She moaned in frustration as Elliot’s seeking fingers found only layers of clothing and buttons. He fumbled for the latch and they tumbled together into the dark seclusion of the narrow hallway, still kissing.
The back of her legs encountered the hall table. The candlestick atop it fell over. He wrested her greatcoat to the floor, his own following. Her hat and his, too, her hair unfurling. She curled her fingers into the soft silk of his skin, on the nape of his neck above his neckcloth. Warm skin. He smelled of sweat and soap. Salty and tangy. Irreducibly male.
The rasp of his chin on the soft skin of her face reminded her of the stinging sensation of the rough rope chafing her legs. She was burning between her thighs, but it had nothing to do with the descent. She wanted him there. Touching her. Plunging into her. Shocking images, vivid in their clarity despite her lack of experience, filled Deborah’s mind, making her moan. The solid ridge of his shaft was hard against her belly. Powerful. Fierce. Like the rest of him, incredibly, intensely male. Man. Elliot was all man. And such a man. She moaned again as he ground his hips against hers.
Elliot’s breath came in harsh gasps. Under her coat, Deborah wore a shirt. No waistcoat. And no corsets. Oh God, no corsets. Her nipples thrust at him through the linen. He cupped one of her breasts, his thumb stroking the delightfully hard nub, relishing the way it made her quiver, made the blood pulse in his already aching groin. Her kisses were like molten silver, burning and searing. His knees bumped against the legs of some sort of table. He picked her up, placed her on to it, spreading her legs, one hand in the heavy fall of her hair, the other on her breast, cupping, stroking, moulding. He wanted to feel her flesh. Tugging the shirt from her breeches he nudged between her legs, wrapping them around his thighs, dipping his head to taste the hard peaks of her nipple.
Her heels dug into his buttocks; her fingers plucked ineffectually at the big silver buttons of his coat. The table shook. It was just the right height to allow him to slide into her, thrusting into the welcoming heat, the slick tightness of her that would envelop him. He was so hard, the release would be spectacular. He had known it would be like this. He had known it! He put his hands around the curve of her bottom to pull her closer. She was still trying to free his coat buttons. Impatiently, Elliot yanked them open.
The crushed canvas fell on to the floor. ‘Damn!’
‘What? What was that?’ Deborah was hazily aware of a pain in her back. She tried to sit up and whatever she was perched on rocked violently. She was sitting on a table!
‘The painting,’ Elliot muttered. ‘I dropped it. I can’t see a damn thing.’
She seemed to have lost a good many of her clothes. And the painting, which they had risked life and limb for, was on the floor somewhere. Deborah slithered back down to reality considerably more quickly than she had slithered down the rope not long before. The candle she’d left for her return was on the floor somewhere, too. It would be easier to fetch another from the parlour. ‘Just a minute,’ she muttered, stumbling down the hallway, feeling her way to the door, trying to tuck her shirt back into her breeches at the same time.
Lighting the candle from the still-smouldering embers of the parlour fire, she studiously avoided looking in the mirror above the mantel as she did so, having no wish to see her shame confirmed in her wanton reflection. Concentrating on trying to get her breathing back under control, she made her way back to the hallway. Elliot was as dishevelled as she. Clothes awry. Neckcloth untied. His lips looked frayed. Such kisses! Deborah held the candle aloft, well away from her own face, turning her gaze to the floor. ‘Here it is.’ The canvas had rolled under the table. She picked it up and handed it to him, embarrassed in the frail light, mortified by her behaviour in the dark. She had more or less ravaged the man. Savaged him more like, for she clearly remembered biting into him, her nails tearing at his skin. Oh God!
Elliot made no attempt to look at the painting. He wished to hell he’d let the bloody thing lie. Another minute of those kisses of hers and he wouldn’t have given a damn. Looking at her now though, seeing the way she avoided his gaze, he knew the chances of him having another minute of her kisses were almost nil. Whatever had caused her to let go that iron control of hers was now firmly leashed.
