Lady of Desire (21 page)

“Why?” she demanded. “So you can keep a close watch on me, make sure I don’t expose you?” Her voice climbed with anger. “So you can keep control of me, just like my brothers? Is that what you want?”

“Now, Jacinda, wait a minute—”

“No,
you
wait a minute, sir.” She shook her head at him. “Things have changed around here. After you hauled me back to my family, for your information, I found someone else!”

She thought he was going to explode, the way his face darkened and his muscles tensed beneath her hand, resting lightly on his shoulder as they danced.

But he didn’t miss a step. The perilous moment passed.

With a calculating gleam in his eyes, he forced a taut smile, then shrugged slightly. “Well. Be that as it may, we both know it’s me you really want.”

Her eyes widened at the sheer arrogance of the man. “You are
unbelievable
!”

Laughing softly, he bent his head down to her ear as he whirled her lightly over the dance floor. “Not at all, my lady. There are advantages in marrying me.” His warm breath sent shivers down her spine. “You’re worried about following in your mother’s footsteps, but rest assured I’ll keep you so satisfied you’ll never even think about straying.”

“Ugh!” With an appalled gasp, she tore out of his arms at the edge of the dance floor and fled out the French doors to the veranda, furious and blushing profusely at his lascivious promise.

Her cheeks flamed at the wanton memory that his words had summoned, of that night in his room. How unspeakably horrid, how odious he was! She had to get away from him before someone noticed her wild reaction to the scoundrel. She had to regain her composure.

Rackford, or Blade, or whatever his name was—the beast came outside a few steps behind her. “Jacinda!”

“Go away! You are not a gentleman!”

He laughed.

Trying in exasperation to escape him, she hurried down the shallow stone steps into the garden, but again, he followed her along the grassy allee and under the trellis of climbing roses, pursuing her with long, brisk strides.

“Jacinda! Blast you woman, don’t put me off when I have just offered myself and my title to you on a silver platter. Forget your silly infatuation. We both know you belong with me.”

“I’d rather die!”

“Who’s the lucky fellow?”

“None of your business!”

“If it’s Acer Loring, I may have to shake you back to your senses.”

“It’s not,” she retorted, hurrying ahead of him. “Go away!”

“Who is it, then?”

“Nobody you know!” The path she had been following suddenly came to a dead end, and she found herself facing a little fountain in a neat, circular garden “room” whose walls were tall, curved box hedges.

As she stood there, not knowing where to turn, her heart pounding, his strong arms closed around her waist from behind her. Before she could even gasp, he turned her around and claimed her mouth in heated urgency, wrapping his arms around her.

“Stop it!” she started to protest, but opening her mouth only invited his kiss more deeply. She moaned softly as his left arm tightened around her waist, his right hand sensuously, possessively cupping her nape.

Oh, she knew the taste of him, the warm, beguiling sweetness of his mouth. She knew his touch, his smell.
Billy
… He gathered her closer in his arms, but she fought his dizzying potency and the urge to let her body melt against his. She willed herself to stop kissing him back. At her stubborn refusal to participate, she felt his lips curve against her mouth in a wicked half smile.

“Come, my lady.” His voice had turned husky. He ran his fingertips along the line of her jaw, tilting her head back, forcing her to look into his eyes, aglow with hungry need. “Give me a proper greeting.”

Slowly lowering his head, he kissed her lips apart with masterful demand.

She did not have the strength to resist as he plundered her mouth. Unconsciously wrapping her arms around his neck, she clung to him.

Billy…

He slipped the red carnation out of his buttonhole and trailed its satin petals down her cheek as he kissed her, then tenderly tucked the flower behind her ear. The sweetness of the gesture made her ache with longing. She caressed his clean-shaved cheek, ran her fingers through his hair—but when she felt his hand cup her breast, she came back sharply to her senses. This was madness!

She tore herself away, panting harshly. He reached for her again. She shoved him away. “No! I don’t want this. I don’t want
you
.”

His jaw clenched. His eyes glittered with thwarted lust and anger at her denial. “Who is he?” he growled.

