Do You Want to Start a Scandal EPB Read online

  She reclined onto her elbow. Atop his bed. Partially dressed. And according to her “plan,” she proposed to stay there for the better part of the night.

  No. This would not do.

  He rose to his feet and began rolling his uncuffed sleeves to his elbows. “I will open the door to your room.”

  “I told you, it’s locked from the inside.”

  “Leave that to me.”

  He opened the door a crack and peered into the corridor. After waiting and listening for a few moments to ensure no one was coming, he turned to give her the signal to follow.

  “You have a bit of shaving soap.” Her fingertips grazed a patch of skin tucked under his jaw. “There.”

  The softness of her touch lingered.

  She cocked her head to the side and gazed at him, making a thoughtful noise. “I’m just realizing I’ve never seen you without a coat. You’re built rather more solidly than one would suspect.”

  Her flattened palm skimmed from his shoulder to his elbow, idly tracing the contours of his arm muscles. Despite his better judgment, he flexed.

  She noticed.

  A surge of raw male pride set his blood pumping.

  Who’s all wrong for you now, darling?

  “Let’s be going,” he said. “Follow me. And stay close.”

  Charlotte sent up a brief, silent prayer and followed him into the corridor, carrying her boots in one hand. He held her other hand firmly tucked under his arm. In relative terms, it was a short journey to the door of her bedchamber, but it felt like a mile.

  He gave the latch an experimental rattle, having put his ear to the door.

  “You said you left the key in the door?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s not there anymore.”

  “That’s odd.”

  Charlotte suddenly realized he’d known which door was hers without asking. She wondered if there was anything to make of that, but other concerns quickly took precedence.

  Such as the sound of distant footsteps coming from the bottom of the servant stairs.

  “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. “We should go back to your chamber.”

  He didn’t react. “It’s a moment’s work.”

  Working in quick movements, he removed an onyx stickpin from his pocket, bit the pointed end to give it a crook, and inserted it in the keyhole with a firm push. He worked the bent stickpin like a lever, testing it at different angles to work the lock.

  As she watched breathlessly, Charlotte wondered if gold and onyx had ever been employed in such a venial occupation. To say nothing of the Marquess of Granville’s aristocratic hands.

  The footsteps on the servant stairs had grown louder. At any moment, one of the housemaids would appear at the end of the corridor. Charlotte could hear her humming a tune.

  “Hurry,” she whispered.

  He didn’t acknowledge her plea.

  His lack of urgency was maddening. They couldn’t be caught like this. There was no way to explain how Charlotte had gone from nursing a headache in her room to standing breathless and disheveled in the corridor, outside her own locked door. Worst of all, in the company of Lord Granville.

  She would never be able to escape marrying him, in that event.

  Oh, no.

  A horrid thought struck her. Perhaps that was what he wanted. Perhaps he wasn’t even trying. Perhaps this entire stickpin nonsense was a mere charade.

  The footsteps reached the landing of the stairs. Charlotte caught a glimpse of black linsey-woolsey skirt rounding the far end of the corridor.

  She wanted to bolt, hide. But where? This corridor suffered from an unforgivable lack of alcoves, potted plants, and marble statuary.

  Her heart was in her throat.

  “There,” he murmured.

  With a soft click, the lock opened.

  In a single motion, he drew her into the room, shutting the door behind them—and leaving nothing but her startled gasp on the other side.

  He flattened her against the closed door, pinning her with his body weight.

  They remained still and silent until the maid’s humming passed Charlotte’s room and continued down the corridor.

  “I told you I’d have it in time,” he said.

  “Yes. You did. All that and your hair isn’t even mussed. What does your valet put in it?”

  “Nothing. No one touches my hair.”

  “No one?” She tilted her head, regarding his thick, dark hair. “What a shame.”

  His heart still thumped against hers, but his expression—difficult as it was to read—didn’t appear to be concern.

  It looked like amusement.

  Could it be that while skulking about corridors and picking locks with his stickpin, the proper, restrained Marquess of Granville was actually having fun?

  How interesting. Perhaps there was something about the hint of danger that made him come alive in new ways.

  Charlotte felt it, too. Not only the lingering excitement of their near escape, but the closeness they shared now.

  His strong, sinewy forearms braced on either side of her body promised to protect her.

  But the dark intensity in his eyes was perilous.

  “You should go.” She slid out from between his arms. “You’ll want to finish dressing for dinner.”

  “Wait.” His hand closed on her arm, holding her in place. “I’ll check your rooms first. Someone’s been in here while you were away.”

  “Really? How can you tell?”

  “Aside from the key being dislodged?” He looked under the bed and inside the closet. “Obviously it’s been ransacked.”

  She looked about the room. “No, it hasn’t. It’s exactly as I left it.”

  “You left it like this.” He picked up a shawl from the floor, holding it by one bit of fringe, and as he lifted it into the air, it pulled with it a tangle of stockings and the stray bootlace.

  “I’m not the tidiest of ladies,” she said defensively.

  With a chastening arch of one dark eyebrow, he turned away and went about checking behind the closet door.

