avenscroft stared at Jesse Whitney with disbelief. The man had gumption, he’d give him that. “You wish for me to court your daughter,” he repeated slowly, doing a poor job of masking his irritation. Now that he’d settled on his course, he wanted his prize: his little dove and her tremendous American dowry. In truth, he wanted her almost as much as he wanted the vast amounts of coin that would accompany her. Certainly more than he cared to examine.
“Those are the terms I’m willing to offer you,” Whitney affirmed. “Either you court her for a fortnight, well-chaperoned and without further ruining her, or you can’t wed her.”
To the devil with it. Now the man wanted him to bow and scrape and come sniffing about his future wife’s skirts like some lovelorn swain when he’d all but secured her hand. To dance at balls. To attend dinner parties and the theater. To seriously pretend to be smitten by her, in public, and most certainly to manage all this while maintaining a façade of respectability and abstaining from drink. Why, he hadn’t been sober long and he already found it deadly dull.
“I ruined her, you daft man,” Ravenscroft grumbled, not feeling even a pinch of guilt at the lie. Well truly, he’d done some damage, put his hands and mouth where they didn’t belong, but he hadn’t bloody well swived her as he’d implied. No, that would come later. If she still truly believed there wouldn’t be a wedding night, he would thoroughly enjoy changing her mind. With his tongue.
“Few are aware of what transpired.” Whitney’s rebuttal was smooth, calculated.
Well played. But no one could do brazen better than he. No one. “There is the matter of possible issue from what transpired,” he reminded his father-in-law-to-be, also without a hint of guilt. “If I refuse to court her and you won’t allow her to wed me, what shall happen when her belly grows? For then, it will be too late for doing the pretty at balls and dinners.”
Whitney went ruddy, presumably from pent-up rage. The poor fellow didn’t appear to enjoy reminders that his precious daughter could perhaps sire a bastard. “Do you want me to kill you after all, Ravenscroft?”
Julian made an elaborate show of scrutinizing his future father-in-law’s person as though looking for the telltale silhouette of a pistol beneath his trappings of finery. “I don’t see a weapon today, Mr. Whitney. Or shall I call you Papa? No? A bit too soon, perhaps.”
His opponent apparently wasn’t given to being blithe. He slammed his hands down on the admittedly battered study desk. “Listen to me, you son-of-a-bitch, this—my daughter’s future—is not a laughing matter.”
No, it wasn’t. Poor girl, about to be shackled to him forever. Little levity in that, unfortunately for her. But Julian couldn’t help himself. He rather enjoyed goading people. It was a trait he’d always possessed. Most damning in the eyes of others, no doubt. “Dear me, old fellow. I don’t recall laughing, but if I did I’m sure I ought to offer you an apology.”
Whitney’s hands snapped closed into tight fists, the knuckles showing white. Those knuckles bore the signs of his past. Mayhap he’d engaged in hand-to-hand combat during the war. Very likely Julian ought to tone down his bombast, but the man irked him.
“The next time you call me ‘old fellow,’ I’ll knock out your teeth. You owe me at least a dozen apologies by now, none of which you seem willing to give.” Whitney pounded the desk for emphasis. “Most importantly, you owe an apology to my daughter. Clara is an impulsive girl but a good girl nonetheless. You aren’t fit to tidy up after her horse, let alone wed her. Give her a proper courting for a fortnight. The wedding will still be rushed, and tongues will still flay us alive, but at least we can build a case for love rather than necessity.”
Julian took exception to all threats against his teeth. As it happened, they were even and straight, quite white, and one of his vanities. “I fail to see how a fortnight of courting will cause any less damage to her in the eyes of society than a simple, immediate marriage will.”
Moreover, it had occurred to him that perhaps Whitney was attempting to use this fortnight to prove that Clara was not, in fact, enceinte, and that their nuptials would no longer be necessary. After all, depending upon where she was in her monthly courses, she could make a liar of him tomorrow. Or this very afternoon. Of course, it wouldn’t be in her interest to do so, but Julian couldn’t be sure just how far the wild-looking former soldier before him would go to protect his daughter. Examination by physician? He doubted it, but then again, if he’d learned anything in his life it was that the actions of most people couldn’t be either trusted or predicted.
