“Ladies.” Lord Blakely strode through the door and straight to them.
Francine’s heart gave a decided lurch.
He greeted Temperance, and one would think that gave Francine a moment to gather her wits. But no… For he leaned down, on the side opposite of where her cousin sat, and placed his lips at her ear.
“’Tis delightful to find you and your cousin in accord,” he breathed hotly over her skin, before giving her neck the briefest of kisses. “Meet me near the back staircase. You have four minutes.”
8
Dark Discoveries Illuminated
Erasmus William Charles Hammond, for you and you alone I leave these last words.
As my firstborn son, my heir, I owe you the greatest apology. For what I’m about to request—nay, to demand—places an even greater burden on you than I have set forth previously.
Son, as the future marquis, you have an underlying responsibility to the title, our lands and people, and to the Hammond fortune. A responsibility toward your brother. Your cousin. And any others there may be like you—bastards we know naught about.
My scapegrace brother has like as not sired by-blows, though one can hope not prolifically. And if the Saints be smiling on us for once, not male. Since, from what I have gleaned, only the males of our line are doomed to suffer the curse, not the ladies.
Pray God I am accurate on that assertion.
However, dear Erasmus, as the owner possessor inheritant of the highest title in our lineage, it’s your responsibility to not only nurture the estates and tenants and ensure they continue to thrive, but to see to the individuals of our line prosper as well. To seek out any others, oversee their actions, to find the strength within you to set forth boundaries, restricting their wild behavior.
To prevent any more innocent lives from being ruined.
Aye, I am damning my soul all over again because I’m tasking you with caring for them all: seeing that any of the cursed Blakely line—whether recognized legally or not—is kept within the bounds of propriety. Kept from committing atrocious acts that might get themselves, and by association, the rest of us hanged. Hung? Hell, son, noosed around the neck with silk over rope is still sufficient to have any one of us crying cockles.
You, Erasmus, must save them all, and yourself as well, uphold the family honor all while determining how you best go on. Do you marry? Become priest-linked and continue the line—along with the curse? Do you embrace celibacy and remain unwed? Avoid tiffing, at all costs? (The life of a monk is not one we’re well suited to, son… I tried when the urges first came upon me, how I tried.)
Or do you succumb to the lure of sexual revelry I now suspect will—at least on some levels—allow you to remain human? As human as the inner beast will permit…
Twelve minutes later Francine was still searching for the dratted stairs. Had he meant the servants’ stairs or was there another set for family use? Was he expecting her inside the narrow stairway, or simply on the landing? And had he meant on the same floor as the portrait gallery or the one below, where the ballroom had collected chairs and stage, for the performances?
The Haydn piece had long-since started, but the sound of her drumming heartbeat drowned out the hauntingly beautiful notes of the violin, viola and cello strings.
She could be forgiven then, for her inability to arrive on time, which was the direct result of taking her leave from Temperance—without alluding to the romantic nature of the assignation she was heading to—and being so eager and subsequently so flustered, that no matter how she tried, she could not locate the referred-to “back” stairs. It wasn’t as if Lord and Lady Stanton provided diagrams to every guest, outlining the whereabouts of each feature in their monstrously large home.
Not to mention that she’d practically flown downstairs, to make a stop of a personal nature, before seeking his specified rendezvous.
Blakely found her wandering around upstairs, silently opening every door on the landing. He made his presence known by coming up directly behind her and pulling her to him. She barely muffled her squeak of surprise. “My lord! I did not hear you.”
“Where have you been?” he snarled in a throaty whisper, his lips hovering near the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
“I—” Shivers fluttered downward and attacked her stomach. Not wanting to be caught so flagrantly flouting convention, she slipped from his grasp and spun to face him. She couldn’t very well confess she was horridly lost, could she?
“I stopped off at the ladies’ retiring room,” she told him, which was the truth. And which also brought an entirely new, slightly disconcerting, topic to mind. “Two women were discussing how you would not remain satisfied for long with your new bride and would return to prowling—or did they say plowing?—before summer’s end.” Oh, why had she brought this up? She sounded the jealous fishwife. “Likely long before. Either way, I should not think it matters, since ours is not a real betrothal.”
And why did that knowledge discomfit instead of comfort?
The candle in the nearest wall sconce flickered and then went out, leaving his face in shadow. “My dear, I am truly disappointed.” He reached forward and adjusted the lace edging the neckline of her gown. “You did not strike me as one who listened to idle gossip.”
“Strictly speaking, I don’t, not usually, but…” His long finger worked its way beneath the lace shielding the upper swells of her breasts…wiggled inside the tighter fit of her stays… Her breath caught, just as he grazed the point of one nipple. “But I—I heard them speaking of your cubs.”
“Oh? Merely speculating, I have no doubt…” He sounded quite bored. “Of things they know nothing about.” With his other hand, he pulled the neckline of her gown and shift down, completely exposing the top of one breast.
Below stairs, the quality of the music changed, becoming more intense as though the beautiful sounds sought to express every nuance of feeling his attentions wrought.
