The carriage had arrived, waiting just outside the house. Charity scrambled inside it with a surprising alacrity, as if she could hardly wait for it to convey them away from the ball, sinking into the shadows of the interior with a sigh of relief as Anthony paused on the pavement to convey her address to his coachman.
He ought to say something, he thought as he climbed into the carriage and closed the door behind him. The carriage rumbled into motion, carrying them away from the raucous ball, and he wished he could see her face in the darkness, wished he might judge by the expression upon it whether her amusement had been just a temporary madness owing to the sheer absurdity of the situation.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I hope I have not caused problems for you there.” He couldn’t be certain how events thrown by thedemimondewere governed, but within theTon, those who had caused such disturbances could not, generally, expect to receive future invitations.
“Don’t be,” she said, and Anthony found himself relieved that her voice was warm, pleased. “He’ll suffer for it; not I. It is not done to make such brazen overtures to someone else’s mistress. It is a trespass that will not soon be forgotten.” There was the rustle of silk in the darkness, a shift in the cool air. “You defended my honor,” she said, in a low, wondering tone.
“Of course I did,” he said. “He was a blithering arse, and he ought to count himself lucky I didn’t choose to break anything more than his nose.” He had considered, however briefly, rendering a swift and vicious kick to the man’s unguarded genitals in the hopes that it might make his pursuit of an uninterested woman moot—at least for sometime to come.
“There are some,” Charity said softly, “morethan some, most likely, who would say I’ve no honor to defend. That I surrendered any claim to it when I chose to become a courtesan.”
“What rubbish,” he said. “Those people don’t matter. The only opinion which matters is your own.”
“Yes, it is.” He could hear the smile in her voice, as if she had been well pleased by the response—a lesson he had finally taken to heart. “Still, it is…nice to be so defended. Even if I am quite capable of defending myself.”
“Are you?” he asked, interested.
“Oh, yes. I keep a knife in my reticule. I’ve only had to use it a handful of times, but I’ve come out the victor each one of them. Heislucky you struck him,” she said, and there was a sibilance in her voice which suggested a streak of malevolence which had been only slightly appeased, “because if you had not, he would soon have found himself light a finger or two.”
In no way did she sound as if she were jesting—but he found himself smiling anyway, at the savagery of it. That she had not found fault with him being so quickly moved to violence, as she had been contemplating a bit of it herself. “And what would you have done, then, if you had relieved a lord of his fingers? He might have set the police upon you.”
“No chance of that. Then his wife would learn where he had been this evening.”
“Is that a problem? You said many of those in attendance were married.”
“It would be a problem for him,” she said, and he felt the heat of her body as she used the slowing of the carriage in a turn to shift herself from her seat to his. She settled beside him with a sigh. “His wealth is on account of his wife’s father’s largesse. He won’t risk those purse strings snapping shut. Probably,” she said idly as she placed her hand upon his knee, “he would have made up some story about having been attacked by footpads.”
“And you were considering this before I struck him,” he said. “Whether or not you might get away with it.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, curling up against his side. “But mostly I was considering the stains that the blood would have left upon my gown. It is so hard to get blood out, you see.”
Anthony choked upon a laugh. “Somehow,” he said, “that does not surprise me in the least.”
“Does it not? How marvelous. Then this will not surprise you, either.” Her hand slid up the wool of his trousers, expertly finding the fall and flickingloose a button.
Anthony sucked in a breath at the pressure of her slender fingers palming his cock over the fall of his trousers. Their encounter in the garden had left him in a bit of a state, which had naturally diminished itself somewhat during the altercation in the hall—but now that same violent arousal came roaring back once more, his cock stiffening with fierce swiftness to the strokes of her hand. “Christ,” he muttered, tensing his thighs.
“This is why I wanted to leave,” she whispered, her lips brushing his ear. “I don’t mind such things as trysts in gardens, where anyone might stumble across us…but I think you would, at least a little.” She gave a wicked little laugh as she slipped off the seat, her hands falling upon his knees to press them open and slide between them. “And I do want you to enjoy this.”
Chapter Sixteen
It wasn’t quiet. It wasn’t calm or peaceful. The only similarity it bore to the fantasy she had once woven for him on that sofa in his library was that it was, in fact, dark. So dark that he could tell that Charity was crouched before him only because her cheek rubbed against his knee, because he could feel the press of her voluminous skirts against his trousers, the heat of her body wedged between his legs.
The wheels of the carriage clattered upon the cobblestone street, creating such a racket that Anthony could scarcely hear himself think. Which hardly mattered, as his thoughts—scattered as they were—grew increasingly dim as Charity slid her hands up the inside of his thighs once more.
“What are you doing?” he heard himself ask, even though the pounding of his heart in his chest beat out a tale of frantic hope. He bit back a groan as those delicate fingers traced the outline of his cock through the fall of his trousers. Another flick, and there was one more button freed of its moorings.
“It has occurred to me,” she said, “that it is every bit as important that one knows how to receive pleasure as it is to give it.”
“Is it?” he asked, and there was a telling hoarseness to his voice, his throat suddenly beyond parched. His thighs tensed anew as she loosed the last of his buttons, and the fall of his trousers opened at last, his cock springing free of the constriction. He couldn’t see more than the vaguest swirl of shadows in the darkness, but he damned wellfeltit when her soft hand, divested of its evening glove, clasped him.
“Oh, yes,” she said, and there was the warmth of satisfaction in her voice as she ran her hand in a smooth stroke from the base of his cock to the head.
His head fell back against the seat. “Christ,” he said, his chest heaving with frenetic breaths.
“You have got to know what pleases you,” she said lightly as her thumb swirled about the head of his cock, collecting the slick drop of moisture thathad welled there. “Your lover will not be so experienced. You must tell her what you enjoy, what brings you pleasure.”
At this moment, with his hands curled around the edge of the seat and his fingernails biting into the rich upholstery, with his thighs hard as granite, tense and aching in the effort not to spill himself in her hand after only the lightest stroke, that list was a short one: he enjoyedallof it. Every bit of it, from the expert strokes of her fingers, to the hum of her wicked laugh, to the pitiless ache in his loins.
