Lady Wallflower

by Scott, Scarlett

  But it would hardly do for anyone to find out about those. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.

  “Oh yes,” Lady Helena was saying. “You are the new publisher for the Lady’s Suffrage Society.”

  “You are a member of the society as well, I take it?” he asked politely.

  “I am.” Lady Helena smiled broadly, revealing the tiniest space between her two front teeth. Far from being an imperfection, this flaw somehow rendered her more charming. “Lady Sinclair persuaded me to join, and I am so pleased to be a part of such a worthy cause.”

  It was indeed a worthy cause, and it was one of the many things about Jo that appealed to Decker. She was not an empty-headed society miss, more concerned with the next ball and the newest gown she had commissioned than the world around her.

  Blast. He hazarded a glance in Jo’s direction to find her gazing back at him. Their stares clashed with the same charge that happened whenever they touched. The intensity awed and shook him, as always. Her lips were pinched, he realized, a slight frown marring her otherwise smooth brow.

  Had she taken note of him chatting with Lady Helena? Did she disapprove? Was it too much to hope she was stewing in the same jealousy which had been afflicting him for the duration of this bloody dinner?

  Decker inclined his head to her in a mocking salute, and then he turned his attention back to Lady Helena. “Tell me more about the Lady’s Suffrage Society, my lady.”

  The rest of the dinner passed slowly, but at least with the accompaniment of Lady Helena’s lively conversation. If Decker continued to steal glances at Jo, it could hardly be helped. And if his blood boiled each time he caught her speaking with Hungtingdon, it could hardly be helped either.

  There was the very real, decidedly unwanted, possibility that his wallflower had found her wings and was about to fly far from him.

  Decker did not like it. Not one whit.

  Because he was a complete lunatic, Decker was lurking in a darkened chamber, awaiting his prey. The ladies had withdrawn, leaving the gentlemen to their port at the conclusion of dinner. But he had no wish to exchange words with a passel of lords, especially not lords who were as insufferably self-righteous as the Earl of Huntingdon. It was a miracle the prick had even condescended to attend a dinner party being hosted by Sin, a man who had been a societal outcast until recently.

  Besides, Decker could not be certain he would be able to avoid planting a fist in the bastard’s mouth. To say nothing of Quenington, who had been eying Jo like a pie he longed to devour every time Decker had glanced in his direction.

  He had taken a gamble in excusing himself from the gentlemen after he had spied Jo heading to the lady’s withdrawing room. Alone. Still, it was a gamble he was willing to make.

  Especially when the reward came back into view.

  He was probably watching her with the same ravenous hunger Quenington had exhibited earlier, and though he hated himself, it did not stop Decker from striking when she neared his hiding place. He stepped out of the chamber, slid his arm around her waist, clamped one hand over her mouth to stifle any cry of surprise she might make, and yanked her into the room with him.

  He closed the door quietly behind them, and then spun them as one, not stopping until her back was against the door.

  “No hollering,” he warned her, sotto voce. “It is me.”

  Her lips were deuced soft beneath his bare palm. Her breath was hot and moist. Grounding his molars, he removed his hand.

  “Decker!” she gasped his name, outrage seething in her voice. “What in heaven’s name are you doing?”

  Excellent question. Making a fool of himself? Possibly. But when had that ever stopped him before when it came to this woman? The answer was simple, pitiful.

  Never.

  “Garnering a moment alone with you after suffering through three hours of dinner party hell. What does it look like?” he grumbled.

  Had she truly believed he would pass at the opportunity to have her within his grasp after having watched her all evening from afar?

  “I have no idea what anything looks like,” she shot back. “You hauled me into an unlit chamber. It is darker than ink in here.”

  Admittedly, his choice of location had not been ideal. However, there was something about having Jo in his arms in the black-as-pitch darkness that honed all his senses to a heightened state of awareness and had his cock twitching to life.

