The Notorious Scoundrel (19 page)

Slowly he brushed her cheek with the pad of his thumb, his touch warm, gentle. “You didn’t mind my company in Hyde Park.”

She shivered under the tender gesture, the hotly spoken words. Little goose pimples sprouted over her skin, making her flesh tingle with the memory of their intimacy in the park. In vivid detail, she remembered the heat, the rain, the wild wind as he’d shielded her
from the tempest with his body, pressed his sturdy weight between her thighs, offering her pleasure, closeness.

“I don’t mind your company now,” she whispered, a need growing inside her. “But if you’re discovered here—”

He bussed her mouth with a soft, light kiss, curtailing her protest. As the kiss deepened, she matched its sound and steady pressure, offering him the same passion he offered her, feeding his desire as he fed hers.

Would it always feel so good? she wondered. Kissing him? Being caressed by his sensuous mouth? She wanted him. Always. She wanted his lips a hairbreadth away from hers at all times. She wanted to take his mouth whenever the need compelled her, welled within her.

“I need you, Amy.”

A firm hand rubbed her waist, petted her breastbone. She raised her bosom, taking in a deep breath, as he rested his large palm over her breast, her thumping heart. She trembled with a fiery want, a familiar anxiety.

“I need to touch you.”

He stroked the buttons of her dress in a lazy manner, making her shiver with delight at his teasing promise of pleasure. Slowly he unfastened the row of beads and parted the fabric folds. The warm breeze tickled her spine and she trembled under the scoundrel’s sensual seduction, quivered with need as he strummed her boned corset and loosened the lace bindings with ease.

“I need to taste you.”

She gasped at the dark hunger in his voice. “Here?”

“Right here.”

He plumped a swelling breast with his strong fingers, kneaded the soft flesh, so tender. She cooed at the delightful sensations, her heart pounding, her muscles firming, but as soon as he parted his lips and took her stiff nipple into his hot mouth, she groaned, unprepared for the erotic attack on her senses.

“You and I belong with the trees and the flowers,” he murmured, lapping his tongue over the puckering nub. “We belong with nature.”

She moaned and burrowed her fingers tightly into his hair as he undulated his tongue over her hard nipple, drawing her further into his mouth, flicking the rigid, sensitive surface again and again.

“Do I please you?” he rasped.

“Yes.”

She ached for him deep inside her belly, a knotted sensation that constricted the muscles in her body; she felt only warmth and expectation and longing.

He tugged at her corset with firmness, searching for her other breast. “Do you want me to please you like this all the days of your life?”

“Yes!”

Amy chewed on her bottom lip as he took her other breast into his mouth and sucked hard, making her so tight inside, so full of energy. She gasped, a deep craving in her soul; she cried out in need.

He rent the corset slightly, exposing the birthmark
between her breasts. He touched the mark with reverence, thrummed his thumb over her taut midriff.

“Do you want me to come to you in the garden and pleasure you every night?”

He bussed the birthmark, matched his lush lips with the smaller configuration. As her heart shuddered, she closed her eyes and sighed.

“Yes,” she said weakly.

“Do you want me to come to you, Amy?” he said fiercely. “After your husband’s finished with you?”

She hardened. It was like a nasty imp had dumped a bucket of icy water over her head. She sensed the goblin’s mordant laughter as a chill seeped right through to her toes.

“After the marquis’s dutifully rutted with you,” he said stiffly, “do you want me to come and give you more fun?”

He knows about the marquis!

She opened her eyes and pushed him away, struggled with her dress. “I know you’re angry with me, Edmund.”

He grabbed her trembling wrists and pinned her hands behind her back. “I don’t think you do, Amy.”

Her breasts still exposed, she was trapped between his thick arms. He pegged her with his steely eyes, his expression darkening.

“I have to marry him, Edmund,” she said, breathless. “We’re betrothed. We’ve been betrothed since I was a babe. It would disgrace my father’s good name if I refused to wed the marquis.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“I…”

“You wanted me for your lover, is that it? Your poor, lowly lover, who otherwise isn’t fit to be seen in your company.”

