His levity in the face of her humiliation, still so fresh, swept away the gratitude Fanny might otherwise have felt.
“Put me down,” she demanded, as Alverley appeared beside the hanging lantern and, with tragic, bovine eyes, regarded her clasped to the stranger’s chest.
“Your intervention, sir, is appreciated…” When the stranger made no move to set Fanny on her feet, Alverley’s voice became diffident. “However, we must rejoin our party. Please…put the lady down.”
Was he afraid? For her? Her reputation? Or did Alverley fear for his own safety, since her saviour’s piratical costume revealed that this was a man who did not resort to padding to bolster his masculine attributes?
The man who held her sounded amused. “I had gained the impression the young lady has no wish for your company, sir.”
She was not going to deny it. Having realised the futility of her struggles, she could enjoy the intimate warmth he radiated. How different to feel a man’s arms around her, instead of Alverley’s, a boy’s…or Lord Slyther’s.
She shuddered again and the stranger held her closer. “You are cold, madam, and this man has caused trouble enough.”
Fanny could not make out his features clearly in the gathering dusk but his voice was rich with humour, his confidence far more appealing than Alverley’s post-adolescent arrogance. Alverley, who now asserted himself, shouting, “Sir, I must object!”
She gasped as Alverley sprang forward and she was swung wide, her bare arm feeling the brush of Alverley’s vainly grasping fingers before she was borne into the gloom. A crowd of revellers rounded the bend, sweeping Alverley into their midst as Fanny was carried in the opposite direction. She did not struggle as his shouts faded into the distance.
“Shouldn’t you scream?” The stranger’s voice was conversational as he traversed the serpentine walk that led to the river.
The strong beat of his heart through her fine muslin gown made Fanny’s beat all the more erratically, as he went on, “Isn’t that what ladies do when they’re kidnapped?”
“I thought you were rescuing me.” Despite her uncertainty, she found his sardonic humour appealing. She consoled herself with the thought that indeed she need only scream and he would set her back upon her feet. She would be free.
It was not a liberating thought. Free to tell her mother she had misjudged matters? Free to become an object of pity—if not ridicule—to her so-called friends?
Clinging to him more tightly as he negotiated a hazard upon the footpath, she added primly, “Besides, bringing attention to my predicament might injure my reputation.”
“While my attentions won’t?” They were by the river now. A short crossing would take them out of the gardens. Almost disappointed, she acknowledged she’d been in good hands after all. Her rescuer was going to put her in a hackney carriage when they got to the other side, rather than smuggle her into some secluded arbour and have his wicked way with her— whatever that actually meant.
She’d never see him again. She’d certainly never know him if she did, even if perchance they met upon the dance floor at some entertainment before the end of the season, for his demi-mask concealed his features. She certainly would not know him in his evening clothes and yet his eyes…surely she’d know those anywhere.
Signalling to a waiting ferryman by the river’s edge, her pirate saviour deposited her upon the bench of the barge, the corners of his mouth turning up at her obvious embarrassment when he sat so close that their thighs touched.
“My Lady of Troy is an enigma,” he murmured, settling closer while he rearranged his sword and scabbard. “Cavalier enough of her reputation to cavort alone with gentlemen in secluded supper boxes and offer no resistance when a better offer comes along, but suddenly so prim.”
Fanny’s objection was truncated by the jolt of the boat as it pushed off from the river bank, which threw her closer against her companion. Drawing back, she said icily, “I am not from the ranks of the Fashionably Impure, sir. Might I remind you that you tore me from the arms of a serious suitor—”
“—whose marital criteria I believe you failed to meet—?” “His mama’s marital criteria!”
“I beg your pardon.” He flashed her a smile before issuing instructions to the ferryman. He was a gentleman—his voice, his bearing left her in no doubt about that.
Pressing herself against the side of the river craft, she ran her gaze the length of his leather-booted feet and calves, up his long, outstretched legs and lean hips and across the hard, flat chest against which she’d so recently been pressed.
