Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  She didn’t want to burn with an intense desire to know about him. It had taken her too long to extinguish that particular flame, to convince herself that she didn’t care, that she’d never really cared, that it was infatuation run its course. But, tonight, he’d revealed a concrete fact about himself: he was a spy. She yearned to know even more about this man.

  She’d never felt more disappointed in herself. Hadn’t the last ten years made her stronger than this?

  She shot to her feet on a surge of resolution, intent on showing Nick the door. “You’ve gotten your wish. I leave tomorrow. We haven’t anything more to say to one another until Geoffrey and Lavinia’s eleventh name day next month.”

  He responded by settling deeper into his settee, and deep annoyance flared through her. His gaze raked up the length of her and held when it reached her eyes. She wouldn’t squirm. She wouldn’t remember the way that look used to snake through her until it reached the apex of her thighs. If she did, her legs might begin to quiver, much like they were now. That wouldn’t do at all.

  “A plot is brewing to assassinate the French king’s heir, Charles, the Duc d’Artois.”

  Mariana retreated a step and fell back onto her settee in a puff of skirts. Within Nick’s gaze, she detected a deadly serious light, and, just like that, she was caught like an impetuous grasshopper. “Why not assassinate the king?” she asked, at once ensnared by his web.

  “The king is on his deathbed and has no heir except for his brother Charles, the Duc d’Artois, whose own heir was assassinated four years ago. With the death of Charles, the Bourbon line dies out, making—”

  “Way for a new line,” she finished for him, unable to help herself.

  He nodded. “And new ideologies.”

  “The French rather have a history of that sort of thing.” It was a glib and sorry attempt to diffuse the tension his intense gaze stirred inside her.

  “These aren’t revolutionaries, Mariana.”

  “Then who is plotting, if not revolutionaries?”

  “A rebellious minority of nobles who do not share the Ultra-Royalist vision for France’s future. These men fear Charles will turn back the clock as if the Revolution never happened.”

  “Can he?”

  “Doubtful, but that isn’t to say he won’t try. These men are emboldened by last year’s constitutional monarchist uprisings in Spain.”

  “Shouldn’t we English support such a cause?” she asked. “After all, a monarchy limited by a constitution is our form of government.”

  “Over the past year, tens of thousands have died in Spain in civil war. Make no mistake, if the heir is assassinated, there will be war. It is in England and all of Europe’s best interest that it be avoided at all costs.”

  “There must be a reason you’re telling me this,” Mariana cut in. She sensed a deeper truth rippling beneath Nick’s words. “A spy doesn’t reveal himself unless he receives something valuable in exchange. What is it that I have of value to you?”

  He shifted in his chair and regarded her as if from a great distance. She could almost see the gears in his head racing to devise the best strategy for handling her. “You caught the attention of the Comte de Villefranche tonight.”

  “You were in the Foyer?” she asked.

  “I have people.”

  “You have people?”

  His eyes held hers. “Yes.” He was absolutely daring her to look away first. “Villefranche is connected to the assassination plot.”

  “The Comte de Villefranche?” she returned, her voice dripping with disbelief. “You cannot possibly believe that . . . boy . . . is capable of assassination and revolution.”

  “I’ve seen boys do worse.”

  Her mouth snapped shut.

  “The truth—”

  “The truth?” she interrupted. “I wasn’t aware you and the truth were acquainted.”

  “The truth is,” he continued patiently—too patiently, “Villefranche fits the description of the sort of idealistic young man who powerful men manipulate into doing their dirty work. He wouldn’t be the first.”

  Fraught silence stilled the air. “Before receiving the note that you were missing and presumed dead,” she said, “your life appeared to be centered around the pursuit of the pleasures of our social set. I thought you played at politics and diplomacy here and there, but nothing serious. Nothing important.”

  Nick leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, his entire demeanor taking on a distinct register of urgency as he breached the space between them. Anticipation sparked the air alive, and the room shrank away. It was just him and her.

  The breath caught in her chest between an inhale and an exhale, holding the scent of him deep inside. She imagined sandalwood roots extending from her lungs into her veins to the very tips of her fingers and toes.

  “Who do you think operates the government of England?” he asked, his voice hushed velvet. “Those with money, education, and land. The Lords, Mariana.” The gray of his irises glowed with intensity. “Is it such a stretch that I could be one of them?”

  Another unruly blush flared to the surface, its warm bloom heating her up by a few degrees. This one for her stupidity. Of course, Nick was the sort of man who kept governments operating. He possessed the intellect and the capability.

  These were qualities she’d liked about him from the beginning. These were memories that had been banished to the past. Until tonight.

  “Why are you here, Nick? In this hotel suite?” she whispered. He was close, so close. “Once Hortense returns, she will help me pack, and I shall be gone by daybreak. You will be free to resume the strange and mystifying life you lead here.”

  His gaze slid sideways, and he sat back in his seat. She almost ached for the loss of his nearness. Almost. She couldn’t possibly be that foolish.

