Page 46 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
The rain broke at last, pattering against the windows. Phaedra dimly noted Jonathan taking his leave and bid him a preoccupied good night. The merciless flick of cards being laid down seemed to cut through all other noise, the rain, the muted sounds of thunder, her grandfather snoring upon one of the settees.
Armande seemed to have recovered his composure. He played with a grim intensity, yet continued to lose points. It was some time before the truth occurred to Phaedra. He was throwing the game by design.
But it had been he who had proposed the wager, and the desire firing his gaze was so heated, she did not doubt it was real. Was his present behavior prompted by gallantry or some other, darker apprehension she could not begin to understand? If he lost, did he truly mean to honor the bet and leave, never to return?
Phaedra reached for the pack and drew out an ace. Now she was almost sure to win both the next trick and the game. She risked a glance at Armande. He appeared too absorbed to notice anything she might do. With all the deftness Gilly had taught her, she slipped the card into her mufftee.
She drew again, and almost cursed aloud at the perversity of fate. What must the odds be against turning up another ace so soon? With a quick movement, she sent the card to lodge with its fellow up her sleeve.
She finally succeeded in pulling the right cards to sabotage her hand. When Armande revealed his, she laid out her losing sweep with a kind of defiant triumph. His impassive expression did not change, but when she scooped up the cards to deal again, his hand shot out, gripping her wrist. She had no time to protest before his fingers delved into her mufftee, producing the missing aces.
Phaedra felt as though every forbidden desire she’d kept locked away in her heart all these years lay exposed before Armande. Was there ever any lady who would have thus bartered her virtue? She might as well have begged for Armande to take her, like any street harlot. Her cheeks burned with shame, and she could not meet his eyes.
“You cheated, milady,” he said softly. “I declare this game forfeit to me.”
But she heard no censure, no triumph in his voice. If anything, he sounded infinitely sad.
By the time Phaedra reached her bedchamber, the storm had ceased its ominous threatening and erupted in all its fury. The rain poured down her window panes. The night raged,a tympany of thunder and violent clashes of lightning, as Lucy helped Phaedra shrug into her night shift. The linen clung to her skin as she slipped beneath the sheets. She was so tense that she hardly permitted her head to rest against the pillow.
As soon as Lucy had gone, Phaedra flung aside the bedclothes. Stumbling through the darkness, she fumbled with the tinder box and managed to light the stump of a candle. Her gaze traveled to the door connecting to Armande’s bedchamber. Her heart fluttered like the wings of a bird about to fly of its own volition into the hunter’s snare.
And Armande? She wondered what he was feeling, waiting for her on the other side of that door. He had walked away from the card table, trying to summon a smile as though the entire game had been but flirtatious nonsense.
But his laughter had been hollow, the longing in his eyes keen enough to pierce her heart. He would not hold her to the wager; she knew that. She had but to return to her bed, pull the covers up tight about her neck and try to lose herself in the oblivion of sleep.
Her gaze shifted to the dressing-table mirror. Her image appeared almost unearthly in the dim light, a pale spirit garbed in flowing white. She arranged the ripples of red-gold hair over her shoulders in a modest effort to conceal the rose-tipped crests of her breasts, visible beneath the transparent gown. She glided toward the connecting door like a sleepwalker, no more able to control her steps than she could put a halt to the thunder rending the skies.
She reminded herself that Armande was still a man enshrouded in mystery, his hidden past a threat to her. He could be the Prince of Darkness himself, for all she knew. She tried torecall the passion that had betrayed her once before, delivering her into seven years of hellish captivity as Ewan’s bride. But memory grew dim until all she could remember was the heat of Armande’s kiss.
Her fingers slid back the bolt, the door whispering open beneath her trembling hand. She held the guttering candle before her like a talisman as she stepped across the threshold into Armande’s chamber.
“Armande?” she called softly.
“I am here.” His voice sounded at once distant and startlingly close. She jumped as the room was illumined by a jagged flash of lightning, revealing the outline of Armande’s muscular form but a few feet from her, as though he had been lingering by the door, tense and waiting. He was garbed in his close-fitting breeches, and his white shirt, unbuttoned to the waist, exposing the vee of his chest. He stretched out one arm to her, extending his hand.
Her faltering steps guided her closer, the dim light of the candle giving the pitch-dark room a misty quality. It reminded her strangely of the dream she had had of Armande so many nights before, when she had returned from Lady Porterfield’s ball. That tormenting dream of so many endings, as she had stripped away Armande’s mask, one time to find death, another desire. What awaited her now in those angular features lost in shadow, the watching eyes but a glint in the darkness?
She had an urge to snuff out the candle and not look upon an expression that might turn the dream into a nightmare. But Armande took it from her before she could do so. In the brief moment he held the taper, his face was fully revealed to her. His sable-dark hair swept back from his brow in damp waves, beads of moisture clinging to the high planes of his cheeks almost as though he had been out walking in the storm. The force of the tempest appeared caught in his eyes, stripping away all illusionof the cold, haughty marquis, leaving but a man, vulnerable, his emotions as raw and untamed as her own.
Phaedra never had imagined anything like the tender way he pulled her into his arms. She could feel the pulse in his throat drumming against her temple.
“I should send you away, but I need you,” he said hoarsely. “You have no idea how long I’ve needed you.”
His voice sounded so strange. She did not understand what anguish deepened those lines about his mouth. For tonight, she did not want to know. No man had ever needed her before, and her heart responded to that appeal.
She longed to ease the pain wracking his brow. Stretching up on tiptoe, she whispered kisses against his mouth, his jaw, the curious tiny scar at the base of his neck. He groaned and buried his face in her hair. The candle sputtered and went out, leaving them in darkness, clutching each other as though they stood not in the security of the bedchamber but lost somewhere in the rage of the storm.
He swept her up in his arms, carrying her to the bed. She wound her arms about his neck, clinging to him even after he had laid her down, stretching out beside her.
“Phaedra,” he murmured. There was again that strange huskiness, a kind of wonder in the way he spoke her name. “You seem more spirit than flesh. I can scarce believe you are real.”
“I am real,” she assured him. Indeed she had never felt so alive as she did this night. She upturned her face to receive his kiss, allowing her lips to part in invitation. His tongue mated with hers, filling her with fire, the kiss becoming more urgent, more demanding.
He deftly undid the ribbons of her nightgown, his breath coming quickly. When he stripped away the linen, Phaedra shivered as the cool air struck her skin. Even in the darkness ofthe room, she felt conscious of her nakedness. Ewan had never bothered to undress her.
She knew Armande couldn’t see her face, but somehow he read her feelings all the same. He pulled back the counterpane and nestled her beneath its downy depths, then stood to remove his own clothing. As he peeled off his breeches and shirt, the lightning burst outside the window behind him in a series of quick flashes, outlining the sinewy strength of his limbs, his broad chest and stalwart shoulders. He stood before her like some god from the pagan tales of old, borne in by the winds of the storm, come to fulfill every fantasy she’d ever dared to dream in her lonely bed.
He slipped beneath the coverlet, drawing her back into his arms, resuming their kiss. The first contact of his bare flesh with her breasts sent shock waves tingling along her skin.
