Don't Bargain with the Devil Read online

  If Miss Seton thought to intimidate him by citing the rich and titled friends of the school, she was in for a surprise. He had dined with kings—he could handle a few English lords. Especially when he meant the school no harm anyway.

  But he must play his role, so he smiled at Tessa. “Please tell your aunt and uncle that they should not listen to idle gossip about my intentions. I merely want to enhance the adjoining property, not ruin your school.”

  Miss Seton snorted. “Tessa, if you go to Mrs. Harris’s office, you’ll find a surprise there.”

  Tessa’s face lit up. “What surprise?”

  “Go and see. I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Young Tessa looked torn between wanting to stay and hear the gossip and the temptation of her “surprise.” The latter apparently proved too much. “I hope we can talk later,” she told Miss Seton. Then, after a quick curtsy for him, she raced off.

  “I see that bribery still works as well on pupils as it did in my youth,” he remarked as Miss Seton headed for the stairs once more. “Do you even have a surprise for that poor girl? Or was that merely a ploy?”

  She eyed him askance. “It just so happens that the duke’s pet monkey is in the office. Since Tessa adores animals, I knew she’d enjoy keeping him entertained.” Lifting her skirts, she descended the stairs. “Unlike you, Señor Montalvo, I am forthright and honest in my dealings with people.”

  She was using her “proper” voice from two days ago, but he began to wonder if it was her real one. Her impassioned remarks in the meeting suited her more than this formal façade.

  “How have I not been forthright and honest with you?” he teased.

  She shot him a mutinous look. “When we first met, you didn’t say one word about what you really intended for Rockhurst. You were purposely evasive.”

  He had to restrain a laugh. “Ah, yes. But as I recall, you were equally evasive.”

  Her face clouded over as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “I do hope you aren’t planning to mention to anyone where . . . that is, how we first met.”

  “Why should I?” That wouldn’t suit his purposes.

  When relief spread over her face, he remembered how prickly the English were about their propriety. Dios mio, that must be why she hadn’t told him her name—for fear that he would speak to her employer about something as inconsequential as finding her in the orchard behaving with the exuberance of any other young woman.

  He wanted to laugh. No wonder he had failed to charm her then. She had probably hoped that withholding her name would protect her.

  Little did she know. Now that he knew her identity, nothing would protect her from him. Especially if she turned out to be the marqués’s granddaughter. Already, he could taste his success.

  And her English propriety could be used to his advantage. “Since you would not want your employer to hear how I found you on my property in such fetching disarray, I will expect compensation for my silence, of course.”

  Paling, she halted to face him. “What sort of compensation?”

  “More time spent in your company.”

  With a look of sheer outrage, she crossed her arms over her chest. “And I suppose you want this time to be spent . . . privately.”

  Any other woman would be flattered. But not Miss English Propriety, oh, no. It should not annoy him, yet it did. “I am not so much a devil as to expect that. I merely wish to see more of the school you prize so highly, and I thought you might be willing to show it to me.”

  “Really?” she said warily.

  “Absolutely.” It would give him an excuse to question Miss Seton further about her background; he needed time and opportunity to confirm her identity.

  “I have invested a large sum in coming to England and surveying sites to find the right one for my purposes.” That was why they had chosen the ruse of the pleasure garden. It gave them reasons to travel as they pleased, ask questions in insular communities, and spend time in popular watering spots without rousing suspicion. For a foreigner in England, that was essential.

  It also ensured that they could stay as long as necessary. Although a tour of performances would have allowed that as well, it would have restricted them to certain cities and times, making their task more difficult.

  “So despite what you think,” he went on, “I am none too eager to launch into a scheme that might anger you and your neighbors. On the other hand, if I am forced to abandon this site, I will sustain a substantial financial loss: the three-month lease I signed with Mr. Pritchard, the expenses of travel, the funds I do not earn while I wait to open my business. You see my dilemma.”

  She softened a fraction. “I suppose.”

  “This is your chance to convince me I should change my plans,” he said as a footman brought him his hat and coat. “Show me how the school operates. Accompany me to one of those assemblies the ladies mentioned.” He shot her a smile of challenge. “What could it hurt?”

  As usual, she was stubborn. “Why not ask Mrs. Harris to show you? Or even Terence, her personal footman?”

  Diego fought a grimace. Mrs. Harris had a formidable footman, rumored to be a former boxer. He had met the surly fellow going in, and the last thing he wanted was to deal with that belligerent ass.

  “Mrs. Harris’s financial interest in the place ensures a certain bias, as does her footman’s. But you seem to have an attachment that runs deeper than money.” He shrugged. “Though I cannot imagine why a mere instructor should be so devoted.”

  “Actually, I was a student here before I became a teacher.”

  Aha, that explained the confusion in that regard.

  “I came here when I was twelve,” she added. “It has largely been my home ever since.”

  That gave him pause, though it fed certain suspicions he’d had about her upbringing. If her “father,” the colonel, had been the nurse’s lover, as he and Gaspar suspected, he might not have been keen to raise a child not his own. Especially since the nurse, who must have pretended to be her mother, had apparently died before she came to England.