  Right. Who was he fooling? His cock was always hard when he was in her presence, and it had nothing to do with the darkness. It had everything to do with her, and this damned obsession of his.

  Decker was no stranger to obsessions; however, in the past, his compulsions had always been limited to pictures, paintings, works of art. He had to have them, and then he hung them on his wall, and the fierce need was gone. Because they had been claimed. They were his.

  “I wanted to speak to you,” he told her then, unable to keep his hands from traveling from her waist, up the small of her back. “You were too busy having your little tête-à-tête with Huntingdon for me to get in a word at dinner.”

  “You were too far away from me,” she protested coolly. “If I had wanted to speak to you, I would have been required to holler.”

  She was not wrong.

  But he was still frustrated at having been seated so damned far away from her, and neither did he like the stiffness in her form, the ice in her voice. “You would not have had to pay the blighter so much attention, however.”

  Her hands settled upon his chest, neither pushing him away nor drawing him nearer. “Do you mean in the same fashion you were hanging upon Lady Helena’s every word?”

  Hmm. How intriguing.

  He found the silken skin of her nape, caressing her there. “Were you envying Lady Helena?”

  “No,” she snapped quietly. “I was enjoying my conversation with Lord Huntingdon.”

  Stubborn creature.

  “He was looking at you as if you were dessert,” he groused before he could think better of the words. “I thought he was already betrothed to someone…a Lady Melissa…or was it Amelia?”

  Blast, but those words revealed too much. He knew it the moment they left his tongue. They seemed to hang there, between them, alive with meaning.

  “Decker,” she said, a smile in her voice. “Never tell me you were jealous tonight of the Earl of Huntingdon.”

  Jealous? Decker?

  Fuck. Yes, he was jealous.

  “You scarcely glanced in my direction,” he said, fully aware he sounded like a petulant child, and damn well feeling like one too.

  He was not accustomed to being ignored.

  “I did enough to take note of all the smiles you were sending Lady Helena,” she countered, her fingers gliding over his chest in slow, maddening strokes.

  “I was distracting myself from the torture of being seated so far away from you,” he admitted like a complete fool.

  “Did you miss me?” she whispered.

  “Every bloody second since I saw you last,” he breathed.

  He had to kiss her. Now.

  One dip of his head, unerringly, even in the darkness, and he sealed his mouth over hers. Her fingers tightened on his waistcoat, drawing him nearer. Orange blossom and the seductive scent of woman filled his nostrils. He told himself to go slowly, tenderly.

  But the moment her lips parted, the already-frayed reins of his control snapped. He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, then nipped. She moaned. Everything else faded away—the dinner party, their fellow guests nearby, the real possibility of discovery at any moment.

  All that remained was desire and the woman in his arms. Each time he held her, she felt more like home than the last. Stupid, this affinity he shared with her. Reckless. Savage and wild, too. Impossible to stop.

  Runaway locomotive, barreling down the line—that was what Decker became as he sank his tongue into her mouth. Her tongue rubbed against his in sinuous seduction. She tasted of chocolate and raspberries from the de
ssert course. He pinned her to the door, without thought, without compunction, and ravaged her mouth with kisses.

  She clawed at him like a ferocious wild cat. His hands were all over her, memorizing the curve of her breast, the softness of her throat, her waist, her silken hair. This time, he restrained himself and just narrowly avoided plucking at her hair pins. Some faint part of his brain recalled they were at a social function, that this could not go on, and that if she returned to the drawing room looking as if she had been thoroughly ravished, tongues would wag.

  But for now, this moment, he had her right where he wanted her. Her gown was crushed between them, and he had never been more tempted to lift a woman’s skirts and plunge into her cunny than he was now. His heart pounded and his cock ached with thwarted lust.

  You cannot take her against a door.

  No, he could not. And so he kissed her instead. He staked his claim upon her. Kissed her until they were both as desperate for more as they had been the night before. And then, a noise in the hall—voices—gradually filtered through the fog of desire hazing his mind.

