Improper Pleasure. Charlotte Featherstone
Grumbling over her stupidity and unusual pride, Amelia stood up from the bench and reached for the strings of the reticule that dangled from her wrist. As she looked down, a blurred image of a gloved hand resting atop her fingers swam before her. With a gasp she looked up and faltered back a step.
“At last we have come face to face.”
“I didn’t think you were coming today,” she whispered. As soon as she said the words, she wanted to kick herself for being so foolish—so transparently needy.
He took a step closer to her, she felt his gloved hand encase hers before he raised it to his mouth. “I have been here all morning, waiting.”
Reluctantly she turned her gaze from his face in order to watch his lips press against her gloved knuckles. “I didn’t see you.”
“I did not wish for you to see me. I wanted to watch you unseen. I wanted to discover everything I could about you before this moment.”
What had he discovered? Did he know her secret? Panic gripped her and her fingers began to tremble in his hand. She tried to pull away, to run, but his long fingers encased her palm, holding her tight.
“Tell me your name,” he asked in a silky voice that felt like a caress—a sensual, tempting touch she felt snaking along her body.
She shouldn’t be doing this. He was a lord, a peer of the realm. Again, she reminded herself that she was no one, and if he were to discover her identity and expose her secret, she would be thrust back to the same horrific world she had once crawled out from.
“Your name?”
“Emmy,” she told him, using the name her father had called her when she was a small child. He cocked his head to the side and studied her with his blue-green eyes.
“I am Adrian, Emmy.”
She shuddered at the intimacy of hearing her voice murmur his name; wished she possessed the strength to say it aloud, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
“Who are you, Emmy?”
“No one,” she replied, savoring the gentle touch of his fingers running along the back of her hand.
How many nights had she dreamt of this, his touch, his large warm hands caressing her? So many nights. So many long, cold—empty—nights.
“Do you come here to write?” he asked. “I’ve seen you with pen and book.”
“No.”
“An artist, then? You study the statuary as if you were a connoisseur.”
“I am just a woman.”
“Not just. If you were just any sort of female I would not be here. I would not have come every week for over a month just to see you and watch you from afar. No, not just any woman, Emmy.”
“I…I must leave,” she stuttered, pulling away from him, fearing her weakness. It frightened her, this unbridled response to him. It terrified her to know it was not only her body responding to this man, but her mind, her heart—her soul.
“Don’t run, Emmy. We have both waited for this moment.”
“I…I can’t.”
“Next week you will be here. You won’t run and never come back to me?”
When she did not immediately answer, he brought her chest up to his and held her close. Her body absorbed the heat radiating from his broad chest, chasing away the dampness of the morning. “You will promise me now, that next week you will be here. You have to return, Emmy because I have to see you. I have to.”
Her heart soared upon hearing his low, fervent words. Dazed, Amelia nodded, unable to do anything else but clasp his words to her breast and hold them tight. One more week, she told herself, just once more, and then she would never again return to Highgate.
Chapter Two
Fog hovered above the wet grass, swirling until it wrapped itself around her body like a shroud. The light from the sun, struggling to break free of the black clouds that hung low overhead, cast her in an incandescent glow that made her appear more ghostly spectre than woman.
As if in a trance, Adrian pushed open the black and gilt iron gate. It protested on its hinges, but with a scrape along the fieldstone path, the gate swung open. He stepped into the cemetery, his feet carrying him over to Emmy.
The mist grew thicker, engulfing her so he nearly lost sight of her in the gloomy cocoon of fog. But then a cloud parted, revealing her as she sat on the bench, her head lowered, the long black veil billowing softly in the crisp spring breeze. She was holding a book and he saw that her hands were bare. His gut reacted to the sight of those small white hands. It was strange that such a simple thing should arouse him so.
As he neared her, his gaze remained focused on her delicate, pale hands; his mind filled with images of her palms sliding along his chest and traversing over his belly. Three little brown freckles lay enticingly between her thumb and index finger, spaced far enough apart so that he could kiss each one. He wanted to fall to his knees and clutch her hand to his mouth, kissing the freckles then stroking his tongue along each one, wetting her hand for the easy glide along his skin. He imagined that hand—her left hand—with its freckles, sliding up his shaft. He wanted to feel her fingers stroking him, soothing his flesh that burned. It had been too long since he enjoyed the simple pleasure of touching—of being touched.
He stood beside her, looking down at her bent head which was covered with her plain bonnet. “I despise the dawn. I loathe it with a passion. It is only the thought of meeting you that draws me out of my bed to brave the morning light.”
She raised her head and studied him from behind her veil. “I adore the morn. It is a time of peace and tranquility. A part of the day for quiet reflection and memories. It is truly the only time that is entirely mine.”
What drove her here? Was she grieving for a fiancé? A lover? Had she been meeting someone else here all this time? The thought tore him apart and he was amazed at how damned jealous he felt. She was his…
“Walk with me?” he asked, offering her his arm while fighting to contain the riotous emotions inside him. He would not think of other men, would not imagine her waiting here in this secluded spot for any man other than him.
She stopped them before a weathered statue of a woman kneeling, her stone hands cupped before her in supplication. The statue was garbed in a long flowing robe while a veil shielded her features.
“This one is my favourite.”
He felt those words, said in Emmy’s quiet voice. He felt that touch as he watched her hand, slight and freckled, skate down the length of the wind-worn sculpture. He was entranced by that hand gliding over the shoulder and waist of the statue. It was as if he could feel that same hand caressing his naked flesh. And he burned. Christ, every inch of his flesh grew hot as he imagined Emmy’s white little fingers trailing along his body.
Touch me that way, he wanted to say. Look at me that way._But he kept silent, and instead allowed himself to become mesmerized by the sight of Emmy’s gentle hands and imagining her soothing touch roaming along his aching, lonely body.
“How forlorn she looks residing over this tangled patch of overgrown shrubbery and brambles. It is as though she has been utterly abandoned—sentenced to years of loneliness until she crumbles to dust. No one will remember her and her presence here. No one but me.”
Reaching for Emmy’s hand, he covered it with his, watching with a sense of power how his large hand engulfed her little one. Never had his body been so hard with anticipation, with passion and simple seduction. Never had he felt a more visceral connection to a woman. It was more than lust that drew him to her.
“From the moment I first glimpsed her through the brush she captured my heart. She has been left all alone, abandoned to this beautiful but lonely