Flirting with Ruin Read online

  There was laughter in his voice and in hers too when she spoke, for it was ridiculous, the situation, but it was also marvellous. ‘You take rather too much for granted,’ she said teasingly. ‘Even were you so inclined, I would not allow you to ravish me.’

  ‘No?’ His fingers traced the lightest of paths down her neck to her shoulder, then skimmed under the folds of her cloak to rest on her waist. He nipped the lobe of her ear. ‘Is it the situation that deters you, Ravishing Rosalind, or the company?’

  He kissed her neck. Beneath her cloak, his hand stroked up her side to cup the weight of her breast. She bit back a soft moan. Her nipples hardened in response. She leaned back against the tree trunk, arched her back just enough for her thighs to brush his, and had the satisfaction of hearing his sharp intake of breath. For once she was enjoying the wielding of power, utterly bereft as it was from any sense of answering threat. This man would not try to take what she would not give. Which made her want to give. More. A little more. ‘The situation is certainly not conducive,’ she said.

  Fraser laughed at this, though it was more of a growl, and it raised the hairs on the back of her neck in the most delightful way. ‘Yet you followed me out here willingly enough,’ he said.

  His thumb was moving over her nipple now. Despite the layers of gown and chemise and corset, she could feel it. His other hand was below her cloak too, cupping her bottom. She moved against him, the tiniest of movement, the most sinuous of touches, enough to feel the hard length of him against her. ‘I do not recall that you gave me much of a choice. Besides,’ she said, ‘I wished to take the air.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’ve taken sufficient air now?’

  His rhythmic caress stopped. In the shadow of the moonlight, she could barely make out his expression, but she did not need to. He was calling her bluff. Rosalind hesitated. She ought to say yes. Almost any other of the men she kept company with would take that for a cue to persuade her, but this man, she was certain, would not. She was not ready for him to walk away. Her body felt alive. Humming, thrumming, taut. Every cliché she had ever read, but she felt it. Rosalind shook her head. ‘I have not,’ she said, and pulled him to her, fastening her mouth on his.

  * * *

  This time when he kissed her, Fraser eased some of his restraint. It astounded him how much he wanted her. This time their kiss was more ardent. It was ridiculous, just as he had said, for two grown people to be kissing in the open air with only a tree trunk for a prop, but it was also intoxicating, and he did not want to stop. Not that it would go much further. Not that he would try. Not that she would permit it. But still…

  Her tongue tangled with his. Her body writhed against his. She had such delicious curves, his hands could not help but cup and mould and stroke. The soft shelf of her breasts above the neckline of her gown. The swell of them, irksomely corseted, beneath. The flare of her hips, and the sweet curve of her rear. The delightful arch in her back as he pulled her harder against him. The softness of her thighs against his. The ache as she rubbed against his erection. He drew his breath in sharply as she did so.

  She smelled musky, of some exotic perfume mixed with soap and the saltiness of her perspiration from dancing. Her skin radiated heat. ‘So hot,’ he murmured. ‘I could almost believe your hair was fire.’

  ‘It was the dancing.’ Her hands fluttered under his coat, stroking down his back, clutching at the tensed muscles of his buttocks, then back up under his waistcoat so that there just his shirt between her hands and his skin. ‘But you are hot too.’

  He kissed her throat. ‘And I was not dancing.’ He nudged her against the tree trunk.

  ‘Then it must be this.’

  She pulled him between her legs, kissing him, touching him, urging him on with soft little moans, making him wild, almost desperate for more. ‘We are adults, not overwrought adolescents,’ he said feverishly, his hands roaming, stroking, urgent.

  ‘Far too old to be carried away by lust,’ she agreed lustfully.

  ‘Far too old.’ He hitched up her skirts and she helped him do so.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said, then gasped as his hand slipped beneath her petticoats to find warm flesh covered by the thinnest layers of silk and cambric.

  She wrapped one of her legs around him. Her cloak fell back, and he kissed the quivering flesh of her breasts, licking into the squeezed-tight valley between them. Her hand skimmed the front of his buckskins to lie flat on his erection. Blood coursed to thicken it. If he did not stop now…

  He did not want to stop now. His fingers found the opening between her pantaloons. He did as she did, flattening his hand against her sex. He could feel her curls on his palm, feel the heat and damp of her sex, radiating. Above them in the tree, something rustled. He looked up and caught sight of the moon.

