…Until his deuced determined companion went on with his blasted suggestions…
“Lady Gabriella Atwater?”
Memory of the pointedly cold, spiteful young woman in Madam Bisset’s shop more than two months ago slipped in. She fisted her skirts. That was the foul creature his friend would see Christian wed to? Oh, no, that would not do at all.
“…outrageously dowered, determined to have nothing less than a marquess…”
Granted, the woman had a monstrous dowry, yet, whyever would any gentleman want one such as that for his—
“May I help you?”
The sharp command from the hall wrung a startled gasp from her lips. For a moment, the horror at being discovered listening at the Marquess of St. Cyr’s keyhole as if she were a child of eight and not a woman of eighteen threatened to drown her, but then her gaze settled on the dark clad servant stalking toward her with the aid of crude wooden crutch tucked underneath his arm.
The right sleeve of his empty jacket had been tacked up. It was not the missing limb that attracted her horrified notice, but rather the dangerous gleam in the man’s nearly black eyes. She gave a jerky shake of her head and then with a terror born of impending discovery stumbled away from him. Prudence raced down the hall. Shameful as it was, she gave a cowardly thanks for her advantage over the man whom she suspected at one time could have easily overtaken her. And by his rough speech would have gladly destroyed her.
With her breath coming in ragged pants, she turned right at the end of the corridor and lengthened her stride. Goodness, what manner of servants did Christian keep? Prudence rushed ahead and then came to the end of the hall. She grabbed the door handle and then casting one fearful glance back over her shoulder, shoved the door open and stepped outside.
The wisdom in seeking sanctuary from the cold indoors hit her with the force of running into a stone wall. Or in this case…a wall of cold air. A sharp blast of winter air slammed into her with such force that tears stung her eyes. That unforgiving chill sucked the breath from her lungs.
“Bloody hell, that is c-cold,” she gasped and hugged her arms close to her chest. She tossed a glance beyond her shoulder, briefly contemplating returning and risking the wrath of the marquess’ burly servant. When faced with the prospect, Prudence stepped outside and closed the door behind her.
Her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkened gardens. There was a decided dreariness to the barren trees and bushes. She rubbed her arms in a bid to smooth the dotted gooseflesh that popped up on her skin. Her teeth chattering, Prudence drew her arms all the closer and wandered deeper out onto the balcony.
This hasty, ill-thought escape through the marquess’ home would decidedly fall into the “avoid scandals of all kind” end of her mother’s mantra.
Thick clouds filled the night sky, occasionally rolling past and blotting out the thin sliver of a moon. Prudence walked briskly along the terrace and wandered to the edge. She placed her hands upon the balustrade and looked out.
Taken hold by winter’s grip, Lord St. Cyr’s prized rosebushes were sharp, leafless sticks. She lowered her elbows upon the ledge of the wall and propped her chin atop her hands, and stared out at the grounds below while contemplating her circumstances, and more, considering what she’d heard from behind the marquess’ door. They were two in the market for a spouse, and yet, how very different they both were. He was sought after, whispered about for only good reasons, while she was shunned, and loudly gossiped about for…well…not at all good reasons. If she were forced to endure an entire Season as this socially snubbed, disdained miss, she’d go utterly mad.
A sharp breeze cut through the walled-in gardens and the frigid air slammed into her person, filling her body with its coldness. Instead of returning to the warmth of the indoors, she took on that slight discomfort for it distracted her from the horridness of her own circumstances.
Lord St. Cyr guiding his partner through the intricate steps of the quadrille slipped into her mind. She bit her lower lip. “It was only a dance,” she whispered to herself. Yet, why had it mattered so very much to her? Because he’d seen past the scandal and there was something powerfully heady about a gentleman who turned his nose up at all those gossips.
The faint tread of footsteps jerked her quickly to the moment. Oh, God! The brutish servant. Her mouth dry with fear, Prudence wheeled around. No scandal…No elopements, no hasty marriages…Her mother’s mantra thundered in time with her panicked heartbeat. As the stranger in black pulled the door closed behind him, she briefly shot a glance over her shoulder at the grounds below. She could jump. She’d done it often as a child from high oaks and willows. Not in a satin ball gown and certainly not from this height.
