Page 55 of The Deception (Baron 3)

“It pleases me that you think so, particularly if you mean when my tongue is in your mouth.”

She saw him naked, coming out of the sea. She was mad. She was beginning to understand lust very well. It was a highly frustrating commodity. She wanted to scream. “Don’t you have an engagement?” she said, trying to keep her voice cool and disinterested, a social voice that held no meaning. “Surely there must be a mistress or two hanging about in the wings waiting for you to come to them.” “Perhaps,” he said, and thought of Morgana. He was paying the rent on her lovely apartment through the end of the quarter. “It doesn’t matter.” He raised his hands and gently closed them about her throat, his fingers lightly caressing her pulse. She didn’t move, just stared straight into the fire, but the heat she felt was from him, standing close behind her. His voice was a warm whisper against the back of her head. “What’s wrong, Evangeline? Are you afraid of me for some reason? Afraid that I will seduce you and leave you?” His strong fingers continued to caress her throat. Slowly he turned her to face him. “Are you afraid of me?” “No,” she said. “I’m afraid for you.” A black brow shot upward. “What does that mean?” She shook her head. “Won’t you tell me what you meant?” She shook her head again, remaining mute. She felt his mouth, feather-light, touch her lips, and instantly she wanted him, although she wasn’t quite certain about everything that was involved. She did know that he

would come inside her body, an odd thing, surely, but it had to be wonderful because he was. She wanted to pull him tightly against her this very instant; she wanted no space at all between them. She wanted his heart to pound against hers. She wanted him to do anything he wanted to do, and she knew that anything he wanted to do surely would make her feel wonderful. He was so close now, and hard, and his scent, she loved his scent, the heat of his body, the gentleness of those long fingers. She closed her eyes, letting his mouth make her dizzy.

“Your saintly departed husband was an absolute clod,” he said into her mouth.

She tried to draw back, but he held her firmly. “No, André was a wonderful man, I’ve told you that.”

“I’m teaching you how to kiss me, Evangeline. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was the first man to touch you, to kiss you.” “Andre,” she said. “He was my husband.” He kissed her again, this time his tongue going more deeply into her mouth, startling her, and she gasped, just a bit, just a light in-drawn breath, but he pulled back and looked down at her. “You are a mystery, Evangeline.”

He didn’t begin to realize what she was. Her mouth was open to tell him, despite—oh no, Edgerton would have Edmund killed. No, she couldn’t bear that.

“Your grace, forgive the intrusion, but your tailor is here.”

It was Grayson, standing outside in the corridor, speaking through the closed door.

The duke touched his forehead to hers, drew a slow breath, and dropped his hands. He didn’t raise his head as he called out, “Thank you, Grayson. Tell the fellow I’ll be with him shortly.”

He straightened finally. He raised his hands and lightly patted her hair here and there, then tugged her gown, straightening it. “There, now, no one would guess that you were quite ready to fall to the carpet and let me have my way with you.” He turned, saying over his shoulder, “We must decide what to do, Evangeline. I hope that your dear departed André still isn’t holding your heart and your affections.”

He gave her no chance to answer him. He was gone, closing the nursery door behind him.

Chapter 29

Marianne Clothilde said to her son, “Edmund wanted examples of irony, dearest. ‘Irony’, I repeated after him, one of my eyebrows at half-mast. Do you know I couldn’t think of a single example to give him? He said he needed irony for his story, for you.”

“This entire situation is a fine example of irony,” the duke said, wondering where the devil his life was headed.

“Perhaps this is an interesting thing for you to say. I suppose you realize that Edmund is going very well with Evangeline. She loves him dearly, and he appears to adore her. Yes, it is a fine arrangement. It’s very odd, though, dearest,” she added after taking a sip of her tea, “but she outright refused to attend Sanderson’s masquerade ball this evening, because she claimed she didn’t own an appropriate costume. When I offered to procure her a mask and domino, she refused to hear of it. Naturally, it wasn’t my intention to make her feel like a poor relation. Her pride in this instance is misplaced. Will you speak to her? She’s so quiet, scarcely ever leaves the house, and she’s lost flesh. I don’t know what’s wrong, my dear, but you must fix it. I know she’d enjoy a ball, anyone would. You’ll see to it, won’t you? Even Grayson has ruminated about it, and that is unusual. He’s fond of her as well.”

The duke frowned at the glowing embers in the fireplace. She’d kept her distance since he’d very nearly taken her in his son’s nursery the day before. He wondered what would have happened if Grayson hadn’t arrived announcing his tailor. He knew very well what would have happened, and nearly groaned with the thought of coming into her.

She wanted him very much. It seemed he had only to touch her, and she very nearly hurled herself at him. He loved it and knew very well at the same time that he shouldn’t touch her, ever. But it seemed he simply couldn’t keep his hands to himself when he was alone with her. He’d told her they had to resolve this, and he’d meant it. He just wasn’t sure what to do, since he simply didn’t understand her. He said more to the softly hissing fire than to anyone else, “I’m nearly ready to be shown the door into Bedlam.” “No,” Marianne Clothilde said very quietly. “I’ve never seen you in this condition before, dearest, but it’s quite obvious, at least to your mother who loves you and knows you really quite well.”

He shot her a harassed look. “Spare me your motherly advice or your damned motherly observations.”

“Very well. I shall simply sit back and watch you flounder, a very new experience for you.”

“I’ve experienced everything a man possibly can,” the duke said and kicked one of the glowing embers with the toe of his boot.

“Actually, you truly have as of now, but you don’t know it as yet, you just think you do.” “Very well, you will have your way, you will think your motherly thoughts, you will make no sense at all. I will speak to Evangeline. I want her to go to that damned ball. I will tell her she is to come with us. I will tell her to accept a domino and a mask from you. She won’t refuse.”

Marianne Clothilde looked down at her white hands, the long, slender fingers, just like her son’s. “You know, you might consider using just a bit of guile, just a hint of deception, instead of this rather forceful approach that seems to come so naturally to you when it involves Evangeline.”

The duke frowned at her ferociously. “She will do what I tell her to do. If she doesn’t, then I’ll—”

“As I was saying, perhaps in this particular instance your lord-of-the-manor attitude wouldn’t work to your best advantage.”

He banged his fist down on the mantel and promptly winced at the pain he’d brought himself. “You might consider a bit of guile yourself, Madame. Talk about holding the reins too tightly, you threaten to choke me. Your own subtlety is less than stunning.” Marianne Clothilde said, her voice filled with laughter that made the duke want to fling one of her prized chairs out the bow windows, namely, the one she was currently sitting on, “Yes, dearest, I won’t say anything more. Never would I want you to consider me an interfering mama.”

“Ha,” the duke said. “I’ll send Edmund to you, since he presently is doubtless with her, and I’ll need to handle this without my son present.” With that announcement he strode out of the drawing room.

As the duke expected, he found Evangeline with Edmund in the nursery. They were both seated cross-legged in front of the fireplace, their heads together, poring over drawings of Paris. “And that, Edmund,” she was saying, “is the Bastille. When the French people had no more food to eat, when they saw there was no hope at all, they stormed the Bastille, this giant, grim prison, and they tore it down, stone by stone. And that is what started the French revolution in 1789.”

Edmund was looking very thoughtful. Evangeline said, “Do you think that perhaps calls for a special story?”

“Yes,” Edmund said. “Perhaps there could be a little girl locked up in this Bastille because she refused to eat her dinner horribly made for her by her stepmother, and a little boy comes to rescue her.”

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