Lady Whistledown Strikes Back Page 10

  “I wish I had a better answer,” he said, “but the truth is, I don’t know why I never told you. The time was never right, I suppose.”

  “We can’t talk here,” she said, suddenly aware that they were still standing in the doorway. Anyone might hear them and wake up. “Come with me,” she said, taking his hand and tugging him inside. She couldn’t take him to her room—that would never do. But there was a small salon one flight up that was far from anyone’s sleeping quarters. No one would ever hear them there.

  Once they’d reached their new location, she turned to him and said, “It doesn’t matter. I understand about Harry. I overreacted.”

  “No,” he said, taking her hands in his, “you didn’t.”

  “I did. It was the shock of it, I suppose.”

  He lifted her hands to his lips.

  “But I have to ask,” she whispered. “Would you have told me?”

  He stilled, her hands still in his, hovering between their bodies. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I suppose I would have had to, eventually.”

  Had to. It wasn’t quite the wording she’d thought to hear.

  “Fifty years is a long time to keep a secret,” he added.

  Fifty years? She looked up. He was smiling.

  “Peter?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “Will you marry me?”

  Her lips parted. She tried to nod, but she couldn’t seem to make anything work.

  “I already asked your father.”

  “You—”

  Peter tugged her closer. “He said yes.”

  “People will call you a fortune hunter,” she whispered. She had to say it; she knew it was important to him.

  “Will you?”

  She shook her head.

  He shrugged. “Then nothing else matters.” And then, as if the moment weren’t perfect enough, he dropped to one knee, never letting go of her hands. “Tillie Howard,” he said, his voice solemn and true, “will you marry me?”

  She nodded. Through her tears, she nodded, and somehow she managed to say, “Yes. Oh, yes!”

  His hands tightened on hers, and then he stood, and then she was in his arms. “Tillie,” he murmured, his lips warm against her ears, “I will make you happy. I promise you, with everything I am, I will make you happy.”

  “You already do.” She smiled, gazing up at his face, wondering how it had become so familiar, so precious. “Kiss me,” she said impulsively.

  He leaned down, dropping a light kiss on her lips. “I should go,” he said.

  “No, kiss me.”

  He drew a haggard breath. “You don’t know what you ask.”

  “Kiss me,” she said again. “Please.”

  And he did. He didn’t think he should; she saw that in his eyes. But he couldn’t help himself. Tillie shivered with a thrill of feminine power as his lips found hers, hungry and possessive, promising love, promising passion.

  Promising everything.

  There was no turning back now; she knew this. He was like a man possessed, his hands roaming over her with breathtaking intimacy. There was little between her skin and his; she was clad only in her silk nightdress and robe, and every touch brought thrilling pressure and heat.

  “Turn me away now,” Peter begged. “Turn me away now and make me do the right thing.” But his grip tightened as he said it, and his hands found the curve of her bottom and pressed her shockingly against him.

  Tillie just shook her head. She wanted this too much. She wanted him. He’d awakened something within her, something powerful and primitive, a need that was impossible to explain or deny.

  “Kiss me, Peter,” she whispered. “And more.”

  He did, with a passion that stole her very soul. But when he pulled away, he said, “I won’t take you now. Not here. Not like this.”

  “I don’t care,” she nearly wailed.

  “Not until you’re my wife,” he vowed.

  “Then for God’s sake, get a special license tomorrow,” she snapped.

  He pressed one finger to her lips, and when she looked at his face, she realized he was smiling. Quite devilishly. “I won’t make love to you,” he reiterated, his eyes turning wicked. “But I’ll do everything else.”

  “Peter?” she whispered.

  He swept her into his arms and deposited her on the sofa.

  “Peter, what are you—?”

  “Nothing you’ve ever heard of,” he said with a chuckle.

  “But—” She gasped. “Oh my heavens! What are you doing?”

  His lips were on the inside of her knee, and they were moving up.

