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  “Beautiful country,” he said. “I wouldn’t have guessed there was so much forest so close to town.”

  “This forest has been the source of my family’s income for generations. We don’t own the mill, but when Alexander Finch purchased the property two hundred years ago, he wisely chose to buy most of the wooded land in the county as well, thereby ensuring the mill would be dependent on the Finches for timber. He also set strict limits on how many trees can be harvested every year, which has kept the forest mostly intact and the price of our timber relatively consistent. Without those limits, I suspect we’d have no mature trees left at all.”

  “You seem very knowledgeable in matters of estate and land management,” he observed.

  “For a woman, you mean?”

  He shook his head. “For anyone. If you asked me what the primary source of income from my family’s estate is, I would be at a loss to tell you, although I confess that I never had much interest in learning such things.”

  “What were you interested in learning?”

  His mouth quirked into the same disarming smile he’d employed yesterday to induce her to let him into the house. “Mostly how to raise Cain and chase skirts.”

  A sharp pang of what could only be jealousy took Artemisia quite unawares. Never before had she experienced a moment’s animus over any of her lovers’ past conquests. But then, never before had she decided to take a lover purely for pleasure. Or at least, not since she made the youthful mistake of believing herself in love with Robert Beaumont.

  Her surprise at her own reaction caused her to say in an unattractive, accusatory tone, “I’m sure you were very good at it.”

  She wished the words back as soon as she had spoken them, but fortunately, her companion seemed not to notice the edge of pique to them, for he laughed and said, “Well, I was rather better at the chasing than the catching.”

  “Now you are being too modest.”

  He raised his eyebrows in mock reproach and pressed his free hand to his heart. “I can assure you, I am hardly renowned for an excess of modesty.”

  “Or an excess of honesty, one suspects.”

  “Ah, there you are quite mistaken. A great many of my transgressions have been the result of a tendency toward being too truthful. I was, for example, once confined to the nursery for an entire week for observing that my Aunt Hermione’s mustache was considerably fuller and better groomed than my father’s.”

  Artemisia’s lips twitched with mirth. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes. And despite the punishment, I have never regretted that I said it. Aunt Hermione’s mustache was quite a fine one, and she ought to have been proud of it.”

  “You really are incorrigible, aren’t you?” she asked, shaking her head to keep from laughing.

  “Guilty as charged. But you must admit, that’s what gives me my charm.”

  At this observation, she could no longer suppress her laughter. He was right. He hadn’t a modest bone in his body. And that was what made him so impossibly charming.

  The forest they’d been skirting on the west came to an abrupt end, and now rolling, green pasture land extended as far as the eye could see on both sides of the path. A cool, ocean-scented breeze, previously broken by the trees, attested to their proximity to the coast.

  Having noted the change in their surroundings, Langston asked, “Does this land belong to your family, too?”

  “No, this is the westernmost end of the Earl of Sandhurst’s estate,” she answered, surprised by the ease with which the man’s name crossed her lips. It was a mark of how far she had come, perhaps, that she no longer hated him. “Our destination is just up ahead.”

  “On Sandhurst’s property?”

  “No,” she said with barely suppressed glee. “On mine.”

  Artemisia Finch’s property turned out to be a stretch of grassy hillside overlooking Moorcambe Bay. At the top of the rise, a two-story stone cottage with a slate roof faced the bay, affording a breathtaking view across the glassy water to the opposite shore. A few fishing boats plied the bay, leaving shiny ripples in their wake. It was idyllic.

  The perfect love nest.

  A horrible, insidious thought crept into his mind. Perhaps he was not the first man she’d invited to this enchanting little hideaway. Why else would she own a place like this so close to Finch House and yet so secluded?

  “This belongs to you?” he asked, doing his best to keep his tone carefully neutral.

  “Well, originally, it belonged to my mother, but when she died, the property passed to me. I spent a great deal of time here when I was a child. It went a bit to seed while I was in London, but since I’ve come home, I’ve put some money into making it habitable again. I may have to move in one day, after all.”

  “Why?” They rode side by side toward the cottage as they spoke. He could see now that a thin trail of smoke emitted from one of the two chimneys.

  “Finch House is entailed and will eventually pass to my cousin, Henry. Although he’s a decent enough fellow, I don’t think he’d take kindly to having me under his roof, even if we are blood relations. I’ll need someplace to live when the time comes.” She shrugged. “Why not here?”

  Walter couldn’t contain his incredulity. “I can think of a few hundred reasons. Most of whom reside a few miles north of here.”

  “You mean the good people of Grange-Over-Sands?”

  “They aren’t exactly kind to you, are they?”

  “I don’t have an especial need for kindness, Mr. Langston.”

  “But surely once your father is gone, you’ll want to move on. Go someplace where people won’t know—“ He broke off, realizing he was about to say something he would regret.

  Unfortunately, she finished his unwelcome thought for him. “Where people won’t know I’m a whore?”

  It sounded even uglier when she said it than when he thought it.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” he said, but the renunciation sounded weak to his ears. He hadn’t meant it in those terms, but the basic sentiment he’d been about to express wasn’t far removed. “I just assumed you might someday want a husband, a family.”

