A Grosvernor Square Christmas

by Vanessa Kelly

  She blocked the treacherous warmth that the declaration always inspired. He frequently told her that loved her. When he challenged her inhibitions. When he was buried deep inside her. When she made him laugh.

  Campion wasn’t a complete dimwit, however badly love had sapped her common sense. Young men who set out to lure foolish girls pledged their affections lightly.

  Or perhaps he meant it, if love equaled desire in his mind. She’d been an innocent before this affair, but she’d soon realized that he was in a perpetual lather for her. As she was for him. She’d reached her twenty-third year before discovering desire’s power. Now sensual appetites enslaved her.

  With a deliberate gesture, she swept aside the covers. The cold air contrasted deliciously with the heat rising in her blood. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  When his expression turned predatory, she trembled with excitement. She loved how she could shatter his control. She’d learned to be daring. They didn’t have time for coyness, although she’d been shy and unsure when they’d first come together. Terrified that at any moment, her aunt would thunder in and proclaim her a whore. Positive that she couldn’t possibly measure up to the other girls this man had welcomed into his bed.

  His open delight in her had soon banished self-doubt. And her aunt was yet to suspect that under the guise of feeding an absent childhood friend’s cat, her frumpy niece sneaked away to wallow in sin.

  After ten dreary, sunless years as her aunt’s dogsbody, at last Campion stepped into the light. She felt free here as she never felt free with her unloving relatives who treated her worse than a servant. Ida Parnell had soon discovered that Campion was quick and hardworking. A diligent poor relation, while hardly welcome, was much cheaper to keep than a maid. And less likely to march out in response to impossible demands upon patience or feelings or abilities.

  Campion didn’t lie about feeding Letitia’s cat. Plato snoozed on the corner chair, long ago bored with the two humans. Most days, Letitia’s neighbor saw to Plato, but on Tuesdays, Mrs. Brown visited her son in Hampstead.

  Such fortuitous timing. This room tucked away in an unfashionable corner of London provided the perfect rendezvous. Here nobody from Mayfair or Belgravia was likely to discover Campion with her secret lover.

  Letitia’s lodgings didn’t meet his standards of luxury, she’d always known that. But if Campion was to maintain her good name, they couldn’t go to a hotel. And if he smuggled a mistress into his house on Half Moon Street, he risked an almighty scandal.

  He curled his long, elegant fingers around the edge of the door. His attention on her unwavering, he shut it behind him with a soft snick. The world outside would take its merry way. But here above the streets, thronging with hawkers and shoppers and ladies of ill repute, she and her lover existed in a realm of unconfined physical pleasure. If only for a few hours.

  Campion’s anticipation intensified as he ripped at his neck cloth and shrugged his superbly tailored blue coat off his broad shoulders. He undressed with gratifying speed, flinging clothes around the room. When his shirt landed on top of poor Plato, the cat protested and jumped down to stalk toward the fire.

  Within seconds, her magnificent beloved stood naked. Tall. Lean. Handsome.

  Lachlan Macmurrie, Earl of Ravenglass. Scion of a great family. Custodian of lands throughout Scotland. London’s most eligible bachelor. A man with the devil’s own charm.

  And this afternoon, Campion Parnell’s to enjoy.

  To her surprise, their looming parting had retreated from her mind. She’d imagined this last meeting laden with sadness. But when this resplendent man wanted her so blatantly, she couldn’t help but bask in his molten gaze. She stretched against the sheets, raising her arms above her head with an abandon that would astonish anyone who knew her outside this enchanted domain.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said softly. The reverence in his voice made her bones dissolve with longing.

  She wasn’t beautiful, but when she looked into his face, she felt as if she was. She was ordinary; fair hair, medium height, blue eyes as common in Englishwomen as buttercups in the spring.

  Lord Ravenglass was anything but ordinary. Her eyes feasted upon him, cataloguing every detail. The narrow, intelligent face under its wing of ruler-straight dark hair. The long, thin mouth that kissed her into delirium. The blade of a nose as haughty as an emperor’s. The powerful body with its spare muscles.

