Page 5 of Chloe and the Devil (Regency Spinsters Alliance #2)

CHAPTER FIVE

“What shall we do?”

Lucien snorted upon hearing Chloe’s question. “I believe you have done quite enough already. I include your scandalous decision to arrange for the two of us to meet in my rose garden tonight at midnight.”

“How else would I have been able to explain the situation to you?” she accused. “My father’s visit with you at Hellsmere House this evening is another example of the fact you rarely come to St. Albans House anymore.”

“And you know exactly why that is,” he bit out.

Her cheeks bloomed with color. “I was always told that running away from a problem ensures it will never be resolved.”

“I am glad you also see the situation as being a problem.” Lucien gave a derisive huff. “I have no idea what madness could have possibly possessed me?—”

“Do not continue!” she cut in fiercely. “The last thing I am in the mood for tonight is to listen to you once again sharing your regrets about the events of that evening with me.”

Lucien looked away. “That does not mean I do not still have them.”

“Then I suggest you keep them to yourself!” She glared. “Let us blame that evening on my being giddy with Christmas happiness and you having drunk too much of Papa’s best French brandy, and once more agree never to mention it again.”

Lucien could not allot the blame for that evening in that same way.

Yes, he had been feeling mellow after a delightful Christmas and a sumptuous dinner. And yes, he had drunk several glasses of Gabriel’s best brandy. But he had not been drunk. Not even close to it.

Because of that, his clear memories of that event haunted him, day and night.

He could still taste and feel this young woman in his arms as he kissed her. He wanted her still. To hold, to kiss, to make love to Chloe and never have to stop.

But nothing, none of his memories of that night, could change the fact she was the daughter of his best friend.

“You are far too young for me,” he dismissed.

“Lily is only a year older than me, and she is to marry Papa on Saturday,” Chloe defended.

His top lip curled back. “Your papa was not the best friend of her father.”

She snorted. “Hardly!”

He nodded acknowledgment of Chloe’s understanding of her father’s dislike, his contempt, for the Earl and Countess of Truro. “Besides,” he continued. “Your father is about to marry the woman he believes is his soul mate.”

“You do not believe in soul mates?”

“I am doubtful I shall ever find one of my own,” he denied evenly.

“But you do intend to marry one day?”

“Of course.” He nodded abruptly. “But it will be for no other reason than to produce the Hellsmere heir.”

Chloe flinched. “Then I feel nothing but pity for the poor, unloved woman who will one day become your duchess.” She spat the words out.

Lucien knew that he had maintained his outwardly derisive expression, but inwardly, he felt something shrivel up inside him. It did not die, only shielded itself from further blows.

Could it possibly be his heart?

Lucien buried any thought of what damage he was doing to his heart by ignoring its wants and needs. No matter what Chloe said or currently believed to the contrary, she was too young, and Lucien was too old and cynical for there to ever be anything lasting between them.

“How did you arrive here earlier?” he demanded as the thought struck him once again that Chloe was completely alone.

“The same way in which I delivered that letter to you an hour ago.”

“Which is?”

“I walked here from St. Albans House two streets away.”

“With your maid?”

“Of course not. That would have been as damning as asking my father’s groom to prepare a carriage,” Chloe dismissed. “Luckily, once I arrived here, I was able to ask a young man, who was out carousing with a group of his friends, if he would deliver the note to Hellsmere House for me. Which he obviously duly did, otherwise you would not be here now.” She eyed him mockingly.

There was so much wrong with that statement that Lucien did not even know where to begin unraveling it. “You walked here alone?”

“Yes.”

“You then accosted a young man and his friends whom you believe had been drinking?”

“I asked if he would be so kind as to deliver the note to the front door of Hellsmere House,” she corrected. “Which he subsequently did.”

“For what price?”

“How did you know—” She broke off abruptly, glaring at him rather than continuing.

His jaw clenched. “I know because I was once young and liked to go out carousing with my friends, your father included,” Lucien bit out between gritted teeth.

Chloe frowned for several seconds before shaking her head. “I am having great difficulty imagining you being young, let alone out carousing.”

Lucien felt a nerve ticking in his jaw. “I assure you that I was. Well?” he demanded when she still didn’t answer his question.

She released a frustrated sigh. “He merely wished to kiss my hand.”

Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “Which you allowed him to do.”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize him or any of his friends?”

“I would not have approached them if I had!”

“So you stopped and made a request to a complete stranger, a young man whom you did not recognize as being part of Society and was obviously out drinking with several other men, that he deliver a letter to Hellsmere House for the price of kissing your hand. I beg your pardon?” he questioned sharply when Chloe muttered something under her breath.

“My bare hand,” she snapped in her resentment. “He requested to be able to kiss my bare hand,” she explained impatiently when Lucien stared down at her.

“And you allowed this?”

“Yes.”

“And then he and his carousing friends went merrily on their way?”

“Yes.”

“You then waited another hour alone in my rose garden for me to join you?”

“In the hope you would join me, yes.”

“And if I had not, you would have walked home alone, again, through the dark streets of London?”

“Of course.”

Lucien reached out to grasp hold of the tops of her arms before shaking her slightly. “Good God, are you so— Do you have no sense of self-preservation?”

