The Seduction of an English Scoundrel (18 page)

Her body tingled alarmingly where it came in contact with his, her shoulder blades, the curve of her buttocks and calves. “You're the only man who ever dared broach the subject,” she answered, turning abruptly at the sound of her name being called. “That's Cecily asking us to join them. Shall we go? I think Simon's with her.”

“You're so obvious, sweetheart.”

“So are you, Sedgecroft.”

“Am I?”

“Absolutely transparent.”

“Then tell me what I'm thinking.”

“I'm sure my tongue could not form the words.”

“I was thinking about what happened last night,” he said softly, lifting a strand of hair from her neck.

He saw her pulse flutter at the base of her throat before she moved away. “Then try to think about something else for at least the next few moments,” she said, her breath catching. “We don't want you walking into the water.”

Grayson sauntered behind her, his angular face reflective. For all her evasive tactics, he couldn't stop thinking about her unguarded openness in the maze last night and how it had changed his feelings for her. He'd never met a woman quite as disarming before. Demure one moment, a temptress the next. Pliant, delicious. Dignified. A bit of a shrew.

A woman who made a man hunger for sex. And commitment.

He stopped, took a breath, shaking his head in denial. Where had that last thought come from?

But it was true. Someone would come to treasure her. There was in Jane, he had discovered, a wealth of qualities to be treasured. And the obvious itself was not uninviting. Why should Nigel's stupidity label her undesirable for life?

His own desire for her rendered the ton's standards ridiculous. His cunning mouse was leading him on quite a chase, and he didn't mind anywhere as much as he should.

Some of her friends suspect she never really loved Nigel to begin with.

Oh, Jane,
he thought, smiling to himself.
You do need a lesson or two in love. Perhaps we both do.

 

Her friends stood together at the shoreline, lamenting the loss of Simon's silk top hat, which a cheeky lord had tossed impulsively into the lake. There was a chorus of cheers as the hat made a false drift back toward the shore, then a collective groan when it began to sink, never to be seen by the haut ton again.

“This is so unlike you, Jane,” Cecily said from the corner of her mouth, pretending to ignore the devastatingly handsome marquess who stood a distance from the others. She was dressed in a chocolate-brown silk riding habit, her small face overshadowed by a matching cap jauntily adorned with swan feathers. “Have you seen the papers?”

Jane stared at the water, conscious in every particle of her being that Sedgecroft hovered behind her, apart and yet so present she could think of no one else. She could still feel the brand of his warm, muscular body against her. Apparently she was not alone in her attraction to him; most of her female acquaintances were sending him winsome smiles and pleas to save the sunken hat. The fact of his universal attraction made her feel inexplicably irritated, that on top of her edgy guilt over the secret she harbored from him.

“Yes,” she said after several moments. “I saw them. You know half of what is written is untrue.”

Cecily's eyes narrowed in speculation. “So the other half is? No. Don't answer.”

“I don't intend to.”

“Everyone is saying that he's going to propose to you, Jane. If he hasn't already.”

Jane sighed. This morning, when she had seen their personalities linked in print, when she had read that a certain marquess had fallen in love with her, she'd experienced the most unjustified burst of joy that had deflated as soon as she put down the paper.

“A part of me actually admires you for this, Jane,” Cecily added after a long hesitation.

From the corner of her eye, Jane noticed Grayson glancing back into the park—Helene was strolling on the arm of Lord Buckley, her pale yellow hair reflecting the sunlight. The Frenchwoman stopped when she caught sight of the tall marquess, covertly giving her escort a tiny nudge away.

Sedgecroft put his gloved hand to his sensual mouth and yawned.

“Admire me for what?” Jane asked absently, engrossed in the nonverbal drama she had just witnessed. What on earth did it mean? Why were people's emotions so hopelessly complicated? She wondered if in a few months that would be her on another man's arm, desperate to attract Grayson's interest. She wondered if Grayson had ever taken Helene into a maze and pleasured her senseless. Or if he would one day look at her and yawn.

“For taking Sedgecroft as your lover,” Cecily whispered in her ear.

