Dangerous to Love (25 page)

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Authors: Rexanne Becnel

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General, #Regency

BOOK: Dangerous to Love
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Lucy swallowed and bit the inside of her cheek. “I know I said that. The thing is … I want this marriage between us to work. I know I tried to avoid it, but … But I want you to know that … that I am not sorry we are wed.”
One of Ivan’s dark brows arched. “I’m overwhelmed with your enthusiasm.”
“That didn’t come out right.” She wrung her hands. Words weren’t going to do the trick, she realized. She would have to take things into her own hands. Literally.
With a confidence that was pure sham, Lucy crossed the short grassy space between them. She loosened his folded arms, stepped between them, and looped her arms around his neck. Then she looked straight into his wary blue eyes. “I’m going to give you a proper wedding kiss, Ivan. I hope you want to receive it. I hope you’ll kiss me back.”
Then, afraid she would talk herself right out of it, Lucy kissed him.
It was like kissing one of the marble statues at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly—at first. When she did not relent, however, when she slanted her mouth against his and used her tongue to stroke the rigid seam of his lips, coaxing him as he’d coaxed her in the past, she felt him begin to soften. She teased his lips apart and deepened the kiss, and his arms tightened around her. Without thinking she arched against him, bringing them fully together.
He was not so immune to her as he seemed! By the time they came apart, both gasping for breath, his heart was hammering just as hard as hers.
“In some ways we are very well suited,” she admitted, ducking her head against his chest.
Ivan cupped her cheek and tilted her head up so that they were face to face. “For a bluestocking you have a shockingly passionate nature. For that matter, you’re probably far too passionate to be a countess either.”
Lucy’s heart sank. “I will try not to embarrass you, my lord.”
“Don’t you have that backward? It’s more likely I’ll embarrass you. And call me Ivan,” he added. “Never again are you to call me my lord.”
She smiled up at him, encouraged by his easing tension. “Yes, Ivan. Unless I am very angry with you.”
“Anger is just another passionate emotion. Like lust,” he said, moving one hand down to cup her bottom and lift her against his arousal.
Lucy sucked in a breath, unable to control her response to him. But as much as she returned his lust, she was also deflated by it. She wanted there to be more between them than that.
He lowered his head, capturing her mouth in a stinging kiss that was filled with lust but also, perhaps, with need. It was that need she must focus upon, she decided with the fleeting portion of her mind still able to think. She would make him need her. She would make herself necessary to him.
“I expect you to be faithful to me,” she said, when she could again speak.
“Keep me satisfied and I will be,” he said. He bunched her skirts up in one hand, baring the lower portion of her legs to the fresh air.
“Keep me satisfied and I’ll be faithful too,” she replied, half fainting now with desire.
Abruptly he pulled away, just enough to stare down at her. “You’ll be satisfied. I’ll see to that. But I’ll have no talk of you being anything but faithful to me. You took your vows and you will abide by them.”
“As shall you. My lord.”
Though locked in an embrace, they glared at one another. Hot and cold. Would things always be so volatile between them? Lucy wondered.
Then Ivan grinned, that wicked one-sided grin that melted her bones every time. “I can hardly wait to get you back to the house, my dear, for I plan to wear you out. In fact, I can’t wait at all. Come.” He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her toward the rear court where the carriages waited.
“But … But what of the reception? Wait, Ivan. We can’t—”
“We can,” he vowed. “I am too hot for you to dither over champagne and finger sandwiches, and toasts from people I don’t give a damn about.”
“No!” Lucy caught an iron fence post with her free hand and dug in her heels. “Please, Ivan.”
He stopped and faced her, a gleam in his eyes. “If I agree, what will you agree to in return?”
Lucy was too befuddled to think. How had he turned matters upside down so fast? “What do you mean?”
“If I must linger amidst our families—neither of which do I much care for—then you must make it up to me. For instance, you can agree to make love to me in the carriage on the way home.”
“In the carriage?”
“In the carriage.”
“But how? I mean—” Lucy stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s either in the carriage later, or in the carriage now.” He gave a sudden tug and she lost hold of the fence.
“All right! All right!”
His eyes moved over her like a stroke of fire, burning her with their intensity. Her insides began to tremble with the most delicious sort of anticipation. “I’ll need some token from you,” he said. “Something to guarantee you mean what you say.”
