The Problem with Seduction (46 page)

He wants her…

Practiced rake Roman Alexander never meant to seduce his best friend’s sister. He certainly never intends to do it again. The handsome scoundrel has never felt more compelled to be a better man. But the damage has been done, for his buttoned-up spinster refuses to marry a bounder like him—and maddeningly, she doesn’t seem to
like
him. Nevertheless, he can’t seem to forget her, or her passionate response to his kisses. How much danger could there be in one more try?

She wants revenge

Practical headmistress Lucy Lancester naively believes her charming rogue has moved on to his next conquest, leaving her free to cherish their one night together for the rest of her bluestocking days. Until the afternoon he arrives at her school intent on proving their one night together wasn’t enough…and this time, the scandal can’t be contained. Well, two can play at that. How hard can it be to ruin a rake?

Chapter One

IF MISS LUCY LANCESTER’S LIFE WERE A BOOK, she’d be living in the last few pages where the villain had been vanquished, the world rescued and the hero galloped on his steed toward the horizon. Her days as headmistress of her School for Unfortunate Females filled her completely. She oversaw the tutelage and deportment of twenty-five bright-eyed girls. Her responsibility extended to the employment of two teachers, a retainer, four maids and a cook. If her school was not profitable it was at least solvent, and she adored living in Bath.

Her life now was a chapter of perfect contentment. If it was the last chapter of her book, and she could look forward to nothing but year after year of this harmony, she would be the luckiest female on earth.

She looked up from her correspondence when Mr. Mowry, her retainer and the only man welcome on the property, appeared in her doorway. He was of middling height, with black hair turning to gray at the temples and a pleasant air. There’d be no more stuffy servants in her future. “Miss Lancester, there’s a gentleman to see you. Shall I show him in?”

“Mr. Strickett? I wasn’t expecting him to collect Wilhelmina until tomorrow.” Wilhelmina was the last of her paying girls to return home for winter break. The charity girls would stay on with Mr. Mowry and Miss Brown. Lucy smiled at him. “Perhaps I may leave Bath early, then, and visit with my sister for an extra day before heading to Devon. Would you mind terribly?”

Mr. Mowry shrugged, a common gesture that would have been cause for a lecture in Lucy’s brother’s house. But Mr. Mowry did know the finer points of conduct, and would never embarrass her in front of her girls’ wealthy families. “You go on now whenever you like, Miss Lancester. But I don’t think it is Mr. Strickett. He gave his name as Lord Montborne.”

Lucy lost her imperturbable comportment for the first time since opening her School for Unfortunate Females. Her mouth dropped open. She stared at Mr. Mowry for several speechless seconds while her heart did somersaults and her hands turned to ice.

“Do you want me to see him out?” Mr. Mowry’s brow wrinkled in concern. He stood a bit straighter. “I’ll have no truck with a man who upsets you, Miss Lancester. I’ll toss a marquis on his ear if you ask me to.”

She blinked twice. Mr. Mowry’s sweet defense of her shook her surprise long enough for her to remember she’d closed the book on Lord Montborne’s chapter. He didn’t
get
a chance to come groveling back. It was her epilogue. There was no room for a series’ ending, one that left the reader on tenterhooks to see how the next episode progressed.

“Yes, please.” Her voice was embarrassingly faint. She was sure she couldn’t stand.

He nodded once. A gleam twinkled in his eye. He was going to enjoy tossing a marquis on his ear, maybe more than was proper. Lucy’s hand wobbled as she unfolded the next letter in her stack. She didn’t see the contents, only the image of Roman’s face the last time she’d turned his proposal of marriage down.

He’d been crushed.

The air in the room suddenly seemed cloying. She pushed back from her chair so suddenly, it screeched across the tile. She went to the window and threw it open. December air flooded in. She let it flow over her, blindly watching the busy street below. Her school was on the outskirts of Bath, the most beautiful city in Britain. Roman
couldn’t
be here. This was her paradise. He was the villain she’d so heroically vanquished.

The door to her office creaked open and she spun around. “Get out.”

It was too easy for Roman to take up every inch of space in a large room. In this tiny study, he commanded it. “
Tsk, tsk,
Miss Lancester. I came all the way here, and let me inform you, it is not an easy journey. There were god-awful hacks and cramped rooms and all manner of tolls to pay. The least you could do is offer me a pretty smile.”

She drank him in, even as she wished him to Hades. He was well over six feet, the tallest man she knew. His bright yellow curls bobbed in loose ringlets. Half the
ton
wore blond wigs now in a ridiculous attempt to imitate a man who simply couldn’t be replicated.

Long ago, as a schoolroom miss, she’d memorized his crystalline eyes and long, patrician nose. He stood at a rakish angle in her doorway, one leg slightly in front of other, one hand on the knob, and flashed her a smile meant to make her insides quiver. “Miss me?”

Zeus, he was conceited. “Not in the least. If that is all—”

He took two steps into the room. His dark blue greatcoat swished and the door slammed closed behind him. “It’s not all, Miss Lancester. I’d say we’ve barely started. Wouldn’t you?”

She gritted her teeth. He was the
beginning
of her story, not the end. “This is my property. Please remove yourself from it before I’m forced to employ drastic measures.”

His blue eyes widened. He grinned wolfishly. “Anything that brings you closer to me. Please, continue with your threat of bodily harm. I look forward to it.”

He was impossible!
“I’m not afraid of you.”

He took another step closer. “Then why did you just move behind your desk?” One fine blond brow rose. “Are you going to stick me with that letter opener?”

She looked down and uncurled her fist. She let the dull silver blade drop onto her desk. Had she picked it up? Did she really require a weapon to defend herself from that belly-quivering smile?

