When Tempting a Rogue (13 page)

Vienne didn’t stop him. In fact, she lifted one leg and braced her foot on a nearby chair so that he could easily slip his fingers between her thighs and touch the dampness there. She wasn’t wearing drawers and the discovery almost unmanned him then and there.

He ran his middle finger along the moist cleft, driven on by her soft sounds of delight.

Then there was a shout followed by raucous laughter, so abrupt and harsh it sliced through the sensual haze—just barely.

Vienne pushed at his shoulders, her thighs suddenly clamping shut on his hand. “Trystan.” She pushed against him again. “We have to stop. Someone might see.”

He lifted his head. Arousal had made his mind foggy, but he managed to turn and see the open doorway where anyone could have stumbled upon them or been watching them. What the hell was he thinking? It was one thing to be caught in a kiss, but this could not be passed off as a mere kiss.

It was only sheer luck that they hadn’t been discovered. For all he knew someone might have been spying on them anyway. It wasn’t as though Vienne was a young debutante whose father would force Trystan to marry her. This would just be fodder for the gossips. An embarrassment for his family.

Christ
. He prided himself on being the one Kane male who didn’t court scandal like a permanent mistress. All Vienne had to do was kiss him and he threw all caution to the breeze.

Damn it.
She made it so easy for him to lose control. He was like an ox with a ring through its nose—ready to go wherever she wanted to lead.

“You have to stop playing games with me, Vienne,” he told her from between clenched teeth. “I’m your associate, not a boy you order about as you please. One of these days you’re going to take it too far.”

She gaped at him, one hand pressed against the neckline of her gown, which was now back in place. “Trystan, I . . .”

He held up his hand. “Don’t. I have no desire to hear anything you have to say. Not tonight. I’m afraid I won’t be available for breakfast tomorrow morning. I have another engagement, but I will meet you at the site later. Good night, Vienne. I hope you sleep well.”

With that acidic farewell hanging in the air between them, Trystan turned on his heel and strode from the room. He didn’t return to the ball. Instead, he made his way to the foyer, thankful that his arousal had cooled as quickly as it had ignited, else he would have had to stay in that room longer. He was too humiliated, too angry at himself for that.

When the footman looked up, Trystan asked him to have his carriage brought around. He was going home. He had enough society for one evening.

But the most maddening realization was that he hadn’t had enough of Vienne. And he was afraid he never would.

Chapter 8

“D
o you believe I’m someone who must always be in control?” Vienne asked Sadie two days later as they enjoyed a leisurely picnic lunch on the grass behind Saint’s Row, where, at night, softly lit by torches, guests could sneak away for trysts or find their way to hidden grottos made for such assignations.

Her friend nearly choked on a strawberry. “Do you want me to lie or tell the truth?”

Vienne shot her a droll glance. “Trystan accused me of trying to control him, or rather our relationship.”

“Relationship.” Sadie practically sang the word. “And just what kind of
relationship
do the two of you have now?”

Vienne picked a small chunk of cheese from the piece in her hand, and popped the deliciously sharp morsel into her mouth. “I honestly do not know. He acts as though he wants to be lovers, but then becomes angry with me for it. I would like to be friends, but I do not know if that’s possible.”

“Friends . . .”
The other woman sounded dubious. “Vienne, I’ve seen how the two of you look at one another, and believe me when I say that the two of you will never be friends. Perhaps Trystan is angry because he thinks you want a sexual relationship and he wants something more.”

Vienne frowned. “How is that possible? He despised me after I ended our affair. Sometimes I think he still does.”

“Well, he went through an awful lot of trouble to insure the two of you had to work together, so that must say something.”

Vienne mulled that over with another bite of cheese. Was it possible that Trystan had legitimate feelings for her? Not dislike or an urge for some kind of revenge, but truly romantic feelings? The thought turned her stomach. She didn’t know what to think of that. She had come to look forward to seeing him everyday. She enjoyed his company when he wasn’t accusing her of being manipulative—which she knew very well was one of her many character flaws. She would hate for him to fall in love. . .

Then she would have to break his heart again.

Wouldn’t she? What was truly terrifying was that a very small part of her insisted heartbreak needn’t take place.

“He deserves better,” she confessed without an ounce of self-pity. “I don’t know if I could ever fully trust him, Sadie. I’ve had my trust betrayed by so many men in the past.” Her father and Marcel were but two of them—the worst of the lot.

“If you came down with influenza and couldn’t work for a few days, would you trust Trystan to continue work on your shops?”

Vienne nodded, tilting her head so her hat shielded her face from the surprisingly bright afternoon sun. “Of course, provided he gave me daily updates.”

