“To hell with Eloise. I want you.”
“That’s very dishonorable,” she said weakly.
He heard the reluctant desire in her voice. It was all he needed. “You’re already ruined,” he pressed, “thanks to me. Please, Maddie, whatever else happens, I want—”
“Shh,” she said. “How in the world do you intend to be with me, Lord Marquis? Are we going to steal into the library and lock the door? Oh, dear me, we’ve already done that, haven’t we?”
He chuckled, delighted. He’d won—at least, for the moment. “That was the drawing room. And when the dance is finished, follow me.”
As soon as the waltz ended, people crowded onto the floor for a country dance. Quin ducked backward, Maddie trailing behind him. As the music started, he slipped out onto the dark balcony. Maddie peeked around the comer, and he pulled her onto the stones. He leaned down to kiss her, but she sidestepped, shoving him away.
“What is it?” he asked, pursuing her toward the railing.
Maddie raised her fist in his direction. “This is what happened before,” she hissed, “with that blasted Spenser. I don’t want anyone to see you trying to kiss me. Not after I just became respectable again.”
“I’ll check first, then,” he said, and moved past her into the darker shadows. Under the circumstances, he was lucky she hadn’t hit him; the only excuse he could give for being so obtuse was that he was having difficulty thinking of anything but feeling the warm, naked slide of her body against his. “All clear,” he informed her, returning to her side. “Now will you kiss me?”
With another hesitant look around, she lifted up on her toes. Leaning her hands on his chest, she touched her lips to his. Quin shut his eyes at the soft touch, slipping his arms around her slender waist and wondering that she’d ever come this far in trusting him. If he’d been the one betrayed and reviled by his peers, he wasn’t certain he’d have been able to do the same.
She sighed. “Oh, my, that’s nice.” After a moment, she relaxed against him. “What now?” she whispered against his mouth, placing feather-light kisses on his lips and along his jaw and cheek.
White-hot desire blazed through him. “We’d best do something soon,” he murmured, “because I am becoming extremely uncomfortable.”
“Out here?” she asked skeptically, her breathing uneven.
Quin stepped to the railing and looked down into the garden. A thick trellis of vines crept up the wall beside the stone abutment. They could climb down, but once there, only the uncertain shadows of the foliage would shield them from curious eyes. And there were plenty of those about. “Devil it.” Banging his fist on the railing in growing frustration, he leaned out further and looked up.
“That way.” He grinned, pointing to the dark window twenty feet above their heads. “The attic.”
“You are completely mad,” she declared, unable to stifle a nervous chuckle. “Quin, you’re not serious. Almack’s attic?”
“Yes, I am. Shall I go first?”
“Quin, I’m not climbing up there. I’ll tear my dress.”
“Then I suppose we’ll have to make love right here.” He smiled softly, running his finger along her cheek. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve torn one of your lovely gowns, Maddie.”
“Oh, damn,” she swore, swallowing hard. “If I wasn’t already ruined, you would take care of it. Climb the blasted trellis.”
He made it up fairly easily. Luckily, the window was unlatched, and he pushed it open and swung his legs over the sill. When he looked down, Maddie had the hem of her gown tucked into her neckline, and she was looking ahead determinedly as she climbed.
“Don’t you like heights?” he asked softly, as he guided her into the tall, narrow room.
“I don’t believe I’m doing this,” she panted, freeing her hem. “I’ve completely lost my mind. This is so stupid.”
Quin lowered his lips over hers, stopping her complaints with a rough, deep kiss. He couldn’t believe she’d done it, either, and he had no intention of letting her take herself back down the trellis right away.
Everything was covered with dust, but fortunately the spare furniture was draped with sheets. He released Maddie long enough to uncover an ornate serving table, a long gash across its otherwise smooth surface. Lifting Maddie around the waist, he set her down on the polished oak.
“Quin, we can’t do this,” she managed, clutching his shoulders and lifting her chin as he trailed his mouth down her soft throat.
“Stop saying that. I want to be with you.”
“And I want to be with you. But—”
He backed away just enough to look her in the eye. “You are not marrying anyone but me, and I am most certainly not marrying Eloise. Is that clear?”
She scowled. “You can’t order me—”
“And I’m not marrying Eloise Stokesley,” he repeated, before she could manage to turn this into another battle. They didn’t have a great deal of time.
Her mouth opened and then closed. “You’re not? Truly?”
“Truly.” He reached down to grasp her ankles, then slowly slid his hands up along her legs, lifting her skirt as he went.
“Just like that?”
Quin leaned down to brush his lips across her exposed thigh, and the muscles jumped beneath her skin. “Just like that.”
“And what about your family?” she pursued raggedly.
“I’ll tell them tomorrow.” Hungrily he sought her mouth again.
She moaned as his gentle touch found the secret place between her thighs. “But what about—”
“Shh,” he murmured. “Don’t ask me anything else.”
Whether she intended to ask anything or not, she became occupied with nibbling at his lip and then his ear. His heart pounding, Quin tugged her legs around his hips, pulling her close against him. It seemed impossible that such a fiery, passionate woman could have had no lovers before him, but he knew she hadn’t. He was her first, and if everything went as he’d planned, as he’d dreamed, he’d be her only lover.
