Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners 2)

by Carole Mortimer

  She had become very fond of her stepgrandfather, David St. Just, the previous Duke of Huntley. Agatha St. Just was a different matter entirely. The duchess had never forgiven Antonia Clairmont for marrying her son, and that disapproval had extended to Antonia’s young daughter, Isabella. Indeed, the duchess’s continued disapproval of Bella, once she became ward to the duke and duchess, had been part of the reason Bella had been only too happy to elope when Lord Jeremy Aston had asked her to marry him all those years ago.

  The other reason was now standing in Bella’s drawing room, once again looking down his aristocratic nose at her.

  She straightened to her full height of an inch or two over five feet. “I am sorry the dowager is unwell and likely to die. But as I have already stated, we have never liked each other. I have also been unwell myself, and do not feel up to traveling into Huntingdonshire or anywhere else.”

  Huntley’s brows rose. “You are refusing my aunt’s dying request?”

  Bella gave a dismissive snort. “Do not attempt to make me feel guilty when I know for a fact you are no fonder of the dowager than I am.”

  No, Dante could not say that he was. He had been orphaned at the age of seven when his parents were killed in a house fire from which Dante had been rescued and they had not. His father was the younger brother of the Duke of Huntley, and his mother the younger sister of the duchess, making them the obvious guardians for the young boy.

  Much as Dante had tried after he was taken into his aunt and uncle’s home, he had never been able to ascertain the slightest similarity between the two sisters. His mother had been all that was laughter and light; the duchess was a sour-faced woman who rarely smiled.

  Nor had the duchess ever allowed Dante to forget he was in her home under sufferance. An act of charity on her part, out of respect for her sister and brother-in-law. Dante had always suspected that it was less a matter of respect for his parents and more a concern of what Society would think and say of Agatha St. Just if she did not take her nephew into her household. Certainly she had never shown the least affection for him.

  Dante had been sent away to boarding school at the age of eight, whereas his cousin Hal had not been sent away to continue his education until he was twelve. Nor had they been sent to the same school, one going to Harrow and the other to Eton. Dante and his cousin, Hal, had also attended different universities when the time came, one going to Oxford, the other to Cambridge.

  It was while at school, however, that Dante had met the other seven Sinners, all also orphans for one reason or another. The eight of them had forged a bond, become their own family, and they remained firm friends to this day.

  The irony of it was he and Hal had become close friends in spite of his aunt’s machinations. They were both only children, and this separation through term time meant he and Hal had appreciated each other’s company all the more when they were both at home at Huntley Park for the holidays.

  Dante shrugged. “My aunt has not made a request for my own forgiveness.”

  “And she shall not receive mine,” Bella stated firmly.

  “What did she do to you to arouse such animosity?”

  Dark eyes flashed. “Is it not enough that she treated my mother abysmally?”

  “Perhaps,” Dante allowed, knowing just how vicious his aunt’s tongue could be. “Then what of me, Bella?” he prompted quietly, once again stepping forward so that he stood but inches away from her. “Have you forgiven me?”

  Those two bright spots of color reappeared in Bella’s cheeks, eyes glittering as she tilted her head back to glare at him. “I do not recall you having ever asked for my forgiveness.”

  “Then I shall ask for it now.”

  Again, Bella found the duke’s close proximity far too…too intrusive for comfort. Besides, she had long ago dismissed her girlish infatuation for this man. Indeed, he had killed it dead with the cutting cruelty of his words.

  She continued to meet his gaze. “I did not deserve to be spoken to in the way you spoke to me that day.”

  His brows lowered. “I did what I thought was for the best.”

  “I was seventeen years old!”

  His jaw tightened. “Exactly.”

  Bella blinked. “Exactly what…?”

  “You were seventeen to my eight and twenty. Moreover, you had been the stepdaughter of my cousin, and were now the ward of my aunt and uncle.”

  “I fail to see why that should have allowed you to ridicule my feelings for you.”

