“Is that how you amuse yourself?” he bit out. “Disguise yourself and bed whomever you like?
How many others have there been?”
Fire lit her gaze, flecks of gold in her green gaze. She swiped a hand through the air. “There have been no others.”
“Oh, I’m certain,” he scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Only _I _ inspired you to toss yours skirts to the wind.”
Angry color mottled her face, chasing off her pallor. “Stop,” she spit out, her lips trembling. “It wasn’t like that!”
“Why did you come here?” he demanded, stalking an angry path toward her. “To gloat?”
His eyes raked her, seeing past the ugly black sack she wore to body beneath, the warm flesh that had sheathed him, hugged and milked him, erasing the memory of every other woman that came before.
The memory betrayed him, inflaming him. Unable to stop himself, he hauled her against him, indifferent to her struggles.
He had never thought to see her again. And here she was. Aurora. Jane. Anger and desire surged inside him, a drugging poison smoldering through his veins.
“All this time I thought you were so different, so changed.” He burrowed his fingers through her hair. The pins dropped free, skimming the tops of his hands on their way to the floor.
“Please,” she moaned as her hair flooded past her shoulders in a rich mantle.
“So cold, so proper, all ice in your veins,” he snarled against her quivering lips, fingers fisting in the silken tendrils of her hair. “You should have told me you only wanted this.”
Crushing his lips to hers, he smothered her cry and plundered her mouth in a brutal kiss. His hands spanned her waist and lifted her onto the wet table in a hard move. Using a knee, he forced her legs apart, settling himself between her thighs.
An erection pushed at his breeches, aching and hungry for her sweetness, for the snug heat of her. Grasping her hand, he forced her to touch him there, groaning at the tremble of her slight fingers against his length. Heaven and hell in one touch. He guided her fingers over him until she moved on her own.
He ravaged her mouth, punishing her.
She submitted, complied, caressed him in feverish strokes. Not a sound escaped her as she took his kiss, suffered the savage invasion of his lips and teeth and tongue on her soft mouth.
Not fighting, but not responding. Not blossoming to life in his arms as she had done at Vauxhall.
Or at the musicale…before she had slapped his face.
Disgusted, he cursed and broke contact. Chest heaving with serrated breaths, he fought his need for her and demanded, “Why have you come?”
Her fingers traced her lips, wet and swollen from his kiss.
“Why?” he thundered.
She stared, her eyes hunted, wounded. Large and bright in her pale face. Beautiful. Hell’s teeth, even now she got beneath his skin.
Bile thick in his throat, he stepped back and swung around, the erotic picture she made with her skirts bunched between her legs atop the table too much to bear.
With the desk between them, he snarled, “Say something, damn you.”
“I—I had no choice.”
He heard something in her voice then, in her barely audible words that had him looking at her with fresh dread sealing his heart.
The agonized look in her eyes told him her next words would forever change his life.
“I’m with child.”
Chapter 17
Jane shoved her skirts down and slid down from the table, regretting the decision as soon as her knees gave out. She grasped the edge of the table, barely catching herself from falling to the carpet and shattering into pieces alongside the vase.
Seth made no move. Merely stared at her. Through her. His scar so very stark, lightening-white on his swarthy face. Her stomach heaved, pitched, and for a moment she feared she would be sick all over the fine Persian rug. She clutched a hand over her belly as if she could quell the violent reaction.
His brown gaze darkened, the amber light in the centers vanishing as he followed the movement of her hand. His granite-carved face cracked and emotion bled through. Fury. Astonishment.
Shaking his head, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a bitter laugh. “Oh, this is rich.”
His laughter carried an edge. Like a finely honed razor, she felt its slice keenly, digging and twisting into her heart. Dropping her hand, she squared her shoulders. “I’ve come because you have a right to know—”
He laughed harder, the sound slicing through her. “And you’re so concerned with what’s right, are you?”
Heat swarmed her face.
“You’ve come only to inform me of this. You want nothing.”
She dropped her gaze, studying the swirls in the carpet with rapt attention. “I don’t know,” she replied, squeezing her eyes in one long blink, mortified at the feebleness of her response.
“You sought me out at Vauxhall,” he proclaimed, his eyes narrowing. “Why? Was this your scheme?” His slid his gaze to her stomach again. “Is the child even mine?”
Her hands curled into fists, the nails digging into her tender palms. “I suppose I deserve the question.” She wet her dry lips and wondered if she would ever endure something so shaming as this again. “Yes, it’s yours. Whether you believe me or not.”
He studied her a long moment, his hot gaze roving over her face in searing thoroughness, as if he stripped away flesh and bones to see all she hid within.
“And you’re expecting a proposal no doubt?” he demanded, his voice frightening in all its calm.
Standing before him, suffering the hot condemnation of his stare, she wished she had not come.
Some shame, she decided, was in fact too much to bear.
Spinning about, she headed for the door. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I thought to accomplish—”
His hands clamped on her shoulders, whirling her around. “Don’t you?” His fingers flexed, burning through the fabric of dress. “You knew precisely what it was you wanted from me when you walked in here.”
