What Isabella Desires (5 page)

She bristled, outrage overcoming self-pity. “I’m not lonely.”

She just wanted him, damn the man.

“Seeking adventure, then,” he said, as if the matter was resolved in his mind.

She wanted to say she was seeking him, but that wouldn’t be too smart, given the way the current conversation was going. She’d seen enough women throw themselves at him to know how he’d react to the ones he didn’t want. Her courage didn’t extend as far as losing him as a friend too.

She smoothed her navy skirts, the satin cooling her fingers. “So what if I am? I’m old enough to fend for myself.”

Sowing her wild oats, as it were—the perfect excuse.

“Bella, you are a lamb in the midst of wolves.”

Her jaw dropped. “Calliope is here!”

“Calliope can take care of herself.”

She crossed her arms. “And so can I.”

“Some rogue will attempt to toss up your skirts the moment you step into a darkly lit corridor,” he said rather bluntly.

Is that an offer? The less restrained side of her wanted to ask. Instead she said, “Well, you would know.”

“What?” The man looked positively delicious even when tinged an angry red. She wondered what color his skin turned in passion. Would it be a darker tone to heighten his golden eyes and black hair, or a reddish hue to make his full lips stand out?

“You’ve tossed plenty of skirts at these functions, or so I’ve heard.”

His knuckles turned white around the high back of a chair. “Lady Willoughby, I’m taking you home. And then I may have a talk with your mother.”

She winced at his use of her address. He never called her anything other than her first name, or a variation of such.

“I was invited to this party and I’m staying. If you need to retire, then please feel free. And my mother will quite understand, I assure you.” Well, she would. Mostly.

“No she will not. She’d be appalled at you being here.”

Frustration beat its wings. “Why is it acceptable for you to be here, then?”

“I’m a man.” As if it were the most obvious thing—which it unfortunately was.

“What about Calliope? I don’t see you haranguing her.”

“She has James to pester her. And don’t try to change the subject. Calliope attended these functions long before she got shackled to James. She knows exactly what to do. Besides, no one would touch her. James would kill them.”

That was true. But beside the point. “I can handle myself fine. I would never let some rake take advantage of me.”

“Like Ellerby? His hands were all over you. You wouldn’t have lasted a minute with him down in the gardens.”

“Do you think I’d just roll over for the sod? That I’m so weak-willed I’d succumb to him the minute he made an overture?”

“He’d make more than an overture,” Marcus said darkly.

“I’m not weak!”

“Everyone has a weakness. Some succumb to it, others remove the temptation.”

She couldn’t help it. She rolled her eyes.

He abruptly moved forward and captured her chin with his long, smooth fingers; freezing her in place and making her forget the thread of the conversation.

“This is a different sort of weakness, Bella.”

His fingers caressed her chin and slid back to the nape of her neck. He leaned down and brushed his cheek, just roughening from the long day, along hers, his breath tickling her ear.

“If he promised you pleasure and untold delights…would you say no?”

She stood stunned, with her cheek pressed against his and his low voice murmuring in her ear. No wasn’t even in her lexicon right now.

“If he pulled you into his arms and made passionate declarations…would you believe him?”

Her body pulled against his, and his free hand slid around her waist. She felt dizzy and drugged.

“Using all the skill he built from doing the same thing to countless women, would you feel you were the special one? The one who could change him?”

He began to slowly rock their bodies in a sensual parody of a waltz. She could hear music, faintly, the violins shimmering around the edges of her consciousness. A consciousness that was solely centered on Marcus.

“If he pulled off your gloves because he said it was too warm in the summer air, would you let him?”

Somehow her hands had risen to his chest, and the hand that had been caressing her neck slid down to capture one of hers. He pulled the glove away from her first finger, slowly, and then the second and third, and soon his hand was sliding up her wrist and arm, to the edge of her glove and slowly, so slowly, pulling it down. And when it bunched, his long artistic fingers slid back down over hers and began tugging again, smoothing the glove down over her digits and pulling it free.

“And if he then took your hand in his and proclaimed himself so overcome with emotion that he had to lay a kiss there…”

He brought her hand slowly—everything felt so tortuously slow—to his lips and pressed them to her knuckles.

“…and if you made no mention of impropriety, would you let him proclaim his undying affection by kissing it again?”

He gently turned her wrist, and his lips grazed her pulse point, which was beating hot and heavy.

