by Diana Bold
The self-derision in his voice distracted her from the fact that he was systematically unfastening her bodice. It felt odd to her to actually be able to see his face as they talked. She’d grown so used to seeing him with the mask. Wanting to show him that the scars didn’t matter to her, she lifted her hand to his ruined cheek, but he flinched away from her touch.
“Don’t,” he snapped.
He glanced down, and she realized he’d tucked her chemise and gown beneath her breasts until they spilled wantonly over the top. She gasped and tried to cover herself with her hands, but he brushed them away, pinning them to the desk at her sides.
“Lovely,” he whispered. “I knew you would be.”
“Please, don’t do this,” she begged, her pride shattered. She didn’t want him this way, not in anger. She’d gone about this all wrong. “You’ve made your point.”
“Have I? Strange, since I’m not even certain what my point was.” He released her hands. “Don’t move,” he told her sharply.
Holding her gaze, he ran his fingertips across the upper slope of her breasts, his breath hitching as her nipples visibly hardened beneath his gaze. Leaning forward, he covered one with his lips, licking and sucking until she cried out harshly, desperate to bury her hands in his hair, but determined to do as he’d asked and keep her hands at her side.
Tearing his mouth away, he bent and slid his hands beneath her skirt, bunching up the heavy layers of satin and lace until his fingertips found her bare thigh.
“I was half in love with you,” he admitted hoarsely. “So thank you for coming here. Thank you for reminding me that there’s no such thing as honesty and love left in the world. There’s only this…”
He found the slit in her drawers, and then his thumb grazed her most intimate flesh. Reluctant arousal pulsed through her, making her damp with need.
“What’s this?” His fingertips slid over her moist cleft, circling and teasing with erotic skill. “Christ, Vanessa. You’re so wet for me.” He surged forward, replacing his hand with the hard ridge of his erection. Even though several layers of cloth still separated them, she couldn’t help but gasp. Holding her gaze, he put his fingertip to his lips, closing his eyes as he tasted her.
And then he was kissing her, kissing her with all the fire and sweetness she remembered. Kissing her until she was dizzy with it. Kissing her until all the anger and awkwardness faded, and she wrapped herself around him like moss.
He was the first to pull away. He stared at her, his chest heaving as though he’d run a great distance, his cheeks flushed with hectic color. “Go to Hawkesmere House on Grosvenor Square on Saturday morning,” he muttered, striding toward the door. “Ask for my mother, the countess. Tell her who you are, and she’ll help you arrange the wedding.”
He shut the door quietly behind him, leaving her panting, half-naked on his desk, wondering if she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Chapter Ten
Adrian managed to hold it together until he reached his attic laboratory. He even managed to shut the door behind him with a quiet click, calmly sliding the lock, before his rage and heartache exploded. With a roar of fury, he swept his work table, sending glass vials and books flying.
The sound of breaking glass was somehow soothing, so he swept another table as well, ruining the delicate experiments he’d been concentrating on for months.
What did it matter? What did any of it matter, when the woman he’d trusted so deeply had just betrayed him in such a soul deep way?
Gold-digging bitch! He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen this in her, this willingness to sell her soul, her body, everything he’d thought so precious, just for money and security.
And what made him even angrier was the fact that he hadn’t told her to go fuck herself. Even through the haze of his anger, he’d realized in some rational part of his mind that this was the only way he could have her. And pathetic wretch that he was, it had been a price he was willing to pay.
He had found out the truth about her, but he’d also insured that he could lose himself in her beautiful body whenever he wanted. The horrific farce she’d suggested was probably the only way he’d ever have a wife and family of his own.
He hated himself for wanting those things, for wanting just a taste of the happiness Morgan had seemed to find so easily.
Fairly snarling with self-disgust, he went to the cabinet and opened a bottle of scotch, downing a quarter of it in one long gulp, straight from the mouth of the bottle. As the familiar burn spread through him, he poured himself a glass.
* * * *
Adrian stirred at the thunderous pounding on the attic door. Blinking blearily, he struggled to sit up, realizing he’d passed out in the chair, then somehow slid to the floor. He ached in every muscle in his body, and a terrible headache pounded behind his eyeballs, threatening to make him empty his stomach of the poison he’d been pouring into it for two—or was it three?—days straight.
“Adrian, open up! I know you’re in there.”
Christ, it’s Lucien.
“Adrian. Come on. Clinton told us you haven’t come out in days. We’re worried about you.”
Good God. Morgan, too. His brothers rarely ganged up on him this way.
“Go away,” he muttered, but his voice came out a ragged, shredded rasp. They couldn’t possibly hear him.
He reached for the bottle near his hip, only to realize it was empty. When had he finished it off? The last thing he remembered was opening it.
Frowning angrily, he attempted to stand and go get another one, only to collapse in the chair, legs trembling as the room spun violently around him. He felt like hell. How long had it been since he’d eaten?
Before he could come up with an answer to that, the attic door exploded inward, bits of wood flying toward him as his brothers shouldered through, staring at him wildly.
He laughed hoarsely and raised the empty bottle in their direction. “Luke, Morg, can I get you a drink?”