Her body swayed toward his. “Tales of orgies and…things,” she confessed in an airy voice. One she tried to firm before finishing, “How could I not listen, I ask you?”
“Orgies? You would have me tell you more of that? I think not. Contrary to what gossip would have you believe, I do have some scruples.”
As though to contradict that claim, his scrupulous finger circled her flesh.
“Not… That.” Well, not particularly that, but she was curious. And embarrassingly breathless.
What happened to decorum?
Decorum could hang—when his touch made her tremble so. Made her ache as though naught else mattered—save his next touch.
“So, you want to know all about Blakely’s Cubs, do you?”
All she really wanted to know was his mouth upon her breast, but as experiencing that singular blessing was completely out of the realm of possibility, considering they were still standing in the hallway, she bit back a moan when his thumb twirled around her areola and somehow managed, “If you are willing to—ah—share that with me.” He plucked her nipple between thumb and finger now, eliciting a moan. One she attempted to muffle. “I would, of course, see it—mmm—as a confidence and treat it as such.”
“Very well. When you inquire so sweetly… Ah, but you are not trying to, say, distract me from doing this?” The plucking motion changed to a full-out palm caressing the mound of one breast. “When I want nothing more than to lick your nipples? Suck them into my mouth this very second and drown in your unique flavor?”
“Distractions, indeed,” she practically panted.
Then, deciding ’twas only fair she gave him the same, she quickly tugged the glove off one restless hand and twined her fingers up the back of his neck and into his thick hair. Grabbing hold and tugging, tugging harder, the more his palm and fingers explored.
He gave a soft grunt, then eased the taunting, retrieved his hand from within her bodice and anchored it behind her back. “In actuality, I have made it a practice to take certain wayward males of the ton und
er my wing. You may consider it my noble attempt to keep them out of trouble. ’Tis all.” As though to divert her from any further questioning, he slid his other hand round her back as well, lowered both along the fabric of her gown until he spread them over the halves of her bottom to cup her fully. Firmly.
“Mmm.” Her back arched, pressing her flesh into his palms.
Are you a strumpet in truth, now? Anyone could happen by!
He’d hear them, I’ve no doubt.
Oh. Right you are. Carry on, then…
“So, umm…” She couldn’t quite stop her hips from squirming closer to his groin. Or was that his hold—tugging her forward? “You are not fostering these young men to satisfy your urges for some tenebrous and drunken debauchery? Even more wicked than what you have already shown me?”
* * *
“Hardly,” Blakely confessed, wondering how their conversation had taken such a turn. “Though I cannot deny participating in such a time or two.” Or wanting to share with you so much more.
“What exactly precipitates your association with these men? If they are not particular friends? And have proven prone to ‘wayward’ tendencies?”
How could she ask such a question, with his hands intimately molding the supple halves of her arse? With how she pressed against him with such abandon he could still recall the precise way her beaded nipple had forged its imprint into his skin? “My intent to keep those so-called cubs safe.”
“From what?”
Her fingers grazing his scalp, pulling his hair robbed him of caution.
“Themselves. Their own baser natures, if you will. Young men, when left to their own devices without guidance or wisdom from their elders, often prove dangerous.” Dangerous? Had he ever been in more danger than he was right now? “At least that has been the case in my experience.”
Get a grip on yourself, man! Frighten her off. Before you do something she’ll not live to regret.
Aye, he should. Before too much time passed, rendering him a full savage and it too late to show her any tenderness at all.
He already knew sex tamed the urges. Sex.
But rough, fast sex. Hard sex. Not the type of loving a lady such as her should ever be forced to endure.
What about lovemaking? Would that help at all when the time came?
Dare he chance it?
“Am I nothing but a charitable endeavor, then, much like your cubs?”
Leave it to Francine to cut straight through the flesh and bone and get to the heart of the matter. “You are the most vexing female I have ever had the fortune to meet.” His staff thrust against his breeches so fiercely he almost didn’t care whether someone chanced upon them. Then she’d have to marry him in truth—and if that wasn’t the most asinine notion he’d had, he didn’t know what was. “If you did start out as a ‘charitable endeavor’, you have quickly turned into something else entirely.”
Blast! This is what he had to guard against. He couldn’t develop bloody tender feelings for the chit. He damn well knew better.
“Your eyes are glowing again,” she commented, staring at him with a rapt expression. “Like sunset upon the ocean. It is as if they change color when—”
“I am sure you are quite mistaken.” S-E-X. It’s about sex, he reminded himself, massaging the flesh of her arse so firmly she groaned. Sex.
Getting sex whenever he wanted it, certainly when he needed it, to enable him to fight off the feral urges that would soon be rising to the fore. If they weren’t already. At that very moment, his blood sizzled, heating his veins and increasing the latent power that always hovered beneath the surface. Whether the cause was irritation with himself or desire for her—or the need to purge tonight’s atrocious knowledge from his mind if only for a brief while—he wasn’t sure and chose not to contemplate further.
He ran his tongue along the bottom edge of his teeth. Smooth. It wasn’t Felis leo burning in him. It was him burning for her. Blast her not-so-innocent charms.
