Unclaimed (18 page)

And so it was not thought that made him turn from her, made him approach the flag that marked thirty paces from the target. He did not think as he raised the rifle to his shoulder, did not contemplate as he focused on the bull’s-eye. He just squeezed the trigger. Black powder and sulfur surrounded him in an acrid haze. His arm ached from the force of the recoil.

The cloud cleared, and they strode forward.

Somehow, he’d hit the bull’s-eye—barely nicking the dark edge of it, true, but the best shot he’d made all afternoon. Perhaps it was coincidence.

Perhaps it wasn’t. He swallowed and looked at her. He could almost taste success, sweet and smelling of black-powder smoke.

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned and paced back to the flag. He followed. It was only now, watching the curve of her backside, the languid sway of her stride, that sanity began to trickle back.

She could beat his shot easily; he’d seen her do it three times in a row.

But did she want to?

Did he want her to? No. And yes. He didn’t want it to happen like this. He didn’t want to kiss her because he’d lost his temper. He certainly didn’t want her to grant him a kiss because she ceded him the win out of pity. He didn’t want her to make herself small for him.

She waited until he stood behind her before raising her rifle, and then she fired in one fluid movement. She didn’t look at him as she walked forward. She must already know the outcome.

He didn’t want her to shoot to miss—not for any reason, not at all.

She stopped at the target. There, embedded clearly in the center, was her shot.

She’d beaten him.

He felt a wave of relief, coupled with a tight sense of loss. Yes, he’d wanted her to win. But still…

“You know,” he said, his voice hoarse, “this was a poorly formed wager. We never did decide what
you
got if you won.”

Her eyes lifted to his lips. Her tongue darted out to touch the corner of her mouth.

Suddenly, wildly, he wanted her to lay claim to the same reward. He shouldn’t want it. He shouldn’t even think it. If he’d had a membership card in the MCB, he’d have taken it out now, because Peril was reaching for him. But her breath cycled in time with his. Her hand fluttered at her side, reaching for him and then falling away, as if she, too, did not know.

She shook her head, as if shaking off a tight little spell, and drew in a shuddering breath. And then she gave him a smile—not a cruel one, but understanding, as if she knew that her goading earlier had aroused him to the point of pain. As if she’d traveled that road alongside him.

“What do I get?” she asked. Her voice echoed in the clearing. “That’s obvious. I get to know you wanted to kiss me.”

The white-hot emotion returned, and this time, he couldn’t control it.

“Bollocks on that,” he said scornfully. And before she could move away, before she could take back those words, he’d stepped into her arms. His hands caught her waist. She tipped her head up to his. And then roughly—stupidly—his lips found hers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JESSICA HADN’T REALIZED
quite what she was doing.

At first, the only thought in her mind had been to do to Sir Mark what he was doing to her—insisting that he could do better. But up until the moment when he’d faced her, his mouth set, she’d not understood. Not truly.

She’d incited men to passion before. But she’d not been considering any sort of strategy. She’d not thought of seducing him, not since the moment when he’d told her that he wanted her to trounce him. She had thought in that moment only of herself—her own wants, her own desires, so long ignored.

As he lowered his lips to hers, what she felt was not victory or even a sense of success. It was a purely feminine response, a delight that had nothing to do with her campaign of seduction, and every thing to do with the fact that it was Sir Mark kissing her.

For all that his hands held her tightly, his lips landed gently on hers. His skin was slightly rough with unseen stubble. And without thought, she opened for him, unfurling as gently as a flower reaching for the sun. He was pure heat against her skin, and she drank him in. Her hands clutched his chest.

All thought washed from her mind. Targets disappeared. The other contestants who had gone before, who were now undoubtedly waiting back at the Tollivers’ estate for the final tally…they vanished. There was nothing in this world but Mark and the taste of liquid sunshine, her own desire filling her to the brim and overflowing.

His body was flush against hers. He made no attempt to hide his erection, poking into her. Still, it was just a kiss—just his lips on hers, his mouth, growing ever confident, his tongue, tangling with hers.

It was just a kiss. It only felt as if it were more.

He raised his head, took his hands from her waist. All Jessica’s breathless desire was met by the crisp air rising off the nearby water. The chill slapped against her face.

She took a step back, raising her hand to her mouth as reason returned. Another man might have looked embarrassed or guilty. Another man would have blamed her for that kiss and called her a temptress. Or worse.

Sir Mark wasn’t looking at her with anything that resembled shame or anger. Instead, his face echoed her feeling of lightning-struck wonder.

“Well.” He rubbed one hand against the seam of his trousers and looked away, as if searching for the right words. “At this moment, I believe a proper gentleman would apologize for taking liberties.”

“If you do,” Jessica said, “I will find a stick and beat you over the head with it.”

He regarded her closely. “Tolliver would see you brought up on assault charges if you did,” he said. His tone was grave, but his eyes flashed at her with a sly, private humor. “And I don’t suppose you would take well to picking oakum at Cornhill. I’ve heard it’s quite damp and unhealthy there. So it’s just as well that, in defiance of all propriety, I don’t feel the least bit sorry.”

“No?” Her breath caught.

“No.” He reached forward and lightly touched her cheek. She could feel the warmth of his hand even through his glove. She wanted to press her own arms around him, to hold him closer.

Instead, he released a sigh and pulled his hand away. “No,” he repeated. “And I should. Under ordinary circumstances, I should be delighted to accompany you home. Too delighted, in fact. I hope you’ll understand when I say that tonight, I must leave you to make your own way back.”

Jessica looked up at him. And in that instant, she remembered what she was supposed to be doing. She’d vowed to seduce him. She
needed
to do it, needed the money quite desperately. He’d made her forget all that. She’d forgotten everything—everything except the feel of his mouth on hers.

