Seducing Mr. Knightly (30 page)

She reached for his hand.

A
NNABELLE
tumbled into his arms, warm and luscious, tempting and maddening.

She was a tangle of long, slender limbs and smooth, alluring curves. Her soft curls brushed against his cheek and he inhaled the scent of her, like roses. He remembered this from the day she had tumbled into his arms during that minor carriage accident. He wanted her then. He wanted her now.

“What are you doing here, Annabelle?” The question had to be asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer. He reluctantly released his hold on her and took a step back.

She bit her lip. Gazed up at him. Heaved such a sigh, as if so disappointed in the world, her fate, and him. He felt a dull ache in his chest. He didn’t want to hurt her or let her down.

“Do you really not know?” she asked, forming each word slowly.

“Know what, Annabelle?” This truth was too important to just be assumed. Too much rested upon it to leave it an understanding. She had to say it aloud.

She mumbled something almost unintelligible.

“I am
a
nodcock or
the
Nodcock?” he clarified. It was a minor but crucial distinction.

“The one and only,” Annabelle said softly.

“I am the Nodcock,” he repeated, and she nodded her head slowly.
Yes.
He exhaled, all suspicions confirmed and all fears realized. After
years
in which she adored him from afar, while he didn’t notice her, it had come to this.

Knightly couldn’t think of all the profound implications of this simple, devastating fact—he was the Infamous Nodcock, he was Annabelle’s heart’s desire and had been for quite some time. He could only concentrate on the facts before him.

Annabelle, standing in a ray of moonlight falling into his bedroom. After midnight. In breeches.

“And you thought the best way to inform me of this was to climb in my second-story bedroom window in the dead of the night?”

“Well if you had noticed me sooner, I wouldn’t have had to resort to such desperate measures,” she said, rebuking him.

“You are saying I caused this . . . this . . .” He raked his fingers through his hair and still couldn’t think. He was the Nodcock. She had said so. All the sighs, faints, lowered bodices, and affectionate touches had been for him. She had literally and figuratively gone out on a limb to reveal her feelings to him.

And now he was expected to show his.

He felt desire. And a million other things he couldn’t make sense of.

“I’ll just be on my way, then,” she said, stepping across the carpet toward the bedroom door.

“That’s all?” he asked. She had come all this way only to leave?

“They said you would either ravish me or send me home. If
this
is ravishment, then it has been vastly overrated,” she said. He choked on shock, and mirth.

“Annabelle,” he said, because something needed to be said. Volumes needed to be said. But he had nothing to follow it up with. He was at a loss for words. He noticed that the few burning candles in the room added a soft, warm, inviting glow to her skin. But it didn’t seem the thing to say.

“My audacity has left you speechless,” Annabelle said, punctuated by another one of those sighs. Like the world had met her low expectations.

But that was beside the point at the moment.

“Your audacity?” His jaw dropped open. The fool woman had nearly fallen to her death at his doorstep. From what he gathered, she had escaped her bedchamber in Bloomsbury, crossed London alone in the middle of the night, and then proceeded to climb the tree in his garden and break into his bedroom. What insanity or desperation propelled her, he had no wish to know, though he had a sinking feeling he knew.

All that talk of ignorant nodcocks and desperate measures. He had invited this.

“Audacity, I suppose, is one way to describe it,” he said, after taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “I was thinking that was a bloody stupid thing to do. Do you have any idea how dangerous that stunt was?”

Knightly caught himself pacing and running his fingers through his hair as if he were actually about to tear his own hair out with frustration.

She could have been hurt. She could have died, twice or thrice over. This forced him to consider a world without Annabelle—his heart stopped for a moment and resumed with the sound of her voice.
A world without Annabelle . . .
It would be bleak and lonely and cold. It was sadly lacking in a young woman’s fearless attempts to come out of her shell.

He did not want to know a world without Annabelle.

“It did cross my mind, yes,” she replied. “However, it seemed preferable to a hot-air balloon ride or running through the streets in an advanced state of undress.”

