Page 13 of The Forbidden Lord (Lord Trilogy #2)

For a moment, she feared she’d gone too far. His body was rigid, frozen, as unyielding as an iceberg as she stood there on tiptoe, her mouth joined to his with embarrassing intimacy.

Then a growl erupted from his throat as he opened his mouth over hers, hungering, needy. Grasping hands anchored her against his taut, lean body, and his mouth began an assault so wild and furious it stunned her.

She rose to his kiss, a fever gripping her blood.

It was easy to become Lady Emma, the bold half-Scottish lass.

Forgotten was Emily Fairchild’s shy uncertainty and virgin manner, blown into the distance like a bit of goose down.

He’d primed her for more, and it took only a tiny shove to thrust her over the edge into passion.

So when he drove his tongue deeply, she tangled her own with it, then went further, slipping her tongue between his open lips to explore the warm, silken dangers of his mouth.

His kiss grew almost brutal, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

Over and over he devoured her mouth, and when that no longer seemed to satisfy him, he stamped hard, possessive kisses along her cheek and down her neck.

His rough skin rasped against her, and his musky scent mingled with the flowery perfumes dancing in the garden air.

His hands roamed where they wished, gliding down her ribs and over the contours of her hips. No longer bound by any restraint, he left off kissing her neck to scatter kisses along her collar bone, then lower, along the neckline of her bodice until he reached the dip between her breasts.

She nearly pushed him away, surprised by his forwardness. Then she caught herself. Forcing herself to arch back, she allowed him to explore the inner curves of her breasts with his firm, knowing lips.

Pleasure pooled low in her belly like warm honey.

Goodness gracious, why must wickedness be so delicious?

The more his hot mouth caressed her, the more she wanted it against parts of her body that only some unnameable future husband should be allowed to touch.

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. She was rapidly losing control of this battle.

Then his hand tugged at the ribbon-trimmed neck of her gown, edging it down the slope of one breast and shocking her to the core. Shoving hard against him, she backed out of his embrace and crossed her arms protectively over her bodice.

A thousand reproaches sprang to her lips as his gaze shot to hers, hard, male, and ravenous. Then she caught herself. Lady Emma wouldn’t reproach a man for being a man.

It took all her will to paste a coy smile on her lips and lower her hands from her chest. “I doubt your Emily could ever kiss like that, Lord Blackmore.”

She fervently prayed that the dim light dappling the garden walks hid the full effects of their encounter. If he could hear her pulse beating triple-time or see her desperate attempts to draw air into her lungs, he’d know at once she wasn’t truly a flirt.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. As he stepped toward her, his expression slid from hot desire to pure astonishment.

Quickly, she caught up her fan. Brandishing it playfully in front of her, she danced away.

“That’s enough of that, my lord. I think I’ve proven sufficiently that I’m not this rector’s daughter of yours.

” When he merely continued to gape at her, she added, warming to her role, “If you’ll excuse me, I’d best return to the ball before my mother finds me being naughty again. ”

“Again?” he choked out.

“Surely you don’t think you’re the first man I’ve kissed, do you? I may be half-English, but I’m half-Scottish, too. And in Scotland, ladies are much more free to … um … enjoy themselves.”

The look on his face was priceless. Lady Dundee was right. Flirting with a man—especially one who’d nearly tossed her out of a carriage in his eagerness to get rid of her—was enormously satisfying.

Turning her back to him, she cast him one last teasing look over her shoulders. “But don’t worry. You rank with the best of the men I’ve kissed, I assure you.” Then she strolled away, smiling to herself in triumph even as she prayed he wouldn’t follow her.

But Jordan was completely incapable of following her. What the devil? Who the deuce was that woman?

That seductress masquerading in Emily’s body had acted like one of the Fashionable Impures auditioning a new lover, not like the virginal innocent who’d kept him tossing restlessly in his bed for months now.

He rubbed his lips. He could still taste her sweet, spiced breath and smell the lavender in her hair.

Lavender. Emily had smelled of lavender.

But many young women used lavender water. More to the point, could his sweet rector’s daughter have put on such a performance? She’d balked at telling one small lie. And she’d certainly never kissed like that.

