That was flattering and encouraging enough to raise her spirits, bolster her confidence, and make her certain that she had made the right decision a few minutes before. She had prayed to be totally ruined, and it was going to happen at the hands of the most sought-after bachelor in Europe, Nicholas DuVille himself! That made it so much better—it gave it a certain flair, a style. In return for sacrificing herself to total ruin to avoid Sir Francis, she was going to have sweet memories to treasure. “I’m not demented, though it must look it,” she began, “and I do have a favor to ask of you.”
Nicki knew he ought to walk away, but he was as strangely captivated by her infectious laughter, her entrancing face, and her astonishing reactions as he was completely bored with the prospect of returning to the ball. “Exactly what is this favor you’re hoping I’ll grant you?”
“It’s a little difficult to discuss,” she said. He watched her reach for whatever it was she’d been drinking. She took a sip of it as if she needed it for courage, and then she raised those large candid eyes to his. “Actually, it’s quite difficult,” she amended, wrinkling her pert nose.
“As you can see,” Nicki responded, suppressing a smile and giving her a gallant little bow, “I am completely at your service.”
“I hope you still feel that way, after you hear what I would ask of you,” she murmured uneasily.
“What may I do?”
“I would like you to ruin me.”
7
UNTIL THAT MOMENT, NICKI WOULD have wagered a fortune that nothing a woman said could truly surprise him anymore, let alone reduce him to his current state of speechlessness. “I beg your pardon?” he finally managed.
Julianna saw him struggle to hide his shock, and she suppressed another siege of unacceptable giggles. She wasn’t certain whether her urge to laugh came from nervousness or the wondrous, evil-tasting potion that men imbibed to make them feel so much more optimistic. “I asked if you would be willing to ruin me.
Stalling for time, Nicki studied her from the corner of his eye while he reached into his pocket and took out the last of the two cheroots he’d brought with him. “What . . . specifically . . .” he queried cautiously as he bent his head and lit the cheroot, “do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I wish to be ruined,” Julianna repeated, watching him cup his hands around the flame, trying to get a better look at his features. “I mean, I wish to be made undesirable to any and all men,” she clarified. “Rendered unmarriageable. Left on the shelf.”
Instead of reacting, he propped a booted foot on the stone bench beside her hip and eyed her in thoughtful silence, the thin cigar clamped between even white teeth.
“I—I really don’t think I could possibly make it any clearer than that,” she said anxiously.
“No, I don’t think you could.”
She leaned a little closer to his leg and tipped her head back, peering up at his unreadable face as he gazed off into the distance. “You do understand what I meant?”
“It would be difficult not to.”
He did not sound very enthusiastic, so she blurted the first inducement that came to mind: “I would be willing to pay you!”
This time Nicki was able to suppress his shock though not his smile at her ability to cause the reaction. “That makes twice,” he murmured aloud. “And in one night.” Realizing that she was waiting for a reply, he lowered his gaze to her upturned face, bit back a wayward grin, and said gravely, “That’s a very tempting offer.”
“I would cooperate completely,” she promised, leaning forward and looking at him with earnest, hopeful eyes.
“The incentives are becoming more irresistible by the moment.”
Nicki let her wait for his decision while he gazed into the distance, analyzing the situation and the intriguing young woman seated on the bench beside his leg. He still wasn’t certain how old she was, but he had known she was no gently bred debutante long before she’d asked him for a “favor.” The clues had all been there from the first, beginning with the fact that she was alone in a dark, secluded area with a man to whom she’d never been properly introduced, and she’d made no effort to correct either situation.
Furthermore, the gown she was wearing was enticing in the extreme, seductively low cut to show off her swelling breasts and tightly fitted to emphasize her narrow waist. No respectable Society matron alive would have permitted her innocent daughter to appear in such a gown. It was a gown for a daring married woman—or a courtesan. She was not wearing a marriage ring, which left only the latter possibility. That conclusion was reinforced by the fact that it had become quite the thing, especially among the wealthy young bucks, to escort their lightskirts to masquerades as sort of a joke. Some of London’s most beautiful and sought-after courtesans were in evidence at this masquerade, and Nicki assumed the angelic-looking one beside him had quarreled with whomever had brought her here. After crying her heart out, she was now looking for a replacement. He knew damned well she’d been “ruined” long before and often since, just as he knew she had absolutely no intention of paying him, but the latter approach was so marvelously creative that he was impressed. She was not only entrancingly lovely, she was unique. And extremely entertaining. With her looks and imagination, her soft, cultured voice, she was not going to have to look very far or very long for a new protector. In fact, if she proved to be half as entertaining in his bed tonight as she’d been thus far, he’d be sorely tempted to volunteer for the role.
In an agony of suspense, Julianna stared at his firm jaw and unreadable expression as he gazed off into the distance, his hands thrust into his pockets, his cloak thrown back over his shoulders. His eyes were creased at the corners, and it seemed almost as if he was smiling a little bit, but that may have been caused only by the way he was holding the cheroot clamped between his white teeth.
Unable to endure the wait any longer, Julianna said shakily, “Have you decided yet?”
