The thought provoked Gideon. Any man fatheaded enough to accost a lady in a crowded theater surely wouldn’t hesitate to visit her alone this late at night.
Gideon reminded himself that he didn’t care. His courtship was an act to satisfy Charlotte’s notorious relatives. Yet her brothers were her immediate family. And they had brought Phillip Moreland to London, presumably to make a match.
A match that Charlotte had made clear tonight she no longer wanted.
“Is anything wrong, Your Grace?” Sir Daniel inquired, apparently sensing that he had lost Gideon’s attention.
“I’m not sure,” Gideon said, annoyed that his inability to concentrate on their discussion was obvious. “All I know is that I was living a straightforward if shallow life. And then, somehow, through no machinations of my own, it has become a twisted knot I cannot begin to untie.”
Sir Daniel smiled. “I suppose those unpredictable turns are what make life interesting.”
“And what make men insane.”
“I’ve a feeling you have more control over your affairs than you realize, Your Grace.”
Gideon gave a negligent shrug of agreement. Of course Sir Daniel was right. Gideon was still in charge of his life. Which did not explain why he planned to pay Charlotte an inappropriate call at the academy the moment the other man took his leave.
Charlotte watched the piece of paper curl and blacken in the small fire that burned in the grate. No one would ever read what she had written tonight. When I am with Gideon, I can think of nothing else but him. Away from him, I—
She glanced up. Sprinkles of rain had been pattering against the window. But that hard rapping was not rain. She rose from the hearth and went to the window to investigate. She pushed apart the curtains and swallowed a scream to see a face grinning at her from the other side of the glass.
“Gideon!”
He drew his coat up over his head, mouthing, Let me in. I’m getting wet.
She hurried from the room and into the front hall to open the front door. He smelled of fine brandy and damp wool.
“Gideon, what on earth are you doing in the rain at this time of night?”
“I saw the light in the window.”
“And?” she asked, clearly suspicious of his motives.
“And I thought I ought to make sure that you were well.”
“Did I appear to be unwell when we parted?”
“No,” he admitted. “You appeared to be the very picture of health.”
“Come into the drawing room and be quiet, please. Why are you here?” she whispered as they went down the hall. “My heart jumped into my throat when I saw you.”
Once inside the room, he peeled off his coat and then his jacket. The damp air must have penetrated to his shirt. The crisp linen molded lightly to his well-muscled chest and shoulders. She sighed as he closed the door. “I wanted to make sure that you did not have any uninvited company.”
She lifted the coat from his hands, compressing her lips. “And you consider yourself to be invited at any hour?”
“Yes, I do.” He glanced at the flames leaping in the grate and drew off his gloves. “You took the liberty of visiting me unexpectedly, as I recall. And that was before we were engaged.”
“That was an emergency.”
A beguiling smile ghosted his face. “So is this.”
She took his gloves, giving a start of alarm. “Your hands are cold.”
“Thaw them for me,” he said, his eyes issuing an illicit challenge.
“Come closer to the fire.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
She laid his coat and gloves over the back of the sofa, feeling his sultry gaze follow her. “I know exactly what you meant. I chose to let the insinuation pass.”
“You chose to bring me into the house,” he said. “And I notice that you locked the door after we entered.”
She was torn. Should she insist he leave or encourage him to stay? She knew what she wanted to do. She had a fairly good notion of what he wanted, too. He was anything but hesitant about letting his needs be known. And it would soon fall on her to satisfy those needs.
He caught her elbow and drew her against his hard, damp torso. “Why are you up this late, may I ask?”
“I stay up late sometimes to think.”
“About?” he asked, cupping her chin in his hand. “What do you think about?”
“Well, the diary, the consequences to the school, the younger Miss Martout’s cough, our wedding, my brothers. I have to interview applicants for my position.…”
“And Phillip? Did his appearance at the theater make you restless at all?”
“Not as restless as it seemed to make you. What a fuss the pair of you made.” And over her, she thought.
“I am still discomposed,” he said, his thumb sketching the curve of her cheek. “Do you know of a way to soothe me?”
Anticipation tingled in her veins. Her heart pounded in want, in warning. He touched her as if he already owned her, and her body answered in swift agreement. She had never dreamed that she would have to fight her own urgings. The fanciful seductions that she’d written in her diary seemed to be on the verge of coming true.
“Charlotte,” he said softly, “what are you wearing underneath your robe?”
“My night rail.”
“And beneath that?”
She hesitated, her pulse quickening. “Nothing.”
“That is what I thought.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her down to the circle of firelight on the carpet. “Gideon,” she whispered, her eyes widening. “You are behaving very impolitely.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
She vented a sigh. “I am surprised that you admit it.”
He frowned in feigned concern. “I didn’t mean to forget my manners. Let me go about this the proper way.”
She stared at him in suspicion. “The proper way?”
“Excuse me while I untie your robe,” he said, tugging the sash apart.
She went still. “You demon, I don’t believe your audacity.”
