The Heart of a Scoundrel

by Christi Caldwell

  “Do not stare at him in that manner,” Honoria pleaded.

  “I do not generally agree with Honoria but, in this, I fear she’s correct. It isn’t polite to stare.”

  “I…” was incapable of one single, coherent thought.

  “Oh, bloody hell he is coming this way.” A beleaguered moan escaped Honoria.

  “Of course he is,” Gillian replied, thankfully filling the void left by Phoebe’s silence.

  “He is dangerous.” There was an entreaty in Honoria’s words that snapped Phoebe to the moment.

  She shifted her attention from Edmund and his forward pursuit. “I…he is not.” Oh, Society certainly knew him as ruthless for reasons she’d never paid attention to. “He is a better man than you or Society credits him as being.”

  Her friend snorted. “We do not credit him as being any kind of good. Not better. Not good. All things lethal and dangerous and…”

  “Miss Barrett.” That husky whisper laced with steel she’d recognize in the throes of her deepest sleep.

  Phoebe gasped and swung her attention upwards the length of Edmund’s impressive height. She hopped to her feet, dimly registering her friends clamoring to a standing position beside her. They flanked her like stern mamas guarding their daughter’s good name. “L-Lord Rutland.” Phoebe cursed the slight stammer that set her apart from the confident, bold women he’d likely known before her. The ghost of a smile hovered on his lips as though he’d heard that tremble and reveled in his power over her. With an obvious reluctance, Edmund shifted his attention to her friends.

  “Miss Fairfax.” Honoria’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. “Lady Farendale,” he greeted a more forgiving Gillian who smiled in return.

  “My lord.” Gillian, the peacekeeper of the two ladies responded for both of them. “It is a pleasure to see you.”

  Honoria allowed her mutinous silence to stand as her denial of Gillian’s polite greeting.

  Just then, the lively quadrille drew to a close, amidst a smattering of applause and excited laughter. The orchestra struck up the strains of a waltz and with a boldness that would scandalize any self-respecting young lady, Edmund turned a hungry gaze on Phoebe. Her mouth went dry as warmth spiraled through her.

  He held his hand out. There was no question, no request. He was in command, control, as he’d been from their first meeting. She eyed his outstretched fingers, and as he studied her through thick, dark lashes there was a flash of impatience, melded with concern in his brown irises. Did he think she would turn down his request? Phoebe drew in a slow, steadying breath, heady with the hint of his weakness—for her. For his show now, and before Society, he was not as self-possessed as all believed. She placed her fingertips in his. Edmund closed his hand over hers and momentarily held her fingers in a powerful grip. Ignoring the pointed, matching frowns worn by her friends, Phoebe allowed Edmund to guide her onto the dance floor.

  He positioned them at the center of the ballroom, as though barefacedly marking her as his before the other peers present. She placed her trembling fingertips along his sleeve as he settled his hands at her waist.

  The orchestra plucked the waltz and he guided her into movement. Edmund lowered his brow close. “You are trembling.”

  Inside and out. “I am,” she said softly.

  “Do you finally fear me?” The hint of a frown hovered on his lips, an indication that her answer mattered to him.

  “Despite your best efforts, no, I do not.” She wanted those words to come out breezy and blithe. Instead, they emerged more whisper than anything.

  His eyes smiled when his lips seemed incapable of the feat. He glanced over her shoulder and as he twirled her in effortless circles, she found the subject of his attention. Or in this case, the subjects.

  Honoria and Gillian stood shoulder to shoulder with their arms folded watching their every movement.

  “They do not approve.”

  She hesitated, but would not have lies between them. “No, they do not.”

  “Smart young ladies.”

  “Do hush.” Phoebe squeezed his arm and the muscles of his forearm tightened under her touch. “Would you spend your time here seeking to convince me of the danger in caring for you and trusting you?”

  His body went taut, and yet effortless and graceful Edmund did not so much as miss a step in the still-scandalous dance. “Do you know what I would spend my time doing?”

  Her body went hot at the husky promise of his question. She managed to shake her head. He placed his lips close her ear. “I would spend my time making love to you.”

