He could even follow the logic of her strategy in regard to his wager. A ten would bring him twenty-one, and presumably a good quantity of tens remained, to warrant a five-unit bet. “Such a diffident wager from such a forthright lady.” He gave her half a smile as he stacked five counters forward of his cards. “I believe in doing a thing boldly if you’re to do it at all.”
A second card came down before each player. Will lifted the corner. Ten of spades. Good Lord, that was easy.
He flipped his ten faceup and sat back, one elbow atop the back of his chair, his heart going like a runaway wagon down a cobblestoned hill. Of course the banker might still tie him, but at the very least he’d keep his hundred pounds. And he’d made himself popular with the other players at the table. Twenty-one meant the banker must keep drawing in hopes of the tie, and that meant a good chance the fellow would go bust.
The first two gentlemen stuck after their second cards. Lydia and the Corinthian stuck after three. The banker added a six and a queen to his nine, and had to pay every player.
“Do a thing boldly, indeed.” What a preposterous figure she made, employing one of the little rakes to sweep in her meager two pounds. “But then I suspect you do all manner of things in that fashion.” Neither her face nor her voice betrayed anything beyond the slightly unseemly, slightly desperate attempts to draw him into flirtation. Nevertheless he knew that wrapped up in her tawdry chatter was a private expression of approval and encouragement. She liked the way he played his part.
So, it developed, did he. Well, and why not? What wouldn’t he give, after all, to be someone else, someone so complacent in his notions of how the world would dispose itself to oblige him? Perhaps he might have grown into such a fellow, had one or two or fifteen things been different. For tonight, and for as many nights as their scheme persisted, he could at least try on that life, the way he might try on some velvet-trimmed dinner jacket that didn’t quite fit and was anyway beyond his means.
Therefore he played the role with gusto, adopting a brooding, fist-to-the-jaw, lower-lip-pushed-out posture between turns and a slight fatalistic flourish of the wrist when he must handle his counters either way.
And with every fresh deal, he caught at Lydia’s constant stream of prattle, sifting it through his fingers meticulously as a jewel thief appraising the proceeds of his latest heist.
She addressed herself to the Corinthian: “If I lose five pounds more I vow I shall quit this game. You must hold me to that.” Quit meant cease, and cease meant six, and that meant one hundred twenty pounds.
To the banker: “You think to ruin me, don’t you? But you see how I hold on, if only by a whisker.” Whisker. Cat. Quatre. Four counters.
And to him: “You must have my share of luck along with your own.” (Luck! A secret jab at him! Numbers overrunning her brain like thistles in a knot garden, and she still had capacity to make a joke that only he and she would apprehend!) “I hope you’ll be mindful of that when you see me on the street tomorrow, begging for a crust of bread.” Bread. Wheat. Huit. God in Heaven, eight counters. One hundred sixty pounds.
But he did as she directed. He handled his cards carelessly, that she might get a look at them and plan how to proceed. He watched for the cues that told him to buy or stick, and measured them against his own understanding. Fifteen against the banker’s visible nine; he didn’t need to see her touch her right finger to her thumb to know he should buy. Pair of tens against a seven, he’d stick whether or not she fidgeted with her bracelet.
He didn’t win every hand. Even with favorable odds he’d sometimes draw an inopportune card or watch the banker get a good one. On those occasions he fancied he could feel her willing him into steadiness, surrounding him with a confidence so solid he almost believed he could lean his weight against it. Not that he needed that, now. Occasional losses notwithstanding, the trend was clearly in his favor. He shrugged at each defeat, and made asinine remarks as to the merits of losing boldly, and waited, always, for her next coded directive.
Devil only knew how much time had passed before she put up both hands to adjust her hair. The quit signal. He’d lost two hands in a row—thankfully on moderate wagers—and she’d apparently decided the composition of the deck was not to her taste.
Half of him wanted to plant himself in that chair and refuse to budge. What rarefied joy it was to work in secret concert with a woman, their shared interest unsuspected by the others at the table, their awareness of each other heightened every moment by the clandestine nature of their bond.
