Shameless

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “You’re very brave, Madame Roux, I’ll give you that.”

  “You don’t frighten me, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You’ve made that very clear.”

  His hands left her shoulders. She shivered involuntarily as she felt a warm finger trail down her back.

  “What the blazes do you think you’re doing?” she asked sharply, unable to see.

  “Unbuttoning your gown. That’s what Mary was doing, wasn’t she?”

  She drew in a quick breath as he took hold of the sides of her bodice and gave them a less-than-gentle tug to bring the edges together sufficiently for him to free the first button. Her heart, she discovered, was beating way too fast. Her knees felt unaccountably weak. She could feel his hands moving down her spine, and the tiny buttons falling prey to them at an alarming pace.

  “And what if I were to tell you to stop, and go away?”

  “You could try it, and then we’d see.”

  “I tell you to your head, I have no intention of explaining my conduct to you.”

  “Have I asked for an explanation? Let go of your gown.”

  With the last button undone, the fragile garment sagged. Only her hand pressed to her bosom kept it from dropping at her feet.

  “Let go of your gown, Beth,” he said again, very softly, his hands sliding inside the opening he had made to rest on either side of her slim waist. She could feel them clear through the layers of her shift and stays.

  Their eyes met in the mirror. At what she saw in the glinting black depths, her breath caught. Her heart fluttered. Holding his gaze defiantly, she nevertheless allowed the gown to drop and stepped out of its gleaming folds.

  “That’s my girl.” As he shoved the garment aside with his foot, Beth was left to look at herself in the mirror. The creamy globes of her breasts spilled over the gossamer top of her chemise, and beneath them her stays closely hugged her rib cage and nipped her in at the waist until the circumference was so impossibly small that the big, dark hands that rested so possessively there could probably have spanned it. Below her stays, the single petticoat she had most scandalously dampened hours earlier, though dry now, still clung tenaciously to her legs so that their outline and slender shape might be clearly seen.

  He said, “I see a damped petticoat works best when you’re wearing only one.”

  He was looking at her through the mirror, too, she saw, and felt her cheeks begin to heat as his eyes lingered on her legs. His hands tightened on her waist, and her heart pounded, and her mouth went dry. Then his gaze moved to something behind her back, and his hands moved, too, and she felt him untying the knots that held her stays.

  “If you have something to say to me, I wish you would say it and have done.” Her tone was cross as she felt the knot come free and her stays loosened.

  “What would I have to say to you?”

  Her stays fell into his hands. Dropping them on the floor, he reached for the tapes of her single petticoat.

  “It’s perfectly clear that you are angry about . . . what you saw.”

  The petticoat dropped next, to be stepped out of and shoved aside. She was left to face the mirror in nothing but the filmy chemise that ended at the tops of her thighs and the white silk stockings that were tied up with blue garters above her knees. To her mingled shock and dismay, she felt her nipples tighten and saw that they now jutted wantonly through the thin fabric. Watching his eyes slide over her, she felt the beginnings of the hot, sweet quickening he had ignited in her before, and fought the urge to wet her lips. That he meant to undress her down to the skin now seemed perfectly clear. At the thought, her breathing grew erratic and her fingers curled into impotent fists. She didn’t know whether to stop this right now or not. She didn’t know if she wanted to stop it. She didn’t know if she could.

  “Let us be precise, if you please. Cluny kissing you is what you’re referring to.”

  Crouching behind her, he slid a stocking down her leg, garter and all. Through the mirror, Beth looked at his dark, bent head, and the breadth of his shoulders, and the powerful lines of his arms and legs, and felt her pulse go haywire.

  “Step out,” he told her in an aside as the stocking reached her ankle, and she did.

  “Very well, then, it’s perfectly clear that you’re angry about Cluny kissing me.” She kept her head high and her voice strong as he did the same to her second stocking. The feel of his warm fingers sliding so intimately down her bare leg sent swarms of electricity coursing over her skin.

