The Marquess Who Loved Me (27 page)

Hours later, after everyone had retired for the night, Ellie shivered as she pulled a voluminous golden veil over her flowing hair. “If Nick wanted me to catch my death of pneumonia, he needn’t have spent forty thousand pounds,” she muttered. “It’s little wonder there are no seraglios in London. We would all freeze to death.”

Lucia sniffed, her temper still high. Ellie had returned to her chamber ten minutes after midnight and found her maid cursing, with fervor and fluency, over the blackened morals of the Claiborne men. “He doesn’t give a fig for your comfort, my lady. But you do look splendid. I’ll allow that he has taste.”

Ellie tugged down the bottom hem of her bodice, but it ended in the middle of her ribcage. She couldn’t cover her belly unless she wrapped a blanket around herself. “I look like a prime fool. Is this how my guests feel when wearing the costumes I prescribe for them?’

“At least the costumes you demand cover everything,” Lucia said loyally.

Ellie noticed that Lucia didn’t answer the question, but it didn’t matter. The dress Nick had sent wasn’t a dress — it was a fitted bodice and a floor-length skirt as seductive as anything she had seen in paintings of the East. The skirt fastened with a drawstring, the bodice with little hooks down the front — but she wore nothing under either piece. It would be quick work to remove them again.

In another mood she would have loved this ensemble. It was gold, worked throughout with gold thread and thousands of amber-colored beads. Lucia had taken her hair down, per the instructions Nick had sent, and rimmed her eyes with kohl. And she’d reapplied Ellie’s jasmine perfume before handing her the veil. The veil didn’t cover her eyes. It covered her hair instead, with two inches of heavy trim that weighed the veil down over her forehead. Without pins to hold it in place, it would be easy enough to drop for him.

Ellie’s hands fisted in her skirts. She forced herself to relax. Lucia frowned unhappily, but she didn’t say anything — what was there to say?

Ellie nodded briskly, feeling like a colonel trying to calm a frightened recruit. “Go to bed, Lucia. Despite his theatrics, I am quite sure the marquess won’t harm me.”

“Why do I feel like I’ve prepared you for a sacrifice?”

Ellie didn’t answer. She loved Lucia as much as any friend she’d had, but at this moment, familiarity was unhelpful.

She turned to the connecting door. She hadn’t used it as a bride. Charles had died before they had ever ventured beyond London. Later, she had dreamed of using it as Nick’s bride instead. As those chances had dwindled to nothing, she had had nightmares of some other woman walking through that door — of him taking a meek, quiet girl who was too stupid to think of what she wanted from life and, in her amiability, unable to make a choice that might betray him.

She was thinking too much. She couldn’t think if she wanted to survive this. She marched to the door, but the heavy sensuality of her golden skirt and the feel of her bare feet sinking into the carpets slowed her stride.

His note had said not to knock. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door before she changed her mind. It was only later — much later — that she wondered why she had obeyed him. He wouldn’t beat her or humiliate her in public. Theirs was a private game, so what could he possibly do to her if she stopped playing? Impoverish her, yes, but he wouldn’t truly force her into his bed.

But at that moment, her choice was made — whether it was by him or by her own heart didn’t particularly matter. She pushed the door open.

Nick sprawled in an armchair by the fire. She wouldn’t be cold, not with the blaze he’d created for her. She hoped the crackle of burning wood would cover the way her breath hitched. He still wore his evening dress, although he’d tossed his cravat aside and unbuttoned his jacket. Somehow, it only made him more dangerous.

His eyes met hers. “Close the door.”

She pushed it shut behind her.

“Come to me.”

She didn’t break eye contact as she walked toward him — she couldn’t waste any opportunity to read his intentions. But as she reached him, she found his eyes weren’t purely lustful. Yes, she saw lust there — saw how his eyes flickered to her hips, then to where her navel peeked above the waistband of her skirt. It wasn’t all there was to him, though. If all he wanted was to take her, he wouldn’t have wasted time waiting for her to change her dress.

