Juliet flexed her jaw several times, and swallowed back the ball of regret that granted fools like Albert Marshville power over women. She angrily turned the pages until she opened to an empty page. She smoothed her palm over the blank canvas, and reached for the box of charcoal. She withdrew a piece and began to sketch.
The lines of the page came together, and she continued to work. Poppy’s mischievous smile materialized, with the glimmer in her eyes. Juliet continued to sketch the young girl. She sat there so long, her back ached from the stillness of her position. She paused to flex her fingers, then returned to her efforts. She added the midnight curls, the likeness leant credibility by the black of the charcoal.
A long while later, Juliet set the nub of charcoal down and raised the page to her lips and blew upon it. She lowered it back to her lap and studied the now filled page, angling her head to study her work with a critical eye.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and she started. The book fell closed with a decisive thump. She held her breath as the steps continued on, and realized it was surely a servant seeing to his or her evening’s duties. She bit the inside of her cheek. Why should she be disappointed that it wasn’t another?
The door opened, and her breath froze in her chest.
Jonathan stood framed in the doorway. Resplendent in his fine evening clothes, his thick, well-muscled legs filled the black fabric of his breeches. He leaned against the doorframe and studied her through sinfully thick black lashes. “Juliet,” he greeted.
Juliet set her book aside and climbed to her feet. “My lord,” she greeted, dipping a curtsy.
He angled his head toward the window seat. “Please, no need for formality on my behalf.” His husky baritone warmed her through.
She remained standing, praying he’d leave, hoping he didn’t.
He shoved away from the doorjamb and strolled boldly into the parlor, king of this, his castle, and she a mere subject to his grand presence.
She moved her gaze over the chiseled lines of his firm cheeks, his aquiline nose, his hard, squared jaw with the faintest cleft at the center, the only hint of softness in a face made for artists to sculpt and her fingers twitched with longing for her charcoal and a blank page to commit him to memory, this beautiful specimen of masculine perfection.
Jonathan came to a stop before her. He captured his jaw between a thumb and forefinger and rubbed it back and forth studying her like she were an unfamiliar species he’d happened to stumble upon. “Are you unable to sleep, Miss Marsh?”
His words roused an image of her comfortable bed, and then all manner of wicked thoughts not at all appropriate for an innocent young lady tumbled through her head. She groaned.
He peered at her through thick, black lashes. “Is everything all right, Juliet?”
Nothing had been all right for more than a year. Not since Papa’s unexpected death. Not since Albert had assumed the responsibility of care of her.
He inclined his head. “Because I believe you groaned.”
Her cheeks warmed. Of course a primal tiger should note even the subtlest of sounds of his prey. “Did I?” Her mind went blank.
The half-moon that hung high in the sky beyond the window, cast a bluish-white glow through the windowpanes, and bathed him in its eerie light, giving him the look of a dark god, not a mere mortal, before her.
His body shifted forward, ever so close to hers.
Thumpthumpthumpthump. Her heartbeat pounded loudly in her ears, dulled her senses, slowed her thoughts so all she knew, all she felt was the heat of his broad, masculine body, radiating out, caressing her with its warmth. Juliet blamed such foolish yearnings on the pull of the early morning moon. In the light a new day, when the sun rose in the distant horizon, logic and order would surely be restored. But for now, she could see naught but him.
She devoured him with her eyes, even as he stood there seeming wholly unaffected by her presence. She’d never considered herself small of stature. In fact, over the years she’d bemoaned her oddly tall height that had her looking down at too many gentlemen. Yet, the earl’s towering frame, six or so inches taller than her own, made her feel for the first time in her life, graceful and delicate. His nearness filled her with a heady sensation, and drove back the history between them, the resentment she’d carried in her heart for his casual possession of Rosecliff Cottage, the vast differences in their statuses. All truth and reality was stripped away, so all that remained were a woman and a man.
Jonathan reached out and trailed the back of his knuckles along her cheek. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I would trade all my holdings to know what you’re thinking just now, Juliet,” he whispered.
