Seven Secrets of Seduction (26 page)

Her knees fell apart like downed reeds, the shadows swam above her, dark and light, like the man at her feet. Life and chance twining together. Here they weren't a lord and a shopgirl. For the lord crouched at the feet of a shopgirl was a ludicrous thought. She was a woman on the verge of freedom, and he was the key in her lock.

The orchestra hit a run of notes, an increase to a crescendo. She gripped his hair, feeling open and wanton and alive. On the crest of a crashing wave.

And then he was above her, and her head rested on a pillow, her back on the cushions. “I feel far too selfish at the moment to let you continue alone. I've been waiting too long to watch your face. To see the color bloom in your cheeks as you experience passion for the first time.”

She thought maybe it was a bit late for that.

He smiled slowly. “Oh, merely prologues, I assure you.” He leaned down and gripped the lobe of her ear between his lips. “I will chain you to your bed later. Feast on you all night.” His lips moved to her throat and down the bared flesh of her chest. “But I can't wait any longer to be inside you.”

His lips hit her breast, and she arched up into him.
Somehow, he had freed himself from his clothing, and her flesh met his. Warm and strong. Slipping together like two halves searching to be whole.

“Do you know what we are going to do now, Miranda?”

“Page…” Her breath hitched as he captured her nipple in his mouth. She couldn't even remember her own name even though he'd just uttered it.

“I'm going to bathe in your beauty. Claim your vibrancy. Make you mine.”

He slid inside her, and she clutched him. Every inch of it caused her to tremble. He continued forward until the entire length of him claimed her.

He pressed forward, rocking his hips just the slightest bit, her body strained automatically, sensing that there was at least one millimeter of ecstasy further she could travel. “Are you going to make me yours too?” he whispered, his hand cupping the base of her rear.

Her body answered automatically by arching up, closing the last gap, pushing past it, making lights explode. His lips clamped around her throat, uttering something against her skin, the blood flowing hotly through her veins.

She panted beneath him and watched as he pulled back, his eyes glittering. She madly wondered what he could or would say. His lips curved, his eyes hot and black. Sucking her into their ink, splaying her open on the page.

The feelings that he engendered coiled together in a knot of wild longing and desire. Her body clamped around his, instinctively clasping him to her. His eyes half closed for a moment, then his fingers wound into her hair, and he kissed her hard.

He pulled back and looked down into her eyes. “I
always knew you would.” Then he thrust up into her, hard and smooth, fierce and sure, causing the lights to explode again. Something escaped from her lips. Some sort of groan or fervent prayer. But she had no time to determine which as he rocked into her again. As she reached for the gold glittering in the shadows. As she met his eyes and movements, mesmerized and more than a little love-struck.

As the world exploded around her in shards of crystal and violin strings. Lights and sound and heat. And still he moved within her, stirring the explosions, making her feel like she could touch the skies. The heavens. Him.

She stared up at him, shuddering breaths still wracking her as he slowed, as the fullness of it all grew. Feelings she couldn't identify clogging her throat.

“Ch—” He cleared his roughly. “I won't let you regret it, Miranda.”

Her breath caught. Had he been about to call her Charlotte? Were the rumors true? But the beginning of the syllable had been all wrong. Unless maybe he was more formal with ton ladies and had been about to say Chatsworth, dropping the Miss.

Her heart stopped as another thought occurred. A thought that connected with a thousand little dropped hints that had been scattered like bread crumbs. Connected and formed into a solid, tangible notion.

Maybe…maybe he had been about to say
Chase
.

Someone attempting to be me? Do not be fooled. I would not deign to reveal myself to the masses.

Eleutherios to Miranda Chase

 

M
iranda drummed her fingers on the counter, face freshly scrubbed of the lingering paint from her costume and the viscount's lovely warm lips, and tried to figure out how to go about her inquisition.

She'd needed to rid herself of all traces of him in order to think straight. Even so, he'd touched her cheek as she'd slipped from her room in his house, after the ball, leaving an invisible trail of scent marking her as she'd left his house and ridden back to hers, clad once more in her everyday wear.

Her uncle had been awake, figures in front of him upon her return. He'd seemed unsurprised to see her arriving so late, but then again he was trying to reconcile all of the books in order to get everything ready for the creditors coming in the following week. And it would be a strange thought to anyone in their circle—other than Georgette now—that quiet Miranda Chase might be having a wild time. Her uncle probably thought she
had fallen asleep in the retiring room, hiding from the guests at the Mortons'.