“Really, but this is getting ridiculous.”
“I’ll have your pantalets.”
“No!” she gasped.
Ivan laughed, and despite her panic, Lucy saw a side of him she’d not seen before. He was having fun with her, teasing her like a little boy might tease a little girl. Except that the stakes here were grown-up stakes. If there was any doubt in her mind that she loved him, it disappeared in a flash.
“Your pantalets or else we leave now,” he threatened, letting his eyes run over her once more.
Lucy shivered with erotic delight. Two could play at this game. She let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, all right.” She glanced around them, then lifted her skirts and untied the front strings of the undergarment. With just a few wriggles it fell to her ankles. She stepped out of them and backed away, her cheeks crimson with embarrassment.
“There. Take them. But I ought to tell you, Ivan, that though I know we must attend our own wedding reception, I’d much rather make love to you.”
Then without allowing him time to reply, she turned and fled. to the dubious safety of the rectory.
 
The reception was an agony. Ivan’s every look tortured her with wicked promises and delicious threats. There were sixteen toasts in all. Lucy counted them in mounting frustration. She couldn’t eat a bite, and between her nerves, her empty stomach, and the sixteen gulps of champagne, she felt as if she were afloat in bubbles. It was a form of torture and yet she knew the building anticipation would only increase the pleasure they would find together.
Stanley and Derek had long ago slipped outside to play in the churchyard. Prudence and the younger girls had followed them. Now Graham pushed back his chair and started to stand, then plopped down when his balance deserted him.
Ivan stood instead. “I thank you all for your good wishes, but now I would like to be alone with my bride.”
The men laughed. The women gasped. Or at least Hortense and her mother did. Lady Westcott only smiled, a faint smug smile. She was vastly relieved to have Ivan wed to anyone, Lucy realized. Even her.
Lucy glanced up at Ivan, hoping he hadn’t seen that satisfied smile on his grandmother’s face. Unfortunately he was staring right at the woman. Though his expression was noncommittal, Lucy saw his hand tighten into a fist. On impulse she grabbed his fist and worked her fingers between his.
When he looked down at her she squeezed his hand and smiled. Their eyes held and after a moment the pad of his thumb rubbed across her knuckles.
“Come, Lucy,” he said. Then hand in hand, they made their escape.
Dusk was hours away. But when Ivan lashed down the shades of the carriage, its interior took on the shadowy warmth of a summer twilight. The driver started forward and in the quiet cab Lucy and Ivan faced one another.
“We are taking the long route home,” he said. He took off his coat and threw it aside.
“Really, Ivan. Can’t … Can’t we simply wait until we get to the house? I mean, it’s but a few minutes away.”
“No.” He untied his stock and flung it on the coat.
Lucy’s insides began to twist into all sorts of interesting knots. “But … But the driver—”
“Is otherwise occupied.” He shrugged out of his waistcoat.
“Yes, but he’ll hear—”
“Nothing. Unless, of course, you are unable to suppress your moans of pleasure.” He unfastened his cuffs and pulled his shirttails out of his breeches. “How many slips are you wearing?”
Excitement skittered across the surface of her skin, raising goose bumps and making her perspire. “I … I don’t know—Ivan!” she cried when his feet spread hers apart.
“We’re married now. You can’t deny me my husbandly rights.”
“I’m not denying you. I’m just … just …”
“Delaying me?”
She nodded. Then she abruptly shook her head. The truth was, she didn’t want to deny him or delay him. “Three,” she said.
“Three?”
“Three slips.”
Their eyes held and the atmosphere of the leather-upholstered interior turned positively sultry. He leaned forward, placed a hand on each of her knees, and began to slide his warm palms up and down her thighs. Slowly.
Lucy could feel herself melting from the inside out. How had she ever thought herself alive before now, before she’d discovered these heretofore hidden emotions he managed to rouse in her?
“Give me the first slip.”
She gave him all three, one at a time, wriggling free as he guided her. He left her without stockings, garters, or shoes, with her aqua silk skirt bunched up around her hips.
The carriage rocked along its way, sometimes over cobbled streets, other times macadam paving, and eventually onto smooth gravel. Outside the sounds of street traffic gave way to the trill of birds and the steady thud of the horses’ hooves. Inside the carriage, however, there was only the sound of rapid breathing, of her faint whispers and his hot kisses moving along the tender skin of her inner thighs.
