Pure Sin (2 page)

"His wife left him today."

"Probably with good reason."

"Rumor has it she ran off with Baron Lacretelle."

"A mutual parting, then. Adam has dozens of lovers."

"He's a cool one to show up tonight as though nothing untoward has happened in his life," an older man remarked.

"It's his Indian blood," a young lady standing beside Flora whispered, her gaze traveling down Adam's lean, muscled form, her voice touched with a piquant excitement. "They never show their feelings."

He looked as though he was showing his feelings now, Flora reflected, watching the animated conversation between their host and the man who was attracting so much attention. The bronze-skinned man smiled often as he conversed, and then he suddenly laughed. She felt an odd, immediate reaction to his pleasure, as though his cheer was beguiling even from a distance.

"Who is he?" Flora asked, struck by his presence.

The young lady answered without taking her eyes from the handsome long-haired man. "Adam Serre, Comte de Chastellux. A half-breed," she softly added, his exotic bloodlines clearly of interest to her. "He's even
more
available, now that his wife has left him."

"Available?" Did she mean marriage? Never sure of female insinuation, since her own conversation tended to be direct, she made a polite inquiry.

"You
know
…" the pretty blond declared, turning to wink at Flora. "Just look at him." And her sigh was one of many—surreptitious and overt—that followed in the wake of Adam's progress that evening.

Flora was introduced to him much later, after dinner, after a string quartet had begun playing for those who wished to dance. When Judge Parkman said, "Adam, I'd like you to meet George Bonham's daughter. Flora Bon-ham, Adam Serre," she found herself uncharacteristically discomposed by the stark immediacy of his presence. And her voice when she spoke was briefly touched with a small tremor.

"How do you do, Mr. Serre?" Her gaze rose to meet. his, and her breath caught in her throat for a moment. His beauty at close range struck her powerfully, as if she were imperiled by such flagrant handsomeness.

"I'm doing well, dunk you," he said, his smile open and natural, the buzz of gossip that evening concerning his marriage apparently not affecting him. "Is this your first visit to Montana?"

"Yes," she replied, her composure restored. He seemed unaware of his good looks. "Montana's very much like the grasslands of Manchuria. Beautiful, filled with sky, rimmed with distant mountains."

The earl's daughter was quite spectacular, Adam thought with a connoisseur's eye, her mass of auburn hair so lush and rich and heavy, it almost seemed alive, her face dominated by enormous dark eyes, her skin golden, sun kissed, from so much time out of doors. He knew of her travels with her father; George Bonham had visited several of the Absarokee camps in the past months. "And good horse country too," he replied, "like the steppes of Asia. Did you see Lake Baikal?"

"Have you been there?" Animation instantly infused her voice.

"Many years ago."

"When?"

He thought for a moment. "I'd just finished university, so it must have been 1859."

"No!"

"When were you there?" He found the excitement in her eyes intriguing.

"June."

"We set up camp on the west shore near Krestovka. Don't tell me you were in the village and we missed you."

"We were a few miles away at Listvyanka."

They both smiled like long-lost friends. "Would you care for some champagne?" Adam asked. "And then tell me what you liked most about Listvyanka. The church, the countess Armechev, or the ponies?"

They agreed the church was a veritable jewel of provincial architecture. It was natural the artistic countess would have appealed more to a young man susceptible to female beauty than to a seventeen-year-old girl obsessed with horses. And the native ponies elicited a lengthy discussion on Asian bloodstock. They found in the course of the evening that they'd both been to Istanbul, the Holy Land, newly opened Japan, the upper reaches of the Sahara, Petersburg in the season. But always at different times.

"A shame we didn't ever meet," Adam said with a seductive smile, his responses automatic with beautiful women. "Good conversation is rare."

She didn't suppose most women were interested exclusively in his conversation, Flora thought, as she took in the full splendor of his dark beauty and power. Even lounging in a chair, his legs casually crossed at the ankles, he presented an irresistible image of brute strength. And she'd heard enough rumor in the course of the evening to understand he enjoyed women—nonconversationally. "As rare as marital fidelity, no doubt."