He closed the remaining distance and pulled out a brass-studded chair. He seated himself before her desk, then suddenly came to his feet again. “Please, have a seat, Miss Lancester. I wouldn’t want to be rude.”

“Insufferable,” she muttered.

“Pardon me?” He arched that blond brow again. A smirk played on his lips.

“I said you’re insufferable.”

“Oh, now that’s not very fair, is it?” He took a step to his right and she skittered back toward the window. Her gaze fixed on a watch dangling from a leather fob attached to his ivory waistcoat. He was still smirking, doing too many dangerous things to her insides. “You didn’t seem to mind me much before.”

She looked up at that. “What do you want?”

Both brows rose at the same time, as if he couldn’t possibly guess what she meant. “Me? Can’t an old family friend pay a call on his best friend’s sister, without her reaching for her smelling salts?”

She drew up hotly. “I’m not—”

He flashed his teeth at her. “Aren’t you?” When she didn’t reply, he took another step toward her. “It is good to see me again, is it not? You must have been wondering where I’ve been. Where does a man disappear to after having his heart crushed under the hard heel of a woman’s shoe?
Crushed,
” he took a step around the back of the desk, “
stomped
on,” another step, “ground
right
into the carpet.” The last step brought him within arm’s reach of her. Her heart thudded so hard, surely he could hear it.

He didn’t need to hear it. Her lips were pursed, slightly parted for a kiss, and her eyes had widened with want. Zeus, next she’d be disrobing for him, and he hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet!

She scrambled around the desk and moved to the door. She turned and stood tall—now she could dart to safety if he tried anything more. “Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t hurt you any more than you hurt me.”

“Now that,” he said, pausing to draw the yellow curtain back and peep out of her window, “I do believe. Can you imagine how it’s pained me to know that while I was watching you from afar, nearly undone by the poetry babbling in my heart, you weren’t even aware of me? My poor pride, you know. I’ve spent the last five months in abject misery.”

Yes, well, that had been the plan. She crossed her arms under her breasts and tried not to look too pleased with herself. “You
like
abject misery.” Then she did smirk. “You’re welcome.”

His face darkened, but it was the only indication that she’d touched a chord buried deep beneath his polished veneer. His lips continued to smile. His head cocked to one side, as if studying a fascinating specimen. Her.

“That’s true,” he allowed. “My poet’s heart is built for pining. That hardly means I haven’t felt every hour we’ve been apart. Every minute you’ve been,” he began his advance again, “hiding from me.”

Oh, devil take this man. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” She craned her neck when he came close enough to tower over her. Her pulse quickened. She kept her arms firmly crossed under her breasts, more to keep herself from reaching for him than to protect herself against him. Even if she hadn’t missed him—and she
hadn’t;
she’d been perfectly content setting up the pages of her happily ever after—she did desire him. If he tried to kiss her …

He must have seen it in her eyes. He closed the distance between their heights and took her lips in an all too-familiar kiss.

She
hadn’t
missed him. But she’d never forgotten
this
. Her toes curled in her shoes. Oh, my. She tasted him on her lips and breathed in the warm, lemon scent of him, feeling her girlish fantasies spiraling in her belly like butterflies. But she didn’t reach for him even though her urge to do so nearly overpowered her. If he’d come just for this, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her asking for it.

As long as he was here, though, dressed in his London finery, handsome as an archangel and drawing his tongue along her lips in slow promise, well—she was hardly going to
stop
him.

His massive frame closed in on her. His hands cupped her small shoulders through her prim gray gown. He used his body and his hands to coerce her back four steps until her shoulders bumped against the door. She moaned.
He wanted her.
He
desired
her. He’d come all this way just to kiss her again.

A little voice in her head—the one that should have been screaming at the top of her lungs that this was wrong—instead stood and clapped. By Zeus, she’d learned a thing or two since she was just a girl. She deserved a standing ovation for this, her masterful seduction of London’s most notorious rake.

If she stopped to think about it, she’d wonder why. She didn’t want to stop. Not when he was exploring her mouth like a thirsty man took a drink. Satisfaction spread through her. Somehow, without lifting a finger, she’d brought him to her again. He kissed her like he would never get enough of her.

If he wanted her to break his heart again, well, then… She was an obliging sort of woman.

His hands moved down her shoulders. His fingers and thumbs encircled her wrists, brushing against the bottom of her bosom as they did, and he gently pried her arms from their protective shield. He let his thumbs caress her palms just a moment before his hands were back on her, feeling her ribs and waist through her corset and eliciting tiny whimpers of need from her.

One benefit of seducing London’s most notorious rake was that he knew exactly how to make it worth her while.

His lips left hers. She tilted her head to the side and allowed him to trail hot kisses along her neck. “Miss Lancester,” he said between ticklish nibbles, “tell me you missed me, too.”

“Uhm-mm,” she hummed in the negative, looking down at his curly blond locks. As he continued to kiss her neck and breathe hotly against the fichu covering her collarbone, the side of his face looked like an oil painting. His eyes were half-closed. His face, perfectly oval. Slight stubble glinted in the afternoon sun pouring through her window. If he’d been any other man, she would have melted into a puddle at his feet, he was so beautifully handsome.

She wanted him at
her
feet.

He looped his arms under hers and without warning, lifted her under her shoulders and swept her to the desk. Papers slid from the polished mahogany and whisked to the floor. He paused to relocate her inkpot to a nearby bookshelf. In those two seconds, she had her chance to stop him from ravishing her.

Those seconds passed without incident and then he was back, covering her with his heavy body, dropping kisses along her cheek and slanting his warm, delicious mouth over hers. His fingers drew along her waist. His palm pressed into her flesh. She gasped, feeling each touch straight through her heart. For almost ten years she’d longed for this. Pined for him. While he’d been out destroying other innocents, she’d waited for the day he noticed
her
.