Notorious (12 page)

“God help me,” she said, “I even know you are trying to seduce me again and yet—”

“And yet you don’t want to stop me.”

Her silence was eloquent.

“We cannot do it again,” she said and he heard the longing in her voice and felt his desire sharpen. He dropped his lips to the hollow between her breasts, tasted her, and heard her breath catch.

“Yes, we can.” His hand came up to her breast. The gown was plastered to her body now as the rain fell with a steady beat. One sly brush of his thumb over her nipple had her shaking and he exulted in his power to do that to her.

“In full knowledge rather than in the heat of the moment—” She sounded breathless.

“Why not? It is more honest.”

She was silent again. He could hear her rapid breathing beneath the drum of the rain. He could also feel the conflict in her. Temptation coiled about them, thick and heady as wine, drugging the senses. She gave a tiny gasp and he felt the resistance ease from her.

“I don’t know why I want you…” She sounded bemused. She had also capitulated. He sensed it.

He picked her up in his arms, strode up the steps onto the terrace and in at the doors, kicking them closed against the storm outside. The room beyond was lit by one candle. It was a drawing room, elegant but oddly characterless. There was a pile of fashionable magazines on the marble-topped table. A harp stood in a corner. The breeze drew a tiny shimmer of music from its strings.

“Your servants?” There was no sense in being indiscreet. Gossip would harm him as much as it would harm her. This was clandestine. It must remain a secret. The thought only intensified his lust.

“They are abed.” She pressed her fingers to his
lips in a brief caress that he felt through every last muscle and sinew in his body.

The house was silent. He carried her up the stairs. He was already hard again now in expectation of what he knew would follow, the downright pleasure and decadence of lying with her, pleasuring each other, making love for hour after hot hour through the night. It was inordinately exciting. He almost stumbled in his haste and anticipation.

“Your room?” he whispered. He felt the soft strands of her hair against his lips as she turned her head.

“There.” Her answering whisper was against his lips. She gestured to the door on the right.

He placed her on the bed and turned to secure the door with a stealthy click. The room was dark, lit only by the reflection of moonlight in the mirror. She moved to close the curtains but he caught her wrist, pulled her to him and started to strip the soaking golden gauze gown from her with sure hands this time, tossing it aside, discarding his own clothes so that at last he was completely naked, skin against skin. He felt her shake as they touched and caught her gasp of pleasure in his mouth, kissing her, his tongue plunging deep.

“Hush…” He murmured it against her lips. “Remember the servants. You are going to have to be very, very quiet….”

He felt her shudder in response to his wicked words. She reached for him, hungry and eager, but
he flipped her over onto her stomach on the bed and straddled her. She tried to rise but he gently forced her down, bending to cover the satin skin of her shoulders with soft, biting kisses, to trail his tongue down the length of her spine, a lick here, a flick over the ribs there that had her squirming. She was hot and panting beneath his hands. He could tell that she wanted to turn over and face him but he held her still, his thighs pressing into her hips. When she felt his cock hard against her buttocks she gave a little stifled cry and he slipped lower, parting her, letting the tip rest against the core of her, pressing gently within. She tried to arch up to meet him. He withdrew and felt the frustration in her tighten like an overwound thread.

“Later.” He leaned over to drop a kiss against the back of her neck. “Not yet.”

She mumbled something that sounded like a curse and he laughed. Some impulse in him wanted to punish her for everything she had done to him and yet at the same time he did not want it, for his anger had already transmuted to pleasure and never had the punishment been sweeter nor the victim more willing.

He slid down the bed, driving her legs apart so that he could press his lips to the tender skin of her inner thighs. Again she tried to roll over and he held her down, his hand splayed in the hollow of her back. Inch by slow inch he explored every last curve of her with his lips and teeth and tongue, working back
to the swell of her buttocks and down again to the smooth, vulnerable expanse of her thigh. He could feel how taut she was with frustration and longing. When he touched her with his tongue she bent upward, tense as the strings of the harp.