  For Charlotte’s part, she crossed to the window. “But someone has been in here. This window’s not only shut, it’s latched. How strange. I suppose it must have been the maid.”

  “The maid?” He emerged from her closet, plucking stray yellow feathers from his shoulder and wearing an irritated expression. “Believe me, no maid has been in this room.”

  “It couldn’t have been my mother. She would have raised an alarm the whole house could hear. But if not a servant or Mama, then who?”

  “Perhaps someone knows you’re up to something,” he said. “And that someone wants you to stop.”

  “One of the mystery lovers, you mean?”

  “Listen to me, Charlotte. You don’t know what kind of secret you could be poking at, or what the mystery tuppers might do to protect it. It’s time to let this go.”

  Let it go?

  She couldn’t let it go. Giving up on the search would mean giving up on the rest of her life.

  “Well, while we’re giving one another advice, my lord . . . I think you ought to give more consideration to love. You might be good at it.”

  “I can’t imagine what makes you say that.”

  She shrugged. “You seem to be good at everything else. But then, perhaps you became good at everything else because you worry you’re not good at love. Do you lack for confidence?”

  In answer, he straightened to his full, impressive stature and glowered at her.

  “Not that I think you should. I just can’t help but notice that although you’ve proposed to two ladies, they were both women who’d be compelled to accept you. The first by family arrangement, and me by the threat of scandal.”

  He stalked to her chest of drawers. “Save your inquiries for the vicar’s daughter. My history has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t. But you’re a most intriguing mystery on your own. I can’t puzzle
you out.” She moved to the bedpost and leaned one shoulder against it. “You don’t seem the sort of man to fear commitment. You committed to me on the thinnest of reasons. Why wouldn’t you set your sights on a lady you liked and woo her?”

  Ignoring her question, he slid open a drawer. “This is empty. What were you keeping in here?”

  “Nothing. I hadn’t used it yet.”

  He cast a meaningful look at the heaps of unmentionables on the floor. “You do understand the purpose of a drawer?”

  “Not everyone keeps their handkerchiefs organized by day of the week.” She crossed her arms. “I’ve told you, I’m all wrong to be your wife. Consider this yet more evidence that we’re mismatched. I’m too young for you, too indecorous, a poor housekeeper. You don’t even like me. I’m merely some impertinent girl who cornered you in the library. You needn’t settle for that.”

  “Settle,” he echoed, replacing the drawer in the chest. “You think I’ll be settling by wedding you.”

  “Everyone will think it.”

  “You,” he said, “are the most unsettling creature I have ever met in my life. I have not felt settled since the moment we met.”

  Charlotte smiled to herself. “I shall take that as a point of pride.”

  “You really shouldn’t.” He advanced on her, closing the distance between them. “Has it not occurred to you that I might have a very real, very pressing reason for wanting to wed you?”

  The darkness in his gaze left no ambiguity as to what reason he meant.

  “But you could get that from any woman,” she said.

  “I only want it from you.”

  She swallowed, suddenly nervous. “You really should be going. Dinner will be called soon.”

  “I’m the guest of honor in this house.” He pushed aside a fallen lock of her hair, and the slight friction teased her neck. “They’ll wait.”

  “If my mother knew you were in here . . .”

  “She’d be thrilled.”

  Too true, too true. “I could cry out.”

  “And ensure we’re caught alone together, in even more compromising circumstances than the last time? Go right ahead.”

  She sighed. He truly did have her cornered.

  There was only one way she could think of to shake him up, change the rules of his game.

  No one touches my hair, he’d said.

  Until now.

  She stretched one hand forward, sliding her fingers through his dark, thick hair. Lightly, playfully—teasing it to wild peaks. Until the clipped locks stood on end, in amusing contrast to his piercing gaze and serious expression.

  He seemed to have no idea how to respond.

  Oh, dear. This man needed unsettling in the worst way.

  Was he so unfamiliar with affection? Perhaps just very out of practice. He’d been restraining himself for so long. That propriety was an overstarched cravat, stifling all the emotion that must be lurking deep inside. Was it any wonder he didn’t see the reason to wait for a love match? In all his years of being perfect . . . he’d forgotten the untidy, unruly bliss that human closeness could be.

  If he’d ever known true closeness at all.

  Bosh, she told her heart. Stop twisting and aching. He’s a wealthy, powerful marquess, not a lost whelp in the rain.

  She added her other hand to the first, toying more freely now. Biting back a mischievous smile, she teased her fingers through his hair, creating tufts that stood out at crazed angles—like the fur of an angry bear. Then she pushed all his hair to the center, giving him the look of a Mohican.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked dryly.

  “More than you could know.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. But he didn’t tell her to stop.

  She took a bit of pity on him, flattening his teased hair with her palms, then raking her fingernails over his scalp from front to back.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled roughly.

  “That’s it,” she whispered, toying with the soft, close-shorn hair at the nape of his neck. “It’s only a bit of tenderness. There’s no shame in surrender.”