“I don’t give a damn what you do or don’t see, Ravenscroft,” growled Whitney. “These are my terms. Court her for a fortnight. Act the part of lovesick swain. It must all be quite proper. And in return, I will give my reluctant blessing upon the marriage, along with the dowry you requested with one exception. Half the North Atlantic Electric stocks will go to you and the other half to Clara, hers by law, along with whatever settlement I choose to bestow upon her, also entirely hers.”
Strange that Julian didn’t care to quibble over the division of the stocks but he did want to argue about a fortnight of waiting to make his little dove into his countess. Fifty thousand here or fifty thousand there, what was it when one had the expectation of nothing? He’d be a far wealthier man than he’d ever fancied possible either way. But he wanted the wedding, damn it, and he wanted it now.
Because he wanted her. Somehow, inexplicably, the plucky Virginia girl who’d shown up in his study unannounced had woken up a part of him he’d thought he no longer had. Desire. He hadn’t truly longed for a woman since Lottie.
To the devil. Perhaps he ought to rein himself in a tad. It wouldn’t do to become so enamored of her before he even knew her, for Chrissakes. “Mr. Whitney, allow me to be blunt for a moment. You don’t want your daughter to marry me, and I perceive this courting nonsense as an attempt on your part to stop the nuptials from taking place. However, I am, you’ll find as you grow to know me better, an amenable bloke at heart. I propose, therefore, a détente of sorts. I will do as you wish in return for your written oath that the wedding will carry on two weeks hence. Our lawyers will discuss the specifics of the agreement, I trust.”
Whitney nodded, regaining a modicum of his civility. “Clara claims to love you, and if there’s anything I know about my daughter it’s that no one, not even the Lord, can stop her from accomplishing something she’s set her mind to. I’ll not stand in the way, but as a father I must protect her reputation as best as I may.”
An odd sensation overcame Julian then, reminiscent of the way he’d felt when his mother had instructed one of the footmen to drown poor Alexandra’s favorite puppy as a punishment for being cross with her nurse. He still recalled the sound of his sister’s mournful howls. Three years old, poor lass. Pity. He supposed that was what he was experiencing just now. Pity for the father coming to terms with letting his daughter go to a notorious reprobate who he feared had only ruined her to gain a fortune.
But he hadn’t ruined her, not truly. Nor was he marrying her with the sole aim of securing her dowry, though that had certainly been the factor that had influenced him to sell himself one last time. He wouldn’t lie to himself about that. Part of his motive was mercenary. Part pure lust.
Wouldn’t do to think about that now, for he’d just allowed himself to be roped into a fortnight-long betrothal. Courting. Observing the proprieties. Fuck. When was the last time he, Julian Danvers, the seventh Earl of Ravenscroft, had been respectable?
“Draw up the papers,” he said, standing, uncomfortable with himself suddenly. Uncomfortable with the lies he’d perpetuated and the way he had so effortlessly and carelessly manipulated not only the man before him but also his beautiful, innocent daughter. “Draw up the papers, and it shall be done.”
Perhaps it was time to find his whisky.
Clara had drunk far too much wine at dinner the night before. Had it been three glasses or four? Five or six? It little mattered now, for the end result was the same either way. Her father had made his announcement. Her fate was sealed. She’d almost heard the clang of the prison doors thundering shut on her right there in the dining room. Her glass had been waiting at her hand, filled with a deliciously mind-numbing claret, refilled by an efficient footman whenever she drained it. Which, as it had turned out, had been often.
Unaccustomed as she was to indulging too heavily in spirits, she felt as though an entire regiment of soldiers had marched across her head while she’d slept. Pity that she felt so wretched, up before dawn with a mouth as dry as Virginia dirt in August after a month without rain. She pressed her forehead to the glass pane of her bedchamber window, absorbing its coolness. She was heated, flushed, and she didn’t know if it was down to the aftereffects of the wine or the terrifying fate she’d so stupidly chosen for herself.
