by Liz Carlyle
He returned his mouth to hers, surging inside with a kiss more urgent than delicate. Her stomach bottomed out again. A little desperately, she drew his tongue into her mouth, and something hot and urgent went spiraling through her, all the way down, drawing at her very center, making her gasp. He sensed it, and deepened the kiss, one big hand cradling the back of her head.
Dimly, Camille realized her breath had sped up, and that Rothewell had one warm, heavy hand on her hip, circling through the fabric. His other hand came up to caress her breast beneath the veil of her shawl, gently at first. His mouth skimmed down her throat, then his heated lips brushed the plump swell of her breast as his hand weighed it, almost lifting it from her bodice. Camille ached for his mouth—to feel it there. The jutting weight of his erection was unmistakable against her belly now. Her breath was coming too fast. Blood seemed to be rushing to her head, and desire pooled in her belly.
Camille was not naive. She knew how men and women made love. When his thumb slipped beneath the ruching of her bodice, and tugged it down, she did not protest. Her right breast sprang free. On a soft, hungry sound, Rothewell captured the nipple with his lips and drew it into the melting warmth of his mouth. Yes. As he suckled her, Camille began to feel boneless, without the will to refuse him anything. She wanted this. Ached for him.
The wind chose that moment to act up, gusting through the rose garden, sending a swirl of dry leaves rattling across the paths and about their feet. Somehow, it jerked her back into the present. To the reality of where they were. In the garden. In broad daylight.
Abruptly, he set her away. The breeze on her bare nipple was an exquisite pain. She opened her eyes and stepped back, frightened by the intensity of her response to him. She could not get her breath. Panic began to flood through her limbs.
At once, Rothewell caught her elbow, and drew her back to him, restoring her dress to order. “Forgive me.” His voice was hoarse, his breathing rough as he pulled her fully against him, and spread a broad, solid hand across her back. “Forgive me, Camille,” he murmured into her hair. “I am too forward.”
Camille’s cheek was against his chest, the soft wool of his lapel tickling her face. He felt wonderfully warm and solid. And yet the panic was shifting to a cold fear which was snaking through her, even as his hand began to make a slow, sweet circle between her shoulder blades. His soft words and gentle touch made him no less dangerous. Was this not precisely how a man lured a weak-willed woman onto the shores of emotional ruin?
Dear heaven, he was a rake just like her father—and yet in an instant, he’d had her all but pleading for more.
Oh, this was not wise. Did she want the sort of life her mother had lived? She drew a deep, shuddering breath. The marriage bed was one thing—and it was unavoidable. But this—oh, God, this sense of tumbling into something heady and wild…it simply would not do.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, and pushed abruptly away. “A most interesting exchange,” she managed. “But strictly speaking, monsieur, this is not necessary, is it? For the having of children?”
“What do you mean?” he rasped.
She glanced up at him. “This…this dalliance? All the kissing?”
He was silent for a moment. “No,” he finally said. “No, strictly speaking, it is not necessary. I think you know that.”
“Oui,” she admitted. She did know. And she knew, too, she had to preserve her heart. Her sanity. She had to keep herself safe from this man.
The intermittent gusts of wind were becoming a strong and steady breeze. The coldness inside her was moving into her limbs now. The fear was wrapping round her heart.
Camille dipped her head, pulled her shawl back around her. “J’ai froid,” she murmured.
Lord Rothewell offered his arm. “Then we must get you inside.”
She looked up at him. “You speak French?”
His face was an emotionless mask. “Well enough,” he answered. “Come, Mademoiselle Marchand. Allow me to see you safely inside.”
She took his arm, still unsettled. She was again Mademoiselle Marchand. She had not meant to insult him. But under no circumstance could she allow herself to become besotted by this man. What had she been thinking, to ache for his mouth so hungrily? Was she as much a fool as her mother had been? She glanced away and felt suddenly ashamed. Not of her desire—but of her utter lack of caution.
They reached the back door, and Rothewell picked up the riding crop which he had hung upon the gatepost. She watched him warily for a moment. “May we be married at once, monsieur?” she asked. “I do not wish to wait any longer.”
