The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (24 page)

She no longer cared that she was naked. She clutched his shoulders and lost her sense of any other part of her except where he aroused her. Shameless, she arched so that her breasts begged for more, and she moaned when he flicked his tongue over their tips again and again.

Pleasure upon pleasure coursed through her, pooling where he caressed, turning urgent and needy with frightening quickness. The most primitive hunger soon owned her consciousness, making her ache, making her cry. This time no pain interfered; no shock brought her back to the world.
Erotic abandon broke in her like a storm and the pleasure turned frantic and tight and desperate. It kept getting worse until she wanted to scream for relief.

Then she did scream, in wondrous shock when a glorious burst of sensation exploded in her. He pulled her close as it happened and held her to him, his face buried in her breasts, his arms wrapping her tightly. She opened her eyes and saw herself in the large looking glasses, naked and wild like a maenad, embracing his dark head while she surrendered to ecstasy.

W
hile Darius drank coffee in the morning room, he frowned over a letter that had been brought by messenger at dawn. He had no choice but to heed the call in it. However, today of all days he did not want to be riding all over the county for the sake of duty. He wanted to stay right here.

Emma had dressed and retreated to her chamber, to wash and dress again, he assumed. She would be down soon.

There was much he needed to say to her and demand of her. About Fairbourne’s. About her meeting with Tarrington. About last night. Most of it should wait for another day now. If things between them progressed as he expected, some of it might not have to be said at all.

She entered the morning room, wearing a simple black dress and carrying a black bonnet. He would have preferred she wear another color, but perhaps that was his conscience looking to pretend last night had been other than it was. There had probably been nothing other than black for Mrs. Norriston to pack in her valise anyway.

He bid the footman serve her breakfast from the food on the breakfront. She ate heartily. He had been prepared for dawn’s awkwardness again when she came down, but perhaps her renewed abandon had made the day less strange.

“I should start back to London,” she said. “Please have your people tell Mr. Dillon to prepare my carriage.”

“I think that you should stay here another day. I have someone I must see this afternoon, and if you wait, I can ride back with you tomorrow.”

“If you will be busy this afternoon, there is little point in my staying longer.”

Miss Fairbourne said that, but Emma immediately emerged and realized the error of that logic. “Oh.” She glanced at him and colored. “I wish that I were clever and sophisticated, Southwaite, so I could bandy your intentions with witty double entendres.”

“Your usual forthrightness suits me better.”

“That is fortunate because it is all I have at my disposal this morning.” She looked at him very directly. That had always captivated him, but now it also brought forth vivid memories of her astonishment last night, and how her gaze forced a pervasive intimacy in the ballroom.

“It was a beautiful and touching night, and an amazing morning,” she said. “However, it would be unwise to do it again.”

She did not hesitate or falter as she issued her rejection. She did not even blink.

He reacted badly to her bluntness, but he managed to swallow his sense of insult. He had asked for forthright, hadn’t he?

Apparently her mind had spared neither herself nor him during the time upstairs while she washed and dressed. He pictured her, weighing it all, putting the pleasure on a scale and stacking all the potential costs against it.

She had surrendered herself to him last night, but not forever. Hell, not even for an entire day, it seemed.

Which meant he now had a choice. Either he could dismiss the servants and persuade her with pleasure right here in the morning room, or some of those things that should be said would have to be said right now.

He stood and offered his hand. “Let us take a turn outside, so that I can explain my thinking on what is wise or not.”

*     *     *

S
outhwaite’s hard expression surprised Emma. Perhaps he assumed she should be so bedazzled that she would melt at the insinuation that he wanted this tryst to continue?

She was not untouched by his interest, or unmoved by the way he looked at her. The familiarity in his manner kept her blood simmering with the remnants of this morning’s heat. She was not so conceited as to think that this attention was her due either. On reflection it had impressed her that she did not wake up alone in that ballroom, with her packed valise waiting outside the door.

He could not really expect an affair, however. He had to know that the risks were too high for her. Nor could she consider it for her own reasons. For the real reasons, she ruefully admitted.

She had finally shaken off her sensual daze while she washed, and acknowledged the impossibility of being the lover of a man from whom she needed to keep secrets of a potentially criminal nature.

The terrace was shaded this time of day by a large elm that hovered overhead. The edge of the back gardens bordered an expanse of grass dotted by other trees and shrubs, and the sounds of a brook twinkled in the air.

He took both her hands and drew her into an embrace. The contact moved her all the more. The thought entered her mind that he would not play fair, and would just seduce her again to get his way. She more than half wished he would. Then she could succumb for another night and another morning, and live for a while in a place of magic where there were no duties and no secrets.

“Emma, you were correct this morning. I ruthlessly seduced you. Nor am I at all sorry for it. You were an innocent, however, and I cannot even claim I thought otherwise. Therefore—”

“I am not sure the word
innocent
ever applies to a woman
of my age. I was, however, a virgin; that is true. Now I am not. I am not regretting it yet, and do not expect to later.”

“A gentleman who compromises a lady is—”

“Are you feeling guilty? Is that what this is about? Well, I am not a lady, so I think that absolves you of the rules your kind has about these things. Doesn’t it?”

For a man facing logic that favored him, he appeared exasperated.

“Damnation, Emma, I am trying to—If you would stop interrupting—” He took a deep breath. “I will not treat you differently due to our different stations, although you keep assuming that I will. We will marry, and very soon at that.”

That deep breath tickled her memory. It reminded her of something. Ah, yes, Mr. Nightingale, as he braced himself to speak words he did not mean so that he might get his hands on Fairbourne’s.

Southwaite did not want Fairbourne’s, although he might not mind having total control over its future. But this was not about that. Like Mr. Nightingale, however, he was making a proposal for all the wrong reasons.

