Once Tempted by Elizabeth Boyle Page B

hand. “I presume that thing is loaded.”
    She nodded.
    “Then do be careful. Those models have a questionable trigger.”
    “Now you know why I chose it.”
    His lips turned in a rather appreciative smile. “Intelligent and beautiful.” He paused, then added as if it were an afterthought, “Just as I remember.”
    Beautiful! He had the nerve to call her that now? He’d said those words before, but she knew he hadn’t meant them. She’d never been considered a beauty by anyone’s standards. Too tall. Her hair too red. Her features hardly noteworthy.
    But when he had said the words just now, there had been a ring of genuineness behind them that made a small, long-buried part of her wish that they were indeed true.
    Oh, dear God, what was the matter with her? A few minutes in his company, and all of a sudden she was falling prey to his false praise.
    “It won’t work this time, Robert,” she told him. “I haven’t forgotten your old lies as yet.”
    “Still thinking about them, though,” he noted.
    Her cheeks flushed hot, but she ignored their stinging admission. “Go over there,” she told him, waving the pistol at a writing table that stood against the far wall.
    “And what would you like me to do there?” he asked.
    “Write your confession.”
    He just stared at her. “You expect me to condemn myself?”
    “Yes.” Olivia pointed the pistol back at him.
    Robert chuckled. “And what will you do with this confession, Miss Sutton? Clear your name and repudiate your involvement in all this? Who will believe it?” He laughed again, as if that notion was quite ridiculous.
    She bit her tongue to keep from telling him exactly what she would like to do with it. Even if he was probably right.
    As a peer of the land, his word would always supersede hers.
    Still, she clung to a small hope that his confession was a start toward exonerating herself and ending her years of hiding. It just had to be.
    She shook the pistol at him. “Just do as I say.”
    He shrugged and made his way to the desk.
    “What do you propose I write this confession on?” he asked, after he had sat down. “I seem to be out of writing paper.”
    Olivia ground her teeth together to keep from using one of Jemmy’s more colorful expressions. Then she remembered that while packing to leave Finch Manor, she’d brought along some of her ladyship’s instruction sheets on traveling, along with some blank sheets of her ladyship’s stationery.
    It had been nothing more than habit at the time, but now she could see why Lady Finch insisted a lady always carry proper writing materials on her travels.
    Olivia knelt down beside her valise, and with one eye and the pistol still aimed at Bradstone, fished out a piece of paper from her bag and handed it to him.
    “Write,” she ordered, nudging him toward the seat with the muzzle of the gun.
    He shrugged, then took up the quill. “What would you have me confess to?”
    A hundred things, she thought. How you lied about loving me. That you had no intention of calling on my mother and asking for my hand in marriage. That you intended to ruin my reputation and my life.
    Instead she told him, “Why don’t you start with the most important part and explain that I had nothing to do with the murder of that man.”
    His head swung around, his eyes narrow, the force of hatred and anger pouring from them startling her with its intensity. “And you don’t think you did?”
    His accusation hit at the heart of her guilt.
    He has the right of it, a nagging voice in the back of her conscience chimed in. If you hadn’t been there, that young man might still be alive.
    It was an indictment that had plagued her on more sleepless nights than she cared to count.
    “Well?” he was asking. “Do you really think anyone is going to believe that man’s death was my fault? Especially when you were found over his body with the murder weapon in your hand?”
    How dare he continue this vilifying charade! Her hand