It Started with a Scandal

by Julie Anne Long

  He sighed a breath he’d seemed to be holding.

  He lifted his hand and held it briefly over his eyes. As if to shield himself from the glare of all that appalling truth. And then dropped it again, and gave his head a slow shake.

  “I don’t know how . . .” he began. “It’s just . . .” His voice was low and scraped raw.

  He seemed unable to meet her eyes.

  They were aimed at his untouched tea.

  And then he turned his head very deliberately to look at her, and the very act of seeing her seemed to pain him.

  Her heart did a slow plummet, and she seemed to feel its jagged edges all the way down.

  He leaned toward her, hands on his knees. “I just don’t know how anyone could ever leave you, Elise.”

  He said it slowly, deliberately, wonderingly, as if handing down a verdict.

  And then he gave a short rueful laugh.

  As if it was both a realization and a confession and he wasn’t quite certain how he felt about it.

  Their gazes collided, and a rush of joy roared through her bleakness. He began to smile.

  She shook her head, as if she could settle all the old fear and shame that had been stirred into its undisturbed place again, but it was no use. She dashed her hand roughly at her eyes, but a few tears escaped and clung to her eyelashes anyway. She could feel the consequences of everything that came before pulling at her.

  He reached out instantly and took her hand firmly, as if to pull her back from the brink of that.

  The gesture was all grace and instinct and tenderness.

  So very him.

  His instinct was always to protect, at any cost to himself.

  She gripped his hand like a lifeline, but it was hardly safety, and she knew it.

  Desire and joy were twined all through with fear of what she wanted. And as he laced his fingers through hers, she remembered the whisper-­soft slide of them over the hairs on the back of her neck, and the fit of his hand at the small of her back, and desire spiked through her so violently that she nearly swayed.

  All those hairs stood erect now, very hopeful of being stroked again, apparently.

  “There was no shame in passion, Elise. The shame is in abandoning you with the consequences.” His voice still had that husky edge. “The shame is all his.”

  “That,” she sniffled, “is not a popular opinion. But if I were trying to seduce me, it is precisely what I would say.”

  He laughed softly.

  But denied nothing.

  “Nevertheless, you gave yourself honestly. We reason with ourselves in such moments, do we not? Fortunes are made and lost every moment on such wagers. Lives are changed for the better or worse in moments.” He snapped his fingers. “You wagered you could indulge passion and receive trust and honor in return, and lost. Every choice, no matter how small, is a gamble. I wagered the Earl of Ardmay would make me a rich man, and he almost did. I imagine there’s still time. I wagered on you restoring order to my household, and here you have upended me completely.”

  She laughed at that, then gave a rather graceless sniffle.

  “You wagered a man you cared for would deal honorably with you. And you lost. We all lose from time to time. It is what makes winning sweeter. The day needs the night in order to enjoy any significance at all, n’est-­ce pas?”

  He gave a shrug.

  She stared at him wonderingly.

  She did rather prefer his vision of life as one enormous gaming table.

  “I’m not a harlot but a gambler?” She managed to say this lightly. “And here I told the staff that life is best played as a long game.”

  She saw his other hand curl into a fist, almost languidly, at the sound of that word.

  “If anyone refers to you as a harlot, would you be so kind as to tell me, so that I may shoot them?” he said almost lightly.

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  He smiled a small, taut smile.

  “There is something between us, n’est-­ce pas, Elise?”

  It was more a statement than a question. An understatement, in fact.

  “Oui,” she whispered.

  A fraught silence ensued.

  “And so, Mrs. Fountain, we have arrived at another such moment of wager, have we not?”

  She was still holding his hand. That hard, elegant, scarred hand, that could wield a sword, a pistol, reins, rigging. And had likely touched more women than . . .

  Now was not the time to think about that.

  In many ways, he was no less frightening now than the day she’d met him.

  And yet she could feel his pulse beating at least as swiftly as her own.

  Because of her.

  Because he wanted her.

  She knew he was waiting for a word or a sign. How she wanted to drag her thumb over that hammering pulse, to commit to memory how he felt about her in this moment, to savor the life in him that had almost been extinguished by six men. How she wanted to raise his hand to her mouth and place a kiss there.

  She released it instead.

  Sliding her fingers from between his, savoring the touch of them as if for the last time.

  And when he took it back from her, resignedly, as if he were scabbarding a sword, she saw the light leave his face.

  It was closed and hard and still.

  The silence that followed was like the sound of the end of the world.

  Or before there was a world.

  And a moment later, with fingers gone suddenly a little clumsy, she reached up and slid a hairpin from her hair.

  And she laid it down between them as if it was the card that would decide the game.

  Chapter 20

  HE STARED AT THE hairpin.

  Then raised his gaze cautiously to hers.

  His breath seemed held.

  She reached up and slid out another hairpin.

  And laid it down next to the first.

  A spirally lock of hair tumbled down and bobbed over her eyes.

  “Well played, Madam.” His voice was amused and admiring, but taut with anticipation.

