by Mia Marlowe
She pushed out of the crowded kitchen and down the dark hall toward a better lit T, where the hall ran perpendicularly in both directions. Now, if she could avoid being seen in Jane's horrible homespun by anyone she knew, she just might make it through the evening.
Jane stared at the gilt ceiling, her vision going in and out of focus. A fresco of nude little cupids cavorted above Lord Hartwell's bed. She'd convinced Ian to let her remain more or less fully clothed, but her soul was stripped bare as the naughty cherubs.
Ian's naked body was stretched out beside her, his hardness rocking a slow knock against her hip. He'd parted the thin chemise enough to free her breasts and was doing totally wicked things to them with his mouth. A small voice in her head whispered that this was madness, but Jane wouldn't stop him. Couldn't. No more than she could fly.
“Janie, love, have ye any notion how fine ye are?” He drew a slow circle around one of her aching nipples with the tip of this tongue.
She gasped at the zing of pleasure that streaked from her breast to her womb. He rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger and she arched her back reflexively. The man knew how to make her want.
“Say ye're mine,” Ian prodded.
With what she knew she still must do this evening, Jane couldn't bring herself to lie. “I belong to myself,” she said between gasps.
“Do ye? Perhaps I'll have to persuade ye different.” To prove his point, he trailed his fingertips down past her ribs, over the mound of her belly, and hiked up her gown. His thick fingers found the lacy slit in her pantaloons and played with the curls between her legs.
The ache grew deeper. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out as she crossed her ankles and clamped her thighs together, trapping his hand. He didn't try to free it, but he couldn't torment her with it either.
‘Not fair,” he said.
“Not fair? You're the one who forced me to come up here with you.”
“I'll not force you now. But open to me, love. I'll make you glad you did.”
When she didn't budge, he bent to nuzzle her nipple, sending another jolt of longing to her core. Her legs parted of their own accord.
His fingers slid deep into her wetness. Equal parts delight and despair shivered through her. He stroked her, teasing, featherlight touches. She raised her hips to meet him. His blessed hand stopped moving and settled over her hot mound, just holding her. She throbbed in an agony of need. Someone whimpered. She was too far gone to feel shame when she realized it was her.
His hand moved again, his fingers circling and stroking, whipping her into aching fury. “Admit ye're mine, girl.”
His lips closed over her nipple, suckling in rhythm with his hand. His fingers danced over her flesh. Helpless little sounds escaped her throat. Jane's breath hissed over her teeth. The wanting was so sharp-edged, she fisted Lord Hartwell's fancy counterpane with both hands, her eyes squeezed shut.
Then Ian stopped. Her eyes flew open. Her body screamed in frustration, but he left her throbbing with heat He withdrew his hand and sat up.
“Say it.”
She shook her head, not trusting her voice. If she spoke at all it would lead to pleading and she couldn't bear that.
“Can ye not? Then I'll try again,” he said, lowering his head to nip again at her breast. “Do ye no’ love me?”
“You know I do.”
“I belong to you, love. I'll not deny it.” He kissed her neck, teasing her earlobe with his tongue, while his fingers found that special spot that threatened to unravel her again. Her body shuddered with anticipation. “Try again. Are ye mine?”
Only all I am. He moved down between her legs and kissed her, open-mouthed. His tongue took over for his talented fingers.
“I... have mercy!” she gasped, propping herself on her elbows.
“There's none in me.” Ian looked up to meet her gaze for a moment, then returned to savaging her with his lips, teeth, and tongue.
She was losing herself. Bit by bit, little pieces of her were breaking off and floating away. Ian, too. With each of his growls of need, she sensed him letting go, releasing his tight rein on himself and joining her in this madness.
They were creating a special place together where there was no right or wrong, where there was only the dance of light and insanity of sensation, of need and heat and blessed friction. Of warm skin gliding on silk and fevered kisses. Of—
Ian moved up and slid his full length home.
