The Rogue and I (6 page)

“That was before,” she said quickly, her voice a bare murmur because, with all her breathiness, her breath had now utterly escaped her. It was all she could do not to let her heart beat madly away, foolish as it was. It was as though his body was sending out some secret question to hers and her traitorous flesh knew exactly what answer she should give.

“You sin no more?” He eyed her up and down, taking in her prim, white gown. “Pity.”

“No, I do not,” she bit out, trying not to feel as if he’d somehow found her wanting. She didn’t want to be pitied by such a man as him. Specifically not him.

He arched a dark brow, then took another swallow of the brandy, oh so slowly licking an errant drop from the rim of the glass. “How terribly sad.”

It was more earth shattering than the day she had first met him and she had beckoned him to steal their first passionate kiss. For now, as a woman, a woman that he had helped to make, she knew exactly what his tongue could do upon another surface than glass.

She opened her mouth to set him down, sure that she could lacerate him. But her wit seemed stymied by that one small gesture of his tongue.

Abruptly, she closed her mouth. A deeply unpleasant thought rattled through her lust addled brain. Good God,
did
he pity her? “What exactly do you mean by that?”

He shrugged, his muscles rippling beneath his thin, white shirt. “You used to have an unbridled love for life. It seems you have abandoned that.”

She lifted her chin. “I have learned the errors of my youth.”

Those errors had been forced upon her one by one. Making her pay for thinking that she could reach as high as a duke’s son for love. What she had done in the wake of their love affair did not bear remembering.

He laughed softly, a whiskey and honey sound. “I am one of those errors, of course.”

“Yes,” she said, her own voice dropping to a soft hum. Lord, this was dangerous territory. The last thing she wished was to discuss their tattered history (her own nearly tattered reputation) in her uncle’s hall.

“Well,” he shrugged, “if it reassures you, you were one of mine.”

His words hit her with surprising pain. How could he say such a thing? “Well and good that you’re rid of me, then.”

A soft sound that might have been a blunted laugh issued from his skilled mouth. “Oh, I’ve never been quite rid of you, my dearest Miss Harriet. Who could?” He took another drink, this one nearly draining it to the dregs. His eyes pierced her, hard and wanting. “A woman like you.”

A woman like her?

“I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped. Harshly. She didn’t. The pain was coming back right along with the searing edge of the memory of their shared pleasure. It was not a memory she wished to be impaled upon again.

Yes. All she had to do was remember that he was a duke’s son. . . And well, her family had been ruined, hadn’t it? She was far beneath a man such as he. In his eyes. Men like him slept with girls from her walk of life, but they did not marry them.

Not in the end.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she repeated again, her voice softer.

It was haunting though. The knowledge that she so desperately tried to ignore. He had planned to marry her. She supposed, it was she that had struck the first blow and then he had landed the killing strike to their love.

As if the long silence between them had not indicating any sort of inner turmoil wracking her, he lowered his gaze and said softly, “Would you rather I
show
it.”

The very implication of those words was enough to turn her into a quivering spot on the floor. If. . .
If
she had been the same girl she’d been five years ago, nothing would have stopped her from striding into his room and demanding that he show her all through the long night.

Now. Now? All she could think of was standing cold, shivering in the piercing rain with a valise meant for travel to Gretna Green. Waiting. Waiting with so much futile desperation until she had waited hours past hope.

That was the memory that she allowed to play through her mind. To poison the ardor so cruelly playing at her skin and emotions. Nor did she wish him to know that he still had any power over her.

So, she let a seductive smile play at her lips. Oh, she had not forgotten how the game was played, even if she no longer played it. She lowered her eyes, knowing her lashes would tease her pale cheekbones. Slowly. Ever so slowly, she took steps towards him.

With only the smallest distance between them, she could smell the scent of Spanish oranges and aromatic brandy. It evoked a terrifying need immediately within her. It tingled straight along the sensitive skin of her arms right to the hot place between her legs. It wasn’t pleasant because it was not welcome. Not this continued instant response to his physical presence.

