‘Indeed, but I have rearranged the meeting.’
Marcus had never forgone his work for her before. Indeed, he had spent so much of those first two months of his marriage in meetings and working that she knew it had been a means to avoid her. But he was not avoiding her today. He had come, just as she had planned. She suppressed a small grim smile of satisfaction and let her gaze wander over him. His hair was ruffled and dark as a raven’s wing. His eyes were a dark intense blue. Last night’s shadow of beard stubble had gone, and she had the sudden urge to reach her hand out and run her fingers over the clean-shaven strong lines of his face. His tailoring was immaculate, dark and pristine, his shirt bright white and freshly ironed. His manner was relaxed, arrogant almost, so that, had she not known better, she would have believed his journey here to have been unhurried.
In the cool clear light of day he looked devastatingly handsome. So handsome that she felt shaken by it and remembered the man she had fallen in love with, and all of the emotions that she had thought she had managed to suppress threatened to resurface with a vengeance. She turned away that he would not see, trying to get a grip on herself, telling herself what she was here to do, and reminding herself why. And when she glanced at him again her resolution was repaired and she was as distant and untouched as he had been all those months ago.
‘I did not realise you had such an interest in classical sculpture,’ she said.
‘I do not.’ His eyes met hers and she felt a shiver ripple right through her. And the tension between them escalated all the more.
‘Then perhaps I can persuade you to develop a liking for Greek antiquities.’ She sent her maid off with his footman and slipped her arm through his. She was standing so close she could smell the clean masculine scent of him, so familiar that it sent the butterflies flocking in her stomach just as it had the very first time she had met him. She quelled them with a ruthlessness that had not been there then.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, but his eyes were dark and intense and fixed with an interest that was all for her. She felt herself blush at the heat in his scrutiny, felt almost heady with it, and averted her gaze, forcing her focus back to what she was here to do.
Her hand was warm tucked against his arm. She left it there and guided him along the gallery.
‘I am surprised by your interest, Ellen,’ he said in a voice that made her tingle as much as if he had stroked his fingers against the nape of her neck.
‘You mean because my father was not born a gentleman, because he made his fortune in trade, you did not think I would understand anything of the classics?’ Her tone was smooth enough but she could not quite disguise the sharpness beneath it.
‘That is not what I meant.’
She looked at him.
‘Your father is a gentleman amongst gentlemen, Ellen.’
She studied his eyes for mockery and, seeing only sincerity, gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘I was sent first to school and then to a seminary for young ladies.’
‘I have an educated wife.’ Contrary to all her expectations he sounded proud. He smiled and his eyes were warm, and something deep in her stomach gave a somersault at the sight of it so that she could not help but smile in return. A real smile that was all of Ellen and nothing of Kitty.
‘You need not worry, I am hardly a bluestocking.’
His smile deepened. He stopped walking, and, taking her hands in his, turned her so that they standing facing one another. His eyes grew serious and he said softly, ‘So where do we start, Ellen?’ And she had the notion that he was not talking about the statues that surrounded them in the gallery, but about something else all together, and with it came the first stirrings of doubt over her plan and all she had striven so hard to set in place. She looked up into those midnight blue eyes regarding her so intently. And for a moment she was tempted to abandon it all, to drop the charade and speak to him with honesty about all that she felt in her heart. This was dangerous ground. She could hear the warning bells ringing all around her. Telling her not to trust him. Screaming at her not to be such a fool. And she listened to them for the scars were too fresh and she could not risk letting him hurt her so badly again.
‘We start here, Marcus….’ She glanced away to the nearest marble, removing her hands from his and gesturing to it. ‘With…’ Her heart gave a little stutter when she realised the statue they were standing before. ‘Adonis.’ She moved to face the stone hero, her back to Marcus, blocking him from her vision so that she could play the role she had come here to play. ‘The personification of the ideal of Greek manly beauty.’ The irony was not lost on her, and in a way it helped strengthen her. That memory of all she had thought him…and thought him still.
