Temptation In Regency Society. Margaret McPhee

if she sought to block him out.

      His eyes traced the golden tendrils that had escaped from the pile of curls pinned upon her head, over her pale shoulders and down the straight line of her back. Her waist was narrow before the flair of her hips and her perfect bottom.

      His fingers froze in the act of fastening the buttons of his pantaloons. His blood turned to ice. He could not move, could not so much as take a breath. He stared at the fullness of her rounded buttocks, stared at the soft white skin … and the distinctive dark mole upon her right cheek that he remembered so well.

      The shock was as explosive as if someone had taken a pistol and shot him at point-blank range. Everything else in the world seemed to diminish. Dominic gaped with utter incredulity, staring at a truth so blatant that he marvelled he had not realised right from the very start.

      ‘Arabella?’ His whisper was barely more than a breath, yet it seemed to resonate within the room as loudly as if he had roared it at the top of his voice.

      Every line of her body stiffened and tensed, the reaction confirming the suspicion his mind had been too slow to form. He saw the small shiver that rippled through her before she pulled the top cover free and then, holding it against her body to cover her nakedness, climbed from the bed. Only then did she turn to face him.

      They stared at one another across the rumpled mess of sheets, and the very air seemed to vibrate with a barely contained tension.

      Even now his mind could not accept the enormity of the discovery. Even now he thought she would deny it. But in her silence and stillness there was nothing of denial.

      Dominic reached her in an instant. With one hand he pulled her to him, barely noticing that he had displaced the bedcover from her in the process. He was too busy untying the ribbons of her face mask, too busy tearing it from her. Even as she gasped, the black-feathered object tumbled to lie at their feet. And he stared down with horror into the shocked white face of Arabella Tatton, or Arabella Marlbrook as she was now.

       Chapter Two

      Arabella’s naked body was hard against the length of Dominic’s, their hips so snug that she could feel the press of his manhood. For a moment the shock of him discovering her was so great that she could do nothing other than stare right back into the eyes of the man she had loved. But then she recovered something of her wits and struggled to free herself.

      ‘Arabella!’ He tried to still her.

      She hit out at him and tried to escape. But Dominic caught her flailing arms and hauled her back to him, securing her wrists behind her in a grip that was gentle yet unbreakable.

      ‘Arabella.’ Quieter this time, but no less dangerous.

      ‘No!’ she cried, but Dominic was unyielding. He stared down at her with implacable demand.

      ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ His eyes had darkened to a black glower that smouldered within the pallor of his face. And there was about him a simmering, barely contained rage so unlike the man she remembered.

      She strove to stay calm, but her breath was as ragged as if she had been running at full pelt and with every breath she took she could feel the swollen tips of her breasts brush against his unfastened shirt.

      ‘At least grant me the honour of allowing me to clothe myself before we have this conversation,’ she said with a calmness that belied everything she was feeling.

      His gaze dropped to rove over her nakedness with deliberate and provocative measure so that she thought he meant to refuse her but, just as she thought it, she felt his grip loosen and drop away.

      She gathered up the black dress from where it lay on the floor and, turning her back to him, quickly garbed herself. She stretched around and tightened the laces of the bodice that she could reach, but had no other option than to leave the remainder loose. The dress gaped from the untied laces, revealing far too much of the pale swell of her bosom. It was the antithesis of respectable clothing, but it was better than facing him naked. She hoisted the neckline of the dress and clutched it in place. Dominic had finished his own dressing and now watched her with eyes burning with a shock that mirrored her own and an unmistakable anger.

      ‘I will ask you again, Arabella,’ he said with a quietness that was deadly, ‘what are you doing here?’

      ‘The same as any woman does in a place such as this.’ She faced him defiantly, and with a determination to hide the shame and wretchedness beneath that façade.

      ‘Whoring.’ His voice was harsh.

      ‘Surviving,’ she said with as much dignity as she could muster and stared down his contempt.

      ‘And where in damnation is Henry Marlbrook while you are “surviving” in a brothel? What manner of husband is he that you have been reduced to this?’ His voice changed, hardened, as he spoke Henry’s name and the word ‘husband.’

      ‘Do not dare to mention Henry’s name.’ Arabella would not stand here and hear it.

      ‘Why ever not?’ he threw back at her. ‘Frightened that I find him and run him through?’

      ‘Damn you, Dominic! He is dead!’

      ‘Then he has saved me the trouble,’ he said coldly.

      Arabella gasped at Dominic’s cruelty and then, before she could think better of it, she slapped him hard across his face. The crack resounded in the room around them and was followed by silence. Even in the soft flickering candlelight she could see the mark her palm had left upon his cheek.

      His eyes had been dark before, but now they appeared as black and deadly as the night that surrounded them. But Arabella would not back down.

      ‘You deserved that.’ For everything he had done. ‘Henry was a good man, a better man by far than you, Dominic Furneaux!’

      Henry had been kind.

      And Arabella had been grateful.

      She saw something flicker in the darkness of Dominic’s eyes.

      ‘Just as he was all those years ago,’ he said in a chilled voice. ‘I have not forgotten, Arabella, not for one single day.’

      Neither had she. With those few words all the past was back in an instant. Of the joy of losing her heart to Dominic, of her happiness and expectations for the future, of the lovemaking they had shared. Lies and illusions, all of it. It had meant nothing to him. She had meant nothing to him, other than another notch upon his bedpost. At nineteen she had not understood the base side of men and their desires. At four-and-twenty Arabella knew better.

      ‘You wasted no time in wedding him. Less than four months from what I hear.’

      She could hear the accusation in his voice, the jealousy, and it fanned the flames of her ire. ‘What on earth did you expect?’ she shouted.

      ‘I expected you to wait, Arabella!’

      ‘To wait?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What manner of woman did you think me?’ Did he honestly think that she would have welcomed him back with open arms? That she would have given herself to him again after he had discarded her in such a humiliating way? ‘I could not wait, Dominic,’ she said harshly. ‘I was—’ Her eyes sought his.

      His gaze was dark and angry and arrogant, every inch the hard, ruthless nobleman she knew him to be.

      ‘You were …?’

      She hesitated and felt the pulse in her throat beat a warning tattoo.

      ‘A fool,’ she finished. A fool to have believed his lies. A fool to have trusted him. ‘You have what you came here for, Dominic. Now be gone and leave me alone.’

      ‘So that you might rush down to Mrs Silver’s drawing room to offer a “glass