by North, Evie
His grip abruptly tightened, bringing her in hard against his body, and he promptly kissed her back.
Gabriella realised with a shock that this was not at all like kissing Terrence. Oh no, this was quite, quite different. Nothing tentative here. His tongue slid inside and tangled with hers, claiming her mouth, his hand cradling the back of her head so that she was unable to pull away.
Not that she wanted to do anything of the kind. In fact, she found it impossible to imagine this man as being Rattray at all. And so, she allowed her imagination to fly.
She was melting in his arms, her hands twining about his neck and twisting in the hair at his nape. He leaned in to kiss the side of her throat, his open mouth hot and wet as he tasted her. One arm was wrapped about her waist, drawing her in even closer to his body, and her thin skirts were no protection from the hard ridge beneath his breeches. Terrence had put her hand on his ‘cock’, as he called it, so she was aware of what this was, but as her investigation had barely begun, and had occurred shortly before they were discovered, things had gone no further.
Gabriella could barely think straight. Her body had heated instantly in response to his mouth. It was as if he had some secret ability to turn her from a thinking, functioning woman with a plan into a complete mess. She made a soft noise. Her breasts were aching, their peaked tips painful in the confines of her bodice, while between her thighs, in that most private of places, her flesh grew heavy and swollen.
She would have spoken his name, but he was kissing her again, and at the same time she felt his fingers unhooking the back of her gown. The bodice gaped and he tugged it down over her shoulders, enough so that he could bend his head and nuzzle at the rounded flesh of her breasts. This was new—Terrence had never ventured here. Or more correctly, she had never allowed him to. Now she gasped, hands clutching at the thin stuff of his shirt as his tongue slid across one aching peak before he drew it into his mouth.
He sucked deeply, and then rasped, “Beautiful,” as everything in her turned molten. She knew she should be setting rules, or at least persuading him to give her what she wanted after he was done with her—the house in London for instance. Instead, she was completely out of her depth and struggling just to keep breathing.
In another moment she would have been on her back on top of his bed, with the heavy welcome weight of him between her thighs. Her restless hands put paid to that. Sliding them up toward his shoulders she found a bulky wrapping enclosing his upper arm, and when he sucked her nipple even deeper into his mouth, the pleasure was such that she inadvertently squeezed.
He grunted in pain and jerked back, out of her reach.
Suddenly alone in the darkness she swayed, trembling. “Are you hurt?” Her voice was louder than she meant. She reached out a hand toward the shadow that was him, just as someone knocked loudly on the door.
“Hawley! Open up! I know you’re in there! Open up, damn you!”
She knew that voice. Was she having a nightmare? Because how else could Lord Rattray be shouting from outside the room when he was here with her? She backed further away from the man she had just been kissing, trying to repair her clothing, and stumbling over that same object she’d tripped on before.
“Lord Rattray?” her voice wavered. “But—”
The door behind her was flung open and the lamplight fell on the figure of the man before her. She gaped. He certainly wasn’t Lord Rattray, and indeed she wondered how she could ever have imagined he was! This man was taller and broad shouldered, his dark hair loose about a face that was lean and very handsome. Amused pale eyes stared into hers and she felt their effect to the tips of her toes.
Lord Rattray strode forward, furious, and grabbed her arm. He hauled her roughly behind him, and off balance as she was, Gabriella couldn’t stop him. It was as if he was protecting her virtue, which under the circumstances seemed rather bizarre.
“Get your hands off Miss Jones,” Rattray said, wig askew.
The stranger laughed, a throaty sound that held more than a hint of danger to it.
For an instant Gabriella thought Rattray was going to have an apoplexy. She stepped out from behind him as he roared, “You young scoundrel! How dare you try to seduce this innocent young woman!”
The stranger’s gaze slid past Rattray to Gabriella, and his expression was droll. She felt her flushed cheeks get even hotter. They both knew it was she who had taken the first steps in this seduction, and he had willingly followed.
The man named Hawley spoke now, his voice low and husky and very definitely that of a gentleman. “Good evening again, Rattray. What are you doing here with Miss, eh . . Jones, was it?” He looked to her for confirmation.
Gabriella nodded jerkily.
He smiled and turned back to Lord Rattray. “What are you doing here with Miss Jones, Rattray? I recall that earlier you were very keen to secure this room. Was that because you were planning an assignation?”
Gabriella could see his lordship trembling with rage, or at least she assumed it was rage. “I will have you know, Hawley, I am saving this girl from the consequences of her own foolish actions. She was caught in the arms of her employer’s son and was dismissed. I, sir, am her only true friend!”
It was a lie but before Gabriella could respond, Mr Hawley’s gaze rested upon her again, speculatively, and this time she couldn’t meet his eyes. She remembered what she had said to him as she entered the room, and although kissing a stranger in the dark was not something a respectable man would do, she could understand how he might think her willing. Especially when she had been more than eager to kiss him back. She didn’t want to think about him kissing her breasts, she wasn’t even sure how that had happened.