“Despite what you obviously think to the contrary, I have a great deal of it.” Chloe shook off his hold, even though doing so would probably result in her having bruises in the morning. “But I do not believe that was to be your question originally. I might be young, but I am far from stupid. As I have said, to have asked for any of the ducal carriages to bring me here would have alerted my father’s head groom to my intention. One he would have felt compelled to report to my father the moment Papa returned home. After careful consideration, I decided the danger to myself, from walking here, was preferable to causing my father that concern. A concern which would, in turn, have led to him demanding an explanation from both of us.”

Lucien knew she was right. But that in no way nullified the danger Chloe had put herself in by venturing out onto the dark London streets so late at night before then accosting a group of drunken young men.

Dear God, they could have raped and murdered her, with no one the wiser until morning, when her absence from St. Albans House would have been noticed and a search for her ensued.

He wanted to shake her again, to berate her further, to— Bloody hell, he wished more than ever to spank her arse! “I will drive you home in my carriage,” he informed her stiffly.

“So that any and all might see me arriving home in one of the Hellsmere ducal carriages?” she derided.

“How you arrive home seems unimportant when you will surely be questioned if you are caught returning to St. Albans House alone and at this late hour.”

“I shall enter through the kitchen, which is deserted at this time of night,” she dismissed.

“And how do you know that?” His eyes narrowed. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”

She scowled. “If I have, then it is none of your business.”

“Have you?” he persisted.

“Once. Last summer,” she admitted. “When all the ladies who are now members of the Spinsters Alliance decided to visit Vauxhall Gardens.”

Lucien’s hands clenched at his sides. “You are an undisciplined brat!”

She gave a scornful laugh. “If that is so, then I am my father’s undisciplined brat to discipline and not yours.”

A nerve pulsed in Lucien’s jaw. “As his closest friend, I believe it is my prerogative to deal with this matter while he is so preoccupied with other events in his life.”

Chloe’s chin rose in challenge. “You do not have any authority over me. As my father's closest friend or anything else.”

Lucien’s hand positively itched to administer the spanking she so deserved.

He decided then and there that he would spank this reckless young lady’s backside.

And he knew the perfect time and place in which to do it!

* * *

Chloe endeavored to give every impression she was ignoring the brooding man sitting beside her inside one of the Hellsmere ducal carriages. The ducal carriage which Lucien had prepared himself rather than waking one of his grooms.

Chloe had stood just inside the warmth of the stables, between her thighs growing hotter and hotter, as she watched Lucien’s muscles flex with each smooth and capable movement of harnessing the horses to the front of the carriage.

The efficiency of his movements showed he had obviously done this for himself before, despite Chloe knowing he employed a full complement of grooms here and at his country estates.

Lucien had waited until after Chloe was seated safely inside the carriage, the curtains drawn, with a lit lantern to alleviate the darkness, before he roused one of his grooms from his slumbers to drive them. Lucien had then climbed inside the carriage to sit beside her. His silence since then had been palpable.

The longer that silence continued, the more Chloe believed it to be deliberate. Another way, no doubt, of Lucien showing his disapproval of her behavior this evening.

But what else could she have done but ask for Lucien’s assistance?

She needed help if she was to find the thief and have the journal returned to her. There were only two gentlemen Chloe totally trusted in this world: her papa and Lucien. For obvious reasons, she had not wanted to inform her darling papa of what she had done. Lucien, who she knew was as decisive and capable as her papa, had been her only other option.

He was currently the most silently disapproving decisive and capable gentleman she knew!

Lucien did not know it yet, and Chloe was still loath to tell him how prominently he featured in the missing journal, but because of that connection he really was the only gentleman she had felt able to tell of her dilemma and ask for his assistance.

His brooding silence now was intolerable. “You—” She got no further than that single word before, as if her speaking had released a tightly coiled valve inside him, Lucien became a flurry of movement.

Movement which resulted in Chloe feeling totally disoriented as she found herself upended and placed over Lucien’s muscular thighs, the skirt at the back of her gown thrown up and one of his arms across her back to hold her in place.

“Lucien—” Her protest at finding herself in this undignified position was cut short the moment one of Lucien’s large hands landed painfully on her backside, the force of the blow not lessened in the slightest by her thin cotton drawers.

Chloe screeched, whether in pain or indignation she was unsure, too busy trying to maintain her balance by clinging to the hardness of Lucien’s booted calves.

“You. Are. The. Most. Undisciplined. And. Reckless. Young. Woman.” Each word was accompanied by another smack to Chloe’s rapidly warming bottom. “It. Has. Ever. Been. My. Misfortune. To. Be. Acquainted. With.”

Chloe turned to glare at him over her shoulder. “I believe you deliberately made that sentence longer than it needed to be! I counted eighteen spanks at least.”

He gave an unrepentant grin. “My only regret is that I did not make the sentence longer still.”

“Barbarian!”

“Brat!”

The heat generating from Chloe’s smacked bottom began to bloom outward and inward, warming her belly, but concentrated more strongly in the swollen lips and channel between her thighs. The very damp and swollen lips and channel between her thighs.

How could she possibly be aroused after being subjected to such an undignified display of Lucien’s disapproval?

Chloe had no idea why that should be, only aware that she was indeed highly aroused. Her breasts felt swollen as her position over Lucien’s thighs caused them to spill over the neckline of her gown. The rosy tips were engorged and highly sensitive inside the bodice. That heat between her thighs was so intense, it felt as if a furnace burned there.

She only hoped Lucien did not become aware of it too.