Gabriel tucked it beneath her bonnet. “You want your tiara, do you? What are you willing to pay for it?”
His love made her uncomfortable. “Pay for it?”
“You didn’t think I would win something as valuable as the queen’s tiara and just hand it over, did you? An immoral gambler like me?”
Disappointment pierced her—although surely she should have expected this. She started walking, her arms stiff at her side. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I can give you my vowels.”
“What are your vowels worth? Your very self has been lost to Mr. Knight. You and all that you own. You have nothing.”
She stared at Gabriel in a kind of helpless horror. Of course, it was true. In some logical corner of her mind, she’d known it was true. But she was a duchess in her own right. She had always owned more land, had more wealth than anyone else she knew. Even her father’s gambling deprecations hadn’t made a dent in the family fortune.
And Papa had tossed it all away in one throw of the cards.
Even then, she’d thought she would go to Mr. Knight, talk some sense into him and all would return to normal. She hadn’t thought that before she could take action, she would need resources and need them immediately. Grasping Gabriel’s arm, she said, “You must trust me when I assure you—”
He answered tonelessly. “Only a fool trusts at a gaming table.”
She shouldn’t be surprised at his ruthless rejection. She shouldn’t, but she was. Her hand fell away. “So you won’t help me?”
“I didn’t say that. But I require . . . a promise. A promise you won’t break.”
“I don’t break—”
He held up one finger. “Don’t lie, either.”
For she did break promises. She’d broken the promise to marry him.
“What I want from you is a night in your bed.”
Her breath caught in her chest. He didn’t mean it. “What? No!”
“Yes!” He did mean it. His eyes were filled with something that should have been triumph, and instead looked like rage.
Her voice sounded harsh, not like hers at all. “You said it yourself. I’ve been wagered to Mr. Knight. Surely that makes me unavailable for the kind of bargain you want.”
“He shouldn’t have waited for you to come to him. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He glanced around them. Hurth and Thomasin had disappeared over the rise. They were alone in the valley. Pulling Madeline into the grove of trees, he caught her in his arms and lowered his face to hers. “Go home,” he whispered. Pushing her bonnet off her head so it dangled on its ribbons beneath her chin, he kissed her.
She shouldn’t let him. She’d already suffered a taste of his seduction, and she’d proved herself only too susceptible. But he kissed so well! And life had become so complicated. The issues were no longer clear-cut. She no longer knew what to think on every matter. She no longer knew who to trust and who to fear.
But she knew she never feared Gabriel. He held her firmly against his body, warming her, letting her feel his strength. Her hands rested on his protective shoulders. Her eyes closed, shutting her into a dark world of the senses. The breeze blew over her skin, cool and tinged with the scent of brine. The branches above them creaked, the leaves rustled, and in the distance, the waves crashed on the shore. Sunshine dappled her with heat. His lips rocked on hers as if that light pressure gave him the greatest pleasure in the world, until she herself opened her lips slightly for just a sample of him. Just a quick flick of her tongue.
Catching her tongue between his lips, he sucked on the tip. With a swirl, he lured her into his mouth. Open to each other, they tasted, touched. She descended into a pool of spinning colors, red and black and bursts of gold. Her pulse beat at her temples and wrists, her breath blended with his and the two of them became one with the wind, the trees, the earth. They were the embodiment of wildness, of nature . . . of untamed, glorious passion.
Lifting his mouth, he waited until her eyes fluttered open, and whispered, “Go home like a good girl, and if the tiara is gambled, I’ll win it for you.”
She stared into his face, seeing the marks of passion—the faint swelling of his lips, the heaviness of his lids. His hips pressed tightly against her; he was aroused and ready, and she wanted to give him everything, anything, that made him happy.
“Promise me, Maddie,” he coaxed.
Luckily, with him her instinct was to be mistrustful. Holding her silence, she waited until her brain functioned once more. Functioned, returned to normal and grappled with the fact that he’d kissed her with the express intent of coercing her into doing his bidding. She breathed deeply of the fresh air, trying to catch her balance when, as always, Gabriel made her dizzy.
