All's Fair in Love and Seduction

by Beverley Kendall

  Elizabeth inhaled sharply and released it on a prolonged sigh. Relief, anxiety, anticipation and heartbreak mingled in one breath.

  She ate him up with her eyes; with the sort of gluttony that brought her both pain and pleasure. She watched the way his loose limbed strides covered the floor. She devoured his fine form. Things she ought not to be doing if she possessed any sort of restraint or self-preservation.

  He stopped to greet their hostess, and something in that greeting gave the impression of warm familiarity. It was in the way Lady Templeton touched his arm and his amused laugh when the marchioness whispered something in his ear.

  Lady Templeton was incredibly lovely, blond and quite buxom, but she was old enough to be his mother. And she was married.

  Jealousy pecked with woodpecker glee at her insides. Elizabeth quickly averted her gaze from the sight of the two together, forcing herself to concentrate on Catherine, who currently carried on a conversation with Miss Dawn Hawkins.

  But try as she might, Elizabeth found it impossible to follow their conversation. Her thoughts and gaze kept drifting to a Lord Creswell, who was devastatingly handsome clad in his white cravat and black tails.

  He turned, his gaze searching the room until he found her, and there it settled. He said something to the countess and started toward Elizabeth, his long purposeful strides closing the distance between them rapidly. All this he did without once removing his gaze from her.

  Elizabeth’s heart felt as if it had scrambled into her throat. Breathing became a ridiculous chore requiring too much thought and coordination. As he drew closer, she didn’t blink fearing she’d discover this was naught but a dream.

  When he was finally standing in front of her, he bowed a formal, elegant bow and spoke her name, which came out more a verbal caress.

  “Good evening, ladies.” He dipped his head in a bow toward Catherine and Miss Hawkins. Catherine responded with a shallow curtsy and Dawn Hawkins preened.

  “Miss Smith, may I have the next dance?”

  He was requesting a dance. Or was this another game?

  Elizabeth shook her head. “My lord—”

  “I refuse to take no for an answer.” He advanced a step and now stood entirely too close.

  Elizabeth tore her gaze from his and darted a glance around. They were being watched with unabashed interest by far too many guests. Catherine nodded, a barely discernible forward tip of her head, silently communicating that a refusal would be most unadvisable.

  Not if Elizabeth didn’t want to cause a scene. And she refused to enter into another game of who would blink first with the viscount.

  Her acceptance came silently, a white, silk gloved hand on his proffered arm. With that contact, instant heat coursed through her, jolting her. She might have pulled off her glove—appropriately white in color—and waved it over her head to signal her surrender had her surrender been wholly complete. This was a dance, nothing more.

  Much in the same way Buckingham was merely a house and Victoria a simple woman who happily took up residence there.

  The viscount kept his gaze fixed on her as he escorted her to the center of the dance floor where they joined the couples lined up to commence a quadrille.

  The music rang out, setting more than three dozen couples into synchronized motion. They moved smoothly and in such harmony one would think they’d danced together for years. But the act of making love, was that not its own lusty, hip pounding, heart thudding dance?

  His fingers curled around hers, possessive and firm. Their eyes met, his smoldering with an intensity that shortened her breaths and set her heart a pounding. She blinked and looked away.

  After several minutes, when her curiosity would go unappeased a moment longer, she asked, “What are you doing?”

  His mouth quirked to one side. “I am dancing. Is my technique so poor?”

  They came apart. He twirled her twice. He circled her wide and then drew her close. His dancing was impeccable, as well he knew.

  “Are you forgetting you don’t like me? You believe I’m one of those lying conniving Smiths.” She forced a smile but spoke with a soft savageness she hoped would wound him the same way he’d wounded her.

  “Believe me…I like you more than well enough.” He regarded her mouth as his thumb furtively stroked the top of hers.

  She felt the intimacy of his touch through her glove. Needles of pleasure spread throughout her like heat on flesh numb from cold. The resurgence of feeling relief, joy and pain.

