Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (38 page)

Shifting Clarissa into one arm, Hadrian held out his free hand to the Frenchman. “And you, De Valmy. I am impressed with your performance in the witness box. And your credentials. The royal seal?”

“It was my pleasure. Though you, I am certain, had the greater pleasure in the beating of Mr. Tibbitts.”

Hadrian grinned. “You very nearly missed the spectacle. What kept you?”

De Valmy glanced at Heloise, who had come up to stand beside her niece. “The merest detour. There was another matter which I hoped to resolve with your own.”

“You may as well tell Lord Ramsbury the complete truth,” Heloise said. “He believes that my niece is a thief.” She smiled up into Hadrian’s startled glance. “I am the culprit, Lord Ramsbury. Clarissa is entirely innocent. I did not know until last evening that Comte De Valmy had taken notice of my weakness. He promised that if I would return the things to him, he would see to it that the jewels I took would be discreetly returned along with those which Emory lifted.”

Hadrian lifted a brow at the Frenchmen. “A gallant gesture, monsieur.”

De Valmy shrugged. “Were madame free, I would make her a more gallant offer.”

Ignoring this, Heloise turned on the younger Blackburne a scolding glance. “I hope you have learned your lesson, young man.
I
certainly have.”

Emory nodded, looking faintly haunted by the experience of the last weeks. “I must have been a little mad. I cannot explain it, else.”

Clarissa looked up at Hadrian. “How did you know about De Valmy’s investigation?”

“I learned of it while I was attached to the Tsar’s entourage by the War Office.” He smiled at De Valmy. “One might say we were working for the same peace through different channels. After Emory was arrested, I sent a message to De Valmy in Paris. He picked up Tibbitts’s trail. I thought, at least, that I might barter clemency for my brother if he would testify that Tibbitts was the man with whom he had been dealing his debts.”

The lanky Frenchman shrugged. “It was nothing, Lord Ramsbury. The merest trifle. Now, may I suggest that we find more pleasant surroundings in which to discuss this matter?”

Hadrian hugged Clarissa closer. “By all means. There are several matters I wish to discuss with each of you.”

“What a forceful man! But then, I knew he would be,” Heloise exclaimed when she reappeared after her interview with Lord Ramsbury in his library. She smiled at her niece, who sat like a penitent waiting for an empty confessional in the hallway outside the library doors. “The questions he asked. And the things he said! And the things he demanded. Well, you really must insist on some autonomy once you’ve married or, mark my words, he will have you right under his thumb.”

Clarissa said nothing. It had been a week since Emory had been exonerated for the jewelry thefts, yet not once in that time had she seen Hadrian, nor even received a message from him. Then yesterday a summons had arrived at Holton House, addressed to Lady Heloise and “Princess Soltana.” It requested them to present themselves at exactly ten thirty
A.M.
at Ramsbury House.

She knew Hadrian was distracted by business. Emory had come to say good-bye to her the day before. He was joining the regiment. Hadrian had agreed to buy his colors, and both brothers thought a few years in the military might be the making of him. Emory had looked different; “sober” was the word that came to mind. The carefree spirit was still there, but it was tapped down, tempered by a new more realistic awareness of the possibilities of life.

When the library door opened again, Clarissa held her breath. Hadrian appeared, looked severely proper and heart-stoppingly male. She came to her feet slowly, but he did not smile at her. His gaze raked her attire, his expression impassive as he said, “Princess Soltana. If you will come in, please.”

“Very well.” Clarissa moved forward on wooden legs, feeling more foolish in her veil than at any time since her masquerade had begun. With an anxious glance at her aunt, she passed by Hadrian and entered the room.

Hadrian looked at Heloise. “We shall be some little while, Lady Arbuthnott. You may be more comfortable in the salon. Ring for whatever you may need.” With that he closed the door.

“Martinet!” Heloise declared as she marched off down the hall, but she was smiling.

Clarissa turned with a start as she heard the key scrape in the lock. There was no smile on Hadrian’s face as he pocketed the key. In fact, he looked nearly as angry as he had the day he beat Tibbitts. She did not fear violence from him, only the emotional storm, but she backed up a step in spite of herself.

