Love and the Shameless Lady (Scandalous Kisses Book 3) Read online

  “I’ll see if I’m needed outdoors.” Julian pecked her cheek chastely enough for even Mrs. Reams, and left.

  Upstairs, Melinda shut the bedchamber door behind them. “We only have a few minutes before Mrs. Reams gets here. Just one more question—”

  “Yes, Antoine sent the threatening letter. He was upset about something in my books. And yes, he meant to kill me tonight, but I didn’t want to explain that before the servants.”

  “It’s hard to believe. Antoine seemed such a pleasant man, didn’t he? Did you know he was in love with you?” She put the baby to her breast. “I must say, I find that hard to believe, too. You’re a pretty woman, but he was a terrible flirt. Mrs. Reams told me so.”

  “I admit, I was astonished to hear it. He flirted with the women at the inn, too.” Daisy rummaged in her chest of drawers for a clean nightdress. “If you have any more questions about Antoine, please direct them to the marquis.”

  “Poor Philippe,” Melinda said. “He must be so distressed.”

  It serves him right, Daisy thought grumpily, not sure whether she meant it. She liked the marquis. He was a charming man, and Julian’s friend . . . Maybe that was why Julian was so reluctant to accuse him in front of the others. She knew plenty of smugglers who broke the law regularly, but she wouldn’t have dreamed of turning them in. On the other hand, they were mostly poor men trying to make a better living, while the marquis . . . might be relatively impoverished, too. Émigrés often were. Hadn’t Julian said something about that?

  When she’d changed her nightdress and drunk her tea laced with brandy, and Melinda had finally left to put the baby back in bed, she curled up at one end of the sofa.

  Too anxious to sleep, she tried her usual method of calming her racing mind—plotting the next novel. She would put a hostage scene into it. It wouldn’t take such a stretch of the imagination anymore. Nor would defending oneself with a knife . . .

  She jerked awake. Julian stood at the end of the sofa, watching her.

  “Oh! I must have dozed off.” She woke further, prickled by anxiety.

  “Don’t look so worried, darling.” Julian lowered himself next to her. “You should go to bed and get some sleep.”

  She sat up. “No. What happened about Philippe? I want to hear what he has to say for himself.”

  “We agreed to postpone explanations until tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why not sleep now, and we’ll deal with, er, other matters when convenient.”

  Anxiety washed over her, far worse than before. “Are you saying you want to go to sleep? Because if that’s the case, just say so.”

  He took her hands and kissed them. “I want to take you to bed, sweetheart, but not if you’re too tired or anxious.”

  “I’ll always be anxious. Let’s just get it over with.” How horrid, she was wailing now. How could he possibly find that appealing?

  He pulled her onto his lap. His arms encircled her, resting harmlessly beneath her breasts. Tantalizingly, too. She might be fearful, but she wasn’t numb. She leaned into him, trying to relax. He nuzzled her neck, sending little trills of desire down her spine. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

  “My love, whatever happened before will not happen with me,” he said. “Lovemaking is a source of pleasure for both parties, not an ordeal. It’s best when savored as long as possible.”

  Chapter 14

  Daisy shoved herself off Julian’s lap and stood.

  “What . . .?” He stood as well. What had he just said?

  She turned away. “I can’t. I don’t have the stamina. I don’t know how other women put up with it.”

  Slowly, he exhaled. So far, it seemed that her former lover had hurt her and spent a long time about it. “Daisy, before we do anything, you’ll have to tell me exactly what went wrong with your smuggler. Otherwise, anything I say may set you off.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Then she nodded.

  “Good.” Julian shucked his coat. “Let’s get into bed and lie together, just holding one another. That’s as important as lovemaking. In fact, it is lovemaking, in its own way.”

  “How can that possibly be?”

  “Because we can cuddle with one another all night, every night.” Quickly, he added, “If we want to, that is. It’s one way of showing by our very closeness how much we love one another.”

  “That sounds . . . cozy. And very pleasant.” But she didn’t loosen her hold on herself.

  “Lovemaking is by nature a . . .” He was getting tired of walking on thin ice. “A more vigorous but perfunctory activity.”

  Perfunctory. That sounded good, but hard to believe. “Truly?” She wasn’t hugging herself quite so tightly now.

  He put his arms around her, and slowly hers slackened and came around him.

  “This is delightful,” he said.

  It was indeed delightful, Daisy decided, or would be if she weren’t so anxious. She tried to concentrate on the pleasurable aspects of hugging Julian. His warmth, his strength, his male aroma, mingled just now with the smell of the outdoors.

  But this wasn’t the same as before, when he’d held her for comfort . . .

  Well, he was doing that now, but in anticipation of the aforesaid vigorous activity. Which he more or less promised would be over with quickly.

  But not if she didn’t tell him all about Reggie.

  Abruptly, he let go and swept her off her feet. She laughed, astonished at how much she liked it. He carried her to the bed, set her on the edge, and removed the flannel-wrapped brick Mrs. Reams had so solicitously put under the coverlet. “We’ll be cozy enough without that.” He motioned her to move over, and she felt like a fool. She wasn’t a baby, needing instructions for everything, and yet she felt frozen inside, unable to do anything without encouragement.