He shifted his gaze to her face, and Julianna felt the full impact of the lazy, devastating smile that swept across his face. “I would not come cheaply,” Nicki joked.
“I haven’t a great deal of money,” she warned, and Nicki bit back a chuckle that erupted into a shout of laughter when she actually started digging into her little reticule, searching for money.
Extending his arm to her, he said, “Shall we find a place more conducive to . . . ah . . .”
“My ruin?” she provided helpfully, and he sensed a slight hesitation that was gone before it materialized. Standing up, she squared her shoulders, put up her chin, and, looking like a queen going bravely and determinedly, announced, “Let’s be at it, then.”
He led her deeper into the maze, guided by a long-ago memory of the time when Valerie and he had been lost inside it for hours because they’d missed the secret path. It occurred to him as they walked along at a leisurely pace that introductions were in order, but when he mentioned this, she told him that she already knew who he was. “And you are?” Nicki prompted when she showed no inclination to volunteer him the information.
Somewhere in Julianna’s hazy mind, tangled up in the dreamy unreality of the night and the moon and the handsome, desirable man at her side, caution finally asserted itself. Trying to think of a false name to give him, she glanced down at her gown. “ ‘Marie,’ ” she provided after a momentary pause. “You may call me ‘Marie.’ ”
“As in ‘Antoinette’?” Nicki mocked, wondering why she was lying.
In answer, she threw up her left arm in exuberation and called cheerfully, “Let them eat cake!” A split second later she stopped dead. “Where are we going?”
“To my bedchamber.”
Julianna mentally recounted the possibilities for ruination. Three dances with the same man. Allowing a man to show partiality. And being alone in a room with a man. Room. Bedchamber. She nodded agreeably. “Very well, I suppose you know more about it than I.”
I doubt it, Nicki thought dryly.
They strolle
d along in companionable silence, and Nicki liked that about her too. She did not feel a need to talk incessantly. When she finally broke the silence, even her timing was right, although her topic was another stunning first in his vast experience with females. She’d been looking down at the ground when she lifted her head and said very solemnly, “I often find myself wondering about worms. Do you?”
“Not as much,” Nicki lied drolly, swallowing back a laugh, “as I used to do.” He couldn’t remember laughing this much in an entire week.
“Then consider this and see if you can think of an answer,” she suggested in the grave tones of a puzzled scientist. “If God meant for them to crawl about on the ground as they do, why don’t they have knees?”
Nicki stopped dead, his shoulders shaking with helpless mirth as he turned fully toward her. “What did you just say?”
A heavenly face lifted to his, eyes shining, breasts swelling invitingly above her bodice, generous lips forming words: “I asked why worms don’t have knees.”
“That’s what I thought you said.” Grabbing her shoulders, he hauled her abruptly into his arms and surrendered to the uncontrollable impulse to smother his laughter against the soft lips that had caused it. He let her go as quickly as he’d grabbed her, uncertain whether her expression was one of shock or reproof. Deciding it was unnecessary and undesirable to discuss either one with someone who was going to share his bed in return for payment, he stepped back and turned away.
Despite that, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing at her several times in the dark to assess her reaction, and he relaxed when he saw the bemused smile touching her lips.
He was not completely certain he’d made all the right turns until they rounded the last corner and he found the secret exit that led around to the side of the house. Knowing in advance that they were going to be in plain view of the revelers for a few paces—albeit at a reasonably safe distance—Nicki carefully stationed himself on her left, between the house and her. “Why are we walking faster?” she asked.
“Because we happen to be in view of the guests from here,” he cautioned.
She peered around him to see for herself. “Let them eat cake too!” she announced cheerfully with another wave of her arm. Raising her voice, she called out, “All of you have my permission to eat cake!”
Nicki felt his shoulders shake with silent, horrified, helpless laughter, but he said nothing to encourage another outburst.
8
IN HIS BEDCHAMBER, JULIANNA SAT upon a small sofa upholstered in rich gold brocade, feeling as if she were in a dream, as she watched him slowly strip off his coat and loosen his snowy-white neckcloth. A thousand warning bells were clanging madly in her head, making her feel extremely dizzy. Or perhaps it was the memory of his mouth crushed to hers that made her head swim.
She lowered her gaze, because that seemed like the right thing to do, and then became preoccupied with what she saw.
Divested of his coat and neckcloth, Nicki loosened the top of his shirt and walked over to the polished table where a tray of glasses and decanters had been left. Pulling the stopper out of the brandy decanter, he glanced over his shoulder to ask if she wanted anything, but what he saw made him frown with concern and turn fully around. She was seated on the sofa, but bending as far forward at the waist as she could, looking at something on the floor. “What are you doing?” he asked.
She answered without looking up. “I don’t have any toes.”
“What do you mean?” Nicki demanded irritably as it began to occur to him that nearly everything she’d done and said in the maze that had seemed shocking or hilarious at the time, including her request to be ruined, could very likely be the result of intoxication or an unbalanced mind. His voice was intentionally sharp. “Can you stand up?” he snapped.
Julianna stiffened at his tone and slowly straightened. Transfixed by the change in him, she stood up as commanded, scarcely able to believe the forbidding man standing there was the same one who had joked with her and . . . and kissed her.
