Never Marry a Viscount (Scandal at the House of Russell 3)

She expected he’d reach it first, catch her, hold her there, put those mesmerizing hands on her body, kiss her again. God, she wanted him to kiss her again! She wanted to lose herself in the heat of his mouth, his tongue. She didn’t want to behave herself, to think clearly—she needed his hands on her. But he simply stayed where he was on the sofa, watching her out of lazy, half-closed eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Going down to my rooms, sir,” she said, her shaky voice sadly lacking in dignity. “I seem to have mistaken your appetites.”

“You know perfectly well what I’m hungry for. Are you coming back here?”

“No. This is . . . this is . . .” Words failed her. During their brief tussle on the sofa she hadn’t had the chance to touch his skin, or to kiss him back, or do the things she’d wanted to do. But she was most certainly not getting any closer to him right now. There was no telling what he might do, and she suspected that this time she wouldn’t stop him. “This is unacceptable,” she managed to say, and then her evil genius prompted her. “It goes against the terms of my contract with Mrs. Lefton.”

He frowned for a moment. “Perhaps you’d best acquaint me with the details of that contract. This is all very entertaining, but I begin to tire of the shy virgin act. If you enjoy games, let’s play something else. You can be the naughty governess and I’ll be the lecherous master.”

“You already are the lecherous master,” she snapped. For some reason his casual words hurt. “And someone else will have to be your naughty governess. I’m going to bed.”

“That was exactly what I was suggesting . . .” he began, when she whisked herself out the door and closed it none too gently behind her. She set off at a run, down the endless hallways, expecting him to materialize behind her, his breath at the back of her neck, his hands reaching for her, pulling her to him, but there was no sound of pursuit, and she told herself she was relieved. She practically fell down the narrow, circular stairs to the kitchen, which now lay deserted, no sign of Dickens or Tim, only the glow of the bright moon lighting the place.

She should have tried to lock the baize door, though most likely it locked only from the outside, assuming it locked at all. She stilled, taking a deep breath and looking around her. The trays had been set for the morning, the whole area was spotless, and while the windows had been opened to let the smells and the steam of the night’s cooking dissipate, she could still sense the lovely fragrance of apples and a hint of lamb.

Clearly everyone was entirely wrong, and the Dark Viscount had no qualms at all about putting his hands on his female servants. She should have known. She was doubtless just one of many, a novelty because she was new. Now she was going to have to spend her time avoiding him until he found someone else to lavish his attentions on.

For some reason the notion didn’t feel particularly comfortable. She didn’t want him doing that sort of thing with anyone else, kissing her, pulling her beneath him on the soft, old sofa.

She realized with sudden shock that there was one room that hadn’t been changed by what she assumed was Mrs. Griffiths’s doubtful taste. The library was the same, though the position of the desk had been moved so that its occupant would have a clear view of the lawns and what used to be the rose garden.

And the sofa he’d pressed her into had been the very same sofa where she’d curled up and read thrilling romances, and dreamed of being swept off her feet with the wonder of a chaste, worshipful kiss.

There had been nothing chaste or worshipful about Alexander’s kiss. It had been carnal, demanding, shocking, and she hugged herself, trying to force the longing out of her body. Curse the man! She didn’t need this kind of complication. She didn’t need the confusion that flooded her, the wicked thoughts that kept dancing in her mind. She needed her old life, where she’d been in control of her body and the men around her.

She had to remember that he was the enemy, or at least, close enough. He had taken Renwick away from them. It didn’t matter that it had legally belonged to him, the terms of her father’s possession broken by his death. Alexander had supposedly killed his first wife, threw her off the battlements of his other house. He was a villain, wasn’t he?

There was a very good chance he had killed her father and stolen the liquid assets of Russell Shipping. He might be a very bad man indeed—all signs pointed to it. She needed to be extremely careful, ignore those random urges that were disgraceful, and remember who she was. She was Miss Sophia Russell, not some chippie to be taken by the first lecherous man to put his hands on her.

Except that other lecherous men had put their hands on her, or at least tried. Once the scandal had broken, she and her sisters had lost any claim to proper courtesy or etiquette. They had been fair game, and Maddy had left more than one importunate gentleman bent over and moaning with pain. Sophie hadn’t had to be quite so physical—she’d been able to slip away without anyone realizing she’d escaped.

