by Mia Marlowe
He scooped her up and bore her to the fainting couch in the corner. There he laid her down with gentleness. Then he stood over her, his hot gaze claiming every inch of her.
Artemisia stretched languidly, the velvet beneath her bare bottom a pleasure in its own right, inviting him to look his fill. She felt wanton and wild and desperately wicked. Her whole being throbbed, but the ache between her legs was so intense, she almost spread them for him, almost begged him to take her right then and there.
She bit her lip to keep from it.
He knelt beside her.
“You are mine, you know,” he said. “I claim you this night.”
“This night I am yours,” she agreed. She swallowed hard, wondering what he was going to do with her. She shivered in anticipation.
He kissed her once more, softly, almost chastely. Then he abandoned her lips and his mouth roved over her—under her jaw, the tender ticklish curve of her armpit, the bend of her elbow, the breathless spot on her ribs. He filled the indentation of her navel with his tongue.
She writhed beneath him.
He took her nipple between his teeth and bit down. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to make her buck with desire. Her womb contracted once in sympathy with her breast.
His hand slid over her abdomen and cradled her sex. Her mound throbbed under his palm and when he slid a finger along her folds, he found a warm wet welcome. His fingertip grazed a sensitive spot and she jerked at the shock of pleasure that coursed through her.
Her breath came in ragged gasps.
“Shh, Larla,” he whispered. “’Twill be all right, you’ll see.”
She quieted as a child might while being soothed after a bad dream. Her solitary life had been the nightmare, though she’d never acknowledged it. She’d been so cut off, not just from other people, but from herself as well. She had no idea her own body could take her on such a wild careening ride of peaks and valleys.
Trev played her senses as a virtuoso violinist might play a Stradivarius. He was a consummate guide for this pleasure odyssey. Looking up into his desire-darkened eyes, Artemisia realized she trusted him.
Trusted him implicitly.
When his hand began moving, she closed her eyes and let him lead her through a dark place to an unknown destination. She sensed the precipice ahead as a blind woman senses a drop in the path before her, but she didn’t hold back. If she should fall, she instinctively knew he’d be there to catch her.
Perhaps the fall was the whole point.
He started to withdraw his hand. Someone was crying. It took her a moment to realize the small sounds of distress were coming from her own throat. His skillful fingers danced her near the promised relief and then whisked her away.
She was prepared to beg him to continue pleasuring her with his hand, to send her over the edge to destruction or paradise. The intensity of longing was so strong, she almost didn’t care which lay at the bottom of the long drop, so long as the unbearable need was stilled.
But then she felt his mouth on her and all coherent thought fled.
“Larla,” a voice called from a great distance. “Larla, where are ye, lass?”
I’m here, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. Her world spiraled down to an ever-tightening circle of blissful agony. Every muscle in her body clenched in concert with her womb.
“Artemisia, your mother is looking for ye,” the voice said from closer at hand, perhaps just on the other side of the studio door.
Good Lord! My mother! And that disembodied voice belonged to her father.
“Stop, oh, please stop,” she said with supreme effort. She grasped Trevelyn’s hair and pulled his head up from between her legs. “Someone’s coming.”
Trevelyn blinked stupidly at her, like a man in the thrall of a hypnotist’s trick.
Her body’s intense need retreated in the face of oncoming panic. She pushed him off her and scrambled to her feet.
“I’ve been such a fool. There’s a party going on beyond that door. Anyone might stumble into this room,” she said as she struggled into her petticoat and pulled the tight bodice over her head. The unresolved ache between her legs pounded with each beat of her racing heart. Her hands trembled.
“I locked the door behind me,” Trev said.
“But still, what if someone heard us in here?” Her face burned with the thought of the sounds that had escaped her throat while in the grip of passion. “What was I thinking?”
“You weren’t.” Trev ran a hand over his face and through his disheveled hair. “And neither was I. I ask your pardon, Larla. Here, let me help you with that.”
