What he found now, first, was Lady Charlotte Hayward.
She stood in the center of the room, turning about, surveying the place, her hands clasped upon her bosom. When her circuit brought her round to face him, she jumped and let out a little shriek.
He would have laughed at the sound, so typically female, but his attention had swung from her to their surroundings, and for a moment he was dumbstruck.
He came inside and found himself turning in a circle, too. “Great Zeus!” he said at last. “What have you done?”
Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. He would have been less astonished had he found the dairy filled with unicorns.
He stood in an airy and elegant room. A yellow and green flower design bordered sparkling white tile walls. A checkerboard of black and white marble covered the floor. Light filtered through stained-glass windows whose design and color complemented the tiles’ flowers. A broad marble shelf ran round the room. A square table with a matching marble top stood in the center.
Upon the table lay a bonnet, carelessly tossed there, he could see, for it lay on its side, the ribbons dangling over the table’s edge.
From ceiling to floor, not a speck of dirt or dust or mold or rust remained. Everything about him glistened and gleamed.
“What have you done to my dairy?” he said. “What happened to the Black Hole of Calcutta I was saving for the setting of the Gothic horror play I was going to write one of these days? Where are all my beautiful spiders? Where are my gloomy corners, where ghoulies might lurk? What have you done with the six inches of dirt on the floor? That was good dirt. I was saving it.”
Her lips quivered and a small sound escaped. She made her face blank but not quickly enough.
What she tried to hide was mirth. He’d made her laugh.
She was happy, too, he thought. This was not the sly grin he’d seen when she’d delivered him to the talkative Mrs. Steepleton or the badgering Mrs. Badgely or when she’d made chaos of his library. This time she was truly pleased.
A truly pleased Lady Charlotte was a sight to behold. She seemed to glow from within. At this moment she was so beautiful—almost ethereally so—that it hurt to look at her.
There was another hurt as well, one he chose not to investigate too closely. He tried to persuade himself that he was…surprised, and it was the overall effect that struck him so forcibly.
Today she did not look at all disreputable, as she’d done the last time he’d seen her.
Kissed her.
Don’t think about that.
It was nigh impossible not to, when she might as well have been wearing a nightgown. Yes, it was a pristine white dress garnished with layers of lace and ruffles, nothing like the plain gowns that respectable women wore to bed. All the same, it made him think of beds, and the thought made him want to muss her and make her look disreputable again.
What a sapskull he’d been to come here!
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“I doubt it,” he said.
“You do not believe you need a dairy,” she said. “You need only feed yourself and a few servants.”
“You have strange notions of what constitutes ‘a few,’” he said. “At last count, thanks to Lady Lithby, I had sixteen million servants.”
“Yes, but fifteen million, nine hundred eighty-eight of those are temporary,” she said.
“I am all agog,” he said. “You can add and subtract. Without using your fingers.” He put his hand to his temple. “The blood is rushing to my head. Perhaps I’d better sit down.”
He saw something in those blue eyes—was it disappointment? Then her expression hardened, the glow faded, and he wanted to cut out his tongue.
“Perhaps you’d better,” she said coldly. “I wish to explain a matter of practical economics. You may find it heavy going.”
Hold your tongue, he told himself.
“Practical economics?” he said. “You know what that is, do you?”
She looked away. “Sarcasm and mockery. How mature. What on earth possessed me to try to help you?”
“You’ve decided to help me?” he said. “That’s novel.”
Her blue gaze came back to him, scornful now. “Yes, it was the novelty. That must be it. Now, perhaps you would be so good as to allow me to explain my thinking?”
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea that elegant females thought—about anything other than bonnets and ribbons and shoes, that is. Pray do explain. I’m all ears.”
She moved away, to stand by a window. She set her hand on the marble shelf and assumed the stance of a lecturer.
He should have found it amusing.
Instead, he was angry. She troubled him, and he was not used to being troubled by women. He didn’t want to be here, looking at her: the impossibly beautiful countenance, its perfect oval framed by silken curls the color of champagne…the layers of ruffles and lace and ribbons covering her shapely body.
Her body, pressed against his.
His arms around her.
The kiss that had left him bewildered.
She’d walked away from it, from him, and now it was as though it had never happened.
Exactly as it ought to be, Logic told him.
“No doubt you believe it more economical for you to buy what you need for a household as small as yours,” she said.
“Whereas repairing a broken-down dairy and hiring dairymaids is the less costly route?” he said. “Oh, and we mustn’t forget the dozen cows I’m supposed to purchase or the cowshed I must rebuild to house them. Not to mention that I’ve yet to see the dairy scullery, where the real work goes on—as opposed to this playroom for ladies.”
The dairy was used for very light work: separating cream from milk and setting cream and junkets. In the last century, fashionable ladies had played at being dairymaids, in the same way Marie Antoinette had played at being a shepherdess.
Her Ethereal Ladyship refused to be baited. “Perhaps you would be so good as to let me make my point without your sarcastic interruptions?”
Perhaps he could stop acting like an ass. Or if he couldn’t, perhaps he’d better leave.
