Page 26 of The Viscount's Seduction
Chapter 8
Bakeley settledhis hand on the swell of Sirena’s hip and held it there. The heat coursing between them was like the exchange of a blood oath. Need, want, and anger did battle with his finer senses.
His father had entered his study down the hall, and that had been Lord Denholm’s voice he’d heard too. Making plans for his future they were, to settle him with the little miss down below who deserved someone better than him, someone younger, someone who wanted her.
What he wanted he had in his arms right now, in a dark bedchamber. She’d tried to push him back, but that had been no display of maidenly airs—it was a fine-honed sense of survival. A maiden she was, he’d guess, and had never been properly kissed before, yet every instinct in her had made her respond. And damn it if he didn’t want to take that further, to show her just how sensual she was.
He could. He could do this. He could have her.
His heart quickened and began to pound fiercely against the hand she had planted on his chest.
He could have her, but not this way. He moved his hands to her shoulders and let his thumbs sweep the soft skin there. “My sister’s rooms are on this floor. She told you to go up and lie down there if you needed. You got lost.”
He could feel the movement of her throat as she swallowed.
“She will back you up,” he said.
“Yes. I’ll go now.”
“No. I’ll go to my father’s study. Wait until you hear the door close again. Then go. Take the main stairs.”
“Thank you.”
He dropped a chaste kiss on her lips. “I’ll call on you tomorrow.”
He rapped onceon the study door and sauntered in. Surprise lit Denholm’s face, but Shaldon merely sunk deeper into his chair, as though he’d been expecting him. Both men were seated comfortably at the low coal fire, drinks in hand, settling his future.
“Just the man,” Denholm said. “Join us.”
“For a moment.” He poured himself a drink and pulled a chair over from the writing table. Why Father had brought Denholm to his chummy, cluttered study was a mystery. No one but two trusted servants were ever allowed to clean, and they only delivered coal and dusted around the piles of paper and books.
But perhaps Father had looked for him in the library. Father was a cagey one. He would have noticed that both his son and Lady Sirena had disappeared.
To hell with it. “I hear you have a horse running at Ascot this year,” he said. His father’s interest in horses had necessarily waned, what with having to save England from Napoleon. But with Denholm, horses were a safe subject.
“Indeed. And I have a fine filly downstairs in your music room. What think you of her? She’ll give you some fine foals. Good stock she is, like her mother.”
Shaldon watched, as ever, unreadable in a crisis.
“She’s a lovely younggirl.”
Denholm slapped his knee, immune to sarcasm. “Indeed she is. Kept a tight rein on her, I did. None of these young ladies’ academies for my chits. Have another one at home just like her. The settlements will be easy. Shaldon and I have already come to terms and we’ll have you married in no time.”
He sipped his drink and stared back at his father. This desire for an alliance with Denholm was baffling. Father had claimed to be too ill to attend Parliament, but he was no doubt busy meddling behind the scenes of government. Of course, Denholm’s would be an easily controlled vote, but he would follow Shaldon’s lead anyway. The man had no political aspirations, unless a horse was involved. And Shaldon had plenty of fine horses to bargain with.
There was the Denholm money, of course, but the Shaldon earldom had plenty of that also. No, his father had some other motivation.
“Well, boy, what say you? Will you marry my daughter?”
And have a lifetime of Denholm at one end of the table and Shaldon at the other?
“I have spent all of five minutes with her, Denholm. She’s lovely and very young, and my strong sense is that she deserves better than me.”
The man’s thick eyebrows drew together as he sorted through the words. “Ah. Because of Lady Arbrough.” He rubbed his hands together. “A man wouldn’t want to give that up. Glenna has been taught the way of the world. She’ll not mind.”
His stomach roiled and his head began to ache, the revulsion he felt seeping inward. Lady Arbrough had seemed a great prize a few months earlier. That she’d picked him as her first liaison in widowhood had raised his spirits. But marrying a young innocent and keeping his mistress on, like some eastern potentate? Bink would not do so, nor would Hackwell. Nor, he suspected, had his father so many years ago, else he would have brought Bink’s mother to England.
He didn’t give a damn if that were the way of the world. It would not be the way ofhisworld.
