“A lady, of course! Can’t be anything else when he goes about carrying tokens of her affection with him.”
She froze, her hand poised on the brass keys. A lady’s token? She thought of the Duke of Richland’s daughter and felt again the inexplicable sting of jealousy.
“It fell out of his card case,” Lawrence went on, seeming oblivious to the fact that she had gone still as a statue. “You should have seen his face when I snatched it up.” He laughed. “I never imagined my brother was so romantic.”
I feel a deep and impassioned desire for you.
Desire wasn’t love. It was a madness. He’d told her it would go away. It was clear that it had. Her jealousy deepened into misery. “Did you learn the lady’s name?”
“No. He refused to discuss it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I know who she is.”
“Do you, indeed?” He leaned closer. “Who?”
She forced herself to look up. “The Duke of Richland’s daughter.”
For some inexplicable reason, Lawrence laughed. “Richland’s daughter?” He shook his head, still laughing. “Not a chance of it.”
She wanted to believe him. “How can you be so certain?”
“Because the token was a hair ribbon,” he said as he straightened away from the counter and put on his hat. “Pink,” he added and winked at her. “With white daisies on it.”
He glanced down and took the box. “We all know who had a ribbon like that, don’t we?” He walked away, whistling, leaving a stunned Maria staring after him.
Chapter 15
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest.
Proverb
He was perfectly well. Shipshape and Bristol fashion.
Phillip stared at the tray of pastries his butler had brought to the table, and he didn’t feel a thing. The ribbon in his card case didn’t feel as if it were burning a hole in his chest. When Lawrence mentioned that the desserts had come from Maria’s shop, he was able to smile and inform his dinner guests in quite a natural manner that Martingale’s, located right next door, was a pâtisserie of the highest quality and his personal favorite. He ate the chocolate tart and listened to the Duttons and his other guests praise the fine quality of her pastry, and he felt not the slightest pang of pain or anger or lust. Yes, he was cured.
Later that evening, after his guests had departed, he suggested brandy and cigars on the balcony to Lawrence, but his brother refused with a yawn, declaring he intended to seek his bed. Phillip ordered a brandy and cigar be brought to him on the balcony and went upstairs.
His valet nodded to him as he entered his bedroom. “Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Gaston,” he answered as he crossed the room. Opening one of the French doors, he stepped outside and took his usual seat on the wrought-iron chair in the corner. It was a fine, warm June night, and for once the scents of flowers and grass from Green Park seemed to override the perpetual city smells.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, feeling more relaxed and at ease than he’d felt in three months. At last, he thought with satisfaction. At last, he was sane again.
“Sir?”
He turned and looked up to find his footman at his elbow with a tray. “Yes, Dobbs, put it there,” he said, nodding to the table beside his chair. “Thank you.”
The servant complied with this order, then bowed. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No, Dobbs, thank you. Good night.”
His footman bowed and departed. He took a sip of the brandy, then started to reach for the cheroot and the cutter from the tray, but something moved, a flash of white in the darkness of the balcony that caught his attention, and he looked up.
It was her. She was standing on her side of the balcony, and he had the strangest sense that she had been waiting for him and had only stepped out of the shadows upon hearing the sound of his voice.
As he stood up, he realized it was the white linen of her shirtwaist that had caught his attention, but it was her hair that transfixed him, for it was loose and shimmered like pale gold in the moonlight. The sight hit him square in the chest.
He watched her as she came closer, and desire washed over him, wiping out in one instant an entire month of determination and resolve. He hated her, suddenly, hated her for the desperate hunger inside himself that he would never be able to master.
With rigid control, he bowed, then he turned to go back inside. But he’d barely taken one step toward the doors to his rooms before she called to him.
“Don’t go, Phillip.”
At the sound of her voice, he stopped again, but he did not turn around. If he looked at her, he would let this madness have him.
