“I simply wished to ascertain if the gardener—” she began.
But Slope raised a finger. “If you and the marquess were to retire to the rose arbor, my lady, you would be less likely to be seen from the house.”
And with that astounding statement, he bowed and retreated.
Esme stood staring after him, mouth open. But here was her gardener, doffing his hat and fingering the brim, for all the world as if he were indeed an outdoorsman, planning to give his account to the lady of the house.
“How dare you climb my roof!” she snapped, turning her back on him and walking toward the rose arbor, which had so many ancient rose trees growing up its latticed sides that it was impossible to see in or out.
“I wish I could take your arm,” Sebastian said, his voice so low that she could hardly hear it.
She didn’t bother to turn around. It was quite difficult to pick her way down a slope slick with rain. The last thing she wanted to do was slip off her feet; Sebastian would likely strain his back heaving her back up.
“What the devil are you doing up on that roof?” Esme snapped, turning around the moment they entered the arbor.
Sebastian smiled, that easy smile that never failed to make her feel—greedy. The very thought made her indignation rise. “You have no right to risk your life on my roof! I want you off my property, Sebastian. Today!”
He strolled toward her. The rain had dampened his shirt and it clung to his shoulders, outlining a swell of muscles.
“What do you have to say to that?” she demanded, feeling her advantage weaken. Damn him for being so beautiful.
“I say,” and his voice was as slow and deep as the rest of him, “first I say hello to your babe, here.” He walked just before her and cupped his great hand over her belly.
“Hello,” he whispered, looking straight into her eyes, not at her stomach. As if he could hear, the child stirred under his hand.
Sebastian laughed. “He must be rather cramped in there these days.” He dropped to his knees and cupped her stomach with both hands. “Hello!” he said against the cloth of her gown. “Time to greet the world.”
He looked up at Esme, and there was such wild joy in his eyes that she shivered all over. Then he stood up, and his hands slid around her body to her back.
“First I say hello to the babe,” he said, and his voice was as slow and wicked as molasses, “and then I saw hello to his mother.”
There wasn’t even a thought in her head of avoiding that kiss. He bent his head and his hands pulled her against him, lips settling to hers as gently as the kiss of the sun. “Oh God, Esme, I’ve missed you,” he groaned against her lips. And when she opened her mouth to reply, he plundered.
His tongue was rough and warm and God help her—a woman with child, a widow, a mature, respectable widow—Esme leaned into his kiss and wound her arm around his neck. He tasted like farmer’s bread and he smelled like rain. He didn’t move his hands. They stayed, huge and powerful, on her back, making her feel as delicate as a bird. He didn’t even twitch a finger toward her breasts, and yet they melted toward him and longed, and other parts of her too…
That wave of longing brought her hands from his neck to his shoulders. It was more than longing: it was exquisite relief. He was whole. He hadn’t fallen from the roof. The very thought brought her a measure of rationality.
“What were you doing up on the roof?” she said, frowning.
He ignored her. His warm, rough tongue plunged into her mouth, stole her words, brought that melting weakness to her knees. Willy-nilly, she curled her fingers into his hair, returned his kiss fiercely, until—
“You could have broken your neck!” Her voice sounded weak, a thread away from silence.
“No,” he said. His hands were starting to roam now. He cupped her stomach again, kissed her so sweetly that tears came to her eyes. “Hello there,” he whispered, “mama-to-be.”
He scooped her up without even seeming to notice what an elephant she’d become and sat on the wrought-iron bench, holding her on his lap. She could feel his welcome stiffly, right through her pelisse.
It had never seemed to matter to Sebastian that her breasts were now so large that she couldn’t wear the delicate gowns in fashion. His hands ranged, not roughly but possessively, over the front of her gown. It was almost embarrassing. Her nipples were so tender these days that he merely drew a thumb across her gown and a low moan hung in the air between them.
He looked at Esme’s eyes then. They had lost all the fierceness. They didn’t snap at him like a mother lion. He pulled her head against his shoulder, brushed a silky black curl from her ear and whispered, “What’s the most beautiful mother in the world doing out in the rain, then?”
