The Devil Earl (16 page)

The memory of that simple kiss flared hot enough to surprise him, and Sebastian reached for her, taking hold of her glasses before she even noticed. Prudence could drift very far away at times, he realized, but he did not mind. He knew how to claim her undivided attention. “Have you a receptacle for these?” he asked.

She stared blankly at the glasses for a moment before slipping them into her reticule. “But, I—” she began, before Sebastian cut off her protest by closing the curtains and plunging them into total darkness. He heard her low gasp in the blackness, and then he dragged her onto his lap.

Another woman might have protested or gleefully rubbed against him, but Prudence simply clung to him, her heart hammering so fiercely that he could feel it against his own.
It was almost as if they beat as one…Pushing that odd, unsettling thought aside, Sebastian cupped his hand to her throat, closing his fingers around her nape, and pulled her to him. Although hearts and souls had ever been foolishness to him, bodies were a different story.
This
he understood.

Sebastian laid claim to her with his mouth. Not gently, for the time for that was past. He wanted to make her his, more than he could ever recall wanting anything, and it was difficult to hold himself in check.

Her mouth opened under his, taking his heat and possession without demur, and Sebastian felt his pulse race as it never had before. He drank in her passion, her joy, and the fevered longing she had never known existed. He mined it with his lips and with his tongue, driving into her recesses, mating with her own in a primitive ballet that was old as time, but as fresh and new as a spring bud.

And as unique as Prudence herself. Unskilled in the arts of love, she somehow managed to send his jaded senses skittering. Her arms were caught between them, and she clutched his lapels, unknowingly pressing herself against him, and when Sebastian felt the first, tentative brush of her tongue, he went wild, gripping her to him, just as if he had not had a woman in years. Then he felt her whole body trembling, and he eased his hold upon her, not wanting to hurt her.

“Forgive me,” he whispered in her ear. He was going to say more, but her scent beckoned, and he kissed her ear, lightly running his tongue along its folds. She shivered again, and he hardened like a rock beneath her bottom. He lifted his hips, grinding against her, and heard her indrawn breath.

“Forgive me,” he mumbled again, knowing he was acting like an impatient bridegroom, but unable to help himself. And she only encouraged him with her shuddering responses. Taking her earlobe into his mouth, Sebastian
sucked on it, reveling in her soft sigh of surprise. He wanted more, needed her, his blood requiring her like some sort of infusion, and although a part of his brain knew it was absurd, the rest of his body cried out for her. His teeth grazed her lobe, gently biting, and she gasped.

“Oh, my lord!”

“Sebastian,” he murmured. Suddenly, it was very important to hear her call him by name. He kissed her cheek, her temple, her eyelids, without disturbing the tidy chip hat perched on her hair. “Sebastian,” he repeated.

“Sebastian,” she echoed. Glorying in the swell of feeling that burst through him at the sound of him on her lips, he took her mouth in celebration. They clung together, Prudence trembling and whimpering in his arms, while Sebastian tested the very limits of his endurance—until a knock sounded against the door.

Like a drowning man, Sebastian had to make his way up for air as desire, hot and overwhelming, threatened to drag him down to depths he had never heretofore explored. With supreme effort, he broke off the kiss and pressed Prudence’s head against his chest while he took in sustaining breaths in dazed astonishment.

The couch rattled again with a hesitant pounding. Summoning up some semblance of his wits, Sebastian put Prudence from him, settling her gently on the opposite seat before he pushed open the door.

His driver, Morley, stood there, looking a bit shamefaced. “We have arrived, my lord,” the fellow said. “Been sitting here for some time, so I thought I best…”

Morley’s words trailed off into an apologetic glance toward Jane, who was standing some feet away. Having been with the earl for a long time, the driver was well acquainted with his habits, and would not have disturbed him, but for her presence.

Sebastian gave him an approving nod before turning back to his guest. Another woman might have protested his behavior,
fussed over her clothes or preened, greedy for his attentions, but Prudence simply stared at him, her hazel eyes wide without her glasses. He was struck with the realization that she, alone among womankind, was neither silly and chatty nor cold and silent. She was…Prudence.

