Susan Carroll (6 page)

“Well,” she said at last, “I might walk with
you as far as the gate and back.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. With a
courtly bow, he offered her his arm. After the barest hesitation,
Anne took it, resting her fingers on the crisp fabric of his
sleeve.

He led her along the gravel walkway in
silence, the glitter and noise of the ballroom fading into
insignificance. From the way he escorted her, with such an air of
distant politeness, they might have been taking a very proper
stroll through St. James's Park at the fashionable hour.

Anne could only marvel at the situation she
found herself in, going for a midnight walk with one of the most
notorious rakes in London. Her late husband would have been
scandalized. So would her mother.

What was it Mama had always said? “Lily has
beauty, Camilla has wit, but you, my Anne, have neither. That is
why you must always strive to be a perfect lady, correct in all
things. The gentlemen will never come flocking to your side, but at
least you may obtain a worthy husband”

And Mama had been right—to a certain degree.
Anne's proper manner had won for her marriage to the handsome and
estimable Sir Gerald Fairhaven. But being good and meek had not
been enough to secure her future. Not enough to prevent her world
from shattering, not enough to keep her from losing what she
treasured most. Norrie.

Anne was roused from her unhappy musings by a
tickling sensation against her cheek. Startled, she glanced up to
discover Mandell staring down at her. He had plucked a white
blossom and brushed it against her face, to regain her
attention.

“For you, milady,” he said, offering her the
flower with a gesture of exaggerated gallantry. `This—whatever it
is. I am afraid that, beyond roses, I cannot identify one bloom
from another.”

Anne accepted the blossom, but it discomfited
her to think that he must have been studying her face while she had
been lost in her gloom-ridden thoughts. Those intense eyes of his
saw far too much. To cover her unease, she rushed into breathless
speech.

“I cannot identify all of Lily's flowers,
either. She has so many strange ones. Her garden is quite
exotic.”

“Rather like the countess herself.”

“I would have planted only primroses or
marigolds. So unimaginative.” Anne plucked at the blossom he had
given her, sending a shower of petals cascading to her feet. “Do
you have a garden, my lord?”

“Oh, yes. Just what you would expect. Weeds,
thorns, briars, some deadly nightshade.”

“Perhaps you should engage a new gardener,”
Anne began seriously, then caught the twitch of his lips and
realized he was teasing her. She almost relaxed enough to return
his smile.

Moonlight bathed his proud aristocratic
features, accenting the planes and hollows beneath his high
cheekbones. Anne eyed him with fascination. She felt rather like a
moth, risking a flutter near a bright flame, but keeping back far
enough so there was no danger of singeing her wings.

She had always sworn to Lily that she did not
perceive the attraction of the rakish marquis, but Anne saw it well
enough. He was handsome, despite his look of a man who had
experienced far too much of the world.

A fallen angel, the romantic Lily would sigh.
But the term did not fit. No, Mandell had never been cast out, Anne
decided. He had with deliberate arrogance turned his back on
heaven.

“If you keep staring at me like that,”
Mandell said, “you will put me to the blush, my lady.”

“Oh! I'm sorry.” Anne lowered her eyes, aware
that she was the one who was blushing. “It is just that we have
never been well acquainted before. I never had the opportunity
to—”

“To study wickedness up so close?”

“No. That is, you are not the only wicked man
I have ever known. There is also my brother-in-law, Lucien,” she
added dully.

“Lucien? You wound me by the comparison,
Sorrow. Your esteemed brother-in-law, and you will forgive my
saying so, is an underbred boor. He is taking himself to the brink
of ruin and doing it with no originality. Whereas I flatter myself
that at least I am going to the devil with a little style.”

“Are you?” Anne regarded him with grave
curiosity. She had spent so many of her days striving always to do
what was right, what was proper. She could not help but be
intrigued by someone who lived as he pleased, not giving a damn for
the consequences or the world's opinion.

“Surely you cannot be satisfied with your
life,” she said. “Pursuing such a reckless course. Has it made you
happy?”