Her head popped off his shoulder before he’d had a chance to kiss her ear. “Rescuing you!” she said, and her eyes were snapping fire again. “What in the bloody hell were you doing up on the roof?”
He couldn’t help it; a smile curled the corner of his mouth. She wouldn’t be so fierce if she didn’t care for him.
“Mending the slate,” he said, knowing it would drive her mad. But he liked her furious, those gorgeous eyes blazing at him, breasts heaving, focused on him.
She jerked her head away from him. But she didn’t move to stand up, so he kept his hands exactly where they were. One on her narrow back and the other cupping the swell of her breast. His fingers longed to move, to caress, nay to take her breast and—
He pulled himself back to a state in which it was possible to listen. She was scolding him for being reckless, heedless, brash, daring, inconsiderate…His fingers trembled, and so he allowed himself to take her breast more snugly in his hand. He imagined its glorious weight on his chest.
He was imprudent, unwise and altogether foolish….
He was maddened by the desire to push off her pellisse, sweep a hand under her gown and claim her as his. Again. Every time. Those few times she had visited his hut, he’d found that his sense of ownership, of a primitive she-is-mine feeling had lasted only an hour or so after she’d left. She’d returned to the house, and he’d stayed in his hut and dreamed of her.
His hand closed on her breast, and his thumb rubbed over her nipple again. The flow of words stopped and there was a tiny gasp. He did it again, and again, and then bent to her mouth. Those lips, so dark, cherry dark, were his. She whimpered and trembled against his chest. He memorized each quiver.
“You are mine,” he said, and the growl of it surprised him.
She leaned back against his shoulder, silky curls falling over his shirt, her eyes closed. Her breathing grew shallow, and she clutched his shirt as his thumb rubbed again and again with the roughness of desire, with the roughness with which he wanted to plunge between her legs.
But he couldn’t. They were in a rose arbor, after all. Slowly he eased her back against his shoulder and let his hand cup her breast, sending a silent apology to the nipple that begged against his palm.
He knew instantly when she returned to herself. It wasn’t that she sprang to her feet. It was an imperceptible change in the air, in the very air they were breathing.
“No,” she said, and the anguish in her voice struck him in the heart. “I don’t want this!”
“I know,” he said, as soothingly as he could, tracing with one finger the graceful curve of her neck. “I know you don’t.”
“Obviously, you don’t care for my wishes! Otherwise you would have returned to the Continent by now. What if one of my guests decides to take a breath of fresh air?”
“I do care for your wishes. You wish to be respectable. You wish to remain a widow. You also”—he dropped a kiss onto the sweet cream of her neck—“you also wish to bed me.”
“I can live without the latter.”
“I don’t know that I can,” he said, his mouth glazing her neck. Her perfume was surprisingly innocent for such a worldly lady. She didn’t smell like some sort of exotic inhabitant of the East Indies, but like an almond tree
in flower.
“I admit that I find you—enticing,” she said, and he spared a moment to admire the steadiness of her voice. “But the game is over. Slope, my butler, knows who you are. In fact, he must have known from the moment you applied for a position. While he is unlikely to gossip about the matter, it is a matter of time before one of my house guests finds out your identity. The house is full of people who know you, Sebastian. I’ll be ruined. And I can’t bear that, not when so much is at stake.
“And I don’t want you to fall off my roof either!” she said, her hand gripping his shoulder. “I cannot bear it if something happens to you, Sebastian. Not after Miles. Not after—Don’t you understand?” Esme felt as if her breath caught in her chest at even saying it aloud.
Oh, he understood all right. He’d probably have five little marks on his shoulder, one love mark for each of her fingers. The smile that grew on his face came from his heart, and if she didn’t recognize that…“You want me to leave?” he said, and he had to steady his voice because she might recognize the rough exaltation there.
She nodded fiercely. “No more Baring the Gardener,” she said. “You must go.”
Much to his regret, he rather agreed with her. It was time to say good-bye to his disguise, much though he loved the simple life. “Do you really, truly wish me to return to the Continent—or, to be specific, France?”