Swallowing hard, she recalled the one-armed stranger’s thunderous fury, and hefted her leg over the wall. Yes, she’d rather take her chances with a risky fall.
“I daresay, I hope you’re not finding jumping over the edge preferable to my company,” an amused voice, and more, very familiar voice sounded.
Prudence froze, her leg hung damningly on the edge of the balustrade. Her heart missed several beats, only this time for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. It was as though from her earlier musings, she’d conjured him. “Oh. You,” she blurted.
Christian stood with his hands clasped behind his back, studying her from down the length of the balcony. He dipped his gaze to her suspended foot. Even with the distance between them, a flash of hot desire sparked in his eyes. Warmth unfurled through her, momentarily driving back the evening chill. She slowly lowered her slippered foot. His pearl white, even smile flashed bright in the dark. “Were you expecting another?” There was a trace of hardness underscoring that wry question, the faintest thread of possessiveness that hinted at more.
Bah. Foolish. In a bid to maintain feigned nonchalance at being discovered lurking in his house and sneaking on his private balcony, Prudence shrugged. “Were you expecting another?” He stilled. As soon as the words slipped past her mouth, the audacity of that inquiry slammed into her. “N-not that it matters wh-whether you’ve come to meet another.”
Christian halted his advance.
It was entirely possible with the chill of the winter night he’d credit the cold with the faint quiver to her words. She willed her mouth to silence. Alas, the words kept coming, fed by her own mortified embarrassment. “What you do is your own business.” Heat scorched her cheeks and she shot her hands behind her, clasping the rail to keep from dissolving into an embarrassed heap at his feet. “Not that you were out here on a matter of business,” she said quickly. Shut your blasted mouth, Prudence Tidemore!
Did his hard, sculpted lips twitch with amusement?
Adopting her breeziest tone, she gave a toss of her head. “You are free to keep company where you would.” As he’d done a short while ago during his and his unscandalous lady’s quadrille. The reminder of that hurt more than it should, more than she wished.
He cocked his head. “Have you quite finished with er…that very specific opinion on your expectations for my…er company?”
“Quite,” she said with a curt nod. All attempts at cool indifference were ruined by the blasted curl that pulled loose of her hideous chignon and tumbled over her eye. She blew it back. It fell promptly back in place.
Christian resumed closing the length of the distance between them and her heart fluttered. His long, effortless strides ate away the space, until he came to a stop right before her. Another winter wind slapped at her satin skirts. Odd, she’d ceased to feel the cold the moment he’d interrupted her stolen moment here. The muscles of her throat bobbed as the scent of him, sandalwood and brandy, wafted about her senses.
“I am not meeting anyone.”
Joy buoyed her heart and then it promptly sank like a rock in her belly. His hulking servant had likely alerted his employer to Prudence’s scandalous flight through his home. “Are you not?” Her voice emerged on a high squeak.
The marquess brushed his knuckles
along her jaw, the touch so fleeting she thought she might have imagined it. “It occurs to me you’ve never answered my question.” Had there been a question? In this moment, all she knew was him. “Who are you meeting, Prudence?”
His breath stirred her cheeks and for one shocking moment, she believed he would kiss her, and for one even more brazen moment, she wanted him to. Nay, she wanted to lean up on tiptoe and take his kiss. Wanted his to be her first. “No one,” she managed to force out. “I merely…” …listened to talk between you and your friend about your marital state.
He arched an eyebrow.
“I was merely avoiding your servant,” she finished lamely. While I was lurking outside your office door, listening at the keyhole like a recalcitrant child. She sighed. This passed a level of embarrassment she’d not yet achieved, until now. “He was a tall man with a crutch.” And a look of death in his hardened stare.
Understanding dawned in Christian’s eyes. “Terry.”
“I—” She gave her head a shake and desperately tried to attend what he was saying. She really did, except he stroked her cheek once more.
