Lord of the Rakes (7 page)

“Tell me.” Philip fingered the pearl buttons that decorated her glove, as if considering how such devices functioned, and how long it would take to undo them. There were so many. Far, far too many.

“It was as if I already felt you behind me. I wanted to look back, but I didn’t dare. I wanted . . .”

“What did you want?”

“I wanted you to be close. I wanted to take your hand, and bring you with me.”

“Into the dark?”

“Yes,” she agreed. She would have agreed to anything, especially if it would make him smile at her again.

“What then?”

“I would have turned toward you. I would have stepped into your embrace.” She imagined his arms folding around her, simply and naturally. She imagined him pulling her close until the whole of her body pressed against him. She shivered, hard.

“Would you have touched me?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed.
Touched you and kissed you. Your arms, your chest, your face, your thighs. I’d wrap my arms tight around you, pull you close, kiss you and kiss you again . . .

“Do you want to touch me now?”

Caroline’s rational faculties rose up in sudden protest. She must think clearly, if only for the space of a few heartbeats. She did not know this man, had not even danced with him. Whatever he made her feel, he remained a stranger. In her wildest fantasies of freedom, did she ever truly imagine being intimate with a stranger? She must be clear, because whatever Philip did after this, however much or little she permitted, this moment could never be taken back.

“Yes,” she said. “I want to touch you. Very much.”

“Then do, Caroline. Touch me.”

Caroline had never imagined a whisper could command her, but Philip’s did. She reached her hand toward him, but then stopped. Philip’s brow arched in the teasing, arrogant inquiry she was beginning to recognize as something of a reflex with him. But she did not rise to his silent challenge. She would not be baited, or hasty. This moment was a gift. No one knew she was here. No one but the two of them knew what she did. She might do anything at all in this privacy and secrecy. Was this entirely the reverse of how intimacy was supposed to come about? Yes, it was, and yet she did not seem to be trying to hold back its flood even a little.

Caroline met Philip’s gaze, turned up her palm, and began to undo the buttons of her glove.

Philip was a long time drawing in breath, and a long time letting it go again. He seemed seized by a hesitation. Or was he simply curious as to how far she meant to take this outrageous flirtation? She could not tell.

“May I be of assistance to my lady?” he inquired mildly.

Caroline found her own hesitation did not even last the space of one breath. “Sir, you may.”

Caroline stretched out her arm, and when she saw the mischief and anticipation sparked in Philip’s expression, her heart sputtered yet again. He set his fingers to her buttons. One at a time, he undid them, exposing her arm’s soft skin to the night and to his gaze. Excitement filled her as she watched the grace with which his strong hands moved—excitement, curiosity, and desire. He was all concentration, all attention to this simple task of baring her to him. She imagined his fingers undoing the hooks and tapes of her ball gown. He would ease her dress away with as much care as he lavished on her glove. She wanted him to hurry, and she wanted him to take forever, so she would never lose the provocative brush of his fingertips against her flesh.

Philip freed the last button. He lifted his gaze to hers again, just as he lifted his hands away from her wrist. He waited. Caroline understood he meant for her to take the next step. Where she found the daring, she did not know. Part of herself was consumed with fear that she would make herself ridiculous, but part of her relished this. The silk whispered against her sensitized skin as she slowly drew off the glove. She meant to lay it in her own lap, but at the last moment she changed course, and draped the glove across his thigh.

Philip shifted his weight. She thought he might be about to speak, but she found she did not want him to. So she laid her bare fingers against his lips. His mouth was warm. She’d expected that, but not that his lips would feel so soft and vibrant beneath her touch. Her hand trembled, but she did not let herself pause. She would not think, or fear. She would act. She turned her hand so the backs of her knuckles could brush down the side of his jaw. He was not so smooth there, but the stubbled texture was pleasing to her, as was the warm skin of his throat, just above the high collar his cravat so discourteously held closed. She allowed her fingertips to toy with the crisp linen, as if she contemplated undoing it. She smoothed the fabric of his coat across his shoulder. Something at her core tried to tighten and loosen at the same time, and the excitement raised by that tension was as intriguing as the feeling of his powerful body beneath her touch.

Neither was Philip unaffected. He breathed with great care—deep breaths in and long breaths out. He was consciously controlling himself. A smile crossed Caroline’s lips at the idea that her touch caused a man to have to control himself. Success bred inspiration, and she took hold of his coat lapel, letting her fingers rub the fabric, as if she was judging its worth. She pushed her hand underneath the lapel and drew her palm downward—down his chest, down his waistcoat, to the hard curve of his hip, to his thigh. She lingered there, relishing the feeling of his breeches’ silk molded to the warm skin and muscle underneath.

