A Rogue Walks into a Ball Read online

  “Why did you kiss me?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “Kissing,” he said, “is not a why proposition. It’s more in the nature of an inspiration.” He paused, then said meaningfully, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Her face burned at the memory of how eager she’d been, how she’d clung to him. “Why are you so calm about the idea of being engaged? Don’t you realize people will actually expect us to marry now?”

  “That’s usually how an engagement works.”

  She ground her teeth. Her mistake had been making this into a conversation when she needed to just make the whole thing go away. “Jack, I appreciate that you are willing to sacrifice yourself for my reputation—”

  “Sacrifice is a pretty extreme word to use in this situation.”

  “Nonetheless,” she said firmly, determined not to be distracted, “I want you to know that you can rely on me to call off the engagement. We just need to figure out how to go about it. I’ve never broken an engagement before, but I suppose the thing would be to wait a week or two, for the sake of looking like we are actually engaged, and then call it off.”

  Jack pushed himself away from the wall and moved closer to her. “We’re not calling it off.”

  Distracting little drifts of his scent came to her, notes of brandy and sandalwood and something heady that must be warm man. She forced herself to focus. “Of course we have to call it off.”

  “Is the idea of being married to me truly so awful for you?” His tone was gentle, and kind, darn him, and it fanned over the hard places in her like a beguiling summer breeze, tempting her to give in to him. She struggled against it.

  “Very well, awful is not the right word,” she said, a marvelous understatement, but how could she admit that she’d dreamed that they might marry—but never that they would have to marry? “But we weren’t... You weren’t...” God, was she supposed to spell it out for him? “We weren’t courting!”

  But he only lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I was always planning on marrying. You, apparently, don’t have any sensible plans for the future. Why shouldn’t we marry?”

  Because you don’t love me, she wanted to wail. Because I’ve lost my mind and my heart and lost hold of every sensible thought that ever guided me, and I’ve fallen in love with you.

  The feeling had been growing within her, and she hadn’t wanted to admit it, but now she couldn’t hide from the truth that she loved this man, and she wanted more than anything for him to love her as she loved him—deeply, unreservedly, passionately. And he didn’t.

  He stepped closer still, and she could have sworn that the heat of his body was warming her even though they weren’t touching, because suddenly her dress felt too hot and too tight. His blue eyes fixed on her intently, as if he found her completely interesting, and the sensation of having all his attention made her want to seal this moment in her heart forever.

  “I quite like you, Sarah Porter.”

  Her heart skipped a beat, then two. Surely he hadn’t just said that he liked her—quite liked her?

  But she knew that he had, because her mind had seized on every inflection of each syllable he’d just spoken. Her eyes searched his, and they held not the slightest hint of teasing. Instead, they shone with hot light that shifted as his gaze dropped to scorch the bare skin of her shoulders.

  He quite liked her.

  In that moment, it seemed like enough.

  He lifted a hand to her face, shaping the curve of her jaw, and the gesture felt unbearably tender. “Why not marry me?”

  As proposals went, it was not exactly what her heart yearned to hear, but there was no mistaking the sincerity in his expression, and she appreciated that he was even asking at all, because she accepted now that she’d only been railing against the inevitable, that they didn’t really have a choice about the engagement.

  “I...” She’d always been so adept at reasoning and calculating and, perhaps most of all, judging, but now, with him standing so close, she could hardly think. All she knew was that she didn’t want him to stop looking at her the way he was looking at her right then. “I suppose I could.”

  One corner of his mouth crept up, and she heard the rumble of a chuckle. “Good.”

  His head dipped, and his warm lips settled against the vulnerable skin at the curve where her neck met her shoulder.

  Achingly slowly, he nuzzled her, and the brush of his late-night whiskers slowly abraded her heating skin. Her breath caught, and she knew that she could no more have said no to him than she could have torn out her heart and thrown it on the hearth.

  He pressed against her, and the heat and strength of his body overwhelmed her, and she loved it. He guided her back against the wall behind her. Her hands flew to his chest, and she greedily spread them under the opening of his coat and explored the taut swells of his muscles. A soft sound of yearning escaped her, and his mouth claimed hers in a searing kiss that left no doubt of his desire for her.

  He broke the kiss to trail his mouth along her jaw. He paused near her ear. “I want you,” he said huskily.

  Her heart squeezed almost painfully, and she couldn’t stop herself from murmuring, “Why?” as she tipped her head backward, opening to him. He chuckled, though it was little more than a rasp, and his lips blazed down her neck and nudged at the bodice of her gown.

  “Always the questions. This is also not a why situation, Sarah.”

  He slid one leg between hers and pressed his arousal against her hip, leaving her in no doubt of his desire. “You have a great deal to learn.” Skimming his large hand along her shoulder, he caught the edge of her gown and pushed it down her arm, exposing her breast. She melted helplessly back against the wall as he nibbled and licked his way downward. “Fortunately, I’m a patient tutor.”

  His mouth slid lower, and the tip of his tongue flicked delicately against her nipple. Sarah’s last sensible thought as he took her in his mouth was that she was no longer capable of sensible thought. She might be in Aunt Louise’s prim sitting room, with its chaste cream linen curtains and its tasteful furniture, but decorum was the furthest thing from her mind. She felt wild and powerful and helpless with passion, and she didn’t want him to stop.

