Roberta just stared. It was almost violent and yet strangely intoxicating. The man was caressing his partner at the same time that he…well, he…The woman, whoever she was, was clearly enjoying herself, given the noise she was making. Roberta didn’t recognize the gentleman; he was rather tubby. But she couldn’t help noting that his thighs were strong, and he too was obviously most happy, and as she watched he shaped his partner’s bottom in his hands and pulled her higher and—
Damon’s arm came around her waist and pulled her silently backwards into the corridor. He was still laughing as he closed the door. Roberta didn’t feel in the least like laughing. She felt odd, as if all the air had been crushed out of her lungs.
Damon peered at her in the dim light of the corridor. “Shocked you to the bottom of your boots, I see. Come along then. We’ll go to the library; there’ll be no one there because it’s so damned hard to find.” He took her hand and pulled her along through a corridor and a turn, and finally through a door.
It was a monstrously big library, all lined with books and hung in somber crimson velvet.
Roberta walked forward feeling slightly unsteady on her legs. There was a sofa before the fire, and Damon pushed her into it. “A brandy, that’s what you need,” he said, going over to the sideboard.
He tumbled a few glasses about and said, over his shoulder, “I take it that was the first tupping you were ever witness to?”
Roberta opened her mouth but no sound came out.
“Poleaxed,” he said cheerfully, coming back and handing her a glass. “Drink that.”
Roberta took a fiery swallow and coughed. “What is it?”
Damon was laughing again. “First brandy, first tupping.”
“I didn’t tup anyone,” Roberta said, taking another sip. She quite liked brandy. Although it made her realize that her stomach was disconcertingly hot, and the drink only made it more so.
“True,” Damon said, throwing himself down next to her. “So, are you shocked, horrified, stricken to the bone?”
Roberta turned and looked at him. He was remarkably like his sister, though his hair was burnished a darker brown, whereas his sister’s was golden. Not that she could see his hair under his wig. He had Jemma’s eyes and her deep lower lip. “It’s rather unkind of you to make jest of me.”
He grinned unrepentantly. “I don’t see why you should be so horrified. It’s entirely natural, after all.”
But was it? Previous to this, Roberta thought she had the facts of procreation and marital intimacy firmly in mind. One of her father’s courtesans had informed her that the man climbs on top of his partner, inserts his private part into the appropriate area, and continues. What exactly continuing meant was rather fuzzy to Roberta, but she certainly understood the mechanics.
Until this.
Because the mechanics might have been—she had to suppose they were—reproduced in a different position…
Under Damon’s interested eyes she felt herself going pink in the cheeks. “It works in many different positions,” he said helpfully.
At this evidence that he knew precisely what she was thinking about, she turned pinker still.
“Any other questions? I am your cousin, after all.”
“Five times removed,” Roberta said rather crossly.
“Actually, it’s more like seven,” Damon said. “As I work it out in my head, you’re about as much related to me as most of the people in the ballroom.”
“Are you implying that I am taking advantage of your sister?”
“If Jemma didn’t want to bring you out, she wouldn’t. Believe me, no one talks Jemma into doing a single thing that she doesn’t care to. Thus, her eight years in Paris.”
“Do you understand why she came back to London?” Roberta asked, desperate to change the topic to something other than tupping peers.
Damon stretched out his long legs. The current fashion for tight knee breeches suited him. His breeches were of a dark crimson and they made his legs, in cream stockings, look remarkably virile.
Roberta caught herself. What was she thinking? It was all the effect of seeing that performance in the sitting room. It made her feel peculiar. Most peculiar, she thought, realizing just what kind of messages her body seemed to be sending her.
“She has to make an heir,” Damon said, “because Beaumont might drop dead at any moment. He collapsed in the House last fall, didn’t you hear? Fell to the ground and everyone thought he was dead. But he wasn’t. Still, the prospect is not too pretty. Fainting is not a healthy man’s activity. His father stuck his spoon in the wall at thirty-four due to something wrong with his heart. Beaumont is living on borrowed time.”
“He looks healthy enough,” Roberta said.
“Doesn’t he? I’m hoping it was an aberration. I like the man, and I think that it’s better for Jemma to have him here to fight with, rather than buried, if you see what I mean. Did you meet the Duchess of Berrow, Jemma’s friend? She was here yesterday afternoon.”
Roberta shook her head.
“She used to be a smiling little thing, and then her husband died—killed himself in truth—and she’s like a little bird with a broken wing now. You can’t coax a smile for love or money.”
“How sad,” Roberta said softly.
“Jemma had to return from Paris and do her wifely duty.”
The words wouldn’t have meant much to Roberta before this, but now she could feel herself getting pink again.
Damon’s mouth curled into a wicked smile. “I don’t imagine Beaumont doing the business in the sitting room with his breeches at his ankles, do you? He’s far too proper.”
A mad choke of laughter came from Roberta’s chest. “No!” Now Villiers…She felt almost feverish at the thought. Villiers she could easily see dragging down his breeches and turning someone over the arm of a chair.
