“Darius, why on earth are you smiling?” Lewis sat back in his chair in his favorite room in the house, his library, and frowned. Floor-to-ceiling dark oak shelves filled with books made up three of its walls.
Standing on the opposite side of Lewis’s mahogany desk, Darius sported a half smile. He shrugged. “They don’t normally run from you. Quite the opposite, in fact—despite your scratchy disposition.” His smile grew.
Lewis tightened his jaw, keeping his foul words from escaping. He wished Darius hadn’t witnessed Sarah’s hasty departure from the dining room this morning. Difficult for him to miss when she’d collided right into him. Now, he was up to his usual jests.
Lewis glanced out the window. It was dusk and the snow had finally ceased. He hadn’t seen Sarah all day.
She’d sent her apologies, excusing herself from the last two meals, citing a headache.
It was a lie. Quite plainly, the woman was now avoiding him.
Why the hell didn’t that please him?
He should have celebrated the solitude he’d had all day. But he hadn’t. His mind returned to her again and again. Raw desire had all but crackled in the air between them. She’d been as aroused as he’d been this morning during their exchange. He was left with a prick so heavy and hard, he wanted to howl.
Her cheeks had been an adorable shade of pink just before she’d darted from the room. Fantasies of seeing her entire body flush, of plying her with pleasure until she begged him for his cock, had tormented him all damned day. He couldn’t help but imagine the sounds she’d make as he sank his length into her hot, wet sex and drove her to oblivion and back. Taking her to orgasm again. And again.
And again.
Initiating her into the pleasures of complete carnal surrender. Something that buffoon in the bedroom, Alfred, had failed to do.
Just the mention of the woman set Lewis’s body into chaos.
He had no patience at the moment for any of Darius’s antics.
There was a sudden knock at the door. “Enter!” Christ. The tension in his body had set him on edge. He didn’t normally bellow at his staff.
To his surprise, Sarah opened the door and walked in. He rose to his feet. She wore a vivid blue and green dress, and she looked so damned good, it made his mouth water. If this kept up, she was going to reduce him to panting for her like a dog.
She glanced at Darius, then at him. “My apologies. I was hoping to speak to you, but if I’m interrupting—”
“No interruption. Darius was leaving.” He’d cooled his tone. Affecting a bland expression, Lewis met Darius’s gaze. By the twitch of Darius’s lips, he could tell he hadn’t fooled him. He was suppressing his smile. Darius knew this woman was affecting him—when he was normally unfazed by women outside a pleasure club.
Darius gave a bow. “Yes, of course, my lord.” Then a bow to Sarah. “Miss Sarah.” He exited promptly, quietly closing the door behind him.
Might as well play along with the ruse. “I understand you had a headache…”
She folded her hands in front of her. “I lied.”
That was unexpected. “I know that. I’m surprised—”
“I’ve lied to you quite a lot.” She threw her arms open wide in that theatrical way she’d done yesterday. “There! I’ve said it!” Dropping her arms back down, she began to pace. “I consider myself to be an honest person. It doesn’t sit well with me that I’ve told you many untruths. I’ve become a liar—among other things. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”
Furrowing his brow, he moved around his desk, then sat on its front edge and folded his arms. A whirl of questions filled his mind. “A liar and other things?” he prompted, since all she was doing at the moment was wearing out the rug with her pacing. “Care to elaborate?”
“Not really. It’s all quite humiliating.” Still pacing.
Clearly, this was going to be like pulling teeth. “Are you saying you aren’t a suffragist? You haven’t studied mathematics? You never attended the University of London?”
“No, that’s all very true. I have First and Second Class Honor degrees in science and mathematics. I teach mathematics too.” More pacing.
“Is this about Alfred? Don’t tell me there is no Alfred, your beloved mathematician.”
She stopped dead in her tracks. “Yes…well, no…I mean, yes.”
“What—?”
“Yes, he exists. Yes, he is a mathematician. No, he’s not my beloved. In truth, he has never been my beloved—though on the night we shared together, I thought otherwise. I honestly believed he had affection for me. I was acquitted of that clearly ridiculous notion when I woke up the next morning. As much as I hate to admit it, your assumption about him was correct. He is a cad—though I lied to you and insisted otherwise.” She wrung her hands, clearly distressed.
