Meet Me at Midnight (2 page)

Touching him, the magnetic sensation was even more powerful. She wondered if he felt it as well. “That was rude, to cut Lionel out like that,” she chastised, to have something to do besides stare up into his enigmatic eyes.

“Was it?” The hand around her waist pulled her slowly closer to him. “I prefer to think of it as simply taking advantage.”

“To what purpose?”

“You,” he answered without hesitation. “Do I need another purpose?”

She sighed, disappointed. Just another rake with the same old well-worn lines. “So out of all the ladies
present,” she returned, half wondering why she bothered, “you decided to waltz with me.”

“I have impeccable taste.”

“Or everyone else knows your reputation and turned you down,” she countered.

The fleeting something touched his gaze again. “Yet you know my reputation and are dancing with me.”

“You didn’t give me any choice.”

“That would have been unproductive. As you see, I am a successful rake.”

She pursed her lips. “How productive is a waltz?”

A considering look touched his face. “For me, the waltz is only the beginning.”

Her body swayed against his, their hips brushing, and the heady, dizzy sensation she’d experienced on first seeing him returned, even stronger. Perhaps Marley had twirled her too vigorously—something had shaken up her insides.

But it would take all of her fingers and toes to tally the number of times an experienced rake had attempted to seduce her, and failed. She knew all the lines of that play, and yet with Lord Althorpe she hadn’t the least desire to exit. “You have further plans for me, my lord?”

“I’d be a fool or three months dead if I didn’t have further plans for you, Lady Victoria.” His voice was almost a growl, sensuous and very sure of itself.

Despite herself, a small shiver of anticipation ran down her spine. “You can’t shock me, you know.”

Humor lit his amber gaze. “I’d wager that I probably could. Twirling is hardly the depth of scandalous behavior. And they don’t call me Sin for nothing.”

She hadn’t been aware that he’d been present at the Franton ball for so long—and she felt like she should
have known. She should have sensed his heady, dangerous presence the moment he’d entered the room. “So shock me, Lord Althorpe.”

His gaze lowered to her mouth. “We’ll start with kisses, then. Deep, slow ones that last forever, that melt you inside.”

Heavens, he was good—but he wasn’t the only one who had wits. “Perhaps you should begin with
why
you want to kiss me, Lord Althorpe, considering that five minutes ago you were more interested in speaking with Marley than in dancing with me.”

Abruptly she sensed that she had his full attention. Nothing changed; not his expression nor his hold on her nor his graceful steps, but she suddenly knew why he had caught her notice from all the way across Lady Franton’s ballroom. And why she hadn’t felt his presence before. He hadn’t wanted her to.

“You must allow me to make amends for giving you the impression that I overlooked you, then,” he said in a low, intimate tone, and glanced around the crowded room. “Do you know of anywhere more…private where I might apologize to you?”

She wasn’t about to flee at his implication and let him think he’d cowed Vixen Fontaine; no one had ever accomplished that. Besides, she wasn’t ready to allow him to escape just yet. “Undoubtedly Lady Franton has locked the doors to anywhere secluded.”

“Damnation.” He cast a scowling glance toward her herd. “We’ll have to make do h—”

“Except for her famous garden,” she finished. There. She’d called his bluff. Now he could be the one to back down from the challenge.

Instead of conjuring an excuse to remain safely in public, though, he smiled—the least friendly, most
dangerous smile she’d ever seen. “The garden. Might I apologize to you in the garden, then, Lady Victoria?”

Uh-oh
. Declining now was out of the question, since she’d suggested it. “I don’t require an apology,” she returned airily, hoping she didn’t sound completely demented, “but you may render me an explanation there, if you wish.”

They had already neared that side of the ballroom, and it was a simple matter to slip through one of the half-open windows lining the east wall. Lady Franton’s exotic garden had won prize ribbons for years, and if not for her familiarity with the grounds in daylight, Victoria would have been hopelessly lost twenty feet from the main house. A scattering of torches dimly lit the flagstone pathways that wound through the flora, rejoining into a circular path around the small pond at the garden’s center.

Now that they had escaped the ballroom, she expected Althorpe to conjure a distraction. In all likelihood he’d never expected her to join him, and his flirtation had merely been a tease. One did not publicly remove earls’ daughters from a ballroom in order to seduce them.

