She nearly moaned. Worse, she nearly bared her breast to beg him to take it again in his mouth. The pleasure had receded, leaving a desperate, wanton craving that was going to drive her mad.
“I won’t,” she said stubbornly, because Moisenays were nothing if not stubborn.
“On Twelfth Night,” he said again, and drew on his gloves as if they’d concluded their business and he was ready to depart. “You’ll be begging for me to take you and vowing that you love me, desperately, completely. That you want nothing more than to be mine.”
This time he drew finger and thumb along her jaw, pressing her chin. He stared into her face as if printing her features on his memory. “All mine,” he said softly.
She pulled away from his touch and stiffened her shoulders.
“Prepare to be disappointed.”
“Neither of us are going to be disappointed, Mad. I promise you that.”
He put on his hat and nodded to her. Then he slipped out the pew door. On his way down the aisle he passed a coin to the pew opener that made the old woman’s eyes wide as shillings. She nodded vigorously in response to his murmured request. Every woman fell prey to Garrick Lockram, Lord Warin. Age and station were no barrier.
Madelina drew on her own gloves, shaking. She had to compose herself before she exited the pew. She’d been transformed by passion—by Garrick—and she had no notion what to do with herself.
She did know one thing. She had already lost his wager.
That meant she would have to cheat.
Chapter Four
Day 7: New Year’s Eve
Garrick didn’t know which was more frustrating: trying to get information from his French contacts, or trying to woo Madelina Moisenay.
The taste of her lingered on his lips, all these days later. Her throaty gasp echoed in his ear, the sign of the desire which he guessed she was experiencing for the first time. He’d be the one to introduce her to passion. She had saved that for him.
He’d known she would. He had been determined to wait until he could do justice to a woman like her.
He was ready, at long last. But was she?
He was not in the habit of seducing innocents, Garrick reflected as he arranged his cravat for the evening. Not even Cassandra Beane, the woman who made him a rake, had been untouched when she came to him. Cassandra had been clear from the start that she wanted a husband more important than Garrick, and she was using him to gain the experience to land a bigger prize. Garrick imagined few seventeen-year-old boys would have declined the opportunity to let a young woman like Cassandra practice her wiles on him. Unfortunately for Miss Beane, her bid for the bigger prize had left her with naught but a babe that required a hastily arranged marriage—not, thank God, to Garrick. He’d escaped that noose at least.
Garrick had decided at a young age that Madelina was not to be toyed with. First, she was his chum, as aggravating as young girls could be, and a bloke didn’t do poorly by a chum and permit other boys to taunt her. When she’d turned twelve and developed breasts, Garrick had been obliged to put his fist in the face of the gamekeeper’s boy, the cooper’s nephew, and the young groom who had begun teasing her in a far different fashion. When she hit fourteen and shed her gawkiness for swan-like grace, Garrick had found it necessary to relieve the fever of desire burning him like a roast. Expending himself with other women left him with enough clarity to exchange words with Mad in her new feminine form. Sometimes even full sentences.
He tied and tucked the ends of his cravat, then reached for his evening coat and worked the double row of buttons. University was accepted as a time for a man of a certain age to sow his wild oats, and Garrick had. He didn’t repent of it. But the summer he took his degree and returned home to put the estate in order after his father’s death, Madelina had been eighteen and ready to marry.
His fingers fumbled on the bronze buttons, recalling. He hadn’t been ready then. His father, a respected barrister who had circulated through various cabinet and government posts, left enough money for Garrick to take his Grand Tour, which he desperately wanted to do. He wanted the polish and sophistication that came from such a tour; more than that, he simply wanted to see the world. He knew if he put down roots anywhere about Milton Keynes he would grow into a dull, sturdy, stunted shrubbery and never see anything of the broad, magnificent globe.
But Mad, that summer. Mad with those lips and those heavy-lidded eyes, the body of a courtesan, the seductivenessshe didn’t know she possessed. He’d been unable to speak when he was around her.
And she had proposed that he marry her. Mad, so serious as she stood in the parlor of her family home, a neat linen apron over her muslin daygown, her mass of dark hair bound into a crown around her head when he was used to seeing it flow like a cloak down her back. Mad, her eyes such a wide and frightened blue as she said, quite reasonably, that if they married, they would please their parents and spare them being thrust on anyone else. She would be a tolerable wife, she said, and he…
Here she had faltered, rallied, bright embers burning in her cheeks. He would never forget her look, her words. She wouldn’t fault him for his ways, nor say a word about them.
He’d been angry. He remembered that, too. That she regarded herself as a bolt of cloth or a loaf of sugar on the shelf, to be selected and used and depended upon to perform its function. As if she weren’t a woman worth fighting for. As if she didn’t deserve so much more, then and now. So much better than him.
She belonged to him. He knew that even as he spurned her proposal, deferring his promise of a kiss. Madeline Moisenay was destined for him, a reward for his future, better self, the only future he wanted. He simply needed to grow into the man worthy of her.
But had he? He’d been foolish on Christmas Eve. He’d sprung on her too soon, forced her into a position where she couldn’t say no and save face before his mother and hers.
She washis. But he’d never had to pursue her before. How could he persuade her to yield?
On the third day of Christmas, the Feast of St. John, his mother invited guests over for the traditional sharing of the wassail bowl. Town was quiet, with so many families gone down to their country estates before Parliament sat and theSeason commenced. Garrick was the reason the Lockrams and Moisenays had stayed in town. He’d told his mother he had business to conduct, and so here they all were, entertaining with the remnants of their usual social circle while Garrick watched for the post. Watched Mad.
He’d cornered her by the wassail bowl of mulled wine and she shared a drink with him, exchanging wishes for luck and good health. He brushed her fingers as he handed her a cup, giving her the look of smoky regard that had sent more than one miss tumbling into his lap.
