Rules of Engagement (24 page)

"You're too impatient. You have to learn to prolong your anticipation."

The swine chided her! She was ready to melt, and he was lecturing. If she opened her legs all the way, if she rubbed her legs against his, perhaps he would understand… and he would be inside her so deeply. Right to the mouth of her womb. Just as he promised. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she deliberately tightened her inner muscles on his organ.

He stopped. He looked down at her. Not a trace of amusement remained on his face. His eyes were red-rimmed, his nostrils flared, the skin that stretched across his features was flushed with hectic color. And he asked, "Pamela, what do you want?"

She tossed her head from side to side, trying to deny him, but finally she said, "You. I want you. All the way in. Now."

He gave her himself. In an explosion of heat and motion, he thrust into her, filling her all the way, satisfying one need, creating another. The mattress rocked and creaked. She moaned and he groaned. When he released her hands, she clutched at his hair, his shoulders, his back. Anything to try and save herself from the devastating passion that swept her along. Swept them along.

Climax struck her like a bolt of lightning, starting deep inside and radiating outward, consuming her entire body, shaking her soul. He wrapped his hand in her hair. He held her still and stared into her eyes. As she trembled with her rapture and he lunged to reach his, she heard the firm demand of his mind and his body.

Mine
, he declared wordlessly.
You're mine
.

So she closed her eyes to shut him out and instead savored every last twitch and spasm, both his and hers.

They were done. The silence that fell was absolute. Her heartbeat slowed. She got her breath back under control. She got her
self
back under control.

But she didn't have the nerve to open her eyes until he said, "I'm feeling more like it. How about you?" He lifted himself away before she had time to look at him, time to respond. "I'll certainly try not to think of this when I'm speaking to Her Majesty, and I suggest you try and control your wayward thoughts, also."

He sounded for all the world like a man who regularly encountered earth-shaking experiences, and found this one rather commonplace.

The mattress creaked as he descended from the bed.

In slothful movements, she rose to lean on her elbow and watched him fasten his trousers. "I'm not going."

Picking the beautiful new gown up off the floor, he tossed it on the bed. "Cease your missishness and dress yourself at once."

He wasn't arguing. He was ordering. He placed the undergarments beside her with no sympathy for her plight at all. And she was still weak. Her legs still shook. Her thighs were damp. Her hair straggled around her shoulders. She felt… well, she felt as if he'd succeeded. As if he'd used her. Or as if… as if he'd offered her more than she, trapped in the remains of her childish fears, had dared accept.

"Get up," he said.

Pamela dragged at her snarled chemise, tucking her knees up against her body and dragging the hem down as far as it would go. "This reception is the culmination of your plans, my lord. When you take Beth up to meet the queen, you will be pronounced a respectable person and all your troubles will be over."

His eyes narrowed on her. "I don't understand your complaint. Did you think I would deny you credit for all you have done for the child?"

She lifted her chin, concealing the depths of her fright with a waspish tongue. "This world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. I do things.
I
don't need to go to this reception to prove myself Her Majesty's respectable, hard working subject."

"You ought to be spanked," he said in a falsely affable tone. "But I don't have time."

In the flash of his temper, she saw a glimpse of the real Kerrich, and he frightened her. "Please, I can't." She grasped the bedpost. "Those people know me."

"What people?"

"The nobles. The
ton.
The people who know about my father." If only she could conceal herself from his freezing indifference! "They'll look at me and pity me. I won't go."

"Those people don't matter."

She glared into his eyes. "To you! You're the earl of Kerrich! No one dares laugh at you or make condescending comments about how low you've fallen or offer false sympathy for your losses."

"Oh? When my father died and my mother began her rampage through the male population, I was ten years old. Do you know how many fights I fought for her good name? Which was more than she ever did!" He was livid. So livid he was shouting. "Do you know how many times I broke my nose for that woman?"

Pamela backed up against the bed post and shook her head.

"Twice." He held up two fingers. "Then she left me. Left me with Grandpapa and went off to the continent with the first of her traveling lovers. She still drops in every once in a while and doesn't understand why I'm not more fond. When she betrayed my father's memory in the basest way and abandoned me to the laughter of fools." Slowly he clenched his fist, then pointed one of his fingers at her. "You're not going to abandon us like that."

"I'm not trying to abandon you."

"Beth deserves better than that, even if you think I don't."

