Page 3 of Chloe and the Devil (Regency Spinsters Alliance #2)

CHAPTER THREE

Lucien saw the answer to his question in the guilt he discerned in Chloe’s expression and her pale blue gaze. Eyes that were so like her father’s.

It was a guilt she quickly concealed by schooling her features and lowering long lashes to conceal that truth from him.

An unspoken admission which only increased the anger he was feeling toward her.

Because Gabriel, Chloe’s father, would only have needed to take one glance, unintended or otherwise, at the words written in the letter Lucien had received so late at night to know exactly who that missive was from.

Chloe, like most young ladies of Society, must at some time have been taught to write in a beautiful and distinctive cursive by one of her nannies. Lucien had seen that handwriting before, many times, on the invitations Chloe sent to him over the years to invite him to spend Christmas, New Year, Easter, or a week or two in the summer with her and her father, either here in London or the main St. Albans ducal estate in the country.

Invitations that Lucien had previously always gladly accepted, having no family of his own and enjoying being in the company of Gabriel and his daughter.

But since the events of last Christmas, Lucien had known he could no longer, in good conscience, continue to spend any of those holidays with the Lord family. The father, because Lucien was ashamed of his previous actions. The daughter, because Lucien had no faith in himself to resist repeating those actions if he was given the opportunity to do so.

Luckily, in the interim, Gabriel had met and was about to marry Lily Tremayne this coming week. After which, Gabriel’s elderly aunt, Lady Hammond, was due to move into St. Albans House to stay with Chloe so that the newly married couple could depart from London to spend the first week of their honeymoon at St. Albans Park. They then intended to make a slow journey into the Scottish Highlands so that Lily might be reunited with her estranged younger sister.

This, thankfully, had postponed the time when Lucien would need to refuse the first invitation since what he referred to in his mind as the incident , to join father and daughter, soon Gabriel’s wife, at St. Albans House for any of the holidays.

Lucien was grateful for the reprieve. At least, he had been, until Chloe’s letter had been delivered to him this evening. Now he was once again feeling decidedly wrong-footed. And once again, it was the fault of the young lady standing in front of him.

A young lady he was very aware he was completely alone with in the moonlight.

“What mischief have you been involving yourself in now, miss?” he demanded to know, unable to hide his impatience with both her and this situation.

Chloe might look like a golden-haired and blue-eyed angel, but Lucien knew from his long association with Gabriel that the other man’s daughter had been embroiling herself in one dilemma after another since she first learned to walk and talk.

Those situations had been considered harmless when she was still a child. But she was now a young woman of nineteen, and the situations she involved herself in tended to be exponentially more dangerous. To herself directly or to her reputation.

For instance, Lucien knew from an exasperated Gabriel that Chloe’s latest adventure was an association with five other young ladies in Society which they had named the Spinsters Alliance. An alliance in which those six ladies had pledged never to be forced into becoming the wife of any of the gentlemen of the ton , young or old.

Gabriel had first become aware of that situation because those six young ladies had held their very first meeting in his library. A conversation he admitted to having unashamedly listened to.

Lady Lily Tremayne had been one of the original six young ladies who had entered into the alliance. A pledge she had broken only weeks later when she and Gabriel had admitted their love for each other.

To Lucien’s amusement, Gabriel had dutifully requested the permission of those young ladies to marry Lily. Which, because they cared for Lily, and could no doubt see the love between her and St. Albans, they had all duly granted.

Proving their pledge could easily become null and void if those ladies believed themselves to be loved for themselves and themselves alone. As Gabriel now openly showed he loved Lily so wholeheartedly.

That Chloe had entered into such an agreement had greatly surprised Lucien, when he knew her to be a beautiful, warm, and charming young lady. Since her Coming Out the previous year, Lucien had watched as many of the young gentlemen of Society had flocked to her side at the numerous entertainments that took place during every London Season.

But he also knew her well enough to believe that if Chloe had made such a promise, then she was stubborn enough to keep it. No matter how many of those young bucks flattered and fawned over her, as well as coveted the fortune she would receive upon her marriage as the only child of a wealthy duke.

The imperious manner in which Chloe now tilted her head was every inch that of the daughter of a wealthy duke. “The matter I wish to discuss with you is of a pressing nature.”

