Guilty Series (18 page)

Anthony smothered an oath against her neck. Hard and aching, he let her go, and took a step back from her, then another, tearing himself away as he tried to extinguish the unslaked lust that was raging through him like a house fire. Neither of them spoke. He stopped half a dozen feet away from her, where she was out of his reach.

She had no experience with what it all meant, but he did. He knew he could not stand here one moment longer, or he would act on it. Ruin for her, dishonor for him.

While he still had some vestige of sanity, Anthony turned away and left her, putting as much space between them as he could. But even with the entire length and two floors of the house between them, he could not escape her. The fragrance of gardenia still clung to his clothes, and much to his valet's bewilderment, he insisted on sleeping in his shirt. Even he did not know quite why, for the scent of her tortured him with erotic dreams all night long. When he woke in the morning, she still filled his senses, and he knew it would take miles to put a safe distance between them.

 

The following morning at breakfast, she learned he was gone. London, Mr. Bennington told her, with four cartloads of antiquities, every piece they
had that was ready for the museum. No, he had not said when he would return. There was a letter beside Daphne's plate, but it was not a farewell note, for the seal did not bear Anthony's coronet. It was a letter from Viola.

Daphne stared down at the unopened letter in her hands without seeing it. Anthony had left because of what had happened last night, or rather, what had almost happened. He had not even said good-bye to her.

Kissing can be far more tempting than you realize.

Tempting, indeed. For both of them.

Daphne told herself it would not do to torture herself with thoughts about last night, and she opened the letter from Viola. Another letter was enclosed with it. She read the one from the viscountess first.

“Does the viscountess have any news of happenings at Chiswick and London?” asked Mrs. Bennington.

Daphne stared down at the letter in her hands without replying. The baron did not want her, and she had no intention of pressing a claim on him for money or support. She knew she had a great deal of pride, and that pride was perhaps foolish, but she would not go begging to relations who did not
want her, not unless she had no other options. First, she would go to London, enjoy her season there, then find a post as a governess as she had planned.

Putting on her mask of cool serenity, she folded the pair of letters and looked up. “No news, I am afraid,” she answered Mrs. Bennington and folded the letter. “Her ladyship gives her felicitations to you both.” She put the letter in her pocket and turned to Mr. Bennington. “Did his grace say what he wanted done while he was away?”

“He mentioned those four mosaic pavements I brought you yesterday, and there are one or two wall paintings still to do. Of course, there is always plenty of broken pottery and the catalog as well. Enough to keep you busy until you leave, I daresay.”

Daphne heard the truculence in his voice, and that cheered her a bit. “More than enough,” she agreed. “You excavated far too efficiently before the frost.”

“You do an excellent job, Miss Wade. As much respect as I had for your father's work, when his grace first introduced you to me, I was skeptical that you could be an adequate replacement. But now I know you are irreplaceable. The duke will not be able to find anyone as good as you. I shall miss you, my dear.”

“Do not speak of it,” his wife declared, “for it is too distressing.” She turned to Daphne. “I do keep hoping you will change your mind and stay here.”

Daphne felt the sting of tears. She smiled at them with affection. “You have both been very kind to me. I shall miss you as well. But do not talk as if I
am leaving today. I am here six weeks yet.”

“I know,” Mr. Bennington said, pushing back his chair. “But come spring, it won't be the same without you. I must go. His grace wanted all that tessellated flooring put in place before he returns. There's much to do.”

The architect departed. His wife turned to Daphne and said, “I had another letter from my friend, Mrs. Treves, and she said speculations on the identity of the future duchess are being bandied about London by everyone. A man of his position could not consider marrying any young lady lower than an earl's daughter, of course, and I doubt anyone higher than a viscount is in Town at present. Too early. So if his grace has gone to London again so soon, I doubt it could be to see Lady Sarah. It must be purely business. Or perhaps he has gone to see his sister?”

Mrs. Bennington looked at her as if expecting confirmation, but Daphne shoved back her chair and rose. “Lady Hammond did not mention the matter. If you will excuse me.”

She walked away, leaving Mrs. Bennington staring after her. “My dear Daphne, are you ill?”

“No,” she called back over shoulder as she left the breakfast room. “It is just that I have so much work to do.”

She did not care who Anthony married, she told herself as she walked out of the house down to the antika. She would forget about what happened last night.