  Oh, God. She momentarily slid her eyes closed. Edmund expertly righted her as she missed a step, catching her to him in a way that brought their bodies momentarily flush. Wicked warmth spiraled through her; a heady aphrodisiac lent power by the forbidden words he’d whispered here amidst the proper lords and ladies twirling about them. She wanted him. In all ways: in her arms, her heart, her life.

  Phoebe could go through her life controlled by the strictures of Society and the expectations placed upon her. She located her mother at the edge of the ballroom talking to her host. Empty. Sad. Alone. Or she could become molded as her mother had been.

  Edmund rubbed the pad of his thumb over her waist, burning her with his touch, even through the fabric separating them. “Nothing to say?” Edmund whispered.

  As she stared up at his cynical, life-hardened eyes, she saw in their depths that he expected her to be shocked and outraged, as any young lady would.

  “I would say I want you to spend your time making love to me,” she whispered in return.

  Hunger flared in his eyes.

  The music came to an abrupt halt and they stopped amidst the other clapping dancers; strangers unknowing that Phoebe’s world was coming undone before them at the hands of this man’s passionate promise. They stood frozen, their breaths coming hard and fast. The forbiddenness of their exchange only fueled this maddening heat spiraling through her.

  “Meet me in Lord Essex’s conservatory.”

  His command was spoken so quietly she could have very well imagined it.

  Then he dipped a short bow and stalked off. Rooted to the floor, Phoebe stared after him for seconds? Minutes? Hours? Time blurred together at the shocking words that were more order than request, he’d put to her. This scandalous promise of more in his arms was a wicked game she’d never before played and, as such, she did not know the rules or requirements. She only knew she wanted him.

  Phoebe gave her head a clearing shake and walked off the dance floor. She located her friends, now locked in conversation with Gillian’s father and another prospective suitor. Shifting her attention away from the two young ladies, she looked about for her mother—and found her. Phoebe’s heart started. An uncharacteristically sad smile wreathed her mother’s lips and reflected back such pain, it stole the air from her lungs. In looking at her, this woman with Phoebe’s hair and eyes, and alike in so many ways, Phoebe saw her future…and wanted more. She wanted control of her own happiness. And sometime between Lord Delenworth’s terrace and this moment, Edmund had become inextricably intertwined with her happiness.

  With that, she turned on her heel and attempted to blend with the satin wallpaper along the walls. She took her leave of the ballroom and went in search of Lord Essex’s conservatory. Phoebe lingered at the edge of the hall that would lead her away from respectability and into sin. She curled her toes into the soles of her slippers. To go off with him would mean ruin should she be discovered and yet…she loved him and wanted him. She wanted to know this fleeting happiness, while hoping it signified forever with him. All the while accepting that it might not. Phoebe wanted him, anyway. Through the crowd, her eyes found Honoria. Her friend no longer attended the conversation with Gillian’s father. Instead, she searched the crowd and Phoebe had little doubt she sought out her improper friend on a path of ruin.

  Phoebe slipped down the corridor. Her heart thundered and fear stabbed at her. She was one set of pry
ing eyes away from discovery. As one who’d never tasted a hint of impropriety and passion before Edmund, this was a world of sentiments she was unfamiliar with. Unlike Edmund who whispered scandalous words of making love to her amidst the ballroom and then urged a meeting. Such a man was accustomed to these clandestine meetings, but in her heart she knew this was altogether different than the ones to come before. A man of Edmund’s power and passion was not one who dallied with innocents…and she wanted to be the woman who broke through his cold façade and filled him with the warmth he’d lost in life. She stopped at the end of the hall and looked right and then left. Phoebe froze. The crystal doors marked Lord Essex’s infamous conservatory.

  She tiptoed down the hall and as her foot depressed a loose floorboard, she jumped and raced the remainder of the way. With shaky fingers, she jerked the door open and all but stumbled inside. Silence served as her only company. She turned and closed the door quietly behind her and remained frozen with her eyes trained on her fingers upon that handle. “You should not be here,” she said softly. Wanting him as she did, and this moment signaling control over her happiness and fate, she could not, however, leave.

