The Bride Wore Scarlet (26 page)

“You
daresay
?” The vicomte crooked one brow as they went in, still arm in arm.

The piano music was mounting toward a crescendo now. Geoff, who was turning pages for Charlotte, glowered at her. She shot him a quick nod to let him know her mission had been accomplished, then turned back to Lezennes.

“The truth is, I hardly know him,” Anaïs quietly confessed, edging nearer so as to afford him a better peek down her bodice. “It was arranged—though once I introduced him to Jane, he turned three shades of red and I thought, truly, that he meant to call it off! What can Papa have been thinking?”

“I'm sure I do not know,” said the vicomte, his gaze warming. “Children are a blessing.”

“Just as I always say, sir!” Anaïs softly exclaimed. “Well, there's nothing to be done about it just now. I promise never to peek at Gisette—
Giselle
—again if you really wish it.”

“She is delicate.” But the vicomte's attention, Anaïs noted, was not on her face. “Giselle has a—a nervous condition. I fear I must . . .”

“Yes—?” Anaïs prompted him.

The vicomte lifted his gaze back up. “Er, insist,” he finished. “I am afraid I must insist.”

“Very well, then.” Anaïs cut him a slightly suggestive smile. “But you must promise to tempt me with some other sort of entertainment instead. Something which might distract me from my lonely plight.”

“Indeed,
madame
?” Speculation kindled in Lezennes' eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“Oh, la, sir!” she said breathlessly. “I really could not say. Perhaps you might tell me of something exciting—your life in Paris? Or some of your adventures?”

“Adventures?” he murmured.

Anaïs leaned into him. “Surely, my lord, a sophisticated gentleman such as yourself has had many adventures?”

“
Bien sûr, madame.
” A smile twitched at his mouth. “One or two.”

She laughed a little too loudly and again Geoff shot her a dark look. Anaïs ignored him, and reminded herself of her goals. To delay Lezennes from forcing his proposal on poor Charlotte. To convince him she was as empty-headed and harmless as possible. Perhaps if he came to trust her, she might even kindle a relationship with little Giselle, though that still seemed unlikely.

And perhaps—just perhaps—she was enjoying Geoff's fury just a tad too much.

Anaïs did not wish to think too hard about that.

Instead, she nodded in the direction of the piano. “Well, they seem happily occupied with one another,” she said with a teasing smile. “Might we have a little stroll in your garden? I find the darkness so very . . . refreshing. You do have some smallish sort of garden, I daresay?” She knew from Petit's reconnoitering that they did not.

Lezennes was beginning to look at her as if she were a tasty morsel. “I fear,
madame
, that we have none,” he murmured, pointing at a very small, plumply upholstered settee. “But why do we not sit just there, and I will tell you stories of my time in the French army?”

Anaïs widened her eyes. “The
French
army?” she said, drawing him toward the seat he had indicated. “Which regiment, sir? Oh, do say it was a cavalry regiment! I always say there is nothing so enjoyable for a woman as to look up and see a handsome man mounted atop . . . well, almost
anything
, really.”

For an instant Anaïs feared she'd played her cards too boldly. But once the shock had faded from Lezennes' eyes, the heat returned threefold. He urged her into a chair and regaled her for a time with his war stories—a process that involved very little war and a vast deal of pomposity.

It also involved a great deal of laughter, and increasingly intimate glances.

From time to time, however, the vicomte glanced at Charlotte, too, as if measuring her reaction to his having turned his oily charm elsewhere.

But Charlotte was not looking, and by the time her long piece had ended and Geoff could excuse himself from the pianoforte, Lezennes had hold of Anaïs's hand, and was proposing they might ride out together the following day to the village of Waterloo, near the
Grand Armée
's last stand.

Anaïs was willing to bet he meant to make it no farther than an inn on the outskirts of Brussels.

Geoff, however, was willing to bet they would not go at all.

“I'm afraid it is out of the question,” he said. “I mean to go sketch the interiors of the Kapellekerk tomorrow. Perhaps we might all go together at another time.”

Anaïs shot an exasperated look at him. “But you do not need me for sketching,” she said. “And Charlotte is not interested in military things, are you, Charlotte?”

Charlotte agreed that she was not.

“But I wish you to accompany me,” said Geoff coldly. “I'm afraid I must insist.”

Anaïs managed to thrust out her bottom lip a tiny fraction, then bite it ever so slightly as she swept her lashes downward.

Lezennes reacted, his eyes warming again. But all the while, he also watched Charlotte from the corner of his eye. He was taking a malicious enjoyment in this, Anaïs realized. And if he could not make Charlotte jealous, then he expected to get—at the very least—a good tumble out of the bargain, and at little inconvenience to himself.

