Swept Away

Finally he lifted his head and looked down at her, his dark eyes glittering fiercely. “Jessica…”

Desire slammed through Stonehaven like a fist at the sight of her face, soft and glowing. She had the dazed look of a woman who had just discovered passion, and though his mind knew that it must be artifice, for she was obviously a woman accustomed to men, his body responded to the lure. She was, indeed, incredibly beautiful, and he had wanted her from the moment he saw her, but now the need to have her was fierce, undeniable. He would not be at ease again, he knew, until this bewitching creature was in his bed, turning into fire beneath his hands and mouth.

Julia saw the heavy passion in his face, the sudden, unmistakable determination to have her. It was what she had wanted to arouse in him, but the reality of it sent a thrill of unease through her. For the first time doubt assailed her: What if she could not control this situation? What if she could not leash and use the need that raged in him?

The sudden trepidation was enough to cut through the fog that had seemed to possess her mind. She stepped back abruptly, one hand going to her stomach as if to still the tumult inside her.

“No.” He reached for her, but she quickly moved another step, and he stopped. “Don’t go. Stay with me.”

“I cannot.” She glanced wildly up the street and saw, like a gift of fate, a hackney rolling slowly along the cross street. She lifted her hand and waved, calling out.

The driver on his high perch peered down the street toward them and obligingly stopped. Julia started toward it, but Stonehaven laid a hand on her arm, stopping her.

“No, do not go yet.”

“I must.”

“Let us just walk a little longer.”

She arched her brows. “I know where your ‘walking’ leads, my lord.”

“Is that so bad a thing?” he countered softly. “You did not seem to think so a moment ago.”

“I am not a prize so easily won,” she responded. “I fear you will find me cheap.”

“Never.”

She shook her head and started to pull away. His fingers tightened.

“At least give me your address, so that I may—”

“I cannot.”

“Why? Have you a husband at home?” Anger roughened his voice.

“No. Please, just let it be.”

“But how will I find you? When will I see you again?”

She looked up at him. His face was hard and fierce, as if the hunger in him had peeled back the layer of easy charm and exposed the powerful reality beneath. His words were not so much a question as a demand.

Julia willed a saucy smile onto her face. She felt as if she were baiting a bear. “I am quite partial to gaming, as you know.”

Then she tugged away and, lifting her skirts to her ankles, ran toward the waiting carriage.

3 (#uda294eb9-b781-5e25-8ac7-17c06e03513a)

“Weren’t you scared?” Phoebe asked, leaning forward to peer into Julia’s face as they walked. They were taking their usual morning constitutional through Hyde Park, and Julia had given her sister-in-law a carefully expurgated account of what had happened the night before when she met Lord Stonehaven. “I can’t imagine talking to him. Was he purely evil?”

“Well, no,” Julia admitted. “He was rather charming, actually. It makes sense, of course, when you think about it. If he were obviously wicked, people would have realized that he was lying about Selby. But because he seems gentlemanly and engaging, one assumes he is telling the truth, that he has pure motives.”

“Mmm. I suppose so.” Phoebe looked disappointed. “I guess I had begun to picture him wearing horns and a tail.”

Julia smiled. “Me, too. But you have met him, have you not?”

“A few times. He and Selby were not close friends, not as Selby was with Varian, say, or Fitz,” she said, naming the other two men who had been trustees of Thomas St. Leger’s trust, along with Selby and Lord Stonehaven. “They had been friends when they were younger, and, of course, they met at their club and parties. But those last few years, Selby spent most of his time at home, you know.”

That fact, Julia knew, had been because of Phoebe. Selby had been a little wild in his youth—not only playing pranks such as the ones he had attributed to Jack Fletcher, but also gambling and drinking too much. But after he fell in love with Phoebe, his life had changed. He had settled down at home in Kent, and had become much more serious and attentive to the business matters of the estate. Selby would travel to London sometimes on his own, and occasionally he and Phoebe would go up for a round of parties and such, but, especially after the birth of their son, they lived a quiet country life. Unfortunately, it had been Selby’s wilder, younger times that people had remembered when Stonehaven had accused him of thievery.

