“See? I said you were clever.” Amusement lurked in his deep voice. Her lonely heart yearned toward that warmth, beckoning as a snug bed on a cold night.
“Too clever to fall for a rogue’s tricks,” she said with complete lack of conviction.
He laughed softly and pressed his mouth to that throbbing nerve in her neck. She’d reached such a pitch of desire, her body clenched in immediate response.
“So I’m not succeeding?” he asked against her shoulder. His voice was thicker than usual.
“What do you think?” Close as she was to giving in, she wasn’t yet there.
“I think I need to work a bit harder,” he murmured.
One hand slid up her rib cage, trailing fire even through the rich silk of her gown. He stopped just short of her breast. Her nipples tightened to the point of pain, and she bit her lip to stifle her excited moan. Her legs wobbled, and she reached out to grab his shoulder. Just for support, she assured herself.
“Ashcroft…” The word was an undisguised plea.
“Yes?”
Diana knew what he wanted. Her so lost in enchantment, she forgot about ending the affair. She summoned her last scraps of resistance. Not enough to make her move away but enough to defy him. “You won’t win, you know.”
“I’ve still got a few weapons in store.”
At last, at last, he curled his hand around her breast, his palm pressing the pebbled nipple. She shuddered, and the moan finally escaped in a long, low keen. Against her will, she pushed into his hand.
“You don’t play fair.” The frantic beat of her heart made speech almost impossible.
“Nobody said I did, my love.”
“You shouldn’t call me that.” She only just kept contact with reason.
Heat radiated from him like a great forest fire. His hand dropped to her bottom, urged her forward. Under his teasing, he was all desire. Against her belly, he was hard and ready. She drew a shaky breath full of musky male arousal. This seduction seduced him too.
“Don’t you like it?”
“No.” She twined her arms around his neck.
“I can see that.”
She gave a protesting wriggle and heard his breath catch. Her helplessness receded. He was hungry for her. More than hungry. He was famished.
“Why don’t you kiss me?”
He didn’t cooperate, blast him. “Patience.”
She slid one hand up his strong neck in a gesture even she recognized was a caress. She tugged sharply on a lock of hair. “Stop teasing me.”
Still he resisted. The laughter drained from his eyes, and he moved away slightly to study her. She was such a fool, but the distance between them felt like absence.
“Are you leaving me?” he asked in a raw voice.
“Yes.”
Immediately, she saw he didn’t believe her, although she spoke the truth. “Then I’d better kiss you before it’s too late.”
Her lips stretched in a triumphant smile. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Ashcroft,” she said warningly. “Charming as your conversation is, I’ve had a surfeit this evening.”
It wasn’t true. His words enchanted almost as effectively as his touch. But if he didn’t place that beguiling mouth on hers in the next second, she’d scream like a banshee.
“Close your eyes,” he said again and with such rich persuasion in his voice, she couldn’t help but obey.
Without her sight, she felt vulnerable. She expected him to continue teasing. He knew it drove her to the edge of madness, and he was in a mood to toy with her like a cat toyed with a sparrow.
She’d fluttered against his claws until exhausted. Now she waited in fatalistic stillness.
His hands glided up to her shoulders and tightened. His mouth opened over hers with unconcealed need. Her lips parted to give him access. He kissed her rapaciously.
For a few seconds, she was quiescent, then she kissed him back, stroking his tongue, returning for a longer foray. Tasting the deep, rich flavor of Ashcroft.
He was like manna. Would she starve without him?
He curled his arms around her waist, dragging her against his body. He was shaking, as much victim to this storm as she.
Soon, kissing wasn’t enough, although she continued to press her mouth to his in desperate craving. He pulled away, panting, and she opened dazed eyes.
He was pale and drawn, vibrating with urgency. Without releasing her, he swiftly glanced around the room.
“Ah,” he said in satisfaction.
The world rocked as he swung her around and lowered her onto the delicate pink sofa. She felt the thin padding beneath her back and against her side, then the impetuous weight of Ashcroft’s body.