“No, Edmund, I—”

“I won’t be your lover, Amy.” He gritted, “If I’m not good enough to touch you as…then I won’t touch you at all.”

Her breath hitched at the implication. If he wasn’t good enough to touch her as her husband…

Her heart cramped at the wonderful thought.

He released her and stalked away, deep into the shadows.

“Edmund wait!”

She grappled with the garment, attempted to fasten the buttons, but her fingers quivered with emotion. In the end, she was too ineffective. She grabbed the material and pressed it against her bust, concealing her breasts. She bounded along the winding path in search of him when she detected the sharp whiff of tobacco smoke.

She stilled and studied her surroundings.

“Do you need assistance, Lady Amy?”

She bristled.

She looked askance and spotted the marquis smoking beside a tree. A creeping chill spread over her limbs, her spine. Had he watched her with Edmund?

“H-how did you get into the garden undetected?” she stammered.

“You didn’t ask your lover that question?”

He stepped away from the tree and approached her as if he might offer her assistance with the garment. She quickly skirted off a short distance. He paused. She shuddered at the thought that he might rub his fingers over her body. She wasn’t his wife yet…would she ever be now? she wondered.

Amy’s heart pumped with vigor. She was ruined. One word from the marquis and her betrothal was finished. She imagined the disgrace, the shame her parents would suffer as the scandal spread across Town. She imagined clobbering the marquis and dragging his carcass into the bushes to rot.

She tamped down the tears that brimmed in her eyes. “What do you want?”

The wretched lord might be persuaded to keep his ogling a secret. If she offered him something valuable, perhaps—

“I want to give you this necklace.” He presented her with a dazzling ruby choker in a velvet-lined box; the gems glistened under the lamplight like hot coals from Hades. “It’s a family heirloom. I’d like you to wear it on our wedding night.”

She stared at the twinkling stones, the bile burning in her belly. “Our wedding night?”

The marquis still wanted to marry her? There had to be a wedding day if there was going to be a wedding night.

She shivered. The black-hearted devil! He had sneaked into the garden, lurked behind the trees, wait
ing for her, so he might offer her the necklace, an intimate gesture. It wasn’t proper for him to meet her in the sitting room and talk about such private matters…like their first night together.

She firmed her lips. He wanted to torment her. She suspected it pleased him to see the distaste, the resistance in her eyes. He loathed her. Why? And why was he willing to proceed with the wedding after witnessing her lovemaking? Family honor? He had vowed to wed her, and he would keep his word, even if she’d dallied with another man?

“Did you think your transgression with Mr. Hawkins a sin?” He looked at her with stony eyes, the tobacco smoke swirling around his head. “I’m not such a puritan, my lady.”

She clutched the fabric even tighter at her bust, her heart knocking against her breastbone with vim.

“Tell me,” he drawled, “do you like his touch? Does it give you pleasure?”

She shuddered at the whispered words, hissing like wet wood in the firelight.

“In the breeze, your moans sound like sweet music.” He lowered his gaze to her bosom, leering at her. “How does it feel to have him in your arms, at your breasts?”

The warmth of Edmund’s touch soon dissipated, her skin feeling cool and clammy under the marquis’s seedy glare.

“It feels glorious, I suspect. I envy him the comfort he finds at your bosom and warm, beating heart.”

Amy spread her shaky fingers apart, tamping down the nausea in her belly.

“I don’t care if you keep Mr. Hawkins as your lover,” he said slowly, looking back into her eyes through a haze of cigar smoke. “It won’t prevent our wedding.”

She squeezed the velvet box with the ruby choker between her stiff fingers. It welled within her, the desire to cry off and escape the lecherous fiend, but she smothered the unruly impulse. She had her parents’ feelings, their reputations to consider, as well. She needed to make a good match, to squelch the rumors regarding her past, and the only eligible gentleman prepared for the task was the marquis; he’d already committed to the duty.

He pulled away from her. “Don’t despair, Lady Amy. I would never stand in the way of true love, I assure you.”

And with that cryptic declaration, he blended with the garden shadows once more.

True love? What did
he
know about true love, the creeping devil?

