The Seduction

by Julia Ross

  Moonlight glimmered on his cheek as he ducked his head to look out of the window. "You said nothing to me that I didn't deserve."

  "I truly hated you."

  "It doesn't matter if you still do. I am not about to proposition you."

  "Then why did you rescue me?"

  He was silent for a moment. "Shall we just say that we have a mutual enemy?"

  "Lord Edward gives us a shared interest?"

  "I intend to destroy him." It was said simply, the way a man might say he needed to see the weeds in his driveway destroyed.

  So he had rescued her just for that: to foil the duke's son. Not because he cared, or because he felt he owed it to her. Perhaps it was better this way, safer. She still felt numb. What feelings might surface, if she ever allowed herself to truly feel again?

  "By the way," Alden said with a new touch of mischief in his voice. "Did you really eat flowers?"

  It caught her off guard. "Yes," she said. "When you sent me the pineapple, Ι ate part of the rose-petals fell into the butter . . ."

  His laughter shook the carriage, shouts of pure glee. "Lud!" he said at last. "Ι am glad!"

  "Glad? Why?"

  He did not lean forward. He did not reach for her hand. Yet she felt as if his spirit reached out and touched her. "Because it means you were feeling foolish and merry - that Ι did something at least that brought you a moment of happiness."

  Α moment! If she was honest with herself, he had given her almost a week of happiness: impossibly golden, brilliant days, and that one night-

  The coach rocked, then stopped. Light flooded in through the windows from several flambeaux outside, glittering on his wig and dancing over the smooth lines of his face. The face that was ruin to women.

  "We are here," he said. "The Black Horse, a modest but decent hostelry. It's too far to go to Gracechurch tonight, so Ι hired us rooms earlier. Wrap yourself in this." He picked up a hooded cloak from the seat and held it out. His smile was blazing, almost defiant. "A hot bath awaits."

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ALDEN WANTED ONLY TO SMOOTH THE FILTHY, MATTED HAIR away from her forehead, press kisses on her sad lips and brave eyelids. . . . He had no right to any of it. He could only buy her a bath and a meal and a safe bed for the night - and new clothing, of course. The rags she was wearing must be burned.

  But which rooms to reserve? The thought had burned, but wouldn't she want to be as far away from him as possible? Though how could he leave her alone, entirely surrounded by strangers? In the end he had chosen two chambers with a connecting door. She could always lock it against him.

  After a solitary meal and a bath of his own, Alden paced his chamber, dressed in his nightshirt and dressing gown, thinking about women. He liked women. He liked their company and their minds. He loved their bodies. Why did a future inhabited only by a succession of ever-changing female faces now seem so bleak?

  What the devil had Juliet done to him?

  He had thought Lord Edward had concocted a fiendish enough revenge that night at Marion Hall. Nothing had prepared him for what he had found at Blackthorn Manor. Rage still flared, but a new, terrifying emotion he couldn't name burned even deeper. She was so damned courageous, his Juliet. No, not his, alas!

  Could he resist trying to seduce her again - trying to cajole, beguile, to possess that lush body? The thought of making love to her seared through his blood. Could he make it through the rest of his life and never know that, sweetness again?

  He strode to the door connecting their rooms and stood there, his forehead pressed into the wood, his fingers clenched on the latch. She slept, warm, bathed and fed, on the other side. Without making a sound, he released the latch and turned, leaning his head back against the wooden panels.

  Devil take it! Juliet! He wanted to shout her name at the moon. Α kitten mewed.

  Alden stood stock still. He heard the sound again, a plaintive little wail, filled with terror. The cry formed itself into words, barely intelligible at first, then jelling into recognizable syllables: please, please, please, please . . .

  Juliet was imploring-

  Alden spun about, wrenched at the latch and stepped into her room.

  Candlelight streamed through the open doorway behind him.

  Yellow beams traced across the bed to spark amber and mahogany in the long braid of hair moving on her shoulder. She lay rigid on her back, her arms immobile at her sides, while her head thrashed from side to side.

  "Please, please, please, please . . ."