For a long moment, he simply stood there, rhythmically slapping the crop against his boot. “Another week, perhaps, for propriety’s sake,” he finally said. “I shall tell Pamela.”
“Très bien,” she murmured, lowering her gaze. “I thank you, monsieur. Will you come inside?”
He shook his head. “No. I think not.”
Camille gave a perfunctory curtsy. “Then I shall say bonjour, monsieur,” she answered. “And thank you again.”
“For what?” he asked tersely.
“For the money you have paid to Valigny, of course,” she answered, holding the door.
“Ah. The money. Yes, let us never forget about that.”
His jaw even harder than usual, Lord Rothewell made a tight bow, then went back down the steps, and out by the garden gate.
Lady Sharpe had lingered with her son no more than five minutes when Thornton returned, bringing with her the baby’s bathwater. The child’s routine was important, the countess consoled herself before surrendering her precious bundle to his nurse.
“I shall be in Sharpe’s study, should you need me,” she said after kissing the child’s forehead.
Downstairs, a small stack of correspondence and invitations awaited her, as they always did this time of day. Lady Sharpe prided herself on being a creature of habit. She went dutifully through all the letters regarding matters at home in Lincolnshire, dictating replies to those she could, and instructing Mr. Bigham, her husband’s secretary, to give the remainder to Sharpe himself.
She was just turning her attention to the invitations when a familiar voice in the hall beyond caught her ear. Lady Sharpe nearly leapt from her skin. “Bloody hell!” she muttered.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?” Bigham turned, gaping, from the papers he had been sorting.
Lady Sharpe’s face heated. “Nothing, Bigham,” she said. “We’ve a guest. That’s all.” Yes, and a most unwanted guest, too. The countess was frantically wondering what was best done about it when the footman appeared.
“Mrs. Ambrose, ma’am,” he gravely announced.
Too late. Lady Sharpe’s sister-in-law swept round him, her color high, a bright green hat set at a jaunty angle atop her pale blond locks. “Pam, my dear!” she exclaimed, circling the desk to kiss the countess’s cheek. “I’ve just got back from a week in Brighton, and it was—oh, dear—are you doing Sharpe’s work for him again? I shouldn’t, if I were you.”
“One does what one can,” she murmured, motioning Christine to a chair opposite the desk. “It is very hard for him to be away from the estate at this time of year.”
Christine shrugged one thin, angular shoulder. “Well, you could hardly travel, bloated, fat, and miserable as you have been,” she said, dropping languidly into the chair. “Honestly, Pamela, you will likely never get your figure back. It really is too horrid to contemplate at such an age.”
Lady Sharpe gave a muted smile. There was no point in explaining to Sharpe’s widowed and cheerfully childless sister how little her lost figure mattered—not when one had the recompense of a son and heir. Moreover, she needed to get Christine out of the house.
“I am afraid, Christine, that I was just on my way out,” she lied. “Why do you not accompany me down to the Strand? I need a new…andiron. Or two. Yes, a new set of andirons.”
Christine stuck out her lip. “How frightfully dull,” she said.
“Now, if you could be persuaded to go down to Burlington Arcade, perhaps? I need a reticule to match this hat. Oh, wait—! Where is Sharpe? I must borrow a hundred pounds first.”
Anything to get Christine out of the house. “I shall get the cash box,” said the countess, starting to rise. Just then, Mr. Bigham laid another piece of paper on the stack. “What is that?” she asked, distracted.
“An invitation which was hand-delivered from Lady Nash, ma’am,” he said solemnly. “A dinner party tomorrow in honor of her brother’s eng—”
“Yes, yes, Bigham, that will do!” said the countess sharply.
“A dinner party in honor of Rothewell?” crowed Christine, reaching for the ivory card. “How shocking! He will not approve, I daresay. I shall go, of course—merely to tease him about it.”
Lady Sharpe snatched the card and fell back into her chair. Rothewell had done it to her again, blast him!
