His laughter rang out, harsh and mocking.
She fled for the door. With one long stride, he reached it before she did and she collided with his unyielding chest. When she would have recoiled, his arms enfolded her, holding her hard against him until her struggles subsided. She buried her mouth in the fur of his chest, refusing to begrudge herself the last taste she would know of his arms.
He rubbed his cheek across her hair. “Tell me, Miss Walker, if you’re so damnably smart, how could you believe the twisted musings of an envious woman far past the bloom of her own youth?”
His heart thundered against her lips. For a long moment, she did not comprehend his words.
“Can’t you see what Tricia’s jealousy has done to you?” He again caught her face in his hands, smoothing her hair away. “You are the most uncommon and utterly beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. I’ve wanted you from the first moment you trod upon my broken ankle.” Her eyes widened in misty wonder, and he laughed. “And, oh, when you look at me like that, all I want to do is lay you beneath me and taste every inch of your lovely fair skin.”
Prudence’s breath came out in a squeak. “You can’t be serious.”
“Let’s get this off, shall we, and I’ll show you how very serious I am.” He bunched the soft flax of her night rail in his hands and began to draw it upward.
She clung to his shoulders. “But you haven’t even kissed me.”
His tongue traced the outer rim of her ear. “I will,” he whispered. “Everywhere.”
His hands rode up over her hips, drawing the night rail with them. “The candle,” she said frantically.
“I know. One candle is not enough. I’d like to carry you down to the ballroom and make love to you beneath the chandelier.” His knuckles brushed her belly. “I wonder what Old Fish would think about that.”
She squirmed in his arms. “Sebastian! You say the wickedest things! I meant for you to put the candle out.”
He drew back, smiling a tender, lopsided smile. “No more hiding, love. No more masks.” He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Please, my darling, be naked for me.”
Prudence had never imagined herself the recipient of such an odd request. But Sebastian’s loving smile was irresistible, and she lifted her arms in surrender. He gently pulled the night rail over her head. A heated blush crawled up her skin, and she squeezed her eyes shut, believing like a child that if she could not see him, he might not be able to see her. His soft groan proved her wrong.
Her hands flew up instinctively to cover herself, desperate to hide the flaws of legs too long, breasts too heavy for her slender frame. He caught her hands, lacing his fingers around hers and bearing them back against the door on each side of her head. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the heat of his gaze on her.
Sebastian drank in her beauty. Her hair absorbed the candlelight, deepening to rich and magical hues. The sight of it spilling like wine over her alabaster breasts both inflamed his tender lust and tempered it with a curious desire to protect. It was as he suspected. Prudence’s stiff-necked pride hid a blossom as precious and fragile as petals of honeysuckle.
She hid her face in her hair. “Please. I’m so embarrassed.”
“Of what? Perfection?”
She dared to open her eyes.
He brought their linked hands down to brush the creamy skin between her breasts. All traces of humor had vanished from him. “Everything I’ve ever possessed that was worth having, I’ve stolen. You’re the only gift anyone has ever given me.”
He lifted her palm to his lips. Prudence took a step away from the door and melted into his embrace, knowing she would never forget the wanton sensuality of her nude body pressed against the crisp folds of his clothes. His mouth closed on hers in a flood of aching tenderness.
Sebastian hardly dared to believe the miracle of holding her pliant body against him. He had dreamed it too often to accept that it was real. A thread of guilt wound its way through his anticipation, but he hastily shoved it away. Prudence had come to him, on his terms, not her own. She suckled his tongue in an innocent attempt to draw him more deeply into her. Her nipples stiffened against his chest, and he felt a dizzying surge of response in his groin. He could feel himself straining against his breeches, hungering to be freed, hungering, too, to allow his hands and mouth to wander over this beautiful, generous creature. But he could not yet trust himself enough for that.
Her hand twined through his hair as he bent his knees and gently took her breast into his mouth. His tongue swirled around the dusky peak, and he felt her deep shiver.