His brows rose fractionally. "No one's had the nerve to so bluntly allude to my marriage. Are you speaking of Isolde's or my infidelities?" His grin was boyish.

"Papa says you're French."

"Does that give me motive or excuse? And I'm only half-French, as you no doubt know, so I may have less excuse than Isolde. She apparently prefers Baron Lacretelle's properties in Paris and Nice to my dwelling here."

"No heartbroken melancholy?"

He laughed. "Obviously you haven't met Isolde."

"Why did you marry, then?"

He gazed at her for a moment over the rim of the goblet he'd raised to his lips. "You can't be that naive," he softly said, then quickly drained the glass.

"Forgive me. I'm sure it's none of my business."

"I'm sure it's not" The warmth had gone from his voice and his eyes. Remembering the reason he'd married Isolde always brought a sense of chafing anger.

"I haven't felt so gauche in years," Flora said, her voice almost a whisper.

His black eyes held hers, their vital energy almost mesmerizing; then his look went shuttered and his grin reappeared. "How could you know, darling? About the idiosyncracies of my marriage. Tell me now about your first sight of Hagia Sophia."

"It was early in the morning," she began, relieved he'd so graciously overlooked her faux pas. "The sun had just begun to appear over the crest of the—"

"Come dance with me," Adam abruptly said, leaning forward in his chair. "This waltz is a favorite of mine," he went on, as though they hadn't been discussing something completely different Reaching over, he took her hands in his. "And I've been wanting to"—his hesitation was minute as he discarded the inappropriate verb—"hold you." He grinned. "You see how blandly circumspect my choice of words is." Rising, he gently pulled her to her feet "Considering the newest scandal in my life, I'm on my best behavior tonight."

"But, then, scandals don't bother me." She was standing very close to him, her hands still twined in his.

His fine mouth, only inches away, was graced with a genial smile and touched with a small heated playfulness. "I thought they might not."

"When one travels as I do, one becomes inured to other people's notions of nicety." Her bare shoulder lifted briefly, ruffling the limpid lace on her décolletage. He noticed both the pale satin of her skin and the tantalizing swell of her bosom beneath the delicate lace. "If I worried about scandal," she murmured with a small smile, "I'd never set foot outside England."

"And you do."

"Oh, yes," she whispered. And for a moment both were speaking of something quite different.

"You're not helping," he said very low. "I've sworn off women for the moment."

"To let your wounds heal?"

"Nothing so poetical." His quirked grin reminded her of a teasing young boy. "I'm reassessing my priorities."

"Did I arrive in Virginia City too late, then?"

"Too late?" One dark brow arched infinitesimally.

"To take advantage of your former priorities."

He took a deep breath because he was already perversely aware of the closeness of her heated body, of the heady fragrance of her skin. "You're a bold young lady, Miss Bonham."

"I'm twenty-six years old, Mr. Serre, and independent."

"I'm not sure after marriage to Isolde that I'm interested in any more willful aristocratic ladies."

"Perhaps I could change your mind."

He thoughtfully gazed down at her, and then the faintest smile lifted the graceful curve of his mouth. "Perhaps you could."

"How kind of you," Flora softly replied in teasing rejoinder.

"Believe me, kindness is the last thing on my mind at the moment, but people are beginning to stare. It wouldn't do to besmirch your reputation on your first
night in Virginia City. And I like this waltz, so allow me the honor of your first dance in Montana." He was avoiding temptation as he swung her out onto the floor, cutting short a conversation that had turned too provocative.

But he found dancing with the alluring Miss Bonham only heightened his sensational response to her, and everyone in the room noticed as well. A palpable heat emanated from the beautiful couple twirling across the floor, and people turned to watch as they passed.

She wore violet tulle, elaborately ornamented with moss-green ribbon and ivory lace, a dazzling counterpoint to her pale skin and auburn tresses and to the severe black of Adam's evening clothes. The diaphanous froth of her gown and her lush femininity were a counterpoint as well to Adam's harsh masculinity. And later as they danced, when a silky tendril of Flora's hair fell loose from the diamond pins holding her coiffure in place, Adam bent his head and lightly blew it aside. At his intimate, audacious gesture, simultaneous indrawn breaths from scores of wide-eyed guests seemed to vibrate through the room.

