One Dangerous Desire (Accidental Heirs) Read online

  “My mother wanted it.” Suddenly chilled by his changed demeanor, May wrapped her arms around herself. “More than she desired anything, I think.”

  “You told me you wanted it too,” he said quietly. “The first day we met.”

  “For goodness sakes, I was boasting, parroting what I’d been told all my life.” She waved a hand, encompassing him from head to toe. “Besides, you were tall and handsome and altogether unexpected. You made me nervous. I hardly knew what I was saying.”

  “Do I still make you nervous?” His husky tone lured her, and she stepped close enough to lay a hand on his chest. His heart beat frantically against her palm.

  “Not when you’re looking at me as you are now.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “How am I looking at you?”

  “As if you want me. As if you . . . love me.” Her voice went quiet as she said the word, which was strange, since her heart, mind, and body were ringing with the sentiment.

  Dipping his head, he took her lips tenderly. And far too briefly. “I need to let you choose. To give you the chance to have what you’ve always wanted.”

  With that, he pulled away and strode toward the parlor door, glancing back at her for one long, searching moment before stepping out and pulling the door shut behind him.

  That scream she’d held back during her climax welled up again. In that intimate moment with him, she’d made her choice. From the moment she’d met the man, he’d always been who she wanted.

  Unfortunately, the choice she’d made had left her—again—and walked out the door.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Three days later

  “MRS. HARK!” HE’D give the woman two more minutes, and then he was going to fire her. Not unreasonable, considering it was the third time he’d called her name, with no response, in half an hour’s time. As he straightened up in his desk chair, cupped his hands around his mouth, and prepared to shout for his housekeeper again, the one man in his employ who was always on time strode into his office at the exact moment he was expected.

  Charlie scampered out from under Rex’s desk to welcome Jack Sullivan, emitting little growling squeaks.

  “Good morning, sir,” Sullivan greeted. “You’ve taken on more staff, I see.” The inquiry agent sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.

  “No new staff.” Though he might be on the lookout for a new housekeeper soon. “Mrs. Hark has gone missing, so one of the kitchen maids is left answering the front door.”

  Sullivan strode across the room and poked his finger into a divot in the wallpaper. “Did you shoot her?”

  “Don’t be absurd.” Rex rolled his eyes, though the gesture was wasted on Sullivan, who continued to examine the bullet hole in the wall.

  “Should I ask why you shot the wall? Or is that question too absurd as well?”

  Rex sighed and ran a finger along the line of his eyebrow, across the spot where a pounding sledgehammer had taken up residence. Drink didn’t help. Sleep proved impossible. Distractions failed to distract. May was ever on his mind—her softness, her scent, and the delicious moans she’d let loose when he touched her. He needed to touch her again. The thought that another man would—Devenham or some other titled fop—made him seethe. His insides were twisted in knots, and he wanted to lash out at everyone and everything.

  “I was . . . in a dark mood.”

  “And took it out on the wall?” Sullivan turned on him with arms crossed and that pompous, disapproving frown marring his face. For a man of humble beginnings, he’d certainly perfected a superior mien.

  “The wall didn’t complain.”

  “Oh, Mr. Sullivan, thank goodness you’ve come!” Mrs. Hark hovered outside Rex’s office door, twisting her apron in her hands. “It still reeks of gunpowder in that room, doesn’t it?”

  Sullivan approached the housekeeper, and she lifted a hand to the corner of her mouth. “He’s been in a bad way for days. Please sort him out, Mr. Sullivan, and get that gun away from him if you can.”

  “I can hear every word you’re saying, Mrs. Hark.” Rex stood up and stretched his back. He’d been immobile too long, frozen by frustration and the impossibility of grasping what he wanted most. “Sounds treasonous to me.”

  When she gasped and her eyes went round as silver dollars, Rex grinned. “Be a dear and get me some coffee, would you?”

  Sullivan whispered a few words of reassurance to Mrs. Hark and closed the door behind her as she finally departed to, Rex hoped, make him a fresh pot of coffee.

