But there were still things an innocent young lady—or even a young married woman—could hardly do and still keep her good name and self-respect. Lying with a man who wanted only her body was certainly one of them.
“Life is too short and uncertain to allow you always to play by the rules, Victoria. Remember that. Sometimes you just hold your head high, step boldly forward—and damn the consequences.”
Morgan’s advice echoed in her mind, and she felt an unfamiliar recklessness grip her. No matter what he wanted of her, she was undeniably drawn to Falcon Delaney, and if she sent him away now she knew she would forever regret it. Her body felt alive and aware, as if all her senses strained to burst from her skin like overripe fruit, and it was a glorious feeling. A breathless, exciting, seductive feeling. Could that be so wrong? She was strong enough, wasn’t she, to step boldly forward?
And damn the consequences!
She moved slowly to the wardrobe and opened it, taking out a gown of the finest taffeta. Pink, he had said? This gown was a light, ethereal pink, glowing like an expensive pearl. It was low-cut, so much so that she had never yet worn it, despite its beauty. It left her shoulders bare and her breasts revealed almost to their rosy tips, and it made her waist tiny. And in her jewel case was the set of diamonds Morgan had given her on her last birthday.
Victoria put the dress on her bed, absently smoothing the glimmering, silky material. Then she turned and went to the bell rope. A bath first, and she wanted to wash her hair and brush it until it gleamed.
She wanted to smell of lavender.
—
Falcon Delaney moved through the quiet, almost deserted morning streets of New York until he reached his hotel. It was not the Royal, but neither was it a tumbledown shanty catering to desperadoes. It was a clean, neat place, its customers affluent men in the city on business—and men passing through the city, of whom none dared to inquire their business.
He got his key from a disinterested clerk and went up to the second floor. In his room, he automatically locked the door, checked the windows, and made certain his bags were undisturbed. Finding no sign of unwanted visitors, he removed a small, leather-bound book from a bag beneath the bed and sat down.
The journal held neatly written but cryptic entries, and he merely glanced over the last entry before making another. It, too, was coded, but he knew the code so well that he wrote swiftly and without hesitation. Though someone looking over his shoulder would never have realized it, he was succinctly detailing the events of the previous night. And puzzling those events were.
There had been a message given to him along with his key, stating that the list he had expected to arrive soon would be delayed for a few days, and possibly longer. Reluctant to focus his mind on business—and startled by that unusual lapse—he nonetheless considered the matter thoughtfully.
The events of the night before were puzzling, more puzzling, in fact, the longer he thought about them. The man with the eye patch, Read, and his henchmen certainly had not acted in the manner of innocent men. Falcon had been knocked out because, apparently, he had been spotted following Read and was known to be armed. Victoria had been thrown into the cellar with him presumably because she had seen what had happened. But none of that explained what the three men had been doing at the shop in the first place, or what the plan was that Falcon’s arrival had “botched.”
The elderly, gentlemanly shopkeeper, bewildered, had professed to have no knowledge at all of why strange men should have carefully broken into his shop the night before, pretending to keep it open for business. Falcon believed him. Nothing had been missing from the shop, not even the small amount of money left in the till overnight. Nothing had been disturbed, unless one counted the shelves disarranged when Victoria had struggled with one of the men.
So why had Read and his men broken into the shop with no apparent intent to loot or destroy?
Falcon stretched out on his bed, closed his eyes, and considered carefully, repeating to himself what Victoria had heard from the men.
They couldn’t take the chance that he—Falcon—knew something. They had gotten an address, and so could go directly to their destination, wherever that was. Something had been botched by the henchman, something ruined because Falcon had been knocked out? Botched. What could have been botched? What plan had been changed by his arrival?
Falcon swore absently as he realized he had not thought to ask Victoria one vital question about what she had heard. He hadn’t thought to ask, and she wouldn’t have noticed, probably, because of where she’d been born. He hadn’t thought to ask if the men she had heard spoke with Southern accents.
Still…it could hardly be connected, could it? Read had paid for drinks with a specially minted gold coin stolen years before in a daring robbery, and Falcon had been knocked on the head because he had turned up unexpectedly. He hadn’t been knocked out because of who or what he was, apparently, but simply because a strange man had blundered in by chance, and his mere presence had ruined some plan of theirs.
It couldn’t be connected. But Falcon’s instincts were prodding him relentlessly, and he realized that, because of experience or because he had seen or heard something he was not yet fully aware of, he believed it was connected. There was a piece missing, something he didn’t know and couldn’t guess, a vital link that prevented him from seeing what had actually happened last night.
What was it?
He couldn’t believe Victoria was involved, despite his initial suspicion. Yet she had been there. She had been the only person in the shop other than those men. Had their “plan” involved her in some way? And, if so, why had his arrival caused them to abandon the plan? Falcon was convinced Victoria knew nothing of what was going on, so how could she be involved?
He pushed the questions to the back of his mind. The answers, if they existed, would come to him in time.
