London's Last True Scoundrel (31 page)

He clasped her hand, held it against him, threading his fingers through hers. “No, no, nothing like that. But I don’t doubt they would have locked me up, and worse, if I hadn’t acted first. I feigned my own death, burned down my laboratory. The story was that I’d died in the fire. Ashburn aided me. I would not have survived without him.”

“Ashburn?”
She stared at him. “I had the impression your brother-in-law is no great supporter of yours.”

“Did he call me a charlatan? A disgrace to the Royal Institution?” He gave a snort of laughter that contained no mirth. “It’s due to Ashburn that I was able to return to my old life at all. He used his influence to discredit my work, you see. He branded me a braggart and a poseur, made me a laughingstock.”

He’d resented Ashburn’s actions, though he’d agreed there was no other way. A part of him still resented them. Intellectual arrogance died a hard death, it seemed.

She thought about that. “So no one believes you were capable of inventing anything,” she said slowly, her fingers returning the clasp of his. “You cannot go back to your work for fear they’ll realize the truth.”

He didn’t like the pity he saw in her eyes. “One person wasn’t convinced,” he said. “Someone has been following me, presumably trying to discover if it was all a hoax and I’m secretly trotting off to my laboratory every night instead of amusing myself in the stews. Months of leading a hedonistic, pointless existence hasn’t convinced him otherwise.”

“Following you?” Her gaze darted to the window, the hand that held his tightening. “Might they have seen you climb up here?”

“I’ve been extremely careful,” he said. He’d taken pains to be seen leaving her house in his carriage tonight before doubling back. The night before, he’d lost his shadow before approaching the house.

But it was too late to hide their association altogether. The man who followed him would know they’d traveled together to London.

“You may be sure that he and his masters aren’t concerned about my amorous interests, in any case,” said Davenport. He hoped to God that was true.

She thought that over for a moment and seemed to accept it. He tried not to feel nettled at the relief that made her shoulders drop a little and the air expel from her lungs with a soft whoosh.

“What do you plan to do about all of this?” she said finally.

A good question. The business had gone on for far too long. He’d told himself he’d let it go on because sooner or later the powers that be would lose interest in him. The truth was rather less flattering, he thought now. He’d been too sunk in apathy to care.

“You needn’t worry. I’ll deal with it.” And to his surprise, he meant it. “But now…” Lazily, he drew her to him and kissed her slowly and thoroughly. “I want very much to deal with you.”

Her breathing hitched as he rolled with her, his long legs tangling with her slim, dainty ones. Her hair spilled over the pillow around her head like whirls of syrupy sunlight. He stroked it back from her brow, picked up a curling tendril and ran it through his fingers, kissed the silken skeins of it, and let it fall. Her scent filled his head, dizzying him as he stared down into her eyes.

She smoothed her palms over his shoulders, regarding him gravely. There was an open, trusting expression on her face that he’d never seen there before. He caught her hands and pinned them down on either side of her head.

Her breathing quickened as he bent his head to hers. When he fastened his mouth over her crushed-strawberry lips, she sighed and surrendered.

He angled his head, kissed her slowly, deeply, using his tongue to coax hers into play. A tentative touch rewarded his efforts. At his murmur of encouragement, she licked into his mouth a little more boldly, her body twisting restlessly beneath his.

A soft moan escaped him as his cock brushed the wet curls between her thighs. The urge to drive into her grew insistent, but he’d only just begun. He released her hands and moved down her body.

Davenport paid her breasts their due, worshiping them, first with his touch and then with his lips and tongue. Honey’s hand stroked his head in a tentative benediction, and a wave of possessiveness broke over him, unsettling in its strength.

There was no stopping himself then. He gripped her hips and entered her with one smooth, deep stroke. Even as she gasped at the sudden invasion, he ran a hand down her thigh and hitched it higher, driving ever deeper, until he lost all concept of the two of them as separate beings.

At the height of his passion, he was only dimly aware of her stifled cry, of her body shaking violently beneath him, of the hot, wet flesh that surrounded him, contracting in a pulsing rhythm. He was too far gone, mindless, wrapped in the intensity of his own pleasure.

