Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (24 page)

He tilted his head back, breathing in the remembered scent of heliotrope and tasting sherry on his tongue as he relived the extraordinary moment when his mouth had touched hers and everything in the world had changed for him. His arousal deepened into lust.

He thought of this afternoon, of how touching her cheek had stirred her desire. She was an innocent, he reminded himself, but here in the darkness of his imagination, that thought seemed to enhance his lust instead of suppressing it, spreading it through his body in a thick, hot wave. The passion in her was unmistakable; it lurked deep down, waiting for the right man to bring it out. He wanted to take her innocence, revel in that passion, and show her he was that man.

“I know what you did.”

Saints preserve us.

Jack almost groaned aloud at the sound of Linnet’s voice, low but unmistakable despite the music coming from the drawing room. His self-control was barely tethered as it was. Did she have to come out here and test it further?

He glanced at the line of tall boxwoods along the side of the house, and he cursed himself for not having the sense to hide among them before he started thinking lusty thoughts. “You shouldn’t be out here,” he said, not daring to turn around. “Not alone with me.”

“I saw you pass by a few minutes ago, but I doubt anyone else did,” she murmured, still keeping her voice low.

Desperate, he tried again. “You can’t be sure of that.”

“I’ve just come out for a stroll along the terrace, and you’re down there in the dark where no one can see you.”

“Thank God for that, at least,” he muttered, and took a deep breath, working to tamp down lust as best he could. “Still, best if you go back in.”

“I just came out to tell you I know what you were doing.”

Walk away, he told himself. Walk away now. But even as he thought it, he knew he wasn’t going to. Striving to seem as if he were under perfect control, he turned to face her.

She stood at the top of the steps, and the light behind her that spilled through the drawing room windows illuminated the golden locks of her hair like a halo and lent a faint glow to the edges of her white silk evening frock. She looked angelic, innocent, and somehow, that harkened to the devil inside him like no siren ever could.

He took another deep breath. “I shan’t use one of my three remaining questions today to ask what you mean, but if you care to explain, I’m all ears.”

“This afternoon in the rose garden, you did what Conrath did. I told you about his holding my hand, of how he . . . caressed it, and you turned right around and tried the same sort of thing. Don’t deny it.”

If he pursued this topic, he was risking annihilation, but then he reminded himself of the goal he’d set that afternoon in Belinda’s drawing room. His purpose in all of this was to spark her arousal and light her on fire and make her want him as much as he wanted her. He couldn’t light her on fire if he didn’t strike any matches. “I won’t deny it, but I do have to wonder if you know why I did it.”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? You wanted to make me feel . . . feel . . .” She paused and looked away, and though the light behind her and the darkness in front of her prevented him from seeing the blush in her cheeks, he knew it was there. He didn’t see it, but he felt it—the first stir of desire in her. It called to him. He took a step forward.

“Aroused,” he supplied. “I believe ‘aroused’ is the word you’re looking for. Yes, I wanted to arouse you.”

“So you admit it.”

“Of course I admit it. I see no reason not to.” He took another step, like a moth to flame. “Did it work?”

She stirred, glancing over her shoulder and back at him. “When you play twenty questions, do you always ask such inappropriate ones?”

“You came out here,” he reminded her. “You brought up the topic. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with desire, Linnet. It would be much more wrong if you didn’t feel it.”

She shook her head, looking away. “You asked me why I fell in love with Conrath. I’ll tell you why.”

She paused for a long moment before she looked at him again. “Once a girl makes her debut, she is allowed to accept gifts from suitors if they are suitable ones.”

Jack frowned slightly at the seeming shift in the subject. “I’m sure you received heaps of them.”

“Yes.” It was a simple admission, said without vanity, an acceptance of fact. “Books of poetry bound in leather covers, boxes of expensive chocolates, and enormous bouquets with all the appropriate sentiments expressed by the flowers chosen. And yet—”

“And yet . . .” he prompted when she fell silent.

“None of the young men who gave me these gifts bothered to find out what I liked to read, or if I cared for chocolates, or which flowers were my favorites. Conrath was different. In our very first conversation, I mentioned how much I loved the sound of the sea. His first gift to me was a conch shell.”

Jack began to understand where this was going, and it gave him a sinking feeling in his guts.

“All his gifts were like that,” she went on before he could respond. “So simple, and yet, so thoughtful. They were meant to show me how much he cared for me, but it was all a lie because he didn’t care. It was a fortune-hunter’s trick. Blueberry muffins,” she added, “would have been just his sort of present.”

“And that’s why you think I did it, as a trick?”

“I don’t know.”

“I did it to please you.”

