“My offer is simple.” She unclasped her hands and reached up to remove the hideous hat and veil.
Good God, the face didn’t match the voice at all.
No indeed, it surpassed the mellifluous lure by leaps and bounds. She was beautiful, more exquisite than any goddess splashed across a canvas. Her golden hair was plaited into basket weaves. Her eyes were wide, blue, unblinking. Her mouth full and lush, her cheeks pink, her cheekbones high. She was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. Who was she, and how had he never set eyes upon her before? For he couldn’t have crossed her path. He would have remembered a splendor so rare.
“Marry me,” she said.
* * *
The silence almost undid Clara. She hadn’t intended to blurt her offer so artlessly. She had rehearsed this moment at least a dozen times in the privacy of her chamber, and never had she faltered. She’d planned a lengthy soliloquy cataloging the virtues of the barter she presented him—his time and name in exchange for a share of her tremendous dowry.
But when she had practiced the bloodless listing of facts and reason, she had been alone. No one had stood before her with the looks to rival a fallen angel. No one had touched her, undone her dress, or uttered the most wicked, debauched words she’d ever heard aloud.
Dear God, perhaps she had made a mistake in choosing him. This man, tall and muscled as most English lords weren’t, more handsome even than she’d recalled from the handful of times she’d seen him from across a ballroom… This man was not at all what she had imagined, what she had prepared for.
And then, he laughed. Threw back his head and laughed as though she’d just delivered the cleverest joke he’d heard in ages. Clara reached for her buttons, beginning to set them to rights. Humiliation threatened to devour her from the inside out. She was the joke. He thought her offer of marriage so ludicrous, it seemed, that he couldn’t stem the flow of laughter pouring from him.
Maybe the earl was mad. He was certainly odd. She hadn’t been able to shake the impression that he was a great cat and she a little mouse, his to toy with, to lure and then strike when she least expected it.
If only she could repair the damage he’d done as quickly as he’d accomplished it. She had four buttons back in place and he was still laughing, damn him. That irked her into saying something else when she knew she likely should keep her peace and go back from whence she came, finding a different way to return home to Virginia.
“One hundred thousand pounds is humorous to a man in your dire financial straits?” she asked.
That finally tempered his good humor. He sobered, fixing her with that penetrating stare of his. “Who are you?”
So he didn’t recognize her, then. They had never been formally introduced, of course. She ought not to be disappointed, but some small, vain sliver of her was. “I am not a woman who should be laughed at, my lord.”
“Oh, I wasn’t laughing at you, love.” He grinned, and it did wicked things to her senses, that grin. “It was the absurdity of the moment. Surely you don’t think to entrap me into marriage by arranging this tableau?”
“I didn’t invite you to molest my person,” she reminded him, flushing. Of course, she had—she was ashamed to admit—been enthralled by him. It was as if he’d cast a spell over her with his beauty and his knowing touch.
“Of course not, but I must be excused for imagining that my reputation precedes me, and that only a certain sort of woman seeks out my company at this time of night.” His voice was low, suggestive. “That sort of woman seeks pleasure, not wedding vows.”
Pleasure. The mere words on his lips sent a frisson of something wanton and altogether alarming settling over her. The things he had said. Lord almighty, but she’d never heard the like in her entire life. The man was everything she’d heard and, quite probably, worse.
“I sought you out for simple reasons, my lord.” She decided to strive for bald honesty in the hopes that she could avoid any further references to matters of the flesh.
“Pray forgive me if marriage seems the inherent opposite of simple,” he purred.
He was a dangerous man, impossible to read. So beautiful at this proximity that she ached just looking upon him. Hardly any wonder he had bedded half the women in the aristocracy if rumors were to be believed. No woman could look upon him and not melt on the inside.
“I’m not looking for a true marriage, my lord,” she explained.
