by Evie Dunmore
“Your brother,” she whispered, “have you found him?”
His hand slid from her neck to her shoulder as his other hand reached for the door behind him, and he pulled her with him into the dark silence of the library. He backed her against the door, then she heard the key twist in the lock.
A pang of trepidation rippled through her. The nearness of his body felt as impelling as if he were pinning her to the door with his weight.
He leaned closer. “Tell me why you ran.”
His breath brushed over her lips, and her chin tilted up, seeking the full pressure of his soft mouth against hers.
“Tell me,” he repeated.
“You said you’d come back.”
He shook his head. “I need to hear you say it.”
Against the spill of moonlight through the window behind him the outline of his shoulders was rigid, and his hands were clenched by his sides as if he were checking himself with some difficulty.
It dawned on her then that most men in his position would simply take what they wanted, and didn’t she know it. She had forgotten all about it around him. But there was no doubt that right now, Montgomery wanted her badly. The tension humming in his muscles reverberated through her own body, and she could smell the salty note of an aroused male on him. If she stroked her hand over the front of his trousers, she’d find him hard. But the choice was hers.
A twinge of pleasure and pain throbbed in her chest.
Beautiful, wondrous man.
He had to know that alone in the dark, they were equals in their longing.
She slipped her hand beneath his coat.
He froze. Under the warm silk of his waistcoat, bands of muscle contracted, and the hardness against her knuckles left her reeling. She watched as her hand flattened against him . . . glided over the silver chain of his pocket watch to his ribs, then up the firm, tapered shape of his torso. So sleek, yet solid, so many strengths contained in one man . . . Slowly, her hand slid down again, down, down over his tense abdomen, over the outside of his trousers.
Montgomery seemed to have stopped breathing. His throat worked as he swallowed, as she hovered, hesitated . . . gently, gently, she pressed her palm against him. She gasped, unprepared for the jolt of pleasure that shot through her at the feel of him. Her fingers curved around him, and the soft grunt this drew from Montgomery set her blood on fire. The mighty man sounded . . . helpless. She caressed him again, inflamed by feeling him heat and twitch, by the rustle of fine wool against her palm.
With a groan, Montgomery clamped his hand over hers, and then her wrist was pinned against the smooth wood of the door and his lips were on hers. At the first taste, things turned fast and mindless. His free hand clutched her waist, hers roamed over his back, his nape, the slippery silk of his hair as his demanding mouth urged her from one kiss into the next. Reality dissolved into shadows and heat, the firm, soft urgency of a man’s kiss, the thick ridge of his desire.
A draft of cool air brushed the back of her knees. She blinked down and found her skirt wadding around her waist, and a hard male thigh invaded between hers. She moaned at the sudden pressure against her softest place.
“Yes,” he murmured, his fingers digging into the curve of her hip. Her uncorseted hip—he groaned into her mouth at the feel of it. His hand on her hip was guiding her in small, rhythmic thrusts against his thigh, and heat bloomed from the friction between her legs. She made an agitated sound. “Please, I can’t . . .”
He made a soothing noise and palmed her thigh, up and over her backside, finding the slit in her drawers from behind, and help, he was touching her. He was touching her there, with slick, knowing fingertips . . . It had only been minutes since the corridor; how could it come to this within minutes? Because they had been needing it for weeks. He stroked harder, and she melted around him as bliss curled through her, curled her toes . . . A finger slid inside her, and her spine arched as she gave a little cry.
They weren’t equal in this at all—he was leading her headlong into frantic oblivion.
Trapped between his thigh and his sliding fingers, devastating pleasure gathered and knotted, and she gripped his arm to stay him, but his muscles flexed so wonderfully as he was pleasuring her, steadily, relentlessly, the tension burst in a white-hot blaze, pulsing in her lips, her toes, her fingertips. Her next cry was muffled against his shoulder, Montgomery’s other hand clasping the back of her head.
She clung to him, her knees like water, the sound of her breathing a roar in her ears.
The fine wool of his coat was rough against her cheek.
He withdrew from her gently.
Behind closed eyelids, white dots flashed and faded like stars.
The haze cleared when his foot pushed at her instep. He was widening her stance, making a space for himself. His hand moved between them, and she knew then that he was working on the fastenings of his trousers.
He wanted her. Right here, standing up against the door.
Her fingers clenched in his shirt. “I . . . I don’t . . .”
Oh, she did. And then she didn’t. She couldn’t. This hadn’t been the plan—there had been no plan.
His hand stilled. “You wish to stop?” He sounded fairly calm, for a man aching to take his pleasure.
Help. She had recklessly unleashed him, and now female instincts battled, the urge to assuage his need, and deeper fears, and then, the obvious—to not look like a complete trollop.
“I can’t,” she whispered, the beginnings of a panic washing over her. “Not . . . like this.”
Not up against a door. Not in any location, had she been thinking at all.
Montgomery’s chest tensed beneath her palms. “Of course,” he murmured. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” A frisson of foreboding raised the hair on her nape.
