Duchess Quartet - A Wild Pursuit Part 33

"No," she said, trying hard to think what to say next. All her practiced seductive lines seems to have fled from her head.

"Alas," he said, even more gently, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I can hardly offer marriage to a woman half my age. So I'm afraid that I shall have to leave your kisses, sweet though they are, to some younger man."

Bea's mouth almost fell open. Marriage? Didn't he know who she was? "I don't want-" she began, but her voice was hoa.r.s.e. She stopped. "As it happens, I am not interested in marriage either," she said quite sedately. "I find that I am, however, very interested in you." She twisted forward and kissed his lips, a promise of pleasure. And she was absolutely honest about that. With him, there would be no boundaries.

But it was he who pulled back. She had been so sure he would lunge at her that she smiled-but the smile faded.

He was a Puritan. His eyes had gone cold, dark, condemning. "I thought you played the l.u.s.ty trollop for fun."

She raised her chin. Her chest had gone icy cold. "Actually, no," she said, and she was very pleased to find her tone utterly calm and with just a hint of sarcasm. "I play myself."

"Yourself? Do you even known who you are, under all that facepaint?"

"I a.s.sure you that I do."

"You play a part you needn't," he said, eyes fixed on hers. "You are young and beautiful, Beatrix. You should marry and have children."

"I think not."

"Why?"

"You simply want to make me like everyone else," she said sharply. "I like wearing macquillage. I would rather not look like myself, as you put it. And I find it incalculably difficult to imagine myself sitting by the fire wearing a lace cap and chattering about my brood of children."

"I think yourself is beautiful. All your paints have washed away at the moment. You never needed them."

"I didn't say I needed them. I enjoy them," she retorted, and then added, deliberately, "Just as I occasionally enjoy the company of a man in my bedchamber."

For a moment they just looked at each other, Puritan to trollop. "Am I to take it that you are not interested in taking a mistress?" she asked steadily, meeting his eyes. She was no child to be whipped by his condemnation.

"Actually, I am," he said deliberately. "But I have little interest in one so... practiced."

Bea got to her feet, shaking out her skirts. Then she bent over and picked up her mangled spencer, shaking it out and folding it over her arm, taking a moment to make absolutely certain that her face wouldn't reveal even for a second what she felt.

Then she looked him straight in the face. "That was cruel, and quite shabby, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. I would not have expected it of you."

"I'm sorry."

She nodded and began to turn toward the gate. After all, she'd had much worse things said to her, mostly by women, but then there was her dear father. So when he caught her arm, she turned toward him with a little smile that was almost genuine.

"Don't you think we should take our bedraggled selves home?"

It was rather amusing to see how badly he felt. There was real anguish in his eyes. "I feel like the worst sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Kissing you in a field and then insulting you."

At that, she grinned. "I gather you wish I were an innocent, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. But I am not. I truly enjoyed that kiss." The smile she gave him was as wicked and lazy as any she'd ever bestowed on a man. "And I would very much have enjoyed your company in my bedchamber as well. But I have never forced myself on a man. I fully understand that you are looking for a far more respectable mistress. Perhaps even a possible marriage partner, given your wish for inexperience?"

Men were such dolts! He stared at her as if she were as alien as that hairy goat.

"It was a lovely kiss," she said. Then she turned and made her way across the field, and when the goat rolled his wicked eyes and snapped his lips over a Pomona green satin ribbon, all that remained of her bonnet, she just smiled at him.

Which startled the animal so much that he galloped off to the other end of the field, leaving her hat behind.

Rees, Lord G.o.dwin CONFIDENTIAL!

in Your Wicked Ways by Eloisa James.

Coming April 2004..

Name: Rees, Lord G.o.dwin.

Nickname: The Sinner.

Hometown: London.

Conveyance: Anything that he can ride fast.

First kiss: He'd rather think about his best kiss.

Super secret: He's developed a pa.s.sion for his own wife...

"I had no idea that this part of Hyde Park existed," Helene said with fascination, a short time later. The gra.s.ses to either side of the little winding path had grown so tall that they touched the slouching limbs of the huge oaks. Daisies poked their heads above the seas of gra.s.ses like intrepid soldiers, fighting off nettles and thistles growing breast high.

"I've never met another soul here," Rees said. "All the polite sort prefer raked gravel paths."

Sometimes the oak trees bent down as if they'd been humbled, brushing their branches to the ground, and then suddenly they would fall back, leaving a patch of emerald green gra.s.s, or a cascade of daisies. Within twenty minutes, she could no longer hear any din from the city at all, no sound of carriages, bells, or whistles. "It's like being in the country," she said, awed.

They rounded the bend and the trees trailed off again, forming another clearing. "Just look, Rees! Aren't they beautiful?" she cried, running into the middle of a lake of frothy white flowers shaped like stars.

Rees stood on the path, his face unreadable. The sun fell relentlessly on his harsh face, on the lines around his eyes, the scowling eyebrows, the generous lower lip, those two dimples...

