Perilous Risk (29 page)

“Don’t do that,” Stephen said.

With the glass poised at her lips, she raised her brows. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t get intoxicated.”

She scoffed. “It would take quite a bit more of this to make me foxed.” She quaffed this glassful a little more slowly. The burn was steadying.

God, help her. What a day this had been!

And she had thought she’d faced the worst that night with Maria Seymour! Her troubles had just been beginning.

She slammed her glass on the tabletop. “You can stop staring at me like that. I am not some bloody delicate lady.”

He continued to stare at her. She could tell he was striving for his usual calm but his eyes were like blue fire. “Don’t use such language, Rebecca.”

“Bloody hell, Stephen, I am not that same young, naïve wife you knew in the Dragoons. I have lived hard and played hard and done things that would make any gently-reared lady faint dead away if she but
heard
about them.”

“This is what Ruel wanted you to be?”

She shrugged. “You know how I was. Uncultured, barely literate. Oh, I could read and write. But I had not used those skills to become worldly in any sense of the word. My reading was limited to the Bible. Father believed too much education led a woman to the devil. As though learning was going to electrify her cunt and cause her to be the most insatiable wanton.”

She threw the vulgar words at him with defiance. Then she tossed her head back, gleaning a great deal of satisfaction from showing him just how jaded a woman she was. He didn’t know her half as well as he imagined. No man did.

He didn’t so much as flinch this time at her crude language.

A measure of the satisfaction drained away, leaving her feeling weaker.

“Ruel encouraged you to continue your education?” he said.

“He encouraged me to read novels and newspapers and he taught me the manners of the nobility, how to conduct myself around the gently-bred officers and their lady wives. He taught me enough French and Spanish that I could converse in those tongues. He advised me how to dress and keep my hair in a more tasteful, elegant manner.”

“He also enabled you to be able to afford such luxuries.”

“Yes, as much for his own pleasure as mine.”

“So, he treated you like a doll?”

She laughed, making the sound purposefully harsh. “I suppose someone might think that.”

“He wanted you to be the perfect mistress. An elegant courtesan in public and a wanton in private.”

“Aye, he did.”

“And he dressed you in seductive clothes, to show off your beauty and gain the envy of his peers.”

“Maybe, yes, maybe. But you are portraying it all wrong. He helped me. He improved me.”

“I thought you were just fine the way you were before.” He swept his hand over her. “You seem to prefer to dress for comfort and modesty now.”

She rolled one shoulder, in that way that she had learned. An elegant gesture. “I have been trying to act my age and to settle into my own social station.”

“Should you be bound by the expectations of any social station?”

“My father has always told me that putting on airs and keeping company with my betters would bring only heartache and disaster.” At that little admission, a sinking sensation of dread twisted into her stomach. She frowned. “He was right.”

How small her voice sounded, as though she were still a young woman, being berated by Father. Or how she had felt, reading his angry response to her letter informing of her marriage to Donald Howland.

“You should dress as pleases you, within reason,” Stephen said.

She gave a small, cynical laugh. “Men always want to dictate a woman’s attire. How would you dress your mistress?”

“I have no interest in keeping a mistress.”

Why, oh why had did his words hurt? She certainly had no wish to be the long-term plaything of a dangerous madman! She swallowed back the aching in her throat. “Yes, but if you had one, how would you dress her?”

He refilled his wine glass then took a deep and leisurely drink of claret.

How strange for a man to prefer wine to brandy or whisky. But then Stephen would have to be different, wouldn’t he?

He set his glass on the table. There was something in the way he was regarding her that made her draw her spine straighter and lift her chin.

He didn’t approve of her? Well, then to the devil with him!

She’d had her fill of men disapproving of her, and of trying to please them and adapt herself to suit their wants. From now on, she would live to please herself. If she got out of all of this alive, that was.

A knock on the door startled her.

Stephen stood and went to answer it.

A couple of male servants carried in a china tub then brought several buckets of hot water to fill it.

She struggled against the rise of tenderness she felt towards Stephen at this unexpected thoughtfulness. To hide it, she gave him an arch look then took the bottle of whisky and her glass with her to the tub.

Her tense muscles were simply dying for a warm soak. Maybe she ought to resist the temptation. But he had just informed her of the futility of her attempting to escape. At least, the futility of making such an attempt whilst he remained wakeful. And he had seen her naked already without doing her any harm.

She stripped off then stepped into the tub.

She suppressed a wince as the water stung the raw skin at her wrists. She leaned against the rim of the tub and let the warmth ease her tight muscles.

“He doesn’t want you.” Stephen’s voice drew her out of her sleepy haze.

Without opening her eyes, she knit her brows together. “What?”

His boots sounded on the wood floor, approaching closer. “Jonathon Lloyd no longer wants you.”

She curled her lip, opened her eyes and regarded Stephen just as intently as he had her. “Yes, of course, I know this.”

He went to his satchel and brought back the little amber bottle of liniment he’d used on her earlier. He knelt beside the tub then took her hands. He used the linen towel lying nearby to dry her wrists. Then he applied a liberal amount of the ointment to her raw flesh, creating a water resisting barrier. He looked up at her then.

Would she always catch her breath at the beauty of those eyes?

“You know in your mind that the Earl of Ruel is no longer yours, but what of your heart?”

“What of my heart?” She pulled her hands from his with an impatient jerk.

He compressed his lips.

She leaned halfway out of the tub, sloshing water onto the wood floor as she did, and retrieved her whisky bottle and the glass.