Maddie’s hands tugged at his waist, pulling his shirt-tails free of his trousers. With a breathless chuckle, she kissed him, her gray eyes dancing with heat and passion. Her hands fumbled with his fastenings, then freed him from his breeches. Quin moaned as she folded her legs around his hips. He entered her slowly, relishing the feel of her warm, tight flesh around him.
She threw her head back as he pushed into her, twining her hands together behind his neck and holding herself hard against him. Quin grasped her buttocks, pulling her to him with every thrust of his hips. He wanted to remember everything—the darkness of the night with the half moon rising just over the rooftops, the muffled sound of the country dance below, the lavender scent of Maddie’s skin, and the sparkle of her eyes as he looked into them.
They climaxed together, and he buried his face against her shoulder as he shuddered and spilled his seed inside her. Maddie threw her arms about his shoulders, holding tightly to him. After a long time, he lifted his head and gently kissed her again.
“Well, you’ve ruined me again,” she said, still out of breath.
“I seem to be making a habit out of it,” he agreed. “I can’t help myself. You are irresistible. But one of these days, you and I are going to share an actual bed, with an entire night of nothing but the two of us.”
She smiled at him and slowly lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. “That would be very nice,” she whispered.
He couldn’t help grinning. Maddie hadn’t said she loved him, but she did care for him. She’d made that much obvious by the degree of trust she’d shown. Whether or not she would ever be able to tell him so, he had no idea. But he could hope. And he would wait.
“I love you, Maddie. I have since the moment we met.”
Her expression sobered. “What do we do now?”
He grinned ruefully. “We climb back down the trellis. Then you and I will go home, to our separate houses. In the morning I will call on my parents, I w
ill call on Eloise, and then I will call on you. You are my heart’s desire, Maddie—you make me feel so alive. Nothing else matters but you and me.”
“Not your family, or your honor, or your title? What if your father disinherits you?”
He reached up to clasp her hands and brought them around to hold against his chest, over his heart. “I will call on you in the morning,” he repeated firmly. “Trust me.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise, my love.”
With a last, lingering kiss, Quin helped her down from the table. She wanted him to keep holding her, but a loud laugh from the ballroom below reminded her that they couldn’t very well stay hidden in Almack’s attic forever—and that was a pity.
He tucked his shirt back into his breeches and attempted to put his hair back in some sort of style, for she’d tousled it rather badly. Maddie self-consciously straightened her skirt and her underthings, feeling rather tousled herself. Pure insanity. That was her only explanation for her behavior since she’d met Quinlan Ulysses Bancroft.
She had heard of men who, once they began, couldn’t stop drinking liquor. Day in and day out they craved the stuff, paying attention to nothing else, until finally they drank themselves to death. For the first time she understood the attraction.
She craved Quin with every breath, with every beat of her heart. No one knew her as he did, and certainly no one cared for her as he did. They were completely wrong for one another, but nothing made as much sense as being with him. In the moonlight his hair looked white and silver, and the green of his eyes darkened almost to black.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, as he glanced over at her.
“You,” she answered. “I can’t figure you out.”
He chuckled. “I thought I was being rather obvious, myself.”
“Not that.” Maddie flushed, though she had to wonder what in the world she had to be embarrassed about. She certainly had no secrets left from him.
Quin flung the old sheet back over the furniture. “What, then?”
“Since you’ve met me, you’ve nearly been drowned, shot, attacked by a mad sow, bellowed at by your father, kept—”
“My father bellows all the time,” he interrupted. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“I just don’t understand how, after all that, you could possibly decide that you love me.”
Quin looked at her for a long moment, then slowly came forward to fix a straying strand of her hair. “I’m not dull,” he said quietly.
“I know that,” she agreed. “I was only mad at you before.”
Gently he put a finger over her lips. “That’s not my point. I’m not dull, but my life is. As far back as I can remember, I’ve known I’d be the Duke of Highbarrow one day. I’ve known who I am to regard as a friend, and who is an enemy—not because I ever met them, but because of who their great-great ancestors were. I’ve known whom I’m to marry practically since she was born. You are…unexpected. And that’s very rare and precious, where I come from.” He grinned. “No one’s actually ever attempted to drown me, before you.”
She searched his eyes, but all she saw was a warmth and passion that matched her own. “What happens when I become dull and ordinary to you?”
Quin laughed, until she put her hand over his mouth before they heard him downstairs. “Hush,” she ordered.
He removed her hand, holding it in his. “I don’t think you could become dull if you wanted to, my dear.” He chuckled softly, his eyes dancing, and leaned down to kiss her again.
That led to more kissing, until the music stopped below. She looked toward the window. “Oh, no.”
“It’s just the set, Maddie,” he said, pulling her close against him again, his arms wrapped around her shoulders as if he never intended to let her go. She wouldn’t have minded that at all. “We’ll wait until the next one begins, and then we should go.”
She looked up at him dubiously. “I don’t suppose you mean we should sneak out the attic and back downstairs that way.”