He caught her chin in his thumb and forefinger, holding her still for his unsettling inspection. “What are you looking for then, dear girl? Cease talking in riddles and place all your cards on the table.”
“A marriage in name only.” She met his gaze, unflinching.
“Ah,” he said softly, stroking her jaw as he spoke the single syllable, drawing it out as though the next moment held great import. “What makes you think I’d sell myself for one hundred thousand pounds? You cannot believe you’re the first to attempt such an arrangement?”
She’d been certain she would’ve been the first. His words gave her pause. Clara had thought out this plan with meticulous care. She had researched, planned, chosen the man before her because he’d seemed an indolent voluptuary and was rather infamously pockets to let. An easy sell, she’d been certain.
But the earl she’d watched these last few weeks, the man who flirted with other men’s wives and drank too much at balls, who courted scandal at every turn, that earl was nowhere to be seen on this dark night in the privacy of his study. For the real Earl of Ravenscroft had a wit as sharp as a Bowie knife and the personality of a coiled rattlesnake. She’d ventured where she didn’t belong. Had imagined him to be a different person entirely.
But she’d come this far, hadn’t she? Her father and stepmother and their legion of servants were not easily fooled. Sneaking out with the aid of a bribable driver her father had recently hired had taken an endless amount of daring and tenacity. She’d made it here, into his study, past his sour-faced butler. She couldn’t simply turn tail and go home.
“I may not be the first to present you with such an offer, my lord, but I believe my offer to be the best.” There. She could brazen it out. She could make him see reason. She hadn’t a choice. Ravenscroft was her only hope of escape now, for if word of her failed attempt at freedom reached her father, he’d change the terms of her marriage settlement as he’d threatened, leaving her with nothing and no recourse. No way of ever returning home. “I understand that you’re in need of funds. You have sisters in desperate want of a season. I neither want nor need anything from you. A great deal of wealth shall be settled upon me after I marry, and I’m willing to give you a hundred thousand pounds of that wealth unencumbered so long as you allow me to return to Virginia.”
“I thank you for the offer, my dear, but the answer is a resounding no.” His fingertips skimmed down her throat. Such a light caress, barely even there, and yet the effect was maddening. “It’s a damn shame you aren’t someone else’s wife. I could have shown you so much.”
He had refused her, yet he hadn’t released her. He touched her with a familiarity she hadn’t ever known, not even with Henry. Now she understood the whispers. Understood why ladies spoke about him behind their fans and sent him longing glances. He could make a woman feel as if she were the most desirable woman in the world, even as he was telling her no.
“Will you not even consider it?” she asked him. “I believe that one hundred thousand pounds could solve a great many of your problems.”
He smiled without mirth, watching his fingers as they settled in the hollow of her throat and then swept lower still, across the bare expanse of her breast that he had revealed with such skilled ease. “Not the biggest problem, I’m afraid. But that is neither here nor there. How much longer will you stay, love? I cannot in good conscience encourage you to linger. If I ruin you tonight, I won’t go to your father in the morning begging for your hand. It really is in your best interest to go. Now.”
But his fingers skated a path of
fire near her nipple even as he warned her, and he lowered his head so that she could smell his cologne and feel his hot brandy-scented breath upon her lips. Would he kiss her? It didn’t matter. She forced her mind back to the task at hand, convincing him of the wisdom of his capitulation.
“Wouldn’t you like to see your sisters have the seasons they deserve? You must love them very much. You could see them settled forever. You could return your estates to their former glory, and I would barely require anything from you for your cooperation.”
“There is only one way in which I’d like to offer my cooperation at the moment, and it is this.” He cupped her face with his other hand and that quickly, his mouth was upon hers. The kiss was not anything like Henry’s had been. It was masterful, a revelation. His lips angled on hers, his tongue sweeping the seam of her lips before coaxing her to open. He tasted of brandy and sin. His fingers slipped from her cheek to her hair, loosening the heavy plaits, holding her in place. His other hand slid beneath her chemise and corset, finding her hardened nipple without err.
