The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (87 page)

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Please.”

“You used to like my kisses, remember?” he said softly against her milky skin.

She closed her eyes briefly as if he’d somehow caused her pain.

He knew her too well to believe it. “I see you have a new fly in your web. He pants like a cur after a bitch in heat.”

She wrenched her hand free, her colour high. “You know nothing.”

She glanced over his shoulder. Her expression changed, became distant and cool. He felt the loss of her anger as he had felt the loss of her body against him.

“Stand aside, sir,” she said in chilly accents. “Here comes a true friend.”

He glanced back. “Ah, the so trusty O’Mally. Is he your friend? Or another of your lovers?”

She glared at him. “My escort. Sadly, he was a few minutes late or you and I would not be having this conversation.”

He couldn’t prevent the surge of jealousy in her trust of the elderly dandy, but he merely bowed. “Allow me to help you mount.” He brought her horse around and interlocked his fingers. She stepped up, her small hands on his shoulders, a feather-light grip. He tossed her up into the saddle, helping her settle her knee around the pommel. His fingers curled around her slim ankle encased in leather as he slipped her foot into the stirrup. When he glanced up, she was looking bemused.

He returned her gaze and with effort remembered his purpose. “I will see you this evening.”

She twitched her skirts into place and gathered the reins. “No.”

“You and I have unfinished business.” He glanced at the tree trunk where they had just recently been pressed together.

She flushed. “Our business was finished years ago.”

“I find myself unconvinced,” he said, raising a brow.

She flicked her horse with her reins and left at a canter.

Gerard watched her slight figure greet O’Mally.

“Tonight, Charlotte,” he promised softly to himself. “And we will both be satisfied.”

His body hardened at the thought. But another sensation invaded his chest. One he’d not felt for a very long time.

An ache.

Almost midnight and still no sign of Hawkworth. She should be glad. She was glad. Desperately relieved. He would have spoiled everything and the end was almost in sight. Lord Graves was a hair’s breadth from an offer.

“You waltzed with Hawkworth yesterday,” Graves whined.

She resisted the urge to bat him away like an annoying gnat on a summer’s eve. Shocked at the disloyal thought, she smiled at him and replied in soft tones. “His Grace did not take account of my wishes.”

The young man stiffened. “If he offered you some insult—”

“Not at all.” She lightly touched his arm with her fan. “It was more a misunderstanding. Tonight, I have danced three dances with you, more than with any other gentleman. To dance again would not be seemly.” Unless they were married. She let the unspoken words hang in the air.

He wooed her against his family’s objections and she would not provide them with the ammunition of scandalous behaviour. Meeting the Duke in the park could have been a disaster. She’d thought to talk to him as a friend, beg him to leave her in peace, until he’d shown his true colours. Lust, not friendship, drove their relationship.

And her taunt about marriage had stabbed at the heart of matters between them. A duke could not marry the daughter of a debt-ridden sot, any more than the ducal heir could have. The old duke had been brutally frank. His heir would be more than pleased to set her up as his mistress, but never as a wife. Nothing had altered in the intervening years.

Gerard was no knight on a white charger arriving to save her from her dragons.

“You will let me take you to supper,” Lord Graves said, his jaw jutting. “You promised.”

More whining. She contained a sigh of impatience and nodded gravely. “I am looking forward to it.” It would be different when they were married. He’d be less inclined to remain underfoot. “If you will excuse me, for a moment, I have a torn flounce that needs pinning.” And a headache brewing.

The darling boy looked anxious. “Hurry back. I will fetch you some champagne.”

Oh how she longed for respite from his constant youthful chatter and jealous eye. Feeling as if she might at any moment die of suffocation, Charlotte fled the ballroom.

It would be fine after they wed, her mind repeated like a mantra as she hurried along the hallway to the ladies’ withdrawing room. She would make him a good wife. They would retire to the country. Breed lots of children she could love. And Father would be saved.

