Seducing an Angel

/5/

"LADY Paget," the Duchess of Moreland said when the ball was over and crowds of people milled about, looking for spouses and offspring and shawls and fans, bidding friends and acquaintances good night, heading for the staircase and the hall below so that they would be there when it was the turn for their particular carriage to draw up in front of the steps. The duchess had just introduced herself. "Did you come in your carriage?"

"I did not," Cassandra said, "but Lord Merton has been kind enough to offer me a ride home in his."

"Ah, good." The duchess smiled. "Elliott and I would have been delighted to take you to your door, but you will be safe in Stephen's hands." /Stephen/. His name was Stephen. It somehow suited him.

The duchess linked an arm through hers.

"Let us go and find him," she said. "This end-of-evening crush is always the worst part of balls, but I am delighted there /is/ a crush tonight.

Meg was terrified that no one would come."

Cassandra saw the Earl of Merton striding toward them before they had taken more than a few steps.

"Nessie," he said, smiling at them both, "you have found Lady Paget, have you?"

"I do not believe she was lost, Stephen," she said. "But she is waiting for you to take her home."

It seemed to Cassandra that it took an age for them to leave the ballroom, descend the stairs, and make their way across the hall toward the front doors. But she soon realized why they were in no hurry. The duchess and Lord Merton were the Countess of Sheringford's sister and brother, and no doubt their carriages would be at the very back of the line.

Eventually there was no one left but the duke and duchess, Lord and Lady Montford, to whom the duchess introduced Cassandra, the Earl of Merton, Sir Graham and Lady Carling, and the Earl and Countess of Sheringford, who had just finished bidding their guests good night.

And Cassandra.

The irony of now being so very conspicuous when she had come uninvited to the ball did not escape her. Neither did the discomfort of being the only nonfamily guest still present. /Especially under the circumstances/.

Both Lady Carling and Baron Montford had offered to take her home in their carriages. She had assured both of them that Lord Merton had been kind enough to offer first.

"Well, Meg," Lord Montford said, "it is a good thing no one came to your ball. I dread to think how pushed and pulled and crushed we would all be feeling now if anyone /had/."

The countess laughed.

"It did go rather well," she said. And then, with a sudden look of anxiety, "It /did/, did it not?"

"It was the grandest squeeze of the Season so far, Margaret," Lady Carling assured her. "Every other hostess for what remains of the spring will be desperately trying to match it and failing miserably. I overheard Mrs. Bessmer tell Lady Spearing that she must discover who your cook is and lure her away with the offer of a higher salary."

The countess protested with a mock shriek.

"You have nothing to fear, Margaret," the duke said. "Mrs. Bessmer's main claim to fame is that she is a notorious pinch-penny. Her idea of more pay is doubtless to offer your cook one-fifth of what you are paying her."

"I could challenge Ferdie Bessmer to pistols at dawn if you wish, Maggie," the Earl of Sheringford offered.

The countess shook her head, smiling.

"Actually," she said, "it would be one-fifth of what /Grandpapa/ is paying her, and if I were Mrs. Bessmer, I would not wish to annoy him."

She looked apologetically at Cassandra.

"Lady Paget," she said, "we are keeping you from your bed. Do forgive us. Stephen is going to take you home, I understand. Please allow me to send for a maid to accompany you."

"That will be quite unnecessary," Cassandra said. "I trust Lord Merton to be the perfect gentleman."

The countess smiled again.

"I am delighted that you came this evening," she said. "Will I see you at my mother-in-law's at-home tomorrow? I do hope so. I hear she has invited you."

"I will try," Cassandra said.

And perhaps she would. She had come here tonight to find a wealthy protector, not to force her way back into society. She had assumed that that was impossible, that she would always be an outcast. But perhaps she need not be after all. If the Earl of Sheringford could do it, then perhaps so could she.

It was a long, long time since she had had friends – except for Alice, of course. And Mary.

And then, at last, Lord Merton's carriage drew up to the steps outside and he led her out and handed her inside before climbing in to sit beside her. He turned after a footman had folded up the steps and shut the door, to wave a hand to his family.

"The perfect gentleman," he said quietly without turning his head back into the carriage as it pulled out of the square. "It is what I have always striven to be. Allow me to be a gentleman tonight, Lady Paget.

Allow me to see you safely home and then continue on my way to my own house."

Her stomach lurched with alarm. Had she wasted this whole ghastly evening? Had it all been for nothing? Was she going to have to start all over again tomorrow? She hated him suddenly, /this perfect gentleman/.

