by Tracy Sumner
Agnes stuffed the handkerchief in her reticule and closed it with a snap. “Is that what they’re calling it now? I’m not so old that I don’t remember those blistering looks. Or the menace they bring.”
Victoria laughed and dropped her puzzle book to the velvet squab. She didn’t know much, not nearly enough, about Aggie’s past. “Care to tell me about that, Aggie? More interesting than the scenery.”
Her companion’s cheeks flushed the same color as the crooked initials embroidered on the corner of her handkerchief. “Not on your life, missy. I wouldn’t want to give you any ideas.”
Finn’s lips covering hers and setting fire to her body was something Victoria would never forget for as long as she lived. His long fingers curving around her hip and drawing her against him. The stunned look on his face when he finally drew back and looked into hers.
She needed no one to give her ideas when she had so bloody many herself.
“This is against my better judgment.”
Victoria peered at her puzzle book without seeing one word on the page. “Understood.”
“We could stay with your cousin, Alphonse,” Agnes chirped in that way she did when she knew she was fighting a losing battle. Like air was trapped between her tongue and her teeth. “I had no idea your father would let the house in Belgravia the moment we headed to Oxfordshire and your mother to Scotland. The situation must be even more dire than we thought.”
Victoria groaned and dropped her head to the seat. “Alphonse pinched my bottom the last time I shared a drawing room with him.” The thought of it still made her skin crawl.
Agnes tapped her reticule with a sigh. “He’s out then.”
“Beauchamp House is fully staffed. Finn doesn’t live there. We won’t be occupying the same house. It’s perfectly suitable.” She said the words, having no idea if they were entirely true.
“Doesn’t matter where he lives if you plan to run him to ground the minute you get to London.”
“You’re going to make me wish I hadn’t told you about the dreams. I’m not going to let him meet his sister without me there to block the thoughts. I won’t make him go through that when I can help.”
Agnes gestured to the hulking man riding his stallion alongside them. “What does he think of this?”
Not much, Victoria could have admitted. Humphrey had reacted precisely as Finn said he would. Requesting every detail about the dreams, swiftly packing his bag, arguing with Piper and Julian about taking her with him, then giving up with a furious look that said someone—likely Finn Alexander—was going to pay for his predicament.
Finn knew the exact second they caught him.
She caught him.
It was three days later, when he stood on the lawn of Ashcroft House and Lady Parchant-Bingman’s lurid thoughts dribbled away like tea through a cracked cup, leaving his mind crystal-clear. He’d only come to discuss his sister’s whereabouts with the duke’s investigator and had instead gotten coerced into attending a soiree he’d no wish to attend. One he wouldn’t have been invited to if not for his unusually close relationship to the host. Now, he could only gulp a breath of night air scented with a wretched combination of lemon verbena and the Thames while accepting that the unstoppable flood of relief and joy at Victoria’s arrival meant he was truly buggered.
I’ve missed her, he realized and threw back the champagne he hadn’t wanted and had, damn it to hell, promised himself he wouldn’t drink. And I’m not surprised she joined the chase.
Incredibly dangerous, the game they played.
One he nonetheless found himself very much wanting to play.
Lady Parchant-Bingman glanced over her shoulder, and upon seeing she and Finn stood behind a fountain that hadn’t filtered water in centuries, a nifty distance from the celebratory horde gathered on the lawn, hooked her finger beneath his shirt cuff and tugged him a step closer. He went, well, not willingly, but obligingly. It was hard to break old habits when he had absolutely no intention of doing anything else.
Of course, that’s how Victoria found him.
Standing too close to a woman he didn’t know in a biblical sense but appeared to. Her greedy finger tucked in his starched cuff, her gaze lifted as if she expected a kiss and wasn’t leaving without one. Finn stepped back awkwardly, surprising himself and the lady, while two foreign concepts peppered his unfettered mind. Shame at being caught in this situation when it was what he did. And jealousy, a spiky flush that stung his skin as he noted Victoria’s fingers resting securely on Ashcroft’s forearm as he guided her around the fountain.