The other half was more than ready to be done. The sooner they both left this table, the sooner they could acknowledge one another, and celebrate together what they’d achieved. He reaped the counters by fistfuls and stashed them in his pockets, and excused himself to go claim a profit of somewhere near a thousand pounds.
ONE THOUSAND, one hundred and sixty-two pounds. Even counting her thirty-eight pounds lost and his forty thrown away at hazard, it was a splendid, splendid beginning.
Lydia slipped from the gaming salon and started down the main hallway. Half an hour more she’d lingered after his exit, flirting with Mr. Keller at her right—a pleasant, innocuous man, Mr. Keller, delighted to flirt and be flattered, but without the means to pursue anything further—and generally making sure no one would have any cause to connect Mr. Blackshear’s time at the table with hers.
Oh, but he’d been magnificent, Mr. Blackshear had. She’d feared, after their earlier conference, that he wouldn’t have the stomach for it after all. But he’d been a bulwark. He’d been a rock. He’d shrugged off losses of a hundred and two hundred pounds like a stallion twitching its flank to throw off a gnat, and hadn’t he looked superb doing it! She would tell him so, in decorous terms. She would praise his resolute poise, and she would joke that he ought to wear that riding coat more often, and perhaps grow his hair to romantic lengths.
Dimmer and dimmer went the light as she moved down the corridor away from the gaming room. By the time she rounded the corner she could scarcely see a thing. She could feel him, though, a warm substantial presence somewhere ahead, and an instant later she felt him beyond any doubt as his hands came out to seize her, and pull her forward into the dark.
He caught her at the waist and lifted her, spinning round with an exuberance that echoed her own. She set her hands on his shoulders, so solid under his coat, and clenched her teeth to forbear laughing aloud. Coins jingled merrily in the reticule that swung from her wrist, and somewhere in his coat-pockets too, a fitting music for this makeshift celebratory dance. Here, unexpectedly, was something new with a man, a chaste congress of body, spirit, and brain, a pleasure she might have dismissed as no worthwhile pleasure at all, had she merely heard it described.
Her skirts twisted round her legs as he spun her, cool and delicious against the few bare inches between stocking-top and chemise, and when he set her on her feet she teetered for a step, hobbled by the skirts that had still to unwind, captive in her own sarcenet snare.
His hands stayed at her waist, steadying. His breaths sounded in the stillness, one breath and two. And of a sudden he crushed her to him: his arm bound her at the waist, his other hand splayed at the back of her neck, and his mouth came down hot and ravenous on hers.
Chapter Twelve
SHOCK UNFURLED from her head to her toes like a sail dropped down from a ship’s mast. Her bent arms and the reticule were pinned between their bodies; now she braced her outspread hands on his chest and jerked her head back. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Had she raised her voice? No. Some dependable corner of her brain stayed mindful of their surroundings, the need for discretion, even as her breaths came shallow from the spinning and the shock.
“One minute.” No part of his hold on her slackened. “Sixty seconds.” His mouth was so near she could taste the words as he said them. “We’ll never refer to it afterward. Nothing will change.”
Was that possible? Could a man and a woman give themselves up to
passion, even for sixty seconds, and walk away unsinged? Surely things must change.
But maybe she didn’t care. His bare hand at the back of her head flexed gently, not like a hand that meant to force her to his will, but like a hand that couldn’t get enough of the way she felt.
His breath came warm and ragged against her lips, her cheeks. A faint flavor of cloves came with it, no doubt from his tooth-powder. He’d cleaned his teeth before setting out tonight. Perhaps with this purpose already in mind.
She might touch her tongue to them, to his clean imperfect clove-scented teeth.
Dear Lord. Of all the factors that could sway a woman into kissing a man. Clearly she was not in her right mind. Drunk on her success at the table, like as not. Their success, rather. She couldn’t have done it alone.
