My Reckless Surrender (3 page)

Oh, she remembered. She thought of little else.

Had she always coveted the magnificent house and its rich acres? She didn't think so. But when Lord Burnley offered her a chance to guide the estate's destiny into the next generation, it was as though she suddenly lifted her head and saw to the horizon instead of just the patch of ground at her feet. Ambition and determination had filled her with purpose. Her love for Cranston Abbey would find its true expression at last. She discovered a task fit for her intelligence and abilities.

The reminder of that revelatory moment steadied her nerve, reminded her why she was in London. Her voice rang with certainty. “I'll write with my progress.”

“Daily.”

“I hope you'll leave me time to accomplish my charge,” she responded with a trace of sarcasm.

He laughed, the sound scratching like dry sticks in a winter wind. “You've become insolent since I raised you in the world, Mrs. Carrick. Don't think I'll forget if you fail.”

She rubbed at her temples where a headache gnawed. In spite of the fortifying memory of what she set to gain, anxiety made her belly cramp with nausea. Burnley had chosen her because he thought she was strong. After meeting Lord Ashcroft, she didn't feel strong.

“I won't fail,” she muttered, even as her heart quailed to recall the finality of Lord Ashcroft's dismissal. Surrendering her virtue promised to prove more difficult than she'd originally thought.

“You'd better not. For your father's sake as well as yours.” The old man straightened from the desk and stepped nearer,
using his height to intimidate. “Don't think to fob me off with false coin. I'll know whether you've seen Vale naked. He's the only man you'll take into your bed.”

Dear God, as if she'd toss another person into this poisonous mix. The old man must be going mad. “I gave my word, my lord. If I promise something, I carry it out.”

The smile crooking his lips sent fear oozing down Diana's spine. With one desiccated finger, he tapped her cheek. “I know that, child. It's one reason I chose you for this honor.”

She bit back a bitter laugh. “No honor. Dishonor.”

“Cranston Abbey and my fortune, not to mention becoming a marchioness, will compensate for any spots on your soul. You'll find after you lose it, that a soul is a completely unnecessary encumbrance.”

She shivered, although it was a decision she'd already made. She'd long ago decided Edgar Fanshawe was Beelzebub incarnate. Was she wise to deal with the devil? She was merely human, and he'd used both threat and reward to lure her. Too late now to renege.

“I won't play you false,” she said stonily.

“You have too much to lose if you do,” he said in an equally unrelenting voice. “I hope your wrong step today doesn't spoil my plans. I shall be most…displeased if it has.”

When the Marquess of Burnley expressed displeasure, people got hurt. Nonetheless, she still had to make him see reason. “There's a possibility Ashcroft won't want me. There's a possibility his no today means no forever.”

Burnley traced her cheek again. She struggled not to flinch. His touch was cold, as if death already sank its claws into him. “That will be unfortunate for you.”

The threat was barely hidden. Helplessness surged in her heart. “He's not a puppet.”

The marquess's lips narrowed. “His cock leads him. His cock is unquestionably interested in you.”

She ignored his profanity. If she'd become freer in her speech since they'd become coconspirators, so had he. He
used strong language to remind her she prostituted herself in this endeavor.

She needed no reminder.

Again, she made herself think of Cranston Abbey and how much she loved it. Such a prize was worth brief degradation.

Her surge of determination quailed under a sudden recollection of Lord Ashcroft as she'd last seen him. He'd looked frighteningly acute, not like a man at the mercy of his base appetites. He'd scared her. He'd attracted her, and that had stoked her fear.

Until now, her fear had been focused purely on the marquess. A fear founded in twenty-eight years of acquaintance. After today, she wasn't sure who was the more formidable, her pimp or her prospective client.

Burnley paused, as if expecting argument. What could she say? She nodded.

“Good girl. I await developments.” He tilted her chin. She wished he wouldn't touch her. She hated it. “I have every confidence you won't fail me. Or your father.”

“My father's the only good man in this whole mess,” she said sourly.

Contempt edged Burnley's laugh as he released her. “Your father is good because he lives in ignorance.”

It was true. She'd give anything to maintain her father's contentment. That was why she was here now. Or at least one reason. She'd never deluded herself her purposes were altruistic. She sought advancement the way so many women had before her, with her body. Her heart was as black as Lord Burnley's. And would turn blacker before she was done.

“I'll leave you to contemplate your mistakes and assess how to avoid them in future,” Burnley said silkily.

He shuffled toward the door. Soon, he'd need a cane. Shortly after that, he wouldn't be able to walk at all. They both knew what awaited Lord Burnley. That was what prompted this mad gamble.

“Good evening, my lord.” Habit made her sink into a curtsy. He turned and arched an ironic eyebrow. He must guess her acid thoughts. He'd always delighted in the rebellious soul of his bailiff's daughter.

