LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      Despite her attempts to push the past away, the memories rippled through her again: Dev holding her hand before the altar as the minister intoned the solemn words of the marriage service, Dev smiling at her as she stumbled a little over her vows in shyness and fear, even then expecting the church door to slam open and her uncle to march in to reclaim her. Dev’s touch had been reassuring and the warmth in his eyes had steadied her. She had felt loved and wanted for the first time in many long cold years.

      For a second she was shot through with regret so sharp and poignant that it made her gasp. First love had been very sweet and innocent.

      First love had been hopelessly naive.

      Susanna turned her shoulder against the rich velvet cushions of the carriage and let the memories slip from her like sand running through the fingers. It was stupid and pointless to have regrets or to dwell on the past. What she had had with James Devlin had been a girl’s fantasy. Now he had nothing but contempt for her. And soon, if she were successful in her plan to take Fitz away from Francesca, Dev would hate her even more.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      THE HACKNEY CARRIAGE put Miss Francesca Devlin down in front of a set of anonymous rooms in Hemming Row. She stood on the cobbles feeling a little drunk with a mixture of guilt, fear and a giddy excitement that was making her head spin. This was a part of town she had visited for the first time only two weeks ago. It was an unfashionable quarter where she knew no one and no one knew her; that, she had been told, was the beauty of the place. Her reputation was quite safe. No one would ever know what she had done.

      After her first visit she had promised herself that it was just the once and it would never happen again. She had gone through the motions of her daily life exactly as she had done before. Nothing was different. Yet everything was different.

      The second summons had come this very night, at the Duke and Duchess of Alton’s ball. Chessie had tucked the note into her reticule, hidden it beneath a white embroidered handkerchief and had spent the rest of the evening in an agony of impatience mixed with anticipation. She had known from the moment she unfolded the note that she would go. Like her brother she had inherited a streak of recklessness, a need to gamble, and this was the greatest game of her life. If she won she would secure everything that she had ever desired. If she lost … But she did not want to think about losing. Not tonight.

      Gambling was in Chessie’s blood. Her childhood had been stalked by poverty, the furniture pawned to pay her father’s debts and no food on the table. Those moments had been interspersed with rare occasions when they had been so rich it seemed to Chessie that she could not quite believe the grandeur of it all. On one occasion her father had won so much that they had ridden around Dublin in a golden carriage pulled by two white horses like something from a fairy tale. That day she had eaten so much she had thought she would burst. She had gone to sleep between silken sheets and in the morning she had woken and the carriage and horses had gone and her mother was crying, and within a week the silken sheets had gone, too, and they were back to coarse blankets. And then when she was six, her father had died.

      Through it all there had been Devlin, four years older than she, tough, protective, grown harder than any child should have to be, determined to defend her and his mother, too, no matter the cost. Chessie knew Dev had worked for them, had very probably begged, borrowed and stolen for them, too. It was Dev who, after their mother died, had gone to their cousin Alex Grant and made him take responsibility for them. The experience had bound them as close as a brother and sister could be. They had had no secrets—until now.

      Chessie paused on the doorstep and almost ran back to the house in Bedford Street where Alex and Joanna thought that she was safely in her bed, back to the world she knew. Except that it was too late, for she had already taken the steps that would leave that world behind. She had done things that a fortnight ago she would not have dreamed of—gone out unchaperoned at night, traveled alone in a hackney carriage, things that other people did all the time but which were forbidden to a young girl of unimpeachable reputation. She smothered a laugh that had a wild edge to it. Young girls did not indulge in games of chance with a gentleman. Nor did they pay with their bodies when they lost.

      The door opened silently to her knock and then he

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