Anaïs was willing to offer him that—or rather, to seem as if she might.

“The hour grows late,” said Geoff, still standing. “Anaïs, get your shawl. We have kept our hosts dancing attendance on us far too long.”

After a flurry of shawls and kissed cheeks, followed by good-byes said at the front door, Anaïs and Geoff crossed the Rue de l'Escalier to their house. She could feel Geoff radiating almost unbridled anger.

Well, let him stew in it
, Anaïs decided. She went up the steps, rummaging for the key in her reticule. In response, Geoff extracted his own, and shoved it roughly into the lock. “Don't you
ever
pull a trick like that again,” he said, his voice cold as the grave.

“We had work to do.” She pushed past him when he opened the door. “I was getting it done.”

Anaïs went inside, and tossed her shawl onto the foyer table. Behind her, the bolt clicked shut. After that, everything was a blur. Geoff caught her shoulder, forcing her around. In a trice Anaïs found herself imprisoned against the door.

His handsome face twisted. “Damn it to hell, Anaïs,” he rasped. “Do you mean to drive me mad?”

She felt her eyes flash. “Is that even possible? I thought you were so—”

“I'll tell you what I am,” he cut in, giving her a little shake. “I'm tired of watching you throw yourself at Lezennes. I told you not to do it. And to go off with him in a carriage—?”

“Geoff, he caught me in Giselle's room,” she whispered. “I had to do something. Besides, I knew you would never agree to that drive, nor am I stupid enough to go. Now kindly take your hands off my arms.”

But he had no intention of that. By the faint light of the hall lamp, she could see his eyes, colder and more implacable than ever before. The weight and the width of him pressed her back against the solid slab of oak. She could smell the mix of irritation and lust rising from his skin; the scent of citrus and warm tobacco mingled with sweat, teasing at her nostrils.

She looked up, far up, and knew he was about to kiss her. And—shame of all shames—that she was not going to fight it. Not really. Not in the end.

Perhaps not even in the beginning . . .

Slanting her head ever so slightly, she let her lashes drop half shut, and heard him curse softly beneath his breath.

Geoff watched Anaïs's long black lashes fan across her cheeks and felt himself fall a little deeper. Fear and frustration and desire run rampant still warred inside him. Shoving his fingers into the soft hair at her nape, he stilled her to his kiss, his tongue sliding deep, invading her.

Anaïs opened to him, and made a low, soft sound in the back of her throat. Dimly, he heard a hairpin strike the floor. Geoff eased his hand beneath her hip and did not hold back. He felt incapable of it. He needed her to understand that
she was his
.

They parried kisses as they had parried blades, taunting and a little dangerous. Tongues slid like warm silk round one other. And when it seemed as if the swell of passion might drown him, Geoff lifted his mouth to slide his lips down her throat. Whispering her name, he nipped and tasted, then trailed his tongue across the sweet throb of her pulse point.

“Anaïs,” he murmured against her skin. “Oh, love, 'tis too late.”

“Too . . . late?”

“We can't escape it, this thing between us.”

His cock was pressed into the softness of her belly, hard and insistent. It was as if he were someone hot and crazed, not cool and dispassionate. He burned for this woman; wanted her as he had wanted nothing in his life. Watching her tonight—watching Lezennes ogle her—it had maddened him. For surely a man was mad to do this.

Nuzzling his face into the turn of her neck, he skated his hand upward to weigh the soft orb of her breast. Anaïs gasped. Geoff caught the ruched edge of her décolletage with his thumb. He dragged it down until the lush mound was free to be tasted.

After that, everything happened in a lust-fueled rush.

Still holding her prisoner with his body, he took her nipple into his mouth. He suckled deeply, then slid the tip of his tongue back and forth over the resultant peak. On a soft cry, her head fell back against the door.

Madness, yes. Roughly he fisted up her skirts. Now. It had to be now.

Later he was unable to recall that moment when he had released himself. He knew only one need; the need to be inside her. The fact that a bed was little more than a staircase away—that a servant might come upon them at any moment—none of this came to mind. He knew only the fierce, dark desire to thrust. To lay claim to her. To spill himself deep inside.

He didn't ask permission. He found the slit in her drawers. Pressing his fingers into her wetness, he felt his entire body tremble. “
Leg
—” he rasped. “Put it—
ah
—”

And then he was pushing himself deep inside her, scarcely realizing how it had come to be.

Oh, he had done this before—a quick, furtive coupling stolen at some opportune moment, with a woman who knew what she was doing. But burning in the back of his consciousness was the fact that this was Anaïs.

