Alex stared at her, transfixed. He couldn’t make a sound.
Lily moved the necessary half inch to bring her lips to his. Alex inhaled quickly. This time he didn’t try to move away. Softly
she brushed her mouth over his, giving him nothing more than questioning pressure. Alex tolerated her kiss with his eyes
tightly closed, as if she were subjecting him to some acutely painful torture. His shoulders and chest turned rock-hard with
the tension of his arms pulling on the ropes. She touched the side of his smooth, hot neck with her fingertips, and he gave a single gasp against her lips.
Astonished, Lily pulled herself higher onto his chest. She wanted more … something … but she didn’t know what, or how. Then there was movement, his head turning slowly on the pillow, adjusting beneath hers. Lily curved her small hand behind
his neck, instinctively pressing harder with her mouth. She felt the sleek push of his tongue, and she was shaken by a jolt of pleasure that made her want to answer the silken movement. Alex felt the way Lily shivered, her breath striking his cheek in
a rush of surprise. Expecting each moment that her lips would be withdrawn, he strained upward in hunger, seeking more.
But she did not pull away—she stayed against him, open and sweet.
Alex clenched his fists. He was trapped by her sinuous body and the bed and his own helplessness. Excitement flooded through him, centering in his loins. Nothing would stop the hardening rise of his flesh, coming to life in heavy, twitching surges. He ached and groaned, and damned himself. Ripping his mouth from hers, he buried his face in the perfumed curve of her throat. “No
more,” he said gruffly. “Either untie me or stop this.”
“No,” she said breathlessly. She had never felt so daring and giddy in her life. She laced her fingers into his thick hair.
“I’m t-teaching you a lesson …”
“Get off me!” he said fiercely. He almost succeeded in frightening her away—he felt her give a little jump.
But she persisted. Still holding his gaze, she eased further over him until she was draped on him full length. He shuddered and
bit his lip. The weight of her body bearing down on his aroused manhood caused him to press upward without conscious thought.
It wasn’t enough. He wanted more—the softness of her flesh surrounding him, the cling and pull of her body as he thrust within her. Somehow he managed to speak very quietly. “Enough. Lily … enough.”
She was breathing very fast, looking as reckless as she had during the hunt, hurtling over impossible jumps. Alex couldn’t
fathom what was going on in her mind, until she spoke. “Say her name now,” she urged in a thick voice. “Say it.”
He set his jaw so hard that he felt it tremble.
“You can’t,” Lily whispered. “Because it’s me you want, not Caroline. I can feel it. I’m a living, breathing woman, and I’m
here. And you want me.”
A thousand thoughts raced across his brain. He searched for Caroline, but she wasn’t there … nothing but a blur of memories, faded color, muted sound. None of it was as real as the face above him. Lily’s mouth remained just above his, close enough
that he could feel the warmth of her lips.
He didn’t answer, but she could read the truth in his eyes. Lily should have pulled away in triumph, glorying in her victory. She
was right, after all. Instead she made a low sound and kissed him again. Disarmed, unable to retreat, all he could do was surrender. Her hands were on his face, his neck, exploring gently. Alex groaned with the need to touch her, hold her tight
between his thighs. Instead he was spread beneath her. It was killing him slowly. The ropes tore at his wrists until they were raw.
Lily gasped at the rhythmic goading of his hips. She tried to move away, only to find that he had caught her bottom lip with his teeth. “Turn your head,” he muttered, his warm breath rushing into her mouth. “Turn it …”
She obeyed, and he let go of her lip, his mouth opening to receive the twisting pressure of hers. Lily gave a small sob of pleasure. Compulsively she gathered tighter against him, impelling her breasts against his hard chest, her stomach flat against his. The friction between their bodies caused her gown to ride up to her knees, but she didn’t care; she couldn’t seem to make herself
care about anything except the urgent need building inside.
There was a knock at the door. Lily stiffened at the sound. “Miss Lawson?” came the butler’s muffled voice.
