Connor drew back slightly. Often when people spoke of the book, they focused on the titillation, the scandal, the wickedness…but these two couples had, both separately and together, explained to him that it had a deeper meaning.
And a part of him swelled with pride to know that a project he had been part of had been able to have a true impact on someone. He only wished he could share that feeling with the person who deserved to have it most…the Lady.
She must want to know that she had been such an integral part in someone else’s life. That so many people loved and appreciated her.
Well, most people. He frowned as he thought of the standoffishness of the duchess that night. Why in the world had she been invited to join their party when she clearly thought so little of him?
This was as good a time as any to find out.
“What of the duchess?” he asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “She seems to despise the book, despite what you claim is its positive impact on her friends.”
Northfield frowned. “Yes, Her Grace does display that, doesn’t she? It’s strange, for she has never been anything but positive about the book.”
“And yet she was somewhat aggressive toward you,” Lyndham said, yet another apology in his voice.
“Perhaps that is the issue,” Connor said, thinking back to Grace’s interactions with him at supper. At times she had been interested in him; at others, forward and bold in her accusations. “Perhaps she simply does not like me. Could she view me as an interloper, not good enough to mingle with those with titles?”
He asked the question with a brittle tone, for the idea of her being so judgmental to him made him feel…frustrated.
Lyndham shook his head immediately. “That is the furthest thing from Grace’s attitude on the subject. She is likely the most liberal-minded of anyone in Society, I assure you.”
Connor nearly breathed a sigh of relief, even though this information didn’t change the duchess’s strange reaction toward him, nor his unexpected ones toward her.
Still, he was determined not to let her friends know of his interest, so he shrugged. “Then it is a great mystery,” he said instead.
Lyndham nodded. “Indeed. And one you will have an opportunity to solve as we should rejoin the ladies.”
Connor finished the last sip of his port before he rose to his feet and followed Lyndham and Northfield from the room. But as he trailed just behind the chatting men, he couldn’t help thinking of Grace.
And wondering if she were truly a riddle he should solve or a danger he should avoid entirely.
Chapter Four
“The best kisses are stolen kisses.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures
Grace moved away from the chatting group in the middle of the parlor and stood at the sideboard for a moment, staring at the sherry she had come here to pour for herself. Only she didn’t want another drink. Her mind was already too cloudy as it was, muddied by Connor’s being here with her, by his sitting amongst her friends like he belonged and talking about the same kinds of things they would speak of to any person.
But she wanted to scream out that he wasn’t just any person! That he couldn’t be there!
But that would do her no good. Instead she tossed a brief glance at her friends and then slipped through the open veranda door onto the balcony that overlooked the dark garden below.
A moment of air was what she needed. At the very least, the brisk feel of it across her skin would shake her from these strange thoughts.
Only it didn’t.
She rested her arms against the cold, rough stone of the balcony edge and sighed. “Idiot,” she muttered.
“Are you referring to yourself or to me?” came a voice behind her. A voice with lilting Scottish undertones that made her thighs clench and unwanted wetness pool in her sex.
She turned and faced Connor, watching as he slowly closed the terrace door and created a privacy she didn’t wish to share with him. Well, she did wish to share it, but she couldn’t. Shouldn’t.
“You followed me?” she asked, trying to maintain that haughty tone she had begun to use with him, hoping it would be a shield so he wouldn’t see the truth.
He nodded once. “I would be remiss if I didn’t. After all, I seem to have greatly offended you, Grace.”
He said her name and she should have corrected him, perhaps even set him in his place where he belonged, but instead she stopped breathing. Her name coming from his lips was seduction in itself. Thanks to his accent, he rolled the R in Grace, and it felt like he had just rolled his tongue over her flesh.
She could hardly breathe as she stood there, mutely staring at him.
He moved a step closer. “Or is it the book itself which offends you? I assure you, you would not be the first to feel that way.”
She parted her lips, but no sound would come, and he stepped closer again.
“Or perhaps your friends are wrong when they say you could never be outraged by a man with as lowly a situation as my own mixing amongst those of power and privilege.”
Grace jolted at that accusation and at the expression in his emerald eyes when he said it. She saw a brief glimpse of the judgment he must have endured during his life. Her heart ached with empathy for him and shame in herself.
Now she was the one that took the step toward him, and suddenly he was so close that his body heat warmed her and she could smell his skin. “Mr. Sheridan—”
“Connor.”
He smiled, making that dimple pop in his cheek yet again. Her body responded accordingly and inappropriately, and she prayed that the heavy fabric of her bodice wouldn’t betray the fact that her nipples were now hard.
She swallowed past a suddenly dry throat and began again. “Mr. Sheridan, I assure you neither the book you have edited nor your person has caused offense to me. Certainly your position in Society means nothing to me. If I have led you to believe otherwise, then I truly apologize for my bad behavior.”
He drew back in surprise at that answer. Another man might have just accepted the apology and gone back inside to leave her to her reverie, but she could see he was not that man.