“I will have put everything in writing, whatever your terms,” he said. “You have my word.”
Terms?
He made to kiss her again. Something in her expression stopped him. He eased back, adjusting the front of his trousers, his lips twisting with discomfort. “Well, I won’t get a hold of my solicitor now,” he said.
Her blood ran cold. So she had understood him right. He thought she wanted to negotiate an arrangement.
“You thought I meant to negotiate an arrangement,” she said out loud.
He frowned at the flat tone of her voice. “You did not?”
He was still breathing hard. He looked oddly boyish, with his cravat rumpled and his hair mussed from her greedy hands, and God knew what she looked like.
Who would try to talk terms on the brink of lovemaking, when a man was half crazed and prone to promise anything? A calculating courtesan, that’s who.
Nausea welled in her stomach.
“And you’d sign whatever my terms?” she heard herself say. “How about a yacht, Your Grace?”
He tilted his head. “If you need one.”
She gave a small, ugly laugh.
He had not seen her at all.
Never mind their talks and walks and breathless kisses, all along, he had clearly never stopped thinking of her as a woman who’d bargain her favors for money. He’d have hardly propositioned a respectable woman for a knee-trembler in his library in the first place.
She smoothed her hands over her skirts. “I told you that I wasn’t in the market for such a thing.”
There was a pause. When he spoke next, his voice was cool. “What do you want, Annabelle?”
You.
At some point, she must have begun feeling, wanting, impossible things. “I don’t want to be your mistress.”
His eyes raked over her, his incredulity palpable, and she knew what he saw, a disheveled female who had brazenly put her hand on his cock.
Her heart crumpled. She felt naked, and utterly foolish.
She was as deluded and impulsive at twenty-and-five as when she’d been a girl.
She turned abruptly and felt for the key in the door lock.
A beat later, he was behind her, his hand staying her frantic efforts.
“Annabelle.”
She shook her head.
“I feel I have offended you, which was never my intention,” he said.
“Please,” she said, “I gave you the wrong impression, which I regret. But I won’t be your mistress. I won’t.”
He hesitated, for two heartbeats, perhaps three. Then his hand fell away and he stepped back, taking the warmth of his body with him. “As you wish.”
His tone was formal. Impersonal, even. Not unlike how he had sounded during their very first meeting in this library.
She unlocked the door and hurried into the night. From afar, she heard the pops and explosions of yet another firework display she didn’t see.
Chapter 19
Dawn had barely dragged itself over the horizon, but the coach to his weekly London appointment was ready for departure.
Sebastian halted in the entrance hall halfway to the doors. “Bonville,” he barked.
The man seemed to materialize from thin air. “Your Grace?”
“Something is wrong with the lighting.”
The butler cast a quick assessing glance around, at the plaster work above, the chandelier, the French seating arrangement before the fireplace, and a touch of panic rose in his eyes. Clearly, Bonville did not find anything wrong with the lighting situation.
“The lamps,” Sebastian said impatiently, starting for the entrance again. “They seem to have dimmed. I reckon the circuit has been overburdened during the house party.”
Granted. It was a subtle thing, but it made the house feel unacceptably dull.
Bonville was all business now. “I will have the gas specialists called in to examine the pipes and every single bulb, Your Grace.”
Sebastian gave a curt nod.
The footmen swung open the double doors for him, and a blast of cold morning air made his eyes water. He briskly stamped down the slippery stairs to the carriage. The light cover of snow that had made Claremont look pristine and enchanted had turned into sludge during the past couple of days. Not that it mattered. The weather was always the same in his study.
London was slowly but steadily soaked by gray drizzle. By the time he entered Buckingham Palace, his leather shoes were glistening wet despite the black umbrella hovering above him.
He did not expect a warm welcome in the royal apartment today. Neither the queen nor Disraeli would be keen on his latest recommendations. He’d push his strategy through regardless. He just knew when a plan was right, like his farmers had a sixth sense for how the weather would change. What niggled at the back of his mind as he took his seat was whether Victoria already knew that his heir presumptive had absconded. That would open a can of worms he’d prefer to keep firmly closed.
The queen and the prime minister sat in their usual spots, she in her thronelike armchair by the window, he right next to the fireplace, as if he suffered from a perpetual chill. Sebastian’s briefing was laid out neatly on the low table.
The queen’s eyes were as opaque as her onyx earbobs. “I was very pleased to hear that your New Year’s Eve party was a success,” she said.
He blinked at the unexpected sting between his ribs. He’d forever associate that party with personal rejection.
“I’m glad it lived up to expectations, ma’am.”
“I had no doubt it would.” Her gaze slid away from him to the briefing before her. “We were, however, surprised by your suggestions for the campaign. Indulging the farmers, Montgomery?”
“You once described them as the backbone of Britain, ma’am,” he said smoothly.
The queen pursed her lips, deciding whether she liked having her own words played back to her like that.
