Promise Me Tomorrow (18 page)

His heat enveloped her. She was only inches from his face. She could feel the thudding of his heart against her own chest.

“Don’t worry.” He grinned at her. “I am not about to ravish you. The ground is muddy here.”

He set her down on higher ground, and she stepped away, straightening her skirts and feeling both foolish and breathless with excitement. He went back to the boat and retrieved the large picnic basket that Cook had sent with him, and carried it into the small white building. Marianne followed him.

The summerhouse was round and enclosed by slatted screens, which Justin folded back to admit the light and air. When all the screens were opened, it gave a lovely view of the pond and gardens and house across the water, and of a verdant meadow and woods beside and behind it. Roses grew on trellises around the base of the house, and their sweet scent filled the air.

“It is beautiful,” Marianne admitted, walking around the inside perimeter to take in all the aspects of the view. The heady perfume of the full-blown roses filled her nostrils.

“And comfortable.” He gestured at the wide, cushioned window seat that ran around the inside wall, just below the opened screens.

“Yes.” Marianne sat down on the edge of the seat, folding her hands on her knees.

At the moment she felt anything but comfortable. The scene was far too conducive to seduction—from the balmy caress of the breeze across the lake to the heavy scent of the flowers to the inviting softness of the cushion beneath her—for her to relax. Despite his protestations to the contrary, she feared that Justin would begin to kiss her. It was not that she feared he would hurt her, for she felt rather sure that he would stop if she insisted. Nor was it that she did not want to feel his mouth on hers, for, if the truth were known, she would like very much to have that happen. But she knew that she could not allow it, and she did not want to have to face that dilemma.

“Let me take your hat,” he said, reaching for the wide ribbon tied beneath her chin, and Marianne started, looking at him warily.

“You scarcely need it in here,” he pointed out mildly, adding, “I shan’t request any other articles of clothing.”

She smiled, feeling a trifle foolish, and reached up to loosen the ribbons. She handed the hat to him, and he laid it on the table beside the picnic basket.

“You needn’t look so wary,” he told her. “I intend only to sit and enjoy the view and talk with you.”

He followed his words by sitting down beside her and half turning, so that he was looking both at her and at the lake beyond.

“What did you wish to talk about?” she asked a little primly.

“Whatever comes to mind. I had nothing planned.”

“Then tell me about yourself. I know less about you than you do about me.”

“All right. But I warn you that my life has been rather dull. I grew up in Kent, a rather unremarkable child, I’m afraid, and did my time at Eton and Oxford. The past few years I have spent doing little but enjoying myself in London. My mother tells me I ignore my responsibilities. I think she means that I should be getting married and producing heirs, but I fail to see the need for haste.”

“Surely there must be more to you than that. You have described half the gentlemen in London.”

“Probably.”

“Yet you are not the same as they. You are not like Bucky or Mr. Westerton or Lord Chesfield.”

“Am I not?” His smile was quizzical. “What is different?”

She hesitated. She could scarcely answer that none of them turned her knees to water or made her doubt her own emotions. “There is in you,” she began slowly, feeling her way, “a kind of power, I suppose, that I do not see in the others. A sense of…I don’t know, danger, perhaps.”

“Danger?” He chuckled. “Mrs. Cotterwood, I think you mistake me.”

“I think not. You are not a man a person wants to cross.”

“You make me sound very forbidding,” he responded lightly.

She shrugged. “You require…watching. No one else at that party noticed my actions. No one else followed me.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, then said, “Perhaps no one else was as bewitched by you as I.”

The glow in his eyes made her a trifle breathless as she said, “I think it was more than that.”

“Perhaps it was. I dislike boredom, and curiosity has always been one of my besetting sins. When I see a lovely woman acting as you were, it makes me wonder.”

“Why did you not set up a hue and cry when you decided I was a thief?”

Lambeth leaned closer. “Frankly, I was far more intrigued by you than I was concerned about Lord Batterslee’s valuables.”

“Why?” she asked him bluntly.

“Because I find you quite different, and I like things—and people—that are unusual. You did not seem to know who I was—or care. You defied me. You were…a challenge.”

“Ah. I see. The problem with being a challenge is that once the challenge has been met and conquered, it no longer intrigues.” Marianne turned away from him, rising to her feet.

He stood up, his hands going to her shoulders to stop her and turn her around. “I am not sure that a man could ever completely overcome the challenge that you are.”

