Leaning over her, one hand on the padded chair arm, he took her wrist and placed it on his breastbone. The hair crinkled beneath her fingertips.
He guided her along the line that led down and disappeared into his breeches. There she stopped, uncertain, but he urged, “Go on, little allumeuse. Show me the skills of a Frenchwoman.”
The breeches had to come off, she supposed, and she supposed he expected her to remove them. Very well, so she would. But if she was Cherie, with the skills of a Frenchwoman, then she should pay special attention to the bulge that resided therein. Seduction, she remembered, was her game.
In a rush, she pressed her hands to his groin. He jerked. She explored with her fingertips. He groaned, a harsh sound torn from him. His pleasure brought a rush of pleasure to her, and when he stood she whimpered an objection.
“You push me too far.” He jerked his open breeches, removed his garters and stockings and everything in one furious sweep. “You deserve—”
He stopped, arrested by her gaze. She hadn’t known a man would be so large, so swollen with impatience. For the first time she knew this wouldn’t work, and she shook her head silently.
“You deserve…damn, I’ll give you what you deserve.” The wrath disappeared from his tone, but not the threat. He tossed a fringed pillow on the floor and lowered himself before her where she rested on the chair. Some reflex made her press her knees together tightly, but he made no objection. He only stroked her belly with his hands until suspense made her quiver. He touched the corner of her mouth with his fingers, separating her lips, and leaned into her. Now he kissed her as she remembered, and she couldn’t speak.
Then she didn’t want to speak.
He tasted her, moved his lips on hers, sipped at her mouth. Their breath dueled, their tongues stroked sweetly. Bronwyn was swept away for hours, for years, lost in the darkness and reveling in it. What he had taught her before was nothing compared with this, and when his mouth retreated, she followed, murmuring complaints.
He sat back on his heels and found her ankle beneath the hem. Stroking the bone, he asked, “Tu veux que je mets ma langue dans la chatte?”
Rich with promise, his voice persuaded her. “Monsieur? Ah, oui.”
Lifting an eyebrow, he smiled and pointed to his tongue. “Vraiment! Ma langue?”
Anything involving his tongue would be heaven, she was sure. “Oui, oui.”
“Tu m’ embête.”
Trepidation touched her. “Oui?”
“Very much oui. You make me a beast with your daring.” He fondled the back of her knee, then placed it on his shoulder. “Most women wouldn’t agree to such a thing, not even with a lover of long standing.”
Before she could ponder such an enigmatic observation, he lifted her skirt and slid under it.
In the mirror the reflection of the candles flickered and glowed.
Like that flame, his tongue singed her flesh as he neared it.
It burned. She burned.
His mouth touched her, kissed her in a way she’d never imagined. She closed her eyes.
She wanted to push him away; she wanted to hold him close. She flexed her hands, curled her toes. She opened her eyes, and he rose above her, so close his shoulders blocked the light.
“Tu as le sang chaud,” he said.
She made no mistakes this time. She didn’t agree, only reached out and wrapped her trembling arms around his waist.
“Tu veux coucher avec moi, oui?”
She stared, uncomprehending.
“You must agree to make love with me, ma vie.” He laid his cheek against hers. “I’ll not have you denying your consent later.”
“I would not.” Her indignation was weak, but only because her body waited and trembled. Still he stroked her, waiting, and she croaked, “I will make love with you.” She pushed his head back and glared at him, even though he lowered his gaze. She insisted, “Now.”
“A demanding woman,” he marveled.
Shaking his shoulders, she insisted, “A frantic woman.”
He refused to move with the speed she instructed. Almost as if he wanted to punish her for some trespass, he slid slowly to his knees on his pillow, pulled her to him, and positioned her. With all the time in the world, he fit them together as she watched anxiously.
He pushed inside her.
Her flesh burned. He hurt her. He was too large, just as she’d thought. “Please,” she faltered. “Don’t.”
He lifted his gaze and looked at her. Really looked at her for the first time that evening.
Reality struck her like a blow. He was Adam, the Adam as she’d known at Boudesea Manor.
And she was Bronwyn.
She’d never deceived him. He’d always known who she was, and he possessed her like a man intent on establishing a claim. No wonder he’d avoided looking at her—the truth was written in his eyes. “No,” she whispered.
“Yes.” Smiling with all his white teeth, he never slowed.
“No!” She pushed at him, but he adjusted his grip on her legs, widening them.
Her maidenhead yielded, unmatched by his relentless advance. He pressed on until he rested against her. He stopped, breathing as hard as if he’d run a great race. “You gave your consent. You swore you’d not abjure.”
Untouched by the resentment clouding her mind, her body adjusted to his invasion, easing about him. A residue of the need she’d experienced still rushed in her blood, augmented, perhaps, by her anger. “Finish, then. Finish, but I hate you. I hate you forever.”
“Forever is a very long time.” His eyes burned her as he moved once more. “And you have a great reserve of passion…Bronwyn.”
“Did you think I would not seek such meager revenge as I could manage?” Adam rubbed his aching leg and glared at Bronwyn’s back. “You humiliated me.”
