Dangerous to Love (10 page)

For the most part, the gentlemen were fops and far more taken with themselves than they were in getting up a flirtation with the ladies. Their wigs were powdered in
every shade of the rainbow. The lace at their throats and cuffs was so profuse as to be ostentatious. Their painted faces and rouged lips put Serena in mind of a collection of china dolls. But it was the affected lisps and mincing manners that offended her the most. She had been acquainted with most of these gentlemen since they were rowdy schoolboys bent on deviltry. She knew for a fact there wasn’t a genuine lisp among the lot of them. By and large, they were a set of harmless fribbles, and when they forgot themselves, which they sometimes did, they were even likable.

Julian Raynor was not an empty-headed fribble, nor was he a fop. Though she was loath to admit it, she had to say that in present company he cut a glamorous figure. Not that any of this weighed with her. In her mind, he would always be the man who had sent her home with a fifty-pound note in her hand.

Watching Raynor now as he deftly played the gallant with two women at one time, Serena became convinced that his notorious reputation did not do him justice. Gamester, rake, libertine—she would not allow such a person to trifle with her innocent sister.

To masculine sighs and exclamations and murmurs of delight, Julian deftly affixed the black patch high on Catherine’s left cheekbone. As he turned away to hunt among the pots and bottles which littered the top of the dressing table, Serena was silent, watching him speculatively.

Unstoppering one, he sniffed delicately. “Lavender!” he disparaged, and pulled a long face. He tried another, then another, until he found one to his liking. “Tuberose,” he said, grinning wickedly, “full-bodied and alluring, for a lady who has the style to flaunt her femininity.”

In the mirror, Catherine’s eyes flirted with him outrageously. Serena could not see Raynor’s face, so she concentrated
on what he was doing. Evidently, Julian Raynor was no stranger to a lady’s boudoir.

When he began to apply the perfume to Catherine’s bare skin with the tips of his fingers, an odd sensation fluttered in the pit of Serena’s stomach, and her breathing slowed. To a stream of advice and encouragement from the onlookers, he stroked the heady fragrance along Catherine’s eyebrows, her wrists, behind her earlobes, to the hollow of her throat. At each brush of his fingers, Serena felt as though her own skin were taking fire. There was an impression of suppressed sensuality in each mesmerizing stroke. The scent of roses permeated the air like some powerful, voluptuous aphrodisiac. She fought against its power.

Slowly, deliberately, he parted the edges of Catherine’s negligee and Serena’s breath became shallower, more audible. Above Catherine’s lace-edged nightshift, the creamy swell of her breasts was visible. A hush descended. One gentleman snickered. Letty giggled. Serena could not have moved if someone had shouted that the house was on fire.

“And here,” he said in a voice that was not quite hoarse, not quite a whisper, “for a lover, and only a lover to discover,” and he brazenly dipped his rose-fragrant fingers beneath the shift, caressing the valley between Catherine’s quivering breasts.

Serena could feel those strong fingers as if they had caressed her own breasts. Her nipples hardened and she stifled an involuntary groan.

“Wretched rake!” exclaimed Catherine playfully, and slapped his hands away. “Is no woman safe from you?”

“No,” he said simply.

Everyone was laughing and applauding, as if the curtain had fallen on a stage performance. Serena was locked in memory. Powerful masculine hands were molding her
to his hard length. There was pleasure there for the taking, if only she would allow herself to share in it.

His head suddenly lifted and his eyes met and held Serena’s across the width of that small room. Awareness, exclusive, frightening in its violence, flashed between them, and she knew that he, too, had been locked in memories of that night.

By sheer force of will, she dragged her eyes from his. It was a while before she had collected herself enough to participate in what was going on around her. As maids displayed several gowns for Catherine’s inspection, Serena threw out suggestions, trying to enter into the spirit of the thing.

“Not panniers?” said Catherine regretfully. She was fingering her latest acquisition, a flowered muslin with a pale green satin underdress. “But panniers are all the rage.”

“Not,” said Serena emphatically, “when one is engaged to attend one of Mr. Handel’s concerts. Even the gentlemen have been requested to leave off their smallswords.” She was referring to the awkwardness in a crush of people of ladies’ voluminous hooped skirts and the ubiquitous smallsword which every gentleman sported.

Her idle observation brought a torrent of protests from Catherine’s enraged beaux. Lord Percy spoke for them all when he lisped, “ ’Pon my honor, I’ll allow no man to dictate my conduct. Leave my thmallthword at home? And pray tell, what if I am thet upon by footpads and highwaymen, or thome knave inthults me? Devil fly away with Mr. Handel is what I thay.”

Under cover of the heated conversation that followed, Julian Raynor relinquished his position at the dressing table and idled his way over to Serena, eventually stationing himself to one side of the sofa where she was seated.
When he leaned both arms along the back of the sofa, so that his breath warmed her nape, Serena went as taut as a bowstring. For her ears only, he murmured theatrically, “You may rest easy now, Victoria. Your little secret is safe with me.”

“I am heartily relieved to hear it!” she retorted with more haste than caution. “And my name is Serena. Miss Ward to you.”

They exchanged sober glances, then he smiled, a teasing grin, which only increased Serena’s wariness. The rake looked almost harmless, which, she supposed, was a good trick for a rake. She had seen him when he looked quite different.

Reaching in the depths of his coat pocket, he withdrew a snuffbox. With an elegant snap of one wrist, he opened it and proceeded to take snuff. “You are not so old as I thought you were,” he said. “Powder and paint will do that to a woman.”

Serena’s eyes darted about her. “I don’t wish to discuss it,” she hissed, her lips barely moving.

“Frankly, neither do I. However, I fear we must.”

