“There is beauty in it,” she managed, as his hand fell to his side. Her skin pricking with the heated intensity of his gaze, Genevieve slipped the book from his grasp.
Standing so close their shoulders brushed, she flicked through the pages of collected oil paintings and sketches. At the intimacy of this stolen exchange, her fingers trembled and she sought the specifically folded page. She stopped abruptly and ran her palm down the Fishermen at Sea masterpiece that she’d studied well into the morning hours on countless lonely evenings in her exile.
“There seems such a loneliness to it,” she murmured, more to herself. “As you said, a darkness.” In those earliest days following the Duke of Aumere’s betrayal, she’d stared bleary eyed at that darkly ominous image, lost in the impending doom hinted at. “Until I came to realize the fisherman was not alone. For the threatening waves that loom, there is the calm of the moon’s presence and it lights the sky, showing that there are others there.” As much as she’d mourned being cut off from her family, she’d found a soothing balm in the quiet countryside; in the star-studded night skies and the snowy winters days. Through it, she’d let herself believe that there would one day be another. Aware of Cedric’s attention trained not on the page but on the top of her head, Genevieve stumbled back a step and knocked into the bench with such force she tumbled into a seated position.
“You were right to order me gone.” His cerulean gaze threatened to bore through her. “You are suitably wary, Genevieve.” Was his a warning? She’d be a fool to not heed it.
“I have reason to be,” she whispered. Not many had given her reason to trust.
“Ah,” he stretched out that syllable. “The former betrothed.”
Genevieve jolted as his words hit her like a jab to the solar plexus. People did not freely speak of the Duke of Aumere’s defection. Their whispers had somehow conveniently omitted that man’s identity, while heaping all senseless blame on her. She tried to dredge up a suitable reply, should again send Cedric on his way, but there was…an ease around him. A falseness and sincerity all at the same time. Having spent the better part of five years insulating herself from hurt, she recognized Cedric’s own artful attempts. With his effortless grin and guarded eyes, the Marquess of St. Albans may as well construct an entire fortress about him.
Another breeze filtered the air between them. It rustled his too-long, thick golden tresses, sending one tumbling over his brow, softening him, making him real—approachable, and not the sculpted model of masculine perfection able to command with a single look. He motioned to the wrought iron bench. “May I?”
She curled her fingers tight, hating this desire to run her hands through his tresses to explore their texture. “If I said no, would you leave?”
“Yes,” he said automatically. “But I’d attempt to convince you otherwise.”
Perhaps her soul was as wicked and wanton as she’d been accused, for she wanted to know what that convincing would entail. He stared at her pointedly and with a hesitant nod, she slid over onto the corner of the bench.
The marquess settled his tall, heavily muscled frame beside her, shrinking the space between them so that their legs touched. His cloak gaped slightly open. She swallowed hard. Unbidden, she stole a sideways look at the muscles of his thighs straining the fawn fabric of his front-flap breeches. Cheeks afire, she swiftly lifted her gaze, praying he’d not noted her scrutiny, and promptly stilled.
Head tipped back, with his eyes closed, the morning’s rays bathed Cedric’s face in sunlight. “Who was he?” he asked, unmoving from his repose so much that she blinked several times believing she’d imagined his question.
“My lord?” she asked tentatively.
“The gentleman to account for your wariness.”
She drew her book closer. “It would hardly be appropriate to speak of such intimate matters.”
“Bah, mine is hardly an intimate question.” Opening his eyes, the marquess picked his head up and favored her with a slow, seductive grin. “Were I to ask you the scent of oil you place in your bathwater or the fragrance you dab behind your ears, now that, I would allow would be intimate…for some.”
Despite a suitable wariness where this man was concerned, a smile pulled at her lips. With his charm, he was a rogue who could coax the queen out of her chemise. “Tell me, my lord, do you work at shocking a lady?”
“Hardly.” He winked. “I assure you, it comes quite naturally.”
