impressively displayed breasts.
A husky laugh punctuated his remark as her warm, spicy scent formed a web around them. “Well, darling, I knew this guest room was unoccupied,” she purred convincingly, tracing the outline of a bruise on the left side of his jaw with delightful concentration. “I must have my pleasures. You know what a bore old Treadwell can be. How can you blame me?”
“The things we do for money, like marrying well in your case, seldom come easily I suppose.” Blackburn petted Susannah’s sumptuous behind lingeringly, philosophically flexible about such comparatively trifling moral issues. His life’s experience had made certain judgments impractical.
“I’m not pleased, however, that those beastly cutthroats were working on the behest of old Treadwell,” she lied effortlessly. She made a moue of distaste. “To attack you outside my town house the other night! I’m afraid that my husband has finally seen through the haze of his senility and realized what a ridiculous cuckold he’s become.”
“Many thanks for your overwhelming concern,” murmured Blackburn with considerable irony. “Mercifully, I recover quickly.”
“I have noticed that your recovery time is enviable.” Susannah turned onto her back in one calculated seductive move. “Which has more to do with my eagerness to escape with you this evening than anything Le Comte’s new mistress could possibly have to offer.”
“Those who have heard her play maintain she’s impressively talented. Her interpretation of Beethoven is said to be masterful.”
“Since when have you developed an interest in music?” Susannah asked sharply.
Since his encounter with an icy, fiery-haired woman in a dark cell by Blackfriars Bridge.
In the next instant he was beset by the image of Devon Caravelle emerging triumphantly from the Frenchman’s bed. He stretched his arms over his head and steeled himself. It wasn’t anything he wanted to think about—who she’d sleep with and what she’d do to keep the noose from tightening around that beautiful neck. Instead of the elation he expected to feel at upending de Maupassant’s plans, he found himself sinking into a cynical torpor. He shifted away from Susannah, her physical presence suddenly cloying.
“Anything I can do, darling?” He’d forgotten how perceptive Lady Treadwell could be. “You seem preoccupied suddenly.”
He smiled distractedly. “I think we should get back to the concert.”
Every muscle in his body felt tight, his jaw locked, his mind in turmoil. The intriguing and dangerous Devon could just as easily be playing him for a fool. Money was more often the motivator than loyalty to a political cause. Or the motives might well be political in nature. He drew a long breath.
The gloves would then come off. He’d never again risk a disaster like the one involving his murdered brother.
With heavy lids and darker intentions, he observed Susannah carefully. Much as it would wound her overdeveloped sense of vanity, he thought, wrapping his wrist in a swathe of her jet hair, this seemingly spontaneous seduction had been welcomed not the least for the sexual interlude as for the information he always gleaned from their postcoital conversations.
“A female virtuoso, it’s unusual, you must admit.” He pushed carefully, positioning a pillow behind his head.
Pouting her disappointment as the subject matter turned from her, Susannah tugged away her hair with small teasing gestures before inching closer to Blackburn. “Her mother, they say, was French, one of those horrid women who became involved with the radicals during the Revolution. Her father was English but nobody seems to know anything about him. They divided their time between London, Paris, and some absurd little cottage,” she revealed cattily. “I suppose she was born on the wrong side of the sheets, hence her French surname. Some men find that sort of thing attractive, particularly in a mistress.”
“De Maupassant and she met in Paris?”
“You’ve been listening to the same gossips as I have, darling,” Susannah scolded mockingly. “One hears that Le Comte’s son was taking music lessons from her at the Conservatoire. I presume, like any other woman with very little to trade upon, Mademoiselle sensed an opportunity and planned to make herself indispensable to Le Comte, in every way.” Susannah’s dark eyes suddenly turned feline before she said in a throaty voice, “You seem very interested, darling.”
And Susannah seemed overly informed.
He shifted to a sitting position on the side of the canopied bed, the corded muscles in his arms flexing. “Interested enough that I recommend we return to the reception before the recital begins. And more important, I wouldn’t want to deprive your legion of admirers of your company.”
Susannah replied by snaking one arm around his abdomen pleasured by the sensation of finely tapered muscle. “Just five more minutes,” she whispered beguilingly, smolderingly confident that her seductive pose would have the desired effect.
Blackburn felt the sway of her pointed nipples against his back as moist lips and tongue traced a path across his broad shoulders. “Blackburn,” she growled low in her throat, “don’t ever think another woman would be any match for me.”
“I think we’ve had enough talk,” he circumvented the possessiveness in her voice, leaning over her lazily, “of Le Comte and his mistress.”
Yet her image wouldn’t leave him alone. The wide gray eyes as she faced him in the dark cell at Blackfriars Bridge, the generously expressive mouth, the controlled sensuality evident in every motion of her body swathed in brown wool. The sensuous whisper of rich silk.
Unaccountably annoyed, he shunted the memory and one of the abundant pillows aside. His hands, equally familiar with intrigue and seduction, continued to caress the silken skin of the eager Lady Treadwell, skimming over her abundant curves. He felt her lips snake persuasively over his taut stomach, narrow hips, until he forgot everything except the spasms of pleasure that racked his body—all the while de Maupassant’s concert proceeded circumspectly below.
Le Comte Henri de Maupassant barely contained his excitement behind his habitual mask of hauteur. His eyes swept the ballroom of his town house, a massive hall that had been recently regilded without thought to cost. On this night he had made sure that one thousand candles cast incandescent light over jeweled and silk-clad guests who were all holding their collective breaths between sips of the finest champagne.
All the better for him to see the Marquess of Blackburn snap the first trigger of an elaborate, and deeply satisfying, trap.
“It’s truly shocking and should not be countenanced,” he heard Lady Hester Bankfort intone, as she pursed thin lips and tapped her meager bosom with a fan for emphasis.
“And that’s precisely why we’ve all decided to attend,” reminded her daughter-in-law Belinda who, along with the two hundred or so of the cream of London society, filled the ballroom of Comte Henri de Maupassant.
“Even if she is his mistress,” allowed Lady Bankfort while giving a brief nod to Le Comte and to a knot of gentlemen already arranged in a row of exquisite Louis Quinze chairs for what was to be the London Season’s most scandalous recital. “But to parade her about shamelessly, like some kind of odalisque…”
Le Comte heard her voice trail off in a huff of disapproval. “Public performances given by a woman! The French take simply too many liberties.”
