by Julia Quinn
She froze. Utterly froze. Completely stopped breathing.
Eyes wide and unblinking (could eyelids make a sound?) she watched with utter and complete horror as Bridgerton came into view, his athletic frame displayed to surprising benefit from her vantage point on the floor.
The tumblers clinked slightly together as he set them down, then he pulled the stopper from the decanter and poured two fingers of amber liquid into each glass.
Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.
“Is everything all right?” Maria called out.
“Perfect,” Bridgerton answered, although he sounded vaguely distracted. He lifted the glasses, humming slightly to himself as his body slowly began to turn.
Keep walking. Keep walking. If he walked away from her while he turned, he’d go back to Maria and she’d be safe. But if he turned, and then walked, Kate was as good as dead.
And she had no doubt that he would kill her. Frankly, she was surprised he hadn’t made an attempt last week at The Serpentine.
Slowly, he turned. And turned. And didn’t walk.
And Kate tried to think of all the reasons why dying at the age of twenty-one was really not such a bad thing.
Anthony knew quite well why he’d brought Maria Rosso back to his study. Surely no warm-blooded man could be immune to her charms. Her body was lush, her voice was intoxicating, and he knew from experience that her touch was equally potent.
But even as he took in that silky sable hair and those full, pouting lips, even as his muscles tightened at the memory of other full, pouting parts of her body, he knew that he was using her.
He felt no guilt that he would be using her for his own pleasure. In that regard, she was using him as well. And she at least would be compensated for it, whereas he would be out several jewels, a quarterly allowance, and the rent on a fashionable townhouse in a fashionable (but not too fashionable) part of town.
No, if he felt uneasy, if he felt frustrated, if he felt like he wanted to put his damned fist through a brick wall, it was because he was using Maria to banish the nightmare that was Kate Sheffield from his mind. He never wanted to wake up hard and tortured again, knowing that Kate Sheffield was the cause. He wanted to drown himself in another woman until the very memory of the dream dissolved and faded into nothingness.
Because God knew he was never going to act on that particular erotic fantasy. He didn’t even like Kate Sheffield. The thought of bedding her made him break out in a cold sweat, even as it swirled a ripple of desire right through his gut.
No, the only way that dream was going to come true was if he were delirious with fever…and maybe she’d have to be delirious as well…and perhaps they would both have to be stranded on a desert isle, or sentenced to be executed in the morning, or…
Anthony shuddered. It simply wasn’t going to happen.
But bloody hell, the woman must have bewitched him. There could be no other explanation for the dream—no, make that a nightmare—and besides that, even now he could swear that he could smell her. It was that maddening combination of lilies and soap, that beguiling scent that had washed over him while they were out in Hyde Park last week.
Here he was, pouring a glass of the finest whiskey for Maria Rosso, one of the few women of his acquaintance who knew how to appreciate both a fine whiskey and the devilish intoxication that followed, and all he could smell was the damned scent of Kate Sheffield. He knew she was in the house—and he was half ready to kill his mother for that—but this was ridiculous.
“Is everything all right?” Maria called out.
“Perfect,” Anthony said, his voice sounding tight to his ears. He began to hum, something he’d always done to relax himself.
He turned and started to take a step forward. Maria was waiting for him, after all.
But there was that damned scent again. Lilies. He could swear it was lilies. And soap. The lilies were intriguing, but the soap made sense. A practical sort of woman like Kate Sheffield would scrub herself clean with soap.
His foot hesitated in midair, and his step forward proved to be a small one instead of his usual long stride. He couldn’t quite escape the smell, and he kept turning, his nose instinctively twisting his eyes toward where he knew there couldn’t be lilies, and yet the scent was, impossibly, there.
And then he saw her.
Under his desk.
It was impossible.
Surely this was a nightmare. Surely if he closed his eyes and opened them again, she’d be gone.
He blinked. She was still there.
Kate Sheffield, the most maddening, irritating, diabolical woman in all England, was crouching like a frog under his desk.
It was a wonder he didn’t drop the whiskey.
Their eyes met, and he saw hers widen with panic and fright. Good, he thought savagely. She should be frightened. He was going to tan her bloody hide until her hide was bloody well bloody.
What the hell was she doing here? Wasn’t dousing him with the filthy water of The Serpentine enough for her bloodthirsty spirit? Wasn’t she satisfied with her attempts to stymie his courtship of her sister? Did she need to spy on him as well?
“Maria,” he said smoothly, moving forward toward the desk until he was stepping on Kate’s hand. He didn’t step hard, but he heard her squeak.
This gave him immense satisfaction.
“Maria,” he repeated, “I have suddenly remembered an urgent matter of business that must be dealt with immediately.”
“This very night?” she asked, sounding quite dubious.
“I’m afraid so. Euf!”
Maria blinked. “Did you just grunt?”
“No,” Anthony lied, trying not to choke on the word. Kate had removed her glove and wrapped her hand around his knee, digging her nails straight through his breeches and into his skin. Hard.
At least he hoped it was her nails. It could have been her teeth.