Lewis ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t any good with emotional women. Nor was he in the least bit pleased that he’d been right about Alfred.
He knew he hated the man.
“What happened the next morning to change your mind?” he asked, amazed that he cared to know.
Especially since it sounded uncomfortably similar to an event in his own life he never spoke about, nor allowed himself to think of anymore.
She stopped her pacing and turned to face him, her cheeks that pretty shade of pink again. “He absconded with my work, in the middle of the night, right out of my desk. By morning, both he and my paper were gone.”
Fuck. The man wasn’t just a cad, he was a despicable thief. “Bloody bounder…”
“He is indeed,” she concurred. “A good many other disreputable things too. I had been working on that paper for a year with the intention of submitting it for publication to the London Mathematical Society. If accepted, it would be my very first paper published. It is a great honor to be distinguished that way among my peers. Even more so as a woman. We must work five times harder than any man for any recognition by the LMS. Alfred has already had two of his works published. I doubt he’s written a single one of them.” She threw her arms in the air to underscore her outrage. He’d never known a woman to be as expressive with her hands and arms as this one was. It should strike him as bizarre, even annoying. But with her, he found it oddly…endearing. “The president of the LMS, Mr. Hughes, has been in Yorkshire for weeks. Everyone knows he will be at the Christmas ball hosted by the former president, Mr. Scarborough. With all his arrogance, I believe Alfred is going to present him with my paper before the esteemed members of the LMS in attendance, submitting it as his own.”
“Then, you were on your way to the Christmas party to seduce him into returning the work he stole?”
She nodded, then shrugged. “It’s what I was planning…but I have doubts now of my success in such a plan. I’m mortified at what a colossal fool I was. I willingly allowed myself to be vulnerable to him. I willingly gave myself to him…all because…” She glanced over at the crackling fire in the hearth and shook her head.
He couldn’t help but take in her profile, firelight caressing her features with its soft orange hues. This woman was so beautiful, yet she didn’t seem to even know it.
“All because of what?” he asked.
Those big, gorgeous eyes of hers returned to him. There was pain in their depths. And it pained him to see it—when he’d taught himself not to feel anymore.
“I’m too embarrassed to say.”
He rose to his feet and approached her. The tantalizing scent of jasmine snaked through his senses the moment he neared. His cock twitched in response. “We’ve all made mistakes in trusting people who don’t deserve our trust. I am the last person who would ever judge you. If you wish it, you may confide in me. I’ll not break your confidence.” What the hell are you doing? That was more than he’d revealed about himself in a very long time. He kept people at a comfortable distance, but he was drawn to this woman.
He had been from the very start.
And he was uncharacteristically allowing himself to be drawn into someone else’s world.
She swallowed, as though the words were stuck in her throat. For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t respond. Finally, she said, “Because…I wanted a love of my own. Maybe even a great love. The kind of love written about by poets. Despite what others say, what cutting words they utter, I am no different from any other woman—or any other human on this earth. I wish to be loved too.”
Her words echoed inside him. He promptly quashed that bit of nonsense. This woman was forever surprising him. Her words were raw and real. Honest. Something he wasn’t used to.
“He was my first…”
She wasn’t telling him something he hadn’t already guessed, but hearing it from her lips only increased his loathing of Alfred. Lewis was certainly no saint, but he never toyed with a woman’s affections.
“I should have known better,” she continued. “I am not what men want. I am too opinionated. My father often said I take the make out of the man. I simply don’t understand why a man wouldn’t want a woman who expresses herself. Who is authentic to who she is. Perhaps she even enjoys a hardy debate on a number of subjects. Why must they only want those who are docile, with minimal education, and petite? Why is it so undesirable to be otherwise?” There was that adorable crinkle in her brow as she frowned. “Your gender is really rather fragile.”
Lewis’s brows shot up and instantly felt a smile tug hard at the corners of his mouth. A first in a long while. “I won’t argue with that. But tell me, why seduce Alfred? Why not, if you believe he’ll have your paper in his possession at the Christmas ball, sneak into his room and retrieve it?”
Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes. She squared her shoulders. “I’ve learned that he’s done this to another woman. A fellow graduate from my university. A friend who confided in me mere days ago. He threatened to expose their single dalliance and ruin her if she told anyone he’d stolen her work and had it published. When confronted, I believe he’ll utter the same threat to me—threatening to take everything from me… Even my beloved teaching position.” A single tear slipped down her cheek. She impatiently swiped it away. “But I will not back down. I’m not going to allow him to take credit for what isn’t his, and I will not allow him to get away with this disgusting scheme of his—again. I wanted to seduce him. I wasn’t going to bed him. Just to let him believe I would and that I was so very in love with him, nothing else mattered. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I wanted to leave him feeling as betrayed as I and my friend felt afterward when he realizes he’d lost the paper. And that my feelings were false.” She sighed. “Perhaps it’s petty of me…”
Lewis didn’t admire many people in his life, but he was in awe of this one woman’s spirit. This was a display of untaught courage before him. The easiest thing would be to hold her tongue and let Alfred have the paper, just as her friend had done, and minimize her personal risk. Yet, she was prepared to risk everything, not just to right a grievous wrong for herself, but for others too.
“I disagree. It’s human. He took much from you—your innocence, your trust, your work.” Her eyes softened at his words, and for a moment, it felt as if warm nectar just poured down his spine. “What if you spoke to the president of the LMS and told him what Alfred did?”
That changed her expression. She was now staring at him as though a horn had just sprouted out of his forehead. “The disadvantages to women are beyond your comprehension, Joseph. That would be very risky. Alfred is a man. He holds far more credibility.”
He nodded at her well-founded point. “Then seduction it is. Let’s teach good old Alfred a lesson he won’t soon forget.” The things that are coming out of your mouth tonight… He wanted to teach the unrepentant scoundrel a lesson or two of his own. One of which involved his fist in the man’s jaw.
“It isn’t going to work. I deluded myself into thinking I can seduce him. He didn’t really want me to begin with. He wanted my work.”
“Is he blind?”
“No.”
“Then he wanted both—you and your work. If I’m going to help you, you’re going to stop making comments like that. Do you want my help to seduce Alfred and get your paper back, or not?”
She glanced over at the fire once more and bit her bottom lip. Lord, how he wanted to do the very same thing to that sweet lip. His groin tightened at the thought. And he tightened his hold on his control. Somewhere along the way, he’d become selfish and self-centered, caring about nothing and no one. For some reason, this woman pulled out a fraction of his old self. He wanted to help her right this wrong—if she’d let him.
She then looked him dead in the eye and said, “I do.”
“Good. Come with me.” He grabbed her hand and stalked out of the library.
* * *
Ella entered Joseph’s bedroom.
He released her hand and shut the door behind her. The room was luxurious, much like the rest of his home. Walls covered in blue damask, with a counterpane of a similar hue on his large four-poster bed. The crackling from the lambent flames in the hearth mingled with her heightened breaths. She was alone in the bedroom of the most sinfully seductive man on this side of the stars. It was a heady thought.
He had her hand again. He crossed the room with her in tow, his long legs eating up the space with rapid ease. Stopping before a tall mirror on the wall opposite the hearth, he placed her before him.
The most delectable heat emanated from his muscled body. It whispered through her blood. It had taken the better part of the day to cool the fever he’d incited in the dining room earlier.
It was spiking again.
She had to fight not to lean back into him.
He dipped his head, his mouth now near her ear. “Confidence is seductive. Confidence in knowing you have what a man wants. That you are what he craves.” His warm breath tickled her ear, sending tiny tingles rippling through her body.
“But I am not.” The words came out a little breathless.
His fingers wrapped around her wrist, and he pulled her hand behind her, pressing her palm to his trousers. She lost her breath.
“This is what you do to me. Do you feel how hard my cock is?” How could she not? He was hard as stone, his length extending beyond her hand. Without a thought, she wrapped her fingers around him and squeezed through the material, eliciting a soft groan from him. A dizzying thrill shot through her. He pulled her hand away, and she immediately mourned the loss. “What I see in this mirror is a woman who is so damned alluring. With sensuous eyes and a mouth made for pleasure.”
She wasn’t looking at herself in the mirror. Instead, she was focused on him, his handsome face. His perfect mouth she was dying to kiss. The fire in his eyes.
And he noticed.
He took a step back. “Take off your clothes.”