Gabe hadn’t the faintest intention of picking up his pen.
“I regret if I overset you with my assessment,” she said. “I greatly prefer clarity in conversation to social niceties.”
“I am honored,” Gabe murmured. He’d been a fool again. Miss Pythian-Adams’s little smile revealed an original and interesting personality, and had nothing at all to do with being a member of polite society. “I have underestimated you.”
“I was not aware that you were interested enough to make an assessment.”
The little smile that curled on Gabriel Spenser’s mouth was, if he but knew it, very close to that smile he admired but a moment before.
“I think one could describe my feelings as close to fascination.”
“Indeed,” she said, closing her book again. “In that case, perhaps I should retire, Mr. Spenser.”
“We are unchaperoned.”
“Yes.” Unhurriedly, she rose. And he rose. “There is nothing fascinating about me,” she said.
Gabe felt slow-witted around her, but even a fool can understand an invitation of that nature when it is proffered. He walked toward her, seeing her green eyes widen, but didn’t manage to enumerate her fascinations before he had her in his arms.
She melted against him with all the urgency of Mrs. Loveit, and he pulled her to him with all the flair of Dorimant himself. But that kiss…a kiss that went on far too long, that took them to a sofa in the corner, that tousled his hair and turned her knees to jelly…that was a kiss which had nothing of Loveit or Dorimant in it.
But it had much in it of Gabriel Spenser, Doctor of Divinity, father of Mary, uncertain and desirous. And much in it of Miss Gillian Pythian-Adams, who thought never to meet a man who wasn’t a fool.
She wasn’t so much a fool that she could not admit her own mistakes.
27
In Which Imogen Learns Something About Marriage Beds…and Other Beds
“I can’t believe it,” Imogen kept saying, shaking with laughter. “I just can’t believe it.”
“Mmmmm,” Rafe said, hauling her out of the theater.
She half ran, half trotted after him, small specks of cream spinning from her garments.
“I can’t go home like this!” she said, laughing.
“Nor get into my hackney like that either,” said the driver, who was standing before his coach. “That’s pie, that is.”
Rafe fished out a sovereign.
The driver took it, but still shook his head. “’Twill ruin my seats. Stink up the place, I shouldn’t wonder. There’s milk in that. Milk rots.”
Rafe gave him another coin. “I’ll take you as far as the Horse and Groom,” the man said begrudgingly. “I’ll not be taking you all the way past Silchester. You can wash at the pump in the back.”
Imogen clung to his arm as they waited for the grumbling driver to spread out a horse blanket. Imogen had taken the brunt of the pie: it had slid down her left shoulder.
Rafe climbed in and then held out his arms. “You’ll have to sit on my lap,” he said.
Imogen hesitated for a moment and then climbed in. Of course, she would sit in his lap. Of course, he would visit her room later that night. It felt as inevitable, and right, and delicious as anything in her life.
A moment later she was nestled on his knees. He didn’t say anything, so she said, “Where is the Horse and Groom?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve never washed at a pump, have you?” She couldn’t stop the feeling of being about to laugh.
“Yes, I have. It will be quite chilly.” He paused. “Of course, we could take a room.”
“A room!”
His arms were tight around her. “Not for the night, of course. But you could have a bath, if you wished.”
Her mind was reeling. “Gabriel?” Her voice came out soft and a little shaky.
He bent his head, and it was a moment or two before she could finish her sentence, and then she didn’t remember how to phrase it.
But he saved her from embarrassment. “I could wash your hair,” he said into her curls.
“No!” she said instinctively. She would never feel comfortable allowing a man to see her completely naked.
The carriage came to a halt, and the door sprang open. “Out of my carriage, you two!” the driver said, his tone nicely calibrated between disgust and appreciation for the sovereigns nestled in his pocket. “I’ll wait for you, shall I?” He smirked.
“No.” His voice was so chilly that Imogen almost shivered. “We’ll find someone in a more liberal frame of mind.”
The driver shrugged. The Horse and Groom was a sturdy little inn, the sort that catered to farmers coming to town year after year to sell their goods at the market. The door was so low that Imogen had the feeling that she should duck or she might strike her head on the lintel.
“My wife and I would like a room and a hot bath immediately. We suffered an event at the pantomime.”
The innkeeper looked at the smeared cream in Imogen’s dark hair and snapped into a bow. “I see that, sir. Right danger those pantomime players are. No respect for persons. Right this way, sir.”
Two minutes later he deposited them in a pleasant, low-ceilinged room, with the promise of steaming water to follow directly.
Which was delivered, as promised, in a mere moment.
Imogen was thinking as hard as she could about Griselda, and those affairs that Griselda had had while no one, including her brother, had the slightest idea.
“Gabriel,” she said, once a sturdy man had deposited the bathtub and poured quite a lot of steaming water inside.
“Imogen,” he said, throwing her a teasing glance.
Their chamber roof was barely over his head, a line of massive beams. The little leaded-glass window squinted under the eves.
“This is my first affair of this nature—”
“And your last,” he said, perfectly clearly.
