The Seduction (48 page)

His smile opened like a sunrise. "Then we
are about to get involved in some midnight capers."

JULIET HAD THOUGHT FOR Α MOMENT THAT THEY
MIGHT HAVE to hide their presence in Feltonbridge, the nearest town to the
ancestral seat of the earls of Felton. But how could they, with two carriages
and a train of servants? They pulled up in front of the largest inn in town.
Alden had already sent a message ahead to reserve the grandest suite of rooms.
An extremely expensive light supper was immediately delivered. After washing the
dust of the road from her hands and face, Juliet sat down at a table laden with
champagne and delicacies.

Alden exchanged a few words with one of his
menservants, then closed the door. He leaned against the wall to read yet
another new letter. Candlelight danced over his hair, as if the sun kissed a
field of buttercups. Juliet watched his fine hands as he crushed the paper into
a ball and tossed it into the fireplace.

He looked up, met her gaze and smiled, then
walked to his chair. He stood for a few moments, both hands resting lightly on
the carved crest rail, and stared down at her.

"There will never be anyone else," he
said evenly. "For the rest of my life. Whatever it takes, whatever we must
go through, once you are free - and you
will
be free - will you marry
me, Juliet?"

She laid both hands flat on the fine tablecloth,
while her pulse thundered in her ears. The trust he had shown, his revelations
about Gregory and Emily and Maria, her own truths offered in exchange - this
one day had changed her yet again, made her ready to take any leap of faith,
whatever the risk.

"If Ι am ever free
- when
Ι
am free - whatever it takes, Ι will, Alden, gladly."

"Then Ι am saved. But in the
meantime-" He looked down at his fingers resting on the chair back. The
crumpled letter lay like a doom in the fireplace. Juliet stared at it, as if
she could read its dark message through the destroyed paper. Alden followed her
gaze and nodded to the crushed writing. "My man of law sends his advice,
almost a decree, that we don't live together now, if we ever wish to
marry."

Startled, she looked back at him.

"Ι am confident that George will come
to an agreement – for enough money." He gave a wry smile. "Perhaps
for the Felton Hoard he will let you go. But your adultery is his only grounds,
so the divorce might be conditional on your
not
marrying me afterward.
"

"Why?"

He turned and paced away. Juliet stared at the
fitted waist of his coat and the elegant flare of the skirts.

"Ι am your seducer, Divorce isn't
allowed to reward sin. It seems that Ι must give you up, even if freeing
you from your marriage takes years."

She closed her eyes and dropped her head into
both palms. "Can you?"

"Ι can do even that, if Ι must.
Ι don't say it will be easy, but Ι will wait for you, Juliet. There
will be no one else, ever."

"Is that a promise?"

His heels clicked on the floor as he walked up to
her. "Let us plight our troth here, Juliet." She looked up to see him
smiling down at her, holding out one hand. "Let us make our promises
before these witnesses." He waved the other hand to indicate the room.
"These candles and hangings. These chairs and this table. The oyster
patties and the champagne. The bread and the butter. My only regret is that
Ι gave all my bloody rings to your husband."

Juliet pushed back her chair and stood up. She
put her right hand in his. "If we don't have a ring," she said.
"Let us seal our promise with a kiss."

He smiled, charming, the lovely smile that had
seduced count less women, now only for her. "Dare you risk it?"

"Ι do. And Ι will risk whatever
comes afterward. If we are to be parted, Alden, then let us take one last
memory with us to sustain us in these damnable celibate months to come."

He spun her so she was pressed against the table.
With a grin of pure wickedness he bent her backward over one arm. Deliberately,
with infinite patience, he trailed fingertips down her throat, over her
collarbone and the swell of her breasts.

"Kiss you where?" he said, trailing a
shivering path of fire over her naked skin. "Here?"

He touched her nipple through the fabric with his
thumb. "Here?"

He moved back to brush over the sensitive spot
below her ear. "Here?"

"Here," she said, breathless, blood
pounding. "On the mouth."

He pressed his lips to hers.

Was it different when you had admitted that you
loved a man with all your heart? Did everything change, because he had said he
loved you and you believed it at last? Juliet knew only that her very soul
craved his touch, that her heart opened and surrendered long before his clever
mouth and ecstatic tongue began to ravish her mouth.

As if he had traveled over parched deserts to
find her-

As if he had slashed for a year and a day at a
thorn hedge to find a lost castle, asleep for one hundred years-

As if he had climbed a labyrinth of stairs,
combating magic mirrors, brushing through a century of spiderwebs, to lift the
sleeping princess to his mouth, Juliet felt bright life flood through her
bones.

They had played games of temptation in the dark.
They had shared painful tenderness in a blaze of candlelight. Now he showed her
at last what it felt like to love without restraint.

Her clothes fell away, one silken element at a
time. His clever fingers released ribbons and hooks. Her skirts fell with a
whisper to the floor. Her stiff bodice peeled back like a crab shell. Overdress,
underdress, corset, chemise: all slid away, one soft murmur after another.

Meanwhile her palms caressed the sleeves of his
brocade coat, feasting ravenously on the erotic contrast of his hard flesh
beneath. He shrugged his shoulders. His coat slid through her fingers to drop
to the floor. Beneath it his silk waistcoat was buttoned from chest to knee.
She followed the line of buttons, releasing each one. The stiff embroidery
opened to rub against her nipple.

Α jolt of sensation ricocheted into her
heart and plummeted to her groin, firing an ache so intense she groaned aloud.
He caught her ragged exhalation on his lips and breathed it in, mingling her
moan with one of his own. His waistcoat followed his coat to the floor. To peel
his shirt over his head they would have to break the kiss. She couldn't bear
it. She couldn't bear to stop kissing. His mouth was a well from which she
could drink forever.

