Another incoherent protest emerged. She parted her lips to drag in a shaky breath, and this time his mouth opened over hers. How did he know exactly where to place his lips when she couldn’t see two inches in front of her face? The room was darker than a cellar in Hades.
He groaned into her mouth, and for the first time, she tasted him properly. His rich flavor overwhelmed her. Without thinking where this might lead, her tongue fluttered against his lips, seeking a response.
He groaned again, a sound of longing deep in his throat. At last his arms lashed around her.
She’d reached a stage of need where she wanted him to batter down her resistance, overcome her doubts, kiss her until all she knew was pleasure. The pleasure that still hovered out of reach, no matter how she enjoyed this dance of playful kisses, of advance and retreat, of pausing for permission, then relenting just as she reached the point of protest.
His mouth remained light on hers, although she felt the tension in his arms as he resisted the urge to tug her closer. How did she know this? Pure instinct. She was woefully inexperienced with a man. She was playing out of her class with a man of the world like Lord Erskine.
Which didn’t mean she aimed to stop the game.
This time with intent, her tongue darted forward to touch his. Heat shuddered through her, sparking a fusillade of unfamiliar sensations. She shifted to relieve the building pressure between her legs.
Philippa might be innocent, but she wasn’t stupid. Her body prepared itself for his. She’d grown up in the country. The mechanics of the sexual act were no mystery. But mechanics had no connection with the unprecedented responses rushing through her, softening her muscles, making her blood throb with need, weighting her breasts and belly with desire.
Heaven help her, he didn’t need to drag her into his arms. The devilish purpose of that long, careful seduction now became clear. Philippa couldn’t bear to be separated from him by even as much as an inch. She was the one who wantonly pressed forward.
He was irresistible, so warm, so big, so powerful. When her body slid against his, she felt the immediate change in him. His kiss shifted from exploration to unalloyed possession. She should be terrified, but instead she felt desired. His tongue plunged between her lips, claiming her. His arms twined around her, so that she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to.
He swung her until she sprawled across his lap, her face tilted toward his, her breasts crushed against his bare chest under the coat. What had begun like a game became as serious as life and death.
She felt dizzy with lack of air and the storm in her blood. The heaviness between her legs made her wriggle. If she’d ever doubted Erskine’s interest, her position now left her in no doubt.
That was astonishing enough. What was even more astonishing was that she wanted him, too. She’d never experienced desire. She’d had no idea how it overwhelmed every consideration but physical need.
She moaned consent against his lips. She was too far gone for fear. There was only heat and hunger and his wild, wild kisses.
He tensed against her, but she gripped his shoulders. All that mattered was that he shared more of those shattering sensations. Then through the pounding in her ears, she heard the rattle of the lock. Before she could break away from Lord Erskine, someone flung open the door.
Keeping her in his lap, Lord Erskine twisted around at the interruption. In the glare of what felt like a hundred candles, Philippa blinked owlishly.
Then horrified shrieks split the night.
Chapter 4
Damn, damn, damn.
Erskine fought the urge to punch the wall, even if this whole bloody mess was his fault. He’d locked them in the dressing room. Then he hadn’t had the sense to keep his hands to himself. Now here he was on the floor with an innocent girl in his arms, and the game was well and truly up.
But Philippa Sanders had been so sweet, so near, so utterly irresistible. The temptation had been overwhelming.
Which was no excuse for mauling her. And now exposing her to full-scale scandal.
Even through the thick door, he should have heard activity in the outer room. But Miss Sanders had so captivated him that he’d paid no whit of attention to anything else.
“Mamma, please hush,” Philippa said urgently, and without effect. “You’ll have everyone in here to see what the fuss is about.”
“How could you? You wicked, wicked girl. How could you?” And a litany of similar complaints about her younger daughter’s character and morals. All at top pitch.
Blast the harridan. Erskine would wager that they’d hear her in London. His grip on Philippa tightened, although it was too late for him to save her from trouble.
Behind the distraught parent’s rotund figure, Amelia stood, hatred glittering in her icy blue eyes as she regarded her sister. Right now, Amelia looked ready to commit murder.
