How the Scoundrel Seduces (41 page)

“The devil I had.” He shoved his face close to hers. “I never forgot you for one day, one hour, one moment. It was you, always you. Everything I did was for
you
, damn it. No one else.”

The passionate profession threw her off course. Dom had never been the sort to say such sweet things. But the fervent look in his eyes roused memories of how he used to look at her. And his hands gripping her arms, his body angling in closer, were so painfully familiar . . .

“I don’t . . . believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins.

His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers.

He was kissing her.
Kissing
her, curse him! That was
not
what she’d set out to get from him.

But, oh, the joy of it. The
heat
of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life.

Time rewound to when they were in her uncle’s garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught.

Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used both lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her.

Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she’d never felt with her fiancé. With
any
man but Dom.

As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes
searching hers, full of surprise. “My God, Jane,” he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer.

Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her still for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm that made her feel all trembly and hot, and his thumbs caressed her throat, rousing the pulse there.

Thank heaven there was a wall to hold her up, or she was quite sure she would dissolve into a puddle at his feet. Because after all these years apart, he was riding roughshod over her life again. And she was letting him.

How could she not? His scent engulfed her, made her dizzy with the pleasure of it. He roused urges she’d never known she had, sparked fires in places she’d thought were frozen. Then his hands swept down her possessively as if to memorize her body . . . or mark it as belonging to him.

Belonging to
him
. Oh, Lord!

She shoved him away. How could she have fallen for his kisses after what he did? How could she have let him slip that far under her guard?

Never again, curse him! Never!

For a moment, he looked as stunned by what had flared between them as she. Then he reached for her, and she slipped from between him and the wall, panic rising in her chest.

“You do not have the right to kiss me anymore,” she hissed. “I’m engaged, for heaven’s sake!”

As soon as her words registered, his eyes went cold. “It certainly took you long enough to remember it.”

She gaped at him. “You have the audacity to . . . to . . .” She stabbed his shoulder with one finger. “You have no business criticizing
me 
! You threw me away years ago, and now you want to just . . . just take me up again, as if nothing ever happened between us?”

A shadow crossed his face. “I did not throw you away.
You
jilted
me
, remember?”

That was the last straw. “Right. I jilted you.” Turning on her heel, she stalked back for the road. “Just keep telling yourself that, since you’re obviously determined to believe your own fiction.”

“Fiction?” He hurried after her. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, why can’t you just admit what you really did and be done with it?”

“What I really did?” Grabbing her by the arm, he forced her to stop just short of the street. He searched her face, and she could see when awareness dawned in his eyes. “Good God. You know the truth. You know what really happened in the library that night.”

“That you manufactured that dalliance between you and Nancy to force me into jilting you?” She snatched her arm free of him. “Yes, I know.”

Then she strode out of the alley, leaving him to stew in his own juices.

♦ ♦ ♦

D
OM STOOD DUMBFOUNDED
as Jane disappeared into the street. Then he hurried to catch up to her, to get some answers.

She
knew
. How the devil did she know?

The answer to that was obvious. “So, Nancy told you, did she?” he snapped as he fell into step beside her.

Jane didn’t reply, just kept marching toward the inn like a hussar bent on battle.

“When?” he demanded. “How long have you known?”

“For ten years, you . . . you conniving . . . lying—”

“
Ten
years? You knew all this time, and you didn’t say anything?”

“Say anything!” She halted just short of the inn-yard
entrance to glare at him. “How the blazes was I to do that? It’s not as if I encountered you anywhere. You disappeared into the streets of London as surely as if you were a footpad or a pickpocket.”

She planted her hands on her hips. “Oh, I read about your heroic exploits from time to time, but other than that, I neither heard nor saw anything of you until last year when you showed up at George’s town house to get Tristan freed from gaol. It was only pure chance that I happened to be at dinner with Nancy that day. As you’ll recall, you didn’t stay long. Nor did you behave as if you would welcome any confidences.”

Remembering the cool reception he’d given her, he glanced away, unable to bear the accusation in her eyes. “No, I suppose I didn’t.”

“Besides, it hardly mattered that I knew the truth. I assumed that if you ever changed your mind about making a life with me, you would seek me out. Since you never did, you were clearly determined to remain a bachelor.”

His gaze shot back to her. “It was more complicated than that.”

She snorted. “It always is with you. Which is precisely why I’m happy I’m engaged to
someone else.
”

That sent jealousy roaring through him, predictably enough. “Yet you let me kiss you.”

A pretty blush stained her cheeks. “You . . . you took me by surprise, that’s all. But it was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

The hell it wouldn’t. He intended to find out if the past was as firmly in the past as she claimed. But obviously he couldn’t do it here in the street. He glanced up at the darkening sky. Or right now.

She followed the direction of his gaze. “Yes,” she said in a dull voice. “Looks like we will have a rainy trip back.” She headed into the inn yard. “Perhaps if we hurry, we can
reach Winborough before it starts. Besides, we’ve got only three hours until sunset, and it’s not safe to ride in an open phaeton after dark.”

She was right, but he didn’t mean to drop this discussion. He needed answers, and once they were on the road, he meant to get them.

He strode into the inn yard, his mind awhirl. He’d never been one for snap judgments, which was precisely what made him a good investigator. He liked to be sure he had all the facts before he sorted them by their implications and importance so he could come to some conclusions.

With Jane, though, getting all the facts was proving difficult. She was obviously too angry to tell him rationally what he needed to know. And he was too unsettled to make sense of what little she’d said.

