How To Tempt a Viscount (2 page)

‘My dance, I believe, old friend,’ he laughed, but there was steel behind the words and he knew that Arlesford heard it. And then she was in his arms and he thought no more about Arlesford.

Twelve inches. A respectable enough distance between them in this rather risqué German dance. Her eyes met his and held. Storm grey eyes filled with such sensual promise, so that the crowd on Fallingham’s dance floor seemed to vanish. Attraction shimmered between them. Heated. Intimate. Shocking in its intensity. And then her lashes lowered and she was once again the demure and proper girl he had married. The contrast intrigued him. He studied the sweep of her lashes, the creamy curve of her cheek, the soft pink lips. He had never been more aware of her as a woman—a very beautiful and desirable woman. Marcus felt he could have looked at her forever and never seen enough. He felt as if had been sleeping for all his life and only just woken up.

Twelve inches, yet as they moved around the dance floor the distance diminished as if their bodies were drawn together by a force too great to resist. Edging infinitesimally closer with every step they took. Closer, as they moved across the floor. And closer. Until he could feel the spark of her body against his and feel the silk of her skirt against the fall of his breeches. Until he could feel her against the hardness of his arousal.

‘Ellen.’ His whisper was ragged and harsh with need and with warning.

Her eyes widened, her lips parted. And for a moment she looked surprised to find him in such a state. But then she smiled.

‘Desist or I am going to have a very large and obvious problem when this dance comes to a close.’ He spoke the words low and quiet by her ear, his jaw tight as he struggled for control.

‘Is there nothing you can do to alleviate the situation?’ she asked and looked at him with such an innocent expression that he did not know whether she understood the suggestive nature of her question.

‘There is, but I doubt we could ever show our faces in society again if we did it here on the dance floor.’ He met her gaze boldly and held it, watching her. His wife blushed but did not look away, and again there was that contrast between the temptress and the good girl, exciting him all the more.

‘What are you then to do?’ She arched an eyebrow.

‘Contrive to think dampening thoughts.’

She digested that in silence and he wondered if he should have been quite as honest about his struggle. The minutes passed. The music played. The dance wove them tighter with its steps. There was no change in his state and, if he were honest, there was only one manner of relief that he wanted.

‘It does not seem to be working.’ She smiled; a knowing, teasing smile.

‘And neither will it, madam, if we continue as we are,’ he said and opened up a distance between them. It sounded as pompous as something his father would say.
His father
… The problem resolved itself in an instant.

He tried to get Ellen to leave the ball early. There were matters that needed to be discussed between them. And there were other things, too. Things that, being faithful to his marriage, he had gone too long without. But Ellen was adamant that leaving early would cause offense, and would not hear of such a thing. She had returned to enjoy London and it seemed she was determined to do just that. The ball went on so late that by the time he got her home she was tired and went straight to bed.

Marcus sat on his bed and stared at the closed door in front of him. It was the door to the connecting bedchamber. He felt the pull of temptation. His body was humming with desire. Aching with it, giving him little chance of sleep. He thought of the tease of her body against his on the dance floor and knew she was as aware as him of the attraction that crackled between them. He wanted her but given how their marriage had started he was not about to make the same mistake again. He wanted to get to know her. He wanted to actually talk to his wife before he climbed into her bed and made love to her.

Chapter Two

Despite the lateness of the previous night Ellen rose early. She had slept poorly, her night a mess of agitated wakefulness and confused dreams, all of them centred round Marcus. But she was not tired. Anger and determination had a way of overcoming fatigue.

She did not let herself think of last night, of what it had been like to be held in his arms. She did not let herself feel. There was too much danger in even thinking of that route. Instead, she told herself the past two nights had been just as they should have. Marcus had bitten, she was sure of it, but there was still work to do if she wanted to reel him in. And she was very determined to reel him in.

She took great care over her toilette, slipping on the dress Kitty had had made for the occasion. Marcus was still sleeping when she wrote the note and left it for him, and departed for the British Museum.

