of Manning, kissing and letting him touch her there. But that scream seemed the merest of faint squeals through that fog of heady need. She wasn’t Emily, not now, and he was not the duke.
His lips slid from hers, along her cheek below her mask, tracing the line of her jaw. He nipped at a spot just below her ear that was shockingly sensitive. Emily gasped at the pleasure, like a burst of ripe summer fruit, sparkling and tart on her tongue. She sought his lips with hers again, eager for another kiss.
Barely had their mouths touched when something did break through that haze—an explosion high over her head. A real explosion, not one in her fevered mind.
Emily’s eyes flew open to see fireworks in the sky above her, red and blue and bright-white against the black night. It was as if they illuminated the truth of what she was doing.
She pushed him away. His blue eyes, lit by those incandescent fireworks, were wide with a shock that echoed her own. Their spell was broken.
“I am so very sorry.” he began brokenly.
Emily frantically shook her head. She didn’t want to hear his apologies; this was all her fault. She had forgotten herself in the most appalling way. She had forgotten the lesson so hard-won with the incident of Mr Lofton.
She was never drinking again, that was for certain.
She searched for her lost shoe by the sporadic light of the fireworks. “I have to find my friends. I’m sure they will be missing me by now.”
Nicholas found the shoe by the side of the path and held it out to her. She was glad he didn’t try to replace it on her foot—she didn’t know what she would do if he touched her again. Obviously she was a complete wanton who could not be trusted.
“Let me see you back to the colonnades,” he said quietly.
“No!” Emily cried. She thrust her foot into the shoe and leaped to her feet. She swayed uneasily at the sudden movement, completely unsteady. The punch, which had made her feel so sparkly and giggly earlier, now made her feel rather sick.
He was beside her in an instant, steadying her with a gentle touch on her arm.
“I am fine, thank you,” she managed to say in a semi-ordinary voice. “I can find my way back.”
“I know why you would not want to be seen with me,” he said. “But at least let me follow at a distance and make sure you find your friends safely.”
Safely? Emily nearly laughed aloud. What more danger could she possibly find? The danger obviously lay inside of her. She was a hoyden.
The thing that truly made her sad and regretful, though, was that one moment when she imagined he really, truly saw her. He didn’t even know the woman he had kissed was her, Emily. She was just a stranger to him, and tomorrow he would surely forget her and this moment in the dark woods.
But she feared she would never forget.
“Please?” he said. “You won’t even know I’m there.”
Emily nodded, and set off towards the colonnade. “You’re going the wrong way,” he called.
She spun around and headed in the opposite direction. The lights and noise grew as she came closer, the glow of the real world surrounding her again. She glanced back to see if Nicholas still followed her, but he was nowhere to be seen.
He was the biggest damnable fool that ever lived.
Nicholas strode down the street. The walkway was crowded with shoppers and servants laden with packages, yet he hardly saw them or heard the greetings of his acquaintances. He wasn’t there, in the fine, sunny day on Bond Street, but back in the darkness of Vauxhall, holding Emily Carroll in his arms.
Emily Carroll! Of all women, how could it come to be her? She had made it clear she disliked him, and she was not the sort of lady he usually liked. She was quiet, watchful, where he liked blithe gregariousness, daring and humour. Yet last night had been beyond daring—it had been sheer lunacy. How did it happen?
Nicholas rubbed his hand over his face, trying to erase the vivid memory of her mouth under his, soft, sweet, eager. The feel of her body against his touch. He knew all too well how it happened. Lady Emily was tipsy on Vauxhall’s potent punch, and he was a little foxed himself. Alcohol and masks were never a wise combination. They always gave the illusion of freedom and anonymity, of lack of consequences.
Well, there was no such thing as lack of consequences. He knew that all too well. His own father had lived his life grabbing whatever he wanted, heedless of its effects on his family name or the people around him. For him, there were no consequences; Nicholas and his poor mother and his siblings were the ones who lived with them. When he himself married Valentina, he didn’t care what happened next, he only cared about his love for her in that moment. And Valentina died because of it.
Since he lost her, he had been so careful. So determined not to be like his father. Until last night.
He had only followed Emily when he saw her stumble away from the colonnades because he was worried about her safety. He didn’t want to think too closely about why he watched her all evening in the first place. Ever since they ran into each other on her arrival, he had been acutely aware of where she was, her laughter with her friends, her tears at the sad song—the glasses of punch she consumed.
He could scarcely believe it when her friends let her wander off alone, and when she went off down the dark pathway. Had she no clue of the danger that awaited a beautiful woman in such places?
Of course she did not. Most young ladies did not grow up as his sisters had, knowing the ways of the world and sophisticated about its dangers. So he had followed, to make sure she was left alone, and when he saw her fall.
He caught her. And it was as if something deep inside of him, something cold and dormant since Valentina, sprang to life. And not just the thing in his breeches, either.
Emily, or rather the tipsy, black-haired lady with Emily’s green eyes, had put her arms around him and made him feel strong and protective and—and needed again. The power of the lust that seized him when he merely touched her foot, felt the warm, rose-scented, feminine life of her, shocked him. It was powerful and primitive, completely instinctive—and not something he would ever have associated with Lady Emily Carroll.
Nicholas kicked at a chink in the pavement, making passers-by veer away from him with startled glances. When he first kissed her, he hadn’t been thinking at all—that burning lust completely took over, and he had to taste her. At first she seemed quite surprised, not sure what to do, but then—oh, hell, but then she responded to him with a gasp, reached out to him, learned the patterns of their kiss.
She learned quickly, ardently. And he forgot they were in a public garden, on the ground amid the trees. He forgot he was the Duke of Manning and she was Lady Emily Carroll, daughter of an earl who was his father’s old friend. They were only a man and woman who wanted each other, needed each other.
He had, blast it all, touched her backside. And a lovely, shapely backside it was. If the fireworks hadn’t