  “No, you should not.” Phoebe stilled as Edmund’s husky baritone cascaded over her. This must have been the manner of temptation that had driven Adam and Eve to sin. Strong hands settled upon her shoulders and kicked her heart into that increasingly familiar hard rhythm. Edmund lowered his lips close to her ear and his warm breath fanned her nape. “But I am so glad you are,” he whispered. His lips caressed the sensitive skin behind her ear.

  Her eyes slid closed as he continued to worship the column of her neck with his skillful kiss. The shock of being pressed against the glass door, on view for any stranger or servant who might steal down this hall and see them so, should have killed this masterful hold he had upon her senses. And yet, there was a shocking thrill at the prospect of discovery. A breathless moan slid past her lips as he turned her around and guided her against the glass paneled door, rattling it in its frame. Edmund took her lips under his in a hard, demanding kiss that she returned with equal degrees of hunger and shamelessness. She opened her mouth, allowing him entry and he groaned his approval. As his tongue found hers, they mated with their mouths in a hot haze of feeling.

  Edmund captured her wrists in one of his large hands and brought them above her head, pinning them to the glass door. His kiss and actions were not the ones of a gentleman gently loving a delicate lady, but rather a primitive male who sought to brand a woman forever his. She reveled in his equal need for her.

  “You should not be here,” he whispered as he dragged his mouth down her throat to the modest décolletage of her gown.

  “No, I should not be,” she managed to rasp as he lowered the fabric of her gown, exposing her skin to the cool night air. “We’ve already a-ascertained as much. But I want to be.” And that is what truly mattered. In a world where she dreamed of passion and life through some other long dead hero’s travels, she would take this journey for her and she wanted Edmund as her guide. Her eyelashes fluttered wildly open and shut. This she would take for her. Her love for him fueled her need to know him in this intimate way.

  Edmund released her arms and they fell limply to her sides, but he caught her hips in his hands and dragged her to the vee of his thighs. His manhood thrust at her belly; his hardness a tumescent sign of his own need. She moaned and with a wantonness she’d not believed herself capable of, reached between them and ran her fingers over the length pressing at the front of his breeches.

  An animalistic groan worked up his throat and she reveled in the helplessness of that sound. Emboldened she continued to tentatively stroke him when he suddenly caught her hand once more.

  She shot a questioning look at him. For the first time, the insecurity of being with a man who knew all in the art of lovemaking, a man accustomed to equally knowledgeable partners slammed into her. “Did I do something—?”

  Edmund kissed the question from her lips and in one effortless movement, swept her into his arms. He stalked through the length of the floral haven. The sweet scent of peonies and roses filled her senses. So this fragrant, floral heaven was Eden. He paused momentarily at the back of the conservatory and then pulled a door open. The crisp night air enveloped them in its fold as he stepped outside to the walled-in garden. Edmund adjusted her bodice and then set Phoebe on her feet.

  She blinked, as though dazed at the abrupt cessation of his caress. “Why did you stop?”

  *

  Why had he stopped?

  Somewhere between the short walk into the gardens and this moment, the small, honorable sliver of a man who still existed hoped Phoebe Barrett would come to her senses. Hope that she’d realize he was a cad undeserving of the gift she offered with her eyes, kisses, and breathless moans.

  But that sliver of a man was just a fragment of who he was. The dark, selfish, hungry bastard that he was only knew he wanted her. Wanted her and planned to take what she offered.

  He shrugged out of his jacket, snapped the fabric once, and then deliberately set it down beside him. A wide-eyed Phoebe followed the garment as it sailed to the ground at the side of a rose brush, taking down with it several silken petals in its fall. “You will not leave?”

  She hesitated and then slowly shook her head. “I would have you take me on this journey.”

  Oh, God. He focused on his ragged breathing to keep from the innocent allure of that misplaced trust. Edmund stared at Phoebe through his lashes. “I am not so honorable that I will urge you to run. I have warned you, but your decision is yours.”

