Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (23 page)

She eased the buttons on his breeches free. Slowly. Tantalizingly. His breath came raw and jerky now. And
she
controlled every touch, every second of his pleasure.

“Shall I find out just how much you like that? Adam, wasn’t it?” The name did not matter, of course. It was probably as false as the name
she
had given him. She would never see him again after this night.

Her companion groaned thickly as his manhood at her smooth, skilled fingers. “Do you like this too?” Louisa’s eyes glittered, as cold as the diamonds at her throat. Slowly she slid her fingers around him, milking him with expert skill. “Or this, perhaps?”

He was quivering against her palms. His face twisted in a mask of utter pain and cruel pleasure.

It almost made her laugh to see how vulnerable he was—how vulnerable they
all
were.

One day soon, it would be Morland standing next to her. He would not be so cool and mocking when she had her hands around him like this!

Louisa’s expert fingers tightened with that image. Her heart began to pound.
Yes, Morland…

She bent lower, her lips wet and seeking. Her companion was hot and swollen and very ready.

Just as she was.

“Tell me,” she ordered. “Tell me if you like what I’m doing. Tell me what it makes you think of.”

Her voice was hoarse as her lips closed around him.

She didn’t even hear his answer.

It was nearly three o’clock before the Duchess of Cranford’s carriage returned Chessy to Dorrington Street. Her feet were aching and her eyes were prickling from the cloying perfumes, pomades, and the press of bodies.

But worst of all was the way she felt inside.

She had tried to ignore him, had tried to block him right out of her consciousness. Yet when Morland had strode from the room, she had known it without even looking.

Because she had
felt
it deep in the pit of her stomach.

Chessy fought a tide of longing that drove her back in time, back to the innocent schoolgirl she had once been.

But she was a girl no more, and her father needed her. She could not allow herself to be weak or distracted. Lord Morland had simply become some sort of a dream figure, played up out of all proportion. And Chessy had no room for a man in her life—especially not an arrogant, womanizing earl.

She looked down at her dresser. There were no lip tints, no jewel cases or perfume bottles.

Nor was there any new letter from her father’s kidnappers.

Weariness overtook her. She sank down onto her bed and eased off her slippers. Outside, she heard a faint crack against the window, and then another.

Rain…

Oddly that was Chessy’s only real memory of England. Her father had explained that he’d taken her east when she was very young, soon after her mother’s death. It had rained, day after day. Week after week. In a fine mist and in heavy, sullen sheets.

Chessy remembered that English rain, but very little else.

Idly she picked up a lumpy figure from her bed, a grubby rag doll dressed in muslin skirts and a white apron. One eye was missing and her yarn hair was nearly gone, but the figure brought back poignant memories.

Keenest of all was the night she’d come down with cholera. The sickness swept through Macao, felling servants and friends, and then she, too, had been gripped by the terrible fever. Her father had held her and rocked her for nearly three days until the danger had finally passed. He had been her world, then and ever since. If sometimes she had missed having a mother to advise and comfort her, to tell her the things girls needed to hear, she never showed it, for fear of hurting the man who had worked so hard to be both father and mother to her.

Nor did Chessy tell him the names the other girls had called her at the missionary school she attended, names like “mixed-blood” and “heathen” and things far worse. The general meaning had been clear enough, along with the hatred and envy that had spewed out with those epithets.

She was as English as they were, of course, as
innocent
as they were, but that did not matter. She and her father were
different.
They spoke the foreign tongue. They studied the foreign culture. At times they even adopted foreign dress.

Yes, James Cameron and his daughter were very different, and in that narrow, closed colonial society anything different was a threat.

So Chessy had been mocked and shunned. And she, with her stubborn Cameron pride, had told her father nothing about it. She had been especially careful not to tell him how the English boys stared at her with lazy, knowing grins and found reasons to be nearby so they could drop their books and brush against her with their hot, groping fingers.

And the names
they
whispered were even worse than the names that their sisters used. Chessy had tried to block out the memory of those rough words and the hollow, mocking laughter, but she never quite succeeded. Only at her exercises did she manage to hold the jeers at bay, or when she was deep in some excavation with her father, the more demanding the better.

But since her father’s capture, Chessy had begun to feel that the laughing voices were winning. As every day passed, they grew louder, warning her that her father’s time was growing short and that she could never hope to save him.

Carefully she straightened the old doll and placed it back upon the bed.

Outside, the rain grew harder, smashing and hammering at the window. The sound pulled her back, back to her earliest memories, which were as bleak and cold as the London streets.

