Seducing Mr. Knightly (37 page)

“Because your fellow Writing Girls just left in quite a hurry,” he said. “Which makes me think you may require alternate means of transport.”

“I’ll just walk,” she replied, as if it were really no bother at all. As if Bloomsbury weren’t on the far side of London. But really, how was she to restrain herself if she were alone with him and when he was looking especially sinful in a very seductive way, and when she knew how it felt to kiss him as if her soul’s salvation depended upon it? Her soul suddenly felt in desperate need of salvation.

The thunder rumbled again. The wind rattled the windowpanes again, darkness drenched the city, and the rain now began in earnest, slapping against the windows.

“Really? You will walk from Fleet Street to Bloomsbury in the driving rain?” Knightly asked skeptically.

“Given the weather, I might hire a hack,” she replied. “I am nothing if not sensible.”

“Yes, hired hacks are a-plenty when it is raining,” he said, which was of course utter nonsense. She thought he really ought to pick her up, sling her over his shoulder, and just be done with it, if he was so intent upon taking her home in his carriage. Her protest would be halfhearted, at best.

Clearly, she was doomed.

“I shall manage,” she said, because that’s what she did best: she managed to get by. Managed to restrain her passions. Managed to be polite when she wanted to act with outrageous impropriety. She excelled at managing.

“Come with me, Annabelle,” he said in a low voice. He was leaning, and he smiled at her. He reached out, clasping her hand in his. The thunder rumbled and the rain picked up and, really, how could she say no?

Chapter 45

Love, Restrained. Alas.

T
OWN
T
ALK

It seems that Mr. Derek Knightly is the most wanted man in London—both by Dear Annabelle and Lord Marsden’s Inquiry.

The Morning Post

T
HE
carriage ride with Knightly progressed exactly as she expected. It was a slow, sensual torture that tested her resolve. The velvet upholstery was soft under her bare fingertips. The rain lashed gently at the carriage windows, which became opaque with steam from the interior warmth of the carriage. The wheels clattered over the cobblestones, and the conveyance swayed in a gentle, rhythmic motion.

Love under false pretenses was not love at all
, she reminded herself.

Even in the short jaunt from the door of
The Weekly
offices to the door of the carriage, Knightly managed to become drenched in the rain. With his jacket open, his white shirt now clung to his skin, revealing every outline of his sculpted muscles. Annabelle
managed
to steal only a few sly glances, which she prayed he didn’t notice in the dim interior of the carriage.

Did other women lust after men like this? It wasn’t exactly the conversation of polite or mixed company. Perhaps it would make a good topic for her column . . . if she was feeling wicked.

At this moment she was feeling wicked.

But determined to be good.

She did not want Knightly by hook or by crook.

Keep telling yourself that, Annabelle
, a cruel voice in her head taunted.

Raindrops clung to his black eyelashes and then dropped off to roll down his impossibly high cheeks. She was struck by the strange desire to lick them . . . before she kissed him and tasted raindrops warmed from his lips.

Oh, for Lord’s sake, Annabelle, she thought to herself.

She folded her hands primly on her lap, interweaving her fingers and clasping her palms together so she might not be tempted to touch anything. Be. Good. She would Be Good. She would make polite conversation so that she might be distracted from lusty thoughts of sitting on his lap rather than properly on the opposite seat.

“How goes the scandal with
The Weekly
?” she asked. Politely.

“We covered that in the meeting, Annabelle,” he said, smirking, as if the blasted man knew she hadn’t been paying the slightest attention all along. How mortifying.

“My apologies. I must have been woolgathering,” she replied primly.

“I noticed,” he said in a seductive tone that made her heart skip a beat. “What was on your mind, Annabelle?”

Licking you. Kissing you. The insane feeling of your hands on my skin. Every sensation from the one night we spent together
.

“Chores. For Blanche,” Annabelle lied, shamelessly. Some things were just not said aloud, not even by Bold Annabelle.

“Why do you stay there?” Knightly asked. She wasn’t surprised by the question. She could always tell it was on the verge of being voiced by her friends and those who were aware of how her family treated her.

“I have nowhere else to go,” she answered with a shrug. It wasn’t quite the truth, but she didn’t know how to explain the real reason. Because they had almost committed her—a shy, gangly girl of just thirteen—to the workhouse or some other employment where she would have never survived. She worked for her own family instead,
grateful
to have been spared a worse fate.

“That’s not true,” he said softly. She winced, recalling his offer for her to reside with him—but as his mistress or his pet or his plaything. Not even Old Annabelle would sell herself so short. “I’m sure any one of your friends would and could take you in.”

“I would hate to impose on them. Besides, I am needed there, which makes me feel useful. And they are my family. One ought to devote themselves to their family.”

“All very good reasons,” he said, then he leaned forward, looked deeply into her eyes. “They don’t appreciate you, Annabelle.”

