By Love Undone (29 page)

“You see Rafe quite a bit these days, don’t you?” he asked, unable to keep the jealous edge out of his voice.

Her smile faded. “I see those who come to visit me,”
she answered. “You’ve been busy elsewhere, apparently.” Maddie glanced pointedly at Eloise, dancing with Thomas Danson.

He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, I have, thank you very much.”

“Eloise is not
my
fault,” she snapped. “You’re the one who keeps promising to marry everyone in sight.”

“I do not!” he protested.

She looked up at him. “I just wish you would tell me, straight out. You’re not hurting anyone, Quin, by doing the right thing and marrying Eloise.”

“The right thing is not to marry Eloise,” he countered. “Which is exactly why I’ve been keeping her occupied for the past week.”

Maddie’s suspicious expression made him want to laugh. “What do you mean, keeping her occupied’? She’s your betrothed, you big oaf.”

“I’ve recently found that idea very unappealing,” he said softly, holding her as closely as he dared in the blasted conservative assembly. “But I decided that while she spends time with me, she can’t be making things more difficult for you.”

“Oh, so now you’re being gallant again?” she said skeptically.

“I thought so.”

“Ah. And you’ll gallantly stand beside her at Westminster Abbey in two weeks as well, I suppose?”

He heard it then—the jealousy in her voice. Quin smiled. “I don’t want to marry Eloise,” he whispered, very conscious of the other dancers circling them and how much damage could still be done to her reputation. “Nor do I intend to do so. I love
you
, Maddie.”

She actually stumbled, tripping over his foot, and with a grin Quin pulled her against his chest until she could regain her balance.

“Are you all right?” he asked, feeling considerably
more confident than he had a moment before.

“What…what did you say?” she asked almost soundlessly, staring up at him white-faced.

“I said that I love you. Is that such a surprise?”

“Well, yes. Quin, you can’t love me—you’re still betrothed to Eloise.”

“Only until tomorrow morning. She can’t hurt you now, and I’m not certain I can take another day with her. I’m finding that several of my acquaintances are rather unpleasant to be around—very arrogant, they are.”

Maddie grinned, her eyes lighting. “You’re an idiot,” she whispered.

“I still love you. I’m beginning to think you’re impossible not to love.”

“Yours is a minority opinion.” Maddie took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have told me, anyway—you’re only making things more difficult. You’re bound to come to your senses soon.”

“Be with me tonight, Maddie,” he murmured. “We’ll figure everything else out tomorrow.”

“But Eloise—”

“To hell with Eloise. I want you.”

“That’s very dishonorable,” she said weakly.

He heard the reluctant desire in her voice. It was all he needed. “You’re already ruined,” he pressed, “thanks to me. Please, Maddie, whatever else happens, I want—”

“Shh,” she said. “How in the world do you intend to be with me, Lord Marquis? Are we going to steal into the library and lock the door? Oh, dear me, we’ve already done that, haven’t we?”

He chuckled, delighted. He’d won—at least, for the moment. “That was the drawing room. And when the dance is finished, follow me.”

As soon as the waltz ended, people crowded onto the
floor for a country dance. Quin ducked backward, Maddie trailing behind him. As the music started, he slipped out onto the dark balcony. Maddie peeked around the comer, and he pulled her onto the stones. He leaned down to kiss her, but she sidestepped, shoving him away.

“What is it?” he asked, pursuing her toward the railing.

Maddie raised her fist in his direction. “This is what happened before,” she hissed, “with that blasted Spenser. I don’t want anyone to see you trying to kiss me. Not after I just became respectable again.”

“I’ll check first, then,” he said, and moved past her into the darker shadows. Under the circumstances, he was lucky she hadn’t hit him; the only excuse he could give for being so obtuse was that he was having difficulty thinking of anything but feeling the warm, naked slide of her body against his. “All clear,” he informed her, returning to her side. “
Now
will you kiss me?”

With another hesitant look around, she lifted up on her toes. Leaning her hands on his chest, she touched her lips to his. Quin shut his eyes at the soft touch, slipping his arms around her slender waist and wondering that she’d ever come this far in trusting him. If he’d been the one betrayed and reviled by his peers, he wasn’t certain he’d have been able to do the same.