He said in a very unpleasant tone, “You have led me a merry chase, haven’t you, Princess?”

“I—you know—” Clarissa swallowed. What did he want of her? A confession? She swallowed and tried again. “This,” she indicated her veil. “Had nothing to do with you. It was never meant to do more than … well …”

“Elicit an invitation from Almack’s?” he offered in a flat voice.

She looked at him with beseeching eyes. “Aunt Heloise told you. I know how feeble a goal that sounds to a man of your experience of the world. But it seemed a very important thing to my aunt. And, as you have learned, her sense of reality is tempered by a caprice that can lead to eccentric behavior.”

“Eccentric? You call theft an eccentricity? Madam, your sense of right and wrong confounds me.”

“I am not condoning her actions. I did not know of the thefts until the night the moonstone brooch disappeared. I merely hope to explain that my concern for her stability led me to believe that by acting out her little charade, she would be distracted from her melancholia.”

“And the adventure. Admit it. You did it for the adventure.”

Clarissa sighed. “I suppose I did. But it was not done to attract the attention of any gentleman, certainly not you.”

“Really?” Had skepticism ever had a better palette than this man’s face? “No drab little widow would have taken my fancy so easily, and you know it.”

Clarissa lifted her chin. “Then that is your loss, my lord. For a drab little widow is all that lies beneath this veil.”

For the first time his eyes glittered. “I intend to be the judge of that.”

Clarissa backed up another step though he had not moved. “I beg your pardon?”

“Should I be more plain?” He did move now, to the corner of the desk and propped a hip against it. “Undress, madam, that I may see the difference between a ‘princess’ and this drab little widow.”

With hands that trembled as much from nervousness as the strange erotic play going on between them, Clarissa reached up and unhooked her veil and let it fall away.

She felt his gaze upon her features and then the heat from that gaze moved inside her and gathered low in her middle.

“Go on.”

Clarissa searched his face for a clue as to what he really wanted from her. An apology? A plea for mercy? Nothing very reassuring showed in those silver-green eyes. Even fewer clues animated his expression. Without comment she removed her bonnet, gloves, and spencer. Finally she stood before him in her frock, stockings, and shoes.

He now leaned fully against the desk, his feet wide-braced before him. “Continue, madam. I see nothing unusual in this.”

Clarissa shot him an angry glance. “Beneath the silk and lace, my lord, women are much the same.”

“Do you think so?” He grinned at her wickedly. ‘Experience tells me otherwise. Satisfy me that I lose nothing by choosing Clarissa over Soltana.”

She knew what he was asking but she could not quite believe it. “The servants?”

“Occupied elsewhere.
Maman
and the girls remain in the country. Poor Jane, her Season has ended a little abruptly, but we shall soon find another occasion with which to distract her. Your aunt is at the other end of the house. Now, if that answers your concerns. You were going to show me the difference between a princess and a widow.”

“You will be disappointed,” she hedged.

“I believe I am up to the disillusionment.”

Suddenly she was very much afraid. She knew him to be a proud man. Was humiliation his goal? She met those eyes, looking for the ruthless streak that had allowed him to be a very effective warrior. Yet she saw only the first kindling of desire. What was his purpose? How remote he looked, so calm, so self-possessed, while she was to strip for his pleasure. Her face went stiff with resentment.

She undid her wrist buttons and then she remembered. But she lowered her gaze before he could see her thoughts. “I cannot reach the hooks at my back, my lord. Shall I ring for a maid?”

“Come here.”

She did not look at him, not until she stood right in front of him, and then when she did, she raised her eyes very slowly, giving them the chance to fill with all the love and longing that she had been harboring these last weeks. When she finally met his green gaze, the impact made her draw a quick breath through parted lips.

She knew the exact moment passion ignited within him; the silver dissolved from his eyes, and the gembright green fire burned through. “Turn around,” he said softly.

His fingers found the first hook at the nape of her neck and she felt it come loose. His hands moved slowly, as if he was enjoying the opening of each hook, and then she felt his warm lips against her spine and her eyes fell shut. He pressed featherlight kisses from the base of her neck down between her shoulder blades to where her chemise began. And then his hands quickly finished the job and the frock slipped from her shoulders to the floor in a seductive whisper.