  She knew she was playing a dangerous game. With each caress, she edged closer to the border between teasing a response from him and putting her emotions and virtue at risk. It couldn’t hurt to allow him a few minor liberties, could it? Show him a bit of affection. Just enough to awaken him to what could be, if only he’d open his heart to the possibility of love.

  At some point, she’d stopped playing with his hair. Which would not have been a problem, if she’d remembered to withdraw her hands—but she hadn’t. Her fingers remained tangled in his thick, dark, tousled locks. His hands had settled on her waist.

  She was just holding him now. And he was holding her.

  His gaze trained on her lips.

  She knew he would kiss her.

  She knew she would let him.

  It all seemed entirely inevitable, wholly predictable—and yet nothing had ever thrilled her more.

  Breathe, she told herself. Breathe now, and deeply. In a moment, it will be too late.

  Piers held on tight. By necessity, not choice. She’d dismantled him. All his disguises and defenses were crumbling to dust at his feet.

  What was it about her? Her fingers couldn’t be so different from other women’s. She was pretty, but not the most beautiful creature he’d ever beheld. As she kept reminding him, she was young and unpolished and impertinent, and nothing a man like him ought to want.

  And yet he did.

  She teased him. She touched his hair. She believed he deserved this and more.

  He couldn’t let her guess her effect on him. He couldn’t let anyone see. He needed to claim her, possess her, and stash her somewhere where she couldn’t wreak so much havoc on his self-control.

  But seducing her wasn’t even what he wanted most right now. He wanted to lay his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair all night long.

  “What are you doing to me?” he murmured.

  He allowed every part of their bodies to meet—the bony prominences of hips, the softness of bellies, the resistance of breast against muscle. The pounding of hearts and the mingling of breath.

  He pressed the full length of his body to hers—every lean, hard, red-blooded, masculine inch of him. Wanting her to feel him, to know the size and shape and strength of his body. To be awed by what she did to him, and what he meant to do to her. He wanted to hear her gasp, make her tremble.

  God help him, he wanted her a little bit afraid.

  Because he was shaken to his core.

  He pressed his brow to hers, and he tightened his grip on her waist.

  Pull back, he told himself. You can’t allow this to happen.

  Then their lips met, filling that last bit of space between them. As though no matter how far their lives stood apart, if they could agree on this one thing only—it was the answer, the reason of it all.

  Her mouth softened for him like a gift, unwrapped. He kissed her deeply, with increasing urgency, and she matched him stroke for stroke. Her grip tightened around his neck, causing parts of his body to tighten in response.

  He slid a hand upward, palming the globe of her breast. She gasped against his mouth and broke the kiss, still holding him close. Her breathing grew ragged as he lifted and kneaded her softness. The point of her hardened nipple pressed against his palm.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and searched himself for composure. He had to stop. If he didn’t release her now, he wouldn’t release her until she lay bare beneath him, clasped in his arms.

  Tearing away from her was like so many things he’d done in his life—cold, ruthless. Necessary.

  “Dinner,” he said. “I’m expected downstairs.”

  She nodded.

  He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Her skin was flushed and smooth. Then he slipped from the room without looking back.

  Eventually, she would glimpse him for what he truly was. That glossy veneer of h
onor that had her fooled would eventually wear away, revealing the darkness beneath.

  But he wasn’t ready. Not yet. He rather liked the sweet, pitying way she looked at him, even though he knew he didn’t deserve it. Could never deserve it.

  I’ve come to save you, she’d said.

  She was a sweet, darling girl. But she was half a lifetime too late.

  Chapter Seven

  “And then,” Charlotte said, indignant, “she beat me about the head with the aubergine!”

  “Oh, dear.” Delia laughed.

  “It’s not amusing.”

  “It is tremendously amusing,” Delia countered, smiling. “And you know it.”

  Yes, Charlotte did. Circumstance might have thrown her and Delia together, but honesty and wicked humor had made them friends.

  “I only wish I could have been there. I would have loved to see your—” Delia winced, slowing in the middle of the wooded path.

  Charlotte winced a little, too. “Shall we rest for a moment?” She ventured a few steps off the path, into a small, sunny clearing. “I see a few blackberries left over here.”

  “Well, don’t eat them.” Delia rested against a tree.

  Charlotte plucked the dark berries from the bush, gathering them in her palm. “Why not?”

  “You know what they say. You can’t eat blackberries after Michaelmas. They’ve been spoiled by the Devil.”

  “Spoiled how?”

  “He spits on them.”

  “Spits on them?” Charlotte pulled a face. “What a loathsome bit of folklore. Dutch children have Saint Nicholas going from house to house, placing treats in their shoes. We English decide the Devil spends Michaelmas spitting on blackberries.”

  “It probably has a practical root. Some goodwife in the Dark Ages had a stomachache after eating blackberries, and they decided the Devil caused it.”

  Charlotte wasn’t so certain. “More likely some bad husband drank too much ale and blamed his sickness the next day on blackberries.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter who it was. They’ve ruined it for the rest of us.”

  “Only if we let them.” Charlotte selected a berry from her cupped hand. “Do you dare me to eat one?”