She nodded again. But Sebastian noted the way she swallowed, and he had to bite back another growl of triumph.
“If you truly wish me to go,” he said into her hair, “you’ll have to grant me a wish.”
“A wish?”
Another curl of her perfume caught him, and he had to stop himself from licking her face, simply drinking her. She was so beautiful, in all her silken, sulky anger and fear for him. “One wish.” His voice sounded drunken.
“I wish for you to go,” Esme said primly. “It is certainly—”
He cut her off. “One night,” he said. “I want one night.”
Her backbone straightened. “What?”
“I’ll come to you tonight. I’ll come to your bedroom,” he said into her ear, and his tongue lingered there for a second. “I’ll take you in my arms, and put you on the bed—”
“You certainly will not!”
He smiled into her curls. “Do you truly wish me to leave your property?”
“Immediately!” she snapped.
“Then I demand compensation.” He let his hand spread on her breast again, warm and possessive on the curve. He felt the quiver that rolled through her body as acutely as she did. “One night,” he said hoarsely, and he couldn’t keep all the lust and love from tangling together in his voice. “One night and I’ll leave your employ and retire as a gardener.”
She was silent, likely worrying about whether they’d be discovered, fretting about her respectability. Only he, whose reputation was absolutely ruined, seemed to understand how very little respectability mattered in life.
His hand trailed over the fabric of her dress, touching the roundness of her thigh. “Oh God, Esme, give me this.” But she was holding something back. He could tell.
“Are you sure that you would want to make love to me in this state?” Her eyes met his, direct as ever. “I’ve grown even more ungainly and—”
He caught her silliness in his mouth. “I want to devour you.” That seemed to silence her; her cheeks turned pink. “In fact, you should take a nap this afternoon, because there won’t be much sleep tonight. I mean to have you every way I can. I mean to intoxicate you and torment you so that you know precisely how I feel about you.” His finger trailed down her cheek and tipped up her chin.
“Don’t mistake what is going to happen tonight.” His voice was sinful, dark and hoarse. “You will never forget the imprint of my skin after tonight, Esme. Waste your life chitchatting with ladies in lace caps. Raise your child with the help of your precious Sewing Circle. But in the middle of all those lonely nights, you will never, ever, forget the night that lies ahead of us.”
Esme’s heart was beating so fast that she could hardly speak.
“Tonight.” He held her gaze. “And then I’ll leave for France because…because that’s what you want, true?”
At the moment she couldn’t quite remember what it was she wanted. Besides the one thing, of course. That thing was pressing against her backside as they spoke.
And the Sewing Circle. She mustn’t forget the Sewing Circle.
11
The Delights of Poetry
Tonight Helene was going to seduce Stephen Fairfax-Lacy, otherwise known as the Puritan, and Bea was perfectly reconciled to that fact. In fact, she was the instigator. She herself had selected an exquisitely desirous bit of verse for Helene to read. Not only that, but she, Helene and Esme had had an uproarious time trying to teach Helene to use a fan and various other flirtatious tricks.
The only reason I feel a bit disconsolate, Bea thought to herself, is that I have no one to play with. If only Arabella had invited sufficient gentlemen to this house party, she wouldn’t have had the slightest qualm while assisting Helene to use the stodgy M.P. in order to curdle her husband’s liver. If there was a dog in the manger here, it was Bea herself. Because of course she would never want Mr. Fairfax-Lacy, not really.
I merely feel, Bea instructed herself, a mild anxiety at the upcoming performance of my protégée. For it was her poem Helene was reading and her idea to use Mr. Fairfax-Lacy to make Helene’s husband jealous. Thus Helene’s success or failure reflected on Bea. And why she didn’t just keep her mouth shut when she had the impulse to meddle in the lives of perfect strangers, she didn’t know.
Lord Winnamore had elected to be the first to read. He was standing before the fireplace, droning on and on from Virgil’s Second Eclogue. Whatever that was. Bea didn’t care if it had been translated into English by Shakespeare himself; it was as boring as dirt.