  Positioning himself in his usual chair in front of Rex’s desk, Sullivan took out his battered journal as if he intended to launch straight into his weekly report. Instead, he closed the book and looked up. “Let’s begin with what ails you, sir.”

  “Let’s not.” Talking about it wouldn’t change anything. “You’re not an alienist come to cure me, Jack. Give me your damn report. That’s what I pay you for.”

  A muscle ticked in the detective’s jaw, and his back went even straighter than usual. After a moment he lowered his head and flipped open a page in his journal. “The Earl of Devenham has decided to—”

  Rex stood up and stomped over to the bell pull, tugging the embroidered length of fabric with such force he nearly wrenched it from the wall. Charlie shot up from his napping spot by the fireplace and joined Rex, no doubt hoping his daily walk through Hyde Park was about to commence.

  Where was that woman with his coffee? He turned back to Sullivan and balanced a hand on each hip, drew in a deep breath, and asked for the answer he didn’t want to the question that had been haunting him for three days. “Is he marrying her?”

  “Sir?”

  “Devenham. Has May agreed to marry him?”

  Sullivan tipped his head, a knowing smirk lifting the corners of his mouth. “Ah.”

  “Trust me when I say that this is not the time for one of your incisive deductions. Tell me about Devenham and May.” Even linking their names in a sentence made him long to put another bullet in the wall.

  “She refused him.”

  The air rushed from Rex’s chest. He raked a hand through his hair. “You’re certain? How can you know for sure?”

  “I spoke to someone who witnessed the proposal and the refusal.”

  Rex could think of only person in Devenham’s circle who’d share such information with Jack. “Lady Emily.”

  “Yes.” Sullivan coughed into his fisted hand, squirming uncharacteristically in his chair. “She told me that she intended to send you a letter.”

  Searching the miserable haze of the last few days, Rex did recall an envelope addressed from Ashworth House. Thick, elaborately decorated paper had been marked in a woman’s looping hand. “I burned it.”

  “You burned it?” Sullivan had perfected a haughty, incredulous tone too.

  “I thought it was an invitation to some dinner party or ball.”

  Reaching up to pinch the skin between his eyebrows, Sullivan sighed. “She wished you to know that Devenham was refused. Lady Emily has an inkling regarding your feelings for Miss Sedgwick, and hers for you.”

  Those feelings were crashing in now, loosened, finally, from the torturous days since he’d last seen her. He hadn’t achieved anything by waiting and worrying. He had to act. Had to see May and make up for six years of missing her. Ensure that neither of them would have to miss being together ever again.

  Rex started for his desk to retrieve the coat he’d discarded on the back of his chair. Charlie clipped along at his heels. “Let’s resume this meeting later, Sullivan. I need to speak to Miss Sedgwick.” Papers rustled with his movements, a few arcing up and coming precariously close to edging off his desk.

  Sullivan reached out to resettle a large piece that seemed determined to reach the floor. “You shot a hole in your plans for the Pinnacle?”

  “Don’t worry. I have several copies of those plans.” For one grim moment, hopelessness had almost won. Almost snuffed out his hope for the Pinnac
le and the future he’d envisioned.

  On his path across the room, Rex paused to clap Jack on the shoulder. “I’m pleased to hear you’re on such excellent terms with Lady Emily.”

  Sullivan jumped out of his chair and mumbled excuses so quickly that Charlie barked at the sudden movement. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Leighton. Not excellent terms. We met in very public circumstances at the Metropole. She takes—”

  “Tea there every Tuesday. Yes, I remember.” Rex pulled his waistcoat down and retied his neck tie, adjusting it in the mirror over the mantel. Not as well as Brooks would have done, or Mrs. Hark, if she ever bothered doing her duties again, but good enough to look respectable. Even for Seymour Sedgwick.

  “I’d wish you luck, sir, but I don’t think you need it.”

  “Don’t believe in the stuff anyway, Jack. You know that.” Just as Rex reached the office door, someone rapped on the other side and then pushed in. The long absent Mrs. Hark faced him, gaping as if encountering a late-night marauder.

