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

“Then I starve,” Joanna said lightly. She had confronted those fears earlier. She refused to let him frighten her. “But fortunately, Nina will not, will she, Lord Grant? I assume that David has left you the means to support his child since you are to be our trustee?”

There was a rather odd silence. Joanna raised a questioning brow. For once, she thought, Alex Grant was actually looking a little. What was it? Embarrassed? Discomfited?

“Ware left a treasure map,” he said gruffly.

Joanna blinked. “I beg your pardon? A treasure map?”

Alex put a hand into his jacket and extracted a flimsy piece of paper, yellow with age. He unfolded it and handed it to her. Joanna gaped. It was a very rough drawing of an island with inlets, bays and coves, crudely executed but with a large X marking a spot close to a beach on a long peninsula. There was, for good measure, the sign of the skull and crossbones.

“Well, really,” Joanna said. “Why could David not deposit money in a bank like normal people?”

There was a hint of color along Alex’s cheekbones. She wondered if he had thought the same thing. He did not strike her as the sort of man to have much truck with buried treasure. She found that she was smiling. It was so gratifying to see Alex Grant at a disadvantage for once.

“Did you bring this back from Spitsbergen along with the letter?” she queried.

“No!” Alex practically snapped the word. “Churchward gave it to me. It was with Ware’s will.”

“It looks all a hum to me,” Joanna said. She shook her head. “How typical of David to be so mysterious.”

“It is all rather unsatisfactory,” Alex said stiffly.

“Well, that was David all over,” Joanna said. “He was most unsatisfactory in so many ways.” She glanced at Alex. His dark gaze was fathomless. “But I forget,” she said, unable to erase the bitterness from her voice. “David could do no wrong in your eyes, could he, Lord Grant? He was above reproach even if he expected you to dig up Nina’s fortune as well as everything else.” She shifted in her chair. “And for that reason I repeat that I cannot permit you to accompany me to Spitsbergen. You neither like me nor trust me and the journey will be uncomfortable enough without turning around and falling over your disapproval at every turn. If you wish to take ship to find this so-called treasure then that is your choice-and your responsibility, but you are not coming with us.”

Alex’s frown had deepened. “It makes absolutely no sense to sail separately, Lady Joanna.”

Privately, Joanna acknowledged that. It did not, however, change her feeling that the last person she wanted on her ship was this disapproving stranger.

“We need not be enemies,” Alex continued. “For the sake of the child we could try to be friends.”

“You aim too high,” Joanna said. “Let us keep our expectations within reason. We could try to be civil.” She shook her head. “The answer is still no. You are forceful by nature. You would be forever trying to tell me what to do and then we would quarrel. Simply being near you makes me feel—”

“Makes you feel what?” Alex raised one dark, quizzical brow.

“Makes me feel infuriated!” Joanna exclaimed, jumping to her feet. It was true. The room felt too small, airless and close, dominated by Alex’s presence, the antagonism simmering between them like a kettle coming to the boil.

Alex got to his feet, too. “So,” he said, “you swore that you would do everything in your power to bring Nina safely home and even in that you lied.”

Joanna stared at him, flayed by his contemptuous tone. “What do you mean by that?”

“Only that anyone with any sense would see that it is in Nina’s interests for you to accept my escort,” Alex said. “But you are so headstrong that you will not agree to it.”

“Don’t speak of me as though you are referring to a horse,” Joanna said furiously. “I am not headstrong, I am the one with sense here! We have been talking for all of ten minutes and already we are arguing. What Nina will need is reassurance and stability, not a pair of guardians who fight like cat and dog!”

She turned away from him and wiped away the errant tears that insisted on escaping from the corners of her eyes. She did not want to cry in front of Alex Grant. He already made her feel so vulnerable, so emotionally exposed. Her feelings felt as though they had been rubbed raw, stinging. David, she thought bitterly, had chosen well when he had sent this man to torment her.

“You must excuse me,” she said rapidly. “It is late and my business here is concluded—”

She turned to find Alex very close to her.

“You’re crying,” he said, his voice rough with some emotion she could not place.

“Of course I’m crying!” Joanna exclaimed. “I have had a very bad week!” She flashed him a look. “Go away, Lord Grant. Can you not take a hint? I really do not want to cry in front of you!”

Alex ignored her words. His hand was on her waist, the gentle warmth of his touch searing her through the silk bodice of her gown. How had that happened? He was drawing her closer, as though he wanted to comfort her. Joanna had never equated a man’s physical proximity with reassurance before; David had only ever touched her when he wanted to bed her. And surely Alex, of all people, cared nothing for whether she was distressed or not. She felt confused, disturbed. She was not sure what was showing on her face. Alex raised a hand and brushed away the smudges of her tears with the pad of his thumb. Her heart ached at the tenderness of the gesture. She looked up to meet the dazzling intensity of those gray eyes and then he was kissing her, his mouth gentle and persuasive, and the sheer surprise of it ripped through her and set her trembling.

