Louise Allen – Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch (страница 3)

“The customary way.” Now that he’d put the gun down, she stepped closer to him, the diamonds on her bracelets glittering in the light of the single candle. “Through the door.”

He cursed himself mentally for forgetting to lock it. Was he getting so old that he’d already turned careless? “Then you can damned well leave the same way you came. Clear off, and leave me alone.”

She shook her head solemnly, the white feather in her hair brushing against the curtains of the bed. She was near enough now that he could smell her scent, jasmine and musk, and in spite of his wish to be left alone, he felt his gaze drawn inexorably to the soft, full curves of her breasts above the white satin. It didn’t make any sense. Why was she here, so beautifully available? He hadn’t had a woman since they’d brought him back to England, and his body was reminding him, a bit too obviously, that he’d recuperated long enough.

“Ma’am.” Consciously he forced his eyes back up to hers. Beautiful or not, he didn’t need the kind of entanglement she’d bring, not now when his life was in such a shambles. “Look here. Where I come from, ma’am, a lady doesn’t visit a man’s bedchamber unless she’s blessed sure of her invitation. If she comes prowling around on her own, then she’s generally something less than a lady. Now will you take yourself back downstairs with the others, or am I going to have to haul you down myself, for all the world to remark?”

Suddenly imperious, she lifted her chin a fraction higher, and he saw now that she was older than he’d first thought, no young girl dabbling at flirtation. “You shouldn’t address me so familiarly. I am the Countess of Byfield.”

“Well, hell.” He scowled at her, unable and unwilling to recall his sister’s careful coaching on English titles and forms of address. “I’m Captain Sparhawk of Providence, and by my lights that’s considerably more impressive. At least I earned my title.”

“So did I.” She smiled with an open charm he hadn’t expected, her lips curving upward like her tip-tilted eyes. “Forgive me. I forgot that you’re an American, and that a countess would be an anathema to you. Perhaps we’ll do better if you simply call me Caro.”

“I’m not going to call you anything.” He grunted, wishing she didn’t use hundred-guinea words like anathema. “I’m tired, and I want to go to sleep. I’ll just say goodnight and then you go on back down to my sister and the rest of your friends.”

“But they’re not my friends.” Impulsively she sat on the edge of his bed and leaned toward his hand, her blue eyes searching his face. “I don’t go out much, you see, and I’ve never met your sister. It’s you that’s drawn me here, Captain Sparhawk, you alone, and now that I’ve found you I’ve no intention of leaving quite yet.”

“I’ve drawn you here?” he repeated softly, staring at her parted lips so near to his own. Her gloved hand brushed against his hand, just enough to make the hair on his arm tingle with anticipation. “A craggy old Yankee shipmaster with white in his hair?”

She smiled again with the same openness. “You’re not so very old, Captain, and I’m not so very young. Together, I think, we could find some common ground to share.”

Her fragrance was like a drug to his senses, filling them so completely he could almost taste her already. He knew she expected him to kiss her. When he’d been younger, it had happened to him all the time. Barmaids or countesses, women generally made their wishes felt the same way. It would be so easy to draw her into his arms and beneath the sheets, to lose himself in the soft, willing pleasure she was offering.

So easy, and so wrong. Just because he’d been careless enough to let her into his room through that unlocked door didn’t mean she deserved a place in his life, however fleeting, or even one in his bed.

Purposefully he shifted away from her, focusing instead on sliding the pistol back beneath his pillow. “It’s late, ma’am. Good night.”

He heard her sigh, and felt the mattress lighten as she rose to her feet. “Jack warned me you’d be like this,” she said sadly. “But I thought at least you’d be willing—”

“Willing for what?” demanded Jeremiah. With humiliating clarity the answer came to him. His brother-in-law was so hopelessly besotted with Desire that he believed love alone could cure every other man’s ills, as well. How many times before this had Jack urged him to find a ladylove of his own? “So help me, if Herendon put you up to this—”

She turned sharply. “Whatever are you saying?”

