To Taste Temptation (13 page)

Samuel didn’t smile, but he inclined his head. “Tomorrow.”

Jasper gave an ironic salute and then strolled off down the street. Despite her admonition to return to the ball, apparently he had other plans. But that was none of her business. Emeline shrugged and turned, only to find that Samuel was much closer behind her than she’d expected.

She pursed her lips. “May we leave now?”

“As you wish.” He stepped aside and gestured to the waiting carriage steps.

Emeline was forced to brush against him to climb the steps. Which was what he intended, no doubt. Men could be so transparent when they wanted to show mastery. As she mounted the first step, she felt his hand grasp her elbow. His body was right behind hers, almost indecently near. She darted a look at him, and his mouth twitched.

Awful man.

Emeline settled herself in the carriage seat and watched as he knocked on the roof and sat down next to his sister.

She looked thoughtfully at the fading bruises on his jaw. “You were in a fight recently.”

He merely raised his eyebrows.

She pointed with her chin. “Those marks on your jaw. Someone hit you.”

“Samuel?” Rebecca was staring at her brother, too, now.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

“You keep so much of yourself hidden from me, don’t you?” Rebecca whispered. “Most of yourself, in fact.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Becca—”

“No.” She turned her face to the window. “I’m too tired to argue tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Rebecca gave a great sigh as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “I didn’t even get to dance.”

Samuel looked at Emeline as if for help, but she was no more in sympathy with him than his sister. She stared out the black window, watching her own reflection. She noticed that the small lines about her mouth made her look particularly old tonight.

They traveled the remainder of the journey home in silence, the carriage rocking and swaying as it rattled through the nighttime London streets. By the time they pulled up in front of her house, Emeline felt stiff and sore and as if she’d be quite happy never to attend another ball in her life. The carriage door opened, and the footman pulled down the metal steps. Samuel got out and helped his sister descend. Rebecca didn’t wait but immediately ran up the steps to her brother’s town house and disappeared inside. Samuel stared after her, frowning, but didn’t move to follow. He held out his hand to Emeline.

She inhaled and carefully placed her fingertips in his. Despite her precaution, he pulled her close as she stepped down.

“Ask me in,” he murmured as she passed him.

Cheek! She made the cobblestones in front of her own home and attempted to withdraw her hand. He wouldn’t let her. She raised her head and met his eyes. His were slightly narrowed, his mouth a determined horizontal line.

“Mr. Hartley,” she said coldly. “Will you come inside for a moment? I have a painting in my sitting room that I would like to have your opinion on.”

He nodded and released her hand. But he followed her closely as she mounted the steps to her house, as if he suspected a trick.

Inside, Emeline gave her wrap to Crabs. “Prepare the sitting room, please.”

Crabs had been with her since before her marriage, and in all those years, Emeline had yet to see him surprised. Tonight was no different.

“My lady.” The butler snapped his fingers, and two footmen ran to begin lighting candles and setting the fire.

Emeline glided after them. She went straight across the dark room and stood by the window, pretending to look out, although of course all she could see was her own ghostly reflection. After a while, the bustling behind her died and she heard the door shut. She turned.

Samuel was stalking toward her, his face quite grim in the candlelight. “Why Vale?”

“What?”

He continued coming, his footsteps disconcertingly silent on the sitting room carpet. “Vale. Why marry him?”

She clutched the fabric of her overskirt in her right hand and tilted her chin up. “Why not? I’ve known him since childhood.”

He halted in front of her finally, much, much too close, damn him, and she was forced to crane her neck up in order to meet his eyes.

His angry eyes. “Do you love him?”

“How dare you?” she breathed.

His nostrils flared, but that was his only reaction. “Do you love him?”

She swallowed. “Of course I love him. Jasper is like a brother to me—”

He gave a nasty bark of laughter. “Would you make love to your brother?”

She slapped him. The sound echoed in the room, and her hand stung. She drew back in appalled shock at her own violence, but before she could say anything—even
think
to say anything—he’d grasped her.

He pulled her close and lowered his head until she felt his breath brush her cheek. “He kisses you like a brother. As if you meant no more to him than the maid who brings his tea in the morning. Is that what you really want from your marriage?”

“Yes.” She glared up at him, so intimately close. Her hands had nowhere to go but his shoulders, and she clutched him as if they embraced. As if they were lovers. “Yes, that’s what I want. A civilized man. An Englishman who knows the rules of society, an aristocrat to help me with my son and my lands. We are perfectly suited, Jasper and I. We are as alike as two peas in a pod.”

She saw the hurt in his eyes. It was very subtle, few other people, perhaps no other person, would understand it, but she saw and comprehended. She was hurting him.

So she drove the knife home. “We will be married soon, and I will be very, very happy—”

“Goddamn you,” he growled, and then he kissed her.

His mouth ground down over hers, smashing her lips against her teeth until she tasted blood. She tried to twist away, but he clutched her harder and lifted her from the ground so she had no purchase. She arched her head and he followed, walking with her until her back was against the wall. And then she truly had nowhere to go. She should’ve given up then—she knew he would never really hurt her—but something inside her refused to admit defeat. She opened her mouth, and when he hesitated for a fraction of a second, she took advantage.

She
bit
him.

He reared back and grinned at her, his beautiful lower lip bloody. “Cat.”

She would’ve hit him then—
again
—if he didn’t already have control of her arms.

And then it was too late. He’d bent his head to hers. This time his lips were soft, brushing over hers delicately, lightly. Teasing, as if he had all the time in the world. She pushed her face forward, to deepen the contact, but he moved aside. Perhaps he was afraid she’d bite him again. Perhaps he was merely toying with her. She couldn’t think anymore, and it didn’t seem to matter, anyway. He returned, like a moth alighting on her lips. Softly, sweetly, as if she were made of spun glass, a delicate, fragile creature instead of the cat he’d just called her.

