The Temptation of a Gentleman (19 page)

A movement in the bushes below caught her eye in the faint moonlight. At first she believed she’d imagined the motion, but when it came again and a man stepped from the shadows to creep over to the tall oak beside her window, she breathed a sigh of relief. Noah was there and she could relax.

At least until he reached the top of the oak tree and entered her room. Then her plan would be set in motion and she would be anything but relaxed.

He looked up as he hooked one booted foot into a notch in the tree. Their gazes met and Marion was drawn in by the pleasure on his face. He grinned, then began the task of climbing the tree to reach her window. She admired how his muscular body moved effortlessly up the tree trunk. He had natural balance and athletic grace. Before she had time to breathe, he’d pushed open her window and was standing before her with a grin on his face and not a drop of sweat on his brow.

“Thank you for leaving the window unlocked.”

“Y-your note.”

She was suddenly very aware she was in her dressing gown. The man always made her conscious of her body and of the way it reacted to him.

“Yes, our little correspondence.” His mouth thinned into a frown as he retrieved a wrinkled sheet of paper from his pocket. Holding it out in front of her nose, he shook his head. “
This
was a dangerous thing to do. You should have known I’d come to you soon, you shouldn’t have taken the risk to contact me.”

Marion drew in a breath as he crossed to the fire and tossed her note in.

“And how was I to know that, Lord Woodbury?” she snapped, her nervousness making her short-tempered. “You haven’t spoken to me since you were last in this room. For all I knew you had abandoned me completely.”

Noah turned from the fire. “Why is it you assume I won’t keep my promise to keep you from harm? Have I done something to prove my deception?”

He watched her face twist at his words and instantly regretted his sharpness. But how was he to react when he came through her window and found her in a thin cotton wrap? It was all he could do to concentrate on why he was there, not wonder what was under that robe. The woman was a test of his self-control and he failed miserably every time he was near her.

“No.” She sat down hard on the edge of her dressing table and folded her arms across her chest as a barrier. “But my time is running out. I was afraid of…” she trailed off, leaving Noah to wonder once again why she was so reticent to talk about her father and Lucas’s plan for her.

“Afraid of what? Shortly your father will force an engagement with Lucas, but I promised you I wouldn’t let the man marry you.” He took a few steps closer. From the miserable expression on her face, he could see that promise wasn’t enough.

She stood up. “You said you wouldn’t let him become engaged to me.
That
was your promise. You told me you would stop this before it went that far!”

“I should have known,” she muttered. “I should have known you wouldn’t be honest with me. That I couldn’t depend on you any more than I could depend on my father or anyone else. I should have taken care of this myself from the beginning, but I let myself get drawn in by friendship and… and…” Her eyes came up to briefly meet his. “Kisses.”

He shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

She took a few steps closer to him, her brown eyes flitting to the door before they refocused on his face. “I must tell you the truth.”

He frowned as the premonition of a trap returned to him, this time much stronger. “The truth about what Marion?”

“The reason why I need your help so badly.” She took a short breath and blinked back the tears that had suddenly filled her eyes. “I wanted to tell you the day I first asked for your help, but I was embarrassed. Then, as we grew closer, I didn’t want you to know that he-”

She stopped, clearing her throat as if what she was going to say was distasteful to her. Although Noah still felt cornered by her strange behavior, he also was compelled to comfort her in her obvious distress. He touched her arm, but the instant he did so he recognized his mistake. Her body heat seared through his skin, while her scent filled his nostrils and dizzied his mind.

“Slow down,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Tell me from the beginning what happened.”

She nodded, but didn’t pull away from him. He didn’t seem to have the strength to draw back from her, so he continued to hold her arm in a gentle grip, feeling the electricity between them pulse through his hand, his blood, and his entire body.

“Noah, when I came to you and told you my father had traded a promise to wed me for the debts Lucas holds over him, I didn’t tell you everything.” Marion’s composure slowly returned to her, no thanks to Noah’s hands on her.

His eyes narrowed, the blue going from the dark color of desire to a brighter, more cautious hue. “What did you leave out, Marion?”

As the coldness crept back into his voice, she swallowed hard. What she was about to say would surely spark his anger. “My father didn’t just sell my hand in marriage.” She took a deep breath. “He sold my… body, as well.”

Closing her eyes, she waited for his rage. Instead, he released her arm as if it burned him and took a step back. “I don’t understand.”

“I said, he sold my body to Lucas.” How she hated repeating the words.

“Look at me.” He put a firm finger beneath her chin to raise her face toward his. “What does that mean?”

She couldn’t stop the flow of the tears as she took in the look of pure rage on Noah’s face. He hated her for her deception, just as she knew he would.

“Lucas wants an heir, but Georgina couldn’t give him one.” She choked the words out. “He told my father he had to
insure
I would breed for him, so he plans to take a husband’s rights before we’re married.”

He made a sound of disgust in his throat.

Marion whispered, “The end of the month wasn’t when he planned to become engaged to me, it was the time he planned to take me to his bed, whether I agreed to that or not.”

She turned her face away and braced herself for the tirade surely to come. Noah’s rage emanated from his body in long waves and he hadn’t even spoken yet.

To her surprise, instead of beginning a diatribe against her, he turned away to stalk to the fire. His back faced her and for a long time he neither spoke, nor moved.

He spun on his heel to face her, but the only indication she had of his anger were his stormy eyes. The rest of his face and his body were the vision of a calm and collected man. He could have been chatting with her in a salon, rather than speaking about the sale of her virtue while she stood in her bedroom clad only in her dressing gown.

“Aren’t you going to shout at me for lying to you?” The waiting seemed worse than the bellowing she knew would come.