  “You will at least own that I have every right to be angry.”

  He straightened as he spoke, and their eyes met again in the mirror. He moved closer to her until she could feel his big body against her back. His hands slid slowly down her arms and back up again.

  With his gaze on her, she barely repressed a shiver.

  “I do not own that at all,” she said, her voice a cold counterpoint to the waves of heat that now undulated inside her.

  “Then your notion of how a wife—particularly my wife—is expected to conduct herself as regards other men needs some adjusting.” His hands closed without warning on the hem of her chemise, and he pulled it up and over her head. “But then, we haven’t been married very long, have we? I’ve no doubt you’ll soon get in the way of it.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  As she caught the first shocking look at herself in the mirror sans chemise, what she had been going to say was lost. Her immediate impulse was to jerk free of the black-clad arm that was now curved firmly around her waist and find something, anything, with which to cover herself.

  “No, don’t pull away from me.” There was a sudden husky undertone to his voice that caused her loins to clench and release in a hot, convulsive rhythm. The arm circling her waist tightened, but there was no need. After that first abortive attempt, she didn’t try to get away from him again. “Look in the mirror.”

  She looked, heart pounding, at herself standing there naked in front of him, facing the mirror and held in place by his hard arm circling her waist. Then she looked past herself to his tall form, still fully clad in the evening clothes he’d worn to Almack’s, so much larger and stronger than she was that the idea of any physical contest between them was laughable, and met his eyes.

  “Is this how you mean to use your wife, then?” Rallying her forces, she had indignation in her voice.

  “Unless you object to it. Do you?” Warm and hard, his hand covered her breast, caressed it.

  Dizzy with the sudden sharp wanting he had wakened, remembering against her will the dark, unbelievably arousing way he had used her before, Beth bit down on her lower lip, unable to deny the hot, molten longing that seemed poised to make her as wax in his hands.

  “No, damn you.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  As he continued to caress her breasts, playing with her nipples, stroking and cupping and rubbing the creamy, strawberry-tipped globes, she watched through the mirror with widening eyes and parting lips. She couldn’t speak. She could scarcely breathe. By the time his other hand slid down between her legs to fondle her there, she was leaning bonelessly back against him, her head resting against his broad shoulder, her eyes slightly glazed as she watched him pleasuring her, a flush in her cheeks, her lips clamped resolutely together against the soft little moans that crowded against them, which she refused to demean herself by letting him hear.

  Observing and at the same time participating as he awakened the most unbelievable sensations inside her was more erotic than anything she had ever imagined existed in this life.

  “You were made for loving, Beth. We could deal extremely, you and I.” His voice was thick. His tongue traced deliciously along the shell-like curve of one ear and delved inside. Then he pressed a line of tiny burning kisses down the sensitive cord at the side of her neck. Her legs had turned to jelly, and she was now moving in helpless, burning response to the ministrations of his knowing hands. At some point he’d shrugged out of his coat and waistc
oat, and she saw with a slightly fuzzy glance back at him that he’d removed his cravat as well. She could feel the hard swelling of him pressing close against her bottom. He was big with desire. His eyes glittered with it. His hands were unsteady with it.

  “I won’t be ruled by you.” As a warning, she realized it lost something because her voice was made breathless and husky by passion. She felt dizzy, and burning hot, and on the verge of that elusive something he seemed to rouse so easily in her. Just the thought of finally reaching it made her shiver with anticipation. She wanted, wanted . . . him.

  His eyes sliding over her face, he first stilled his hands for the briefest of moments, then removed them altogether, completely distracting her. As one of those shameful little moans escaped her after all in protest, he turned her to face him.

  “You can rule me, then. How does that suit? I find I’ve no objection whatsoever to the thought of living under the cat’s paw, as long as the cat is you.”

  “Liar,” she said. Pinning his eyes with hers, she wrapped her arms around his neck and melted against him.