She gasped at the sensation, arched into his hand. His kisses slowed. He nipped at her lower lip then sucked on it gently. He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth, to her ear, his tongue darting out to trace the shell and lick the sensitive area she hadn’t known existed just behind her earlobe.
“Why did you come here, little dove?” he whispered into her ear. “Tell me what you want.”
He had turned her mind upside down. She couldn’t think. His shoulders were broad beneath his waistcoat and shirt. She hadn’t even realized she was touching him, but she opened her eyes now and stared. This had not been her plan. Not at all. He was never meant to touch her, and yet he was sucking the tender flesh of her throat, kissing a path to the curve of her shoulder, nipping her with just enough pressure to send an unwanted flood of something primitive and wholly foreign straight through her veins. Her pelisse was somehow on the floor, her bodice partially shucked. Lord God in heaven. What manner of scrape had she gotten herself into now?
“My lord, will you not see reason?”
“Is it reason that brought you here to me tonight?” he whispered and then continued his path of fire down the curve of her breast. He dragged her corset down with both his hands, nearly exposing her.
“Yes.” And no. But largely yes. She forced herself to think, to recall all the things she’d meant to say. “I want my freedom. Do you not also want yours, my lord?”
Another tug, and her corset was beneath her breasts. He shocked her by sucking on her nipple through her chemise. He captured it between his teeth and tugged, sending an answering pull of want low in her belly. When he released her, he glanced up, meeting her gaze, and she couldn’t help but notice how lucid and direct he was. He’d been toying with her again, she realized, and she had fallen so neatly into his trap. Had he even been affected?
“Freedom is an illusion,” he said coolly. “Perhaps you’re too young to have realized that yet, but the truth will inevitably come to you. We are all trapped here in one way or another, and the only escape is death.”
Such a harsh, cold view of the world. Clara shivered. “One hundred thousand pounds, my lord, and all you need do is wed me and let me go.”
Chapter 2
Julian stared at the delectable woman in his arms. She was half dressed. Completely lovely, her sensitive skin marred by the nips and licks he had given her. She was responsive after all. It had merely taken some coaxing on his part. But no matter. Of course he could make a woman—any woman—want him. It was simultaneously his gift and his curse.
But it wasn’t her surprisingly sensual reaction that gave him pause or her undeniable allure. It was her words. One hundred thousand pounds was no trifling matter. A man could pay off his debts with that kind of coin and still live more than comfortably enough, provided he had a care with what remained.
Naturally, it could be a ruse, a hyperbolic lure to lead him to the altar. Sacrificial lamb, etcetera. She didn’t seem the cozening sort, however, and he fancied himself a superior judge of character. She blushed prettily now beneath his frank regard, though whether her embarrassment stemmed from the liberties she’d allowed him or her daring proposal, he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps a healthy smattering of both.
“You want to pay me to marry you, little dove?” The mere suggestion sounded so absurd that he almost laughed again. He decided to discomfit her instead, caressing her jaw and touching his thumb to her lower lip once more, precisely where he’d nipped it. “Was this meant to be my taste of the wedding night, then?”
Her lips compressed into a tight line, blue eyes snapping fire at him as she shrugged from his loose grasp and stepped back. “As I’ve already explained, there will be no wedding night, sir.”
“On that we are agreed.” His gaze flicked to her breasts straining against her chemise, her nipples stiff little temptations beneath the white fabric. They begged to be sucked, those nipples, without the barrier of cloth. “For there will be no wedding.”
He set her away from him. Pity she was either a bit touched or green enough to believe the plots and schemes she read in Gothic novels could be applied to her life. He would have dearly liked to finish what they’d begun. True desire had become a rarity for him but he felt it now, pulsing through him like a starved beast. She was lovely and innocent, and he longed to awaken her to pleasure. To take the artlessness of her and consume it for himself.
