by Lucy Ashford
‘Just give me a respite from the husband-hunters for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘That’s all I ask.’
Her green eyes were glittering again a little dangerously. ‘So—inconvenient, to be rich and eligible. I don’t suppose you’ve considered a genuine betrothal as a solution, Mr Davenant?’
‘Good God, no,’ he remarked imperturbably. ‘Far too much trouble.’
He saw her bite her lip; saw her eyes darken with emotion. Damn, thought Adam. Normally he had no trouble condemning the frivolity of all forms of sentiment. But just at this moment something that was almost uncertainty clouded his well-ordered thoughts. Up till now he’d found this woman infuriating, surprising and amusing in equal measure. Her Somerset accent was so impish that it had made him want to laugh out loud.
But he’d not missed the flash of pain that shadowed her eyes whenever her husband was mentioned. When she looked as she looked now, her vulnerability made him long to take her in his arms and...
Nonsense! All an act. She was tough; she’d had to be, to make a success of her business in a hugely competitive world. Holding her own in an upper-class milieu, clinging to the hereditary arrogance of her upper-class birth and thus avoiding the subservience of some of the other fashionable modistes, who only clawed their way up through sycophancy towards the rich.
And she was beautiful enough to make any man’s blood race.
Adam got slowly to his feet, reminding himself that he didn’t want to find his own emotions tangled up in Belle Marchmain’s messy life...bed the woman, then ditch her—and I’ll give you all the land you want. How Jarvis had grinned as he said it.
Well, Adam wasn’t going to bed her, but Jarvis wasn’t to know that.
And when the time came to do what he had to do, she’d hate him for it—but didn’t she hate him anyway? Why, then, did the nagging thought keep lurking at the back of his mind that he rather liked her?
Ridiculous!
He walked over to the walnut bureau in the corner and unlocked a drawer. ‘By the way,’ he went on imperturbably, ‘I’ve placed a notice of our betrothal in the Gazette. It will appear on Friday. And I believe that on an occasion such as this, a token of esteem is customary.’
He handed her a small, wrapped box and watched her open it. It was a ring he’d bought yesterday from Gray’s in Sackville Street, made of sapphires set
in gold. It was unostentatious, but exquisite, and
he’d expected her—she was, after all, a woman—to be pleased.
She clearly wasn’t.
Belle Marchmain just looked at it coldly and said, ‘I don’t want it.’
As she held it in a hand that trembled a little, something inexplicable tightened in his chest. She looked so vulnerable, so beautiful that, damn it, Adam wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. Kiss those full pink lips, and watch her eyes close in hazy desire. Make love to her until she whispered his name in reciprocated passion...
He said, ‘It’s simply a gift. I’m sorry if you’re offended by it.’
She’d already put the ring back in its box and placed it carefully on the table. ‘Presumably your gifts are usually welcomed with cries of gratitude?’ she enquired brightly.
‘God damn it,’ Adam swore. ‘But you’re an awkward creature, Mrs Marchmain! Most people would not understand your damned reluctance to accept my offer of betrothal, especially as it’s a...’
‘A small price to pay for keeping my brother out of gaol?’
Adam was silent, watching the pulse that flickered in her throat.
She said at last, in a quiet voice that somehow twisted his gut, ‘Mr Davenant. I have fought and fought for my independence. It is, perhaps, the one thing I most value above all. But please—please don’t pretend that all this, your house, your gifts, are anything other than your attempt to express your contempt for me.’
He said, after a while, ‘I have my pride, as you surely know. Do you really think I would want to be associated with a woman for whom I felt contempt?’
She heaved air into her tight lungs and lifted her chin. Adam Davenant certainly couldn’t be telling her that he liked her. ‘La, Mr Davenant,’ she retorted crisply, ‘you are a strange creature, to be sure! But it’s your time and your money that’s being wasted.’
‘Oh, I don’t consider it a waste,’ Adam said softly. ‘Besides—I cannot resist a challenge.’
