“Believe it, love.” He squeezed her upper arm. “I’ve come for you.”
He had come to Carrington House, yes. But his intentions weren’t as pure as he pretended. Couldn’t be. Not after all this time, all this silence. She couldn’t help but wonder why, given the intervening months and lack of word, he would appear in her chamber, ready to seduce her as though she were one of his strumpets.
Very well, she’d play at his game. All the better to rout her enemy. “Why now?”
“Why not now?” He gave her another maddening kiss.
She broke it, her palms finding his shoulders and pushing. “Perhaps I ought to rethink your disfigurement. I don’t trust you, Pembroke. You’re a stranger to me, and I certainly don’t want your kisses. Surely there are any number of women scattered about London who would be more than eager to receive them.”
“I’m not so strange. I’m your husband.” He slid her nightdress down over her shoulder. “And I daresay your lips might be telling me one tale, but your body tells me another. You aren’t as cold as you would pretend, my girl.”
“You’re five months too late recalling we’re wed, my lord.” How many nights had she lain alone, thinking of his kiss, his hands on her, his body joining hers? Far too many to give in with such ease, her conscience warned her. She did not wish to become a victim to him yet again. “Or do you expect me to believe you’ve suffered a blow to the head and have been wandering about London an amnesiac left with no choice save pilfering the drawers of every woman you can find?”
He nipped the curve of her shoulder with his teeth, sending a shiver of awareness through her. “On that account, I can assure you that you’re hopelessly wrong, my dear. I’ve never once purloined the drawers of any lady of my acquaintance.”
How like him not to deny his sins but to attempt distraction and seduction instead. “That is probably owed to them not wearing any,” she said with grim boldness, not caring if she shocked him. Let him be shocked. Let him be angry. Let him be anything but the cad she’d married, all beautiful of face and silver of tongue.
He cast her an amused glance as he licked her skin. “Have you a peculiar habit of peering beneath other ladies’ skirts? I daresay if you have, I might be tempted to watch.”
The rotten man. She should’ve known she couldn’t shock someone of his reputation, a man who thought he could leave his wife to collect dust in the countryside while he gadded about London, only to return months later with fast hands and a wicked mouth. “Of course I haven’t, you scoundrel.” She shrugged away from him. “If there is anyone in this chamber with a fondness for being beneath other ladies’ skirts, it is you.”
“Fair enough. I’ll own my failings.” He stilled, capturing her gaze with his. Even after all he’d done, the impact took her breath. “I’ve hurt you.”
Pembroke said it as though he were just processing the realization, almost as if the fact that she possessed feelings was a revelation. Perhaps he had never thought of her as a flesh-and-blood woman with expectations and emotions. Certainly, it would have been far more convenient for him that way.
Of course he had hurt her. He’d hurt her far more than she cared to admit and far more than she would admit to him. “You disappointed me and misused me.”
“I’m sorry, darling.” He bent his head and kissed her shoulder again.
She wished that apology hadn’t slid so effortlessly off his tongue, for it only underscored his disingenuousness. But she wasn’t the girl he’d married any longer, now was she? She had come a long way from the quiet, shy debutante who’d been more terrified of London’s Upper Ten Thousand than she’d been of New York’s frigid Four Hundred.
Victoria stopped him again. “No. You mustn’t.”
“Ah, but I must.” Her husband’s mouth was on her neck, kissing a trail over her bare skin.
She steeled herself against him. His brand of persuasion was exceedingly intoxicating, but the price would prove dear. It always had with him. “When last I saw you, your tone was quite different,” she reminded.
“Circumstances change.” Somehow, the bedclothes had pooled around her waist once more. He peeled the fabric of her nightdress back and kissed his way down the swell of one breast.
“How could they have changed so swiftly?” She pushed him away but he caught her hands, turning them over to kiss. “You made it abundantly clear you didn’t want a wife, and you most certainly didn’t want me.”
“I did no such thing,” he scoffed. His teeth scored the sensitive center line of her palm.