He made her so angry, with his callous disregard and his attitude that everything affected only him. "Don't you understand? I don't want to be humiliated."

"You're going to have to face them sooner or later," he said. "It might as well be now."

She sat there on the bed, clutching her chemise in both her fists and doing her best to convey scorn. "I would think, since you have been through this, that you would be more sympathetic."

"More sympathetic to being abandoned?" Gripping her ankle, he dragged her toward him. "Or more sympathetic to female megrims?"

She kicked at him, but he set her on her feet beside the bed and stripped her chemise out of her grip and off over her head.

Stepping back, he looked at her. And looked at her again. The frantic rush of activity stopped. He licked his lips as he stared at her body, but she now recognized the signs of his arousal, and this was not arousal. This was more like dawning horror and desperate comprehension.

She began to think, to suspect…

Drawing in a hard breath, he said, "No." He dove at her and she raised her hands in self-defense, but he had her out of everything, even her stockings, and he seemed not even to notice her bewildered resistance. Turning her to stand before the fire, he stepped back to view her. "Don't move," he commanded.

Self-conscious at his incredulous inspection, she covered herself with her hands.

"Damn it, woman, put your hands down."

She looked at him, defiant, acutely aware of her nakedness, and desperate to escape this scene.

"You," he said, and his voice shook. "Do you know who I am?"

Had he remembered that long-ago night? He had, she was sure of it. "You are Lord Kerrich."

"I've seen you before, haven't I? Years ago, the party with King William for little Princess Victoria. At Kensington Palace. You were the girl in the window."

She thought begging to be allowed to miss the reception was the worst humiliation she could endure, but it was nothing compared to this.

"I was angry," he said. "I took the boys out to the garden. I told them I was going to scare the girls, and when I started climbing the trellis, they ran away."

This was like the dream where she stood on the street before an oncoming carriage and was unable to move. Unable to scream.

"I saw you, alone in a bedchamber, changing your clothing." His open-handed gestured indicated her whole figure. "I saw you nude."

Any wise woman would have been pretending ignorance by now, instead of standing still, fists clenched, in a panic as he reminisced about a time she had done everything she could to forget.

"You lying little jade." His eyes sparked with fury. "You saw me. You know me! You always knew it was me who fell—" He paused.

"Into infamy?" she asked gently. If it was too late, it was too late. He knew her. "Yes, Lord Kerrich, I recognized you immediately as the notorious youth who dangled upside down and naked before the nobles of the age." Proudly, she straightened her shoulders. "Now may I put on my clothes?"

"You were a conceited swine even then." She passed judgement with cool disdain.

"I can't believe you lied to me for so long about something so important."

"I didn't lie."

"By omission—again." He clutched his head in disbelief. "Just as you did about your appearance."

"So you've told me all of
your
truths?"

"We're not talking about
my
sins." He took a turn about the room. He was a man. Men didn't have to be honest about certain things—like emotions. "That is beside the point. How long have you remembered?"

"Always." Pamela shrugged. "Never. What difference does it make? We only met the once. It was of no importance."

"No importance? How dare you say it was of no importance? That night haunted my dreams for years. It still haunts my dreams"—no wonder he'd dreamed of that body with the horrible Miss Lockhart's face attached!—"although now I know why."

"That evening was a long time ago," she said, "and within a fortnight my father had abandoned us. I never think of it. I scarcely remember. I want clothes."

"I've been trying to give you clothes all afternoon, and if you'd just taken the damned things I wouldn't know even now." That face. That body. He'd been a boy infatuated with a girl for the first time in his life. She hadn't cared; she had been brought there by her father to be company for the child-princess, and Kerrich had been given to understand she dared not fail in that commission. Looking back, he realized Pamela had been intent on being the perfect daughter, as if that would somehow procure her the perfect father. Kerrich and his clumsy bids for attention had been secondary, and had elicited only scorn.

"I'll take them now," she said.

"Damned right you will." Picking up the undergarments, he flung them at her.

She caught them and dropped them into the chair. Except the chemise, which she pulled over her head as quickly as possible. "I saw you, too. Well, actually, first I heard you yell. Then I saw your face for a split second before you slid off my windowsill. When I went to the window and opened it, I could see you again. Hanging by one leg of your trousers. From the trellis. With that famous full moon twirling in midair."