He grunted against her lips, shifted, and tensed, bumping the back of the sofa. “Damn it, this couch is made for midgets.”
She laughed. Like the rest of the library, the sofa was constructed on the small side. Certainly far too small for what Lord Ashcroft had in mind.
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t make love to me here. Laura might come in.” She tried to squirm into a sitting position, but his body trapped her.
He wriggled to find a more comfortable place kneeling over her. Without success, she noticed with the beginnings of genuine amusement. The great lover’s sudden gaucheness touched her heart in a way his self-confidence couldn’t.
The best he could manage was resting on one knee between her and the back of the couch and supporting himself with his other leg on the floor. The position looked uncomfortable, unwieldy.
“You’re naïve if you imagine Miss Smith isn’t aware what we’re doing,” he said dryly. “She’s no fool, that lady.”
“Nonetheless you’re not…having me on the sofa.”
He smiled down at her. “Care to place a wager?”
“You’re so sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure of you,” he retorted, and nuzzled her shoulder, pushing aside her bodice.
She trembled, and moisture bloomed between her legs. Her body recognized and welcomed the pressure of his. Her body didn’t care about pride or principle. Her body wanted him to shove up her skirts and take her.
He raised his head, his nostrils flaring. His smile turned deeply sensual, and heavy lids lowered over his eyes. She knew that expression. He meant to take her without delay.
“Ashcroft,” she protested, flattening one hand on his shoulder and pushing.
He didn’t budge. Of course he didn’t. He had no intention of going anywhere. He had every intention of satisfying the lust that lit his face.
How had they come to this? She’d thought to throw him out with a flea in his ear. Instead, she was flat on her back, her body preparing itself in wanton swiftness for his.
“You know you want to.” He settled himself more securely and threw one leanly muscled leg over her skirts.
Somehow, he made himself at ease on the minuscule piece of furniture. She had no idea how. She’d have thought it mathematically impossible.
“You’re such an arrogant ass,” she said with a lamentable lack of force.
“Aren’t I indeed?” he agreed amiably enough.
His new position leaning on one elbow left the other hand free. He brushed her hair back from her face with a gesture whose tenderness made her heart ache.
His hand dipped across her face, down her throat, across the bare skin above her bodice. She knew exactly where he headed. Her skin tightened in anticipation.
His fingers insinuated their way under the gold braid, slipped lower to brush her nipple. The crest tightened. Her hand curled in the soft blue wool of his coat. Her breath came so hard, it emerged in shaky sobs. With her other hand, she grabbed his wrist.
“Should I stop?” he asked with an idleness contradicted by the simmering light in his eyes, hot jade between the thick lashes. He stared at her bosom with a concentration that made gooseflesh break out all over her.
She bit her
lip, knowing if she agreed to his touching her breast, she agreed to this encounter reaching its conclusion.
It was impossible to fight him and herself at the same time.
She should tell him to go. If she insisted, he’d relent. If she insisted as though she really meant it, unlike her pathetic attempts so far. She couldn’t blame him for dismissing those as coy prevarications.
She drew breath, ready to reject him.
Instead, two unsteady words emerged as she released him. “Don’t stop.”
Oh, she was hopeless.
He sighed with satisfaction and plucked at her nipple, shooting vivid sensation through her veins. She shifted restlessly, seeking relief, but nothing quenched the flood of desire.
Still tormenting her breast, he bent his head and kissed her. She responded with all the unspoken, disastrous longing in her heart. She loved him, and she was grimly aware she was running out of time for his kisses.
After a long interval of delight, he wrenched his mouth from hers and rained kisses across her neck. He slid her dress out of the way. The air was cool on her naked skin.
She cried out softly when his lips closed on her nipple, then cried out again when he drew hard. She thrust her fingers into his hair and pressed his head closer.
The sensation was purest torment, purest pleasure. Feverishly, she cupped him. He groaned against her skin and tilted his hips, pressing into her hand. Even through his breeches, he felt like a furnace.