It took only thirty minutes before he arrived, and she worried for every single one of them that he would not come, standing there in the classical gallery with her maid, trying to concentrate on reading the information cards attached to each of the ancient stone sculptures, and not keep glancing up at the door. She saw his tall, dark-clad figure entering at the far end of the room even before the maid whispered her warning, and felt almost weak-boned with relief. She deliberately remained staring at the card as if she were reading it. Only when she heard him say her name did she glance at him as if in surprise.

‘Marcus, I thought you were busy today. Did you not say that you were in Westminster this morning?’

‘Indeed, but I have rearranged the meeting.’

Marcus had never forgone his work for her before. Indeed, he had spent so much of those first two months of his marriage in meetings and working that she knew it had been a means to avoid her. But he was not avoiding her today. He had come, just as she had planned. She suppressed a small grim smile of satisfaction and let her gaze wander over him. His hair was ruffled and dark as a raven’s wing. His eyes were a dark intense blue. Last night’s shadow of beard stubble had gone, and she had the sudden urge to reach her hand out and run her fingers over the clean-shaven strong lines of his face. His tailoring was immaculate, dark and pristine, his shirt bright white and freshly ironed. His manner was relaxed, arrogant almost, so that, had she not known better, she would have believed his journey here to have been unhurried.

In the cool clear light of day he looked devastatingly handsome. So handsome that she felt shaken by it and remembered the man she had fallen in love with, and all of the emotions that she had thought she had managed to suppress threatened to resurface with a vengeance. She turned away that he would not see, trying to get a grip on herself, telling herself what she was here to do, and reminding herself why. And when she glanced at him again her resolution was repaired and she was as distant and untouched as
he
had been all those months ago.

‘I did not realise you had such an interest in classical sculpture,’ she said.

‘I do not.’ His eyes met hers and she felt a shiver ripple right through her. And the tension between them escalated all the more.

‘Then perhaps I can persuade you to develop a liking for Greek antiquities.’ She sent her maid off with his footman and slipped her arm through his. She was standing so close she could smell the clean masculine scent of him, so familiar that it sent the butterflies flocking in her stomach just as it had the very first time she had met him. She quelled them with a ruthlessness that had not been there then.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, but his eyes were dark and intense and fixed with an interest that was all for her. She felt herself blush at the heat in his scrutiny, felt almost heady with it, and averted her gaze, forcing her focus back to what she was here to do.

Her hand was warm tucked against his arm. She left it there and guided him along the gallery.

‘I am surprised by your interest, Ellen,’ he said in a voice that made her tingle as much as if he had stroked his fingers against the nape of her neck.

‘You mean because my father was not born a gentleman, because he made his fortune in trade, you did not think I would understand anything of the classics?’ Her tone was smooth enough but she could not quite disguise the sharpness beneath it.

‘That is not what I meant.’

She looked at him.

‘Your father is a gentleman amongst gentlemen, Ellen.’

She studied his eyes for mockery and, seeing only sincerity, gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘I was sent first to school and then to a seminary for young ladies.’

‘I have an educated wife.’ Contrary to all her expectations he sounded proud. He smiled and his eyes were warm, and something deep in her stomach gave a somersault at the sight of it so that she could not help but smile in return. A real smile that was all of Ellen and nothing of Kitty.

‘You need not worry, I am hardly a bluestocking.’

His smile deepened. He stopped walking, and, taking her hands in his, turned her so that they standing facing one another. His eyes grew serious and he said softly, ‘So where do we start, Ellen?’ And she had the notion that he was not talking about the statues that surrounded them in the gallery, but about something else all together, and with it came the first stirrings of doubt over her plan and all she had striven so hard to set in place. She looked up into those midnight blue eyes regarding her so intently. And for a moment she was tempted to abandon it all, to drop the charade and speak to him with honesty about all that she felt in her heart. This was dangerous ground. She could hear the warning bells ringing all around her. Telling her not to trust him. Screaming at her not to be such a fool. And she listened to them for the scars were too fresh and she could not risk letting him hurt her so badly again.