Lucy clutched Ivan’s shoulders, but did not protest. Oh, no. She did not have it in her to protest the incredible things he was doing to her. He kissed her where he should not, where she should not want him to kiss her. But he wanted to, and she wanted him to, and so she let him.
It took all her concentration not to cry out at the exquisite joy of it. Every time he flicked his tongue back and forth over the secret spot he’d discovered there, she felt herself giving in to the urge. Her hands tangled in his hair as he pressed his face between her thighs. One of his fingers slipped inside her and he began the rhythm she’d learned too quickly to crave. He kissed her; he stroked her; and suddenly it was all too much.
With a cry of utter capitulation she let go, shuddering with the onslaught of violent release.
“Ivan! Ivan …”
She would have remained there, collapsed against the plush seat, a boneless puddle of female flesh. But with a low growl of satisfaction Ivan pulled her across the short space to straddle him on the opposite seat.
At the first touch of his fully aroused maleness against her thigh, Lucy opened her eyes. He’d satisfied her. Now he needed as much from her. Despite her exhaustion, his desire for her roused her at once.
She braced herself on his shoulders as he positioned her over him. “Do you think he heard me?” she asked. “You know, the driver?”
Ivan’s hands tightened around her waist and he slowly pressed her down over him. “Does it really matter?”
“Yes … No … I don’t know,” she moaned when he thrust up into her, first a little way, then farther, then all the way. “I don’t know,” she repeated as they began to move together. Up and down. In and out. Faster and faster, until she didn’t care if the entire world heard.
He laid claim to her, husband to wife—man to woman—just as she made her own claim on him. She would make him need her or die trying. And perhaps somehow, someway, if she were lucky, she might eventually turn that need into love.
Then he clutched her and let out a mighty groan, and once again she cried out her own release. And if in the flood of sticky warmth and mutual exhaustion it was not love he felt, she took comfort in the thought that it felt very much like love to her.
 
I
van swept her up the front stairs, taking two steps at a time. He did not give a thought to her dishabille, but Lucy did. She buried her face in his shoulder and prayed that the servants did not see—and if they did, that they would not gossip too widely about it.
But how could they not? It was clear what he was about, for he made no efforts to be quiet or discreet. He strode boldly down the wide upstairs hall, carrying her in his arms, like a prize he’d just won.
The irony was, Lucy felt as if
she’d
just won the prize. This man—this lusty Gypsy—was hers now. Her husband. As he turned toward the master’s wing of the enormous Westcott town house, she pressed a kiss against his neck, in the place where his neckcloth should be, but was not. He hefted her higher and increased his pace.
He paused before a mahogany six-paneled door and kicked it open. In that first glimpse of his apartment, Lucy’s impression was of dark woods, luxurious fabrics, and the most enormous bed she’d ever seen.
Then she was flat on her back in that bed with Ivan covering her body with his.
This time they removed all their clothes. But their joining was just as urgent, just as demanding as it had been in the carriage. And just as overwhelming.
Afterward they must have dozed a while, for when Lucy next became aware, Ivan was kissing a trail along her spine, from the nape of her neck, down her back, and past her waist. When he nipped her derriere, she squirmed breathlessly beneath him. How could she want him again so intensely?
This time they made love more slowly, experimenting with different positions. In the end, however, when she straddled him while he tortured her breasts so sweetly with his mouth and hands, it was just as frantic as the first time. She rocked back and forth over him, drawing him in then out, at a pace she feared would kill them both.
And in that moment of the little death, the
petite mort
she’d read about but not understood until now, she wanted no more in life than this. To lie with Ivan, and die with Ivan, and forever rest in Ivan’s arms.
But the sweetness of their entwined collapse did not last. Lucy awoke to Ivan’s muffled curse and a determined knocking on the door.
“Wake up. Wake up, I say!” came Lady Westcott’s shrill voice.
“Get the hell away from that door,” Ivan growled. “Get the hell out of my house and out of my life!” he added viciously.
“I will do no such thing.” Then the latch clicked, the door swung open, and the dowager countess advanced into the room.
“Son of a bitch!” Ivan leaped out of the bed. Horrified that the woman would discover them naked in their bed, Lucy yanked the covers over her head. “Isn’t it enough that I am wed?” he roared. “Do you wish to witness the consummation as well?”
“Something terrible has happened.”
