How to Tempt a Viscount

‘Your dress…’ There was nothing of the usual barely veiled disinterest in his tone, nothing of that strained reserve. Indeed, he was looking at her, really looking at her for the first time. She saw the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

‘I have found myself a new dressmaker.’ She leaned ever so slightly towards him, lowering her voice to a husky whisper as if they were conspirators, and presenting him with a more impressive view of her cleavage. ‘Do you like it?’ His eyes dropped to her breasts, just as Kitty had said they would, before he dragged them back to her own.

‘Very much so.’

She smiled invitingly before returning her view to the play. ‘Romeo and Juliet. Did you know it is my favourite Shakespeare?’

‘I did not,’ she heard him say. ‘But then I am only just realising there is much I do not know about you, Ellen.’

She watched the figures on the stage without seeing them, for she was trying too hard to keep the swell of emotion hidden. And she was too conscious of the tall, dark handsome man by her side, and of what she had come to London to do to him.

How could a man fail to recognize his own wife? Marcus was still asking himself the question by the time they were travelling home in the carriage. She was his wife. He had known her in the most intimate of senses, yet, if he were honest, he did not know her at all. Not the girl who had stood so quietly by his side at the altar and lain beneath him so unresponsive in the marriage bed, nor the woman who sat opposite him in the shadowed light of the carriage now. In the glow of the street lamps his eye skimmed over her perfect face, down over the long black velvet cloak that he knew hid the perfect figure. His memory of his wife was of a timid girl, painfully shy and whom his company seemed to make nervous and uncomfortable. He wondered how he could have failed to notice the strong sensual woman who now sat opposite him. But then given the mess of his emotions at the time of his wedding he supposed it was possible. Simmering anger, betrayal and resentment had a way of blinding a man to all else.

‘What has prompted your return to London?’ he asked.

‘It is the start of the Little Season and what was it that Dr Johnson said…? “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.” I wanted to visit the shops, the social scene, the theatre…and my husband, of course.’ He heard the small seductive smile more than saw it. ‘And then there are my duties as your wife—’ she smiled again and he felt his mouth go dry and his blood surge even though she finished it with words of innocence ‘—charitable works, entertaining, support and the like.’

And then, while he watched in stunned fascination, she laid her head back against the squabs and closed her eyes. The rest of the journey was in silence.

Ellen was too much on his mind. Marcus could not sleep that night nor could he concentrate the next day in critical discussions over his father’s Tollerton estate. There was a sensual tension between his wife and him that, by the time of Fallingham’s ball the following evening, seemed to be winding tighter with every hour that passed.

Attraction. The very air seemed thick with it as he stood watching Arlesford partnering her upon the dance floor. She had barely noticed him all night, engaged as she was in having such a good time chatting and laughing and dancing with everyone except him. The steps she wove with Arlesford were those of a chaste cotillion yet Marcus found himself unable to take his eyes from her. And even though Arlesford was his friend and Ellen his wife, he found himself brooding with a possessiveness he had never previously felt. So that when the set and the music finished and the Volse began and Arlesford showed no sign of returning her, he found himself up on the floor cutting in on the duke. The Volse—hardly a dance of the Ton, but one that he had no intention of letting her dance with another.

‘My dance, I believe, old friend,’ he laughed, but there was steel behind the words and he knew that Arlesford heard it. And then she was in his arms and he thought no more about Arlesford.

Twelve inches. A respectable enough distance between them in this rather risqué German dance. Her eyes met his and held. Storm grey eyes filled with such sensual promise, so that the crowd on Fallingham’s dance floor seemed to vanish. Attraction shimmered between them. Heated. Intimate. Shocking in its intensity. And then her lashes lowered and she was once again the demure and proper girl he had married. The contrast intrigued him. He studied the sweep of her lashes, the creamy curve of her cheek, the soft pink lips. He had never been more aware of her as a woman—a very beautiful and desirable woman. Marcus felt he could have looked at her forever and never seen enough. He felt as if had been sleeping for all his life and only just woken up.

Twelve inches, yet as they moved around the dance floor the distance diminished as if their bodies were drawn together by a force too great to resist. Edging infinitesimally closer with every step they took. Closer, as they moved across the floor. And closer. Until he could feel the spark of her body against his and feel the silk of her skirt against the fall of his breeches. Until he could feel her against the hardness of his arousal.

‘Ellen.’ His whisper was ragged and harsh with need and with warning.

Her eyes widened, her lips parted. And for a moment she looked surprised to find him in such a state. But then she smiled.

‘Desist or I am going to have a very large and obvious problem when this dance comes to a close.’ He spoke the words low and quiet by her ear, his jaw tight as he struggled for control.

