“Annabelle, you sh-shouldn’t have,” Evie murmured later that afternoon when Annabelle confessed what she had done. The four friends sat in Evie’s bedroom, where the girl sat with her face covered in a thick application of white cream that was supposed to get rid of freckles. Staring at Annabelle from beneath the heavy layer of bleaching unguent, Evie tried to continue, but it was clear that her powers of speech— which were not all that extensive to begin with—had been obliterated by disapproval.
“It was a brilliant strategy,” Lillian declared, picking up a nail file from the vanity where she sat. Whether she actually approved of Annabelle’s actions was not clear, but it was obvious that she would remain loyal to the end. “Annabelle didn’t actually lie, you see. She merely repeated a rumor that had been told to her, and she made it clear that it was just that—a rumor. What Kendall chooses to make of it is up to him.”
“But Annabelle didn’t tell him that she knows for a fact that the rumor is unf-founded,” Evie argued.
Lillian concentrated on filing her nail to a perfect oval. “Still, she didn’t lie.”
Feeling defensive and guilty, Annabelle looked at Daisy. “Well, what do you think?”
The younger Bowman sister, who had been repeatedly tossing the Rounders ball from one hand to the other, gave Annabelle an astute look as she replied. “I think that sometimes not giving someone all the information is nearly the same as a lie. You’ve started on a slippery path, dear. Beware your next step.”
Lillian scowled in annoyance. “Oh, do stop talking like a sideshow fortune-teller, Daisy. Once Annabelle gets what she wants, it won’t matter how she accomplished it. Results are everything. And Evie—no ethical hairsplitting. You agreed to help us manipulate Lord Kendall into a compromising situation—how is that any worse than Annabelle repeating an unfounded rumor?”
“We all promised not to hurt anyone,” Evie said with great dignity, taking a small towel and wiping thick streaks of cream from her face.
“Lady Constance hasn’t been hurt,” Lillian insisted. “She’s not in love with him. It is quite obvious that she wants Kendall only because he’s an end-of the-season bachelor, and she’s unmarried. Heavens, Evie, you’ve got to harden yourself. Is Lady Constance any worse off than we are? Look at us—four wallflowers who’ve got nothing to show for their efforts so far, except freckles, an adder bite, and the humiliation of having exposed our knickers to Lord Westcliff.”
Annabelle, who had been sitting on the edge of the mattress, let herself fall back to the center of the four-poster bed. She stared at the striped canopy overhead, feeling guilty. Oh, how she wished that she could be more like Lillian, who believed that the end justified the means! She promised herself that she would be strictly honorable in the future.
But…as Lillian had pointed out, Lord Kendall could either believe or disregard the rumor at will. He was a grown man who could make decisions for himself. All Annabelle had done was to sow the seeds—it was Kendall’s choice either to nurture them, or let them lie fallow.
In the evening, Annabelle dressed in an ice pink gown made of countless floating layers of transparent silk gauze. The waist was tightly cinched with a reinforced silk belt adorned with a huge white rose. Her skirts made a soft swishing sound as she walked, and she fluffed out the top layers, feeling like a princess. Too impatient to wait for Philippa, who was taking forever to dress, Annabelle left the room early, in the hopes of seeing her friends. With any luck, she might even encounter Lord Kendall and find some excuse to slip away with him for a few moments.
Favoring her ankle slightly, Annabelle walked along the hallway that led to the grand staircase. On impulse, she stopped at the Marsden private parlor, the door of which had been left ajar, and she entered it cautiously. The parlor was unlit, but surplus light from the hallway was sufficient to illuminate the shadowy outlines of the chess table in the corner. Drawn to the board, she saw with a flicker of pleasure that her game with Simon Hunt had been restored. Why had he taken the time to arrange the pieces as if they were still in play? Did he expect her to make another move?
Don’t touch anything, she told herself …but the temptation was too great to resist. She squinted in concentration, assessing the situation with a fresh eye. Hunt’s knight was in the perfect position to capture her queen, which meant that she would either have to move the piece or defend it. Suddenly she saw best how to protect her threatened queen—she slid a nearby rook forward to capture Hunt’s knight, thereby eliminating it from the board altogether. Smiling in satisfaction, she set the captured piece to the side and left the room.