“I don’t give a damn what has happened. Get out of here!”
Lucy peeked out from beneath the silk damask. Despite her embarrassment and the uncertain light cast by the guttering candles, she could see Lady Westcott’s distress. “What is it?” she asked. She pushed herself to a sitting position, clutching the sheets up to her chin. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing I can’t remedy,” Ivan answered. Naked though he was, he advanced on his grandmother. “Get out or I’ll put you out.”
“Ivan, please,” Lucy cried. “Let her speak.”
“Why should I?”
“Valerie is gone!” Lady Westcott cried.
Lucy’s heart began to hammer. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Good for her,” Ivan muttered.
“She has absconded with that scholar. The one
you
introduced her to,” the old woman added, shaking a crumpled sheet of parchment at Lucy.
Ivan snatched up a robe and donned it, then took the note from his grandmother. He scanned it, gave a short laugh, then handed it to Lucy. While she read it, he sat back on the bed, leaning against the headboard. He crossed his ankles and folded his hands over his stomach as his anger turned to amusement.
“So she’s gone to Gretna Green with the man she loves,” he said. “Let’s hope she consummates the marriage before she’s caught and forced to have it annulled. That’s what you’ve come here for, isn’t it? To have me find her and stop the wedding?”
Lady Westcott stared at him, looking every bit her age and more. Lucy caught Ivan’s arm. “Please, Ivan. Don’t make light of what is a very serious situation. Your grandmother is rightly concerned about her goddaughter’s future.”
“You mean she’s concerned that this will make
her
look bad. Everyone knows Valerie was in town under
her
protection.”
“You’re
the one who brought Valerie to hear that man speak.
You’re
the one who introduced them!” Lady Westcott accused, shaking her fist at Lucy. “This is the thanks I get?”
“The thanks you get for what?” Ivan bit out.
He was enjoying this far too much, Lucy realized. “What’s important here is Valerie,” she reminded them both.
“Valerie is apparently marrying the man she loves—unlike most proper ladies,” Ivan added, staring pointedly at Lucy. When she had no response for that, he turned back to his grandmother. “So tell me, just what is it Lucy should be thanking you for? Surely you do not intend to take credit for her newly elevated status as Countess of Westcott?”
Lady Westcott’s face turned from pale with distress to mottled red with rage. She advanced on them, stomping her cane on the floor with every step. She stopped at Lucy’s side of the bed. “It was I who brought her to London. You would never have met her had I not found her first.”
Lucy wanted to groan. That was the last thing Ivan would want to be reminded of. She glanced nervously at him and, sure enough, he was glaring at his grandmother through narrowed eyes.
“What do you want from me, my thanks?”
Lady Westcott smiled, a cold, thin grimace that sent an uneasy shiver up Lucy’s spine. Lucy laid a hand on Ivan’s arm, hoping desperately that she could keep him calm. “This is all pointless. While you two argue, Valerie could be anywhere.”
“He doesn’t care about his cousin,” Lady Westcott snarled. “He cares nothing about any of his family, nor about our position in society. He doesn’t worry at all about the scandal that could be attached to the Westcott name. He would have let our line end, just to thwart me. Only I outwitted him, didn’t I?”
“Outwitted me?” Ivan echoed in a dangerously mild voice. Beneath her hand Lucy felt his arm stiffen.
Lady Westcott gave a smug croak of laughter. “You are wed, aren’t you? And it’s due entirely to my careful planning.”
Lucy could not believe her ears. Careful planning? Then she had an abysmal thought. Could it be that the dowager’s scheming had been even more devious than she’d suspected?
Unfortunately, Ivan had leapt from the bed and now glared at the old woman. “What careful planning?”
Lady Westcott gestured toward Lucy. “I hired a pretty woman with a sharp intellect, as unlike the silly girls you dallied with as I could find. I hired her to keep you away from Valerie, and in the process flung her directly in your path. And you stumbled right over her, didn’t you? Stumbled over her, fell into bed with her, and now are married to her.”
Lucy wanted to stop her. “It was not that way at all!”
Lady Westcott swung around to face Lucy, and though Lucy knew that she was not the focus of the old woman’s rage, it was clear she would nonetheless be equally burned by it. “No? You were bored and wanted to escape the country and come to town. Every woman wants a wealthy husband, especially penniless spinsters like you.” She stared triumphantly at Ivan. “I have given both of you what you wanted.”