She looked completely dazed, Nicki realized. Dazed and disoriented. With an anger that was heightened by disappointment and self-disgust for his own naïveté, he said scathingly, “Are you capable of uttering anything at all that could convince me you are capable of intelligent thought at this moment?”
Julianna flinched from that all-too-familiar voice. It had the same clipped, authoritative tones, the same contemptuous superiority that had humiliated and antagonized her in the park. Tonight her reaction was slowed by brandy and shock, but when she did react it was just as instinctive and just as effective, although more restrained. She wanted this to be a night to remember, to cherish. “I think I am,” she said softly, lifting her chin, her voice trembling only slightly.
“Shall we begin with Greek philosophy?” Clasping her hands behind her back, she turned sideways, pretending to study the painting above the fireplace, as she continued: “Socrates had some interesting observations about knowledge and ethics. Plato was more profound. . . .”
Julianna paused, trying desperately to clear her head and remember what else she knew of philosophers, ancient or otherwise. “In modern times . . .” she tried again, “Voltaire is a particular favorite of mine. I enjoy his wit. But of all the modern . . .” Her voice trailed off as Julianna heard him coming up behind her, then she made herself go on: “Of all the modern philosophers, the one I am best acquainted with was a woman. Her name was Sarah.”
He stopped so near to her that she could actually feel him standing at her back. Shaking with uncertainty, Julianna said, “Shall I share Sarah’s favorite theory with you?”
“By all means,” he whispered contritely, his warm breath stirring the hair at her temple.
“Sarah’s theory was that females were once considered superior to males, but that males, in their deceitful arrogance, found a way to—”
Julianna’s entire body tensed as his hands curved around her shoulders, drawing her back against his full length. “Males found a way to convince us, and themselves, that women are actually birdwits and—”
His warm lips touched a sensitive place behind her ear, sending shivers racing down her entire body. “Go on,” he urged, his voice like velvet, his mouth against her ear. Julianna tried, but her breath came out in a shuddering sigh. She was losing control again, letting the brandy soothe her and convince her this was right. It was either this or Sir Francis Bellhaven: sweet, forbidden pleasures with memories to cherish . . . or life with a man who sickened her. Surely she was entitled to a few more moments, she decided.
Nicki felt her heart racing beneath his hand as he slid it over her midriff, taking his time before he let himself touch the full, tantalizing breasts that were within his reach. He slid a kiss over her smooth temple and trailed another down the silken skin of her cheek. She smelled like fresh air and flowers, and in his arms she felt like . . .
Wood.
She was breathing as if she were running, her heart was thundering from . . .
Fright.
Nicki lifted his head and wordlessly turned her around. In disbelief, he stared down at the hectic color on her cheeks and eyes, eyes that had darkened to violet pools, eyes that watched him in uncertainty. The color in her cheeks deepened with embarrassment as he inspected every feature of that elegant face, looking for something, anything, to indicate that this wasn’t new and terrifying for her. He wanted to discover one thing that indicated experience.
And all he could find was innocence.
This was her first time.
She had not done any of this before.
He wanted her despite that. No, he realized with disbelief, he wanted her three times more because of that. She was there for the taking, she had asked him to do this, had even volunteered to pay him to do this. And still he hesitated. Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he forced her to meet his gaze. In a voice that was devoid of anything except reassuring neutrality, Nicki asked, “Are you absolutely certain you
want to be here . . . to do this?”
Julianna swallowed audibly and nodded slightly. “It’s something I have to do—to get it over and done with.”
“You’re completely certain?”
She nodded, and Nicki did what he’d been longing to do all along. Except that as he bent his head, he had the disquieting thought that he wasn’t merely despoiling a virgin, he was destroying an angel. He seized her mouth with violent tenderness, forcing her to respond and then pushing her harder until she was moaning in his arms and his hands were clamping her to him, then moving forward, sliding up to cup her trembling breasts.
“No!” She broke free with such suddenness that she caught Nicki off guard. “I can’t! I can’t! Not that!”
She shook her head wildly, and Nicki stared at her in frowning disbelief. One moment she’d been kissing him back, her arms twined sweetly behind his neck, her body molding instinctively to his. The next, she was running across the room, leaving him there, jerking the door open and racing. . . .
Straight into Valerie, and another woman who was raving about her daughter being abducted and demanding a search of the house for her. As if in a dream, a nightmare, he saw the woman who had accosted him in the park wrap her arms protectively around the girl who had been his a moment before.
Only the older woman was different now. She wasn’t groveling about what a pleasure it was to meet him, she was looking at him with triumphant hostility all over her face, saying, “After I have put my daughter to bed and summoned my husband, we will discuss this privately!”
9
JULIANNA?” HER MOTHER’S NORMAL SPEAKING voice sounded like a screech. Julianna’s head hurt so terribly that even her teeth seemed to ache in their sockets. In all the world, the only thing that wasn’t awful this morning was her mother. Her mother, who should have been livid, who Julianna had thought would disown her for less than what she’d done last night, was the soul of gentle understanding.