"Alas," she said, speaking low and injecting humor into her voice, "I am being rejected. Spurned. I am unwanted, unattractive, ugly. I shall go home and cry hot tears into my cold, unfeeling pillow."

She stretched out one hand as she spoke and set it on his leg, her fingers spread. It was warm through the silk of his breeches. She could feel the solidity of his thigh muscles.

He turned to her, and even in the darkness she could see that he was smiling.

"You know very well," he said, "that not a single one of those things has even a grain of truth in it."

"Except, alas," she said, "for the hot tears. And the unfeeling pillow."

She slid her hand farther to the inside of his thigh, and his smile faded. His eyes held hers.

"You are probably," he said, "the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"Beauty can be a cold, undesirable thing, Lord Merton," she said.

"And you are without any doubt," he said, "the most attractive."

"Attractive." She half smiled at him. "In what way, pray?"

"/Sexually/ attractive," he said, "if you will forgive me for such explicit speaking."

"When you are about to bed me, Lord Merton," she said, "you may be as explicit as you wish. /Are/ you about to bed me?"

"Yes." He slid his fingers beneath her hand, lifted it away from his thigh, and carried it to his lips. "But when we are in your bedchamber, the door closed behind us. Not in my carriage."

She was content, though her next move was to have been to lean forward and kiss him.

He set their clasped hands on the seat between them as the carriage rocked through the darkened streets of London, and kept his head turned toward her.

"Do you live quite alone?" he asked.

"I have a housekeeper," she said, "who is also my cook."

"And the lady with whom you walked in the park yesterday?" he asked.

"Alice Haytor?" she said. "Yes, she lives with me too as my companion."

"Your former governess?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Will she not be shocked when you arrive home with a – a /lover/?" he asked her.

"She has been warned," she told him, "not to come out of her room when I arrive home, Lord Merton, and she will not."

"You knew, then," he asked her, looking very directly into her eyes despite the darkness, "that you would be bringing a lover home with you?"

He was a tiresome man. He did not know how to play the game. Did he imagine that like a lightning bolt out of a blue sky she had been smitten with love as soon as her eyes alit upon him in his sister's ballroom? That everything had been spontaneous, unplanned? She had /told/ him it had all been very much planned.

"I am twenty-eight years old, Lord Merton," she said. "My husband has been dead for more than a year. Women have needs, appetites, just as surely as men do. I am not in search of another husband – not now, not ever. But it is time for a lover. I knew it when I came to London. And when I saw you in Hyde Park, looking like an angel – but a very human and very virile angel – I knew it with even greater certainty."

"You came to Meg's ball, then," he asked her, "specifically to meet /me/?"

"/And/ to seduce you," she said.

"But how did you know I would /be/ there?" he asked her.

He sat back in his seat. But almost at the same moment, the carriage rocked to a halt outside her shabby-genteel house, and he moved his head closer to the window and looked out at it. She did not answer his question.

"Tell me, Lord Merton," she said, her voice almost a whisper, "that you are here not only because I set out to seduce you. Tell me that you looked across the ballroom at me earlier this evening and wanted me."

He turned back to face her, and she could just make out his eyes in the prevailing darkness. There was an intensity in their gaze.

"Oh, I wanted you, Lady Paget," he said, his voice as low as hers. "And that is not just past tense. I /want/ you. I told you earlier that when I go to bed with a lady it is because I choose to do so, not because I am unable to resist seduction."

Yet he would not have spared a thought to bedding her tonight if she had not deliberately collided with him – or /almost/ collided, just before the waltz began. He might not have even spoken with her or danced with her, unless he had done so for his sister's sake. /No, Lord Merton/, she told him without speaking aloud, /you have been seduced/.

His coachman opened the door and set down the steps. The Earl of Merton descended, handed her down, and dismissed the carriage.

There was a certain feeling of unease, Stephen found, mingled with the pleasant anticipation of sensual pleasures. He could not quite understand the discomfort, except perhaps that they were in her home, where her servant and her companion were sleeping. It did not feel quite right.

Sometimes he despised his conscience. While he had lived an active, even adventurous life since he was a boy, he never had sown very wild oats, though everyone – including himself – had expected that he would.

To his relief, they encountered no one inside her house. One candle had been left burning in a wall sconce in the downstairs hall, and one on the upstairs landing. In the dimness of the light they shed, he could see that the house was respectable, if somewhat shabby. He guessed that she was renting it, and that it had come furnished.

