Julia Ross
Dear Reader: Here are two excerpts from The Wicked Lover. Happy reading!!
The Wicked Lover
Berkley Trade Paperback. February 2004. ISBN: 0-425-19406-X
He had a regrettable weakness for beauty: in horses, in clothes, in art, in women. He was known for it. . . .Robert Sinclair Dovenby, known throughout Georgian London as the Dove, was also reputed to be dangerous. An unfortunate day, then, when Dove returns home to find his mistress, the lovely and socially powerful Lady Grenham, burning his clothes in the street in front of his townhouse. Even worse that the reason for her rage is waiting for Dove in his bedroom:
First excerpt from The Wicked Lover:
He had a damned good idea what he would find in his bedroom. If it was the right lady, she might get exactly what she’d come for.
Dove lifted the latch and opened the door.
He stopped dead.
A girl sat on a chair near the window. She did not look like a strumpet. Beneath a French straw hat, her angular face was flushed, apprehensive, vaguely pretty only because she was young. Yet she seemed more annoyed than frightened. As he entered she struggled against what appeared to be her own hat ribbons, which had been used to efficiently truss her to the chair.
The girl’s eyes narrowed, assessing him, before her glance slid away to the bed.
A young man stood spread-eagled at the foot of Dove’s four-poster, arms stretched uncomfortably. Each wrist had been securely tied to the bedposts with the cords from the hangings.
Long-limbed, neatly made, the young man stared defiantly at Dove. His wig boasted white curls and a queue. The shoulders bunched on an ill-fitting blue coat. The bed canopy cast his angry, fine-boned face into shadow, the skin chalk-white, startling in contrast to vehement lapis lazuli eyes, ringed with fatigue as if bruised.
Potential explanations splintered into myriad possibilities—none of them without danger, several of them rich with delight. Closing the door behind him, Dove leaned back against the panels and folded his arms. His premonition of peril seemed absurd, yet the scent of it lingered, along with the faint smell of smoke.
"I enjoy uninvited female company," he said, "as the lion enjoys the gazelle. The presence of a manservant, trussed like a hare for jugging, seems sadly superfluous."
The girl’s freckled nose turned pink.
"My mistress is not at fault, sir." The young man’s voice was light, cultured, hard to pin down. "She’s already afraid. If you would be pleased to untie her?"
"Why? She does not look afraid."
"We did not intend—" the young man began.
"Whether it was intentional or not," Dove interrupted, "the gazelle is at a distinct disadvantage, if she voluntarily enters the lion’s den."
The French hat dipped over the girl’s powdered hair. Green ribbons trailed across fingers marked here and there with pinpricks. Neither a strumpet nor a lady. He nevertheless gave her a small bow.
"We have not been introduced, ma’am. Robert Sinclair Dovenby, your servant. The world sometimes calls me the Dove."
"And your friends?" The manservant jerked angrily against his bonds. "What do they call you? Sinclair—or just Sin? An appropriate enough name for a man of your reputation."
Dove smiled at him. He was also young, but not too young: a hint of wary experience marked the high cheekbones and stubborn chin, and lurked in the pout of the full bottom lip. An odd grace traced the long legs and slender arms, half hidden by the coarse blue jacket. Interesting! He wondered fleetingly how well—or if—this intruder could handle a sword.
"Your mistress was brought here by tales of my notoriety?"
The young man’s bravado was almost tangible.
"She was brought here on a whim, sir. It means nothing."
"Brought here? May I ask your mistress’s name and business, sir? I admit I’m agog with curiosity. Though I’m sure her company promises infinite delights, I did have other plans for this evening."
The young man looked away at the ceiling. "Of course. You are busy. My mistress’s name is Mademoiselle Berthe Dubois. We arrived recently—and with some difficulty—from France. She only came to search— to fetch something."
Search? The word numbed like a shower of ice water.
"She came to fetch something? From a complete stranger? Pray, what did Miss Dubois hope to find in my bedroom? Her own stray wits, perhaps?"
The stubborn chin set in defiance. "Only an item of your clothing. Anything would have sufficed. It was quite random—a wager."
"Ah!" Dove walked around the room, closing empty drawers. "A wager."
"A chance thing," the young man said. "We met a party of ladies—"
Dove stopped by the girl’s chair and smiled down at her. "How very, very naughty of you, Berthe Dubois. A chance meeting, where my undoubted infamy was discussed? You wagered that you could walk into my bedroom, take an article of my clothing, bring it back to the other ladies, and win—one hundred guineas, perhaps?"
"Two hundred," the young man said.
