My Reckless Surrender (2 page)

“Thank you,” she said, equally flatly.

Perhaps Lord Ashcroft was so used to rutting with diamonds of the first water that her charms paled in comparison. For the first time, the prospect of failure—and all that meant—loomed.

When she'd contemplated this scheme, she'd wondered if she possessed the audacity to carry it off. Naively, she'd never considered that this notorious rake might consider her beneath his touch.

His lips twitched with sardonic humor. “And your name?”

“Diana.”

She'd toyed with using a pseudonym and abandoned the idea. It was hard enough playing the strumpet's part, however temporary. Lord Ashcroft addressing her by another woman's name when he took her would shatter her.

“Just Diana?”

“Yes.”

He wouldn't recognize her family name even if she had any intention of providing it. Once this was over, she planned to disappear without possibility of discovery. Although a man
like Lord Ashcroft had no need to pursue a reluctant lover. He'd quickly find another warm body to fill any vacancy in his bed.

Now she sat before him, it was more difficult to treat him as the cipher he'd become in her mind. The jade eyes were beautiful, startling in his saturnine face. His nose was long and haughty. His brows were straight and black as sin, like the thick hair tumbling over his high forehead.

Like his heart,
something in her whispered.

He was handsome. She'd known that. She'd seen sketches of him in the papers. But nothing readied her for the magnetic attraction of those intense, masculine features. Or the vibrant sexuality emanating from him like a low incessant hum.

She'd prepared to deal with a weakling, a victim to his vices. If that was true about Tarquin Vale, it didn't show in his face. For a terrifying moment, she doubted all she'd heard about this rapscallion.

He looked a man of experience. He looked, to her astonishment, a man of judgment. He looked, curse him, anything but bowled over by either her brazen offer or her rustic attractions. Her unformed, hopelessly optimistic ideas about bringing the Earl of Ashcroft under her spell and keeping him there faded like mist under hot summer sun.

This man, she could already tell, did nobody's bidding. Unless it fitted precisely with his own inclinations.

“So we're to be strangers in every sense except the carnal?”

She forced herself to maintain her role. “I seek pleasure. Experience. I seek knowledge from a man who knows his way around a woman's body. Memories to warm a cold, lonely night.”

“Quite a responsibility.”

To her surprise, she found herself releasing a breath of laughter. “I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion.”

His arched eyebrows acknowledged the unintentional double entendre. She blushed and hated herself for it. She needed to appear sophisticated and confident.

“So what's in it for me?”

She bit back an urge to tell him in the bluntest terms. She hadn't expected to have to plead her case. In her wilder imaginings, she'd expected him to drag her off to a bedroom the moment he saw her. Or shove her down onto the carpet.

So far, her imaginings had caused nothing but trouble.

So what was in it for him? “A cooperative, undemanding lover.”

A superior smile curved that expressive mouth. “Cooperation I've already got. And believe me, I insist upon a demanding lover.”

Curse him and his word games. She tried to sound seductive. Even in her own ears, she didn't succeed. “I offer you an adventure. I offer you something outside your usual pastimes.”

The smile didn't waver. “And of course you're completely familiar with my usual pastimes.”

How did a lady convince a reluctant gentleman that she belonged in his bed? With every moment, Diana edged further and further away from what she knew.

“I've heard the gossip. A chaste female has the advantage of novelty. Especially a chaste female who makes no call upon you apart from sexual congress.”

He released a short laugh. “I've had the best. What makes you think a chaste female will hold my interest?”

She quashed a twinge of pique that she had to draw in this buyer like a costermonger selling apples by the roadside. “Then take up the challenge of transforming a chaste female into a wanton.”

His bright green gaze turned speculative. “Ah, now that could be interesting.”

Diana's shoulders tightened as she made herself ask the one question that mattered. “Do you accept my terms?”

Another of those electric silences fell. Bristled. Extended.

Lord Ashcroft tapped his fingers together in a considering gesture and surveyed her with glinting jade eyes. She
couldn't tell what he was thinking. Automatically her hands curled around the pearled reticule in her lap. She tensed as she awaited his answer.

His gaze left her face to sweep her body. Long black lashes shadowed his cheeks. They should look feminine. They didn't.