Anaïs, who deserved better. The woman he was falling heart over head in love with.

And still he could not stop.

He was not sure Anaïs wanted him to.

“
Aah
,” she sighed. “Yes . . .”

He held her perfectly balanced, his hand cupped beneath the swell of her bottom, her spine set to the door. Anaïs had curled one leg about him, lifting herself eagerly. In his arms she felt no more than a feather, as if she were a part of him. As if this was something perfect, instead of something tawdry.

He lifted her another increment and shoved his entire length into her warmth. She was slick with need, her passage tightening against the invasion, and he thought at that moment he might explode. He thrust and thrust again, impaling her against the door, Anaïs's breath ratcheting up with his every stroke.

Her lashes were nearly closed, her mouth slightly parted. “
Yes
,” she whispered. “Like that—Geoff,
oh
—don't stop . . .”

Her climax came swiftly, in the heat and rush of the moment. Geoff felt the release shudder through her, watched in delight as her head fell back against the door, and her lovely throat worked up and down. Around his cock, she pulsed and tightened, her leg curling hard about his hips as she urged herself against him.

He felt his release surge forth, pumping into her stroke after stroke, the pleasure like the parting of the heavens. As if he were being drawn body and soul into that glorious white light.

Long moments later he became dimly aware of a sound. The doleful
tock-tock-tock
of the longcase clock at the turn of the stairs. He still held Anaïs to him, bound chest to chest in his arms, their foreheads damp and lightly touching.

“Geoff?” She fell back against the door, gasping for breath. “Are you . . . finished?”

“Hell, no,” he growled. “Not by a long shot.”

Chapter 16

Victorious warriors win first then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then seek to win.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

B
ut the reality of what he'd just done was sinking in on Geoff. Good God, he'd taken her against a doorway as if she were a two-penny whore. And in their own front hall, where a servant could have come upon them at any time.

But all around them the house still lay in silence. The servants had gone to bed just as he'd told them to do. The clock was ticking away as it always did. Farther down the street, he could hear the rumble of a late-night carriage crossing over the Rue de l'Escalier.

Then all fell quiet again. No one had been disturbed.

Gently, he lowered Anaïs, and felt her leg slip over his hip, then lightly touch the floor. “Oh,” she said again.

Kissing her softly one last time, he tugged up the sea-green silk of her dress, then caught her up gently in his arms. Only then did he notice the soft wad of fabric at her knee.

“A stuffed dog,” she whispered. “Don't drop it and trip.”

The day wanted only that—the two of them rolling back down the stairs in a state of dishabille with servants hastening upstairs to see what the commotion was about.

He carried her carefully up to her bedchamber. Elbowing his way through the door, he set her down at the edge of the mattress, where the lamp burned low on the bed table. The soft light flickered, casting half her lovely face in shadow.

“I am going to undress you, Anaïs,” he whispered, “one lovely inch at a time, then lay you down in that bed and make love to you properly.”

“Ah.” She looked at him through eyes still sated, a quizzical smile toying at her lips. “And am I to have any say in this business?”

“Dashed little,” he replied, reaching around to unfasten the buttons of her green gown. “You could say no, I suppose.”

“And you would . . . ?”

He trailed one finger along the edge of her bodice, watching her nipples harden. “Convince you otherwise,” he rasped, tugging the bodice down just far enough to expose the tips of her lovely breasts. “Shall I start?”

She reached up, and set her hand to his cheek. “Geoff, I—”

“Don't,” he said, kissing the word from her lips. “Don't waste what little time we have together, love. It's fate, and we'll madden ourselves fighting it.”

Her lashes swept down almost shyly, and he felt her tremble inside.

He meant for her to do a great more than tremble before the night was out.

He dipped his head and stroked the tip of his tongue round her sweet, rosy peak, and watched in satisfaction as it hardened. He laved it slowly, with tiny flicks followed by a long, slow circle, and when she gave a breathy sigh, he turned his attention to the other.

“You are relentless,” she whispered, her voice so soft he scarcely heard it.

He kissed his way up her breastbone, then finished slipping free her buttons. Anaïs's gown was exquisite—a shade of shimmering green like the Adriatic's shallows at sunset—and when it slithered down and took her shift with it, he saw her garters were made of the same color silk, and trimmed with dainty white lace.

On a sound of appreciation, he knelt and began to roll them down, taking her silk stockings along with them. The stuffed toy dropped down her drawer leg and rolled under the bed.

She lifted her lashes and looked down at him shyly. “No one ever undressed me like this,” she whispered.

