The Courtesan's Daughter (27 page)

“Someone,” she said in a monotone, “save me.”

“Whom are you talking to?” Ashdon asked.

“To no one, really,” she said. “I just want to be able to say honestly that I called for help, though no help was forthcoming. These are just the sorts of questions one is asked after an abduction. I have to be able to hold my head up and look my children in the eyes when this tale is repeated. God forbid I should have to admit to my future daughter that I went willingly with the man who defiled me and ruined my good name.”

“And I am that man?”

“Who else?”

“I am also the father of this future daughter?”

Caro raised her eyebrows and lifted her hands in a gesture that clearly said
who else?

“Is no one going to ask for my version of events?” Ash said, the barest smile hovering over his mouth.

“I certainly hope not.”

“No, they never do in these sorts of situations, do they?” Ashdon said calmly. “One always assumes the worst of a fellow while believing the absolute best of the woman.”

“Are you implying that it is you who have been abducted?”

“Are you implying that I have not?” he countered. She could just make out his features in the darkened interior and he looked to be … but it could not be … was he
smiling
?

“I’m afraid I must be the one to inform you, Lord Ashdon, that it is always, and I mean
always
, the woman who is the injured and innocent party in these affairs.”

“Innocent, of that there is no doubt,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and slouching down so that his legs were almost entangled with hers. Completely inappropriate, obviously. She felt her heart skip three beats. “You are such an innocent that it seems not to have occurred to you that you are completely ruined.”

“Not occurred to me? I am completely aware that I am completely ruined. Believe me, Lord Ashdon, a girl does not leave the schoolroom until she knows in every particular the various and devious ways a man may ruin a girl of good name.”

“You seem remarkably calm about it.”

“Do I? ” she said. “Another result of my education, I daresay.”

“Perhaps you had better call for help again,” he said softly.

“Why?”

“Because I have just decided that I am going to kiss you.”

Her heart gave up skipping and ran so fast she could not be bothered to try and count the beats, and then it slammed into her hips where it lay, shattered and prostrate.

“You are remarkably calm about it,” she managed to whisper.

“I should hope so,” he said softly. “I own the goods, after all.”

Her heart leapt to life. “I should say not.”

“Those pearls, Caro,” he breathed, “those pearls draped around your throat, give me every right to you.”

“Easily repaired, sir,” she said, lifting the pearls from her breasts to lift them over her head.

“Don’t!” he said sharply, and she obeyed. It was most humiliating. “Never take them off. Never, unless I take them off you myself.”

“Like a badge of ownership?” she said sharply. “I hardly think so!”

“Exactly like a badge of ownership,” he said. “I bought you, Caro, and, if you behave yourself, I may even marry you.”

“You
may
marry me!” she barked out. “I am
ruined
, Lord Ashdon. You bloody well
will
marry me!”

“As I said, you are surely an innocent to be so calm about the fact that I hold your life, in the most symbolic sense, in my hands. Which reminds me, I would like to hold your breasts in my hands again. Kindly lower your bodice.”

“I will
not
!” she said, her heart hammering wildly. He was not going to marry her? “And what do you mean you may even marry me? You made your intentions plain at Hyde House, both symbolically and verbally.”

“For your mother’s benefit, yes,” Ashdon said. “Do not tell me, Caro, that you are ignorant of the enmity between my father and your mother. What else has all this,” and he spread open his hands to encompass the coach, the two of them, the whole of London, “been about if not them?”

“But you said you would marry me,” she said, sounding pitiful and knowing it, but unable to stop herself. She was rather disgusted with herself for not being able to stop herself where Lord Ashdon was concerned. “You told my mother.”

“And I told my father, by way of the gossip which is surely running through Hyde House since our departure. I’m sure he’s quite annoyed.”

“Isn’t your father always quite annoyed about something or other?” she asked, feeling as if the pearls were burning circles into her skin, but unable to defy Ashdon and remove them. She was a silly fig of a girl, quite as innocent and ignorant as he claimed.