Moonlight and mist washing over them, the gorgeous couple, a first-rate example of refinement and culture, all the things he wasn’t even though he faked it very, very well.
One look at Tori, and he knew. She would make a marvelous duchess.
It was an odd feeling to shatter inside but remain standing. Julian’s words filtering through and making it worse. Cracks are how the light gets in, boy-o.
Victoria’s eyes were the color of a leaf frozen in ice when they met his.
“Julian worked quickly,” he murmured and glanced again at her fingers draped over Ashcroft’s elegant linen coat. Mine, shot through his mind as he shoved down the savage urge to yank her away from the duke, which would have been entertaining as all hell. A former soldier and chance mercenary when the instance called for it, Ashcroft would pummel him to within an inch of his life if he so much as breathed on him. Finn was an excellent marksman and damn good with a knife but a soldier of fortune he was not.
Ashcroft glanced between them, sensing unrest but looking too poleaxed to do much about it. He rubbed the fingertips of his left hand together, his cheeks ashen. Victoria’s gift was blocking his, as they’d expected, as he’d warned the duke earlier in the evening it might.
How long, Finn wondered, before Ashcroft asked for her hand in marriage? Forget love when your duchess could bring normalcy.
A talent more valuable than the Queen’s jewels for those in their world.
Lady Parchant-Bingman studied each member of the group, searching for a salacious tidbit to impart later in the evening. Ashcroft rose to the challenge, releasing Victoria and turning to the inquisitive lady with a smooth laugh Finn knew to be the height of deceit. Though he considered him a friend, Ashcroft had the temperament of a caged lion and smiled only on the rarest of occasions. Humor was not in his repertoire. “Come, my lady, I have a better spot where you may view the pyrotechnics.”
Finn coughed into his fist. It always amazed him that a man consumed by flames wanted to entertain with fireworks. Of course, a passion for them did explain the blazes that occurred rather often at the duke’s estates.
Ashcroft threw Finn a droll look. “Mr. Alexander is going to escort Lady Hamilton to her companion, who was taken with a sudden bout of sneezing and retired to the resting room.” He slipped his watch from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. Gave Finn another look, not so droll this one. “Fifteen minutes until the festivities begin if the rain holds off. Lady Parchant-Bingman, will you assist me in gathering everyone on the south lawn? I would appreciate it, and you are well-acquainted with most of those attending, I believe.”
Lady Parchant-Bingman preened, flashing Finn a molten look that said, later, my darling, but I must go, he’s a duke!
He watched them cross the sloping lawn, Ashcroft’s head bent toward the lady’s in resigned consideration, while the lady at Finn’s side stood silent and seething. Knowing no other way to approach the situation, he started with humor and a smile. Idly, he wondered how much the chipped tooth was affecting his presentation. “I neglected to inquire about your travels. Did Humphrey regale you with all the times he’s gone haring off after me? Mad dashes in the middle of the night due to my transgressions? How he’d rather discuss the plague than Julian’s chronology?” He snaked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “When did you decide you’d rather leap from the carriage than listen to him bemoan his torturo
us fate for another bumpy mile? That usually hits me before we’ve made it to the end of Harbingdon’s drive.”
Victoria turned to him then, and he got his first good look at her in seventy-two hours. Enchanting in a lavender gown that flowed over her body like a waterfall, hair tucked in a lustrous arrangement she and Agnes certainly couldn’t take credit for, eyes glowing more hazel than green. That star-freckle next to her lip, his weakness, bringing him home like a beacon. She looked young, guileless, a little skittish. More than a shade vexed. Vulnerable, in a way that unwelcomely captured his heart—a verdict that would nurture her ire when she sought to present a vastly contradictory portrait. As he’d come to know her, her troublesome behavior had shown itself to be a way to protect a generous and intelligent heart. A way to prepare for a dismal future, much as he was doing. She was stubborn and impetuous, true, but nothing like Piper’s confident, devil-may-care comportment, which he’d confused Victoria’s with at first.