Morgan smiled a bit at that, but Lucien’s expression said he wouldn’t be so easily charmed. “What the hell happened in here? This place looks like a war zone. All your inventions…ruined. What the hell, Adrian? Did you do this?”
Adrian glanced around, feeling a pang of regret and embarrassment as he realized how destructive his anger that first night had been. The floor was covered in broken glass and wires. Quite a miracle, actually, that he hadn’t cut the shit out of himself while he was passed out.
“You’re bleeding,” Morgan said grimly, reaching out and plucking a deadly-looking shard of glass from his shoulder.
Perhaps not so miraculous, after all.
“I was celebrating,” Adrian said bitterly, knowing there was no use trying to hide what had happened from them. Lucien had an uncanny way of getting the truth out of him, and Morgan could practically read his mind. “Haven’t you heard? I’m getting married.”
“Married?” Morgan blinked, then shared a disbelieving glance with Lucien. “What the hell is he talking about?”
Lucien groaned and held up a hand. He obviously had an inkling. “Clinton,” he called, to the coward who was obviously waiting just out of sight. I’ll kill the bastard for telling them. If they don’t kill me first. “Go and get Adrian something to eat. A pitcher of water. Some bandages. And something to clean this mess up with.”
After Clinton’s steps receded, Lucien met Adrian’s defensive gaze. “Please tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Vanessa Bourke.”
“Vanessa Bourke? The actress?” Morgan grabbed another chair and pulled it through the wreckage. He straddled it backwards and gave Adrian an irritated look. “What is he talking about?”
Adrian sighed and sagged back in his chair, his heart beat pounding behind his eyes. His rage had left him, and all that remained was embarrassment. He should have known. He should have listened to Lucien.
“He’s been seeing her as Prometheus,” Lucien muttered, leaning against the shattered doorframe.
“I’m assuming something’s gone wrong.” He waved an expansive hand over the destruction Adrian had caused. “If you’re this angry, why would you even consider marrying the girl?”
“She knows who I am,” Adrian confessed, his stomach roiling with alcohol and shame. “She threatened to go to Scotland Yard if I didn’t make her my wife.”
“That little whore,” Morgan exclaimed, shoving out of the chair and pacing angrily away. “You know, I saw her just a few days ago, and she gave me the strangest look… Then she asked if you had come to the theater with us. I told her you never go to theater, but apparently I was wrong.”
“That must have been how she figured it out,” Adrian said, putting it together, surprisingly bothered by the ugly word his brother had called her. “She probably recognized something about you, then realized Prometheus had to be me.”
“Well, this is ridiculous,” Lucien snapped. “Of course you aren’t going to marry her. We’ll figure out a way to fix this. Women like her can always be bought. We’ll simply pay her to go away.”
Adrian shook his head slowly, wincing at the pain the slight movement caused. Despite his anger, he wasn’t about to let Lucien pay her off. She thought she wanted him? She thought his money and position were enough to make her happy? Well, then, let her lie in the bed she’d made. He planned to get every penny of his money’s worth out of her.
He couldn’t stop thinking of the night she’d made him chocolate and he’d rubbed her feet. Perversely, he wanted to remind her of that for the rest of their lives. He wanted her to remember what they could have had, if she hadn’t tried to take what he would have so willingly given her.
“Oh, I’m marrying her,” Adrian told his brothers fiercely. “She’s mine, and I’m never going to let her go.”
Chapter Eleven
Vanessa paced the earl’s lavish sitting room while she waited for her audience with the countess. Every gilt chair leg and yard of brocade proclaimed she did not belong here. Even the butler had looked down his nose at her, as though she wore a sign that proclaimed her low class and an actress, despite the carefully polished manners and upper-class speech she’d worked so hard to cultivate and the hours she’d spent agonizing over her appearance.
She remained waiting for over half an hour before the countess finally deigned to put in an appearance. However, Adrian’s mother was not the formidable harridan she’d expected. Instead, the countess was a slender, lovely blonde with an air of fragility surprising in someone with so much power.
As the countess entered the room, Vanessa scrambled to her feet and executed her best curtsy. “Good morning, my lady.”
The countess barely acknowledged her presence before wilting gracefully into a gilt chair. “My son is such a trial to me,” she announced, in a fadeaway voice. “Apparently he expects me to arrange a wedding in little more than a fortnight, and to such an…unsuitable woman.”
Flushed heat rose to Vanessa’s cheeks, but before she could protest or say something in her defense, the countess continued, “I never expected any better from Adrian, though. What sort of woman besides a fortune-hunting actress would marry the beast?”
Beast? Vanessa stared at the countess in stunned horror, shocked that the woman would speak of her own son in such a manner. No wonder Adrian hid himself from the world. If this woman, who should’ve loved him more than anyone, chose to shun him, then how could he expect more from anyone else?
“He is not a beast,” Vanessa told her future mother-in-law furiously. “He’s beautiful and brilliant. Any woman in the world would be lucky to have him.”
“Such passion.” The countess seemed to look at Vanessa for the very first time. “Is it possible you actually care for him and aren’t just an opportunist?”
