CHAPTER 3
“Good evening, sir.” Carson, Devin’s valet, opened the door. He took in his employer’s disarray, more alarmed by the rumpled cravat and the rent in his coat than by the marks of fighting on Ravenscar’s face. “I say, my lord, are you all right? Did something happen?”
“Bit of a dustup,” Devin admitted. “A cold cloth for my face would be nice.”
“Of course, sir.” The servant hurried off to do his bidding.
Devin sighed and ran his hand back through his hair. He wondered if it had been simple thieves, as he had assured his fair rescuer. The coachman was right in saying that it wasn’t an area where thieves and ruffians were wont to linger. There were one or two of his creditors whom he would not be surprised to find were behind the attack. He suspected that if his rescuers had not routed the fellows, they might have told him to pay up if he didn’t want more of the same.
He would have to be more careful now…perhaps carry his little pistol, though that would mar the line of his coat. Carson would protest.
His thoughts wandered to his rescuers, and he smiled to himself. What an odd sort of woman! He had been somewhat distracted by his own fight, but he was almost sure that she had waded right into the melee and whacked one of the miscreants with her umbrella. A pretty thing, too. He wished the light had been better—and his vision not so impaired by alcohol. Her hair had been brown, and he had been unable to determine the color of her eyes, but they had been large and bright, and she had had a merry, laughing mouth. He remembered more distinctly the generous curve of her breasts above the neckline of her evening gown. He remembered, too, the unmistakable response of his body when he looked at her.
He wondered if she was a member of the demimonde. She had spoken and dressed like a lady, but he could not imagine any lady of his acquaintance wading into a fight like that. And there had been something odd about her speech. He could not quite put his finger on it, but there had been a certain inflection that was not quite right. Perhaps she had taught herself to speak like a lady, and an attractive bird of paradise could easily have a carriage and dress well. It would explain the actions, so unlike a woman of aristocratic breeding.
He toyed with the idea of trying to find out the woman’s name. She intrigued him. In general, Leona didn’t squawk about his brief dalliances with other women. She knew that he would never stray far. But, he remembered with a sigh, there was the lowering thought of the state of his finances. He could never hope to lure some ladybird from her obviously generous patron when his own pockets were to let. And the way to remedy that lay back at his mother’s house where, he suspected, he was something of a persona non grata at the moment.
His failure to appear tonight was something that could be remedied, he supposed, with some effort on his part, but, as always, he rebelled at the thought. Something inside him quailed at the idea of spending the rest of his life shackled to a woman for whom he felt at best indifference…and, at worst, active dislike. He had seen enough loveless marriages made for the sake of name and family—including that of his own parents, not to mention Rachel’s and Leona’s—to know that he did not want that state for himself. He was not, he hoped, such a romantic fool as to wish for love in a marriage—or, at least, he had not been for many years. However, he was fairly sure that it was better not to marry at all than to live in the sort of quiet loneliness that was Rachel’s and Westhampton’s lot.
Carson returned, carrying a cool, damp cloth on a small silver tray. Devin took the cloth and held it against the cut on his lip, remembering as he did so the way the woman tonight had wiped away his blood with her handkerchief. He could smell again the faint scent of roses that had clung to the lace-trimmed cotton. He wondered if she, too, smelled of roses.
“A note arrived for you tonight, sir,” Carson said and went over to the small table in the foyer, where another small salver held a square white piece of paper, folded over and sealed. “Ravenscar” was all that was written on the front, in the bold, loopy handwriting that he recognized instantly as Leona’s.
A familiar sense of anticipation snaked through him as he took the note from the tray Carson offered him. He split the seal and unfolded the note.
Darling,
Tonight after midnight. I have a surprise for you.
It was a message typical of Leona—brief, unsigned and faintly mysterious—and it immediately wiped out all thoughts of the woman he had met earlier this evening.
“What time is it, Carson?”
“Why, a bit after eleven, I believe.”
“Good. We have enough time. I need to clean up before my visitor arrives.”
Both of them knew who that visitor was, but neither would, of course, say it aloud. His relationship with Leona existed behind a veil of secrecy, however flimsy that veil might be. Though every gossip in London society knew about them and whispered about their long-standing affair behind their backs, it was still only gossip and not proven fact as long as they maintained their secrecy. Lord Vesey did not care what his wife did—they went their own ways quite happily—as long as he was not subjected to public ridicule.
