No wonder he made such a god-almighty hash of it.
For a long silent moment she studied his face. The Devil knew what she saw there. But sudden decision entered her expression.
“Sherrin, his lordship wishes to promenade in the park.” She glanced past him to the coachman. “So the park it is.”
“Yes, madam.” The coachman looked unhappy. Given the water cascading over his oilskins, Erith couldn’t blame him for his lack of enthusiasm.
“Stop at the first folly.”
“Very good, my lord.” Sherrin slid the panel closed.
Olivia sent Erith a long-suffering look as the coach began to move again. “We’ll both end up catching our death. Not to mention poor Sherrin. He’s got a wife and six children.”
“If I take you back to the house, you’ll leave me,” he said obstinately. He knew he made an utter fool of himself. He wished he could stop, but some demon possessed him.
“I can leave you from a park as well as from a drawing room.”
Soon the carriage drew to a stop. Erith peered out the foggy window and saw the looming bulk of a Greek temple. The panel behind his head slid back again. “Here, your lordship?”
“Yes, Sherrin. Wait in the building until we summon you.”
“Very good, my lord.”
The carriage rocked as the man climbed down, and Erith watched him dash through the teeming rain and disappear into the temple. He turned back to Olivia. “Shall we walk?”
She sent him a disbelieving topaz glare. “It’s a deluge out there.”
“Just a soft spring shower.” Roughly, he released the door catch and stepped into the storm, tugging her after him. “You won’t melt.”
“I honestly believe you belong in Bedlam.” He expected her to struggle, but she didn’t fight as she tumbled out of the carriage and into the weather.
“Probably.” He’d only been outside seconds and already the lashing rain slicked his hair over his forehead. He blinked away the streaming water that obscured his vision. The wind blasted rain at them in cold needles. She was right. He did belong in an asylum. No person in their right mind would willingly go out into this storm.
He felt far from in his right mind.
Taking her arm, he headed doggedly toward a gray and soggy grove just off the path, his boots splashing through the puddles. She scurried to keep up. Her elaborate gown was a sodden mess and her bonnet collapsed into a lump of wet straw.
She removed it, observed it for a second, and tossed it to the side of the overflowing track. “Irredeemable, I’m afraid.” She had to raise her voice above the rain.
“Like my character.”
“Like mine.”
“Then we suit each other.”
“That doesn’t mean we should remain together.” She ducked her head as an eddy of wind gusted a torrent of cold water over them. “If I freeze to death, it won’t matter whether I’ve decided to stay or not.”
“Does that mean you’re thinking about it?”
“Right now I’m thinking of a warm fire and dry clothes. And perhaps a brandy and a cigar.”
At last they reached the copse. Erith dragged her under the shelter of the trees. He dropped his hold on her. Instinct told him if she’d come this far, she wasn’t likely to run.
“You’ve got to stay with me, Olivia.” He didn’t have to shout here, thank God. “I’m the only man in Christendom who will tolerate your eccentric ways.”
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black. Who forced whom out into this tempest? Perry told me you had a reputation for coolness and calculation. I’ve seen precious little evidence of either. Couldn’t we have this discussion in the carriage?”
She shivered. Her face was paper white. He should be horsewhipped for making her stand in this downpour. Still, stubbornly, superstitiously, he refused to return her to the carriage that would take her away from him.
“You tried to keep me at a distance,” he said with a trace of sullenness he immediately resented.
“And drowning me will make you feel closer? If that’s the case, can’t we do this when there’s a warm bath handy?”
The idea of her long graceful limbs slick with soap and hot water sent searing arousal through him that not even the freezing weather could douse.
For a woman compelled into the middle of a tempest, she didn’t sound particularly angry. Irritated but not furious. He wondered what went on in her complicated, fascinating, brilliant brain. He wondered what went on in his to haul her about like this.
She wiped her face. But it was useless. Water still poured down. Her neat braided hairstyle, so different to the intricate creations she usually sported, came apart under the flood, and her hair, darkened to old bronze, clung to her face and neck in long straggling rats’ tails. She didn’t look at all the glamorous creature he was used to.
She looked more breathtakingly beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen.
She fixed an uncompromising regard on him. “Say what you have to and let me get back into the dry.”
He moved nearer, partly to shield her from the weather, partly because he needed to have her within the shelter of his body. The scent of rain filled the turbulent air, but underneath he caught a hint of her delicate scent. He’d recognize that fragrance from the other side of a room.
He stared hard at her. Raw, eviscerating emotion made him shake. He felt lost, exposed, threatened. “Are you going to leave?” he asked starkly.
Her face contracted with dismay. “Don’t. I’m not worth it.”
“Of course you are,” he snarled with sudden anger. He caught her arm in a hard clasp. “Damn it, Olivia, I surrender. You can have your public avowal of power over me. If you’ll stay.”
“I don’t care about the bet,” she snapped. “Why is having me as your mistress so important?”
He answered with perfect, bewildered honesty. “I have no idea.”
“Neither do I. You’ve had no pleasure.”
His mind filled with his delight in her quick wit. His delight in her beauty. His delight in her spirit. His delight in…her.