“You know damned well what I’m saying! What did Jack tell you of poor old ailing Jeremiah? Did he tell you I was so lonely that I’d welcome the attentions of a woman, any woman, who showed a breath of interest in me?”

By the light of the single candle her eyes flashed bright as her diamonds. “What he told me was that you were proud and hot tempered, but oh my, I never dreamed he meant this!”

“But you came anyway, didn’t you?” Shoving himself from the bed to stand, Jeremiah saw how her eyes widened at his size as he loomed over her, how she stared at the jagged new scar that sliced across his torso. “Was I that much of a curiosity, a foreigner, an American, that I seemed worth the effort of seduction?”

“Seduction!” She tipped back her head and her laughter rippled merrily from her lips. “You think I came here to seduce you?”

He was in no mood for teasing, and he never liked being laughed at, especially not by a woman this pretty. “Aye, what other reason could there be for you creeping in here while I slept, every bit as bold as any barkeep’s daughter?”

“You left me no choice.” With her head cocked, she looked at him shrewdly. “You never leave this house. How else was I to find you?”

“You found me well enough in my bed, didn’t you?”

“You really do believe I came to seduce you,” she said incredulously, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Lord, I wouldn’t know how to begin.”

“Like this.” He rocked her back off her feet and into the crook of his arm before she could protest. He swallowed her startled little cry into his mouth, his lips moving deftly over hers. He would show her that he wasn’t some laughable American savage. He’d prove to her that he didn’t need her pity, or her curiosity, or whatever other contemptuous impulse had brought her here tonight. She tasted every bit as sweet as he’d hoped she’d be, soft and warm in his embrace, and with a low groan he slid his hands along the satin, down her back to settle on the curve between her waist and hip.

Yet for a woman brazen enough to chase him to his bed, she seemed oddly uncertain. She lay stiffly in his arms, her hands curled defensively against his chest, and though her lips had parted for his, she waited for him to lead her. Were English gentlemen so self-centered that they left their women as unschooled as this one so obviously was?

With a new gentleness he deepened the kiss, exploring the most sensitive corners of her mouth until she began to answer him, tentatively at first and then with growing ardor. Her hands crept up his chest and around his neck to draw him closer, and, charmed by the ingenuity of her response, he felt his anger melting away, replaced by an intense bolt of desire. Lord, it had been too long! Countess or not, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to take what she offered. He lifted her against him and she moaned deep in her throat, and he knew then she wanted him as much as he did her.

And then she jerked free and slapped him as hard as she could.

He stared at her, his cheek stinging where she’d struck him. “What the devil was that for?”

“You—we shouldn’t have kissed like that,” she said breathlessly. Her face was flushed, her lips still wet from their kiss, her hair disheveled and her plume cocked to one side. “It wasn’t right.”

“It seemed right as rain to me.” Strange how he wasn’t really angry with her. Disappointed, yes, but not angry.

“No, you don’t understand.” She lowered her gaze, her clasped hands twisting together. “You don’t understand at all.”

“You’ve called it well enough there.” He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, still rubbing his face. She’d caught him on the jaw with the edge of one of her bracelets, and he knew he’d have a bruise in the morning. “You’re not making much sense, sweetheart.”

“I don’t, not when I’m distraught.” She fidgeted with the clasp on one bracelet as she struggled to regain control of her emotions. “Frederick says it’s one of my greatest failings, and he has worked quite hard to rid me of it.”

Though Jeremiah waited for her to explain who Frederick was, she didn’t. Her husband, most likely. If she was a countess, then somewhere there had to be a count—no, an earl. But whoever Frederick was, Jeremiah would be damned before he’d ask.

“Don’t tell me,” he said instead. “You have a list of failings as long as my arm.”

“No, Captain, I don’t, no matter how much you wish to believe the contrary.” She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “Good night, then, and forgive me for disturbing you.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that, yes.” She gave her shoulders an odd little shrug, almost a shudder. “I’ve caused us both enough trouble tonight, haven’t I?”