Lady Scandal (8 page)

Stupefied by her calm acceptance of what he’d dreaded as his final obstacle, never anticipating a lady of rank would acknowledge him without exhaustive convincing, Zeus made an effort to find his tongue, pry it off the floor where it’d dropped along with his jaw, and employ it with the same aplomb she exhibited.
“…declare Zeus Tanner to be a most generous and thoughtful lover. His praiseworthy actions before the…act…
” he stumbled here, recalling the gaiety with which Marianna had written this part,
“are dampening in the extreme. He will set his sights—
”

“Pardon me,” Lady Juliet interrupted, a quizzical expression replacing the encouraging one of before. “She deems it a tribute to call your efforts ‘dampening’?”

He stared. Was she in jest? “What?”

She leaned away from the settee, the skin between her eyebrows creasing. “Her…ardor…” Now
she
stumbled. Then forged ruthlessly ahead. “You dampen it? And yet she praises you?”

Good God. He’d known the lecher she was married to. It was inconceivable. But… “Are you an innocent?”

Rather than answer, she bit one corner of her mouth and relaxed back into the cushions, crossing then uncrossing her arms and looking everywhere but at him. “Well?” Zeus demanded into the strained silence. “Are you in truth a virgin?”

Not that it made any difference to him; he wanted her, was beginning to think she
needed
him.

Hell. It did make a difference. A big one.

A
lady
for a wife. A virgin bride.

Fate had surely smiled on him for once. But how to convince her
he
was the husband she required without having to reveal the rest of this damnable letter?

Her own spirits dampened now that she’d inadvertently betrayed her ignorance, Juliet sought to cover the blunder by feigning confidence. “I was married to one of the crudest men in England for all of three years. What do you think?”

She finally brought her eyes back to his magnificent chest, her mouth going dry at the sight. Hair. Who knew a man could have such a glorious feathering of silky hair upon his sculpted musculature? Traveling across the textured plains of his stomach, past his naval and down…down…

“I think your husband was the worst of men. A hard-arsed, bracket-faced buffoon. A reprobate and a bastard in the worst possible sense.” As though stunned by hearing the oaths spewing from his mouth, Mr. Zeus Tanner tensed his jaw, inclined his head in a brief bow. “Forgive me.
I think
, regardless of whatever experience you claim to have, you’ve never been bedded properly.”

“And you know how to do that? Bed me…properly?”

His head came up, eyes flashing fire. “I most certainly do!”

“Please go on.”

“With…bedding you?” he said raggedly.

Juliet gave a negative shake of her head. “With your reading.”

She thought she heard him mutter “I’d rather get right to the bedding” before he plainly said, “In truth, I’ll do most anything to postpone finishing this letter.”

“Most anything?” Juliet sought confirmation. Dare she ask what kept crossing her mind? Oh, it was too brazen by half! Wivy would be aghast to learn Juliet risked her already shaky reputation (ruined by running the advertisement in the first place, according to Wivy) to request such a thing.

Who says Wivy must know? She’s not here any longer, now is she?

But you are. And he is.

And oh, merciful heavens, he was so very big and brawny, his powerful muscles so spectacular. His sun-lightened hair and sun-darkened body the complete opposite of Leth’s scrawny, whey-toned self and slouchy stature.

“Aye,” he said assuredly, likely having no clue what manner of wicked thoughts now danced temptingly through her head. “You’ve already tested my mettle with your higgledy-piggledy array of questions, my taste buds with your huckster of a scone and my patience with your confounding ability to prevaricate. Why not test me further?” He ended on a relaxed laugh. “What would you have me do? Or answer? Though my current ensemble is certainly not fit for king nor court, I remain most
court
eously at your service.”

His glib-tongued wordplay tempted a smile, but the compulsion to see more of him stript to the skin prevented her from responding in kind. “Would you…”

“Would I what?”

“Would you…mayhap…consent to… Oh blazes! Forget I asked. Or didn’t ask.” She huffed a sigh. “I pray you will forgive the interruption. Now do go on with her letter.”

“No. I want to know what you want of me.”
Anything
to avoid completing the dreadful letter. Only the sheerest of will allowed Zeus to refrain from crushing it in his fist. “Would I…what? Come now, if we’re seriously contemplating a union between us, should there not be freedom to speak? Regardless of topic?”

“Aye, I would wish for that as well. Though I confess it is not a freedom that’s been granted me in the past.”

“I am granting it now. Inquire away.”

Again she hesitated, her eyes skittering like a scared rabbit, jumping all over the place but returning time and again to the area below his waist. The area that, despite his best efforts, kept responding to her undisguised interest. “Lady Juliet?”

In a hushed voice, she quickly sped through, “Would you perchance show me your male part?”

The silence after her whispered request weighed on him like a quarry full of stone, slowing his thoughts, stalling his response.

Zeus was hard-pressed not to snap his fingers in front of his ears, to test their acuity. To bang a flat palm upside his head. Had he heard her aright?

As if to tell him he had, the far-off grumble of thunder reached his awareness easily enough. It sounded like encouraging applause. And why should that surprise him? The Baseborn Bastard and Lady Scandal were putting on a grand show.

“Did you not hear me?” She blinked up at him with equal parts sincerity, curiosity and, it looked to him, pure mortification. “Could you be persuaded to lower your buckskins and show me your…your…”

“My male part,” he choked out, finishing what she couldn’t bring herself to utter a second time. “Aye, I heard you. I’m just attempting to ensure I understood. You…want…” He spoke clearly and plainly—possibly to shock the little she-devil clear to her toes? “To view my dirk? My cock? Now? Here? Have I got the right of it?”

“You do indeed.”