Her eyes followed his lips as the tremors scuttled through her, and when he lifted his head, she locked eyes with him.

“And if you leaned into him, your breathing shallow, your eyes glazed, with that sultry look that begs for him to throw you on or up against the nearest surface…”

He leaned forward, eyes still locked with hers, the intense gaze that never dimmed heightened by sexual awareness, his lips a hairbreadth from hers. Her eyes slid shut and she felt the barest touch of his lips sliding across hers.

“…would you let him?”

Oh, yes. She leaned forward to press her lips against his, but he leaned back at the same time. The music had stopped. The room was silent save for harsh breathing, which she realized was emanating from her. His whiskey eyes were dark and shuttered.

Oh.

Oh.

She felt color flood her cheeks. Silence filled the air, and it was only with the strictest will that she kept herself from filling it with stutters and stammers.

He leaned forward again, and the spell relit, not quite shattered as yet. He trailed her freed glove across her chin.

“Weakness, Bella. Stamping out the temptation is kinder in the long run. Stay away from these parties. Stay away from dresses like that. And most definitely stay away from the rakes.”

Then he turned on his heel and walked through the door.

She should be in bed. It was well past sleeping time, and well into waking time. Alas, she was knee deep in clothing, not in the least drowsy after the night she’d had. The feel of him was still imprinted on her…Marcus leaning so close, holding her, nearly kissing her…

She closed her eyes and took a deep, dreamy breath.

“You know, my lady, it would be much easier if you’d just tell me what you wanted changed?” She cracked an eye to see Bertie standing with her hands on her hips near the wardrobe.

Bertie was a bit sterner than most ladies’ maids, but her heart was always in the right place, and her loyalty was unquestionable.

They had waded through a massive pile of dresses, Isabella tossing each one as soon as it entered her hand. None of them were right for her plans.

“I need something a little more daring. The hemline raised, or the bodice dropped, or, I don’t know, something. Something with more verve than what I wore tonight.”

Unfortunately, Bertie’s tired eyes were the only thing raised in the room. “What has gotten into you? That dress you wore had plenty of skin on display.”

Isabella fiddled with a pin. “But I can’t wear it again so soon. And the other new gown I have from the shop is a day dress. Madame Giselle will not have the others until the day after tomorrow. I need something for tomorrow.”

She heard Bertie mutter something that sounded like, “Tomorrow—you mean today,” and chose to ignore her.

She looked at her clothing pile in disgust. She hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with her wardrobe two weeks ago, but now…“Something obviously modified from what I have.”

Especially after Marcus’s comment. Stay away from dresses like that. If that wasn’t an odd reprimand thrown in the midst of his little seduction tirade, she didn’t know what was.

Bertie tutted. “Don’t know why you need a dress with more ‘something,’ whatever that includes. What’s wrong with this?” She held up a mignonette-green gown, pretty and staid. “You look lovely in this. And it doesn’t show off anything unseemly.”

“Why is everyone so worried about my dignity these days? Haven’t I proven to be the epitome of the retiring and invisible lady? Why is it that when I show a hint—a hint—of wanting to have a little more fun, then everyone is up in arms?”

Bertie just looked at her. “It’s because you are such a retiring type, my lady. You aren’t a flash. And pardon me for saying so, but I think you do very well as you are. People like you. You have plenty of gentlemen interested in taking tea with you or riding through the park.”

Isabella gripped the pin in her hand. “In order to find out what I think their chances are with other women. In order to have a pleasant conversation as a ‘respite’ in the middle of their courting schedule.”

“Plenty of nice gentlemen are here because of you alone, and you know it,” Bertie admonished.

Isabella wilted. “Oh, I don’t mean to be a brat. But those gentlemen aren’t here because of me. Not the real me.” She walked to the window and pulled back the draperies on the dawn. “They just find me unobjectionable and solid.” She grimaced. “I can’t tell you how it stings to be told you are a good sort, not too giddy, and well grounded.”

“There are worse things.”

“Of course there are,” she murmured, watching an early morning wanderer walk by in the fledgling gray light. “But it’s nothing to make a heart flutter. And neither are the men who profess interest in me.”

“And you are set on finding something to get the flutter going, I suppose. Perhaps with a dark-haired someone?”

Isabella dropped the drapery and sat down on the bed, putting the pin on the bed stand and smoothing the linen of her chemise. “Isn’t every woman interested in something that makes her heart flutter?”

