When You Wish Page 9

  “Now it’s my turn to ask an indelicate question … if you will permit me?”

  She nodded.

  “Why are you returning it?”

  “Because I believe Lillith gave it to me by mistake.” She hesitated, then shrugged and went on. “You see, I came to her for a special nostrum and instead was given this bottle containing only a useless scrap of old leather with scribbling on it. There was another man at the cottage when I arrived and a great deal of confusion ensued when Lillith’s cat leaped onto the table, knocking things about and—”

  “Was it a black cat?” he interrupted to ask.

  “Why, yes, it was black. How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” he muttered. “This scrap of leather, could the scribbling on it be a spell of some sort? An incantation?”

  “I suppose it could be. It says something about wishes and moths.” She shook her head impatiently. “I only know it’s not what I paid for, nor what I need.”

  “When did Lillith give you this bottle?”

  “Last evening. Why do you ask?”

  “Because last evening is also when my man visited Lillith and was mistakenly given this bottle with a quite pungent liquid inside.” He withdrew the green bottle from his pocket and held it in his outstretched palm.

  “Why, they’re exactly alike,” she exclaimed, holding hers next to his.

  “Yes. Perhaps our coming here tonight will not be a total waste after all.”

  “Are you suggesting we have the bottles intended for each other?”

  “I am. And since we have no way of knowing when Lillith might return, I suggest we take it upon ourselves to right the matter.”

  She hesitated only a second before nodding and holding out the bottle. “That seems sensible.”

  Christian took the bottle from her and handed her his with only the faintest twinge of conscience. Fairness demanded he tell her his bottle was empty. But survival might well depend on saying nothing to prevent her from handing over the spell he was convinced Lillith had intended for him.

  His survival instinct won out and a sudden rustling in the bushes spared him any further remorse. An instant later a figure in a long dark coat emerged from the shadows and charged toward them, stopping a few feet away, a coiled whip in one hand.

  “There you are,” the figure exclaimed. “Is yer ladyship all right, then?”

  “I’m fine, Esmerelda. I’ve run into an old friend here and we’ve been chatting.” She turned to Christian. “My coachman,” she explained, a trifle inaccurately.

  Esmerelda was a woman’s name, and it was a woman’s voice that had called to Delilah, and, as he squinted in the darkness to get a better look, Christian realized it was definitely a rotund woman’s figure blocking the path. Who on earth employed a woman as a coachman?

  Delilah. Now he remembered the gossip he had heard about her, about how she employed an entire household of women and children and had even organized the women into some sort of business, making … what? Toys? No. He couldn’t recall, only that the unorthodox venture had made her the talk of London and scandalized her family.

  “I really must go,” said Delilah before he had a chance to ask her about it. “Esmerelda will accompany me to the carriage. Thank you for returning my bottle. Good-bye, Christian.”

  “Good evening, Lady Moon,” he replied, bowing and watching as she and Esmerelda disappeared into the darkness, leaving him with dozens of unanswered questions, and a fascination he thought he’d left behind years ago.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DELILAH SAT IN the moving carriage, fingering the pretty little green bottle Christian had traded her. The pretty little empty green bottle.

  The man had done it to her again. Duped her. Used her. Misled her and then sauntered off, leaving her to deal with the consequences.

  Christian Lowell really was the devil, she decided. Seven years hadn’t changed that.

  She had once vowed to remember what he was in every fiber of her being. And she would have, she told herself, if running into him so unexpectedly hadn’t jostled her nerves and stirred up all sorts of silly feelings. In those few moments they were together she had succumbed to a flurry of emotions: surprise, embarrassment, excitement, amusement, and—as much as she hated to admit it even to herself—a flicker of renewed interest.

  At the moment, however, all she was feeling was a controlled, low-burning, slow-spreading fury. Aiding her control was a sense of relief that the worst was over. For weeks, ever since learning of Christian’s return, she had been braced for their initial meeting, prepared for the inevitable awkwardness, at least on her part, and determined to impress upon him that she was no longer the silly little girl she’d once been.

  In spite of the impact of encountering him so unexpectedly, she was satisfied she’d recovered and performed admirably. Next time she would do even better. Next time she wouldn’t be taken by surprise or played for a fool by him in any way.

  Delilah felt an instantaneous surge of indignation. Next time wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t be allowed to get away with his little stunt this time.

  She was no longer a gullible, love-struck sixteen-year-old with limited options. Her lips curved upward at the thought that the Blackmoor Devil didn’t know it yet, but he had met his match.

  Leaning forward, she yanked on the cord to signal Esmerelda to stop and called to Dare, the boy riding postilion, to join her inside the carriage. He appeared quickly, and as usual, with an added touch to make the black-and-gold livery she provided his own.

  “Lovely scarf, Dare,” she commented, eyeing with some suspicion the long black-and-white checked scarf looped with characteristic insouciance around the twelve-year-old’s neck. It was hard not to be suspicious from time to time, since she and Dare had first met on opposite sides of her reticule as he attempted to relieve her of it against her will

  “I won it fair and square, Lady Moon,” he responded, his tone far more earnest and less belligerent than it had been when he first joined her a year ago.

