Scandals of an Innocent (21 page)

She rolled over and buried her head under the pillow. She had forced Miles to honesty, and now she
knew she was being most dreadfully dishonest herself. She threw the pillow aside and gave a long sigh.

She was starting to love Miles all over again, against her will, perhaps against all sense but with a helpless inevitability that she was not sure she even wanted to fight. The tenderness she had sometimes glimpsed in him and his determination to hold her safe had completely undermined her resistance even though she knew he was acting as much out of self-interest as concern for her. Now, more strongly than ever, she sensed the complex and damaged reality under Miles’s cynical outward shell, and she wanted to reach him. She was a fool. There was no doubt about it. She, who prided herself on her practicality, was behaving like a silly little scatterbrain, just like Lydia. Her mind told her she was making a mistake but her heart was not listening.

A sound out on the landing caught her attention. Thinking of Lydia made her wonder whether her friend could be so imprudent as to creep out before dawn to risk another hour in her lover’s arms. Alice slid softly from the bed and padded over to the door. She remembered Miles’s strictures about not opening it until Marigold called her in the morning, but then she heard another soft sound and she turned the key and opened the door a crack.

There was a single lamp burning down the hall and by its light Alice could see that Miles was sleeping on a pallet outside her door. Her heart gave a huge leap of shock and something else. She stared down at him, absolutely rooted to the spot. In sleep he looked relaxed and the hard lines and planes of his face were softened. His dark eyelashes rested against the curve of his cheek. A day’s stubble already darkened his jaw and
Alice suddenly felt a huge, near-ungovernable urge to fall to her knees beside him and run her fingers along his cheek to feel that skin rough beneath her hands.

She must have made some noise, or perhaps a tiny movement, because the next moment she found herself flat on her back on the pallet with Miles’s body on top of hers, pinning her down. He was breathing fast, and there was a hard, dangerous light in his eyes. Alice was so shocked that for a second she could not move and barely remembered to breathe. Then she tried to struggle but it was as humiliating as when he had caught her outside the gown shop; he was too strong and she could barely do more than wriggle beneath him, a maneuver that did not seem to do anything to ease the situation, for something even more dangerous flared in his eyes. Her hands came up against his chest and it was then that she realized he was naked, or at least partially so. The skin beneath her palms was warm, hard and smooth. Alice swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling as parched as a dry riverbed.

“You are lying outside my bedroom door and you aren’t wearing any clothes!” she blurted out, realizing a second too late that she had spoken her thoughts aloud. She saw Miles’s smile, and then he rolled off her and sat up.

“I still have my breeches on,” he said mockingly. His tone changed. “Don’t ever do that again, Miss Lister. I could have hurt you.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Alice protested. “I thought I heard a sound—”

“And so you came to investigate even though I had expressly told you not to do so?”

Alice sighed. “It was wrong of me,” she conceded.

“It was.” Miles still sounded furious.

Alice sighed again and struggled to her knees, abruptly aware that her nightgown was bunched up and revealed the backs of her thighs. She grabbed the gown and dragged it down, and in the same moment she saw Miles’s gaze slide over her naked skin, and then his eyes widened and darkened with an equal mixture of shock and something Alice immediately identified as lust.

“
What,
” he said, “is that?” His voice was rough and just the tone of it sent flickers of erotic sensation through her body.

“Wh…what?” Alice asked, dragging the lawn and lace as far down as she could and gripping it tightly about her ankles.

Oh Lord, he had seen. And she could never, ever explain…

In a panic now, she tried to scramble to her feet and back away from him, but Miles put out one lazy hand, grabbed her about the ankle and she tumbled back down onto the pallet with a little shriek.

“Shh.” Miles put a hand over her lips. “You’ll wake everyone.”

Before Alice could protest he scooped her up in his arms, strode through the door of her bedroom and deposited her on the bed. She sprawled there, out of breath and indignant, her nightgown riding up again, her face bright pink.