  He grabbed handfuls of her skirts and dragged them upward. She was breathless, her body coursing with warm honey. His hand slid over the top of her thigh and slipped between her legs. If she had ever thought about such a thing happening—and considering her luck with men, she’d envisioned little beyond a nunlike future for herself—she would never have dreamed she’d want to allow a man to put his hand... there.

  She whimpered as he slipped a finger among her private curls and parted her folds. The stroke of his finger made her body hum and yearn in ways she’d never experienced before, and she pressed shamelessly against him, seeking more.

  He groaned. His head was bowed over her shoulder, and she could feel his breath against her neck and the quickened rise and fall of his chest against her.

  “Jack,” she whispered.

  “Hmm?” Without waiting for her to continue, he said, “Do you like this?” His finger moved in circles over an exquisitely sensitive spot, and her breathing quivered.

  “I...”

  He stilled his finger, and she gasped at the abrupt cessation. He lifted his head and looked at her. In the moonlight spilling through the window near them, she saw that his hair was tousled and a sheen of perspiration gleamed on his skin. His air of urbane masculinity had been replaced by something wilder and less controlled, and she realized with a hitch of pure female satisfaction that she’d done that to him.

  “Do you, Sarah?”

  “Yes! Don’t stop,” she begged in a ragged voice she hardly recognized.

  With a grunt, he returned to her, his touch teasing and leisurely, driving her higher, her inner muscles twisting tighter in unrelenting pleasure. Her head rolled from side to side against the wall, and her fingers dug into his shoulder as she struggled toward something just out of reach
.

  “Easy,” he murmured, “let me do this for you.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she moaned. “I can’t take any more.”

  “Shh,” he soothed, even as his other hand teased her taut nipple. “You can.”

  Some resistant part of her surrendered to him then, leaving her pliant and open to him. As if he sensed the change in her, he slowed his motions to the most incremental, languorous movements. With passion-drugged fingers, she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it wide to fall down his shoulders. His skin was hot satin, the silky hairs covering his chest a new sensation as he came against her.

  Just when she thought her knees would buckle under her, the pleasure broke, carrying her on a wave far beyond herself. Lost to bliss, she was only barely aware of him catching her as she began to slide down the wall.

  “Sarah, darling,” he murmured, and as she was coming back to herself, she heard the thick note in his voice. He was still aroused, she knew, because she could feel his hardness against her hip. She wondered if the hardness was uncomfortable, but that was about all the thought she could manage to complete, because she was so very, very relaxed.

  He kissed the top of her head. “I have plans for you, Sarah Porter.”

  “Mmm...” She sighed. “Plans?”

  “But for now, you must go to bed, and I must go home.”

  As she lay in bed barely ten minutes later, still drugged from his kisses, still warm from his body, she struggled to make sense of all that had happened. She still didn’t know if their engagement was a good idea, but she also saw that she had little choice for now—and that there might be some rather wonderful benefits to being Jack’s fiancée.

  Chapter 14

  Sorella Teresa: Men are so distracting.

  Breaking the Habit, Act 3, Scene 1

  Now that they were engaged, Sarah and Jack were expected to do a great many things together. They were expected, for instance, to attend every ball to which the Hallaways were invited. Fiona, confirmed in the rightness of her love-at-a-ball belief, still had two daughters to marry off, and she felt that luck was currently on the Hallaways’ side.

  At tea one afternoon, when Fiona brought up the subject of Lord and Lady Mercer’s upcoming ball, there was a general groan among those present, which meant Jack and Kate, as Sarah would never have been so rude to Fiona.

  Annabelle was not present, having gone home to Hertfordshire to visit her father and take a brief respite from the rigors of the Season. And Alice had gone with Marcus and Rosamund to visit Rosamund’s uncle Piggott at the cottage by the sea that Marcus had bought for him. The cottage by the sea meant that Uncle Piggott no longer had to depend on his awful niece Melinda to provide him a home, but he’d insisted, before accepting the gift of the house, that Rosamund and Marcus must look on it as their holiday cottage and visit him frequently, which they were delighted to do.

  “Forgive me, Mother,” Jack said, “but doesn’t it seem that now that Sarah and I are engaged, there’s no need for us to attend so many events?”

  “On the contrary,” Fiona said. “You and Sarah, being so recently engaged, are very interesting to people right now.”

  “So you mean to use us as a sort of advertisement, to encourage suitors for Kate and Alice?” Jack asked from his customary spot on the divan, next to Sarah and near the biscuit plate. He winked at Sarah, and she smiled with that hint of shyness he sometimes caught on her face that was all the more endearing on a woman who would never be described as shy.

  Frustratingly, they’d had not a single private minute together since the night of their engagement several days before, and Jack was beginning to think he’d soon lose all semblance of civility if he couldn’t get her alone. She had a freckle on the side of her neck, almost at the back of her neck really, an extremely cute freckle, and it had been teasing him since the moment he’d sat down next to her.

