by Liz Carlyle
He gave a bark of laughter and set his glass down.
“So,” she said, edging forward on the sofa. “What did Miss de Rohan give you?”
Reminded of it, he extracted the note from his pocket and read it. “The address of some chap in Buckhurst Hill,” he said, passing it to her. “George Kemble. Can’t think as I know him.”
“Nor do I,” she murmured, studying it. “Not that that means much. Will you go?”
He thought about it for a moment. “It would seem ungrateful to spurn her suggestion,” he finally said.
“When?” Lightly, she laid her hand over his. “And may I come with you?”
He looked down at their hands, hers so small and slender, the fingers lying coolly across his own, and resisted the urge to lift it to his lips. Lord, he was reluctant to further involve her. And just as reluctant to let go of whatever threads of her he dared cling to.
Perhaps he wanted to believe they were in this together.
They were not. This mess of his own making had nothing to do with her. And Miss de Rohan’s offer aside, that faint spiraling of hope he’d felt in Ruthveyn’s garden had been but a chimera; a fantasy bred of dreams and desperation. He was likely no closer to extricating himself from the tangle of deceit than the day the judge had banged his gavel and sent him to rot in the filth of Newgate.
But Anisha was looking at him expectantly with her wide-set, intelligent eyes; looking straight through to the heart of him, it often felt. And he, it seemed, was weak.
“I suppose we might go in a day or two if the weather holds,” he finally answered. “But in a closed carriage this time, Nish. Our quiet friendship is one thing. But being too often on my arm in public? It won’t do.”
“I believe whom I’m seen with is my decision,” she replied.
He found he could not look at her. “You must think of the boys, Nish, and of your future,” he said quietly. “Besides, no one is going anywhere until I’m sure young Lucan has done his duty by Miss Rutledge.”
“And if he does not?” she asked.
“I will be tempted, of course, to give him a good hiding with my riding crop,” said Lazonby, his voice grim. “But, as someone so recently recommended, I am coming slowly to accept that I am not omnipotent. That I cannot force everyone to do my bidding—even when I know bloody well that I am right.”
Anisha did not even remind him not to curse. Instead she lifted her hand away and sat quietly for a long moment, staring at her spurned glass as if the golden elixir might hold all the world’s truths.
“You are taking this to heart, aren’t you?” she said softly. “This business of looking after us?”
“You have known me a long while, Nish,” he replied, “but known me, perhaps, at more of a distance than you realize.”
She turned to him, her gaze quizzical. “I don’t understand.”
He tried to smile and failed. “You once said I was not what I pretended to be,” he murmured. “I think perhaps you were right.”
“I know I was,” she said gently.
He stared into the cold, black depths of the hearth. “I try not to forget, Nish, the man my father brought me up to be,” he said. “Some days, though, I must search pretty hard for him inside myself. But I am not so steeped in bitterness, so driven by revenge, that I’ve lost my course entirely. There is still a little of the gentleman in me, I suppose. Yes, I take this to heart. I swore to your brother that I would look after you for the year or so he’s gone. And I will. Somehow.”
Anisha drew a deep breath. “But this is just the theater, you know,” she said, broaching the subject that hung like a dead weight between them. “It will be very public. And Luc is going with me.”
“Oh, well then!” Lazonby threw his hands up. “I’ve nothing to worry about! After all, who could be more responsible than Luc?”
“Rance,” she said, cutting him a chiding glance. “Luc will do well enough for appearance’s sake. But make no mistake—I am responsible for myself.”
He drank for a moment in silence. The truth was, she was responsible for far more than herself. Her children. Her younger brother. The running of the house. More, even, than that in Ruthveyn’s absence. Still, he wanted to rail at her, to tell her that he was responsible for her. That she was a fool for continuing to see Napier, and that he forbade it.
But that strategy had not thus far got him anywhere. And where did he wish it to get him, anyway? Anisha was not a fool. She was sensible and, for the most part, wise to the world. The problem—the possessiveness—was his.
