The Danger of Desire (28 page)

“Eight o’clock.” She rose and let him kiss her again. “I knew I could count on you. Balfour will be so pleased.”

But what she meant was that
she
was already pleased. And really, whatever machinations she was up to, that was all that ought to matter. “I hope he will.”

He saw her down the steps and to the carriage himself.

Hugh tried to keep himself busy writing all the necessary reports for Admiral Middleton, but after his mother left, the house was too quiet. Jinks had taken Timmy out with him on one of his errands or another. Hugh found himself wandering from room to empty room. Trying to keep himself occupied, trying to keep from admitting all he wanted to do was watch
her
sleep. Feast his eyes on the sight of Meggs unmasked, unprotected by that formidable veneer of distrust and cleverness.

But when he entered the room, her dark eyes were open and, he wanted to think, a little less wary. “How are you feeling?”

She slowly pushed herself up to sitting and crisscrossed her legs beneath the covers, like a lazy cat arranging itself. She was, perhaps, still at bit muzzy from the laudanum. “Who was your lady friend?”

The lawn nightdress was draping itself interestingly across her shoulders and breasts. Hugh was sure he could see the sweet, pink crests beneath the sheer fabric. He moved away to busy himself at the fire.

“I don’t have a
lady friend
.”

She let out the smallest huff of scorn. “Then who was she? She smelled beautiful. The whole house is perfumed with her—gardenia and something else. Is she your mistress?”

“Good God, lass. If you didn’t notice, she’s old enough to be my—”

“Didn’t look that old. Didn’t move like she was old, though I didn’t get a good look at her face from the window. All bedaubed in lace she was. Even her hat. She was a prime article.”

“She will be eminently flattered to hear you think so. She is my mother.”

There was a long pause as she tried in vain to control some emotion. It proved itself, as it so often did, to be cheek. Sweet, opiate-influenced cheek. “Fancy
you
having a mother. And here I thought you’d sprung straight from the loins of the devil himself.” But she smiled a little in that saucy way of hers, amused by her own joke.

God help him. He was going to choke on wanting her when she was soft and sweet, and half undressed.

“I have to go out this evening, to a dinner. It will involve tidying up business with the admiral, I expect.” He let himself walk closer so he could see the luminous light in her dark, glossy eyes. “Meggs, I want to talk to you when I return. We haven’t spoken since yesterday, and I want to make sure you aren’t still thinking of leaving.”

It was a long, excruciatingly uncomfortable minute, while his blood pounded in his ears, before she replied. She spoke quietly, but she tossed up that shoulder to try to shrug off the truth. “Don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He picked up her hand and kissed it. “You don’t need anywhere else to go. You belong here.”

Hugh presented himself at the Balfour town house on Berkley Square at precisely one minute after eight o’clock in the evening, even though he knew his mother could not intend to serve dinner until at least nine and he would have to endure a full hour of the Briarly-St. Badgley miss.

So he was surprised when Balfour immediately strong-armed him into the midst of a group of influential lords. Hugh wasn’t sure if the attention was a reprieve, or a sentence, but he couldn’t help but be pleased to be singled out by Balfour’s praise.

“Can’t tell you how pleased we are to hear of your success. My stepson has been approved for the King’s honors, in consequence of his numerous exemplary offices for the Crown. You’re to be congratulated, Captain.”

Hugh would have been more pleased simply to be given back command of a ship to secure his future success, but beggars—especially beggars to the Board of Admiralty—couldn’t be choosers. “I thank you, sir.”

And he certainly wouldn’t have chosen Major Rawsthorne for a dinner companion. Hugh was exceptionally surprised to find him part of the group. But his mother had said it would be “political.” So he had been warned.

“Major Rawsthorne.” Hugh acknowledged the introduction with a small bow. “Didn’t know you were acquainted with Viscount Balfour.”

“I make it my business to know everything about men of influence. And about the people I become acquainted with in the course of my duties.”

Such posturing, such playing of roles and donning of metaphorical masks. Hugh wished Meggs were with him to see it all and to amuse him with one of her characteristically blunt, colorful observations. She would know exactly how to take these people.

