Nicole Jordan - Desire

He could melt her quite easily if she allowed him, Brynn knew, feeling her pulse quicken wildly.

It took all her willpower to maintain her pretense of chill disinterest. “You aren’t alone,” she replied, injecting frost into her voice. “Any number of gentlemen feel that way.”

His hand dropped as if he had touched hot coals, while the seductive warmth abruptly left his eyes.

“I will be away for the remainder of the day,” he said tersely before turning on his heel and quitting the study.

Brynn let out a shuddering breath. Suddenly remembering her purpose, she turned back to the desk and dropped Lucian’s seal ring into the drawer as if it were poison. Then she shut her eyes, feeling the violent thud of her heart.

It dismayed her, having to lie to Lucian. She despised deception. But she’d had little choice. She couldn’t expose her brother for fear of how Lucian would react. Grayson might be engaged in something illegal, but he was still her flesh and blood. Certainly she owed him more loyalty than she did her new husband.

Didn’t she?

Lucian dodged a blow and returned a punishing one of his own as he battled Gentleman Jackson himself. A crowd had formed around the ring, most of whom were watching in silent awe.

Jackson’s Rooms on Bond Street was one of the finest pugilist clubs in England. Stripped to the waist and breathing hard, the two opponents had already gone six rounds with their bare fists. Lucian’s shoulder muscles ached, and he was sporting various new bruises, but he’d had the upper hand for some time now.

Then he let fly another deadly punch, connecting with Jackson’s jaw and sending the former champion of England stumbling backward against the boundary ropes.

Regaining his footing with difficulty, Jackson wearily held up his hands and grinned. “Pax, my lord. I know when I’ve had enough.”

Nodding, Lucian hid his disappointment and shook hands, brushing off the Gentleman’s praise and the spectators’ accolades with strained patience. He was still hungering for blood as he picked up a towel and wiped the sweat from his brow.

Primal violence was supposed to relieve sexual frustration, but it had had little effect on his lust. Nor had it improved his mood in the least. He wasn’t sleeping well or concentrating on his work. He spent his nights tortured by his aching loins, burning to possess his elusive, tormenting wife. His days he filled with mind-numbing work or spent in places like this, soliciting punishing physical activity.

Despite his resolve to keep up his guard, he’d become much too bewitched by Brynn. And now he was suffering from another kind of arousal altogether: suspicion.

When he’d found her in his study this morning, he wondered if he was badly mistaken about her. He had thought Brynn uninvolved with her brother’s suspected treasonous activities, but after seeing them together-the guilty looks on their faces-he had to seriously question if he could trust her.

Lucian swore under his breath. It was grating enough that his agents in Cornwall had nothing untoward to report about Sir Grayson-no evidence whatsoever that his nocturnal activities went beyond simple smuggling. Worse, they had no further leads regarding the gold thefts or the alleged mastermind, Caliban. Such impotence galled Lucian, but the possibility that he would have to keep an eye on his own wife in his own home filled him with anger.

It was that dark thought that had driven him beyond his normal range of endurance when he’d fought Jackson, but he still hadn’t worked off his frustrations.

Clenching his jaw, he tossed the towel on a bench.

As he reached for his shirt, though, he looked over and spied the Marquess of Wolverton moving toward him. Dare wasn’t smiling.

“What brings you here?” Lucian asked when his friend reached him. “I thought you considered fisticuffs barbaric.”

“I do. Rapiers are far more civilized.”

“Well, if this is a social visit, I should warn you, I’m in the devil of a foul humor.”

“Then I regret to make it worse. I’ve heard a rumor I thought you would wish to know about.”

“A rumor?”

“Do you recall the contretemps that began at your aunt’s garden party?”

Lucian winced at the memory. “How could I forget? Two young whelps quarreling over who could best teach my wife to shoot.”

Dare nodded. “Pickering and Hogarth are still quarreling. The poet has challenged Hogarth to pistols, and they aren’t even planning to wait properly until dawn.”

“A duel?” Lucian said, raising an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with me?”

“They are fighting over your wife, Luce. It seems the two young sap-skulls have accused each other of impugning her honor. They are dueling over her as we speak.”

