by Cheryl Bolen
"Beau, don't." His fingers held her wrist in a bruising grasp, his teeth clenching with something that seemed akin to pain. But she merely flattened her palm against the hard plane, circling the pebble-hard nub of his nipple.
"Don't what? You cannot say you don't feel it for me as well. I may be innocent of curtsying and fans, milord Stone, but I can assure you that where I came from I did not remain innocent regarding this. " She leaned forward, brushing her lips across the tiny wound upon his cheek, nipping at his naked collarbone. The tremor that went through him filled her with a sense of power, a sense of wonder, and a stubborn resolve beyond any she had ever possessed.
"Damnation!" Griff hissed in a ragged breath, hurling her hand away from him, wheeling to stalk across the room. He stood there, framed in the light spilling in from the window, his dark hair tumbled like some pagan king's, his feet planted wide. "Damn it, Beau, what do you want of me? Do you want me to snatch up what you are offering—pity, maybe, or gratitude that you mistake for love? Do you want me to bind you to me for eternity when you are scarce a child, watch you come to realize that you may respect me, hold me in some affection, but that I am nothing but the benefactor who snatched you from the highroads? I may be a bastard in countless ways, Isabeau, but I'm not bastard enough to chain you to the first man who touches your fancy, even if it is me."
"Blood and thunder, Stone, I've known scores of men, blasted hordes of them," Beau retorted, her own temper raging. "And as a sex, I have not found them a very admirable lot. I've no desire to go poking in amongst them, waiting for one of them to trample over me or grab my purse-strings or my petticoats."
"You've known brigands, highwaymen, criminals, Beau. Soon you'll be in ballrooms with the best London has to offer."
"Bah. I've seen them as well. They're the ones who toss their coin to Nell for poor Molly, then nearly run their carriages over her when they are through."
"Isabeau."
"Fine." There was a steely edge of temper in her voice, one that reverberated with danger. "You will not believe that I love you until I've dazzled half a dozen men. That is your own stupidity. But I'll humor you, Stone. Because even when you're being a pigheaded, addle-brained idiot, I love you so much I ache inside."
Beau saw him flinch. "I just don't think you know your own mind, Isabeau. And it would drive me insane if another man—" He stopped, the glint in his eye thunderous enough to satisfy even Beau.
"I've known my own mind since I was two years old, Stone," Beau said, her eyes narrowed with challenge. "And I warn you. I always get what I want."
With that Isabeau stomped from the chamber, her chin thrust in the air, her eyes gleaming with a belligerence that would have made Molly blanch with trepidation.
Chapter 17
Silver lace and shining shoe buckles, glittering snuffboxes and gemstones of every size, from the vulgar to the negligible, spangled the throng of amusement-seekers who crowded about the large rotunda of Ranelagh Gardens. The myriad of colors, smells, and sounds provided a banquet for the senses. Laughing and chattering, the people plied the booths seeking tea or, for the more daring, wine, while Ranelagh House itself loomed to the north like some beneficent monarch, an ornamental lake in the distance rippling like liquid sapphire.
Oblivious to his surroundings, Griffin strode down the walk, trying to recapture the lazy aura of diversion he had experienced within Ranelagh years before when it had been but one more treasure trove of lights o' love, convivial company, and fine drink. How many times had he ambled along these winding pathways when he had been a young man eager for romances and spoiling for fights? He had embroiled himself in three duels here and had won considerable coin making far-flung wagers with his friends. But despite his wild actions, he had never felt this teeth-grinding, fist-clenching, tongue-tangling unease that made him feel as if he were walking along the edge of a razor.
He scowled down at Isabeau, a muscle in his jaw working. Tonight she was a vision. She seemed alive with fire and passion and a playfulness that he mistrusted. Her flame-bright hair was unpowdered, in defiance of fashion. Her gown clung all buttery gold about her trim waist, its embroidery of rich green lattice and dainty blue flowers accenting the creamy luster of her flawless skin. Her tight sleeves were iced in snowy lace that spilled down past her wrists, her expressive hands fluttering as she delighted in each new spectacle.
