Page 52 of Loving a Beast of a Marquess
“Zachary,” she said even as he captured her mouth in a kiss that threatened to melt her very being. “Zachary, I need to speak to you.”
“Don’t tell me you came here to speak with me.” He trailed a hand down her side, and she gave an involuntary shudder. “I may know little of your heart, but I can read your body.”
She wanted him, and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to dismiss what she had seen and its implications. After all, she had crept into Zachary’s room in the middle of the night just as Lord Riffy had crept into Zachary’s mother’s room, but—
“Wait,” she said, catching his hand. The sleepy kisses slowed, and he rolled back, propping himself up on his elbow.
“You really did come here to speak with me?”
“No,” she admitted. “I came here exactly for the reason you presumed, but on my way here, I saw something strange.”
He toyed with the bottom of her nightgown, dipping his fingers underneath along the line of her knees. Further up, to the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. “What did you see?” he asked.
“Uh.” Every stroke, although it didn’t stray to the apex of her thighs, succeeded further in distracting her and encouraging her to remain here.
What she saw could always be construed as being nothing.
Yet it had been Zachary’smother’sroom.
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck and shoulders. “I’m still listening.”
“I can’t think,” she said, her traitorous body shuffling closer to his fingers, so he could finally finish what he started all those days—weeks—ago. “Zachary, wait. You’ll want to hear this.”
“Are you certain?” She could hear the smile in his voice as his other hand scraped across her peaked nipple. “I can think of few things I would rather do now than—”
“I saw Lord Riffy enter your mother’s room!”
His hand stopped. The only sound was their joined breathing, matched in tempo.
“My mother?” he asked after a moment. He withdrew his hand from between her legs, and she mourned its absence even as she rejoiced that he was taking this seriously. “You saw Lord Riffy enter my mother’s room on your way to see me?”
“I did.”
“That can’t be right.” He rolled back and ran a hand through his hair. “Percy would never—my mother would never—”
“I don’t know what’s occurring between them. All I know is what I saw.”
Once, she might have been tempted to assume the cause was innocent. After all, she had never felt the lure that could draw her to a gentleman’s bedchamber.
But now she knew better, and she knew all the things that could occur between man and woman. Even unmarried women.
Zachary cursed and threw back the covers. “I will not have any rest until I find the cause of this,” he said. “Wait here, Evangeline. It’s better no one knows that you came to visit me.”
“But—”
“Please.” He leaned back across the bed and cupped her cheek with unexpected gentleness. “If I am about to discover something I would wish not to, I would not have your reputation tarnished, too.”
Too.
So, he also suspected the same things she did.
Oh, how she wished they would not turn out to be true.
She sat up against his pillows, pulling the sheets about her knees as she watched Zachary pull on a shirt and breeches and leave the room.
* * *
Zachary made no real effort to conceal his footsteps as he walked along the landing to his mother’s room. Around him, the house was almost entirely silent. Even the servants had gone to bed. He was the only one awake.