  An exultant smile stretched her lips. “You’re quite picturesque yourself.”

  His mouth quirked. “Like a garden folly?”

  That mouth had fascinated her from the moment she’d met him at the Fulfords’ masquerade, a month after she’d arrived in London to assist in her cousin’s husband hunting.

  By rights, Campion Parnell should have been well below the superb Earl of Ravenglass’s touch; in looks, in fortune, in breeding, in rank. But the Fulfords’ party had been a crush and she’d been masked and more inclined than usual to respond to friendly overtures. At every other event she’d attended, she’d been too conscious that she was the poor relation to put herself forward.

  When the tall stranger had remarked upon the music, which had been awful, and offered a hand to help her through the crowd, she’d accepted. Although if her aunt had seen her niece with the famous Lord Ravenglass, she’d have packed Campion off to Sussex in disgrace that very night.

  Aunt Ida harbored ambitions for her daughter Fenella. If either Parnell girl was to catch the earl’s attention, it wouldn’t be the annoying burden that her brother-in-law’s death had inflicted upon her household. Luckily, Aunt Ida’s attentions in London were so focused on Fenella’s social progress that Campion could escape the house more often than was strictly proper.

  Lord Ravenglass was a man of the world, a veteran of romantic intrigues. Only someone of his experience could have contrived further meetings. Their flirtation had progressed quickly through secret walks in the park and drives in a closed carriage. Drives that Campion recalled mainly for increasingly halfhearted attempts to retain her chastity.

  When Lachlan had begged her to come to his bed, she hadn’t hesitated. Fate seemed to favor her lapse from virtue. For the only time in her life, Campion was largely unsupervised, she had access to a private room, and she wanted to give herself to a man.

  So easily had she strayed from the once inevitable path of virginity, drudgery, and obedience. Whatever untold misery awaited once she left London, still she couldn’t repent her recklessness.

  “Come and ruin me again,” she said in a low voice.

  “With pleasure.” He strode forward, expression intent. The air sizzled with his desire. The sight of his hardness made her shift restlessly against the sheets to ease her rising need. Her belly tightened with liquid heat.

  He snatched her up and kissed her with a desperation that left her quivering with excitement. The prospect of leaving him stabbed anew. With a strangled sob, she flung her arms around his neck. Before he could query her distress, she distracted him. He groaned into her mouth as she stroked him.

  With an urgency that sent the blood rushing through her veins, he pushed her into the mattress and came down over her. She immediately arched up, curling her legs around him. When they’d first become lovers, she’d been awkward. Now she swiftly positioned herself. He slid into her with a powerful ease that forced the breath from her lungs in a long exhalation of satisfaction. He filled her, made her complete, anchored her in the world.

  At the peak of his thrust, he stopped and rose on his arms, staring at her as if memorizing every line and plane of her features.

  She felt trapped in bright light. Could he see the love she’d never confessed? He must guess that a woman who until now had kept herself pure felt more than just a passing fancy.

  As the craving to move became irresistible, her fingers dug into his shoulders with bruising pressure. She could tell from his tightening muscles that he too felt that primitive compulsion to finish, to rush to completion, to seek
ecstatic oblivion.

  Still he didn’t move.

  She clenched in subtle invitation. Hold. Release. Hold. Release. Her body tempted him, demanded that he break this stasis.

  “Lachlan?” It hurt to speak, her throat was so jammed with the tension spinning between them.

  “Don’t move.” He shifted infinitesimally, sparking a jolt of tumultuous sensation. But still it wasn’t enough.

  “What do you want?” she asked helplessly, plowing her fingernails into his back. Even through her striving, she felt a savage pleasure in knowing that he’d wear her mark tomorrow. After she’d gone.

  “I want to know you’re mine,” he grated.

  “Of course I’m yours.” She heard the despair in her voice. If he only knew how true those words were.

  “When I’m inside you, like this, I know that.”

  His unexpected vulnerability breached her barriers against revealing her love. “It’s always true,” she confessed, pressing upward, frustration fizzing in her blood.