Fortunately, calling for his phaeton, putting the top up, and getting them on the road gave him time to settle his thoughts. Certain things seeped into his memory. Such as how Jane had called him “Saint Dominick” three months ago, which at the time he’d thought odd for a woman who should have believed him a fortune hunter. Or how she’d spoken of being tired of “waiting” for her “life to begin.”

Good God. She really
might
have been talking about him then. About waiting for
him
to come after her. All this time . . .

No, he couldn’t believe that. She’d only been seventeen when they’d ended things, and women that age were still feeling their way in life. She couldn’t possibly have been carrying a torch for him all these years.

Why not? You’ve been carrying one for her.

He stifled a curse. Nonsense. He’d cut her out of his heart.

God, he was such a liar.

They were now well out of the city. She sat quietly beside him, obviously uncomfortable after what had happened between them.

She couldn’t be any more uncomfortable than he was. He could still taste her mouth, still feel the moment when she’d turned to putty in his arms. He was aware of every inch of her that touched him. Her hand lay in her lap, so close he could reach over and take it.

Or perhaps not. The last thing he needed was her shoving him off the phaeton, which she was liable to do right now if she took a mind to it. She was damned angry.

Though he wasn’t entirely sure why. She was now engaged to a very rich, very well-connected earl, all because Dom had set her free. So why did she look as if she wanted to throttle him?

Nancy. The chit must have made everything sound worse than it was. “Tell me how much your cousin told you about our . . . supposed dalliance.”

“Everything, as far as I know.” Jane smoothed her skirts with a nonchalance he might have believed if he hadn’t also noticed how her hands trembled. “That you coaxed her into making it look as if you were making advances to her. That she then convinced Samuel Barlow to help get me into the library without suspecting, so I could see your manufactured tableau.”

Nancy
had
told her everything. “She promised she would never say a word.”

“I gave her no choice.” Jane’s voice lowered to an aching murmur. “I’m not the fool you take me for, you know.”

“I have
never
taken you for a fool.”

“No? You didn’t think I’d notice when you made no further attempts to court Nancy? Or any other rich ladies? There was no gossip about you, no tales of your fortune hunting. It wasn’t long before I smelled a rat.”

Blast it all. “So you went to Nancy and forced her to tell the truth.”

Jane got very quiet. He glanced over to find her looking chagrined.

“Actually, I sort of . . . tricked her into it. I claimed that I had encountered you in Bond Street, and you’d revealed the truth then. I told her I just wanted to hear her side of things.”

A groan escaped him. “In other words, you deceived her.”

“Pretty much.” Jane fiddled with her reticule. “It wasn’t difficult. Nancy isn’t, well . . .”

“The brightest star in the sky?”

Jane winced. “Exactly. She’s fairly easy to manipulate. Indeed, that was all it took to have her blurting out everything. That you told her a bunch of nonsense about how I would be better off without you—”

“It wasn’t nonsense,” he interrupted. “You
were
better off without me.”

“Was I? You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually.” He clicked his tongue at the horses to have them step up the pace. “Do you know where I lived for my first three years as a Bow Street runner?”

“It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have cared.”

He uttered a harsh laugh. “Yes, I’m sure you would have been delighted to share a garret above a tavern in Spitalfields with me. To eat only bread and cheese four days a week in order to save money. To forgo coal in the dead of winter so we’d have enough money to pay the rent.”

“That does sound dreadful.” Her voice held an edge. “But that was three years of the twelve we were apart. What about later? After you started to have some success?”

“I didn’t move out of the garret because of any great success. I moved out because I . . . was traveling too much to sustain lodgings in London. That’s how I spent the rest of my time as a runner.”

In Manchester and wherever else the Spenceans and their ilk were fomenting rebellion. But he couldn’t talk about that, not to her. She would never understand those difficult years, what he’d done, what he’d been expected to do. How could she? She was a lady encased in a castle of
privileged living. She didn’t know anything about the struggle between the poor and the rich. He wouldn’t want her to.

“That was your choice, though, wasn’t it?” she said softly. “Not all Bow Street runners travel.”

He tensed. “No, but neither do they make much of a living. I was paid far more for . . . er . . . traveling than for catching criminals in London. I was able to save up enough to start my business concern precisely because of all those years when I was willing to go anywhere for my position.”

To take any risk. To spy on his fellow countrymen. It still left a bad taste in his mouth.

“And what about after you started Manton’s Investigations? That was four years ago, Dom. If you had wanted me, you could have approached me then.”

“Of course,” he said bitterly. “I could have marched up to your uncle’s house and begged you to marry me. To forgo your fortune, leave your comfortable position, risk being cut off by all your friends and relations so you could marry a man whom I was sure you considered a fortune hunter.”

“Yes. You could have.”

“And you would have gladly accepted my suit. Even though you could have had your pick of the men. Even though you had an earl and a marquess sniffing at your skirts—”

“You knew about the marquess?”

He cursed his quick tongue. “The point is, you would have been a fool to choose me over one of them. And I was astute enough to realize it.”

“No, the point is that you’ll never know whether I would have accepted your suit. You didn’t offer it. You never took the chance, and that is your loss.”

The words stabbed a dagger through his chest. She spoke as if she’d given up on him. But of course she had, hadn’t she? She’d accepted Blakeborough’s marriage proposal. And given how hard she’d fought twelve years ago not to
jilt Dom, she was certainly not going to jilt Blakeborough.