He got to his feet as he took out the silk rose and the handkerchief. He held them in the candlelight, watching her, scorching her with the unspoken accusation before he let them drop.
Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She tossed her head with an angry snort and glared at him, her lip curling. She pulled her feet away, as if the items had burned her right through the bedclothes. He felt a surge of triumph in his breast, the thrill of retribution, and braced himself for tears, pleas for mercy, and—
“How dare you?” she demanded, keeping her voice low, casting another quick look at the door.
He folded his arms over his chest. “You aren’t going to deny that these belong to you, are you, Isobel?”
She pushed back the covers and reached for the little silk rose, rising to her knees on the bed as she shook it at him.
“This is mine. It fell out of my wig when we—” She stopped, a blush spreading over her pale cheeks. He raised a lazy eyebrow and slid another sultry gaze over her body, showing her he remembered every touch, every kiss.
With a soft cry of fury, she threw the rosebud at him, and it hit his cheek, so light it was more a caress than the slap she intended it to be, but he flinched, surprised.
She pointed at the handkerchief still lying on her bed, and her eyes bored into his, filled with indignation.
“That little souvenir, my lord, is not mine. It obviously belongs to one of your other conquests.” She filled the word with venom and spat it at him.
He didn’t believe her. He leaned toward her. Kneeling on the bed, she was the same height as he, and he came so close their noses almost touched. She didn’t flinch or look away. In her rage, she forgot to hold onto the neck of her robe. The candlelight caressed the delicate bones of her throat, and deepened the tempting shadows between her breasts. He grabbed the handkerchief, brought it between them, held it before her eyes.
“You haven’t even looked at it, Isobel. How can you be so certain it isn’t yours?” He unfurled it like a battle flag, so she could see the initial and the embroidered rose.
“It is not mine,” she insisted. As quickly and as gracefully as a cat, she slipped off the bed and stalked past him.
“The rosebud, Isobel. The M for Maitland. Look at it,” he demanded, following her.
With her nose in the air, she crossed to her dresser, opened the drawer, drew out a plain linen square and thrust it into his hand.
“This is mine,” she said.
It bore her initials and the Ashdown crest. There was no lace, and no rose.
“There’s a dozen more in the drawer, all alike, if you wish to look on your way out, Lord Blackwood.”
She stood in the middle of her room and glared at him. Her prim flannel robe was at odds with the lace that trailed below the hem, and her bare feet were white and vulnerable against the darkness of the carpet. Her hair swept around her like a cloak, loose, glorious, and simmering angrily in the low light. His breath caught in his throat.
The intimacy of the situation was overwhelming. He stood and stared at her, crushing the damned handkerchief in his fist.
“Why, Isobel? Why me?”
A little of the fury went out of her eyes, and she looked away for an instant. “Is that why you came? To fish for compliments? Do you expect me to tell you what a magnificent lover you are?”
“It would be a place to start. Why didn’t you tell me your name when I asked?” He dared to take a step closer. “I know you enjoyed it. Both times.” Her head shot up and she drew the breath to deny it, but he held up a hand. ‘Magnificent lover’ was your description, Isobel.”
“I believe you enjoyed yourself as well, my lord,” she said boldly.
He took another step toward her. The hushed fall of his boots on the carpet was the only sound. He didn’t stop until he reached her and they stood toe-to-toe, and she had to tip her head back to meet his eyes. “Now who’s fishing for compliments?” he asked, and pulled her into his arms, swooping down to capture her mouth with his.
Isobel was powerless to resist. Fury melted under the heat of his touch. He’d broken into her bedroom like a thief and tossed another woman’s handkerchief at her, but pride was no match for her desire for this man. She sank into the kiss, reveled in it, marveled that her need for him only grew stronger the more she tried to sate it. She was drugged by the sensation of his body against hers, by the scent of his skin, by his lust for her.
She reached up a hand to his chest and felt the tiny portrait in her fist.
Robin.
