Temptation (15 page)

She would have to sleep here tonight and see what the morning brought.

She inspected the closet. As Captain Carterton had promised, it was full of clothes. Beautiful clothes, too. Gowns of expensive silk, striped bodices, even a luxurious coat of heavy velvet. She ran her hand over the soft fabric. She’d drooled over a coat like this in a shop window last winter but had been horrified at the cost. Captain Carterton’s brother must be wealthy to afford to buy his wife such luxuries.

At one end of the closet hung a few nightgowns. Seeing them, she could well believe that whomever they had belonged to had used the cottage as a place for secret assignations. No sturdy flannels or even plain cotton among them. Just frothy confections of silk and lace that displayed more than they concealed.

She picked the most modest one and laid it out on the bed. Then, opening the door and checking that Captain Carterton was not lurking outside in the hallway, she quickly stripped off her uniform.

The silk went on smoothly over her naked body and floated around her calves. She had never owned anything so decadent as this one nightgown.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror inside the closet. The fabric clung to all her curves, and the thin fabric was so transparent as to be almost sheer. Through it she could see the dusky pink of her nipples and a dark triangle at the apex of her thighs.

Hurriedly she got into the bed and pulled the covers over her. The mattress was filled with soft feathers, and a goose-down comforter was spread over it.

Only just in time. Captain Carterton walked in to the room with a cup of tea on a tray.

He placed it on the bed for her, and then shrugged off his jacket and started to unbutton his shirt.

Wide-eyed, she watched him as she sipped her tea. “This is my room. Go away. Or if you will not go away, then keep your clothes on.”

His shirt now unbuttoned, he kicked off his shoes. “I cannot sleep in my clothes.”

“I did not ask you to.”

He took off his shirt and pulled off his linen undershirt. “This cottage was designed as a love nest. There is only one bedroom. Only one bed.”

His chest was broad and smooth. She swallowed uncomfortably as she looked at him, not daring to look away for fear of what he would do next. In her heart she had known it would come to this as soon as he had climbed into the carriage beside her. “You cannot mean to share it with me.”

With his shirt now off, he was unbuttoning his trousers. “That is exactly what I mean to do.”

She tucked the bedclothes tightly around her body. “I cannot sleep in the same bed as a strange man. You will have to take the floor.”

“The floor? When there is a perfectly good feather bed with room in it for me? I do not think so.”

He was wearing nothing but his linen smalls now. “You are a soldier, as you keep on reminding me. Surely you have slept in worse places.”

“Not when there was something better on offer.”

He had better keep his word not to tell tales on her, or her reputation would be utterly ruined. No one would believe that she had innocently shared a bed with him. She wasn’t sure herself that it was possible, but it seemed once again that she had little choice in the matter. “Then, at least, put some clothes on. You are indecent.”

“Unlike you,” he gave her a huge smile as he pushed his smalls over his hips and let them fall to the floor. “I always sleep in the nude.”

When Beatrice still had not arrived home by ten that evening, Lenora went in search of Mrs. Bettina. It was very unusual for her roommate not to be at home so late in the evening. Quite unheard of.

Mrs. Bettina was sitting by the parlor knitting socks and humming to herself. Actually humming. Lenora had seldom seen her look so cheerful. She hated to break into her landlady’s mood. “Beatrice is not here,” she said baldly, not knowing how to break it to the matron any more gently. “She finished her shift the same hour as I did. She should have been home long before now.”

She tried not to show it, but she was worried sick about her friend. Beatrice would surely have told her if she was planning to go out in the evening. Being roommates they always shared such information as a courtesy, so each would know when to expect the other home.

If Beatrice was planning an evening meeting with Dr. Hyde, he might have mentioned something in passing, too. She had been working with him on an operation all the afternoon, and he had had plenty of opportunities to casually allude to his plans. He knew she and Beatrice were best friends as well as roommates. But he had said nothing.

Lenora had been battling panic all evening. The streets of London were not always safe. Anything could have happened to an unescorted young woman on her way home.

