Don't Tempt Me (5 page)

No, that hadn't changed, in any event. For all their noise, for all the complaining and criticizing, they kept their distance.

He walked out onto the little balcony.

He held up his hand.

The crowd quieted.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “Everyone wants to see Miss Lexham.”

He did not shout. He scarcely raised his deep voice. But he made it stronger in some way, and it seemed to her that people on the other side of the square must hear him clearly.

“Very well,” he said. He turned to her and made a small gesture, signaling her to join him. She looked down at the long fingers, slightly curled, bidding her come. She looked up at his handsome face. A shock of pale hair, the color of early morning sunlight, fell over one eyebrow. He wore a faint smile. She could not tell what sort of smile it was, and this made her uneasy.

She reminded herself that she'd known nothing
about Karim or the world in which he lived, yet she'd soon learned to navigate its treacherous pathways. She'd learned how to amuse and please him. As a result, she'd won his affection and a great fortune in jewels.

This would be easier, she told herself. All she needed to do was find a way into the world to which she properly belonged.

She had come home quietly, Lord Winterton so determined to avert the uproar, which, in the end, could not be averted. They'd kept her hidden in her father's house for two days, behind closed windows and curtains. She'd felt as though she'd never left the harem.

She stepped through the window and onto the balcony.

The crowd fell silent.

So did her sisters.

Hundreds of faces turned upward. Every pair of eyes focused on her.

She went cold, then hot. She felt dizzy. But it was a wonderful dizziness, the joy of release.

Now at last she stood in the open.

Here I am
, she thought.
Home at last
,
at last. Yes
,
look at me. Look your fill. I'm not invisible anymore.

She felt his big, warm hand clasp hers. The warmth rushed into her heart and made it hurry. She was aware of her pulse jumping against her throat and against her wrist, so close to his. The heat spread into her belly and down, to melt her knees.

I'm going to faint
, she thought. But she couldn't let herself swoon merely because a man had touched
her. Not now, at any rate. Not here. She made herself look up at him.

He wore the faintest smile—of mockery or amusement she couldn't tell. Behind his shuttered eyes she sensed rather than saw a shadow.

She remembered the brief glimpse she'd had, of pain, when she'd mentioned his brother. It had vanished in an instant, but she'd seen it in his first, surprised reaction: the darkness there, bleak and empty and unforgettable.

She gazed longer than she should have into his eyes, those sleepy green eyes that watched her so intently yet shut her out. And at last he let out a short laugh, and raised her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips against her knuckles.

Had they been in the harem, she would have sunk onto the pillows and thrown her head back, inviting him.

But they were not in the harem and he'd declined to make her his wife.

And she was not a man, to let her lust rule her brain.

This man was not a good candidate for a spouse.

There had been a bond between them once. Not a friendship, really. In childhood, the few years between them had been a chasm, as the difference in their genders had been. Still, he'd been fond of her once, she thought, in his own fashion.

But that was before.

Now he was everything every woman could want, and he knew it.

She desired him the way every other woman desired him.

It didn't really mean anything. It certainly wouldn't mean anything to him.

Still, at least she felt desire, finally, she told herself. If she could feel it with him, she'd feel it with someone else, someone who wanted her, who'd give his heart to her.

For now, she was grateful to be free. She was grateful to stand on this balcony and look out upon the hundreds of people below.

She squeezed his hand in thanks and let her mouth form a slow, genuine smile, of gratitude and happiness, though she couldn't help glancing once up at him from under her lashes, to seek his reaction.

She glimpsed the heat flickering in the guarded green gaze.

Ah, he felt it, too: the powerful physical awareness crackling between them.

He released her hand. “We've entertained the mob for long enough,” he said. “Go inside.”

She turned away. The crowd began to stir and people were talking again, but more quietly. They'd become a murmuring sea rather than a roaring one.

“You've seen her,” he said, and his deep voice easily carried over the sea. “You shall see her again from time to time. Now go away.”