“Farmers are not our clientele,” Disraeli said. His white hair stood on end at the back of his head, as if he’d taken a nap in his wing chair and not yet fixed himself. “Local soil is not the running ticket of the Tories. Besides, the Liberals firmly have their claws in them already.”
“They are easy prey for Gladstone because they still hold a grudge against you over the corn laws,” Sebastian said. “Enough of them could be turned if given a few concessions.”
Disraeli was gripped by a coughing fit; he coughed until his eyes bulged and watered. “But how many farmers are there?” he asked when he had caught his breath.
“Around three thousand.”
“Not a number that will make or break our victory, surely? Even if they had the vote.”
Sebastian resisted the urge to rub a hand over his face. How this man had managed to weasel his way into a position of leadership and into the queen’s good graces continued to astound him.
“Give each of these three thousand farmers a few partners in trade they can infect with their outrage in the pub every Friday, and we have the tens of thousands of outraged tradesmen who are bound to influence their constituencies,” he said. “The Liberal party is still very effectively blaming the economic downturn on the Tories, and they are blaming us daily, in town halls and market squares all over Britain.”
Disraeli’s lips twisted as if he were trying to rid himself of a bad taste in his mouth. “You were there when I wrote the Tory manifesto. We stand for expanding the empire, endless horizons. Glory. Greatness. That is what uplifts people, even the most lowly man. Uplift the empire and farmers will follow you gladly.”
Sebastian’s smile was entirely void of humor. “And I give every man credit who prefers starving for glory over feeding his family,” he said, “but the current polls are what they are and they demand a change in tactics.”
One did not even have to read four newspapers every morning to know this, or have a spy planted among the opposition. He, like every man of his class, had tenants. Unlike his peers, he saw their toils; he found them reflected in his own balance sheets when a harvest was bad or imported grain was sold too cheaply. It was all there if one cared to look. And he had looked hard in the past five days; every moment he hadn’t spent speaking to Scotland Yard, he had buried himself in paperwork and figure columns and reports. Of course, facts hardly convinced people whose emotions wanted it to be otherwise; a pity, for he found he was surprisingly unwilling to indulge petty sentiments today.
The silence in the royal apartment thickened. Disraeli shifted in his chair until the queen produced a displeased little sigh. “Very well,” she said. “While three thousand men are not a problem, tens of thousands could well be. Beaconsfield, we suggest you do as the duke recommends. As long as it can be done discreetly.”
* * *
What a curious thing power was, Sebastian thought when he was back on the train. The one person in Britain who could effectively tell him what to do barely reached his chest. And it was he who had given her much of that power, because he valued his mission and he needed her to achieve it. It was a worthy mission, of course. The men who had come before him had, save a few shameful exceptions, guarded and improved their dynasty for hundreds of years.
Still, as the sooty fog and grime of London faded into the distance behind him like a bad dream, he wondered where the line was between being a servant and a prisoner to a cause.
The train screeched to a halt at the next station.
“Oxford,” a member of staff announced below his coach window. “Ladies and gentlemen, please alight here for Oxford.”
Christ. The urge to scan the platform for the familiar glint of mahogany hair was absurdly overwhelming. He stared straight ahead, making Ramsey squirm in his corner across.
She had been gone for five days. He had caught up with an impressive stack of paperwork since, and he had quickly found several reasons why it was a good thing that Annabelle Archer had walked
back out of his life.
It grated, of course, that he was not sure what had caused her to refuse him. He didn’t like unfinished business. And as the days passed, he was thinking of her more, not less. He caught himself looking for her in the stables. Had stared like a fool at the armchair where he had first found her. He woke hard and aching every morning, and couldn’t get relief from his own hand because in the end, he didn’t find release until he made it about her—her soft mouth, her soft moans, the sweet hot welcome of her body . . . hell no, the last thing he needed was to link Annabelle Archer ever more closely to his desires.
A shudder ran through the coach as the train prepared to leave.
A visceral urge to jump into action shot through Sebastian’s limbs.
I could have her.
He could get off the train. He could find her, take her, drag her back to his bedroom, and keep her until she haunted him no longer. His ancestors wouldn’t have hesitated to do exactly that. Even today men like him could get away with unspeakable things . . .
With a huff, the train detached from the platform.
He exhaled a shuddering breath. Cold sweat had broken over his forehead, and for a moment, he sat in awe at his own dark impulses.
There were more civilized options to woo her—writing a letter, calling on her.
He would do nothing.
He had been an inch from taking her against the library door, like a drunk using a wench behind a tavern. He had never treated a woman thus before. But the truth was, a shocking emotion had held him in its clutches that night—to be inside her, or die.
No one should have that much power over him.
He opened his eyes to the empty winter landscape rushing past. The horizon was fading into a sickly yellow hue.
He allowed his mind to return to Oxford one more time, pictured her with her head bent over a book, her hair curling against her soft nape and her clever mind whirring. A bittersweet pull made his chest contract. He supposed that was how it felt to miss someone.