No Place for a Dame (33 page)

Apparently, he reacted rather poorly to terror.

The carriage lurched to a stop and Will came round and opened the door, reaching in to pull out the stepping block.

“Forget that.” Without preamble, Giles caught Avery up in his arms and swept her from the carriage. He ignored her gasp. If she thought he gave a bloody damn for her bleeding charade any more, she was sorely mistaken. He needed to feel the reassurance of her heart beating against his chest as he carried her up the steps.

The door swung open before he’d reached the top. Burke’s astonished visage appeared, framed in the doorway.

“Out of my way.” He carried her into the brightly lit interior. Burke was the only one in attendance. He reached to take Giles’s greatcoat, but Giles brushed past him and started up the stairs.

“Shall I send for Mr. Travers, sir?”

Just what he did not want: Travers ringing a peal over his head for his negligence. He knew his culpability in Avery’s injuries well enough without Travers reciting them.

“No. Don’t disturb him.” He left the footman staring after him from the bottom of the stairs. At the top, he went directly to Avery’s room. Only then did he lower her feet to the ground.

He tried to step back but she clung to him. Surprised and uncertain, he looked down into her face.

“You’re safe now,” he reassured her. “No one will hurt you.”

“They could have followed us.”

“No. And even if they did, no one will take you from me.” He’d meant to say “from here” but somehow the other word came out. The truer word.

She regarded him somberly with eyes the color of a moonlit sky, a deep, incandescent blue. She was pale. He bracketed her face between his palms, tipping her head to examine the bruise just becoming visible beneath the blood-matted curls.

“Does it hurt much?”

She shook her head. Her eyelids slipped closed.

“If it does, you must tell me. This is no time for false courage, Avery. I will remind you of the words you spoke to me not a week past—”

She pulled his head down and kissed him, stunning him into immobility. Then she let him go, dropping back to the flat of her feet. But she did not retreat. Not even a step. And her eyes never left his.

They stared at one another.

She was flushed and breathing heavily and he could not think of one bloody thing to say, one word, because— He grabbed her more roughly than he’d intended, snatching her into his embrace and covering her mouth with his.

Caught by surprise, for a second she pushed against his shoulders but then, with a small cry of abandonment, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Her mouth opened under his and his tongue swept deep inside, tasting her, stroking the sleek inner lining of her cheek.

He looped one arm around her waist, lashing her small frame to his. With his free hand, he cupped the back of her head. The cool, silky curls slipped between his fingers, the warmth of the skin beneath penetrating his palm. He plundered her mouth, impelled by a desperate yearning. Still holding her, he broke off their kiss and lifted her into his arms and carried her deeper into the room.

“Kiss me,” she said, her lips on his neck, her fingers digging into his shoulders. “Want me.”

Want? He
ached
for her. “Dear Lord, Avery,” he muttered thickly. “Don’t tempt me. I’m just a man.”

“I don’t want to tempt you,” she said. “I want you to make love to me.”

How often had he lain near sleep, the image of Avery in his bed, appearing at the last instant of consciousness because he refused that specter entrée in the cold, practical light of day? She was his charge, and if not his ward, still a responsibility passed down from his father.

But she was also a woman.
The
woman. The one who complicated his thoughts and disrupted his reason, who hovered in the background of his imagination all day and disturbed his sleep all night.

“What happened tonight has intensified your emotions. This is just a reaction against your previous fear.”

“A reaction…” she acknowledged, her mouth trailing a path along his jaw. His eyes closed as he focused all his attention on the amazing sensation. “… that led to an understanding. I want to know what that other woman knows.”

There were no other women. There was only her. His head swirled, dazed by the feeling of her hands moving down his chest in untutored exploration, his waistcoat’s buttons coming undone in their wake. “What other woman?”

Darkness clouded her eyes. “The woman at Sir Isbill’s.”

She’d seen him and Sophia? Bloody hell. “Avery. That wasn’t—”

She covered his mouth with her fingertips, shaking her head. “No. I don’t want her here. In any way.”

She languished a kiss on the corner of his mouth, causing him to catch his breath as she untied his cravat the rest of the way. She tugged it from around his neck and dropped it to the floor. Her fingers danced down his open shirtfront, sniggled beneath and brushed against his bare skin. Every muscle in his chest leapt into rigid response. “Avery—”

She rose up on her tiptoes and caught his lower lip gently between her teeth. “Shh.” Her tongue touched his, sending a jolt of searing desire straight to the core of him.

“Avery,” he managed, “what are you doing?”

She looked straight into his eyes. “I’m seducing you.”

By God, she was. She
had
. Years ago.

Without another word, he swept her high into his arms and headed for the bed.

Chapter Thirty-Four

I
nside a hired carriage, Sophia North made her plans.

She had waited for over an hour after Strand had left Isbill’s before following him. She didn’t worry about offending Lord Vedder. Oddly, it was Vedder who’d suggested she reconcile with Giles in the first place. When she’d agreed, he’d presented her with a nice ivory and silk fan.

Then he’d gone on to explain that he and some of his friends were very concerned that “poor Giles” was acquiring new, low habits and that if she learned that he’d been haunting diverse places or if he mentioned any names with which she was unfamiliar, Vedder and his friends would be interested and
most
grateful.

Sophia gave scant credence to his innuendos. If Giles had developed new, unsavory habits he wouldn’t likely give a tinker’s damn what Society thought. Most especially not Vedder. Giles was nothing if not autocratic. Still, if carrying tales about Giles—though God only knew why Vedder and his “friends” cared—garnered her some pretty new trinkets, she was not averse to the arrangement.

