Her Secret Affair (14 page)

She held tight to the bedpost. Why did it hurt to suffer Kern’s misguided opinions? “I never enticed your father. He only imagined it. You know his foibles better than I.”

“I know your cunning as well. You’d peddle your body to anyone in breeches.”

“Then your memory is faulty, my lord. At our first meeting,
you
propositioned
me.
”

“So I did,” he said, his voice low with menace. “A pity I’ve never availed myself of what you give so freely to other men.”

He stalked toward her, and a wave of acute awareness rippled through Isabel. He exuded power like an angry god come down from the heavens to punish a defiant mortal. The dark determination on his face should have frightened her, but a curious fascination held her in place. Swept up in the throes of a strange thrill, she could not have fled if her life had depended upon it.

His arms imprisoned her and his fingers roughly caught her chin, but before he could use force, she lifted herself on tiptoe and met him halfway. He groaned out her name, and she shut her eyes, the better to savor the closeness of his muscled body. His kiss melted her until she felt flushed with fever, and his tongue penetrated her mouth with aggressive intimacy. The divine bliss of passion made her more conscious of the emptiness inside herself, the need to be filled by this man.

Kern. Dear God, she was kissing Lord Kern. Wildly. Thoughtlessly.

“No,” she whispered, turning her head to the side and inhaling the alien male scent of him. “We must stop. This is
wrong.
”

“To hell with right or wrong,” he muttered, and kissed her again with coaxing intensity.

Isabel caught her breath as his big hand cupped her breast, exploring her with the reverence of a connoisseur. The familiarity that had been so disgusting with an old lecher now enflamed her senses. She should not allow Kern such liberties, yet she, too, wanted—
needed
—him to go on touching her. She wanted to know the feel of his hands on every part of her body. A dark excitement unfurled within her. She wanted what she had heard the aunts whisper about … she wanted flesh on flesh.

As if privy to her fantasies, he reached behind her and worked at the buttons of her gown. All the while, their lips clung in a series of frantic kisses. His hands trembled—trembled as she herself trembled with the fury of her feelings. She slid her fingertips along his jaw and luxuriated in the roughness of his skin, the coarse silk of his hair. How extraordinary to inspire such passion in a man she’d believed to be heartless, hostile, unfeeling. How incredible to experience such arousal in herself. She felt as if another being possessed her body, a sensual creature who thrived on voluptuous indulgence.

Cool air wafted against her spine. Isabel shivered deliciously as he fumbled with the strings of her corset. The stiff garment loosened, and she helped him push down her bodice, their eager hands bumping until only a scrap of thin lawn covered her above the waist. With one arm he caught her to him, then peeled her chemise downward. He cradled one bare breast in his palm and gazed at her with hooded eyes.

“Beautiful. My God, you are beautiful.”

The harsh awe in his voice filled her with wanton pleasure. Bending his dark head, he suckled her until her legs melted like candle wax and she felt herself tumbling backward, taking him with her. They landed in a tangled heap on the feather bed. His body came down on hers; his weight knocked the breath from her lungs and jolted Isabel to her senses.

Even through the folds of her skirts, there was no mistaking the hard rod pressing against her thigh. Often enough she’d heard the aunts describe a man’s physique and his driving urge to copulate. Given her own pulsing need, she realized how close to disaster they loomed.

She braced her hands on his shoulders, but it was like pushing against a granite wall. “Kern,
no.
We mustn’t do this. We cannot.”

“We can, indeed,” he muttered against her throat. “I want you. I need you.”

They were the words she had dreamed of hearing, whispered by a nameless, faceless lover in her lonely bed. He moved his mouth down to her bosom, and the heat of his kisses threatened to melt her resolve. And then he reached down to draw up her skirts.

The memoirs. He could discover the memoirs. The little book lay at her side …

The thought galvanized her. He was her sworn enemy, the one man who could ruin her plans. The one man who could ruin
her.
“Listen to me,” she urged. “This cannot go any further.”

“For God’s sake, stop talking.” And he nipped the tender bud of her breast.

She sucked in her breath, resisting the erotic pleasure of it, resisting the reckless desires inspired by his closeness. Cupping his hard jaw in her palms, she drew up his face and forced him to look at her. The primitive passion there was terrifying … and incredibly tempting.

