* * *
Georgiana settled in the carriage, trying to calm her nerves. She’d met most of the Hunters, but she’d never met the eldest, Lord Lockwood, or his wife, Lady Elise. She took courage from the fact that she was wearing her new gown and knew she looked more than presentable and every bit as fashionable as Lady Elise would be.
She’d expected Charles to take a place beside her after he handed her up, but he sat across from her instead, facing backward. They started off with a little jerk and he braced himself with a shoe to the seat beside her. A little smile hovered at the corners of his mouth as he studied her. He was so completely handsome tonight that she feared her heart was in her eyes so she glanced away.
“No more country mouse,” he murmured. “You will not be easy to ignore.”
“Do you want to ignore me?”
“Not in the least, Georgiana. I thought you knew that. Would you like me to show you what I want from you?”
“No!” The last thing she wanted was to arrive at Charles’s brother’s house looking disheveled and wrinkled. “I’d much rather you behaved yourself.”
“Really?” He licked his lips and smiled again.
Her heartbeat hammered rapidly and heat washed through her. She knew too well the havoc that tongue could cause to her senses. To her free will. And was causing havoc to her now with just his subtle reminder. “Behave yourself, Charles.”
“’Twill be a long, boring evening if I do.”
“’Twill be a mortifying evening if you do not.”
“I am not feeling in the least bit civil.” He knocked on the roof above him. “Change of plans, Peter. Belmonde’s,” he called to his driver.
“Belmonde’s?” she queried as the coach turned.
“A place where it will not matter how I behave.”
“But—”
“I’ve decided I want you to myself tonight, Georgiana. My brothers will understand.”
She masked her disappointment. She’d been looking forward to being part of a family, if only for an evening. “Are you ashamed of me, Charles? Or have you decided you do not want to involve your family further in our deceit?”
“Ashamed? Good God, no! Selfish, perhaps. And my family will understand and forgive the deceit—if, indeed, there is one.”
“But of course there is a deceit. They think we are engaged.”
His eyes darkened and he merely watched her until she could not bear the silence.
“What are you up to?”
“Exploring options, m’dear.”
“You are being quite cryptic, Charles. What options?”
“The deeper in we get, the more difficult it will be to extricate ourselves. Might as well go through with it.”
“Go through with what?”
“The marriage.”
She was stunned to silence. The steady clop of the horses’ hooves punctuated the silence, and the dim light in the coach made Charles’s expression difficult to read. Was he teasing? Serious? Had he forgotten the fate of her husbands? “I—”
“I know. Shocking, is it not?”
“Stunningly so.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Imagine how surprised I was when it popped into my mind.”
“How... Why were you thinking of such a thing?”
He shrugged, then rubbed his right shoulder. “We’ve been unable to provoke an attack until today. Alas, it was my enemy to show himself, Georgiana, not yours.”
“Are you well, Charles? Did he hurt you?”
“Only my pride.”
Relief spread instant warmth through her. “Do you think the deaths were coincidental after all?”
“I believe Booth’s death was coincidental. As for Allenby and Huffington...that remains to be seen.”
Relief and disappointment mingled in a confusing blend. “Then we can dispense with our ruse?”
“To the contrary, it is more important than ever. Events have taken on a life of their own.”
“Is there something new?”
“Laudanum, Georgiana.”
He was studying her for a reaction, but she could not make sense of his statement. Was she supposed to know what that meant?
“Do you take laudanum?” he pressed.
“I have taken it on rare occasions to help me sleep.”
“Do you keep it on hand?”
“Aunt Caroline used to. Her scars would sometimes pain her.”
Charles shook his head. “We could have a problem.”
Georgiana thought of the vial of laudanum at home in her dressing table drawer. Who had found out about that? And why did they think it could have had anything to do with her husbands’ deaths? “How can my aunt’s laudanum matter?”
“I intend to find out.”
The coach drew up outside an elegant establishment in the neighborhood of St. James. Charles alit and turned to help her down. “I am about to become the envy of all my friends. Did you look in a mirror before coming out, Georgiana?”
She looked down at her gown and patted her hair into place. “Am I disarrayed?”
He laughed and took her arm. “You are perfection.”
A gloved footman in a greatcoat opened tall glass doors for them and stood aside as they entered a wide foyer. Georgiana was nonplussed to hear a string quartet playing quietly and nearly drowned out by the sound of conversation and laughter. A man standing behind a desk smiled and nodded at Charles. “Good to see you, Mr. Hunter. Will your companion be playing this evening?”
“I believe so. Shall we say fifty pounds, Biddle?”
“Of course.” The man made a notation in a large ledger and gave Charles a small chit, which he put in the pocket of his dark jacket.
Biddle came around the desk and held his hand out. “Your wrap, madam?”
Charles moved behind her and slid his hands over her shoulders to take her shawl. She blushed when he skimmed his fingers over the exposed flesh in the deep V between her breasts as he parted the shawl to lift it away. She shivered, her body remembering the sweetness of his touch. His sigh fanned her cheek before he handed Biddle the shawl and led her toward a second set of glass doors where another footman awaited.