“Lord Vickery,
what
are you doing?” Her words came out as a strangled croak. Her body was one huge, burning blush of combined mortification and utter desire.

She tried to crawl away from him up the bed, but once again Miles was too quick for her, his hand clamping about her bare ankle again and holding her still.

“You will tell me,” he said softly, “what it was that I saw just now—or I will take a look for myself. Well?”

Alice clutched the nightgown tighter about her legs. “I-it…”
It is just more proof, if that were needed, that I am not a lady….

Miles’s bright hazel gaze pinned her against the pillows. “I thought that I knew all your secrets now, Alice, but it seems not.” His glance traveled over her slowly, from flushed face and tumbled hair to bare feet. “You do realize that when we are wed,” he said, “if not before, I will see you—all of you—without your nightgown?”

Alice made another choked little noise. She did not think she could feel any hotter without burning up. “Then you will just have to wait, won’t you?” she whispered.

“Unfortunately, I am of an impatient disposition,” Miles said. “Forgive me, but I am about to behave most improperly.”

He caught both her ankles and tossed her over onto her stomach. Alice lay sprawling, tangled in her hair and the blankets, the breath knocked from her, the shock pounding through her. It was so sudden that for a moment she lay still, completely stunned, and then she felt one of Miles’s hands easing the nightgown up the backs of her bare thighs. She struggled to raise her head and tried to whip herself over, but Miles’s free hand was in the small of her back, holding her still, pressed down on the bed.

“No,” he said. “Don’t move.”

“Miles,” Alice wailed.

“Darling Alice,” Miles said, the intimacy of his tone making her completely weak, “I
have
to see.”

Alice made a sound that was mingled appeal and
surrender. She turned her head away, allowing her hair to fall forward to cloak her face. She felt hot and hopelessly aroused and at the same time breathless with nerves. Since her formal betrothal to Miles she had managed to ignore the little pinpricks of anxiety that had reminded her that she was a former servant girl and as such no suitable wife for a marquis. She had told herself she was good enough for anyone and she had almost believed it. But here was proof that she was utterly
unsuitable,
for what other marchioness in the entire country would have a
tattoo?
She could imagine the Duchess of Cole’s horrified tones if ever she heard this scandalous piece of news: “My dear Miss Lister, only circus freaks and sailors have tattoos….”

She felt Miles pull up the linen of her night rail so that it skimmed the tops of her thighs and stopped just below of the curve of her buttocks. Alice’s heart was almost bursting in her chest. There was a silence. She turned her head against the bedcovers and stole a look at Miles from beneath her lashes. His hand had stilled on the back of her leg and he was staring fixedly at the little flower that was pricked out in ink on the soft skin of her upper thigh.

She heard his breath catch hard and then his fingers, lighter than the graze of a butterfly’s wing, brushed the curve of her leg and slid across her inner thigh. Alice’s body clenched.

“A tattoo,” he said, and his voice barely sounded like his own. “Well, well, Miss Lister, what a surprise you are turning out to be!”

Alice squirmed. “I only had it done as a prank,” she said. “The fair was on the stray in Harrogate one summer and a number of us went from my employer’s
one night.” She knew she was gabbling and could not seem to stop. “I thought it would be fun but I was young and foolish and didn’t realize that it would not wash off. I scrubbed and scrubbed at it until my skin was sore and then I covered it up and pretended it was not really there!”

Miles laughed but the hot, heavy look in his eyes did not ease, nor did the pressure of his hand in her back, holding her still. She lay prone and unmoving, very aware of her exposure to his hungry gaze.

“Did it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes,” Alice said. “The tattooist was an old woman who laughed at me when I screamed.” She hesitated. “You like it, then. The old witch who did it said that my lover would like it, and I did not understand her at the time.”

“And now you do,” Miles said roughly. The look of concentrated desire in his eyes made her feel faint.

“I was afraid you might think it quite inappropriate for a lady,” Alice said.

