Clio said, "As a matter of fact, I am."
At this, Rafe threw her a warning look. Her heartbeat accelerated.
Impossible man. Was he worried she'd announce her plans to break the engagement? Or perhaps he worried that she would confess their passionate embrace?
It would serve him right if she did either one.
But Clio was tired of thinking about Rafe and Piers. For once, she was ready to talk about herself. "Here are my three statements. First, my favorite color is green."
Daphne groaned. "Make it a little less obvious."
"Second," Clio forged on, "I am planning to build a brewery here at Twill Castle. And third . . ." She swept a glance around the room. "I have never been kissed."
She folded her hands and waited for their reaction.
The room lapsed into stunned silence. Daphne, Teddy . . . even Phoebe . . . They weren't merely surprised. They all looked positively aghast. Was the idea of a brewery truly that upsetting to them?
Teddy shook his head gravely. "That's . . . well, curse it. I don't know what to say to that. Except that I'm dashed sorry."
"Oh, darling." Daphne rose from her chair and came to sit beside Clio on the divan. She put a hand on Clio's knee. "He's never kissed you? In all these years, not once?"
Clio inhaled slowly. It was a sad comment on her life that her nearest family believed this to be the most likely truth.
"I suppose we all knew it wasn't a love match," Daphne said. "But I thought surely you two shared some fondness for each other by now."
"He won't get out of it." Teddy roused himself from his chair. "We won't allow him to cry off, no matter how he tries to weasel his way out of this engagement. After eight years, the man owes you a wedding."
"Wait," Clio said. "You're jumping to conclusions. How do you know the kissing one isn't the falsehood?"
"Because it's obvious," Daphne said. "Everyone knows your favorite color is green. So that's ruled out. And a brewery, really? That can't be true. Of all the outlandish ideas."
"What's so outlandish about it? The estate's resources need to be used, or the local community will suffer. Don't you think I could do it?"
"She could do it," Rafe said.
Clio turned to look at him, surprised. She didn't think he'd been paying attention.
"She could do it," he repeated, leaning one shoulder against the paneled wall. "This region is ideal for beer-making. Miss Whitmore has the funds, the land, the wits. With the right help, she could make a go of it."
"Perhaps she could," Teddy agreed. "But her intended wouldn't approve. Are we to believe the pubs and taverns will all be serving Lady Granville's Ale?" He chuckled. "Your brother wouldn't allow such a thing."
"You're right," Clio said, gathering her courage. "I don't imagine Piers would allow it. But that's just it, you see. I'm not going to ma--"
"You're not going to open a brewery. Of course not. How absurd." Daphne clapped her hands. "Well, that settles Clio's turn. Who is next?"
"Wait," Rafe interjected, in a tone that would not be disobeyed. His eyes flashed. "Clio's turn isn't over. You have it wrong, Lady Cambourne. You have it entirely wrong."
"What makes you say that?"
"Miss Whitmore has indeed been kissed," Rafe said. "I'm certain of it."
"But how can you possibly know?" Daphne asked.
Clio's breath caught. Did she want Rafe to answer that question honestly? Perhaps she did. But even though she'd started this game, the decision was out of her control.
He gestured in anger. "Because I was there."
Damnation.
Rafe hadn't meant to say that. The words had just fired out of him, like a wild, reckless punch he should have checked.
Everyone stared at him. Including Clio, he assumed, but he didn't dare glance her way to confirm it.
"Lord Rafe, are you telling us you witnessed this kiss with your own eyes?" Daphne didn't bother to hide her skepticism.
"No," he replied honestly.
He hadn't witnessed it with his own eyes. What kind of jackass kissed with his eyes open?
He'd witnessed it with his own lips.
But telling that truth wouldn't do his cause any favors.
"Then I shall stand by my answer," Daphne said. "Now whose turn is next?"
"Mine," Rafe said.
"Your turn?" Clio asked. "I thought you weren't playing."
"I changed my mind."