A laugh bubbled from her lips and it felt so wholly wonderful to be the laughing, bright-eyed young woman she’d been. That saw you nothing but ruin… She promptly slapped her hand over her mouth and stole a look about, as with that unexpected amusement logic was restored. He was a rake, a rogue, and all things forbidden. She’d not be so lax in her judgment again—not any more than she’d already been with this man. “You should not be here,” she said again. “You came to apologize.” When gentlemen made apologies for nothing. Not her father. Not the Duke of Aumere and his dastard brother. “Though I appreciate that gesture.” Even as it roused skepticism in her breast. “But for you to remain, only raises further risk of…” Additional censure. She’d already been ruined.
“Who was he?” he asked instead.
She trembled. How easily he followed her unspoken thoughts. What game did this rake play? “Why would you have me speak of it?” Genevieve braced for a charming smile and a lie.
Instead, he held his palms up. “I do not know.” They were words spoken with a quiet truth.
She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. Either she was the very greatest of fools or she’d been alone for so very long that she’d see friends in rakes. “Then you’ll leave?”
He inclined his head.
Eying him warily, Genevieve wetted her lips.
Cedric unflinchingly met her stare.
A long sigh escaped her. She’d no doubt he’d wait until the sun set for the night before leaving this spot without a name. “The Duke of Aumere.”
An inscrutable look flashed in his eyes and she wanted to know the meaning of it. Wanted to know what he thought about her being tossed over by a duke, on her wedding day no less. Instead of leaving, however, he stretched out and looped his ankles.
An exasperated sigh escaped her. “You promised to leave.”
“Ah, but I did no such thing, Genevieve.” He tugged the errant curl hanging over her brow. “I merely lifted my head in acknowledgement.”
How free he was with his movements and words without worry of recrimination. It was she, however, who would bear the lash of Society’s censure. Frustration stirred at a lot where women should be so judged, while men were free with their every movement and with that, reality intruded on this stolen interlude. “This is not a game, my lord,” she bit out. Her father’s earlier warnings that morning came rushing back, effectively dousing the haze cast by talks of artists and paintings.
He winged an eyebrow up. “Do you want me gone?”
No. She leapt to her feet and retreated several steps, placing much needed distance between them. “It is improper for you to be here.”
Undeterred, he shoved lazily to his feet. “But do you want me gone?” he pressed with a dogged tenacity.
She should. She should want him on the opposite side of the world for the danger he presented and with the desire he roused. As his long-legged strides ate away the distance between them, her mouth went dry.
“Do you?” he prodded on a silken whisper that ran over her warmer than any summer sun.
With her pulse pounding madly, Genevieve forced words out. “Have I not said as much?”
“No,” he brushed his thumb over her lower lip. “In fact, I’ve asked you three times with no real answer.” The book tumbled once more to the earth, falling between them and her heart skipped a beat, then promptly tripled its rhythm. “You have spoken about propriety and decorum, but what do you want?”
I want your kiss. I want your kiss even as it goes against all judgment and fuels the sinful opinions
about me…
He toyed with her lower lip. “What do you want?” he urged in seductive tones Satan himself would envy.
You…
Cedric claimed her mouth in a hard, hungry kiss. This was not the hesitant, gentle questing of the evening prior but rather an explosion of want and desire. He folded his hand about her nape, angling her to receive him, and with a breathless moan, she returned his kiss. Genevieve twined her hands through his hair reveling in the silken thickness of those loose curls. He parted her lips and slid his tongue inside, and the hint of coffee and cinnamon invaded her senses like a potent aphrodisiac. Their tongues tangled in a wild dance as old as time and he drew back.
She bit her lip at the loss of him, but he merely dragged his mouth down her neck, where he nipped at the place where her pulse beat for him.
“Genevieve,” he whispered, nothing but her name, and her knees buckled.
