“Not now, Marianne.”
Undeterred, she plucked at his sleeve. “But there’s someone I want you to meet!”
He watched his sister’s bright eyes flick over his companion briefly, before her eyes came to rest on the lady’s pert breasts. Her jaw hit the starched Elizabethan ruff she wore.
He stepped around his frozen sister, and she disappeared behind them, swallowed by the crowds. He’d explain tomorrow, when his brain was functioning again and he could think of something other than the pressing need to make love to this woman.
Yasmina?
Charlotte?
He pushed through the crowds, ignoring anyone who tried to stop them, desperate to find a place to be alone with her, needing to touch her, to kiss every satin-clad inch of her, whoever she was. They’d get to that afterward, he promised himself.
He opened the first closed door he came to and pulled her inside. The honorable scent of leather and old paper assailed him. Westlake’s library. It would do as well as any other room, he thought. A soft carpet, a deep settee, the top of Adam’s wide mahogany desk—
A loud gasp stopped him before he’d gone three paces, letting him know that the room was already busy. He stopped so fast that Yasmina crashed into his back. Six ton matrons, shepherdesses all, stared at him.
“Damn,” Phineas muttered under his breath as they recognized him. Their eyes bulged with indignation. Six fans snapped open and fluttered, and a twitter began behind them.
Adam, dressed as Henry VIII, came toward him, his eyes on the woman behind Phineas, his expression bland. Phineas instinctively stepped in front of her, shielding her.
“Ah, Blackwood, I was just showing Lady Moresby and Lady Kelton some family portraits.” He sounded so calm that Phineas had the sudden desire to hit him. “Do join us.” Phineas glanced up at the magnificent oil portrait of Carrington glaring down at him in dour disapproval, and backed out of the room without a word. He was leaving Westlake in the awkward position of having to explain his ungainly intrusion. The old hens were probably clucking already, squawking over his lack of manners and speculating as to who his companion might be. Adam surely was.
Phineas winced. He still didn’t know the answer to that himself.
Even if he’d wanted to, he could not have introduced her. He could tell them how she tasted when he kissed her, how her breasts felt in his hands, or describe the soft sounds she made when he slid slowly into her body, but he couldn’t tell them her name.
Damn them all. Right now he had a very urgent need for privacy. Once he’d loved her, and satisfied them both, he’d find out who she was and make a hundred introductions.
He needed a place where they wouldn’t be interrupted. He could hardly take her upstairs with Jamie asleep in the nursery. Marianne would call him out, shoot him dead and mount his head in her new sitting room.
He looked down the length of the hall, trying to remember where the passage led and which rooms might be unlocked and unoccupied. Hell, he’d take a curtained alcove behind a potted palm in the ballroom right now. He forced his lust-fogged brain to work. To the right there was the morning room, the dining room, and the stairs to the kitchens. Beyond that was the door that led into the garden and Adam’s pride and joy, the conservatory.
“We should go back to the ballroom, my lord,” she said at his elbow.
“The conservatory,” he muttered.
“What? No, I think—”
She looked so delicious that he dared to swoop in for a kiss, if only to stop her objections. Her lips clung and her body cleaved to his. She wanted him as much as he wanted her, but not here. Anyone could walk by. He stared down at her luscious mouth.
“Do you like cherries?” he asked, running a thumb over the ruby flesh of her lower lip.
“Yes,” she said on a sigh. “That is, I want—” She flicked her tongue out over her lips, and he was instantly as hard as a post.
“I know,” he growled. “Come on.”
He pulled her into the conservatory. It housed dozens of exotic plants, collected by Adam’s ships from around the world. Adam also grew strawberries, cherries, and oranges year-round to please Marianne. The room was hot and dark, the heavy fragrance of flowers and fruit a powerful aphrodisiac. Not that he needed one.
He pushed through the foliage. The setting was perfect for a casual seduction, but a trifle awkward for what he had in mind. They’d made do with a bench before, but he’d spent weeks imagining this woman in a proper bed, for a night, a week, or a month. In the same way Adam carefully catalogued his collection of plants, Phineas had listed the things he wanted to do to Yasmina once he found her.
