Lady Reckless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 3) Page 5

No, she could never be his.

  She was forbidden.

  But that did not stop him from lowering his head, falling into her emerald eyes. “I do not think you a burden.”

  He thought her the loveliest, most tempting woman he had ever known. He also wished, briefly, that he was a scruples-lacking scoundrel like Dorset.

  “Of course you do.” Her chin quivered. “Please, Huntingdon. Leave me alone. Stop following me. Stuff your sense of honor and duty.”

  Her eyes glistened. Tears, he realized, and the sight of them did something to him. His restraint snapped. He touched her at last, brushing the backs of his fingers over her cheek in a tender stroke. A mistake, as it happened. Her skin was a revelation. She was a mystery and a temptation, everything he wanted and yet could never dare to have, knowing where it would eventually lead.

  “Do not weep, Helena,” he said, his voice a low rasp.

  Her eyelashes fluttered, and a tiny bead of moisture clung to them. He had upset her, and he hated it. Hated it more than what she was doing to herself.

  “Go,” she told him, but as she voiced the directive, her fingers curled in his coat. “Let me do what I must to save myself.”

  He told himself he should stop touching her. But a tear tracked down her cheek, and he caught it on his thumb. He told himself to step away, but his head lowered. Her mouth was close to his. So close, her breath feathered over his lips. So close, he could not resist settling his mouth over hers.

  He was aware of a gasp. Perhaps hers, mayhap his. He did not know. Because in the next moment, her soft lips moved, clinging to his. The fire in his head roared through his blood, overtaking him.

  The gentleness in his kiss fled. He kissed her harder, with all the pent-up desperation he had spent the last few years tamping down and ignoring. Kissed her as he had longed to.

  Kissed her as if she were his.

  Wanted her to be his.

  And when her mouth responded, he could not help but to feel she was his. That this moment, this woman in his arms, was meant to be. He teased her parted lips with his tongue. She tasted sweet and tart, like champagne. Huntingdon could not seem to have enough of her now.

  One word rushed through his mind, repeating itself to the pounding beat of his heart. More. More. More.

  He cupped her face, angled her head to allow him to ravish her mouth properly, as he wanted. Her tongue moved against his, tentatively at first. She kissed like an innocent and not like a wanton who had been throwing herself into the arms of scoundrels.

  Gabe groaned as he sucked on her lower lip before catching it between his teeth and tugging. Her fingers sank into his hair, raking over his scalp and leaving sparks in their wake. Flames licked down his spine. Spread over his skin. He was ablaze for her.

  He kissed her as if she were his life source, as if he would never again have the opportunity to know her mouth beneath his.

  Because he could not.

  This is wrong, Gabe. Think of your duty, your honor. Stop this madness at once, before it is too late.

  There was the voice of reason which had been eluding him, arriving far too late to keep him from madness. He raised his head against his will, ending the connection, staring down at her flushed cheeks, her kiss-bruised mouth. Her eyes were wide, fringed with tear-stained lashes. Glazed with passion.

  Scalding shame hit him, joining the perilous heat of his ardor. What had he done?

  A second word hammered its way through his thick skull then.

  “Huntingdon.” Helena blinked, as if she were dazed, her hands returning to his chest and pushing.

  Her tongue ran over her lower lip, almost earning another groan from him. He was harder than he had ever been, rigid and ready in his trousers.

  What had he been thinking? That he would take her against the wall of books?

  Dear God, he hated himself. He had not thought of Lady Beatrice or the consequences of his actions once. Not until now. Not until he had already gone too far. Grandfather was surely rolling in his grave. Mayhap he was no better than his mother and father had been. Cut from the same disastrous, selfish, sinful cloth.

  “Huntingdon, you must go,” Helena was saying, dragging him from the depths of self-loathing.

  Shaking him from his thoughts.

  What had he done?

  “Forgive me,” he said stiffly, before realizing he was still cupping her face.

  Instantly, he released her, stepping back in retreat.