‘We start here, Marcus….’ She glanced away to the nearest marble, removing her hands from his and gesturing to it. ‘With…’ Her heart gave a little stutter when she realised the statue they were standing before. ‘Adonis.’ She moved to face the stone hero, her back to Marcus, blocking him from her vision so that she could play the role she had come here to play. ‘The personification of the ideal of Greek manly beauty.’ The irony was not lost on her, and in a way it helped strengthen her. That memory of all she had thought him…and thought him still.

She reached out and touched a hand to Adonis’s smooth stone face. Traced her fingers down that bold sculpted nose, swept a slow caress across the cold lifeless cheek. A man whose handsome looks had dazzled her from the moment she set eyes upon him. ‘Little wonder that Aphrodite fell in love with him.’ Just as Ellen had fallen in love with Marcus. She slid her fingers lower, her thumb tracing along the strong stone jawline to find his chin. ‘He was killed by a boar while out hunting, and where the drops of his blood splashed upon the forest floor, anemones sprang.’ Her hand stilled as she stared at the perfectly chiselled lips that reminded her too much of Marcus’s.

‘A tragic story,’ he said.

‘Very.’ She swallowed down the lump in her throat and moved her fingers to the stone lips in a touch as lingering and intimate as a lover’s, imagining they were Marcus’s lips.

‘Ellen.’ His voice was so close behind her that she could feel his breath against her hair, feel his warmth against the length of her spine, yet she had not heard him move.

‘He is so very cold,’ she murmured. ‘With the touch of my lips do you think I could breathe life and love and desire into him?’

He reached his hand and placed it over hers where it lingered upon Adonis’s mouth. His fingers captured hers, his thumb stroking against her hand. ‘I think it is a certainty.’

His other hand slid around her waist and came to rest flat against her abdomen. She jumped at his touch, her pulse leaping, her heart hammering so hard that she thought he would hear it within the still silence of the gallery. His touch seemed to brand her as if his hand were laid against the nakedness of her belly.

‘Ellen,’ he said again, more gently this time. ‘We need to talk….’

But Ellen did not want to talk. Talking would only open those floodgates of emotion that she had barricaded shut. If she started talking she knew she would end up weeping. And God only knew what he wanted to say: words that had been difficult enough to hear from another…words that from his own lips would destroy that last remaining vestige of pride to which she clung. No. She could not risk anything of that. She calmed the frenzied beat of her heart and turned in his arms so that she could look up into his face.

‘Right now?’ she said. Her gaze held his before dropping down to his lips—the lips of Adonis. Then boldly, before her courage could desert her, she reached her mouth to his, so close that they shared their breath, so close that she could feel the arc of tension and longing between their lips even though they were not touching.

‘Later,’ he whispered as his mouth closed over hers and he kissed her, kissed her with such an expertise that Ellen could never have hoped to have faked. There was nothing reserved about his mouth this time, nothing of a sense of duty and resentment. Marcus’s lips were hot and masterful, his tongue teasing against hers in an invitation to intimacy. It was a kiss that made her head dizzy and set a fire burning low in her belly. Ellen followed where he led, almost forgetting what this was supposed to be about, rocked by the force of overwhelming need exploding between them. She felt the caress of his hands against her back, pressing her to him all the more so that they seemed to merge together, their hearts thudding in unison. She wanted this, needed it. Yet amidst the roar of her blood and the fire in her thighs she heard the cool quiet whisper calling her back from the brink. It took every last ounce of Ellen’s willpower to break off that kiss.

His gaze held hers, his eyes dark with desire and filled with a hunger that she had not seen in any man. But she did not want him to see her struggle, nor how dazed she felt, reeling from the knowledge that this was what it could have been like all along. She lowered her face, and rested her forehead against his chin, gathering herself as she stood there breathless and with her breasts squashed hard against the muscle of his chest. He had not loved her then. He did not love her now. In her mind she heard again Amanda White’s voice from across the months and that gloating little tinkle of a laugh. And her blood chilled. Unrequited love. Unrequited desire. Both burned a lesson upon a woman’s soul. A lesson that Ellen had learned only too well.