“Oh, don’t look so alarmed.” Phyllida set down the glass, then took an oyster from Cameron’s plate and tipped it down her throat. “I think it wonderful that you’ve gone and eloped with the elusive Lord Cameron. I’m happy for you, even if he did throw me over for a younger woman.”
Her eyes glittered in mirth, the brittleness gone from her laughter. Phyllida Chase’s ice had melted.
“Would you like to join us, Phyllida?” Ainsley asked her coolly. “They’ll bring you your own plate and glass if you ask them.”
Phyllida sent her a sunny smile. “That would be lovely.” She turned and waved through the crowd. “Giorgio, I’m here. I’ve found friends.”
A broad-shouldered, dark-haired man moved past the tables toward them, and Cameron rose to meet him.
Phyllida caught the man’s hand when he reached them. “Look, darling, it’s Lord Cameron and his new wife. Ainsley, this is Giorgio Prario, the famous tenor. Giorgio, love, they’ve invited us to dine with them.”
The Italian man was alarmingly tall, and he stood toe-to- toe with Cameron. But Signor Prario held out his hand in a friendly manner and took Cameron’s in a firm grip. “Yes, the Scottish lord who provided us with the means to remove to a happier place. I thank you.” He bowed to Ainsley. “My lady. I also thank you.”
Ainsley blinked. “Cameron provided you the means?”
The two men sat down and the ready waiters appeared with extra plates and cutlery, glasses and napkins. More champagne was poured, and the maître d’hôtel personally offered them the best from the kitchen. Cameron was a very rich man, and every restaurateur in Paris knew it.
“Money for the letters, darling,” Phyllida said when the waiters finally departed. “You didn’t think I truly cared for what the queen gets up to with her horseman, did you? I only cared that she’d pay dearly to save herself embarrassment.” She beamed at Cameron. “Cam’s generosity gave me the last bit I needed so that Giorgio and I could set up a house here. My husband is busily divorcing me in London, and when that’s all done, Giorgio and I will be married.”
Phyllida radiated happiness. Her smile was wide, her eyes soft, and she looked far younger than the cold, remorseless woman Ainsley had faced in the gardens at Kilmorgan.
“Giorgio is now the most sought-after tenor on the Continent,” Phyllida went on, voice filled with pride. “The crowned heads are all demanding him. He’s giving a concert tomorrow night at the opera house. Darlings, you must come. You’ll understand my infatuation with him when you hear him sing.”
“But, Phyllida,” Ainsley burst out as soon as Phyllida paused for breath. “Why all the scheming with the letters? Why not just tell me what you wanted the money for? I might have been a bit more sympathetic, or even tried to help you get it.”
Phyllida’s eyes widened. “Confess to the prim-and-proper confidante of the queen that I wanted to run away from my lawfully wedded husband? You, who were so famously devoted to an elderly man who bored you senseless?” Phyllida lifted her glass of champagne. “I am delighted to see you’ve let Cameron corrupt you.”
Giorgio had turned to Cameron to ask him a question about horses, and the two men were already deep in conversation about that. Ainsley watched Cameron become interested in their discussion about differences in various race courses.
I was already corrupted, dear Phyllida. Cameron simply made me acknowledge it.
“Surely you could have raised the money without resorting to blackmail,” Ainsley said.
“Not at all. My so-called friends were as upright and closed-minded as you. They’d rather obey the rules and live in misery than boldly snatch a few moments of happiness. Besides, I wanted to punish Her Little Majesty for forcing me into marriage with an ice-cold man. To Mr. Chase, a wife is little more than an automaton to stand beside him and say the right things at the right time—to benefit him. I’m surprised he didn’t store me in a closet every night and wind me up again every morning.”
“Was Signor Prario the happiness the queen had taken from you?” Ainsley asked, remembering their conversation in the garden. “The reason she made you marry Mr. Chase?”