  “We have not much time.” Helena smoothed the fall of her skirts and raised a hand to her hair, tucking an errant tendril back into place. “Lady Clementine Hammond is expected within minutes.”

  All the fire in his blood turned to ice. “Lady Clementine Hammond?”

  Though he need not ask. He knew well enough who and what she was. A notorious gossip with a reputation as a lady who had forced more than her fair share of marriages after catching couples in alcove embraces and moonlit kisses.

  Helena nodded. “She was to have happened upon Dorset and myself… Oh, dash it all. We haven’t time to tarry, Huntingdon. You must go, now, or risk being caught in a compromising position with me. What will Lady Beatrice think?”

  Likely what he thought of himself. That he was an abysmal rogue.

  Still, whilst he knew he needed to put as much distance between himself and temptation as possible, he felt the need to explain himself. Not that he could.

  “I will go, then. But first, I must apologize for acting in such a dishonorable fashion.” He paused, attempting to gather a proper excuse when there was none to be had, save that she hopelessly enthralled him although she was the last woman who should. “I cannot think what came over me. You are like a sister to me, and I was so overcome by my need to comfort you that I acted irrationally. I should never have been so familiar, and I can promise you, such a loathsome, unworthy action will not occur ever again betwixt the two of us.”

  He heard himself and inwardly winced at how bloodless he sounded. How cruel and cutting. It was a brutal lie to suggest he had kissed her for any reason other than that he had wanted to feel her lips beneath his more than he had wanted his next breath. But he could never admit as much to her.

  Hell, he could not admit it to himself.

  The truth was terrifying, and better left buried. But as he railed against himself for what he had done, for giving in to this desperate, terrible weakness he possessed for her, he noticed she had gone pale, all the color leaching from her expressive face.

  “You are forgiven, of course, Lord Huntingdon,” she said coolly. “Naturally, I would never expect such a loathsome, unworthy moment to happen again. And mayhap I, too, should ask for your forgiveness. I never meant to force my attentions upon you, and I assure you it is not my intention to entrap you into scandal. Which is why it is imperative that you go before Lady Clementine arrives.”

  Damn it, he had mucked that up, had he not? He had somehow managed to act the cad and then insult Helena as well in his attempt to make amends for his lack of control. Gabe would go, because what other choice had he?

  He bowed, feeling like the world’s greatest ass. “I shall take my leave.”

  With that, he hastened from the library, hating himself more than he ever had before.

  Chapter Five

  One need only look to the territory of Wyoming, where women have enjoyed the right to vote since 1869, for an example of how women’s suffrage benefits the community.

  —From Lady’s Suffrage Society Times

  Helena’s closest, dearest, oldest friend, Lady Juliana Somerset, had finally returned from abroad. The much-awaited reunion had thrilled her when she had first received word of Julianna’s arrival in London. She had thrown every other social obligation out the window for the opportunity to see her friend once more.

  Now that the day had arrived, she should have been overjoyed. Instead, Helena was fraught with agitation as she awaited Julianna for afternoon tea.

  All because Huntingdon had kissed her. />
  Because his lips had been hot and firm and insistent upon hers.

  Because his tongue had been inside her mouth.

  The moment in the library had been electric, and she had relived it at least a thousand times—possibly more—in the hours since.

  But then, he had promptly taken the best moment of her life and ground it beneath his heel by calling their kisses loathsome and unworthy and by claiming he only viewed her as a sister.

  Yet again.

  A lady could only sustain so many blows to her hope and pride.

  She paced the length of the salon, consulting the ormolu mantelpiece with each pass. Julianna was not due to arrive for another ten minutes. With a sigh, she turned back toward the open door. A shadow in the shape of her brother passed.

  “Shelbourne!” she called, eager for distraction. And the opportunity to sway her brother in her favor.

  Thus far, he had remained immovable as a stone, insisting she should accept a marriage of convenience and that love matches were the stuff of fiction and fantasy.

  The shadow retraced its steps and paused on the threshold.

