Lord Langley Is Back in Town (32 page)

And when she ran the cloth up his calf to his thigh, he stopped her, his hand covering hers. “My lady,” he said in voice thick with need.

She glanced up and saw something there in his eyes that tore at her heart even more.

Desire. Painful, aching desire.

This wasn’t seduction, this wasn’t a man trying to charm her, tease her as he had the previous night, but a man who desired to be lost in her arms. Lost from a world closing in around him.

Minerva felt herself unravel. She didn’t know what to do, but like the choice of helping him, cleaning him up, she knew if she failed him, she would never forgive herself.

That and she desired him. Longed for him. She looked into his eyes and once again swore he could see all the way to her soul.

Yet she also saw a dark pain shadowed in his gaze. Could it be that his secrets were so much like hers?

Yet he took her hesitation altogether wrong, and lifted her to her feet. “Go, Minerva. Please. I won’t involve you any further.”

She gazed into his eyes, where the conflict was easy to see.

And he must have known it, for he turned away, catching up the towel and wrapping it around him.

“It is for the best,” he said quietly. “Besides, in a few hours I need to be . . . Well, I need to go . . .”

“The duel with Chudley?” Minerva gaped at him. “Don’t tell me I’ve gone to all this trouble just to see you shot.”

“Minerva, I must. Can’t you see that?”

“No, I cannot.” Vexed and furious—mostly at her own indecision—she picked up the wet clothes and dirty rags and put them in the wash basket.

Silently, she cleaned up, while he wound another towel around his waist. Concealing himself, just as he concealed so much more.

“My lord,” she said, her words coming out in a tumbled rush, “do you wish for someone to confide in? Someone to help you?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, as if surprised to find her still there. “I would ask the same of you, my lady.”

Minerva took a step back. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Do you have anything you wish to tell me? Something that you need assistance with?”

Right now? Hours before his ridiculous duel with Chudley and suddenly he wanted to help her? As if she would even ask, and add to his already obvious problems. Wasn’t that why he’d come to Town without telling his own daughters, if only to avoid involving them? She glanced up at him, biting her lip, then shook her head and went back to tidying the kitchen, if only to avoid going up to her bed.

If only to keep from being alone.

He wouldn’t confide in her, anymore than she would him, because, she mused, they didn’t trust each other enough.

Was that it, or was it as he said, too dangerous to involve her?

Minerva shook her head. She was involved, whether he liked it or not, and she was about to turn around and tell him so, but when she looked up, she found he’d slipped from the kitchen and disappeared up the stairs as silently as a cat.

Leaving her utterly alone.

L
angley got up to his room in the attics and cursed himself the minute he closed the door.

What the hell was he thinking? She had been willing and desirable, and he refused her. Rubbing his skull, he realized he’d been hit in the head harder than he thought.

No, it wasn’t that. It was because when he was with Minerva, everything was different.

The lady was so infuriatingly sensible. And capable. And smart. Not some bluestocking—but intelligent—sharp-eyed and capable of thinking quickly.

And she doesn’t trust you
, a wry voice teased. Another point in her favor.

That needled him more than he cared to admit.

Minerva didn’t trust him. She wouldn’t confide in him. Wouldn’t ask for his help.

Damn her! If she had any idea of the scrapes and dangers he’d faced, endured . . .

Well, she does now
, he realized.

Her fingers had traced the lines on his back. The ones he’d gotten in Abbaye, the prison in Paris where he’d been detained until Napoleon’s defeat.

Why, she’d shivered as she washed them, as if they were still raw and open. But she hadn’t recoiled. Hadn’t stopped and backed away.

She’d finished what had needed to be done and asked no questions. Well, no more than she could resist. Nor had she been prodded to pry when she’d seen the scars on his wrists—the ones he took great pains to keep hidden.

And after years of living a life of lies and deception, he knew exactly why she hadn’t asked.

Because she had a dark secret of her own that kept her from prying into the hearts of others.

No, Minerva Sterling’s secret wasn’t an overdrawn account or an expensive obsession for endless shoes and gowns. And it pained him more than he cared to admit that he was powerless to help her—at least until she trusted him enough.

She trusted you enough to offer herself to you . . .

He made an inelegant snort. Because her aunt had exhorted her to do so to keep him from making his meeting with Chudley. Digging around under his bed, he found the bottle of brandy he’d stolen from Mrs. Hutchinson a few days earlier and took a long pull.

Yes, that was why she’d looked at him that way, as if he were the first man she’d ever desired.

And if he was being honest, the reason he refused her, left her, was because when she’d looked at him with those wide, honest eyes, he knew—knew like he’d never known with any other woman—that they were . . . that she was . . .

Unlike any woman he’d ever met.

Oh, he’d loved Frances all those years ago, but with the wild careless passion of youth. And it had been lost long before it had ever been tested when she’d died in childbirth, leaving him with their infant twin daughters and a brief line of memories.

In all the years since, he’d done naught but imitate that heedless, reckless love, poor imitations all, but it was also all he knew how to do.

All he’d thought himself capable of doing.

He glanced down at himself and realized he’d put on a clean shirt and breeches.

Because he had no intention of going to bed.

Go to her. Tell her. Before tomorrow. Before your entire life unravels.

He left the attic and began the slow descent to her room. The steps creaked beneath his steps, as if echoing his thoughts.