  Rex glanced down. He could do with a few sips of coffee before he departed, but the women’s wrinkled hands were disappointingly empty. The scent in the air around her wasn’t the rich, smoky aroma of coffee, but the verdant scent of roses.

  Heaven help him. In his eagerness to see her, he’d begun imagining May’s perfume on the air.

  “No coffee, Mrs. Hark?”

  The older woman bristled at the question, lifted her chin, and announced, “You have a visitor, Mr. Leighton.”

  “Well, where is he?” There was nothing in the hallway behind his housekeeper but fresh air.

  “She is waiting in the drawing room.”

  “Mrs. Hark,” Rex spoke as gently as he could, despite his impatience. Perhaps the whole gunshot business had addled the woman. “We don’t have a drawing room.”

  “Oh you have one. You simply refuse to use it. Couldn’t bring a lady into a shooting range, now could I?” The housekeeper peered around him at the blackened hole in the wall.

  A room across the hall had served as a drawing room for the previous owner, but Rex refused to furnish any room he didn’t use. He rarely entertained, and this rented house was temporary.

  “Lady?” Glancing over his shoulder, Rex shot Sullivan an amused look. Apparently the man who’d once pursued others for a living was now being pursued himself. And by a duke’s daughter, no less.

  “Miss May Sedgwick. An American, by the sound of it. Just like you, sir.” Mrs. Hark looked him up and down, far more impudently than he imagined most housekeepers assessing their employers. “If a bit more genteel.”

  May was here. Across the hall. In his temporary home that wasn’t fit for visitors. Rex moved past Mrs. Hark, reaching up to straighten his tie one last time. An uneven clicking sound indicated Charlie followed close behind.

  “May.”

  She stood in the center of the nearly empty room, taking in the elaborately carved cornices at the top of the wall. When she finally turned her head to look at him, there was none of the pleasure in her expression that he felt exploding in his own chest like a firecracker.

  “It’s empty. You haven’t decorated this house at all.” Her indignant tone reminded him a bit of Mrs. Hark.

  “No. I don’t intend to live here long. Seemed a waste of effort and funds.”

  “Doesn’t anyone ever visit?” May didn’t wait for his answer before stepping toward the wall to examine a plaster frieze of nymphs or fairies or witches. Rex couldn’t care less for the decorative style of the previous owner.

  “I don’t encourage visitors.”

  That drew her bright blue gaze to his. “Am I not welcome, then?”

  “You are always welcome.” He wanted to tell her that he wished to make any place he laid his head her home too. If he could arrange for a wedding soon, they’d have to endure only a few months in this Berkeley Square house before their suite of rooms at the Pinnacle were ready.

  Turning on her heel, she swept toward him, wearing a fiercely determined scowl. “That’s very good to hear, considering that you kissed me.” She came close enough for him to feel the shuffle of her skirts against his legs, for her scent to sweeten the air between them, her breath to warm his face. Then she poked him hard in the center of his chest with her forefinger. “Considering that you touched me intimately on my parlor sofa.”

  He opened his mouth, but she stopped him.

  “I’m not finished yet,” she said with that damnably pointy finger of hers wagging in his face. “You said you loved me once.”

  “May—”

  She pressed her finger against his lips, not tenderly, but with enough force to abrade his gums against his teeth. “You’ve given every indication that you still love me, want me, desire me. As long as I ignore the fact that you attempted to woo the sister of the man who asked me to marry him.”

  Rex pulled back to free himself from her bruising finger, but he reached a hand out to touch her. It seemed months since he’d last touched her.

  She moved with all the skill of a fleet-footed boxer, sidestepping out of his grasp. Her quick movements drew a nervous yip from Charlie.

  “Well, hello.” May instantly dipped down into a crouch, her green day dress pooling around her like a lily pad. “It’s very nice to meet you, pup.” She looked up at Rex. “You bought a dog.” For the first time since arriving, there was a bit of the usual lightness in her tone, a sparkle in her eye.