After a moment, they began to turn away, and by degrees they drifted out of the square.

Marchmont had done nothing more than brush his lips over her knuckles.

It was more than enough.

He'd caught the scent of her skin and felt its softness, and the sensations lingered long after he let go and turned away.

Perhaps, after all, he should have said yes. Visions of Zoe dancing in veils swarmed into his brain again.

He pushed them away. He was not about to disrupt his life to marry a complete stranger, even for Lexham's sake.

He turned his attention to the square. It was emptying, as he'd known it would. The mob's excitement abated once they saw that the Harem Girl looked like any other attractive English lady. This was only the first and easiest part of the task he'd undertaken.

Part Two was the newspapers. Unlike the mob,
they wouldn't let go of a sensational story so easily. The stragglers in the square were mainly newspaper men. They wanted a story, and they'd make one up if necessary.

He reentered the library, where Zoe waited, her blue eyes brimming with an admiration and gratitude that even he, who couldn't be bothered to read expressions, could comprehend. He didn't know whether or not he believed what he saw in her face. A dozen years ago, he would have known what to believe. But a dozen years ago, Zoe would never have worn such a melting expression.

This wasn't the Zoe he'd known all those years ago, he reminded himself. In any event, he didn't need to know what was in her heart, any more than she needed to know what was in his. He'd promised to bring her into fashion, and that was all he needed to do.

He turned his attention elsewhere.

Her sisters hovered in the doorway, one black figure standing at each side of the frame and two with enormous bellies pacing in the corridor beyond.

A quartet of crows.

“Who died?” he said.

“Cousin Horatio,” said Augusta.

“Ah, the recluse on the Isle of Skye,” said Marchmont.

Lexham had taken him there after Gerard died. Some thought it a strange place to take a grieving fifteen-year-old, but Lexham, as always, knew what to do. In hindsight, Marchmont saw how wise his guardian had been not to send the new Duke of
Marchmont back to school. There he'd have to hide his grief. There, among his friends, he'd have no Gerard to boast of, no letters from Gerard to look forward to. Skye and the eccentric Cousin Horatio held no associations with Gerard or their dead parents. It was far away from the world in which they'd grown up, and it was beautiful. He and Lexham walked. They fished. They read books and talked. Sometimes even Cousin Horatio joined the conversation.

The brooding atmosphere of the place and the solitude had quieted Marchmont's mind and brought him a measure of peace.

“He died a fortnight ago,” Dorothea said.

“He left his property to Papa.”

“The least one might do is wear mourning for him.”

Were they thinking of sending their youngest sister to Cousin Horatio's? Zoe on a desolate, windswept island of Scotland's Inner Hebrides? She'd think she was in Siberia. For one who'd spent twelve years in a land where the sun always shone and where even on winter nights the temperature rarely fell below sixty degrees, it would be exactly the same thing: bone-chilling and spirit-killing.

His gaze drifted to Zoe, in her wine-colored shawl and pale green frock. She was the antithesis of mourning, acutely alive and unmistakably carnal.

It wasn't that her garments were seductive. It was the way she wore them and the languorous way she carried herself. Even standing still, she vibrated physicality.

“I did not have enough clothes, and the black dress my sisters found for me was too small,” she said, evi
dently misreading his prolonged survey as criticism. “To alter it was too much work. The maid must take a piece from here.” She pointed to the bottom of her skirt, drawing attention to her elegantly slender feet. “Then she must add it to this part, to cover my breasts.” She drew her hand over her bodice. “They must put in a piece here as well.” She slid her hands along her hips.

“Zoe,” Dorothea said warningly.

“What?”

“We don't touch ourselves in that way.”

“Most certainly not in front of others who are
not
our husband,” Priscilla said.

“I forgot.” She looked at Marchmont. “We don't touch. We don't say what we feel in our hearts. We don't lie on the rug. We keep our feet on the floor except in bed or on the chaise longue.”

“Where were you keeping your feet?” he said.

