Temptations of a Wallflower (13 page)

She had only waltzed twice in her life. Both times had been lackluster and unremarkable—though she suspected that had more to do with her dull partners than the dance itself. The two men had moved without grace, escorting her across the floor with leaden steps.

Yet here, the carnal nature of the dance reached its apotheosis. Women wrapped their arms around their partners' shoulders, pressing their breasts tightly against male chests. Men clasped women's waists snugly, and sometimes their hands drifted even lower, cupping the women's buttocks close so they were groin
to groin. One couple didn't even bother attempting to dance. They merely swayed together in place, stroking each other's bodies, staring into each other's eyes. Sarah was surprised the air around them didn't vibrate with heat.

“A dance, my lady?”

Sarah nearly jumped when a man suddenly appeared beside her with the request. He stood half a head taller than her, nicely filling out his bronze coat, and he wore a matching bronze silk mask. His muscular thighs were encased in black breeches. His lips were voluptuous as he smiled invitingly at her, one large hand extended to escort her onto the ballroom floor.

He would be perfect for an assignation. Young, strapping. Already primed for seduction. All she had to do was take his hand and see where the night would lead.

“No, thank you,” she said instead.

“If you should change your mind . . .” He bowed and retreated back into the dimness of the room.

She was alone again.

A sigh rose up from her chest. Even here, in this masked assembly, where no one knew her and she could do and be anything at all . . . even now, she'd consigned herself to the role of wallflower. As if she knew no other way of being. But she did! She knew the realm of her books. There, nothing was impossible, and all whims and desires were indulged. If that existed in her mind, in her imagination, then surely the potential was there in her. She'd freed herself before, when she'd decided to become a working writer. Now she could embody all elements of the Lady.

If only for tonight, she vowed, she would be the kind of audacious, intrepid woman from her novels. She would be a woman who made good earnings from her own ability. She would finally be someone who saw and desired and took, according to her own demands.

The dance ended. Many couples hurriedly left the ballroom floor, seeking shadowy corners, where they immediately fell into each other's arms.

Sarah looked around for the man in bronze, hoping to catch sight of him. She would let him know that yes, she would like a dance. It didn't have to lead to anything further, but she needed to know her capability, her strength.

With the dance floor emptied, the other side of the chamber was revealed. Guests she hadn't seen before emerged from the darkness. Women in gowns that fastened up the front. Men in snug breeches. Everyone masked, anonymous and free in their disguises. A woman laughed riotously. A man had his arms wrapped around two women as they tried to dance to their own music. They seemed antic in their need for freedom, moving with the energy of billiard balls ricocheting across the baize.

Not everyone.

She became aware of him through his stillness. His self-contained vitality. Where others around him spun and staggered, he was leashed power.

He wore dark blue, with a matching blue and gold mask. His dark hair had been ruthlessly slicked back from the hard contours of his face. A faint haze of stubble lined his lean cheeks. He stood tall, sinewy and muscled, surveying his surroundings with a slightly
mystified smile, as if surprised and amused. Was he a regular? Was this his first time? Difficult to say.

Whoever he was, he attracted attention. Women hovered around him like bright moths. He wasn't doing much besides standing with a glass of wine. Watching everything with that removed smile. Yet the females floated close by, striving to catch his eye with fluttered fans, even dropped handkerchiefs.

He didn't pay them much attention. Just continued to observe.

A thousand questions pirouetted through Sarah's mind. Who was he? From whence did he come? Her writer's mind flew in a dozen different directions. Was he a bandit? A prince? A sea captain covered in intricate tattoos beneath his clothing? Anything seemed possible. And she wanted to know everything. He gleamed like a black diamond in the depths of night.

She froze when their gazes met across the room. He stood too far away, and the light was too dim for her to make out the color of his eyes, but she felt the sudden heat and intensity of them—all through her body. Everything within her seized and stilled, drawn to one finite point. The room and all its occupants dissolved like sugar in tea. All that existed was her and the man in blue. He started, as if struck by the same bolt of electricity.

