The Governess's Scandalous Marriage

The huskiness of her voice entered Christian’s ears like a caress. It was as tempting and appealing as her body and the lustrous eyes looking back at him from behind the mask. Both aroused him in an unexpected way and this bewitching young woman aroused a hungering ache he hadn’t known in a long time. Lust and desire were collecting heavy and thick deep in his body and he sensed she could fulfil his needs and bring some brightness to his life after many months of darkness. The conviction was profound. He narrowed his eyes, mentally stripping her of her delectable gown, draping her instead in a diaphanous fabric that was so light her body would be open to his gaze. The thought warmed his body and encouraged his erotic thoughts. Alluring and provocative, she was a natural temptress. Christian had to fight the insane impulse to take hold of her lithe, warm, breathing form, crush it beneath him and kiss her soft, inviting lips. He wanted her and he had methods of persuasion and powers of seduction to call on if necessary. Thoughtfully he contemplated the young woman before him and, drawn by an urge that was stronger than reason and eager to see the fullness of her features, he raised his hand to remove her mask. Aware of his intent, she immediately shoved his hand away and backed away.

‘Please don’t touch me.’

His smile was slow, sensual and brilliant. ‘I would dearly like to see your face. I am more than willing to take you under my protection for the time you are here.’

‘I am perfectly capable of protecting myself,’ she retorted, shocked by his temerity, ‘and I do not intend remaining longer than I have to.’

‘Pity. I was already imagining an evening of pleasure.’

‘With a thief, sir?’

‘If that is indeed what you are,’ he said softly, ‘then yes.’

His eyes captured hers, a lazy, seductive smile curving his lips. His stare travelled over her before coming back to her face. He lifted one eyebrow slightly in a silent challenge. Something in his stare quickened her pulse. There was a sweet warmth in her chest. They stared at each other for a moment, with just two yards between them. Linnet barely realised she was holding her breath. Bowled over by the delicious magnetism of the man, she felt herself being drawn towards him, knowing she should step back and walk away, but she was too inexperienced and affected by him to do that. ‘You don’t even know me.’

‘No, I don’t, but I am willing to remedy that situation. What is your name?’

‘That is for me to know, sir. I do not intend sharing the personal details of my life with a perfect stranger.’

* * *

Lord Blakely tilted his head to one side and regarded her with a critical, masculine eye. He was becoming more intrigued by her by the minute. He wondered who and what she was. Earlier he had seen her with an older woman and assumed she was this young lady’s chaperon. It would appear he had been mistaken. An unprotected female roaming the passageways of Stourbridge House led him to think that perhaps she was an actress or even a courtesan, forced to earn her living as best she could. She had charm and feminine graces in abundance—eminently agreeable qualities in a mistress.

* * *

Linnet drew a deep breath. Those dark eyes seemed to see more than she wished him to see. She was aware that her body trembled slightly as she tried to figure out a way of extricating herself from this situation that seemed to be running away with her. This man seemed determined to detain her and she suspected he did not give up easily. ‘If you are suggesting what I think you are, then your proposal is most indecent. If you are here in pursuit of pleasure, then you must look elsewhere.’

Even as she said the words Linnet knew that because of the inferior role she had assumed he could not be faulted and the difference in their social status—if indeed he was a peer of the realm, as he professed to be—was an open invitation to seduction. Ladies did not infiltrate events such as this alone and with criminal intent.

‘I’m sure we could come to an arrangement that would suit us both. I assure you that you will find me most generous.’

‘I do not think I would care for your kind of generosity.’

‘Are you not tempted to know me better? I think you would find it interesting to discover more.’

‘I doubt it. You think too highly of yourself, sir.’

‘That is a failing indeed.’

He shocked her when he touched her gently under her chin. Linnet caught her breath sharply as he tilted her face upward and looked into her eyes.

‘Perhaps you are afraid, is that it?’

