Sin Incarnate (No Rules for Rogues Book 1)

by Isobel Carr

  ‘And, before you ask, yes, she’s very beautiful. And, yes, the entire Italian court is charmed. And, no, I wasn’t among the gaggle of young blades vying for her attention.’

  ‘Gaggle?’ she choked out, half laughing, but keeping her attention firmly in front of them, giving him only her profile and that mischievous dimple.

  ‘What else would you call a large group of lovesick Italians? A herd?’

  Mrs Exley burst into full-throated laughter, the sound making his chest suddenly tight. The path they were following through the woods meandered, curving around a magnificent oak. Glendower and the men with him disappeared in the twists and turns.

  ‘Somehow I don’t think either geese or hoofed animals are quite the right choice.’

  ‘A pack?’

  ‘At least that sounds predatory.’ She suddenly stopped and tugged at her skirts, ruthlessly ripping them loose from the brambles at the side of the path.

  ‘A hedge might be more appropriate,’ Ivo said, glancing meaningfully at the offending plant. ‘Something dense and hard to avoid.’

  Something like himself, seemingly.

  She laughed again, the sound startling a flock of small brown wrens from the trees. Still chuckling, they broke from the woods into a sunlit pasture. Ivo blinked, trying to adjust to the sudden light. A herd of Jerseys grazed lazily before them. A few lifted delicate, sculpted heads to watch them pass.

  He paused as they came to the stone fence that separated the park proper from the estate’s grazing land. The group that had been ahead of them was nowhere to be seen. Only the two of them remained, suddenly marooned on a quiet, pastoral island.

  A cow lowed and another answered. A trill of birdsong swept across the meadow. Otherwise, it was oppressively quiet. Except for the loud beating of his heart, thumping in double-time as his blood rushed and heated.

  Ivo hopped lightly over the fence, weighing what he might do, divining consequences.

  They were alone.

  A wise man would do nothing. He would walk away…

  He turned and she handed her gun over. He carefully laid it to rest against the wall with his own, then reached across to her.

  They were alone…and she owed him.

  Her eyes darted about, searching the pasture behind him. Ivo bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning, to keep from grabbing.

  She put her hands in his, her grasp slightly hesitant. He shifted his weight, bracing himself. She scrambled over the fence, sure as a ewe on a rocky hillside, only to tumble into his arms as one foot got caught in layers of chemise and petticoats.

  Ivo fell back a step as she fetched up against his chest, her eyes opening enormously. He caught her up tightly, holding her just off the ground as linen and camlet swirled out about her.

  She stared up at him, barely breathing as he slowly lowered her to her feet. Gold flecked her eyes like the hammered surface of an ancient amulet. She didn’t pull away, as he fully expected her to. She sagged against him, brought one gloved hand up to trace the scar on his cheek, kid-covered fingers disturbingly gentle.

  Dauntry froze as her finger traced the narrow scar that cut down across his cheek. A shadow of beard, slightly rough on either side of the narrow sliver of scar tissue, pulled at the soft leather of her glove. He’d healed with no disfiguring pucker. Lucky.

  The slight smile he’d been trying to hide slid from his face. Vanished beneath her caress. Her heart was hammering, pounding so loudly she almost couldn’t think. The scent of bergamot and leather filled her nostrils. Made her want to inhale deeper. To bury her face in his neck.

  This was a very bad idea.

  She should have walked away. Should have run after Audley and Brimstone. But that irreverent thrill that went through her whenever she was near Dauntry had overwhelmed her better judgment. The challenge he presented was impossible to resist. Sin incarnate. That was what he was.

  He had powder streaks on his face. Little black dots dusting his right cheek, almost obscuring the natural beauty mark that lurked below the corner of his right eye.

  When her finger completed its journey, she let her hand drop to rest on his chest, fingers splayed out. He inhaled audibly, as though he’d been holding his breath a long while, and brought his lips down to cover hers.