“Stonehaven was pleasant enough,” Phoebe continued, her brow wrinkling. “A little remote and stiff, I thought. We never talked long. I always thought he found me boring.”

“Nonsense,” Julia replied stoutly, although she could understand, deep inside, how some could find Phoebe’s sweet personality a trifle insipid. “If he did, then it was he who was to blame, not you.”

“I was always glad when he moved on to talk to someone else. He made me a trifle…uncomfortable.”

Stonehaven had made her a trifle uncomfortable, too, Julia thought, but not, she suspected, in the way he had affected Phoebe. He had unsettled her, brought out strange responses that both puzzled and surprised her. No one had ever kissed her the way Lord Stonehaven had last night—one of the things she had been careful to not tell Phoebe—and the way she had felt when he did so shocked her. Her body had raged with all sorts of wild sensations, and she had wanted, shockingly, to feel more of them. Julia wondered if that made her a wicked person. Was that how “loose” women felt? And was it those feelings that made them abandon all propriety?

What was most disturbing to her was that she had felt those things with Lord Stonehaven. She hated him! Yet when he kissed her, when he crushed her body against his and his mouth consumed her, she had melted. How could a man she despised have made her feel that way?

The only answer she could find was that it was the kiss, not the man, that had made her react so strangely. She had not felt such a kiss before; gentlemen didn’t kiss that way, or at least they did not kiss ladies like that. No doubt it was part of the licentious life Lord Stonehaven lived, sinful knowledge that he had gained with women of dubious repute. It was probably the very sinfulness of the kiss that had rocked her. Their vicar, in his sermons, often warned of the temptations of sin, of the lure that evil held for humans. Julia had not really understood it before, but now she did. That kiss had tempted her, had made her feel and act in a way she would never have dreamed she could, had overridden, at least for a moment, her thorough dislike of Lord Stonehaven. She supposed that if any other man had kissed her in that way, she would have felt the same. She had a tendency toward lewd behavior, apparently.

Well, she knew now what she had to watch out for, Julia thought. Next time she would be prepared for that kiss, and she would stand firm against it. She would not let herself be swept into such a maelstrom of pleasure.

“Will you see him again?” Phoebe asked now.

“Oh, yes,” Julia responded quickly. “I mean, well, I shall have to, of course. Last night was just the beginning. I wanted to catch his interest, that was all. I didn’t expect to gain any knowledge. It will take a little while to get my hooks firmly into him, and then I will begin to reel him in.”

Phoebe giggled. “Honestly, Julia, you do say the funniest things. You make him sound as if he were a fish.”

“Well, and so he is,” Julia responded. “A prize fish, whom I intend to hang on our wall.”

“Are you—will you go back to that place?”

“I shall have to. I have no other way to meet him. Naturally I couldn’t tell him where we live.”

“Oh, no,” Phoebe agreed with a little gasp of horror. “When will you go back? Tonight?”

“No,” Julia replied reluctantly. She wanted very much to return to Madame Beauclaire’s tonight—only because she was filled with eagerness to get the truth out of Stonehaven, she told herself—but she knew that to do so would ultimately work against her. “I cannot let him think that I am eager to see him again. Men like a chase, I understand, and Stonehaven seems to me to be a man who likes it particularly. I have to build up his anticipation, make him begin to worry that he will not see me again. Then, when he does see me, he will be much more enthusiastic.”

Phoebe nodded. “I’m sure you are right. I am merely impatient. I want so much to hear his confession.”

“I think I shall return on Friday. That will give him two days to stew and wonder. How does that sound?”

“I don’t know. I was never much good at that sort of game. The only man I cared about was Selby, and I wanted to see him so much that I could not pretend otherwise.”

Julia smiled at Phoebe’s slightly guilty expression and reached out to link her arm through hers. “’Tis just that you are too honest and good a person to prevaricate, my love. It rather makes you wonder about me, doesn’t it—that I find it so easy to do so?”

“Julia! Don’t say such things!” Phoebe would never allow any negative words about one of those she loved, even from the loved one herself.