Astonishingly, in spite of her nervousness and her irritation with this dissipated scoundrel who refused to fulfill her expectations, her skin tightened in arousal. As the cool gaze studied her breasts, her nipples hardened.

Surely it was fear that stirred her reaction. Her suddenly damp palms. The frantic tattoo of her pulse.

She never lied to herself. Something in her responded to this dismissive, arrogant, spectacular man. Something long denied, crushed, unfamiliar, perturbing. Planning this reckless gamble, she'd never factored in cravings of her own.

“Lord Ashcroft?” she asked sharply when his attention didn't shift from her bosom.

The eyes he raised were opaque, like cloudy green ice. “My dear lady, flattered as I am, I must decline your generous offer.”

T
he earl's voice was wintry. He sounded as if he turned away an importuning tradesman. To Diana's chagrin, her color rose higher. Anger stirred. Anger and shock.

Wildly, she cast around for some inducement to convince him he wanted her in his bed. She looked into that handsome, implacable face and saw not a spark of attraction. Not even a spark of interest.

Mortification knotted her belly. She wanted to be proud and disdainful. Treat him with the contempt he obviously felt for her. Instead, one shaky word emerged from her lips. “Why?”

Annoyance darkened his striking features. “Madam, there is no point in…”

As she rose, her legs were unsteady. She had no idea what to do, she was lost, bewildered, embarrassed. She couldn't countenance defeat even though defeat stared her in the face. And so early in the game. “Your pardon.”

He stood as she did and rounded the desk in two or three powerful strides. Blindly she turned toward the door. She should stay, fight him. All she wanted right now was to leave.

The glittering, magnificent reward that lured her to pros
titute herself sailed completely out of reach. She couldn't bear it.

“Madam. Diana…”

She made a gesture of denial although the sound of her Christian name in that deep, vibrant voice made every nerve buzz with awareness. Her trembling hand closed around the doorknob and turned it.

The door didn't budge.

A large masculine hand flattened on the mahogany panel in front of her. A large masculine hand attached to a long masculine arm.

Panic joined her whirling maelstrom of emotions.

They were alone. It was his house. She'd placed herself outside the protections society offered chaste women.

The breath jammed in her lungs. Slowly, she turned and looked up at him. Surprising really, how far up. She hadn't realized quite how tall he was. His body was so beautifully proportioned, his height hadn't seemed unusual when he'd stood for her entrance and exit.

Except she clearly wasn't making an exit anytime soon.

“What do you want?” she asked in a thready whisper, her eyes fastening on that remarkable face, with its intelligence and wickedness.

 

“Perhaps I want you,” Ashcroft murmured. And watched her gray eyes darken with fear and a fascination she couldn't hide, much as he knew she tried to.

Which made no sense when she'd boldly offered herself, cool as a drink of springwater on a summer's day.

She had beautiful eyes. Large, clear, and brilliant, shadowed by thick dark gold lashes that matched her elegant brows but not her bright gold hair, just visible under the bonnet.

Ashcroft frowned down at the woman, the pores of his skin tightening with unwelcome arousal. And warning.

Nothing about her added up. He didn't trust her. Instinct
urged him to throw her out on her stylish rump and pray he never encountered her again.

Yet he wasn't entirely ready to let her go.

This close, his senses filled with her scent. Green apples. Disconcertingly innocent. And beneath that fresh perfume, a subtle female warmth.

Since she'd raised her veils with that absurdly dramatic gesture, he hadn't been able to look away. She was exquisite. Slender and graceful, with a purity of feature he'd never seen before. She looked like a Madonna, yet hawked herself like a streetwalker.

Any man would pay a fortune for her favors. If she was a courtesan. He already knew she wasn't.

Perhaps she was the country widow she claimed. His intuition insisted she wasn't completely honest. If not about everything, about most of what she'd said.

His intuition, unlike the women he'd known, never lied.

“You don't want me.” Resentment beaded her low voice. “You just said…”

A pulse fluttered under the delicate skin of her bare throat. He told himself he should take pity on her. Except she didn't cringe away, and her face held stubbornness as well as fear.

He didn't know what she wanted of him. Not what she asked, although he recognized the signs that she found him attractive. She'd needed courage to come here, and she needed courage to continue staring into his eyes.

