Page 8 of Beneath the Devil’s Mask (The Hidden Hearts Collection #4)

Moonlight bathed his proud aristocratic features, accenting the planes and hollows beneath his high cheekbones. Anne eyed him with fascination. She felt rather like a moth, risking a flutter near a bright flame, but keeping back far enough so there was no danger of singeing her wings.

She had always sworn to Lily that she did not perceive the attraction of the rakish marquis, but Anne saw it well enough. He was handsome, despite his look of a man who had experienced far too much of the world.

A fallen angel, the romantic Lily would sigh. But the term did not fit. No, Mandell had never been cast out, Anne decided. He had with deliberate arrogance turned his back on heaven.

“If you keep staring at me like that,” Mandell said, “you will put me to the blush, my lady.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.” Anne lowered her eyes, aware that she was the one who was blushing. “It is just that we have never been well acquainted before. I never had the opportunity to—”

“To study wickedness up so close?”

“No. You are not the only wicked man I have ever known. There is also my brother-in-law, Lucien,” she added dully.

“Lucien? You wound me by the comparison, Sorrow. Your esteemed brother-in-law, and you will forgive my saying so, is an underbred boor. He is taking himself to the brink of ruin and doing it with no originality. Whereas I flatter myself that at least I am going to the devil with a little style.”

“Are you?” Anne regarded him with grave curiosity. She had spent so many of her days striving always to do what was right, what was proper. She could not help but be intrigued by someone who lived as he pleased, not giving a damn for the consequences or the world’s opinion.

“Surely you cannot be satisfied with your life,” she said. “Pursuing such a reckless course. Has it made you happy?”

“Ah, now I have the feeling you are trying to learn my secrets, my lady. You would not like them.” He was still smiling but his voice held an edge of warning.

“I did not mean to pry. It is only that I have noticed you before at other gatherings. You seem solitary, alone even amid a crowd.”

“You have noticed me before? I am flattered. I wish I could return the compliment, but I feel as though tonight I am seeing you for the first time.”

“You are not. I was always there.” Anne was surprised by the trace of bitterness in her voice. Yes, she had always been there, fading into the woodwork. “I daresay you just don’t remember me very well. I have not been to London for the past two years.”

“Two years? Has it been as long as that? I never really knew you before. But you have changed. You are not nearly as mild as I recalled.”

“I suppose I am different. It is owing in some part to being widowed.”

“You miss your husband a great deal?”

“Naturally.” Anne moved automatically into the expected response. She had had enough times to perform it since Gerald’s funeral. “Of course, one would. Miss one’s husband or any close acquaintance. Any death diminishes one. ‘Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’”

“Then you were not in love with him?”

Anne started to protest, but he silenced her, saying, “My dear Lady Fairhaven. A grieving widow usually does not wax so cheerfully philosophical, nor does she quote Donne.”

He did not sound shocked, merely amused. All the same, Anne hung her head. She had the feeling the moonlight revealed her face too cruelly, those less than perfect feelings she sought to keep tucked away.

She was startled to feel his fingers beneath her chin. Slowly, he tipped up her head, forcing her to look at him. His expression astonished her. She would never have thought Mandell’s smile could ever be quite that gentle.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I would have thought worse of you if you had esteemed Sir Gerald. He was a pompous, narrow-minded prig, full of his own self consequence.”

As a dutiful wife, Anne knew she ought to defend her husband’s memory, but that shocking voice that piped up inside of her from time to time affirmed that Mandell was right.

It didn’t matter for she could not speak anyway, not with Mandell standing so close, holding her prisoner with his eyes. They were as dark and relentless as a night with no stars.

He continued, “And I no more approve your choice in poets than I do husbands.

I have never been that fond of Donne. My tastes run to something more like ‘Say what strange motive, Goddess, could compel a well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, could make a gentle belle reject a lord?”

He caressed a tendril that had strayed loose from her braids. The back of his hand grazed against her cheek.

“I am afraid I don’t recognize that passage,” she said.

“It is by Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock.”

“Oh!”

He twined the strand around one of his long slender fingers. “You are fortunate I have no scissors or I would be tempted to do a little theft myself. Your hair is like spun gold in the moonlight.”