“Sebastian, please. I can’t even think!”
He slipped to his knees, filling the delicate cleft of her navel with his tongue. “For once in your life, Prudence, stop thinking.”
Prudence had no choice but to obey as his reverent hands parted the silky pelt between her legs. He muttered an oath that sounded more like a prayer as his fingers slipped beneath to explore the honeyed folds and hollows of her body with tender expertise. She shoved aside his shirt and gripped his shoulders in a desperate attempt to find some substance in a reality melting to shuddering pleasure. The cool wood of the door pressed to her back and hips seemed to be part of another, saner world. Her instinct to shrink away from him was consumed in the flames of a more primitive instinct to arch against him, to open herself to the stroking persuasion of his eloquent touch.
She panted softly as his thumb discovered her heated nectar and teased it forward until he found the taut, aching bud hidden by her velvety folds. Her knees buckled at the pleasure, and he slipped an arm around her, cupping her hips as he buried his mouth against the dark fur at the V of her thighs in the tenderest of kisses.
Her shy gasp was lost in a new sensation as he sheathed his finger inside her, pressing forward with gentle determination until he felt her wince of pain. Her body quivered in disappointment as he withdrew.
“Oh, God, Prudence, you’re so tight.”
“I’m sorry, Sebastian.” Her voice was very small. “I don’t mean to be.”
His groan was one of exultation as he curved his arm around the backs of her thighs and lifted her straight into the air. He pressed his cheek to the delicate skin of her belly. She clung to his shoulders as he spun around and dropped her neatly on the bed.
As he peeled off his shirt, she reached for a corner of the satin counterpane to cover her nakedness.
“My sweet Prudence,” he said, trapping the counterpane under his knee as he joined her on the bed, “I was not rebuking you. The … um …” He searched for words, curbing with effort his characteristic frankness. “… deliciously untried condition of your body only serves to demonstrate what a fine and precious privilege you are bequeathing to me.” He propped himself up on one elbow and ran a finger down the flat plane of her stomach.
Her brow crinkled in a frown. “How would the Dreadful Scot Bandit Kirkpatrick say that?”
Sebastian’s slow, sensual grin sent the blood coursing through Prudence’s body in a primal throb. He pressed his mouth to her ear. “Something scandalous like, ‘Och, lass, ye ne’er had a mon inside ye the way I’m goin’ to be inside ye.’ ” His finger dipped into her, smearing the honeyed dew to ease his passage. His burr thickened with desire. “Ye want me, angel. Ye’re hot and wet and needin’ a mon like me to fill ye.”
Prudence had always loved words, but she had never before known their full power. “Scoundrel,” she breathed, melting into his tender touch.
Sebastian dared to slip another finger into her, knowing only preparation could ease the pain to come. She turned her face to his, groping blindly for a sustenance to soothe the aching hunger flowering within her. He smoothed a thread of hair from her moist lips and laid his mouth over hers. The world narrowed to the wet heat of their fused mouths and bodies. Her legs fell apart, giving his hand dominion over her. His fingers began to move of their own volition, matching each thrust of his tongue. When he felt her arch and rock against him, he fo
rgot patience, forgot gentleness, forgot everything but the promise of ecstasy tightening around his fingers as he buried them roughly in her. An involuntary whimper escaped her throat.
He half lifted his weight as if he might pull away. “I can’t bear to hurt you, lass.”
“I know that.” She ran her fingertip along the pale, rigid scar under his chin. “You won’t hurt me. You’re not your father, Sebastian.”
He stared down at her, his eyes as unfathomable as smoky diamonds. “Is there anything Jamie didn’t tell you?”
She averted her gaze as she ran her hands over his arms, delighting in their muscular resilience. “Tricia always said I was a nosy miss.” She cupped his throat and pressed her lips to his scar.
Sebastian’s skin tingled from her cool touch. Nothing in his life had prepared him for her. Not the perfunctory stabs at pleasure he had made before he met Tricia, and not their expert couplings which had left him breathless, spent, and completely hollow. For Sebastian Kerr, there had been little of love in the making of it. He had suspected long ago that he was as crippled as his father.