Victoria recalled all too well the awful argument they’d had before he left for London. His words still stung, even with the intervening time that had passed. I married you because I had no other option besides penury. My father demanded it. I bloody well never wanted a wife. I’ve done my duty, and now I’m going to carry on living my life as I see fit.
The Duke of Cranley held Pembroke’s purse strings, she had discovered after their nuptials took place. The duke wanted his heir to settle down, and he’d done what he needed to make certain the unruly Pembroke would comply. He’d cut him off. Having satisfied the old man’s stipulation, Pembroke had once again had no need for an unwanted wife. He’d left her behind in the country and pretended as if she didn’t exist.
She’d somehow been foolish enough to believe he held her in regard, but he had merely been good at manipulation and getting what he wanted. She had begged him to stay, and he’d looked through her as if she were a piece of furniture in his study. Expendable. The reminder was like stepping into a hip bath of ice water. She shoved him. “Go away, Pembroke.”
He rolled over onto his back, his big body stretched out alongside hers, and heaved a sigh. “I can’t go away. I live here.”
“You live in London,” she countered.
“I live wherever I choose.”
She supposed he did. But he’d chosen to live as far away from her as possible. Victoria straightened her nightdress and propped herself up on her elbow to study him. “Why have you decided to return to Carrington House? Truly?”
He skewered her with a ferocious frown. “Why pepper your husband with blasted questions when he’s just returned home? Should you not be overjoyed to see me?”
Victoria considered him, wishing he was not quite so debonair, not quite so compelling. Not quite so likeable in spite of his voluptuary ways. His teasing air and persuasive kisses were like wine. She didn’t dare over imbibe. “No. I daresay I ought not to be. If you think you can return here after mostly ignoring me for the entirety of our marriage and expect a warm welcome, you are positively delusional.”
“It’s only been a fortnight or so.”
Oh he was a maddening creature. “It’s been five months.”
“Dear me. Has it?” The look he directed her way was half sheepish.
And then, like a sudden burst of light in a dark room, it came upon her, the real reason for her husband’s return, for his presence in her chamber, his skilled kisses and roaming hands. Her lips tightened and a wave of fury hit her with so much force her body trembled with it. “You’ve spent the money you received in the marriage settlement, haven’t you?”
He frowned. “Of course not.”
She didn’t believe him. “The duke has cut you off.”
“Lower your voice, my girl. You’ll have all the miscreants belowstairs prattling about us.”
“I am not your girl.” Her outrage heightened at his blasé tone. “The only miscreant in this house is you, Pembroke. Now leave me to my slumber and find your own chamber. For that matter, go back to London. Surely there are any number of women awaiting you. I don’t want you here.”
“I daresay you’ll change your mind. Let’s not make a row of it.”
She gritted her teeth and reached for the Dickens volume, holding it aloft in threatening promise. “If you don’t get out at once, I’ll give your nose another good, hard thwack with Great Expectations.”
Pembroke rose to a sitting
position, raking a hand through his already-disheveled hair. “You wouldn’t.”
Perhaps she ought to blacken his eye while she was at it. “I most certainly would. Now get out.”
Chapter Two
Well good Christ, this was proving an utter disaster. There was a very real possibility of bodily harm at the hands of his countess, who currently wielded a book of Dickens as though it were a sword with which she could run him through. Not only that, but she presumed to order him about, demanding that he leave this chamber which, by rights, was truly his, along with everything in it.
Along with her.
Jesus, the fire-spitting creature before him was not the woman he’d left behind the day after they’d wed. His plan suddenly seemed far more difficult than he’d supposed, for it all had gone straight to Hades the moment he’d stepped into her dark chamber. The quiet young lady he’d known had turned into a book-wielding virago. Perhaps she was even a trifle unhinged. His nose still smarted with the sting of her unexpected blow, and he found it nearly impossible to believe that she’d actually bitten him as though she were a feral dog.