‘Is there nothing you can do to alleviate the situation?’ she asked and looked at him with such an innocent expression that he did not know whether she understood the suggestive nature of her question.

‘There is, but I doubt we could ever show our faces in society again if we did it here on the dance floor.’ He met her gaze boldly and held it, watching her. His wife blushed but did not look away, and again there was that contrast between the temptress and the good girl, exciting him all the more.

‘What are you then to do?’ She arched an eyebrow.

‘Contrive to think dampening thoughts.’

She digested that in silence and he wondered if he should have been quite as honest about his struggle. The minutes passed. The music played. The dance wove them tighter with its steps. There was no change in his state and, if he were honest, there was only one manner of relief that he wanted.

‘It does not seem to be working.’ She smiled; a knowing, teasing smile.

‘And neither will it, madam, if we continue as we are,’ he said and opened up a distance between them. It sounded as pompous as something his father would say. His father… The problem resolved itself in an instant.

He tried to get Ellen to leave the ball early. There were matters that needed to be discussed between them. And there were other things, too. Things that, being faithful to his marriage, he had gone too long without. But Ellen was adamant that leaving early would cause offense, and would not hear of such a thing. She had returned to enjoy London and it seemed she was determined to do just that. The ball went on so late that by the time he got her home she was tired and went straight to bed.

Marcus sat on his bed and stared at the closed door in front of him. It was the door to the connecting bedchamber. He felt the pull of temptation. His body was humming with desire. Aching with it, giving him little chance of sleep. He thought of the tease of her body against his on the dance floor and knew she was as aware as him of the attraction that crackled between them. He wanted her but given how their marriage had started he was not about to make the same mistake again. He wanted to get to know her. He wanted to actually talk to his wife before he climbed into her bed and made love to her.

Chapter Two

Despite the lateness of the previous night Ellen rose early. She had slept poorly, her night a mess of agitated wakefulness and confused dreams, all of them centred round Marcus. But she was not tired. Anger and determination had a way of overcoming fatigue.

She did not let herself think of last night, of what it had been like to be held in his arms. She did not let herself feel. There was too much danger in even thinking of that route. Instead, she told herself the past two nights had been just as they should have. Marcus had bitten, she was sure of it, but there was still work to do if she wanted to reel him in. And she was very determined to reel him in.

She took great care over her toilette, slipping on the dress Kitty had had made for the occasion. Marcus was still sleeping when she wrote the note and left it for him, and departed for the British Museum.

It took only thirty minutes before he arrived, and she worried for every single one of them that he would not come, standing there in the classical gallery with her maid, trying to concentrate on reading the information cards attached to each of the ancient stone sculptures, and not keep glancing up at the door. She saw his tall, dark-clad figure entering at the far end of the room even before the maid whispered her warning, and felt almost weak-boned with relief. She deliberately remained staring at the card as if she were reading it. Only when she heard him say her name did she glance at him as if in surprise.

‘Marcus, I thought you were busy today. Did you not say that you were in Westminster this morning?’

‘Indeed, but I have rearranged the meeting.’

Marcus had never forgone his work for her before. Indeed, he had spent so much of those first two months of his marriage in meetings and working that she knew it had been a means to avoid her. But he was not avoiding her today. He had come, just as she had planned. She suppressed a small grim smile of satisfaction and let her gaze wander over him. His hair was ruffled and dark as a raven’s wing. His eyes were a dark intense blue. Last night’s shadow of beard stubble had gone, and she had the sudden urge to reach her hand out and run her fingers over the clean-shaven strong lines of his face. His tailoring was immaculate, dark and pristine, his shirt bright white and freshly ironed. His manner was relaxed, arrogant almost, so that, had she not known better, she would have believed his journey here to have been unhurried.

In the cool clear light of day he looked devastatingly handsome. So handsome that she felt shaken by it and remembered the man she had fallen in love with, and all of the emotions that she had thought she had managed to suppress threatened to resurface with a vengeance. She turned away that he would not see, trying to get a grip on herself, telling herself what she was here to do, and reminding herself why. And when she glanced at him again her resolution was repaired and she was as distant and untouched as he had been all those months ago.

‘I did not realise you had such an interest in classical sculpture,’ she said.

‘I do not.’ His eyes met hers and she felt a shiver ripple right through her. And the tension between them escalated all the more.

‘Then perhaps I can persuade you to develop a liking for Greek antiquities.’ She sent her maid off with his footman and slipped her arm through his. She was standing so close she could smell the clean masculine scent of him, so familiar that it sent the butterflies flocking in her stomach just as it had the very first time she had met him. She quelled them with a ruthlessness that had not been there then.