Now here was this innocent woman-child daring to tell him he was wrong. And offering herself to prove it.
He enfolded her in his arms, encompassing her as if he could somehow draw the warmth and rich texture of her skin into his own. She buried her mouth against his shoulder with a wordless murmur.
He kissed her hair. “Let me pleasure you, angel,” he murmured, and slid down her body, through the pools of candlelight dappling her creamy skin. Her delicate scent was maddening, all honeysuckle and jasmine and musk.
Prudence’s urge to clamp her knees together went unheeded as a deeper urge rocked her. Sebastian parted her thighs with gentle hands. His mouth touched her, seeking to give solace where before he had given pain.
If she had been standing, she would have fallen. Her hands entwined in his hair; the tawny strands slipped like silk between her fingers. She lay back, hypnotized by a languid desire to close her eyes and surrender to the delicious sensations. His beautiful mouth pleasured her, doing things she had never, not even in her most heated dreams of him, imagined. The novelty of it was dark and mysterious and unbearably sweet. A moan tore from her and she arched her slender back, holding nothing from him. Without disturbing the maddening rhythm of his mouth, Sebastian thrust his fingers deep within her. She cried out his name in a voice she did not recognize as a blinding wave of pleasure broke over her, cresting again and again until she lay breathless and shivering among his pillows.
When her eyes fluttered open, he was leaning over her, his grin softened by concern. “I thought you might have swooned.”
Her own lips curved in a shy smile. “I’m not the sort of girl who swoons.”
He touched his lips to hers. “I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”
His hand lowered to unfasten the hooks of his knee-breeches. Prudence nibbled her lower lip to keep it from trembling. Not wanting him to see her fear, she reached across the bed and smothered the candle as he slipped out of his breeches.
The darkness enfolded them like a black velvet curtain. Her hand fluttered out to find him. She nuzzled her cheek against his chest, content to be held while her eyes adjusted to the light of moonbeams scattering through the chintz drapes. The cost of Sebastian’s patience was betrayed by the thundering of his heart.
She tilted her face up for his kiss and their naked bodies entwined in languorous communion, his muscled thigh entrapping both of her legs, his belly pressed to hers. Her skin contracted violently at the sleek heat of his engorged manhood. He eased himself over her, bracing his weight on his elbows, and she slipped her arms around his neck.
Sebastian stared down into her eyes, seeing in their violet depths what he least wanted to be reminded of at this moment. It would be so easy to bury his guilt and doubt in her trusting body, but somehow he could not take her in dishonesty. She had come to him, but he had to ensure that she understood the cost of it.
He met her gaze unflinchingly. “You know this changes nothing. I still must marry Tricia.”
Some selfish demon within him howled its anguish as Prudence disappeared. It was that simple. One second she was there. The next, she was gone. She stared at him without blinking. All that had been melting warmth between them cooled to unnatural stillness.
The blood drained from her face as if his words had somehow pierced her heart. “Let me up.”
His demanding hardness brushed the silky curls between her legs. His muscles contracted with the temptation to drive himself into her honeyed sheath, to shatter her icy composure with a vivid reminder of his heat. To make her cry out his name once again with passionate abandon.
A trickle of sweat eased down his brow. “You can’t ask me to stop now. It’s not fair.”
Prudence was too wise to struggle. “What do you know of fairness?”
Desperation gave his voice a hard edge. “You came to me. I thought you understood the way of it.”
“Let me up.” She enunciated each word with crystal clarity.
He flung himself off her as if she had shot him. Prudence had never known such an aching emptiness. Without the warmth of Sebastian’s skin covering her, she felt vulnerable and ashamed of her nakedness.
She sat up on her knees, clutching the counterpane to her breasts. “You said you cared for me. How can you marry her?”