Both, more than likely.
She wasn’t getting the hasty wedding she’d expected after all. No, not precisely. Instead, her father had somehow brazened it out with the earl, the results of which meant she was to be courted for a fortnight to make a case for their love match. Paraded before the society her father had embraced—the society she herself found so affected and silly—as though she were an ornament from the hunt.
The street below was beginning to wake. The grim, seemingly inescapable London fog was fiercely thick this morning, overtaking everything beyond her window so that all she could discern were some splotches of light and the dash here and there of a liveried carriage. Perhaps it was the hour when gentlemen returned from their clubs or from their mistress’s beds. All Clara knew was that it wasn’t an hour she would ordinarily be awake.
Courted. Her stomach roiled at the thought. She’d suffered enough pomp and pageantry the last few years. Finishing school, etiquette lessons, dancing instructions, her comeout, introduction to the queen… It had been endless, strict, laden with rules and tricks, wolves in sheep’s clothing. And now, just when her escape had seemed within reach, she was to be delayed by a courting, of all things. It may as well have been a hanging for all she looked forward to it.
What madness. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d become mired in something far larger than she’d ever planned. She’d imagined a quick marriage, her coffers filled, the freedom to do whatever she wanted. It would have been a tearful farewell with her father and Lady Bella, for she truly did care for them. But then it would have been off to the place where she belonged, the place that called to her heart in ways she had never been able to convince her dear father of. Your home is in England now, he’d counter to her every complaint. You will find this country’s appeal in time.
But she hadn’t. Time had passed—years had gone by—and she still disliked almost everything about the country in which she’d found herself unceremoniously mired. She’d committed nearly every act of rebellion she could dream up, short of simply running away, in an effort to dislodge her father from his stubborn determination to keep her in a place that was cold and rigid and dreary.
She turned from the window as her maid arrived, fresh-faced and irritatingly chipper. She brought Clara’s correspondence on a tray along with some tea. Clara seated herself at her desk as was her morning ritual and riffled through the letters while Anderson attended to her coiffure. A slashing scrawl caught her attention, and somehow she knew the owner of that bold penmanship. It seemed he too had risen early. As if it were him touching her and not a mere scrap of paper, warmth unfurled within her belly, and her fingers tingled.
Little dove,
Your father has convinced me—N.B. said convincing transpired sans the use of any firearms—that we must do our best to appear honorable and respectable for the next fortnight. I’ll call this afternoon. Dare I trust you’ll be at home?
Yours,
R.
Clara stared at the scrap of paper in her hand and realized she was smiling. Oh, he was a charmer, the rake she’d chosen for her mad plan. She’d do well to guard her heart against him. Catching her lip between her teeth to quell her unwanted reaction, she took up pen and paper to fashion her response.
Lord Ravenscroft,
While I’m gratified to hear my father didn’t threaten your person upon this occasion, I’m afraid I won’t be receiving callers.
Sincerely,
Miss Clara Elizabeth Whitney
She received a response just after breakfast, under the watchful eyes of her stepmother and the Duchess of Devonshire, who had paid a call on her social rounds. Feigning disinterest, she slipped the note into the pocket of her morning dress as though she weren’t enjoying their game of cat and mouse. She longed to read the contents of the note but dared not seem too eager. Nor did she wish to arouse the suspicions of Lady Bella any further.
The duchess and Lady Bella continued chattering about the duchess’s ball, which was to be held the next night. What music was to be played, what refreshments—certainly not any aspics, which the duchess deplored—but plenty of champagne, who was to be in attendance, etcetera, etcetera, and all rather boring stuff to Clara. A footman interrupted their lighthearted banter shortly, bringing with him a large arrangement of stunning white lilies.
“For Miss Clara,” the young fellow intoned.
Lady Bella directed him where to place the flowers before inspecting them. “Quite lovely, Clara.” She turned to the footman. “Was there not a note accompanying them?”
“I’m afraid not, my lady.” He bowed and exited the room.
Clara didn’t require a note to know who had sent them. The earl.