Anne flushed, reaching up to rescue her curl. She was not accustomed to such compliments. Lily would have known some light response to make, Camilla some clever retort. But she was not Lily or Camilla. She was only Anne.

She summoned up her most prim expression. “Is it possible, my lord, for you to hold a conversation with a woman without attempting to flirt with her?”

“I don’t know. I have never tried.”

“I wish you would do so, at least with me.”

“Why? If ever there was a woman in need of a little flirtation, I have a notion it is you.”

“What I need most,” she said sadly, “I fear you cannot give me.”

“Faith, milady! For the heaven you promise me with those lips, I would be more than willing to attempt it.”

“You should not say such things to me.”

“And you should not purse up your mouth that way. It might give a man the notion you want to be kissed.”

“If any man ever tried it,” she said fiercely, “he would fast realize his mistake.”

But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, Anne realized the mistake had been hers. A rake like Mandell could regard such a statement as nothing other than a challenge.

Before she could move, he closed the distance between them, slipping his arms about her waist. Anne’s pulse leapt with alarm. She splayed her hands against his chest to hold him at bay.

“You promised. You said for the moment I was safe with you.”

His dark eyes mocked her. “That was then. This is now.”

“You tricked me!”

“Lured you down the garden path? I fear that I did.” He whipped her arms behind her back, pinioning her wrists in a steely grip. “But then you already knew what a reprehensible fellow I am, my virtuous Anne.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said. Her struggles were futile as he drew her against him, the softness of her breasts crushed against the unyielding wall of his chest. Beneath his silken garments, she could sense his muscles tensed like iron.

The layers of clothing that separated her from his hard masculinity seemed far too flimsy a barrier.

“Why should I not call you virtuous?” he asked. Resting his cheek alongside her temple, he breathed a kiss against her hair. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but—” Unable to escape, she tried to remain rigid, but the heat of his mouth caressed the sensitive skin behind her ear, causing her to tremble. “You make it sound like a mockery.”

“Forgive me, but I have never been any great respecter of virtue.” He drew back, and she tensed knowing that he meant to have his kiss.

“Please,” she whispered. His eyes glinted in the darkness. They held no mercy, only a fire that caused her heart to pound with a strange mixture of fear and excitement.

His mouth came down to cover hers. She had steeled herself for one final, furious resistance, but the softness of his lips took her by surprise. She had been braced for something far more hot, ruthless, not this gentle questing, this coaxing caress.

She could not prevent a sigh from escaping her. Her mouth parted slightly beneath his. The pressure of his kiss became more demanding and he eased his tongue between her lips.

Anne stiffened. The shock of a contact more intimate than she had ever known reverberated through her entire body. His mouth teased, tasted, plundered, his tongue mating with hers. Disturbing sensations of heat rushed through her, making her knees grow weak.

She held herself still against him, but deep within some dark secret place in her heart something stirred, just a brief flickering of that passionate part of herself she had learned to deny.

She did not respond to Mandell’s embrace, but briefly, achingly, shamefully, she wanted to. When he released her at last, she was thoroughly shaken.

The kiss that left her so shattered showed few visible signs of affecting him except for a peculiar gleam in his eyes, his breath coming light and quick.

“That is much better,” he murmured. “With a little more such effort, we might erase that primness which spoils your mouth entirely.”

Anne touched one trembling finger to her lips, bruised and moist from the force of Mandell’s embrace. A hot flood of mortification coursed into her cheeks. She had not responded to Mandell’s improper advances, but she had not put up a life-and-death struggle either.

Mandell glanced down at her with a slight frown. “You are not going to weep or swoon on me, are you?”

Anne shook her head.

“Good. Would you like to hit me?”

Anne shook her head again. She felt too stunned, groping her way through the confused haze of her own emotions to do anything. She released a great shuddering breath.

“You must be quite mad. Why did you want to do that to me?”

“Why did I want to kiss you?” Mandell’s voice was laced with amused incredulity. “My dear Lady Fairhaven, your education has been sadly lacking.”

“Yes, but I mean, why me? I am not at all the sort that—” Anne stumbled on, miserably aware she was making no sense. “You have been kissing the wrong woman.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Unlike you, my dear, I never get lost in the dark.”