  “And if I move away from here, where no one knows my sordid past, I can have all those things by lying? That would hardly be Christian of me, Mr. Langston.” She pulled her mount to a halt in front of the cottage.

  Walter stopped Mercury beside her. This conversation did not bode well for the afternoon he’d envisioned spending with her. “It is hardly Christian for anyone to sit in moral judgment of his fellow human beings.”

  She let out a wry laugh. “In my experience, judging one another is what good Christians do best.”

  “But that is because they are human, not because they are Christian. The Bible is rife with injunctions against it—let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all of that.”

  “Be that as it may, Mr. Langston,” she said briskly, tossing her reins over the hitching post in front of her, “we appear doomed to live among human beings, and they will judge. And they aren’t wrong, are they? I am a whore, or we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  She spoke without an ounce of censure or resignation, and that, ironically, was what cut him to the quick. He was no better than his parishioners. He might not hold her in contempt, but neither could he court her properly, the way he would any other lady of her background. Worse, he could not deny that a part of him was grateful not to have to observe the rules.

  “So, are we going to sit out here on our horses all afternoon, or shall we go inside and attend to…well…business?” She gave him a smile that was pure seduction, leaving him no doubt as to what sort of business she had in mind.

  In spite of his self-recriminations, his cock twitched to life. “You deserve better than this,” he murmured.

  She shook her head. “No, this is precisely what I deserve. And I would infinitely rather enjoy what I can have than pine for what I cannot. And, unless I miss my guess,” she added in a low, sultry tone, �
�I can have you.”

  Yes. Yes, she could.

  6

  The interior of the cottage was bright and airy owing to the large windows overlooking the bay. Light streamed into the small entryway from both the parlor on the right and the dining room on the left, illuminating not only the narrow hall but the steep staircase leading to the upper floor.

  Walter paused at the parlor door, but Artemisia tugged at his hand. “The bedrooms are upstairs. Unless you fancy the settee for this sort of thing…” She raised her eyebrows.

  He swallowed against the rush of lust that swelled his veins—and other parts of his anatomy. Apparently, he did fancy the settee for this sort of thing. “I didn’t want to presume an invitation to your upper floor until it was extended.”

  “You needn’t play the gentleman with me, Mr. Langston. We both know you are invited to both my upper and lower floors.”

  He halted at the foot of the first stair, not allowing her to pull him up after her. She stopped and turned to look at him, her eyes widened in query.

  “Walter. You should call me Walter,” he said. “And I am a gentleman.” Or, at least, he was discovering that he wanted to be one. For her.

  “Then you know a gentleman doesn’t keep a lady waiting.” Her hair, which she wore in a simple but elegant coil, shone in a shaft of sunlight. A smile tugged at her lips as she added, “Walter.”

  He liked the way his name sounded when she said it, as though he were something both delicious and vaguely illicit, like an especially rich dessert or the last tumbler of a particularly fine brandy. No wonder she’d commanded the attentions—and wallets—of London’s wealthiest, most aristocratic gentleman. She knew how to make a man feel as though he were the center of the universe. And yet, as though she fancied herself a lump of coal rather than a diamond, she offered herself to him for nothing at all.

  Nothing save pleasure.

  The thought was humbling. And an implicit challenge. One he was determined to meet—or better still, exceed.

  He cupped her jaw in his palm, running his thumb over the high ridge of her cheekbone. Her skin was even silkier, even softer than he remembered. “I wasn’t planning on a quick, meaningless tumble. If keeping you waiting means keeping you wanting, I’m willing to make an exception to my claim of being a gentleman.”

  “What were you planning on, then?” Although her tone was teasing, her respiration was ragged and her pupils threatened to swamp her irises. Though he might be imagining it, he thought her breasts were straining against the bodice of her dark blue riding habit.

  Rising up on the balls of his feet to meet her height, he feathered his lips across her parted ones in the faintest of kisses. “A long, slow, and exceedingly meaningful tumble.”

  She shivered. “That sounds…promising,” she murmured.

  “It is most assuredly a promise,” he answered. He only hoped it was one he could keep.

  To Walter’s chagrin, the first time was likely to be neither long nor slow.

  As soon as they reached her bedroom—he thought of it as hers, at any rate, although he supposed she did not often sleep in it—they fell into frantic, open-mouthed kisses and a frenzied effort to remove one another’s clothing. There was nothing leisurely in the way they devoured one another and instinct told him they had begun as they would go on.

  Swift. Sweaty. Urgent.

  Their mouths firmly engaged, she tugged his shirt tails from his breeches while he undid the large, round buttons that held together the front of her bodice. When it came open, he discovered she’d worn no stays beneath the dress. The only fabric separating him from her breasts was the light muslin of her chemise. Sliding his palm over the thinly veiled half-globe of one breast, he circled the hardened nipple with his thumb. Her breasts, like the rest of her, were exactly to his taste in size, shape, and density, and a groan of appreciation tore from his throat.

