Read Online Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle - Free Book Online Page A

alarm. Downstairs Carlyle shouted orders over the pealing shrieks of the maids, while the pounding feet of the footmen indicated they were searching the house. Rising above it all, his aunt’s histrionics pierced the clamor and din.
    Any minute now, someone would barrel through the door and discover him with Miss Sutton along with her smoking pistol.
    He could imagine the scandal and gossip that would follow—and hinder his investigation. Robert’s gaze swung around the room, looking for somewhere to stow her until the furor had died down.
    She seemed to follow his intentions. “It is too late, my lord,” she told him. “You are about to be caught.”
    “Not yet,” he told her, catching up the horrendous length of his cravat. He ripped off an end, wadded it up in a ball and shoved it in her mouth. With the remaining length, he tied the gag firmly in place.
    Her protests continued, though muffled, punctuated with more shots from her thick and sturdy heel—no delicate silken slippers for this miss.
    “Get her in the dressing room,” he told Aquiles, opening the door to the chamber off his bedroom. “Tie her up. Hang her from the shelving, if you must. Just make sure she can’t get loose and that she remains silent. Then post yourself outside this door and make sure no one goes in there until I return.” He went back and grabbed the lady’s valise, which she’d left in the middle of the room, and tossed it in behind his friend and their squirming and twisting captive.
    Just as Aquiles disappeared into the adjoining chamber, Carlyle and Lady Bradstone burst into his room. “Robert! Did you hear?” she asked. “Carlyle says that horrible noise was a pistol. How can that be? Shots fired in our house? Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine,” he told her.
    “I feared the French were coming to take you away from me,” she said between big tearful sniffs into her handkerchief.
    “No, madame. Nothing like that,” he said, holding up the weapon. “Aquiles found this in my dressing room. I had forgotten all about winning this piece in a card game from Lord Potter, or was it that Bingham fellow?” He shrugged and tried to effect a lazy grin. “Not that it matters now. Still, imagine my surprise when I discovered the damned thing was loaded after all this time.” He nodded at the hole in the wallpaper. “My apologies, madame.”
    For once, his aunt didn’t notice his formality, for she was staring in wide-eyed shock at the wall. “Goodness!” she exclaimed. “You could have been killed.”
    “Not this time,” he muttered as he wrapped a comforting arm around her and led her from the room. “Not this time.”
    The fête downstairs was in full swing by the time Olivia was able to wiggle her hands free from Aquiles’s knotted restraints. With her fingers loose, she plucked off the lacy gag and took a deep, freeing breath.
    Damn the man, she seethed, as she felt her way to the door of the tiny chamber. She had half a mind to march down to his welcome home festivities and tell one and all about his nefarious deeds.
    “Yes, Olivia,” she grumbled to herself. “And just who will believe you?”
    What she needed was proof that Robert had been the one who’d murdered that man, not her.
    But how to get it?
    What would Hobbe do ? she wondered. Her hero wouldn’t have gotten himself in this entanglement. Of that, she was certain.
    Well, first things first, she thought. I need to get out of this prison.
    With her ear pressed to the door, she could hear the even, steady snoring of Robert’s henchman close by. And as she tried to push the door open, she found it barred by some great weight.
    Probably the big oaf himself, she realized.
    She turned around and leaned against the door, vexed and angry at herself for getting caught by Bradstone this second time.
    If only he wasn’t still so . . .
    She stopped herself before she even dared finish that thought. Still so handsome, was what her wayward imagination had been