She reached out and touched a hand to Adonis’s smooth stone face. Traced her fingers down that bold sculpted nose, swept a slow caress across the cold lifeless cheek. A man whose handsome looks had dazzled her from the moment she set eyes upon him. ‘Little wonder that Aphrodite fell in love with him.’ Just as Ellen had fallen in love with Marcus. She slid her fingers lower, her thumb tracing along the strong stone jawline to find his chin. ‘He was killed by a boar while out hunting, and where the drops of his blood splashed upon the forest floor, anemones sprang.’ Her hand stilled as she stared at the perfectly chiselled lips that reminded her too much of Marcus’s.
‘A tragic story,’ he said.
‘Very.’ She swallowed down the lump in her throat and moved her fingers to the stone lips in a touch as lingering and intimate as a lover’s, imagining they were Marcus’s lips.
‘Ellen.’ His voice was so close behind her that she could feel his breath against her hair, feel his warmth against the length of her spine, yet she had not heard him move.
‘He is so very cold,’ she murmured. ‘With the touch of my lips do you think I could breathe life and love and desire into him?’
He reached his hand and placed it over hers where it lingered upon Adonis’s mouth. His fingers captured hers, his thumb stroking against her hand. ‘I think it is a certainty.’
His other hand slid around her waist and came to rest flat against her abdomen. She jumped at his touch, her pulse leaping, her heart hammering so hard that she thought he would hear it within the still silence of the gallery. His touch seemed to brand her as if his hand were laid against the nakedness of her belly.
‘Ellen,’ he said again, more gently this time. ‘We need to talk….’
But Ellen did not want to talk. Talking would only open those floodgates of emotion that she had barricaded shut. If she started talking she knew she would end up weeping. And God only knew what he wanted to say: words that had been difficult enough to hear from another…words that from his own lips would destroy that last remaining vestige of pride to which she clung. No. She could not risk anything of that. She calmed the frenzied beat of her heart and turned in his arms so that she could look up into his face.
‘Right now?’ she said. Her gaze held his before dropping down to his lips—the lips of Adonis. Then boldly, before her courage could desert her, she reached her mouth to his, so close that they shared their breath, so close that she could feel the arc of tension and longing between their lips even though they were not touching.
‘Later,’ he whispered as his mouth closed over hers and he kissed her, kissed her with such an expertise that Ellen could never have hoped to have faked. There was nothing reserved about his mouth this time, nothing of a sense of duty and resentment. Marcus’s lips were hot and masterful, his tongue teasing against hers in an invitation to intimacy. It was a kiss that made her head dizzy and set a fire burning low in her belly. Ellen followed where he led, almost forgetting what this was supposed to be about, rocked by the force of overwhelming need exploding between them. She felt the caress of his hands against her back, pressing her to him all the more so that they seemed to merge together, their hearts thudding in unison. She wanted this, needed it. Yet amidst the roar of her blood and the fire in her thighs she heard the cool quiet wh
isper calling her back from the brink. It took every last ounce of Ellen’s willpower to break off that kiss.
His gaze held hers, his eyes dark with desire and filled with a hunger that she had not seen in any man. But she did not want him to see her struggle, nor how dazed she felt, reeling from the knowledge that this was what it could have been like all along. She lowered her face, and rested her forehead against his chin, gathering herself as she stood there breathless and with her breasts squashed hard against the muscle of his chest. He had not loved her then. He did not love her now. In her mind she heard again Amanda White’s voice from across the months and that gloating little tinkle of a laugh. And her blood chilled. Unrequited love. Unrequited desire. Both burned a lesson upon a woman’s soul. A lesson that Ellen had learned only too well.
‘We should go home,’ he said.
She slid her hand down lower, brushing it once ever so lightly against the bulge of his manhood in his breeches. ‘To talk?’
‘Amongst other things,’ he said. She could hear the slight strain in his voice and she was glad of it.