“Oh, yes,” she sighed as he turned his attentions to her other breast. She surrendered with a wholehearted enthusiasm she should regret but couldn’t.
Suddenly the tiny sofa offered ample room. He bunched her skirts, lifting them so the evening air chilled her thighs above her stockings.
His face was buried in her neck, and her dress was up around her waist. One hand trailed teasingly across the top of her leg. She ached for him to touch where she burned, then for the more profound invasion.
He knew that, the devil, and taunted her with delay.
She arched to encourage him to shift his fingers those last few inches. Her hand tugged at his breeches.
Suddenly he went still.
“What is it, Ashcroft?” she asked in a choked voice.
Surely he didn’t mean to deny her. That would be cruel, and everything she knew insisted he wasn’t a deliberately cruel man. Teasing and infuriating, certainly, but not cruel.
He raised his head, his face drawn with tension. “Don’t you hear that?” he asked sharply.
She frowned. What on earth was wrong?
Then she heard the knocking. Someone was at the front door. Someone insistent on entering if the peremptory banging was any indication.
Don’t let it be Burnley. Anyone but he.
Horror flooded her, turned her heart to stone. Hurriedly, she pushed Ashcroft away.
This time he didn’t resist. She scrambled up against the arm of the sofa, tugging at her dress. She needed a maid. She needed a fresh gown. She needed time to present an appearance of composure she didn’t feel.
How debasing for the marquess to discover her tousled and half-naked and smelling of her lover. She felt sick at the prospect.
“Are you expecting someone?” Ashcroft rose to his feet and watched her with a shuttered expression in his beautiful eyes.
“N…no,” she stammered, knowing fear was clear in her voice and her face. She acted as if she had something to be guilty about.
The problem was, she had.
Nervously she glanced at the closed door. The knocking had ceased, so she guessed whoever it was had been admitted.
She pulled at her bodice in another futile attempt to appear as if she hadn’t made love most of the day. Ashcroft extended a hand to help her as she staggered to her feet, but she ignored him.
A grim knell of foreboding tolled in her heart. She felt like a whore awaiting her pimp.
How could she face Lord Burnley like this?
But when the door soundlessly opened, the man who walked through on Laura’s arm wasn’t Lord Burnley.
It was her father.
Chapter Twenty-two
Struggling to dampen his rampant arousal, Ashcroft watched Diana. Her face was white as parchment and filled with acrid shame. Miss Smith’s eyes settled on her friend with visible concern.
He stepped forward to speak, but Diana stopped him with an emphatic gesture he couldn’t misunderstand. “Papa,” she said in a strangled voice.
Shock held Ashcroft motionless. The suspicions that had always lurked beneath his endless desire reared up like venomous snakes ready to strike.
His expression severe, the old man turned in his daughter’s direction. He still wore his hat and coat, and he leaned heavily on a cane. He was tall and gaunt, neatly but inexpensively dressed. Ashcroft guessed he was a lawyer’s clerk or small-scale merchant. An incongruous parent for Ashcroft’s gorgeous, modish mistress. This man couldn’t have funded Diana’s house, clothes, servants.
So who in Hades had?
Diana ventured forward to press a kiss to the old man’s cheek. He stiffened in rebuff. Ashcroft caught the lancing hurt that darkened her eyes as she turned in his direction. He had a feeling she didn’t see him at all. She looked sick with fear and humiliation.
Ashcroft remained silent because clearly that was what she wished, but questions multiplied. He was grateful the old man didn’t glance at him. He still trembled with frustrated desire. Nor had Diana’s hurried attempt at a toilette achieved much. Her bright hair tumbled down her back like a lascivious milkmaid’s.
“Papa, what…what are you doing here?” She sounded uncertain, afraid, unhappy.
He hated to see her proud spirit brought low. His Diana always met the world with her head high.
His Diana?
Hell, what was wrong with him?
