To Wed a Rake(18)

“After what we shared?” she said, and there was a generous dollop of warning in her tone, just in case he thought she was a pretty little French miss to be bedded and forgotten. Now she thought of it, he had treated Emelie in a horrendous fashion.

If Emelie had really existed, of course.

He was staring at her lips and seemed to have lost track of the conversation, so Emma drew in her lower lip and then slowly pushed it out again, just to remind him how soft that lip felt against his.

“Think of Paris,” she said, her voice softer and as close to sirenlike as possible.

“Thinking of Paris has never done me the least bit of good,” he said. “Since I can’t remember the half of it.”

“How could you have forgotten me?” There was genuine indignation in her tone. After all, he had forgotten her, off in St. Albans. Just because he’d never seen as much of her as he supposedly saw of Emelie, it was still a desertion.

“I waited for you,” she said, pitching her voice low and shaky, and lowering her eyelashes the way Bethany did when she was squabbling with her husband.

“You did?” he asked, unhelpfully. “That’s very flattering.”

“Foolish, more like,” she snapped.

“Well, but you must have married quickly thereafter…. Or was I helping you commit adultery?”

“My Pierre was decrepit by the time we met,” she said. “The poor, poor man was good for nothing but lying in bed.”

“By all accounts, Pierre and I had a lot in common,” he observed.

“Not in the most important aspects,” she said. She leaned toward him and as boldly as any bird of paradise, slid her tongue along the plumpness of his lower lip. After all, didn’t he say that Frenchwomen learned quickly? She had a half claim to French nationalit fen 9;mpness of y.

She heard his breathing hitch, but he didn’t say anything.

So she leaned even closer and put her hand on his knees. She could feel muscles there, strong and sleek under her hand, begging her to run her hand higher, to—

He pulled away so fast that she nearly lost her balance and fell into the well of the carriage.

“I debased myself too many times in Paris, ma petite,” he said, and there was something implacable in his tone that told her that she had just lost the battle. “No matter how tempting you are, I will not do so again.”

“Who could have known that you had turned into a saint?” she asked, an edge to her voice. “By all accounts, you have been universally kind to women of my nationality.”

“My kindness is exhausted,” he said.

She believed him, that was the worst of it.

“I haven’t slept with a woman since I took my drunken self onto a boat coming across the Channel,” he said, lifting her chin so that their eyes met in the near darkness. “If I were to sleep with another Frenchwoman, Emelie, it would be you.”

She opened her mouth, and he stopped it with a fierce kiss.

“But I don’t do that anymore,” he said one swooning moment later. “I don’t drink, either, in case you’re thinking of getting me drunk.”

“Do you intend to give up the pleasures of the bed forever?” Emma asked with some curiosity.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s see. You sound like a monk….” She paused and let the silence dangle for a moment. “Or a eunuch.”

“Emelie! You’re shocking me. And you a young lady of good breeding.”

“Oh no,” she said. “If I was a young lady of good breeding, how would Paris have ever happened?”

“I wonder about that myself,” he said a little grimly.

“And it did,” she continued blithely. “So you needn’t worry about sullying my reputation.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m worried about my reputation.”

“That’s not fair!” Emma cried, with all the strength of her disappointment. If she went home without winning the challenge—even if he didn’t know it was a challenge—then she would have to cancel their betrothal. There was no way about it other than that. And she didn’t—

She stopped that thought and steadied her voice. “I do believe that we are in agreement that you owe me a favor, monsieur.”

He looked at her hard for a moment. The smile curling his lips made her squirm in her seat. Then he suddenly thrust open the trap in the roof and shouted something up at his coachman. Emma couldn’t hear it.

“What did you say?” she demanded.

“I’m going to fulfill my favor,” he said, settling back in the corner and crossing his arms over his chest. He couldn’t have made it any plainer that dalliance was no longer on his mind.