“I would undress you like this every night of the week,” he answered, skimming his hand down the back of her calf.

But he could not. Not for long. She was not his, and likely never would be.

The realization drove him, riled him as nothing ever had. It was as if, before Anaïs, his life had held nothing but pale imitations of passion. Vague sentiments masquerading as love and lust and yearning.

Her stockings and garters down, he remained on his knees, untying the ribbon of her drawers. They slithered down her thighs at once, settling in a heap at her ankles. Geoff kissed her thigh, then kissed higher still, delving into her curls with one finger.

“Oh!” she cried, her voice thready.

“Open a little for me,” he growled. Anaïs seized the bedpost as if for strength. He touched her intimately with his fingers, sliding through the warmth. She closed her eyes tight and began to make a soft sound in her throat.

He spread a row of kisses across the swell of her belly and thought again of the darkness and the mystery of the forest; of Anaïs's shadowy depths as yet unexplored. She was so sensual, this dark, fey creature. So naturally erotic, in ways he was sure even she did not comprehend.

He wanted very much to tutor her, to watch Anaïs become the beautiful, voluptuous woman she was meant to be. To entice her feminine nature to unfurl like a flower to his touch.

Suddenly impatient, he rose, and began to strip off his cravat a little roughly.

She opened her eyes and let go of the bedpost. Her fingers went at once to his throat. “Stop,” she chided, “and lift your chin.”

With a slight smile, he did as he was told.

“You have an arrogant jaw,” she said, stripping loose the knot. “Did you know that?”

He said nothing as she drew the neck cloth free from his collar. She let it drop to the floor, then pushed his coat from his shoulders. Her clever, slender fingers made short work of his waistcoat buttons, and that, too, landed on the floor with a soft
whuff!

He could not take his eyes from hers now. She wanted him still—wanted him too much to refuse him, thank God—but she was none too happy about it.

He vowed to make her happy.

He vowed that by sunrise there would be no turning back for either of them.

With one hand, he swiftly dragged his shirt off over his head, and flung it aside. His gaze fixed to hers, he toed off his shoes and unfastened the only trouser button still hanging.

Her warm hands settled at his hip bones, and pushed the wool and linen down as one. His manhood sprang free from the tangle of clothing, already hardening. Anaïs took the weight of him into her hand and stroked. Breath and belly seizing at once, Geoff closed his eyes and wondered if it was possible to come from the mere brush of a woman's fingers.

Perhaps. If it was the right woman.

He could not wait. He took her into his arms and kissed her deep, then tumbled with her onto the bed. She opened her legs to take him. “Come inside me, Geoff,” she whispered.

Geoff obliged her, but this time he slid into her slowly. Still, she was tight. He closed his eyes, felt his arms shudder, and willed himself to hold back. This time he wanted to love her for a long time; love her until her breath became soft, sweet gasps in the night.

In response, Anaïs whispered his name again, curled one leg around his, and drew him down, enveloping him with her warm, slick passage. He sank into her womanly flesh like a man embracing his fate. He closed his eyes, and felt as if he was precisely—and finally—where he belonged.

How many times had he made love to a woman, only to leave her bed a little more lost and a good deal emptier? Not this time. Not with this woman. There was only the yearning, stronger and more heart wrenching. Geoff closed his eyes and eased himself back and forth inside her. Anaïs cupped her hands round his face, kissed him long and hard, rising to meet his every stroke.

She was his.

And he was hers.

The sooner they gave in to that truth, the better it would be.

She was so lovely, his forest nymph. In the cool stillness of the room, he drove himself inside her, reveling in the effort of it. He thrust and thrust, matching her pace and her sighs until sweat slicked his body. And still it was not enough.

It would never be enough. Oh, he would slide deep into Anaïs that one last perfect time and, yes, spill himself in relentless thrusts against her womb. But he was fast coming to need so much more than just release.

Just then, Anaïs hitched her leg higher around his waist, and swallowed hard. Much of her hair had tumbled down now and was spread across the counterpane in a beautiful silken swath. Lamplight shifted and danced over her nakedness, warming her skin. On a breathless sigh, she pressed her head back into the softness of the pillow, her face strained with that exquisite search for pleasure.

Cupping his hand beneath the lush swell of her buttock, Geoff lifted her ever so slightly, then stroked another fraction higher in search of that sweet, aching spot.

He found it. He found her, and bound himself to her, heart and soul. She arched to him, her body stiffening like a cord drawn taut, her eyes flying wide as her nails raked down his back. And then she shuddered and convulsed beneath him, crying out his name.

She was his. And he was hers.

