Undoing of a Lady

“Have you quite finished?” Nat’s politely disdainful voice cut through her thoughts. So he wanted to make her feel naive and humiliated. Anger and desperation surged in her blood. She was not going to let him win; not when he was a great deal less composed than he pretended.

“No,” she snapped. “I have not.”

She came close to him again, so close she could feel the heat emanating from his body. She looked up into his hard, unyielding face. What would it take to shock him? She did not have to go too far, just far enough to force him to admit he had been wrong in underestimating her. She was no child and she was not going to be dismissed as one. She put her hand on his chest and could feel the thunder of his heart.

“Lady Ainsworth was your mistress, was she not,” she whispered in his ear. She skimmed her hand down his shirt, pulling it loose from the band of his pantaloons. “I heard the maids talking about it. They had it from her dresser that you were mightily well endowed. Huge, so they said. They made me very curious about you…”

Nat’s whole body shuddered. “Lizzie. Stop this.” His tone was violent. “You don’t understand what you are doing.”

“Oh, but I do,” Lizzie said. “I’m no child.” She tugged his shirt free and slid her palms over his bare stomach. He felt smooth and shockingly delicious. The exquisite sensation distracted her for a moment. She had had no idea…She heard him gasp and felt the muscles jump and quiver beneath her fingers. A reaction at last…Emboldened, she turned her face into his neck and pressed her lips against the skin of his throat. He tasted of salt and heat and he smelled of bergamot cologne and of leather and of something she recognized as Nat’s own scent. It was familiar to her yet intensely exciting.

He turned his head slightly. Their lips were only inches apart now. She could feel how close he was to the edge of the precipice. Her senses spun with triumph and something else so strong it made her tremble. He was not so indifferent to her now. She had won. She slipped her hands around his back, reveling in the hardness of muscle beneath her questing fingers. She dug her nails into him and felt him flinch.

“Lizzie, for Christ’s sake—”

She liked the note of desperation in his voice. It soothed her wounded feelings to think she had driven him to this. She knew she should stop now, draw back, but she allowed one hand to drift to the fastening of his pantaloons, then a little lower. She felt light-headed, drunk, and a little mad perhaps. Her hand brushed the front of his trousers, tracing his erection. The hard, huge bulge of his arousal shocked her even through the straining material of his pantaloons. She heard Nat suck in his breath and swear harshly, and she paused for a second and stepped back, heated anger and passion abruptly doused by the cold realization that she had gone far too far. Bravado and fear struggled in her but beneath her apprehension was a fast, wicked current of feminine curiosity that was so powerful that it stole her breath and made her heart race.

They stared at one another for one long, laden moment then Nat grabbed her, moving so fast that Lizzie did not even have time to anticipate the action. His mouth came down hard on hers. Clearly the other men had not known how to kiss and equally clearly, Nat did. It was Lizzie’s only coherent thought before she went under and was submerged in a surge of sensation so violent that she almost fell.

As kisses went, it had little in it of love or even liking and a great deal of lust and anger. The pressure of Nat’s lips forced hers to open and then his tongue slid across hers, taking ruthlessly, with no consideration or gentleness. Lizzie did not know if he meant it to punish her, but it did not matter because suddenly she wanted whatever he had to give. She felt breathless with excitement, driven far beyond sense or rational thought. She forced a hand into Nat’s hair so that she could keep his mouth on hers, and she nipped his lower lip and felt him pull in a breath before he plundered her mouth ruthlessly. Her lips felt swollen and ravished from the assault. The heat pooled low in her belly and she ground her hips against his enormous erection. Nat made a sound in his throat that was half-groan, half-snarl.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled apart her riding habit and her chemise, stripping her to the waist. The laces tore and the hooks went flying across the stone floor. His hand was on her bare breast. Her mind reeled. She heard a moan and knew it was hers. Nat pushed her down onto the window seat and then his mouth was at her breast and she felt his teeth and his tongue on her, and she cried out, the sound echoing off the stone of the folly walls. Her body was shuddering with a need that threatened to devour her. She felt simultaneously shocked and excited and so desperately wicked and wanton that she almost screamed with the pleasure of it.