“Are you sure there is nothing amiss?” Maria inquired.
“Nothing…at”—whatever body part Kate was sinking into his leg sank a little farther—“all!” The last word came out as more of a howl, and he kicked his foot forward, connecting with something he had a sneaking suspicion was her stomach.
Normally, Anthony would die before striking a woman, but this truly seemed to be an exceptional case. In fact, he took not a little bit of pleasure in kicking her while she was down.
She was biting his leg, after all.
“Allow me to walk you to the door,” he said to Maria, shaking Kate off his ankle.
But Maria’s eyes were curious, and she took a few steps forward. “Anthony, is there an animal under your desk?”
Anthony let out a bark of laughter. “You could say that.”
Kate’s fist came down on his foot.
“Is it a dog?”
Anthony seriously considered answering in the affirmative, but even he was not that cruel. Kate obviously appreciated his uncharacteristic tact, because she let go of his leg.
Anthony took advantage of his release to quickly step out from behind the desk. “Would I be unforgivably rude,” he asked, striding to Maria’s side and taking her arm, “if I merely walked you to the door and not back to the music room?”
She laughed, a low, sultry sound that should have seduced him. “I am a grown woman, my lord. I believe I can manage the short distance.”
“Forgive me?”
She stepped through the door he held open for her. “I suspect there isn’t a woman alive who could deny you forgiveness for that smile.”
“You are a rare woman, Maria Rosso.”
She laughed again. “But not, apparently, rare enough.”
She floated out, and Anthony shut the door with a decisive click. Then, some devil on his shoulder surely prodding him, he turned the key in the lock and pocketed it.
“You,” he boomed, eliminating the distance to the desk in four long strides. “Show yourself.”
When Kate didn’t scramble out quickly enough,
he reached down, clamped his hand around her upper arm, and hauled her to her feet.
“Explain yourself,” he hissed.
Kate’s legs nearly buckled as the blood rushed back to her knees, which had been bent for nearly a quarter of an hour. “It was an accident,” she said, grabbing on to the edge of the desk for support.
“Funny how those words seem to emerge from your mouth with startling frequency.”
“It’s true!” she protested. “I was sitting in the hall, and—” She gulped. He had stepped forward and was now very, very close. “I was sitting in the hall,” she said again, her voice sounding crackly and hoarse, “and I heard you coming. I was just trying to avoid you.”
“And so you invaded my private office?”
“I didn’t know it was your office. I—” Kate sucked in her breath. He’d moved even closer, his crisp, wide lapels now only inches from the bodice of her dress. She knew his proximity was deliberate, that he sought to intimidate rather than seduce, but that didn’t do anything to quell the frantic beating of her heart.
“I think perhaps you did know that this was my office,” he murmured, letting his forefinger trail down the side of her cheek. “Perhaps you did not seek to avoid me at all.”
Kate swallowed convulsively, long past the point of trying to maintain her composure.
“Mmmm?” His finger slid along the line of her jaw. “What do you say to that?”
Kate’s lips parted, but she couldn’t have uttered a word if her life had depended on it. He wore no gloves—he must have removed them during his tryst with Maria—and the touch of his skin against hers was so powerful it seemed to control her body. She breathed when he paused, stopped when he moved. She had no doubt that her heart was beating in time to his pulse.
“Maybe,” he whispered, so close now that his breath kissed her lips, “you desired something else altogether.”
Kate tried to shake her head, but her muscles refused to obey.
“Are you sure?”
This time, her head betrayed her and gave a little shake.
He smiled, and they both knew he had won.
Chapter 7
Also in attendance at Lady Bridgerton’s musicale: Mrs. Featherington and the three elder Featherington daughters (Prudence, Philippa, and Penelope, none of whom wore colors beneficial to their complexions); Mr. Nigel Berbrooke (who, as usual, had much to say, although no one save Philippa Featherington seemed interested); and, of course, Mrs. Sheffield and Miss Katharine Sheffield.
This Author assumes that the Sheffields’ invitation had also included Miss Edwina Sheffield, but she was not present. Lord Bridgerton seemed in fine spirits despite the younger Miss Sheffield’s absence, but alas, his mother appeared disappointed.
But then again, Lady Bridgerton’s matchmaking tendencies are legendary, and surely she must be at loose ends now that her daughter has married the Duke of Hastings.
LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 27 APRIL 1814
Anthony knew he had to be insane.
There could be no other explanation. He’d meant to scare her, terrify her, make her understand that she could never hope to meddle in his affairs and win, and instead…
He kissed her.
Intimidation had been his intention, and so he’d moved closer and closer until she, an innocent, could only be cowed by his presence. She wouldn’t know what it was like to have a man so near that the heat of his body seeped through her clothes, so close that she couldn’t tell where his breath ended and hers began.
She wouldn’t recognize the first prickles of desire, nor would she understand that slow, swirling heat in the core of her being.
And that slow, swirling heat was there. He could see it in her face.