She made her decision at that moment. In truth, she had no real choice. She must go back to Morland’s townhouse and study each room carefully. Then she must search the bedroom completely, as her father’s captors had ordered. There could be no more delays.

Whitby’s face
held just the
right
impassivity when he opened the door
to
the Earl
of
Morland the next afternoon
.

“Miss Cameron is receiving in the, er—green salon,” the butler intoned, taking the earl’s gloves and hat.

“Thank you, Whitby.” Morland caught a trill of laughter from the end of the hall. “A busy morning?”

With a mere lift of his white brows, Whitby managed to convey a world of information.

Morland frowned. “Gentlemen callers too?” He’d expected her to take them, of course, but not
this
soon.

“In droves, your lordship,” the butler said lugubriously. “Lounging about the steps, flooding the alcove with flowers, and rattling on about ‘the divine poetry of Miss Cameron’s eyes.’ Shouldn’t wonder if there weren’t a dozen of them in the salon right now, in fact.” The butler turned resignedly. “If you would care to follow me, your lordship.”

Booming male laughter assaulted Morland, leaving him in no doubt of Whitby’s assessment.

Blast
. It was the height of impropriety to entertain male callers without a chaperon present. When word of the business made its way through the
ton,
Chessy’s reputation would be ruined. Had the woman no sense of her situation?

At the end of the hall he stood surveying the room where Whitby had led him.

It was worse than he’d thought! A dozen men thronged the room, laughing and chatting or examining the Oriental rarities displayed against one wall.

And in the center of the melee, cool in a peach muslin morning dress, stood the woman Morland was fast coming to believe would be the destruction of his peace, his sanity, and his very life.

He walked toward her, ignoring the exaggerated groans of several young sprigs. His eyes were only for Francesca.

He saw her instant stiffening. Even then, she kept her back turned, and that defiant gesture angered him. So
he
was not to be allowed into the inner sanctum, was he?

But in spite of his anger, Morland did not wish to see Francesca Cameron snubbed and jeered at. It was a pleasure to discover a female who stood up for her own ideas—no matter how outrageous they were.

Only then did Morland notice the flowers covering every available surface in the room. Belatedly he realized he had brought no offering of his own. The knowledge made him feel awkward and slightly ashamed.

A strange tension gripped his chest as he watched Chessy raise one swain from bended knee. He had a wild urge to sweep the whole noisy lot of them out into the street. But she was obviously enjoying her first taste of acclaim. What sort of cad would he be to deny her that pleasure?

A muscle flashed at Morland’s jaw as he waited in silence for her notice.

It did not come.

He had caused more harm than he had realized in the duchess’s conservatory.

“Miss Cameron. A word, if you please.” His mouth tightened when she still did not turn. “If your company can spare you,” he added grimly.

A hail of protests met this request, but Morland barely noticed. His attention was trained on the woman turning slowly while sunlight poured through the window.

His first thought was that she looked remarkably fresh and clear-eyed after a night that must have gone on nearly until dawn.

His second thought was that she looked wrenchingly, impossibly beautiful. That much had not changed.

Morland’s fingers clenched behind his back as he watched a faint wave of color stain her cheeks. She lifted a full-petaled rose from a vase that must have contained some three dozen.

She turned the crimson bud, as if considering Morland’s request. “Ah, but you do not state your business, my lord. I must be wary of such requests. I have no one to protect me here in London, you see. Only my father, and he is very often occupied.”

Behind her the bevy of swains swore loud vows to protect Miss Cameron unto death.

At any other time Morland might have found the scene amusing and quite harmless.

But now it made him frown.

Was the woman purposely orchestrating this display to annoy him?
“I believe it would be preferable for us to speak outside. Miss Cameron.”

“Do you, indeed?” Her eyes glittered. “Lord Morland, isn’t it?” She laughed recklessly. “But I hardly know you. I cannot see that we have the slightest thing to discuss.” She slanted him a tight smile. “In private or otherwise.”

“Chess—” Morland caught himself with a silent curse. “Miss Cameron—I am certain that your guests would not begrudge me a few moments of your time.”

Another chorus of protests met Morland’s pronouncement.

Chessy surveyed him through half-lowered lids. “What do you think, gentlemen? I am afraid it is really quite improper of him to ask.”

More voices rose in protest.

Chessy stared at Morland and shrugged gracefully. “I’m afraid the majority must carry the day, my lord. Perhaps some other time.”