  “Rather what you think, I imagine,” he murmured, his mouth hot against her thigh.

  “But—”

  He looked up suddenly, and the loss of his lips on her skin was devastating. “Will anyone notice if I ruin this gown?”

  “My…no,” she said, too dazed to put together anything more complete.

  “Good,” he said, and then he gave it a yank, ignoring Tillie’s gasp when the left strap separated from the bodice.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been dreaming of this moment?” he murmured, moving his body up along hers until his mouth found her breast.

  “I…ah…ah…” She hoped he didn’t really expect an answer. His lips had found her nipple, and she had no idea how it was possible, but she swore she felt it between her legs.

  Or maybe that was his hand, which was tickling her in the most wicked way possible. “Peter?” she gasped.

  He lifted his head, just long enough to look at her face and drawl, “I’ve been distracted.”

  “You’ve…”

  If she’d meant to say more, it was lost as he moved back down, his lips replacing his fingers in her most intimate place. Dozens of words flooded her mind, most involving his name and phrases like You shouldn’t, You can’t, but all she could seem to do was moan and mewl and let out the odd “Oh!” of delight.

  “Oh!”

  “Oh!”

  And then once, when his tongue did something particularly wicked, “Oh, Peter!”

  He must have heard the squeak in her voice, because he did it again. And then again and again until something very strange happened, and she quite simply exploded beneath him. She gasped, she arched, she saw stars.

  And as for Peter, he just lifted himself up and smiled down at her face, licked his lips, and said, “Oh, Tillie.”

  Epilogue

  Triumph!

  For This Author, that is.

  Was it not hinted right in these pages that a match might be made between Lady Mathilda Howard and Mr. Thompson?

  A notice appeared in yesterday’s Times, announcing their betrothal. And at last night’s Frobisher Ball, Lord and Lady Canby declared themselves delighted with the match. Lady Mathilda was positively radiant, and as for Mr. Thompson—This Author is gleefully pleased to report that he was heard to mutter, “It shall be a short engagement.”

  Now then, if only This Author could solve the Neeley mystery…

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 21 JUNE 1816

  Julia Quinn

  When Julia Quinn created Lady Whistledown in her groundbreaking novel, The Duke and I, she never dreamed that the character would take on a life of her own. Readers everywhere were fascinated by the mystery of her identity, and Julia’s Korean publisher was even forced to put up an internet bulletin board so that her fans in that country could discuss her books.

  The author of twelve novels and four novellas for Avon Books, she is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest. Her next novel, When He Was Wicked, will be published in July 2004.

  Please visit her on the web at www.juliaquinn.com.

  The Last Temptation

  Mia Ryan

  For my Mamo.

  I meant to dedicate one to you

  a long time ago, Mams.

  Hopefully God lets you take time off

  from being the most be
autiful angel up there

  to get some good reading in.

  Chapter 1

  This Author suspects, however, that if any of Lady Neeley’s guests were to point to the true tragedy of yestereve, they would not mention the missing bracelet but rather the uneaten food. (The guests were, rather tragically, torn from their meal during the soup course.) This Author has it on the best authority that the menu was to have included lamb cutlets with cucumbers, veal ragout, curried fowl, and lobster pudding in the first course. The second was to have featured saddle of lamb, roast fowl, boiled capon with white sauce, braised ham, roast veal, and raised pie.

  This Author shall not remark upon the desserts, which remained uneaten. It is far too painful a subject to ponder.

  LADY WHISTLEDOWN’S SOCIETY PAPERS, 29 MAY 1816

  The entire house smelled of lobster: old, overdone lobster. Not the lovely, enticing smell that had caused Isabella’s mouth to water as Lady Neeley had made them wait for dinner the night before. Oh, no, this morning the lobster smell had permeated every thread of every cushion of every sofa and chair, and it absolutely was no longer enticing.

