“I’m not ungrateful.”
She placed her finger on another one of the wounds and pressed until the lead shot rose to the surface. She tossed it in a pan beside the bed. “You are. Dreadfully.”
He turned his head and caught her hand. “Let me say now, I am grateful.” He pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m grateful for everything about you. For your beauty, and your intelligence, and everything that makes you you.”
“For my bravery in not leaving you to face Stanhope alone?”
He visibly wavered between pacification and exasperation. As she expected, exasperation won out. “You should have escaped.” He sounded clipped, irritated. “If faced with such circumstances again, you are to save yourself.”
The man never gave up. She sounded just as clipped and irritated when she said, “I doubt I shall face such dangerous circumstances in Paris.”
His muscles clenched. “Celeste, I truly do love you.”
As if she believed that. “I’m still going to take the shot out of you.”
“No, I’m telling you the truth. I love you.”
“You’d have to be a fool not to.” She paused. “Oh, but I forgot, you are a fool.”
“You sound like my brother,” Throckmorton snapped.
He had caught her unwilling interest. “Your brother? What does Ellery have to do with this?”
“My brother, my mother, my daughter, my niece, and my future sister-in-law. Before I left to come after you, they all told me I was a fool.”
“Good. It’s unanimous. We all agree.”
“Your father didn’t tell me I was a fool. He just punched me in the face.” Throckmorton indicated his swollen eye.
“Good for Papa. Did you know Esther put castor oil in your whisky?” The unmitigated horror on his face made her laugh. “I don’t know that for sure. But if I were you, I’d check when I got back to Blythe Hall or you could make close friends with your chamber pot. Lie back down. I need to get these out.”
He lowered himself, his body a lovely tan against the white of the sheets. “Don’t you care?”
“About what?” She managed to push two more pieces of shot out of his back while he squirmed.
“That I love you?”
“Do you think declaring that you love me makes everything all better?”
“Doesn’t it?”
She had to refrain from plunging the scalpel into his thick head. “Should I be so honored to be the recipient of your love that I will forgive everything? All your lies, all your betrayals, the way you used me?”
“You weren’t angry about being used in connection with Stanhope.”
“No, for in that instance I understand why you used me.” With the point of the scalpel, she made a tiny cut over the swelling on his buttock. He gasped and held himself very still, and with the tweezers she removed the pellet. “I even agree that, when weighed in the balance, my pride is not as important as my country.”
He sounded very serious when he said, “I never meant to strip you of your pride.”
“But put together with your sneaking, underhanded seduction and that ticket to Paris and a bank draft, all in the pursuit of a suitable business alliance between the Throckmortons and Lord Longshaw . . . that doesn’t carry the same weight as saving England, and taken altogether makes an ugly portrait of you and your mercenary soul. Your declaration of love can’t clean the grime away.”
“You’re right.”
“What?”
“I said you’re right.”
Her eyes narrowed on him. What does that mean?
“I did the wrong thing. I am always insufferably sure my way is best, and that is why I should marry, so I can be told, frequently and often, that I am wrong. Are you woman enough?”
He made her want to laugh, and she hated that. This was no time to remember the enjoyment she experienced with his conversation, no time to recall how well they fit, mind and body. “I’m woman enough to cut this last pellet out.” She smoothed his buttock where the shot had punched a hole through the skin. This was the deep one, the only one that really required surgery. “You must remain very still.”
He ignored her, stirring restlessly on the bed. “What about your declaration of love?”
“What about it? You didn’t believe me.” And right now, as she laid out the needle the doctor had left, she resented that, too.
“So I was right. You really don’t know what love is. You never truly loved me.”
How had this happened? How had she lost control of the conversation? She was no longer on the attack, he was, and that wasn’t fair. For the first time in this affair, she held the knife, and in more ways than one. She wanted to keep it that way.
“I loved you enough to . . . to trust my body to you.”
Slowly, he sat up, staring at her, revealing himself in all his glory. Despite his pain, despite her reprimand, he wanted her.
And from his expression of grim triumph, she realized she had been manipulated into an imprudent statement. She should have remembered with whom she sparred.
“You loved me that night.”
If she had denied it, she would be nothing more than a wanton. If she agreed . . .
“One pellet left. Lie down and let me get it out.”
To her surprise, he obeyed her.
Because, she realized, he’d used his body to distract her, then made his point. While entrusting himself to her hands, he was content to let her think about the state of her heart.
Cunning. The man was cunning.
With a light touch, she slid the scalpel along his skin, swabbed the blood that welled up, probed and found the shot. She eased it free, took the single stitch necessary to close the wound, pressed a pad on the site—and suddenly found it necessary to sit down.
She didn’t care about his pain . . . did she? Taking that pellet out had been just retribution for his misdeeds . . . hadn’t it?
Yes, this weakness was nothing more than her reaction to being held hostage, to putting herself in danger, to shooting a man.
Sinking on the bed, she sat very still and waited for her trembling to cease.