There was a touch on her cheek and she turned, to find Damon looking at her. “You’re not thinking about my brother-in-law,” he said, his eyes slightly narrowed. “So who, my dear Roberta, cousin and relative, are you thinking of?”
She gasped but said nothing.
“It’s Villiers, isn’t it? I forgot that you’d already found the love of your life.”
He still held her chin and it seemed to Roberta as if the world stopped spinning and froze, with the two of them but a hair’s breadth from each other.
“Of course I was thinking of Villiers,” she said, pulling backward. Pulling herself together.
He raised his glass to hers. “To many lazy afternoons spent in the drawing room with your husband.”
“You shouldn’t say such things,” she scolded, taking another delicious sip from her glass.
“Why not?”
He had green eyes. She’d never realized that before; she thought they were blue, like those of his sister. But no, they were green, and beautifully shaped, with a little turn upward at the corners. “Because I am a young lady,” she said, looking at the fire again.
“I suppose that young ladies don’t think about disreputable people tupping in drawing rooms?”
“Never.”
“But you, Roberta, aren’t you rather extraordinary among young women?” There was a thread of laughter in his voice.
She shook her head. “Not at all.” She almost choked when a large sip of fiery liquor went down the wrong way.
“I thought you were…For one thing, I thought you told the truth.”
“Well, of course I tell the truth,” she said. She dared to look at him again. There was something different in his eyes, something daring and delicious and altogether not like the Damon of yesterday. She was shivering with excitement, and yet she hadn’t the faintest impulse to leave the room. Which she ought to.
“As to the truth,” he said, stretching out his legs again, “I found the whole scene rather arousing. Didn’t you?”
She couldn’t think what to say. One had to suppose that arousing covered feelings like the queer warmth in her legs.
/> “Look at that,” he said, obviously thinking the conversation was no more important than an exchange over muffins. “Lady Piddleton ran my stockings.”
There was a large snag running through the clocks splashed on the outside of his stocking. And then she noticed that higher up, where his tight breeches turned into a waistband, there was—
One had to pretend to be a virtuous young lady and not have even seen that.
“What was she doing in such a position as to scratch them?” Roberta asked, and then felt herself going purple as all sorts of thoughts as she’d never had before came to mind. She stared at the mantelpiece so that she wouldn’t accidentally gaze at his breeches again.
He let out a peal of laughter. “Lady Piddleton, Roberta! Coming into fifty years old, with a face like the back of a rusty saucepan?”
“I merely wondered how it came to pass,” she said with dignity.
“Jeweled heels,” he said. “Belying her age, she rubbed her shoe against my leg under the table at supper.”
Roberta blinked at him. “In an invitation?”
“Are you so surprised? That’s a notable insult!” He made a mock scowl.
For a second, she saw him as Lady Piddleton undoubtedly did, a big muscled man who moved lazily but in perfect control, whose eyes had a wicked, laughing tilt to them.
“No,” she said. “I suppose not.”
“These are things you will have to learn quickly if you wish to marry Villiers—you do wish for marriage, don’t you? Because—”
She was quite sure that Villiers would do her quick honors in the sitting room as well. “Marriage,” she said firmly.
“You’ll have to trick him into it,” Damon said.
“I will?” She had been thinking the same thing.
“You’re beautiful, and you’re in a fair way to being the most delectable young lady on the market this year. But Villiers isn’t on the market. He shows no sign of wanting a bride, not at all. And there’s all those children of his to take into account.”
Roberta nodded. “Four?”
“I think it’s only two,” Damon said. “But one of them was fathered on an unmarried girl, daughter of Lord Killigrew. So it’s not as if you could just let him spring you a babe, and hope that would get him to the altar.”
She nodded.
“Seduction is out of the question, then,” Damon said, and she felt him turn toward him. “But you don’t know a thing about that business, do you? Have you ever kissed anyone?”
“Actually, yes,” she said, enjoying the tiny shadow of surprise in his eyes. “I may not have seen anyone tupping before, but I have certainly been kissed.”
“And have you kissed, as well?”
“Of course,” she said, though frankly she wasn’t sure what the difference was.
He put down his glass of brandy on the floor next to the couch. “Being kissed is like this,” he said. His mouth came down on hers gently, persuasively.
“You shouldn’t be kissing me,” Roberta said a second later. Her heart was thudding in her chest over the impropriety of it all. “You’re my cousin—”
“Not really,” he interjected.
“Well, you know what I mean,” she said. “I’m in love! I’m really in love, Damon. You have to understand that. Ladies don’t sit around and kiss other people when they’re in love!”
“Ah,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve met so few people in love that I likely haven’t learned that particular lesson yet.”
“Well, it’s true,” Roberta said, feeling rather regretful because he looked disconsolate. “I can’t kiss you. I’m supposed to be kissing Villiers.”
“Did he offer?”
Roberta blinked at the intense green of his eyes. “Not yet. We just met and danced but one time.” She couldn’t help smiling. “He’s coming to the house to play a chess match with Jemma and he said he would see me as well.”
“Ha,” Damon said. “I suppose you’ve heard about the dual chess matches?”
Roberta nodded.
“Trust my sister to add yet another utterly disreputable story to a long and checkered career in my family.”
