Dark Obsession (7 page)

Clutching her tightly, he raised her to her toes, causing her breasts to rub along his coat front and bringing her lips on a level with his. He attributed the next moments wholly to gravity and the mysterious forces of electromagnetism, for surely he never would have kissed her otherwise.

But there it was, there
they
were, lips pressing, moist and searing, while rivers of heat poured through him straight down to his toes, thoroughly flooding his loins along the way.

Miss Thorngoode fought him for the briefest instant, then shuddered and melted against him. He released her shoulders and wrapped his arms around her. Like twin serpents her arms coiled round his neck, lifting her sweet, soft breasts high against his chest. Her fingers twisted in his hair.

Ah, he might have enjoyed the kiss, the heat, the taste of Miss Thorngoode for the next hour or so, and decency be damned, but it was pain and not propriety as her teeth closed on his bottom lip that sent his head jerking backward.

He thrust her to arm’s length, her sudden release of his hair inflicting further pain. ‘‘Why the devil did you do that?’’

‘‘Why do you think?’’ Her fingers kneaded her mouth as if it throbbed in pain—as his presently did.

‘‘Don’t act the innocent with me, my sweet Honora.’’ He too raised a hand to his mouth, then held it up to inspect for blood. There was none. ‘‘I might have given you the benefit of the doubt, but I’ve had my eye on you all evening. A contemptible hoax, my foot. I saw how you warmed to the subject of art during supper—your passion, you called it, speaking of inner feelings and overwhelming sensations. As if I didn’t know what
that
meant.’’

‘‘I was engaged in an interesting conversation about a topic that inspires me. Where is the crime in that?’’

‘‘If you weren’t flirting with Lord Albert, then . . . I don’t know what.’’

‘‘Flirting? With Lord Albert? Are you demented?’’

Yes, well, maybe she hadn’t exactly been flirting with Albert, per se, but she’d certainly courted seduction with someone at that table.

Chad? The notion sent a knifing pain to his temple, a bitter taste to his mouth. For an insane moment he loathed his friend’s patrician good looks.

Her lips parted in a smirk both wry and accusing. ‘‘And what of you and Lady Belinda?’’

‘‘What
about
me and Belinda?’’

‘‘Belinda is practically my sister, and don’t change the subject. You’re no shrinking violet. You’re downright combustible, and no use denying it.’’ He attempted to raise her chin in his palm but she shrugged away.

Then she tipped her face up to meet his gaze dead on. Her smile was shrewd, too filled with cunning for his liking. ‘‘Are you saying it matters to you?’’

‘‘What matters?’’

‘‘Me. What I do.’’

‘‘Don’t be absurd.’’

A knowing lift of her brows made him want to yank hair—his, hers, it wouldn’t have mattered. He knew only that she was dangling him just this side of lunacy.

Good God,
did
he care what she did? The notion galled him, especially in light of that look on her face. Undoubtedly she’d use the knowledge against him, and he’d be as ruined as poor Signore Alessio. Or worse, should her father become involved.

He took a determined step back. ‘‘Do not flatter yourself, my dear. You may shag every garret rat in London and you’ll not inconvenience me, so long as you stay away from my nephew.’’

She hissed a breath. Her obstinate expression dissolved into the last thing he expected—sheer unhappiness.

His conscience shoved at his anger, his self-righteousness and his damned perplexity, which admittedly did nothing but flourish in this woman’s presence.

‘‘I see.’’ With a calm belied only by her flared nostrils, she raised her hems and started away, stepping out from the walnut’s canopy.

It was her utter lack of wrath—wrath he deserved no matter her past sins—that made him regret the past several moments. Whatever wrongs she may have committed, who was he, indeed, to judge?

‘‘Miss Thorngoode, wait. I . . . I apologize.’’

She paused and half turned toward him. Moonlight poured across her features, illuminating a spot of moisture yet to dry on her bottom lip. Silver dollops swam in her eyes. She looked so frightfully young— young and despondent and undeserving of the blow he’d knocked her.

His appalling words reverberated through him and made him queasy. He wished she’d say something. Insult him. Take another swing. She merely lifted her shoulders, white and ethereal in the moonlight, and swept into the house.

