Regency Surrender: Passion And Rebellion. Louise Allen

straight away?

      She might be a virgin, but she knew what men and women did in the privacy of their bedrooms.

      Her aunt might have sneered at girls who ‘lifted their skirts to oblige a man’s beastly desires’. But then her aunt had never been in love. If she had, she would know that sometimes you could look at a man and just swoop inside. And melt. And feel as though you would do anything if only he would put his arms round you again.

      Not that she was in love.

      She just wanted that feeling she’d got when he’d put his arms round her. And have his lips touching hers again. And...when he wanted more, as he surely would, then she—yes, she wanted to find out what that was like too. She’d overheard servants gossiping and giggling about what their menfolk got up to between the sheets. It had sounded as though they thoroughly enjoyed it.

      And if she didn’t like it, then she needn’t ever do it again. She would have found out the truth for herself. As her aunt had always said—never take anything on trust.

      And she’d spent so many years trying to be good. Trying to win approval from people who kept on assuming the worst of her. She’d paid dearly for sins she had never committed.

      So what was the point in not committing them?

      She lifted her chin and met his look full on.

      ‘Not tonight.’ It was too soon. There were preparations she had to make. The one thing she did not want to risk was having a baby, outside of wedlock. And she wasn’t going to trip naïvely into his studio assuming he would take care of that aspect of things, let alone trust him to take care of her, should the worst come to the worst.

      She didn’t need him to take care of her—that was not the point. She was wealthy enough to take care of both herself and any number of children she might have. The point was she did not want to be responsible for burdening some poor innocent child with the terrible stigma of illegitimacy.

      ‘When, then?’

      ‘Tomorrow night’, if she could find an apothecary who spoke English well enough to understand what she needed to purchase and for what purpose, because the last thing she wanted was to have to take Monsieur Le Brun along to interpret for her! ‘Or perhaps the one after’, if it proved difficult to find such an establishment.

      He dropped her hand and took a step back, his face hardening.

      ‘I might not be there,’ he said.

      He might not be there? She’d just taken the momentous decision to fling herself off the precipice of respectability, into the unknown sea of carnality, and he could just shrug it off, as though it was nothing?

      Well, she could shrug too.

      She did so, then said, with as much insouciance as she could muster, ‘Then I will have had a wasted journey.’

      She turned to walk away from him. She wasn’t going to beg him to change his mind, or show a bit more enthusiasm. She wasn’t going to let him see how badly his casual attitude towards becoming her lover hurt her, either.

      ‘Wait,’ he said, coming up and falling into step beside her. ‘Make a definite appointment, give me a fixed time, and I will be there.’

      The way he looked at her calmed her ruffled feathers instantly. He wanted her. He really wanted her. He was just too proud to beg.

      ‘Saturday, then,’ she said. Because in part, he was right. If she didn’t set a definite date, she might never work up the courage to go through with it. ‘And if, by any chance, I cannot keep our...’

      ‘Assignation,’ he supplied, putting paid to any last lingering doubt they might be talking about painting her portrait.

      She swallowed. ‘I will get word to you, so you will not be disappointed.’

      ‘I will be disappointed if you do not come,’ he grated. ‘But—’ he flung up his chin ‘—neither will I pursue you. It must be your choice. Come to me freely, or not at all.’

      With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving her frowning after him. That last speech hadn’t sounded like the kind of thing a seasoned seducer of women would say at all. In fact, if she hadn’t known better, she might have thought his pride might be wounded if she didn’t go through with what she’d promised.

      Which was absurd. She was only another conquest. Just one more in a long line of women he’d enjoyed and then discarded.

      She meant nothing more to him than any of the others. Of course she didn’t.

      And she’d better not start looking for signs that she might.

       Chapter Six

      Two nights. She’d made him wait two whole nights.

      What kind of game was she playing? What was so important she could put off this raging inferno that blazed between them for two whole nights?

      She was letting him know that she was not as desperate to take him as her lover as he was to become hers. He raised his hand and stabbed his brush at the canvas on which he was currently working—the back view of a woman, her head tilted to one side as she tried to make sense of the picture before which she stood.

      So be it. Let her play her little games. It was what women did. Lucasta was never happier than when she had some poor victim dangling on a string. But he wouldn’t be anyone’s puppet, then or now. However long she made him wait, he would do whatever it took to break free of the obsession that had taken hold of him since the night she’d shown up in Paris. And the one sure way to do it would be in bed. Once he’d slaked his lust, there would be nothing left. Wasn’t that always the way with women?

      Once he’d done with her, perhaps he would be free of the bitterness that had steadily grown throughout his twenties, the rage that made him cruel to his friends, callous towards women and so reckless of his reputation even his father had been forced to agree there was nothing for it but to send him abroad.

      Not that he’d minded coming to Paris. Almost as soon as he’d arrived, he’d started to find a measure of...something in his life that had always been lacking before. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d broken free of his family’s stranglehold, ceased the pretence and the posturing, and was finally doing what he’d always wanted to do. It was more than that. It was the feeling that he could be anyone he wanted here. Nobody thought him odd for tossing aside his entire lifestyle. After all, they’d just overthrown an entire regime. The whole country was making itself over into something new, not just him.

      And if a people could depose their own king, a man could conquer his obsession with the woman who’d sent his whole life into disarray. Yes, he could. He put down his brush and picked up the canvas. The romantic aspirations he’d had as a callow youth had long since charred to ashes. And what was left was something he could handle. He carried the painting to the far corner of his studio, where he put it down, facing the wall.

      It was lust, that was all he felt for Miss Dalby. All she was good for was bedding. And he knew, from experience, that once he’d bedded her even the lust would pass. He would finally know, in his heart, as well as in his head, that she was...nothing.

      * * *

      ‘Are you quite sure you know what you are doing?’ Fenella was practically wringing her hands as Amethyst tied the ribbons of her new bonnet in a jaunty bow under her chin. She’d been unhappy from the moment Amethyst had admitted she’d met Harcourt in the Louvre and commissioned him to paint her portrait.

      ‘It isn’t really...proper...to be alone with a man, you know. And I am supposed to—’

      ‘Do not worry, Fenella,’ said Amethyst briskly, giving her reflection one last assessing glance in the mirror. ‘I know exactly what I am doing. And since nobody in Stanton Basset will ever know what we choose to do while we are in Paris, unless