A Most Sinful Proposal (7 page)

Marissa stood a moment and watched them go. Her heart was beating hard and she still felt shaky around the knees. She took a deep breath and then another, wondering what on earth had possessed her to ogle him so blatantly. The question as to whether or not she was fast had been answered well and truly. At least, that was what Valentine must think her.

Well, it was too late now to turn time back. Later, she would deal with the consequences of her actions.

The horses were tethered to the churchyard fence, but as she took a step toward them, she heard the sound of another horse approaching from over the crest of the hill.

Baron Von Hautt had returned and he was coming toward her. She could hardly believe it. She was certain her mouth fell open. He drew up his mount opposite her in the lane, earth scattering around him, his long coat flapping about him like giant wings.

He was looking at her. His eyes were light, but not the glorious blue of Valentine’s, rather they were pale and chilly. With his gray hair and youngish face he was striking, and yet his looks left her cold. And afraid.

Von Hautt’s mouth twitched into a half smile and he nodded at her. “You are every bit as beautiful as I believed you to be when I saw you through the window at Abbey Thorne Manor,” he said.

“How dare you spy on me!”

“Oh I dare,” he said in that cold voice. “I dare a great deal.”

For an awful moment she thought he was going to urge his mount closer and she wondered if she should turn and run to the safety of the church. But he must have seen the panic in her eyes because he laughed.

“Do not fear, I will not hurt you. Not yet. I mean to save you for last.”

The next moment he’d wrenched his mount around and galloped off, down the hill toward the village. Shocked, shaking, Marissa ran a few steps after him, and saw him take a sharp turn to the left, away from the coaching inn, where the others had gone, and vanish between a row of cottages.

V
alentine carried Jasper into the inn and up the creaking staircase, into a chamber above. By the time the doctor arrived at the vicar’s behest, his friend was lying on the bed, pale and in pain, but awake. Perhaps he would be better unconscious, Valentine thought with a grimace, as the doctor opened his bag and took out some sharp-looking instruments.

“The bullet is still lodged in his shoulder,” he announced, slipping on a pair of glasses. “I will need to remove it and dress the wound.”

Lady Bethany moved closer and took Jasper’s hand firmly in hers. That was when Valentine decided he was no longer required, and made a hasty exit, closing the door behind him. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the sight of blood, it was just that he preferred not to see too much of it. Especially when that blood belonged to one of his closest and oldest friends.

A servant hurried by, giving him an odd look. Self-consciously, Valentine pulled his jacket tighter across his bare chest and buttoned it. His shirt was still upstairs with Jasper but he was unlikely to be
wearing it again, considering the state of it. He used it as a bandage because there was nothing else, never thinking twice, until he’d seen Marissa.

The image of her was suddenly right there in front of him and he knew it wasn’t possible he could have mistaken the look on her face. Valentine groaned and rubbed a hand over his eyes, shaking his head. Just because Vanessa had shuddered at his merest touch didn’t mean all women were the same…did it?

Marissa’s gaze on him had been like liquid fire, singeing his skin, lapping his body, burning him. He’d felt his cock jutting out like a prize stallion. Valentine never lost control of his passions, but in that moment he’d honestly wondered if he was about to spill in front of her. She had done that. The carnal force they were generating between them had done that.

God help him if he ever actually touched her bare skin. He’d probably self-combust. They’d find his body smoldering away and never know why.

The thought was humorous in a black sort of way, and he grinned as he continued down the creaky stairs and out through the door. But his smile vanished when the first person he saw was the source of his physical discomfort. Marissa had arrived with the two horses. A hostler was just helping her down from the saddle to the cobbles—there was a flash of stockinged calf above her riding boots. Safely on the ground, she shook out the skirt of her riding habit and reached up to adjust her hat, brushing back the veil that had fallen over one eye.

Valentine stood and admired her pale skin and dark hair, allowing his gaze to follow the trim curve of her waist and the voluptuous swell of her bosom in the tight emerald green jacket. Already he could feel her effect on him beginning to take hold, and he had to give himself a stern talking-to before he felt able to approach her with the required decorum.

“Miss Rotherhild,” he called in a hearty voice that sounded horribly false even to his own ears.

She jumped like a frightened filly and looked at him with huge dark eyes and it was only then he knew something was very wrong.

He reached her in several strides and took her arm in a firm grip. As he thought, she was trembling. He wanted to hold her, to wrap his arms tight about her and draw her into his body, where he knew she fitted so well. If they hadn’t been in such a public place he may well have done so.

As if she’d read his mind she stepped away, putting space between them, clearly making an effort to regain her usual calm. “He came back,” she said.

“He?” Valentine growled, hoping she didn’t mean who he thought she meant.

“Baron Von Hautt. He came back after you had gone.”

