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Chapter 7

He stepped towards her, and she shrank back against the windows, clutching her shawl about her in an action that some part of her knew to be both futile and ridiculous. Being fully clothed – at least at the start – had not helped her before. A light flared, and she saw that he held a closed lantern, and had uncovered it.

He set it down, his lips quirking wryly as he regarded her. ‘You are quite safe, Lady Georgiana – or at any rate, as safe as you wish to be. I give you my word I merely came to talk. We have matters to discuss, do we not? Private matters, best examined without any fear of interruption?'

As safe as she wished to be. She forced down the traitorous thoughts his words, his damnably seductive voice set roiling within her. ‘How do I know I can trust you?' she said bluntly.

‘Have I not given you sufficient proof on our most memorable previous meeting that I will go precisely as far as you desire me to and no further? No matter how strongly my own inclinations might urge me otherwise?'

She flushed hotly from head to toe, and grasped the windowsill for support. It was true, she could not deny it. Neither violence nor coercion nor even any form of persuasion had played the least part in what had happened between them. If he had bewitched her, she must admit that she had been a willing victim. More than willing: eager.

‘And besides,' he said, settling into the chair beside her bed and making himself comfortable, just as though they were having some quite ordinary conversation in an ordinary setting, ‘you forget that your most excellent aunt and her chère amie are close by. Should you feel compelled to scream, or make any other kind of loud noise, I feel confident they would hear and come running to your rescue. You need not fear scandal, either, since no one else besides your little family party is staying in this tower. Shriek away, the instant you feel threatened, I beg you. There is no denying that it would be a little awkward for us both if you were to choose that course, but I doubt your aunt would spread the matter abroad, for the sake of your reputation – and as for my reputation, of course, it could hardly be any worse than it is already. Sit down,' he added in a less satirical tone. ‘I'm not going to pounce on you.'

She came over to the bed, and sat where she could see him, but not too close, her back straight and her hands primly clasped in her lap. Though it was a little late for that. ‘Did you have me put in this chamber on purpose?' she asked suddenly.

He laughed softly. ‘How could I? I did not know your identity until I set eyes on you this afternoon. I am seldom surprised, but I admit I was then. No: the whole building is honeycombed with secret passages and hidden stairs. My ancestors were both Catholic recusants and shocking libertines, the whole pack of them, and it seems the results in terms of domestic architecture are much the same. In the unlikely event that I should wish to pay a nocturnal visit to Lady Debenham, for example, I may easily do so.'

She felt a wild impulse to laugh, and suppressed it ruthlessly. ‘But how did you know I was here, then, and not in one of the other rooms in this tower?'

He waved a languid hand. ‘Blanche has a list, which I purloined. She is terrifyingly organised. You might, of course, have for some inscrutable feminine reason swapped chambers with your aunt or Miss Spry, in which case you cannot doubt that I would have vanished as silently as I came. I doubt you would have heard my arrival, you know, had you not been awake and up already. Why were you, I wonder? A guilty conscience?'

She refused to rise to his bait, and would certainly not be discussing her conscience with him. She doubted he possessed such a thing. ‘I would have heard even so, I think. The panel creaked most shockingly.'

‘I thank you for the information,' he said gravely, though somehow she knew his voice and the tiny, fleeting expressions on his face well enough by now to tell that he was mocking her still. ‘I will make sure to oil the hinges for the next time.'

‘I insist you close up the secret way immediately! Because there will not be a next time!' she shot back, and then moderated her tone for fear Louisa or Miss Spry might hear. ‘There will never be another such improper occasion!' she hissed in further emphasis. It was a sentence that lent itself to being hissed, and she was pleased with the sound of it. ‘I do not see that we have anything at all to say to each other!'

‘Do not be disingenuous,' he said, his eyes glittering in a highly disturbing fashion. ‘It does not suit you, my dear. I had thought you fearless.'

God, his voice when he spoke the endearment, even if it was meant ironically! It was like the lightest of caresses across bare flesh, arousing, tempting, promising much more. She could very easily see why so many women had succumbed to him. But she would not be one of them. Not again. She bit her lip, and then realised he had seen her do it, and wished she had not.

‘You know we must talk.' He was relentless.

