with a rat, and she didn’t think she could fend off persistent enquiries without further arousing his curiosity.
She must regain control of this situation immediately.
‘I’ll just put them back in the box. I’m sure you can return them,’ she said, giving him a determined smile. ‘Shall we go upstairs now?’
To her further frustration, he shook his head. ‘There’s no need to hurry. We have all evening. I thought we’d chat first.’
She had to work hard to keep her expression impassive. ‘Chat’ was the last thing she wanted.
She should give him a flirtatious look, try to entice him, but she couldn’t remember how. ‘I thought you would be...impatient,’ she said, a little desperately, trying to bring his mind back to the physical.
‘Oh, I am. But delay just heightens anticipation, making the fulfilment all the more satisfying. Now, my sister said you’ve spent most of the last few years in the country. What did you do there, if you didn’t paint? Although in such a grand manor house, I expect there was an excellent library. Did you re-read the classics, or more modern works?’
Once again, she struggled to find an innocuous reply. ‘I...wasn’t much given to reading.’
And once again, his eyebrows winged upward. ‘But you always loved to read. Was the library inferior?’
Her chest was getting so tight, it was difficult to breathe. ‘N-no, the library was, ah, was quite good.’
‘Then why did you not avail yourself of it?’
Oh, why would he not just leave it be? ‘I didn’t always have access to it,’ she ground out.
‘Not have access? But you were mistress of the household. I can’t imagine you letting some old fright of a housekeeper deny you books!’
‘It wasn’t the housekeeper,’ she blurted.
He was silent so long, she thought perhaps he’d finally taken note of her obvious reluctance and dropped the matter. Until he said quietly, ‘Your husband denied you books?’
Oh, why had she never learned to tell a convincing lie? ‘Yes,’ she snapped, irritated with him for his persistence, with herself for not being able to come up with a plausible story to deflect him. ‘Whenever I displeased him. And I displeased him constantly.’
Setting down her wine glass with a clatter, she reached over to seize his hand. ‘Please, can we have no more of this? I’d like to go upstairs now.’
Though he continued to regard her with an expression entirely too penetrating for her comfort, he nodded and set down his own glass. ‘Far be it for me to deny an eager lady.’
He had no idea how eager, she thought, light-headed with relief as he followed her up the stairs. Eager not for caresses, but to pleasure him and be gone before he could tug out of her any more ugly secrets from her marriage.
At the chamber door, she took his hand and led him to the bed. ‘Let me make you more comfortable,’ she said, urging him to sit, then attacking his cravat. The sooner she got to bare skin, the closer she’d be to seducing—and escaping—him.
But though he let her unwind the cloth and toss it aside, when she started on the buttons of his coat, he stayed her hands and pulled her to sit beside him on the bed. Tilting her head up to face him, he asked, ‘Did he take away your paints, too, when you did not please him?’
Caught off guard again, she couldn’t seem to come up with anything but the truth. ‘Yes.’
‘How long have you been without books and paints?’
She pulled her chin from his fingers, not wanting to meet his gaze. ‘A long time.’
‘And piano?’
Ah, how she’d missed her music! She’d hung on the longest to that, sneaking out in the depths of the night, like a burglar who’s discovered where the valuable jewels are hidden. In the smaller music room, a location far removed from the servants’ quarters and the main rooms, she’d played softly, in darkness or in moonlight...until that last, terrible night.
She jerked her mind free of the memories. ‘I’m not the woman you once knew, Alastair.’
Gently he recaptured her chin and made her look up at him. ‘Aren’t you?’
He lowered his mouth to hers, barely brushing her lips, his touch butterfly-light. This time, it was she who levered his lips apart with her tongue, then stroked at the wet warmth within.
With a growl deep in his throat, he responded immediately, seizing her shoulders and deepening the kiss. She wriggled her trapped hands down his chest and stomach until she could reach the buttons of his trouser flap, then struggled to open them against the erection that stretched the cloth taut. Finally working two buttons free, she slipped a hand inside, caressing down his length to the silky tip and back.
When he gasped, she broke the kiss, pushed herself off the bed and knelt before him. Before he could countermand her, she quickly popped the other buttons, grasped his member in both hands and took him into her mouth.
With him now beyond words, she ran her lips and tongue over every surface, listening carefully for his responses, deepening her touch or increasing friction when he gasped or thrust against her. Having catalogued his most sensitive areas, she focused on them, sucking, nipping and laving gently, then harder, then gently again, trying to stave off and intensify his climax.
It seemed she had done well, for some moments later he cried out, his nails biting into her shoulders through the fabric of her gown as he reached his peak, shuddering.
Not until he sagged back on to the bed did she gently disengage. Noting that he seemed for the moment insensate, she walked over to the washbasin to refresh herself, planning how she would next attempt to satisfy him.
Undress him, stimulate him, straddle him, she thought, ticking off in her mind the techniques that might leave him most sated. She damped down the shivers of feeling sparking at her breasts and between her thighs as she envisaged pleasuring him.
Pleasuring him, she rebuked her stirring senses. This had nothing to do with her.
Hands at her shoulders startled her. ‘Come back to bed,’ he whispered, nuzzling her neck.
Obediently she turned and allowed him to guide her over. ‘Let me undress you first,’ she urged.
‘Only if I can then return the favour.’
Get him naked and she might avoid that. Murmuring a non-committal response, she turned to seat him at the bedside.
Swiftly, she removed his jacket and waistcoat, then pulled the shirt over his head. And caught her breath, as any woman would, for he was so beautifully made.
Strong arms and shoulders gleamed in the candlelight. The muscles of his chest tensed as she ran a finger over them, down the taut belly to the edge of his trousers, then back up and over the scar that circled one shoulder.
‘Sabre slash,’ he answered her unspoken question. ‘Doesn’t hurt any more.’
‘Where?’ she asked, curious in spite of herself.
‘Badajoz.’
She’d read accounts in the newspapers about the battle. Not yet retired from Society, she’d also heard he’d entered the fortress city first, leading the van of the ‘forlorn hope’ through the breach the engineers had blasted into the walls. Her heart, not yet armoured against him, had swelled with fear at his recklessness, with joy that he’d been spared.
Denying the heat building within her, she ran her tongue along the scarred ridge of flesh, feeling him gasp and flinch under her touch. Encouraged by his response, she kissed lower while her hands caressed the lines of muscle and sinew.
Concentrate on him, she urged herself as her fingers tingled