Weakly she dropped her head to the pillow, the puff of her breath tickling Alex’s ear. He turned his head against her buoyant
curls and inhaled the sweet fragrance.
Burton spoke again. “Miss Lawson?”
Lily raised her head. “Yes, Burton?” she asked unsteadily.
“A message has just arrived.”
She froze. That could mean only one thing. Burton would never intrude on her privacy unless the note were from a particular source.
Alex watched Lily intently. The blush drained from her face. There was a gleam of something like fear in her eyes. She
seemed dazed. “It can’t be,” he heard her whisper. “It’s too soon.”
“Too soon for what?”
The sound of his voice seemed to recall her. She wiped her expression clean and rolled away from him, jerking at her skirts. Carefully she avoided looking at him. “I must bid you good night, my lord. I th-think you’ll be comfortable here-”
“Not likely, you little tease!” He watched in fury as she fumbled to restore her appearance and left the room. He shouted a
few choice obscenities after her, adding, “I’ll see you in Newgate for this! And as for your damn butler—” The door slammed,
and he felt silent, glaring at the ceiling.
Lily faced Burton in the hall, too distracted to worry about her disheveled appearance. There was a note poised on the silver
tray in his hands. The paper was sealed with a dirty blob of wax.
Burton proffered the tray. “You instructed me to deliver them to you upon their arrival, no matter what time—”
“Yes,” Lily interrupted, snatching the letter. She broke the seal, and scanned the scrawled lines. “Tonight. Damn him! He
must have people watching me … always seems to know where I am …”
“Miss?” Burton had never been privileged to know the contents of the letters, which arrived at the terrace on a sporadic
basis. He had come to recognize them by the elaborate, untidy handwriting, and the strange appearance of the bearers.
The letters were always delivered by ragged boys fresh from the street.
“Have a horse saddled for me,” Lily said.
“Miss Lawson, I should like to point out the inadvisability of a woman riding alone in London, especially at night—”
“Tell one of the maids to bring my gray cloak. The one with the hood.”
“Yes, miss.”
Slowly she went down the stairs, keeping hold of the railing as if to steady herself.
*
Covent Garden was an especially unsavory area of London, where every worldly pleasure from the conventional to the unthinkable was to be had for a price. There was advertising both visible and verbal: printed bills and notices plastered on
every wall, the din of swindlers, pimps, and prostitutes shouting invitations at every passerby. Regency bucks, coming from
the theaters with their light-o’-loves, teetered drunkenly to the market taverns. Lily took care to avoid all of them. A drunken lord could sometimes prove as dangerous and inhuman as a professional criminal.
As she crossed through pools of gaslight and shadow, Lily felt sympathy for the parade of prostitutes trodding the thoroughfares. There were young girls and haggard old women and every age in between. They were either thin from starvation or bloated
with gin. They all wore the same weary look as they rested on steps a
nd posed on corners, producing painted smiles for any prospective customer. Surely they would never have turned to such an existence had there been any other choice.
There but for the grace of God, Lily thought, and shuddered. She would kill herself rather than turn to such a life, even the life
of a courtesan wearing diamond clusters and servicing her protector on silk sheets. Her lip curled with disgust. Better to be
dead than owned by a man and forced to serve his physical needs.
Traveling south on King Street, she passed the churchyard. She ignored the catcalls and jeers thrown at her from the roofed shacks that served as shops and dwelling places. Cautiously she went across the street from the market entrance. The two-story arcade was fronted with a pediment and granite Tuscan columns, an oddly regal design for a place containing such squalor. She reined in her horse and paused in a shadow. There was nothing to do but wait. Ruefully she grinned as she saw a pair of young pickpockets nimbly working the crowds. Then she thought of Nicole. Her face turned to stone. My God, what kind of existence was she leading now? Was it possible, young as she was, that she was already being used to turn vice into profit? The notion brought stinging tears to her eyes. Roughly she rubbed them away. She couldn’t give way to emotion, not now. She had to be
cool and self-controlled.