  Phoebe wet her lips. “I know that, Edmund.”

  That intimate use of his name on her lips drove him mad with desire and he closed the distance between them with a speed that brought a shocked gasp to those same lips. He settled his hands on her rounded hips and pulled her close. What hold did she have over him? As he took her lips in a demanding kiss, she met his desire with her own heated ardor. Edmund guided her gently to the ground and brought her down upon the fabric of his jacket. He came over her, taking in the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “Then come with me,” he whispered. “I will give you your journey.”

  In one fluid movement, he shifted her gown and chemise down to expose her breasts once more to the moon’s glow. The pink tips of her nipples puckered in the cool of the night. On a groan, he closed his mouth around the pebbled flesh and worshiped the bud. A shuddery gasp exploded from her lips and then she fisted her hands in his hair and held him close.

  Encouraged and afire with a hungering need for her, Edmund continued to lave the swollen tip. He blew faint puffs of air onto her nipple and then claimed it under his lips. Over and over he repeated the patterned movement until Phoebe splayed her legs open. “Please,” she begged.

  Every other woman to come before Phoebe had merely been an object with which to slake his lust. There had been no bond. No connection. But rather a cold, emotionless meeting of two like beasts. He’d given pleasure and gained pleasure, but there had been none of this fiery ache inside and out to possess a woman in any way and every way she could be possessed.

  Now, as he rucked up her wrinkled skirts and slid his hand between her legs to find her hot, wet center, he confronted the truth that she was different. Like a siren, she’d shaken down his defenses and tossed him onto the rocks, dazed, enraptured by her. With his hand between them, he teased the damp, auburn curls that shielded her womanhood.

  Her hips shot off the ground. “Wh-what are you doing?” she gasped, but her legs fell open in an unwitting invitation.

  With a slow grin, Edmund slid one fingertip into her honeyed warmth, relishing her broken cry. “I am exploring you, Phoebe. Learning what makes you cry with desire, tasting you so I never forget the taste and texture of you.” He toyed with the slick, wet nub of her center and she shot a hand out, covering his with her own, holding him in place.

  “D-don’t stop,” she pleaded, her words a breathless entreaty.<
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  “I do not intend to, love.” Fueled by the gripping need and an equal panic, he slid a finger into her dripping folds.

  “Oh, my,” she cried out. “Edmund.”

  He continued to work her, readying her for his entry and with each deliberate touch her cries took on a keening desperation that drove him to a frenzy.

  The unrestrained sounds of her desire, headier than any other moment that had come before this, made every woman of his past melt away. Phoebe’s innocence was an aphrodisiac; a drug he’d consumed and now it possessed him. Once he had her, he could, at last, be free of her maddening, witches hold.

  He parted her thighs with his knee and palmed her center with the heel of his hand, knowing just the pressure to drive her to madness. Phoebe screamed to the skies and he swallowed that unrestrained sound with his mouth. Sweat beaded the top of his head as he warred with the unholy need to thrust himself deep and pump into her over and over until he found release. His eyes slid involuntarily closed as she raised trembling fingertips and brushed back the sweat from his brow.

  Edmund reached between them and released his erect shaft from the confines of his breeches. He forced his eyes open and held her passion-glazed stare. “This is going to hurt,” he said gruffly as he laid himself between the sweet envelope of her silken thighs.

  “I trust you,” she whispered and splayed her legs open wider. A wall of emotion slammed into him, humbling him with her unwarranted faith and trust, in light of his betrayal. Her arms came up and she wrapped them about him, holding tight.

  Then with a groan he slid his length slowly inside her welcoming, hot heat. The tight walls of her virginal sheath closed about him, drawing him to the edge of ecstasy; an edge if he tumbled over, he’d never recover from.

  Phoebe moaned and shifted her hips.

  I am going to lose myself. I am going to spill myself like an untried youth all because of her innocence. Fighting the black thread of orgasmic ecstasy pulling at him, he moved himself deeper inside her core. With each drag of his shaft, her keening moans grew louder in volume. Edmund paused when he reached the threshold of her innocence. Take her. Take her now.