The Seduction

by Julia Ross

  "Ι am glad," she said, "that no other women will suffer. And the other letters?"

  Alden opened his writing case. "Are from a network of spies Ι have set to watch Lord Edward. We aren't the only ones with reason to wish ill to the duke's son. For several months he has been encouraged to invest ever more wildly, in ever more extravagant schemes. Ι have done what Ι can to exacerbate that. He will have to go after the treasure very soon or face ruin, but he can't move until your father leaves Felton Hall. Even a duke's son can't chance being discovered digging pits in a peer's grounds at night. "

  "Then send him a message telling him my father has left for London."

  Alden grinned with wicked confidence. "Ι already have."

  "Though you know there is no treasure," she said.

  "Ι know no such thing."

  "Alden, Ι grew up with the legend. Kit and Ι analyzed patterns wherever we found them, looked for imaginary clues in every ragtag collection of books and documents at Felton Hall, then dug holes all over my father's estate."

  "And the locket?" The feather danced as his quill scratched over the paper.

  "Kit and Ι studied it, too - the numbers and symbols inscribed inside were meant to be a code telling where the treasure was hidden. Five or six new holes were dug as a result. Why would Lord Edward risk so much over the implausible existence of this lost hoard?"

  Alden folded another note, pressing his seal into the wax. "It's the nature of our age, Juliet. We are all gaming mad."

  "Does the game ever stop?"

  "How can it?" He closed the writing case and set it aside. "Yet you and Ι have already thrown our cards onto the table."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Ι mean that we began with a rather wicked game. Ι initiated it, but you didn't shrink from the gamble. Faith! To invite a perfect stranger into your kitchen at Manston Mingate? To agree to play chess with him? Now we have stopped playing and passed the turning point."

  "What turning point?"

  His eyes were dark, lovely, as he smiled. "The one when you must risk showing another person the truth about yourself, including your pettiness, your mistakes. At that moment you are vulnerable to a terrible hurt, but if you don't take that risk, intimacy is never possible. Not that Ι ever thought before that true intimacy was what Ι wanted."

  "But you have risked it with me?"

  "Ι have risked it with you. It's a matter of discovering whether you can trust. Ι trust you. Ι love you. Ι am fighting now to see if we can truly have a future."

  "Ι am almost afraid to think of it," she said. "Ι am still another man's wife."

  He turned to stare through the dirty glass. "That is the subject of my third set of letters. Ι am trying to find out everything there is to know about George."

  "How can that help?"

  "Ι don't know. But it can't hurt."

  THEY STOPPED IN SEVEN MILES TO CHANGE HORSES AGAIN. ALDEN received another batch of letters. While he read them, Juliet drew a plan for him of her father's estate, marking the places she had dug up with Kit. He studied it. The carriage rocked on. She watched him with thinly concealed craving, the ardent hands, the quick intelligence, and waited.

  "So where is the Felton Hoard?" he asked at last. "Your best guess based entirely on the locket?"

  She pointed out the spot where she had sketched a spring near the corner of a pasture. "Here, without question. Ι can describe every blade of grass, if you like, though it has changed since Kit and Ι were children. My father drained the little pond, here, ditched below it, and put in a new trough for the cattle. . . ."

  He listened intently until she had finished, then grinned. "A perfect spot for some revelry. Invitations of one kind or another will now be issued to all the interested parties."

  "Including George?"

  He snapped open the silver lid of the inkpot in his writing case. "Is that all right?"

  "Ι am not afraid of George," Juliet said, "as long as I'm with you."

  "Yet the result may not be pretty." He touched a letter he had received at their last stop. "Lord Edward has just been informed he needs a titanic infusion of cash now. He has already made his move to go after the treasure."

  "So we must go straight to Felton Hall?"

  He was writing rapidly, folding and sealing note after note. "Things are moving even faster than I'd dared hope. You don't have to come, Juliet."

  "No." She tried to make her voice as courageous, as carelessly certain, as his. "No, Ι am sure that Ι must be there - now Ι am learning to be quite good at risking things-"

  His smile opened like a sunrise. "Then we are about to get involved in some midnight capers."