She gestured at the furniture. “No chairs in Cairo. When I sit in one, my legs want to curl up under me.”

“This isn't Cairo,” Augusta said. “You would do well to remember that. But of course you won't.” She turned to Marchmont, who was with difficulty maintaining his composure. “Marchmont, you may find this all very amusing, but it would be a kindness to Zoe to face facts: It will take years to civilize her.”

She'd got him aroused in an instant, the little witch, and made him laugh at the same time. Zoe Octavia had never been fully civilized. She'd never been like anybody else. Now she was less so.

He let his gaze slide up from the hips and bosom to which she'd called his attention. Up the white throat
and delicate point of her stubborn chin and up, to meet her gaze.

It was the gaze of a grown woman, not the girl he'd known. That Zoe was gone forever, just as the boy he'd once been was gone forever. Which was as it should be, he told himself. That was life, perfectly normal and not at all mysterious. It was, in fact, as he preferred it.

“If by ‘civilized' you mean she must turn into an English lady, it isn't necessary,” he said. “The Countess Lieven isn't English, yet she's one of Almack's patronesses.”

“What is Almack's?” said Zoe. “They keep screaming about it, and I cannot decide whether it is the Garden of Paradise or a place of punishment.”

“Both,” he said. “It's
the
most exclusive club in London, impossibly hard to get into and amazingly easy to get thrown out of. Birth and breeding aren't sufficient. One must also dress and dance beautifully. Or, failing that, one must possess sufficient wit or arrogance to impress the patronesses. They keep a list of those who meet their standards. Some three-quarters of the nobility are not on the list. If you're not on the list, you can't buy an admission voucher and can't get into the Wednesday night assemblies.”

“Are you on the list?” Zoe asked.

“Of course,” he said.

“Men's moral failings tend to be overlooked,” Augusta said.

Marchmont ignored her. “You'll be on it, too,” he told Zoe.

“That,” said Gertrude, “will take a miracle, and I
have not noticed that you and Providence are on the best of terms.”

“I don't believe in miracles,” he said. “Not that Almack's signifies at present.”

“Doesn't signify?” Augusta cried.

Why would they not go away? Why had Lexham not strangled them all at birth?

“I've disposed of the mob,” he said. “Next is the newspapers.”

He walked to the door, and the tragic chorus gave way.

He summoned a footman.

“You will find a disreputable-looking being named John Beardsley loitering in the square,” Marchmont told the servant. “Tell him I shall see him in the anteroom on the ground floor.”

As one would expect, this set off the chorus.

“Beardsley?”

“That horrid little person from the
Delphian
?”

“What is the
Delphian
?” came the lilting voice from behind him.

“A newspaper,” said a sister.

“Ghastly, gossipy newspaper.”

“He's a vile little man who writes stories for it.”

“Sometimes in iambic pentameter. He fancies himself a
writer.
”

“You can't mean to have him in the house, Marchmont.”

“What will Papa say?”

“Since I am not a mind reader, I haven't the least idea what your father will say,” said Marchmont. “Perhaps he will say, ‘That was an excellent idea the
ancient Greeks had, of abandoning female infants on a mountainside. Why was that practice given up, I wonder?'”

Having rendered them momentarily mute with outrage, he turned to Zoe. “Miss Lexham, would you be so good as to walk downstairs with me?”

Before she stepped out into the corridor, she smoothed her skirts. In another woman, the gesture would have seemed nervous. With her it was provocative. She did it in the way she'd trailed her hands across her bosom and along her hips.

I know all the arts of pleasing a man
, she'd said.

He had not the smallest doubt she did. He was aware of heat racing along his skin and under it, speeding to his groin. He could almost feel his brain softening into warm wax, the wax a woman could do as she liked with.

Nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Men paid good money for women who possessed such arts. He'd be paying good money, too, come to that. He forgot about her annoying sisters and laughed—at himself, at the circumstances.

She looked up questioningly at him, and he almost believed she had no idea how provocative she was. Almost believed it.