Once he'd gone, she slumped into a chair and stared sightlessly at the unlit grate. What was she to do? How was she to seduce a man who expressed no interest in her? Did she have the nerve to try again?

Given what she gained if she succeeded, she couldn't let cowardice deter her. Even though cowardice prompted her to pack up this luxurious little house right now and return to the familiar comforts of home and honest toil.

She was so lost in her troubled thoughts, she didn't hear the door open. The first she knew of anyone else in the room was Laura's touch on her shoulder.

“He's gone.” Her friend's words were a statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

Her friend sank into the chair opposite Diana. “He's a bad man. You should run a thousand miles.”

Laura loathed Lord Burnley. As well she should. He'd hanged her father and transported her mother. All that had been left of the Gypsy family was a small dark-eyed girl. For once Diana's father had stood up to his employer, who wanted to cast the eight-year-old child out to beg on the highway. Instead, John Dean had raised the orphan as his adopted daughter. Now while Diana and her father ran Burnley's estate between them, Laura managed their home.

Burnley had insisted that Laura join her foster sister in London. Diana still wasn't sure why. Perhaps for appearance's sake, although this house would remain a secret from everyone apart from the few trusted servants necessarily involved.

“You know what I stand to gain.” Diana had continued this argument with herself since Lord Burnley's offer several weeks ago.

Laura's face didn't lighten. “Yes, you become chatelaine of Cranston Abbey. Once your husband meets his Maker.”

Or goes to the hell he deserves.

Laura had never approved of Diana's involvement in this scheme. Diana had tried again and again to make her see that whatever price she paid now, the reward was worth it. Cranston Abbey was a generous return for a few uncomfortable weeks in a rake's bed.

Diana itched to take over the reins of the estate, to institute the improvements that had frustrated her all the years she'd played Burnley's right hand. She'd be a fool to turn her back on what fate offered.

She prayed fate was kind.

Her possession of Cranston Abbey and her father's comfortable old age relied on one incalculable factor. Whether she could get Tarquin Vale to plant a child in her empty womb.

A
shcroft sipped his champagne, the cold bubbles bursting against his palate. It was the only coolness in the theater turned ballroom for the night. The oppressive heat that had hung heavy over London all day hadn't eased with evening. Around him, the crowd heaved in sweaty, forced gaiety. Discordant laughter and chatter overwhelmed the orchestra scratching out the latest waltz.

What was he doing here? He hadn't meant to come, although his presence at the courtesans' ball was as much an institution as the ball itself.

He glanced around, deliberately avoiding avid feminine eyes. He never left the ball without a companion, sometimes more than one. What had seemed exciting decadence to a man in his twenties now palled.

Damn it, he was thirty-two. Was he really the same fribble he'd been a dozen years ago? Were his amusements as banal? Would he stand here, leaning against the orchestra rail, searching for a warm body to relieve his solitude when he was forty? Fifty?

Bleak, disturbing thoughts.

He took another sip, grimaced at the wine's cheap bite, and wondered if he should go home.

His self-reflective mood wasn't completely the fault of his evening entertainment. Since ordering his visitor from his library yesterday, he'd been restive, discontented.

No woman had made a lasting impression in years. But something about the mysterious intruder lodged in his memory and wouldn't shift.

Breaking his habit, he'd stayed in last night. So he'd woken unusually early, before noon, and with a clear head. And immediately remembered Diana—if that was her real name, which he took leave to doubt. That automatic recollection made him sorry he hadn't sought oblivion in the fleshpots.

He'd forget the jade quickly enough. He wasn't even sure he remembered what she looked like. Half an hour in a wench's company, however intriguing she and her proposition might be, wasn't likely to linger in his mind when so many pleasures offered distraction.

Except pleasures lost their charm through sheer repetition. Here he was surrounded by the most spectacular light-skirts in London. And he couldn't generate energy to crook a finger in any particular woman's direction.

You're a hopeless case, Vale.

He ignored yet another lure from a masked woman. Perhaps a courtesan. Perhaps not. The ball was open to the public, which made it such an illicit thrill for members of the ton who attended. One never knew if one danced with a duchess or a Covent Garden drab. All one needed was the price of a ticket. A lot of women didn't even have that, but hung around outside in hope some sap scratched up the blunt to get them in.

“Have you chosen a companion yet, my lord?”

The sultry voice penetrated his brown study, and he found himself looking down into a pair of big blue eyes under a silver mask so flimsy as hardly to justify the name. Familiar big blue eyes.

“Hello, Katie,” he said without enthusiasm. Although the courtesan was as much friend as occasional lover, their as
sociation harking back to when he first came down from Oxford.

