Don't Tempt Me (4 page)

Or at least it must seem so.

She adjusted her shawl and her own posture, making herself as alluring as she could without being too obvious about it, while she filled her mind with the ritual formulae employed on similar occasions.

In a logical and orderly fashion, she summarized for the duke her sisters' and absent brothers' assessment of the situation and their reasons for wanting to send her away.

“They say the only other solution is for me to marry a man of the highest rank,” she went on. “They say others must defer to him. They say that a man so highly placed will want an innocent girl of eighteen. I am not truly innocent, and I am not eighteen, but I am a virgin.”

“Ooooh,” said Mama.

Zoe went on determinedly, “Yusri Pasha gave me as a second wife to Karim, who was his eldest son by his first wife. But Karim could not make his…his…”—though Marchmont kept his eyes half closed, she knew the duke regarded her intently—“his instrument of delight. The limb a man uses for pleasure and to make children. What is it called?”

Shrieks from the sisters.

Zoe ignored them. “No one will tell me what it is in English,” she said. “If I ever learned the word, I have forgotten it.”

He made an odd sound in his throat. Then he said, “
Membrum virile
will do.”

The two older sisters put their heads in their hands.

“He could not make his
membrum virile
hard,” Zoe said. “He was sickly, you see. He was unable to be a true husband, though he was so fond of me, and
I did everything they taught me to awaken a man's desire.
Everything.
I even—”

“Zoe,” her father said in a strangled voice, “it is unnecessary to explain in detail.”

“One wishes it were not necessary for her to speak at all,” a sister muttered.

“One wishes the floor would open up and swallow one.”

“We shall never,
never
live this down.”

“Never mind them, Miss Lexham,” said Marchmont. “Please continue. I'm all ears.” He drank some more.

“I shall be an excellent wife to you,” she said, hoping she didn't sound as desperate as she felt. She told herself that if this didn't work, she'd go to Paris or Venice as she'd threatened, though those had never been her first choices. She wanted to live in her native land and have the life she'd dreamt of for twelve long years. It looked as though the Duke of Marchmont was her one chance to have that life. He was handsome and young and healthy and not excessively intelligent, and he desired her. He was
perfect.

Fate had thrown him in her way. A gift. All she had to do was hold onto him.

Don't panic
, she counseled herself.
You know exactly what to do. You spent twelve years learning it.

“I know all the arts of pleasing a man,” she went on. “I can sing and dance and compose poetry. I learn quickly and will learn how to behave correctly in…in good society…if you will help me, or find me teachers.”

She was not calm enough. Her English was faltering as a consequence, but she plunged on. “I know
widows are worthless, but I was never a wife of the body. I remain a virgin, and a virgin is valuable. Too, I have jewels, enough to make as great a dowry as a maiden would have. I shall be a loving mother to your children. All the children of the harem were fond of me. In truth, it made me sad to leave them, and I shall be happy to have children of my own.” She paused and glanced at her sisters. “But not too many.”

“Not too many,” he repeated. He drank some more.

“I know how to arrange a household,” she said. “I know how to manage servants, even eunuchs—and they can be impossible. Their moods are more changeable than a woman's.”

“Eunuchs. I see.”

“I know how to manage them,” she said. “I was the only one in all the household who could.”

The other two sisters put their heads in their hands. Mama covered her face with her handkerchief.

Marchmont emptied his glass and set it down. His slitted green gaze came back to Zoe. She couldn't truly see it, so secret he was in the way he used his eyes, but she certainly felt it. His slow, assessing look traveled from the top of her head to her toes, which curled in reaction. All of her body seemed to curl under that gaze, as though she were a serpent stirring, lured out of the darkness into the warmth of the sun. She felt the stirring and curling inside, too, low in her belly.

“That is a
most
tempting offer,” he said.

 

The room fell oppressively silent, and it seemed to Marchmont that his voice echoed in it. “To be able to manage eunuchs is a rare accomplishment, indeed.”

The four harridans made no sound. Their youngest sister had succeeded in doing the impossible: She'd rendered them speechless.

“Well?” she said into the lengthening silence.

He poured himself more wine. The effort not to laugh was sure to do him a permanent injury.

He was sure he'd never, in all his life, heard anything so hilarious as Zoe-not Zoe's marriage proposal or her sisters' reaction to it.

That alone was worth the thousand pounds he'd lost in the wager. Hell, it was probably worth the price of marriage. He'd be laughing about it for years to come, he didn't doubt.

But years to come was a very long time, and marrying now would be inconvenient. For appearances' sake he would be obliged to give up his mistress for a time, and Lady Tarling hadn't yet begun to bore him.

“It devastates me to decline,” he said, “but it would be grossly unfair to take advantage of you in that way.”

“Does that mean no?” said Zoe. Her soft mouth turned down.

Marchmont eyed her grown-up, delectably curving body. “It is no,” he said, “with the
greatest
regret. Were I to consent, I should be marrying you under false pretenses. I can accomplish what you require without your having to shackle yourself to me permanently.”

He knew that without him she had virtually no hope of a welcome in Society. He was the one man in London who could do what she needed done for her—and he owed it to Lexham to do it. Marchmont had not the smallest doubt in his mind about this. No amount of wine could wash that great debt away.

Her frown eased and her expression sharpened. “You can?”

“Nothing could be simpler,” he said.

She let out a little whoosh of air.

Relief?

He was, for an instant, taken aback.

He was, he knew, a matrimonial prize. Unwed women would sell their souls for the chance to become the Duchess of Marchmont. Some of the wed ones, given the least encouragement, would happily do away with their husbands.

But the Duke of Marchmont had never taken himself seriously, and even his vanity was of the detached variety, far from tender. If her tiny sigh of relief wounded his feelings, the blow was merely a glancing one.