The moment that second door opened, Georgiana realized they’d come to a gambling club—a “hell” she’d heard them called. But there was nothing hellish about this establishment. It was opulent to the point of being ostentatious. Gilt moldings, intricate wallpaper and plush carpeting lent an almost decadent feeling. A stunning crystal chandelier, at least twice the size of the largest she’d ever seen, hung in the center of an enormous room casting rainbows of light throughout. An open stairway led to a mezzanine where people milled about, watching the play below. The women below appeared to be a bit older than Georgiana, while the women above were younger and more daringly dressed. And their companions seemed somewhat familiar in their handling of them. Demireps?
Dozens of tables, perhaps more, stood at intervals throughout the room, and players were gathered around every one of them. Some tables appeared to be for cards, some for dice, and yet another held a wheel. Heavy velvet draperies shielded alcoves set into the walls, and while she watched, a couple entered one and a moment later, the drape closed. Whatever could be the purpose of that?
For Georgiana, who’d only played casual cribbage with her aunt or whist with friends, the scene was fascinating. And quite exciting. She waited while Charles busied himself with a man in a booth, exchanging his chit from Biddle for counters to gamble.
When he returned to her, he took her arm and led her toward the tables. “What game do you prefer, Georgiana?”
“I’ve only learned whist and cribbage. Oh, and backgammon.”
Charles laughed. “None of that here. The games you played were for societ
y. There is nothing social about Belmonde’s. Gambling is serious business.”
“But everyone seems so polite. I do not hear any quarrelling or see anyone doing anything...déclassé.”
“Look higher and closer, my dear.”
She did. Above them, a young man Georgiana could have sworn she had danced with last year stood behind a woman dressed in vivid green. One of his arms wrapped around her middle holding her back against him and the other lingered scandalously near to her breasts. Would he fondle the woman for all to see? She looked away, feeling terribly gauche in such worldly company.
Charles leaned near to her ear. “Do you begin to see what I meant about civil company, Georgiana?”
She nodded. A shout of laughter went up at a table across the room, and a croupier pushed a pile of counters toward a woman dressed in elegant cerulean blue. When the woman turned to speak to the man beside her, Georgiana recognized her as a countess much respected in the ton. She was a widow, the mother of three and a popular hostess. Then she looked at another woman, and another. They were accompanied by men, too, and were also women she’d met at soirees and balls.
Ah, these were mature women who had earned the right to do as they please. Women whose reputations no longer needed guarding. Women capable of weathering a storm of gossip. Was that why Charles had dared bring her here? That, twice widowed and therefore obviously not virgin, she did not need to guard herself as unmarried women do? Or was it that Georgiana Huffington, whispered to be a murderess, could withstand so small a scandal as gambling?
Suddenly, his motives were important to her. “Charles, why did you really bring me here?”
He stopped and turned to her. “Someone tried to kill me today, Georgiana, and it wasn’t the person I was trying to provoke. Between my enemies and yours, death is a breath away. I did not feel like sitting at a polite dinner discussing the weather, politics or the latest on dit regarding this duke or that marquis. I wanted to do something to bring an end to this. To flaunt our relationship wherever it might do the most good. To be seen and noted. Certainly not at a family dinner party. We must flush our quarry out of hiding as soon as possible. We may not have much time left. You may not have much time.”
His words chilled her. “Do you think he will now try to kill me?”
“Not unless our culprit is Walter Foxworthy.”
“Why?”
“Because your death would solve his problems. If his suit to become your conservator fails, he loses everything. But with you dead, he is the heir to the Betman fortune unless you conceive. Odd coincidence, is it not, that your husbands have died before they could impregnate you?” Charles smiled and cupped her cheek as he leaned closer. “But no, that is not my concern. If Foxworthy wanted you dead, he’d have made an attempt when you were still unprotected in Kent. If he merely wanted to prevent a future heir, well then, his target would be your husband. If there is anything you’ve forgotten to mention, Georgie, anything you’ve withheld, now would be a good time to tell me. Now, before the authorities close in.”
She ignored his question for one of her own. “What is your concern, Charles?”
“That you could be arrested.” He led her to a table where men were casting dice. He leaned close again. “That I could be killed. That time will slip away from us, Georgie. We haven’t a moment to spare.”
His sense of urgency caught her. “Cease, Charles. Take me home at once. Disassociate yourself from me. I won’t be the cause of your death.”
“You care what happens to me? I thought you disliked me.”
“I’ve never disliked you.”
He laughed and dropped his entire stack of counters on the table after exchanging a few words with another man. As the play began again, he turned back to her. “You lie so charmingly, my dear. No need. I’ve come to terms with it.”
“Charles, you are the one who walked away from me. One day you were kissing me senseless and the next—”
A cheer erupted from the table, and the man beside Charles clapped him on the back as the croupier pushed the winnings toward him. “Congratulations, Hunter.”