  Hot. Urgent. Almost desperate. He tasted of the ale they’d all had before setting out, sweet and slightly earthy. His hands firmed about her waist. George went utterly still, savouring the moment, before her tongue darted out to meet his, curled inside his mouth to tease the soft edge of the inside of his lip, the slick hollow of his cheek. His stroked back, teeth clashing with hers.

  She loved this. The feeling of a man’s hands, the way he tasted, the impossible softness and heat of his mouth. The heady sense of power that came with the ability to control all that strength with nothing but the light caress of her hand, the seemingly submissive exposure of her throat.

  Her nipples budded, hard and impatient against the stiff fabric of her stays. Blood pooled in her belly, a dull ache that throbbed in time with her heart. She nipped at his lip, urging him on, wanting more. Needing more. He slipped one hand down to cup her bottom, pulling her hips up hard against him, his fists tightly clutching her coat and skirts. Holding her firmly, the ridge of his erection manifest where it rode against her belly.

  This was exactly as she’d been imagining it—God help her.

  What was it they said about an Englishman who acted like an Italian? Something about his being a devil. Here was proof. A man who’d taken the fire of Italy into himself. And, at this moment, it burnt for her. He burnt for her.

  His hand went to the front of her coat, slipped one button loose. George inhaled sharply, her whole body tight with anticipation. Queasy, shaking with need.

  The distant sound of dogs barking intruded and sent her heart racing with panic. Dauntry pulled his head back with a slight jerk, like a horse startled by a rabbit dashing across the road. He blew his breath out in a long huff and rested his forehead against hers, keeping his arms loosely around her. His thumb traced slow circles against the small of her back. Comforting and arousing all at once.

  She shivered, desire draining out of her core and flooding through her limbs, making her hands shake, her knees wobble. The magic moment they’d been suspended in popped like a soap bubble hitting the grass.

  It was too easy to get lost in such a moment. Too easy to drown in sensation. Too painful to resurface.

  She screwed her eyes shut, wanting to cry. To curl up and bawl. She shouldn’t have let this happen. She had rules about flirtation and seduction. Rules she’d never violated. Not once. They were the only thing that kept her life orderly and safe, and kept her balanced just this side of social ruin.

  The last sane corner of her mind railed at her to break his hold, but she couldn’t get her body to comply. Her arms were around his neck, one hand locked in the curls of his queue. This was completely out of hand. Someone was bound to come along any minute.

  After one more deep breath, he raised his head and took a step back from her. Her eyes opened. Her arms fell, trailing reluctantly across his shoulders, down his chest, then fell away completely as she sank down onto the wall, legs no longer able to support her. She took one shuddering breath, getting herself back under control.

  ‘Well,’ she ventured.

  Dauntry just stared at her, a slight flush making his scar stand out in bold relief. God, he really was beautiful. An impulse—to find out if the body hidden under layers of leather, wool, and linen was as perfect as that face—hammered hard through her, a relentless staccato of lust and curiosity. She could have him. Just the once…but not here. Not now.

  George sat up a bit straighter. She could manage this. She could.

  She forced herself up from the wall, picked up her gun, and strode off before he could say anything. Before he could touch her again. All she wanted to do was turn and curl into him. Bask in the warmth of his body, of his desire.

  He�
��d kissed her. Not only had she let him, she’d welcomed it.

  Welcomed it? She’d wallowed in it. Thrown herself into the moment like it was her last.

  Only minutes ago she’d been secure in the knowledge that such a thing would never happen. She would never allow it to happen. That for all of Dauntry’s palpable desire, she was in control.

  Her resolve had crumbled as soon as his arms had closed around her.

  No. It had been lost the moment he’d taken hold of her hands. Nothing but that small connection, glove to glove, and all her resolutions had melted away, nothing more than frost on an early spring morning.

  Weak, wanton, and wilful. Three things a woman should never be.

  She’d always had trouble with the last, and occasionally with the second, but never with the first. At this moment she was dying to indulge all three. To lead him, not to the gun room where friends and family awaited, but to the grotto hidden deep in the garden. To the summer house, already shut up in preparation for the coming winter. To her room. To the enormous curtained bed with its enveloping layers of down and linen.

