A woman on horseback was coming up the sweeping staircase. The horse’s hooves made no sound on the thick red carpet and the soft jingle of its harness was the only noise as the whole banqueting hall fell silent. The woman was young and she sat very tall and straight in the saddle, moving gently with the motion of the horse. There was a little smile curving her lips and a wicked spark in her green eyes. Her long titian hair tumbled in glorious array over her shoulders and down to her waist. Her white thighs gripped the horse’s side as she urged it up the staircase.
Nat’s brain refused to accept the evidence of his eyes.
She was stark naked.
Her lissom, pale skin looked like alabaster. One small but perfectly rounded breast peeked from beneath the cascade of her hair, the nipple pink and pouting from the ministrations of the cool night air. The other breast was hidden, but the auburn strands of her hair seemed only to emphasize its tempting curve. Her hands were holding the reins in her lap covering what little was left of her modesty.
Nat heard the men around him draw in their breath sharply as they saw what he saw. And what he saw was his wife, the new Countess of Waterhouse, and she was completely nude, displaying herself in all her wanton beauty in front of the assembled company of the Oyster Club.
Nat’s first response was complete denial. This simply could not be Lizzie. Not even she would do something so outrageous, so scandalous. The room spun about him and he closed his eyes for a moment, but when he opened them and the world steadied, Lizzie was still there and she was still very, very naked in front of forty extremely appreciative gentlemen. She was riding along the corridor now, toward the big balcony windows and there was a very indiscreet rush of men in her wake.
Swift on the heels of Nat’s disbelief came shock, sharp and sickening, and a mixture of fury and mortification. Men were smacking their lips now, eyes bulging from their heads, the coarsest of jests on their lips. Coarse jests about his wife. They were looking on his wife with lust. No doubt they all wanted to ravish her senseless. And Lizzie herself, provocative, triumphant Lizzie, was smiling at them alluringly, enjoying the admiration and the attention.
Nat watched as Lizzie approached the open doors of the balcony window. It was a good twelve-foot drop to the ground and a ripple of apprehension spread about the room as the assembled company took in her intention.
“Thirty guineas says she will make it!” One enterprising gambler declared, slapping his coins down on the table.
“Fifty against!”
The crowd jostled for the best view.
Nat pulled himself together and strode toward his wife. “Elizabeth!”
His voice was perhaps a little less authoritative than he might have desired, whether from anger or shock or a combination of emotions. Whatever the reason, Lizzie ignored him completely and walked the horse up to the edge of the balcony.
There was a moment’s pause and then they jumped, horse and rider united in a most elegant and perfectly executed leap down to the street. Nat—and everyone else—was afforded the most perfect view of Lizzie’s pert, rounded buttocks and the quickest, tantalizing flash of the crease between her thighs. A concerted sigh ran through all the men in the room, and then the place erupted into chaos as they abandoned the landing and ran down the stairs to see if both horse and rider had survived the jump. Nat ran, too, down the staircase and out into the warm, damp night, torn between fear and an anger so intense he had never experienced it before. Men were pushing and shoving to get a view and as Nat ruthlessly cut his way to the front of the crowd he saw Lizzie trotting demurely away down the street. The lamplight gleamed on the pale skin of her bare back and buttocks and on the lovely curves and hollows of her body. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.
“I say! How marvelous!”
“Splendid creature!”
Nat felt the relief rip through him followed swiftly by ungovernable rage. He saw Miles approach him and then his friend put a hand on his arm and started to speak but Nat did not seem able to hear him. He shook Miles off violently and set off down the street in the direction that the horse had gone. He could still hear the sound of hoofbeats echoing through the night air.
She had gone too far this time.
