“Thank you,” Eleanor said with genuine gratitude, before slipping away.
Only when she was inside the hackney did she notice a similar hired coach just pulling away from the home opposite her own, with a lone man sitting inside. Eleanor peered through the darkness at the face in the other coach’s window. There, lit by only a sliver of moonlight, was a face she would recognize anywhere—Hugh, the Earl of Ledsey.
* * *
Charles arrived early to Lottie’s by special request, and filled her in on the events of the ball—including Lady Sarah’s preposterous costume of an angel. Lottie’s smile wavered, however, at the mention of Charles dancing the waltz with Lady Eleanor.
The clop of hooves came to a stop outside and he glanced behind the window covering to see a woman in black slip out of a hackney. His pulse kicked up a notch in wicked delight. Lady Eleanor had arrived. And no doubt the journals with her.
Or one of them, at least.
Lottie twirled one dark curl thoughtfully on her finger and pursed her lips.
He dropped the curtain. “What is it?”
Lottie’s brows lifted in feigned confusion.
Charles pointed to the hair curled around her digit. “You are twirling your hair and pursing your lips. Which you always do when you have something you want to say. So speak your piece and be done with it.”
She sighed and spread her hands over the green silk gown she wore. “Have a care for why you’re here, Charles. Why you’re helping.”
He frowned. “I am not following...”
The footman appeared at the door and announced the arrival of Lady Eleanor.
“Bring her in,” Lottie said to the footman before turning back to Charles. “She is meant to wed, not to be distracted by you.”
Something deep in Charles’s chest gave a little snag. There was Eleanor’s second condition, which he had not yet answered: his amenability toward marriage to her. He’d thought of it for a good length of time, and frankly did not see the possibility of her not being wanted.
“I’m well aware of that,” he replied.
“Good.” Lottie beamed widely at him. “Then I’ll let you have your time with Lady Eleanor once we have had a chance to celebrate her success. Assuming she brought the journal.”
Before anything further could be said Lady Eleanor entered the room, appearing unlike she ever had before. A gleam lit her emerald eyes, reflecting the grin on her face, and her cheeks were rosy with good health. She’d already removed her cloak and mask. Her bright red hair was tied back in a simple knot, and free of the ghastly blonde wig.
“Oh, Lottie,” she breathed. “Thank you for your incredible instruction. Your tutelage has been invaluable.”
Lottie gave a squeal of excitement and caught Lady Eleanor in a hug. “I’m so very delighted,” Lottie gushed. “I heard how brilliant you were. Have you had any proposals yet?”
If Lady Eleanor had been surprised by the physical affection of Lottie’s impulsive hug, she did not show it. Instead she returned the hug and laughed. It was a sweet, joyous sound that Charles found to be quite pleasant.
“It has only been one day,” Eleanor said.
Lottie released her and put a hand on her hip. “Does that matter?”
“Well, I did have many callers, and Mother has stated that the Earl of Devonington would like to take me to Vauxhall. I also received several lovely flowers.”
Lady Eleanor slid a glance at Charles and smiled, as if they had a shared secret. And perhaps they did—he knew how eager she had been to rid herself of the Earl’s company. But even with the knowledge of her disdain for Devonington, he could not stop the gnaw of irritation grinding at him.
“Have your feet quite recovered?” Lottie asked with a chuckle.
Lady Eleanor rolled her eyes playfully. “Not enough to chance another set with Devonington any time soon. I was lucky to beg off from Almack’s this evening, or I might have been in the same situation once more. But, I had something to bring tonight.”
She hefted a bag from her side. Charles stepped forward and accepted the welcome heft of it into his grasp.
“One of the journals,” Lady Eleanor said. “As promised.”
He pulled the stiff leather handles of the bag, splitting it open at the middle to draw out a battered journal with an embossed gold compass on the front. A true journal of the Adventure Club.
Relief washed over him. She had brought it.
“You remember our agreement?” Lady Eleanor said.
Her sly glance indicated that she still anticipated an answer for her second condition. Charles’s gut tensed. Surely agreeing to wed her if she had no other alternatives was no great deal. Her victorious night at the masquerade practically guaranteed that he’d never have to make good that promise.
He looked up from the journal. “I do,” he replied smoothly.
He pulled the key from his jacket pocket. It had been worth the discomfort of its sharp edges jabbing against him to ensure it remained safe.
Lady Eleanor came to his side, teasing him with her delicate scent, which had clung to his clothes the night before.
“Shall we get started?” He handed her the key.
An impish smile touched her lips. “I confess I’ve read through a little of this one. Even without the key it made for interesting reading.”
The flat metal sheet rested in her hands, held just at the empire waist of her evening gown. A mere inch below her bosom. Much as he wanted to delve into the contents of the journal, he could not stop his attention from glancing over the bounty of her creamy breasts, encased in a swath of pale green silk—the lucky cloth.
“Will you open it?” she asked.
“Yes.” He pulled back the cover to the first page of neatly written script.
