A little scandal

by Patricia Cabot

  Kate, who’d never before had the slightest trouble finding her tongue, seemed perfectly incapable of using it at this point. It might have been because, once she was inside the library, the marquis kicked the door to the garden closed, then took her by both shoulders, and spun her around to face him. The fury in his eyes was rather out of proportion, Kate couldn’t help thinking, for the situation.

  “Was that your cat I saw out there with you, Miss Mayhew?” he demanded harshly. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that excuse won’t work this time. I saw him, quite clearly, so don’t insult my intelligence by attempting to lie.”

  She stared up at him. That he’d been drinking was clear from the fact that she could smell whiskey on his breath. Whether or not he was drunk was another question entirely. He didn’t seem drunk. He wasn’t slurring his words, nor did he seem the least unsteady on his feet. But why, then, was he behaving like a jealous husband?

  “You ought to have let me know you were lonely for male companionship, Miss Mayhew,” he snarled. “While I might not have Lord Palmer’s devastating good looks, I’m a bit more convenient, you know, considering the fact that you needn’t sneak out into gardens after midnight to meet me. My room’s just a few yards down the hall from yours, you know.”

  Slowly, comprehension dawned. Lord Wingate thought that had been Freddy, not Daniel Craven, in the garden just now. He’d seen Kate speaking to a blond man and assumed ...

  Oh, dear.

  Kate had just enough time to wonder, But he’s in such a passion, even if I told him the truth, would he believe me?, before Lord Wingate, with a sound that seemed to Kate very much like a moan, dragged her forward and crushed her mouth beneath his.

  Kate had spent more hours than she liked to admit fantasizing about this exact moment. But none of her dreams had prepared her for the real thing. Because in her dreams, the marquis didn’t have sharp whiskers that stung the soft skin of her face. And in her dreams, the marquis’s lips weren’t so hard, so insistent on hers. And when, in response to this insistence, Kate relaxed her own lips so that he could do to them whatever it was he seemed so badly to want to, his tongue didn’t come darting into her mouth. Not in her dreams.

  And certainly, in her dreams, the marquis had never held her quite so tightly, causing her to be crushed against his unyielding chest His hands had never roamed up and down her back and sides, stroking her through the silky material of her peignoir. And never, not even once, had one of those hands come up to close over one of her breasts.

  That was the thing about dreams, though. Sometimes reality was most definitely preferable.

  The moment Kate felt the marquis’s fingers on her breast, her eyelids, which had drifted closed when he’d first started kissing her, sprang open. What, she wondered, is he doing?

  The answer, of course, was quite evident, or should have been, to the dimmest of individuals. He was making love to her—hard, violent love.

  And she was liking it. She was liking it quite a bit.

  Kate had been kissed before. Not like this, of course. But then, nothing she’d ever experienced had been quite like this. But never had she allowed a man to touch her the way the marquis was touching her ... never had she wanted a man to touch her that way. It was perfectly shameless how much she wanted him to touch her. Why, no sooner had his fingers closed over her breast, than she’d risen to her toes, and thrown her arms as far around his neck as they would reach, thrusting her nipple more deeply into his palm. And no sooner had his tongue found its way into her mouth than she was meeting it with her own. What kind of girl let a man do these things to her? What kind of girl liked it?

  Kate Mayhew, apparently.

  Oh, well, Kate thought. And then she couldn’t think at all, because the fingers that had been cupping her breast moved, and suddenly, Kate’s peignoir was a filmy puddle on the floor. And then both the marquis’s hands were on her breasts. Considering the fact that he was kissing her at the same time, so deeply, so intrusively, that his tongue seemed to be intent on exploring every crevice of her mouth, she found it rather hard to breathe all of a sudden, or even to stand up, since he was so tall, and she had to rise practically to the tips of her toes just to keep on kissing him ....

  But that turned out to be no problem at all, because Lord Wingate, apparently recognizing her distress, suddenly reached down, and, cupping her buttocks in the hands that had been cupping her breasts just seconds before, lifted her against him. It seemed only right to Kate at that point to slip her legs around his waist, since that was what she’d done in her dream.

  Only in her dream when she’d done this, she had wakened before she’d encountered the extremely hard thing thrusting against the front of his trousers. Now it seemed perfectly natural to press herself against it, and she did so enthusiastically. And when doing so elicited from him another one of those sounds, halfway between a whimper and a moan, she thought that encouragement enough to do it some more.

  She couldn’t see, of course, where it was he was taking her, since her entire field of vision was filled with him. But when she felt something flat and hard beneath her, she realized he’d set her down upon the edge of his desk. Not, she thought, where they’d made love in her dream, but she was beginning to think her dreams terribly pallid when compared to the real thing.

  Especially when the marquis, still kissing her, seemingly with no intention of ever letting her mouth alone, reached out and slipped her nightdress up over her head.

  And then, much to her disappointment, he did stop kissing her. The sound of their mouths tearing apart was loud in the darkened room. Still, there was enough moonlight for her to see that he was simply standing there, staring at her, as he held the nightdress in one limp hand. She ought, she supposed, to have tried to cover herself—she was completely naked, after all. But she figured she’d already had the advantage of having seen him without any clothing, so she ought to extend a similar courtesy for him.