Her heart pounded at the light but sure pressure of his warm fingertips against her skin, but she managed to meet his gaze squarely. ‘I’m not afraid of you, sir. I’m not afraid of anyone.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

He continued to peer down at her, into her very soul. A lazy, seductive smile passed across his mouth, curling his lips, and Linnet felt herself being drawn towards him, knowing she should step back and walk away, but she was too affected by him to do that. Feelings she had never experienced before began to appear within her and she could not deny that she was attracted by him. Belated warning bells screamed through her head and her eyes became fixed on his finely sculptured mouth. As he came closer still, to her helpless horror she knew he was going to kiss her.

When he reached out and took her hand, drawing her into his embrace, she knew she was trapped as securely as a rabbit in a snare.

Chapter Two

Linnet was mesmerised by him. He was standing very close. She could smell the sharpness of his cologne and feel his presence. Like a magnet, it was drawing her to him and she hadn’t the will to resist, nor did she want to. A smile played on his lips, curving gently, a lovely smile, and an errant wave had fallen across his brow. The heat of his closeness was making her warm and the feelings coursing through her body spoke of desire, not love, not even infatuation. It ached for him to touch her, her lips ached for him to kiss her. Her heart suddenly started pounding in a quite unpredictable manner. He was looking into her eyes, holding her spellbound, weaving some magic web around her from which there was no escape.

‘I—I should go,’ she whispered. ‘Please let me go at once.’

‘Not a chance,’ he murmured. With his arms around her he held her tightly against his chest.

The strength of his embrace and the hard pressure of his loins made her all too aware of the danger she was in, that he was a strong, determined man, and that he was treating her as he would any woman he had a desire for. Resolutely she squirmed against him. A strange feeling, until this moment unknown to her, fluttered within her breast and she was halted for a brief passing of time by the flood of excitement that surged through her.

‘It’s useless to resist me,’ he said huskily. ‘Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.’

The darkening of his eyes, the naked passion she saw in their depths drew her even more to him, but it was his tone and not his words that conquered her. She relaxed against him, her entire body beginning to tremble with desire. Her head swam and she was unable to still the violent tremor of delight that seized her, touching every nerve until they were aflame. There was nothing she could do to still the quiver of anticipation as he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his own. The shock of his lips on hers was one of wild, indescribably sweetness and sensuality as he claimed a kiss of violent tenderness. In silent permission she opened her mouth to his and what followed evoked feelings she had never felt before. That was when she realised the idea of resisting him was ludicrous and a gross miscalculation of her power to deny him, for the kiss went through her with the impact of a broadside.

His lips caressed and clung to hers, finding them moist and honey sweet, and for a slow beat in time hers responded, parting under his mounting fervour. She leaned against him, melting more closely to him, as though the strength had gone from her. All her will began to crumble and disintegrate. The moment was one of madness. The sweetness of the kiss, the yielding to it, of willingly parting her soft lips for his searching tongue, made her confused with longing. Unconsciously, and too naïve to know how to hide her feelings, her arm rose and slid over his wide, masculine shoulders and she slipped her hand behind his neck, a movement which, in her inexperience, was an act of pure instinct to Linnet, unaware that it might convince this stranger that she was no different to any other woman he had made love to. Seemingly aware of her weakening, he raised his head and stared down at the softness in her eyes.

‘Please,’ Linnet whispered, trying to sound firm but without conviction. ‘We should stop. This game has gone on long enough.’

‘Games are for children. This is something between a man and a woman.’

‘But...’

He silenced her with his lips, kissing her long and deep and hard. He closed his eyes, intense desire for this woman torturing him. As he caressed and kissed this sweet young woman, his flesh betrayed his need, rising up against his will. He was hungry for her and could hardly restrain himself from flinging her down on to the floor and making love to her.

* * *

Imprisoned by his embrace and seduced by his mouth and strong, caressing hands, which slid down the curve of her spine to the swell of her buttocks and back to her arms, her neck, burning wherever they touched, Linnet clung to him, her body responding eagerly, melting with the primitive sensations that went soaring through her, her lips beginning to move against his with increasing abandon as she fed his hunger, unwittingly increasing it. When he slid one hand down to her buttocks and pressed her to him, she became acutely conscious of her innocence. She was lost in a dreamy limbo where nothing mattered but the closeness of his body and the circling protection of his arms.

