The evening hadn’t been so bad. The food was delicious. Even the company had been pleasing. It was good for her. At least that’s what she continued to tell herself. Getting out of her comfort zone and engaging with Society. Taking her mind off the shambles of her life.
Struan Mackenzie’s Mayfair mansion was the height of opulence. The dinner had been no less lavish, a meal fit for the Queen consisting of too many courses to count. The finest food and drink for a couple dozen guests, all titled. All of whom she knew either in name or acquaintance. Clearly the gentleman was all about making connections in the highest echelons of Society. There were at least three marriageable young ladies present, all of whom cast admiring glances his way. She had no doubt he would soon find himself a bride to his liking.
The young ladies in attendance were actually kind to her. That was a novel experience she credited to the fact that she was married now and not a threat to their prospects with Mackenzie. They were no longer competing. And he was clearly the catch they were all vying for.
“I’m sorry that Lord Camden couldn’t attend tonight.”
With a fixed smile, she looked away from the young lady playing the pianoforte to Struan Mackenzie as he stepped beside her. “He was most sorry to miss it as well,” she managed to say without choking on the lie.
Mr. Mackenzie stared at her overly long, and she was almost certain he sensed the falsehood . . . that he knew Max knew nothing about her being here tonight.
“I confess I am a little surprised to be included in your dinner party, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“And why is that?”
She shrugged lightly. “You could have invited an eligible young lady rather than me.” That would have better served his interest.
He smiled slowly, his teeth a blinding flash of white against his golden skin. “I invited you and your husband because I find you both interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“Amusing,” he amended. She frowned, not sure she liked that any better than being called interesting.
“I did not realize we were the subject of your amusement.”
“I was curious to see how the two of ye are getting along in your new marriage.”
And she had come here alone. Without Max. What must he think? She stifled a cringe and told herself she did not care what Mackenzie or anyone else thought of her.
“We are doing quite well. Thank you for your well wishes.” She smiled tightly, well aware that he had not precisely wished them well.
He angled his head. “Your husband is an interesting man.”
Interesting? Max? That was a fair assessment. He had long fascinated her.
Mackenzie continued, “I was not at all surprised when I learned the news of your marriage. Not after Lord Camden paid me a call.”
She whipped her head around, scrutinizing him anew. “My husband paid you a visit?” Max made no attempt to disguise his dislike for Mackenzie. Why would he call on him?
The Scotsman nodded as though it were of no real significance. “Yes. Following our encounter at . . .” His voice faded but she knew to what he was referring. Max had called on him after he returned her home from Sodom. It would have been very late. Practically the middle of the night. Why would he have done such a thing?
Mackenzie must have read her bewilderment. He stepped closer, his deep burr a low whisper. “I believe he wanted to guarantee my discretion on your behalf. I assured him he need not concern himself on that account. It is no’ a hobby of mine to ruin young ladies.”
She flushed and nodded once. Max had done that? She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. He had always expressed concern for her reputation. Perhaps she should have been more concerned about Mackenzie’s inclination to keep her secret.
“Lord Camden takes his responsibilities very seriously.” If her voice sounded strained, she was hopeful he did not notice.
“Verra seriously indeed.” He chuckled, his gaze skimming her appreciatively. “And ye were one of his responsibilities even before marriage? Now that is what I find most interesting.”
Her flush burned deeper, and she knew she must be blushing bright red. She watched as his moss green eyes traveled over the length of her before settling on her face.
“Then I suppose you weren’t surprised to learn we had wed.”
He chuckled deeply again. “Ah, no. Not at all. Considering the real purpose of his visit was to warn me off you—”
“What?” She turned and faced him fully, not even pretending interest in the couple at the front of the room anymore.
“Are you so astonished? He warned me to stay away . . .”
“Away?”
“Yes. He warned me away from you.”
Aurelia blinked and stared unseeingly at the elegant folds of his cravat for a long moment, trying to understand what he was saying. Max had warned Struan Mackenzie to stay away from her? It all clicked into place then. “That’s why you did not call on me again?”
Mackenzie shrugged. “We came to a gentlemen’s agreement.”
About her. They came to an agreement about her. As though she weren’t a person but a piece of meat to be fought over? A matter—not a person—upon which to be negotiated. It wasn’t to be borne.
“He wanted my promise not to marry you,” he elaborated. “I gave him my word.”
As if it was only up to Struan Mackenzie. As if she possessed no say . . . no brain.
“In exchange for what?” she bit out, and then shook her head, waving a hand. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Hot indignation bubbled up inside her. An awkward stretch of silence fell between them. She groped for something to say to fill the void when all she really wanted to do was storm from the room and corner Max somewhere so she could unleash her ire.
“The young Lady Camille is lovely,” she offered to the Scotsman.
The girl had been perfectly cordial to Aurelia, congratulating her on her marriage. Camille was also one of the few present who had been kind to her prior to her marriage.
