The Lady Knows Best, page 23
“A horse.” Daphne approached warily, hand extended, palm up. Widow nuzzled, clearly hopeful for a treat, then blew out her nostrils in disappointment. Daphne giggled. “You got me a horse.”
“I know you said you’re not much of a rider, but Raynham was right—it’s a necessity in the country. I’ve a stable of hunters, but I wanted a horse you’d feel secure on. You’ll be safe as houses on this one,” he said, slapping the horse’s sound flank. “Why, I shouldn’t even worry if you took a notion to go out alone.”
“Alone?” Daphne drew back her hand and shook her head, as if she couldn’t imagine such a thing.
“Well, best not to,” he agreed. “But I thought, sometimes, you might like to be by yourself. And speaking of, it’s time for the second part of your gift. Care to take a little ride?”
She glanced down at her clothes. “I’m really not dressed for it.”
“No matter,” he said, whistling for the groom, who led the horse away. “We can walk, though I hope we don’t get soaked.” The sun was surely fully risen by now, but its face was hidden behind dark, tumbling clouds. “It’s not too far,” he promised, and took her arm again, leading her through tall grasses, along the edge of the trees.
Just as the raindrops began to pelt down, they came to a clearing and a tiny stone outbuilding hardly worthy of the name of cottage. Hurrying her to the door, he ushered her inside and ducked beneath the lintel to join her.
“What is this place?” she asked, looking about her.
He hung his greatcoat and hat on a peg behind the door, then held out a hand for her pelisse. “You asked to see my favorite place at Lyneham.”
He’d never know what the building had been meant for, a storeroom or perhaps a shepherd’s shelter. But when he’d found it, some twenty years ago, it had seemed magical—the only place he’d never minded being by himself.
He’d come out the day they had arrived to make certain the roof and the hearth were sound, and the day after that, he’d repaired some masonry and swept away the cobwebs with his own hands. Yesterday, after he’d returned with the horse, he’d come back and seen to its furnishing: a quilt-covered cot, a desk stocked with paper and quills, candles and a tinderbox on the rough wood mantel, and two chairs—just in case she might ever be inclined to share the space.
He’d even laid a fire, for which foresight he was glad as he knelt to light the kindling. “I used to hide away here,” he explained with a laugh. “I needed someplace my tutor couldn’t find me.” And then, dusting off his hands as he rose, he finished simply, “Now it’s yours.”
She glanced around again—it took but a moment to take in every corner—and shook her head, clearly bewildered. “A horse, a hideout . . . it’s as if you’re inviting me to run away from home.”
His answer, if there was one, caught in his throat. He dragged a chair closer to the fire and gestured for her to sit down in it, then sank into the other. It took three deep breaths for him to gather the proper words.
“Maybe, in some way, I am,” he confessed at last. “If I were any sort of gentleman, I’d let you go, not hold you to a promise, a proposal made under duress.”
As he spoke, she watched the flames lick along the logs, blackening them. “You did warn me, that first night, that you’re no gentleman.”
He turned his gaze to the window; just the day before yesterday, he’d filled the opening with a single pane of clear glass, now blurred with rain. “I did.”
“In fact, when Lord Ryland asked you about a widow in St. Albans, I thought . . .”
Ah. He’d wondered whether she might have overheard their conversation, but he hadn’t considered how Alistair’s teasing remark might have sounded to her ears.
“You thought you’d caught me playing chess.”
He saw her chin wobble in a sort of nod. “But why—why have you done it?” she demanded, her face still in profile. “When I see the man you are here, at Lyneham, so concerned with the welfare and feelings of others, I can’t help but wonder why you’ve been content to play the part of a notorious rake in Town, why you let yourself be branded that devil, Deveraux.”
“Make no mistake, Daphne,” he said, reaching for her hand, but settling for the arm of her chair. “Those aren’t mere rumors. There have indeed been too many women, too much gambling, and far, far too few checks on my bad behavior over the years. Alistair says I’m constitutionally incapable of believing myself disliked, and I always avoid being alone. I suppose that’s why I concocted this marriage scheme—though I told myself it was for my grandmama. To make her happy, and to do my duty to the title before I turned thirty. But the truth is, a wife, any wife, mostly meant to me that there would always be someone in my house. In my bed . . .”
She chewed her lip, then looked toward the window and the little cot beneath it. “And yet you gave me all this?” she asked, turning to face him again, her eyes the shade of the gray mare’s coat and the stormy sky outside. “As a means of escape . . . from you?”
He managed a weak smile. “No one ever accused me of being clever.”
“So it would seem,” she answered, with narrowed gaze. “Certainly not that knuckle-rapping tutor you found it necessary to hide from.”
“Well,” he said with a shrug, “I don’t blame him, now. I wasn’t an easy student, by any means. Always preferred to be on the go, rather than settling to a book or applying myself to some problem to be worked out on a slate. Numbers and letters are more often a source of confusion than clarity for me, but if I can just do . . .” He made a motion with his fingers like tying a knot.
