by Eva Devon
“So, you weren’t seeking me out?”
“Of course not. Don’t be absurd.”
He inched the ribbon free, letting her mask slide from her face. And as she was bared to him, he whispered. “Pity.”
Never in her life had she felt more naked than at that moment, her mask gone. “Why?”
“I rather like the idea of you seeking me out.”
She huffed out an indignant breath. “You know, I’m not one of your silly doxies.”
“Lady Patience,” he said, dropping her mask to the ground, “not even the stupidest of men would accuse you of silliness. You are a rare creature. A beautiful creature. A creature with the most wonderful depths.”
As he paid her each compliment, he angled closer to her, leaning down, tilting his head.
Captivated entirely by the promise of what he was about to do, she did nothing to protest.
In fact, much to her own dismay, she found herself tilting her head back, allowing her body to mirror his. Allowing her breath to soften and her lips to part.
“Is that why you were following me?” she asked. “Because of my wonderful depths?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He hesitated then smiled a slow devil’s smile as he slipped the book he was reading from his coat pocket. “Because I wanted your autograph Mr. Auden.”
Chapter 8
Charles held his breath, waiting for Lady Patience’s reaction.
For a long moment, she moved not at all. She merely stood, shocked, her face unreadable even without the mask he had just divested her of. Her stunning body was still languid from the moment before when they’d been about to kiss.
It had nearly killed him to break the moment. But he didn’t wish to seduce her without her knowing that he knew.
Good God, he wanted to seduce her. Her mind was brilliant and her body? Her body was divine. He’d suspected it before, but now? Now, he’d seen her in the full regalia of the most fashionable women. He was tempted to get down on his knees again and worship again.
With her lithe figure in the high-waisted, low cut, flowing-skirted gown, she was heaven. It skimmed her body with the ease of a lover’s touch. And if he used his imagination, he might have sworn he could see every nook and shadow through the thin, yet expensive, gold embroidered, jewel encrusted fabric.
“Lady Patience?” he prompted, tempted to simply take her in his arms and seize her mouth with his own.
She licked her ruby painted lips then grabbed the book from his hand. Her suddenly frantic gaze darted over the leather binding and gold leaf title. “You? No. I—You are mistaken, sir.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” she countered loudly.
Her voice grew stronger, more determined.
“My dear woman, do not dissemble,” he contested gently. “You’re P. Auden.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“W-what evidence have you?” she sputtered.
This would be tricky but he knew that in this he had to be truthful. “A manuscript written in your hand that is currently in print.”
Her lips pressed together and her fluid frame tensed before she let out a rage-filled sound of amazement, “You went through my things?”
“A sneak remember?” he replied, hoping to diffuse her temper.
“But only in ladies’ bedrooms!” she protested.
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Apparently not.”
“What made you do it?” she demanded, her face as pale as the moon above them.
“I wished to help you,” he replied honestly.
That seemed to give her pause but then she retorted, “I didn’t want it. I told you I didn’t want it.”
“It was arrogant of me, I do realize that now.”
She groaned.
“What an arse, I must have sounded,” he said. “Offering to show your work to my publishing friends.”
She gasped, horror stricken. “That’s what you did. You showed it to someone?”
“I confess it.”
She frowned and suddenly poked his chest with her forefinger. “Did you tell them who wrote it?”
“No.”
“You swear?” she demanded, poking again.
“Indeed.”
“I ought to murder you,” she said, retracting her finger.
He rubbed his chest where she had prodded so vehemently. “Kiss me, instead,” he said softly.
She threw up a hand, her other still clutching her book. “Are you mad, Lord Charles?”
“Very likely. But you wish to.”
“What?” she prevaricated. It was clear she was in no confusion about what he’d said.
“Kiss me,” he explained in any case. And then he added, “As I do you.”
He could see it, her struggle to not deny his words.
“This is impossible,” she finally said.
“My discovery of who you are or your desire to kiss me?”
She scowled. “Both.”
“Why don’t we make the best of it?” In truth, he still wanted to help her. He was fascinated by her. She was a woman unlike any he had ever met. “Now, I know who you truly are. . . And that your exceptional books come from accurate research. Allow me to assist you.”
Again, she snorted.
“I can assist you with things that Mrs. Barton can’t,” he pointed out.
“Oh?” She folded her arms across her bosom, book still in hand. “I doubt it. She’s very skilled.”
“There are certain skills she doesn’t possess.”
She turned up her head and challenged him. “Such as?”
He paused. For a moment he was tempted to act the gentleman and escort her home, but it was that very temptation which suddenly had him yanking her into his arms.
Her book dropped to the grass.
She let out a small sound of surprise as he pulled her tightly to him. As he held her with one arm, he wove the fingers of his opposite hand into her elaborately coifed hair, tilted her head back then devoured her mouth.
Oh God. The pleasure. The perfect pleasure of her lips beneath his drained away his years of jaded ennui. He loved kissing. He’d always loved kissing but he’d done enough of it that it had no longer transported him the way it had done when he’d been a youth.