It was almost pitch-dark in the glass house, and as dense as a jungle. The faint lights of the city beyond the high garden walls lessened the blackness only enough to see the dark lace of leaves and branches against the glass ceiling.
Phineas pushed past pots and clinging vines with clumsy desperation, not daring to let go of her hand. He reached the trunk of the cherry tree, ran into it, actually, and turned, tugging her into his arms.
She pressed her body to his with a needful cry, her mouth crashing hard into his in the dark. He molded the length of her luscious body to his, devouring her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, reveling in the taste of her. She was everything he remembered her to be.
More.
“Yasmina,” he muttered. “Charlotte.” Whoever she was, she was a marvel of feminine perfection.
He spread his legs, drew her between them, and she pressed her hips against his, rubbing, soft little gasps of desire escaping from her lips, the satin of her gown whispering sensuously as she moved. The sword was in the way again, but this time he pressed the ruby clasp and let it fall to the ground with a careless clatter. There was no need to tell her what he wanted. She already knew. He marveled at that, and the fact that their hands unerringly found what they sought in the darkness.
Her perfume washed over him like a tidal wave, and he groaned and slid his fingers down the plump warm slopes of her breasts to scoop them out of her scanty bodice like ripe fruit. Her nipples peaked instantly under his thumbs and she gasped and threw her head back, thrusting herself into his hands, his mouth. She fumbled with the laces on his doublet as he struggled to free more of her body from the tight bodice. He wanted to touch every inch of her incredible skin, softer than the satin of her gown.
“Laces,” she sighed, guiding his hand to the ribbons that tied the back of her gown, and he expertly unstrung her. He gasped as her hands slid inside his open tunic at the same moment, her touch electrifying. She pinched his flat nipple, and the sensation shot straight to his groin.
“Yasmina,” he growled, using the name he knew best, the one that had resounded in his mind for weeks. He slid down the smooth tree trunk, pulling her on top of him. She straddled him, leaned forward to kiss him, her naked breasts brushing his chest. He was enveloped in a fragrant cloud of lace and satin, and he struggled to find a way through the tangle of petticoats and frills, seeking paradise. He wished he still had the sword handy. Or a machete. He could smell the sweet musky scent of her desire under her skirts, and it drove him wild.
At last he felt warm, soft, bare flesh. She moaned as he touched her, and he slid his hand upward along the inside of her quivering thighs, over the silk of her skin until he brushed the curls at her center. He inserted a finger into her, felt her tremble and sigh. She was wet, ready for him, and he stroked the soft petals of her flesh. He caught her cry, kissing her hard, using his tongue in her mouth as he used his finger below, driving her release higher.
As she collapsed against him, he could feel her heart pounding against his in the darkness, and he couldn’t resist a private grin of pure masculine pride at his accomplishments as a lover. He wanted to be good, especially, earth-shatteringly good, for her.
She was murmuring as she slid a hand down to find the ties of his Elizabethan breeches to free his erection. Her hand closing around him was almost too much. He�
��d waited weeks for this moment.
“Now,” he commanded, grasping her hips, lifting her and positioning her. She plunged down onto him and shivered in renewed climax almost at once. It undid him, and he thrust into her, hard and fast, holding her buttocks in his palms, feeling the silken skin, the warm, feminine flesh, the flex of her muscles as she moved on his body, strove for pleasure in time with him. In the faint glimmer of light he could see her white breasts above him, the nipples dark and round, the long pale column of her neck.
“Take off your mask,” he said, holding his release until he could look into her eyes, even in the dark. It was like trying to control a team of runaway horses. He was on the edge, buried deep in the hot, tight paradise of her body.
She made a soft sound of denial and moved her hips against him, swiveling in a provocative, needy little circle that made him forget everything, even his own name, let alone hers. He thrust into her, unable to do anything else.