I want you to kiss me. The thought, so very real, and desperate she marveled he’d not heard her innermost wishes. “That would be a fool thing to do.” She prided herself on the steady deliverance of those words. Unable to hold his heated stare any longer, she let her gaze slide away from his, off to the side, toward the full floor-length windows.
He continued his delicate stroking. He brushed his knuckles along her chin. “I must be all kinds of fool,” he murmured.
Her lids fluttered closed, as she leaned into his touch. A man such as this could never be accused of being a fool. Not him. “Why do you say that, my lord?” She managed to squeeze out on a breathless whisper.
He lowered his brow to hers, his sapphire blue stare pierced her with its intensity. “Jonathan,” he demanded with all the authority of one accustomed to having his every desire met. “Say my name.”
“Jonathan,” she whispered, loving the feel of his name upon her lips, so utterly masculine and yet all the same, smooth as warmed chocolate.
He cupped her cheek. “Now tell me you still do not desire my kiss, Juliet?”
She swayed against him, hating the inherent weakness inside her, that she should crumble so easily beneath his delicately sensual touch. Not when he should appear so wholly unaffected by her presence. Juliet tipped her chin up a notch. “Is that what this is, Jonathan? A manner of game? A battle of wills between—”
His mouth closed over hers, hard and searching. Her body stiffened at the unexpectedness of his embrace and then it was as though all the muscles drained from her body, leaving her weak-kneed as she melted against him. She moaned as his lips slanted over hers again and again, almost punishingly, as though he hated himself for his own weakness as much as she detested herself for this hungering for his touch.
He urged her mouth open and plunged his tongue deep inside. Oh God, he tasted of brandy and honeysuckle, an unexpected taste to this sinfully handsome man. The sweetly erotic combination she longed to lose herself within. Her legs buckled, but he caught her to him, anchoring her close to his chest, while he continued to plunder her mouth. “Jonathan,” she moaned into his mouth, the breathless whisper swallowed by his kiss.
He pulled back and she groaned in protest, but he only moved his attention to the lobe of her ear. He drew the sensitive flesh between his teeth and lightly nipped her. “You’ve bewitched me, Juliet Marshville,” he said, his pronouncement harsh and guttural in a manner she’d never before heard from the polished Earl of Sinclair. He trailed his lips down her cheek, to the corner of her lip, and nipped at the flesh there.
Juliet bit her lip to keep from crying out.
“I’ve never encountered a woman who looked at me with such fire in her eyes, and yet burned so hot for my touch,” he said, hoarsely. He concentrated his attention on the sensitive flesh where her neck met her ear.
Her head fell back, and a breathless giggle escaped her. “Th-that ti-tickles,” she rasped but the words ended on a pained groan as he gently sucked at the flesh there. “What are you doing to me?” she implored. This man, who laid careful mastery over her body.
He cupped her breast and she cried out, but he immediately swallowed the sound with his lips. “I’m making love to you, sweet Juliet.” And he did. His expert fingers rolled the swollen bud of her breast, and never more had she want
ed to shrug out her gown and expose her naked skin to the night air.
“Oh, please, Jonathan,” she begged as he pulled his mouth away, not knowing what her body begged for, only knowing with his touch he’d erased the logic that drove her hatred and turned her into a quivering mass of fierce desire.
His fathomless eyes, roved over her face, as though he sought to commit her every feature to memory. “Become my mistress.”
Juliet shook her head, and tried to make sense of his words, a statement more than a question.
Become my mistress. Not his wife. His mistress.
He reached for her hand, but she pulled away from him and held her palm up. Jonathan would make her his whore, but never his wife. Even as she longed for his touch, ached for him, she could not, nay would not, ever accept an offer to be his mistress. “No,” she said, proud of the firm resolve in that single utterance.
He scowled, a man who seemed wholly unaccustomed to having a lady deny his every wish. “No,” he repeated.
