by Gayle Wilson
“Not since you showed me Father’s announcement of my betrothal to Gerald. Or perhaps I should sayyour announcement?”
She could hear the slight challenge in her voice, and from his puzzled expression, she knew he had heard it, too.
“My announcement?”
“Did you fabricate that entire scenario? Gerald indicated that he knew nothing about any plan to announce our engagement.”
“Then Amberton is a liar,” Raven said calmly. Whatever story the viscount had told her probably had something to do with her presence in his apartment yesterday. “Surely you aren’t inclined to believe anything he asserts. Not after yesterday.”
“But, you see, Idid believe it. On the night of Aunt Agatha’s party. He implied that you’d created that announcement to trick me into a runaway marriage.”
“If you remember…” He stopped, allowing her to complete his thought.
She did remember. She had been the one who’d suggested that flight to the Border.
“The announcementwas sent, to thePost and theGazette. Reynolds was barely able to prevent its publication. And I don’t believe it was sent without Amberton’s knowledge,” he said.
“No,” she admitted, convinced by the quiet sincerity in Raven’s voice as he reiterated what he’d said the last time they had been together in this room. “But I did believe him. That night. And since he’d already suggested that you’d managed to break me to the bit… I’m afraid I reacted very foolishly. He invited me to play cards. Not in the card room, but alone upstairs. And to prove that I wasn’t under your thumb, as he’d said, I agreed.”
There was no response, either verbally or in the blue eyes. Catherine had expected that by this time Raven would have chided her for her actions or have made his disgust over them apparent, but there was nothing but polite interest in the lucid blue depths.
He doesn’t care, she thought, and that idea was remarkably painful. Or I’ve destroyed whatever feelings he might have had about the impropriety of his wife’s playing cards alone with a man by my far-more-improper actions of yesterday.
“And I lost,” she forced herself to continue, swallowing the tightness that had begun to gather in her throat.
“I told you it was all a matter of numbers,” Raven said, the corners of his mouth deepening. He hadn’t really expected this confession. By the terms of their agreement, he had no right to an explanation, yet she seemed to believe he was entitled to one.
“I couldn’t keep my mind on the game,” she continued. “He suggested I wager my bracelet—the ruby-and-diamond one you’d admired on the way to the party. But when I tried to give it to him, after the game, he said it was something you’d surely miss. And you wouldn’t miss…the other.”
“The other?”
The question was very quietly spoken, but there was still no censure in Raven’s face when she glanced up to answer him.
“A kiss. That was to be the forfeiture. And Iwas afraid you’d notice I’d lost the bracelet. You’d hadn’t even had time to receive the bill,” she said, her voice faltering slightly.
Raven looked down at his fingers, which had found the silver letter opener on his desk. He traced the handle’s design with his thumb, trying to control lips that seemed determined to smile. Catherine had believed he’d rather she give up a kiss to that bastard than a bracelet.
He wondered for the thousandth time why he’d made this agreement.Because that was the only way you could win her and you knew it, he reminded himself grimly. At that unpleasant thought, he lost the inclination to amusement her hesitant confession had evoked. She was his wife, and she knew nothing about him, nothing about the way he felt. Especially the way he felt about her.
“And I missed our waltz,” she continued, the non sequitur revealing, perhaps, how painful her recital was. But when his gaze lifted to her face, Catherine realized by the slight movement of the stern line of his lips that Raven knew exactly what she was talking about.
She took a deep breath, determined to finish. “And then he sent me a message. Yesterday. Just before I should have begun dressing for the party. If I didn’t come to pay the forfeiture, he’d tell you about the wager. He said he needed the money.”
“And so you went.”
His eyes were once more on the movement of his long fingers, their darkness a contrast to the palely gleaming silver of the opener they held.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And he demanded more than his kiss,” he suggested.