Her discarded glove still lay across Philip’s thigh. She wrapped her fingers around it and began to lift it away. Abruptly, Philip clamped his hand around her wrist. He did not hurt her, but he clearly did not intend to let her move.

“Oh, no, my lady.” With his free hand, Philip pulled the glove through her unresisting fingers. Did he know what the play of silk against her skin was doing to her? Quite probably, and he was drawing out the sensation on purpose. “Not yet. I find I am unwilling to relinquish my prize so soon.”

Swiftly, and unexpectedly, Philip looped the long glove around her wrist where he held her, and knotted his fingers around the other end. She was tied to him now. Her heart hammered in the base of her throat as she looked at her wrist bound to his hand.

“You’ll crease the silk,” she said, dazed and distracted. It was a game, she knew that. She could pull back at any time, and he would probably let her go. It was a sham, a lover’s tease, but it aroused her to fresh longing all the same.

“I will crease far more than silk, Caroline, if I am given my way.”

“Then . . .” Her mouth was dry. She moistened her lips, and tried again. “Then I may take it I have succeeded in my seduction of you?”

“You may. What do you intend to do with that success?”

Half-formed imaginings stirred in Caroline’s mind, and in her blood. Those imaginings shifted and teased, as his touch teased, as the warming silk wrapped around her wrist teased. She had no names for any of them. But all her heated imaginings had their reflection in Philip’s eyes. He knew how to name her desires. He knew their shapes and understood the maddening sensations inside her. He could reveal them to her one by one.

Caroline leaned forward and kissed him. Had his mouth felt intriguing against her fingers? It was nothing compared to the touch of his lips against hers. That was sweet and spiced and exhilarating all at once. It was as if she had been waiting all her life for this. Philip reached up and cupped the back of her head with his broad palm. He urged her forward, pulling gently and inexorably on her bound wrist as he did. His tongue ran along the seam of her lips. Curious, she parted for him, so he could enter, and touch her there. He turned them both, tilting her down so he could to reach more deeply into her. He was insistent. He was impertinent, and she welcomed him. Time was gone. Volition fled. There was only this kiss, and Philip’s hands, holding her where he wanted her to be. Where she wanted to be.

But, unexpectedly, Philip pulled away. His face now a mask of anger, turned from her. Fear and embarrassment gripped Caroline for a cruel moment. Had she done something wrong?

Then she saw Philip’s eyes fixed on a man’s silhouette that stood with its back to their bower. That silhouette lifted its hand to its mouth and cleared its throat loudly.

I
f ever Philip had felt ready to do murder, it was in that moment, with Lady Carolyn beside him and his blood roaring from the heat and stunning intensity of their first kiss. Their first kiss—which was now interrupted by the insufferable, ridiculous, and wholly unwelcome Gideon Fitzsimmons.

Already, the fire in Lady Caroline’s bewitching eyes was dying. In another moment regret might rise to replace it. Philip was not prepared to risk that, even if it meant having to later hide Gideon’s corpse from Mrs. Gladwell’s gardeners. He had to find out what the man wanted, and make him go away.

He also knew he could not speak to Caroline with anger in his voice. Her state of feeling was too fragile, her understanding of flirtation and passion too new, and their circumstances too unusual. Any show of ungentleness on his part might tip her into regret. So he simply touched her wrist—her bare, warm wrist—to urge her to stay where she was. He then rose, and strode out of the shadowed grove to the garden path. There he grabbed Gideon firmly by the upper arm and drew him out of Caroline’s line of sight. Once he was sure she would no longer see, he spun his startled friend around to face him.

“What in God’s name do you want?” he demanded in as low a whisper as he could manage.

Gideon jerked free of his grip with surprising strength. To Philip’s surprise, his friend looked not just startled, but genuinely angry. “To tell you, before you strolled out into the public street with your new liaison, that your current liaison is out front waiting for you.” Gideon spoke each word with ice-cold precision. For a moment all Philip could do was search Fitzsimmons’s face to see if the man was joking.

“What current liaison?”

“Eugenia Warrick.”

Philip felt his blood drain to the soles of his shoes. Several details fell into place, all of them unwelcome. “Gideon, did we stop in here because she asked you to bring me?”

Fitzsimmons scrutinized Philip’s expression, and his own fell into confusion. “Are you about to tell me Mrs. Warrick is no longer under your protection?”

“That is correct.”

Gideon raised a ringed hand to his cravat, which seemed to have grown uncomfortably tight. But to his credit, the man did not attempt to duck the situation, or the charge. “She gave me to understand you two had simply had a quarrel.”

“A quarrel,” said Philip bitterly. “She broke off our affair over a week ago, in the most humiliating way she could think of.”