Good God, he was hard as oak from that kiss. Taking out his handkerchief, he wiped away the beads of sweat on his brow. If she were Emily, where had she learned how to flirt and kiss and drive a man to utter distraction? He’d nearly deflowered her right here in Merrington’s garden.

Deflowered her! He snorted. As if that woman could possibly be a virgin. Emily Fairchild had most certainly been a virgin, but he had his doubts about Lady Emma.

Or had she merely been trying to confuse him? If it hadn’t been for that kiss, he would’ve sworn the woman was Emily. She tasted and looked and smelled like Emily. And she had a connection to Lord Nesfield.

His blood ran cold. Yes, there was that.

Muttering foul oaths under his breath, he adjusted his clothing to cover his still obvious arousal and walked slowly toward the house. He glimpsed a human shape in the shadows of a nearby tree, but assumed it was another couple dallying in the dark garden and walked on, deep in thought.

If it had been Emily, she’d been awfully stubborn in her lies. Could even Nesfield have coaxed the prim rector’s daughter into pretending to be his niece? And why? The man would need a strong reason for giving a nobody like Emily both a new identity and a lavish coming out.

A nasty thought cut viciously through his mind, stunning him with its ugliness. What if Emily were Nesfield’s mistress? Nesfield would never marry a rector’s daughter, but he might try to arrange an advantageous marriage for her once he was done with her … as payment for services rendered.

He shook his head. That was absurd. Nesfield could hardly have taken Emily as a mistress, then discarded her in two months’ time. Nor could Jordan believe that the Earl of Dundee and his wife would cooperate in such a scheme.

Nonetheless, Emily couldn’t have done this without Dundee’s cooperation. And Nesfield’s.

The thought of Nesfield and Emily plotting together was enough to make him doubt his suspicions. How could Emily, the girl who’d quoted scripture at him and refused to lie, be capable of such a deception?

But how could two women be so much alike? And how could he be attracted to them both?

Devil take her, whoever she is, he thought sourly as he climbed the steps to the balcony, then crossed to the ballroom. She’d knocked him back on his heels with her little display out there, then left him craving her voraciously.

He entered the clamor of the ballroom and paused, searching the roiling knots of dancers for the little chit.

She’d infected him with some disease to make him want her like this—that was the only explanation for such insanity.

If he had any sense at all, he’d leave at once and put her out of his mind.

Instead he stood there, scouring the room for a glimpse of her pearl-twined hair and shimmering white gown, the one he’d pawed only minutes ago in his eagerness to taste her bare flesh.

“You look as if you’ve been hit on the head with a mallet,” came a familiar voice at his side.

He glowered at Ian’s grinning expression. “It wasn’t a mallet. And the spot was a bit lower, unfortunately.”

Returning his attention to the ballroom, Jordan finally spotted Lady Emma.

She was waltzing with young Radcliffe as cool as you please, without a hint in her sweet expression of the scene she’d played with him in the garden.

The puppy was holding her close enough to imprint his lecherous body on her skirts.

Where was the chit’s chaperone, for God’s sake?

Somebody ought to put a stop to her outrageous behavior!

Ian followed the direction of his gaze. “It’s not like you to be interested in an innocent.”

“She’s no innocent, I assure you,” he snapped.

“So you don’t still think she’s the rector’s daughter you mistook her for?”

“I don’t know what to think.” White anger seared Jordan when Radcliffe lowered his head to whisper something in her ear and she laughed.

“Come, man, I met her mother, a formidable matron if ever I saw one. Why would a woman of Lady Dundee’s social status put an impostor forward as her daughter, risking her husband’s reputation and the future of her other daughters?”

Why indeed? “I don’t know; perhaps the countess grew bored in Scotland and this is her entertainment.” His eyes narrowed. “And what about Lady Emma’s speech? If she’s from Scotland, where’s her brogue?”

“She wouldn’t have one, not with an English mother like Lady Dundee. The countess probably worked with her for years to prevent her from developing an accent.”

“You can’t eliminate an accent that easily. She ought to have some trace of it.”

Ian sighed. “Even if Lady Dundee were foolish enough to pass off a nobody as her daughter, Nesfield says the woman is his niece, too.”