He barely had the presence of mind to wrench away from her when his crisis came.

*   *   *

After what seemed like hours of intimate exploration, they fell into a daze of sated exhaustion. Davenport’s hand settled, heavy and warm on her breast. Hilary all but purred at how good it felt.

He moved over her once more, giving her nipple the odd, desultory lick that sent a dart of bliss arrowing down her body.

“Why can’t I resist you?” She sighed, spearing her fingers through his hair.

She was cursed with a fatal weakness for this man. Every time she thought he’d loved her until she couldn’t take any more, he proved her wrong, reawakening her desire.

Silently he laughed, hot breath flowing over her wet nipple, setting her whole body tingling. “Honey, you can’t resist me because I know your secret.”

That sentence was punctuated by another slow, firm lick that made her stomach tighten and her sex clench.

What secret?
“I’m almost afraid to ask.”

His tongue traced around her aureole, tantalizing her in between his words. “That whatever prim exterior you might show to the world, you’re a naughty, wicked girl inside.”

A bolt of excitement speared through her. “I’m nothing of the sort,” she managed. “I can’t imagine why you should think it.”

His mouth closed over her pink, distended flesh and sucked, making her melt into the mattress.

“You know why I think it?” He kissed his way up her décolletage, pausing to nip her chin on the way, and finally reached her mouth.

She took the bait, too curious to feign disinterest. “Why?”

Those dark eyes laughed down at her. Then he kissed her on the nose. “You love it when I say dirty words.”

The mere idea revolted her. “Are you mad? I do not.”

“So you have that, too.” He rolled away from her and put his hands behind his head in a pose of purely masculine satisfaction.

“I wish you would stop speaking in riddles.” She gave a huff and drew the sheet up over her breasts. Her loins ached in frustration.

“Oh, it’s quite common among straitlaced females—or so I’m told.” She heard the smirk underlying his matter-of-fact tone. “Coupled with the desire to hear me whisper filthy suggestions in your ear, you choose not to believe or accept that this is the case.”

“It is
not
the case, I’ll have you know.” She was almost certain it wasn’t. Surely only courtesans and other wantons would enjoy such treatment.

“You may say what you like, Honey. I know differently. You have no idea the satisfaction it gives me to be the only man who knows it.”

He was so smug. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You are talking nonsense to be provoking. I won’t listen to you.”

He rolled toward her again and propped his head on one elbow and plucked the sheet from her breasts, feasting his gaze on her. “Shall I prove it, here and now?”

Heat flooded her belly. “No, because I
don’t
like it and you must stop this right this minute. It’s insulting and—and in any case, you’re wrong.”

He regarded her with a glint of challenge in his eye.

“We’ll see, shall we?” was all that he said before he took possession of her mouth once more.

*   *   *

Despite having enjoyed Honey’s sweetly rounded body several times the night before, Davenport begrudged every minute Beckenham spent in her company today. Why had he been so stubborn as to refuse to take her to see the sights of London himself? He was only giving Beckenham more opportunity to show what a superior fellow he was in every respect.

“You are quite medieval, you know,” said Cecily, who sat flipping through a stack of what appeared to be old scandal sheets. “She won’t return any faster simply because you keep watching for her out that window.”

She pulled one scandal sheet closer. “Gracious, did you know that Lord H.-F. is rumored to be bringing a suit against Mr. L. for criminal conversation? That must be Lord Howell-Fotheringay, must it not? But who, I wonder, is Mr. L.?”

“Who gives a fig?” said Davenport. “Howell-Fotheringay is a brute and his poor lady deserves all the criminal conversation she can get.”

Cecily put down her paper and stared at him.

“What?” he said, frowning.

“You are snappish today, besides pacing about like a caged tiger. Hilary is with Beckenham, Jonathon. She’s as safe as can be.”

“That’s what you think,” he retorted. “Beckenham’s a dark horse, mark my words. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch.”

“Beckenham, a dark horse? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

She reached over and selected another printed sheet and settled back to read. “Anyone would think you were jealous.”

Of course he was damned well jealous. His throat felt tight and hot whenever he thought of Honey alone with Beckenham.

“I should have insisted Mrs. Walker accompany her.” Not that the hard-drinking matron was in proper frame to undertake such an excursion.

