Page 53

T he room was dark, and she was half-hidden behind the heavy silk draperies, but she was wearing a pink silk…well, it was some color of a gown. Johnathan couldn’t quite tell what color, the world having gone a bit fuzzy at the edges, but it must be pink, mustn’t it?

“This gown suits you,” he whispered against her skin, reaching out to stroke one of her long curls. “That shade brings out the rich color of your hair.”

She stiffened, and he paused for an instant, confused, but after a moment the tension eased from her slender frame, and the long, white fingers clutching the edge of the windowsill relaxed.

What had become of her gloves?

The thought was there and then gone again as he buried his face in the impossibly soft skin of her neck.

“Dear God, you smell divine.” He opened his lips over the pulse behind her ear, groaning at the seductive scent.

It was soft, with a subtle hint of roses, but it was earthy, as well, like rich soil and clean skin warmed by the sun.

“Is this a new perfume? You should never wear any other.”

He gathered up the long, luscious curl he’d loosened from where it had fallen against her pale neck, captured it between his fingers, and raised it to his mouth.

She made a sound, a sharp intake of breath.

Desire flooded his belly as he dragged the silky strands across his lips, and then he was lost in her seductive scent.

A quiet sigh left her lips, a slow, sweet exhale unlike any he’d ever heard from her before, and arousal shot through him, headier and more dizzying than the brandy he’d consumed. He wrapped his hands around her slender waist and eased her back against him, and she…

For one strange, frozen moment it felt to Johnathan as if she was about to pull away from him. He wanted her badly, but he loosened his hold on her waist at once.

He might be deep in his cups, but he wasn’t a brute.

But she didn’t pull away. Instead, she arched into him, one hand stealing up to cradle the back of his neck, her fingers sifting through his hair.

“ Yes .” Johnathan’s heavy eyelids dropped closed, and he eased her hips back, tucking the tantalizing warmth of her against him, so she could feel how much he wanted her.

He’d admired Lady Susanna from the first moment he’d seen her, had desired her, but this time his passion for her felt different, deeper, a needy ache not just in his cock, but everywhere, in his palms that throbbed to cradle her breasts, in his fingertips and his lips, the arch of his neck clamoring for her touch, his mouth desperate for her tongue.

Christ, even the soles of his feet wanted her.

Everywhere, every inch of him was desperate to have her, but this wasn’t his bedchamber, and several hundred people were crowded together just at the other end of the hallway.

A gentleman didn’t toss up a lady’s skirts in his hostess’s library.

“My carriage is just outside,” he murmured, unable to resist the temptation to nip at the dainty lobe of her ear. “Will you come with me?”

No answer, unless it was the maddening drift of her fingers over the back of his neck. Johnathan groaned, every hair rising in reaction to her touch.

But a gentleman didn’t toss up a lady’s skirts…

She turned her head, and her soft breath drifted over his jaw.

A gentleman didn’t toss up…

He trailed his fingertips over the slender curves of her hips, across her belly, and the sound she made, that needy little gasp, God help him.

This is a library, and not even your library .

It’s Lady…Lady…Lady Somebody-or-Other’s library.

Johnathan let his fingers wander higher, tracing a line from her belly to the space between her breasts, praying for strength when he found her unencumbered by a corset, all her delicious curves unbound, as if she’d been waiting for the stroke of his roving hands.

No corset? That didn’t seem ? —

She caught his hand and pressed her lips to his palm.

A gentleman didn’t toss…

No matter how much he wanted her. No matter that he was trembling for her, his cock as rigid as an iron spike, pressing against his breeches, his chest heaving with every labored breath, his head swimming?—

A gentleman didn’t…

But Johnathan did. He was .

He wrapped a hand in her hair and eased her head back, swallowing at the sight of the long, graceful curve of her neck laid out like a feast before him.

He caught her chin between gentle fingertips and turned her head aside so he could press his lips there, his tongue darting out to taste the arch between her neck and shoulder, his hands sliding up to cradle her breasts.

A soft cry fell from her lips as he stroked her, the peaks of her nipples going taut against his palms, and just like that, with her hungry little pleas echoing in his head, Johnathan was lost, his hand fisting her skirt and dragging it to her knees, then higher, imagining the pink silk caressing her thighs, and higher still, past the warm, wet hollow between her legs where he was dying to bury his face, his mouth, his tongue. “I want to taste you, Susanna.”

She went utterly still, her reaction so sudden and unexpected it chased some of the fog of desire from Johnathan’s head. “Susanna? It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s Melrose.”

A gasp broke from her lips, shattering the quiet. It was a gasp of distress, not passion, and in one baffling instant, she went rigid against him. Johnathan froze, stunned. “Susanna? I beg your?—”

But she didn’t give him a chance to beg for anything. Before he could utter another word, she snatched her skirt from his fist, jerked it down, and tore herself from his arms.

Johnathan instinctively moved to follow her, to catch her and soothe her with whispered assurances, but she was gone in a whirl of skirts, leaving behind only the memory of her silky hair against his lips, and a faint scent of roses.

He stood there for long, silent moments, dazed, but the lady had made her choice. There was nothing left for him to do but return to the ballroom.

Johnathan gathered himself together, his heart curiously heavy in his chest, but just as he was leaving the library, he stepped on something, and leaned down to pluck it up.

It was a violet ribbon.

He pressed the smooth silk to his nose, and drew in a deep breath.

Roses.

He slipped the ribbon into his pocket, and left the library.