He gave an impatient wave, imitating his father’s provoking style. “Say on.”
She colored a little but went on coolly enough, “I know what I’m about. I’ve had your dairy scullery scoured, too. As you can see, there is no door to it from here.” She gave a sweep of her hand to indicate the walls about them. “There will be no danger, therefore, of the scullery’s heat and steam leaking into this room and spoiling the milk. You will be relieved, I’m sure, to learn that most of the equipment is in good order. You will need to replace the wooden gutters, but the vats and churn and coppers and such need only minor repairs. By the time you have acquired the cows you need, we shall be ready for the dairymaids to commence their work.”
“And I need to hire dairymaids—yet more servants—because…?”
“Lithby Hall has fifteen milk cows,” she said in the patient tone usually reserved for small children and village idiots. “When the family is here, we use vast amounts of milk and butter. This leaves no cream to spare, nor milk for cheese making. As a result, for most of the summer and autumn months we buy our cream and cheese from others. We buy in large quantities. I can find out the exact figures if you wish. But it should not be difficult for a genius like you to do the reckoning. I have four younger brothers, two of them still in leading strings, and my parents are fond of entertaining. Now, we can buy our cream and cheese elsewhere or we can buy these articles from you. Which would you rather?”
Mortification ignited the smoldering embers of his temper. He’d told no one of his money troubles. He’d let wolves tear him to pieces before he did.
And here she was, in her ruffles and ribbons and lace that must have cost five years of a dairymaid’s wages. Here she was, her nose in the air and her pale gold hair lit like the Botticelli Venus, lecturing him on finances.
&
nbsp; “Thank you, Lady Charlotte, for telling me my business,” he said tautly. “I wonder why I troubled to hire a land agent and a land steward, when I had only to seek your advice—in between your visits to the milliner.” He glared at the ridiculous bonnet. “How foolish of me not to seek your counsel sooner. I blame it on my misguided upbringing. I was taught, you see, that it was vulgar to discuss money except with one’s man of business.”
Vulgar be damned. It was his pride she’d struck.
It was bad enough learning how ignorant he was about the costs of maintaining a property. To have her know it as well, and tweak him with it, was intolerable.
Her eyebrows rose. “I thought you did not care for rules,” she said. “I had not thought to find you so close-minded.”
“Close—”
“But I see what it is,” she said. “I have wounded your masculine pride. My mistake. I had not thought to find you so childish as to reject sound advice merely because it came from a woman. How foolish of me.”
“Childish?” he said. “Childish?”
“Yes.” She moved away from the shelf and brushed past him, walking to the door. “I beg your pardon for wasting your valuable time. I humbly apologize for disturbing the perfection of your dairy. Tomorrow I shall tell the servants to restore the dirt.”
He grabbed her bonnet from the table and stomped after her. “Don’t forget your hat,” he said. He held it out.
She took it from him and looked at it, then up at him.
She threw it at him. He caught it and flung it aside onto the marble shelf.
She turned away, head high, back straight.
Well.
He pushed the door shut before she could go out.
Her face went pink, but she looked back over her shoulder, the blue eyes flashing defiantly up at him. “Oh, now you are going to become all masterful,” she said. “If you think you can intimidate me with your—with your great size and—and swaggering arrogance, I recommend you think again.”
He was far beyond thinking. Logic, common sense, calculation, along with all the other components of the reason he prized so highly, jumbled into a useless tangle in his mind. He watched her perfect skin change, the pink washing over her face and neck. He stood near enough to discern the greenish tint in her blue eyes. He could see how long her lashes were, and how much darker they were than her hair.
Her lips were soft and pink and glistening, slightly parted as her breath came faster. He remembered the kiss that had all but brought him to his knees. He stared at her mouth and heard her sharp intake of breath.
Back away, said Logic. Now.
He grasped her arms and turned her toward him and lowered his head. She turned her face to one side.
That’s a no. What could be plainer? Let her go. Give it up.
He clasped the back of her head and turned her back.
“No, you don’t,” he said.
He held her. She didn’t struggle at all, but murder looked up at him from those blue eyes.
“Kill me, then,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Then his mouth covered hers, and Logic gave up.
Chapter 7
She didn’t move a muscle. She remained stiff and haughty and angry, her mouth firmly shut.
Darius lifted his mouth from hers and regarded her stony countenance. He remembered how she’d glowed, only minutes ago, before he’d ruined everything.
He remembered how warm and yielding she’d been the other day, the sweet surrender that had made his heart ache, his tiny, hard, reputedly nonexistent heart. He could almost feel again the coaxing touch of her mouth on his, drawing him back when he knew he ought to pull away. Her gentle persistence had stripped away all his defenses, all his better sense.
Ah, well, then.
He brushed his lips against her cheek.
I’m sorry.
He heard her breath catch.
He lightly kissed the corner of her mouth.
Please forgive me.
A tremor went through her.
He kissed her nose.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
He brushed feather kisses at the top of her eyebrows.
“Oh,” she said softly.