Marianne looked up at him, her heart beginning to knock wildly in her chest. His hands were warm and strong upon her shoulders. As he gazed down at her, his thumbs began a slow, sensuous rubbing. His eyes darkened, and his mouth grew softer, and she knew he wanted to kiss her. The awful thing was, she realized, that she wanted him to do it, too.

“No,” she began feebly. “You said you would not.”

“I said I would not force you. Or do anything you did not want me to.” The implication of his words hung clearly in the air. “I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I don’t give a damn about what you do at parties or how many treasures you and your ‘family’ take. And, honestly, at this moment, I don’t give a damn about Bucky or how tight a web you weave around him.” His eyes flamed with a fierce light, and his voice was low and fraught with desire. “All I want is to kiss you. To take down that blazing hair and let it run over my hands. To touch your skin.”

As he said those last words, he touched his forefinger to her cheek, running it lightly down to the line of her jaw and along it. His skin seared her, and she could feel the faint tremor of passion in his touch. She sucked in her breath sharply at the sensations it evoked inside her.
This was what she had feared—this hunger that he could raise in her so quickly and easily.

“Lord Lambeth…” she began shakily, her hands clenching into fists at her sides—not, she knew, from a desire to strike him, but from fear that if she did not, her hands would go of their own free will to slide across the expanse of his chest.

“Justin,” he said hoarsely, his head bending close to hers. “Call me Justin. I want to hear my name on your lips.”

“Justin,” she complied, raising her face so that she was gazing straight into his eyes. It was a mistake, she knew: his gold eyes, darkened by desire, bored into hers, seducing her without his ever moving a muscle.

A sound escaped him, part sigh, part groan, and he cupped her face with his hands and bent to kiss her. A shudder ran down through Marianne, and she moaned, leaning into him, her lips hungry on his. Desire lanced through her, shocking in its intensity. She curled her fingers into his shirt, holding on to him as if she might fall if she let go.

J
USTIN’S ARMS WENT AROUND
M
ARIANNE
,
pressing her up into him. They clung together, eager and hot, the flame from one stoking the fires within the other, building higher and ever higher. His hands stroked her body, roaming down her back and over her hips, squeezing her buttocks and grinding her pelvis against his. Flames licked through Marianne’s abdomen, and she felt frenzied and out of control. She wanted to feel his hands everywhere on her; she hated the cloth that separated them from her flesh. His mouth was desperate on hers, his fingers almost bruising in their hunger.

He tore his lips from hers and began to kiss his way down her neck. Making a noise deep in his throat, Justin lifted her into his arms and carried her in two quick steps to the wide cushioned bench. He laid her down on the cushion and went down on his knees beside her. He kissed the soft tops of her breasts, his lips leaving a trail of fire across her chest, as his hand cupped one breast, his thumb caressing the nipple into a hard bud. Marianne squeezed her legs together, aware of a deep, insistent ache there.

Justin slipped his hand beneath the top of her dress, sliding over her bare skin, caressing the soft flesh, until his fingers found the taut nipple. Impatiently he shoved down the material, freeing one white globe. For a long moment he simply gazed at it, his thumb circling the dark pink bud, making it harden and point. Then he bent and touched the tip of his tongue to it, wetting it with slow, velvety strokes. Expertly he teased the button until Marianne was whimpering and arching up toward him, the fire in her loins raging out of control. Then he took her nipple into his mouth, pulling at the bud with a hot, wet suction that shot delightful pulses of sensation down through her.

Marianne moved restlessly. She felt at once languid and frenzied. She wanted to scream with impatience, and at the same time, she wanted the lazy movements of his tongue and mouth to go on forever. She ran her hands over his back and shoulders and up into his hair, caressing and squeezing, digging her fingers into his flesh whenever some new and delightful sensation shook her.

Justin’s hand went behind her, undoing the top buttons of her dress, and he shoved down the neckline of her dress and the sheer chemise beneath, exposing both her creamy white breasts. His mouth began to feast upon them as his hand stole down her leg and up under her skirt. Marianne gasped at the feel of his hand against her skin, separated only by the thin cotton cloth of her undergarment, and she raked her nails down his back.

His fingers slid between her legs and moved upward, easing her legs apart and gliding smoothly up and up until she was almost sobbing with anticipation, assaulted by the dual pleasures of his mouth and hand. Then his fingers found the hot, damp center of her desire, and Marianne let out a groan, arching up against his palm. He stroked her through the cloth, and she grew wetter beneath his ministrations. Involuntarily, Marianne’s hips began to circle, seeking satisfaction. She fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, opening the top two, and slid her hands inside, roaming over the bare skin of his chest. His skin was hot to her touch, exciting her even more, and she explored him eagerly, her fingertips caressing the smooth, firm flesh and twining through the curling hairs, touching the hard buttons of his masculine nipples.