“Perhaps the answer is in your pocket, my dear,” the duchess observed shrewdly, never one to mince words.
Clara fished the note from her pocket with reluctance, opened the envelope, and found once again a missive marked with his bold scrawl.
Dearest C.E.W.,
I never said he didn’t threaten my person. Merely that he didn’t use a firearm. Something very much like ‘Do you want me to kill you after all?’ I’ll call at 3.
R.
Lord in heaven. She was smiling again. Realizing she had an audience, she folded the note, marshalled her lips into a rational line, and cleared her throat. “No, I’m afraid this note is from Lady Bo. Perhaps the lilies were sent here in err.” She stuffed the note back into her pocket for good measure.
“Pish,” the duchess dismissed, waving her hand in the air as if combatting an irritating fly. She was animated, bold, beautiful as a butterfly, and older sister to Clara’s dear friend Bo. Once, Her Grace had acted as Clara’s chaperone at a country house party where Clara had unabashedly run her quite ragged. They’d forged a camaraderie of sorts, with the duchess taking Clara under her wing. Of course she could see straight through Clara like a window pane that had just been washed. “If you wish to keep your secrets, you may. But the smile upon your face is quite telling, dear girl.”
“Our Clara fancies herself in love,” Lady Bella revealed with a grim air as she searched Clara’s face, perhaps for a sign of repentance. Or madness, perhaps? One shouldn’t presume to guess.
Some part of Clara—the wicked part—still sometimes found the blindingly beautiful English rose her father had married a rather irritating interloper. In truth, Clara was the interloper, and perhaps that was the real issue. She’d never, from the moment she’d first stepped ashore in England, felt as though she belonged. Their world had already existed without her, and hers without them.
“I don’t fancy myself in love,” she lied, not without compunction. But she’d told the tale so many times that it came more naturally now. “I am in love. I sincerely hope to make a love match with the earl.”
Knowing her stepmother and the duchess as she did—the two could not have been closer had they been sisters born and raised—Clara was certain that the duchess was privy to what had transpired. Ah, well. It seemed there were never any well-kept secrets in London anyway, and soon she would be far, far away from this nonsense.
“A love match with Ravenscroft?” Tia inspected her with keen interest. “I’ve known him for years, and I’ve never known him to be the sort who charms young ladies or entertains them in his study at midnight. If you were a widow or a wealthy married woman with a husband who turns a blind eye to peccadilloes, I would believe your story. But you’re too young for him, too sweet, too…innocent.”
Innocent she was not. She recalled all too well what the earl had done to her. What he’d said to her. Part of her wanted it again. Wanted more. No innocent lady would have such a response to his depravity. But here was a rather salient piece of information. The duchess and her husband-to-be were acquaintances.
“You know Lord Ravenscroft?” Why hadn’t she realized that? “What precisely do you know of him?”
“He is a charmer and a flirt, but I do believe he has a genuine heart. He was quite good to my sister Cleo, and they remain friends.” Tia paused, appearing to choose her next words with judicious precision. “You are aware of his reputation, I trust?”
There it was again, the ever-present reminder that the earl was a wicked man. And he was, for she had experienced his skill firsthand. “His past is not my concern, Your Grace.”
“Ah,” was all Tia said, and Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that her abbreviated response said far more than anything else could.
“It is not too late to turn away from all this, Clara,” her stepmother entreated. “You can change your mind. The damage has not yet been done. Don’t be at home if he calls today.”
“I will be at home.” Clara was firm, unrelenting. If anything, Lady Bella’s heartfelt persistence swayed her in the opposite direction of her intent. “Her Grace says that he has a generous heart. Does that not mollify you?”
Lady Bella pursed her lips as though she’d tasted something sour. “Not in the slightest. A generous heart does not excuse a blackened reputation. The earl is a scoundrel of the first order. How I wish you would see he’s not the man for you.”
“I can see why you’d be drawn into his web. He’s deadly handsome, I’ll own,” the duchess continued. “But dear Clara, don’t forget that surfaces can be deceiving. Bitter scars can hide beneath the most beautiful of facades.”