  “Don’t be silly,” Fiona said. “Your sisters don’t need any sort of advertisement. But it’s sensible to have... exposure if one wishes to have results.”

  Jack laughed. “That sounds like one of those hardened gambler’s sayings: ‘You can’t win if you don’t play.’”

  “Well, it’s true,” Fiona said. “It’s impossible to find a marriage partner if you don’t circulate.” She flicked a meaningful glance toward Kate, who was looking out the window that gave onto the street. It had not escaped Jack’s attention that Kate had been taking a great many walks of late, with a maid to accompany her, of course. But he suspected, given the care with which she’d been dressing, that she had some purpose beyond exercise.

  “I can hear you, you know,” Kate said mildly, before turning around.

  “Isn’t that rather the point?” Jack asked.

  “There’s nothing so insufferable as a recently engaged person,” Kate said. “Sarah excluded, as she is never insufferable.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah said with cheerful smugness.

  “You’ll both be at the Taylor musicale tonight, of course,” Fiona said with a smile, as though the musicale were a treat no one would want to miss. The Taylor musicale evenings were long evenings, and Mrs. Taylor, a serious music lover, frowned emphatically on late arrivals and early departures.

  “Actually,” Jack said, “I’ll be giving that a miss.”

  “Oh?” Sarah said at the same time as his mother. He turned to Sarah with a regretful smile and muttered under his breath, “Trust me, I have a plan. Just make sure you get out of it too.”

  Pink colored her cheeks. “But,” she breathed, flicking her eyes toward his mother and looking a little flustered.

  Jack was eager to fluster her a great deal more, which he meant to do that evening instead of going to the Taylor musicale.

  His mother was waiting for him to explain himself, and Sarah looked curious. “I have a few things I need to take care of,” he said.

  “Can’t you accomplish them and go to the musicale? Everyone who is anyone will be there, and you know how good the reception is for mingling.”

  This was true. Since everyone in the audience was held in captive silence by the oppressive, all-seeing glare of Mrs. Taylor, the release that the reception at the end of the musicale provided was significant. People stood around with plates of notably good sandwiches and glasses of wine, and there was generally a great deal of exuberant conversation, the audience having been unable to utter a single word for hours.

  “No, I really can’t,” Jack said. In addition to the time he planned to spend with Sarah, he needed to work on Breaking the Habit. He’d promised to deliver a draft to the director of She Knew She Was Right within the next month. He also wanted to work on it, wanted to see how the story would develop. But there’d simply been no time; in the last three days alone, he and Sarah had strolled in Hyde Park with his mother and her friends, been to dinner at his cousin’s house, attended two garden parties, and squeezed in another viewing of She Knew She Was Right with Alice and Annabelle before they left Town.

  He’d skipped tea at his mother’s house twice, sending a note to Sarah both times to let her know he wouldn’t be there but that her presence would be most desired by his family, should she wish to go herself. But skipping tea had bought him only a few hours of writing time, and what he needed was an uninterrupted stretch.

  “And in all fairness to Sarah,” he pointed out, “she hasn’t had a moment to herself since we became engaged and she suddenly became a curiosity.”

  “I haven’t felt like a curiosity,” Sarah hastened to say, shooting him a look meant to scold him for using her for his own purposes.

  “You know,” Fiona said after a moment, “a break for both of you does sound like a good idea.” Jack sent his mother a grateful look. Fiona might be unflagging in her pursuit of happy marriages for her children, but she was also unfailingly considerate and quick to understand, qualities he’d always treasured in her.

  “But if it would please you…” Sarah began.

  Fiona shook her head. “Jack’s right,
dear. You two should take the night off. There will be several more events later this week, and you don’t want to become overtired.”

  “I—well, that’s very thoughtful of you,” Sarah said.

  A few moments later, Fiona cleared her throat delicately. “Kate, it’s just occurred to me that I need your help with that issue I told you about earlier.”

  “What issue?”

  Fiona stood and began walking toward the door. “That issue with your gown for the musicale.”

  “Is there an issue with my gown?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Kate’s eyebrows drifted up, the corners of her mouth trembling for a moment with gentle skepticism. “I don’t actually want to go to the musicale either,” she said, but without much spirit, as though lodging a protest for form’s sake.

  “Mmm,” Fiona said noncommittally. “Come along, dear.”

  As Kate followed Fiona, she turned to smirk at Sarah and Jack, then closed the door behind her.

  Sarah groaned. “Your mother did that on purpose.”

  Jack stepped closer, not wanting to waste a moment of this little slice of private time his mother had just given them. He took her hand and turned it over and pressed a kiss to the tender inside of her wrist. She squeaked adorably.

  “Of course she did,” he said. “We’re engaged, after all, and she’s likely just realized that we haven’t had a moment alone since the night of the ball.” He kissed just under her ear, then trailed a row of nibbling kisses toward the delectable freckle.

  “This freckle,” he muttered, lavishing attention on it and the soft, warm skin surrounding it, “is utterly charming.”

  “Which freckle?” she asked in a voice turned breathy.

  He smiled against her skin. “This one on the side of your neck.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  He kissed it again. “No, I don’t suppose you could have. I’m claiming it as my own personal freckle.”