A lazy voice came from the darkness nearby. “So ‘ere you are, then. I ‘ope you bring what I want.”
Slowly Lily dismounted and clutched the reins of her mount in one hand. She turned in the direction of the voice, and forced herself to speak steadily, though her entire body was trembling.
“No more, Giuseppe. Not a farthing more until you give me back my daughter.”
Chapter 7
Count Giuseppe Gavazzi had all the striking splendor of a figure from an Italian Renaissance painting—boldly prominent
features, curly black hair, rich olive skin, and lustrous black eyes. Lily remembered the first time she had ever seen him.
Giuseppe had been standing in a sunlit Florentine piazza, surrounded by a group of Italian women who hung on every word
he spoke. With his flashing smile and dark beauty, he had taken Lily’s breath away. Their paths had crossed numerous times
at social events, and Giuseppe had begun to pursue her ardently, ostentatiously.
Lily had been overwhelmed by the romance of Italy and the previously unknown excitement of being seduced by a handsome man. Harry Hin-don, her only other love, had been staid and so very English, qualities that had pleased her parents. She’d
thought Harry’s tight grasp on propriety would influence her, save her. Instead her wildness had caused him to leave her. But Count Gavazzi had seemed to relish her impulsive glee— he had called her exciting, beautiful. At the time it had seemed as if she’d finally found the man with whom she could drop all pretenses and be herself. Now the memory of her own foolishness disgusted her.
In the past few years Giuseppe’s looks had coarsened—or perhaps it was merely that her perception of him had changed.
His pouting lips, praised by the Italian signoras for their sensuous fullness, now seemed repulsive to Lily. She loathed the
way his gaze roamed greedily over her, though once she had been flattered by his attention. There was something seedy
about his appearance, even in the way he stood with his hands clasped on his hips to emphasize their unusual narrowness.
It made her stomach turn to look at him and remember the night they’d spent together. He had astonished and humiliated
her by asking for a gift afterward. As if she were some dried-up spinster, obligated to pay a man to come to her bed.
Giuseppe reached out and pushed Lily’s hood back, revealing her resolute face. “Buona sera,” he said in his rich voice, his fingertip extending to stroke her cheek. She knocked his hand away, making him chuckle. “Ah, still with the claws, my darling
cat. I come for the money, caro. You come for news of Nicoletta. Now give to me, and I do the same.”
“Not anymore.” Lily drew in a trembling breath. “You oily bastard. Why should I give you more money when I don’t even
know if she’s alive?”
“I promise you, she is safe, ‘appy—” “How can she be happy with no mother?” “Such a beautiful little girl we ‘ave, Lily. With
the smile all the time, and the pretty ‘air …” He touched his own ebony curls. “Pretty like mine. She call me Papa. Sometime
she ask me where is Mama.”
That broke her as nothing else could. Lily stared at him without blinking. She swallowed against a lump of pain, and tears
sprang to her eyes. “I’m her mother,” she said wretchedly. “She needs me, and I want her back, Giuseppe. You know she
belongs with me!”
He regarded her with a faintly pitying smile. “Maybe I return Nicoletta before now, bella, but you make too many times
mistake. You have men looking, asking question in the city. You do tricks on me, ‘ave them follow me after we meet. You
make me angry. Now I think for more years I keep Nicoletta.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything about that,” Lily cried. It was a lie, of course. She was well aware that Derek had men searching for Nicole. Derek had informants in every part of the city, including porters, clerks, dealers, whores, butchers,
and pawnbrokers. Over the past year he had summoned Lily four different times to take a look at dark-haired girls matching Nicole’s description. None of them were her daughter. She couldn’t afford to take them in. What Derek did with them
afterward, she didn’t ask and had no desire to know.