“So why do Nesfield’s niece and the daughter of his rector resemble each other so much?” Except in their experience with men. “Strange coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps. How did you come to meet a rector’s daughter, anyway?”

“She was at Dryden’s masquerade ball in Derbyshire two months ago.”

“Was she in costume that night, wearing a mask, that sort of thing?”

Jordan sensed a trap. “Yes.” He added hastily, “But I saw her without her mask.”

“For how long?”

With a black scowl, Jordan returned his attention to the dancers. He could only imagine what Ian would think if he admitted he’d seen the girl’s face in dim moonlight for a mere matter of minutes.

“I take it from your silence that it was a brief glimpse.”

“It was enough.”

Now the deuced woman was dancing with Pollock. With a jealousy bordering on idiocy, he remembered Pollock’s vow to find a woman to love.

Well, it won’t be her, Pollock, Jordan thought. Pollock wasn’t for her. None of them were for her. If anyone had her, it would be him, and he wasn’t about to become entangled with a deceitful, coy flirt.

Unfortunately, his body had other ideas. All it wanted right now was to drag her back outside and lay claim to her like some half-witted stallion.

“My God,” Ian said dryly, “this rector’s daughter must have made quite an impression on you for you to remember her after so short an encounter.”

Jordan met his friend’s speculation with stony silence. How could he explain the way Emily had affected him that night? He didn’t understand it himself. “It was enough to make me almost certain that this woman is not Lady Emma, but Emily Fairchild, engaged in some scheme of Nesfield’s making.”

“That man is the most humorless, self-important creature in all England—why would he indulge in something so risky to his reputation?”

“I don’t know. But I do know the woman I met, and I’d swear that’s her.”

“Well, I hope you’re wrong.”

“Why?” A horrible thought suddenly seized him. Ian was now watching Lady Emma, and at the sight of his intent scrutiny, another ridiculous spasm of jealous anger wracked Jordan. “You’re not thinking of courting her instead of Lady Sophie, are you?”

Ian shot him a sideways glance. “Perhaps. I’m ready to put an end to this search for a wife.”

With a fervency that astonished him, Jordan wanted to tear his best friend into little pieces.

“Judging from your murderous expression, however,” Ian went on with decided amusement in his tone, “I’d best not try it. I’m not the sort to fight over a woman.”

Devil take the man. Ian had merely been gauging his reaction. “I don’t care if you court the chit,” Jordan grumbled, trying futilely to regain lost ground. “But don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when I prove to be right.”

Ian laughed. “Now that I think about it, I don’t believe Lady Emma will suit me after all. Two dances with her told me that. Lady Sophie meets my requirements better. I want an easy wife, not some flirtatious, unruly Scot. I have no tolerance for breaking in wild fillies.”

Breaking in wild fillies. Jordan wouldn’t mind having a go at breaking in this particular filly. Judging from that kiss in the garden, Lady Emma could make the most devout monk forswear his vows of celibacy. And Jordan was no monk.

But even if she were Emily, he needn’t refrain from seducing her—for it would mean she was a designing, lying wench and not the innocent he’d thought. For some reason, that possibility infuriated him. He’d liked Emily Fairchild exactly as she was.

“Look at her,” Jordan bit out. She’d taken a new partner, that idiot Wilkins. “She’s an incomparable actress. Well, I will expose her little game, whatever it is.”

“Why? What does it have to do with you?”

Ian wouldn’t understand. It was like discovering that the unicorn you revered for its magical powers was really a horse with a horn attached. It made you want to tear off the horn and kick the horse. “If she’s an impostor, people ought to know,” he grumbled.

“What rot! You’re not doing this for the good of society.

You want that girl, and you want her badly.

You’re besotted with the very sort of woman you’ve always avoided.

” Ian’s smug smile broadened. “What a sweet revenge for all those women who’ve tumbled head over heels for you and received nothing for it but a cool glance. ”

“Don’t be absurd. I’m not besotted. I’m never besotted.”

“Then it should be a singular experience for you. Beware, my friend; they say it isn’t easy to dismiss love.” He added, only half-facetiously, “Protect your heart if you can.”

“No need, I assure you,” Jordan retorted. “As Pollock is so fond of saying, my heart is made of granite. No one, and certainly not some pretty chit up to no good, shall change that.”