“Better?” he said.
“I suppose, although–”
“The cold air will help clear your head,” he interrupted. “You will thank me for it later. I promise.”
Emma looked at him with suspicion. “You aren’t taking me outside to seduce me, are you?”
“Me?” Will said with feigned surprise even though that exact thought had already crossed his mind. “I do not know what gave you that idea, but I can assure you my intentions are noble and true.”
No doubt if Emma were sober she would have seen straight through his lie, but the wine had dulled her senses just enough to turn her doubt into unfounded trust. “I suppose I shall have to take you at your word.”
“I suppose you will.”
Arm in arm they stepped out into the lightly falling snow.
CHAPTER FIVE
Covered in a thin dusting of white the frozen ground glittered like a string of diamonds wrapped round a woman’s slender throat beneath the silver moon. Keeping his arm firmly wrapped around Emma’s shoulders to prevent her from wandering off and falling face first into a bank of snow, Will guided her to a walkway that looked as though it had been recently shoveled.
It wrapped around the side of the mansion, leading them past a long line of windows lit from within by the soft glow of candlelight. Rippling shadows and the soft hum of voices indicated the dinner party was very much ongoing despite the hostess’s dramatic exit to parts unknown. Will wondered if Vivian had found her husband and hoped – for his sake – that she was still searching.
If there was one thing he’d learned from his years as a rake and a rogue it was that there truly was no greater force than a woman scorned. He still carried the scar of the last female he’d angered. A vivacious redhead with a wicked temper that had served him well in bed but so well out of it, she’d thrown a perfume bottle at him when he’d told her he was ending their affair. The bloody thing had shattered when it struck him on the shoulder, embedding two pieces of glass deep into his flesh and making him smell like honeysuckle for three weeks straight.
The scar now served as a reminder that women were fickle, temperamental creatures. Although it was rather difficult for him to imagine Emma ever throwing anything heavier than a disapproving frown.
Head ducked against the bitter cold she trudged along dutifully beside him in a more or less straight line, looking so positively adorable with her nose tucked inside the collar of his oversized cloak that it was a struggle not to scoop her up in his arms and nuzzle warmth back into her rosy cheeks.
Wait one bloody moment. Will stopped so abruptly that he nearly slipped. Scoop her up in his arms? Nuzzle her rosy cheeks? Where the hell had that wayward thought come from? He did not scoop and he certainly did not nuzzle. Nuzzling was for poets and poor saps who imagined themselves in love.
“Is something the matter?” Emma blinked up at him with her dark gypsy eyes and he felt an unfamiliar and uncomfortable stirring deep within his chest in a part of his body he had been ignoring for a very, very long time.
His heart.
“Nothing,” he said brusquely before he resumed walking, unconsciously tightening his arm around Emma’s back so she wouldn’t slip on a covered patch of ice. He was protective of her, Will realized with a scowl. And even though he’d come out into the cold and the snow in an effort to clear her head it was his head that obviously needed clearing.
He was many things, but a knight in shining armor wasn’t one of them. While he went to great lengths to please a woman in bed – or on the floor, or against the wall, or in one memorable instance splayed across the dining room table – he could care less about them outside of it. Love them and leave them was his own personal mantra and it had served him well over the years.
One by one he’d watched as his peers and friends had made the horrendous mistake of getting married. He had attended more weddings than he cared to count and through every one of them he’d thanked his lucky stars that he wasn’t the one standing up at the altar. If his father had his way he would marry eventually, but until that day was forced upon him he was determined to remain a bachelor for as long as possible, free to do whatever – and whomever – he pleased.
So why the bloody hell was he playing gentleman escort to a shy little wallflower?
It boggled the mind.
But just as he was about to tell her in no uncertain terms that their time together had come to an end she turned to him and said, in a breathy little voice that hit him square in the gut, “Do you know I have never been kissed?”
