Page 54 of Guilty Pleasures

Mrs. Bennington looked at her as if expecting confirmation, but Daphne shoved back her chair and rose. “Lady Hammond did not mention the matter. If you will excuse me.”

She walked away, leaving Mrs. Bennington staring after her. “My dear Daphne, are you ill?”

“No,” she called back over shoulder as she left the breakfast room. “It is just that I have so much work to do.”

She did not care who Anthony married, she told herself as she walked out of the house down to the antika. She would forget about what happened last night.

A mosaic of Europa lay waiting on her worktable. She stared at it, but the image of Europa blurred, and Dapnne saw a different image—a fresco of a naked woman and a naked man. She saw Anthony tracing the woman’s hip with his fingertips.

Last night, he had touched her like that. Tongues of heat curled inside her body at the memory of his touch. She remembered every moment—the solid heaviness of his body behind hers as he had held her in an embrace, his low voice murmuring in her ear, his kiss, the hardness of him pressed against her.

Seeing erotic wall paintings was one thing, but it was a whole different thing to feel his hands on her, his mouth on hers, that indescribable pleasure and aching anticipation for more.

He was marrying someone else. How could he have touched her that way if he was marrying someone else?

Men have no character when it comes to women.

Anthony’s words came back to mock her, and she realized that just because a man desired a woman, it could mean nothing more than that. He had been flirting with her for weeks, and she had flirted back. Both of them had enjoyed it. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back. Both of them had wanted more of it. They had gotten it.

Love and desire were not the same thing. He might desire her, but he was not in love with her. She desired him as well, for even now, she longed for his touch, but she was not in love with him any longer. Last night, it had been desire, not love, that had taken her closer to bliss than she had ever been. Love had broken her heart. She would do well to remember the difference.

Chapter 18

Anthony immersed himself in work. The usual duties and matters of business, meetings with other members of the Antiquarian Society who happened to be in Town at the moment, and the museum project itself kept him busy from early morning until late at night. All in an attempt to keep his mind occupied, away from thoughts of lavender-blue eyes and lust.

But as he stood in the domed center room of the building that would house the finest collections of Romano-British artifacts in the world, every fresco, every mosaic pavement, every wine amphora reminded him of what he was trying to escape.

What was it about the woman that made him unable to get her out of his mind? There had been a time when he had barely noticed her. There had been a time when he had never even thought about her unless she was standing right in front of him, stammering her way through explanations of a Latin translation he questioned or describing the nuances of meaning in a particular mosaic. She had obeyed every order he had given her without a word of protest. No matter how demanding or even unreasonable his expectations, she had always exceeded them. She had behaved, in fact, like any other person in his employ: subservient, unquestioning, and excellent at the work for which she was paid.

Then she had up and resigned her post, bursting out with the ridiculous reason that she did not like him and did not want to work for him any longer. At that moment, after five months in his household, she had transformed right before his eyes into someone he had never met before, someone who made short shrift of his position, his title, and himself, someone who had always been there, he imagined, hidden behind an impersonal, efficient mask for the sake of her wage. When the first opportunity to leave had come her way, she had taken it. He had been forced to use all his ingenuity to keep her in his employ as long as he had.

And why? Because she did not like him. But she had liked him well enough when he’d held her in his arms. She had liked him well enough to kiss him and enjoy it as much as he had.

Anthony knew he was liking her. Far too much. He desired her more than he had ever desired a woman before, a feeling so unexpected, given his initial impression of her. He had been wrong about her, and now she invaded his mind every time he let his guard down. Honor be damned. Why hadn’t he bedded her when he’d had the opportunity? At least then his fantasies of making love to her would cease to be an obsession that continually took his mind from his work. He stared at the fresco that lay on the display table before him, his gaze fixed on a bowl of grapes, the faded color of the fruit more like lavender than purple. He slammed his fist down on the table. “Devil take it!”

“You called my name?” a male voice drawled from the doorway.

Anthony recognized that voice even before he looked up. “Dylan Moore,” he said, drawing a deep breath, grateful for the distraction, as he tore his gaze from the wall painting on the table to the man entering the room.

“You call this a museum, Tremore?” Dylan said, glancing around. “It looks more like a mausoleum to me. All these stone walls and statues. Ye gods, it even has a sarcophagus.”

“I see that you have still not cut your hair,” Anthony commented, straightening away from the table. “How long is this latest rebellion against the fashionable world going to last?”

His friend grinned. “I’ve not quite decided. My valet is in histrionics about it daily. I fear he shall drug me senseless one night and take a scissors to it. But I am determined to bring back the fashion of longer hair for men. Deuce take it, Tremore, the London beaux need someone to hold them in check.”

Dylan was no beau. When first introduced to England’s most famous composer, most people could not manage anything beyond a mumbled how-do-you-do, for his appearance was always a bit shocking. It was designed to be.

He was almost as tall as Anthony. His thick black hair hung in waves to his shoulders and was always disheveled, as if he had scarcely risen from his bed. His eyes were black as well, so black the pupils were invisible, so black that Lady Jersey had once declared him a modern Mephistopheles. It was a comparison that suited him perfectly. His brows had a mocking curve, and his mouth a sulky one. He had the charm of angels and the luck of the demon after whom Lady Jersey had named him.

His fancy tickled by her comparison, he heightened his Mephistophelean image by always dressing in black, no matter the occasion, an affectation that amused him endlessly. His ankle-length black cloak with its gold silk lining was familiar to everyone in society, and so was his behavior, which grew more outrageous with each passing year. Dylan was wild, disreputable, and invited to every fashionable party. He also composed some of the most exquisite music Anthony had ever heard. They had been friends since Cambridge.

“So what has you invoking the devil, Tremore? Work, I would guess, since that is all you ever seem to do.” Dylan, never able to stand still for long, began to wander around the room, looking at the exhibits. “Or perhaps it is the idea of putting the ducal emeralds around some young lovely’s neck that has you cursing?”

“Can nothing in my life be private?” Anthony asked with an exasperated sigh. “How far have the speculations gone?”

“A fresh list of likely future duchesses was presented in one of the society papers only a week ago. What did you expect, dear fellow? That you would take your emeralds to Bond Street and no one would notice?”

“Foolish of me, I know.”

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