by Jo Beverley
Past tense. Past tense.
She’d pointed out that they did that on Christmas Eve, but he hadn’t seemed to care. “This is my wish for you, Genni-love. A fine husband and a babe in your arms by next Christmas. Then you’ll have your own home in which to set up the presepe, and a child to share it with.”
She’d smiled to cover pain, because the wish was as much for him as for her. He did love her and want the best for her, but he wanted peace in his new nest, too. This journey had been her escape, but after just three days in a coach with the Trayce ladies, she fretted for solitude.
She realized she’d come to a halt and hurried on again. Was she impossible to please? Was she one of those people who could never be content, no matter where they were? Surely not. She’d been blessed with much happiness and knew how to appreciate it.
She was simply upset by today’s events, but they would set a saint on edge. As a result, she was in no state to think clearly about anything. What she needed was a good night’s sleep. With luck, Thalia would be tucked up and snoring by now.
She turned to retrace her steps, but realized she had no sense of where she was. Which way? How embarrassing to become the first truly lost guest.
She picked a direction, trying to steer a straight line through random corridors, then turned a corner and saw light. It was cool and pale, so must be moonlight through a window. She headed for it, sure she could get her bearings from a look outside. She could even, she thought with amusement, navigate by the stars.
The light spilled through an archway, not a window, an archway into a long room moonlit by a wall of tall windows. She walked in and turned, not surprised to see ranks of pictures. This was the Malloren portrait gallery.
The wash of light turned the ancestral faces a ghostly gray, which seemed disturbingly appropriate, as if any of them might step out of a frame to haunt her. Facing her, however, was a portrait of someone very much alive—the current marquess.
He stood in formal dress, haughty and austere, young but very much the magnate. He seemed unoffended by her invasion, but his direct gaze was so perceptive that she shivered. She looked away—and saw another marquess.
Lord Ashart lounged on a window seat, long legs stretched before him, hands in the pockets of his breeches. He was studying her in a manner chillingly like that of his cousin.
Disregarding courtesy, he did not rise. “Is this a damsel which I see before me?” he said, misquoting Shakespeare. “Come, let me clutch thee.”
She hesitated, as much from sizzling response as from fear. She was in no state for another encounter, but pride would not let her turn and run away.
She replied from the same speech of Macbeth’s. “Perhaps I am but a damsel of the mind, my lord.”
“The worst sort. What are you doing here, Miss Smith?”
“If marquesses may wander in the night, may not we lowly commoners do the same?”
“Ah, you’re fleeing Mallorens, too, are you? Then flee this room. It’s full of them.”
“In fact, my lord, I’m fleeing Trayces.”
“Still a mistake. You’ve found me. And”—he gestured lazily—“my infamous aunt.”
Genova couldn’t resist. She walked closer to him until she could turn and study the picture on the opposite wall.
She shivered at a truly ghostly effect—the features floated into nothing. Then she realized it was a sketch for a portrait either hung elsewhere or never completed. The picture showed head and shoulders of a girl in Grecian costume, arms bare, holding a lyre, her dark hair tumbling around her laughing face.
“She doesn’t look mad,” Genova said.
“But madness is mad itself, and can come and go.”
“Do you truly think her husband drove her mad?”
He gestured to a portrait beside the sketch. “There he is.”
Genova studied a formal portrait of a powdered-haired man with a mild, amiable face. Beyond that was one of a lady who looked both lovely and sweet-natured. There was a matched kindness and poise that made Lady Augusta seem wild.
“Portraits can lie,” she said.
“But generally to conceal fat and warts, not soul.”
“I’ve seen the one of you the Trayce ladies have.”
“Ah, that. I remember being deadly bored. But that is the condition of man, is it not? Inconstancy, anxiety, and boredom.”
She turned to study him. “Are you drunk, my lord?”
His heavy-lidded eyes could give a deceptively sleepy appearance. “Don’t people say, ”drunk as a lord“? It’s clearly my duty to be drunk, and of course, noblesse obliges. May I oblige you?”
Genova sighed audibly to cover a shiver of foolish temptation. His proposition gave her an excuse to leave, however, pride intact.
Before she could move he said, “Come, sit with me, Miss Smith. I promise not to offend, and we should plan our strategic disengagement.”
Willpower can stretch only so far before it breaks. Genova joined him on the seat, but left enough space between them for one or two imaginary chaperones. They were necessary. Moonlight flowed down his virile body, making him seem half light, half dark, and breathtaking.
“Strategy, my lord? We seem to have no difficulty in finding disputes.”
“True, peace might be more difficult, but perhaps we should try it. We need to be besotted for a day or two to lend credence to our commitment.”
Genova’s skin tingled with anticipation and alarm. “Why?”
“Come now, you’re not dull-witted. If Tess Brokesby is tattling, guests will arrive tomorrow pregnant with gossip and watching our every look. If we are already at sword’s point, the betrothal will look spurious, or at least forced. If they witness a day or two of devotion, you’ll emerge as victim of my callousness.”
“I don’t care to be seen as any sort of victim!”