She struggled in his arms, furious at his words because she could not deny them. “Release me.”
“What’s wrong, Jane? Is this any way to treat your husband-to-be?”
She froze, staring at him with wide, aching eyes, certain she had misunderstood.
“Isn’t this what you wanted? Can you not find the nerve to admit it?” He jerked her against his.
“Ironic, isn’t it? Once upon a time I wasn’t good enough to marry a Spencer.”
Molded so tightly together, she was unsure where either one of them began or ended. He cupped the side of her face, and the warmth of that large hand, the rasp of his calluses on her skin sparked a response deep within her. She had to stop herself from leaning into his palm like a purring cat.
“Why?” His strained voice sounded almost suffering to her ears—something her conscience could not bear. She had never set out to hurt him. Had only thought to have something for herself at long last. “Just tell me that.”
She struggled to swallow past the lump in her throat. “I—I wanted us to be together. Because of what I once felt for you.” There. She had said it. Perhaps not the full truth, but close enough.
“If you felt something for me, you have a strange way of showing it.” His grip on her face tightened. “Likely all you saw was a plump pigeon, ripe for the plucking. A convenient escape from Billings and the sort of half-life he would have you lead. You’d do anything to be free.
Even shackle yourself to me.” He set her from him forcefully.
She staggered away, touching her face, still feeling the burning imprint of his hand. His rebuff stung. It had cost her much to say those words, to admit that she had gone to Vauxhall out of the love she once felt for him, mirage that it had been.
A bitter taste filled her mouth. She hadn’t changed much over the years. At seventeen, she knew nothing of love. A woman grown, she knew even less.
Gathering the scraps of her pride, she turned for the door. “Think what you like.”
She would not suffer another moment convincing him that her foolish heart, and not a cunning scheme, drove her into his arms at Vauxhall.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she replied, hastening from the room as if the devil himself were after her. And perhaps he was.
“You march in here, announce you’re carrying my child and think to leave,” Seth’s harsh tones followed her into the foyer, as did the stomping of his boots.
“I owed you the truth,” she tossed over her shoulder, releasing a shaky, grateful breath when no butler or footman lurked near. This was difficult enough without an audience.
“Look me in the face and tell me you don’t expect me to drop down on bended knee?”
Slowly, Jane faced him, a strange calm settling over her.
She scanned his face, memorizing every stone-carved line, resting briefly on the deep scar slashing his hard mouth. Stark. Bleak. Like blood on new fallen snow.
She envisioned him dropping on one knee to the cold marble floor and asking for her hand in marriage. The vision blurred at the edges, impossible to see distinctly. Even Marcus had not extended the courtesy. Her father had negotiated her marriage in his study, minus her presence. It had been a coldly calculated union from the start. Marriage to Seth, she realized, would be little better. Born of necessity, it would be just as cold. Grow just as empty. She saw that now.
Her calm threatened to snap then, and she knew she had to flee before her composure crumbled and she fell to pieces at his feet. Later, alone, free of him, the fog would lift and her mind would clear. And in the clear she would see things perfectly—would see a solution with which she could live.
“I expect nothing from you, Seth. Nothing at all.” Expectations were for other people. Fresh young girls with their innocence and souls fully intact. It had been years since she had been such a girl. She should not have come. Should not have attempted to rob him of the chance to find such a girl.
But then it had been years since he had been such a boy.
Before she could convince herself that they perhaps deserved each other after all, she marched out the front door, her entire body trembling in fear that he would stop her…and in agony when he did not.
Seth stared after her, watching the rigid line of her spine as she ascended her carriage, the black swish of skirts at her ankles a taunting flash.
What game did she play? Surely she did not mean to depart as if matters between them were settled.
His hands curled and uncurled at his sides, his right index finger twitching with the impulse to jump down the steps and yank her into his arms. Whether to hug her or shake her, he did not know. But he resisted. The woman affected him too much, threatened his control. The very control he had sworn to never again surrender.
Standing still as stone, legs braced as though aboard ship, he watched the carriage clatter down the street.
“Seth?” Julianne approached from behind.
Instinctively he turned, shielding her from the brisk afternoon air. Taking her elbow he shut the door and guided her back to his study.
“I thought I heard Jane’s voice.”
His gut tightened at the hopeful ring in her voice.
Julianne liked Jane. There was no getting around that. “Yes, she was here. She left.”
Her face fell. “Oh. I see.” Julianne sank onto the sofa, her hand sliding along the heavily padded arm as if searching for a handhold, for reassurance. “She did not wish to see me, then.”
“We had matters to discuss.”
Her brow creased. “What could you have to discuss? I did not think you much liked her.”
The memory of Jane’s yielding heat surrounding him, binding him like silken chords, tormented him. As it had for nights. Knowing her identity changed nothing.
For weeks, his hunger for two different women had confounded him. He had ached to possess both of them. Discovering they were the same woman made sense in an odd sort of way.