A mosaic of Europa lay waiting on her worktable. She stared at it, but the image of Europa blurred,
and Daphne saw a different image—a fresco of a naked woman and a naked man. She saw Anthony tracing the woman's hip with his fingertips.

Last night, he had touched her like that. Tongues of heat curled inside her body at the memory of his touch. She remembered every moment—the solid heaviness of his body behind hers as he had held her in an embrace, his low voice murmuring in her ear, his kiss, the hardness of him pressed against her.

Seeing erotic wall paintings was one thing, but it was a whole different thing to feel his hands on her, his mouth on hers, that indescribable pleasure and aching anticipation for more.

He was marrying someone else. How could he have touched her that way if he was marrying someone else?

Men have no character when it comes to women.

Anthony's words came back to mock her, and she realized that just because a man desired a woman, it could mean nothing more than that. He had been flirting with her for weeks, and she had flirted back. Both of them had enjoyed it. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back. Both of them had wanted more of it. They had gotten it.

Love and desire were not the same thing. He might desire her, but he was not in love with her. She desired him as well, for even now, she longed for his touch, but she was not in love with him any longer. Last night, it had been desire, not love, that had taken her closer to bliss than she had ever been. Love had broken her heart. She would do well to remember the difference.

A
nthony immersed himself in work. The usual duties and matters of business, meetings with other members of the Antiquarian Society who happened to be in Town at the moment, and the museum project itself kept him busy from early morning until late at night. All in an attempt to keep his mind occupied, away from thoughts of lavender-blue eyes and lust.

But as he stood in the domed center room of the building that would house the finest collections of Romano-British artifacts in the world, every fresco, every mosaic pavement, every wine amphora reminded him of what he was trying to escape.

What was it about the woman that made him unable to get her out of his mind? There had been a
time when he had barely noticed her. There had been a time when he had never even thought about her unless she was standing right in front of him, stammering her way through explanations of a Latin translation he questioned or describing the nuances of meaning in a particular mosaic. She had obeyed every order he had given her without a word of protest. No matter how demanding or even unreasonable his expectations, she had always exceeded them. She had behaved, in fact, like any other person in his employ: subservient, unquestioning, and excellent at the work for which she was paid.

Then she had up and resigned her post, bursting out with the ridiculous reason that she did not like him and did not want to work for him any longer. At that moment, after five months in his household, she had transformed right before his eyes into someone he had never met before, someone who made short shrift of his position, his title, and himself, someone who had always been there, he imagined, hidden behind an impersonal, efficient mask for the sake of her wage. When the first opportunity to leave had come her way, she had taken it. He had been forced to use all his ingenuity to keep her in his employ as long as he had.

And why? Because she did not
like
him. But she had liked him well enough when he'd held her in his arms. She had liked him well enough to kiss him and enjoy it as much as he had.

Anthony knew he was liking her. Far too much. He desired her more than he had ever desired a
woman before, a feeling so unexpected, given his initial impression of her. He had been wrong about her, and now she invaded his mind every time he let his guard down. Honor be damned. Why hadn't he bedded her when he'd had the opportunity? At least then his fantasies of making love to her would cease to be an obsession that continually took his mind from his work. He stared at the fresco that lay on the display table before him, his gaze fixed on a bowl of grapes, the faded color of the fruit more like lavender than purple. He slammed his fist down on the table. “Devil take it!”

“You called my name?” a male voice drawled from the doorway.

Anthony recognized that voice even before he looked up. “Dylan Moore,” he said, drawing a deep breath, grateful for the distraction, as he tore his gaze from the wall painting on the table to the man entering the room.

“You call this a museum, Tremore?” Dylan said, glancing around. “It looks more like a mausoleum to me. All these stone walls and statues. Ye gods, it even has a sarcophagus.”

“I see that you have still not cut your hair,” Anthony commented, straightening away from the table. “How long is this latest rebellion against the fashionable world going to last?”

His friend grinned. “I've not quite decided. My valet is in histrionics about it daily. I fear he shall drug me senseless one night and take a scissors to it. But I am determined to bring back the fashion of
longer hair for men. Deuce take it, Tremore, the London beaux need someone to hold them in check.”

Dylan was no beau. When first introduced to England's most famous composer, most people could not manage anything beyond a mumbled how-do-you-do, for his appearance was always a bit shocking. It was designed to be.

