Tarnished Amongst the Ton

She could not breathe. There was no mistaking his intent. But was he asking her to be his mistress or simply to indulge in a liaison here for a few days? Either of those possibilities should have sent her fleeing from the room and yet, in the fleeting seconds before he bent his dark head and captured her lips, she could not feel outrage or fear or anything she should have experienced. Only desire. Desire mercifully untainted by fear or apprehension.

Phyllida closed her eyes as Ashe drew her close against him. It was not from modesty, but simply for the sheer pleasure of his hard body against hers, the strength of him, the male heat and scent, the deliciously contradictory sensations of safety and danger. Ashe’s kiss on the quayside had fuelled arousing dreams, but that had been the merest caress, she realised as her lips parted under his and he took possession of her mouth. Then his attention had been half on the man who had made her so afraid, now he was focusing every iota of his formidable expertise on reducing her to quivering surrender.

Did he expect her to respond? She had no idea how to answer this onslaught, although her hands had curled instinctively around his neck, her lips had parted and her tongue seemed to be doing daringly

wicked things without her conscious direction. He believes me to be a virgin, to be innocent, she reassured herself as she wondered dizzily if she was about to faint from lack of air, or simple lust.

Ashe seemed to sense her weakness even as her legs began to give way. He broke the kiss and she opened her eyes to find herself still held in his arms. His heavy-lidded gaze studied her face. ‘I thought I was not wrong,’ he murmured.

Arrogant man. The thought flashed into her head as a deep indrawn breath steadied her. What had she been thinking of? This was madness. Delicious, exciting, infinitely tempting, but completely wrong. Besides, it could come to nothing. She liked Ashe, he took the trouble to kiss with finesse and consideration for her pleasure, but she could not pretend to herself that the delight would last were matters to go any further.

‘You thought me a lightskirt?’ she flashed at him. She would not back away. Phyllida stiffened her spine and her quaking knees and did her best to ignore the clamouring instinct to throw herself back into Ashe Herriard’s embrace and find out if he could, after all, work magic and banish her memories and her nightmares.

‘No. I thought you a passionate woman it would be a pleasure to kiss and I judged you would respond if I did.’ He was watching her like a man confronted by an unpredictable danger, calm but poised to evade both a slap on the cheek or a lashing from her tongue.

‘And now what?’ Phyllida demanded.

‘We could do it again?’ That wicked mouth was serious, but his eyes were filled with laughter.

‘That is not what I meant! Am I to expect kisses whenever you find me alone—or do you have the intention of taking me to your bed, my lord?’

‘My lord,’ he echoed. ‘Am I so in disgrace? Would you come to my bed if I asked you? It is what I hope.’

Chapter Ten

Phyllida hesitated a betraying second too long. ‘No! Of course I will not come to your bed!’ Her hands were knotted in her apron and she made herself release it, smooth out the creases.

Ashe half-turned and moved to examine the Meissen figures as though to soothe her by putting a little distance between them. ‘A pity. I am very attracted to you.’

His long fingers caressed down the bare arm of the dancing lady and Phyllida shivered as though they touched her own naked flesh.

‘You told me you wanted to be friends,’ she accused.

‘I have always been friends with my lovers,’ he countered.

‘How pleasant for you! I am very conveniently here, am I not?’ And I am a weak-willed woman who has been dreaming of the touch of your lips, the pressure of your hands, the hardness of your body and I am not sophisticated enough in these matters to hide that. ‘And there are no other distractions to entertain you.’

‘There are plenty of distractions, Phyllida. Not that any of them are very entertaining,’ Ashe said wryly. ‘But are you telling me that you feel nothing for me? That I am so far adrift in my reading of you?’

She moved round the packing case, glad of its bulk between them, and reached in for another wrapped object. ‘I am a respectable woman, my lord.’ Liar. ‘I cannot afford to allow my feelings to dictate my actions.’ The wrappings fell away to reveal a pot-pourri bowl. She set it down on the table too hard and the fragile pierced lid rattled like her nerves.

‘Then you do have feelings for me?’

‘Only the realisation that you kiss very well.’ She wiped her hands on her apron and dug into the chest again. If she fled from the room, she would never have the nerve to return and the work steadied her hands. ‘I expect you have had a great deal of practice. Or perhaps it is simply that I have had very little and you are actually quite mediocre at it.’

That surprised a chuckle of laughter from him. ‘Should I be suffering from any excess of masculine conceit, you, Phyllida, are a most certain cure for it.’

She removed the paper from around a stack of delicate Worcester fruit plates, lips tight on a thoroughly unladylike retort. After an interval when he said nothing, made no move to touch her, she asked, ‘You expect feelings in your liaisons, do you?’ His face went very still. ‘You charm your mistresses with talk of love, perhaps?’ She had meant to be sarcastic, to show her scorn for his talk of feelings when all he wanted was to bed her, but the expressionless face was suddenly vulnerable. For a second she thought he flinched.

‘Ashe? What did I say?’ Phyllida realised she had blundered into something she did not understand.

‘I no longer make that mistake,’ he said tightly.

‘You loved one of your mistresses? What happened to her?’ As she asked it she guessed. There was loss, bleak and cold, in those green eyes. ‘She is dead.’

‘Yes.’ Ashe turned away as though to study the porcelain she was setting out. ‘All this is European. Is it any good?’

‘It is excellent.’ If he thought to divert her by changing the subject she would not oblige him. ‘And valuable. And that is not important. Tell me about her, the mistress you loved.’