“You told Lord Downing that I would catalog his library.”

Her uncle nodded absently, hunched over his ledger. “Yes.”

“When?”

He waved a distracted hand. “When he asked.”

“When exactly did he ask?” she pressed.

“He first mentioned it a month ago? Said it was a possibility. Why does it matter?” He looked up over the top rim of his glasses. “He came back a week later and said the project could go for as long as it took. He would continue to pay. And quite well, I can tell you. Might just be keeping us afloat.”

“A month ago?” Her mind churned. He hadn't entered the shop a month ago. Were her mad thoughts true?

“Think it was a Wednesday?” Her uncle tapped his lip with his messy quill, ink spotting the surface. “Yes, you had just stepped out for your weekly book-club meeting. Must have just missed you.”

A strange buzzing began in her mind.

“Left precipitously right before you returned. Yes, just missed you.”

Or had known exactly when she'd be gone. But no, that was silly. All of these thoughts were silly. She was simply asking the questions in order to eliminate the strange suspicion from her mind.

“Was going to introduce you too.” He waved his quill, head down. “He said he wanted the best worker I had. Didn't care that you were female.”

Didn't care that she was female. That sounded awfully familiar. But, no, surely not. These were all mad thoughts.

“Oh? Did he say so before or after you told him I was available to help?”

Her uncle looked up and tapped his quill against his lip again. “Before? What difference does it make? Quite good of him, I thought. Never had cause to think less of your work for being a female, myself. Better than anyone else I've seen.”

Amidst the churning confusion, a warm rush of fondness for her uncle flowed through her. “Thank you, uncle. But I do not find that sentiment often, especially in the wealthy, so I must admit to surprise.”

“Seems a decent sort. Likes books. Nothing wrong with that.”

“No.” She spread her hands. “But did he say anything specific?”

“Said he wanted someone who knew Shakespeare and sonnets. Knew then that the best choice was you. And it didn't take any convincing. He accepted immediately. Decent sort, he is.”

The buzzing became an ocean wave breaking upon a cliff face.

She excused herself and ran to her room, upending her lap desk onto the bed. She shuffled through her papers, pushing them in all directions until she found the clipped articles from the
Daily Mill
that she had saved. She thumbed through them until she got to the first one—the one that had caused her to respond.

Why hadn't she thought of it before? Their first meeting…his reference to Shakespeare and thus the
great sonnets of old
. His talk of the tawdry book. It was as if he had been hoping she'd know it was he.

She shuffled through more of the papers. From the initial, sarcastic ones, to the more intense.

She had developed such a preconception about Mr. Pitts that she hadn't entertained the thought that he might walk through her door in disguise. And be a
viscount,
no less.

No, that wasn't correct. Mr. Pitts was the disguise.

She shifted, uncomfortable with that thought. Mr. Pitts was real. But so too was Lord Downing.

She had never thought the two men could be one and the same, until it had struck her dead in the chest in the dark, sweat-drenched room at the Hannings. For all her talk of looking beneath, she hadn't bothered to do aught but skim the surface.

Could she blame herself though? For not thinking that a viscount would write scathing pieces to the paper, then write to
her
in answer to her own piece, then subsequently strike up a lively personal correspondence. For not thinking that a man who looked like that would be on the other side of the pen.

Would chase and strike up a
romance
with someone like her.

She found it suddenly hard to catch her breath.

She hadn't been wrong when she'd said to Georgette that it felt as if he'd engineered her work in his library. But for
how long
had he done so?

The man on the page, the one she had confessed
everything
to, was the same man…the same man she was confessing
about
.

Oh.

Oh
.

Oh
, he was going to pay.

And at the same time…he was her confidant. The secret friend with whom she could share everything.
The same man she had been consorting with for the past two weeks
.

The strange feminine power that had been blooming within her suddenly exploded. He had tracked her down. He had started this seduction, this romance with her. Already knowing who she was.

She flexed her fingers. The insecurities that had been
plaguing her seeped out, like ink finally unblocked from the nib of a pen. As Georgette was wont to say…why
not
her? Why not her if he was the same man. The ink-stained mate of her soul.

But why approach her this way? What had he to gain?

Why the elaborate charade? The Shakespearean farce?

The reason eluded her, but other things slotted into place. Gaps in the viscount's demeanor that she could suddenly understand and read. Sloping invisible script between the written and spoken lines that suddenly formed a more complete picture with the two men combined.

But why had he approached her in that way?