She forced out the words. “Helen is waiting downstairs.”

He stared with half-closed eyes, his fingers caressing her skin and sending ripples of pleasure through her. She saw the moment when realization dawned in him. His eyes widened, the wildness releasing its hold on the civilized man. His hands tightened on her, but only for an instant. Uttering a groan of frustration, he jerked himself off the bed.

He strode across the dim bedchamber and flattened his palms on a table, his back bowed. His uneven breaths disturbed the air as he struggled to master himself.

Like dry autumn leaves blown by a cold wind, regrets piled high in Isabel. She felt bereft … empty … alone. Her reaction made no sense, for there was nothing to lament. Better she should rejoice in thwarting Kern. Better she should take satisfaction in his obvious discomfort.

Better she should stop feeling so distressed herself.

“Don’t lie there gawking,” he growled over his shoulder. “Cover yourself.”

His command jolted her into sitting up on the bed. She tugged at the twisted chemise, then wrestled with the corset. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him stalk to a mirror and straighten his cravat. When he turned around, he looked the fine nobleman again, with nary a hair out of place or a wrinkle in his forest green coat, while she felt mussed beyond repair.

“You might offer to help me,” she snapped, straining to reach behind her back. “I can’t get these strings untangled.”

His lips thinned in arrogant disapproval as he approached the bed. “Turn around.”

She obeyed—only because the minutes were ticking away. She crossed her arms to hold the undergarment in place. As he pulled on the laces, his fingers brushed her back, and she drew in a breath to extinguish the damnable flame kindled by his touch.

“Too tight?” he asked.

Seized by an inexplicable shyness, she shook her head. It felt strange to be tended by a man, especially this aristocrat. What must he think of her? Though her throat ached, she held her chin high. No doubt she had confirmed his ill opinion a hundredfold. He would be blaming her for leading him astray, while absolving himself from any sin.

He kept his thoughts to himself. Cloaked in impersonal silence, he buttoned her gown and waited while she tidied her hair and repaired her bonnet. Then he went to the door and held it open, the consummate gentleman.

His cool control irked her. It was as if their passionate encounter on the bed had never happened. Isabel wanted to shatter his haughty self-discipline, to remind him he was a man like any other man. She wanted to prove his civilized manner was only a veneer.

Walking to him, she tracked her fingers along his clenched jaw and over his warm lips. “Never fear, my lord. Your little secret is safe with me. For the moment, anyway.”

The slight flaring of those green irises betrayed his alertness. “I have no secrets.”

“You do now.” She curved her mouth into a wicked smile. “Who knows, someday I might just write my own memoirs.”

Icarus always came to me under cover of darkness.

The most furtive of all my lovers, the Reverend Lord Raymond J—— took his pleasure after hours, when inquisitive eyes would not witness his lapse from grace. When he could indulge his penchant for dressing in my underclothes and pretending to be a fallen angel.

One nocturnal visit in particular stands out in my mind. I had passed a pleasant evening with a gentleman from Cornwall, and upon his departure, took myself back to bed, only to be awakened in the wee hours by the stealthy groping of my flesh and the whispering of naughty proposals in my ear. Icarus wore my best feathered boa, a silk shift, and a pair of my gartered stockings, but it mattered little to me, for the tool beneath these feminine trappings was all man. What delights we shared in the darkness, what joys of Eros! When at last our passions were spent, he slunk away as if our heated encounter had melted his angelic wings.

You might wonder, Dear Reader, why did I tolerate a lover who was ashamed to be seen with me? Perhaps, being the daughter of a stern country vicar, I liked the jest of luring the good cleric into sin. Or perhaps—oh, yes!—perhaps it was the prospect of soothing my broken heart, of filling the void left by the loss of my first true love.

My dearest Apollo.

—The True Confessions of a Ladybird

Chapter 8

Kern walked into his father’s bedchamber the next morning and found him with a lapful of housemaid.

Stripped linens from the bed strewed the floor. Sunshine streamed past the opened draperies and haloed Lynwood, clad in a dressing gown and enthroned in a wing chair by the window. Two giggling maidservants vied for his attention. He delved his hand beneath the skirt of one and buried his face in the bosom of the other.