She nodded, not seeming surprised. She looked into his upturned face. “So did he,” she said simply, and Jack felt as if he’d just been kicked in the teeth. He sucked in his breath.

“Every word he said, everything he did—the gifts, the attentions, caressing my hand to arouse me—all deliberate, all designed to please me, and disarm me, and move me to fall in love with him. He manipulated me. And I think you know just how he did it.”

He knew. He’d known all his life. How could he not, having watched the same scenario play out for his father, then his brother, over and over? Conrath had nothing on either of them. But how could he convince her he wasn’t like that? “Linnet—”

“He deceived me, and he broke my heart, but I got over him, and I forgave myself for being a fool. Any girl, I told myself, can make a mistake. But I was determined not to make the same mistake twice, which is why I was so resistant to any suitor over here. I felt sure they were all after my money and nothing more. That night in Newport, when I walked into the ball, I was so confident, so sure of myself and my judgment and what I wanted. But it was proved to me that night that my judgment about men is . . .” She paused and grimaced. “Flawed.”

He cursed Conrath, and Van Hausen, and his brother and his father and every other fortune-hunting scoundrel to hell. “What you’re saying is that you still think I’m a fortune hunter.”

“No, what I’m saying is that I don’t know you’re
not
one.”

He thought of her father, and the deal they’d made, and frustration rose up inside him, a dangerous addition to the desire already coursing through him. “You could say the same about all the other men here,” he said, stabbing a finger at the drawing room. “You dismissed one or two of them for that very reason last spring.”

“There’s one enormous difference between them and you, and I’ve known it all along.”

“What’s that?”

She looked at him, but she didn’t answer. In the silence, piano music and feminine laughter echoed from the drawing room, a sharp contrast to the frustration and arousal coursing through him.

It seemed an eternity before she spoke. “They don’t make me feel the way you do.”

Her words were like paraffin tossed onto flames. His desire flared, and he started forward, but then her words in Belinda’s drawing room came back to him, reminding him that what he wanted so badly to do was the one thing he could not do. It took all he had, but he stopped. He drew a deep breath, leashed his lust, and used his last question of the day. “How do I make you feel, Linnet?”

“You know,” she said, her voice almost indiscernible over the music. “What you said.”

“Not good enough. I want you to say it.”

“Aroused.” Her tongue touched her lips. “You make me feel aroused.”

Oh, God.
The tension was becoming unbearable. He lowered his gaze along that splendid body and back up again, torturing himself, knowing that what he was about to do could backfire utterly. “I think that’s something you’ll have to prove.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’m aroused, too, Linnet. So aroused, I can barely think, I can barely breathe, and all I want in this world is to walk up those steps, haul you into my arms, and kiss you again. But I’ll be damned before I’ll give you cause to say I took your kiss against your will. So, that means you have two choices. The first choice is the proper one: Turn around, go back inside, and leave me alone.”

Her chin lifted a notch. “And the second one?”

“You can come down those steps, Lioness, walk over here, and kiss me.”

Chapter 13

Linnet’s heart slammed against her ribs, a jolt of pure panic. “I can’t do that,” she gasped.

“Why not?”

She cast a glance over her shoulder, then looked at him again. “If anyone came out on the terrace, we’d be seen.”

She watched in dismay as he backed up three paces, stepped between two of the enormous boxwood pillars that lined the wall of the house, and vanished from view.

She stared at the shadowy recess into which he had slipped, torn by the agony of a decision she shouldn’t even be trying to make. The obvious thing to do, the one thing a well-bred girl could do in these circumstances, was go back inside.

Linnet didn’t move.

He was the most provoking man, the most aggravating man she’d ever known. That kiss in the pagoda had seemed like the most shameful, ruinous thing that had ever happened to her, and yet, that wasn’t what she felt right now. That kiss had stained her reputation and wrecked her life, but for no reason that made any sense whatsoever, she wondered what it would be like to risk ruin again, to go down those steps, slide in between those boxwoods, and walk into his arms so that he could kiss her again. How would it feel?

Her body responded at once, before her mind could even consider. Arousal stirred, opening inside her—vibrant and quivering with life. Slowly, she walked down the steps and moved toward the recess where he’d vanished from view. With one last glance over her shoulder, she followed him.

The sharp scent of the boxwood and the mellower one of bay rum filled her nostrils, but she could see nothing at first. The darkness was almost total. She was a scant three feet away from him, but all she could make out was the glimmer of white from his shirt and waistcoat. She blinked, and after a moment, her eyes adjusted, enabling her to discern his tall form leaning against the brick wall behind him, and when she blinked again, she saw his face. His expression was grave, his eyes like pitch.

She waited, standing in front of him, her insides shaking, and she had no idea what to do next.

