A Lady Never Surrenders (13 page)

Stoneville glanced from her to Jackson. “Are you sure you need the help?”

“Of course. And Mr. Pinter deals with this sort of mishap daily, given the raw recruits he trains at Bow Street, so let him do what he does best.”

It wasn’t Jackson’s job to train anyone at Bow Street—there were underlings who did that—but since it rapidly became apparent that her ladyship’s “mishap” was just a ruse to enable them to speak privately, he played along. “Yes, a common occurrence.” He offered her his arm. “I can handle it well enough.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pinter,” she said as she curved her hand into the crook of his elbow.

He could feel his lordship’s eyes watching them as they headed down a different hall that led toward the servants’ quarters in another wing, but at least the man didn’t protest her purpose any further.

As soon as they were out of sight, she tugged him down an unlit passage. “This way. There’s a place where we can speak privately. No one ever comes here.”

He soon found himself in a secluded part of the manor. The musty scent and closed doors told him that the chambers hadn’t been opened in some time. Then she unlocked a door with a key that she kept on a chain around her neck and went inside.

The room was clearly an unused parlor, since all the furniture, save one settee and a writing table stacked with books, was protected from dust with white canvas covers. But the settee and table had been drawn up to the fireplace, and it was clear from the ashes in the hearth that a fire had been laid there not long ago. A short-handled broom nearby and a wool blanket completed the image of someone’s private retreat.

Hers.

“Don’t they give you a large enough sitting room, my lady?” he asked as she bent to ladle some coals into the hearth, then used a flint and some kindling to get a fire going.

She eyed him from beneath lowered lashes. “You have no idea what it’s like to be surrounded by a family like mine. We have enough space for a hundred guests, yet everyone seems determined to stay in the same ten rooms. My family doesn’t know the meaning of privacy.”

Straightening, she turned to face him. “Sometimes I just want to get away from them all. Especially lately, with Gran breathing down my neck about marrying. Sometimes I go shooting, and sometimes…” She shrugged.

“You come here to hide.”

Her eyes glittered at him. “Escape. It’s not the same.”

He went over to the table and picked up a book, then smiled at the title:
Ammunition: A Descriptive Treatise.
He went through the others—
Instructions to Young Sportsmen in All that Relates to Guns and Shooting
,
The Shooter’s Companion …
and oddly enough, a book called
Emma
.

When that one made him raise his gaze to her in question, she colored. “Don’t tell Minerva about that. She won’t be happy to hear I’m reading a novel by a woman she considers her competitor, even though the authoress is dead.”

“I wouldn’t dream of mentioning it. Though I’m surprised that you read novels.”

“I do have other interests than shooting, you know.”

“I never said otherwise.”

“But you think me a complete tomboy. Admit it.”

He measured his words. “I think you a woman with a few unusual interests that happen to be similar to those of some men. Those interests don’t, however, make you a tomboy.”

No tomboy would fire his blood the way she did right now in her elegant redingote, despite the black smudges of powder along its sleeves and the mud caked along its hem. And no tomboy would have kept him up last night imagining what it would be like to raise her skirts so he could run his hands along the pale swaths of thigh that lay above her garters.

“And yet,” she said hoarsely, “you kissed me as if I were some mannish chit beneath your notice. God forbid you should treat me as a desirable woman in front of my suitors. It might give them ideas.”

He stared at her, thunderstruck. She was angry because he’d accorded her the respect she deserved? “Forgive me, my lady,” he said acidly. “I didn’t think you’d want me to toss you down in the grass and ravish you. I see I was mistaken.”

Two spots of color appeared on her cheeks. “There is a vast space between ravishing me and treating me like a child. The gentlemen expected you to kiss me on the lips, as they would have. You won such a kiss, after all. When you didn’t take it, I’m sure they thought it was because I was somehow … unattractive to you. And that only hurts my cause.”

Her
cause
, which was to be affianced to one of those arses. Anger boiled up in him. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. You wanted me to kiss you with some degree of passion so your suitors would be convinced of your desirability as a woman. Is that right?”