"Afraid you'll have to wait for the next round, Brandon," Sir Teddy Cambourne said. "My lady here cut straws and passed them around. That part's been done. You can't have a turn if you don't have a straw."
Rafe threw the man a look. A look with the force of a fist. "Really?"
Cambourne had nothing further to say. Neither did anyone else.
Rafe took the collective silence as his invitation. "First statement. In my original championship bout, I defeated Golding with a hard blow to the liver in the twenty-third round. Second . . ." He settled into a chair. "The last time I spoke with my brother, Piers told me how much he regretted the extended absence imposed by his duties, because . . ."
Just get it out, man.
"Because he was so deeply in love," he finished.
The room was quiet.
Until Daphne dropped a two-word pin into the silence: "With Clio?"
"Yes, with Clio."
Rafe rose from his chair again and began to stalk the carpet fringe. He was irritated beyond belief. What was wrong with these people? This shouldn't be difficult for any of them to believe. Yes, his brother was reserved, but surely they all loved Clio. She was entirely lovable.
All too lovable.
He might have entered into this falsehood halfheartedly, but he was committed to it now.
Committed with everything he had.
"When we last spoke, Piers reminisced about her come-out ball," he said. "How she wore a gown of pale blue silk with lace at the edges. Pearls studded in her hair. He recalled how lovely she looked, even though she was nervous. He took note of how she greeted every guest with genuine kindness. And he told me that he knew, right then, there was no lady in the room her equal. That he felt like the luckiest of gentlemen, knowing she was promised to be his." He swept a glance around the room. "He loved her then. He loves her still."
Everyone was quiet as he returned to his chair.
"Not bad," Bruiser muttered.
Cambourne smacked his thigh with his gloved palm. "Well, that's a comfort. Isn't it, dumpling?"
"You're assuming that's a truth," Clio said evenly. "We've only heard two statements from Lord Rafe. I'm still waiting on the third."
"The third. Right." He cleared his throat. "I sleep in a lavender nightshirt. An embroidered one."
Bruiser sipped his brandy. "How very literal of you."
Daphne laughed. "Really, it's no use. None of you know how to play this game at all. Your lavender nightshirt is almost as preposterous as Clio's brewery. Do let's play cards after all."
Well, that was that. He seemed to have convinced her family at least, and Rafe didn't know how to feel about it. Relieved, triumphant, disgusted with himself . . . His emotions were some combination of all these.
But his feelings were irrelevant. There was only one person in the room whose emotions mattered.
And if Rafe hadn't managed to sway her tonight, there was no hope for him now.
Chapter Sixteen
Clio waited until midnight.
And then she waited a full hour more.
When she heard the footman pass down the corridor on his final patrol of the evening, she sat up in bed.
It was time.
She wrapped her dressing gown over her nightrail and cinched the sash tight. Then she plucked her chatelaine from the dressing table and ventured out into the corridor.
She went slowly. She had to; she hadn't dared bring a candle. And she didn't want to risk waking anyone with her footfalls or rattling keys.
At the end of the hall, she turned an
d hugged the right side of the corridor, counting the doors until she reached the fourth. After scouting the surface with her fingertips to find the keyhole, she inserted the master key from her chatelaine . . .
Held her breath . . .
And turned it in the lock.
Click.
The door swung inward, soundless on its well-oiled hinges.
She waited in the doorway for a moment, giving her eyes time to adjust. A banked fire glowed in the hearth, coaxing her forward. Clio made her way into the room, then took a stub of beeswax candle from the mantelpiece and crouched to light it with the coals. The single flame painted the room with a weak yellow glow.
She could see the room better now.
She could see him better now.
And good heavens. Wasn't he magnificent.
The bed in this chamber was a large one, but the ranging sprawl of his limbs made it look like a child's bed. All the coverlets had been cast aside. The pillows, too--save one. He slept on his back, draped by a single linen bedsheet. Beneath it, his body was a landscape of sculpted ridges and shadowed glens. With every breath, his chest rose and fell.
She watched, transfixed, until she realized she was breathing in time with him.
