He wanted to lean over to inhale the scent of her hair, the fresh scent he remembered too well. He sat straight and gazed straight ahead over the tops of his shoes.
“It’s meant to allow the invalid more independence of movement,” he said. “My grandmother took herself over lawn and gravel and every sort of surface. I believe there was some sort of joking theory about attaching a steam engine to it, to move individuals hither and yon without manual or animal labor. She’d still be racketing about in it, I daresay, if she hadn’t succumbed to a vicious fever.”
The same fever had, he’d been told, left his father a shockingly changed man. Though Ripley had been ten years old at the time, he barely remembered the person his father had been before, the witty, charming fellow his mother spoke of sometimes, the gentleman who’d won her heart. The miserable miser had crushed all happier memories.
“Uncle Charles must have been chagrined to have to use it himself,” he said. “As I am chagrined. But there’s no help for it. The ladies of this house scold me deaf and witless if I try to walk. And with my bad foot, I’m not fast enough to outrun them.”
She stood up and smoothed her skirts. “Such a tragic, tortured life you live.”
“I never thought I’d see the day I’d be henpecked and rolling about in an invalid chair. But my time has come, it seems. I feel a touch of gout coming on. Maybe I’ll wear a wig and false teeth.”
She straightened her spectacles, though they were perfectly straight. “And so many have believed you’d never live long enough to suffer from gout or need a wig and false teeth.”
“Did your ladyship only come here to mock my infirmity or had you another ulterior motive?”
She set her hands on her hips and surveyed the library. “Your aunt happened to mention that Lord Charles’s more recent acquisitions were never entered in the library records. They’re in a heap somewhere in this room. I offered to make myself useful.”
Ripley turned the handles of the chair and it began to roll backward. “Down here.”
“Do you have to do it the hard way?” she said.
“It’s boring the other way.”
“Or maybe you don’t know how to make that thing go forward.”
“Of course I do. Nothing to it.” He turned the winches and the chair began to go in circles. He heard something thump onto the rug.
“For heavens’ sake, Ripley, you’re knocking books off—look out for the footstool!”
He dodged the footstool, but turned the handles too quickly, because the chair started to spin, and she cried, “Not the vase!” and jumped to catch it at the same time he spun the opposite way. She stumbled and fell across the chair . . . over his lap . . . vase in her hands and arse upward.
For one endless moment, neither of them moved. He was acutely aware of her body’s warmth and the pomatum’s scent rising from her hair. His head dipped downward and he inhaled, closing his eyes.
“It’s heavy,” came her muffled voice.
He lifted his head, cursing himself.
“If you can keep this thing perfectly still,” she said, “I can set the vase down on the floor.”
“I’m not sure about ‘perfectly still,’” he said. His nether regions were alert to the female body in close proximity. He could feel her breast against his arm.
“Can you take it?” she said.
“What?”
“The vase. Can you take it from me?”
He reached cautiously with one hand. The chair rolled backward.
“Put on the brake,” she said.
“I’m not sure it has a brake,” he said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Of course it does.”
It was hard not to be an idiot when one had a shapely woman more or less in one’s lap and one did not happen to be remotely saintlike.
“It’s on your right,” she said. “On the curving bit the arm’s attached to. The smaller rod. You had to lift it to allow the chair to move.”
“Ah, yes. Forgot.” He pushed down the rod and locked the wheels.
She carefully set down the vase. This wasn’t as easy as one would think. She had to shift her body from an awkward position to one not much less awkward. Though it would be wiser to look elsewhere—upward for instance—he wasn’t wise. His gaze became riveted on her bottom, insufficiently hidden under a too-thin petticoat. Moving in an unbearably lascivious manner, it was mere inches from the hand holding the rod.
He gripped the rod more tightly.
She began to climb off him, cautiously turning to face away.
Too cautiously, because every small move set off powerful sensations in his breeding parts, which cared nothing for friends, let alone propriety. All they cared about was the curving feminine body moving against his arms and chest and in his lap. His heart rate shot up and other sensations shot through him. His hand, gripping the rod so tightly, jerked it upward.
The chair began rolling, swiftly, toward the windows.
“Ripley, stop playing!”
“Stop wriggling.”
“I’m trying to get off without hurting your foot. Or falling on my head. Stop the chair before we go through the window!”
He pulled on the handles and the chair spun rightward.
She was scrambling to get off him, and the chair kept moving because of her movement. “Stop it, Ripley.”
“I can’t get hold of the rod,” he said. “Your skirt’s in the way.” Also her fine bottom, now resting against his stomach, was in the way of something. Clear thinking, absolutely.
She wriggled some more, and got herself awkwardly arranged with her bottom in his lap and her legs hanging over his knees. “Stop it so I can get off, will you?” she said.
He stopped the chair. He didn’t want to.
He told himself to behave, but that went against years of doing the opposite. He looked down the long, obstacle-ridden library and something in his mind shifted.
As she cautiously began to get off his lap, he turned the handles.
The chair started moving again. She reached for the rod to stop the wheels, but his thigh was in her way. She grabbed his right hand, trying to turn the handle, but he held on, immovable.
