She started. “Not at all. It’s wonderful. Almost exactly as I imagined.”
“As you imagined?” So much for shocking her.
“Oh, yes.” She slanted a shy look his way that made his blood pound. “Though I could never have imagined what happened in the carriage.”
“Nor could I,” he mumbled under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He tried to leer at her, though the concept of leering was foreign to him. “I merely wondered if you’d been imagining what’s going to happen here.” He nodded toward the bed. “Or rather, over there.”
“Of course.” Slowly she faced him. Then with shaking hands, she opened her pelisse and let it slide from her shoulders onto the floor. “I only hope that I can be…um…satisfactory.”
When she approached him with a hesitant smile and a swing to her hips that would have done any light o’ love proud, every muscle in his body sprang to attention.
Then a knock came at the door—the servants bringing their dinner. He nearly tripped over a chair in his haste to let them in. At this rate, he’d never last the night. He began to wonder if Lady Kingsley had a twin. A wanton temptress of a twin bent on driving him insane.
The servants laid out a vast spread of covered dishes and left. She surveyed the crowded table, her unabashed delight further inflaming his desire. “What’s for dinner?”
Fornication. And for dessert, more fornication. “Take a look,” he choked out.
She circled the table, uncovering the first few dishes—pea soup and turbot in lobster sauce and mutton cutlets and boiled potatoes. Then she paused, her eyes twinkling up at him through the mask. “Are you sure we have enough? Perhaps we should add another six courses or so.”
“I didn’t know what you’d like, so I ordered everything that sounded appetizing.”
She uncovered the remaining dishes, her smile widening as she revealed sausages and cauliflower and pigeon pie, a capon in caper sauce and roast tongue, pickles and asparagus and a cucumber salad redolent with vinegar. Not to mention the Portugal cakes and tansy pudding that provided the final touch.
“Apparently you find the entirety of Clarendon’s kitchen appetizing,” she teased. Then she added more earnestly, “It was truly lovely of you to do all this for me. You aren’t…that is, I didn’t expect you—I mean, the man who bought me—to be so generous.”
“Thank God I’ve managed to defy your expectations. You’ve been defying mine all night.”
“I do hate to be predictable.” She leaned low to sniff the pigeon pie, and her costume fell forward enough to reveal the lush, pale breasts hanging free within the satin sheath and lacy chemise. No corset. Good God. He thought his breeches would burst right there.
Nor did it help when she straightened, eyes gleaming, to pick up a bottle and ask, “Would you like wine, my lord?”
When coupled with that low, husky voice she’d adopted as a disguise, her blatant innuendo made him reel. “Are you offering me the beverage? Or something else?”
“Both, I think.”
Images of licking wine off every inch of her naked body flashed into his brain. Bloody hell, she was driving him mad. “Then I’ll have the beverage.” When she actually looked disappointed, he added, “For now.”
Her tinkling laughter filled the room and made his loins tighten painfully. How much more of this teasing could he take?
She poured two glasses and handed him one with a knowing smile that made his blood thunder in his temples. Fighting to restrain his rampant urges, he held out her seat for her, then rounded the table to his own seat. Silence reigned for the next few moments as they filled their plates.
When she picked up her fork, he noted that she still refused to remove her gloves. The woman never ceased to surprise him. One moment she was offering him “wine,” and the next she was behaving with extreme propriety. Fortunately, that tiny glimpse of the real Lady Kingsley helped him bank some of his lust.
“Tell me something, Lord Warbrooke,” she said.
“Justin.” He took a couple of bites of the turbot.
“Justin. Of course.” She ate some pigeon pie as prettily as a duchess, then set down her fork. “You said earlier that you weren’t married. Why not?”
He shrugged. “I never found the right woman, that’s all.”
“Out of the hundreds of eligible women who parade through London every year in search of husbands, you couldn’t find a single one to suit you?”
He took her skeptical tone for a challenge. Settling back in his seat, he folded his hands over his belly. “I don’t fancy marrying some grabbing young female whose only object in life is to spend my money and flaunt my title under the noses of her friends.”
“My, my, you do think highly of your attractions. But surely not all women of good society are out to spend your money and flaunt your title.”
Impudent minx. “If they aren’t, they’re certainly hiding it well. At any rate, I have no time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Unlike most of my peers, I actually do something with my money and my title. I’m on the board of several charities, and I take my duties in Parliament very seriously. My mother and my sister eternally complain that I spend too much time and money on those activities. I can only imagine what a wife would have to say about it.”
He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he swirled his wine. “Which is why I’d rather stick to keeping a mistress. Are you sure you won’t fill the position?”
“Certainly not!”
At this hint of the real Lady Kingsley, he couldn’t help laughing. “Such a disappointment. You’ll force me to seek out one of those bits of muslin who cavort through the theaters.”
She stared down at her plate. “You could look for a wife who might support your aims.”
Like her. It was an intriguing thought, one he’d had before. But he’d always been stopped by two things—her overly fastidious moral sense and her adoration of her late husband. While the first was obviously in question, the second still rankled. He didn’t fancy following an act like Henry Lamberton.
