Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride Read online

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I understand,’ he said, his eyes meeting hers above the rims of their glasses. ‘You were angry with me. I was furious with you, too—relief, I suppose. For a while there I thought I wouldn’t be able to afford to buy you.’

  ‘You are the sort of man who will not give up. You would have done something.’ The red wine warmed her stomach and the food put strength back into her. She would need it, Laurel sensed. Her whole future hung in the balance. She was his—he had bought her. But she was no one’s slave, nor was he a man who would compel a mistress to stay with him, even one who had surrendered her virginity to him.

  ‘What is it exactly that you do? You don’t spend all your time hunting missing women, do you?’ She smiled at him. ‘You were incredibly discreet in Martinsdene.’

  ‘I’ve a small estate near Falmouth,’ Patrick said, looking into the depths of the wine as though he could see the scene. ‘It doesn’t bring in much, although I’m working to improve it. I’m a younger son, so I have no expectations. I want to enter government service and for that I need a patron and a reputation. I have been acting as a confidential agent for anyone of any standing in the area who’ll employ me. This case is proving more intractable than most,’ he added, his mouth grim.

  ‘You’ll solve it,’ she said. ‘You came to the mystery of the Shelley sisters late, that is all.’ He gave a complicated jerk of his head, half agreeing with her, half, she could tell, clinging to the high standards he had set himself. ‘You have your career all mapped out. You are a planner, aren’t you, Patrick Jago?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed, still staring into the wine. ‘Build up the estate, buy more land, employ a steward, impress some more patrons. I have it all worked out,’ he added as though mocking himself.

  And find the right wife. The unspoken words seemed to hang in the air between them. That is not me, Laurel thought as her stomach gave a painful swoop. Orphaned daughter of the minor gentry without money or connections or the slightest influence. Ah, well, it has seemed like a fairy story from the beginning, complete with ogres and dragons and my white knight.

  The clock struck four and she looked up, bemused by her thoughts. ‘Time to get out of here,’ Patrick said, standing up and reaching for his clothes.

  ‘Where are we?’ Laurel got up, too, and struggled into the flimsy gown. It was virtually transparent, but with the large shawl draped and tied it would pass.

  ‘An alleyway down the side of Almack’s Assembly Rooms. In the middle of fashionable St James’s,’ Patrick said, tying his neck cloth with a simple knot. ‘Very convenient for gentlemen squiring wives, daughters and sisters to the ton’s premiere marriage mart if they become bored with genteel dancing and lemonade.’ He shrugged into his coat and checked his pockets. ‘Eleven guineas. We’ll do.’

  He led the way down to the main floor, then found the service stairs at the back. There were faint sounds coming up from below as some unfortunate kitchen underling made up the fire and filled the kettles for the new day. ‘I thought so,’ he murmured, his hand on the back door handle. ‘She’s left it unbolted to fetch in the coals.’ They slipped out and into the cold dawn light without incident.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Laurel huddled next to him as the sleepy hackney carriage driver Patrick had hailed in St James’s Square set off.

  ‘Back to my inn room. I’ll order breakfast and you can wait while I get money out of the bank. Then we’ll take the mail to Falmouth.’

  ‘You’ll take me to Meg?’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me—I have an ulterior motive. I want you with me.’

  ‘But why should you?’ she asked, her breath catching.

  ‘Because you belong to me in every way that matters,’ he said, his eyes steady on hers. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes! But you hardly know me, Patrick.’

  Patrick looked at the anxious violet eyes watching him from the shadows and read the uncertainty in them. No, his heart was not mistaken: she felt the same way he did.

  ‘Don’t you want to make an honest man of me?’ he asked. ‘You tie me to the bed head, you torment me with feathers, you do unspeakable things with an implement I am unwilling to put a name to and then you won’t come with me?’

  Laurel made a choked sound somewhere between laughter and a sob. ‘Idiot. Men do that sort of thing all the time I expect.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he pointed out. ‘At least, never when the person with me meant so much to me. I wouldn’t mind repeating the experience with you. I have pocketed some feathers. The amount this evening cost, I thought the least they could do was to throw those in.’

  The sound became more of a chuckle. ‘Oh, don’t tease me! How am I ever going to pay you back?’

  ‘You cannot, it will take months. Years. A whole lifetime, in fact. And here we are at the Belle Sauvage.’

  The light was brightening and the yard was beginning to work up to its full early-morning bustle. Patrick paid the driver and then reached into the carriage. ‘Come here, Laurel. You can’t walk through the yard in those slippers.’

  She protested faintly but did not struggle as he took her in his arms and walked across the yard to the accompaniment of whistles from the stable boys.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she mumbled into his lapel and he realised that her worries went deeper than humour could reach.

  ‘The key is in my pocket,’ he said as they reached his door. ‘Can you find it?’

