he earl had put his hand up her skirts.
And she’d let him.
Clara could not force the thought from her mind. Not as she went about her preparation for dinner that night. Not as she dressed for breakfast the next day. Not as her father addressed her with the frigidity of a stranger. Not as she politely inquired as to the wellbeing of Lady Bella’s mother. (Still as much of a harridan as ever and merely the victim of a bad fish course conflated with a tendency toward melodrama). Not at all.
Worse, she’d enjoyed it. Her mind relived that heart-stopping moment in the carriage again and again. He’d been handsome, dressed to perfection, no plum half-moons beneath his intense eyes as he’d had that night in his study. And he’d been intent upon her, looking at her as though he longed to devour her, catching her in his seduction as easily as if she were a butterfly trapped in a net. One swift journey up her skirts, and she’d been done.
And Lord, the way he’d made her feel. It had been sinful for certain, but she’d never experienced anything like the molten heat and honey, the dizzying pleasure of his long fingers touching her very core as he watched, as he made her watch. He’d touched the part of her even she’d dared not touch. Now she wondered why, for it was clearly a most receptive and delightful place for such a thing.
Heaven have mercy on her, she’d only been alone in his presence twice, and the man had already made her as much a sybarite as he. A most disquieting realization. Perhaps something was wrong with her. She certainly felt out of sorts, as though her body were too heavy or her skin too tight, her thoughts all wound up inside like a ball of twine.
“Clara, dearest? Where is your mind?”
Clara jolted from her sinful musings, cheeks going hot before she could collect herself as she met her stepmother’s gaze. Ravenscroft was to call upon them today for tea. More flowers had arrived that morning, so sumptuous and lovely and dear that she was certain he couldn’t afford them. They’d been accompanied by a note with a single word.
Again.
Yes, that was precisely what ailed her—the portent of a lone, menacing, thrilling word. “Forgive me, Lady Bella. I was merely gathering wool.” She attempted a smile she didn’t feel. In truth, she simply wished to have done with this ridiculous courting nonsense Papa had devised. The sooner she could wed the earl, the sooner she could leave him and his troublesome hands, wicked mouth, and beautiful face behind.
“You were granted a reprieve yesterday,” her stepmother observed. “Have you not wondered if perhaps it was providential? You could still refuse him, deny him access to you, forget all about this madcap sense of romance you’ve allowed to rot your brain.”
Providential indeed, she thought weakly. “Not in the slightest, my lady. I’m committed to staying the course. Do you not love my father?”
Lady Bella’s expression softened, and somehow the effect rendered her even lovelier than she already was. “I love your father very much.”
“And what if someone had told you not to wed him? Would you have listened?” Clara knew another twinge of guilt for asking the question and using her stepmother’s weakness for her father against her. However, her cause needed all the help it could manage to swindle, borrow, or steal.
Lady Bella’s lashes swept down over her gaze. “Your father would not have allowed anyone to come between us. But what we share is rare, Clara. It’s a special bond, the sort that cannot be nurtured in a hasty courtship or a longing glance cast across a ballroom.”
Truly, did Lady Bella suppose Ravenscroft the sort of man who made eyes at a lady over the quadrille? She was about to answer when the earl himself was announced. Here was the man she couldn’t shake from her mind, and he was just a mortal after all, with hair that was a bit too pomaded this afternoon for her liking and a shade of stubble upon his jaw. While his wardrobe was perfection—tailored trousers and a gray waistcoat, all the mode—the darkness beneath his eyes had returned.
He bowed, and she had to admit that he cut a lean figure. Not at all the build one would have expected of a man given to indolence, womanizing, and drink. His hips were narrow, shoulders broad, and she spied not a hint of a paunch beneath his layers of fashionable clothing. He was an enigma, at turns precisely what she’d expected and then at other times quite the opposite.
“Lady Bella,” he greeted, the epitome of polite sophistication. His gaze lingered on Clara for a beat longer than necessary, and an unwanted surge of heat swept over her. “Miss Whitney.”
The tea was weaker than Clara preferred, though she didn’t particularly care for the English custom of teatime. The conversation was stilted in the extreme, steeped in Lady Bella’s obvious disapproval and displeasure. For his part, Ravenscroft either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He carried the conversation with his easy brand of charm. He knew how to banter, and he knew how to win over virtually any opponent.
