Page 26 of The Devil in Her Bed
“Don’t believe everything you hear.”
His chuckle belonged to the devil. “My sins are so many, they’d crush yer average demon, Countess, and a night with ye might be my only chance to glimpse what I’ll be missing whilst I inevitably burn in hell.” He brushed the soft place behind her ear with his lips, nuzzling into her hair. “I promise to take ye to paradise, to keep ye there with me, if only for a night.”
Francesca’s insides knotted at the same time her most feminine parts turned warm and liquid, pulsing with an answering ache. The answer was no, wasn’t it? This man, he’d never been whispered about, not by the council, not by any of her “lovers.”
She didn’t understand what was happening. Didn’t have time for it. If she took him up on his offer, she’d be exposed, and not merely because she didn’t have a certain scar on her thigh. One she’d give herself the moment she reached home.
“We’ll do it in the dark. Yer secrets and truths can remain yers, until ye’re ready.” Drake seemed to take her silence as acquiescence. “Meet me tonight. I’ll be at the bottom of the back stairs at half one.”
He released her so abruptly, a less dexterous woman might have stumbled. As it was, Francesca reached outto let the stone of the manse hold her up as she watched the wicked Scot saunter back inside.
Francesca grappled with her heart, her lungs. With indecision and lust and fear and yearning. For the first time in her life, she understood.God!She’d thought men so simple. So ridiculous, to be led about by her. To be handled so deftly with the promise of a little pleasure. Now it made sense how the body was more powerful than the mind. How need could overcome logic. How desire could excuse danger.
Half one, bottom of the back stairs.
Francesca bit down on her lip hard enough to hurt, gathered herself, and went in search of another drink.
Chandler escaped the dance floor to slide into the quietude of the east wing. Once he found a washroom there, he locked the door, yanked his cravat loose, and greedily gulped air into his lungs.
God damn, but he’d never been so turned on. He was hard enough to punch through marble. His blood simmered with the want of her, with an anticipation he’d not felt since he’d been a lusty lad seeing a naked woman for the first time.
The Countess of Mont Claire. Francesca?
If he thought her beautiful before, she was even more so when she was angry. Her eyes sparked like diamonds cutting into emeralds. Her pale skin flushed, and he would have given his eyeteeth to follow that color below the line her bodice.
A flush of desire? Or of guilt?
When he’d baited her, the melted puddle of warm,willing woman had frozen to ice and iron in his grasp. He’d instantly wanted her back the way she was, drooping with desire against him.
Desire, and probable deception.
He still didn’t believe a word she said. He’d have not been able to seduce her if he truly thought she was Francesca.
Not only was she was missing a freckle on the top left of her lip, but everything about her was as wrong for Francesca Cavendish as it was right for his libido. She was more lithe and nimble than demure and delicate. Strong, sure, and bold. Three things Francesca had never been.
He’d loved the girl for her fragility. He’d spent his youth swathed in guilt and self-loathing for reasons innumerable, and she’d made him feel like he was St. George, the knight in shining armor who could slay her dragons.
But to this imposter, he could be no saint. She stirred ardor and lust with such violence, he could barely contain it.
And with her, he wouldn’t have to.
Chandler gripped the sides of the sink, staring at a stranger in the mirror, going over their interactions carefully, word by word.
She’d ignited within him a spark of recognition, hadn’t she? Something had stirred memories of their shared childhood.
The years have changed us both, a desperate inner voice contended.What if she is who she claims?
Impossible. Wasn’t it? Pippa had said Francesca didn’t make it.
For the millionth time, he wished Pippa had survived so he could talk to her. Ask her. Delve into her memories.
So the world could have known her endearing exuberance.
He’d tried so hard to save her. He’d done his best. He’d paid for every second of his sacrifice for her in blood, in nightmares, and with his very soul.
Memories, as he well knew, were forever unreliable. His entire life seemed like a struggle against them, and not just memories of the Mont Claire Massacre.
He’d been broken before then.
