His accusation left her almost speechless. “I am very mature. I was born mature.”
“You ran away.”
An unanswerable accusation. She had run away. Stung, she retorted, “But not from my responsibilities. From you.” Blast. An unwise admission.
“Why would a mature woman run away from a mere man?”
“Not from the man.” She took a breath. Gabriel always sucked up all the air in a room. “From the gossip. I wanted the gossip to die.”
“Four years. . . . Yes, it’s all quite, quite dead. Dead and picked clean by the crows.”
She considered him, trying to read his thoughts. That was always difficult to do with Gabriel. His words had more than one meaning. With Gabriel, there were layers within layers, and when he looked like that—as if he were two steps ahead of her and planning to stay that way—she could scarcely fathom his subtlety. Did he mean all that flagrant emotion between them was dead?
Well. Good. As it should be. She was conscious of nothing but relief. Nothing but relief. “That’s the ticket!” she said encouragingly. “I knew we could come to an understanding. I shouldn’t have made the scene. It was wrong of me.” A huge admission, one she was sure he would appreciate.
He did not. “It was wrong of you.”
She waited to hear him apologize, also.
He said, “You broke your word to me.”
“What?”
“You vowed you would be my wife. The date was set. The notice was in the Times. You broke your word.”
Her temper rose one notch. Temper all the more easily roused because of her own guilt. A duchess of Magnus never broke her word. It was a family creed—yet she had. “You shouldn’t have gambled when you knew how I felt about it.”
“This issue was power, darling. If I hadn’t won that fortune, you would have run our marriage with a ruthless hand, just as you run everyone else’s life.”
“Instead, we have no marriage”—the injustice of his accusation cut her—“and I do not run everyone’s life! I simply take steps other people are too lazy to take to set matters right.”
“Really?” His tone ridiculed her. “Where’s Eleanor?”
Madeline started to explain, then clamped her mouth shut.
“Let me guess.” Still he watched as she roamed toward the dresser, touched the silver-handled brushes, the shaving cup. “You sent your cousin Eleanor to Mr. Knight to make your excuses because you always told her she was too timid, so you’re throwing her into deep water to sink or swim.”
“She’ll be fine.” Eleanor would be fine.
“Unless she drowns. Mr. Knight is not a gentle man in any sense of the word.”
For a moment, doubt niggled at Madeline. Then she remembered Eleanor’s bravery in the face of fire—French fire—and relaxed. “She’ll do. She’s just like Jerry. She has hidden depths. She has only to plumb them.”
Gabriel’s mouth turned down. “Jerry.”
“Jerry. Your half-brother.” She smiled with remembered affection for the shy, charming lad who had been her age and seemed so much younger. “How is he?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead!” She staggered back a step, too astonished by the news to respond with the proper platitudes. “How? Why?”
“He was killed at Trafalgar.” Gabriel’s lips barely moved, and his eyes were as green and chilly as the North Sea.
“He died a hero, then.” Stupid comment, and no comfort to a grieving brother. Despite Gabriel’s lack of seeming emotion, she knew he did grieve. Jerry had been the son of a second wife, and he had adored and emulated Gabriel. Gabriel had protected him from the low elements of society. They’d had no other family, only each other.
“A damned waste of a good man,” Gabriel said.
Finally she was able to form the words that should have come first. “I’m sorry for your loss. I grieve for him, too.” In her first spontaneous move toward Gabriel, she held out her hand.
He stared at it, unmoving.
Dropping her hand, she wondered what else she could say, how she could make matters right. But that was beyond even her powers; before her stood a cynical, angry man, and she would be lucky to escape from his retribution unscathed. “I am sorry,” she reiterated. Retreat was the better part of valor, so she walked toward the closed door, toward freedom. “Our little reunion is over.”
He sprang forward, moving with that peculiar grace and speed that made women watch him . . . and men hesitate to challenge him. Setting himself between her and the door, he commanded, “Tell me what you’re doing here, dressed so modestly and pretending to be a companion.”