“How are your sisters, Lord Ravenscroft?” Lady Bella asked, still cool though the earl had undeniably begun to thaw some of her ice. “You have two, yes? Lady Alexandra and Lady Josephine?”
He inclined his head. “You are, of course, correct as ever, my lady. Both are well, thank you, but perhaps a trifle in need of some sisterly guidance from a female. It’s my fervent hope that Miss Whitney might become dear friends with them.”
“I’m sure Miss Clara would enjoy such an arrangement, in the event of your marriage.” Lady Bella said the last as if it tasted bitter upon her tongue. As though their marriage were still a questionable matter.
Clara stared at the earl’s hands upon the fine china of his saucer. So large, those hands, holding such a delicate porcelain. He could easily crush it in his fist, but he was gentle, his long fingers curved over the handle as though it were a lover’s body. Pity that she’d never again be capable of looking upon his hands without recalling what they’d done to her.
“Clara, dearest?”
She blinked and forced her attention to her stepmother, who had apparently asked her a question. A question she hadn’t heard, mired in wicked thoughts about Ravenscroft’s hands, of all things. Not even his mouth, though another stolen peek confirmed it was equally as fine as she’d recalled, well-molded and sensual.
“I would dearly love a turn about the garden, Lady Bella,” she blurted, suddenly in need of air. Lots of air. “Forgive me, my lord. If you’ll excuse me?”
“I’ll escort you,” the earl offered, playing the role of the gallant knight all too well as he shot to his feet.
“My lord,” Lady Bella argued.
“We shall stay in view of the windows at all times, Lady Bella,” he countered. “I’ll not do Miss Whitney any harm, I swear. Not a hint of scandal.”
Her stepmother’s gaze was as sharp as a guillotine. “Ravenscroft, my husband will have your hide if you so much as touch her elbow inappropriately.”
The earl nodded, unperturbed. “I wouldn’t dream of molesting Miss Whitney’s elbow, I assure you.”
Such a droll wit, his lordship possessed. Clara repressed her smile. Lady Bella did not appear equally amused.
“I’ll be watching from the window, my lord.” Lady Bella’s tone was frigid. “Five minutes. No more.”
“Thank you, my lady, but fifteen would really be much more the thing.”
“Seven and a half, not a second past.”
“Ten,” he countered, “and a disappearance behind a tall, accommodating hedge.”
Clara couldn’t stifle her shocked laughter at his daring.
Her stepmother pinned her with a remonstrating glare before turning the full force of her disapproval upon the earl. “You think everything a lark, do you not, my lord? Eight minutes and absolutely no accommodating hedges to speak of. You’re fortunate indeed that I haven’t called for my husband to beat you to a pulp for your insouciance.”
“Ah, I suppose being a peer of the realm possesses its merits,” he said drily.
“Being a peer of the realm has nothing to do with it,” Lady Bella corrected. “Clara professes to care for you. And that, my lord, is your only saving grace.”
He smiled, but the effect did not reach his eyes. On the whole, it was a rather grim smile, harsh and unforgiving. “On that, my lady, we are agreed.”
A turn about the gardens for eight minutes with an overbearing stepmama watching from a window for the slightest misstep. Damnation, he supposed this was his punishment for toying with innocents. Or perhaps it was his very own form of Purgatory? One of Dante’s circles? Jesus, who knew.
The only fact Julian did know as he stood in the garden with Clara, her hand on his elbow—the better to avoid an improper touch, and all that—was that if he didn’t soon take her to bed, he’d go mad. How had he thought that touching her in his carriage was a good idea? How had he believed he could slide his hand beneath her skirts, experience the welcoming, wet heat of her, her newly awakened desire, and then ride home to his impudent sisters, threadbare home, dwindling cast of servants, and empty bed? How had he ever fancied he could carry out polite conversation before Lady Bella and not recall what Clara tasted like? Sunshine and honey and the earthy musk that was deliciously, innately hers.
Fuck.
Someone needed to brain him. Plant him a facer. Trounce him. Take up the cudgels and beat him senseless. For that was the only way he could shake the deliriousness this innocent slip of a girl had visited upon him.