“He put his tongue in my mouth,” she admitted, shivering at the remembrance of the disgusting slackness of Gerald’s lips over hers. She wished suddenly that she hadn’t told Raven that, but it was too late to deny what had happened. And the other was even more repellent. “And then—he put his mouth on my body,” Catherine finished, determined to tell him everything. But if, as they said, confession was good for the soul, she wondered why she felt so awful. Her husband’s face was completely calm, and when he spoke again, he didn’t say what she’d expected.
“I have only one question,” Raven said. “In light of our agreement, I don’t understand why you didn’t tell Amberton to call due the bet and be damned. Idid promise not to restrict your actions, and nothing you’ve told me seems serious enough to warrant a breach of our contract. You certainly weren’t entertaining a lover yesterday afternoon. It appeared that I’d interrupted a brawl rather than a romantic interlude.”
“I thought you’d be angry,” she said truthfully.
“Then I’d have violated the freedom I promised you.”
“I suppose I never thought you’d hold to those terms,” she said almost hopefully.
“I always honor my contracts, Catherine,” Raven said, “no matter how unfavorable to me they may eventually prove to be. It’s the only way to have your word trusted. If you break one agreement, then the person you’ve cheated will never trust you to keep your promises the next time.”
Catherine reflected disappointedly that she really didn’t want to hear a dissertation on contracts. Nothing had gone as she’d expected. She’d made her painful confession, and Raven had treated the entire incident as if she had been making mountains out of molehills. All he could talk about, it seemed, were contracts and agreements. What she wanted, on the other hand, was the comfort of his arms about her as they had been yesterday after Gerald’s attack. Why did he never react as she expected him to?
“What did you do to him?” she asked, thinking suddenly that he’d never told her what had happened between them after he’d sent her home with Tom. Beyond the fact that Amberton had had a sword and he’d taken it away from him.
“Not, apparently, as much as you did. I think that’s why the had to resort to stabbing me. He didn’t have much fight left in him after you got through with him.”
She could hear the sudden amusement in his voice, but she didn’t understand its cause. “What I did?”
“I only hope, Catherine, that if I ever manage to displease you to the extent the viscount did, you won’t resort to such desperate measures against me.”
“I don’t understand,” she admitted.
He smiled at her confusion, realizing that she really didn’t. Confirmation, had he needed any, that the story Amberton had told him was a fabrication. At least the supposed ending of that story had been fabricated by the viscount’s vicious tongue.
“For all your professed recklessness,” Raven said, savoring that knowledge, “you’re a remarkably innocent child.”
“I amnot a child,” she denied, stung by his evaluation. She was aware again of the difference in their ages and experience. Raven had traveled all over the world, and she had never even left England. He was the only man who always made her feel childish.
“No,” he admitted, “you aren’t. You are, however, a very beautiful young woman who’s been confronted for perhaps the first time with the bitter lesson that people are not always what they seem. I hope it doesn’t make a cynic of you.”
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��I should never have trusted him.” She had fallen into Gerald’s trap as easily as she had into that set for her two years ago by Richard Henning’s charm. Too trusting by far, she acknowledged bitterly, of the gentlemen of her circle, who had, in the end, proved themselves to be far less than chivalrous.
“You have to trust someone,” Raven said easily. “Next time you’ll be wiser in choosing the object of your confidence.”
Next time, he thought, perhaps she’d confide in him. If he taught her that he could be trusted. Knowing it was time to leave, Raven pushed himself up from the desk, an awkward effort, made with his right hand flat against the cluttered papers.
For the first time since she’d begun her confession, Catherine remembered his injury—an injury she’d been the cause of. Her eyes traced over his left shoulder, looking for any indication of the bandage that she knew concealed the wound made by Amberton’s blade. The morning coat, however, seemed to fit with its accustomed smoothness over his muscular frame. Her gaze lifted from her examination of his body to find his eyes on her face.
“Try not to grow up entirely while I’m gone. I should hate to miss any of your further adventures,” he said, smiling at her.