Slipping away this time might be more difficult, when the truth was, she didn’t want to. She shook her head at her own foolishness. She had a lock on her bedroom door, and a chair to lodge beneath the knob, and she would use both. She stripped off her clothes and bathed in cool water, hoping to bring down the fever inside her. All it did was give her a chill. With a sigh she pulled on her lace-trimmed nightdress and crawled beneath the damp sheets. When she’d been a lady, someone had warmed her sheets for her with a warming pan. It might be that simple courtesy that she missed most of all. She needed a warm bed and warm covers to wrap around her. She needed to sleep, and forget what had happened in that too-familiar room.

All she could do was lie there, eyes open in the dark, and wait.

Damn the girl! What kind of game was she playing? Whatever it was, it grew extremely tedious. He needed sex; he needed to shove his cock into someplace tight and willing, and he wanted it to be Sophie. Again, he had to consider Mrs. Lefton’s surprising ability. She’d sent him someone the complete opposite of what he’d wanted, and it was exactly what he needed.

He’d grown bored with sex over the last year or so. Six years ago, after Jessamine had died and he’d faced the ignominy of a trial, he’d decided to go away, travel the world. Rufus had come with him, and his brother had been more than conversant with the ways of the world.

Rufus had called it a Whoreson’s Grand Tour, and they’d managed to sleep with Venetian courtesans and French aristocrats, though they were thin on the ground these days. Alexander had taken opera dancers and royalty and streetwalkers to his bed; he’d dabbled in a worl

d of bondage and pain for pleasure, and he was still bored. He’d ordered Miss Sophie as one might order a sack of flour, just for the convenience of it, and instead of taking care of his physical urges, it was starting to become an obsession. She was starting to become an obsession.

He’d played games before—women seemed to like them—though never with a hired partner. Some women couldn’t achieve their peak without being spanked, or pretending to be a captive princess or some such bollocks. That was the advantage of whores—one didn’t have to go through all that rigmarole. You snapped your fingers and they were there. It was up to them to do all the work to entertain, not him.

Though in fact, Sophie was doing just that. He couldn’t remember wanting a woman more in his life, not even when he was young and foolishly, desperately in love with Jessamine. Mrs. Lefton’s delicious morsel was a positive genius in building his desire to a dangerously explosive point, and he knew that when he had her, while he doubted it could be as gratifying as this pent-up frustration suggested, it would still be quite . . . satisfactory.

She was going to cost him a pretty penny, and she was worth every bit of it. She’d managed to distract him from his younger brother’s death, and his own, unthinkable guilt, guilt that came from relief that . . . no, he wasn’t going to let those thoughts in. When she was around he could think of nothing but her—the taste of her, the feel of her, the sheer, saucy effrontery of her.

This whole cooking business was a charade, he thought as he reached for the lemon torte. He was going to have to find someone to take her place once this game was played out. He certainly had no intention of arranging his desires around the demands of the kitchen, and there were at least two suitable houses on the estate that would do for her. He took a bite, and let the mélange of flavors dance against his tongue, and he closed his eyes and savored it. Well, perhaps he’d still allow her to bake. Only for him, of course.

He finished the piece of cake, then reached for the apple tart with hard sauce. He was naturally lean, but a few months of Sophie’s fell hand and he’d become as roly-poly as a judge. He laughed at the thought, finished most of the tart, and set the plate back down on the tray, half-tempted to have the footman order her back once more. Her behavior amused him, though he supposed the letter Dickens had brought him accounted for some of his sanguine mood. There was a good chance Rufus might have survived.

He should have viewed that possibility with unadulterated joy. But there was nothing simple about his relationship with Rufus, nothing straightforward about his younger brother, and never had been.

Rufus had always been the charming one, the naughty one, the occasionally devious one, and Alexander had learned long ago not to underestimate him. Indeed, he’d worried about him for the last few years, when he’d disappear for months at a time and return in the middle of the night, with odd injuries like burns on his hands or a broken leg.

And the money had been a concern as well. Soon after Alexander had unexpectedly come into the title and the debts that came with it, Rufus had somehow managed to unearth a huge amount of money. He’d been evasive, insisting it was simply part of the inheritance that had gotten overlooked, and in the end Alexander had taken the money and made a great deal more, enough that he could easily return the original money to Rufus and not even notice its loss.