And even if he could, he could never get past her dislike of him. Even if at the moment that dislike seemed decidedly absent.
“I haven’t had much luck finding a wife who’d ‘support my aims,’ ” he replied. “In my experience, most women of good society would rather entertain callers and redecorate their town houses.” All except Lady Kingsley, that is.
She cut her meat with precise little jabs. “Isn’t that what you’d…um…want of your wife? Someone who’d tend the home fires while you’re out doing something with your money and your title? Someone who’d stay behind the scenes to make you look good?”
“Good God, no…er…Bella.” Bloody hell, he’d almost called her Lady Kingsley and given himself away. It was easy to think of her as the alluring Bella when she was melting in his arms, but not so easy when she started talking like the officious viscountess. “Such a soft-brained creature sounds deadly dull.” He shot her a perplexed look. “Why would you assume I’d want that sort of wife?”
Swallowing, she concentrated on dicing her potato into bits. “Men with political aspirations usually prefer it.”
He pounced on her slip. “And what makes you think I have political aspirations?”
Her head shot up, her face showing panic. “I–I…isn’t that why you serve on all those boards and such? What other reason would a marquess have for doing so?”
Still smarting from her earlier allegations, he snapped, “Can’t a man with political aspirations also have a social conscience? And be interested in politics precisely because of that conscience?” He leaned back and glared at her, daring her to repeat her unfair assertions from this morning.
But she mostly seemed surprised by his statement. “Well…I…yes, I suppose so.”
He relaxed. “That’s why I’d prefer a wife who’d participate in activities where she felt useful—either to me or to others. If that turned out to be wor
king for reform at my side, I’d welcome it.”
Suddenly it occurred to him that he might use this conversation to coax her into revealing her true identity. “Besides, there are times when a woman’s fine instincts and knowledge of domestic life can be a real asset, especially on charitable boards.”
“Oh?”
“Take, for example, a governing board I serve on for a boys’ school.” He drank some wine, gazing at her over the rim of the glass, but she wouldn’t look at him. “With coal prices being what they are and our budget limited, we were having trouble heating the two large halls the boys slept in. It took a woman on the board to figure out that we were attacking the problem from the wrong angle. Instead of heating the rooms, she said, we needed to heat the beds.”
Bella seemed to have developed an inordinate interest in her cucumber salad, given the way she dredged the slices back and forth through the dressing.
He went on. “Lady Kingsley suggested that during the day we store the boys’ blankets in a closet adjacent to the chimneys that lead from the kitchens. She also said the lads should put hot bricks from the oven into their beds every evening before bedtime. Between the warmed blankets and the bricks, the boys are kept quite comfy, and we aren’t forced to pay exorbitant prices for extra coal.”
“What a good idea.” She lifted a smug gaze to him. “This Lady Kingsley sounds very resourceful.”
He stifled a grin. “Oh, yes, very resourceful indeed. But then it takes a woman to be resourceful in such matters. We men would have spent all our time trying to figure out how to lower the cost of coal in England so we could afford to purchase more for heating Lamberton School.”
She laughed, and the warm sound settled in his chest. They are in a companionable silence for a few moments.
But he wasn’t done with her yet. “Of course, those womanly instincts and emotions can sometimes also be a liability.”
“How so?”
“I recently suggested that we build a factory on the grounds of the school. And this same astute lady—reacting as the gently bred creature that she is—opposed it without even listening to my proposal.”
She drew her mouth up in a mutinous line. “Perhaps the idea of child labor revolted her.”
“Ah, but these are older boys, eager to learn a skill and find ways to support their parents and siblings. Besides which, I don’t mean to have them do anything taxing. The way I envision it, the factory’s activities can be integrated with their studies. They’ll learn about mathematics in class, then see it applied at the factory. They’ll learn how to run a business through the factory, then be more motivated to read those books and essays that inspired the men of trade who went before them.”
“I see. It does sound…rather intriguing when you put it like that.” She toyed with a piece of asparagus, twirling it round and round on her plate with her fork. “And did the other members of your board approve of this idea?”
“Some of them. Not all.” He broke off some bread and buttered it. “In fact, that’s why I was at that auction—I was trying to convince Lord Bradford to support my position.”
Her gaze shot to his. “But you bid against him!”
“Yes. I bid against him.” He added dryly, “I think it’s safe to say that I’ve lost his support.”
“Why would you do that? Enter into a foolish bidding competition when it went against your best interests to do so?”
Tossing the bread aside, he leaned forward to clasp her hands. “Because I couldn’t bear to see a woman as lovely and refined as you in the clutches of a man like him.”
The blood drained from her face. “So you were trying to…to protect me?”
He nodded. All right, so that wasn’t all he’d wanted to do, but that had certainly been part of it.
“You weren’t really wanting to spend the night with a widow at all?” she asked in a small voice.
“No. It’s not my sort of entertainment. I only bid because Bradford did.”
Drawing her hands free of his grasp, she murmured, “Then you don’t really want to bed me.”
