To Wed a Rake (8 page)

“I fell out of a number of
beds
,” he said finally. “Drunk, blind, trying to find my way to a chamber pot. A kind of death. But one always wakes up, more’s the pity.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said. She turned his hands over and began caressing his palms, trying to ignore the fact that her fingers were trembling. “I fell out of a carriage once.”

He went still; she more sensed than saw it. “What happened?”

“I was eight years old, and trundling along to the village in the old pony cart, driven by an ancient—but quite sober—groom. He didn’t know that I was leaning over the side, trying to pull sprays of wild roses into the carriage. He went around the corner just as I grasped a particularly beautiful spray.”

There was a little chuckle in his voice. “I believe I hear the echo of pain in your voice.”

“Straight into the rosebush,” she said mournfully. “I have a scar across my right eyebrow that is still visible.”

One hand slipped from hers and traced the shape of her eyebrow. “Beautiful,” he said, and the husky roll in his voice made her bite her lip. “Your brows fly above your eyes in a cur ebrow.particularly fetching fashion. I saw no break, and I feel nothing now.”

“I color them,” Emma said briskly, trying to quell the butterflies in her stomach.

His hands slipped to her shoulders and her waist and
then, all of a sudden, he gathered her up, and a moment later she was seated on his lap.

“I gather you grew up in England.”

“Actually, we have pony carts in France,” she said, hastening to put her French accent back in place.

His face was so close to hers. Perhaps he would kiss her. Emma felt a wave of excitement so acute that she felt almost faint.

“What made you stop trying to fall out of carriages?” she asked quickly, just as his mouth was moving toward hers. He didn’t stop though, just brushed her lips with his. Involuntarily, one of her hands came up and curled around his neck. It was a strong neck, muscled and firm.

“I couldn’t do it.” He said it almost into her mouth. “I could never let the reins go and simply fly into space. Walter had an exuberance that I never had. He drank with enthusiasm and rode with abandon. I’m conservative. I tried to teach him to be less reckless—” He shrugged.

Emma was hoping that he couldn’t feel her heart beating against her ribs. He had a beautiful mouth: curved, a little sad, delicious, firm…. Holding her breath, she took a finger and rubbed it over his lips.

“Will you take off your mask now?” he asked, his voice velvet dark in her ear.

She reached up to untie it and instantly realized the advantage of having her arms at the back of her head. The motion pushed her breasts against his chest. It felt delicious, dangerous. She stilled, untying the laces of her mask slowly, hardly breathing. She could just see his eyes, shadow pools of black in the darkness, sliding over her skin like a hot lick of brandy.

A second later, his hand slid down her throat to the curve of her breast. She gasped. She’d noticed his fingers
were calloused but hadn’t imagined that they would weave a spell on her skin. They swept over the top of her bosom and slipped beneath the ornate gold cloth of her bodice.

His eyes held hers, not letting her look down and see what he was doing, where he was rubbing with his thumb, because he—he—

“What costume
are
you wearing?” he asked silkily.

“What?” she gasped.

“Are you Cleopatra, all in gold?” he asked. “But no, this is no Roman tunic.” Her eyes widened. His hand was clasping her breast now, pushing her bodice down, almost—almost touching—

“Perhaps you were Venus?” he whispered, his lips tracing a line down her cheek.

Emma couldn’t answer; she was simply, absolutely silenced for the first time in her life.

“I believe you must have been Queen Elizabeth.” His lips were on hers now. He asked silently, and she parted her lips, having heard of such a thing but never imagined having the inclination herself. Besides, hadn’t her governess said that husbands don’t kiss in such a manner? Of course! He thought she was a French hussy, and so he dared to kiss her in this fashion.

Emma opened her mouth a little wider, and he came to her. Something like that should have been disgusting, but it just—wasn’t. He tasted like…like…She didn’t know. Like a man, one could only think. He was tasting her, too, now, and then his hand stilled on her breast.

Her heart was thudding against her ribs. She felt as if she were a bird, caught between the warmth cen 9;t her of his hands and the seduction of his mouth, unable to move or to speak. Gil had a hand behind her head now, angling her so that he could ravage her mouth, take her as he would, and all she could do was—

Her mind was racing. She should do something, or he might get bored and stop. And she didn’t want him to stop, did she?

He pulled away. His hand left an unwelcome coolness in its wake, and a small sound broke from her lips. Disappointment? Passion?

“I cannot fulfill your request,” he said.

“What?” Emma said, scarcely hearing him through the po
unding of her heart in her ears.

He picked her up and, with gentle precision, put her back on the opposite seat. “I cannot make love to you in this carriage, or elsewhere, madame. You must forgive me.”

Emma opened her mouth, but no words emerged.

“Your request,” he said, watching her. “Your one request before you marry the wealthy burgher.”

For a moment she stared at him blankly and then the truth—or lack of it—seeped back into her mind. “Why not?”

“It wouldn’t be right,” he said.

Emma felt a shot of pure rage. This man, who by all accounts had slept with so many Frenchwomen that he likely murmured
je t’aime
in his sleep, was daring to become moralistic at this late date?

“After what we shared?” she said, and there was a generous dollop of warning in her tone, just in case he thought she was a pretty little French miss to be bedded and forgotten. Now she thought of it, he had treated Emelie in a horrendous fashion.