“Well, go on,” he said when she didn’t move. “We don’t have much time before someone comes out here looking for you.” His voice sounded amiable, almost friendly, and yet, she knew that wasn’t what he felt. She sensed the tension in him. It was palpable in the confined space and short distance between them. “Best if you kiss me quick.”

Her heart seemed to stop for a second, then it began to hammer in her chest. She moved closer, then closer still, until their bodies were almost touching. The quivering inside her intensified as she rose on her toes and brought her mouth up to his. By the time she was a hairsbreadth away, her anticipation was so acute, it felt like pain.

She pressed her lips to his, and pleasure pierced her at once, pleasure so sweet, so acute and unexpected, she groaned against his mouth.

He stiffened, straightening away from the wall, and for a moment, she thought he was going to embrace her or push her away, but he did neither. Instead, with her lips barely touching his, he stilled again, and she realized he was waiting for her to do something more.

She didn’t know quite what that something was, for this light brush of lips was where her experience with kissing ended, but she did know she wasn’t ready to pull back, so she moved her mouth experimentally against his. It was a tentative, exploring caress, and as she did, the arousal within her grew hotter. Her hand came up to touch his cheek.

His response was immediate, as if her touch was just what he’d been waiting for. He slid an arm around her, and his fingertips pressed the base of her spine, urging her even closer. She did, and when her breasts brushed his chest, the pleasure spread through all her limbs, bringing a strange, boneless sensation that made her knees go weak.

Without conscious direction, her arms came up to wrap around his neck. She wanted to be even closer, and he seemed to know it, for his arm tightened around her waist, and his other arm came around her shoulders, embracing her totally, just as he he’d done in Newport. Her head was spinning, her knees were weak, her body was on fire, just like in Newport. And yet, it all felt so different. Whether it was because this time she’d come willingly into his embrace, or because there were no witnesses, or because he was no longer a stranger to her, Linnet didn’t know, but she felt no shock, no shame, and no outrage. All she felt was a deepening excitement, and a need for even more.

He tilted his head, and his mouth opened over hers. His tongue touched her closed lips as if he wanted her to part them, and when she did, she tasted port. She had no time to savor it, however, for his tongue entered her mouth, and she jerked, jolted by the sudden, electrifying shock. A man’s tongue in her mouth? Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that.

As if sensing her surprise, he eased back, but she pursued, duplicating his move, her tongue touching his. The move seemed to ignite something inside him, for his embrace tightened even more, lifting her almost off the ground, bringing her against him so fully that she could feel the hard length of his body everywhere he pressed against her. He seemed especially hard where his hips were pressed to hers, and the intimacy of it shocked her. She broke the kiss with a gasp, lowering her arms, flattening her palms against his shoulders.

He eased her to the ground at once and released her, his arms falling away and his body pulling back from hers to flatten against the wall behind him. She ought to have been relieved, for her body was in turmoil, her head spinning like a top, and her breathing hard and quick, but she didn’t feel relieved by his withdrawal. Quite the opposite. She felt bereft. She felt frustrated. She felt . . . incomplete.

His breathing was every bit as ragged as hers, stirring the hair at her temple. The satin lapels of his dinner jacket felt slick against her palms as she slid her hands down from his shoulders. His chest was like a wall against her palms, and even as she recalled how easily he had carried her across a meadow and up a hill, she knew as she had not known yesterday, that he wasn’t the only one with power.

It was a heady feeling.

After a few moments, she looked up, and in the darkened shadows, she watched a faint smile curve his mouth. “Damned if I’m not the luckiest chap in the world,” he murmured, his voice a bit unsteady. “How many men get struck by lightning twice?”

She didn’t have time to think of a response.

“Linnet?” Her mother’s voice floated to where they stood between the boxwoods.

She felt Jack’s hand tighten at her waist, and she watched him press a finger to his lips. She nodded in understanding, and he lowered his hand, leaned out to peek at the terrace nearby, then straightened again to look at her. “She’s gone back in. Follow her, quick.”

Linnet felt a jolt of panic, and her hand flew to her mouth. “I can’t.”

For some reason, his smile widened. “Don’t worry,” he said as he pulled her hand down and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “You don’t look debauched. Good thing for both of us my valet shaved me just before dinner.”

She had no idea what shaving had to do with it, and she couldn’t seem to gather her dazed senses enough to figure it out. There wasn’t time for contemplations on the subject anyway, for Jack was already shoving her out from between the boxwoods. She turned toward the terrace, took a deep breath, and went up the steps, her heart still pounding, her pulses still racing, her lips still tingling. Despite his reassurance, she felt debauched, and she had no idea how to hide what seemed so obvious.