“‘Lord Deveraux has never been a man for numbers, but he’s right good with his hands,’” she said, evidently quoting someone. At his bemused expression, she explained. “Your steward said that to Lord Stalbridge, at dinner the night we arrived, and it struck me then, though I couldn’t decide why. But I’ve been told my sister Erica was much the same as a child. When Bell and I were girls, most of our schooling was unconventional. Papa said once that Erica’s resistance to all the usual lessons, the ones that had worked so well for Cami and Paris, had forced him to come up with a new plan.”
“The old ways can’t have been easy for her,” he said, knowing how rarely girls had a chance to run and jump and play, but were instead expected to sit and stitch on samplers all day.
“No, I don’t suppose it was. But it doesn’t sound as if it was easy for you either,” she said, softly laying her hand over his where it rested on the arm of the chair. “I’ve never understood why people refuse to see children as . . . well, as people. People aren’t all cut from the same cloth, so it stands to reason they wouldn’t all learn things the same way—whether boy or girl, rich or poor.”
He thought again of her insistence on the need for a school in the village. “You’re a wise woman, Daphne Burke,” he said, dropping his gaze to watch her fingertip trace the back of his hand. “Surely too wise for me.”
“That,” she said, with a pointed look worthy of Miss Busy B., “may be true. But I’ll argue with anyone who tries to claim you’re not clever. You arranged all this.” She got to her feet and walked around the small room, touching everything, lingering for a moment over the desk before sitting on the edge of the cot. “You understood, without my having to explain it, how I would treasure a room of my own, a quiet place to retreat to on occasion. I’ve rarely been alone either. Rarely had the chance or the choice. But all the same . . .” She smoothed her palm over the quilt. “I have sometimes been lonely.”
He tilted his head. “Aren’t alone and lonely one and the same?”
“Not at all,” she insisted. “And I think some part of you must have always known that, or you would never have come here. Of course . . .” She hesitated, looking down at the toes of her walking boots, peeping beneath the damp hems of her skirt. “I suppose that also means that, even when you’re a married man, you may still sometimes feel lonely, might decide to seek out—”
“No.” He could plainly see what she had been about to suggest. “Because this is not about some nameless, faceless woman to manage my household and give me an heir. Not anymore.”
“Not about someone who would help you win your wager?” She glanced upward but did not quite meet his eyes.
“No.” He stood and would have paced if there had been room. “I thought I knew what I needed, but I was wrong.” She was watching him now, and he latched on to her tenuous gaze and held it. “I need you.”
The words, the most desperate plea he had ever uttered, seemed to hang in the air between them.
And then she patted the empty space beside her on the bed.
If she had needed any further proof that he was no gentleman, the speed with which he tore off his coat, tossed it aside, and crossed the cottage floor would surely have been sufficient. Setting his knee on the bed, he propped his forearm along the window ledge behind her, uncertain whether the cot would bear their combined weight—something he’d never dared hope for an opportunity to discover. He reached out his other hand to tip up her chin for a kiss, but she slipped easily from his grasp, sinking down to the mattress and inviting him with her expression to follow.
The ropes beneath the cot creaked ominously, but they held as he lowered himself over her. The bed was narrow and their bodies were aligned in such a way that it would be futile to try to disguise his arousal. As he cupped the back of her head in his hand and brought their mouths together for a searching kiss, there could be no question of his desire, his intent.
And no question of her willingness as she dragged a foot up his leg and hooked her leg over his hip.
“If we do this,” he said, slightly breathless as he broke the kiss and tipped his forehead to hers, “you have to marry me.”
He felt her smile against his jaw as her hands freed his shirt from his breeches and slid up his back. “I haven’t been privy to all the details, but I did think that was the plan.”
“Be honest.” He lifted himself slightly, holding himself away from her, if only a fraction of an inch. “You had your doubts. You’ve been looking for a way out of it.”
“I have,” she agreed, pressing her lips to his throat. “But I’m not searching anymore. I want this.” She tightened her arms around him, pulling their bodies together again. “I want you.”
* * *
Somewhere in the back of Daphne’s mind, Miss Busy B. cleared her throat.
But when she spoke, it was in that other voice. Not a scold, just a gentle warning.
This changes things, you know. Are you sure?
Perhaps Daphne’s conscience wasn’t as divided as she’d thought.
Well, she wasn’t going to waste time arguing. She’d made up her mind—yesterday, at the latest, but almost certainly before that. And her decision had had nothing . . . well, almost nothing to do with what had happened in the library.
She had come to Lyneham intending to find proof of something she had already begun to doubt: that Miles was the worst sort of profligate, representative of a species of men whom women could never trust. The truth, as always, was rather more complicated.
He wasn’t perfect. Except perhaps at this, she thought as his lips traveled down her throat, tracing a searing path. But his mistakes and misspent years mattered less to her than the decency she’d glimpsed deep inside him: his love for his friend, for his grandmother, for Lyneham Park.
And while young women might need advice from time to time, they didn’t need a moralizing lesson, to be told again and again to guard their chastity and refuse to open their hearts. She had written as much, and sent it off to London with Lady Stalbridge.
After all, the goal of the Magazine for Misses was to empower young women to make choices for themselves . . . even if that meant choosing a rake.
“Wait.”