Clio left the candle on the mantelpiece and crept toward the side of his bed. She eased herself onto the edge of the mattress, stretching out her legs so that she lay on her side, propped up on one elbow.
With her free hand, she gingerly plucked the edge of the bedsheet and--after waiting one, two, three breaths to make certain he didn't wake--began to tease the linen downward. She worked slowly, carefully . . . knowing the answer she sought would lie beneath.
He stirred in his sleep. Eyes still closed, he rolled onto his side, throwing an arm toward her.
His hand landed on her thigh.
Clio sucked in her breath. She held still, squeezing all her muscles tight. Her heart, however, wouldn't be so easily reined in. It hammered in her chest, so loud she was certain the pounding would wake him.
Oh drat. Oh Lord.
She'd left her room feeling secure in the brilliance of this idea. Suddenly the idea wasn't just an idea, but a reality--an immense, sleeping, sensual giant of a reality--and she wasn't secure at all.
His hand was on her thigh.
And moving.
Even this afternoon, he hadn't dared to touch her so boldly. His fingers stretched and flexed. His caresses widened to shameless, possessive circles of her hip.
Was it possible she'd entered his dream now?
If so, she couldn't help but wonder what they were doing in there.
His fingers flexed, squeezing her backside. "Clio," he groaned.
Something good, it would seem.
With a low moan, he snaked his arm around her waist, and a small contraction of his muscles drew her close. "Clio."
"Yes, Rafe?"
Green eyes snapped open. "Clio?"
In a heartbeat, he was on the far side of the bed--as close as he could get to the edge of the mattress without falling off.
Considering the violence of his reaction, Clio tried not to feel affronted. Surely she would have noticed if her face had broken out in leprous sores since dinnertime.
No, that was the look of a man caught out in his lie. Which meant she had him right where she wanted him.
"What the devil are you doing here?" He clutched the bedsheet, holding it level with his neck.
"Isn't it obvious?"
"I hope not."
"I'm here to see the lavender nightshirt."
Oh, his face. Clio wished she were better at sketching, so she might have preserved that astonished look forever.
"The lavender nightshirt," she repeated. "The embroidered one you told us about tonight. You had better be wearing it under that bedsheet. Because I know your story about Piers was pure fabrication, from beginning to end."
"Well, you're wrong." He pushed the bedsheet down to his waist. "See? No lavender nightshirt."
No, no lavender nightshirt.
No nightshirt at all.
He was bared to the hips, every inch of his torso hard and gleaming in the firelight, like a sculpture cast in bronze. She was rocked by the impulse to reach for him, but some ingrained voice of warning held her back--not the voice that warned a girl away from dangerous men but the voice that kept her from reaching for a potato that had fallen in the coals.
He would singe her fingers.
"Then you cheated," she managed to whisper, dragging her gaze back up to his. "You told more than one lie. You rogue. Men have been called out for less."
"What is this? We're dueling now? No one gets called out for parlor games."
"No. They get called out for trifling with a gentlewoman's virtue and ruining her chances at happiness. This is my life at stake. And you lied to me."
The sleep was gone from his expression now. He was awake, and angry. "I said that Piers loves you. Why is that so damned hard to believe?"
"Because my lie was so close to the truth. He never even kissed me, Rafe. Not once in eight years of betrothal."
He shook his head in disbelief.
She folded her hands in her lap. "It's true. When you kissed me in the tower a few days ago . . . ? That kiss was my first."
"Your first?" Rafe couldn't believe it.
He sat up in bed. The linen bedsheet pooled about his waist. "That's not possible."
"I assure you, it's true. It's beyond humiliating to admit it, but it's true."
He stared at her, with her delicate profile and her unbound hair falling down her back in golden waves. She was so lovely, he ached. For the first time, he began to question his brother. Could Piers be one of those men who preferred his own sex?
Surely not. Rafe dismissed the idea out of hand. When they were youths, his brother was forever "borrowing" Rafe's best French engravings from his bottom drawer, even though he pretended to know nothing about it when confronted. And there'd been stories of the usual debauched adventures in his university days. Not a lot of stories, but a few.