“We go down the way we came up,” he said calmly.
“But I am considerably less motivated to climb down the trellis than I was to climb up,” Maddie complained, only half joking. “That’s a damned long way down, Quin.”
“I’ll go first, so you may fall on me if you feel the need to do so.”
Releasing her, he strolled to the window, peering out carefully. “The garden appears to be deserted,” he informed her, and leaned out to look down at the balcony. “Oops.” He ducked back inside. “Apparently we’re not the only amorous couple this evening. I must say, Almacks’s standards are falling abominably.”
Now that she wasn’t quite so…involved with Quin, the night air coming in through the window felt chilly against her bare arms. She hugged herself. “I guess we have to go out the other way, then.”
“No, we don’t. We can wait another few minutes.” He glanced down and then looked at her again. “Don’t you want to know who it is?”
“Absolutely not. Whoever they are, no doubt they want privacy, or they wouldn’t be out there.”
Quin straightened and turned back to her. “Do you want my coat?” He started to shrug out of it.
“No, I don’t want your coat, Sir Galahad,” she retorted, yanking it back up onto his shoulders. “You’ll have to put it on again in two minutes, anyway.” He did feel nice and warm, though, so she slipped her arms around his lean waist, under his coat.
He had told her that he loved her, and she wished she could say the words back to him. She felt them, so much that it almost hurt to hold them in, but when she tried, they simply became stuck. Tomorrow, she would tell him. After he told Eloise and his parents that he intended to marry ruined little Maddie Willits.
Once he’d done that, she had the feeling that reality would come crashing down on his head, and he would regret having becoming temporarily mad and said all those wonderful things to her. Until then, she would let everything be a dream. A very pleasant, comforting dream.
“Why did you turn Dunfrey down?” he murmured into her hair.
She buried her face against his chest. “I thought about what you said. Charles claimed he loved me, but he sounded just as sincere when he called me a whore in front of all my friends. You were right. I think he just wanted my dowry.”
“Maddie,” he said softly.
“It’s all right.” The music began again, and she started at the sudden noise.
Quin leaned backward and glanced down again. “Hm. Apparently they weren’t as amorous as we were. They’re gone. In all fairness, though, they didn’t remove any clothes.”
She chuckled against his hard, well-muscled chest. “Neither did we.”
“We rearranged some,” he protested. “If you’d like me to be more thorough, I’m quite willing.” He shifted. “Exceedingly willing.”
She could tell. And if she didn’t let go of him now, she never would. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, pulling free of his arms. “Get going.”
“Minx,” he said, turning for the window.
“Oaf.”
“Lightskirt.” Hopping up onto the sill, he swung his legs outside.
“Blackguard.”
“Sprite.” Quin disappeared from view.
“Dullard.”
His head reappeared. “I say. That last one I handed you was a compliment.”
“Oh. Um—hero.”
He grinned. “Much better. Come along, my sweet. And you’d best be quick about it.” Quin vanished downward again.
He was right. If no one had already discovered their absence, they were luckier than they deserved. Frowning nervously, she hiked her skirts up to her knees and swung her legs out over the garden. Grasping one side of the trellis, she awkwardly stepped onto it.
“Very nice,” he murmured from very close below her. “I should have let you lead before.”
“Shut up,” she snapped quietly, making a game effort to stomp on his head with her slippered
foot. When she’d first seen him, she’d never have thought the Marquis of Warefield could be so very funny and witty and passionate and warm. Thank goodness he’d seen through her anger before she had.
Finally he gripped her about the waist and set her down on the balcony’s hard stone. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?” he whispered.
“I will.” Someone had left a half-empty glass of Madeira on the railing, and she picked it up, pasted a bored expression on her face, and slowly strolled back into the ballroom.
No one turned immediately to stare at her, and she took that as a good sign. When her mother grabbed her arm, she jumped and nearly spilled the glass down her front.
“Where have you been?” Lady Halverston hissed, her face flushed.
“Getting some air,” she replied. “I’ve been rather nervous tonight.”
“Even so, with your reputation, you know better than to go wandering off. People would be more than willing to believe you were up to something. And then all of Lady Highbarrow’s efforts would have been for nothing. I could never have explained that to Her Grace.”
Maddie tugged her arm free. “Don’t worry, Mama. I know what I’m doing. I shan’t embarrass you again.”
She turned away and caught sight of Rafael. He was in his dress uniform again, splendid and dangerous and handsome. Even the scar across the left side of his face only served to make him look more rakish. He leaned against the wall, a glass of port in each hand, and looked at her. After a long moment, he straightened and made his way around the edge of the ballroom to deliver one of the glasses to his brother.
Maddie took a breath. Rafe, at least, knew something had happened between her and Quin. All she could do was pray that no one else did, and that Quin’s optimism about tomorrow would be true. For both their sakes.
Chapter 17
Quin rose early. A year ago—hell, six months ago—he would never have imagined a day like this. And he certainly would never have been looking forward to it. Lately his well-buried adventurous spirit seemed to have emerged, and he knew exactly whom he could thank for it. In fact, he intended to thank her for it as frequently as possible.
By Love Undone Page 30