  On a sigh, she tilted her head, first to one side to remove one diamond drop earring, then to the other side to remove the other. Next, she tugged open the clasp of her gold filigree bracelet. Her gaze lifted to find him following her every move.

  Instantly, a specific sort of intimacy pervaded the air between them. It was the slow, familiar intimacy of a husband observing his wife make herself comfortable.

  “What are you doing?”

  If she didn’t know better, she might think she’d unnerved him. “Readying myself for bed. It’s what one does in the normal scheme of things. Or is normal completely lost to you?”

  “Normal,” he replied, “is a word deeply rooted in the relative. Normal is an entirely individual experience.”

  She resisted an incredulous shake of her head. “Philosophical musings aside, when did Hortense say she would return?” she asked, her tone all brisk business. She needed the distance such a tone provided.

  “I asked her to take the night off.”

  Mariana opened her mouth and snapped it shut. Those words couldn’t possibly mean what they sounded like, what her body, traitorous and hot, might hope they meant. “I have no lady’s maid tonight?” she got out.

  He nodded.

  A riot of desire skittered through her. That nod had led them places in the past.

  No. That wouldn’t do.

  She mustn’t let her body rule her head.

  She wrapped herself in righteous umbrage and shot to her feet in an exasperated shush of silk skirts, grabbing the candlestick to her right and purposefully striding to the French doors dividing the sitting room from the bedroom. She pulled them wide.

  “Well, then, there is no help for it. You must play the part,” she called over her shoulder. “Unbutton my dress.”

  Chapter 4

  All-a-mort: Struck dumb, confounded.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

/>   “Unbutton your dress?” Nick repeated. It wasn’t possible he’d heard those words in that order.

  “Yes,” she called out, confirming his worst fear.

  A nascent feeling of horror unfurled within him. Mariana had always been a provocative woman, which was precisely why he hadn’t spent time alone with her in a decade. Her ability to upset his equilibrium remained absolute and effortless.

  Still, he couldn’t resist the pull toward her. He rose, and a few hesitant strides had him at the threshold of the bedroom, the vision of her propped against a bedpost before him. Mirroring her insouciant stance, he balanced a noncommittal shoulder against the doorjamb.

  “This isn’t a good idea,” he protested . . . weakly. If pressed, his flimsy shred of resistance would give way to whatever wish she voiced.

  “Have you spent a single minute of your life bound within layers of corset, shift, and tightly buttoned dress? Has this ever been required for one of your spy missions?”

  He couldn’t miss the scorn in her voice. “Never.”

  “Then you’ll have to trust me when I suggest that it’s a bloody fantastic idea for you to unbutton me. You’ve done it before, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “I haven’t,” he said, his voice incapable of more than a low, gravelly rumble.

  She blinked, and a moment passed. “You’re the one who dismissed Hortense. Even if she is a spy, she’s also my lady’s maid.”

  As if to illustrate her seriousness, Mariana swiveled around and braced her hands on the bedpost, readying herself for him.

  Readying herself for him?

  Reason bade Nick exit the room, locate Hortense, and abandon the entire proposition. Under no circumstance should he close the distance between them and place his hands on Mariana’s body. Paper thin layers of chartreuse silk and muslin between his fingers and her skin wouldn’t be enough.

  A few quick steps could carry him to her. A few quick steps could undo him.

  His eyes swept down the length of gown draped elegantly across her body as if it had been sewn onto her. A brief count yielded fifteen glimmering, jet buttons racing down the ridge of her spine. Fifteen. With any other man and woman, this would be the scene of a seduction. A simple assenting nod of her head was all it would take for them to become those two other people with no past and no future—only tonight.

  Except he and she weren’t that man and woman. Not with their history.

  He shook his head to clear it, lest he forget the mission that had brought him to this room tonight. Before him stood an opportunity, and in the world of espionage, one didn’t spurn opportunity. One seized it. Second chances were rare and unreliable.

  Somewhat fortified, he closed the requisite distance. The heat from her body mingled with his and enveloped them in a cocoon uniquely them. A bead of perspiration trickled down the hollow of his spine.

  Oh, no, he hadn’t forgotten what it was like to undress Mariana. A heartbeat later, he took the top button between thumb and forefinger. Smooth muscles contracted across her back, resulting in a slight arch just above her derriere. Impossible she didn’t feel this implacable tension, too. The certainty didn’t make his task any easier. Only a blindfold would.

  The tiny button slipped its silken loop. Only fourteen more to go. He cleared his throat. “Mariana?” Her name came out on a rasp barely loud enough to stir the quiet stretch of air between his mouth and her neck. Beneath his fingertips, he felt her breath suspend in anticipation of his next words. He flicked the second and third buttons free in quick succession. “I have a proposition for you.”

  At last, he was speaking the words he should have spoken the moment she’d entered the sitting room. He was here in a professional capacity, not as a husband and certainly not as a lover.

  “A proposition?”

  He couldn’t miss the lilt of interest inflecting her voice. The fourth and fifth buttons slipped free, and he tamped down a stab of disappointment when he saw that she wore a corset beneath her dress. He should have felt relief that another layer of fabric stood between his skin and hers, but he didn’t.