She sighed. “Oh, my, that’s nice.” After a moment, she relaxed against him. “What now?” she whispered against his mouth, placing feather-light kisses on his lips and along his jaw and cheek.

White-hot desire blazed through him. “We’d best do something soon,” he murmured, “because I am becoming extremely uncomfortable.”

“Out here?” she asked skeptically, her breathing uneven.

Quin stepped to the railing and looked down into the
garden. A thick trellis of vines crept up the wall beside the stone abutment. They could climb down, but once there, only the uncertain shadows of the foliage would shield them from curious eyes. And there were plenty of those about. “Devil it.” Banging his fist on the railing in growing frustration, he leaned out further and looked up.

“That way.” He grinned, pointing to the dark window twenty feet above their heads. “The attic.”

“You are completely mad,” she declared, unable to stifle a nervous chuckle. “Quin, you’re not serious. Almack’s attic?”

“Yes, I am. Shall I go first?”

“Quin, I’m not climbing up there. I’ll tear my dress.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to make love right here.” He smiled softly, running his finger along her cheek. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve torn one of your lovely gowns, Maddie.”

“Oh, damn,” she swore, swallowing hard. “If I wasn’t already ruined, you would take care of it. Climb the blasted trellis.”

He made it up fairly easily. Luckily, the window was unlatched, and he pushed it open and swung his legs over the sill. When he looked down, Maddie had the hem of her gown tucked into her neckline, and she was looking ahead determinedly as she climbed.

“Don’t you like heights?” he asked softly, as he guided her into the tall, narrow room.

“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she panted, freeing her hem. “I’ve completely lost my mind. This is so stupid.”

Quin lowered his lips over hers, stopping her complaints with a rough, deep kiss.
He
couldn’t believe she’d done it, either, and he had no intention of letting her take herself back down the trellis right away.

Everything was covered with dust, but fortunately the
spare furniture was draped with sheets. He released Maddie long enough to uncover an ornate serving table, a long gash across its otherwise smooth surface. Lifting Maddie around the waist, he set her down on the polished oak.

“Quin, we can’t do this,” she managed, clutching his shoulders and lifting her chin as he trailed his mouth down her soft throat.

“Stop saying that. I want to be with you.”

“And I want to be with you. But—”

He backed away just enough to look her in the eye. “You are
not
marrying anyone but me, and I am most certainly not marrying Eloise. Is that clear?”

She scowled. “You can’t order me—”

“And
I’m
not marrying Eloise Stokesley,” he repeated, before she could manage to turn this into another battle. They didn’t have a great deal of time.

Her mouth opened and then closed. “You’re not? Truly?”

“Truly.” He reached down to grasp her ankles, then slowly slid his hands up along her legs, lifting her skirt as he went.

“Just like that?”

Quin leaned down to brush his lips across her exposed thigh, and the muscles jumped beneath her skin. “Just like that.”

“And what about your family?” she pursued raggedly.

“I’ll tell them tomorrow.” Hungrily he sought her mouth again.

She moaned as his gentle touch found the secret place between her thighs. “But what about—”

“Shh,” he murmured. “Don’t ask me anything else.”

Whether she intended to ask anything or not, she became occupied with nibbling at his lip and then his ear. His heart pounding, Quin tugged her legs around his
hips, pulling her close against him. It seemed impossible that such a fiery, passionate woman could have had no lovers before him, but he knew she hadn’t. He was her first, and if everything went as he’d planned, as he’d dreamed, he’d be her only lover.

Maddie’s hands tugged at his waist, pulling his shirt-tails free of his trousers. With a breathless chuckle, she kissed him, her gray eyes dancing with heat and passion. Her hands fumbled with his fastenings, then freed him from his breeches. Quin moaned as she folded her legs around his hips. He entered her slowly, relishing the feel of her warm, tight flesh around him.