That
certainly grabbed Jane's attention. She felt a blush begin at the soles of her slippers and rise to her face in a tidal wave of embarrassment. Worse, to judge by that devilish glitter in his eye, Sedgecroft had heard it, too.

“He is
not
my lover,” she whispered back, sounding less convincing than she should have. “He is a companion, a . . . a family friend.”

“Such friendship,” Cecily said in a tart but more subdued voice, “is known as fattening the lamb for the kill. Yes, the entire world sees that enormous diamond brooch on your bosom. We all know exactly where it came from and that if this friendship ends in marriage, everything will be forgiven. But what if he follows in Nigel's footsteps? What if Nigel returns?”

“Kindly change the subject, Cecily,” she whispered, positive she heard Grayson chuckle.

Cecily pulled her to the water's edge. “You must break off with him. At least until you are calm enough to think this through.”

“You try breaking off with Sedgecroft.”

“I am truly worried about you, Jane. It looks for all the world as if you're enjoying his company.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“And perhaps you are too heartbroken to know what you are doing.”

“I might be doing what I want to for the first time in my life.”

Jane was surprised at how strongly she felt about defending the rogue. Her friends saw only his facade. They did not perceive the kindness and love of family that quite stole Jane's heart. He might be a wretch at times, but he did take care of his own. If Grayson ever did fall in love, she thought wistfully, the woman he chose would not only be pleasured senseless but also cherished.

“It—” Cecily subsided into a deep silence as a shadow fell between them.

“Do you want to ride now, Jane?” Grayson asked in a pleasant voice, as if he weren't aware he was the topic of this whispered conversation.

Jane looked up at him, a thrill of pleasure going through her. Devil he might be, but the way he made her feel defied description. Cecily gave a moue of disapproval and faced toward the lake, where a handful of flowers had been tossed as a memorial to Simon's sunken hat.

“If you like,” Jane said, afraid that her two friends would start a fight over her at any moment. Cecily and Sedgecroft were both her friends, she realized, a pair of dissimilar people who were only trying to protect her in their own opinionated way. How was she possibly to keep peace between them?

“Yes,” she said, sending Cecily an apologetic smile. “I think a ride is a good idea.”

 

“Now Cecily is angry at me,” Jane remarked in distress to Grayson two hours later as they strolled in the humid shadows of her Grosvenor Square garden. “She's predicting all manner of misery will be heaped upon my head, and she might not be wrong.”

“Well, she's wrong about me,” Grayson said, obviously assuming he was the accused source of impending misery. “I hope you came to my defense.”

“I did, but . . .”

She stopped at the potting shed, glancing up at the house just to see a bedroom curtain fall quietly into place.

“The spying network has spotted us,” she said with a grim smile.

“Who is it this time?” he asked in a stage whisper. “Caroline or Miranda?”

“I think it was both. In fact, I think Caroline had a spying glass in her hand.”

He studied her with a slow smile. “Shall we give them something to worry about?”

“Oh, Sedgecroft, what a scapegrace you are. What are we going to do? We shall have to stop this silliness before the ton demands to know our ‘wedding' date.”

“Are you breaking off our engagement, Jane?”

“Would you be serious for a moment?”

He glanced up, distracted by the distinctive creak of a window opening. His face dark with amusement, he grasped Jane's hand and led her around the potting shed. “Now they can't see us at all, which should really alarm them. So, what will it be tonight, a soirée or a private supper for two?”

Jane resisted the temptation to melt against his hard torso. “Did it ever occur to you that normal people simply stay home at times to read . . . or rest?”

“There's no rest unto the wicked, my dear, or so the Bible says.”

“As if you had ever read it.”

“Oh, I did.” His blue eyes danced at the memory. “With a governess who was practically my own age holding a rod to my backside. I've had some difficulty studying Scripture since then though. Sometimes I wonder what ever happened to that woman and whom she's torturing now.”

Jane forced a smile to hide her reaction. She could believe what a handful he had been as a boy. But heaven help her! By governess he could only mean Esther Chasteberry, or Lady Boscastle, as she would now be called, mother to another generation of misbehaved Boscastle schoolboys. The Governess of the Iron Glove. It set off all of Jane's anxieties to discover he remembered the woman so well. He certainly wouldn't be joking if he knew Esther had married his missing cousin.