Amy shuddered at the words. She dismissed them, in truth. She hadn’t the wherewithal to sift through her complicated feelings for Edmund. And what about the marquis’s deviant promise that he’d permit an affair between her and the scoundrel?

The situation was too distasteful. She needed to prevent the wedding. She needed to foil the betrothal.

A
my skulked through the shrubbery. She parted the foliage and peered at the churchyard a short distance away. The sturdy gravestones dotted the level terrain like silent sentries, guarding the dead.

She shivered at the morbid atmosphere, searched the landscape for a sign of the sordid marquis. She had followed the man in the hopes of learning more about him and his unseemly interludes, but she wasn’t likely to uncover anything scandalous in the quiet parish. She sighed, shifting from her crouching position, her legs cramped. She’d tracked him thus far; she thought. She’d wait a few minutes more before declaring the day a failure and skirting off.

Amy spied the deserted hallowed grounds with growing impatience. She had watched the marquis pass through the church gates. She had slunk after him shortly thereafter, but she was having trouble locating the man now.

She moved stealthily through the bushes. After
searching the entire churchyard with her eyes, she realized the marquis wasn’t there and huffed.

Where had the man disappeared?

At length, she heard soft murmuring. She stooped as she approached the wooded enclave, and peered through the leaves at the patch of land set aside from the churchyard. She counted a few headstones there—and the marquis.

He hunkered beside a monument, speaking softly. As he stroked the cold, gray stone his voice deepened, darkened. An almost wretched blathering passed between his lips as if the man was in distress and needed attention.

Amy chewed on her bottom lip, wishing him an apoplexy, but she quickly quashed the wicked thought, for the marquis hadn’t ruined her after witnessing her tryst with Edmund, and for that he deserved some consideration, she supposed. She glanced at the church steeple, shadowed by the late-afternoon sun. Was the parson inside the holy dwelling today? If not, she’d have to dash toward the nearest village to fetch assistance.

She looked back at the hunched figure. The marquis had quieted. He scraped his fingernails along his scalp and grasped his sandy brown hair.

He was weeping

Amy was disarmed. She stared, transfixed, at the haunting spectacle. The man was such a cold beast. How did he keep such heavy feelings concealed? Where did he keep them? But the grief that poured from his soul convinced her the black-hearted devil
had
a heart pressed somewhere deep within his being. It was a wounded heart, and she empathized with the mysterious man for a moment.

After a thorough atonement with the body in the grave, he righted himself. Quietly he vacated the grounds and returned to the church courtyard where his coach was stationed.

As soon as Amy heard the wheels crackling over the pebbled road, she emerged from her hiding spot and slowly approached the tombstone. It was a simple, rounded marker with two doves engraved on the façade.

She squatted, touched the rough surface, weathered with age. She brushed her fingers across the birds, symbols of peace. She next pressed her fingertips into the crevices that marked the name, the letters vaguely familiar to her. She was learning to read. She traced her fingers over an R and a U. Next she fingered a D…but she wasn’t able to spell out the rest of the name.

The dates she deciphered as 1791–1811. The deceased was twenty years of age. Not a lost child, then. The marquis had never wed, so it wasn’t his spouse interred in the earth. The occupant was too young to be an aged parent. A sibling, perhaps? No, the marquis was an only child, like her. Who then?

Amy made the sign of the cross and lifted off her haunches. She approached the small church. She stepped inside the ancient structure and was greeted with the pungent aroma of burning tallow candles. The rows of pews seated about forty parishioners, she esti
mated. She caressed the wood seats, skipped her fingers over them as she stepped down the aisle.

A chill gripped her bones as she imagined her wedding march, the sinister groom waiting for her at the end of a similar aisle, his eyes cold, biting, filled with rancor…despair.

“Good day,” she called out. “Is there someone here?”

A young curate, with a mop of curly brown hair, appeared from a small office behind the pulpit. “Good day, miss. How can I be of service?”

Amy smiled. She was dressed in a simple white dress, respectable, but otherwise plain, her long hair plaited and secured with a ribbon. She wanted to protect her ducal heritage. It wasn’t right for her to be traipsing through the countryside without an escort, and she didn’t want word to reach the marquis that she was snooping into his private affairs.