She cast him a resentful look, then nodded.

He strode up close, unable to contain his temper. “Isn’t it enough for you that they’re already barking at your heels like randy hounds? That they’re seizing your hand at the breakfast table and inviting you for tête-à-tête practice sessions at their estates?”

“What good does that do me when you seek to turn their affections away at every turn? You provoked me to accept that shooting challenge because you wanted me to frighten them off with my enthusiasm for guns. Admit it.”

All right, so that was true. But he had good reasons for it. “I
wanted
them to see you for who you really are and not for the woman you keep pretending to be.”

“
Pretending
to be?” she said in a choked voice. “And who is that? A lady worthy of marriage? You wanted to expose me as some … adventuress or man in woman’s attire or … oh, I don’t know what.”

“No!” he protested, suddenly all at sea in their argument.

“You know what, Mr. Pinter? Ever since we made our agreement, you’ve only made matters worse, for some nefarious reason of your own.” She planted her hands on her hips and gave him a look of pure defiance. “So you’re dismissed from my employ. I no longer require your services.” With her head held high, she strode for the door.

Hell and blazes, he wouldn’t let her do this! Not when he knew what was at stake.

“You don’t want to hear my report?” he called out after her.

She paused near the door. “I don’t believe you even
have
a report.”

“I certainly do, a very thorough one. I’ve only been waiting for my aunt to transcribe my scrawl into something decipherable. Give me a day, and I can offer you names and addresses and dates, whatever you require.”

“A day? Just another excuse to put me off so you can wreak more havoc.” She stepped into the doorway, and he hurried to catch her by the arm and drag her around to face him.

He ignored the withering glance she cast him. “The viscount is twenty-two years your senior,” he said baldly.

Her eyes went wide. “You’re making that up.”

“He’s aged very well, I’ll grant you, but he’s still almost twice your age. Like many vain Continental gentlemen, he dyes his hair and beard—which is why he appears younger than you think.”

That seemed to shake her momentarily. Then she stiffened. “All right, so he’s an older man. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t make a good husband.”

“He’s an aging roué, with an invalid sister. The advantages in a match are all his. You’d surely end up taking care of them both. That’s probably why he wants to marry you.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No? He’s already choosing not to stay here for the house party at night because of his sister. That tells me that he needs help he can’t get from servants.”

Her eyes met his, hot with resentment. “Because it’s hard to find ones who speak Portuguese.”

He snorted. “I found out this information
from
his Portuguese servants. They also told me that his lavish spending is a façade. He’s running low on funds. Why do you think his servants gossip about him? They haven’t been paid recently. So he’s definitely got his eye on your fortune.”

“Perhaps he does,” she conceded sullenly. “But not the others. Don’t try to claim that of them.”

“I wouldn’t. They’re in good financial shape. But Devonmont is estranged from his mother, and no one knows why. I need more time to determine it, though perhaps your sister-in-law could tell you, if you bothered to ask.”

“Plenty of people don’t get along with their families,” she said stoutly.

“He has a long-established mistress, too.”

A troubled expression crossed her face. “Unmarried men often have mistresses. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t give her up when he marries.”

He cast her a hard stare. “Are you saying you have no problem with a man paying court to you while he keeps a mistress?”

The sigh that escaped her was all the answer he needed. “I don’t think he’s interested in marriage anyway.” She tipped up her chin. “That still leaves the duke.”

“With his mad family.”

“He’s already told me about his father, whom I knew about anyway.”

“Ah, but did you know about his great-uncle? He ended his life in an asylum in Belgium, while there to receive some special treatment for his delirium.”

Her lower lip trembled. “The duke didn’t mention that, no. But then our conversation was brief. I’m sure he’ll tell me if I ask. He was very forthright on the subject of his family’s madness when he offered—”

As she stopped short, Jackson’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Offered what?”

She hesitated, then squared her shoulders. “Marriage, if you must know.”