At once Garrick recognized his advantage. He sat up again.
She tweaked the sheet over him.
“It’s a little late for that.” Removing the sharp scalpel from her fingers, he gingerly placed it on the nightstand. “You’ve seen it all. You’ve had it all.” He took her face between his palms and looked into her eyes. “You’ve kissed it all.”
She wrestled herself free. “All right! You’ve driven your point home. We both understand we’ve had . . . we’ve taken pleasure of each other.”
“Are you sorry now for what we had?” Taking her hand, he pressed it to his groin. “Did the light on my sins make your love evaporate?”
It was hard to think when her fingers were wrapped around his member, and the heat and the memories pressed at her. He could give her such pleasure, yet she had to resist. She wasn’t going to marry him. At least not out of gratitude. And certainly not out of lust. “You are embarrassed because of me.”
“Do I feel embarrassed?”
She used just a hint of her fingernails.
He let her hand go at once. “You don’t embarrass me. I told you before. I’m not a snob.”
“I believe you truly don’t care that I’m the gardener’s daughter. But with me, you lose all your heady superiority. You’re no longer Garrick Throckmorton, lord of the spies, sovereign of business, in control of yourself and everything you do. You’re Garrick Throckmorton, a man who gives into temptation. You blame me for what you consider a weakness. I do not accept the blame. I will not live with guilt, yours or mine, for all my life.”
She had struck a rich vein, for he cleared his throat and looked abashed. “I might have thought that before,” he admitted. “But when I’m with you, I’m not a man like any other. I’m better than all the others, better than I’ve ever been before, because I have you.” He corrected himself. “Because
I’m with you.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He wanted possession of her. Even now, when he was trying to say the right thing, to convince her of his contrition, his true nature strutted through his conversation.
She should have anticipated his next move. She could only blame her own weakness for her lack of foresight.
Because he wrapped her in his arms and fell backward on the bed, taking her with him.
She struggled. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Not if you stay still.”
“You’re going to bleed on the sheets.”
He chuckled. “There’s my practical girl.” When she would have thumped him, he clutched her tighter. In his deepest, lushest, most dark velvet voice, he said, “I understand my mistake.”
She hated that she fit into his embrace so snugly.
“I made our entire courtship a farce. You called me a liar. You wonder if you can trust anything I say. So what good does it do me to tell you I love you?”
She hated that she listened to the thump of his heart and heard in it the echo of her own.
“But I do love you.”
She hated that she believed him, regardless of his confirmed record of being the biggest phony in England.
“Marry me. Let me prove my love to you. I’m not the richest man in England. Not yet. But I’ve got a great estate in Suffolk, a townhouse in London and a hunting lodge in Scotland. I’ve got servants who have a special reason to love you. A daughter who scolded me for letting you go. A mother who explained that I loved you.”
“Good for her,” Celeste muttered.
“I’ve got a huge garden that needs tending since my gardener and all the undergardeners have quit—”
“Oh, dear.” She had put her father in a dreadful position.
“—But if you wed me, you could probably convince them to stay. I would give you everything I own. If you wished, I would even find you occupation as a Russian translator—”
“Don’t forget French, Italian and a little Romanian.”
He paused, and when he next spoke she detected a little more confidence in his voice. “Perhaps I’m not easy to live with—”
She snorted.
“—And perhaps you could find someone you could love more, but if you search the world over you’ll never find a man to love you more than I do.”
“And I’ll wager you’ll let me look,” she said sarcastically.
“Well . . . no. I’m not a fool. I wouldn’t take the chance.”
She grinned. He was telling the truth with a vengeance now.
“I seduced you because I couldn’t not. You are everything that is missing from my life, and I had to take you, drink of you, taste you just once.” His hands moved in big circles on her back, massaging out the tension. “Only . . . once could never be enough.”
His sentiments sounded heartfelt. His touch evoked the memory of his possession. More significantly, her own desire sabotaged her resistance. She wanted him to be sincere. She wanted him to love her.
In that low, vibrant, deep velvet voice he vowed, “For you, I would take up my family and abandon my home and my duty, and come to live in Paris to acquire your services.”
“As . . . translator?”
“As courtesan! That is what my mother said you were going to do.”
She hid her face in his chest, but not quickly enough.
“Are you laughing?” He tucked his finger under her chin and lifted her face, shining with humor. “You are laughing.”
She tried to maintain her gravity. “Lady Philberta must have neglected to tell you she had talked me out of my decision to become a courtesan.”
He stared down at her, intent on something he saw in her face.
She quieted, looking back at him.
“I have missed your laughter. You’re always smiling—do you know that’s what I first loved about you? That ever-present smile. When I wiped it off your lips, I felt as if I’d destroyed something more precious than gold.” As though mesmerized by the sight, he caressed her lips with his thumb. “You never answered my question. Do you still love me?”
Insulted, she pushed at his chest until he let her sit up. “You are truly a dolt! True love doesn’t disintegrate at the first touch of adversity. Of course I love you.”
