by Sara Bennett
“Tell me what should I watch out for?” she asked him, leaning forward in her chair. “I mean, in case a man wishes to seduce me and in my cloistered innocence I don’t immediately understand his intentions?”
The words sounded ridiculous to her own ears but Valentine didn’t appear to notice. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, he may try to persuade you to be alone with him.”
“Do you mean like we’re alone?”
“Yes.” He frowned. “Only this is quite different.”
“And what might he do when we’re alone?” She wrinkled her brow. “Perhaps you should show me exactly what you do mean, Valentine?”
He was still staring at her and now his gaze dropped to her décolletage, her rounded flesh straining against the deep rose of the cloth. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and Marissa knew with complete certainty that she had been right to pack this dress for George.
It was a shame he wasn’t here to see it.
Chapter 11
Valentine felt as if a bolt struck him low in the belly, traveling like wildfire throughout his body. His head swam, his heart began to thud heavily. This was a degree of lust, of need, he had never felt before. With her pale flesh falling out of that delicious dress and her dark curls caressing her neck, she was like something from a midnight fantasy.
And, oh God, he wanted her.
“Would he touch me, do you think?” she said in that same dreamy voice. “Like you touched me?”
He tried to cool himself down but her words brought images to his fevered mind that only raised his temperature higher. “Marissa,” he groaned, “stop.”
“Would he kiss me, do you think?” She slid forward on the edge of her chair, closer to him. He could feel the warmth of her body and smell her scent. “Like you kissed me, Valentine?”
Her lips were only a fraction of an inch from his. So near he could taste them. Valentine struggled to gain control of himself, trying to remember all the reasons he’d sworn he would stay away from the minx. He was winning, or he thought he was, and then she slipped down onto her knees on the floor, her hands resting on top of his thighs, and smiled up at him.
Her dark eyes were wide, guileless, but there was a laughing sparkle deep within. Her dimple peeped out, teasing him. And that was when he realized it was all pretense. He’d been treating her like an innocent ingénue so she was playing the part.
She must have seen something in his expression warning her he’d seen through her act, because she went to withdraw her hands. Quick as a flash he grasped them tightly with his, holding her prisoner.
“Oh no you don’t, minx,” he said. “You asked me to show you what a man like Von Hautt would do to you and I’m going to show you. It’s the least I can do after your performance just now.”
Her lashes swept down and she stopped struggling.
He closed the distance between them, taking her mouth deeply, completely. She made a sound but surprised him by not pulling away. He didn’t plan to be gentle. He was going to show her the worst of mankind.
At least that was his plan.
But the warm delight of her mouth was already blurring the lines between punishment and pleasure. Valentine slid his tongue between her lips, deepening the kiss. She froze and then, dash it, she did the same to him. He groaned, but didn’t stop. It wasn’t until he felt her tugging at his grip on her hands that he was able to control himself enough to draw back.
“Valentine,” she said, and her voice was breathless. “Please.”
He felt ashamed, and for a moment he was back with Vanessa. “My apologies, Marissa. I got carried away.”
“I don’t want you to apologize. I want to touch you.”
He went still. Why did those words of hers affect him so? Because they made him feel wanted and desired, emotions he’d forgotten over the years?
“Is that what you’d say to Von Hautt?” he said huskily, trying to regain control. “Have some sense, Marissa!”
“I am sensible,” she replied calmly. “I always have been sensible. But right now I wish I wasn’t. Right now I refuse to be sensible!”
He began to protest, but she placed her fingertip against his lips. And then she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
“I trust you,” she whispered.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” he growled, and showed her why.
She was hot, her skin on fire, as if the passion he’d lit was burning through her from the inside. She was struggling for breath, probably because of her corset and other fiendish feminine devices. He cupped her breast through the dress, feeling her soft flesh, the hard nub of her nipple butting against his palm and seeming to beg for his mouth. He wanted to oblige. He wanted to take her now, on the Turkish rug. His body was begging him to give it release after so long without a woman.
But Valentine knew he wasn’t going to do that. This was neither the time nor the place, and he was not the man to initiate Marissa into such pleasures, although no doubt she would argue about that as she did everything else.
“Please,” she gasped, “can you do what you did before? Can you touch me…?”
For a moment his head went fuzzy. His hand even moved toward her skirts, but he stopped himself. If he touched her then it would only be a short step to taking her on the rug.
With grim purpose he set her away from him.
For a moment she sat among the folds of her rose red dress. A lock of her hair had fallen over one eye, her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was swollen from his. At first she looked at him expectantly, and then, when he made no move to join her, in bewilderment. Her gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants.
“You want me, Valentine,” she said huskily. “I have learned that much already.”
“Oh yes,” he growled, “I want you, you minx. I don’t deny it.”
“Then why…?” she wailed.
“Because I have no intention of taking a virgin on the salon floor.”
She turned her face away. “I suppose that is a reasonable answer,” she said quietly. Then, with a sideways glance and a little smile, “Is there somewhere else you prefer?”
