Guilty Series
Page 66
“See what? There isn’t anything down there.”
“How do you know? You said yourself you’ve only been in the new wing once. Have you been this way?”
“No, but I told you this part of the building isn’t even open yet. The map says so.”
“Forget the map.” He took a couple steps backward and made a great show of looking down the two ends of yet another empty gallery. “It seems to me there’s plenty to see down here,” he said, and returned his gaze to hers, trying to look as innocent as possible.
She frowned, an adorable look of perplexity on her face. She looked down at the map, then back up at him. “What is down there? More pottery, I suppose.”
“Heaps of it, and some other things, too.”
She took a step closer. “Like what?”
“You want a list? Come and look for yourself.”
He vanished around the corner and stepped into a niche that was clearly meant to hold a statue but was empty at present. He leaned one shoulder against the stone wall, waiting, listening to her approach. She was falling for it. She always did, bless her trusting soul. He grinned.
When she came around the corner and saw him standing in the niche, smiling at her, her perplexed frown deepened into a scowl. “You tricked me.”
“Of course I did.” He straightened away from the wall, laughing as he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “I used to do this all the time, find ways to get you alone. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember. Let go of me and stop being ridiculous.”
She started to pull away, but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he pulled her back into the niche with him.
“Hammond, what are you doing?”
He maneuvered them around in the tight space so her back was to the wall. “You’re trapped now. To get out, you have to pay the toll. You remember how these things work, don’t you?”
She did. Staring at him from where he had her trapped in the shadowy corner, she licked her lips as if they had suddenly gone dry. “I am not going to kiss you.”
His smile deepened as he flattened one palm against the wall and leaned closer to her. With his free hand he toyed with the ribbons of her hat. He pulled, untying them, and her straw bonnet fluttered to the floor behind her. “You fall for this trick every time,” he said, fingering the button of her shawl collar. “I think it’s because you secretly want me to kiss you, but you just can’t be honest and admit it.”
“If I fall for your tricks, it’s because you are a master of deceit.” She moved as if to step out of the niche, as if expecting him to let her pass. He didn’t.
Instead, he tightened his fingers around the collar button at her breastbone and cupped the side of her neck in his free hand. “Rules are rules,” he said, smiling faintly, caressing her jaw with his thumb. “You have to kiss me first.”
“We did silly things like that in our courting days, and we are not courting anymore.”
“Aren’t we?” he countered with wry amusement, appreciating the arousal he was feeling at this moment. “This seems very much like courtship to me. A great deal of delicious anticipation and heaps of work and ingenuity on my part. I thought after I got married I wouldn’t have to do this courtship business anymore, but you are forcing me to take desperate measures.”
“Forcing you? Of all the ridiculous—” She broke off, bit her lip, and once again tried to step around him. He wouldn’t let her, and she gave a vexed sigh. “Let me out, Hammond.”
“I will, I promise.” He slid his arm down from the wall and curved his hand around the side of her waist, still playing with the button of her collar. “But I get a kiss first.”
A distinctive male voice echoed to them from the other end of the gallery, interrupting any reply she might have made. “Gentlemen, I know you have been eager for a view of the Romano-British pottery we have collected this year that isn’t on display yet. Follow me.”
“That’s Anthony!” Viola whispered, dropping the map to push frantically at John with both hands. “He will find us.”
John didn’t move. “So? We’re married now, remember?”
“Let me out of here.” When he still did not move, desperation entered her voice. “He’s bringing those Venetians this way!”
With both hands at her waist to keep her in place, John leaned back to look out of the niche and down the long gallery, where the Duke of Tremore paused, then turned right. A line of elderly gentlemen followed him, and they moved toward the deeper recesses of the new wing. “No, they aren’t,” John answered her in a whisper. “They are going the other way.”
Once they had vanished from view and their footsteps could no longer be heard, he returned his attention to the vitally important task at hand. “They are gone,” he said, moving closer to his wife again. “Now, where were we?”
She glanced around as if trying to find a way to escape, but there was none. She was hemmed in on three sides by stone walls. Cornered, she set her jaw. “I want to leave.”
John shook his head. “I want my kiss.”
She made a sound of impatience. “Men are such children.”
He lifted his hand from her waist to cup her cheek, and the feel of her soft skin against his palm had his desire rising higher. His thumb caressed that tiny mole at the corner of her mouth, and he breathed in deeply of violets. The slow ache of desire inside him began to burn hotter. “My thoughts at this moment are anything but childish, believe me.”
A hint of panic came into her face. “I am not going to kiss you!”
Still caressing her cheek, he slid his other arm around her waist. “Fine. I am perfectly content to just stand here and hold you.”
“You mean we are going to remain here all day?”
“That depends on you. Come on, Viola. Pucker up.” He bent his head, moving his hand back until his fingertips slid into her hair, loosening the complicated knot at the back of her head. A hairpin fell, hitting the stone floor at their feet with a delicate clink.
