The Seduction

by Julia Ross

  "La! The price of your original wager was mine."

  "So we are both in demand tonight. Firstly, by Lord Edward. Now, me by you. You, obviously, have won."

  Her neck curved like a sculpture of Venus. Her mouth was set, rigid, her back like a column.

  "You cannot bear not to be in command, can you, Lord Gracechurch? You cannot bear it that the consummation of our game is due to my ultimatum, not yours, even when it is what you worked for so very hard?"

  "You do not accuse me of being Lord Edward's accessory?" he asked. "You don't think Ι was part of this from the beginning?"

  She spun about and walked away a few paces, heels clicking on the floor.

  "No, of course not. Even you are not such a good actor. All you know is this: to labor, toil, slave to win yet another conquest, another lady's name to add to your endless string of meaningless encounters. Why else would Lord Edward choose you?"

  The back of her neck seemed very tender beneath the clasp of gold chain that held her locket. Α sweep of powdered hair rose above her bent nape, an echo of the sweetness of the curve of her shoulder. Whatever accusations she flung at him now, he deserved. It was all true. He had accepted this profane wager. He had intended to win it.

  They both knew that he had almost succeeded.

  He stepped toward her - and saw a faraway version of himself stepping back. Α large mirror gleamed at each end of the corridor. They reflected into each other, an infinity of hallways, receding and receding in a sparkle of candlelit glass. In each replicating image he saw himself. The smallsword. The wide skirts of his waistcoat and the silk-clad shape of his calves. His gilt hair worn without powder, unless that was required for an audience with royalty. Α vanity that seemed hideous to him now, dressed like a doll in the clothes of the court - except his jacket, of course, which he had stripped off. Wise, always, to be able to reach one's blade easily when surrounded by enemies.

  His gaze slid away from his reflection to lock onto that infinity of ladies, multiple images of rose silk, powdered hair, deep décolletage. Smaller and smaller, disappearing into the never-ending corridor, each one stood with hooped skirts billowing, spine rigid with courage. Each pair of blue eyes looked back into his with disdain.

  Juliet. He had told her he loved her. He had casually said the same to a myriad women. Why on earth did he think he perhaps meant it now?

  "Ι have been asking myself what Lord Edward's real game was all week," he said. "Ι do not usually lose at cards-"

  "Nor with women, why is why he used you. Now it is my turn. What matter if there is one more notch on your bow?"

  "It matters, if you are not truly willing, Juliet."

  Her fan snapped, the frail ivory wands splintering in her hands.

  "Willing? Oh, your conceit is surely greater than that? You are such a splendid lover, every woman is willing."

  He swept her a bow. Up and down endless glass corridors, blond heads bowed, getting smaller and smaller. He retreated into the familiar game, the game he had perfected with so many women.

  "Then you will not change your mind?"

  "I will not!"

  He smiled, deliberately. "Ma'am, I desire your body with a quite reckless ferocity. I have never denied or attempted to hide that. When in addition, I stand to win back my fortune and my ancestral home, I am by no means noble enough to turn that down. I only hope you are prepared for what's about to happen."

  She wavered then. He saw it in the nervous little jerk of her hand. "Prepared?"

  "To share passion for our mutual pleasure, for as long as it lasts, with nothing else implied. I am ruthless about affairs. Mine are only of the body, not of the heart. That's what it means to be a rake. I will not marry you."

  Rose satin flowed in the infinite mirrored images as she turned away. "Alas, but there is another condition, sir: After tonight, you will never see me again."

  It was a small shock. He took the broken fan from her hands. "I did not mean anything quite so drastic. I shall delight in changing your mind."

  "You will not seek me out again."

  "After tonight, you may wish me to."

  "But if I do not ask you, you will not contact me. I must have control in this."

  He bowed his head. "Your wish is my command, Juliet."

  "You are also, no doubt, experienced enough to guarantee not to get me with child?"

  "Yes, I can guarantee that."

  "Then, if we are to consummate our unholy treaty, we had better begin. There's not much time left."

  The door flew open. Like a cork thrust forward on the wave of inebriated laughter from the room behind, Sir Reginald Denby's flushed face bobbed into the corridor.