She led him inside a square bedchamber at the top of the stairs and lit a single candle on the heavy dressing table. She angled the side mirrors so that suddenly it seemed as though there were many lights.

He shut the door.

There was a large chest of drawers in the room beside a door leading, presumably, into a dressing room. There were small tables on either side of the bed, each with three drawers. The bed itself was large, with heavy spiraling bedposts and an ornate canopy covered with a faded dark blue fabric that matched the bedcover.

It was neither an elegant nor a pretty room.

But it smelled of her, of that subtle floral scent she wore. And the candlelight was soft and flickering. It was an /enticing/ room.

He wanted her.

Ah, yes, he wanted her very badly indeed. And he could find no rational fault with what was about to happen here. He was unmarried and unattached. She was a widow and was more than willing – indeed, she was the one who had initiated all of this. They would be harming no one by becoming lovers tonight – and perhaps remaining lovers through the rest of the Season. They would simply be giving pleasure to each other and to themselves.

There was nothing wrong with pleasure. There was everything /right/ with it.

And there were no expectations on either side, no sensibilities to be hurt. She had been quite firm about the fact that she was not in search of a husband and never would be. He believed her. He was not in search of a wife. Not yet, anyway, and probably not for another five or six years.

But he felt uneasy.

Was it because of the rumors circulating about her? /Had/ she killed her husband?

Was he about to sleep with a murderer?

Was he afraid of her? /Ought/ he to be?

He was not afraid.

Only uneasy.

He did not know her. But that was no cause for unease. He had not known any of the women with whom he had had sexual relations over the years.

He had always treated them with courtesy and consideration and generosity, but he had never known any of them or wanted to.

Did he want to know Lady Paget, then?

She was standing beside the dressing table, looking at him in the candlelight, that strange smile on her face that seemed both inviting and scornful. He had been standing overlong close to the door, he realized, probably looking like a frightened schoolboy about to bolt for freedom.

He moved toward her and did not stop until he had his hands on either side of her surprisingly small waist and lowered his head to set his lips against the pulse at the base of her throat.

She was warm and soft and fragrant. And her body molded itself to his, her generous breasts pressed to his chest, her hips moving slightly to fit more comfortably against him, her thighs warm against his own. He could feel the blood pounding through his body, hammering in his ears, tightening his groin, and pulsing through his stiffening erection.

He lifted his head and kissed her lips, his own parted, his tongue seeking the warm, moist cavity of her mouth. She sucked it deep and pressed it against the roof of her mouth with her own tongue. Her hands slid up his back, beneath his coat and his waistcoat, and then down to spread over his buttocks while her hips moved suggestively and he stiffened further into arousal.

His own hands began the laborious task of opening the small buttons down the back of her gown. He lifted his head and stepped back when the task was completed to nudge the gown off her shoulders and down her arms and then down her body, taking her shift with it, exposing first her magnificent bosom, then her small waist and the alluring curve of her hips, and then her legs, which were long and shapely.

Her garments slithered down to form an emerald green and white heap at her feet, leaving her standing in white gloves and silk stockings and silver dancing slippers.

He could not take his eyes from her. There was something, he realized, even more alluring than nakedness, and this was it. He drew a deep, slow, steadying breath.

She stood looking back at him, her eyelids half drooped over her eyes, her arms at her sides until she extended one toward him and he slowly peeled back the glove and dropped it to the pile. She reached out the other hand and smiled that siren's smile.

When he was finished with the gloves, he went down on one knee before her and slid her stockings down her legs one at a time after first removing the garters. She set each foot in turn on his bent leg as he maneuvered stocking and slipper off the foot and tossed them behind him.

He kissed each instep, each ankle, the inside of each knee, and each warm inner thigh before standing again.

She was quite as lovely as he had anticipated. More so. She was not a small woman in any way, but she was perfectly proportioned, beautifully formed. She was magnificent.

What had ever made him believe that he found youthful slenderness desirable?

He expected that she would now proceed to undress him. Instead, she lifted both bare arms and kept her eyes on his as she drew the pins from her hair. She did it slowly, leisurely, as though there were no rush to get to the bed, as though she were unaware of the bulge of his erection or the barely suppressed quickening of his breathing.

Though her smile indicated that she was very aware indeed.

And her heavy eyelids suggested that she anticipated the main feast with as much desire as he.