  He laughed and found her mouth, and then passion exploded so fiercely between them that conversation was at an end. He bore her down to the expensive Aubusson carpet that covered the dressing room floor and kissed her in places she had never imagined she would ever be kissed and put that huge, hot part of himself inside her and made love to her until she had forgotten everything but him, until she was so mindless with need that she moaned and clung and cried out his name with abandon, until finally he showed her what that something was she had felt herself on the verge of for so long. He loved her until she learned firsthand what ecstasy was all about, until the hot, burning quaking inside her finally broke and she was borne away by the fierceness of her own response, until a fiery whirlwind caught her up in its toils and swept her away.

  When it was over at last, when he rolled off her and pulled her against his side and she had regained her senses and breath enough to realize what exactly it was they had done on her dressing room floor, she smiled and opened her eyes and ran a questing hand over his bare chest. It was warm and faintly damp and taut with muscle, and she loved it. Actually, she decided, bestowing a sweeping glance over his sprawled body, she loved everything about him. Then she looked the truth in the face: the fact was, she loved him.

  “You’re looking very pleased with yourself,” he observed. Beth glanced up to meet his eyes. Lying flat on his back, he’d tucked an arm beneath his head.

  “I’ve decided being married may not be so very bad after all,” she said. Then, with the air of one making a handsome confession, she added, “I should probably tell you that Cluny forgot himself and surprised me with the quickest of kisses. There was no more to what you saw than that.”

  He smiled. “Had I not realized that almost from the outset, my girl, my reaction to seeing Cluny’s mouth on yours would have been far less mild than it was, I assure you.”

  Beth stared at him. Her brows snapped together.

  “You knew there was nothing to it?” She propped herself up on an elbow, the better to see him.

  “After I had a moment to think? Absolutely.”

  “You couldn’t have known. I have been flirting with Cluny—indeed, with a good many gentlemen—quite desperately. You had no way of knowing if I was or was not kissing them.”

  “Ah, but you see, I know you, Madame Roux. Until that moment with Cluny, I never even entertained the possibility that you would kiss anyone but me.” He gave a gentle tug to a curling lock of hair that dangled near his hand. A lurking grin touched his mouth. “To tell you the truth, I thought you were probably doing all that flirting to get a reaction out of me.”

  Beth glared at him. After a moment, honesty compelled her to say, “I was.”

  “Would you care to tell me why?”

  “The devil take it!” She hesitated, and to her annoyance felt a blush heat her cheeks. “If you really want to know, it was because I discovered that I love you. Quite madly. There, I’ve said it. Make of it what you will.”

  “Why, Beth.” Surprise flared in his eyes, quickly followed by an emotion she couldn’t quite name. Then, even as she searched his face for something—some answer to the question her announcement tacitly posed—he rolled over with her and kissed her with a fierce hunger that drove everything else out of her head, then got to his feet, picked her up, and carried her to bed.

  By the time he left her, dawn was just lighting the sky. Beth knew that, because she opened her eyes to the sound of her bedroom door being quietly closed, registered that she was alone in her bed and in the room, and saw gray fingers of light creeping around the edges of the curtains all at the same time. Of course, he needed to get back to his own room before the servants began stirring, which would be soon now.

  She stretched, smiling, luxuriating in the soft warmth of the covers, knowing she needed to get up and put on her night rail but postponing the moment for as long as she could, as delicious memories of the night they had just passed unspooled through her mind. He had introduced her to a whole new world of sensual experiences that she had never even dreamed of, in the process making of her a willing pupil who was eagerly looking forward to learning more. As Claire had assured her countless times, marriage was indeed a wonderful institution, if entered into with the right man. And for her, Neil was the right man.

  Then realization hit her like a thunderclap. She had told him she loved him. But never, not even in the hottest throes of desire, had he replied in kind.

