It did. Katherine practically melted into his arms, forcing him to lean back against the feather tick mattress to protect his bruised ribs. Not that he minded having her plastered down the length of his body. He returned his attentions to her mouth, and to his great delight, she accepted them with alacrity, angling her head just so, opening her lips just enough to run her tongue against his own.
He may have moaned a little at that. He couldn’t be sure, so lost he was in the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her. And when he ran one hand over her small, perfect breast, she did not stop him, rather leaned even farther into him, making a delightfully wicked sound in her throat, pressing her hips against his own.
“God, Katie,” he bit out, running his other hand down her long, lithe body, all the way to the curve of her backside, urging her on. A genuine moan broke through her throat at his liberty. Instinct had begun to rule his untried body, it seemed, for not even in his most lurid dreams had he imagined doing this, much less having her respond to it.
He rolled his hips up into hers again, and yet another moan ripped from her throat. She had to have felt his arousal, even through all the inconvenient layers of her skirts, but the fact that she liked it . . .
Well.
Sebastian wondered why he’d not tried this with her earlier. Bloody Lady Ice indeed. Perhaps all he’d needed to do to win her favor was become the rake that she’d always imagined him to be.
“Want you so much . . .” he whispered, kissing down the length of her slender, alabaster throat. “Only you. Never been anyone else for me.”
“Sebastian . . .” she said against his ear, shivering all over.
“Let me,” he murmured brokenly, slowly, pushing her skirts up her long, long legs, now draped artlessly, wantonly, on either side of his hips. At some point, she must have climbed on top of him. She was so warm, so perfect, each inch of her that he uncovered. When he reached her thighs, she shuddered, pushed him down, and rose up on her knees so that she was looking down the length of his torso, seizing control. Her hair was a tangled tow-colored halo around her head, her face was adorably flushed, and her eyes were unfocused with desire.
“Katie . . .” he began again. He was too lust-fogged to offer anything more. Just her name. Or at least the name that he planned to use for all the rest of their days together. His own private name for private moments like this . . .
He gasped as her hand swept down his bare chest, all the way to the edge of his breeches. She began to work on his flies with surprising dexterity.
“Katie!” he cried, heart racing and harder than he’d ever remembered being in his entire life. Things had taken a swift turn. Too swift. He’d not make it much longer if she . . .
Did that.
“Bloody hell, I love you . . .” he gasped out, as the back of her hand very deliberately grazed his bare erection.
She froze and glanced up at him, as if startled out of a trance, her hands falling to her sides, away from her prize. He didn’t quite groan in frustration, though it was a near thing.
Hell and damnation. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut, for it was obvious he’d spoiled the moment with unwanted sentiment.
The blush quickly fled her cheeks, leaving them ominously bloodless, and her expression turned to something resembling panic. In a blink, she was off of him and nearly to the other side of the bedroom, panting so hard she was nearly sobbing.
He sat up and hastily rearranged his breeches, his own cheeks still ruddy with passion, a fog still settled in his brainbox. All he managed to register for certain was that she had stopped just as they’d been getting to the good bit, and that she was upset. Beyond upset.
Though he didn’t know why. They had been getting along splendidly.
“Katie . . .” he began.
She turned away from him, trying to repair her mussed hair. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped.
The fog began to clear, and a horrible, black weight began to settle on his chest. “Please, please don’t regret this . . .”
“Stop, just stop,” she said, smoothing her skirts now, though it did little good. He’d managed to thoroughly wrinkle her. “This can’t . . . this is impossible.”
He tried to stand up, but between the state of his broken body and his unquenched lust, it was impossible to manage. He certainly couldn’t follow her out of the bedchamber, considering the current line of his breeches.
“Don’t go, not yet,” he said. They should have a chat, if nothing else. Now that he had his wits halfway back, he could manage that, at least.
She laughed a little hysterically and tossed him a look over her shoulder. Pain and something like revulsion contorted her usually placid features.