Her hands trailed down his chest, over his ribs, to either side of his waist. He shivered once, but didn’t otherwise move. He would wait for her word.
“Sixty seconds.” She flicked one wrist and her reticule hit the floor. “Make them count.”
His mouth closed the distance between them, more patiently this time. His lips brushed over hers and the tiny beard-bristles brushed after, raising gooseflesh all up and down her arms. He was sweet and slow and masterful and he filled up all her perception with the smell of bay rum.
But with only sixty seconds they couldn’t afford patience. He had no time to be sweet or slow. She sent a hand up his spine to the very short hairs at the nape of his neck—if only she had time to take off her gloves, and rasp those hairs against her palm!—and when she’d taken a firm hold at the back of his head, she sent her tongue right into his mouth and ran it over his teeth, space between and all.
He made a sound in his throat. Perhaps he wasn’t used to bold women. But clearly he didn’t mind. He stroked his own fingers down the back of her neck, encouraging her, and a moment later both his hands were at the front of her gown, finding their way under the outer layer to run wild over the purple silk.
Yes. This was exactly what he ought to do. It was right he should read the contours of her corset, and mold her hips, her thighs, with his hands as though she were wet clay. She did feel a bit like wet clay, or warm wax, or some other thing that would take whatever shape he cared to give her. He’d backed her against the wall somehow without her noticing and now she pressed her shoulder blades into that support and swayed and twisted under his touch.
Had it been sixty seconds? Never mind. She found the fastenings that held her overdress together at the bosom and she undid them, deftly, that he might put his hands there too.
Such large hands he had, and so capable. The left one slid over her hip, up her waist, silk bunching before it, and settled, finally, over her breast. His breath roughened in her mouth; he shook that gathered silk free that there might be but one thin layer lying flat over the part of her body he touched; the thinnest possible barrier between his palm and the nipple he’d provoked into ripeness with his kisses and his sculptor’s hands.
Thank Heaven—oh, she’d go to Hell for such blasphemy but surely she’d reserved her place there long ago, and at all events thank Heaven she’d cut her chemise down to the top of her corset and left off all her petticoats. Because now she understood the reason for the existence of purple sarcenet. His thumb moved slowly over her nipple, an excruciating tease made doubly excruciating by that cream-smooth knit stuff preventing her from truly knowing his touch; triply excruciating by the way his tongue caressed the curve of her lip, echoing the leisurely strokes of his thumb.
She arched into his touch and he broke off the kiss. She could feel his head angled to watch, though surely he couldn’t see anything through the darkness. His right hand came to her left breast and his touch felt … wondering, almost worshipful. The touch of a man who’d never put his hands to a woman before, or perhaps the touch of a man who’d come near to dying and meant never to take earthly pleasures for granted again.
That might be true, that last one. That might be his case. She’d think on it later. “Use your mouth,” she said now, and her voice was all harshness and need, perfectly fashioned to puncture the illusions of a worshipful man.
But no, he liked that too. He muttered something hot and unintelligible; it ended in low, velvety laughter, and then his mouth was where she wanted it and nothing else mattered in the world.
She pushed herself up on her toes and arched harder, to make this as easy as it could be to him so that he might never, never stop. Because here, in fact, was the reason for sarcenet. She’d been so wrong before. The sweep of his tongue, dragging the fabric to and fro where she was so sensitive. His hands locking her in position, one between her shoulder blades and one at the back of her waist to keep her in thrall to his exquisite torture. His wet mouth dampening the silk, adding sweet complexities to the sensation and meanwhile marking her, staining her, fixing her with a badge visible to any observer, a memento of just what he’d done.
He didn’t do enough. If he would only grind himself against her, as any decent man could be expected to do, he might finish her off before he had a chance to remember that business of stopping at sixty seconds.
She sent her hands round behind him. Filled her palms and splayed fingers with those particular muscles that would power a man as he drove into a woman, once he was properly persuaded.
