Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden

Merryn fixed him with a very direct stare.

“What was your intention then, your grace?”

“To give back something that should never have been mine,” Garrick said.

He expected her to contradict him or at the least to make some derisive comment but she did neither. Her blue eyes searched his face as though she was weighing the truth of his words and after a moment she gave a tiny nod of acceptance. Garrick released the breath he had not been aware that he was holding. He felt relief and something more, something that almost felt like gratitude, as though she had given him a present beyond price. Then she straightened and the moment was gone.

“Were you looking for something?” she asked.

“Yes,” Garrick said. He smiled. “As were you, when you ransacked my bedroom.”

Her gaze flickered. She stiffened a little. It was interesting, Garrick thought, how transparent she was. Interesting, but extremely inconvenient for her. The lies she had spun him that night in his bedroom had been imaginative because she was clever, but deceit was not her natural state. She would always prefer to meet an enemy head-on.

She ignored his comment. “We must stop meeting in bedchambers,” she said. “It is not respectable. I suggest that you leave.”

Garrick smiled. “I am merely returning your visit, as a courtesy,” he said. “I don’t believe we finished our conversation at the library. I’d like to talk some more.” He phrased it politely but with iron beneath his words. She heard the note in his voice and her head jerked up; he felt her antagonism. It shivered like a mirage between them. Her anger was palpable and with it bitterness, and something more, something not so easily defined. Garrick knew she was acutely uncomfortable that he had invaded her bedchamber, a space she had thought was private to herself. And she was even more uneasy about the fierce physical awareness that trapped them both. Garrick knew that she felt it as much as he did and he sensed that she, so much less experienced than he, did not understand their mutual attraction. Nor did she like it. But she could not deny it.

“I do not suppose that you were invited tonight,” she said, her pansy-blue eyes considering him thoughtfully.

“No,” Garrick said.

“Then you could at least have shown a modicum of courtesy and sensitivity by staying away.”

“I could have done,” Garrick agreed, “but I did not. This is too important.”

Their gazes locked. The antagonism flowered again, strong and dark between them, once again with that undercurrent of something else, something hot and turbulent.

Garrick gestured to the champagne bottle resting on the table beside Merryn’s pile of books. “Would you care to join me?” he asked.

She paused and then nodded. “Thank you.” She motioned toward the glasses. “What a civilized intruder you are, your grace,” she said. “You think of everything.”

“It would be an insult to the vintage to drink straight from the bottle,” Garrick said. He returned with two glasses and handed one to her. Their fingers touched. He heard the little catch of her breath she could not conceal as his hand brushed hers.

He poured for her and clinked his glass softly against hers in a mocking salute, two adversaries meeting and acknowledging that the game was going to be a fierce one. She waited for him to make the opening move. Garrick obliged.

“Does Lady Grant know that when you pretend to be attending lectures and concerts you are actually stalking innocent noblemen in their own homes?” he asked. “Does she know you have been sleeping in my bed?”

A hint of color, rose-pink like her gown, stole into Merryn’s cheeks. “I don’t stalk noblemen in the plural,” she said.

“Then it’s just me,” Garrick said. “How flattering.” He waited until she had taken the window seat then sat down opposite her and stretched out his long legs. The leather wing chair was comfortable, enveloping.

“So,” he said again. “Does Lady Grant know?”

Merryn took a sip of her champagne. He knew she was buying time. A pulse beat in the hollow of her throat, betraying her nervousness.

“No,” she said, after a moment. “She knows nothing of what I do.” She looked up. Her eyes held a mocking spark. “What are you going to do about it?” she said.

“I could tell her,” Garrick said thoughtfully. “I could tell everybody.”

Merryn looked thoughtful. She caught her lower lip between small white teeth. “No one would believe you,” she said politely. “I am Lady Merryn Fenner. I am a bluestocking. I am above suspicion.” She held his gaze, her own steady and bright.

“Except that a woman’s reputation is so vulnerable,” Garrick said gently. “Was vulnerable not the word you used when you warned me at the library? A whisper of scandal and a reputation dies. Your reputation, Lady Merryn.”

Merryn’s gaze narrowed on him. “That is true, of course,” she said. She dangled her half-full champagne glass between her fingers. “If you want to frighten me, though,” she added, “you will have to use something more powerful than society’s censure. I don’t care for it very much.”

A point to her.

“You don’t seek to wed?” Garrick asked. “A tattered reputation might well put paid to your chances.”

She flicked him a look of contempt. “I’d rather become a nun.”

“I assure you,” Garrick said, “that you do not have the least aptitude for it.”

She blushed at his reference to her unrestrained response to his kiss but the look in her eyes was still one of deep disdain. “Oh, well,” she said, “if I change my mind I am sure that your thirty thousand pounds will repair any tatters in my reputation, your grace.” She shrugged. “That is if I find a man I prefer to my books. I confess I have not done so yet.”

“You are meeting the wrong men, then,” Garrick said.

She laughed. “Which is hardly surprising, I suppose, if I frequent the bedchambers of men like you.” She gave him a very direct look. “And you, your grace? Do you seek to remarry?” She paused. “I suppose not. It is not exactly your forte, is it?”

Ouch. Two points.

“I wondered whether you wished me to return your possessions to you,” Garrick said, upping the stakes. “Return the evidence of your midnight wanderings, if you like? Your book, your spectacles … Can you see without them?”

“Perfectly, I thank you,” Merryn said.

“Then they are for disguise only?”

She gave him another pitying stare. “You have too vivid an imagination, your grace. My glasses are for reading, not for disguise. Fortunately I have two pairs.”

“There is also your underwear,” Garrick said.

She stiffened. “You have been rifling through my underwear?”

“You left it in my drawers.”

“Then I think perhaps you had better keep it,” Merryn said icily “I don’t really want it returned secondhand.”

“I haven’t been wearing it,” Garrick pointed out mildly. “Merely looking at it.”

“How singular of you.”

“Not really,” Garrick said. “If you know anything of men, Lady Merryn—”

“I don’t.” She cut him off. There was something defensive in the way that she withdrew from him as though he trespassed on forbidden ground. Her voice was soft but her fingers, rubbing ceaselessly over the embroidery of the window cushions, betrayed her agitation. Merryn Fenner, he suspected, was not accustomed to people getting close to her and stripping away her defenses.

“I know nothing of men,” she said, “nor do I wish to know.” Her tone eased a little. “My sisters … They are the ones to whom you should address your gallantries, your grace. They are wasted on me.”

Garrick wondered if she resented being in the shadow of Joanna Grant and Tess Darent, both such beautiful, charming women. Had she deliberately taken this step back, refused all competition, made her world in books and libraries, lectures and scholarly research where they could not and did not want to follow? And could she not see that she, too, was beautiful and oh so desirable, like a tiny pocket goddess with her tumble of silver gilt hair and those wide blue eyes? It seemed not. Or perhaps she simply did not value good looks. Perhaps she did not even want to be beautiful.