Stephanie Laurens - Beyond Seduction

His eyes were on her face, searching. Deeming it wise to distract him, she said, “You must have been waltzing quite a bit this year, what with all the balls in London.”

He raised his brows, his expression-mild resignation-for once clear. “Thanks to my sisters’ antics, I spent very little time at any balls. I’d reach town only to be called back within a few days.”

“So they were behind all those strange happenings?”

The line of his lips turned grim. “Indeed.” He met her eyes, hesitated.

She waited, eager to hear more but knowing better than to press him.

His lips quirked. “At least, having dealt with your brothers, you’ll understand. Those strange incidents, all of which were expressly designed to bring me hot-foot home, were my dear sisters’ reaction to the advent of the new Lady Hardesty.”

She blinked, tried to imagine, and couldn’t. “I don’t see the connection.”

“Thank you. I didn’t either. They, however, had convinced themselves that like poor Robert, I, too, might succumb to the lures of some femme fatale who would banish them to live with Great-Aunt Agatha in Yorkshire.”

She stared at him, confirmed that he was speaking the plain truth. She tried to keep her lips straight, failed entirely and laughed. “Oh, dear.”

He merely gave her a resigned look; his lips not curved but relaxed, he continued to whirl her as she struggled to master her mirth.

“I…” She paused to draw in a huge breath. “I truly can’t imagine you falling victim to any female.”

Gervase looked into her face, into her eyes, a shimmery peridot green in the chandeliers’ light. He’d thought the same, but was no longer so sure.

The music ended; he swung her to a flourishing halt-which, he noted, she enjoyed. Her unalloyed delight in the dance, something she’d permitted him to see, had to him been a subtle pleasure.

It was also a significant advance from where he had been when he’d first fixed his eye on her; then he hadn’t been able to see past her shield. Now…in moments like this, he glimpsed the woman behind it clearly.

With every fresh insight she grew more intriguing.

After one swift glance over the heads, he took her arm. “I believe it’s time for supper. Shall we?”

Her brows rose a little at his clear expectation of her agreement, but then she inclined her head. Her next words told him why. “The boys told me you’d formed some new gentlemen’s club in London. If they had it right, one with a rather unusual purpose.”

He smiled. And set about distracting her.

In that he was surprisingly successful; between her questions and his answers, ranging over the Bastion Club and its members, the true nature of his past service to the crown, Dalziel and his office, they progressed through supper in earnest conversation, sufficiently engrossed to discourage others from joining them. As they strolled back into the corridor leading to the ballroom, Gervase couldn’t recall a supper he’d enjoyed more.

Why he found her, of all females, so easy to talk to he didn’t know, yet her quick wits and the breadth of her understanding had allowed him to speak freely of topics he normally eschewed.

That had been another subtle pleasure, just being able to relax and speak without thought. Without censoring his words.

Perhaps it was dealing with her brothers that had left her so patently unshockable. So calm, so grounded.

Around her he felt anchored in a way he never had, not with any other, not at any time.

“This Dalziel,” she said. “You’re quite sure he’s right, and there is one last traitor somewhere in the government?”

Taking her arm, he turned her away from the ballroom. “Yes. If you met Dalziel you’d understand, but quite aside from the fact he’s the last person to invent things, we-the rest of us-have seen evidence that this last traitor exists. Jack Warnefleet got closest-he nearly caught the man’s henchman-but the traitor killed his man rather than allow him to fall into our, and Dalziel’s, hands.”

She walked beside him, looking ahead, puzzling over Dalziel’s nemesis and not really seeing. He knew that last was true; she made no demur when they reached a garden room and he opened the French doors giving on to it. Without comment, a faint frown on her face, she walked through.

“This traitor-what is known of him?”

“Another traitor suggested he had some connection with the War Office. Beyond that, the only physical description is of a tall, well-set-up, dark-haired gentleman of the ton.”

“Of the ton?” She whirled to face him as, having closed the door, he joined her.

He nodded. “He killed his henchman at a royal gala at Vauxhall. The only people who could obtain tickets were members of the ton, and the young lady who saw him was quite certain of his station.” He paused, looking into her eyes. “As Dalziel puts it, the last traitor is one of us.”