  ‘Put me down,’ Laurel suggested as she scrabbled in his pockets. ‘No, here it is.’

  ‘I’m not putting you down until I reach the bed,’ Patrick said, shouldering the door open and striding across the room. ‘There. Not as comfortable as the one we’ve been using, but it will do. Now, will you stay here until I come back?’ She looked doubtful, biting her lip. ‘Give me your word, Laurel. I don’t want to have to take you to my bank looking like that, but I will unless I’m certain you’ll be here when I return.’

  ‘You won’t want me after we get to Cornwall, I’m sure. I’m too ignorant, too naive, for you.’ This is love, isn’t it? Love and lust, all mixed up into one delicious, heartbreaking emotion.

  Patrick knelt by the bed, making her scoot back against the pillows. ‘Listen to me. I love you, Laurel. I love the way you kiss, I love the way you taste, I love your courage and your humour and the way you feel in my arms. I have known you only days—yet within minutes I felt I had been waiting for you all my life.’

  ‘Oh, Patrick.’

  ‘Are you going to argue with me? Tell me you do not like me? You may not love me yet, but I will not rest until I have made you happy.’

  ‘I believe you. I love you,’ she said simply, suddenly utterly certain, catching his hands as he gestured with them. ‘I thought it might just be desire, but it is all mixed up together. Make love to me.’

  He stared at her, the smile spreading slowly across his face until the joy danced in his eyes. ‘I love you, Laurel Vernon.’ He took off his coat.

  ‘Patrick? I thought you were going to the bank.’

  ‘It won’t go away.’ He ripped off the crumpled neck cloth and sat down to yank at shoes and stockings. ‘I want to make love to you somewhere untainted by silks and perfume and money and fear. I want to make love to you on this rather lumpy mattress with the world going by outside the door. No ropes, no feathers, no artifice. Just you and me.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ This was no fairy tale, this plain inn room with the sound of post horns and shouting ostlers, the thud of running feet along the gallery on the other side of the thin wall. This was reality. This was the beginning of the rest of her life.

  Laurel pulled off the gaudy silk and threw it across the room. ‘You’ll have to buy me a gown and petticoats, as well,’ she said.

  ‘Hmm?’ He wasn’t listening to her. ‘Your hair. So long.’ Patrick reached out and touched it and she felt a little gasp escape her lips as though his
hand had brushed her breast. Her nipples hardened and she leaned into his touch. He ran his fingers through the heaviness of her hair, lifting it and letting it flow free, his body tense as though he was focused on that one sensation alone.

  He pushed her back onto the pillows, following her down with his weight, one hand still sifting through the tangled weight of her hair. His mouth on hers was gentle but possessive. She knew him now, the taste and the feel; she understood how to answer the probing tongue with little strokes of her own, with tiny nips of her teeth on the fullness of his lower lip, and all the time she let herself sink deeper into the reality of him. So much to learn about him, a lifetime to do it in.

  She was so lucky, she thought hazily. Perhaps her friend Meg was, as well, if she understood Patrick’s cryptic remarks about Lord Brandon. But nothing would make Meg truly happy until she found her sisters.

  Patrick nipped at her ear and Laurel pushed her hands between them, felt the hard, flat plane of his stomach tighten as her hands skimmed down to the waistband of his breeches. She wriggled under him as she pushed them down and he arched up so she could lick and nip at his nipples, fascinated by the way they knotted, as hers did, loving the rough masculinity of the hair on his chest as she ran her fingers through it.

  They tumbled over, off balance as he struggled out of his breeches and, released from his weight, Laurel slid farther until she could take him in both hands, stroke up the satin skin over hot, rigid muscle. Instinct overcame bashfulness and she dipped her head, took him in her mouth, spread her hands up to his chest to hold him and marvelled as Patrick groaned and fell back. Hers senses were full of him, under her hands she could feel his pulse thundering. Such power, she thought hazily, experimenting with tongue and lips as he shuddered.

  Then he twisted, reaching for her, lifting her until she was straddling his hips. ‘Come here,’ he said, his voice husky and she rose and let herself sink onto him, inch by aching inch as he filled her, completed her.

  ‘I love you, Patrick Jago,’ she said, holding him tight within her. ‘Take me home.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He bore up, lifting them both, driving into the heart of her as her senses unravelled into heat and light and a pleasure that was on the verge of unbearable. And then the world stopped spinning on its axis and they ran out of words or the need to speak and were at peace.

  Discover what happens to the Shelley sisters in Louise Allen’s The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters series, available wherever books and ebooks are sold from Harlequin Historical.

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  Louise Allen has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website— www.louiseallenregency.co.uk —for the latest news!

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0739-4

  Auctioned Virgin to Seduced Bride

  Copyright © 2011 by Melanie Hilton

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