She had every reason to be relieved, he told himself. She would not have gone to the extreme of proposing to him if her appalling sisters had not, in their usual way, exaggerated the difficulties of her situation.

“Nothing simpler?” one of them cried. “How drunk are you, Marchmont?”

He ignored her and kept his attention on Zoe-not Zoe. “For reasons which elude me, I am fashionable,” he said. “For reasons which elude nobody, I am highly eligible. The combination makes me welcome everywhere.”

Zoe glanced at her sisters for confirmation.

“I grieve to say it is true,” said Gertrude.

“It is very tiresome, and I find the responsibility onerous, but it can't be helped,” he said. “My presence determines the success of a gathering.”

“Like Mr. Brummell,” said Zoe. “That is what they said. The man must be like Mr. Brummell.”

“Not altogether like him, I hope,” he said. “If you ever hear of my bathing in milk or discarding a neckcloth because every fold and dent is not precisely where it ought to be, I hope you will be so good as to shoot me.”

She smiled then, a slow upward curve of her lips.

Visions of this exotic, grown-up version of Zoe dancing in veils crept into his mind, along with the first part of her qualifications:
I know all the arts of pleasing a man.

Perhaps, after all, he should have said yes.

No, absolutely not. Though he wasn't altogether sober, he was well aware that the little brain between his legs was trying to take charge of the situation. He told himself not to be an idiot. He shoved the visions into the mental cupboard.

“In short,” he said, “you need me, but contrary to your sisters' hysterical assumptions, you don't need to marry me. You don't need to marry anybody until you're quite ready.”

Another little whoosh of air. “Oh,” she said. “Thank you. You are very handsome and desirable, and I was so glad of that—but I was married from the time I was twelve years old, and it seemed a very long time, and I would rather not be married again straightaway.”

“You may leave everything to me,” he said.

“That is one of the most horrifying sentences I have ever heard,” said Augusta.

“Everything?” said Zoe. She gazed at him expec
tantly, her eyes like two dark seas, deep enough to drown a man.

He set down his glass. If his mind was sliding into metaphor, he'd had quite enough to drink. “Everything,” he said firmly. “Come with me.”

“Go with him?” cried a sister.

“Go where?”

“What can he be thinking?”

“Thinking? When does he ever think?”

While the harridans recommenced playing the Greek tragic chorus, Marchmont took Zoe's arm and led her out of the room.

 

The long-fingered hand wrapped about Zoe's arm was very warm. The heat spread out from there and raced up and down, from one side of her body to the other.

Zoe looked down at his hand and wondered how he did it.

But as soon as they were out of the drawing room, he let go of her. He folded his hands behind his back and walked on. His legs were long, but he did not hurry. She had no trouble keeping up with him.

Aware of servants watching while they pretended not to, she would not let herself stare at him. This wasn't easy. For one thing, the provoking boy she'd known so long ago had turned into someone else: a tall, strong, hauntingly beautiful stranger. That took some getting used to.

For another, this stranger had effortlessly awakened in her feelings she'd heard talked of endlessly but had never experienced. She was still reeling from that discovery.

Still, he was a stranger, and she was relieved not to have to marry him. He seemed to be very conceited. He was nothing like the boy she'd known so long ago.

All the same, she couldn't help wondering what he looked like naked.

She couldn't help wondering what it would feel like if he put those big, warm hands on her womanly parts.

She shivered.

“It is unseasonably cold,” he said. “We're in for a filthy night, I don't doubt. The sky was overcast as I left White's and continues to darken. Do you know what White's is?”

She towed her mind back to the moment. “I heard my sisters say you had friends there,” she said.

“It is a gentleman's club in St. James's Street,” he said. He told her the names of various members, describing his friends in detail, quoting Beau Brummell, and explaining the latest set of wagers in the betting book.

It was interesting, and he spoke in an amusing way. Yet Zoe was aware that he was…not drunk exactly, but in a haze.

She was familiar with the haze of intoxicants. In the harem, opium helped bored and frustrated women pass the time. She could not understand why so sought-after and powerful a man, who was free to go where he pleased and do as he pleased, chose to pass his day in a haze.

It was not her concern, she told herself. Yet she couldn't help wondering whether the hazy state dulled his carnal urges or made his
membrum virile
soft.

She doubted it.

He paused at the door to the library.

She glanced behind her. The small drawing room was not very far away. Still, the library was private, at least for the moment. If he wished to touch her she would let him, she decided. Purely for educational purposes. She knew a great deal about men and what they liked and what to do for and to them, but she had not learned what she liked. Karim's touch had never stirred her, nor hers him.

This man would be different. That much was obvious.

“After you, madam,” he said.

She walked into the library, her heart picking up speed.

He followed her in, then walked straight to the central window. He flung open the curtains.

A roar went up from the crowd.

Zoe stood stock-still, staring at the back of his head, at the familiar pale blond hair. Yes, he'd always been the boldest of them all, though everyone used to say it was Gerard who was the reckless one. But bold and reckless were not the same thing.

She was aware of footsteps in the corridor behind her, and her sisters' voices becoming more audible. In another moment her brothers would hear the noise outside, and they'd emerge from their lair and…

And it would make no difference at all. They would do the same as they'd always done. In childhood none of the others had ever been able to stand up to him. Now he'd been a duke for almost half his life, accustomed to do as he pleased, accustomed to being deferred to.

The library had tall windows, like doors, giving out onto a narrow balcony. Marchmont threw open a pair of windows.

Her sisters let out a collective gasp.

“Good grief!” one cried.

“He's mad!”

“Drunk, is more like it.”

“Where is Papa?”

“Why does he do nothing?”

Zoe glanced back. They huddled in the doorway, complaining and objecting, but they came no farther and made no attempt to stop Marchmont.