A predatory smile curved his lips. “I want you to become my mistress. I’ll keep you in London. I’ll rent you a house, buy you pretty clothes to show off those lovely tits, drape your neck in jewels. And I will visit you now and again, my love, and tutor you in erotic arts.”
Flabbergasted, Grace could find no rejoinder. And Wesley bent forward, waiting with his lips mere inches from hers, obviously certain she would cry, “Yes, yes, yes!”
She would like to plant her hands on his chest and shove him back but refused to even touch him for that. She clenched her fists, certain her fingernails were cutting through her cotton gloves. “Why would you make me such an offer? Was I not just one on your list of conquests for a wager?”
“I want you. For your beauty. For your spicy lovemaking.”
“I’d starve before I ever accepted an offer from you.”
“Now is a very foolish time for pride, Grace.”
“Perhaps, but I could not swallow it now without choking on it. Being with you tends to make things want to come up.”
He jerked back. “Stupid witch.” He spun away and stormed off down the narrow path until he vanished around a bend, and his golden hair, beaver hat, and immaculate greatcoat disappeared.
A familiar protective growl startled her. “What did he say to you, Grace?”
Devlin strode to Grace, who stood with her back to a gnarled apple tree, her hands behind her, her head tipped back against the bark. This had to be a highwayman’s fantasy—finding a beautiful, gently bred lady alone in the woods, one who possessed a perfect face worth swinging for and a voluptuous body that was carnal temptation personified.
But for the first time in his life, Devlin felt guilty over focusing on a woman’s sexual attributes. He liked Grace Hamilton. “What did he say?” he repeated. “If Wesley insulted you, I will—”
She turned, treating him to the pink flush in her cheeks and the sparks of tempestuous anger in her green eyes. “Spank him again? Perhaps he enjoys it,” she muttered.
Feisty, still. But he could not for the life of him understand why she had followed Wesley out here.
“Tell me what he said, Grace.”
She would not look at him. Offended or hurt, he couldn’t tell.
For a moment, she chewed the thumb of her white cotton glove. Then she groaned, a very unladylike sound, and, like her snorting laughter, this charmed him too.
“Lord Wesley made a very generous offer. A house in London, enough jewels to choke me, and lessons in lovemaking from the master.”
“Did you accept?”
Without looking to him, without a word, she began to stalk away.
Blast, what had he done now? He’d asked a simple question; she was in trouble, she might have accepted. “Grace, stop.”
Even his dangerous tone had no effect on Grace. She reached the first set of steps cut into the rock of the ridge and was hurrying down, skirts in her hands. The wind that hurtled over the ridge ripped at those skirts and threatened to steal her hat. Bare branches swooped toward her, and the gray clouds seemed to press closer as though drawn by her fire and heat.
Damnation.
She had stood there and listened to the twaddle his bloody titled brother had fed her, but she ran away from him.
He would not stand for it.
All he wanted to do was help her.
Heedless of the wet rock, he took the steps three at a time. She reached the small terraced plateau before he caught her.
Not there. He was not about to have a confrontation in this place—so he scooped her into his arms. She squealed and pushed against his biceps. “Don’t struggle, love. If I drop you here, you’ll roll down the steps.”
God, she was a delicious weight in his arms. Her lush bottom rested against his forearm and his hand splayed over her shapely back. Instead of taking the path down, he took a narrow track away from the edge of the ridge and found his father’s folly. Bushes now obscured the path, but the branches were only budding and the white columns and oriental roof peeked through.
Slowly, Grace slid her hands up to his shoulders and held on as she twisted in his arms. “What is this?”
“Where I was conceived,” he said with wry humor.
Pushing open the door with his boot, he gave a sigh. The daybed cushions bore stains and mildew, and dirt and dust coated everything. “Apparently my father hasn’t been trysting with the same regularity he used to.”
“You are not taking me in there. It was bad enough that I went to the summerhouse at his lordship’s summons—I will not be carried in against my will.”
Her breath brushed his face, warm and sweet.
“Is it against your will, Grace? Is that the truth?”
God, but her scent drove him mad. Rock hard, aroused to the point he could barely think, he refused to press his interests. He was not going to seduce her. He was not going to act like his damned brother.
“You thought I would be willing to become his mistress. After what he did. What he said. You think nothing of me—of course, you don’t—”
Putting her on her feet stopped her words. He touched his thumb to her lips in the doorway of the once sumptuous room where a hundred women had fallen in love with his randy father. Even through the leather of his glove, he caught his breath at the softness of her mouth, the sheer velvet perfection of those rose-pink lips. “I was afraid you felt forced to accept, love.”
Her breath hitched—he heard it—and she brushed a soft kiss to his black gloved thumb. “I turned down your offer, Mr. Sharpe. I would never accept his.”
Grace could not believe she said the words with such a steady voice. Mr. Sharpe’s magnetic blue eyes held her with far more power than Lord Wesley’s intimating stance. She could not look away—his sapphire blue irises appeared rimmed with a thin circle of violet, unusual and arresting.
They were alone and it would be so very easy to touch him. Everywhere. His chest. His shoulders. If she wished, she could reach down with both hands and greedily explore the hard length of his cock.
Mystified, she looked up into his blue eyes again. They’d shared one night and it felt as though all barriers had dropped away. But then he knew more about her than anyone. He knew she was capable of going to a man’s bed with a broken heart, desperately searching for…for hope, she realized.
Was that it? Hope that she had not lost everything with one stupid mistake? Hope that she could still be desired for who she was? Confused, she blinked, now aware that she had no idea what she had wanted from making love with Devlin Sharpe, except a few fleeting moments of connection.
But they had a connection now. It was undeniable.
“I want you, Grace.”
His voice was molten sin, his lips smiling in conspiracy as though he could read her very thoughts.
Perhaps he could. Perhaps she was that transparent. Lust showed. Desire showed. She’d spent years trying to be proper—to be from her mother’s world, not her father’s—and she’d thrown it all away in one night.
The instant his knuckles skimmed her cheek with tantalizing pressure, she tipped her head back, shut her eyes, and moaned. Lazily, his fingers stroked back and forth, and suddenly all she could think of was her quim. How hot she suddenly was. How tight and tingly she felt. She swallowed hard and touched him in return.
Cupping her palm, she cradled his strong chin, the sort of chin that promised