White Lace and Promises (5 page)

She clamped a hand to her forehead and turned to Grey. “I don’t feel very well. The air is very tight in here tonight.”

His expression turned to polite concern. “Of course, my darling.” He took her arm, then nodded at the other gentlemen. “Pardon us.”

* * * *

“I spent every day for six years in this chamber.” Beth’s voice echoed in the little upstairs schoolroom that smelt of dust and mouldering paper.

In the dim light from the window, Grey watched her walk past the semicircle of small desks, then past the larger desk to the hearth. She seemed recovered, but one could never tell with her—like a cat, she hid her weaknesses.

“Mrs Hazelwood employed a governess, just for me. A frightful old harridan. My palms stayed constantly sore. And, after she left, Mrs Hazelwood sent me to a young ladies’ academy in Baltimore. To teach me to be a lady.” Her delicate shoulders rolled up and then down. “You see how well it took. The other girls knew my situation. They hated me. I wouldn’t tolerate their insults and I was expelled within six months.”

Never before would she open up about her childhood. Grey had been holding his breath, afraid if he made a sound she’d stop speaking. But now that she’d fallen silent, he had to know. “Did you ever ask her who your father was?”

“I asked once when I was eight.” Her tone was light. Too light. “Mrs Hazelwood said nothing and refused to speak to or look at me for three whole days afterwards. I couldn’t bear it. I never asked again.”

He winced. He knew the old biddy could be insensitive but still… “Damn, Beth.”

“Oh, Grey, please, you must understand how shaming it was for her that her servant—a woman under her care and responsibility—got herself into such a position.”

How coolly and rationally Beth said that. Grey took a deep breath, trying to ease the ache he felt for her. “Did it never strike you as odd she would go to so much trouble over a servant’s child?”

“Mrs Hazelwood lost her daughter years and years ago, to the yellow fever. It’s been said that, as a child, I favoured Mary Hazelwood. Blonde hair and blue eyes. It must have softened her towards me. But then, Mrs Hazelwood is very open-hearted—gives to the almshouse and all.”

“That’s not the same as privately championing a child and raising said child in her own home.”

“Well, it is how it was,” she replied in snappish, defensive tones. “You must admit, for such a high stickler, it was an amazing move.” He forced his own tone to be gentle.

Her expression closed and she shrugged again. “My mother died in her care. I suppose that made the difference. She had such high hopes I would marry a clergyman, be a credit to her. Live up to her expectations of a child of her house. It’d break her heart to know of my harlotry.”

The ugliness of that last word wiped all rationality from his brain. Anger pounded through his blood and his jaw began to ache. “Beth, stop it.”

She glanced over her shoulder and arched one pale blonde brow. “Grey, we both know there’s only one reason why you want to marry me and it isn’t for my hostess abilities.”

“Damn it, Beth. Don’t do this.”

She rolled one shoulder up to her ear, then turned to the mantel. She struck a flint and lit three candles.

“Beth, it’s not true and you know it. I have made a place for you in my life—as my wife. Believe me, it’s not something I did lightly.”

“Ha! Now you regret it.”

He took a deep breath. “No, I don’t.”

Damn it. They had spent the whole of their courtship without this topic coming between them. She’d been warm, giving and wholly natural with him. Now she was defensive and defiant. Testing him.

 
“You’re going to have a position of respect in my life and you shall have anything you want. You shall have your charity school.”

Her dream of running a charity school to teach piano to unfortunate but talented girls had given him his first inkling that she was more than a gorgeous piece of petticoat to warm his bed.

“Won’t everyone simply adore that notion—a charity school for the charity girl?”

“Beth, it will be something of your own. Something you alone will control. A very different experience for you. It will ease the memory of these years you were powerless.”

She was going to enjoy being his wife in every meaning of the word. Especially when she learnt the kind of power his wealth and name could wield for her. Power was a balm for many of life’s disappointments. He well knew this from his own experience.

She laughed, low and soft. “Admit it—you dismissed your other mistresses only because I play the harlot better.”

He compressed his lips. Who the devil had ever called her a harlot? Certainly never he.

And she was well aware it was bad manners for a fiancée to broach the subject of a man’s mistresses, much less compare herself to them. She was doing it deliberately to provoke him. To test him and gain reassurance. But he had done everything he could to reassure her. What more could he do?

God, young women and their constant insecurities. Hadn’t he stayed away from them for a reason?

She faced him and the candlelight backlit her hair into a glowing halo. “Please stop scowling at me.”

Christ. Her voice—all breathy and soft. A bedchamber voice that made his lower stomach go taut.

“I am not scowling.”

Her hips swung with practiced grace as she walked towards him. A harlot’s exaggerated, seductive moves, as if to taunt him further. It should enrage him, and it did, yet the blood rushed into his groin, bringing him to a full erection. Lord above, she drove him insane in all meanings of the term.

As she stopped before him she made a pretty pout. “You are angry with me.”

He stared down into eyes as large and impossibly azure as the tropical sea. A man could drown in such depths and forget himself completely. Beneath the expensive floral perfume he’d purchased for her, her natural tangy, sweet scent tempted him. Her breast brushed his arm and, at the soft warmth, the tightening in his stomach spread to his cock, increasing with each beat of his heart. Lust pounded through him until he grew almost lightheaded with it.

A whole week away from her. A whole week, when he was too addicted to her intense sensuality. Whose clever idea had it been to refrain from carnal relations with her in the carriage? What would it have really hurt?

Her face tilted up to him, the delicate cords in her throat extending, exposing the beating pulse that just begged for the press of his lips. Rational thought became impossible and he took hold of her lithe waist and bent towards her.

“I disappointed you, didn’t I?”

He paused with his lips poised to kiss her neck. “What?”

“In the ballroom, just now.”