He felt disoriented, disconnected, as though a perfectly solid floor had suddenly collapsed beneath his feet. He’d long ago recognized that Diana kept secrets. But the passion always seemed real. Tonight, he couldn’t help wondering if the woman who had shared his bed with such enthusiasm comprised nothing but falsehood.
Anger tightened her father’s features, forcing Diana to retreat a few steps. “That’s a question I should ask, daughter.” The man’s voice resonated with perplexed rage. “You’ve told me for weeks you and Laura are staying with Lady Kelso, yet when I call on her, I’m informed you’re not there. In fact, they’ve never heard of Mrs. Carrick, supposed companion to the countess.”
Diana winced. Her hands twined at her waist, and her distress was a tangible presence. “I’m…I’m sorry, Papa,” she said almost soundlessly.
Her father continued as if she hadn’t spoken. His cultured accent made Ashcroft place him slightly higher in society than his plain appearance indicated. But no way was this man aristocracy or even gentry.
“I prevailed upon George Coachman to bring me from Surrey. The fool should have come straight here. He must have known the Kelsos would turn me away. Apparently everybody in my vicinity is party to this conspiracy.”
“Is there trouble at home?” Diana shook like a reed in a gale.
Her father looked more austere. Ashcroft noted little resemblance between them, apart from perhaps the height and the stubborn line of the old man’s jaw.
“I think any trouble is in London, don’t you, Diana?” her father said in a frigid tone.
With every cold word her father spoke, each as pointed and deadly as a dart, Diana looked more devastated. Ashcroft shifted restlessly, burning to defend her but knowing his championship was the last thing she wanted. After that first begging, terrified glance, she hadn’t looked at him. It was as if he didn’t exist.
“Papa, I…” She faltered into silence and bit her lip.
“Well should you stammer and blush, daughter,” he snapped. He leaned more heavily on his stick, but his expression remained accusing. “Who pays for this house?”
“I…” Diana shot a helpless, be
gging glance at Miss Smith. Miss Smith remained silent.
“Don’t pretend you do. William left you some money, but not enough to fund an extravagant visit to London. I can’t help but feel Lord Burnley is behind this.”
Burnley?
Appalled disbelief paralyzed every muscle in Ashcroft’s body. The sensation of falling through plain air intensified.
That unmitigated blackguard, the Marquess of Burnley, knew Diana?
Burnley was the sort of aristocrat he despised. A brute who believed his rank gave him the right to transport children for minor crimes or hang them if he could get away with it. A man who fitted perfectly among those other fools and powermongers whose overweening arrogance and blind conservatism consigned most of the nation to poverty and ignorance.
Ashcroft and Burnley clashed frequently and bitterly in Parliament. Thanks to the draconian politics of most of the ruling class, the contests usually ended in Burnley’s favor.
So why should Lord Burnley’s protégée, if that’s what Diana was, seek out the dissipated Earl of Ashcroft? Burnley must have described Ashcroft to her as the devil incarnate. Yet she’d brazenly offered herself with some humbug about wanting sexual experience.
Bewilderment, suspicion, wild surmise juggled for a place in Ashcroft’s mind. Nothing made sense.
Was this a plot? He couldn’t see what she or Burnley hoped to gain. If the affair became public, Diana would suffer, not Ashcroft. His reputation with women was so tainted, the world hardly expected him to act the knight in shining armor. If word got out he’d debauched a virtuous country widow, the ton wouldn’t raise a hand to hide a yawn of boredom.
Nonetheless, Ashcroft’s skin itched with wariness.
While his brain winnowed contradictory facts, he watched Diana. She looked stricken, lost.
She looked guilty.
Ashcroft didn’t understand. Mysteries piled on mysteries, and every time he thought he’d solved one puzzle, a hundred more sprang up in its place. Unraveling Diana’s secrets was like trying to kill the damned Hydra.
Her hands curled in her skirts, and her tiny pants of distress punctuated the discussion. “It’s not what you think.”
My Reckless Surrender Page 24