I'm not innocent
, she'd said. That he could believe.

“I was only thinking of the thousand pounds you've cost me,” he said.

“You refer to the wager with your friends,” she said. “You didn't believe it was me. But why should you? I was worried at first that my own parents wouldn't know me.”

“Well, none of us do, do we?” he said. “But it is you, beyond a doubt. And I am far too glad of that to begrudge the money.”

“You're glad?” she said, her face lighting up. “You're glad I'm back?”

“Of course,” he said. “Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?”

She looked away then, and he couldn't see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes—not that he would have noticed. Eyes were reputed to be windows to the soul. The Duke of Marchmont didn't care to look that deep.

That evening

Wearing a wry smile, Lady Tarling opened the oval red velvet box. Within lay a diamond and golden topaz necklace, with matching bracelet and earrings.

“How beautiful,” she said. She looked up at the man who'd given them to her. “I'm partial to golden topaz.”

Marchmont hadn't known this, but he wasn't surprised. Lady Tarling's taste was exquisite. She was a slender brunette, with large, light brown eyes. She knew exactly what became her, and golden topaz, set off with diamonds, suited her perfectly.

His secretary, Osgood, who was in charge of selecting suitable gifts for His Grace's amours, would know this. Osgood always kept several fine pieces
of jewelry on hand, particularly the kind to be used as generous parting gifts, for His Grace was easily bored. This was not a parting gift. It was intended, in fact, to prevent that—until His Grace decided it was time to part.

“I've taken on an amusing task that may keep me away for a short time,” Marchmont said.

“Ah,” she said, her smile faltering a little.

“An obligation to an old friend,” he said. “I've agreed to bring his daughter into fashion—and perhaps find her a husband before the Season's end.”

“An old friend. I see.”

“You'll read something about it in all the papers tomorrow,” he said. “Rumors will be traveling through Almack's tonight.”

“But you knew I wouldn't be there to hear them,” she said.

Lord Tarling's handsome young widow was not on the patronesses' list. Lady Jersey had taken her in dislike.

“I preferred you not learn about it from one of the cats who will be there,” he said, “or from the newspapers. They were likely to give you the wrong impression altogether.”

“It must be a curious impression, indeed, to result in such a gift.” She gave a little laugh. Her silvery laugh was famous. It was gentler and prettier, many thought, than Lady Jersey's tinkling laughter. This was but one reason Lady Jersey loathed her.

“I've taken Lord Lexham's daughter under my wing,” he said.

She closed the box. “But all of his daughters are launched and wed—” She broke off, the truth dawn
ing. She was, after all, both intelligent and well informed. “You refer to the…”

He didn't wait for her to hunt for a more tactful term. “The Harem Girl, yes,” he said.

“My goodness.” She moved away from him to the nearest chair and sat down hard—but tightly clutching the box, he noted.

“There's going to be a ridiculous uproar tomorrow,” he said. “Completely ridiculous, as the world will soon discover. For the time being, discretion would be in order. Miss Lexham has some prejudice to overcome: Her recent past is not regarded as respectable.”

“And I am not well loved by some who decide who is acceptable and who is not. Your…er…protégée will want the blessing of Almack's lady patronesses, as well as the Queen.”

Queen Charlotte didn't like Lady Tarling, either.

“It will not take long,” he said. “By the time she's presented at court, no one will turn a hair.”

“You are very confident,” she said.

“Oh, Zoe's intelligent and beautiful,” he said. “I've no doubt she'll take. It's merely a question of quieting the uproar and retraining her a bit.”

“Intelligent and beautiful,” Lady Tarling murmured. She opened the box again and studied the jewels therein. “I see.”

He didn't know what she saw, and it didn't occur to him to be curious. He was not accustomed to explaining himself and had gone as far as this only because their liaison had scarcely begun, and he wasn't quite finished with her.

It never dawned on him—and why should it?—that she was intelligent enough to perceive this.