So, as it had been for many years, Devin saw Leona only now and then in public—perhaps making one of her party at the theater or opera, or attending a ball to which she was also invited—never by a word or gesture indicating that she was anything other than a friend. He did not go to her house except when he went with her brother Stuart. They met late at night when she left her house or whatever party she was attending and, thoroughly hidden in a hooded cloak, took a hack to his house, slipping around the side and entering through the garden door. At those times, he waited for her by the fire in his bedroom as he would tonight, a glass of brandy on the small table before him, his pulse thrumming with expectation.
There were evenings when she did not come. One never knew with Leona—it was one of the things that kept any relationship with her from becoming mundane. Sometimes she could not get away. And sometimes she simply liked to keep matters unsettled. Over the years, Devin had reached the point where her absences no longer drove him nearly mad, but he had never been able to quite get rid of the prickle of jealousy, the thought that she had not come because of some other man—her husband, who, despite their avowed disinterest in each other, still had first call on her, or perhaps a new swain, some fresh-faced lad who hoped to attract the attention of the most desirable lady in London. Earlier in his career, Devin had settled matters with one or two of them. His blood no longer ran so hot or so fast, but still, the thought of her being with another man, even just to talk, carried a sting.
The secrecy and mystery, that sting of jealousy, the uncertainty of their rendezvous, all had served to keep alive the excitement of their affair through the years that they had known each other.
He took the stairs two at a time, his valet trailing after him, and went to his room. It did not take him long to clean up, and even though Carson was meticulous to the point of irritation about his ascot being tied just so, he was also nimble-fingered about it, and so, several minutes before midnight, he was once again impeccably dressed and groomed. He sent Carson off to bed and settled down before his fire to wait, pouring himself a small snifter of brandy.
He had a good deal of time to wait. It was almost one o’clock before there was the soft scrape of a shoe outside in the hall and the door to his room opened. Devin rose to his feet as a woman slipped inside. She closed the door behind her and turned to him, reaching up slowly to push the hood back from her face. As many times as it had happened this way, his pulse still beat a little faster. Leona looked at him, a faint smile hovering about her lips.
She was aptly named, Devin had always thought, with her tawny golden hair, rounded, sherry-gold eyes, and lioness spirit. Leona was a wild creature, barely tamed by the rules and strictures of English society. She paid them lip service and nothing more, in private going her own way.
Devin had met her when he was eighteen and first came to London from his father’s estate. The world had opened up to him then, the sophistication of the city replacing the stultifying life he had known at Darkwater. Instead of his father’s prayers and moralizing, there had been gambling and boon companions and late nights spent in clubs and taverns. Instead of daily lessons, there had been hours of time to do with as he wanted. And instead of boring country misses, there had been…Leona.
He first saw her at a ball at Lady Atwater’s. She had been wearing a dress made of gold tissue that clung to her every curve, and her skin had gleamed in the candlelight, her eyes reflecting the glitter of her dress. He had wanted her with a rush of lust he had never before experienced. She had played him like the green lad that he was. Looking back on it, Devin could see that, but, these years removed, the fact that she had done so only amused him. He had stumbled all over himself, trying to get her into his bed, but she had teased and eluded him for over a year, rejecting him until he was on the verge of giving up, then subtly sparking his desire into flame again with a look, an accidental brush of her bosom against his arm, a quick kiss in the garden.
His pursuit of the married Lady Vesey had been a scandal, of course—one of the many scandalous things he had done in Town that brought down his disapproving father’s wrath, driving an ever-widening wedge between the two of them. But he had not cared for scandal. Most of the things he enjoyed in life, he found, were a scandal. As Leona had pointed out to him, he and she were not like other people.
“Hello, Dev,” Leona said in her distinctive, throaty voice.
“Leona.” Devin strolled over to her, his eyes roaming over her face and down her throat to her chest, where the full globes of her breasts swelled up over the neckline of her dress. Leona, like some of the other “wild” set of ladies, often dampened her thin dresses, so that they clung to her voluptuous body more tightly. Tonight he could see the dark circles of her nipples through the thin material of her virginally white muslin dress, and his loins tightened in response. Trust Leona to dress like a maiden making her debut, yet somehow manage to look like a wanton.
He bent and brushed his lips against hers. “You are looking lovely tonight.”
It amazed him sometimes how well she had kept her looks. He did not know the hours and expense that were put into creams and cosmetics and hennas. Nor had he realized that in the past two or three years, he had almost never seen Leona in full daylight, their times together kept to evenings lit by softening candlelight.
