Lord of Fire (19 page)

She stared at him in perplexity.

He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “All right, my dear Miss Montague, I will let you in on the family secret, though I really thought everyone in the ton already knew. Only my eldest brother, Robert, the present duke of Hawkscliffe, and my little sister, Lady Jacinda, are of the true blood. The rest of us are, as they say, cuckoos in the nest. Georgiana’s husband only claimed us as his own to avoid the humiliation of having been cuckolded yet again by his wife.”

She stared at him intensely for a long moment, absorbing this with a scandalized look, then turned away. “I believe,” she said gravely, “that it is time for tea.”

His smile faded. He thrust his gloved hands into the deep, voluminous pockets of his greatcoat and looked down at the toes of his polished black boots. “You think less of me because of my parentage.”

“No—”

“Yes, you do. I can see it in your face.”

“No, Lucien, it isn’t that. I am . . . embarrassed.”

He studied her warily.

“I don’t know what to make of you,” she said simply, shaking her head. “Surely this causes you pain and has caused you pain all your life, and yet you laugh. I don’t understand. And I am not accustomed to speaking so intimately, especially with a man I barely know.”

“
Alice.” He turned to her and stared into her eyes, willing himself to keep his hands in his pockets, though he longed to take her into his arms. Her questioning gaze was so serious, so vulnerable. “Pray, do not be embarrassed. That was not my intention. I like talking to you.”

She smiled uncertainly, the wind playing with wispy tendrils of her hair.

He returned her smile, drew his hand slowly out of his pocket, and gently brushed her hair out of her face. Her smile widened, and a blush filled her cheeks.

“Who can account for it?” he murmured. “There are some people that we know all our lives and yet never really feel we know them at all. But there are other people—” Unable to resist the temptation, he ran a feather-light caress down the curve of her cheek with one leather-sheathed knuckle. The cobalt depths of her eyes flickered with response, but she said nothing, heeding his every word. “—people we meet in a day, and instantly, it feels as though we’ve known them all our lives.”

Holding his stare, she turned her cheek away from his touch. “How many women have you said this to?”

He flinched and drew his eyebrows together in sudden anger, though he knew he deserved it. “I am not toying with you,” he said, his tone low and hard. “Perhaps there was a time when I would have, but I am not a boy anymore. I have seen too much death and too much pain and now all I want is—” His words broke off.

“What, Lucien? What do you want?” she whispered.

His fractured gaze dropped to her lips. His touch slipped down from her cheek to her jaw, tilting her head back. He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them. He caught a glimpse of the desire and confusion swirling in the blue depths of her eyes before he closed his and lowered his head, caressing her mouth with his own. He pulled her carefully into his arms, trembling at that magic moment when he felt her graceful body melt receptively against him. She parted her lips and let him slip his tongue into the warm, honeyed sweetness of her mouth. Blissful longing racked him. He held her face between his leather-gloved hands and drank of her kiss, savoring her with a tenderness that came from his knowledge of her innocence. She clung to him, there on the precipice.

“Please,” she moaned, trying to turn her face away. Her cheeks were rose-red, her eyes feverish blue beneath her sandy lashes.

“Look at me.” He cupped her jaw and made her meet his hungry stare. “I’m not going to hurt you.” She peered uncertainly into his eyes. “I would never hurt you,” he whispered. “I’d rather die.”

“Why must you kiss me?”

“Because I cannot bear waiting for you to kiss
me
.”

If she had been poised to continue bewailing her fate, his blunt answer visibly caught her off guard. “You actually expect
me
to kiss you?” she retorted in breathless indignation.

“Expect it? No. Desire it? Yes.” He gave her a lazy half smile. “With every fiber of my being.”

She stared at him with a quizzical expression somewhere between thrill and alarm. “But . . . I don’t know how.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” he whispered.

She did not pull away. Blushing helplessly, she flicked her gaze downward to his mouth, then back up to his eyes. He drew nearer, offering himself. He tilted his head, so close he could feel her soft breath on his lips, warm and soft against the wind’s sharp cold.

A second later, she mirrored his movement, tilting her head in the opposite direction. She lowered her lashes as her lips danced a mere sliver of an inch away. “I don’t know how,” she protested again barely audibly, then rested her hands on his shoulders and closed her eyes, kissing him as softly as an angel.

Lucien held perfectly still, filled with such pleasure that he wanted to die rather than ever to let it end. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him again, more firmly this time. Her slender body trembled against him as he wrapped his arms around her waist. She was tentative, careful, but her breasts heaved against his chest and her eyes had turned a sensuous shade of midnight blue when her gaze met his. Her lashes drifted closed, and he lost awareness of everything in the world but her as she pulled him down to her and skimmed the tip of her tongue past his lips into his mouth.

Shocked and entranced, he surrendered to her will, wanting nothing more than to fulfill her every whim. She groaned as she tasted him more deeply, raking her fingers through his hair. She ran her hands along his jaw, his throat, tracing the edge of his cravat, demolishing his capacity for reason—then she suddenly stopped and pulled back.