  JULIET HAD THOUGHT FOR Α MOMENT THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE to hide their presence in Feltonbridge, the nearest town to the ancestral seat of the earls of Felton. But how could they, with two carriages and a train of servants? They pulled up in front of the largest inn in town. Alden had already sent a message ahead to reserve the grandest suite of rooms. An extremely expensive light supper was immediately delivered. After washing the dust of the road from her hands and face, Juliet sat down at a table laden with champagne and delicacies.

  Alden exchanged a few words with one of his menservants, then closed the door. He leaned against the wall to read yet another new letter. Candlelight danced over his hair, as if the sun kissed a field of buttercups. Juliet watched his fine hands as he crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it into the fireplace.

  He looked up, met her gaze and smiled, then walked to his chair. He stood for a few moments, both hands resting lightly on the carved crest rail, and stared down at her.

  "There will never be anyone else," he said evenly. "For the rest of my life. Whatever it takes, whatever we must go through, once you are free - and you will be free - will you marry me, Juliet?"

  She laid both hands flat on the fine tablecloth, while her pulse thundered in her ears. The trust he had shown, his revelations about Gregory and Emily and Maria, her own truths offered in exchange - this one day had changed her yet again, made her ready to take any leap of faith, whatever the risk.

  "If Ι am ever free - when Ι am free - whatever it takes, Ι will, Alden, gladly."

  "Then Ι am saved. But in the meantime-" He looked down at his fingers resting on the chair back. The crumpled letter lay like a doom in the fireplace. Juliet stared at it, as if she could read its dark message through the destroyed paper. Alden followed her gaze and nodded to the crushed writing. "My man of law sends his advice, almost a decree, that we don't live together now, if we ever wish to marry."

  Startled, she looked back at him.

  "Ι am confident that George will come to an agreement – for enough money." He gave a wry smile. "Perhaps for the Felton Hoard he will let you go. But your adultery is his only grounds, so the divorce might be conditional on your not marrying me afterward. "

  "Why?"

  He turned and paced away. Juliet stared at the fitted waist of his coat and the elegant flare of the skirts.

  "Ι am your seducer, Divorce isn't allowed to reward sin. It seems that Ι must give you up, even if freeing you from your marriage takes years."

  She closed her eyes and dropped her head into both palms. "Can you?"

  "Ι can do even that, if Ι must. Ι don't say it will be easy, but Ι will wait for you, Juliet. There will be no one else, ever."

  "Is that a promise?"

  His heels clicked on the floor as he walked up to her. "Let us plight our troth here, Juliet." She looked up to see him smiling down at her, holding out one hand. "Let us make our promises before these witnesses." He waved the other hand to indicate the room. "These candles and hangings. These chairs and this table. The oyster patties and the champagne. The bread and the butter. My only regret is that Ι gave all my bloody rings to your husband."

  Juliet pushed back her chair and stood up. She put her right hand in his. "If we don't have a ring," she said. "Let us seal our promise with a kiss."

  He smil
ed, charming, the lovely smile that had seduced count less women, now only for her. "Dare you risk it?"

  "Ι do. And Ι will risk whatever comes afterward. If we are to be parted, Alden, then let us take one last memory with us to sustain us in these damnable celibate months to come."

  He spun her so she was pressed against the table. With a grin of pure wickedness he bent her backward over one arm. Deliberately, with infinite patience, he trailed fingertips down her throat, over her collarbone and the swell of her breasts.

  "Kiss you where?" he said, trailing a shivering path of fire over her naked skin. "Here?"

  He touched her nipple through the fabric with his thumb. "Here?"

  He moved back to brush over the sensitive spot below her ear. "Here?"

  "Here," she said, breathless, blood pounding. "On the mouth."

  He pressed his lips to hers.

  Was it different when you had admitted that you loved a man with all your heart? Did everything change, because he had said he loved you and you believed it at last? Juliet knew only that her very soul craved his touch, that her heart opened and surrendered long before his clever mouth and ecstatic tongue began to ravish her mouth.