Lady Patience’s kiss stole away his reason and launched him into a sort of pleasure drunk ecstasy.
He fed her soft kiss after soft kiss and though at first she was reserved, her limbs relaxed against him in slow degrees until, at last, she was grabbing fistfuls of his coat, pulling him towards her as if she wished they could intertwine like the oak and the ivy.
This was bliss. Bloody hell. This was perfection.
Unheeded by reason, which had fled him, he kissed her with such abandon that the next thing he knew, he was tracing his mouth along the ivory column of her throat, working to the swells of her barely-covered breasts.
He kissed and nipped and savored every sweet sigh of hers as he then lowered a hand to cup her perfect bottom.
Pulling upward, he cradled her hips against his hard cock.
She let out an exclamation of surprise but not protest.
If anything, she seemed as lost in madness as he. In fact, she pressed herself to him with even deeper intensity.
’Twas as if they’d both been starving for each other, having never even known what they were hungry for all these years.
Which was absolutely ludicrous, of course.
He didn’t believe in anything at first sight except lust. . . But this didn’t feel like simple lust.
Kissing her felt like being enveloped by an inferno.
An inferno that was as marvelous as it was terrifying.
Terrifying? What the devil had made him think that?
But yes. As he kissed her breasts then began pulling up her skirts, skimming her stockings with his fingertips, he knew he was terrified. But in the most magnificent way.
He was terrified because he felt on completely unfamiliar ground with Lady Patience because she truly was unlike any woman he’d ever known and so he had no idea how to manage her.
Stroking his fingers up her thigh, he traced the line of her silk garter. How tempting to pull the tie. Instead, he slid his fingers upward, wondering if she would allow him to slip his fingers between her thighs and discover if she was hot and wet for him.
Would she allow it?
Would oh so proper, terse Lady P permit such a thing?
But then again, in this moment, she wasn’t simply Lady Patience. She was an entity entirely unknown to him. She was P. Auden, the maker of worlds, the knower of those who’d experienced the most sensual temptations and the worst of destructions. She was a creator and destroyer and adventurer all in one.
And he wanted to brand her body with his.
The feel of her beneath his hands filled him with a hunger so wild, so deep, he felt as if he were about to lose himself and that was why ever so slowly, he didn’t wait to see what she would allow.
Retreat was the wisest action here. For if he traversed too far, he had a strong feeling that he would be flung forever from her lands.
And quite frankly, he wanted to discover every hill and valley of her.
It was jarring. Women had always been his domain, but not her.
She was terra incognito and he felt like an explorer which might either be wrecked by the unknown landscape or given the most bountiful lands depending on the route he chose.
So, he would travel with care.
Deliberately, he slowly lowered his hand and placed her skirt back. He straightened his spine and gazed down into her beautiful face.
She was flushed and as drunk on their passion as he, but there was still a reserve there as if she didn’t need the mask now on the ground to hide herself. Perhaps that strange reserve was what had allowed her to be so wanton.
He wouldn’t take that from her.
He’d already forced a closeness that she clearly hadn’t wanted, discovering her secret.
Charles cupped her chin then stroked the pad of his thumb over her swollen lip. “That is what I can offer you. The skills I can show you that Mrs. Barton cannot. That your imagination cannot.”
She let out a shaking breath. “I grant you, my lord, that you have, indeed, shown me something that no one else could do.”
“It could be just the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“Allow me to show you my world. Allow me to take you deeper. Allow me take you further into the darkness that you find so fascinating.”
Fear danced suddenly in her eyes and he was certain he had said the wrong thing.
Perhaps she wished only to observe the demimonde, the half-world, from a safe distance. His offer was not for her to watch but to participate and he might have seriously misjudged her.
“Darling,” he whispered, “you needn’t be afraid.”
“Needn’t I?”
“I’ll protect you from the darkness.”
Her lips turned in a strange, knowing smile. “Ah. . . But, my lord, you are the darkness. And yes, I should like to know it better. Come what may.”
“Come what may,” he agreed and as he took her hand in his and squeezed, he felt certain he had found heaven. Or, possibly, hell. It was very difficult to tell. But he knew that after his doings with Patience, he’d never be the same again.
Chapter 9
Lady Patience sat in the opera box with her paid chaperone, Mrs. Peters, and lamented, not for the first time, that she couldn’t go out to normal places in London without a companion. Mrs. Peters was perfectly lovely company. In fact, she quite liked the older woman’s practical viewpoints and lack of foolishness.
However, there were times when she wished she didn’t have to live two such separate lives. A single young woman, even a spinster, couldn’t brazen about as a married woman. And so, she kept Mrs. Peters on hand for her visits to town.
It did beg the idea that she should simply marry to alleviate some of the rules that she was forced to follow.
And as she looked across the theater and over the audience as gilded as the surroundings, she spotted what society simply called The Duchesses.