“Of course I care for him,” Vanessa snapped, wishing for the thousandth time that she’d handled things differently that day in Adrian’s study. When he’d admitted he was Prometheus, she should have simply thrown herself into his arms, instead of continuing with her harebrained scheme of blackmailing him.
“Well, he’ll only break your heart,” the countess warned. “Such a strange boy. I don’t believe he’s capable of loving anybody.”
You’re wrong. Vanessa thought of the flash of betrayal she’d seen in his eyes when she’d made her underhanded proposal, of the fire and passion in his kiss, and knew he had the ability to love very deeply.
She only hoped she hadn’t completely destroyed whatever tenderness he’d felt for her. “I was half in love with you.” Dear God, she couldn’t bear it if he ended up hating her. She promised herself she’d do everything in her power to regain whatever ground she’d lost, if he’d only let her.
“Fittings for your gown will begin tomorrow,” the countess said, suddenly all business. “We’ll have an engagement party in two weeks. There will be a terrible scandal, and I’m sure the papers will make much of the beauty and the beast angle, but I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Clearly, planning parties was the countess’s forte. She forged ahead ruthlessly, completely ignoring any comment or suggestion Vanessa dared make. She seemed to enjoy being a martyr and would probably have been somewhat disappointed had Adrian chosen not to marry an actress. From comments she made, Vanessa sensed she’d gotten much sympathy from her friends for the trials and tribulations she’d been forced to endure thanks to her strange and reclusive son.
For her part, Vanessa was content to let the countess do the planning. She had no doubt the entire event would be flawlessly executed in the countess’s hands, and she didn’t really trust her own judgment. The last thing she wanted was to embarrass Adrian in front of his friends and family.
Two exhausting hours later, she was finally dismissed with orders to return the next day for her first fittings.
She was waiting in the foyer for Adrian’s coach to be brought round when she sensed someone watching her from the top of the graceful staircase. The earl.
“Miss Bourke,” he called, when she lifted her gaze. “May I have a moment of your time?” He was slightly older than Adrian, but every bit as attractive. His hair was perhaps a bit darker, black instead of warm sable, and his eyes a deeper blue, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance.
Her heart sank as he strode toward her down the stairs. She didn’t think she could bear yet another interrogation. Her nerves were already frayed to the breaking point.
“My lord,” she murmured, dropping into a belated curtsy. “Of course.”
He gestured toward an open door to the right. “Shall we speak in the conservatory?”
She nodded apprehensively and followed her future brother-in-law into a glass room with soaring ceilings and an abundance of greenery and flowers. An oppressive heat and humidity hung in the air, but the scent of lavender calmed her.
He gestured to a stone bench, but when she sat, he continued to stand, glowering down at her. “Let us be perfectly straight with one another, Miss Bourke. I do not appreciate your attempts to blackmail my brother.”
She caught her breath, surprised both by his bluntness and by the fact that Adrian had confided in him. “I know what you must think of me,” she told him, cheeks flaming. “And I don’t blame you for thinking the worst. But please believe I never wanted any harm to come to your brother. I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and for what he’s doing.”
He stared at her for a long moment, seeming to stare into her very soul. “Adrian has been through a lot in his life. The last thing I want is to see him in a marriage to a woman who does not love him, so I am prepared to make you an offer.”
“What sort of offer?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’ve done some checking, and I’ve discovered your fondest wish is to leave the stage. I believe that is what has driven you to such an act of desperation. If you give up this ridiculous plan to marry my brother, I will set you up very comfortably in a house in the country for the entirety of your life. Just please, don’t do this to Adrian.”
She stared at him, stunned by his generosity. He obviously loved Adrian very much. For a moment, she considered it, for in truth, he’d just offered her everything she’d ever wanted. She and Gabriel in a pretty little house in the country…
But she hadn’t earned it, and when she thought of never seeing Adrian again, a part of her cried out in denial. She wanted him. She could not bear the thought of letting him go. When she thought of adopting Gabriel, the picture was not complete without Adrian there beside her.
“I thank you for your generosity,” she told the earl, with as much dignity as she could muster. “But I must decline your offer. Adrian needs me. He needs someone to see past his scars and recognize him for the beautiful, brilliant man he is.”
The earl gave her the ghost of a smile. “You’re right. That’s exactly what he needs. But are you the one to give that to him, I wonder?” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t even consider it, were it not for the fact that Adrian allowed himself close enough to you for you to discover the truth. You must know how hard it is for him to trust anyone.”
She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. “I have no intention of hurting him again.”
“See that you don’t,” he replied sternly.
She blinked rapidly, feeling like the worst sort of trash. Hadn’t the last few hours proven beyond a doubt that she did not belong here? Maybe she should just take his offer.
“Don’t cry,” he muttered, his entire manner gentling.
“I tried to get him to tell me the truth,” she whispered. “I wanted him to take off the mask, to trust me with his secret, but he wouldn’t. He walked away from me, rather than take the risk. I waited for him to change his mind, but when it became clear that he wouldn’t, I decided to force the issue. To give him no choice but to show me who he really was.”