“And pardon me for loosening the drawstrings of your night rail.” Which he did with ease.
She gasped, and the sound drew his attention to her mouth. “You are utterly—”
“And do forgive me while I gaze upon your hidden charms in the firelight.”
Her eyes grew wider until he skimmed his hand down her throat, and she squeezed them tightly shut. “That,” she whispered in a warm voice, “is not at all what I meant about manners.”
“Then…”
Gideon lost the focus of his thought, too entranced by the soft flesh he had unveiled to find his voice. She lifted her head, only to moan softly as he bent to kiss the tip of the breast that peeked temptingly through her loosened garments. His tongue lashed back and forth in a flagrant act of enticement. Lightly he lifted both robe and night rail to expose her lower body to his view.
“Gideon,” she groaned, reaching her hand down in an attempt to cover herself. “I’m indecent.”
“No, darling.” He caught her wrist, his gaze riveted to the inviting hollow between her upper thighs. “You are perfection.”
“But you—”
“I like to look,” he said. “I could reach a climax if I looked at you long enough.”
“I feel immodest,” she said, shivering as he stroked his other hand over her knee and then higher.
“And do you know what I like even better than looking?”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him, another helpless shiver betraying her. “No.”
“This,” he said as he gently parted the folds of her cleft and pressed his fingers into her beckoning softness. “I like touching better.” In fact, he liked touching her intimately better than any other act he could remember from his recent history. Perhaps from his entire life. Her response to him was so natural and unstudied that she might have been the one well-versed in seduction.
She turned
her head, a cry breaking in her throat as he tested, teased, and stretched her to the boundaries of what either of them could take, and he knew he couldn’t trust his control another minute. He knew his body had reached the limit, and all he could do was give her blessed release and draw pleasure from that.
Dark temptation swam in his mind. If he coaxed her a little more, he could take her maidenhood and soothe his own passions in her beautiful body. He could unravel the rest of her restraint with his mouth, his hands, his throbbing cock. He could fill her tight heat with the length of him. Oh, God, he would move within her so hard and fast and high, that she would probably pass out in a delirium of sensation.
His body ached as she broke, pulsing against his knuckles, bathing him in the sweet dampness of desire. He grasped her soft white arse in his free hand and savored every quiver that she couldn’t suppress.
He drew a breath that he hoped would still the temptation that urged him to slake his hunger inside her. But all he could do was watch her come back slowly to her senses. And with a sigh of regret, he drew her night rail and robe over the flesh that he could not wait to possess. “There,” he said, lifting his hand away. “I hope you are satisfied that I have not breached the rules of proper behavior.”
She smiled, her blues eyes sultry. “Did you get what you came for tonight?” she queried softly. “Are you always on the prowl this late at night?”
“Are you complaining about the pleasure you just experienced, my dear?”
“Not at all. But is that really all you wanted?”
He glanced away, his jaw set in a hard answer.
“Gideon?” she whispered, her voice concerned. “Was it only passion that brought you here?”
Even now she unsettled him with the sweet concern that she didn’t try to hide. It made him ache with lust and guilt and other insidious emotions that he wasn’t ready to confront. He wouldn’t grow weak and open himself to pain again. This was enough. Charlotte was happy to share his name and his bed; she hadn’t made any other claims on him that he didn’t intend to give.
“To answer you previous question,” he said without looking at her. “Yes. I prowl at night, but never alone.”
“Well, isn’t that a comfort?”
He smiled wryly. “All right. I’ll be honest. I was afraid your old sweetheart might make the grave error of visiting you tonight.”
“I doubt that my brothers would allow that.”
“But I’m here,” he pointed out. “And I didn’t see a guard at the door.”
He felt her hand alight on his arm. He ached for her touch. “Perhaps,” she whispered, “after what they witnessed tonight at the theater they were convinced you had assumed that position.”
Chapter 19
Charlotte listened to the light rain tapping against the window. She could feel the throbbing pleasure he had given her recede and fade to a faint ache. She would have burrowed against Gideon’s strong body if he had not drawn away from her.
And if he had not looked so pleased with himself. “You are undeniably the most arrogant man I have ever met.”
“Thank you.” He rose to his feet and smiled down at her as if she had praised him. “Anything else?” he asked, extending his hand to lift her from the scene of her undignified surrender.
“Yes. You are entirely too wonderful, and we are fortunate no one saw you enter the academy. I doubt you would be wearing that smile if Miss Peppertree had listened in on our mischief.”
“Miss Peppertree needs a good—”
“Gideon.”
He reached to the sofa for his coat and jacket. “My respect for Miss Peppertree does not extend beyond blowing her a kiss.”
“A memory I’m sure will stay with her forever.”
He slid one arm into his jacket. “How long have you known the lout?”
“The who?”
“You know who I mean. Moreland. Your first love.”
She knotted her sash. “Exactly how much of my diary did you read?”
“Not as much as I should have.”
“I’ve known Phillip all my life. Now it’s your turn to reply.”