When he tried to reach for her again, she braced her hand against his chest, firmly holding him at arm’s length. “No.” Her eyes blazed with cobalt fire, warning him back. Her lips were wet and bee-stung, her cheeks rosy. “That’s enough,” she panted, her bosom rising and falling rapidly.

His famous cunning fled. His Machiavellian mind was blank with lust. Drunk with the taste of her, his silver tongue was left devoid of one coherent line with which to coax her back to him. She lowered her hand from his chest and marched unsteadily away.

“
Alice,” he panted.

She kept going, returning to the path in the shady woods. He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, trying to weave together the tatters of his sanity. He dragged his hand through his hair and surrendered to a quiet, utterly intoxicated laugh. Good God, he had
not
seen that coming. He strode after her into the woods, where gray dusk had already arrived. She had a lead of several yards on him, and she was all but running back to the house.

“
Alice!”

No response. She didn’t even pause.

“Wait!”

She brushed off his call with an annoyed shrug. He had to jog to catch up, but when he reached her side, she ignored his questioning gaze, her dark blue skirts luffing like sails in the breeze as she marched on relentlessly.

“
Alice?” he asked gingerly.

“Stay away from me.”

He noticed the scarlet blush in her cheeks and realized she was mortified by her lusty response to him. A rakish grin spread over his face. “My darling, there is no reason to be embarrassed—”

“You are making me break my promise to my brother that I would take care of Harry. Do you realize that? Do you even care?”

He grabbed her arm and stopped her. She whirled to him.

“Stop it,” he ordered quietly, but he saw fear darting through her eyes, not of him, but of her own feelings. She was not prepared to accept her passion—at least not her passion for him.

“This is not who I am! I am not your plaything—”

“Don’t say that again. I know you’re not.
Alice, I told you I’m being sincere. I’ve never been more earnest in my life. Or is that what frightens you?”

“
You
frighten me! You, Lucien—Draco—whoever you are! All you care about is yourself—your pleasure! Do you even realize how selfish you are? Are you able to see it?” She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. “If not, let me remind you that you are holding me here against my will. You forced me into this. I don’t want to be here, and I am
not
getting involved with a . . . a jaded scoundrel whose only wish is to debauch me!” She tore the white musk rose he had given her out of her buttonhole, threw it on the ground, and started to stride away.

“I am alone,
Alice.”

His sharp words took even him by surprise and stopped her as she reached the meadow. She paused and looked warily over her shoulder, her long shadow stretching over the faded grasses. His body was rigid, and his glare was fierce as he stood there staring at her. He felt naked before her—impatient, frustrated—but he could not stop himself. Somehow he had to make her understand.

“Don’t you see?” He checked the dark note of pleading in his voice, but he could not expunge the tone of quiet despair. “I need . . . I don’t know what I need. All I know is that I am alone. Entirely . . . alone.”

There.
The words were out.

He held her stare, his entire soul at her mercy. He saw the tremor that shook her, saw her battle with herself, but she was an ivory tower of virtue; she did not break.

She passed a scathing glance over him. “I’m not surprised.”

He flinched, dropped his gaze.

She turned on her heel and walked away.

CHAPTER
SIX

Hours later, Lucien swept out of the gates of

He rode low in the saddle, a taut give in the reins, the wind rippling through his hair and the stallion’s mane. Around him, the blowing woodlands were alive with the creaking of branches and the rattle of dead leaves. The horse didn’t like it, snorting in warning at the wind, tossing its head.

The peasants claimed that phantoms walked on nights like this, Lucien thought, his mood as sulky and dark as the sky, where no moon shone. Woolly clouds trampled the crisp elegance of the constellations as the wind herded them on like vast gray sheep. The chill of the night and the speed of his stallion’s gallop helped to take the edge off the hurt and anger he was still nursing, thwarted passion burning in his veins.
Alice’s words had cut him, but even so, he had waited like a fool for her to come out of her room, busying himself for hours with minutiae, unable to concentrate until the maid told him that Miss had asked for supper in her room.

He had realized that she was battening down in there for a siege. He had spent enough time in the army to hate sieges with every fiber of his being. They always ended disastrously. He didn’t suppose he could starve her out, but he refused to try to wheedle her out again with words. He still had the key, of course, and could win the battle in a trice, but that was hardly an honorable victory. If he simply barged in on her, she would only detest him more. He was beginning to see that he
could not
win by any of his usual methods. What the devil had he gotten himself into? He slowed his horse, sensing that the stallion’s initial explosive burst of verve upon being let out of its kingly stall had been spent.

Predictably, the stallion settled into a more amenable temper. Lucien gave the horse’s velvety neck a grateful pat; he understood the animal’s eccentricities, and the horse understood his. Leaving the woods for the open moors, they dropped back into a leisurely canter.