The Pleasure Trap (10 page)

“You’re wearing the kissing patch, Eve,” he said. “That tells me far more than your empty words.”

Flirting wasn’t her forte, but she gave it a try. “You’re making that up. It was given to me by your grandmother.”

He captured her hand and dispensed with the fan, then her reticule. Something about her open palm seemed to fascinate him. The muscles in her abdomen tightened.

“My grandmother,” he said, “is a devious old woman. Who do you think pointed out to me that you were wearing the kissing patch?”

Did everyone know she’d never been kissed? Why couldn’t people mind their own business? She frowned.

He smiled. “And you sent me a message with your fan.”

“What message?”

“Damsel in distress.”

“I was cooling my cheeks, that’s all.”

“After taking lessons from my grandmother? You’ll have to do better than that.”

He wasn’t in a hurry. He pressed a kiss to her hand, then brushed kisses to the inner curve of her arm and lingered over the sensitive shell of her ear. Much to her dismay, she was finding it hard to keep her spine straight. Her knees were beginning to buckle and her breathing was becoming audible.

The brush of his hand against her cheek startled her into opening her eyes wide. His face filled her vision. “Eve?” he murmured.

Her voice was breathless. “Yes?”

“Are you making mental notes for your next novel?”

“My next…novel?” she repeated blankly.

A smile barely touched his lips. “I thought not.”

His head descended. Hers lifted. Their lips met and clung. She didn’t pull away, not even when he put his hands on her waist and drew her closer. It was like sipping fine champagne. One sip made her happy, two sips went to her head. After that, she stopped counting. She wanted to drink and drink till she was drunk on him. He didn’t threaten her. He was a rogue on the outside, but inside he was chivalrous and thoughtful and kind.

She made a small, choked protest when he brought the kiss to an end. Unsmiling, he studied her face for a moment. It was an intense look that bordered on disbelief.

“I must be crazy,” he muttered.

She gave a muffled yelp when his arms suddenly wrapped around her and she was dragged against the full length of his body. “Crazy,” he muttered, and he took her lips again.

That kind, chivalrous gentleman was nowhere in evidence. She was in the arms of some primitive being who wanted her with a passion she hadn’t known existed. She wasn’t afraid. She was enthralled. Men always treated her with deference. In Ash’s arms, she felt more alive, more female, more liberated than she’d felt in her life.

Drinking champagne was nothing like this. She reveled in her new-found feminine power. If she was moved, so was he. Beneath the pads of her fingers, she could feel his muscles bunch and strain. There was a catch in his breath. She could hear it as his lips brushed over her cheeks, her throat, her brows before he took her lips again, desperate lips that found an answer in her own desperate response.

She came out of the clouds when his hands began to wander. He was kneading her hips, her spine, pulling her hard against the lower half of his body. She was stunned by the proof of his desire, then shocked when his hands dipped lower and squeezed her bottom.

His head lifted. “What the devil is that?” he demanded, and he squeezed her again.

Warm color surged into her face. “My bustle.” Her voice was clipped.

He began to laugh. “Saved by the bustle,” he choked out, “or should we try again?”

She wriggled out of his arms and tried to adjust the bustle.

“Allow me.” One yank set it to rights. “I won’t say I’m sorry,” he went on, “because I’m not. You’ve exceeded my wildest dreams, Eve Dearing.”

His allusion to dreams made her feel guilty and just the tiniest bit ashamed. But, as she kept telling herself, she had no control over her dreams. They didn’t mean anything.

“Don’t make too much of it,” she said. “I was curious, that’s all.”

He laughed softly. “In the interests of your next torrid romance?”

His jibe hardly registered. She was still shaken. No wonder he’d thought her heroes were anemic. She hadn’t known the first thing about men, but she was learning.

She cleared her throat. “Naturally. What else could it be?”

He cupped her chin in one hand and held her face up to the light. His eyes were searching. His expression was serious.

“What?” she asked tremulously.

“There’s more to you, Eve Dearing, than shows on the surface.”

When it looked as though he would kiss her again, she said in a shaken voice, “We should get back to the others.”

He found her fan, her mask, and her reticule, then ushered her out of the arbor. The steady stream of people was all going in one direction, to the fireworks display on the far side of the booths. Ash kept up a flow of small talk, to which Eve said not one word. She was still in a sensual daze.