She did not respond right away. She allowed herself to experience the flutter of excitement that filled her on hearing this proposal, despite its motivations. She permitted a series of rapid fantasies to fly through her mind, of her being the Countess of Southwaite.

Unfortunately other images followed them, of this man’s reaction when he confirmed his wife’s father had cooperated with smugglers. Of his cold silence when he learned that she had continued that right under his nose. Of his anger when her brother returned and revealed their father had not been coerced at all, but had used the auction house thus for years.

She set aside those sadder pictures and focused on the face in front of her eyes. She gazed hard and deep so she might never forget what he looked like right now, and how he made her feel anything but ordinary, even if he was only doing the right thing as gentlemen were taught to do.

“I am honored, of course. I dare not be,” she said.
“However, I know you do not want to do this. I am not suitable, and we both know it.”

“I know nothing of the kind. You are suitable if I say you are.”

He really believed that. How adorable his conceit could be sometimes. “I cannot accept. I think you already know most of the reasons why.”

She eased out of his embrace. An unexpectedly deep disappointment and pain in her heart said that she would indeed pay dearly for their passion, but not in ways assessed by the world.

He paced away, stopped to look at her in amazement, then paced some more. “You are impossible sometimes.”

“I like to think I am practical, not impossible.”

“How is it practical for you to choose scandal over marriage to an earl? It is so impractical as to put your sanity in question.”

“There will be no scandal. No one will find out. Your famous discretion will see to that. So there is no reason to swallow the bitter medicine and do the right thing.”

“You are most understanding. Oddly so. If you had not been moaning with pleasure mere hours ago, I might take offense at all your practical consideration.”

She was trying very hard to keep this civil but he simply would not allow it. “What is odd is your insistence on having a row about this, when instead you should be rejoicing in your close call.”

Something passed through him that brought a poignant warmth to his eyes. “If you will not accept my proposal, then be my lover, Emma.”

Ah, now they were down to it. She
was
suitable for that.

“Please do not be insulted, but—I think not. Please know that my decision in no way reflects on…your amorous skills.”

His eyelids lowered. “I am heartily relieved to hear it. Your good opinion of me is so very important. Can I ask what your decision does reflect on? Perhaps there is some other area in which I can improve.”

“You do not have to be sarcastic. I thought you would want to know it was not due to…that. I would if I were a man. As for the rest, there are many areas in which you can improve. There are for all of us. However, my decision mostly reflects that your pursuit of me, beginning with the Outrageous Misconception, has never made any sense.”

“Who said such things make sense? Hell, if they made sense, or had to make sense, I—”

“You would have never kissed me, let alone the rest. No, do not object to spare me a truth that I already know. I am sure I am not typical of the women you have had as lovers before, and we rarely converse without arguing. That is why your pursuit has been, well, suspicious.”

“
Suspicious
now.”

“Yes,
suspicious.
I would have to be stupid not to wonder about ulterior motives.”

“Do not impugn
my
motives just because
you
think you are ordinary, Emma.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake. “I will speak plainly since your pride will not allow you to hear anything less—”

“Heaven spare me. I think you have been plenty plain already.” His furious eyes settled on her, darkly. “Fine, explain my motives that you know so much better than I do myself.”

“I think that you used your flirting and pursuit to try to make me pliable so I might bend to your will about Fairbourne’s. If something resembling true desire eventually moved you, I am flattered. However, I would like to keep last night a fond memory, and avoid ever wondering about your motives in the future. For that reason, and because of our frequent rows and…everything else, I do not think any kind of intimate alliance between us would be wise.”

He gazed in her eyes deeply, directly. “I’ll be damned before I accept a fond memory and nothing more.”

She did not miss that he did not disagree with a single word she had said. “Then I fear you will be damned, Lord Southwaite. Now, please, call for my carriage. I must return to London. I have an auction to prepare.”

*     *     *

T
he woman was infuriating. Maddening. Irritating as hell…

Darius released his anger while he galloped up the coast.

Did she really expect him to stand down?
Now?

“You do not really want to do this.”
Hell, no man wanted to marry but most did eventually. Not because they wanted marriage itself, but because they wanted a woman. Some marriages came about because a man seduced a woman and it was the right thing to do. She knew that, damn it, but acted as if the rules did not apply to her.

Just as she ignored that a woman once seduced was supposed to
stay
seduced, especially if it was her first time with a man.

She had expected him to be relieved at her refusal. And he was, in a way. Not entirely, which was odd. All of which was beside the point, damn it.

“I am not suitable.”
No, she wasn’t. If he were willing to overlook the ways in which she wasn’t, including the potential scandal looming about her father, why should she feel obligated to be “practical”?

Hell, Emma Fairbourne was not a woman to care if she was not suitable anyway.

Both rejections had probably all been due to the “everything else.” She knew that he was suspicious that her father had been in league with smugglers. She might be too. Well, he would take care of part of the “everything else” today, and the rest very soon.

Head still pounding with curses, he followed the slope of the cliff path north of Fairbourne’s cottage, where it dipped down to the sea. Before it leveled again, he turned his mount right onto a rocky path that took a more precipitous route to the shore. Fifty yards before it met the water, he dismounted, tied his horse to a ragged, bony tree, then walked along a narrow ledge. Almost like magic one of the deep shadows on the cliff face turned into the mouth of a cave.

Tarrington lounged against its edge, calmly honing a very large knife against a stone. He looked up on hearing Darius’s footfall.

“Good that you came,” he said. “I don’t want to be paying for their board another night.”

“Of course I came. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I thought maybe you were still busy protecting that lady.” He grinned. “To say your face looked black yesterday is putting a fine point on it. Not that you appear any friendlier today.”