Griffin cursed inwardly, his gaze fixing on the filmy white froth. He felt the urge to rip away the delicate webbing and tuck it over the low swept bodice.
She was an infernal menace. She drew the eyes of every man upon the walk. Three dandies had nearly run over an elderly baron's wife when they saw Isabeau. And one scrawny stripling of nineteen had slammed headlong into the side of a booth when she passed. She had so dazzled the cursed boy with one of her smiles—that blinding, impish smile—that Griffin had wanted to grab her and kiss her until she couldn't see or even think of any man save himself.
"Is that the sort of man you are so eager for me to become acquainted with, my lord?" she had inquired with honeyed sweetness, a slight hint of a smirk upon her lips.
He had dragged every bit of self-control he had possessed to the fore and had told her she might attempt to select one not so fresh from his cradle.
"For a man who is going to such a deal of trouble to introduce me to eligible prospects, you seem to be overly particular," she had teased him. "We've been here nearly an hour, and you've not presented me to a single one." Tossing her curls until they had bounced, burnished red-gold, against her shoulders, she had peered at him from beneath her lashes. "Well, perhaps I shall be pure drowning in men at the supper you and your dear Cousin What-the-blazes have arranged."
"Cousin Jane," he had snapped. "Lady Charcross. And if there was anyone here worth the cloth in his breeches, I would thrust you upon him at once."
She had laughed at him then, a light, tinkling laugh that had been full of mischief. His chest had constricted until he had nearly tumbled over a cart laden with pastries.
He glared at her, his cheeks burning afresh as he recalled the humiliating episode, but his eyes were snared by a tiny freckle that peeked over the bodice's edging as if to taunt him, and his already aching loins tightened further still.
Blast it, she was driving him insane. And she was having a bloody rollick of a time doing it! If he could just get her to cover herself decently...
"Isabeau, do you not think we should retrieve your cloak from the coach?" he managed stiffly. "You appear a trifle chilled."
"Oh, nay, my lord. It is a wondrous balmy night." She brushed her fingers over the bared skin of her décolletage in a gesture that all but unmanned him. "I marvel that you could suggest such a thing. You look quite... er... overheated yourself. You are not becoming feverish?" Ignoring the crowd, she turned and laid her hand upon his brow. Her fingers were still warm from her breasts as she traced a delicately seductive path down his cheek. He drew in a sharp breath, but that proved still more devastating to his senses, for the scent of her—violets and cinnamon and sweet meadow breezes—filled his nostrils, raced through his veins.
"Damn it, Isabeau, there is nothing amiss with me that your—your concealing yourself modestly would not cure. As your guardian—"
"As my guardian, you ordered my gowns. All in the height of fashion. And as for what is disturbing you, look about you. Half the women here this evening have more flesh displayed than I."
"Is that so, Mistress DeBurgh? Then I had best affix my attention upon those we pass, for they must be fair naked from the waist up!" The instant he snapped out those hasty words he cursed himself for uttering them. Isabeau's eyes widened with amusement, and she collapsed into a fit of giggles. He wanted to clap his hand over that berry-red, beckoning mouth.
With delightful innocence Beau flung her arms about his neck, setting up a roar of approving laughter all around them. Her breath was moist, warm against the tensile cords of his neck, the sensitive skin about his ear. "If you dare to fi
x your gaze upon any save me, Lord Stone, I shall steal into your bedchamber tonight and cleave out your gizzard!"
Griffin let loose an oath, his hands sweeping up to clench about her wrists, drag her hands away, but the image of Isabeau slipping into his rooms, all soft and scented and hungry to love him, filled him with the even sharper vision of drifting down amongst cool linen sheets, touching her, tasting her until they were both wild with the need clawing through them.
"Fine," Griff ground out, beads of perspiration clinging to his skin. "Cleaving out my gizzard would be far preferable to this infernal torture. Mark me, woman, if you—"
"Shtone! Shtone!" The slurred cry muffled Griffin's warning. A hand slammed companionably into his shoulder as a bewigged man in a puce coat stumbled into him. The force made Beau wobble as well, and Griff’s hand shot out to steady her, his fingers colliding with bared flesh that was as warm as sun-drenched satin.
