Golden Flames

by Kay Hooper

  He lifted his head slowly from her breast, his darkened eyes intent on her flushed face. She looked thoroughly kissed, heartbreakingly beautiful in her innocent awareness. Her lips were red and swollen, her eyes sleepy with desire, dimly shocked. He slid his hand back up over her belly, cupping her breast gently and briefly before easing the silk upward until she was decently covered again. Then he surrounded her flushed face softly in one large hand and kissed her, vaguely surprised at the surge of tenderness he felt.

  He brought them both upright, drawing the cloak back over her shoulders as she slowly lowered her arms, fastening it again. And when she was sitting demurely, gazing at him with huge eyes, he leaned back into his own corner and sighed. “No one at the party will doubt that I want you,” he said softly. “A man can never hide what a woman does to him.”

  Her eyes flicked downward to the straining evidence of his arousal, and then skittered hastily back to his face in confusion. Between the plantation of her childhood and Morgan’s thriving ranch, she could hardly have avoided learning of the physical evidence of male sexuality, but his soft, bold reference to his body’s response to her was both shocking and—in some part of herself she didn’t want to acknowledge—exciting.

  He chuckled softly. “Making love in a carriage is an awkward business,” he offered. “If there had been a bed nearby, sweet, a loaded gun wouldn’t have stopped me.”

  Victoria strove to think clearly, but it was almost impossible to do so with his gaze on her. What was the man doing to her? And why did he talk about love when she knew all too well that wasn’t what he wanted from her at all. “I—I suppose you’d know…about carriages.” She felt a stab of jealousy so sharp it bewildered her even more.

  He chuckled again, a low, husky sound. “I’m thirty-four, sweet. There have been a few carriages. Does that disturb you?”

  “Of course not,” she said stoutly. Then, driven, she said, “Are there—is there someone here? In New York?”

  “A woman? Only you, sweet.”

  “Stop calling me that,” she managed to object somewhat weakly.

  “But you are sweet. I can still taste your sweet skin in my mouth, on my tongue. As sweet as honey.”

  Victoria tried not to think of her still-burning body, her aching need for something beyond her experience. But it was so difficult when he insisted on talking that way! She concentrated on the rhythmic hoofbeats of the horses drawing their carriage. “Where is this party? We’ve gone a long way already.”

  “Almost there. The home of Leon Hamilton.”

  She had wondered if their destination would be the home of someone who knew her and Morgan, and was relieved to find that this was not the case. And it was unlikely, she had decided, that the “cream of New York society” would contain anyone she had met; Morgan cared little for society, and his friends here were primarily businessmen and their families. Still, she was half-consciously braced to encounter someone who knew she was married.

  “Leon Hamilton? Sir Leon Hamilton?”

  “He abandoned the title when he left England,” Falcon told her lazily. “It was a terrible blow to his wife, Mary. She had a fancy to be called Lady Hamilton.”

  Both curious and determined to divert her mind from other confusing emotions, she asked, “How did you meet them?”

  “During the war. Leon held a post in Washington, and I was often there.” He didn’t tell her that Leon had been, and still was, a very high official, and Falcon’s boss; that was something very few people knew.

  Victoria wanted to question him further, but she became aware suddenly that the carriage was slowing, aware of bright lights and gay music and the hum of many voices. And when she looked out the carriage window, she was daunted to see a huge mansion, sprawling with the indolent air of immense wealth.

  She had been born in a mansion, and Morgan’s home was hardly a hovel, but wealth of this rare type was utterly beyond her experience. She felt suddenly awkward, wretchedly inexperienced, and somehow inferior. And he saw.

  As the carriage stopped and a footman opened the door with a flourish, he stepped out and took her hand to help her. And his smile was gentle. “You will undoubtedly be besieged by amorous admirers in just a few moments, but I refuse to give you up even to our host.” He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and led her up the wide, shallow steps, and Victoria felt inexpressibly more confident.

