“Oh, yes,” she sighed as he turned his attentions to her other breast. She surrendered with a wholehearted enthusiasm she should regret but couldn’t.
Suddenly the tiny sofa offered ample room. He bunched her skirts, lifting them so the evening air chilled her thighs above her stockings.
His face was buried in her neck, and her dress was up around her waist. One hand trailed teasingly across the top of her leg. She ached for him to touch where she burned, then for the more profound invasion.
He knew that, the devil, and taunted her with delay.
She arched to encourage him to shift his fingers those last few inches. Her hand tugged at his breeches.
Suddenly he went still.
“What is it, Ashcroft?” she asked in a choked voice.
Surely he didn’t mean to deny her. That would be cruel, and everything she knew insisted he wasn’t a deliberately cruel man. Teasing and infuriating, certainly, but not cruel.
He raised his head, his face drawn with tension. “Don’t you hear that?” he asked sharply.
She frowned. What on earth was wrong?
Then she heard the knocking. Someone was at the front door. Someone insistent on entering if the peremptory banging was any indication.
Don’t let it be Burnley. Anyone but he.
Horror flooded her, turned her heart to stone. Hurriedly, she pushed Ashcroft away.
This time he didn’t resist. She scrambled up against the arm of the sofa, tugging at her dress. She needed a maid. She needed a fresh gown. She needed time to present an appearance of composure she didn’t feel.
How debasing for the marquess to discover her tousled and half-naked and smelling of her lover. She felt sick at the prospect.
“Are you expecting someone?” Ashcroft rose to his feet and watched her with a shuttered expression in his beautiful eyes.
“N…no,” she stammered, knowing fear was clear in her voice and her face. She acted as if she had something to be guilty about.
The problem was, she had.
Nervously she glanced at the closed door. The knocking had ceased, so she guessed whoever it was had been admitted.
She pulled at her bodice in another futile attempt to appear as if she hadn’t made love most of the day. Ashcroft extended a hand to help her as she staggered to her feet, but she ignored him.
A grim knell of foreboding tolled in her heart. She felt like a whore awaiting her pimp.
How could she face Lord Burnley like this?
But when the door soundlessly opened, the man who walked through on Laura’s arm wasn’t Lord Burnley.
It was her father.
Chapter Twenty-two
Struggling to dampen his rampant arousal, Ashcroft watched Diana. Her face was white as parchment and filled with acrid shame. Miss Smith’s eyes settled on her friend with visible concern.
He stepped forward to speak, but Diana stopped him with an emphatic gesture he couldn’t misunderstand. “Papa,” she said in a strangled voice.
Shock held Ashcroft motionless. The suspicions that had always lurked beneath his endless desire reared up like venomous snakes ready to strike.
His expression severe, the old man turned in his daughter’s direction. He still wore his hat and coat, and he leaned heavily on a cane. He was tall and gaunt, neatly but inexpensively dressed. Ashcroft guessed he was a lawyer’s clerk or small-scale merchant. An incongruous parent for Ashcroft’s gorgeous, modish mistress. This man couldn’t have funded Diana’s house, clothes, servants.
So who in Hades had?