The Highwayman's Lady (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Karen Lingefelt

  Or maybe if he kissed her. Again. Could she tell it was him by his kiss?

  “And I believe you did say the other night that you’d never been kissed before,” he added. “Not even by your betrothed.”

  Had Captain Jordan already forgotten their kiss this morning—or rather, yesterday morning? She didn’t know whether to be indignant or confused. Maybe he wasn’t Captain Jordan. Drat! Just when she was quite certain she knew the highwayman’s true identity, he had to say something to plant another seed of doubt in her turbulent mind.

  There was only one thing to say in response. “You needn’t bother,” she whispered. “It just so happens I did receive my first kiss since I saw you last.”

  “Indeed?” He gently twined both arms around her, holding her close against him. Something hard jabbed into her hip, and she wondered if it was his pistol. “Upon whom did you bestow a favor that you would deny me?”

  “That’s none of your business, sir. I mean, that’s none of your business, you rogue.”

  “Oh, no.” He loosened his hold on her, much to her dismay. “I thought you were Miss Griffin. Now I fear you might be Lady Tyndall.”

  “I am Miss Griffin, and I daresay you have more to fear from me than from my aunt. But you should know the gen—the other rogue who did it said he thought I looked as if I wanted a kiss. But I think he was only taking advantage of me because he believed the gossip that you’d already done so.”

  “All the more reason why you should give me a kiss. If everyone believes we’ve already kissed, then we may as well do so.”

  As he held her closer against him, Felicity felt an odd shudder in her lower belly, or maybe that was just his pistol again. She desperately hoped it wouldn’t accidentally go off. His mouth was practically against her ear, his lips all but brushing her lobe. As it was, his nose was in her hair. Her legs weakened as she grabbed his solid, muscular arms as if to keep her balance.

  “Think of that other night,” he murmured, still nuzzling her hair. “Think of me pulling you away from the carriage lamps and into the shadows…think of me doing this.” And his lips fell over hers as he held her against his hard length.

  If she’d hoped to positively identify him as Captain Jordan by his kiss, then she was destined for disappointment…only she wasn’t disappointed, albeit for a different reason. This kiss was deeper and more passionate, as evidenced by the bold thrust of his tongue past her open lips as it searched for her own.

  Captain Jordan hadn’t done that. Nor had he tasted of wintergreen. Instead he’d been more tentative and tasted as if he’d come after her straight from the breakfast table—which he had.

  And whereas she’d stiffened in Captain Jordan’s embrace—if only because she’d been startled by his unexpected advance—she felt herself weakening in the arms of whoever it was holding her now. Dizzying heat shimmered through her, trickling through her veins till it lazily curled itself into a throbbing knot of desire deep within her.

  As she leaned into him, no longer able to stand on her own, he slipped his hands over her hips before lifting her night rail, bunching the fabric in his hands as he slid it up to her waist before stroking her bare derriere with his equally bare hands, their smooth warmth keeping her initial shock at bay.

  He’d removed his gloves along with his mask. She thought of reaching up to see if it was still somehow attached to his head or if he’d cast it off altogether, but was swiftly distracted from that idea as his hands grasped her night rail again, this time sliding it up past her breasts.

  Captain Jordan certainly hadn’t done this outside of Howland Hall.

  He broke the kiss. “Is this what I left without the other night?” he whispered, his wonderfully warm hands cupping her naked breasts as she gasped and reveled in a fresh wave of yearning for even more.

  “Maybe. Is that why you came back to me?”

  “Are you glad I came back?” As his thumbs lightly feathered the tips of her breasts, making them tingle, she leaned against the desk and tilted her head back, unable to suppress a whimper. With the same reckless impulse that had sent her out of the carriage to confront him the other night—for this was swiftly surpassing that event as the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her—she brazenly tore off her night rail and stood before him naked, though he couldn’t possibly see her in the solid darkness.