  “He came for free. Charlie followed me home from a walk, and I couldn’t shake him after that.”

  “He’s injured.” She patted Charlie’s back near his misshapen rear leg, and his tail began wagging a merry jig.

  “Happened long before I met him.” The little wire-hired dog had likely found himself on the wrong end of a fight with a larger dog or perhaps caught under the wheel of a drayer’s cart. Whatever the cause of his injury, he’d come through the pain and found a way to manage just fine. Rex admired that about the little scrapper. “His leg won’t improve, but it never seems to slow him down.”

  May lowered her head close enough to kiss the mutt and whispered in his half-cocked ear. “It seems you’ve revealed that Mr. Leighton has a heart, after all.”

  “I did try to shoo him off.” He had no idea why he felt the need to defend himself. He’d admit to a thousand weaknesses if it made her smile at him as she was now against Charlie’s brindled fur.

  “We know the truth of it. Don’t we, Charlie?” After giving the dog a final pat, May stood to face him. “So you take in stray dogs but have an aversion to stray cats.”

  “May—”

  “You walked away. Again. Emily says her father told you that Henry planned to propose. You believed I’d accept. Why?”

  As fetching as he found the blue fire in her eyes, the disappointment he read there sliced through him as easily as that stiletto blade had years before.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s because I named my cat Duchess.”

  “I wanted to give you the chance to make a choice. Though when you put it that way . . . ” Rex stepped forward and caught her around the waist. Warm, lush woman filled his hands. Better, she pressed into him, all her curves snug against his hard edges.

  “It sounds ridiculous?”

  “You’re angry.” He stated the fact as he nuzzled the downy softness of her cheek.

  “Less so now than when I walked through your door, I must admit.” She lowered her eyes, staring somewhere in the region of his third button. Her body warmed his, and when she arched her back a fraction to get closer, he fought to maintain control, to push past the desire she always stoked in him, and remember all the pretty words he’d imagined saying at this moment.

  “Excellent, because I have a rather important question to ask you,” he finally said.

  Her head tipped back and she watched him, not with distrust but with hope. So much hope. As much as he’d seen in her gaze half a dozen years before. How many times had he been on the cusp of asking her then? Fear and cowardi
ce had always tied him up, bound his tongue as tightly and thoroughly as they’d strapped him to his bed at the orphanage when he got into a fight or spoke out of turn.

  “I’m ready to hear your question,” she prompted, tugging at the button that had recently garnered so much of her attention.

  Beyond ready. Overdue, she meant to say. He could see the anticipation in her lovely thick-lashed eyes.

  Rex swallowed and drew in a breath that was as much an easing of tension as a deep inhale of May’s scent.

  Why were words so damn difficult when his chest was on the verge of bursting? He could show her his feelings much more easily than he could talk about them. She’d always been the wordy one, enthusing like an onrushing train about this topic or that.

  Her waist felt so right between the span of his hands. He wanted to hold her like this every day for the rest of his days. Stroking one hand up her back, he reached high enough to feel a few loose strands of her hair brushing against his fingers.

  “Be mine, May.” It was all he could manage, the heart of all he wanted to tell her. “Marry me?”

  The heartbeat pause between his question and her response stretched out for what felt like an agonizing eternity. Then, just a moment later, a soft inhale, parted lips, and “Yes.”

  He dipped his head to take her mouth, forcing himself to be gentle, to taste her rather than devour. That would come later.

  “Yes,” she said again when he pulled away. Then she balanced her hands on his shoulders and pushed up to kiss him, tasting him, stroking him with her tongue, driving him mad.

  When her breasts slid down his chest as she lowered herself to her heels, she pulled her head back, assessing him. Whatever she saw, whatever evidence he displayed of the lustful craving she’d stirred in him, it seemed to please her. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” She reached up to caress his jaw, running her finger down to the divot in chin. “Mrs. Leighton has a nice ring to it.”

  She knew exactly what he needed to hear. Her words salved his fears like honey soothed a wound. Mrs. was all he could offer her. No title, no inherited castle, no noble blood flowing in his veins.