Imogen started. “Well, that is as may be. I certainly do not plan on making—I do not—” she floundered to a stop. “I should like to take a bath now. Alone,” she added. “Then I shall—” she stopped again.
“Why don’t you take a brief rest?” he asked, for all the world like a courteous butler.
Imogen nodded jerkily.
And that was how she found herself wearing nothing more than a chemise, with a quantity of damp hair bound up in toweling.
Waiting to become an immoral woman.
One has to suppose that every bird of paradise had this moment in her life: a before and after. There must always be the hesitation before the first plunge into sin, the teetering at the river’s edge before becoming a light woman, a lightskirt, a light-heeled maid.
He walked in quietly. Imogen was seated on the bed—not lying down; that reminded her unpleasantly of her wedding night. She was wrapped in a blanket. And she’d thrown her clothing to the side.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
No one could say that Imogen Maitland, once embarked on a life of sin, did so with maidenly docility or shyness.
Her companion walked across the room and snuffed one of the candles, using the little tin hat designed for that use.
Wasn’t he in a hurry, the way she was? Imogen’s heart was beating quickly.
Then he looked back at her, and there was something in his eyes, just glimpsed in the shadow, that gave her courage. He walked to the mantel and snuffed that candle, leaving only one lit, on the table by the window. Its small light played fitfully with the pale moonglow coming through the small leaded panes.
And then, after another glance at her, he put out the final candle. “If you’ll forgive me my foolishness,” he said in that slow scholar’s voice of his. “Theatrical mustaches leave a red lip in their wake. I have my vanities, as you see.”
Imogen couldn’t help laughing: the idiotic, welcoming laugh of a fallen woman. She was aware that a moral conscience appeared to be missing in her character. She was positively thrumming
with enjoyment. This meeting in a strange room in an inn with a beautiful, lean man who would lavish her with kisses wasn’t raising a single qualm. Instead, joy and anticipation poured through her veins like molten fire.
The thought drifted through her mind that she was well and truly a fallen woman and floated away. She was more interested in the long line of male flank as he leaned over to pull off his boot. It was beautiful, all that hard-muscled leg.
The room was so dim now that she couldn’t even make out his face. Imogen shook with the excitement of it. No wonder women made fools of themselves committing adultery: there was the pure liquid gold excitement of it. His second boot hit the ground and then his clothes followed. His body was just a shadow in the darkness, the body of a demon lover.
Rafe turned around, finally. Imogen was all shining white shoulders, the drab blanket slipping off. She’d let her hair down, and it fell like black water to one side.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, sitting on the bed to slip a hand by her cheek.
This was the moment that would make or break the evening: would she look at his face, mustache-free, and run shrieking from the room? But her eyes fell closed at the touch of his hand, so he just leaned closer and tasted her…a nip on her plump lip and then a fierce assault to answer her little pant. Somehow that moment when she was supposed to look at his face and recognize him was lost, because he kept kissing her as he pulled her blanket away.
There she was, as beautiful as he’d ever dreamed. Her eyelids flickered, so he gave her another fierce, openmouthed kiss. Then he slowly let his body fall onto her soft one, telling himself to memorize this first time of feeling her, Imogen, under him. He felt dizzy with the raw pleasure of it.
But the sense—the dragging sense—that she would open her eyes and realize who he was…“Did you watch while you made love to Draven?” he asked. The sound of his voice growled in his ears. He used Maitland’s first name deliberately.
And at the same time he ran a hand down, down the velvet sweep of her neck, over to the soft, unsteady weight of her breast, to the delicate curve of her ribs.
“I—” she gasped, turning her head.
“Did you make love in the darkness, under the covers?” he growled.
Her eyes were open, but he knew his face couldn’t be seen because he was brushing his mouth back and forth against her breast.
“Yes,” she choked.
“Then close your eyes,” he said, his voice rough. “Close your eyes, Imogen. Stay still.”
He began to stroke her breast with his tongue, and she fell back into the darkness, her hands reaching blindly for his hair, her body shuddering.
It was sometime later that Imogen realized that making love to a demon lover who won’t let you open your eyes, who strips you naked in the night air, who bites you and licks you and nips you all over—
Has nothing in common with making love to a husband. Nothing. She kept trying to fill her lungs, kept trying to stop the little shudders, kept trying to ignore the sensations between her legs. Because he said—he said to keep her eyes closed. And not to move.
She was rolling her head back and forth. He was pulling her nipple into his mouth, driving her crazy, delirious. But along the sweeping waves of hot delirium came a swell of resentment. Draven and she had made love in the dark. Draven was the love of her life, the sweetheart of her youth, and she had longed more than anything else to make him happy. When he didn’t seem to want her to move, she stayed as quiet as she could, making her body into a cradle for his, trying in every way possible to show him how much she loved and appreciated him. It was in the dark, under the covers, and she learned quickly that Draven didn’t like it if she pushed against him. Once she had done it instinctively—her hips arched—and he said, “For God’s sake, Imogen, let me do a man’s business for once in my life, will you?”
But now she was in a hired room, and her companion was not her husband. She’d—she’d be damned if she was going to lie there like a compliant wife while he feasted on her body and she kept her eyes closed and her body still.