He had called her ‘beautiful’ but right now he was considering whether or not she was the sort of immoral woman who would happily throw herself at any man. For some reason she didn’t want Mr Hawley to believe that. Her plans to use Lord Rattray as he intended to use her suddenly seemed revolting and wrong. Why did she ever think she could live such a life?
Now Mr Hawley would surely despise her and tell her to go, and she had nowhere to go. Her emotions plummeted until it felt as if winter had crept into the room. Hawley would hand her over to Rattray and close the door with relief, because she was nothing to him. In her experience that was what people did when faced with a situation that demanded too much of them.
Which was a shame, because despite the heat of desire from his lips and hands, despite the molten trembling deep inside her, or perhaps because of it, Mr Hawley had made her feel cherished. When he kissed her and held her, she had felt as if this stranger in the darkness might mean something to her.
And now he was going to turn his back on her as if she was an unwanted kitten.
3
MADDOX
Maddox rubbed at the ache in his arm as he frowned at the older man. Rattray was up to something and, from what he knew of his lordship’s dubious dealings with women, it couldn’t be good. He’d heard the whispers. Men like him played at being kind, upstanding citizens when all they really did was use their power and position for their own self-gratification.
“Well, Rattray,” he mocked, “we both know that’s a lie. You never do anything unless it gains you an advantage. If you’re helping Miss Jones, then I have no doubt it is for some nefarious reason.”
“Preposterous!” the man blustered. “How dare you, Hawley, castigate me for bad behaviour! You and your brothers are notorious scoundrels. If it wasn’t for your father, you would all be carrion for crows by now.”
“Is that so?” Maddox smiled despite his simmering anger, knowing it annoyed the other man. How dare Rattray suggest his brothers would be better off at the end of a rope? “Let us ask Miss Jones’s opinion on the matter. What brought you here tonight, Miss Jones?”
Maddox tried to see her expression, but she had turned so that he could only see a slice of her face. All the same, he could tell she was blushing. And if what Rattray had said was true, the
n he understood her embarrassment. The woman seemed rather accident prone. If not for his earlier epiphany, he might even have left her to her fate—although the memory of the warm curves in his arms and her lush lips and lusher breasts, tempted him far more than he wanted to admit. She had taken him by surprise, just when he’d been thinking he deserved a willing woman, and he’d fallen back into his old ways.
He supposed he could still turn his back on her and the unpleasant Rattray. And yet he’d made the decision to be a better man, so wouldn’t this be the ideal opportunity to put that theory into practice?
Miss Jones needed saving. Ergo, Maddox the newly minted hero would save her. Although this time, he reminded himself, he wasn’t going to fight any duels.
“Lord Rattray has employed me to be his secretary,” she said at last. “He is going to Paris on a business matter and requires me to write letters for him.” Her voice was melodic and sweet. Innocent, Maddox would have said, if he hadn’t known better. “I am presently without work and he said he wished to help me. He gave me the directions of this inn, and the room where I was to meet with him. That was why I was…” She took a breath. “That is why I am here now.”
“Miss Jones,” Maddox began patiently. “Do you think it is a normal part of being Lord Rattray’s secretary that he should also arrange for an assignation in this inn in the middle of the night?”
There was no answer to that and he knew it. All the same, he ignored the continuing throbbing in his injured arm, waiting patiently as Miss Jones and Rattray exchanged glances. Rattray didn’t want her to answer, he was frowning a warning, and for a moment Maddox thought she would heed him.
And then she spoke in a desperate rush, as if she needed to get the words out before Rattray could stop her.
“I was a governess and I was dismissed without a reference or any hope of another position. I had nowhere to go. My employers believed I was seducing their son and although I tried to explain it was he who was seducing me, they didn’t believe me. Lord Rattray happened to be there at the time and offered to help.” This time her eyes flashed as they turned on his lordship. “I wanted to believe that what he was proposing was honest and above board but in my heart I knew that was a lie. I felt I truly had no choice but to agree to whatever he wished and make the best of it,” she added, her voice full of shame and anger. “Even though I knew the position he was offering me involved—”
“Fucking,” Maddox said lightly.
Rattray growled his disgust, and Miss Jones turned her big eyes upon him. She bit down on the fleshy part of her bottom lip, and Maddox felt a hot blade of lust slice through him.
“Well that’s what it was, surely?” Maddox continued. “Or are you going to tell me you love her, man?”
Rattray was still blustering but there was a look in his eyes not unlike that of a rat in a trap. Miss Jones moved a step closer to Maddox, as if he was the better of the two options, and he felt an unexpected sense of satisfaction. Perhaps she thought him a hero after all? And then he noticed the way her breasts filled out her bodice, and the curls of dark hair that framed her pretty face, and the lust still lingering from before returned with a vengeance.
Well, he was not a hero, certainly, to think thoughts like that. But perhaps he was good enough. He pushed down those feelings and met her eyes, finding them dark and full of doubt.
She was making up her mind about him.
Ordinarily, were they alone together, he would pounce now, seduce her into his arms and his bed. Not that he was a Rattray who needed to lie to a woman to get her to give herself to him. He had never found that necessary. Women came to him because he was charming and attractive and they liked what he did to them. Did that make him a villain? He hadn’t thought so, but in his new role as would-be hero he needed to exercise some modicum of restraint.