Dove laughed. "Then how tragic that I have no clothing left, except what remains on my person. Though I’m charmed by the brilliance of her revenge, Lady Grenham has burned my entire wardrobe. Unless I disrobe further, your mistress cannot win her bet."
"You would not undress in front of a lady," Berthe Dubois said in French. It was not the accent of Versailles.
"Not unless invited." Dove took a knife from his boot and sliced one green ribbon. The girl pulled a hand free and with a small sound rubbed her wrist over her mouth. "Yet I am disappointed," he added in her own tongue, "that your manservant did not put up a better defense and so allowed another lady to bind you to a chair."
"I am unarmed." The young man also spoke French, slipping easily from one language to the other. "Lady Grenham had a pistol. When she found us here, she became rather discomposed."
"I can imagine. Rifling through a man’s shirts is such an unfortunately intimate task to perform in front of his mistress. So you introduced yourselves?"
"She introduced herself, Lady Margaret, Countess of Grenham." The young man broke off and took a deep breath, then began again in English. "I didn’t think it politic to determine whether her pistol was loaded—"
"I assure you that it was. So with the help of her firearm, Lady Grenham forced Miss Dubois to help truss you to my bedposts. Then, also at pistol point, she tied your mistress to that convenient chair?"
"What could we do, when faced with a gun?" Berthe said, still in French. "Then she tore into your dressers—"
"Which you and your manservant had already conveniently opened."
"—and threw everything from the window like a madwoman. We couldn’t stop her," the French girl added helpfully.
Not sure if he could trust himself to keep his mirth hidden, Dove walked to the window, tossing the knife in one hand.
"But why the devil couldn’t my servants stop either of you? Are my footmen helpless clay in the hands of a woman? Is my house open to every stray female who presents herself at the door, whether trailing her manservant or not?"
"It’s not your servants’ fault," the young man said. "I used a ruse to lock the footmen into the pantry."
"Then I shall have to get an entire new staff, it seems." Dove looked down at the smoldering ashes in the street. Meg had left. The crowd was drifting away. "And, thanks to you, a new lover."
"No harm was meant, sir," the young man said with steely politeness. "You’ll be pleased to release us, I’m sure. You are a gentleman?"
"But what if I’m not a very nice gentleman?" Dove closed the window, shutting out the oncoming night. "Perhaps I am very nasty indeed to young ladies who force their way into my bedroom?"
Their eyes watched him as he strolled about the room. He caressed random objects: his washstand, his brushes, the candlesticks, a stack of leather-bound books abandoned on a table: Defoe, Milton, Molière, Henry Fielding.
"After all, no one consulted me, did they?" He picked up a volume and smoothed his thumb down the spine. Nothing seemed to have been touched except his clothespresses. "By the requirements of your wager, without my agreement I was cast as the angel of benevolence, unwittingly donating clothing to strangers." Dove set down the book: Tom Jones—another rogue who hadn’t known his true parents. "Whatever your motives, you have just cost me my wardrobe, as well as a delightfully experienced mistress. They will both be very expensive to replace."
"No doubt you can win sufficient at the tables," the young man said.
"Of the sins of a rake, I prefer wine and women, which is unfortunate for Mademoiselle Dubois. What if my pleasure is a little too inventive for her tastes? Do you really think that she can match the naughty habits of an experienced lady like Meg Grenham?" Dove picked up a silver-and-ivory box from a side table and took a pinch of snuff, the gesture as deliberately insulting as he could make it. "Though you are safe, of course, being a man."
A blush ran like a flame across the youth’s peerless bones. "Are you foxed, sir?"
"To ride that half-broken stallion in town, I must have been. However, the sight of Lady Grenham’s bonfire and the resulting calculation of the loss to my purse sobered me instantly. I am now in complete possession of my wits. Fortunately for Mademoiselle Dubois, I rather wish to be alone with them. I shall call a sedan chair to take your mistress wherever she would like to go."
"You’ll let us leave?"
Dove closed the snuffbox with a snap, sliced the remaining ribbon with his knife and helped the French girl stand. "I shall let you leave, ma’am. Your man, I think, must stay and answer a few questions."
"I won’t leave without him," Berthe Dubois said stoutly.
"Because you are his faithful servant, are you not?" Dove asked gently. "His cook, perhaps?"
The Frenchwoman’s resolve faltered. Her gaze slid again to the bed.
"Oh, devil take it," the young man said. "Yes, she’s my servant. Go back to our lodgings, Berthe."
"Mais—"
"Monsieur Dovenby is owed his explanation, that’s all. After which, as he has said, he prefers to be alone. I shall be quite safe."
