The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (29 page)

“I do not think a shiny rock will heal my ankle,” she said petulantly.

He cocked a brow. “You must believe, Phoebe, for the cure involves a bit of Hindu mysticism,” he said, and took her hand in his, turning it palm up. With his finger, he traced a line from the edge of her index finger to the bottom of her palm, then lifted her hand and kissed it.

That tiny, tender little kiss sent a thrill through her. He lowered her hand; she stared at it. “Is that the cure?”

He shook his head, and still holding her hand, he stepped closer, so that he could reach around her. He traced a long, slow line down her spine, sending a most remarkable shiver that spread little fingers of a tingling sensation to her limbs. “Do you feel your ankle?”

Phoebe shook her head.

He moved her hair over her shoulder, exposing her neck. “Tell me what you feel.” He bent his head and kissed her neck, his breath hot, his lips warm on her skin.

She felt…a torrential downpour of desire. She felt weak, washed away by it. He lifted his head. “How is your ankle now?”

“Have I an ankle?” she whispered.

He chuckled softly, cupped her face, and kissed her on the lips, detonating something deep inside Phoebe that pushed her into a pool of desire and uncertainty. She needed to feel the comfort of his arms again. She could not fathom his hold on her when no other man had come so close to making her lose herself so completely. She actually felt like another woman, desperate for his touch and his attention and desperate to return it.

Her ankle was truly forgotten—she knew nothing but his fierce embrace, his urgent kiss. He raked his hands through her hair and kissed her deeply. She grasped his wrist with one hand, his lapel with her other, anchoring herself to him.

He slipped one arm around her waist and picked her up, so that her feet were dangling above his, her body held firmly and effortlessly against his. He moved them up against the wall of the ruin, shifted from her mouth to her neck, then slid down her body, to her bodice, his fingers curling into her flesh.

He moved feverishly against her, stroking every curve of her body, seeking every patch of exposed flesh. Phoebe closed her eyes and tossed her head back. Her body was thrumming; every bit of flesh his lips touched flared with heat. She felt hot; she needed to feel his flesh, too, and grappled with the buttons of his waistcoat before pushing the fabric aside. She could feel his hard, lean body through the lawn fabric of his shirt, and pulled the shirt from the waist of his trousers.

He suddenly stepped back, shrugged out of the waistcoat, and hastily pulled the shirt over his head.

Phoebe managed to suppress a maidenly gasp at the sight of his naked torso, but he was heart-achingly beautiful. He looked like the Greek sculptures that graced the terrace at Middleton House in London. She had never seen a man’s naked chest so very close, and she could not help but touch it in wonder. Her fingers fluttered over the slight indentation between the muscles that ran from his sternum and disappeared into the top of his trousers. She grazed his hardened nipples, ran her hand over the thick expanse of his shoulder.

Will’s breathing was shallow, his jaw clenched as if he strained to keep himself still as she touched him. But when she touched his chin, he grabbed her hand, kissed her palm, and said roughly, “I cannot bear to be near you. When I see you in your rooms, or in the dining room with Farley and the others, or walking near the gazebo, I cannot…I cannot bear to be set away from you. Nor can I be near you and not touch you.”

His eyes were blazing with a man’s fever, his jaw taut. “I cannot bear it,” he said again through clenched teeth, and suddenly grabbed her up in his arms and sank to his knees with her, pulling her down onto the coat, which he’d tossed on the soft, moss-covered ground.

He could not have aroused her more. Phoebe’s hands were everywhere then, running over his body, feeling every sinewy inch of him, caressing him, gliding over him, stroking the soft down of hair from his chest to his groin.

Will caught a breath in his throat when her tongue flicked across his nipple as her hands fumbled clumsily with his trousers to free his erection. They were engaged in a sensual melee, and it made Will impossibly mad with desire. He frantically sought the fastenings of her gown and released two succulent breasts from the confines of the fabric. He caressed them, took them in his mouth, sucking the hardened peaks with his tongue.