So she will confide in you.

So she’ll trust you.

So you can find your heart.

That thought stayed his progress.

Find his heart? Ridiculous! He simply needed to thank her for her assistance. He continued until he reached her door.

Yes, thank her.

And beg her to reconsider her offer.

The door was cracked open and he went to push it open.

I am not here to seduce the lady. As I told her, I can’t involve her.

But you have . . .

He was about to call to her when he spied her standing before her mirror.

Her brown hair, so staid and ordinary in its tight chignon, now fell in tumbled curls down past her shoulders. She wore only her chemise, which revealed what her sensible gowns hid—a lush and curved figure—round breasts, full hips, the body of a woman who could enflame a man into insensibility.

Then she turned and he spied something that had his lips turning up in amusement.

The Sterling diamonds.

What had she said last night in the carriage?

Oh, yes, now he remembered.

. . .
if I am feeling a bit out of sorts, there have been a few times when I’ve worn them . . . just for myself.

And just as he’d suspected, she liked to wear them when she was half dressed. Dangerous minx.

Though nearly naked as she was, she outshone the cold stones like the most precious jewel he’d ever seen.

He slipped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him.

“Minerva?”

She gasped and whirled around, hairbrush in hand, ready to defend herself.

But when she saw it was him, the brush fell from her fingers, landing in a dull thud on the carpet.

“I . . . I . . . I . . .” she stammered.

They stood there for a moment, both unwilling to speak. The desire in her eyes, that aching need, was so clear. He should say something, he had to tell her . . .

“I came to thank you,” he whispered. “Properly.”

She shook her head. “A proper thank you?” Slowly, she crossed the room and reached up to cup his battered face. “Langley, surely you’ve come here for more than that.”

Chapter 13

Do you think Lord Langley is as legendary—in certain matters—as they say?

A confidence overheard at Lady Ratcliffe’s afternoon tea

M
inerva could not believe her bold desire. Instead of ordering him out, as she should have, she was now standing half dressed in front of Langley, and practically begging him to take her to her bed.

Langley, surely you’ve come here for more than that?

However had she come up with such a brazen line?

His stubbled jaw teased her hand, still cupped around his poor, battered face. A handsome man in his finery, there was something all too enticing about Langley once he was stripped of his polished veneer and all that was left was the virile man beneath.

“I’ve come . . . that is to say, I came down here to . . .” he stammered, sounding like a befuddled bridegroom rather than an accomplished rake.

His reluctance, his disquiet, only emblazoned her desires. He wanted her, she knew that, but something was very different about this night. This moment.

For both of them.

His open shirt revealed a smooth, hard chest, and to her bemusement, his feet were bare.

Why that was amusing, she didn’t know, but then again, it wasn’t every night she had a handsome, barefoot man come padding into her bedchamber . . . She smiled up at him. He had come to her. Just as she’d wished when she put on the Sterling diamonds.

“I don’t know what I am doing here,” he confessed.

“It couldn’t wait until the morning?” she asked coyly. Lady Standon no more, Minerva cast away everything that had held her life in bindings.

“No, it couldn’t,” he murmured.

“I should throw you out,” she whispered back. “But I won’t let you go without one thing.” She slid closer to him, one hand pulling his face down a bit while the other curled around his waist so she could hitch herself even closer to him.

Langley, the man with the easy quip, the man used to inviting a lady for a tumble with merely a flick of his mischievous, devil-may-care glances, opened his mouth to say something, to ask that one obvious question, but nothing came out.

Like a siren of old, she smiled at him, inviting him to do that thing she’d vowed she would never allow him.

To kiss her.

Parting her lips, she rose up on her tiptoes and said, “Are you going to make me beg?”

“No,” he said, pulling her closer still. “That will come later.”

And then he kissed her.

His kiss the other night, while tantalizing, had been hastily given and abruptly ended, so it made this one all the more mesmerizing. Slowly, his lips covered hers, claimed hers. Somewhere, he’d found Mrs. Hutchinson’s stash of brandy, and the hints and rumors of that rich brew whispered over her senses. As his tongue tangled with hers, her body swirled with passions, as if his kiss filled her with its own intoxicant.

Oh, and it was a heady brew. His hands roaming over her back, her bottom, drawing her ever closer to him, up against him, while his lips, his tongue, teased her to drink even deeper. To fall headlong with abandon into his seduction.

Though wasn’t she the one doing the seducing?

It was ever so hard to determine who was seducing whom. Having tackled her fears earlier with naught but bravado, now Minerva found her heart, her own power.

The command every woman yields when she finds her heart’s desire. Her soul. Langley’s kiss, instead of leaving her wavering and shocked, now awakened a potency she’d never known she possessed.

It filled her heart with a vitality, a knowledge, that she’d never dared claim, for fear that someone might realize she was no proper lady. But it seemed Langley didn’t need a proper lady.

He wanted her. And only her.

Her hands ran up and under the front of his shirt, starting at the top of his breeches, where a hint of crisp hair ran down to where his manhood even now strained against his plain breeches.

He stilled, as if waiting to see which she would choose—north or south—and for the life of her, she paused, spellbound by the heat of his body, the notion that her touch drove him to this drawn-out pause, awaiting her next step with the same trembling desire that was racing through her fingers, up her arms.