He glared up at the mahogany tester, his head resting on one folded arm. “I have no choice. She can give me what I need.”
“What do you need, Sebastian? Money? Access to a title? A town house in London?”
His voice was low and flat. “Respectability.”
She threw back her head as laughter burst wildly from her. “Respectability? I’ve had respectability all my life, and I can promise you it’s nothing extraordinary.” She pressed the heels of her palms to her stinging eyes. “Tell me one thing. If I were an heiress, would you marry me?”
His narrowed gaze shifted to her. “In a heartbeat.”
She dove for the edge of the bed, dragging the counterpane with her. With the reflexes of a bom thief, he lunged for her. His arms encircled her waist, pulling her back against him. Her hair spilled over his face. He caught her flailing wrists in his hands, subduing her with all the gentleness he could muster.
“Listen to me, Prudence. We have a chance at happiness that few people in this world ever have. I can be with you and cherish you for our whole lives. Let me take care of you.”
She crumpled against him. “What are you offering me? A few hours before dawn after Tricia has drugged herself insensible? A stolen kiss in the pantry? A new gown on my birthday?”
He touched his lips to her hair. “I am offering you a lifetime of tenderness. Tricia will never suspect us.”
Prudence twisted in his arms until she faced him. “And if you get me with child? What then? Will you pass it off as the stable boy’s? The butler’s?”
An unexpected heat brushed his cheekbones. “I can protect you from that. There are ways.” He hoped he was sincere. The vision of her slender body swelling with his babe inspired a poignant longing that shook him.
He made no attempt to stop her as she pulled out of his arms, sliding off the bed. The unmistakable bitterness in her eyes quenched his last spark of hope—yet he could not stop trying.
“You know your aunt better than anyone does. Do you think Tricia will take no lovers after we’re wed? It’s the way of things in her world.”
Prudence crossed to the door and knelt to gather her night rail, her shoulders bent beneath the weight of the counterpane. “But not in mine.”
Sebastian Kerr, who had bit back his pleas his entire life, said softly, “Please, Prudence. Don’t leave me.”
Her hands paused in their motion. She looked back to find him naked in more than his unabated need for her. His haunted gaze caught and held hers.
She dropped the night rail over her head, letting the counterpane fall in the same motion.
Sebastian caught a glimpse of her skin.
Her hand touched the doorknob.
He leaped from the bed and crossed the room in two strides. His own hand covered hers. “You mustn’t tell Tricia who I am. Both of our lives may depend on it.”
She stared at the door.
His fingers tightened around hers. “Swear you won’t.”
She lifted her gaze to him, and he stepped back, recoiling from the contempt in her eyes.
“I swear it.” She opened the door. “It would have never worked between us anyway. Because I don’t have the money. And you, Sebastian Kerr, don’t have the guts.”
The soft click of the door shutting in his face echoed louder than a pistol shot.
Sebastian wandered over to the chair like a blind man. His toe touched something hard, and he stopped his foot just short of crushing the cool steel and delicate glass of Prudence’s spectacles. He set them carefully beside his hairbrush. Among the bristles, a long dark hair entwined around his shorter blond ones.
Sighing wearily, he stared at his plaid, which lay folded in a neat square on the bureau. He picked it up and buried his face in the soft, scratchy wool, breathing deeply of Prudence’s fragrance before it became no more than a memory.
Prudence’s hands trembled as she twisted the key in the lock. She pressed her forehead to the bedchamber door, gathering her courage to turn and face the painful sterility of her tent-bed. There it was, bolster tidily fluffed, edges of the counterpane tucked neatly around the mattress. It would never know the weight of a man, the shameless sprawling of blankets, the fragrant aroma of cheroot smoke and brandy. The bed was as neat and prim as a coffin.
Her knees, still weak from Sebastian’s loving, faltered. She swung around and gripped the edge of her dressing table, coming face to face with her own reflection. Loose tendrils of hair spilled over her face, eerily dark against the white of her skin.
Tonight was the end. The end of everything.