She tried to press her thighs together to gain surcease but he held them wide, running his tongue over her hot core back and forth in the most delicate and teasing caress, again and again, feeling the unendurable tension in her build tighter and faster until at last she came apart beneath his touch. Then he tumbled her over so that he could see her face, see the sweet agony and the bliss reflected there and feel her shaking uncontrollably in his arms, her skin hot and damp against his. He pressed kisses to her mouth and ran his hands soothingly over her trembling body until she quieted, and again he felt the most enormous sense of triumph and possession and other, more troubling emotions that stirred beneath the surface but which he chose to disregard. He was adept at ignoring any deep feelings stirred by the sexual act; in his experience they usually boiled down to gratitude and pleasure rather than anything more profound and certainly he had no wish for anything else with Susanna. They shared a past and now, unexpectedly, it seemed they shared the ability to give each other deep physical enjoyment. That was enough. It was more than enough. He would soon drive out any other emotion, drowning it in pure sensation.

“I like being able to do this to you.” He propped
himself on one elbow, watching her as she lay there spent in her pleasure, her skin flushed, her lashes spiky dark against the curve of her cheek. “It gives me great satisfaction.”

He ran a hand possessively over her breast, felt her instinctive response and lowered his head to take the nipple in his mouth.

“I like it, too.” She sounded sated, confused. “I must be mad. I do not understand.”

Dev did not understand, either. Nor did he care. He had been plunged into a maelstrom of physical delight tonight and once he had tasted it he was lost. His desire for Susanna was deep and dark and compulsive and it rode him like a devil.

He raised his head from her breast. “You owe me.” He smiled at her wickedly and saw her eyes widen as she took his meaning. He held her gaze, challenged her, and after a moment she rolled over, all tangled black hair and sinuous limbs. She pushed him back on the bed. Her lips brushed his belly, his thigh, and then she had taken him into her mouth and his excitement was so extreme he almost shouted aloud.

Almost he let her take control. The sweep of her hair against his stomach, the caress of her tongue, the shimmering moonlight on the bed, the silken sheets against his back were part of a sensual enchantment that threatened to drive him beyond sanity. The first time, in the garden, had been for her. This was where she paid by meeting his price.

He watched her in the mirror; watched her mouth
on his shaft and thought of the utter bliss of demanding what he wanted from her and giving her absolute pleasure in return, sensual delight searing enough to bind them together in perfect union. The erotic image of her, etched in the black and white of moonlight and shadow, the soft touch of her lips and tongue, the dark whirling spiral of his lust threatened to drive him too far too fast.

“No more.” He ground out the words and pulled away from her. “I want to come inside you.”

He saw the flare of excitement in her eyes as he drew her up and pulled her on top of him so that she slid down to encompass him in her heat.

Outside, the rain fell with an insistent primitive beat in echo of their lust. The storm broke overhead, the thunder shaking the house. The night was so humid and dark one could get lost in it and Dev felt adrift, driven to the furthest shores of pleasure. Hotter and hotter the spiral burned. He felt Susanna push him to the very furthest extremes of bliss and realized with helpless abandonment that he, the perpetrator, the one who had wanted to make her pay, was the most willing, most helpless victim of all. Then she came in great rolling waves that carried him with her. Even as he felt the ecstasy wash through him and recede he felt something else, that elusive emotion he had felt before and sought to drive out, and now it was stronger than before and it wrapped around his heart like the tendrils of a vine. Even as he sought to dislodge it he had the most dis
turbing sensation that it was too late. He was caught, ensnared, the trap tightening even as he drew Susanna’s exhausted body closer into his embrace and fell asleep.

Later he woke her and made love to her again whilst her body was still soft and drowsy with sleep. Her movements were slow and languorous, spinning out the delight they took in each other. He felt desperate to have her again, like a youth who had only just learned how much pleasure there was to be had in bedding a woman and grasped greedily after it. He felt Susanna smile against his lips and knew she was aware of his driving hunger but he was powerless to hide his need from her. It made him angry that his restraint was so wafer-thin. He took her with a controlled intensity that forced them both to a peak of ecstasy so sharp it was almost like pain.

“Open your eyes,” he ordered her as he felt the first irresistible ripple of her climax close about him. “I want you to be sure who is making love to you. I want you to remember me.”