He easily caught her and pulled her against the hard, muscled wall of his chest, anchoring her close. At the contact, her nipples pebbled hard against the fabric of her gown and desire; wicked and wanton, and all things wonderful flooded her senses, as she strained close, desperate for…she knew not what, only that she’d never known this explosive passion from any of her former betrothed’s chaste kisses.
She sought his lips again and he raised his obligingly, returning her kiss. With every slant of his mouth, he ran his hands searchingly over her; the curve of her hip, her lower back, her buttocks, and heat exploded inside her and threatened to consume her in a fiery conflagration of desire.
“Lady Genevieve?” The distant call of her maid brought them apart.
Genevieve stood cloaked in a thick haze of desire and a slow-dawning horror. She frantically searched about.
“Here,” he murmured, as with the same methodical precision of last evening, he put her hair to rights and then swiftly retrieved her book. His remarkable calm bespoke a gentleman accustomed to far too many close calls.
Her belly tightened as a green, vicious envy twisted inside.
“Lady Genevieve?” her maid’s voice grew stronger as she drew closer.
Genevieve snatched the volume from his hands. “I am h-here, Delores.” She flinched at the tremor to her words. Frantically, she whipped her head back. “Please,” she whispered. “Surely you understand, as my every action is under scrutiny, I cannot see you again.”
He put his lips close to her ear, and his breath fanned her skin, sending delicious shivers radiating out. “Do you truly want that?”
No. “It matters not what I want,” she said on a pleading whisper.
Cedric placed a hard, quick kiss on her lips. “What you want should always matter.” He took her by the shoulders and gave her a gentle nudge toward her maid’s approaching footsteps. “And Genevieve?” he said in hushed tones, as she turned to go. She looked questioningly back. “Primrose.” Her heart jumped. “By the scent upon your skin, I would wager it is primrose you place in your water.”
Chapter 9
The empty sketchpad lay open, the blank pages both mocking and tempting. Cedric sat staring at them, as he had for the better part of the hour. How many pages had he secretly filled before his bastard of a sire had ultimately discovered, and ended, all such trivial pursuits?
…my heir will not do something as foolish as to waste his time with frivolous pastimes. Find yourself a whore, not a bloody sketchpad…
The fury of that diatribe rang around the chambers of his mind, all these years later.
He’d loved sketching. Loved it when he’d really loved nothing. On the pages of those books, he’d found a peace and calm, and a sense of freeness from the constrained world where he was nothing more than a future duke. More, he’d forgotten how much he loved it until a too-brief conversation in Kensington Gardens that morning with a lady who both knew art and was unashamed and unapologetic in discussing it. Where he’d buried that desire to create, tossed his charcoals into the rubbish bin, and yet…he’d retained this old book.
Of their own volition, his fingers found the pen and, dipping it into the inkwell, he proceeded to mark the page. With each slash and slant of the pen, an amorphous image took shape. His hand flew frantically over the previously blank sheet and a long forgotten exultation fanned out dulling the ennui he’d known of late; an ennui which had not been solved by gaming or whoring or spirits.
The door bounced open with such force it slammed against the wall. “By God, I said find a respectable wife. I should expect you’d show up at my bloody ball and dance only once and with the Farendale doxy.”
Cedric jerked his gaze up and cursed. His father stood framed in the doorway. The only hint of his barely concealed fury was the vein throbbing at the corner of his left eye. Quickly closing the book, Cedric dropped his pen. “Father.” He forced an indolent grin and propped his feet on the edge of his desk. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” There had never been any father-son warmth between them. Theirs had been a relationship built on nothing but the unfortunate circumstance of blood and the obligations that went with that same blood.
His father kicked the door closed with the heel of his boot. “Goddamn it, you know what has brought me here.” Yanking off his gloves the duke stomped across the room. He stopped at the edge of Cedric’s desk and slapped his gloves together. “Put your bloody feet on the floor,” he snapped, as though speaking to a recalcitrant child.
Alas, Cedric hadn’t been a boy for a long time now. Rather, he’d been shaped into a cold, unyielding figure, masterfully crafted in his father’s image. Lounging in his leather chair, Cedric folded his arms at his chest.
