Page 26 of What A Rogue Wants (Lords Of Deception #1)

Madelaine glanced at Louisa, who sat quietly knitting in a corner.

Could she stay with Grey and Helen’s lady’s maid?

She felt herself wavering, and then Grey’s deep laughter filled the hallway.

Her stomach fluttered, and she shook her head while scrambling around the room to gather the remainder of her things.

“I can’t. I must go, now.” She could hear Grey talking to someone outside the door, and longing to be near him pierced her heart.

Helen stomped her slipper. “I don’t understand you,” she said in a low tone. “I don’t mean to be overly bold but you do like him, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Well then, my dear, if you don’t want to lose him, you’d better act as if you like him before another lady steals his heart.”

“Don’t put ridiculous notions in Madelaine’s head, Aunt Helen.

” Grey’s deep voice made Madelaine jump.

Her gaze flew to the doorway where he stood and a tremor filled her.

He was perfectly shaven, his thick wavy hair wet and combed back from his face.

He wore a dark blue coat that enhanced the golden color of his skin beautifully, and his tan breeches clung to his lean, muscular thighs.

He looked the impeccable gentleman of Court except for the bloody gash on his face.

Her resolve not to say more than a polite greeting to him was forgotten on a rush of words. “What happened to you?” She was not conscious she’d moved until she stood right before him, and his heady masculine scent invaded her, but she could not will herself to move away.

He raised a gloved hand to his right cheek. “Is the damned thing bleeding again?”

She nodded. “What happened?”

“More training. But I was distracted with other thoughts.” His gaze locked on her, smoky blue and intense.

“You’ll be the death of him,” his aunt murmured as she gave him a kiss and swept out of the room with her lady’s maid behind her. From the hall came Helen’s impatient voice. “Come, Lady Madelaine, if you still are departing.”

A sense of vital desperation clung to Grey as a faint, sardonic smile curved his lips. “You don’t have to avoid me. You’ve made clear your wishes.”

It had been on the tip of her tongue to say goodbye, but his words changed everything.

He’d completely misinterpreted why she was avoiding him, and his misunderstanding was entirely her fault.

She needed to be truthful with him. Her stomach rolled and heat crept up her chest and face.

She had to be brave. She had to tell him, or risk losing him to another woman, as his aunt had so bluntly pointed out.

“Lady Helen, I’ll be staying if your lady’s maid can still act as chaperone. ”

Helen’s silent answer was to send her maid scurrying back into the room. Louisa bobbed a curtsy to them. “Where would you like me?”

“Yorkshire,” Grey responded with a scowl toward the door where Helen’s laughter trickled back to them from the hall.

Madelaine pressed her lips together on her amusement.

“Why don’t you take the settee? It’s the most comfortable chair in the room and you can spread out your knitting.

” Not to mention it was the only place she and Grey would have been able to sit close together.

Putting Louisa there took care of the problem of her and Grey possibly touching.

Even an inadvertent caress could crumble her defenses.

As Louisa shuffled over to the settee, a faint smile curved Grey’s lips. “Why do you need another chaperone? My sister is here. And she’s on the mend.” Grey swept his hand toward the bed where Elizabeth slept so soundly that her snoring filled the room.

Madelaine arched an eyebrow. “Yes, a fine chaperone she’d make.”

Grey grinned lazily, his gaze sweeping down the length of Madelaine’s body. “She seems the perfect chaperone to me.”

“You mustn’t say such things.”

“What did I say?” He looked utterly innocent and handsome.

She laughed as she recounted his words. “You said nothing. But it’s the way you say nothing.”

“I promise to say everything in the most monotone voice I can muster the entire time we’re together.” He motioned toward two chairs under the window that faced Elizabeth’s bed. “We can sit there, talk and keep an eye on Liz at the same time.”

Madelaine nodded and started toward the chairs, startling when Grey took her hand. “Lord Grey,” she chided, addressing him formally because of Louisa’s presence. She tried to pull her hand away, but he held tight.

“Just leading you safely to your seat,” he said in a voice so lacking intonation that she chuckled.

“How very kind of you, Lord Grey. I’ve been walking on my own two legs for twenty years now. I’m quite the expert.”

“Yes, but this floor is treacherously bumpy.” He made a show of tapping his foot on the floor.

Once seated, he released her hand, but not without trailing his fingers along the inside of her palm.

Delicious tingling sensations ran from her palm, up the length of her arm and sent her heart into a faster beat.

Tongue tied with how he made her feel and nervous over how to start her confession, she settled on an obvious task. “Shall I clean your cut for you?”

“If you’re not afraid to touch me.” A provocative challenge rang in his words.

Madelaine narrowed her eyes in warning even as her body responded to the subtle change of his tone. She rose, wet a rag, and came to sit beside him. “You’ve forgotten yourself.” She dabbed at his cut.

“I’m terribly sorry.” He grinned sheepishly, and she could just imagine him young, full of mischief, and grinning precisely that way to his nanny.

After she wiped the last traces of blood away, she returned the rag to the wash stand and settled back beside Grey. “I bet you were never spanked as a child, were you?”

“Of course not.”

She suddenly recalled the last spanking her mother had given her.

A neighbor had come to call and Madelaine had tromped through the house in a pair of breeches she’d stolen from one of the servant boy’s rooms. Later, after the neighbor had left, her mother had come to Madelaine’s room, shut the door, and whipped her until welts covered Madelaine’s bottom.

She’d forgotten the moment until just now.

“Madelaine,” Grey said lowly, his voice so razor-sharp that it snapped her from her recollection, and she glanced automatically to Elizabeth’s bed to see what was the matter. But Elizabeth lay still, her snoring filling the room.