When she reached him, he held out a hand for her. But the flat of his palm ordered her to stay rather than beckoning her closer. She shook her head. “What is your plan, Nick? Why am I here?”

“You can guess. Stay still.”

She sighed. “You are much more cooperative in my paintings.”

He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “If you paint yourself looking exactly as you do now, I’ll give you a hundred pounds.”

She resisted the urge to hug her arms around her bare torso. “Never. This dress is obscene.”

“Do you not like it? Only the highest class of woman could afford such attire. I would have brought you a sari instead, but you would probably spend a week trying to deduce how to wrap it.”

“Why the fixation on clothing? Your note indicated I wouldn’t be wearing anything for long.”

“Always so impatient,” he murmured. “I have dreamed of you like this for a very long time. And if I want to spend all night looking at you, I will.”

He seemed good for it. He examined every inch of her, blatantly, heatedly, with a gaze that tracked across her curves as closely as any hands could. In this garb, she was all curves — her breasts molded by the tight bodice, her hips flaring under the heavy contours of her skirt. It was a dress made for dancing, for pleasure — for a sensuality born in heat and sunlight, not a lurid seduction in a cool English bedchamber.

It was also a dress made for her. He claimed to hate her — but his fantasies told another story.

“You are beautiful, Ellie,” he said, after an eternity. “More beautiful than I remembered. I thought surely my dreams had gilded you more than you warranted. They were gross distortions compared to this.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Spare the compliments, my lord. You can have me without murmuring sweet nothings in my ear.”

His eyes narrowed. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to fuck you while you stay aloof and untouched by the whole sordid affair?”

It was hard to keep from breaking when she didn’t
know
what she wanted, but when her mind couldn’t work, ten years of habit took over. She shrugged. “It’s your affair, not mine. But I’ve guests to see to in the morning, so I hope you don’t take long.”

His restraint was admirable — so calm she almost hated him for it. “I have changed my mind about my revenge.”

Her stomach dropped. Her jaw dropped with it. “Are you letting me go?”

His smile was just as grim as anything she’d seen from him. “Never. But I thought the idea of sharing a bed with me would upset you. It only seems to excite you.”

Ellie still gaped. “I’m not excited. I’m pragmatic. You bought your way into my bed. I may as well enjoy it.”

“That takes the shine off my revenge, doesn’t it?”

“What is your plan, then? Make it so bad I don’t enjoy it?“

He smirked. “It is impossible for me to be that bad.”

“Insufferable,” she muttered.

“Call me any name you like. But every time I take you, you are going to feel something. Pleasure, hatred, ecstasy, regret, joy — feel whatever you want. But you
will
feel. And in my bed, you won’t be the icy queen you play for everyone else.”

She did hate him then. “That wasn’t part of our agreement.”

“I believe it falls under ‘you will do anything I ask in bed or outside it.’ Or was that not comprehensive enough?”

She suddenly wanted to run. She had thought their first two nights had been an anomaly, with a depth of feeling that was inevitable on their first couplings. Surely by now she should be able to stay disengaged.

But if he saw that her behavior was an anomaly — if he recognized that she never shared herself like that — he was determined to make it a habit.

“You cannot control my feelings, Nick.”

“I won’t tell you what to feel — but you
will
feel. Now come here.”

She wanted to run. He saw it in the way she came up on the balls of her feet — in the way her eyes widened, then narrowed, shock followed by the need to act.

He was the worst sort of cad. But he had dreamed of her like this for so long, spent so many nights wishing for her. Now that he had her…

He wasn’t a hero. And he wouldn’t let her go.

But he didn’t want a pliant, thoughtless thing in his arms. He wanted her alive — as awakened by the possibilities between them as he was. He held out his hand. “Come to me, Ellie.” His voice was softer than it had been. He couldn’t seem to keep an edge to it when her kohl-rimmed eyes were so stark. “I vow I won’t hurt you.”