She looked stern-a severely disapproving Valkyrie. “No wonder he-Dalziel-is so determined to expose him.”

“Indeed. But enough of Dalziel.” His ex-commander had served his purpose. They stood alone in the garden room, well away from the ballroom. He reached for her.

Madeline blinked and glanced around; before she could do anything beyond register that they had somehow wandered down to Lady Moreston’s garden porch-a square room between two others, wall-less on one side and so open to the garden with a pair of slim ivory columns framing the view-she was in Gervase’s arms.

Recalling his fell purpose-and her opposition-she braced her hands on his chest and pushed back to glare at him. “You distracted me.”

The accusation made him smile. “I did. I admit it.” Holding her fast within one arm, he raised his hand, and brushed the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. Leaving it throbbing. Then his eyes, dark in the weak light, lifted to hers. “And now I propose”-his hand shifted; his long fingers framed her jaw and tipped it up as his lips lowered to hers-“to distract you even more.”

Madeline intended to hold firm, to refuse to play his game, but her besetting sin had other ideas.

No matter how much she’d tried to dismiss it, to play down her interest, that more adventurous side of her that she so rarely let loose knew the truth.

Knew how deeply she longed to know more, to learn of desire, and the passion that, with his arms around her and his lips on hers, seemed to hover at the edge of her perception.

It was that need to explore that had her twining her arms about his neck and kissing him back, had her sinking against him in flagrant encouragement entirely deaf to the protests of her rational mind.

Rationality, caution, held little sway as their mouths melded, as the kiss deepened and time spun away.

Simple heat, simple hunger.

And a yearning that welled from her soul. That touched her in a way she’d never felt before, that swelled and grew and drove her.

Drove her to twine her fingers in his hair and clutch as his hand, drifting down from her jaw, feathered over her breast, then closed.

Through the taut satin, one artful finger circled her ruched nipple, and she mentally gasped.

Waited. Poised on a cliff edge of elusive tension, wanting to know yet more.

His lips left hers. From beneath her lashes, she watched him glance down, to where his hand cupped her firm flesh.

His fingers lightly closed, then he glanced at her. After an instant, he closed the distance and brushed his lips over hers again, then drew back.

“You’re curious.” His tone made it a discovery.

She blinked, breathed back, “How can you tell?”

“I can taste it.”

Did curiosity have a taste, a texture?

“You want to know about this.” His fingers shifted again.

Her nerves leapt, and she shivered.

“I’ve a confession to make.” His voice was low, a gravelly rumble. “I want to know, too. Want to see where this…”-his fingers drew another shuddering response from her-“leads. Yesterday, at the castle, when you insisted on leaving, when you turned and gave me your hand I very nearly seized you, tossed you over my shoulder and carried you off to my bed.”

“Oh?” Some totally wanton part of her wished he had.

“Yes.” Gervase paused, hand caressing, fingers stroking, then went on, “Just so you know you’re not the only one affected, not the only one involved here.” Caught. Trapped.

By what, he didn’t know.

He drew her back into his arms, back into the kiss, steeped them both in the moment, in the spiraling sensation and welling need-as far as he dared. With her and him, and where they were, there was only so far they could go.

With real reluctance, he lifted his head, drew breath-felt the pounding in his veins, compulsive, insistent, demanding. Sensed the same in her.

Her lashes fluttered, then she focused on his face.

“Have you changed your mind yet?”

She blinked at him, not once, but twice, before comprehension swam into her gaze. Then she snapped out of the spell-theirs, not his alone-and eased back out of his arms. “No.”

He hadn’t expected any other answer, not yet, but despite the words her less-than-certain, faintly puzzled tone sent his spirits soaring. She was wavering, yes!, but experience warned the time to press was not yet. She had to come to him of her own accord, for her own reasons; she was that sort of woman. An independent lady.

Letting his face set, he coolly stated, “If that’s the case, then we’d better get back to the ballroom.”

She hadn’t wanted to return to the ballroom, a fact that demonstrated just how completely her besetting sin had overwhelmed her good sense. Climbing the castle steps the next morning, Madeline sternly lectured herself-yet again-that under no circumstances should she allow Gervase to embrace her again.