He was almost as tall as Anthony. His thick black hair hung in waves to his shoulders and was always disheveled, as if he had scarcely risen from his bed. His eyes were black as well, so black the pupils were invisible, so black that Lady Jersey had once declared him a modern Mephistopheles. It was a comparison that suited him perfectly. His brows had a mocking curve, and his mouth a sulky one. He had the charm of angels and the luck of the demon after whom Lady Jersey had named him.

His fancy tickled by her comparison, he heightened his Mephistophelean image by always dressing in black, no matter the occasion, an affectation that amused him endlessly. His ankle-length black cloak with its gold silk lining was familiar to everyone in society, and so was his behavior, which grew more outrageous with each passing year. Dylan was wild, disreputable, and invited to every fashionable party. He also composed some of the most exquisite music Anthony had ever heard. They had been friends since Cambridge.

“So what has you invoking the devil, Tremore? Work, I would guess, since that is all you ever seem to do.” Dylan, never able to stand still for long, be
gan to wander around the room, looking at the exhibits. “Or perhaps it is the idea of putting the ducal emeralds around some young lovely's neck that has you cursing?”

“Can nothing in my life be private?” Anthony asked with an exasperated sigh. “How far have the speculations gone?”

“A fresh list of likely future duchesses was presented in one of the society papers only a week ago. What did you expect, dear fellow? That you would take your emeralds to Bond Street and no one would notice?”

“Foolish of me, I know.”

“Very,” Dylan agreed, pausing to look at him between a pair of tall marble statues. He lifted one eyebrow. “Well, out with it, man. Am I to know the identity of the lady fair?”

“Lady Sarah Monforth.”

His friend made a sound of disbelief, rolled his eyes, and moved around the statues to pause at a table of bronze and iron weapons. “You jest with me, Tremore. Tell me the truth.”

“Indeed, I am in earnest. However, she is in Paris until Candlemas, and I have not yet proposed, so I ask you to keep my confidence.”

“I am too dismayed to do otherwise. Why on earth would you, of all men, choose to chain yourself to a nitwit?”

“It is a highly desirable alliance.”

“No doubt. Her name was first on the list.” Dylan picked up a bronze knife and studied it for a moment, then placed it back on the table. “Know
ing that you abhor the marriage state as much as I, my guess is that you do this strictly for the heir?”

Anthony was becoming irritated. He did not need the meddling of his friends in his affairs. “Do you have a point?”

Dylan looked up and met his gaze. “You will have to bed her,” he said, sounding appalled. “Lady Sarah is one of those beautiful women who haven't a whit of sensuality.”

“Spoken like a true hedonist. I am making a sensible marriage.”

Dylan's laughter ricocheted around the domed ceiling overhead. “God, Tremore, I wish I could be you. You are so controlled, so disciplined, so determined that all shall be as you will it. I suppose you have already informed God that you will require at least three sons to ensure the Tremore line?”

Anthony was accustomed to Dylan's caustic wit, and he refused to be provoked. “It is good to see you, my friend.”

“And you as well, I confess it. We always manage a great deal of amusement whenever you are in town. What shall we do this time? We could go to Seven Dials and smoke opium. I did that a few days ago, and it was an indescribable experience. I shall be inspired to compose five new concertos because of it.”

Anthony knew Dylan probably had smoked opium in Seven Dials. It provided just the sort of danger Dylan craved. He was always doing things like that.

“Or perhaps we should invade the brothels,
Tremore, since you have not been so wildly irrational as to fall in love with an actress or elope with the daughter of a chimneysweep since I last saw you. After all, you shall soon marry a woman as erotic as this creature here.” He gestured to the marble statue beside him. “So, shall we go a-whoring tonight?”

For a moment, Anthony was tempted. Perhaps an interlude with a London courtesan was just what he needed to rid himself of the tense, hungry need that raged through his body. After all, if he were skirt-smitten, a demirep could cure him in less than half an hour. “A delicious idea, Moore,” he admitted to his friend, “but I cannot. I have another engagement.”

“Do not be tiresome. I have been attempting to work on a new opera, and I have not had a woman for at least a week.”

Anthony's hand touched the edge of the fresco laid out on the table and he lowered his face for a closer examination of the fruit bowl. He closed his eyes and caught a hint of gardenia scent. His fancy, he knew. “That long?” he asked, straightening away from the table.