  “Ah, my bold loveliness,” he whispered hotly. “Which of us is more wicked?” One hand remained on her breast while the other skimmed downward, light as a feather over her rib cage, her navel, and finally the pulsating swell between her thighs. She held her breath as his fingers combed through the thick curls covering her sex, until one finger alone found her aching, swollen center, and she sighed with bliss as she parted her legs.

  “Is this what you wanted the other night?” His lips all but touched hers as with that single finger he flicked at her throbbing nub, lightly, teasingly, maddeningly as her hips involuntarily jerked with each forbidden touch as she gasped for breath. He claimed her mouth again, his tongue thrusting more assertively than it had before. She recalled the dream she’d had earlier, of the highwayman doing precisely this. He’d stopped every time she reached for his mask.

  She made no effort to reach for it now, for she didn’t want him to stop what he was doing. With one flick of his finger, he’d lit a spark that with another flick teased it into a tiny flame, till that knot in her core turned into a fireball that finally exploded into a blaze of ecstasy such as she’d never imagined before, except in those frustrating dreams. Felicity cried out as the flames subsided, and she thought she would slide to the floor before he took her into his arms again, holding her against him.

  All her senses seemed heightened now as she panted, for he felt harder than he had before, and she involuntarily rubbed her pulsating sex against his pistol before the horror of what she was doing seized her, and she wrenched out of his grasp. Good God, she might have caught herself on the trigger and made it fire!

  “What’s wrong?” he inquired. “Are you not glad I came back? Or do you wish I was that other rogue who bestowed your first kiss?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I felt your pistol and I was afraid I’d slip and make it discharge.”

  “Indeed, you almost did.” Yet he didn’t sound at all concerned. If anything, his whispered voice was full of amusement. “How I long to see all of you.”

  She snatched up her night rail from the desk behind her, knocking papers to the floor. “Then you shouldn’t have blown out the candle, for I would certainly like to see all of you.”

  “Especially my face, I suppose? And now that I think about it, you never really have seen my pistol, have you?” He sounded as if he could barely keep from bursting into laughter.

  If he was Captain Jordan, then what must he think of her now? Perhaps he now agreed with everyone back at Howland Hall that she was a wanton harlot who’d offer her favors to gentleman and highwayman alike, even if they were the same man. Yet how could he, when he was responsible for what everyone now thought of her?

  She slipped the night rail over her head and let it drop down. “Why did you come here tonight? I don’t think you came here to see me, or I wouldn’t have found you at my cousin’s desk. What were you looking for?”

  “An express from Lady Tyndall. And before you ask how I know about that, because that was surely your next question…”

  “Oh, you needn’t bother, for I can guess. Servants’ gossip. A servant, after all, would’ve dispatched my aunt’s express. A footman mentioned it to a groom or coachman, someone who worked at the stables. Someone who worked at the stables would’ve told someone who worked in the fields, who might’ve passed on the word to someone from the gypsy encampment, because there are always gypsies camped in the woods around grand estates, and a gypsy probably told you, the highwayman, who likely keeps a lair near the gypsies.”

  “You just saved me the trouble of explaining.”

  “I’m pleased to be of assistance.” She
wondered now if she shouldn’t have let him stumble and fumble to come up with an explanation on his own, but after what he just did, she was reluctant to break the spell of forbidden enchantment he’d cast over her. “However, you won’t find the express in this room, because I already looked.”

  “Did the duke open it already? I found other expresses from Lady Tyndall on the desk, but not the one that incriminates me in your ruin.” He chucked her under the chin. “Of course, I was interrupted in the commission of my crime, wasn’t I?”

  “It’s not here because I already looked. In fact, you interrupted me. It might be in the duke’s bedchamber. Don’t ask me to explain how, but I think he may have put it into his coat pocket before going upstairs to dress for this evening.”

  “You just did explain how. Then let us go upstairs and search his bedchamber.” To her astonishment, he brushed past her across the rug toward the doorway. Fortunately there was no furniture to crash into or globes to upend between desk and doorway.

