“I paid for it. And the tea tray. I thought”—she took a deep breath—“we would want the room warm when we removed our clothing. If you must know.”
He went still, hands gripping the rough board mantelpiece. “That does seem the sort of thing I ought to know.” Without looking at her, he strode to the desk, poured out a cup of tea, and gulped it with a wince.
“I—”
Clack. His teacup hit the tray with ringing force. “What is going on, Augusta? Why are you tormenting me? You reject my politeness and seek to upend my honor, then you offer the ultimate intimacy as though it means nothing.”
She sat again on the bed. “We have a different idea of what constitutes the ultimate intimacy.” This seemed an inadequate reply, but what else could she say? I know I am tormenting you. I am tormenting myself too. She was not feeling very wise right now, but she had wisdom enough to keep that particular thought to herself.
“Do we?” He began to fiddle with the items on the tea tray, his voice low and carefully steady. “Perhaps we do. To me, it can indeed involve undressing, just as you suggested. Or it can be experienced with the removal of no clothing at all. The ultimate intimacy happens when two people want nothing more than to be together, and when being together is a pleasure in itself. When the joining of bodies is more than a lust slaked; it’s heart to heart and mind to mind.”
As he spoke, he created a spell. Its ingredients were his low voice, the warm scent of coal, the slope of the ceiling like a secret cave over their heads, the rich sleekness of the old coverlet beneath her fingers. They were alone, they were together, and his voice was twining through her frozen depths, cracking shards of ice free. They were so sharp, like tiny knives.
She closed her eyes and pushed the feeling aside. Let him wake her body; let her mind sleep.
“We don’t have a different idea of the ultimate intimacy, after all,” Augusta said. “But that’s not what I’m offering you.”
The china cup on which his fingers rested rattled in its saucer. His fingers were trembling, then—and Augusta knew what it meant when one’s face was stern but one’s fingers trembled. He was hurt. She had hurt him.
Her heart thumped a protest. “I can’t offer it to anyone,” she rushed to explain. “I’m not capable of it. But I want to…” What would the right phrase be? It could not be make love without love. Rut and swive sounded so vulgar.
“You want to…” He prompted, lifting his hand from the treacherous china cup. “Ah, you are blushing. Permit me to guess what you want, then. You want to revenge yourself on your wretched former lover through me, even though he will never know or care. You want to be wanted yet not do any wanting in return. You want all the power, all the advantage. And then you want to be able to back away, done with me, and say that you’ve had enough.”
“All correct,” she said. “Except for one thing. I want you very much indeed.”
She did; she knew she did. That was why she had traipsed through the streets of Bath and strewn coin on every floor of this lodging house. She had wanted to make him hers; she had not expected him to mind.
But he did, and that hurt too. Many things hurt now that the ice had begun to crack.
Could this truly be the same day she had fled Emily’s house in a borrowed cloak? She had run to Joss, then from Joss, then been brought back by Joss. She could not get away from this man, no matter how much she wanted to.
Obviously she did not want to.
Silently, he had crossed the room. Now he sat next to her on the small bed, ropes creaking as he settled. “Good lord,” he said quietly. “What did he do to you, this man from your past?”
The mattress sank beneath his weight, tipping Augusta closer to the wall of his chest. “Too much,” she said. “Or not enough. The end result was the same. But there’s no room for someone else right now. Not here.”
Joss’s mouth made a grim line. “I certainly don’t want to be joined by another man, either in flesh or spirit. But can you forget him while you are with me?”
With no one but you. “That is the reason I’m here.” Her voice sounded hoarse, choked. Her breasts were heavy; her sex clenched. Her heart was a frantic flutter. Why had she thought she could control Joss? She couldn’t even control herself.
With a gentle forefinger, he turned Augusta’s chin toward him. Eyes as dark as smoky quartz searched her, looking so deeply into her she felt as though he had seen the thoughts she did not speak. Closer, he bent, and when his lips parted, she closed her eyes. Yes. Now it would begin. He would kiss her again, and she would kiss him back, and somehow she would be knit back together.