And it was probably just as well. He, who prided himself on his finesse, had all but ravished her in the hallway, for God’s sake! To say nothing of the fact that in their lust they had forgotten all about the extremely valuable painting they had stolen. A painting which was now looking rather the worse for wear. A wholly inappropriate desire to laugh took hold of him. He struggled, but could not stifle it. ‘I’m sorry,’ Elliot said helplessly, ‘it’s just—well, ludicrous. I assure you I didn’t plan it. The last bit, I mean—at least not like that. Only you were so—and I was so—and there was the painting abandoned on the floor, after we went to such extremes to get it.’
To his surprise Deborah’s face lightened. She did not smile back, but she looked as if she might. ‘Is it always like this? After you have committed a crime, I mean? Is it always so—so intoxicating? Inflaming?’ she asked, daring to meet his gaze now.
‘I don’t know, I’ve never had an accomplice before.’
‘The painting—it’s not damaged, is it?’ Deborah asked anxiously.
Elliot unrolled the canvas and shook his head. ‘See for yourself.’ She came closer to inspect it. Her hair was perfectly straight, hanging well past her shoulders. If he looked, he would see the outline of her breasts under her shirt, for she had not put her coat back on. With a huge effort of restraint, he stopped himself.
‘Such an ugly man,’ Deborah said softly after a while of staring at the portrait. ‘I would not like to have this on my wall. Is it valuable?’
‘It’s by Velázquez. I should hope so.’
‘Will you sell it, then?’
Elliot began to roll the canvas back up, carefully this time. ‘Yes,’ he said tersely, ‘I’ll sell it.’
Deborah opened her mouth to ask what he did with the money, then thought better of it. Tiredness washed over her. Her shoulders began to ache. Anticlimax in every sense weighed like a heavy blanket, muffling her. ‘It’s late,’ she said wearily.
‘Yes.’ Elliot hesitated. He was edgy with frustration. She had been so aroused, he was sure he could easily rekindle the flame between them, but something held him back. Is it always like this? ‘It wasn’t the housebreaking that made me turn to you like that,’ he said, running his hand down the smooth cap of her hair, ‘it was you. Ever since we met, I’ve wanted you. You must know that, Deborah.’
She jerked her head away. ‘It will be light soon.’
‘I see.’ He didn’t see at all. Rebuffed, puzzled by the extreme swing in her mood, and too tired in the anticlimax to make sense of it, Elliot picked his hat up and, shrugging into his greatcoat, tucked the painting into a large inside pocket. ‘Did it work?’ he asked. ‘Did it do as you hoped, banish the black clouds, make you feel alive?’
Deborah smiled tremulously. ‘While it lasted. I shall keep a look out for reports of our heinous crime.’
‘And paste them in a keepsake book?’
‘Something like that.’
He kissed the fluttering pulse on her wrist, telling himself that her vulnerability was simply exhaustion. ‘Goodnight, Deborah.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Goodbye, Elliot. Be safe.’
The door closed softly behind him. The parlour clock struck three. Only three. Wearily, Deborah picked up her man’s coat and made her way up the creaky wooden stairs to her bed.
Outside, Elliot made his way home by a circuitous route through alleys and mews. She was like a chameleon, changing so quickly that he could not keep up with her. Her kisses. He groaned and the muscles in his stomach contracted. Such a delightful mixture of raw passion and innocence. Hot, burning kisses that even now made his blood surge and pound, yet they were neither knowing nor experienced. Deborah kissed with the savagery of a lion cub.
Elliot stood in the shadow of a stable building as the watch passed by, informing the empty street that all was well. It had frightened her, her passion; she had been far too eager to blame it on the extraordinary circumstances, as if by doing so she could distance herself from it. What kind of marriage had she had with that bastard of a fortune hunter?