  —

  “I don’t know where Falcon found you,” Mary Hamilton said cheerfully a few hours later, “but I must say it’s doing him a great deal of good to realize he has to fight to keep you!”

  Victoria smiled at the merry brunette as they both sat, partially sheltered, behind a screen of plants in the vast ballroom. Her confidence had grown even more, for Falcon’s prediction had been uncannily accurate. He had given her up to a succession of dance partners, however, because Leon Hamilton had quite literally dragged him from the ballroom almost instantly after the first dance. “Some kind of business, I suppose,” Mary had explained wryly.

  “Why is that?” Victoria lightly asked her hostess now.

  Mary laughed. “Haven’t you noticed that since he and Leon have come back into the ballroom that Falcon has looked exceedingly disgruntled because he finds you claimed for dances with other men? It’s a new thing for him, I promise you. Women tend to desert other men to fall at his charming feet.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” Victoria murmured, stealing a glance at the dance floor, where Falcon’s partner for the last two dances had been a vibrant redhead with predatory eyes.

  Mary noted the glance and sighed. “Yes, Cassie does cling somewhat. Not that she has any right,” she added hastily. “But Cassie was born with the conviction that every man just has to succumb to her charms, and she’s been working on Falcon for a good, long while now.” She didn’t add that her own impression was that Falcon had quite likely succumbed, to the extent of enjoying those charms at least once out in the secluded garden during a previous party; knowing Cassie, Mary felt that hardly counted as a conquest.

  “What are you ladies doing hiding behind the plants?” Leon Hamilton demanded severely as he joined them. “Gossiping, no doubt.” He was a distinguished man with silver hair and shrewd, kind eyes, and reminded Victoria of Morgan.

  Mary lifted a haughty brow at her husband. “We’ve both been trundled around the floor, trod upon, leered at, and sweet-talked until we’re fairly sick of the sight of you exhausting males. We’re fragile flowers, you know, and, without rest, prone to fainting spells.”

  “You’ve never fainted in your life,” Leon told his wife lovingly. “When Brian was born, I was the one who fainted.”

  Victoria was a little startled, but Mary giggled and told her, “He did too. Facedown on the floor. He almost broke his nose.”

  “I was better with James,” Leon told Victoria in a cheerful tone. “I only thought about fainting.”

  “Miss Fontaine?” One of her previous partners, a somewhat inebriated scion of a wealthy importer, stood before them with a hangdog expression of loverlike pleading. “Dance? You promised me another.”

  “I’d love to, Mr. Nash,” Victoria said promptly, rising to accept his arm. And she had the satisfaction of seeing a dark scowl on a particular face in the crowd; Falcon had begun to make his way toward her, and now turned toward the punch bowl instead with an expression just short of savage.

  Victoria kept half her mind on the rather stumbling conversation and feet of her partner, while the rest of her thoughts were concerned with the ball in general and Falcon in particular. He hadn’t partnered her since that first dance, but she had felt his brooding gaze on her even as each of them had danced with others. The redheaded Cassie, with all her ripe charms, had been unable to hold his attention.

  “Oh, pardon me, Miss Fontaine!”

  “Quite all right, Mr. Nash,” she acknowledged automatically, shoring him up with a strong arm and attempting to keep her feet out of his lethal path. She choked back a giggle a
s she glanced around at other couples, and she was fascinated by what she saw.

  There were probably a hundred people filling the ballroom, dancing and laughing, people dressed in brilliant colors and with the flush of exertion and enjoyment on their faces. It was hardly the decorous scene she dimly remembered from balls in her childhood, but there was something immensely appealing in the robustness of it all. There were no overt improprieties, although Victoria had seen more than one couple disappear out into the garden with glazed, intent expressions, and her partners so far had shown a tendency toward flowery compliments.

  “…like emeralds!”

  She blinked up at the flushed and handsome face of her partner. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Nash?”

  Steering her with a heavy tread around a couple dancing more slowly, he said doggedly, “I said, you have eyes like emeralds.”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you.” Accustomed to her protected status as Morgan’s wife, she had found the most difficulty in responding to these wretched compliments with an appearance of ease; it was hardly something she was used to hearing.