Descending the grand staircase, she crossed through the entrance hall and walked along another hallway toward a circuit of public rooms. The carpet beneath her feet muffled all sound…but suddenly she sensed that someone was behind her. She felt a frisson of warning across her exposed upper back. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that Lord Hodgeham was following her, moving with surprising swiftness for such a stocky man. His heavy fingers hooked into the back of her silk belt, forcing her to stop or risk the possibility of having the fragile band snap in two.
It was a sign of how arrogant Hodgeham had become that he would accost her in a place where they could so easily be seen. Gasping in outrage, Annabelle spun to face him. She was confronted by the sight of his portly torso crammed into tight evening clothes, while the oily scent of his cologned hair assaulted her nostrils. “Lovely creature,” Hodgeham muttered, his breath pungent with the scent of brandy. “Recovering nicely, I see. I think perhaps we should resume our conversation of yesterday, before I was so pleasantly diverted by your mother.”
“You revolting—” Annabelle began in fury, but he interrupted the flow of words by clamping his fingers on either side of her jaw and squeezing hard.
“I’ll tell Kendall everything,” he said, his bulbous lips very close to hers. “With sufficient embellishment to ensure that he will look upon you and your family with the purest disgust.” His ponderous body pressed hers against the wall, nearly squeezing the breath from her. “Unless,” he said, his sour respirations striking her face, “you decide to accommodate me in the same manner that your mother has.”
“Then go and tell Kendall,” Annabelle said, her eyes blazing with hatred. “Tell him everything and be done with it. I’d rather starve in the gutter than ‘accommodate’ a repulsive swine like you.”
Hodgeham stared at her in incredulous fury. “You’ll regret it,” he said, flecks of spittle gleaming on his lips.
She smiled with cold contempt. “I don’t think so.”
Before Hodgeham let go of her, Annabelle caught a movement out of the corner of her vision. Turning her head to the side, she saw someone walking toward them—a man who was moving with the stealthy strides of a stalking panther. It must have appeared to him that she and Hodgeham had been caught in an amorous embrace.
“Release me,” she hissed to Hodgeham, and shoved hard at his bulky girth. He stepped back, finally allowing her to take a full breath, and shot her a glance of malevolent promise before walking in the opposite direction of the approaching man.
Rattled, Annabelle stared into the face of Simon Hunt as he took her by the shoulders. He was watching Hodgeham hurry away, with a hard, almost blood-thirsty gaze that made her blood turn cold. Then he looked down at her in a way that caused her breath to catch. Until that moment she had never seen Simon Hunt without his usual nonchalance. No matter how she had insulted or cut or spurned him, he had always reacted with predictable jeering self-assurance. But it seemed that she had finally done something that had provoked genuine fury. He looked ready to strangle her.
“Were you following me?” she asked with forced calmness, wondering how he had managed to appear at that particular moment.
“I saw you walk through the entrance hall,” he said, “and Hodgeham trailing after you. I followed because I wanted to find out what was going on between the two of you.”
Her gaze turned defiant. “And hav
e you found out?”
“I don’t know,” came his dangerously soft reply. “Tell me, Annabelle—when you said that you could do better, was this what you had in mind? Servicing that idiotic lump of lard on the sly, in return for the pitiful recompense he gives you? I wouldn’t have believed you to be that much of a fool.”
“You sodding hypocrite,” Annabelle whispered furiously. “You’re angry with me for being his mistress and not yours—well, you tell me something—why does it matter to whom I sell my body?”
“Because you don’t want him,” Hunt said through his teeth. “And you don’t want Kendall. You want me.”
Annabelle did not understand the seething tangle of emotions inside herself, or why this confrontation had begun to fill her with a strange, terrible exhilaration. She wanted to hit him, throw herself on him, provoke him until the last few fragments of his self-control were smashed to powder. “Let me guess—you’re prepared to offer me a more profitable version of the same arrangement that I supposedly have with Hodgeham?” She laughed scornfully as she saw the answer on his face. “The answer is no. No. So once and for all, leave me alone—”
She stopped as she heard the chatter of more people coming along the hallway. Exasperated and desperate, she whirled around to find a door that she could slip through, to keep from being seen alone with Hunt. Catching her in one arm, Hunt hauled her inside the closest room and shut the door smartly.