Clara didn’t care to hear any more of their well-intentioned guidance. She had a singular pursuit now, and that was marrying the earl so she could gain her freedom. It would seem that if she had any hope of either of those two things occurring, she needed to play the game her father had devised for her. She needed to be courted.
Julian arrived at the Whitney residence precisely at three, buttoned up, jaw freshly shaved, smart waistcoat, rakish hat, looking for all the world like a gentleman intent upon wooing his lady. In short, he’d been ready for a proper courting. Or rather, as proper a courting as a man who’d fucked half the ladies of the Upper Ten Thousand for his supper could manage.
But he’d been met by a harried Lady Bella who’d informed him there was a family matter—urgent, her mother suddenly ill and in need of attendance—that would prevent her from acting as chaperone. A lady’s maid would not be sufficient. The bloodthirsty Mr. Whitney was not at home, leaving no way for Julian to see Miss Whitney. She was so very sorry, but could he possibly call another day when the dowager marchioness was not ailing?
So he’d done the gentlemanly thing, bowed and apologized, offered his sincere hopes that the fierce old curmudgeon that was Lady Thornton would prevail. He’d gone back to his carriage, but as he drove along, he’d seen the strangest thing. A lone woman hurried along the street, head down, dressed in the first stare of fashion though she clearly sought to be unnoticed, a large hat tilted to conceal her face. He recognized that form, even though he’d held those lush curves in his arms but once. She turned and he saw her face.
Damn it all to hell, she was a troublesome one.
He instructed his driver to stop and alighted, closing the distance between them with easy strides. “Miss C.E.W., can it be you?” He kept his voice carefully low and intimate as he drew alongside her, touching her elbow lightly.
“Lord in heaven,” she exclaimed in her airy drawl. Surprise mingled with alarm on her beautiful, expressive face. “You gave me a fright, sir.”
What the devil was she thinking, sneaking away from her home with no chaperone, in the midst of the day? Did she truly believe no one would see and recognize her, that she wouldn’t ruin herself? That there wouldn’t be hell to pay? The girl’s temerity knew no bounds. She was either slow-witted or possessed of tremendous audacity. Though, to be fair, she had stolen her way into his study at midnight and proposed to him—that alone suggested audacity of a most unbecoming and tremendous sort. The sort he quite admired, in fact.
But none of that meant that he was going to allow her to ruin his plans to wallow in her dowry and thoroughly debauch her after she’d become his countess.
“Come,” he said in his most authoritative tone. Clearly, she needed his aid before she committed any more egregious sins. And wasn’t that a laugh, the Earl of Ravenscroft looking after a lady’s reputation? “Into the carriage with you.”
“I can’t go anywhere with you.” Her eyes were wide and bluer than the clearest country sky.
“You can and you will.” He cast a glance around the busy street. It was only a matter of time before they were both recognized. “For your sake, little dove, get into the carriage. I’ll take you safely back home.”
“I’m safe enough.” She cast a pointed look toward her reticule, which bulged in most peculiar fashion. “I carry a pistol with me always. I’ve done this many times before.”
Damnation. He had no doubt that she had. Perhaps she was as much of a cutthroat at heart as her dear papa. “Into the carriage. You cannot run about the streets of London unchaperoned. Mr. Whitney was most firm in his stipulations.”
She frowned at him, her eyes sparkling with mulish heat and her chin tilting in the air. “What business is it of yours whether I run about the streets? I’m my own person, my lord.”
“Of course you are, little dove, but you are also to be my wife. You’re under my protection now.” As he said the words, he couldn’t resist touching the tip of her stubborn chin.
He felt her warmth through his gloves, and the scent of her, orange and musky and dazzling as sunshine, slammed over him. It was delightful, intoxicating. She was intoxicating. The notion that he was now her protector oddly aroused him—the juxtaposition of his life of sin with her purity made him harder than a randy youth with his first woman. Right there on the street.
To hell with it. If he didn’t gather his wits and her both, he’d be doing something rash. Like taking her maidenhead in his carriage. It had its appeal, of course, but there was something delicious about waiting, about making her his in good time. No woman he’d bedded had ever been his, whether in heart or in status, and he rather liked the notion of her being the first.