  Isabella Martin made her way quietly down the back servants’ stairs to the kitchen. She held her breath and carefully stepped over the stair that creaked. She did not want to face Lady Neeley, not yet, at least. And she definitely couldn’t deal with Lady Neeley’s parrot from hell. That stupid bird had made an awful night nearly unbearable. And the fact that Lady Neeley had done nothing to help Isabella left a very bad taste in her mouth.

  After ten years of being her constant companion, Isabella deserved, at the least, to have had the old woman put the pestering pest in the cupboard for an evening. But, no, Isabella had spent the entire night ducking out of the way as the stupid bird had tried to kiss her with its painfully sharp beak.

  Bugger the parrot was bugger Lady Neeley, as well, Isabella thought as she finally pushed through the door to the kitchen.

  Christophe was busy making some sort of pastry that smelled eerily of lobster. He glanced up as she came in.

  “Good morning, Christophe,” Bella said with a bright smile.

  “Good?” he asked. “You use this word and I do not think I understand it. Maybe, yes, it is good a little bit now that beautiful Bella brightens my kitchen with her smile.”

  Bella laughed and smiled wider. Ever the charmer, Christophe was. Bella slid onto a stool across the table from the French chef she had found for Lady Neeley about five years before. He was a small man, about five years younger than Bella and a good foot shorter than she, with dark hair and darker eyes. And whenever Bella felt even a little sad, she knew that she could sit in Christophe’s warm kitchen surrounded by succulent aromas and receive compliments, one on top of another until her head swam with them.

  Christophe shook his head now and blinked his eyes as if fighting back tears. “My dinner ruined!” he cried. “Ruined! For what, I ask you? Some ugly bracelet. Well, I’ll tell you, Bella, this household is going to eat lobster soup and lobster biscuits until they turn green.”

  Bella grinned. “The biscuits or the people?”

  Christophe frowned and pounded at his dough. “I am not in the mood for laughing this morning, Bella, ma chérie. Is society all abuzz this morning about the artistry that comes out of my kitchen? They should be, oui? Mais non! Ne pas c’est matin. No, this morning Lady Whistledown talks about the dinner that never happened and some horrible bracelet.”

  Christophe sniffed dramatically and shook his head as he viciously pinched off bits of the dough he had finished kneading and placed them onto a greased pan. “I have cried all of my tears, though, so you are fortunate that you will at least not have to see a watery Christophe this morning.”

  “A watery Christophe sounds terribly unappetizing, I must admit,” Bella said.

  Christophe paused in his work, a greasy bit of dough suspended between them. Bella frowned at the fishy smell that wafted up from it.

  “You seem rather more perky than you ought to be this morning,” Christophe said. “Must I remind you that your party was ruined last night? It was my food, oui, but you are the one putting all of Lady Neeley’s parties together. And as I always do, I will once again remind you that you are a genius.”

  Bella grinned. “Thank you, dear.”

  “But you are not at all upset this morning?”

  “Well, of course, I am a little sad. But, really, I’m just happy to be away from the parrot.”

  Christophe grimaced. “What has happened to that devil bird? It was always a really awful thing, spitting at everyone, but all of a sudden it is now trying to make love to you, I do swear. And according to Mrs. Trotter, it now talks incessantly. It will not shut up. It is making the housekeeper mad.”

  “Yes, well, I was tempted on many occasions last night to leave a window open in hopes that the thing would make an escape,” Bella said.

  Christophe giggled as only the young Frenchman could. “Perhaps Lady Neeley would follow the dreaded thing.”

  “Christophe!” Bella frowned at the chef.

  He just rolled his eyes and shrugged, and then he shrieked, “My tarts,” and ran for the oven. He twirled in a circle, grabbed a quilted pad off the peg on the wall, yanked open the oven, and pulled out a tray laden with beautiful, flaky strawberry tarts.

  “I knew I smelled something that was not completely of the lobster variety.” Bella sighed and clasped her hands at her breasts. “They’re gorgeous!”