“Blast,” he murmured. He scooped up a handful and passed them to her. “Hold these, will you?”
She cupped her hands and stood quietly while the play continued. The man next to Charles smiled and stepped back from the table to talk to her. “I say, Mrs. Huffington, if you are so lucky for Hunter, perhaps I ought to have you accompany me to a table or two.”
He knew her name, so he had to know that she hadn’t been particularly lucky for other men. She forced a smile. “Lucky? I think I shall do you a favor and not accompany you, sir. Whatever luck Mr. Hunter has had, he has made for himself.”
“You are too modest.”
The play over, Charles turned to them. “Luck is where you find it, Converse, and I do not intend to share mine.” He gave Georgiana a look that made her knees go weak. It was then that she began to understand. His voice, his manners, his heated looks, made it clear that he was making a slow, deliberate love to her. She should have been embarrassed, but she recovered when she recalled that this was his intent—to make society believe that they were lovers, and were, indeed, engaged to be married. She returned his look and was rewarded by a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
They stared at each other in silence until Mr. Converse cleared his throat and moved away. A slow grin bloomed on Charles’s face. “Well played, Mrs. Huffington.”
A footman brought a small basket for the counters, and another footman offered a tray of wine glasses. Charles took a glass for each of them and led Georgiana to one of the alcoves and a tapestry banquette where they could sit. He put the basket and glasses on a small table, and when he sat close enough for her to feel his heat and smell faint traces of his shaving soap, she felt her expectations rising. Would he kiss her? In public? Or would he drop the drapery to give them privacy?
“Now, what is this about me walking away after our kiss?”
She blinked. How could he not know? Before she could stop herself, she blurted the words she’d guarded since their reintroduction. “Do you really not remember that kiss in Lord Russell’s garden? I was so completely taken with you that I’d have allowed you any liberties you wanted. But then you cooled. I would look for you across a room or at a ball, and you were not there. Or, if you were, you would merely glance at me and turn away.” There! She’d brought it into the open and she only felt relief, not shame.
“Me? I would glance away?”
“I was young. I did not know what I’d done. But I came to believe that I’d allowed you too much access to my person. Only cheap things come easily. You must have thought me very cheap, indeed.”
“Cheap? You think our kiss did not cost me? Oh, Georgiana, if you only knew what it cost me.”
“Then why—”
“Hush,” he whispered as he leaned closer, crooking his finger and lifting her chin.
She was on the verge of tears by the time his lips met hers. Softly, worshipfully. When he ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, she moaned as everything inside her loosened. She opened to him and he accepted the invitation, making small licks against her tongue, inviting her to test him—test his resolve, his passion, his determination.
A deep moan rumbled in his chest and resonated in hers. She could feel his tension like a tightly drawn bowstring ready to snap. Just the memory of what he’d done to her the last time they’d been so enraptured caused a burning in her middle and a moistness at her core. He began to stroke her back, pressing her closer and closer. He would not let her break the kiss and catch her breath. Instead she was falling deeper and deeper into that dark swirling mist of desire until she did not want to breathe. Only to feel. To experience his passion. To be joined to him, locked together in body and mind.
He slipped one hand around to touch her breast, th
en push one side of the deep V of her décolletage aside so that he could find one soft aureole and tease it into a tight aching bud. He pinched it tenderly and a streak of pure primal pleasure shot down her middle to that other, more demanding, bud.
She was so lost to his seduction that she forgot everything but Charles’s hand. His mouth. The pleasure was so intense that she dropped her head back to offer her throat with a deep surrendering sigh.
His breathing was coming quick and harsh. “Bloody goddamned hell,” he groaned. “Can you stand or shall I carry you out?”
Chapter Thirteen
All Charles could think of was getting Georgiana home before they lost control. He’d never been so swept up in a moment. But he would not subject her to this kind of scrutiny and gossip. This was private business.
He helped her stand and made for the door. As he draped her shawl around her shoulders, he instructed Biddle to cash in his counters and hold the money for him. His carriage was waiting only half a block away and he had Georgiana safely inside within moments of their kiss. This time his lust was not going to get the better of him.
Though she offered her lips when they were settled and the coach had pulled into traffic, he did not accept. Instead he held her hand, stroking her palm with his thumb. Rather than cooling their ardor, the drive and tension between them heightened it. Expectation quickened their breathing, heated their glances, and kept them mute. Words could only diminish what they were feeling.
Arriving at Georgiana’s doorstep, he lifted her down and shouted to Peter to go home. He would not need a driver again tonight. Sanders, like any good footman, had been waiting for his mistress’s return and opened the door before they reached it. Charles carried Georgiana up the steps and through the door, ignoring the footman’s look of astonishment and Finn’s confusion.
Clara’s wide-eyed expression quickly changed to one of concern. “Is she fallen ill, Mr. Hunter, sir?”
Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison Page 63