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. You won’t take what I offer, and I can’t give you what you ask for. Yet still you plague me.” Her eyes were like washed gems between the wet fringe of lashes. Her face was white with cold and tension. “What do you want, Erith?”
The rain had eased as they argued. It provided a gentle pattering background to that one bleak question.
He could only speak the words engraved on his soul. The soul he thought had calcified into stone over the last sixteen years of grief and loneliness. “I want you.”
He caught a flash of pain in those brilliant eyes. “But I don’t want you.”
“I can make you want me.” His voice cracked with desperation. His chest heaved as he fought for breath.
“No, you can’t.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. The glove was smooth and wet against his skin. It was the same gesture she’d made last night. After all the strife, her sudden tenderness then had torn his heart. The simple touch still made the breath catch in his throat.
Closing his eyes, he let her warmth soak into his bones. She said she didn’t want him, but that touch hinted she was far from indifferent.
He shouldn’t do what he was about to. He knew it would destroy any chance of convincing her to stay. He opened his eyes and tightened his hold on her arm, not bruising but enough to stop her stepping away.
“Olivia,” he whispered, just for the pleasure of hearing her name.
He saw awareness seep into the clear brown eyes, turn them the color of dark whisky. She trembled under his hand.
With cold? With fear? With desire?
He couldn’t say. But she didn’t recoil as he leaned closer.
“No, Erith.” It was a mere thread of sound. Her breath brushed across his lips, heat to his chilled flesh.
“Yes,” he said as softly. He cradled her jaw in his free
hand and gently tilted her chin toward him.
For one suspended instant, the rain, the wind, the cold, receded to nothing. There was just the woman and the promise of the kiss to come.
She whimpered as his mouth touched hers. Unless he’d been so close, he would not have heard. Just for a moment, he lingered, tasting the coolness of her skin, the freshness of the rain. Then he pulled away a fraction so the ghost of the kiss hovered even after the kiss ended.
The rain fell in a curtain around them, adding a sweet edge of innocence to what they did. She parted her lips and sucked in a shaky breath. He waited for her to wrench away as she had when he kissed her before. But she remained completely still. Apart from the endless waves of trembling that combed through her tall, willowy body.
He must stop. That kiss meant more than anything she’d ever granted him. More than the contemptuous seduction of his body with her mouth their first night.
Right now he had her grudging consent. He had no right to demand more.
But he was only human and he’d wanted to kiss her since he first saw her. He bent forward and grazed his lips over the mole on her cheek. Then before she could protest, he sipped at her lips again. They were soft and smooth like damp satin.
He’d kissed her before, but he hadn’t known what was at stake then. It was a game they played.
This tentative kiss was more important than life and death.
Delicately his tongue touched the seam, savoring a trace of the warmth inside. She made a soft humming sound deep in her throat and for a brief instant opened. Her breath touched his tongue and almost imperceptibly her lips moved against his.
He sighed and the hand cupping her jaw curved into a caress. Her tiny, hesitant, unpracticed response made him dizzy with arousal. Arousal tempered by an agonizing tenderness that made him want to cherish as much as ravish her.
He tasted her kiss for an endless moment, knowing to ask for more was to invite disaster.
But he couldn’t stop himself increasing the pressure. Fleetingly her lips softened, parted, answered his.
Then she stiffened under his hands and pulled away. But slowly, as if she woke from a dream. She’d closed her eyes, and as her heavy lashes rose, he glimpsed the young girl she’d never had the chance to be.
Her dazed expression changed to horrified realization. “You kissed me.”
“Yes,” he said helplessly, wanting her so much, he thought he’d die of it.
“Take your hands off me.” Her voice shook.
With an ironic gesture of apology, he released her arms. She struggled to erect barriers against him. But she was more vulnerable than he’d imagined.
Erith could be gracious in victory. For the present.
Now that he wasn’t holding her, he became aware of his surroundings. The rain was cold. The wind rose again. The thunder in his heart found an echo in the crescendo of thunder in the sky. It was muddy and dank underneath the trees. An icy trickle of water ran down his face and disappeared into his sodden neckcloth.
“I’m going back to the house. Don’t come with me.”
“Let me escort you to the carriage.” On such a foul day, the park was deserted, but nonetheless he didn’t like the idea of her unprotected.
Her laugh sounded like a muffled sob. “I want to walk.”
“Olivia, don’t be absurd.” He reached to catch her hand but she stepped away.
“Kindly allow me my way in this at least.” She turned on her heel and twitched her saturated skirts, more black than green after their soaking. With her shoulders straight and her head high, she stepped out from under the trees.
He couldn’t let her go like this. With nothing resolved. He snatched her arm and this time wouldn’t let her rebuff him. “What are you going to do, Olivia?”
She cast him an unreadable topaz glance. “Change my clothes, for one thing.”
She’d retreated into Olivia Raines, queen of courtesans. Although the queen of courtesans looked woefully bedraggled. It said something for the equally woeful state of Erith’s emotions that he found her disheveled state endearing. More than endearing. Hugely alluring.
He let her go. And said words the notorious Earl of Erith would once never have believed himself capable of uttering. “Please don’t leave me, Olivia.”