But no lips touched hers, and her puzzled eyes opened. Instead, fingertips danced over her temple. “This hairpin must come loose.” With one little yank, he had it free, then pressed the curved pin into her palm.
At once, a band of tension she had not known she carried began to relax. She searched his face, dark and clever and impatient and wry. His eyes were kind. Too kind. Even pitying, maybe.
He had not told her yes. But he had not told her no, either.
She heaved a deep breath. “Will you take out some more pins?”
“Certainly.” Joss tugged more hairpins free, slipping his fingers through her locks, pins pinging onto the floor like tiny hailstones.
“It’s such a trial to be female,” she said. “When I was preparing to debut in society, my mother often said, ‘You have to suffer to be beautiful.’ And I told her, ‘It’s not worth it!’ But of course it was, for a while.”
Ping. Another hairpin dropped to the wooden floor, a delicate sound. A shiver raced through Augusta’s chest, her belly. She was not prepared for the eroticism of such a tiny noise: an unmistakable sound of undressing.
The last time she had undressed for a man, she had thought herself in love and beloved. She had been so innocent. The contrast was painful, yet she would not go back. Now that she had drunk of honesty, bracing and brave, she wanted nothing else.
So she must be honest too. “I shall tell you what happened,” she said behind the red fall of her hair. “The man—he was a master forger, feigning love so well I never suspected I was being deceived. I helped, too. I wanted to be loved, and so I was ready to believe.”
And she was the one to spin the spell now, as she told Joss the truth. The meetings in secret that seemed so romantic. The kisses and promises he extracted, the physical passion that began to enslave her. She agreed to marry him, but the trip to Gretna Green was put off for one reason, then another.
She was ensnared; she could think of nothing but him. She would go along with his every suggestion, falling deeply without knowing it.
“It was my fault,” she said. “My foolishness to believe him. I cannot trust myself to know what’s right.”
“And you do not believe anything anyone says unless it is horrid.” Joss sighed. “You never made it to Gretna Green, I assume. Unless you had him killed, and truly are a widow?”
The idea brought a smile to her face, swift and wolfish. “Would that I had finished him off, though it wouldn’t be worth the chance of being executed. No, we never eloped. And I never…ah, fell with child. In both instances I now consider myself fortunate.”
She shook back her hair so she could look Joss in the face. So far the pain of honesty had been like pinpricks, swift and sharp. Now she lanced herself. “When my parents died and my fortune fell under the control of trustees, he abandoned his suit.” Her heart gave its usual squeeze, hard and hollow. “He had, apparently, been courting someone else all along. Someone better.”
The stark, bare details were enough to sketch the picture for Joss. In her mind, though, the memory spread like watercolor bleeding over paper. The news of her parents’ accident arriving at the London house, instead of her parents themselves. Their clothes still in the wardrobes, their shoes and boots cleaned and lined up, waiting for
them to step back in. This was the worst part: the reminders of how swiftly they had vanished.
She had just returned from Colin’s lodging when the messenger arrived from Portsmouth with the tale. Her parents had arranged a quick sail for pleasure; city-bound folk, they could not resist the chance to ruffle the open water they missed so much. But a sudden squall, or maybe no more than the wake of a larger boat, tipped their vessel.
City-bound folk, dressed in costly, heavy layers. They could not swim to safety.
As she listened to the message that upended her world, her skin was still pink and sensitive from Colin’s stubble. He had scratched at her as he uncovered, kissed, licked every inch of her body, but it was not for this reason she felt unbearably raw. The marks had still not entirely healed when a servant mentioned a few days later that “nice Mr. Hawford” was now betrothed to a sugar heiress.
It was embarrassing. It was shameful. That was the moment she realized she had thrown her heart after someone who did not want it. She had lost everyone she loved at once, and she felt she had lost herself.
