Page 32 of A Gentleman’s Offer

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Meg said animatedly, ‘Dominic, I am horribly afraid that he has stolen all her money. As well as being her father he is her trustee, though I do not know if she has others, and I do not think there is anyone who would question his right to invest her money as he chooses. Not now Mama is gone from his house. I am perfectly confident that he has shared no details of my sister’s fortune with her – you’ve met him; you have seen how he is. I fear he has taken it and spent it all, and that is why he was so keen for to marry you.’

‘A man he thinks is in his power,’ he responded slowly. ‘Someone who would be unable to object, however furious he might be when he learned the truth. My God, Meg, you must be right!’

She was in a curiously ambiguous mood, both energised and troubled, eyes sparkling, and her intelligence was exhilarating to him. ‘What I do not know,’ she said, ‘though perhaps I can guess, is what he has done with such a fortune. Look about you – he certainly hasn’t spent it on interior decoration.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘and from my experience of the wine he serves his guests, he isn’t spending it on that either, and God knows he can hardly have had a new coat this century. Well, I am not one of those men – though I would go bail your father is just such a one – who cannot endure to think that his wife is more intelligent than he is. I stand in awe of your superior intellect, and I believe you truly have got to the bottom of the matter at last, and will shortly puzzle out all the rest. Yes, I can see that you are quite puffed up with your own consequence as a result, and I cannot marvel at it. But if we were indeed married, madam, I can think of many enjoyable means I might employ to remind you that intellect is not quite everything.’

‘Really? How intriguing.’ She seemed most willing to be diverted from these serious matters now.

He rose and came to her side. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, looking down at her, smiling wolfishly. ‘I might, for instance, shower you with kisses till you cannot distinguish your head from your heels and admit that in some matters I may have the upper hand. That’s while you still remember how to speak in coherent sentences, of course, which presently, I assure you, you will forget.’

‘Try me.’

‘That’s a most tempting offer. Rather in the nature of a dare, perhaps, if you imagine for a moment that I will not do it.’ They were standing very close together now, and Dominic in reality had very little idea what he was saying. God, he wanted her. This flirting and teasing was all very well, it was delightful, but underneath it all he was always aware now that he wanted her so badly.

‘I think you probably will do it. I’m sure you’re quite capable of it. The question is, will it achieve its object and make me submit to you?’

‘The beauty of my plan,’ he murmured, reaching out and running one long finger very gently down her cheek as she closed her eyes and swayed towards him, as caught up in the moment as he was, ‘is that it doesn’t matter. Whether you do or you don’t, I’ll still have kissed you. There’s nothing I want more in life just now – or at least, nothing I can have. I need to forget everything else in the world, all of our worries and our uncertainties, in the sheer intoxicating pleasure of your embrace. So how can I lose?’

‘Must I be the loser then?’ She turned her face to where his hand still rested, and found his palm and pressed a kiss into it. The intimacy of it almost overset him. He shivered, the intensity of emotion she aroused in him still new and strange and wonderful. He’d unhesitatingly trade all the sex he’d ever had for one soft touch of her lips on his palm. She pierced him to his core. Which didn’t mean that innocent little caress was enough for him; far from it, he was hard for her, here in her aunt’s drawing room in her father’s house, with only a closed door – not even a locked one – between them and the danger of discovery. It was all so tangled in confusion. He wasn’t sure if anyone in the Nightingale household would mind enormously if they were discovered in a compromising situation, since the woman she was supposed to be would – if nothing occurred to stop it – be his bride in a week or two. But it would make it so much harder for Meg to cry off, to refuse to become Maria forever, and that would be damnably unfair. It would be just another, softer form of blackmail, and he could not countenance it, tempted though he was.

‘I hope you will never be the loser by any action of mine. I want to give you everything.’

She chuckled, her breath whispering across his sensitised palm and sending a bolt of electricity leaping and fizzing through him. ‘I can’t believe you really want to give me… everything… here and now, in this room, sir.’ The tip of her tongue darted out and licked the tender skin, and he groaned. She was tormenting him, and it was delicious.

‘Of course I do. My idea of everything encompasses a great deal, I should tell you.’