Will was not any easy man to stun into silence. After all of the sinful acts he had seen and done it took a great deal to surprise him. And yet with one question he found himself rendered completely and utterly speechless.
“Not even once,” Emma continued, blissfully unaware of the effect she was having on him. Sliding free of his arm she wandered a few feet away and glanced back at him over her shoulder, winged brows pinched together over the bridge of her nose. “Why do you suppose that is?”
Will could only stare. Stare at the snow sparkling in her hair like tiny pearls. Stare at her rosy red lips that were puckered out ever-so-slightly. Stare at her guileless brown eyes framed by dark, thick lashes. Inside the warm drawing room Emma had been pretty enough to turn his head. Outside in the snow and the cold and the moonlight she took his bloody breath away.
“I am certain I could not imagine,” he managed to say in a voice gone gruff and hoarse. At his sides his large hands curled into fists, muscles bulging with the effort it took not to march up to her, yank her body against him, and claim her mouth with his own. And my father says I have lost all common decency, he thought with a humorless twist of his mouth. He may have been a scoundrel, but he wasn’t a complete and utter bastard. Were Emma anyone but who she was – an innocent whose good judgement was obviously blurred – he would have had her flat on her back in a matter of seconds. As it stood it was taking every ounce of willpower he possessed (which wasn’t a considerable amount) not to do precisely that.
“You should go back inside now, Lady Emma.”
“Now you want to go back inside?” The line between her brows deepened with confusion. “But I thought you wanted to come outside. Isn’t that why we are here?”
“Yes,” Will gritted out, “but you shouldn’t be without a proper chaperone.”
“You could be my chaperone,” she said innocently.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing proper about me.”
“I suppose you are right.” She was quiet for a moment, her eyes downcast, her expression pensive, before she lifted her head and looked up at him questioningly. “Will you kiss me, Lord Prescott?”
Kiss her? She wanted him to kiss her? Was she trying to see how far his self-control would stretch? As it stood he was already straddling the fence between sinner and saint and leaning more towards sinner with every passing second. It was a testament to his willpower that he hadn’t shoved her up against the nearest tree and taken what he wanted already.
Kiss her?
She would be lucky if that was all he did.
“Lord Prescott? Did you hear me? I said will you–”
“I bloody well heard you just fine,” he snapped with unnecessary force. “And no, Lady Emma, I will not kiss you.”
“Oh,” she whispered as the rosy glow drained from her cheeks leaving them as white as the snow beneath their boots. “A – A simple no would have been quite fine, thank you.” Ducking her chin into the collar of his cloak she turned quickly away but not before he caught a glimpse of the tears glistening in her eyes. Will’s breath exploded in a cloud of frosty white smoke as he raked a hand through his hair, pulling the ends taut with equal parts frustration and need.
“There is no reason to be upset,” he began. Especially when I am doing this for your own bloody good, he added silently. Women. Fickle creatures, every last one of them. When he kissed them they expected
the moon and the stars on a silver platter, only to inevitably curse his name when he left them the next morning. And when he didn’t kiss them – when for once he took the high road and acted like the gentleman he’d been born to be instead of the scoundrel he’d become – what did they do? They cried, making him feel like a complete and utter sod.
“I am not upset,” Emma lied with a tiny, pitiful sniffle that tugged at his heart and had him grinding his teeth together. “I am j-just cold.”
“And I’m the bloody King of England.” Exasperated by her tears – and the unwanted pang he felt in his chest as a result – he went to her and grasped her slender arms through the heavy folds of the cloak. Snow continued to fall, a bit heavier than before, covering them both in a soft dusting of white.
Mindful of any watchful eyes that might be peering out at them through the curtains he switched their positions, spinning her in front of him so that his broad back shielded her face from view. They were standing so close the plumes from their breath mingled together to create a steamy wall of hazy white smoke, reminiscent of fog rising up off a pond in the early hours of morning.