The wordless sound he made confirmed his enjoyment of her explorations, and his mouth came back up to take hers once again. He unfastened the tie of her underdrawers and slid his hand beneath the material, delving down between her legs. Marianne gasped and shuddered as his fingers moved expertly in the soft, slick folds, finding the hidden nub of flesh that was at the seat of her pleasure. His finger moved gently, teasingly over it, arousing her with the merest feather of a touch.

Justin kissed his way to her ear, taking the lobe between his teeth and worrying it delicately, and all the while his fingers worked their magic, until she was groaning and clutching at his shoulders, urging him to the completion she sought. His finger tightened on her, and suddenly pleasure crashed through her, blinding in its intensity. Marianne cried out, her legs stiffening, as the pleasure washed through her in waves.

Justin nuzzled against her neck and murmured, his voice rich with satisfaction, “Bucky has never brought you that, I’ll warrant.”

It took a moment for his words to penetrate the haze of pleasure in which she floated. Languorous and sated, she lay still for a moment, his sentence gradually soaking into her consciousness. “What?”

Ice stabbed through her satisfaction.
Buckminster again—always Buckminster!
“That is why you did this? To woo me away from Bucky?”

Marianne’s voice rose in indignation, and she sat up, twisting away from him. Justin looked at her flashing eyes and realized what a mistake he had made.
Curse his tongue!
“No! That wasn’t what I meant at all!”

“No? Then what
did
you mean?”

His mind befogged by the hunger that throbbed within him, Justin struggled to find words to express the primitive male satisfaction that had surged inside him at her cry of pleasure. It was a tangle of pride and possession, sexual need and jealousy, that he barely comprehended himself. “Why, only that—that you are mine. That neither Buckminster nor any other man shall have you.”

“Your possession, you mean?” Marianne spat. “How nice for you.”

She sprang up, tears clogging her throat, and adjusted her clothing.
How could she have been so stupid? So naive? She had known he wanted to seduce her away from Buckminster, yet she had fallen into his arms like a piece of ripe fruit ready for plucking.

“You’ve certainly come out ahead today,” she went on furiously, reaching behind her to fasten the buttons he had undone. “You have bested both Buckminster
and
me.”

“I wasn’t trying to
best
you,” Justin protested, rising to face her. “What is so wrong in taking pleasure in giving you satisfaction?”

“How saintly of you! I am sure that you did not have a thought of removing Bucky from my clutches—or of showing me how easily you could control me.” Marianne’s cheeks flamed with humiliation.

“I wasn’t trying to control you,” Justin retorted hotly. “Damn it, woman, how can you accuse me of base motives when I have given you pleasure while I am still damned unsatisfied!”

“Poor thing!” Marianne retorted sarcastically. “Perhaps it will make you think twice next time before you start one of your foolish games!”

She whirled and ran from the room. Justin started after her, then stopped with a low curse. He thought with some pleasure of picking up the picnic basket—and perhaps the table and chairs as well—and tossing it into the pond, but he stopped himself, knowing that he would feel even more the fool after he had done it.

Damn the woman! How did she manage to remain so indifferent to the passion that seemed to rob him of all ability to think?
Justin had, in truth, originally conceived of the idea of seducing Marianne in the summerhouse as a way to woo her away from Buckminster, but in the passion of the moment, he had forgotten all about it. All he had been thinking of was making love to her, and his remark about Bucky, if he was honest, had spoken more to jealousy than to any desire to help his friend.

Obviously, however, it was Buckminster and the possibilities he offered her that were uppermost in Marianne’s mind, Justin thought bitterly. He reminded himself that he had known from the first that Marianne was a criminal schemer; he knew that he should not be surprised that she gave more importance to money matters than to passion.

The devil of it was that he had given in so to desire. If she was not interested, he should move on. He would have done so long since with any other woman.
And that was exactly what he would do now, he told himself. He would stop this foolish pursuit. He would forget about Marianne Cotterwood—if that was even her name—and find a more pliable female. Buckminster did not need his help; he was a grown man, and quite capable of taking care of himself.

With those pragmatic thoughts uppermost in his mind, Justin grabbed the basket and marched back to the boat. After tossing the basket into the vessel so hard that it rocked, he jerked off the mooring rope and climbed into the small boat. He put his back into his rowing and made it across to the landing dock at the foot of the garden in record time—and he looked only three times across at the path where Marianne made her way around the lake back to the house.