She looked at Guiseppe with hate-filled eyes. “I’ve given you a fortune,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t have anything left. Have
you heard the expression ‘blood from a turnip,’ Guiseppe? It means I can’t give you any more, because “I don’t have it!”
“Then you look to find more,” came his soft reply. “Or from somewhere I take the money— there is many men asking to
buy a pretty girl as Nicoletta.”
“What?” Lily put a hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of agony. “How could you do that to your own child? You wouldn’t sell
her like that—it would kill her—and me—oh, God, you haven’t already, have you?”
“Not yet. But I come close maybe, caro.” He held out his empty palm. “You pay the money now.”
“How long will this go on?” she whispered. “When is it going to be enough?”
He ignored the question and shoved his open hand toward her. “Now.”
Tears slid down her face. “I don’t have it.”
“I give you three days, Lily. You come to bring five thousand pound … or Nicoletta is gone forever.”
She lowered her head, listening to the sound of his retreating footsteps, the raucous noise of Covent Garden, the soft nicker of
her horse. She shook with wild desperation—it took all her strength to keep it inside. Money. Her accounts had never been so depleted. This past month she hadn’t turned her usual profit at Craven’s. Well, her luck would have to change, and fast. She’d
have to play deep. If she couldn’t win five thousand in three days … God, what would she do?
She could ask Derek for a loan … No. She’d made that mistake once before, a year and a half ago. She’d thought that with his stupendous fortune, he wouldn’t mind loaning her a thousand or two, especially at her promise to return it with interest. To her surprise, Derek had turned coldly cruel, and made her swear she’d never ask him for money again. It had taken weeks to get
back in his good graces. Lily didn’t understand why he had been so angry. It wasn’t as if he were a miserly man—just the opposite. He was generous in countless ways—giving her presents, the use of his vast properties, allowing her to pilfer from
his kitchens and liquor supply, helping her search for Nicole … but he’d never given her a farthing. N
ow she knew better
than to ask.
She considered some of the rich old men she knew, men with whom she had gambled and flirted and maintained friendships with. Lord Harrington, she thought numbly, with his fat belly and cheerful red face and limp powdered wigs. Or Arthur Longman, a respected barrister. His face was rather unattractive—large nose, no chin, sagging cheeks—but his eyes were kind, and he was an honorable man. Both of them had hinted in gentlemanly ways about their attraction to her. She could accept one of them as a protector. There was no doubt she would be well treated and generously provided for. But it would change her life forever. Certain doors that were yet open to her would be closed for good. She would become an expensive whore—and that was only if she were lucky. If her experience with Giuseppe was anything to judge by, she might prove so unsatisfactory in bed that no one would want to keep her.
Lily went to the horse and rested her forehead on its warm, dusty neck. “I’m so tired,” she whispered. Tired and cynical.
She had so little reason to hope for Nicole’s return. Her life had become nothing but endless grubbing for money. She should never have wasted so much time with this business about Penny, Zach, and Alex Raiford. It may have cost her Nicole. But
if not for the distraction of the past week, she thought she might have lost her sanity.
A light rain began to fall, drops pattering on her hair. Lily closed her eyes and lifted her face, letting the water trail down her cheeks in cool rivulets. Suddenly she remembered Nicole at bath time, making the discovery that she could wet her tiny fists
and shake them in the air and splash them in the tub.
“Look what you can do!” Lily had exclaimed with a laugh. “How dare you splash your mama, you clever little duck …
water is for the bath, not the floor …”
Stubbornly Lily wiped away the raindrops and tears. She squared her shoulders. “It’s only money,” she muttered. “I’ve gotten it before. I’ll get it again somehow.”
*
The clock chimed nine times. Alex had been staring at it for nearly an hour. It was a sentimental figured bronze clock, adorned with porcelain roses and a shy shepherdess glancing over her shoulder at a nobleman proffering a bouquet of flowers. The rest
Kleypas, Lisa - Then Came You.html Page 16