  Diego played dumb. “You have no parents?”

  “Of course I have parents. Well, a father. And a stepmother, but—” She caught herself. “The point is, when I have not been with my family, I’ve been here. I would hate to see it harmed.”

  Ah, she was so easy to provoke into saying too much. He rather liked that about her. She was exactly what she seemed, which was more than he could say for her treacherous countrymen. “Then the matter lies in your hands.” He slid into his greatcoat, trying not to let her see how much her answer mattered. “I have not yet bought Rockhurst. My mind can be changed. Who better to change it than you?”

  A tiny frown formed between her nicely shaped brows. “And if I agree to this scheme, you’ll keep quiet about finding me in your orchard?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I have to speak to Mrs. Harris and determine if she will allow me—”

  “I would advise you to make sure that she does.”

  She stiffened. “You really are the devil, you know.”

  “Merely an astute businessman, cariño.”

  A pretty blush touched her cheeks. “You shouldn’t call me that.”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  She refused to look at him. “It means sweetheart.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You speak Spanish.” One more confirmation.

  “I looked it up after you said it in the orchard.”

  “Ah.” Too bad. But their earlier encounter had intrigued her enough to go to the trouble of finding out what he had called her, which gave him more pleasure than was wise. “So. Do you agree to my proposal?”

  “You give me no choice, do you?”

  “None.” When she glared at him, he arched an eyebrow. “You act as if I ask you to throw yourself on a funeral pyre, yet I am the one accommodating you. I do not have to listen to your opinions on the matter of your school, you know.”

  A rueful smile to
uched her lips. “I know. Forgive me. I have been a trifle . . . cranky of late.”

  He would love to know why but had pushed his luck as far as he dared. “It is forgotten. Shall we begin our tour of the school?”

  “I can’t now; I’ll be much too busy helping settle the girls in this afternoon. But tomorrow, after the term has officially begun and I have finished my first class, I’ll have plenty of time to show you around. Assuming Mrs. Harris agrees.”

  He did not want to wait, but neither did he want to appear overhasty. “Very well, tomorrow, then.” Clapping his hat on his head, he bowed to her. “Good day . . . Lucy, is it not?”

  “How did you— Oh, yes, Tessa mentioned it. Actually, it’s Lucinda.”

  He bit back a smile. He’d been right.

  “Of course, you must call me Miss Seton,” she chided him.

  “But even your pupils call you Lucy.”

  “Tessa called me that because I was her friend before I became her teacher.” She frowned. “I suppose I shall have to make her address me more formally in the classroom, or my students will never pay me any mind.”

  “They will pay you even less mind if they learn how I found you in the orchard.” Heedless of her panicked gaze, he added ruthlessly, “And I have no reason to keep the tale to myself when you are being so prickly and formal.” Why not blackmail her into that as well? The quickest way to gain her confidence was to demolish those walls of propriety that kept him out.

  She scowled. “You are determined to have your own way, aren’t you?”

  He stifled a triumphant smile. “Always.”

  “And I suppose you mean for me to call you Diego.”

  “It is what my friends call me.”

  “We are hardly friends,” she bit out. “And if anyone were to hear us, they would make the wrong assumptions about our association.”

  “So we will only be informal in private.” That was actually better. The more secrets they shared, the more likely she was to trust him when it counted.

  “Fine. Call me what you please.” She smoothed her skirts. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have to prepare for our students’ arrival. Good day, Señor Montalvo.”

  Her stubborn insistence on not using his Christian name goaded him into doing what he should not. He caught her hand, then bent to press a hard kiss to the back of it. “Good day, Lucy.”

  She froze but did not immediately snatch back her hand. With his blood thundering in his ears, he took advantage, turning her hand over to brush another kiss over her palm, which was neither necessary nor proper. She smelled of violets, so English. Yet so arousing that he let his mouth drift to her wrist for another brief kiss before he straightened, still holding her hand.

  For a moment, they stared at each other, two uneasy adversaries trapped in a gesture that ought to have been awkward.

  Except that it felt entirely different. Intimate. Intoxicating. Addictive.

  Addictive? No, that must not be. He could not afford addictive.

  With a swift press of her fingers, he let go, whirled, and walked out the door.

  As he strode down onto the drive, he broke into a sweat. He could swear that when he had kissed her wrist, her pulse had leaped beneath his lips. That tiny reaction had resonated through him, shaken him somewhere deep inside.

  For despite all her blustering and her fiercely loyal defense of the school, Lucy Seton was still a woman, susceptible to the touch of a man. To his touch. As he was susceptible to hers.

  Por Dios, he could not let himself be susceptible. It made it harder to continue the charade. It would muddy his perceptions, ruin his concentration—and concentration was everything. One must never take one’s eye from the prize, or everything fell into chaos.

  Like a wraith, Gaspar came out of some hedges and fell into step beside him. “You won’t believe what I found out from the school’s cook about that teacher.”

  “I know,” Diego said irritably. “She is the one. Lucinda Seton.”

  “It’s a good omen, meeting her right off. It bodes well for our success.”