He was far too intelligent.
“And yet you will not look at me directly,” he mused, almost more to himself than to her. “You seem bent on avoiding me.”
She backed away, as if she could escape the line of his thinking. “No.”
“No?” He arched a brow and his green gaze seemed to drink in every angle of her face, dissecting her reactions and reading meaning into them all.
He moved another step toward her, and suddenly the wall was behind her and he was invading her space most inappropriately. Maleness and sin was in every glint of moonlight off his angular face.
“Perhaps I have read you wrong indeed,” he whispered.
He reached out and placed one finger beneath her chin. It was a simple gesture, one she didn’t want to respond to, but her body was no longer in her control. She shivered from head to toe and revealed her wanton desires to him as plainly as if she had ripped her gown open and offered herself to him right here on the terrace.
“Please,” she whispered, begging for what, she wasn’t certain. For his body against hers? For him to be the bigger person and walk away? For him to do something so she wouldn’t have to?
He tilted her chin up and lowered his mouth. There was a moment of hesitation where she could feel his breath, warm and sweet against her lips, and then he kissed her.
He brushed his lips against hers, softly, gently, but the moment she parted them slightly in surprise and pleasure, he growled deep in his throat and the word “kiss” was no longer enough to describe what he was doing. It seemed limp and empty in comparison to what was happening now.
He drove his tongue into her mouth and stroked it over hers. He dragged her body against him with a curse that was lost in her mouth and tasted every inch of her. He sucked her tongue, he drew her in, he forced her to respond.
Her body burst into life, colo
rs exploding behind her closed eyes, every nerve ending she possessed becoming hypersensitive and aware of him. Wave after wave of desire and pleasure hit her and she clutched his forearms, as if she could be kept from being swept away by anchoring herself to him.
She had never been kissed like this before. Not by the discreet lovers she had kept in the years she’d been a widow, not even by her husband, her first tutor in pleasure.
But this was Connor. And for years she had imagined what it would be like to meet him, touch him, kiss him…
She jolted at that needy thought and her eyes flew open. When she pulled back, she was surprised that he immediately released her from the pleasurable prison between his body and the wall. He stepped away, though his green eyes were dark with desire and his chest rose with gasps of air. When she allowed her gaze to flit downward she couldn’t deny that outline of what seemed to be a quite impressive erection blossoming the front of his trousers.
He obviously wanted her as desperately as she desired him. But he didn’t know her. He didn’t know the bond they shared. What explanation could he have for her apparent impact on him?
Or was she just an upper class conquest for a man of his rank?
“Connor,” she managed to whisper, then shook her head. “Mr. Sheridan.”
He smiled. “Connor.” His accent was heavier now, as if he didn’t have the self-control to tamp it down.
“Mr. Sheridan,” she repeated, blinking at him. She had nothing to say, no way to pretend this hadn’t happened and she hadn’t wanted it. She shook her head. “I-I should go. I—good night.”
Without waiting for his response, she scurried around the veranda, bypassing the door into the parlor where her friends would see her, where she would have to make explanations, and into another room where she could make her escape without being seen.
She would let Connor make her excuses. And hope that he would be discreet where she had not been.
Grace paced her chamber, her skirt twisting around her legs every time she pivoted to a new direction. She hardly noticed it, though, for her mind was too busy betraying her. Taking her back to that moment when Connor’s mouth had slanted over hers and claimed her. When she had opened herself in surrender.
She stopped walking and covered her hot cheeks with icy hands. “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” she berated herself, as if the harsh words could erase what she’d done.
They didn’t. All they made her do was relive the entire encounter again, from the moment Connor found her on the terrace, calling herself that exact same word.
Her chamber door opened and Grace spun to face her maid with a groan of relief. If Maura was here, surely she would be distracted enough not to think about what she’d done, relive what she’d done, contemplate what would happen if she did it all again.
Maura looked at her, face lined with concern, and gently closed the chamber door.
“My lady,” she said, tone benign even as she approached Grace with some caution, as if she were a wild beast.
How obvious was the upset on her face?
“I didn’t expect you home for some time,” Maura continued as she took Grace’s elbow and guided her into the dressing room attached to the bedchamber.
Grace squeezed her eyes shut. “I had a headache,” she lied half-heartedly.
Maura nodded, face clear of reaction or judgment as she began to unfasten Grace’s gown swiftly. “Is there anything else?”
Grace held her breath. Emotions were swelling inside of her, confusing thoughts she could share with no one. They made her out of control, they made her wild and reckless. But Maura, bless her, knew enough about the situation that if Grace told her the truth, she would at least understand it.
“Connor was there tonight,” she whispered.
Maura’s fingers faltered on the gown and she came around to face Grace. “Connor Sheridan?”
Grace nodded, her cheeks going hot again. “Isabel and Jacinda invited him—I think both to interrogate him about the identity of the Lady and…and…”
She could scarcely say the words, even with Maura looking at her so expectantly. She drew in a ragged breath and then murmured, “They brought him there for me. In some strange matchmaking attempt.”