She bit her lip. Her face was flushed and her breath was coming faster and her spectacles had tipped to one side.
He pulled the handles and the chair rolled forward.
She grabbed his arm. “Ripley!”
“After a false start, they’re off, in good style!” he said. “Ripley in front, jockey Lady O holding on for dear life. But Chair and Other Chair follow close behind. Table inches up round the clump, but Ripley remains in the lead. The steed’s speed is phenomenal!”
He went on as though shouting race proceedings to an eager crowd behind a peephole, while he turned both handles, and the chair rolled swiftly toward the southern end of the library.
“Ripley!”
He narrowly missed a footstool and rolled on. “Will Ripley crash into the chest King James I gave somebody who’s been dead some hundreds of years? But no, clever Ripley misses by an inch, and now heads down the course to King Charles II’s writing desk—”
“Left, you lunatic!” she cried. “Left!”
He made a sharp left, then more sharp turns, this way and that, going backward and in circles and zigzags, narrating all the while. He felt her back shaking against him, then it broke from her: a peal of laughter.
The world changed and brightened, and his heart lifted. He laughed, too.
“Here’s a tricky turn,” he said. “Will Ripley make it, or lose his footing—his wheeling—and pitch his rider onto the turf?”
“Left!” she ordered, laughing. “Sharp left. Now right. Faster, Ripley. Red Footstool is gaining on us. Watch out! Vase trying to break onto course. Don’t be thrown off stride. That’s the way! Faster, Ripley!” She pretended to whip his knees, and he laughed so hard he nearly toppled them both out of the chair.
On and on it went, up one side of the library
, and down another, narrowly missing a king’s ransom in ancient furnishings. They never saw the door open or the face peering in. They didn’t see the door close, quickly and quietly, as the mechanical chair rolled that way.
On and on the mad race went, until Ripley and his rider were both laughing too hard to do more. Then at last he let the chair roll to a stop among a tangled heap of rugs, not far from the books to which he’d meant to lead her.
“And here, at the finish line, the winner’s trophy: a great heap of moldy old books,” he said.
She looked over at the books piled on a large table, then up at him. Her face was flushed and her hair was coming undone.
“The brake,” she said breathlessly. “Lock the wheels. As a jockey, I should be mortified to fall off my mount at the race’s end.”
He fumbled with the rod, unable to concentrate.
She grabbed his hand. “Really, it’s not that complicated,” she said.
He held her hand, his fingers closing around hers, then twining with hers. He drew her closer.
His breath came hard. His chest rose and fell. Hers, too. Her eyes were blue now, and bright as stars. Traces of laughter lingered in them, though her smile was fading. The sound of her laughter, that beautiful sound, echoed in his head.
“You win,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her.
Chapter 12
The instant he’d taken her hand, Olympia knew what was coming. She could have escaped so easily. She didn’t even try.
When he kissed her, she held tightly to his hand, pressed between them, against his chest. She could feel their hearts beating, so fast. Then he drew his hand away to cup her face while he kissed her, and she brought her arms up around his neck.
No thinking involved. Instinct. Need. That was enough. She answered the kiss the way he’d taught her and the way her heart urged her to do. He wrapped his arms about her, and her pounding heart felt so light, like a bird’s, fluttering madly as it soared.
The kiss was wrong. A part of her knew this. But a stronger part of her knew she’d never find this feeling again. It would never again be like this. She was infatuated and foolish, yes. She knew that. She knew, too, that one had only one chance in a lifetime for a first infatuation. This was hers.
The kiss deepened instantly and, with the first full taste of him, reason and strength of will melted away, along with her muscles. She tasted the wickedness of his mouth and his tongue, and the wickedness raced through her like strong drink, stronger than the brandy that had set her on this path. It made her care for nothing but what she felt at this moment: the warmth of his body, the way he cradled her, the feel of his strong arms about her, the heat that was different from body warmth, and the pull of wanting more of whatever this was.
He gave her more, his hands moving over her shoulders and back, down her arms, as though he was discovering and memorizing her. He slid his mouth to her cheek and jaw and throat, making a trail of kisses, hot and sweet. She let out a little moan of pleasure and tried to follow his lead, touching, kissing. She heard the sound he made, deep in his throat, an animal sound that made her shiver. Then he was moving his hands all over her, over her breasts and waist and hips, and she grew hotly impatient.
No thinking, none at all. The mind couldn’t swim against the flood of sensation. Thought ebbed to nothing while her body, her very being, came tautly alive. She moved under his touch instinctively, the way a cat or dog moved to be stroked and petted. No self-consciousness, because the pleasure and wanting and so many other feelings had all the power.
She was aware of his hand moving down along her leg. She heard the rustle of muslin and felt air touching her stocking where before her petticoat had touched it. She felt his hand, pulling up her dress, then resting on her knee for a moment before sliding over her stocking and up above her garter to her bare thigh. She trembled at the touch, at the intimacy of it. She knew this intimacy was wrong but she didn’t care. She couldn’t get enough of the feelings and the closeness. She wanted and wanted and didn’t know what it was she wanted, beyond knowing she wanted him, and that the feeling, the wanting, was like starvation.