"Do we want to talk about what we saw that night?" The chemise reached her knees, but the firelight behind her showed right through the gossamer fabric. "I saw you. With that rich body, the high, heavy breasts, the curve of your hips and your long, long legs. And you looked at me with your sorrowful eyes and all I wanted to do was comfort you." His voice rose. "Right before I plunged into scandal!"

She sat on the chair, crushing the starched petticoats, and pulled on the filmy new stockings and garters. "I know you saw me, just as I know you fell. Must we drag our pasts out in the open when we've got a party to prepare for?"

"I slinked and worried for months. I was sure my mysterious goddess at the window would tell. Or that someone who knew me had seen. But no one ever came forth." He paced across the room. "But I knew someone had freed me from my trousers. I heard two girls' voices from the open window above me, felt that poker prodding at my leg, and when it ripped—"

"Are you complaining about the job I did freeing you?"

"I knew it." He turned on her. "I knew it was you!"

"Because I have to say, I did the best I could considering that I thought you would want the job done quickly. In addition, the princess arrived in time to see me grabbing the poker. She was only nine, but she already behaved regally, and she insisted on giving me advice the whole time." She was standing, struggling with the corset.

"Turn around," he ordered.

She glared at him for one moment of defiance. Then good sense prevailed, and she did as he commanded. After all, she couldn't dress herself, and he doubted that she wanted to call a maid to view the shambles in here.

Speaking to the wall in her brisk, no-nonsense tone, she said, "I can't believe you are still fretting about this. It was a boyish prank. It failed spectacularly and you were exposed in an embarrassing manner. But I suppose, knowing you, you're worried that I'll tattle it about. I won't. If I didn't before, I don't know why I would now. No one knows and I don't know why anyone would care."

"The queen is using it to blackmail me."

She tried to turn. "What?"

He jerked her back around by the corset strings. "Her Majesty has the trousers, she has the poker, and she's threatening to tell society the identity of the mystery man who was the full moon on the foggy night. How else do you think she got me to adopt the brat?"

"Threatened to take her money out of your bank? But no, you said you didn't need the money."

"And I don't bow to financial blackmail. Which she knew. So she had an alternate plan."

"You mean… all of this—me, Beth, the lessons, the party—everything was to protect you from the revelation of a twelve-year-old, silly piece of gossip?"

"People will laugh!" he roared.

"You're the earl of Kerrich. What do you care if they laugh?"

With a sense of gratification, he pulled the corset tight enough to give her a lovely line in her dress—and offer her some discomfort. "I shouldn't care if I'm laughed at, heh? But your sensibilities are too delicate to bear facing people who might remember the scandal of your father's abandonment."

"Do you dare compare the insignificance of your bare bottom with the very real tragedy of my family's disintegration and disgrace?"

"As you have so kindly pointed out to me, it was twelve years ago." Tying off the corset, he turned her to face him. "No one is going to remember."

"That might be true, but my father died less than a year ago in France in the arms of yet another of his ladies. She apparently had fallen for his charm." Pamela cleared her throat. "Her husband took a dim view."

"Good God."

"Her husband caught them
inflagrante delicto.
He barely missed his naked wife when he shot my father." Her gaze flickered toward him, then away. "That, I believe, has revived the scandal in all its glory and added a luster which cannot be denied."

"I am so sorry." Not about the scandal, but about the death. She might sound stalwart, but he'd seen the glitter of tears. Taking her in his arms, he held her closely. "It must have been like losing him all over again."

She jabbed at his stomach, and when he didn't release her, she pinched him. "Save your condolences. I scarcely consider the loss."

He released her. Clearly she didn't want his solace, but he could see the tangled skein that held her in its coils. Or perhaps he understood because he had been a lost child, too. "He was your father. You must have mourned him."

"Mourned him?" Wondering how to explain such matters to such an obtuse man, Pamela scowled at Kerrich. She hated this, but if talking about her father and his stupid disgrace would release her from her duties at Buckingham Palace, she would talk. "I didn't mourn him. I mourned my
mother."

"Of course you did." He spoke very slowly, as if speaking to a dim pupil. "Your mother died in a state of grace, without ever spoiling your youthful dreams of motherly perfection."

"I didn't think she was perfect." Pamela said quickly. Until her mother's death, she had scorned her mother's meek acceptance of disgraceful fate. Afterward… well, perhaps she had idealized her mother a little too much.

"But your father—early on, you were forced to see his faults. So when he died, did you mourn him?"

