‘It’s silly to be upset about the jewellery,’ Gianna mumbled, her sobs becoming hiccups. ‘They’re just things.’
‘They were more than jewels to you, they were your memories. He had no right to take those from you.’ On second thought death might be too kind for the count. Death could martyr even a bad man. But beggaring was a different story. Poverty would be a long, slow social death for a man like Minotti, just like each scandal of his in London was another nail in his father’s pious coffin. He could do it, he could ruin the count. One night at the tables, one fabulous game...
No. This wasn’t his fight. He had plans. She had plans. He didn’t figure into hers any more than she figured into his. Their association was free to end now. And yet, the smell of her hair, all rosemary and sage, and the memory of her body in his hands were far more compelling arguments for ignoring those realities in exchange for what he could give her in this moment if she would let him.
Nolan pressed a kiss to her hair, to her cheeks where her tears dried, to her mouth where her lips parted for him, her body leaning into him. Her hands gripped the lapels of his banyan, fisted in the material with want and need. He wooed her with gentle kisses, slow kisses that gradually moved them away from sorrow and consolation and towards something hungrier, needier. He had her beneath him now, the work of a few quick manoeuvres to transfer her from his lap to her back, her hair tumbling across the pillows, her hazel eyes wide with desire.
Her hands were on him, slipping inside his robe, thumbs running across his nipples, hips pressing up against him, inviting the rise of his erection, answering his invitation. His own hands were sliding beneath the hem of her nightgown, sliding the garment up over thighs and hips so that his mouth met bare skin in its downward journey. This time, his body would have its way, it would finish what it had started against the chapel wall and in the gondola.
He kissed her navel, feeling her body tense in excitement at his touch. He kissed her mound, the scent of her, the heat of her surrounding him. ‘Are you ready?’ he breathed against her, his mouth finding her intimate cleft, his tongue sweeping the pearl nestled inside. He felt her gasp, then cry out with the discovery of pleasure. He drank of her, her essence, her joy. This was a heady delight indeed, her pleasure feeding his as she bucked beneath him. He could feel her body shake, could hear her give a hard cry as the pleasure overwhelmed her.
He trailed kisses up past her navel, to her breasts, her throat, feeling her body come down beneath his mouth from its fevered pitch. ‘You are delicious,’ he whispered against her mouth.
‘You are wicked,’ she murmured. Her knees bent, squeezing gently around him where he rested between her legs, her body’s invitation clear. Her teeth nipped at his ear, her breath blowing against his lobe. It was the little things she did that drove him beyond good sense. If that didn’t do it, her words did. ‘Tonight, Nolan, I want you to make me forget.’
Sweet heavens, how he wanted to! It would be so easy. But how many nights had he thought as she did now? How many nights as he asked for the same in not so many words? ‘Lady X, Lady Y, Miss This Night, Miss Last Night, make me forget.’ It had never worked, not in the long term anyhow, not beyond the moment. He knew what he had to do, hard as it was.
Nolan placed a kiss to the side of her mouth. ‘In the morning you will be disappointed.’
His body was in full protest by now, hardly believing what he was turning down. He’d been attracted to her from the first and now he had her asking, she was choosing him as he’d wanted. But not this way. She was at the mercy of a very emotional evening—the burglary, the near discovery in the hall, the pawing man in the ballroom, the depleted jewel case. Her body and her mind were responding accordingly. But she would regret it in the morning. More than that, she might regret him. That was unthinkable. Perhaps it was vain, but he didn’t want to be one of her regrets.
She tugged at him, unwilling to admit defeat, her hands dropping to the waist of his robe. ‘Please, Nolan.’
He covered her hands and stayed them. ‘Trust me, sex will bring pleasure, it will not bring forgetfulness.’ He dropped a kiss on her cheek and was gone. If he stayed any longer, he would be lost. She was far too tempting.
‘Where are you going?’ she called into the other room as he pulled on discarded clothes.
‘Card game,’ he mumbled. His least favourite game to play, solitaire, but what could he expect when he’d become St Nolan, protector of Venetian virgins?
