Don't Tempt Me (15 page)

“I'd always thought the Dance of the Seven Veils was a myth,” he said.

“It isn't,” Zoe said. “It's very beautiful and arousing to men—well, not to Karim, but then,
nothing
aroused him.”

Not like you
, she thought. The trouble was, she'd thought of him in that way far too much. She really needed to meet other men.

“That is an unsuitable topic of conversation,” said Augusta, who'd quickly regained her normal pomposity.

“You had better go away, Marchmont,” said Gertrude. “You do not take this seriously, and you are a bad influence.”

“Zoe can practice her gymnastics later,” said Marchmont. “I must mount her.”

 

Augusta turned purple. Even Zoe looked taken aback.

“Out!” Augusta snapped. “Out!”

“Certainly not,” Marchmont said. “I am in charge of launching Zoe into Society, and she can't make a respectable show if she isn't properly mounted. We can't have her riding in Hyde Park looking like a quiz, on a borrowed horse on a borrowed saddle and wearing a borrowed habit.”

At the moment, in her borrowed finery, she made anything but a respectable show. It was the first time he'd ever seen her not wearing day dress, with her bosom covered. At present, it was on full display. Overfull display. They had stuffed some lace into the bodice for decency's sake, but it was obviously too small, and the lace was being asked to do more than the laws of physics allowed.

Zoe laughed. “Oh, it's a word play.
Mount
means two things. Very funny, Marchmont. I'll be happy to let you mount me.”

The two younger of her sisters covered their mouths.

Augusta and Gertrude glowered.

“I'm sorry to interrupt your presentation lessons,” he said. “But the matter can't wait. We're due at Tattersall's in an hour.”

“What is Tattersall's?” Zoe said.

“The grand mart for horses,” Priscilla explained. “It's quite close to Hyde Park Corner. They've room for more than a hundred horses, as well as carriages and harnesses and hounds.”

“The auction is not until
Monday
,” Augusta said. “And Tattersall's is for men only.”

“Like a gentleman's club,” Priscilla told Zoe.

“Women do
not
enter,” said Gertrude. “Unlike a gentleman's club, they let in persons of high and low degree, including some of unsavory character.”

“For a lady to go is unthinkable,” said Augusta.

“True,” said Marchmont. “But the rules do not apply to me. I thought it unwise and dangerous to choose a horse for Zoe without her participation. I've made arrangements. What's the good of having a duke in charge of these matters if he doesn't use his…er…duke-ness?”

“Baksheesh,” Zoe said. “It works magic, I know.”

He knew what baksheesh was. He'd learned about it when she'd told her story to Beardsley. London was not altogether different from Cairo in that way. Bribes worked wonders.

“That, too,” he said. He didn't know or care what
the special arrangement had cost. He left financial wrangling to Osgood. “But we have a limited time. Can you get out of that contraption quickly?”

“Oh, yes.” She lifted up her gown, reached under, and started wriggling about as she hunted for the petticoat ties.

“Zoe!” Gertrude cried.

“Someone help me get out of this,” Zoe said.

“Not here!” Augusta shrieked.

Zoe paused, the front of the dress pulled up to expose her knees and more. Her garters were plainly visible. They were red.

She did not appear to be wearing drawers.

She let the garment fall, dragged up the train, and ran out of the room. “Jarvis?” she called. “Where is Jarvis?”

He muttered something about making sure she didn't tumble down the stairs and followed her out.

It was the feeblest excuse. The truth was, he couldn't take his eyes off her. It wasn't simply the expanse of smooth flesh on display, either. It was the way she moved in the hooped skirts, the way they exaggerated the sway of her hips, and the way the skirts billowed about her. She was like a ship under full sail, gliding along the passage as though she glided on water.

He was dimly aware of her sisters saying something. He shut the door behind him, to shut them out.

She had the train over her arm, but the way she held it hiked up the skirt on one side. He remembered what he'd seen, what he knew: under those hooped petticoats was only air and skin.