An admiring study of his strong, well-sculpted jaw had her locking gazes with him when she reached his treacle-brown eyes. She slid her own away in embarrassment. Confident eyes, she thought. Like hers, his demi-mask sufficiently concealed his identity for an amour such as this, but the eyes were pools of information and she was satisfied that his conveyed all the attributes she considered essential in a man—humour, decisiveness, confidence and, just briefly, kindness. He was not a swaggering ‘Johnny-take-all’. She was prepared to take a chance on that.
The moon was high in the sky now, a golden orb above the revellers in masquerade who promenaded along the river’s edge. Others lolled in boats upon the water.
Rather than shame, she felt shivers of excitement. Not for the events already played out with Alverley—they were best forgotten—but for the sudden anticipation of what might happen during the next few minutes in the river barge with this handsome stranger…if she was bold enough.
She sucked in a breath. Would he kiss her? Did she want him to?
Oh, yes!
Having experienced her first kiss in Alverley’s thin-armed embrace this evening, she wasn’t sure such an unsatisfactory mingling of tongues and saliva deserved the title. But an opportunity had been handed to her on a platter. If Fanny was destined to become the wife of Lord Slyther, the handsome pirate beside her, she decided, would provide the benchmark of comparison.
The voice of reason perched upon her shoulder.
If Mama were ever to find out…
She shuddered. If anyone at all were ever to find out.
Yet how would they and what was her crime—if it could ever be laid at her door?
Her companion studied her, an interested twist to his mouth, a curl of dark hair falling across his forehead in Byronic imitation.
“How disappointing. Not a fair Cyprian? So if I offered you five shillings for a quick tumble you’d turn me down?”
She stared at him, unsure she’d heard him correctly before her suppressed anticipation was swept away by outrage.
“How dare you!” Any cautious, properly brought-up young lady would have considered the indignity of Alverley’s let-down infinitely preferable to a horribly compromising situation with a stranger. She was a fool!
Fanny scrambled to her feet, causing the small vessel to rock perilously and the riverman to round on them with an angry curse.
“Careful, or you’ll drown us all.” With another lazy smile her rescuer—or was he to be her ravisher, after all, by the time he was done with her?—tugged at her hand. Clumsily, she landed across his lap, her head thumping against his chest. So hard and broad. So unlike Alverley’s.
Arms like steel bands encircled her upper body and knees as he held her tucked against him like a baby.
Fanny realised she had behaved like a baby. He’d been teasing her. She pretended to be so worldly but in truth she knew nothing of men—at least of handsome men possessed of confidence and humour. Men who could offer her what she wanted—a pocket book that would please her mama, a title her sister and brother could trade upon and…
Wistful longing for the seemingly unobtainable stayed her struggles as she stared up at him and his face fractured in her imagination before reassembling into the incarnation of all she could desire and more—a man who promised excitement and adventure at the very least.
“Many people lose their nerve on the water”—his eyes glinted m
ere inches above her face with wicked pleasure—“and, while I’ve neglected to bring along my burnt feathers, a kiss works wonders for warding off the vapours.”
Oh, she was tempted, but was this one more miscalculation?
However, a demeaning struggle that might pitch them all into the Thames seemed an extreme reaction, Fanny decided, when this man’s close proximity was the antithesis of distasteful.
Yes, the antithesis, she confirmed, her bones going soft as his long, elegant fingers caressed her hair, her throat and shoulders with surprising gentleness, for he had shifted her so her head rested in his lap. She gazed up at his face, with all the glory of the starlit sky behind him, closing her eyes as her companion contoured her décolletage with gentle fingertips, causing her mind to spin with wicked, sensuous thoughts.
She would never accept Lord Slyther. Like a patient toad, he was waiting to crawl back out of the wings to repeat his offer of three months ago, revelling in the knowledge that Fanny was cornered.
When the stranger’s hand brushed across her breast, she caught her breath.