His nostrils flared. “And if your father had realized the letter delivered to me came from you?”

She waved a dismissive and gloved hand. “I trust you enough to know you would never have allowed that to happen.”

“You trust me enough?” he echoed incredulously.

Her cheeks became flushed. “I trust your need for discretion enough,” she corrected tartly.

Lucien scowled. “What does that mean?” He sensed the comment was meant as an insult.

The glitter of Chloe’s eyes as she glanced up at him told him he was right to do so. “It means I am well aware of your desire—no, the burning necessity—for you to remain the cold and proper Lucien Lyons, the Duke of Hellsmere, to all who know you.”

“I do not remember being cold or proper with you on this past Christmas!”

Some of the color leeched from her cheeks. “I thought we had both agreed never to mention that incident again?”

They had. At Lucien’s insistence. Unfortunately, he had not been able to forget their passionately shared kiss for a single moment since it happened.

Lucien had always enjoyed spending the holidays with Gabriel and Chloe. An arrangement which had been all well and good while Chloe was still a child, but it had been brought home to Lucien this previous Christmastime, quite succinctly, that was no longer the case.

“I thought you had gone to bed long ago.” Lucien prompted curiously when he saw a still fully dressed Chloe hovering in the hallway outside the bedchambers at St. Albans Park on Christmas Eve.

She gave him a warm smile. “I did, yes.”

Lucien frowned, having spent the past hour imbibing Gabriel’s best brandy as the two men lingered beside the fire in the library after dinner. “Then should you not be fast asleep? I was always told that no presents would be delivered until or if I had fallen asleep,” he recalled with a wistful longing for those years of his childhood when his parents had still been alive.

“I am not a child,” Chloe snapped.

Lucien startled. “I did not say you were.”

“You meant to imply it with your talk of presents being delivered.”

Had he?

Possibly, yes.

But that was perhaps because it had become more and more difficult, during the year since Chloe was introduced into Society, to continue to think of her as a child.

The plump temptation of her lips said she was far from being that, as did the fullness of her breasts now visible above the neckline of her gown.

Chloe had grown into a beautiful woman. She might only be a little over five feet tall, but she nevertheless possessed womanly curves. Her beautifully sculpted face was also devoid of all signs of the plumpness of childhood. Most especially in those full and tempting red lips Lucien could not seem to look away from.

As if aware of the reason for his stare Chloe held up what looked to be a bunch of some sort of Christmas greenery. The leaves were a bright green and had the plump and white berries Lucien vaguely recognized as belonging to the mistletoe plant.

“Do you know what this is for?” she prompted huskily.

Lucien looked at her blankly. “I have always believed it to be poisonous.”

“It is if you touch the leaves too much and put them anywhere near your face or mouth,” Chloe acknowledged. “But if I hold it above our heads, just so.” She raised the bunch of greenery high above them. “Then the two people standing beneath the mistletoe are supposed to kiss each other.” The tip of her tongue appeared between and then slowly moistened her lips as she gazed at him from beneath long lashes.

Lucien’s own mouth became suddenly dry. Nor could he tear his gaze away from those now damp and parted lips. “I believe we both know that would not be good sense for either of us,” he finally managed to say gruffly.

She chuckled. “I do not believe good sense has any part of Christmas.”

“Chloe—” Lucien could say no more because a bold Chloe was now standing on tiptoe and pressing her lips firmly against his.

Lucien wished he could claim that it was the brandy, having lowered his defenses, which caused him to kiss her back. But it would be a disservice to them both to speak such a lie.

One taste of Chloe’s lips and Lucien wanted more. He took more. As he kissed her, his arms moved purposefully about her waist to mold her delicious curves against the much-harder contours of his body, his cock throbbing almost painfully inside his pantaloons.

His hunger for her grew even more intense after he broke the kiss to taste the slender column of her throat and then lower, to the full swell of her creamy breasts. Her skin tasted of honey and heaven’s nectar and every degree of sweetness in between.

Her groans of pleasure were a match for his own as he sucked and laved that creamy flesh into his mouth. He never, ever wanted to stop. Until ? —

“Lucien!” Chloe grasped his shoulder to shake him from the haze of lust blinding him to everything and everyone but the woman in front of him. “I can hear Papa coming up the stairs!”