He turned her around and cinched the lacing on her bodice tight. Then he bent and helped her wrap the sari around her body in sensuous folds. Each flick of his fingers was agony because she wanted more than anything for him to be helping her disrobe again instead.
Embarrassment heated her cheeks. She could hardly stand to look at him.
“Larla! The bear’s getting ready to leave,” her father called. “Come bar the door behind him. Where are ye, sweeting?”
Her heart sank. Angus Dalrymple was talking off his head in public. If he kept this up, her mother would start insisting he be sent away again.
Only a few moments ago, she’d been euphoric, drowning in a flood of new sensations. Now she was utterly adrift.
“Larla?” The door knob rattled but the old man wasn’t able to open it. “Are ye there, child?”
Trevelyn slipped a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his. He dropped a quick kiss on her nose.
“We’ll make a better job of things next time,” he said. “May I call on you on the morrow, Your Grace?”
Next time. The shining promise hovered in her mind. “Please do. If you don’t, I shall be forced to call on you.”
“Shall I come as Thomas Doverspike or myself?”
She smiled wickedly, thinking of the miniscule genitals on her Mars. “Send Thomas. Now that I think on it, I believe there’s a problem with the painting. It isn’t at all accurate to the model.”
“Phew!” Trev swiped his brow in mock relief. “I’m glad to hear you say so.”
The door shivered under her father’s attempts to open it. Thank God, Trevelyn had slipped the bolt behind him, but the door wouldn’t withstand a determined battering.
“Go,” Trev said.
She fidgeted with her veil and finally managed to catch it behind both ears. “What about you?”
“I’ll dress and rejoin the party in a few minutes. If you’ve been missed, it will do your reputation no good for us to be seen returning to the ballroom together.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “Save a waltz for me.”
“All of them,” she promised.
Chapter 14
“Don’t know what’s got your mother’s knickers in a knot, but she’s in a great stramash,” Angus muttered to Artemisia as they walked arm in arm toward the ballroom. The gas-lit corridor was lined with revelers. His rheumy eyes darted from one masked face to the next. “Too many hungry people in the house. Who let them all in? Where’s that Naresh? He should know better than to let so many beggars in at once. We can’t bloody well feed all England.”
“Hush, Father,” she whispered. “It’s a party for Delia and Florinda. These people are our guests.”
“A party? Weel, that’s different then. For the girls, ye say? Anything for me lambkins, ye know that. But these guests do seem a wee bit odd, do they no’?” Between one step and the next, her father transformed into a magnanimous host. He slapped a hand on the back of a medieval knight. “Are ye enjoying yourself, then, me fine sir?”
Artemisia found Naresh serving by the punch bowl and waved him over. The slim, elegant Indian was dressed all in white with a purple plume tucked into his tall turban.
“Keep Father out of mischief, please,” she said to Naresh softly.
“That had been my every intention this night, but your lady mother set me to wor
k serving the drinks.” Naresh inclined his head toward the circle of tittering matrons. Constance Dalrymple was holding court in the center of their fluttering fans. “She has an announcement she will wish to be making and I’m thinking it must be a terrible one. All her guests must have a drink in hand to bear the hearing of it.”
“No, Naresh, it’s something that requires celebration,” Artemisia explained. “She’ll be calling for a toast.”
Delia’s match with Lord Shrewsbury’s son must have been finalized. Constance Dalrymple couldn’t wait for the banns to be read to announce the upcoming nuptials to the cream of the ton. Her mother must be delirious with joy.
Artemisia couldn’t begrudge her this moment. Especially since Constance didn’t know her hopes for Florinda and Trevelyn Deveridge were in utter ruins. Surely there was another cash-poor eligible bachelor with aristocratic connections who would accept a nabob’s daughter. It was better than slogging along in threadbare gentility. Artemisia would set James Shipwash on the hunt first thing Monday morning.
Across the room, her mother swept toward the musicians like a stately galleon, the crowd parting before her in anticipation. She leaned to whisper to the first violinist, who acknowledged her by tipping forward at the waist in a stiff, seated bow. He sped up the last rondo and finished the piece with a bravura flourish.
