The Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts With Scandal (14 page)

Mercy couldn’t see his eyes. The top half of his face was in shadow still, but she knew he stared; she felt the intensity of his searching gaze. “Go to bed,” he muttered. “I’ll write my letter. Don’t you worry. I’ll manage without fancy words and your advice, even if Molly has formed a taste for finer things and a disdain for my plain manners.”

There seemed no other choice now. Her head still ached, and her feet were freezing. “Will you sleep there, in that chair? It cannot be very comfortable.”

He leaned forward into the light, and those thick, dark eyelashes lifted as he perused her face. “I’ve slept in worse places, Buttercup. Now take your cold feet and your precious orange gown upstairs out of my sight.”

Mercy backed away toward the stairs, informing him proudly that it was not orange. “It’s ‘Mystery of the Orient.’”

“I stand corrected, rebuked, and chastened.” He grinned slowly, and firelight caressed the side of his face. “Get up those stairs, Buttercup, my patience is far from infinite.”

Well, she knew that already.

Hovering on one foot, then the other, she looked at Rafe sprawled in that chair beside his fire and felt a hollow ache in her stomach. He was more out of that chair than in, being too large for it. But somehow his size made him seem more sad and alone. And tempting. No one ever had this effect on her, making her forget the things that should be important.

“If you’re sure,” she murmured, her tongue suddenly too thick for her mouth. “If you don’t need your own bed.”

He scratched his unshaven chin. “It’s not as big as the one you’re used to, I daresay.”

“It’s very comfortable.”

“Not as comfortable as it could be. It’s hard. Very…hard.”

She watched his fingertips trail slowly over the dark stubble on his cheek. “I don’t mind,” she said. “A firm bed is often better.”

“I like something soft in mine.” Swift blue darts of fire shot from his eyes and arced across the distance between them.

Mercy swallowed, reaching behind her for the newel post. “Oh.”

“Yielding under me,” he added quietly, unblinking.

“That’s…nice.”

“It would be. Very.”

A coal fell from the fire and onto the hearthstones. It woke Mercy from her trance, and she hurried up the stairs without another word.

Reaching his bed, she fell face-first upon it and inhaled a deep, hearty breath of his manly scent where it clung to the quilted cover. It was a good thing, she thought then, that he had Molly to wait for and she had the viscount. Without those barriers, who knew what might have happened that night on a foolish whim they would later regret? She snuggled against his bolster, arms tucked around it. He had no idea how much unrequited passion she held stifled in her own soul.

But he liked her gown, she thought sleepily, remembering the way he’d looked her up and down, his gaze trailing over her like warm, wanton fingertips. He approved her gown. She’d only ever been looked at like that once before. By him. On their aborted wedding night, when she wasn’t wearing anything but a corset and chemise.

That, of course, had been her most impulsive, disorganized flight ever. Veteran of several escapes from her elder brother’s lackadaisical caretaking, she’d never previously failed to pack all the right clothes and accessories for adventure. It was her belief that one should always be well shod and fashionable, no matter what the occasion. But at seventeen, embarking on a spontaneous, midnight elopement with Rafe, she’d left behind her best lace nightgown. Handmade Alençon lace too. When the item was discovered missing from the neatly folded clothes in her trunk, she’d exclaimed in distress at her absence of mind, but Rafe had merely laughed. He’d asserted, with a cheery wink, that she had no need of it on that night. He would keep her warm enough.

But it was not fear of a chill that had kept Lady Mercy, still in her corset, fretting over the contents of her traveling trunk for a quarter of an hour. It was the fact that, without the aid of a lady’s maid when she packed her trunk, she’d forgotten a nightgown. This was unusual for her, and therefore a bad omen. The entire order of her evening was subsequently destroyed. That, she realized now, was where her courage went on that fateful night.

“Come to bed.” The young man’s blue eyes, so startling and heated, had watched her from beneath a coal-black fringe of hair. “If you don’t come to me, I’ll come and get you.”

He was a very tempting, distracting fellow, and one could almost disregard the importance of proper order when he was around to dismantle everything. That, perhaps, was the trouble—the reason why she forgot her lovely, gossamer lace nightgown. Rafe Hartley was scrumptious enough to make a girl forget her own mind. It didn’t matter how levelheaded a person was, if the head itself was left behind where it could be of no use in such a time of crisis.