Erskine had always suspected that Amelia’s angelic looks hid a nasty streak. He suppressed a shudder and thanked heaven that the elder Sanders girl had never appealed to him.
Mills, who held the key to the dressing room, raised his candelabra and greeted his master with a cool smile. “Merry Christmas, my lord.”
Nothing shook Mills’s composure, although a faint tightening around his eyes hinted that Mrs. Sanders’ hysterics came close.
“Philippa, how could you do this? How? Oh, I can’t even look at you!” Mrs. Sanders sucked in a noisy breath. “And still you sit there, basking in your sin.”
Guilt punched Erskine in the gut as he realized that he should have released Philippa the instant the door opened. Holding her was purely instinct, some rusty protective urge remaining from a boyhood of rescuing stray dogs and birds fallen from their nests. He thought he’d outgrown his need to shelter small, defenseless creatures. Apparently not. Philippa was a stalwart soul, but one glance at her wan, set face indicated that she needed protection.
Before he could apologize, she struggled free and stumbled to her feet. Feeling absurd on the floor before his accusers, he rose as well. In a futile attempt to shield her, he hovered at her shoulder. She sidled away, bumping into the leather trunk in the corner. Clearly she didn’t appreciate his attempts to play the hero.
Damn it, why should she? He’d acted like a dunderhead.
Kissing Philippa, he’d felt invincible. Right now, facing down a wall of disapproval from his dressing room doorway, he felt like a rat in a trap.
“Mamma, there’s a perfectly innocent explanation—”
“Don’t bother lying, you nasty little cat.” Amelia’s contempt made Philippa recoil. “I should have guessed when you offered to help me that you pursued your own causes. You were so clever to hide your interest in Lord Erskine.”
“Amelia—”
Erskine glanced at Philippa, then wished he hadn’t. She looked utterly overcome. Unfortunately, however wounded and humiliated she appeared, she also appeared delectable and ruffled and thoroughly kissed. Her rich brown hair tumbled around her shoulders, and in her crushed dress, she looked little better than a gypsy. Her intentions may have been pure, whatever her sister thought, but Blind Freddie could see that physical contact had occurred behind that locked door.
Before anything else, he had to put a cork in the mother’s damned caterwauling. “Mrs. Sanders, bringing the house’s attention upon us can’t be your purpose.”
To his surprise, the lady abruptly shut her mouth and turned accusatory blue eyes, eerily similar to her oldest daughter’s, in his direction. Erskine frowned. Those eyes were completely dry and, until she glanced down in what he read as false humility, alight with calculation.
What the deuce was going on? Had he been caught by the oldest trick in the world? Suspicion soured his gut as he stared at Philippa.
He was under no illusions about his appeal to the ton’s rapacious ladies. A single man of great fortune and distinguished lineage always attracted marriage-minded females. Since leaving university and taking his place in society, he’d been on guar
d. Since before that. The lassies on his Scottish estate were as awake as any English miss to the main chance.
But his doubt over Philippa’s motives vanished almost as soon as it arose. He was the one who had locked them in, and he hadn’t mistaken her dismay at the prospect of a scandal.
A glance at Mrs. Sanders told him that if Philippa hadn’t realized the advantages of tonight’s events, her doting mamma certainly had. Amelia continued to glare poison at her trembling sister.
“Just what are you doing in here, Mamma?” Philippa asked in a small voice.
Her mother regarded her youngest daughter with disfavor. “I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted you to read to me. I was horrified to find your room empty. Naturally I went to Amelia and made her tell me where you were. I can hardly believe your brazen behavior.”
Amelia’s mouth pinched at the explanation. Erskine could imagine how unwillingly she’d revealed her sister’s whereabouts. But Mrs. Sanders was a bully to the bootstraps. A self-centered little minx like Amelia could never withstand her mother’s demands.
Wearing a startling scarlet dressing gown, his host Sir Theodore Liddell appeared at the bedroom door. Only moments behind him, Erskine’s nitwit drinking companions crowded along the corridor, tripping over one another in tipsy eagerness to investigate the brouhaha.