He struggled to clear his head and focus on her words. “No, you did fine. Beautifully.”

She had, considering that the memory of facing Dorr at City Tavern must surely have rattled her. Indeed, such a glance at the rapacious side of the old satyr would have been enough to rattle many a seasoned society lady. He raised his head to look at her. “I am not disappointed in the least.”

“You charming liar.” She gave him a smile, all white teeth and softly curving pink lips, but beneath her fluttering lashes her eyes were sad. “The truth is I ran away like a green girl. They are probably saying as much in there right now.”

“All ladies get overheated and faint. They’ll think nothing of it.” He bent and took her mouth. As the haunting strains of a waltz sounded distantly, he slid his tongue along hers. She was all fire and wine. He let his hands slide down from her waist to cup her ass.

God, she drove him to distraction. He drank of her hungrily. Greedily. But he knew he’d never be able to find satiety.

When he’d tried to leave her behind and return to New York, he might have spent his nights fucking his pretty mistress, tall, lushly figured, red-haired Kate. Instead, he’d lain in his lonely bed tormented by the memory of Beth’s kisses. She had a way of kissing, drawing his tongue in and swirling hers around it… He lacked words adequate to describe the sensation.

He lacked words to describe her.

And, in the end, he’d lacked the will to put her behind him. Now Kate was living off his generous congé while she sought another protector.

Here he was, on the verge of doing what he’d vowed he would never do—getting married again. All right, yes, he had broken his vow. It didn’t mean he’d given over control. He could be a husband yet keep his priority focused on business. Time to prove that. He broke the kiss, raised his head and opened his mouth to suggest they return to the ballroom.

Beth pressed her soft body into his pelvis and his cock throbbed in response. His heart beat a tattoo in his ears, and a warning echoed off the walls.

He was losing his self-control. He removed his hands from her tempting little ass. “We shouldn’t start this here.”

She gripped his lapels. “Why not?”

Her eyes turned to blue smoke, full of need and longing. She was such an emotional, sexual girl. Her needs ran high. His own need he could resist, but hers was another thing entirely. The hunger in her eyes pulled deep inside him, as if she yanked his guts with just a glance.

But
he
must be in control, not her. It had to be that way from the very start between them. It must—else he’d have no peace.

He grasped her wrists and pulled her hands away. The feel of her small-boned wrists, the softness of her skin, sent pure fire racing through him. He dropped her hands and fixed her with his strongest look, the one he’d learnt at his father’s knee. The one that quelled men of twice his age and wealth.

She quailed…a bit.

All right, those were some fairly big guns to level at such a petite girl, but he knew from past experience that her charms were deadly.

 
“We should not do this here,” he repeated, slower this time, more for himself than her.

She laughed, a nervous catch in her throat. “Who is going to know?”

A mischievous light sparkled in her eyes. His heart gave a little leap and warmth suffused him—a strange sensation of pleasure and pride at knowing she wouldn’t be quelled. Not even by him.

But no. He’d better get things in hand. He opened his mouth, prepared to deliver a sharp retort. To tell her just how childish she was being. She grasped his erection through the wool cloth of his pantaloons. Again, fire went racing through his whole body, forcing a sound between a laugh and a gasp from the depths of him.

Her tongue flirted over her lips as she squeezed him and her eyes teased his, glittering with lust—and triumph.

He shot out his hand, seized her by the cascade of silver-gilt curls that lay against her nape and dragged her head back. He paused, holding her like that. Her lips parted and her eyes widened. Then she laughed, throaty and wickedly sensual.

“You’re playing with fire.” He scarcely recognised his own voice.

Her eyes ignited into blue flames and her body trembled against his. “Burn me.”

God, she was such a vixen.

He brought his open mouth down on hers and stabbed his tongue again and again into her velvet-wet cavern. Ravenously. Savagely. He wanted her to feel the same powerlessness he did. Wanted to impress on her how ungovernable this passion was.

She didn’t even flinch. She thrust her tongue back against his with bold strokes. She never backed down. Never. His very own virago. He loosened his grip on her hair, cupped her face and his mouth gentled on hers.

Dear God, he adored her mouth.

Maybe a few more moments wouldn’t matter.

Meanwhile she’d got his fall open faster than he’d thought a woman’s fingers could work a man’s buttons. And he’d let her. Couldn’t find the will to stop her. She wrapped her hand around his heated flesh and squeezed him. Pearly fluid surged from the tip. She swirled her thumb, spreading the fluid in a silken glide over the head.

He groaned deep in his throat and opened his eyes to enjoy the beautiful, refined lines of her face while still relishing the taste of her kiss. She stroked him up and down with agonising slowness. His heart drummed in his ears, chest and cock.

She broke the kiss. Eyes that smouldered like sin held his as she licked her palm, thoroughly wetting it. Then she twisted her hand about his shaft while stroking up and down, touching him in a mind-bendingly novel way.

“God, Beth, where’d you learn that?” He barely choked the words out.

Her throaty laugh resonated deep in his balls. “I know a lot of things I have yet to show you.” She squeezed him. “You like it?”

Couldn’t she tell from the way he was leaking all over her hand?

“I like it fine,” he managed to choke the words out.

She laughed again. A wicked promise.

She pushed her breasts, belly and pelvis against him. Her soft curves pressed into him and she slid slowly down his body. He caught his breath.

She dropped to her knees.

His heart pounded and his erection twitched urgently. She grasped him and held on firmly. Squeezing. So accurately mimicking the rhythmic clenching of her cunt when she came that he released his breath in a groan and leaked uncontrollably. She bent her head and her warm breath cascaded over his heated flesh. Again, he sucked in his breath and held it. She glanced up at him, her eyes full of sin and sex. Her little pink tongue came out and swept over the head, licking it clean. He threw his head back.