Twice damned as an idiot, he’d opened the door then, and he thrust it open now with more force than he intended, sending it back against the wall with a loud bang.
With his heart pounding and his jaw set against the worst possible scenario, he found instead the woman he was obsessed with sitting demurely in a chair by a brick hearth, a glass of sherry arrested near her lips and her eyes wide at his abrupt arrival.
Fully clothed, every female frippery in place, her hair still neatly coiffed in a simple chignon. Derek too, perched on the bed, was dressed right down to his Hessians and even his neckcloth.
No, not at all the same scene he’d invaded a decade ago.
Praise God.
Relief had him speechless. Or maybe it was something else, something akin to mortification. Into the resulting silence, he managed to say brilliantly, “Good afternoon.”
It was Derek who responded. His old friend got to his feet in one lithe movement, a small smug smile on his mouth. With studied precision he tugged a watch from the pocket of his waistcoat, glanced at it, and tucked it back away. “You took longer than I thought, Nick.”
What?
Nicholas wanted to glare, but he couldn’t manage it, even after years of practice in controlling his emotions. He said coolly, “Care to explain that remark?”
“Care to explain your presence here?” Derek sauntered toward the doorway. “Not to me, of course, since I’m leaving. I am sure Lady Wynn would like to hear what you have to say, though. Call on me when you get back to London.”
What the devil is going on?
Nicholas stepped out of the way as his friend shouldered past him. Derek had a faint but unmistakable smile of open amusement on his face.
Yes, as if Nicholas weren’t scoffing at himself already, that’s what he needed, someone else laughing at him.
But it was hard to be too irritated if he was suddenly alone with Caroline. Alone. With her. In a remote country inn.
A dream come true. No, make that a male fantasy come true. Or maybe a combination of both.
She looked positively enchanting in a simple gown of pale rose muslin, her attire rumpled from her journey, those silver eyes luminous as she gazed at him from across the small room.
The bed, he noted, looked comfortable enough.
He’d thank Derek for his choice in accommodations later. “You expected me?”
Her voice was hushed. “I . . . hoped.”
She hoped. Dear God, he was in over his head.
“I don’t know why I’m even here.” He thrust his hand through his hair in aggravation and exhaled raggedly. “Except I really could not take the idea of your going through with the second part of this bargain.”
“So you came to save me?” She sat there, the small glass dangling in her fingers, her face unreadable. Usually, he understood what women were thinking. No, that was wrong—he could guess what women were thinking, but understanding it was something else.
Now he really had no idea.
Nicholas moved into the room and shut the door behind him.
At that moment he banished Helena’s ghost into not only the hallway but the forever past. “I came for you,” he said in simple honesty. “What it means exactly you are obligated to help me understand.”
“Obligated?” Auburn brows rose, but Caroline looked becomingly flushed. “Rothay, you do
understand
that just because you are a skilled lover, handsome in every way, and could charm a snake out of a basket, I am not necessarily one of your conquests.”
“Aren’t you?” He grinned.
Why had he ever hesitated over this?
“Well,” she said in that same pragmatic, prim, very Lady Wynn voice—though the heated anticipation in her eyes belied it—“I am not convinced of it.”
No one knew how to issue a challenge like she did. No one. In one note she’d managed to turn his life upside down. Look at what she was doing to him now. She was still halfway across the room and yet he could feel his erection grow, just from the promise of being close to her.
This wasn’t just simple desire.
That
he’d felt before. Many, many times. It was the fodder that fed the gossip mill; it was what kept him from thinking about Helena; it was in the past.
This was different. It had been different from the moment he’d kissed her that warm afternoon on the terrace in Essex and had the first taste of her tentative but eager passion.
Or maybe when she’d lifted off her hat and veil back at the seedy little tavern . . .
Oh hell, who the devil cared when? It had happened.
It just had.
He looked magnificent.
