Wicked Seduction (14 page)

He looked at her, amazement coloring his thoughts. A woman with a rich, doting husband was exactly what he needed. But . . .“I do not know that I am up to spinning anything beautiful these days.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “It shall be easy once you start. I loved every word of Alex’s story.”

“But that was real.”

She shrugged, her lips soft. “It doesn’t matter. Real or not, your words will be perfect.”

He shook his head, but she was looking at him with such light in her eyes. His head stilled, his objection dying on his lips. In the end, he sighed. “I will try,” he promised. For her, he would try anything.

“Excellent.” But then her brow creased with worry. “But I don’t think they are in London yet. They will be, never fear. The baroness loves the Season. A few days. A week at most.”

He nodded, his mind spinning. He might not be in London in a week’s time. Alex’s father had asked him to come by tomorrow. It was possible that the man wanted to invest in Kit’s shipping venture. If nothing else, he might give Kit a loan to restock the ship. Then as soon as there was cargo, Kit would leave. Before, he had believed he would never sail again. But his leg was healing better than he would have thought. He couldn’t climb the riggings, but he could command. Besides, what choice did he have? Shipping was the only way he could earn a living, and cargo waited for no man. Or woman.

But there was something he had to do first. Something he had to put to rest before he could leave England again. A memory of Scheherazade that needed its final good-bye. And smart as she was, his angel read the need right off his face.

“I suppose,” she said slowly, “that there is something else you want to know, isn’t there?”

He nodded, misery welling up inside him. He had no desire to be with Scheherazade. Whatever he had once felt for her was long gone, and certainly his boyhood desires were nothing compared to what he felt for Maddy right then. But he had come to England with the express intent of returning Alex to his family and reassuring himself, once and for all, that Scheherazade was well cared for. It was her memory that had kept him sane on the boat. And it was his nightmares of her death at his hands that had kept him in Africa when he might have returned home. More even than a reunion with his brothers, he needed to see that she was alive and well. Once he saw that, then he could at last move on from his past.

None of those thoughts found their way to his lips. He couldn’t express the tortured reasoning behind his needs. And in the end, Maddy simply stopped waiting for his explanation. With a blank expression, she stepped over to her dresser and pulled a letter from a pile of papers there.

“Lord and Lady Blackstone sent a brief missive agreeing to attend Rose’s tea next week,” she said, her body stiff and her tone flat. “There was a second letter with it,” she said as she handed him a pristine envelope addressed in a tidy hand. “This letter was for you.”

Chapter 12

Kit took the letter with a shaking hand. It was from Scher. He knew it. And he needed to read it, but in front of Maddy? In front of the woman he had just seduced? He couldn’t do that, especially now that her face had gone flat.

“I have hurt you,” he said, stating the obvious.

Her expression hardened even more. “Life has hurt me,” she finally said. “And I miss my father.”

She missed more than just her father. She missed her childhood and the innocence of that time. Just as he missed the carefree man he’d been before Michael tossed him on a boat and declared him dead.

“What does she say?” she asked, her tone almost bland.

He broke the seal and pulled out the sheet, but his vision swam as he tried to read it. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. He was a man, damn it. He had survived in the worst hell known to mankind. He had even killed. He could read one damn letter from the woman he once loved. He rubbed his face and opened his eyes.

“ ‘Dearest Kit,’ ” he read aloud. “ ‘I am stunned but so thrilled to hear that you are alive. Please, dear friend, will you come visit me tomorrow at tea time?’”

He stared at the missive, his mind numb with emotion. His knees went weak and he found he was sitting back upon Maddy’s bed.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Isn’t this exactly what you wanted? To see her again?”

He nodded. It was. It most certainly was. And yet . . . “I have been in my new rooms a day,” he said. “I have already received a dozen letters just like this. Old friends, acquaintances, people I once knew.”

She touched his cheek, the gesture tender even though she held the rest of her apart from him. “You thought to get something more personal from her?”

He nodded.

“She is married, Kit. She has two children and is increasing with her third. You have been gone from her thoughts for nearly seven years.”