Lucy had never seen Ivan so angry, and she could hardly blame him. A vein throbbed in his neck and for a moment she feared he would strike the defiant old woman down. She felt like doing the deed herself. But instead, he grabbed his grandmother by the arm and grimly ushered her from the room.
“You wanted her! You cannot deny that!” the woman shrieked, brandishing her cane as she tried to strike him with it. “The least you can do in return is to find Valerie and save her from the idiot scholar! Don’t you have any loyalty to your own flesh and blood?”
He pushed her out of the room, then stood tall and menacing in the doorway. “My flesh and blood? Surely you jest. When have any of you ever treated me as your flesh and blood? All my life I’ve been an embarrassment to you, not good enough to be a Westcott—until it was clear there would be no other Westcotts
but
me. And now you think you can flay me with guilt regarding my own flesh and blood?”
He let loose an ugly laugh. “Valerie has a father; go to him. She has brothers and uncles and other cousins. Let them see to her welfare. As for me, I applaud Mawbey’s boldness. Frankly, I did not think him up to it.”
Then he swung the door closed and with a crash of wood on wood, the conversation ended.
Lucy had remained in the middle of the bed, frozen by Ivan’s awful words. How wretched his childhood had been. How lonely. How forsaken and unloved he’d been all those years.
Oh, how she wanted to make up for that unhappiness of his, to shower him with love and drive all those terrible memories out of his head.
But a person was formed by the experiences of his childhood. She’d always believed that, and when he turned to look at her, his face a mask of bitterness and suspicion, she knew more than ever that it was so. His childhood had been bitter indeed. He had reason to suspect the motives of everyone of her class, including her.
Especially her, it now seemed.
He stopped beside the bed. His eyes pinned her with an awful intensity and chilled her with their complete lack of warmth. “Now. Where were we?”
Lucy shook her head. Her hands tightened on the sheets. “Ivan. We need to talk about this. I—”
“No. We don’t.” He reached out and caught a wayward lock of her hair and wound it around one finger. “Nothing has changed. In this, at least, the old bitch is right. You married what every woman of your class wants: a man above you in station with enough money not to care whether you have any of your own. But I too have married what every man wants: a lusty wench who does my bidding in bed. So it seems we are perfectly matched.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “Remove those sheets. I want to see what I have bought and paid for.”
Lucy gritted her teeth and lifted her chin. “That’s not how it is between us.”
She felt the pressure on her scalp when he wound the lock tighter still.
“No? Then tell me, how is it between us? No one would ever call us a love match. The last thing you wanted was to marry me—as you made so painfully clear. As for myself …” His eyes ran over her, and though she remained shrouded in the silk sheets, every square inch of her skin grew taut. “As for myself, I have wanted you naked in my bed since the first moment I saw you. And now I have you there. It’s that simple. Remove the sheet,” he repeated in an emotionless voice.
Lucy could no more have complied with that order than she could take back the vows they’d made just hours ago. But her hesitation did not matter to him. With a sharp jerk he bared her to the cool night air and the colder sweep of his darkened eyes.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to cover herself and hide from that cool, assessing look. How could he treat her with so little feeling? She knew he felt betrayed. She knew he felt duped. But how could he come to her as if their joining owed nothing to emotion but were purely a physical act, as casual as scratching an itch—and equally memorable?
But perhaps that
was
how he saw it, she realized sadly. After all, it was she who’d fallen in love with him, not the other way around. So she sat there, frozen awkwardly against the pillows, half sitting, half reclining, as he raked her with his awful gaze. That his unforgiving eyes burned her with their touch only increased her misery.
It was not supposed to be like this between them.
“Spread your legs for me.”
Lucy swallowed hard. “Why are you doing this?”
“Spread your legs.”
“I was never a part of your grandmother’s plotting, Ivan. You know that! I fought you at every turn.”
If anything, his expression grew grimmer. “So you did. But none of that matters. My grandmother’s untimely interruption has reminded me of something I had momentarily forgotten: that our marriage is like all other English marriages, a convenient arrangement for both parties. You accused me once of using my title and wealth to get me whatever I wanted, and it seems you were right. In return for my Westcott name and money, I have purchased a wife. You. And now all I want in return is my money’s worth. So come. Spread your legs. Show me what my Westcott name and money have purchased for me.”

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