Knightly stopped pacing to stare at her.

“What does that have to do with anything? No, do not tell me.” He shook his head. “ I don’t want to know.”

“Suggestions from readers as to how I might attract the attentions of the Nodcock,” she explained in a very small voice.

“I am the Nodcock,” Knightly said, needing to repeat the words again. Eventually, the truth would seem real, make sense and take hold.

“Am I not in your bedroom in the middle of the night after risking my life?” Aye, she was. And standing in a puddle of moonlight. Risking her virtue, too.

She had mentioned ravishment, throwing the word out like a lure. She didn’t need to. The sight of Annabelle in his bedroom was enough. Annabelle in his bedroom dressed so that all her curves taunted him was further temptation. Annabelle, in so many words saying she wanted him, nearly undid him.

“By some miracle you are here, yes, and not in a mangled heap in my garden,” he said, because the thought of a world without Annabelle made him feel as if he couldn’t breathe.

“I thought it would make a good story for
The Weekly
,” she explained.

“Did you not think of how it could have gone wrong?” he said, voice rising. It was fear of having almost lost her, of still possibly losing her. That decision he had avoided was now here in his bedroom saying words like “ravishment” with her plump lips he wanted to feel everywhere on his body.

Would he choose her, or belonging?

“Of course I considered that! When I was stranded on that branch and your windowsill, I thought about it extensively. But I wouldn’t have been there if Julianna and Eliza had not assured me it would be perfectly fine.”

“Oh, those two. Those two are trouble. And the breeches,” Knightly said, taking a long, rich look at her legs clad in the fitted kerseymere breeches that clung to her hips and thighs in such a sinful way.

He should not look.

He could barely wrench his gaze away. God, he wanted to strip them off her, to reveal acres of pale skin, bathed in moonlight.

“I’m not sure if your breeches show sense, given your tree climbing escapades or even more madness. What if someone had seen you?” he asked. In the back of his mind he thought that none of this really mattered—she was safe, no one had seen her. But something momentous was going to happen. He and Annabelle were going to make love. There was no avoiding it, really. It had been inevitable, he supposed. He wanted to know her, intimately, more than he’d ever wanted anything.

Anything.

And he needed a moment to process that everything was about to change.

“Miss Overlooked Swift, remember? Spinster Aunt from Bloomsbury! So what if I was spotted? What do I have to lose?” There was a note of anguish in her voice, but defiance in her stance. “No one ever
sees
me, Knightly. Least of all you. Which is why I have to do utterly mad and dangerous things to get attention. And now here I am and my intentions are clear. What do you have to say about that?”

He had seen her—or started to, these past few weeks. He’d been driven to distraction by her—but just these past few days. He thought of all the years they met every week when she sighed when he walked into the room, and he had thought nothing of it. Never even noticed.

Of course she had to climb a tree and knock on his bedroom window to get his damned attention. She had risked her life and heart for him.

“I am the Nodcock,” he said. Again.

“I’m dreadfully sorry about the name,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

“I shan’t forgive you for that,” he said sharply. Good God, if anyone knew he’d never live it down.

“I wouldn’t either,” she replied with a shrug. But they both knew her heart was so damn big and loving she would forgive almost anyone anything. Even a bastard like him.

“I suspected as much,” Knightly added. “I was thrown off by Owens and Marsden. And I suppose I didn’t want to see. But I suspected.”

“And yet you let me take it this far?” she asked, horrified. Understandably so.

“Last week you were only fainting in my arms, Annabelle. And now you’re risking life and limb to break into my bedchamber in the middle of the night? How was I supposed to know you would go to such lengths?”

If he had seen this coming . . . If he had known that she would resort to this . . . What would he have done? He groaned when his brain supplied the idiotic suggestion of lining the ground with feather mattresses in case she fell.

The truth was, he didn’t know what he would have done. The sight of Annabelle in breeches and a thin white linen shirt didn’t exactly facilitate rational thought either.

“You let me throw myself at you when you knew!” And then Annabelle folded her arms across her chest and stomped her foot. Bloody adorable.

