erhaps she could have worded that better, Daisy reflected as the duke gawped at her with searing intensity. Her skin felt unaccountably warm. Her entire body, in fact, felt feverish, a state that could be owed in part to her blunt observation and in part to her reaction to him.
He was beautiful, her husband.
Sebastian, he had insisted, though it still seemed odd to think of him in intimate terms. To be standing in such proximity to him that his scent, hints of pine and musk, washed over her. To be alone with him in a bedchamber—her bedchamber.
Odd and somehow intoxicating. Her every sense was heightened, her body awash with anticipation. She could feel his stare like a caress, from her hardened nipples to the ache between her thighs. She wanted him, but he didn’t want her. His blood sullying the sheets, the cut on his thumb, the hard set of his jaw, all bespoke antipathy. And she couldn’t blame him. He was a man whose hand had been forced, who’d been saddled with a sudden, unwanted burden.
Except that he wasn’t staring at her now with the same rigid expression he’d worn since crossing the threshold. No, indeed. He was looking at her rather in the same fashion she imagined a mountain lion appeared just before clamping its jaws around its prey.
He was looking at her like he wanted to consume her.
“You want me to help you disrobe?” he asked, his voice a low, gruff rumble that sent a thrill skittering through her.
“Yes,” she blurted. Dear Lord, she was only making things worse. “That is, of course I will require assistance. If you want the servants to believe we’ve… consummated the marriage, then you cannot propose to leave me standing alone in my chamber, with my toilette intact. I’m afraid I can’t undress myself, given the construction of this gown. Therefore, it stands to reason that you’ll need to aid me.”
More than anything else, she didn’t wish to give her father any reason to attempt to prove the marriage invalid. She hardly knew what he’d do when he realized that she’d not only ruined herself but disobeyed him, dashing any chances for his much-desired connection with Lord Breckly. No one defied her father without suffering deeply for their daring.
The memory of the last time she’d done so cut through her with the precision of a blade and every bit as much pain before she chased it from her mind. She wouldn’t think of Padraig now or ever again if she could help it. He was her past, and the man standing before her was her future. They couldn’t have been more different.
She couldn’t afford to allow one questioning maidservant who noticed Daisy was still perfectly, impeccably dressed—bloodied sheets or no—to open the door for her father. She would not return to live beneath his roof. Nor would she suffer one more of his rages.
“Very well.” Sebastian closed the distance between them in two long strides. “I assume this bloody frock has buttons on it somewhere?”
Her breath caught as his fingers traced the front panel of her bodice, beginning just beneath her breasts and then down over her ribs. Through her stiff corset and layers of undergarments, she could still feel the heat of him. She watched his large, capable hands tracing downward, over her waist. The buttons were hidden on her back, and some wicked part of her longed to hold her tongue, to make him continue his fruitless search just for the delicious slide of his fingers over her body.
“On the back.” Her gaze traveled from his hands to his mouth. What would it be like to have those sensual lips angling over hers again, this time with no one to interrupt and no encumbrances?
He seized her waist and spun her about so abruptly that she lost her balance and fell into him. A distinct ridge prodded the small of her back, and she fought and lost the urge to rub herself against him like a cat. His fingers bit into her waist, pulling her back and anchoring her to him completely. A dark, carnal sound tore from him. His mouth was on her in the next breath, kissing the same sensitive skin behind her ear that he had brought to life that night in the moonlight.
His lips grazed the shell of her ear, then skimmed lower, trailing a series of decadent kisses down her throat. When he stopped to lick and nibble there, a pang of something new started from her core and radiated throughout her entire body. The heady, magic spell that had descended on her at the Darlington ball returned.
She yearned for something she didn’t entirely comprehend. All she knew was that she ached with a need that only he could slake. Sebastian. Her husband. Self-preservation was the last thing on her mind as she writhed against his powerful frame, wanting more of his mouth, more of his kisses, more of his touch.
Daisy felt pins being plucked from her hair, the heaviness of her braids loosening and opening. One of his hands had migrated from her waist, and was buried in her half-unbound locks, fisting in it, angling her head back so that he could feast on her neck.
“Christ, you smell so bloody good,” he growled against her throat.
So did he, and she would have told him as much if she could have managed to utter a single, coherent word. But he had robbed her of the ability to conduct intelligent conversation. To think of anything that wasn’t him, his wicked lips, his knowing touch.
She inhaled deeply, her fingers reaching back to sink into his dark hair. Perhaps they didn’t need pretense. Some wild impulse within her imagined him stripping her gown away, covering her body with his on the bed. Consummating their union. It was such a tepid phrase, a bloodless way of describing the intense pleasure he gave her. What would it be like to give herself to him? To become his wife in deed as well as name? Her pulse pounded.
But just as curiosity mingled with desire, he tore his mouth from her neck and set her away from him. “Jesus,” he muttered, sounding as shaken as she felt. His fingers skated over her spine. “Where are the goddamn buttons, Daisy?”