She would be trapped forever if she didn’t yield. And really, what did it matter? Gabriel could do nothing to her. “I’m going to stop my father from playing in this game.”
“He’s not here.”
“He will be. Do you think my father has the will to stay away from a game like this one?”
“It’s possible. He gambled but little while you were gone.”
Bitterly, she said, “Except to lose me to a stranger.”
“He was enticed.”
Her temper and her suspicions stirred. “You know a great deal about it. Were you there? Did you help entice him?”
Stepping closer, he pressed her into the corner between the tallboy and the wall. Spacing his words, he said, “I . . . don’t . . . gamble.”
That was so palpably untrue, she could scarcely speak. “The last time I saw you, you were fresh from a kill. Now you’re on the path of another conquest.”
“Unlike the rest of your dependents, Your Grace—”
“Don’t you call me that.”
“What?” He pretended surprise. “Your Grace? But others call you that, and you respond courteously. And you are the duchess of Magnus.”
He had a fine way of irritating her, and he was in top form. “The future duchess, and no one else calls me Your Grace in that tone of voice.”
“I will endeavor to please Your Grace with my tone of voice.”
She ground her teeth. She wasn’t going to win. Not against Gabriel.
“As I was saying, Your Grace, unlike the rest of your dependents, I do not live to please you.” He stroked his finger along her cheek. “Except in one, very important way.”
She jerked her head back. “Don’t.”
“Don’t? Why not? No one knows what we did that night. I told you, the gossip is dead.” He stroked her cheek again. “But my claim is not.”
This time she smacked his hand away, and hard. “What claim is that?” As if she didn’t know.
“My claim on you. Don’t you recall, darling?” Leaning in to her, he drew in a breath as if relearning her scent. “I made my claim that night, after your magnificent scene at Almack’s.”
Of course she remembered. Even now, her heart hurried. “I acknowledge no claim.”
Moving ever closer, he said, “Obviously, or you never would have dared to leave me after giving yourself.”
“You took!”
“Lying to ourselves, are we? You are such a coward. You were always a coward, and you hide it so well.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You fooled even me.”
“I am not a coward!”
“A desperate craven.”
“How can you say that?”
“How can you say I took you? One moment, you were struggling against me. The next, you grabbed me and bit me, right on the lip.” He touched the corner of his mouth. “Bit me hard enough to draw blood.”
Her chest rose and fell as she gazed blindly into the past.
She had wanted to hurt him. Hurt him as he had hurt her. She called him a blackguard. A gambler. And grabbing his head in both her hands, she had curled her fingers into his hair and bit him. He jerked, and cursed, and tried to take control again. But she held him tighter, and licked the small dribble of blood, and suddenly they were rolling on her bed, ripping at each other’s clothes.
She had been insane.
No
w her gaze came to rest on Gabriel’s throat, brown and smooth, and on the ruff of hair at the top of his chest.
He said, “One of the attributes I admire about you—besides your magnificent figure—is the way you ignore the facts right before your eyes.”
She jerked her eyes to his face. Was he laughing at her?
But no. She recognized the signs of his temper. “Did you have my baby?” he demanded.
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me, Madeline.”
“No. I started my . . . I knew I wasn’t expecting before I left England.”
He surveyed her grimly. “How nice for you.”
Not really. At a time when most women would have been on their knees praying to God for their monthly flow, she had cried at the first signs . . . and told herself her distress was nothing but typical female emotion. Not love thwarted. Not desperation and grief.
“I wondered for four years,” he said. “Like a fool, I thought you were coming home. By the time I realized you were not, it was too late. You were beyond my reach, and I had—” Abruptly he cut himself off, and pressed her further into the corner. “What would you have done if you’d found yourself enceinte? Or didn’t you think about that? Is that a sign of your vaulted maturity?”