Reaching behind her, she grasped his wrists and pulled herself free. She stepped out of his embrace. “I can’t go home. As you so callously pointed out, I have no home left.” Not be Madeline de Lacy of Lacy Manor? It didn’t bear thinking of. “Now I need to follow Thomasin before she realizes she’s been compromised.” Discussion over, she hurried away, her mind tumultuous with all she’d learned today, and all she must do to set matters right.
He easily paced beside her, his hands behind his back once more. “You’re in danger here.”
She retied her bonnet to frame her face, then lifted her face to the wind, hoping the cool air would clear the signs of passion from her face. “If I leave and my father arrives, there’ll be no one to talk him out of this reckless gamble.”
Gabriel’s teeth audibly snapped together. The color rose in his face as he stared at her, brows down, jaw clenched. “He’s not coming.”
She stared back. “There’s no changing the facts. He’ll be here. He loves to gamble. I only wonder why he’s so tardy.”
In a hoarse, goaded voice, he conceded, “If he appears, I could talk to him.”
Her sarcasm bubbled over. “That should achieve the goal. I’m sure he’ll listen to you, a confirmed gambler.” Exasperation pushed her over the edge. “He’ll imagine you want him gone because you wish to avoid a challenge, and be all the more determined to play.”
Gabriel muttered as if to himself—although she heard him very well—“I tried. I did try.” Raising his voice, he said, “Then you’ll pay my price for your tiara.”
Chapter Twelve
“Ye told her what?” MacAllister crumpled the freshly laundered, stiffly starched cravat in his hands. “Ye dunna mean it!”
“Of course I do.” Gabriel removed the cravat from MacAllister’s grip, shook his head over the spoiled cloth and tossed it aside.
“Ye told wee Miss I’m-the-Duchess-and-Don’t-Ye-Forget-It that ye’ll win the queen’s tiara, and just hand it over withoot a kiss on the rump or a . . . Wait a minute.” MacAllister squinted at Gabriel. “I’ll wager there is some rump-kissing involved. Yers.”
“You know me too well.” Extending his hand, Gabriel waited until MacAllister gave him an unwrinkled cravat.
“So ye’re going t’ take precious time when ye ought t’ be resting up for the game, and spend it romancing a duchess who’s already done ye wrong?”
“I wouldn’t put it in quite so unflattering a manner, but . . . yes. I believe that covers the matter.”
“What I’d like t’ know is, what does that lass possess that makes yer guid sense fly away? She’s always been trooble. She’s always going t’ be trooble, and ye don’t need any more trooble. Especially na’ now, when ye’re so close t’ locking a wrench around Rumbelow’s ballocks!”
Trouble? MacAllister was right about that. Madeline was trouble.
“Get rid of her,” MacAllister urged. “Send her away. Do yer romancing later.”
Gabriel carefully placed the cravat around his neck and began the intricate process of tying it correctly. “She still won’t go.”
“Why in the bluidy hell na’?”
“Because her father might yet appear.” He met MacAllister’s gaze in the mirror.
MacAllister grimaced. He kne
w very well what Gabriel thought of Madeline’s father. Not long after she’d left for the continent, in a fit of drunken rage, Gabriel had expressed his disgust of Magnus eloquently and vehemently.
MacAllister hadn’t understood—he wasn’t much for human relationships.
“Did ye tell her she could get killed?”
“She figured it out on her own.”
MacAllister’s jaw dropped. When he managed to close it, he asked, “And she won’t leave? I jump every time I see one of those villains with their guns tucked into their waistbands. I’d go.”
Gabriel shook his head at this profession of cowardice. MacAllister had never backed away from a fight in his life. “You can’t. I’ll need you before this is all over.”
“Humph.” But Gabriel could tell MacAllister was pleased. “Even with her being here under yer very nose, ye dunna have t’ pursue her.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I dunna know why.”