Even so, she didn’t back down. She cocked her head to the side, her curls falling over her shoulder, caressing her slightly bare breasts. Drawing in a breath, she reached out and took his glass in her fingertips.

To her astonishment, he didn’t let go, but rather kept his own fingers along the glass. Their skin almost touched but not quite. Their eyes met with instant hunger. She didn’t stop. Oh no. Pointedly, she drew the glass and his arm closer. With him helping her, her eyes open, locked with his, she tilted the cool crystal to her lips and drank the spicy drink.

It burned a hot stripe down her insides, just like his touch might do to her outside. She could have sworn that she could see his pulse leap in his neck.

“Come in,” he whispered, a ragged note to his deep voice.

She stepped back, dropping her hand away. Every part of her urged her to do as he said, except the part that mattered the most. Her heart. Smiling slightly, she lifted her hand and rubbed her thumb along her lower lip, wiping the last of the drops away.

His gaze followed the movement, like a man lost at sea watches the clouds for rain.

A laugh of pure pleasure issued from her throat. Cruelty even, rang softly from her. “Always a pleasure to get the best of
you
,
my lord
.”

The mirroring words that he had spoken earlier in the day filled the space between them and a look of shocked astonishment wiped away the one of growing desire on his face.

Before he could form a reply, she whipped towards the empty hall, her heart thumping so hard she feared she might drop upon the perfectly woven runner. Oh, the triumph of it! She walked away quickly, knowing the long train of her robe chased after her. Knowing he watched her disappear into the dark corridor!

Nothing could have been more perfect.

Unless. . . Unless she had kissed him. Harry sucked in a sharp breath at the horrifying thought. No. That evil voice was severely mistaken. The look on his face would be one she’d hold dear night after night after night.

*     *     *

F
ive Years Earlier

Devonshire

Water nymphs were supposed to be the very devil. Troublesome. Mischievous. Capable of dragging a man quite willingly to his watery death. The young woman reclining back on her elbows in the bottom of one of his father’s rowboats was all those things and. . . More.

She was simply more. More than any other person he had ever known. His world was full of empty headed people who said
what
was supposed to be said
when
it was supposed to be said. One ongoing routine or set out play that could only be delineated from the pain of death or social ostracism.

She was different from everything he had ever known. From her long, blonde, tangled hair which hung unfashionably far down beyond her waist, to her witty, sharp, blue eyes, to her body. . . Her lush body virtually visible to him through the thin, wet linen. God, he could lose himself in her body.

The soft line of her white throat descended to fragile collarbones and then down to breasts not too large. Almost small really. But they were taut and the nipples, soft pink through the white fabric, were hard. She did nothing to hide them from him.

It was impossible.

Mad even.

Everything about her suggested she wasn’t a woman of bad reputation, except for this patent display of femininity. Garret couldn’t fathom it, but he was quickly losing himself moment by moment to the girl before him. He had to stop this line of thought. This need to take her with him and never let her go for fear he would lose this completely foreign feeling of freedom and simultaneous captivity.

“Do you often do that?” he asked, his own voice rough to his ears.

She tilted her head to the side, her wet locks falling over shoulder. “Do what exactly?”

“The Lady of Shalot bit?” he said unintelligently, but his brain didn’t seem to be functioning in a normal pattern. It kept wondering, if he looked down her body, would he see the soft shadow of curls at the apex of her thighs?

She hesitated then laughed, clearly at herself. “Yes.”

“Indeed?” surprise ripened in his voice. He hadn’t played games of make believe since he was very small.

“You don’t? Imagine things?” she asked, surprise mirrored in her own lovely clear tones.

Once he’d been sent down to school, such things had been discouraged. Sons of dukes did not go charging after imaginary dragons. Though apparently they did save drowning maidens. “No. No, I don’t.”

She eyed him slowly, her eyes traveling carefully over his face and then his shoulders, his chest, and then back to his eyes as if she had seen the promised land.

