Her mouth fell open, and she laughed. In retrospect, it had been easy enough to call herself silly, yet she had always recalled the violent bitterness that had motivated her and justified herself with memory of that emotion. Put in Anthony's blunt manner, her motives did seem absurd.
"You will laugh," she said. "But it was because I found out my father loved a courtesan. His mistress, Mrs. Newland."
Anthony didn't laugh; instead, he looked at her as if she'd grown a third eye. "Emily," he said gently, like a mother imparting an obvious fact to a stupid child, "many men take mistresses before and after marriage; some even love them. Surely you didn't expect your father to mourn your mother forever?"
"Yes," she said simply. She tried to give a nonchalant shrug, to remind herself that it no longer mattered, but she couldn't keep the thickness from creeping into her voice. "Theirs was a romance that the ton still speaks of: the dashing earl and the beautiful daughter of a duke. He grieved for my mother so much that he could not love us; it gave him a reason to ignore Colin and me. It was a reason that was beautiful, tragic. I wanted love like that for myself." She paused, glancing down at their clasped hands. His thumb softly stroked the back of her fingers as he listened. "But if he loved his mistress, then his indifference toward us could not stem from his undying love for my mother. It simply meant that he never found us worthy of his love."
"Emily…" Anthony shook his head, a smile tilting the corners of his mouth. "You are an idiot. Colin loves you. The ton adores you," he said, and added with an uneven grin, "Even I love you."
"I used you horribly," she reminded him, but the heaviness in her chest eased, and Emily found herself smiling back. "You can't love me."
"Since I was fourteen years old," he said.
"Don't be absurd," she admonished, and her smile faded. "I was an idiot," she admitted with a sigh. "But I was young."
"It was only ten months ago."
"Many things can happen in ten months."
"Yes," he agreed quietly.
They sat in companionable silence for a few moments, until the absent stroke of his thumb abruptly stopped.
"Did you meet this courtesan? Was she the rumor in Leicester Square, where you learned—"
He broke off, and his gaze dropped to her lips. She suddenly recalled the words she had spoken to him.
I learned that if a woman takes a man's organ into her mouth, she can make him do anything she wishes.
His hand clenched on hers, and she knew he was imagining it as well. A restless ache swept through her, tightening the peaks of her breasts, settling warm and taut beneath her womb.
She slowly nodded; his expression intensified, his jaw clenched. She leaned forward, a liquid movement, and brushed his hair from where it had fallen into his eyes.
"This would not be wise," he said, a raw edge to his voice.
Desire thrummed through her; she could feel the answering tension in him and didn't need to question what he thought this was.
"We've already decided I have a tendency toward idiocy," she said, and then paused when Anthony pressed his lips together. She touched his mouth softly with her fingertips. "Why do you do that?"
He caught her hand in his and tugged her toward him almost playfully. "What?"
She rocked forward until her knees were against his thigh and sat back on her heels. An unladylike position, perhaps, but a comfortable one. "You don't allow yourself to laugh when you are with me. Am I so formidable?" She tried asking the question lightly, but she knew he would hear the anxiety that ran beneath her teasing tone.
"Yes." He turned her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. An innocent kiss, but tongues of flame licked the length of her arm. Her body tightened, trembled. His gaze locked on hers, warm, rich blue. "Your every smile, your every word leaves me breathless and delighted. If I laughed as often as I wished, there would be no other sound in the room."
His words pierced her like arrows. She drew in a deep breath, her eyes searching his face. "You aren't laughing now," she whispered.
He sat up and rested his forehead against hers. "A nosferatu is stalking you. He would kill you and your brother."
"He sleeps, as does my brother," she said, and threaded her fingers through the hair at his nape. It was soft, and his skin was like silk beneath her hands.
"A demon waits."
"Hugh watches for her." Her palms smoothed down his shoulders and felt the strength of him beneath his shirt. He shuddered under her touch, his lashes swept down as he closed his eyes.
"When I leave, I will not return for a century."
"When you leave, every day I will stare up at the sky and thank Heaven and you for looking after a silly, stupid girl and her vain brother."
A laugh rumbled through him but did not escape. He sealed her lips with his, and she rose up against him, winding her slim arms around his neck. She immediately sought to deepen the kiss, opening her mouth, a soft moan of anticipation sounding low in her throat.
He yielded to her quiet demand, his lips parting. His tongue gently traced the sharp line of her teeth before dipping inside, tasting.
His leisurely exploration sent delicious shivers along her spine. She arched closer, but he pulled away with a long, unraveling sigh.
"You undo me, Emily," he said.
She wanted him to become undone. She raised her fingers to her lips and felt the lingering moisture. His impassioned gaze followed the movement and then with a low growl of frustration, pushed away from the bed.
He strode toward the window, but not before Emily saw the taut stretch of his breeches across his loins and the outline of his shaft.
Tempted to lure him back, she got as far as uncurling her legs from beneath her before he turned around and pinned her to the bed with a heated stare.
"They will hear," he said, his voice thick. "Hugh, the nosferatu, the demon—if they are listening, they will hear us. Every sigh, every word, every movement of my body against yours."
The images his words conjured sent pleasure coursing through her, even as she recoiled at the thought of being on display—particularly for creatures such as those.
"I will be silent," she said.
"I fear I will not."
She tucked in a grin and flicked a glance at his straining erection. "You were last time."
He chuckled, a rich, deep sound that filled the room. She hugged a pillow to her chest, smiling with pleasure. It wasn't an outright laugh, but it would do.
Shaking his head, he said, "Last time was possibly the least-fulfilling sexual encounter—outside the marriage bed—in the history of England."
Her face went scarlet, and she hurled the pillow at his head. He caught it easily, and his renewed humor was payment enough for her embarrassment. "Go to sleep, Emily," he said. "We'll discuss your ineffective courtesan-learned technique later."
"I've learned many techniques since then," she muttered, hut lay down, curling around her remaining pillow. She felt the warmth of his gaze on her and was certain that her roiling emotions and lingering arousal would never let her rest.
And then she slipped into dreams.
Anthony knew the moment she fell asleep. He heard it in the cadence of her breathing and the subtle relaxing of her form.
He still held her pillow in his hands, and he deliberately unclenched the fists he had sunk deep into its softness, grateful that it had not exploded into a shower of feathers under the pressure of his grip. He should not feel the jealousy that swept through him, nor the anger directed at those lovers she'd taken—he had her once, and his motives had not been pure. Yet he still wanted to tear apart every man who'd touched her, erase from her every memory of them: nameless men who had likely brought her more pleasure than Anthony ever had.