She opened her eyes and they were slumberous and dark, full of sensual secrets and the smile in them made his body clench. He came then, feeling her clasp him as she, too, fell deep into pleasure.

Later still, as the first pale streaks of dawn were lighting the eastern sky and shining on the cool, rain-washed streets, he left her without waking her again.

S
USANNA WOKE VERY SLOWLY
. The room was filled with light and the bed was empty. She, too, felt curiously light and empty. Her memory presented her with a succession of images of what had happened the night before. She knew that they were true. Yet she could not believe it.

She had made love with Dev, flagrantly, wantonly, deliciously and too thoroughly ever to be forgotten. Her entire body heated at the memories of that wicked night. And she was still no closer to understanding why she had done it.

She reached for her wrap. She felt slow and hollow, as though all feeling had been drained from her, all emotion spent during the long, hot hours of the night. And yet her feelings felt sharply alive. Devlin… Once before he had come into her life and he had lit it up with his danger and reckless intensity. She had paid a high price for that. Matters had never been the same again. She could not believe that she had made the same mistake twice.

Dev. Her husband, though he did not know it. It did not make it better, easier, that they were still
wed. It made the layers of deceit and emotion all the more complex. When she had known him at seventeen she had been fathoms deep in love with him. Now she was no longer that naive girl, now she most certainly did not love him anymore and yet she had given herself to him, offering up body and soul.

She sat down before her pier glass and started to brush her hair, the long strokes setting up a rhythm that soothed. In the past nine years a score of men had tried to seduce her, more than a score probably. She had not been counting. But she had refused them all. There were times when she had been tempted, times when she had wanted to escape the poverty and the hardship and the loneliness for a few brief hours, yet when she thought about giving herself to a man it had felt tawdry, an empty bargain where once with Dev she had glimpsed paradise.

She had seen paradise again now. Perhaps that was why she had wanted him—because she had wondered if her youthful memories of their time together could possibly have been true. Yet it had not merely been curiosity that had prompted her to take Devlin to her bed. Her emotions were far more profound, complicated and confusing than that, so overwhelming, in fact, that they scared her. So it was an insult to both of them to try to dismiss her response to Dev as mere curiosity.

And then there was Emma. She did not like Emma and she knew Dev did not love his fiancée but she was damned if she was going to be the means for
Dev to betray the girl. She had done it once and it had been wrong. She did not imagine that Emma would be complaisant about Dev keeping a mistress. She was Dev’s wife, not his mistress, but no one knew that. No one could know.

With a sigh she laid down the pearl-handled hairbrush and let her hand fall to rest on her stomach. She had been foolish but, she hoped, not dangerously so. She was blessed that her courses were extremely regular and always had been so she should at least be safe from pregnancy this time. She shivered as the memory of the past brushed her like dark wings. Loving and losing… Her family, her husband, her child… Loss was all she had ever known. She could not let it happen again. If it did it would destroy her.

Her mirror image gazed back at her, pale and wan this morning. She had known that she was vulnerable to Dev but she had not calculated the depth of her own susceptibility. Any man was resistible, no matter how arrogantly he believed the opposite, if one simply did not desire him. Her difficulty was that she had imagined herself immune to Dev and had discovered the opposite to be true. Well, it must not happen again. If anyone found out it would ruin her plans to entrap Fitz, ruin the job she was doing for the Duke and Duchess of Alton and with it her entire future and that of the twins, too. Once again the anxiety stirred in her and she forced the dangerous fears away. She could do this. All would be well. She must keep away from Devlin now, focus
on bringing Fitz to the point as quickly as possible, take the money and run.

There was a tap at the door and Margery poked her head around. When she saw that Susanna was awake she looked relieved.

“My lady, I came in earlier—twice—but you were sleeping so deeply I did not want to disturb you. I hope I did the right thing.”

Susanna had a sudden vision of the little maid stumbling on a scene of utter debauchery, herself asleep in Dev’s arms, both of them stark naked, their clothes scattered about the room. But there was nothing on the maid’s face to indicate she had received such a shock to her sensibilities.

“Thank you, Margery,” she said. “Pray do not concern yourself about it.”

The maid’s expression eased. “I fear you have missed Lady Phillips’s Breakfast, ma’am,” she murmured. “And Mrs. Carson’s recital.”