After a while, Falcon rose and shaved, then dug out his spare gun and loaded it, and went to have breakfast before returning to the waterfront. It was early, but he was hardly concerned about the sleeping habits of others. He rousted a reluctant Sam out of bed and questioned him about Read, but the barkeep had nothing significant to say.
“I don’t know his name, sir, or where he’s staying. He didn’t come back last night at all.”
“Did he speak with an accent? A Southern accent?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t notice.”
Taking a chance, Falcon questioned a few more waterfront denizens. All he got for his trouble was a feeling that Read had been new to the waterfront, because no one seemed to know anything about him.
His intent questioning had kept his mind off Victoria and what had happened between them, and he was quietly furious now that this new and promising trail had gone cold so quickly. Still, it wasn’t the first time, and he finally returned to his hotel, disappointed and annoyed but unsurprised.
He’d have to wait for the list. Wait until there was something more to go on than his nebulous instincts. And, in the meantime, there was Victoria.
Falcon made arrangements for a private carriage for that evening before going up to his room, smiling a little as he thought of the long drive out to Leon Hamilton’s palatial estate. It was a very long drive, and he meant to instruct the driver to take his time about it.
He felt a brief twinge of compunction at the realization that Victoria Fontaine was unprotected in the city, but reminded himself that she had agreed to accompany him tonight. After you kissed her senseless! There was no escaping the fact that he had indeed set out to weaken her resistance to him, but he consoled himself with the thought that he certainly wasn’t planning on rape. He had never in his life forced himself on a woman, and didn’t intend to start with Victoria.
No, he intended to be very sure that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. There would doubtless be limitless opportunities tonight, he thought dryly, wondering if Victoria could possibly know that the “cream of New York society” was a lusty and fort
hright bunch with few illusions left. He had been to parties at the Hamilton estate several times these last years, and there were always a few highborn ladies and gentlemen who came in from “strolls” in the garden with the rumpled, gleaming-eyed look of satisfying sex in the bushes.
He had himself, once or twice.
Leon Hamilton, though devoted to his Mary, had been a bachelor of some note for a number of years, and his lush garden, if not precisely planned for dalliance, at least made the pursuit of such occupations immensely gratifying. And the people he called friends certainly took advantage of his hospitality. There were always numerous bedrooms thoughtfully prepared beforehand for unplanned activity, and if Mary would sigh in regret to know that the rooms were lustily shared by couples not wedded to each other, at least she understood and accepted as well as Leon the failings of humanity.
Falcon wondered what Victoria would make of his friends. The glittering New York society of 1871 was a far cry from both the genteel South and the rough Southwest. With manners and—some maintained—morals challenged brutally by war, society had learned just how fleeting its pretty customs could be. It would have been too much to say that a “live for today” attitude prevailed, but not too much to say that there were few moral strictures in the postwar North.
Falcon ordered hot water for his bath, looking forward to tonight with a great deal of anticipation.
Chapter 3
She was waiting for him in the lobby of her hotel, and Falcon paused for a moment just inside the doors to gaze at her before she saw him. The black velvet cloak she wore hid a part of her gown from him, but he saw with a feeling of triumph that she had indeed worn pink. The gown was obviously taffeta, and its delicate pink color, along with the black cloak, set off her fair beauty strikingly. Her hair was up in an intricate style made curiously fragile by a black satin ribbon woven in among the gleaming strands. She had fastened the cloak at her throat, which prevented him from seeing if the diamonds dangling from the small lobes of her shell-like ears were matched by a necklace lending icy fire to her creamy breasts; fortunately, his imagination where she was concerned was vivid.
He approached her on cat feet. “Beautiful. Just beautiful.”
She looked up at him, startled by his silent approach, and a faint color swept up her cheeks. But there was something new in her eyes, something half-shy and half-excited, and he knew his seductive efforts in the cellar had borne fruit. He offered his arm with a slight bow, and amusement rose in him when she accepted the arm with a sidelong glance that held a rueful appreciation of his gentlemanly manners.
The lady was no fool; plainly, she found his publicly donned courtesy quite definitely suspect.
“Why do I feel I’m being led into the lion’s den?” she murmured as he guided her out to the waiting carriage.
Falcon laughed softly with real amusement. “I can’t imagine. Are you afraid of me, Victoria?”
She didn’t answer until they were inside the closed carriage and moving. “Afraid of you?” She seemed to consider the matter, gazing at him in the shadowed interior. “I think it would be unwise of me to pretend you aren’t a dangerous man.”
“Not dangerous to you, surely.”
Her green eyes were serious. “Western men are a peculiar breed, a law unto themselves. Sometimes their gallant manners would make a European nobleman cringe in shame at his own lack, and at other times they’re as rough and raw as the land that bred them. Dangerous to me? To any woman, I should think.”
After a moment, he smiled. “I was born in Ireland.”
“Were you? But you’re a western man nonetheless. A Texas Ranger, didn’t you say?”
“Yes, for several years.”
“And a Union soldier before that.” Her tone was thoughtful. “And before that—a scout, perhaps? An Indian fighter?”
“Both,” he confessed, oddly pleased by her perception.
“And the scar?”