“I read a few recent entries that regarded me. And the part about the lout who is nursing the egg you laid on his noggin.”
“Is that all?” she asked skeptically.
“Considering the short time it was in my possession and the distractions that competed for my attention, I think I did quite well.”
She stilled, her mind sensing an omission. “I thought you left the diary in your carriage and did not take it in that house.”
He shook his head. “I was…Well, I read some of it in my carriage.”
“And you took it—you didn’t! You did not take it into that place of ill repute?”
He turned away to slip his arm into the dangling sleeve of his jacket. Charlotte narrowed her eyes at him in chagrin. “Don’t tell me you engaged in any lascivious acts with my diary sitting there as an unwilling witness?”
“Of course I didn’t,” he said hastily. “Do I look like a complete rogue?”
“Yes. Yes, you do.”
He captured her face between his large hands. “What just happened between us is the closest I have come to a lascivious act in a long time.”
“It’s the closest I have ever come,” she whispered.
“Which is as it should be.”
He lifted her face and kissed her lightly on the mouth. She shivered instinctively. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“How else are we to learn anything about each other during our all-too-brief courtship?”
“I suggest long walks together in the park.”
“Not private enough for a—”
“Neither is this house, Your Grace,” she said, collecting her wits again. “You have to leave.”
He released her with a deep sigh. Before he could disconcert her with another charming ploy, she reached around him for his coat. He took it and turned to the door. “Don’t walk me out,” he said, glancing back at her with a look that made her start shivering all over again. “And stay away from the windows. There are dangerous men about this time of night.”
He escaped quietly from the house and hurried out into the gaslit drizzle. He wasn’t sure what was happening to him, but his thoughts seemed to be as twisted into knots as his body was.
He glanced back to catch her peering through the curtains at him. He shook his head in warning. She disappeared. Any passerby could see her if he hid in the greenery under the window. The thought unsettled him. Indeed, when he turned around he saw a man in a long cape hurrying across the street.
He stared at him through the misty haze. “Sir Daniel! You again?”
“Good God, Your Grace. I did not recognize you at first. I was about to show you the sharp end of my walking stick. I thought the academy might have a Peeping Tom at the window.”
Gideon hesitated. It was a damn good thing Sir Daniel hadn’t looked through the window a few minutes earlier. “Do you ever sleep?” he asked, gesturing to his coachman to draw up the parked carriage.
“I sleep off and on through the day.”
“Shall I drive you home?”
“No, thank you. It isn’t raining hard, and I was supposed to meet a contact on the corner.”
Gideon stared down the street. “I don’t see anyone. What manner of person is he?”
“An unreliable one,” Sir Daniel said in a disgruntled voice. “I should have known he wouldn’t show up on time.”
“This meeting doesn’t concern Charlotte, does it?”
Sir Daniel shook his head. “I doubt it, but I would like to know whether word of this dilemma has reached the streets. It is more likely that instead of sharing any helpful information this person would hope to profit from the situation.”
“I assume it isn’t a woman. Do you know his name or whereabouts?”
“His name is Nick Rydell, and a more unprincipled character I’ve yet to encounter. As to his whereabouts, all I can sa
y is that when you want to find him, it is nigh on impossible. Yet he seems to be everywhere you do not wish him to be at other times.”
“Why did you choose this location for an encounter?”
“I didn’t, Your Grace. He did. And now if I may be so bold, I would like to ask you to leave in case he has spotted you and will not come forward until I am alone.”
There wasn’t much Gideon could do under the circumstances but to respect this request. Clearly he could not stand vigil outside a school for young ladies without causing another scandal. But that did not justify sitting useless while a diary that had been in his possession was perhaps being passed from one stranger’s hand to another’s. His future wife’s reputation was at stake.
He had to launch his own investigation, and whether it was to prove his honor to himself or to the Boscastles seemed to matter less by the minute.
Nick ambled about the street, oblivious to the bustle of another London morning. He calculated that there would be several bidders for the diary, which he had first stowed in a place of honor under his pillow beside his pistol and then, reappraising its worth, had hidden under a loose floorboard. He had been up half the night reading select passages from the lusty tome. He was shocked, titillated, and impressed. He might stumble over an occasional word he didn’t recognize, but he got the gist of the entries that described Miss Boscastle’s encounters with the duke. Naughty, naughty. She used words as well as he used a knife. Quite the wicked girl. He thought he was in love.
Still, business was business. Who wanted the diary the most? The bat who had commissioned its theft? The publisher on Fleet Street who’d had the displeasure of conducting business with Nick before? The fancy courtesan whom the duke had thrown over for the lady with the red-hot pen?
Trickier to predict was whether the duke would let himself be blackmailed or would go off his head and throttle Nick. He’d seen Wynfield fencing at Fenton’s School of Arms. The duke was a natural fighter; he had to be good if Fenton had trained him, and Nick had to respect that, if nothing else. Then there was the lady herself.
The Duchess Diaries: The Bridal Pleasures Series Page 12