Desperate, she had tried to bring herself back by coloring in the lines more brightly: clothes, gaiety, flirtation. But society had faded away until she was alone, her flash and dazzle only making the darkness about her more unrelenting.
Taking a deep breath, she explained to Joss, “No one thought to keep his betrothal from me because no one knew he was courting me. Which means, I suppose, that it was never courtship at all. I think he was pursuing both of us, and whoever was the easiest to topple would become his wife. Or maybe I was too easy to topple.”
Joss looked as he always had: wry and wistful and wicked all at once. “Are you sure you do not wish him killed?” He reached behind Augusta’s head, sliding his fingers through her hair. Ping. Another hairpin fell to the floor.
“I wish him gone,” she said. “That’s what I wish. But I was the one who vanished.”
Somehow, she thought he would know what she meant: he, who spent his life at the whim of a relation who scarcely acknowledged him. It was easy to vanish—far easier than one might expect.
“I understand,” Joss said. “But you are here now, entirely present. And you are worthy. Just as you are.”
***
This woman would be the death of him.
If Joss had one guiding principle in his life, it would be: don’t use women for your own selfish pleasure. Men who did not agree ended by ruining lives. Joss’s mother’s. Jessie the maid’s. Augusta was, as she had said, lucky to have escaped with no wounds to her body. Even so, her mind and heart and reputation had all suffered.
And tonight, she placed them all in his hands. She meant to use him—but did that not also mean she trusted him to make things right for her? He had no idea what to do with such trust.
So he plucked more hairpins free and flicked them to the floor, trying to ignore the delicate floral scent of each tumbling lock. Running his fingers through her dark-red strands merely to check for further pins. Certainly not noticing their sleek texture, or the way the long strands fell like gossamer once he released them.
He tried. He tried to close his ears to the deep breaths Augusta took, the faint “Oh” of pleasure when he removed a particularly tight pin. Though it was difficult indeed to let that last one pass. The little catch of her voice vibrated through him, plucking at his resolve. To unbind a woman’s hair—to be allowed to run his fingers through it—God. His few partners of the past had never permitted him such intimacy, nor had he wished it.
Now not only his thoughts were disobedient, his body was too. Heated and eager, an erection threatened to scatter all thought and replace it with need.
He curled his toes within his boots, pressing them into the hard sole. Discomfort. That was what he needed. Discomfort and calm and gritted teeth and for God’s sake why must her hair smell so good? It was like the scent of the country in spring, bottled fresh and sweet.
Inhaling deeply of the scent, he cloaked the breath as a sigh. “That’s all the pins, I think.”
“What do we do now?” She turned to face him. Her eyes were the color of luxury: a fine French brandy, a gemlike cabochon of amber. Sandalwood oil.
“You’re the one with the grand plan,” he said roughly. “You decide.”
“I trust you,” she said.
And that was that: resolve vanished. Or maybe it only transformed, turning from something leaden and determined into the sweet clarity of hope.
She trusted him. Did she realize how she had rocked him with three small words? Did she realize what a difference that made? Her reason for sneaking into his room was dark and sad—but she trusted him, and trust was light and precious.
And she wanted him. And by God, did he want her. He’d been fighting against it since her first you would do. Now that he knew her impossibly bright, willful, generous mind, you would do sounded like a benediction.
“I will do anything you want,” Joss said. “Anything at all.”
Augusta beamed at him—then hesitated, half turned toward him on the bed. “I should have prepared beyond this point. I don’t know what to do.”
“Might I make a suggestion?” Somehow he managed to sound light, but he could not remember ever asking a weightier question.
“Yes. All right.” She smiled. “You may suggest it, and I will tell you what I think.”
“Naturally. So you can be mistress of this encounter.”
“Naturally.” Her smile tilted sideways, a wistful little curl of lips.
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Having kissed before, there seems no reason not to do it again. That particular barrier has already fallen.”