‘A challenge? Ha!’ Her brilliant green eyes were glittering again. ‘You seem to have this picture of me as a virtuous paragon. But my five years as a merry widow have been full ones, I assure you! Why, I’ve had admirers by the dozen...’
‘Name one of them.’
‘What?’
‘Your admirers. Name just one.’ He folded his arms across his broad chest.
‘Well—well, there are so many. Five years, Mr D.!’
‘I’m waiting.’
‘How could I possibly give you names?’ Belle said a little breathlessly. ‘That would be entirely shabby of me, would it not?’
‘You’ve forgotten your accent again.’
‘What?’
‘Your Somerset accent.’
Belle went pale. ‘Can I go now?’
He looked at his watch, meticulous over timing as ever. ‘Lennox has instructions to provide a coach and driver in half an hour.’
Half an hour—oh, Lord, an eternity. Her eyes fell on the piano in the corner of the room.
‘Then I have time for my music!’ She put one hand to her breast like an opera singer. ‘I cannot live without my music—I told you so, didn’t I?’
‘And I told you...’
But she was already sweeping to the piano to pull out the stool. ‘Every day, I absolutely must practise, for a whole hour, and I have to sing as well...’
‘You’ll have the house often enough to yourself,’ he said swiftly. ‘So the piano, surely, can wait.’
‘But, Mr D., I have to play whenever the music takes me, and that moment is now!’
She began to attack the keyboard in a thundering cacophony of notes. It had been one of Aunt Mildred’s ideas that she learn to play the piano, one of Belle’s ideas that she didn’t, and as a girl she’d deliberately driven her ancient music master to despair.
She smiled at Adam sweetly and began to warble, ‘Cherry ripe, cherry ripe, Ripe I cry...’
She sang in the ridiculously affected way she’d heard one of the Misses Pomfrey sing, to much applause, in the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath. Trilling on the high notes, she gazed at Mr Davenant and simpered at him between verses, while her fingers continued to attack the keys with a quite extraordinary variety of wrong notes. ‘Full and fair ones, come and buy!’ she sang to him one last time.
His broad shoulders were shaking. She realised he was laughing.
‘Stop,’ he was saying. ‘In the name of God, stop...’
She did. She stood up and all trace of mischief had gone from her expression. Her face was rather pale.
She eased the dryness of her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I warned you that you would quickly tire of me, did I not, Mr Davenant?’
‘Will I?’ he breathed. ‘Will I, Belle?’ He was on his feet now, slowly coming towards her like a predatory animal. Something in his husky drawl made her heart race and her pulse thump. She swung away with a gasp, ever alert to danger—this was nothing less than danger!—but he came steadily nearer, the laughter still dancing in his watchful eyes, and captured her with one big hand around her waist. His fingers imprinted themselves through the skimpy muslin, sending pulsing warmth through every nerve ending.
‘You are indeed making a mistake,’ he said softly, ‘if you think I am not the man to respond to your challenge, Mrs Marchmain.’
Chapter Ten
Oh, Lord. ‘That was not a challenge!’ she fired back in desperation. ‘That song was to show you what an absolutely hideous fiancée I will be, Mr Davenant—convenient or not!’
‘I’m not convinced,’ he replied. His voice was st
rangely husky. ‘I think I shall make you play the piano for me every night, wearing pink and lime green. And I shall definitely—most definitely—ask you to sing for me.’
Belle stared at him. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re mad,’ she said flatly.
‘No, I’m simply fascinated. I can’t wait to find out what other skills you possess.’
Something was tingling through her veins. A kind of sweet intoxication at the sound of his husky voice.
‘You talk of many lovers,’ he went on, so close now that she could feel the heat of his big body. ‘I wonder—did they touch you like this, Mrs Marchmain?’
He was using his lean finger to stroke the satin-soft skin beneath her earlobe and then, when her eyes flew up to his with utter shock, Adam cupped the back of her head and lowered his own.
His lips brushed gently over hers, slow but sure. Tasting. Exploring. At first she was rigid with fear. She felt the blood race through her veins, thundering to her heart. Then she was melting helplessly beneath that tender caress. Like his first kiss, but more of everything.
