She could not have been more startled if the marble centurion had suddenly sprung to life and taken her into his arms.
She was so astonished by the feel of Marcus’s mouth on her own that she went absolutely rigid for a few disbelieving seconds.
Marcus was kissing her. His strong, powerful hands rested on the naked skin of her shoulders, sending small shivers of excitement down her spine.
This notorious man whom she had come to know so intimately and whom she admired so much, this man who had stridden through her dreams every night for nearly a month, was making love to her right here in her own library.
Marcus had occupied her every waking moment since she had returned to London. She had spent her days studying him so that she could turn herself into a believable illusion of a woman to whom he might conceivably make love.
She had garnered rumors, tales, and a few real facts from every available source. She had read everything that he had written that she was able to find. She had spent hours contemplating the smallest details that she had learned about him in an effort to comprehend him and make him seem more real.
In the process she had created a very private fantasy for herself, one she had not shared with anyone, not even Amelia or Aunt Zoe.
Late at night, after a long, tension-filled evening of playing her role, she had lain awake imagining how it would feel to actually be Marcus’s mistress, to be the woman he took to his bed, to be the woman he loved.
The woman he loved.
A long time ago she had quietly concluded that she was not the sort of female who could experience great passion or inspire it in a man. She had come to terms with that knowledge, accepted it. She had told herself that she was too levelheaded, too practical, too intellectual to fall in love.
Nevertheless, in spite of her own self-knowledge, she had woven a web of fantasies around Marcus.
It had all seemed harmless enough because the man was safely dead.
But tonight he had walked out of her dreams straight into her life. And he was far more fascinating in the flesh than he had ever been in her dreams.
“You are most unusual, Iphiginia. Not at all what I expected.” Marcus’s voice was dark and shadowed with heavy sensuality. “Yet you are exactly what I seem to want tonight.”
She could not answer, not only because he captured her mouth again, but because she was quivering from head to toe. His arms tightened around her as he nibbled gently at first, then persuasively, and then more insistently. His hands tightened on her shoulders.
She gasped, parting her lips. He responded by invading her mouth with his tongue.
The momentary stiffness created by her initial surprise evaporated, leaving Iphiginia feeling incredibly warm and pliant. Heat pooled in her lower body. It was an extraordinary sensation.
She gave a muffled moan which seemed to please Marcus. His fingers flexed on her skin. Another wave of delicious shivers went through her.
She lifted her hands and gripped the dangling ends of his long, white cravat. “This is really most astounding, my lord.”
“Yes, it is, is it not?” He kissed her jaw and the tip of her nose. “And I promise you that you are no more astonished than I.”
“My lord.”
“My name is Marcus.”
“Oh, Marcus.” Consumed in the fires of her excitement, she released his cravat and wound her arms snugly around his neck.
The movement instantly brought her body into closer contact with his. She was pressed tightly against him now. Her breasts were crushed against the wall of his broad chest. She could feel the shockingly hard bulge of his manhood straining beneath his breeches.
His long fingers brushed against the nape of her neck.
She cried out softly in response. The place between her legs began to grow damp. Her head tipped back against his arm, and his lips found her throat.
“Marcus. Dear heaven.” She clenched her fingers in his hair. Her senses were whirling now. She could not seem to think.
“I believe you will make me a most excellent mistress, my sweet.” Marcus took a step back toward the wide green and gold Grecian sofa. He tugged Iphiginia with him.
She heard a dull thud as his boot came up against one of the broken chunks of marble.
“Bloody hell.”
“Oh, dear.” Iphiginia started to pull back. “Do be careful, my lord. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
“No doubt, but I trust it will be worth it.” Marcus sidestepped the stone and fell back onto the sofa.
He kept one foot on the floor and tumbled Iphiginia swiftly down on top of him. She spilled across his hard, muscled body and lay captive between his thighs. Her airy skirts fluttered delicately for a moment or two as if in protest. Then they settled across Marcus’s legs with a soft whisper of surrender.
The heat that poured from Marcus threatened to burn Iphiginia. She had never felt anything so intense.
He caught her face between his hands and brought her mouth to his.
The spell was broken by a horrified exclamation from the vicinity of the door. “Iphiginia. What is going on in here?”
Dazed from Marcus’s lovemaking, Iphiginia started to raise her head. “Amelia?”
“Damnation,” Marcus growled. “What in the bloody hell?”
“Let her go at once, you damnable man. Do you hear me? In the name of heaven, release her.”
“Amelia, wait. Stop.” Iphiginia pushed herself up on her hands and turned her head toward the shadowed doorway. She saw Amelia, dressed in a chintz wrapper, her dark hair unbound, racing forward through the maze of statuary and furniture.
“Amelia, it’s all right.” Iphiginia struggled to sit up.
Amelia paused, but only long enough to grab a poker from the hearth. She hoisted it in a threatening fashion and glared at Marcus. “Let her go this instant, you bastard, or I’ll brain you. I swear I will.”
In one swift, startlingly efficient movement, Marcus pushed Iphiginia out of the way, rolled off the edge of the sofa, and got to his feet. He reached out and jerked the poker from Amelia’s hand before she had even realized what he was about.