  She sighed. “Poker again?”

  Dare nodded, his quick grin sheepish and irresistible. “But not with the younger boys. I remembered what you said about a gentleman not stooping to easy pickin’s. You don’t have to worry about me breaking your rules. I’ve put the life of crime behind me.”

  “I know you have, Dare,” she said, her own conscience rumbling a reminder of how fine a line she was about to walk. “In a way that’s what I need to speak with you about. Please have a seat.”

  As he settled himself across from her, she called new directions to Esmerelda.

  “And as quickly as possible, please,” she concluded, pulling the door closed.

  Delilah gripped her seat as Esmerelda shouted and the well-trained horses took off.

  Turning to Dare, she said, “Dare, in the year I’ve known you, we have spoken at great length about rules, and you have done an admirable job of following them to the letter. But sometimes there are exceptions to the rules. There sometimes arise unusual situations, what we refer to as extenuating circumstances. Do you know what that means?”

  Dare shook his head.

  “It means,” Delilah said, “that I need you to do a very big favor for me, one that will require breaking, or at least bending drastically, one of the rules we’ve established.”

  “Which one?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “The one about picking pockets. Do you remember what I said about that?”

  “You said I must never do it again, no matter how easy a bloke makes it. You said it’s wrong to take something that doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Exactly. So it is very important that you understand that the item I am going to tell you about really does belong to me, and that if I could think of any other possible way to get it back from the gentleman in question, we would not be having this conversation. Understood?”

  Dare nodded, his blue-black eyes narrowing with an awareness beyond his years.

  “Go
od,” said Delilah. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  DELILAH WAS primed and ready the following afternoon when Christian arrived at the elegant Mayfair townhouse that was hers by virtue of the fact that she was the widow of Sir Andrew Moon. She kept him waiting just the same, allowing him to simmer and suffer for a change before joining him in the drawing room.

  “Hello, Christian,” she said, pausing just inside the airy and sophisticated room done in shades of gold and white.

  He turned abruptly to face her.

  “Very clever,” he said without preamble. “Now give it back.”

  “I’m fine, thank you for inquiring. Yourself?”

  “I’m angry as hell.”

  “Oh, dear. Would a cup of tea help?”

  “No,” he said between gritted teeth.

  “Then perhaps a sherry? Port? A seat?”

  “I won’t be here long enough to sit or drink sherry. I want my bottle, Delilah, and I want it now.”

  “Which bottle? There are two, as you may recall, remarkably alike in detail, and one belonging to each of us.”

  “I want the one you stole from me last night.”

  “I stole from you? How exactly did I do this?”

  “Don’t give me that innocent look. You know bloody well how you did it. You picked my pocket.”

  “Me?” she countered, hand on chest.

  “Yes, you. Not directly, of course. You’re much too devious for that. But you arranged it, I’m certain. You somehow beat me home, orchestrated that little altercation on the sidewalk out front, and while I was distracted you had the bottle plucked from the coat pocket where you saw me put it.”

  Delilah arched her brows in a delicate expression of amazement. “My, my, that was clever of me.”

  He smiled smugly. “To a point. Your little ploy may have succeeded, but for one fatal mistake. It was very sloppy of you to send a pickpocket dressed in livery I could easily trace back to your doorstep.”

  “Oh, do you really think so?” she asked, her tone as careless as her movements as she retrieved her fan from the velvet duet seat and toyed with it. “I was beginning to fear I should have been a great deal sloppier, seeing as how it took you all night and half of today to figure it out.”

  That wiped the smile from his face very nicely.

  “You wanted me to know,” he said, his voice pitched low enough to alarm a less intrepid woman.

  “Of course. That was half the fun.”

  “And the other half?”

  “The other half will come from returning it to you.” He looked so relieved at the news that she couldn’t resist letting the moment drag out a bit before adding, “After extracting my pound of flesh, of course.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you owe me, Blackmoor.”

  “You dare to say that I owe you when you’re standing there in possession of both bottles?”

  “Wrong. I tossed your bottle, the empty bottle, into the Thames. Leaving me with only one in my possession, the one I was given by Lillith.”

  “Mistakenly.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “And one, I might add, that is of no use to you, as you yourself admitted,” he reminded her.

  “That was last night. It’s very much of use to me at the moment.”

  “Simply by virtue of the fact that I desire it?”

  She smiled. “I’m glad to see your wits improve as the day progresses.”

  “Unfortunately my temper does not keep pace. Tread carefully around me, Lady Moon. I am in no mood of late to be toyed with.”

  “And I am in no mood to be hoodwinked. Twice now you’ve played me for a fool, so it’s really two scores I’ll be settling for the price of one.” She shrugged. “I’d say you’re still getting the best of the bargain.”

  “This is nonsense,” he declared, not asking the nature of his earlier transgression. Nor denying it.

  So he did remember, thought Delilah. Good. And he had the common decency to feel some remorse over the way he’d taken advantage of her, if the dark red flush creeping from his neck to his sun-browned cheeks was any indication. His gaunt, sun-browned cheeks. Daylight confirmed last night’s suspicion. While still the most annoyingly handsome man she had ever seen, the years of war had taken a toll. He looked exhausted and edgy and … desperate, she decided with satisfaction. Under the circumstances, she found it a very encouraging combination.