Later, Emmeline wouldn’t recall how she managed to gather her wits enough to tear herself from his arms at last, nor would she remember her frantic flight down the corridor, a prayer on her lips that she wouldn’t meet anyone else—dear God, please —her feet echoing on the bare wooden boards of the staircase, then the blur of figured green damask wallpaper in the hallway on the third floor.

Then, at last, the safety of her bedchamber, her lungs on fire, her breath ragged, tearing at her throat as she sucked in great gulps of air.

It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s Melrose.

There was only one Lord Melrose in London, and he was the very same Lord Melrose Juliet had wagered on, the same Lord Melrose who was meant to make Juliet his countess before the end of the season!

Emmeline’s head met the door behind her with a hard thump.

No, it can’t be. I can’t possibly be so unlucky as to ? —

“Emmeline, is that you? Oh, thank goodness! Where have you been? Help me loosen some of these buttons, will you?”

Emmeline stared dumbly at Juliet, uncomprehending, her heart still pounding.

“Emmeline! Quickly, dearest, before I collapse.”

Juliet was tearing at the neckline of her gown, panting, her cheeks flushed with hectic color. Emmeline, recalled to her senses, turned Juliet around and began attacking the long row of silk-covered buttons on the back of the gown. “I told you this gown was too tight, Juliet!”

“It wasn’t too tight yesterday.” Juliet was still trying to catch her breath.

Emmeline wrestled with the delicate violet silk until at last she managed to loosen a half-dozen buttons.

“You didn’t consume four cream cakes at tea yesterday, as you did today.

Dash it, these buttons are as slippery as those treacherous satin slippers you’re wearing. I’m shocked you didn’t turn an ankle.”

“The heat nearly finished me, if that gratifies you. The corset, too, please. Oh, I wish I could do without one, as you do!”

“I wasn’t graced with your curves.” Nor would she have known what to do with them if she had been.

Once she’d freed Juliet from the gown and corset, her sister fell onto the bed with a theatrical flop. “Thank goodness! You’ve no idea what a narrow escape I’ve had, but I simply refuse to swoon at my first ball of my very first season.”

“It’s fashionable to swoon.” Emmeline leaned over the bed, flapping Whateley’s Observations on Modern Gardening —which she’d somehow miraculously held onto during her encounter with Lord Melrose—in front of Juliet’s face to cool her.

“If one is a delicate, tender young lady in modest ivory silk, which I most decidedly am not.” Juliet plucked fretfully at her damp cotton shift. “Oh, dear. I’m all sticky.”

Emmeline peered down at Juliet’s face, an anxious frown on her lips. “Why didn’t you call a servant to help you unlace?”

“I expected you’d be here, and I thought once I’d caught my breath, I might go back down.”

“You can’t go back down, Juliet. Indeed, there’s no question of it. You’re far too warm, and you don’t look well. I advise you to go to bed at once.”

“But I haven’t danced with Lord Melrose yet! How am I meant to marry the man and win our wager with Lady Fosberry if I never even dance with him?”

Warmth seared Emmeline’s cheeks at the mention of Lord Melrose. The better question was, how was Lord Melrose meant to dance with Juliet when he was kissing Emmeline in Lady Fosberry’s library?

Dear God, what have I done?

“There will be other balls,” she managed to choke out.

“Yes, you’re right. I’m wrung out, I’m afraid.” Juliet pushed a straggling lock of hair from her forehead, and grimaced at her wrinkled gown. “Where did you run off to, Emmeline? I thought you meant to remain in your bedchamber all evening.”

“I was just…er, I was…”

Kissing Lord Melrose in the library. Yes, the same Lord Melrose you’re meant to be betrothed to by the end of the season, only it wasn’t just kissing, there was touching, too, and ? —

Juliet’s eyes narrowed on her face. “Why are you so flushed and out of breath?”

“Flushed?” Emmeline gulped. “Who’s flushed? Not me, I assure?—”

“Never mind,” Juliet said, waving a hand. “I know where you’ve been.”

“You do ?” Emmeline’s voice was little more than a panicked squeak.

“Of course.” Juliet gave her a puzzled look. “You’ve been down in Lady Fosberry’s rose garden, haven’t you?”

“ Yes . Yes, indeed, I have!” It wasn’t a lie, after all.

“I do wish you’d changed your mind about attending the ball tonight, Emmeline. You will come to the next one, won’t you? You’re such a graceful dancer.”

Emmeline recognized Juliet’s best wheedling tone, and let out an inelegant snort.

“You can’t come to London for a season and refuse to dance a single dance, Emmeline.”

“I can, quite happily, and anyway, I don’t imagine the circumstances of my not dancing would have changed if I had gone to the ballroom.”

“Nonsense. I’m sure you would have had a perfectly lovely time.”

Certainly, if one could call an evening spent among the ton lovely, which Emmeline did not . “Never mind me. I’m content as I am. Now, off to bed with you.”

The sooner Emmeline put this day behind her, the better.

But Lord Melrose refused to be dismissed as easily at that.

He haunted the darkest hours of the night, his low, deep whisper in her ear, his soft lips leaving trails of fire across her skin, his quickened breath and the gentle rasp of his beard awakening nerve endings she didn’t even know she possessed, despite her diligent study of human physiology.

She danced along the edge between dreams and memories until light began to peek around the closed draperies. It was only then Emmeline realized she’d left the linen bundle with her ribbon inside stuffed into the pocket of her dress.

She eased the coverlet aside, careful not to disturb her sleeping sister, and tiptoed across the floor to her discarded gown. She searched through the pockets, a relieved breath leaving her lungs when she felt the rough texture of linen under her fingertips.

But her relief was short-lived. The bundle was open, the layers of linen crumpled, and her violet ribbon…

It was gone. Her ribbon was gone.