  “Wait!” she whispered frantically. “You can’t go upstairs. You probably don’t even know where the staircase is.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. Fine, go on upstairs.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me? You don’t want me going up there. No doubt you’re concerned about what Lady Tyndall might think if she found out you were in a bedchamber with me, unchaperoned—as if it would be proper to be in a bedchamber with me chaperoned.”

  “You must leave before someone else sees you!” He would more likely hang just for being here at this hour, and under such circumstances, than for anything he’d done to her.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he assured her in a whisper. “Go on upstairs!”

  Felicity raced up the stairs. She was in her bare feet, so there shouldn’t have been a sound. But each step she made seemed to echo like a roll of thunder throughout the front hall. It wasn’t until she reached the top of the stairs and the echoes of her footsteps continued to reverberate that she realized there were no echoes. Only his booted footsteps as he ascended behind her.

  “You mustn’t come up here!” she protested.

  “Too late. I’m up here. And what’s that light?”

  A faint light glowed from a room far down the hallway. Felicity’s heart sank. “I’m not certain, but it might be from the duke’s bedchamber. Perhaps the servants are readying it for his return.”

  “And pray, how tall is the duke?”

  As that seemed an odd question to ask under the circumstances, Felicity couldn’t help responding with, “Why?”

  “Just trying to make casual conversation,” he said in a testy tone that would indicate otherwise. “Is he as tall as me?”

  “I don’t know, since I’ve only seen you in darkness, and if I do see you in the light, it’s very poor and you’re either bent over a desk or standing on an uneven roadside. Maybe if you removed your mask—”

  “I don’t think that would help. At least it wouldn’t help me. How much taller is he than you?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it, and fast.”

  “What does his height have to do with finding the express my aunt sent today?”

  The candlelight from the end of the hall didn’t quite reach where they were, so she couldn’t see a thing, but she did hear him take a couple of steps, followed by several thumps that didn’t come from the floor.

  “What was that?” she gasped.

  “Oh, nothing. I’m just banging my head against the wall. I shall assume he’s shorter than me and if worse comes to worst—”

  “Oh, I doubt he’s shorter than you,” Felicity said. “He’s just over six feet tall.”

  “Thank you!” he whispered with a flap of his cloak that sent a fleeting breeze her way. His footsteps hurried down the hallway and Felicity thought she heard him mutter something about women and pulling teeth. She stood rooted to the spot, struggling to make sense of what was happening, because she wasn’t sure what was happening.

  Her highwayman—no, that highwayman—had returned from seemingly nowhere to tempt her into further scandal—and she was allowing him to do it!

  She tiptoed after him, chastising herself for doing so—not for going after him yet again, especially considering the trouble she’d brought on herself the last time she’d mindlessly done that, but because she was tiptoeing when no one would have likely heard her anyway because of her bare feet. Whereas he marched down the hallway without a care in the world for the repeated thumping of his boots, as if he wanted to warn whoever was in that candlelit room that he was coming.

  She broke into a run just as he crossed the threshold of the candlelit room and barked, “Who are you and what are you doing in my bedchamber at this hour?”

  Chapter Twelve

  These damned eyeholes! Jack could barely see a thing through them without tilting his head around this way and that like some gin-soaked drunk in Seven Dials. All he could ascertain was another man in the bedchamber who he assumed was a manservant. If he was wrong and the man turned out to be the Duke of Halstead himself, then Jack—not to mention Felicity—would be deep in the suds.

  “Your Grace?” The other man’s voice cracked with a mixture of trepidation and skepticism. “Is that you?”

  “Pray, who else do you think I am? Prinny? Boney? Brummell? Byron? Or maybe just some anonymous brigand who came breezing through the front door, bold as brass, to engage in a bit of burgling? Mayhap that’s what you’re up to.”

  “Oh no, Your—”

  “No? Well, of course it’s me.”

