The Devilish Pleasures of a Duke (11 page)

Emma and Charlotte had decided several months ago that they would write an etiquette manual for those young gentlewomen who strove for refinement but could not afford private instruction. Both women wrote for recreation. But a guidebook was a vast undertaking that would possibly require years of effort and deep practical reflection. Once or twice a week, at the end of the day, Emma would scribble a few notes on a crucial issue to be included.

Sometimes she and Charlotte would indulge moments of sheer silliness and insert a satirical chapter just for fun. The Delicate Art of Disengaging Oneself from a Belching Baronet. How to Pour a Bad Glass of Wine into a Potted Fern at a Party.

Where in this guidebook would there be a chapter entitled: “A Gentlewoman’s Disgrace—How to Feign Dignity After the Fall”? She laid down her quill with a sigh, dismayed to notice the nib dripping ink onto her papers. And on her brother’s desk, too.

She had never spilled ink in her entire life.

This was the careless state into which her one sin had led her. Where was the sand? She watched the stain spread until a dark velvet voice spoke over her shoulder.

“May I offer you some help?”

She slid from her chair as Adrian reached over her and blotted the ink with the clean handkerchief he had produced from his vest pocket. “You’ve ruined that, too, you know,” she said in embarrassment. “What a pair we make.”

He folded his handkerchief across the ink blot. “What’s another stain to a life as corrupt as mine?” he asked in the neutral voice that made it impossible to know whether he was serious or not.

She stood, her heart racing as her eyes met his brooding regard. “You should not be walking about without an attendant,” she said lightly. “I meant to mention that in the garden.”

His gaze held hers before he glanced away. “And I meant to tell you that I really feel much better. I’m leaving, actually. I’ve taken advantage of you and your brother long enough.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts. What an infuriating person. On the one hand, he made her feel guilty and ashamed for what she’d done with him. On the other, she suffered the same emotions for driving him off before he’d had a chance to heal. “Why is it that men can never admit to any weakness? I’m going to have you taken back to bed. By a footman.”

He leaned his hip against the edge of the desk. “Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother at all,” she said, turning toward the bellpull—and finding herself suddenly trapped between a tall virile male and the desk. “What are you doing?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “What did you want of me?”

“I was looking for Heath,” he said quietly, his body a breath from hers.

He edged a little closer. She shivered in response.

She raised her face to his. “Really?”

“No.” He lowered his gaze. “No. I was hoping to see you before I left.”

His confession, the memory of the brief but blissful pleasure they had shared, hung between them, both a taunt to Adrian and a temptation. He wanted her so badly, he refused to believe she did not want him back.

Before she could stop him, or he could stop himself, he bent his head and kissed her. Her lips parted, perhaps in surprise. He drove his tongue deeply inside her mouth. Her body shook. Even then he forced himself to hold his hands at his sides because if he touched her, he would want more and more until he’d taken his fill. He wanted her, and if she were any other woman he would have found a hundred ways to have her. But for now, because she was Emma Boscastle, he had to pretend to observe certain rules of conduct that he’d never bothered to properly learn in the first place.

“No,” she murmured, but her lips yielded, warm and lush, and underneath her denial he tasted desire and remembered driving his fingers into her silken flesh. Groaning, he deepened the kiss. “Please,” she said faintly.

“Please, what?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. Someone might…see.”

“I locked the door behind me.”

Her shoulders gave a delicate shiver that hinted she craved this as much as he did.

“The problem,” he continued softly, “is that you’re in my every thought. I am tormented by the memory of how it felt the moment I breached your defenses.”

Her breathing quickened. “Don’t say it.”

“You came apart for me,” he went on, low and relentless. He trailed his fingers down her throat. “There could have been more. Perhaps you need time. It was my fault, I am a fool to have rushed what should have taken months to grow.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said brokenly. “We’ll forget it.”

“I’ll wait,” he whispered. “I believe I may need you, although I’ve never needed anyone before, not like this. Have you? It’s not a particularly comforting feeling. I’m not used to being so bloody emotional.”