For a fleeting instant her hauteur melted. He saw deep into the wild turmoil in her soul before she whirled around. With a choked curse, she picked up her skirts. He watched in despair as she ran across the muddy ground into the rain-swept afternoon.
Chapter 12
The door to the bedroom slammed open with a crash, rattling the windowpanes and setting the closed curtains, with their bright embroidered peonies and peacocks, to billowing.
The Earl of Erith loomed in the entrance. Potent. Intense. Vibrating with the same fierce desperation Olivia remembered from the park. He brought the storm inside with him.
With a shocked gasp, she sank lower into the cooling bathwater. She clutched her half full brandy glass in front of her like a shield. Her maid gave a shriek and dropped the pitcher she’d lifted to rinse Olivia’s hair. The pottery vessel shattered and water flooded everywhere.
“Lawks, miss!” Amy gasped. Her panicked gaze settled on Erith and she bobbed a clumsy curtsy. “My lord.”
“Get out,” he told the girl without shifting from the doorway. Dripping black hair clung to his drawn face and his clothes were a soggy mess. His feverishly glittering gray eyes remained unwavering on Olivia.
Amy was too startled to take warning from his calm tone. She began flinging towels onto the puddle. “The carpet will spoil—”
“I said get out,” he said even more quietly.
This time Amy heard the threat. She dropped the towels, performed another awkward curtsy, and dashed for the dressing room.
Olivia and the earl remained behind, sharing a charged silence.
For a fraught moment the memory of that wondrous kiss in the rain hovered between them. She tasted the spicy warmth of his mouth on hers. She felt his cold hands cradling her face. He’d held her as if he’d never touched anything so precious in his whole life. Her lips parted with trembling expectation, just as they’d parted under his gentle exploration.
That poignant kiss had sliced her soul in two.
She could hardly bear to recall it.
It was over an hour since she’d fled like a madwoman through the cloudburst. Blind with anguish after leaving Erith, she’d stumbled upon an empty hackney when she reached the rain-swept street. By the time she’d arrived home, she was chilled to the bone. She’d dashed out of the shabby hired carriage and into the house, intending to depart immediately, before he returned to confuse her with more demands and questions, and damnable tenderness that left her lost and defenseless and yearning.
Reason, self-preservation, experience screamed that she must end the affair. Now. This minute. Before the strange bond between them destroyed the powerful woman she’d created from the helpless, terrified, abused girl.
So why hadn’t she left?
She met his wild silver eyes across the room and an electric jolt sizzled through her. Nerves? Fear? Resentment? Surely not excitement. Her fingers clenched on her heavy crystal glass and she couldn’t look away.
Erith moved inside the room and shut the door with a studied care that indicated how close to the edge he was. “You’re still here,” he said softly, without coming closer.
“Yes.”
He lifted one tanned hand to tug away his sodden neckcloth. He dropped it to the floor. “Why?”
Dear heaven, she didn’t want to answer. She wasn’t sure she could. Or not in any way that made sense. Once, she might have said she stayed for the sake of her reputation as London’s greatest courtesan. But that would now be a lie. Perhaps it had been a lie from the first. She could no longer deny Lord Erith had always drawn her like a magnet drew iron filings.
I’m here because you kissed me in the rain. You kissed me as if I broke your heart.
Ridiculous.
She sought to inject a practical note into the thickening atmosphere. “Erith, you’ll catch your death in those wet clothes. Why not order a bath? I’ll finish here and arrange supper if you’re staying.”
“Oh, I’m staying, all right.” His sensual lips twisted in a grimace that wasn’t quite a smile. “Why are you still here, Olivia?”
Confound him, he was as persistent as a mastiff with a bone. She decided to adopt the attacking position. Although how formidable could she be, crouching naked in lukewarm water with long strands of wet hair snaking around her?
She injected a sarcastic edge. “I gathered from your histrionics in the park that my presence was necessary for your continued sanity, if nothing else.”
As she should have expected, her childish attempt to annoy failed. His voice remained steady and low, although she knew him well enough to guess the turbulent currents swirling beneath his composure. An ocean of titanic emotion seethed under his impassive facade. She remembered the desperation in his voice when he’d begged her not to leave him. Seeing this proud man brought to such a state had moved her to helpless tears.
“I thought I’d find you packing. Or gone.” He shrugged out of his tight coat. With some difficulty, as it adhered soggily to his body. He threw it down next to the neckcloth.
Some devil made her say, “I have certain standards, my lord. I refuse to leave your protection looking like I’ve been dunked in the North Sea.”
The bathwater had become uncomfortably cold. She told herself he’d seen her naked before. But absurdly, the day with its astonishing crevasses of emotion had left her shy.
How laughable. She hadn’t been shy since her first lover.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s an observation. An accurate one, as it happens.”
As if to prove his confidence, he reached down to relieve her of the brandy glass. He took a substantial mouthful then placed it near the few remaining towels folded on top of the sideboard.
The shiver that shook her wasn’t entirely from the cold bathwater. When he drank from the same glass, it felt like he set his claim upon her.
Tempt the Devil Page 13