Beyond Seduction (35 page)

"Hah!" Sebastian barked. "Not just once. She'd jump back in his bed the minute he invited her."

"You could stop her," she suggested.

Sebastian smiled, a lazy curl of mouth and mustache. "Maybe I could. But maybe I don't want to.

Maybe I fancy Nic myself."

He wagged his fair, straight brows as if daring her to be shocked. Despite her best efforts, she could not hide the sudden hitching of her breath. Her heart had jolted as hard as when she'd tripped on the Turkish rug. Before she could gather her wits, he set down the candelabra and reached toward her with the wine bottle's neck. He wasn't offering her a drink. Instead, he drew the cool green glass down the hollow between her breasts. The tip of his fingers followed into the shadows. When he met her startled gaze,

his eyes were amused but sympathetic.

"You could join us," he said, "square off our little trian-gle."

She shook her head, though the response wasn't as immediate as she liked. His offer held a dark attraction, one she knew better than to accept. "I couldn't do that to Nic."

"Who says Nic would mind?"

Oh, he was determined to shock her. Ignoring the implications behind his words, she firmed her jaw.

"I couldn't do that to me, then. I won't watch Nic bedding someone else."

Sebastian's finger traced a path around the neckline of her robe, skimming the first slight swell of her breasts. Her nipples hardened beneath the silk but she refused to act ashamed. Sebastian wet his lips,

then lifted his eyes to hers. "What if refusing to play meant you would lose him?"

Merry didn't believe Nic would stoop to this kind of blackmail but, in the end, it did not matter.

"My answer would be the same," she said. "I was not born to share."

A grudging respect lurked behind the mockery of his smile. He didn't speak, merely turned back to the painting and took a drink.

She had the impression she'd been dismissed.

So much, she thought, for being fed.

*  *  *

"Where have you been?" Nic demanded as Mary draped his robe on the bed's twisting bottom rail.

She was naked beneath the silk. The bedside lamp threw her slimness into relief, slanting the shadows

of her breasts along her ribs. His throat ached at her blend of fragility and strength. She was a faerie in

the moonlight: elusive, mysterious. He'd woke half an hour earlier to find her gone and had been sitting

up ever since. Every creak of the old building had heightened his consternation, every watery slap of the canal.

Twice he'd gotten up to search for her and twice he'd stopped himself at the door. Nicolas Craven did

not treat women like possessions. His lovers were free to go when and where they pleased.

But he hadn't liked wondering where she was, or the suspicions it invoked. Of course, he liked her failure to answer even less. Suspicions notwithstanding, he'd fully expected her to offer an innocent explanation. Her hesitation told him that would not be the case.

"Well?" he prompted.

She smoothed the paisley robe across the rail. "Sebastian took me to the attic to show me Evangeline's painting."

Her voice was uninflected, but he was too experienced not to realize she was testing him. He'd known women who lived to make their partners jealous. To them, this proved how highly they were prized—a ploy he had always scorned.

To his dismay, this time the ploy was working.

Rather than betray his weakness, he gritted his teeth and waited. As he'd expected, Mary gave in before he did.

"He tried to seduce me," she confessed, "but I declined."

A fury swept through him that had nothing to do with any game she might be playing and everything to

do with the perfidy of his friend. Sebastian knew what Mary meant to him, better perhaps than he did.

At that moment, Nic could cheerfully have smashed his teeth straight down his throat.

"Is that so?" he said tightly, and even he could hear the anger in it.

"Yes." She looked at him, pride in every line of her body: a funny-faced, pint-sized queen. "You can do what you like and I can't stop you, but I've decided for myself. For as long as we're together, I'll only sleep with you."

Her declaration disarmed him. He gaped in astonishment, but she was not finished yet. "I trust you'd

give me the courtesy of a warning," she added stiffly. "I don't think I'd want to stay if you intended

to be intimate with someone else."

"I assure you," he snapped, "I have no such intention!"

"You don't?" Her queenly mien had fallen away as if it had never been. What remained was a

vulnerable and sweet young woman.

Nic grinned at the change, warmed in places no fire could reach. Knowledge burst inside him then—silently, brilliantly—like an unsuspected star. He didn't know how he'd managed to blind himself for so long. This afternoon, on the balcony, he'd felt the glow they made together and had fretted at what it meant. Now he knew. He loved Mary Colfax, loved her as he'd never thought to love another soul.

To his astonishment, the revelation was not as awful as he'd feared.

Then again, he would have to think carefully before deciding on a course of action. His relief that she'd turned Sebastian down might have made him giddy. What, after all, did loving Mary mean? Would it change him? Would it last? He knew very well she cared for him. Might he disappoint her despite the unexpected openness of his heart?

Until he could answer those questions, he had better keep the sentiment to himself.

He could not, however, keep her at a distance.