Surly, a little disheveled, out of sorts, irritated, and yet the gleam in his beautiful dark eyes was one she recognized with a vivid clarity.
Desire.
The scandalously delicious Duke of Rothay wanted her.
Was it too much to hope that wasn’t the only thing that brought him all this way?
From the bulge in his breeches as he deliberately shrugged out of his jacket, it was hard to be sure. But, as Lord Manderville had pointed out, if the Devilish Duke wanted a woman for base purposes, he needn’t ride any distance to find her.
But he’d come.
The risk had been worth it.
He advanced purposefully across the floor. Caroline took a compulsive gulp of sherry, never taking her eyes from his lean form. He was just as tall, just as masculine and powerful as she remembered, and just as intimidating as the last time they’d locked gazes across a crowded ballroom.
Except that he halted before her chair and extended his hand instead of doing something more presumptuous like sweeping her up into his arms.
Just that. One extended hand.
It was symbolic of what she hoped he offered. Not just transient pleasure but a more meaningful joining. Nicholas had come from London to prevent her from following through with her judging offer, and Lord Manderville had exited as planned, leaving them alone. Everything so far was going well.
The slow pound of her heart throbbed in her wrist and throat.
Caroline took his proffered hand, entwining her fingers with his as she allowed him to gently tug her to her feet. “Like I said, I hoped . . .”
She stopped, faltering, not sure how much she was supposed to volunteer.
Nicholas had a faint smile on his face. A dark lock of hair hung over one brow. His breeches and boots held dust from the road. He took the glass of sherry from her hand and set it aside. “You hoped what?”
After all, what did it hurt to say it? Well, maybe it was a risk, but Nicholas had come a fair distance to interfere, and though Derek swore it would happen, it still both surprised and thrilled her. “I hoped you’d come.”
An ebony brow went upward. “I hoped I wouldn’t,” he said on a low mutter before he crushed his mouth to hers.
It was not in the least a gentle kiss. It was intense, demanding, yet somehow yielding at the same time. Caroline leaned into him, letting him have his way with his tongue and lips, and found her hands on the lapel of his jacket and her breasts against his chest. Since he was obviously there despite his better judgment, she could forgive even that gruff tone of voice.
The Devilish Duke was not all charming at the moment . . . and she loved it. Loved the hotspur need in his embrace, loved the lack of finesse. He was capable of persuasive planned allure, of tantalizing seduction, but this was something else entirely. His hands roamed over her body and they melted together.
Ebony hair brushed her cheek. A hot demanding mouth possessed hers and she felt the rigid length of his erection even through the layers of their clothing. The small room didn’t matter; the darkening sky held no meaning; all that was her world was one man.
That said it all.
One man.
“Nicholas,” she murmured against his lips.
He whispered back, “I’m here. Heaven help me, I couldn’t stay away.”
Yes, he was there. It made her body taut and needy. “I’m glad.”
“Let me demonstrate just how much I am here.” He backed her toward the bed.
His hands worked their magic. She didn’t stand a chance, but she didn’t want one. Her gown was unfastened and pushed from her shoulders so quickly she was barely aware of it slipping free and pooling on the floor. Chemise, stockings, and slippers were disposed of just as fast and he scooped her up to deposit her nude body on top of the coverlet.
“Now, that is worth riding all the way from London for,” he said as he began to undress deliberately, his gaze roving over her body.
How she’d missed it. The blatant audacity in his stare and the resulting curl of excitement deep in her belly. He fairly jerked off his clothing and for a moment he just stood there as if he realized with the same frantic force of need how important the moment really was to them both.
Then he climbed onto the bed and into her arms, sliding fully on top of her, his mouth claiming hers again. This time the kiss was slow and wicked, his erect cock hard between them. Caroline rubbed against that long length, winning a small rumble of approval from deep in his chest.