His mouth went dry.

She rounded a corner. He could have—and should have—stopped then if he'd known how, but he didn't.

Temptation glided ahead of him, and he couldn't turn away.

Though the corridor was carpeted, she must have heard him, because she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. She gave a little laugh and broke into a run.

Then he became aware of the staircase looming ahead and a chair against the opposite wall and a table beyond that, with a great china dragon standing on it—and scores of obstacles elsewhere. If she tripped and fell against the table, the dragon would fall on her head.

“Zoe, stop!” he called.

She stopped abruptly, dropping the train. She started to turn, lost her balance, and tottered toward the stairs.

He lunged toward her and pulled her upright and dragged her away from the stairs.

He pushed her against the nearest wall, solid and safe, and tried to calm himself.

Impossible. His heart was racing, churning with panic and anger and desire everlastingly put off.

Red garters and stockinged legs and the memory of her hands on him and the taste of her mouth and the scent of her skin. In his mind he saw her as she was long ago, galloping away, never to return. He saw her as she was yesterday, in his arms, yielding and eager and curving and soft and turning the cool spring day into summer.

“Don't, don't, don't,” he said. He didn't know
what he was saying. Nothing made sense. But she was here, and he could feel her breath on his face. He could hear her inhale-exhale, fast and shallow, like his. He was aware of the rustle of silk and the gown billowing about him, a silken, feminine cloud.

“Damned hoops,” he said. Then his mouth was on hers and she gave way instantly, her lips parting to his, her hands reaching up into his hair. To hold him.

As though there was any danger of his running away.

He'd never run away. It was always she.

He had her now, though, and all the balked lust of yesterday exploded into life at the first taste and touch. Their kiss was deep and wild, nothing civilized about it at all, but he was worlds away from civilization at this moment.

He broke away from her mouth to press his face into her neck and drink in the scent of her while his hands slid over the silk and lace encasing her. He was heatedly aware of her hands moving over him. She wasn't afraid to touch. She wasn't afraid to explore his body. Far from it. Her hands stole under his coat and waistcoat, and dragged over the front of his shirt. Then those restless hands moved behind and lower, to grasp his buttocks and press him closer. She rubbed herself against him.

He slid his hands over the silk and ruffles and the frustrating layers between them. He wanted skin, but the dress entranced him. The silk draped over the hoops was the most sensuous and seductive of traps, yielding to the pressure of his hands and billowing up again when he released them.

He grasped a fistful of silk and ruffles and lifted
up the front of the dress. The silk and lace whispered against his coat sleeve while he reached under and his fingers slid over her stocking and upward, to pause on a garter.

Red.

No drawers.

His hand stole upward, to skin.

She moved against his hand. He trailed his finger upward, to the junction of her thigh.

“Oh,” she said.

She was so soft in that softest of places.

“Oh.” She squirmed against his hand.

Then, “Oh!” she said, and pushed him away. Hard.

So hard that he dropped the front of her dress and stumbled backward.

Then he heard the approaching footsteps.

It was then that he came to his senses—or as close as he could get. He looked down in despair at the incriminating evidence: his cock standing at attention, a great bulge straining at the flap of his breeches.

He bent down and made a show of helping her gather up her train. He was explaining the most efficient way of carrying it when her father rounded the corner and stalked toward them.

“Marchmont,” he said. “I want a word with you.”

 

She'd heard the door shut shortly after she left the drawing room. She'd known it was Marchmont behind her. She knew his step, and she'd trained herself to hear far stealthier footfalls than his.

All the same, she was amazed she'd heard her father coming. All the world had narrowed to Marchmont
and what he did to her. She could not remember when anyone or anything had absorbed her as fully as he did when he kissed and caressed her.

She really needed to meet other men.

“You'd better go to your maid,” Marchmont told her.

“Not yet,” said Lexham. “This involves Zoe, too.”

Marchmont's countenance, which had been almost human a moment ago when he'd got her all stirred up, reverted to its usual tell-nothing expression.