“No. I will not become your mistress. You can’t—”
“I’m the Earl of Sinclair,” he interjected. “I can do whatever I want, Juliet.”
A breathless laugh, more of a sob, worked its way up her throat. It spilled past her lips, the sound desperate to her own ears. Oh, her boldly arrogant Jonathan. He saw the world in absolutes. He didn’t know, nor likely had ever known, the shades of uncertainties in between the unpleasantness of life. All he knew was that he wanted her in the physical sense. He wanted ownership of her body, but not her heart. What did you think, you silly fool? A jeering voice echoed around her mind. That he would wed you? No, earls didn’t wed their sisters’ governess.
As though he detected the shock in her silent thoughts, he again said, “Be my mistress, Juliet. I’ll give you your cottage. I’ll give you more jewels than you know what to do with. I’ll give you any damn trinket your heart desires.”
Her heart wrenched. “Your mistress,” she said, her voice hollow. He’d make her his mistress. He’d put to her the very same indecent proposal made by Lord Williams. He knew her so very little that he should believe baubles meant more to her than her own respectability.
Jonathan continued, seeming unaware of the turbulent emotions raging through her. “You’ll never have to take employment as a blasted governess again. You’ll live for the pleasure I can give you.”
Because she was a weak-willed fool, she allowed him to pull her into his arms and kiss her until all coherent thought fled, until she was whimpering his name, almost prepared to accept the offer he put to her.
He pulled back, and placed a kiss at the corner of her lips. “You are so beautiful. ‘But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and you are the sun.’ And you’ve set me afire, sweet Juliet.”
His unwitting words of the star-crossed lovers and their family of enemies yanked her viciously from the moment. She wrenched away from him, her breath coming in fast, hard pants. Juliet touched a hand to her heart in attempt to slow the pounding organ.
“What is it?” But for the hoarse edge to those three words, she’d not know that this man had been the same one to caress her body, and search her mouth with such a fierce intensity.
She slipped her fingers into his, and guided his hand back to his side. “Don’t,” she whispered, as the implications of her actions here, in this very place slowly sank into her like a foot attempting to slog through thick mud. “Oh, God,” she whispered, and raised a trembling hand to her mussed locks. She tucked the loose, flyaway strands behind her ears.
You’re one of Sin’s fancy pieces. Prudence’s earlier accusation resonated in her head like the loud chimes of church bells. Because even a girl of fifteen had detected Jonathan’s dishonorable intentions toward Juliet. Become his mistress, indeed.
What had happened here, with this man, their very actions jeopardized the stability she’d hungered for this past year. With his intoxicating kiss, and expert touch she risked her good name, her virtue. “Oh, God,” she repeated, shaking her head. She’d been so very close to laying herself open, fearless to his invasion, and then what would have become of her? In the end, she would have been nothing more than the fallen woman Lord Williams had attempted to make of her.
Jonathan placed his hands upon her shoulders and turned her to face him. His stark white gloves a vivid reminder of the great divide between their stations; he, a powerful, sophisticated nobleman, and she…a small baronet’s sister, and now governess. “We’ve done nothing wrong. We are both adults who know what we want, Juliet. I want you, and you want—”
She slapped her hands over her ears and cringed. “Stop.” Juliet shied away from his touch. Why, he saw her as nothing more than a woman of questionable moral standing, and she’d done nothing but indulge those assumptions. A bitter laugh gurgled up from her throat. She’d leaned into him and begged for his kiss like any common strumpet in the street.
“Don’t look like that, Juliet,” he ordered, his tone harsh and angry.
She ignored him, and took a step backward. With fingers that shook she gathered together sketchbook and charcoals. “And so there are no misunderstandings between us, my lord, I will never, ever become your mistress.” I should have left this room the moment you entered.
His thick-hooded lashes veiled his eyes. “Never is a very long time.”
“If you’ll excuse me, my lord,” she said on a shattered whisper and then turned and fled.
Perhaps she was something of a coward after all.