Her plaintive tone confused him. “It’s not that I don’t want to bed you exactly…it’s just that—”
“I should have known.” Her head was bowed, and she kept twisting her hands together. “I was afraid of this—that I might lack the figure and the…the female attractions to tempt a man like you—”
“Good God, I only wish that were true,” he broke in. She was making him feel awful. And were those tears glimmering in her eyes, for God’s sake? “See here, Bella, there isn’t a bloody thing wrong with your figure or your female attractions. If this were a different situation, I’d already have you naked in that bed.”
Her startled gaze swung to him. “What do you mean—a different situation? Even if you started out by trying to protect me—and I do appreciate that—you did win me. And you can tell I’m willing to go through with my end of it. I want to be naked in that bed, so why not take advantage of it?”
“Because you only think you want it, that’s why! You don’t really want it.”
She rose from the chair, her eyes bright. “You have no idea what I want!”
“Not a sordid night with a stranger, I’ll wager.” He rose from his chair, too, his blood running hot as he waited, hoping she’d admit that he wasn’t a stranger to her. When she only glanced away, he snapped, “No matter what your foolish reasons for participating in that auction, you couldn’t possibly have known what you were getting yourself into.”
“I knew precisely what I was getting myself into: a night with a man. That’s all I wanted!”
“Someone who might abuse you or hurt you?” He dropped his voice to a threatening murmur. “You don’t know what men can be like.”
Her head snapped around, her fierce eyes boring into him. “Then perhaps you should show me!”
Without warning, she began to unfasten the ties that held her flimsy satin costume together, and all the blood in his body rushed to one inexorable spot.
She freed the last tie, then shimmied defiantly out of her gown to reveal a chemise so sheer he could see the tips of her breasts straining against the silk. He couldn’t help it—he gaped at them, his mouth going dry at the sight.
“Devil take you, Bella!” His muscles tightened, and the heaviness of his desire settled between his thighs. “You won’t stop this madness until I give you a taste of what you think you want, will you?”
That seemed to provoke her even further. With a grim, determined smile, she thrust her breasts up for his perusal. That made it even worse, for the loving drape of the silk left nothing to the imagination. They were perfect—as plump and luscious as he’d imagined in his fevered fantasies of her.
She strode up to him, practically daring him to touch her. “If you want me naked in that bed, Justin, then do something about it. Because no matter what your reasons for bidding, you paid a lot of money for one night with me. So I think it’s time you put your mouth where your money is.”
When she began to unbutton her chemise, revealing her lovely bare skin inch by inch, all his control snapped. Taking the few steps to meet her, he caught her head in his large hands. Need surged through him as he stared down at the full, tempting lips and the eyes that gleamed mysteriously behind the white satin mask.
He wanted to shake her. He wanted to kiss her.
She’d made him desperate to bed her, but it was impossible. Because it wasn’t only Bella he’d be bedding, but Lady Kingsley, too. And though Lady Kingsley seemed to think she wanted this, once she came to her senses, she’d hate him for taking advantage of her whim. She’d never be able to face him across the table at meetings, and their encounter would lie solidly between them until it became an ugly thing they couldn’t get around.
He wished there could be more between them. But much as he’d teased her about taking her for his mistress, that would never work. Nor could he marry a woman still in love with the gentle Saint Henry. What Justin felt for her wa
sn’t gentle, and he’d be damned if he’d compete with her late husband for her affections.
But he could at least make her see the idiocy of what she was doing. “Never say I didn’t warn you,” he growled, then brought his mouth down hard on hers.
He’d tried to be careful before, heedful of the sort of woman she was and sure that she’d stop him at any moment. But now anger rode him, anger and desire and a need to put her silly notions to rest once and for all. So he spared her nothing in that kiss, taking her mouth with all the passion he was capable of, making sure not to blunt the force of his desire in any way.
But she didn’t seem to mind. Her mouth was eager beneath his, warm and open and yielding. She tugged at his coat until he shrugged out of it, and then she went to work on his waistcoat buttons.
A haze of need fogged his brain. He filled his hands with her breasts, reveling in the full weight of them, the nipples that pebbled beneath his touch even through the fabric. Oh, God, she was soft…and sweet and more woman than he’d ever imagined. He had to taste her or he’d go mad.
Trailing kisses down her neck, he shoved her chemise off her shoulders and down far enough to bare both breasts—both beautiful, bountiful breasts. They made his mouth water. He dropped to one knee so he could kiss them properly.
She smelled of lemons and woman—a scent designed to entice. And it was working, too. All he wanted was to lay her out and take her like a savage.
He settled for taking her breast in his mouth instead, laving it with his tongue, teasing the sweet little nipple with his teeth. When she uttered a groan and arched into him, that only maddened him further. He sucked and caressed her lush breast endlessly, fondling the other with his hand, until he was so aroused he thought he’d erupt right there.
Bloody hell, he must end this soon, before he did something he regretted, before he cried out her real name.
Which he now realized he could never do. They might not have lain together, but they’d done and said enough to mortify her for life. So it was best that she think he hadn’t guessed her identity. Then she could return to her real life without embarrassment, repenting only in private the reckless encounter from which she’d escaped by the skin of her teeth.
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