The spell was broken. Reality returned to her. It was daylight. The rumbling of conveyances on the street below reached her ears. What had she been thinking to allow herself to get so carried away? He was a stranger to her, even if he was her husband, and he clearly resented her.
Of course, how could she find fault with him after confessing the way she’d schemed against him? And then, even a breath later, when he’d asked her if there was anything else she needed to unburden, she had misled him again. Had lied to him. Part of her had wanted to tell him about Bridget, but another part reminded her she didn’t know what sort of man she’d married. She would like to believe he would never hurt her, but she had suffered many disappointments in her life, and the cynic in her wouldn’t allow for blind hope or trust.
“The buttons, Daisy.” His voice cracked like a whip through her jumbled thoughts.
With trembling hands, she reached behind her to find the line of buttons cleverly disguised beneath a velvet placket. “Here.”
His fingers brushed against hers for a brief moment, and the contact was like a spark of electricity. Hastily, she snatched her hands away to pluck some more of the pins from her coiffure. Cool air kissed her bare shoulders above her chemise and corset as he peeled open the back of her gown.
“There now.” He pulled her sleeves down, her bodice going along with it. “I’ll loosen your corset. I trust you can manage the rest?”
His tone was cool once more. Almost impersonal.
It was as if he had two opposite parts of himself at war. He was frigid one moment and scorching the next. A cold, imperious man she couldn’t read at one turn and a sensual, wicked lover the next. Which one was he?
She swallowed, confusion warring with the lingering remnants of desire. He must be angry with her for her deception despite his claim to the contrary. “I can manage the rest, Your Grace. It was merely the laces and the buttons that I couldn’t reach. Thank you for your help.”
“Sebastian.” The laces of her corset went slack as he undid the solid knot Abigail had tied earlier and plucked at the crisscrossed strings to loosen them. “Wait another twenty minutes or so before ringing for your lady’s maid.”
“Yes, Your—Sebastian.” She swallowed, holding her bodice to her chest as he swept past her, stalking in the direction of his chamber.
“I’ll be leaving shortly. Settle yourself however you like,” he called over his shoulder, not even bothering to glance her way.
His callous treatment after such an intimate moment stung more than it should. It wasn’t as if she loved him. Goodness, it wasn’t as if she even knew him. But somehow, none of that mattered as she watched him walk away. He wanted her to call him by his Christian name, but he didn’t want to consummate their marriage, and he couldn’t wait to remove himself from her presence.
“Will you be home for dinner?” she called after him.
He hesitated for a moment just before crossing back into his chamber. “It’s doubtful. Should your family call or cause any undue trouble for you, inform Giles to have word sent to me at once. He’ll know where to find me.”
And then the door snapped closed behind him, leaving her standing alone in her new chamber, half-naked and more adrift than she’d ever been in her life.
He was going mad.
He’d trained to withstand water torture, to suffer broken bones, plucked fingernails, mind tricks, and beatings. He’d learned the art of defending himself with his fists and dexterity, with an expert crack of a pistol or the deft flick of his wrist and a sharp blade. He’d spent nights in brutal cold, days in the company of the most sadistic men and scurrilous criminals in the land. Had survived an assassin and a deadly inferno.
He damn well ought to be able to resist one woman. Even if she was a beautiful goddess of a woman who smelled delicious, whose soft skin made him want to taste her everywhere, whose mere presence in a room made him want to take her so hard and deep he didn’t know where he ended and she began.
“Fuck,” he muttered, glaring at the half-empty glass of whisky in his hands before downing the remainder of the contents in one fiery gulp. The burn distracted him but for a second, and the liquor did nothing to soothe his jagged nerves.
“Jesus, Sebastian.” Griffin, the Duke of Strathmore and one of Sebastian’s oldest and best friends in the League, pinned him with a pitying look. They were seated in Strathmore’s billiard room, sipping whisky. “I can’t believe you agreed to marry the chit.”
That made two of them.
Sebastian slapped his glass down on the carved mahogany table between their chairs and took up the decanter to refill it with another hearty dose of amber-colored liquid. “I took an oath. I do what’s asked of me.”
Regardless of how preposterous it was. Regardless of how much he loathed being the sacrificial lamb. And regardless of how doing what he’d been asked had felt wrong for the first time today.
His oath and his sense of honor were currently at odds, wreaking havoc upon his conscience. Everything within him had wanted to claim Daisy Vanreid as his earlier that afternoon. Even though she was a woman he couldn’t trust. Even though doing so would be akin to using her, manipulating a woman he’d soon no longer even be married to. If she was innocent, he’d never forgive himself. But if she was guilty, there would be hell to pay. None of it—not the way he felt or his reaction to her—made sense. Indeed, nothing about this entire mission did, and it sure as hell didn’t help that Carlisle was keeping him largely in the dark.
