as well to know exactly what they were planning?
‘Quiet,’ Edmund mouthed a warning against her ear, but how had he known?
Kate was so busy struggling against the incendiary effect of just his breath on her ear lobe, his mouth so close against her neck she could almost feel the words form on his lips, that she missed Lady Tedinton’s first few words and frowned fiercely at him in the pitch darkness. How could she be so wrapped up in her response to his closeness that even the small matter of the murder of Lord Tedinton faded against the fierceness of the fire Edmund had lit between them with those few passionate kisses?
‘All you’ll need to do is be found with the silly chit in a scandalously dishevelled condition, then you can inform everyone you were just celebrating your engagement a little prematurely,’ she was saying in a scornful tone. ‘Even Carnwood won’t gainsay you when the silly wench is obviously in need of a husband.’
‘And you think I’m incapable of thinking up such a simple scheme myself, Selene? I’m almost insulted,’ Bestholme responded in that cold, indifferent voice Kate now knew was not an affectation, but reflected his true self.
‘You’re still being dunned and always begging so-called loans off me to pay off your endless debts, so you evidently don’t have the nerve to carry it out.’
‘Whereas you have the nerve and not the brains?’
‘Think so if you dare,’ Lady Tedinton hissed and Kate shuddered at the casual evil of it all.
‘I do dare, but that’s why you keep coming back to me, isn’t it?’ Bestholme demanded and there was the sound of a brief scuffle and then a horribly needy moan as Lady Tedinton demonstrated the truth of what he said.
‘Take me now,’ she growled.
‘No, it’s too risky,’ her lover argued and gave a low chuckle that made Kate shiver at the cold lustiness of their loathsome need for each other, ‘and I like you desperate, Selene. By the time Tedinton has pawed you all the way home and tried to mount you like a man, you’ll be glad to meet me in that very convenient summerhouse he’s had built in the garden for us, if he only knew it, and feel a real man between your legs again at last.’
‘I hate you,’ she informed him throatily and there was another of those horrible interludes as Kate heard them kiss noisily and even caught the sound of fine cloth tearing as they went at each other like beasts.
‘I like the way you hate. Now tidy yourself up, then get back to the ballroom and persuade that old fool to take you home early. I’ll go the other way and come back through the garden, so nobody will know you were with me. It’s only the fact I’m supposed to be courting a fortune that keeps my creditors off my back as it is, so who knows what they might do if they found out about you, my lovely doxy?’
‘Foreclose?’ Lady Tedinton asked as if discussing the weather and Kate felt sickened at the sound of her lover’s flat-handed slap, presumably to somewhere that didn’t show. ‘I could come to you in the Fleet,’ she offered throatily, as if violence made her more eager and Kate wondered if she might disgrace herself and Edmund by actually being sick, then considered the consequences and managed to control her revulsion after all.
‘No, try informing on me to get me sent there and you’ll rapidly discover what a mistake you’ve made. Just behave yourself and go on keeping that senile old idiot sweet, then be where I told you to be by dawn, Selene, or I’ll take my pleasure elsewhere. There are plenty of younger and more obliging mistresses than you who can be had for a lot less trouble than you cause me,’ Bestholme warned carelessly.
‘I’ll be there,’ Selene Tedinton replied urgently.
‘I know,’ her repulsive lover drawled huskily and Kate heard his footsteps recede while the light faded as he ungallantly took his candle away, leaving his mistress still in the dark.
A few moments later there was the swirl of silk and satin and an exasperated curse, then softer footsteps receded towards the ballroom until all seemed silent and empty in the room beyond this airless office they’d been trapped in.
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