Someone called her name, and she gave a guilty start when she saw Leigh Fleming bearing down on them. He gave Ash a look of mingled annoyance and suspicion before he spoke to Eve.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere. The fireworks display is about to begin. I thought we agreed to stay close to the Grove?”

She relinquished Ash’s arm and tucked her hand in the crook of Leigh’s elbow. “We went for a walk,” she said. “That’s all.”

Ash was quite happy to fall into step behind them, since there wasn’t room on the path for three people to walk abreast, but when Eve and Fleming excluded him from their conversation, he began to feel mildly irritated.

He left the path, found a cheroot in his pocket, and lit it from one of the low-hanging lamps. He didn’t want company, so he ducked into the entrance of a nearby arbor, where he could watch the passing scene undisturbed.

He inhaled and blew out a stream of smoke. Tonight, she’d been ravishing in the gown she had borrowed from his grandmother. Men couldn’t keep their eyes off her. Perversely, all he’d wanted was to wrap her in his cloak and stare down any man who got too close.

His brow wrinkled. Crimson satin. There was something familiar about that gown, some forgotten memory that skirted the edge of his mind—Eve and crimson satin. It would come to him eventually.

Tonight, he hadn’t been able to resist her.

He blew out another stream of smoke. A persistent inner voice was telling him to try harder, because if he wasn’t careful, he’d be harnessed to the kind of life he despised—marriage to some eligible girl, and begetting heirs to secure the succession.

So he was taken with her. In time, that would pass. They were incompatible. She was an incurable romantic, and he was a disillusioned idealist.

The kiss was a mistake.

Why had she permitted it?

They’d both got more than they’d bargained for.

So much soul-searching was making him restless. To blazes with Eve Dearing. He didn’t want to change any more than she did.

Cursing softly, he threw the stub of his cheroot into the shrubbery and went to join the others.

Chapter Eight

Eve noted the dreamy smiles on her companions’ faces and grudgingly admitted that Ash Denison was probably right. The party at Vauxhall was over. They were back at the Manor, trudging upstairs to their beds, and every lady looked as if she were floating on air.

Whether or not they’d been kissed, they had evidently had the time of their lives.

No need to look at Lydia. She hadn’t stopped talking since they’d arrived home. So many beaux vying for her favors! So many invitations to places where no lady should go! So many gentlemen of rank begging her not to leave London. “And as for Lord Dension,” she gushed with a sideways glance at Eve, “I’m sure I’m quite dizzy from all the outrageous compliments he paid me.”

Lydia had always liked to hold center stage, but tonight she was different. She seemed as wound up as a little girl on Christmas Day. What present was she going to open first? More to the point, who had put that sparkle in her eyes? It had to be a man.

Could it be Ash Denison? And why was everyone looking at her? Did they think she was jealous?

It was a great relief to slip into her own chamber and shut the door on the world. The maid helped her undress, then left her to her ablutions. After completing her nightly toilette, she sank into her soft feather mattress and drew the covers up to her chin.

Thoughts turned in her mind in a never-ending circle. Nell. Anna. Ash Denison. Her first kiss. Ash Denison. Her first kiss. Ash Denison…

She was twenty-four years old and she’d received her first kiss tonight. Why wasn’t she smiling? Why wasn’t she floating on air? As kisses went, she thought it must be superlative. After all, Ash Denison had had a great deal of practice. How many women had he kissed, anyway? A hundred? A thousand? More? Kissing her would hardly rate a yawn. She, on the other hand, had no one to compare him to.

How far would he have taken her if she hadn’t stopped him?

Her mind flirted with the thought. Suddenly aware that she was smiling, she gave herself a mental shake. She wished she would stop thinking about Ash Denison and go to sleep.

Concentrate! Think of something else!

Her lashes fluttered and her breathing slowed as she began to drift. Pictures of gardens filled her mind, the gardens she had visited with her mother. She felt free and happy just being with her mother, and the sweet scent of orange blossoms filled the air. Orange blossoms…

She drifted further into the stream of sleep and let the current take her.

Strange. She was lying on a grassy bank with the sun beating down on her face. A shadow blocked out the rays of the sun. She opened her eyes to see Ash’s face hovering above her. He was stretched out beside her, propped on one elbow, and his crooked smile was so devastatingly sweet that her heart turned over.