He'd always admired courage. Unwilling interest wove its way through anger and doubt. “Perhaps I'd like a taste of what's on offer before I decide whether I want more.”

Her white throat moved as she swallowed. “You play with me.”

His response was curt. “You come here unbidden and insult me. I deserve some fleeting entertainment as recompense.”

“In…insult you? I meant no…”

He leaned closer and bent his head to the crook of her neck and shoulder. With every second, the urge to taste her
burgeoned, but he reined it in. Instead, he drew in a lungful of her sweet fragrance.

“That only added to the insult,” he murmured. “You appear from nowhere, proposition me as if I were a whore, then you're surprised I'm less than overwhelmed at your generosity.”

He heard the ragged saw of her breath, but she didn't pull away. He was astonished he had to struggle to resist kissing the smooth flesh so close to his lips.

“I can't be the first woman who's wanted to…sleep with you.” Her voice strengthened. “You've invited plenty of women into your bed. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

He laughed softly and watched her tremble as his breath brushed her skin. “This gander likes to do his own chasing, Madam Goose.”

“So…” She paused, and he knew she scrambled after her scattered courage. “Are you chasing?”

He lifted his head and studied her. Except for two hectic flags of color high on her cheekbones, she was pale. Her pupils dilated, the black threatening to swallow the gray. A pink tongue flickered out to moisten her lips.

Hunger slammed through Ashcroft.

Before this he'd toyed with her. In that second, the game became serious.

He wanted her.

By God, he could take her. She'd offered herself. He only needed to hike up her skirts, part her thighs, and ease the aching hardness of his cock in her wet heat.

The idea filled his head with fire.

The onset of such powerful desire made him pause. His instincts still shrieked danger.

Very slowly, he edged away, although his hand remained splayed next to her head on the door. Each inch he removed himself felt like an excruciating mile. That in itself was admonition to banish this puzzling visitor.

“Lord Ashcroft?”

Her low voice played along his veins like music. In spite of his best efforts, he couldn't help but imagine that voice whispering salacious wishes in the privacy of his bed.

As she spoke, her lips parted. All he saw was that lush, glistening mouth. The hint of darkness within. While the rest of her features could be carved for a cathedral sanctuary, her mouth was pure sin. He already knew she'd be delicious.

Against every dictate of self-preservation, he leaned down. One taste. One taste only…

He loomed close enough for her breath to warm his face. The sweetness made him close his eyes in sensuous appreciation. When he opened his eyes, her lids drooped, and her body curved toward him in unmistakable surrender.

Kiss her, his physical self insisted.

Don't kiss her,
his brain frantically demanded over the rising clamor of his senses.

He stood motionless, caught between the two contradictory impulses. While his heart thumped like a drum, and his blood surged hot and turbulent.

A tiny moan escaped her, and she angled her chin higher in appeal.

The sound snapped his strange paralysis.

Abruptly he stepped away. Another step to ensure temptation remained out of reach. He straightened and folded his arms over his chest. Only he knew the gesture was to stop him from grabbing her. Whatever magic she exerted, it was devilish powerful.

Her return to actuality was slower. She lifted heavy eyelids and sagged against the door. One gloved hand rested on the wood as if she needed support.

He knew how she felt. His own knees weren't completely solid. And he hadn't even touched the jade.

Good God, what did she do to him?

“My original decision stands, madam.”

She frowned in puzzlement. Either she was a superb actress or she really was hopeless at concealing her thoughts and feelings. “I don't understand.”

He took another step away and grabbed the ledge of his desk behind him to keep himself from lunging for her. “While I find you charming, that's as far as my interest extends.”

Her skin was so fine and clear, he saw the color drain from it. The eyes she leveled on him were dark with an anguish completely out of kilter with his rejection.

“Lord Ashcroft…”

He had to get her out of this room, out of his house, before he did something foolish. Like touch her. “Our interview is at an end.”

Trembling, undecided, she remained poised before him. He braced for some embarrassing scene, begging or tears.

She surprised him as she'd already surprised him so often. She drew herself to her full height. She was tall for a woman. An Amazon, firm-muscled and full-breasted. He had a sudden dizzying vision of how her long legs would wrap around him in coitus. He stifled a groan.