  "Well, Gracechurch? Do you agree to the lady's demands? We have a new wager riding on the outcome."

  Alden swept him a formal bow. "You may tell Lord Edward that the lady gains her desire. I trust you wagered on the winning side, sir, and that your distinguished guest is not too disappointed by his failure to win Gracechurch Abbey?" He turned back to Juliet and held out a hand. "Madam?"

  Her fight for courage was palpable as she placed her fingers in his. Α tremor ran up his arm. He laid his other hand over hers to keep it still." Her wide eyes glanced up into his. Alden pulled Juliet to his hip, crushing her hoops, doing his best to imbue her with confidence. Now it was too late to turn back, she was shaking like a leaf.

  Sir Reginald seemed ecstatic. "Hah! I wagered you'd do it this time, Gracechurch. Deuced pretty filly, what? Would've had her myself - just for the sake of her eyes, dammit all!" He bellowed until a footman came running. "The green bedchamber, man! Show this lady and gentleman to the green bedchamber."

  "I despise green, Denby," Alden said. "Did you not hear me tell Fenborough so?"

  "The green room's the best-" Sir Reginald began.

  Alden ignored him and smiled at the footman, standing awkwardly to one side. "You may go. The lady and I will choose our own accommodation."

  The footman seemed distinctly confused. "My lord?"

  Denby swayed against the wall. "Take 'em to the green chamber and be damned to it!"

  Alden tapped Denby lightly on his plump cheek, not enough to hurt, just enough to humiliate. "I regret I must spoil the rest of your evening's entertainment, Sir Reginald. We’ll find our own way."

  Taking a tight grip of Juliet's fingers, he led her away, leaving the footman to support his drunk master as he slumped to the floor.

  Α stair led them up to several suites of bedrooms. Alden strode down corridors, throwing open doors, until he found what looked like a disused dressing room with a valet's sleeping couch against one wall. The couch had been made up with clean sheets. The room had no windows or other entrances, and it met one other vital criterion: a key in the lock.

  He spun Juliet inside and closed and locked the door. The room plunged into instant darkness.

  "Why here?" Her voice was sharp with bravado. "Ι have no aversion to green."

  He reached for her face with both hands and cupped her cheeks while he kissed her on the forehead.

  "Do you still not know what kind of men these really are, Juliet? Denby's green bedroom is infamous in the clubs of London."

  "Infamous?" she asked faintly.

  "For its walls and ceilings, even the bed canopy. The room is filled with mirrors, hidden doors, peepholes-"

  "Why?"

  "So that an audience may watch."

  For a moment, her shattered breathing was her only response.

  "Oh," she said at last.

  He groped forward in the pitch dark, still leading her by the hand. His fingers brushed over hanging garments, a dresser, a patch of plastered wall. The darkness muffled and obscured, leaving him only sound, scent and touch. Every little rustle, every sigh, magnified. Every scent, poignant, pungent, intoxicating. Every touch, a focused concentration of sensation.

  The room smelled of clove-pinned oranges, sharp and sweet. Her skirts brushed against his legs, releasing the tang of lav
ender. Beneath all of it ran the scent of Juliet: musky, winsome, bathed in wildflower water, powdered with aromatic starch.

  His senses fired.

  He was aroused, alive, vibrant with desire. He felt for the couch and sat, pulling her down beside him. Her breathing sounded harsh and frightened. Her hooped skirts enveloped his legs. He held her hands in both of his and waited. Her fingers shook with a fine tremor. Her nervous breath brushed his cheek. For a moment, he thought perhaps she was crying. Everything else fled his mind but that one thought: had he made Juliet weep?

  Somewhere in the house, he heard a clock strike. The single chime of the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes till midnight.

  With one fingertip he traced her cheek and brushed his thumb over the curve of bone below her long lashes. Her eyes were dry, yet - somewhere in his heart - he still thought she wept.

  Alden slipped one hand behind her head, feeling the stiff powder in her hair. Her stays creaked as he pulled her into his arms and laid her head to fit into the curve of his shoulder. For a few moments they sat in silence, two human beings embraced by the dark. He felt alive with a tenderness so strong that even his scorching ardor must wait in the face of it. With the fingers of one hand he smoothed the hair back from her forehead, until he heard her breathing grow quiet and steady.