But tonight she had other plans. Tonight she meant to secure something for herself. She intended to seek Strand out in his own house and continue the conversation they’d begun in Isbill’s library.

Strand had been adamant that he would not “endanger her reputation” by indulging in an impromptu assignation. Sophia was no fool. She realized he was not so much worried about her reputation as his marital status should they be discovered. He would have been surprised to realize that, after the initial titillation provided by the possibility of being found out had faded, she’d shared his concern.

Her visit this evening was twofold, the first being by far the most important.

Strand had promised to set her up with funds, but he hadn’t said how or when and she was broke. She needed to know exactly when she could expect his gift and how much it would be, and impress upon him the need for secrecy. If her father discovered their arrangement, he would simply take the money from her for himself. She needed it. Only a princely sum would satisfy the gambling debts she’d incurred.

Until now, she hadn’t been too concerned over whether she would be banned from the tables. She was pretty and lively, acting as both an ornament and a distraction to the gentlemen players. The question was when would the money she owed exceed the value she had in that role. She feared it would be soon.

The farther into debt she’d slid, the more she had rued her loss of Strand. He was wealthy enough to have provided for her
and
any pastimes she might have pursued, he was ungodly handsome, and he was a considerate lover—something she’d always sneered at before, thinking that a lover ought to be forceful and audacious, but in the last months had come to realize that forcefulness could hurt and that too often audacity went hand-in-hand with callousness.

’Twas true that Strand had often seemed in some fashion
absent
from their couplings. Not physically absent. He performed very prettily and with a rigorous attention to her satisfaction, but she always had the impression that he held part of himself back and that that part was, well, somehow
saddened
by their bed sport. She wouldn’t have minded nearly so much had she thought him disgusted or disdainful. She actually
found the idea that he was compelled to take her against his higher nature stimulating. But the idea that their coupling saddened him both irritated and offended her.

Not that she’d let such fine feelings bother her now.

No, now that cool reason had returned to prevail, she had no intention of trying to coerce Giles into marrying her. True, she could prevent any unwanted pregnancies but accidents did happen. Bedlam was filled with them. And she had not been overstating the matter when she’d declared that she would rather die than be forced to breed some horrifying monstrosity.

But she didn’t need to marry Strand to reap the rewards of such a union without the liabilities. She could become Strand’s mistress.

Discreetly, of course, and in such a fashion that it would not interfere with her plan to marry Lord Nickelbough. Such a solution would satisfy all her needs. She would be the wife of a peer—true, not a marquess, but still a wealthy member of the aristocracy; she would not have to worry about some little horror crawling out of her birthing canal; and she would have the cachet and the gifts that came with being the Marquess of Strand’s lover. His last mistress had received a new phaeton and a matched pair of bay geldings as parting gifts.

So, it was with a great deal of confidence that Sophia arrived at Strand’s townhouse. She had never been inside before, not even during their short engagement, because Strand was not one, as he’d put it, “to waste time entertaining when I prefer to be entertained.” It was just as magnificent as she’d imagined and again a fleeting regret that it would never be hers clouded her good mood. She dismissed it. She had no doubt she would visit it many times in the future.

The lights were mostly extinguished in the windows, which suited her purpose. As she could not very well knock on the front door, she would be obliged to go round back to the servants’ entrance. Lady Caroline Lamb had often visited Byron by just such a means, though she’d been dressed as a page.

Sophia pulled the hood of her dark cloak up, covering her bright red hair, and exited the carriage, pausing to instruct the driver to wait an hour. She and Strand would either be done with their business by then or, more likely, she’d be staying the night, in which
case it would be up to Strand to make arrangements for her discreet departure.

She slipped through the garden door to the back of the house and hesitated. She had no doubt any servant that answered her knock would let her in; she was well-known to them all and did have some consequence. But perhaps, if the door had been left unlatched, often the case where tradesmen arrived to make deliveries well before the household rose, she could simply enter and search for Strand’s bedchambers herself? While the former would certainly be easier, the latter provided a deliciously illicit flavor to the encounter. But which chambers would be his?

She backed up and tipped her head to scan the windows on the second floor. Only two of them were lit. One was bound to be his.

Ah, there! She smiled triumphantly. She would know that tall, broad-shouldered physique anywhere.… The smile faded from Sophia’s lips. For Strand was not alone.

His back was mostly to the window, obscuring Sophia’s view of his companion. All she could see were his elegant hands clutching a blanket covering the shoulders of a slight figure. He dipped his head and with an urgency and passion he had never shown Sophia covered his companion’s mouth with his own. For a moment it appeared as if Strand’s attentions were unwanted, for small hands appeared on his broad shoulders, pushing at him.

He ignored them.

Sophia stared, amazed. When had Strand ever forced himself on a woman? When he’d been with her, he had retreated at the slightest hint of reluctance on her part. He was not a man who took, because, she’d always assumed, he’d never needed to. He’d never known what it was to “need.” Well, apparently he knew now.

For a few seconds, the small hands on his shoulders remained defiantly clenched but as Sophia watched, the slender fingers unfurled and one hand curved around Strand’s neck as the other melted up and over his shoulders, clinging to him.

She could almost see the tension in Strand’s body as he held himself in check but then abruptly, hungrily, he lifted the small figure in his arms and, their mouths still locked in a passionate kiss, turned and vanished from view.