“Taking my virginity is not a meager revenge.” Enveloped in a satin wrap and lying stomach down on the fainting couch, she twisted his lace cravat as if his neck were inside it. “At least, I don’t consider it so.”
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He was usually not so clumsy, but her unforgiving fury had taken him by surprise. She acted as if she were the offended party, not he, refusing to admit her culpability. “We must come to an understanding in this matter before we return to Boudesea Manor.”
“I’m not returning,” she said in a monotone. “I told you before.”
“Of course you are. You can’t stay here. It’s not proper. Should word of your identity escape, your reputation—”
“As the ugly Edana sister,” she interrupted, “will be ruined. So you’ve said. And I say—”
“I don’t like it when you use language so vigorously.” He sounded like a prude, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Having Bronwyn treat him as if he were a cad grated. He’d sworn that when he caught up with her, he’d make his opinions known. She’d experienced the sting of his anger, the fury of his possession—so why did he feel guilty? With a patience he didn’t know he retained, he said, “You expected I would be incensed at your defection.”
“I didn’t know that you would sneak around like Molière performing in that”—she searched for the title and finished petulantly—“that play.”
He hid a smile, although she still declined to look at him. Probably because he refused to don more than his shirt. “Are you speaking of The Doctor in Spite of Himself? The play in which the woodcutter masquerades as a doctor by speaking Latin gibberish?”
“That’s it.” She hunched her shoulder expressively.
“I spoke French, not Latin, and it was not gibberish.” He stepped close behind her and stroked the fall of her hair, amazed anew at its color and flyaway texture. “I once said I could make love in four languages, and it’s true, although the idioms are not the kind a gently bred woman would know—even if she actually spoke French.”
Springing away from his hand, she raged, “You laughed at me.”
He was silent. Better than
most, he realized how love shriveled when exposed to mockery. Speaking French to her had been an irresistible impulse, one born of her sham accent and his temper. Trying to make her understand, he said, “When first I met you at Boudasea, I didn’t know you. I saw only that dreadful wig, the cosmetics which hid, I thought, greater horrors. Then as I became acquainted with you, I realized you concealed your soul.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t conceal myself.”
“Don’t you? Don’t you play games with us lesser mortals?” He caught her hair again and pulled, demanding an answer. She shrugged, and he chuckled. “See? You can’t deny it. I was discovering you, stripping away your disguise, anxious for the final unveiling.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” she said coldly.
“Tonight in Madame Rachelle’s salon, I could only stare. All your masks were gone, you were as magnificent as the moon on a cloudless night, and I had not been there.” He experienced a sincere stab of grief, of jealousy. “Other men had seen you, spoken with you, fallen in love with you, and I had not been there. I felt like a mother would feel, forced to leave her baby, only to return and find the child walking. So you see, you’re not the only one with a complaint.”
She whipped her head around and glared. “A complaint? Is that what you think I have? A complaint?”
Her gaze flamed with contempt before she turned her back once more. His sincerity hadn’t touched her. She still thought him a whoreson. This came of trying to explain his emotions to a woman. He snapped, “Marriage is a bargain, and someone must get the worst of any bargain.”
“I don’t want to get the worst of this bargain,” she answered sullenly.
He clenched his fists and hoped he could keep from strangling her. “You’re not getting the worst of the bargain. I’m the one who’s providing the money, the home, the stability.”
“I’m the one who’ll live under your thumb. I’m the one who’ll suffer when my enemies taunt me with your mistresses.” She stared into the fireplace, seemingly fascinated by the cold ashes. “I’m the one whom you’ll have the right to beat if you so choose.”
Stung, he snapped, “As if I would.”
“Few men go into a relationship expecting to hate their wives, but it’s more common than everyday affection.” Pulling the wrap close around her as if she were cold, she said, “You say I’m not a gambler, yet you wish me to marry and gamble on your continued interest.”
The cobalt-blue satin molded her, and his gaze lingered on the tensile strength of her spine, expressed so plainly in her posture. “I do not see how I could fail to remain interested in a woman who leads me on such a chase.”
She ignored him as she cradled her chin in her hand. “What greater gamble is there? For if a man is unhappy with a relationship, he can leave, find another woman, beat his wife. A man has all the rights. If a woman is unhappy with the marriage, she can do nothing.”
“Except make his life miserable, as you’re doing with me.” Exasperated, he watched as she swung her bare feet restlessly in the air. The wrap slipped away, leaving her ankles and calves bare, but he acquitted her of deliberate incitement. Indeed, he even acquitted her of teasing. She was so bound up in her mortification, she didn’t care that he was there.
“You ghastly creature.” She drew out the insult as lovingly as a caress. “At least I haven’t been chatting with my secretary about the disadvantages of marrying a learned woman.”
Ah, so there it was. “I was afraid you heard. Freely I admit my guilt, and can offer no reasonable defense. I’m a clumsy man, rough and uncultured as any common seaman.” Only a lecher would desire a virgin so recently deflowered, he mused.
“Teaching me to kiss and then complaining because I was too good a student.” With a sharp tearing sound, the lace of the cravat ripped in her hands. “Making me want to visit your bed, then heaping scorn on me.”