He let his hand fall to his side and she mourned the loss of his touch. “Terry is harmless.”
Prudence eyed him skeptically. The man had looked prepared to take her apart for wandering through Christian’s townhouse.
“Though I can certainly see why he’d make you uneasy. I have a rather unconventional staff.” She would most assuredly agree with that. “They are former soldiers,” he explained.
“Indeed?” When most lords and ladies hired only the most refined servants, this man had filled his household with burly men, some with crutches and missing limbs.
“Indeed.” He rocked on the balls of his feet. Another gust of winter wind slammed into them and Prudence shivered, her teeth chattering noisily. “Here,” Christian murmured, slipping off his jacket.
She made a sound of protest that died a swift death at the sight of him in his shirtsleeves, waistcoat, and cravat. There was something so very intimate in being with him in this manner, clad the way he might be if they were husband and wife, and his home were empty but for the two of them. He slipped the midnight black fabric over her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said softly, burrowing into the warmth that still clung to the jacket. Prudence discreetly turned her nose into the collar and breathed deep of his sandalwood scent.
He tipped his chin in the direction of his townhouse. “Are you not enjoying yourself this evening?”
“I am not,” she said before she could call the words back. “That is—” Oh, why could she not have a clever lie on the ready like Poppy? Prudence sighed.
“Well,” he stretched out that one syllable, his husky tone wrapped about it, making it somehow more. “It would seem you also far prefer the cold of my gardens to the frigidity of the peerage inside that ballroom?” He gave her a wink.
“Oh, yes.” She dropped her gaze to his stark, white cravat. “Though I expect one such as you would know nothing of that frigidity.”
Christian opened his mouth, but no words were forthcoming. He didn’t bother with false protestations, for which she was grateful. As the sought-after, roguish Marquess of St. Cyr, the world in which they moved found a small, select few lords and ladies in its favor. The unfortunate others were just one misstep away from Societal disdain. She and he moved within those two very distinctly different spheres.
Suddenly disquieted by the solemnity in his eyes as he passed his gaze over her face, she turned out and gave her attention to the desolate grounds below. The wind slapped her skirts. She instinctively folded her arms at her chest and rubbed her forearms.
Tension thrummed between them, as this man, more stranger than anything else moved nearer. His knees brushed the back of her skirts. “It is a certainty I’m far more deserving of their frigidity than you could or would ever be,” he whispered against ear and shivers radiated from her neck, all the way to her belly, and down to her toes. He must have attributed the slight tremor of her body to the cold of night for he lowered his gloved palms to her shoulders. Then slowly, ever so slowly, he ran his palms down her forearms and then up again in a rhythmic motion that sucked at her senses.
No scandal…no scandal…
“You are merely being magnanimous,” she managed, priding herself on the evenness of those words. His touch wrought havoc upon her ability to formulate clear thoughts. “You needn’t disparage yourself on my account.”
Christian paused, halting that seductive movement that had rubbed warmth back into her limbs and she wanted to cry out in protest. “Mine are not merely gentlemanly protestations. I assure you, my lady.”
My lady. Not Prudence. And yet, his shocking touch shattered propriety like an icicle hitting the cobblestones.
Christian angled her slightly back around, so that she faced him. “Society sees what they wish to see. They take a person and their circumstances and make order of them in whatever way they can. And do you know what I’ve come to find, Prudence?” Her name once more. Happiness lightened her chest so that she had to tell her brain to tell her head to nod.
He brushed back that tight curl hanging over her eye. “I’ve found that Society is more often than not wrong in the order they make a person’s life.”
For a moment, his usually smiling eyes filled with such darkness, she again shivered. A hungering to know what accounted for that somberness gripped her. But more, a cowardice to not know the secrets hidden in his eyes kept her silent.
Something cold and wet touched her nose. She blinked several times and then, with alacrity, shot her gaze up to the night sky. White flecks fluttered and danced an uneven pattern down to the earth. “Snow,” she breathed. Prudence looked to him, her heart lifting. “It is snowing.”