A pinch of pain lanced her, then disintegrated in the bliss of holding him inside her. “Oh, Ian.”
Jane had led such a controlled existence 'til now. Do this. Don't go there. Touch not. She accepted that the circumstances of her birth had denied her certain things. Now unbridled life roared in her veins and she welcomed it.
No one would deny her here. There was no one else in this place apart, none but they two. She wrapped her legs around him, drawing him farther into their private world of push and pull, rise and fall.
“Say ye are mine, love,” he urged, thrusting deep with each word. Then he stopped and raised himself on his elbows to look down at her. “Say it. Even if it's a lie.”
She was so close to some unseen edge. One more time, just one, and she'd unravel completely, like a spindle of yarn tossed across the floor, whipping free.
“I am yours, Ian Michael MacGarrett.” She rocked her pelvis, pressing her sensitive spot hard against him. The contractions began. She convulsed around him, urging him to join her. He moved with her. She bucked beneath him, holding him tight and wishing she'd never have to let him go.
“I'm yours,” she repeated. She didn't care if he used her words against her later. “Body and soul, bone and breath.”
A groan escaped his lips. Ian's body stiffened and he poured his seed into her, hot and steady, shuddering with the force of his release. Then he settled his cheek between her breasts and lay still as a dead man, except that his breath feathered warmly over her tight nipple.
“I am yours.” She pressed a kiss on the crown of his tousled head. “And it is no lie.”
Chapter Eleven
Jane slid her fingertips along the indentation of Ian's spine. His breathing was so slow and even, she began to suspect he'd fallen asleep. She didn't care. Their bodies were no longer joined, but she still reveled in his weight on her.
She sighed in contentment. All her joints felt loose and she suspected she'd be a little sore in the morning. It didn't matter. She wouldn't trade this moment for—
The strains of a waltz drifted up to her ear.
“Oh, no!” She squirmed and Ian rolled off her. Jane scrambled from the bed, pulling her chemise top closed and knotting the lace tie. She fastened the buttons marching down the front of her gown and toed on her slippers. Thank God she'd insisted on remaining more or less clothed.
Ian sat up on the bed, his legs thrown over the side. “What the—”
“I must go.”
One look at him almost broke her resolve. Broad shouldered, deep-chested with the slightest dusting of dark hair whorled around his brown nipples—Jane sighed and yanked her gaze from him. There was no help for it. The last waltz was playing. Jane ran to the mirror in the corner of Lord Hartwell's chamber, trying to finger-comb her coiffure back into some semblance of order.
She could hear the music more clearly now. How many bars was that? Eight? Sixteen already gone?
“Where do ye think ye're going?”
“To accept Lord Eddleton's proposal.” She strode toward the door.
He beat her there and splatted a thick palm against the English oak. “Jane, I beg ye. Dinna do this.”
“I gave my word.” She tugged on the handle but Ian held the door fast.
“And what of your word to me? Does that mean nothing?” Barely bridled anger rolled off him in scalding waves.
“I'm still yours. Now more than ever.” She put a palm to his cheek and his black scowl softened. “But this is something I must do for—”
“For Lord Somerville,” he finished.
“Yes, and for Sybil, too. Don't forget. If not for her needing to run off from time to time, neither of us would be able to read or write.”
“Sybil was a selfish, spoiled b—” He caught himself, drawing his lips tight. The joy of literacy was obviously the last thing on Ian's mind. “She dinna do it out of the kindness of her heart.”
“So you won't let me do this for her out of the kindness of mine?” She slid her palm down to his bare chest. The warmth of his flesh called to her and she almost gave answer.
“If Eddleton lays a hand on ye—”
“He won't,” she assured him. “A gentleman doesn't compromise a woman he intends to marry.”
“Hmph!” Ian's mouth turned up in a wicked grin. “Guess that makes me no gentleman.”