She turned back to him as his hands moved up to frame her bare shoulders. This time there was no denying the passion or the slight smile crooked in the corners of his mouth. “Are you trying to seduce me, madam?”

“Soltana is a temptress, so I’ve been told, my lord. What makes her so?”

It was meant to be a teasing question, but she saw by his suddenly serious expression that he thought she needed a genuine answer. “I don’t know that a man can describe that which makes him desire one woman over another. It is not a matter of physical beauty, or even comeliness of form, or even availability. There is something, some hunger that a man carries inside him. When a certain woman walks by, he is struck with that hunger, and the pain is so great he must sate it or die a little. That is all I can say.”

“And Soltana is the meat for your hunger?”

He caught her face in both hands. “
You
are the meat, and the bread, and the wine of my hunger,
Bahia.
Don’t forget Plymouth. It’s always been you, whatever the form, that awakes the hunger that keeps me waiting for the next taste of you.”

She did not doubt his description, for it was very nearly like the longing that she carried within for him. “Yet you treated Soltana differently than you did Clarissa. Why?”

He bent forward to lean his brow on hers. “You ask such difficult questions,
Bahia.”
He leaned back and studied her face. “Will you understand if I say you presented that rarest of all natures, the temptress who is a genuine lady? If I was confused by it, then blame society which dictates the roles we play. For Soltana I am
Shaitan.
For Clarissa I am Lord Ramsbury.”

She framed his face with a palm pressed to each cheek and looked deep into those powerful light eyes. “Who are you with me now?”

He grinned at her as his arms looped about her waist and drew her in between his spread legs. “A man who has found his mate.”

The pleasure of being in his arms again was almost too much to bear. Tears gathered in her throat but she swallowed them. She must not cry. That was a silly female thing to do, and Hadrian Blackburne did not seem the sort of man to enjoy foolishness. “Hadrian, I think you had better kiss me.”

He took her face very gently in his hands, and then the touch of his kiss was so light she was not perfectly sure they were touching until his tongue swept her bottom lip with warm wet fire. The touch shook her from head to toe, and then his mouth was engulfing hers in the hunger she had learned to recognize but knew she would never completely tame. And that was the joy of it. For he would keep coming back, again and again, to be sated with and in her.

They were like children in their joyous urgency to undress each other. And then he was bending her back on the huge desktop among the estate papers, and Parliamentary bills, and War Office memos, and household bills. The absurdity of their actions would not gel in her mind. He was moving over her, his face a symmetry of taut lines and angles and hollows of desire. She forgot to be amused because his hands were opening her and touching her and making her weep with desire.

“I love you,” she said, holding his head by handfuls of hair, “and I know you love me.”

“Allow me, madam, to demonstrate,” he said, grinning at her with wicked intent.

He entered her in one powerful thrust and her gasp of pleasure echoed his groan of gratification. Bodies humming with mutual need, he made love to her a long time, with long slow deep thrusts that sent papers scattering and made the silver ink well tremble.

Later, when they were stretched out on the desktop, Hadrian propped on his elbows above her, he said in a passion-sated voice, “Say that you will marry me, very very soon.”

Clarissa sighed, thoroughly enjoying herself. “It must needs be a small wedding for I am a widow scarcely a year.”

“It will be you and I, and a priest tomorrow,” he vowed.

“Oh, we must have your family, and my aunt. Then there is the consideration that a hasty marriage might only compound the gossip. Perhaps we should have a small but dignified service.”

“Twenty people, next week,” Hadrian assured her.

Her dark eyes laughed up into his. “Mind the undue haste. Autumn is a pleasant season, don’t you think?”

Hadrian caught her chin in a hard hand. “Consider, madam, that you might well have assumed the shape of an autumn harvest by fall. The pumpkin comes readily to mind.” As if she needed a further hint, he thrust his hips on her, reminding her that they were very much still a part of each other.

“I see. Very well.” She reached back over her head and pulled the quill from its perch. Then very carefully she wrote on his shoulder blade.