“What’s all this hullabaloo, Erskine? Is this some Christmas prank? Bit early in the morning for hijinks, don’t you think?” Sir Theodore’s jovial tone abruptly hardened as his eyes fell upon his cringing niece. “Good God, Philippa, what are you doing here?”
Any frail hope Erskine had harbored that he and Philippa might manage to sail through without attracting the world’s notice shriveled. And he became increasingly convinced that Mrs. Sanders had manufactured this impromptu gathering.
He reached for Philippa’s hand. For one sweet moment, her fingers curled around his. Despite the chaos buffeting him from all sides, brief peace filled his soul. Then that peace disintegrated as she withdrew her hand to twist it in her skirts in an agony of guilty remorse.
“U-Uncle, I know how this looks—” she stammered, sounding completely unlike the forthright woman who had demanded her sister’s letter.
“Damned fishy is how it looks, Philippa, my girl,” Sir Theodore snapped, an angry flush turning his cheeks as red as an overripe apple. “Just what in Hades are you doing in this reprobate’s room at this hour? And why are you half-dressed?”
Erskine winced. The uncle showed as little propriety as the mother, even if he spoke from temper rather than calculation. Behind Mrs. Sanders, the drunken idiots audibly sniggered.
“Half-dressed?” With shaking hands, Philippa tugged at her clothes, although her uncle had exaggerated. However tempted he’d been to take matters further, Erskine had made sure that she stayed buttoned to the neck.
“My lord, your niece is blameless,” Erskine said, knowing nobody would believe him. But he couldn’t bear to witness Philippa’s shame. Especially when all she’d done was enjoy a few kisses. She was hardly the Jezebel that gossip would paint her once this story got out.
As it inevitably would.
Again he cursed his damned arrogance in shutting that door, although nothing could make him regret kissing her. That had been an unforgettable experience, whatever its price.
His defense of Philippa attracted Sir Theodore’s wrath. “Look at her, with her hair falling about her like bloody Delilah.” His voice lowered, but that only emphasized his outrage. “Erskine, I know the stories about you. Who doesn’t? But I never heard of you ruining a girl of good family. This is abominable behavior, even for you.”
Erskine hid another wince. Tonight he’d suffered an uncharacteristic impulse to do the right thing. Perhaps this was a lesson not to change his bad old ways.
“Your niece and I were trapped in the dressing room.” His chilly tone would have done his stiff-necked father credit. “I will not have Miss Sanders’s name sullied. She is respectably dressed. Her hair is untidy as a result of her struggle to open the door.”
“A likely story,” Sir Theodore sneered. “Even if it’s true, that doesn’t explain her presence in your bedamned bedroom.”
“Uncle, I had good reason for being here,” Philippa said shakily.
“Apart from brazen stupidity, I can’t think what,” her uncle retorted.
In silent pleading, Philippa’s eyes fastened on Amelia. Erskine wasn’t remotely surprised when Amelia failed to come to the rescue. Philippa, of course, was too honorable to tell tales. Odd how well he knew her, but he believed to his bones that she wouldn’t betray her sister.
Although, to give Amelia the little credit she deserved, what was the point of confessing to the letter? Her lapse would only compound the scandal of her sister caught in a rake’s bedroom.
Sir Theodore looked ready to explode. “I’m the closest thing that the brainless chit has to a father. I can’t let this insult go unchallenged.”
God above, could this get any worse? With every moment, Erskine found less room for maneuver. He had no intention of shooting Sir Theodore. The man was at least thirty years his senior. And if Erskine was any judge of men, the plump baronet had devoted most of those thirty years to drinking. The fellow couldn’t hit a bull elephant at five paces.
With a horror that this time looked genuine, Mrs. Sanders abruptly ceased bawling and stared aghast at her brother. “Theodore, don’t be a fool. In a duel, Erskine will make mincemeat of you.”
The wrong thing to say. Tact apparently didn’t run in Philippa’s family. Tact or good sense. Which was a sodding pity, considering Erskine’s likely future.
