscounts have appeared on our doorstep?"

"Aye. Do you have any idea how many?" her husband parroted, standing as well.

Oscar shook his head with as much humility as he could manage. "I do not. Though, I apologize greatly for any hardships you've suffered due to my absence. As you know, my father died when I was quite young, and so I never had an opportunity to know much about the family from which he was estranged when he married my mother." Since the absence of a father was something he had in common with Vandemere, it wasn't difficult to sound sincere. "When she died, I was set adrift and left uncertain how I would be received. It was Miss Hartley who moored me to Addlewick, convincing me to find my way here to what remains of my family. I do hope you can forgive my delay."

"Oh, you poor darling," his buxom aunt cooed, wrapping her arms around him as she shoved his head down to her bosom. "Of course

you're forgiven."

"Babette, let him come up for air. Don't smother him to death until after we have the truth," Millicent said with the faintest

Scottish burr growling at the end of her words as her willowy form rose from where she'd been perched on the very edge of

the chair cushion.

Oscar let those words sink in as he was released from Babette's attempted bosom asphyxiation. And for some reason he felt

like laughing.

All this time, he'd thought he had to worry about Ladrón trying to kill him. But here? Clearly, he'd have to learn to sleep

with one eye open.