“I don't know what to say. You probably deserved whatever punishment she dealt. I—”

She blinked as he caught her chin in his hand and gave her a quick hard kiss. In an instant a dangerous surge of warmth flooded her senses, then disappeared as he drew away, leaving her feeling a little unbalanced and annoyed. “That will have to hold you for a few hours,” he said with regret. “The gardeners are coming.”

“Hold me for a few hours. Honestly, Sedgecroft, as if a woman cannot live and breathe between your kisses. That is arrogance.”

He laughed, casually steering her off the path to avoid the wheelbarrow being pushed their way. “I've been told that more than once,” he said, and kept his hand on her shoulder. “Anyway, it's just insurance to make sure you don't fall into the clutches of any brooding young barons who fancy you.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Jane replied. “You shouldn't make fun.”

“A male on the prowl can use such sympathy to his own advantage.” His voice was cynical.

“Spoken as one who knows all the tricks of his trade.”

“But you can do better than Brentford, Jane. We have only begun our quest.”

“Has your heart ever been broken?” she asked him softly.

He took a step away from her, drawing his hand to his side. Caroline and Miranda had just appeared in the garden, making an embarrassing show of pretending to admire the hollyhocks.

“Only once. Horrible feeling.” He grimaced, escap-ing in the direction of the garden gate. “We'll have a good time tonight. Bring your Bible or a rod. Whatever pleases you.”

Chapter 16

Her Bible or a rod.

Jane felt a glacial chill go through her as his tall frame disappeared from sight. She was going to need all the prayers in her Bible and a rod for self-protection when Grayson found out the fate of his iron-gloved governess. And what part Jane and Nigel had played in her life. How long could she maintain this charade before she broke down? How long would it take him to realize that she had been deceiving him?

She folded her arms across her chest as her two sisters crept up behind her. “What happened?” Caroline demanded, one eye on the garden gate.

“We hurried outside as fast as we could when we saw you,” Miranda said, pausing to take a breath. “We would have been faster, but Caroline couldn't find one of her shoes.”

“Nothing happened,” Jane said unconvincingly.

Caroline gave her a cool tiger-eyed stare. “He took you behind the potting shed.”

“And I was going to show him the bulbs Aunt Matilde sent from Brussels.”

“Is that why the top three buttons of your riding jacket are unfastened?” Miranda asked with an innocent look. “Because you were showing him your bulbs?”

“I had gone riding in the park,” she said indignantly. “It was warm this afternoon.”

Caroline sighed. “I'm sure it was. Oh, Jane, my sensible, respectable, scandal-free sister, how
could
you let this happen?”

She nudged a stone with the tip of her shoe. “I ask myself that every hour.”

They flanked her on the flagstone walkway. “It's all so unlike you, Jane,” Miranda said, staring at her eldest sister's profile. “You know what he is.”

“I'm not exactly sure what he is,” Jane said in a pensive voice. But whatever it was, she liked it very, very much. “I only know that he does not deserve my deception.”

“Are you going to tell him?” Caroline asked hesitantly.

“I have to, don't I?” Jane replied in distress. “Although I keep hoping that by some miracle he'll decide he's done his duty, and he'll never have to find out the truth.”

Caroline frowned. “Not unless Nigel vanishes from England and never returns. And certainly not as long as you . . . show him your bulbs.”

“Would you like us to tell him for you?” Miranda asked after a moment of reflection.

“No,” Jane said forcefully. “That would be the coward's way out.” She paused, biting her lower lip. “I shall tell him on Friday.”

“Think this through very carefully,” Caroline said. “If Sedgecroft decides to betray your confidence out of anger, another scandal on the heels of the first will be the end of you. We are not entirely sure we can trust him to keep your secret.”

“I cannot see him merely shrugging off the whole thing without a grudge,” Miranda added ominously. “A Boscastle might make an excellent friend, but I would not wish for one as an enemy.”

The same thought had crossed Jane's mind more than once. She stared back at the potting shed, feeling another chill of foreboding go through her. What an unbearable prospect. All that charm and male energy turned to anger, to retaliation. All the delicious fun they shared cast under a shadow of deceit.