Susanna glanced at the clock. It was well past three. “It is astonishing that I have not missed the Duchess of Alton’s soiree, as well,” she observed. “Pray fetch me a cup of tea, Margery, and lots of chocolate biscuits, and then come and help me choose my gown for this evening.”

The maid withdrew and Susanna walked across to the wardrobe, riffling through the gowns hanging there. The golden gauze from the previous night had disappeared, she saw. No doubt Margery had re
trieved it earlier. She hoped none of the ribbons had been torn. That would be difficult to explain.

At least Dev was unlikely to be present at the Duchess’s soiree since it had been specifically arranged as a very select gathering to throw Susanna into Fitz’s lap. Gloom settled in Susanna’s stomach like a dull weight. Tonight she must make sure to flatter Fitz and hang on his every word. The sooner she could extract a declaration from him the sooner Francesca Devlin’s hopes would be permanently destroyed and she could ring the curtain down on this sorry charade. She sorted through the gowns with increasing irritation, trying to choose something that was revealing but demure, a little bit racy but not enough to frighten the dowagers. She had to look tempting but irreproachably respectable. She shook her head. Last night had been deeply, delightfully unrespectable. Her skin prickled again at the memory, little shivers of pleasure racking her. This was no good, no good at all. How could she seduce a marriage proposal from Fitz when all she could think of was Devlin?

Her hands stilled. How could she not seduce Fitz? She had no choice. Once before she had ended in the poorhouse. The stench of sickness and desperation was in her nostrils still. She could never condemn Rory and Rose to such a life. She had saved them from that fate when they had been little more than babies and part of the pledge she had made with their mother was that they would never, ever go back. She
could feel Flora’s dry hand clutching her own, see the terror in her friend’s dull, dark eyes.

“Promise me…” Flora had said and there, surrounded by the dead and the dying, she had given her word and watched as her friend slipped away, finally at peace. She, who had buried her own child, would never desert the children entrusted to her.

“The figured rose cream silk would look beautiful for tonight, my lady,” Margery ventured and Susanna jumped, realizing that the maid had returned and she had been so lost in her thoughts that she had not even noticed.

“Yes,” Susanna said. “Thank you, Margery.”

It was time to become Caroline Carew again, to forget the past and certainly to forget that her night with James Devlin had ever happened. She had a marquis to entrap. She could not fail. She reached for the chocolate biscuits and ate four of them in quick succession. She felt comforted. A little. Washing the chocolate from her fingers, she started to dress.

“Y
E WERE SLEEPING LIKE A
baby or a man with a clear conscience.” Dev came awake to find Frazer shaking him none too gently. “Strange,” the valet continued, “since you were out until first light and I’ll wager ye were up to no good.”

Dev stretched, yawned and lay back on his pillows. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said. He felt good; more than good, his temper mellow, his body satiated. He knew that he should not. Guilt at his be
trayal of Emma, shock, remorse… Those were the emotions that should be troubling him now, coupled with a determination to put the hot, sensual night with Susanna behind him and ensure it never happened again. What he should not be feeling was physical satisfaction tempered with a strong urge to repeat the experience again, as soon as possible, as often as possible.

Frazer’s mouth had turned down at the corners. “Your harlot must have been a cut above those Haymarket drabs,” he said sourly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Dev said, ambushed by a sudden fierce protectiveness toward Susanna that took him by surprise. He threw back the covers and stood up.

“Aye well, ye be careful, laddie,” Frazer said, handing him his robe. “Seventy thousand pounds Lady Emma has. Worth more than a quick fumble with a whore—”

“That in no way describes my experience last night,” Dev bit out, holding on to his temper by a thread, “and I suggest you speak of it no more, Frazer.”

It was the first time that he had ever spoken in such a way to Frazer and he saw the man’s brows rise before a faint wintry smile touched his lips.

“Very good, sir,” the valet said, and there was approval in his voice. “There’s a gentleman to see you by the name of Hammond,” Frazer continued.
“I wouldn’t have woken you otherwise. Said you had consulted him on a business matter last night.”