An arm shot out from a doorway, curling around her waist and dragging her into a darkened room.

Her stomach jolted. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out when a warm finger pressed against her lips and a familiar voice said, “Hush.”

The scent of his bay cologne swirled around her. “Your Grace?”

“Charlotte.”

He spoke her name in his deep voice. He cupped her face in his hands. “Have you forgotten my name so soon, sweet?”

The endearment tore at her heart, ripped open the wounds she thought long since healed.

She jerked her head away to no avail. “Let me go.”

He sighed. “I wish I could. Say my name.”

“Gerard,” she spat at him, desperate for release in case she committed the error of this morning. “Let me go, before someone sees us.”

He released her. Her cheeks felt suddenly chill. She stared at a face shadowed from her gaze, the shadow of her girlish dreams and the shadow of her lonely nights. “Why are you doing this?”

“This?”

“Plaguing me? Following me?” When you never followed when I most needed you, the broken voice whispered in her head. The voice she usually ignored. She turned away, strode to peer through the gloom at a portrait above the mantel. “Why did you drag me in here?”

The striking of a tinderbox sounded behind her. Candles flared to life, the room, a library, took shape around her as he lit the scattering of candelabra and the sconce between the bow windows.

She swung around. “Why, Gerard?”

He blew out the taper and tossed it in the empty hearth. A wicked smile touched his lips. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?”

She tossed her head. “You and a hundred others.”

“You’ve grown cruel, Charlotte. The adulation of striplings has gone to your head.”

The words were spoken lightly but they lashed like a whip. “You were the same kind of stripling once,” she replied, wielding her own lash.

In three strides, he came to stand before her, his body no longer that of a boy but of a powerful male. Large and full of arrogant confidence. He gripped her shoulders, his gaze searching her face, his lips thin, his eyes hard enough to break her. “That boy is gone,” he said softly and his mouth descended on hers. Ravishing. Punishing. Blissfully hot. The kiss of a bold, hungry man.

How she longed to yield, to feel again the joy, to relive their passion. Her body trembled with eagerness. Pride came to her rescue. She stiffened against his onslaught, fought for command of her traitorous body and heart.

He lifted his mouth, but didn’t release her. “Why?” he murmured against her lips. “Why, Charlotte?”

She shrugged free from the circle of his arms, strode with short impatient steps to the window and shifted the edge of the drape. Outside, street lamps wavered in the mist, blurring her vision. An image of her father languishing in a French debtors’ prison hardened her resolve and her voice. “Why what?”

He came up behind her. “Why did you leave?”

She spun around. Incredulous. “Why would I stay?”

His jaw flickered. “And so here you are back again, married, widowed and once more plying your wiles on a green youth.”

Pain like a clenched fist in her stomach almost doubled her over. “He is a fine young man.”

“And wealthy.”

Heat rose to her hairline. He made it sound so sordid. She paced away from him, her silk skirts catching at her legs, her heart beating a retreat. She clenched her fists against the fear. A terrible fear she could deny him nothing. “What makes you think you can once more interfere in my affairs?”

“Affairs? A good choice of words.” He gave a hard laugh. “Have you forgotten what we had together?”

An ache carved a swathe through bone and muscle all the way to her soul. “We had nothing,” she cried. “And you know it.” She eyed the distance to the door. If she ran …

He cut off her retreat with one smooth step, held her upper arms. Fury blazed in his eyes along with the hotter fire of possession.

“We had this,” he growled and claimed her mouth with a plundering kiss.

Even as she began to fight, he softened his mouth, wooed her with his sensual lips, planted small kisses to the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, her closed eyelids.

Every inch of her face garnered his attention and her heart opened like a parched rose in the desert to a gentle rain.

Yielding, she sighed and twined her arms about his neck as her body remembered the sensations of his touch. He nuzzled her throat, kissed the pulse beneath her ear, and murmured, “I missed you.”

“Oh, Gerard.”

More kisses rained on her face and lips, tastes and licks remembered and yearned for over long tearful nights.