He sat up, too, so quickly that he flinched. “Then will you forgive me? Take a chance on me? Marry me?”
She thought about how he had callously planned her seduction, and cold anguish and hot fury curled up her spine.
Then she thought about dancing in the ballroom. Talking under the stars. Loving in the conservatory.
She knew the ruthless businessman and spy lived within him, and if Garrick was left to end his days alone, he would in truth become the bastard who used and discarded without conscience. But within also resided the man of great passion and resolute integrity. If she . . . if she accepted his proposal, she would have to live with everything that he was. He was excruciatingly sure of his brilliance. He would do what was right for her whether she wished it or no. He would cosset her, talk to her, love her until all other existence seemed dry and tedious.
Did she dare take a chance that he loved her?
He did. She’d known it even before he’d stumbled onto that truth.
Could she whole-heartedly forgive him for his perfidy?
She had to. She loved him. Putting her finger on his chest, she pushed him back on the bed and leaned close. “I choose you, Garrick Throckmorton. I choose you.”
Throwing his head back, he laughed, a full, rich laughter that the old Garrick Throckmorton would never have permitted himself.
She kissed him while he laughed, reveling in his satisfaction. No matter that she made it clear she selected him; he was convinced he won her, and would be absolutely insufferable.
Still laughing, he kissed her back, holding her, running his hands over her. “Is the door locked?” he asked.
“Do you think I’m barmy? No, it’s not locked!”
Rolling her onto her back, he kissed her with the light, delicate kisses of a seducer. “It should be,” he insisted.
“No.” Although she could be convinced, and soon.
Lifting his head, he stroked her hair. “I thought when I told you I loved you, you would run to my arms and stay there forever.”
“You’re conceited.”
His thumbs glided in circles among the whorls of her ears. “After winning a woman like you, how could I not be?”
Sliding her hands around his neck, she brought him close and rewarded him for his brilliant reply. The heat between them flared; their mouths became more intimate.
Tearing himself away, he gasped, “The door.”
“It’s not locked,” she assured him.
“I’ll lock it.”
She caught him when he would have risen. “Mr. and Mrs. Jackman are already shocked that I demanded to care for you myself.”
“You are determined to make me pay for every little inconsequential hideous mistake I’ve made, aren’t you?”
She adored hearing his frustration. “You’ve been wounded. You shouldn’t indulge in rigorous activity.”
“I’ll stay very still.”
“Then what good would you be to me?”
He glared at her, and when that made no dent in her determination, he submitted an offering. “Ellery is going to become a spy.”
“I told you he’d be good at it.” She trailed her fingers down his ribs, enjoying his nakedness. “What about Lady Hyacinth?”
He turned his attention to the buttons on the back of her gown, sliding them free with a light, quick touch. “She’s going to marry him and become a spy, too.”
“Lovely.” She spoke of the plans and the buttons.
“If Mr. and Mrs. Jackman walked in on us now, they would be shocked anyway.” For all his impatience, he kissed slowly, teasing with his tongue, gloating at her unqualified enthusiasm. “I think we should have a swing built in
our bedroom.”
“You are a very naughty man.” She paused and considered, decided he might be right and decided not to notice as his fingers slipped her gown off her shoulders. “How will we explain it to the children?”
“Never mind them. How will I explain it to my mother?”
“Oh . . . I think Lady Philberta will understand.”
“I will make you happy,” he vowed. “And I will never stray.”
“I know,” she said smugly as she kissed him. “I know how to use a rifle.”
“The door . . .”
“It’s locked. It was all the time.”
About the Author
CHRISTINA DODD is the author of over twenty romances that have made regular appearances on the national bestseller lists, including the New York Times. She has won numerous awards, including Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart and RITA awards.
Praise for the Bestselling Master of Passionate Romance
CHRISTINA DODD
“Christina Dodd is everything I’m looking for in an author—sexy and witty, daring and delightful. She’s one of my all-time favorites!”
Teresa Medeiros, author of The Bride and the Beast
“One of the finest writers of the decade.”
Affaire de Coeur
“Christina Dodd’s astonishing talents rise to glorious heights.”
Romantic Times
“Memorable characters, witty dialogue, steaming sensuality . . . sheer enjoyment.”
Jill Marie Landis
“[Her] hot sex scenes and tantalizing romantic tension don’t disappoint.”
Publishers Weekly
“An award-winning writer of fast-paced, well-crafted historicals . . . Readers will be waiting for her latest.”
Library Journal
“Treat yourself to a fabulous book—anything by Christina Dodd!”
Jill Barnett, author of Wicked
Also by Christina Dodd
CANDLE IN THE WINDOW
CASTLES IN THE AIR
THE GREATEST LOVER IN ALL ENGLAND
A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER
MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH
ONCE A KNIGHT
OUTRAGEOUS
PRICELESS
RULES OF ATTRACTION
In My Wildest Dreams Page 30