With a grunt, the duke slid into the opposite chair. “I could not have been clearer during my last visit.”
Visit. Is that what the old bastard would call these meetings? This man had never been driven by familial devotion or regard, but rather for discussions on wealth and power. “Ah, yes,” Cedric said, reveling in the way his father’s eyebrow dipped. “The very important business of my securing a wife.” Important business his father could hold his breath, all the way to hell, and wait for.
“I’ll see you in hell before I’ll see you wed the Farendale chit.” If anything could entice him, well, it would be that small triumph over the duke’s wishes.
With the depravity of his existence, he’d see him in hell, regardless.
Regardless, his father’s worries over Cedric’s dance with Genevieve Farendale were irrelevant. Although strangely enchanted by the guarded lady’s peculiar interests, Cedric had as much intention of marrying as joining the bloody clergy. That truth, however, did not prevent him from some very deliberate needling “Come, Father, she is a marquess’ daughter. Even you cannot fault the lady’s birthright.”
“She is a whore,” his father said bluntly and all amusement left Cedric, replaced with a red haze of fury that sent his hands curling reflexively on the arms of his chair. What he wouldn’t give to bloody the old bastard’s face.
He swung his legs to the floor refusing to allow the duke to needle him. All the while, a seething fury ran through him. “Other than your dictatorial efforts for the selection of my future bride, is there anything else that has brought you here?” he asked, maintaining a thin grasp on his wavering control. When was the last time he’d been roused to this unholy rage at anything his father said or did? And because of Lady Genevieve Farendale. How in blazes could he account for that?
“A fortnight.” The duke’s terse utterance cut across his confounded thoughts.
A fortnight…?
“To select a bride,” his father said with a triumphant smile on his hard lips. “If you fail to do so, I’ll see you cut off from your creditors and funds, until you do decide to cooperate.”
When Cedric had been a young man, he’d journeyed by ship to the Continent. Two days into his travels, a violent storm had ravaged the sea. In his fine quarters, Cedric had clung to the high-quality mattress, while his stomach in revolt, dipped and lurched. How ve
ry much this moment was to that long ago day.
“Nothing to say now?” his father waggled his eyebrows. “Where is the mocking grin and stinging wit?”
Cedric curled his hands reflexively upon the arms of his chair, his nails leaving crescent marks in the Italian leather. “You will not cut me off,” he said at last. The only thing the duke cared about more than his title, was the way in which the world saw that title. Any hint of weakness or shame to that beloved status would shatter the bastard in ways that no emotion or feeling could.
The tightening of his father’s mouth hinted at the truth to Cedric’s supposition. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. But is that something you care to wager your security on?”
Yes, Cedric rather believed it was. He’d no interest in spreading the poisonous Falcot seed to some innocent miss, even if that innocent miss was desiring of nothing more than the title of duchess.
…I have no interest at all in the title of marchioness, duchess, or anything else…
“Get out,” he said curtly.
And surprisingly, his father stood. “You do not wish to wed, Cedric, and I understand that more than most. The last thing I wanted was to marry your fool romantic of a mother.” At the detached emotionality of that admission, a chill iced his spine. How very cold and callous the man was about the wife who’d given him his precious heir. “But we are not unalike,” his father said pragmatically.
A thousand denials sprung to his lips and he wanted to snap and hiss at the other man for seeing any part of Cedric in him. Instead, he remained motionless, immobilized by the long-known truth. He was his father’s son. He’d never put anyone’s interests or pleasures before his own, and lived for his own physical gratification. The same ugly running through the duke’s veins ran hot through his own. After all, in his mother turning Cedric fully over to her husband’s control when he’d been a mere boy, she had seen that truth herself. And that had been his mother, who’d dedicated her last days on earth to her other child, Clarisse. What did that say when one’s own mother saw her child as irredeemable at just eight?
The Lure of a Rake Page 10