Amelia’s shriek of dismay was a high, keening wail.
“Amelia, calm yourself.” Iphiginia stumbled to her feet, slipped past Marcus, and ran to her cousin. She put her arms around the distraught woman. “Calm yourself, cousin. I am all right. He was not hurting me, I promise you.”
Amelia raised her head and looked at Iphiginia un-comprehendingly. Then she turned to stare at Marcus. “Who is he? What is he doing here? I knew this plan of yours was dangerous. I knew that sooner or later some man would seek to take advantage of you.”
Iphiginia patted her soothingly. “Amelia, allow me to present the Earl of Masters. My lord, this is my cousin, Miss Amelia Farley.”
Marcus raised one brow as he set the poker aside. “A pleasure, I’m sure.”
Amelia gazed at him, slack-jawed. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”
“So I have been told.” His mouth quirked slightly at the corner. “But evidence to the contrary continues to crop up.”
Amelia swung around to confront Iphiginia. “The blackmailer did not murder him, after all?”
“Apparently not.” Iphiginia blushed and hastily straightened her gown. She noticed that one of her plumes was lying on the floor next to Marcus’s boot. “It is a great relief to know that we are not dealing with a murderer, is it not?”
Amelia narrowed her gaze suspiciously at Marcus. “I’m not so sure of that. What, precisely, are we dealing with here?”
“An excellent question. Certainly not a ghost.” Marcus reached down and scooped up the white plume. He held it out to Iphiginia. “I shall enjoy helping you answer the question in greater detail, Mrs. Bright. But as it grows late and the mood of the evening has been dispelled by the events of the last few minutes, I believe I shall take my leave.”
“Yes, of course, my lord.” Iphiginia snatched the plume from his hand. “But you
did mean it when you said that you would allow me to continue to masquerade as your paramour, did you not?”
“I meant every word, my dear Mrs. Bright.” Marcus’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight. “I shall do everything in my power to help you create a deception that is so true to life that one cannot distinguish it from the real thing.”
“That is very kind of you, sir.” Iphiginia felt a rush of gratitude. “Is it your intellectual curiosity that persuades you to indulge me, my lord, or your natural gallantry?”
“I strongly suspect that it is not gallantry which persuades me to assist you, madam.”
“Then it must be your intellectual nature,” she said complacently.
He gave her an amused glance as he made his way toward the door. “You know me so well.”
“She should.” Amelia glowered at him. “She has made an extremely thorough study of you, my lord.”
“I am honored.” Marcus walked out into the hall. He paused, his eyes resting thoughtfully on Iphiginia. “Be sure to lock your door after I leave.”
Iphiginia smiled. “Of course, my lord.”
Marcus stepped out into the night and closed the door very quietly behind him.
There was a short, taut silence in the library. A moment later the wheels of the earl’s black carriage rumbled on the paving stones.
Amelia swung around to face Iphiginia. She had herself under control, but her soft brown eyes were still haunted with traces of the old fear.
She was twenty-six years old, a year younger than Iphiginia. In many ways she was far prettier, with her finely wrought features, glossy dark brown hair, and excellent eyes. But there was a starkly remote quality to her that made her seem austere and unapproachable.
“I thought he was forcing himself on you,” Amelia whispered.
“I know you did. I understand your concern. But, in truth, he merely kissed me, Amelia.”
Iphiginia was the only person in whom Amelia had ever confided the details of the hellish experience that she had endured eight years earlier as an eighteen-year-old governess.
Amelia’s mother had died giving birth to her daughter. Amelia had been raised by her scholarly but poor father, who had given her the one thing he had in abundance, an education. When he had died, the small stipend on which he and Amelia had depended abruptly ceased.
Faced with the task of making her own way in the world, Amelia had done what countless other young women possessed of a good background but no funds did: She had applied for a post as a governess.
She had been raped by her employer’s houseguest, a man named Dodgson.
The lady of the house had walked in on the scene only moments after Dodgson had finished the assault. The woman had been scandalized. Her immediate response had been to dismiss Amelia.
The rape had not only cost the penniless Amelia her much-needed position, it had made it impossible for her to secure another one. The agency which had sent her into the household where she had been attacked had refused to find her another post.
The head of the agency had informed her that she was no longer sufficiently respectable to work for a firm which prided itself on its exclusive clients and the unblemished character of the governesses and companions it supplied to the best families.
Iphiginia knew that deep inside Amelia the deep scars of that terrible night had faded but had never entirely healed.
“You allowed him to kiss you?” Amelia shook her head in wonder. “But he is a stranger. Indeed, by rights, he is supposed to be a dead stranger.”
“I know.” Iphiginia sank down slowly onto a Roman-style chair. She gazed at the plume in her hand. “But he does not feel as though he were a stranger. Do you know what my first thought was tonight when I saw him in the Fenwicks’ ballroom?”
“What was that?” Amelia asked warily.
Iphiginia smiled. “I thought that he looked exactly as he was supposed to look.”
“Rubbish. You have spent far too much time dwelling on what you suppose to be his nature.”
“Very likely.”
Amelia scowled. “He just appeared at the Fenwicks’ ball?”
