Obviously he’d never really known her at all. He’d certainly misjudged her housekeeping skill; by all accounts she ran the Meredith ménage very efficiently. And the sensual heat she’d been fired with at nineteen was nowhere in evidence. Now she stuttered a few awkward phrases because she was determined to be civil, shrank from his touch because she loathed him, and in response he frightened her by acting like a priapic adolescent six years too late. He should have taken her when he had more right and more chance…
Yesterday she’d let him comfort her, but then she’d not had her wits about her. Now she had and he could tell from her rigorous self-discipline that she’d vowed never again to be so defenceless in his presence. He’d witnessed her raw distress and he knew that had simply given her another reason to hate him. Grieving for her sister was private. He’d no business knowing of it. Yet he was glad he did. Not that he relished her pain, but oddly he’d liked being able to salve it. He’d brought her relief… Which brought him full circle, and to wondering, acidly, if she’d like to return the favour…especially as he knew she was hovering on the brink of asking for something.
‘I should tell you at once why I arrived at your house and was discourteously persistent in my desire to speak to you yesterday…’ Rachel rattled off, clattering her cup and saucer down on the polished mahogany.
‘Why bother?’ Connor bit over her words, frustration making him sound boorish. ‘Are we going to pretend that I’ve no idea why you would come back to London and urgently want me, less than two weeks after leaving and having been quite indifferent to my existence? Something perhaps to do with the fact I took your inheritance from your father in a gambling hell?’
Rachel felt stone-cold beneath the toneless blast. But there it was—the subject was out in the open, at his instigation, and she must keep it there. ‘I wasn’t indifferent to your existence. And if I seemed so…well, acquit me, sir, of blame. It was your idea we should appear so…careless of the other’s presence.’ She gave him a small smile. ‘And you were right. It was a clever, sensible idea; there was no malicious gossip. I thought we dealt tolerably well together. Aren’t you pleased?’
He smiled at his fingers drumming against wood. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ he mimicked in his soft Irish accent. ‘Now where do I remember that from? You need to be a little closer when you say it, sweet, and looking up at me as though you really cared what I might answer.’
Rachel felt tears of anger burn her eyes. He was determined to be as obnoxious as possible. ‘Actually, I am back in town, too, to be of service to my friend, Lucinda Saunders, as she is increasing. Please don’t think my father’s misfortunes are all that bring me here. But now the matter is aired… Yes, I should like to speak about that. I should like to negotiate a short lease on my property so that June might still hold her wedding at Windrush.’
‘It’s mine.’
‘Yes. I should like a short lease, please, to cover the period next month when my sister is to be married.’
He turned slowly, looking at her from beneath his long black lashes. She forced herself to calmly return his stare. She managed a wavering smile, too. ‘Why would you need it then? You have your Mayfair townhouse. It is the height of the Season. Few of the aristocracy will be in the country. Your friends and associates will be in London, I’m sure…’
‘How do you know who my friends and associates are?’
‘I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to be presumptuous. I was just pleading my cause.’
‘That’s right; you’re pleading, and I told you, Rachel, you need to come closer to do so if you’re hoping to be successful.’ His voice sounded like sweetest honey, his eyes resembled a summer sky. His expression was one of callous amusement.
With an attempt at a careless shrug she paced towards him, hoping it wasn’t noticeable that her molars were grinding or that her fingers, behind her back, looked gnarled. She halted just before him, cocked her head in a way that she prayed looked arch and knowing. ‘There, sir. I am close. I had not realised that now you are older your eyesight and hearing might be failing. Please listen very carefully,’ she enunciated crisply, biting off each word to prevent herself coarsely slandering him. ‘I am willing to pay you for a short lease on my…your property. The financial inducement will be worth your while. In fact, I’m willing to negotiate upwards to one hundred pounds—’
‘I want a thousand.’
Rachel’s powder-blue eyes shot fully open in consternation. ‘A thousand?’
‘Take it or leave it.’
‘You know I have nothing like that to give you from my allowance…’
‘You’re wasting my time then, this morning, Miss Meredith, unless you can think of a better inducement likely to tempt a man lacking morals and basic faculties.’
