Explosive. Charlotte MedeЧитать онлайн книгу.
divan, determined not to let the man detect her fear which sat like a heavy stone in her chest. “I don’t know where all this is going,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. “Neither of us has the score, so what do you hope to accomplish here? Or is this simply your idea of revenge, a salve for your wounded male pride at having been abducted by Le Comte’s men and dragged into this affair?”
He dropped into a wingback chair opposite her, his expression inscrutable. “When you come to know me better you’ll realize that I seldom allow pride to get in the way of anything I do.”
“I don’t intend to get to know you better,” she answered huffily. “I shall return this instant to Le Comte and insist that we proceed without you.”
It was a feeble bluff. The best she could do at the moment up against cold-blooded reality.
“Somehow I doubt it,” he said, reading her mind again. He stretched out his long legs and sank further into the chair. “Instead, I think de Maupassant will come for you. As a matter of fact, I’m counting on it.”
She sucked in a startled breath. His dark blue eyes met her own. “You believe Le Comte will want me back badly enough to give you the score? That’s ridiculous!”
He leaned forward in the chair, his gaze predatory. “You underestimate your value to him, Devon. Of course mistresses are plentiful, that’s not what I’m referring to.”
“What are you referring to?”
“Access to what you know—he wants what’s in your head.”
Devon catapulted to her feet, nearly stumbling over her pelisse. She was overtired and on the brink of overplaying her hand, ready to shout at him that she was not the Frenchman’s paramour.
She stopped just in time when she noticed how he searched her face, his dark eyes almost black in the firelight. He was thinking, calculating, manipulating—and it infuriated her.
“I would rather hang.”
The look he shot her was skeptical. “That can be arranged, all too easily. So sit down, I’m not finished.”
Her eyes blazed fury.
“It’s your knowledge that de Maupassant is interested in and your relationship with your late father.”
Of course, her father. The traitor. The man whose work and reputation she was trying to vindicate. If it killed her.
She made a small sound of contempt, perching herself at the edge of the divan. “Do you intend to hold me hostage then?” She made herself fold her hands calmly on her lap while drawing from her rapidly dwindling resources.
Blackburn gave her a considering look. “It’s your doing. You failed to secure the score from the Frenchman as required. This is simply another way of forcing de Maupassant’s hand—he needs the two of us. And I need the Eroica—now.”
Bloody hell, the man was high-handed. Devon’s resolve hardened like stone against his arrogant stance. “And I’m simply to acquiesce to either your or Le Comte’s request, just like that?” She snapped her fingers in his face. “And as I said to you before, don’t bother offering me money.”
Devon braced herself as Blackburn rose from the chair and walked to the fireplace. He leaned against the mantel and folded his arms over his chest. “What would you have me believe, Devon? That you failed in your bid to charm the Eroica from the Frenchman’s grasp? I’m beginning to think that you’re playing me false. As a matter of fact, I wonder whether you’re as politically neutral as you pretend to be. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if your sympathies lay with Bonaparte, given your familial history.”
The implication of his words sank into her bones. In order to manipulate, to subdue—Blackburn had to trust her. “My only interest is in my music,” she equivocated, raising her chin aggressively. “De Maupassant was the only avenue open to me, the only opportunity to continue my study. In exchange, Le Comte forced me into securing your cooperation.”
Gaze pinning her, he stalked forward. She felt his hard fingers tip up her chin. “You’re lying,” he said simply.
Devon held herself perfectly still, afraid she’d fall apart if she moved a single muscle, her silence the only answer. She hated him. She hated the situation they found themselves in. And she hated the fine trembling suffusing her body as he wrapped one large hand around the back of her neck.
“You’re very beautiful.” He stared at her hard and she couldn’t look away.
Her breath came faster.
He tilted her head, exposing the vulnerable column of her neck, holding her immobile between his warm hands. Very quietly, he murmured, “I know what you want, Devon, and I can give it to you.”
The air left her lungs in an instant and she felt herself retreating into herself, away from that touch that managed to obliterate all thought. She wanted to close her eyes, shutting him out, but she couldn’t. He shook his head and the world came to a standstill.
“I can make this easy for you. If you let me.”
“That’s impossible. You don’t know.” Her voice broke. “You can’t know.”
His gaze hooded, he watched the emotional struggle reflected in her eyes. As if he had all the time in the world to bend her to his will. It was worse than any threat, hearing that velvet voice saying the words she so desperately needed to hear.
“It’s your father, Devon. You want to discover who murdered him and why, don’t you?”
Chapter 6
With her body inches from his own, Blackburn could feel waves of shock pulse through Devon. It would be so easy to take advantage of her vulnerability, but he let his arms drop to his sides.
She sat stiffly with straight back, her hands clenching into fists. “I shouldn’t be at all surprised that you would be involved in such a dirty business as murder.”
Blackburn shoved his hands in his pockets, smiling congenially. “I thought you might say that.”
She wrapped herself more securely in her pelisse, closing the opening at the slim column of her neck protectively. “What do you know about my father’s death?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment.”
“Don’t play with me, Blackburn.”
“I’m not playing at anything, Mademoiselle. You just don’t like it when you’re not in control, do you?”
He could tell that she was beginning to detest it when he called her Mademoiselle—with all its unsavory implications.
“Isn’t it the other way around,” she taunted recklessly. “The idea of a woman in control is clearly not to your liking, is it?”
“I believe that’s a moot question given the present circumstances,” he pointed out in measured tones, still looming over her, ready to intimidate if necessary. The crackling of the burning logs did nothing to edge out the tangible and mounting tension between them, a volatile mixture of high-stakes emotion and guardedness. Blackburn watched Devon carefully as if everything about this woman affected him immoderately, the feel of her in his arms, the pliancy of her soft mouth and lush body.
No, it did not bode well, his intensifying fixation with de Maupassant’s young mistress. He was breathing hard at just the thought of having her all to himself, here deep in the country. Where he could do anything he wanted with her.
He always knew that he would bed her. But he couldn’t let this get out of hand.
Unless he used it to his advantage.
How very tidy, the concept of self-indulgence not entirely foreign to his nature.
She was waiting. Her hair was in disarray, pins lost somewhere between London and Armathwaite; her body, that slender