  Before she embarrassed herself by doing something as silly as wilting to the floor, the dying strains of the cello signaled the end of the dance. Saved.

  “Shall we?” Derek proffered his right arm. She accepted, momentarily grateful to have something solid to keep her upright.

  Her crutch proved to be the very thing she required a crutch for. But she didn’t remove her hand. More of that gluttony she suffered from.

  For the area skirting the dance floor, standing room was at a premium. Derek handled the swell of guests with ease, maneuvering them expertly until the press of bodies thinned, where one could breathe.

  They passed a surprisingly well-dressed Lady Danvers, who refused to meet her gaze, which was odd as Elizabeth had never seen the dowager looking so ill at ease. Since the evening in the garden, the dowager had cornered her at several events slyly inquiring about the upcoming announcement. The dowager had been like a cat toying with a mouse certain that one of her swipes would draw blood.

  Elizabeth wasn’t quite certain when she realized Derek was leading her farther and farther away. Where guests no longer surrounded them but were now voices at their backs, and the surroundings weren’t so brightly lit. But once she realized, she halted.

  She’d once tread this perilous path before. It had landed her behind a hedgerow with a charming lord. The same path had had her giving away her innocence, the consequences, hers and hers alone to bear. This was the path her sister had taken and forever lived to regret. She’d be three times the fool to tread down it again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Elizabeth dropped her hand from his arm. “I’m going back to the ball.” Her voice wasn’t all that strong but her will was.

  “Elizabeth…. Please” It wasn’t his tentative touch on her arm that halted her mid-stride but the entreaty in his voice. She felt scalded by it.

  If she had any sense at all, she’d leave. But he’d never spoken to her like that before. As if he’d yearned for her from a distance and now she was within reach. So she stayed because when it came to her dealings with Derek Creswell, rational thinking sprouted wings and flew out the front door, attaining heights far out of mortal reach.

  She was just a flesh and blood woman.

  She turned and peered up at him. He even looked different. The way he looked at her; it was softer, wistful almost. As if she was no longer that Elizabeth Smith of Penkridge, Staffordshire, somehow connected to all that was treacherous and wicked in the world.

  “What is it you want from me, Derek?” He’d made it clear he wasn’t going to marry her, so perhaps he thought to have her as his mistress.

  And foolish foolish girl that she was, she didn’t know she would refuse him.

  “Not here.” He glanced around. “Let us speak in private.”

  The hallway was dimly lit and empty save them, but the entrance to the great room was within sight. Anyone could venture out and see them.

  She hesitated a moment before relenting with a nod.

  Taking her hand in his, he led her down a narrow hallway that branched from where they’d been.

  “It seems you know this house intimately,” she murmured, not exactly accusing him of other intimacies with one of the female occupants she couldn’t bear to think of.

  “I played here as a child. Lord and Lady Templeton are as close to me as family. I practically grew up with their son,” he responded, with a brief look down at her.

  With those words, Elizabeth no longer wanted to hang the ver
y lovely Marchioness of Templeton in effigy. His explanation certainly explained the easy familiarity between him and the lady of the manor. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere no one will interrupt us,” came his cryptic response.

  She nearly pulled back then. Interrupt them from doing what? Did he intend to…do anything untoward? Here of all places? The thought did not arouse her or fill her with wicked anticipation.

  He must have taken her hesitation as trepidation for he tightened his hold on her hand, angled his head down slightly and whispered in her ear, “Trust me.”

  Trust him as much as he trusted her? That was reason enough for her to leave that instant. But she didn’t. She stayed because, ironically, she did trust him.

  Seconds later, he pushed open the door to a room and ushered her inside. A quick glance around revealed a room really the size of a rather large closet furnished with a small writing desk, one solitary bookshelf, a cushioned armchair and a reading gas lamp. The lamp was unlit but light poured in through a passageway from the adjoining room. Elizabeth gathered this was the antechamber to the study or library.