“No, thank heaven!” She arched a brow at him. There was another backhanded marriage proposal in there somewhere, but she didn’t have time to fish for it now. She stood tiptoe to peck his cheek. “Now let me go. And get yourself back into Charlie's livery before someone catches you here in the altogether.”
“Ye dinna want me to frighten the upstairs maid?”
“I don't want you to anything the upstairs maid,” Jane said with mock sternness, before she slipped out the door and down the dim hallway.
“
Is that a waltz?” Eddleton asked between gasping breaths.
“Why? Do you need music to keep the rhythm going?” Lady Darvish asked, grasping his buttocks and pulling him in deeper. “I'll hire a quartet full-time then, Bert! One-two-three, one-two-three...”
Jane was running now. It was like a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake! Hartwell House was so huge and the hallways so convoluted, she couldn't find the head of the staircase they had come up. She couldn't even hear the music any longer. She skittered to the end of the hall and started trying doors. Finally one opened onto a dimly lit back staircase and she dove down it at breakneck speed.
“There's no door,” she said in despair when she reached what should have been the second floor, the level of the ballroom. The staircase was obviously reserved solely for the use of those who served on the family's floor, so there was no need for another exit. She put an ear to the wall. Faintly, she heard the whine of violins. “There's still time.”
She turned and continued downward. “This staircase has to end somewhere.”
“Careful with that, my good man,” Giovanni said as he handed his top hat to Lord Hartwell's porter. “The beaver, she does not like to be crushed.”
“Of course, milord,” the servant said, bowing deeply. “Lord Hartwell is in his study with several other members of the House of Lords. Whom shall I tell him is calling?”
“The Count of Montferrat.” Giovanni flared his nostrils with aristocratic disdain, as if noticing for the first time that a grand fete was in progress. “But do not trouble his lordship. I can hear he has a small entertainment under way. Perhaps I should return at a later time.”
“Oh, no, milord, he'd not want a gentleman of quality such as yourself turned away. Not one who came all the way from...”
“Tuscany,” Giovanni supplied helpfully.
“That near Wales, is it?” the porter asked.
“Near enough.”
Giovanni spied Sybil out of the corner of his eye. The little minx was scurrying toward the main staircase as if her knickers were on fire. She was tugging on her second glove. When she reached the foot of the steps, she cast a furtive glance each way, her gaze bouncing over Giovanni as if she didn't recognize him.
Did fine clothes really change a man that much?
She started in the direction of the music, nearly taking the steps two at a time. Then she seemed to catch herself and slowed to a more sedate pace. She looked like sin with feet swaying in that scarlet gown.
“I believe I see someone with whom I am... well acquainted,” Giovanni said. “Tell his lordship I am at his disposal after he has finished with his other guests.”
He didn't wait for the porter's murmured “Yes, milord” as he hurried after his wayward lover. He caught up to Sybil before she reached the first landing.
“Well met, my Lady Sybil,” he said, snatching up her hand and bowing over it correctly, when he wanted nothing more than to scrape his teeth against her perfumed knuckles. “I hope you have saved a dance for me.” Then he lowered his voice to a furious whisper, because the porter was gawking up at them with deep interest. “Why not cut out my heart with my own palette knife, cara mia? It would be less cruel.”
Her hazel eyes registered shock.
“Si, it is me.” Sybil had never suspected his locked trunk held velvets and gold brocade. Giovanni turned back to the porter. “The lady and I are old friends and have much to... how you say... catch down on? Is there such a place where we may not be disturbed?”
“His lordship's library. Back down on this level. Round that corner. Second door on the right,” the porter said. “If it please you, milord, I could have a bit o' rum punch sent in for you and the lady's refreshment.”
“No need,” Giovanni said, as he grasped Sybil's elbow and was pleased by her little squeaking gasp. “The Lady Sybella's company, she is refreshment enough.”
The real Sybil picked her way through the labyrinthine corridors leading from the kitchen to the showier parts of Lord Hartwell's grand manor. Jane's homespun was scratchy against her skin as she walked.
