The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,23

“Keep the change.”

“I’ll scream,” Elizabeth threatened. “I’m not his wife. I’m nothing to him.”

The innkeeper regarded her with pity. “You seem to know him, and the baby does look a bit like—”

Elizabeth’s fury broke in a single teardrop. It drew a scalding path down her cheek. “He can’t just charge in here and act like he owns us! He’s married! To someone else!”

The innkeeper’s wife’s eyes went wide. She elbowed her husband in his ribs. “Now it makes more sense.”

Yes, it made all the sense in the world, and she’d been stupid to ever think otherwise. She’d never had the possibility of holding all of his heart. He was married. He’d always been married.

“Look here,” the innkeeper said, shaking himself from a surprised stupor, “you need to keep your private business private. This is a proper establishment. I can’t have folks thinking it’s a—a bawdy house. They won’t come back.”

“I will not be quiet,” Elizabeth said through clenched teeth. “I will never go willingly with him.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t have a woman like you here alone,” the innkeeper said, to Nicholas’s evident amusement. “If you could at least pretend to be married…”

Nicholas twisted his lips into a tight smile. “No hardship at all. Come along, then, Beth. Bring the baby and let’s go upstairs. I’ll even get down on one knee and apologize, if that’s what you want.”

Elizabeth stood rooted to the floor. What did she do? If she refused to go with him, the innkeeper would toss her out and there would be only her servants to protect her from Nicholas. If she went upstairs with him, she’d be at his mercy anyway. He looked murderous, though she didn’t truly believe he would do her bodily harm.

This was a man she’d been in love with?

A rap on the door’s frame drew the attention of everyone in the room. Elizabeth looked, too, and her breath caught. Lord Constantine.

Nicholas’s weathered face darkened. “Get out.”

Con relaxed his forearm against the doorcase, clearly making no move to leave. “Why? I’ve only just arrived.”

“This doesn’t involve you.”

The innkeeper’s and his wife’s attention bobbed back and forth between the two men. They must have forgotten their desire to maintain the appearance of propriety.

Con’s overly dramatic wince implied that he couldn’t credit what he’d just heard. “I’d have thought a dispute involving a man’s mistress, his babe and her ex-paramour would naturally be of interest to him.”

The innkeeper’s wife nodded her head in agreement.

Elizabeth didn’t know if she should be relieved or suspicious of Lord Constantine’s bald-faced lie. Nevertheless, she was glad to have an ally against her ex-lover, who fairly growled, “I don’t know what game you’re playing at, Alexander, but it’s a dangerous one. Do you know what manner of woman she is? Have you experienced the depths of her selfishness firsthand?”

Elizabeth recoiled at his verbal slap. Oliver let out a wail of disapproval, too.

“No.” Con’s only trace of disgust was directed at Nicholas. “We were only just getting on when you called her back to your bed. Is this how you seduced her last time? Chasing her, calling her names, embarrassing her in a public place for all and sundry to see? I think, then, it should not be so hard for me to woo her back.” He flashed a rakish grin.

“What a handsome young gentleman,” the innkeeper’s wife said to no one in particular. “A pretty way with words, too.”

“I just want my boy,” Nicholas said. While he’d never hit Elizabeth, his feelings about striking her alleged lover were less clear. He’d undoubtedly schooled whelps as cocky as the one braving his ire now. Nicholas was five and forty, much older and brawnier than Lord Constantine. Moreover, he was emotionally invested, which Lord Constantine couldn’t possibly be.

Con pulled an apologetic face. “I can see how much you want this baby to be yours, and I sympathize with you, I truly do. But she was with me nine months before he came along. I am very sorry about that, but it’s time you leave my son alone.” He indicated Oliver, who had started to drool.

Nicholas turned a furious red. He’d always been overbearing, but there had been kindness, too. When he hadn’t been breaking her heart with his dalliances with other lightskirts, he’d been generous, showering her with fine apartments, jewelry, and an enviable annuity, paid out of the massive settlement of his wife’s dowry. Elizabeth had provoked a perfectly ordinary man to this new fury, and for that she was