“I suppose. A little thin. I prefer my ladies with curves.”
Not missing the flirtation, heat scored her cheeks. She felt a frisson of guilt. Max had insisted the man’s interest would not have dissipated because they were now married. Perhaps she should not have scoffed at him.
Then she recalled how angry she was at him. She quickly repressed her guilt.
“Are you happy, Aurelia?” Mackenzie asked, rolling her name in that gravelly burr of his.
She shifted uncomfortably on her feet and blinked at him. “You are blunt, and I don’t recall giving you leave to use my Christian name. It’s Lady Camden now, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“Come. As a former suitor? Are we not permitted a little familiarity?”
She didn’t reply, instead sipped her punch and scanned the drawing room, hoping one of the guests milling about would choose that moment to join them so she did not have to answer Mackenzie’s discomfiting questions.
His burr was low and silky near her ear and his hand brushed her elbow. “Is it too much to think I might care for you?”
She lifted her gaze, reading the seduction in his eyes. This was more than friendly interest.
“Step away from my wife.”
Chapter 23
It all felt hotly familiar to Max. Walking up on Aurelia with Mackenzie hovering close, his big hand on her like he had every right to touch her. If possible, this time he felt closer to unraveling. Here, in Struan Mackenzie’s drawing room, he wanted to tear the bastard apart.
Aurelia’s eyes widened and then narrowed. “Camden,” she said with a calm at odds with the spitting fire in her brown eyes.
There she went again. Calling him Camden as if they weren’t lovers.
And why did she look so angry to see him? She was here against his wishes. He had done nothing t
o her. She was the one in error here.
“This is a surprise.” Her lips curved into a brittle smile. “I did not think you could make it tonight.”
Oh, the cheek of the girl!
Mackenzie slid his hand off her arm, and some of the tension ebbed from Max’s shoulders. Until the bastard opened his mouth.
“Your delightful wife and I were just having a fascinating conversation.” He slid her an appreciative glance. “She always proves diverting.”
Max shook his head, despising that way he spoke about Aurelia. As if she and he were the most intimate of friends. He stepped closer, almost nose-to-nose with the Scotsman. He might not give a bloody damn about the curious stares shooting their way, but he would speak low so they would not be overheard. “You gave your word to stay away from her.”
“I promised I would give up my pursuit to marry her.” Mackenzie shot him a cocky smile. “I did no’ say I would no speak to her again . . . no’ touch her—“
Max’s fist flew out before he could stop himself, his knuckles contacting with the man’s jaw.
Mackenzie went down. Chaos erupted, which included Aurelia shouting his name. Max. Not Camden, and for that he was perversely satisfied. Even as several men lunged across the room to restrain him, he was gratified to know that in the heat of passion she thought of him as Max and not Camden as everyone else in the world. She was it, the only one, and for some reason that mattered to him for reasons he refused to examine.
“I’m fine,” he growled, shaking off hands.
The big Scot rose to his feet, gingerly touching his jaw. The crowd shrank back, no doubt assuming Mackenzie would want a crack at him now.
Aurelia was of the same assumption, too. She stepped between them, holding out a hand as though to ward off Mackenzie. “Don’t . . . please . . .”
Something snapped inside Max at having her intervene as though he couldn’t defend himself. Or her.
He stepped around Aurelia, closing his hand around hers and pulling her to his side. “We’re leaving.” He held Mackenzie’s gaze, conveying all his fury, all his possessiveness. In a single look he let the Scotsman know that he would not have his way. He would not have her.
A long moment passed and then something passed over Mackenzie’s eyes. He nodded. One nearly imperceptible nod. He understood.
With one hand still flexing his jaw, he stepped to the side and gestured for them to pass.
Adjusting his clasp on Aurelia’s hand, Max pulled her after him and out of the drawing room. Every pair of eyes followed them and he didn’t care. He didn’t give a bloody damn.
He was going home and he was taking his wife with him.
In moments they were in the carriage. She launched herself into the seat across from him. It was reminiscent of the night he fetched her from Sodom. Now, as then, she didn’t want to touch him.
“Are you out of your mind?” she demanded.
“I told you not to come here.” He shrugged. “What did expect me to do when I learned where you were?”
“Not that! You hit him! In front of all those people! What will people say—”
“Come now.” He tsked. “What others think of you has never mattered.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, which only pushed the generous swell of her breasts higher. The sight made him ache. He wanted to touch her there again. Taste her. Close his mouth around—
“Perhaps it matters now.”
He studied her in the shadowy interior of his rocking carriage. “Oh? What’s changed?”
She said nothing. Her eyes gleamed at him across the distance, deep and full with emotion. The anger was still there but something else lurked, too. Something he had never seen in her before. Whatever it was it made him want to haul her across the carriage and into his arms so she didn’t look that way anymore.
She must have realized she was revealing something of herself because she averted her gaze, looking downward. Her lashes cast dark crescents on her cheeks. “He told me what you did,” she whispered, and damned if she didn’t sound wounded. As though he had damaged her somehow.