  “Just wait until you taste them, my beautiful Bella,” Christophe said, prancing about the kitchen as he readied a plate for her. “We mustn’t forget the pièce de résistance,” he said and sprinkled sugar over the whole lot.

  Bella could barely contain herself and plunged into the lovely pastry the second Christophe put the plate in front of her. “Ohhhh,” she said around a gooey bite. “You are divine, Christophe.”

  “Of course I am,” he told her. “And before I forget, I need you to tell me what you want to eat for your birthday. Anything your heart desires is yours. Well, in the culinary sense, at least.”

  “My birthday?” Bella asked, licking at bits of strawberry tart that had clung to her lips.

  Christophe batted his lashes at her. “I shall wait until you have swallowed before continuing this conversation, thank you very much.”

  Bella laughed and swallowed. “It is going to be my birthday, isn’t it?” she cried. “I had forgotten.”

  “Of course you have, darling, I shall probably put it completely out of my mind when I turn thirty as well. Thank God that won’t happen for five more lovely years, though.”

  Bella blinked. “Thirty?”

  “A traumatic age, je pense,” Christophe said. “So you just write down exactly what you would like for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it is yours, ma chérie.”

  “But I am not turning thirty,” Bella said. “It is my twenty-ninth, I’m very sure of it.”

  “Oh, come, you didn’t even remember it was your birthday. And, definitely, it is your thirtieth.”

  The strawberry tart, which had been light and sweet and very near perfection, suddenly tasted like dirt in Bella’s mouth.

  “On June twelfth, eighteen-fifteen, you turned twenty-nine, Isabella Martin. I remember it clearly. You became drunk off the trifle and sang a song to Mrs. Trotter that made Lady Neeley cry.”

  “You promised you would not repeat that,” Bella reminded him.

  “And that means that exactly two weeks from today you are going to turn thirty,” Christophe announced with a flourish of his hand.

  Bella pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. “It is my thirtieth birthday,” she said quietly. Thirty. It wasn’t the end of the world, of course. But she suddenly realized that she had forgotten the fact of her exact age on purpose.

  She remembered thinking last year that something had better happen during the year, something to change her life. Because if her life was the same when she turned thirty years old, ther
e really wasn’t much hope it would ever be different.

  Because, even though from the time she had first entered Lady Neeley’s home ten years before, upon the death of her parents, Bella had been pretty sure that she would probably spend the rest of her life as a spinster in someone else’s home, until now she had held fast to a tiny slice of hope in her heart that something else might happen.

  But, really, after one turned thirty, the chances of anything changing in one’s life became very slim. And they hadn’t been all that numerous when she was twenty-nine.

  “Now then, your menu, Bella?” Christophe stood before her, a feathered quill in hand, a piece of paper on the counter between them.

  “Er,” Bella said, food being the last thing on her mind.

  “There you are, Miss Martin!” shrilled Lady Neeley.

  Bella and Christophe turned as the thin, white-haired woman entered the kitchen, the wretched parrot perched upon her shoulder.

  Christophe stiffened as the parrot screeched, “Martin, Martin, Martin,” and launched himself at Bella.

  The bird’s talons pierced the material of Bella’s dress and scratched her shoulder as his beak pecked mercilessly at her neck and ear. She was going to kill the bird.

  “Might I suggest a parrot stew?” Christophe whispered.

  “I don’t know why he has suddenly found you so appealing, Miss Martin, but it is quite cute, isn’t it?” Lady Neeley asked with a laugh.

  “Take that bird out of my kitchen,” Christophe said.

  “Of course, Christophe, of course. Come along, Miss Martin, I have a very big favor to ask of you.” Lady Neeley swished her skirts and walked out.

  Bella stood, trying to keep the parrot’s beak away from her eyeball or anything else that could be permanently damaged, and followed Lady Neeley. Hopefully the woman wasn’t going to ask anything too difficult of her. Bella did feel like getting back into bed and pulling the covers over her head.