"You have your orders from your master, Miss Dubois," Dove said. "Besides, you have no other choice. If you don’t go willingly, I shall be forced to lay hands on your person, which I believe you would hold in some distaste."
He laid the cut ribbons into her pinpricked hands. Without thinking, she folded them carefully. Not a cook, then, a maid. A lady’s maid.
Dove rang the bell. One of his footmen, sheepish still, appeared immediately. With a few quick instructions, Dove saw the French girl escorted from the room.
Poor Berthe Dubois! She was brave and stalwart enough, though not quite as stalwart as her companion, still tied spread-eagled at the foot of his bed. The Frenchwoman would certainly be carried anywhere she wished to go, but the ride would take the best part of the evening. Dove did not want his interview with Meg’s remaining captive to be disturbed by anything.
He studied the long neck and high cheekbones, the pale face marked by those extraordinary blue eyes. The curved line of hip and waist, revealed where the jacket had fallen open. Was she an actress, hired by a rival as part of a deliberate plan to rob him of Meg and his security in society? Or was she here to discover his far more dangerous secrets? Either way he thought he might enjoy finding out.
She met his gaze, then glanced down. Small white teeth scraped over her ripe bottom lip. Erotic images fired like grapeshot.
For as Robert Dovenby had recognized on his second glance, the individual tied to his bedposts was not only young and beautiful, but a woman.
Second excerpt:
Dove hires the mysterious stranger as his secretary, pretending not to know her real gender. Sworn to uncover his secrets and to bring him to the scaffold, Sylvie has no idea that he has seen through her disguise. When she and Dove attend a winter masquerade, she retreats alone to the center of a maze. Asute readers will guess that Dove hasn't been drinking at all and that he's playing a cat-and-mouse game of his own. Yet their game is about to move to a whole new level:Wrapped snugly in her domino, Sylvie sat at the center on a wrought-iron bench and listened to the footsteps striding along the frosty paths, retreating and advancing with every turn of the labyrinth. Her heart kept the same rhythm, as if it knew that her destiny was stalking toward her. At last a masked figure walked into the small space where she was sitting. He leaned crookedly against the statue of Aphrodite—the prize at the heart of the maze—before tipping back his head to smile at the moon.
There were many crimson dominoes here tonight. In the hooded cloak and with his face covered with the black half-mask, he should have been impossible to recognize. Sylvie only knew it was Dove by his height, his scent, and by the shape of his mouth.
That beautiful mouth!
Everything else was lost in darkness, as she was, safely ensconced in the shadows. She waited, not even sure if he had seen her, her breath feathering softly into the night, her mouth alive with sensitivity.
He turned, then recoiled as if startled when he saw her, though he recovered with admirable ease to give her an unsteady bow. He had been drinking? Then he might be vulnerable, careless—perhaps she could use this? If so, she must use it! Yet she sat quietly, leaving it to fate.
"Ah, ma’am," he said. "What is a man to do when his mistress abandons him?"
Lud, he thought she was a woman? Sylvie kept her silence, thinking fast.
The moonlight might glimmer a little on her white mask, as it shone tonight on a hundred other white masks, but the hood of her domino hid her wig. The long folds covered her masculine coat and breeches. He had no way of knowing that—foxed—he was making a fool of himself with his secretary. He thought she was a woman!
She pulled farther back into the shadows and spoke softly, seductively, while her heart hammered at the risk.
"I don’t know, sir," she said. "Find himself another mistress?"
"Heartless advice, ma’am," he replied. "You would have me kiss a stranger?"
The quiet was absolute, as if they both held their breath, a cocoon of silence among the dark hedges. She had only to open the domino and step into the moonlight to let him know. Yet a moment like this might never come again.
Sylvie stood, keeping the fabric wrapped tightly over her betraying clothes and man’s wig. She was a wraith, lost in cold darkness. With her back to the moon, the hood must completely shadow her face.
"Isn’t kissing strangers the purpose," she asked, keeping her voice breathy, insubstantial, "of a masquerade?"
He reached out one hand. His fingertips brushed her jaw. "You are kind, ma’am."
"You’ve been drinking, sir?"
"Regrettably." His tone was rueful. "And I’m cold to the bone. Would you warm me?"
"What if I, too, am a frozen creature?"
The moonlight that cast her so deeply into shadow lit his masked face. Entrancing creases bracketed his mouth as he smiled. He still clasped Aphrodite’s stone robes, as if he might fall without the support, but with the other hand he tipped up her chin. "Nevertheless, you would kiss me?"