“I would have returned to England and married you.” She answered steadily, for of course she had thought of it. What woman would not? And although she hated the idea, she would have come back and married the man . . . and been miserable all her days.
“That’s the first right answer you’ve given me.”
“I don’t answer to you.”
He watched her, one corner of his mouth kicked up, until she wanted to squirm. Instead, she tried to brush past him.
He caught her before she had taken two steps. Holding her shoulders, he propelled her toward the mirror and, standing behind her, made her face herself. “Look at you.”
Instead she looked at him.
“Look at you,” he insisted.
Her eyes met her own in the mirror.
“I’ll never forget the first time I saw you. You were so young. Tall, proud, sure of yourself when the other debutantes were only pretending. At that moment, I wanted you.”
She remembered. He’d been leaning against the wall at Lady Unwin’s ball, surveying the newest crop of debutantes as they fluttered in, all dressed in white and pink and light blue. The whisper had run through the girls: There he is, the earl of Campion, a notorious fortune hunter. Notorious, wicked, exciting. Tittle-tattle claimed he had only to crook his finger and ladies ran into his arms. He ruined reputations, and each female he graced with his attention counted herself lucky.
By the time Madeline heard the gossip, it was too late. He had straightened away from the wall, held out his hand, and she had gone to him. She was in love. And she had thought he was in love with her.
Now, in the mirror, she saw herself . . . and she saw him. Them. Together, as if they were in a portrait painted to celebrate their marriage. And some cruel truth made that look right.
His hair grew away from his forehead in a sharp widow’s peak, giving him a demonic appearance. His eyes were a mocking green . . . a passionate green. His lips . . . he dipped them toward her neck and paused, just above the skin. His breath caressed her, and she wanted to close her eyes and give herself up to exquisite, almost forgotten sensation.
Instead she lifted her hand to shove his head away.
His voice stopped her. “Have you forgotten? What it was like that night?”
He didn’t mean the night they met. He meant the night they made love.
“In your own bed, darling. I took you in your frilly, girlish, virginal bed. Do you remember? You were pacing across your bedchamber like a virago, still furious at me for daring to ruin your dream of Sir Galahad, and furious with yourself for making a scene. And I came through the window.”
“I tried to push you back out.”
“A two-story drop beneath me, too. Darling, I love it when you’re savage. When you bite and scratch. . . . I still have scars on my shoulder where you dug your nails into me.” His voice mocked and reminded. “All that ferocity, and you thought it was rage.”
“It was rage!”
“It was passion.”
She wouldn’t win that fight. In the maelstrom of sensation that had possessed her that night, she hadn’t recognized any of the emotions. They’d all been new and fresh, harsh like freshly pressed wine and just as heady. She hadn’t been herself . . . or else she wasn’t the woman she knew herself to be. “You were angry, too.”
“Livid. That you thought you could throw away what we had—”
“I didn’t throw away anything.” Why was he doing this? Saying this? Making so much out of times long past? “We had nothing. Nothing that was real.”
“It felt very real when you wrapped your legs around my hips and met my every thrust.”
“Stop.” She tried to cover her ears.
Grasping her wrists, he pulled her arms down. His breath stroked her ear, his voice was husky and far too deep. “When you came, your body grasped me, caressed me like no other woman ever had.”
She strained against his grip. “Don’t talk to me of other women!”
“Jealous, darling? You don’t have to be.”
How she hated that smile on his face!
“You are unsurpassed in your passion.” Still clasping her wrists, he wrapped her arms around herself to hold her in his embrace. “I’ll never forget those sounds you made—not little, ladylike sounds, but full-bodied screams of delight. I thought your father would blow the lock off and force us to wed at gunpoint.”
“Father wasn’t home.”
“No, of course not. He could never be depended on.” With a bitterness that sounded deep as a well, Gabriel said, “As usual, that blackguard ruined everything.”
“He hasn’t ruined anything. You did.”
“You’re lying to yourself again. Your father separated us. You try to claim I broke us apart, but he’s the one who’s scarred you.”
