“Trollop?”

“Yes.” Anna blinked. “I thought you knew Berthe was the one who…”

“Went through my things?” Jane finished, surging off the bench. “Oh, I’m sure she took great joy in that!” The little viper already gloated over Jane being relegated to a governess.

Her gaze drifted to her armoire, her stomach rolling at the thought of Berthe, Marcus’s favorite maid, rummaging through her personal things. It brought to mind the day Jane had caught the maid trying on one of her gowns, twirling before her cheval mirror bold as a peacock. Jane never held hope that the girl would be dismissed, not when she earned her wages in Marcus’s bed.

“If I stay in this room a moment longer I shall go mad.”

Anna pulled back to look at her. “What are you thinking of?”

Jane lifted her chin. “They don’t own me.” A fire kindled in her blood, burning a smoldering path up her chest. “They may have confiscated my clothes and jewelry, but I’m not their prisoner. Nor am I child to be led about. Anna, I’ll be venturing out tonight.”

“They can prevent you from taking a carriage,” Anna pointed out.

Jane paced. “The lack of a carriage did not stop me last time. I have friends. Lucy can loan me a carriage.” She glanced down at her gown. “And a dress more suitable for my destination.”

“Where are you going?”

It took only a moment for her to answer, and she realized that the answer had been there all along, a shadow hovering in the back of her mind—her goal perhaps from the start.

“Vauxhall.”

Chapter 12

People teemed Vauxhall, their voices a heavy thrum that competed with the blare of the orchestra. Even though he stood outdoors, Seth craved air. Air and space.

He had decided almost instantly that Fiona Manchester would never do as his wife. She could not look long upon his face. Not an uncommon reaction, to be sure—especially from a lady. He should have come to expect no less. Call him fool, but he wanted a wife that could at least bear the sight of him.

When he addressed her, she held his gaze only a moment before her eyes trailed the line of his scar, then darted away as skittish as a bird.

And that was another matter. She looked as though she could break beneath the slightest pressure. Indeed, she reminded him of some delicate piece of crystal to be handled with utmost care. Not the kind of woman he wanted in his bed.

The image of a full-bodied woman in a gold dress flashed in his head. Now that was a woman he could handle without fear of hurting. And Jane, a voice whispered, unbidden, across his mind.

The voluptuous body that strained against her widow’s weeds was made for a lover’s hands.

His palms tingled and he closed them into tight fists, cursing himself a fool. Jane was not the sort of female to entertain an illicit affair. For no other reason could he have walked away from her earlier today. Not with desire for her pumping through him, fierce as the tide. However, he was the sort a man took to wife. Only not him. He may have put the past behind him, but he was not fool enough to marry into the Spencer clan.

Fiona Manchester was the sort he should wed. Theirs would be a marriage of politeness and formality—what he had claimed to want.

The question at hand, he reminded himself, was whether she could be trusted to care for Julianne. That was all that mattered. The only thing to be considered. Not his personal desires.

“Lord St. Claire, are you not enjoying yourself?” Fiona Manchester asked, flicking him with her fan coyly. A forced gesture, to be certain. That she took pains to flirt with him, despite her obvious distaste, marked her every bit the social climber he first judged her.

He opened his mouth to respond, then froze at the sight of another woman, wondering if the vision real or merely an extension of the dreams he had suffered these last nights. Garbed in the same gown of gold silk, she weaved among the throng of people, dodging the hands that tried to grasp her arm and pull her into their circle.

She walked haltingly, her neck craning as though she searched for someone. As breathtaking as the first time he clapped eyes on her, she wore the black domino again. The golden diamonds at her throat glittered in the lamplight.

Seth shook his head, telling himself she couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be here.

Still, he felt himself moving, breaking from his group, leaving the startled Miss Manchester in midsentence as he advanced on his mystery woman with steadfast purpose. The blood rushed his veins, filling his ears with a desperate tempo to rival the beat of the orchestra. As he shoved through the crush, other men stopped to gawk and devour the sight of this lone enchantress, and he knew she was no vision, but real. Flesh and blood woman. _His _ Aurora, set free to fly the night. Even as he told himself it was insanity to react so strongly to a woman whose face he had yet to see, whose name he had yet to speak, he moved, stalking her like a jungle cat honing in on its prey.

She would not get away this time. He would not be fool enough to let her walk away from him.

Not this woman who made the blood burn in his veins, who stared at him without fear or revulsion in her gaze, but something else. Something unidentifiable, something akin to admiration. Here, he thought, was a woman he could have… perhaps even keep.

Drinking in the sight of her, he vowed to believe whatever he read in her gaze. If only for tonight. For one night he would allow himself to believe he deserved whatever she would lavish on him with her eyes, and, the devil take him, her body.

Jane felt his presence before she saw him. A heat radiated at her back and the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck tingled in familiar awareness. With a small gasp, her hand flew from the stone railing she clutched and she spun around to find herself face-to-face with Seth. He was alone. No sign of his companions. No sight of the lady he was supposed to evaluate as his bride.

She had imagined finding him ensnared in the spell of another woman. Despite deliberately wearing the gold dress and black domino again, she feared he would be too enthralled to give her notice. Relief pinched at her heart to see his dark gaze fixed on her face with single-minded intensity.