“It isn’t my father’s handwriting.” Eleanor settled the key so it fit snugly within the page.
“Nor my father’s.” Charles studied the key. The letters revealed through the slits spelled out WDIFLSJSNLIDFNEWSZDIJLBEK.
Eleanor shook her head. “It makes no sense—no matter how I try to combine the letters.”
“It was the same with my father’s journals,” he replied. “But there must be at least one or two pages where it works. It has to be here somewhere.”
“This is so very interesting...” Lottie peered down at the book.
Charles knew Eleanor would prefer to be alone with him, to get his answer to her request. Part of him wished to be with only her as well, yet part of him feared it. Thoughts of Eleanor had burned through him since the masquerade ball, of kissing her and how much he longed to touch her.
Then there was the answer she still awaited.
He cradled the weight of the journal in his hands, its leather soft and cool against his palms, its secrets scrawled on fine paper. He knew he had to have them all.
He would have no choice but to agree to Eleanor’s terms—and hope to God he was correct that she would never press him to make good on his agreement. And that he could stay his growing attraction.
Chapter Fourteen
Eleanor found using the key to be far less fascinating than reading the journals themselves had been. And Lottie found not a jot of it interesting, despite her initial claim. After only several pages she cast a flippant excuse and made her way from the drawing room.
Eleanor’s pulse sped up a notch. She and Charles were alone. She would have her answer.
“We ought to forgo all the pages with images...”
Charles spoke beside her, near enough for his warm breath to tickle the sensitive skin of her neck. Each time he did so delightful prickles of pleasure danced over her, like the little bubbles of champagne floating up the sides of a glass.
“Good idea.”
There would be no words on those pages, of course. Though she also suspected he feared some of the
drawings would be too vulgar for her. And they were. She’d seen them herself, but she would not confess as much.
She tried to turn the page showing a roughly sketched tower, but it caught on her glove and she turned several pages rather than only the one intended.
“You should take off your gloves.”
He took the book from her and set it aside with the key. Her heartbeat tripped over itself. Charles took her hand in his and slipped free the button at the heel of her palm. The blunt edge of his forefinger ran up her inner wrist. Eleanor sucked in a breath. When had the skin there become so sensitive as to make such a simple touch feel so terribly intimate?
“Your Grace...” she whispered.
“Charles.” His voice was low, quiet—a silken caress in her mind. “Call me Charles, Eleanor.”
Her mouth went dry and she found she could no longer speak. Instead her eyes remained captivated by his and she nodded. He pulled at the gloves and they slipped off, unveiling her palms to the cool air of the room one glorious inch at a time until her hand was bare and in his.
There were small calluses on his palms, but his long, tapered fingers were cool and smooth against the heat of hers. He held her hands between his, letting their skin press together.
Eleanor’s breath came faster, and she wondered idly if he could feel the wild thrum of her pulse against his skin. His fingers moved over hers, restlessly exploring, including the carefully rounded edges of her nails and the highly sensitive dip of her palm.
Eleanor watched the graceful slide of his hands over hers and tried to keep from closing her eyes at the blissful sensation of their naked flesh against each other’s. He put his hands to hers, palm to palm, so his fingertips extended an inch over her own, and slid his fingers between hers.
There was a sensuality in the act of joining them together which left her flushed and her insides trembling.
She gasped. “Your Grace, this is—”
“Improper.” He released her and cleared his throat. “Indeed, it is. Forgive me.”
He laid her gloves gently on the table and passed the journal to her. She took it with trembling fingers. Her skin still hummed with the tantalizing warmth of his caress.
“And it’s Charles.”
He winked at her, appearing unaffected by an encounter which had left her hot and flustered, with that strange thrumming racing through her veins. He reached over her and used those magnificent hands of his to find the page they’d last left.
“Do you have an answer for me?” Her voice had gone breathy and it made her sound altogether foolish to her own ears. “For my second request?”
“Say my Christian name.”
His voice was a low, sensual purr that stroked over her. Dear heavens, he was going to make her faint dead away before the hour ended if he kept up with such intimate flirtation. Even still, her mouth went dry at the suggestion behind the command.
“Your answer, if you please... Charles.” His name lingered between them and tasted sweet on her tongue, like tea cakes or marzipan.
“Yes, Eleanor.” He glanced down, as though almost shy, and regarded the journal. “My answer is yes.”
He lifted the key from where she’d set it aside absently and held it up, so they might work together again. The thin piece of metal fluttered in his grasp and giddiness charged through her at the way he too was clearly affected.
The idea that she was causing him to feel the way she did, shaking with excitement and breathlessness, served only to make every part of her tingle with awareness.
He leaned closer to her side with the key, close enough that their shoulders brushed as he moved the metal from one page to another. The warmth of his body seeped through his jacket and whispered against the exposed skin of her arm. She wanted to edge closer to him, until she was firmly pressed against his tall frame.
Eleanor turned the pages almost without seeing them, absorbed in his nearness, in the wonderful exotic spice of his scent. She hoped he was concentrating on the key, as she found herself incapable.
