Temptations of a Wallflower (10 page)

“May I walk you home?” he offered immediately, unwilling to let her go.

“My carriage is waiting,” she said regretfully. Then she brightened. “I can give you a ride home.” She added in a confiding tone, “My maid is with me, so you needn't worry that I'll ask you to do anything scandalous again.”

More the pity.

He ought to stay at the bookshop and ask McKinnon his questions. But the offer of being alone with Lady Sarah—despite the presence of her maid—was too good to refuse.

“A lift home would be most welcome,” he said.

After collecting her maid, who had been reading volume two of a gothic novel, they climbed into her
carriage outside. In a trice, they were heading back to Mayfair.

They swayed with the movement of the vehicle, and for several minutes they traveled in silence. The maid stared deliberately out the window, making herself fade into the background. Given the length of Jeremy's legs, he worked to keep from brushing them against Lady Sarah, but it wasn't easy.

“How long do you plan on staying in London?” she asked. “I imagine your parishioners cannot spare you for long.”

“I have a curate to oversee things whilst I'm away,” he answered. “As to the length of my visit . . .” He shrugged. “That's yet to be decided.”

“I'm going to be impertinent again, I'm afraid, and tell you that I'm going to the Imperial Theater tomorrow night. To see a new burletta by the writer Mrs. Delamere. Oh, didn't she recently marry your cousin, Lord Marwood? I guess that would make her Lady Marwood.”

“Indeed, but how is that impertinent?” he wondered.

“Because I hope to see you there,” she replied, smiling.

He'd had no plans to go to the theater. “There's a very good chance that I will be in attendance.”

Her smile widened. “Excellent. Have you seen anything by Mrs. Delamere?”

“I've been away from the city for too long.”

“You'll enjoy her work,” Lady Sarah vowed.

“If you do, then I'm sure I will.”

“Ah, flatterer!” But there wasn't any censure in her voice.

“Men of God don't flatter, Lady Sarah,” he intoned.

At that, she laughed. “Very vicarish words, Mr. Cleland.”

He laughed with her. “Then my work is done.”

As they continued on toward home, his heart loosened. What was this sensation? Pleasure. Joy. Excitement. A host of emotions that brewed potently within him.

He craved these new sensations, powerfully. And yet . . .

Jeremy cursed what could never be.

“I must go now,” the highwayman said regretfully. “But before I do . . .” He reached out and plucked the diamond and pearl ring from my hand. “A memento.”

Before I could protest the theft, he was gone. I leaned out the window to see him riding off into the night, like a phantom, his long greatcoat flying out behind him.

“My lady?” the coachman called to me. He emerged from the woods, throwing off the ropes that had been used to bind him.

“Drive on,” I said. “But we'll stop at the next town.” If my highwayman frequented this region, perhaps someone in the village might have an idea as to his whereabouts. I wasn't ready to let my wonderful lover slip through my fingers . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

S
o much potential here in the theater for her writing! Flirtations, scandals, cuts direct, and whispered promises, all behind the veneer of a social night out to see and be seen. Sitting in her family's private box at the
Imperial Theater, Sarah surveyed the crowd excitedly. Numerous places for amorous encounters existed here, too: the boxes themselves when the lights dimmed, in one of the retiring rooms, or even backstage, hidden behind painted scenery while the performance was ongoing. The possibilities were numerous and delightful.

She could have Lady Josephina start an affair with an actor and they could . . . no. Actors were a feckless lot, hardly the stuff of rich sexual fantasy. They were likely too obsessed with themselves to be very talented as lovers. She smiled to herself, thinking of an actor watching himself and not his partner in a mirror as they made love. How dispiriting.

No, Sarah decided that Lady Josephina would be traveling to Oxford to visit her nephew at university. Then, Lady Josephina would meet her nephew's classical theater professor—a sober but attractive man possessing a secret sensuality. It could lead to some very thorough and focused lovemaking . . .

The performance had yet to begin, and people were seating themselves in the pit or in the boxes as the orchestra warmed up. She fanned herself against the stifling heat from so many people and lights. But another kind of heat pulsed just beneath the surface of her skin.

She'd see Jeremy tonight. It thrilled and terrified her to have had him observe her book on knot tying. Let him think her interest was purely nautical.

She oughtn't look forward to seeing him this much. Theirs was an association that couldn't go very far. But her heart, mind, and body remained obdurate, craving him with an unseemly hunger. She'd no one to whom she could confide this need. Certainly not her mother.
Of her few friends, she didn't trust any of them not to gossip. Best to keep her feelings to herself and let her quill be her outlet for everything she could not allow herself to do.

The duchess sat beside Sarah, while her father was absent, as he didn't much care for the theater. Lady Egerton, her mother's friend, had positioned herself just behind them, and she chatted with Mrs. Boyle, her companion.