  "It's not too late, Juliet," he said. "You have sufficiently humiliated Lord Edward. Ι can take care of myself without this sacrifice."

  She pulled away. He could imagine the proud tilt to her chin, the way her hands smoothed her skirts to make that slight crackle.

  The air beside him cooled as she stood up.

  "It's no sacrifice," she said. "I need you to best Lord Edward, and that is more than just bravado. Honor forbids that we lie about this."

  He reached out one hand. It did not feel like chance that he immediately caught her fingers. An invisible cord stretched between them now. He could do nothing wrong.

  "And what else, Juliet?" His arousal filled his world, a sharp convergence of carnality. "What else?"

  "There is nothing else."

  "But there is still something else that Ι hope is true, Juliet."

  "What?" Her voice shadowed the dense, quiet darkness.

  Could she feel the quick pulse of his desire? Sense the pleasure and anticipation building in his body? He gently separated her fingers and caressed each one, from knuckle to tip, lingering over the sensitive pads, letting his thumb stroke small circles in the center of her palm.

  "This truth: That you would like to discover what a rake knows about women that an ordinary man can't imagine. All those long lessons in Italy. What he learned from the keen passions of the many women since, too many to count. All of that wickedness and pleasure, more intense than honest people know. Perhaps you want that, too. Just once. To sin in the dark with a stranger."

  Her hand trembled. "I want only that you win your wager against Lord Edward."

  He traced over the swell at the base of her thumb, around and around. "What if that isn't enough reason for us to make love, Juliet?"

  "It has to be!" She sounded desperate, the tears closer to the surface.

  He lifted her hand. She allowed him to carry her knuckles to his lips. Her fingers gripped his convulsively as he kissed them, one by one, carefully, fleetingly, in a caress designed to tantalize.

  "Then it will be enough, because you wish it." He knew absolutely that he meant it. "So let us make this the most memorable night of our lives."

  HE RELEASED HER. INSTANTLY JULIET PRESSED HER HAND TO her lips. Sweet fire burned over the backs of her knuckles and licked at the center of her palm. Clenching her fingers into a fist, she stood bereft, abandoned in the night. Her corset constricted, laced tightly around her ribs where it forced up her breasts. Was that why her heart ached?

  Everything she had said about the duke's son was true. It was worth anything, even this further destruction of her reputation, to disrupt his plans and force his public repudiation. Lord Edward would never forgive her, but he would also never pursue her again after what she had done downstairs.

  Yet she did not intend for one moment to truly allow this rake's misuse of her body.

  Her pulse raced. It felt like panic. She swallowed.

  There was something else the duke's son had said to her when he' d told her about that base wager in London: Ι knew Gracechurch would never succeed with you. You could neuter such a popinjay with the lift of one eyebrow.

  She had almost done it in the open carriage, when she had pretended to be unmoved by his kisses and seen that fleeting vulnerability cross his face. Let Alden Granville think he had secured her favors. Let him think he had won his wager and saved his fortune. Then let him find himself impotent in the face of her scorn! She would humiliate him, destroy him, strip him of his pride and conceit, and leave him shattered.

  Black night filled her vision. She could hear his steady breathing. His keen, masculine scent filled her nostrils. She had inhaled it like fresh air when she'd first come up behind him in Sir Reginald's drawing room. The other men were doused with strong perfume. In contrast, Alden Granville carried only the bouquet of fresh water, like a fast-flowing brook, mixed with some indefinable maleness that she wanted to draw deep into her lungs. Damn him that he had used all of that beauty to deceive her!

  "There can't be much time left," she said into the breathing silence.

  Something clunked as it hit the floor. The sound echoed in her heart in a small burst of panic.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Removing my shoes," he replied calmly.

  Metal made a small clink.

  "What was that?"

  "My smallsword. Ι don't usually wear it when Ι make love." His voice teased, full of confidence. Damn him!

  "You are getting undressed?" Her voice was too high, almost a squeal. Juliet swallowed again and took a deep breath.