‘I find nothing funny in this,’ Rachel forced out through her gritted white teeth. ‘You are intending to ruin my sister’s wedding day. How dare you! The preparations have taken a full eight months! My father had the grace, the good manners, to issue you with an invitation to the ceremony and yet you are at pains to ruin everything through your vengeful greed. You do not even need the rent money, do you? All you want is revenge. It’s me you hate—why make my sister suffer? And she, little fool, once thought herself stupidly infatuated with you. You played cards with a man who was drunk. Only the most loathsome individuals gamble for high stakes with either very young or very drunk men. Yet you did! I don’t care that my poor papa says the rules were adhered to. You’re a cheat! A…a beastly miser… I hope you rot in hell, you detestable brute…’
‘You’re still going to need a better inducement than that, Rachel,’ he taunted softly as the tears sparkled on her lashes and her bosom heaved defiantly against its flimsy restraint.
Furiously she threw herself at him, her arms raised as though she would beat at him with her fists. Her hands snaked to his neck, coiled tight…then stilled, as though she was in the throes of a dilemma: whether to clash mouths and attack him with the kiss he seemed determined to torment from her, or grab his throat and choke the life out of him instead. She rested against him, trembling in rage and humiliation, yet oddly comforted as she had been yesterday by the feel of his warm strength against her cool, quaking body.
His hands covered hers, unclasped them from where her nails threatened to puncture his collar. With a sudden jerk, he shoved her back. Immediately she hung her head, hoping to shield the sight of her wet eyes and mutinously contorted features.
‘So why did you do it so often, Rachel? Come, tell me…’ he needled her, needing her provocation, her participation.
She flung up her head, to reveal her small, white teeth bared. Immediately they commenced savaging her soft lips, then she spat out, ‘Because that’s what you deserved…because I despised you…because I hated you touching me…kissing me… You disgusted me.’
She flicked her face away a second too late and his mouth caught hers, slick and punishing. She fought to twist her wrists in his grip, but he drew her relentlessly against him until he could fasten both of her hands in one of his behind her back. His free hand trailed her spine, barely touching, cupped her buttocks in a soothing circular stroke before ramming her against his rigid arousal and holding her there. She gasped outrage into his mouth, yet pressed her hips forward. When his fingers tucked inside her bodice and softly brushed at her satiny skin, she held her breath. When a breast was teased free of its demure confinement and his thumb leisurely found a turgid nipple to play with, she moaned her disgust and arched her back, forcing more of her sensitive, throbbing flesh to fill his hand. He obliged her by kneading it with slow artful pressure, and even the hard male laugh that filled her mouth moments before his rapacious tongue couldn’t make her stop wanting more.
His mouth suddenly released her bruised aching lips and moved to her ear. ‘You despise my touch…I disgust you. Say it now. Then ask me again for that damned house.’
Rachel felt the ice shiver her lower lip, the heat drench her eyes and
her head fell forward so that her forehead was resting against his shoulder. ‘You’re an evil man.’
‘I’m a vindictive man.’ Gently, with one dark finger, he tilted her face up to his, looked deep into her water-blue eyes before deliberately letting his gaze drop to where her exposed breast still pouted at him. ‘And you’re the hot wanton I always thought you. If it wasn’t for the fact that now I’m older I’m a little bored with fornicating against walls and chairs, I might take the trouble to discover whether Moncur’s taught you any worthwhile tricks—’
He easily dodged the small fist that she swung at him, although he guessed that the force with which the mantel clock was swept to the floor meant it was unlikely to resume ticking. Connor stepped over smatterings of glass and internal springs on his way to the door, a choke of laughter breezing back over his shoulder. ‘If you’re about to need a dustpan and brush, rearrange your clothes before the maid arrives. Heaven forfend that the servants discover too that their mistress is a little trollop.’
‘I loathe you,’ Rachel whispered while, mortified, she blindly acted on his hateful advice.
‘Good,’ he said carelessly as he put a hand on the doorknob. ‘At least now I feel as though I’ve gone part way towards deserving it. By the time I’ve finished with you perhaps we’ll be even. Oh…I take it you’re soon to journey home?’