“If the two of you were in a dangerous situation, would you trust him to get you out of it?”

“I would trust that both of us together could get us out of it.”

Vienne smiled. “That is what I love about you, Vienne. Your confidence.”

“I’m not stupid nor am I helpless.”

“I would never accuse you of either.”

“Many men think I’m cold and unfeminine because I trust my own instincts. Trystan claims to like it, but then he turns around and accuses me of trying to seduce him into docility.”

“Are you?” Sadie asked in all seriousness. “Are you trying to manipulate him?”

Vienne glanced down at the blanket and began picking at a loose thread. “I did try at first, but now . . . I’m not sure what it is he’s up to, but I do not want to control him. He has come up with so many wonderful plans and ideas, I would hate to stifle that.”

Sadie smiled like a child who knows a secret she’s not supposed to tell. “Sounds to me as though you like him. A lot.”

“I do. Sadie, I respect him. That’s odd isn’t it? Especially since I do not know if I can trust him outside of business.”

“It’s not odd. You are a woman who has been treated poorly and has come to expect it from every man she meets. It’s how you protect that wonderfully big heart of yours.”

She snorted. “Oh yes, I am such a warm and loving person.”

“You are. Look at how much you give to charity. You helped me when I needed it. Your friends are very fortunate people, Vienne. They are merely low in number.”

Such praise. No one had ever said such things to her before. “My friends are very dear to me,” she replied hoarsely. “Sadie, I want you to know that if anything should happen to me, I have left the club and everything I own to you and Indara.”

Her friend started, her face going stark white. “Vienne, don’t say such things. I don’t want to hear it.”

She reached over and patted Sadie’s slender hand. “I don’t mean to distress you, I just wanted to tell you.”

“Is there something else you need to tell me?” There was a slightly frantic note to her voice. “Are you ill.”

“No, but I received this yesterday afternoon.” She took a letter from a pocket in her jacket and passed it to her friend.

Sadie opened the letter and read, “ ‘
Cease construction or suffer the consequences, Jezebel
.
’
Good lord, Vienne. This is a threat.”

She nodded. “Yes. It would seem Trystan wasn’t the object of the pranks after all.”

“This is not a prank.” Sadie waved the letter. “This is frightening.”

Vienne took the note from her and slipped it back into her pocket. “Indeed. That is why I shared it not only with our private security but with Scotland Yard as well. They’re investigating it now.”

“What did Trystan say?”

Suddenly the pattern of the blanket was vastly intriguing. “I haven’t told him.”

“You have to! Why, you both could be in danger. For all you know he received a similar missive.”

Her smile was a wry one. “If so, then he hasn’t seen fit to share it with me either.” She sighed. “I will tell him next time I see him.” Truthfully, she would have told him yesterday. But the stony silence he gave her at the construction site, the day finishing touches were being put on the first-floor shops, made her wary. He had canceled their breakfast meeting in the morning as well—and that hurt just enough that she decided not to go after him out of spite. In fact, she had yet to step foot on location today, coward that she was.

She doubted he even cared. With her out of the way, he would be free to do whatever he wanted to the emporium. For a second—and only one—she wondered if perhaps that was the plan, but then she realized that if Trystan wanted her dead, she would be dead.

No, this was the work of someone wanting to scare her. They were moving on from hurting her employees to threatening her. Perhaps Trystan had gotten a similar note.

“My dear friend.” Sadie’s expression and tone was all sympathy. “You do not know what to do with yourself, do you?”

“No.” Vienne shook her head as humiliating tears burned threateningly at the back of her eyes. “I feel as though I don’t quite know myself. I know I should stay away from Trystan, but I contrived to kiss him because I couldn’t stand it any longer. I want him, but I am afraid of having him. He is not a man who will be content to have what we did before.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

She met her friend’s wide gaze. “He could hurt me, Sadie. He could hurt me very, very badly. And I would not blame him if he did.”

Sadie inched closer on the blanket to put her arm around Vienne’s shoulders and Vienne welcomed the contact. “I hate to see you so uncertain. Why can you not see yourself as a good person?”

“Because I am not. I have done awful things, the least of which was breaking Trystan’s heart.” Perhaps that wasn’t the least, because right now it seemed like a terrible thing indeed.

“Look at what Jack and I did to one another. We caused each other so much hurt, and yet we managed to forgive one another.”

Vienne pulled back enough to look her in the eye. “Yes, but you two love each other. You always have.”

Sadie’s smile seemed pitying . . . or Vienne might simply be paranoid. “Didn’t you once tell me that Lord Trystan declared his feelings for you?”