With a surge of dread, she pushed him away. This was not anonymous anymore. This was a dangerous, high stakes game she could not win. She would lose everything if—when—Honoria found out. She stared at the door, her heart pounding, but the house was quiet. She wrapped her arms over her robe, hugging it to her, holding the portrait so tight in her hand that the filigreed edges cut into her palm.
He was staring at her, and she shut her eyes. He’d come for an explanation, but she didn’t have one, couldn’t tell him the truth.
“Are you mad, Blackwood? I cannot do this!” she said, taking refuge in anger.
He put his hands on his hips and frowned, breathing hard, but made no attempt to touch her again. “Why not? It’s not as if it hasn’t happened before, and this time the luxury of a bed would surely enhance the pleasure.”
She let her eyes roam over him, tempted still, despite the risk. He wore black, which should have made him sinister, dangerous, but he looked magnificent. Magnificent. There was that word again. It should be his word.
“No!” she said, trying to mean it. Weak, that would be her word, and he would be the cause of it. “Honoria’s room is right down the hall! Robbie—my son—is upstairs.” She held out the portrait, and it dangled between them like a talisman against calamity. “I am not one of your conquests. I have a reputation to protect, Blackwood.”
He stepped right over her good intentions and cupped her cheek, running his thumb over her hot skin. “I think we know each other well enough that you may use my Christian name, Isobel. It’s Phineas. Say it.”
His voice was low, dark and seductive, and she rubbed her face against his palm like a cat in heat. “There is nothing Christian about you,” she whimpered. He laughed, and she shut her eyes, the sound vibrating over every nerve. “Please, Blackwood,” she begged.
“Close enough,” he muttered, and with very little effort and no warning at all scooped an arm under her knees and lifted her as if she weighed nothing. He carried her back to the bed and dropped her on the rumpled sheets.
She scrambled backward and clambered off the other side, putting the dangerous, seductive surface between them. She could see his erection through the dark wool of his breeches, and she shut her eyes against the flood of desire.
“Look, Isobel, I’m willing to play your game,” he said. “No one need know. We can keep our affair discreet. You can even continue to snub me by day, if it salves your conscience. I’ve grown used to it.”
She stared at him, saw he meant his offer in all seriousness. Her heart was hammering against the fragile cage of her ribs. Her knees barely held her upright. She clung to the bedpost, wishing she were as hard and unfeeling as the carved oak. She wanted nothing more than to fall onto this bed with him, but he was a craving she could never satisfy. She wanted more, everything, when she could not afford to have any.
“This is not an affair,” she said.
He gave her a slow, wicked grin that frayed the raveling edges of her willpower. “Then what is it?” he asked.
What indeed? “It’s a mistake. It was never supposed to happen,” she murmured, wondering which of them she was trying to convince.
He didn’t look like he believed her. She didn’t believe a word of it herself. He was the best thing—and the worst—that had ever happened to her. “I didn’t know—that is, I didn’t think it would—” She stopped before she said too much, spoke a truth that would not let her go back to a world without him.<
br />
“You like what I do to you, Isobel. You like how I make you feel.”
She moaned her denial, adding the lie to her sins, sure she would burst into flames in punishment at any moment, or worse, that Honoria would open the door and find her here, with him.
“Please, Blackwood, you’ve got to go.” She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see him leave. Instead, he came around the bed, and she sighed when he pushed his hands through her hair.
“You have beautiful hair. I had no idea it was red. All those weeks, trying to imagine what you looked like without a mask, a hat, a wig. I didn’t guess you were a redhead.”
She couldn’t pull away from the simple, sensual caress. “I suppose you thought I was blond. Most of your amours seem to be blond.”
She felt her face heat and wondered if she’d given away the sad fact that she’d watched him from the shadows for months before Evelyn’s masquerade.
He merely lowered his mouth to hers. “Not anymore,” he whispered against her lips. She opened her mouth as if it was a natural thing between the two of them, let his tongue find hers, held onto his broad shoulders and stood on her toes, pressing the length of her body against his.
A muffled thump in the hallway made her jump. Terrified, she pushed him into the dark corner behind her and stood in front of him, staring at the door.