“You’re the only man who has ever kissed me,” she told him.

He laughed, but it was a pleasant laugh with no sting behind it. “As I am well aware.” He plucked a blade of grass and chewed on it as he looked out over the horizon. “Now tell me something I don’t know, Eve.” This time his voice was serious. “Tell me why you throw up a wall whenever I get too close to you.”

“Because,” she said, “you’re always finding fault with me.”

“I could say the same about you.”

“You make me feel inadequate—as a female, I mean.”

“Ditto—as a male, I mean.”

Since he was smiling, she knew he wasn’t annoyed. “That,” she said, “is sheer bravado on my part, with a dash of self-preservation thrown in for good measure. I’ve never met anyone like you, you see.”

“What am I like?” He sounded like a sleepy lion.

She held her face up to the sun’s rays as she considered his question. “You’re every woman’s idea of a dream lover.”

And that’s what he was, a dream. That’s why she could say and do anything she wanted. You couldn’t be held responsible for what you said or did in dreams.

“I’m flattered.”

He didn’t sound flattered, so she opened her eyes and looked appealingly into his. “But that’s only a part of it. You make me want things I know are out of my reach. When I’m with you, I want to be beautiful and desirable.”

“And that frightens you?”

“Because I feel so inept. I could meet you on the dueling field with pistols at twenty paces, but in the boudoir, I’m a complete novice. I’d be hiding in the closet or under the bed.”

He blocked out the sun’s rays again as he bent over to study her face. Shaking his head, he said slowly, “
I
think you’re beautiful.
I
desire you. But what I admire most is that your life has direction. You’re a wildly successful writer. You can’t know how much I envy that.”

His words made her heart sing. She looped an arm around his neck. “Your life has direction. You make people feel good about themselves. You don’t have to work at it. It’s a gift.”

He said seriously, “Tell me what you want from me, Eve.”

She answered him seriously. “Teach me how to be a woman, Ash. Teach me about pleasure. You promised you would.”

She sensed his smile as their lips met, then the smile dissolved as he pressed the softest kiss to her lips, her brows, her throat. He gave a low throaty chuckle and threw a handful of confetti in the air, only it wasn’t confetti.

“Kissing patches,” he told her, and they both laughed as the patches floated down and came to rest on every part of her person.

That was when the kissing began in earnest.

There was no hesitation on her part. All her scruples were blissfully asleep. His every kiss and caress drowned her with wonder.

She abandoned herself to the wonder. Who would have believed that passion could be so pleasant? She felt as though she were languidly drifting in a tropical stream. The sun warmed her skin; the breeze was as soft as swansdown. Her limbs were fluid and weightless. She smiled dreamily.

Everything changed when his kisses became hotter. Her eyes opened wide and a sudden tightness gripped her throat. She could hardly breathe. The tightness spread to her breasts and the lower part of her body. This wasn’t pleasure. This was torment. Heat followed every brush of his lips till she was sure that she would burst into flames. She moved restlessly, trying to get her breath. How many kissing patches were there?

“What’s this?”

He had found the birthmark on the back of her left shoulder. She hadn’t realized that she’d disrobed. That was the thing about dreams. Things happened and you had no memory of them.

“I was born with it,” she said, her breath catching. “It’s the Claverley ruby and is passed on from mother to daughter, like a family heirloom.”

The tickle of his hair on her back as he kissed the Claverley ruby was suddenly too much to bear. She turned, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him as he’d kissed her, and she gloried in his response. Sensation was building inside her. She knew she was going to shatter.

Sudden tears welled in her eyes. What she felt was more than pleasure. She didn’t want a chivalrous English gentleman—and where had that thought come from? She wanted this difficult, confusing man who was so much more than he allowed the world to see. She’d been blind, but now she could see clearly. Sadness. Guilt. Something…

There was something important she had to ask him, something about his brother.

He raised a little as he felt her hands pushing at his shoulders.

“Ash,” she began, and got no further.

A terrible scream rent her mind, and a whirlwind of disjointed thoughts overwhelmed her. Ash dissolved before her eyes, sucked into the swirling gale. As swiftly as the whirlwind had surged to life, it subsided, and a different picture formed in her mind. A woman in white was fighting for her life outside her window. A man was there. He had a knife in his hand and murder in his heart. He raised his knife to finish her off and someone else screamed, distracting him from the woman who had collapsed on the ground.