Chapter Fifteen
He had to stop sleeping in club chairs or else recommend that the Danieli get more comfortable ones. Better yet, have them invent some that converted into sleepers for poor male victims of capricious women everywhere. Nolan rolled his shoulders and his neck experimentally, wincing when he felt a kink.
‘Something wrong with your own room?’ Brennan Carr strode into the empty club room, dressed for the day, making Nolan wonder how long he’d slept. Brennan was not the earliest of risers. He hadn’t wanted to sleep too late. There were things that needed doing. He was supposed to meet with his man of business in Venice, he had money issues to settle, Gianna’s clothes were arriving and there were things to settle with Gianna as well, although he was hard-pressed to define what those things were exactly.
Brennan took a chair next to him and stretched into it, trying out a few different positions. ‘Not the best for sleeping, I’d imagine. You, by the way, look terrible,’ he said pointedly before sending one of the waiting facchini to bring coffee and breakfast.
‘Thanks,’ Nolan drawled, pushing a hand through his hair. ‘What do you want?’
Brennan leaned forward, his blue eyes laughing, his face alight with mischief. He radiated envious amounts of energy. ‘I want to know what’s going on. I haven’t seen you in three days. When a man’s travelling companion disappears with the exception of a few moments at midnight to request a nightgown, one gets—’
‘Jealous?’ Nolan interrupted.
Brennan leaned back into the chair with a laugh. ‘I was going to say curious.’ The facchino came and laid out breakfast, English-style, the way Brennan liked it: shirred eggs, kippers, sausage, toast and a huge carafe of coffee. Nolan opted for toast and coffee in the Italian style, but Brennan fixed himself a towering plate of food.
‘You eat like a horse.’ Nolan shook his head at the pile of food in front of Brennan.
‘I need it.’ Brennan winked. ‘You need it, too. You look like a stag at the end of the rut.’ Brennan shovelled eggs into his mouth. Even with the finishing of Paris and now Italy, Brennan ate for fuel, the aesthetics of the meal lost on him as he fed his furnace. ‘So? Who is she? Is she worth it?’ he asked around a mouthful of eggs.
Normally, Nolan shared quite freely about his affairs with his friends, but he was hesitant this morning. ‘It’s not like that. This is different, complicated.’ He sipped his coffee, marvelling over Brennan’s already half-empty plate.
Brennan snorted. ‘Not that different. I heard her last night, and you, too, through the wall. Apparently, the nightgown is working out.’
‘Yes and no.’ Nolan set down his coffee cup and leaned forward, hands on his thighs. ‘Can I ask you something seriously?’ This would be new territory for the two of them. They usually confided in Archer or Haviland, but those two friends had married and were off on their own adventures. The group of four that had left England was just a pair now. It was an unlikely pair, too. They were the wild ones, the ones to whom everything was a lark, the two without any responsibility. Now, they just had each other.
Brennan managed to sober and stop eating. ‘What is it?’
‘Bren, have you ever met a woman you can’t have sex with?’
There was a long pause and Brennan managed to look suitably appalled. His voice, however, was unsuitably loud. ‘Oh, God, Nolan, are you impotent? How? When? Last week, I thought you and t
he countess had... And what about last night?’
Nolan waved a hand to hush him. The facchini were starting to look. ‘Lower your voice, of course I’m not impotent,’ Nolan said through gritted teeth.
‘Then what?’ Brennan’s eyes grew round. ‘Do you have syphilis?’ He whispered the last, but it came out as a stage whisper. He might as well have shouted it to every facchini in the club room.
‘No,’ Nolan said evenly, starting to lose patience. ‘I do not have syphilis, nor am I impotent. I am perfectly capable of pleasing a lady.’ Brennan had a way of making him justify the most ridiculous things. He drew a deep breath and tried again. ‘It’s like this: I could have her, but it would ruin everything.’
Brennan was getting interested now. He hadn’t touched his plate in the past two minutes. ‘And last night? Didn’t you already “have” her? Were those not the sounds of “having” that I heard through my wall?’
‘Cunnilingus,’ Nolan clarified.