She braced for the door to come crashing in.
“Hide!” she hissed, and did her best to press him into the shadows.
Chapter 26
Isobel had no idea what the ungodly noise in the hall might be, but surely it meant discovery and disaster.
Blackwood was in her bedroom, and there was no way to explain him away.
She waited for the door to crash open, for Honoria’s screams of outrage. Charles would come running, and probably Jane too, and her shame would be complete. She flinched as another thump echoed through the house.
She felt Blackwood’s hands on her shoulders, moving her aside. “Thank you for your kind offer of protection, sweetheart, but I’m quite capable of defending myself.” He stepped in front of her, pulled a pistol from the small of his back and cocked it.
“What are you going to do with that?” she demanded in a shrill whisper. “Please, it’s only Honoria, arriving home from a party. Perhaps she’s downstairs looking for something to eat to help her sleep.” Another crash shook the room. She stared at the door, but it remained closed.
“Something to eat?” he muttered. “Sounds more like she’s hunting big game in the hallway.”
“It doesn’t matter! You’ve got to leave! Go down the back stairs, out through the kitchen,” she instructed as she hurried toward the door, but he caught her arm.
“Isobel, wait—”
She shook him off. “If you aren’t leaving, at least hide!” She looked around, searching the intimate space of her bedroom for somewhere big enough to conceal a man his size.
He stepped past her and locked the door. Now why hadn’t she thought of that?
He crossed to the window and pulled back the drapes a fraction, and she followed. A coach stood in front of the house, with a familiar portly silhouette on the curb next to it.
“It’s Charles!” She drew back, afraid he would look up, see her in the window, or worse, see Blackwood there. She blew out the candle, leaving them in darkness.
Blackwood opened the curtains fully and stood watching whatever it was that Charles was doing. What was he doing?
Isobel held her breath as two men came down the front steps with a crate and carried it to the coach.
“Is Charles going out of town?” Blackwood asked. He sounded calm, barely even curious, but his avid gaze never left the coach.
Charles was directing the loading of the vehicle. The men weren’t Maitland servants. They had rough, lean faces. “I don’t know. He sometimes goes to Waterfield Abbey.”
“Does he usually depart in the middle of the night?”
She shrugged, uneasy. “It’s in Kent, a long journey.” It was the only explanation she could think of, but it sounded false even to her. She saw the glint of coins in the lamplight as Charles paid the men. They melted into the dark.
Blackwood turned to her as Charles climbed into the coach. “I have to leave, Isobel, but this discussion isn’t over. If it’s too distracting in your bedchamber, then I’ll call on you tomorrow. We can have this conversation in your drawing room.”
“That’s impossible! You can’t call on me here!” He raised an eyebrow and waited. “Honoria wouldn’t like it.”
“This isn’t about Honoria, Isobel. It’s about what you and I want, and I for one still want an explanation.”
She retreated into the shadows and pulled the flannel robe around her body. “There isn’t one, don’t you see? It was just a moment’s pleasure. There isn’t anything else to say, Blackwood. Forget it ever happened. It cannot happen again.”
“And what am I supposed to do when I meet you in my sister’s salon?”
She felt the sting of tears but forced herself to meet his eyes. “You must show as much disdain for me as you did before you knew.”
His mouth tightened, and she sensed he was not satisfied with that. Still, he turned away at the sound of the coachman’s order.
He opened the window wide and stuck a leg over the sill.
“What are you doing?” she hissed.
He cupped her chin and kissed her quickly. Her lips instinctively curved to his, a perfect fit. He pulled away too soon. “I still say this isn’t over, Isobel. I need—” He stopped and shook his head. “But this isn’t the time.” He climbed out her window and disappeared silently into the dark.
Isobel watched Charles’s coach pull away from the curb, clumsy under the heavy load. Blackwood emerged from the shadows, on horseback, and followed. At the corner of the street, he turned to look at her, his expression unreadable. Then the darkness swallowed him and he was gone.