“No, no, I didn’t meet Giorgio until about a year ago. But it was a similar thing—ten years ago, the most delightful man in the world asked me to marry him, but the queen refused to let me. He wasn’t rich enough or well-born enough to be able to override the queen’s objections, and she persuaded my family to her side. I was too young and too afraid to simply run away with him. He’s long gone, in America, probably married to someone else by now. Mr. Chase was looking for a society wife about the same time, and the queen influenced my family to marry me off to him instead. Our Victoria buried me in misery for ten long years. I decided that she needed to suffer a little for it, though she’ll never quite understand what she did to me.”
Ainsley thought she understood a little. Phyllida was a woman of strong emotions, and being locked to a man who had no interest in her must have been very, very hard. Ainsley’s marriage hadn’t been her choice either, but at least John Douglas had been a warm man. Friendly and kind, he’d done his best to make his young bride happy. The fact that he hadn’t entirely succeeded hadn’t been his fault.
One thing Ainsley didn’t understand, however. “If you were so in love with Signor Prario, Phyllida, why did you take up with Cameron?”
Phyllida waved this away. “Because Cameron has a reputation for lavishing very expensive gifts on his ladies.” Phyllida glanced pointedly at Ainsley’s diamonds, and Ainsley stopped herself touching the strand on her bosom. “Giorgio and I wanted to elope, but neither of us had a bean. He raised money by singing, and I by the only way I knew how—out of other men. Cameron is very generous, you must admit.”
“And Signor Prario didn’t mind this?”
Giorgio was now engrossed in his discussion with Cameron, which had moved to sport in general. He didn’t look in the least worried that Cameron had once been his mistress’s lover.
“Giorgio understands that I love him to distraction,” Phyllida said. “He knows that people like us need patrons—singers no different than ladies. Now he’s attracted a patron of his own, a very rich, elderly Frenchman who dotes on young tenors. So we have no more worries about money.” Phyllida gave Ainsley an open look. “You don’t know, darling, what it’s like to fall asleep at night with a man who adores you. To open your eyes in the morning and look upon him, knowing that your day will be filled with delight. It’s absolute bliss.”
No, Ainsley didn’t know what it was like. She had to glance away, to pretend interest in the last drop of champagne in her glass.
Phyllida rattled on, not knowing that she’d said anything awkward. “I can already tell that you’re good for Cameron—heavens, he married you, the man who put it about, loudly, that he’d never go to the altar again. The Mackenzies are hard, hard men, but you seemed to have softened this one a little.” She squeezed Ainsley’s hand. “Do come to the concert, you and Cameron both. You won’t regret it.”
Too damn many people here. Cameron shifted on his seat in the crowded box high above the stage while below them, Prario burst into song.
The fact that Phyllida has stuffed Prario’s box with as many people as she could meant that Ainsley sat slap against Cameron on his right. This was fine, but the presence of so many others meant that he couldn’t take advantage of the closeness as he’d like. He had to sit, hard and aching, with Ainsley’s scent under his nose, and not be able to do anything about it.
Phyllida sat on the other side of Ainsley, with Phyllida’s Parisian friends taking up the other chairs. The box was tiny in the eighteenth-century jewel box of a theatre, and Phyllida sat forward to watch Giorgio Prario, her face glowing with love.
Cameron had to admit that Prario was good. His voice filled the theatre with solid sound, his notes unwavering. Cameron tried to lose himself in the beauty of the music, while his trousers stretched too tight. He should have overridden his Parisian valet’s horror and worn his kilt.
Ainsley leaned to him, her warmth heady, and her sweet voice drifted into his ear. “How many buttons, Lord Cameron?”
Cameron’s breath stopped. He felt a hand on his waistband, but their corner of the box was too dark for him to see his own lap. Ainsley’s hair and eyes glowed in the light from the stage, and her smile was sultry.
“Devil,” he murmured back.
“I say four.” Her breath tingled down every nerve.
“Eight.” That would open him all the way. “The whole bloody lot.”
“You’re daring, my lord.”
“I don’t believe you’ll do it,” he whispered back.
Ainsley popped open the first button, bold as brass. She kept her eyes on the stage, sitting modestly in her chair while her fingers opened buttons too damn slowly for his taste. Cameron’s heart hammered as each one came undone, and then he was sitting in the opera house with his trousers open.