“The unworldly virgin is out for adventure,” her pirate lover murmured, lowering his head to whisper in her ear, “and, if I’m not to be accused of nefarious deeds, I think our encounter should end here.”
The desolation of his withdrawal caused her to open her eyes and cry out, “My companion earlier this evening kissed me and it was horrible.”
He tilted his head in enquiry. “You just promised to kiss me!”
“I can’t promise it won’t be just as horrible.”
She reached up and stroked the plane of his cheek, contouring his high cheekbones before resting her forefinger tentatively upon his lower lip. With a glint in his eye, he bit down gently and hot, lustful longing speared through her.
“I’m prepared to take that risk.”
“In that case, my bold ingénue…” He brought his mouth down to hers, murmuring against her lips, “Let me show you one of the things for which I am renowned.”
He began gently, brushing his lips against her cheek, nose and lips with featherlight touches that seemed to promise more than they delivered.
She wanted more. What harm could come from a lusty kiss and a quick fondling with no one the wiser? Tomorrow she would deport herself like a lady and venture forth to do her mother’s bidding. She would find herself the husband her mother demanded.
Lord Slyther…
Ugh…
She sucked in the scent of the man who held her—fresh sweat and sandalwood— revelling in the wonderfully suffocating proximity of his body against hers.
Oh, sweet heaven…that’s exactly where she was. Heaven, in the arms of a man who had brought her to life—for excitement had never before fizzed through her veins or curdled her juices like this.
The gentle lapping of the water and the splash of the oars reminded her that their journey would soon be at an end. So would her sensory adventure—a brief flash of pleasure in an otherwise dried-up existence.
Reaching up her hands, she pulled his face down to deepen the kiss. His dark, tousled hair, his full, poetic mouth, and the sardonic gleam in his treacle eyes made him the consummate lover of her imagination. A lover she could never have.
But she could have a taste.
His mouth came down hard and full upon hers, bruising it with an urgency his previously unhurried pace belied. Blood coursed furiously to her extremities, exploding in her brain as his tongue tangled with hers and his hands skimmed her body, touching, stroking, feeling her into wild sensation through the light gauze of her costume.
It was madness, she knew, and she was powerless against the need unleashed within her. Alverley’s betrayal of her hopes was insignificant compared with this sensual gratification. She felt the tension in her whole being stretch, feared she would burn to a cinder or explode in a shower of ashes if he continued—yet her world threatened to return to its barren wilderness if he stopped.
“Is this what you meant by a kiss?” he managed to gasp during a brief interlude before redoubling his efforts.
“Oh…yes…”
But wasn’t there more? What were these unsatisfied cravings?
It seemed that the more thoroughly he kissed her, the more her body wanted to feel his…what? Possession of her…?
Self-preservation, like a single dust mote, lodged in her brain, and she gasped her resistance. Miss Fanny Brightwell, who’d spent her life trying to prove that her beauty and virtue put her on a par with all those with handsome dowries, was about to throw it all away like a common doxy for five minutes of self-gratification.
What a little fool…
Her hands were against his chest, palms turned inwards as a prelude to forcible resistance, when another totally unexpected, all-consuming sensation cast aside every objection she’d been about to make.
Obviously mistaking her gasp for permission to move to the next level, he’d transferred his explorations to beneath the hem of her dress and his hands were now skimming the length of her leg, moving lightly above the tops of her stockings, the gentle, rhythmic touch of soft fingertips against the heated, sensitive flesh of her inner thigh making her want to shriek aloud her pleasure.
She heard herself gasp the words, “Oh yes! More!” And her eyelids seemed heavy as she opened them briefly at the brush of his dark curling hair against her neck. He’d moved his body lower and his mouth was on the loose fabric of her décolletage, his breath making the gauze warm and damp, creating spirals of sensation through her bosom while the curious longing that radiated from her lower belly was like…
Fanny was beyond rational thought. This was sensation like she’d never known before. She intercepted his brief glance—wicked and knowing, entirely confident that he still had her permission to continue his amatory exploration. Clearly her glazed rapture was enough, for he gripped the gauze frill with his teeth and brushed it aside, enabling him to access the swell of her bosom.