“I wanted to come out here alone, you know,” Clara said then as they stopped before a perfectly trimmed hedge. Not tall enough to serve his purpose, but a green slash of boxwood nonetheless. The sun was blotted out by fog, and the air was far from fresh. But the garden was, somehow, rebelliously green and alive in their city of filth.
A casual glance over his shoulder confirmed the wraithlike face of his chaperone on the other side of the pane. Blast. She was true to her word, Lady Bella. He turned his attention back to his betrothed’s profile. A perfect, petite slash of nose. A high cheekbone. A smattering of freckles. How de trop. How refreshingly real. He hadn’t noticed before. Nor had he noticed the way her left brow winged out in imperfection. “You sought to avoid me, little dove? Why, I wonder? Do you not trust yourself with me?”
She made an impatient sound, almost a harrumph, keeping her gaze trained on the hedge. “You flatter yourself, Lord Ravenscroft.”
“Did you not enjoy my touch yesterday?” He couldn’t resist goading her with the question. Some devil within him wanted to see her cheeks filled with roses once more, to shake her from her nearly flawless equanimity. “Tell me, love, when you lay alone in your chamber last night, did your thoughts not stray to our carriage ride at all?”
Her lips compressed into a firm line, hammered out by irritation, he had no doubt. “No, my lord, to both impertinent questions.”
He grinned. Perhaps there was something to be said for being watched in a garden while he conducted a proper courtship. He’d never aroused a woman with mere words before.
“You didn’t even think of me once, darling?” he pressed, stepping nearer to her with a subtlety he hoped would spare him notice from the hawk-like chaperone at his back. His trousers curved into the voluminous fall of her gown, their sides almost touching. Yes, there was something to be said for the wait. Somehow, their lack of intimate contact only heightened his desire. That gilded scent of citrus wafted to his nose, and his cock went as hard as a marble bust.
She turned her head toward him at last, rewarding him with the full effect of her beauty, the high forehead, delicate tawny brows, luminous eyes, the lush mouth, slightly retroussé nose. Even her ears were lovely, goddamn it, the plump little lobes calling for him to bite and lick.
“I didn’t think of you at all, Lord Ravenscroft. I thought of my home, the place where I belong. I thought of freedom, of the scent of the earth in Virginia after a summer rain, of the sun rising over Richmond. I thought of the call of whip-poor-wills and a sky that isn’t blanketed in noxious fog and endless drizzle.”
Her impassioned reply had him knowing a sharp pang of jealousy. What would it be like, he wondered for a fleeting moment, to be thought of with as much unadulterated passion as the woman before him directed upon a place on a map? The urge to usurp her homeland in her affections rose within him, as ridiculous as it was unrelenting. Tea was not a panacea, it seemed. Nor was an eight-minute turn in the gardens with a grim, window audience.
He leaned nearer to her, just near enough to maintain propriety but capture the full attention of the woman before him. The woman who expected him to believe she carried a mere place in the same regard as a man’s touch. Virginia couldn’t damn well make her come, now could it?
“Perhaps I was remiss in my efforts.” He allowed his gaze to dip to her lips. “Next time I shall use my tongue.”
Her eyes flew open wide. He’d shocked her again. Such an innocent, his future countess. But just as quickly, she schooled her features into unaffected elegance once more. “For what purpose, Lord Ravenscroft? I’m sure you’ve already wielded your tongue upon me with your verbal prowess on each occasion of our meeting. Sometimes with manners, but usually without.”
Ah, she wanted to play the game? He hoped to hell that Lady Bella wasn’t about to swoop down upon them and put an end to their invigorating tête-à-tête, for he was enjoying himself immensely. “Sweet, innocent darling, you cannot think I meant to use my tongue for something as boring as speaking.”
She swallowed. “My lord, this conversation is quickly becoming improper.”
“If you wanted proper, you sought out the wrong earl, little dove,” he reminded her with a touch more bitterness than he intended. “Proper is for clergymen and maiden aunts. Proper is dull as hell. Improper, however, is infinitely more rewarding. Do you want to know what I’d do to you with my tongue?”