“Is that wise, Rebecca?”

“After today? It is necessary.” With a last defiant glance at him, she slipped back into the tub and poured herself another glass of whisky and took a modest sip of it, letting the burn spread more slowly this time. Savouring the richness. God, Jon could pick the best Scotch whisky.

He took the bottle from her. It made a little thud as he set it on the floor beside the tub. “What of your heart, Rebecca?”

She flicked him another defiant look. “My heart is dead.”

“No, it is not.”

“Yes, it is.” She reached over the edge of the tub and set her empty glass down. It fell over and rolled, making a clear bell-like chime as it came to rest against the china tub. She sat up straighter and jutted her chin out. “I am dead and cold inside.”

Stephen shook his head with a look of utter assurance.

An urge to lean over and slap that look right off his face made her palm burn. Beneath the water, she curled her fingernails into her palms.

He reached and traced a fingertip down her cheek, tracing where a stray curl lay wet and plastered to her skin. “Your heart is not dead, only dormant.”

“Well, that’s a relief to know,” she quipped, hiding her ire though her tone came out rather snappish. Lord, he was so full of himself.

“You know he cannot be yours again and yet you cannot let him go.”

A huge lump lodged itself in her throat. Her eyes burnt.

How could he just sit there and say such things? How could he slash her to pieces like this and remain so calm? His image grew a little wavy. She closed her eyes and shook her head firmly. “No, no, you’re wrong. I am done with men. All men.”

His look grew tender, so full of compassion. “No, you’re not that kind of woman.”

“Ha! And you know what kind of woman I am?”

“You are a little afraid of your own lust for life. That’s the real reason you have suppressed yourself.” He spoke so quietly, so gently, the huskiness in his voice was accentuated. “You need a strong man in your life, someone to rest your burdens on. Someone who will guide you and set limits for you but without making you feel that your freedoms are unduly trampled upon.”

That lump in her throat seemed to double in size. She tucked her chin to her neck and swallowed.

It was hard for her to take. He shouldn’t see so clearly into her. It was a crime for God to allow anyone to be so perceptive. Her wounds and her pathetic lingering feelings that would not die no matter how hard she tried to suffocate them with hours of work and denial, all of that was her affair. It was a delicate, private matter. She had a right to her dignity.

Some of the ointment had washed from her wrists. It made an iridescent oily film on the water’s surface. She traced her fingertip over it, making swirls in the little rainbows. “I have my father.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It shall have to do. I have wasted my youth and have reached the age where a husband is no longer a possibility for me. I have made my peace with the situation.”

“No, you haven’t made peace with the situation. You have merely suppressed yourself and run from that which you most desire and need.”

Was he prepared to take that position? She glanced up through her lashes and her gaze clung to the sensual curve of his mouth. If he kissed her now, he would taste of lush wine.

God, help her, why did such thoughts continue to plague her?

She shook herself.

Because of the abduction, she was done with him. And after him? There would be no man ever again.

He traced his fingertip around the shell of her ear. Hot shivers chased down deep inside, seeming to centre in her nipples. Gooseflesh erupted all along her nape, back and chest. Pleasurable electricity.

“Jonathon Lloyd doesn’t want you, not now.” He leant closer, so close his breath tickled her ear. “But I do.”

Another wave of heated shivers raced down her neck, made her shudder slightly. “Please Stephen, don’t.”

“
I
want you.” He put his lips to the hollow beneath her ear.

“Stephen, don’t…” Her voice trembled for he was licking that sensitive patch of her neck. “Don’t.” She tried to make her voice firmer, but failed. Her nipples went rigid.

“However, I don’t want you for a mistress.”

“You don’t?” What the devil was all this foolish talk about then?

“I would make you a baroness.”

Oh God.
Oh God.

A dry-mouthed, giddy panic beat through her blood.

No, she didn’t wish to marry again.

She’d never sign on for that kind of misery again. She would never risk being trapped, yoked to a man who could do nothing but disappoint her.

However, she’d be a cold woman not to have her head turned by such talk. Not her head. Her heart. Too much was at risk when her heart was affected. She gripped the sides of the tub and slowly shook her head. “No, you shouldn’t say things like that. It’s not kind to make empty promises.” Her voice caught. “You’ll make me hate you completely if you lie to me about something like that.”

Her voice had risen on the last. For she never, ever wanted to hate him. Couldn’t bear to hate him. Yes, she was madder than a hornet over what he’d done today. But she suspected she didn’t really
hate
him. Not the hollowed-out-heart way she would despise him if he made her such romantic promises and then eventually abandoned her for a younger, wealthier and perhaps titled woman. If she could survive another such rejection again to begin with.

Did his regard, his passion really matter so much?

Apparently, it did.

The thought sent pricking spires of fear into her chest and lower into her belly. She made an effort to breathe slower, deeper.

Don’t lose your head. Remember, you are supposed to be wiser now.

“I am not lying to you,” he said firmly.

“The day you marry some fresh-faced baronet’s or squire’s daughter, I will remember your romantic talk and I will hate you for lying to me about something so intimate and serious. I will hate you because you lied just because you wanted to seduce me.”

“I do want to seduce you.” His smile, sensual lips curving upwards and revealing white teeth, made her catch her breath.

With trembling lips, she couldn’t help but return it.

Bloody hell, she was so lost now! The smile froze on her lips and she hugged her shoulders. “I knew it.”