One step at a time he eased her into the window embrasure. Under the spell of his delicious mouth, she startled when the window frame touched her back. He pressed into her, his thigh parting her legs, his hands cradling her face. “Remember?” he asked.

She laughed, a poor broken sound

He closed the curtain around them. Their own private world. As if they were young and innocent again. And deeply in love.

His mouth found hers. Thought slipped away as their tongues tangled and danced to the music one heart played to the other, until dizzy and breathless she broke free. “How could I forget? It was a conservatory then, though, not a library. And your father almost caught us.”

He kissed her jaw, her ear, nibbled the lobe, tasted her throat when she arched back against the wooden frame to give him access.

Her insides ran hot, like melted honey, warm and golden and sweet. His scalding breath shivered across sensitive skin, his lips teased the rise of her breast.

She ran her hands through the silk of his hair, across the breadth of shoulders more manly, stronger than she remembered.

He licked the hollow between her breasts, his long clever fingers working free the tapes of her stays at the neckline of her gown. He tugged the confining fabric down and found her nipples beaded and aching.

He suckled.

She moaned at the surge of desire. She clenched her fists in his thick wavy hair and her body tightened, remembering the bliss. Yearning.

Gently his hand trailed down her hip, caressed her thigh, and inched her skirts upwards. He stroked the bare flesh above her stockings.

“Gerard,” she warned half-heartedly.

“Hush, sweet,” he whispered and flicked her nipple with his tongue.

She melted.

He pushed against her with his knee and the sweet pressure made her squirm. So delectable. But not nearly enough.

“Put your leg up on the seat,” he said softly. “Remember how you liked it like this?”

“Gerard, we can’t. We mustn’t.”

He chuckled, deep and low. “Say no then, love. Say it now.”

Love.
Her heart stilled. How many times had he called her his love? Remember? How could she ever forget? Free will seemed to flee. She could not deny him, for to do so would be to deny all the years she’d been so alone. And lonely.

Dear sweet heaven, she’d missed him.

One large warm hand raised her thigh and she rested her foot on the window seat. One hand drew her gown languorously to her waist and cupped her buttock, steadying her, the other roved ever higher.

He took her mouth as he caressed and teased her body, until she could do no more than moan her pleasure.

“You are ready, sweet,” he said. “Let me in.”

She gasped her assent and raked her hands through his hair, kissing his mouth as he unbuttoned his falls. He cupped both hands beneath her and easily lifted her up. She brought her legs around his waist and clung to him. A moment later, his hard flesh sought entrance to her body.

She lowered herself on to him, with a sigh.

He groaned against her neck. “My Charlotte,” he said. “Mine.”

Pleasure cast her on to tossing seas where tempests raged. He held her in arms of steel, driving her, deep and hard, her spine protected from the harsh wood at her back by his hand. She was transported to another realm, a place of naught but pleasure. A place where she gave as much as she took and the bright light of completion beckoned.

A place where love reigned supreme.

His ragged breaths rasped in her ear. “Now,” he demanded. “Now, darling.”

She ground against him, seeking to break the bonds of earth.

He thrust into her, his hips sensually twisting.

She shattered. He came with her.

Together they drifted on the warm current of hard-breathing bliss. His forehead dropped against her shoulder. “Dear God,” he muttered.

Suddenly aware of her surroundings, of what they had done, thoughts rolled around in her head, while her body stretched like a luxuriating cat’s. She shifted in his arms and he carefully lowered her to her feet. He fixed his clothing, then helped her with hers, tying her tapes, hiding her bosom, rosy with his kisses.

He drew open the curtain.

The library door swung back. She couldn’t see the intruder as Gerard moved in front of her, protecting her from view.

“Your Grace?” Graves’ voice.

Charlotte shrank into the shadows.

“My cousin said you wanted to see me? Am I interrupting some …”

Gerard moved, shifting as if to shield her, but somehow failing.