‘Why? There is nothing to be said. It was, it is, all a horrible mistake,' she said very low. ‘You were in ignorance of my identity, and I of yours – I hope you know that?—'

‘I do know it,' he said lightly. ‘I have good reason to. I do not think anybody – apart of course from a jealous husband on one particularly memorable occasion in my wild youth – has ever been so appalled to see me in all my thirty-one years of existence. My amour propre has never been served such a severe blow. Mr Summerson would no doubt tell me it is good for me.'

‘I do not know how you can make a joke of such a serious matter!' she hissed.

‘Practice?'

‘You must be the most provoking creature alive!'

‘You are not the first person to say so. But we are dancing around the subject, are we not? I am as guilty as you, for I find an unexpected pleasure in sparring with you. Pray continue. You were saying, most unflatteringly: a horrible mistake. I believe you said something similar last time, too.'

‘Yes,' she said very quietly. ‘A mistake, a moment of madness on my part. I was tricked there, to that dreadful house – you know I was, I told you so – and then…'

‘And then…? There's the rub. You could have chosen to leave when I so nobly offered you the chance. You did not. Moreover, you lied to me, and made me think you something you are not, and I acted on that mistaken belief. If you can put what happened next out of your mind, you have the advantage of me, for I cannot. No matter how I try, and God knows I have tried. As I think I said to you once before, you are not obliged to give me any explanation for your behaviour, and I'm not asking for one. But do you really pretend to be surprised I have come to you tonight?'

She put her hands to her burning face. He was not saying anything she had not said to herself a hundred times, and his words were daggers. ‘Why exactly are you here, then? I demand you tell me plainly. Enough with the insinuations. Is it just to talk, as you claimed, or do you have blackmail in mind?'

His beautiful voice was expressionless, but somehow she thought he was angry. ‘Blackmail to what end, Lady Georgiana?'

‘I would have thought it obvious!'

‘I try never to be obvious. I recommend the habit to you, madam.'

‘Certainly,' she said bitingly, ‘a man who summons a veritable harem of young ladies to his home to choose between them for a bride, and then comes to another in secret and proposes to make dishonourable love to her, while all the others sleep in happy innocence, cannot be said to be obvious. Many choice adjectives could be applied to such a man, but I am sure that "obvious" is not one of them.'

He sighed, and was silent for a moment, looking down at his hands. ‘I suppose that that is all too true. Consider me duly chastened. The trouble – one of the troubles – with having a reputation for outrageous behaviour is that sometimes I allow it to run away with me. I am not, after all, as you so pertinently remind me, the Grand Turk.'

She refused to soften at his almost-apology. ‘You owe me nothing, sir, but only you can say what duty you owe to your future wife.'

‘Yes, yes,' he said with a touch of impatience. ‘Consider your point sufficiently well made, Miss Prim. To the victor, the spoils. I will leave you to your virtuous slumbers, and trouble you no more.'

‘Good!' she said, standing, flushed with triumph. She had bested him; the new and more prudent Georgiana had won. She had, just this once, defeated her worst self. Perhaps there was hope for her yet.

And then their eyes met, and held, and despite all Georgie's resolutions something flared to instant, insistent, undeniable life between them, as it had done before with such disastrous consequences.

He rose too, and only now did he approach her with lazy confidence, like some big cat sure of its prey. ‘Your words are very fine,' he said, his tones silken once more, and lazily amused, ‘and I applaud the noble sentiment. Your concern for your sisters, even the ones you don't like one bit, is most affecting. But, my little liar, we both know – do we not? – that if I reached out and touched you now, your body would take fire at my lightest caress. Be damned to sisterhood and virtue, the blood in your veins is saying to you now. Be damned to caution and respectability. Put your hands and your mouth on me, Gabriel, and give me what I crave so desperately!' He was very close, and his voice was little more than a whisper when he said, and now she was unsure if he spoke for her still, or for himself, ‘Give me what you gave me when first we met, and give me more than that before I die from wanting it!'

She gasped at the images his words called up in her, and he laughed softly, and then he did reach out one well-formed hand and touched her face. It was the lightest and most innocent of caresses, but the effect was electric, all-consuming. She tried to repulse him, or if she could not repulse him to stay still as a statue under his touch and betray nothing of the effect he had upon her. But it was too late, for he knew already, and in any case she could not dissemble; her physical being simply would not let her. Her face turned instinctively into his palm, her body yearned towards him. And he bent his silvered head and kissed her.

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