  Her corset was black. And lace. It was the corset of a trollop. Lust, pure and strong, shot straight to his cock.

  He must ignore that he stood close enough that the fine strands of her upswept hair fluttered with each word he spoke. And that the heat from her body permeated him at an elemental level. And that she wore the corset of a trollop.

  “It would be of considerable use,” he began, hoping the formality of his words would neutralize the decidedly informal bent of his thoughts, “if you were to remain in Paris and further your acquaintance with the Comte de Villefranche.”

  “Further my acquaintance?” she asked. “Why would I do that?”

  “We have no agents so conveniently placed.”

  “Is that what I am? A convenience?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite so far as that.”

  Her response was a resounding silence. Nothing was ever easy with Mariana. She didn’t wilt or defer to his authority. She stiffened her back and challenged his every word. Most men found this sort of woman exhausting. Not Nick. She tended to invigorate him.

  The buttons were coming loose in a steady little rhythm now. Six . . . Seven . . . Eight.

  “You would be in a position,” he continued, “to collect information.”

  “Ah, a collector of information.” A thread of mockery wove through her voice. “What sort of information?”

  He began reciting possibilities as if ticking items off a list. “Names . . .”—Nine—“Dates . . .”—Ten—“Rendezvous points . . .”—Eleven—“Snippets of conversation you might overhear . . .”—Twelve—“Notes you might read by chance. Idealism often disguises the deeper motivations of the major players. You would place yourself in the position to get at the core of the intrigue.”

  “And how exactly will I accomplish this?”

  “By earning Villefranche’s trust.”

  Thirteen.

  “And how do I go about that?”

  Fourteen.

  His fingers hesitated above the soft curve of her waist. Could he say to her the words he’d come here to say? After all, they were the same words he’d spoken to countless agents, both male and female, over the years. Never mind that the law stated she was his wife. That particular detail had been a minor technicality for years.

  He let the words come. “By any means necessary.”

  The air went still in the way it did before a storm broke. Nick braced himself.

  “By seducing him?” she asked in an incredulous half-whisper.

  Fifteen.

  “Any means,” he repeated, his voice hollow to his own ears.

  No buttons remained unbuttoned, yet his hands lingered at the small of her back.

  “Now my corset,” she said, her words a quiet command.

  “Pardon?” Impossible that he’d heard her correctly. A litany of curses, he expected, but not this.

  “Loosen my stays,” she stated more firmly.

  “Mariana . . .”

  It was the plea of a desperate man, but he no longer cared how he sounded. Only a fool kept silent when he was drowning.

  She presented him her stubborn profile. “I need a deep breath. Now.”

  Shaky fingers felt for the knot holding the stays together, and his mouth went dry. No longer could he ignore her effect on him. Blood ripe with anticipation raced through his veins, pervading his body with a specific craving that demanded to be assuaged in the specific ways only he and she had known.

  Did he remember? How could he forget? His cock, hard and ready, certainly hadn’t.

  It would be nothing to reach down and gather up her dress, one silk fold at a time, exposing the long length of her legs inch by irresistible i
nch until—

  No. He must resist. Who was he asking her to seduce anyway?

  “About Villefranche,” she began. Her voice held a matter-of-fact quality that served to stabilize the moment. “Have you considered that he will suspect I’m getting close to him at your behest? You and I are married after all.”

  “Society is well aware that we are estranged,” Nick replied. His fingers began working at the knot again. He needed to finish this task. “Villefranche and his conspirators may think to play you against me, but it’s an opportunity we mustn’t pass up.”

  At long last, Nick’s fingers tugged the knot free and loosened the stays. Task complete, nothing prevented him from stepping away from her and collecting himself before he ruined the entire mission. Except his eyes lingered on the transparent swath of muslin that did little to protect the supple, ridged line of her spine from his gaze.

  Like nothing, the flimsy scrap of fabric would rend in two. His tongue would trace that exposed line all the way up to the sensitive, fine hairs of her neck . . . That was another sort of opportunity before him. But it was one he must pass up.

  “You will answer me one question before you have my reply.” She swiveled around to face him. Her dress draped forward ever so slightly, and he caught a glimpse of black lace peeking above chartreuse silk. She was a picture of womanly dishabille of the most delectable sort. “Why are you dressed in this manner?”

  “I have gone underground.”

  “And this has to do with someone in the Foreign Office declaring you missing and presumed dead?”

  “That makes two questions.”

  “Humor me, Nick. It seems that you could uncover the details of the assassination plot dressed as Lord Nicholas Asquith, alive and well. Yet you’re not. What aren’t you telling me?”

  She leaned against the bedpost and crossed her arms in front of her breasts to prevent her dress from slipping to her waist. His eyes had no choice but to drop and follow the movement. In a slow blink, his gaze returned to meet hers and held steady. “Before your arrival in Paris, I was assaulted by two men in this suite. I managed to turn the dagger around on one of the assailants while the other fled the scene.”