Free Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle

Sutton captured a man’s attention with her vivacity, with her fierce independence, with her uncommon beauty. The ton might not have appreciated her lively coloring, but Robert had always had a weakness for redheads.
    Besides, it was hard to forget a woman who would boldly enter your bedchamber and threaten to kill you. And that she hadn’t killed him made her all that much more a study in contradictions, unlike this transparent little fortune hunter before him.
    “Do excuse me, ladies,” Robert said, offering a short bow and taking his aunt’s arm. “Duty calls.”
    Lady Colyer tapped her fan on his other arm. “Perhaps my daughter and I can call on you later this week, my lord, so we can finish recounting for you our recent visit to Gravesly Manor. We haven’t even gotten to the description of the second drawing room yet.”
    “I will be breathless until I hear all of it,” Robert told her. For a moment he almost wished Miss Sutton had finished him off. At least it would have given him a viable excuse for never having to listen to Lady Colyer’s shrill voice ever again. But given that he had Miss Sutton in his possession, he would soon be free of London and the Lady Colyers of the world.
    With the other woman now out of earshot, his aunt added her own grating complaint. “Robert, didn’t we discuss this problem not four hours ago, and now here he is again.”
    “Who, madame?”
    “That pirate of yours. He is lurking about the ballroom in the most unfashionable manner.” She pointed her fan toward one of the doorways, where Aquiles towered over the guests like a draft horse amongst a herd of ponies. And by the way he was hopping from one foot to the other, he looked about as comfortable as one as well.
    Something must be damned wrong for him to leave that chit alone, he thought. He could only imagine what trouble Miss Sutton was causing now.
    “I thought I explained that it was imperative he be kept out of sight.” She shook her head. “He is frightening some of our more refined guests.”
    Robert wanted to ask her who those might be, as he hadn’t met anyone who qualified for that distinction.
    “Oh, please do something about him, Robert,” his aunt said in her most plaintive and trying voice. “You promised.”
    “So I did, madame,” he told her. “And I will see to this indiscretion immediately.”
    He crossed the room as quickly as he could, nodding to those who called out greetings or well-wishes and avoiding those who sought a more lengthy dialogue.
    But one guest did manage to stop him.
    Lord Chambley.
    “Bradstone,” he said in greeting, as he stepped into Robert’s path and stopped his course cold. “We have unfinished business, you and I. You can’t continue to avoid me for much longer.”
    Robert wasn’t too sure what he’d been doing to avoid the man, so he nodded in acknowledgment and said nothing.
    “I will have an explanation,” Chambley said, his voice low and menacing.
    “Now is neither the time nor the place,” Robert told him, adeptly sidestepping him and wondering at the man’s “business” interests with his cousin.
    “Soon, Bradstone. Soon,” Lord Chambley called out after him.
    When he reached Aquiles’s side, Robert asked, “Why aren’t you upstairs?”
    Aquiles stared at the ground, his lips moving but no words coming out.
    “Out with it, man. What has happened?”
    “She’s vanished,” Aquiles stammered.
    “What do you mean ‘vanished’?”
    “Poof. Gone. Perhaps by the angels, I think,” he said.
    Aquiles always liked to attribute anything that on the surface did not make sense to the mischievous actions of angels.
    Robert sincerely doubted angels would dare meddle with that termagant they had corralled upstairs.
    Leaning forward, Robert sniffed at Aquiles’s breath. Angels had a way of appearing to his servant when he’d been imbibing too much Madeira.
    “I haven’t been drinking, if that is what you think,” the man protested. “I opened