Chapter Four #2
Apprehension breathed gooseflesh along Lucy’s skin. Wrapped up in the tale of the Methven inheritance, stifled by guilt, she had forgotten for a moment that Lord Prestonpans had dropped her well and truly in trouble with his ill-considered ramblings earlier.
“You do not deny it,” Methven said after a moment. “So it must be true. You wrote the erotic letters that scandalized society last year.”
He strode across to the fireplace and laid one arm along the mantel. Every action spoke of latent power and authority. Lucy felt completely intimidated and was equally determined not to show the fact. She stood up, because being seated when he was standing made her feel at an acute disadvantage.
Her palms were damp. She rubbed them on her skirts. “I did not realize how Lachlan’s friends would use those letters,” she said. “I had no notion.”
“Ignorance is an excuse you have already tried this evening,” Methven said pleasantly. “It wears thin. Your gullibility has been fairly extensive, hasn’t it, Lady Lucy? How did you expect people would use erotic letters?”
Lucy’s face was burning. “I agree that my na?veté has been extensive,” she said, between shut teeth.
Methven stepped away from the fireplace and came toward her. He took her gently by the upper arms, turning her so the candlelight fell on her face. He did not let her go; his hands were warm on her bare skin above the edge of her gloves, and his gaze on her face made her feel mercilessly exposed.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked.
“My lord!” Lucy was genuinely shocked. She could feel even hotter color stinging her cheeks now.
“It’s a fair question,” Methven said, “under the circumstances.” He looked unmoved by her outrage, amused even. “The erotic letters hint at an experience far greater than that of the average debutante. Not—” he appraised her thoughtfully “—that you are average, precisely. Far from it.”
“My experience or lack thereof is no business of yours, my lord,” Lucy said. “That is a scandalous question. No gentleman would ask it.”
Methven inclined his head ironically. “Then I am no gentleman. And I would still like to know the answer. Could one write like that without knowing what it truly felt like to make love? I think not.”
“There was no personal experience in my writing,” Lucy said.
She was feeling strange; her head felt too heavy and too light at the same time, as though she had been drinking champagne.
She was suddenly aware that Methven’s hands had slid down her arms to hold her lightly by the elbows.
She wanted to tell him to let her go because it felt disturbing, far more so than a simple touch should.
And then he stroked the tender skin in the hollow of one elbow with his thumb, such a sweet caress that it made her catch her breath and made the blood flow heavy like honey in her veins.
“You must have an extremely vivid imagination,” Methven said softly.
“I have no imagination at all,” Lucy said, trying to concentrate. “Writing is purely an academic exercise for me.”
She saw her words had surprised him. His hands stilled on her. There was curiosity and speculation in his eyes.
“Pure is not really the right word to describe your writing,” he said. His gaze narrowed on her face. “Are you telling the truth? Such provocative words did not affect you in any way?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucy said impatiently.
She gave a little dismissive shrug. “Lachlan wanted love letters, so I researched what a love letter should be and wrote some. I do understand that some people find them stimulating to the senses, but I—” She stopped.
She was not going to tell him that she had locked any and all desires away long ago in order to spare herself pain.
“You?” Methven prompted.
“I don’t find them remotely arousing,” Lucy said truthfully.
Methven nodded slowly. She did not understand the expression in his eyes. “How interesting,” he said. “So the letters were not drawn from personal experience at all.”
“Certainly not,” Lucy said. “They were drawn from my grandfather’s library.”
That made him smile and in that moment she saw her chance. His attitude seemed to have softened toward her a little. She would have to take a risk.
“Are you going to give me away?” she asked. She thought it was better to be direct than to prevaricate. Or beg. Begging was out of the question. She was not that feeble even if she was desperate.
For once he did not answer her immediately. His face was pensive. After a moment he said, “Perhaps you should have considered the consequences of your actions, Lady Lucy.”
He was right, of course. She should have done so.
She wondered now if rather than being naive she had been deliberately reckless.
In her deepest heart she had known the trouble that would be caused if the truth about the letters came out, and yet she had written them.
She had no explanation as to why she would do such a thing.
Except that the letters had been a small rebellion, exciting, dangerous.
She had challenged all the stifling rules that bound her, and it had been exhilarating.
Besides, she had thought herself safe. She had thought no one would ever unmask her.
“You are right,” she admitted grudgingly. “It was stupid of me.”
“It was foolhardy and dangerous.” He sounded unyielding and unsympathetic. “You have interfered in several people’s lives and done a great deal of damage.”
Lucy felt like a chastened schoolgirl. “I realize that it was wrong,” she offered. She tried her special smile again, the one without guile, the one that generally made men melt like butter. “I have apologized.”
It did not work. Methven smiled too. Grimly. “You are trying to manipulate me,” he said. “I am not so susceptible, Lady Lucy, I assure you. I think...” He paused. “I think the people you deceived should be told.”
“No!” The stark, black panic was on Lucy now, threatening to swallow her whole. Perhaps begging was not out of the question after all. She struggled to stay calm.
“You could not prove I wrote them,” she said defiantly.