For just a moment, she thought the rough voice belonged to Miss Busy B., urging caution once more.
Then Miles levered himself off her, off the bed. “This,” he said, looking down at her, “isn’t what you deserve.”
She hoisted herself onto her elbows, prepared to argue, to explain her new philosophy on liberty of choice. But before she could speak, he had sat down in one of the chairs and begun to toe off his boots. Then he peeled off his stockings, revealing muscled calves dusted with fair hair. And after he had unknotted his cravat, he stood, stripped off his shirt, dropped it onto the chair.
Her mouth went dry. The darkened library, she realized, had revealed almost nothing at all. But now, she could see everything. His sculpted chest and arms. The V of muscles between his hip bones like an arrow pointing to his arousal, barely disguised beneath his low-slung breeches. The melting heat of his gaze.
Then he crooked his finger, urging her to rise, and she understood he wanted to look at her too.
Though nervous, she complied with his silent request. After all, one of the things that had helped her to make her decision was the realization that he truly saw her, just when she had decided it would be her fate to be forever overlooked.
She unfolded herself from the low bed and began to fumble with the fastenings of her dress.
“I have a better idea,” he said, grasping her by the waist and turning her slowly so she faced the bed and her backside was to the fire. The window cast its pale, stormy light over her face.
“Now,” he said with a devilish grin, stretching himself out on his side on the bed, one elbow against the mattress, his head propped up on his hand, “you may begin.”
She set one foot on the seat of a chair to unlace her boot and remove it, then did the same with the other. “Leave your stockings on,” came the rasped order when she began to reach up to untie her garters.
The dress was more of a struggle, though she had chosen it in the wee hours of the morning because it did not require a maid’s assistance. Though she was sure she must look dreadfully awkward, his face revealed nothing but desire as she managed to undo the buttons and ties and eventually shimmied the dress down her arms and over her hips until it lay in a puddle at her feet.
And then just her shift remained, for she certainly had not bothered with a corset when she had dressed alone in hurried silence an hour before dawn.
When she reached down to grasp the hem, he sat up a little straighter. As she lifted her shift, inch by inch, he watched avidly—looking not just at the skin she revealed, as the garment rose over her knees and up her thighs, but at her. All of her.
She paused at the top of her legs, the hem of her shift drooping just low enough to cover her thatch of dark brown curls. His charming, boyish smile grew strained.
“What advice would Miss Busy B. give a man who’s being slowly driven mad by desire?” he asked.
“Be patient.”
Turning her back to him and her already flaming face toward the fire, she lifted the shift over her head and let it drop to the floor.
He sucked in a sharp breath. The rope cot creaked as he sat up fully. “Did you somehow imagine I wasn’t aching to see this side of you too? My God . . .” She heard his feet strike the floor, and a moment later, his hand swept over her hip and the breadth of his chest was pressed against her back. His whispered voice was reverent. “You’re beautiful—every inch of you.”
“I’m just . . . ordinary,” she insisted.
“I’m not going to waste breath arguing with you.” He dropped an open-mouthed kiss at the base of her neck, in that spot that made her shiver with delight.
“If I’d said as much to you on the night of the Clearwaters’ ball,” she pointed out, “I’m fairly certain you would have agreed with me.”
He wrapped an arm around her hip bones, nudging her backside with his erection. “Does it feel like I agree with you now?”
“I’ll admit I have limited . . . well, no experience with the matter, but it’s my understanding that the male anatomy will respond predictably to certain stimuli—Oh!”
He had lifted a hand to her breast and began to rub his thumb over her nipple, rousing it to an aching peak. His low, wicked laugh was hot against her ear. “Not just the male anatomy. Now . . .” He turned them both to face the bed. “I’m quite willing to concede that Miss Busy B. knows a great many things. Otherwise, how could she give such excellent advice? But she doesn’t know more than I do about how much I desire my—my bride.” The word sent a surprising shiver of longing through her. “Into the bed with you.”
She practically scampered away at his command, her haste a combination of eagerness and nerves. As she fumbled to untuck the quilt so she could climb beneath it, he caught her hand. “Afraid you’ll be cold?”
Heat radiated from him, warming her from shoulder to hip. He’d shed his breeches, she realized. She managed to shake her head. Still, he obliged her by reaching around and lifting the blanket for her. But as she turned to lie on her back, she didn’t cover herself with it. She had no desire to hide from him.
And he hid nothing from her. Not the need in his darkened gaze, nor the tautness of his trembling muscles as he lowered himself over her. And not his . . . cock, she’d heard it called. She’d seen them on marble statues and, once, in a bawdy cartoon. She’d not been prepared for how different it would look on a living, breathing man.
Her man.
She’d expected, quite honestly, to be a little alarmed by the sight of it. After all, it was larger than she’d imagined, though thankfully not as large as the naughty picture had portrayed. She knew it was meant to fit, somehow, inside of her. She hadn’t known it would be ruddy and beautiful, that the mere sight of it would make her pulse speed and her body ache with need.
Almost of its own volition, her hand reached for him, and this time, he didn’t stop her, though he gasped a little when her cool fingers closed around his heated flesh. The contrast between satin skin and iron hardness was fascinating.