“I think this will mark him rather more than usual,” Ashdon said. “Are you going to lower your bodice or not? ”

He was back onto that again?

“No, I am not,” she said, resisting the urge to clamp her hands over her breasts in outrage. She was not going to give in to outrage. She was going to proceed logically and rationally. Sense would rule the day, as it must in a civilized world. It was so unfortunate that Ashdon didn’t appear civilized at the moment, a definite flaw in her hastily devised plan to distract him. “Are you saying that you spoke of marrying me merely to annoy your father?”

“Must we talk of my father
now
? I would rather speak about your bodice and those pearls, sinking just out of sight into the deep shadow of your cleavage. You were quite right, by the way; you have the loveliest breasts. I would so enjoy seeing them again. Kissing them. Holding them in my hands.”

Her heart quivered like a captured bird, which did her no good at all.

Inspiration.

“How charmingly put,” she said. “Very well. I will lower my bodice, but only if we continue our conversation about your father and our marriage.”

“You’re negotiating with me?” Ashdon said with a wry grin. At least she hoped it was a wry grin; in this light, he could well have been leering at her and she would be the last to know the difference.

“If you must call it that,” she said.

“How charming. And here I thought all our negotiations were past, the pearls bearing the proof of that.”

“I’m beginning to hate these pearls,” she said. “I’m almost sorry I ever asked for them.”

“I’m not,” he said, and this time there was no doubt. He was leering. She could hear it in his voice. Blasted sot.

“You’re not foxed, are you?” she said. If intoxicated, that would explain much and ease her fears.

“Because I said I liked your breasts?” he said.

“Of course not!” she said sharply. Really. How insulting. “Because you are not acting like yourself, Lord Ashdon.”

“Am I not? You know me well, then?”

True enough. She hardly knew him at all, but what she knew, she found either irritating in the extreme or compelling in the extreme. Some days one wished for a simple mediocrity, a comfortable complaisance. Particularly on days like today. Particularly with Lord Ashdon.

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

“I thought I knew you,” she said, trying for pity, a sort of innocence that would arouse his chivalric training.

“Take down your bodice and get to know me better,” he said.

So much for chivalric training.

“Talk to me about your father and my mother and I’ll loosen the tie,” she said.

“You are a determined negotiator.”

“I am a determined virgin.”

Ashdon laughed and shook his head at her. “It hasn’t occurred to you that I could slip my hands inside your gown without any assistance from you? You are already ruined, no matter what we do or do not do.”

“I believe at this point, Lord Ashdon,
everything
has occurred to me, including the fact that you are baiting me just to get me to refuse you.”

“You
are
refusing me. Your bodice is still up.”

“I meant about marrying you,” she said.

Ashdon sighed and leaned back against the squabs. “You can refuse me, you know. You have a brilliant start into the courtesan’s life.”

“You’d rather I be a courtesan than your wife?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted for yourself when this marriage was first broached by your mother?”

It was the perfect opportunity to tell him the truth, though telling the truth to a man was always a risk as their emotions ran a strange course. But as risks went, she had little to lose at this point.

“Lord Ashdon,” she said softly, one might even have said
meltingly
, “I have hoped for marriage all my life, as I expect most women do. I wanted to be pursued. I wanted to be admired. I never wanted to have a man, mired in debt, to be procured for me. And then,” she said over his rising anger, a force she could feel in the close confines of the darkened carriage, “I met you.”

Caro loosened the tie to her bodice and eased it open, letting the sheer white muslin tumble down to fall against the swells of her breasts, let it be remembered, her
lovely
breasts. Ashdon’s anger melted into desire. She could feel that, too.

“How could I ever be a courtesan?” she continued. “Yours are the only hands I want to touch me. Yours, the only mouth. Yours, the only breath I want mingled with my own. I am ruined, Lord Ashdon, for any other man. I am ruined, and you are the man who has ruined me. Will you not take the spoils of your conquest?”