He watched as her hair began to come down, and then swallowed as it all cascaded about her face, over her shoulders, and down her back. One heavy lock fell across a breast, and then settled in the valley between.

It was heavy, shining hair of a vibrant red. It was her crowning glory.

For once that tired old clichГ© had real meaning.

He swallowed again.

"Let us go to bed," she said.

He caught hold of the edges of his coat, just below the lapels, but her hands came up to cover his.

"No," she said. "Only your shoes, Lord Merton."

Her hands left his and moved to the waist of his breeches. Her fingers worked deftly at the buttons while they gazed into each other's eyes.

The flap dropped open.

"Now," she said, moving her head forward and setting her lips softly to his as she spoke, "you are ready. Now we are both ready. Let's go to bed."

He thought for a moment that it was because she could not wait for him to undress. But he knew that was not it. He knew she was cleverer than he. His blood pounded, his desire was almost pain. And it had something to do with the fact that he was fully clothed in his ball finery while she was naked.

She led him toward the bed and threw back the covers before lying down on her back and raising her arms to him as he came down on top of her.

She wrapped her arms about him and moved her breasts and hips against him, murmuring to him with soft, unintelligible words as he settled between her thighs. One of her feet caressed his leg through his breeches and his stocking. With his hands and his mouth he explored her, caressing, teasing, kneading.

He felt her fingers free him from the fabric of his breeches and drawers and feather lightly over his erection. He drew a sharp breath.

She laughed softly and drew him toward the wet heat between her thighs.

But no. This was /not/ seduction. He was /not/ a virgin schoolboy to be played with by a practiced courtesan. He slid his arm beneath hers so that she had to release him, and set his hand where his erection had been a moment ago. He explored her with light, teasing fingers, rubbing, scratching lightly, pressing a little way inside, describing small circles as he did so. With his thumb he found and lightly massaged that small spot that had her drawing a ragged, audible breath.

If he was to be the seduced and she the seductress, then she would also be the seduced and he the seducer.

There was to be equality in this encounter.

Pleasure for both, to be administered and to receive.

He took a firm grasp of her buttocks, positioned himself, waited for her to lift slightly toward him in wordless invitation, and pressed hard into her.

He heard her laugh softly as her inner muscles clenched tightly about him and her legs lifted from the bed to twine about his. He raised himself on his forearms and looked down at her. Candlelight whispered across her face and made flickering flames of her hair, tumbled across the pillow.

"Stephen," she said, setting her palms against the lapels of his coat, sliding them up to his shoulders.

He shivered at the sound of his name spoken in her low, seductive voice.

"Lady P – "

"Cassandra," she said.

"Cassandra."

And she relaxed her inner muscles and rotated her hips about him.

"Stephen," she said, "you are very large."

He laughed.

"And very, very hard," she said, her eyes mocking him. "You are very, very much a man."

"And you, my lady," he said, "are very soft and very wet and very hot.

Very, very much a woman."

Her lips mocked too, though her breathing was not quite steady, and he lowered both his head and his body and moved in her with deep, firm, rhythmic strokes, prolonging the intense, painful pleasure of their coupling for as long as he could before releasing into her and relaxing all his weight down onto her as the blood pounding through his temples gradually subsided and he wondered if he had waited long enough to give her too the ultimate pleasure.

He was ashamed of the fact that he was not sure.

"Cassandra," he murmured as he withdrew from her and moved off her to lie beside her, his arm still beneath her head.

But there was nothing else to say. The exhaustion of sexual satiety overpowered him and he slid into a deep, satisfied sleep.

He was not sure how long he slept. But when he awoke he was alone – and still dressed in evening clothes that were going to be horribly rumpled.

His valet would scold for a month and threaten to resign and find a gentleman who had greater respect for his skills.

The flap of his breeches had been neatly raised and buttoned, he realized with a flash of embarrassment.

The candles were no longer flickering. But the room was not quite dark.

The light of early dawn was graying the window and the room itself. The curtains had been drawn back.

He turned his head and looked toward the dressing table. Lady Paget was sitting sideways before it, looking back at him. She was dressed, though not in last evening's gown. Her hair had been brushed smoothly back from her face and tied neatly with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. It fell in a thick column down her back. She had her legs crossed. One foot was swinging back and forth, a slipper half off it.

"Cassandra?" he said. "I am so sorry. I must have – "

"We need to talk, Lord Merton," she said. /Lord Merton?/ Not Stephen any longer?

"Do we?" he said. "Would it not – "

"Business," she said. "We need to talk business."