But unless she became a very good actress in very short order, being found out was a distinct possibility, so Linnet squared her shoulders, notched up her chin, and pasted on the most serene expression she could manage.

“Ah, so you’ve changed your mind and come back in after all.” Helen’s voice was light, but Linnet knew those words were for the benefit of anyone who might have noted the length of her absence from the drawing room.

“I like standing out on the terrace,” she replied, but she wasn’t quite able to meet her mother’s gaze as she sat down beside her on the settee. “It’s a beautiful evening.”

A glance around the drawing room told her the other ladies hadn’t seemed to notice her return, and conversation didn’t pause, but when her mother leaned close to her and spoke again, Linnet knew she wasn’t off the hook just yet. “Just where were you, young lady?”

Linnet turned, giving her mother what she hoped was a convincing enough expression of bewilderment as she prepared to tell the most blatant lie of her life. “I don’t know what you mean. I was right below you.”

“Were you, indeed?” Helen murmured.

Linnet felt a shimmer of guilt and looked away before her mother could see it. “Of course,” she lied again, her guilt deepening as she reminded herself that she wasn’t the only one affected by her ruined reputation. Her scandal reflected on her family, too.

“You shouldn’t go off the terrace,” Helen said after a moment.

Still, there was little Helen could do but accept her explanation. No one had seen her with Jack, no harm had been done, and though her pulses were still racing, and she still felt wild and wanton, Jack must have been right that there was no outward sign of what had just happened, for none of the women in the room were staring at her.

But that conclusion had just crossed her mind when her gaze paused at Lady Trubridge, and she felt a sudden jolt of apprehension. She didn’t know quite why, for the marchioness wasn’t even looking at her. She was talking with a group of ladies on the other side of the room. But then, as if she sensed Linnet’s gaze, she turned her head, and her shrewd and thoughtful gaze rested on Linnet. Not a flicker of emotion showed on her face, but Linnet’s apprehension deepened into fear.

Working to keep her expression as neutral as possible, she looked away, drew in a slow, deep, steadying breath, and reminded herself that not only her reputation, but her entire future was at stake.

This wasn’t Newport. Tonight, she had not been the innocent recipient of a man’s advances. Instead, she had chosen his kiss, she had welcomed it, she had reveled in it. And it had been glorious. But it couldn’t happen again, not unless she agreed to marry him. And two wild, wanton kisses or not, marrying Jack Featherstone was a choice Linnet just wasn’t ready to make.

U
NLIKE
L
INNET,
WHO’D
had to go straight back to the drawing room, Jack had the luxury of taking a bit of time before rejoining the men. A good thing, too, for lust was thrumming through his body, and despite several minutes lingering by the side door into the house, he found it damned difficult to douse the flame. As he reentered the dining room, he could only pray he’d managed to don the nonchalant air of a man who’d been out for an innocent little walk.

When he’d dared her to come down those steps and kiss him, he hadn’t expected her to do it. He’d hoped she might, for Linnet wasn’t any more inclined to back down from challenges than he was. But he’d also known what she was risking to take up a dare like the one he’d thrown down, so he’d stood in that shadowy recess, hardly willing to hope or even breathe. When she’d appeared in front of him, her gold hair and white dress glinting in the dim light, exhilaration and excitement had risen in him at once, like fireworks shooting skyward, and it had taken all the will he had to stand there and wait for her to close that last bit of distance. The wait had been agony.

When at last, she’d pressed her lips to his so sweetly, so innocently, he’d nearly gone to his knees, and the carnal sound of her moan against his mouth had been almost more than he could bear. But when she’d touched him, that had brought the lightning down, sending the lust he was working so hard to contain coursing through every cell and nerve of his body, and he’d been unable to hold back another second.

He might have ravished her then and there if she hadn’t brought him back to earth. Appreciating that fact, however, didn’t have quite the dampening effect it ought to have. Rather, it started his mind thinking of ravishment rather than self-control.

Jack’s imagination wasn’t allowed to go too far down that particular road, however, before Nick stood up, indicating it was time to rejoin the ladies, and he supposed he ought to be grateful for that. As he followed the others out of the dining room, he reminded himself of what was at stake. He had to keep his head, for if he didn’t, Linnet would be the one to pay the price.

Fate, however, didn’t seem willing to trust Linnet’s welfare solely to Jack’s willpower, for the moment they walked into the drawing room, he saw Belinda’s gaze hone in on him, and he was reminded of an alert cat sitting outside a mousehole, ready to pounce. A moment later, when he saw her walk over to her husband, he suspected his absence from the dining room was the topic of their discussion, and when she started in his direction a moment later, he knew it for certain.

“Jack,” she said as she passed him. “A word.”