  He sighed deeply. “Possibly because they were not real but the immature emotions of an infatuated young girl who had her whole future ahead of her.”

  Her mouth twisted. “And no doubt you preferred women who matched or exceeded your own reputation for sexual licentiousness?”

  His nostrils flared angrily. “Do not presume to know what my emotions were then or now, Bella,” he growled.

  She eyed him scornfully. “I was not aware you possessed any emotions.”

  “More than you could ever know,” he assured her harshly.

  “More than I wish to know,” she assured him.

  “Besides which,” Dante continued, “you could not have been so much in love with me when you eloped with Aston only weeks later.”

  “I believe I might have eloped with the devil himself if it meant I could escape the guardianship of Agatha St. Just. Instead of which,” she said warmly, “I was fortunate enough to marry the sweetest, most considerate husband in the world.”

  “You were in love with your husband?”

  Perhaps not at first, but certainly later. “I was.” She nodded.

  Huntley reached out to grasp the tops of her arms. “How fickle the female heart is, to be sure.”

  It was both pain and pleasure to have Dante’s hands upon her for the first time.

  Pain, because his fingers were holding her so tightly they would, in all probability, leave bruises.

  Pleasure, because the mere touch of his hands was enough to send quivers of awareness down the length of her spine before centering at her core.

  Bella had been a virgin on her wedding night, which she and Jeremy had spent at an inn in Scotland following the wedding, the two of them having eloped to Gretna Green. Thankfully, her mother had advised her the previous year as to what would be required of Bella in the marriage bed. She had also explained that if Bella was lucky in her choice of husband, she might also know pleasure in his touch.

  Bella’s new husband was only two years her senior, and although not quite as inexperienced as she, Jeremy had not had many sexual encounters either. It had been a question of the two of them learning together.

  They had done so tolerably well. Sexual relations with Jeremy had been pleasant, if not wildly exciting. Then Jeremy, following the path of several of his friends, had decided to go off and fight in Wellington’s army against the Corsican usurper. After that, his visits to England, and their marriage bed, had necessarily been infrequent. Jeremy had been killed the previous year at the Battle of Toulouse, one of the last battles to be fought before Napoleon surrendered and was sent into exile on the island of Elba.

  It felt somehow disloyal to now acknowledge she was experiencing pleasure merely from having the touch of Dante’s hands upon her. Not just pleasure, but a sizzle of excitement she had never experienced in her deepest intimacy with Jeremy.

  A realization that instantly caused her to pull away from that disturbing touch, no doubt adding to the possibility of leaving those bruises on her skin. “Please go,” she instructed coldly.

  “Bella—”

  “Dante,” she came back challengingly.

  Instead of the familiarity annoying him as she had intended, those sculpted lips curved into a slow, sensual smile. “I believe I enjoy hearing my name on your lips.”

  “I believe I have heard quite enough from you for one day.”

  The smile remained. “I am leaving for Huntingdonshire at ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “I wish you
a safe journey.”

  “Then wish one for yourself too, because you are coming with me.”

  Her gasp was one of outrage at his arrogance. “I most certainly am not.”

  “Oh yes, you most certainly are,” he assured her pleasantly.

  “You cannot make me go with you.”

  “No?”

  “Absolutely not.” She gave a firm shake of her head. “I was a married lady and now I am a widow, and I now make my own choices and decisions as to where I shall or shall not go. I have no wish to leave London at this time.”

  “Is that because you do not want to be parted from your current lover? Or is there some other reason you need to remain in town?” He studied her through those slitted lids.

  “I do not have a current lover!”

  “Then perhaps it is time you did.”

  Her eyes widened at the husky tone of Dante’s voice. “You?”

  “Why not?”

  Bella could not have been more shocked if Dante had sprouted two heads and both of them began to recite the Lord’s Prayer, in Latin.