“Yes. He knows nothing about the blackmail situation, by the way. He says that he is definitely not a victim.”
“Good lord. And he did not give you away?”
“No. He obviously had heard all the rumors that we have contrived to put about. You could say that he and I patched up our quarrel in front of the entire ton.”
“I wonder why he went along with the thing,” Amelia mused.
“Masters is a very intelligent man with a keen sense of curiosity and a marvelously open mind. Obviously he made the very sensible decision not to unmask me until he discovered what I was about.”
Amelia snorted. “Hmm.”
“A man of his wide-ranging intellect would naturally possess a rational, coolheaded nature. He is not the sort to jump to conclusions.”
“It makes no sense,” Amelia snapped. “I do not like this business. I’ll wager he’s got another reason for being so cooperative.”
“What reason would that be?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he has decided that it would be amusing to turn you into his real mistress.”
Iphiginia caught her breath. “Oh, I really don’t think—”
“Precisely.” Amelia gave her a grim look. “You have not been thinking properly since this affair started. Bah. Why the devil isn’t the man dead as he was purported to be?”
“He has been away at one of his country estates and only returned to Town because he heard about me.”
“So the note Aunt Zoe received claiming that Masters had been murdered because he would not pay blackmail was merely a ploy to frighten her.”
“Apparently. This is all very odd, Amelia.”
“This entire plan has struck me as decidedly odd from the beginning.”
“I know you have not approved,” Iphiginia said. “But I thought it was working rather well.”
“Until Masters came back from the dead. Some people have no consideration. What are you going to do now?”
“I have no choice but to continue posing as Masters’s mistress.” Iphiginia tapped her gloved forefinger against her pursed lips. “My original plan is still the only one we have and I believe that it is still a good one. If my true identity is revealed, I will lose my entrée into Masters’s social circle.”
“No great loss, if you ask me,” Amelia grumbled.
“I disagree. As the mysterious Mrs. Bright, paramour of the Earl of Masters, I can go anywhere and talk to anyone.”
“But as Miss Bright, spinster, bluestocking, and former proprietor of Miss Bright’s Academy for Young Ladies, you will be confined to a much more mundane circle of acquaintances. Is that it?”
Iphiginia made a face. “I’m afraid so. It’s true that I now have ample funds, thanks to our very good fortune with our property investments—”
“You mean thanks to your very shrewd knowledge of architecture and Mr. Manwaring’s talents as a businessman,” Amelia corrected.
“And your skills in financial matters,” Iphiginia added. “Do not forget your contribution.”
“Yes, well, that is not the point.”
Iphiginia smiled wryly. “As I started to say, regardless of the status of my finances, as Miss Iphiginia Bright, I lack the social contacts and the cachet I need to move in Masters’s circles.”
“And you are still convinced that whoever is behind the blackmail threat moves in Masters’s world as well as your aunt’s.”
Iphiginia stroked the white plume. “I am certain of it. It is clear that whoever he is, he knew a great deal about the earl’s plans for the Season. He was able to time the delivery of his threat to Aunt Zoe very precisely.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“And he knows the secret from Zoe’s past. The only connection between Masters and Aunt Zoe is those men who played cards with Guthrie and who now play occasionally with Masters.”
/> “But Guthrie, himself, never knew Zoe’s secret.”
“Guthrie was so drunk most of the time that he couldn’t even win at cards, let alone perceive what was happening right beneath his nose. But someone who was close to him might well have guessed what was going on between Zoe and Lord Otis and put two and two together when Maryanne was born.”
“And tried to blackmail her with the facts eighteen years later?”
“Yes. Do not forget that the news that Maryanne is actually Lord Otis’s daughter, not Guthrie’s, was not worth much until the Earl of Sheffield asked for her hand in marriage a few months ago.”
Iphiginia did not have to go into the details. They both knew that if there was a scandal connected to Maryanne’s name, Sheffield would no doubt retract his offer.
The Sheffield family was notoriously high in the instep. They very likely already had doubts about the wisdom of the heir marrying someone such as Maryanne. True, she had a respectable portion to recommend her, but it was not a great fortune. And she was quite lovely, but there was no denying that her family was somewhat undistinguished.
Sheffield could have looked much higher and everyone knew it. His alliance with Maryanne was a love match and love was considered a frivolous reason for marriage in the ton.
“I don’t know, Iphiginia,” Amelia said after a moment. “This whole scheme was dangerous enough when we thought the earl was dead. But now that he is alive, I have a feeling that matters could get considerably more complicated.”
“Yes.” Iphiginia glanced at the nude centurion. “But I must tell you that I am very glad that he is alive, Amelia.”
“I can see that.” Amelia’s mouth thinned as she rose to her feet. “It comes as no surprise. You have been falling in love with him for weeks.”
Iphiginia felt her face turn very warm. “You exaggerate.”
“I know you better than anyone. Even better, I believe, than your sister or your Aunt Zoe. I have never seen you react like this to any man. Not even Richard Hampton.”
Iphiginia grimaced at the mention of her sister’s new husband. “I assure you, I never found Richard as …” She strove for the appropriate word, “as interesting as Lord Masters.”
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