"Do you know what my father was like? All charm when he wanted his way, and all sulking when he didn't get it. Always looking out for some new woman to chase, and always bored when he got her. Always spending money we didn't have on something he didn't need because he thought that would make him happy. My mother always put her own needs aside so he could have what he wanted because she wished him to be content." She pressed her hand to her forehead; the remembering gave her a headache. Or perhaps that was the press of tears behind her eyes. "As if anything could ever have made him content. He left when I was fifteen, old enough for me to know what he was—a man running from his ailing wife and his judgmental daughter."

"But you still loved him."

"No!" She drew a fierce breath, then lost it in a quivering sigh. "Yes. I don't know."

"Of course you loved him. You fear me too much."

"What are you talking about?" Her throat almost closed up, and she massaged it with her palm. "I don't fear you!"

Almost to himself, he said, "You won't marry me." Then he looked up at her. "And you won't let yourself love me."

"Not every woman in the world is going to love you."

"But you want to."

She would never get involved with a man who understood women. She would never get involved with another man at all.

"I'm the first man you've ever let yourself get close to," he said. "Aren't I?"

What was he trying to do? Snatching up the petticoats, she pulled them on and turned her back on him. "You know you were my first."

"Your first what? Your first
lover?"'
He came around to see her face. "You can't even say the word. I'm your lover. I make love to you. We wallow in touching and kissing and fornicating and loving. You admit to all of it, except for the loving. I know now what I miss when I'm with you, and that is the quiet whispers in the dark after all the passion is spent. The whispers of 'I love you.' "

"It would be a lie." Yes, it would. She tied the petticoats and reached for the dress. "You don't whisper to me, either!"

He was relentless. "You pretend to be asleep or"—he gestured toward the rumpled bed—"you pretend not to see."

She wanted to deny everything, but watching her father lie his way through a swath of maidens had hardened her resolve to be honest. "I don't want to love you."

"I know that." Taking the gown from her, he slipped it over her head and helped her with the sleeves. "From our first meeting, you tarred me with the same brush that tarred your father, and regardless of the evidence never have you let yourself change your mind. You see only the rake when you see me, never the man."

Was he right? He fastened the porcelain buttons at the back. She had supposed her heart ached because of the weak and frivolous longing for a man like her father. Did it instead ache because she wouldn't allow herself to love the heroic man of her dreams?

"You can walk away from me if you like, but still I say, whether or not your father was wholly a villain, you still loved him, and because you won't admit it you can never love a man. So will you mourn your father or will you die an old maid?"

Facing him, she was defiant to the end. "There are worse things than being an old maid."

"Lonely. Embittered. Poison to anyone who tries to get near you. Always keeping your father's watch with you as a reminder that people can hurt you, and you should push them away." A knock sounded on the door, and Kerrich walked to it and laid his hand on the knob. "Yes, there are worse things than being an old maid." He eased it open a crack.

"My lord," Moulton said, "there has been an incident at the Bank of England."

Pamela saw Kerrich's attention leave her, leave the room, leave the house,

"So my grandfather was right." Kerrich sounded amazed and gratified.

"Lord Reynard read the situation correctly, my lord."

"Get my horse. I'll be right there." Not bothering to shut the door all the way, Kerrich went to the closet and pulled out a pair of well-polished black boots, a crisp clean shirt, a blue waistcoat and a black coat.

As he stripped off his shirt, she went and stood in front of him. "What do you mean, you'll be right there? You're due at Buckingham Palace in less than two hours."

"Something important has come up." The clean shirt went on and he tucked it into his trousers.

"Something important?" She snatched up his waistcoat and held it hostage. "What would you call Beth's introduction to the queen?"

"Less important. Excuse me." He tried to take the waistcoat and when she wouldn't give it up, he went back to the closet and brought out a dark green brocade and shrugged into it.

Pamela followed him as he walked to his coat and picked it up. "You can't do this. You can't abandon Beth."

"The child will be well cared for without me." He stopped and looked her over. "Assuming you're over your histrionics and will do your duty as governess and accompany her. My grandfather will take my place, and I'll be there when I can."

"This is just the kind of behavior I should have expected from a dilettante such as yourself. You commit yourself to a scheme and then can't carry it through."

"Considering your behavior today, I would have to submit that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

His cool mockery fired her indignation. "Quite the contrary. I'm going to the party. You are not. You are cold and uncaring."

He put his arms into his coat as if he hadn't heard her.