He met her eyes then for a pregnant moment, and she saw that her answer had annoyed him. “We have already stepped well beyond the boundaries of what you would consider proper behavior, Countess. Besides, who’s to know? And you need not fear that I’m short of blunt, because I’m far from that. Buying you a few fripperies will not put me in the poorhouse, I assure you.”
Isabella shook her head determinedly. “Your finances are not in question. It’s simply that I cannot allow you to pay for my clothes. Why, that would make me … make me …”
“Yes?” he questioned very quietly, lowering the wing he was getting ready to bite into.
“Less than a lady,” she said, and looked away. He made a sound that bespoke extreme vexation, drawing her eyes again. Before he could respond in anger, as she feared he would do, Isabella added hastily, “That isn’t to say that I don’t realize that I must commission a few decent gowns to wear. Perhaps if you would be so kind as to give me an advance on my salary—I am assuming you do mean to pay me a salary—I could purchase enough for my needs myself.”
“Of course I intend to pay you a salary—” Alec broke off suddenly, put the wing back on his plate, and wiped his hands on his napkin. Then he got to his feet, came around the perimeter of the cloth, and hunkered down at her side. Isabella set her own plate on her lap and looked at him wide-eyed. His expression was intent, and there was, besides, a certain impatience in his eyes.
“Hell, Isabella, let’s have an end to this farce, shall we?” His voice had an underlying roughness. “You have a care for me, I think, and I … I find you more than attractive. You may consider my person and my money at your complete disposal for the foreseeable future, if you wish. I can afford to buy you a wardrobe as grand as a duchess’s. I can give you jewels, and your own carriage and horses—whatever you want. I know you’re not greedy, love, and I’ve no fear you’ll bankrupt me. You’ll have carte blanche to purchase what you choose, I’m a rich man, and I’ll see you well provided for in the event we part ways, enough for you to afford to live quite comfortably for the rest of your life. You need never return to St. Just again.”
Isabella went very still as he spoke. When he finished, his eyes sweeping her face for her reaction, she could barely speak. She had to force the words out through her suddenly dry throat.
“I am not sure that I understand you. Exactly what are you proposing?”
He looked at her more carefully then, and something—uncertainty?—flickered for a moment in his eyes. Then he grinned, though the grin was crooked, went down on one knee before her, and placed a hand over his heart.
“ ‘Come live with me, and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.…’ “ His voice, like his posture, was teasingly soulful, but his eyes were intent, and they never left her face.
“You are suggesting that I become your kept mistress.” It was a statement, not a question. Despite the heat, Isabella suddenly felt as if she’d been turned to ice.
“ ’Tis a crude way of putting it. I prefer to emulate Marlowe and ask you to be my love.”
His hand dropped away from his heart to reach for hers. Numbly she allowed him to take her fingers in his, and raise them to his mouth. As if she were no more than an observer of the pretty scene, she watched him press his lips to her knuckles. Coldly, clinically, she took in the bowed, handsome head, the broad shoulders, the muscled thighs that his kneeling position caused to strain against the knit breeches. Dancing sunbeams glinted off gold threads in his tawny hair.…
He looked up at her then, smiling. “Well, Countess?” She stared at him unspeaking for an instant longer. Then her eyebrows twitched together and her mouth turned down violently at the corners. Jerking her hand from his hold, she jumped to her feet, upsetting her plate, which had been resting on her lap. He looked up at her as she stood over him like an avenging fury, surprise plain on his face. Then his expression changed as he too stood. “Isabella-”
“You may take me back to town, if you please.” “You’re angry.” He sounded resigned. “I should have waited, I know, but I wanted to put an end to all these silly games between us. I desire you madly, love.”
“Don’t dare speak so to me!”
His mouth tightened with impatience. “Very well, if you wish, we’ll continue to play out the farce to its end. But you may be very sure that you’ll end up in my bed sooner or later, however much you like to pretend that you will not. We want each other too badly, my girl. You as well as I. It’s there in your eyes for me to see every time you look at me.”
