To Lure a Proper Lady (13 page)

At any rate, the truth hadn't provoked the sort of reaction Lady Whitby had hoped.

Admiration, indeed. Dysart had been utterly selfless to walk into an unknown life—one for which he'd been completely unprepared—and all for a girl his upbringing told him was beneath his notice.

Such an action didn't merit whispers behind fans at parties. It did not warrant society shutting him out, even if he'd turned his back on its members. No, it deserved praise and admiration and a reward of some sort, but Lizzie had little to offer that he might accept.

Although he was accepting the surge of affection his story had aroused well enough. His arms slipped about her waist, settling into her embrace and returning it with the solidity of his presence. His body.

Her breasts were pressed against the hard planes of his chest until she wanted to sigh with the pleasure. But she couldn't release the sound, for without her conscious will directing them, her lips somehow sought and found his.

He reacted with surprising softness, a simple press and release repeated over and over, the opposite of what he'd done in the maze. There, his kiss had been sudden and driving, fueled not so much by passion as necessity.

A dark well of emotion, one she'd uncovered just now, lay beneath each movement of his mouth, igniting an answering spark inside her. She pushed her fingers into his hair and when the tip of his tongue flickered against her mouth, she opened for him.

At his invasion, the spark roared into flame, but she could only respond as he took control of the kiss. His arms tightened about her until she bent beneath him, and all the while he devoured her.

When he tore his lips away, she gulped in air, but the respite was only momentary. With a growl, he set his mouth to the throbbing pulse just below her ear, and his teeth scraped sensitive skin.

Sweet God in heaven, she'd never known a kiss like this. Any of the gentlemen who'd tried had been just that—gentlemen. Not Dysart. He'd learned the hardness of the world, and it came through in this intimate moment. But she drank in every last drop of the darkness he offered her and thirsted for more.

Ravenous lips trailed down to the edge of her bodice, while one of his hands skated up her torso until it curved about her breast. His thumb traced over her nipple once, twice, until the tip hardened into a peak of aching need.

“Ah!” She threw her head back in offering.

His other hand moved up to plump her other breast, as if he meant to test its weight. She stared down at those tanned, calloused fingers over fine silken fabric. Oh, the contrast. The roughness of his skin might snag her gown, but she didn't care, because she understood its source.

What he was doing to her was scandalous. It was wrong, but heaven help her, she didn't want him to stop. Not now, not ever. She wanted his bare flesh touching hers, abrasive against her softness.

Raising her arms, she reached for the buttons at the back of her gown.

But the sort of morality that had driven him to toss society aside reared its unfortunate head, for he pulled away and gripped her wrists, his breathing a harsh rasp in the evening quiet.

“We can't do this,” he muttered after a moment. “Not anywhere, but especially not here.”

Dear Lord, Papa lay in the next room. Dysart's passionate onslaught had driven the knowledge from her mind. And yet, the response he'd aroused in her still simmered, tempting her to suggest they find a better place to continue the exploration. She'd learned about the man before her, but she still didn't
know
him.

And she desperately wanted to.

He drew in a breath. “I should go.”

That statement smacked her in the face as effectively as a winter downpour. “What do you mean? Go back to London?”

“No, but I should do that, too.”

“You…You can't. You're not finished here yet.”

“I'm not, no. Not with the job.” His tone had taken on an officious detachment that she despised. “But I think it's best all round if I avoid the party guests in the future.”

Blast it, she was a member of the party, in a real sense. He meant her, too.

“I will report in when necessary, but we will conduct our business in proper form—in the public rooms of this house.”

The bloody corridor was endless, but that was a good thing, Dysart mused as he strode down the passage. If he didn't place some distance between himself and the duke's chambers—between himself and Lady Elizabeth—he'd march back into that blasted sitting room and finish what they'd started.

To hell with the lady's father in the next chamber. To hell with the fact that she was a lady and he was hardly a gentleman. God, she'd melted in his embrace, as soft and pliant as the finest silk. So sweetly responsive. He'd never known the like.

His groin still ached with frustrated desire, although he ought to be used to that state after his marriage to Sally. Other men would call him mad if they knew he'd taken a wife in the full realization he could never avail himself of the haven her body provided.

And he hadn't. In eight years, he'd never demanded anything of his marriage bed. True, he hadn't been a monk, exactly, either, but the number of interested women he deemed clean enough to take to his bed were few and far between at his adopted level of society. The last thing he'd wanted was to trade an hour's fleeting pleasure for the French pox.

But Lady Elizabeth is different.

Damn that niggling little voice, tempting him to turn back. Because he knew that voice was right. Due to his marriage, he'd gone out of his way to avoid romantic entanglements, but one had seemingly found him.

Elizabeth aroused in him the same sort of protective streak Sally had, but the feeling this time went far deeper. Sally had been a stranger to him when they married and her experience with Pendleton had given her a healthy mistrust of the masculine gender. She'd been doomed to maintain a wall of reserve against the world, which included Dysart himself, even if, in his youthful desire to right a wrong, he'd acted as her savior.

