To Wed a Rake (11 page)

But he was like a partridge in the wild: if she startled him, he’d fly away. So she knelt to his side, quite as if she didn’t even notice the way his pantaloons were straining, and ran her hands through his hair. His hair was wild, coarser than hers. It sprang back against her fingers and smelled of woodsmoke and some sort of male soap, strong and not perfumed.

He wasn’t protesting, so she let her fingers do the thinking for her.

His forehead was high, the forehead of a thinking man, a man who knew Shakespeare, the Parliament, and the way not to fall out of a moving carriage. And how to make a woman fall in love with him, in all of one evening. His nose was a narrow aristocratic triumph, a nose handed down from the Elizabethans. His mouth…well, his mouth had everything in it. A sardonic laugh, and one of joy. That plump bottom lip knew grief and—unless she was truly mistaken, and Emma had made a practice never to be mistaken—was longing to kiss her breasts.

Men liked kissing a woman’s breasts, for all that Gil had so far only run his hands over her. She edged up closer to him and thought about offering him a breast, but rethought it. For one thought, it felt dismally maternal. For another, his black eyes were so steady and clear that she couldn’t quite find the courage. And for the final thing, it just didn’t sound right. Perhaps she’d misunderstood when village
women talked of men supping at their breast, for all they were babes in arms.

She moved back and let her hands run from his lean cheeks to the strong cords of his neck, down to the ridged muscles on his chest. Were all men so muscled? His nipples were flat against his skin, and his mouth opened slightly as she touched them, although he made no sound.

It would be nice to hear
him
make a sound in his throat. Not looking at his eyes, she ran her fingers over his chest again, but he was silent, just waiting.

His pantaloons fastened themselves at the waist, but she wasn’t certain he would allow her to disrobe him. It wouldn’t suit his Puritan tendencies, that was certain.

She bent over him, and her hair fell forward, creating a little curtain around their faces. Then she licked his bottom lip again. A woman could spend her life tracing that line, feeling the quake low in her stomach at the curve of it, the softness of his lip, the strength of it.

A huge hand came to the back of her head and pulled her mouth down to his, and in that moment she let her right hand sli sighastede from his lean stomach onto the front of his pantaloons. For a moment he went rigid, his mouth warm on hers,
in
hers, and her fingers curled around him as if of their own volition, and then he groaned into her mouth, a queer, hoarse sound that made her sink from her knees so that she was lying on top of his body, boneless, sinking into him.

His mouth was ravaging her, her hand trapped between their bodies, between the softness of her skin and the fabric of his pantaloons.

And then Emma threw away the idea of winning the challenge. If Gil would just kiss her for another moment, kiss her for another five minutes, let her hand rest on top of that part of him that pushed into her palm, demanding
something that she knew little of, but was all too eager to discover…

It was the first time that she had entirely dismissed the thought of winning the challenge. Who cared about the challenge? The only thing that mattered was that he was rocking up against her, pushing her legs apart, his knees going where—his hands touching…

Then he growled something at her.

He said it again. “I give
up.
”

She closed her eyes, but she heard him all right. In an instant, she began wrestling with the two little rows of buttons on his pantaloons. But a gentleman’s tight evening pantaloons don’t slide off his legs without help.

He gave a bark of laughter and rolled to his feet. She lay there, looking up at him, knowing she was all white skin and a spread of red hair. He was watching, so she did exactly what she wanted to do, which was move her thighs apart, just a little. Just enough so that her cheeks flooded red at the same time the burning heat in her belly flared.

He tossed his trousers to the side, followed by his smalls. His legs were golden dark in the dim light from Jeremy’s lantern, ridged with muscle and dusted with hair. And then, higher—the color grew in her cheeks but she didn’t look away.

She was pretending to be a widow, but she wasn’t going to pretend to be less interested than she was.

He came to his knees beside her, but instead of throwing himself on her as she half expected, he cupped her face in his hands. “You’re to marry that worthy burgher of yours within a fortnight, do you hear?” he told her fiercely.

She nodded, eyes on his, wondering at the way that love could just rise up and grip you in the heart so fiercely it would never let you go. Those sloe-shaped eyes of his, that lock of hair on his forehead, those lean cheeks…“I
shall,” she whispered. And, in her heart:
I’m going to marry you within a fortnight.