‘Not yet, Marcus.’ She gave him the slow seductive smile she had been months in the practising. ‘We have only just started our lesson.’ Then she tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, as a respectable wife might do to her husband, and led him farther down the gallery to study a stone head of Hercules. And as a party of ladies had just entered into the gallery, the tall, powerful, aroused man by her side could do nothing other than acquiesce.
Marcus sat in the carriage opposite Ellen the next day and thought over last night’s political dinner. He had not expected Ellen to accept his invitation to accompany him, but she had done so, and been very quiet ever since. Their return to Dover Street had been too late for discussion or anything else. And now he was here in his town coach to accompany her on her shopping trip.
‘I hope last night’s dinner did not bore you too much.’
His words made her draw her gaze from the coach’s window. Her mind seemed elsewhere, as if she were seeing nothing of the passing streets. ‘I was not bored,’ she said and glanced towards the window again, her expression still brooding. ‘I did not know what you did at Westminster. I did not even know that you work for the Alien Office.’
‘Bullford should not have spoken of such matters at the dinner table. Not only was it bad manners in front of ladies, but my association with them is supposed to be confidential.’
‘I am glad that he did. For a wife should know of her husband’s life.’ She paused. ‘You should have told me right at the start, Marcus, before we were married.’
His eyes met hers, and he had the sensation that she was not talking about his work for the Alien Office, but something else much more personal, something about which he wanted to forget.
The coach stopped outside the dressmaker’s shop that she had come to visit and there was no more time for discussion. But Ellen was still looking at him and there was something in her expression that seemed to see right to the heart of him,, something that spoke of hurt and anger and coolness, as if she knew. He prayed to God that he was wrong. Everything had changed since those months leading up to and immediately after their wedding. He had not been honest with her then, nor would he be now; some aspects of the truth were too cruel to tell and he did not want to hurt her. He knew he owed her an apology, and some measure of explanation, but he wanted to draw a line under the past for both their sakes.
It was only once they were inside the shop he realised its nature. The decor was discrete. The only clue came from the row of small paintings upon the wall, each work showing women in various flimsy items of underwear. He lifted one of the business cards from the stack neatly piled upon the counter: Madame Boisseron, Dressmaking and Corsetry. He glanced up from the card to Ellen’s face and found her watching him. She said not one word; she did not need to. The fact that she had brought him here with her was enough.
Madame Boisseron bustled through from the back room. ‘Ah, Madame.’ Her accent was soft and French and she seemed to recognise Ellen. ‘I have everything in which you expressed an interest. All is ready and waiting for you.’ She slid a sly glance at him and her smile deepened. ‘Come through, please do.’ She beckoned to Ellen and gestured towards the back room.
‘Monsieur is welcome, too. The viewing area is small but comfortable.’
Viewing area? Marcus felt his blood stir. He shot a glance at Ellen, gauging her reaction to the woman’s words.
Ellen smiled at him, a dark, come-hither look, and he knew she wanted this as much as him.
Madame Boisseron led them up a stairwell to the upper floor of the building. Everything of the place was expensive and up-market. The walls were a soft ivory, and the chandelier above their heads dripped with crystal and gold. The beige oak banister complemented the Italian marble flooring and stairs, at the top of which were several doorways. Madame Boisseron led them through the farthest one.
The first thing he noticed was the room’s warmth. Even though it was still summer a fire burned on the hearth. Across one third of the room dressing screens had been erected, and over the screens hung an array of erotic-looking corsets. There was a long sofa against the opposite wall, to which Marcus was directed. Ellen disappeared behind the screens with Madame Boisseron and he was left sitting alone.
He scanned the room. The decor in here, as with the rest of the shop, was tasteful and subtle. The walls were a pale pink and underfoot he could feel the thick softness of the pink-and-ivory carpet. Beneath the lace-draped window sat an oak console table upon which was an arrangement of white and pink orchids. Marcus’s gaze was drawn to the naked statue of Aphrodite by the white marble fireplace; it made him think of Adonis in the British Museum and the soft trail of Ellen’s fingers and the warm passion of her lips. Just the memory of it aroused him. He pushed the thought away and reined his body under some semblance of control.
