Mischief

by Laura Parker

  Yet he could not turn away now from the woman whose presence tormented and teased and touched him in every hour since she had come into his life. So then, maybe she would stop him, stop them, from making a terrible mistake.

  He reached out and slid his right arm around her waist, drawing her back against his chest. She trembled but did not resist. “Lady, I am all but mute before your courage. But, think what you do. It is not too late.”

  “I did not beg you follow,” she said in a voice so soft a whisper would have seemed a shout.

  “Did you not?” He smiled in the dark as he placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Did you not without a glance dare me? Did you not without a gesture offer a way?”

  She turned her head to press her cheek against the back of his hand. “Perhaps.”

  “Fearlessness is not the same as bravery. The brave soul knows the dangers and still feels compelled to act. Have you counted the danger?” Why, he wondered, was he arguing against his own desire?

  Japonica turned in his arms, glad for the darkness that did not allow her to be daunted by his gaze. “May a woman not be as brave as a man?”

  “Lady!” That breathless sound spoken in his deepest voice took away from the word the distinction of class and left only the delight of a man who stands before the woman he desires. “I would help you be even braver, if you would allow it.”

  A sweet sadness welled up in Japonica, the piquancy of his pledge bringing tears to her eyes. Because of him she had already done things that had forever changed her life. But he did not know that.

  No! She brushed the thoughts from her mind with a slow shake of her head. Tonight, this night was for her alone. All she wanted was to be brave enough to be with him. “What would you have me do?”

  Devlyn did not know her thoughts but he could guess the source of the struggle taking place within her. She was trembling now, little uncontrollable shivers beneath his touch. His aunt thought her untried. Her spirit in the face of that possibility drew from him a tenderness of which he had not known he was capable.

  He pulled her closer until her cheek was against his chest and their bodies met from shoulder to hip. He reached up and slid off her net cap. He felt her hair fall free down her back. As her curls tumbled and bounced, they released the fragrance of a Persian garden.

  He bent to her, bringing his lips to touch the shell of her ear as he whispered, “Do not be afraid, bahia. I will do nothing you deny me.”

  He brushed his lips across her cheek until they briefly touched hers in the gentlest of kisses. The meeting of lips sent a shiver through her that was answered as a quiver in his lower belly. His mouth opened on hers and the urgency he sought to hold in check slipped a bit. Sweet! Her mouth was warm and tasted of the honeyed dates they had eaten for dessert. It was enough to tip his teetering emotions sharply toward passion.

  Sensations of longing quaked along her nerve endings as his open mouth slanted over hers and then she felt him trace the contours of her lips with the tip of his tongue. Fear, anger, despair, and desire melded together under the heated persuasion of his kiss into a moment of longing so strong she did not want him to snatch that pleasure away.

  She raised her arms, threading them between his to reach around and grip his back. His was strong and solid beneath the fingers she splayed across his shoulders, a secure place upon which to rest her troubled world.

  She heard him expel a soft sound of satisfaction but it was quickly smothered as their mouths blended in kiss after long searing kiss.

  Feelings rammed the barrier she had spent a year building against her own sense of self-mistrust and shame and betrayal. The Hind Div had come back to life, whether to save or damn her she did not know. And in this moment she did not care. She longed only to learn if the feeling, born of shame and on a night when she had no say in the matter, could be matched when it was her will and her desire and her need driving passion’s onslaught.

  Oh, but if she were wrong!

  The door of conscience would not stay shut on her doubts. It flew open, forced by a gale of turmoil and second thoughts. What if in a few heartbeats he would have her skirts about her waist and she would discover that her passion too was a counterfeit? What if in an hour she knew she was, again, his fool?

  With a cry very much like a wail, she tore her mouth from his and tried to break free. He let her go without a moment’s hesitation.

  She took several steps from him, breathing hard as though she had run a long way with the devil at her back. He said nothing for a moment and she was too daunted by her actions to think of anything.

  “So then, you are afraid.”

  “Yes!” It was a quick desperate whisper.

  “It is a lady’s right to change her mind.”

  He sounded resigned, when she felt stretched across an abyss that would not allow her to move forward or back but might surely tear her apart if she did not choose. “Is it so easy for you?”

  “Easy?” The word was spoken low but with such fervor that she did not doubt the sincerity of his passion. “Would you have it be easy?”

  Japonica shook her head though she knew she must be nothing more than a dark silhouette in a room where the fire had died to embers. “I do not understand myself.”

  “Nor I.” He sounded as bewildered as she did.

  She knew she was not thinking clearly and that she needed to. But he had come up to her again, his arms slipping about her waist and that touch made her blurt out what she had not meant to say. “There was a man, someone once—before.”

  Devlyn’s whole body came alert with her confession. “Yes?”

  “He was quite dazzling.” He heard in her voice the quiver of shame. “I should not have been alone with him. I should have been more wary …”

  “He took advantage of you?”

  “Oh yes.” She sounded as if she was smiling but he knew that could not be. She angled a shoulder away from him and he released her regretfully but he could not hold her against her will. When she had moved a few chaste feet away she spoke again. “It was no brutal encounter but it was against my will. That will had been subdued by drugged wine.”