He stepped out of the mews and made his way across Russell Square, letting himself in silently. A candle stood ready in the hall, reminding him of the clatter of the candlestick from the table at Deborah’s house. The evening had been full of surprises. He should not have allowed her to come down that rope, but the sight of her dangling over him had been…
Mounting the stairs, he tried to put if from his mind. He was exhausted. Carefully stashing the painting, he willed himself to think of the chain of events he must set in train to dispose of it, but as he climbed into bed, the memory of Deborah—her mouth, her hands, her breasts, those long legs, that pert derrière—climbed in with him. He was hard. Persistently hard. Lying back against the cool sheets, Elliot surrendered to the inevitable.
Chapter Four
Deborah jerked awake, exhausted from lurid dreams in which she was always in the wrong place, with the wrong person, in the wrong attire, at the wrong time. Dreams in which she was endlessly chasing the shadow of the man who had made a shadow of her. Dreams in which no one could see her, no one would acknowledge her, in which she existed only to herself. When she spoke, the words were soundless. Time and again, she tumbled into the room where he was, only to have Jeremy look straight through her.
In her dreams, she was sick from her failures, sick from knowing that no matter how hard she tried, she would fail again. The familiar weight of that failure made the physical effort of rising from her bed a mammoth task. No amount of telling herself that it was just a dream, nor any reminder that it had no basis in
reality, could shift that lumpen, leaden feeling, for the truth was that Deborah believed she had failed, and it had been her fault.
Long experience had shown her that hiding under the covers and willing fresh dreamless sleep had no effect whatsoever, save to nourish the headache which lurked just under the base of her skull. Slowly, with the care of a very old woman afraid of breaking brittle bones, Deborah climbed out of bed and went through her morning ablutions, blanking her mind against the lingering coils of her monochrome nightmares, forcibly filling her head with colourful images from her adventures last night.
She winced as she soothed a cooling lotion on the chafe marks at her knees and thighs, but as she folded away the male clothing she had worn, out of sight of the daily help, her mood slowly lifted. By the time she sat down to take coffee at her desk, she was smiling to herself. Bella Donna, that vengeful, voluptuous creature of the night, would not be confined to history after all. At last, after several barren months, she had her inspiration for the next story.
What would Elliot think if he knew he was her muse? Deborah paused in the act of sharpening her pen as a lurid image of herself atop the hall table, her legs entwined around him, flooded her body with heat. Closing her eyes, shuddering at the memory of his lips, his hands, the rough grate of his jaw on her skin, she was astounded at the speed and intensity of her arousal. Had the painting not fallen, had she not fetched a light and broken the mood, she would have given herself to him. As she recalled raking her nails on his skin, urgently pressing herself against the hard length of his manhood, she turned cold. What on earth had come over her?
It would be a salve, to persuade herself that she had become so caught up in Bella Donna’s character as to have forgotten her own, but it would not be the truth. Bella Donna took her pleasures in a calculated way. Bella Donna used and discarded men as she used and discarded her various guises when she had no further use for them. Last night, Deborah had wanted, needed, desired with a purity of feeling which left no room for anything else. It frightened her. The intensity of her feelings, her lack of control, terrified her. She did not want any of it.
Ever since we met, I’ve wanted you, Elliot had said. But the circumstances in which they met were coloured each time by danger. It was surely that which made him want her, as it made her want him? Only the thrill of defying the rules, the edge which recklessness and daring gave to fear, could explain the strength of their mutual desire in its wake. Nothing else, surely, could explain why she had forgotten all the inhibitions her marriage had taught her and allowed an instinct she hadn’t known she possessed to drive her.
No, last night, she had not been Bella Donna, but neither had she been Deborah. She could not reconcile that vivid, bold creature with the one sitting at her desk in her grey gown in her equally grey life. But then, wasn’t that what she had wanted from last night’s adventure? To shed her skin, to step out of the tedium of her day-to-day existence, to escape from herself for a few hours? She had certainly achieved it beyond her expectations.
Now, though, she must get back to reality, which might very well be grey by comparison, but at least it was safe. Never mind that it was unexciting, unadventurous and above all lonely. She was used to being lonely. Most of her married life she had been lonely. And lost. And hurt. She would do well to remember how quickly the bride with stardust in her eyes had become the hated wife.
