She reached for him, and as she took him into her body in the dark and he moved in her swiftly, urgently, she felt as though she had become something elemental. She was pleasure, she was the night, she was free, she was love, she was his.
They clung to each other in silence for a long time after he came.
She held him until his breathing settled into slumber.
She kissed his face softly. When she slid from his arms, sheunderstood how Lucifer must have felt when he was evicted from heaven.
He untied her cravat blindfold at last.
She slid from the bed. She gathered her dress and felt herself returning to her body. And now she was Ginny, with all that entailed, and that meant she needed to return to her room and face what tomorrow would bring.
Chapter Twenty
He awoke alone the following day, stark naked, sideways across his bed, and chilly. His pillow smelled like her, and so did his skin. His cravat was trailing from his open hand. The memories came in such a vivid rush that his breath went short.
He forced himself to move when what he wanted to do was savor, and remember. But if the maids came in and found him like this he’d likely be evicted like the rules threatened.
He had an important meeting today. So he washed and shaved and dressed in crisp clothing. In the little mirror in his room he looked like a man who had shagged all night. It was a good look for him, he decided.
At ten o’clock, Farnham, Sydenham’s footman, brought Marchand up to a room lined with bookcases and furnished in mahogany and gilt.
Sydenham rose from behind a fine desk—not nearly as fine as the one Marchand had in his office, he ascertained—to greet him.
“Mr. Marchand. Always a pleasure to see you. Imagine my delight when you wrote to me to request a private conversation.Have you a business proposition in mind? Something juicy, perhaps?”
He gestured to a chair and Gabriel sat down across from him.
He didn’t reply.
He merely regarded Sydenham wordlessly, expressionlessly.
Fixedly.
Long enough for the earl’s smile to drift away from his face and for unease to settle into his expression.
“I know what you did,” Marchand said finally.
And because he noticed everything, he saw the minute tensing of the Earl of Sydenham’s jaw. The spasm of muscle at his cheekbone. The twitch of a brow.
It wasn’t shock.
It was guilt.
For a moment, it didn’t seem as though the earl would respond.
“I beg your pardon, Marchand?”
“I know that you drugged the young Earl of Highgrove’s brandy that night at Lucifer’s Fall.”
The earl’s mouth parted slightly.
No sound emerged. His eyes had flickered to blankness for an instant, in shock.
Marchand continued calmly. “I know you put a so-called headache powder known to cause hallucinations in the earl’s brandy. And then you proceeded to take advantage of his resulting incapacitation to win fifteen thousand pounds.” He shook his head. “Hardly sporting of you, Lord Sydenham. Very, very,veryagainst the rules you agreed to when you became a member.”
Marchand’s heart was now, in fact, thudding like a war drum.
He’d been seething ever since he’d confirmed this.