  He climbed in next to her, supporting his head on one elbow, and smiled down at her. “One step at a time, love.” He leaned in and kissed her.

  Oh, such pleasure. The warmth of his lips, his hot breath, the sensual flicker of his tongue. Longing coursed through her. She put an arm about him and moved closer. They kissed and kissed, and she pressed her body against his, savoring the sensation of her breasts against his chest.

  She needed to feel his arousal, to get used to the idea that he would put it inside her, for she had already decided she would not back out of this from fear. She wrapped her leg across him and encountered the bulge of his hard cock. It sent a bolt of anxiety through her . . . and yet, her privates began to throb.

  They’d throbbed with Reggie, too. At first.

  She broke the kiss. She would have to deal with Julian’s cock soon, but he was right. For his sake, she should explain herself.

  She sat up and set a couple of pillows against the headboard, and invited him to join her. It gave her an illusion of control.

  “We didn’t have anything in common but lust,” she said.

  “Not an unusual reason for sexual intercourse,” he murmured.

  “And although I encouraged the gossip that says I seduced him, I think it was equal on both sides. I couldn’t abide the thought that people would feel sorry for me afterwards. I preferred to acknowledge my misbehavior out loud and in defiance of everyone.”

  He grinned. “A family trait, perhaps?”

  She couldn’t help a small smile. “We have a long line of scandalous ancestors, and the present generation is much the same. Even Gloriana, for all her obsession with propriety, is the most contrary person I know.”

  “Back to your mutual seduction,” Julian said, rather like a governess guiding a pupil back to the point of the lesson.

  Daisy tried not to balk. She wanted this lesson. Even if it turned out badly, at least it would be over with.

  “I th
ink he wanted to bed a lady, to see if it felt different from a common woman. I just wanted to find out what it was like.” She paused. “No, that’s not true. I did it to upset my mother.” A sob rose in her throat. “It was horrid of me. I knew it would hurt her dreadfully. I suppose, in my heart of hearts, I knew it might kill her. I’m not a good person, you know.”

  “You are an angel. You take splinters out of the feet of snarling dogs. You think about others’ feelings and even forgive spiteful cousins. To continue with this diversion, though, may I ask why you wanted to upset your mother?”

  “Because she wouldn’t stop saying horrid things about Colin. She ceased talking to him when he was twelve years old because my sister Emma drowned.”

  “Yes, I remember, you told me that earlier.”

  “She blamed it on Colin, which wasn’t the least bit fair. Emma wasn’t a baby. She shouldn’t have gone to the river alone. Colin is the best brother in the world. I think you’ll like him.”

  “I’m sure I shall.”

  “My mother was one of those people who talks a lot, and all the talking she might have done to Colin, she did to me, so I got a double dose of her grief and anger and-and hatred. How could she hate her own son? It made me love Colin all the more. I didn’t see him much, though. He was away at school and then at Oxford, and then he went to London and became a rake.”

  She sighed. “My nurse, Mrs. Fletcher, did her best to shield and comfort me until she was pensioned off. I visit her sometimes, and she is always kind to me. To Colin, too. Her son is Colin’s valet.”

  Julian said nothing, and Daisy realized that she was rambling again. “Now that I can see it more clearly, I realize that Mama was afraid she would lose me, too. She went everywhere with me, talking unceasingly, warning me of the world’s dangers. Not merely the kind of accident that had taken Emma, but rakes and ravishers and so on. She wouldn’t even let me walk to the village alone or with my governess. I appealed to Colin, who allowed me to go to school in Leicestershire, which made her hate him all the more. But soon I was too old for school and had to stay at home. Mama refused to take me to London. She said Colin’s pernicious influence would ruin me. She moaned about how tedious it was, stuck in Lancashire with me. She even—”

  “What?”

  Daisy shook her head, then swallowed her pride. “Sometimes, when I said or did something she didn’t like, she said Emma would have been a better daughter, not a bore like me. She wished Emma had lived and I had died instead.”

  “Good God.”

  “I just wanted to get away from her. Can you understand?” Daisy loathed the pleading note in her voice.

  “Completely.” Julian’s voice was cold. “So that’s why you dislike the word boring.”

  She shrugged. It wasn’t, not really. Well, maybe partly, but she didn’t want to enlarge on that particular subject. “And then I met Reggie.”

  “A handsome, swashbuckling smuggler.”

  She let out a tiny, mirthless chuckle. “Yes, he was handsome, and he certainly seemed swashbuckling, like a pirate from a romantic novel. Now that I am acquainted with many smugglers, I realize most are ordinary men doing a dangerous job, and bravado is sometimes necessary. In any event, he came out of the village inn just as I dropped a hatbox, and he bowed politely and restored it to me.”

  “At which point your mother almost had an apoplectic fit.”

  She flinched.

  “Another faux pas on my part?”

  “She didn’t have apoplexy until later. That day in the village, she took my arm and steered me away, but not before our eyes had met. It was instantaneous lust on both sides. Not that I knew much about lust, having been so sheltered, but my mother couldn’t control my imagination. In my innocence, I thought he loved me. I thought I would be the one Warren to prove that love existed. So stupid of me! To make a long story short, chance encounters led to assignations. Kissing him was exciting.”