She did. Her expression, her sparkling, intelligent gaze, all clamored with curiosity. “Perhaps you ought to bite your tongue, my lord,” she suggested airily, refusing to give in to that inquisitiveness. “That seems to be the wisest course of action for all concerned.”
“Wisdom and desire so rarely go hand in hand,” he returned, smiling at her rejoinder before bemusement overtook him.
He enjoyed her wit, her determination, and even her dedicated love for her homeland, her wrongheaded pursuit of liberation from her father’s perceived tyranny. He liked bantering with her as much as he liked kissing her and touching her. Now there was a rarity indeed. Few women had ever called to him on a deeper level than mere animal lust. That this innocent firebrand from Virginia, this slip of a girl with golden hair who smelled like sunshine, who’d shown up in his study and proposed marriage to him did—somehow, this seemed like God’s greatest joke of all upon one of His most sinful servants.
“On that notion, my lord, we are in agreement,” she said, interrupting his musings with such abruptness that for a moment he wasn’t certain what she referred to. “You’ll not sway me. A marriage in name only. I don’t care how handsome you are or how fine a kisser.”
As she said the last, she raised her fingers over her mouth as though doing so could recall the words. Color still tinged her cheeks. With his free hand, he covered her fingers where they rested in the crook of his elbow. Just a slight touch, but she was teaching him that there could be power in the smallest of gestures.
“You think me a fine kisser, Clara?”
She glared at him. “You must already know that you are, sir.”
“Perhaps.” He considered her with great care. “But hearing it from you is the greatest of compliments. I do believe your delightful stepmother is about to swoop down upon us any moment. But do think tonight when you’re alone, darling, where you’d like to have my tongue. You’ll find I’m a most obliging sort.”
Think about where you’d like to have my tongue. Indeed! The man was a rake, a cad, a voluptuary, a… Why, Clara had run out of insults already, but there it was. Plain and stark and true. The Earl of Ravenscroft was every bit as wicked as she’d been led to believe. She didn’t know which was worse, his obvious dearth of morals or the way he’d managed to intrude upon her thoughts far too often when he was nowhere in sight. His sinful suggestion had stayed with her, and she was ashamed to admit that her fanciful imagination had envisioned more than one place upon her person where she’d like to have the bounder’s tongue.
It was wicked, wanton, and altogether at odds with her plans for a hasty marriage, even hastier dissolution, and her happy return to American shores. She took a calming sip of the champagne she’d forgotten she held. Then another. And another. She’d tucked herself into a corner of the Duke of Devonshire’s ballroom, where she hoped she could remain undetected by her fellow revelers, her stepmother and father chief among them, for as long as possible. Invisibility wasn’t a virtue, but in the maelstrom of her life, it had suddenly become a condition she craved.
“Clara, dear heart.” The familiar, feminine voice in her ear had Clara whirling to find her closest friend, Lady Boadicea Harrington. Bo was auburn-haired and tall to Clara’s petite fairness. The two of them had become fast friends in finishing school, bonding over their mutual hatred of such an insufferable institution. They’d both been seen as too spirited by their families, too rebellious in nature, desperately in need of some ladylike polishing. As though we’re candlesticks, Bo had once lamented, rolling her eyes.
Bo grinned at her now in that vibrant, carefree way she had that made anyone who looked upon her feel as if they were sharing in a great secret. “I feel it’s been ages since we’ve seen each other. I’ve missed you so.”
“And I’ve missed you.” Clara was relieved to see her friend and confidante at last. “There’s so much I must tell you.”
She hadn’t dared to write Bo with news about her plan for fear her father was reading her letters after all the trouble she’d brought raining down upon him. Lord knew he’d done it before when he suspected her of becoming too familiar with the Earl of Dalmain’s third son. In truth, Henry had kissed her but twice, though his long and ardent love letters—intercepted by her irate father—would have suggested otherwise.
Henry’s kisses had been nothing at all like the earl’s. They had been pleasant but hasty, a quick press of his wet mouth upon hers. Not entirely unpleasant, but neither had it left her longing for more in the way Ravenscroft’s masterful mouth had. Lord have mercy, there her wicked mind went again, at full gallop into enemy territory. She had to grab hold of the reins.