“I shall have to take that risk, won't I?” she said firmly.

And another scandal would not be the end of her at all. Losing Grayson's trust would.

 

Grayson realized he was heading into treacherous, uncharted territory with Jane. More than once he even considered calling off their arrangement, but he could not bring himself to it, making up a dozen excuses to continue seeing her. At the very least he decided he should make an attempt to put her out of his mind when they were not together. He'd been neglecting his own affairs anyway. He had never felt comfortable wallowing in the idle affairs of the aristocracy.

Business matters at the wharves awaited him. He'd vowed to investigate a rumor that Drake intended to follow in Brandon's ill-fated path and serve in the East India Company's ranks. Grayson could not afford to think about a woman all day long, no matter how appealing she was.

Yet he thought of little else, and found himself constantly looking forward to seeing Jane again. He felt eager to share some amusing event with her, or to discuss his concerns about the family, to seek her advice.

What had their arrangement become?

He did not dare speculate.

 

Another five days sped by, and Jane still could not dredge up the courage to make her confession. Five days of Sedgecroft occupying her time, seducing her spirit, five of the happiest and most terrifying days in her life. Happy because he made her laugh with his good-natured audacity and honesty, terrifying because she realized she was more than a little in love with a man whose courtship of her was a generous charade.

Terrifying because of the secret that stood between them.

The handful of hopeful suitors who actually dared to call on her were turned away with polite excuses. She even refused to go shopping with Cecily on their weekly excursion to Bond Street, not wishing to be lectured again. Instead, she and Grayson went boating in Chelsea with Simon and Chloe, racing against Drake's boisterous crowd. Naturally Grayson's boat won.

The next evening they attended a ball, and on the Thursday night before Doomsday, the date designated for her confession, the two of them went to a play with her parents and returned home alone when Lord and Lady Belshire decided to play cards with an elderly friend in Piccadilly.

“See her safely home, Sedgecroft,” Lord Belshire said, approving of this arrangement only because Jane seemed happier than she had been—well, since before she started planning that ill-fated wedding, actually. And no one had heard a word from that cruel wretch Nigel. So Belshire felt heart-sorry for his eldest daughter, sorry enough to encourage her to spend time with a purported rogue who was proving himself to be more reliable than his cousin.

“Simon and the two girls will be home,” he added as a precaution. “So the pair of you will not be alone.”

But Jane and Grayson did end up alone, except for the servants who shuffled about in the shadows of the house. Lord Belshire had forgotten that Simon was taking Caroline and Miranda to a birthday ball.

So she and Grayson stood in the black-and-white marble entrance hall like figures on a chessboard, with undercurrents of tension and temptation in the air. Who would make the first move?

He plucked one of Lady Belshire's peacock feathers from the brass urn and tickled Jane's nose with a theatrical waggle of his eyebrows.

“Alone with you at last,” he whispered, his mouth brushing her hair. “What do you think we should do first?”

“Stop being silly for one thing.” She pulled off her plum silk pelisse, her voice catching at the dark look he gave her. Not since that night in the maze had they given in to temptation again. “And now you've made me sneeze—”

“God bless you.” He tapped her on the head with the feather. “And I'm serious. Shall I seduce you in the rose damask drawing room or in the gold?”

She started to laugh, more to cover how his question aroused her than anything. “Well, we have neither, so it looks as if seduction isn't in the cards. But . . . it is late. I suppose the proper thing is for you to go.”

“Why?” He pulled her gently against him, wrapping his powerful arms around her waist. Jane caught a glimpse of their reflection in the hall-stand mirror, his tall form in black evening clothes overshadowing her, her body bent to his. For a moment the mirror's illusion made them become one, joined in shadow. She swallowed, her heart pounding erratically at the thought. The feather dropped from his fingers and drifted to the floor.

“I'm not going to leave you all by yourself,” he said, tilting her face up to his.

“The servants are here. I'm safe.” Safer than with him in one way. But in others—well, she knew in her heart Sedgecroft would never let anyone harm her. If only he could have saved her from herself.