“This isn’t a joke, Marissa! Despite your wild and passionate behavior, you are an innocent and if I took advantage of that for my own pleasure I would be the worse sort of rake.”
She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and then sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She climbed to her feet, slowly, despondently, and shook her skirts to straighten them. When she looked at him again he saw, with genuine horror, that there were tears sparkling in her eyes.
“I wish you wouldn’t treat me like a silly child,” she said. “I do know my own mind. I am twenty-three years of age and have been an independent woman for a great many of those years now—I’ve had to be.”
Valentine hardened his heart; it was the only way to withstand her. “If you want an affaire, Marissa, there must be a great many men in London willing to oblige you. Why come all the way to Abbey Thorne Manor and pick on me? Or were you planning to ask George?”
She gave him one of her direct looks. “George,” she repeated, and sighed. “George was my first choice…is still my first choice. Are you going to tell him about—about this?”
“Of course,” he mocked. Then, at her gasp of dismay, “No, I’m not going to tell George! I’m not such a beast as that.”
But you are a beast, Valentine.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You know that neither of us planned this thing that is happening between us. Neither of us is able to control it.”
“Speak for yourself,” he said in a hard voice. “I am perfectly able to control myself.”
She wrinkled her brow irritably. “Oh?”
He ignored her. “I agree we are laboring under a strong physical attraction, but it will soon fade and then you will be amazed you ever considered me a candidate for something so precious as your virginity.”
She was watching him, listening to his words, but if he’d exp
ected her to argue or pout and stamp her foot like a child, he was wrong. Marissa was no child. She replied in a way that was honest and touching, though he refused to allow himself to be swayed.
“I have never felt this—this…I don’t even know what to call it. Mating attraction? I want to understand it; I want to wallow in it—take a deep breath and dive in. I am a little out of control, I think, and for someone like me, who is always in control, that is terrifying. And exhilarating. Both at the same time.”
Valentine made another effort to warn her of the perils of her behavior. “You make conversation like a Bohemian. Beware of what you say and who you say it to.”
Her chin was up and she looked as regal as a queen…only far more touchable. “My grandmother is a Bohemian so I learned at an early age to say what I mean.”
“Tell me you are not intending to follow your grandmother’s way of life?” he said. “Your father would never allow it, surely?”
She laughed. “There you go again, thinking I do not know my own mind and must have a man to tell it to me. My father has said he doesn’t care if I marry or not. I think on the whole he would prefer I didn’t because then I could help him catalogue his papers and keep his library tidy. My mother wants to see me happy. They are somewhat Bohemian, too, you see.”
“Marissa,” he growled, “you are driving me to madness.”
“My grandmother has lived a very happy life. She has given herself up to pleasure.”
“Dear God, I am in the presence of a madwoman. Is that what you intend to do? Give yourself up to pleasure?”
She blinked at him, startled. “I suppose, in a way, I do.”
He closed his eyes in genuine pain. When he opened them again she was smiling in a manner that made him extremely nervous. “What are you thinking?” he asked suspiciously.
“I was wondering whether you were about to offer to initiate me into the world of pleasure, Valentine.”
He gave her a hard look and her smile grew, the dimple peeping out in her cheek.
“Don’t worry, Valentine, I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to.”
He scowled at her and refused to answer.
She waited a moment, and then said, “Goodnight, Valentine, I will see you in the morning,” and turned away, her skirts rustling about her.
“Dash it,” he muttered, as the door closed. He poured himself another brandy, despite knowing he’d had enough. The silence of the empty room weighed dark and heavily upon him. It was as if her presence had made it lighter and airier and it was only now she was gone that he realized the fact.
She was like no other woman he’d ever known and he knew he’d never meet another who could match her. He was besotted with her and despite all the problems he could see looming over him he couldn’t bring himself to drive her away.
Valentine set down his half-full glass. He should go to bed and sleep it off, the brandy and Marissa. One thing was for certain, he had no intention of making the same mistake he’d made last time, when he married Vanessa in a warm haze of romantic dreams and woke up with cold, harsh reality. Whatever madness Marissa was trying to inflict upon him must be fought and defeated, because whatever she said this was all her fault. Until she arrived on his doorstep he’d been perfectly happy with his life.
And he refused to consider any alternative views.
It wasn’t until he was in bed and drifting into sleep that he remembered George. Marissa had made it clear—or as clear as anything she said could be—that George was her reason for being at Abbey Thorne Manor. Did she believe herself in love with George? Was he the man she hoped to initiate her into a life of pleasure?
Valentine was no expert on relationships, far from it, but he was fairly sure Marissa and George were not going to be a fairy-tale couple. They were too different and George would treat her carelessly and not like the treasure she so obviously was.
“Dash it!”
With a groan he put the pillow over his head and tried to sleep.
Eventually he did sleep, but it seemed only a moment later that he was sitting bolt upright, staring into the darkness. Voices were coming from downstairs. A door banged shut. In his half-awake state he thought it was Baron Von Hautt come for Marissa, come to carry her out into the woods and undress her.