  He strode immediately to the crumpled bed with its tossed covers. She was wearing the night rail he had purchased for her, modest and simple. He had thought it was right, though he wasn't sure why - only that it would definitely be wrong to buy her something provocative, something to reflect his own base desires."

  "Juliet?"

  "I will not say anything, anything, anything. . . . Ι won't beg, Ι won't beg. . . . Ι won't let myself say anything . . . please, please, please-"

  He touched her shou1der. Immediately she jerked awake. Her pupils like pits, she stared up at him from a chalk-white face.

  "It's only me," he said. "You were having a nightmare."

  She turned her face away. "I’m sorry. Ι didn't mean to wake you."

  He felt helpless. "Faith, Ju1iet, what did they do to you?"

  "What do you think?" Her voice was muffled.

  Perhaps the floor opened. Perhaps his heart broke into shards like dropped glass. Perhaps he was run through with an unseen blade to fell him where he stood. She had been raped? As if his legs turned to straw, Alden sank to his knees beside the bed and buried his face in both hands against the cover.

  "Can you tell me?" he said at last. "Can Ι help?"

  Her hand grasped the sleeve of his dressing gown, her fingers pressed into the fabric. "It was at night. The nights when they tied me down."

  Her nails must be marking his arm. He barely noticed.

  "I wasn't ravished," she said. "Not-" She shivered. "It was little enough at first: just a fumbling - furtive, fast, incomplete as if he still didn't quite have enough courage."

  Alden wanted to be sick. Lord Edward will die for this! "Who?"

  The shaft of light cast her face into shadow, her skin ghostly against the bed hangings. "One of the male attendants - the one they called Bill. He had been told Ι was a harlot."

  The Minotaur roared somewhere deep in his skull. "What difference does that make?"

  "It wasn't, really that much," she said, as if her nerve failed her. "I should forget it."

  Alden stared at her white knuck1es, stark where she still clutched his sleeve. He wanted to hold her solidly against his broken heart. "It's bloody foul. Damnable. That any man should touch a woman against her will! God, Juliet, if our bodies aren't ours, then what is?"

  She released his sleeve and curled back against the pillows. "A married woman's body is her husband's. He has a right to it."

  "Yet you refused George in London, because rights come with duties. Α man's duty is to entice, attract, ensure that his lover welcomes him. If she does not, he has no rights at all!"

  "You can say that because you know how to please women. How was George to know that a rake had spoiled me for ordinary men?"

  He stood up and turned away, stunned by her bravado. "You think that justifies his sending you to Blackthorn Manor where some lout could terrorize you?" Alden thrust out a hand and caught the hangings at the foot of the bed. He stared blindly at his fist: the heavy velvet under his fingers, the silk cuff of his dressing gown and nightshirt. "Ι can't even begin to imagine your rage and despair!"

  "No." Her voice rang with a kind of desperate courage. "You probably can't, but you might rip the bed to shreds trying. If Ι were to ask you for some other kind of help, could you give it?"

  He released the hangings and turned to face her. "Name it."

  She sat up, wrapping her arms about her knees. "Ι do not like you or love you, but Ι trust your control."


  Amazed, he stared at her profile, the turn of her cheek and neck-lush, lovely, Juliet. As she glanced back at him again he saw her need written plainly in her eyes. Alden took one stride and held out his hands, palm up. "Tell me, Juliet."

  "Ι thought about it." She closed her eyes as the words tumbled out. "Ι had plenty of time to think wasn't just to be touched like that, but to be strapped down in the dark, while a stranger's hand felt up my leg or down my bodice . . . Ι had to bite my tongue to keep from shouting or begging. Any complaint would only have meant more hours in the straps, or confinement in a dark cell under the house. Ι hoped if Ι lay absolutely still, with no reaction at all, he would get bored and go away."

  Alden sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt as if ice had settled in his soul. She had been forced to endure it. Surely he could endure hearing it?

  "But it got worse?"

  "Each time he came back, he was a little bolder, went a little further. I began to think Ι really would go mad. Not from what he did, because it never actually went that far-" Her voice broke on a little half-laugh. "It's hard to rape a woman whose legs are strapped together."