He heard her footsteps bring her closer to him, the tap of her boot heels on the slate floor. She stopped several feet from the wall. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”
She knew. He closed his eyes. His chest tightened. Damn Lawrence.
From long practice, Phillip forced his features into polite, expressionless lines. Only then did he look at her.
In the dim, hazy moonlight, her skin seemed lit with a luminous glow. “You have my hair ribbon.”
Was it a statement or an accusation? He could not be sure, but he forced himself to reach into the breast pocket of his jacket. As he pulled out his card case, the action brought pain, as if he were ripping it out of his chest. He opened the case and removed the ribbon. He stared at it for a moment, then he shoved it toward her. “Here. Take it.”
She didn’t move. “I thought I’d lost it.” She looked up at him, her pretty hazel eyes wide. “But you took it, didn’t you?”
Tell her you found it after she’d left Kayne Hall, he thought. Tell her that.
He didn’t say it. He couldn’t, for it would be a lie. “Yes.”
“Why?”
God, did she really expect him to tell her? To confess that she had owned his heart, body, and soul for fourteen years? He stepped over the wall and crossed the short distance between them. He grasped her wrist, lifted her hand, and slapped the ribbon into her palm. “Take it, damn you.”
The instant her fingers closed around it, he shoved her hand away, but he couldn’t seem to find the will to leave. He tried to make her do it first. “Go inside, Maria.”
She put the slip of pink silk into her skirt pocket, but she still didn’t move. “Why did you take it?” she asked again, moving closer. “More important, why did you keep it?”
He could feel the tremors in his body, tremors that were deep down within him. They threatened to shatter the taut, tenuous hold he had on a lifetime of principles. “If one of us doesn’t leave now,” he said, his voice low and tight, “I’ll forget I’m a gentleman.”
“I believe I’d like to see that.” She moved even closer. Her breasts brushed his chest, burning him through layers of clothing. She touched her lips with her tongue, sending a surge of lust through his body. “I’d like to see the walls of Jericho come tumbling down.”
He tried one last time to warn her. “I won’t be answerable for my actions.”
“I know.”
He cupped her face, his thumbs touched her soft, soft mouth. “I’ll take your virtue.”
“That’s all right,” she whispered, her lips brushing his thumbs, sending that lust spreading throughout his body. “I won’t tell on you.”
With those words, his reason dissolved. His honor crumbled. Like a dam breaking, the hungry need for her that he’d held back for so long broke through his resolve and poured through his body like a powerful, raging flood.
He slid his hands into her hair, tangling the long, golden strands in his fists, and he tilted her head back. He kissed her, a deep, hard kiss of total possession. It must have hurt her, for it bruised his own mouth. And yet, despite that, she entwined her arms around his neck and made a low, sweet moan of accord.
He tore his mouth from hers long enough to ask the vital question. “Are your maids asleep?”
“Yes,” she gasped,
and that was all she had time to say before he claimed her lips again. Tasting deeply of her mouth, he began pushing her backward, guiding them both toward her door. Once there, he reached behind her, turned the handle, and shoved the door wide, then continued guiding her backward into her bedroom. Once they were both inside, he kicked the door shut behind them.
Desire was coursing through him like tidal waves, and he strove to contain it. He had yearned for this moment for so long, and he had no intention of ruining it by being too quick. He wanted to arouse her gradually, build the passionate fire in her bit by bit, until it blazed as hot in her as it did in him, until the pleasure of it consumed them both.
He tore his lips from hers and buried his face in the curve of her neck, forcing himself to contain his moves and go slowly. His hands left her hair and slid down to her slender waist, and his fingers moved up and down her spine in lazy circles as he trailed kisses along the column of her throat and across her jaw to recapture her mouth with his.
He kissed her, long, slow, deep kisses, as his hands left her waist and came up between them to begin unbuttoning her shirtwaist. He worked his way down, button by button, and he could feel a quiver run through her body with each one he unfastened.