  And as slowly, torturously slowly, as slowly as she’d dreamed of sliding her hand up over his hard thighs . . . she slid out another pin.

  He followed her hand with his eyes as she placed the pin down next to the first, as if he’d heard her thoughts. And followed her hand all the way back up to her hair.

  She withdrew another pin.

  He watched, statue-­still, a smile beginning to grow.

  Several little spirals of hair were freed this way, and she began to worry that what had begun as sensual was now comically Medusa-­like. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  She reached up for the last pin.

  “No,” he said abruptly. “Allow me.”

  He leaned toward her, so close she could see the burnished tips of his dark lashes, and the gold splashes in his eye, so like autumn leaves spiraling in a wind, and she could smell starch and tobacco and warm man and she thought, This must be how he does it. One whiff of him was as intoxicating as a snifter of brandy. One sniff and women would fall at his feet. Or on their backs, rather.

  His breath came swiftly against her cheek, against her ear, mingling with her own swift breath, and her nipples rose to attention.

  And he drew, at last, that last hairpin from her hair, with the same gravity and triumph as Arthur had pulled the sword from the stone. He held it up to her, then tossed it into the pile with the others.

  She gave her head a little shake.

  He leaned back just a little to review the result.

  “Dear God, it’s chaos,” he murmured. “We best put them back immediately!”

  She would have laughed, but as he spoke his fingers were already lacing through it, and his voice had gone lazier and softer a
nd more lulling with each word until “immediately” was a confiding whisper, and she was perhaps the happiest creature ever to be caught in a web of her own making.

  He let his fingers dangle across the nape of her neck, and just like that little bonfires of pleasure were lit all across her nerve endings. It was a veritable Beltane of bliss.

  When his hands were thoroughly wound in skeins of her hair, he tugged back her head.

  “I am so glad,” he murmured, “that you are a gambler, chérie.”

  His lips brushed hers.

  She moaned softly. It was scarcely even a kiss, but its subtlety held the promise of untold pleasure. It suggested he was a man who knew more about her desires than she did, and could fulfill them. He was a magician.

  “I know, ma chérie. In good time. In . . .” He brushed her lips with his. “ . . . good . . .” He coaxed her lips open and gently pulled a kiss from them. “. . . time.”

  His lips crushed hers.

  With the dive and twine of his tongue, the brush and slide of his lips, layer upon layer of pleasure was revealed to her, heat and satin, cognac and smoke, dizzying musky sweetness, and she tumbled deeper, deeper, deeper into a sweet oblivion. His fingers loosed themselves from her hair and skated down, down, so lightly over her breasts, over those erect nipples, and she arced and gasped as bliss snaked through her veins.

  “Elise.” His voice was in her ear, a hoarse whisper, and he touched his tongue there. She shivered, and arched her neck, abetting him.

  His mouth traveled to that secret, satin hollow beneath her ear where the tempo of her pulse betrayed her desire. He left a slow, hot kiss there, too. She considered herself branded. She was his.

  His fingers were at the laces of her dress, fumbling at first, his fingers awkward. He spread them loose, and her dress sagged down the front of her like shameless, drunken doxie, to just above her breasts.

  “You are beautiful.”

  “You are foxed.”

  “On you,” he clarified.

  “Very well. I am beautiful.”

  He laughed softly and dragged his fingertips, a touch soft as a whisper, across her collarbone, across the soft swell of her breasts, and her breath came jaggedly. Teasing.

  He took another kiss, a soft one, as his finger skated over the smooth mounds of the tops of her breasts, and she did what she’d long imagined doing—­she slid her hands up over his hard thighs and skimmed the tight, burgeoning swell of his cock with her nails.

  He hissed in a breath and his thighs parted to allow her access.

  Two could tease.

  She did it again.

  “Elise,” he groaned against her mouth.

  She felt lustful and savage.

  He hooked his fingertips into the top of her gown and drew it down hard, and suddenly she was nude to the waist.

  “Mother of God,” he said with great, cheerful reverence, and filled his hands with her breasts.

  His thumbs drew hard filigree figures over her ruched nipples, and the pleasure was shocking. She gasped, and her head went back, which gave him an opportunity to drag his lips down her throat. He ducked his head and closed his mouth around one nipple, then sucked gently and traced it with a sinewy, knowing tongue. The shocks of pleasure fanned through the far reaches of her body.

  “Philippe . . . God . . .”

  He pulled her toward him then, and in a motion as graceful and deliberate as a waltz, he closed his arms around her and rolled the two of them to lay side by side, face-­to-­face, on the settee, and he hooked his arm beneath her thigh so that it lay across his and they were fused, groin to groin.

  And the heavenly shock, the relief, of the press of her body against the hot, hard length of his. She melted into him and pushed her body against the hard cock fighting the confines of his trousers. She could taste the lust, hot and electric, in the back of her throat, feel it coursing through her.

  The rush of his breath, the hoarse words, a rush of French and English, very appreciative, coarse and profane. Knowing she had this power over him was excruciatingly erotic, and suddenly she was afraid of how much she wanted him, and what that might mean. His hands slid down to her buttocks and he pushed her against him again. She was likely seconds from her release and yet . . .