To save time, Dare drove, since his curricle was immediately available. They took the North Road, heading toward a field just outside London.

Lucian sat silently, his muscles rigid, his thoughts churning. They would likely arrive too late to prevent the duel and avert a scandal, but he had to try.

When they drew near, a sinking feeling claimed him. They might indeed be too late. Several carriages had stopped beside the road, and a crowd had gathered alongside the field.

What knotted his gut, however, was when he recognized a landau that bore the Wycliff crest on the door panels. Apparently it had only just arrived, for as it ground to a halt, a woman spilled out and began running toward the crowd.

Brynn. Dear God.

Riveted, Lucian watched as she pushed her way through the spectators and onto the dueling field, plunging directly into the fray barely an instant before shots rang out-

Fear slammed into his chest.

Leaping from the curricle even before it came to a stop, Lucian sprinted toward the crowd, terrified of what he might find.

They were hovering around a prone figure, he saw with dread. Upon reaching them, he shouldered his way through, then skidded to a halt, shock taking the place of fear. Brynn was there on the ground, kneeling beside a man’s body, holding his bloody hand.

For a moment Lucian felt his mind reel. The image was so much like his nightmare visions… except that in his nightmares, he was the man dying.

He moved closer, his heart pounding. The prone figure was Pickering; the poet had clearly been shot but didn’t appear to be dead. An elderly man, evidently the surgeon, was inspecting his shoulder wound and elicited a groan.

Young Pickering grimaced in pain at the prodding of his raw, bloody flesh, even as he gazed up at Brynn. “My lady…” he rasped, biting his lower lip.

Tenderly she brushed a lock of hair from his brow. “Hush, don’t speak. Save your strength.”

Lucian gritted his teeth, relief and jealous fury welling inside him. He wanted to wring Brynn’s neck for endangering herself that way, for scaring him half out of his mind, for gazing down so tenderly at another man, wounded or not-

When Lucian moved possessively to stand beside her, though, Brynn looked up, as if sensing his presence. She was crying; he could see pale streaks on her face, anguish in her green eyes. Lucian felt something twist painfully in his chest, warring with his darker emotions.

She froze for an instant when she saw him, but then the wounded man claimed her attention.

“I would endure ten times the pain,” Pickering murmured hoarsely, “for but one of your smiles.”

Brynn swallowed in a visible effort to hold back tears and might have answered, had not the doctor brusquely interrupted.

“He should recover, but I must take him away to remove the bullet. Stand back, please,” he said to the crowd that was pushing in to gape at the wounded man.

One young gentleman stood slightly apart-the poet’s opponent, Lucian realized. When Brynn rose unsteadily to her feet, Lord Hogarth stepped forward to address her in a pleading tone.

“Please forgive me, my lady. I didn’t mean to hurt him, truly.”

She whirled on him, her eyes heated through her tears. “I am not the one you should be begging for forgiveness!”

Hogarth first looked startled by her vehemence, then wounded. He opened his mouth to protest, but Brynn cut him off. “This must stop, Hogarth. It will stop. I never wish to see either of you again.”

“My lady…”

“Please just go.”

He looked stricken, but he seemed to comprehend her sincerity, for he took a step backward, then another, before turning and stumbling blindly away.

Dashing tears from her eyes, Brynn watched as the injured Pickering was carried to the surgeon’s carriage. The crowd dispersed then, sending surreptitious glances at Lucian.

Swallowing hard, Brynn risked a glance at him herself and felt her heart sink. His blue eyes were glittering dangerously.

She didn’t protest as he took her arm in a firm grip and escorted her to the Wycliff landau. From the corner of her eye she saw his friend Lord Wolverton waiting beside his curricle, but Lucian gestured toward the marquess, indicating he meant to ride with his wife.

He handed her into the landau, then settled beside her, shutting the door forcefully behind him. She could feel his simmering fury as the carriage began to move.

“What are you doing here?” she murmured, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“What do you think I’m doing? I’ve come to fetch my wife. And I’m the one who should be asking that question. What in hell were you thinking, running onto a dueling field like that? You could have been killed!”