Christine was staring at the invitation suspiciously. “Why may I not see it, Pam?”
Lady Sharpe sighed. “You may, I suppose,” she said. “But I am afraid, Christine, that you won’t be invited to this one.”
Christine’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon? Has Xanthia become so high in the instep she no longer knows me? That haughty husband of hers is but an earl, for God’s sake—and barely even English.”
Lady Sharpe pursed her lips. “Xanthia likes you very well, Christine.” A second lie on the heels of her first! “But I am afraid there has been some shocking news. You shan’t like it—and it is not really my job to tell it.”
Christine had gone perfectly still. “Oh, Lord, I knew I shouldn’t have gone to Brighton!” she said. “He is ill, is he not?”
Lady Sharpe felt her eyes widen. “Ill?”
Christine leapt up, and began to roam the room. “Rothewell—he’s been behaving very oddly,” she said, sounding more aggrieved than grief-stricken. “At times, he refuses to see me. He won’t eat. He seems so distant. He cancels plans. Once he looked to be in pain. Oh, dear, what a bother this will be!”
“A bother?”
Christine whipped around, her lips in a pout. “We have been invited to a house party in Hampshire,” she said. “He’ll use this, I daresay, as another excuse not to go.”
“No, he will not be going to any house party,” Lady Sharpe agreed. “Christine, my dear. I am very much afraid to say—well—that Rothewell is getting married.”
Camille watched the garden gate slam behind Lord Rothewell. His shoulders were stiff, his pace determined as he circled around in the direction of Hanover Street. Her hand still holding the door, Camille realized she had been unkind, and she was ashamed.
She had been angry with herself, not him. But that kiss—it had been too much. By the time it had ended, she had been boneless and disoriented. As if her weak knees had allowed her to melt into a warm puddle of desire, something Lord Rothewell could easily tread through on his way to the next woman he might bed.
She closed the door without fully appreciating just how prescient the notion was—until she heard the bloodcurdling scream from Lord Sharpe’s study.
“Madame?” Camille cried. Her shawl slithering halfway off as she ran, she made a mad dash down the passageway.
She almost collided with the thin blonde who burst from the study and into the corridor, with Lady Sharpe on her heels.
Camille brought herself up short, sending her shawl falling to the floor. But the blond woman had espied her and jerked to a halt, quivering with what looked like indignation. One finger thrust at Camille, the lady looked back over her shoulder.
“Is this what he has thrown me over for?” she cried. “This—this insipid little brown mouse running madly about?”
The countess had her fingertips to her temple. “Christine, for God’s sake,” she said. “Preserve just a scrap of your dignity!”
“What has happened?” Camille demanded, looking past the woman to Lady Sharpe. “Madame, you are unhurt?”
Eyes flashing with irritation, Lady Sharpe dropped her hand and nodded. “I am fine, my dear.”
And then the woman’s words struck her. Is this what he has thrown me over for?
Camille stiffened her spine and stood with all the elegance she could muster. “Pardon, madame,” she said, turning to the lady. “I think we have not met?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And she’s French!” she exploded. “The little baggage is French! How dare he?”
“Christine, for God’s sake, calm yourself!” hissed Lady Sharpe. She cut a sympathetic glance at Camille, but she also looked deeply vexed and more than a little embarrassed.
Regrettably, there was but one way to handle such a misfortune. Camille stepped deeper into the fray and smiled at the woman. “Alors, you are the mistress?” she asked, forcing her chin up. “And you have just learnt of me? Quel dommage! It is most unfair, is it not?”
“Why—What—Who are you?” the woman demanded.
Camille managed a bemused look. “Why, just the—the—what did you call it? The brown mouse, oui? I am afraid I do not know the word baggage.”
A horrific shade of red was crawling up the woman’s face now. She was trembling with outrage.
“Oh, I should not worry, were I you, madame.” Camille was angry, yes, but a malicious little part of her was enjoying herself. “It is a very big world, n’est-ce pas? You are his mistress, and perhaps that will not change—but rest assured, I am not leaving.”
“Why how dare you!”
