By Love Undone

by Suzanne Enoch

  “How was dinner?”

  Maddie jumped and whipped around to see Quin exiting the darkened morning room, his expression tense and angry.

  “What were you doing in there?”

  “Reading,” he said shortly. “How was dinner?”

  No doubt sensing trouble, Beeks flashed her a sympathetic look and fled downstairs into the kitchen. Maddie put her hands on her hips. “Reading, in the dark? You were spying on me, waiting for me to come back.”

  “Do you really think I have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for you?”

  “Apparently not.” Maddie flounced past him, heading up the stairs to her bedchamber.

  He followed right behind her. “At least tell me whether you enjoyed Gaylord Densen’s company.”

  A flush reddened her cheeks. “He’s very amusing.”

  A hand snaked around her waist and jerked her sideways with surprising strength. Trying to keep from falling over, Maddie grabbed onto Quin’s shoulder and arm as he half-dragged her into the drawing room.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she demanded, staggering away from him.

  Quin closed and locked the door, then turned to face her. He leaned back against the sturdy oak frame. “We are going to have a little chat.”

  “More of your stupid rules? How can you possibly have thought up still more of them?”

  “Practice.”

  “I’m very tired. I’d like to go to bed.”

  “Without telling me about Gaylord Densen’s little card party?”

  Maddie snapped her mouth shut, any thought of confessing that she’d been misled about the nature of the evening’s engagement vanishing. He had no right to act so superior. “What do you wish to know about it, then, my lord?”

  He stepped closer to her. “Why didn’t you listen to Eloise’s advice about going there? She warned you about it.”

  “She did no such….” Maddie looked at him, then walked over to the writing desk under the window to give herself a moment to think. She couldn’t possibly tell Quin; he’d never believe her. “I don’t know,” she said instead.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Oh, leave me alone.”

  She tried to push him out of the way, but he didn’t budge. Instead, he grabbed her hands and pulled her up against his chest. “You are too bright for me to believe that you don’t know why you would attend a card party with a herd of disrespectables. Do you really want that badly to leave here? Or was everyone correct about you encouraging Spenser?”

  Her heart wrenched. “How dare you?” she spat, jerking free of his strong grip and stalking back across the room.

  “A little less witty tonight, aren’t you, dear? Exhausted, no doubt.”

  When she turned to glare at him, his jade eyes glittered with anger. But fury wasn’t the only expression that touched his face. He desired her. He wanted her—and whatever tremors of need and want that triggered in her own soul, it abruptly made several things quite clear. “That’s why you dragged me to London in the first place, isn’t it?”

  His expression darkened further. “What are you talking about?”

  “When you kissed me at Langley—you as much as said you wanted me to be your mistress. You still do. You think I really did encourage Spenser—so why would I have any objection to the great, grand Marquis of Warefield’s attentions?”

  He strode toward her, then with obvious effort stopped himself, clenching his fists. “That is absolutely not true, and you know it, Maddie.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  Quin glared at her. “Because Uncle Malcolm asked me to bring you here—and because I behaved poorly and wanted to make amends for it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really.” He jabbed a finger at her. “The least damned thing you could do is cooperate a little. For God’s sake, would it kill you to admit that you’re grateful to me?”

  She pounced on the word. “Grateful? Grateful? For what? For being able to have stupid, drunken men try to grab my breasts and make idiotic jokes about me?”

  “What in damnation are they supposed to think, when you attend gatherings like that? If you behave like a slut, they’ll treat you like one!”

  The vase was in Maddie’s hands almost before she realized she’d snatched it up. With a furious hiss, she dashed the contents into his face. “Self-righteous ass!”

  Water dripping down his finely chiseled nose, Quin grabbed her arm. Maddie, more furious than she could ever remember being, wrenched free of his grip. With a loud rip her delicate sleeve tore off in his hand. He glared at it in shock, then flung it to the ground and advanced on her again. “Lightskirt!”

