‘I am sure I am not the first woman to have been trapped into an unhappy marriage,’ she said drily. ‘Nor will I be the last. And as you say, I did become a countess because of it.’
‘Do not attempt to make light of it, Mariah!’ Wolfingham rasped harshly.
‘How do you wish me to behave, Darian?’ Her eyes flashed darkly as she looked up at him defiantly. ‘I have wailed and railed, and now I wish to forget it. As I have forgotten it these past seventeen years.’
‘Did you forget, Mariah?’ He looked down at her searchingly. ‘Did you ever really forget what that man did to you?’
Of course Mariah had never forgotten. She had not wanted to forget, was the woman she was today because of it.
Her chin rose. ‘Enough so that I do not require, or need, your own or anyone’s pity because of it.’
‘Does this feel like pity to you?’ Wolfingham had grasped one of her hands and placed it over the noticeable bulge in his pantaloons. ‘Does it?’ He pushed for an answer, his eyes glittering down at her darkly.
‘And how long will that desire last, Wolfingham?’ Mariah fell back on derision as her defence as she deliberately removed her hand at the same time as she returned his gaze mockingly. ‘Until you have sated your lust between my thighs and then wish to move on to some other conquest? Possibly to a woman who is younger and less complicated!’
He gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I find your complications intriguing and your age of four and thirty is unimportant to me.’ A nerve pulsed in the tightness of his jaw. ‘And I resent your assumption that my desire for you is a fleeting thing.’
‘Perhaps I presume as much because it has been my experience that a man will say anything, promise anything, when he wishes to bed a certain woman.’ She eyed him scornfully.
Darian frowned his frustration. He did not give a damn what Mariah’s previous lovers had told her, or promised her, when he was the man now standing before her, telling her, physically showing her, how much he desired her. How much he desired to be with her.
A desire of such intensity that Darian had no doubt it would not abate for some time. If ever.
More than anything he wished to take Mariah to his bed. To gently kiss her, caress her, to taste her, to worship every satiny inch of her, and show her the depth of his desire for her. And then he wished to start all over again. And again. And then again. Again, and again, and again, until Mariah was left in absolutely no doubt as to the depth of his desire for her.
At the same time as he knew that this place, Eton Park, with its peepholes into the bedchambers and a temple worthy of the debauchery of the Roman Empire at the height of its power, and the guests to match, plus the Nicholses’ intrigues, was not where he wished to lie with Mariah the first time. Not where he wished to make love with her, to worship her and her body, as she so deserved to be worshipped.
His hands fell back to his sides as he stepped back. ‘Very well, we will continue with our walk for now. But we will talk on this subject again once we are back in London,’ he added softly.
She arched a taunting brow. ‘Not if I do not wish to do so.’
Darian’s mouth quirked into an equally mocking smile. ‘A word of advice, Mariah. I am not like any of your previous lovers. When you know me better, which you most assuredly will, I believe you will find that I am a man who always means what he says as well as always keeps his promises!’
Mariah masked her uneasiness as she fell into step beside him as he began to walk back in the direction of the lake, very much afraid that Darian Hunter was indeed a man who always meant what he said as well as kept all of his promises.
Afraid?
Oh, yes, Mariah was very much afraid, in spite of everything that had happened between them since they first met, that she desired Darian Hunter as much as he now claimed to desire her.
That she desired to know Darian in a way she had never desired any other man.
* * *
‘Do try to smile, Darian, rather than scowl and glower in that dark and disapproving way,’ Mariah advised lightly later that afternoon, viewing his reflection in the mirror after he had entered her bedchamber through the door adjoining their two rooms, after only the briefest of knocks. His appearance was elegantly foreboding in a black superfine, grey waistcoat and pantaloons. ‘Else, once we arrive downstairs for tea, the other guests will think that the two of us have argued.’ She looked at her own reflection in the mirror to give her already perfectly styled hair another pat, rather than continue to look at Darian’s more disturbing reflection.
Everything about this man disturbed her.
The way he looked.
Her undeniable response to his touch.
The desire she was finding it more and more difficult to deny or control.
And the fact that she had confided so much of her past to him earlier today.
That breach in the barrier she had kept so firmly about her emotions for so many years disturbed Mariah most of all, so much so that she had spent the past four hours, since they parted downstairs after returning from their walk, attempting to shore up or replace that barrier.
Only to have taken but a single glance at Darian’s reflection in the mirror as he strode forcefully into her bedchamber just now to know that those efforts, determined as they might have been, had been a complete waste of her time.
What was it about this man in particular that affected her so? Oh, he was handsome enough. Forceful enough. But he was far from the first handsome or forceful man to have expressed a desire to bed her. Desire she had found absolutely no difficulty in rejecting in the past.
No doubt because she had not felt a return of that desire for any of those other men.
The same desire that had so shaken and disturbed her earlier, to a degree that she had confided more of her past to this man than she had ever wished anyone to know.
The very same desire that made her feel so vulnerable whenever she was in his presence.
‘I have absolutely no interest in what they do or do not think,’ Darian answered her impatiently now, the scowl still dark upon his brow as he stepped further into the room.
Mariah turned slowly, a slight frown creasing her own brow now. ‘Has something happened?’
Darian stared at her incredulously.
Had something happened?
As far as Darian’s life was concerned, Mariah Beecham had happened.
So much so that just one look at her, when he entered her bedchamber just seconds ago and saw how beautiful she looked in an afternoon gown of the palest turquoise, her breasts a creamy and tempting swell, the very low and curved neckline of that gown revealing the tops of her nipples as being a deep rose, and he was forced to endure a hard and painful throb inside his pantaloons yet again.
At the same time he felt a ridiculous desire to cover up those beautiful breasts, so that no other man could look at or see any part of them. Or become aroused and tempted by looking at them, as he undoubtedly was.
A ridiculous reaction, when Mariah’s coolness towards him this morning, once they had left the temple, and then completed their walk about the lake together in complete silence, had spoken only too clearly not only of her need to put a physical distance between them, but also of a return of that emotional one.
Darian had lingered in the hallway to have that promised word with Benson while Mariah went up the stairs alone. By the time he arrived up the stairs, the