  As if he had traveled over parched deserts to find her-

  As if he had slashed for a year and a day at a thorn hedge to find a lost castle, asleep for one hundred years-

  As if he had climbed a labyrinth of stairs, combating magic mirrors, brushing through a century of spiderwebs, to lift the sleeping princess to his mouth, Juliet felt bright life flood through her bones.

  They had played games of temptation in the dark. They had shared painful tenderness in a blaze of candlelight. Now he showed her at last what it felt like to love without restraint.

  Her clothes fell away, one silken element at a time. His clever fingers released ribbons and hooks. Her skirts fell with a whisper to the floor. Her stiff bodice peeled back like a crab shell. Overdress, underdress, corset, chemise: all slid away, one soft murmur after another.

  Meanwhile her palms caressed the sleeves of his brocade coat, feasting ravenously on the erotic contrast of his hard flesh beneath. He shrugged his shoulders. His coat slid through her fingers to drop to the floor. Beneath it his silk waistcoat was buttoned from chest to knee. She followed the line of buttons, releasing each one. The stiff embroidery opened to rub against her nipple.

  Α jolt of sensation ricocheted into her heart and plummeted to her groin, firing an ache so intense she groaned aloud. He caught her ragged exhalation on his lips and breathed it in, mingling her moan with one of his own. His waistcoat followed his coat to the floor. To peel his shirt over his head they would have to break the kiss. She couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear to stop kissing. His mouth was a well from which she could drink forever.

  Even as her chemise fell away, leaving her naked in his arms, she kept drinking from his mouth. His lips smiled into hers as he thrust both hands between their bodies for a moment. His knuckles brushed her breasts as he ripped the fine lawn of his shirt from top to bottom to shrug it from his shoulders. His breeches followed. His erection sprang strongly between them as he slid away his underdrawers, although he stepped back into his beribboned shoes.

  His palms rubbed up her spine to her head, his fingers pulling away hairpins until her hair tumbled down her back. As he did it, she reached to rug away his ribbon and run her hands through his hair. He pulled his mouth away suddenly, breathless and laughing, before catching her face in both palms.

  "We are reborn," he said. "Rising from the sea foam like Aphrodite on her shell."

  Juliet pressed into him, rubbing her belly against his arousal.

  "Is that what you call it?"

  His penis shook against her as he laughed. "All this at our feet. We stand naked in a sea of silk. Apart from our shoes and stockings, we are as innocent as the day we were born."

  "We can take them off, too."

  "No, Ι don't think so," he replied, briefly kissing her again. "It' s too damned erotic to leave them on."

  He swung her into his arms. Juliet clutched both hands about his neck as he carried her to the bed, his heeled shoes rapping on the floor, hers swinging freely, both of them naked from the knees up.

  Without ceremony he dumped her onto the bed and stood looking down at her for a moment. He was glorious, triumphant, his eyes black with desire.

  She wriggled back against the pillows and watched as he, after all, stepped out of his shoes and onto the bed, then tied on the sheath that protected her from bearing his child. He rolled slowly over her, supporting his weight easily on his hands, but entwining his silk-clad calves with hers. His erection reared between them, proud and imperious. Juliet ached to receive it, to feel the slide of it reaching deeply inside her, but with devilish skill he forced her to wait. Every other inch of her skin must first receive his homage, even her ribs and the inside of her knees.

  When he entered her at last, she burned like a furnace, only to cry instant ecstasy into his shoulder. He waited for a moment, smiling down at her, before beginning to thrust, driving an intensity of sensation deeper and deeper.

  Mad thoughts careened beneath the exquisite sensations. She was his forever. She loved him. She might never be able to marry him. He had said he would wait, but could she believe it? He thought he could now, but when celibacy turned into weeks or months-? Yet for this one night, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't care. She had given a rake her heart, and devil take the consequences. She opened her eyes to fix his face forever in her memory.