He brought his mouth closer to hers and watched her lips part. Her thick brown lashes lowered a fraction. Oh, yes, she remembered this game of theirs as well as he did. Just as he had so long ago when they were courting, he held back, controlling the desire in his body, waiting for hers to flare up. He brushed his lips lightly against her cheek, right at the edge of her lips. “One kiss,” he coaxed. “Give me just one, and I’ll let you go.”
“No, you won’t.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I know you too well to believe that. You’ll just take more liberties.”
“Only if you don’t say no.” He fiddled with the collar button, unfastening it, then pulled the lacy shawl away, exposing the skin of her throat and shoulders above the wide, rounded neckline of her dress.
“What are you doing?” She made a grab for the collar, but he dropped it to the floor.
“Taking those liberties. You dither too long.” He bent his head and kissed the bare skin along the side of her throat, inhaling the soft, familiar scent of her. She let out her breath in a little, fluttering sigh. Her neck, her weak spot, his opportunity. He blew warm laughter against her throat, loving it.
Footsteps echoed on stone, and the voices of a man and woman floated to them from far away. It had obviously occurred to some other man that a museum had plenty of opportunities to get his woman alone.
“You have to let me go,” Viola whispered, but not so forcefully this time. “Someone will see us.”
Undeterred by something as trivial as faraway voices, he trailed kisses along the curve of her neck and shoulder as he slid his hand down. “They’d have to come all the way down the gallery, and we’ll hear them in plenty of time. Besides—” He broke off, forgetting whatever he’d been about to say as his palm curved around the full, round shape of her breast and she gave a little gasp. Layers of fabric impeded him, but his memory of his wife’s luscious shape was perfectly clear. The excitement inside him rose like the tide and he forgot whatever he’d been about to say.
Her hand moved, her palm flattened over his, not quite pressing his hand to her breast, but almost. Tacit encouragement. No stopping yet.
John shaped her breast through the fabric with his hand, his fingertips brushing back and forth over the bare skin just above the rounded neckline of her gown. He tasted her throat in countless little nibbles, all the way up to her cheek.
Her breath was coming faster now, and she twisted in his arms. “Someone will see us,” she moaned softly, sounding aroused and miserable and angry all at once. “Oh, John, someone will see.”
“Better kiss me quick, then.”
She made a wordless sound and turned her face toward him, giving him what he wanted. Her mouth touched his and opened, sending shimmers of pleasure through his body. Her hand lifted to spread across his cheek. Her kid glove felt smooth and cool on his skin, her mouth hot and sweet. He closed his eyes, savoring a delight so long forgotten, and yet so familiar. This was Viola; he remembered her taste as he kissed her, he remembered the puffy fullness of her lower lip as he sucked it, he remembered the perfect line of her teeth as he explored them with his tongue.
She broke the kiss suddenly, turning her face away. She stirred in his hold and made a faint sound—a protest, maybe.
Past the blood pounding through him, and her soft little objection, he heard something else, the tap of footsteps turning to come down the gallery toward them, and John knew he was out of time. At least for today.
Wrenching himself away, he pressed one last quick kiss to the side of her neck, pulled back and let her go. He bent to pick up her shawl collar and hat from the floor and handed them to her. As the footsteps came closer, he straightened his cravat and leaned out of the niche to have a peek, striving to force down his arousal and regain a semblance of sanity. An elderly, stooping gentleman in a dusty black suit and spectacles was coming toward him. Beside him, John could hear the rustle of straw and fabric as Viola shoved on her hat, donned her collar, and straightened her rumpled clothes.
“At last!” John exclaimed, and stepped partway out of the niche. “We have been wandering around forever, trying to find our way, and now here is someone to assist us.”
The old man stopped and squinted, peering down the length of the gallery. “Is there someone with you, sir?”
“My wife and I were looking for the new collection of weapons and armaments. We seem to have gotten lost.”
“I should say you have. It isn’t down this way at all.”
John schooled his features into buffle-headed perplexity. “Isn’t it?” He turned his head in Viola’s direction. “Sorry, dearest. I seem to have led us astray.”
He got a none-too-gentle kick in the leg for that remark.
“Did you not get a map when you came in?” the man asked.
“Map?” John pressed his fingers to his forehead as if he were trying to think. “No, I don’t believe we did.”
“I am Mr. Addison, the assistant director of antiquities.” He beckoned with one hand. “I shall direct you and your wife to the armaments.”
“I say, that’s awfully kind of you.” John glanced into the niche and held out his hand to Viola, adding in a whisper, “Collar button.”
She fastened it, glaring at him as if this was all his fault. She stuck her chin up to the level of hauteur befitting a duke’s sister, brushed back several loose tendrils of hair that had fallen over her face, then put her hand in his and stepped out into the gallery.
“Why, bless me!” the elderly gentleman exclaimed, “Lady Hammond!”
“Good day, Mr. Addison.” She was trying to sound dignified, John knew, but there was still a flush in her cheeks, a breathless edge to her voice, and a rumpled quality to her appearance, in which he took a great deal of satisfaction.