Even as her chemise fell away, leaving her naked
in his arms, she kept drinking from his mouth. His lips smiled into hers as he
thrust both hands between their bodies for a moment. His knuckles brushed her
breasts as he ripped the fine lawn of his shirt from top to bottom to shrug it
from his shoulders. His breeches followed. His erection sprang strongly between
them as he slid away his underdrawers, although he stepped back into his beribboned
shoes.

His palms rubbed up her spine to her head, his
fingers pulling away hairpins until her hair tumbled down her back. As he did
it, she reached to rug away his ribbon and run her hands through his hair. He
pulled his mouth away suddenly, breathless and laughing, before catching her
face in both palms.

"We are reborn," he said. "Rising
from the sea foam like Aphrodite on her shell."

Juliet pressed into him, rubbing her belly
against his arousal.

"Is that what you call it?"

His penis shook against her as he laughed.
"All this at our feet. We stand naked in a sea of silk. Apart from our
shoes and stockings, we are as innocent as the day we were born."

"We can take them off, too."

"No, Ι don't think so," he
replied, briefly kissing her again. "It' s too damned erotic to leave them
on."

He swung her into his arms. Juliet clutched both
hands about his neck as he carried her to the bed, his heeled shoes rapping on
the floor, hers swinging freely, both of them naked from the knees up.

Without ceremony he dumped her onto the bed and
stood looking down at her for a moment. He was glorious, triumphant, his eyes
black with desire.

She wriggled back against the pillows and watched
as he, after all, stepped out of his shoes and onto the bed, then tied on the
sheath that protected her from bearing his child. He rolled slowly over her,
supporting his weight easily on his hands, but entwining his silk-clad calves
with hers. His erection reared between them, proud and imperious. Juliet ached
to receive it, to feel the slide of it reaching deeply inside her, but with
devilish skill he forced her to wait. Every other inch of her skin must first
receive his homage, even her ribs and the inside of her knees.

When he entered her at last, she burned like a
furnace, only to cry instant ecstasy into his shoulder. He waited for a moment,
smiling down at her, before beginning to thrust, driving an intensity of
sensation deeper and deeper.

Mad thoughts careened beneath the exquisite
sensations. She was his forever. She loved him. She might never be able to
marry him. He had said he would wait, but could she believe it? He thought he
could now, but when celibacy turned into weeks or months-? Yet for this one
night, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't care. She had given a rake her heart,
and devil take the consequences. She opened her eyes to fix his face forever
in her memory.

The shudder of his climax rippled over his body,
taking her to delirious depths of release. His head was thrown back, his expression
sublime. Juliet closed her eyes and wept her rapture openly, until she found
the sleep of pure exhaustion in his encircling arms.

She woke to a mouth on hers and a hand. tenderly
brushing hair from her forehead. In her sleep she kissed back, as if she kissed
the night demon come to take her to paradise.

"Midnight capers," Alden whispered
against her lips. "It is time to go after Harald Fairhair's pretty
treasure."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

JULIET
STRUGGLED AWAKE. ALDEN WAS ALREADY DRESSED - BUT
simply, in a dark coat and breeches with riding boots - and standing beside the
bed. He held a candle in one hand and shielded her eyes from its direct flame
with the other.

"What did you do to me?" she asked.
"I feel as if the blood has been drained from my body and replaced with
silly happiness."

He grinned like Abednego given cream. "Why
silly?"

She stared up at his features, caressed by
candlelight. "Oh, Ι am a very fool for love, Alden Granville-Strachan.
How am Ι to bear celibacy now, after that?"

He leaned down and kissed her mouth once more.
"As Ι will, one day at a time."

Juliet sat up, still weak ίη every
limb. "Is it morning?"

"Almost dawn. We left midnight behind
several hours ago. Lord Edward is on his way. Ι must be after him. Are you
still sure you want to come?"

Was hesitation foolish? After all, she had not
seen Felton Hall since she had run away with George all those years ago. And
perhaps her father had not gone to London at all. Swallowing her trickle of
trepidation, Juliet nodded.

She slipped from the bed and found hot water
already waiting in a basin. She washed rapidly, not caring that Alden's eyes devoured
her as she did so, nor that he was obviously aroused by the sight. She almost
hoped he would not be able to resist and would - instead of riding out to
confront their enemy - stride across the chamber to make love with her again.

"I would," he said as if reading her
mind. "God knows Ι want to. But if Ι am to be celibate for some
impossible length of time into the future, perhaps I'd better start now.
Besides we mustn't lose Lord Edward."

DAWN SPREAD WATERY FINGERS ACROSS Α SKY LIKE
AN opalescent eggshell. Juliet stood with Alden under a small stand of trees
and shivered - not from cold, though the early morning air was chilly and damp
with dew. The great house before them, still sleeping darkly beneath the wash
of pink and green-yellow sky, was Felton Hall. This was where she had grown up,
played with Kit, walked sedately beneath these trees with her mother-whence she
had run away with George Hardcastle, handsome and charming, but a man without
depth and with no essential core of kindness. Little shivers ran through her
blood like a hoard of tiny imps.

Without a word, Alden reached back and took her
hand. They stood in absolute silence for several more minutes. At last a group
of shadows materialized from the woods opposite them: a troop of misshapen
creatures, like a small herd of strange beasts with bizarrely long necks and
stiff heads bobbing at each step.

"Our enemy," Alden whispered then.
"He brings minions."

The shapes moved closer, jigging their strange
heads. Juliet stared at them: four men carrying picks and shovels over their
shoulders. Ahead of the group, one figure devoured the turf with ferocious
strides, the tails of his coat flying behind him: Lord Edward Vane.