"Come here," he said, putting out his arms. "Let me prove how easily you entertain me all by yourself."

Though she clambered onto the bed with the agility of a stripling lad, the way she snuggled into his arms was purely female. He stroked her cloud of hair behind her back, the pleasure of touching her strangely new. When she slung her thigh across his legs—a possessive gesture, if ever there was one—he hardened as emphatically as if she'd taken him in her mouth.

She hummed at the feel of him stiffening, but did not move except to wriggle and hug his waist. Like

him, she seemed content, at least for now, to hold and to be held. Her cheek moved like a cat's against

his shoulder. When she spoke, her voice was still unsure.

"Tonight, in the attic, Sebastian implied that you ... that the three of you ..."

Ah, thought Nic as her query trailed away. Old Seb tried to set them at odds by disclosing that bit of history.

"Yes," he said, deciding truth was the best response.

Her head lifted slightly from his chest. "Yes?"

"Yes, we all were intimate together." He let out the sigh he'd been holding. "Looking back, the choice seems foolish. How could such a thing not complicate our friendship? Someone always feels hurt, or jealous, or simply less loved than someone else. For a while, after it ended, I wasn't certain we would

stay friends. We should have guessed what we were risking. But we were young. Proud of our wildness. Proud of flouting society's rules. I don't think any of us realized that who you share your body with is more than a matter of the flesh."

Mary's hold tightened on his waist. He heard her draw a breath but she did not speak.

"I've shocked you, haven't I?"

"I—" She laughed, a soft exhalation. "Yes, a bit. When I first met you, that night you saved me in the street, when you touched my face and asked to paint me, I thought, 'Here's a man who has no limits. Here's a man who's done things.' It attracted me."

"And now?"

She feathered her hand across his shoulder. "It still does. I think you're very brave."

He smiled at that, then turned on his side to face her. "It had nothing to do with bravery. Just the ability

to be open to something new. Sebastian was my friend as much as Eve. I'm not certain I can explain

what they gave me. I was a stranger to London and more alone than you can imagine. They welcomed me back to the human fold."

She was quiet for a moment, her hand curled between them on the sheet. He sensed no judgment in her, simply an effort to understand. "Anna came after them, didn't she?"

"Yes," he said, remembering how she'd taken him in when he could no longer stand between Seb and

Eve and their sharp, sharp knives. They'd made him feel again, but Anna had made him sane.

"They were the important ones, weren't they?"

"The important ones?"

"Of all the people you slept with."

"Yes," he said, surprised by her insight and by the fact that he'd never defined it that way himself.

"They were the important ones."

"You'll be my important one." She said this with a hint of defiance, but also with satisfaction. She was proud he would change her life.

He went hot at the knowledge: his face, his eyes, the skin across his chest. "Mary," he said, his throat so tight the sound would scarcely come out. He was painfully aware of her youth, of the honor she did him and the responsibility it imposed. He had never said such a thing to anyone, never had the courage she was showing now.

"Don't worry," she said, "it's all right if you only like me."

He couldn't let her believe that, no matter if he ended up disappointing her, no matter how little he

wished to bare his heart.

"I more than like you," he said, then silenced her—and himself—with a deep, distracting kiss. Sharing

his secrets had grown too easy. It was time to return to safer ground.

Otherwise, he might tell her more than she could condone.

*  *  *

Lavinia Vance's private dressing room was filled with gowns and gloves and all manner of feminine things. Here she stored her jewels and her cosmetics and sometimes, when she chanced to be indisposed, she spent the night on the soft, pink satin lounge. Only her maid entered this jasmine-scented sanctuary, and even she did not possess the key to the old armoire.

It was the perfect place to hide the painting: her enemy, as she'd come to think it, the squawking voice

of all her fears. Staring at it tonight, by the light of a single beeswax taper, she felt so overwhelmed she had to set the candle down and sink onto the tufted chaise.

She knew Godiva was Merry, knew it without a doubt. Geoffrey had Craven's address, of course, from corresponding with the artist about his own portrait. Unfortunately, once she'd screwed up her nerve to

go there, the closemouthed butler refused to say anything except that his master was not in England. Left with no choice, she'd returned to the gallery, to try her luck with Mr. Tatling.

"Charming young woman," he'd said when she asked him about the model. "Name of Mary Colfax. Quiet, but surprisingly well spoken for a girl of humble birth."

The gallery owner had no idea how surprising it really was, nor had he questioned Lavinia's urgent need to contact his client. Her claim that she wanted to commission another work was enough to earn her the intelligence that the artist, along with his female friend, had left on a jaunt to Venice. He had the address

if she cared to write.

Lavinia didn't, but she took it all the same.

Venice. So far away. How tempting it was to simply leave everything be. But Merry would return. Eventually. No doubt trailing clouds of scandal like noxious fumes. Lavinia could have strangled her if