He could hear the soft murmur of Ellen and the corsetiere’s conversation and the rustle of clothing. It seemed to take an age, during which Marcus wandered over to the window and looked down on the narrow long garden below. And then he heard her voice.
‘I was thinking of this one, Marcus. What do you think?’
Marcus turned to look, and the vision she presented fired his blood. His need for her was instant and fierce and feral, threatening all of his well-honed control. Instincts as primitive as time itself strained to be unleashed. He felt the muscle in his jaw clench.
‘If you will excuse me, I have a few things to which I must attend.’ Madame Boisseron slipped away, closing the door behind her. But Marcus did not shift his gaze from his wife’s.
He could hear the step of the dressmaker’s feet down the stairs. The only other sound was the thud of his heart. His focus narrowed on Ellen, as a hunter that had sighted its prey. She was wearing a corset of striped pale coral-pink and ivory that cleaved to the curves of her body, the shift beneath it so low cut that it did nothing to hide the thrusting creamy breasts or the first rosy tease of her nipples. The shift reached to her calves but it was so fine as to be almost translucent. He could see the shadow of her bare thighs, and the patch of golden brown hair that curled between her legs. He made no effort to hide his body’s reaction. Just stood there, rock-hard and ready, watching her.
He was perilously close to the edge. Ellen had no idea just how close, for she pushed him further.
‘You do not like it?’ She put her hands on her hips and revolved slowly for his perusal.
‘You know that I do,’ he said in a quiet voice.
She glanced down at the massive bulge in the front of his breeches and she smiled the smile of a woman that knew her power, before presenting him with her back. ‘See how the laces are made of a matching pink. Such a difficult shade to come by—especially in satin.’ She looked over her shoulder at him with blatant enticement in her eyes. ‘Feel how soft they are,’ she purred.
‘Not here, Ellen.’
‘Why ever not?�
� She gave a little wiggle of her hips and his eyes dropped to where her buttocks showed through the fine weave of the shift.
‘Are you afraid that Madame Boisseron will return and catch us?’ she said in a teasing voice as she turned to face him once more with a gaze that smouldered.
‘You are playing a dangerous game, Ellen. You know what I want to do to you.’
‘Do I?’ One delicate eyebrow raised. ‘Why don’t you tell me, Marcus?’
Tell her how he wanted to walk over there, pull her into his arms and plunder her sweet riches. How he wanted his mouth hard against hers and his hands on her waist, her hips, her breasts. How he wanted her moulded to him, so that he could rip those pink satin laces apart, freeing her breasts from the corset, cupping the softness of those creamy mounds, rolling her nipples between his fingers until they budded, plucking them until she was panting and writhing for more. And to arch her in his arms, delivering her breasts to his mouth so that he could work upon each rosy peak in turn. Tasting them, tonguing them, until she cried her need aloud and he bent her over that armchair, taking her as hard and urgently as the desire that drove them both.
But Ellen deserved better than some hurried tupping in a corsetiere’s fitting room. When they went to bed again he wanted to tell her with his body what he had not told her with his words. He wanted to give her the lovemaking that she should have had in those early days of their marriage. He wanted to right what he had done wrong.
‘I will, Ellen. Every little detail.’
She smiled a secret sensuous smile.
‘Once we are home,’ he said.
She walked right up to stand only inches before him, torturing him all the more. So close he could smell the soft scent of freesias from her skin and see every individual long dark lash that lined her eyes and the rise and fall of her breasts with every breath. Desire hummed between them. The air was ripe with it. He reached out a single finger and gently touched the rosy softness of her lips, letting his hand drop lower to trail down her the line of her neck, on to her décolletage and heading slowly and steadily towards her breasts, his eyes holding hers as he did so, daring her as much as she had dared him. Ellen stepped away before he could reach his target. ‘Once we are home, Marcus…’ She parodied his words and arched one perfectly formed brow.
How To Tempt a Viscount Page 2