He caught his breath in apprehension. This was . . . this was not right at all.
“Find one of your whores to finish you off,” she said coldly before she swept from the room.
Well.
The line of his breeches was almost immediately back to its modest proportions, if nothing else.
He lay back against his bed, stunned, all of the desire in him extinguished in the blink of an eye. He pressed a fist against his heart, as if that would stave off the hollow, panicked knot from growing larger in his chest.
What had just happened?
Had he ruined everything already? He’d known it was a risk to attempt a seduction, considering he’d not even begun a proper courtship, but he’d not expected this spectacularly cruel rebuff. And it had been cruel, perhaps unknowingly so on her part. It was expected, he supposed, given the reputation he’d cultivated for years, but he, unlike most of his hypocritical peers, did not deal in whores and never would. He found prostitution to be one of humanity’s most loathsome inventions.
He’d never even properly been with a woman since the debacle with his uncle and mother, though he’d tried on a few occasions. But those attempts had ended in disaster. He’d just not been . . . interested and had given up on the enterprise entirely years ago. His reputation as a rake was entirely fabricated. He’d never made friends or trusted easily. How could he let himself share the most intimate parts of himself with a near-stranger? How would he ever find a woman who could be more than that? Who could move him enough to truly want?
Well, Katherine had, and the craving for her was unlike anything he’d ever known, overwhelming, and totally inappropriate.
But she couldn’t possibly know about his past, or why that particular insult had been the perfect weapon to use against him. Still, her repudiation had stung right where it hurt the most. He could barely breathe from the pain.
He banged his head against his pillow in frustration and stretched an arm over his suspiciously damp eyes to block out the world.
He’d told her he loved her, hadn’t he?
Even he could admit it had been terrible timing for mawkish declarations. Yet it didn’t make the words any less true and made her subsequent departure hurt even worse.
He hoped he could salvage this disaster of a situation before it was too late. Now that he’d resolved to court her, he’d just have to show her how sincere he was in his intentions. He’d have to somehow prove to her that his reputation was just that: a reputation, not the truth. For the truth was that he loved her, that there’d never been anyone else for him. The truth was that he was tired of fighting. He wanted to be happy, and for once in his life he felt he might actually deserve to be.
Mostly he just wanted her.
The attraction was there. He had certain proof of that now.
Now he only had to make her love him as much as he loved her.
Chapter Ten
In Which Montford Betrays a Friend’s Confidence to His Wife, Who Betrays Her Husband’s Confidence to a Friend, Who Does Not Take the News Well at All
THAT AFTERNOON, MONTFORD, Astrid, and her great-aunt Anabel stopped in for a visit, and w
hile the duke was upstairs with the patient, the ladies and Katherine took tea in the drawing room. Katherine almost felt as if the hideously inappropriate events of the morning had not happened at all, given how blandly the rest of the day had unfolded. A walk in the garden with Seamus, Penny, and Mongrel, as the pug had been dubbed by Sebastian. Luncheon in the parlor with Dr. Lucas, who droned on and on about the charity hospital while she pretended to pay attention. A consultation with Cook in the kitchens on the menu for the week. Now tea with the duchess and Aunt Anabel’s pompadour in the drawing room.
So exceedingly ordinary.
She suspected, though, that she could very well be in shock. She’d nearly held Sebastian’s Male Part in her hand nearly six hours ago, after all. He’d professed his love nearly five hours and fifty-nine minutes ago. She’d then fled his bedchamber in a haze of horror and self-disgust nearly five hours and fifty-eight minutes ago.
Not that she was counting.
These were events from which one simply didn’t emerge unscathed. Yet at the moment, all she felt was numb. She certainly had no appetite, but she pretended to eat a biscuit as she watched her friends warily, feeling as if a storm was brewing on the horizon. Thankfully, Aunt Anabel had fallen asleep in her teacup soon after she’d finally corralled her giant panniered gown enough to sit down, her wig tumbling over one eye, her chest rising and falling underneath her stiff corset.
