Perilous Risk (2 page)

Jon had a way of injecting finality into his tone, as though he were utterly weary of a person and had mentally dismissed them. He had just done so.

Icy indignation settled over Kean’s handsome features. “I’ll leave the two of you then. I have a party to attend to in any case, and I vow others will prove more cheerful company.”

Holding himself rather stiffly, he walked away.

Jon turned to face Rebecca, his vivid blue eyes terribly distant. Wintry.

He studied her. Probing.

Her heart began to pound. Could he see?

“What are you doing over there hugging the wall like a step-child?” He reached out a hand. “Come here.”

Rebecca immediately dropped her eyes and focused on her wineglass. She lifted it to her lips and downed the remaining half-glass. Her heart was jumping frantically against her chest wall. But God help her, she still felt the pull. The urge to look over towards the other side of the card room.

No, don’t.

Her palms began to sweat, soaking her silk gloves.

“Becky.”

Jon’s sharp tone shook her from her thoughts. She raised her eyes to his.

“I said to come here.”

Her belly quivered. She turned to the tea table nearby and set her empty glass on it. Then she smoothed her hands over her silk skirts. She began walking towards her protector, forcing a smile. Her heart remained guilty.

He continued to stare at her with wintry blue eyes.

She stopped and stood in front of his chair. Her gloves were so damp they stuck to her like a second skin. She peeled them off, partly because she couldn’t bear the clammy texture and partly just as a further delay.

Jon reached to the ashtray sitting on the arm of the wingchair and snuffed his cigar. He took her hand and brought it to his cheek. She felt the roughness of stubble. He hadn’t shaved since very early morning. He was usually fastidious about shaving in the evenings before any social engagements. It said much about his intentions to meet her here that he hadn’t taken the time to do so before leaving Whitecross Hall.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you before you left,” she said.

In the morning, he would set out for London and from there embark on a voyage to America, where he planned to spend a couple of months.

“Would I leave England without seeing my best laundress?”

She had to smile a little at that. Indeed, she had been his laundress through his long service in the Dragoons. But she had also been a lot more.

He moved her hand from his cheek and pulled it down, indicating that she ought to sit in his lap.

But she couldn’t. She was so nervous, she felt about to leap from her skin. She sought another excuse for delay. “Was Cranfield’s wife really prostrate with grief?”

Gossip held that Lady Cranfield was a cold young woman. In truth, Rebecca wasn’t all that curious about such details. But she could think of nothing else to say.

“So they said.” He scowled. “Grief for Cranfield—can you imagine?” His voice rang with incredulous disgust. “Good God, she must have loved his worthless arse.”

“You despised him so much.”

“Yes, I did. He was weak, unprincipled, uncaring. Just another fine son of the aristocracy.”

Jon was different now from how he’d been when she’d first known him as a young Dragoon officer. He had been both a leader and mentor of the men who served beneath him. He had understood their human weaknesses and sought to inspire and drive them to be brave, dutiful soldiers.

However, he had loathed his grandfather, the former earl, and been rejected by his noble family. Even bastard sons had been loved better in other noble families. Yet Jon had worked hard to prove himself capable of succeeding on his own. Proving himself different from his origins. He’d had some difficulty with authority and couldn’t stop clashing with his commanding officer. But he was not afraid to labour or to get his hands dirty. Since he had inherited the earldom and come home, he had become so hard, so cold, so cynical.

She wished she could somehow inspire him to see his unexpected inheritance as an opportunity to do things his way, not as an unwanted burden. However, she hadn’t been able to do so thus far.

She frowned. “Cranfield was a kind, gentle boy. How can you despise him?”

“Charming? Yes, that he was. Kind? No, he was not kind.”

“How can you say that?”

“Ah, you saw him only as a beautiful boy.” He reached up and traced his fingertip over her lower lip. “You saw only his green eyes and the sprinkling of freckles across his chubby cheeks.”

Her cheeks began to burn. Oh, sometimes Jon just didn’t know when not to prod! When something was too close to the bone for teasing. “That’s not so! He was a very kind, gracious person. At least he was the few times I spoke with him.”

“He left his wife alone in the country. As I said, a very young wife. And meanwhile he played lackey to every other woman he met. That doesn’t speak of a very thoughtful nature, does it?”

She shook her head. But she didn’t want to spend their last evening together before his trip discussing the unfortunate Cranfield and his funeral. She touched Jon’s gloved hand and traced his knuckles through the kid leather, enjoying the texture. “Shouldn’t we go into the main chamber?”

The main chamber was where everyone else was already engaged in an orgy of carnal excess.

He liked to watch other people make love.

She’d rather act than watch. Well, her time would come later, when he took her upstairs. Until then, she would sit at his feet and rest her cheek against his leg whilst he fondled her and watched other people. That was why they had met here. Maybe once they had reconnected physically, she would lose this sense of increasing foreboding.

His look remained distant.

She tugged his hand. “Jon?” she said, softly.

“What?” His tone was a shade irritated.

“Shouldn’t we go into the main chamber?” she repeated.

The furrow between his brows deepened and his hard mouth drew into a thin line. “In a while, Becky.”

He pulled his hand away from her. Then he lifted his drink to his lips.

She swallowed against a sudden burning in her throat. He was determined to be cross. She didn’t always understand him. What was bedevilling him?

She slipped down to her knees and bit her lip, still swallowing against the burn in her throat. She had missed him. Was that it then? Had she missed him so much that she’d been tempted into—no, no, it hadn’t been that dire. No man, no matter how intriguing his dark eyes, could tempt her into betraying Jon.