The halls were better lit in this part of the house, but dark doorways led off on either side. For a moment, Sybil fancied she was creeping past the open maws of slumbering beasts.
“That's what I get for bedding an artist,” she muttered. “More imagination than a body needs.”
She could hear the sound of music one floor above. In the ballroom, the string quartet would be competing with the low rumble of myriad conversations, clinking crystal and the swish of silk.There was the grand foyer ahead, with the porter leaning indolently against the wall. She quickened her pace.
A footman was coming down the grand staircase, moving quietly as a cat, his gaze focused on the porter.
He doesn't want to be seen, Sybil thought, wondering if the man was making off with a pair of Lord Hartwell’s diamond studs. She squinted at him. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
He's wearing Somerville livery, but he's not Edward or Charles, Sybil realized suddenly. Even though all footmen tended to look alike, surely she'd have remembered that handsome face and broad-shouldered frame.
The floor creaked under her step and his gaze shot to her. A smile lit the man's face like a sunrise.
“Jane!” He abandoned stealth and bounded down the rest of the stairs in a couple of leaps. “Janie, me love, I know ye enjoyed wearing that borrowed finery, but believe me, ye shine everyone else down in your own sweet things. I knew ye'd see reason, lass.”
Suddenly Sybil was in the large man's embrace. His lips covered hers in a deep kiss. She put up a token struggle, but his kiss was far from unpleasant, so she decided to relax and enjoy it.
He'll have to come up for air sometime.
When he did, she ran her tongue over her bottom lip and said, “Well, that was interesting, but I think you should know I'm not Jane.”
“What are you two doing here?” the porter demanded, leaving his post to close the distance between them. “If you're not in service, get you back to the kitchen. No, no. We can't have you wandering the halls. Take the back way.”'
The porter pulled open a low-slung door along the side of the staircase to reveal a dim, narrow route disappearing beneath it. “And don't let me catch you in the public areas again or I'll toss you both into the snow myself.”
Sybil grasped the handsome footman's hand and pulled him into the small space after her. Once, when she was ten, she had managed to sneak out of the most boring piano recital in human history and discovered the door beneath these main stairs. She'd spent the entire evening wandering the secret places of Hartwe
ll House and no one was ever the wiser.
“This might be just the thing for finding your Jane without being seen,” she whispered.
The door closed behind them, casting them into dimness, broken only by thin shafts of light knifing through the cracks in hidden doors.
“Then you must be Lady Sybil.”
“Brilliant deduction,” she said as she moved down the narrow space. “Never let it be said Somerville doesn't hire the brightest and best. Come. There's a dumbwaiter hidden in the library. We can use it to get up to the ballroom level.”
A man's voice carried through the thick library door, his tone angry and growling. Eddleton couldn't make out all the words, but he suspected some of them were foreign. Pity he hadn't paid more attention while he was on his Grand Tour. Once he had picked up the best way to invite himself into a lady's boudoir, his interest in other languages waned.
“Someone's coming,” he whispered, pulling back and adjusting his small clothes.
“But we're not done yet, Bert,” Lady Darvish complained. “Leastways I'm not.”
The crystal doorknob jiggled and began to turn.
“Quick! Through there.” Eddleton picked Lady Darvish up, clamping a hand over her mouth, and scuttled toward the curtained alcove where French doors led out onto a terrace. The last thing he needed was to be caught in flagrante delicto with the Black Widow of Wembley Street on the night he plighted his troth to Sybil Somerville.
Just as he yanked the draperies closed, a man and woman stormed into the room. Eddleton peeked through a slit in the curtain.
And recognized the red gown. His nearly betrothed, b'Gad! With another man. Why, he ought—
Lady Darvish squirmed in his arms and grabbed one of his hands. After she slid it into the top of her bodice, she settled and gave him a wink and a shrug.
Eddleton sighed and began toying with her tight little nipple. Anything to keep the woman quiet...