His hand, his hand. Warm, possessive, it slid over the bare flesh of her thigh. She tried to push herself closer, as though she could climb inside him, inside it, whatever this experience was, this wild race of feelings.
His hand stilled and his mouth came away from her neck and he said something she couldn’t make out, his voice was so low and thick.
Then he said, more clearly, “Get off, dammit. I told you I can’t be trusted.”
Lady Olympia climbed off him, not in the most graceful manner. The chair wobbled a little, but the wheels had caught among the rugs and couldn’t go far. That wasn’t why she moved so awkwardly. Her lack of grace was Ripley’s doing.
She was an innocent, and he’d taken advantage of her ignorance and got her stirred up. Not as badly as he’d stirred up himself, but enough to disorganize her immense brain, where he didn’t doubt she kept everything neatly catalogued by subject.
Once she was on her feet, she shakily smoothed her skirt and pulled the dress’s bodice fully round to the front. She straightened her spectacles and brushed distractedly at her hair with the back of her hand.
While she put herself to rights, he fought the urge to put her to not-rights.
I hate me, he thought. He concentrated on easing the chair out from the bunched-up rugs while he tried to calm himself.
“I don’t care what my aunt says or what you say,” he said. “The sooner you get back to London—or I do—the sooner we’re separated, in other words, the better. I’m no good at self-denial. I loathe it.”
He’d given it up altogether after his father died. He’d practiced too much of it before then—though it wasn’t exactly self-denial, when his mentally unbalanced father held the purse strings and all the other strings controlling his life.
She folded her hands at her waist and regarded him as she might have regarded a book whose category eluded her. “Do you not mean self-control?” she said.
“I mean I’m not good at not getting what I want. Which is deuced awkward, do you see—on account of your being my best friend’s bride-to-be!”
She blinked. “It’s awkward, I daresay.”
“Whatever else Ashmont assigned me to do, it wasn’t practicing for the wedding night.”
“Probably not,” she said.
“Definitely not,” he said.
“Very well.” Her color rose. “You seem to imply I’m what you want.”
“Imply? Isn’t it obvious?”
A pause.
“In that case, maybe you ought to be the one to marry me,” she said.
For a moment, Ripley’s mind felt like a clockwork mechanism after a spring had sprung loose.
“I need to marry a duke,” she said. “That is to say, a man of rank with a large income. It would be the ideal solution.”
Posture stiff, she explained: Her parents were loving spendthrifts who never thought about the future and the little they’d leave for their eldest son and heir, not to mention the nothing they’d leave for the five other boys. Meanwhile, her father wasted absurd sums of money on Seasons for her, with the ever-optimistic view of getting her married. Naturally, when Ashmont had offered for her, she had viewed him as a deus ex machina.
Ripley was still trying to digest her suggesting he marry her. The business about her family wasn’t news. He’d already caught on to that, and once he’d spent some time with her, he’d understood that she couldn’t have accepted Ashmont for romantic or ambitious reasons. All the same, her hardheaded view of her situation, combined with what amounted to a marriage proposal, had him at sea.
Collecting his wits, he said, “In short, being a solvent duke, I’d do as well as Ashmont.”
“Or as badly. But I’m more used to you now.”
Among other things, she must have grown used to his taking advantage of every opportunity to debauch her. True, she hadn
’t discouraged him. True, she’d cooperated fully. Not that he of all men regarded this as a character flaw. On the contrary, he liked her enthusiasm. Very much. Ashmont would, too. What Ashmont wouldn’t like was his best friend eliciting the enthusiasm.
“Have you been at the brandy again?” Ripley said. “Were you not listening? I can’t steal my best friend’s affianced bride. I can’t seduce, bed, or wed her. It simply isn’t done.”
She adjusted her spectacles, though they didn’t need adjusting. Her hair, yes, but he wasn’t about to touch that with a barge pole. He eased the mechanical chair back. Out of arm’s reach.
“Ah, yes, a gentleman’s honor,” she said. “But I’m not a gentleman. I need to be practical.”
He didn’t want her to be practical. He didn’t feel practical in any way. He was still dizzy from what had passed between them. Not that it was so very much, really. A heated embrace and some naughtiness, true. But he’d only fondled, and hadn’t really got to the good bits . . . and it was past time to stop thinking about that.
“The fact is, I’m not getting any younger,” she was saying.
“Neither is Mends,” he said.
“I didn’t mention him,” she said.
“I know he’s in the back of your mind. Another practical solution, in case the ducal one doesn’t work out.”
“I do not understand why you keep bringing up Lord Mends,” she said.
“I’ve seen him with you. The way he looks at you. It’s disgusting, at his age.” More than once in the past, Ripley had wanted to cross a ballroom, pick the fellow up, and put him out on the street, far away from her.
He realized now that, had Mends been a younger man, Ripley might have done something like it, but more violently. Why hadn’t he ever crossed a ballroom to her? Had he assumed she’d always be there, waiting, until he was good and ready for a respectable girl?
He’d waited too long, and Ashmont had got there first, and there was nothing to be done.
“He’s besotted with my cataloguing theories and the prospect of putting his library in order for free,” she was saying.