“His lordship said I should be grateful for his offer,” Miss Jones said, and shot Rattray another dark look, as though being closer to Maddox gave her the courage to do so. “He said I would be writing letters for him, but his servant informed me the position was more about…”
She bit her lip again, before the words once again rushed out of her, as if she was burning her bridges and knew it. “About lying on my back in his bed.”
The tension in her face and body made Maddox aware of just how much she was betting on him to save her from her present situation. Or maybe, he thought, glancing at Rattray, she no longer cared, and just wanted to escape Rattray’s clutches at any cost.
“Delightful,” Maddox said. “What have you to say to that, your lordship?”
Rattray was grinding his teeth. “This is all nonsense! She agreed to work for me. I didn’t have to force her to say yes. She’s no virgin, I know that for a fact. They were at it when they were caught.”
Gabriella gasped and stared at him in amazed fury. “We were not! He was kissing me, that was all. I am a virgin!”
Maddox wished she hadn’t said that. Now he was thinking about his friend Lawrence, and their wager to bed as many females as they could. Lawrence had devised a scale and points were given for the various types of females, from a commonplace unmarried milkmaid through to the wife of a noble. But the highest points were always allotted for a virgin The two men had even run a book at their club to the amusement of their friends and the other members. Not exactly heroic behaviour.
Rattray didn’t seem to realise he had already lost the fight. He carried on, spewing out a description of the scene he had been privy to between his secretary and the elder son, going into detail, most of it unnecessarily lurid. When he finally came to a halt he was breathing heavily, as if recounting the moment had stirred him sexually. It was only then that he seemed to notice how Miss Jones was staring at him in angry humiliation.
Maddox raised an eyebrow. “I think you should leave now, old chap.”
At first Rattray refused, but Maddox could see he knew the game was up.
“Why did she come here if she didn’t want what I offered?” he demanded, even as he was backing toward the door. “Ask her that, Hawley!”
“I’ll be sure to, Rattray.” He wiggled his fingers. “Goodbye now.”
There was more teeth grinding and protest but a moment later he was gone. The door closed, leaving them in near darkness once more.
Maddox searched for a candle on the table by the bed and lit it. The flare of the wick made him think of something else he wanted to ask her, and he turned to face her. She was in the middle of the room, standing very still. He suspected she might start to weep but as if to prove him wrong she lifted her chin and stared back at him with admirable courage.
“Why did you come into the room in darkness?” he asked her. “Why didn’t you bring a candle? Or leave the door open?”
“Because I didn’t want to see him,” she admitted in a dull voice. “I knew it had to be done, but if it was done in darkness… I thought I could pretend he was someone else.”
Maddox paused. “The elder son perhaps?”
At that she shook her head. “No, not Terrence. I spoke the truth about him. He tried to seduce me and then wouldn’t stand up for me when his parents found us. At least Lord Rattray was honest in his desire to debauch me.”
Maddox tried not to clench his fists, because right now all he wanted was to go and find Rattray and beat him senseless. Already he felt protective of the young woman before him, but he also wanted to take her in his arms and begin kissing her all over again. Perhaps, he thought unhappily, he and Rattray were not so different after all.
4
GABRIELLA
The candle light allowed her to see him better now and what she could see made her hold her breath. He was younger than she’d thought at first, and so much handsomer. His hair was darker and it hung loose about his face, the ends just brushing against his shoulders, and those shoulders were broad beneath the rumpled white cloth of his shirt. The thin cords that held the shirt together at his throat were untied and he wore no neckcloth. She could s
ee part of his chest when he moved.
Her gaze slid down over that chest despite herself, down his lean body to his narrow waist and hips, and the strong thighs outlined by his tan breeches. This man was beyond attractive, a specimen of creature she had only ever dreamed about, if she thought he existed at all. Looking at him made her heart beat faster and her skin prickle with the sort of need Terrence Laurel had initiated in her during their clandestine lessons.
Gabrielle swallowed and wondered whether she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire, for a man like that no doubt knew all too well how they appeared to others, and would be accustomed to taking advantage of it.
He poured a goblet of wine from a decanter that rested on the same table as the candlestick and held it out to her. No one had ever poured her wine before, nor had she any recollection of drinking it, but despite her doubts it seemed impolite to refuse.
“Thank you.”
He poured another and then lowered himself carelessly onto the only chair, nodding at the bed. “Sit down,” he said. It sounded more like an order than a request, despite the soft huskiness of his voice.
Gabrielle sat, perching very carefully on the edge of the mattress. She cradled the wine in her hands and wondered what was going to happen next. She rather thought she would be wise to get up and walk away, but the question was the same as before: Where would she go? Back to the orphanage was one option, but there was no certainty that they would take her. Not with her dismissal and the scandal with the Laurels—and there was no use pretending they would not hear about it.
Those who ran the orphanage might consider her a bad influence on the other girls, no matter how she tried to explain what had really happened. And the truth was she had spent time with Terrence and allowed him to take liberties she’d known at the time were wrong. He might have tried to seduce her, but she had been a willing participant.