  His arms encircled her waist as he pulled her in close against the unrelenting hardness of his body. “I might have turned down the generous offer of your body seven years ago, Bella, but I would not do so again now,” he said gruffly. “Perhaps we should both look upon this trip into Huntingdonshire as an opportunity to…explore those emotions, you seem so certain I do not possess.”

  She pushed her hands half-heartedly against the hard wall of his muscular chest. “I have no wish to explore anything with you.” She glared her frustration at being unable to free herself.

  “The yielding of your body says otherwise,” he murmured confidently.

  Impossible to deny it when the heat in Bella’s core had now spread to every part of her, creating a tingling sensation in her breasts and causing her nipples to engorge and ache. The heat between her thighs had caused her nether lips to feel swollen and damp.

  The fact that the evidence of Dante’s arousal was pressed against the softness of her abdomen was not helping her predicament. “Take your hands off me before I am forced to scream.”

  He bared his teeth in a smile. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”

  It was truly frustrating to know she could not carry out her threat, not when she would be the one to suffer for it if she did. Gentleman of the ton seemed to be allowed to behave exactly as they pleased, but the ladies were not allowed that same freedom. And a reputation, once lost in Society, was not easily recovered. With no family of her own to speak of—Bella certainly did not count the St. Justs as family—her friends in Society were all she had left. She certainly did not want to risk tarnishing her reputation for this gentleman.

  The duke raised dark brows. “Agree to come to Huntingdonshire with me tomorrow, and I will release you now.”

  Bella’s heart was beating rapidly and loud enough to be heard, and she would be lying to herself if she tried to claim it was for any other reason than Dante’s close proximity. The warm vitality of his chest beneath her hands. The hard throb of his arousal pressing against her.

  If she had understood him correctly, and she believed she had, Dante St. Just was using the lure of the two of them embarking upon an affair as an added incentive to accompany him to Huntingdonshire.

  Considering Bella’s physical reaction to him, she could not claim her body, at least, to be averse to the idea.

  Thankfully, she felt otherwise. She did not care for the way in which Huntley had intruded upon the privacy of her home and was now attempting to emotionally blackmail her with a double-edged sword. On the one side lay her dying stepgrandmother; on the other, the lure of an affair with him.

  Bella owed the dowager duchess nothing but the same contempt she had received from the older woman. A contempt which had deepened after the death of Bella’s mother and stepfather. Admittedly, the duchess had also been suffering from the loss of her only son, but that was no excuse for the older woman’s complete lack of empathy or sympathy for Bella’s own loss. Or the duchess’s deliberate cruelty toward her in the weeks that followed. Admittedly, not the same humiliating cruelty as Dante had inflicted by his rejection of her declaration of love for him, but enough that Bella had known she could not remain under the duchess’s roof a day longer.

  She would not go to Huntingdonshire, no matter what the duchess’s state of health. And most certainly not in the company of Dante St. Just. As he, it seemed, would not leave her home until he had elicited her agreement to accompany him.

  Or, at least, the illusion of her agreement.

  The St. Just family, what was left of it, had virtually disowned her after her elopement with Jeremy. Including the man now refusing to release her until she acquiesced to his demand to go with him to Huntingdonshire tomorrow.

  “Very well.” Bella gave an abrupt inclination of her head. “You may release me now as you said you would,” she instructed coolly.

  He considered her through slitted lids. “You might be agreeing merely to humor me in order to achieve your freedom.”

  Obviously, he had not realized it, but Bella had not agreed to anything, whether it gave her freedom or otherwise. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do not feel any need to humor or reward you for your arrogance,” she derided.

  Dante continued to eye her suspiciously. “You can be ready to leave with me at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”

  “I can.” But she had no intention of doing so.

  “Very well.” His arms dropped back to his sides, but he did not step away. “I am very much looking forward to getting to know you again, Bella.”

  She gave a snort. “Considering you did not know me in the first place, that might prove difficult.”

  “I knew you,” he assured her softly. “Well enough to know your desire for me was real, at least.”