  Rosalind followed his gaze. ‘A harvest moon.’

  ‘Symbol of fertility,’ Fraser said wryly.

  ‘And madness.’

  She was looking at him now. There was something in her eyes—uncertainty, hesitation. The merest hesitation, but it was sufficient. Fraser forced himself to remove his hand. ‘Is it madness?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘You are probably right.’ Fraser sighed. ‘We have had enough of the night air, wouldn’t you say?’

  Would she? She should. Rosalind righted herself. ‘I think we are both a little drunk on it,’ she said regretfully, pulling her cloak around her. ‘That, and the moon.’ She shook back her head and met his gaze full on. ‘I should have heeded Kate’s warning. She told me it was potent.’

  ‘Kate?’

  ‘The friend I am visiting. I should go.’

  ‘May I escort you there?’

  Rosalind shook her head firmly. ‘It is but a step.’

  She did not wish to be seen with him, that much was plain. Was she ashamed? More likely—and quite rightly—simply cautious of her reputation. Though she had left the inn with him boldly enough. Fraser was torn. She was right to go. It was madness for him even to consider asking her to stay, pure folly to contemplate finishing what they had started, but he hadn’t wanted anything for so long that was exactly what he was contemplating. Even though the last thing he wanted was any sort of entanglement. Except that when he looked at her, he could think of nothing but entanglement. He ran his hand through his dishevelled hair. ‘You will not be insulted if I tell you that I wish it could be otherwise.’

  ‘On the contrary, I would be insulted if you wished it so,’ she replied with a hint of a smile.

  He couldn’t help but laugh at that. ‘Aye, well, that is some consolation.’ A cloud scudded over the moon, and Fraser’s laughter faded. ‘You know, I am not the sort of man who usually takes advantage. I doubt you’ll believe me, but I was on the point of retiring when you walked in tonight. I don’t know what I was thinking—I wasn’t thinking—but I do, you know. Usually.’

  ‘So too do I. Usually. Despite my reputation for doing otherwise.’

  Her voice had changed, there was a sharpness to it now he did not like. Irony. Sarcasm. Bitterness. He caught her hand as she turned from him. ‘What were you escaping from tonight?’

  He thought she wouldn’t answer him, and then she did. ‘Myself. And you?’

  ‘The same. Rosalind…’

  But she had slipped her hand free again. ‘Goodbye, Just Fraser,’ she called, and began to walk quickly down the path that led through the woods. He took an instinctive step towards her and then stopped. What was the point? Already she was but a shadow. He watched her until she disappeared, then turned back towards the village. Picking his way past a slumbering farmer slumped in a hard chair in the hallway of the Rothermere Arms, Fraser was already beginning to wonder if he’d dreamed the whole encounter.

  * * *

  Rosalind and Kate had the huge dining room at Castonbury Park to themselves. Kate’s father, the Duke of Rothermere, took his breakfast gruel in his rooms. Mrs Landes-Fraser, the duke’s dead wife’s sister who had moved to the gre
at house to take charge of her two nieces upon their mother’s death, took tea and bread and butter in her bedchamber. Phaedra, Kate’s sister, had piled a plate high from the covered dishes that lined the sideboard, devoured it in a few minutes and fled to the stables where she spent most of her time.

  ‘It seems such a waste,’ Rosalind said, indicating the virtually untouched platters of kidney, eggs and sausages from which only Phaedra had partaken.

  ‘I expect the servants eat most of it,’ Kate replied, buttering a bread roll. ‘I have tried to suggest that it’s unnecessary, but despite the fact that my father has more or less taken up residence in his rooms since we had the news about—about Edward—he insists that everyone else carries on as normal. Though, to be honest, since we’ve been pretty much an all-female household for some time, with all my brothers and my cousin Ross away, I think it has been some considerable time since we have done anything like justice to breakfast.’ Kate poured herself a second cup of coffee. ‘Never mind that—tell me, did you enjoy yourself last night?’

