To Wed a Rake (7 page)

Then he caught her eyes again. Well, perhaps she wasn’t
that
much a lady. Ladies rarely had such a fascinated gleam in their eyes, at least not Englishwomen. Leave that to a Frenchwoman.

Her fingers were playing on his wrist, as if she couldn’t stop touching him. One thing he’d learned in his misbegotten life was that you have to forgive yourself. For being the only one in your family left standing. For not being there to catch Walter as he fell from the carriage.

For ravishing a young woman. Because, apparently, he had conducted himself so well that she wanted a repeat.

And he, as he sometimes had to remind himself, was a gentlemen.

Gentlemen never disappoint ladies.

One moment Emma was sitting on the bench, gazing with some satisfaction into her future husband’s eyes, and the next she was on her feet, heading back into the ballroom. Something had changed between them.

He was so much bigger than she, although she was a tall woman. His hand was on her shoulder, and though it was gentle, it made her quake inside. One could only suppose that he had made up his mind to grant her request.

There had been a flash of such pain in his eyes when she mentioned his brother that her stomach clenched at the sight of it. And yet when she glanced sideways at him now, all she could see on his face was a kind of raffish enjoyment.

He slowed as they neared the open doors of the ballroom, looked down at her, and there wasn’t a trace of grief in those eyes. They looked wicked, like a promise in the moonlight, like the end of all the great love stories rolled up in one. And that smile on his lips ought to be outlawed. For the first time she really believed Bethany. This man
had
cut a swath through Paris. It seemed likely that not a Frenchwoman in Paris resisted him.

“I gather,” he said, ignoring the curious faces that turned toward them, “that you wish me to do you a favor.”

“If you would be so kind,” she replied, keeping her eyes on his so that they didn’t drift to his lips. Was this
her
, wondering how he would taste? She’d never thought of such a thing before. For a moment she felt a sense of vertigo, as if the old Emma who painted bees in her studio had been replaced by a lascivious Frenchwoman, licking her lips at the sight of Kerr.

Well, he was her husband.

Almost.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked.

She blinked, confused. Wasn’t he going to sweep her into his carriage and have his way with her? Frankly, she wouldn’t even mind the carriage. True, Bethany had said that carriages were not appropriate, but—

“Yes, of course,” she managed and took his arm. But she had forgotten that new dances had come into fashion since the days when she and Bethany had a dancing master, and she hesitated at the edge of the floor.

“A waltz,” he said to her. “New, German, and quite fast. Allow me.” He put a hand around her waist and pulled her close.

She gasped.

“It’s a three-step rhythm,” he said to her, laughing at her confusion.

Around them was the swish of satin and silk as milkmaids and queens turned in the arms of kings and clowns. She put her hand on his shoulder, and they stepped into the gaily colored throng.

His hand guided her, and after a moment she learned the pace.

“That’s it,” he whispered into her ear. “Frenchwomen are always fast learners.”

Suddenly daring raced through her again, turning her veins to fire. The mask on her face hid the normal Emma,
turning her into another woman, a bolder, more courageous version of herself. “I believe that you must be beginning to remember me, my lord. Those were your very words on an earlier occasion.”

Wonder of wonders, he didn’t freeze but smiled back at her. His hand strengthened at her back and pulled her closer. Shivers crept up Emma’s legs and made her feel weak in the knees. She licked her lips and felt even weaker when she saw his slow smile.

“Would you like to take a short drive, Madame de Custine?”

“Emelie,” she said. “And yes, that would be quite pleasant.” Pleasant wasn’t quite the word, not for the sense she had that the pounding of her heart could be heard by the whole room.

They began to make their way through the crowded floor, Kerr brushing off the greetings of his friends. From the glances that followed them, Emma could say without hesitation that she would receive at least four letters tomorrow detailing her fiancé’s contemptible behavior.

From the corner of her eye she saw her cousin Mary and quickly turned her head the other way. Her mask may have served as an adequate guard against Kerr’s recognition of her, but one good look from her cousin, and the masquerade would be ruined.

