Pursued By The Viscount (6 page)

Then, perhaps, at the age of five and twenty and with a child in the nursery, it was past time she was?

And by a man such as Brooketon. Self-confident. Handsome. Experienced in the ways of women.

There was little gossip in Society about Brooketon’s personal life—who would
dare
to discuss such an arrogantly powerful man, even in the privacy of their drawing rooms? But the little Rachel had heard indicated he took the occasional mistress. Discreet and quietly conducted affairs with widowed ladies of his own age who had no expectations of remarrying.

As Rachel did not.

Some of the tension eased from her at the realization she and Brooketon were both adults, with no hidden agenda and no expectations.

Only desire.

Rachel could no longer deny the way her heart pounded whenever she was in Lucien’s company. Or that unfamiliar tingling in her breasts at the thought of having those sculpted lips pressed against her own, and the unfamiliar dampening and blossoming between her thighs.
 

Indeed, she could not seem to help staring at those gloriously sculpted lips.

“Yes?” It took every ounce of self-control Lucien possessed to keep his voice from sounding forceful or demanding as Rachel took an age, it seemed to him, to decide whether or not she would so much as allow him to kiss her.

She looked at him beneath lowered lashes. “Yes.”

Lucien had not realized how tensely he waited, until his breath left him in a relieved sigh at hearing Rachel’s answer.

“But you will stop if I command it?” She made no effort to hide her lingering feelings of unease.

But at least it was now only unease rather than outright panic. That bastard Shaw’s brutality had damaged this lady so much, Lucien wanted to hit someone. Or something, as that gentleman was no longer alive to receive his anger.

An emotion he pushed firmly to one side as he saw the way Rachel looked at him with shy expectation. One day, he promised himself, Rachel would lie naked in his arms after they had made love, and the two of them would be completely and unreservedly satiated after those hours of lovemaking.

Until that day, he would temper his impatience and accept each part of Rachel as she was willing to give it.

Rachel forced herself to stand unmoving as Lucien lifted his hands to cradle her cheeks. He raised her face to his before he lowered his head toward hers. Her lips parted as if by instinct to accept the soft pressure of his.

She closed her eyes as a thrill shot through her unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Warmth. Pleasure. So much pleasure, as their breaths mingled, the firm heat of Lucien’s lips continuing to sip at and taste hers.

That tingling returned to her breasts, except it was now accompanied by an ache. The dampness increased between her thighs, and the lips there felt plumper.

A thrill shot through her body as Lucien’s tongue stroked the softness of her lips, causing a tingling excitement. An excitement that rose higher still as that tongue parted her lips wider before entering her mouth slowly, and then claiming, possessing her totally.

That silken tongue slid alongside her own, stroking, igniting nerves with each slow caress. Rachel was clinging to the width of his shoulders by the time his lips left hers to trail hotly to her earlobe. His marauding tongue was a sensuous rasp against that sensitive skin before moving lower to her bared throat and the dips and hollows at its base. All while still only holding her with those gentle hands cradled about her cheeks.

Nevertheless, Rachel sensed the control he was exerting, the turmoil of his emotions, and the raw need churning beneath the surface of that iron will.

Emotions she also now recognized inside herself.

She wanted more of the pleasure this man was giving her. More of his power and self-assurance. More of Lucien.

All the barriers she had erected to protect herself came crashing down in that moment, until all Rachel could feel was Lucien’s lips against her skin and the wildness of the emotions surging through her own body. Everything she had once been, that younger woman so full of expectations, returned at that moment. It wiped away the disillusionment and years of pain, until all she craved was the pleasure Lucien said he wished to give her.

“More,” she pleaded, overwhelmed with that need. The
wanting
. God, how desperately she wanted!

“Rachel…?”

She opened her eyes to gaze up at Lucien, her breaths coming more quickly as she saw the raw desire in his eyes.

“Will you leave with me now?” he pressed. “Come home with me and allow me to pleasure you in private and at our ease?”

She blinked. “Come home with you…?”

“Unless you would prefer we go to your own home?”

Would she? Did she wish for the two of them to go to Shaw House, the home she had once shared with James? “No,” she answered firmly.

“Wait here.” Lucien’s hands were gentle on the tops of her arms. He squeezed them lightly before crossing the room to open the door. “Lady Shaw wishes to leave now, if you will find her cloak.” The maid he had instructed to guard the door slipped quietly back into the room. “Order my carriage to be brought round immediately,” he instructed someone else standing out in the hallway before stepping back into the room and once again closing the door.

Rachel fought to keep her panic from rising as the maid assisted her with her cloak. She felt unable to look at Lucien as he remained standing across the room, sure that if she did so, she would change her mind and refuse to go with him.

Her lack of experience in these matters made her unsure of what would happen once they reached Lucien’s home, but she wanted it anyway.

She wanted Lucien.

Chapter 6

“I will be only a matter of minutes making our excuses to the Walkers,” Lucien assured her once they were in the entrance hall. “You will need to put up the hood of your cloak. It’s raining outside.”

Rachel watched him stride off in the direction of the ballroom before she turned to look out one of the windows at the falling rain, feeling inwardly warmed by his caring as she arranged the hood of her cloak over her hair.

Even so, she had no idea if she was doing the right thing in going home with Lucien. Could she do this? What if her panic returned? Would Lucien—

“My, my. Viscount Brooketon. You are aiming high,” a familiar voice taunted from close behind her, at the same time as she was enveloped in that equally recognizable—and unpleasant—cologne. “No, do not turn around.” His voice hardened in warning. “Whatever happiness you might think you have found with Brooketon, know this: it will last only for as long as I allow it to do so.”