“Has your plan commenced?” Bo asked quietly, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Bo enjoyed larks. In finishing school, she’d once switched out the headmistress’s cheese plate with a rather convincing array of sliced soap. Madame Desjardins had not been impressed to be the butt of such a joke. “Do tell.”
Clara nodded. “My plan has more than commenced. I’m marrying the earl in a week and a half’s time.”
“Truly?” Bo’s eyes went wide. “How can it be when I haven’t heard a word?”
“My father is doing his best to blunt the scandal. Unfortunately, I’m being forced to endure two weeks of proper courtship before we can wed.”
“Shrewd of Mr. Whitney,” Bo agreed before a frown creased the otherwise flawless cream of her high forehead. “But does this mean you’re really going to leave me here in this unforgiving wilderness on my own?”
“You have sisters,” Clara reminded her.
“Of course, and I love them all dearly, but none of them have ever crept into the darkness of a Swiss night with me to rig a saucer of honey to fall on Lady Louisa Wormley’s head after she left her chamber in the morning.”
Clara laughed at the reminder of one of their more memorable adventures. “Lady Louisa deserved a saucer of pig excrement. The honey was too kind.”
“You see? Where will I find anyone else with such a delightful sense of justice?” Bo clapped her hands to her wasp waist and gave her a severe look. “Don’t answer me. I despair.”
Her friend’s feigned melodrama had Clara relaxing slightly, and momentarily distracted her mind. “You may visit me in Virginia whenever you like. My doors will always be open to you.”
“Is Ravenscroft in accord with your intentions?” Bo asked.
“Yes. He’s pockets to let as you said, and he needs the funds. He keeps his portion, and I return to my home. It will all be easy.” She flushed as she said the last, for her thoughts again strayed to his wicked suggestion, and to thoughts of his touch. Of how much she’d enjoyed it, and of how difficult she found it to resist him.
“He’s the devil’s own sort of handsome, is he not?” Bo seemed to sense the sinful course her thoughts had taken. “Is he as good a kisser as they say?”
Her pride wanted her to lie, but this was her friend. Her compatriot. The very lady with whom she’d released frogs into the knickers drawer of one Miss Caroline Stanley. “I’m afraid so,” she admitted weakly, embarrassed. “Bo, he’s every bit the rake they say he is too. Perhaps worse.”
“Never say it.” Bo looked impressed.
She likely was. Bo was unique and bold, and she aired her mind without caring who she offended or what rule of society she bent. She was a true original, the last of her sisters on the marriage market. As such, her parents were quite eager for her to make a good match before she created a horrible scandal. Bo herself was in no such hurry.
“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true,” Clara grumbled. “Though it grieves me to admit it. I’d certainly never tell a soul other than you. Well, and perhaps the earl himself. I do believe I foolishly told him just such a thing yesterday in the gardens.”
And he’d been pleased, the rapscallion.
Her friend’s gaze searched Clara’s, seeing far too much. “You like him, don’t you?”
Like him? Of course she didn’t like the Earl of Ravenscroft. He was odd, a contradiction, too handsome for his own good. He was a reprobate who’d used his looks to cuckold husbands all across London. He drank too much. He didn’t seem to hold anything sacred. He’d never done anything worthwhile in his life, aside from taking on the title of earl and walking about as though the world was his theater. Why, the greatest suffering in his life was likely nothing more dire than a leaky roof on one of his stately homes or a worn carpet he could ill afford to replace. Pockets to let for an English lord was still living quite handsomely for most folk.
No, she didn’t like him at all. She opened her mouth to say precisely that.
“Don’t answer me now,” Bo intervened in a low tone, her eyes darting past Clara’s shoulder and widening with meaning. “He’s coming this way. Oh my, he is wonderfully fine-looking, Clara. I’d forgotten just how much since I saw him last at Cleo and Thornton’s dinner. I’m not sure I’d be in such a rush to leave for Virginia, were I you.”
Clara pursed her lips. “The appearance hides a most hideous soul, I’m sure. Devoid of all morals.”