He did.

Ashdon wrapped his arms around her and pulled her onto his lap, his mouth taking hers in gentle plunder. She sighed into him, into the heat of him, into his scent and into his embrace. She wrapped herself around him, her arms around the starched linen at his throat, her tongue around his, her slippered feet around the bulge of his calves, and dove into his kiss without a thought of surfacing. Let passion take them both. He had said it: she was ruined. There was no going back, only forward, into marriage if she could make him bend against her will.

He would bend. He would bend against desire and then she would have him.

Ashdon’s hands went to her bodice and she moaned in supplication, urging him onward, past the pearls and everything they stood for, to her flesh. To desire.

Her bodice gaped, a flimsy barrier, and then his hand was on her breast, his thumb rubbing her nipple, her body fired by streams of passion. Thought fled. Sensation ruled.

She was lost. All that was left was for Ash to find her.

His mouth trailed along her cheek, to her ear; she shivered. Away from her ear and down the line of her throat; she moaned. His hand cupped her breast, his thumb flicking hard against her nipple; she groaned and her hips twitched against the hard ridge of his erection. He groaned. It was a minor victory in this war of desire, but she took it, enjoyed it.

“You would not have a gambler,” he breathed against the rise of her breast as his hand pulled her bodice down and down until she felt the full impact of the chill night air on her skin, the full impact of his hand upon her skin … the full impact of Ash. “No gambler,” he mouthed, “yet you gamble for stakes higher than I ever have. You’ve gambled your life, Caro. You’ve gambled it all. On me.”

“Have I lost, Ash? ” she whispered, her mouth against his neck, feeling the pulse of his life and his passion beneath her lips, driving what was left of caution out of her very bones. “Have I lost everything?”

He kissed her in answer, his hand plunging down further into her bodice until she heard the rip of fabric and knew she was completely bare-breasted before him, just like in the dressing room. Nothing like in the dressing room. This was raw passion in the dark. There was no pounding against the door, no threat of interruption, no possibility of censure.

She spun downward into passion, seated firmly on Ash’s lap. She fell out of her life and into his. She was caught by his hand and by his mouth, teased and tasted, consumed and consuming.

His hand pressed between her legs and she pressed them closed against him. She wanted his touch, ached for him, but as instinctual as it was to want him, it was equally instinctual to deny him. Not that. Not yet. Certainly not now.

“Open for me,” he breathed against her mouth.

She could not speak for want of air. She shook her head instead.
No.

“Open, Caro.”

“Have I lost everything?” she repeated, her voice breathy and high-pitched. She sounded afraid.

She was.

“I’ve lost everything,” he said hoarsely. “Why not you?”

In the next instant she was no longer afraid. She was furious.

“You’ve lost nothing, you great oaf, nothing you did not toss away with both hands.”

She pushed him, pushed against his shoulders with her hands. He did not move an inch. He was stone, and just as sensible.

“I am not tossing you away, Caro,” he said roughly. “I am keeping you.”

She ignored the tremor that ran through her. She was going to ignore everything from now on that did not serve her well, and she had decided, somewhat belatedly, that Lord Ashdon did not serve her best interests. And to top it off, he truly was as ill-tempered, and ill-mannered, as his father. Her mother had been quite wrong about that when she had assured her that Ashdon only required careful managing. Wild boars could not be managed.

“I am not going to be
kept
by you, Lord Ashdon,” she said. “Since I am not going to be your wife, which is entirely your choice, then I am not going to be your ladybird, which is entirely
my
choice.”

For answer, he dropped his head and suckled her breast.

She grabbed the hair on the top of his scalp and pulled his mouth off of her.

He cursed in response.

She smiled in response.

He grabbed her wrists, but she slipped off his lap and landed on the floor of the carriage, her wrists still caged in his hands.