He let go a breath. Had he misread her so entirely? Or was this sudden capitulation—this demureness after giving as good as she got—merely another strategy in her game of seduction? If so, her tactics threatened to succeed.

Not that she’d left him in his former rigid discomfort; no, his guilt over his utter boorishness precluded that. He wasn’t hard. But, ah, God, he wanted to be. He yearned to feel her warm and feisty in his arms again. Wanted it in a way he hadn’t wanted anything in a long time, since before . . . everything happened.

What did that mean? How had this woman, this ruined chit of a girl, managed to affect him so profoundly in so short a time? What was it about her that drove him to distraction? He’d already broken his word to her father, for he’d both harassed and abused her—albeit unintentionally—despite his promise not to. He wondered if Thorngoode would use a weapon or his bare hands to flay him.

Had it been her or her mention of Blackheath Grange that worked him into such a state? And was his refusal to allow her use of the manor truly about Jonny? Or about his own fears of returning to that dismal place and facing the past. Unable—unwilling— to seek the answer, he shook the questions away.

He paused to master his breathing before returning to the house. Before facing his fiancée again. Heaven help him, if the Painted Paramour was to be his wife, he had damned well better determine how to be her husband.

The voices came at her as if from across a snow-smothered valley.
I will
echoed twice, fiirst in a subdued rumble, his, then higher and softer, hers. Different yet equally uncertain. Unsteady. Both, one might even say, apologetic.

While the blood pounded in her ears in counter-rhythm to the flailing of her heart, her knees wobbled beneath a crashing conviction that she shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be doing this.

But the vows had been spoken. It did not matter whether the words were sincere, or that they had seemed to come from some source beyond herself. Indeed, perhaps they had.

Last night she’d slept fitfully, tossing, turning, slapping her pillows. Eventually she had dozed, dreaming of a fair-haired woman standing by her bed. In her dream Nora had sat up, frightened and trembling, clutching the bedclothes to her chin.
What do you want?
she’d demanded. The woman smiled, and for some inexplicable reason Nora’s fears dissolved.

‘‘Who are you?’’ But the woman had vanished, and Nora had awakened to find herself sitting up in bed, the linens balled in her fists.

Now she had given her consent, made her pledge, because some nameless woman in a dream—a figment of her own wistful hopes—had said she should.

‘‘I pronounce you man and wife. . . .’’

She belonged to him now, for better or worse, for always.

Her veil came away from her face, swept back between Grayson Lowell’s long, straight fingers. For an instant Nora marveled at the difference between those hands and her father’s, once worn to bleeding on a regular basis in the effort to survive.

Vastly different from her own hands too. Sturdier, stronger. Hers were small and delicate but often paint stained, the nails and cuticles suffering from contact with powders and oils. And yet with her frail female hands she created, sifted life’s singular moments through her fingers and set them to canvas. At least, she did so as best she could and with an open heart.

Could Sir Grayson make a similar claim? Had he ever created anything with those fine gentleman’s hands?

His face came into focus and filled her vision, became the whole of her world while masculine scents settled over her. Lifting her veil did little to brighten the prospect before her, for the dusty church forbade entrance to all but the slenderest fingers of sunlight. Even close up her new husband seemed drawn from a midnight landscape, his startling blue eyes the only brilliance in his shuttered expression.

His lips were cool and smooth, just moist enough to leave a trace of dew across her own. She resisted the urge to flick her tongue across the spot while the rector concluded the ceremony. Resisted but could not quell the temptation to compare this kiss with the other one they’d shared.

She had bitten him. The memory nearly raised a grin. He’d deserved it, cad that he’d been. Though she must admit it hadn’t been so much the kiss but the insults flanking it that had provoked her temper.

But . . . she’d made a shocking discovery that night, a little secret he must never learn. It lived inside her, a quivery predicament with the power to trip her heart, hitch her breath, send her better sense for a tumble.

The organist struck up the exit march, discordant notes that blared through the building and rattled inside her. With a hand at her elbow, Sir Grayson, her husband, turned her about and nudged her toward the back of the church.