Phoebe’s hand surrounded his erection, moving so lightly, almost too lightly—it was driving him mad. The conflagration in him was beginning to roar out of control. She covered the top of his head with kisses, kneaded his shoulder. When he lifted his face to kiss her, she smiled with pleasure and kissed his face, pressed her lips to his eyes, to his nose, to his lips, and trailed a river of simmering kisses to his chest. And down again, Lord God, down his torso, her lips, soft and moist, searing him with each touch.

Every fiber of his body burned. He’d been without a woman too long; it seemed almost as if he’d never felt a woman in his life. It startled him, aroused him, and frightened him on a very deep level.

When her lips touched the head of his shaft, Will lurched violently. She shied away when he did, but he put his hand on her mass of blond curls and gently led her to return.

She bent over him and traced her tongue along the length of him, her touch excruciatingly sensual, incredibly carnal, and Will gasped as he tried to keep from writhing and bucking beneath her. But it was no use; his self-control was hanging by a thread. This woman, this widow, was pushing him beyond the limits of yearning.

Her lips surrounded him once more, but it was unbearable. As fantastically pleasurable as it was, he needed to be inside her. He groped blindly for her, lifting her and yanking her up to him like a rag doll, then encircling her tightly in his arms. Her lips landed softly on his as he twisted about to put her on her back.

He moved over her, pushing her skirts up until they were hiked above her hips, then slipped his hand between her legs, into the opening of her undergarment. She was hot and slick, and her moan against his mouth came close to undoing him completely. His fingers slipped inside her heat; his thumb stroked her mindlessly until she made a little cry and shifted against him.

He could endure it not a moment longer. He caught the waist of her undergarment and yanked it down. As he covered her mouth with his, he moved between her thighs, nudging them farther apart with his knee.

“You have put me at the end of my endurance. I need you,” he said roughly, and slid into her on a swell of raging desire.

She was so tight—almost impossibly so, and she let out a small yelp. Will froze, paralyzed with confusion, and looked down at her.

Phoebe’s eyes were closed, her brow creased with pain.

“Dear God,” he muttered. He tried to withdraw, but her clarion blue eyes fluttered open, and she lifted up to him and kissed him, then threaded her fingers through his hair and pressed her head to his. “Stay,” she whispered. “Make love to me. I’m fine.”

Will could not fathom what had happened, but his body was seething with the need to be in her. He began to move—slowly and reluctantly, afraid of hurting her—but Phoebe kissed him, drawing him back into the pool of desire and submerging him completely in it with her body and her tender response.

He buried his face in her hair as her body drew him in. He moved deeply inside her, his heart growing with each stroke, with the primal claiming of her. With every stroke he came closer to claiming her completely and reached between them to stroke her, intent on bringing her with him. She whimpered with pleasure at his touch, tightened hard around him, and softly cried out, biting into his shoulder as she shuddered and contracted around him.

Her climax drew his more powerful one—with a strangled sob of ecstasy, he released into her. He gasped for air, unable to catch his breath, in awe of what had happened between them, and confusingly, as moved by it as he was horrified.

Somberly, he gathered Phoebe in his arms and rolled to his side. She nuzzled her face into his neck. They were covered with a sheen of perspiration, and they lay there until the heat had ebbed from their skin.

Still, Will did not let her go. He tried to make sense of it all, to understand how it was that he, a man of certain experience, had never felt as intensely alive as he did. He’d never experienced such deeply heartfelt yet foreign emotions.

The sensation, he quietly realized, was not unlike breathing underwater.

Phoebe sat up, used the bottom of her chemise to quickly clean herself. He silently watched her, noting her lips, red and swollen from their lovemaking, her cheeks flushed with the exertion of it.

And her eyes, filled with disquiet.

He could scarcely look at her without wanting to kiss her or to hold her, yet it alarmed him to be so wholly consumed as this. He had no notion of what would come of it, if the feelings would hold or fade away over the course of the night.

The jingle of Fergus’s bridle brought him back to reality, and Will realized the hour was growing late. He stroked Phoebe’s hair. “We must go.”

She nodded.

Dozens of questions coursed through his brain as he stood up and donned his shirt. Phoebe was looking at him, her expression a little disconcerted. “How is your ankle?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Let’s give it a go.” Will helped Phoebe up, helped her to put her gown in order. She put a little weight on her ankle, found it more bearable than she had even an hour ago. “I think I can walk.”