“Where are you going?”
“Manchester, and then perhaps into Scotland. I haven’t quite finalized my itinerary.”
“But I should think…” She hesitated, knowing that she had no right to question his plans. She couldn’t imagine, however, that a jarring carriage ride would be very com- fortable.
“I shouldn’t be gone more than a fortnight,” he continued, the clear blue eyes still resting on her face. “Reynolds will keep you informed.”
“And that?” she questioned, lifting her hand in the general direction of his broad left shoulder.
“Is nothing for you to be concerned about,” he said quietly.
His denial of her right to worry over him hurt. “But what if it becomes inflamed? And you’re away from home.”
“Home?” He repeated the word questioningly, wondering if her concept of a home was this politely distant relationship they shared. So different from what he’d hoped for, from the warmth of the home and family he’d known all his life.
Catherine couldn’t read whatever emotion was hidden in that word. “Thisis your home, Raven. And I am your wife. Even if we intend to keep our relationship on a business basis, I should think you must know that I’m concerned about your welfare.”
“Are you, Catherine?” he asked. And at her slight nod, he smiled at her again.
Altogether, Raven had smiled at her more today than in the entire length of their previous encounters, she thought. And that was very strange, considering that she had expected quite the opposite reaction, given the events of yesterday.
“I don’t suppose your business could be postponed?” she suggested hesitantly. “At least until your shoulder’s had an opportunity to heal.”
“I think not,” he said. “I told you not to worry. I’m well accustomed to looking after myself.”
Reluctantly, she was forced to admit defeat. “Then I’ll see you when you return.”
Raven had moved very close to her, and she realized she was blocking his access to the doorway leading to the front of the house. She stepped aside just as he moved to go around her. Once again she found herself in breathtaking proximity to his very masculine body. Her hand lifted to find something to help her regain her balance, and what it found, quite naturally somehow, was the wide expanse of a muscled chest. Surprisingly, his right hand came to rest warmly over her left, which was lying now against the fine material of his coat.
“Try not to bring London tumbling down about your ears while I’m gone,” he said softly.
She nodded, but she was remembering her head resting against this same chest yesterday and his hard arms reassuringly locked around her body. And last night… Most of the night she had spent remembering the feel of his lips under the caress of hers. And remembering his body, the width of his shoulders and the muscled chest.
Raven didn’t say anything else for a long time, but there was no discomfort in the continued silence of their strange tableau. Only his hand was touching hers, which rested on the solid strength of his body. After a long time he lowered his head, moving very slowly, perhaps as she had done last night, giving her an opportunity to step back, to break the delicate connection between them. His lips touched against the smooth cream of the skin stretched over her collarbone, above the low neckline of her jonquil yellow morning dress. At the first electric jolt of sensation, her eyelids fell, closing suddenly in response to what he was doing.
His mouth moved without any pressure along the fragile bone that led to the slim column of her neck. The feeling of his lips gliding over her flesh was like nothing she’d ever felt before. There was no attempt at domination, no application of the unusual power of his body. Raven was touching her exactly as his strong, dark fingers caressed the frail stems of the imported crystal with which his table was set each evening. The fingers she had watched every night with such fascination.
She wondered what they would feel like against the rounded globe of her breast, their callused strength pleasantly abrasive against her skin. She must have taken a breath at that image, for she realized that she had forgotten to breathe before, holding her body still so that she wouldn’t miss any of the sensations caused by the movement of his mouth. His lips hesitated, lifting away from her throat at that quick intake of breath, and desperate for their touch, she heard herself whisper, “Please.”
Raven waited a heartbeat, evaluating the meaning of that request, but finally, hoping that he had rightly interpreted what she wanted, his mouth began again its slow, relentless journey. Up the slim column of her neck now, as she turned her head to give him freedom to touch her there. The caress slowed again when he reached the pulse under her jawline, nuzzling against the increased flow of blood through her veins caused by his nearness. She realized suddenly that he was running his tongue gently over the fluttering beat. She could feel the heat and wetness, and she had never felt anything more sensual in her life than the warmth of his opened mouth on her body.
