Scandalising the Ton. Diane Gaston
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harm to feel that delight one more time? What harm?
Lydia slid her hands up his chest until her arms encircled his neck. The hair at the nape tickled her fingers and his collar felt cool and damp. She rose on tiptoe and tilted her face to him, letting him know she’d made her choice.
He groaned with a man’s need and bent forwards, placing his lips on hers, tentatively, as if he still would permit her to change her mind.
She did not want to change her mind. She wanted her body to sing with the pleasure he could create. She wanted to be joined to him, like one. She wanted to not be so terribly alone.
He drew away slightly, then crushed his lips against hers with a man’s command. The effect was exhilarating.
His kiss, familiar but new, deepened. Her lips parted and their tongues touched, the sensation intimate and delighting.
He pressed her to him, and she could feel the evidence of his arousal beneath his clothing. That womanly part of her ached with desire to feel his length inside her again. She wanted him to sweep her away, to make her forget everything but him.
Her heart pounded wildly.
She’d once forgotten everything but Wexin. Wexin’s kisses—chaste compared to Adrian’s—had once made her feel secure in a future of happiness, but Wexin, while kissing her, had the stain of blood on his hands, the murder of a friend.
Lydia pushed hard against Adrian’s chest and backed away. The look he gave her was wild, heated, aroused and confused.
She put a hand to her forehead. “Forgive me.” She dared to glance into his eyes. “Forgive me. I cannot do this. I must not.”
He breathed heavily, and it seemed to her he was fighting to keep calm.
“Lydia.” His voice was so low she seemed to feel it more than hear it. “Why deny this passion between us?”
She stared at him. How could she explain that she could never again allow a man to have that sort of power over her?
“I must deny it.” Her voice sounded mournful and weak. She must never again be weak. She lifted her chin. “Please leave, Adrian. Do not return.” She walked behind the chair again and clutched its back.
“Lydia.” His eyes pleaded.
She held up a hand. “Do not press me, Adrian.” She took a deep breath. “I have enough worries.”
He turned and started to walk away. Lydia did not know which feeling was the greater: relief at his departure, or sorrow.
Before he reached the door, he stopped and turned back. “Before I walk out, tell me something, Lydia.”
She waited.
He looked directly into her eyes. “Do you need money?”
She inhaled sharply. “What makes you think I need money?”
His hand swept the room. “You light fires only for show. You have no flowers. And there is the matter of your servants—”
“I have servants,” she retorted. Well, three servants, but he need not know the number was so small.
Would he tell the creditors and reporters? If word of her true situation escaped, all of England would know the shocking state of her finances. Even Levenhorne and the men at the bank did not know how bad it was, how close they’d come to having nothing to eat.
“I came here to offer you help,” he said. “How much money do you need?”
“I don’t need money.” She felt her cheeks heat. “But if I did, I would not take yours.”
His brows rose. “Why?”
“Why?” She gave a nervous laugh. “Would that not mean I was in your keeping? Do not mistresses accept money from their…patrons?”
His eyes creased at the corners. “I make the offer as a friend, nothing more.”
She glanced away. Truth was, she still needed money for the most pressing debts. It would buy her time until her parents returned and her father could help her. At present, her only hope was that her sister could find a way to help her, to get money to her without her husband’s knowledge. Lydia had sent Mary to pass on a letter through her sister’s maid.
“I do not need your money, Adrian,” she whispered.
“I offer it without obligation.”
He said this so sincerely, she almost believed him, but she’d believed Wexin, a murderer who professed to love her, who bought her trinkets, while spending every penny of her dowry. It made no sense that a near-stranger, a known rake, would offer her money without expecting something in return.
“It is not your place to help me,” she told Adrian. She blinked. “If I needed help, that is.” She squared her shoulders and forced herself to look directly into his eyes. “Please leave now, Adrian.”
For a moment he looked as if he would cross the room to her, but instead, he turned and walked to the door. She twisted away, not wishing to watch him disappear out of her life.
His voice came from behind her. “I am your friend, Lydia. Remember that.”
She spun back around, but he had gone.
Chapter Four
All eyes are on Kew Palace this day where the Queen remains gravely ill, her physicians declaring the state of her health to be one of “great and imminent danger”…—The New Observer, November 15, 1818
Samuel Reed lounged in the wooden chair while his brother, Phillip, the manager and editor of The New Observer, sat behind the desk, his face blocked by the newspaper he held in front of him.
“We must find something more interesting than the Queen’s illness for tomorrow’s paper, else we’ll be reduced to printing handbills and leaflets like Father.”
Their father had been a printer with no ambition, except to see how much gin he could consume every night. It was not until the man died of a drunken fall from the second-storey window of a Cheapside brothel that Samuel and Phillip could realise their much loftier ambitions: to publish a newspaper.
They were determined to make The New Observer the most popular newspaper in London, and Samuel’s stories about Lady Wexin had definitely set it on its way. Each London newspaper had its speciality, and the Reed brothers had deliberately carved out their own unique niche. Not for them political commentary or a commitment to social change. The Reed brothers specialised in society gossip and stories of murder and mayhem, the more outrageous the better.
“Anything interesting in the out-of-town papers?” Samuel asked.
“Not much…” Phillip’s voice trailed off.
Like all the newspapers, they freely stole from others, often passing the stories off as their own. Every day Phillip perused the out-of-town papers looking for the sort of sensational and unusual stories that fitted their requirements.
The New Observer had other reporters besides Samuel to provide shocking or remarkable items from all around London, including the seediest neighbourhoods. Fascination with the most lofty and with the lowest, that was what the Reed brothers banked upon.
Samuel rose and sauntered towards the window. At least the rain had passed. The previous day had been nothing but rain, and, therefore, precious little news.
“Here’s something.” Phillip leaned forwards. “Fellow in Mile End set a spring gun to shoot at intruders. Except his own feet tripped the wire and he shot himself. Died from it.”
“That’s reasonably interesting.”
“Not to the fellow who died.” His brother laughed.
Phillip picked up another paper and read. “The spinners are still rioting in Manchester.” He rolled up the paper