“What's on the bill tonight?” the duchess asked.

“A burletta by Mrs. Delamere . . . I mean, Lady Marwood,” Sarah answered, consulting her program, “followed by comic songs and acrobatics.”

“I do like a good comedic tune,” the duchess said. “And acrobatics. Pity we have to sit through the first part.”

“Don't you care for the burletta?” Mrs. Boyle asked. “Lady Marwood is quite celebrated.”

“Her tragedies are finely written, but too gloomy,” her mother replied. “Life is difficult enough without forcing ourselves to endure someone else's suffering.”

Sarah's stories celebrated the earthy, joyous part of life and left it at that. No need to worry about practicalities or how her characters would go on for the rest of their lives. No, she happily wrote about sex, knowing that her readers would get to enjoy themselves whenever they picked up one of her books, leaving the cares of the mundane world behind, if only for a few hours.

Sarah gladly shouldered the responsibility. She'd no desire to write “serious literature.” It was too often moralizing, or crammed full of sorrow. Escape had its own important value. She would never flatter herself
into thinking she could change the world, but she didn't want to. That task would be left to other writers, other minds. She wanted only to entertain, and counted herself lucky that she had the opportunity to do so.

“It's hard to believe,” Lady Egerton exclaimed, “that the playwright married Lord Marwood!”

Sarah's mother sniffed. “A topsy-turvy world we live in, when a viscount marries a commoner—and a writer, at that.”

Sarah thought it all quite romantic, frankly.

Their voices hushed as the curtain to their box was swept aside. A darkly handsome, Byronic-looking man stepped inside. He looked every inch the rogue, with his long black hair, piercing eyes, and sensuous movement. Viscount Marwood, the very man they'd been speaking of and London's most notorious rake. Well, he
had
been a rake, until he'd proposed to Mrs. Delamere onstage, and the playwright had accepted him. They'd married not that long ago. If only Sarah had been in the audience the night of the proposal, she could have seen the drama unfold before her very eyes.

The viscount didn't seem entirely glad to be in a theater box with older matrons and a wallflower, yet he quickly covered his lack of enthusiasm with a smile and bow.

“Ladies,” he murmured. “My greatest pleasure.”

“Lord Marwood,” the duchess said, inclining her head and offering her hand. The viscount took it and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles. “My felicitations on your, ah, recent nuptials.”

“Thank you, Your Grace. I am delirious with happiness,” Lord Marwood said without a trace of irony.

While Sarah might have normally been intrigued by a man so infamous, she paid him no mind. Not when Jeremy strode in behind him, wearing all black, his curly hair swept back to reveal the clean contours of his face.

Sarah's heart hammered. She half-rose from her chair, then sat back down, fanning herself.

“May I present my cousin,” the viscount said, waving toward Jeremy. “Mr. Jeremy Cleland.”

Jeremy bowed, the movement elegant and restrained. “An honor,” he said. His gaze immediately went to Sarah, and she couldn't make herself look away.

She found her voice. “Will you join us for the performance?”

“Much obliged,” Lord Marwood said before Jeremy could answer, “but I have my own box, and my bride awaits me.” He said this with a glow of happiness. “Though,” Lord Marwood added, glancing over at his cousin, who continued to gaze at Sarah, “I can spare Jeremy.”

“Oh, but we don't want to keep family apart,” Lady Wakefield said airily. Sarah wanted to kick her.

“Nonsense,” Lord Marwood answered with a wave of his hand. “I'm sure Jeremy would relish the chance to get away from an old sinner like myself.”

“Sin is contagious,” Jeremy said, nodding.

“Let him stay, Mama,” Sarah said quietly but urgently to her mother.

Her mother sighed, as though put upon. Clearly she felt that entertaining Jeremy was a waste of time. Yet she said, “Very well. Do sit, Mr. Cleland.”

“Maggie and I shall see you after the performance,”
Lord Marwood said with a chuckle, then disappeared.

Jeremy took a seat just behind Sarah. She could sense his rangy, warm presence like a fire at her back. But she kept her gaze firmly on the stage, as if testing herself. Could she spend at least ten minutes in his presence without actually looking at him?

“Lady Sarah,” he murmured. His breath, lightly scented with tobacco and whiskey, fanned gently against her neck.

“Mr. Cleland,” she answered. “It still shocks me that Lord Marwood is your cousin. Rather a diverse family tree.”

“Since Marwood's married,” he said, “his mania for the theater has been replaced with a mania of an entirely different kind. One that seems to make my cousin very happy. Poor bloke.”