And Helene realized with a great thump of her heart that she'd never gotten over that first infatuation with him, that first blinding pa.s.sion that had driven her out her bedchamber window, and into his carriage, the better to make their way to Gretna Green.

She almost dropped the flowers she held, the realization was so blinding.

When Rees appeared at her side, hamper in hand and sat next to her on the gra.s.s. Helene couldn't even bring herself to speak. She'd spent nine years telling herself that the brief infatuation that led to their elopement was a dream, a fribble, a moment's blindness.

But it wasn't. Oh, it wasn't.

Numbly she helped Rees pull a tablecloth from the basket and load it with pieces of chicken, pie, fruit, and a bottle of wine.

She refused a gla.s.s of wine. "Hair of the dog," Rees said, "and very nice hair it is." He grinned at her. He had a chicken leg in his hand and was eating it like a savage. And he had that wicked look about him again, the one that made her think about the muscles hidden by his white shirt.

To her surprise, Helene found that she was hungry. She put a plate of chicken on her knee and began struggling to cut it properly. "Don't bother," Rees said lazily. He was lying on his side, looking twice as comfortable in a bed of flowers as he did in a drawing room. "Just eat it, Helene." She looked at him with disdain. "I don't eat with my fingers. I discarded that habit in the nursery." "Who's to see? There's only you and I, and we're nothing more than an old married couple." Old married couple implied comfort and ease, and she didn't feel any of that with Rees, particularly with the secret p.r.i.c.kling awareness she had of his body. He had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeve and his bronzed arm lay all too close to her. "It seems to me that you are always removing your clothing," she told him, eyeing him with distinct hostility. How dare he be so comfortable, while she was both over-heated and hungry? Her beautiful little blue jacket felt altogether winterish with the sun shining on her back.

In answer, he sat up. Helene edged back. Rees was overpowering at close quarters. "Here," he said simply, holding the chicken leg to her lips.

"I couldn't!" But she hadn't eaten all day. Her stomach gave a little gurgle.

Rees laughed. "Go ahead. There's no one to see."

"You're here," she said mulishly.

"I don't count," he said, giving her an oddly intent look. "That's one of the nicer things about being married, I always thought."

She took a bite. The chicken was delicious, faintly reminiscent of lemon. "It's exquisite," she admitted,

taking another bite.

"I pay my cook one hundred guineas a year," Rees said, ripping off a little strip of chicken and bringing it to her lips.

When she didn't open her mouth immediately, he rubbed the chicken on her lip. "Oh my, your lips are greasy," he said, leaning closer.

"Oh!" Helene said, licking her lips.

"Very nice," Rees said, and there was a dark, velvety something in his voice that made the little coil in Helene's stomach grow tighter.

"Give me a real kiss, Rees," she said.

His hand was stroking her neck. It froze for a moment.

"Do you remember how you used to kiss me before we were married?" she asked.

"Aye," he said, "I must have been a beast, always pulling you into a corner..."

"I loved it," Helene admitted.

"You never-"

"Ladies don't."

But Rees had clear memories of his wife refusing to kiss him with an open mouth, telling him he was disgusting to want such a thing. He hesitated. Their newfound friendship was so fragile and (although he didn't really want to think such a thing) important to him. He didn't...

So she came to him. The wife who hated kissing opened her mouth and timidly, sweetly, begged for entrance.

Rees had always known he was no gentleman. And he'd known for years that he had no control around his wife either. Nothing seemed to have changed. He plunged into her mouth so violently that she toppled backwards into a bed of flowers and he came with her, his limbs tangling with hers, devouring her mouth.

All the while, some part of him was waiting for her to tear her mouth away, to push him away, to scream that he was depraved, disgusting...

But the only thing that happened was that slender arms wound around his neck and a slender body tucked itself into the hard curves of his body with such melting softness that he could barely stop himself from groaning with the pure delight of it.

An offer too hot to resist!

USA Today bestselling author of A Wild Pursuit ELOISA JAMES.

YOUR.

WICKED WAYS.

"Romance writing does not get much better."-People Tired of being virtuous, Helene, the Countess G.o.dwin, decides it's time to imitate her scoundrel of a husband. Donning a shocking new look, she goes to a ball vowing to find a scandalous lover of her own. But instead she finds only her own infuriatingly handsome husband, Rees, the Earl of G.o.dwin. They'd eloped in a fiery pa.s.sion that had burned too hot to last. Yet now Rees is making her a brazen offer, and Helene decides to become again, his wife... his very, very wicked wife...

From USA Today bestselling author of A Wild Pursuit ELOISA JAMES.

YOUR WICKED WAYS.

"Romance writing does not get much better." -People On Sale: 3/30/04.

www.EloisaJames.com Avon Books An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers www.avonromance.com www.AuthorTracker.com.

Books by

Eloisa James.

A Wild Pursuit.

Fool For Love.

d.u.c.h.ess in Love.

Coming April.

Your Wicked Ways.