Still, he couldn’t forget the recent sounds of her pleasure and the movement of her body against his. She’d tried to dismiss him when she realized his perfidy, but she hadn’t been able to maintain her scorn. He couldn’t forget the sweetness of her surprise, her amazement, as she discovered passion. He felt ten feet tall when he remembered how she’d dismissed his expertise at first; then feared it; then sought it.
Tossing the shreds of lace into the fireplace, she said, “You were surprised to discover I was a virgin, weren’t you?”
“No, not surprised.” Relieved, but not surprised. Overjoyed, but not surprised. Surprise was too small a word, and that in itself shocked him. He’d told his mother her virginity interested him only in as much as he wished to prove his paternity. Was this possessiveness he experienced?
“Why would you be surprised? After all, I am the ugly sister.”
Traps lay buried in this conversation, traps to catch any man preoccupied with the shape of the woman rather than the verbal sparring. “You are so beautiful you make my heart stop.”
Clearly disbelieving, she pulled a long face and issued an ultimatum. “I’m staying at Rachelle’s.”
Cautiously he perched at the foot of the couch. “Madame Rachelle is a kind woman, but you’d be embarrassed to have her paying your support.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, distrusting his every movement. “The Princess of Wales is interested in my work on the manuscripts, and has agreed to my petition for pension.”
“Ah.” He caught her ankle and smoothed one finger along her arch. Her toes curled; she jumped and tried to wrestle away. Casual as the lecher he now knew himself to be, he kneaded the muscles of her foot. “I suppose you have more time to work on the manuscripts here than at Boudasea Manor, also.”
To resist such a massage proved beyond her powers of resistance. As he’d known she would, she relaxed in slow degrees. “Yes, my time is my own here. There are no social engagements unless I wish them, no…”
He moved to her other foot. Her head sank down onto the couch and she seemed to forget what she was saying. “No…?” he encouraged.
“No…um.” She’d lost her train of thought, and she frowned. “I like meeting important men.”
Forcing himself to continue his massage, he asked, “Has anyone recognized you?”
She moaned when he found a particularly tender place between her toes. “It always hurts there when I walk in slippers with those high Louis heels.”
Her moan distracted him, but only for a moment. “Recognize?” he prompted.
“No, no one knows who I am.”
Cheered, he asked, “Do you want me to rub your calves?”
Lifting her head, she snapped, “Absolutely not.”
The rhythm of his fingers never broke. “Of course those fools who call themselves gentlemen wouldn’t identify you. The change is remarkable. I always knew you were attractive, but somehow it all seemed skewed. Now it’s as if a butterfly has struggled from her cocoon. How did you do it?”
“You thought I was attractive before?”
It was the only thing she’d heard, he noted with satisfaction. In tiny increments he moved up to her ankle, her calf. “You don’t think I tried to seduce you just because of your mind? I’m not so altruistic.”
“I never thought…”
Such craftiness was unworthy of him, he castigated himself. But it was nothing less than the truth, and she was such an easy mark. Almost as if she’d never heard a sincere compliment before. “I can’t imagine why you covered your hair with that dreadful brown wig. Even if you put this glorious mane up and covered it with one of those lacy caps, you’d still be one of the most striking women I’ve ever seen.” He tickled the sensitive skin behind her knee.
Her muscles twitched beneath his ministrations. “Honestly?”
“Don’t you remember how frantic I was for you in the woods?”
In the voice of sweet sarcasm, she said, “It was dark in the woods. You couldn’t see me.”
“I’d been looking at you all evening long. I knew what I w
as getting.” Leaning down, he blew in short puffs, lifting the light silk over her thighs.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.” She shivered. “It’s no use. I’m furious with you.”
“But how else can I apologize?” he protested.
“You’re going to apologize by doing the same thing that made me angry?” She sounded incredulous, but her voice caught.
He laughed low in his throat and feathered touches up the inside of her thighs. “Was that really what made you angry?”
“We shouldn’t—”
Sinking one finger inside her, he marveled at her body’s compliance. “Oh, shouldn’t we?”
Chapter 11
Adam wiped the sweat from his brow. He’d never seen so much prime society in London in August. For the noble and wealthy, the Season was over. Normally they escaped the heat by retiring to their country estates. But not this year. This year ladies and their maids jostled with tradesmen and the scum of the city to cling close to Change Alley, where fortunes changed hands daily and the porters now rode in carriages.
He didn’t want to be here, shouldn’t even be walking on his aching leg, but where else had he to go? Bronwyn wouldn’t budge from that salon, and he wouldn’t return to Boudasea Manor without her.
“Lord Rawson! Good to see you back on your feet.” Northrup slapped his back like a cohort of long standing. “Heard you were ill.”
Adam staggered a bit under the unnecessary force. “Not at all. As you see, I’m healthy as ever.”
“I would have bet on it.” Tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his velvet waistcoat, Northrup nodded sagely. “Yes, my lord, I would have bet on it.”
Adam eyed the younger man. “The Change has been treating you well, I see.”
Northrup grinned, a bit deflated, a lot proud. “Very well, sir. Your teachings have sustained me.” Like a boy with a new toy, he promenaded away, then back, flaunting his expensive new outfit.