“Lord Ravenscroft, I’d like to be on my way,” she prattled now, oblivious to the mayhem her beauty and bold naïveté wreaked upon him.
“No,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so, my dear.” Without relinquishing his grasp upon her elbow, he hauled her toward his waiting carriage and the relative safety of the privacy waiting therein.
She balked, tugging back and attempting with all her might to resist. But he was stronger than she, and trundling her into his carriage was a small matter indeed. He quietly instructed his driver to take several laps around the neighborhood before returning her to her father’s home. After all, he reasoned, who was he to turn away such a gift from the fates?
He settled himself on the squab opposite her and studied her just long enough to make the blush rise to her cheeks. Seducing her would be most enjoyable. His gaze dipped to her bosom, full and high, and he recalled how the sweet bud of her nipple had felt in his mouth through the fabric of her chemise. Ah, yes. Seducing her would be his manna.
“I fail to see why you insist upon abducting me, my lord.” She was in high dudgeon. “I cannot imagine this is what my father had in mind when he requested a proper courtship.”
He ignored her jibe. “Tell me, love. How often have you snuck away from your father’s keep to prowl the streets of London with a pistol in your reticule?”
Her brows snapped together into a frown. “That’s none of your concern.”
But it was. She was. And he quite liked it. He quite liked her, much to his bemusement. “Perhaps I ought to try a different course, Miss C.E.W. You seem to have no dearth of courage and—one might even venture to say—foolishness. Why not simply steal away from your father’s house in the night and take passage back to America on your own? Your gift for sneaking out of your home is surely unparalleled by any other young lady of an age with you. Why seek me out?”
Her full lips curved into a rueful grin, somehow making her all the more entrancing. “I would beg to differ, sir, that I am anything but a fool. My father is a stubborn man, and in a misplaced effort to keep me close to him, he’s sworn to deny me all funds unless I marry here in England. Think me as feather-headed as you like, but I know the fate that would befall me should I try to return on my own without a cent to my name.”
Jesus, an innocent lovely like her on her own wouldn’t last long in the rough underbelly of the world, even if she actually knew how to fire the pistol hidden in her reticule. At least she wasn’t naïve enough to think to brazen it out on her own. But still, she had sought out him, the blackest soul in all London, to be her savior. And he too was leading her astray. Taking advantage of her just as any other faceless man along her journey would have.
He didn’t like that realization, so he tamped it down, past the place where his conscience once lived. Good and buried, that brief sense of guilt. “I think many things of you, but feather-headed, rest assured, is not one of them.”
She nodded, looking more flustered than ever. “This carriage ride seems to be taking longer than necessary.”
A shrewd little thing, too. Good. He’d never enjoyed the company of vapid women, though he’d suffered it for the sake of survival. “Belgravia is an absolute crush at this time of day.”
“Hmm.”
“Where were you off to, my dear?” He decided to change the subject, distract her quick wit. “As I recall, you were meant to be properly courted by me this afternoon.”
“Of course I was, until Lady Bella’s mother took ill. I dislike being cooped up in a city, if you must know. It makes me feel itchy. So I take walks.”
Itchy. She was the oddest female he’d ever encountered. He found her utterly captivating. He’d wager she was a fair shot with the pistol she kept in her reticule, too.
“You take unchaperoned walks,” he observed drily.
“Don’t pretend to be honorable now.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Everyone has been delighting in reminding me how thoroughly jaded and wicked you are.”
“I’m all the bad things you’ve heard about me and then some.” And damn if that didn’t rankle, far more than it should. After all, the truth ought not to hurt. “But as we’ve already established, we each have a mutual need for the funds your father will bestow upon you. I’m now subject to his whims the same as you.”
“You, subject to anyone’s whims? Somehow I find that difficult to imagine.”