Neither did Gabriel. What existed between him and Madeline was like nothing he’d ever experienced or could hope to experience again. Four years ago, when they were first together, she had been without a clue to the extraordinary nature of the bond between them. A bond of the flesh, yes. They were wild for each other, desperate to mate. But more than that, they were friends, with the same imagination, the same sense of humor, the same ideals—although she doubted that now. If he’d been the kind of man to buckle under and be her puppet-husband, they would have had a good marriage. But he wasn’t, and they didn’t. Instead she’d made that scene at Almack’s, and during her upbraiding, all he could think was that she threatened to leave him.
He hadn’t said a word. He had taken her invective.
When she’d returned home, he’d done what he’d spent many previous hours imagining—he’d climbed the tree outside her window and come through to take her as his woman.
He’d thought that would fix everything. He’d thought she would recognize and acknowledge his claim.
Instead, when she was gone and he was alone, he’d been haunted by memories. And those were worse than his former imaginings, for they were real.
He knew what her breasts looked like, heavy and full, with peach-colored nipples that responded to his touch. He knew her golden skin was soft and warm, especially between her thighs . . . especially in the place that he made for himself. He knew she responded to his touch with demands of her own and with slow, deep moans that gave him her blessing even as he hurt her.
And he had hurt her when he entered her. For a woman so tall, so brash and bold, she had been small inside, wrapping his cock in a heat so tight he still woke, dreaming of her, shaking with desire. But no matter how tiny she had been, he had given no quarter because he could not—could not—pull out. She’d paid him in kind, biting him, digging her nails into his back. She’d marked him; he’d marked her.
Then she’d left him.
“Damn!” He threw the ruined cravat to the floor.
MacAllister slapped another in his hand. “Ye’re going t’ go through all of them if ye’ll na’ pay heed.”
When Gabriel had been inside her, he had owned her. Her inner tissues had caressed him, her hips had curved up to accept him, her legs had clutched his hips. Each of her movements might have been orchestrated to give him pleasure, for each movement had brought him closer to the climax of his life. When he’d come inside her, he’d emptied himself, his seed spurting into her womb with such force, he died from the bliss. And was resurrected even before he pulled out, to do it again.
Dear God, what a night that had been!
MacAllister made a huge fuss as he brushed Gabriel’s fine, dark blue jacket.
Gabriel ignored him.
Then he’d seen Madeline at Chalice Hall, proud as ever, tall, beautiful, perhaps a little thinner, and he’d suffered from a cockstand so persistent more than one married lady had noticed, and provided him with an invitation to indulge. He didn’t care to indulge with them. He wanted only Madeline, and having Madeline was next to impossible.
Unless—he grinned savagely in the mirror—she gave in to his blackmail.
MacAllister observed that grin, and apparently didn’t approve. “Ye canna have the lass permanently. Her father lost her t’ that American.”
“Mr. Knight shouldn’t have waited for her to come to him. I understand the game he’s playing. Having her come to him is a way to establish power, yes, but when his prize is wandering about the country, he’s taking a chance someone with less principles will make a claim.” Gambling ethics be damned. Gabriel had always known he would make his claim on her; no other man was going to swoop in ahead of him.
“When did ye lose yer principles?”
“I haven’t lost them. I simply don’t choose to utilize them with Mr. Knight. Winning a wife at cards is a damned poor way to go about a courtship.”
“Principles are principles. Ye canna discard them at whim, or ye’re no better than Rumbelow.”
Gabriel winced. “A low blow, MacAllister.”
Gabriel had done his research. Rumbelow never pulled the same swindle twice. He seemed to take delight in surprising his victims—and the magistrates. The underworld of London and Liverpool took a kind of pride in his accomplishments—and they despised him, too. The term honor among thieves meant nothing to Rumbelow. He had begun his career with a select group of intelligent thieves to swindle the old and helpless. But after a few years, when he had his crew well in place, he pulled a job, a fantastically large fraud, that fleeced nobles and merchants. Rather than split the proceeds, he cheated his team, and when the law closed in, he disappeared, taking the stolen goods and leaving his men to hang or be deported.
