Page 35 of A Baron's Scandalous Quill
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When the carriage came to a stop at the end of her road, Becca pleaded with them not to go too near her house in case it wasseen by her father. No doubt, it would start an interminable amount of questions regarding where she had been to such a late hour and why she was returning in such a fine carriage. She thanked the driver and walked the last road quite alone toward her house.
At the door, she unlocked it with her key from her reticule and stepped inside.
“Becca? Is that you?” her father called from within the house.
In a panic, Becca looked around the hallway. There was a candle lit on the hall table; the pale lemon light would surely reveal all the papers she was carrying, and her father would ask questions about what they were. So also wondered madly if he would sense there was something different in her. Would he be able to see on her face that she was a changed woman now? That she had tasted a forbidden, illicit excitement?
“Becca?” His footsteps followed, moving from one end of the small house toward her.
“I’m here,” she called back, frantically looking around herself. There was a cupboard beside her, and she thrust the door open, shoving the papers inside an umbrella stand, then closing the door again. She had barely shut the door when her father rounded the corridor toward her.
“There you are. You are late tonight.” Frederick stood there with his arms folded, his eyes looking at her with clear suspicion. “Where have you been?”
“Seeing Charlotte,” Becca told the first lie that came into her head. “I’m sorry I am so late. I had a piece I was working on that I was unhappy with.” Feigning nonchalance, she took off her bonnet and spencer jacket, threading them over the coat stand nearby. “She helped me to improve it, but it took a lot longer than I thought.”
“Hmm, all right. I do not like you walking in darkness so late, though. Next time, send a messenger to me, and I’ll have the carriage come and get you.”
“A carriage?” she laughed at the idea. They shared the use of a single carriage that worked for the whole street. “You might not be able to get it.”
“Then I’ll find one from somewhere. Please, Becca, it’s not safe to walk the streets of London so late at night.”
“Very well, Father.” She followed him deeper into the house, glancing over her shoulder at the door and the cupboard where she had hidden the papers relating to William.
Her father could not know that for all his fears of what could be, she had quite willingly decided to put herself in danger that night by acting as the baron’s mistress. She didn’t care, though. It didn’t feel dangerous to share in what they had done. It felt like the ultimate and most perfect indulgence.
She had a feeling when she returned the next day, they would not be able to stay apart from each other again.
Chapter 13
“I’m quite decided,” William said as he looked over the papers in front of him.
“What? All of it?” Becca’s surprise made him look up from the papers.
He didn’t answer for a minute and just stared at her, completely distracted.
God’s wounds, she has this effect on me!
He looked at the golden hair that had been tied into a neat chignon, thinking of the way it had fallen out of such an updo the day before on his settee. He thought of those aquamarine eyes, the way they had stared at him as he had pleasured her, the mad blush on her cheeks, the pinkened lips that had parted and moaned his name.
He could feel his length hardening as he stared at her, just imagining now what it would be like to take her completely. Did she wonder what it would be like, too? If he were to bend her back over his own desk in this study of his, lift her skirt, and lower his trousers enough to find her center with his own, to drive them both to an oblivion of pleasure?
“Will?” she said with a mischievous smile, which showed she had known he had become distracted.
He sighed and shifted behind the desk, making sure that she would not see exactly what she had done to his body.
I’m helpless around her, it seems.
All night, he had thought of nothing but her, having heated dreams and such mad spells of desire that the only thing for it was to sate himself to see him through the night. When he’d woken that morning, over breakfast, he had talked with Henry about all the money his father had taken from others.
“I am certain of it.” He managed to find his voice, concentrating on what he wished to say. “I shall repay every man whom I can discover my father owed money to, or who he cheated out of money.”
“But…” She stepped toward him across the study.
In this room, William felt much more at ease. Rather than his father’s study, they were in his own study. This room was much lighter in comparison, and having Becca in the room felt even more right.
She belongs in a room of such light.