But Elizabeth—even after such a short acquaintance, he felt he'd learned more about her than he ever knew of Sally. The carriage ride to Suffolk had taken hours rather than the days required to reach the Scottish border, and yet even the few words he and Elizabeth had exchanged accounted for more conversation than had transpired with Sally. He'd fully expected Elizabeth to behave like the spoiled little misses he'd encountered in his youth, and yet all that leapt to mind when he thought of her was her natural ease as a hostess, seeing to all her guests and taking care of the crises in the kitchen with a level head.

Her cool competence reached out and touched something in his mind the same way her body called to his.

She was going to make some titled blue blood a damned perfect wife. The bloody bastard.

And that was the reason Dysart needed to stay away from her. Whatever family he'd been born to, he was no longer part of that world. His choice. He'd walked away and did not regret it when he saw a man like Pendleton accepted. Any association Elizabeth developed with Dysart would only drag her down. Soon enough, he'd return to Bow Street, and when she came to Mayfair with the fashionable next social Season, their worlds would remain separate.

Once he'd finished this case, he'd never meet her again. If some strange chance saw them pass each other in the street, there would be no acknowledgment. That alone was reason to leave her untouched, no matter how his body demanded fulfillment.

Yet he still turned to stare down the corridor at the door that stood between them—willing it to disappear.

A flutter of movement at the far end of the passage scattered his thoughts. Sodding hell. Shrouded by the late evening shadows, a figure was edging along one wall. Not a female, either, to judge by height and dress. Sneaking, and not just anywhere. The interloper was making his way toward the duke's chambers.

“You there.” Dysart moved to intercept. “What are you about?”

The figure halted in his tracks. Closer to, a face solidified out of the gloom. Snowley. What the devil was he doing here this time of night? He might be after either the duke or Elizabeth—but that would mean he was aware of Elizabeth's chosen sleeping arrangements. That thought did nothing for Dysart's temper.

Eyes narrowed, Snowley raised his chin. “I might ask you the same thing.”

“No one gets in to see his grace without my permission.” Lord, Dysart sounded as imperious and disdainful as the king's own butler confronted with a lowly street urchin. “Owing to the lateness of the hour, you'd best wait until morning. The man is too ill to be disturbed.”

“Did someone hire you on staff and neglect to inform me?” If Snowley wished to earn the title of most contemptuous, he was doing a splendid job. “I cannot fathom any other reason for your presence or taking that tone.”

Dysart placed himself squarely between the other man and the entrance to the duke's apartments. “Lady Elizabeth may have hired me, for all you know. Either way, I'm not about to let you by.”

Snowley went dangerously still.

Dysart hadn't reckoned the man for a brawler, but in this moment, doubt crept in. He flexed his fingers. A fight to start the day, a fight to close it. He might even take pleasure in smashing his fist through Snowley's face, if only to burn off some of this excess frustration.

“You know what they're saying about you?” The question may have sounded nearly innocent, but an edge crept into Snowley's tone.

“Oh, are you going to trade
on-dits
with me? Shall I ring for tea and we can be all civilized like a pair of old ladies?” Provocative, perhaps, but now that Snowley had put him in the mind to fight, he might as well enjoy it.

“What does someone like you know of civilized behavior? Pendleton told me a very interesting story this evening. Turned out of your own family, and they will not have you back. No one in polite society will receive you.”

“Is that a fact?” Dysart crossed his arms over his chest. “Funny how his grace asked me to this house party, then, isn't it?”

“Pendleton says you have a taste for the maids, the younger the better.”

“That's rather rich coming from him.”

“And we won't get into your predilection for the stable boys.”

Dysart choked back a bark of laughter. Was that the best Pendleton could do? “Why should I care what Marcus Pendleton says about me?”

“Because of Lizzie.”

Lizzie. The familiarity hit him like a knife to the gut. “What has Lady Elizabeth got to do with any of this?”

“Let's make matters perfectly clear. I am going marry her. She just needs a little convincing.”

Convincing.
This time the knife struck home and twisted. The hairs at the nape of Dysart's neck stood on end. If Snowley modeled himself after Pendleton in any manner when it came to dealing with women…No, Dysart couldn't allow himself to complete that thought.

Breathe.
He had to maintain a cool head.
Had
to.

To that end, a change in subject might be wise, if only to unbalance his opponent. “Tell me, where did you go to school?”

“What?”

“I asked where you went to school.” Dysart enunciated each syllable in his best public school accent.

“I had private tutors, but what that has to do with anything…”

“Ah. That's why I don't remember you. I think you'll agree education is important. Do you know where I got mine?”

“No?”

“Harrow, but no matter. My second education was far more important. I acquired that one in the rookeries. Do you know what that means?”

“No.” Snowley's inflection rose on the response, practically turning it into a question.

Quick as a cat, Dysart lunged, gathering two fistfuls of Snowley's lapels. “It means you don't want to do anything that might make me lose my temper.” He kept his tone low and lethal. “Do I make myself clear?”