And so he claimed her. Claimed her in the most carnal and wild of ways as her womanly flesh pulsed around his. A triumphant sound coiled up in the back of his throat, something almost savage, as if it had been dragged up from deep in his chest.

Stabbing his fingers into her hair, Geoff held Anaïs still to his thrusts and sank his teeth into the soft flesh of her throat, still pumping furiously inside her. When he came, it was in a bone-shuddering jolt of white-hot pleasure. His ballocks convulsed and his arms trembled. And then he threw back his head on a deep groan, and thrust home one last time.

He fell across Anaïs, and lost himself in the scent of sex and rosewater and sweat. Then he set his lips to her throat more gently, whispered her name as her arms came round him, and knew that he was lost in her forever.

G
eoff stirred to awareness to hear the clock in the stairwell striking two. He could feel Anaïs's head, still cradled against his shoulder as it had been when he'd drifted off in that sweet, boneless lethargy that inevitably follows sensual bliss.

Crooking his head on her pillow, he looked down to see Anaïs staring up at him, eyes wide, honest, and unblinking.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “We forgot to put out the lamp,” he murmured.

“Oh, we forgot a lot of things.” Anaïs's smile was a little wry. “But I like the light. I like to look at you.”

It was his turn to smile. “Do you?”

Her lashes dropping shut, she rolled into him, and trailed the tip of her tongue round his nipple, causing his breath to catch. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Your face is beautiful, of course, but this chest—ah, it is magnificent. As I'm sure you are aware.”

He chuckled. “You keep saying things like that,” he answered. “As if you truly expect the worst of me. Have you had a great deal of experience with handsome, arrogant men?”

She flopped back against his arm, flat on the bed, her breasts like ripe, round peaches in the lamplight. “Oh, enough,” she said. “But you're right. That was a precipitate choice of words.”

At that, he threw back his head and laughed richly. “Oh, damn me with faint praise, Anaïs,” he said. “You expect the worst of me—
eventually
. Is that it?”

“Oh, Geoff, don't let's argue,” she said, rolling toward him again, and setting her forehead against his ribs. “Let's just enjoy this for what it is.”

At that, he slipped a finger under her chin, and tipped her face up. “What this is,” he said quietly, “is a serious business.”

Her eyes widened. “A serious business?” she echoed. “Tell me, Geoff, how serious? My feelings and my plans aside, mind. Because I was given to understand your attentions were fixed elsewhere.”

At that, he felt the stirring of irritation. “My attentions are my own to fix as I damned well please,” he said. “And if some busybody—say, my old chum Lazonby—has managed to suggest to you otherwise, then I'll deal with him soon enough.”

She turned her head away. “You mustn't blame Lazonby.”

“Who, then?”

“It does not matter,” she murmured. “It was just something you said that day in the bookroom at the St. James Society.”

It damned well did matter.

But Geoff held his tongue, and let his mind run over all the things they had discussed that day. He had been uneasy about traveling alone with Anaïs, for even then he'd been dangerously attracted to her. God only knew what he might have said. Something about being ready to do his duty to his title, he thought. For a woman as skittish as Anaïs, perhaps that had been enough.

He had been quiet too long, apparently.

Anaïs looked up at him. “I ask you again, Geoff,
are
your attentions fixed elsewhere?” she asked. “And mind how you answer that, please.”

He felt a flood of frustration—and no small amount of chagrin. “They were, yes,” he confessed, “but in the vaguest of ways.”

“It mightn't feel so vague to the lady in question,” she murmured.

At that, Geoff felt his cheeks warm, as if he were some chided schoolboy. “I will make my apologies to the lady as soon as we return to Town,” he said. “She will doubtless be relieved.”

But Anaïs's eyes were sad. “You cannot know that,” she said, tucking her head nearer as she curled her leg over his. “Just let this be our secret, Geoff. I could not bear to have anyone else hurt. And this thing—this heat between us—it will burn out, you know. We are destined to go our separate ways.”

He felt a knot deep in his throat. “Could you love another that easily, Anaïs?” he rasped.

“I do not know,” she said. “I only know that I promised my . . . my family I'd marry from amongst my great-grandmother's people. And if ever I find the right one, I will.”

“And yet you are one-and-twenty years of age, Anaïs,” he gently reminded her. “You have spent large portions of your life in Tuscany. And you have not found your dream lover so far.”

“Thank you, Geoff, for reminding me how thoroughly on the shelf I am,” she said, though there was little bitterness in her voice. “But this isn't about me. You've left an iron in the fire back in London, so have a care no one gets burned—someone who doesn't deserve it—for I've been on both ends of that harsh tool, and let me tell you, it
hurts
.”