“If I start telling you how
reckless
--” his voice finally rose as emphasis on the word. “--you were for keeping the entire truth from me, I’m afraid I’ll bring down the house.”

Her bottom lip quivered, but she forced herself to remain calm. She couldn’t fall apart, not in the face of his total composure. It would only seem more manipulative than she had already been.

“I didn’t want you to think less of me, Noah. I
liked
being your friend and I didn’t want to lose that because of my father’s vile plans.”

He snorted out a curse under his breath. It was a word she’d never heard before, but she didn’t have to guess the meaning.

“So to maintain our friendship, you
lied
to me?”

“It sounds so terrible when you put it that way,” she said quietly as she turned away. This unruffled reaction was far worse than anything she’d imagined. Before she got two steps away from him, he caught her arm and spun her back.

“Don’t turn your back on me while you talk. I want to know what’s a lie and what’s the truth, I can only do that when you look at me,” he growled.

Another sob escaped her lips, but she did as she was told and stared into his face. “I deserve that, but…”

“But what?” His eyes narrowed. “But you think I’m the kind of man who would judge you on your so-called father’s actions? That I would think less of you because he sold you?”

Her pent up emotions finally overflowed. “I didn’t know what you would think! I’m not like you. I cannot just analyze a person within a few moments and decide if they’re trustworthy or not.”

“But you did.” His voice rose up another notch before he took a deep breath. “You did exactly that when you decided to lie. My God, do you know what you’ve done?”

She wanted to beg for his forgiveness, but it was far too late for that. Instead she dipped her head in defeat. “I’ve hurt your case, I’ve ruined our friendship, and I’ve made you hate me.”

“Hate you?” He wrinkled his face as if that was a foreign notion. “None of those things! You’ve put yourself in terrible, terrible danger.” With one step, he had both her arms in his hands. “Any night, Josiah Lucas could have come through that door and taken you, and I would have known nothing about it. He would have hurt you, and I couldn’t have protected you. That’s what makes me so furious with you that I want to shake some sense into your head.”

Her heart, which had already been pounding, now doubled its time. “I realized that today when he attacked me in the library, and that’s why I sent for you,” she whispered.

“He attacked you?” Noah’s face twisted into a terrifying mask for a moment, then returned to normal. “Did he touch you?”

His eyes narrowed and malice entered his tone. In that moment Marion understood the dangerous man behind Noah’s façade. God help the man who crossed his path. He would live to regret his mistake.

“No,” she whispered. “But he made it clear to me that you would never take me from him.”

“My God.”

With a shiver, Noah folded her into his arms, crushing her against his chest until she could barely breathe. His heart pounded against her cheek, and suddenly she realized he wasn’t angry, he was afraid for her.

“I could have spared you all that fear,” he said. He drew back and stared down at her. “I could have ended this nightmare you’ve been living for the past month, if only you’d told me the whole truth from the start.”

“I’m sorry.” He was so close she felt her own breath reverberate hot against her lips.

He tilted her chin up a fraction. “Don’t be sorry, just promise me you’ll never lie to me again. Trust me to help you.”

She nodded, held willing captive by his arms and his eyes. For a brief moment, she forgot everything around her as he filled her vision and kept her warm with the heat of his body. But even as she nodded, the faint flickering of guilt in her mind reminded her of her plan for Noah that night.

Would she really be able to force his hand after all the kindnesses he’d done for her? After all the feelings he inspired in her? No. She couldn’t lie to him once again. No matter what, she would find a way to escape her father without using Noah.

“Yes, I promise, but…”

Before she could finish her sentence, Noah brought his lips down to consume her with a kiss that turned all her bones to water and her blood to fire.

Instantly, Noah felt Marion collapse into the kiss, giving up freely what he demanded with his mouth and with his hands as they roamed down to her waist. His fingertips dug into the cotton of her wrapper and around her hips, dragging her up against him until their bodies touched intimately and Marion let out a quiet sigh of surrender. The rage and fear that had coursed through him when she told him the truth eased from his body, replaced by a pulsing desire he couldn’t control. Truth be told, he didn’t even want to control it any longer. He needed Marion. He needed to feel her in his arms and keep her safe by making her his.

By the way she returned his kiss, she wanted the same thing, though he doubted in her innocence that she knew what that want inside her was. He smiled against her mouth. He would teach her. He would teach her what that ache deep within her belly was, and how easy it was for him to release her from its pleasurable grip.

“Noah,” she sighed against his mouth, clutching him closer.

“I want you,” he whispered, pressing hot, swift kisses against her cheek, her jaw line and up to the shell of her ear. He teased the outer rim with the tip of his tongue. “Let me love you tonight.”

She nodded, her only answer a deep, throaty moan of pleasure. With that permission asked for and granted, he guided her backward until her backside bumped against the mattress edge. There he was surprised when her hands came up to loosen his jacket buttons. She shoved the heavier fabric aside and slid her hands down his chest and across his ribcage. He sucked in his breath as his need threatened to burn out of control.

But this would be her first time, and he wanted to make it special, an experience she would look back on with a blush of pleasure, not a grimace of discomfort. Tamping his need down, he cupped her chin to kiss her once more. She shivered under the touch and the soft half-moons of her fingernails grazed his muscles as she clutched at his shirt.

Noah eased his mouth down to Marion’s throat, taking a deep breath of her scent as he continued to kiss her. Funny how he’d never really noticed the uniqueness of each woman’s scent before. Until Marion, he hadn’t noticed a great many things about women.

Marion moaned when Noah’s mouth trailed across her collarbone. He shoved aside the top of her wrap while he moved lower, revealing more and more of her skin. But instead of being shy, Marion shifted to aid him, wanting to be free of the confines of her clothes. She wanted to press her body against his in the intimate dance of sex she knew so little about. Fear was the last thing that crossed her mind.