What a load of prittle-prattle,
she would probably say of the evening. On the other hand, he was sure she would have enjoyed watching and cataloging all the characters: the hearty country girl, the sophisticated London miss, the elegant and gracious matron. The generous patron and the bluff young Lord. Even the insidious, professional bastard.

“You’ve come up roses for old Middleton, at the Admiralty. Young Captain McAlden here has managed quite a nice little piece of intelligence work,” Rawsthorne announced to the group. “We might want to recruit him.”

So much for Admiral Middleton’s request for discretion. Clearly Rawsthorne had none. But that was, of course, Rawsthorne’s modus operandi, to puff up himself, and his service, at the expense of others. But it gave Hugh leave to dislike Rawsthorne more than ever. “I thank you for the offer, but no. The navy suits me perfectly.”

“No? Just as well. Although you might want to take some advice—the benefit of greater experience. I’ll warn you against ‘going native,’ as we used to say in India. Don’t want to get too comfortable with the lower classes, even in London. I shouldn’t like to warn you here, in your mother’s home, but it won’t do to, how should I say, dabble with the servants. Not good breeding.”

Hugh forced himself not to react. Not to reach out and choke the life from the bastard. Just because Rawsthorne was an unmitigated ass and no gentleman was no reason to ruin his mother’s dinner party with a satisfying bloodletting. And he wouldn’t be effective helping Admiral Middleton if he made a public spectacle.

But Rawsthorne misunderstood Hugh’s silence and laughed in derision. “You see, you’re not the only one who knows how to find out things people want to keep hidden.”

“Hidden? You are mistaken. My life is an open book. Anyone may see I serve the navy at all times.”

“Yes, even when you’re on half pay as an invalid. It does help to have additional help in such times.” He looked meaningfully at Viscount Balfour.

Stupid, blind, pompous bastard. It was one thing for Rawsthorne to take his verbal potshots at Hugh—he was fair game. But Rawsthorne stepped over the line when he included Meggs, and now his stepfather in his careless talk. Discretion be damned. Two could play this game. “I imagine it does. It is a comfort to know I reached my rank before my mother had even met Viscount Balfour. But is there someone here of particular influence you’d like me to introduce
you
to?”

If he was going to burn his bridges, he might as well strike the match. And he was in the mood for a bloody bonfire.

CHAPTER 20

H
ugh was not used to hangovers. They were as new as the guilt that dragged at his conscience like a sea anchor over his behavior to Meggs—he had never before earned either condition. And so, head in hands to halt the vicious, queasy pounding behind his eyeballs, and slowly nursing down a mug of bitter, black coffee, he was singularly unprepared when Meggs waltzed into his study first thing the next morning with her armor of worldly derision firmly in place.

“So what’s it to be, now, if I’m not to be a mop squeezer? Learning to become a courtesan or mistress, I suppose? Learning how to fuck men’s secrets out of them?”

She might as well have slapped him.

“Is that what you think?” he growled over the bitterness lodged in his throat. Did she know him so little to think he’d do such a thing? How could she think that, after the careful, respectful way he had been treating her? Damn her eyes for still not trusting him when he had done everything in his power to prove himself trustworthy. If that’s the way she was going to act, he was through with masquerading as a gentleman. “Well then, if you insist, we ought to get started right away. Take your clothes off so I can have a good look at you.”

“What?” She was stunned, as shocked as he’d been by her accusation. Good. Two could play this game. He let the unworthy surge of satisfaction goad him on.

“Isn’t that what a pimp, a flash man, would do? Get a good look at his merchandise? I didn’t take a good long look at you the other night. But from what I remember, I’d say we’ll need to fatten you up a bit. You’re a trifle on the sleek side. A man doesn’t want a lathy wench. A man likes a woman pillowy.”

She was staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Good. She’d been warned. He’d told her he was a hard, hard man.

“That’s what you assumed, wasn’t it? That I would want to turn you into a courtesan? Courtesans need to be soft and voluptuous. A courtesan’s body is her weapon. I have absolutely no doubt that in time, you could learn to become quite lethal.”

“I don’t think—” she broke off, enraged and hurt. Her voice, and indeed her whole body, was trembling.

