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They stood too close beneath the umbrella for her to look long into his eyes. The rain about them served as walls penning them in, and despite the cool night air, she felt warmed by his nearness. She noticed the driver and footman discretely looking away.
“I should return you your winnings. It was not fairly won.”
At his frown, she added, “At the very least, I should offer you the opportunity to win back your money.”
“I would rather have your company.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
“I am to spend some days in the country at the Chateau Follet,” he continued. “I would be much obliged if you were to join me.”
She hoped her mouth did not fall dumbly agape at yet another outrageous proposition from the Baron Rockwell.
“That is no mere invitation to tea,” she said, unsure of how she should feel. Is that why he had let her win at brag? Were her winnings intended as a payment of sorts for her company? Had he sought her out in coming to the gaming hall then? And above all, why her?
With his uncanny ability to read her thoughts, he answered, “Your winnings tonight are yours regardless of whether or not you agree to accompany me.”
“When is your intended trip?” she asked for lack of a better response.
“It is an open invitation from the hostess.”
“Lord Rockwell, you must disavow these tendencies to proposition me,” she said, feeling her wits returning. “You disapprove of my patronage at a gaming hall—a disapproval I find quite hypocritical as you are a patron of the same—yet would invite unspeakable scandal upon me were I to accept this invitation of yours.”
“Chateau Follet is immensely discrete.”
“I am neither your mistress nor your whore, Lord Rockwell.”
She saw a muscle ripple along his jaw and decided it was best to end their conversation before she incurred his wrath.
“I bid you good night.”
She stepped out from under the umbrella and managed to unlock the door despite her trembling hands. Without a backward glance, she hurried inside the house, safe from the rain and safe from Lord Rockwell.
Chapter Two
THE RAIN PERSISTED into the morning. Sitting in the comfort of his study, Halsten cursed to himself as he recalled the events of the prior night. He had been too injudicious with Miss Herwood and had spoken with the hastiness of a callow youth rather than the maturity of his thirty years. She had such an effect upon him. Despite the year that had passed, her influence only seemed to have grown more potent. Standing beneath the umbrella with her, their bodies so close it was miraculous that they did not touch, he could not resist. He wanted another night with her.
Nay, he wanted more.
He rose from his chair to walk off the tightening in his groin whenever he recalled his tryst with Miss Herwood. How lovely her derriere had looked quivering beneath the tails. How exquisite her form bent over the chair. How beguiling her groans as she succumbed to him. He had had little doubt that she would find pleasure in his forbidden proclivities. Though her initial fear and doubt was expected, she had not judged or condemned him for a deviant. She had acquiesced rather quickly—though he had proposed a wicked wager to tempt her consent. It had been an unfair wager. He knew full well he would make her spend.
What he had not expected was the impression their encounter had made upon him. Though he had not anticipated they would spend more than one evening together, he had to withhold himself from seeking her out in the following days. How often had he jerked his cock while on the chair to which he had trussed her? Even now he felt a desire to venture into the room where he kept the implements of his carnal interests and work his cock till he could think no more.
He had even taken himself to India in an effort to forget her. Granted, he had business in India to tend to, but the trip had not been necessary. He had no fondness for the long journey, and whilst in India, her absence was made more palpable. He found himself thinking of the temples that he would show her and how delighted she would have been by the markets with their teas and silks. A visit to the most infamous brothel in Mumbai proved as fruitless in erasing Miss Herwood from his mind. As he pounded his cock into one particularly limber nautch dancer who could wrap her ankles behind her head, her slender frame so light he could have picked her up with one hand, he longed for the fleshier body of Miss Herwood.
Gradually, sessions in Parliament, a passing courtship with the daughter of a Duke, and a trip to Bath with Lucille, his younger sister, did force the memory of Miss Herwood to
recede. But when he heard a friend mention the gaming hall that he knew Miss Herwood to favor, he could not resist seeing if she was still there. He wondered if she had kept the ivory elephant he had gifted her in their last and only correspondence since their affair, but Miss Herwood was not a sentimental woman. He had quickly gathered that her financial situation had not changed since last they met.
His steward interrupted his reverie. “A letter from Miss Rockwell, your lordship.”
Breaking the seal, Halsten scanned the contents of the letter. In between reprimands of his cruelty for leaving her with their Aunt Sophia and lamenting the tedium that would surely send her to an early grave, Lucille alternately scolded him and begged him to allow her to come to London.
“You treat me as you would a child,” she had complained upon his last visit.
“And I will continue to do so until you are happily married to a man who can provide for you,” he had responded without lifting his eyes from the newspaper.
“A more ruthless guardian could not be had than mine own brother!”