“What is this other engagement you have? Monforth and his family are in residence in Hertfordshire, I believe, not here in London.” He paused as if considering possibilities, then he smiled. “Ah, the lovely Marguerite, I assume?”

Those words brought Anthony to his senses, for he realized he had not seen his mistress for over eight months. God, he hadn't even thought about her.

“I am not seeing Marguerite,” he said, thinking perhaps he should, for that might return some semblance of order to his distracted mind, but it could not be tonight. “I am having members of the Antiquarian Society to dinner. We have business to discuss regarding the museum. Would you care to join us? I am certain they have never seen anything like you before. I will let you come if you promise not to do anything outrageous such as recite naughty limericks at table.”

Dylan shuddered. “Sit around drinking port with a group of dry, old archaeologists, and try to behave myself? I think not. I would rather be flogged in a public square or drink insipid lemonade with giggling girls at Almack's.”

“You cannot. They banished you. Lady Amelia, two seasons ago. Remember?”

“Ah, yes, Lady Amelia. I had forgotten that.”

It was Dylan's refusal to marry Lady Amelia Snowden after kissing her during a waltz in front of over a hundred people that had compelled Lady Jersey and the other grand dames of Almack's to forbid him from entering that veritable institution for his entire lifetime. Dylan was not wont to weep over it.

“It was only because Lady Amelia slapped your face at once that her reputation was saved,” Anthony pointed out. “That kiss would have ruined her otherwise.”

“I told her to slap me. There was nothing for it. Everyone was staring at us.” Dylan straightened
away from the statue and began walking toward the door, the edge of his cloak churning up glimpses of gold silk behind his boot heels. “If you will not come out and chase petticoats with me, I must fend for myself. I believe I shall go to the theater tonight. Abigail Williams is playing in
The Rivals
. I shall jump down from my box and carry her off the stage.”

“Really, Moore,” Anthony called after his friend, “do you not think you are taking this mad artist charade a bit too far?”

“Is it a charade?” Dylan asked, pausing in the doorway to look at him with an odd smile. “I often wonder. Call on me, Tremore, when you wish to do something amusing.”

Anthony watched his friend vanish through the doorway, and he shook his head. Dylan was a talented, brilliant man, but he seemed to be getting wilder with each passing month. He had not been the same since he'd taken that fall in Hyde Park three years before.

Anthony pushed thoughts of Dylan out of his mind and looked down once again at the fresco in front of him. He traced his finger along a serpentine crack amid the faded grapes, a thin, hairline crack repaired with precise and painstaking skill.

He would never want anything enough that its loss would drive him beyond reason. Never.

He jerked his hand back from the wall painting. When he left London, he would go to Hertfordshire and see Sarah. It was time to make their engagement official.

 

“No, no,” Elizabeth said, laughing as she grasped Daphne's shoulders and turned her around. “You moved the wrong way.”

“So I did,” Daphne admitted, laughing. “Oh, dear, I shall never be proficient at this quadrille business,” she confessed as she resumed the dance, concentrating on the figures Anthony had taught her. The music was provided by three violins in the corner instead of a tiny musical box, Elizabeth was her partner instead of Anthony, and the other couples were not imaginary. Twenty-two young girls having their lessons were moving with them in the steps of a country dance.

Though she had once been horrified by the thought of learning a new skill in front of people, her lessons with Anthony had given her enough confidence that at least now she could laugh at herself when she made a mistake. When she had mentioned to Elizabeth her lack of experience with country dancing three weeks ago, and her desire to practice, the girl had insisted they spend her next few Thursday mornings at the assembly rooms.

“Do not become discouraged, Daphne,” Lady Fitzhugh called to her from her chair beside the wall, when Daphne once again turned the wrong way. “Dancing well takes practice. Anne and Elizabeth began receiving instruction in these very assembly rooms when they were just ten years old. You are doing quite nicely, dear.”

“It's true, you know,” Elizabeth said as they lined up with the other girls for a new dance. “By
the time you join us in London, you will be quite fine. You dance better than you think.”

Anthony had said the same, but moving in the same steps with other people present made her errors much more noticeable to her. Oddly enough, she did not care quite so much. Anthony had helped her gain a bit of self-confidence.

She did not want to think of Anthony, and she forced herself to say something. “Are you still leaving after Twelfth Night?” she asked as she clasped Elizabeth's hand and they turned in a
moulinet
.