  He forced himself to stop.

  To release her.

  Decker took a step in retreat, and slammed straight into the punishing edge of a table. He bit his lip to stifle the howl of surprised pain that threatened to be unleashed. Fucking hell, that hurt! The next time he hauled Jo into a chamber, he would make certain there was a goddamn lamp lit within it.

  The next time?

  Your time is limited with her, arsehole.

  “Decker?” she whispered hesitantly. “Have you injured yourself?”

  “Do not worry, bijou,” he returned, rubbing his aching rear where the offending table had bit him. “My arse does not hurt nearly as much as my cock does.”

  Or my ego.

  He ought not to have spoken with such vulgar familiarity with her, and he knew it. But she was the one who wanted to be wicked, was she not? Besides, he had already said far worse to her, and he had shown her his collection of erotic art.

  “Shall I rub it for you?” she asked.

  Decker almost swallowed his tongue. His prick twitched.

  “My arse or my cock?” he could not resist querying, his voice hoarse and thick with lust.

  Good God, she could rub both for him. Either. And never stop.

  The voices grew nearer, reminding him of the necessity that this interlude between them—regardless of how delicious it had been and how much he did not wish for it to end—had to come to a halt.

  “Which hurts the most?” his minx dared to ask.

  Bloody hell, he had already debauched her.

  And his cockstand was like a granite obelisk in his trousers at the moment. He could not step out of the chamber in such a state.

  “Damn it, Jo.” He stalked back toward her, wishing he could finish what they had begun. Knowing they could not. “You are a vixen, do you know that? But as much as I would like to linger here with you, doing so is unwise. You want to be wicked, not to be thoroughly, ineffably ruined, and even if you are ruined, I am not the man for you. I have no intention of marrying. You should return to the ladies in the drawing room.”

  “I should,” she agreed. But then, she surprised him by rising on her toes and giving him a quick, chaste kiss.

  Likely, she had been aiming for his lips, but in the darkness, she only found his chin. He grinned anyway. “Go before we are discovered.”

  The voices had faded back down the hall.

  She spun about, a swirl of silk. “Decker?”

  He gritted his teeth. If she remained in this damned room for any longer than the next minute, he would have her on her back on the carpets, her petticoats raised, his tongue on her cunny.

  He inhaled slowly. “Yes, Jo?”

  “Do you like Lady Helena?” her question was hesitant.

  “Not in the way I like you, bijou,” he told her tenderly, in spite of himself. “Now go, and no more flirting with Huntingdon.”

  Her hand was on the latch—he heard it turning.

  Before she opened the door, she threw one last parting shot that left him reeling. “I like you, too, Decker. Quite a bit more than I ought.”

  And then, she was gone, leaving him in the murk with nothing but a raging cockstand, a smarting arse, and her words, sinking their talons deep into the recesses of his forgotten heart.

  Chapter Eight

  “We have recently been blessed with many crates of books for the children, my ladies,” said Mrs. Chisholm, the proprietress of the orphanage where Jo, her sister Alexandra, and her sister-in-law Clara were paying a visit. “They were donated quite generously by a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous.”

  “Books for the children?” Clara asked in her calm, sweet American drawl. “I was under the impression most of the children were incapable of reading.”

  “Yet another blessed improvement we can thank the Lord for bestowing upon us,” Mrs. Chisholm said.

  Apple-cheeked and perpetually flushed, she had a kindly smile and compassionate gray eyes she hid behind wire-rimmed spectacles. She made an odd swishing sound as she walked, and Jo could not be certain if it was the result of her shoes or her undergarments, but whatever the case, Mrs. Chisholm seemed to genuinely care for her charges in a way her predecessor decidedly had not.