Those words were enough to penetrate even the darkest depths of the desire Lucien had fallen victim to.

“Go to your bedchamber,” he instructed fiercely as he pushed her away from him.

“But—”

“Go,” he said again, harshly. “I never wish for you to speak to me of this again.”

The pain of his rejection was visible in her eyes and the paling of her cheeks.

And then the pride of Lady Chloe Lord fell firmly back into place, and she looked down the length of her nose at him. “Do not fear, I never shall!” She turned quickly on her heel and fled down the hallway to her room.

It was not until Lucien hastily straightened his clothing that he noticed the mistletoe lying discarded and forgotten at his feet.

“My particular problem now was not caused by anything foolish on my part.” The sharpness of Chloe’s tone interrupted Lucien’s damning memories of that night. “Well…not in the way that you are implying,” she corrected irritably before resuming looking at him with that haughty expression. “I am well aware that you, and most other members of Society, believe me to be an empty-headed flibbertigibbet. That you all think my only interests in life lay in fashion, attending lavish entertainments, and bestowing my affection upon my over-indulged cat.”

Lucien knew that many in Society did view her in that silly way. But he also believed that was because it was the only side of herself Chloe allowed them to see.

Having observed Chloe growing up, aware of the intensity of her curiosity about many things, Lucien knew that her outward similarity to a butterfly, as she flitted from interest to interest, was not the whole picture of who the adult Lady Chloe Mariah Lord had become.

Except, since this last Christmas, Lucien had denied himself even the wish to think of her as being an adult, let alone more than she appeared on the surface.

He knew that to do so would be to open a labyrinth of emotions inside himself that might prevent him from ever finding his way back to the sanity he had been so desperately clinging to for these past weeks and months.

“Tell me what has happened that you felt the need to risk your reputation by requesting a meeting in the garden of an unmarried gentleman in the middle of the night.” Not just any gentleman, Lucien acknowledged heavily, but one her father believed he could trust implicitly with his daughter.

A trust that Lucien had brutally abused that night all those weeks ago.

He still had no idea how he had allowed his guard to slip so monumentally that he had succumbed to Chloe’s wickedly challenging gaze when she accosted him in the hallway that night, the bunch of mistletoe clutched in her hand.

Nor would he attempt to pass the blame for that lapse on his having been totally relaxed and mellow after enjoying a delicious Christmas meal and then imbibing an excess of St. Albans’s excellent brandy.

To do so would only be deceiving himself.

He was a single gentleman aged eight-and-thirty, was not just the peer of Chloe’s father but also his close friend.

Lucien had also spent many years dismissing all efforts by Society’s matrons and their daughters in their machinations to entrap him into matrimony.

He could only think that those successful years of resistance had given him the false belief that his self-control was absolute.

A belief in himself that hadn’t merely been dented but shattered into a million pieces when he found himself faced with the challenge of trying to resist kissing the fully grown and impishly beautiful Chloe Lord.

Damn it, no matter how much Lucien had tried to dull the memories of that night, mainly by avoiding spending time in Chloe’s company and by attempting to have sexual relations with several ladies of the demimonde, it was an endeavor he had failed at miserably. For the first time in his life, he had found himself disinterested and totally unable to sustain a cock stand, despite those ladies’ efforts to rouse him.

Instead, he had found himself returning home on those evenings to take himself in hand before pumping his cock to completion as he once again thought of the taste and feel of Chloe’s lips against his own.

He usually tipped over the edge of that desire when he imagined going further. Of having those full, cherry-red lips wrapped around the girth of his cock as he thrust inside the heat of Chloe’s mouth.

It was all the image he had needed for copious amounts of pre-cum to escape from the slit at the top of that bulbous head as he imagined he felt the soft rasp of Chloe’s tongue on his sensitive flesh.

So far, Gabriel, being completely engrossed in his love and obsession for Lily, hadn’t noticed that Lucien had been avoiding any social engagements or invitations since Christmas which might, for any reason, result in his being alone in a room again with Chloe.

This, being alone with her now in the dead of night, with the full moon as their only illumination, was not only foolhardy but dangerous. To both of them.

“Well?” he snapped when he realized he had still not received an answer to his question.