To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)

To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1) Page 17

Emeline glided after them. She went straight across the dark room and stood by the window, pretending to look out, although of course all she could see was her own ghostly reflection. After a while, the bustling behind her died and she heard the door shut. She turned.

Samuel was stalking toward her, his face quite grim in the candlelight. “Why Vale?”

“What?”

He continued coming, his footsteps disconcertingly silent on the sitting room carpet. “Vale. Why marry him?”

She clutched the fabric of her overskirt in her right hand and tilted her chin up. “Why not? I’ve known him since childhood.”

He halted in front of her finally, much, much too close, damn him, and she was forced to crane her neck up in order to meet his eyes.

His angry eyes. “Do you love him?”

“How dare you?” she breathed.

His nostrils flared, but that was his only reaction. “Do you love him?”

She swallowed. “Of course I love him. Jasper is like a brother to me—”

He gave a nasty bark of laughter. “Would you make love to your brother?”

She slapped him. The sound echoed in the room, and her hand stung. She drew back in appalled shock at her own violence, but before she could say anything—even think to say anything—he’d grasped her.

He pulled her close and lowered his head until she felt his breath brush her cheek. “He kisses you like a brother. As if you meant no more to him than the maid who brings his tea in the morning. Is that what you really want from your marriage?”

“Yes.” She glared up at him, so intimately close. Her hands had nowhere to go but his shoulders, and she clutched him as if they embraced. As if they were lovers. “Yes, that’s what I want. A civilized man. An Englishman who knows the rules of society, an aristocrat to help me with my son and my lands. We are perfectly suited, Jasper and I. We are as alike as two peas in a pod.”

She saw the hurt in his eyes. It was very subtle, few other people, perhaps no other person, would understand it, but she saw and comprehended. She was hurting him.

So she drove the knife home. “We will be married soon, and I will be very, very happy—”

“Goddamn you,” he growled, and then he kissed her.

His mouth ground down over hers, smashing her lips against her teeth until she tasted blood. She tried to twist away, but he clutched her harder and lifted her from the ground so she had no purchase. She arched her head and he followed, walking with her until her back was against the wall. And then she truly had nowhere to go. She should’ve given up then—she knew he would never really hurt her—but something inside her refused to admit defeat. She opened her mouth, and when he hesitated for a fraction of a second, she took advantage.

She bit him.

He reared back and grinned at her, his beautiful lower lip bloody. “Cat.”

She would’ve hit him then—again—if he didn’t already have control of her arms.

And then it was too late. He’d bent his head to hers. This time his lips were soft, brushing over hers delicately, lightly. Teasing, as if he had all the time in the world. She pushed her face forward, to deepen the contact, but he moved aside. Perhaps he was afraid she’d bite him again. Perhaps he was merely toying with her. She couldn’t think anymore, and it didn’t seem to matter, anyway. He returned, like a moth alighting on her lips. Softly, sweetly, as if she were made of spun glass, a delicate, fragile creature instead of the cat he’d just called her.

In the end, she couldn’t hold out. She parted her lips as shyly as a virgin, as if she’d never been kissed before. Maybe she hadn’t—not like this, anyway. The tip of his tongue darted into her mouth and out again, and her tongue followed. She pursued him into his mouth, and he sucked at her, gently, oh, so gently, biting. His entire weight was pressed against her, holding her upright against the wall. And she wished, desperately, that there were not so many layers of fabric between them. That she could feel that hardness—feel him. She moaned, a whispering, light sound, entirely unlike herself, and he stilled.

He lowered her gently to the ground and took his mouth, his hands, and himself away from her. She stared at him, completely at a loss for words.

He bowed. “Good night.” And he left the room.

Her legs were shaky, and for a moment she simply leaned against her sitting room wall, not even attempting to walk to the settee for fear her legs would collapse beneath her. As she leaned there, she licked her lips and tasted blood.

Whether his or hers she could not tell.

A CIVILIZED MAN. Sam shouldered past the gawking footmen and out of Emeline’s town house. A civilized man. He ran down the steps and continued running, the familiar feel of his muscles lengthening and warming a comfort.

A civilized man.

Of all the words that could be used to describe him, civilized was the last anyone would use. He rounded a corner and had to dodge a group of drunken riffraff. The men scattered apart in surprise at his appearance. By the time they started yelling insults, Sam was yards away. He continued down the street, ducking on a whim into a dark alley. His feet pounded rhythmically against cobblestones, each footfall a silent jolt to the body. With every step, his body grew looser, more well oiled, until he ran almost without volition, almost without effort. The momentum built until he flew. He could run like this for miles, hours, days if he had to.

There was no point in lusting after a woman who didn’t want him. In Boston he was a well-respected figure, a leader of the trading community, thanks to his uncle’s business and the wealth he’d amassed since inheriting it. In only the last year he’d been approached twice by keen fathers, making it known that Sam would be a welcome son-in-law. The ladies in each case were pleasant enough, but there’d been no spark. Nothing to make him single them out as special. He’d begun to think that his standards were too high. That a man in his position should settle on good family and a pretty face as adequate for a contented marriage.

