“Or . . .” He paused, pressing his thumb against her lower lip. It felt like velvet, and arousal thrummed through his body. “Right there. I’d have to be quick about that one, though. Even if we were engaged, long, deep mouth kissing has to be done behind the shelter of the rose arbor.”
Her lip trembled, darkening to a deeper pink, a sign that his strategy was working. “You shouldn’t say things like this to me,” she whispered against his thumb, squeezing her eyes shut.
But she didn’t draw back, she didn’t move away. She quivered in his hold, and lust rolled in his body like thunder.
He knew he had to stop, for the effort of holding back, of not kissing her right now, was becoming intolerable. He drew back, letting his hand fall, and when she opened her eyes, he gave her an artless look. “What, this isn’t the sort of conversation you had with Carrington when he took you for a ride this morning?”
“Heavens, no.” She gave a wild little laugh, pressing her fingers to her flushed cheek, right where he’d caressed her a moment ago. “I can’t imagine ever having a conversation like this with Carrington.”
Encouraged by that information, he went on, “Tufton, then?”
The way she wrinkled up her nose and pursed her lips told him that he didn’t have anything to worry about from that quarter, but then she spoke again and shredded any cocky notions Jack might have had that he’d moved into first place.
“Hansborough, though,” she murmured, drumming her fingertips against her cheek, a speculative note in her voice that caught him up sharp. “He might be a different story.”
Jack set his jaw. “Why?”
“Well, he’s so good-looking.”
“Good-looking?” Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “The man wears pomade in his hair.”
“He’s quite charming,” she went on, ignoring Jack’s criticism of his rival. “Witty, too. He’s kissed a few girls in his life, I daresay.” She lowered her hand and gave a shrug. “Any girl would be willing to have a conversation about kissing with Hansborough.”
He felt his guts twist with dread, and his arousal gave way to something else, something dark and dangerous he’d never had cause to feel in his life before. “You can’t have a conversation with Hansborough about kissing.”
“I can’t?” she echoed, emphasizing the word, reminding him of just how well she responded to autocratic commands. “Oh, really? Why not?”
“Because it would be impossible,” he countered, aware that he sounded as belligerent as Androcles’ lion. “He’d have to lift his gaze from your bosom long enough to pay attention to what you were saying, a feat far beyond him, I fear.”
“Jack, are you—” She paused as a smile started to curve her mouth, but then she bit her lip to catch it back. “Jack, are you jealous of Hansborough?”
God, yes.
The idea that she could even contemplate kissing Hansborough or any other man but him made Jack feel absolutely violent. He wanted to smash his head into the garden wall or rip Hansborough’s throat out. Never in his life had he felt like this, not about any other woman he’d ever known, and he realized why the kiss in Newport had about knocked him off his feet and why he’d been so dead set to win her ever since. From the moment his lips had touched hers, he belonged to her, body and soul. He knew that as surely as he knew his name.
He wanted her to know it, too. He wanted to haul her into his arms right here, right now, right in front of her mother, and show her why he was the only man in the world who ought to have the right to kiss her.
But past experience had already taught him doing such a thing wasn’t going to win her over, so he could only stand there, staring into her eyes, motionless and mute, cursing himself for teasing her with her jealousy yesterday, and for pushing her to tell him about Conrath, and most of all, for ever starting this silly game in the first place.
He felt exposed, vulnerable, and in desperation, he bent to pick up the baskets he’d dropped earlier. But as he straightened, he knew he had to give her some sort of reply, preferably something offhand and clever that would put him back on safer ground. “Linnet, you know I can’t tell you that,” he said, working to keep his voice light and teasing when what he felt was dark and feral. “It’s not your day to ask questions.”
He managed a flirtatious smile before he turned away and started back to the house. Charles, he thought with chagrin, would have been quite proud of him for that.
HE WAS JEALOUS of Hansborough.
Linnet watched him go, too astonished to move. He’d said last night that today it would be his turn to be jealous, but she had deemed those light words an attempt to tease her and nothing more. In turning the tables today, she hadn’t expected him to react with such force, and for a moment those usually impenetrable eyes of his had revealed something far more turbulent than teasing ought to evoke. Like their picnic, when she realized her failure to arrive had wounded him, she felt as if a curtain had just been drawn back, showing her the truth.
Or what she thought to be the truth, she amended at once. She’d been sure more than once that a man cared about her, only to discover how easily she’d been deceived. And right now, her wits felt thick as tar, all her senses were in tumult, and there was no way to be sure about anything.
She lifted her hand to her face, brushing her own thumb over her lower lip where he’d caressed her moments before, just as stunned by that as she was by the discovery of his jealousy. After his intimate questions, provocative suggestions, and light caresses, her insides were still quivering.
He hadn’t touched her since that night in Newport, but even the fact that he would be so bold as to touch her a second time right under her mother’s nose wasn’t what left her standing here as if rooted to the spot.
The fluttering agitation evoked by his words, the anticipation as he’d lifted his hand, and the pleasure that had fissured through her at his touch, and yes, the tension and excitement of knowing her mother was a mere twenty yards away—all that was a combination that left her breathless and giddy.