“Come.” He jerked his head from her hold, released her from his, set her gown to rights and caught her ungloved hand. “I am taking you now.”
“Where?”
“The first private place I can locate.”
Which happened to be a secluded alcove, hidden from view by nothing more than a long velvet drape. The olive curtain was the only thing that separated them from the mass downstairs listening to the professional musicians. Erasmus led her behind the drape and secured it, giving them a measure of privacy, however precarious.
In the instant before they were enshrouded in darkness, Francine glimpsed a ceiling-high window centered in the alcove; it, too, was draped. So no light from that quarter. Standing just inside the curtain, she huddled, waiting. Needing.
Pushing back anxiety that rose like a spectre, ready to snaffle her wits, send her huddling. Oh, not because of what she suspected they were about to do but because it was as black as pitch.
She hated total darkness. So very absolute when one was indoors and not outside among nature’s nurturing presence… Where the sounds of birds, bugs and breezes kept one company.
Listen. You’re not remotely alone.
The soothing sounds from the quartet vied with the choppy cadence of her overly loud breathing as sexual awareness competed with inane fear.
Clothing rustled. Fabric whispered against skin. Something dropped. His cravat? Maybe his tailcoat? What was he removing?
So much easier to concentrate on that, on him, than the idea of being alone. In the dark.
“Francine.” His low, soothing murmur threatened to quiet the fretful apprehension that endangered her peace when darkness hovered and obscurity loomed.
Again, he rasped her name, his warm hand cupping one side of her face, stilling the silly terrors further.
“You really cannot see in the dark at all, can you?” he asked in a low voice.
“Nay, I cannot,” she whispered back. “Why?”
“Because I am standing in front of you, stripped nude. And you have not flinched.”
“Noooo. Really?” Shock, dismay, the sharp bite of excitement, all rivaled for superiority. Excitement won heartily and she took a small step forward. “Naked— Completely? Here?”
“You look dumbfounded, my little dumbwaiter,” he laughed softly. “And nay, not here. Not completely. I am not that far gone, not yet, however much I might wish it were so. But my waistcoat is undone, my breeches unfastened and yet you do not seem inclined to join me.”
“One moment.” No other prompting needed, she turned toward the remembered wall, carefully pulled the strings of her reticule off her arm, bent at the knees and flailed with her outstretched hand until she found the solid surface, placing her small bag upon the floor, along with the glove he’d stripped off.
Standing, she angled back toward his heat and lifted her still-gloved hand, encountering his hard chest, covered in nothing more than his thin shirt. “I am inclined. Very much so.”
As though her touch lit the flame, embers in his unique eyes flared to life, set them afire. She imagined the radiance from his glowing eyes enabled her to see, him at least—if not their surroundings.
Which was patently ridiculous! Or was it?
Because as Erasmus began peeling the glove down her arm, it was as though she watched him watching her… She most assuredly felt her heart turn over in her chest at the sensual journey he made of removing a simple evening glove, journeying the fine linen from her elbow to her fingertips with exquisite attention to detail, allowing his touch to linger over every portion of skin he exposed. How was it his touch upon her mere arm caused the moisture in her mouth to evaporate? And to accumulate lower, directly between her thighs?
She licked lips gone dry and forced herself to remain still, no matter how part of her wanted to rip the curtain from its moorings and flood light into their tiny alcove so she could see every bit of this encounter, not just the fanciful visions she no doubt embellished in her mind.
“What abou
t your spectacles?” he asked in a hushed tone, stripping the glove off completely. “You’re wearing them now. Do they not aid your vision?”
The tingle that had begun in her fingertips made its way down to her toes, which curled in her slippers. Had he said something? All she could think about was the nearness of his chest. The heat now assaulting her fingers. “Hmmm?”
“Your spectacles,” he reminded with a light laugh, bending to kiss the newly exposed crease of her elbow.
Her entire arm caught fire. “They do not prove sufficiently helpful, not in dim light.”
He lifted his shirt and placed both of her bare palms against the muscles cording his stomach. They twitched under her touch. Hard as iron, warm as a forge. Her fingers flexed, tracing the delineations.
“Touching is better than seeing,” she whispered, closing her eyes to better envisage every heated second. The music and mood created by the beautiful strings wafted up and around them, creating a bewitching space. A place transported far away from the small nook in a large London home and into an enthralling escape, one inhabited by no one save the two of them.
Erasmus shifted, grasping her wrists. “A padded bench is two steps to your right.”
He led her to it and sat down. When she moved to do the same, he stopped her with a gentle touch to her waist. “Not yet. Remove your gown.”
She stood transfixed, unable to move, anticipation, longing—a level of boldness she’d never known—surging through her at his nearness, at the certainty of what they were about to do. Knowing their proximity to the other guests, how very forbidden their actions, only heightened her desire.
“Francine?” His voice firmed. “Your gown. I want it off tonight.”
“You cannot expect me to do that here!” Though a wicked part of her wanted desperately to comply…
His hand settled heavily upon her hip. “You promised to obey me. In all things—”
Ensnared by Innocence: Steamy Regency Shapeshifter Page 12