Sir Theodore puffed up. “This is all your fault. You’ve let these girls run wild, Barbara. Although I always thought Philippa had a scrap of sense, unlike that twit Amelia.”
“Uncle!” Amelia spluttered. “At least nobody’s ever found me in a man’s room after midnight.”
Only for want of opportunity, Erskine felt like saying, remembering her letter. The problem was that hardened, selfish little flirts like Amelia kept an eye to their own advantage and rarely faced the consequences of their behavior. It was innocents like Philippa who were always caught out.
This had gone far enough. He drew himself up to his full height and shot a speaking glance at Mills. “We’ve provided enough Yuletide entertainment for your guests, Sir Theodore.”
Erskine raised supercilious eyebrows at the louts in the doorway. He’d perfected the look years ago to squash the pretensions of social-climbing mushrooms. As usual, it succeeded. The boisterous young bucks shuffled back, muttering.
At a nod from Erskine, Mills closed the door and stood at the entrance like a tall, thin gatekeeper.
That left Philippa, Amelia, Mrs. Sanders and Sir Theodore. A more manageable group, although Erskine wasn’t deceived about his cronies’ discretion. The events of this Christmas Eve would be general gossip in London before the day was out.
“Much better,” he said calmly. There had been quite enough theatricals. “Sir Theodore, may I get you a brandy?”
The older man nodded, then frowned as though disappointed that the high drama descended into something resembling a family meeting. Even Mrs. Sanders seemed less inclined to histrionics, although her eyes retained their beady, acquisitive light.
“Just what do you intend to do about my little girl?” she asked, her show of concern for Philippa too late to convince. “She’s ruined.”
Mills shifted from the door—Erskine’s dismissal had succeeded, the threat of invasion faded. The valet moved to the sideboard and poured generous brandies for Sir Theodore and his master. Then after a considering glance at Mrs. Sanders, one for that lady.
Erskine stepped next to Philippa and once more took her small, cold hand in his. His deliberately ostentatious gesture wouldn’t be lost on her mother and uncle. Or her sister.
Ignoring Philippa’s frantic attempts to pull away, he straightened and spoke words that yesterday hadn’t been on hi
s horizon. “Sir Theodore, would you honor me with your niece’s hand in marriage?”
Chapter 5
FOR PHILIPPA, THE next four days became a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake. She felt like a ghost in her uncle’s house. Or like a prisoner in a dungeon. Again and again, she protested that under no circumstances would she marry Lord Erskine, yet still arrangements proceeded for the hurried wedding.
Why should her mother change a lifetime’s habit and listen to her now? The triumph of capturing the elusive Scottish earl for her daughter made her mother deafer than usual to common sense.
Not that her triumph was untrammeled joy. Even as she prodded at Philippa to show some enthusiasm for this ill-judged match, she bewailed the fact that Lord Erskine had chosen the wrong daughter. How it irked her that the beautiful older sister would become a mere Mrs., while plain little Philippa joined the ranks of the aristocracy.
Amelia’s reaction to the engagement wasn’t a surprise either, which made it no more pleasant to endure. Like their mother, she was convinced that Philippa had engineered this awful mess. In Amelia’s mind, Lord Erskine had been ready to steal her away from her betrothed. Only Philippa’s spite had stymied that glorious outcome.
As a result, Amelia retreated into a seething silence that Philippa correctly diagnosed as a first-class sulk. Even Mr. Fox noticed that his chosen bride had been elated on Christmas Eve and noticeably downcast and snappish since—and nobody would describe him as the most perceptive of men.
The only blessing in the whole miserable situation was that, thanks to the almighty scandal, all guests not directly linked to the family had departed the house by Christmas night. Unfortunately that left Philippa with her betrothed, her nasty cousin Caroline, her sullen sister, a mother who ignored her every plea, and an aunt and uncle never much interested in her, who now treated her like she carried a contagious disease. Mr. Fox was kind, but a stranger, and he’d taken to retreating into the smoking room to avoid his grumpy fiancée.
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