His anger and frustration were difficult to contain. He made a sound in his throat, took a step away and then spun around and came back again. “I should never have left you there alone,” he said with a low, intense fury.

“You couldn’t have known—”

“I should have waited for you.”

“Lord Jasper needed help.”

He fixed her with a compelling look. “Did he hurt you, Marissa?”

She shook her head and a lock of her dark hair tumbled onto her cheek. “He frightened me, that’s all.”

He glowered at her, although it wasn’t Marissa he was upset with and she seemed to know that.

“What are we going to do now?” she said after a moment.

“That depends on Jasper,” he answered her more moderately. “He may have to remain here until the doctor thinks it’s safe to move him. You and I and Lady Bethany can of course return to Abbey Thorne Manor, but while we’re here I’d like to visit the ruins of Montfitchet Castle and talk with this Mr. Jensen, the local historian.”

“No, the baron mustn’t stop you from doing what you came to do, Valentine,” she said with approval. She took a couple of steps toward the inn, her silk skirts rustling. She looked back at him over her shoulder. “Will we see how Lord Jasper and my grandmother are managing?”

He followed after her without another word.

The doctor had finished his operation and dressed the wound in clean bandages and was arranging for some restorative medicines to be prepared by the local apothecary and brought to the inn. The last remnants of the messy business of removing the bullet were being tidied away, and Lady Bethany looked up with a relieved smile when she saw her granddaughter.

Marissa went to take her outstretched hand, giving the patient a sympathetic grimace.

“Poor Lord Jasper,” she said. “Are you in a great deal of pain?”

“Not so much, thank you, my dear. The doctor tells me I will live to make a full recovery.”

“And you, Grandmamma?”

Lady Bethany’s smile grew thin. “If I’d known when I agreed to accompany you to a weekend house party, Marissa, that it would be this exciting I may have reconsidered. Perhaps next time you could confine yourself to playing whist and charades, my dear, instead of gallivanting about all over the countryside after roses and Prussian barons.”

Marissa bent to kiss her cheek. “Come now, Grandmamma, you have to admit this is much more fun than standing on windswept hillsides admiring ferns and mosses?” Even as she said it she wondered whether she was trying to soothe Lady Bethany’s ruffled nerves or whether she actually was enjoying herself.

“I am not admitting to anything.” But Lady Bethany’s eyes sparkled.

“I wish I had got my hands on Von Hautt,” Jasper muttered. “This is all his fault.”

Lady Bethany’s expression hardened alarmingly. “Next time he turns up you will let me deal with him, Jasper. I find a nice sharp hatpin does the trick very nicely.”

The two men looked at her in astonishment—with a hefty dollop of admiration in Jasper’s case—while Marissa stifled a giggle.

“Lord Kent still wants to see the ruins of Mont
fitchet Castle,” she said, when she was able.

“I will rest here until you are done,” Jasper declared. “The doctor says I should be able to travel back to Abbey Thorne Manor if there is no more bleeding from the wound.”

“Did you want to come with us, Grandmamma?”

“I think I will stay here, too,” Lady Bethany replied, fixing her dark gaze on Valentine. “I trust you will take care of my granddaughter, Kent.”

Valentine hesitated. Marissa could guess the reason. It wasn’t that he didn’t intend to take care of her, but rather because he would have preferred she remain here at the inn, out of the way. Perhaps she should save him the awkwardness and feign a headache? But Marissa had no intention of making life easier for Valentine.

Besides, she had to prove to herself that she was perfectly capable of being in his company without behaving like the wayward heroine in a dreadful penny novel.

“Indeed I will take good care of her, Lady Bethany,” he said smoothly, and gave a little bow. “Unless she prefers to rest here…?”

Marissa dashed his hopes. “I’m not at all tired, thank you.”

“My granddaughter has never been one of those feeble young ladies who cannot walk more than a few steps without catching breath. I blame tightlacing,” Lady Bethany said. “Once at Brighton Pavilion I remember I was—”

“We will leave you now, Grandmamma, and Lord Jasper,” Marissa spoke hastily, before her grand
mother’s risqué story could progress any further. “Come, Lord Kent, we have a rose to find.”

All that remained of lonely Montfitchet Castle was a crumbling stone tower surrounded by a sea of long grass. A wild rose rambled through what had once been a narrow window, but although Valentine examined it closely he knew at once it was just a common dog rose, the single petalled flower a pale shade of pink and not the exquisite cup of golden petals he had read and dreamed about.

“No luck?” Marissa said.

“If the Crusader’s Rose was ever here then it is long gone.”

“At least we know Baron Von Hautt has not found it, either.”

“Yet,” he muttered.

“Do you know,” Marissa said, “this is nothing like my father’s expeditions. Are your rose hunts always this exciting, Valentine?”