Releasing her right arm Will lifted his hand and gently traced the chilled curve of her cheek, marveling at the sheer softness of her skin. Everything about Emma, from her obsidian hair twisted up into an elegant coiffure all the way down to her tiny little feet encased in a pair of very impractical satin dancing slippers, was dainty and delicate and exquisitely fragile. Part of him was afraid to touch her… even as the other part yearned to touch her all over.
“Why do you want me to kiss you?” he asked, his voice little more than a rumbling growl. She raised her gaze to his, her dark gypsy eyes as bright and vast and magical as the moon itself.
“Because, just once, I want to know what it feels like. Passion,” she said before he could ask what ‘it’ was. “Passion and lust and – and longing. I want to know what it feels like to long for someone.” She bit the inside of her cheek, drawing it inward before releasing it with a tiny pop. “Does that make me a bad person? To want what I shouldn’t?”
Will caught a tear on the pad of his thumb before it could slide off the edge of her chin. “No,” he said firmly. “It doesn’t. But you are a beautiful woman, Emma. Surely you’ve suffered no lack of suitors. Any man would be lucky to have you.”
Her eyelashes flicked down, concealing her gaze. “Vivian says I am too proper and men find me boring and staid.”
Vivian is a bloody idiot.
“She – she said I was a prude. And she’s right. I am. But I don’t want to be. Not tonight.” Her chest lifted and fell beneath his cloak as she took a deep, bracing breath and lifted her eyes to his, revealing a myriad of conflicting emotions. “Won’t you kiss me, Lord Prescott?” she whispered. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
The very idea that she would show concerned for his reputation was a true indication of just how much the wine had overwhelmed her senses. Were Will a stronger man – a better man – he would have walked away then and there. Unfortunately for Emma, he wasn’t stronger or better. And she had finally pushed him to his breaking point.
“Yes,” he said huskily, tilting her face up with one hand while the other found its way beneath her cloak and around the slender arch of her spine. She trembled where he touched her. Just a tiny, involuntary shiver of awareness that had his entire body pulsing with desire. “Yes, Lady Emma, I’ll kiss you.”
CHAPTER SIX
The Next Morning
“I wondered when you were going to get up. Feeling a little worse for wear, are we? I expected as much.”
Emma stared up into the smirking face of Lord Prescott and felt her stomach drop all the way down to her toes. Grabbing the sheet she buried her head beneath it and squeezed her eyes together so tightly that bright spots of color danced across the inside of her lids.
A dream, she told herself as her heart beat frantically against her chest and the back of her neck went cold and clammy. It’s just a horrible, horrible dream. When I wake up I shall be alone and Lord Prescott will be passed out below stairs or in one of the maid’s bedrooms or wherever rakes go when they have indulged in too many glasses of bourbon.
Except when she slowly lowered the sheet he was still there, smirking down at her, his green eyes bright with amusement and a wolfish grin teasing the corners of his mouth. “You’re not dreaming,” he said, delving straight into her mind and plucking out her thoughts. “How much do you remember? Not very much I imagine,” he mused before she could form a response. “You were well and truly foxed. How does your head feel?”
Emma pressed her fingertips to her aching temple. “Horrible,” she admitted.
Lord Prescott looked only vaguely sympathetic. “There’s a brew for that, though I don’t know how to make it. Honey and coffee and something else. Brandy, maybe.”
“I am not going to drink more alcohol.” Her stomach did a slow, uneasy roll just thinking about it. Keeping the sheet pulled as high as she possibly could without smothering herself, she cautiously made her way to the far, far edge of the mattress. She would have gotten up and fled the room if not for her flimsy white nightdress. A nightdress she had no memory of putting on. “Lord Prescott, what are you – that is to say how did you… er…”
“Come to be in your bed?” Pushing himself into a sitting position he leaned back against the tall mahogany headboard and regarded her with a lifted brow. Cool morning sunlight danced across his smooth chest, illuminating his golden skin and the hard rigid edge of carved muscle.