“I need some information,” she said. “There’s a grave marker with a pair of doves just beyond the church grounds. I’d like to know more about the deceased.”

The Church of England maintained records of births and deaths and marriages, so the information shouldn’t be too hard to ascertain, she thought.

The curate frowned. “That’s unconsecrated land, miss.”

“Unconsecrated?”

“The land isn’t blessed; it isn’t sacred.” He smoothed his clerical vestments. “It’s where we bury the suicides or the unbaptized, the nonconformists.”

Her pulses leaped. “I see.”

“Why do you want such information?”

He sounded ominous. Amy suspected the pious curate was affronted by her unbecoming questioning, and she refrained from making any more inquiries.

“I’ve made a mistake, is all.” She bobbed a curtsy. “Good day.”

Quickly she scurried away from the holy house—and the curate’s sanctimonious stare. She wandered the churchyard for a brief time, trolled the grounds as she assessed the news that the corpse was laid in unconsecrated ground.

Who
was buried there?

She would have to find some other way to learn the name on the headstone, the identity of the deceased—and why the bones were so important to the marquis.

Amy headed for her own stationed vehicle; it was a short distance away and concealed. As she traveled the pebbled road, she detected the faint shuffling of feet and glanced over her shoulder.

Two figures ambled down the road at a distance.

She eyed the bodies, those of two men. Farmers, perhaps. Or tradesmen. She looked away again…but a niggling suspicion hounded her thoughts and she examined the figures once more.

“Oh, bullocks!”

Amy took off running.

“You eat like a pig.”

Edmund glowered at his brother, standing in the door frame. “Sod off, Quincy.”

The pup entered the room and rounded the dining
table before he settled into a chair, scratching his chin. “What’s wrong, Eddie?”

He took a bite from the roasted lamb, mumbled, “Nothing.”

“If you’re stuffing your belly, something’s wrong. Care to tell me about it?”

Edmund chewed his food in silence.

“It’s Amy, isn’t it?”

He gnashed his teeth.

“And her pending marriage to the marquis?”

He slammed his fist into the table, rattled the dishes. “I’m about to flatten your nose, pup.”

“That won’t really make you feel better.”

“It might,” he growled.

Quincy raised an amused brow. After a short silence, he pressed on with “Are you going to fight for the lass?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“She’s betrothed to Gravenhurst.” The blood in his skull pounding, he gritted, “What am I supposed to do about it? Duel with the marquis? He’s not dishonored her good name.”

Quincy snorted. “No one duels anymore, Eddie.”

“What did you mean, then?”

He shrugged. “Break the engagement.”

“Why?”

“You care for her, admit it.”

Edmund stiffened at the provocative suggestion, girded his muscles against the rising pressure in his chest, the unfilled longing. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

I have to marry him, Edmund. It would disgrace my father’s good name if I refused to wed the marquis.

“Shut up, Quincy.”

He folded his arms across his chest and sighed. “You don’t feel you deserve her, do you?”

Edmund mustered a surly expression. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand better than you think. I’ve lived in their shadows, too. Breaking away from the past isn’t easy, I know. But
you
have a chance to make a new start for yourself with Amy, and if
you
don’t take it, it’s your own damn fault.”

Edmund humphed and stared at his plate, feeling less hungry. He sucked the meat’s juices off his fingers just as the butler appeared in the door frame and announced in his classical, brusque manner, “Lady Amy.”

Edmund bristled. Slowly he lifted his gaze, set it upon the piquant lass as she stepped into the room, draped in fine white linen, her fair hair plaited in a charming fashion. She was so damn lovely. In her presence, he was sentient of his every defect—and his every desire to be a better man. It was a stupid, wistful desire.

“Hullo, Amy,” from Quincy.

Edmund firmed his jaw, feeling less hospitable. “What are you doing here, Amy?”

She was pale. She possessed light features, but her skin seemed even more pallid, iridescent in the sparkling sunlight.

He demanded roughly, “What’s happened?”

“I’m being followed,” she said, breathless.

The brothers exchanged knowing glances.

Quincy bounded to his feet. “I’ll take a look outside.”