Damn it all. Jackson had no right to resent it, but the thought of her in Lyons’s arms made him want to smash something. “And of course, you accepted his offer,” he said bitterly. “You couldn’t resist the appeal of being a great duchess.”

Her eyes glittered at him. “You’re the only person who doesn’t see the advantage in such a match.”

“That’s because I don’t believe in marriages of convenience. Given your family’s history, I’d think that you wouldn’t either.”

She colored. “And why do you assume it would be such a thing? Is it so hard to believe that a man might genuinely care for me? That he might actually want to marry me for myself?”

The hurt in her words set him back on his heels.

“Why would anyone wish to marry the reckless Lady Celia, after all,” she went on in a choked voice, “if not for her fortune or to shore up his reputation?”

“I didn’t mean any such thing,” he said sharply.

But she’d worked herself up into a fine temper. “Of course you did. You kissed me last night only to make a point, and you couldn’t even bear to kiss me properly again today—”

“Now see here,” he said, grabbing her shoulders. “I didn’t kiss you ‘properly’ today because I was afraid if I did I might not stop.”

That seemed to draw her up short. “Wh-What?”

Sweet God, he shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t let her go on thinking she was some sort of pariah around men. “I knew that if I got this close, and I put my mouth on yours…”

But now he
was
this close. And she was staring up at him with that mix of bewilderment and hurt pride, and he couldn’t help himself. Not anymore.

He kissed her, to show her what she seemed blind to. That he wanted her. That even knowing it was wrong and could never work, he wanted to have her.

She tore her lips from his. “Mr. Pinter—” she began in a whisper.

“Jackson,” he growled. “Let me hear you say my name.”

Backing away from him, she cast him a wounded expression. “Y-you don’t have to pretend—”

“I’m not pretending anything, damn it!”

Grabbing her by the sleeves, he dragged her close and kissed her again, with even more heat. How could she not see that he ached to take her? How could she not know what a temptation she was? Her lips intoxicated him, made him light-headed. Made him reckless enough to kiss her so impudently that any other woman of her rank would be insulted.

When she pulled away a second time, he expected her to slap him. But all she did was utter a feeble protest. “Please, Mr. Pinter—”

“Jackson,” he ordered in a low, unsteady voice, emboldened by the melting look in her eyes. “Say my Christian name.”

Her lush dark lashes lowered as a blush stained her cheeks. “Jackson…”

His breath caught in his throat at the intimacy of it, and fire exploded in his brain. She wasn’t pushing him away, so to hell with trying to be a gentleman.

He took her mouth savagely this time, plundering every part of its silky warmth as his blood pulsed high in his veins. She tasted of red wine and lemon cake, both tart and sweet at once. He wanted to eat her up. He wanted to take her, right here in this room.

So when she pulled out of his arms to back away, he stalked after her.

She didn’t stop backing away, but neither did she turn tail and run. “Last night you claimed this wouldn’t happen again.”

“I know. And yet it has.” Like someone in an opium den, he’d been craving her for months. And now that he’d suddenly had a taste of the very thing he craved, he had to have more.

When she came up against the writing table, he caught her about the waist. She turned her head away before he could kiss her, so he settled for burying his face in her neck to nuzzle the tender throat he’d been coveting.

With a shiver, she slid her hands up his chest. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I want you,” he admitted, damning himself. “Because I’ve always wanted you.”

Then he covered her mouth with his once more.

C
elia’s head was reeling. He wanted her? Mr. Pinter
wanted
her?

Not Mr. Pinter. Jackson.
Jackson.

She released a shuddering breath as he trailed kisses from her mouth to her ear, his breathing heavy and his heart racing beneath the hands she pressed against his chest.

He
did
want her. He was devouring her, dragging open-mouthed kisses along her neck and throat like a man starved. He still smelled of saltpeter and smoke—as masculine and earthy as the rasp of his faint whiskers against her skin. Desire welled up in her when he tongued the hollow of her throat.