Part of her, though, wished that weren’t so. Her boredom had abruptly vanished; she wanted to sink into him, to have his touch envelop her as his words and his voice had enveloped her senses already.

“Your explanation, my lord?” she prompted. If he intended on retreating, she wished he would get on with it and quit tantalizing her with his presence.

“We’re not private enough yet.” The marquis slid his hand beneath her elbow, keeping her close beside him, and guided her along the path winding around to the pond.

Uncertain anticipation ran hot just beneath her skin. Light as Lord Althorpe’s touch was, she sensed the strength underneath, a hint enough to know that she couldn’t pull free from his grip if she wanted to. Far from frightening her, he aroused her in a way no other man had ever managed. She wondered what his lips would taste like, how they would feel pressed against hers.

They stopped beneath the purple overhanging blossoms of a wisteria, the scent of the flowers drifting about and encircling them in heavy summer sweetness. “Now,” he murmured, facing her, his palm still cupping her elbow, “where were we? Ah, yes. I was rendering you…an explanation.”

Victoria met his gaze, golden and catlike in the torchlight. She was very aware of the steel beneath the velvet of his grip; the isolated quiet broken only by the muted chatter of voices and violins and the rustle of the wind, and even the way he had positioned her between the heavy wisteria branches and his lean, hard body—two equally immovable objects.

Whatever it was, he wanted something. Something from her. “I was wrong earlier,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Sin was a powerful temptation, indeed.

His gaze drifted down the length of her gown and returned to her face. “Wrong about what?”

“When I first saw you, I thought you resembled your brother. You don’t.”

With one long finger he reached out and brushed a straying lock of hair from her face. “How well did you know old wooden head?”

A tremble ran down Victoria’s spine at the feather-light touch. Her involuntary response bothered her,
since his callousness offended her. “The Marquis of Althorpe was well respected.”

The finger traced her cheekbone. “And I’m not? That’s hardly a revelation.”

Good God, he was making her shiver
. “I don’t comprehend why you speak so poorly of your own brother,” she countered, trying to keep her voice steady, “particularly when everyone else admired him.”

He studied her face in the flickering torchlight, and she had the sense that something besides flirtation had his interest. “Apparently not everyone admired him,” he countered. “Someone did put a ball through his head.”

Victoria stiffened. “Don’t you care at all that he’s dead?”

Althorpe shrugged. “Dead is dead.” His fingers traced the curve of her ear. “Did I hear Marley call you the Vixen?”

Suddenly things made sense. “Was this entire conversation an attempt to get Vixen Fontaine into the garden, so you could brag about it to all your friends?”

The marquis froze for a heartbeat, then softly caressed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “What if it was?” His sensuous mouth curved into a slow smile that stopped her breath. “But I don’t have any friends. Only rivals.”

“So you want to kiss me.”

“Surely that doesn’t surprise you.” He tilted his head, his gaze lowering to her lips. “You’ve been kissed before, no doubt. By Marley, perhaps?”

Her lips felt dry, and she resisted the impulse to lick them. “Innumerable times. And not just by Marley.”

“But not by me.”

Then his mouth closed over hers.

Pulsing heat coursed through her. She was used to being in control—of both her emotions and her encounters with men. Yet as his lips molded to hers, teasing and pulling and consuming, she felt anything but in control. Her mind, her heart, all her senses were spinning—more wildly than they ever had in Marley’s arms.

Althorpe’s hands cupped her face as he tasted her. With a breathless sigh that didn’t sound at all like her, Victoria slid her arms up around his shoulders, pulling herself closer against him.

He slowly bent her back until she leaned against the gnarled trunk of the tree. Warm, sure fingers slid down her shoulders, pausing to caress her waist, then her hips, then drifting lower. She tangled her fingers into his hair, trying to guide the heated pressure of his mouth against hers. All she could hear was their ragged breathing and the flying roar of blood through her veins. She’d never felt so hot and dazed and wanton.

A distant, dreamy part of her became aware of the cool breeze that brushed across her legs, hardly enough to cool the heat between them. She was glad for the tree; without it, she wouldn’t have been able to stand upright.