As that unruly appendage responded to her honest, if outrageous, request and his mantra changed from brains over ballocks to ballocks
for
brains, Zeus actually debated showing it to her. “
Are you insane?
Bound for Bedlam on the next cart out?” he asked, his dismay not fabricated in the least, trying to convince them both just how asinine this was. “Am I? For still standing here—like this?”

Arms spread wide, with the blighted letter clenched in one outstretched hand, her pale stocking dangling from the other, and his silk neckcloth waving in front of his nude chest like a white flag of surrender, Zeus wanted to deliver a sharp slap to his deuced responsive
male part
, chastise it into calming down. Better yet, deliver several sharp slaps to
her
posterior to punish her for being so positively enchanting and without guile or guilt. To ask such a thing! And of a stranger!

Instead of administering that well-deserved smack to either his person or hers, Zeus waited…wondered…willed himself to ponder…what might Lady Scandal do next? “At least you’re living up to your name, I’ll give you that.”

Her lips pursed and she sniffed as though something soiling the very air she breathed wafted in front of her nose. “There’s no call to be disparaging. I—”

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“
You did?
”

Chapter Four

Magnificent Protrusions & Manly Paraphernalia

A compliment?

Hell if he knew anymore. About any of this. “Aye, I did. I like your gumption, woman—and before you reprimand me for any perceived slight, I know full well the honor you do me, reflecting upon my suit. It escapes me not that your inherent place in society elevates you so far above my reach you might as well reside in the heavens. As a man of no birth, no military accomplishments and nothing to recommend him save several heartfelt references and my own desire to claim your hand, I owe you deference and humility and should accord you every respect that is mind to command. Yet I tell you now—when we’re alone, if you act the part of a refined lady, so shall I treat you as one. If, on the other hand, you behave—”

“If I do not?” she interrupted his tirade. “What then?” Her cheeks flushed again but this time ’twas not embarrassment nor timidity. No…’twas the flush of excitement, perhaps one of anger, that heated her skin and brought a spark to her eyes. “Perhaps I want to be treated as a female,
as a woman
, when we’re alone. No more, no less. What say you, Mr. Zeus Tanner?”

How could he say anything when some inner sense told him this was the first time she’d allowed her mouth to unburden her tongue?

“Would you treat a
wife
as one or the other but not both? Mayhap a
lady
,” the word dripped distain like venom from a viper, “thinks of her birth as blighted as you do your own, have you paused once to consider that? Mayhap a lady is trapped beneath both convention and propriety, strapped down by responsibilities and duty to those relying on her to the very detriment of her own self, her
womanly
self!” Eyes flashing fire, she pierced him with her sincerity, her wish to be anything other than what she’d been born—a L-A-D-Y.

Both hands flexed with the need to touch the womanly lady before him, but he restrained the urge. Crinkling the letter in one and tightening his grip upon the stocking with the other, he remained resolutely silent, resolutely in place, instinctively granting her the freedom she’d been denied previously, that of airing her grievances against the very sex that sought to dominate and control her.

“Have you ever, even for one second, given any thought to the plight of a young, aristocratic female, one locked by the unfortunate circumstance of her ‘exalted’ birth into a marriage—a union—not of her choosing? Well, by all that’s good and holy, I will
choose
this time!”

Though bridled (she’d not raised her voice sufficiently to reach beyond the confines of the room), her very intensity screamed at him, each syllable slamming into his ears, pounding through his blood, and settling into his loins, weighing his staff with desire, and him with the desire to answer her in kind—as a
man
, and not as her social inferior. Two human beings, one male, one female, choosing to forsake the boundaries and strictures of the world to which they both belonged in order to reach an accord, together.

In any other scenario, save this mad one she’d constructed amid solicitors and servants and shields, two strangers would never have such an occasion to talk and behave as freely, as scandalously, as they each continued to do so.

That he stood before her, both attracted and appalled, more riveted than repulsed, spoke volumes as to how badly he wanted
her.
Lady Juliet. Her fire, her boldness, her pointy little chin and plump little breasts. As her heat and vivacity continued to warm him, thoughts of revenge faded to the background; images of her, challenging his head and warming his bed, surged to the foreground.

“I will choose!” she repeated hotly. “Because— Because…” Her breath caught as a single, stifled sob worked free. Brandishing her arms in front of her as though warding off bad memories, she breathed deeply.

When her splinted leg shifted, tipping her forward, Zeus feared her balance was soon to follow. He jumped toward her to assist.

Shaking her head, she motioned him back.

After several inhalations, she regained the control she’d lost for so short a time. Pressing her spine into the settee, she speared him with her earnest gaze. “I will choose my next spouse because I refuse to live with doubt and fear and regret for the rest of my life. If this marriage scheme fails to procure me the right husband, it won’t be for lack of trying. Or for lack of trying something different! Now… I acknowledge that my request is beyond the pale, beyond the bounds of everything and anything considered acceptable on any level of society, but…but the dreaded…
ridge
above your…your…
below
your waist has captured my attention thoroughly and I crave the sight of you, yearn to see what manner of man you might be.”

As though acceding to her impassioned plea, the wrinkled letter drifted from his grasp.

To prevent its escape, Zeus tightened his stranglehold on the stocking. Too bad his mind had already flown the coop, his sane thoughts scattering like wayward chickens.

More like a cocky rooster, his damn cock only wanted to do her bidding.

She gazed up at him, enraptured, granting him a look of such pure adoration, Zeus had the ghastly feeling he could spend the rest of his life living up to the image of the man he
could
be in her sight but would never attain if he retained pride and walked away now.

“For God’s sake, stop looking at me like that!”
Brains over ballocks
, he chanted
. Mind over mattress.