Chapter Seven
The applause was still booming in the theatre as Adelaide stepped into her dressing room. Normally she reveled in the accolades, but tonight they felt a little dull. She was distracted and she’d felt that in her performance. In the second act she’d missed a line entirely and her co-star, Robin, had smirked with pleasure and said something snide about it as they rushed to change costumes for their final scene.
“Wretched man,” she muttered as she took in a deep breath she wished would calm her and moved toward her dressing table.
It was then she heard a sniffle from the corner of the room, a tiny area behind her costumes. She pivoted toward it.
“Who’s there?” she called out as she pushed the dresses away and revealed Melinda sitting beneath, tears streaking her cheeks.
“Gracious, Melinda!” Adelaide gasped, leaning down to grasp her friend’s arms and pull her to her feet. “What is it?”
Melinda was trembling as Adelaide guided her to the settee and they sat together.
“It—it’s that horrid Sir Archibald,” Melinda admitted when she had stopped crying and could catch her breath. “Oh, Lydia, he came backstage during the performance again.”
Adelaide clenched her teeth. That man was a menace. “Toby didn’t stop him?”
Melinda shook her head. “He was busy with the show, of course. I was standing in the wings, saying your lines along with you and suddenly he was right behind me.”
Adelaide studied her. Melinda was often a bit silly and she was prone to theatrics that went beyond the stage, but in this moment Adelaide could tell she was truly upset.
“What did Sir Archibald do?” she whispered.
Melinda shivered. “He yanked me into the corner behind the stage, the darkest one. He pinned me against the wall and kissed me.” She gagged. “He tasted of sweat and cheap cigars and whiskey. Then he started grinding his hard, disgusting cock on me.”
Adelaide grasped both her hands. “Oh, dearest, he didn’t…”
She trailed off and Melinda turned her face. “No. I managed to push free of him and ran. That’s why I hid in the dressing room. He was looking for me, I could hear him blustering up the hall, calling me all matter of names, but he didn’t find me.”
Lydia let out a sigh of relief. “I’m so sorry he hurt you,” she said. “But I’m glad it wasn’t worse. We really must tell Toby to find someone to guard the back. There are too many men of Sir Archibald’s ilk who think they can take what isn’t offered to them, especially by women such as us.”
“Please don’t say anything to Toby,” Melinda whispered, her cheeks flaring.
Adelaide stared at her. “Why ever not? It is his job as manager to ensure—”
“I know, and he’d feel awful if he knew the truth.” Melinda ducked her head. “Anyway, Toby did hire some men, but Sir Archibald actually crowed about paying them off.”
Rage pulsed through Adelaide at the thought. There were so many men from her sphere who thought they were entitled to more than a woman was willing to give. Their power was a weapon and a shield. “But certainly we must protect you and the others.”
Melinda shrugged. “The next time I’ll be sure Robin’s understudy stands with me. Or I’ll stand near Toby. That should help, shouldn’t it?”
Adelaide wasn’t so certain, but before she could say more about it there was a knock on her door and Toby, himself, ducked in.
He shot a glance at Melinda and the smile on his face fell. “What is it, Melly?”
Melinda brightened, putting on her best stage face. “Nothing at all, Toby. We were just practicing a few lines together.” She leaned in. “What’s that you’re hiding behind the door?”
Toby didn’t seem convinced by Melinda’s lie, but he shifted a vase of beautiful flowers into view. “Flowers for Lydia,” he declared. “From—”
“Me,” a voice finished for him, and the door was pushed open all the way to reveal Graham standing there.
Adelaide rushed to her feet as she stared at him. She’d been thinking of nothing else but him since the previous night with James and Emma. He was the cause of her distraction both then and now.
“Your Grace,” she managed to croak out as she watched him enter the room. Fill the room. Steal the air. He was impossible. But once again, he seemed not to recognize her for who she truly was as he smiled down at her.
“Mrs. Ford,” he said, just as formal but with a lilt of teasing to his tone.