“Pity,” she breathed softly.

“Why?” He was genuinely curious. Curious at her gaze. At her demeanor. And hanging on every fascinating word this bizarre young woman uttered.

“Well,” she began simply, “the imaginary world is so much better than this one.” Her eyes darkened a little with sadness, but then they sparkled. “I don’t always play the Lady of Shalot, you know. She’s far too tragic for every day. But the weather was fine and I came upon this lake and there was the boat, and I said to myself, ah Camelot!”

He glanced away from her for a moment, half expecting to see Arthur’s castle towering somewhere in the distance. “Another tragic story really.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

He glanced down at the pond, his heart pounding at the knowledge that if he had not come along, she, like her clothes, would now be floating at the bottom of the serene water. “Love affairs always seem to go wrong in the ballads.”

She laughed, a lush deep sound that was nothing at all like a bell. “That’s because tragic ending are the best.”

“Hardly,” he said amused by her sense of drama, his eyes turning back to her hypnotic face. “You wouldn’t have liked to drown?”

“Definitely not.” There was a long pause, her breath clearly hitched in her throat. Then finally she rushed, “If I had, I wouldn’t have met you.”

The words, so simple, shook him. It was true. Utterly true. Somehow, he knew they were supposed to meet. Supposed to change each other. It was a shocking realization which he quickly put aside before he could truly begin to think on it. “Look, I’m being a terrible knight in shining armor. We should get you ashore and clothed. Are you cold?”

“How could I be on such a wonderful day?”

Her sense of optimism was another thing he didn’t quite understand. After all, his father was ever trying to impress upon him the untrustworthiness of the world. “I’m going to jump in and swim the boat to shore.”

“And I will sit here,” she patted her small hands against the wooden boards. She winked at him, then added glibly, “And do my bit by not falling in again.”

“Thank you. Very good of you.”

“Yes. So, I thought.”

There was a long pause. He knew he should jump in now. He’d swim her quickly to land and then he would take her up to the house and hand her over to the housekeeper. But he didn’t. He just sat there, staring, unable to take his eyes from her.

She stared right back at him, seemingly equally transfixed until at last, she breathed, “You know, you must kiss me now.”

Chapter 6

The Present

The Trent Estate

Emmaline waited a good quarter of an hour before she finally peeped into the corridor. She gazed from left to right. At this time of night it was completely dark, not the least bit of light lurking, except from each pane of glass that allowed faint tendrils of moonlight to peer in.

It seemed safe. But could she be sure?

Finally, just like her cousin would do (or at least she was rather certain she would do) she threw caution to the wind and trotted out into the hall.

It had been much on her mind of late. This preposterous business of waiting for the wedding night. She loved Edward and he loved her. Why should they wait?

A silly smile lilting her lips, Emmaline rushed down the hallway. Quite frankly, she was tired of being an angel and she was quite ready to turn in her wings. Humans seemed to have a great deal more fun.

It only took her a few moments of rushed tiptoeing to find Edward’s apartments. As bride groom, he’d been given a suite. As soon as she stood in front of the white and gold door, painted in the French style or so she had been told, she hesitated. What exactly should she say?

Or do?

She hadn’t dared asked Harry. Even if her cousin was always getting into scrapes, she really did doubt that Harry would encourage her down the same path. Especially one of this nature. Even she had heard the rumors about Harry’s near brush with disgrace.

Squaring her shoulders and smoothing down the frills and bows of her dressing gown, she grabbed hold of the latch and pushed it down. The door swung open to dim light.

Good. Edward was not yet asleep.

She wandered through his private sitting room. A sitting room she had labored over with the decorating, learning a great many terms that had not lingered in her brain. She simply didn’t find the difference between damask and silk terribly interesting. If there even was a difference.

The doors to the bedroom were blessedly open, the light drifting towards her. Emmaline lifted her chin and marched forward. A thrill of anticipation leapt through her, stealing her breath away. After all, this was the moment she had been waiting for for so long.