“Oh, it is,” Miles said. He gave a ragged laugh. “That is why I like it so much.” He sighed, shaking his head. “What an odd mixture of innocence and impropriety you are, sweetheart. You confound me. Fascinate me.”

He touched the tattoo again, with a fingertip, in a caress that made Alice give a little sound that was halfway between a sigh and a groan.

“I am no proper lady,” she whispered. “I know that. No lady would visit a tattooist’s tent at a fairground.”

“I do not want a proper lady in my bed,” Miles said. He bent his head, and Alice felt his tongue flicker across the tiny flower, and her body caught alight and burned. She was aware of every sensitive inch of her
skin against the yielding bed, of the way that the friction of the covers rubbed her nipples and pressed against her belly. She was even more acutely aware of her bare legs and the slide of her nightgown over the curve of her buttocks. The cold air ravished her naked skin and the hot flick of Miles’s tongue made her squirm, and then he sucked on the tattoo, hard enough for her to feel a bite of pain that mixed exquisitely with the pleasure, and his hand slipped between her thighs and they fell apart irresistibly to allow him to touch her intimately.

His fingers were at the very core of her. Alice’s mind reeled with shock and disbelief at the sensation.

“Miles, what—”

“Trust me. Do you like that?”

Did she like it?
She thought she was melting into bliss, except that her belly was coiling tighter and tighter with the sweetest, most desperate ache of need.

His fingers shifted their pressure. She was moist and hopelessly aroused and it took only one sly stroke, and then another, and her body exploded in a cascade of pleasure and her mind filled with light and she would have screamed aloud except that Miles tumbled her over onto her back and covered her mouth with his, smothering her cries. He held her with her wrists bracketed above her head and kissed her. She was dizzy and panting and breathless and he sucked on her lower lip and darted his tongue into her mouth and demanded a response from her even as her mind and body still trembled with the enormity of what had happened to her. And this time she did not refuse him. She opened her lips to him so that he could do devastating things to her mouth and he plundered it without
reservation, kissing her deeply and with a fierce need. Though her body still clenched with the pleasure he had given her, Alice wanted more. She knew that her nightgown was up around her waist and her legs spread and Miles was lying between them, hugely aroused, and that in a second he would take her, and she wanted to feel him inside her more than she had ever wanted anything in the entire world.

And then, unbelievably, he stopped and eased back from her. His gaze rested on the curve of her bare stomach and dropped, dark and primitive, to the juncture of her thighs. Then she felt his hand clench in the material of her nightdress and he smoothed it carefully down over her nakedness in a gesture that was so intimate and tender that she felt shaken. His expression was harsh and set, and a muscle worked in his cheek.

“Miles?” she whispered.

His eyes met hers, torment in their depths.

“If I take you now I will break every rule,” he said. “I am sworn to protect you and…” He shook his head, biting off whatever it was he was about to say.

“I thought that breaking the rules was what you did,” Alice said. Her voice came out as only a thread of sound. He looked angry and she felt cold and confused to see it. A moment ago he had held her with tenderness and desire. Now he was looking at her as though he did not even like her very much.

“I thought so, too,” he ground out. “Unfortunately, I appear to be plagued by an honor I did not know I possessed.”

Miles wrenched himself away from her. The door slammed after him and Alice was left stunned and breathless on the bed. Her body felt soft and boneless
with the bliss it had already sampled and yet cheated and unsatisfied, longing for more.

What had Miles meant when he had said that he was plagued by an honor he did not know he possessed? She could only assume that he had intended to seduce her there and then—that he had planned it ruthlessly in order to circumvent the conditions of their betrothal and force her to marry him at once. She had suspected from the start that he might plan to do such a thing. But at the last moment it appeared he had not been able to go through with it. Yet he must have known that she had no will, no desire to resist. His discovery of the tattoo had aroused them both beyond bearing, and she had longed for him with a hunger that had matched his own.