His smile deepened. “I could have a damned good go at trying, and it would please me to do so.”
Just the hint of impropriety would be sufficient. Lucy knew that.
“Please—” She heard the entreaty in her own voice, and this time there was no guile at all. “I know I deserve—”
“To be punished?”
His words, hot and dark, tugged something deep inside her.
It was a sensation Lucy had never felt before and it was so swift and so fierce that she gasped.
A shocking bloom of warmth and pleasure spread low through her body.
Her eyes jerked up to his face, to meet the turbulent heat in his eyes.
He gave a low exclamation and the next moment she was in his arms and he was kissing her.
Lucy had not been kissed since that night at Forres Castle. It was not the sort of thing that she invited gentlemen to do. She had never even thought about what it might feel like to kiss someone again, not even out of intellectual curiosity.
This kiss was not like the one she had shared with Robert Methven years before.
It felt fierce, heated and complicated, with no concessions to her inexperience.
She felt his tongue tease her lips apart and she opened to him and he took her mouth completely.
His tongue swept across hers, tasting her as though she were honey, and a powerful heat washed through her, scalding her, shocking her.
Immediately she was lost and out of her depth.
There was too much here, too much of dark pleasure, too much carnal promise, overwhelming, impossible to understand.
It had happened far too fast and now the shock and the fear caught her equally quickly.
She was shocked that after what had happened to Alice she could even feel like this, feel such passion, such desire.
Then, a heartbeat later, guilt caught her too, and the familiar terror, and she froze in his arms.
He felt it and drew back from her. She heard him mutter a curse.
She wanted to run away, frightened at emotions she could not begin to comprehend, but he held her close, her cheek against his shoulder, his lips on her hair, and gradually the fear faded.
Within the circle of his arms she felt safe and protected; she felt sixteen again holding his promise against her heart.
It was so unexpected a sensation that she relaxed, her breath leaving her in a sigh and her body softening. Only then did he speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His tone was rougher than she had heard from him before, but it did not frighten her.
She knew his anger was not for her. He released her.
She could not look at him, gripped as she was by a sudden shyness that paralyzed her.
So he put his hand under her chin and made her meet his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I went too far, too fast.” There was regret and gentleness in his eyes and Lucy felt the floor shift beneath her feet and felt her stomach slide.
He released her. Confusion swept through Lucy then because she was remembering that no matter how she had felt before, this was now, and she had betrayed him and he did not like her for it. Yet despite that, something had happened between them, something dangerous, something she did not understand.
“I think,” she said—and her voice was a thread of sound—“that you should go.”
He looked at her for a long, long moment and his eyes were dark, his expression opaque, and she had no idea what he was thinking. Then he nodded abruptly.
He bowed and went out. Lucy heard the library door close.
She sank down onto one of the spindly cherrywood chairs, then got up again straightaway and went over to the sideboard, where she poured herself another glass of Lord Brodrie’s best claret.
She needed a drink. The burn of the liquid against her throat steadied her.
She drained the glass and filled it again.
The fire felt too hot. She moved away to a window seat, pressing her fingers against the cold diamond panes. It was as though her body was too heated, sensitive and on edge, wanting something.
“Lucy?”
She had not heard the library door open, but she saw that Mairi was standing on the edge of the Turkish rug, watching her. The candlelight glittered on the silver thread in her gown. Mairi’s gaze went to the glass in Lucy’s hand. Her eyebrows shot up.
“I saw Lord Methven leaving,” she said.
“We were discussing literature,” Lucy said. She drank some more claret and felt it slip through her veins, soothing her.
“Of course you were, Lucy,” Mairi said dryly. “I always find literary discussions so exciting they leave me looking as dazed as you do now.”
“It’s the drink,” Lucy said.
“And the kissing,” Mairi said. “You should see yourself.”
Lucy looked up at her reflection in the big mirror that hung above the fireplace.
Her eyes looked a hazy dark blue. Her lips were stung red and slightly swollen.
She pressed her fingers to them and felt an echo of sensation through her body.
Her hair had come undone from its remaining pins.
She had no notion how that had happened.
She had no notion how any of it had happened.
She was not sure what disturbed her more: the kiss or those sweet moments after in Methven’s arms when she had felt protected and safe.
Now you know how Alice felt.
Immediately Lucy felt the cold fear take her.
It was impossible. She had never felt physical desire, not when she had read the erotic tales, not even when she had written her own sensual poetry.
Yet one minute in Lord Methven’s arms had awakened emotions in her that she had never known, feelings that terrified her because she knew where they could lead.
She did not want to feel any of them.
Lucy shrank in on herself, the cold lapping around her again. Alice had given herself up to love and passion, given her heart, given her whole self, body and soul. It had ended in shame and misery and pain, and Lucy would never, ever make the same mistake as her twin had done.
“It mustn’t happen again,” she said aloud.
There was a mixture of amusement and cynicism in Mairi’s eyes.
“How naive you are,” she said gently, taking Lucy’s arm and steering her toward the door. “Once it has happened once, of course it will happen again. The only real question is when.”