“You’re insufferable! Take me back to town!”
She felt as if she were choking, as if she were wrapped about by iron bands that tightened with every breath. There was an ache in the region of her breastbone that she refused to subscribe to a lacerated heart. Pearl had been exactly right: Alec had meant to set her up as his mistress all along. He would enjoy her favors only as long as they continued to please him, and when they no longer did, when her novelty began to pall, he would buy her off. If things were different, if the world could be as she wished it and not as it were, there was nothing on earth that would please her more than to be his love. But love had nothing to do with the arrangement he proposed. It was a business transaction, pure and simple. The irony of it was that it was she who had insisted that their future association be strictly business. Though what he had suggested was certainly not the sort of business she had had in mind!
“It’s a common enough arrangement, you know. There’s no need for you to act as if I’ve mortally insulted you. Indeed, you could say it’s an honor to be asked. I’ve never before gone to the trouble of setting up an official chère amie.” If he was trying to pour oil on the waters he had disturbed, he failed abysmally. Isabella rounded on him, fists clenched and eyes flashing.
“So I’m supposed to feel honored by your filthy proposition, am I? Well, let me tell you something, you bounder—I feel dirtied by the very suggestion! And if you won’t take me back to town, right now, I’ll walk every step of the way! So help me I will!” Furious, she marched toward the carriage. He fell into step beside her.
“Be reasonable, Isabella. I’d no intention whatsoever of insulting you. You’re taking this entirely the wrong way.”
“Are you going to drive me back to town or am I going to walk?”
“You can’t go back to town. There’s no place for you to stay but the Carousel, and you can’t wish to stay there; it’s not a fit place for you.”
She threw him a glance of such fury that his eyes widened as if from a blow.
“Not a fit place for your mistress? I would have thought that a bawdy house was the perfect place for a whore!”
“Isabella—” He tried again to calm her, but she wouldn’t let him finish.
“Don’t even speak to me, you … you …”
“I don’t see why you’re so bloody upset.” He reached out suddenly and caught her arm, forcing her to stop and face him. She swatted ineffectually at his imprisoning hand, but he refused to release her. “You’ve bedded me already—of your own free will, and don’t try to make me think you didn’t enjoy it—and it seems to me that the insult would be if I then went on about my business and never gave you another thought. But did I do that? No. Having already plucked the choicest blossom from the bush, in a manner of speaking, I still offered you free access to both my purse—which is more than plump—and my person, which I’ve never yet had a female despise. What’s the insult in that? Pray enlighten me, because I’ve no idea.”
As he spoke, she had ceased swatting at him to stare at him with growing incredulity.
“I can well believe you don’t see the insult, you blackguard! I’m sure it is very different with your kind, but I was raised to think that ‘lady’ was more than a courtesy title!”
He stared at her for a moment without speaking. She lifted her chin at him haughtily.
“Ah,” he said finally. “So that’s the way it is. The insult’s not so much in the offer
as in the offerer. Would your answer be different if I were a bloody lordship like your bloody murdering husband?”
Pure rage flared from her eyes at that. “My answer would be the same if you were the Prince Regent, or the King himself! Take me back to town, I said!”
This time she succeeded in knocking his hand from her arm, and whirled away toward the carriage.
He was right behind her. “Damn it to hell, Isabella, you’re being ridiculous, and you know it. Come, let us forget this whole fiasco of a conversation and go back to what we were before! ’Twas a joke merely, I assure you.”
“You meant every word,” she said fiercely, and stalked on toward the carriage. He made a sound that was halfway between a growl and a groan.
“All right, so I did. Hell and the devil, ’tis a bloody compliment I paid you! Haven’t you the sense to know a compliment when you get one, girl?”
Isabella did not deign to look at him. As they reached the carriage she ignored his outstretched hand and clambered into the seat on her own. In cold silence she sat, arms crossed over her breasts, looking pointedly off into the distance as he, standing beside the carriage looking up at her, bit off a disgusted oath.