  “Oh, now you’ve hurt me,” she taunted, and kicked him in the knee. “Tearing a dress you paid for—you beast!”

  “Ow, damn it! That’s right—I own almost everything you have on.” He yanked off her other sleeve as she gasped in outrage. “And I get nothing in return. You probably gave more to Gaylord and his cronies tonight for fun!”

  She grabbed up a porcelain miniature and hurled it at him. “Bastard! You said you didn’t want anything in return!”

  The diminutive Caesar hit his shoulder and fell to the carpet in a hundred pieces. Quin grabbed the room’s second vase, and a cascade of cold water and daisies doused Maddie. “I don’t anymore!”

  She shrieked and flung pillows from the long couch at him. “Liar! I can’t even imagine how dull your life must be—no wonder you keep me about!”

  “That little error will be remedied tomorrow. And my life is perfectly happy without you in it!” he yelled, throwing a pillow into her face.

  She hurled it back at him. “Ha! So that’s why I’m all you talk about with your mother and brother—because you’re so exciting.”

  “Hoyden!”

  He grabbed for her again and she spun away, but her skirt came to a sudden stop without her. Ripping free of its stitches, it tangled around her legs and sent her tumbling against the writing desk. Her hair, drenched and coming down from its clips, hung in her face. She swiped it out of the way and spied the brass letter opener engraved with His Grace’s initials. “You arrogant, stuffy—” She lifted the letter opener and swung her arm at him.

  One of his waistcoat buttons flew off, the threads neatly slashed in two.

  “That is why you want me about,” she panted, her heart beating so furiously she thought it must explode. He backed away warily, looking for an opportunity to grab her weapon away from her. “Because you are so very dull.”

  “I am not dull.”

  Slash went another button to the floor. “Dull!”

  He stopped when his back came up against a bookcase.

  “Dull!” Through her fury, an odd, fluttering tingle began along her nerves, making her hand shake.

  His eyes met hers, his anger deepening into something else entirely. “Damned nuisance,” he growled.

  The last button came free and rolled beneath the couch. “Dull,” she breathed.

  Quin grabbed her chin in his fingers and tilted her face up; his mouth closed roughly over hers. He pried the letter opener from her hand and flung it into the corner.

  Maddie’s pulse raced as her frustrated outrage swept into an equally fierce, wanting desire. She pressed herself against him, pulling his coat and then the buttonless waistcoat from his shoulders. She twined her fingers into his damp honey-colored hair and kissed him hungrily, matching his angry passion with her own.

  He took the few threads of dress remaining around her shoulders and ripped them in two. His strength was a little frightening, yet wonderfully exhilarating. “Maddie,” he murmured hotly, turning them so that she was the one pinned hard against the bookcase.

  She couldn’t stop kissing him. She didn’t want to stop kissing him, and touching him. Her dress was nothing but a tattered rag hanging about her waist until he tore it free and dropped it to the carpet, leaving only her thin, flimsy shift covering her.
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br />   He pulled his fine lawn shirt free of his breeches, trailing his mouth along her jawline. What they were doing, she knew distantly in the part of her brain that remained sane, was very, very wrong. And she didn’t care. All that mattered was that he didn’t stop.

  Maddie moved his hands out of the way and tugged the wet shirt over his head. She moaned as his lips found the hollow of her throat, and her fast-beating pulse. Her heart fluttered wildly as he pushed the one remaining strap of the shift from her shoulders, and kissed the bare skin it revealed.

  “Oh, God,” she murmured, gasping for another unsteady breath as the shift slid down her body to the floor.

  He pushed her harder against the bookcase, as though trying to bring them still closer together. Quin covered her mouth with his again, as if to stifle any protest she might make. His hands slipped from her shoulders and down to her breasts, and she drew another ragged breath at his intimate touch.