And Napier, the arrogant coxcomb! Good God, Lazonby had wanted to throttle him tonight. Weeks ago, he had convinced himself that Geoff marrying Anisha was something he could have borne. Geoff was a good and worthy man. But he knew now that, even then, he had been lying to himself.
“Rance.” Her soft voice severed his thoughts. “There is only one reason I continue to see Napier, and you know it. Now, may we change the subject? I wish to tell you about a garden party I’ve a notion to attend.”
“A garden party?” He was instantly suspicious.
Anisha proceeded to lay out Lady Madeleine’s plan to introduce her to Sir Wilfred Leeton.
He let his gaze drift over her face. “Nish, I’m not sure it’s wise,” he said. “And I don’t recall hearing about Leeton’s being knighted. Hannah must be proud enough to pop her stitches.”
She turned a little toward him, her hand returning to lie lightly over his. “You know her?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Well, I remember her,” he said. “She was a little outré in those days. A rich lady friend of Arthur’s, actually.”
“Ah, yes,” said Anisha. “I heard a bit of gossip about Arthur and his so-called lady friends from Madeleine.”
“Well, their romance—what little there was—didn’t last long. They were just chums, I recollect.” With an absent, natural gesture, Rance began to massage the palm of her hand with his thumb, wondering if she was tired. “Arthur introduced Hannah to Leeton. Brought her round quite a lot, actually, and the three of them fell into the same fast crowd—the demimonde, or dashed near it.”
“And now she is respectable,” Anisha murmured.
“Aye, well, money can do that, if you spread it around in the right places.”
“How jaded that sounds—but alas, not untrue.” Anisha lifted her hand away, leaving him suddenly cold and a little lost.
But why? It was just a touch. Merely her hand. And yet he found himself resisting the urge to seek it out again. To press and knead and work the day’s stress from those small, capable fingers. And then to slip off her shoes and do the same.
But those, oddly, were amongst the most intimate of touches. And the very sort of intimacy he sought so desperately to avoid.
“Rance,” she went on, “you might join us. You and Leeton get on, yes?”
“When I knew him, aye,” said Rance. “But his garden party? I think not.”
“Ah.” She exhaled slowly. “Well, then.”
He cast Anisha a sidelong glance to see that she’d reached up and begun to draw the elaborate feathers from her hair, her arms lifting her lush swell of cleavage. His gaze swept up, taking in her long, elegant neck, set to perfect advantage by her jeweled collar and long, dangling earrings; her full lips and her fine, faintly almond-shaped eyes, and knew that entire wars had been fought for women far less desirable than she.
It felt as if he was fighting one now.
Damn it, he needed to go home. To stay here in his current mood—and having been at Ruthveyn’s whisky much of the night—was to court disaster.
He set the glass away again and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Nish, it’s late,” he said again as she tossed the last feather on the tea table. “You need your rest.”
As always, it was as if she sensed his mood. Turning to face him, she tucked one leg beneath her and leaned near, setting a palm to his lapel. Her tiny slippers, he noticed, were bejeweled, as th
ey so often were, and around one perfect, slender ankle dangled a charm on a gold chain.
Unable to resist, he reached out to lightly touch it. “I should go,” he whispered.
“Is that really what you want, Rance?” she replied. “To go?”
Oh, there was a wealth of intimation in that small, simple question.
Something inside him went perfectly still. He dropped his hand and looked at her. Fleetingly he allowed himself the joy of drinking in that face, which was at once so beautiful and so familiar to him, and those huge brown eyes, like infinite pools of knowledge, so keen and so piercing when she pinned him that Lazonby knew he had few, if any, secrets from her.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, I don’t want to go. Does it make you any happier to have me say it?”
Her smile was muted. He picked up his whisky and drained it.
“You are angry with me,” she said. “You don’t want Napier to court me. But you have not asked me if I mean to court him in return.”