“All right, have it your own way then. I’ll bloody well take you back to town if Your ’Ighness wishes it! I’ll drop you off on your bloody ’usband’s doorstep! I’m starting to think the murderous bugger’s got the bloody right idea!”
His roughening accent told her that he was fast losing his temper, which suited her just fine. She had already thoroughly lost hers! When she didn’t reply, but continued to look away from him in icy hauteur, Alec swore again, turned on his heel, and stomped back to gather up their leavings. In moments he was tossing the basket in the carriage with more force than was necessary. It landed with a bounce and a clatter at Isabella’s feet, and she shoved it beneath the seat.
Removing the horses’ feed bags with more speed than care, Alec threw them into the back with barely controlled violence. Then he climbed up beside Isabella, untied the reins and, with a flick of his wrists, got the tilbury smartly in motion. The only problem from Isabella’s standpoint was that they were heading in precisely the same direction as they had been before.
XXXIII
“London,” Isabella pointed out coldly, “is the other way.”
“Aye, and if I were as big a bloody fool as yourself, Countess, I’d be ’eaded that way. As it is, I’m takin’ you to where you’ll be out of ’arm’s way whether you like it or not.”
“And just where is that?”
“Amberwood, as was intended from the first. I’ll not change my plans to suit a ’oity-toity miss’s distempered freaks.”
“As you seem determined to do just as you please with no thought of my wishes, must I expect to be ravished the moment we arrive?” The question dripped icy disdain.
His head snapped around, and the look he gave her told her more than any words could have just how furious he was. Then he was hauling in on the reins, pulling the horses to a sudden stop. He wrapped the reins around the knob at the front of the carriage with quick, angry purpose, and turned on Isabella, who was hanging on to the side with both hands as the vehicle lurched forward, then back. Her eyes widened in the face of his blazing wrath.
“I’ve ’ad all I plan to put up with of your bloody airs. You’d do well to keep a civil tongue between your teeth, Countess, lest I decide to school you to better manners.” He forced the words out through clenched teeth.
“Violence is just what I would have expected from a canaille like you,” she responded haughtily, nose in air. “And you’re dropping your h’s.”
Like a line stretched to the breaking point and beyond, his temper snapped. Isabella saw it happen, saw the flood-tide of red rush into his cheekbones, saw the sudden fierce flaming of his golden eyes.
“You liked the common touch well enough the other night,” he growled, and reached for her. Alarmed, she shrank back, but he dragged her toward him, his fingers digging into her soft flesh. He pulled her close and held her there, his eyes alight with a ferocious gleam, his mouth twisted grimly. He meant to frighten her, she thought, and refused to admit even to herself that he was succeeding. Suddenly he was no longer Alec but the Tiger, lord of London’s criminals, brutal, savage, in his own world all-powerful as a king.
His mouth swooped toward hers. He meant to punish her with his kiss.
She turned her head away, struggling, but he pulled her halfway across his lap, still holding her in that bruising grip so that she could not get away. As they fought, the horses stirred restlessly, stomping their feet so that the carriage jerked and rattled. Overhead a squirrel set up a raucous chatter. But Isabella was aware of none of this. She was only conscious of the hardness of the upper arm against which her head rested, the strength of the hands holding her, and the predatory gleam in his eyes. He caught her jaw, dragging her head around, holding it still for his kiss. As those golden eyes met hers, she ceased to struggle. Mesmerized, she could only wait for him to deal her the lethal blow.
And it was lethal, she realized even as he took her lips, kissing her with a passion that was at first as much fierce temper as wanting. Lethal to her morals, lethal to her self-respect and the good of her soul. She could not be his mistress, and she would not. But oh, how she wanted him! Never in her life had she thought to respond to a man as she responded to him, instantly, at his slightest look or touch. He dazzled her, blinded her to duty and every sense of what was right and wrong. He tempted her past bearing.…
Even as his tongue slid between her teeth, her mouth opened for him, allowing him entry, kissing him back. Her arms, freed now of his harsh grip, slid up to curl around his neck.