“Good,” he said, as if they’d settled something. “In that case, I give up. I’ll pay you that favor. I’m sorry I ever forgot you, that I ever got drunk in Paris, that I ever—”

She wasn’t really listening. He had a hand on her bottom, and he slid her legs open, and then—and then he came to her.

It hurt, and it didn’t hurt.

Her blood sang and thundered at the same time.

Her eyes closed, and yet she felt she could see through every pore.

He slid in, a little way, and made that hoarse sound in his throat, exce
pt perhaps it was she who made it, and then he didn’t move again, so she went where her body wanted to go and arched up, against him, training him, teaching him, keeping him close and mindful and
hers.

He was a good learner, for an Englishman.

Of course, she was French, and Frenchwomen are the fastest learners of all.

They left through the front door. Gil left Jeremy’s unlit lantern where he could find it in the morning.

Neither one of them seemed to feel like talking. Emma’s throat was tight with something: tears? She rarely cried and only for a very good reason, so that couldn’t be it. Come to think of it, the last time she’d really cried had been at her mother’s funeral.

Her bejeweled Elizabethan dress felt frowsy now, and unbearably heavy. She couldn’t wait to enter her bedchamber in Grillon’s and collapse in a bed and try very hard not to think about the evening.

She’d won. Her father had Gil’s ring safely stowed away, and she had done her part of the business, and that was that.

Gil was sobriety itself, handing her into the carriage as if she were made of glass. He said good-bye to her there, a
sweet little farewell buss on the lips. “I would hope,” he said, “you consider my debt repaid, Madame Emelie?”

What could she say? That the debt he had now incurred would take a lifetime to repay?

“Of course,” she said and gave him a little kiss of her own. “You’re free and clear, my lord.”

“Gil,”
he said. But after that, they didn’t say anything to each other.

When she involuntarily winced, climbing down the carriage step, he insisted on scooping her up and carrying her right up the steps of Gillon’s. Emma thanked God for her mask; this story was going to be all over London before the morning gossip columns even appeared. It had to be three in the morning, and yet those who’d come to London expressly for the masquerade were just beginning to drift to their beds. They were gathered in small clusters amongst the exquisite pillars of the entryway.

The manager, Mr. Fredwell, saw them coming and hurried toward her. “Madame de Custine!” he cried, taking in the situation at a glance. “You must have injured your ankle.”

“Indeed she has,” Gil said coolly. “I believe it would be best for madame if you had two footmen carry her in a chair to her chambers.”

There was a little rustle of voices, as of wind passing through the poplars. Apparently the Earl of Kerr wasn’t going to sweep this mysterious Frenchwoman up to her chamber in his own arms, thereby guaranteeing that she would appear in every gossip column printed on the morrow.

Instead, and to everyone’s disappointment, he deposited her in a chair, nodded to Mr. Fredwell, and left without further ado, striding down the steps as if he hadn’t whisked
her out of the ballroom, sparking a hundred rumors and a thousand delicious speculations.

Emma swallowed hard and didn’t let herself worry about the fact that her future husband was the type of man who bedded a beautiful Frenchwoman, told her to marry her fiancé promptly, and then left without a word of farewell. After all, Gil was what he was.

And she loved him, more’s the pity for her.

Her spirits rose a bit when the footmen left and her own maid came clucking toward her. “Oh, miss, what did happen to you? Twisted your ankle, did you?”

Emma fashioned herself a graceful limp and allowed herself to be placed in a steaming bath scented with rose, given a tisane, and put to bed in starched sheets, as if she were an invalid.

Her chamber looked over the great inner courtyard of Grillon’s. Sl {&#xput owly the sound of tinkling laughter and voices died away, and yet she lay wide awake in her beautifully ironed nightgown, tied at the neck with a blue ribbon, and stared at the stars. Her room opened to a small wrought-iron balcony, along the lines of that onto which Juliet wandered.

The stars were far away, small and cold and quite unlike the twinkling bits of gold flake that still danced at the corner of her vision. She tried to imagine using transparent stretches of silk to revolutionize Mr. Tey’s stages, but she dropped the idea without even trying. She didn’t want to paint scenery flats any longer. And it wasn’t only because Grieve’s set had been so much better than hers.

For some reason, it felt as if
she’
d
taken Gil’s virginity, which was absurd. Absurd. Then why did she feel this dragging sadness?

Clouds kept drifting across the full moon, looking like
boats, frigates, and ships making their way over to France, and all those enchanting, irresistible Frenchwomen.

At last she fell asleep, not even realizing that her cheeks were wet.