The crowd clapped politely.
“Thank you, my friends,” Constance Dalrymple said as if the ovation was for her. Her color was high, even accounting for the extra paint she was wearing, and her eyes over-bright. “My daughter, Her Grace the Duchess of Southwycke, thanks you for further ennobling her home with your presence. If I could find her in this press, no doubt she’d be delivering this news, but unfortunately, during a masquerade people are sometimes misplaced.”
There was smattering of giggles. Part of the unspoken rules of a masked ball was that just as identities were temporarily lost, so one might lose one’s inhibitions. Hadn’t Artemisia proven that in those torrid moments with Trev? She wondered how many of her guests had availed themselves of the garden or wandered into one of the great house’s many empty rooms in search of the same wanton pleasure. She shifted uneasily. The drumbeat low in her belly had yet to be silenced and she fancied she caught a whiff of muskiness mixing with the scent of violets swirling about her person.
“At any rate,” her mother went on, “I have the most exciting news to share. My daughter Delia has just accepted the suit of Baron Malcolm Cholmondley, son of Viscount Shrewsbury.”
No, the Viscount has accepted the fact that from now on Father’s money will be settling his son’s markers at every gaming hell in London. But Delia will have a title, bought and paid for, Artemisia amended grimly to herself. She doubted there was much point in trying to encourage her future brother-in-law to more prudent behavior, even once the knot was firmly tied.
A rustle of conditional approval, mixed with ill-concealed annoyance, fluttered around the room as the crowd digested Constance’s news. Some society matrons already thought the daughters Dalrymple had bagged more than their share of the nobility with Artemisia’s dearly departed duke. Now Constance could add a baron to her list of Season trophies.
“Oh, but that’s not all! The Earl of Warre wishes to address you as well.” Constance dipped in a low curtsey as a tall, straight-backed gentleman approached.
Lord Warre was dressed as a Moldavian prince resplendent in a red satin-lined cape. He removed his domino and flashed a fine set of teeth to the assembly. With his iron gray hair and snapping dark eyes, he still cut a dashing figure despite his years. In the strong lines of his features, Artemisia recognized the bone-deep attractiveness echoed in Trevelyn. Her chest constricted.
What in the world might his Lordship have to say to this gathering of revelers?
“As most of you know, my son and heir, Theobald Deveridge, has been happily married for several years,” his Lordship began. Artemisia’s gut twisted with foreboding. “However, I’ve yet to see my second son suitably shackled with the bonds of matrimony.”
Polite laughter greeted this obvious tongue-in-cheek remark.
“But tonight, I have the privilege to formally announce the betrothal of my son Trevelyn to Miss Florinda Dalrymple. I know you will all join me in a toast wishing them every happiness.”
The distinguished gent lifted his fluted wineglass and the rest of the company followed suit.
Artemisia was nearly sick on the spot. She knew Florinda would do her mother’s bidding, no matter what, but how could they have announced this without Trevelyn’s knowledge?
There was only one explanation.
He knew.
It was the only thing that made sense. Young women were bartered away like pawns on a chessboard every day, but a man did not wed without his consent. In her mind, she ran through their brief conversation in the studio, before his honeyed words and sinfully delicious kisses turned her body into his willing ally. When she’d accused him of spying on the family he intended on marrying into, he’d feigned ignorance. But she realized now he’d offered no denial.
Even though Trev was bound to marry her sister, he’d still nearly succeeded in seducing her. If not for her father’s unwitting intervention, her ruin would have been complete. How could she have been so stupid?
She saw him then on the far side of the crowded room, standing silhouetted in the dark doorway, like a fallen angel up from the pit, intent on dragging the unwary down with him. He turned his masked face toward her.
Bile rose in the back of her throat as she fled the crowded ballroom.
Chapter 15
Early the next morning, Trevelyn burst into his father’s walnut-lined study without bothering to knock. The family’s solicitor, Mr. Weatherby, startled at the interruption and cringed back into the red leather wing-chair.