  Her brother’s appearance shocked her. He had the Davenport height and their father’s dark hair, coupled with an aura of perpetual brooding. But this afternoon, he was still dressed in his rumpled evening wear—presumably from the day before, with purple crescents bruising the skin beneath his green eyes. His countenance was pale as well.

  She wondered if he had slept.

  For the past two years, her brother had become increasingly reckless. She could not understand the change, which had been sudden rather than gradual.

  He bowed. “Hellie. You are looking well this morning.”

  She dipped into a brief curtsy, mimicking his formality, so at odds with his pet name for her. “It is afternoon, Shelbourne.”

  His brow furrowed. “Ahem, yes. So it is. Forgive me for misspeaking. Shall I join you for tea, then?”

  “You may,” she said, “if you wish to listen to feminine chatter.”

  He grimaced. “One of your Suffrage Society ladies joining you, then? I do believe I shall pass. I support your cause, but I am hardly in the mood for entertaining just now.”

  Shelbourne, for all that he was in their father’s uncompromising mold, was also beloved to her. She confided in him. Not everything, of course. Certainly not her inconvenient and unrequited love for his friend the Earl of Huntingdon, for instance. It was one of the reasons his refusal to take her side in the matter of her betrothal to Lord Hamish was such a betrayal.

  “Not a member of the Lady’s Suffrage Society yet, as it happens,” she answered him lightly, doing her utmost to cast all thoughts of Huntingdon—and his kisses—from her mind. “However, I do have hopes she will join us in our efforts soon. Rather, it is an old, dear friend of mine, Lady Julianna Somerset. She is newly returned from abroad. You do recall Lady Julianna, do you not?”

  If possible, her brother’s skin turned a shade nearer to pale, milky white. His jaw tightened, his entire bearing changing. Stiffening. “I do not think I remember her. I will leave you to your chat. Father has demanded an audience, and I was just on my way to him when you stayed me.”

  There was something suspicious about his reaction, about his manner. Helena could not quite determine what. Or why. She did not think Julianna and Shelbourne had ever had cause for much interaction. She and Julianna were quite a few years younger than Shelbourne, and Julianna had gone to America just after her comeout to live with her mother.

  Although her friend had written dozens of letters during her absence, she had never explicitly explained—at least, not to Helena’s satisfaction—the reason for her abrupt departure from London. However, for today, Helena would simply focus upon the happy event of her friend’s return.

  “Will you not remain for a moment?” she asked her brother, when he seemed almost itchy to flee. “I was hoping we could speak.”

  Shelbourne tugged at his necktie as if it had suddenly fashioned itself into a noose. “I dare not keep Father waiting.”

  “A minute here or there shan’t make a difference,” Helena tried, although it was hardly the truth when it came to Father.

  He despised tardiness. But she needed her brother’s help.

  “Hellie, I haven’t the time for this,” he bit out, his voice possessing the lash of a whip.

  She was taken aback by his vehemence. “Just a moment, please. I am begging you to help my cause and plead with him on my behalf. I cannot bear to marry Lord Hamish, and the announcement of our betrothal is imminent.”

  “I do hope you are not persisting in your wrongheaded notion of marrying for love.” Her brother’s lip curled in distaste.

  Of course she was not. The man she loved was marrying another. But she could not say that. Not to Shelbourne. Not to anyone. Loving Huntingdon was her carefully guarded secret.

  “It has nothing to do with love and everything to do with Lord Hamish being an odious boor who believes women are empty-headed ninnies who require men to make all the decisions for them.” Frustration surged anew within her. “Have you ever spoken to him?”

  Shelbourne inclined his head. “I will own that he possesses a shortsighted understanding of the fairer sex, and that he shares some of Father’s antiquated and thoroughly wrong views. However, Lord Hamish is a gentleman. He respects you and holds you in high esteem and will never cause you shame. You will want for nothing as his wife. Father wishes to secure your future. I want that for you also.”

  She wanted a secure future as well. But not with Lord dratted Hamish White! Why could no one see reason?