The moment that thought crystallized, Imogen was off the bed so quickly that she almost caught her companion in the crotch.
“What!” he said, coming to his knees.
For a moment she just looked at his body in the dim light. The bed was a large, old four-poster, made to survive the bouncing bouts of farmers and their wives on a holiday in town, as well as (most likely) loose women and their demon lovers. He was on his knees: one lean line of muscle from his chiseled shoulders through his chest, furred with slight hair that arrowed down…she took her time looking, and could feel her smile as if she were watching herself.
She hadn’t been wrong, that time she glimpsed Rafe’s equipment. Apparently men came in all sizes, and these brothers must have been on the lucky side of the draw.
She couldn’t stop thinking of Rafe’s comment that he bet Draven made love under the covers and didn’t show his equipment to a wife, only to loose women. Well, by God, she was a loose woman, and she wasn’t going to cover her eyes for the pure shock of seeing it.
He was smiling. His face was in shadow, but she saw the gleam of white teeth, and then the lazy pleasure in his voice as he stretched, full of animal grace.
Imogen heard a little pant coming from her mouth. She snapped her mouth shut. She was standing naked in the center of a room, with a naked man before her. She pushed out one hip and put a hand on it.
“I don’t wish to keep my eyes shut,” she said, her tone accepting no question.
He nodded.
“We are not a married couple who has to hide under the sheets.”
“May I beg you to return to bed, oh woman who is not my wife?”
She walked forward one step and stopped. “I have a few questions first.” He laughed at that, a husky, full-of-enjoyment laugh that made her feel even more confident.
“What am I supposed to do when you’re on top of me?”
“Whatever you like.” He said it promptly enough, but it wasn’t the answer Imogen wanted.
“How would a bird of paradise behave?”
“An old-fashioned term for one as sophisticated as you,” he said, sounding amused. “A bird of paradise would do precisely what would make her partner the happiest: and that would likely include a lively show of enthusiasm.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t very specific.
“But perhaps you’re more interested in a baggage than a bawd? Because a bold girl, a naughty girl, a woman who was in this bed for the pleasure not the profit, would make absolutely certain that she did precisely what she wanted to in order to increase her own pleasure.”
“Oh…”
“She wouldn’t give a damn about her partner. Let the man take care of himself.”
Imogen smiled a little. Didn’t she say that she wanted to have an affair in order to learn more about men? And yet it seemed that perhaps what she really meant was that she wanted to learn about herself.
“Well, you baggage,” came his voice, slow syrup deep and sweet. “I’m thinking that Lady Maitland has just decided to turn herself from a lady to something quite different.”
She could barely see him, just a gleam of all that rumpled brown hair. She climbed back onto the bed with a little swagger about her. In one swift movement, he pulled her against his body.
“I’m not a lady,” she gasped.
It was like throwing a piece of paper into a fire, how quickly her body flamed at the sense of him, tight against her back, her bottom round against him. And his hands were on her breasts…
She let her head fall back against his shoulder, and he bent to her mouth, tasting the bad girl, baggage taste of her, Lady Maitland dancing into wildness.
“Do you like that?” he said, low and demanding, his hands on her breasts, doing things, touching her hard and then soothing, one then the other until her body was shaking.
“Yes,” she said, and her voice didn’t come out with bad girl sauc
e, but all slumberous and sleepy.
And then one hand started to slide its way down her stomach, and Imogen didn’t even try to stop her body from moving. She was moving to a ballet that only she could hear, a seductive little twist that was saying touch me, touch me.
But he didn’t seem to hear her because one hand kept tormenting her breast, and the other was kneading her stomach and then creeping to the soft skin of her thighs, and rubbing little teasing circles but not—
She arched her hips.
“Please!” It came out a growl.
“Imogen…” It came out like a sigh, a man sigh, the kind a man makes when he has his hands full of exactly what he likes best and is taking his time with it.
But Imogen sounded as if she were growing crotchety, so Rafe let his fingers walk over her skin, as soft as satin, and he couldn’t wait to taste it there, and then into a tangle of the sweetest hair he’d ever had under his fingertips. She was whimpering now, and it sounded good. Better than the sound of whiskey pouring into a glass. Better than anything he’d ever heard in his life. So he gave it to her.
Because he was always going to give her exactly what she wanted, even if she didn’t know that yet.
He took her mouth at the same moment that his fingers dipped deep, caught her cry in his mouth and he didn’t let her down easy either. He kept her there, pulled back against his body so that he was tucked right into the soft curve of her ass, working magic with his hands, taking her mouth in the same wet, hot flurry that was driving her higher, and higher—
She was twisting against his hands now, and he turned her closer to him, tucked her face against his chest and set out to remind the world before he started drinking, Rafe Jourdain was a man who never let a woman go unpleasured.
To be frank, Imogen wasn’t presenting a challenge.
It wasn’t more than a moment before she cried out so loudly that he was pretty sure they heard her down in the sitting room. He’d have to take her out the back door because there wasn’t a bit of face paint on her and anyone who saw a woman with a face this beautiful would never forget her.