“Ah, now I have the feeling you are trying to
learn my secrets, my lady. You would not like them.” He was still
smiling but his voice held an edge of warning.

“I did not mean to pry. It is only that I
have noticed you before at other gatherings. You seem solitary,
alone even in the midst of a crowd.”

“So you have noticed me before? I am
flattered. I wish I could return the compliment, but I feel as
though tonight I am seeing you for the first time.”

“You are not. I was always there.” Anne was
surprised by the trace of bitterness in her voice. Yes, she had
always been there, fading into the woodwork. “I daresay you just
don't remember me very well. I have not been to London for the past
two years.”

“Two years? Has it been as long as that? I
never really knew you before. But you have changed. You are not
nearly as mild as I recalled.”

“I suppose I am different. It is owing in
some part to being widowed.”

“You miss your husband a great deal?”

“Naturally.” Anne moved automatically into
the expected response. She had had enough times to perform it since
Gerald's funeral. “Of course one would. Miss one's husband or any
close acquaintance. Any death diminishes one. 'Never send to know
for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.' “

“Then you were not in love with him?”

Anne started to protest, but he silenced her,
saying, “My dear Lady Fairhaven. A grieving widow usually does not
wax so cheerfully philosophical, nor does she quote Donne.”

He did not sound shocked, merely amused. All
the same, Anne hung her head. She had the feeling the moonlight
revealed her face too cruelly, those less than perfect feelings she
sought to keep tucked away.

She was startled to feel his fingers beneath
her chin. Slowly, he tipped up her head, forcing her to look at
him. His expression astonished her. She would never have thought
Mandell's smile could ever be quite that gentle.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.
“I would have thought worse of you if you had esteemed Sir Gerald.
He was a pompous, narrow-minded prig, full of his own self
consequence.”

As a dutiful wife, Anne knew she ought to
defend her husband's memory, but that shocking voice that piped up
inside of her from time to time affirmed that Mandell was
right.

It didn’t matter for she could not speak
anyway, not with Mandell standing so close, holding her prisoner
with his eyes. They were as dark and relentless as a night with no
stars.

He continued, “And I no more approve your
choice in poets than I do husbands. I have never been that fond of
Donne. My tastes run to something more like 'Say what strange
motive, Goddess, could compel a well-bred lord to assault a gentle
belle? O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, could make a
gentle belle reject a lord?'“

He caressed a tendril that had strayed loose
from her braids. The back of his hand grazed against her cheek.

“I am afraid I don't recognize that passage,”
she said.

“It is by Alexander Pope. The Rape of the
Lock.”

“Oh!”

He twined the strand around one of his long
slender fingers. “You are fortunate I have no scissors or I would
be tempted to do a little theft myself. Your hair is like spun gold
in the moonlight.”

Anne flushed, reaching up to rescue her curl.
She was not accustomed to such compliments. Lily would have known
some light response to make, Camilla some clever retort. But she
was not Lily or Camilla. She was only Anne.

She summoned up her most prim expression. “Is
it possible, my lord, for you to hold a conversation with a woman
without attempting to flirt with her?”

“I don't know. I have never tried.”

“I wish you would do so, at least with
me.”

“Why? If ever there was a woman in need of a
little flirtation, I have a notion it is you.”

“What I need most,” she said sadly, “I fear
you cannot give me.”

“Faith, milady! For the heaven you promise me
with those lips, I would be more than willing to attempt it.”

“You should not say such things to me.”

“And you should not purse up your mouth that
way. It might give a man the notion you want to be kissed.”

“If any man ever tried it,” she said
fiercely, “he would fast realize his mistake.”

But as soon as the words were out of her
mouth, Anne realized the mistake had been hers. A rake like Mandell
could regard such a statement as nothing other than a
challenge.

Before she could move, he closed the distance
between them, slipping his arms about her waist. Anne's pulse leapt
with alarm. She splayed her hands against his chest in an effort to
hold him at bay.