He held out a hand to her. “Are you hungry? I brought along a picnic.” He asked, although he knew she would not refuse, and she did she disappoint him. She seemed restless and eager and a bit disoriented—ripe for the plucking.

Sebastian found a soft, shady spot and shook out a linen cloth large enough for the both of them to sit on—or lie upon. The maid giggled and sighed, obviously impressed by his devotion to details, before Morley swept her off.

Prudence did not seem quite as awed by his feast, although she made it plain she had never picnicked off gilt-edged bone china, nor sipped champagne from the finest crystal goblets while outdoors. Deliberately, he had kept the courses to a minimum and included several dishes designed to enhance one’s other appetites, such as plump, fresh oysters. He was, after all, an old hand at such things.

But, somehow, the scene he had set so many times before played out differently with Prudence. The stultifying conversation and blithe compliments he would normally have offered did not belong. Instead, they spoke of their shared interests, of writing and books and Wolfinger.

Prudence, he realized, was quite taken with his ancestral home, and he wondered if perhaps the abbey was not a better setting for seduction than a grassy slope in the spring countryside. It was certainly one he had never used before, and its very uniqueness held appeal. The old place appealed to him, too, and the two of them together, exploring the abbey and each other, presented a tempting picture to his mind.

Watching her bite daintily into a tiny pastry, Sebastian felt his body clench and thoughts of Wolfinger flee. Why wait? If she were any other woman, he would take her right here,
right now. His driver, well versed in his tactics, had already led the maid away, entertaining her, keeping her from them. They were alone. He could lift her skirts and be inside her in a flash, pumping between her long golden thighs until he reached satisfaction.

But would he really be satisfied? Was that all he wanted from Prudence Lancaster? Sebastian’s jaded self told him to take what he could, but somewhere deep inside him was the thought—the hope—that there was something else, and that this spinsterish provincial might be able to give it to him.

“I have a confession to make,” she said. Her words, breaking into his musings, startled him. He was even more stunned when she slowly stripped off both of her gloves. By God, perhaps she was no innocent, after all!

One look at her face told him he was wrong, for her smile was one of amusement, not seduction. Then she held out her hands for his inspection, and Sebastian felt something odd in the very pit of his being.

Ink stained her fingers.

Sebastian stared, while the strange sensation swept over him, taunting him with its power. He wanted to kiss them. He wanted to take each clever digit and lick it until this woman who was more interesting, more intelligent, more alluring, than anyone he had ever known whimpered her surrender to him.

“I have been writing again,” she said, dragging his attention forcibly away from her tempting hands. “Originally, I had promised Phoebe that I would not take up my pen during our London visit. You see, I have a lamentable habit of immersing myself totally in my work, to the exclusion of aught else,” she explained.

Her words danced through Sebastian’s blood like a liquor, heating and firing his imagination as he considered Prudence Lancaster immersing herself in him, totally…

She leaned forward. “But, I cannot help it! After our last meeting, I wrote feverishly. You, my lord, inspire me so!” Sebastian felt a stab of dismay at the sight of her earnest, blushing countenance. Perhaps his little games of intrigue had worked too well.

“I must admit, my lord, that I find your company most…stimulating! And it has been quite a boon to my work.” She was not being coy or flattering; her serious expression told him that she simply stated the truth.

Sebastian knew an alien sensation suspiciously akin to guilt. Perhaps it was because without her spectacles, Prudence looked so much younger, so naked and vulnerable. Ruthlessly he reminded himself she was an adult, a woman of sound mind and judgment, who wanted whatever “stimulation” he might provide. And yet, he was struck with a profound sense of self-loathing that made it impossible for him to seize her outstretched hands.

She was his. Sebastian had enough experience to tell that he could have her now, and these feeble flickers of a conscience he had thought long dead be damned! He hesitated, and in the silence that followed, the thought of taking her body filled him with revulsion, not for her, but for himself.