His gaze alternated between the book, and her. More specifically, her mouth, as though he longed to kiss her as he had the night of the masquerade.
She turned one more page and her gaze fell on a vivid painting of a woman wearing little more than scarves. A swath of red fabric was tied over her breasts and a long purple skirt was slung around her naked waist, with slits high enough to reveal her thighs. Her arm was extended upward, with her middle finger and thumb pinched together, and she stared directly out of the page with dark, fathomless eyes and long, enviable lashes.
The woman was beautiful, but the exposure of her person obscene. Far more so than any other image Eleanor had seen thus far. She would have dropped the book had Charles not grabbed it from her.
Too many questions whirled through her stunned mind for her to fix on any one in particular, and she regarded Charles with a look of confusion. Well, perhaps panicked confusion, if she were being entirely honest.
“There are things in here a lady should not see.”
She knew this, of course, but she hadn’t expected such a state of nudity.
Eleanor swallowed. “Who was she? A...a courtesan?”
“Ghawazi.” He closed the book and cast her a regretful frown. “Women who dance.”
“She’s so exposed...”
The horror began to fade and a raw curiosity pulled at Eleanor. She reached for the book. Charles did not stop her from taking it. She pulled it open to the page and stared down at the image once more—the image of a woman whose sole source of income relied on performing. Eleanor was not so foolish as to believe women such as her only danced. And yet there was no shame painted on the woman’s lovely face. There was only pleasure and satisfaction.
Eleanor considered her own ungloved hands. How ridiculous to be so overwhelmed by bare fingers when this woman was nearly naked and seemingly glad to be so.
“This is not appropriate.” Charles reached for the book.
“Nor is my being alone with you,” Eleanor countered. “Or being in a courtesan’s home, or reading through this journal, or having kissed you on the terrace, or our agreement. And yet I seem perpetually to do all the things I was taught long ago that a lady ought never to do. And I am enjoying it.”
Her body trembled with the realization of what she’d said. It had burst from her with more emotional truth than she’d permitted herself to experience in a lifetime. It was powerful, this liberation. Powerful and euphoric. And she suddenly found herself craving more.
* * *
Charles had struggled for the whole duration of his time with Eleanor. It had all been so much easier when he had been able to regard her with distaste, as the daughter of the man who had destroyed his father’s dreams.
But now, as he witnessed her determination to overcome her failings, and as she looked to him for his candor and advice, and after he’d sampled the sweetness of her lovely mouth, it was impossible to hate this woman.
What the devil had consumed him to have her call him Charles? And yet the way she said it, soft and hesitant and far lovelier than his name had ever been spoken before.
He’d been distracted by the closeness of her person to him—near enough for him to sense the heat of her, to breathe in the subtle jasmine notes of her scent—and that damnably low-cut bodice had distracted him every time he’d tried to read the letters in the key.
And after such a declaration from this woman, of her newly found enjoyment of life, he was drawn to her. He looked up and saw the passion lit up in the depths of her soul. He moved toward her as a moth to a flame, unable to stop his hands from caressing her lovely face.
He should stop. Leave. Call Lottie. Anything.
His mind raced with ways to free himself from the grip of his own temptation when Eleanor pushed onto her toes and pressed her lips boldly to his own.
He accepted the kiss, meaning it only to be a simple caress of her soft mouth on his own, something chaste and innocent. Just one and then he would back away, as he ought to. He needed to leave her for another man—one who would be a proper husband to her. And yet that first capture of her lower lip was swiftly followed by the greedy brush of his tongue.
A soft whimper sounded in the back of her throat and she sank against him, giving herself fully to the kiss, to him. His body roared with the want of her, the want to have her closer still, to remove so much more than her gloves. But she was not his. And then her lips parted and her tongue swept into his mouth.
His shaft strained against his fitted breeches and blinded all logic in his mind. He’d been a fool to allow so much time to elapse since he’d last had a woman. Too much of his focus had been spent on acquiring accolades and foreign treasures and not enough care had been paid to his person.
Everything in him begged he make up for the oversight now, with this pliant beauty in his arms and her wild vein of passion he’d helped unveil.
Charles trailed kisses down her chin to her slender, graceful neck and gently nipped the area just behind her jaw. Her moan hummed in his ear and sent pleasure rippling through him.
It wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Needed more.
He needed her.
He should not, and yet he did.
His thoughts splintered apart his rationale and his lips wandered down the delicate line of her collarbone, lower still to the enticing swell of her bosom. Her fingers threaded through his hair and she gave a quiet gasp when his lips grazed the low neckline of her gown.
More.
He tugged gently at the silk until it slid low enough to reveal the tempting pink of one partially exposed nipple.
“Charles...” Eleanor whispered, her voice throaty with desire.
He didn’t know if it was encouragement, but she kept a tight enough grasp on his head for him to be held in place and to assume it was not a protest. He pressed his thumb just above the pink nipple, popping it free from the confines of her stays, and closed his mouth over it.
How to Tempt a Duke Page 12