  “Make me believe it.” He caught her thighs and pushed them high, changing his angle. The movement set off a series of small explosions inside her. She was so close to the familiar crisis and he’d hardly touched her yet.

  “Believe it.”

  She was his. She always would be.

  The hunger in his kiss ripped through her, made her shake. This possession stirred responses that she’d never felt before. She met him with open-mouthed welcome, teeth clashing, tongues dancing. He crushed her into the bed, tangling his hands in her wild mane of hair.

  Still he kissed her. Still he didn’t move.

  She whimpered beneath him. “Please, Lachlan. Please.”

  “Do you want me?” he growled, rubbing his cheek against hers like a lion greeting his mate. And still his huge, throbbing power filled her.

  “More than life itself,” she admitted.

  He sighed with shuddering relief. His breath ruffled the hair at her temple, teased the delicate shell of her ear. “You’ve never said that before.”

  “You knew.” She curled her hands around his neck and tugged sharply at the damp strands at his nape.

  He grunted at the discomfort. “I hoped.”

  “You knew,” she insisted.

  Finally he shifted, dragging back slowly, stealing her capacity for speech with every inch of retreat. She moaned and trembled. She’d reached such a pitch of arousal that the deliberate, gradual withdrawal took her flying toward the edge.

  Then implacably he filled her again. And again.

  Usually it took longer to reach her peak. Not today. With a choked cry, she jackknifed and lashed her arms around him, convulsing as stars and fire and lightning raged around her. Transforming the world to fiery brilliance.

  She was still quaking and gasping when she opened her eyes to find him watching her. His eyes were black with barely leashed desire and his body was rigid.

  With an unsteady hand, she traced the stern line of his mouth. The skin stretched against the bones of his face. His jaw was adamantine with the control he exerted. He looked like a man who conquered nations. Just so must his ruthless Highland ancestors have looked before they stole their neighbors’ cattle and women, and started the inexorable climb to greatness.

  She braced for him to seek his release. Instead he pressed his lips to hers. The kiss was tender as his loving hadn’t been. It felt like a silent pledge, although she had no idea of what. Shocked she lay quiescent under the sweet exploration. Then he closed his eyes. His shoulders straightened and he plunged into her.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  He groaned low in his throat and his grip on her hair tightened to pain. An unfamiliar liquid heat flooded deep inside her.

  Lachlan slumped beside Campion, turning her to keep their bodies joined. For a long, silent moment, they lay thigh to thigh, chest to chest. Both panting to fill lungs starved for air.

  She shifted a little, not enough to separate them, testing the satiny warmth inside her. He’d always been careful to protect her from a child.

  Not today.

  Shock held Campion silent. The implications of what Lachlan had done were so shattering, she had no idea how to react. In those turbulent moments when he’d surged into her, she’d felt powerful and cherished. As if the pledge he made to her had been one of lifelong love. When of course she knew the rich, aristocratic Earl of Ravenglass would never lower himself to wed a girl as insignificant as Campion Parnell.

  A child would cause so many problems. She should be utterly appalled. She should be furiously angry. Instead she felt bewildered and anxious. The turmoil left her feeling lost, struggling blindly to find her way ahead.

  He hadn’t quite drifted off, although he looked exhausted. Under heavy eyelids, he surveyed her, a faint smile of masculine triumph teasing his lips. The possessiveness in his gaze and in his embrace made her feel wanted, needed…loved.

  She’d always recognized that it would be dangerous to surrender to the illusion that he cared. But after that shattering union, she couldn’t rebuild the barriers between what she knew was real and what she longed to be true. For a moment, she imagined the poor relation and the brilliant earl establishing a life together.

  Only for a moment.

  Even through the ebbing tide of pleasure, sorrow stabbed at her. Her heart clenched in futile denial of what she knew to be inevitable. This was the last time they’d lie like this, the last time he’d hold her in his arms. How could she bear to lose him?

  Abruptly she realized that she couldn’t spoil the memory of this afternoon by saying goodbye.