Roberta thought it was very nice of Jemma to lure Villiers to the house, but she kept her mouth shut.
“Now I kissed you,” Damon said, “so why don’t you kiss me? Because you’re going to have to understand kissing in order to catch Villiers. The man has slept with most of the women in London.”
“Are you saying I need to practice?” she asked suspiciously.
“Something along those lines. And who better than with a family member?”
The glint in his eyes told her that his flimsy justification was nothing more than that. But there was nothing unpleasant about Damon, after all, and practice might be a good idea. So she leaned over to him and placed her lips on his, just as he had with her. And as Angus Pilfer had done, last year in the cow lane, and as the squire’s son had done at the village dance the year before that.
“Is that your best try?” he asked, pulling back.
She looked at him. There was something dangerous about this, but it was fun, not nearly as unnerving as talking to Villiers. “I gather you think my performance was inadequate?” she asked. “Then, sir, I defer to your teaching abilities.”
His eyes glinted at her. “Kisses are preludes. That couple we saw in the sitting room started with just a kiss, I’ve no doubt.”
The image flashed back into Roberta’s mind and she shivered.
“They both enjoyed the kiss,” he went on, “and so things progressed.”
“Well,” Roberta said, not wanting to sit there silently like a little girl, “I could certainly see they were enjoying the progression!”
He laughed. “Who would have thought Lord Gordon had it in him?”
“Who is he?”
“A horse-loving, stout Englishman. Did you see how his wig was askew?”
She nodded.
“An intelligent gentleman always removes his wig for a true kiss.”
She knew she was out of her depth; she knew it. He tossed his wig on a chair, and suddenly his hair swung forward, all bronzed brown and shining.
“So, kiss me,” he commanded.
She leaned toward him again. He smelled clean and fresh, not like some men she’d danced with this evening who smelled like lilac hair powder or, worse, sweaty locks. She put her lips onto his and kept them there for a moment. Was she supposed to do any different?
But then somehow his mouth yielded to hers, though she had not asked such a thing, had not understood such a thing. The sweetness of it clanged through her body and she pulled back. “What do you think?” he asked, as if they hadn’t—as if she hadn’t—
But Roberta’s mind was clashing with images. “That’s what you meant by a prelude,” she said, surprised to hear how very collected her own voice sounded.
“Precisely,” he said, sounding pleased, as if she were a good student who had solved a difficult mathematics problem.
He curled a large hand around the back of her neck. “Let’s do that again, shall we?” he said. His head came toward hers. She closed her eyes this time, smelling the maleness of him and tasting him at the same time. He was holding her still, and suddenly he was doing the kissing, rather than she, and this was different.
No prelude, this, she thought dimly, because he was part of her, he was inside her, he was tasting her—and how different it was. She had to stop kissing him. She was in love with someone else.
But somehow she leaned back against the sofa and he leaned toward her, and still he kissed her. His mouth was madness, like cherry wine in midsummer: sweet, intoxicating, drugging.
He kept kissing her.
It made her feel restless, as if small sparks danced between her legs, as if the pooling warmth she felt in her stomach after leaving the sitting room were turning into something altogether more embarrassing and more—more dangerous.
There was a dim question in her mind about the natu
re of kisses. And then, as if a curtain lifted, she realized that she was being kissed, and she rather thought she would like to kiss. So she curled her hands into the silky locks of his hair and pulled him a bit closer and kissed him.
It all changed again.
His body felt heavier against hers, hotter, charged with a weight that made her feel achy where she had felt warm.
As if he could hear that drugged thought whisper through her mind, he pulled back.
Roberta didn’t open her eyes immediately.
“Have I shocked you?” He didn’t sound in the least sorry, just curious.
She opened her eyes. “No,” she said, meaning to shock him for once. “I am interested in how kissing feels.”
His eyebrow flew up. “Feels?”
She smiled, and knew it was a siren’s smile, a gamester’s smile.
“You would appear to have learned something.”
“If not from you, from the sitting room,” she said. She stretched, knowing that the plumpness of her breasts above the stiff fabric of her bodice was tantalizingly close to his finger.
Being Damon, he did the unthinkable. He ran a long finger over the curve of her breast. “Very nice,” he said, and she heard the hitch in his voice with approval.
His finger burned a sweet trail. But she batted him away. “A salutary lesson, and I thank you for it,” she said, rising.
He rose too and she couldn’t help checking his breeches. But alas, the heavy line of his coat swung into place.
He caught her looking and laughed. “Well-designed coats, aren’t they? Any number of women can caress my legs under the table and no one will know if I respond. I hardly need say that I did not respond for Lady Piddleton, but if you stroke me under the table, it would be another story.”
Roberta walked over to a mirror on the wall rather than answer this nonsense. The glass was long enough to give her an excellent view of the way her silk gown had been crushed when he leaned against her. There was nothing to be done about that, but she tucked an errant curl back into place.
Damon appeared in the mirror behind her, bewigged once more. He was so warm that she could feel his body just behind her. “’Twas a dangerous game we played tonight,” he said to her reflection. “I am no Villiers, Roberta. If we ended up with a child, you’d have to marry me.”