  “Marry me!”

  “No, thank you,” she answered absently, stealing a glance toward the punch bowl, where Falcon watched her broodingly and a redheaded Cassie stroked his lapel with one of her talons.

  “Miss Fontaine!”

  “Oh, hush,” she murmured, frowning up at Nash. “People stare when you wail like that! What is it?”

  “I asked you to marry me,” he told her in an aggrieved, but lower, tone of voice.

  Victoria managed to compose her expression into one of reluctant denial, but only because she’d had practice; this was the third proposal in an hour. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Nash, but that isn’t possible.” Gravely, she added, “You see, I’ve lost my heart to a riverboat gambler.” By this time, she could almost have described that mythical gentleman.

  The music ended with a flourish, and the damp hands of Nash unwillingly released her. “Oh, hell,” he said.

  Victoria curtsied, keeping her face grave, and turned away from his disheartened self. Instantly, she found her hand tucked into another masculine arm, and Falcon was leading her toward the punch bowl.

  “If you aren’t thirsty,” he told her very politely, “you should be. How many times did he step on your foot?”

  “Only once,” Victoria replied serenely.

  Falcon laughed, a bit shortly. “Do you always let your dancing partners hold you so close?”

  She turned to face him at the table, accepting the glass he held out, elated by his tone. But she kept that elation out of her expression. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.” He stared down at her. “Half the men in this room have had their hands on you in the past hour. It’s that damned dress.” His gaze dropped to her lavishly displayed bosom, still presenting its enticing illusions, and a nerve throbbed at the corner of his hard-held mouth. “They can’t take their eyes off you, they’ve been drooling over you since we arrived.”

  “They?” she said very softly.

  His gaze lifted swiftly to her face, and there was a flash of reluctant, wry humor in the depths of his eyes before they were shuttered again. “They. Me. I’m just like the rest of these poor besotted bastards, caught in your web.”

  Victoria felt a strange, hot shiver at the leashed savagery in his deep voice, and she realized for the first time the danger of taunting a man like Falcon. Beneath the civilized, polite manners he maintained in public, she was all too aware of something not quite tame. Wildness. Her free hand reached out to touch his forearm lightly, and she could feel it tense even through the material separating his flesh from hers. “Dance with me,” she invited quietly.

  He set his glass aside slowly, took hers and placed it also on the table, and then grasped her hand and led her out onto the floor. The musicians were playing a waltz, and he pulled her far closer than was proper, the hand at her back guiding her firmly. She caught her breath in surprise, very conscious of his body brushing hers with every step, but couldn’t find the will to draw away from him.

  “No one held me this close,” she managed breathlessly.

  “Good.” His eyes were darkened, heavy-lidded. His gaze dropped to her bosom for a moment, then lifted to her face again, and the green eyes glittered darkly. “Make sure no one else does. I’d hate to have to kill a man over you.” His voice had hoarsened, but there was something almost careless in the tone, despite his savage words, as if killing a man over her was something he wouldn’t hesitate to do.

  Victoria lifted her chin, her confusion about this man lending her a flash of spirit. “You don’t own me.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “No!” she snapped.

  He smiled slowly, and when he spoke, he kept his voice low. “I will, Victoria. I’ll brand you so completely mine that other men will see it from ten feet away.” He watched her absorb that, saw confusion warring with the anger in her eyes; she was showing her spirit for the first time, and he was fascinated by her.

  “I won’t belong to you.”

  “You will.”

  The interlude in the carriage had shown her that the pleasure to be found in his arms was wildly overpowering, and she had not allowed herself to consider the enormity of that. But now, bearing the implacable note in his calm voice, she felt a surge of sheer, blind panic. It was no longer a matter of whether she behaved with ladylike morals or saved her good name; in that instant, she realized that something vital to her very being was at stake in this dangerous game. He threatened more than her reputation. He could destroy far more than society’s opinion of her, far more than she had believed possible.