Not for a moment did he break the kiss that was inciting her. His mouth was hungering, turning to a heated, crushing demand. What she had felt in the beginning became raw hunger, cindered beneath the white heat of their mutual desires. It was sudden, the awakened fires, the hungering lust, the bittersweet ache of passion such as Linnet could never have imagined.

When he finally drew his mouth from hers an eternity later, Linnet reluctantly surfaced from the glorious Eden where he had sent her, her face suffused with languor and passion, her eyes luminous.

‘Well, well,’ he murmured, lightly touching her lips with his own. ‘I seem to have awakened a temptress. You’re the most direct, self-willed woman I have ever met, traits I admire in any woman, but you are also so damn lovely and desirable.’

His words affected Linnet like a douche of cold water. Stepping back, she glared at him, trying to regain control of her rioting emotions. ‘You should not have done that... We—we shouldn’t...’

* * *

Struggling for control, finding it with effort, Christian swept a lock of dark hair from his brow. ‘Come now,’ he managed to say, smiling, though he himself was shaken by the moment. ‘It was only a kiss—an innocent kiss, nothing more sordid than that.’ But he was not convinced by his words. With her ripe young body, moist lips and large liquid bright eyes, he was led to think that he had never caressed any woman that had evoked his imagination as much as she did. The lingering impression of her lips on his, of their thighs pressed together, had done much to awaken a manly craving that had gone unappeased for some months.

* * *

‘You call what you just did innocent?’ Linnet whispered, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened between them.

Raising his hand, he traced a finger gently down the curve of her warm, flushed cheek. ‘It was a kiss—a kiss that could lead to other things—if you would let it.’

Linnet looked at him with a renewed light in her eyes, under no illusion as to what he was asking of her. He was smiling now, a lazy, masculine, supremely confident smile, a gentle promise in his expression and the flickering depths of his eyes that drew her in. It held her spellbound for the longest moment as a plan began forming in her mind, a plan so shocking she hardly dared enlarge on it. It caused her heart to pound so hard she could scarcely breathe, for it was a plan no gently bred young lady would dare think of, let alone consider.

She had been raised to believe that young ladies of quality must not abandon the restrictive codes of behaviour that governed their conduct without fear of censure, but with one stroke, this stranger had presented her with an answer to her problem. Despite having caught her in the act of what he mistakenly thought was stealing, he was obviously attracted by her. On a stroke of desperation all her fears and wretchedness, all the worries for the future, came hurtling back to her and she thought that maybe she could turn the situation to her advantage. By giving herself to him on her terms, perhaps she could retrieve the necklace, return it to its rightful place and exonerate Toby of any wrongdoing.

The plan sent a chill down Linnet’s spine, but it did not shock her. The misery that Toby’s gambling had caused her over the past months had come to a culmination when this man had made his presence known to her and drained her of all feeling so there was hardly any emotion left in her. If her capacity to feel had been intact, everything inside her would have protested and rebelled against the plan forming in her mind. But with her feelings and emotions subdued by the anxiety of the situation her brother had created, Linnet’s thoughts were entirely practical. She was driven by desperation. She and Toby had been impoverished for a long time and she was determined they would not become beggars. If there was a way of saving herself and Toby from homelessness and starvation, then she would do everything in her power to do so. Afterwards, the shame would be something she alone would have to live with.

‘I am not afraid and I have a mind to test your generosity and exact my revenge—to recoup what I have just lost to you. If I were to lay down terms of my own, would you accept them for an evening of pleasure?’

‘Terms?’

‘An evening of pleasure in return for the necklace you have just taken from me?’

He frowned. ‘And your terms are not open for negotiation?’

‘No. Take it or leave it,’ she said, her voice low and direct, her lovely eyes challenging.