She threw her head back as he pushed into her, twining her hands together behind his neck and holding herself hard against him. Quin grasped her buttocks, pulling her to him with every thrust of his hips. He wanted to remember everything—the darkness of the night with the half moon rising just over the rooftops, the muffled sound of the country dance below, the lavender scent of Maddie’s skin, and the sparkle of her eyes as he looked into them.

They climaxed together, and he buried his face against her shoulder as he shuddered and spilled his seed inside her. Maddie threw her arms about his shoulders, holding tightly to him. After a long time, he lifted his head and gently kissed her again.

“Well, you’ve ruined me again,” she said, still out of breath.

“I seem to be making a habit out of it,” he agreed. “I can’t help myself. You are irresistible. But one of these days, you and I are going to share an actual bed, with an entire night of nothing but the two of us.”

She smiled at him and slowly lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. “That would be very nice,” she whispered.

He couldn’t help grinning. Maddie hadn’t said she loved him, but she did care for him. She’d made that
much obvious by the degree of trust she’d shown. Whether or not she would ever be able to tell him so, he had no idea. But he could hope. And he would wait.

“I love you, Maddie. I have since the moment we met.”

Her expression sobered. “What do we do now?”

He grinned ruefully. “We climb back down the trellis. Then you and I will go home, to our separate houses. In the morning I will call on my parents, I will call on Eloise, and then I will call on you. You are my heart’s desire, Maddie—you make me feel so alive. Nothing else matters but you and me.”

“Not your family, or your honor, or your title? What if your father disinherits you?”

He reached up to clasp her hands and brought them around to hold against his chest, over his heart. “I will call on you in the morning,” he repeated firmly. “Trust me.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise, my love.”

With a last, lingering kiss, Quin helped her down from the table. She wanted him to keep holding her, but a loud laugh from the ballroom below reminded her that they couldn’t very well stay hidden in Almack’s attic forever—and that was a pity.

He tucked his shirt back into his breeches and attempted to put his hair back in some sort of style, for she’d tousled it rather badly. Maddie self-consciously straightened her skirt and her underthings, feeling rather tousled herself. Pure insanity. That was her only explanation for her behavior since she’d met Quinlan Ulysses Bancroft.

She had heard of men who, once they began, couldn’t stop drinking liquor. Day in and day out they craved the stuff, paying attention to nothing else, until finally they
drank themselves to death. For the first time she understood the attraction.

She craved Quin with every breath, with every beat of her heart. No one knew her as he did, and certainly no one cared for her as he did. They were completely wrong for one another, but nothing made as much sense as being with him. In the moonlight his hair looked white and silver, and the green of his eyes darkened almost to black.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, as he glanced over at her.

“You,” she answered. “I can’t figure you out.”

He chuckled. “I thought I was being rather obvious, myself.”

“Not that.” Maddie flushed, though she had to wonder what in the world she had to be embarrassed about. She certainly had no secrets left from him.

Quin flung the old sheet back over the furniture. “What, then?”

“Since you’ve met me, you’ve nearly been drowned, shot, attacked by a mad sow, bellowed at by your father, kept—”

“My father bellows all the time,” he interrupted. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“I just don’t understand how, after all that, you could possibly decide that you love me.”

Quin looked at her for a long moment, then slowly came forward to fix a straying strand of her hair. “I’m not dull,” he said quietly.

“I know that,” she agreed. “I was only mad at you before.”

Gently he put a finger over her lips. “That’s not my point.
I’m
not dull, but my life is. As far back as I can remember, I’ve known I’d be the Duke of Highbarrow one day. I’ve known who I am to regard as a friend, and who is an enemy—not because I ever met them, but
because of who their great-great ancestors were. I’ve known whom I’m to marry practically since she was born. You are…unexpected. And that’s very rare and precious, where I come from.” He grinned. “No one’s actually ever
attempted
to drown me, before you.”

She searched his eyes, but all she saw was a warmth and passion that matched her own. “What happens when I become dull and ordinary to you?”

Quin laughed, until she put her hand over his mouth before they heard him downstairs. “Hush,” she ordered.

He removed her hand, holding it in his. “I don’t think you could become dull if you wanted to, my dear.” He chuckled softly, his eyes dancing, and leaned down to kiss her again.