“No,” he said, putting the glass down with a heavy clunk. “I have counseled you against having anything to do with the man. But I have thus far resisted the urge to ask anything. It is not my place to do so—again, as you so recently pointed out.”
But her gaze had hardened a little. “I want to take a lover, Rance,” she pressed on. “I am a young woman still. I have grown weary of always sleeping alone.”
Lazonby felt the knife of her words thrust deep and twist, goring at his heart. “Anisha, for God’s sake, just don’t—”
“No, hear me out,” she interjected. “I want a lover, Rance, not necessarily a husband. I want . . . you. Oh, I’ve tried not to. I’ve tried to want someone else—or something else—with no luck at all. And I can keep trying, I suppose, if that’s the only choice left to me. I can go to the opera on the arm of a different man every night, and look about me for some temporary distraction. But who I truly want—alas, that will not change.”
“Nish, don’t,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
But her hand came up to stroke his face, her fingers warm against the flesh that ached for her touch. “So if you are interested in taking up that role, then yes,” she went on. “Yes, you may have some say in what I do and with whom I do it. Yes, you may ask me not to see other gentlemen. You may ask me to stay away from Napier. As the man sharing my bed, you would have that right.”
“And if I am not?” he rasped, looking at her.
She removed her hand, drew a little away, and set her cheek to the back of the sofa. “Then we will remain the dearest of friends,” she whispered, gazing at him. “And I will listen to your advice always, because that’s what friends are for. But in the end, I will do what I please, and you will have no right to be angry with me.”
She was offering him a choice that was no sort of choice at all.
For a long time, he thought about what his response should be. His elbows propped on his knees, his hands dangling, he tried to form the right words—words about respect and selflessness and promises. But the words would not come—perhaps he, too, had grown weary of them—and when at last she leaned into him again, her warmth and exotic scent embracing him like a living thing, Lazonby felt himself shudder.
Her hand caught his shoulder and pushed him back against the sofa. “Close your eyes,” she whispered, just before she set her lips to his throat.
And he did, God help him.
In a rattle of silk, he felt the sofa give under her weight as she came astraddle him. “Close your eyes,” she said again, her mouth moving over him, setting his skin ashiver.
“Anisha,” he whispered.
But he did not open his eyes, and instead let her hands and mouth roam over him. They were simple gestures; innocent, really. Her fingers stroking over his chest, along his waist, through his hair. Her lips on his eyes, his cheeks, under the turn of his jaw.
He stilled himself to it unflinchingly. And yet despite the simplicity, the powerful thread of desire began to run through him, to twist and to pull him like molten metal deeper into the heat of her.
She opened her mouth, warm against his cheek, then skimmed it down until the tip of her tongue stroked a ribbon of moisture along his bottom lip. She caught the swell of it between her teeth, nibbled and sucked, then moved on. Beneath the snug wool of his trousers, Lazonby’s cock began to harden and throb, but it seemed an almost secondary thing; the sensations he felt were something deeper and more primal than mere lust.
He felt her mouth move along the bone of his eye socket, then his temple, until her lips hesitated, feather-light, upon his ear. “Take me upstairs to my bed, meri jaan,” she whispered. “Take me upstairs. Join your body to mine.”
“Anisha—”
“No.” The word was soft but sharp. “Don’t speak. Just . . . for one night, don’t.”
Her words falling away, Anisha shocked him by easing her hand down the fall of his trousers. With the tips of her fingers and the firmness of her palm, she rubbed back and forth along the ridge of his erection, causing him to suck air through his teeth.
She made a little sound of feminine satisfaction in the back of her throat. “Now that,” she whispered, “is unmistakable desire.”
“Did you have any doubt?” he rasped.
For an instant, she hesitated. “Not much, but one never likes to assume,” she murmured, her mouth skimming round the turn of his throat. “Desire can be so . . . complicated.”