Nat pulled up the velvet skirts of her riding habit. She reached for the fastening of his pantaloons and their hands bumped. They were both shaking. The material gave and then she felt him hot and hard in her hand and she gasped with astonishment and wonder, and Nat covered her mouth roughly with his again. His hand was on her thigh, pushing her legs apart; she felt him at the very core of her and then he was deep inside her with a single thrust. The pain of it was sharp and violent. She gasped but he did not stop.

She was braced against the window embrasure and he pushed her back and back each time he took her. The stone was cold against her bare back but the friction of Nat’s body was fierce and heated between her thighs and the sensation of it was too overwhelming and too insistent to escape. The pain faded and blissful tremors rippled through her, gathering pace, building, exquisitely intense. She screamed as her body seemed to come apart with blinding pleasure. She heard Nat call out, felt him hold her even tighter, plunge even deeper and pulse as he emptied himself completely into her.

There was silence, a moment when time seemed suspended, when Lizzie could neither breathe nor think, nor feel anything but the most perfect sense of rightness. It felt heavenly. Her body felt ripe and sated and her mind felt a deep content, as though at last she had come home and was at peace. For Nat had spoken the truth when he had said that she loved him—she could see that with utter clarity now, all pretence and pride torn away in the honesty of their lovemaking. Nat was hers and he always had been, and now she was truly his.

And surely Nat must love her, too, because that was the way it was meant to be.

Lizzie opened her eyes and blinked a little. The candlelight seemed too harsh and bright, stinging her eyes. Nat had withdrawn from her. He had turned away, fumbling with his clothes. His face was in shadow. Lizzie waited for him to speak, to tell her he loved her. And then suddenly he turned to look at her fully and her heart leaped in anticipation of the words she would surely hear and the love she would surely see in his eyes. The moment spun out and she searched his face, and saw bewilderment and disbelief and a dawning horror there.

“Lizzie…” He said. His voice shook. The horror in his expression was raw and painful.

Lizzie felt cold. Something inside her seemed to shrivel and die, shredding like petals falling from a blown flower.

Nat did not love her. He had never loved her.

She could see it in the appalled dismay in his eyes.

She pushed down her skirts, dragged the fragments of her bodice together and tried to stand. Her legs were shaking and she stumbled and almost fell. Her weakness horrified her. Nat was coming toward her now and she felt panic clogging her throat. She could not talk to him now. She could not even look at him. She felt too shamed as though every last defense had been stripped away leaving her emotions as exposed and naked before him as her body had been. She had to get out. She had to get away from him before he guessed the truth of her feelings, before he put it into words and made her humiliation intolerable.

She overturned the table, blocking his path and sending the candle flying, and then she was running down the stone spiral stair, reeling off the wall as she almost fell in the darkness. She heard Nat swear and saw a flare of flame behind her as the wall hangings caught fire from the candle, and then she was in the guardroom, groping for the key on its ledge, and for a split second she could not find it and the panic clawed at her chest. She heard Nat beating the flames out and hoped it would hold him for a precious few seconds. The door…It seemed to take forever for her to open it, whilst her cold and shaking fingers slipped on the key, and then she was out in the night and she could hear Nat’s steps on the stair behind her and smell smoke on the air.

Where to run? Where to hide…

The wood closed about her. It was dark, deep and anonymous. That comforted her. She could hear Nat calling her name and there was an edge of fear to his voice as well as anger, but the sound was fading as he moved away from her. The relief washed through her. He would not find her now; would not find her again until she was ready to be found. She did not need anyone to help her. She could put herself back together, good as new. She could pretend that this had never happened.