  Beth’s eyes snapped all the way open. She sat up in bed. Once more she reviewed her confession, and the events that came after. He had made love to her until their passion steamed up the night, but no word of love had ever passed his lips.

  A horrible, crushing thought occurred: perhaps he hadn’t told her he loved her because he did not.

  Beth knew with a certainty as solid as bedrock that she wasn’t going to be able to live with that. A moment later she knew that she couldn’t even bear the uncertainty of not knowing.

  She had confessed her love, and she wanted—no, needed—to hear him do the same.

  And if he did not love her . . . ?

  Well, she needed to know that, too.

  Now.

  Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she got up, pulled on her night rail and wrapper, tying the pretty ruffled garment at her waist, and headed for Neil’s apartments at the back of the house. The hallways were dark and deserted, and she hadn’t thought to bring a candle, so she had only the faint fingers of dawn stealing in through the occasional window that opened onto one or another of the halls to light her way, but it was enough. Twisting her unconfined hair into a long, loose rope over one shoulder, padding silently in bare feet, she saw not another soul. When she reached Neil’s door, she didn’t even hesitate. Turning the knob, she pushed it open and went in.

  The sight that met her eyes stunned her. She stopped with her hand still on the knob, gawking for the briefest of moments in disbelief. Clad only in breeches and a shirt, Neil lay prone on the carpet of the firelit room, limbs sprawled, eyes closed, to all appearances unconscious, she thought with a thrill of horror. Leaning over him, a burly man in a frieze coat and buckskins seemed about to loop something—a garrote?—around his neck. Two more men stood nearby, both aiming pistols at Neil.

  Startled, the intruders looked around at her as she entered. Beth recovered her wits, instantly backpedaled, and screamed like a steam whistle. A pistol snapped in her direction and fired. The explosion of sound hit her with the force of a mule’s kick, throwing her back into the hall. As she hit the floor she felt nothing, no pain at all, but somewhere in the back of her mind rose the shocked realization: I’ve been shot.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  BETH.

  Sheer terror for her pulled Neil from semiconsciousness. Her scream slicing the air caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end and sent adrenaline surging through his system. Forcing his scattere
d senses to function, he realized, in his first instant of restored awareness, what had happened: Clapham, Parks, and Richards had been waiting for him in his room. Preoccupied by thoughts of Beth, lulled by the safety he’d thought his new life afforded him, he’d had no notion of being on his guard and walked right into the ambush. One of the three had clouted him over the head as soon as he’d stepped inside the chamber. He had no doubt that in a few moments more, he would have been dead and his assailants would have vanished into London’s mean streets.

  Beth had followed him to his room. That was the thought that overrode all else. Propelled by deadly fear for her into frenzied action, he caught just a glimpse of her bright hair and pale wrapper in the doorway as he rendered Clapham impotent and perhaps dead by chopping him savagely in the knee, then in the neck as he fell. Even before Clapham hit the ground, Neil dove for Parks, but it was already too late: the slimy little bastard had fired his pistol. And not at him. At Beth.

  Christ in heaven, please let her not be dead.

  He hadn’t prayed in more than a decade, not since, he remembered, the terrible day he’d watched his mother and sister die. God hadn’t granted his prayer then.

  Please, please, God, grant it now.

  Even as he felled Parks with a single savage blow and watched Richards, knowing himself far overmatched, flee like the coward he was through the door, his thoughts, his prayers, every ounce of his will were focused exclusively on Beth.

  She was no longer in the doorway. She was no longer screaming.

  If she’s dead, I can’t live.

  Bolting for the hall, for Beth, with that thought ricocheting through his brain, he wondered if it was his fate to always lose the people he loved.

  I love her.

  He hadn’t been able to face the truth of that until this moment, and now it brought agony with it. Love equals pain and loss; he’d known it, deep inside his soul, and that was why he’d turned away from admitting how he felt about her even to himself. His love for her was like a guilty secret his subconscious had kept locked away. Until now.