  “A lucky coincidence, I will grant you. But we make our own success—omens have naught to do with it.” He slanted a glance at Gaspar. “You, of all people, should know that. How often have you said that anything can be done with a trick? That miracles only last until the source of their illusion is revealed?”

  “I used to think so.” Gaspar veered toward the orchard. “But the older I get, the less certain I am. I’m not as ready to dismiss the hand of Fate as I once was.”

  Shaking his head, Diego quickened his pace. If this was Fate, then Fate was cruel. To offer Diego a chance at obtaining his dream, while forcing him to keep at arm’s length the first woman to attract him in a very long while . . . it was damned unfair. A very unlucky coincidence.

  Unless she proved not to be the one, after all.

  He shoved his hand into his coat pocket to draw out the miniature. “I hate to discourage your new philosophy, but we thought we had found our quarry before, and we were wrong. Miss Seton might be only another dead end.” He gazed at the picture of the young Spanish woman. “She does not even resemble Doña Catalina.”

  “I warned you she might not.”

  “And she mentioned nothing about having Spanish parents.”

  “She may not know. No telling what tales the colonel has spun for her.”

  That was certainly true. “She is twenty, not nineteen as the marqués said.”

  “Can’t you just take what Fate has handed us and be happy?” Gaspar grumbled as they reached the orchard. “You ought to be rejoicing.” He paused, his gaze boring into the side of Diego’s head. “Unless—” He blocked Diego’s path. “I know why you don’t want her to be the one. You want to bed her, and you can’t if she’s the granddaughter of Don Carlos.”

  Bed her? He wanted to do more than that. He wanted to ravish her, devour her, incite her to passions beyond her wildest dreams.

  Diego neatly sidestepped Gaspar to stalk through the trees. “That is absurd.”

  “Is it?” Gaspar hurried to catch up to him. “I watched the two of you on those steps. You kissed her hand. After you knew who she was.”

  Diego strove for nonchalance. “I kiss a lot of women’s hands.”

  “Not these days, you don’t,” Gaspar said. “And I saw how you looked at her. You’ve never looked at a woman like that.”

  “Like what?” Diego snapped.

  “Like Antony seeing Cleopatra for the first time.”

  Why did Gaspar have to know him so well? “A whimsical notion. But utter nonsense. I hardly know her.”

  Though what he knew, he liked. Her passionate outbursts amused him, and her loyalty to her school impressed him. She called him the devil for what she felt was a good reason, but she looked at him as if she didn’t think him the devil at all.

  That made him yearn.

  Yearn? He was mad. The only thing he yearned for was Arboleda, and she was the key to regaining it. So she was out of his reach. “You know I will not jeopardize my bargain with the marqués. If she is the one we seek, I will persuade her to return to Spain with us, as I promised. That is all.”

  “I want to see you regain your family’s home, but life is not meant to be lived alone. So if you really want this woman—”

  “Then what? Throw away everything I have worked for? Dishonor my vow to Father? Because that is what taking up with Miss Seton would mean. The marqués made it very clear—we are not to lay a hand on her.”

  “Except for confirming her identity.” A dark expression flitted over Gaspar’s features. “Perhaps I should be the one to examine her thigh for her birthmark. You are too eager to get inside her drawers to be trusted with that.”

  “I am not remotely interested in getting inside her drawers,” Diego growled.

  Hostias, how he wished Gaspar had not put it that way. Now he had that image in his head to plague him.

  The marqués’s granddaughter had a butterfly-shap
ed birthmark on her thigh. His instructions had been clear. They had to see it with their own eyes, at the exact moment of revealing its importance. A great deal of money was at stake, after all. Their quarry must not have the chance to create a similar birthmark. And if a servant were paid to look, the truth might be manipulated.

  Diego had easily agreed to the stipulation. But that was before their quarry had turned out to be a lovely creature capable of rousing his desire. Even knowing it was madness, the very idea of lifting Lucy’s skirts, either stealthily or with her permission, fired his blood unbearably.

  He gritted his teeth. “I will do whatever I must to make sure that the marqués gets his granddaughter exactly as planned.”

  “And it does not trouble you that he means to find her a titled husband to bear him his heir, now that his son is dead?” Gaspar’s tone grew skeptical. “That some other man will be ‘plowing her field’?”

  He steeled himself against the image of Lucy in another man’s bed. “Why should it? It has naught to do with me. I do not qualify as a husband for her.”

  “Your father was—”

  “Nobody, compared to the marqués. Don Carlos would never agree to let her marry me. His aspirations are higher. He would cut her off first—and refuse to give me back Arboleda as he promised, too. If I relinquish my estate, it will be back to performing and endless travel—no Arboleda, no nothing. I will not risk that just to bed some female.”

  He strode up the Rockhurst steps and headed for the brandy. This perplexing attraction to Lucy would pass if he kept a tight rein on it. He had weathered hard times before; he could do it again.

  Even if it meant relinquishing his chance at the lovely Lucinda Seton.

  Chapter Five

  Dear Charlotte,

  I am surprised you tolerate anyone else being as opinionated as you. We both know you don’t take well to having your ideas contradicted. And I would not pin your hopes on such a petition. The licensing magistrates are notoriously fickle about their choices, not to mention susceptible to bribery.