But still, she turned to drink in the sight of him striding toward her through the ballroom’s heavy crush of revelers with a purpose she didn’t mistake. Their eyes met, and a heavy, languid feeling sluiced over her. He was a beautiful creature, tall of form, lean of hip, his shoulders broad beneath his black evening clothes. His dark hair had been pomaded with a more judicious hand tonight, rendering it less gleaming and more lush. For some reason, she imagined tunneling her fingers through it, raking her nails over his scalp, holding his head to hers for the kind of devouring kiss he’d bestowed upon her that night in his study. The kind of kiss some forbidden part of her clamored for again.
Perhaps her brain was rotten, as her stepmother had suggested. It had to be for her to entertain the notion of ever again allowing Ravenscroft to kiss her. He reached them and bowed with formal elegance, taking their extended hands one at a time to buss the air over them. Bo’s hand came first, and when it was Clara’s turn, the delicious slide of his firm mouth upon her skin teased her, ever so slight but nonetheless sending her traitorous heart into a flurry.
“Forgive me if I’ve intruded upon you, Lady Boadicea, Miss Whitney.” His tone was butter smooth and rich. Practiced.
He wasn’t requesting forgiveness, not truly. Rather, he was marking his claim, Clara realized. She had aligned herself with the wickedly handsome man before her, this man who smelled of French cologne and had taken untold numbers of ladies to his bed. In a short time, she’d be his wife.
The thought gave her a shiver that she banished with the stern reminder that theirs would be a marriage in name only. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man who often asks forgiveness,” Clara said, harnessing the streak of boldness that wanted to come to life within her.
“Ah, Miss Whitney, how insightful you are,” he remarked, an odd light in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. “Penitence isn’t one of my virtues, I’m afraid. Of course, many would tell you that I haven’t any virtues at all.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Bo told him matter-of-factly.
Part of Clara couldn’t believe her friend’s insouciance but then she thought about all the nights they’d crept about their finishing school in the name of pranks and revenge. For his part, the earl flicked a casually assessing glance over Bo before turning his brilliant eyes back to Clara.
“This is the one, then,” he said, and she knew he had discerned which friend had led her to his door in a mere sentence.
He was blessed with an alarming penchant for reading people with a blend of clarity and ease. She’d witnessed it before, but she was just beginning to fully appreciate its consequences. The Earl of Ravenscroft was smarter, wilier, and more aware than she’d even supposed. “Lady Bo is my dear friend,” she said carefully, aware that she neither confirmed nor denied his suspicions. She didn’t wish to cause any trouble for Bo, after all.
“Of course.” He flashed a grin that showed off his white, even teeth. “Lady Boadicea, I have an old and treasured friendship with your sister, Lady Thornton.”
His confirmation of the Duchess of Devonshire’s similar suggestion days earlier stirred up an odd emotion that she refused to recognize as jealousy, for of course it wasn’t. Curiosity was all it was. Bo’s elder sister, the Marchioness of Thornton, shared a love match with her husband. They were a rarity in the ton, Clara understood. So how was it that Lady Thornton was a friend of Ravenscroft’s?
She looked at Bo, who shrugged, as if to suggest it a moot point, and then back to the earl, who revealed nothing. His expression was impenetrable. Surely he would’ve realized the implications of his admission. But if he did, he didn’t appear to care.
“I believe you owe me this dance, Miss Whitney,” was all he said.
She raised a brow. “I’m sure I don’t owe you a dance, Lord Ravenscroft,” she returned. “However, I will give one to you, just the same.”
Julian had to admit he found her cheek oddly endearing. As he led Clara into the glittering crush of dancers and they took up their places opposite each other, he once again experienced an irritating surge of appreciation for the plucky girl. Irritating because he wasn’t meant to like her. Lottie had cured him of any misguided notions about the finer emotions that supposedly distinguished men from beasts. The sad truth of it was that men and beasts were all the bloody same. The eyes of their fellow revelers were upon them, sudden and curious, as if to underscore his presumption.
“After this dance,” he felt compelled to warn into her ear, “my interest in you will become common knowledge.”
“What shall happen then?” she asked, her Cupid’s bow bearing an amused slant, as though she were privy to a joke shared by no one else in the chamber—certainly not him.