Gideon sighed sharply. “You should have told me, Philip.” Philip felt the justice in his friend’s rebuke, but was in no mood to acknowledge it. “All right, that’s neither here nor there,” Gideon went on. “This is my mistake. I’ll go out and get her away . . .”

Philip forced himself to swallow his anger. Though his friend was taking responsibility, this was not truly Gideon’s fault. He hadn’t made the severance of his connection with Eugenia generally known, not even among his few close friends. He also knew better than most that Eugenia Warrick was quite capable of looking in a man’s eye and lying to get whatever she wanted.

The question was, since she was the one who broke things off, why would she want to see him now? As much as he might hate to acknowledge it, Philip knew he could not return to the so-delightful mutual seduction he had been enjoying with Lady Caroline until that question was answered.

“No,” he told Gideon. “This is my responsibility. I’ll go.”

“What about . . .”

“That is also my responsibility.”

Gideon bowed in acknowledgment of this truth, but Philip did not wait to hear whatever answer he murmured. He was already hurrying back to where Lady Caroline waited. But did she wait? Or had she thought the better of things, and left? Philip had to work not to break into a run.

But no. He reached their shaded retreat, to find Caroline still sitting on the bench. She had taken the glove he’d looped around her wrist and now wound it through her fingers. She was not looking at her hands. She was staring into the distance. There was just enough light for him to see a look of terrible and heartfelt longing on her beautiful features. Philip’s heart stopped, completely and painfully. Never had he been struck by such a blow as the sight of Caroline Delamarre in that one instant.

He deliberately ground the pathway’s gravel under his heel to give her warning of his approach. In an instant her face had snapped around and she schooled her features into politeness. He moved forward carefully, as if she might run from him, and run she might. But as he approached, he saw her pale cheeks color. She did not rise, did not move to reprove or berate him, even jestingly. She watched his approach in silence until he stood before her.

For one of the few times in his adult life, Philip Montcalm faced a woman and felt entirely at a loss for words.

“I have to leave you,” he breathed.

She said nothing, but despite the uncertain torchlight, Philip clearly saw the questions that chased each other through her eyes.

He spread his hands. “There is no explanation I can make, Caroline, and no apology I can offer that will possibly be enough. I can only ask you to believe that something has arisen that I cannot leave for others to deal with.”

It seemed like an eternity before she answered, “I do believe you.”

Philip thought to ask her to wait here for him, but reluctantly laid that idea aside. He had no idea what Eugenia wanted. This might be a matter of five minutes, or fifty-five. He could not leave Lady Caroline alone in the dark, doubting him.

“Do you wish for me to arrange your escort back to the house?”

Now, she did drop her gaze, to her hands and her glove. Her cheeks colored darkly. The realization that this blush was pure embarrassment wormed its painful way into Philip’s mind.

Despite this, when she spoke, it was with quiet dignity. “No, thank you. I shall manage very well.”

Philip moved forward. He should leave her, leave this seduction that had turned into such an unbelievable mess and let them both go about their way. But he did not. He could not.

He crooked his finger beneath Caroline’s chin, and she let him. He urged her face upward so he could look into her eyes. This also she permitted.

“I have no right to ask this of you. I am aware of that. I should not do it, and I am aware of that as well. But I will ask. May I come to you?”

She did not answer, not in words. Instead, she rose gratefully to her feet. He took his hand away from her face, and in that same moment she raised hers to his. Caroline laid her naked fingertips gently against his lips, as she had done before. The shape of his mouth seemed to fascinate her. He watched her eyes widen, and his groin tightened with a fresh burst of pain. That pain said it would kill him if he did not touch her, did not kiss her. If that were true, Philip told himself sternly, he must stand here and die. He consoled himself with the realization there were far worse fates than to die from Lady Caroline’s inquisitive touch.

He was certain he felt her readying her refusals. Refusals he must understand and accept. He was a fool and ten times worse. Why had he asked that question, now of all moments? If he’d just left, there was still a chance he’d find a way to repair the damage and reclaim their moment of passion. Some other gathering later in the season would provide an opportunity to renew their flirtation, and their seduction.

And yet he had asked, and in asking, perhaps ended all the sweetness before it had even begun.

“Yes,” said Caroline. “Yes, you may come to me.”

Philip’s breath left him in a single, long sigh. Now he did catch her hand, gently, as if she were glass he might break with a careless touch. He turned her hand up to him, and softly as he was able, he brushed his lips against her palm. When he raised his eyes again, he saw her eyes, which had been wide with uncertain daring a moment ago, were now half closed. So. His was not the only passion that refused to fade.

Oh, Lady Caroline, I swear this is only the beginning of what I have to show you.

“You are staying with your friend Miss Rayburn?” he asked.

