Alex's Angel (33 page)

She kissed the tip.

“Just be passive this time, sweetheart. Open to me,” he said.

She opened her mouth and he slid inside. He longed to thrust himself deep into the snugness of her throat but she wasn’t facile with this yet and to push her too hard, too fast, would put her off. Then he’d never be able to have this from her again. Even so, her mouth was warm and wet and wonderful and he was dying to spill inside. He stroked the shaft of his cock with quick, hard strokes. His cock jerked and jerked, pumping his seed into her. Moments of stunning pleasure and deep satisfaction…and it was almost enough.

* * * *

Street lamps cast golden light into the darkened carriage as it clattered along. Staring at Alex’s faraway look, Emily sat, silently twirling one long, dark red ringlet round and round her gloved finger, her stomach knotting tighter and tighter. She couldn’t believe she’d let him talk her into accompanying him tonight. But in those moments after their lovemaking, she’d been willing to do anything he wanted.

Their lovemaking.
Why had she allowed him to—to…lay his hands on her like that? She’d sworn she would never allow anyone to control her ever again. So why had she found the experience of being so vulnerable to him so thrilling?

She shifted in the seat gingerly. But her bottom had ceased to burn and tingle and was now simply sensitive—in a way that despite herself still sent delicious waves of pleasure through her.

Dear God, letting him thrust his cock in her mouth, trusting him. Knowing now the sensation of his cock, jerking in her mouth as he came, the taste of his seed. She couldn’t possibly have ever felt closer to him.

Uneasiness quivered around her navel. She couldn’t control her reactions to him. She never had been able to and now she couldn’t learn to. Instead of being jaded to him, she became increasingly fascinated with him and their growing liaison.

Was there anything she wouldn’t allow him to do? She had made a serious miscalculation when she’d thought she could play the sophisticated woman and be his lover. She had already vowed once to stop letting him manipulate her and yet tonight she had let him manipulate her into further carnal acts. Maybe she had already lost herself.

At the thought, fear prickled through her.

This
affaire
between them, it
had
to stop. Now. It was too dangerous for her.

The carriage was slowing and Alex suddenly came alive. He stared at Emily with piercing intensity. He reached for her hand. She laughed in hitching breaths, feeling so taut she feared she’d break.

“Don’t worry—it’s merely some merchants and their wives; even a couple of mere sea captains.”

His words were like a sharp slap, breaking the surface of her tension and allowing wild emotions to boil up through the cracks. Pride and anger. She had forgotten that she sat here in clothes he had purchased, in a borrowed cloak. She had forgotten that she was poor and her origins meagre compared to his.

But apparently he had not.

“How glibly you say that. Mere sea captains.” On the last three words, she mocked his upper class, polished tone. She fiddled with the heart-shaped pendant on her necklace. “It’s most unfeeling of you to say so. My father was a mere sea captain—and his father before him.”

His face contorted into a pained frown and he leaned closer. “I am sorry, sweetheart. My words were poorly chosen. I only meant that if you can handle congressmen, you can handle these people tonight.”

He smiled, slightly, ardour lighting his eyes. Her heart made a little bounce, a desperate wish to believe—but it was simply more of his charm, more of his ability to control her through manipulation. Well, she might have weakened earlier, but now she wouldn’t have it.

She had not lost herself.

She would prove it, to him and herself.

“How grateful I should be. The mighty Alex Dalton, lowering himself to escort the daughter of a mere sea captain to a supper party.”

His eyes went cold as steel and the skin pinched near his nostrils. “Now, damn it. That’s not fair—”

A knock sounded on the carriage door and Alex’s look immediately turned coolly polite.

* * * *

In the Cogwell’s parlour, the conservatively dressed women’s eyes widened upon observing Emily’s gown. She quickly came to realise that Rachel’s sense of what was fashionable was likely to be viewed as too daring by these more practical, modest, middling sort women. Wanting only to run back to the carriage, she inhaled deeply, then smiled frozenly during all the introductions. There were too many names at once to match with the faces.

The very last guest arrived. His bottle-green suit enhanced his russet hair and green eyes. He looked almost handsome in a sad, romantic way. But he made her internals twist in a sick panic.

Richard Green.

He stared at her with bitterness. With hate.

He would tell.

Maybe right here, tonight. No one had dared say anything openly to her about the Blue Duck, but maybe he would. Maybe he would ask her bluntly, in front of everyone and she would be on trial, her expression judged by everyone to seek the truth.

An ashy, acridness filled her mouth.

It was one thing to have contemplated letting a few gentlemen take her to bed and pay her. It had been a sacrifice in the name of keeping her liberty so she could continue her art, her mission. It was also another thing if people simply speculated about herself and Alex. But if all of Philadelphia
knew
she had been playing at being a tavern harlot, then it could go very bad for her work. It would taint people’s opinion of both her and her book.

One misstep, one piece of bad luck…

She was still tipsy, still wobbly from the shock of her sexual reactions to Alex earlier. She was all alone in an unfamiliar house, facing a sure threat to everything she’d worked for.

Suddenly Alex, who had seemed the very devil himself not but moments before, seemed to be her only source of safety. The only friendly face. She grasped his arm.

He frowned with concern. “I am sorry. I didn’t know he’d be here. I’d never have brought you here if I had known.”

“Will he tell?” she whispered.

“No.” Alex’s eyes glittered coolly. “Green wouldn’t dare.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because he knows I’d blow a hole through his head, that’s why.”

She gaped at him and he gazed steadily back at her. He actually meant that. Gladly accepting a glass of wine from a passing servant, Emily all but gulped it down. Seeing the servant come around again, she discreetly requested a refill. She sipped slowly. Green caught her eye, nodding and grinning, his eyes ablaze with a strange, almost feverish light. She quickly drained her glass.

