Authors: Lynne Connolly
He strolled to the door, and then paused with his hand on the knob and turned back, as if on an afterthought. “I will find out what you’re hiding, one way or the other. Make no mistake about that.”
His parting shot delivered, he had no reason to stay. He opened the door and walked into the bright expanse of the hall with its crisp black and white tiles.
As the footman left to fetch his outerwear, the door to the room opposite opened. Claudia rushed out and grabbed his hand. Without stopping to speak to him, she dragged him back to the room.
“Close the door.”
“Won’t your duenna object?” Her mother or someone. For heaven’s sake, the men of her immediate family were in the room opposite. They’d run him through, given half a chance. “Shouldn’t we leave the door open?”
She snorted. “Do you see a duenna? I have no need of any such thing. Besides, you all but proposed to me in my father’s study. Whatever got into you?”
He would show her exactly what. He pulled her into his arms and to the echo of her shocked squeak, he crushed his mouth to hers.
No gentle salute this, but a passionate kiss of desire. Exactly what he’d fantasized about while he was standing in front of her father. Her proximity there had tortured him, especially the saucy little looks she kept shooting him. Teasing him.
He lifted his mouth from her gratifyingly kiss-reddened one. “Did you think I didn’t notice the way you looked at me? You are playing with fire, madam. Do not flirt if you have no intention of continuing.”
“Oh, I have every intention of continuing.” She sighed and reached around his neck, tugging him down to her and this time initiating the kiss.
With a groan, he surrendered. She tasted of honey, and Claudia. When he drove his tongue deep into her mouth he detected a touch of the coffee she must have drunk at breakfast.
He caressed her, holding her tightly to him. Today her hoops were modest and he could draw her closer, but frustratingly not close enough. He badly wanted to treat her like the most experienced of doxies, but for all her eagerness, she was untried, even innocent in physical matters.
When he lifted his head, her lips were slick with his caresses. He didn’t release her and she didn’t try to pull away.
Her eyes danced. “Do you mean to do that every time we find ourselves alone?”
“Yes.” Why equivocate? He couldn’t keep his hands off her, and as long as he kept his baser desires strongly leashed, he could at least have this.
“Then I’ll have to find more excuses to be alone with you.” She touched his nose with her finger, tapped it as if in rebuke. “Mind you, that doesn’t mean that I will fall in with your outrageous suggestion. Kissing you is a little different to a betrothal.”
“We’d have more time alone together.” That in itself was a good reason as far as he was concerned. He worried about her. He wanted to keep her in view, in case she took some idiotic idea into her head to run off and infiltrate another house of ill repute. How on earth could he let her do that again? The very thought made his stomach churn.
“We could be pressured into doing something neither of us wants.” Pressing her hand on his chest, she stretched up on her toes for another kiss.
“Yet you’ve reached the grand old age of twenty-four without marriage.”
Although she wore a lawn fichu over her breasts today, he could still taste them. He wanted that satiny bounty he’d touched last night again. That was not the reason for his sudden proposal, though. He needed to keep her safe. He very much feared that without him, she’d hoodwink her family again. This time she could find herself in the kind of trouble she couldn’t escape from.
“I have.” She flashed a saucy grin, and those enchanting dimples peeped out.
He could not think of one reason why he should resist. He kissed them, dotting his mouth first on one, then the other. “I daresay you’re expert at evading unwanted suitors.”
“I am. Any number of fortune hunters have tried to lure me into their carriages.”
“That sounds ominous.” It did. “What made you think you were safe with me last night?” Unexpectedly, anger surged up to burn him. He never allowed anger to control him, but he had to remind himself of that fact. “You went into a house of ill repute that just happened to be full of traitors who would have killed you if they discovered your identity. You went into a private room with me.”
She moved closer. “I think I was safest there.”
He groaned as her body heat seeped through to him. “It depends what you regard as safe. Do you really think I’d have held off for much longer?” Holding her firmly, he refused to let her squirm against him. The minx knew full well what she was doing. “If you tease men in this fashion, you’ll not remain a virgin past another day.”