He replied with the edges of his teeth, unleashing a riptide of pleasure that nearly buckled her knees. Good. She knew how to have this conversation. She slipped one hand back round to the front of him, down and down between their bodies, and, oh, good Lord. He’d told the truth.
Well, of course he had. She’d never truly doubted him. But to take his dimensions on faith was one thing. To have the evidence at hand was something else entirely.
She took a grip. Nankeen and man, with his shirttail and a thin layer of linen between. He hissed, a sharp indrawn breath that cost him his hold on her nipple. She could feel his hands and arms go tense. His whole body went tense; she could sense it even in the parts that didn’t touch her because the air between them had stilled so.
“Wait.” A single hoarse syllable, and her stomach dropped like a partridge shot out of midair. He was remembering all his reasons; the lady in Camden Town and everything else.
She couldn’t let him. “Wait for what?” Her hand tightened and stroked up his length. “You’re as ready as I’ve ever felt a man to be.”
“I’m not. I don’t—” His breath caught and he shuddered as her palm slid back the other way. Say what he would, he wanted this.
Her fingers found the first of his buttons and tipped it through the buttonhole. She would give him what he wanted. She would make him forget. They would be guilty together, throwing off everything either one knew of propriety or obligation to gratify the appetites of a moment, and together they would—
“No.” The voice might carry a note of pleading, but the sudden iron grip at her wrist was all command. He put his other hand to the wall and pushed away with a wrenching motion, as though she were some spider who’d snared him in treacherous silk. “No more.”
Her hand fell empty at her side. Her skin ached already for the loss of his touch. What had happened to her? A month ago she’d at least had the decency to feel shame during that moment when she’d mistook his sister for a lady he was courting. Tonight she didn’t care. She only wanted to possess him, and all the ladies of Camden Town combined would not be enough to stop her.
Only he could do that.
“I’m sorry.” His voice shook. He’d leaned against the wall an arm’s length away, face to the wallpaper by the sound of his breaths. “I’m sorry, Lydia,” he said again. “This isn’t what I want.”
A candle-flame of sympathy flickered, but she would give it no air. She wasn’t that sort. Corruption crawled in her veins, heedless lust fired her every nerve, and countless wadded-up scraps of anger filled the cavity where a woman’s warm heart ought to be.
This isn’t what I want, he’d said.
As if she hadn’t held the evidence in her hand.
I SEE.” MISS Slaughter’s voice hit the air between them like a sheet of ice, frigid and breakable in equal measures. “My congratulations, then. You counterfeit expertly.”
Did she suppose he needed her help to feel wretched? “You know that’s not what I mean. I’ve already admitted I desire you. I just …” Confound it, would she even understand? “I want to be better than this. I don’t want to be the kind of man who ruts with someone else’s woman in the hallway of a gaming hell.”
“You’ll understand my mistaking you for such a man, I hope.” Ice in bitter shards, now. “The part where you had my nipple in your mouth was particularly befuddling.”
Befuddling didn’t come close. Astounding, staggering, spellbinding, electrifying. As long as he lived he would remember the way she pushed up on her toes to meet him, so sure of what she wanted and so shameless in demanding it.
Bloody hell. Why couldn’t he just do this? Why couldn’t he take what she wanted to give, and give what she wanted to take, and let pleasure answer for itself?
Because he’d told her he wouldn’t. I’m not another lout looking to make use of you, he’d said, and she’d begun to trust him. And damn it all, her trust meant something and she needed to know that he knew that. He felt, carefully, for the breeches-button she’d undone and did it back up. “The fault is mine, entirely. I was wrong to begin this, and grievously wrong to let it continue as far as it did. My actions dishonored us both.”
“It’s not in your power to dishonor me.”
Devil take him. Her every lashing-out just made him harder, made him want to take her back in his arms and shape all that fury into searing passion. “You’re right, Lydia.” Instead he must work to soothe her. “I’m sorry.”
“You said that already. In fact you said we wouldn’t speak of this at all. I had supposed you a man of your word.”
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