This was what she had dreamed a kiss could be like. This was what...
Still tenderly, he held her face with both his hands and tipped it up to allow his own lips fuller access. And she found she was yielding to the tingling, building need; aware, in a dark whirlpool of longing, of the searching pressure of his tongue, before she gave way to the hard thrust of it; harsh, yes, but she welcomed it!
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she’d reached round him and under his coat, her palms gliding with a will of their own up over the crisp lawn of his white shirt to his shoulders, sensing, beneath her palms, those mighty muscles bunching. The feel of his hard body sent her imagination reeling into a realm well beyond kissing. As if to imprint what this was a precursor to, he’d drawn her so close in his arms that his powerful thigh was pushed between hers; she could feel his arousal, thick and taut, against her stomach and her soft breasts were crushed, their nipples hardening, against the broad wall of his chest. Deep inside her was a throbbing ache, a fluttering sweet pulse, needing something. Needing—him.
Dear God, she wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She despised this arrogant, low-born man who’d forced her into a calculated, cynical betrothal. But his satin-textured lips were still tasting her, his slightly rough tongue teasing, then withdrawing and slowly teasing again, mingling with hers in dark insinuation as his arms held her close. And she felt a low moan of need escape her.
He continued to explore her with half-kisses and devastating strokes of his tongue until she found herself reaching to run her hands through the thickness of his hair. At the same time his hands were finding and cupping her breasts and the pads of his thumbs were circling each nipple, sending her spiralling in a delicious whirlwind of torment. She writhed against him, lost in his slow deep kiss.
He drew away just a little. She made an involuntary sound of loss and her eyes flew up to meet his heavy-lidded gaze.
‘Belle,’ he was saying huskily. ‘Belle, there’s a bed upstairs...’
Her breathing was agitated, the peaks of her breasts hot and hard. She was aching, they were aching, for his touch, for his big, strong hands to cup them again, to rekindle that delicious feeling...
And wasn’t that what this man wanted? For her to beg him to make love to her, simply so he could reject her and utterly humiliate her? Wasn’t that what he’d wanted ever since her words of insult that day on Sawle Down?
A tight pain seized her chest. All her senses felt raw. She breathed, ‘I thought you said you would wait for an invitation.’
His grey eyes were hooded. Dangerous. ‘By God, Mrs Marchmain,’ he said with a gravelly edge to his voice, ‘if that wasn’t an invitation to bed you, then I don’t know what the hell it was.’
She stared up at him in utter dismay. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...’
Adam gazed down at her, the painful throb of his erection not even beginning to ease because with her lips swollen and her sweet breasts pouting beneath that pink muslin flimsiness, she looked more desirable than ever. A widow, a woman of the world; funny, clever and beautiful, yet with a little-girl-lost look that if he wasn’t careful might just have the power to melt his hard heart. Except there was no way on earth that he would let it. And anyway, she hated him.
Remember the railway. His bargain with Jarvis had to come first. Using her? Yes, he was using her—just as she was using him, to save that contemptible brother of hers from ruin.
‘Let’s make things clearer between us next time, shall we?’ Even as he spoke Adam was walking towards the door. ‘As I said—I’m not going to force myself on you. But on the other hand, I won’t be toyed with, do you understand me, Mrs Marchmain?’
She licked her dry lips. ‘I understand,’ she whispered.
He held himself very still for a moment, then said levelly, ‘I think you should move in here as soon as you can. I’ve already told you it’s not acceptable for my fiancée to live above a dress shop.’
Her cheeks whitened; she lifted her chin. ‘I see. Yet it’s acceptable for her to live in a house usually inhabited by your mistresses?’
Adam registered the scorn she flung into that word with a renewed flash of anger. Damn her for her upper-class self-righteousness. ‘Oh,’ he answered smoothly, ‘as you’re fond of pointing out, I wasn’t bred to live by the rules of polite society. You’ll move in, as soon as possible.’