It was a face she couldn't marry, couldn't think of marrying: a beautiful house with all the doors closed and the windows drawn. The women in his life would always be shut out.

And she, unlike most of them, would know what he used to be and could envision what he might have become. She'd heard his laughter and watched his face before, in the drawing room. She'd seen and felt him come alive when he pushed her against the wall and when she thought he'd ravish her and it hadn't occurred to her to do anything but let him.

Then she'd been caught up in the excitement and danger. It was so deliciously wicked, in the corridor, with her hoop petticoats going up and down like ocean waves. It was thrilling, too, knowing that any minute she and Marchmont might be caught.

The trouble was, any minute they might be caught and he'd think he had to marry her. So would everyone else.

Her body liked the idea, too much. Her heart and mind and pride knew better. When she wed, she wanted an eager and happy and, yes, loving bride
groom. She did not want a man doing his duty—no matter how beautiful and exciting he was and how wild he made her when he touched her.

“Perhaps we ought to adjourn to a less public environment,” said Marchmont.

Papa stared at him. “What's brought on this attack of stuffiness? The trials of managing Zoe into respectability? But if it were easy, Marchmont, then anyone could do it, and you'd be bored.” He held up a thick envelope. “Know what this is, Zoe?”

“It looks official. Like the Sultan's firman.”

Papa laughed. “You're close, child. Only observe the seal. This is your invitation. Arrived a moment ago, direct from Carlton House.” He clapped Marchmont on the shoulder. “Lady Lexham will be in alt. I know you said it would come. I know my girls are all in a frenzy about it. But my lady didn't want to get her hopes up.”

The frozen expression on Marchmont's face melted slightly.

“But that's weeks away, I understand,” Lexham went on. “And my lady and I agree with Zoe that she needs to practice her social skills before that. With strangers. Men, in particular. She's had all the experience she needs in dealing with women, and she is a woman herself.”

Marchmont's gaze slanted briefly at Zoe before returning to her father. “Men,” he said. “You want her to meet men.”

“Other
men,” Zoe said.

“She suggested it last night,” Papa said.

Marchmont looked at her. He gave very little away,
but she was trained to notice. His eyes held some emotion, and it didn't seem to be relief.

She told herself it was stupid to try to read his mind. They had been interrupted in a moment of passion. His mind would be muddled with balked lust.

“Mama said we could have a small dinner party,” she said.

“With men,” said Marchmont.

“No more than twenty guests,” said Lexham.

“With a lot of men she doesn't know,” said Marchmont.

“That's the point,” Zoe said. “I need to practice how to behave with men I don't know.”

“But I'll want your help with the list, Marchmont,” said Papa. “I'm liable to fill the places with a lot of fusty politicians.”

“They must be the kind of men who'll wish to talk to me and dance with me and flirt with me,” said Zoe. “The kind of men who might wish to marry me.”

“He understands,” said Papa. “Eligible men, of course. He'll know who's most suitable, in the circumstances.”

“Eligible men,” said Marchmont.

“We shall give Zoe an opportunity to dip her toes into the social waters in a small way, among those disposed to accept her, before she tackles the mob at the Queen's House.”

“Dip her toes, yes,” Marchmont said. “I beg your pardon if I seem preoccupied. I quite agree, and I should be happy to help you with the guest list, but the present time is inconvenient. Zoe and I have an appointment to see a man about a horse. Then
we must have her measured for a saddle and riding habits.”

“Ah, yes,” said Papa, “I meant to attend to that. We had a bit of a to-do yesterday, I understand. Threw Priscilla into a panic. But Zoe always did that, I reminded her. You remember, don't you, Marchmont?”

“Yes.”

“You needn't worry about the horse, Papa,” Zoe said. “Marchmont will take care of that. But he's right. We cannot stop now. I must change out of these contraptions.”

“In any event, I should want some time to decide exactly who merits the honor of meeting Zoe before the Queen does,” said Marchmont. “I'll send a list tomorrow.”