He cupped his hand beneath her breast and trailed his thumb across her nipple, so that it hardened and pointed. “Did you wear this to a party?”
“Yes. Nearly caused a riot at Lady Blanchette’s soiree—or at least one would think so, from the freezing way she talked to me. But the men all seemed to enjoy it.”
“I am sure they did.” He chuckled, and his hands dropped to her waist, pulling her to him for a kiss. He winced slightly as their lips touched, and Leona drew back.
She looked up into his face, her eyes going to his lip. “What happened? Does it hurt?”
He shrugged. “Some men jumped me, but I got away. It bled a little, but it’s all right.”
Leona’s eyes darkened seductively, and she went up on tiptoe until her lips were only a breath away from his. “I never minded a little taste of blood,” she murmured, and her tongue flicked out to run across his lips.
He pulled her hard against him and buried his mouth in hers. After a long, thorough kiss, he released her. Leona leaned back, looking seductively up into his face. “Mmm. I have a surprise for you tonight,” she purred.
His loins tightened. “Do you?” Leona’s surprises were always sensual delights, worth the teasing she usually insisted upon before revealing them. “A pleasant one, I hope.”
“Most pleasant.” She smiled, walking her fingers down his chest. She hooked her hand in the waistband of his trousers, then pushed him away from her. “But first, I think, a bit of brandy would be in order.”
“Of course.” He had learned to enjoy Leona’s cat-and-mouse games, enjoying the mounting pleasure and anticipation, even the frustration, knowing that it would lead to intense pleasure. He turned away easily and poured her a glass of brandy.
She took the snifter from him and gestured to him to sit down in the chair. He did so, and she took a seat on his lap, turning sideways. She sipped at her drink, then set it aside. She began to play idly with the buttons of his shirt, undoing them slowly one by one and slipping her hands in between the edges of his shirt.
“I heard about your American heiress,” she said after a moment, tweaking one of his nipples.
“What? I don’t have an heiress, American or otherwise.”
“I heard differently. It was all the talk at Lady Blanchette’s. The daughter of a clothier, I believe.”
“He deals in furs.” Devin smiled. “Jealous, my love?”
“Me? Jealous of a fur trader’s daughter?” Leona asked scornfully. “Hardly. Interested, more like. Does she really want to marry you?”
“According to my mother, the father is panting for it. Wants to get his hands on an earl’s estate.” Devin picked up Leona’s discarded drink from the small table beside the chair and drank from it. “They are, apparently, swimming in money. They could save Darkwater.”
“Oh, Darkwater.” Leona dismissed the estate with a wave of her hand. “They could save us.”
“Save us?” Devin looked at her, a trifle taken aback by her words.
“Yes. From financial ruin.” Leona stretched, arching her back so that her breasts thrust even more boldly against the sheer material of her dress. Then she slipped her hand inside Devin’s shirt and let her hand roam freely over his chest as she talked. “Vesey says he refuses to pay any more of my gambling debts. He says Croesus himself could not keep up with my spending habits.” Her fingers settled on his nipple, caressing and squeezing it, circling it teasingly. “I reminded him that I scarcely married him for his charming manner. He was to supply the funds, and I would provide the veil for his, uh, true sexual proclivities. But he said that no amount of behavior on his part could possibly be worth the amount of money I waste.”
Leona’s full mouth settled into a luscious pout. “Do you think this dress is a waste?” She stroked her fingertips across the neckline of her dress.
“Not on you,” he replied, his eyes following the movement of her fingers. His hand slid up her body to cup her breast and caress it, his eyes glittering with desire as he watched her nipple tighten in response to his touch.
“But, then, nothing over fourteen attracts Vesey’s notice,” Leona added with a shrug. “I mean, really…I find a schoolboy exciting now and then—there is something quite stimulating about that wide-eyed eagerness. But as a steady diet?” She shook her head. “But I am straying from the subject.” She stretched up to brush her lips against his. “We were talking about your American heiress.”
“I told you, she’s not my American heiress,” Devin responded. “I have no desire to marry her.”
“Of course you don’t. Don’t be silly. Who would want to marry some boring little chit from the back of beyond? But…needs must.”
“’Needs must?’” Devin repeated in some astonishment. His hand went up to cup her chin, tilting her face so that she had to look into his eyes. “Are you saying you think I should marry this girl?”
“Of course,” Leona replied reasonably. “What else are you going to do? What else are we going to do? Much as I love the taste of you, my pet, we cannot live on it. We need money to survive. You haven’t a cent. You told me what your uncle said the last time you asked about the estate. It loses money and has for years. Your funds have long since been depleted. What are you going to do—take up clerking?”