She went absolutely still and her lovely face turned solemn. “Would it be so important if I were not a virgin?”
Now his anger ratcheted up to fury. Who had done this to her? “Why? Has someone hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No. I have every reason to believe I retain the precious commodity. It’s just not right, Dominic. Why should I keep myself pure when it’s highly likely that my husband, whoever he turns out to be, will not?”
“Ah.” Clearing his throat, he gave his emotions a moment to subside. Not, unfortunately, his erection, which strained against his breeches. As well she couldn’t sense that. What was it about this woman? She aroused him, angered him, and amused him, all at the same time. He never knew where he was with her and he’d always preferred certainty in his life.
No, she couldn’t be for him, not for a lifetime. He’d do his job, ensure her safety and move on. If she agreed to a temporary betrothal, he could keep her close while he worked. Either that or she’d drive him crazy while he abandoned the work of getting Stuart out of the country. Then there’d be hell to pay because he’d wager he wasn’t the only man working on this task.
“Claudia, will you accept a temporary betrothal? You know we would not suit in the long term.”
She broke out of his arms, lifted her skirts, strode across the room in a most unladylike manner, and then turned and came back to him. “Do I truly? Indeed, I have discovered no one with whom I could imagine staying for a lifetime. Is everything temporary? Do I have to console myself with mild friendship or a business partnership? Or maybe I’ll find some luck. My parents are devoted to each other, yet they barely knew each other when they became betrothed. I want something more.” She spread her hands. “I want love.”
“You deserve it.” He meant that. Whatever other labels he stuck on this woman, one remained with him. She was passionate. He’d hate to see that fire dimmed. “I fear I am not the man who can give it to you.” All his life he’d spent alone, as if somehow he wasn’t a part of what was going on around him. That feeling had only increased when he discovered his parents were keeping a secret from him.
Claudia made him feel alive, truly in the present for the first time in forever. She deserved better than what he could give her. How long would that elusive feeling remain once he knew her better?
“Then I won’t marry you and I won’t agree to a false betrothal.”
He would persuade her. He had never yet failed, but he set himself to a longer campaign than he would have liked. “In that case, I will court you. Every ball, rout, performance at the theater. I’ll call on you to take you riding in the park, and I’ll invite you to music recitals and displays of soldiering skill at Horse Guards. You will not rid yourself of me.”
“I’ll have my own duenna, is that it?” She made a face. “A male one.”
Taking the step that separated them, he hauled her back into his arms for a kiss. This time he thrust his tongue into her mouth without preliminaries, desperate to taste that recklessness that he had never unlocked in himself. Everything he did was calculated, analyzed, and worked out. This woman showed him a touch of danger, true danger, the kind that came of plunging in with her heart instead of her head. It invigorated him while it terrified him, and he couldn’t let her do it alone.
She pressed against him and threw herself into whatever he wanted to do with her as recklessly as she did everything else.
When they separated their lips, they were both panting. Her bosom enticed him, its fine covering of lawn the most tempting sight he’d witnessed for a long time.
“Very well,” he said, “I agree, for now. I’ll court you. If society shows any sign of creating a scandal, we will be betrothed.”
“I’ll be even worse off when I jilt you,” she pointed out. “Then they’ll have another name to add to the list of the things they call me.”
He gave her a wolfish smile. “Then I’ll have to make your reasons for doing it very good, won’t I? Shall I have a mistress and flaunt her before you? Or swear that I’ll never let you out of my sight, that I’ll be locking you up in my house in the country for your own good?”
“Or I was mistaken about you,” she murmured against his chest. “You’re not the man I took you for. Maybe you’re a changeling, swapped by the fairies at birth for one of their own. It would certainly explain the flamboyant clothing. Are those buttons real gold?” She toyed with a waistcoat button right over his chest.
If wishes came true, he’d be naked and she’d be stroking his skin, but there was a saying about wishes and horses.