“No one can keep such a promise.”

But she reached out her hand and let him pull her into his lap. Her veil fell away, revealing her hair — the same red waves he’d dreamed of any number of times.

He couldn’t resist her — couldn’t help himself when her lips were so close to his and the blood rushing from his head to his cock made it so damned hard to remember what he had planned for her. He kissed her. He swore she kissed him back. Her hands roved over his shoulders. Her lips opened for him, and he heard her approving moan as he claimed her.

Suddenly he didn’t want what he had planned for her. He didn’t want a slow, devastating seduction; didn’t want to play the patient lover until she finally admitted that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He still wanted to hear her need for him, but at this point, he would take what he could get.

He knew, somehow, in a dim corner of his mind that hadn’t quite flickered out, that these were the ravings of an addict. One more card, one more glass, one more pipe — one more time sinking into her, and surely he could save them both. It was madness — but it was no madness he wanted rescued from.

He stopped kissing her long enough to stand up. She didn’t say a word as he pulled her up with him. He pushed her hair back on both sides of her face, brushing her temples with his thumbs. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her scent. It fired his pulse — gave him the final spur to overwhelm his control and give in to his fantasies.

He kissed her again, hard, using her hair to tilt her up toward his mouth. She moaned as their lips met — moaned again as he bit her, lightly, tugging at her lower lip before plunging into her with his tongue. But a kiss wasn’t enough anymore. He needed to see her, now.

He broke away and dropped his hands to her bodice. He’d planned to make her strip for him. But now he wanted to strip her himself — not reverently, as he always had before, but forcefully, irrevocably.

The bodice opened down the front, with hooks made of stiffened thread catching into fragile loops on the other side. He wrenched it open, fraying threads and scattering beads as he shoved the bodice down her arms — letting her breasts out of their cage to fit perfectly in his hands.

For Nick, seeing her breasts for the first time in a decade was its own reward. For Ellie, his gaze was a new kind of torture. He looked so hungry for her, so damned reverent even though he shouldn’t be — so in love with her, even though she knew he’d never admit it.

Just as in love as she was — and just as unable to forget the past.

She couldn’t bear the way his blue eyes lit up, the way he concentrated on her as though he had to memorize every color, every smooth contour and every pebbled surface between the ridge of her collarbones and the stiffened peaks of her nipples. But she kept her eyes open. It was torture to watch him — but not as bad as the torture of letting him go.

His hands grazed across her breasts — then turned rougher, as though he remembered, at great personal cost, that her breasts weren’t an altar. He squeezed her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, with just enough force that it almost felt like a bite.

“You don’t know how I’ve dreamed of this,” he murmured.

She knew. She’d dreamed of it too — dreamed of him loving her again, touching her again, taking her again. But he kissed her again before she could confess, and his mouth swallowed whatever she might have said while one hand still caressed her and the other skimmed lower, down the curve of her bare torso to the waistband of her skirt.

A quick tug on the drawstring was enough to make the skirt collapse around her legs. It was so stiff with embroidery and beading that it was almost a shell — almost like she was Venus coming out of the waves for him.

He stopped kissing her and stepped back. She regretted the candles then — every inch of her was illuminated. But it wasn’t her nudity that made her self-conscious. With her painting, she’d stopped being precious about the human body long ago. It was that he was still clothed where she was not — and she wanted to see him, all of him, the way he currently devoured her.

“Won’t you undress?” she asked.

“I undressed you. You can return the favor.”

She stepped forward and pushed off his coat. His waistcoat came next, then his braces, and then his shirt, which he had to pull over his head himself. He bent to take off his shoes as well, but she stopped him. “Allow me, my lord,” she murmured.

She knelt. Her hair fell around her as she pulled his shoes off his feet. As she rolled his stockings down, she caressed the arch of each foot. Then she kissed the bridges, right on the top where the shoe buckles would have been. She heard him inhale — heard pain in the sound, as though it rasped over broken glass.