Brennan considered him for a moment, head cocked. ‘What do you mean by “ruin everything”? How much can you ruin in a one-night stand? Besides, didn’t you win her in a card game? I thought ruining was a given.’ Brennan paused, an idea starting to click in to place. ‘You didn’t ruin her. All this time I thought you’d been in that hotel room rutting like a stag and you haven’t touched her. Why? Are you sure you don’t have syphilis? I know someone who can help...’
‘No, enough with the syphilis—you’re starting to sound like your father,’ Nolan said sharply.
Brennan’s face went stony. It was a mean thing to say. Brennan’s father was no better than his when it came to paternal instinct. This was the man who’d sent his son off on a Grand Tour not with loving words or a farewell hug, but with a packet of French letters and the stern admonition, ‘Don’t get syphilis.’ Nolan had been standing there when he’d said it.
‘I’m sorry, Bren.’ At least Brennan’s father had said goodbye. ‘Please, just listen to me. This is not about sex.’
‘I might not be your man, Nolan. I’ll try, though.’ Brennan meant it, but they both knew Brennan’s whole world was sex. He was the product of a father who had towed him to a brothel on his fifteenth birthday. Usually, it made Brennan interesting. This morning, it just made him limited. To be fair, this was new ground for Nolan, too. Gianna raised a host of uncomfortable reactions in him.
‘If I take her to bed, all it proves is that I can seduce a woman into sex.’ Which wasn’t news. He’d been seducing women into bed with him for over a decade. ‘In her eyes, it makes her just a wager, a prize I was simply entitled to.’ It proved he was no better or different than the men she knew.
‘But in your eyes? Don’t tell me you have feelings for this winsome prize of yours,’ Brennan prompted, picking up his plate and filling it for round two of breakfast.
‘In my eyes, I think she’s in trouble. She needs help.’
‘I think she is trouble. She needs protection, is what you mean.’ Brennan blew out a frustrated breath. He shook his head. ‘You intend to be her knight in shining armour? Perhaps you might tell me why you think so?’
‘She was wagered against her will as punishment for not accepting a marriage offer...’ Nolan began. ‘I offered to let her out of the deal.’
‘Very wise man. You have your own plans,’ Brennan said pointedly. ‘But apparently your option didn’t happen because she fell in the canal and suddenly she’s ensconced in your luxurious rooms, you’re borrowing nightgowns from your friend, sleeping in club chairs and she’s still here three days later.’ Brennan sighed. ‘Can’t you see it, Nol? She’s played you like a harp, just stringing you along. She’s got you buying her clothes, what else does she have you doing?’ Brennan gave a chuckle. ‘Here’s the beauty of it, Nol. She’s got you believing she’s really a virgin and she hasn’t even had to earn her keep on her back. You’re a frigging holiday for her. She gets all of this for free while you’re worried about what happens to her sensibilities if you sleep with her.’
‘You’re a cynical bastard when you put your mind to it. What happened to “What sort of trouble, Nol? How can I help”?’ Nolan groused. Brennan was usually all energy and good humour. He supposed he’d expected Brennan to commiserate with him, hypothesise with him about the depth of Gianna’s trouble and come up with a solution.
Brennan shrugged. ‘I don’t let my dark side come out to play much, but when I do, it’s positively lethal.’
The problem was, Brennan’s thoughts weren’t far from his own. Nolan had thought the same thing, had even accused Gianna of the same thing. He’d got slapped for it. He understood that urge now. He wanted to do more than slap Brennan for it, too. ‘Part of me wants to hit you for that,’ Nolan confessed glumly.
‘Have you asked yourself why?’ Brennan was being serious now. He reached for his coffee cup and drank, grimacing a little at the heat.
‘I can’t believe I’d be so blind to such ploys. She’s not using me. I would know,’ Nolan protested. ‘I’m a master at reading people. I know when they’re lying, I know what motivates them.’
‘Maybe that’s precisely why you can’t see it. You know how it is; the master who can resist or detect the most complex of ploys is brought down by the simplest of manoeuvres,’ Brennan warned, sipping carefully from the coffee cup.
‘No, I’m certain of it. She’s in trouble. Last night, we crashed the count’s masquerade and retrieved her mother’s jewel case—’ He didn’t get to finish.