“Lord Drummond,” she flung out in defiance.

“Can’t say I know the man. I can hardly wait to meet him. What do you think he’ll say when I tell him about your little visit to Bainbridge Street? Or how you tried to seduce me in the carriage so that I would let you go on to France?”

“Don’t you dare threaten me,” she whispered, murderously holding his gaze. “Two can play at that game,
Blade
. If you breathe one word about that night to Lord Drummond—or to anyone else—I will tell the whole ton about your past with your filthy, thieving gang.”

He regarded her in simmering amusement. “Well, touché, my dear. Seems you learned a thing or two in the rookery.”

“You’re the one who said I should learn to think like a thief. Just stay out of my way, and I will stay out of yours, agreed? You’re the one who dragged me back to this life. If I am to be confined here, then I intend to make the most of it.”

He studied her shrewdly. “Staying away from you is the one thing I cannot promise.” She started to turn away with a scowl but he stopped her, grasping her arm. “I want you, Jacinda,” he warned softly. “One way or the other, I will have you.”

“Try it, and my brothers will have your head. You’re in my world now, and if you cross me, Lord
Rackford
, you’re the one who will be sorry.” With that, she threw the red carnation on the ground and hurried back through the cool, dewy darkness of the garden, returning to the glittering ballroom before she was missed.

Cursing himself for making a thorough botch of it, Rackford was left standing there, staring after her, not quite sure how to proceed, but thoroughly vexed to find himself rejected yet again by the maddening chit. He watched her marching rather shakily up the moonlit path, her golden curls swinging, her gauzy skirts rippling around her legs. She ran up the few shallow steps to the veranda and disappeared inside.

He let out a long exhalation and started to drag his hand through his hair, then scowled at the reminder that they had made him cut it short.

Lord Drummond
? he thought furiously.
Who the hell is he
?

Tugging at his starched silk cravat with a low growl, he stalked back into Devonshire’s sprawling palace, stomping the carnation into the turf as he passed. At the threshold of the French doors, he paused warily, feeling out of place again and frustrated to the point of exasperation with his clumsy ignorance of this glittering world and all its subtle dangers.

Scanning the ballroom for his golden-haired quarry, his brooding gaze wandered back to the place where her family had been standing. Determined to have a look at this beau ideal of a man whom she deemed worthy of her hand, he moved warily through the crowd until he noticed his host talking with a knot of guests nearby. Devonshire would tell him who this Drummond fellow was. Reaching the young duke’s side, he endured another round of introductions, bowing, shaking hands with the men, proclaiming himself enchanted to meet their diamond-dripping women. Everybody gave him that same speculative look and seemed compelled to mention their daughters or nieces, but privately, he had already chosen his bride whether she bloody well liked it or not.

As discreetly as possible, he pulled Devonshire aside after the guests’ meaningless chatter and asked him the all-important question. When the duke told him what he wanted to know, nodding across the ballroom to where the Knight clan still stood, Rackford could scarcely believe his eyes.

“You’re jesting,” he said, glancing again at his host.

Devonshire shook his head earnestly.

“That’s… the same Lord Drummond of the Home Office?” he pursued, just to be certain.

“Yes,” the duke told him, nodding.

The name had not occurred to him till he saw the man. It hadn’t seemed possible. Now it appeared even less so.
What the hell is she up to
? Rackford narrowed his eyes.

The radiant young Jacinda, whom he had already come to think of as his, was clinging rather desperately to the arm of a man who was seventy if he was a day. A man who was known as one of the most infamous Tory oppressors of Lord Liverpool’s government. She was openly flirting with the old tyrant. He saw it in her carefree laughter, her sweeping lashes, the pretty tilt of her head, the fluttering of her fan. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

She’s lost her mind
, he thought.
That old wigsby
—
over me
?

Why, it would be easy stealing her from that doddering ancient. Sturdy and square-jawed, Lord Drummond was not a frail-looking elder, but his skin was lined and weathered, his hair the same dull gray of his tailcoat. His round spectacles glinted in the candlelight, as though he were even now dreaming up some clandestine court intrigue or some new way to trample the poor.