  Far better to disappear back to Sussex without a farewell. Write a note explaining that she’d been called away. Wish him well from a distance, when he couldn’t look into her eyes and see that forsaking him ripped her into jagged pieces.

  Just as it tore at her to imagine him taking some other woman to his bed.

  The gossip was that now the earl had reached the age of twenty-eight, he intended to choose a bride. Perhaps even tonight at the Winterson ball. Campion knew that he was going. He’d mentioned his mother madly shopping for a new gown to befit the occasion.

  Every time Campion thought of Lachlan marrying someone else, she felt physically ill. The rational side of her recognized that men of noble lineage were obliged to produce aristocratic heirs. But loving him so desperately, she couldn’t be entirely rational. At the deepest level and despite everything she knew of the world she lived in, she believed that he was hers. Forever.

  “You’re crying.” His voice roughened with concern.

  “Am I?” She raised one hand to her face and her fingers came away wet.

  His slashing black brows lowered. “Did I hurt you?”

  When he shifted, his body slipped from hers. She missed him immediately.

  “No.” She blushed, although surely an earl’s mistress should have long ago lost the ability to blush. “I’m just…overwhelmed.”

  “I wanted to overwhelm you,” he said softly, his voice weighted with drowsiness. He drew her against him. “Rest now.”

  Past the line of his shoulder, she watched the cat stretch and pad toward the door.

  “I’ll tend to the cat first.” She always allowed Plato a couple of hours to roam while she was here.

  “Hurry back,” he murmured, kissing the tip of her shoulder.

  She pressed her lips to his. It wouldn’t do to make the kiss too emotional, too passionate. Nonetheless, she lingered, memorizing the taste of his mouth and the way his lips moved upon hers. Etching into her mind the scent of his skin and the heat of his body.

  Before she could cling too long, so long that she’d never let him go, she lifted her head and smiled. “You make me very happy.”

  It was the closest she’d ventured to telling him that she loved him. She wanted him to know that the greatest measure of joy she’d ever experience was here with him. But that, again, betrayed too much.

  Between his thick black lashes
, his green eyes sparked with a warmth that had little to do with passion and everything to do with affection. This was when her heart begged her to trust in impossible happy endings, when he looked at her as though she carried the stars in her hands. “I’m glad.”

  She kissed him once more. Briefly. Urgently. She couldn’t meet his eyes again without bursting into tears. “Sleep.”

  His smile developed a sensual edge, even though he was nearly asleep. “For a little while. I have plans for this afternoon.”

  More love play, she guessed. The yen to stay and let him possess her once, twice more nearly made her hesitate. But she knew that her resolve failed. She wasn’t far from pleading with him never to leave her.

  Her plan had always been to finish this affair with dignity, to walk away with her head high. She wanted Lachlan to remember her as proud and strong. Although right now she felt like crumpling onto the floor and crying her eyes out.

  Before she weakened, she slipped out of the bed and gathered her clothes. She dressed hurriedly, hiding under the hooded cape that had proven such a boon in this intrigue.

  While she prepared to leave, Lachlan tumbled into slumber, rolling onto his back and flinging one arm out as if reaching for her.

  The gesture made her heart ache. They’d never spent a night together. They never would. Another source of piercing regret.

  She straightened and told herself that women without fortune and beauty had no business dabbling in foolish dreams. The admonition didn’t ease the crippling weight inside her. Perhaps after she’d repeated that grim litany for ten years or so, it would prove more bracing.

  Very quietly, she opened the door a crack, letting Plato brush past her skirts. After one last glance behind her, she slipped away, abandoning Lord Ravenglass to the dimly lit room.

  Campion was sitting at the kitchen table, struggling with a pile of mending, when Alice the housemaid came to fetch her, her face alight with curiosity. “You’re wanted upstairs, miss.”

  Sighing, Campion put her sewing aside. It was hopeless doing fine work by the light of cheap tallow candles. She refused to blame her clumsiness on the tears stinging her eyes. “Is something wrong?”