He kissed her temples and the corners of her eyes. He kissed the top of her ear and made a path of featherlight kisses along her jaw and kissed her chin and continued up to her other ear.
She made a half-stifled sound, suspiciously like a giggle.
He covered her face with butterfly kisses, and the stoniness melted away. Still, he didn’t stop. He teased, he played, until at last her hands came up and grasped his shoulders. She turned her head to capture his mouth, and even when her soft mouth touched his, he held back, kissing her as though they were children, as though he’d never kissed before, and this was the first time, and it was all new, a discovery.
It was.
Her lips trembled under his gentle kiss, and something within him trembled, too.
He brought his arms around her, so carefully this time, as though he held an armful of delicate blossoms. He inhaled her scent, sweeter and lighter than any flower. He wasn’t sure what he felt; he only knew he didn’t want it to stop. He deepened the kiss but again by the slowest degrees…holding back, holding back, even while he felt the pull of desire, as sure and inevitable as the tide. Her tongue met his, and the taste of her was sweet and light and inevitable, too, as natural as the clash and mingling of waters at the sea’s edge.
It was a kiss, only a kiss, and everything in a kiss.
He wrapped his arms more tightly about her, giving more to get more, of the warmth and lightness and the strange sense of beginning. Her body yielded, pressing against his while she played with the deepening kiss, exploring, learning, taking it as slowly as he did, surrendering, as he did, a heartbeat at a time.
By the same slow degrees, feeling welled inside him. It came from someplace deep, unfamiliar. He had no defense ready for it, no protection now against it, and it built into a surge of longing so powerful that he staggered back under its impact and braced himself against the marble table.
He dragged his mouth from hers to press kisses upon her cheek and upon the arch of her brows and the perfect shell of her ear and the smooth arc of her throat. She caught her breath and let it out in a sigh. Then she lifted her hands from his shoulders and wrapped her arms about his neck.
He tightened his hold, pulling her closer. His hands moved over her back, along her straight spine and down to the sweet place where her waist curved out to her bottom. Down his hands slid, shaping to the voluptuous curve of her derrière, then pressing her against his arousal. She stiffened, but in the next instant she yielded, and pushed against him.
His control unraveled.
He reclaimed her mouth, and this time the kiss was deep and fierce. He grasped her bottom, turned, and lifted her onto the table. She clung to him, and he let his hands slide down over her dress to the hem. He slipped his hands under dress and petticoat, and slid them up over her feet, and clasped her ankles. Slowly, he drew his hands up the sweet curve of her legs while the silk stockings whispered under his hands.
Up, up, he moved, to her knees, the dress and petticoats moving up with him, rustling as they bunched up over his forearms. He let his fingers trace the shape of her garters but he didn’t stop to untie them. He drew his hands up and up, and all the while, they kissed, no longer like children but like lovers, hungrily. Every pore of his body came alive with pleasure and with something else, something he didn’t recognize, couldn’t name.
He skimmed his hand over the thin cloth of her drawers to the place where the garment opened between her legs. His heart raced like a steam engine, as though he’d never before touched a woman intimately. And, as though he never had, and was almost afraid, he only drew the back of his index finger against the downy curls. He felt her sigh against his mouth. Then her mouth left his, and she kissed him as he had done her: lightly over his cheek, and to his ear. He felt her tongue lightly tr
acing the outline of his ear, then her lips along the angle of his jaw.
His intimate touch was equally delicate. He coaxed and teased until he felt her push against him for more. Then he brought the heel of his hand against her, and pressed. She rocked against his hand, her breath coming faster and faster.
His own breathing matched hers; her quickening pleasure excited him almost beyond bearing. He was aware of nothing but needing to be inside her and have her completely. Yet he let her pleasure herself until he felt her shudder of release. She gave a little gasp and moan, and buried her face in his neck.
He held her, his heart pounding so hard that everything seemed to be vibrating around him. His mind was thick, a haze of heat and excitement and triumph and need. Too thick for reasoning, let alone caution.
He hardly knew he was reaching for his trouser buttons. It was instinctive. But she caught hold of his neckcloth, forcing his face up to look into hers, and gasped, “For God’s sake, think. Look at me. Look at me. I’m not one of your lightskirts.”
He looked up into that ethereally beautiful face, and the last words lashed as sharp as any whip. He drew back abruptly and took a step away from her.
She pushed down her skirts. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, I cannot believe this. You are—you are…” She let out a huff of air. “Curse me, why do I blame you? But you do not make it easy for a woman, do you?”
Darius barely comprehended. All he heard, ringing in his ears, was the one sentence: I’m not one of your lightskirts.
The warmth and longing and triumph and pleasure died under the icy blight of those words.
He stood appalled, ashamed.
This was a nobleman’s daughter.
A nobleman’s only, unwed daughter.
This was beyond stupidity. This was dishonorable, despicable.
And deeply disturbing. He was the servant of Logic, not of Lust. Never, never before in all his life had physical desire made him forget himself as he’d done a moment ago.
She slid down from the table and straightened her skirts. Then she shot him a scornful glance. “You needn’t look so frightened,” she said. “I won’t tell anybody.”