“Yes. I promise you. Only two with hair as brown as mine and one of red.” She left him standing there.
He couldn’t very well call out her name, but he could confirm the information.
“Is a blonde woman therein?”
He heard giggling but no response. Sighing, he supposed he ought to return to the ballroom and wait.
***
“GET ON THE BED,” LORDChandron said, his voice neutral, sounding almost bored. “And draw up your skirts.”
“I beg your pardon.” Julia had been wondering how she would get around him, but his quiet tone scared her more than if he’d been shouting loudly. He was entirely too sure of himself.
“You are a common mopsey, and while I’m used to better, I am in need of relief. Do as I say, or I shall tear off your gown, and then you will have to go downstairs in disgrace.”
Curtsying to this monster had clearly been a mistake,she thought.
“If I go downstairs with my dress torn, everyone will know you are a beast for I shall scream it at the top of my lungs.”
He shrugged. “I’ve weathered worse. Easy enough to vow you came up here and lured me with your wiles, probably in order to blackmail me. After all, we both know you were up to no good, although I’m not sure what.”
She remained motionless. The viscount couldn’t seriously imagine she was going to acquiesce and let him have sexual relations with her, merely because he was a member of the nobility and a bully.
He took a step toward her. “Hurry up, or I shall lose my patience. After all, if you aren’t titled, you shouldn’t even be at my party. Therefore, you must pay for the champagne you’ve had at my expense. And I intend to exact compensation.”
She considered locking herself in the dressing room until he grew tired of tormenting her. To that end, she took a couple steps in the direction of the only other door in the room. Unfortunately, it took her closer to the bed.
“Good girl.” With those words, he released the fall front of his breeches, and his shaft sprung free.
She screamed before she even realized she was doing so, unable to take her eyes from her first live view of the male organ.
“No one else is on this floor,” he warned, “except servants, and they won’t help you.”
Suddenly, with wings for feet, she rushed to the dressing room door, nearly managing to open it before he crashed into her from behind. Feeling herself flung in an arc, she landed on her back on the edge of the viscountess’s bed. In the next instant, Lord Chandron had lifted her skirts and was between her legs so she couldn’t close them.
“My sister is a countess,” Julia hissed.
He hesitated for the briefest of moments, then his fingers were at the juncture where the legs of her winter drawers met. Wearing them was a practice considered coarse by some, but they kept her warm. Moreover, she was glad of even their scant protection as he sought to find her intimate channel.
“Probably a lie, and no matter really. Any type of person,” he paused as he pressed his erection to her most sensitive, private area, “seems to marry into the nobility these days. Whores, even.”
Bucking and pushing at him, Julia screamed again.
“Hold still!” he ordered as if he were commanding a servant to do his bidding.
Writhing, she screamed again. To her amazement, the door burst open, although she couldn’t see past the brute. It didn’t matter. Regardless of who had found her, her reputation would be ruined but her virtue saved!
“Get out!” the viscount called over his shoulder, and since he was master of the house, she assumed the person would do as he ordered.
“Help!” she yelled, in any case, hoping even a servant might take pity and come to her aid.
She heard a roar of outrage before, quite abruptly, the viscount was jerked away, seeming to fly off her as if he weighed nothing at all. Frantically, she lowered her skirts and looked up to see the furious face of the Earl of Marshfield.
She’d heard the term “eyes flashing in anger” yet had never seen such a thing until that moment.
“Get up,” he growled, as if she were resting there on a lazy Sunday.
Julia scrambled to her feet. The most important thing at that instant was to get out of the room where she’d been alone with a man and back where others could see her.