He was steering her with a mere touch of her elbow. One jerk of his head, and a footman appeared with her pelisse, and Kerr threw it over her shoulders. His fingers lingered for a moment, and a potent whiff of her own perfume drifted to her nose.
That’s why women wear perfume
, she thought suddenly.
For their own pleasure.

“Have you always had a fondness for Englishmen?” Kerr asked.

“Of course not,” Emma said. “Most Englishmen are so
unattractive: pasty white, with t cwhir asked.hat yellow hair that one knows will sneak away in the night, leave the man naked as a billiard ball within a few years.”

She walked ahead, and Gil followed. He was thinking hard. Clearly, Madame de Custine had been in Paris when he was there, and she had somehow found herself in the way of his marauding, drunken self. And if she now wished to have a final
affaire
before she married her worthy burgher, who was he to complain? “Before your comment, I saw no particular reason to celebrate my dark hair,” he told her.

She pursed her lips and then gave him a slow, raking glance, from the top of his hair to his boots. Gil almost laughed. There was nothing more enjoyable than a Frenchwoman in passionate pursuit of an hour’s entertainment.

“Indeed,” she said finally, “Your hair is gratifyingly dark. In fact, I took you for a Frenchman until I heard of your success with the women of France.”

“Ouch!” Gil said, laughing. After all, he was to marry, too. Perhaps this French lady would be his last fling before he settled into a dutiful matrimony. He helped her into the carriage and then seated himself opposite her. “I am entirely…at your service, madam.”

“In that case,” she said with perfect aplomb, “I am staying at Grillon’s and I would be very grateful if you would accompany me to the hotel.”

His eyebrows rose. Little Emelie was remarkably accomplished at the business of making an assignation. For a moment he had a flash of sympathy for her worthy burgher. Her eyes were shining with excitement above her mask. She had lovely eyes, with a wicked fringe of lash that curled at the corners of her eyes, giving her an entrancing coquettishness. Truly, how could he have forgotten this woman?

He pushed away the thought. Two bottles of brandy a night have a way of doing that to a person; and when one is
trying above all to forget that one’s little brother just died, other things tend to get forgotten at the same time. “Would you care to remove your mask?” he asked.

“Oh, I think not,” she said. Her voice sounded like sin, joyous sin. She leaned forward and put a small, gloved hand on his knee. A bolt of pure lust shot to his groin. “I think it would be most amusing this way, if you’ll forgive me, Kerr. After all, you don’t remember my face from our last encounter, and I should hate to cause either of us embarrassment should we meet again. I am marrying an Englishman, after all.”

“You called me Gil at the masquerade. And I am quite certain that I shall forget your face once more, if you ask me to do so.”

“You will forgive my lack of confidence,” she said, and the rich glow of laughter in her voice was more tantalizing than her hand, which still rested on his knee. “I should like to wear my mask.”

“There is more than one way to befog my memory,” he said. And then, eyes fixed on hers, he reached up and turned down the small oil lamp that hung at his side. His side of the carriage was instantly cast into shadow, leaving only the light from the small lamp on her side burning. Its glow cast gold on the deep red of her hair, caught brilliance from the diamonds at her ears, turned the deep velvet of her pelisse to shining bronze.

She glanced at her own lamp. Then slowly, carefully, she began to pull off her right glove, finger by finger. “May I attend to your lamp?” he asked, rather horrified to find that his voice had darkened to a growl. There was something unbearably erotic about watching her slowly, so slowly, remove one glove.

She chuckled. She was not the sort of woman who giggled, he noted to himself. Finally, she curl cllyone ged back her glove
to reveal a hand as beautifully shaped as her mouth. “One should never tend to oil lamps while wearing gloves,” she said, turning down the wick. “It presents a hazard.”

The light flickered, cast one last ray of light over the cream of her neck, and went out. Now the carriage was lit only by the flickers of light that came from below the tied-down curtains as they rumbled through London.

He sat for a moment in the dark, every sense aware of her movements. She was taking off her left glove unless he was mistaken.

“I shall not make love to you in this carriage,” he said suddenly.