Ah, but the sad reality of it was that he’d been subject to the whims of others for more than half his life. Lady Esterly had been old enough to be his mother when she’d plied him with attention, gifts, and drink. He’d been fourteen, orphaned by a father who reasoned with his fists and a flighty mother. The interest of an older, worldly, beautiful woman like the Countess of Esterly had been a siren’s lure. And just that easily, he’d been trapped. His time and his body had never again been his own.
Until now. Although even now, he had still trapped himself. But this time, he was old enough, wise enough, to know what he was about. This time he saw a beautiful woman, smart and prickly and bold and odd, and he was fascinated. Fascinated in a way that had nothing to do with the fortune she brought with her. No, if he were brutally honest with himself, he’d admit that his actions weren’t entirely mercenary. A sobering thought if there ever was one, that.
“We’re all subject to the whims of others in one fashion or another,” he told her as he muddled his way through the painful remnants of his past. Remnants he hadn’t realized still required muddling, after all this time. “Some of us are merely better at fooling ourselves into thinking we aren’t than others.”
“I suppose you’re correct in that assessment, my lord. We are all at the mercy of someone else at times, are we not?” Her drawl was soft and under-pronounced. A delicious trill.
There was her exotic, citrus scent again, teasing him. Luring him. He leaned forward, closing the distance between them in the confines of the carriage, and traced the silken curve of her cheek.
“And now you’ve placed yourself at my mercy, little dove.” He withdrew, bit the tip of his glove, and shucked it. Bare skin, the better to touch her. To tempt them both. He cupped her cheek, then traced a delicate path to the supple curve of her rose-pink mouth. His thumb ran over her lush lower lip once, twice, thrice. The seam of her Cupid’s bow parted and he sank his thumb inside, feeling her wet heat. God, how he wanted that. How he wanted her. To hell with his promise of a proper courtship. This woman was his, damn it. “Why would you choose me, of all men?”
She nipped his thumb, startling and intriguing him all at once. Of course she would bite. He pulled back.
“I’m at no one’s mercy,” she denied. “Not any longer. That is precisely why I chose you.”
“Do you think me so easily controlled, then? Do you think you can wave your papa’s money in my face and make me come to heel like your pet?” Anger rose within him, swift and strong. He recognized that this fury was old, pouring from a deep wound, that it was not necessarily hers to bear. But he wanted her to understand that he was not weak. He was not—would not ever again be—a plaything, a man to be toyed with by a woman whose needs he fulfilled. He had played that role for far too long.
“Of course not. Ours is an even exchange. You get your portion of my dowry and I get mine and—most importantly—my freedom.”
Her reasoning was calm, unperturbed. As if she weren’t sharing an enclosed space with one of the lowliest rakes in London, sans chaperone. Some beast within him rose up then, wanting to shake her from her tranquility.
“What if I’ve decided that I want more than you bargained, little dove?” he asked, touching the smart trimmings on her bottle-green street suit directly above her madly thumping heart. Bless fashion. Bless her, all stubbornness and beauty and sunshine. “What if I want you?”
Her supple lips pursed into a moue that he found equal parts fetching and irritating. “Our agreement is not negotiable.”
So she thought. Ah, silly chit, believing he possessed a shred of honor. He slid a casual but firm touch around her neck, his fingers catching in the silken web of her carefully coifed hair. His grip tightened, pulling her head back with just enough strength to show her who was truly in control. “I could take you here. Now. I could slide my hands under your skirts, over your calves, straight to your soft thighs and the slit in your drawers. We both know you would welcome me.”
She stared at him, her bosom rising and falling with the violence of her breaths. She wasn’t alarmed. Rather, she was…intrigued, he’d wager. Aroused. His little dove possessed a wicked streak, it would seem. Her lips parted ever so slightly.
“You wouldn’t dare.” Her words were a low, throaty whisper. Her pupils were large and round in her brilliant blue eyes. She looked for all the world like the lushest, sweetest peach hanging before him on a branch, all ripe and ready to be plucked. Or, as it were, fucked.
He grinned. “Oh, I’d more than dare.” With his free hand, he demonstrated, reaching beneath her voluminous skirts to find the hollow of her knee. Her heat singed him through her silk stockings, and of its own volition, his hand traveled higher still, coursing over her frilled drawers to cup the delicious curve of her outer thigh. “Part your legs for me, darling.”