She took a breath. “I’m not going to answer that question.”

“I think you just did,” he said, smiling at her. “Will you be honest with me?”

She exhaled slowly. “I shall try.”

“What would a man like me have to do to win your affections?”

He was teasing her, Emma thought, and a blush heated her face. His disingenuous banter was so effective that it must have been practiced, perfected, on a dozen other women before her. “I have reached the age, my lord, when discretion overrules desire. When virtue must subjugate Venus.”

He looked deeply into her eyes and then, to her indignation, burst into laughter. “That’s rubbish. You’ve never even tasted life. Don’t deceive me or yourself.”

“How do you know what I’ve tasted?” she asked in irritation.

He smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your vast experiences. However, I doubt that you have seen as much of life as I have.”

“Is…is everything they say about you true?” she asked in hesitation.

He shrugged. “Such as?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Fighting Chinese pirates—”

“They were French pirates, as a matter of fact. Freebooters. The East India Company hired me to put an end to their aggression on what we claim as British territory.”

She regarded him with relief. “It all sounds rather noble like that.”

He paused. It did. But it hadn’t been noble at all. It had been fierce, bloody, and hellish.

“What exactly did you do in the company?” she asked.

He almost answered, anything they bloody paid him for, but he reminded himself that a man had to watch his words around a lady like Emma. It hadn’t mattered much how he spoke around soldiers on the other side of the world.

“I am anything but noble, Emma,” he said with rueful honesty. “But neither am I a liar.”

“Then what are you?” she whispered.

He shook his head, his voice rough. “A man who finds your company irresistible. I don’t know the words to explain what I have never felt before. Please, reassure me, I am not alone in this madness.”

She lowered her gaze.

His knuckles grazed her collarbone. Her breasts tightened, swelled as if awaiting his touch. How she could pretend to be unmoved when his nearness tormented her, she could not say. Her every sense urged her to submit. It was shaming to realize how this one man had made her so aware of her womanly yearnings. A flush worked slowly down her face into her breasts, then below. He breathed sexual desire into her very bones.

“Adrian,” she whispered, closing her eyes.

“You shiver when I touch you.”

She shivered when he entered the room, too. “I forgot my shawl in the garden.”

“I can’t forget what we did, Emma.”

“You haven’t even tried,” she said with a moan of distress. “Adrian, honestly, you aren’t being fair.”

“Will being fair win you?”

He bent his head, smiling, and kissed her again. His tongue slowly circled hers, sweetly tormenting, until she arched her throat in surrender. Sensual enticement burned in the air they breathed. “I like to think about you,” he whispered. “About those little groans you gave as I played with your quim. How wet you were.”

“Adrian.” Her lower body buckled. The inner walls of her body softened. A stinging surge of blood tingled throughout her veins. “You promised me.”

“What I promised,” he said thickly, “is that I would not tell. I never said I would not desire you nor try to coax you back into my bed.”

She shook her head. Yet he surely knew her body desired him. She could not hide the signs. A soft gasp escaped her lips as his erection jutted into her soft belly. Her pulse beat a wild betrayal at the base of her pale throat.

“Emma.” He breathed a groan into her delicate mouth. “Why not? I am a well-born man who lost his way.”

Why not? His hips shifted in restless sensuality at the plea. She trembled delicately, further arousing his hard, aching body. He needed to touch her, to feel her flesh. He clenched his hands, swearing he would master his lust for her, and prove his worth.

But in his mind he was undressing and possessing her in every sexual act under the sun. Blood thundered between his temples, in his groin. He ground his teeth, cursing the male instincts that reminded him of the sweet treasures under her skirt, her subtle perfume. Like vanilla and female heat. Comfort and sex with the same woman.

How could he convince her he was not past redemption when his past, his behavior toward her, proved otherwise?

He stared down at her. Her mouth looked damp, swollen, so delicious he would die to taste her again. Somehow he grasped the remnants of his sanity, remembered where they were.

