She needed to stop being foolish. The duke was still interested in her, but now that she no longer presented a mystery, that would pass. Quickly. A mysterious shepherdess might catch his eye, but Amanda Waverly would never hold it.
Besides, she would disappear in two days. Thursday she would take her leave of Lady Farnsworth. The next day, she would walk away from her home and take different lodgings. Even if he did persist in pursuing a liaison with her, he would not know where she was.
That reassured her. It also saddened her. She did not want to admit to that emotion, but it lodged under her heart, impossible to ignore. She gazed out the window into the night and admitted that she wished she were free to at least consider his arrangements, disreputable though they were sure to be.
Her blood had raced upon seeing him tonight. Even her fear of someone discovering her crimes could not compete with the joy that had burst through her. And that kiss—she closed her eyes and experienced it again. A tantalizing arousal stirred low and powerfully.
Something she wanted badly sat there for the taking, and she could not have it. To feel so alive in his arms, so excited and so free—to be wrapped in an intimacy that went beyond names and histories, but instead was woven from a more essential familiarity—
It was the kind of passion that might last a woman a lifetime. She almost wept with frustration that she could not know that for even one more night.
Or could she? . . . One night was just that and nothing more. Then she would be gone.
* * *
The dream woke him suddenly. Its images pressed on him, scattered and vivid, then immediately began slipping away.
He had been in Newgate Prison with someone. Brentworth? No, Stratton. Why would Stratton be there? He would never risk bringing Newgate’s diseases back to his infant son. Yet, it had been he, along with a warden, looking in on a cell where three boys wasted.
He recognized the boys. He had seen them three months ago when the MP Sir James Mackintosh had offered to take any lords with an interest into the gaol. Sir James had been surprised that the only peer to meet him outside the gate had been the Duke of Langford.
He did not know why he had gone. Curiosity, perhaps. A vague awareness that too many people suffered punishments too harsh for their crimes. So he had followed Sir James through the prison, and seen those boys who, it was explained, were pickpockets. One had taken all of five pennies.
Sir James had not been in the dream, though. Stratton had. And suddenly while they stood there, the cell did not hold boys but women. Old women, young women—all of them poor, some of them sick. One by one, they had come to the cell door and looked out at him.
An old one had beckoned him to look closer inside. He still smelled her in his mind, she stank so badly. He had done as she’d indicated and there, against the back wall, pale in the few beams of light, naked from head to toe, stood Miss Waverly.
He stretched his mind to see that image of her again, but like most dreams it had already broken apart, some pieces fading and others not, and all he saw was that old crone crooking her finger at him.
He relinquished the phantom memory. This was another punishment for doing his duty, he supposed. He dreamt of prisons instead of pleasure now, and the only naked women were behind bars, out of reach.
He turned onto his back and began drifting again. His final clear thought was that tomorrow he would let a house north of Hanover Square.
Something interfered with his full descent into sleep. Not a dream this time. A noise. A breath. A presence.
A pressure on the mattress snapped him alert. A face hovered over his own. A woman’s face. She kissed him.
He knew who it was. Delighted, he let her do her artless worst. Then he pulled her atop him so he could embrace her.
She was naked. She had arrived and disrobed without a sound. Before desire claimed him completely, he vaguely wondered how she had done that.
“Another night meeting,” he said between kisses while his hands smoothed down her body. “Someday I want to see you in the full light of day.”
“Perhaps someday you will,” she murmured.
“Considering you wear no clothes and have invaded my bed, I assume I am relieved of any inconvenient promises tonight.”
“I rescind the most inconvenient, but trust you will still be a gentleman.”
“Not only a gentleman, but a most discreet one. That is a new promise that you can trust as much as the last, Amanda.” He flipped her onto her back. “If we are going to do this, we should do it properly.” He sat and pulled off his nightshirt and discarded it onto the floor. He lay with her so he could feel her warmth on his skin.
“My experience is limited,” she said, as if he did not know. “I may not know what properly means.”
“Mine is not, so we are safe there. Now kiss me again. I find your kisses as sweet as any I have known.”
She hooked her arms around his neck and kissed him carefully, then more passionately. He took over and released the pent-up desire that had tortured him since that ball. It conquered his mind and essence, provoking a hunger stronger than he had known in years.
* * *