  Besides, she rather liked the way he was staring, as if he couldn’t look away. And so she leaned back against the heels of her hands, and let him look, until, with another one of those moans, he dropped the nightdress onto the floor and came back to her, this time fastening his mouth not to her lips, but on the tip of one of her breasts.

  This was something Kate had not been expecting, and it caused her nearly to leap from the desk in astonishment ... not out of offended propriety, but because of the way the heat from his mouth on her naked breast made her feel, which was unlike anything she’d felt before. The aching sensation between her legs that she’d come to recognize returned with a vengeance the moment his tongue began circling first one nipple, and then the other. Sinking her fingers into his dark hair, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back until her long hair trailed across the desktop. Really, but this was just too deliciously wicked ....

  But that was nothing compared to how she felt when the marquis’s fingers suddenly moved between her legs. Again, she nearly bolted from the desk. But he had wrapped a hand around her neck when she’d leaned her head back, and he kept her in place by kissing the column of her throat, pressing his fingers on the exact spot Kate had been pressing for nearly a week now. She was so startled by his expertise in this area, thinking she had somehow communicated this desire with her mind, that she opened her mouth to express her astonishment. But he silenced her once more with his lips and tongue, and she decided that it probably wasn’t that important anyway.

  What did seem important, however, was that she feel the skin on those shoulders she’d been admiring for so long. And so she reached out and ran her fingers beneath the fabric of his shirt. What she felt surprised her. His body was as strong and as hard as she’d always known it would be, but where it wasn’t covered in coarse black hair, his skin was smooth, almost as smooth as her own. He seemed to recognize her curiosity, and obligingly ripped his shirt and coat off, with enough force for her to hear fabric rend.

  But he didn’t seem to care about that as he wrapp
ed her in his naked arms and drew her against him for another of those sense-shattering kisses. Now what pressed between Kate’s thighs was not his fingers, but the full force of his erection. She could feel it behind the fabric of his pants, straining to be set free, and it seemed to her only fair that she release it. Only she hadn’t the slightest idea how men fastened their trousers. She laid light fingers against the front of his pants, looking for some sort of opening, but apparently, she hurt him, since he jerked away, and then looked down at her for a few seconds, as if she had shocked him.

  She could not see his expression, since his back was to the moonlight that was spilling in through the windows and French doors. His eyes were shaded in darkness, his features cast into planes of grey and black. But there was enough light for her to see his hands move, after a moment. And then, miraculously, his trousers were gone, and when he came back to her, that part of him which had been yearning to be free was free ... and singed the inside of Kate’s thigh with its heat.

  And then that ache Kate had been feeling—that sensation of emptiness she’d been experiencing since she’d first dreamt of the marquis—suddenly made sense. Of course. She ached because she needed him to fill her. And if her fingers, which she put out to touch that part of him pressing so insistently against her, did not deceive her, he was more than capable of handling the job. He should be able to fill her quite nicely.

  In fact, there might be ... well, a bit more than she needed there. She didn’t suppose there was any way he could maybe make himself a little ... less.

  But when she raised her head to inquire about this possibility, his lips came down over hers again, making speech an impossibility. And then to Kate’s very great astonishment, he seemed actually to grow in her hand. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, since he’d seemed impossibly large before, but there was no denying it. The hot flesh around which her fingers was curled was actually growing.

  And then before she knew what was happening, the marquis’s hands were cupping her buttocks again, and he was sliding her up to the very edge of the desk, right up against that burgeoning flesh. He kept on kissing her, his tongue invading her mouth the same way that other part of him was invading the area between her thighs. And for a few seconds, Kate welcomed the weight of him, the width of him, the heady sense of finally, finally being filled ....

  Until a white-hot burst of pain caused her to tear her mouth from his with a gasp and sink her fingernails into those shoulders she’d admired for so long. She had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out.

  But it was too late. She was broken. She was as sure of it as she was sitting there. He had broken her in half, and now she was probably dying. She clung to him, feeling tears spill from the corners of her eyes. She was going to die, right there, in his arms.

  Well, she supposed she’d asked for it.

  But then a second went by, and the pain seemed to ebb a little, and the marquis said, his breath hot in her hair, “Miss Mayhew.”

  For some reason, this made her laugh. Although it was difficult to laugh, with him filling her like that.

  “I believe,” she said, “that at this point, you had better call me Kate.”

  “Kate, then,” he said, and lifted his head to look down at her. He must have seen the tears, since he cupped her face in his hands, and with his thumbs, wiped them away. “Beautiful Kate,” he whispered, lowering his head again, until his forehead rested against hers.

  Then, simply, “Kate,” the third time with a note of desperation in his voice. And then, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he were trying to stop himself, but couldn’t, simply couldn’t, he plunged even more deeply into her ....

  And it no longer hurt. Kate realized it all in a rush, just as his hands, still cupping her face, brought her mouth up to his, as if to silence whatever protest she might make. But she made none, not even as his lips and tongue began another one of their calculated assaults upon her senses. Because it no longer hurt. In fact, it felt good, having him inside her. More than good. It felt right, as if he were something she’d been missing all her life, and his being there made her suddenly whole.

  Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t dying after all.

  No, she decided, a moment later, when he began to move, slowly at first, and then with mounting urgency, within her. Definitely not dying. Unless she had already died, unbeknownst to herself, and was now ascending some kind of celestial ladder to heaven.

  Because that’s how it felt, his filling her so completely. Like she was heading for paradise. She’d wrapped her legs around him again, and now she held on to him as if he were the only stable thing in an otherwise topsy-turvy world, pressing herself as closely as she could to him, not letting him go, no matter how hard he thrust within her. And he was driving himself into her with no little force, using his hands to cushion her spine as he bent her body farther and farther back ....

  And that’s when it happened, that thing that had been happening to her all week, whenever she’d pressed her hand between her legs and thought of him. Only it had never happened exactly like this. No, never quite like this.

  Suddenly, it seemed as if that celestial ladder Kate had been climbing exploded into a thousand shards of gold, and she was falling ...

  ... but a delicious, languorous fall, with the pieces of the ladder, glowing like stars, falling with her, and landing on her, and kissing her skin all over, as if she were being brushed by thousands of angel’s wings ....

  And then she opened her eyes, and she was on Lord Wingate’s desk in the library, and he, breathing very heavily, indeed, had collapsed on top of her.

  A small voice inside her head said, Oh, no.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “You will, of course,” Lord Wingate said, from across the pillow, “give up chaperoning Isabel at once.”

  Kate blinked at the dark blue canopy above her head. It looked extremely far away. The ceiling in Lord Wingate’s bedroom was very high, and the canopy over his bed very nearly reached it, unlike the canopy over her own bed, which came nowhere near the towering height of the town house’s ceilings.

  “I will?” Kate asked. “Why?”

  It was a question she had been asking herself for several hours, ever since she’d realized what she’d done. But this time, she didn’t mean, Why did I just let that happen?

  “Well, don’t you want to have your evenings free?” Lord Wingate asked, his voice the same lazy drawl it had been ever since the first time they’d made love, several hours earlier. “To spend with me?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course.”

  “There’s so much,” the marquis said, “I want to show you.”

  He was lying beside her, his head propped up on one hand, supported by his elbow. With his other hand, he kept stroking the smooth white skin over her hip. He hadn’t stopped touching her in one way or another—fingering her hair, caressing her face, holding her hand—since that moment downstairs when he’d lifted his face from her neck, where he’d buried it when passion overcame him, and said, under his breath, but still audibly, “Mine.”

  That was all. Just that single word: Mine.

  Not that Kate had been expecting a marriage proposal, or a declaration of love, or even a thank-you. She wasn’t precisely a woman of the world, but she wasn’t completely naive.

  Still, it seemed an odd thing to say. Even odder, he said it with so much savage conviction—really, the way she imagined some sort of conquering barbarian would exult over spoils he’d earned in battle. Only the Marquis of Wingate, despite the fact that he seemed fairly to exude masculinity, was not what any person would call a barbarian ... well, not unless that person had seen him heave something—or someone—out a window.

  Still, Kate did not necessarily consider herself spoils.

  Not that she didn’t understand why he might feel a certain amount of satisfaction. That she could understand. She was feeling a lot better herself. Well, physically, at least.

  Emotionally, however,
she was convinced she’d just made the worst mistake in her entire life.

  Lord Wingate seemed to have no such misgivings. In fact, from the moment he’d so triumphantly declared her his, he’d begun talking, rather wildly, she thought, about their future together. A future, she quickly ascertained, in which she would no longer be in his employ as his daughter’s chaperone. No, that position appeared to be lost to her forever. Now there was a new, and much better paying opening for her to fill: That of the marquis’s mistress.

  “First thing after breakfast,” he said, his fingers still tracing patterns on her hip, “we’ll go and start looking at properties. I think I heard there were some lovely town houses for let over in Cardington Crescent. Would you like to live there?”

  “Why,” Kate asked, “can’t I go on living here?”

  “Well, because people will talk, Kate. And we don’t want Isabel to find out, now do we?”

  Kate looked back up at the canopy. It rather hurt her to look at him, naked as he was. He was still so powerfully attractive to her, despite the fact they’d made love ... oh, so many times, she’d lost count. If anything, she was more attracted than ever to the marquis. For he wasn’t only a highly skilled, thoroughly enthusiastic lover. He was also extremely kind—every bit as kind, it turned out, as Mrs. Cleary had sworn he was. After he’d muttered that mysterious “mine,” he’d lifted Kate from the desk as gently as if she were a baby, and then carried her all the way up the stairs, to lay her, not in her own bed, as she’d thought he would, but in his.

  Then the marquis himself—well, it wasn’t as if he could call a servant to do it, since it was after three in the morning—had heated her a bath, and made her get in it, and tenderly washed away, with his own hands, the evidence of their crime ... though almost as soon as he wrapped her in a towel they committed that crime again, this time in his lordship’s massive bed.