Her chin rose, her mouth hardened, although nothing hid its generosity. The voice that emerged was crisp. “I wish you good day, then, my lord.”

Even her hands were steady as she tugged those damned veils down. Only a few minutes in her company, and already he regretted the concealment of her features.

Oh, she was good, whoever she was.

With a snap of her skirts, she turned and strolled from the room as if those searing seconds of sexual awareness had never existed.

 

“Stupid little bitch!”

Diana braced but didn't flinch as Lord Burnley raised his hand. She'd long ago learned the only way to hold her own with the marquess was to pretend to a courage she didn't possess.

As she stood before him, she kept her voice steady and she planted her feet firmly on the carpet. “If you bruise my face, you'll delay our scheme until the marks fade, my lord.”

“I don't have to hit your face,” he snarled. Nonetheless, he lowered his fist and began to pace the tiny library of the house he'd rented for Diana in Chelsea. The area wasn't fashionable, but it was close enough to Mayfair for their purposes. “What possessed you to beard him in his den? I told you how to snare him. A chance meeting. A sprained ankle in the park. A lost dog.”

His impulse to violence seemed to have subsided. She bent her head to hide her relief. “I decided a direct approach would intrigue him.”

“Now he's rejected you out of hand.”

She shrugged with completely artificial nonchalance. “He's a man who can have any woman in the world. Why should he be interested in me?”

Burnley stopped, and his cold green eyes ran over her with an assessing glance she'd become used to in recent weeks. “Don't be a fool, girl. You'll prove utterly irresistible.”

“Well, that certainly wasn't the case today,” she said with asperity.

His thin mouth lengthened in displeasure, whether at her failure or her defiance, she didn't know. “Try again. I've fought this bastard in Parliament for ten years. For all his numbskull ideas, he's damned clever. But I know his weaknesses. You're just the woman to appeal to those weaknesses.”

Even she, who didn't follow politics closely, was aware of the long-standing enmity between the draconian Edgar Fanshawe, Marquess of Burnley, and the reformist champion, Tarquin Vale, Earl of Ashcroft. The two men clashed over and over, with the marquess usually emerging victorious because his cruel, eye-for-an-eye principles received general support from the upper classes. Burnley viewed Ashcroft's unreliable politics as a sign of his unreliability as a man.

The tall old man leaned back against the desk and folded his arms over a chest that had once been broad and powerful and was now thin and hollow. Diana hid a shiver. In spite of the obvious differences between the two men in age and vigor, the stance was exactly like Lord Ashcroft's when he'd sent her packing.

Today had been painful and frightening. Her brief was clear—seduce the Earl of Ashcroft. So simple at a distance. So complicated now she'd met her quarry. Already events teetered out of her control, and Ashcroft hadn't even touched her yet.

For one dizzying moment, longing to be safely back at Cranston Abbey made her heart clench. She didn't belong here in London. She belonged in that beloved place, the house and estate she'd devoted her life to as much as any mother devoted herself to her offspring.

She reminded herself that if she held fast to her purpose, Cranston Abbey would be hers. This was one case where ends really did justify means. She did no harm to Lord Ashcroft if she persisted, and in return, all her dreams would come true.

She forced herself to sound stalwart. “I haven't finished with Ashcroft.”

A smile twisted the old man's thin lips. He was still handsome, but illness took its inevitable toll. Deep lines scored his cheeks and drew down the corners of his mouth. His eyes sank into their sockets. “You always had spirit, I'll give you that. Even when you were a brat.”

Wearily, Diana brushed at the stray tendrils of hair that tickled her forehead. After her stymied attempt to engage Lord Ashcroft's interest, she was tired and humiliated. Keyed up in a way she didn't dare examine too closely. She felt like someone had rubbed her skin with glass paper, excising a layer or two, leaving her too exposed to the world. The sensation was unfamiliar, unwelcome, uncomfortable.

She'd give her right arm for a cup of tea and five quiet
minutes in a chair to enjoy it. But such prosaic luxuries were out of reach. When she'd returned from the debacle at Lord Ashcroft's, Burnley had been waiting.

Burnley frowned thoughtfully. “I can't stay. If we're seen together, the scheme will unravel. Remember what's at stake.”