Griffin took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if I could do the same. The thought of marrying anyone—let alone a saucy American wench suspected of treason—is enough to make me ill.”
Treason.
Hearing the word in correlation with Daisy was like a dagger’s honed blade into his gut. “I don’t think she knows anything Carlisle suspects her of knowing.”
His friend stared at him, his look speculative. Almost suspicious. “You don’t think so? Did you bloody well read the report he sent to the League?”
Of course he had. The letter had arrived transcribed in careful code that to the outside observer would have seemed unassuming as a maiden aunt’s tepid scrawl. But in truth, it had contained privileged information. The same information about Daisy that Carlisle had fed him previously. Connections to an Irish shop girl suspected of working with the dynamitards, a broken betrothal to a Fenian leader. Nothing new, and nothing substantial.
His friend’s probing gaze made him take another swig of spirits. “I read it.”
He’d read it twice and then burned it, just as he did with all League correspondence.
“And?” Griffin raised a brow, raising his cigarette back to his mouth for another puff.
Sebastian fought the absurd urge to take one of his friend’s cigarettes from the paper sleeve on the table and smoke it himself. Perhaps it would calm him, but ever since the fire, he hadn’t been able to countenance bringing any sort of smoke into his lungs. It made him cagey, took him back to the day he’d almost died.
He settled for whisky instead. “And it’s flimsy evidence at best, Griff. I’m not saying I trust Daisy, but neither do I believe it’s in her nature to plot to kill innocent civilians.”
No, he realized as he spoke the words aloud. Nothing in his dealings with her had shown she possessed the capacity for cruelty, or the ability to hurt others without compunction that he’d witnessed in so many other foes over the years. She was an odd woman, sometimes bold and blazing with daring and passion, other times haunted by the brutalities she claimed to have received from her father. He longed to believe her innocent, to accept everything she’d told him as truth, and the knowledge was an unwanted revelation to him.
For there was something she was keeping from him. She had lied to him earlier, boldly and without compunction. That small hesitation had given her away.
“Have you bedded her?” His friend asked baldly into the silence that had descended upon them.
The need to defend her honor rose within him. He was an oxymoron if one ever lived. “No,” he snapped. “Not that it is any of your concern.”
“You want to bed her,” Griffin concluded.
Correctly, damn his hide.
“No,” he lied. “I don’t bed pawns. I never have.”
The last bit was truth, at least.
“She’s a beauty.” Griffin ground the nub of his cigarette into a silver ashtray. “Had half the men of the ton sniffing her skirts. Christ, you must have heard the rumors about her. She couldn’t be an innocent maid by this juncture. No one would blame you for wanting a taste yourself.”
Of course he’d heard the rumors. Had seen with his own two eyes the way she led men on a merry dance, lured them in with her wiles. Kissed them. But something uncoiled within him then, some burning need to defend her, a searing outrage on her behalf. The Daisy Vanreid who had asked him if he had ever hit a woman had been desperate. And she didn’t deserve the scorn of any man. He believed her. Against all reason and ration, he believed her.
“You go too far,” he warned his friend. “The lady is my wife.”
“Not truly.” Griffin’s expression turned from scornful to incredulous as he scoured Sebastian’s countenance. “Bast. You’re defending her like a man who’s smitten. Are you mad?”
How ironic that his friend had reached the selfsame conclusion as he. What was it about Daisy that undid him? His mouth curled into a grim, mirthless smile. “Likely.”
“Bed her then.” Griffin took a long pull of whisky. “Get her out of your blood. But you’d best sleep with a dagger under your bloody pillow.”
Sebastian finished the dregs of his second glass. By now, the stuff had finally begun to do its work, filling his veins with a calming languor. Drinking himself into a stupor seemed like a good course of action for the evening of his wedding day. Perhaps it would keep him from making any greater mistakes than those he’d already committed. “Griff?”
Griffin stared into the fire in the grate, seemingly mesmerized by the dancing flames. “Aye?” he grunted without looking up.
“Go to hell,” he said without heat.
His friend’s dark eyes met his, as he raised his glass for a mocking salute. “Already there, old chap.”
Though Griffin spoke the words casually, Sebastian knew his friend suffered from demons wrought by what he’d seen and done, just as they all had. Griffin had never been the same after returning from Paris. He had been a young, optimistic operative caught up in the siege and taken hostage by the French. When Sebastian and another spy had finally located and freed him, Griffin had resembled nothing so much as a beaten, emaciated corpse.
In the Special League, there was always a price to pay, and each member had paid their fair shares in pounds of flesh.
The heaviness of the moment settled into his bones. He searched for something flippant to say, some manner of distraction for them both. “Hell has some damn good whisky.”
Griffin grinned and downed the rest of his glass. “That is does. Care for a game of billiards?”
Sebastian finished his whisky as well. Had it been his second or his third? The fourth? Who gave a damn. He was getting soused tonight. It was the only panacea he had left. “Prepare to lose, my friend.”