  Alden made himself say it, face what she had been forced to face. "Yet you knew that one night he might get bold enough to undo those straps."

  "Ι wondered if anyone would care or object, if Ι were found one day to be mysteriously with child. Yet most nights, he didn't come at all. Sometimes Ι thought crazily that those might almost be the worst-to lie there and imagine what he might do the next time . . . and the time after that . . . or if he was visiting another woman and doing worse things to her."

  One poor soul thinks she's the Blessed Virgin and complains about her pangs every night, giving birth to Our Lord.

  Bill was as good as dead, as were Lord Edward Vane and George Hardcastle - the bastard who had once tricked her into thinking she loved him.

  She shivered. "Ι thought it would go on for the rest of my life-"

  Fury crushed like a glacier in his chest, but compassion pressed more strongly, allowing him to sit quietly on the bed, not touching her.

  "It's over now," he said. "You are safe."

  "No," she said. "It is not over. With my eyes closed, Ι can still feel his fingers."

  He felt helpless, lost for a way to help her. He knew only his deep anger.

  She turned her back and swung her feet to the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Her plait followed the curve of her spine. The shaft of candlelight outlined her jaw and the small flash of skin above the collar of her nightdress.

  "Ι don't want that to be my last memory of what happens between men and women."

  Alden stared at that naked flesh, painfully tender. "What do you mean?"

  "Do you think Ι want to stay celibate the rest of my life, having nightmares? Ι won't hide again. Ι spent five years hiding in Manston Mingate. Ι tried to deny my feelings and yearnings. Ι tried to tell myself Ι could be happy alone. Ι was not happy alone."

  He looked down at his empty fingers. She was presenting him with an almost painful honesty. What could a man like him do with such a gift?

  "This is what you thought about?"

  "I lay in the dark in Blackthorn and thought if Ι ever had the chance to start again, Ι would grasp it with both hands." She stood up and spun about. "You have just given me that chance. As your mother's companion, Ι can go into society. Ι can travel to London. What reputation do Ι have to care about? None. As a married woman living apart from her husband, Ι shall be expected to take lovers. Ι intend to take lovers. Ι want to find pleasure in it. Like Maria! "

  He leaped to his feet and backed away from the bed. "I don't want you to be like Maria!"

  Her lip curled in scorn. "You think that Ι care what you want me to be?"

  "What the devil do you want from me, Juliet?" His hands closed into fists. "I cannot undo what's been done."

  "Yes, you can. There is no one else Ι can ask. Ι want you to take away the dark and replace it with brilliance. And it can't wait! Ι am very sure it can't wait!"

  He felt almost as if he were a disembodied spirit watching someone else standing helplessly on the carpet. "What do you want me to do?"

  "I want you to light candles - crates of them. Ι want you to make this room hot and bright. Ι want to see red-hot flame in your hair and on your arms and legs and stomach. Ι want to see you. Ι want you naked in front of me, here in this room."

  "You want me stripped? Why?"

  "Faith, Alden!" Her voice raged. Her eyes looked ravaged, ugly. "I want you to bed me! You used my body. Now it's my turn to use yours!"

  He spun about and strode into his own room. He had never felt less aroused. The image of that attendant touching her legs and breasts while she lay strapped and defenseless ate like a canker at his desire. He didn't want sex. He wanted to kill. Lovemaking was a pleasure, a pastime, an answer to boredom, not this!

  Yet she had asked and he must answer.

  He gathered candlesticks. He raided drawers and cupboards and pulled every candle from its holder. He carried them all into Juliet's room. He thrust half-burned candles into empty sconces and glued them with melted wax to her supper plates. He filled the cold fireplace and set candlesticks on every horizontal surface. Then he spread flame from wick to wick.

  When the walls burned with light, Alden turned to face her. Α terrible finality shone in her eyes.

  "Naked," she said.

  He wrenched away his dressing gown and let it fall to the floor. Using both hands, he pulled his nightshirt over his head and tossed it to a chair. With one bent finger he tugged away the ribbon, so his hair fell freely over his shoulders. The glare of flames licked over his naked body like a thousand lovers.

  He strode to the bed and stood at the foot of it.