She couldn’t understand her feelings for that young man. Neither could she fight them.

Only the evening before their mad flight, she’d been in London at a winter ball hosted by her brother. Of course, the staff had their own dance on the same night, and when Molly learned Rafe was in town with his father, she invited him to attend. Unfortunately, Rafe, not content with remaining below in the servants’ hall, invited himself to the ball above stairs instead. Not that he had any intention of dancing. He came there to cause trouble and talk Mercy into running off with him. They’d shared their first kiss, and the next thing she knew, they were on their way to be married, fleeing into the chilly November night, their laughing, excited breaths crisply outlined against the dark sky.

But it was never consummated. Mercy, finally assured that her absent nightgown would not be missed, had just taken two steps toward the bed, when the door crashed open and there stood her brother, along with the startled innkeeper.

Just in the nick of time. She’d begun to think she would never be rescued from Rafe Hartley. Or from herself.

Five years later, here she was again, letting herself fall into a scandalous situation with the same man. She was still entangled in his life, had put herself back into it when she dressed in the black taffeta and wrapped her face in a shroud of lace, looking to help him in some way. Needing to.

Ah, if only Molly hadn’t lost her nerve, none of this would be happening, she thought peevishly. He couldn’t still tempt
her
if he was safely married to another woman, could he? Perhaps Carver hadn’t believed that. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted Rafe to marry her lady’s maid because it would make a permanent connection between them.

And perhaps she’d wanted him to marry Molly for that same reason.

She and Carver were both guilty of interfering in their own way.

Mercy couldn’t be sure how long she lay there on his bed, drifting in and out of her drowsy thoughts that were not quite dreams. It was some considerable time later when she heard a loud creak outside the chamber and then the rusty complaint of old hinges. The door opened.

“I changed my mind.”

Her eyes flew open. She held her breath. Had she imagined that voice?

No.

Somewhere behind her, he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I need my bed after all…”

Mercy rolled over and pushed herself up on her elbows. Rafe stood in the open door of the bedchamber, a mere shadow, his features hidden.

“And the woman in it,” he added.

“We can’t,” she protested feebly, heart drumming hard in her ears.

“I’ve been told there’s no such word.”

“Then we musn’t.” But she was losing the breath to speak. And the will to argue. “We shouldn’t.”

“I don’t care about shouldn’t.” He stepped into the chamber and closed the door behind him, masterful and arrogant. “You came here to put things right. So put them right. Give me what you denied me five years ago.”

“But I…we…”

“Unfinished business, my lady. You owe me.”

He’d tried, hadn’t he? The temptation she offered, putting herself in his path again, was more than any flesh-and-blood man could withstand. One knee on the bed, he stretched slowly over her form as she lay propped up on her elbows. If she meant to run away again, now would be the time to do it.

But she stayed. Didn’t move an inch.

Just as well, because he had a feeling he couldn’t let his slippery catch off the hook this time.

He knew what he was doing when he carried her inside his farmhouse that evening, and when he hid her boots so she couldn’t leave. He’d told himself it was for her own benefit, but he wasn’t a good liar.

Strips of silver moonlight trickled in through the leaded windows, casting a pattern of distorted diamond shadows across the bed and her sprawling form. She half lowered her lashes, and her lips parted. He could hear her breath, could feel it now too as his hand swept from her waist to her bosom.

The material of her gown was warm under his palm, soft, but the flesh beneath it was firmly corseted. How could she sleep in that discomfort? Answer—she simply couldn’t. Good thing he was there to help the ice queen out of it, then.

His lips caressed hers slowly, parting them. He expected a word of protest, another reminder about Molly, but there was nothing, just a gentle yielding of that sweet-tasting mouth as she sank down on her back and his body covered hers, his hand on her breast, his fingertips trailing over the swell of flesh above her bodice.