“Lost, again, my lady?” Mr. Addison shook his head at her.
She gave the feeble smile of the dim-witted female that only fooled old men and stupid young ones. “It’s this new wing, sir. It confuses me.”
“I keep telling you to always take one of the maps with you when you go wandering about the museum,” he said, answering her smile with an indulgent one of his own. He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “Your husband accompanying you today, I see.”
John bowed. “Lord Hammond,” he introduced himself when Viola failed to do so.
“A pleasure, my lord. Come this way to see the armaments.”
They followed a few feet behind Mr. Addison as he led them out of the gallery.
“That was close,” John murmured in her ear, laughing softly, exhilarated by the whole experience, especially the gratifying passion he’d aroused in his wife, which had been his goal for the entire afternoon. “I haven’t had this much fun in years.”
She sniffed. “Don’t expect to have any more of it,” she whispered back. “Not with me, at least. I have no intention of letting you trick me again.”
“No?” He cast a sideways glance at her and grinned. “Now that’s a challenge I can’t resist.”
Chapter 8
Viola stared at herself in the mirror of the modiste’s dressing room without seeing her reflection or the costume she intended to wear to the charity ball. All she could see was her husband’s wicked smile. An outrageous man, he really was, using all manner of tricks and wiles on her just like he used to do, and as he had said, she always fell for it. She would have to watch her step better in the future. He was so good at beguiling her.
He was good at other things, too. She touched her fingers to her mouth, feeling the delicious warmth of his kiss all over again even as she reminded herself he was good at kissing because he’d done so much of it. That true and painful reminder didn’t help. It only made her feel more muddled and agonized.
What had happened yesterday? She closed her eyes, thinking of those stolen moments in the museum, and she knew the answer. She’d lost her head, just like the naive girl of nine years ago.
So long since John had touched her like that, but time hadn’t made a difference to the way she responded to him. Time hadn’t shored up her pride enough to take away the excitement of his hands and his mouth.
She wrapped her arms around herself and opened her eyes. Looking at her reflection, she saw all her confusion and misery looking back at her, and she did not understand her own mind or her own heart. What was wrong with her? Pride had held her together through heartbreak, kept her head high when he turned to other women, helped her pretend to him and to the world that she didn’t care what he did, enabled her to find satisfaction in a life of charity work and good friends. Where had all her pride been yesterday?
He would hurt her again if she let him. He would. The deceptions of pulling her into empty corridors and stealing kisses might be harmless ones, but she knew he could lie with his heart in his eyes about the things that mattered most, and she always wanted to believe him. That was what frightened her. How easy it was to believe him.
Do you love me?
Of course I do. I adore you.
A knock on the door interrupted her, and at her call to come in, Daphne entered the modiste’s dressing room, wearing her costume of Cleopatra. “Well?” she asked, smoothing the heavy tresses of her black wig. “What do you think?”
I think I am losing my mind.
With an effort, Viola pushed the museum outing of the previous afternoon out of her mind. It was all right to lose her mind as long as she didn’t let him steal her heart. She turned to her sister-in-law, relieved by the distraction, and smiled. “Did Cleopatra wear spectacles?”
Daphne made a face. Laughing, she said, “I shall not be wearing them to the ball, dearest! What do you think of the costume?” She toyed with the wide, jeweled collar abo
ve her flowing white gown. “Is it too silly of me to choose something like this?”
Viola looked at her best friend in the world, thinking of the woman Daphne had been when they met two years before—shy, so uncertain of herself, so much in love with Anthony and trying so hard to hide it. She was different now. Having her love returned so passionately by her husband and the responsibilities of her role as the Duchess of Tremore had taken away much of Daphne’s shyness and replaced it with a measure of self-confidence. But there were moments, like this one, when the shy woman Viola had first met did come peeping through.
“It isn’t silly in the least,” Viola assured her. “Why should you think it so?”
“I have always wanted to be Cleopatra,” Daphne confessed. “I am just uncertain I can be convincing in the role. Even if it is only for a Fancy Dress ball, we are supposed to act out our parts all evening.”
“You look very queenly to me,” Viola said, laughing. “And Anthony seems willing to be your Marc Antony. He’d take on the entire Roman Empire if you asked him to.”
Daphne’s mouth curved in a smile that was a bit reminiscent of a cat with the cream jug. “True. I rather like it that way, too. He told me once I have all the power over him because women have all the power in the world over men if only we exercise it properly. It took me a long time to understand what he meant.”
Viola sighed. “If you understand it, explain it to me,” she said wryly. “I could do with some of that power just now.”
Her sister-in-law’s smile faded, and Daphne looked at her with a hint of compassion.
Viola couldn’t bear that. She turned in a pirouette. “What do you think of me as a French marquise?”
“I think you look lovely. As always.”
“Thank you, but what of the costume? Is it authentic?”
Daphne tilted her head. “If you wish to be truly authentic, you will have to powder your hair.”
Viola smoothed the dark blue velvet of her overskirt. “Won’t that make rather a mess?”