“
Victoria!
”

From the fury in the voice, that might have been the fifth time the Earl of Stiveton had shouted her name, but it was the first time she heard it. Tearing her mouth from Althorpe’s, she drew in a gasping breath. “Yes, Father?”

Basil Fontaine stood at the edge of the fish pond and glared at her. His fist clenched a glass of Madeira so tightly that Victoria was surprised he hadn’t shat
tered it. “What in God’s name are you doing? And get your hands off her, Althorpe!”

Sometime during their kiss, the marquis had gathered her skirt past her knees and her thighs, exposing her stockings and her silk unmentionables to the moonlight. His kneading, caressing hands had pulled her nearly naked form to the hard length of his body while she’d clung to him helplessly. Slowly, as though he hadn’t a care in the world other than kissing her, he lowered his hands from her. Where he had been touching her felt hot.

She wanted to look up at him but resisted the temptation as she straightened. Flustered and discomposed as she was, she couldn’t bear to see it if their kiss hadn’t affected him as it had affected her. She was the one who made men swoon at will; it wasn’t supposed to be the other way around.

“You must be Lord Stiveton,” the marquis drawled.

“I don’t intend to introduce myself to you under these circumstances, you blackguard! Move away from my daughter!”

Victoria frowned, rational thought beginning to penetrate the warm, rosy cloud. Father hated scenes, particularly the ones that involved her. He certainly wouldn’t shout and stomp and draw attention to one—unless it was too late to hide it, and he was trying to salvage what he could of his own good name. She glanced beyond the fish pond, and her heart missed a beat.

“Fiend seize it.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Not quite the ending I’d envisioned,” Althorpe murmured, apparently still unconcerned.

Lady Franton’s entire guest list stood on the far side of the fish pond, tittering and whispering and pointing.
At least it seemed like the entire multitude had appeared to witness her latest and worst scandal.

“How dare you carry on with my daughter in that manner!”

Her mother emerged from the crowd to join her father. “Victoria, how could you? Do as your father says, and come away from that awful man!”

Victoria tried to force her brain to function again. She felt sluggish, as though even now she would rather be standing beneath the wisteria kissing the tall rake beside her. “It was just a kiss, Mama,” she said in as calm a tone as she could muster.

“Just a kiss?” Lady Franton, their hostess, repeated in her shrill voice. “He was practically inhaling you!”

“No, he—”

Lord Franton stepped into the torchlight. “This is beyond the pale,” he announced, as half a dozen of his burliest footmen pounded up behind him. “I let you join us tonight out of respect for your late brother, Althorpe. Obviously, though, you cannot be trusted to conduct yourself in a manner befitting your st—”

“Might I make a suggestion?” the marquis said, his voice as calm as if he were discussing the weather.

No doubt he faced angry crowds all the time. Victoria, though, felt mortified. High spirits were one thing; being caught kissing—being inhaled by—a notorious rake was something else entirely. And now everyone had practically seen her bare bottom!

“‘A suggestion?’” Lord Franton echoed scornfully. “There’s only one thing that could put this right, and it’s not clever jests and making fun of—”

“Before you continue your tirade,” Althorpe interrupted, “I returned to England with the intention of assuming the duties of my title.”

Victoria risked a glance at him as the garden abruptly quieted.

“I have no wish to cause offense to either Lady Victoria or to you for our slight indiscretion,” he continued, his tone dismissive. “I will therefore ‘do the right thing’ as you so eloquently put it, Lord Franton: Lady Victoria and I shall marry. Does that satisfy your requirements for propriety?”

Victoria felt the ground drop out from beneath her feet. “
What?
” she gasped.

He nodded, his eyes and expression unreadable as he glanced down at her. “We both stepped too far. It is the only logical solution.”

She scowled. “The only ‘logical solution,’” she snapped, “is to forget this entire incident. It was a kiss, for heaven’s sake! It’s not as though we set off for Gretna Green!”

“With his hand halfway up her…you-know-what? That was no first kiss,” the Duke of Hawling blustered from the crowd of onlookers, while dozens of others echoed the statement in more graphic detail. “With Althorpe’s—and the Vixen’s—reputations, no doubt he’s already well on his way to an heir.”