MacAllister knew all that. He’d tracked the few who survived, talked to them, learned all there was to know about the man they had called Master.
But nothing MacAllister said could change Gabriel’s mind about Madeline. “Nevertheless, I’ll keep her. It’s her word she would marry me against the duke’s word that she would marry Knight. I have prior claim.”
In his doleful voice, MacAllister said, “Ye should be ashamed of yerself, taking advantage of a young woman’s desperate bid t’ preserve her one remaining family heirloom.”
“You’d think I would be ashamed, wouldn’t you?” Gabriel wasn’t ashamed. He was glad of the opportunity. “Her father’s made her life a misery all these years. If she’s going to put her life at risk for him, and I have to let her, then she’s going to pay for my worry—and my protection.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Probably.”
Gabriel had never been a good man. Until he’d met Madeline, he’d been a rakehell, a fortune hunter and a womanizer. Then all his dormant ambitions had coalesced into one—that of being her partner. Since she’d left, he hadn’t experienced one moment of the wildness that had so attracted Madeline.
Apparently, all it took was one disdainful glance from her fine eyes, for now the rakehell had returned in full force.
He was going to have her, and he wanted her to know it, to think about it all the time. He wanted the cockstand in his trousers to be matched by a soft melting between her thighs. He wanted to know that if he slid his hand under her skirt and touched the curling hairs, they would be damp with her desire . . . for him. That afternoon, when he kissed her, when he tasted her, it had been all he could do not to pin her against the tree and take her where they stood. And to hell with everyone else.
He hadn’t because it was too soon and too public.
“Ach, that looks guid.”
It took Gabriel a moment to realize his valet spoke of his cravat. A moment to examine it in the mirror. “That does look good. Hand me my jacket and the knife for inside my boot.” Lifting the yellowed lady’s glove from atop the dresser, he held it to his nose, sniffed the faint, lingering scent of leather and Madeline and smiled. “Let me go to the ball.”
Chapter Thirteen
Thomasin snatched the hairbrush out of Madeline
’s hand. “You’re awful at this.”
Madeline hated to admit it, but it was true. Thomasin made Madeline, in her plain dark muslin, feel tall and inelegant. Thomasin’s gown of white sarcenet was overlaid by a short tunic of pale pink crepe, with short sleeves and a low bodice that displayed her bosom admirably. Only the tumbled blond hair detracted from the vision that was Thomasin, and Madeline could do nothing about it. She couldn’t get her own tresses to behave in an orderly manner, much less tame Thomasin’s board-straight mane. “Your hair just doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. Maybe I should try the curling iron. . . .” Madeline cast an uneasy glance at the round metal tongs sitting on the hot stovetop.
“No! I saw what you did to my new silk gown. You’re not getting near me with a curling iron.” With a deep sigh, Thomasin rose and pointed at the dressing chair placed before the mirror. “Sit down. I’ll show you what I want.”
With a flounce, Madeline seated herself. “I hate failure.” Like the failure of the afternoon, when she unsuccessfully attempted to convince Gabriel to win her back the tiara.
“Yet you seem to have a lot of them.”
Madeline bit her lip on her retort. How could it be so difficult to do what Eleanor had always made look so easy? Madeline had spent fifteen minutes this morning trying to light a fire in the grate, and finally Zipporah had had to be called in. Lady Tabard’s skinny maid hadn’t believed Madeline’s tale of damp flint and steel, and proceeded to start the fire the first try. She’d been insolent about it, too.
Comb and brush in hand, Thomasin brushed Madeline’s long, dark hair. “I have suspicions about you.”
“Suspicions?” Madeline’s voice sounded too high, and she brought it down an octave. “What kind of suspicions?”
“I think perhaps you weren’t always a companion. Were you a lady before, and your parents died and left you with no means of supporting yourself?”
A likely tale, and one Madeline wished she’d thought of herself. “Yes, indeed! Quite right!”
Scandalous Again: Switching Places #1 Page 12