She was thinking, he suddenly realized, of Jack Coldwater. Of the compromising position in which she’d seen him—must have seen him—else she would never have wondered . . .
It had not been his proudest moment. And that recollection served only to further frustrate him, like lamp oil hurled onto a banked fire. He had nothing to prove, damn it.
And yet . . . and yet . . .
If was as if something inside him snapped. With one arm he lifted her, feather-light, from his lap, scooping beneath her knees with the other arm as he dragged her up. She gave a little cry of surprise, her arms lashing round his neck.
She did not want to talk, by God, he thought, striding from the parlor.
She did not want to take no for an answer.
Even having seen of him all that she had seen, and knowing all that Ruthveyn had likely told her, she was nonetheless bent on this—whatever this was going to be, in the end.
And tonight—just for tonight—he was weary of doing the right thing, for restraint had never been his strong suit. So he would give in and ruin her, he thought, going relentlessly up the stairs. He was going to give her—this one night—just what she was asking for, and damn the consequences.
It said something, he supposed, about his standing in this house and in this family that he knew to the very door which bedchamber was hers. He’d always known—but had he not, tonight’s frantic search for Luc would have revealed it—for Anisha’s very essence, her scent, her opulent colors, her tidy habits, all of it had been apparent in the room.
After shoving open the door and kicking it shut again with his heel, Lazonby strode in to deposit her onto the bed. By the light of the lamp turned low upon the night table, he watched her blink up at him, all beauty and innocence.
Then she held open her arms.
He waited long enough to strip off his coat. Hurling it to the floor, he followed her onto the bed, loosening the fall of his trousers as he went. Already his cock was hard as a constable’s tipstaff, the blood thrumming through his loins and his brain in an urgent drumbeat.
“Anisha,” he managed.
She clung to him and he settled against her, rucking up her skirts with his knee. His mouth found hers and he kissed her too roughly, thrusting deep into her mouth. Anisha did not hesitate but kissed him back, arching hard against him as her hands plunged into his hair.
On a groan, her head went back into the softness of the pillow. He thrust deep again, then more rhythmically, telling her plainly his intent. Half hoping, perhaps, she would push him away.
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She did not. Instead, her fingers slid from his hair and went a little desperately to her skirts. She inched them up higher and he heard a stitch rip. She curled one leg hard about his waist.
He shifted his weight, settling himself fully between her thighs, his buttons already half undone. “Rance,” she whispered, her eyes closed. “Oh, just . . . please.”
He found the silky fabric of her drawers and pressed his fingers deep into the wet softness between her legs.
“Yes,” she said. “Now.”
Oh, his body wanted now. But his heart wanted slow.
She was Anisha, the beautiful, perfect thing he had desired from afar for so long he thought himself a little maddened by it. Whatever this was between them—this searing, just-once passion—he wanted it to be perfect; wanted to draw out her desire like a fine silk thread spun by the cleverest of hands upon the most delicate of wheels.
When she touched him again, however, easing her fingers between them, Lazonby realized that perfection was not what she asked. Not what she needed. She had been alone a long time, she said.
And he had been alone forever.
She kissed him again, her small nostrils delicately flaring. Her fingertips rubbed the hard ridge of him while her opposite hand threaded through his hair. Slipping loose the last of his buttons, he took himself in hand and pressed deep into her softness. Drawing up her knees, Anisha tilted her hips, crying out as he entered her.
Lazonby suppressed a jubilant sound from somewhere low in his throat and felt her warmth surround him, drawing him deeper. She was like the moon pulling the tide to shore. Unconditionally. Relentlessly.
Lifting himself a little, he rocked back and thrust again. Her breath seized, a soft, primal sound of feminine pleasure. He thrust and thrust again, then set a pace to match her need. Everything moved as if in a dream. He knew, vaguely, that this was a moment to be savored; that the physical act had never felt so exquisitely perfect to him, and never would be again. But the urgent madness was already upon him; an almost feral need to mate, to claim, to thrust.