Nat did not love her. He had never loved her. She had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

The thoughts jostled through Lizzie’s head, dark and menacing like monsters in a nightmare. She pushed them away. She had to forget what had happened. And now that Nat was at liberty to attend his wedding, he, too, could join in the pretense. He could marry Flora, just as he had intended, he could gain the fortune he needed, and neither of them would say a word about this night ever again.

Except that Nat had never been very good at pretending. Lizzie had always said it was because he had no imagination, but Nat had always had a nasty habit of facing his demons and of making her face hers as well.

Not this time…

“Nothing happened,” Lizzie said aloud. She smoothed the torn remnants of her bodice and wondered why her fingers were still shaking. “Nothing happened at all.”

Chapter Two

NAT WATERHOUSE STOOD in front of Fortune Hall, stared up at the darkened window of Lizzie’s bedroom and tried to think. What would Lizzie do now? Would she run? Would she hide? Where would she go? He should know the answer to these questions. He had known Lady Elizabeth Scarlet for ten years, since she was eleven years old, and he a youth of eighteen. He had seen her grow from a child into a woman. He had thought he knew everything there was to know about her. How wrong he had been.

Where was she?

His mind did not seem to be functioning as clearly as usual. He could not seem to focus on the practicalities of his situation, what to do, how to put matters right. All he seemed capable of thinking about was Lizzie.

What the hell had he done?

Pointless question. He knew precisely what he had done. He had seduced a woman who was not his fiancée on the night before his wedding.

He had ended over a year’s celibacy by making love to the one woman he should never, ever have touched.

He had ravished a virgin.

He had been too weak and too lacking in self-control to resist.

None of the above actually did justice to the heinousness of the situation, though. He faced it squarely.

Lizzie. Hell. He did not love her. He had not even liked her very much for the past few months. Once upon a time they had been friends but she had been getting under his skin recently, trying to persuade him not to marry Flora, provoking him, using him, taking him for granted. He had already been aggravated almost past bearing when he had received her note that night. He had almost ignored the summons and only habit and that damned sense of responsibility he had always felt for her had prompted him to go to meet her. He wished he had not.

Regret speared him, painfully sharp. That was pointless, too. It was done. Lizzie had goaded him, pushed him beyond bearing but he was not going to blame her. The truth was that she could not have provoked him into doing anything unless he wanted it, and he had wanted to make love to her. He had been desperate to make love to her. He still was. It shocked him that he could be in such a godforsaken mess and all he could think about was Lizzie’s beautiful silken white skin beneath his hands and her body, unbearably hot and tight about him, and the dazzling, blinding pleasure of taking her. He was no saint when it came to women, but nor was he a rake. And Lizzie was the last woman whom he would ever have imagined wanting. How could he when he had always seen her as in need of protection? From the moment he had first known her he had sought to make up for the fact that the two men who should care for her—her half brothers Montague and Tom Fortune—were a feckless idiot and a dangerous wastrel respectively.

He was worse than both of them.

Damn it all to hell and back.

The chimes of the church clock wafted over the fields from Fortune’s Folly village. One o’clock. Less than an hour for his whole life to change…

Where was she? He had to know she was all right.

Anxiety ran through his blood. Of course she was not all right. How could she be? He had ravished her, ruthlessly seduced her. He had known that she must be a virgin, still innocent despite her wild, wayward behavior. What gently bred debutante of nearly one and twenty was not? And she had shown her inexperience when her shameless provocation had disintegrated into shock and she had run from him, appalled and fearful in the end. It was true that Lizzie was outrageous. She frequently went too far but this time she had frightened even herself. And she was no longer innocent and it was his fault.

He had to speak to her.

He looked again at the blank, dark windows of Fortune Hall. He could raise the whole house, of course, and wake everyone up looking for her. It would cause outrage, scandal. If she were found to be missing that would cause even more. Lizzie was already known to be wild. If word went around that she was not in her own bed in the middle of the night, gossip would simply speculate on whose bed she was in. Her reputation would be in tatters.