“Why ‘poor'?” Sarah asked, turning around in her seat. Blast, she hadn't lasted nearly as long as she'd hoped, but she was rewarded by looking upon him again. She glanced quickly at her mother and was happy to see that Lady Wakefield was too engaged in conversation with her companions to notice Sarah's own discussion with Jeremy. “Surely, as a man of the cloth, you believe in the sanctity of love.”

“I do,” he said at once, holding up his hands. “I believe love is a true, beautiful, and solemn thing.”

Their gazes met and held, a current of heat passing between them.

“But not too solemn, I hope,” she pressed. It was grim to think that Jeremy would be the sort of man to extinguish the candles, get completely under the covers, pull up her nightdress just enough to get the
deed done, and then apologize afterward for sullying her.

“There's joy in it, too,” he amended. “But where Marwood's concerned, before he married I doubt he knew what it meant to love. Beyond the physical act of it,” he added, then blushed both adorably and carnally. Perhaps he wouldn't be a staid lover, after all. He rested his hand on the back of her chair, and she felt the brush of his knuckles between her shoulder blades.

More heat filled her. This was a dangerous conversation to have with him. Were she ever to marry, the most she could hope for was esteem and perhaps a mild, weak sort of affection. Love was the stuff of plays and novels—though her own books seldom mentioned that emotion. Lust motivated her characters, not love.

Yet with Jeremy . . . she dreamed of things she'd little hope of ever knowing.

Sarah wished . . . oh, she wished for many things. All at once, the strangest desire to tell him every secret surged forward. Partially because he was a man of the cloth. But more because he was
him,
with that openness of heart that felt so genuine and enfolding. She wanted to confide in him, let him know that she was the Lady of Dubious Quality. Much as she enjoyed holding that mystery to herself, she wanted to share it with someone. Her hidden triumph.

But if he knew, what might his response be? He wouldn't greet the news with excitement and approval. He could be disgusted, or angry. Even if he did, astonishingly, accept her as a writer of erotic books, his role as a moral leader of the community would be jeopardized by the knowledge. He'd have to turn his back on her.

“I've seen far more happy brides than unhappy,” he continued.

“There must be something to the institution, then,” she answered.

“Most likely,” he said, a corner of his mouth turning up, “or else we wouldn't keep getting married. We need someone with whom to share our most intimate thoughts.”

The word
intimate
sent a shiver through her.

Another intimate secret threatened to spill, one she had to bite back forcibly. Perhaps it was the way Jeremy inspired thoughts of confession. Perhaps it was the understanding and confidence they shared. But she longed to tell him something about herself. Something no one knew.

She had invited Jeremy to the theater tonight, but she could never invite him to her next destination. In three days' time, she was to visit a clandestine club, one that specialized in masked revelry. Often, part of the entertainment included people making love on stage. Through her publisher she'd heard that occasionally members of this club liked to enact scenes from her novels. The notion was thrilling, to know that her writing impacted people so much that they would want to re-create her work, live and in the flesh.

The idea of going to see it was impossibly scandalous. Her, a duke's untouched daughter, venturing forth incognito
to a gathering known for actual sexual performances was unheard of. Devastating to her reputation.

And yet the possibility was far too enticing. She could not resist it, as much as she could not resist the
pull of writing. The danger of it. The risk. Her life was so circumscribed, so regimented and quiet—she needed that element of chance. It was as if, by taking risks, she regained control over herself.

But if Jeremy found out . . . then, surely, he would never want to see her again.

Pain filled her, sharp and caustic.

Pushing away the urge to divulge her secrets, she focused instead on what she and Jeremy could speak of. Even the precarious topic of love was more acceptable than her carnal writings, or discussing covert masked societies with staged sexual acts.

“Perhaps Lord Marwood can learn from his cousin's example,” she offered.

His alluring blush deepened. “He's a sight more experienced than I.”

“It would be difficult to find anyone who could top him for experience,” she noted with a smile.

Jeremy chuckled at that, the sound like napped velvet against her flesh. She leaned back, pressing his hand against her skin. He glanced over at the point of contact but did not move away. A secret touch, its knowledge shared only by them.

His cousin would be an excellent model for one of her characters. Sensuous, worldly. A veteran of the bedroom. Yet Lord Marwood interested her not at all. Far better to write of a man like Jeremy, one who discovered and learned his potential. And there was so much promise in him . . . they could learn things together. Explore the realm of the senses. Explore each other.

Her pulse thrummed at the thought, and her body cried out silently,
Yes, please!

“I like the way you speak your mind, Lady Sarah,” he murmured softly.

“I like to speak it,” she answered. “Though I don't often get the opportunity.”

“That's a shame.”

“I thought women were for decorative purpose, not to opine their thoughts and feelings,” she noted.

He shook his head. “I find that men who believe that are petty creatures, fragile and afraid.”

“You aren't? Doesn't the Bible teach us that women should be docile and biddable?”