  Rosalind took a sip of coffee, debating the various replies to this question. Having lain awake most of the night reliving the evening, she was no closer to understanding her behaviour. Across the table, Kate was looking at her quizzically. No point in prevaricating, Kate would see right through her with those too-perceptive blue-grey eyes of hers. ‘I think so,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘You think so? How intriguing.’ Kate leaned her chin on her hands, placing her elbows on the table in a way that would have had her aunt clucking in horror. ‘I scent a scandal, do tell.’

  Rosalind laughed. ‘I am the wanton widow, of course there is a scandal.’

  ‘My dear, your reputation, as you very well know, is as much undeserved as mine,’ Kate said acerbically. ‘You may keep company with rakes and harlots because by doing so you hope to make up for those years spent incarcerated with that puritan tyrant of a husband, but keeping company is where it ends. In fact, I am willing to bet that despite all your attempts to have the world think otherwise, there has been no one either before nor since Bartholomew to dock at your berth.’

  ‘Kate! Your language is quite shocking,’ Rosalind exclaimed with mock horror.

  Her friend grinned. ‘I learned that one from a streetwalker in Covent Garden. I have been working with a new charity to rescue such women, you can have no idea how colourfully they speak.’

  ‘Actually, I can.’

  Kate chuckled. ‘Yes, but my point is that while you undoubtedly have had any number of vicarious experiences, you have none that are first-hand.’

  Rosalind began to cut her crusts into small squares on her plate. ‘You are right. The sad fact is that I find the whole experience of intimacy really rather—well, off-putting. I thought it was simply a case of ousting Bartholomew’s disgust of the whole matter by some alternative experience but—’ She broke off, blushing wildly.

  ‘Ros, as you know, I too found it disappointing,’ Kate whispered. ‘I wonder if it’s simply that some women are not capable…’

  ‘Yes, that is exactly what I thought. Exactly. Until last night.’ Rosalind pushed her breakfast plate aside. ‘Kate, I still can’t quite believe it, I can’t believe what I did—I can’t believe that I actually regret not doing more, but it’s true. Last night, I met this man.’

  ‘Rosalind!’ Her friend’s eyes were wide, her narrow face avid with interest. ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. A stranger. He is not from here, merely travelling through. A Scot. It doesn’t matter who, I will not see him again, but—Kate, for the first time ever I could understand why women cast their reputation to the winds. When he kissed me…’

  ‘He kissed you! In the Rothermere Arms!’

  Rosalind burst out laughing. ‘I thought you were unshockable.’

  ‘So too did I,’ Kate said wryly.

  ‘Not at the inn. We danced there, in the taproom, and then we went for a stroll in the woods and it was there that he kissed me. And when he did, Kate, I swear it was different from anything. I felt—I felt—I don’t know how I felt, but I didn’t want it to stop.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘Two grown people with only a tree for a prop,’ Rosalind said with a soft smile, remembering his words, ‘of course it did. Eventually.’

  ‘My God! So it is true what they say of the harvest moon then?’

  ‘Well he was certainly potent enough, but whether it was to do with the moon or not…’ Rosalind pushed her chair back and went over to gaze out the window, cooling her heated cheeks on the cool pane.

  ‘And now?’

  She turned back to face into the dining room and shrugged. ‘And now nothing, Kate. It was just a—fleeting fancy We were strangers who passed in the night, that is all.’ She threw herself back down in her chair with a swirl of petticoats. ‘Actually, that is not all. I think I will make some changes to my life. I’m bored, and kicking over the traces simply isn’t helping—I’m just as bored with that. I need something else. Some other excitement. Last night I felt alive. That’s what I want.’

  Kate smiled wanly. ‘That is what we all want.’

  Rosalind was immediately contrite. ‘I’m so sorry, that was tactless of me,’ she said. Her instincts were to give her friend a hug, but she remembered that Kate hated to be touched, and instead contented herself with leaning across the polished breadth of the breakfast table to press her hand instead. ‘You must miss your brothers dreadfully.’

  ‘I keep expecting them to come walking through the door. If they had been living at home, I think I would have accepted it more easily—you know, their absence would have been more obvious. But because they were both away in the army, it is as if they are still there. Am I making sense?’

