Vanquished (14 page)

Looking up into her furious face, Hadrian said, "No need to break the crockery over my head. It was an accident, I assure you."

"Accident or not, a gentleman would beg my pardon." Taking in that dark-eyed gaze and moist, trembling mouth, it wasn't anger Hadrian read so much as naked yearning, unadulterated desire.

"But then again I'm no gentleman, am I, Callie? And I never beg." He reached for her hand and took her bleeding finger inside his mouth.

"I think your cat may be jealous of me." Lying atop Hadrian on the divan, her chin resting lightly on his chest, Callie glanced above them to where the black-and-white cat perched on the sofa back. Tail flicking and ears pinned, the feline looked poised to pounce.

Hadrian followed her upward gaze. "No one fancies being usurped, and Dinah's got spoiled from being on the receiving end of my undivided attention."

Pushing up on one elbow, Callie smiled down at him, feeling deliciously wanton and wholly alive for the first time in . . . well,
forever.
Abed or the nearest thing to it with a man who was not nor would ever be her husband was the very last place she should be, and yet she couldn't find it in herself to regret it for so much as a moment. "I can't say as I blame her."

He slid his hand to her nape, pulling her back down to him and capturing her mouth in another of those long, languorous kisses that set her pulse pounding, her
sex
pounding, so that she wanted to rip off every stitch of his clothes if only she dared. Pulling back, he said, "In the event you've failed to notice, my attention, like my eyes and lips and hands, has been occupied solely with you for the past hour or so."

Despite his declaration that he was no gentleman, once he'd brought her down atop him, Hadrian had acted nothing but, not pressing her for more than she was willing to give nor undoing so much as a single button of hers.

"An hour is it? I suppose I never did get 'round to taking your picture."

Grinning, he reached up and stroked the side of her face. "You can take my picture or indeed anything else of mine whenever you wish, though it would be a shame to bury all this beauty beneath a cameraman's cloth. You belong in front of the lens, not behind it."

She slid kneading fingers into his hair. "Now you really are laying it on with a trowel."

"You don't believe me?"

She settled her head on his shoulder, such a lovely feeling, that. "Simply say I think you're rather guilty of gilding the lily. Only in my case, the lily is more in the way of being a rather stout weed."

"Oh, Callie, what am I to do with you?" He turned his head, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "You're a very sensual woman whether you care to admit it or not. You also happen to be lovely to look at, to touch." He slid his hand down her spine to the swell of her bottom beneath the padding of her wrinkled skirts. "A great many men would pay dearly for the privilege of taking you to bed."

Stunned, Callie felt heat rushing her cheeks. She wasn't sure at which she was more appalled, Hadrian's scandalous statement or the traitorous thrill that shot through her at the thought that a man, this man, might covet her that much.

Instead of rising up in indignation as well she ought, she turned her face up and asked, "Would . . . would you pay for me?"

Looking down into her eyes, he didn't hesitate. "Yes, I would. In fact, I believe I'm paying even now."

"How so?" She licked dry lips, very much aware of the slow, sweet ache drumming the moist space between her thighs. A single word from her and Hadrian would move to release that ache and bring her satisfaction that until now had existed only in her dreams, and yet she held back.

"There are all sorts of ways of paying one's dues, Callie," he said, somber gaze steady on her face. "Those who can afford to do so pay with pounds sterling. And those of us who cannot, we pay with our flesh. But then I think you already know that. After all, that is why you came back here with me, isn't it?"

Rather than answer that, she rose up over him, touching her lips to brow, his eyelids, the sensitive spot where the pulse struck the side of his throat. Even with clothing separating them, the sensation of touching a flesh-and-blood man after a decade of self-denial and empty fantasies was nothing short of exquisite. Eyes on his face, she said, "I love touching you. Do you mind it terribly?"

"Touch me anywhere you like. Anywhere but my heart," he added on a whisper and let his head drop back against the cushion.

Hadrian was buttoning on a fresh shirt when the shop bell sounded from below. Callie, back so soon? He'd seen her to the door mere minutes before. Had she left something behind? Better still, perhaps she'd decided she wanted more from him than kisses?

Anticipation thrumming through him, he called out, "I'm upstairs, love," trusting his voice to carry through the half-open door.

Footfalls, rather heavier and slower than he remembered hers being, announced her presence on the stair landing. Without turning around, he said, "Decided to come back for another photography lesson after all?" He whirled about, welcoming smile withering when he saw who it was darkening his door.

Cane in hand, Josiah Dandridge stepped across the threshold. "I believe I shall leave any photographing to you, St. Claire."