Mrs. Bettina gave her a measured glance. “I would not worry about Beatrice. I saw her leaving the hospital in the company of Captain Carterton. And the sergeant-major told me—” She blushed and cleared her throat. “Sergeant-Major Tofts told me that Captain Carterton was planning a surprise for her this weekend. I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see her until Monday.”

Lenora gaped. “But she is planning to marry Dr. Hyde. She told me so herself. And she doesn’t even like the captain very much. I heard her grumbling about how annoying he was just this morning.”

Mrs. Bettina would not be disturbed from her knitting. “I think the captain is growing on her.”

“But the doctor?”

“The doctor takes her for granted. Maybe a little competition in that quarter will open his eyes to what he really wants.”

Lenora retreated to the room she shared with Beatrice—alone. However lightly Mrs. Bettina was taking the absence of one of her lodgers, Lenora herself was not so sanguine. She did not trust Captain Carterton as Mrs. Bettina did.

She had heard Beatrice crying in the night on the evening she had gone to the music hall with the captain. He had clearly not treated her as a gentleman ought to treat a lady, but had managed to upset her badly. Beatrice never cried.

If Captain Carterton had persuaded or somehow tricked Beatrice into going away with him for the weekend, she could be in all kinds of trouble. Lenora would not be a true friend of hers if she did not try to find her.

She climbed back up the stairs and into bed, but sleep eluded her. She would go and see Dr. Hyde in the morning and tell him of Beatrice’s absence. He was a clever man. He would know what to do.

“Did you sleep well?”

The low husky voice roused Beatrice from a light doze. Though the captain had kept to his side of the bed during the night, she had been on edge and had slept poorly. She had lain stiff as a board for much of the night, fearful lest she should roll over and bump into him in her sleep.

The first birds were singing with the coming of the dawn before she had drifted off into a deeper sleep, and even then she had been prevented from truly resting by disturbing dreams. Saucy dreams of passion. Erotic dreams of her limbs tangling with the captain’s, of his mouth kissing her privates, of his finger inside her teasing her, bringing her to the brink but not quite pushing her over…

She had never slept in the same bed with anyone other than one of her sisters before. Let alone with a man who had made no secret of his desire for her. It was no wonder she had been restless.

She looked blearily up from her mound of pillows. “No, I did not.” Yet another sin to add to his tally. “Did you expect I would?”

“You need to relax. Stop worrying so much. Me? I slept like a baby.”

She shut her eyes again. “I do not want to know. Are we returning to London today?”

He reached out and brushed a tendril of hair away from her cheek. “Do you love me yet?”

“No.”

“Will you marry me anyway?”

She twitched away from his hand. She didn’t want his tenderness. “Certainly not.”

“Then I’m afraid we will have to remain here.”

“Do you intend to keep me here until I agree to your demands?”

“Only until my week is out. You are a smart young woman. By then I am confident you will have seen the merits of my proposal.”

“You are mad. Utterly mad.” A man would have to be mad to run off with her, determined on making her fall in love with him. It was arrant nonsense.

A woman did not fall in love with a man just because he wanted her to. She fell in love with him because she knew he was of good character. That was certainly the first thing she herself looked for in a man. Everything else was negotiable, but a good character was paramount.

She turned her back on him. “You cannot win my heart this way. And you definitely will not win my hand in marriage.”

“Do the two of them not go together?”

“I am a practical woman. I do not ask for the moon and the stars as well.”

After all, what did she know about the captain? He was handsome, sure, in a well-cut uniform and moustaches kind of way, but that was only his outside. His inside was so much more important. And all she knew of his character was that he was highly impulsive. That was no recommendation for a husband.

Her brother, Teddy, seemed to like him well enough, but men were notoriously poor judges of character. Or maybe it was simply that the qualities that made a man a good companion were exactly the opposite to those that made him a good husband.