Her laughter was so suggestive that it almost destroyed his control and sent him leaping to her seat. “
Mon dieu
, what a respectable man you are sober,” she said. “In Paris, you were
sans cérémonie.
”

“I can only regret my loss of memory,” he said, meaning it. “May I hold your gloves for you?” he asked, leaning forward.

“Of course,” she said, dropping the gloves unerringly into his hand.

“Do you see in the dark, like a cat?”

“No. But I am accustomed to it, since I have spent some time in the wings of a theater. Theaters don’t light the rear, or it will be visible to the audience.”

“You’re a professional actress?”

Actresses had a reputation for being nothing more than prostitutes, although Emma could have argued the point. Five years of painting sets for Mr. Tey had taught her, if from a distance, that actors and actresses arrived at their ethical lapses in as many ways as other people.

“No, I am not,” she said, undoing the clasp at her throat and allowing the thick velvet of her pelisse to fall from her shoulders.

“May I?” His voice had darkened to a husky rasp that made her heart beat faster in her chest. She handed her pelisse to him.

“Then why on earth have you spent time in a theater?”

“I paint drop scenes, the scenes that mark the changing of an act.”

“You paint drop scenes,” he said, sounding utterly stunned.

“Exactly. I painted one for an amateur performance, a few years ago, and fell into doing more as a favor to the local theater. That’s how I met my devoted fiancé,” she added, remembering his supposed existence.

“Ah yes,” he said, “the worthy burgher, the man whom you marry next week.”

“Precisely.” Wasn’t he going to kiss her? They passed a house with torches burning all the way to the roadway, and the carriage flashed with light for a moment, just long enough so that she caught sight of his brooding eyes.

“How long did you stay drunk in Paris?” she asked impulsively.

He stared across at her, but there was no light in the carriage now, and she couldn’t read his face. He must have taken off his gloves, because he picked up her right hand and began caressing it, large fingers slipping around hers. Her stomach felt a liquid jolt of heat.

“Six months,” he said, just when the silence had stretched so long that she had to babble of something. “I was drunk for six months. And I gather it was on one of my most oblivious evenings that I met you,
ma chère.
”

But Emma didn’t want to talk of that nonexistent meeting. “And the drinking was due to your brother’s death?”

He leaned forward and put her hand against his lips. The touch of his ctou lakiss to her fingertips made the warmth in her belly burst into flame. She suppressed a gasp. She had to
appear experienced, not cast astray by as simple a thing as his touch.

“Walter died in October over a year ago,” he said, sitting back again and winding her fingers between his large ones. “He died in a carriage, while up at Oxford. Forgive me if I already told you the details when I saw you last. He was in his third year, and they were larking about—”

He stopped, and his fingers tightened on hers.

“What happened?” she asked, although she knew well enough. She’d been at the funeral, of course. She had pressed his mourning glove with her mourning glove, and murmured something through her black veil, put on for the brother-in-law who would never be her brother-in-law. At the funeral Gil’s eyes had been dead, black, expressionless; she could remember the look in them to this day. And the next thing they’d heard, he’d gone to Paris.

“He was drinking,” Gil said flatly. “There’s nothing unusual about drinking, of course. In some ways, the course of a university career is synonymous with a soak in a brandy bottle. But a man who’s been drinking doesn’t have good control of the reins. Nor yet of his balance. And Walter fell from the carriage, that’s all. Dropped the ribbons, fell out as his carriage swept around a corner.”

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“They say that he didn’t suffer.”

“I suppose…Does that help?”

“Not much.”

She leaned forward then and took his hands, both of them, in hers. The carriage was trundling down a long, dark lane, and so she couldn’t see anything at all. She let her fingers wander over his hands, over the calluses on his fingers, probably from holding reins.

“So I gather you were trying to get drunk enough to fall out of a carriage?”

There was a moment of silence, and she felt a drop of fear. Had she gone too far? But he gave a bark of laughter. “Something like that, I suppose.”

She lengthened her fingers, stretched them over the broad backs of his hands. “And did you succeed?”

“Obviously not.”

She waited. The carriage lurched, rounding a corner.