“Oh!” Fanny convulsed in his arms as desire thrust like a spear through every nerve ending. His mouth had taken possession of one nipple at the very moment his fingers reached the juncture of her thighs.
She gasped and gripped him tighter. She’d never been touched there before—had never even touched herself because of the knowledge that these were forbidden parts, never spoken of and somehow clothed in mystery and sin.
Now his fingertips, soft and gentle, increased their pressure slightly, and Fanny felt the release of a lifetime of inhibitions.
She felt her skin tingle and her brain whirl as he slipped a finger inside her, withdrew it, then slipped—what, two?—into her mysterious depths, before he resumed the rhythmic circular movements with his thumb and forefinger over the heated slickness between her legs. By slow degrees her temperature was rising, her breath coming faster as strange sensations at the very core of her seemed to pull her ever tighter. What was happening to her? This journey of discovery was taking her to places she’d never even visited in her imagination. She’d never felt so deliciously wanton—she was scaling heights she’d never thought to scale as the sensations in her lower body gathered pace. They signalled her desire for something so elementary, yet something she was unable to articulate, and with a desperation that threatened to destroy her she nearly cried out aloud when the nose of the barge hit the riverbank with a muted jolt.
“So nearly there and yet not quite,” murmured her pirate, discreetly withdrawing his hand from beneath her skirts and tidying her clothes as he helped her to her feet.
“Aye, we’re at t’other side, now,” announced the riverman with a sly look as he jumped out to steady the craft.
She rose shakily, as if the foundations of her life had shifted.
And they had, for just now she’d experienced what no unmarried young woman ought to have experienced. Certainly not a respectable one.
As they reached level ground, he bent to kiss her lightly on the lips before signalling to a jarvey waiting nearby with his hackney carr
iage.
Fanny’s mind whirled. She’d felt excitement like she’d never known, cruelly truncated. Then she felt ill as she imagined allowing Lord Slyther access to her nether regions like she’d allowed this handsome…stranger, whom she leaned against while he held open the door for her.
She had no one to rely upon for support—never had—so it was ridiculous to lean against handsome strangers like some helpless, lovelorn creature. She murmured, “Tonight you showed me the only excitement I will ever know, for I am destined to marry a man I do not love.”
He helped her into the carriage, his smile disbelieving. “Goodnight, mystery lover,” he whispered as he leaned through the window to brush her lips once more with his. “I wish you every happiness.”
Fanny returned his smile, then knocked on the roof to signal the jarvey’s departure. She would not give her address. The house her mother had leased for the season was lowly and the danger to her reputation unknown. What she did know, however, was that her life would never be the same.
CHAPTER TWO
Fanny tiptoed across the threshold, her heart pounding as much from fear of being discovered by her mother as from exciting and disturbing recollections of her river crossing.
That evening she’d had both the disappointment and the thrill of a lifetime, and at that moment she wasn’t sure if she would ever recover from either.
The door that Mary, her maid, had left unbolted by special arrangement, made little noise as she closed it behind her. All was silent and dark within. If she was lucky, her mother would never even know she’d left the house.
She was not lucky. She felt the stinging slap of her mother’s hand across her cheek as she rose from shooting the bolt.
“Little fool!” hissed Lady Brightwell, flinging her daughter into the hallway. “Where have you been? Certainly not playing cards with Miss Brownhill in that scandalous rig-out! Helen of Troy, indeed. It’s a gossamer web that leaves nothing to the imagination! Answer me, girl! Have you brought our good name into disrepute?” Lady Brightwell, her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line, hustled her daughter into the dim, candlelit drawing room, slamming the door behind her.
Rakes and Rogues Page 76