Catching Letty’s suspicious eye upon them, Serena smiled and said through her teeth, “Major Raynor, there is nothing more to say. Please leave this house at once and never darken its doors again. If you persist in making a nuisance of yourself, I shall be forced to call one of the footmen to escort you out.”

“You are,” he said, stifling a yawn, “the most melodramatic female of my acquaintance. I have not endured the tedium of this past hour merely to have you turn me away now. I give you two choices, Victoria. We either discuss what needs to be said between us in front of all these witnesses, or we discuss it in private. Which is it to be?”

“There is no privacy to be had here!”

“Fine. Then you may begin by telling me—”

“Wait!”

“Yes?”

Conscious of the notice they were attracting, she gave way, but not very graciously. “The bookroom,” she snapped. “With my brother not at home, it should be free. Ask one of the footmen to direct you to it. I shall give you a few minutes then follow you down.”

Letty, coming up at that moment, threw Serena a vexed look before turning her considerable charm upon Raynor. Serena observed her with a careful eye. Since Letty had blossomed, at seventeen, into a young woman of rare beauty, she had begun to attract beaux like moths to a flame. The attraction was mutual. Men was all she ever thought about. Serena, who loved her sister dearly, was inclined to treat this affliction as a malady that time would cure. Watching Letty now as she practiced her newfound woman’s wiles on Julian Raynor, Serena sincerely wished that she had taken the malady a mite more seriously.

Dimpling smiles from the aspiring Jezebel. Lazy grins from the rampant rogue. Serena felt something move inside her, something she neither wanted nor liked. Excusing herself, she moved to the empty chair beside Miriam Porter, old Judge Porter’s dashing young wife, and listened with feigned absorption to a conversation in progress on the merits of David Garrick’s performance as King Lear, which had been performed the night before at Drury Lane. But when Julian Raynor said his adieux to Catherine and slipped from the room, she was burningly aware of it.

   In the corridor, Julian was met by a young footman with an emerald winking at his left ear. At sight of Julian,
he gave a start, then a slow, foolish grin spread across his face.

“Miss Ward will see me in the bookroom, if you would direct me to it,” said Julian.

“I should deem it an ’onor, Major Raynor, sir,” replied Flynn with so much enthusiasm that Julian’s brows rose.

This was not the welcome he had met with the first time he had tried to gain admittance to the house. On that occasion, the door had been shut firmly against him by a decrepit butler who looked as though his face had been cast in marble. Miss Ward was not at home nor ever would be to Julian Raynor, he was given to understand. It was regrettable that his scruples would not allow him to accept that answer.

“Flynn, is it not?” said Julian conversationally, as they descended the stairs.

“Fancy you remembering me,” said Flynn.

It was no great feat, thought Julian, for Flynn was the most colorful footman to appear on the London scene for some time, and that was saying something. His lack of decorum, not to mention his amorous adventures with highborn ladies, had made him a person of some celebrity. What Julian could not understand was Flynn’s attachment to the Wards. It was reported that the young footman had received many advantageous offers to lure him away and had refused every one of them.

On entering the bookroom, Julian paused, his eyes instantly drawn to the portrait on the fireplace wall. Elsewhere he had noted large empty spaces on the walls where it was evident pictures had once hung. By the looks of things, Jeremy Ward was reduced to selling off his picture collection in his efforts to raise money.

Julian’s smile was tainted with scorn. There were still servants in plenty, and the ladies of the house did not look to him as though they were practicing economies.
Their conversation was all of new gowns, and the lavish entertainments where they might show them off. When he remembered the workhouse, and what his own family had been reduced to, his throat tightened painfully.

For a long moment, he struggled with his feelings, trying to master them. He should be glad that the Wards were living beyond their means, for it put them more securely in his power.

He crossed to the fireplace. With an arm resting on the mantel, he studied the portrait intently. It was a moment before it came to him that the young woman who gazed down at him was not Serena Ward. This lady, whom he assumed was the girl’s mother, was the picture of well-bred docility. Unlike her daughter, the name
Serena
would have suited her. As for the girl, there were many names he would like to call her, but
serene
was the furthest from his mind.

The thought made him smile. It was impossible not to remember that Serena Ward had given him the sweetest pleasure he had ever found with a woman. Yet it rankled to know that he wanted her still. No man in his right mind wanted a woman who had tricked and deceived him, and who, subsequently, had displayed her utter contempt for him by barring him from her house. But beyond all this remained the unpalatable fact that she was the daughter of Sir Robert Ward.

He supposed he should have left well enough alone, should never have applied the perfume to Catherine’s bare skin. It wasn’t Catherine who had filled his mind as his fingers sought out all her pulse points, but the tantalizing image of bringing the haughty Serena Ward to her knees. At each bold touch, across the width of the room, he could almost feel her icy dignity begin to melt, and the thought had electrified him. One look had told him all he
wished to know. He had accomplished his goal, he had shaken the girl to her very foundations, but in doing so, he had also shaken himself.

At the click of the doorlatch, he turned from the portrait.

S
erena entered the room in a flurry of skirts. After closing the door quietly, stealthily, she slumped against it. Her breathing was quick and audible; her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were brilliant with emotion. When she spoke, no one could doubt that it was anger that moved her.

“I might have known,” she said, “what to expect from you.”

“Yes, I think you might,” he answered reasonably.

“You had no business to force your way into my house.”

“I didn’t force my way in. I was invited.”

Advancing a step or two, she stabbed the air with one hand. “You played upon my sister-in-law’s good nature so that I would be compelled to speak with you.”

In contrast to her impassioned tones, his were calm and faintly amused. “True,” he said. “In the normal way of things, there would have been many opportunities to approach you. In your determination to avoid me, however, not only did you bar your house to me, but you also made yourself a recluse. I was obliged to use subterfuge to gain my ends.”