A smile moved the corner of his lips. “Then I’m sure we can portray it as a triumph of virtue over vice.”
Not if you smile at me like that.
Genova flicked open her fan to provide a shield. “Very well, my lord. I will try to pretend devotion for a day or two, but the dramatically enjoyable separation will be my reward.”
That smile deepened. “Can I interest you in a dramatically enjoyable joining first?”
Parts of her trembled, but Genova was not such a fool as that. “If you seduce me, my lord, I will not release you from this engagement.”
That wiped the smile away. “A worthy opponent. So be it. When shall we two part again? Not, at least, until after Christmas. We don’t want discord to disturb the season of joy and peace.”
She studied him, cursing the uncertain light. “Don’t we? I assumed you were here to do precisely that.”
“Why?”
The air suddenly felt colder. She should brush past the subject, but for survival’s sake she needed to know what was going on. “Truth,” she said.
“Ah, yes. I am Loki at this feast.”
“Loki?”
“The Norse god of discord.”
“Talk sense, my lord! What do you plan?”
“It’s no concern of yours.”
He was right, but it wasn’t in Genova’s nature to back away from a just cause. “If it threatens your great-aunts, it is. I won’t let you hurt them.”
“You may trust me with their welfare, Miss Smith.”
She wanted to protest, but she recognized one of those lines a sensible person did not cross.
“You look,” he said, “as if you are biting your tongue.”
A touch of wry humor gave her courage to persist. “Are you really planning havoc, my lord, because of a tragedy nearly forty years old?”
“Ah, don’t, pandolcetta. Don’t meddle there.”
The sobriety of the warning raised the hairs on her neck.
Chapter Nineteen
“We have more interesting conflicts,” he said with false lightness. “”We must bill and coo.“
Genova wanted to resist h
is warning and his deflection, but her courage failed her. She preferred to think of her cowardice as sensible caution.
“Only in public,” she said.
“I don’t remember that proviso.”
She looked at him over her fan. “Why would you want to bill and coo in private, my lord? We are nothing to each other.”
The smile was back, the wicked one that threatened impossible, mouthwatering delights. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“About the Mallorens…” She raised it deliberately as defense.
“About our attraction.”
“Our pretended attraction.”
“Our passion.”
“Our problem.”2.5
“Our love.”
“Our war,” she retorted.
He laughed. “Very well, I will stage amor, and you will stage war, though I warn you, I lack experience in my role.”
She raised her brows in disbelief, and he said, “We’d need another word.”
“You won’t shock me, my lord. I know them all.”
“How interesting.”
She recognized that her retort, though true, had been unwise. It had given him a wrong impression.
But at least he wouldn’t presume that he was dealing with a naive miss.
“So, let us plan war,” she said, “since that is unambiguous.”
“Is it? You will need provocation. Shall I let you find me in another woman’s bed?”
“It would give me cause,” she agreed, hating the thought. “But wouldn’t you end up at the altar?”
“Not if the lady was married.”
She was caught unawares by that. “Then at sword’s point with her husband? I’ll have no blood spilled over this, my lord. I must have your word on that.”
“Must,” he echoed. “You have a too commanding disposition, Miss Smith.”
“You’re probably correct, but I mean what I say. I will not be a cause of bloodshed. You must avoid that.”
He sighed and held out a hand. “Come here.”
Her heart thumped. “Why?”
“To pay your forfeit.”
“I agreed to no forfeit.”
“Even so.”
She licked her lips, knowing she should ignore him, should rise and walk away, but it was as if she was snared—by the exhilaration of the fight, by the razor-edge of danger, by him. She knew she’d taunted him, hoping for something like this.
“You cannot force this, my lord.”
“No?”
“Very well, you will not. It would be the action of a knave.”
He was watching her in a way that would send a sensible woman screaming into the night. “I grant you a counterforfeit, then.”
“What?”
“You may choose something for which I must pay a forfeit in turn.”
“You are drunk.”
At last she stood, but too late. He caught her wrist and tugged her back down, closer on the seat. She tried to pull free, but he tightened his grip. She didn’t fight very hard. Her blood was singing in mad delight.
“You’re cold,” he said, sounding surprised.
Of course the man who’d voluntarily ridden outside all day did not feel the cold like a normal person. He let her go and clasped her hands in wonderfully warm ones, gently massaging them. She suppressed a groan at the pleasure of it.
“Come, Genova,” he murmured, “I propose a game, no more. Christmas is time for games, and it will help us play our parts.”
“Your game seems more like a challenge to me.” But she was melting so much under his warm touch that she was surprised she wasn’t sliding off the seat into a puddle.
“An easy challenge.” He raised her hands to blow first into one palm, then into the other. “To avoid penalty, you have only to avoid giving me orders. And, of course, you have only to command me if you want a kiss.”
The confident glint in his eyes should have given her strength to resist, but instead it made her want this game more. “What if I make your forfeit for you kissing me?”
“Somewhat circular, but why not? What shall I pay? More kisses? A circle of delights. No, a spiral, like a whirlpool…”
Alarmed by that image, she pulled free. “Guineas.”