Melinda had shoved to her feet as he came in and now she hustled to the door. “Come, Toby, I’ll help you with the break down.”
Adelaide didn’t take her eyes off Graham as the two exited, closing the door behind them as they did. She swallowed hard. Alone again. She’d been alone with this man more in the past few days than she had been with any man since…
Well, since a good long time ago.
“Was your friend quite well?” he asked.
She stared at the unexpected question. “Melinda?”
He nodded. “She looked as though she had been crying.”
Of course he would notice. Adelaide was beginning to realize that while Graham put on a face of distance, he was actually very aware of his surroundings and those within them.
“She’s…fine,” Adelaide said, since there was no use in telling him the truth about Sir Archibald. What would he do about it? Men of his rank were allowed to do what they liked. She and Melinda would have to work out their own way to handle this.
He tilted his head, as if reading that response, but then he moved closer. “You were wonderful tonight.”
“I was distracted,” she admitted before she thought it through.
He arched a brow. “By what?”
He was so close now. Too close. He was looming, though there was nothing intimidating about it. Just alluring. Warm. Strong. Safe.
Although the last thing Graham was was safe. She had no idea why that descriptor had come to mind. Nor why she couldn’t think of any response to his question except for the truth.
“You,” she finally whispered.
His eyes went wide and then a broad grin spread across his face. It was feral and possessive and hot and so damned real that she fought not to launch herself into his arms. That end seemed inevitable, but she was going to lean away from it as long as she could.
“You were distracted by me?” he practically purred. “You flatter, Lydia.”
“It isn’t meant as a compliment, Graham,” she retorted, then clapped a hand to her lips. He had told Adelaide to call him Graham, not Lydia. “I-I’m sorry, my lord—Y-Your Grace,” she stammered. “That was spoken out of turn.”
His smile hadn’t faded. “I like that you call me by my given name,” he drawled. “I would much rather be that which you moaned than my title, which was last held by a bastard whose very memory turns my stomach.”
Adelaide hesitated at that unexpected confession, a brief glimpse into a past she found she desperately wanted to know. He didn’t give her the chance, though, for he continued talking. “I came here because I can’t stop thinking of you either, Lydia. You are all that has been in my head since the last time I touched you.”
Adelaide frowned, unexpected jealousy ripping through her. Jealousy of herself, which was ridiculous and incredibly confusing. But he was saying that while he danced with her-Adelaide her, while he talked to her, while he teased her and winked at her and generally made her feel…nervous, he’d been thinking of Lydia Ford.
Who wasn’t even real.
Except right now she felt very real, especially when Graham was reaching out a hand and sliding his fingers along her jawline. His touch was electric, and she shivered at the power of her body’s immediate response. She felt hot and cold at the same time, her nipples tingled and her sex felt heavy and full and wet. There was no controlling that. In truth, she didn’t want to control it, because it had been a very long time since she felt such a need, and never before had it been so earnest and powerful.
He leaned in and she didn’t pull away. She just lifted her mouth to his and let him kiss her.
Unlike the first time he’d claimed her mouth, this time he didn’t sweep her away. He didn’t back her into a table. He didn’t grind against her like they were animals in undeniable heat. This time he kissed her gently, his tongue probing her lips and then her mouth when she opened on a sigh.
When he pulled back, his pupils were dilated until there was only a sliver of blue remaining, and his breath was short. “Lydia, come home with me.”
Her eyes went wide. There was no mistaking him. He wasn’t asking her to his home for tea. If she took his offer, he would make love to her. And every rational part of her screamed at the dangers of that. The dangers of entering an affair with a powerful man, the dangers of him discovering her true identity, and the dangers of involving more than her quaking body once she had surrendered to this man who already set her entirely on her head, whether she was Lydia or Adelaide.
And yet her rational voice was so easily quieted when he glided his hand down the slope of her neck, pushing aside her hair and tracing her collarbone with gentle strokes of his fingertips.
“Please, Lydia.”