As for his quest to make her fall in love with him? She’d known it was impossible from the beginning. Women did not fall in love at the drop of a hat—he should know better than that. A woman gave up so much on entering the married state that she had to exercise the utmost caution in accepting a man’s proposal. Her poor sister Emily had married a brute, and had had to run away from him. At least Emily was happy now, though she had burned her bridges with society and would never be respectable.

Beatrice was greedy—she wanted to be happy and respectable. Marriage to a handsome soldier she had only just met, a captain in the army who was duty bound to serve in whatever far-flung corners of the Empire he was sent, was a recipe for disaster.

But although she did not want to marry him, she could not pretend he left her indifferent. Love was one thing—but lust, she had recently discovered, was quite another.

She had liked Dr. Hyde well enough to marry him, but she did not want to touch him. Not like she wanted to touch the captain. She wanted to take off all the captain’s clothes and run her hands down his body, to savor every inch of it. She wanted to run her hands through his hair, and over his chest. She wanted to feel the muscles on his thighs, and stroke his member until it stood up proud and strong for her. She wanted to feel him on top of her, his body matched with hers, skin on skin.

Even now, lying half asleep in the mound of pillow, she could feel her body responding to his nearness, begging her to act on her fantasies. In between her thighs was prickling with heat, and she writhed uncomfortably on the bed to make the itching go away. It didn’t. Her movements only intensified the heat, and made it move across her body. Her chest was hot and flushed now, too, and she could feel her face start to burn.

His eyes darkened as he watched her. “You can fight it all you want, but it’s not going to go away.”

He knew what she was feeling, the desires that were tormenting her. Perversely, it made her all the more determined to resist him. “It may not go away immediately, but I can ignore it. I can refuse to give in to it.”

He moved toward her on the bed, the mattress sinking beneath his weight, drawing her closer toward him. “Why refuse yourself something that you want so much?”

She held herself stiff, refusing to relax into his embrace. He did not deserve her. “For the same reason that I do not eat a pound of chocolate at one sitting. Because it is not good for me, and however much I want to give in to the temptation at the time, I know it would make me feel ill straight afterward.”

“I taste better than chocolate.”

She turned her head away, fighting temptation. “I would not know.”

“Don’t you want to taste me?”

“Not at all.”

“Like I tasted you in the hansom cab?”

She gave an involuntary jump and turned to face him, her eyes wide. How could a woman do that to a man? “You mean…?” She wasn’t quite brave enough to put her question into words.

“Yes, a man likes to have a woman’s mouth on him, just as a woman likes to be tasted by a man. Are you not curious to try it?”

What would it feel like to have his cock in her mouth? She had held him briefly in her hand the other night, and had felt how strong and smooth he was. But what would he taste like? Would he like to be licked gently, or would he want to put as much of himself as he could in her mouth, and to have her suck on him?

Whatever he tasted like, she would never know. “You would taste like too much chocolate,” she said firmly. “And I do not want to have a stomachache.”

He sighed then, a sigh dragged out from the bottom of his soul. “I have been patient with you, Beatrice. More than patient. And I am not, by nature, a patient man.”

“I’m sure it is good for your soul for your patience to be tried once in a while,” she replied flippantly, turning her back to him again and snuggling back down into the bedclothes. He had abducted her against her will—she saw no reason to entertain him. “After all, you have a lot to atone for.”

“But I have run out of patience now.” With those ominous words, he pulled her over onto her back, looped a length of silk over her wrist and tied it tight.

There was no point in fighting him—he was stronger than her and would have his way in the end. She merely glared at him while he looped the silk over her other wrist and tied the ends to the bedposts.

She had seen such bonds on severely disturbed patients who were so out of their minds they were a danger to themselves or to their caregivers. Never had she imagined that one day she would find herself tied up in such an undignified fashion, totally helpless, unable to move, unable to protect herself, unable to have any will of her own. Trust the captain to seek to impose his will on her in such a manner.

“Tying me up will do you no good,” she said calmly, as he pulled back the covers and looped similar lengths of silk around her ankles, spread-eagling her on the bed. “I am not a dog to be chastised.”