  Derek released her hand, removed his gloves and quickly lit the lamp. With deft efficiency, he fished into his jacket pocket and pulled out a key, which he used to open the desk drawer. The contents of the drawer now had Elizabeth’s focused attention. She watched as he picked up a sheaf of papers—no more than four in number—and handed them to her.

  In dull surprise, she looked down at the papers filled with bold masculine scrawl now clasped in her hand and then back at him. “What is this?” she asked.

  His mouth curved and his eyes seemed to light from within. Elizabeth didn’t think she’d ever seen anything quite as beautiful as his smile.

  “With that report you are ensured Lady Danvers will never breathe a word of what she witnessed that evening in the garden. She will in fact never be a threat to your reputation whether you marry or not. I will even go as far to say she could see you prancing about as naked as the day you were born and would never speak a word of it.”

  The individual words, Elizabeth understood, but together they colluded to confuse her and send her mind into a tailspin. And not because she was daft but because the notion didn’t seem possible. “What did you—? How could you have—? Do I even want to know?” She stared blindly down at the papers in her hand. Her mind registered dates and Italy and the name Vincent.

  He laughed softly and smiled tenderly.

  “Let us just say Lady Danvers is anxious that a certain Vincent Trifoli remain in Italy. He has more than a passing resemblance to her son and heir, Steven. They became acquainted forty-five years ago, just ten months shy of the earl’s birth.”

  “The Earl of Danvers?” Elizabeth asked in a hushed voice.

  Derek nodded.

  And the dowager had had the nerve to lecture her on morality? It was beyond the pale, yet somewhat satisfying to know that the dowager couldn’t lord the incident over her anymore.

  But that meant… She furrowed her brows. Why had he gone to the trouble of digging up the dowager’s past?

  “But why would you do that? You never intended to marry me. I thought you wanted to see me ruined.”

  He flinched at that. Reaching out his hand, he grasped her wrist and pulled her inexorably closer. In silence, he slowly peeled the glove from her hand and dropped it on the desk beside his. He then did the same to the other.

  “I’m sorry. I was wrong,” he said, his voice deep and low. He drew her into his arms.

  Elizabeth went stiff. He had been wrong about so many things. “Wrong about what precisely?”

  “Your sister. I spoke with my brother and he admitted to bedding her,” he said grimly.

  Madeline. He was sorry about her sister. That had been the one thing she’d understood—his loyalty to his brother. She was happy he’d learned the truth but—

  “I have something for you.” He released her and moved toward the bookshelf.

  Elizabeth immediately missed the warmth of his arms.

  From one of the upper shelves, he retrieved a glossy wood figurine measuring approximately a foot and a half in height.

  “You once asked to see my work and asked if I ever sculpted people. I told you only if I found them interesting enough. Well no one has interested me more than the subject of this one.” He offered the carving to her.

  Dazed, Elizabeth accepted it, her fingers registering the smoothness of the shiny surface. It was a woman bedecked in a lovely ball gown, her head angled over her shoulder. The lace on the gown had been intricately carved as were the combs decorating her hair. She was slim and slightly full in the breasts, and the face…the face was undeniably hers. It was beautiful.

  Her breath hitched, her hands began a violent trembling and her eyes grew wide as her gaze flew up to his. Tears burned the back of her eyes.

  “This is how I first saw you, peeking at me over your shoulder. That image has remained ingrained in my mind since.”

  “Derek.” His name came out choked as emotion seared her throat.

  “I don’t want you to marry me for fear of ruination. I want you to marry me for the same reason I want to marry you. For love.”

  Elizabeth didn’t have the capacity to speak. At least not with any proficient articulation. She was buffeted by too many emotions, all of them overwhelming. She let out an uneven breath.

  “I will be forever grateful that Lady Danvers is the biggest gossip in all of Christendom.”

  She smiled despite the tears beginning to fall.