“Years ago.”

“It takes a lot more than a few years to destroy true love.”

Vienne’s stomach rolled. “Don’t say such things. I beg you.”

“Why is it so awful for you to think that someone might love you?”

“Because I don’t deserve it? Because they might expect it in return from me? I don’t know, Sadie! Can we talk of something else? The idea of Trystan Kane being in love with me makes me want to be ill.”

Her friend stared at her as though she had never seen her before. “You poor thing. You’re in so deep you don’t even see it, do you?”

“What?” Vienne demanded. “What don’t I see?”

Sadie shook her head, causing the huge hat upon her head to jiggle. “Nothing. We will talk of something else then. Did you hear that Lady Gosling has ordered a red gown to wear to her husband’s funeral?”

That brought a smile to Vienne’s lips. The old lord had died the day before and no one was very sad to see him go, especially not his wife. “I had not heard that. What other gossip have you heard?”

Sadie began to chatter, filling Vienne in on the most scandalous and ridiculous
en dits
from the Upper Ten Thousand. She listened and smiled, even laughed in places, but her mind never strayed too far from the note in her pocket and the fact that she wished Trystan were there to tell her everything was going to be all right.

T
he fact that so many days had passed without incident at the construction site made Trystan feel a strange blend of hopefulness and paranoia. Just because nothing had happened didn’t mean it would continue to go so smoothly. More than likely their culprit was simply lying in wait, hoping they’d think he was done before springing something disastrous on them.

On this afternoon that had started out sunny but was starting to gray, Trystan had just finished checking in on another of his projects and was enjoying a cigar and a glass of scotch with his brothers at Brooks’s. It had been ages since he’d visited a gentlemen’s club and now he remembered why.

“Can’t believe you’d get behind such a sordid scheme, Trystan m’boy,” Earl Chase lamented. “Why, it’ll turn our virtuous ladies into debauched bawds, you mark my words.”

He could humor the older man, perhaps even pity his drunken state, balding head, and unfortunate teeth, but Trystan wasn’t in a mood to do either. He’d been in a foul temper ever since he’d left Vienne at Angelwood’s ball, and the reason did not elude him.

“How do you suppose a convenient shopping experience will do that, sir?” he asked, despite being kicked by Archer under the table. Grey watched with barely concealed amusement.

The earl seemed to think it should be obvious. “Why, it will expose them to all sorts of untrustworthy gentlemen! Encourage them to spend their husband’s money on frivolous things and turn them into ill-mannered harridans!”

“They’re ‘exposed’ to unsavory gentlemen every time they attend a ball. Most of the time their husband’s money is the dowry the lady brought to the union—and the only thing that will turn them into ill-mannered creatures is if they take up getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon and spouting off about things of which they know
nothing
.”

The aging aristocrat stared at him, sputtering, and his brothers were trying—not very successfully—to hide their laughter. Trystan, however, wasn’t finished. “It’s not that I do not appreciate your concerns, Chase. I simply think you’re a misogynistic antique who believes all women are pretty idiots. Out of sympathy for your poor wife, I shall have to extend Lady Chase a generous line of credit. Good day.”

The earl was as red as a freshly boiled lobster. He pointed a hairy finger at Trystan. “You insolent cur. I ought to trounce you within an inch of your life.”

“With what?” Trystan taunted him. “The strongest thing on you is your breath.”

The earl drew back his hand, as though he planned to slap Trystan across the face. Trystan waited, hoping the old man would do it, just so he could hit back.

Instead, Grey stood and caught the other man’s arm. “I believe my brother said good day, Chase. Do run along before I have to you escorted out.”

The old man sneered at Grey, then at Trystan, but he walked away without another word.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Trystan remarked peevishly.

Grey took a puff on his cigar. “Yes, because knocking about an old man will make you so very popular in society.”

He had a point, damn him. Trystan tossed back the remainder of his drink and reached for the bottle to pour another.

“So,” chirped Archer, “what’s crawled up your arse and died?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied sullenly.

His brothers exchanged glances across the table. “La Rieux,” they said in unison.

Trystan pressed his forehead against the tabletop. “What did I ever do to deserve you two sods for brothers?”

“I dunno,” Archer replied. “Must have been a lottery or something. Look, Tryst, I’m the last person who should be giving relationship advice, but it seems that ever since you tangled up with that French bird again you’ve bounced between ecstatic and suicidal. It’s obvious there’s something going on that you need to do something about, and fast. Because quite frankly, we can’t stand being around you when you’re like this.”