Regency: Courtship And Candlelight: One Final Season. Elizabeth Beacon

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ will when we return to the ballroom together in a state of disarray and hint very strongly that we’ll shortly be announcing our engagement. I may despise Bestholme and his whore, but I’m not above borrowing that scheme now the devil’s in the driving seat.’

      ‘Nonsense, if you go ahead and I follow you into the ballroom a little later, nobody will dream we were together all this time, or that either of us heard anything we shouldn’t have tonight. Nobody need be any the wiser.’

      ‘You have a simple-minded faith in the gossips suddenly turning incurious about all you say and do that I could find almost admirable, Miss Alstone. If only it wasn’t so misplaced and silly,’ he told her, suddenly back to the aloof and superior Lord Shuttleworth he’d been towards her since returning to town and Kate refused to ask herself why his icy tone hurt and the hard look she could imagine in his eyes cut through her so coldly. ‘You have now been absent for far too long to just shrug it aside and pretend you’ve been innocently drifting about, and I don’t want those two black-hearted villains realising you overheard their assignation,’ he went on relentlessly and Kate felt her palm itch to slap some sense back into him.

      ‘Then what do you suggest that I do instead, you infuriating man?’ she gritted through clenched teeth.

      ‘Be thoroughly compromised by me, or prepare to embrace life as a social outcast,’ he informed her so laconically she felt that odd sense of not being quite connected with the real world threaten her again.

      ‘You can’t do this, Edmund, you’ll be dragooned into marrying me if we appear together in such a state as you suggest and we both know that you don’t want to wed me any more,’ she protested in a fierce whisper.

      ‘Better that than risk that unsavoury pair realising you were wafting about listening to out-of-the-way conversations, Kate,’ he declared not very encouragingly.

      ‘How flattering,’ she told him crossly, wishing she could turn her back on the infuriating monster and walk away.

      ‘Find a bit of steel to stiffen your backbone, for goodness’ sake, Miss Alstone,’ he chided like some large and handsome gadfly sent to plague her by a malign fate.

      ‘Why should I resign myself to such a fate when you obviously don’t have the least desire to marry me?’ Kate managed to say in defiance of her inner idiot, who was demanding stridently that she accept eagerly and be glad he felt honour-bound to marry her after being so sternly set against it.

      ‘Needs must when the devil drives,’ he said coolly and must have decided he was done with useless words and it was time for action before things got worse.

      He hustled her out of a side door and into the garden proper before she could find breath or words to protest with and urged her inexorably closer to the long windows of his lordship’s fine ballroom, but not close enough for propriety, of course. The further they got from that darkened room the better, even if it was leading them closer to marriage, Kate decided numbly, and cursed herself for not fighting this more strongly. It was hard to fight temptation when it beckoned so wickedly.

      ‘You could leave me here alone,’ she whispered softly in defiance of her own eagerness for any sort of marriage with him, even this forced one.

      ‘So you could be quizzed from now until next Christmas on the identity of your cowardly lover?’ he murmured back, and anyone watching them would probably mistake them for fellow moon-led idiots lured out here by such promising darkness, she decided crossly. ‘Go back in that room alone after spending such a long time away from it and your chaperon, and you’ll be ruined without anyone having to plot against you,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘and in acute danger once that harpy realises you could have overheard her plot to murder her husband, whilst you wandered about in the shadows so carelessly that anything might have happened to you.’

      ‘And being a perfect gentle knight you’re sacrificing yourself instead?’

      ‘No, being a pattern-card of perfection was so dull that I gave it up,’ he declared flippantly.

      ‘Along with me?’ she murmured, then could have kicked herself for letting him know how much his recent rebuffs had hurt her.

      ‘I thought I’d save myself the pain of enduring another crushingly polite refusal,’ he told her and Kate hurt at the careless apology in his deep voice. ‘I dare say marrying you won’t be so bad once I get used to the idea again,’ he added.

      ‘And if you think I’ll stand by idly while you have affairs with other women you will be sorely disappointed, Edmund Worth,’ she informed him in a fierce undertone.

      ‘That’s entirely up to you, dear Kate. If you keep me otherwise occupied, I probably won’t have the time or the opportunity to stray,’ he observed and silenced her with another mind-stealing kiss.

      Furious, she did her best to bite him, so he deepened his kiss and dared her give whatever she might have had the wits to withhold until now. Defeated by her own need of him, her body seemed to meld itself to Edmund’s powerfully lean one of its own accord and wild heat burst into instant life again. She angled her wanton mouth to his in a way she should think appallingly fast but didn’t. Never mind fast, her deepest buried instincts warred with her training, he’ll still marry you now, even if he doesn’t really want to.

      She couldn’t make herself break away, even with that chilly thought in the back of her mind, but she clenched her hands at her sides and refused them the luxury of his lithely muscled body. It didn’t abate the searing wildfire flaming through her like a force of nature, but it made her feel a little better about herself and the self-control she’d once prided herself upon.

      Unimpressed, his hands ran over her in an unashamed exploration and she loved it. She’d always denied being capable of deep feeling, in her ignorance of how elemental and out of control she would be with the right man. Now he let his wicked hands find a way between them, despite her body’s ridiculous efforts to plaster itself against him like a poultice, and Edmund ran an approving thumb over a raised nipple that immediately hardened and begged for more without permission from her. She had to fight not to moan and cry out a frantic demand for more, for everything. If not for the half-painful gnaw of need, the half-wondrous goad of heat at the heart of her, of course she would put distance between them and escape the purely physical spell he’d cast over her, yes, that was just what she would do, in a minute.

      This was the wild and passionate Kate he’d always known existed beneath that façade of serenely composed beauty. Edmund managed to find enough willpower from somewhere to put a distance between them and convince himself painfully that he’d discovered enough about her most secret passions for now, in public or almost public as they were. He forced his hands away from her delicious body before his fascination with it broke his self-control. She was flushed and breathless, her soft gasps for air drawing his attention to her lush, but firm, young breasts, rising and falling rapidly against the low neckline even a single lady could wear by her fourth Season without being considered intolerably fast.

      Her eyes were wild and more beautiful than he could ever recall seeing them even in his dreams as they blazed with feelings he would give half his fortune to read fully. Her lips parted as she fought to get her breath back and his eyes lingered on them with hungry fascination as she slicked them with her sharp little tongue. If he wasn’t to throw himself on her and ravish her on the lower terrace of his hostess’s garden, he must get their engagement rolling relentlessly on before she lost that starry-eyed, just-kissed look and remembered all the doubts and fears that inhabited her contrary thoughts whenever he wasn’t in a position to haze them СКАЧАТЬ