That shard of truth cut so deeply she caught her breath on the pain. “That’s outrageous!”
“Is it?” Like a cat at a mouse hole, he watched her in the mirror.
She tried to wrestle herself away. “I admit it! Because of my father, I don’t like gambling. But that’s good sense. I’ve seen the damage gambling can do.”
“Only if it’s out of control. Have you ever seen me out of control?” Gabriel chuckled, and answered his own question. “That’s right. You have . . . once.”
Treacherous, starving for caresses, crazed at being in Gabriel’s arms once more, her body reacted . . . as she watched. He was too clever. While he held her like this, she saw what he saw, and she couldn’t deny the hectic color in her cheeks. Breasts swelling over the neckline of her plain blue gown. A shiver that worked its way down her spine.
He pulled her securely against him. Like the sun of Italy, his heat warmed her. Against her back, she felt each muscle of his chest. Against her bottom, she felt the strength of his desire. And in her heart, she wanted, lusted, beyond good sense and discipline.
“Maddie.”
She’d dreamed of his voice, ardent and breathy in her ear, and for a moment she shut her eyes and pretended time had no meaning, and he was her dearest love.
But he said, “Maddie, open your eyes.”
When she did, he was watching her with that catlike intensity. Arms around her still, he slid his palms down onto the backs of her hands. He lifted them, guided them . . . and she cupped her own breasts.
Shocked, she struggled to escape from his grasp.
“No. Wait. Watch.” That damned seductive voice spoke again, his breath stroking her ear.
And she stilled, her gaze transfixed, her every sense on alert.
Delicately he guided her. With her fingertips, she circled her nipples. With her palms, she rubbed the lower curve. And when he pressed her hands against her own aching flesh, she mo
aned. Once. Short and sharp.
There was no denying the proof of what she saw. There was no denying that moan. He had his triumph. He could laugh at her if he wanted.
Instead, with narrow-eyed concentration, he placed her arms around her waist. His own hands rose to pleasure her. His palms circled her breasts, enjoying a very masculine pleasure in the shape, the weight . . . her desire. Taking her nipples between thumb and forefinger, he pinched them lightly, driving her against him to escape the yearning, or to quench it. Half mad with desire, she fought to turn in his arms, but he held her still, tasting the shell of her ear with his tongue, then biting lightly on her lobe.
Her head fell back against his shoulder. Each breath she took was redolent with her desire and his wildness.
His hips moved in a slow roll, lascivious and inviting. “Do you remember how good it was, that first time? You were a virgin, Maddie, and I made you shudder and sigh. Now your body’s open to me. Think . . . think what I could do to you tonight.”
“No.” Thank heavens, she retained some semblance of judgment. “No.”
With his hands on her rib cage, he turned her to face him. “No?” He smiled, one of those smiles with too many white teeth and not enough charm. “How long do you think you could tell me no if I kissed you?”
“No.”
“Like this?”
Caressing her lips with his, he ignited memories of stolen minutes in the sunlit garden, of midnight meetings outside a crowded ballroom. She’d kissed other men while in Europe: Italians, Spaniards, even a stray French soldier. For surely other men could wipe the recollection of Gabriel’s kisses from her mind. But no. None of them kissed like he did, as if they enjoyed the act. None of them took the time to learn the shape of her mouth, to whisper love words in ardent tones, to open her lips and—
“Stop thinking about them,” he murmured. “Think about this.”
He supported her head with his elbow, bent her backward, and with firm pressure possessed her mouth. His lips opened hers. His breath glided down her throat, filling her lungs with his air, his life. Ravenously, she tasted him, and savored the return of a passion that had slipped away, leaving a fire that blazed like a comet’s tail. The act reminded her of making love for the first time; he took care not to hurt her, but he brooked no opposition. Instead, with his tongue, he forced her to remember the primeval rhythms that had ensnared them before.
Scandalous Again: Switching Places #1 Page 6