She loved the skillful way his hands moved over her body, the warm feel of his mouth on her neck as she arched into his embrace, the scent of his skin. Already she was wet and receptive, eager to feel him inside her. It was natural to spread her legs, an invitation he didn’t miss. Nicholas braced his weight on his forearms and accepted the offer, his knees opening her thighs wider as he poised to enter her.
For a moment he paused, the restraint it took evident in the tension in his muscled form. “I’m never possessive.”
That he was still having trouble defining his actions was no surprise.
Caroline gazed upward, a languid pleasure assaulting her senses as anticipation hummed through every nerve ending. “I know.”
The tip of his erection rested against her opening, but he didn’t move. “The idea of you with Derek—oh hell, you and anyone—was more than I could take. It was torturing me.”
More than any sentimental words, the dark look on his all-too-handsome face made her smile. Caroline touched his cheek. “I wouldn’t have done anything anyway.”
“Why not? Tell me.”
She caught the deepened, hoarse tone of his voice. That Nicholas Manning, the devilish lover of so many women, his suave, practiced charisma whispered about behind gloved hands wherever he went, was urging her into some kind of declaration first was poignantly amusing. He was good at every aspect of making love, but love itself seemed to be something that shook his usual unruffled calm.
She wasn’t good at it either. But she tried. “I can’t imagine being with anyone but you.”
“Why wouldn’t you have lain with Derek? That was the agreement. Women find him infinitely attractive.”
Was Nicholas—
Nicholas
—truly insecure about her?
That was a euphoric realization.
“The agreement was before,” she told him, her tone quiet and direct.
“Before what?” His eyes narrowed just a fraction. She could feel the heat from him, the evidence of his desire pressing against her yielding flesh, the slight tremble in his arms showing the amount of control it took for him not to complete the act they both wanted so desperately.
“Before you, Nicholas.”
“Go on.” The restive tone demanded something. The look on his face said he’d ridden after her, and the statement that made needed a firm reason for her to support it.
Caroline had never in her life declared her love to anyone, but then again, she didn’t think she’d ever loved someone before. Her mother maybe, as a child, but she didn’t really remember her. Her cold, stern, distant father, her unfeeling, dutiful aunt, and least of all Edward, whom she loathed, hadn’t inspired warm feelings. Nicholas had wooed not only her body but also her soul with his gentle, skilled touch and compelling smile.
One silent, moonlit dance on a terrace and she had been lost.
She struggled to say the right thing. “Once you touched me . . . since Essex . . . I just knew I couldn’t. I told Derek as soon as we got back that I withdrew my offer.”
“So this was a trick?”
The last thing she wanted was for him to feel
that
way. She reached up and touched his mouth with a fingertip. “No. I don’t know what to call it, but not that. I think Derek speculated it might make you examine your feelings if you thought I would still go through with it.”
“Did it occur to him I had no desire to examine my feelings?”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his disgusted tone, but she still felt shy when she said, “I’m glad it did because”—her hips lifted a little to emphasize the point—“we are here now. Like this. Would you mind . . . ?”
Her inadequate declaration seemed to satisfy him, for his smile held a wolfish quality. He growled out, “I don’t mind at all.”
His entry was fast, impetuous, hard enough to make her gasp. He sheathed his entire rigid cock deeply, the blissful sensation making her quiver. Her eyes shut. “Yes.”
They moved together, their bodies communicating what they apparently couldn’t say with words. The rhythm was unconstrained, wild, and Caroline reveled in it as she climbed toward that erotic paradise.
No, she could not imagine doing something so intimate, so wonderful, with anyone but the man who moved with her now, both of them seeking . . . finding. . . .
The completion was rapturous, the pleasure so acute she felt as if the world stopped and the sky fell. They shuddered together, enveloped by sensation, limp in the afterglow as they sprawled in a tangle of arms and legs, both of them reluctant to speak once their breathing began to slow to normal respiration.
Nicholas had come after her. Even naked in his arms, her body damp in the aftermath of tempestuous passion, some part of her held stunned disbelief it had really happened.