Chapter 27
Charles joined Isobel at the breakfast table without so much as a grunt of good morning. He was still wearing his evening clothes, and he ordered Finch to bring a decanter of brandy. He filled his teacup to the rim, twice, and left his food untouched.
Isobel’s own breakfast tasted like ashes in his silent, moody company.
Wherever Charles had gone last night, with Blackwood in hot pursuit, she had not expected to see her brother-in-law this morning. She’d hoped to have a quiet breakfast and time to compose herself, but Charles’s presence made the tension almost unbearable. Her heart skipped a beat.
Blackwood knew.
Those words had echoed in her mind since he appeared in her bedroom, then disappeared again almost as mysteriously. He knew.
He left by climbing out the window, and she’d been too distracted by his presence to find that immediately surprising. It wasn’t until she was getting dressed this morning, after a sleepless night, her fingers shaking as she buttoned her prim gown, that she wondered exactly how the Marquess of Blackwood had gotten into the house, and her bedroom, at all.
He’d climbed down the side of the house like a squirrel and followed Charles as he went about his unsavory business.
By the time she finished dressing her hair—the hair he’d said was beautiful—she was beginning to suspect that the Marquess of Blackwood was something other than a gentleman. Or a rake.
Isobel’s stomach lurched as the door to the breakfast room opened and Honoria entered. Jane Kirk was with her. She carried the morning post along with a notepad and pencil, ready to write her mistress’s instructions for the day.
“Charles, look what’s arrived!” Honoria trilled, waving an invitation in Charles’s face. He silently refilled his teacup and sent his mother a look of irritation. Isobel glanced at Jane, who was looking over her dress to ensure it met Honoria’s strict standards of dullness. Isobel was certain it did, but underneath, her heart pounded a rapid tattoo.
There was a man in my room last night, she was tempted to crow to the gi
mlet-eyed companion, and not just any man—
The Marquess of Blackwood.
She lifted her toast to her lips but set it down again, untasted. He would not be there again, and she felt the loss keenly.
“Charles!” Honoria chided her son. “This is an invitation to Lady Augusta Porter-Penwarren’s musicale evening! I knew Lady Miranda favored you. Obviously, she simply wishes to be pursued more forcefully.”
Charles snatched the engraved card out of Honoria’s hand and squinted at the elegant script. He tossed it back on the table with a sneer. “This invitation is addressed to Isobel, Mother. It does not mention me at all, or Miranda Archer’s longing to have me pursue her forcefully or any other way.” He glared at Isobel. “In fact, I would think that since it mentions only Isobel, it is a clear and pointed indication of the lady’s desire that I cease my attentions to her.”
Isobel sipped her tea, striving to be invisible. It was uncharacteristically astute of Charles to notice such a subtle snub. Honoria would now blame her for Miranda’s lack of interest.
She hoped Honoria would refuse the invitation. Blackwood was certain to be there, and she could not bear to be in the same room with him now that he knew the truth. Every glance, every gesture, would be sweet, dangerous torment.
“What did you say to Lady Marianne last night?” Honoria demanded, fixing suspicious eyes on her.
Isobel swallowed. “Why, I told her that Charles was handsome, clever, and rich, just as you told me to,” she lied.
“And what did she say to that?”
She had sent her sister racing around the theatre to avoid him, exactly as Charles suspected. He was watching her now, his bleary gaze daring her to lie again.
“She said that Miranda had a number of suitors, Charles among them of course, but she had not decided on any of them as yet,” Isobel said carefully.
“And the Duke of Welford’s girl? Did you discuss her?”
“There’s a rumor that she’s to marry the Marquess of Blackwood,” Jane Kirk murmured, and Isobel’s heart lurched painfully. Even Jane Kirk had heard the news, then. Had Blackwood already proposed? Isobel felt a fizzle of indignation that he should come to her in the night, with his promise to another woman still warm on his lips. Honoria gasped in horror at Jane’s tidbit of gossip, obviously as shocked as Isobel.
Secrets of a Proper Countess Page 19