  Maddie ran her hands down his hard, smooth chest, and the muscles jumped beneath his skin. He captured one of her hands and lowered it to the fastenings of his breeches. She could feel his hard, growing arousal, and with rumbling, unsteady fingers undid the fastenings and freed him from confinement.

  Twisting, Quin half pushed and half carried her down to the floor. His hot, hungry mouth immediately sought her breasts, and she tangled her hands in his hair and arched against him as her nipples hardened at the caress of his tongue. He must be insane, to want her—and to want her in his parents’ own drawing room—and she must be equally mad to encourage him.

  His hands swept down her flat belly to her rounded hips, squeezing and kneading her buttocks and pulling her against him. Quin’s mouth claimed hers again as he stretched the long, lean length of his body atop hers. His skin against hers was warm and intimate, and when his knee nudged hers apart, she arched her hips again, feeling his throbbing manhood brushing against her thigh.

  Moaning as his mouth teased hers open, their tongues caressing, Maddie slid her arms around his strong, muscular shoulders, holding him against her. “Quin,” she whispered breathlessly.

  He entered her with a growling moan of possession. At her gasp of pain and surprise and wonder, he froze. “Jesus,” he muttered raggedly. Burying his face against her shoulder, he held his body very still except for the tremors of tension along his arms. He lifted his head again, his dark green eyes burning into hers. “Jesus,” he repeated. “You were a virgin.”

  Before she could gather her wits enough to say that of course she was a virgin, he kissed her again, deeply and roughly. Slowly his hips began to move again, forward and back against her, inside her, and she gasped again. “Oh, Quin, that feels so good,” she groaned, lifting her hips to meet his increasing rhythm. “You feel so good.”

  “God, so do you,” he answered, shifting his arms so he could lean down and nibble at her ear. “Hold onto me, Maddie. It gets even better.”

  Waves of ecstasy made her whole body tremble as he made love to her. She wasn’t certain she would live through anything better than this. Her ankles lifted around his hips, as though her body already knew what to do. She threw back her head, half-closing her eyes at the erotic, intimate feeling of him, of Quin, moving inside her.

  Another shiver of tension began in her most secret core, and then grew until it exploded into a pulsing, shivering jumble of indescribable delight. Maddie cried out, her entire body arching. Above her Quin thrust deep and fast into her a few more times, and then convulsed against her. Slowly he collapsed on top of her, his weight hard and muscled and welcome.

  All of the fight driven out of her, Maddie concentrated on regaining her breath and her senses, and absolutely not on contemplating what she and Quin had just done. And what she already wished he would do again.

  Quin closed his eyes, savoring the warm, soft feeling of her body beneath his. Having just made possibly the greatest mistake of his thirty years, he probably should feel considerably worse than he did. The most he could manage, though, was a dim sense that his complicated life had just become much more confused.

  The wild pounding of his heart gradually slowed, and with a deep breath he lifted his head to look down at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Puzzlement showed briefly in her eyes. “Tell you what?”

  “That even after Spenser, in all your five years away from London, you’d managed to remain…pure?”

  Maddie scowled, then shoved at his shoulders with surprising strength. “Get off me, you big oaf.”

  Reluctantly he shifted off of her and sat up. Unable to help himself, he let his gaze drift down to her soft, full breasts, heaving with her angry breath. Maddie had a spectacular bosom. “Was it such an idiotic presumption?”

  “Only if you know nothing about me,” she snapped. “You really did believe all those rumors, didn’t you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Then why did you presume I was a whore?”

  He blinked, wishing his brain would hurry up and catch up with his body. That had never been a problem before. “I never did such a thing. It’s just that…five years is a long time, Maddie.” And he’d wanted to make love to her for so long, and then she’d made him so damned angry…sweet Lucifer, he was an idiot.

  Her gray eyes studied his for a long moment, while the excited flush of her cheeks slowly faded. “So you decided that since I was already ruined, you might as well take advantage.”