What a sad affair their wedding was. Between her and Sir Grayson they’d mustered all of a handful of guests—the Earl of Wycliffe, the Stockwells, the odd assortment of elderly aunts and uncles, all of whom appeared just the tiniest bit confused.

Mama had insisted on the church, at the same time bluntly refusing to allow any of Nora’s artist friends to attend. Somehow she saw Nora’s downfall as their fault, even though not one of them had been involved in Alessio’s deceit. Mama needed someone to blame, and in Alessio’s absence her anger settled on anyone even remotely connected to the art world.

At the open doors of the vestibule, the morning sun hit Nora full in the face. She blinked and wished Sir Grayson would release her elbow. Did he believe her incapable of remaining upright on her own? A new, gleaming black phaeton pulled by a pair of matching bays—a gift from her parents—awaited them on the windy street. They ducked beneath a shower of rose petals and well-wishes and made their way to the vehicle’s open door.

‘‘After you, my dear.’’ Again he nudged her elbow as if she were unable or unwilling to proceed on her own.

Feeling cross, she gathered her skirts and climbed inside, then experienced a heated sense of panic when he clambered in after her, filling the empty space with a bulk of shoulders, arms and legs.

The door closed, sealing them in dusky solitude, she and this stranger. He was all muscle and rambling limbs with no particular regard for her own need for space. His knee tapped hers as the coach rocked forward. His coat sleeve brushed her bare forearm while his shoulder knocked solidly against hers. Even as she attempted to negotiate an inch or two between them, that little secret whispered to her pulse points, murmured its quivering message to deepest places inside her.

Her fingertips traveled to her lips, pressing ever so gently. . . .

‘‘Thank heavens that’s over.’’

Snapped from her musings, she scowled up at him. ‘‘Can you never refrain from insulting me?’’

He regarded her blankly. Then his eyebrows gathered. ‘‘I did no such thing. You can’t mean you enjoyed that?’’

Her breath caught. Had he read her mind, somehow guessed . . . but then she realized which ‘‘that’’ he meant. The ceremony, not the kiss. A laugh of relief escaped her as she relaxed against the squabs. ‘‘Goodness no. It was torture.’’

‘‘Deuced right.’’ He paused. ‘‘Wait. You’re not insulting
me
now, are you?’’

Her gaze traced the strong lines of his face and she wished, for the briefest instant, that those vows they’d repeated hadn’t rung with such hypocrisy. She merely faced forward again and shrugged.

‘‘I suppose I’d deserve it.’’

She smoothed the layers of her lace and satin skirts. ‘‘Indeed you would.’’

From the corner of her eye she saw him studying her. She couldn’t be certain, but she believed she detected the beginnings of a smile. With a tremor of anticipation she wondered what he was thinking, what he might be planning. As she’d learned at Wycliffe House, Grayson Lowell was nothing if not unpredictable.

When she braved a glance, however, the smile had vanished.

‘‘I wish to apologize for my behavior that night at Chad’s,’’ he said, uncannily following her thoughts again. ‘‘I don’t usually say or do those kinds of things.’’

‘‘Oh?’’ She pulled the lace mitts from her hands and tossed them into her lap. The ring he’d placed on her finger only minutes before glimmered with indifference. ‘‘So you save that privilege specifically for me?’’

‘‘Not exactly.’’ He released a breath. ‘‘I was angry but not at you. None of this is your fault.’’

‘‘Meaning?’’

‘‘I had to marry. If not you, then someone else.’’

‘‘Someone with a generous dowry.’’

He nodded.

‘‘I suppose your options were limited.’’

Another nod, accompanied by a shrug.

She glanced at his profile, itself a fascinating world of jutting angles and rough planes, as inhospitable as any barren landscape. Several days ago she had begun a painting of him by memory. Now she realized she could never hope to capture a spirit as volatile as Grayson Lowell’s.

She sighed. She had been his last resort, just as he had been hers. No one else would accept either of them. No wonder he was angry. She was angry too. But did he have to say it? Rub it in? Wouldn’t a gentleman at least preserve the illusion of this day, make a gift of it rather than handing her an empty plate of reality and bidding her chew it well?