  “As you said, a girlish infatuation,” she dismissed.

  “And now you are a woman. A very beautiful and very desirable woman.”

  “I am a widow,” she reminded him.

  “Your year of mourning is over.”

  “My mourning for my dear husband will never be over.”

  Dante’s mouth thinned. “A dead husband cannot keep you warm in bed at night.”

  “An unrepentant rake could never give me the warmth or fidelity my husband did,” she came back waspishly.

  He frowned darkly. “I will make you a promise, Bella. For the duration of our time in Huntingdonshire, I will neither see nor acknowledge any other woman but you.”

  Her brows rose mockingly. “Can a Sinner make such a promise with any degree of truthfulness?”

  Dante drew back at this verbal reminder of exactly what he was doing here. Something he had almost forgotten during the course of this conversation with Bella.

  Nor was she correct in her assumption that Dante and his circle of close friends had earned the name The Sinners because of a life of debauchery. The eight of them had chosen that collective name for themselves, in honor of the one they still considered their leader, Dominik Sinclair, the Duke of Stonewell.

  “I can and do,” Dante informed her coolly.

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Is this not rather a sudden change of heart on your part in regard to myself? After all, you have shown none of this…partiality toward me before now.”

  Dante might not have revealed an interest in Bella, but that did not mean he had not felt it. He had genuinely believed he was acting for the best when he rebuffed her declaration of love seven years ago. Impossible to explain—to admit—to his feeling of shock when he learned of her elopement with Aston only weeks after declaring her love for Dante.

  “You were a married lady,” he stated aloofly.

  “And now I am a widow who has no wish to become a convenient lover for you whilst you are forced to reside in Huntingdonshire with your sick aunt.” She eyed him scornfully.

  Dante gave a snort. “My dear Bella, you are the least convenient woman I h
ave ever met.”

  Her chin rose. “That will not change.”

  “I sincerely hope not,” he drawled.

  “Would you please leave now?” she repeated wearily.

  “Until tomorrow.” Dante might be taking his leave, but he somehow felt no more reassured by Bella’s acquiescence to accompany him to Huntingdonshire than he had by her earlier refusal.

  Chapter 3

  “Going somewhere?”

  Bella turned sharply at the sound of that voice speaking from beyond the lamplight of her stable yard. A voice she recognized only too well. “What are you doing skulking about in the shadows of my stables, Dante?” she challenged.

  He stepped into the lit and cobbled yard at the back of Bella’s London town house. He had a black top hat upon his head and was wearing a dark brown superfine with buff-colored pantaloons above brown-topped Hessians. “You may leave us,” he dismissed her maid and coachman as they stood beside the carriage, ready to depart.

  “You will do no such thing,” Bella counter-ordered.

  “Go.” The coldness of the duke’s tone brooked no argument.

  The two servants cast a look toward an indignant Bella before glancing back at the stony-faced duke. Then both scuttled off without saying a word, the maid back inside the house, the coachman into the stables.

  “How dare you!” Bella demanded furiously.

  “How dare I?” Huntley snapped back. “We had an agreement we would both leave for Huntingdonshire in the morning.”

  “You made that agreement with yourself,” she refuted. “I did not agree to do any such thing.”

  “I am well aware of that, which is why I was skulking about in the shadows in anticipation of your sneaking away into the night.” Dante had realized Bella’s lack of verbal agreement to their earlier arrangement on his carriage ride home as he recalled and examined the whole of their conversation. To say he was now furious at having his suspicion confirmed would seriously understate the matter.

  Did this further confirm the suspicion she was indeed Napoleon’s spy?

  Once he’d realized that at no time had Bella actually said she would accompany him in the morning, he’d been alarmed enough to send one of his footmen to stand watch over the occupant of Aston House. That young man had arrived back at Huntley House shortly after nine o’clock this evening with the news that Lady Aston’s carriage was currently being made ready for a journey.