Gasping, Eve pushed herself out of bed. Her limbs felt leaden; she could hardly breathe. She was inside the mind of a murderer. Rage. Hatred. Fear. She was crippled with the fury of a murderer’s emotions. Words were forming in her mind.

Kill her! Kill them both! Stupid bitches! They know too much!

What’s that? Who’s there?

Nell.

He’d seen Nell. She could sense the surge of fear sweep through him.

Eve stumbled to the window and flung it wide. “You down there,” she yelled. “I see you. Dexter, get him. Attack!”

It was a ruse, but it was the best she could come up with on the spur of the moment. Dexter was at her side, his hackles raised and fangs bared in a snarl that would have shocked those who thought of him as an overgrown puppy.

She turned from the window and ran. Others had heard the scream and had come out of their chambers to find out what was going on. Footmen in their nightshirts were donning coats and shouting for lanterns. Eve waited for no one. She let Dexter lead the way. He made straight for the shrubbery below Eve’s window. When he began to whine and bark, the footmen converged on him.

Eve knelt beside the inert form of a woman. Lydia. She had changed into one of her own gowns, a floating white gauze. The scarlet poppy that bloomed on the bodice came from her own blood. She was very still but breathing softly.

Eve ordered one of the footmen to fetch the doctor and the constable. Pointing to another, she told him in a hard voice that she needed his nightshirt. The man’s jaw dropped, but he did her bidding when he saw the feral gleam in her eyes.

To the others who were standing gaping, she yelled, “What are you waiting for? There’s a murderer out there! Search the grounds. Find him.” Nell was safe. She didn’t know how she knew it, but Nell was safe.

As they moved off, she tore the shirt in two and set to work to stanch the bleeding. She knew what to do because she’d learned the technique of dressing wounds to add credibility to one of her heroines, who’d had to doctor her brother.

There was another technique she’d learned that she’d repudiated a long time ago, the gift that came to her from her mother. It was the Claverley charisma that had saved Lydia tonight, not Eve Dearing.

She got up when she’d finished her task, then ordered one of the footmen to tear down one of the shutters to use as a stretcher to carry Lydia to her bed. There was no end, she thought bitterly, to what she’d learned in order to make her stories come alive. If only she had cultivated her charisma instead of pretending that it did not exist, she may well have prevented what happened tonight.

As they trudged back to the house, she opened her mind to the man who had attacked Lydia. The sense of his presence was swiftly fading. She suppressed a shudder as the next thought gripped her mind. He would be back, driven by rage, hatred, and…fear, fear of Lydia, fear of the girl, and fear of…? Her mind went blank.

It would come to her eventually, but now there was nothing to be done but take care of Lydia.

On the top step she halted and looked over her shoulder. All was calm. No shiver of apprehension disturbed her mind. Nell was safe. Emptiness. Silence. She turned and entered the house.

Across the river, in his rooms at Grillon’s, Ash flung himself out of bed. He hadn’t wanted the dream to end. He was still hard with wanting her, so close to taking her. Air was rushing in and out of his lungs. God in heaven, it seemed too real to have been a dream. If it hadn’t been for the woman’s scream…

Where in Hades had that scream come from?

Ignoring his nudity, he stormed into his manservant’s room and halted just inside the door. He didn’t have to see Reaper to know he was there. He could hear his snores. If a woman had screamed, Reaper would have heard it. Neither sleep nor the effects of a night of heavy drinking had ever dulled Reaper’s uncanny ability to waken at the sound of danger.

He shut the door and returned to his own room, then went straight to the window and looked out. Carriages were coming and going. He saw a watchman strolling on the pavement, waving a lantern in one hand, clutching a truncheon in the other. Nothing seemed amiss.

After closing the window, he sat on the edge of his bed and combed his fingers through his hair. If nothing was wrong, why was he shaking like a greenhorn before his first battle?

He couldn’t sleep now. He debated one moment more, then made his decision. A fast gallop to Kennington and back would help him unwind. And if there were lights in the house, he might call in to make sure that everyone had got home safe and sound.

Having settled on a logical response to his illogical alarm, he wakened his manservant, told him to tell Hawkins to have two horses saddled and waiting, then he began to dress.