“What’s the matter?” The dark look on his face puzzled her.

He reached for her suddenly, and with the memory of her mother’s last spanking fresh in her mind, she shoved her chair backwards out of his reach.

“ Madelaine .” He dropped his hand and sat very still. “Goddamn,” he whispered. “Did your father beat you as a child?”

“No.” She was very glad he’d not asked about her mother.

She’d never told a soul about the spankings she’d received from her mother every time she’d been a disappointment, but now that she was remembering them, she was shocked to realize just how many she could recall, and the pain of what her mother called “a simple spanking”.

He studied her intently for a moment before speaking. “Who beat you?”

Heat flooded her cheeks, and she swallowed convulsively against the feeling that her tongue was tied. “N-n-no one.”

His eyes glittered as he stared. “Madelaine, you’re lying to me.” His voice was low and fierce. “Tell me. I’ll keep your secret.”

His scent of freshly washed male surrounded her.

When had he moved his chair closer? Their arms touched and their legs brushed.

She glanced worriedly at Louisa, but the woman’s eyes were closed and her mouth was hanging open.

Wonderful, her chaperone, her lone defense against her own desire for Grey, was fast asleep.

Discomfited, she pressed her fingers to her temple and took a deep, calming breath.

“My mother didn’t beat me,” she said without stuttering, so it had to be true.

“She s-sp—” She clenched her teeth and took another deep breath.

“She spanked me when I deserved it, which was quite a lot given how disobedient I was.”

He slid his arm around the back of her chair to rest on her shoulders, while he smoothed her hair in a repeated, calming fashion with his free hand. “What sort of spankings?”

She sighed at the relaxing feeling his touch brought her. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head against his arm. “The typical sort with her hand and sometimes a leather strap.”

“And did it hurt very much?”

“I don’t know.” But her bottom screamed now in remembrance.

“ Madelaine .”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. His face was inches from hers. She tried to draw back, but he slid his hand to the base of her skull and held her locked in place. “Did it hurt?”

He’d not relent until he had his answer. She could see it in the dark glint of his stormy gaze. “Yes, it hurt. Terribly. I usually couldn’t sit the next day. Are you satisfied?”

She tried to turn her face from his, but his other hand came up and captured her chin. “No, I’m angry as hell. Did your father hit you too? Because if he did—”

“No,” she said as sharply as she dared with two people sleeping so near.

“As far as I know, he never had an inkling Mother hit me. He was gone often to see the king and on various trips, and when he came home Mother would always be upset with him for having been gone as long as he was. I think they were too busy arguing over how much he was gone to talk much about me other than for Mother to bemoan what a failure I was as a proper lady.”

Grey looked at her as if he was struggling with some great emotion. He stroked her bottom lip with his finger, igniting that familiar fire he’d lit before deep in her belly. “I’ll never hurt you, or let anyone else hurt you again.”

The shock of his lips on hers silenced anything she was about to say and allowed him complete access to her mouth.

His tongue slipped inside like silk, but burning hot.

He explored her mouth gently with erotic strokes until the fire in her belly started to spread up her body, and a low moan escaped her.

Then just as suddenly as he’d started the kiss, he pulled away but captured her hand as he did so and brought it to his face.

“I wish we were alone.” His voice was raw and gravelly.

She traced down the slope of his jawline, and then made herself pull away. “I wish it too, but I know it’s very good we are not.”

“Why’s that?” His hand was again around her shoulder, his fingers brushing lightly back and forth over the skin exposed at the base of her neck.

“Because you scare me.”

“I scare you?” He stopped brushing her lip.

“No, no.” She shook her head. “The way you make me feel when I’m around you scares me.”

“Ah.” He smiled, two dimples appearing in either side of his cheeks. “That’s different. That kind of fear I like. You should release yourself to your fears. A little bit, that is.”

God, the man was impossible. His every word sounded like an invitation to sin, and she very much wanted to respond “yes”, but she couldn’t.

Yet she could offer him the truth of her heart.

“I’ve avoided you since you told me what my father said because I was afraid if I was alone with you too much, I would break my vow to be an obedient daughter. ”

“I see.” He fiddled with one of the flowers embroidered on her dress. “So you do want me to continue to court you?”

“Very much,” she whispered, suddenly feeling shy.

A crease lined his forehead. “And if your father won’t relent and give his permission?”

She refused to consider the possibility. “He won’t refuse me. He’s very reasonable, and I’m sure his worry has to do with your reputation at Court. But once he hears how honorable you really are, and I tell him how you cared for your sister, I know he’ll change his mind.”

“What if your father is refusing my courtship because of other reasons?”

She frowned. “What else could there be?”

Grey shrugged, not meeting her gaze. “Nothing.” His tone was harsh. “There’s nothing.” He looked up and smiled. “Together we’ll change his mind.”

She nodded. They had to change his mind.

She didn’t think she could defy her father.

His disappointment would be so great, and there was part of her that wondered whether it was her mother’s disappointment with her that had led to her parents’ last argument that had sent her mother tearing off on her stallion into a snowstorm and her death.

“So you don’t mind waiting to court me?”

“I’m courting you now.” He grinned. “And I mind very much waiting for you, but I suspect you’re worth the wait. Will you consider something for me?”

“What?”

“Will you see me if someone is always present, and I vow not to touch you again until we have your Father’s agreement that I may court you?”

“Yes.” Her husky tone made her wince. She had to get a little control. It was hard. She wanted more than anything to spend more time with him. “I’ll see you as long as someone is always present.” After all no harm could come if he kept his vow.