The littler girl dropped an automatic curtsey. Her wide brown eyes, so like Mrs. Coswell’s, stared at him with undisguised curiosity. So this was Emma. At six, she was the same age as his youngest sister, but she was a smaller child, clearly made of the same bone structure as her graceful mother.
“Why were you kissing my mother?” she asked. Her older sister put a restraining hand on her arm but the child shrugged it away.
“Are you going to be my new father?”
“Emma!” Both Mrs. Coswell and her stepdaughter chided the little girl. Oakley chuckled, caught between embarrassment and amusement.
“Not quite, Emma,” he said, “but I believe your mother’s manners are remiss. Please, allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Oakley. It is a great pleasure to finally meet you.”
Maggie shot him a dangerous look and Oakley deemed it a good time to make his exit.
“Are you here to take us for ices, my lord?” Emma asked. “We were supposed to go for ices this afternoon. I thought Mama forgot.”
“Unfortunately, my dear, I am otherwise engaged,” Oakley said a bit uncomfortably. “Perhaps I may have the honor another day.”
“I’ll see you to the door,” Emma chirped, skipping to keep pace with him. “I’d like to see the menagerie at the Tower, too.”
The moment Emma and Oakley had left the room, Olivia turned around.
“You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?” she demanded in a furious whisper.
Maggie gaped at her; the truth stuck in her chest.
“You don’t deny it!” Olivia threw herself down on the sofa and covered her face in her hands. “I suspected. It’s not as if an earl would ever marry you but…” Olivia came up once more, her face red and furious. “How could you? How could you dishonor my father so? You’re ruining my chances of a respectable marriage! What if someone knew?”
Faced with Olivia’s anger, Maggie shriveled inside. She had not been thinking of her stepdaughter, her late husband or her young daughter. For once in her life, she had only been thinking of herself and her desires.
She had thought herself discreet and thought that discretion protection from any scandal or danger. She had thought, perhaps she deserved this little pleasure.
After all, she was only twenty-two.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Love is swift of foot.
Love’s a man of war,
And can shoot,
And can hit from far.
Sitting on the stairs of his house, fully dressed for the Lords, his wig in his hand, Oakley finally understood what George Herbert had meant.
The morning had started out like any other. He was at liberty until half past one and had intended to spend what was left of the morning at White’s.
But halfway down the staircase, the melancholy pull that had tugged at him for days turned into a cannon and bowled him over with resounding force.
All the sighs and stoic moroseness were clear signs of a deeper illness.
He loved Maggie.
The knowledge terrified him. What was he supposed to do with this? The woman no longer wanted anything to do with him. She’d chosen duty to her family over their affair—a choice that Oakley, at the time, could only understand and admire. It was what he would do. What he should do.
He didn’t want to let her go. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t responsible, but she was what his heart most desired.
Therefore, what would he do?
He sat there on the steps for the greater part of an hour, ignoring the curious stares of the staff.
Finally, it came to him. He had to wait—wait until the young Miss Coswell was married and safely settled. In fact, he’d ensure she was married as soon as possible to whichever man she fancied.
Then, when Parliament broke, he would whisk Maggie away to one of his lesser country estates where no one would care the least.
All he had to do was convince Maggie to wait for him as well.
“Ho, brother!” Down in the entry, handing his hat to the butler, and looking decidedly worse for a long night out on the town, Charles gawked at him. “Has Parliament taken to sitting in our town house? Or is this simply the new fashion?”
Oakley tried to summon a witty, cutting response, but his emotions were all too soft and raw.
His grin fading, Charles bounded up the steps to sit beside him.
“Are you taking ill? Dizzy spells? Shall I call the physician?” The sudden fear in his brother’s voice stirred him. Naturally, his brother would be worried. Charles had been the one with their father, hunting in Scotland, when the man shrugged off his bouts of pain and dizziness until one day he just collapsed. Later they learned their father had had a cancer of the stomach, far progressed.
“No, Charlie.” Oakley lay a calming hand on his brother’s arm. “I’m not sick; at least, it’s nothing that time won’t cure.”
He released his brother and then, elbows on knees, rested his head in his hands.
There was a shuffle of movement downstairs, the butler peering back into the entryway with curiosity and then scurrying away.
Charlie whistled, a long, ringing noise that broke the silence.
“You’re in love,” Charles said finally, shaking his head, and grinning once more.
Coming from his brother’s mouth, the words sounded so ridiculous that Oakley laughed. Then he frowned.
“Have you ever been in love, Charles?” Oakley challenged.
“Only a dozen times a week,” his brother said, laughing. “This week it’s this little actress over at Sadler’s Wells.”
Oakley snorted. His brother definitely experienced a different kind of love.
“Who is it then? That Coswell woman that Mum’s been so flustered about?”
Maggie, Oakley wanted to counter, not that Coswell woman. Instead, he merely nodded his head in assent.