  He could destroy her.

  With a muffled cry, she wrenched free of him, fighting her way past several startled couples until she escaped the ballroom through the French doors leading out onto the veranda.

  —

  “Falcon!”

  He paused at the doors, turning reluctantly to face Leon Hamilton. “What is it, Leon? I’ve already made my report.” He kept his voice low, but it was impatient. “I have to—“

  “She won’t go anywhere,” Leon told him dryly. “The garden is enclosed, remember? Come into my study. I’ve just received a message.” He turned away.

  Falcon hesitated for an instant, then muttered, “Goddammit,” and followed his host…and boss.

  Leon was pouring brandy into a glass when Falcon entered the book-lined study. He handed it to the younger man. “You look like you need something stronger than that doctored punch out there.”

  “Thanks.” Falcon drained the glass and set it aside with the businesslike air of a man who wants to get on to other more important things. “The message?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to sit down?”

  “No.”

  Leon smiled. “I didn’t think so.” He cleared his throat. “The message. Marcus Tyrone’s back in the city. You know he gave us the slip a few weeks ago in that little ship of his? He was heading south, but we lost him. Well, he’s home.”

  Falcon frowned. “When?”

  “Couple of days ago, I believe, although I just got the message. Does it matter?”

  Falcon didn’t answer for a long moment. Did it matter?

  Marcus Tyrone. The blockade-running captain was now a successful businessman, and Falcon had made a point of showing himself to the man each time he visited New York. Theirs was an odd relationship, balanced carefully between surface cordiality and animosity, between knowledge and suspicion. They had met formally after the war, and though Falcon had not accused Tyrone of having transported the gold to the rebels, each had heard the silent accusation as the hunter had cordially faced the hunted. There was nothing to be done about Tyrone’s involvement now, Falcon was aware, unless he was caught with the gold in his hands.

  And since Falcon was not in the habit of deceiving himself, he admitted at least inwardly that he would have disliked it very much if he had been f
orced to openly accuse Tyrone, or have him arrested. He felt, perhaps oddly, that the other man could have been a friend under different circumstances.

  He acknowledged that and thought about it. Perhaps it came from a feeling of empathy, he decided. Tyrone, like himself, was a lone wolf; even in a crowd he stood apart, observing…usually cynically.

  “ ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be,’ ” Falcon murmured aloud, then laughed shortly.

  “What?” Leon asked.

  Falcon looked at him. “Nothing. Does it matter that Tyrone arrived in New York a couple of days ago? I don’t know, Leon. I just don’t know.” He drew a deep breath, conscious once again of jangling instincts he couldn’t label or sort. “But I have the feeling that things are happening, things we don’t know about yet. Someone’s put a match to a trail of gunpowder, and I don’t know where the hell it’ll lead.”

  Leon’s brows lifted, but in surprise rather than doubt. “I’ve never heard you sound so sure of anything.”

  “I’m only sure something’s happening. Not what it is. We’ll see.” He sighed. “Until we have the list, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then I’ll go back to the party.”

  “Yes,” Leon murmured. “I thought you would.”

  —

  She engulfed him in a wave of perfume at the bottom of the veranda steps, her breathy voice urgent.

  “Oh, Falcon, I knew you’d come looking for me! I’ve been waiting, waiting so long. Here, darling, this way—“

  “If I were a gentleman,” Falcon said dryly, allowing himself to be led down a path, “I’d certainly accept your flattering offer, Cassie. But since I’m a right bastard, I’ll admit that you aren’t the lady I came looking for.”

  Her laugh was a tinkling sound, unoffended, even disbelieving. “That washed-out blond bitch? Oh, forget her, darling. She couldn’t warm a man with a blazing torch in her hand, and probably wouldn’t know what to do with this lovely thing.” Her hand was stroking the front of his trousers passionately. She had pulled him behind a bush and tugged down the low-cut neckline of her gown to rub her generous breasts against his chest.