  “Shelbourne, please,” she began.

  “What would you wish instead of the marriage Father has found for you?” he snapped. “To go gadding about New York City, courting ruin in the fashion of Lady Julianna Somerset?”

  “She had the approval of her family. I have already pleaded my case to Father and he has remained stalwart. As a woman without means of her own, what else am I to do but hope my family will not force me into a hated union?” She paused, something new occurring to her. “I thought you said you did not remember Lady Julianna.”

  “My memory has restored itself.” His tone was cold. “A scandalous baggage, that one. I am surprised Father allows her to pay you a call.”

  Not Shelbourne as well. It seemed he was shaping more to their father’s mold with each passing day. She was about to correct him when their butler arrived to announce Lady Julianna.

  Shelbourne cut a quick bow, excused himself, and fled the room as if the seat of his trousers were aflame. So much for his help with Father. Why did he persist in believing love was a fiction and marriages were best made in duty?

  Helena was still frowning over her brother’s odd behavior when Julianna crossed the threshold. But she promptly dashed her misgivings away as her beloved friend hurried across the salon to her.

  “Helena! I have missed you, my dearest friend.” With her brilliant red hair and decidedly Parisian gown in shades of aubergine, Lady Julianna Somerset cut a striking figure.

  Helena embraced her dear friend tightly, thinking she had scarcely changed at all in the years she had spent away. “I can scarcely believe you are here, returned at last!”

  “Nor can I.” Julianna stepped back, her smile somewhat tremulous, an undeniable glitter of emotion in her blue eyes. “It is so good to see you. You must tell me everything I have missed in my absence.”

  Where to begin? There was much to tell. So much. Her concern over her impending betrothal to Lord Hamish had not made its way into her letters, as she had done her best to keep from straying to upsetting subjects. As Mother always said, bad news does not travel well.

  But now, her friend was here, just when she needed her guidance and support most.

  “Have a seat and I shall ring for tea,” Helena said grimly, for she had quite a story to tell, and she suspected Julianna did as well.

  This distraction was just what she needed to
keep her mind from returning to ruinous thoughts, like the way Huntingdon’s lips had molded to hers. Or how desperately she wanted him to kiss her again.

  The day after he had courted ruin by kissing Helena senseless in the library at the Cholmondeley affair, Huntingdon had come to the bitter realization that he needed to engage in two thoroughly unwanted calls. He was presently undertaking the first, and the second would necessarily follow.

  Lady Beatrice held his arm as he took her for a turn in the small gardens at her father’s Mayfair townhome. The day was unseasonably warm, and beneath his coat, he was perspiring, the fine fabric of his shirt sticking to his skin. He wished he could appreciate the manner in which the sunshine caught the hints of copper in his betrothed’s dark hair. However, all he could see was Helena after he had kissed her.

  That sultry mouth so dark red and inviting.

  “Your call this afternoon is an unexpected pleasure, my lord,” Lady Beatrice said softly.

  She had been at her needlework when he arrived, and he had regretted the interruption of her day and the potential disruption of her emotions as well. But it was necessary to unburden himself. His sense of honor would allow no less.

  He wondered where the devil to begin. What a godawful muddle. “Forgive me for not sending word, but I needed to see you as soon as possible.”

  Because he was a scoundrel.

  Because he could not control himself.

  Ah, bloody hell. The temptation of Helena in his arms, her body curled to his, had been too much for him. He tried to cast all thoughts of her from his mind—she had no place there. And she most certainly did not belong in this moment of solemnity between himself and the lady he had wronged.

  But she would not go. Helena remained. For a moment, he swore he could detect her scent on the breeze. His heart squeezed in his chest.

  “I am flattered you were so eager to see me,” Lady Beatrice said, a hint of flirtation in her voice. “It has only been a few days since you were in my company.”

  Guilt lodged inside him with the violence of a swinging pickaxe.

  “I am always eager to see you, my lady,” he forced out. “You know that. No other lady can compare.”