Registering the shape of the piano and the clutter of music stands, Annabelle jerked away from Hunt. He reached out to steady a flimsy music stand that had nearly been overturned by the brush of her skirts. “If you can stand to be Hodgeham’s mistress,” Hunt muttered, following as she retreated farther into the music room, “God knows you can stand to be mine. You could say that you’re not attracted to me, but we both know that you’d be lying. Tell me your price, Annabelle. Any sum you’d care to name. Do you want a house of your own? A yacht? Done. Let’s get this over with—I’ve had enough of waiting for you.”
“How romantic,” Annabelle said with an unsteady laugh. “My God. Your proposition is somewhat lacking in subtlety, Mr. Hunt. And you’re wrong in your assumption that my only option is to be someone’s mistress. I can get Lord Kendall to marry me.”
His eyes were as dark as volcanic glass. “Marriage to him would turn into a living hell for you. He’ll never love you. He’ll never even know you.”
“I don’t want love,” she said, stricken by his words. “I just want—” She paused as a sudden pain centered in her chest, in a ball of unendurable coldness. Staring up into his unreadable face she tried again. “I just want—”
There was a sound at the door. The knob began to turn. Startled, Annabelle realized that someone was about to enter the room—and then all hope of marrying Kendall would vanish like so much dust in the wind. Reacting instinctively, she seized Hunt’s arm and dragged him with her toward an alcove by the window, framed by paneled curtains that had been hung on a brass rod. The only thing in the alcove was a window seat upholstered in velvet, with a few books stacked carelessly on one side. Jerking the curtain shut, Annabelle flung herself on Hunt and clapped her hand over his mouth, just as someone…or sever also me ones…entered the music room. She could hear the muffled sounds of masculine voices, and some banging and clanking that perplexed her until she heard the plucking of out-of-tune violin strings. Oh, God. The musicians had come there to tune their instruments before the ball began. In all likelihood she was just about to be compromised in front of an entire orchestra.
There was just enough light spilling over the top of the curtain to cast a faint glow over their features— enough for Annabelle to see the evil smile that had suddenly appeared in Simon Hunt’s eyes. One word or sound from him in these incriminating circumstances, and she was done for. Her hand pressed harder over his mouth, her eyes only inches from his as she pinned him with a gaze that threatened murder.
The musicians’ voices mingled with the sound of instruments being tuned, drawn-out notes being held until they joined in harmony, dissonance being disciplined into order. Wondering if they would be caught, Annabelle stared blindly at the curtains, willing them to remain closed. She felt the touch of Hunt’s breath against the edge of her hand and realized that his jaw had gone taut. Glancing at him, she saw that the malicious amusement had vanished from his gaze, replaced by a look that was far more alarming. She froze, her heart beginning to hammer so heavily that it hurt, and she stared at him with widening eyes as his free hand lifted slowly. Her fingers were still clamped over his mouth…he began to pryat them delicately, one by one, starting with the smallest, while his breath fanned in quickening surges against the side of her hand. Her head moved in a stiff little shake, and she strained away from him, even as his arm tightened around her waist. She was utterly trapped…helpless to prevent Simon Hunt from doing whatever he wanted.
The last finger was pulled away, and Hunt pushed her hand down and gripped the back of her neck. Her fingers fluttered against his sleeves, her upper body arching slightly as his grasp on her nape tightened. He was not hurting her, but he had made it impossible for her to move or struggle. As his head lowered, her lips parted with a silent gasp, and her mind went dark.
His mouth was on hers, gentle but sure as he coaxed a response from her. She was filled with instant fever, burning everywhere, helpless against the onslaught of a desire like nothing she had ever known before. The memory of their one kiss was nothing compared to this…perhaps because he was no longer a stranger to her. She wanted him with a desperation that frightened her. The pressure of his lips floated lightly over hers, straying briefly to her chin, her cheek, leaving trails of soft fire wherever they ventured, before he returned to her mouth with more explicit pressure. She felt the tip of his tongue against hers, the silken touch so unexpected that she would have recoiled had he not been holding her so tightly.