What should she do? Approach him? Remain where she was to see if he approached? Indecision pinned her in place.

But he knew what to do. Without breaking his gaze from hers, he set his wine on a passing servant's tray. Then, with sure, deliberate steps, he crossed the room. Heading straight for her.

“My ring,” I demanded. “I want it.”

He lifted one brow. “Is that all you came for?”

“You're a clever man,” I said, trailing my fingers up his chest. “What do you think?”

“I think,” he said, grinning, “that I am growing exceedingly fond of you.”

“Then show me,” I insisted.

And he did, his mouth finding mine, his hand slipping beneath my bodice to caress my . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

T
he man in blue said nothing as he approached Sarah. His gaze remained on her as he cut across the room, sure and purposeful. Nothing stood in his way. Music for the next waltz started up, and couples began to collect on the dance floor.

Her heart lodged in her throat as he came to stand in front of her. Warmth and the scent of leather radiated from his body, invisible and alluring.

Without speaking, he held out his hand. He broke their shared gaze long enough to glance toward the dance floor. An invitation.

Everything seemed to fall into place. She had come to free herself, and this was her moment. This stranger was the man. And she was the woman. To take what she wanted, when she wanted.

She slid her hand into his. Neither wore gloves. It was skin to skin. Her breasts went tight and heavy, and heat pooled between her legs—all from a simple touch.

Wordlessly, he led her onto the dance floor.

He wasted no time on preliminaries. No polite bow at the onset of a dance. No discreet distance between them. He pulled her close against his taut body. Even through the fabric of her cloak and gown, she felt the hard strength of him, sinew and intention. As he held her, she couldn't break from his gaze. She didn't want to. Her breath came hot and quick, and her head spun—all before they had taken a single step.

Who was she? What was happening? Nothing but now mattered.

The dance began in earnest. And he moved. They were as close to each other as two clothed people could be. She felt every twitch, every glide of his body against hers. The music swirled and floated, and they moved in time with it, hips together, this way and that. He was at all times in control, his hand large and hot in the small of her back. He watched her with proprietary need, his gaze on her lips.

It was the closest she'd ever come to making love. She didn't know this man in blue, but they claimed each other.

Yet . . . oddly . . . she felt as if she
did
know him. She could not quite explain or understand it, but something in her recognized something in this masked stranger.
She turned protectively toward it, as though seeking the warmth of the sun in the middle of a cool, rainy day.

Yet he was profoundly
other.
Charismatic, without saying a word.

They turned together, moving as one, moving as though they were meant for this. For each other.

Time slowed. And yet, all too soon, the music came to a halt. Whether the other couples left the dance floor or remained, she had no idea. All she knew was him.

Then he bent down. And kissed her.

His lips were firm and soft against hers. Surprisingly gentle and tender. At first. His mouth slanted over hers, urging her lips to part. Stunned at first, she could only let him kiss her. This was her first real kiss. But then an age-old instinct took over. She needed to claim this thing she desired. She opened for him, letting him in.

It was lush, their kiss. Rich and intoxicating in its naked desire. This was not a kiss of politeness, of well-m
annered
affection. This was a man and a woman—strangers to each other—united by shared hunger. His tongue swept against hers, searching, and she sucked on it. Her reward was a low growl deep in his chest.

One of his hands cradled the back of her head. The other flattened against the small of her back, urging her against him. She wrapped her arms around his wide shoulders as she pressed against him tightly. It was only a kiss—she'd written about so much more—yet she felt herself lost, dazed, adrift on sensation.

She broke the kiss with a gasp.
Good Lord. Jeremy.

How could she do this with a stranger, a man she'd
known less than an hour, when she'd barely even touched the man she truly wanted? Tears burned her eyes at the thought of her disloyalty. How could she face herself, when she'd proven herself to be a faithless lightskirt?

“I—” But she had nothing to say to the man in blue.