And molten heat flared through Flora's senses.

Even as she shut her eyes against the exquisite sensation of his warm breath on her neck, she felt his arm tighten around her waist, as if he too were susceptible to urgent desire. And she understood suddenly why women pursued him. Beyond his obvious beauty he offered a wild, reckless excitement; oblivious to exacting decorum and every watchful eye, he did as he pleased. Heedless, rash, direct And she felt him hard against her stomach.

She was far too beautiful, too impetuously unconstrained, and even as he moved against her in the dance, his arousal pressed into her yielding body, he struggled to retain a pragmatic grip on reality. Only short hours ago he'd vowed to give wide berth to pampered patrician women. But she's not precisely pampered, his libido pointed out, allowing him the rationalization he craved. She's lived in tents in far corners of the world most of her life. There. It's all right, his heated voice of unreason said. And as his erection swelled, he found himself surveying
possible discreet exits from the room. "Can you leave?" he bluntly asked, deliberately omitting the familiar seductive words. He didn't wish to be so aroused by her. His irrational, heated desire disturbed him; he would prefer she refuse.

"For a short time," she said as bluntly as he.

His surprise showed.

"If it will ease your discomfort," Flora softly said, her dark eyes touched with violet squarely meeting his, "
I
could seduce
you
."

"Do you do this often, then?" His voice was cool, but his grip tightened at her waist.

"Never." The brush of her thighs against his as they turned in graceful slow loops around the floor seemed patent contradiction.

"Should I be honored?" A certain insolence colored his words.

"If you wish," she tranquilly said. "I prefer the concept of mutual pleasure."

His reaction to her last two words was immediate. She could feel it. "Could I interest you in a view of Judge Parkman's new garden?" Adam brusquely queried, turning them toward the terrace doorway.

"It depends on the view."

His head snapped around from a swift survey of an exit route, and he found her smiling up at him.

"I'm serious," she said, but a teasing impudence gleamed from her eyes.

"I'll see what I can do," he gruffly declared. "Do you need a wrap?" A nearly forgotten politesse.

"How chivalrous," she said with a smile, "but I think we're both comfortably warm. It must be the dancing."

"Or
uncomfortably
warm," he muttered, gazing down at her with heated black eyes. "And dancing has nothing to do with it." They'd reached the border of the dance floor, and with an edginess Flora found equally tantalizing and disturbing, he wordlessly guided them around two potted palms to the terrace door, pushed it open, and pulled her outside.

He stood on the flagstones, his hand firmly gripping hers, scrutinizing the garden that was almost bare of flowers this early in the spring; the foliage of hedge and bower consisted only of half-formed leaves. A decision apparently made, Adam turned toward the back of the stone mansion, moving less swiftly so Flora could keep up. Then, leaving the terrace, he walked across the carefully raked gravel of the back drive into the dusky entrance to the carriage house. With the large double doors open, the spring moonlight illuminated the front third of the interior, which Adam carefully noted before moving farther back into the shadows.

He seemed to know where he was going, for he strode surefooted to a landau set against the wall, abruptly swept her into his arms, and deposited her in a tumble of violet tulle on the wide satin-upholstered seat.

"Should we put the top up?" Flora murmured, stripping off one long kidskin glove as Adam unlatched the lacquered door and stepped into the open carriage.

He shook his head. He'd selected the landau for its roominess and open top; he'd made love in enough closed carriages to know the merits of space. "Will your father look for you?" he asked as he seated himself beside her and slid into a comfortable sprawl.

"Not since I turned eighteen and came into my own fortune." Her smile was pale in the dim light.

"You're very unusual," he softly said, gazing at her.

"You are too. You must know that." She was unbuttoning her second glove at the wrist.

"One's constantly reminded," he dryly said, stretching his arms above his head, then relaxing again. "Acting Governor Meagher and his drunken volunteers are currently dividing their time between Con Owen's Saloon and their inebriated pursuit of Indians." He shifted his posture slightly. Restless, he was questioning the wisdom of his libido-driven actions. "My clan is trying to stay out of their way."