“Be careful,” she beseeched.

Quincy smiled at her before he and the butler departed from the dining room in brisk strides.

Edmund wiped his mouth, his fingers in the napkin; he lifted to his feet. With steady footfalls, he approached the trembling woman, resisting the impulse to draw her into his arms, comfort her.

“Did you recognize the men, Amy?”

“Yes, they’re the same two assailants from the Pleasure Palace.” She dropped her reticule on the table. “They must have discovered my identity as Zarsitti. They’ll ruin me, Edmund!”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he said darkly.

“What else is there?”

“Kidnapping? Death?”

She snorted. “They want money, I’m sure of it. A bribe. I’m not Zarsitti anymore; they can’t collect the hundred-pound bounty on my head, but they can blackmail
me
into giving them the lost amount.”

She circled the table in a fretful gait. He spied her anxious mannerisms, heard her harried breaths. She was working herself into a frenzy. If he embraced her, he’d smother her fussy movements…but he’d ignite an unquenchable fire in his belly, too.

He said sharply, “Why don’t you just pay them off and be done with it?”

“And
where
am I going to get a hundred pounds?”

“From your father.”

“I can’t go to my father.” She knotted her fingers. “I can’t confess my past!”

“I’ll give you the bloody money.”

She stilled, looked at him with wide green eyes. “You’d do that? Even after…?”

“Last night?” he said roughly.

She flushed. “Do you hate me?”

He breathed slowly through his nose. “You lied to me, Amy.”

“I never lied to you.”

“Aye, you did.” He closed the door and folded his arms across his chest. “You had no business coming to me in the park, giving yourself to me when you were promised to another man.”

He choked on the last word, a wretched truth.

Amy munched on her bottom lip. “I wanted to come to you in the park. I wanted to be with you, Edmund.”

The quiet confession disarmed him, upset his moody disposition. He quelled the rampant need to touch her, taste her. She looked at him with such hopeless longing, he very nearly crossed the room and took her in his arms for a savage kiss.

I want you too, Amy.

He smothered the unfit impulse. She was a duke’s daughter. He was a pirate’s son. If desire burned between them, the damnable heat was moot.

“I’ll fetch the blunt.”

“Wait!” She circled the room again, brandished her
hands. “The assailants haven’t approached me with any demands. What am I supposed to do with the money?”

The sound of her swooshing petticoats rattled his sensitive senses even more. “What do you want from me, then? Do you want me to kill the blackguards?”

She paused and gasped. “I’m not asking you to commit murder…not yet.”

He looked at her with a wry expression. “Then why did you come here?”

“I need your help. You have a friend, a Bow Street Runner. Can he look into the matter for me? Arrest the men?”

“You’d prefer a stranger’s help to mine?” he said tightly.

“You
trust your friend, so I trust him, too.”

The stiffness in his muscles loosened, and he warmed at the thought that the woman believed in him, trusted him.

She said quietly, “Will you help me?”

He gazed into her eyes, so imploring. He might never stand beside her in society as her social equal, but he would always stand behind her as a friend. “Yes.”

She sighed. “Thank you.”

“What about your fiancé?”

She hardened. “What about him?”

“Why didn’t you ask him for assistance?”

She grabbed a chair, crushed the wood between her fingers. “I’m not very fond of the marquis.”

“Trouble, Amy?”

“Yes,” she bit out. “I have to marry him, the lout.”

He stared at her, confounded. It was the ambition of every chit in society to snag a titled husband, even if he was a lout, and her betrothal to the marquis assured her position within the
ton
.

“What’s going on, Amy?”

She stroked her fingers across the chair’s ornate headpiece. “I have to marry the marquis…but I don’t want to be with him.”

Gravenhurst was a bloody peer of the realm, though. He offered her respectability and security and every other social advantage that she had longed for since being in the rookeries. Was she really displeased with such an advantageous match?

“Why?” he demanded.

“I don’t like him,” she said in a flat voice. “We don’t suit.”

“Are you sure, Amy?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she snapped, still rubbing her fingers across the chair’s headpiece in a mindless fashion. “I don’t want to be with the marquis.”

Who do you want to be with, then?