Jon signalled to a passing servant that he wished his glass to be refilled. It seemed as though he might be bent upon getting foxed.

Rebecca sighed. It wasn’t like him to drink to excess and he could be poor company when deep in his cups.

He touched her shoulder and pulled her against his leg.

The tension in her throat relaxed a degree and a curl of warmth eased into her belly. She pressed her cheek to his leg. Of course she would never, ever be unfaithful to him. She loved him completely.

“Christ, Becky, is this all there is? Endless drinking, gambling, hunting and whoring and all just waiting for some mindless carriage horse to crack one’s skull?”

His uncharacteristically gloomy tone unsettled her. “The Jonathon Lloyd I used to know—Captain Lloyd—he would have said it was simply Cranfield’s time to die.”

“Time to die? No—not in this case. Cranfield lived a useless life, right up to the end. He never had a chance to redeem himself. It was such a damned depressing spectacle of a life.”

Rebecca’s neck and shoulders began to tense. Dwelling on such matters always put her ill at ease. She put her finger to her mouth and chewed the tip of her nail. A peculiar tingling chased around her navel.

This time she couldn’t resist.

Her gaze was drawn to the other corner of the parlour.

The dark head bent over the chessboard. He had forgotten about her. A little pang constricted her heart. Which was silly. Of course he had forgotten her. She had rejected his earlier advances.

As though he felt her eyes upon himself, he glanced up from his game.

Heat twisted through her lower belly and spread into her loins, and she couldn’t prevent the slight upward curving of her mouth.

His expression remained impassive. His eyes, as cold and dark and deep as the sea at midnight, held hers transfixed.

Or did she only imagine the coldness?

What had caused that coldness? Wounded male pride?

Yes, she had rejected his advances. But she had been tempted. So tempted…

A caress brushed over her hair, light as a spider’s legs.

She jumped.

Jon traced her ear. He had removed his glove and his fingers were slightly coarse and warm. “You do know that I would have come sooner, if I’d been able.”

She nodded.

He gave a gentle tug on the pearl earbob he had given her when they had first come home from New Orleans. That had been right after he had sold his commission upon inheriting. “You look very fetching in that frock.”

“You think so?” Her voice sounded a touch hoarse. Sensual. She touched the lace trim on her bodice.

Jon had sent the gown to her last week with instructions that she was to wear it here at Eastwood Place. The dressmaker had visited her personally and seen to the fitting. It was a courtesan’s garment, embellished with much lace and sparkling beads. Its low-cut bodice and plunging back, the capped sleeves set halfway down her shoulders, left much of her upper body bared.

She continued touching the lace on the gown. The gentleman watched her and his dark eyes seemed to glitter with lust.

But surely she couldn’t really see that from this far away?

“I knew you would be a vision. Blue becomes you.” Deep fondness sounded in Jon’s voice. He was kind to compliment her. She wasn’t really the type of woman he was most drawn to. He adored ladies with masses of long hair, the darker the better. And whilst he often complimented her breasts as being perfect little peaches, truth was he preferred melons.

Rebecca’s breasts were more like apricots.

But she knew she looked well in the gown. Earlier, all the gentlemen had followed her with their gazes. As though she were truly beautiful instead of merely passing pretty.

One gentleman in particular…

Now she couldn’t tear her gaze away from those dark eyes across the chamber.

Jon ran a finger over her nape, along the chain of the necklace that marked his ownership of her, reminding her, without words, that she gave him something that surely no fine-born lady could.

Her complete and total submission and obedience.

She dropped her head and stared at her lap. She loved him so dearly, not even a whole regiment of mysterious, dark-eyed gentlemen could entice her from his side. She pressed her cheek against his leg and felt the tension ease in his powerful muscles. They sat there a long while, he drinking and she soaking in his nearness, his favour.

Everything was right. Perfect.

And then she did it. She couldn’t stop herself. Just a quick glance.

To see if he was still there. If he was still looking at her.

He was.

A deep inhalation sounded. “What’s this between you and him?”

At the note of vexation in Jon’s voice, Rebecca’s heart seemed to stop.

“Attend to me, Becky.”

She jerked her head around to gape at him, her mouth slightly parted. Under his vivid, cool blue appraisal, her wits abandoned her.

He gripped the back of her neck lightly.

Gooseflesh spread like wildfire down her nape and back.

“I asked you, what has been transpiring between the two of you?”

Flutters erupted in her belly. “Nothing.”

“Then why is he staring at you as though you two had some kind of…” He scowled for a moment. “Profound connection.”

“You suspect me?” She attempted a light tone but her voice rose on the last word.

“I was rather late in arriving. You were bored, eh?”

The last time he had determined that she’d flirted a little too avidly with a gentleman during his absence, she hadn’t sat comfortably for a good while. She was under his dominion. His to control and to own.

With his free hand, he tapped his fingertips on her half-bared shoulder. “I am waiting for you to answer me.”

“Yes, we did, I mean I…played chest…Uh, I played chess with him.”

Oh God. Oh God. Why was she behaving as though she were guilty? Why was she
feeling
so guilty?

Jon tightened his grip on her neck. “You don’t play chess.”

“We played and I lost. Badly.”

He shook his head, ever so slightly. “No man looks at a woman like that simply from having played chess with her for a few days.”

His stare penetrated her and her heart fluttered all the harder. Why not tell him? Why was she feeling so guilty over this matter? “All right, we knew each other from before.”