“For the sake of fairness,” she whispered, her blue eyes steadily holding his, “I choose to believe that it is your head injury making you behave with impropriety.”

He snorted in amusement. Now he felt like twice a devil. Did she not understand what a desperate rogue he was and that for the first time since he could remember, he cared what someone thought?

“Emma, listen to me,” he said in a stark under-tone. “There is nothing wrong with my head. I’m perfectly fine.”

“What are you saying?” she asked him impatiently.

“I only wanted your attention,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I admit I took advantage.”

“And you expect me to believe that you got hit on the head to attract it?”

“Not exactly. The chair wasn’t part of my plan.” He sighed ruefully. “I did hope, however, to stay in bed as long as you were willing to take care of me. I could have walked out of this house anytime I chose. But I chose to play on your goodness and now I’m confessing and asking for your understanding. I deceived you, but only because I took pleasure in your care.”

“I see,” she murmured. And he thought that she did. “Well, the physician said you were to be kept under observation for several days.”

“I don’t need bed rest,” he protested, his eyes glinting down at her. “I need…you. Your personal attention.”

“Ah.” Her tempting mouth flattened. “I believe that there are any number of women in London who would be more than glad to answer your needs.”

“I’m not referring to my carnal needs,” he said swiftly. “I haven’t been in good society for over a decade, and I’ve forgotten how to behave. What I need is”—he grasped for inspiration, for the key to her sympathy—“instruction in deportment. I need someone to smooth my rough edges.”

“You’ll not get an argument from me there.”

“I can’t have a reunion with the old bugger of a duke unless I’m proper,” he elaborated. “He’s particular about appearances.”

“You should be more particular about your language,” Emma exclaimed.

He grinned unexpectedly. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I didn’t even realize what I’d called him. The word just slipped out. How can I present myself to him in such an unpolished state?”

She drummed her fingers on the desk, her gaze frankly skeptical. “I’d be shocked by all this if I hadn’t grown up with five brothers of my own. And—” She shook her head in sudden realization. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been in England for almost a year and you have not even
visited
your father?”

“Give or take a few months.”

She studied him in dismay. “Your
dying
father? An elderly person who is willing to overlook your past grievances and offer an olive branch of—Why are you looking up at the ceiling, my lord?” she asked annoyedly. “It is most unsettling.”

“I was just wondering when the heavenly chorus would break into a hymn.” He shrugged at the scolding frown that she gave him. “And, by the way, I’m the one who should be offering forgiveness, not him. He made my life miserable, Emma. He drove me away with his unfounded suspicions. I’ve lived almost half my life believing I was not his son.” He glanced down at her in cynical amusement. “He’s also not as old as you think, and he isn’t dying.”

“He’s recovered?” she asked in surprise. “Are you sure?”

“If there was ever anything wrong with him to begin with. I think it was a ploy to bring me home.”

“Do you expect me to believe that your father feigned a deathly illness to bring you back home?”

“Yes.” And he assumed she would take his side. He had done nothing wrong to his way of thinking.

“You are his son, Adrian,” she said, meeting his gaze. “It is your duty and your birthright to honor him.”

“Honor him?” he said in disbelief. “That old—”

“It is what you were born to,” she said gently. “He cannot disinherit you. It’s time to put your personal feelings aside.”

“Is that right?” He stepped into her small frame, a tactic, he knew quite well, that was usually distracting. “Scarfield told me for years I was born of a whore and that I wasn’t his. Do you expect me to put aside years of abuse?”

“Let him make amends, that’s all, and then you can decide. At least you can hear him out.”

“Why should I?” he challenged her.

“Have you ever considered what would happen to England if all our blooded aristocrats simply decided to abdicate?”

“I despise him,” he admitted, still waiting for her to agree his enmity was justified.

She vented a sigh. “No matter how bitter your feelings, you have to face him. For your sake even more than his.”

“Don’t tell me what I feel or what I must face,” he said, raising his brow. “Just help me.”

“I’m not sure how.”

“Neither am I. But there you have it, Emma,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “This all proves I need—”