  ‘Perfect sense.’

  Kate sniffed. ‘Phaedra feels it worse than I. She and Ned were so close—and so alike. She spends all her time down at the stables—not that she ever did anything else—but it is different now. Her horses are her only consolation, and though she has been forbidden to ride out while we are deep in mourning, I cannot bring myself to reprimand her for doing so. She is hiding from facing the facts, she won’t talk, and I am no use at all to her, so if her horses help—well, I shall not be the one to stop her.’

  ‘What about your other brothers?’

  ‘Giles is in London, hiding just like Phaedra. You have most likely seen him more recently than I, since you share a taste for the shadier reaches of society. He is probably trying to drink himself into oblivion. And Harry too. He was with Ned at Waterloo, you know. But he too is hiding in work—a new post, something diplomatic that he won’t talk about. Neither of them want to come to Castonbury, and who can blame them. Too many memories. I wish they were here today, though.’

  ‘Today?’

  Kate began to crumble her untouched bread roll. ‘We had a note yesterday from an officer who fought with Ned. A Major Lennox. He is here in Castonbury. He has brought some of Ned’s effects and a commendation from Wellington himself—which we knew about, of course, from Harry, but it seems this major has to deliver it. He comes today for an audience with my father. Rosalind, I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you would sit with me, I would very much appreciate it. This commendation, it is an honour, I know, and I hope it will help my father, but I can’t help feeling it will be difficult, meeting a man who was actually there with Ned when he—at the end. I don’t want to break down in front of Phaedra. Will you sit with me?’

  ‘Dearest, of course I will. If you are sure I would not be intruding.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No. My father probably won’t even notice.’ She got to her feet. ‘Major Lennox arrives at noon. We are meeting in the drawing room.’

  Rosalind looked down at her bright primrose morning dress. ‘Then I had better make haste and change.’

  Chapter Three

  Fraser drove himself to Castonbury Park in a gig borrowed from Albert Moffat, the landlord of the Rothermere Arms. He had known Edward Montag
ue’s family was influential, but he had thought nothing of it. Passing through the huge ornate gates under the watchful eye of the gatekeeper, he was taken aback by the sheer grandeur and beauty of the stately pile in front of him.

  The grounds were extensive. Rolling parklands to the south stretched back to a tree-lined horizon. The main entrance he had come through faced north, the wide carriageway sweeping through more formal grounds and gardens. Two lakes, Fraser noticed as he drove slowly by, the larger with an island in the middle, separated by a suspiciously rustic bridge. A little pavilion on the farthest stretch of water suggested there would be good fishing. Then came Castonbury Park itself. Neoclassical, with the pleasing proportions of the Palladian, in style, the frontage, which was flanked by two galleries curving out to an east and west wing, consisted of an imposing colonnaded portico that reminded Fraser of the Palais Bourbon in Paris. The tall windows on the main floor were pedimented. Behind them Edward’s family, twice bereaved by the war, waited for him to provide them with consolation.

  Handing over the reins to a waiting footman splendidly clad in scarlet-and-gold livery, Fraser felt a craven impulse to turn around. A hand-cast medal, a hand-written commendation from Wellington, a few personal belongings bound in a trunk were all he had to offer. What consolation could any of those be? If Lord Giles was anything to go by, none. He’d met him and his rather less forbidding sibling Lord Harry at their club in London, thinking that one or both the brothers would prefer to be the bearer of his news to their family. He’d been wrong. Lord Giles, now the heir apparent to the dukedom, had no intention of going to Derbyshire in the near future, and Lord Harry was about to take up a new post abroad. Fraser had thought at first that they didn’t care. Upon reflection, he realised they cared too much, and could not find it in his heart to blame them even if he wished fervently, now the day was come, that one of them could have had a change of heart.

  He wished it was over. Writing bland letters, making of the bloody reality something palatable in the aftermath of battle for bereaved families was bad enough. Facing them was a thousand times worse. Fraser, who had never once faltered in the line of duty, who was famed for his fearlessness, could almost believe he would rather take up arms again than execute this final commission.