How could the mistake be helped when he’d never known another female before Piper? Not really, as his clandestine encounters had involved little actual involvement.
Surprising him, as he stood there debating how to lighten the mood since his chipped smile wasn’t doing the trick, she slipped her finger in his cuff and made a very unflattering mewing sound. “Oh, Mr. Alexander, you’re the most handsome man! Dreamy. Simply enough to make me lose my breath…and the microscopic thought contained in my tiny brain.”
Finn stilled, raw heat traveling from the point where kid leather grazed the underside of his wrist straight to his groin. “You’re jealous.” He followed this pronouncement with a bracing laugh that had her snatching her hand back and jamming it against her hip.
No need to mention he’d been jealous as well.
“I am no such thing. It’s the constant attention that’s hard to overlook. At every event you followed me to, my sullied guardian angel, I watched in amazement as people stumbled and fawned and drooled. Not only women mind you. You want to pick out the men with certain proclivities in our society. Simply place you in the room, and it’s entirely evident in five seconds.” She whipped her hand high, pointing at the blustery clouds above. “I think even the birds are entranced. I’m astonished they don’t tumble at your feet, an act of biblical proportion.”
Finn brought his hand to his lips to cover the smile, and the dimple Piper said only made women angrier in tense moments. This was delightful. He hoped Tori would tell him more about how she’d watched him those many months—as he’d watched her. Dreamed of her. Began to hunger, without even knowing what her voice sounded like.
What she was like.
Now, he knew so many things about her, and his hunger was a raging clamor in his mind. If he could only get it out of his mind that she was made for him. His partner for life, should he find the courage to ask her to give up everything, which of course he couldn’t.
“Don’t laugh, you beast. You invite the grotesque attention. You wear blue all the time.”
He looked down at his lapis waistcoat, one that closely matched his eyes, and blinked. Huh. Finding her gaze, he chewed on his bottom lip as the expression on her face circled from irritation to suspicion to something he didn’t want to define. “One question.” Gesturing like a ball bounced between them, he asked with more composure than he felt, “If we’re only friends, how could it possibly matter? My flirting? It’s like breathing, reactionary and with little meaning, as stalwart and automatic a defense as your behind-the-pillar kisses, but still I ask.”
She lowered her gaze, her hands finding her skirt and diving in, twisting the lilac silk into submission. When her shoulders rose with a halted intake of breath and the soft words spilled from her mouth, he was lost. “I don’t know…but it does.”
Her candor—when he’d found no one in his life except his family to be truthful, worthy, endearing—sent a shimmer of fury through him. Catching her around the waist, he backed her into the shadows and brought her up on her toes, tucking her as close to his body as he could without tumbling her to the dewy grass and falling atop her. Where the difference in their height would make no difference at all. Cupping her jaw with fingers that trembled, he tilted her face high. “Is this why you came after me,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Pour ce qu'ils veulent tous,ou est-ce plus?”
For what they all seek—or is it more?
“I return the query,” she replied in French. Poorly articulated, badly accented, but understandable. “Is my gift all you want—or is there more?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. A lie when he knew damn well. Then he confirmed his truth by cradling the nape of her neck, drawing her into him as he bent to seize her lips. The taste of champagne and strawberries flowed into his mouth, down his body, and out the soles of his feet, grounding him to the earth and to her.
Her arm rose, grazing his waist, ribs, shoulders, reaching past his jaw and sending fingers into his hair, tangling, tugging, creating a jolt of aroused pleasure and a moan he could not contain.
She started at the sound and drew back, her expression concealed by shadow, but her wild eyes were glowing through it. If his groan wasn’t enough to tell her he was losing control, the erection pressed against her hip, an awakening he couldn’t conceal if his life depended on it, should have.
“Walk away now,” he said gruffly, his hands sliding to her shoulders and grasping, drawing her in instead of pushing her away, “before it’s too late.”
When it was already too late for him.
Shaking her head, she stepped back atop the low row of bricks circling the fountain, slanted her lips over his, and claimed him.
He sighed, giving up, giving everything he’d previously withheld.