Rachel merely jerked her head as a sign of assent.
‘When you go, you can do this dastardly miser a favour by saving him the cost of posting a document to your father. Before that gentleman left earlier in the week, from the kindness of my heart and because I have no quarrel with your sister or Pemberton, I granted a dispensation allowing him to retain the property until the first of July. The document’s signed and sealed now. You can carry his copy safe home with you.’
Rachel raised her golden head, looking through a mist at his dark saturnine features; her eyes blinked, trying to plumb his for signs of deceit.
He gave her a ruthless smile. ‘Don’t get to thinking I’m about to be any more sentimental than that, my dear. On the second of July your inheritance goes to auction…to be sold to the highest bidder.’
The door had been closed barely a second before his untasted tea was dripping down the white-painted panels and delicate floral china shards littered the carpet close by.
Maria Laviola lay on her stomach in bed, looking listlessly at Paris fashion plates. Her head twisted to peer over a shoulder as she heard the door slam. An incipient smile curved her lips and her inertia was already dispersing. The journal, which she had idly been flicking through whilst sipping her morning chocolate and nibbling at a little toast, was sent in a flutter of pages on to the floor. She swivelled on to her back. Instinctively her knees bent and her thighs parted. She elevated herself on her elbows, shaking her head to clear her loose black hair from her eyes. She waited, her stomach clenched in an agony of excitement. The familiar sound of masculine boots hitting the stairs two at a time made her drop her head back and smile at the ruched-red bed canopy in pleasure and triumph. She hadn’t seen him for two days and two nights and had begun to think…because of what she’d heard about that little hussy…that perhaps there was some truth in such stupid gossip. He was jaded, she knew; but then that was to be expected in men of his exceptional attractiveness and station in life who had been pleasured by women so often. And she knew that such men often tried to whet a sated palate with youth and innocence. But youth and innocence couldn’t compete for long with expertise…and over the years she had gained plenty of sensual skill.
She had begun to think that perhaps her days as the Earl of Devane’s mistress were already numbered. And she didn’t want that…not yet. Not only was he beautifully built, generous and at times an attentive, lusty lover, but he was the most fêted man in the ton. Everybody wanted to be with him: quiz him over his army exploits, over the decorations and medals he’d won at Waterloo. They wanted to find out why it was Wellington favoured him over so many others and had made him a senior member of his staff. What did he have to tell about the Iron Duke and his odd, eccentric ways?
Maria knew she was envied because she had him, by ladies and demi-reps alike. She knew there were plenty angling to oust her and take her place warming his bed in the hope that they might do what she couldn’t: warm his heart. Yet he too was envied, because he had her. Doe-eyed young bucks and their sires lusted after her and she was shrewd enough to keep them looking.
She and Connor made a most charismatic couple, she thought. Now, if their relationship was formalised, it wouldn’t then matter to her quite so much if he played with any mercenary little demi-vièrge to whom he took a fancy.
He plunged into the bedchamber with a cursory word for her young French maid. Immediately Francine was quitting the room with a blush and a whispered, ’Bon matin, milor.’
It was hardly surprising the girl looked so awkward, Maria thought with a sultry peek at him through her dark lashes. His neckcloth was off and scrunched in a hand and the corded strength of his brown throat was naked to the eye due to the fact that his shirt buttons to mid-chest were already undone.
Maria fell back on to the bed, chuckling delightedly. ‘Sometimes, Connor, I wish you could just keep in your clothes long enough for me to appreciate the so-dashing figure you cut. How handsome you look this morning…and so early…’ Her dark almond eyes lowered to where his fingers now worked at the buttons on his skintight breeches. And how delectably tight they were, she noted, as the fly gaped. She felt her breath tighten in her throat and she squirmed a little against the bed in anticipation. ‘You’re up so very nice and early this morning, my lord,’ she purred, her eyes still on the magnificent bulge at his groin. Her lips moistened, her bones melted as she realised she had a morning of very little work ahead of her. It wasn’t until he stood naked, and his immaculate clothes were balled into one fist in a way that was likely to have given his tailor a fit, prior to them being sent with careless savagery into a corner, that she actually looked properly at his face. There was no time to ask what ailed him…
He came down on her fast, spreading her knees with his and giving her little foreplay before thrusting into her hot, wet welcome. But then she didn’t need or want preliminaries. By the time he impaled her she was practically climbing his torso with her vine-like legs, and the growl of triumph and satisfaction that tore from her as he hurtled towards release was feral-like in its huskiness.
