She’d punched him. The blasted woman had punched him. Which, when all was said and done, was hardly the worst she’d done to him over the years.
Nick touched his battered jaw. Cara looked almost as startled as he felt. Before she could recover sufficiently from her shock to abuse him again, he unceremoniously picked her up, plopped her down on the table, and held her prisoner there with arms on either side of her body, his legs pressed against hers.
They were practically nose to nose. They were definitely thigh to thigh. Nick’s blood stirred. Not to mention other portions of his person. If she hadn’t noticed yet, it was a matter of mere time. Lord, how could she not notice? Or perhaps she had. There was a horrified expression in her beautiful eyes as she stared at him. Curious, he waited for her to speak. She murmured, “I never hit anyone before in all my life!”
And of course he had to be the first. Nick could not help but smile. “Did you like it?” he inquired.
Cara’s horror began to fade, to be replaced by an awareness of her position. He held her so well imprisoned that she could barely squirm. “I did, rather. I think I’d like to do it again.”
At least she wished to do something again. Before she could become enamored of the notion of further violence, Nick leaned closer still. “Pray restrain yourself,” he said, and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. Then he kissed her cheek, her temple, her eyebrows and her ear, and pulled her cloak aside so that he might work his way down her fine slender throat. When she made no attempt to stop him, not that she could have stopped him, held prisoner as she was, or that he would allow it even if she tried, he drew back to look at her. Her lovely eyes had fluttered shut. Now they opened. Her luscious lips parted. She looked adorably dazed.
“Cara mia,” he groaned, and claimed her mouth with his. The taste of her was as intoxicating as he had remembered it all these years. He plunged his tongue into her eager mouth, and his fingers in her hair, scattering hairpins everywhere. Her hand moved to his chest, tugged at his cravat. Nick gave himself up to the moment. No woman he had ever known, and he had known many women, had ever fit so perfectly into his arms.
The moment, or moments. Perhaps even hours. When Nick at last regained his senses, Cara’s cloak was on the floor, her hair not only unpinned but unbraided and tangled around her shoulders, her gown in a state of shocking disarray; while his cravat had been untied, and his shirt yanked open. Her hands were splayed on his bare chest. His hands rested on her bare skin also, one on her shoulder, and the other on her knee.
She was disheveled, bemused, and bewitching. Impossible for either of them to deny how much he wanted her now. In case she did mistake it, he moved slightly against her. She flushed. Now perhaps she would cease being such a termagant and listen to what he had brought her here to say. He leaned his forehead against hers. “Cara,” he sighed.
“Satyr! Goat!” She pushed at his chest. “Luring innocent young women to your lair!”
It would seem the moment—or moments—had ended. Nick didn’t feel like releasing her just yet. He placed his hand atop hers and captured them against his chest. “I don’t think that goats have lairs. And you’re hardly innocent, my love.”
Her fingers twitched, as if she wished to claw him. The expression in her sapphire eyes was not so blissful now. “No, nor am I young, and well I know it, so you needn’t harp on the subject. The fact remains that no gentleman would invite a well-brought-up young woman to misbehave like this.”
She was glorious, even in a temper. Nick raised her hands to his lips and kissed them. “Misbehave how? Pray be more precise.” He turned one hand over, ran his tongue along her palm, took a finger in his mouth.
“Um,” she said, distracted, and then snatched her hand away. “Release me at once, you toad, or I shall make you sorry that you did not!”
First a goat, and now a toad. This reunion wasn’t going exactly as Nick had hoped it would. However, it was going as he had expected, which was why the door was locked. He eyed her with amused curiosity. “How do you propose to do that?”
Cara glowered. She looked unutterably desirable, her lips swollen from kissing, her cheeks flushed, and her hair tumbling down her back. “I don’t know. But I promise you won’t like it one little bit.”
There would be no more kisses now, at least not willing ones. Nick wanted desperately to pick Cara up and carry her off to his bed, there to indulge in deliciously delirious paroxysms of passions that lasted for hours. After which, she’d doubtless run off to her country fortress, where long-fanged monsters lurked in the moat, and servants waited to douse him with boiling oil. Nick released her and moved away.
Cara watched him walk toward the fireplace. Absurd, to feel bereft. He moved like some sleek dark jungle beast, all sleek muscle and coiled strength, ready in an instant to pounce and bring down his prey. She swallowed as Nick took off his jacket and tossed it onto a chair, then bent to build up the fire. So there was a poker in the room. The firelight gleamed russet in his hair.