It was nothing like yesterday. Nothing like Gerald’s touch. It was as different as day and night, as dusk and dawn. The dawn of her recognition of just how much she had hungered for this. She hadn’t known what she had wanted those nights she’d watched Raven’s hands moving over the fragility of the glass he held so securely. Those times she’d studied the slight movements of his firmly chiseled lips. But her body had known. And it was responding to his touch now as if in those weeks it had simply waited in blind anticipation of this moment.
Raven removed his hand from hers, and she felt his thumb and forefinger against her chin. She opened her eyes as he lifted up her face. The blue of his eyes was more clear than she’d ever seen it, dazzling in the sharp brightness of his gaze. His mouth was not smiling, its hard line stern and set. And she wanted it. Over hers. Involuntarily, she moistened her lips with her tongue. His eyes followed its movement, and then his eyelids closed, hiding the blue flame. And in response to the unspoken invitation, his dark head lowered to find the moisture her tongue had left on her lips.
His mouth wasn’t hard, as she’d expected from the thin, forbidding line in which it was too frequently set. Instead it was warm and gentle. Firm and knowing. He knew exactly how to touch her—not domineeringly, but with none of the disgusting slackness of Amberton’s kiss. His lips settled over hers, moving, almost taunting her with their power to make her respond. Suggesting that there was more that she wanted, and now needed.
The expression of her need was running in shivering torrents through her frame. She moved against the hard body that was bending over hers, wanting to make contact with its power all along the length of hers. Somehow his arm was behind her, holding her so that she was firmly supported and free to think of nothing but what his mouth was doing. And of the movement of his body against her own. Raven was so vital, warm and re
al, and she wanted to touch his skin as she had last night. To feel it move beneath her fingers, a smooth sheath for the muscles underneath.
His mouth opened suddenly over hers, his tongue invading, hard and sure. As hard as the muscles she had just been imagining she was once again touching. As hard as the chest her breasts were crushed against by the power of his arm against her back. As hard as…
Catherine gasped a little under the shattering impact of the discovery that she was not the only one responding physically to what was happening between them—an occurrence so foreign to the arrangement to which he had scrupulously held in the long weeks of their marriage. This is what she had wanted, she now knew, but he had never before indicated that he had any interest in her body. As his was now clearly revealing that he did. She wondered why he had never before seemed to want to touch her.
Idon’t need a mistress, he had said so long ago.What I need is a hostess. The two roles had been clearly defined and separated.
So he already had a mistress. That, of course, was why he’d not shown Catherine his expertise at this art before. And expert he certainly was, she admitted bitterly. He had just forced her to forget what had happened yesterday in Amberton’s apartment, and in doing so, he had left her trembling in his arms like a schoolgirl.
You’re such a child, he’d told her. Apparently when it came to lovemaking, he’d been right. Or at least he’d reduced her to one. He was, she was forced to admit, far more experienced at this than she. Her mouth withdrew from the caressing touch of his tongue. She was embarrassed to remember how passionately hers had been matching the provocative movements of his—revealing, perhaps, in willingly following his instruction, how inexperienced she really was. The chaste kisses she’d allowed her beaux to steal on dark balconies and in the cunningly sheltered alcoves of a dozen ballrooms—kisses that she had thought so daring—had been nothing like this. Nothing to match what she had just shared with the man who was, and who was not yet, in any true sense of the word, her husband.
A business arrangement—that’s all he had wanted from her. And she had practically thrown herself at his head. Raven had kissed her because she had made it obvious that she’d wanted him to.Please, she had begged, and he had accommodated her. In her embarrassed realization of what a fool she had just made of herself, she stepped back, removing herself from his embrace.