* * *

He had to give her credit, Christian thought to himself, fighting down a rush of disgust. At least she was honest about what she wanted. And he had to respect her honesty and courage, if not her standards. Her decision to consider his offer was anything but respectable. He wondered how, in a matter of moments, he had gone from thinking of her as a thief, then as an opponent in a game of chance, to seriously considering inviting her to share an evening of pleasure.

He had not had a serious relationship with a woman in a long time, nor had he wished to. All his romantic entanglements had not been permanent and were soon forgotten. As a youth when he had witnessed his father’s affairs and his mother’s heartbreak, he had spent years of evasion, trying to avoid affairs of the heart, ignoring the whispers and sighs of women eager to shackle him with matrimony. And he had succeeded, believing himself immune. Deep inside, what his father had done, his betrayal of his mother and the tragedy of her death still haunted him. He had deliberately put the memory away, not wanting to look too carefully, but now, when he looked at this young woman whose name he did not know, he found it rising to the fore. He had always diligently avoided becoming deeply involved with any woman in the romantic sense and it would be no different with this young woman, should she consent to his request.

Christian still didn’t want that kind of relationship. But he had only recently returned from Egypt after an absence of almost a year and if he was to dispel his dark thoughts, how much easier he would find it with a lively young woman such as this with sweet young flesh as a diversion. Despite her illicit occupation, there was a forthright quality about her, a freshness with an intriguing hint of mischief in her lovely eyes that drew him like a moth to a flame.

‘I am tempted,’ he replied.

* * *

Feeling somewhat light-headed, and unaccustomedly bemused, held by his intense gaze, Linnet knew that if she was not careful she would fall under his spell. Sensual pleasure still spiralled through her and her body ached with a need she had never experienced before. If she were honest with herself, she would admit to feeling a measure of curiosity about what an evening of pleasure with this man held. Feeling slightly faint, shocked at the extremely unladylike drift of her imaginings, Linnet looked away. It was madness, she knew, but she didn’t want to leave him, to widen the distance between them. She looked at him once more, the sheer wickedness of the slow, lazy smile he gave her making her catch her breath. She was trapped by the dark eyes behind the mask that were searching her face intently, a question in their depths, a question she could not have answered even if he’d asked her. She was surprised when, seeming to come to a decision, a change came over him and he stepped away from her.

‘As much as I would like nothing more than to share an evening of pleasure with you, I regret I must decline. The necklace is important to me.’ Turning from her, he strode towards the door. ‘I advise you not to linger in this room and from this moment on take on a more suitable occupation for a young woman. ’Tis a dangerous profession you have chosen. You appear to be intelligent, so I am sure you care about yourself, about what you do—but not enough, it would seem, if you decide to carry on stealing other people’s property. Perhaps you don’t have enough faith in yourself—or pride.’

‘I do believe in myself,’ she confided softly. ‘You were mistaken in what you saw. I didn’t steal the necklace. I was putting it back.’

He turned and looked back at her, reminding himself that here was no innocent. But he could not help but wonder at the gist of what she had said. He was troubled by the intensity of her statement. It had been a flash of unguarded candour—and honesty, maybe?—which surprised him. It was born of deep conviction—and perhaps more than a little pain. There was an intensity in her eyes behind the mask, showing in their depths a strong will that as yet knew neither strength nor direction. He was surprised at the feelings of tenderness she aroused in him.

‘Perhaps what you say is the truth. How would I know? I only know what I saw. But a word of warning. Those who make thieving their profession are destined for an early death on the gallows. Think on. If you are indeed a thief, then the next time you get caught, the person you rob will show you no leniency.’ Christian inclined his head slightly. ‘It has been a pleasure meeting you. I doubt our paths will cross again.’

On that note, giving her a farewell salute and a cheeky, knowing wink—a playful, frivolous gesture that infuriated her—he went out, closing the door softly behind him.

* * *

Unbeknown to Linnet, had she told him the truth about her reason for being there, he would have readily alleviated her fears and given her an explanation of his own purpose for being in Lord Stourbridge’s Egyptian room. This being the case, she could have left knowing Toby would not be arrested for theft. As it was they had both misinterpreted the other’s reasons and parted taking their mutual distrust with them, and she was left with the nagging fear that Toby was not out of the woods.