Will nodded and stepped away. “I’ll just fetch Fergus,” he said, and took one step toward the horse. But he froze, staring at the horse for a long moment before wheeling around. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She looked confused. “It’s better—”

“Not your ankle,” he said, and watched the color begin to fade from her face.

Phoebe bit her lower lip. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, but you seemed…” He couldn’t bring himself to ask. He didn’t know what to ask.

“Will…” Her voice was so soft, he could scarcely hear her. “It’s been…it’s been a very long time since…since…”

“Ah,” he said, and lifted a hand to stop her from saying more. He walked back to where she stood, embraced her, cupped the back of her head and held her against his shoulder. He wanted to ask how long it had been since she’d lain with a man, if she’d loved her husband, if her marital lovemaking was as powerful as what they’d just shared. But he felt her sigh, and realized that regardless of her past, something extraordinary had happened between them. “Come, then,” he said gently. “We must return to the hall before it grows too late.”

He kissed the top of her head, and with his arm around her shoulders, he helped her to walk to Fergus.

Addison happened to be standing in the foyer speaking with Farley when his lordship and Madame Dupree arrived on horseback, her in front of him, her hair undone and falling wildly about her shoulders in a way that made Addison swallow hard, and Lord Summerfield holding her in a firm and familiar grip.

Addison glanced at Farley, whose face darkened as he, too, spied them. “Well, well,” the butler muttered, and turned to a footman who happened to be passing through. “Billy, a hand for his lordship,” he said.

Billy instantly glanced at the drive. His young eyes widened with surprise, but then narrowed with an innate understanding. “By the saints.”

“Billy!” Farley snapped.

“Aye, sir,” Billy said, and moved swiftly out the door and into the drive.

“Billy!” Addison heard his lordship call. “You’ve come just in time, sir. Madame Dupree has suffered an accident.”

“ ’Twas no accident, I’ll grant you that,” Farley murmured as he, too, went out.

Addison sighed as he watched Billy help the seamstress down. He rather liked Madame Dupree, and hated to see her harmed in any way.

Of course she would be harmed—they always were. The moment his lordship offered for Miss Fitzherbert—which of course he would do, as it was his duty—poor Madame Dupree would be harmed.

I t should have been something marvelous, a moment to remember always—but it had filled Phoebe with as much heartache as it had wonder.

God help her, she’d never meant it to go so far, never meant to lose herself to him so completely. But she’d been entirely seduced by the magic of the moment, by the feelings of lust and…and love—it was love, wasn’t it?—that had filled her as she lay on his coat in that old ruin. She’d been powerless—unwilling, really—to stop him from giving her the most sublime pleasure she’d ever known.

She hated the fact that she’d deceived him so utterly. She had tried to think, had debated telling him the truth then and there, but he had so readily accepted her fragile explanation, and she was incapable of finding the courage to correct him. And now, she was torn between her respect for herself, which was miserably low, and what she was certain was love for him.

How had she ever believed she could assume the identity of someone she was not? If Ava and Greer were here, they would lambaste her for her foolishness and her silly fantasies. She remembered the day she’d left London on this ridiculous and badly conceived trip, and what Ava had said to her then: “You mustn’t be too dreamy, Phoebe. You know how bird-witted you can be with your head in the clouds.”

What she wouldn’t give to see her sister’s face now! How she longed to feel her arms around her, to be able to tell her what a horrible, wretched, wonderful thing she had done!

She scarcely slept at all—her violently perplexed, disconcerted thoughts kept her awake. Phoebe hugged her pillow tightly to her and kept her face buried in it, hoping for some sort of divine clarity, something that would show her the right path.

The clock on the mantel had just struck two when she heard the creak of floorboard. She came up with a gasp and start, her eyes focusing on the dark figure at the foot of her bed. Will. She knew without asking—she could sense him, could feel his strength and energy in a way she would not have believed possible before today.

He moved around to the side of her bed and sat on the edge. He didn’t speak, but entwined his fingers in hers. In the eerie light of the moon, she could see his handsome face, could see the troubled look in his eyes. “If I had known,” he spoke hoarsely, “had I understood, I should have done it all differently.”