  She shivered palpably at his touch, her breath coming in sweet, harsh pants into his mouth as he tugged her chemise downward. At the precise moment he freed her breasts, she finished her work on the buttons of his fall, and her hand found the ridge of his erection. He took a hissing gulp of air as she stroked his length through his drawers, her delicate fingers gliding upward from the base to linger at the sensitive head.

  “You’re making this very hard,” he muttered, gritting his teeth to maintain control.

  “I certainly hope so,” she purred, a throaty laugh punctuating the entendre.

  His heart throbbed in time with his cock. “You really are incorrigible, aren’t you?” he asked, repeating her observation about him.

  “Yes,” she agreed with a sultry smile, “I would say that I am. We’re a matched pair.”

  “Indeed. Although at the moment, I am more interested in a rather different pair.” In demonstration, he lowered his head and closed his mouth around one bared nipple.

  “Oh!” The sound was half-laugh, half-gasp, and her teasing fingers faltered briefly in their exploration of his manhood. She swayed dangerously, and recognizing the signs of an impending collapse, Walter maneuvered her until they stood beside the bed. A moment later, they were falling onto it in a tangle of limbs and skirts and other flapping bits of clothing.

  Once they had settled on the bed, his body half-splayed over hers, he returned his attention to her breasts, laving one nipple and then the other until she whimpered and writhed with glorious, undisguised pleasure. Her hips arched and wriggled in invitation. An invitation Walter was too far gone to delay answering.

  With a little assistance from her, he managed to release his suspenders and kick out of his breeches and drawers. Making his way through the expanse of her skirts was no mean matter by comparison, and it took some effort and more time than he would have liked to bare her long, lithe legs. When he reached the top of her thighs, he discovered she had also foregone wearing drawers, and he stopped for a moment, his blood pounding in his ears at the dizzyingly abrupt revelation of the nest of golden curls crowning her mons and the unmistakable scent of warm, willing woman. The tantalizing notion of burying his head between her thighs to taste that flavor that accompanied that scent floated through his head, but was swiftly eradicated by her hand closing around his member.

  “Please, Walter,” she whispered, “don’t make me wait any longer. I’ve waited so long.”

  Desire mixed with pure masculine triumph surged through his chest, impossible either to analyze or ignore. Of course, she hadn’t been waiting for him specifically; they’d known one another less than a day, after all. But that fact mattered not a whit to the portion of his anatomy around which she had wrapped her palm and which she now guided with unerring accuracy toward her core.

  He closed his eyes against the assault on his senses as the head of his cock met the soft, supple folds of her labia and then the slick heat of her entrance. Releasing his shaft, she tilted her hips in wordless encouragement, and he pressed into her, burying himself in her unutterably sweet, unbearably tight channel.

  She let out a sigh of satisfaction. “Ahh, that’s so good.”

  His chest swelled with pride; his cock and balls swelled with the need for release. He withdrew slowly, plunged back in more quickly. A second time, then a third. Her hands found his arse, her back arched, her knees bent. She met each thrust, a dance of bodies as precisely attuned and perfectly choreographed as any reel or quadrille, but for the ever-increasing tempo. Determined to ensure her pleasure before he reached his own, he made a valiant effort to slow the pace, but she was having none of it.

  Digging her heels into his buttocks, she whispered, “No more waiting, Walter. Take me like you mean it. Like it matters.”

  Her words shattered any hope of restraint, any pretense of control. He gave himself over to the stark, primal lust he’d felt the moment he spied her from the church steps, perhaps even from the moment he’d first seen her in London three years ago. And she came right along with him, her passion and urgency equaling—perhaps exceeding—his own
.

  Despite the mountain of her skirts bunched at her waist, he adjusted their positions so that he could kiss her again. His climax gathered behind his eyes, tingled in his fingertips, curled at the base of his spine, and he needed her lips against his to ground him, to keep him firmly tethered to the earth. She stilled beneath him as their mouths touched and then broke apart, her angelically beautiful face damp with sweat and flushed with rapture. Heaven had never looked more profane.

  Knowing he was close on following her into climax, he tried to withdraw, but she locked her legs around his hips. “No, don’t leave. Stay inside me.”

  He ought to protest, ought to wrench himself free. He always took care to spill on the sheets in an effort to prevent an unintentional conception. Thus far, to his knowledge, he’d been successful in that endeavor. But she held him fast, and there was simply no time to escape. In the end, perhaps he didn’t even want to. He came inside her as she asked, and he was fiercely glad he did, because it was glorious.

  If there was a child, he was not certain he would be sorry.

  * * *

  “You needn’t worry,” she remarked some time later. After their frenzied coupling, she had risen from the bed and was now in the process of removing her rumpled riding habit.

  Walter felt a bit unchivalrous for not offering to assist her, but she seemed to have matters well in hand. In any event, he was not convinced he would be of much help, since her costume appeared to be held together by a series of cleverly concealed buttons and hooks intended to be accessible to the wearer.

  “Worry?” he echoed. At the moment, he was too sated and too delighted by the prospect of a repeat performance to worry about much of anything except his likely recovery time.