Belle closed her eyes. She was condemned to spend the next few weeks under the protection of a man who despised her. Who could also—he’d just proved it yet again—reduce her to a molten heap of need with just one kiss.
And she could see no way out. Already he was autocratically leading the way into the hall where his steward rather warily stood holding her raspberry-pink and lime-green pelisse.
‘My coachman will call for you tomorrow afternoon,’ Adam told Belle curtly as he escorted her to the coach waiting in the street. ‘As I said earlier, there’s an auction of Egyptian-style furniture at Christie’s. He will take you there.’
Oh, God. That Egyptian furniture she’d made such a song and dance about. Now, she simply felt an idiot for pretending to like such gaudy ostentation. ‘Will you...?’ she began.
‘Yes, I’ll be there waiting for you,’ Davenant went on ruthlessly. ‘And even if you feel you’re not quite ready to move in here yet, people will observe that we are together, and will guess that we’re preparing this house for your occupation. What with that and the announcement in the newspapers, no one can doubt that you and I are serious about our commitment.’
Deadly serious. Belle swallowed. ‘Very well. But I will dress in my own attire, as usual!’
‘By all means. I expect you to make an impact, Mrs Marchmain. And I trust your taste.’
‘You—you do?’
‘I do.’ A hint of gentleness in his voice now. Misleading, dangerous even, because this man bore her no kindness.
He was holding open the door to the carriage for her. At the last moment she turned, the pink and green ribbons on her tall hat fluttering, and said in desperation: ‘I am not sure. I really cannot be sure about all this and you, too, in your heart of hearts must doubt the wisdom of what we are entering into...’
His eyes were unreadable. ‘In my heart of hearts? Clearly you haven’t listened to enough gossip about me. You see, it’s rumoured that I simply don’t possess a heart, Mrs Marchmain.’
He was already giving her his hand to help her inside and the beautiful bay horses moved smoothly off. Despite the warm afternoon sun, Belle found she was shivering.
* * *
Adam returned to the parlour, dragging his hand through his cropped dark hair. Damn. Damn it to hell. The room was still imbued with the delicate lavender scent of her clothes and her skin. Her sweet, soft skin...
His body throbbed at the way she had opened to his kiss, at the memory of her low moan as his hands cradled her breasts. He’d known what she was ready f
or, and so did she. But hell, he’d sworn that he wouldn’t touch her unless she begged him to. And hadn’t she just done that?
No.
That was the trouble. She’d reacted divinely to his kiss, to his caresses—but as far as she was concerned he was breaking his damned promise. Taking advantage. Hell’s teeth, that was the way women thought. Even though she must have felt his goddamn arousal burning against her, even while she clutched him close begging for more, it was all his blasted fault.
Adam cursed again. If he wasn’t careful, this could go badly wrong. Before this latest, dangerous stage of their relationship, Adam had to admit he’d been enjoying her company far more than he’d have thought possible. He’d found her amusing, original and outrageous. And as for her piano playing—he was grinning just at the memory of it.
Yes, outrageous was the word for Mrs Belle Marchmain. But underneath that sparkling veneer he guessed she was as fragile as hell.
He reminded himself that it was her own damned arrogance that had made her vulnerable. That, and her loyalty to her brother, a little voice inside him said. Normally Adam let his mistresses down gently; always they were regretful, but he was careful not to upset their pride.
He knew that with Belle Marchmain there could be no gentle parting. No sweet words of regret followed by a handsome payout. He had to humiliate her. That was the price Jarvis had demanded for his land. And Adam needed to get started on his railway before the autumn set in—so this counterfeit betrothal could be for only a few weeks at most.
Grimly Adam suppressed the memory of the taste of her soft pink lips, the feel of her sweet firm breasts that had peaked to his touch, the almost overriding urge he’d experienced to carry her slender body upstairs and make powerful love to her.
Damn it to hell—there must be no more of these kind of riotous thoughts. Pity was a sentiment he definitely couldn’t afford, and besides, if she didn’t hate him now, she surely would before too long.
* * *