Cameron wore thick underwear against the cold of October, but damned if Ainsley didn’t find a way inside. She’d removed her gloves, he noted as her bare fingers closed around him.
On the stage, Prario launched into an aria. The crowd hung on every note. Ainsley’s hand slid down Cameron’s immense and burning hardness and squeezed.
He hid a groan. The music swelled, and the noise released from Cameron’s throat was drowned in Giorgio’s notes.
Cameron leaned his forehead in his hand as Ainsley worked him. Ainsley, the minx, kept her gaze on the stage, even plied her fan languidly, all the while her left hand squeezed, pulled, stroked, twisted.
When her fingers touched his tight balls, Cameron almost left the chair. He made himself still, his hand clenched on his thigh while her hand tightened on him.
What she did drove him wild. He wanted to pull Ainsley onto the chair with him and burrow under her skirts until he was satisfied. He wanted to drag her to him for a long kiss; he wanted to rip the buttons from her bodice and feast on the package inside.
“Damn you,” he whispered.
Ainsley smiled. She glided her hand up and down him in fine, hot strokes. God, he was coming apart. He clenched his jaw to stifle his groans, but he wanted to shout to the world what his sweet little lover was doing to him in the dark of the box.
Below them, Prario wound to the top of the aria, his voice clear and true as he scaled the notes. He reached the top one and held it, and Cameron broke.
Cam snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it over himself, Ainsley moving her hand away just in time. Cameron’s seed spilled in an ecstasy of feeling and music, joy in the heat of Ainsley pressed against him.
“I want to be doing this inside you,” he said savagely into her ear. “I want to feel you taking me, knowing that you’re mine.”
“I’d like that too,” she whispered.
Cameron rode out his climax as Prario’s voice slid downward in glissando. At the end, Prario threw out his arms and bellowed his last, loud note.
The crowd roared its appreciation, and Phyllida leaned to Ainsley, eyes shining. “Didn’t I say he was wonderful?”
“Indeed,” Ainsley said calmly as Phyllida sprang to her feet. Ainsley pulled on her gloves and rose to join the ovation, leaving Cameron to hastily refasten his trousers in the dark.
As soon as the door closed behind them in the townhouse, Cameron said to the footman, “Leave us.”
Well trained, the footman turned down the last gaslight and discreetly faded away. Ainsley’s heart fluttered in excitement. Cameron had refused Phyllida’s invitation to a grand soiree after the performance and had nearly shoved Ainsley into his town coach, telling the coachman to get them quickly home.
Now Cameron pressed Ainsley into the paneled wall in the dark, pinning her wrists above her head. He kissed her without a word, not letting her speak or ask questions. He was taking, lifting Ainsley up the wall until their faces were level.
His kisses were brutal, burning. Cameron might have kept his wanting dammed after she’d played with him in the theatre, but now he let the dam burst.
“Vixen,” he whispered. “Unmanning me in public.”
Ainsley licked across his mouth. “I enjoyed it. I believe you did as well.”
His voice went soft but savage as he used words that should offend her but instead excited her beyond measure. He told her what he wanted to do to her, and what pet names he’d call her. No lady should listen to such things, but, as Cameron had pointed out weeks ago, Ainsley wasn’t quite a lady.
He kissed her bosom, diamonds catching in his teeth. His hands went to the clasps on the back of her bodice, and he made a grunt of frustration as he tugged.
“Tear it open,” she whispered. “I don’t care.”
She didn’t. Why stop this sensation when a simple needle and thread would repair the damage?
Cameron smiled a feral smile, and he ceased being gentle. He yanked wide her bodice, kissing and licking her flesh as the fabric came away. The cool of the panel pressed into her back, the hot hardness of Cameron into her front. Ainsley felt dizzy, decadent, wicked.
He disrobed her, a layer at a time, right there in hall beneath the curve of the spiral stairs. So many layers a lady had to wear, and Cameron kissed her and touched her as each one came off.
Ainsley didn’t protest until he tugged open his trousers, not even bothering to remove his coat.
“We’re in the front hall,” she said.
“We were in a box in the theatre. You didn’t worry about propriety then.”
“It was dark.”
“It’s dark here, and my servants know damn well better than to disturb me.”