Maura’s eyes went wide as saucers, but she slowly returned to her place behind Grace to finish freeing her from the suddenly stifling gown.
“If only they knew the truth about your relationship, I wonder what they would think,” Maura mused.
Grace squeezed her eyes shut. “My relationship with Connor Sheridan was only in theory, in letter, before tonight. You see, I-I—” She fisted her hands at her sides, making it difficult for Maura to glide the satin away from her upper body. “I kissed him.”
Maura gasped and Grace’s dress hit the floor in a heap. “I’m sorry,” her maid said, dropping to retrieve the gown. “I—”
“Oh, leave it, Maura,” Grace said, pacing away in her underthings. “I don’t care about the damn gown. I must tell someone. I must. But only because I trust you, Maura.”
The maid nodded, the movement jerky due to her surprise. “I think I have proven you can do that.”
“More than once,” Grace agreed. “He kissed me, I suppose that would be the more apt description. On the terrace after supper.”
Maura shook her head, watching as Grace sank, knees trembling, into a chair. She motioned for her maid to join her and Maura did so, taking a place across from Grace with hesitation.
“What led to him taking such liberties?” the maid asked.
Grace covered her face. “I don’t know. I was awful, peevish, not at all myself, and he followed me outside—I suppose to determine why I’m so hateful to him—and suddenly it was just happening. Like a dream. Like a fantasy.”
She shivered at the memory of his body heat, his taste, the way he had so thoroughly explored her mouth and left her body on fire.
“So you liked it,” Maura encouraged.
Grace flinched. She had been too obvious, and part of her wished to berate her servant and pretend she hadn’t been caught going on like a ninny about Connor.
But how fair was that? She had dragged Maura not only into the secret of her writing identity, but now into her interactions with Connor. It was her own fault she had kept her friends in the dark so she couldn’t speak to them on this issue.
She shuddered to think what Isabel and Jacinda would say if they ever knew what a lie she had lived out under their very noses.
“I liked it,” she admitted. “Oh, I did like it, Maura. It was…”
She stopped herself from saying more because there was no way she could describe what she’d felt when Connor touched her without revealing too much. She might tell Maura some things, but her first impulse was still—and would likely always be—for privacy in her feelings, her experiences.
“But what happened afterward?” her maid pressed. “If you two got along so well, why come home early?”
Grace shivered. “Because we don’t get along ‘so well’. I liked kissing him, but that doesn’t mean I like that he is suddenly amongst Society, talking about the book, talking about me. What if he says something and someone realizes who I am? What if he decides to further himself and somehow hurts me?”
“Do you think he would?”
Grace hesitated, thinking of how proud of himself Connor had seemed at supper when he talked about the book and the Lady. He obviously enjoyed playing games related to Society’s interest in her identity.
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
Maura’s expression became somber. “If he did, that could be dangerous indeed.”
Grace nodded. “Dangerous is exactly the word. Especially since Connor tells me that the Lady has received threats against her person that he never shared with me in our letters.”
Maura gasped. “Threats?”
Grace’s stomach turned. She’d been trying not to think about that fact, but when Connor mentioned it a second time that night, it had hit her hard
. Here he was flitting around in her circles, likely riling up those angry with her. One misplaced word and her house of cards could come tumbling down.
Maura shoved to her feet and gathered up the gown she had dropped, smoothing the fabric reflexively.
“Your Grace, have you thought of…thought of…”
When Maura trailed off, Grace stared at her. Her maid looked very nervous. “Yes?” she encouraged, as kindly as she could when her mind was racing.
“I only mean to say that if you kept the man close, perhaps it would allow you to know what he was saying and to whom,” Maura whispered. “Society will tire of him soon enough if he doesn’t give them what they want.”
Grace gasped as she realized what Maura was saying. “Keep him close,” she repeated softly.
The thought gave her shivers she couldn’t control. After all, she had been drawn to the man from nearly the first moment they collaborated together. Seeing him had only made her attraction stronger, and his kissing her had thrown her desire out of control.
There were many ways to keep him close, but only one that stood out in her mind. Take him as a lover.
The thought hit her in the gut and between the legs, making her sex throb with desires she had been trying to manage since the first moment she saw him across the room.
If she did that, she would have the benefit of purging herself of those needs, those wants, those desires for the man. She would have him and he would never know he was with the Lady he knew so well.
And Maura was correct. Being close to him could keep her aware of what he was doing and saying to others. She could even subtly encourage him not to say or do anything that would jeopardize her. Or put him off the track to her true identity until he bored of the game and went back to his real life.
“My lady, I didn’t mean to offend,” Maura said when Grace had been quiet for too long.
Grace pushed to her feet. “You haven’t, Maura. You’ve only given me a great deal to think about. I have always lived my life under the philosophy that I would rather regret what I’ve done than what I have left undone, and I think that applies to this situation as well.”
A Measure of Deceit Page 4