“Here I thought you were a stodgy man, old before your time. You’ve managed to get yourself involved in one of the more scandalous marriages of the season, procure a membership to the infamous Harridan House, which you did not bother to share with your younger brother, I might add, and then you fall in love with a new mistress with whom you’ve been seen cavorting all over town. What have you done with my oh-so-discreet older brother?”
Harridan House. It had been at least a week since Oakley had thought of Amphitrite. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had thought of her. Maggie had replaced her completely in his life. Perhaps he was a bit fickle.
Amphitrite. He conjured an image of her in his mind but it was Maggie he saw now—Maggie whose long legs had wrapped around him, whose pink lips quirked in laughter, whose brown eyes were flecked with amber, whose…
Wait right there. Oakley gripped the banister to keep his balance. It just couldn’t be. But of course it could, and suddenly everything fit into place: why she had broken it off when he’d asked her to be his mistress, why she had flirted with him so brazenly that night at Lady Ashburton’s.
Maggie was Amphitrite, one and the same.
He had never been so certain of anything in his life.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Five days after she sent Oakley the note, Maggie believed the world had been leeched of all color. She had not realized just how much she had come to depend upon their time together—how much she cared for him.
Just how much did she care for him? A taunting little voice asked inside her head.
Too much, she answered. So much so that it still brought her joy even while she mourned the loss.
“Darling, this is silly,” Diana chided her, running a soothing hand over her back. “The brat is your daughter, not the other way around. You’ve done nothing to endanger her marriage chances. If anything, being seen in the company of an earl is helpful. And poor Oakley!”
Maggie looked up at that. “Poor Oakley?”
“Yes!” Diana cried. “The young man hunted me down two days ago, said you’d returned all his letters unopened and couldn�
��t I change your mind?”
“He came to see you?”
“You did have the maid turn him away at the door. Short of waiting outside of your house on the off chance you’d step out, which he did by the way, I suppose he felt he needed to call in the reserves,” Diana defended him. “You’ve made the man so desperate he even returned to Harridan House looking for the long lost Amphitrite!”
“He what?” Maggie gasped. For the first time in five days, she stopped regretting her decision. How dare he? Was one woman so interchangeable for another that he would go to Maggie when he could not have Amphitrite and to Amphitrite when he could not have Maggie?
“He left this for you.” Diana pulled out a rectangle of creamy paper that Maggie recognized as his card. The man was bold, so bold that he apparently no longer cared to keep his identity at Harridan House secret. “And Lucy mentioned that he came only to find you.”
He had scrawled a note on the back of the card: Amphitrite, forgive me. Grant me just one more night. Your Poseidon.
“He didn’t come to find me,” Maggie scoffed. “He came to find Amphitrite.”
Diana raised an eyebrow derisively. “Please, darling, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that you’re both.”
“He doesn’t know that!”
Diana sighed wearily. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie said angrily. “But I want him to learn that he can’t treat women this way. He can’t treat me this way.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Harridan House remained unchanged, Madame Rouge’s boudoir as well.
With Lucy’s skillful help, Maggie dressed up as Amphitrite, adorned her hair with pearls and seashells, tied a blue silk mask around her face.
The mask lay heavy on her skin. It was difficult to breathe.
At every moment, she knew that she was Maggie inside a costume. She didn’t have the heart for playacting.
When he entered the room, looking so handsome and vibrant that her eyes stung with a wet heat, she managed to pretend.
She sauntered toward him and pressed her body against his, threaded her arms around his neck.
His arms circled around her, the palms of his hands curving around her buttocks and she nearly forgot her purpose, her desire to teach him a lesson.
“My Lord Oakley,” she whispered, “I thought I would never learn who my masked lover was. But now, as you have revealed yourself, you have no need for the mask.”
He didn’t protest when she pulled on the silk, untying the knot.
Maggie couldn’t help herself as she teased him with the cloth, the way he had teased her so many weeks ago, sliding it across his jaw, across the sliver of skin visible above his cravat.
He reached for her mask, but she stopped him and stepped away.
“No, my lord,” Maggie chided him, unable to keep the edge from her teasing tone.
“Then I wish for my mask as well,” he said, his voice low and more gravelly than usual. “For I must be Poseidon, the only man with the right to meet you here.”
He said it as if he were so certain of himself, as if she did belong to him. If only she didn’t know that he treated all women this way, as interchangeable bodies he wished to own.
“But gods often change their earthly form when they intend to seduce,” she managed to say, running the scrap of black silk over her own body now.
“So they do,” he growled. He stepped forward and her eyes widened at the coiled strength of his movement. She stood her ground with difficulty.
“I’ll need to make certain, my lord,” Maggie purred, holding up one hand to stop his progress, “that you have no disguise. Please, if you would be so kind…” She made a little gesture with her hand toward his coat.
He did stop, his head cocked to the side, considering. Then he did as she asked and shrugged out of his coat.
His gaze locked with hers, he continued to undress.
Maggie found herself perspiring. The room was too hot, the air between them tangible with electricity.
Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t doing a very good job at teaching him a lesson.
She took a deep breath. It would come. She merely needed patience. And if she was to be perfectly truthful, her actions this night were also for her.
For her pleasure.
Finally he stood naked before her, letting her look her fill. He seemed to know that she was in charge this night and waited for her next command.
“Lie on the bed.”
While he did as she said, Maggie bent down to pick up his cravat.
When she rose again, he was on the bed, leaning back on his elbows, watching her. The expression on his face—a funny hiccup in the vicinity of her heart—made her want to burst into tears.
Once again she asked herself what she was doing. Torturing herself? She should run far away from this man. The wild, riotous emotion inside her felt so different from what she’d felt for her husband.
Oakley didn’t deserve any of her tender feelings, no matter that look in his eyes.
She took a deep breath and walked around the bed until she stood by his head.
“Your arms, please.”
He stretched his arms above his head. She wrapped the cloth securely around his wrists. Then she fastened the loose end around the bedpost.
Her task done, she pushed all other thoughts from her head and studied his body.
“You say you wish to be my only lover,” Maggie whispered, “but am I your only one?”
“Yes, and I want only you.” The wretch smiled even as he lied. She hadn’t really expected him to lie. Not Oakley, not the man she’d come to know these last weeks. The amount his deception hurt surprised her.
She steeled her resolve again and climbed onto the bed.
“Good. A woman wants to know that.”
Not a flicker of guilt crossed his face.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he offered.
“All right.” Maggie leaned over him, letting her hair fall across his chest, teasing his skin, the silk of her dress brushing his groin. “Why did you come to Harridan House?”
She barely touched him but simply the sensation of her hair and the scent of her skin, so near him, was exquisite agony.
Oakley resisted the impulse to pull on the cloth that bound him. He’d play the game the way she wanted. After all, it was clear from what she said that she still thought he didn’t know who she was.
But she knew exactly who he was. He was fairly certain she’d known all along, but by sending his card, he’d made certain of it. Apparently, she wasn’t particularly happy with him.
As long as she kept touching him, he’d follow her lead.
For now.
Her mouth found one of his nipples and Oakley moved despite himself, trying to get closer to her mouth and to rub himself against any part of her he could reach.
“We had an appointment,” he rasped, knowing that he wasn’t really answering her question.
Her teeth grazed his skin dangerously, biting down lightly, almost like a warning.
Hell, he knew it was a warning but he wanted whatever punishment she meted out with her body.
“Come now, my lord Poseidon.” She used his alias mockingly. “Tell me.”
“Oh, you mean the first time?” Oakley tried to keep the laughter out of his voice. She was making her way across his chest, her tongue licking a hot path, and when she found his other nipple all thoughts of laughter fled.
“Exactly,” she urged.
He found it difficult to focus on anything but her skillful tongue. Not that he wanted to think about the whole fiasco anyway, but he had promised to tell her whatever she wanted.
“I’d been jilted. I was curious to see the place where it was rumored my erstwhile fiancée had been trysting with her lover. I never expected to stay. I never expected to return. But I fell under your spell.”
She seemed satisfied with his answer for she moved again, down his body,
the side of his chest, to his hip, finding all the most sensitive places till his skin was alive with the fire and each touch of her tongue was a newly lit flame.
He wanted to run his hands through her hair, to touch her skin, but his movement was aborted by his own cravat and he muttered under his breath.
Her lips touched the hollow where his thigh and groin met, her hot breath tickling his cock, and he nearly leaped off the bed.
Maybe this wasn’t a game he wanted to play. Or perhaps he should simply change the rules.
“Why did you turn down my offer?” He knew very well why she’d said no. Maggie Coswell would never agree to be any man’s mistress. But Amphitrite…
“I ask the questions.” She moved again, this time the hard, pointed tip of her tongue met his already straining, fully distended muscle. He pulled again on the cravat.
“If you were my mistress, I would have given you everything,” he goaded.
“I told you, Oakley,” she began—and for the first time he wondered that he had never recognized her voice—“I don’t work here.”
Her mouth closed over him, taking him in, and he groaned aloud at the incredible, tight, wet feel of her lips sucking him, her tongue swirling around his cock. He thrust his hips up even as he strained against the cloth that bound him.
He knew he shouldn’t say it, but he wanted to see how far he could push her.
“You don’t have to work here to work for me.”
He tasted so good in her mouth, hard and salty. She could have lost herself in sucking him. She almost didn’t hear what he said. Then comprehension dawned.
The man was unbelievable! Why on earth had she spent days moping after him?
As she slid her mouth off of him, she knew at least one reason. She loved his body. No matter what he said to her, she wanted to fuck him. She wanted to feel this delicious cock inside of her. She knew she was shameless and right then, already creaming and clenching in anticipation, she simply didn’t care.
She straddled his hips and slowly lowered herself over him, savoring the sensation of each steely inch, gasping at the feel of his hard cock spreading the walls of her cunt.
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