As she cried out, he clasped his hands around her hips, pressing into her as far as he could go. The molten waves of his release rolled on endlessly.
He clasped her against his chest, still inside her, caressing the smooth planes of her back, the jut of her shoulder blades, the softness of her neck. Once he could breathe again, he’d question her. He’d know if she lied, and he opened his mouth to tell her so, but she kissed his throat, licked at the corner of his mouth provocatively, convincing him questions could wait for a few moments. He turned his face to kiss her properly.
“How did people manage to make love with all these petticoats and laces?” he asked.
She laughed, the sound vibrating through him. “I assume they took them off,” she said.
“And used real beds,” he suggested. She didn’t reply.
He touched her face, running his finger under the edge of her mask, over her high cheekbones, along the seam of her mouth. She caught his fingers in her teeth and shifted her hips, indicating without words she wanted more.
He stroked the warm skin of her thighs and buttocks, dipped between, teasing her, and laughed against her mouth as she sighed. “You’ll have to wait for a few minutes, greedy wench,” he said. “I assure you it won’t be long.” He already felt the desire to take her again, his mind ready for her, even if his body required a brief respite. There was time for love play and a few pointed questions between kisses. He ran his lips over the fragile curve of her jaw, the corner of her mouth, the tip of her nose. “Take off your mask,” he breathed into her ear. It was a command, not a plea.
Instead of responding, she stiffened and moved off him. Cold air rushed to claim the heated flesh where her body had rested on his. Could there have been a more pointed refusal? He felt the loss of her acutely.
“Come back,” he said without moving, not daring to, in case she fled. He heard the soft rustle of her clothing in the darkness, saw the faint shimmer of satin as she righted her garments.
“I should go back to the ballroom before I am missed,” she said softly. “Oh, no. I need you to lace me up again.” She said the last shyly.
He could hear her agitated breathing in the dark. She hadn’t gone far.
“Leaving so soon? But I promised you cherries,” he drawled.
She laughed. “There really is a cherry tree in here? I will forgive you if there is not, you know.”
He got to his feet and reached up. The cherries hung in clumps above him, and he grabbed a handful of the cool, smooth fruit and pulled. One burst and he felt the juice running over his hand. He held them out to the shadowy form he hoped was Yasmina. He could very well be offering Adam’s prized cherries to a potted plant. “See?” he asked.
“It’s too dark to see anything,” she replied, her voice a little to the left of where his hand was extended.
“Where’s your mouth? Let me feed you.” He shut his eyes as he felt her hand on his, the touch tentative as she guided his fingers to her lips, sucking the juice from them with a sigh of amazement.
“Blackwood! There really are cherries!” she said, as if she’d still expected to discover he’d been lying to her. He frowned at the sound of his name on her lips and wondered what else this woman knew about him. Prickles of warning shot up his spine.
He put a cherry against her lips. She bit down, and the squirt of juice hit his fingers, the sensation erotic. He leaned forward, finding her mouth, sucking the sweet taste from her lips and tongue. He was hard again, ready for her in a rush of urgency.
“God,” he gasped, dropping the cherries in his hand and reaching for her. “Tell me your name,” he begged, his voice ragged.
“Call me Yasmina,” she sighed, nuzzling his neck, her breath warm against his skin. “Or Charlotte. What difference does it make?” She kissed him, her lips clinging to his to silence him when he tried to speak again. He pulled away, heard her grunt with frustration.
“Tell me your name,” he said again, his hands on her shoulders, holding her away from him, tormenting them both in the name of duty. “I need to know how to find you. If this is going to keep happening—and I sincerely hope it will—I want to know what to call you, where to send flowers, or a basket of Westlake’s cherries.”
She rubbed against him like a cat, and he reached under her skirts again. She pressed against his hand and fumbled for his erection, drawing him toward her. He went, unable to resist, kissing the long column of her neck.
“This cannot keep happening, Blackwood. It should not have happened at all,” she murmured.