“My escort for the evening proved disappointing.” She sipped her wine and sent him a meaningful glance under her artfully darkened lashes. “Young men can be so…young.”

Ashcroft laughed softly. “But sadly old ones can be so old.”

“There's a stage in between that's just right.” Her lips, reddened to ruby with a glistening salve, curved upward in unmistakable invitation, and she placed one hand on his arm. “Would you like to remind me?”

Normally, Ashcroft would accept her overtures. She was a luscious armful with the deftest hands in the business. And he was grimly aware he had nothing better to do tonight.

He didn't know why, but tonight Katie, for all her obvious allure, didn't answer his strange mood. Perhaps “obvious” was the problem. Although God forbid he tired of beautiful women who knew just what they wanted from him.

Regretfully, he shook his head. “Not tonight, sweeting.”

As he'd expected, she took her rejection with good grace, pressing his arm and smiling. “I can see you're blue deviled. Perhaps a friend of mine will lighten your humor. She's new to Town. A true redhead. A Long Meg, tall as a Grenadier Guard, legs like a Thoroughbred.”

Great Jehovah, what was wrong with him? Even the idea of bedding an Amazon fresh to the capital didn't appeal. “Maybe later.”

Katie cast him a searching look, but she knew not to pry. A few remarks on the latest scandals, and she sauntered off with a sway of her voluptuous hips.

After half an hour more of pretending to enjoy himself and unaccountably failing, Ashcroft handed his glass to a passing footman—probably an out-of-work actor. The urge to escape, to seek fresh air, was overwhelming.

He nearly always stayed in Town through summer. He caught up on his parliamentary work when the city was
quiet, and the social whirl temporarily slowed. This year, he wondered if he should retreat to the gloomy magnificence of Vesey Hall, his country seat. He hated the house, but London didn't seem to answer his current, inexplicable frame of mind.

In the distance, he caught a glimpse of a Titian-haired cyprian towering over short, plump, and obviously bedazzled Lord Ferris. Katie, as usual, was right. The wench was spectacular enough to take Ashcroft's fancy. But somehow tonight he couldn't summon a jot of interest.

Time he went home and shook himself out of this unwelcome humor. He nodded to two acquaintances, both like him unmasked, both married, and began to clear a path toward the entrance. Difficult when traffic flowed into the cavernous room rather than out. He tried not to admit that it was embarrassingly early to seek his bed. Especially as he went alone.

For all his height, strength, and sheer bloody arrogance, he became trapped in an eddy, unable to proceed or retreat. His attention dipped to the woman facing him.

Tall. Graceful. Hauntingly familiar.

“Lord Ashcroft.”

Her voice slid over his skin like perfumed oil. How she achieved this effect over the hubbub was a puzzle. Every cell in his body went on instant alert. The nagging dissatisfaction that had dogged him all night vanished.

His heart pounded out a single word.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
The reaction was as elemental as a hungry lion scenting an antelope.

Except this particular antelope smelled of freshly harvested apples.

“Diana.” He, famous for his eloquence, was lost for words.

His eyes devoured her. He retained enough self-awareness to wonder how he recognized her among hundreds of women. Her black-and-gold mask was large and gaudy and hid her face to the jaw. Her eyes were mysterious, concealed,
but he could see her mouth, pink, moist, full. He'd know that mouth if he were dying.

He wanted that mouth on him.

“You know who I am?” The cool jade didn't sound surprised.

“Yes.” Hell, he needed to untangle his tongue before she discovered just how she bamboozled him. If only he untangled his tongue ready to use it on her. The carnal images rocketing through his mind made him rigid as iron. “What are you doing here?”

She was suddenly still, even as the crowd flowed around her.

Was she afraid? Previous acquaintance indicated little frightened her, even when it should. Then, to his amazement—and reluctant admiration—that luscious mouth curved into a confident smile.

He caught a flash of defiance in the eyes she leveled on him. “Looking for you, of course.”

Her boldness scattered what little sangfroid he retained. “I believe our dealings came to an end two days ago, madam.”

“I lost a preliminary skirmish, my lord, not the war.”

His instincts still screamed danger. But nothing could make him retreat, even when the crowd divided, and a path opened to the door. “What if the enemy is invincible?”

Her smile broadened, developed a mocking edge. “Are you my enemy?”

“I'm not your friend.”

“What a pity. You'd make a good…
friend.
”

The euphemism for “lover” in that suggestive tone roared through his blood like fire. He hadn't touched her, and already he wanted her more than any woman he remembered.

He ached to tear off her mask. Her eyes glinted behind their covering, but he couldn't read her expression. All he had to go on was that sinful curl of her lips and the warm, laughing voice. Warm, laughing, sensual,
knowing.