“I know how little money I have,” Devin growled. “Everyone has been kind enough to remind me of it. Certainly marriage would solve that problem. But then I would have a wife.”
“A minor inconvenience, surely.” Leona waved her hand airily, dismissing the problem. “Many men have wives, and one would scarcely know it. Send the boring little colonial off to Darkwater and let her live there. No doubt she will be quite happy living there—she’s spent her whole life in a backwater, after all. She wants to be Lady Ravenscar, and she will have that. She will have her little ‘domain,’ and the poor naive creature will probably think she is living the life of the Ton. Heavens, Dev, I doubt she would be able to live anywhere except immured at Darkwater. She probably can’t keep up a minute’s conversation on any topic but housekeeping or some such thing, and she would be lost trying to determine what to do with an oyster fork. Can you imagine taking the chit out into Society? Let your mother take her to Darkwater and oversee her education.”
“Perhaps that is not the life she imagines,” Devin pointed out. He stood up abruptly, setting Leona aside. “What if she wants to live in London and foist herself on Society in all her rustic glory?” Devin asked. “Am I to endure my wife making a laughingstock of the Aincourt name?”
“Don’t be absurd. What will it matter what she wants? Once you are married to her, her money is yours. You are her husband, her lord and master. She will do as you say.”
“Mmm. No doubt just as you do what your lord and master says.”
“How absurd—to compare me with a fur trapper’s daughter.” Leona laughed, her rather short upper lip pulling back charmingly over white, even teeth. “Really, Dev, you make me laugh.”
“I am glad you find it so amusing,” Devin replied sourly. “I thought you, of all people, would not urge me to marry this chit. Does it bother you not at all to think of my having a wife? Of my bedding her and producing heirs?”
“Really, Dev, don’t be so plebian. Your getting a few puling brats on some insipid cow has nothing to do with us. What could it possibly matter?” She went to him, sliding her arms about his waist and leaning her head upon his chest. “I can remember more than once when you have had another woman…even at the same time. As I remember, we both found that rather stimulating.”
“It was a different matter altogether,” he said gruffly, his mind involuntarily going back to the debauched evening she had mentioned. His loins stirred at the memory. “I did not marry the other woman. I had no obligation to her, no ties beyond money.”
“And what binds you to this one besides money?” Leona returned. She slid her hands down the small of his back and onto his buttocks, digging in with her fingertips. “Come, enough talk. I think it is time for my surprise, don’t you?”
He bent and kissed her in agreement. Leona slipped out of his arms and went to the door. She opened it and stuck her head out, then came back in. A moment later, a figure wrapped in a hooded cloak entered the room. The person was small; he assumed from the stature that it was a woman. The only other noticeable thing about her was that her dainty feet were small, tanned and bare.
As he was taking in this unusual fact, Leona closed and locked the door into the hall and came back to Devin. She took his hand and led him to the bed. Taking off their shoes, they climbed onto the high bed, where Leona directed him to lie on his side. She snuggled up behind him, propping herself up on her elbow so that she could see.
The cloaked woman padded over to the side of the bed, taking up a place a few feet away from them. She untied the cloak and pulled it off, revealing herself as a small dark woman dressed in a brief top that covered only her breasts and loose trousers made of gauzy material that gathered at her ankles. Slender gold chains hung at her bare waist and around her neck, and looped across the narrow top. Tiny bells hung in a row around the hem of the top and across the waistband of her trousers. They dangled from a ribbon braided into her thick black hair, and on bracelets and anklets. With every movement they tinkled musically. Over her flimsy garments were wrapped a multitude of colorful scarves, all of the same flimsy material. Just looking at her sent a jolt of desire through Devin’s loins.
She looked downward almost shyly as she raised her arms above her head and began to click her fingers together, making a rhythmic metallic sound with tiny cymbals. Then her hips began to move in an undulating motion, setting up the jangle of the bells. She began to dance, her feet and hips moving rhythmically. She moved in a small space, swaying and writhing and twisting.
“Stirring, isn’t she?” Leona whispered into his ear, her breath sending shivers through him. She took the edge of his ear between her teeth and worried at it gently. While the girl danced, Leona’s hand slipped beneath the open sides of his shirt and began to roam his chest, and the combination of the erotic sight and Leona’s touch made the pulse begin to roar in his head.