“Actually they are normally very leisurely affairs. It is only since you arrived that things have heated up.”

The word was a mistake. It reminded him of what else was heating up every time he glanced in her direction.

“I think we should return to the inn,” he said gruffly, but as he moved away one of the whiplike stems of the thorny dog rose caught across his sleeve and the back of his jacket. He tried to shrug himself free but the thorns were too sharp and too tenacious; he was effectively their prisoner.

Marissa, seeing his dilemma, tried to pry the
thorns loose, only to stop with a cry as one of the hooks dug deep into the pad of her thumb, despite her glove.

“Let me see.”

Valentine reached for her hand, his fingers closing around hers, just as he remembered he shouldn’t risk touching her. But it was too late. Slowly, like someone unwrapping a forbidden birthday treat, he unfastened the single delicate button at her wrist and gently drew off her glove. Her hand was soft and her skin unblemished apart from a smear of blood on her thumb. He bent to examine the wound, playing for time. The bead of red swelled against her white flesh where the thorn had dug deep.

“I—I don’t think the thorn broke off,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Valentine?”

The veins on her wrist were visible through her pale skin, and he could feel the beat of her pulse beneath his fingers. He felt dizzy, as if he’d drunk too much, but it wasn’t alcohol making his head spin. It was her, Marissa Rotherhild.

Before he considered consequences—indeed his brain had little to do with it—he lifted her hand to his mouth and ran his tongue delicately across the injury, the taste of her blood clean and salty.

His eyes met hers and the intense eroticism of the moment held them spellbound.

Her lashes swept down to hide whatever she was feeling, but he felt the involuntary trembling of her fingers in his, and knew she was as affected as he. “You will think me—” she began, but didn’t finish.

“What will I think you?” he murmured, his voice deep and husky. She was closer than a moment
ago, the scent of her filling his senses. Although her dark hair was pinned up beneath her hat, he could see some curls ready to tumble down. He wanted to tug them loose and bury his face in their warm darkness.

Gently she withdrew her hand from his. She took a step back, stumbling, putting space between them.

Was he frightening her? Valentine felt a wave of doubt crash over him. Could he have misread her? Was what he’d thought of as an intense attraction actually terror and disgust, the same emotions Vanessa had felt whenever he came close to her? The old poison seeped stealthily into his heart and mind and certainty turned to doubt.

You are no better than a beast, Valentine. I cannot bear your touch or your kisses.

No amount of patience or declarations of love had changed her opinion, and in the end they were bitter strangers living underneath the one roof. But always in the depths of his heart he’d wondered if perhaps Vanessa was right and he was beastly. A man beyond love.

“The rose thorns will tear your jacket,” Marissa said. Her voice saved him from further memories of the past. “You’d better take it off.”

He gave a grateful nod. It was only as he reached to flick open the buttons and shrug himself out of the garment that he recalled he was no longer wearing his shirt.

He stood, uncertain whether to proceed. “Miss Rotherhild,” he said, uncomfortably, “I am naked. You may wish to turn your back.”

She blinked at him, but there was no disgust in her face. Her expression was gentle, a little dazed, and the smile that curled her lips teased his senses in a way that was exceedingly dangerous.

“Oh, I—I don’t think that will be necessary, Lord Kent.”

A ripple of lust curled in his stomach. There it was in her face, that same sense of a storm brewing that he’d seen outside the church. Slowly Valentine slipped one arm out of his jacket. Her gaze widened and her hand went involuntarily to her lips. She stood perfectly still as he began to remove his other arm from its sleeve.

In other circumstances he may have found it amusing, ridiculous, this deliberate disrobing in front of an innocent young lady. But there was nothing funny about what he was feeling. And Marissa…well, if he could believe what he was reading in her face she found his actions utterly compelling.

Valentine knew he was no Adonis, and yet the way she was eating him up with her eyes made him feel like a god. A master of sensuality. In a heartbeat he’d been released from the misery of his marriage to Vanessa, his shackles broken.

She took a step toward him, reaching out her hand, only to pause uncertainly. “I have a great need to…That is, may I touch you?” she spoke earnestly.

“Yes,” he growled, aching for her fingers on his nakedness.

She pressed her palm to his chest, waiting a beat, and then slid it down and over his breast bone. He shivered. She put her other hand on him, then re
membering her glove, quickly unbuttoned it and drew it off, before replacing her hands—her skin against his. His chest was rising and falling heavily with his breath as she stroked her palms over his shoulders and down the muscles of his arms, then back again. Once more he had to resort to squeezing his hands into fists to stop himself from grabbing hold of her. She brushed her fingertip over his rigid nipples and examined the wiry strands of hair growing around them. She leaned closer, as if she was a botanist examining some rare specimen, and her warm breath teased his flesh. An image flashed into his mind of her mouth closing over his cock.