He lifted a hand to finger the crescent scar on his cheekbone. “This? When I was a boy, my brothers and I often rode through Apache camps near our ranch, borrowing the Indian custom of counting coup.”
“Trying to touch as many braves as possible? I’ve heard of it. Is that how you were hurt?”
He smiled. “In a way. My half-broke mustang took exception to a raid one night and threw me. I landed on a sharp stone. A battle scar, of sorts.”
She smiled in return, thinking of a young boy cursing his temperamental mount.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you are?” he said suddenly, huskily.
Her smile faded slightly, leaving only the curve of delicate lips. “Yes. Yes, you did. Thank you.”
Falcon reached out to touch her cheek gently, and then his hand dropped to toy with the fastening of her cloak. “Is this to keep out a chill? Or me?”
Her gloved fingers tightened around each other in her lap, and Victoria felt her breath grow short. “The dictates of fashion,” she said finally.
He unfastened the cloak slowly, holding her gaze with his, very aware that her breath, like his, was shallow and quick. And some distant part of him marveled at these incredible feelings. She felt it too, this aching fire, and he was delighted by her swift response to him. “Fashion can go to hell,” he murmured.
Victoria made no move to stop him, and though she knew she should be ashamed of her wanton desire to have him see her, touch her, kiss her, what she felt was excitement.
He opened the cloak completely, pushing it back over her shoulders, and his breath caught at what he saw. The gown was low-cut, baring her luscious breasts almost to the nipples, and against the creamy flesh a diamond necklace gleamed. The lanterns hung outside the carriage sent a part of their light into the shadowed interior, playing over her exposed flesh with the loving glow of pale gold. Her breasts rose and fell quickly, each motion lending to the enticing illusion that the gown couldn’t possibly hold the full mounds captive a moment longer.
If it was an illusion…
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he muttered hoarsely, and his hands were on her bare shoulders, turning her toward him; he was inflamed even more by her instantly pliant response.
Victoria didn’t even try to resist him. She had invited this, she realized dimly, invited this by agreeing to accompany him tonight, by wearing the provocative gown. And why couldn’t she feel ashamed of that? Why did she feel only achingly, vibrantly alive and incredibly excited? Why did she want to feel his hands on her, his lips…
One of his hands slid down her back to her waist and pulled her as close as possible, given the crinolines beneath the voluminous skirt of her gown; his other arm surrounded her shoulders and crushed her upper body against him. He could feel the firm mounds of her breasts pressed to his chest, feel as well as hear her soft gasp, and an urgent sound escaped him just before his lips captured hers.
She was prepared for the shocking possession of his tongue this time, as well as she could be prepared for a sensation so devastating, and her body responded feverishly. Against his hard chest, her breasts swelled and ached, and her arms slid up around his neck of their own volition. He was easing her back into the corner, and she could feel his arousal against her hip, bold and demanding.
When he released her lips at last she could only moan, and her head fell back instinctively as he plundered the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat. Her fingers twined in his thick, silky hair, and she wanted suddenly to remove her gloves so that she could feel his hair, his skin. And then his lips moved lower to brush hotly against her straining breasts, and she forgot everything except sheer pleasure.
“So sweet,” he muttered thickly, cupping a breast while his mouth caressed it, gazing fixedly at the edging of lace that just barely hid a hardening bud from his eyes. He brushed his thumb over that hidden delight, and felt it thrust outward impudently in an instant response. He nuzzled his lips along the rich, lustrous material guarding her treasures, barely aware of the scratching of lace, his tongue flicking the rosy skin
and her low moan sorely testing his control. “Victoria…”
She had never known such pleasure existed, and the only rational thought in her mind was the desire to feel more. She was hot, cold, shaking—her body a prisoner of the sensations sweeping over it with the relentless rhythm of an ocean’s waves. The hot, wet caress of his tongue seared her skin, and his hand gently squeezed her breast until she thought she’d go out of her mind. She cried out softly when it responded to his attentions by swelling even more, until the stiffened nipple thrust free of confining silk and his mouth closed hotly around it.
All her senses were centered there, drawn by his pleasuring mouth, and they burned with a hunger she had never known. Something inside her, some dimly perceived barrier, melted in the heat of his caress, and she couldn’t even find the breath to cry out her astonished delight.
She was hardly aware of his hand sliding down over her quivering belly, but a sudden touch at the vulnerable apex of her thighs jerked an instinctive, shocked protest from her lips. “No! Falcon, don’t!”
“Shhh,” he murmured against her breast, his hand rubbing gently through the layers of cloth while his mind vividly imagined the soft, damp warmth too much material hid from him. He wanted to draw her skirt up, find his way through the delicate feminine underthings until he could touch that heat, caress the womanly core of her. His entire body ached with the need to feel her naked and passionate against him. His tongue teased her nipple delicately with tiny, fiery licks that were fiercely hungry. “Don’t stop me, sweet. So sweet. You taste so good.”
Victoria wanted to protest again, but the heat at her breast had sent a part of its fire lower, deeper in her body, and the aching inside her became a hollow, bittersweet need. “Falcon…you shouldn’t…I can’t…”