Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ himself in the soft, willing pleasure she was offering.

      So easy, and so wrong. Just because he’d been careless enough to let her into his room through that unlocked door didn’t mean she deserved a place in his life, however fleeting, or even one in his bed.

      Purposefully he shifted away from her, focusing instead on sliding the pistol back beneath his pillow. “It’s late, ma’am. Good night.”

      He heard her sigh, and felt the mattress lighten as she rose to her feet. “Jack warned me you’d be like this,” she said sadly. “But I thought at least you’d be willing—”

      “Willing for what?” demanded Jeremiah. With humiliating clarity the answer came to him. His brother-in-law was so hopelessly besotted with Desire that he believed love alone could cure every other man’s ills, as well. How many times before this had Jack urged him to find a ladylove of his own? “So help me, if Herendon put you up to this—”

      She turned sharply. “Whatever are you saying?”

      “You know damned well what I’m saying! What did Jack tell you of poor old ailing Jeremiah? Did he tell you I was so lonely that I’d welcome the attentions of a woman, any woman, who showed a breath of interest in me?”

      By the light of the single candle her eyes flashed bright as her diamonds. “What he told me was that you were proud and hot tempered, but oh my, I never dreamed he meant this!”

      “But you came anyway, didn’t you?” Shoving himself from the bed to stand, Jeremiah saw how her eyes widened at his size as he loomed over her, how she stared at the jagged new scar that sliced across his torso. “Was I that much of a curiosity, a foreigner, an American, that I seemed worth the effort of seduction?”

      “Seduction!” She tipped back her head and her laughter rippled merrily from her lips. “You think I came here to seduce you?”

      He was in no mood for teasing, and he never liked being laughed at, especially not by a woman this pretty. “Aye, what other reason could there be for you creeping in here while I slept, every bit as bold as any barkeep’s daughter?”

      “You left me no choice.” With her head cocked, she looked at him shrewdly. “You never leave this house. How else was I to find you?”

      “You found me well enough in my bed, didn’t you?”

      “You really do believe I came to seduce you,” she said incredulously, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Lord, I wouldn’t know how to begin.”

      “Like this.” He rocked her back off her feet and into the crook of his arm before she could protest. He swallowed her startled little cry into his mouth, his lips moving deftly over hers. He would show her that he wasn’t some laughable American savage. He’d prove to her that he didn’t need her pity, or her curiosity, or whatever other contemptuous impulse had brought her here tonight. She tasted every bit as sweet as he’d hoped she’d be, soft and warm in his embrace, and with a low groan he slid his hands along the satin, down her back to settle on the curve between her waist and hip.

      Yet for a woman brazen enough to chase him to his bed, she seemed oddly uncertain. She lay stiffly in his arms, her hands curled defensively against his chest, and though her lips had parted for his, she waited for him to lead her. Were English gentlemen so self-centered that they left their women as unschooled as this one so obviously was?

      With a new gentleness he deepened the kiss, exploring the most sensitive corners of her mouth until she began to answer him, tentatively at first and then with growing ardor. Her hands crept up his chest and around his neck to draw him closer, and, charmed by the ingenuity of her response, he felt his anger melting away, replaced by an intense bolt of desire. Lord, it had been too long! Countess or not, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to take what she offered. He lifted her against him and she moaned deep in her throat, and he knew then she wanted him as much as he did her.

      And then she jerked free and slapped him as hard as she could.

      He stared at her, his cheek stinging where she’d struck him. “What the devil was that for?”

      “You—we shouldn’t have kissed like that,” she said breathlessly. Her face was flushed, her lips still wet from their kiss, her hair disheveled and her plume cocked to one side. “It wasn’t right.”

      “It seemed right as rain to me.” Strange how he wasn’t really angry with her. Disappointed, yes, but not angry.

      “No, you don’t understand.” She lowered her gaze, her clasped hands twisting together. “You don’t understand at all.”

      “You’ve called it well enough there.” He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, still rubbing his face. She’d caught him on the jaw with the edge of one of her bracelets, and he knew he’d have a bruise in the morning. “You’re not making much sense, sweetheart.”

      “I don’t, not when I’m distraught.” She fidgeted with the clasp on one bracelet as she struggled to regain control of her emotions. “Frederick says it’s one of my greatest failings, and he has worked quite hard to rid me of it.”

      Though Jeremiah waited for her to explain who Frederick was, she didn’t. Her husband, most likely. If she was a countess, then somewhere there had to be a count—no, an earl. But whoever Frederick was, Jeremiah would be damned before he’d ask.

      “Don’t tell me,” he said instead. “You have a list of failings as long as my arm.”

      “No, Captain, I don’t, no matter how much you wish to believe the contrary.” She closed her eyes briefly and sighed. “Good night, then, and forgive me for disturbing you.”

      “Just like that?”

      “Just like that, yes.” She gave her shoulders an odd little shrug, almost a shudder. “I’ve caused us both enough trouble tonight, haven’t I?”

      He caught her arm as she turned toward the door. Beneath the silk, her skin was warm and he felt the quickening of her heartbeat at his touch. “You can’t go now.”

      She looked pointedly at his hand before she raised her gaze to meet his. “Why not? You’ve been telling me to leave ever since you woke.”

      “Use your ears, ma’am, and you’ll know. All’s quiet below. It must be well past midnight.”

      “Then I can let myself out. I’m hardly helpless, you know. My coachman will be waiting with the carriage where I left him, at the bottom of the hill.”

      “Well, you’re not going alone.” He released her arm, reaching for his shirt and tugging it over his head. Helpless or not, she wasn’t going to traipse off into the darkness by herself as long as he had anything to say about it.

      “I assure you such sudden chivalry isn’t necessary,” she said indignantly. “I’m quite capable.”

      “Oh, aye, I’m sure you are.” He shrugged on his coat, not bothering with a waistcoat or hat, and smoothed back his hair. “And don’t mistake it for chivalry. If you’re found in the shrubbery tomorrow with your throat slit and your diamonds gone, I don’t want to be the last one who saw you alive.”

      She made a disgruntled, undignified sound in the back of her throat that made him smile. СКАЧАТЬ