To be an anonymous persona without the handsome face and expectations of seduction clouding the conversation? Perhaps to share himself without repercussion? It was something that had always appealed to her about her own letters. The freedom of them.

Her breath caught. Written confessions he had actively responded to. Ones she had sent from her very soul. To him. About him.
About him, though she hadn't known it.
Her throat closed, dry and heavy.

The utter bastard.

The lovely beast.

She narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath.

The question now became—what was she going to do with her information?

She shuffled through her papers, determined to piece together a draconian plan that would have him wrapped in chains until she was ready to release him. Other pieces of correspondence slipped from the box. Letters from Eleutherios. Lovely, lyrical lines.

She had always thought it seemed as if Mr. Pitts knew him personally. But why would the viscount hate Eleutherios so?

She paused, her hand upon an original handwritten sonnet splayed upon crisp parchment. Because he practiced his own brand of seduction? Did he see the author as a threat? What made it personal?

The threads of overheard conversation filtered through.

Why not go back to your correspondence and literary pursuits? Sell your melancholy memoirs?

He wouldn't be caught holding a book of sonnets he hadn't written himself
. The words permeated the heavy haze.

His brother Colin had lighter hair. Brown with a bit of a wave. If he styled it correctly and affected a less dour attitude…he could have been the man in the hall.

But sober Colin who supported order and rules? He was a man she would hardly credit with writing a tome on
seduction.
Then again, it appeared that same sober man was perhaps fighting a fierce flirtation with her maid at the house.

Could Eleutherios be the viscount's brother? It would give the viscount a personal push against her interaction with him.

She thought hard on the man from last night. Not Colin. Similar, but not the same. But…but there was a younger brother. The youngest. A hellion. He had been in the papers before, going on his Grand Tour. His name started with a C too. Georgette would know it.

Pretending to be his middle brother?

She thought about the interaction between the viscount and the fake author with that information
in mind. She tapped the sonnet militantly. Yes. She'd bet her monthly stipend that the viscount's youngest brother was the man at the Hannings'.

The viscount had been irritated. Extremely irritated, yes. But that seemed true for his family in general. For he hadn't seemed to hate Colin at Lady Banning's. He had been defensive and fed up.

He had been more irritated that Miranda might be taken with the idea she had met the author, and her response again to the author's writings. Jealous even.

She looked down at her correspondence—the pages from Mr. Pitts interspersed with those from Eleutherios—and traced the letters absently. Everyone seemed to like sonnets these days, she thought just as absently.

Then stopped. Her fingernail creasing a small dent in the sheet.

What was to stop the viscount from also…but no, that would be silly.

She looked at the sheets splayed around her. At the vitriol against Eleutherios. Surely someone wouldn't write that against oneself? She gripped the page, creasing the words.

Muttonheaded, rattle-pate, twit…

And yet, when she went over the papers with a critical eye, and clenched fingers, there were similarities in sentiment, in voice. Though one voice was full of darkness, and the other light. Only that small dark current under Eleutherios's words was a link.

She put a hand to her forehead, to the cold sweat gathering there.

The marquess…the brother…even the mother stepping in to help her husband play whatever trick
had been concocted that night. The marquess had been looking for the fake Eleutherios before he had entered. Had said of his own admission that he had thought to
play him himself.

She wiped her palm on a cloth, searching for something that would put the mad thoughts to rest. The handwriting…it was completely different. Written by two different hands.

She gave a relieved, if slightly hysterical, laugh. Perhaps she would be accusing Galina of being Eleutherios next.

Her laugh cut off, and she promptly felt the need to put the cloth directly to her head. The viscount had a hundred servants. And his valet would know all of his secrets. And he traveled with him everywhere. Could put everything to the page that Eleutherios wrote.

Or everything that Mr. Pitts wrote.

The viscount had declared Eleutherios to be a fake right off. Perhaps simply because he knew that the man was his brother. But it could also be a simple statement of normal fact.

Was he truly both men? Sent to bedevil her?

She examined the notes. Never had she been so affected by a man, and in the space of half a year she had been affected by three in succession. But perhaps not three men, at all. Instead, three thirds of a man. Incomplete.

She swallowed. All of the feelings that she had for each of the three swirling around and striking against one another. Looking for places to absorb. To connect.

Why?

Who was Viscount Downing? Which one of these incarnations was the real man himself, if any?

Sent to bedevil
her.
A shiver of warmth followed a sudden heaviness in her throat. Hope and unease mixed in a strange cordial. Why had she been the one he had singled out?

And what was she going to do with the knowledge…