Chapter 10
Lesson Ten
One should be able to speak freely with a gentleman
The lady had been listening at his office door. Terry had directed Christian in her direction. The truth of what she’d likely overheard would be bandied about by gossips and shake his family with an unneeded scandal. Not that any scandals were needed, but particularly not any further given Christian’s current state. Yet, something gave him pause. He took in the wide-eyed wonder etched in the heart-shaped planes of the lady’s face.
“Why are you staring at me?” Prudence whispered, her breath clouded in the cold air.
He momentarily closed his eyes to blot out the innocent lure she’d cast, wanting to breathe in her unjaded goodness so he might be restored to the person he’d been before the hell of his own making. This woman fit not at all into the plans forced upon him as marquess and yet she drew him like a Siren hopelessly battering him at sea. All thoughts, plans, and efforts for those title graspers fled when presented with her unadulterated honesty. Ah, God help him. Such unsullied innocence was an aphrodisiac that, with his bloodied hands and ugly past, he’d long ago learned the perils of. “I cannot look away.”
She opened her mouth and he kissed the question from her. Christian took her lips under his, first with a gentle meeting. He explored the bow-shaped contour of the plump flesh. The hesitancy with which she met that caress heightened the reminder of her innocence. There had been another. Young. Innocent. But underneath had been a jaded, treacherous heart. He stiffened, hardening that deadened organ to the seductive pull this woman held over him.
Prudence pressed her palms to his chest. Her small, delicate gloved hands drew him further into whatever web she wove. With a groan, Christian deepened the kiss. He slanted his lips over hers, again and again until a breathless moan escaped her. He swallowed the sound of her desire and wrapped his arms about her waist, drawing her close.
“Christian,” she cried out softly, tangling her fingers in his hair, urging him closer still.
Fueled by her unrestrained hungering, he dragged his mouth down her cheek, and lower, searching out the long column of her neck where her pulse pounded. He nipped at the flesh, lightly marking her, but then f
rom some distant recess of his mind where propriety still lived, and reason still existed, he recalled she would have to return to the ballroom.
“I-I have n-never,” she said huskily, her words ending on a gasp as he cupped her buttocks and dragged her where his shaft pressed hard at the front of his breeches. Prudence arched her neck. “I have n-never felt anything like this.” Then with an innocence that blended with an innate knowing surely Eve had given all women, she pushed her hips against him.
“Ah, you are a Siren,” he rasped and claimed her lips once more. This time gentleness melted away as she opened her mouth to accept him. He found her tongue with his and she met his kiss in a blend of innocence and boldness that was not the practiced exchange of the courtesans and skilled mistresses he’d taken.
Her legs weakened, and he caught her, guiding her against the edge of the balustrade. There, with only the small snowflakes and the clouds overhead as their witness, he learned the taste and texture of her mouth. She was honey and peppermint; the perfect blend of innocence for the woman she was.
“I am going to hell,” he said gruffly as he trailed kisses along the column of her throat to her modest décolletage. Innocent English ladies did not fit into the scheme of his plannings.
“Su-surely not for this?”
Surely for a host of sins and crimes. That staggering reminder jerked him to the moment. Christian stumbled away from her with such alacrity she faltered. He immediately shot his hands out to steady her from the perch he’d guided her moments ago. His breath came hard and fast, in time to the quick rise and fall of her chest. With her rapid blinking, she had the look of a night owl caught in the morning sun. He raked shaky fingers through his hair. Christ. What manner of madness had possessed him touching her as he had?
“What is wrong?” Her soft whisper reached his ears.
Likely the same manner of madness that still gripped him, for he ached to take her in his arms once more. A harsh laugh rumbled up from his chest, and unable to bear the sight of her uncertain and questioning expression, he dragged a hand over his face. “There is everything wrong.” He let his hand fall to his side. He had no place meeting this woman out here alone, who dreamed of more and who clearly deserved more, and certainly even less place kissing her like she was a common street whore he’d plow against the balustrade on a winter’s night.
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 29