The blood roared in his ears. What had he been thinking to leave Lizzie alone again? How could he have been so foolishly smug and complacent as to think that she might sit quietly waiting for him, when she was no doubt bored and lonely and so like a child throwing a tantrum she had to do something completely outrageous? This was Lizzie Scarlet, the wild, headstrong, wilful miss who was no more likely to change and reform than her gray mare would turn to a roan gelding. Nothing could excuse this behavior—not Lizzie’s grief nor her misery nor her anger. The truth was that she was spoiled to the bone and she was never going to change. She had made him a laughingstock and proved publicly that their marriage was a sham and a debacle.
The anger threatened to devour him whole. How many years had he known Lizzie? How many times had she pulled a trick that was, if not as appalling as this one, then disgraceful and scandalous and undisciplined? When she had been no more than Sir Montague’s naughty little sister it had not mattered. He had laughed, and shaken his head over her wildness whilst thinking privately that she was a hoyden who had been dragged rather than brought up. Now, suddenly, it mattered terribly. Everything was different because she was his wife.
Nat found that he was running down the Fortune Street, following the faint, fading rap of hooves until he came to the mews at the back of Chevrons. His breath was coming in short, sharp bursts. His blood fizzed with rage and tension. He stormed into the stables and came up short to find Lizzie there, calmly rubbing her horse down. She was wearing a loose dressing robe now, though her feet were still bare, and the fact that she was clothed now only seemed to incense Nat further. For some reason he had expected her to run and hide from him, and her blatant refusal to back down, to accept blame, to beg his forgiveness for her dreadful behavior, was the last straw. And in that moment he realized with appalled horror that he was hugely, hopelessly and unbearably aroused. He looked at the saddle lying on the floor and thought of it pressed between her thighs, and barely managed to repress his groan.
He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. She stood there, the brush in one hand, her face set and pale. In her eyes was a sparkle of rage that met and matched his.
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” she said pertly. “It was the most perfect jump. Starfire—” she patted the horse’s neck “—is all spirit and no fear.”
All spirit and no fear.
Nat realized that he was almost too insane with rage and arousal to speak. He took Lizzie by the shoulders and pushed her roughly ahead of him out of the stall and into the hay store next door. The door of the stall banged behind them and the horse shifted. Nat caught sight of one of the grooms out in the yard, his face a picture of shock and speculation. No doubt he had seen Lizzie ride in, naked and shameless. Nat did not know why that should worry him particularly when every other gentleman in the county had just seen her displaying herself with abandon, but somehow it did. He slammed the door of the storeroom in the groom’s face, shot the bolt and turned to his wife. He grabbed the neck of her robe and wrenched it from her so that she was once more standing naked in front of him.
“And you think that this is the appropriate attire for riding?” His voice shook so much he could barely force out the words. “And in front of every one of my friends and acquaintances?”
Her chin came up. She made no attempt to cover herself. Once more her bright auburn hair covered her shoulders and tumbled over her provocative little breasts and she put her hands on her hips. “No doubt they envied you,” she said, her gaze going to the immense bulge in his pantaloons.
“No doubt they thought you a whore and wanted to have you on the banqueting table,” Nat said. The mere thought of any other man possessing her—or even wanting to possess her—drove him to insanity. “Was
that what you wanted?”
The fury sparked again in Lizzie eyes. She threw the brush at him. He ducked as it sailed over his head.
“Bastard!” she said. “I hear my cousin bribed you to marry me. All that talk of honor and saving my reputation and caring for me—” Her voice broke. “Oh, I knew you needed the money, too,” she finished bitterly. Her breasts were rising and falling rapidly with each gasping breath she took. “At least you were honest about that. But you had my dowry for that. You did not need for Gregory to sell me to you, as well—”
Nat made a grab for her, but she slithered from his grip, lithe and slippery, and snatched the riding crop that was on the table. She held it out toward him like a weapon.
“Don’t touch me or I’ll hit you! I mean it!”
“Lizzie,” Nat said. “Please…” He made a desperate final grab for his control. “Can we talk about this?”
In response she brought the crop down on his arm, the pain so jarring he caught his breath.
“Keep away from me!”