Her eyes went wide, her body tensing beneath his touch. She wasn’t accustomed to such familiarity, of that much he was certain. But her untried innocence appealed to him in ways he hadn’t anticipated, and despite his best intentions for a proper courtship, the urge to show her pleasure was strong. He longed to bring her body to life, to give her the first, forbidden taste of passion.
“We’re meant to have a proper courtship, my lord, and then a marriage in name only,” she reminded him breathlessly.
“Mmm, but that is all deadly boring. Let me make you spend, love. Just once.” He was like an opium addict now, drawn to what he craved—Clara, her passion, her innocence, the illicit —and he couldn’t stop until he sampled at least a bit of it.
Her thighs fell open to his questing touch. He found the slit of her drawers, damp with her dew. Lust surged over him. His fingers traced her soft mound in slow, gentle strokes, circling her pearl. She jerked and tensed beneath him. He stroked her, toyed with her. Back and forth. She caught her lip in her teeth, head tipping back against the carriage squab. Ah, she was sweet. Slick and hot. He wanted to taste her, to put his mouth where his hand was and lick and suck her until she came undone.
Her eyes closed.
No, he was having none of that. He increased his pressure ever so slightly. “Look at me, Clara.”
She refused, turning her head to the side, remaining otherwise open to him. Her cunny was as responsive as ever, her wetness bathing his finger. But he wanted her completely, wanted her gaze to meet his as he gave her the first taste of pleasure.
“Look at me,” he demanded again. He’d played many games with many lovers over the years. But this was different. This wasn’t about control or domination or titillation. It was about her, and it was about him and things he had never even imagined he’d desire.
She gave in at last, turned back to him, her eyes clashing with his. A pant stole from her. “What do you want from me?”
Her question surprised him. Everything, he wanted to say. Every part of you. All your innocence, all your passion, every bit of your delectable body. Instead, “I want you to lose yourself. Give in. Watch me as I bring you pleasure.”
He was well aware of his depravity, leading a maiden down the garden path of the dissolute. She’d kissed with a charming inexperience that suggested she’d kissed a scant few men, if any, before him. She was a virgin, a naïf he’d sworn to chastely court. And yet here he was, hand up her skirts, inside her drawers, playing with her, craving not only her climax but also her complete abandon. He was already teaching her how to be wicked.
It was as if she’d heard his words herself, for a change came over her. Her hands flew to his chest, pushing him back to the squab opposite her. He went, allowing her to overpower him with ease. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready to be as wicked as he wanted her to be. Perhaps she lied to herself. She straightened her posture into a stiff, ladylike pose, fidgeting her skirts into place.
“A marriage in name only, my lord,” she reminded him with the cool, august bearing of a queen. She could be proper when she wished, the spitfire before him. “As I said, the terms are not negotiable, and I’ll thank you not to place your hands upon my person again.” She blushed furiously as she said the last.
But he wasn’t about to accept her dismissal so easily. He raised his fingers, still glistening with the evidence of her desire, to his mouth, and tasted them. Sweet and musky. His cock went painfully rigid against his trousers. “Never again?” he asked with a wicked grin.
She stared at him. He’d shocked her. But he’d also intrigued her, and he could see it quite plainly. “Never again,” she repeated, her tone rather faint. She swallowed. “Our agreement won’t change. Now if you’d be so kind as to return me to where I belong? I don’t suppose it truly takes this length of time to get a carriage back to my father’s home from where you found me, regardless of the absolute Belgravia crush.”
She was turning his own words against him. Yes, she was a clever minx. But even the most clever of minxes could be outfoxed. He’d win her yet, even if he did dread the day he’d have to face her wrath when she realized he had no intention of allowing her to go traipsing back to Virginia like the lamb bound for slaughter.
“Very well,” he agreed with a relaxed air he was far from feeling. He rapped on the carriage, signaling to his driver that their circling was, alas, at an end. Not all wars could be won in a single battle, but he was prepared to lay siege of the very best sort.