Now she was no longer a victim of her own gullibility. She was not the source of every disappointment, the cause of every misfortune. She need not hide from her friends for fear they discover her unhappiness. She need not pretend to herself that she was anything other than miserable. Guilt and insecurity need no more drive her actions than that most cruel emotion of all, love. Her life might be bland, but it was her own. Safe from feeling, maybe, but it was also safe from pain. She intended always to be safe from now on. Whatever had come over her last night, the person she had been was not the real Deborah. The experience had been a release. Cathartic. An antidote, a dose of danger to counteract the malaise of boredom. That was all, and it was over now.
Resolutely, Deborah picked up her pen. It was past midnight when Bella Donna made her way stealthily out into the night dressed in male attire, on a mission which would scandalise the ton and throw her into the orbit of the most dangerous and devastatingly attractive man in all of England, she wrote.
* * *
‘You look tired, Elliot.’ Elizabeth Murray drew her brother a quizzical look.
The resemblance between the siblings was striking enough to make their relationship obvious. The same dark, deep-set eyes, the same black hair, the same clear, penetrating gaze which tended to make its object wonder what secrets they had inadvertently revealed. Though Lizzie’s complexion was olive rather than tanned, and her features softer, she had some of her brother’s intensity and all of his charm, a combination which her friends found fascinating, her husband alluring and her critics intimidating.
‘Burning the candle at both ends?’ she asked with a smile, stripping off her lavender-kid gloves and plonking herself without ceremony down on a comfortably shabby chair by the fire.
Elliot grinned. ‘Lord, yes, you know me. Dancing ’til four in the morning, paying court to the latest heiress, whose hand I must win if I’m to pay off my gambling debts. Generally acting the gentleman of leisure.’
Lizzie chuckled. ‘I am surprised I did not see you in the throng around Marianne Kilwinning. They say she is worth twenty thousand at least.’
Elliot snapped his fingers. ‘A paltry sum. Why, I could drop that much and more in a single sitting at White’s.’
Lizzie’s smile faded. ‘I heard that your friend Cunningham lost something near that the other night. I know it is considered the height of fashion, but I cannot help thinking these gentlemen could find better things to fritter their money away on.’
‘You’re not alone in thinking that.’
‘Did you speak to Wellington, then?’
‘He granted me an audience all right,’ Elliot said bitterly, ‘but it was the usual story. Other more pressing commitments, a need to invest in t
he future, resources overstretched, the same platitudes as ever.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps I’m being a little unfair. He told me in confidence that he was considering taking up politics again. Were he to be given a Cabinet post, he said he would do all he could, but—oh, I don’t know, Lizzie. These men, the same men who have given their health and their youth for their country, they can’t wait for all that. They need help now, to feed themselves and their families, not ephemeral promises that help is coming if only they will wait—we had enough of those when we were at war.’
‘Henry. I know,’ Lizzie said gently, widening her eyes to stop the tears which gathered there from falling as her brother’s face took on a bleak look. She hated to cry, and more importantly Elliot hated to have this deepest of wounds touched.
‘Henry and hundreds—thousands—of others who were brothers, friends, husbands, fathers. It makes me sick.’
‘And Wellington will do nothing?’
‘I’m sorry to say it, but at heart he’s a traditionalist. He is afraid, like Liverpool and the rest of the Tories, that too many years abroad have radicalised our men. He thinks that starving them will bring about deference. I think it will have quite the opposite effect and, more importantly, it’s bloody unjust. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t swear and I didn’t mean to bore you.’
‘Don’t be so damned stupid. You neither bore me nor shock me, and you know it. I have no truck with this modern notion that we women have no minds of our own,’ Lizzie said tersely.
She was rewarded with a crack of laughter. ‘Not something anyone could ever accuse you of,’ Elliot replied.
Outrageous Confessions of Lady Deborah Page 7