The elegant cacophany of the musicians jangled in her ears, reminding her of the imminent possibility of discovery. She forced herself to relax against Hunt, her body shaking. For the next few minutes, she would let him do anything to her, anything, just so long as he didn’t betray their presence. Hunt tasted her again, searching with subtle strokes of his tongue. She was shocked by the intimate exploration, and even more by the unspeakable sensations that shot through the vulnerable places of her body. Delicious weakness overtook her, and she wobbled in his hold, her hands groping for his neck, his hair, the locks thick and silky against her fingers. The tentative inquiry of her hands caused him to draw an out-of-rhythm breath, as if her touch had affected him intensely. He slid one hand up to the side of her face, cradling her cheek as he pulled back just enough to nibble and tease, catching gently at her upper lip, then the lower one, lavishing her with feathery brushes of warmth. Compulsively, she exerted shaky pressure behind his neck, urging him back down to her, and when his mouth took hers in another penetrating kiss, she nearly moaned aloud. Before the sound could escape her dilated throat, she tore her mouth away and buried her face against his shoulder.
She felt the quick rise and fall of his deep-vaulted chest, and the hot rush of his breath against her hair. Grasping the mass of pinned-up curls at the back of her head, he pulled her head back to expose her throat. The burning path of his lips began at the tiny hollow just beneath her right ear, awakening exquisitely sensitive nerves as he traced the line of a delicate vein with his tongue. His fingers slid over the top of her shoulder, his thumb finding the wing of her collarbone, his open hand exploring the fragile architecture of her body. Nuzzling the side of her throat, he found a place that made her shiver, and he lingered there until she felt another moan threatening to break from her kiss-dampened lips.
Pushing at him frantically, she managed to divert him for all of three seconds, after which he sought her mouth with another hungering kiss. His palm brushed over the silk that covered her breast, once, twice, thrice. With each slow pass, the heat of his skin sank through the veil of fabric. As her nip
ple tingled and budded, he stroked it tenderly with the backs of his fingers until it tightened even more. The increasing pressure of his kiss forced her head back in a position of surrender, opening her to the lazy caress of his tongue, the artful investigation of his hands. This wasn’t supposed to happen, her nerves shattering with pleasure, her body consumed with sensual heat.
He made her forget everything in those silent, febrile moments—she lost awareness of time, of where they were, and even who she was. All she knew was that she needed him closer, deeper, tighter …his skin, his hard flesh, his mouth wandering in heated trails over her body. She gripped at his shirt until it loosened from his trousers, clutching handfuls of the starched white linen in desperate need of the warm skin beneath. He seemed to understand that she had no experience at controlling this level of desire—his kisses became soothing, his hands beginning to move over her back in calming strokes. However, the more he tried to ease her craving, the worse it became, her mouth moving frantically beneath his, her body twisting in an anxious rhythm.
He finally resorted to taking his mouth away and holding her in a crushing embrace, his lips buried against the flushed curve of her neck and shoulder. Annabelle was absurdly grateful for the brutality of his grip, his arms forming heavy bands of muscle that helped to contain her violent trembling. They stood like that for what seemed an eternity, until Annabelle became hazily aware that the room was silent. Sometime during the past few minutes, the musicians had finished their preparations and left. Lifting his head, Hunt slowly reached for the edge of a curtain panel and moved it an inch to the side. Seeing that the music room was empty once more, he returned his attention to Annabelle, using the tip of his thumb to brush back a lock of glinting hair that had fallen over her ear.
“They’re gone,” came his rasping whisper.
Too stunned to think coherently, Annabelle looked at him without speaking. His fingertips traced the hot surface of her cheek, the swollen cushion of her lips. With something like despair, she felt the skyrocketing response of her unappeased body, the renewed vigor of her pulse, the wash of pleasure that slipped over her skin. That was the time to pull away from him, or her disappearance would soon be remarked on. To her shame, she remained still, her body hungrily absorbing sensations as Hunt continued to caress her. His hand moved to the back of her gown, and she felt the deft workings of his fingers, even as he bent and kissed her mouth again. This time she could no longer hold back the sounds; the small sobs that broke from her throat, the whimper of relief as the tight bodice of her gown was loosened. The cut of the neckline had made it impossible for her to wear a corset with cups— instead she had worn an under-the-bust style that had left her breasts unconfined beneath her chemise.