  George touched one hand to her face, reliving the slight burr of his cheek against hers. It had been riveting in the moment. Wonderful.

  She glanced back over her shoulder, her gaze meeting Dauntry’s. He smiled, lazy and sure like a cat after a kill, but didn’t rush to catch her. Should she find that troubling? Alarming even? She couldn’t make up her mind. It all depended on what he wanted. On why he’d kissed her.

  She wasn’t about to ask him, not just now.

  For now, it was enough that the she felt alive for the first time in years. Crackling to her toes with awareness and anticipation in a way that only frustrated desire and the promise of its fulfilment could achieve.

  In pregnant silence, they crossed the last field before reaching the formal gardens and making their way to the gun room. Inside they found a large number of the guests already cleaning their guns. George sat down and cleaned her own, rinsing the used powder out of the barrel and then disassembling the lock and oiling the whole mechanism. It was good to have something to do with her hands. Something simple. Physical. Real.

  Had any of the others noticed her hands were shaking? That her breathing was still the smallest bit uneven? Had they noted that she and Dauntry had come in together? Thankfully Brimstone and St Audley had gone to the village. They were the ones most likely to notice her over-excited state. Her oldest friends. Her champions since childhood. Her biggest obstacles.

  When she finished reassembling the lock, she put the beautiful rifle away in its cabinet, lock-step beside its brethren. She leaned back against the panelled wall, bare hands pressed to the cold wood behind her, and studied the room. It smelt like home. Leather, bay rum, whisky, wood smoke, oil, and the faint hint of gunpowder mingling in the air. It felt like home. This was her place. Her kingdom. Far more so than the overheated drawing rooms of London.

  Dauntry was still working on his own gun. Several unruly curls had slipped from his queue to fall forward, hiding his eyes. So beautiful—and if she was very, very careful, she could have him. Could allow herself the indulgence. Once.

  Her rule kept things simple and under her control. One night of passion and then a clean, swift end. No question of being someone’s mistress, or chance for any man to think he had the right to dictate to her, to rule her.

  With an inaudible sigh, she forced herself to look away and went to excuse herself to her father-in-law. If she tarried long enough for the others to finish up she wasn’t exactly sure what would happen, but she was smart enough to know that something would. Being caught in flagrante delicto in the gun room was not something she aspired to.

  Chapter Four

  Rumours run rife about the Earl of S—. Some say his long sojourn abroad was due to his eloping with the wife of a French butcher.

  Tête-à-Tête, 10 October 1788

  As they assembled for the promised hunt on the fog-shrouded lawn outside Quorn Hall, Ivo eyed Mrs Exley—George—with misgiving. When she’d mentioned she’d be joining the hunt, he’d pictured her riding to the hall to farewell the men, or following along to observe in a smart little carriage, not actually riding to hounds. She, of course, had meant exactly what she said.

  It was ridiculous, the license she was allowed. Indulging her was one thing, but she was going to break her fool neck. From the look of things, her husband had never made the attempt to rein her in. Ivo doubted it was possible to do so now.

  He frowned, fiddling with his horse’s reins. He didn’t have any right to dictate to her. A strong desire to do so, but no right. And despite that kiss, she was unlikely to give him the right.

  She was mounted on an enormous bald-faced gelding with startling blue eyes. It wasn’t an attractive animal, but it was an impressive one, its sleek brown hide almost black in the morning gloom. The beast looked like far too much horse for a lady. Even one as intrepid as George.

  The low mist swirled about the horses’ legs, making disembodied jinns of the footmen who circled with trays and bottles, refilling cups. It gilded everything with a damp sheen. Ivo’s coat, the reins, his face. Tiny droplets formed in his mount’s mane, ran together to form larger ones which dripped steadily down onto the animal’s shoulder.

  George’s gelding champed at the bit, spittle turning to foam where metal met sensitive lip. He shifted his weight from side to side, coat twitching with nervous energy. George barely seemed to notice her peril. She leaned forward slightly in the saddle and gave her mount a solid slap on the neck. The gelding tossed his head and settled, obedient to his mistress’s silent command.