He inhaled her intoxicating scent and wished she preferred something cloying and floral, something less earthy and inviting and bright. Something that didn’t make him mad for her. “You’ll be watched. Your every action will be fodder for the gossip mills. In short, you’re about to experience firsthand the folly of your decision to enlist my aid in your schemes.”
“But my lord, I have no schemes.” She said the last with the ease of a practiced coquette.
He bowed, feeling grim and altogether too appropriate. They linked hands, palm to palm, and she turned her face up to his as he settled his other hand high on her waist, drawing her nearer than was entirely polite but he didn’t give a damn. Her corset was a cuirass beneath her silk gown, keeping him from knowing the lush nip of her waist. He couldn’t help but imagine her lovely form without the stiff girding. He would trace her soft curves, come to know the swell of her hips. A swift surge of lust kicked him in the gut, right there on the ballroom floor as the orchestra struck a waltz and they began the obligatory steps.
Waltzing involved too damn much whirling for his peace of mind. While his dancing proficiency had improved over the years, his appreciation for the art most certainly had not.
“I beg your forgiveness, Miss Whitney, in the event I prove a less than nimble dance partner.” He smiled as though he hadn’t a care in the world, keeping his tone equally light and low.
Several ladies and lords had actually begun making spectacles of themselves in their effort to stare. He longed to quit the ballroom, but fleeing wouldn’t do a thing to further his cause. It would only invite more speculation, more whispers, more gossip to fly. The ton was a complex machine, powered by scandal and built upon unforgiving ruthlessness. He possessed too many black marks against him to count by now, his presence within polite society suffered for his association with the prince and the Marlborough House set.
But for Clara this would all be new. He didn’t wish to make her a scapegoat, and the realization had a chilling effect upon his ardor. Then again, the urge to protect her, he supposed, was likely innate—some sort of remnant response from the days of ancient man. For there was nothing about the vibrant American beauty in his arms that made him feel differently for her than any other woman who had come before.
Or was there?
He stared at the pale, silken skin of her throat, the delicate hollow beneath her earlobe, the waterfall of golden curls spilling from her coiffure, the diamonds winking from her hair and ears. Mine, came an unsettling thought from deep within him. She will be mine. From the tip of her upturned nose to her wild eyebrow, to her red lips and small hands, her full bosom and responsive nipples…all of her. Every bit of her. He’d lay claim soon enough, and yes, he had to admit that their marriage would make her different from all the other women who had come before, whether he liked it or not. For that matter, whether she liked it or not.
Round and round they went, twirling by rote. Then he saw a flash of glossy, dark curls, a familiar profile—too handsome for conventional beauty, her patrician nose a bit long, her cheeks high slashes charged with color as she danced ever nearer in the arms of her partner. Lottie. Julian felt, for just a breath, the careening slide of anger, followed by a return to the bottomless pit of self-loathing where she’d cast him.
Jesus, her partner was leading her astray, making a fool of them all, and they were on a path to collide. Before he realized what Lottie was about, he’d pulled Clara closer, her skirts brushing his legs, nearly tangling in his feet. He turned her neatly so that it was his back that bore the brunt of the collision and not Clara’s smaller and more delicate frame as Lottie and her partner jostled into them.
Despite his attempt to shield Clara, the damage had been done. This altercation, however apparently innocent and accidental, would be remarked upon by all. Lottie smiled at him, acknowledging him with a nod of her head. It was a knowing smile upon her lips. A satisfied one.
“Do forgive me, old chap,” drawled her partner, equally insincere, enjoying their little farce. The Marquis of Ashburn hadn’t changed a great deal since Julian had seen him at one of their set’s wild house parties. It had been the very last wild house party he’d attended, in fact.
For a moment, he returned to that day, to Lottie’s chamber. She’d been nude beneath Ashburn, mid rut. The unwanted image of the marquis’s pale, hairy arse and thin, spider-like legs thrusting into her flashed briefly through his mind. A year had passed, but the bile in his throat was just as real and bitter as if it had been that very morning that he’d blithely walked in upon the woman who claimed to love him being fucked by a man he’d once counted as a friend.
“You’ll need forgiveness, Ashburn, but not from me,” he forced himself to quip with a lightness that was far from the true, dark ugliness festering within him.