If she were going to make love to another man, experience pleasure with another man, marry another man, Finn would make sure she never forgot this passionate moment in the midsummer twilight.
This moment when she was his.
The bricks made it easy for her to loop her arms around his neck, her breasts settling heavily against his chest. Hyacinth, he concluded after days of questioning, she smelled like hyacinth and vanilla, the unique fragrance unraveling his longing and laying it out like a rug before him. He cradled her head, nipped her bottom lip, soothed with his tongue, then nipped again. Her answering shift, hip to hip, the ragged sound of delight whispering from her throat, telling him all he needed to know.
He didn’t have to handle her delicately, like a vase he feared breaking. The woman who he was certain rode a horse like a whip and rolled in the grass with Piper and quarreled with him until he lost the will to conquer her would be an enthusiastic, fearless lover, meeting him move for move, sigh for sigh, pleasure for pleasure.
Unafraid to reveal his yearning, he palmed her hip and brought her gently against his hard length, settling her rather perfectly. Even through layers, he could feel her. Warm and welcoming. “Tori,” he whispered hoarsely, “you are magnificent.” Her hair was wild, the moist air creating a wealth of riotous curls he longed to see spread beneath him as he slid inside her.
With a stuttered catch of breath, she gripped his shoulders and followed his languid rhythm, their tongues echoing the movement of their hips. It was a dance as old as time…one he’d fantasized about, sweat-slick sheets and flushed skin, the scent of her, him, them, capturing the bedchamber and defying his every concern.
Slowing the kiss, she dropped her head to his shoulder, breathless, trembling. She was close, he thought in amazement, and he hadn’t even put his hands on her, not truly. He could make her come, right here in the moonlight, while standing on a low brick wall surrounding a decaying fountain on Ashcroft’s estate. Make her remember him if she were to marry the duke, every time she saw the crumbling monument.
If she were this responsive fully clothed, what would she be like when he stripped her down to nothing, all those silly stratums gone, his lips and teeth, his tongue, covering every inch of her with absolutely no barriers in place?
>
A lewd impulse, but one he followed, fingers trailing across her belly and up the side of her body to her breast. Cupping the full mound, his thumb found her nipple, pressed, circled, making it harden like the pebbles wedged beneath his boot. Her head fell back, exposing the glorious, arching nape of her neck. Powerless, his lips were there in seconds, kissing, sucking, drawing her skin tenderly between his teeth. Her pulse tapped against his jaw, proof of her yearning, the realization sending a pulse of longing through him.
Hell, he could come himself with nothing more than her sighs ringing in his ears, her fingers clutching his shoulders, the sweet taste of her filling his mouth.
Desire was overriding sense, he knew, when he began calculating how long it would take to retrieve his carriage, parked a scant distance from Ashcroft’s house to avoid the throng, send a note to Julian’s townhome so Humphrey didn’t worry, then spend the next two days inside, over, beneath, and behind Victoria Hamilton.
She had no idea how inventive he could be if inspired, which he rarely, if ever, had been.
He might even surprise himself.
He was eagerly reclaiming her lips when an explosion sent them stumbling apart, Finn’s quick reflexes, an arm snaked about her waist, the only thing that kept her from tumbling into the bone-dry fountain.
Chapter 12
In stunned bewilderment, Victoria watched color from Ashcroft’s horribly-timed pyrotechnic display wash across Finn’s cheeks and spark off his enlarged pupils. His hand lay on her breast, no longer cupping but still a firm, mesmerizing hold, and their eyes, at the exact same second, dropped to the marvelous indecency.
As she mentally debated the next steps—to the carriage together or apart—many things occurred at once.
A storm. The Earl of Hester. Finn’s temper. Observations about her gift.
A lone raindrop hit her bottom lip. Finn’s gaze tracked it as he leaned in to kiss it away when the Earl of Hester stumbled through a break in the hedges with a sneering chortle. Without a word, Finn strode directly to Hester and sent his fist into the man’s jaw. The earl went down like a carpet had been yanked from beneath his feet, the savage display unlike anything Victoria had ever seen.