“You promised.You said for the moment I was
safe with you.”

His dark eyes mocked her. “That was then.
This is now.”

“You tricked me!”

“Lured you down the garden path? I fear that
I did.” He whipped her arms behind her back, pinioning her wrists
in a steely grip. “But then you already knew what a reprehensible
fellow I am, my virtuous Anne.”

“Don't call me that,” she said. Her struggles
were futile as he drew her against him, the softness of her breasts
crushed against the unyielding wall of his chest. Beneath his
silken garments, she could sense his muscles tensed like iron. The
layers of clothing that separated her from his hard masculinity
seemed far too flimsy a barrier.

“Why should I not call you virtuous?” he
asked. Resting his cheek alongside her temple, he breathed a kiss
against her hair. “Aren't you?'

“Yes, but—” Unable to escape, she tried to
remain rigid, but the heat of his mouth caressed the sensitive skin
behind her ear, causing her to tremble. “You make it sound like a
mockery.”

“Forgive me, but I have never been any great
respecter of virtue.” He drew back, and she tensed knowing that he
meant to have his kiss.

“Please,” she whispered. His eyes glinted in
the darkness. They held no mercy, only a fire that caused her heart
to pound with a strange mixture of fear and excitement.

His mouth came down to cover hers. She had
steeled herself for one final, furious resistance, but the softness
of his lips took her by surprise. She had been braced for something
far more hot, ruthless, not this gentle questing, this coaxing
caress.

She could not prevent a sigh from escaping
her. Her mouth parted slightly beneath his. The pressure of his
kiss became more demanding and he eased his tongue between her
lips.

Anne stiffened. The shock of a contact more
intimate than she had ever known reverberated through her entire
body. His mouth teased, tasted, plundered, his tongue mating with
hers. Disturbing sensations of heat rushed through her, making her
knees grow weak.

She held herself still against him, but deep
within some dark secret place in her heart something stirred, just
a brief flickering of that passionate part of herself she had
learned to deny.

She did not respond to Mandell's embrace, but
briefly, achingly, shamefully, she wanted to. When he released her
at last, she was thoroughly shaken.

The kiss that left her so shattered showed
few visible signs of affecting him except for a peculiar gleam in
his eyes, his breath coming light and quick.

“That is much better,” he murmured. “With a
little more such effort, we might erase that primness which spoils
your mouth entirely.”

Anne touched one trembling finger to her
lips, bruised and moist from the force of Mandell's embrace. A hot
flood of mortification coursed into her cheeks. She had not
responded to Mandell's improper advances, but she had not put up a
life-and-death struggle either.

Mandell glanced down at her with a slight
frown. “You are not going to weep or swoon on me, are you?”

Anne shook her head.

“Good. Would you like to hit me?”

Anne shook her head again. She felt too
stunned, groping her way through the confused haze of her own
emotions to do anything. She released a great shuddering
breath.

“You must be quite mad. Why did you want to
do that to me?”

“Why did I want to kiss you?” Mandell's voice
was laced with amused incredulity. “My dear Lady Fairhaven, your
education has been sadly lacking.”

“Yes, but I mean, why me? I am not at all the
sort that—” Anne stumbled on, miserably aware she was making no
sense. “You have been kissing the wrong woman.”

“Oh, I don't think so. Unlike you, my dear, I
never get lost in the dark.”

He reached for her again, but this time she
managed to evade his grasp. Whirling, she stumbled down the path.
Her legs so unsteady, she was never sure how she made it back to
the terrace.

It did not occur to her that Mandell was not
pursuing until she had actually breached the threshold of the
French doors. When the darkness behind her remained still, she drew
up short, striving to regain her composure.

For once she blessed the fact that her
presence attracted so little notice in a crowded ballroom. The only
one who seemed to observe her precipitate return was Mr. Nicholas
Drummond. He regarded her with a frown of concern. But his stare
did not bother her so much as another's might have done. She was
sure Mr. Drummond was too much a gentleman to indulge in any
speculation or gossip.