Ashburn threw back his head and barked out a laugh. “Ever the ready tongue, Ravenscroft. One ought not to be surprised with all the practice you’ve had, eh?”
The orchestra ended its set, leaving the other dancers milling about them in a sea of colorful silk, perfect evening clothes, gleaming jewels, and unabashed curiosity. He bowed to Clara, who watched him now with a questioning expression upon her unguarded face. Damn it, he couldn’t allow Lottie and Ashburn to rattle him. Nor would he allow them to insult his future countess.
“Some of us use our tongues wisely, my lord, and others do not.” He kept his tone mild and cool, but his meaning was apparent, as was his deliberate slight in return.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” Lottie murmured, pursing her lips as she raked a rude stare over Clara. “Ravenscroft, won’t you do the honors?”
There was something inherently wrong about the business of introducing one’s former mistress to one’s future wife, whether or not the former mistress was a peeress. Lottie was a duchess and a favorite of the Prince of Wales, which allowed her entrée into the best parties. However, all polite society knew damn well that, aside from the heir and spare, not one of her children belonged to her husband. Just as all polite society knew damn well that he and Lottie had indulged in a very lengthy and public affair. He’d foolishly imagined he cared for her and she for him. She’d tossed him away like a dress from last season.
“No,” he said with deliberate calm.
Lottie faltered. She was not the sort of woman who had ever been denied. She’d been raised in a life of privilege, cosseted and spoiled, adored for her beauty, sought after for her charms. Men fought to win her. Even Bertie, as the Prince was known, had fallen for her with an unusual haste.
Her lips thinned and her nostrils flared, betraying her ire. “You’ll not introduce me to your little nobody?”
“Oh, I daresay I’m not a nobody,” Clara interrupted then, her tone as august as any peeress in her own right. She bestowed a slow, withering glance upon Lottie. “Nor am I particularly little. I am a Virginian, however, and we Virginians are a fierce lot. I can shoot an apple off a man’s head from fifty paces.”
Lottie stiffened. “How…accomplished you must be.” Her tone belied her words.
“Or a woman’s head,” Clara drawled, smiling sweetly.
Well, hell. His little dove never ceased to surprise him. Julian grinned, feeling the weight that had been heavy upon his chest suddenly disperse. “Good evening, Your Grace,” he said in his most dismissive tones. “Lord Ashburn.”
And then he whisked Clara away from the tawdry pair, giving them the cut. “Well done,” he congratulated his betrothed in quiet tones as he escorted her out of the fray.
“An acquaintance of yours?”
“Former,” he acknowledged, a trace of the old bitterness creeping into his voice. “I’m sorry, Clara, for the insult paid you. I’d have avoided it if I could have.”
“She still seems smitten with you, but she is not a nice woman, my lord. I wouldn’t consort with her ilk if I were you,” she startled him by saying. “You can do far better than her sort.”
He was bemused by her pronouncement, declared to him as he led her through the seemingly endless crush of the ballroom where anyone could overhear. This girl either didn’t have an inkling of proper decorum, or she didn’t give two shites. He rather suspected it was the latter rather than the former. No one had ever told him he could do better. No one but this petite, feisty American wearing an outlandishly tight midnight-blue gown that showed her waist and bosom to perfection. Damn, but she was lovely. And cheeky. And she’d bested Lottie. Hell, she’d even defended him, and he doubted she’d ever met a more debauched voluptuary than he.
Moreover, she was right. He could do better than Lottie, a woman who had professed to love him all while fucking at least two other men at the same time. Christ, but he’d been stupid. How he had trusted and believed in a woman like the Duchess of Argylle was a mystery to him now. Foolishness mixed with drink, no doubt.
“Of course I can do better than her sort,” he told Clara, placing his hand over hers on the crook of his elbow for just a moment before removing it, lest it be remarked upon by anyone. “I’ve already found her. Or perhaps, to be more apt, she found me.”
“Don’t forget you cannot keep her,” she reminded him beneath her breath, shooting him a sideways glance that just about undid him.
He was bloody well keeping her at his side and in his bed. Never had he been more certain of anything in his entire, admittedly misbegotten life. But he very wisely kept that to himself as he caught sight of Clara’s protective stepmother and steered her back into safe waters.