Good lord, he’d have to tell his parents! How on earth would they take the news that he meant to court one of the most notorious women in London? He could hardly tell them the truth even if he knew it himself. He was beginning to think he understood nothing about this affair, and for the first time in his life, he was truly out of his depth.
Nevertheless, when he kissed her again, he stopped worrying.
* * * *
After a week, Claudia was no nearer getting to know the man so assiduously courting her as she’d been when she first met him. He charmed her, bestowed glorious kisses on her when nobody was watching, and ensured people saw him in public wherever she was.
She didn’t trust this man. He confused her. All his previous confidences and truths were gone, disappeared after that meeting in her father’s office as if they had never existed. Every time she tried to get close to him, he evaded her. He brought her into the company of people they could discuss nothing with, or kissed her. Every time he kissed her, he took her resolve away completely.
She wanted him so badly, but she wanted the man she’d seen glimpses of, not this society fribble. The man exasperated her.
On the Monday after his declaration that he would court her, she met him in a thankfully abandoned corridor in a house she happened to know well on the evening of a ball at her grandfather’s house. Her grandparents lived in a grand mansion near Piccadilly, one of the few still standing after the building craze had razed many of them to the ground.
Slapping her hands on his chest, she pushed. It proved an effective way of moving him, impelling him back into a small chamber, one used by the family. Smiling, he put his hands over hers and backed off, even being so obliging as to open the door.
Then he made her breathless by swinging her around and claiming a kiss. He’d taken control of the situation as easily as if he’d initiated it. She responded, as always, with eagerness and pleasure, giving a small moan when he slid his tongue into her mouth. She loved the way he did that. Intimately, as if he were making love to her in truth. Now she had her doubts and that was what she wanted to talk about.
He drew away reluctantly, their mouths making a sweet, wet sound when they separated. “You taste so good, Claudia. You bewitch me completely.”
This time she was determined not to allow him to seduce her away from her purpose with tender words. “What is happening, Dominic? You agreed that you would not shut me out. Why, then, have you done so?”
He closed his eyes and dropped his head, so his forehead touched hers. “There is nothing to tell, dear one. Truly. I have discovered nothing. It’s as if they were waiting for something to happen, but I have no idea what that is.”
At last, the first words on the subject she’d persuaded out of him in a week! “What are you doing?”
“I’m following you, and so far it’s proved the most rewarding part of this investigation.”
“What is he doing?”
“You know you are adorable when you’re like this,” he mused.
“Like what?” She could have bitten her tongue out, because all she was doing was giving him a chance to distract her. Which he did, skillfully.
He swept his palm up her back and touched the bare skin above her bodice, which, since this was a ball, was cut lower than usual. Then he smiled and kissed her. “When you’re excited or angry about something, your eyes sparkle and you get the most becoming flush here.” He traced a gentle line on her cheekbones and then down her throat. He skated it over the place where a frill of lace peeped over the top of her stiffly corseted gown. “It’s immensely attractive to feel and see such soft, enticing flesh above a rigidly laced-in body. I can hardly feel you through your gown, what with all the boning and undergarments, but I know it’s there and I want more of it.”
She would have given it to him, except she had not lost sight of her goal. “What have you been doing?”
His sigh was theatrical. “Nothing, sweetheart. At least nothing of import. I swear it. I’ve been watching the house, and I’ve seen him a time or two, it’s true. But he’s gone out, come back and so far he’s done nothing. He’s kept to his usual haunts and his usual cronies.”
“Did he visit the Dankworths?”
“Not directly, but he went to places they also attended.” He smiled wryly. “I took you to that tedious concert at Ranelagh because he was there.”
“That was why you left me in the company of my family for a half hour?” She pulled away.
But he drew her back “Yes it was.” He kissed her forehead. “I learned nothing and saw nothing, other than a man who should not have been there talking a gentle walk with companions I already knew about. A waste of time I would much rather spend with you.”
With more than a little exasperation, she pulled out of his arms. “Then what’s to be done? Is this a private visit and he’ll go back with no harm done?”