“We can stay up late and play cards,” he said casually, leading her down the hall to the drawing room. “I'm sure you can wager something I want.”

“I—oh, no, I forgot. I'm supposed to have breakfast with Cecily and Armhurst tomorrow.”

“Beg off until next week,” he said firmly.

“I can't. I have to see her before her family leaves for Kent to ready the estate for her wedding.”

He closed the door quietly behind them, his gaze focused on her. The room lay in darkness, and he watched her as she went to the sideboard. He'd been dying all night to touch her, even with Lord and Lady Belshire sitting beside them in the box. Every brush of her soft shoulder against his had sent a shiver of lust down his spine. Temptation quickened his heartbeat to a dangerous tattoo as she came toward him. His blood thickened, hot waves of desire washing through him.

She took a tiny sip of his whiskey before handing him the glass. “Oh.” She grimaced. “If that doesn't light a fire in your belly, nothing will.”

Except you.

His long fingers curled briefly around hers as he took the glass, loosening his cravat with his free hand.

Make me leave, Jane, before I forget this cannot go further.

She turned toward the enormous sofa in the center of the room, sinking in a rustle of silk. “What did you think of the play?”

“I didn't watch it.” He sprawled out beside her. “I was a little distracted.”

She studied him in wonder. His eyes looked silver in the shadowy dark, heated, sparkling with sin. “I don't think I'm going to ask what distracted you.”

Of course it had been her. While pretending to watch the play, he had been wracking his brain to remember all the gossipy things he'd heard about Jane over the years. Everyone had assumed she belonged to Nigel, and Grayson hadn't paid much attention. Well bred. Beautiful. A bluestocking. Yes, all right, a bluestocking with a body that belonged in a royal brothel. No one had mentioned her wicked humor and those bewitching green eyes, or that attractive touch of insecurity. Or that with her all his devils would meet their match.

“Who is Armhurst?” he asked, taking a sip of his drink.

“A friend of Cecily's.”

“A young man?”

“I think so.”

“There was an Armhurst involved in a duel last year over a broken romance.”

She took a breath. There was ice in his voice and heat in his gaze as he slowly leaned toward her, his golden mane of hair brushing the lapels of his black evening coat. The scent of whiskey on his breath tantalized her. The scorching heat in his eyes seared her.

“Don't go,” he said, his tone deceptively light.

Her heart skipped a beat. They hovered on the verge of something, a fall into the unknown. She sensed it and could not decide whether she should be afraid or not. “What?”

“You're not meeting this Armhurst. I forbid it.”

“And if I do?” she asked, teasing him a little.

“Then I'll be there, and Armhurst won't dare even look at you.”

“Don't tell me you've never been involved in any duels,” she said, her heart quickening at this display of possessive autocracy. What had changed between them?

“My morals are not in question right now, Jane.” Which, he reflected wryly, was a damned good thing, considering the immoral things he wanted to do to her.

She laid her head back on the sofa. “Tell me something, Sedgecroft. Would you marry a woman if you didn't love her? If your family insisted, or she had pots and pots of money and was a great beauty?”

He reached back to put his glass on the table behind him. This was dangerous ground, being able to talk so openly to a woman. “Jane, to be completely honest, I have never been sure I would marry a woman I loved, pots of money or not.”

“You wouldn't?”

“Well, a month or so ago I would rather have been boiled in oil than submit to being leg-shackled. But lately, I've been looking at life in a different way.”

She felt him shift forward, a move on the chessboard. Her mouth went dry. In another moment she would slide into his lap. She would pull that warm, powerful body against her and disgrace them both. “Since your father died, you mean? The Boscastle burden of responsibility you told me about?”

He brushed his knuckles across her plush lower lip, responsibility the last thing on his mind. He wanted her so badly that his very bones ached. “That, and other things. Has anyone ever told you that your mouth is highly erotic?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly. “Nigel probably doesn't even know what the word means.”

Suddenly she could not remember what they had been discussing. Not with his decadent mouth a whiskey-scented breath from hers. Not when those blue-silver eyes speared her with sensual possession, and her body thrummed, tightened in response to his unspoken demands. She wanted to give him whatever he desired, however wild, however dangerous that might be.