Rake or not, there was no denying Lord Prescott his handsomeness and Emma’s face flushed a dull, deep red when she caught herself staring at his chiseled abdomen. Dear heavens. Was he wearing pants? She sincerely hoped he was wearing pants.
“You invited me here,” he drawled. “In fact, you insisted.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open as her startled gaze jerked away from his stomach and up to his smirking countenance. “I most certainly did not!”
“You most certainly did. Not that I was complaining.” His grin was pure wickedness. “This is the most comfortable bed I have slept in quite a long time.” He thumped the mattress with his hand, giving her a little jolt. “Not too hard, not too soft. Don’t you agree, Lady Emma?” he asked, his tone filled with sly insinuation that caused Emma’s thighs to reflexively press together.
Had they… did they… have relations? If they did she couldn’t remember it, although surely she would feel different if they had. She didn’t know precisely how it all was done, but she’d learned enough from Vivian to know that it was painful the first time and there was blood. But she saw no evidence of any bleeding on the sheets and aside from her pounding head she did not feel any lingering soreness.
“It – it is a very fine bed.” What else was there to say? What else could she say? She wanted to demand that he leave the room at once, but what if someone saw him? It would not matter if they’d been intimate or not. The implication would be more than clear and the scandal that would result was too horrifying to even contemplate. Her reputation would be ruined. Any chance she might have had at finding a respectable husband destroyed. She would never be able to show her face in high society again. Her parents would be ashamed. They might even disown her and then what would she do? Where would she go? How would she feed Hamlet?
Hamlet!
With a tiny gasp of alarm Emma sat straight up and threw the sheet aside without a single thought to her modesty. “Where is he?” she said frantically as she scrambled across the mattress on her hands and knees and began tossing pillows and blankets onto the floor in a desperate attempt to find her beloved pet. “Have you see him? Did he get out?”
“What the devil are you going on about? Who is the ‘he’ you are – I was using that,” Lord Prescott complained when she yanked his pillow out from behind his back. It, too, joined the growing mountain of bed linens piling up on the floor. Once Emma had finished stripping the bed bare she sat back on her h
eels at the foot of the mattress and buried her head in her hands.
“Hamlet is my cat! And he’s missing.” It did not strike Emma as odd or even particularly unusual that she would be more upset over the disappearance of her pet than her own ruin. Hamlet was the most important thing in the world to her. He was more important than her reputation. More important than the scandal that would come if Lord Prescott was discovered in her room. More important than anything.
“You mean that fluffy white ball of fur that tried to suffocate me in my sleep in the middle of the night? I put him in the closet.”
“You did what?” Emma cried as her head lifted. At that very moment Hamlet decided to release a rather belated – and quite irritated – meow. In a flash Emma was off the bed and had the closet door yanked open. Looking rather cross Hamlet pranced out, gave her a disdainful glare over his shoulder as if she had been the one to lock him away, and trotted over to the nearest window. With one easy leap he settled himself on the sill and promptly proceeded to fall asleep in the sun, his chest rising and falling in rhythm with the sound of his contended purrs.
“Well he doesn’t look the worse for wear,” Lord Prescott commented. “But I am afraid the same cannot be said for you. Might I recommend running a comb through your hair before you leave the room? Wouldn’t want people to talk.”
A hot, unfamiliar flash of anger bubbled up in Emma’s chest as she whirled to face Lord Prescott. How smug he looked, sitting in the bed like some sort of high and mighty king! This was all his fault, she decided. Yes, she’d clearly had too much wine and as a result her head hadn’t been as clear as it ought to have been, but he’d taken advantage of her! Or at least she thought he had, for surely despite what he’d said it hadn’t been her idea for him to come up to her bedroom. What a ludicrous notion! He was merely trying to cover his tracks and doing a rather poor job of it at that.
Regency Christmas (Holiday Collection) Page 26