  She went still.

  Still quaking.

  Her heart beating so hard that the blood whooshed in her ears. She rested her head against his heaving chest, feeling the thump of his heart against her cheek. She didn’t want to meet his eyes.

  He didn’t question it. She could feel his confusion.

  And then his hands slowed and gentled on her back, over her derriere, but never stopped moving.

  And then she lifted her head. She could count his eyelashes if she wanted to, or look up his nose, and she could see a tiny scar next to his fine mouth, and a dusting of golden stubble on his chin, because it was already near morning.

  “Philippe . . .” She began an apology.

  He smiled softly at her. He traced her lips with his finger, a way of hushing her.

  “I know so many secret places to kiss you, and so many ways to touch you, Elise. I know how to make you mad, mad with want for me.”

  The fingertips of his other hand were doing a whisper-­soft slide against the vulnerable satiny skin inside her thigh, just above her garter, skin no man had ever touched so sweetly, so skillfully. She quivered with exquisite tension as each stroke sent quicksilver ribbons of pleasure through her.

  And then he paused.

  “Philippe . . .” And now it was almost a plea.

  “I think that when we make love, Elise, the world will burst into flames. But it will not be tonight.”

  Her vocabulary was lost to her. The only thing that seemed to have a voice was the slick, pulsing center of her.

  His fingers were still skating back and forth, back and forth. So coy. So skilled. So just out of reach.

  “You are not certain. Of this. Of us.”

  It was a moment before she could speak.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  It was true.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “It used to be you. And now I think it’s me.”

  He paused, thoughtfully. His fingers never stopped moving.

  “When you are certain, you will come to me. You will ask for it. And I will make you scream with pleasure, and you will do the same for me.”

  “I won’t, Philippe. I can’t . . .” The fingers were making her mad, mad, mad with desire now.

  “I did not say I wouldn’t use persuasion in the interim.”

  “Philippe . . .”

  “And I will not leave you to beg tonight, chérie.”

  He slid his fingers up over her where she was wet and aching, and like a wanton she arched into the hard, skillful stroke.

  “Now . . . there . . . Philippe . . .”

  He didn’t need instructions. He knew.

  And an instant later she shattered, like a thrown vase, into a thousand sparkling, blissful shards, her body arcing violently with the force of her release. He pressed her face gently against his chest to muffle her hoarse scream.

  And for a time they lay together, her cheek against his chest rising up and down, up and down, a little more slowly minute by minute as their breathing evened.

  She hadn’t screamed like that with Edward, that was for certain.

  The clock whirred and bonged 3:00 a.m., and it wouldn’t be long before the maids would be up to light the fires. She stirred.

  “My leg is asleep,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she murmured. She shifted.

  “I must ask something of you,” he said suddenly.

  She turned to him, her hair falling down over his face, and he parted it like curtains, looking earnest.

  “Do n
ot worry so about all of the pins in your hair. If you need a ribbon, I will buy a ribbon for you. Postlethwaite’s Emporium has dozens.”

  She laughed. “First a chair, then a ribbon . . . you will lure me into disreputability with a trail of gifts.”

  A flicker of something that looked like pain crossed his face.

  And it was a piercing reminder that nothing at all was on offer apart from this, whatever this was.

  She loved him.

  She knew, just then, with a startling clarity and thoroughness that was both peace and torment.

  She could never make love to him. She couldn’t. Not for her sake, and not for Jack’s. There would be no return if she did.

  “You will come to me,” he said softly.

  “I won’t,” she said just as insistently. “I can’t, Philippe.”

  He simply smiled faintly, enigmatically.

  “But I’ll wear a ribbon, and fewer pins,” she promised him gently, as if she’d just told him good-­bye.

  “How you indulge me,” he murmured, dryly, after a moment.

  “WILL YOU GIVE me a push, Giant Lord Lavay?”

  “It is a hammock, not a swing, Small Master Jack. If I push, you will fly out as if fired from a catapult and hit the church bell—­ding!”

  This made Jack laugh so loudly that he nearly fell out of the hammock anyway.

  Philippe leaned over to stabilize it.

  He’d found a cluster of alders perfect for slinging two hammocks, and though it was still cold, and with Jack’s mother’s blessing, the two of them had trudged out to sling them up so Jack could see what it was like to be a sailor.

  They lay side by side, bundled up, arms crossed for warmth.

  “It’s grand,” Jack pronounced. “Sailors sleep like this? On a ship?”

  “Oui, the hammock was our bed on the ship. The ship sways on the sea, the hammock sways along with it.”

  They could see their breath as they spoke, but it was rather peaceful to stare up through the trees at the clear, cold sky. Lavay could remember no other period like this in his life. A calm before everything changed forever. There was the London assignment. There was Alexandra.

  And there was Elise.

  He didn’t search for excuses to ring for Elise. Her assistance was no longer necessary with correspondence, she managed the household skillfully, no more innuendo-­laced conversations were necessary.