  “I was only picking up the clothes Your Grace wore earlier today and turning down the bed, as I always do every night. I didn’t know you’d return so early from Lady Whitbourne’s masquerade. You quite startled me.” Jack caught a glimpse of hands reaching for his face. “Shall I help you off with—”

  “No!” Jack batted the valet away. “She wants me to leave it on.”

  “She…?”

  “Yes, she! Since when did you insist on an explanation for every woman I bring home after midnight? Now be off with you.”

  The valet sidled past him to the doorway. “I thought you meant the duchess, Your Grace. Do you mean there’s another—another—?”

  “Woman? Yes. Send her in here at once. I’m sure you’ll find her hovering just out in the hallway. She’s the one masquerading as a ghost. It may look like a lady’s night rail to you, but she’s supposed to be a ghost, meaning you’re not really supposed to see her.”

  “Indeed, there is such a person out here, Your Grace. She’s hiding her face in her hands. Did she lose her mask? Shall I look for it?”

  “By all means, do. But don’t bring it back up here. When you find it—if you do, and mind I don’t want to see you again until you do—just leave it on the table next to the front door where she can pick it up on her way out.”

  “Don’t you mean I should leave it on the table next to the side—”

  “Wherever!” Jack roared. “Just go! And leave the candelabrum.”

  Footsteps scuttled down the hallway. Jack took only two steps across the bedchamber before he tripped over something heavy and very stationary. With a curse he pitched over it straight to the floor. What the bloody hell?

  “Perhaps if you took off that mask, you wouldn’t trip over all the furniture,” Felicity said sweetly.

  As Jack rose to his hands and knees, he enjoyed an extraordinarily clear view of the intricate pattern of the rug. He tugged the mask back into place and patted the wig, his heart thundering as he realized just how dangerous this was—not as much as anything he’d done in battle, but more so than it had been the other night when he waylaid this vixen’s carriage. If he lost the wig, she might recognize his hair, regardless of how many blond men were currently stumbling around London or even the Sussex countryside making asses of themselves and all because of a woman yet. As it was, he was still amazed she hadn’t yet figured out who he r
eally was. He was presently in an extremely vulnerable position. How easy it would be for her to knock the wig off his fool head and tear off this cumbersome mask!

  Oh, what the hell. “Well, you’re standing right there and here I am on the floor. You could unmask me now if you really wanted to. Why don’t you?”

  “You can’t mean that.” Her voice fairly brimmed with scornful disbelief.

  “Why do you say that as if you find the very suggestion unthinkable? Could it be there’s something you won’t do? You’ll leave your carriage to come after me for who knows what reason, and you’ll even let me kiss you and do other things while you stand there in nothing but your night rail or even nothing at all, but—oh! Maybe that’s why you’d prefer I remain masked for the time being?” He rose to his full height and whirled around to face her. “So I won’t have such a clear view of you in your night rail—or out of it?” Damn it, why was he able to see more of the rug than he would have liked, but not of Felicity in her night rail—or out of it? He felt the familiar quiver in his groin at the memory of her nude body in the darkness. The smooth, warm skin…the wonderful curves…the assorted little nubs that elicited her moans whenever he touched them…the hot, swollen dampness beneath hair as thick and curly as that on her head.

  “Can you truly not see me that clearly?” She backed away, just out of his reach. He had a better view of her through the right eyehole if he lowered his chin.

  She stood with her arms at her sides, gazing back at him expressionless, though he thought her lower lip might be trembling. He could barely discern the outline of her body beneath the night rail—the confirmation that she did indeed have two legs that parted ways on either side of a dark, faintly triangular shadow framed by gently flaring hips. Two dim circles poked through the flimsy fabric hanging over her breasts. One shoulder was bare, but maddeningly obscured by a long, thick braid he wished to undo until her russet hair flowed like wavy ribbons of silk over that shoulder and through his fingers—after he removed his gloves again, of course. He’d hastily donned them again and put his mask back into place while trailing her upstairs.