“Well, Winnamore,” Arabella said briskly, the very moment he fell silent, “that certainly was educational! You’ve managed to put my niece to sleep.”
Esme sat up with a start, trying hard to look as if she hadn’t been daydreaming about the way Sebastian would—might—“I’m not asleep,” she said brightly. “The eclogue was utterly fascinating.”
Arabella snorted. “Tell it to the birds. I was asleep, if no one else was.”
But Lord Winnamore just grinned. “Do you good to hear a bit of the classics,” he told her mildly.
“Not if they’re that dreary. I’ve no need for them. Am I right in thinking that the whole thing was praise for a dead man?”
When Lord Winnamore nodded, Arabella rolled her eyes. “Cheerful.” Then she turned to the company at large. “Let’s see, we’ll just put that painful experience behind us, shall we? Who wants to go next?”
Esme shot Helene an encouraging look. She was sitting bolt upright on a wing chair, looking desperately uneasy. As Esme watched, Bea handed Helene a small leather book, open in the middle.
Helene turned even paler, if that were possible. She seemed terrified. “Helene!” Esme called across the room. “Would you like to read a poem, or shall we save your performance for tomorrow?” But Esme saw in Helene’s eyes terror mixed with something else: a steely, fierce determination.
“I am quite ready,” she answered. She stood up and walked over to the fireplace to stand where Lord Winnamore had been. Then she turned and smiled at Stephen Fairfax-Lacy. Esme almost applauded. No one could call that a lascivious smile, but it was certainly cordial.
“I shall read a poem entitled ‘The Shepherdess’s Complaint,’” she said.
“Lord, not another bloody shepherd!” Arabella muttered.
Lord Winnamore sent her an amused look. “Lady Godwin did say shepherdess, not shepherd.”
Helene was starting to feel reckless. It was too late for second thoughts. Fairfax-Lacy would come to her bed, and then she would flaunt—yes, flaunt—him in front of Rees.
She threw Stephen another smile,
and this one truly was warm. He was going to make it happen. What a lovely man!
“Well, do go on,” Arabella said rather impatiently. “Let’s kill off this shepherdess, shall we? Lord, who ever thought that poetry was so tedious?”
Helene looked again at Stephen Fairfax-Lacy, just to make certain that he realized he was the benefactor of her poetry reading, and began:
If it be sin to love a sweet-faced Lad,
Whose amber locks trussed up in golden trammels
Dangle down his lovely cheeks with joy—
“Trammels?” Arabella interrupted. “Trammels? What the devil is the poet talking about?”
“The man in question has his hair caught up in a net,” Winnamore told her. “Trammels were used by fishermen—” Helene cast him a look as well, and he fell silent. She felt rather like a schoolmistress. One kind of look for Stephen, a look that said Come to my room! Another kind of look for Lord Winnamore—Hush in the back, there! “I shall continue,” she announced.
When pearl and flower his fair hair enamels
If it be sin to love a lovely Lad,
Oh then sin I, for whom my soul is sad.
Helene had to grin. This was perfect! She looked down at Bea with thanks, but Bea jerked her head almost imperceptibly at Stephen. Obediently, Helene looked at Stephen again. It was getting easier to smile at the man. And all this talk about sin had to make it clear what she had in mind.
O would to God (so I might have my fee)
My lips were Honey, and thy mouth a Bee.
Then shouldst thou sucke my sweete and—
and my—
Helene stopped. She could feel crimson flooding up her neck. She couldn’t read this—this stuff!
“That’s a bit of all right!” Arabella called. “Lady Godwin, you are showing unexpected depths!”
But Esme was crossing the room and taking the book from Helene, who seemed to be frozen in place. “It’s too deep for me,” she said, giving Helene a gentle push toward her chair. “I am a respectable widow, after all.” She glanced down at Bea and then decided not to ask that minx to read. “I think we have time for only one more poem tonight.” It wasn’t that she was particularly anxious to retire to her room…except that Sebastian might be waiting for her. A lady never kept a gentleman waiting.