But she, a complete innocent, would never comprehend what he could see with one look of his experienced eyes. All she would know was that he was looming over her, that he was stronger, more powerful, and that she had made a dreadful mistake by invading his private sanctuary.
He was going to stop right there and leave her bothered and breathless. But when there was barely an inch between them, the pull grew too strong. Her scent was too beguiling, the sound of her breath too arousing. The prickles of desire he’d meant to spark within her suddenly ignited within him, sending a warm claw of need to the very tips of his toes. And the finger he’d been trailing along her cheek—just to torture her, he told himself—suddenly became a hand that cupped the back of her head as his lips took hers in an explosion of anger and desire.
She gasped against his mouth, and he took advantage of her parted lips by sliding his tongue between them. She was stiff in his arms, but it seemed more to do with surprise than anything else, and so Anthony pressed his suit further by allowing one of his hands to slide down her back and cup the gentle curve of her derriere.
“This is madness,” he whispered against her ear. But he made no move to let her go.
Her reply was an incoherent, confused moan, and her body became slightly more pliant in his arms, allowing him to mold her even closer to his form. He knew he should stop, knew he damned well shouldn’t have started, but his blood was racing with need, and she felt so…so…
So good.
He groaned, his lips leaving hers to taste the slightly salty skin of her neck. There was something about her that suited him like no woman ever had before, as if his body had discovered something his mind utterly refused to consider.
Something about her was…right.
She felt right. She smelled right. She tasted right. And he knew that if he stripped off all of her clothes and took her there on the carpet on the floor of his study, she would fit underneath him, fit around him—just right.
It occurred to Anthony that when she wasn’t arguing with him, Kate Sheffield might bloody well be the finest woman in England.
Her arms, which had been imprisoned in his embrace, slowly edged up, until her hands were hesitantly resting on his back. And then her lips moved. It was a tiny thing, actually, a movement barely felt on the thin skin of his forehead, but she was definitely kissing him back.
A low, triumphant growl emerged from Anthony’s mouth as he moved his mouth back to hers, kissing her fiercely, daring her to continue what she’d begun. “Oh, Kate,” he moaned, nudging her back until she was leaning against the edge of the desk. “God, you taste so good.”
“Bridgerton?” Her voice was tremulous, the word more of a question than anything else.
“Don’t say anything,” he whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t say anything.”
“But—”
“Not a word,” he interrupted, pressing a finger to her lips. The last thing he wanted was for her to ruin this perfectly good moment by opening her mouth and arguing.
“But I—” She planted her hands on his chest and wrenched herself away, leaving him off balance and panting.
Anthony let out a curse, and not a mild one.
Kate scurried away, not all the way across the room, but over to a tall wingback chair, far enough away so that she was not in arms’ reach. She gripped the stiff back of the chair, then darted around it, thinking that it might be a good idea to have a nice solid piece of furniture between them.
The viscount didn’t look to be in the best of tempers.
“Why did you do that?” she said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.
He shrugged, suddenly looking a little less angry and a little more uncaring. “Because I wanted to.”
Kate just gaped at him for a moment, unable to believe that he could have such a simple answer to what was, despite its simple phrasing, such a complicated question. Finally, she blurted out, “But you can’t have.”
He smiled. Slowly. “But I did.”
“But you don’t like me!”
“True,” he allowed.
“And I don’t like you.”
“So you’ve been telling me,” he said smoothly. “I’ll have to take your word for it, since it wasn’t particularly apparent a few
seconds ago.”
Kate felt her cheeks flush with shame. She had responded to his wicked kiss, and she hated herself for it, almost as much as she hated him for initiating the intimacy.
But he didn’t have to taunt her. That was the act of a cad. She gripped the back of the chair until her knuckles turned white, no longer certain if she was using it as a defense against Bridgerton or as a means to stop herself from lunging forward to strangle him.
“I am not going to let you marry Edwina,” she said in a very low voice.
“No,” he murmured, moving slowly forward until he was just on the other side of the chair. “I didn’t think you were.”
Her chin lifted a notch. “And I am certainly not going to marry you.”
He planted his hands on the armrests and leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from hers. “I don’t recall asking.”
Kate lurched backward. “But you just kissed me!”
He laughed. “If I offered marriage to every woman I’d kissed, I’d have been thrown into jail for bigamy long ago.”
Kate could feel herself begin to shake, and she held on to the back of the chair for dear life. “You, sir,” she nearly spat out, “have no honor.”
His eyes blazed and one of his hands shot out to grip her chin. He held her that way for several seconds, forcing her to meet his gaze. “That,” he said in a deadly voice, “is not true, and were you a man, I’d call you out for it.”
Kate remained still for what seemed like a very long time, her eyes locked on his, the skin on her cheek burning where his powerful fingers held her motionless. Finally she did the one thing she’d sworn she would never do with this man.
She begged.
“Please,” she whispered, “let me go.”
He did, his hand releasing her with a startling abruptness. “My apologies,” he said, sounding the slightest bit…surprised?
No, that was impossible. Nothing could surprise this man.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he added softly.