It was very similar to what she’d felt when Conrath had held her hand under the table.
The realization was like a dousing of cold water.
He’d done it on purpose. Right after she’d told him about Conrath holding her hand, he must have started plotting how he could do the same thing. And he’d succeeded, too, touching her face and her neck and her mouth until she was awash in sensation, and doing it all right under her mother’s nose. That conniving, sneaky—
“Don’t you want to walk back with Lord Featherstone?”
Her mother’s voice interrupted her, and Linnet came out of her outraged contemplations with a start to find her parent standing beside her.
“No, I don’t,” she answered as she bent to reach for the two baskets of roses he’d left on the ground. “Trust me, Mother, being anywhere near that man right now is the last thing I want to do.”
She ignored her mother’s disappointed sigh as she walked away.
IF THAT AFTERNOON in the garden had given him any hope he was making progress in his courtship, the evening dashed it to smithereens. Linnet spent her entire evening glued to Hansborough’s side like a limpet, and Jack had to watch the fellow lower his gaze to where it damn well didn’t belong all through dinner and dessert. One thing he didn’t have to do, however, was sit through the port while Hansborough smirked at him across the table.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said, rising, port glass in hand. “I’m going out for a breath of air. It’s quite warm in here this evening.”
He excused himself from the dining room, slipped out the nearest side door, and went outside. He walked along the house, taking deep breaths of the cool evening air, striving to clear his head and regain his control before he joined the ladies. Piano music floated to him as he came around the corner of the house, but as he started up the steps of the terrace, Linnet’s voice floated to him over the soft melody of the sonata being played, and he kept walking, st
raight past the French doors and down the steps at the opposite end of the terrace. But he stopped at the bottom and closed his eyes, listening for her voice again.
He had to get hold of himself before the other men finished their port, for the idea of Hansborough having Linnet’s attentions all evening while he stood out here and did nothing about it was unthinkable.
God, he thought, once it hit a chap, jealousy was an odious thing. He didn’t know why it was deemed the green-eyed monster, for to him, it was no serpent or dragon. It was a black, smothering wave.
It hadn’t been all that difficult for him to ask Linnet about a man from her past, for he felt no jealousy over a memory. In fact, he’d dived into that pond expecting Conrath’s seduction to be far more wicked than it had proved in reality. Hansborough, however, was here and now, and that was a whole different thing.
The viscount had the power to say and do the same things he was doing; there was nothing to stop him. And if Jack was any judge of character, the fellow knew his way about when it came to women. The idea that Linnet would contemplate even a discussion of kissing, much less engage in the act of it, with any man but him was unbearable, and yet, if it happened, he knew he could do little to stop it.
He downed his port in one draught, set the crystal goblet on the stone pedestal beside him, and took a few more steps along the side of the house, moving out of the light that spilled from the windows along the terrace and into the shadows beyond the steps.
This was only the second evening. He stopped walking again and raked his hands through his hair, wondering in desperation how he was going to endure four more nights of this without going insane or giving in to the same wild impulse he’d had in Newport to claim her for himself.
He could not allow either of those things to happen. He had to tamp down this dark, smothering jealousy before it could have power over his actions. He closed his eyes, but when he did, an equally dark and powerful emotion stirred inside him, and here, alone in the darkened garden, he couldn’t resist allowing it to take hold of him. He closed his eyes.
The image that came into his mind was of her as he’d first seen her in the ballroom at Newport, a golden beauty with lovely eyes who’d riveted the gazes of half the men in the room the moment she stepped through the door. He imagined her now as he’d imagined her then, seeing past the upswept hair, glittering jewels, and Worth gown. He imagined now what he’d imagined then, all that tawny hair down around her shoulders. In his imagination, he stripped away pink silk to expose exquisite breasts, shapely hips, and long, slim legs. Arousal stirred in him.
He tilted his head back, breathing in the remembered scent of heliotrope and tasting sherry on his tongue as he relived the extraordinary moment when his mouth had touched hers and everything in the world had changed for him. His arousal deepened into lust.
He thought of this afternoon, of how touching her cheek had stirred her desire. She was an innocent, he reminded himself, but here in the darkness of his imagination, that thought seemed to enhance his lust instead of suppressing it, spreading it through his body in a thick, hot wave. The passion in her was unmistakable; it lurked deep down, waiting for the right man to bring it out. He wanted to take her innocence, revel in that passion, and show her he was that man.
“I know what you did.”
Saints preserve us.
Jack almost groaned aloud at the sound of Linnet’s voice, low but unmistakable despite the music coming from the drawing room. His self-control was barely tethered as it was. Did she have to come out here and test it further?
He glanced at the line of tall boxwoods along the side of the house, and he cursed himself for not having the sense to hide among them before he started thinking lusty thoughts. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, not daring to turn around. “Not alone with me.”
“I saw you pass by a few minutes ago, but I doubt anyone else did,” she murmured, still keeping her voice low.
Desperate, he tried again. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“I’ve just come out for a stroll along the terrace, and you’re down there in the dark where no one can see you.”