The girl danced on, her hips pumping, breasts jiggling, setting all the tinny bells dancing, punctuated by the rhythmic clicking of the cymbals on her fingers. And Leona stroked him, her fingers teasing over his chest and stomach, then down over the cloth of his trousers. She let out a low, throaty laugh at the tumescence pressing against the fabric.
“Would you like more?” Leona breathed against his ear. “Perhaps you want to see her more clearly?” Raising up a little, she clapped once sharply.
The dark-haired dancer reached up, never stopping the movement of her hips, and detached one scarf. She let it fall, drifting slowly down over her legs to puddle at her feet. Slowly, as she twisted and turned, undulating to the rhythm of her cymbals, she undid the scarves one by one.
Devin watched her undress, his breath rasping in his throat, the heat rising in him, as Leona caressed him, her hand slipping beneath his trousers to wrap around him.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “Still hard as you were as a lad. I like that.” Her tongue flicked out and traced the whorls of his ear, sending a long shudder through him. “What does it matter if you take a wife when we will still have this? Who cares if some peasant from the colonies can claim to be your wife? Go to Darkwater once a year and bed her for an heir, then return to me…and all the pleasures you are used to.”
“Leona…” Devin let out a laugh of disbelief and turned to look her in the face. “I cannot believe that even you—you are seducing me into asking another woman to marry me.”
“I am asking you to make it possible for us to continue as we always have,” Leona snapped back, her eyes flashing. “I told you Vesey is limiting me to a paltry allowance. If my lover, too, is without funds…”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening to take another lover? He won’t last long if I call him out.”
“Don’t be absurd. I would do what I had to. Because you refuse to do what you should.”
“Dammit, Leona, if you dare…”
“I wouldn’t replace you, darling. You would always have a place in my bed. I would simply have to give you less time.”
“Christ! You talk like a whore.” He pulled away from her, rising to his feet.
The dancing girl stopped and stepped back uncertainly, her eyes going up to Devin’s suddenly stony face.
“Oh, Dev, stop acting like a spoiled child.” Leona slipped off the bed, too, making a quick motion with her hand to the dancer to continue.
The woman began to dance again. Leona walked over to her and, as the girl slowly undulated, she slid her hand over the other girl’s chest, now slick with perspiration, and unfastened another of the scarves. Leona looked up at Devin, her face challenging, her eyes lit sensually. “Come, Dev, my love, you know what I am. I have never pretended to be anything else.”
As she talked, she caressed the other woman’s body, setting scarf after scarf adrift, until the woman was clothed only in the sheer pants, brief top and delicate gold chains. “I am wicked,” Leona went on. “And so are you. You enjoy this, just as I do. Just as you enjoy all the things we do—things no decent person enjoys.”
He watched her, no more able to look away from the erotic scene than he was to suppress the hot pulsation in his manhood. His eyes were glued to Leona’s nimble fingers as they unfastened the top and pulled it away, leaving only the gold chains draped over the woman’s small tanned breasts. She caressed the woman’s breasts delicately, circling each nipple with her forefinger.
“Don’t you want to take her now, Dev?” Leona purred. “Don’t you want to drive yourself into her? I’d like to see it. You’d like me to watch, wouldn’t you? Do you think that’s normal? It’s wicked. Wicked, the way you and I are.”
With an abrupt, fierce movement, she jerked at the waistband of the sheer harem trousers, opening them, and let them fall down to the dancer’s feet. “What do you think, Dev? Will you take her?” She stepped away from the woman. “Or would you rather take me?”
She unbuttoned the front of her dress and peeled it back, revealing her breasts, firm and full, centered by large dark nipples, pointed with desire. She pushed the dress back off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, revealing her naked body beneath. Running her hands provocatively down her body, she looked at him, arching one brow.
“Well, Dev, do you want me? Or maybe you want both of us. Or are you too pious, like your father?”
“Damn you,” he growled, reaching out and pulling her to him. “You know I want you.”
Leona smiled and rubbed her body against his. “Then admit it. Admit that you are wicked. You don’t give a damn about that silly American chit or whether she enjoys living at Darkwater. You don’t give a damn about the Aincourt name. Not as long as you can have plenty of money. And this.” She looped one leg around his, rubbing herself suggestively against him. “Well, Dev, do you?”
“You know I don’t,” he replied thickly, swinging her up into his arms and dropping her none too gently on the bed. “You’re right. We’re steeped in sin,” he said as he unbuttoned his trousers and peeled them off. “And I will marry the damned heiress, if that is what you want.”