His eyes sprang open and his heart began to thud. Valentine was just about to leap to her rescue when he realized one of the voices he could hear was Morris’s.
Clambering out of bed, he pulled on his robe and made his way to the landing. There was a candelabra on the table, the wavering light picking out the scene in the hall below. Morris, dapper even in his night robe and nightcap, was helping a man remove his traveling coat, fair hair glittering with raindrops.
“Will I wake Lord Kent, sir?”
“No, no, Morris. Best leave it till the morning. He might be in a better mood then.”
Valentine began to make his way down the stairs. “I doubt it,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing his brother start. “Where have you been, George? And what the devil do you mean by it?”
George met his arrival at the bottom of the stairs with a handshake and a warm smile. “Valentine.”
Valentine tried to maintain his anger but it was already dissipating into a sort of grumpy irritability. George always had that effect on him; he could never stay truly cross with him for very long. Now he sighed and led his brother into the library. Morris followed them, lighting first the candles and then the fire in the grate.
“Well, George?” Valentine demanded, determined to get an answer. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there,” his brother said airily, thanking Morris as he sank down by the fire and warmed his hands.
“Miss Rotherhild was understandably concerned when she arrived and you weren’t here to greet her,” Valentine went on, watching George’s face intently. He wasn’t disappointed. George grimaced and his eyes held a trace of guilt, but only for a moment.
“Marissa? I did remember to tell Morris about her, Valentine. I’m sorry if you were put out. Is she still here or did you insult her and send her fleeing from the ogre, back to London?”
It was Valentine’s turn to feel guilty as he remembered exactly what he and Marissa had been doing. “She is still here,” he said, sitting down opposite his brother. “Why? Did you hope she’d be gone?”
George grinned. “Good God no! She’s a dear girl, don’t you think? I’m looking forward to seeing her.”
Valentine tried to read his face and failed. “What is she to you?” he asked bluntly. “I haven’t a clue what you’re up to and I wish you’d tell me.”
“I’m not up to anything,” George said, with his innocent look. “And Marissa and I have a great deal in common.”
“So she’s told me,” Valentine muttered.
“Well why ask me then?”
“You’ve never mentioned her before.”
George grinned. “Do you fancy her yourself, brother? I should warn you she has an aversion to anyone who dabbles in botanical matters. You’d have to give up your rose.”
“I heard it was by dabbling in such matters that you made Miss Rotherhild’s acquaintance, George. What were you doing attending botanical meetings? It seems very unlike you.”
George sighed. “I’ll only tell you if you promise not to tell her.”
“On my honor,” Valentine said dryly.
“I was passing and I happened to see her entering the building.” George’s expression took on a dreaminess that sharpened his brother’s interest. “She really is a goddess, isn’t she? So I followed her in and pretended to be one of the crowd. They were thrilled to have me, I can tell you, when they knew I was your brother!”
Thankfully Valentine didn’t have to answer, as Morris had reentered the room carrying a tray. George perked up at the sight of it. “Ah, Mrs. Beaumaris’s delicious fare. I tell you, I’m starving! Thank you, Morris. Valentine, I intend to kidnap Mrs. Beaumaris and take her back to L
ondon with me. You don’t realize how lucky you are.”
“And you’re changing the subject,” Valentine retorted, nodding his own thanks to Morris.
George shrugged, and began piling his plate with an assortment from the tray Morris had brought in. “I lost track of time. You know me, I’m easily distracted. There was a boxing match and then I met some friends and was invited to join a shooting party and before I knew it…”
Valentine leaned back in his chair, watching his brother eat. He wanted to berate him, play the stern elder brother, but he couldn’t drag up the necessary emotion. The truth was he was very fond of his younger brother, and there wasn’t any harm done, was there? In fact, George not being here had meant Valentine had Marissa all to himself, and despite all his doubts concerning her, he had enjoyed her company immensely. He’d felt more alive than he’d felt for a very long time.
So instead of telling George off he began to talk about the letter from Bonnie and their father’s army papers and the new direction the quest for the Crusader’s Rose was taking.
George listened intently. “Baron Von Hautt actually shot Jasper?” he said, shocked. “The man has quite clearly lost his mind.”
“I’ve had the servants keep a watch for him around Abbey Thorne, but so far no one has seen him again. But we need to take care, George. Whatever is driving Von Hautt is so strong he is willing to kill for it.”
“I think I will come with you to Magna Midcombe tomorrow,” George said. “Jasper will be of no use, even if he could travel, and Marissa should not come, either, if it’s dangerous.”
Valentine gave a short laugh.
“What?” George demanded, smiling inquiringly.
“If you think Marissa Rotherhild is going to be stopped by the threat of danger then you don’t know her at all.”
George’s gaze sharpened, searching his, but the next moment he was stretching and yawning, saying he’d better get to bed if he was going to be up bright and early in the morning. “Goodnight brother,” he said, as he left the room.