  Ivo inhaled a deep breath of cold, damp air. He let it out slowly, his eyes roaming over George. God, she was beautiful. Not the classic society beauty, but beautiful in the way a prizewinning race horse was, or in the manner of a finely wrought sword. Strong. Elegant. Rare.

  Her habit hugged curves that only yesterday had been pressed against him. Wool lovingly cupped the swell of her breast, the long lines of her thighs. She held an ivory-handled crop in one hand, but she didn’t seem to need it.

  This morning she was once again safely hemmed in by Brimstone and St Audley, her two devoted bulldogs. Both of them eyed him as though he was trying to snatch their favourite bone.

  Which, in point of fact, he was.

  He’d spent half the night thinking about it, sunk in the kind of wicked imaginings that came so readily in the wee hours. Sleek, naked limbs, a cloud of auburn hair, her soft cries echoing off the wainscoting, or muffled by the bedclothes. The same images that had haunted now tantalized.

  The path from obsession to bedding wasn’t any wiser, but it was clearer. Like a series of stepping stones revealed when a storm-swollen creek receded. Mossy, slick, dangerous, but a way across all the same. Maybe bedding her would be enough to cure him. God knows she owed him something for what he’d sacrificed.

  Fucking him wouldn’t turn back the hands of time, mend the fences he’d broken with his grandfather, or make his mother forget the scandal he’d almost caused, but it would be a beginning. A token. An acknowledgment.

  Ivo accepted a stirrup cup from a milling footman and tossed it back, smiling to himself as he saw George do the same. He savoured the burn of the brandy as it slid down his throat. If he kissed her she’d taste exactly the same. Sharp and fiery.

  There was no explaining why she was so damnably alluring. She simply was. There was something about the way she held herself, her slightly husky voice, the intelligence that burnt behind her amber eyes. Something fierce, defiant, and oddly masculine. Each element on its own was nothing—but together?—together they were everything.

  He kept his eye on her as they approached the first obstacle, a tall hedge that separated the road from an open grazing field. The hounds had already scrambled through, a seething, baying swarm. George was riding at the fore, bent low over the neck of her mount, skirts trailing behind her. All around her riders peeled off, looking for
a lower spot, a gate or other opening.

  George aimed her mount right at the hedge.

  Ivo’s heart skittered, missing a beat, as her horse bunched its powerful hindquarters, muscles rippling under its glossy coat, and sailed over the fence. It hit the ground on the other side and galloped off without so much as a stumble, George still firmly in the saddle.

  He wanted to haul her off her horse and beat her. He wanted to applaud.

  Instead, he followed her over the hedge. It would be just his luck to take a fall today and end up the butt of her two bulldogs’ jokes. He didn’t like to think of himself as an overly proud man—not like his grandfather, never like the marquess—but that would be more than flesh and blood could bear.

  They didn’t like him very much, her bulldogs. And they were not the least bit shy about making him understand that he was unwelcome. He didn’t blame them. He knew what he wanted to do to her, with her, and he doubted they would approve. Whatever George was to the two of them—friend, lover, something in between—Ivo didn’t care. It didn’t make a bit of difference.

  Ahead of him George and Bennett thundered across the field, followed closely by Brimstone and St Audley. Ivo dropped his hands, giving his mount his head, and raced after them. The rest of the field trailed behind him, hooting and jeering as they urged their mounts on. They sailed over a particularly treacherous rock wall, George giving a whoop of triumph as she thundered on. Ivo shook his head. By all rights she should have been flat on her back in the mud long ago. Any other woman would have been.

  As they rode across the field Lord Glendower called to his daughter-in-law over the rock wall, taking her to task. ‘You could have gone round, Georgianna,’ he yelled.

  Ivo found himself nodding in grim concurrence. Not could have. She should have gone round. She rode hard, too hard, took the highest jumps, the most dangerous paths as though she had something to prove.