Despite the cheerful fire he'd got going earlier for Callie's sake, Hadrian felt as though the temperature in the room had dropped a good ten degrees. Without preamble, he asked, "Why are you here?"

Leaning on his cane, Dandridge paused in plucking off his leather gloves to survey the two teacups set on the table, their contents barely touched. "A picture of the Rivers woman frolicking in the park like an inmate escaped from Bedlam with her skirts blown beyond her knees may not be the piece de resistance I am paying you to produce, but it constitutes a promising beginning to building the case against her. I want it."

So his initial instincts about being followed hadn't been pure paranoia after all. "You've set someone to watch me."

The older man dismissed the question with a flick of his hand, the thin fingers gnarled like the trunk of a knotted oak, the top liberally dusted with dark hair yet to turn full gray. Hadrian stared at the appendage for a long moment, disgust and something more--anxiety--taking root in the pit of his stomach. It was only a hand, after all, and an old man's hand at that. Why it should bother him he couldn't say but there was no dismissing that it did.

I'm overwrought. I haven't been sleeping. Yes, that must be it. . .

"How long will it take you to develop it?"

Hadrian hesitated, weighing the merits of claiming the image had been destroyed in the proving process. But no, a green-behind-the-ears assistant could be expected to make such a mistake but not an experienced photographer.

"I'm afraid that's impossible. No such image exists."

That got the MP's attention. "The devil you say."

Hadrian crossed his arms. "Had I attempted to make such a photograph, Miss Rivers would have been on to me in an instant. She is no fool, after all."

Indeed, Callie was no fool. Nor was she the ruthless, cold-hearted bitch he once might have made her out to be. Instead he'd found her warm and loving, gracious and kind. True, she was passionate about her beliefs, opinionated to the point of obstinacy even, but those were small sins compared to what Dandridge had in store for her. What she could have done to warrant the MP's very personal hatred Hadrian couldn't begin to imagine. Surely pushing a suffrage bill through Parliament wasn't the whole of it.

Another mystery yet to be answered was why the devil he'd let her off so easily that afternoon. Lying pliant in his arms, it would have been easy enough to strip off those confining clothes of hers and seduce her--and in full view of the camera he'd set up, no less. With one pull of the striking chord, his debt to Dandridge would have been paid in full. And yet, as in the park, he'd prevaricated only . . . why?

Dandridge assessed him through narrowed eyes. "She is a handsome woman, is she not?"

Careful to keep his expression blank, Hadrian answered, "Some might find her so."

"It is not the opinion of 'some' that interests me. How do
you
find her?"

Meeting Dandridge's gaze, he chose his words with care. "She is passably attractive, though the clothes she chooses to wear cannot be said to flatter."

Without warning, Dandridge brought the tip of his cane down hard onto the floor, sending Dinah scurrying. "Then get her out of them, by God!"

Hadrian held his ground. "It's as yet early days. We've had but two sittings so far. Had I proposed she strip off so much as a glove, she would have fled out that door never to return, let alone promise to return again tomorrow."

Dandridge aimed a knotty index finger at Hadrian. "I may not comprehend the menial mechanics of a camera but I am something of an expert in human nature, St. Claire, and I detect a wavering in your resolve."

Despite the battering of his heart, Hadrian managed a shrug. "You must be imaging things. Beyond the blunt her photograph will fetch, Caledonia Rivers means nothing to me."

His words had the desired effect. Dandridge backed down. "Mind you keep it that way." Cane in hand, the MP made to leave. Halfway out the door, he turned back. "The suffrage bill comes before the Commons for a final read in precisely thirteen days. I must have the evidence in hand well before that."

"As you shall."

"I hope so, St. Claire. For your own sake, see you do not fail me."

Carriage skirting the Victoria Embankment, Dandridge pushed aside the window curtain and peered out. Sighting the shadowy yet unmistakable form stamping his feet at the base of the riverside road, he touched the tip of his cane to the carriage ceiling, signaling his driver to pull over. A moment later, the door opened. The conveyance dipped as a hatchet-faced hulk in a worn tweed coat and shapeless hat climbed inside.

Sam Sykes pulled the door closed and settled into his seat, setting springs creaking. "Good day, guv."

"You took long enough." Dandridge turned to his newest retainer and felt his nostrils twitch in recoil.
Leeks,
he rather thought,
or was it garlic?
Whichever, it was flavored with the unmistakable pungency of unwashed flesh. He'd always been fastidious, a failing of his, he supposed. Yet he'd never understood why being born in the gutter apparently compelled one to carry the stench of the stews about wherever they went.

And yet persons such as Sykes had their uses.

Dandridge waited until the carriage continued onward before asking, "What do you have for me?"