He’d waited five years for this. For her. Not that there hadn’t been other women, but there were none like this one, and he knew it the first time he saw her, when he was twelve. Then, looking for some way to get the strange redhead’s attention, he’d lobbed a ball at her head and knocked her bonnet off, directly into a puddle. She promptly called him an “ignorant peasant,” and thus he’d decided she wasn’t worth his notice anyway. Fate had seemed determined to keep them on opposing sides of every argument from then on. Everyone thought he ought to be with Molly Robbins, until even he began to think it. Molly was a part of his world, and this woman never could be. When he was sensible, he knew that.

Tonight, he wasn’t being sensible.

She wriggled under him, guiding his hands to her breasts, but their lips never broke from the kiss. It turned hungry, greedy. Her hands came up to pull on his shirt, ripping it in her haste. When he felt that eagerness, sheer pleasure raced hot through his blood. On their wedding night she was hesitant, using any excuse to delay joining him in bed. Tonight she was eager, a wildcat. He knelt astride her while he opened the fall of his breeches and she lay rumpled under him, her hair pins all lost, her clothing half-undone.

“Rafe,” she murmured as her moonlit gaze followed the path of his busy fingers. “What are we doing?”

“You’re putting things right, remember?” Breathless, he tugged his breeches down and then tipped forward again to slide her petticoats upward. “Making it up to me.” Her fine silk drawers were soft and warm under his suddenly trembling hands. “After all this time.”

He heard her sigh as his fingers touched her intimately through the slit in her drawers. “We must have lost our wits,” she whispered haltingly. But even as she spoke, she moved her hands to explore. When her fingers touched his erection, it grew another inch at least. Desire lay heavy in his loins, and each gentle caress of her soft hands threatened to bring him beyond the brink.

Moonbeams were caught, trapped under her lashes, gleaming like flashes of light caught on a lazy stream.

“You
are
sober?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t know,” she replied on a hitch of breath. “Am I?”

He bent to kiss her lips, then her chin, then her throat. It seemed a shame to him that she worried so over her costly silk garments, when the skin beneath was far more exquisite, a material made from cream, honey, and molten gold, woven by creatures from another world. Why cover it at all? he mused. If he had his way, she would never wear another stitch of clothing. Except when he wanted the pleasure of removing it.

“Yes, I am sober,” she sighed, “but we still shouldn’t. Should we?”

“Oh, yes.” He inhaled a deep breath of her fragrance as his mouth traveled lower, over the swell of her breasts. “We’ll find our wits in the morning,” he managed, hoarse. “If we want them back again.” She arched, moaning softly, but not in any manner that might be mistaken for complaint. His lips sank into her sweet, delicious flesh again, sucking and nibbling gently.

It was too late for shouldn’t. Clearly they both knew that.

His finger entered her slowly through the slit in her drawers, and she gasped. At the same moment, her hand closed tightly around his swollen, thickening manhood. “It is warm,” she muttered, sounding surprised.

“Full of life,” he agreed. His pulse quickened and seemed to start somewhere in the root of his cock, traveling all the way up his spine to thud away in his temple.

If he wasn’t careful, he would spend too soon. So he drew back a little and teased her with his finger, withdrawing it until she squirmed and complained. Bossy-Drawers. She was hot and moist, pushing herself into his hand. “It’s awfully distracting to have you and this”—he added a second finger and moved them together, slowly, in a circular motion—“preying on a man’s mind.”

Her eyes widened. “Yes…I can…see…how…how it would be—”

It still wasn’t enough to silence her, but
this
would be. Sliding his fingers through her dewy entrance, Rafe sought the magical pearl that would transport her away from her doubts and fears, beyond her blessed self-control. As he worked it with just enough pressure, he kissed her again. His tongue delved deeper, digging for the capacious cries of wanton desire now blossoming inside her, seeded by his targeted caress.

Not so icy now, was she? Excitement pulsed a maddened rhythm in his heart, sent his blood quickening through his veins. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. And tonight—just for tonight—she was his.

***

“You are my bride,” he whispered huskily. “Mine.”

In that moment, she agreed utterly. The heat and strength of his body over hers completely swept all other considerations out of her mind. His hair smelled of wood smoke from the tavern, but underneath that it was all Rafe. The scent of masculinity. She gazed at her pale fingers in his dark, dark hair, and then looked up at the pattern of moonlight over the cracks in the low ceiling.