She lifted her gaze and there it was. The hurt in her eyes.
“What did he tell you?” Immediately he wondered if Mackenzie had made up some lies.
“You went to see him. After Sodom.”
Not lies, then. The truth. The truth had upset her. A flicker of uncertainty curled in his chest that perhaps he had something to feel guilty about. A feeling he quickly squashed. He would not change his actions, so there was no sense regretting them. “Yes. I did,” he admitted.
She inhaled, lifting her breasts higher against her bodice. He tried not to stare. Staring only made him want her more, and she clearly wasn’t in the mood to have him. No, she looked as though she would rather have his head on a pike. “How could you do that?”
He frowned. “I was looking out for you—”
“You made him promise not to court me . . . not to ask to marry me.” She shook her head. “That left me with Buckston.”
“What does any of this matter now? You’re married to me.”
“It matters because you don’t trust me. I won’t have you control me . . . my own family never treated me like that. I was twenty-three and unwed because they trusted me to make my own choices. Something you—my own husband—can’t even do!”
Helplessness washed over him looking at her, listening to her. This was new. Listening to a female. Trying to understand the workings of her mind and how not to behave in a wholly selfish manner. He’d never come near to this intimacy with another female. He was gone before things ever became even close to this. Aurelia was the only woman he ever argued with . . . the only one who mattered.
A lump rose in his throat and he inwardly cursed. “Has it occurred to you that I did it for myself?”
She nodded fiercely, scooting to the edge of her seat in the heat of her indignation. “Well, you certainly weren’t thinking of me.”
He nodded back just as fiercely, leaning forward, feeling dangerous right then. As though he might admit anything. Do anything. “My own selfish reasons drove me.”
She sucked in a tiny breath and jerked back ever so slightly.
He closed in, moving closer. A few inches separated them. It would be so easy to grab her, touch her, kiss her.
Instead, he continued talking. “I went to Mackenzie’s because I couldn’t stand the thought of you with him. I probably would have put an end to you and Buckston, too, no matter that he was but a harmless fop . . .” He was breathing harshly now, his hands curling around the edges of the squabs. “Because the idea of you being with anyone but me makes me want to hit something.”
There was no sound save the rasp of their breaths and the creak of the rolling wheels on the street.
She blinked, her brown eyes owlishly big in her face.
“Don’t tell me I silenced you.” Such a thing he would have never thought possible.
She opened her mouth. Her lips worked, but no sound emerged except a strangled, “I—I—”
“It’s all right,” he growled. “You don’t have to say anything.” He reached out, curved a hand around the back of her neck and hauled her onto his lap.
Her sweet breath escaped in a puff against his mouth as they gazed into each other’s eyes in the dim interior. They were so close. Their mouths practically touching, but not. Not kissing. Not yet. Everything in him quivered from the restraint. Another one of those whimpery sounds escaped her lips.
He speared a hand through her hair, scattering the pins so that the dark mass tumbled loose. A small sound escaped her. God. He loved all those little sounds she made.
He pulled her head back, bringing his nose to the arch of her throat and inhaling. He missed her smell. He loved it. He caught whiffs of it throughout the house. Especially when he passed her door. He wanted to
roll over in his bed and be able to breathe it in all the time.
He dragged his mouth and nose up her throat, loving the way she shuddered in his arms. He flexed his hand in her hair, forcing her face back down, his mouth taking hers. Claiming it in a crushing kiss.
She was eager, ready. Her mouth opened instantly for his and his tongue swept inside, colliding with hers, tasting all her sweetness. All her warmth.
Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she pushed herself up on his lap so she could straddle him. She settled back down then, pressing her sex against his cock. Even with clothing between them, she scorched him.
Her skirts pooled around them in a giant puddle of silk. His hands roamed her bottom, buried beneath layers of fabric, and he growled, frustrated at the bulk of material in his way. His palms moved around to her front. He yanked her bodice down, not caring at the rip of seams. He tugged down her corset and broke their kiss to look at her. To feast his gaze on the erotic bounty of her breasts spilling free, pushed up high over her corset. His cock jumped against the front of his trousers. Groaning, he bent his head and seized a dusky nipple, drawing it deep into his mouth.
She cried out, arching against him, fingers diving into his hair, urging him on. He sucked and laved her nipple with his tongue and then scraped it with his teeth until it sprang into a hard, distended tip. She went wild in his arms, her hips undulating on him. She knew what was coming now and it made her hotter, ready and eager.
She pulled on his hair, yanking him to her neglected breast. “Camden,” she growled.
“No. Say it, damn it. Say my name.” Camden was his father. And his grandfather and the sire before him. She used to say his name. Long ago. He’d hear it from her lips again.
Her lips pressed into a flirty, mutinous line. “No.”
He smiled slowly. “I’ll hear it from you.”
She shook her head, her dark hair tossing around her.