“Do you play the lawyer again, dolcissima?” he asked over her gasp.
“Pretty Italian blandishments don’t disguise ugly intentions.” She hated how priggish she sounded.
She expected more mockery but he merely leaned back on his heels and caught her foot again. He stroked her leg up to the knee and back. “Not ugly, surely.”
The heat of his touch penetrated her threadbare stockings and made her toes curl. She’d never considered her feet and ankles particularly sensitive until Merrick launched his gentle exploration. Her skin burned. Her heart raced with a dizzying mixture of fear and excitement. Her hand lifted to unbutton her jacket before she recalled that he’d misinterpret any removal of clothing.
He might be on his knees on the floor, but his assessing gaze held no hint of the supplicant. Instead he challenged her to throw caution to the winds and discover what he knew and what she didn’t. “Take it off.”
“You move too fast, Mr. Merrick.”
His fingers drew another elaborate pattern from ankle to knee. “We have a mere week, Miss Forsythe. Time’s wingéd chariot and all that.”
Suddenly the relentless push and pull he practiced upon her was unendurable. Merrick lured her to deny everything she believed in return for the sheer pleasure of his touch. And for the sake of that half-smile tilting his mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please stop.” She hardly recognized the choked voice. “For pity’s sake, please stop.”
He frowned and lifted his hand. “Sidonie, I won’t take it further.”
“You say that but you don’t mean it.” Hurriedly she shoved her skirt down. “And I fall for your tricks like the veriest moonling.”
In helpless frustration, Jonas stared up at Sidonie from where he kneeled. Every second in her company stoked his arousal. He wasn’t fool enough to imagine the fascination one-sided. She might say no, but her cheeks flushed with excitement and he couldn’t forget how only hours ago she’d kissed him. Now that her backbone lost its forbidding rigidity, she reclined against the sofa like an odalisque. An odalisque in a superfine hacking jacket.
She should look ludicrous. What she looked was irresistible.
He gritted his teeth and struggled for self-control. The urge to trail his fingers up those slender legs to the treasure at their apex beat like a tattoo. But with every step she took toward surrender, her uncertainty grew. If he pushed her too far, she’d run. Roberta or no Roberta.
The promise of the greater prize made him set her foot down. Immediately she lifted her legs and curled them under her, out of reach.
“You know I mean to seduce you.”
“I know,” she said in a raw voice, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. He tried to tell himself he was too old and cynical to find the childish gesture touching. “I’ve always rather despised people who allowed passion to lead them astray.”
He shifted to lean against the sofa, his shoulders resting near her bent knees. “Now you find passion is a ruthless master.”
Her delicate scent wafted out to torment him. He couldn’t sit this close without touching her. He twisted, leaning an elbow on the couch, and caught her hand. To his surprise, she didn’t jerk away.
“Fit punishment for assuming myself immune.” Her voice lowered. “Every man I’ve known has been contemptible. My father was weak and greedy and unable to countenance a contrary opinion. He was incapable of kindness or affection. While he didn’t hit my mother, his tyranny turned her into a cypher until she just faded away and died when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.” He was. The Forsythe women had appalling luck with the men in their lives. And it wasn’t as if Sidonie’s entanglement with Jonas Merrick would do her any good.
“My father never ceased to blame my mother for only producing two useless girl children.”
The picture of an unhappy family life that she painted was vivid, if heartbreaking. “Hardly your fault.”
Sidonie shrugged with a carelessness Jonas didn’t believe. “The only time he ever expressed an instant of satisfaction with either of his children was when William offered for Roberta. A lord for mere Miss Forsythe? Even a shabby, slightly questionable lord counted as a triumph. Our family wasn’t influential and while Roberta’s portion was respectable, she was hardly an heiress.”
“The uncertainty about my birth blighted William’s marital prospects.” Jonas didn’t hide his satisfaction. After all, William had blighted most of his prospects.
“William courted Roberta as a last resort. His original ambitions were much higher. But no magnate would waste a daughter upon a man who might be disinherited any time.”
“Not that he has been disinherited.”
“No.”
He waited for her to continue, but she remained quiet. Curious, Jonas glanced up. She stared down into her lap and her lush mouth twisted with unhappiness. He wondered why. Last night she’d been ready enough to call him a bastard to his face. This namby-pamby reaction to his scandalous origins seemed uncharacteristic. “No need to step carefully. I’m accustomed to being socially unacceptable. I’ve had years to come to terms with illegitimacy.”
Did she guess he lied? Because of course he did. His bastardy was a wound that never healed. When she finally looked up, Sidonie’s brown eyes didn’t betray derision. Instead they were veiled as he’d never seen them.
“It… it can’t have been easy when you were raised as the heir,” she said hesitantly, and to his surprise her grip on his hand tightened as if she extended comfort.