  The hair lifted on Devlyn’s nape. Something familiar in this story. Something … if only … “You were drugged and raped.”

  He saw her silhouette start “Rape is such a harsh word.”

  “Rape is a harsh deed,” he answered.

  She put a hand to her cheek. “I wish it were that simple. I wish I could know. I don’t think I resisted him. I was curious, you see … curious.” The word trailed out on a sigh of regret.

  “But your will was tampered with.” His said it flatly without the balm of pity.

  “Yes.” For the first time she looked back at him. “It was not my choice.”

  “A woman should always have a choice.”

  She stared at his silhouette, wondering if he meant what he voiced so readily. He had used the word woman, not lady. She had not been what society would call a lady until her marriage. Did he understand how much the distinction meant to her? Or was it only that he spoke without the knowledge of the blotted-out memory that would cast him as her defiler? “Why would a man treat a woman so?”

  “Perhaps he feared her. Or sought to punish her. Or thought she was someone other than she was.” He shrugged. “I do not defend him. I do not know him.”

  “Perhaps not,” she said more slowly this time. But it was time for her to be certain.

  She came toward him, her gaze searching the umbra for a glimpse of his expression. When she stood an arm’s length away she could see his eyes shining like flames in his shadowed face. It was a moment of truth she thought she would have to wait until Judgement Day to confront “He lived in Baghdad. His name was the Hind Div.”

  “The name is known to me.”

  “Is it?” She felt as if lightning were about to strike her, so strongly did she tingle all over.

  “The n
ame comes to me sometimes in dreams.” How distant he sounded when in fact he stood right in front of her. “A disembodied creature with the face of a cheetah. I thought it must be a nightmare of my battered mind’s contriving.” There was a bleak expression on his face, a deep sense of the doubt of his mind’s workings. “I did not know there was such a man.”

  “Some would not credit him as wholly human,” she answered. “They say he was a wizard. Some believed that he was a spirit, others the devil they called him.”

  “How did you come to know him?”

  “I was sent to persuade him to help Lord Abbott escape from Baghdad after the French arrived. I offered him money. He required another sort of reward.”

  “Your virginity for your life.”

  Her virginity for three lives! She had not thought of it in quite that manner. “That was not the bargain we struck until … afterward.”

  Devlyn took a step toward her, half-closing the distance. “No wonder you trust no man. Little wonder you do not trust your own allure. It betrayed you once to great cost.”

  “My allure?” She had feared she might weep in front of him. Instead, laughter burst from her. “Do not toy with me. I am plain. Ordinary as crockery. I do not attract admiration. I do not…”

  “Know your own value.” He reached out and ran a finger down her cheek. “Light a candle, lady.”

  She did as he asked, putting to light the candlestick that stood on the chimneypiece. The sudden brilliance made her blink but the room was large and the taper did not destroy the intimacy of shadowed corners.

  Yet when she looked back, the man before her seemed changed utterly. Flickering flame exaggerated the contours of his face. Shadows etched deeper the twin smile lines that bracketed his mouth like the trace of a beard. They filled in the deep sockets of his eyes with smudges like kohl. For an instant she saw not Lord Sinclair but the fanciful facade of the Hind Div before her.

  “Please,” she whispered in choked anguish, and turned away.

  “What is it?” she heard Lord Sinclair say, his deep voice echoing as a disembodied sound in the room.

  Irrational tears pushed behind her eyes where moments before laughter had provoked her. Yet neither emotion seemed connected directly to her. They crowded in on her from another source. The warm firm pressure of his hand settling on her arm was the only real thing in the world she could believe in.

  “Japonica?”

  She looked up to reassure him that she was fine, but the words slipped right out of her mind as she met his gaze. The face of Lord Sinclair was again very real, with all its very human contours and shadings. Quite suddenly she was ashamed of herself, of what she had been thinking about, of what she had been willing to do with a man any sensible person would call her enemy.

  Devlyn saw the beginnings of doubt gathering like sneak thieves in her gaze but he was not about to put off his original purpose. “Come, lady.”

  He took her hand and moved to stand before the pier glass in the corner, holding the candelabra so that its light fell on her face.

  “Look there and tell me you see no charm of feature and deny the blush in your cheek, the brilliance of your eyes.”

  Japonica cast her gaze down. The power she had felt upon first viewing herself in full regalia had deserted her. Like the brilliance of her gown, dulled by the meager light, her confidence had deserted her. “I do not see it.”

  His hand came up and cupped her chin lightly. This time he addressed her in Persian. “The clever merchant displays his gaudiest wares to catch the crowd’s taste for flash. The rare treasure, he keeps hidden from the eyes of careless passersby who would not value what they would buy. For the true connoisseur alone will he unwrap his rarest prize.”

  As he spoke he turned her face slowly back and forth, tilting it at different angles so that the light played along the curves of her cheeks, the glistening surface of her ripe mouth, and shone in her eyes.