Really, the woman was not a satisfactory chaperone by anyone’s definition. Mrs. Walker’s lack of vigilance had come in handy for his own nefarious purposes. Now he realized her shortcomings would be equally welcome to any other man hopeful of getting Honey on her own.

“They are in an open carriage,” said Cecily. “They are visiting tourist haunts, surrounded by hundreds of people. What on earth could Beckenham do to her, even if he were so inclined? Which, I promise you, he is not. Whatever he might have said to provoke you, you must know he’s still eating his heart out over that dreadful creature.”

Cecily curled her lip and Davenport pitied Georgiana Black if she ever crossed his sister’s path. Beckenham was Cecily’s favorite person in the whole world. Anyone who trampled on his tender feelings would answer to her.

Davenport wasn’t convinced, however. Honey was the first respectable female Beckenham had taken an interest in for years, if the others were to be believed. Worse, if Davenport
were
to choose a suitor for her—which he had no intention of doing—Beckenham’s name would be top of the list.

He yanked aside the curtain to peer out again into the street.

“About time,” he muttered as Beckenham’s curricle drew up at the door.

For an instant Honey’s face tilted up to the sky and Davenport saw her cheeks were becomingly flushed. He hoped the fresh air and sunshine gave her that particular radiance and not Beckenham’s silver-tongued flattery.

That Beckenham was neither silver-tongued nor particularly given to flattery was beside the point. You never knew what a man was capable of until he met a woman he fancied. Look at Davenport, about to trundle off to Lady Arden this afternoon to plan a young lady’s debut.

Beckenham didn’t come into the house but merely saw Honey to the door. Though Davenport did his best to squint downward to see how they looked when they parted ways, the awning obscured his vision.

“Oof! Shut the curtains, do.” The plaintive cry came from Mrs. Walker, who stood on the threshold, putting her hands up and turning her head away from the sunlight that shafted in through the window.

Davenport inspected the damage. Mrs. Walker clearly still suffered ill effects from last night’s roistering. She couldn’t call on Lady Arden in that state.

He’d anticipated this and brought Cecily with him to take her place.

He turned to the window to make sure Beckenham had left. Before he let the drapes fall, a flash of movement across the street caught the tail of his eye.

He made himself step back from the window. He didn’t want to show that he’d seen the figure loitering, watching the house.

But he’d caught a glimpse of a man with a narrow, pointy face like a weasel and knew he wasn’t mistaken.

*   *   *

Hilary wondered if Davenport regretted his insistence on accompanying her to Lady Arden’s that afternoon. He’d been taciturn and inattentive, a frown creasing his brow.

“Don’t mind my brother,” said Cecily as they set off for Lady Arden’s town house. “He’s jealous that you had such a pleasant drive with Beckenham today.”

The bait failed to get a rise from Davenport, but that didn’t seem to bother Cecily. She expanded on her theme, wondering aloud if Davenport might challenge Becks to pistols at dawn over the excursion.

Hilary regarded him doubtfully. On the one hand, the notion he might have been jealous made her a trifle giddy. If he was jealous, it meant he cared about her, at least a little, didn’t it? But that didn’t explain his present abstraction.

He was no better when they sat down to tea with their hostess.

Lady Arden was saying, “I do not pretend it will be a simple task to procure vouchers for you, my dear, for the patronesses particularly despise your guardian. Lord deVere has offended them on so many occasions, I’ve lost count.”

Hilary winced, but Cecily put her hand over hers and pressed it. “Never mind about Lord deVere. We all of us have relatives we’d consign to the Outer Hebrides if we could.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” muttered Davenport with a meaningful glance at Cecily. So it seemed he was paying attention, after all.

Lady Arden smiled and waved a hand. “Yes, never mind that, my dears, I will find a way. Jonathon, you must keep your distance from Miss deVere, at least until she is sent the vouchers. Lydgate here will escort her to Almack’s, of course.”

Davenport’s brows slammed together.

Fearing he’d punch his cousin in Lady Arden’s drawing room or do something equally shocking, Hilary said quickly, “Why cannot Davenport escort me, Lady Arden?”