Behind him, the door snapped open. He did not need to see Lady Elizabeth to gauge her mood. Her upset took concrete form, tightly coiled as a serpent and ready to strike without warning. Snowley must have caught her expression, though. His eyes widened.

“What in heaven's name is going on here?” She stepped forward in a clear if futile attempt to insinuate herself between Snowley and Dysart. “What has come over you? Release him.”

Reluctantly, Dysart unknotted his fingers. Snowley brushed the front of his topcoat and took a step back.

Lady Elizabeth turned the full force of her glare on Dysart. “First Pendleton and now I catch you fighting with my cousin. In front of his grace's rooms, no less, when you know he's unwell.”

She paused for breath, her bosom expanding. Snowley's gaze drifted south, and Dysart repressed the urge to launch himself at him once again.

“If I might ask you something,” Snowley began tentatively. “I've been trying to determine your relationship with…with…with this Dysart fellow.”

“That is none of your affair, as I've told you more than once.” Though Elizabeth was easily the smallest of the three, her presence made her appear taller than the other two. “The duke condones his presence, and that is all you need to know.”

“But Pendleton…” Snowley squared his shoulders and drew himself up. The bloody idiot had clearly never learned when to stand down. “I demand to know what is going on under my nose.”

“There is no need to take that tone with me. I owe you no explanations. You may be the duke's heir, but you are not the duke yet. And until that time, I do not have to answer to you.”

Something subtle shifted in Snowley's expression—a mere hardening, a flattening of the lips—but it was enough to cause a warning tingle to run down the back of Dysart's neck.

What if he only wanted to make your puh-
pa
ill? Perhaps make you accept him out of panic?
His words to Lady Elizabeth mere days ago echoed through his mind. The harebrained scheme, as she'd termed it, but suddenly it didn't feel quite so off. Mad, certainly, but instinct told Dysart Snowley was quite capable of that sort of madness.

Lizzie should have insisted on a different Runner that day on Bow Street. Someone more levelheaded. Someone older, who would certainly have more experience. Someone far less attractive.

Concentrate.

She forced her mind back to the task at hand—rereading her manuscript. She'd retreated to one of the smaller parlors, not hiding, exactly, although Lady Whitby had cast several speculative glances in her direction over breakfast. Lizzie had only gone off to find a few moments of peace, and to lose herself in the pleasure of creating something all her own, only to have Dysart continually invade her thoughts.

He'd somehow invaded her story, as well, in the form of a rusty-haired stranger with a mysterious past. Good heavens, it was too much, especially when his literary self had taken to jumping into ponds to rescue the heroine's lost kitten. Said heroine had derived far too much delight in noting the way his sodden garments clung to his muscular body.

No, no, and no.

Lizzie picked up her quill, dipped it in ink, and crossed out the offending paragraphs with decisive strokes.

The rasp of a throat clearing sounded louder than the scratching of her pen. Blast. Dysart himself stood in the doorway, his clothes thankfully dry, but that didn't erase the memory of the way his body had felt pressed against hers.

She resisted the urge to duck behind her sheaf of papers. Instead, she coerced her voice into the officious crispness she used to direct the servants. “I thought you said it would be better if we meet only in public spaces.”

A glint in his eye, followed by an odd darkening, told her he was recalling the exact same moment in the duke's sitting room. Their tongues dancing, their bodies entwined, his hand on her breast.

“I'll take my chances for now.” His reply came as a low rumble that warmed her through as much as her wayward thoughts. “I owe you an apology for the unforgivably unprofessional manner in which I've been conducting myself.”

“I see.” Although she didn't. Not really. Not when his unprofessional manner encompassed so many possibilities. Was he referring to his fights or the liberties he'd taken—liberties she'd permitted and reveled in?

She wasn't exactly sure she wanted him to apologize for kissing her when she'd fully enjoyed those encounters. When she wished for further exploration.

“I shall make every effort to do better in the future. I give you my word.”
As a gentleman.
He left that part unvoiced, and why shouldn't he? He'd walked away from that particular role over a decade ago. And yet, she trusted him to keep his word more than several so-called gentlemen she could think of.

“Apology accepted, then.” What else could she give but the expected reply?

He seemed to hover on the balls of his feet, as if torn between taking his leave and risking closer contact. Or perhaps he was simply curious about her scribblings. Heaven help her if he actually learned of their contents.

She spread protective fingers across her words. “Was there anything else?”

“If I'm to conduct myself in a professional manner, I ought to get to work. And to that end, I find myself in need of some paper.”

“Over in the writing desk.” With her chin, she pointed to the far corner.

He stepped into the room. Closer. “You've got some paper right there.”

She spread her fingers and pulled the sheets toward her lap. “I'm using it.”

He craned his neck. “What are you using it for?”

“Is this an example of your interrogation technique? I'm hardly impressed.”

He leaned one hip on the edge of her table, his body angled toward her, and she recalled his penchant for sitting atop his Bow Street desk. “Do you really want me to demonstrate my technique? I've a trick or two I reserve for the ladies.”

“And would that constitute professional conduct?”

One forefinger snaked out to snatch a page. Just in time she yanked it back.