“Which time?” he asked, nuzzling her ear, nipping the lobe until she relaxed in his arms, let him bear her backward beneath the cherry tree, their fall cushioned by her petticoats.
“Both times. Neither time. Never, ever again,” she said on a wistful sigh, parting her legs, drawing him to where she wanted him. He resisted the urge to thrust, teasing her, needing information before he gave in to desire.
He caressed her breast, rubbed his thumb over her needy nipple and felt it swell.
“Are you married?” he asked her. “I can be discreet—”
She stiffened. “No, of course not!” she said, trying to pull away, but he wouldn’t allow it. “Please—”
He cupped a hand behind her head, drew her mouth back to his, gentling her with a drugging kiss. He ran his hand over her throat, traced the delicate lines of her jaw as he slid his hand behind her head, under the curls of her wig. She had a tiny mole on the back of her neck, and he ran his finger around it.
“Please,” she whispered again. She was writhing beneath him.
He hovered, making foreplay out of the interrogation. He’d make her give up a secret for every caress she craved. He was already sweating. The game would require the utmost willpower. Not that he couldn’t—
Light streaked across the floor as the door creaked open.
“Blackwood?”
Phineas was on his feet in an instant, squinting at the silhouetted form in the doorway. He would have reached for his sword but it was lost in the dark. His lover scrambled into the shadows with a horrified gasp and a hiss of satin, but Phineas kept his eyes on the intruder.
“Adam,” he growled, recognizing Westlake’s voice. Damn him, he probably wanted to give the old cats a tour of his conservatory too, now that they were finished in the library.
Phineas hurriedly straightened his clothing before his brother-in-law marched into the glass house with half the ton in his wake and created a scandal London would be talking about for the next decade. He strode to the door, intent on keeping everyone out, glaring at Adam like an angry bear.
Adam’s eyes searched the dark foliage, and Phineas’s fist curled, ready to punch the curiosity off his face. He stepped into the hallway to face down any society matron who dared look at him with outrage and shock, but Westlake was alone. Phineas turned to his brother-in-law. If this was about his damned sense of propriety, then—
“Duty calls, Blackwood. We’ve got to go.” Adam’s voice didn’t carry even a hint of apology for the
interruption.
Phineas squinted at his brother-in-law’s face, read the urgency there. His anger sharpened to keen alertness.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not here,” Adam muttered through gritted teeth, and looked pointedly into the darkness behind Phineas.
He followed Adam’s gaze. “I need a minute.”
“No more than that,” Adam replied. “This can’t wait.”
Phineas went back into the conservatory.
“Yasmina?” he called softly. She didn’t answer. There wasn’t even a telltale rustle of clothing to betray her hiding place. She must be horribly embarrassed. Or she was a master of subterfuge. An uneasy feeling prickled along his spine, but he pushed it aside and concentrated on lacing his doublet. There was nothing he could do about it now.
“Yasmina, I have to leave,” he said to the shadows of the leaves and branches. “I’ll be back before the ball is over. Wait for me.” He dared not say more. She didn’t reply, and Adam was waiting. He returned to the hallway.
Adam’s expression was cool and unreadable. He expected a lecture for using Adam’s sacred conservatory to stage a seduction, but that sin was obviously less important than the matter at hand.
Phineas followed him out through the kitchen and into the mews behind the house, where a carriage was already waiting.
“What’s so bloody important?” he demanded, and settled back against the squabs as the carriage pulled away at a gallop.
Isobel huddled behind a row of huge clay pots and waited until everything was quiet. Fear and the coldness of the flagstones crept into her bones and made her teeth chatter. The room smelled of cherries, rich soil, and sex.
With shaking hands she straightened her clothing as best she could, awkwardly tying her laces over her shoulder, cramming her wayward breasts into the bodice as far as they’d go. She wiped away tears of regret and stood for a long moment near the door Blackwood had shut so firmly behind him, gathering the courage to leave the dark sanctuary, knowing she must be gone before he returned. She would go home at once, of course, and send the coach back for Charles.
Secrets of a Proper Countess Page 13