“Very true,” she said. “All right. Let’s kiss, then.”
From an arm’s length apart, they stared at one another, each waiting for the other to make the first move. At once, they broke into nervous laughter. “This is about as erotic as adding up expenses in a ledger,” Joss finally said. “Perhaps we ought not to discuss each step in such detail.”
Augusta twisted her long, coppery hair into a rope and slung it over her shoulder. “No, let’s not discuss it.” Reaching for his shoulders, she pressed back, back, until Joss had to sink to one elbow or lose his balance. “I think I do have an idea, after all. Will you close your eyes?”
He raised one eyebrow, which he knew she hated—or maybe she loved it, because she gave him a wicked laugh as her fingertips grazed his face. Low and secretive, a throb of joy, and he shut his eyes as bid, ready to learn what she had in mind.
Loosened strands of hair danced over his features, light as spiderwebs, tickling his skin. She was…good Lord, she was crawling atop his lap. His hips shifted, and she let out another of those magical, intoxicating moans just as when he had pulled free her hairpins and run his fingers through her uncoiling hair.
Which was another idea, wasn’t it? Eyes still closed, he let her press him flat to the fortunate surface of the bed. His fingers whisked down, finding the curve of her breast, then reluctantly moving left until they located her long rope of hair. Up, up, he followed it until he cradled her cheek in his hands. Then with deliberate force, he skated his nails into her scalp, working free the tension, rubbing the sensitive nerves. Pulling her face closer to his.
“Oh,” she moaned again, and within two seconds—maybe less—Joss had yanked her flat atop him, full breasts crushed to his chest. The silk of her gown was as smooth as a coin, her warm breath at his throat like the memory of summer.
It was so easy now, so natural, to find her lips with his; to press them, tease them, torment them as she so beautifully tormented him. He sipped at her, full and sweet, his hands fisting in the skirts that tangled over her legs. She moaned her pleasure again, or maybe he did too, as mouths fit together and hands slid and traced the planes of bodies through far too many clothes. He lifted his head, catching her mouth more dee
ply, nipping her lips and grinding his hips upward into hers. There was no way he would ever be done kissing her, this flower-scented goddess…
Until she put his hand on her breast. “You can look,” she panted, “at my dockyard. If you want to.”
His eyes snapped open.
Augusta filled his sight, all firelight-gold skin and brandy-gold eyes and bronze-gold hair. So much gold he had to shut his eyes again, a quick squeeze. When he opened them, she had shifted. No longer a gilded goddess, she was a beautiful woman with parted lips and a questioning expression on her face.
“You have forever improved that word, as far as I am concerned,” he said. “Never again shall I be able to visit the coast or the ports of the Thames without being overcome by a fit of fleshly lust.”
“Oh?” She pressed a kiss to his throat, shifting the line of his cravat to dart the tip of a hot tongue over the sensitive skin. “Is that how you are feeling now? Overcome by a fit of fleshly lust?”
“Not quite,” he said. “Not quite overcome. I know perfectly well what I am doing and saying and thinking. To you. With you. About you. “
“Oh,” she said again. “Do demonstrate, if you please.”
Eighteen
Do demonstrate, if you please.
It was an order, yet a sort of abandonment—and the combination gave Augusta a sense of power of a sort she had never known.
Until Joss laughed at her. Of course he did. She didn’t even need to see his face to know the curve of his lips, the leaping line of his dark brow. “What shall I demonstrate? The speed with which I can divest you of your bodice?”
“That would be acceptable,” she murmured, head still pillowed on his shoulder, against his throat. She would never be done breathing in the scent of him, so unique yet so familiar.
“Acceptable, you say. That is hardly a hearty endorsement. I shall have to think of something better.”
“Demonstrate…” She trailed off, thoughts floating in a scatter like dandelion seed. “Demonstrate what it would take to overcome you.”
Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress Page 19