“Open your mouth,” he whispered and her mind reeled shock whilst her lips parted in instinctive response to the command and to the pressure of his. Alex coaxed them farther apart with sensual deliberation and she felt the slow sweep of his tongue against hers. She could taste brandy mingled with the salt of her tears. The heat consumed her then, fierce, scalding her, leaving her shaking and breathless. They fell apart and stood staring at one another.

“What was that?” Jo found her voice first. “Comfort?”

“Scarcely that.” For a moment Alex looked as stunned as she felt, his expression taut and astonished, his gray eyes mirroring her shock and confusion. Joanna felt a violent wash of pleasure to see how shaken he was.

“That was not what I intended to do,” he said slowly.

“I imagine not.” Joanna bit her lip. She felt dazed and heated, her stomach burning with wicked excitement. The air between them felt alive. From the room next door came the roar of the boxing crowd as atavistic as a beat in the blood. There was something equally primitive in Alex’s eyes, but it did not scare her. It called to her.

“But now that I have.” He was drawing her close again, his voice so low that she could barely hear it, “I confess I have been wanting this for a long time. In Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and even earlier …”

She could have stopped him. She thought she should have done, knew she should have done. She did not like Alex Grant, yet for some reason that very aversion seemed to make his appeal even more powerful. It added an undertow of raw passion that simultaneously seduced and appalled her. There was a dark current of attraction between them that tempted her with its wicked sweetness, drawing her in so that she clung to him instead of pushing him away. She did not understand it and when Alex held her she did not care.

This time it was not so gentle. Alex’s lips captured hers and took them with all the passion she had always sensed was in him. Joanna yielded to the danger and the excitement, sliding her arms about his neck, pulling him closer. The kiss was so urgent and primitive that she shook with the power of it. It called to an answering need in her. Gone was the ice maiden, the woman David Ware had scorned as barren and frigid. Her mind spun as she realized that she had never felt like this before, never experienced this intensity, this utter desire. It was what she had searched for and never found. She made a small, surrendering noise deep in her throat and felt the harsh need surge in him as he gathered her closer, every hard line of his body taut against hers. There was a tense, heated spiral of desire tightening within her. She wanted him to make love to her here, in this inn parlor with the wild noise of the crowd in her ears.

When he finally released her Joanna pressed her fingers to her mouth in disbelief and felt her lips swollen and moist from the demand of their kisses.

“Well,” Alex said, “that was interesting.”

Interesting? Was that what he called it? Joanna stared at him in outrage. He had kissed her with lust and sweetness and a fiery heat that had her body still humming and he thought it was interesting? Really, she thought, he only needed to speak to annoy her.

“I am glad that you thought so,” she said frostily, trying to damp down her feelings.

His grin was pure wickedness. He looked damnably pleased with himself. Joanna’s annoyance grew.

“I suppose it was a little more than that,” he said.

“You flatter me,” Joanna said. “I should like to know how you can kiss me like that when you profess to dislike me so heartily.”

“It seems that I do not need to like you to kiss you,” Alex said. His gaze was dark and hot. “Nor do you need to like me to kiss me back.”

She felt color flare into her face. “It is unaccountable, is it not,” she said, “for I do not like you at all.”

“And yet.” Alex ran his finger down the curve of her cheek. Her skin seemed to warm to his touch; she resisted a powerful impulse to turn her face against his hand, seeking further caresses. She was simultaneously mortified and fascinated by her response to him. She could feel the arousal building deep inside her again, tight as a knot.

“And yet you want me,” Alex said.

“I want a carriage with matching grays and a diamond necklace from Hatton Garden,” Joanna said, “but it is not going to happen, just as any sort of affaire between us is not going to happen.”

“Is it not?” His voice was dangerously soft. His hand fell to the hollow at the base of her throat, his touch as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. Joanna could feel her breathing catch. She knew that the pulse there would be pounding; her heart was racing so fast now that she could feel the beat of it against the silk of her bodice. Alex ran a finger along her collarbone, dipping his hand beneath the ruffled neckline of her gown to caress the upper curve of her breast in a touch that was fleeting and yet wrenched so deep a sensation from Joanna that her knees almost buckled beneath her. Her nipples hardened instantly and a tiny gasp broke from her lips. Alex’s gaze was intent, dark, focused, utterly consumed with desire. He slid the slippery silk from her shoulder and his lips replaced his fingers, drifting down across the tender skin of her neck and the delicious line of her breasts to dip into the hollow between them, his tongue flicking, hot and shocking against her skin.

Joanna’s mind spun with dark, erotic images, her body melting into slow, luxuriant pleasure. It was like a game, a dare, a test of how far he could push her, and she knew she should stop it, stop him, but she did not want to because she was trapped in a web of sensual delight.