  He shifted closer to her, noting that despite her words, she couldn’t help dropping her eyes below his waist for a moment. “Now, just a damned minute—I don’t recall your trying to stop anything. Just the opposite, I think.”

  “Well,” she began, blushing again, and belatedly covering her lovely chest with her arms, “I simply…got a little carried away.”

  At that his lips twitched in a small grin. “I’ll say.”

  “You stop that!”

  “Well, now we’re in a spot.”

  “No, we’re not. Go fetch me another dress, and we’ll go upstairs to bed. The end.”

  “To bed together?” he suggested hopefully, caressing her cheek with the palm of his hand.

  For just a moment she shut her eyes, leaning into his embrace. “This isn’t funny, you know.”

  He chuckled. “I know. It’s a damned tragedy.” And one he was rather enjoying. There was a powerful connection between them, and he affected her just as she affected him. And for once, where Maddie was concerned, he actually felt in command of the moment. Still touching her cheek, he rose to his knees and leaned forward to kiss her lightly, at the same time removing her one remaining hairclip and letting her damp auburn hair tumble down her shoulders. “And in my own, excessively dull way of thinking, I do have a solution in mind.”

  Slender fingers hesitantly lifted to trace the muscles of his abdomen. “And what might that be?”

  She still desired him, whatever better sense she had. He looked at her face, at the yearning and passion even her renewed anger hadn’t been able to drive away. He wondered if she saw a reflection of the same in his own gaze. “Marry me.”

  Pure surprise dilated her eyes. “What?”

  He smiled. “I said, marry—”

  “Why?” she interrupted. “Now that I’m truly ruined, why not just keep me as your mistress or something, so that you can still marry Eloise Stokesley like you’re supposed to?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. At Langley I said I would do right by you, Maddie. I may have…stumbled somewhat, but those weren’t just words. I meant them.”

  “Oh, please.”

  Maddie stood and grabbed her shift, the only intact piece of clothing left to her. Looking at the carnage, Quin was surprised he hadn’t left bruises on her. For Lucifer’s sake, his breeches were still wrapped around one ankle, and he still wore his boots. He’d had mistresses before, but never—never—had he been so out of control.

  “I can hardly wait for your next ‘stumble,’” she continued, pulling the thin garment on over her he
ad and hopelessly disheveled hair. “What will it be? Rendering me naked in the middle of Almack’s assembly?”

  “Maddie,” he protested, standing and yanking his breeches back into place. “I am serious. I’ll speak to His Grace in the morning. And we will be married. As soon as I can arrange it.”

  “No, you won’t. And no, we won’t. It’s stupid to throw away two lives, Quin.” She hesitated, looking up at him. “Whether this had happened or not, three quarters of London thinks I’ve done it with someone. Nothing has changed.”

  Now he was offended. “Something damned well has changed.”

  “Just listen, won’t you?” she said with more heat. “My chances of tricking some gentleman into thinking me respectable and marrying me are zero.”

  She shrugged, loneliness touching her eyes again, making him want to hold her—even though he half thought she would seriously damage him if he tried.

  “They are not,” he said.

  “They are…and they always were. I came here for the sake of your uncle. And once we complete the spectacle at Almack’s, I will go back to Langley. I never thought otherwise. I can’t believe you did, either.”

  He stared at her, righteous indignation warring with his desire to take her again, right there on the floor. He’d known she was bright, but he’d had no idea someone so…impassioned…could be so wise. Too damned wise for her own good. For his own good. “But, I—” He stopped the words just in time, just before he said “I love you.” If she’d thought him an oaf before, that statement would drop him into irretrievable imbecility.

  Maddie bent down to snatch up the tattered remains of her lovely gown. With the bits and pieces gathered in her arms, she unlocked the drawing room door. For a moment she leaned her forehead against the cool, smooth wood, then turned to face him again. “Quin, marry Eloise. Do what you’re supposed to do. You don’t need me in your life.”