Dev stopped. He had completely forgotten that the previous night he had stopped off in a coffeehouse to speak to Hammond, the most illustrious inquiry agent in London. He had asked the man to find out all he could about Susanna—and her husband, the late lamented Sir Edwin. Hammond had looked at him with weary, cynical eyes and had said he would report back the following day.

“Changed your mind?” Frazer said, not unsympathetically, as Dev hesitated. “I can send him away.”

“No,” Dev said slowly. He was aware of a curious duality in his feelings, a need to know the truth and at the same time a feeling of reluctance. He might not like what Hammond had to tell him. Very likely he would not like it. Protectiveness toward Susanna stirred in him again and he shook his head impatiently. He had made wild and uninhibited love with Susanna but that should not mean anything to him other than that it had been deeply pleasurable and he wanted to do it again. It did not mean that he thought her any less of an adventuress. It certainly did not mean that he cared for her. Yet he could not quite erase the picture of her sleeping in his arms, her hair spread across his chest, her head resting on his shoulder, her body soft and sweet against his, vulnerable in sleep.

With a sigh he reached for his shirt, shrugged himself into his jacket whilst Frazer
tutted
at his
impatience and lack of care, then went through to the drawing room. The late-afternoon sunshine lay across the floor in bars of gold. He had indeed slept late.

“Sir James.” Hammond got to his feet and shook Dev’s hand. He brought with him the smell of the alehouse, of old smoke and stale beer. It seemed ingrained into his skin. But his shrewd dark eyes were bright.

“An interesting case you gave me,” he said, “that of Caroline Carew.” He sounded, Dev thought, like a man who had solved a particularly complex and pleasing puzzle.

“I did not expect you to have an answer for me so soon,” Dev said.

Hammond bared his teeth in something that just about passed as a smile. “I pride myself on the speed and efficiency of my work. Besides, I was already asking a few questions about the merry widow.”

Dev felt a stir of disquiet.

“Why?” he said swiftly.

Hammond gave another of his vulpine smiles. “When a woman as rich, beautiful and mysterious as Lady Carew comes to Town I am…shall we say…naturally curious? I already had a man working on it. Just in case.”

Dev grimaced. Even though he had commissioned Hammond to find some information on Sir Edwin Carew it disturbed him that others had already been digging into Susanna’s secrets. Somehow it made
him feel protective of her all over again, which was folly when Susanna was surely as vulnerable as a tigress.

He signaled to Hammond to take a seat and waited, aware of the same odd mix of anticipation and unease.

“Caroline Carew,” Hammond said deliberately, “is not, strictly speaking, a widow.”

For a moment Dev was rendered speechless. “Sir Edwin Carew is still alive?” he queried.

Hammond grinned. “Not at all, sir. Edwin Carew never existed.”

Dev frowned. Evidently Hammond was not as accomplished an inquiry agent as he claimed to be. “Of course he does, man,” he said. “I’ve met people who claim to have known him! The Duke and Duchess of Alton—” He stopped again. Hammond was looking very amused.

“It’s a neat confidence trick, sir,” the inquiry agent said. “I’ve seen it happen before. One person claims to know Sir Edwin and before you know it there will be people who remember meeting him, or discussing astronomy with him at a lecture or sharing a whisky with him in an Edinburgh inn. They will even give you a physical description of the man.”

Dev sat down heavily. If Susanna had invented Sir Edwin Carew it could only be for one reason—to hide her real past. She had told him that she had left Balvenie for Edinburgh, to find a rich husband. Sir Edwin was supposed to have been that man. Sir
Edwin had not existed. She could only have invented him in order to bait the trap, the rich widow out to catch a marquis. Would that marquis find, when it was too late, that the prize he thought he had captured was no more than a penniless adventuress on the make? A cynical smile twisted Dev’s lips. Susanna had been very clever. She had pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes. But now the thread was starting to unravel and if he was cunning he might just be able to find a way to persuade Susanna to cease her pursuit of Fitz before it was too late for Chessie. It was unlikely, given the secrets she knew about him, but if there was a way he would find it.

“You are absolutely certain of this?” he questioned.

Hammond looked offended. “I am the best, sir.”

“Very well,” Dev said. “Thank you.”

Hammond nodded, stood.