His mouth twisted wryly. “I am not surprised that you find me of such help, for I am the perfect villain.” He could have let it go at that, called for the coachman and taken her back, but Prudence gave him a quick, guileless look of denial that told him she did not believe him.

Sebastian’s frustration flared into anger, and he knew an overwhelming compulsion to give her a brief, bleak glimpse into himself, no matter what the cost. Otherwise, the foolish chit might cling to the absurd notion that there was something redeeming in his black character. As amusing as it was to have a champion, Sebastian had tired of the game. It was time to set Prudence Lancaster to rights.

“I am afraid that you have been wrong about me, Prudence,” he drawled. “I
am
the count.”

P
rudence appeared dismayed, and Sebastian reveled in her discomfort, taking a painful sort of delight in the fact that he was finally getting through to her, through those Gothic fancies to the practical side she showed to all but himself.

“I am the count,” he repeated, annoyed at how silly the words sounded.

“Nonsense!” Prudence protested. She glanced down at her gloved hands. “I admit that after I first saw you, I was seized with renewed inspiration and perhaps I did pattern my villain after your…physical being. However, that is where the resemblance ends, for he is an evil character, excessively so, while you are…not.”

She sought his eyes, and the glitter of admiration in her own was unmistakable, Sebastian could not bear to look at her, fresh-faced and serious in her defense of him, but he refused to turn away. Suddenly, it was a matter of courage. He
had
to tell her. He must protect her from him, because Prudence was something fine and precious. She deserved better than a wicked nobleman who wanted only to vary his jaded palate with her innocence.

“My uncle was no role model for a young boy,” he began, amazed at how easily the words came. “When my father died, he snatched me out of the fields of Yorkshire and tossed me into the depths of London’s world of vice.” He
gazed into the trees, but he saw an awesome figure to an impressionable lad. A god who had turned out to be more like the devil.

“Gambling!” Sebastian muttered, with a humorless laugh. “I frequented the worst hells with him, but I was luckier than poor James. I won. Perhaps if I had not, I might have learned a lesson, but I took pridein my so-called skill. I made a fortune in those clubs, never blinking when others, some no older than myself, lost their wealth to me.”

Sebastian paused, dredging up memories that he had thought long buried. “Like young Fitzpatrick, who went home afterward and put a bullet through his head.”

The tale poured from him now, bits and pieces that he had never shared with a living soul, in a catharsis so strong that he could not stop. “And the brothels. My doting uncle took me to the best and worst of them, where women would do anything for money.

“And I let them, taking them so carelessly that I felt no pleasure. I performed for others, boastful of my talents, until one morning I found myself…” He could not finish, did not want to sully her soul with the knowledge of what all he had been and done.

“Yes, well, it is a wonder I never got the pox that struck down my uncle,” he said. “Otho was still in the early stages, of course, but he knew what was coming, and I think he courted death.”

Sebastian did not blink as the explanation for that bizarre night leapt to the tip of his tongue for the first time in his life. “We had been drinking when he was killed. It was an accident, but he urged me on. He knew I was the better duelist. He
knew,
“ Sebastian repeated, his body taut at the memory.

“It started as a game, as so much did with him, but he pushed me, nicking me, daring me, until it became real.” Sebastian lifted a finger to the scar under his eye, recalling
all too clearly the way the blood had impaired his vision, made him lunge too forcefully in his own defense.

“I think the old bastard wanted to die as flamboyantly as he lived, instead of succumbing to the ravages of his disease. And, of course, he did not give a damn what would become of me afterward. It probably suited his warped sense of humor to imagine his heir hanging for murder.”

Sebastian smiled grimly. “That is what I’ve always thought, but who would believe me, if I told them?” He asked the question of the air, and was absorbed in his dark remembrances until he heard a soft voice respond.

“I would.”

He glanced at her finally, and there was no pity on her sober features, only that same clear-eyed gaze, intelligent, serious, practical. No horror. No disgust. Sebastian felt his insides twist in violent reaction to that unswerving regard, as if, after years of death, she had given him a new chance at life. And yet, reanimation would take effort. Did he have that strength? Would it be worth the cost?