Once his hand reached her waist, he pulled back, looking into her face, watching as she slowly opened her eyes. She’d always had beauty to take his breath away, but he had never seen her look lovelier that she did at this moment, and when she smiled at him, shaking back her beautiful hair, he felt it like a tangible force. And when she breathed his name on a tiny sigh, the sound was like throwing brandy on a fire, igniting the desire he was fighting so hard to contain.
He grasped the edges of her shirtwaist and pulled it back from her shoulders, but that seemed to unnerve her, for she stirred, making a sound of agitation. He left off undressing her for the moment and tilted his head, pressing a kiss to her ear. “It’s all right. I want to undress you. Don’t be afraid.”
She stirred again. “Heavens, Phillip,” she whispered back. “I’m not afraid. It’s just—” She broke off with a little jerking movement.
“What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t unbutton my cuffs.”
In all the fantasies he’d had of her, he’d never imagined her saying something like that. He began to laugh, a deep, rumbling chuckle that caught him by surprise. Her as well, it seemed, for she pulled back to look at him. “Phillip, you’re laughing.”
“Sorry. It’s just that that isn’t the sort of remark a man expects at a time like this,” he explained as he unfastened the buttons of her cuffs. Her shirtwaist fell to the floor. He lifted his hands to unbutton her corset cover, but she grasped his wrists, stopping him.
“I like hearing you laugh. I always have. That’s why I used to do silly things, you know. Trying to make you laugh.”
Smiling, he began slipping buttons free. “Like singing ‘The Major-General’s Song’ with that silly fusilier’s helmet on your head and a monocle on your eye?”
“You remember that?”
He paused and looked into her eyes. The tightness in his chest deepened and spread. He wanted to say that he remembered everything—not just that fusilier’s helmet that kept falling over her eyes because it was too big, but other things, too. He remembered the white-hot anger he’d felt when the teasing of the village children had made her cry; the lift of his spirits every time a letter in her handwriting had come to him at school, the vanilla scent of her hair; the shimmers of fear when he’d seen Lawrence with her in the rose arbor, making her laugh as he had never been able to do; the bleakness of his days after she was gone.
He couldn’t say any of that, for the words seemed stuck in his throat, so he cupped her face and took her mouth in another long kiss. He trailed more kisses along the velvety skin of her cheek to her ear as he unbuttoned her corset cover, more kisses along the column of her throat and across her collarbone as he pulled the garment over her head and tossed it aside, and still more kisses along the soft, white skin of her shoulder as he unfastened the hooks of her corset and let it slip to the floor.
He lifted his head, and when he glanced down, he saw the faint, unmistakable outline of her nipples beneath the thin nainsook of her chemise. His control began slipping away.
Now, he thought, now he’d be able to see what until now he had only been able to imagine. He grasped handfuls of nainsook in his fists and began pulling her chemise out of the waistband of her skirt.
“Phillip?”
He paused, breathing deeply of the luscious scents of vanilla and cinnamon on her skin as he his fists tightened around folds of soft white fabric. “Yes, Maria?”
“I—” She hesitated, then gave a little laugh. “I’m not experienced in these matters, but am I supposed to be the only one whose clothes come off?”
“No.”
“Good.” She raised her hands to his chest, grasped the lapels of his dinner jacket and began pulling the garment off of his shoulders. He didn’t know whether to groan or laugh, but he let her slide the jacket off. She then unfastened the buttons of his shirt and removed his cuff links, and he pulled the shirt over his head.
Shirt and cufflinks hit the floor as she flattened her palms against his chest, and the warm touch of her hands sent his control slipping down another notch. He fought to regain it, but he couldn’t stop the groan that escaped him as she began to caress his bare skin.
“Yes,” he said, his voice a harsh rasp in his throat. “Touch me, Maria. God, yes.”