Astrid sat innocuously enough by her dozing aunt at the moment, her giant belly mounded in front of her, and promptly ate half of the biscuits cook had sent out, petting Mongrel between sips of tea. But she was also fidgeting, her color high, her lips twitching in a mischievous smile. She was in a suspiciously good mood, and Katherine was sure there was more contributing to it than news of Sebastian’s improved health.
When Astrid had exhausted all the tedious talk of the annual Montford ball that was to take place in a few days, with Aunt Anabel rousing herself to consciousness occasionally to interject something vaguely related to the conversation, she finally sat forward in her seat and let the dam burst. Just as Katherine had feared.
“Oh, but I have the singlemost choice bit of gossip! I’ve been gasping to tell you since I got here!”
“Really,” Katherine said dryly. “I couldn’t at all tell.”
Astrid made a face. “Well, I was famished! I can’t tell you the best gossip of the century on an empty stomach, can I?”
Astrid had eaten most of cook’s store of biscuits and had just finished off the last of the pot of tea.
“I suppose not. Are you going to tell me now?”
Astrid wiggled her eyebrows. “You’ll never guess.”
Her friend was ridiculous. Living in London had turned her once fine brain to absolute rubbish. Katherine reined in her impatience with a roll of the eyes.
“You’re going to like it.”
She doubted that. “Oh?”
“You’re going to really like it.”
For the love of . . . “Astrid!”
Astrid smirked. “Very well. Where to begin.” Astrid tapped her chin with a biscuit and gathered her thoughts. “While you have been here playing nursemaid, the whole city’s been abuzz about Sebastian’s attack. You haven’t read the papers, have you?”
“I’ve been busy,” she said vaguely.
“Details have gotten out. How you found him and brought him back here, and how he was so badly beaten as to be unrecognizable. Is he unrecognizable?”
“Very nearly.”
“A shame,” Aunt Anabel put in suddenly, swinging her head up and thumping her cane on the Aubusson rug. “The boy has a fine face, and an arse to die for. Reminds me of my lovely French aristocrat when I was at Versailles back in the eighties. I wouldn’t mind having a go at him, banged up face or not, if I were forty years younger . . .”
“Montford said he was banged up from top to toe,” Astrid interjected before her aunt could complete her thought, though it was a bit late, in Katherine’s opinion, to spare their ears. She’d definitely gotten the gist of Aunt Anabel’s intentions toward Sebastian’s arse. “The papers have discoursed at length about how London’s Singlemost Beautiful Man was most savagely disfigured. Your servants must have talked.”
“He’s not disfigured!” Katherine shot back hotly, though she wondered why she was defending him. She just couldn’t seem to help herself when it came to the scoundrel. “Just a bit bruised and cut up.” Well, maybe a lot. “And I just bet everyone has loved the tale of his destruction. Really, it makes me sick how people can find such malicious joy in someone else’s pain. Self-righteous snobs with nothing better to do . . .”
“Katherine!” Astrid cried, her eyes wide, her hands raised in surrender. Mongrel had begun to whimper in her lap, her eyes equally wide.
“What!”
“You’re yelling. And you’re gripping that teacup as if you mean to hurl it at me.”
Katherine put the teacup on the table and told herself to calm down.
Astrid’s expression melted sympathetically. “You poor thing! You’re terribly eaten up about this. You must care a great deal for him. I’ve never seen you like this about anybody except your dogs.”
Katherine stared down at her hands. “He’s my nephew.”
Astrid wrinkled her nose skeptically. “Not really.”
“Wish I had a nephew who looked like that,” Aunt Anabel groused. “Though I suppose there’s that duke fellow of yours, Astrid. He’s not half bad on the eyes and has nearly as fine a backside as his friend. Quite satisfyingly plump.”
Lord.