Camille shrugged, and picked up her shawl. “But I do dare, madame,” she said quietly. “And I think you must come to grips with it. In another week, you may still be Rothewell’s mistress—but this mouse shall be his wife.”
Lady Sharpe looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to cry. Suddenly, she glanced over her shoulder and brightened. “Oh, look!” she said, waving a hand toward the window. “There is Rothewell now. He must be awaiting his horse. If you have a bone to pick, Christine, you should pick it with—”
The woman was halfway down the steps before Lady Sharpe could finish.
Camille caught the flying door before it swung round to smack Lady Sharpe in the face. “Au revoir, madame!” she sang before closing it. “Et bonne chance!”
Rothewell turned, the color draining from his face. Camille waved at him and slammed the door. Lady Sharpe gave a snort of laughter, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Camille twisted her mouth wryly. “Well, madame, this mouse could use a glass of sherry if you would be so kind?” she said, resolved to hide her hurt. “Perhaps something even stronger. And then, if you please, madame, you must tell me just who that lady was.”
Lady Sharpe looked at her and laughed again. “You really must do something, my dear, about that frightful Franglish of yours,” she said. “It really does tend to come and go, does it not?”
“Oui, madame.” Camille lifted her skirt and curtsied. “As it is needed—or as the nerves dictate.”
“Come along, then.” The countess went back into the study. “I think I shall join you in that sherry, Camille, whilst I savor thoughts of the punishment Rothewell is reaping right about now.”
“It was badly done, assurément,” said Camille. “A man should hide his mistress away before making a proposal of marriage, do you not think, madame?”
Lady Sharpe took two glasses from a door in the sideboard and set them on a tray. “Yes,” she cheerfully agreed. “If he means to keep one at all.”
“Oui, but what man does not?” asked Camille rhetorically.
The countess’s face fell as she poured. “Dear child!” she murmured. “Many men do not—and you must see to it that Rothewell does not.”
Camille blinked her eyes for a moment. “Mon Dieu, madame, but how can such a thing be done?”
“Oh, you will think of something, clever girl.”
“Shall I, madame?” asked Camille doubtfully.
Lady Sharpe handed her the sher
ry, then eyed her across the second glass. “Oh, yes,” she said musingly. “I am quite persuaded, you see.”
“Persuaded of what, madame?”
“Persuaded,” she said, lifting her glass high, “that Lord Rothewell has met his match.”
Camille wished she was equally confident. Over the next two days, she thought often of Rothewell’s mistress. Indeed, she was almost grateful to the poor woman. Their awkward meeting had driven a stake neatly through the heart of whatever nascent passion Camille might have been tempted to nurture for her future husband.
The lady’s name, the countess later explained, was Mrs. Ambrose, and she was Lord Sharpe’s half sister. Camille’s heart had sunk at that pronouncement. It would have been far easier to think of her husband’s mistress as a member of the demimonde. Instead, her blood was far bluer—and more English—than Camille’s, a fact which begged but one question—why wasn’t Lord Rothewell marrying his beautiful blond mistress? There could be but one answer. Money.
Chapter Five
In which Lord Nash hosts a Betrothal party
Marriage, someone once said, is a desperate business,” quoted Lord Rothewell, lifting his chin so that Trammel might better knot his cravat. “And by God, I am beginning to agree with him.”
“Marriage is a desperate thing,” the butler corrected, standing back to admire his handiwork. “And it was Selden, the great English jurist, I believe, who said it.”
“Indeed?” Rothewell surveyed his reflection in the gilt cheval glass. “It is very lowering, Trammel, for a chap to know his butler is better educated than he could ever hope to be.”
Trammel’s eyes had lit on a loose string at the baron’s right cuff. “I should hope that it is more lowering to be dressed by one’s butler,” he said, going to the baron’s dressing case for a pair of scissors. “You might give some thought to hiring a proper valet, sir, now that you are marrying.”
“No need,” said Rothewell gruffly. “Just get me through this dinner party tonight, Trammel, and the wedding. Then you may go back to thrashing the staff at your leisure.”