“No.” Her voice had gone thick and slow with the strength of her need, and Philip bit his tongue to suppress the smile that wanted to form at the honey sound of it. He could not have her thinking he mocked her. “I have my own house. Number Twelve Andover Street.”

“Tomorrow night, then?” Philip picked up her glove from the bench where it had been discarded and laid it across the palm he had just kissed. When she nodded, he closed her fingers around the glove as he had earlier closed them around his handkerchief. Then he leaned in so she could feel his breath against her ear. “You may look for me at ten of the clock. And I promise, I will not fail you, Caroline.”

With that, Philip did let her see his smile, for just a heartbeat before he turned and strode deliberately away. The truth was, he had to get away. Now. At once. If he did not, he would lose the last of his very frayed restraint.

Will she do it?
The question pounded through Philip’s veins as he strode away from Lady Caroline.
Will she truly be there tomorrow night? Will she open the door when I arrive? Or will she change her mind? God knows she has reason enough . . .

Philip lengthened his stride. The pain from his hardened member was like a fist pressed into his guts. He had to get away from her. He must keep walking. He vowed he would not even look back.

That, it turned out, was a vow he could not keep. From the safety of the garden’s shadows, Philip glanced over his shoulder.

Caroline had not moved from the bench. Torchlight outlined her queenly figure as she held her glove to her lips. Philip had thought it impossible for him to grow any harder. It seemed he was wrong.

Philip forced his eyes forward, and kept walking.

God, but she was magnificent! When she’d touched him with her bare hand, his mind had reeled and his organ turned to stone. It was astounding. Tonight, he’d looked on a woman with her breasts on full and unashamed display, and felt the mildest sort of interest. When Caroline had invited him to undo her glove’s buttons . . . he’d been on fire. It had taken every ounce of his resolve to take the moment slowly. He was determined to relish each catch of her breath and every small sigh that escaped her. All the while the crude schoolboy in him kicked at the walls of his sophisticated restraint. That schoolboy wanted to throw back her amber skirts and take her at once. He wanted to do nothing less than fuck her hard while she screamed his name in her ecstasy, and let the whole world watch.

Philip’s thoughts filled with visions of Caroline’s naked body, of how her voluptuous breasts would overflow his hands, of how her legs would feel when she wrapped them tightly around him.

The night was beginning to turn genuinely cold, and he welcomed it. It distracted him from the pain in his overeager body as well as his runaway thoughts. It was possible he had given her too much time. She might regret what little they had already done together. She might send him a letter . . . but no, he’d given her no address and a lady of quality could hardly inquire of her acquaintance where the Lord of the Rakes lived. But he might arrive tomorrow night and find her house dark and her door barred.

Somehow, though, Philip could not bring himself to quite believe this. It might be the simple pride of an accomplished rake, but it also might be the memory of Caroline’s questing hand across his mouth, of the look of wonder and delight in her eyes when she said yes.

Caroline, I will make you understand exactly how well I value that one precious word from you.

He would not give in to that randy schoolboy then either. Caroline deserved all a man’s time and attention. When she did open her door to him, she would have his for the whole of their night and well into the morning if he could manage it. It was not just that she deserved it, which she did. Whether Caroline understood it or not, she would need that time. She might be mature, fascinating, and daring, but she was clearly not experienced. When she yielded to his touch, she was trusting him with her body as she had never trusted any other man.

That thought proved unexpectedly sobering. Now that he was away from her intoxicating presence, the more prudent portion of Philip’s thoughts reminded him that Caroline did not understand the disarming intensity inherent in sexual attraction, or in its fulfillment. Whatever she said in the heat of the moment, she might wake up in the morning to find she wanted more from her lover than a few hours of pleasure. Then there would be doubt and regret in earnest, and it would be far too late for either of them to undo it.

Did he truly mean to take that risk? Did she? There was something different about Lady Caroline. He sensed it down in his bones. It was not just her willingness and her unpracticed boldness. There had been that unexpected moment of silent communion between them, when they had both raced together into the unknown and then laughed at its overly dramatic results together. He had never shared such a moment with a woman before. It spoke to something deeper and more intriguing waiting within her soul.

Philip’s steps had brought him back around to Mrs. Gladwell’s terrace. He skirted the house, oddly grateful he did not have to return to the glittering gathering. His thoughts left him not just randy, but uneasy. Exactly who was Lady Caroline? The scraps of gossip he’d picked up from Lewis Banbridge told him nothing of substance. She was rich enough, and titled enough, that she should have been married off years ago. But she hadn’t been, and now she seemed determined to become an adventuress. It was hardly the normal path for a woman to take. Even the boldest widows generally preferred to pursue several nights, or weeks, of flirtation before they said yes.