“Why are you doing this?” Rachel trembled inside the warmth of her cloak. “I have done nothing to you except endure the torment and brutality of your lover for years.”

“And now he is dead, and you are very much alive.”

“James has been dead for over a year—”

“And you have been playing the merry widow. Dancing on his grave,” he added harshly.

She gasped. “That is untrue. I duly kept to my expected year of mourning, only ventured back into Society— Oh.” She realized now that this man had started to pursue her almost as soon as she returned to Society. Because he had been waiting for that day? Like that spider weaving his web?

“When. How. What. If,” he dismissed with scorn. “Since your return, you have indulged in a dalliance with me, and now it seems you have set your sights on Brooketon. You are a slut and a whore, madam. James called you that, you know. His little whore. And sluts and whores need to be punished for their sins.”

“I have committed no sin!” It hurt, God, how it hurt, to learn that James had spoken of her in so derogatory a way to his lover. Laughed at her naïveté and inexperience, no doubt.
 

“You are guilty of emotional, if not physical, infidelity with me. By taking someone as rich and powerful as Brooketon for your lover, you are guilty of avarice as well as adultery.”

“I cannot be an adulterer when I am no longer married.”

“You besmirch James’s memory with your sluttish behavior.”
 

Rachel felt the prick of tears in her eyes at having that disgusting name leveled at her. Could this man be insane? Had she been saved from one tormentor only to find her every move plagued by another? With this one set on revenge for something she’d had no control over?

She had looked up to and respected James before their marriage, if not after it. Now her husband’s lover dared to call her disgusting names and issue threats? It was unfair—

“Are you ready to leave?” Brooketon prompted.
 

Rachel spun round to look about the entrance hall for her tormentor. But there was only Brooketon and herself here, and the stoic-faced butler waiting to open the door for their departure.

She had not imagined that conversation. Or the names he had called her. And the unspecified threat in his words.

“Rachel?”

She focused on Lucien, his expression quizzical, those piercing blue eyes seeming to see into her very soul. What did he see there, she wondered? That slut and whore she had just been called? Or something else?

“Did something happen while I was gone?” Lucien frowned at how pale Rachel’s face had become in his absence.
 

 
“No… I… Perhaps I should return to my own home, after all.”

Lucien studied her searchingly, aware she had avoided answering his question. She appeared agitated, and her gaze refused to meet his own. He glanced across at the Walkers’ butler, the elderly gentleman giving a barely perceptible nod of his head. In confirmation that someone had spoken to Rachel in Lucien’s absence?

“We will discuss it further in my carriage.” He took a firm hold of her elbow as he walked her toward the door. “I expect to hear from you in the morning,” he addressed the butler quietly, so that Rachel did not hear, sure the other man would be able to shed some light on what had happened during Lucien’s absence to have brought about this change of heart in Rachel.

“Certainly, my lord.” The elderly man gave a respectful bow as he opened the door.

A frown marred Lucien’s brow minutes later as he gazed across at Rachel from the opposite side of his carriage. He wished now that he had sat beside her, would have liked to take her in his arms and try to dispel some of that air of despair that now seemed to surround her almost as closely as the cloak she had wrapped around her so defensively.

“I will instruct my driver to go directly to your home.” There was no need for further discussion on the subject, he realized.

She avoided meeting his eyes in the soft glow of the lantern lit inside the carriage. “You must think me a coward.”

“I think you are a very brave lady who has survived brutality from a quarter she should have least expected to find it.”

She straightened as if stung. “I do not want your pity!”

 
“Perhaps that is as well, because you do not have it,” he stated. “Respect? Yes. Admiration? Also yes. Pity is for people who have lost someone dear to them. Or if circumstances have rendered them incapable of taking care of themselves or their family.
You
are neither of those things. Instead, you are a strong and capable woman who has risen above the adversity life dealt her. You have managed your own household for this past year, and in doing so have provided a happier life and a loving home for both yourself and your son. I see nothing there to pity.”

He made her sound almost heroic, Rachel acknowledged ruefully, when she knew she was far from it. Yes, she had done those things Lucien spoke of, but there had been no real choice in regard to managing things for herself since James’s death. The alternative had been to agree to allow her father to guide her during her widowhood, as he had offered to do. Rachel had gently refused the offer. Knowing herself finally free of James’s tyranny, she had balked at the idea of again placing herself under the rule of any man, even a gentle soul like her father.

Her chin rose. “I will never give any man say over any part of my life.”

“I should not dream of attempting to do such a thing. I like you exactly as you are.”

He
did
like her, Rachel realized as she saw that emotion in the warmth of his gaze. So steady and sure. A man who knew who he was and what he was. And what he wanted.

He wanted her.

Rachel had absolutely no doubt about that as she met his unwavering blue gaze. “I like you too,” she acknowledged shyly.

“I had begun to suspect that might be the case,” he said with satisfaction.

Rachel allowed the bubble of laughter rising inside her to break free, relieved to let some of her tension go. “I truly had no idea of your dry sense of humor until today. You have always seemed so…aloof. Disapproving of all about you.”

“Perhaps that is because I am. Not disapproving exactly, but certainly jaded, even cynical.” He grimaced. “I am aged seven and thirty and have seen far too much of life, and the people in it, to suffer fools gladly.”

Rachel now saw him as being decisive, a man of action rather than inaction. But only if that action suited him and his own plans. She could see nothing wrong in that. He did not set out to hurt or trample over other people’s feelings, but he was not averse to doing so if he considered it the correct thing to do.