She turned and fled the chamber. She had to go. Immediately. Before she did something she would truly regret.

Hurrying down the hallway, she passed a small group of women standing near a table of refreshments.

“It's true,” one of them was saying to the others. “I have it on the best authority that someone is here tonight to learn the identity of the Lady of Dubious Quality.”

Sarah froze.

“How did you find this out?” another queried.

“Servants' gossip. They said a stranger had come tonight. A man. Tall—wearing green? Blue?”

Sarah's stomach pitched. Heaven help her, had she just been kissing the man who wanted to learn her secrets? No, it couldn't be him. She refused to believe it.

I have to leave
. Hastening past the women, she stumbled toward the foyer.

“My friend?” Amina asked with a puzzled frown.

But Sarah had no words for her. She dragged open the front door and hurried off toward her waiting carriage several blocks away. One of the most thrilling and adventurous nights of her life had turned into the very worst. She could only pray that the man in blue never learned who she was. That all her secrets would remain safe.

She hastened into the night, fear and inevitable change chasing her like demons.

H
is hair curling damply over his collar from his dawn swim at Hampstead Heath, Jeremy paced the paths of his mother's garden, deep in thought. Other than his early morning excursions to the bathing pond to work off a surfeit of energy, he'd gone nowhere in the two days since he'd visited the masked gathering. Instead, he'd haunted the garden that had always given him peace, searching for a measure of elusive tranquility. Yet it didn't matter how many times he strode up and down the gravel walkways. He couldn't be still, couldn't be calm.

Not since The Kiss.

How could he not have known? How could he have blithely assumed that he could go to that gathering without there being some profound change in him? That he could continue on as he always had, ignorant of who he was? Never knowing what he was capable of?

The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he walked briskly past the struggling rose bushes.

His mother had been mercifully ignorant of Jeremy's visit to the masked club, but she had noticed with some gentle reproof at breakfast that he hadn't been sleeping, as evidenced by the telltale shadows beneath his eyes. “Perhaps I should fetch my physician,” she'd murmured concernedly.

“I'm just not used to London anymore,” he'd answered, but that was far from the truth.

Now, alone in the garden, he pushed his body into motion as his thoughts churned.

He roasted upon the spit of his own conscience.
What had happened had been . . . much more than he'd ever imagined. Awful, wonderful. Liberating. Imprisoning. A host of contradictions that continued to torment him, days later.

He'd never felt as free as he'd been at the masked gathering. As though he could finally loose himself from the checks that held him firmly in place, confining him to a role that never felt natural. The club had been a place of unfettered sensuality. A realm of the senses. And he'd
belonged.
He'd experienced all the things that he normally kept locked within himself. Confidence had surged through him. There hadn't been anything to prove. He could simply
be
.

And it had worked! Women had gathered around him in remarkable numbers. They'd hinted at invitations both silent and spoken.

He'd been intrigued. What man wouldn't be? But none of the women had fascinated him so much as the Golden Woman, as he'd taken to thinking of her. In her gold cloak and mask, she'd looked still, remote, yet alive with sensuous energy. She'd been alone, hardly attracting attention to herself, but he hadn't been able to look away from her. She'd been a lodestone, drawing him forward, obscuring all thought other than the need to be near her. To touch her. See if she'd been as cool and distant as she'd appeared.

He'd been another man as he'd crossed the room to her. He'd transformed as he'd taken her hand and guided her onto the dance floor. Bolder than he'd ever been. Possessed with a self-assurance he'd never had. Whoever this Golden Woman was, he'd craved her with a sudden and inescapable need.

Then he'd kissed her. And just that one kiss had surpassed all his previous carnal experience. She'd been spicy and sweet, utterly delicious. Irresistible with her seeking lips and forthright desire. There had been a moment, a bare moment at the very beginning, when he could have sworn that she didn't know much about the act of kissing. But that hesitation and uncertainty had quickly burned away, revealing naked passion.