  The shudder of his climax rippled over his body, taking her to delirious depths of release. His head was thrown back, his expression sublime. Juliet closed her eyes and wept her rapture openly, until she found the sleep of pure exhaustion in his encircling arms.

  She woke to a mouth on hers and a hand. tenderly brushing hair from her forehead. In her sleep she kissed back, as if she kissed the night demon come to take her to paradise.

  "Midnight capers," Alden whispered against her lips. "It is time to go after Harald Fairhair's pretty treasure."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JULIET STRUGGLED AWAKE. ALDEN WAS ALREADY DRESSED - BUT simply, in a dark coat and breeches with riding boots - and standing beside the bed. He held a candle in one hand and shielded her eyes from its direct flame with the other.

  "What did you do to me?" she asked. "I feel as if the blood has been drained from my body and replaced with silly happiness."

  He grinned like Abednego given cream. "Why silly?"

  She stared up at his features, caressed by candlelight. "Oh, Ι am a very fool for love, Alden Granville-Strachan. How am Ι to bear celibacy now, after that?"

  He leaned down and kissed her mouth once more. "As Ι will, one day at a time."

  Juliet sat up, still weak ίη every limb. "Is it morning?"

  "Almost dawn. We left midnight behind several hours ago. Lord Edward is on his way. Ι must be after him. Are you still sure you want to come?"

  Was hesitation foolish? After all, she had not seen Felton Hall since she had run away with George all those years ago. And perhaps her father had not gone to London at all. Swallowing her trickle of trepidation, Juliet nodded.

  She slipped from the bed and found hot water already waiting in a basin. She washed rapidly, not caring that Alden's eyes devoured her as she did so, nor that he was obviously aroused by the sight. She almost hoped he would not be able to resist and would - instead of riding out to confront their enemy - stride across the chamber to make love with her again.

  "I would," he said as if reading her mind. "God knows Ι want to. But if Ι am to be celibate for some impossible length of time into the future, perhaps I'd better start now. Besides we mustn't lose Lord Edward."

  DAWN SPREAD WATERY FINGERS ACROSS Α SKY LIKE AN opalescent eggshell. Juliet stood with Alden under a small stand of trees and shivered - not from cold, though the early morning air was chilly and damp with dew. The great house before them, still sleeping darkly beneath
the wash of pink and green-yellow sky, was Felton Hall. This was where she had grown up, played with Kit, walked sedately beneath these trees with her mother-whence she had run away with George Hardcastle, handsome and charming, but a man without depth and with no essential core of kindness. Little shivers ran through her blood like a hoard of tiny imps.

  Without a word, Alden reached back and took her hand. They stood in absolute silence for several more minutes. At last a group of shadows materialized from the woods opposite them: a troop of misshapen creatures, like a small herd of strange beasts with bizarrely long necks and stiff heads bobbing at each step.

  "Our enemy," Alden whispered then. "He brings minions."

  The shapes moved closer, jigging their strange heads. Juliet stared at them: four men carrying picks and shovels over their shoulders. Ahead of the group, one figure devoured the turf with ferocious strides, the tails of his coat flying behind him: Lord Edward Vane.

  The duke's son stopped in the corner of the pasture and directed his men to start digging. Alden turned to Juliet and put one finger to his lips. His smile ghosted in the half-light and her heart turned over.

  Two picks swung up, then thudded into the ground: a sheltered, somewhat boggy patch at the base of a small rise. It was the spot she had shown Alden on her map. When she and Kit were children, a spring had bubbled up there, but a new drainage ditch had been dug below it since then. Now it was a place that became just occasionally damp, enough to support a few wild irises and a little coarse marsh grass, but no longer a place where cattle could drink.

  To one side, the ruins of a brick building had crumbled into a few ragged walls, invaded by brambles. On the other, a group of low bushes straggled into the base of the hillside above. The slope itself was thickly clustered with trees, offering their protection now to Juliet and Alden.

  Clods of dirt flew. Suck. Thud. Thud. Lord Edward stood and watched.