“You’ll be back in London in less than a fortnight,” she predicted.
“I shall prove you wrong.” He startled her by moving his caress to her cheek. He had never, not even during their courtship, touched her face. Just a slow, deliberate swipe of his thumb over her cheekbone, his long fingers cradling her jaw. Hardly anything, really. Hardly noteworthy, and yet it chipped at the careful boundary she’d crafted between them.
She tilted her head, severing the contact. “What do you want?”
But his hand merely continued its gentle travels elsewhere. Down the curve of her throat, then sliding to cup the base of her skull. His eyes scoured her face intently, as though she were a book whose meaning somehow evaded him. “Your hair is very pretty. Have I ever told you that?”
“No.” She eyed him warily. There was a time when she would have welcomed his praise, when she’d craved his smallest gesture. When she’d wanted to be more than the American fortune he’d married. But that time had ended. “Sham flattery will get you as far as traveling on a one-legged pony would.” Which was to say nowhere at all.
“What of truthful flattery?” His thumb kneaded into the taut muscles of her neck in lazy circles. “You’re lovely.” His breath teased her lips. He’d drawn nearer, near enough to kiss. He leaned forward.
No. She would not allow him to so easily sway her. He didn’t deserve her, the knave. “Please don’t.”
It was too bad, really, that she hadn’t realized what he was about, that she’d been so pathetically naïve. He had done his best to court her as though it wasn’t her fortune he was after. She knew differently now.
“Don’t what?” He came even closer. “Don’t do this?” Pembroke lowered his mouth to hers for a slow, soft kiss. He fitted his upper lip between hers, gently at first, and then with increasing pressure, catching her bottom lip between his teeth and tugging. “Or this?” He pulled the bedclothes from her grasp.
She wasn’t sure which was worse, his sudden amorous advances after so long a silence or her traitorous reaction to them. He cupped her breasts through the delicate fabric of her nightdress. A slow, languorous ache slid through her, no matter how much she tried to stifle it. Every part of her body reawakened. He’d introduced her to this world of pleasure before shutting her out of it.
“Pembroke,” she protested, but her voice was shamefully weak. She loved his hands on her, always had. The awful man knew his way about a woman’s body, and though it was plainly the result of far too much carnal knowledge, she couldn’t deny the way that particular surfeit of knowledge made her feel. Her nipples hardened.
She forced herself to think of the women whose bedchambers he’d been frequenting during his absence. Their names were a dagger’s prick to her senses.Lady Lonsdale. The Duchess of Eastwick. Mrs. St. Hillaire.
He grazed her lips with his again, exerting just enough pressure to leave her hungry for more. He knew how to kiss, the devil. “Have you missed me?” he whispered into her mouth.
She swallowed, holding herself stiffly, refusing to capitulate. “Not in the least.”
Hadn’t there been the Countess of Ardmore, after all? Lady Northclyffe, too. The gossip had been more prolific than a New York blizzard. At first she’d devoured each troubling bit of news. But it had been too painful, and so she’d stopped her connection with the outside world, save letters from her dear friend Maggie in London and her family in New York, who remained blissfully unaware of her husband’s peccadillos.
His mouth moved over hers with increasing insistence. He smelled divine.Lady Shillington. The actress Lillie Longwood.She bit his lip. Not with enough force to bloody him, but with a pressure that stated her resistance. He could not simply appear in the night and bend her to his whims with his good looks and bone-melting kisses. No, he could not. She was not a twig to bow in the wind of his whims. She was a woman. A woman with a heart and feelings, a woman who’d been cured of the naïveté with which she’d married him.
“Damn it!” He hauled back, staring at her as though she were a creature he’d just witnessed in the wild for the first time. “You bit me.”
“Did I?” She kept her tone light, unconcerned. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“I detect a notable lack of sincerity.” He pressed his fingers to his mouth before holding them out for inspection. “No blood, thank Christ.”
She caught the bedclothes in her hand and held them over her bosom as though it were a suit of armor. “I wouldn’t dream of disfiguring you. What would all your ladybirds think?”
“Ladybirds.” He stared at her, his expression revealing nothing.
Did he think her daft? Well, perhaps she couldn’t entirely blame him for his underestimation of her. After all, she’d been duped by him before, and her stupidity aggrieved her still.
“The women you’ve been taking to bed,” she elaborated. “I won’t call them ladies. It’s a title they don’t deserve, regardless of their ranks.”
“I have no ladybirds. Darling, it’s you that I want.”
The bold pronouncement sent a flurry of old longing through her before she tamped it down. How was it that he could treat her as if she were no more important than a cup of tea and still set her aflame? Thankfully, even if her body and heart were turncoats, her common sense remained. “You cannot expect me to believe such tripe.”
“Believe it, love.” He squeezed her upper arm. “I’ve come for you.”
He had come to Carrington House, yes. But his intentions weren’t as pure as he pretended. Couldn’t be. Not after all this time, all this silence. She couldn’t help but wonder why, given the intervening months and lack of word, he would appear in her chamber, ready to seduce her as though she were one of his strumpets.
Very well, she’d play at his game. All the better to rout her enemy. “Why now?”
“Why not now?” He gave her another maddening kiss.
She broke it, her palms finding his shoulders and pushing. “Perhaps I ought to rethink your disfigurement. I don’t trust you, Pembroke. You’re a stranger to me, and I certainly don’t want your kisses. Surely there are any number of women scattered about London who would be more than eager to receive them.”
