Trial by Desire (Carhart 2)

Aside from that long fall of muslin, it appeared that skin was essentially all she was wearing. His mouth dried.

It had been a long time. And damn, he wanted her. He wanted to claim the curves that lay under that fabric. He wanted to cross the room in one bound and press her against the feather tick. Desire coursed through him, pounding in his ears as powerfully as a flooding river, pulling all his good intentions downstream.

She pushed her legs out in front of her, exposing a smooth curve from foot to calf. Her feet flexed, pointed, and then she stood in one graceful movement. The moonlight rendered the white stuff of her shift translucent. He could see the curve of her waist through that thin fabric. His hands yearned to touch her.

She’s yours. You might as well take her.

She frowned at him. “You’re wearing a surprising amount of clothing.”

“I am? I hadn’t realized.” The thick fabric of his trousers was the only protection he had, the armor behind which he could hide the truth of his physical response. He’d been erect since he’d walked in the room.

He didn’t move forward. Instead, he concentrated on the rise and fall of his breath. He was in control, not his pounding desire. Not his fevered imagination. He was in control. He wasn’t a savage.

But then she moved toward him. The gown rippled about her, fading into translucence where the light from the moon shone through. She set her hands on her hips—a movement that only cinched the fabric about that gentle curve. The material slid against her skin in a soft whisper. It was a challenge she issued him, even if she didn’t know it yet.

“Really, Ned. How hard can this be?”

“Excruciatingly hard.” And long. And thick.

“Well,” Kate said, “I’m your wife. We both know how to proceed from here.” She let out a hard-put-upon sigh. “Can we just get this over with? I won’t protest.”

She promised not to protest in the ill-used tones of a servant, agreeing to shovel manure. But even with so little encouragement, Ned went from hard to rigid. His rationality was shredding around him. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“It doesn’t work?” She glanced down in surprise. “I see. Your years abroad did change you. It never had a problem working before.”

It stiffened upon being so directly addressed. For a second, he berated himself for not changing from trousers to a loose robe, one that would hide it. “It works. Trust me. If you waved your hand about, you could verify that it is working right now.”

She reached out, and he caught her fingers before they could explore the depth—or rather, the length—of his attraction.

“That was a rhetorical device.” Her hand fluttered in his. “Not an invitation. Not twelve hours ago, you were telling me you didn’t need anything as complicated as a love affair.”

“Goodness.” She pulled her hand from his grip and shook her fingers. “We’re married. It would hardly be a love affair. It’s not as if you need to seduce me. No other man has such scruples.”

No doubt. Most of Ned’s peers thought that “scruples” meant that a man took pains to keep his mistress far from his wife. One demonstrated scruples by taking out subscriptions to charity, by supporting the parish’s poor. Scruples were inconveniences, to be set aside in the dark of night when a woman whispered that she was willing.

“That’s the thing.” The words scraped harshly in Ned’s throat. “You see, I don’t want to be just any man. I intend to be better.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m quite sure of it. You’re better. And longer. You forget, I’ve spent three years here, with gentlemen clamoring to seduce me. It’s just your luck that I don’t need sweet nothings to succumb tonight.”

“Kate, I know I’ve made mistakes these last years. Hell, the only reason we married was because I made a mistake.”

Her chin lifted at that. “You arrogant…arrogant…” Her mouth worked.

No doubt, Ned thought, the phrase she was searching for was son of a bitch. He wanted to hear those vulgar syllables delivered in the perfect tones of a duke’s daughter. But alas. Her ladylike vocabulary failed her.

“Arrogant cad,” she finished. “We married because I said yes.”

“I convinced you to meet me alone. We were caught together because I—”

“I met you alone, Ned. Why on earth do you suppose I did that?”

A sense of unease grew in him. He shook his head, starting over. “It was a marriage of convenience, and—”

“Oh, do be quiet,” she snapped. “I was raised to be practical about marriage, Ned. I don’t need a declaration of love. I don’t want you to swear your undying affection, and if you did, I wouldn’t believe it, anyway. I just want—” She cut herself off, and then turned around. Her hair spun with her, pale gold decorating her shoulders.

“You want what?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. In that instant—even with the dark of night shielding her expression from his eyes—he guessed at the truth. He didn’t want her to answer. He didn’t want to hear whatever it was she was about to say.

“You,” she said quietly. “I just want you.”

He could hear three years of hurt echo in her voice, and he shifted from one foot to the next.

“It wasn’t all about convenience,” she said softly. “I married—”

“You married a scrawny little mister,” Ned said dryly. “An arrogant cad.” And, apparently, a bigger son of a bitch than Ned had realized.

She smiled faintly at that.

“Well. Yes.”

“You’ve never asked me for much.” The only time she’d ever asked him for anything was when she had asked him not to leave. He hadn’t listened then.

Matters had become bad around here. She accepted Harcroft’s sligh

ts so easily. She was willing to submit to Ned—and God, what an image the thought of her sweet submission still made—even though he’d hurt her. She accepted that she was to have nothing from this marriage but dry dust.

Had he made them that bad?

Ned was afraid he had.

“Just come to my bed,” she said with an exhale.

If he had been any other man, he might have done so. He wanted the taste of her badly enough to do it. But then, even though she’d never asked him for anything, he could hear the entreaty in her voice. No matter what she said, she didn’t deserve an emotionless coupling in the dark.

Other men might set their scruples aside after nightfall and then take them up again in the morning. But Ned was laboring under another burden. When he let his control lapse, he’d found himself slipping down into darkness.

No. He couldn’t be just any man. He had to be better, stronger and more in control. After he’d hurt her, he owed her more than a few minutes with his trousers bunched at his ankles.

“When I take you again, Kate, you won’t be offering yourself to me out of a sense of duty or obligation or whatever this happens to be.” He slid a finger under her chin.

She shivered under his touch and took a step back.

“You won’t flinch when I touch you. And you won’t tell me it’s not a love affair. You won’t ever tell me that.”

More important, he would have control over himself—control over the inexorable wants that she brought up in him. He would be able to trust himself around her, trust that this time, he would not go careening off into the abyss again.

She looked up at him, the gray of her eyes silver in the moonlight. Her lips were parted. She didn’t say a word; she just stared at him, a strange combination of innocence and seduction, desire and hurt wafting off her. She drew him as strongly as any siren would have, and without any notion of the rocks that waited to dash him to pieces if he were to give in.

He pulled his finger from her chin and rubbed it surreptitiously against his trousers. “You told me earlier that our marriage might dry up and blow away in one great gust. If a little wind could do us in, what do you suppose would happen if I just used you?”