‘So does mine,’ she breathed, and then that dangerous, wicked tongue of hers licked its way slowly up his long finger to the end, circling it, before she drew the tip into her hot, wet mouth and began sucking on it. He gasped and stroked the inside of her lip very gently, and in response she sucked harder, drawing his whole finger inside her and moving up and down upon it in a manner highly dangerous to his composure. His other hand, sadly neglected, jealous of its more fortunate fellow, sought her breast and cupped it. Through the thin fabric that covered her, he felt her nipple harden under his touch, and brushed the pad of his thumb across it. It was her turn to let out a low, inarticulate sound of pleasure that vibrated enticingly around his wet flesh. It was searingly erotic in itself, and as a taste of greater pleasures to come it left him breathless. To imagine her moaning in just such a fashion, to imagine not only hearing the delicious sound but feeling it, while she…

But she released his finger with tantalising slowness and said against it, ‘Your clever plan to kiss me into helpless submission… how’s that working out for you, Dominic? Do you feel I’m on the brink of breaking down and acknowledging your superiority in this matter?’

‘What plan?’ he growled, only half-joking. ‘I can barely remember my own name, let alone what I wanted to know. And as for being on the brink, good God… Don’t stop, Meg. I have no idea what you were going to do next, but I’m very sure that I was going to like it. Or I could do something – perhaps it’s my turn, as is only fair – that you would enjoy enormously.’

‘I was enjoying that.’ He hadn’t moved his hand away from her face – whyever would he? – and she kissed his palm again. But he was highly attuned to her every mood, and he was afraid that it felt like an end rather than another beginning.

‘We do need to stop,’ she said, confirming his fears. ‘We must have been alone here for a great while, and quite apart from observing the proprieties, we need to gather our wits and see how best we can arrange to meet my brother.’

Her words made no sense to him, dazed with desire as he was, but he released her instantly, though he did not quite have the strength to step away from her. ‘I don’t give a fig for the proprieties, and I give less than a fig for your brother. What in heaven’s name has Francis to do with anything? I scarcely know the fellow, apart from recognising him when I see him.’

‘Nor I, in truth,’ she said, smiling up at him, his frustration echoed in her face. ‘I couldn’t tell you how often I’ve met him in my life, but certainly it can’t be very many times. I’d much rather stay here, lock the door, and see who can reduce whom to helpless submission. As you said, there really could be no loser in such a contest. But you know it won’t do. It’s not that I care what anyone would think – what the servants are thinking right now, for instance. I don’t, really. But we still have a great deal we need to arrange, and Francis is the key to it all. Or at least, I hope he is. He is the only person who has the right to question Lord Nightingale’s finances.’

‘You think he may be privy to your father’s disreputable secret?’ Dominic tried not to let the doubt creep into his voice, but wasn’t at all sure that he succeeded.

Meg laughed. ‘Oh, no. I’m sure he isn’t. I understand from Maria and from Hannah that they have very little to do with each other from one year to the next. They could never be described as close; you must have observed that Francis was not at the engagement party, though I believe my aunt might have invited him even though my father would not have done so. I would wager that he knows nothing at all. But he may be able to find it out quite easily.’

‘From what I have seen of him,’ Dominic replied drily, ‘I find it much easier to believe that he knows nothing than that he will be able to find out anything at all. He seems a good fellow, if a trifle reserved, and has a reputation for being most amiable and easy-going – excessively so, even – but a searching intellect I fear he is not.’

‘I did not know,’ she said calmly. ‘All that I do know of him, really, is that he has as little to do with our father as possible, which I must count as a strong point in his favour. If they lived in each other’s pockets, I would be wary of the strength of their connection and would not think of approaching him for help. I might even consider it dangerous. But as matters stand, that is not a concern. If Francis cannot look into things directly himself, which I can quite see he may not be able to if all you say of his character is true, he will easily be able to employ someone to do so. Indeed, it must be greatly in his own interests to take such action, if I can persuade him that there is even a slim chance my suspicions could be correct.’

‘Of course he is the perfect person to ask, if you are reasonably certain he can be trusted not to reveal all to your father,’ he said, taking her hand and pressing it. ‘How can I help?’