“She hasn’t been gone from mine!” he exploded, coming off the bed and stepping away from Maddy’s too intimate touch. “Every day, I thought of her. Every breath was because she waited for me. Everything I did—and I did such terrible things, Maddy—was so I could come back to her.”

“And yet you didn’t. You bought your freedom when?”

“Four years ago,” he said, the words paining him as he spoke.

“You stayed away for four more years. Why?” Her eyes were dark, her body still, but he knew she was listening with her whole heart. And that she would not judge him.

He sighed. “I was more animal than man. I feared I would hurt her.”

“Or be reviled by her?”

“Yes.”

He heard her hand fall to her side. “I cannot imagine how hard this must be for you.”

“I don’t love her, angel. I swear to God in heaven that it is not how I feel toward her.”

“Then what is it?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. She was everything to me for so long. Everything I had lost, everything I thought I wanted. But then I changed. I became an animal to survive.”

She touched him then. Despite the way he had hurt her, she pressed her fingers to his back and let her warmth seep into him. “You are not an animal now.”

He turned around, catching her when she would have slipped away from him. He wrapped her in his arms. Her body was stiff and unyielding, but she softened quickly enough. Within the space of two breaths, her body melted into his. He closed his eyes as his head dropped to her hair. She was real. She was not some mirage of a memory of another time. And he drew his strength from her. His angel.

“I cannot see her,” he suddenly decided. “Not when she writes me like that.”

For a long moment, she had no response. He, on the other hand, felt her breathing, the erotic press of her lips against his neck, and even the rapid beat of her heart. But then he felt her strengthen, as her body slowly drew apart from his.

“You will go see her, Kit.”

He didn’t want to release her, but he would not cage her against his side. He owed her that much at least. “Angel—” he began, but she stepped away, folding her arms across her chest. And damn he was a bastard for noticing that her nipples were tight, her breasts full and pump.

“You must go,” she said.

“No. No, I won’t.” Did he sound like a stubborn child? “I shall go see my brother instead. I should like to see the house where I grew up again. Even if he has painted it a ghastly color. Green. Pah!”

Her eyes lightened at that, but her mouth remained implacable. “You should go see your brother. It is well past time. But you must go see Lady Blackstone first. Tomorrow at tea, Kit. You must.”

“Why?” Why should he go when she was but a fading memory? Why should he look at the past when the present was so much more enticing?

“Because you cannot move on until you put the memory of her to rest.” There was more she wanted to say. He read it in the tightness of her body and the way she pinched her lips shut.

He looked away, unable to see her looking so prim. Especially since he knew the fire that burned just beneath her skin. “Agh,” he said, self-loathing churning in his gut. “I am useless this way! I cannot think. I cannot even fight for the woman I want.”

He heard her breath pull in with a hiss. “She is
married
, Kit. There is no fighting for a woman who is pledged to someone else.”

“I know!” he snapped. He hadn’t meant Scher. He had meant her, Maddy, his angel. He wanted her. Just looking at her made him hard with want. But with all the storm of emotions in his head, he could not find the words to express that. “You don’t understand me!”

“I understand that you are longing for something that is gone. I too spent months crying for my father, wishing for my friends back home, desperately pleading with God to make it different. I miss that life, Kit. With every breath I take, I miss it. But it is gone.”

“I cannot do it,” he said, the revelation cutting so deep, he could barely breathe.

“You can,” she returned. “You are stronger than you think.”

“Not without you,” he said. “Not alone, I’m not. I can’t . . .” He raised his arms in despair. “I just can’t.”

He saw her close her eyes, fighting some internal struggle. Then when she opened them, he saw that she had surrendered. To what, he didn’t know. To him, perhaps. To the impossible position he had just placed her.

“Then you won’t go alone,” she said. “I will tell Rose that I must go convince Lady Blackstone to join us for tea. She will get her father to loan me the carriage. We will go together tomorrow.”

He looked at her, seeing her willingness to help him, and he was humbled. “I owe you so much,” he said. “And have abused you most abominably.”

She looked at her clasped hands. “You may thank me by making your peace with Lady Blackstone tomorrow, by attending Rose’s tea Tuesday next, and then by repairing whatever fences you need to with your brothers.”