He stared, all humor wiped away. “I did not think you mercenary.”
She put distance and cool air between them. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t be, but as it happens, the guineas won’t be for me, but for the baby.”
She saw him react with sharp impatience, and her shiver was not of pleasure this time.
She raised her chin. “I may not be able to force you to admit your responsibility and provide for Charlie, my lord, but now I can compel you to provide the funds. Anytime I must.”
After a moment he laughed. “Very well, my Amazon. A guinea a kiss. How many guineas, I wonder, are needed to support a child for life? A hundred? A thousand?” His voice mellowed into a seductive purr. “In how many days?”
Her mouth and throat dried.
No wonder he’d laughed.
“We have an agreement, Miss Smith?”
Kisses were only kisses. It rang hollow in her mind, but she would not, could not, back down. This would all be under her control.
She stirred moisture in her mouth and swallowed. “Yes, my lord.”
He captured her hand again, sliding closer. “Then come let us start our account.”
Every scrap of sense screamed a warning, but the rest of Genova sank willingly into the whirlpool so that his last word was murmured against her lips and sealed them. Need for this had been building since their morning kiss, had been mounting to fiery heat during their debate, and was crowned by his mastery now.
His hands, clever hands, traveled over her, and hers were doing the same. She slid one beneath his jacket, savoring the hot, hard lines of ribs and hip and spine. Another cradled his head, holding him close, as if he might try to escape before she’d had her fill.
It had been so long, too long, since she’d kissed a man like this.
She’d never kissed a man like this.
Never a man like this…
His mouth was hot and skilled, with a taste still new, but remembered from the morning and already delicious. It stirred fires in her she’d never imagined. Soon her whole body burned for him, rubbed against him as if layers of clothing could melt away and bring them, as she scandalously longed to be, skin to searing skin…
It was he who broke the kiss, he who put space between them.
For pride’s sake, Genova stopped herself from pursuing. At least he looked as wild as she felt, eyes dark, breaths deep. His disordered coat, hair, and cravat were, she knew, entirely her work.
She had to say something, something that would cover the way she felt. “I think that’s more than a guinea’s worth, my lord.”
“What’s the price for a night, then?”
After a devastated moment, she slapped him.
She surged to her feet to run, but he caught her to him. “I apologize. I apologize! I didn’t mean it like that.” Then he laughed. “Yes, I did, but I meant no slur. Lord,” he groaned, “I can’t even make sense.”
She pushed and he let her go. She gathered herself as best she could. “I accept the apology, my lord. I think we were both a little carried away.”
“A little…”
She had to conceal how strongly she’d been affected. If he knew, he’d pursue and she’d drown in the flames. Could one drown in flames… ?
“There must be no more of this,” she said, proud of her flat voice.
“Must,” he repeated softly.
She put out a hand to hold him off, though he hadn’t made a move.
“Yet we must act the lovers for a day or two, Genova.”
“Not like that!”
“No, alas. Not like that.”
She was braced for attack and afraid she would succumb, but he turned and picked up something from the window seat. It was the pins and combs that had held her hair in pla
ce. She put up a hand and found it in wild disorder. It was thick and heavy and must look a tawdry mess.
She gathered it with shaking hands into a tight knot and took a proffered pin to skewer it in place. Then another, and another, reassembling Genova Smith, woman of sense. The combs were decorative, and she thrust them in last. Her hair could look nothing like Regeanne’s skillful arrangement, but it would look vaguely as she was used to wearing it.
He was watching her, his face shadowed, for his back was to the light. Could he hear her pounding heart? Could he smell her perfume as she smelled a spicy, subtle scent from him?
She tried to hold him off with words. “Remember, my lord, if you seduce me, I will hold you to the betrothal.”
After a moment, he nodded. “Then be strong for both of us, Genova Smith, for we will be dancing very close to the flames.”
He picked up her shawl, clearly intending to wrap it around her, but she grabbed it and backed toward the arch. “There’s no need to escort me, my lord.”
He stayed where he was, all cool, disordered, desirable elegance in the moonlight. “Perhaps I was hoping you knew the way back.”
“Back to where?”
“Ah, an interesting question. For we’re not where we were when you entered this room, are we?”
Breath caught by that, Genova turned and walked out of the gallery.
Ash watched the place where he’d last glimpsed Genova Smith, his body still hot with desire for her, with dangerous, irrational physical need.
The woman was magnificent, but terrifying. She seemed to accept no boundaries, and he did not want her hurt by whatever happened here. He wanted her, but that way would lead to a disastrous marriage. She was not the bride he needed.
He remembered his coarse, appalling words and groaned. When had he last said anything so clumsy?
Perhaps never.
Why? Why had those words escaped?
Because he’d been thinking them. Thinking them in his mind, in his blood, in his throbbing cock. Hades! She could inflame him like spark to tinder. He pushed his hands against his temples. Once was enough. No other woman was going to rip his life apart with rich curves and wicked, knowing eyes.