Of course, perhaps he wasn’t so unlike a feral dog himself, for her nip had made him harder than he’d already been. Although she had made every effort to push him away, he didn’t mistake her body’s reaction to him. Nor did he mistake his to hers.
Tonight, he saw her in a way he hadn’t before. He’d caught a glimpse of vulnerability in her unguarded expression before she’d chased it away with scorn. But it had been there, and that fleeting impression hit him square in the gut as he considered her now. She was just a woman, trapped as surely as he, more than a mere pawn in his war against his father.
The realization shook him in a way nothing else had in his admittedly misbegotten thirty years of life. She raised the book higher, as though to somehow menace him, and the action disbanded the spell that had settled over him. He should have gotten good and soused before coming to her. Perhaps he was growing as addled as the duke.
“Bloody hell, woman, put the book down,” he ordered. “I’ll overlook the first blow and even the bite, but if you attempt to maim me again, I’m afraid my patience for spoiled American girls will be at an end.”
But his words only served to rankle her even more. Roses bloomed in her cheeks, her full lips tightening into a grim line. The oddest urge to kiss them back into their natural, pliable shape hit him. Ridiculous. He didn’t want this woman, this stranger with a gleaming cascade of golden hair falling over her shoulders, with her flat New York accent and freckled, retroussé nose. He never had.
In the time he’d been away, his mind had not often flitted to her. It was true what she’d said. Petite souris, he’d thought when he’d first seen her in a crushed ballroom, little mouse. His to play with and then abandon at will. It had been dreadfully easy to ply her with charm. Easier still to leave her behind and all but forget her existence as he buried himself in all manner of vices in London.
“Indeed, my lord?” Her voice was frigid as Wenham Lake ice. “How very amusing, for I find that my patience for spoiled English earls who’ve never known an inkling of responsibility in their misspent lives is at an end as well. That means you really ought to go.”
She had cheek, and the perverse streak that had always run through him admired her gumption. But her words had also touched a far more sensitive vein inside him, the one he’d fought for years to dull with hedonistic distraction. Responsibility. Duty. They were words he loathed, words that in his youth meant accepting whatever abuse his father had chosen to inflict upon him. It is your duty as the heir. You have a responsibility. For a moment, as the past threatened to intrude upon his sanity, he swore he could feel the brutal lash of the last caning he’d received, hear the sick crack of bone. Broken ribs were the devil of a thing.
“Careful, darling,” he warned.
She watched him, seemingly weighing her options. The Dickens volume remained aloft, her battle colors flying. “What should I be careful of? What will you do, sir? Will you bed me and then leave? Will you abandon me to rot here for a year? Ten years?”
She had no notion of who he was, of just how low and depraved he could be. And she was foolishly brave to mock him, to tempt the beast within to roar to life. “I’m much larger than you.” Keeping his tone even was a struggle. Suddenly, he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. This should have been easy. Quick. Instead, he’d spent the last half hour attempting to bed her and being routed at every turn. “I could very easily bend you to my whims, my dear. I could take the book from you. I could take you, if I chose.”
Her nostrils flared, the only indication that his words affected her. “Ah, at last the charm has fled. No more pretty words and roaming hands? If you would force me, my lord, I have no choice.” She dropped the book to the floor, and it was one of the heaviest sounds he’d ever heard. Then she settled into a supine position, arms tight to her sides, still as a corpse, staring at the ceiling. “Here you are, my lord. If it pleases you to take what I’m not willing to give, then take it. It’s yours, after all. Everything I’ve ever had is yours now.”
Damn it. Damn her, for being the heiress the duke had chosen to replenish the dwindling family coffers, for being yet another unwanted duty foisted upon him, for being outspoken and bold, for taking him to task and making him feel lower than the worst sort of East End criminal. Damn her for making him see her. For making him want her. For making him see the man he’d become.
He grabbed the bedclothes and yanked them to her chin, disgusted with himself. “I’d never force you.”
