Untouched

At his side, Grace lay in trembling stillness until the downstairs door slammed behind Monks. Then she scrambled out of bed to stand shaking in the center of the room. She wrapped her arms around herself, hands clenching and unclenching convulsively on her elbows. Her stance lifted her breasts under the green satin. Matthew’s sexual hunger, momentarily submerged in sick anger, returned in a crashing wave.

“That was…awful.” Her eyes glittered with agitation and she vibrated with tension. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” he said implacably. He rolled out of the bed and stood close enough to tower over her.

Her fine dark brows contracted with furious denial and she jerked her chin up until she met his eyes so far above her. “I can’t!”

She flung herself into restless pacing. The flimsy satin flowed around her slender body, clinging and sliding over thigh and breast and hip with a fascinating liquidity that reminded Matthew of the sea.

He hadn’t seen the sea in eleven years but he remembered the relentless roll and rush of water. He remembered how he couldn’t take his eyes off it. He certainly couldn’t take his eyes off Grace as she prowled the room like a caged tigress.

“I will not have that filthy creature salivating over what he thinks you and I do in this bed.” She reached the end of the room and whirled around with such violence that her plait whipped around her head like a lashing tiger’s tail.

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks as long as he thinks we’re lovers,” Matthew bit out while Grace’s angry humiliation seethed around him like a stormy ocean.

Such passion she had. How could Monks say she was cold when she invested everything she did with feeling, with heat? Matthew wanted that passion to warm him.

“I can’t bear it!” She passed so close that her scent teased him. She’d slept in his arms for two nights and now her scent was part of him, like blood or breath. Another turn. Another swish of satin. Another flurry of steps toward him and away and back again.

He reached out to tug her around to face him. The skin of her arm was smooth and cool under his hand in spite of her quivering rage. “A few insults from a creature like Monks is small price for safety.”

He was edgy and angry. Monks’s foul insinuations had ripped at him too. Grace’s tempestuous parade around the room only worsened his frustration. He wanted her to devote all that energy to him. If she didn’t calm down, he’d tumble her onto the rumpled sheets and forget his rapidly fraying honor.

She nodded once and her wary, unhappy eyes sharpened on his face. “I don’t know how you bear living here.”

“I bear it because I must,” he said grimly. He turned toward a chest and ripped out fresh clothing without paying attention to what he chose. If he stayed within touching distance, he wouldn’t lie when he claimed she was his lover. “I’ll see you at breakfast. We should spend the day together.”

“For Monks and Filey,” she whispered behind him.

No, he wanted to say, for me. But he was silent as he left her to her chastity and the sunlit room.

Grace sat back on her heels away from the now-tidy rose bed and found Lord Sheene watching her. That gold gaze heated her to her marrow.

All day he’d watched her, at first covertly. As the hours went on, he’d taken less trouble to mask his interest.

He stood at his workbench potting what looked like another dead stick. He definitely wasn’t concentrating on the task.

She blushed and looked down to where his attention focused. Her woefully low neckline drooped, revealing the embroidered top of her chemise.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to pull on this particular gown. So far she’d only altered two dresses and Mrs. Filey had removed both for laundering. She raised a hand to tug her décolletage up when something stayed her. Perhaps the hungry intensity of his gaze. Perhaps the barely hidden desolation beneath the sexual interest.

His uncle had stolen so much from him, even the chance to ogle a pretty girl.

Well, the only girl he had the chance to ogle was Grace Paget and she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him.

A decent woman wouldn’t tease a man like this. Josiah would be disgusted with her. But Josiah was gone and she was most definitely alive. And in the grip of a physical enchantment beyond anything she’d imagined possible.

She wanted Lord Sheene to look at her.

She let her hand drop to her waist and straightened her spine so her bosom rose high and proud. How she wished there was more of her. Although what there was seemed enough for Lord Sheene. The lines of his face sharpened and a muscle twitched in his cheek. She had no doubt that behind the concealing bench, he hardened. The moisture evaporated from her mouth at the thought.

“You were talking about extending the franchise,” he said in a strangled voice.

“Was I?” She vaguely remembered they’d been discussing politics. The marquess, for all his seclusion, was surprisingly well informed, much more than she.

“Yes.”

She waited for him to say more. But he was silent while his eyes devoured the curves she paraded like some strumpet hawking her wares in Covent Garden.