Her pulse beat like a trapped bird. Did something in her yearn for a moment of warmth, a moment to be female again? Did she want to slip back into those familiar pathways? Could she leave him craving a woman who would no longer exist in the morning? She was rooted with horror at the stakes, yet an overwhelming desire also burned: to hazard it, to find out what she could from his body.
"You should return to the party," she said.
"No." He touched loving lips to the corner of hers. "I should kiss you."
Warm, supple—the electric contact of his mouth to her skin! She stood stunned as her soul began to quake.
"Why not choose another of the myriad incognito ladies at this masquerade?"
"I’m choosing you." His breath burned, his voice murmured. His fingers left her chin to stroke softly over her palm. "Unless you say no, I think I must kiss you."
The drums in her heart pounded a crescendo. She felt almost faint at the thought of the risk: if he guessed, if he uncovered her disguise! She could not allow him to touch her body, to discover the boy’s clothes, but—
"Your mouth trembles, ma’am. I am a helpless witness to the beauty of your upper lip, the charm of the pouting curve beneath it. I think you will taste of honey."
"No," she said. "Of mulled wine."
Sylvie grasped his free fingers in hers, closed her eyes, and let it happen. His lips touched. Ineffable sweetness flooded her tongue.
His mouth was bliss.
Bliss!
She felt the shock of it—at the brilliance, at the exquisite sensitivity—before sensation invaded, blazing through her blood. Forgetting restraint, letting desire meet desire, she kissed back.
He tasted of wine and wickedness, forged by skill into genius. Sensation shivered, pooling heat in the groin. Palm pressed against naked palm. Mouth pressed to open mouth. Tongue touched tongue.
Hunger roared. She was enveloped in the glorious heat of his body. Her fingers clung to the hard length of his. Their palms pressed together, rubbing, twisting. His tongue played with hers, suckling, plunging. His lips teased, demanded, insisted, sparking a tumult of longing.
Crushed against his strength, Sylvie kissed back, wanting more.
She wanted him to touch her. She wanted those lovely masculine hands to explore her softness, her weakness. She wanted his palms and fingers and mouth to worship in her soft, scented, hidden spots. She wanted his tongue between her legs—
A wave of flame scorched from his lips.
With his free hand he still gripped the statue. With hers, she gloried in the muscled strength of his back and waist. Her blood caught fire. Her legs quaked as his erection swelled against her belly. She slipped her hand between their bodies and closed it over that glorious hardness. The pulse of his arousal thrust against her palm.
The locked fingers of her other hand slipped from his—
Before it was too late, she forced herself to pull away, leaving him clinging only to the statue. Her blood raced hot and sweet. Her mouth swam with honey. Her lips blazed. Her groin ached with passion and the void of sudden loss—
To fold down onto the iron bench to carry him there with her! Down onto the cold stones to be bathed in his fire! Down, down until this insatiable longing was burned away and fulfilled! Lud, what the devil was happening to her? She wanted, wanted, wanted—
The bewildering ferocity of it hurt.
Clutching the folds of her domino she reeled to the exit to stare out at the dark pathway. Vienna. Rome. Paris. She had calculated every move, offered herself only when necessary and always with cynicism, with discretion. She had taken pride in her delicate, measured control.
Until now!
"Don’t leave," he said. "Devil take it, ma’am. Don’t ever leave!"
"You’re drunk, sir," she said. "You bestow your gifts at random."
Damn him! Damn him!
All that luminous intensity would have been offered to any chance-met stranger—would have been given just as freely to any lady in a white mask? She shivered.
He was feral. He was inspired.
She had met her match.
In the worst possible circumstances—when she had solemnly undertaken to destroy him, when she was living in his household as a spy, when it was too late to begin again—she had met her match!
"Faith, ma’am!" He sank to his haunches at the base of the statue and stared up at the sky. "Will you marry me?"
"Marry Aphrodite," Sylvie said, choked. "She is no colder than I."
She stumbled away through the maze, leaving him there, his kisses deserted, his lovely, indiscriminate skills abandoned to lie empty in his hands.
Blind alley after blind alley trapped her, before she burst at last onto the path to the terraces. In the space in front of the ice castle, guests moved and swayed to new music. Reflecting the frosty stars, the ladies’ evening gowns shone with diamonds and pearls. Powdered hair curled onto naked necks and shoulders.
Dominoes and masks discarded, the guests were dancing.
Sylvie tore away her own cloak and mask to march out into the crowd. A young man again, a ruthless, invincible tool for the duke, she walked straight into Lady Grenham, the lady to whom Robert Sinclair Dovenby had once given his heart.
The Wicked Lover will reach stores on February 1, 2004. Happy reading!
Berkley Trade Paperback. ISBN: 0-425-19406-X
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