He laughed mirthlessly. Reputation? Lizzie was ruined. If there was to be a child…

His blood ran cold. He could not leave her to face that alone. He had never abandoned her before and he would not do so now. For the first time he thought about his rich marriage of convenience. He should have thought about it before since he was so desperately in need of money, but somehow his concern for Lizzie had blotted out all other thoughts. His marriage had been the perfect solution to all his financial problems. And Miss Flora Minchin would have been the perfect refined, biddable wife. She was Lizzie’s opposite in almost every way. He had never had the remotest desire to rip Flora’s clothes off and make love to her. No doubt she would have been utterly aghast if he had expressed such a desire. But Flora was rich—so very, very rich—and he needed the money so desperately. He was in a trap. People depended on him, his parents, his sister Celeste…The anger and fear tightened within him when he thought what might happen to Celeste if he let her down. He would never in a thousand years have thought himself the kind of man to succumb to blackmail and yet when his sister’s life, her future and her good name, were in the balance, he had not even hesitated. He knew he could not. It was his responsibility to protect those who relied on him. So he needed a fortune…

Lizzie was rich, too.

The thought slid into his mind and the relief flooded through him.

He had to marry Lizzie.

It was the perfect solution. It would put matters right. It would save her reputation, solve his need for money…

Lizzie would be the wife from hell.

The thought came swift on the heels of the others. The devil was in Lizzie, always had been, since she was small. Perhaps it was because she had had such a ramshackle childhood with a neglectful mother who had run off with a groom and a father who indulged her like a pet for half the time and forgot she was there the other half. When her father had died and she had come to Fortune Hall at the age of eleven to live with her half brothers, the sons of her mother’s first marriage, matters had barely improved for her. Neither of her brothers had any interest in her. Monty Fortune had engaged a governess for her to absolve his conscience. Lizzie had put mice in the woman’s bed and the governess had left. None of her successors stayed long, stating that Lizzie was unruly, undisciplined and out of control, a state of affairs that Tom Fortune in particular encouraged. Nat could still remember the first time he had met Lizzie when, as a university contemporary of Tom’s, he had come to Fortune’s Folly and seen a truculent girl in a grubby white dress, all tangled red hair and huge green eyes, climbing the trees in the home park like a tomboy. She had fallen out of an old oak tree and Tom had laughed and Nat had been the one to offer her a hand to help her get up again. And so it had started, with Nat easing Lizzie out of the scrapes she had got herself into, always there for her because neither Monty nor Tom cared a whit.

But this…This was more than a scrape. This was a full-blown disaster. Yes indeed, Lizzie would be the most difficult, intractable, headstrong wife imaginable, the most unsuitable countess and in the fullness of time the least appropriate duchess in the kingdom. Marriage to her might well be a living hell. But hell was precisely where he was heading. He knew there was no escape.

LIZZIE HAD CLIMBED IN at her bedroom window, scaling the ivy, reaching for the handholds that only she knew were there in the old stone of Fortune Hall. She had climbed in and out of the house this way for as long as she could remember, coming and going as and when she pleased, avoiding the discipline of her chaperones, such as it was, and with her half brothers in blissful ignorance of her behavior. Tonight Monty was still awake—when she had slipped past the window she had seen him drinking on his own in the library. There had been no sign of her other half brother, Tom, although the presence of another glass beside Monty’s on the table suggested that someone else had been there earlier that evening. Lizzie’s half brothers had patched up their quarrel now that Tom was no longer a wanted man. Monty had conveniently forgotten that he had disowned his brother and Tom had seemed prepared to forgive him. Lizzie thought that their rapprochement was largely convenience, since no one else in the village of Fortune’s Folly would give either of them the time of day now. Everyone hated Monty for his unscrupulous greed in applying more and more of his medieval taxes to fleece the populace, but people hated Tom more for his ruthless seduction and abandonment of Lydia Cole. Lizzie would not have set foot back in her brother’s house if it had not been for the fact that Monty had threatened legal proceedings against anyone else who gave her shelter. He had then neglected to find a chaperone for her with the result that Lizzie had no one to account to on nights like this. Or alternatively, Lizzie thought, one could say that no one actually cared what she did.