“Suspected,” he clarified. “I suspected but I was not certain. I did not have the facts. And I operate on facts.”

“You suggested I give up the ruse,” Annabelle pointed out, and it sounded like an accusation. It sounded like he had lured her here. She stepped closer to him. He swallowed, hard. “You asked if I wanted satisfaction,” she whispered.

“Be careful what you ask for, Annabelle,” he warned.

She took another step in his direction. If she came any closer, he could not be held responsible. A man could only endure so much temptation. As it was, his self-restraint was already straining under the pressure.

He wanted to claim her mouth, sink his fingers in her hair, strip off those breeches. He wanted to feel her skin, hot and bare, underneath his. He wanted to see if one of Annabelle’s infamous blushes went beyond her cheeks. He wanted to bury himself inside her. He wanted to know her, possess her, make love to her so thoroughly it would be impossible to move.

“Well, I have given up the ruse,” Annabelle said plainly.

There were reasons, good reasons, why all those things he wanted should not happen. He could not think of one now. Not one.

“You want satisfaction, Annabelle?” He looked down at her face tilted up to his. Her eyes were large, searching. Her lips were plump, red, and slightly parted.

“I think so,” she replied, revealing that devastating innocence of hers. She was offering that to him, along with her trust and her faith. That was why Annabelle scared him, and why he’d been reluctant to see the truth.

With Annabelle, it would matter.

With Annabelle, there would be no turning back. There would be no marriage in the aristocracy, there would be no parity with the New Earl. He still wanted these things. But in this moment he wanted Annabelle more.

When Knightly made a decision, it was swift and sure and he followed through without looking back. On the spot, in the moment, he chose Annabelle.

His life’s ambition, tossed out the window in exchange for the chance to lose himself in her kiss, her touch, her sighs. That’s how much he wanted her.

“Oh, you do want satisfaction, Annabelle, you do,” he promised. His voice was rough. “I’ll show you.”

He did not start with a kiss. She had kept him in suspense, wanting, waiting, and teasing for weeks. Tonight she would suffer the same . . . though he was damn sure she was going to revel in every second of it. He’d make sure of that.

Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, and he began by removing the hairpins holding those curls back. A mass of thick blond curls tumbled down around her shoulders. Annabelle, undone.

His breath hitched. He had known Annabelle was pretty. But with her hair down she was beautiful. Like a goddess. Like it was impossible that he should not have noticed her all these years . . .

Well, he was going to discover her now. He was going to give her years worth of attention, in one night.

She gazed up at him. It pulled hard at his heart. No one had ever looked at him like that. She was nervous, and she was putting herself in his care. She had literally gone out on a limb for him when no one else ever had. And she stood before him, waiting . . .

Then Annabelle licked her lip; a nervous gesture that he found unbelievably erotic. She would stay the night and, he thought wickedly, she would like it.

“Annabelle,” he said, clasping her cheeks in his palms. There were all these things he should say. All these feelings he didn’t have the words for. The woman left him speechless and nearly breathless. “Annabelle.”

She tasted like sweetness and trouble. A marvelous combination. She responded hesitantly at first and then he could feel her reservations and nerves calm and fade. He didn’t know he could do that with a kiss. Was he drunk on that power? Or just drunk on Annabelle?

They kissed in the moonlight, until he could stand it no longer—a minute, maybe two. He was desperate to know her. How soft was her skin? How did she sound when he pleasured her? How did she taste, everywhere? How did it feel to be inside her?

Knightly needed to know. Knightly sought answers.

One could not make proper love to a woman while she was dressed as a boy. He tugged at the shirt, pulling it from her breeches and above her head. Buttons seemed to have gone flying; he heard them skittering across the floor.

Annabelle folded her arms over her chest.

“Oh no, my dear Annabelle,” he murmured. “I need to see you.”

Truly, he needed to. Like he needed air. He needed to know how the real vision of Annabelle compared to the one he had conjured up, late at night when he was alone. He knew this would far surpass anything he’d imagined.