They were all married ladies and were the most powerful married ladies of the ton. All were married to dukes. Tonight the Duchess of Darkwell, the Duchess of Hunt (Lord Charles’ sister-in-law), the Duchess of Blackburn, the Duchess of Roth and the Duchess of Aston all sat together in the head box holding as much court as any queen could do.
Lady Patience fought a sigh of envy.
They looked like they were having a very merry time.
All were dressed in flowing, verging on scandalous, gowns of the deepest jewel-toned hues. All bore jewels which had them shimmering like their own night sky. All were waving fans, gesticulating and sipping champagne as they chatted, glanced about and occasionally glanced down to the antics of the stage.
When Madam Ballantine took to the stage to sing her aria about seducing her lover by disguise, The Duchesses all paid rapt heed then burst into applause at the crescendo.
The audience took their cue and also clapped their hands together, giving a thunderous cacophony to the already loud hall.
Yes. The Duchesses were lucky, indeed.
But Lady Patience, as she continued to stare, knew that marriage could be a very risky business, indeed. That is why she’d never chanced it.
After all, the wrong fellow could sentence one to a lifetime of country living or far, far worse. A husband could potentially keep her from writing.
She let out another sigh.
“You’re staring,” Mrs. Peters said brightly. “They do look like they’re having fun though, do they not?”
She laughed then shook her own self-pity away. “Was it so very obvious? My observation?”
“My dear, if you’d stared any harder, your eyes would have fallen out of your head.”
“What a description.” It was a good thing Mrs. Peters was not an author with such blunt words. “I was envying them, it is true.”
But she needn’t wallow too long in self-sorrow. After the opera, she was meeting Lord Charles. He was going to take her to a secret gathering.
She wasn’t entirely certain as to what she’d agreed to with him.
She had a feeling he thought rather more than she did. If he thought she’d be his lover, he was mistaken.
That tryst in the garden was all she could allow. As a single woman, the risk of a child was far too great. And well, her books contained the all too tragic fates of women who had fallen in such ways.
She could never chance such a tragic end for herself or a babe.
No. No love affairs for her.
“Why don’t you marry?” asked Mrs. Peters bluntly.
“No one will have me,” she said, waggling her brows.
Mrs. Peters tsked. “Only because you offer so little encouragement to anyone. Rather you make fun of any man who tries.”
“Well, I am sorry prospects now, what with Uncle Reginald’s death.”
As far as she understood, the ton had spread the news of the loss of Barring House in a game of cards like fire through a dry hay field. She had no wish to make it widely known that she had a private income of her own. She certainly didn’t want people to question where that income came from.
The curtain to her box opened and a footman slipped in. “Lady Patience?”
“Yes?”
The tall, exceptionally handsome, young footman inclined his head. “The Duchess of Hunt would like the pleasure of your company.”
Lady Patience snapped her gaze across the gaggle of women she’d just been admiring.
The Duchess of Hunt lifted her fan and smiled then gestured with her fan for Patience to join them.
Patience resisted the urge to glance about as if the duchess were motioning to someone else.
After all, she’d never been one of the popular ladies of the ton and
The Duchesses were nothing if not popular.
Mrs. Peters, hidden by skirts and chairs, kicked her.
Yes. Kicked.
She glared at the older woman, but they did have a relationship which allowed for such a thing. Cantankerous and intelligent, Lady Patience would never have survived ton gatherings with anyone timid.
She needed someone who would give her a good kick when she disappeared into her dream worlds. . . or at present, her self-conscious thoughts.
Nodding, Patience gathered her dark skirts and followed the footman down the candlelit hall to the grandest box of them all.
She lingered outside the heavy, velvet curtain befringed with golden tassels as the footman announced her.
Girding her loins, she entered.
All her life, she’d been bold enough. But she’d been an outsider. Odd. She’d known this. It’s why, once her required seasons were done and no one had offered for her hand, she’d happily retired to the country to her books. . . And then to her research.
She was uncertain how to be Lady Patience in the society of such women because she so seldom entered society now. Oh so proper Lady Patience was someone she only trotted out when absolutely necessary. Like tonight’s visit to the opera or Lord Charles arrival at Barring House.
Most of the time, she didn’t have anyone to speak to. So she never needed to worry about what she said or how she behaved and well. . . When she went out with Mrs. Barton, she could revel in the wilder side of her nature without going too far.
As soon as she stepped into the exclusive box, she felt her mouth dry. Whatever was she going to say to these ladies? Ladies who were the rulers of the ton.
Oh dear. What if they made fun of her or patronized her? After all, she’d been the subject of gossip recently.
“Do sit down, Lady Patience,” the Duchess of Hunt said gently, her emerald fan pointing to the delicate chair beside her. “Shall I make introductions?”
“I know you all by reputation, of course,” Lady Patience replied. And of course, it was true. Who didn’t know each duchess by sight if one read a newspaper or went to any event at all in London?
“Then let us not waste time with niceties,” the Duchess of Hunt said happily.