Astrid gave a beleaguered sigh, steadfastly ignoring her aunt. “Shall I continue?”
“There’s more?”
“Much more. And for your information, the public is not happy about Sebastian’s misfortunes. In fact, everyone is up in arms.”
Katherine was a bit dumbfounded by this, but then she wondered why she bothered with any sort of logic at this point. She knew how fickle society could be. One minute they were declaiming Sebastian from the rooftops, and the next they were mourning him. How predictable, really.
“Everyone believes Sir Oliver is responsible,” Astrid continued. “He denied it, but there’s no getting around the fact that half of Westminster heard him threaten to kill Sebastian the day he was attacked.”
Katherine seethed inwardly. “Sebastian should have taken responsibility for Rosamund, but that is no excuse for behaving like a savage.”
Aunt Anabel snorted. “Savage? The Terror was savage, gel, and this century’s fashions. I shall never understand the Empire waist. Completely without imagination.”
Astrid ignored her aunt once more. “But that is just the thing. Sebastian didn’t do it! Montford was right all along. Sebastian was telling the truth. He is not the father of Rosamund’s baby.”
Katherine felt as if someone had knocked the air out of her. “What?”
“Well, after Sebastian’s attack, Rosamund broke down and confessed everything. She told her family that Sebastian had never so much as touched her and that Colonel Firth was the true father. And yesterday—this is the best part—Rosamund had her baby, and guess what color its hair was?”
Katherine was too dumbfounded to answer.
“Red. Scots red, just like the colonel’s. Firth finally fessed up, and the squire is sending the pair of them on an extended holiday to the Colonies. There is no doubt now. Sebastian was innocent all along.”
Katherine wanted to say she had never doubted this, but she had. She had believed Sebastian was responsible. She felt sick.
“How is this all known?” she asked, still reeling.
“Oh, how these things always are. Servants’ gossip, newspapermen listening in keyholes. Whatever. The important thing is that Sebastian is an utterly vindicated man. And oh, I could just scratch out Rosamund’s eyes for being such a cow!”
/>
“Why would she lie like that?”
Astrid shrugged. “Because she wanted Sebastian, of course.”
“Of course. Who wouldn’t?” Aunt Anabel interjected again.
Katherine had to agree with her on this point. Who wouldn’t, indeed?
“She nearly succeeded in killing him,” Katherine said.
“I suspect she’ll be punished enough, exiled to the Colonies.” Astrid shuddered. “I could think of nothing more dreadful. I must say, though, when Sebastian recovers, he might wish he never had.”
“Don’t say that,” Katherine breathed.
Astrid just laughed airily. “But it’s true. He’s going to be the toast of London, and he’s going to hate it.”
She imagined Sebastian being hoisted upon the plump shoulders of every society matron in town, a returning hero, the tarnish to his reputation wiped clean. She could all but see the avaricious gleam in those matrons’ eyes as they fawned over the “poor, maligned marquess” and assessed his merit. It wouldn’t matter that he was impoverished, what with his title, not to mention his startling looks. Katherine could already see the matchmaking mamas hurling their heiress daughters at him to see if they would stick.
She was beginning to prefer Sebastian’s former reputation as mad, bad, and socially unacceptable.
“So am I,” Katherine said through her teeth. “Though I suspect it won’t be long before one of his true conquests comes forward and knocks him back out of favor. He’s hardly a virtuous gentleman when it comes to women, now, is he?” As she so intimately knew. She had the bite marks under her collar to prove it. Thank heaven it was the winter.
Though he had been a spectacularly artless kisser for a reputed rake. But she supposed one didn’t have to be good at that to be an expert in seduction. He did well enough with his pretty words and earnest caresses. Kissing was hardly a prerequisite for the main course, anyway.
“God save me from virtuous gentlemen,” Aunt Anabel declared, straightening her wig with a little huff. “Dreadfully dull, my dears. Trust me on this. You want a rake. They know all the good bits in bed.”
Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2) Page 14