“Usually the fluttering leads down a dark path. Or a baby eight months after the wedding. Sometimes it’s better to stay out of temptation’s grasp.”

“So I’ve been told,” she muttered.

Bertie crouched on the floor. “None of us wants to see you hurt, is all. The man you fancy included.”

She looked at Bertie and couldn’t stop the sadness from showing. “I know. I never said he didn’t consider himself a friend or some sort of strange protector. I wasn’t alone two minutes in that room before Calliope came running in, looking confused and asking what trouble I was in—Marcus had to have immediately sent for her after leaving.”

“As well he should have,” her maid said in her upright voice. “Widowed or not, you shouldn’t be alone with strange men.”

“I wasn’t alone with any strange men!”

“You might have been, had Lord Roth not rescued you. I’ve heard tales of Ellerby from other maids. Not to be trusted, that one.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes, I don’t have a tendre for Ellerby. And I’ve been married, in case it escaped your attention all those years. I’m not a green goose. I know you care for me, but stop acting as if you need to protect me from the world. It’s appreciated in gesture, but not especially in actuality. I am twenty-eight years old. Quite old enough to handle myself.”

Bertie looked chagrined, and Isabella couldn’t resist patting her hand to take the sting out.

“I know my behavior has been a little addled these past few days. It’s just…I feel as if I’m letting something pass me by. I know it’s easier to stay calmly on course, but it’s as if I’ll lose something entirely too precious if I don’t take the chance,” she finished in a whisper, and looked at the lines on her palms, rubbing one thumb over the longest furrow.

Bertie stayed silent for a long moment, then patted her knee, a serious look in her eye. “Then let’s fix you something to wear. It’s not as if you have to change. We’ll merely stretch you until he can’t do anything but be too tempted to grasp you in return.”

A slow smile overtook Isabella’s face and she clasped Bertie’s hand between hers.

“But don’t do anything too outrageous.” Bertie grimaced. “Or God have mercy, your mother’ll have my hide.”

Marcus pushed through the doors and out to the terrace of the fourth gathering he’d been to that night. They had gone successively downhill. Not that much could have topped the Grenstridge masquerade three parties back for the sheer toll on his nerves. He had been trying to work out his pique ever since. Unfortunately, none of his regular haunts had done any good.

There were few people out at this point. It was either too late in the night, or too early in the morning—the faint light of dawn peeking over the London houses. Only the true carousers were still up and moving.

Isabella had assuredly been tucked safely into bed, covers drawn up to her chin, hours ago.

He still couldn’t believe she had shown up at the Grenstridge masquerade. What had Calliope been thinking? He’d nearly wrung her neck when she’d given him a smug glance in answer to that question. Stephen and James had merely looked amused.

Isabella didn’t belong at parties like that. Was he the only sane one in the bunch?

Though with the way she had reacted to him in the library, all supple limbs and husky voice, one would never have known that she didn’t belong. He’d cursed himself blue afterward for what he had done to himself when trying to warn her away. Having her warm, curvy body pressed to his as he attempted to scare her had done nothing for his libido. It had taken a good thirty minutes, after a curt word to Calliope and a quick escape, before he had been able to enter polite society once more. Good thing the party had barely approached polite.

He felt somewhat horrified to have thought of her in a sexual way. She was sweet, innocent Isabella. Not innocent is some ways, she had been married, of course—and she could be downright surly sometimes—but overall, she radiated a sort of pure goodness that he liked to bask in, like a cat in a sunny spot. She maintained a positive outlook on the world that he refused to taint.

He flipped his pocket watch as he neared the gardens. A sturdy hedge separated them from the yard beyond. He reached his destination and whistled a low tune to announce his presence.

He felt the person on the other side of the hedge before he spoke. “Evenin’, Lord Roth, or morning, as it were.”

“Good morning, Kurp.” He scanned the gardens, but the few stragglers outside weren’t close enough to hear. “Your report?”

Meeting with underground contacts visibly during the day was stupid, and Marcus didn’t consider himself a stupid man. No one expected him to meet his men during social functions, which made them perfect. This meeting was closer to daylight hours than usually planned, but the bleary eyes of the guests would compensate.

“Not good,” Kurp replied. “Crosby gang got Fletcher, and we ain’t heard from Fysh in a sennight. The lads try not to show it, but they’re gettin’ nervous.”

Marcus clutched his watch. “Yes. It’s understandable.”

“This was left.”

Marcus lifted the heavy paper that was passed under the hedge.