  “Where’s the bottle, Delilah?” He glanced around, then strode across the room, examining the desktop and the corner curio cabinet, his agitation evident. “Don’t make me turn this place inside out.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I am more than willing to tell you where to find what you seek. Better yet, I’ll show you.”

  “Please do. And quickly.”

  “It’s right here.”

  Watching him, she smoothed a palm over her hip and down the front of her thigh to a spot just above her left knee, where the outline of the bottle was obvious beneath the delicate fabric of her ivory batiste skirt.

  “I’ve attached a gold silk cord to the neck of the bottle and tied it around my waist, beneath my chemise,” she explained, deliberately painting a word picture for the benefit of his imagination. Judging by the reflexive tic in his right cheek, it worked. “There it is and there it stays, until you earn it back.”

  Slowly, his dark gray gaze lifted from the concealed bottle to meet hers. At that moment, Delilah counted his eye patch a blessing. She wasn’t sure she could have endured twice the fiery outrage in his glare. She waved her fan, as if that idle motion could cool the air between them.

  At last he spoke. “What, precisely, madam, shall I be required to do to earn back the bottle?”

  “Nothing too strenuous, or outside your field of expertise.” The fan fell still. “I want you to ruin me, Blackmoor. Feeling up to it?”

  NO, SCREAMED everything inside Christian as he struggled not to appear dumbstruck. After two sleepless nights in a row, he was barely up to crawling into bed and pulling the covers over his head. His own bed, in spite of what she seemed to be proposing.

  It was a trick. It had to be. The way his luck was running, if he accepted her offer he’d no doubt stumble on his way to her chamber and break his neck. He paced the room, trying to figure out what she was up to. He’d learned the hard way that with Delilah, things were never as uncomplicated as they first appeared.

  There was nothing to do but call her bluff.

  He turned back to her, casually checking his watch. “All right. I have an hour or so to spare. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  “An hour or so?” She laughed. “Sorry, Blackmoor, my challenge will not be so simply met, nor, I’m afraid, was it intended to be taken quite so literally.”

  He shrugged. “Then you’re blackmailing the wrong man, Delilah. This poor, ravaged soldier knows of only one way to ruin a lady.”

  “Ha. You’re hardly poor, or ravaged, nor are you any longer a soldier,” she pointed out. “I’m also in a position to know that you are eminently knowledgeable and practiced in the art of compromising a lady.” She ran her gaze over him. “Perhaps that’s why you appear to be in such dire need of a good night’s sleep. Tell me, have you been making up for lost time, Blackmoor?”

  He managed a suitably smug grin, not about to admit the truth—that at present, he, the rakehell of Wellington’s army, was reduced to a cowering jinx who would no more dare a clandestine rendezvous than he would poke out his other eye.

  “I see my paltry attempt at modesty is no match for your insight,” he told her. “So if you will be a bit more literal in your request, I’ll do my best to accommodate you.”

  “I suppose what I should have said is that I want you to ruin my reputation … or at least sully it enough around the edges so that the duke of Remmley will refuse to marry me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  REMMLEY?” CHRISTIAN FROWNED, as he managed to place a face with the name. “Why, he mu
st be sixty years old.”

  “Sixty-three,” she corrected.

  “Why on earth would you want to marry a man old enough to be your grandfather?”

  “I don’t,” she snapped, tossing the fan aside. “That’s the point. The problem is that my brother is having a hard time getting that inconvenient little fact through his thick skull.”

  “Roger?”

  “Yes, Roger. With my father gone he thinks it’s his solemn responsibility to see me safely wed. As if one trip down that primrose path weren’t enough,” she grumbled.

  “But why Remmley?” asked Christian. Her disgruntled remark had inspired numerous questions about her marriage.

  “Because he’s available and respectable and willing … which a surprising number of gentlemen are not. I seem to have developed a reputation for being difficult,” she said with obvious satisfaction.

  “I can’t imagine why,” he drawled. “So Roger has deemed Remmley a suitable mate for you?”

  “Roger wants me married, as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.”

  “Even if you’re opposed to the idea?”

  “Especially because I’m opposed to the idea.”

  “But why?” he pressed.

  She quirked a pale brow at him. “The usual reason a woman is married off against her will—to bring her under control, tame her, break her spirit.”

  “I see,” he countered. He’d like to meet the man with enough time on his hands to try to tame Delilah.

  He didn’t doubt her claim, however. He and Roger Ashton had been at Eton together and Christian knew firsthand how protective the other man was of his baby sister, and how sensitive he was to public opinion. People were talking about Delilah and that was bound to make Roger unhappy.

  “But Roger is not going to have his way in this,” Delilah declared as she flounced defiantly into the chair beside her, gleaming like a rare jewel against the gold brocade high back. “He can push as hard as he pleases. I’ll push back harder.”

  “Perhaps you’re judging him unfairly. Has he told you his reason for wanting you to wed Remmley?”