She desperately wanted a bath. She was aching, her body sore there, between her legs, and sore inside. Not so raw as her heart, though. She could smell smoke on her clothes and in her hair. She could also smell Nat’s scent on her body like an imprint, but perhaps that was a trick of her imagination. She did not want to remember him holding her close enough to put his mark on her. She did not want to remember him inside her. She shuddered, closing her eyes, closing her mind.

Cold water would have to do. She would have jumped into the moat when she had got back had it not been for the fact that she was terrified Nat would find her. Instead she lit one pale candle, making sure that the curtains were drawn so close that no light would show outside, and then she stripped off her tattered clothes. Usually she dropped her gown and underclothes on the floor for the maid to pick up but these were ruined, the laces torn, the hooks ripped out. That would cause gossip. That would be difficult to explain.

Such passion. Such pleasure…

She had thought that she would die from such pleasure. She had never imagined it, never dreamed it. Such bliss at Nat’s hands…She had felt as though her very body would melt, honey-soft, with satisfaction and fulfilment.

She had felt a soul-deep contentment as well, but that had fled fast enough when she had seen the expression on Nat’s face. Some pain stirred deep inside her and she soothed it quickly back to sleep. No need to think of that. It was over. It was her secret and it would remain so.

She bundled the clothes up carefully and hid them under a pile of blankets in the chest. She would take them out and burn them when she could, and watch the memories drift away on the smoke and ash. Nat would be married by then and gone from Fortune’s Folly with his bride.

Avoiding her reflection in the long mirror, she started to wash herself with the cold water from the ewer and the cloth that was on the dresser. Her hair would have to wait until the morning. There was nothing she could do about that. She started with her face, the ice-cold water from the bowl shocking her a little, wakening her. Neck, shoulders, the curve of her arms…She paused as she raised the cloth to her chest, the irresistible memory intruding of Nat’s mouth at her breast, tugging, nipping, licking…Her body tightened, aching inside, wanting him again. It was impossible to erase that knowledge now. The hand holding the cloth fell to her side and she turned slowly to examine her body in the long pier glass.

She did not look the same. There were marks on her body, faint bruises that indicated the intensity of their lovemaking and also showed the loss of her innocence, the extent of her experience now. She stared at them whilst her body resonated with the knowledge of what she had done. She waited for feelings of shame or regret. None came. That must prove she was as wild and brazen as everyone claimed. She had no shame for the act of making love. All her regret was saved for the terrible mistake she had made in loving where her feelings were not returned. That humiliated her beyond bearing.

There was a small smear of blood on her inner thigh. She scrubbed it away, vigorous now. Her virginity was lost. This was the proof. Some faceless, unimagined future husband would probably cut up rough about her lack of chastity. Men were so often odiously hypocritical about such matters. She found she did not care. Perhaps she should. But she had never been able to imagine herself married. Marriage required compromise and maturity and she was painfully aware that she was not very good at such things. Truth was, she had never wanted to be. Now the possibility of marriage seemed more remote than the moon.

She put on her nightdress but rather than getting into her bed she sat down on the velvet cushioned window seat. Was Nat out there in the shadows of the darkened garden? She felt an almost irresistible urge to pull the curtain back and look. The thing that stayed her hand was the knowledge that if he were there it would be for all the wrong reasons. He would not have followed her because he loved her. He would have followed her because of a sense of responsibility. He would want to make sure that she was safe home and to put matters to rights.

He could not.

Nat cared about her. She knew that. But caring was so mild an emotion compared to the wild love she had for him. Caring was for infants and the old and the sick. Nat did not share her passion. He had shown her lust and she had confused it with love. It was an easy mistake to make, a naïve mistake, she supposed. She felt a boundless love for him. He cared for her. She had poured out her feelings in their lovemaking. He had met her love with his desire. The disparity between their feelings for one another was enormous.