Making his way to the ballroom, Christian saw Lord Stourbridge strutting and posing among his guests like a colourful bird of paradise. Despite his flamboyant, larger-than-life appearance, he was a shrewd businessman who had made a large fortune in clever investments. He was also, like Christian’s own father had been, interested in ancient relics and was a keen collector, often travelling to the Holy Land and Egypt with the hope of discovering some precious relics to add to his private collection. The two men had been drawn together by their shared interest.

On seeing Christian, Stourbridge moved towards him.

‘Why, Blakely. It is a profound pleasure to see you again. So glad you came.’

‘Thank you for inviting me.’

‘Lord Stourbridge fixed Christian with an investigative stare. ‘Your father’s death must have come as a shock to you. What was it? His heart?’

Christian nodded.

‘Unfortunately it’s one of the hazards of being in Egypt—the heat, you know. Although there are other hazards that play havoc with travellers and explorers alike. They are likely to encounter serious difficulties and indeed great dangers.’ He smiled blandly. ‘Might I say that like so many persons of our mutual acquaintance I am totally sympathetic to what happened to your father. We met out there. As I believe my lawyer has informed you, I have some of his artefacts among my own collection. The necklace in particular is a beautiful piece, of great value. Thieves are a problem out there. He wanted to make sure it was brought back safely. I was glad to be able to help.’

‘I thank you for that and I trust you won’t mind if I tell you the necklace is now in my possession.’ He patted his pocket. ‘Father bequeathed it to the British Museum, along with some other pieces he uncovered. It will be on display shortly.’

‘I’m happy to hear it.’ Lord Stourbridge was about to turn and walk away when he paused and asked almost hesitantly, ‘What about the child—Alice? I seem to recall...’

‘She is with me—here in London,’ Christian quickly replied. ‘I—trust I can rely on your discretion on that matter, Stourbridge.’

He nodded, thoughtful. ‘You can depend on it. Wouldn’t want to besmirch your father’s memory, Blakely.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate that.’

As Christian walked away, he put all thoughts of the child from his mind. Instead his thoughts were of the young woman he had invited to spend the night with him. A smile touched his lips. He had enjoyed deceiving her into believing he, too, might be a thief. He need not have challenged her to a roll of dice for possession, but he had enjoyed playing the game. It had been worth it.

* * *

Alone now the stranger had left her, fully aware of the enormity of what had just happened, Linnet realised how fortunate she had been to be let off so lightly. The man could have raised the alarm and had her arrested and she would have been unable to prove her innocence. Instead he had bested her and taken that which she had gone to great pains to replace.

The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that whoever the man was, he was still a thief and if the roll of the dice had gone in her favour—which she doubted—he would not have given her the necklace. It had been important to him. Realising how stupid she had been and that he had duped her, Linnet stared at the closed door with a firestorm of humiliated fury.

Returning to the ballroom, she was impatient to leave. She found Toby and told him to summon the carriage. Thankfully they had come in their own carriage so they didn’t have to wait for Aunt Lydia. Behind the mask Linnet’s eyes searched the lively, chattering throng, looking for the tall, black-haired man. At first, to her immense relief, she failed to locate him, then, just when she was beginning to think he had left, she saw him.

He stood with a boisterous group of young gentlemen on the other side of the room, a head taller than any of them. With a crush of people milling around them, it couldn’t be better for her. Linnet was calm now, icy calm. She had been thrown by his surprise appearance, it had unnerved her, but now she was back in control. She made her way out of the ballroom, eager to put as much distance as she could between her and the irascible gentleman. She was on the point of leaving the ballroom when the dance ended. She paused and glanced back, seeing the stranger’s head above the crowd. At that moment he turned his imperious head and his bold, rebel’s eyes locked on to hers and he smiled, raising his fingers to his head in a salute, a lazy cocksure smile, with humour and a warning of the danger to them both if anyone should discover what had transpired between them in Lord Stourbridge’s Egyptian room.