Chapter 9
At the breakfast table the following morning, Jonathan read and re-read the same five lines in the copy of The Times about a certain Lord L being discovered in a compromising position with Lady-Something-Or-Another.
In the thirty-minutes since he had entered the breakfast room and sat to enjoy the newspaper, a coffee, and a plate of cold ham and baked eggs covered in a tomato sauce, he’d not managed to learn the identity of that particular woman discovered with Lord L. In large part because he truly didn’t give a fig if Lord L was diddling his butler.
In larger part because he couldn’t, for all his wealth and holdings, ignore Juliet or the memory of their kiss last evening. Her position at the opposite end of the long breakfast table only made his already exceedingly difficult task of forgetting the lady all the more impossible. He’d offered to make her his mistress. Had offered her wealth beyond anything she’d ever earn in the course of her lifetime as a governess. He’d even offered her that bloody cottage. And how had she responded to his offer? She’d eyed him like he was a spider who’d crawled between her bed sheets.
In the end, he’d felt like that damned spider that had crawled into her bed.
Over the years, he had become accustomed to women vying for a place in his bed. He didn’t beg women, but rather had they begged for the pleasure of his touch. Juliet, however, had tipped her chin up and flatly rejected his offer. I will never, ever become your mistress. Never, indeed.
Poppy, seated alongside Juliet, prattled on in the young woman’s ears, which he found he didn’t mind for the distraction afforded him with an opportunity to study Juliet.
He lowered his paper, not because he needed another glimpse of the crimson siren whose kiss had stolen all hope of sleep from him, until the morning sun peeked beyond the distant horizon. Her proud shoulders stiffened. He picked up his coffee and took a sip of the vile brew.
“Are you listening to me, Jonathan?” Prudence called from across the table, with a touch of impatience.
“No,” he said over the rim of his glass.
His sister pointed her eyes to the ceiling, appropriately vexed. “You’re insufferable,” she lamented, and then promptly dismissed him.
Which was very good, because in the moment he cared about his sister’s words with the same level of interest he cared about Lord L’s dalliance with Lady Someone-Or-Another.
Juliet’s long fingers toyed with the fork, and his eyes narrowed at the faint tremble to
those digits. He found some solace in knowing the young lady experienced at least some level of discomfit in his presence. With a smile, he again picked up his paper, and peered around the edge of it over in Juliet’s direction.
She nibbled at the edge of her roll. The sweetly erotic image conjured a remembrance of their kiss last evening. Jonathan fought back a groan.
Then, she peeked up at him. Their gazes met. Held. And then she returned her attention to the buttered roll, cold ham, baked eggs, and bacon atop her dish. His lips twitched. Well, if that wasn’t quite the breakfast plate for such a lithe, slender young lady.
Prudence cleared her throat.
Jonathan jerked his attention back to the page in front of him, lest his sister note his untoward interest in Miss Juliet Marsh.
Prudence coughed.
He rustled the paper. “Perhaps you need a drink, Pru?” he suggested, drolly.
“I assure you, I’m just fine,” she returned.
Jonathan lowered the page slightly, and arched a brow.
His minx of a sister waved a hand in his general direction. “I merely wondered how long you intended to study that same page before you realized your paper is flipped upside down?” she called loudly from her spot at the opposite end of the table. A heavy amount of humor laced her question.
His gaze flew back to the copy of The Times in his hands. Bloody hell.
Poppy and Penelope erupted into a flurry of giggles.
Mother quietly scolded them, until they fell silent.
Of course the second eldest of his sisters, the troublesome bit of baggage, would not let the matter die. “I must admit, Sin, I find myself left speechless at your remarkable talents.”
Penelope and Poppy tittered behind their hands, encouraging Prudence.
Jonathan flipped the page around so quick, the bottom corner dipped into the tomato sauce atop his egg, coating the sheet in a slimy, orange-red film. Oh, well hell and damn, now.
Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons Book 4) Page 9