Kern thought he’d grown inured to his father’s lechery. But after a night of brooding about his own lapse of moral restraint, he lost all patience.

He strode toward the trio, took firm hold of the maidservants by their apron strings, and brought them stumbling to their feet. Their giggles turned to gasps. The plumper of the two fell to her knees, wailing, “Don’t sack me, m’lord. We didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Don’t turn me out on the streets!” cried the other. “I’ll starve.”

“Never venture near this room again,” Kern said. “Now get out.”

They made a wide berth around him, snatched up the dirty linens, and scuttled out the door.

Lynwood crossed his arms over his rumpled green dressing gown. His bare, withered legs stuck out from beneath the hem. “Don’t glower, boy. There’s no wrong in having a bit of fun. Truth be told, another taste of pussy might make you less of a prig. You haven’t had any in how many years? Fourteen, eh?”

Looking into the dark pit of memory dizzied Kern; with iron effort he stepped back from the edge. Rather than let himself be drawn into a quarrel, Kern stalked to the leaded casement window and leaned against the sill. There had been alarming episodes of late when his father had had trouble recalling his own name, times when he did not recognize his own son, but from the sharp gleam in his eyes, Lynwood appeared lucid this morning. For that, at least, Kern could be thankful.

“Where is Mullins?” he asked. “No maid is allowed in here without him present.”

Lynwood bared his teeth in a grin. “My prison guard had a trifling accident just before the maids arrived. I fear I missed the chamber pot and pissed all over him instead.”

Kern stifled a startled laugh. His father needed no encouragement in his tricks. “Henceforth, he’ll store a spare set of clothing right here in this room. Now, I wish to ask you about your visitor yesterday. Miss Isabel Darling.”

“Fine-looking piece of ass, eh? Pity
you
don’t go for whores.”

But Kern did—at least this one in particular. For half the night, the memory of her lush body had tortured him, the sweetness of her kiss, the softness of her breasts, the incredible moment when he had covered her on the bed and felt her hips cradle him. Even now the witch roused him to throbbing torment.

Yes, he had the same base urges as any man—but until yesterday he’d possessed the discipline to control himself. God! How could he have forgotten Helen?

His fingers dug into the windowsill. “Something Miss Darling said has been troubling me. She claims she did not attempt to blackmail you. Is that true?”

“Blackmail?” Lynwood blinked as if confused. “How could the chit extort money from me? I’ve never bedded her. Even if I had, she’d be lost among the masses.”

“She has Aurora’s memoirs. Are you certain she didn’t threaten to publish that filth?”

“I can’t remember her saying so.” The duke passed his hand over his wrinkled face. “Strange, for a while there, I believed the young one
was
Aurora—till she pulled that knife on me. Betimes, I can’t keep my own wits straight.”

Resisting a surge of pity, Kern concentrated on the discrepancy that nagged at him. “Then she must have tried to entice you. You said so yourself.” Yet that didn’t make sense, not when there were younger, wealthier, more accessible noblemen to gull. “What other reason could she have for coming here?”

“I’ll tell you what. She asked if I’d put arsenic in a box of chocolates.” Lynwood snorted in derision. “I never gave a woman chocolates in my life. The rod in my breeches is treat enough.”

“Arsenic.” Despite the sun beating on his back, Kern went cold. What deadly game was Isabel playing now? “Tell me exactly what Miss Darling said to you.”

“The chit said she’d cut my balls off, that’s what! Just because I mistook her for her mother.”

Kern hunkered down on his heels in front of his father. “Never mind that. I want to know about the arsenic. Who were you supposed to have poisoned?”

“Her mother, I think.” The duke’s imperious features crumpled into horrified sadness. “But I wouldn’t have hurt Aurora. We had many a good time together. Many a good time.” He hung his head in the guise of a dispirited old man.

Stunned, Kern sat back on his heels.
Isabel believed her mother had been murdered.

Impossible.

Yet like an icy fist, the thought gripped Kern. It cast a new light on her determination to infiltrate the
ton.
Perhaps Isabel wasn’t a fortune hunter intent on snaring a husband.