If Emelie had really existed, of course.

He was staring at her lips and seemed to have lost track of the conversation, so Emma drew in her lower lip and then slowly pushed it out again, just to remind him how soft that lip felt against his.

“Think of Paris,” she said, her voice softer and as close to sirenlike as possible.

“Thinking of Paris has never done me the least bit of good,” he said. “Since I can’t remember the half of it.”

“How could you have forgotten
me
?” There was genuine indignation in her tone. After all, he
had
forgotten her, off in St. Albans. Just because he’d never seen as much of her as he supposedly saw of Emelie, it was still a desertion.

“I waited for you,” she said, pitching her voice low and shaky, and lowering her eyelashes the way Bethany did when she was squabbling with her husband.

“You did?” he asked, unhelpfully. “That’s very flattering.”

“Foolish, more like,” she snapped.

“Well, but you must have married quickly thereafter…. Or was I helping you commit adultery?”

“My Pierre was decrepit by the time we met,” she said. “The poor, poor man was good for nothing but lying in bed.”

“By all accounts, Pierre and I had a lot in common,” he observed.

“Not in the most important aspects,” she said. She leaned toward him and as boldly as any bird of paradise, slid her tongue along the plumpness of his lower lip. After all, didn’t he say that Frenchwomen learned quickly? She had a half claim to French nationalit fen 9;mpness of y.

She heard his breathing hitch, but he didn’t say anything.

So she leaned even closer and put her hand on his knees. She could feel muscles there, strong and sleek under her hand, begging her to run her hand higher, to—

He pulled away so fast that she nearly lost her balance and fell into the well of the carriage.

“I debased myself too many times in Paris,
ma petite
,” he said, and there was something implacable in his tone that told her that she had just lost the battle. “No matter how tempting you are, I will not do so again.”

“Who could have known that you had turned into a saint?” she asked, an edge to her voice. “By all accounts, you have been universally kind to women of my nationality.”

“My kindness is exhausted,” he said.

She believed him, that was the worst of it.

“I haven’t slept with a woman since I took my drunken self onto a boat coming across the Channel,” he said, lifting her chin so that their eyes met in the near darkness. “If I were to sleep with another Frenchwoman, Emelie, it would be you.”

She opened her mouth, and he stopped it with a fierce kiss.

“But I don’t do that anymore,” he said one swooning moment later. “I don’t drink, either, in case you’re thinking of getting me drunk.”

“Do you intend to give up the pleasures of the bed forever?” Emma asked with some curiosity.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s see. You sound like a monk….” She paused and let the silence dangle for a moment. “Or a eunuch.”

“Emelie! You’re shocking me. And you a young lady of good breeding.”

“Oh no,” she said. “If I was a young lady of good breeding, how would Paris have ever happened?”

“I wonder about that myself,” he said a little grimly.

“And it
did
,” she continued blithely. “So you needn’t worry about sullying my reputation.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m worried about
my
reputation.”

“That’s not fair!” Emma cried, with all the strength of her disappointment. If she went home without winning the
challenge—even if he didn’t know it was a challenge—then she would have to cancel their betrothal. There was no way about it other than that. And she didn’t—

She stopped that thought and steadied her voice. “I do believe that we are in agreement that you owe me a favor,
monsieur.
”

He looked at her hard for a moment. The smile curling his lips made her squirm in her seat. Then he suddenly thrust open the trap in the roof and shouted something up at his coachman. Emma couldn’t hear it.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“I’m going to fulfill my favor,” he said, settling back in the corner and crossing his arms over his chest. He couldn’t have made it any plainer that dalliance was no longer on his mind.

Emma narrowed her eyes. She had a most uncomfortable warmth between her legs, and a squirming feeling all over her body, and her heart was still pounding.

“Since I cannot, alas, fulfill your first request,” he said, as politely as if he were unable to serve her a cup of hot tea, “I shall do my best to make your brief stay here in England a pleasant one. I shall show you a place that will kaceof hot tea be of great interest to you.”

The only place of interest that occurred to Emma was his house—nay, his bedchamber—but that seemed unlikely to be their destination.

She settled back into her corner. But she wasn’t going to wrap her arms over her chest and allow him to bask in his morality. Oh no. She may be a beginner at this seduction business, but she had a feeling that she was a natural learner. So she leaned her head back, as if she were exhausted, closed her eyes, and thought about the way he kissed her, and the way his hand had settled on her breast.

A little breathy sound came from her lips. She threw an
arm over her head and grabbed the curtain, as if to steady herself when the carriage swayed. The bodice on her dress strained to drop below her nipple. The sensation was unbearably exciting and made her shift in her seat. She didn’t open her eyes. Either he was looking at her, or he wasn’t.

Instead, she concentrated on remembering his kiss. He had run his tongue right into her mouth. If she hadn’t heard gossip about such things, she never would have believed it. Of course, she knew about the mating act. But she’d never…really…in fact, it was rather the same, wasn’t it? When Gil’s tongue ran along her lips, she opened them as if he was the sweetest piece of sugar candy she’d ever been offered. And he tasted so good, the kind of good that made her heart thud against her ribs even to think of it. She squirmed a little in her seat. Because if kissing
was
like the act of consummating a marriage…The very thought made her feel strange.