“You do
think
. You think so fast, you could give yourself whiplash. You were thinking I’m such a prick, I would
fuck
you, take your maidenhead, simply for the expediency of getting you to spread your legs for other men.”

She blanched, the only traces of color in her face two spots high on her cheeks. She turned away, toward the door. “You flash bastards are all alike. You spout all noble—”

He was around the desk and had his hand hard on her wrist before she could move a foot. “Alike, are we? Is that why you offered your body to me in that bathtub, because I’m like every other man? Is that why I kept my hands off you for weeks and weeks until I was fit to be strangled with wanting you? Is that why I left you, rather than take advantage of what you had so stupidly and blatantly offered? Rather than start your ‘training’ by giving you a thorough fucking right then and there, against the wall, like a three-penny uprighter in a doorway?”

She struggled, pulling her arm away, so he hauled her back against his chest. He loomed over her from behind, his lips at her ear.

“How foolish of me, to think I wanted you for
myself
. For
your
own self. How foolish of me to want
your
body. Your scent. Your skin.” He let his hand snake around her tiny waist and move lower, pressing his palm flat against the hollow of her belly, holding her against him and letting her feel his body surrounding hers. “Do you really think I would treat your body as if it were merchandise—mine to do with as I wanted?”

She wouldn’t answer. Her silence battered at him, driving him on. He could feel the tattered remnants of his careful self-control tearing away. He reached up and speared his fingers through her ruined hair, fingering the blunt, uneven strands. “If I ran you like a pimp, I would never have allowed you to cut your hair. A courtesan has lovely, flowing hair. Hair that a man could run his hands through and tangle his fingers in, to pull her head back, so he could tongue and kiss her.”

He suited action to words, dragging apart the careful attempt she had made to put up her hair, pulling out the pins and tugging her head back and exposing the long, vulnerable slide of her throat. He set his teeth to graze against her sensitive skin, and she shivered, her shallow breath echoing softly into his ears. Ruthlessly, he drove her on.

“A man likes long hair.” He let his hand slide deliberately lower over her skirts, down her belly to her mound. He lowered his voice to a rough whisper. “Except here.”

She swallowed hard, and the pulse along her throat leapt. “No.”

“Yes. Especially here. Courtesans are well groomed all over. The object is to display their sex. I would have done some ... judicious trimming so your cunny would have been displayed to advantage.”

He felt the tight tension coil through her body, and the movement resounded through him, roaring through his blood. “Oh, yes. Foolish of me, not to have done. I would have enjoyed barbering you.”

Her eyes slid closed, and her lips fell open in shock. And arousal. He felt her body’s surrender, and a carnal mixture of lust and triumph poured into his veins, allaying the savagery of his need.

“And I would have made sure you enjoyed it, too. Very much. I would have made you feel the same want and hunger I feel. And I think all this belligerent talk is just an excuse. An excuse to make me see you as a woman. Let there be no doubt in your mind—I do. I see you. I want you.” He cupped his hand firmly around her sex; he could feel her heated pulse. “You’re throbbing. And warm. I wonder if you’re getting wet. Shall we see? Shall we see if you actually want me as much as I have wanted you?” He lowered his voice to an intimate whisper. “Shall you open your legs for me and let me see?”

Slowly, inexorably, so she would feel every last inch of material as it dragged over her legs, he began to gather up her skirts. Her hands opened wide in the air, not daring to touch him, but needing some anchor, fingers searching vainly until she grasped them tight into fists.

Looking down over her shoulder, he pressed flat into her belly with one hand, and with the other he pulled her skirts away so that she was naked from the waist down except for her stockings. The coarse black wool was a shocking, decadent contrast to her smooth white thighs. The erotic image burned itself into his brain. His mouth went dry, and the air in his chest grew heated and tight. His erection pulsed against the thick wool twill of his breeches.

She tried to cross her legs, to hide herself. He stilled her with a firm hand on her thigh.

“God. Look at you. Look at yourself.” He drew her legs apart so he could see that dark triangle of soft curls covering the entrance to her sex. “How could you think I would want to share you with any other man? How could you think I would let anyone else inside you? How could you not know, I wanted only you, and you alone?”