He would. He would do what she asked because he could not bear to hurt her more. “Of course, angel.” He took a step toward her, but she held up her hand.

“I think you should go now. Rose will be coming home soon, and she always wants to talk about the evening.”

He glanced at the clock. Rose would not likely be home for another hour at the earliest, but he didn’t argue. He knew it was a convenient excuse to get him out of her bedroom. He grimaced. She should not need to lie to get him to leave. He should not have climbed in here in the first place.

“Thank you, angel,” he said, knowing the words were so inadequate.

“My name is Maddy,” she said. “Now go.”

He nodded and went for the window. He had no choice with her body so rigid, as if she held herself together by willpower alone. He knew that feeling well, and so he did the best thing for her. He left. As quickly as possible, though his heart wanted nothing more than to take her back to bed and caress away the pain he had caused. But that would only make matters worse.

He paused only once. He climbed down the wall easily enough, landing with a soft thud. And when he had gathered up his things, he stopped to look up at her window. She was there, silhouetted against the candlelight from her bedroom. Her skin was touched by moonlight, and her hair was askew, making a soft halo about her face. She had never looked more like an angel. But she did not want that name, so he ceded to her wishes.

“Thank you, Maddy,” he said loud enough for her to hear. Then he added two more words under his breath. “My angel.” And he ducked away.

Maddy watched him disappear into the night. He moved silently, and when he donned his dark coat, he was also invisible. But she saw him. In her mind’s eye, she saw every part of his body, that which she had seen and that which she had only dreamt. She felt like she knew him intimately, just as he probably felt he knew her.

Except it was all a lie. With a sigh filled with remorse, she stepped away from the window and locked the pane tight. He would not creep in on her unawares again.

Oh, but it had been wonderful. Such pleasure! She hadn’t known it could be like that. And they hadn’t even done the most intimate act. She wondered if it would be even better then. Or if a man invading her body would be painful and uncomfortable. And most important, would she ever really know?

She was a respectable woman, gently reared and niece to an earl. Her lineage was excellent, if not her dowry. She had every reason to hope for a match this Season, and weeks yet to catch one. She should be on her knees thanking God that she had not given away her virginity this night. That Kit hadn’t pressed for her to strip out her clothing and give him all. She doubted she would have refused. She was that mindless when she was with him.

But she was still a virgin. And she could still make an acceptable match. Which meant a husband, a home, and children. Everything she wanted. But only if she refused Kit the next time he knocked on her window. Only if she cut him out of her heart right here and right now.

He was not proposing marriage. He was obviously still in love with Lady Blackstone. Maddy was merely his relief of the moment, and she could not be such a stupid, reckless woman around him. Even now, she worried that she was tainted somehow. That eligible bachelors would look at her and know what she had done.

No more! From this moment on, she would act with the utmost propriety. Her bedroom window would be latched shut. No intimate conversations in private—whether it be the kitchen, the back of a ballroom, or at her bedroom window. And as for tomorrow . . .

Her mind stuttered to a halt. Propriety demanded that she absolutely not go with Kit to visit Lord and Lady Blackstone. Unmarried girls simply did not travel with gentlemen who were not related to them. But she had promised, and more than that, she believed that he could not face Lady Blackstone alone. If she did not pick him up in the carriage tomorrow, then he would not go on his own. Which meant he would be trapped in pretend fantasies of the life that might have been.

She couldn’t condemn him to that. But she would have to take steps to ensure that she didn’t weaken. She had no sense around him, but there was a solution. After all,
two
unmarried ladies could travel with propriety to a lady’s house.
Two
unmarried ladies could also travel in a coach with an unmarried man, though that was less proper. And best of all, the second unmarried lady in question had already decided that she would marry Mr. Frazier. Rose would naturally leap at the chance to spend time with her imagined fiancé.

It might not be fair to Mr. Frazier to expose his vulnerabilities to Rose, especially since Rose was a terrible gossip. But that was the price he would have to pay. If he wanted Maddy there beside him when he saw his Scheherazade, then Rose would have to be there as well. That’s how proper women behaved. And from this moment on, that’s exactly what Maddy intended to be: excruciatingly, horribly, and without a doubt
proper
.