He pulled his hand away as if he had been burned. In truth he had been, the sensation of her skin beneath his hand searing a molten path to his loins.
He wheeled to face the man who had assaulted him, glad to have someone to vent his fury upon. But the somewhat vague eyes peered into his face with owlish pleasure, features only slightly coarsened by dissipation, alight with surprise.
Albert Tarkington, Baronet of Vailtree, beamed with the same irrepressible good nature he had affected since they had been boys together at Eton.
Griffin stared into the countenance of his old friend, for an instant regretting that he could not vent his frustration by challenging him to a duel—a nice, sane matching of swords to ease the fire raging inside him.
"So 'tish you, Shtone!" the plump-faced baronet exclaimed, cracking his palm again into Griff’s shoulder. "Heard you were to be about, but I scarcely believed it, even if it was your own cousin who informed me. Dashed glad to see you again."
"Bertie." Griff removed himself from the man's reach.
"Ish been a thousand years since I saw you last," Bertie said. "Mished you dreadful, the lot of us did. Grieved for you when Tom Southwood told us the old duke dived for his crypt."
Griffin had a fleeting twinge of worry for Charles as he recalled Tom's enigmatic note.
Tarkington's voice dropped low, his bleary eyes earnest despite the network of red veins running through their whites. "Bleedin' good fellow, yer brother was, disregardin' the fact that he waxed a bit starshed."
Griff grimaced, struck suddenly by the odd certainty that he was more touched by Tarkington's blunt condolences than by any of the more solemn ones he had received since setting foot upon English shores. "William was a good fellow, wasn't he, Bert?" Griff said, grateful that Tarkington's customary inebriation would most likely keep the baronet from taking note of the sudden thickness in Griffin's voice.
But Bertie cleared his own rather gouty gullet and pulled a kerchief from his pocket to mop his sweaty brow. "So," he said with forced bluffness, "Janey—I mean, your cousin, Lady Charcross—said you were getting up a party tonight to... er, preshent some ward you were saddled with. There be half a dozen o' the ton's finest awaiting yon." He gestured in the general direction of the rotunda. "Expected old Southwood to be amongst 'em, seeing as the twain o' you were ever so thick. But he just put in from the Continent this morn. Must be damned tired what with chasing after that wife of his."
"Tom is waiting upon me tomorrow night." There was a grimness in Griffin's voice that startled Beau. "He's coming to Ravenscrest so that we can... clear up a bit of business between us."
Bertie shrugged. "Well, Southwood has more woman than he can rightly handle already, I'm told. Leavesh more pickings for the resht of us." Tarkington thumped Griffin upon the shoulder good-naturedly. "So, Shtone, tell me. Did you provide a rash of other females in addition to this... ward?"
"I fear he brought only me." Isabeau stepped toward Bertie, her eyes dancing beguilingly as she curtsied. "I fear," she continued in a stage whisper, "my Lord Stone is in a great hurry to marry me off so that I'll not be a bother to my family any longer."
Griffin went rigid as Bertie almost strangled upon his own neckcloth. His thick fingers reached up to wrench that offending garment askew. "'Zounds!" he gasped. "You... are Shtone's—"
"My ward," Griffin stated frigidly. "Mistress Isabeau DeBurgh."
"'Pon my soul, Griffin, can't be 'cause she's mudface that you're itching to be rid of her!" Bertie declared. "A reg'lar stunner, she is. With all that... that red stuff on her head."
"Hair. It is called hair."
Bertie looked mortally wounded. "I'm not that drunk, Shtone. You've seen me drunker. I've seen you drunker."
Unaccountably Griff felt heat steal along his cheekbones. For the first time in his life he hoped none of the stories of his wild past would be told.
"Bertie," he said, grabbing Tarkington by one meaty arm, "I hardly think it would be proper to discuss such states of indisposition with my ward present."
Bertie hiccupped, waving his other hand toward the laughing Beau. "Well, it is just that, with a face the like o' that, all peachy an' smooth. I can't see why you're making a fuss you're about tryin' to leg-shackle her. Why, any man without numb breeches would—"
"Any man would scarcely do for my ward." The shadow of pleasure he had taken in seeing his old companion once again had faded from Griff, leaving in its wake irritation and the fervent wish that he had never suggested taking in Ranelagh, had never dreamed up the scheme of introducing Isabeau into society, and that he had merely kept her safely locked inside Ravenscrest, bounding down stairs three at a time, sneaking licks from the sugar rock and matching wits with him at chess.