  "Does that alarm you?"

  That slight shush of satin must be his waistcoat sliding from his arms. She could imagine it, the rose-and-silver embroidery folding, dancing as it was shrugged off his strong shoulders and back.

  "Ι don't- Νο, of course I'm not alarmed!" Yet she stood frozen in the dark.

  Something fine and soft rustled, tiny sounds as if the bells in the pattern on his lace rang in Some almost inaudible, miniature world.

  "Then you will be glad to know Ι have now shed my shirt. My breeches come next."

  Her eyes must be closed against the pitch dark, squeezed tightly shut, for she could see a vision of him moving as he had moved through her hayfield, golden and powerful. Heat flooded her, as if her skin caught fire in that imagined bright sun.

  Α muffled snap. Opening buttons?

  The shush of sliding fabric. His breeches slipping down over his strong, slim hips?

  The fire was spreading, smoldering up over her belly and sending long tendrils of flame deep inside. Let him build an answering fire of his own! Let him be desperate, pleading when she finally mocked and repudiated him!

  The tiny shivering sound of soft underclothes being drawn down over bare muscled thighs.

  His breathing, fast and strong.

  Then - except for that steady cadence - silence.

  "You are naked?" she asked at last.

  "Yes." His voice smiled.

  Scarlet shame burned over her face, but she must know. She must know that he was ready and keen and vulnerable. "You are aroused?"

  "Yes."

  She had to gulp down panic, try to breathe normally, but the heat was consuming her and she couldn't catch a proper breath. "You have that much desire?"

  "Ι vibrate with desire-"

  "You're invisible. Ι can't tell!" Her voice was tight with trepidation and this underlying, all-consuming rage.

  ''Yes, you can. You don't need eyes to know that Ι am aflame with intensity. You know it in your bones, Juliet, because you feel the same way."

  Not yet! Not yet! He must be brought to the point of desperation before she too
k her revenge. Yet her legs wanted to fold, collapse into a heap of satin skirts and hoops. She reached out to steady herself and found nothing. She couldn't see. She didn't know where he was. She couldn't interpret the small sounds any longer.

  "What happens now?" Panic vibrated in her voice. She gulped convulsively.

  "Now it is up to you."

  Her fingers flailed in the darkness, only to brush over some thing silky and soft. For a moment she was arrested in a kind of blind madness. But it was only his hair.

  He was kneeling at her feet.

  Juliet gasped in a breath, then another.

  "Hush, " he said. "Relax. Your wish is my command."

  She stood stock still, her fingertips resting on those waves of unpowdered gold. Silky. Soft. Spun sunshine robbed of color by the dark, cheated of its visual splendor, leaving nothing but silken sensuality. She stroked back over his head, feeling the part and slide of that gold on her palms, the ripple of curl, then the heavy mass entrapped by the ribbon.

  "Untie it, if you like," he said.

  She did not want the distraction of words, only this floating sensation. She tried to focus again on her burning desire for revenge. "What?"

  "My hair ribbon. You may untie it, if you like." His voice was amused, warm. "Then Ι will truly be - like the first man - entirely naked."

  Juliet froze. She had demanded that he ravish her. When he was helpless with desire, she intended to destroy him, verbally emasculate him. Let him find himself helpless and flaccid, while she poured scorn on his impotence! He knelt defenseless at her feet. Yet she shook deep in her bones when he asked her to untie his hair?

  Her breath rushed out as somewhere in the soaring confusion of heat and emotion she found the courage to continue.

  "Very well. Ι do not- Ι do not have much practice at this. You will forgive my being a little clumsy?"

  "It's only a ribbon."

  She slipped her palms over his bent head, groping past the shock of his firm shoulder, his strong neck, his skin aflame, until her fingers closed over the ribbon.

  He knelt at her feet like a knight errant and let her fumble. Juliet groped for the loops, identified the free ends and disentangled them from his thick hank of hair. She tugged until the knot slipped undone. Tentatively she ran her hands through the strands, separating them, letting the flow of liquid silk slide over her palms and between her fingers, lifting the rippling mass away from his face, smoothing ίι over his broad shoulders.