While Cameron spoke, he lifted Ainsley against the wall, cushioning its hard surface with his arms. He supported her hips, and by now she knew how to wrap her legs around him as Cameron entered her in one smooth stroke.
The erotic feeling of him awakened her, excited her. His words died to whispered breaths, and his strength kept Ainsley from falling.
Nothing existed at that moment but herself and him. The raw sensuality of Cameron, the smooth lip of the paneling, the sounds in his throat as he loved her.
Hot, hard, sensation. Ainsley arched against her lover, the feel of his coat exciting against her bare skin. Cameron caught the sounds of her aching need in his mouth.
They rocked into the paneling, and then his eyes went dark, his pupils spreading, and she felt him release inside her. Cameron kept thrusting, his kisses hotter but more relaxed, the frenzy dying into warmth.
Cameron carried Ainsley upstairs, where the coal fire heated her bedchamber, and laid her on the chaise while he quickly got out of his clothes. Ainsley’s clothes they’d left all over the hall. She started to protest that they should retrieve them, but he silenced her with a kiss. That’s what he’d hired the damn servants for, he growled.
Cameron wanted loving, not talking. The armless chaise was perfect for having Ainsley on top of him, and soon, Cameron was buried inside her again, Ainsley sighing in pleasure.
Damn, but she was beautiful. Ainsley’s breasts moved while she rode him, nipples dusky pink against her Scots- pale skin. Her hair was still piled on top of her head, some of the little curls dripping down her neck.
When Ainsley gave him a little smile, her eyes half closed, Cameron knew that no woman would ever be more beautiful than Ainsley. The softness of her body, even the fading, snaking scars on her belly, made her so, so lovely. She belonged to him, always, forever.
He’d loved her squeezing him with her hand, but being inside her was ten times better. She was tight, damned tight. He loved it. He loved her.
The last thought made Cameron lose all control. He rocked against her, hands on her thighs, her hands splayed on his chest as she swayed. She made sweet noises in her climax, but Cameron’s coming was raw. He held on to her, tight, tight, and his Oh, fuck! rang through the room.
Never go, never. I need this. I need you.
He pulled Ainsley down to him and they drowsed
in afterglow, warm by the fire. He pressed his cheek to Ainsley’s hair as she skimmed her fingers across his chest, both of them exhausted by passion.
He didn’t let himself think much as they cuddled together. This moment was too important for stray thoughts. There was only Ainsley, and himself, and now.
Cameron rested with her until the window lightened to gray. Ainsley slept against his chest as he held her, her breath on his skin.
Finally, he rose and carried her to the bed, Ainsley still sleeping. He laid her down and covered her as tenderly as he’d used to with Daniel, when the lad had been a boy in a cot.
Ainsley’s eyes fluttered open. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Please, Cam.”
Chapter 21
She hadn’t asked him that in a while. Cameron was already hard and hot for her again, but something dark twisted inside him, tendrils wrapping him so tightly he couldn’t breathe.
Ainsley’s eyes held longing, but Cameron was already moving from the bed, shaking his head.
“Eleanor Ramsay explained to me what your wife did to you,” Ainsley said behind him. “I understand why you don’t let yourself sleep in the same room with a woman.”
Cameron turned around. Ainsley was sitting up, the sheet pulled to her chin, watching him.
“With anyone,” Cameron said. “And Eleanor didn’t tell you all of it.”
No one knew but Cam. Cameron hadn’t been able to confess every truth, even to Hart, and he didn’t want to tell beautiful, unmarred Ainsley that his wife had not only beaten him with that poker, but on two occasions had tried to rape him with it.
He remembered the incidents with clarity, even though so much time had passed. The wash of pain that had jerked him out of deep slumber, Elizabeth’s laughter, more pain, blood, his own screams. He’d flung Elizabeth away, and still she’d laughed.
He’d started allowing himself to sleep only when he was alone, behind a locked door. But damned if Elizabeth hadn’t tricked a servant into letting her into Cameron’s chamber late one night so she could go at Cameron again. The only thing that had worked after that was posting a guard, both on his own door and Elizabeth’s. She’d railed about that too.
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