 
* * * *

The dry, overcooked roast pork could only be swallowed by washing it down with copious amounts of wine. The conversation reflected the atmosphere, oppressively dull. Samuel Cogswell was Alex’s second cousin on his mother’s side, but they were not close. He came here once a year out of respect to his mother’s memory, but it was always an onerous duty.

With boredom threatening to crush him, he introduced the topic of Rousseau’s
Émile
, a guaranteed point of controversy in this den of Federalists.

Emily looked up instantly and her eyes challenged him. “I agree with Mr Rousseau that physical activity and open, natural air are important for the mind, though his limited view of female education is clearly misguided.”

“If you reject part of his philosophy, how do you justify embracing his ideas about nature and education in general?” Cogswell asked, smiling condescendingly.

“Most men see women only as they wish to see them, existing only to serve domestic needs. I forgive Rousseau his prejudices just as I forgave my father.”

“You are very generous, then,” Cogswell replied, sharing a wry look with his chuckling male dinner companions.

“I agree most with Catherine Macaulay—both boys and girls should first develop their bodies and useful habits. Then focus on Latin grammar, French and geography, taught in an enjoyable manner.”

“Latin grammar taught to girls?” Cogswell said, glancing quickly at his wife, who appeared close to fainting while fanning herself rapidly. Clearing his voice, he continued, “To what purpose, Miss Eliot?”

“To discipline their minds,” Emily replied.

Most of the men sat laughing, some of them wiping tears from their eyes with their linen napkins while their wives simply sat silently, their dull countenances frozen with shock. It wasn’t the most progressive gathering in Philadelphia.

“Well, Dalton, what do you think of your young protégée’s radical thoughts?”

Alex smiled his most non-committal smile. “The lady is entitled to her own opinions without ridicule—but it’s bad enough that boys’ minds are subjected to torturous Latin without adding the fairer sex.”

“You didn’t enjoy Latin?” Emily fixed him with eyes that held serious curiosity. The memory of her body, soft and docile beneath his touch, teased his memory.

“No—and I enjoyed my sardonic schoolmaster even less.”

General laughter ensued.

“But then, I was a restless child.”

“When misguided adults stifle restlessness they unwittingly stifle the child’s mental abilities as well,” she said, adorably impassioned.

She’s so damnably lovely. And she’s yours for taking…forever if you want.

He pushed the dangerous thought down and re-focused his attention on the conversation.

“Still, studying Latin did me no harm.” She said the words calmly.

Dead silence ensued. Even Alex blinked, speechless. He had no idea she was that thoroughly educated.

“You studied Latin grammar?” one man finally asked, his eyes threatening to bug out of his head.

Women studying Latin wasn’t unheard of, but to this company it must seem like the harbinger of pandemonium throughout the whole social order.

“My grandfather was a schoolmaster and he insisted on it,” she replied. “But formal study can only do so much. Observation of the natural world is important for understanding. Following nature is the march of man.”

“You quote Joel Barlow as well?” asked Cogswell, a smile playing about his lips. “You’re a very strange flavour of Jacobinism, Miss Eliot.”

“You accuse me of Jacobinism based on what?” Emily asked, her voice sharper than Alex had ever heard it.

“Most young ladies accept the political wisdom of their fathers and husbands. For you to reject your father’s opinion so irreverently is in itself a hallmark of Jacobinism. Are you a Jacobin, Miss Eliot?” Cogswell demanded, fixing her with a stern look.

“I am not, sir,” Emily said defensively, her face flushing.

Mrs Cogswell perked up, seeing a lifeline to direct the conversation out of such murky waters. “Yes, Miss Eliot, who was your father?”

“Tom Eliot of Salem, a sea captain,” Emily said, glancing at Mrs Cogswell. Her face was still flushed and her hand trembled on her wineglass as her eyes flashed defensively.

Alex had wanted to stir a little controversy, not throw flames at the other side. She was totally disgracing herself—and him by proxy—in wearing her emotions, her offence, so openly. He had seriously miscalculated her ability to conduct herself in public. It just went to show how really untried and naïve she was. And it also proved beyond a doubt that he was the veriest wolf for taking advantage of her.

Cogswell wasn’t done. “Any woman who would disrespect her father’s opinions directly mirrors the social upheavals taking place in France as we speak.”

“I don’t condone the violence but not all French ideas are wrong,” Emily said.

Cogswell’s grey brows snapped together and he lifted his chin slightly. “Our government, well based in English law, is the best in the world. We don’t need French philosophy degrading our moral fibre.”

“Our government may be the best but it’s not perfect. Some issues are incomplete.”

“Such as?”

“Slavery,” Emily said calmly, as if she wasn’t opening a keg of powder.

Cogswell’s face went rigid. “Well, it’s your Mr Jefferson and the other Republican-Democrat rabble who engage in slaver—”

“Just as many northerners profit by the slave trade. Many here in Philadelphia have slaves as their servants—”

“Allow me to finish, Miss Eliot. ‘Twas God’s decision to place the slaves subordinate to the white man—as it was His decision to place children subordinate to their fathers and women to their husbands.”

Alex tapped the table slowly, feeling his jaw tightening. A social disaster, growing worse by the moment. Still, with the subject raised, he couldn’t remain silent.

“Where is your proof, Cogswell, that God intended slavery?”

“So you advocate setting all the slaves free to wander helpless and starve in the streets?” Cogswell said in a challenging tone.

“I advocate no such thing. It would have to be well thought out, carefully executed.”

“And they said your association with radical abolitionists was only in passing.”