When his hand slid inside that shocking neckline to find the softness of her naked breast, she whimpered a wordless protest into his mouth. But her eyes stayed tightly closed and her back arched, pushing her breast more closely into the palm that cupped it.
“Isabella. You feel so sweet.” If he had been angry, his anger, like hers, had perished in the flames. He sounded as dazed as she felt, as dizzy with wanting. He kissed her cheek, her ear, her neck, before his lips returned to find hers again.
His mouth was slow and hot, his tongue both gentling her and claiming ownership of the sweet territory it explored. Her mouth met his with helpless rapture, unable to mount even so much as a token resistance. The merest touch of his lips and hand had shattered her defenses like brittle glass.
She was his, to do with what he would. Her kisses, her caresses, all belonged to him. If he wished her to live in glorious shame as his mistress, she was suddenly, dreadfully afraid she had not the strength to resist.…
Even as his hand tightened on her breast, his fingers seeking out the tiny bud that thrust hungrily into his palm, the sound of hooves on the road behind them brought Alec’s head up. Her eyes opened to find him staring back down the road they had travelled, shaking his head slightly as though to clear it of the mists of passion.
“Hell and the devil, what bloody timing! Though I suppose it’s just as well. An open carriage is not really the place for—” He broke off, looked down at her lying across his lap, and with a surprisingly tender gesture removed his hand from her bodice and smoothed back a tendril of hair that had strayed across her cheek. “Here, love, sit up and straighten your dress. We’ll sort this whole thing out when we get to Amberwood.”
“I won’t be your mistress.” She was still dazed as he set her off his lap, but not too dazed to manage a faint but pursuing protest at his apparently unchanged plans for her. As the drugging effect of his touch was removed, her resistance improved. She could resist, and she would.
“Are you still arguing?” He leaned over and dropped a quick, hard kiss on her still tremulous mouth even as he picked up the reins. “Hush your mouth, woman, and let me drive. You can argue with me all you want later, when we have a modicum of privacy.”
The hoofbeats were drowned out by the sound of their own ca
rriage wheels clattering over the ruts as Alec got the horses moving again. Looking at him, still somewhat befuddled from that heart-shaking kiss, Isabella saw that the anger was totally gone from his face. He looked cheerful, and completely sure of himself again. As he felt her eyes on him, he slanted a glance at her and smiled.
It was a breathtaking smile, warm and intimate and loaded with charm. Isabella felt her heart turn over at the impact of it.
Without a doubt, Alec Tyron was the handsomest man she had ever seen in her life. Just looking at him caused her a physical pang. But his looks, magnificent as they were, were not what drew her to him so strongly. There was something in the man himself that appealed to her, a kind of warmth at which she yearned to thaw her chilled heart.
Giving in to such dangerous feelings would be a major mistake, she knew. She might be young, she might be inexperienced in the love games he played so easily, but she was not a fool. It would be all too easy to fall in love with her dazzling ruffian, and that way lay a broken heart.
Because, sooner or later, she knew she was going to have to give him up, resume her proper place in the world, take up her lackluster life again as the wife of an indifferent earl and the daughter of a less-than-fond duke. There was no place for Alec in her life, her real life, and however little she liked to face it, that was the simple truth. She was of the nobility, and a married lady to boot, and he was a charming nobody from the gutters of London. Even if she had not been wed to Bernard, their liaison would have been impossible. But add a wedding ring to the mixture, and a love affair between herself and Alec became an offense against God as well as man.
Alec’s arm brushed hers as he drove, and glancing up at him, she saw that his face had tightened with tension.
The horseman behind them was closing fast. Isabella could hear the hoofbeats clearly, even over the noise of their own carriage. She supposed that was why Alec was pulling the horses up, although it seemed an unnecessary precaution as the road was certainly wide enough for a lone horseman to pass. But that couldn’t explain why Alec was grabbing at something under the seat.…
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