She sounded considerably more self-assured than the woman who had accosted him two days ago. He shouldn't like it—he'd thought her overweeningly confident then, and she was more brazen now—but somehow his body didn't heed his criticism.

“I told you I like to do my own hunting.”

Presumptuous baggage.
His rakish attitude didn't cow her. He wished he didn't find her nerve so appealing. He wished he didn't find
her
so appealing. He battered back a wild impulse to kiss that smile from her mouth until she joined him in the turbulent storm.

“If you insist, I'm willing to run away from you, my lord. Not too fast.”

He laughed again. He couldn't help it. She was so damned impudent. “Are you implying I'm in my dotage?” At most, he was only a few years older than the chit.

“I don't like to waste time. We both know I'm perfectly willing to be caught. Can we take the headlong pursuit as read?”

His heart leaped. She was out of the usual run of women. The searing curiosity to see whether she carried that daring into bed intoxicated him. Still, he tried to pretend she didn't captivate him utterly.

“I need to be interested in pursuing.”

Even without seeing her face, he knew she stared back in blatant disbelief. Who could blame her? Attraction sparked between them like electricity. “Aren't you?”

The crowd shifted again. The illusion that he and this gorgeous, troublesome woman were alone in a glass bubble shattered. A man dressed like Henry VIII jostled Diana, propelled her into Ashcroft's chest.

As her head jerked up, her gasp of surprise feathered his jaw. Automatically, he reached to catch her, circling her slender arms with his hands. His heart slammed against his ribs, then began to gallop. Desire flared, hotter than Hades.

“Are you all right?” he asked in a strangled voice.

That damnable smile was back. The urge to kiss it from her full lips became nigh irresistible. “Yes.”

He waited for her to straighten. Instead, she trailed one gloved hand down his jaw. “You're not as invincible as you claim, my lord.”

The noisy, whirling world careened to a standstill as she nestled her hips into his. His cock throbbed against her skirts. Any show of indifference was futile. He realized the glitter in her eyes was excitement. He wasn't the only one responding to the building awareness.

Some survival instinct made him fight back although nothing could make him draw away. “It's mere human reaction.”

She laughed, the sound low and alluring, and stretched up on her toes. The sensation of her body lengthening against his almost blew the top of his head off.

“Oh, you're human, my lord.”

Her lips came closer. He should avoid her, but an attraction beyond anything he'd known in years, perhaps ever, held him transfixed.

He braced himself for the touch of her mouth but at the last, she hesitated. The scent of apples swam in his head. Her warmth seeped through his clothing to his skin. Briefly, he recalled the impression of innocence she'd left after their first meeting. An impression at odds with everything else about her.

Her fleeting uncertainty passed, and she pressed her mouth to his.

Shock held him still. Through the riot in his head, he knew he should have expected this. She'd hardly been shy at their first meeting, even if she hadn't assaulted him.

Not that this was exactly assault…

Her kiss was astonishingly sweet. Barely sexual. The tentative cling of her lips. The honey taste of her mouth. The glorious closeness of her body.

The scent of apples left him tipsy as if he'd downed a bottle of brandy.

His arms curled around her, drew her into his heat, so he felt the wild hammer of her heart. To his surprise, she stiffened before abruptly melting. With that softening, her mouth opened, and her tongue flickered out to trace the seam of his lips. His daze faded, and his hold tightened. He answered her foray with an exploratory sweep of his tongue. She moaned, and the muffled sound hurled his excitement to the sky.

She kissed him back, but something made him pause. Her reaction puzzled him, forced him to fight through the fog in his brain. For a woman so outspoken about what she wanted, her response seemed unsure. As if it was a long time since she'd kissed anyone.

Given her lavish beauty, this was so unbelievable, he lifted his head and stared at her. Holy God, what he'd give to see her face right now.

This wasn't the place. Already, the ball whirled out of control. Drunken whooping echoed off the walls, and he wasn't the only fellow taking liberties with his companion.

If Diana was indeed a respectable widow, mindful of her reputation, he couldn't shame her before the dregs of society. And his intentions toward her rapidly became a private matter.

Her lips were damp from his, red and swollen. A delicate flush marked what he could see of her pale skin.

He slid one hand down her arm to seize her gloved hand. For a woman with seduction in mind, she liked to cover herself. Her dark red dress might cause comment at a county assembly. Here, among the demimonde, it seemed as modest as a nun's habit.

His glance dipped to her bodice, which offered teasing glimpses of her magnificent breasts. His groin tightened. She might display her charms with more subtlety than he was accustomed to, but that didn't mean they lacked appeal.

“What's wrong?”

Part of him, the part capable of thought, noted she no
longer sounded like a worldly siren but like a woman dazzled by unexpected pleasure. She hadn't kissed like a siren either. She'd kissed him like she meant it.