He could hear the echo of the auctioneer’s voice rising and falling as he sold the next item, and winced as he tried to block out the sound. Alice came across to him and laid a hand on his arm.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry, Miles. It must be very difficult for you to have to do this.”
Miles closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered the compassion in Alice’s face ten days before when they had been at the Granby Ball and she had pressed him on his feelings for his family. He had not wanted her kindness then, or her sympathy. He did not want it now. He absolutely could
He tried to find some casual words to dismiss Alice’s concerns but they seemed to stick in his throat. He wanted to back away from this unexpected emotion, to dismiss it out of hand. He grasped after his customary cool cynicism. “It is of no consequence, Miss Lister. Why, when everything is sold there may even be some profit for me to gamble away…”
He told himself that it was the truth, but the words would not come.
And suddenly, with a blinding shock that shook him to his soul, he realized that he was bitter and furious that he should be the one forced to sell Vickery and Drum, to be the man who had humbled the family pride, when it was his father with his irresponsible profligate ways who had done the real damage years before. He felt sick and angry that the late Lord Vickery had once more abrogated his responsibility by dying before he had had to sell up, leaving Miles to bear the burden of all that ignominy and to sell his honor along with his possessions. His father, whom he had idolized before their terrible quarrel and cold estrangement…He could see at last that he had kept the Breguet watch for sentimental reasons hoping, perhaps, to keep faith with his father even though at times they had been so bitterly divided. And now at last he saw that everything had gone. He had lost everything and it hurt damnably.
He found that instead of dismissing Alice as he wanted to, he had put his hand over hers as it lay on his arm. Her face was tilted toward him and her lips were parted, pale pink, soft and sweet. In her eyes was something that looked like genuine pain and concern. Miles felt something shift deep within him.
He pulled her to him and kissed her with all the pent-up rage and violence that was in him, pushing the hood of her cloak back so he could tangle a hand in her bright hair and tilt her head to bring her mouth up even more ruthlessly to meet his. He felt her gasp against his lips and then she yielded to him instantly and absolutely, and her surrender lit something wild and primitive in him, and he was aware of nothing other than the unconditional need he had for her and the whirling, painful spiral of their desire. He felt shaken to the depths of his soul and yet somewhere in that raging darkness he felt a core of peace he had not known in a very long time, a peace that only Alice could give him.
He thought nothing of her youth and her inexperience. When he had kissed her in the parlor at Spring House he had been in control, dictating the encounter, planning a calculated seduction and showing her the extent of his mastery. He had had some restraint then, but there was nothing restrained about either of them now as he drew her ever closer and Alice responded, sliding her hands across his back to hold him hard against her. He felt her tug his shirt loose, and then she was running her fingers over his bare chest and shoulders, and the sensation wrenched a groan from his lips. He angled her head to take his kiss more deeply still and felt as though he was falling into a place of mystery, heat and shadows, somewhere he had never been before, somewhere that terrified him and yet offered the most tempting peace and absolute bliss that he could ever wish for, where he did not have to fight for what he wanted because his heart’s desire was freely given and his for the taking…
“Alice!” Lizzie was calling for her from the hall. “Alice, are you all right? Where are you?”
For a moment the words barely penetrated Miles’s brain, for he was so wrapped up in the taste and feel of Alice in his arms. Then he heard the sharp tap of footsteps on the stone floor, and sanity flooded his mind with cold clarity. He let Alice go so abruptly that he had to catch her arm to prevent her from falling. One look at her face told him she was completely stunned. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were wide and dark with a mixture of shock and the remnants of heated passion and she was pressing her fingers against her lips in a gesture of bewilderment that sent a sharp, unexpected surge of tenderness through him.
Miles’s breathing slowed and the fever in his blood abated. He felt cold and shocked and disturbed in a manner that he could not quite analyze. A part of him was cursing the interruption, for surely he could have seduced Alice there and then, taken advantage of her honest response to him in order to oblige her to marry him at once and damn the lawyers and their conditions. But another, deeper part of him was so troubled he could not bear to think about it.
“Alice!” Lizzie was practically upon them.
Miles wrapped the cloak about Alice, pulling up the hood and dropping a brief, hard kiss on her lips.
“Lady Elizabeth is here,” he whispered, and to his relief she blinked and lost the look of shock and wonderment that had held her still as a sleeping princess in a fairy tale. She spun around just as Lizzie shot through the study door. Miles took strategic cover behind his desk. He had no wish to display his current physical state to all and sundry and in doing so put Alice in an impossibly embarrassing situation.
“There you are, Alice!” Lizzie exclaimed. “We all thought that Lord Vickery must have carried you off and ravished you by now! I was the only one brave enough to come to your rescue and I am relieved to find you unharmed.” She looked at Miles, making no attempt to offer him false sympathy on his losses.
Miles held Alice’s gaze for a long moment. There was a reflection of his dark desire in her eyes alongside shock and some wariness, but when she spoke she sounded quite collected and a great deal less shaken than Miles felt.
“I am perfectly well, Lizzie, I thank you,” she said. “Lord Vickery-” the tremor in her voice was almost undetectable “-I’ll bid you good day.”
“At your service, Miss Lister,” Miles said. “I will call on you tomorrow.”
Her gaze flickered to meet his. “Will you?”
“You may be certain of it.”
Lizzie grabbed her arm. “Come along, Alice! I want to show you my latest purchase! I have bought the prettiest set of china ladies…”
They went out into the hall, Lizzie chattering like a magpie. Alice did not look back. Miles heard her footsteps fade away and then she had gone.
Miles shook himself, trying to dispel the disturbing sensation that something profound had occurred between him and Alice. It was no more than lust, pure and simple. The flare of intimacy between them when she had reached out to him counted for nothing in any emotional sense. He did not wish to have any deep connection to Alice. He only wanted to sleep with her-and to have her money. He had been bored and blue-deviled by the sale, momentarily angered to think of his father’s profligacy. Alice had wanted to offer comfort and so he had taken it from her physically. He was still hard to think of her. He should have seduced her on the desk and thus compromised her so thoroughly that the lawyers would have had to retire in scandalized defeat, Lady Membury’s conditions were laid waste and a priest would have been sent for immediately.
Once again the image of Alice came into his mind, but it was not the fantasy of Alice lying in wanton submission beneath him but of her reaching out to comfort him in his loss, her pity and concern somehow touching his soul. Miles swore violently. His mind was being turned by this fever he had for her. That was the only explanation. And there was only one cure.
Three months be damned. Lady Membury’s conditions be damned. He would have Alice and he would have her money, too. She would surrender to their mutual desire. He would see to it that she did. And next time he would not behave like a gentleman. He would lock the door, ignore all interruptions and seduce her with the ruthlessness of the true rake.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS SNOWING the following morning. Pushing aside the heavy drapes that kept out both the light and the drafts from her bedroom, Alice saw that the sky looked like a fat white eiderdown that was spilling flakes like feathers in thick, whirling clouds. She pulled the curtain back as Marigold knocked on the door and came in, bearing a tray with a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of toast upon it.
“Get back into bed, miss,” Marigold scolded. “You will take a chill standing there in your nightgown!” She put