T
HE TEARS HAD STOPPED BY THE TIME
she reached the bottom of the garden, but Marianne went up the back stairs to her room anyway, not wanting to face any of the other guests. She knew she must look a fright, and she did not have the strength to deal with her impersonation of a lady at the moment.

A restorative cup of tea and an hour’s reflection on the perfidy of men left her much calmer, if no less angry with Lord Lambeth. She put on her most attractive day dress and redid her hair, and when the fishing party returned, she went downstairs. She flirted outrageously with Lord Buckminster—at least when Lord Lambeth was in the same room.

He soon left, and then she launched into her role of spoiled, irritating
belle.
She treated Penelope like something of a servant, sending her first to fetch the fan she had left in her room, then, only a few minutes later, to bring down her light shawl. When Bucky expostulated, she merely gazed at him coolly and said, “Nonsense. Penelope loves to do it. It makes her feel useful.”

She whined about everything she could think of, from the callous way Bucky had left her alone this morning to the temperature in the room, which was, by turns, too hot and then too cold for her delicate skin, to the lack of refreshment for her parched throat. When she was cold, she tried to persuade Buckminster to ask Lady Merridale to give up her seat by the sunny window to Marianne. When he stuttered that he could not do so, looking shocked, Marianne complained that he was not willing to do anything for her. Next she needed a stool for her feet and told Bucky imperiously to get one for her.

Nicola and Penelope were sitting with Marianne and Bucky when she demanded the stool, and Nicola had to put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile at her cousin’s astonished face. While Bucky was gone to the other room, looking for a footstool, Nicola leaned over and squeezed Marianne’s arm.

“Dear girl, you are wonderful! I have never seen Bucky look so indignant as when you sent Penny back up for that shawl.”

“I hope it’s working. I am running out of things to carp about,” Marianne replied. She turned toward Penelope. “I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings.”

“Oh, no. I know you’re doing it for me. It is just…” She looked a trifle sad. “I do so hate to see Bucky looking so crestfallen.”

“Stiffen your spine, Pen,” Nicola told her firmly. “Everything is going perfectly.”

“Here he comes,” Marianne, who was facing the door, said, quickly dropping her friendly manner. She smiled stiffly at Nicola and said, “Why don’t you start a conversation about horses?”

Nicola grinned. “This should be a treat.”

Bucky joined them, smiling determinedly, and set the stool down at Marianne’s feet. She put her feet upon it and quickly decided that it was too close to her chair. It took several minutes of Bucky’s moving it around before he achieved precisely the right spot.

Once he had resumed his seat, looking at Marianne somewhat askance, Nicola asked casually, “Did you ever buy those grays you were looking at, Bucky?”

He brightened. “Lord Pemberton’s pair? Dash it, no! He decided not to sell, after all. I was a little miffed, I must say. I had my heart set on them.” He turned toward Marianne, explaining, “They were beautiful steppers. I wish you could have seen them.”

“Were they?” Marianne drawled in a bored voice.

He proceeded to enumerate their fine points. After a few moments Marianne cut in, saying, “Really, Lord Buckminster, such fuss over a couple of horses! After all, they are all pretty much the same, are they not? Let’s talk about the ball your mother is giving this week. Who is coming?”

The conversation bounced along, with Nicola pulling the conversation back to horses, then Marianne dragging it back to her favorite topics—herself and parties. Nicola kept directing the conversation toward Penelope, as well, and each time Marianne quickly moved to shut the girl out. Marianne was afraid that perhaps they were being too obvious even for Bucky, but the growing frown on his face reassured her that they were not. Bucky’s disillusion—as well as his protectiveness toward Penelope—was rapidly growing.

That evening, after supper, the guests were largely gathered in the music room, halfheartedly listening to Lady Merridale play the piano. A few of the gentlemen had retreated to the card room—among them Lady Merridale’s husband, who had, presumably, heard her piano playing often enough—but Mr. Thurston and his secretary, Mr. Fuquay, remained, as well as Lord Buckminster and Lord Lambeth. Lady Buckminster pressed Penelope into singing some popular songs.

She looked quite pretty, Marianne thought, slim and dainty in a sky-blue gown from Marianne’s closet. Marianne glanced sideways at Lord Buckminster, who was watching Penelope, a faint smile on his face. She smiled to herself and glanced at Nicola. Nicola, too, had been observing Bucky, and she smiled and nodded to Marianne.