"Mr. Bertie, I regret to say that my lord is a most tedious guardian, forever preaching propriety," Beau piped up, extending a hand to the baronet's gloved one. "But I think he is somewhat of a hypocrite. The stories I've heard..." Her voice trailed off suggestively as she peered up at Tarkington through those thick, dark lashes, "I believe that his lordship wants me out of his way so that he may take his place again in society as reigning rakehell."
Albert choked out a guffaw, raising Beau's fingers to his lips in salute, and it was all Griffin could do not to knock Tarkington's hand away with one fist. "Well, I believe that there are a bevy of London's finest bucks in the rotunda fearing they are to be saddled with some horse-faced girl of agonizingly good family and torturously nondescript personality. That's how it usually is when there is such a stir to send a gel off. I think they will be pleasantly surprised. If I may, milady?" Bertie offered her one puce sleeve, and she let her fingertips drift down onto it, smiling up into the baronet's face in a way that drove Griffin mad.
"Thank you, kind sir," she said, keeping pace with the nobleman as he began a somewhat unsteady course toward the rotunda. Heavenly smells wafted out, tantalizing those who would dine. The clatter of china and silver, the scraping of chairs against the floor, and the ever-present chatter seemed to lure those outside the building with an invisible thread.
Isabeau slanted a glance up at Griffin, who stalked beside them. His mouth was tight with anger, and his eyes were like twin embers, hot and furious and full of hunger—a hunger every roast capon in London could not have filled. A hunger Beau fully intended to taunt and torment until even the most noble and saintly of men would not have had the strength to subdue it. And Lord Griffin Stone was no saint!
She flashed him a wicked glance, wetting her lips so they shone in the lamplight, and a delicious shiver worked through her as she imagined what it would be like when that barely leashed passion that had glittered in Griffin's eyes was loosed upon her. Devastating. Mind-shattering. Wild and wondrous and as full of danger as the storms that hurtled in from the vast oceans, his loving would be. Yet filled with such a rare, sweet tenderness it would break her heart. She was stunned as tears pricked at the back of her eyes, her smile softening with anticipation.
"Here we be, Mistress DeBurgh." Bertie Tarkington's voice jarred her back to the present, and sh
e was surprised to find that they had entered the building. In front of her a fair rainbow of masculine forms was seated around a large table. Beau met the battery of their stunned eyes with her most winning smile, trying not to laugh as they all but tripped over one another in their efforts to secure a place at her side.
Golden-curled Adonises, powdered dandies and rugged-featured paragons who reeked of the sporting set crowded near her. It was as if Griffin's cousin had managed to prepare a banquet of suitors for Beau's perusal. Whatever her taste in men, it would have been represented among this company. But not a one of them, from the flamboyant, bewigged giant of a man garbed in scarlet to the bookish, long-nosed gent with a slight lisp could hold a candle to the man who had already bewitched her heart.
Beau stole a glance at him, taking in his thunderous scowl. There were ominous emotions roiling in the blue-gray depths of his eyes. They held a delicious danger, the same alluring menace that had been present when she had first seen his face across a moonlit road. And there was something about seeing him this way that fueled the imp of mischief always lurking in Isabeau's breast, making her want to prick even more relentlessly at what sanity he had managed to maintain.
She shook herself mentally. She was aware that the vague babble she had been hearing was several introductions being rattled off at once, as if she were a prize to be awarded to whichever of the candidates was first to reveal his name. She drew a fan from her pocket, unfurling the painted scene of the Muses with a flirtatious snap.
"I vow I shall never be able to keep the lot of you straight," she said, giving them her most dazzling smile. "There are so many of you, and... well, I regret I have not been much in polite company."
"It is a crime to keep such beauty hidden," a bull of a man boomed. "Stone should be taken up by the constable for effecting the thievery of such a delight to mine orbs."