“All right,” Nat said, the fury whipping through his blood. “If you want to play it like this.”
He did not recognize the jumble of lust and fierce violence and frustration within him. It felt as though he had been propelled far beyond his normal self by feelings and emotions that were completely uncontrollable and absolutely alien to his nature. He grabbed the end of the crop and used it to drag Lizzie toward him. She wriggled her arm free again and brought the crop down hard against his buttocks. The sensation, the pleasure and pain, burst through his body in an explosion of sparks. His cock jutted fiercely. He groaned. She did it again, with a wicked flick of the wrist and he froze as even more intense feelings racked him. A third time and he almost came where he stood. He tore the crop from her hands and snapped it in half, throwing the pieces into a corner. She did not take the opportunity to run away. She stood in front of him, her eyes and the tilting smile on her lips, taunting him.
“I warned you,” she said.
“And I’m warning you.” Nat was panting. “Parading yourself before all those men…I am the only one who can have you.”
She shrugged an insolent shoulder. “That’s all you care about, isn’t it—the sex and the money. Well, if you want me you’ll have to take me.”
Even as he reached out to her she whirled away from him and ran for the door. She was quick, but now he was quicker. He caught her by the upper arms and spun her around so that her bare back was against the rough brick wall of the store. He yanked her head back with one hand tangled in the silken tresses of her hair and ground his mouth against hers and in return she bit his lip hard and he tasted blood.
This was madness, this frenzied, desperate need he had for her. He knew it and the fact that it was so far removed from his usual rational demeanor filled him with equal measures of despair and arrant desire. He did not understand why he felt driven by the need to tame her but he grabbed one of the leading reins from the table and looped it about her wrists, dragging them above her head and securing the leather over a jutting metal hook. The expression in her eyes when she realized that he had restrained her was feral. She kicked out at him but he brought his body in close to her, trapping her flailing legs between his thighs. She writhed and wriggled now to no avail.
“Lizzie,” he said. They were close, staring into each other’s faces, her breasts touching his chest as they both panted for breath. And then that impudent smile twitched her lips again.
“Nat,” she said. “How far would you go?”
“As far as you,” Nat said. “Further.”
The dare was in her eyes. “You think so? Try me. Test me. Take me.”
Her words snapped the last of Nat’s control. He ran his hands down her body, over the breasts that had so tormented him with their pert, pouting beauty when she had flaunted them in the face of every man in Fortune’s Folly.
Take me…
Now at last he could pinch and squeeze and suck on her until she cried out and arched to his mouth, satisfying himself with both her submission and her eagerness. He could part the silken softness of her thighs and find the slick center of her and feel the way that her body closed about his marauding fingers just as it would squeeze him to an excess of pleasure and lust. He could run his thumb over the nub of her and revel in the way that she twitched and jerked in her bonds, and the way in which he could demand this response from her and she would give all she had because she was as desperate as he.
“You should not have provoked me,” he said against her mouth whilst his fingers still invaded her, sliding, stroking. “You did not understand what would happen.”
Her eyes were a slumberous green from sensual arousal now, her lashes a dark flicker against her cheek, her lips parted on each needy breath.
“Oh, I understand this well enough,” she said. “It is the only thing between us that I do understand.” She writhed. “Finish me. Please. I don’t mind begging.”
Nat shook his head. “Consequences,” he said. He twisted his fingers inside her a little and heard her gasp.
“I’ll come anyway,” she said, “just to spite you.”
“And then you’ll come again,” Nat said, kissing her in such gentle counterpoint to his words, “and again until I say you can stop.”