Need continued to pulse through him as he turned down the garden path, barely seeing the hedges and statues around him. They were obscured by the storm cloud of his thoughts hidden in the mists of his mind.

Where that kiss would have led . . . What might he have done had the Golden Woman not broken the contact and fled? There had been a second of wanting more, but then she'd left, and he had been on his own. Alone with the growing specter of regret.

That same remorse cut him now with rusty, jagged knives. His hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. He was a cad. A bounder. Worse. Far worse.

Lady Sarah was the one he wanted, not some faceless, nameless woman at a masked orgy.

There had been an intangible quality about the Golden Woman that had called to mind Lady Sarah. Both were watchful, separate. Was that why he'd been so comfortable approaching her in the first place? Yet the Golden Woman wasn't Lady Sarah.

He wanted to apologize to Lady Sarah, but he couldn't tell her about where he'd been and why he'd been there.

It would have to remain a secret, buried within him
self. Even the thought of confessing it burned him. He would take this knowledge to his grave, but it would always smolder like a coal within him.

He stopped in his anguished pacing as a thought occurred to him. The Golden Woman and the Lady of Dubious Quality might be one and the same. She'd held herself apart from the proceedings, just as the Lady of Dubious Quality might. She hadn't had the same practiced air about her as the other women, as though she lived a life of the mind more than one given to masked orgies.

My God—it made sense. He went ramrod straight at the thought. He'd come so close, so
very
close to his quarry.

“Brooding is bad for a man's humors,” his father's voice said, interrupting his thoughts.

Jeremy glanced over with dismay. Lord Hutton strode toward him, brow lowered. It was an expression with which Jeremy was a little too familiar. What would his father disapprove of now?

“Sometimes it's the only recourse,” Jeremy answered, his temper too short for deference.

“Nonsense,” his father clipped. “There's always the moderate option.”

“Moderation is a luxury in which not everyone can indulge,” Jeremy countered.

His father's frown deepened, and no wonder. Jeremy seldom spoke to Lord Hutton this way. But Jeremy was too exhausted and drawn taut to give his father the usual reverence he demanded.

Standing in front of Jeremy, Lord Hutton clasped his hands behind his back and glowered. “Your search
for the Lady of Dubious Quality seems to have grown stagnant.”

“I've been conducting my investigation,” Jeremy said.

His father waved a hand dismissively. “I've seen none of it.”

Jeremy couldn't tell his father about the masked society—and the fact that he'd very likely
kissed
the Lady of Dubious Quality. “Nevertheless, it's been carried out.”

“I want more progress,” the earl insisted. “Whatever it is you've been doing, you'll need to push harder on discovering who this jade is, and soon.”

“I'm doing the best I can,” Jeremy answered.

“You seem to need further inducement,” his father said. “If the prospect of more money doesn't inspire you, then perhaps less might be more motivating.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you refuse to do your duty,” the earl snapped, “then I refuse to do mine. Unless I see tangible results of your search, unless the Lady of Dubious Quality is found, I will cut your allowance in half.”

Jeremy stared at his father, aghast.

The earl continued relentlessly. “I doubt a vicar with a modest living can afford trips to London, much less all those books you are so fond of.”

What little freedom Jeremy had suddenly disappeared, choked by his father's threat. “You cannot . . .”

“I can, sirrah, and I will.”

With that, Lord Hutton paced away.

The earl's demands always came first. It didn't matter if Jeremy was eight, or eight and twenty. He was a pawn to his father, little more.

He stood in his mother's garden, but he felt trapped, caged. As though the hedges surrounding him were bars, and all he could do was smash against them in frustration.

A
t dusk, he journeyed back to Bloomsbury. The building that housed the club appeared even more sedate and ordinary as daylight faded. There was no sign of what went on in the evenings. Though the growing darkness conspired to hide details, Jeremy took no chances and wore a suit of russet and brown—old clothing of his that remained at the house—rather than his more sober clerical clothing. It wouldn't do if anyone saw him approach the house in his role as a vicar.