She opened her mouth to say something, to offer up some witty greeting, one of the countless quips she had heard during the years she had propped herself against ballroom walls, watching and listening to coy debutantes.

Before she could utter a syllable, he grabbed hold of her wrist and turned, pulling her away from the courtyard and down one of the many dark winding paths. He avoided the wide lamplit lane where groups and couples strolled, choosing dimmer paths where many a maid or matron had lost her virtue.

Still, Jane found she could not speak, could only bid her feet to keep up with his swift pace, could only pray her pounding heart did not burst from her chest. She had ventured out tonight to prove to herself that no one ruled her—that stealing her clothes and jewelry did not steal her spirit, her will. And, if she were perfectly honest with herself, she had come to immerse her barren heart in what it had long been denied. To finish what they had started today at Seth’s townhouse.

They rounded one bend, then another, the hedges seeming to thicken around them. Still, Seth strode ahead, his long strides so purposeful she felt certain he had a destination in mind.

His fingers slid from her wrist to her fingers, twining with them. The intimate hold sent her heart racing even harder, and she recalled the times she had stared at his hands, watched in longing as he took her sister’s lily-pale hand in his own when they walked ahead of her. How she had wanted to feel her own entwined with his. To walk through his family’s orchard with him at his side. Her chest grew tight at the feel of their palms pressed tightly together.

He stepped off the path and plunged them into the foliage. She tripped over a root. He caught her close to his hard chest, and she imagined she could feel the beat of his heart, as wild as her own, through their clothing. Her free hand came up to grasp a hard bicep and his muscles tensed, bunching beneath her touch.

In one sudden movement, he backed her against a tree, its trunk a wide wall at her back, scratching the delicate fabric of her gown.

“I will not let you go again,” his voice scraped the air, hard with resolve.

“I do not want you to,” she returned. The truth, but irrelevant. Because she would go. No matter what she wanted. She would have this time, this moment. And she would go.

She could barely make out the outline of him looming over her. The crowd laughed in the distance and faint applause filled the air.

Almost as if he read her mind, he vowed thickly, “It’s going to be good between us.” His hand cupped her cheek, the callused pad of his thumb tracing the seam of her lips.

She opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. She had no idea what to say at this point. A coy response felt wrong. Instead she bit the pad of his thumb, then sucked where her teeth had nipped.

He groaned. “I’ve not stopped thinking of you.”

“Me too,” she breathed, then flushed with embarrassment. “I m—mean,” she stammered, “you…

I have not stopped thinking of you.” For nearly all my life.

“There is no escape this time,” he announced, his hands coming down on either side of her head, caging her in as he had done earlier today.

Her heart tripped. I don’t want to escape you. I never did. You were the one I wanted to run to.

Almost as if he heard her words, he answered the call to her parched soul, her deprived body, pressing his solid length against hers so that she felt his every angle, every hollow, right down to the hard bulge prodding her belly.

And then he was kissing her.

Her eyes drifted shut, lost to the joy of it. Bliss. Seth. The very one whom she had spun impossible fantasies. As a girl, she convinced herself that if she wished it enough, if she hoped and prayed hard enough, he would be hers. One day it would happen. Could happen. Eight years had passed since her heart had harbored that foolish dream. Since Seth had disappeared. Since she had wed Marcus. Since she had forgotten how to dream.

But tonight, it seemed, the dream would become reality. Tonight, he would be hers. Or rather Aurora’s. For a single night, at least. It would be enough. She would make it so.

Tongue tangling with hers, his fingers slid into her hair, scattering the pins. And with those pins, her inhibitions—if any remained—fled. A lick of heat curled low in her belly, tightening and twisting until she grew wet between the legs. His hands slid lower, seizing her buttocks through the fabric of her gown.

She moaned into his mouth, hating the skirts in her way, barring her from finding relief.

She pressed herself against him, winding her arms around his neck, wondering at the insistent ache throbbing at her core. She’d never felt anything like it, not at the start of her marriage when Marcus had sought her bed. Those nights, however fleeting, had never been more than… nice.

Never had she felt this blistering passion. Never had she burned.

Her fingers wove through his hair, luxuriating in the softness, in her freedom to touch the chestnut locks that she had spent many a summer day watching ruffle in the wind.

His hands released her derriere and she fell back, boneless, ready to melt down the tree’s rough length. Still, their lips clung, drinking, tasting, devouring each other as his hands moved to her bodice. She gasped into his mouth when he cupped her br**sts through her dress.

With a growl, he wrenched his lips from hers, dragging his mouth down the column of her throat as he tugged her dress down, sucking, nipping at the cords along her neck. She heard a tear, but didn’t care. She needed his hands on her, skin to skin.

Her head fell back on the tree, a cry rising up in her throat as he clasped her br**sts, his touch reverent, too gentle for her tightly wound body that wept for fulfillment. Her head lolled side to side, a hoarse plea on her lips. “Please.”

His hold tightened, his rough palms chafing the tender skin. He took her ni**les between thumb and forefinger and rolled the pebble-hard peaks until she thought she would fly from her skin.