“Thank God for that, at least,” he muttered, and took a deep breath, working to tamp down lust as best he could. “Still, best if you go back in.”
“I just came out to tell you I know what you were doing.”
Walk away, he told himself. Walk away now. But even as he thought it, he knew he wasn’t going to. Striving to seem as if he were under perfect control, he turned to face her.
She stood at the top of the steps, and the light behind her that spilled through the drawing room windows illuminated the golden locks of her hair like a halo and lent a faint glow to the edges of her white silk evening frock. She looked angelic, innocent, and somehow, that harkened to the devil inside him like no siren ever could.
He took another deep breath. “I shan’t use one of my three remaining questions today to ask what you mean, but if you care to explain, I’m all ears.”
“This afternoon in the rose garden, you did what Conrath did. I told you about his holding my hand, of how he . . . caressed it, and you turned right around and tried the same sort of thing. Don’t deny it.”
If he pursued this topic, he was risking annihilation, but then he reminded himself of the goal he’d set that afternoon in Belinda’s drawing room. His purpose in all of this was to spark her arousal and light her on fire and make her want him as much as he wanted her. He couldn’t light her on fire if he didn’t strike any matches. “I won’t deny it, but I do have to wonder if you know why I did it.”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? You wanted to make me feel . . . feel . . .” She paused and looked away, and though the light behind her and the darkness in front of her prevented him from seeing the blush in her cheeks, he knew it was there. He didn’t see it, but he felt it—the first stir of desire in her. It called to him. He took a step forward.
“Aroused,” he supplied. “I believe ‘aroused’ is the word you’re looking for. Yes, I wanted to arouse you.”
“So you admit it.”
“Of course I admit it. I see no reason not to.” He took another step, like a moth to flame. “Did it work?”
She stirred, glancing over her shoulder and back at him. “When you play twenty questions, do you always ask such inappropriate ones?”
“You came out here,” he reminded her. “You brought up the topic. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with desire, Linnet. It would be much more wrong if you didn’t feel it.”
She shook her head, looking away. “You asked me why I fell in love with Conrath. I’ll tell you why.”
She paused for a long moment before she looked at him again. “Once a girl makes her debut, she is allowed to accept gifts from suitors if they are suitable ones.”
Jack frowned slightly at the seeming shift in the subject. “I’m sure you received heaps of them.”
“Yes.” It was a simple admission, said without vanity, an acceptance of fact. “Books of poetry bound in leather covers, boxes of expensive chocolates, and enormous bouquets with all the appropriate sentiments expressed by the flowers chosen. And yet—”
“And yet . . .” he prompted when she fell silent.
“None of the young men who gave me these gifts bothered to find out what I liked to read, or if I cared for chocolates, or which flowers were my favorites. Conrath was different. In our very first conversation, I mentioned how much I loved the sound of the sea. His first gift to me was a conch shell.”
Jack began to understand where this was going, and it gave him a sinking feeling in his guts.
“All his gifts were like that,” she went on before he could respond. “So simple, and yet, so thoughtful. They were meant to show me how much he cared for me, but it was all a lie because he didn’t care. It was a fortune-hunter’s trick. Blueberry muffins,” she added, “would have been just his sort of present.”
“And that’s why you think I did it, as a trick?”<
br />
“I don’t know.”
“I did it to please you.”
She nodded, not seeming surprised. She looked into his upturned face. “So did he,” she said simply, and Jack felt as if he’d just been kicked in the teeth. He sucked in his breath.
“Every word he said, everything he did—the gifts, the attentions, caressing my hand to arouse me—all deliberate, all designed to please me, and disarm me, and move me to fall in love with him. He manipulated me. And I think you know just how he did it.”
He knew. He’d known all his life. How could he not, having watched the same scenario play out for his father, then his brother, over and over? Conrath had nothing on either of them. But how could he convince her he wasn’t like that? “Linnet—”
“He deceived me, and he broke my heart, but I got over him, and I forgave myself for being a fool. Any girl, I told myself, can make a mistake. But I was determined not to make the same mistake twice, which is why I was so resistant to any suitor over here. I felt sure they were all after my money and nothing more. That night in Newport, when I walked into the ball, I was so confident, so sure of myself and my judgment and what I wanted. But it was proved to me that night that my judgment about men is . . .” She paused and grimaced. “Flawed.”
He cursed Conrath, and Van Hausen, and his brother and his father and every other fortune-hunting scoundrel to hell. “What you’re saying is that you still think I’m a fortune hunter.”
“No, what I’m saying is that I don’t know you’re not one.”
He thought of her father, and the deal they’d made, and frustration rose up inside him, a dangerous addition to the desire already coursing through him. “You could say the same about all the other men here,” he said, stabbing a finger at the drawing room. “You dismissed one or two of them for that very reason last spring.”
“There’s one enormous difference between them and you, and I’ve known it all along.”
“What’s that?”
She looked at him, but she didn’t answer. In the silence, piano music and feminine laughter echoed from the drawing room, a sharp contrast to the frustration and arousal coursing through him.
Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London Page 21