She watched him obliquely as he stared up at the ceiling. The ache between her thighs was a delicious, throbbing reminder of what undivided attention he had shown her moments before, of what tender torture might yet be repeated, if she could but make him stay.
Maria trailed a light finger over the hand he had thrown across his eyes. ‘You are a tiger this morning, my lord. Where have you been these past two days? Not that I object, since it brings you here so eager to see me.’ And that was true, she thought. Let him get his appetite elsewhere if he must; he chose to dine right here, that was gratifyingly obvious.
Connor removed the irritating, tickling finger from his skin and wondered whether he had the energy to get up and go home; he needed to see Jason about keep putting his damned horse and carts in his stable. His stepbrother had now pawned him over two thousand pounds’ worth of cattle and carriages to ease his debts.
Not that his rough and prolonged session with Maria had exhausted him and rendered him lethargic. He’d felt drained the moment he shut the door on Rachel at Beaulieu Gardens. Drat the bitch. Even now, with the thorn in his flesh drawn, he couldn’t stop thinking of her.
As though aware that his quiet concentration, his contained irritation, was due to another woman, Maria shaped her mouth in sly determination. Gently, softly, as though not to distract him from his introspection, she straddled him, rocking her hips against his. She lowered herself, tantalising him by keeping her full, honey-tipped breasts swaying close to his face as her mouth descended to lightly touch his. It dotted kisses from his chin to his
throat, then her tongue darted to a nub of nipple as she slithered her body lower against his satin-sheathed chest muscles.
He should go back and apologise for being all those things she’d called him, he supposed. He should go back and tell the infuriating ice maiden that, but for a proper kiss, a kind word, he’d sell his own estate before he’d sell hers. And she wasn’t as frigid around him as she’d like him to think. God, he wanted her! He knew that now…he knew that too damned well. His breath hissed in through his teeth as Maria’s mouth started to work its sly sorcery. His jaw tensed, his torso parted company with the mattress, and so did the fingers of one hand. Automatically they curled against her scalp while the others spread against his eyes. But it wasn’t that hard to imagine that the silken crown beneath his palm was golden…
Chapter Nine
Sam Smith loped coltishly along, a tuneless noise whistling out through his touching front teeth. He flicked idle glances at numbers on gateposts, checking them against the bold black scripted direction on the letter he was bearing. The house he was passing had a fancy iron gate with the number sixty-two scrolled on to it in gilt. Number thirty-four was some way yet along this terrace of fine double-fronted villas that comprised Beaulieu Gardens.
His attention was suddenly caught by a familiar face beneath a peaked cap, and he raised a hand to one of his acquaintances who ran errands for one of his master’s acquaintances. The page, dressed in maroon uniform, was just entering a grassy oasis enclosed within railings in the middle of the road, to walk his mistress’s little Pomeranian dog. Sam eyed the dainty canine on the end of the lead with contemptuous distaste as it skittered over the cobbles. In Sam’s opinion, if someone wanted a pet dog, they should have a dog, not a rat. That magnificent Irish wolfhound he’d seen in a picture, hanging in the master’s study, now that was a dog. He just wished he could see the beast in the flesh, but it was kept at the master’s Irish estate. He’d like more than anything to go there. But he must bide his time, show willing and God willing, the Earl might keep him and Annie on. Then they might soon get to travel with him to Wolverton Manor across the sea. That would keep Annie good and safe from that trading justice and they could start afresh. A new life for them both, that’s what Sam wanted. What would they miss? No ma and pa to care for. Both were dead. No sweethearts to hanker after that bound them with invisible cord to their past. All they had was each other…and the Earl of Devane.
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