  “Look again, bahia, and see the truth. Only you have the power to bring forth the rarest treasure of yourself. I saw a glimpse of it tonight, as did every man present.” His hand moved to her shoulder to turn her to face him. Distrust still shaded her expression but he saw something else, the beginning, perhaps, of hope. “Do you doubt what you saw in the eyes of the Mirza? Do you doubt what you see in my gaze?”

  Yes!” she whispered raggedly because she feared to believe it.

  But he only smiled at her and said, “Liar!”

  Devlyn saw his reply made her blush. When she closed her eyes against his challenge, the curl of copper lashes against her soft cheeks distracted him. In the candle glow her hair had become flame, forming angel hair waves that billowed about her shoulders. How could she think herself plain when she looked as she did at this moment?

  He smiled, supposing he was as captivated as any man had ever been in the presence of a woman he desired. “You have always known the truth I speak and resented the noisy crowds who seek the easy prize and would not stop long enough to notice something more precious.”

  “Yes,” she breathed. But she could not look at him.

  He bent and kissed the edge of first one and the other set of her eyelashes. “I have stopped. I seek you out. I have come to learn the value that is you.”

  She opened her eyes and he saw in them a question. He did not know how to answer it, only pose another of his own. He touched a finger to her lower lip and rubbed gently there. “What is it you seek, bahia?”

  Japonica saw desire in his face and no longer doubted its sincerity. But that did not allay her fears. He might so easily destroy her and all that she held dear, including this moment.

  She looked away, wanting to escape the forbidden truth in his eyes. “This is foolish, my lord. We should not be here together like this.”

  “No. We should not.” His finger left her lip and trailed over the smooth curve of her chin. It sailed light as a feather down the slim column of her throat and paused at the indentation at its base. “But we were not speaking of shoulds and propriety. There is only you and I. And no one to deny us.”

  “The world ….”

  His finger rose to her lips to stop her speech. When she glanced up in affront, he smiled. “The world is not with us. There is only you.” He lifted his finger from her mouth. “And I. For you I will be any and all you ask of me.”

  Japonica could not stop her smile. “I thought I was the rare and precious prize and you the customer. Should I not seek to be all you seek?”

  He smiled back, the mocking smile of the Hind Div. “You already are.”

  His hand settled lightly over the fullness above her low-cut bodice. “I would have you. What would you have?”

  Japonica found she could not answer honestly. She pushed away his hand, the first act in turning away from him, but somehow she was turning to him instead, and he was reaching for her. She pressed her head to his chest and heard the pounding of his heart like surf on a stormy night The brazen woman who had invited him to her room had vanished. If she let him see the feelings that hovered at the edge of every encounter with him, she would be lost. She could not want what her heart whispered above the beat of his. She wanted more than his body. She wanted his love. And that of course, was absurd.

  She should send him away, order him out of her room and her life. Instead, she held tighter to him and hoped he would not leave. Madness, surely. Somehow she must find a way to hold something of herself back or she would be lost.

  Devlyn felt her clutching him, clinging like a child afraid of the dark. But he did not want her to yield to him out of fear or resignation. One man had taken from her what was her right to give. He must be certain that this time it was what she wanted and only what she wanted.

  He pushed her gently away and she looked up questioningly at him. “I am a man missing his past, his hand, and his illusions about life. I can offer you only this night in this place, as you would have it.”

  It took a great dea
l of courage to meet his gaze, and when she did, her voice quavered. “You ask what I want?” He nodded, no longer smiling. “Then it is simply this, my lord. I—I want to know what it is like to be with a man when it is by my choice.”

  The declaration set off fireworks in Devlyn’s middle. “You wish me to make love to you?”

  “Not love!” she said almost desperately. Why did he have to use that word? “I desire you.” She tried to look past him, to remove if only a fraction of herself from the moment that had become too much. “All that you have said and done has led me to believe that you desire me.”

  Devlyn permitted himself a small smile. “Lady, you are too modest in your description. I very badly want to take you in my arms and kiss you until you can think of nothing and no one but me. And then I would help you to pleasure and help myself to you.”

  Japonica jerked in surprise that he spoke to her in Persian. It struck her that they had both been doing so for some time. So then it was like a dream, this moment, delivered in the poetic language as artificial as it was lovely.

  She turned a little away from him. “You would pleasure me, burra sahib?”

  “I would, Uzza. As if it would be my last deed on earth.”

  A renewed surge of daring curled through her. How easy to pretend that their actions could be as artificial and lovely as the language in which they couched their desire. In fantasy, any and everything was possible.

  She looked back at him. “Where do we begin?”

  It took Devlyn two heartbeats to recognize the subtle change. Not so much as a blink had altered her expression yet he felt it all the same. She had erected a shield. She might come to him but she would not yield all. He understood the source of her fear but knew, too, that it would be impossible for her to find complete pleasure if she held apart from him. If she would lie with him she must do so freely.

  He put his arms around her, smoothing a hand down her back to bring her fully against him. “Do you hear my heart, bahia? It beats for you. You can alter its pattern by the slightest act. If you were to kiss me you would feel it quicken and know it responds at your request. Will you not try the simple exercise?”