LITMIR.BIZ

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were your parents?’

      ‘They were very well.’ And relieved that their daughter had gone back to her husband. Had they known of what she had planned and plotted all these months past they would have felt nothing of that relief.

      ‘And Southampton?’

      ‘Most educational.’ In more ways than he could possibly imagine.

      His attention was not elsewhere, cool and oblivious of her presence, and always with that underlying edge of resentment. She could feel the intensity of his stare, the full weight of his focus, and with it, for the very first time, came a sense of power, and the feeling was a balm to the rawness in Ellen’s heart.

      ‘You seem…different. I barely recognised you.’

      She barely recognised herself when she looked in the peering glass. Her hair had been washed in beer to make it shine, then curled and pinned and dressed for hours. Her freckles were covered with a fine dusting of rice powder and her lips were stained with the smallest hint of carmine before a smear of gloss. The corsets and dresses revealed her body in a way it had never been revealed before. And then there was her posture and her way of moving. Ellen had been a diligent pupil. On the outside, the plain mousy girl was gone, and on the inside, determination seemed to have obliterated all of her fears and anxieties.

      ‘Different?’ She looked at him then, with raised eyebrows that had been perfectly plucked and shaped and combed, her expression all feigned innocence. ‘How so?’

      His gaze moved over her hair, down over the line of her throat, to linger upon her breasts, which were in danger of escaping the bodice of her dress, before coming back up to study her face. Ellen quashed her embarrassment, quelled that instinct to look down at her lap and fidget.

      ‘Your dress…’ There was nothing of the usual barely veiled disinterest in his tone, nothing of that strained reserve. Indeed, he was looking at her, really looking at her for the first time. She saw the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed.

      ‘I have found myself a new dressmaker.’ She leaned ever so slightly towards him, lowering her voice to a husky whisper as if they were conspirators, and presenting him with a more impressive view of her cleavage. ‘Do you like it?’ His eyes dropped to her breasts, just as Kitty had said they would, before he dragged them back to her own.

      ‘Very much so.’

      She smiled invitingly before returning her view to the play. ‘Romeo and Juliet. Did you know it is my favourite Shakespeare?’

      ‘I did not,’ she heard him say. ‘But then I am only just realising there is much I do not know about you, Ellen.’

      She watched the figures on the stage without seeing them, for she was trying too hard to keep the swell of emotion hidden. And she was too conscious of the tall, dark handsome man by her side, and of what she had come to London to do to him.

      How could a man fail to recognize his own wife? Marcus was still asking himself the question by the time they were travelling home in the carriage. She was his wife. He had known her in the most intimate of senses, yet, if he were honest, he did not know her at all. Not the girl who had stood so quietly by his side at the altar and lain beneath him so unresponsive in the marriage bed, nor the woman who sat opposite him in the shadowed light of the carriage now. In the glow of the street lamps his eye skimmed over her perfect face, down over the long black velvet cloak that he knew hid the perfect figure. His memory of his wife was of a timid girl, painfully shy and whom his company seemed to make nervous and uncomfortable. He wondered how he could have failed to notice the strong sensual woman who now sat opposite him. But then given the mess of his emotions at the time of his wedding he supposed it was possible. Simmering anger, betrayal and resentment had a way of blinding a man to all else.

      ‘What has prompted your return to London?’ he asked.

      ‘It is the start of the Little Season and what was it that Dr Johnson said…? “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.” I wanted to visit the shops, the social scene, the theatre…and my husband, of course.’ He heard the small seductive smile more than saw it. ‘And then there are my duties as your wife—’ she smiled again and he felt his mouth go dry and his blood surge even though she finished it with words of innocence ‘—charitable works, entertaining, support and the like.’

      And then, while he watched in stunned fascination, she laid her head back against the squabs and closed her eyes. The rest of the journey was in silence.

      Ellen was too much on his mind. Marcus could not sleep that night nor could he concentrate the next day in critical discussions over his father’s Tollerton estate. There was a sensual tension between his wife and him that, by the time of Fallingham’s ball the following evening, seemed to be winding tighter with every hour that passed.

      Attraction. The very air seemed thick with it as he stood watching Arlesford partnering her upon the dance floor. She had barely noticed him all night, engaged as she was in having such a good time chatting and laughing and dancing with everyone except him. The steps she wove with Arlesford were those of a chaste cotillion yet Marcus found himself unable to take his eyes from her. And even though Arlesford was his friend and Ellen his wife, he found himself brooding with a possessiveness he had never previously felt. So that when the set and the music finished and the Volse began and Arlesford showed no sign of returning her, he found himself up on the floor cutting in on the duke. The Volse—hardly a dance of the Ton, but one that he had no intention of letting her dance with another.

      ‘My dance, I believe, old friend,’ he laughed, but there was steel behind the words and he knew that Arlesford heard it. And then she was in his arms and he thought no more about Arlesford.

      Twelve inches. A respectable enough distance between them in this rather risqué German dance. Her eyes met his and held. Storm grey eyes filled with such sensual promise, so that the crowd on Fallingham’s dance floor seemed to vanish. Attraction shimmered between them. Heated. Intimate. Shocking in its intensity. And then her lashes lowered and she was once again the demure and proper girl he had married. The contrast intrigued him. He studied the sweep of her lashes, the creamy curve of her cheek, the soft pink lips. He had never been more aware of her as a woman—a very beautiful and desirable woman. Marcus felt he could have looked at her forever and never seen enough. He felt as if had been sleeping for all his life and only just woken up.

      Twelve inches, yet as they moved around the dance floor the distance diminished as if their bodies were drawn together by a force too great to resist. Edging infinitesimally closer with every step they took. Closer, as they moved across the floor. And closer. Until he could feel the spark of her body against his and feel the silk of her skirt against the fall of his breeches. Until he could feel her against the hardness of his arousal.

      ‘Ellen.’ His whisper was ragged and harsh with need and with warning.

      Her eyes widened, her lips parted. And for a moment she looked surprised to find him in such a state. But then she smiled.

      ‘Desist or I am going to have a very large and obvious problem when this dance comes to a close.’ He spoke the words low and quiet by her ear, his jaw tight as he struggled for control.

      ‘Is there nothing you can do to alleviate the situation?’ she asked and looked at him with such an innocent expression that he did not know whether she understood the suggestive nature of her question.

      ‘There is, but I doubt we could ever show our faces in society again if we did it here on the dance floor.’ He met her gaze boldly and held it, watching her. His wife blushed but did not look away, and again there was that contrast between the temptress and the good girl, exciting him all the more.

      ‘What are you then to do?’ She arched an eyebrow.

      ‘Contrive to think dampening thoughts.’

      She digested that in silence and he wondered if he should have been quite as honest about his struggle. The minutes passed. The music played. The dance wove them tighter with its steps. There was no change in his state and,

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