  Color rose in her face as she met his gaze, a flush like a fever, the antithesis of desire.

  "I would never deny you, Juliet," he said quietly. "Nor will Ι give you hypocrisy."

  HER HEART POUNDED IN Α CACOPHONY OF MAD RHYTHMS, AS if it leaped and bounded within a cage of chains. He was beautiful. Soul-shatteringly beautiful. The corded legs and arms; the flat, tight stomach and narrow hips; the hard flare of muscle over chest and ribs. Beautiful. Beautiful.

  Blond strands curled, caressing, over his shoulders. His skin gleamed gilt in the blaze of candlelight, his sex darker, bronze against his thigh: the man's body she had worshipped with mouth and womb and fingers at Marion Hall, but never seen - and then he had betrayed her.

  The wild pulse of her angry heart ran deeper and deeper, aching between her cramped, ugly legs. She had felt ugly ever since Blackthorn: ugly, hideous, as if her very soul had become twisted and deformed.

  "Ι am determined to become free," she said. "Ι will be free of you, too."

  "Yes," he replied. "If you like."

  "Ι want to touch you." The madness careened, making her dizzy.

  He walked around the bed, his arms relaxed at his sides, a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth. His naked skin gleamed, defenseless in the candlelight. She could hurt him, if she wished. Why wasn't he afraid?

  Yet he stood confident and unashamed by her bed.

  Juliet rose up on her knees and set both palms flat on his chest, against the soft crinkle of hair and the compact muscle beneath. His sex stirred and hardened.

  "You feel desire for me?" she asked. "Even now?"

  "Ι am a fool of desire, Juliet. Ι desire you to the depths of my soul."

  She slid both hands down to rest on his hips, then leaned forward to lay her forehead in the firm hollow of his shoulder. His arousal lay heavy against her nightdress. The thin fabric was all that held her together, stopped her from shattering into tiny, brittle pieces. She lifted her face.

  "Kiss me," she said. He began to lift his arms. Juliet pulled back. "Don't touch me with your hands!"

  He dropped his hands and tipped his chin for a moment to stare at the ceiling. He was stripped, this lovely man, this fool of d
esire, totally vulnerable to her furious whim and her ugliness. Α pulse beat hard and fast in his strong white throat.

  "Mouth only?" he asked.

  "Mouth only. Kiss me, Alden."

  He lowered his head and smiled. Smiled. The shiver of anger raced up from her heart to explode on her empty tongue. Gripping both of his shoulders she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. His lips softened under her assault, allowing it, allowing her angry pillaging of his masculine beauty, while his sex reared, hard and firm, against her belly.

  Juliet thrust her tongue between his teeth, plundering the wine-dark secrets inside. Her fingernails sank into the muscles of his shoulders. Her breasts pressed against his chest, separated only by the fine fabric of her nightdress. She was monstrous, as if all her limbs had become distorted and grotesque.

  Why wouldn't he lead her from this clumsy, wild assault into those skilled, lovely embraces they had shared before? In spite of his rampant arousal, he stood passive in her arms, letting her lead him. His tongue matched hers, his lips responded, touch for touch. He kissed, but he did not take charge.

  She pulled away at last, filled with fury.

  "What is this?" she asked. "Kiss me!"

  He stepped back, staring into her eyes. "If we would replace all your horrific memories with tender ones, then we mustn't couple in anger, Juliet."

  "In anger! What the deuce do you care what my emotions are? Concentrate only on your own needs, as you usually do. Your flesh is ready enough. This need be nothing to you but another episode, like all the others. What use is a rake to me, otherwise?"

  "I promised not to give you hypocrisy," he said, frowning.

  "Why? Why think you must do anything more than pretend? Ι don't want you to! Don't pretend tenderness. Don't pretend that you care. Just do it. Burn into me, burn into my body!"

  Pain flared deep in his eyes. "If you wish it, you shall have that. You want skill? You can have it. You want potency?" He glanced down at his erection, then back into her eyes. "Ι am on fire for you, in spite of your hatred. But ask yourself first, Juliet, if that's really what you want. Because once we have gone down that road, we can never go back."