“Good morning, son,” his father said in his usual unflappable style. “You’re up rather early for someone who didn’t make it home before dawn.”
Trevelyn hadn’t dared come home earlier for fear of losing control and throttling his sire.
“Father, I need to speak with you.” He labored to keep his tone civil. “Now.”
Mr. Weatherby gathered up his sheaf of paper and stuffed it into his brief case. “We can continue this at a more opportune time, my lord.”
“Nonsense,” the earl said. “Whatever my son has to say to me can be said in your hearing. What has taken possession of you, Trevelyn? You seem to have completely forgotten what little manners you have. Your behavior at the home of Southwycke last night was unconscionable. You might at least have stayed long enough to accept congratulations from the other guests on your impending marriage.”
Trevelyn clenched his teeth and clasped his hands behind his back. The urge to hit something—or someone—was so strong, he didn’t trust himself to let his arms dangle at his sides. Trev’s eyes burned in their sockets.
Mr. Weatherby turned a sickly shade of green. “Really, my lord, I should give you two a moment—”
“Mr. Weatherby is correct. When you hear what I have to say, I think you will also prefer this conversation be private,” Trevelyn said.
The solicitor scrambled to his feet, ready to beat a hasty retreat.
“Sit down, Weatherby. You and I haven’t concluded our business yet, and I have no intention of postponing necessary proceedings for my son’s frivolities.”
Mr. Weatherby sank into the chair and pressed himself into the leather like a rabbit going to ground, caught between two terriers.
“Trust me, Father,” he said. “I’m feeling anything but frivolous.”
“Well, out with it, then. We haven’t all day. Unlike slackers with no livelihoods, Mr. Weatherby and I have work to do,” Lord Warre said with undisguised contempt.
“Very well. You were warned,” Trevelyn said, taking a deep breath. “You, sir, are a bastard.”
Mr. Weatherby looked as if he’d just swallowed a herring whole. Lord Warre’s mouth twitched alm
ost imperceptively, but otherwise he showed no reaction.
“I assume,” the earl said, “this has something to do with your betrothal.”
“There is no betrothal and you know it.” Trevelyn tightened his fists. The impulse to knock that smug look off his father’s face was almost irresistible. “I’ve barely spoken three words to the Dalrymple chit. You do not have the power to force me to wed.”
“That’s where you are mistaken,” his father said. “I have it on good authority that you did more than say three words to the girl. You were seen entering the same room a daughter of Angus Dalrymple had just ducked into. The two of you were alone for a goodly length of time, quite long enough for her to be thoroughly compromised, or you’re no son of mine.”
“But that was—“ Trevelyn bit off the words. Obviously, his father’s informant didn’t stipulate which Dalrymple daughter was with him un-chaperoned. Trev wouldn’t brush Artemisia with the taint of scandal by naming her.
“You brought this on yourself through carelessness.” Lord Warre’s voice took on the conciliatory tone Trev recognized as the one his father used when he was lulling a member of an opposing party into complacency. Usually, just before the earl hoodwinked his unwary adversary completely. “If it had been an opera dancer or some light-heeled doxy, I’d look the other way. But a virgin with aristocratic connections—“
“You mean a father with deep pockets,” Trev said bitterly.
“There’s no need to be vulgar.” The earl tugged his waistcoat down. “When the girl’s mother told me her daughter was missing and you were also, it was incumbent upon me to see that you do the right thing.”
“Father, you wouldn’t know the right thing if it bit you on the ass.”
The earl raised his hands in frustration to Mr. Weatherby as if to say ‘You see what I must endure,’ and then looked back at Trevelyn.
“You are nearly thirty years old.” His father raised an aristocratic hand and ticked off Trevelyn’s faults on his slim fingers. “You resigned your commission. Politics hold no interest for you. The world of trade is obviously not suitable for a Deveridge. You are clearly not cut out to be a man of the cloth. You have no purpose, no sense of yourself, son. A wife steadies a man, helps him find his place in the world. I would not be the man I am today if not for your mother.”