Brennan choked on the hot coffee, spluttering and cursing as he coughed, coffee splashing a little too warmly on his thighs. ‘Dammit! Dammit! Ouch! Get me a napkin!
‘Whoa, stop right there. Did you hear what you said? You took a jewel case out of another’s house without permission? That’s not retrieving, Nolan, the English word for that is stealing. She has you stealing for her. How is that “not using” you?’
Nolan was regretting not keeping Brennan informed. There was so much to explain now and hearing it all at once did lend it a sense of the preposterous. ‘The jewel case belongs to Gianna. It’s not the count’s and he has plundered it. There was hardly anything left. If anyone did the stealing, it was the count.’ Nolan felt his anger rise in remembrance of Gianna’s fallen face, the tears. ‘Gianna was entirely undone when she saw it.’
‘I’ll bet she was. She was likely planning to live on those jewels until she could get another Englishman to hold up a few coaches for her.’
‘You may play the cynic all you like. You don’t know her like I do.’ Nolan could hear the defensiveness in his tone and in his thoughts. But for good reason. Brennan hadn’t fished her out of the canal, hadn’t seen her fear when he’d pulled the knife to cut her laces, hadn’t felt the honest abandon of her passion when he touched her, hadn’t heard her cry out—well, not the last apparently.
In all fairness, it was easy for Brennan to doubt. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t talked to her. He had no history with her. And what do you have? Does three days qualify as history? Even so, is it three days of history or three days of lies woven by a skilful temptress? Her mother was a successful courtesan. How far did the apple really fall from the tree, after all?
Whoa, that wasn’t fair. That was like saying he was his father, the puritanical bastard who had beaten his brand of justice into Nolan until he was old enough to leave.
‘I am sorry, old friend. I sense our conversation on the subject has reached an impasse.’ Brennan spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘So what if she’s using you? I mean, it can be fun that way, too, as long as you’re not overly invested.’ Nolan appreciated Brennan was trying to make him feel better.
‘Just promise me you’ll be careful, Nolan. I am your friend and I am here for you, although I’d rather you avoid trouble altogether.’ He offered a wry smile. ‘Ursula von Hess was asking about you last night. The barone
ss seems very taken with you, something about your sharp tongue and its compatibility with a particular body part of hers.’
Nolan laughed for form’s sake. But his heart wasn’t in it. He knew what Brennan was suggesting: stick to the formula—sex for physical pleasure and women who understood that rule. Women like the baroness. Women like Gianna who were either virgins in honest peril or women playing a deeper game that went beyond a tumble in the sheets were trouble either way.
Brennan rose, tugging at his jacket. The club room was starting to fill with men coming in to read their newspapers and journals. ‘I’m going to see the tailor. Perhaps you’d like to come? You can clean up there.’
Nolan shook his head. ‘I think I’ll finish my coffee and then I have appointments to keep.’ He wanted a moment alone with his thoughts now that he was past the emotions of the night and the surprisingly hard cynicism of Brennan’s comments. Something bothered him about the jewel case, the logic of it seemed flawed. But he had not been able to concentrate on why in the aftermath of opening the case.
That thread of logic was easier to trace this afternoon in the quiet of his mind. Had she really risked going back into a home that she feared for a case that she had to have known would have been plundered? Did the case hold something else? What did she see in it that he didn’t? He felt confident in assuming there was something more valuable, something the count would overlook even after five years of plundering. That meant it was hidden.
All right, Gray, follow that line of thought, and he did, right to the conclusion that the case must have a secret compartment or drawer. Should that hold true, it also opened up another inescapable, less savoury conclusion: she hadn’t trusted him with the real truth of the case. Instead, she’d distracted him with tales of jewels, and tears over plundering stepfathers, and he’d fallen for it. Unlike so much between them, this at least could be tested. Nolan rose from his chair. There was only one way to find out.
He was halfway up the stairs to his room when Signora Montefiori met him coming down. ‘Signor! There you are. I thought perhaps I misunderstood when to deliver the dresses. You were not in your room.’
Rake Most Likely to Seduce Page 13