  “That,” he glanced pointedly at the wood carving of her, “is yours only if you agree to marry me. If you refuse me, I will have to keep it as it will be all that I have of you.” He wore his vulnerability on his face, his eyes exhibiting a caution she’d never seen before, his voice low and uncertain.

  Carefully and with undue care, Derek extricated his gift from her trembling hands and placed it on the desk. It was then she noticed the adhesive plaster wrapped around his index finger.

  Instantly concerned, she asked, “What happened?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  He chuckled softly and held up his finger. “It’s just a nick from the carving knife. I gave myself three days to finish and I succeeded with only minor war wounds.”

  Elizabeth’s vision blurred as a sob wracked her frame. He immediately enclosed her in his arm and she buried her face into the crook of his shoulder, melting into the hard contours of his body.

  He leaned down and pressed a possessive kiss against her lips. “I was your first—”

  A heartfelt apology.

  “—and I want to be the only man in your life.”

  A heartfelt declaration.

  “Will you do the honor of agreeing to be my wife?”

  A proposal.

  She let out a shuddery breath. “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

  Keeping her in the tight circle of his arms, Derek sank into the chair behind him, tumbling Elizabeth into his lap.

  He quirked his brow. “Oh? That is all?”

  Elizabeth found it hard to speak, now distracted by his erection pressing up against her bottom. She choked down a sob.

  “Shhh, my love,” he said gently wiping a tear with his thumb.

  Elizabeth had never felt so much in all her life. Her feelings were just too big, too extraordinary, too exhilerating.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  Her acceptance.

  And then she kissed him.

  Epilogue

  Elizabeth came slowly awake to the familiar press of an erection against her bum. She pressed back to gauge the level of his willingness—her husband's readiness was never in question.

  A rumbled groan sounded from behind her as strong hands gripped her hips and brought her naked form flush against his equally naked front. His chest hairs gently abraded the soft skin of her back. With his hands still holding her hips in place, he pressed his erection into her, his breath har
sh and labored near her ear.

  Elizabeth didn't even try to hold back the moan that slipped heedless from her lips—could deny him nothing not even the sound of her pleasure. Moisture collected at her center readying her for his possession. She couldn't remember once in their eight month marriage when she hadn't been.

  Months ago, she’d stopped being amazed how she could crave Derek's touch so intensely and want him with such frequency. She just accepted it for what it was as one in the many ways they expressed their desire and love for each other.

  "Good morning. Lift your leg," he urged, his voice passion drugged.

  Elizabeth eagerly obliged him, raising her leg inches before Derek took control.

  Sometimes he would linger, running his fingers languidly down the length of her thigh before reaching her knee. This morning he was impatient, sinking into her in one smooth thrust, filling her to capacity. Impaled, she could only whimper and moan at the sheer pleasure of his possession.

  Need clawed wildly within her. He pulled almost out and then slammed back into her with enough force to make her toes curl and her knees to shake in his hands as he held her open for him. Her breath came in ragged gasps as he pummeled her, in and out, repeating the movements until her vision blurred.

  With a sinuous arch of her back, she thrust her bottom back hard on a downward stroke. He hissed out a breath between clenched teeth as if in pain.

  From there, things got wild and out of control. They labored like that for several minutes, the race to satisfaction, the promise of nirvana just strokes away.

  When her climax hit, it ripped through her with the strength of a tornado, and defying gravity, flung her up to the stars. Only after she found her release, did Derek take his. With one final thrust, he spent himself inside her, her name a violent groan on his lips.

  Elizabeth could barely catch her breath. Her skin was damp and rosy from exertion and satiation. She lay in her husband’s arms utterly spent.

  Slowly he pulled out of her and pushed the length of her tangled hair over her shoulders. A soft kiss landed on her neck. She loved when he did this, loved basking in the afterglow. The scratch of his stubble had her reaching up with her free hand to lovingly rub his cheek.