She swallowed. Despite her wicked foray into the theatre, her life was truly set in stone. She was a spinster who lived with a guardian who despised her, and had no prospects for a future. Not ever again would she be offered this kind of passion.
And she wanted it. She wanted him.
“Very well,” she choked out. “Yes. But I—I’ll take my own carriage.”
He seemed surprised both by her acquiescence and her caveat, but he didn’t argue. He only nodded as he slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her from the relative safety of the dressing room and toward the wild and unpredictable abandon of what would happen next.
Graham had arrived home first and waved off his servants, telling them to go to bed. He didn’t want politeness and pretending tonight. He just wanted Lydia.
Now he paced in his foyer, glancing occasionally through the window as he waited for her carriage to arrive. The small, unmarked one she hadn’t allowed him to help her into. She’d just asked him to tell her driver the directions, then slammed the door in his face.
He didn’t know how to read the woman. Perhaps that was part of the draw. She was alive and unpredictable and nothing like anyone he’d ever known. He needed that after the past few months. Hell, after the past few years. He needed it more than he needed spinsters who challenged him, certainly.
He stopped his pacing at that thought. Where had it come from? Images of Adelaide, in a moment like this, just as he was about to bed a woman who was her polar opposite? It was unseemly.
Well, perhaps not her polar opposite. They both had blonde hair, not that he could really tell the true color of Adelaide’s thanks to her relentlessly stern chignon. And their eyes were blue. But Lydia’s were wide and sensual, where Adelaide’s were hidden beneath those spectacles she never removed.
“Why are you comparing them?” he growled out loud, jolting himself back in line. “Ridiculous.”
Lydia’s carriage turned into his drive, and he straightened as he moved to the door. He opened it to watch her driver help her down. She looked up at his townhouse and he awaited her reaction. It was magnificent. Every woman said so. He hated the place, but that was another story entirely.
But Lydia simply pursed her lips, seemingly unaffected by the huge building, and her eyes lowered to settle on him. In that unguarded moment, lit only by the lights in the house behind him, she looked…afraid. Uncertain. His stomach clenched at that sight, for it was almost innocent.
But she couldn’t be innocent, could she? Most ladies of the stage weren’t. And she was Mrs. Ford. He still wasn’t sure if that was a lie or the truth.
The look flitted away as she moved up the stairs toward him, and his brain emptied of all questions and thoughts and all feelings except for that renewed drive to claim this woman in the most primal way he could muster. His cock ached as she stopped before him and stared up into his face.
“Are you going to invite me in?” she asked.
He blinked, realizing he’d been standing mute for almost thirty seconds. “Of course, please.”
He stepped aside and she entered the house. Once again, she only gave it a cursory look over and then she turned toward him, her hands folded in front of herself.
“Don’t most men of your stature have servants, Your Grace?” she asked, a lilt of teasing to her tone.
He shut the door and leaned back against it, staring at her. Great Christ, but she was magnificent. Her hair was still down in wild waves around her shoulders and her small but perfectly formed breasts. He wanted to see her with only that hair covering her.
“I sent them to bed,” he said. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
She smiled slightly. “A good idea,” she whispered.
He couldn’t hold back anymore. With a low groan, he moved to her and cupped the back of her head, dropping his mouth against hers with what he knew was out of control animal heat. She didn’t resist him, but reached up to clutch his lapels, arching against him with none of the innocence he’d sensed in her on the drive.
He tasted her, like honey and sherry and something that was just her, just perfect. And he wanted that scent and that taste to be dumped over him, he wanted to bathe in it. Be burned with it. Something to make it never go away.
He pulled back, panting, and motioned to the stairway. “Shall we?”
She nodded and reached out a hand. He stared at her slender fingers, ungloved as they touched his. She folded her hand around his, and for a moment he was flooded with a sense of incredible peace. He forgot everything that normally haunted him and took a deep breath.
But need was still need, drive was still drive, and he moved up the stairs at last, drawing her up to his room and shaking with the power of everything he wanted to do to her. Now he could, and he wasn’t about to waste a moment she had granted him.