In the end, she couldn’t hold out. She parted her lips as shyly as a virgin, as if she’d never been kissed before. Maybe she hadn’t—not like this, anyway. The tip of his tongue darted into her mouth and out again, and her tongue followed. She pursued him into his mouth, and he sucked at her, gently, oh, so gently, biting. His entire weight was pressed against her, holding her upright against the wall. And she wished, desperately, that there were not so many layers of fabric between them. That she could feel that hardness—feel him. She moaned, a whispering, light sound, entirely unlike herself, and he stilled.

He lowered her gently to the ground and took his mouth, his hands, and himself away from her. She stared at him, completely at a loss for words.

He bowed. “Good night.” And he left the room.

Her legs were shaky, and for a moment she simply leaned against her sitting room wall, not even attempting to walk to the settee for fear her legs would collapse beneath her. As she leaned there, she licked her lips and tasted blood.

Whether his or hers she could not tell.

A
CIVILIZED MAN
. Sam shouldered past the gawking footmen and out of Emeline’s town house.
A civilized man.
He ran down the steps and continued running, the familiar feel of his muscles lengthening and warming a comfort.

A civilized man.

Of all the words that could be used to describe him,
civilized
was the last anyone would use. He rounded a corner and had to dodge a group of drunken riffraff. The men scattered apart in surprise at his appearance. By the time they started yelling insults, Sam was yards away. He continued down the street, ducking on a whim into a dark alley. His feet pounded rhythmically against cobblestones, each footfall a silent jolt to the body. With every step, his body grew looser, more well oiled, until he ran almost without volition, almost without effort. The momentum built until he flew. He could run like this for miles, hours,
days
if he had to.

There was no point in lusting after a woman who didn’t want him. In Boston he was a well-respected figure, a leader of the trading community, thanks to his uncle’s business and the wealth he’d amassed since inheriting it. In only the last year he’d been approached twice by keen fathers, making it known that Sam would be a welcome son-in-law. The ladies in each case were pleasant enough, but there’d been no spark. Nothing to make him single them out as special. He’d begun to think that his standards were too high. That a man in his position should settle on good family and a pretty face as adequate for a contented marriage.

Sam cursed and quickened his pace, leaping over a pile of trash. And now he felt a stupid, wholly uncontrollable yearning for a woman he simply could not have. A woman who wanted a
civilized
man. Why her? Why this prickly aristocrat who didn’t even like him?

He halted, placing his hands on the small of his back to stretch it. It was all a joke of the cosmos, it must be, for it all to come together at once as it had tonight. His nightmares about the massacre, made real and terribly tangible in the ballroom. His confrontation with Vale. The horrible revelation that
she
was engaged to that aristocratic prig. He threw back his head and laughed at the night and the black sky and his world that was trembling around him, about to fall. A cat startled and scurried into the shadows, howling its displeasure.

And then he ran again.

E
MELINE TOUCHED ONE
finger to the green baize book cover. A fine dusting of rot fell to the tabletop. She’d found the fairy-tale book that Reynaud and she had spent so many hours poring over as children. It had necessitated an extensive search of the attics all this morning, accompanied by much sneezing and filth, and she’d had to take a hot bath afterward, but she’d found the book. Now she’d placed it on a table in her sitting room as she contemplated her find.

What she hadn’t expected was that it would be in such terrible condition. In her memory, the book was pristine and new, Reynaud’s long, slim fingers deftly turning the pages. In truth, the worms and moths had evidently been at the book. The binding was warped, the pages yellowed and falling out. Quite a few were stained from damp and mold. Emeline frowned as she traced the embossing on a corner of the cover. It depicted a pike or staff laid against a worn soldier’s pack, as if a soldier home from war had set the items by his front door.

She sighed and turned back the cover to reveal the other unfortunate surprise. The book was in German—something she’s completely forgotten from her youth. She’d barely begun to read when she and Reynaud looked at the book, and she’d spent most of the time examining the illustrations.

At least she thought the language was German. On the frontispiece was the title in ornate, nearly illegible letters and beneath was a crude woodcut illustration. It showed four soldiers in tall métier hats and gaiters marching side by side. Nanny had been a Prussian émigré, having crossed the Channel when she was a little girl. The book must have originally been hers. Had Nanny told the stories from memory or had she translated them into English as she turned the pages?

Voices came from the hallway outside the sitting room door, and Emeline straightened away from the table, walking several paces from it. For some reason, she didn’t want to share her find just yet with her guests.

The door opened to reveal Crabs. “Lord Vale and Mr. Hartley are here, my lady.”

Emeline nodded. “Show them in.”

She struggled to hide her surprise. She’d invited them to tea this morning, but it had never occurred to her, after last night’s disagreement, that they’d arrive together. Yet here they came, Jasper first in a striking scarlet coat with yellow trim and a cobalt blue waistcoat that caught the color of his eyes. His dark mahogany hair was clubbed back in an unpowdered queue that no doubt had been quite neat when he’d left his valet this morning. Now, however, curling locks rioted about his temples. Emeline knew quite a few girls who’d cheerfully kill their nearest and dearest for hair like Jasper’s.

“My sweet.” Jasper advanced and caught her a careless kiss somewhere near her left ear. Emeline, looking over Jasper’s shoulder, met Samuel’s enigmatic gaze. The colonial was in brown again today, and, although the handsomer man, standing next to Jasper, he appeared like a crow in the shadow of a peacock. The viscount stepped back and threw himself into one of her setting-sun orange chairs. “Hartley and I have come hat in hand like petitioners before a queen. What would you have with us? Do you mean to broker a peace?”