Damnation! This was what came from kissing. Yet Cara had wanted to be kissed. Well, hadn’t she? She’d even left off her stays. And now that she’d been kissed, want it or not, she wished very much for more. As if she didn’t already know what madness came from kissing Nicky! He stood up and smiled at her. Cara scooped up her scattered hairpins and ducked behind a box chair.
She was ridiculous. And enchanting. Not to mention voluptuous, her breasts thrust into fine relief as she raised her arms above her head to pin up her wayward curls. Nick could not help but think of peaches. Large, luscious, ripe peaches, so delicious for the tasting that a man didn’t care if the juice ran down his chin. And if he didn’t get control of his wayward thoughts, he was going to have to leave the room.
Having achieved a coiffure remarkably similar to a haystack, Cara lowered her arms. “You look absurd,” Nick remarked. “Cowering behind that chair. Surely you don’t think that I would do you harm?”
The frown returned. Her nose twitched. She said, “Lucasta Clitheroe.”
Lord Mannering wasn’t fool enough to be drawn into a conversation about Lucasta Clitheroe in this particular moment. “She’s the Countess Fenton now. You’re likely to encounter her at some point. It would probably be best if you didn’t try to snatch out her hair.”
Lady Norwood crossed her arms beneath her sumptuous bosom. “Whyever should I wish to do that?”
“You seem to dislike the lady.”
“I hope you don’t mean to tell me I should not!”
She looked both belligerent and wary, and so she should have been, because if Nick made up his mind to take her, that chair would not long stand in his way. Despite Cara’s opinion of him, he was a gentleman, however. More or less. Most of the time. “How do you like my house?”
She looked startled. “This isn’t your house.”
“But it is. You’re remembering the place in Bedford Square. This is also a family dwelling. Since few people associate the place with me, I can be private here. But I’m forgetting my duties as a host. Are you hungry? Would you care for some tea?” Nick eyed the lowered level in the diamond-cut decanter. “Some brandy perhaps?”
Cara had already had sufficient brandy. The sweet taste lingered in her mouth. Or perhaps that was the taste of Nicky. “Your house is beautiful,” she said. “I assume you use it for your trysts, since you were so intent on bringing Zoe here.”
“Actually, I wasn’t.” Nick watched her with some amusement. “Intent on bringing Zoe here. Your niece is terrifying. She puts me in mind of a young she-wolf.”
Cara tried hard not to chuckle, and failed. Since the marquess had apparently lost his interest in kissing her, she came out from behind the chair. “Do you deny you sent the note that brought me here?”
Nick was glad to see she’d relaxed sufficiently in his presence to be seated, although she’d find soon enough that carved mythological figures entwined with flowers didn’t make an especially comfortable perch. “True enough, I sent the note. However, Zoe’s presence here was never my intention. My servant was instructed on pain of disembowelment to deliver it to Ianthe.”
Cara stared blankly at him. “I don’t understand. You wished for an assignation with Ianthe?”
Of course he hadn’t wished for an assignation with Ianthe. Where Zoe was too young, too short, too dazzling to suit his taste, Ianthe was too tragic and water-logged. Cara, however—He said, “Don’t be absurd.”
Cara bit her lower lip and set to ruminating. Nick was silent, watching her. The ancient gown she wore was a faded blue in color, and clung to her magnificent body like he wished he might. Her hair made a brilliant, if somewhat untidy, coronet around her head. She looked like some pagan priestess about to engage in a fertility rite.
She had always looked that way. When he’d first glimpsed Zoe, during that first incredible second before he realized she wasn’t the female who had long haunted his sleep, Nick had experienced an appalling flash of déjà vu, as if the years had reversed themselves for him, and he was again seeing Cara for the first time, a moment he would never forget, for it had literally affected all the rest of his life. Now that Cara was with him again, so many years later, he found her much more captivating than she had been as a girl. Definitely she was more captivating than her niece.
And considerably more sensible. She said, “You don’t want Ianthe.”
It was a rare pleasure to watch a fine mind function. Cara’s mind was working at such a furious pace that smoke would at any moment puff out of her ears. “I do not.”
She grasped the carved chair arms. “Let me make sure I understand this. You expected me to come here.”
“I did.”
“You encouraged Zoe to set her cap at you so that Beau would persuade me to return to London.”
“I did.”
“You never wanted my niece.”
“I most emphatically do not want her.” Nick moved away from the table. “The devil, Cara, give me credit for a little common sense.”
Cara would give him credit, all right, for being a conniving scoundrel. And even more handsome than when she had seen him last. The lines of experience around his eyes and mouth suited him, as did his short hair. His shirt remained open, for she had torn off his buttons in her haste to touch his skin.
