Her Valentine's Secret by Beverley Oakley

Author:Beverley Oakley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2019-06-13T18:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

“Y ou are certain it’s not a trick, Lisette? He has the miniature in his lodgings? Lord, but I had hoped he’d have it with him.”

Lisette was able to turn her disappointment to advantage as she curled her lip in apparent disgust, though it was not all feigned. “It is not a trick, and he expects he will have me dancing to his tune.”

James stopped her progress toward the door and swung her round to face him. “Remember why Lucien Monteil is the success he is today, Lisette. He seeks to profit from everything. And you are no exception. He was in love with your mother. He tried to seduce her; his first conquest. She told me she laughed it off with good nature at the time; that she forgave him his gaucheness, and that he was embarrassed. Well, he hasn’t changed. He’s only learned to operate with more success, more smoothly. Don’t be taken in.”

“Taken in?” Indignantly, Lisette threw off James’s hands. “By Lucien Monteil? What do you take me for? Before the night is done, I will have achieved my life’s ambition—his destruction.”

She would have left then, but James was not done, for he gripped her fingertips just before she was out of reach and pulled her back to him. She assumed he intended to reinforce his point, and indeed this was so.

The sudden, hard contact with his lips was not what she’d expected. Nor were the feelings that were communicated by his touch. It was a deep and thorough kiss, and the revulsion she felt was more intense than any loathing she’d hitherto drummed up for Lucien.

Yet Lisette had a good teacher in James. For seven years, he’d tutored her in ways to pretend what she did not feel, and her compass was finely attuned to the danger she courted in showing anything but gratitude and relief at his kiss.

So she responded with greater ardor than he, though the wetness of his lips and the unwelcome intrusion of his tongue made her want to be ill.

“Promise me, James, you’ll always look after me, and that you’ll be there tonight to save me from the worst of what Lucien has in store,” she sobbed as she broke the kiss and sank against his chest, hoping her show of weakness and dependence were convincing.

James looked satisfied as he looked down at her, limp in his arms. “He will barter and make you agree to come back, but you will put this in his wine or water, Lisette.” He handed her a small twist of paper that contained the agent that would immobilize Lucien or—she suspected in the case where she had what she finally wanted—worse. “And I shall come in the carriage with you and then make my own way into the house. At no stage will you be alone.”

Of course he would not leave her to her own devices, but now she was James’s prisoner. Go to number twenty-four Albermarle Street, Lucien had said, if James is not with you.

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