As Rackford’s astonished gaze moved back to Jacinda, he remembered her that night in his room, speaking with such impassioned determination about her longing to be free; he remembered how he had teased her about marrying an old wigsby. Slowly, understanding dawned.

Why, you sly little baggage. You scheming, darling, errant little vixen
. He stared across the ballroom at her in amazement.
You have found the keys to your cage, after all
.

It seemed the only husband who would not inconvenience the lady was a dead one.

He was stunned. He would have laughed outright at her daring ploy, except that it suddenly meant the old man was a more serious rival than he had first assumed. The threat was not Drummond himself, but what he could give Jacinda.

Freedom.

The very thing that he, Rackford, had taken away the night he had returned her to her family.

His slight, sarcastic smile faded as he sought to orient himself to this confounding new set of circumstances. As though feeling his stare, she looked over and peered furtively at him from over the edge of her fan, meeting his gaze through the crowd. For a heartbeat, he couldn’t breathe as the fire of her dark, sultry eyes engulfed him.

Chiding her with a sardonic smile, he shook his head slightly at her.
It won’t work. You want me too much
.

The stubborn curl that fell down the middle of her forehead jumped as she tossed her head in haughty disdain and looked away, but a blush crept up her cheeks. Then her aged suitor led her off to mingle among the foreign dignitaries who had begun pouring in from the royal wedding.

With growing anger and deepening doubt, Rackford watched the mismatched pair for as long as he could hold his temper in check—approximately nine seconds—then abruptly stormed out of the ball, not taking his leave of anyone.

He’d had enough of this damned civility.

It was time to go hunting Jackals.

Yanking the knot of his cravat free, he stalked out to the new, absurdly expensive curricle his father had bought him—in a pitiful effort, he suspected, to assuage his conscience for bashing his head in on any number of occasions.

The groom hung on for dear life as Rackford drove the curricle brashly through the streets. It was so much lighter and faster than the lumbering wagons he was used to that he nearly overturned the thing tearing around the corner of Piccadilly and St. James’s Street. He heard the groom gulp aloud and realized he was on the verge of taking out his wrath on the poor stupid horses. He was not his father.

Reining in, he drove the rest of the way back to the grand, gloomy mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields at a more reasonable pace, still brooding. God, she was a stubborn creature! Yet despite his will to the contrary, he could not remain indifferent to her. It was madness to want a woman like her. Even Lucien had called the girl devious. Perplexed and seething, he eased the horses to a halt in front of the tall brick house built eighty years ago by George Dance the Younger.

Vaulting out of the curricle, he left it to the groom. As the servant drove the flashy vehicle away, returning to the stables through the nearby narrow passage, Rackford walked up the front stairs, habitually glancing over his shoulder. Behind him, the garden square, once the scene of public executions, was dark and quiet, the other great houses sitting around it in aged respectability like dowagers reminiscing on their debutante days. The great houses still remained, but the neighborhood was past its prime. Even the handsome theater on nearby Portugal Street had slipped out of favor and was now being used as a china warehouse. The fashionable world had moved west to Mayfair; indeed, from the window in his apartments upstairs, he could almost see the border of his former turf.

If there was a reason why he had chosen his territory so close to his father’s residence, he didn’t want to think about it. The old bastard spent most of his time in Cornwall, anyway, getting foxed, and could hardly be bothered to attend the opening of Parliament each year. Rackford knew because he had, with a jaundiced eye, followed his family’s activities from a distance.

He continued up the steps and was surprised when Gerald, the night butler, opened the door for him with a cordial bow. “Lord Rackford.”

“Evening, Gerald. Is my father at home?”

“No, sir, His Lordship is at his club. Shall I send anything up for you?”

He waved off the offer. “I’m fine.” He was still not used to having people do everything for him. Indeed, he could not seem to treat the servants like the efficient automatons they were hired to be. “Thanks, old boy,” he said, giving the man a hearty clap on the shoulder as he strode past him.