She didn’t regret it for an instant. Considerable time had passed since she’d enjoyed the sight of a man’s chest. Few chests, she suspected, were as handsome as Nicky’s. And as great a pleasure to rest against. “You are considerably better,” she said, “than a kumquat tree.”
Lord Mannering sincerely hoped that he might be. “Obfuscation,” he observed, as he poured brandy into a glass. “To confuse, and make obscure. I knew that if Beau grew worried enough about his daughter, he’d persuade you to return. Although I will confess to wondering at times if I’d bit off more than I could chew.”
He stood too close for comfort. Prudently, Cara removed herself from the chair. “You were right to wonder. Zoe throws things out of windows. She also scratches and bites. Beau is afraid you’ll play fast and loose with her.”
Nick remembered when Cara had bit and scratched, though not in a rage. Apparently she was remembering also, because she glanced at him. “Zoe says that you are very manly,” she added. “She notices these things because she means to have several affaires de coeur before she settles down to become some poor man’s wife. But she means to sample even those goods before she makes her purchase. You can see why she’s driving Beau to distraction.” Nick looked dismayed, and Cara could not stop herself from smiling. “How is your rheumatism, pray?”
Lord, those dimples. Her smile was like a blow to the belly. Or maybe to the heart. “I’ll get down on my knees for you if you wish it. I did so once, as I recall. And then you married Norwood. I have never understood why.”
His voice had turned husky. Cara was stricken briefly mute by a vision of Nicky on his knees before her, and what he might do there. She reminded herself that even her own brother had said she was grown drab and dull. “Don’t try and claim you wore the willow longer than a sennight. I know otherwise.”
He was not so foolish as to claim anything of the sort. “I never said I was a monk.”
Anyone less monkish, Cara could not imagine. The memory of his kiss still tingled on her lips. “Why haven’t you married, Nicky? You need to get yourself an heir.”
Nick was running out of patience. If Cara backed any farther away from him, she’d end up in the fire. “Why is everyone so concerned with my progeny? I have an heir, my nephew Colin, who will someday be a fine man, even if at the moment he’s driving my sister to distraction with his pranks. He’s already been sent down from university once this term. Speaking of heirs, you didn’t give Norwood one, I hear.”
To talk of heirs with Nicky was to open doors of memory best left closed. Cara looked away. “That was a different matter. Norwood didn’t require an heir. His title died with him. It is unkind of you to use me like this. I would never have thought you’d go so far to get your revenge.”
Nick wasn’t feeling kind, nor did he know why he should be expected to, when all was said and done. He placed his hand on Cara’s cheek, and turned her face to his. “Revenge is not a luxury in which gentlemen indulge.”
Her eyes narrowed. “No? Yet you brought me out in the streets of London alone at night. Anything could have happened. Had you thought of that?”
Her skin was cool against his hand, and soft and smooth as silk. Perhaps he had been base enough to wish her frightened a little bit, but never would he see her harmed. “You weren’t alone for a moment. My servants think I’m quite mad.”
“And the hackney driver?”
“He thinks I’m mad also, but it matters naught to him, because I’m also rich.”
Cara wasn’t certain she didn’t agree with them. Not that her own processes of reasoning were above reproach. “But, Nicky, why?”
His hand slid down her cheek to cup her jaw. “Because you showed no signs of returning to London on your own.”
How she wished to turn her head and press her lips against his palm. Cara stared at Nick instead. “And of course it would never occur to you to come to me.”
His thumb brushed across her lower lip. “Did you want me to?”
Difficult to remember, with him touching her like that. “I think,” Cara said unsteadily, “that I never wanted to see you again.”
Nick raised his other hand and framed her face between them. “You made that fairly clear. We have unfinished business between us, Cara. Frown at me all you will, but admit that you wouldn’t have let me in if I’d come knocking at your door.”
Could she have turned him away? Cara didn’t know. “Very well. I’ve come to London. Now will you discourage my niece?”
He bent his head and brushed his lips against hers. “No. Not unless you encourage me instead.”
Not unless she what? The scoundrel! Cara jerked away from him and raised her hand. Easily, Nick caught it. “Why are you so determined to do violence to my person?” he asked, in exasperated tones.
“I’m feeling violent.” Cara tried to twist free. Perhaps Nick hadn’t meant what she’d thought he did. Surely he hadn’t meant what she’d thought he did.
On the other hand, Cara wasn’t altogether certain she didn’t want Nick to mean what she’d thought. He had the most appalling effect on her. “What the devil are you up to, Nick?”
How cross she looked. How troubled. Nick touched a fingertip to her furrowed brow. “I’m flirting with you, cara. Has it been so long that you’ve forgotten how it’s done? And if you run off again to the country, I swear I’ll elope with your wretched niece.”