  “The same benefactor has been generous enough to provide the older children with teachers,” Mrs. Chisholm added. “He is of the firm belief that orphans should have the means of bettering themselves. He also provided us with a handsome new rosewood piano, the finest model, with the intention that the children should spend some time gaining instruction in music. A most worthy endeavor, indeed, and ever so much better than the workhouse, you understand.”

  Jo agreed heartily with the benefactor in that orphans ought to have the same opportunity in their lives as other children. Her heart ached each time she visited the orphanage. But whilst they had been visiting the orphanage for a few months now, these sudden gifts were as much of a surprise as it had been when the orphanage had suddenly acquired a new patron who had placed the softhearted Mrs. Chisholm in charge of the entire affair.

  And there was something about the proprietress’s revelations which brought to mind the last man she would have ever supposed might play secret benefactor to an orphanage. New books and a rosewood piano? Decker owned a publisher and a piano factory.

  “This mysterious benefactor sounds like a man with a very good heart indeed,” observed Clara as Mrs. Chisholm led them to the large chamber where the older children often gathered.

  “Oh yes, Lady Ravenscroft,” the proprietress agreed. “The purest heart. So many are willing to forget all about the plight of these poor, beloved children. We are most grateful for the generous hearts of your ladyships and Lord Ravenscroft and our other benefactors. I will go and fetch the children for your ladyships, if you do not mind waiting?”

  With a curtsy, Mrs. Chisholm departed the room, leaving Jo, Alexandra, and Clara alone. Jo’s mind instantly began to wander.

  Ordinarily, Jo took great delight in their weekly visits to this and a handful of other London orphanages. There had been a time, not long ago—before Julian had married Clara and received her massive dowry—when their familial munificence had been an impossibility. They had been dreadfully impoverished, the Ravenscroft estates in ruin. Being in such vastly different circumstances had left Jo feeling not just thankful but as if she ought to help others in some way, now that she could.

  But today, she would be the first to admit that her heart was not entirely devoted to the task at hand. It had been two days since she had last seen Decker. Since he had left her stewing in misery whilst he flirted with Lady Helena. Since she had stolen kisses with him in the darkened room at the Sinclair townhome following dinner.

  Since he had told her he had no intention of marrying.

  That last bit was not meant to bother her.

  She ought not to care a fig whether or not he ever intended to wed. She h
ad already decided he was the last sort of man she would ever wish to make her husband. Had she not?

  Yes, of course.

  The two of them suited in certain ways, but in many other senses, they were quite ill-matched. It would be the mésalliance of the century, an earl’s sister and an earl’s bastard. A man who was an unrepentant rakehell with a wicked streak the size of England and a woman who was…

  Well, that thought rather brought her up short. It occurred to Jo that she had no idea who she was. Not truly.

  And why had Decker failed to send any notes in the two days since that reckless encounter in the dark chamber? The way he had pinned her body to the door with his still haunted her. She had lain awake for the past two nights, thinking of nothing else.

  But he had been strangely silent.

  “Jo?” Alexandra prodded her quietly, tearing her from her troubled thoughts. “Would you like to play the piano, or sing? You know I am wretched at singing, but Clara has volunteered herself to read, which leaves the two of us with the musical bits.”

  “You are a dreadful singer,” Jo agreed without bite, for it was an undeniable truth that her science-minded sister was far more at home in her sphere of studying and experimenting than in any of the feminine arts.

  Music was not one of Alexandra’s gifts. Careful thought, objective thinking, and rigorous scientific study? Yes—those were much more the sorts of things at which Alexandra excelled.

  “I attempted to argue with her whilst you were gathering cobwebs in your mind, but she is feeling rather ungainly these days and wishes a more comfortable seat than the piano bench. As I shall be in her place all too soon, I deemed it wise to be sympathetic,” her sister explained.

  Clara was heavy with child, her first baby with Jo and Alexandra’s brother Julian set to arrive soon. However, in true Clara form, she refused to retreat for her lying in until, as she phrased it, I am half the size of London and am feeling miserably bovine.