Pity too that his days of selling himself were at an end. She’d almost be worth it.
“Not even for a hundred thousand pounds?”
That rather caught him off guard, for it was almost as if she’d read his bloody mind. Something else stirred in him then, warring with the lust. Anger. He stalked back to her, crowding her with his body. He should have some mercy, at least allow her to finish buttoning herself back up, but she’d scratched him deep enough with her question and her offer to make him bleed.
“Who told you I would sell myself so cheaply?” He settled his hands on her waist, drawing her flush against him. “Even whores must set their price, my love. One hundred thousand pounds is a pittance to spend the rest of my life shackled to someone, regardless of how pretty her bubbies are.” And the bubbies in question were, undeniably, flawless, crushed to his chest in the most tantalizing manner.
Her lush mouth dropped into a perfectly shaped O before she gathered her wits enough to plant her palms on his shoulders and push. “If you find insult in my offer, the fault is mine. Only allow me to go and I shall never again trouble you.”
In her ire, her drawl deepened. He could listen to her speak all day in that accent.
But the wrath within him still burned a steady, vital flame, and so he wouldn’t think about her soft, lilting patterns of speech. “Why should I let you go when I have you precisely where I want you, little dove? I don’t suppose this was part of the madcap plans you hatched in your bedchamber, was it? No, I daresay not. I was meant to only be pleased by the honor you pay me in offering to sell the rest of my life for a hundred thousand pounds.”
A new, telling shade of red tinged her high cheekbones. “I hardly asked for the rest of your life. I wish to return to my home in Virginia. One hundred thousand pounds for a marriage that can be over the moment I step aboard a ship bound for America hardly seems a devil’s bargain to me.”
Perhaps it wouldn’t to someone like her, but Julian had been selling himself for over half his life. It had begun with Lady Esterly and it had ended with the Marchioness of Lyndhurst. The intervening years had held too many names and faces to recall.
He didn’t release her as she wanted, held her still. She would not escape so effortlessly. No, she had been the one who had decided to come to him. She’d had an entire carriage ride to question the wisdom of her decision and had still proceeded. “Selling one’s self is a devil’s bargain, regardless of the price and circumstance.”
This slip of a girl, quite beautiful, was no different than the rest. She want
ed something from him. Wanted to use him in exchange for financial compensation, but this time it was his name instead of his body. Jesus, how had he gotten here, to this place in his life where at thirty-one years old he faced a golden angel in siren’s form who was scarcely twenty if she was a day, who thought she could damn well buy him and then toss him away like rubbish?
“It is an even exchange, my lord.”
She was brave, this lovely American girl. She faced him without flinching. Even now, she held her head high, her bodice gaping, her throat marked with what he had done to her, and she did not cower. He could admire bravery. Foolishness was another matter.
“Who sent you to me?” he asked quietly, for he wanted to know. Very much. They’d never crossed paths. He still didn’t know her name. And while he was aware he possessed a reputation, he couldn’t think she’d dreamt up this farce on her own.
“If you think I’ve been sent here by one of your former…friends, you’re wrong.”
“Friends,” he repeated. “Come now. None of the ladies you’re so delicately referencing were ever my friends.”
“Your paramours, then. No, it was not any such person. Proposing this agreement to a gentleman was my idea, but a good friend of mine suggested you as an ideal candidate. Of course, I must now wonder at the wisdom of her recommendation!” Her eyes went wide, and she seemed almost as startled as he by her outburst. “Does that please you, my lord? Why do you toy with me now? Have I not entertained you enough for one evening? Can you not be merciful and allow me to go if you’ve no interest in my offer?”
Could he not be merciful? Well yes, he supposed he could, but some small part of him was actually enjoying this game. He stared at her, considering her words with care, and as he did, muted hollering reached his ears from somewhere else in the house. The front door, perhaps.
Heart’s Temptation Series Books 4-6 Page 28