  “I’ve noticed how much you enjoy kissing.”

  Daisy felt herself blushing. “Yes, but I was led to believe doing more would be even better.”

  Julian took her hand. “It can be. It will be. Love makes a big difference to enjoyment.”

  She frowned, finding this absurd, but reminded herself once again that Melinda had said much the same. “Why should that be?”

  “Because the loved one’s enjoyment is as precious as one’s own, if not more so.”

  “What a beautiful thought.”

  “And perhaps because one can be oneself.”

  Once again, she recalled what Philippe had said: Sir Julian is not what he seems.

  “You can’t usually be yourself?”

  “Can anyone? We all have personal façades that we maintain except in the most intimate of relationships. Your hard, indifferent exterior, for example, which you find difficult to maintain with your family.”

  His assessments were disconcertingly accurate. “And you? What are you really like?”

  “Not much different from what you see, but perhaps that’s because I have so few close relationships.” He cocked his head ruefully. “I’m going to have a hard time controlling my anger with Philippe, because he’s one of my oldest friends.”

  That might explain Philippe’s ability to assess Julian, although it still didn’t explain what he’d meant. “You don’t want to lose that friendship, and yet you feel it’s your duty to report him.”

  “Perhaps. It depends on the dictates of my conscience.”

  “Aren’t duty and conscience the same?”

  “I wish it were that simple.” A mournful note had crept into his voice. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “There must be a way to work it out. There always is.” It occurred to her that she had just implied that there was a way to work out her own problem, too. She hoped so, more and more with every passing moment, here with Julian. Sitting together, talking, holding hands.

  In bed.

  “No more stalling, love. Get on with your story.”

  “I wasn’t stalling. I—” Oh, very well, maybe she had been stalling. Maybe she’d hoped, in some small, cowardly part of her mind, that she would learn some deep, dark secret about Julian that would prevent her confiding in him.

  He truly didn’t seem the deep-dark-secret sort. Reserved, certainly, but what of it? She took a resolute breath and soldiered on.

  “At last I sneaked out at night to meet him. I took Snappish from the stables and rode to the Diving Duck.”

  “Reggie let you ride there alone? Damn the fellow. Obviously he cared nothing for you and only for himself.”

  “Yes, but how was I to know? At the time, it felt deliciously daring to set out on my own. At first it was exciting. Lots of kisses and caresses.” Daisy knew she would enjoy that part of the process. “Do you want to caress me?” she asked wistfully. “I mean, before we do more?”

  “My dear girl, I want to caress and kiss and lick you all over.”

  Heat exploded within her.

  “But I won’t until I’m reasonably sure you won’t flinch and run away.”

  She had to get this over with. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast. “I won’t run away.”

  “No?” He palmed her breast gently, then rubbed his thumb across the hardened nipple. She shuddered with desire. “Are you sure?” he asked again, ruefully this time.

  “Yes.” She pushed her breast into his hand again. “I like that. Well, unless you squeeze it hard. That hurts.”

  “That’s what he did to you?”

  “Not at first, but later, when he was angry.”

  “He became angry with a beautiful woman in his bed . . .” Julian ceased his gentle caresses, frowning. “Ah, did you try to stop him? That might anger a man, but it doesn’t excuse him.”
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br />   “Not at first, but after an hour I’d had enough!”

  “An hour?” Julian considered questioning her on the accuracy of this statement, but held his tongue.

  “Yes, only an hour, damn you! I’m sorry I’m lacking in proper stamina, but that’s just the way it is. So you may leave now and find yourself a real woman, thank you very much.”

  Appalled, he dropped his hand from her breast. What had the beast put her through? A virgin, her first time . . . “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She turned from him, weeping now, with rage or shame or what, he couldn’t tell. “At first I didn’t mind too much, but after a while it hurt like the devil. I was bleeding, although I didn’t realize that until I reached home, and he kept cursing and changing positions and ramming into me! Of course I tried to stop him. I did stop him. I yanked myself away and kicked him, and grabbed my clothing and left, but not until after he’d told me . . .”

  “Told you what?”

  She said nothing, but her bosom rose and fell. She’d already confessed to an appalling experience, but apparently they hadn’t reached the end. She got off the bed and walked away. “I wish you hadn’t said you won’t leave, because you must.”

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but didn’t get down. Let her have a bit of distance, if that helped. “I’m waiting, Daisy. Just tell me.”

  “Oh, very well.” That petulant voice meant she’d raised a wall between them, but at least he now had the ammunition to tear it down again. An hour! As a lady with an excessively proper mother and likely no other source of information, she’d had no notion what to expect.

  “He said that I was boring in bed. In fact, that I was a bore in general, and that now that he’d sampled a lady . . .” She gritted her teeth. “He said that word, lady, as if it meant excrement or worse.” She stormed across the room and back, not meeting Julian’s gaze. “He said he now knew why gentlemen had to have mistresses, and he’d stick to ordinary whores from now on.”