“Surely a saint like Sir Mark can stand up to a little temptation,” she said.

But he didn’t smile at the jest. Instead he shook his head. And this time, he truly was grave. “Not tonight, Mrs. Farleigh. Not tonight I can’t.” And before she could answer, he turned and walked away from her.

She watched him go, her stomach twisting. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. She wasn’t supposed to want him, too. She was supposed to seduce him—but it felt dreadfully as if he were the one seducing her.

You can do better.

All she had to do was take her own advice and stop
thinking
about seduction. She liked him. She liked his style, to the point and honest and unstudied. She liked that she could make him lose his head. She liked that he made her forget, if only for a few minutes, everything but the primal attraction between them.

But most of all, she
loved
that he’d wanted her to win.

Men had complimented her beauty, and she’d stayed detached. They’d written poems about the timbre of her voice, and she’d been unmoved. But just the thought of Mark, saying in a voice roughened by desire that she could do better…that had brought her to the edge.

It was the first time in years that she’d liked it when a man kissed her. And therein lay the danger.

Maybe she could seduce him simply by not thinking too hard, by letting herself slide into an infatuation that came all too naturally to her. But could she then turn around and heartlessly betray him to Weston?

She’d done a great many stomach-churning things in the name of survival. She could do this, too. It wasn’t as if she had so much choice. All she had to do was let herself feel the heady thrill of attraction. She could tumble headlong into…into
like
with him, letting that nascent admiration grow. And then, when she respected him—when she appreciated him—when she longed for his touch and couldn’t bear to see him hurt, why, then all she had to do was betray him.

She wanted to vomit.

Instead, she sighed, took a deep breath to settle her stomach and collected her rifle.

THERE WAS ANOTHER letter from her solicitor when she stopped by the post office on the way home from the competition. The envelope was thicker than usual; it must have contained several pages. She ripped it open as soon as she was in private.

The first sheet was little more than an introduction—a few more bills left off the last note sent and a final tally of her accounts. The amount—something under nine pounds—was not something she cared to contemplate.

That sense of nausea had not dissipated, and the truth of her finances did nothing to ease her worries.

There was another letter from Weston enclosed—a terse note, really, demanding that she give him news. She passed over that one quickly and turned to the final sheet.

It was filled with her solicitor’s writing. She frowned and began reading as she walked.

I regret to inform you…

Her steps slowed in the path, then came to a standstill.

She read on. Her hands didn’t dare to tremble. Her feet didn’t dare to misstep. She could not look away from the page—the words it contained seemed impossible.

She’d had one good thing in her life, and while she’d been here in Shepton Mallet, flirting with Sir Mark, it had been ripped away. And Jessica hadn’t even had the chance to say farewell.

She should have been crying, but her eyes stayed dry. There was nothing tears could do to change the situation in any event.

Amalie had taught Jessica all the rules of being a courtesan. Stupidly, they came to mind now.

Never trust a man who gives you diamonds; whatever he needs to apologize for isn’t worth the jewelry.

Every new man is a risk; better the man of moderate means, who stays for two years, than the wealthy protector who abandons you after a month.

And most importantly of all:
Every courtesan needs a friend. We would never survive without each other.

For the past seven years, Amalie had been that friend. Amalie had taken the place of Jessica’s sisters. She’d been the constant warmth in Jessica’s life.

But Amalie wasn’t here, and none of her advice could see Jessica through this blow.

Don’t think. Act.
That wasn’t Amalie’s advice; it was what Jessica had told Sir Mark earlier today. And like that, she was turning in the path, fighting the burn in her lungs for breath. It might feel like a mistake tomorrow, but tonight, she needed a friend.

IT HAD BEEN a mistake.

That was all Mark could think as he made his way home from the competition, his long strides sending up clouds of dust around him. He forced himself to keep to a walk, even though he wanted to run, to put as much distance as he could between himself and what had just happened.

Rationally, logically, he knew that it was the sort of slip that anyone might make. Mrs. Farleigh was a widow, not some virginal miss. It had been nothing but a kiss—a heady kiss, to be sure, but he’d not shoved her against a tree as he’d wanted. He’d not flung her to the ground and lifted her skirts. He hadn’t even let his hands stray past her waist, and he’d wanted to drink her in.

It was just a kiss. A flirtation gone too far. If he’d been any other man, he’d have enjoyed the feel of her lips on his and then thought nothing more of the matter.

But Mark knew himself better. For him, it had been a catastrophe.

He’d lost his head before, and he hated the feeling. He knew what it was like to act without thinking, to have no control over what came next. It felt like close kin to madness, plain and simple. And he had seen what madness could do.

His mother, in her madness, had beaten his brothers. She’d done good works, yes, but she’d also nearly killed his brother.

He didn’t fear that he would become mad. He’d never detected the slightest propensity toward unreason in himself. Still, he hated the feeling of rage overtaking him, hated the feeling of want overpowering his intellect. It reminded him that no matter what he did, a piece of his mother had lodged inside him. He’d inherited a fragment of her temperament alongside her hair and her eyes.

As he’d grown older, he’d watched his mother ossify into a shell of a woman, nothing to her but rage and anger. He’d eaten porridge throughout his childhood, too; today, he could no longer stomach oats. He’d developed a distaste for excess emotion to go along with his dislike for gruel.

Mark had thought about his ideal wife before. He’d not yet found her, not in the myriad subdued and pliable debutantes that had been pushed his way. Mark’s ideal wife was intelligent. She would be a perfect companion: clever enough that he would never tire of her company, outspoken enough that she did not simply bow to his whims. She would challenge and confront him when necessary.