She did come then, against his hand. And again, still restrained, at the insistence of his lips and tongue, and then he could wait no longer and unfastened her bonds and tossed her down into the pile of hay. He held her with one hand whilst he freed his shaft with the other. He lowered his mouth to hers again and she kissed him back, as insatiable as she was angry, her hunger as violent as his own. He was so hard by now that he thought he might explode, simply shatter. She pulled up his shirt, scoring his back with her nails, biting his chest and shoulders. There was no gentleness in her touch. She wanted revenge and it hurt. And when she dug her fingers into the stinging marks that the crop had made on his buttocks he spread her and plunged into her with hot, ruthless strokes and came immediately, shouting her name. Lizzie screamed and her body arched and convulsed about him. It was over in seconds.
Afterward, when he had recovered a modicum of strength, Nat wrapped her in the tattered remnants of her gown and carried her into the house. Her body felt soft and compliant in his arms, her head against his shoulder, her eyes closed. The edge had gone off Nat’s anger now but he felt bruised and tired yet still unsatisfied. He hunted that satisfaction and fulfilment all night long, seeking oblivion in Lizzie’s body, driving her to wild peaks of pleasure, making her climax again and again until she was spent. He woke her simply so that he could touch her at will and do whatever he wished with her pale, tantalizing body. She did not refuse him once. He lay with his shaft buried deep within her, hard and hot, for several hours, not moving, resisting the twitch and spasm of her body about him as though determined to show he could resist the power she held over him. He felt as though he was in a dream in which he pursued something so elusive that it was forever within reach and yet it slipped away from him just when he thought he had captured it. Even when he took her for the final time the pleasure overwhelmed him only to ebb away and leave him exhausted and empty, deprived of whatever it was he sought.
Nat fell asleep trying to puzzle out what it was that he was searching for and awoke as the summer dawn broke into the room in all its shimmering golden glory. He turned instinctively to search for Lizzie’s warmth and found the bed empty. The corresponding barrenness inside him seemed to deepen and grow. He felt at the same time scoured clean of the anger of the previous night and yet even more hollow and lonely than he had before. And he felt shocked. Shocked with himself and appalled at what he had done. He could not escape the thought that his marriage, for all its extremes of physical pleasure, was a complete disaster in other respects and he did not know what to do to put it right. He did not even know where to start.
Where was Lizzie?
Nat’s apprehension started to increase. Last night…Last
night he had been intolerably angry with his new wife, so furious and possessive and distraught that he had taken her and used her. He had probably frightened her or given her a disgust of him. Lizzie was wild, his perfect physical match; she aroused in him emotions that he had never dreamed he possessed and that made him forget to be gentle. He had been so incensed that he had made no allowances for her relative youth and lack of experience.
Guilt twisted his gut. She had run from him now just as she had after that first night in the folly. On the thought he got up, grabbed his dressing robe and went to the door that connected their rooms. It was locked.
“Lizzie?” He rattled the handle. “Lizzie!”
He went out into the corridor and was about to try the other door into Lizzie’s room when he heard a step behind him.
“May I be of assistance, Lord Waterhouse?” Mrs. Alibone was standing in the corridor behind him, wearing a long black dressing gown of formidable respectability, a candle in one hand. “If it is locked I could fetch the spare set of keys,” she continued. Her eyes were bright with prurient excitement and suddenly Nat felt sick.
“No,” he said. “Thank you.” He was not having the housekeeper intruding into Lizzie’s room and perhaps finding her distraught, in floods of tears. It was bad enough that the entire household knew that Lizzie had ridden out naked the night before—and that when they returned he had ravished her in the stables. There would be plenty of talk without providing a sequel. Suddenly, despite his anger the previous night, he felt desperately, feverishly protective of Lizzie.
“Thank you, Mrs. Alibone,” he said pointedly, when the housekeeper made no attempt to leave, “you can go now.”
Only when Mrs. Alibone had slid silently away did he turn the handle. By now he was shaking. The door was not locked, but Lizzie’s bed was neat, turned down for the night but untouched.
Nat snatched his clothes, dressing haphazardly in shirt and pantaloons, and managing—just—to drag on his boots without the assistance of his valet. He ran down the stairs, through the waking house and out into the garden.
Undoing of a Lady Page 18