No, Piers liked women.
Which made Clio's confession all the more baffling to comprehend. How could Piers resist kissing this woman?
Rafe had excellent reasons not to kiss Clio, and he'd succumbed to temptation--multiple times--despite them.
"I was truly your first?" he asked.
She nodded.
White-hot triumph forked through him like a lightning bolt. Rafe could have run a victory lap around the castle. He hadn't felt this good since winning his first championship bout. He couldn't even be angry with his brother now. Knowing that he was Clio's first kiss, her first touch . . .
It made him want to be her first everything.
Not just her first, but her last. Her best.
His hands made fists in the bedsheets. "You need to return to your own chamber."
Instead of leaving, she eased herself farther onto the bed and tucked her crossed legs under her nightrail. Making herself right at home.
To be fair, he supposed she was in her own home. Very well. He could be the one to leave. Not just this room, but the castle. If he went to saddle his gelding right now, he could be in Southwark by daybreak.
He nodded at his shirt and trousers, draped over the arm of a chair--just out of reach. "Hand me my clothing, will you?"
She didn't move, except to toy with a lock of her unbound, golden hair. When she spoke, her tone was husky. "Would you like to hear a bedtime story?"
"Not particularly, no."
Laying a hand to his chest, she pushed him back against the mattress. "You're going to hear one anyway."
Holy God. There was rock-hard, there was hard-as-steel, and then there was the solidity of Rafe's current erection--which so thoroughly surpassed all his previous experience, he suspected it might be of interest to science.
He considered closing his eyes, sticking his fingers in his ears, and chanting Broughton's rules at the top of his voice until either she went away or mo
rning dawned. But one look at the stubborn set of her chin, and he knew it was no use. She was determined enough to wait him out.
She was too accomplished at patience, this woman. And that was his idiot brother's fault.
"Once upon a time," she began, "I imagined myself to be Sleeping Beauty. Promised in my cradle to marry . . . well, not a prince, but something close. I was surrounded by well-meaning relations, showered with gifts. Wealth, good breeding, education. Even a castle."
She hugged her knees and stared at the banked fire. "And right around my seventeenth birthday, I went to sleep. There wasn't any spindle to prick my finger. But I fell asleep just the same, and I stayed that way for eight long years."
Firelight played over her face, caressing her cheek with more tenderness than a brute like Rafe could ever muster.
"All around me, my friends were marrying, traveling, having children, and making their own homes. Not me. I was still asleep in that tower. Still waiting on my prince to come home and kiss me, so I could wake.
"Then one day . . . I decided to give myself a good pinch and wake up. The prince wasn't coming for me. And maybe--just maybe--I didn't need him, anyway. I'd been given so many gifts. An education, a fortune, a castle. Who was to say that simply because I was female, I couldn't make something of those gifts myself?" She looked at Rafe. "Then came you."
"I'm no kind of prince."
"No, you're not. You're wild and rebellious and rough-mannered. But you kissed me in a tower. You brought me every flower in the hothouse. You gave me an entire roomful of cake. You swept me off my feet." She rested her chin on her knees and regarded him. "And tonight, you remembered what I wore to my come-out ball when I was seventeen years old. Down to the pearls studded in my hair."
Rafe's pulse stuttered to a halt. His mouth dried. "No. That wasn't me. I told you, that was Piers."
"You're such a terrible liar." Her eyes shot him a lash-fringed accusation. "I thought you didn't come to my debut. But you were there. You must have been."
"I was there," he admitted. "But I didn't stay for long. I left almost as soon as I arrived."
"Why?"
"Because I couldn't stand to be there another moment. I've told you how it was. I fancied you then, and you know how I always envied Piers. That night was . . . It was torture. I hated what they'd done to you. The whole purpose of the evening was to wrap you up like the world's shiniest birthday gift and present you to Piers for his approval." He pushed a hand through his hair. "It made me want to hit things. So I went out and found something to hit."