Sam cursed and quickened his pace, leaping over a pile of trash. And now he felt a stupid, wholly uncontrollable yearning for a woman he simply could not have. A woman who wanted a civilized man. Why her? Why this prickly aristocrat who didn’t even like him?

He halted, placing his hands on the small of his back to stretch it. It was all a joke of the cosmos, it must be, for it all to come together at once as it had tonight. His nightmares about the massacre, made real and terribly tangible in the ballroom. His confrontation with Vale. The horrible revelation that she was engaged to that aristocratic prig. He threw back his head and laughed at the night and the black sky and his world that was trembling around him, about to fall. A cat startled and scurried into the shadows, howling its displeasure.

And then he ran again.

EMELINE TOUCHED ONE finger to the green baize book cover. A fine dusting of rot fell to the tabletop. She’d found the fairy-tale book that Reynaud and she had spent so many hours poring over as children. It had necessitated an extensive search of the attics all this morning, accompanied by much sneezing and filth, and she’d had to take a hot bath afterward, but she’d found the book. Now she’d placed it on a table in her sitting room as she contemplated her find.

What she hadn’t expected was that it would be in such terrible condition. In her memory, the book was pristine and new, Reynaud’s long, slim fingers deftly turning the pages. In truth, the worms and moths had evidently been at the book. The binding was warped, the pages yellowed and falling out. Quite a few were stained from damp and mold. Emeline frowned as she traced the embossing on a corner of the cover. It depicted a pike or staff laid against a worn soldier’s pack, as if a soldier home from war had set the items by his front door.

She sighed and turned back the cover to reveal the other unfortunate surprise. The book was in German—something she’s completely forgotten from her youth. She’d barely begun to read when she and Reynaud looked at the book, and she’d spent most of the time examining the illustrations.

At least she thought the language was German. On the frontispiece was the title in ornate, nearly illegible letters and beneath was a crude woodcut illustration. It showed four soldiers in tall métier hats and gaiters marching side by side. Nanny had been a Prussian émigré, having crossed the Channel when she was a little girl. The book must have originally been hers. Had Nanny told the stories from memory or had she translated them into English as she turned the pages?

Voices came from the hallway outside the sitting room door, and Emeline straightened away from the table, walking several paces from it. For some reason, she didn’t want to share her find just yet with her guests.

The door opened to reveal Crabs. “Lord Vale and Mr. Hartley are here, my lady.”

Emeline nodded. “Show them in.”

She struggled to hide her surprise. She’d invited them to tea this morning, but it had never occurred to her, after last night’s disagreement, that they’d arrive together. Yet here they came, Jasper first in a striking scarlet coat with yellow trim and a cobalt blue waistcoat that caught the color of his eyes. His dark mahogany hair was clubbed back in an unpowdered queue that no doubt had been quite neat when he’d left his valet this morning. Now, however, curling locks rioted about his temples. Emeline knew quite a few girls who’d cheerfully kill their nearest and dearest for hair like Jasper’s.

“My sweet.” Jasper advanced and caught her a careless kiss somewhere near her left ear. Emeline, looking over Jasper’s shoulder, met Samuel’s enigmatic gaze. The colonial was in brown again today, and, although the handsomer man, standing next to Jasper, he appeared like a crow in the shadow of a peacock. The viscount stepped back and threw himself into one of her setting-sun orange chairs. “Hartley and I have come hat in hand like petitioners before a queen. What would you have with us? Do you mean to broker a peace?”

“Perhaps.” Emeline smiled quickly at Jasper and then turned to Samuel, bracing herself for the contact. “Will your sister join us?”

“No.” Samuel laid his long fingertips against the back of a chair. “She sends her apologies and pleads a migraine.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Emeline gestured to a chair. “Please. Won’t you sit, Mr. Hartley?”

He inclined his head and sat. His hair was tightly braided in a military queue today, every strand contained and controlled, and the sight made her perversely want to take it apart. To let his hair stream round his shoulders and run her fingers through it until it pulled at his scalp.

The maids bustled in with tea at that moment, and Emeline was glad to take the chance to calm herself. She sat and oversaw the placement of the tea things and kept her eyes down, away from the wall and away from him. Just last night he’d kissed her in this very room. He’d pressed her against the wall beside the window, and he’d traced her lips with his tongue, and she’d bit him. She’d tasted his blood.

Her teaspoon clattered as Emeline’s hand trembled. She glanced up, right into Samuel’s dark stare. His face looked carved from stone.

She cleared her throat and glanced away. “Tea, Jasper?”

“Yes, please,” he replied cheerfully.

Was he completely oblivious to the undercurrents between her and Samuel? Or perhaps he was aware and chose not to notice. They had a very civilized understanding, after all. She didn’t expect him to live like a monk before marriage—or indeed afterward, if it came to that—and perhaps he was equally tolerant.

She handed the teacup to Jasper and asked without looking up, “Mr. Hartley?”

There was a silence. Jasper noisily stirred sugar into his tea—he had a horrible sweet tooth—and took a sip.

“Tea, Mr. Hartley?”

She stared at her fingers curled around the teapot handle until she couldn’t stand it any longer. Jasper must surely know something was wrong. She looked up.