She met his gaze, unflinching. “I’m not spoiled. Nor am I a girl.”
No, she wasn’t a girl. She was very much a woman. Her body was lush and full in all the proper places. High, heavy breasts. Rounded thighs, trim ankles. She smelled of orris root, and her hair was a revelation. Freed from the dreadful, pastel gowns she’d worn during her Season, she was all woman. All lovely. Perhaps she had been before, and he’d been so blinded by his resentment that he’d failed to notice. He hadn’t been her only suitor, after all. But he’d been the heir to a duchy, and he had won her hand.
Yes, he’d won her, and then he’d left her. Little wonder she thought he would ravage her. Jesus, what a bastard he was. It had been easy to blame her when she’d been an afterthought rather than a woman staring at him with haunted eyes.
“My apologies,” he blurted, because he didn’t know what else to say and because everything he’d imagined—all the meaningless praise and sweet flattery he’d intended to ply her with—had been vanquished by the sight of her lying still on the bed, waiting for him to abuse her.
She stared at him. “Why have you returned?”
Why had he returned? The answer was simple. He’d made a deal with the devil, and the devil had reneged.
“An inkling of responsibility,” he repeated her words as he slid from the bed. With the formality of a suitor in a drawing room, he bowed to her. “I shall leave you to your slumber, my lady. Until tomorrow.”
Without waiting for her response, he strode to his adjoining chamber, slamming the door at his back. Damn it all to hell. How had he ever imagined this would be straightforward? Nothing about returning to Carrington Hall and the wife he hadn’t wanted was. Here he stood, alone in his unprepared chamber, which he generally disliked even when it had been readied for him and which he vastly disliked when it had not.
The room smelled as though it had been sealed up for quite some time. The lamps were lit, but beyond that, nothing was readied. His valet was likely still overseeing the unpacking of his carriage below, and he was left ringing the bell pull for assistance.
His hands shook. Jesus, she’d unnerved him, his wife. She had a name, of course. Victoria. He’d never spoken it aloud, had never even thought it until this moment with the sting of self-disgust roiling through him. How little he knew of her. How little attention he’d paid her. She came from a well-known New York family and her father ha
d made a fortune on stocks before sending her to London with an immense dowry. She hadn’t been as bold as some of her fellow American heiresses. She had seemed mild of temperament, given to dreadful dresses. Proper and prim, the sort of lady he sought to avoid at house parties and balls.
The sort of lady one might abandon in the country for five months at a time.
Beyond that, he knew nothing. Not nothing, perhaps. He knew she smelled of violets and her hair felt like heavy silk in his fingers. He knew the lush lines of her body. Thinking of her now, her creamy skin and full breasts, the glimpse he’d caught of a pink, erect nipple—made his cock hard all over again. None of it made sense—not his reaction to her, not her transformation, not any damn bit of it. This odd, inconvenient attraction he felt for her was surely the effect of a lack of spirits and a return to his grim ancestral home and all its demons.
After all, he was the Earl of Pembroke, celebrated womanizer and unrepentant rakehell. He preferred fast women who wore bright colors and low décolletages, women who gambled and changed lovers like gowns and had husbands who didn’t mind. His father had hand-selected Victoria as his wife, largely for her marriage settlement of half a million pounds. Not a sum to be sneezed at by anyone these days. Will had been given an ultimatum—marry the chit to restore the familial coffers or be disinherited altogether. He’d swallowed his pride and half a bottle of whisky and made a deal with the devil. Marriage to the little American mouse, then he’d return to his old life once more. And return to his old life he had, with the abandon of the truly dissolute.
Until the summons.
The duke expected him to produce heirs and was not pleased to see his august decree so openly flouted. But Will couldn’t resist perturbing the old bastard with a good scandal. He’d allowed Maria to live in the Belgravia townhouse for two months, and she’d destroyed a number of costly family paintings when he’d informed her that her services would no longer be required.
Dashing Dukes and Romantic Rogues Page 29