“I know,” she said, even adding a little shrug. Oh, she knew. But having lost some family, she clung to those she had left. Even if it was Thomas, the most inattentive brother in Christendom, and his harridan of a wife. Annabelle couldn’t say those words aloud, and it was bittersweet that she didn’t have to with Knightly. He saw. He knew.

“Do you not feel the same way with your half brother?” she asked, turning the tables on him. “As much as he may scorn you, he is still your family. And people tend to stick with their families, for better or for worse.”

“He doesn’t,” Knightly said flatly, and that was the end of that conversation. She refused to feel badly about introducing a sensitive topic, because after all, she had already lost him. She had nothing left to lose.

The silence, however, would not do.

“Well, how is the scandal?” she asked.

“There are rumors I may be arrested,” Knightly said, uttering such devastating words as easily as one might say
There are rumors it is going to be cloudy tomorrow.

“Arrested?” Annabelle gasped.

The carriage rolled to a stop in front of her home. What wretched timing.

She rubbed the steam away from the windows and peeked out. There was a rustle at the drapes in the drawing room window. Blanche was likely watching.

“Oh look, here we are,” Knightly remarked lightly, as if he had not just mentioned such an awful fate looming. “Come, I shall walk you to your door.”

They dashed madly through the downpour, arm in arm from the carriage to the front door. They stood under the porch, seeking its small refuge as rain tumbled down around them. His eyes were dark in the gray light, but they were locked upon hers.

It was a moment in which every breath, every gaze, was laden with depth and passion and vexing words unsaid. She recognized it from novels. She recognized it because she was living it in this real, heart-pounding moment.

Annabelle tilted her head up to his, and she knew her lips parted, practically begging for his kiss. To be fair, it seemed like he might kiss her. He brushed a wet strand of her hair away from her eyes, his knuckles gently grazing her cheek. His eyes never looked away from hers.

But he didn’t kiss her. She’d have sworn that he wanted to. And yet—

“Goodbye, Annabelle,” he said in his sultry voice. She stood there in the rain and watched him walk away. There was a swagger in his walk, and that, with the mischief she’d seen in his eyes, made her wonder just what Knightly was up to.

Chapter 46

The Arrest

Dear Annabelle . . .

Unfinished letter on the desk of Derek Knightly

Knightly’s Mayfair town house

I
T
had been impossible to not touch her. He wouldn’t allow himself, much as he wanted to, as part of the seduction.
Leave her wanting more.
Hadn’t that been one of the schemes? Knightly knew now that however much he’d been tortured by her tricks, she must have suffered mightily in the execution. Seduction, and the willpower required for it, was no walk in the park.

Such were his thoughts as he wandered from one room to the next. He paused near the fire in the drawing room and leaned against the gray marble mantel. Annabelle, dear Annabelle. He craved her touch and ached to caress her so much that he feared his survival depended upon it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to survive if he could not have her.

After that carriage ride in which they both suffered the torment of unrequited love, Knightly had allowed himself to brush one damp curl out of her eyes and indulged in the touch of her cheek, which set him afire. She had reduced him to that mere caress.

His desire for her had not been sated in the slightest by such a benign touch. In fact it only inflamed more, as he was reminded of the softness of her skin. Of how he had once touched her all over, and where no one had ever touched her. Not even Annabelle herself. That he knew of. God, that thought made him hard.

Nevertheless, he continued to stroll from the drawing room across the marble floor of the foyer, into the dining room with its mahogany dining table polished to a high shine. He stared at his brooding reflection in the extremely well-polished silver tureen. An oil painting over the mantel depicted a nude woman at her bath; he thought of Annabelle.

Usually, he felt pride in his home. It was the physical manifestation of his success—and of his bachelorhood. No womanly touches like a half-finished embroidery or fragile little knickknacks made the place seem welcoming.

The house felt downright cold. Yes, it was a rainy night. But fires were blazing in every fireplace in every room. The building seemed cold and empty because Annabelle wasn’t here to fill it up with her sighs and laughter and kisses and death-defying escapades and just . . . her.

Annabelle, he wanted Annabelle. Needed her. Craved her.

He understood now why she had to say no to his lust-driven proposal that she move into this museum of a house and become his mistress at his convenience. He had asked her only to share his bed and be around for his comfort. She deserved so much more. She knew that, and he was glad of that.

He knew that now. He needed so much more of her now.

Loss will do that to a man; it’ll make him realize what he’s missing in a really damned painful way. Since he did not lose, he had embarked on that courtship to win her back.

But hell, it was slow going. He wondered how she had endured for all those years and months and weeks and days. He’d only been at this game of seduction and loving trickery for a fortnight and already his nerves were frayed, his desire overwhelming, his patience worn to a delicate thread. Yet she had steadfastly loved him and patiently waited for
years.