He tilted his head back, letting her explore him, savoring her curiosity even as he struggled to keep his arousal in check. He allowed her to run her hands over the muscles of his chest, shoulders, arms, and abdomen. But when she reached the waistband of his trousers, he knew his self-control would snap if he let her continue her explorations.
“Enough,” he said, grasping her wrists. “That’s enough for now.”
She started to protest, but he was impervious. “My turn,” he said firmly. He reached around her waist to unfasten the three buttons at the back of her skirt, then he sank to his knees, pulling her skirt down with him. “Step out of it,” he said, and when she did, he shoved the garment out of the way. He unlaced her boots and pulled them off. They, too, were tossed aside, then his hands curved behind her ankles and moved slowly up her calves to her knees, sliding inside her drawers to the garters that held up her stockings.
His fingers lightly caressed the backs of her knees, and delicious tingles of warmth danced along her spine. She looked down, watching as he pulled the ribbon ties of her garters to unfasten them, then slowly slid her stockings down her legs. When he reached her ankles, he slipped her stockings and garters off her feet, then he slid his hands slowly up again. Even through the muslin of her drawers, his touch seemed scorching hot as his palms skimmed her thighs, then her hips, then lifted to the front of her chemise.
He pulled the edges apart, freeing the tiny satin knots from their loops. Then his hands fell away and he sat back on his heels. His gaze met hers.
“Take off your chemise for me,” he said. “I want to watch you take it off.”
Mesmerized by the heat of his gaze and the intensity of his command, she obeyed. Reaching for the hem of her chemise, she pulled the garment up her body and over her head, then tossed it over one shoulder and shook back her hair. When she looked at him again, she sucked in a sharp breath, startled. Though his expression was grave, as always, she saw something else in his face, something she had never seen there before. Tenderness.
“Oh, God,” he whispered hoarsely. “God, Maria, you’re so lovely. Even more lovely than I imagined.”
She stared at him, appreciating that he had done this very thing to her countless times in his imagination—undressed her, kissed her, made love to her. All these years, he’d had that ribbon, and he’d thought of this, imagined this. That knowledge sent a feeling through her like nothing she’d ever felt before, a feeling beyond physical sensation, a joy so powerful it
was like pain, yet so sweet that it was pleasure, and she knew Prudence had been right. She was in love with this man.
He lifted his hands to cup her breasts, bringing back that aching warmth she’d first felt in the carriage. It seemed to melt her like butter, robbing her of the ability to stand. “Phillip,” she moaned, her knees giving way. “Oh, crikey.”
He caught her, his hands grasping her hips to keep her upright, and she thought she heard him laugh under his breath. She watched in fascination as he began to stroke and caress her. He shaped her breasts, toyed with them, brushed his fingers lightly over her hardened nipples, and the warmth in her deepened and spread. She brought her hands up to cradle his head, moaning low in her throat as she pulled to bring him closer.
He came that short distance, straightening on his knees, and she watched in amazement as his lips parted over her breast and he drew her nipple into his mouth.
She gasped with shock at the piercing sweetness of it, tilting her head back and arching toward him, her hands tightening in his hair, her arms cradling his head. She felt him draw her nipple between his teeth, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the sweet excitement of it. He suckled her, his teeth and tongue gently working, while she could only shiver and gasp, holding his head to her breast, clinging to him to keep herself from falling.
He sucked harder. She moaned, and again, her knees gave way, but his arm wrapped around her back, holding her upright. He laid his cheek to the side of her breast as he used his free hand to untie the thin satin drawstring that held up her drawers. He tugged the garment down her hips, and it fell, pooling around her feet.
Then his arm tightened at her back, his other arm curved beneath her knees, and he rose with her in his arms, then he carried her to the bed.
He laid her in the center of the bed, and she opened her eyes to find him watching her as he pulled off his boots. Maria glanced down, watching as he undid the buttons of his trousers and slid them off his hips along with his linen.
Secret Desires of a Gentleman Page 22
