A Rake's Vow (21 page)

That last was a temptation, but one so potently, preeminently dangerous not even she dared prod it.

Not yet. There were other things she’d yet to learn.

Like the feel of his hand on her breast—different now he was kissing her so deeply, now she was so much in contact with him. Her breast swelled, warm and tight as his fingers closed about it; the nipple was already a ruched bud, excruciatingly sensitive to his knowing squeeze.

And their kiss went on, anchoring her to her own heartbeat, to the repetitive ebb and surge of a rhythm that played at the very edge of her consciousness. The pattern swirled and deepened, but still the beat was there, a crescendo of slow-burning desire, conducted, orchestrated, so that she never lost touch, was never overwhelmed by sensation.

He was teaching her.

Quite when that became clear, Patience couldn’t have said, but she’d accepted it as truth when the gong for lunch sounded. Distantly.

She ignored it; so did Vane. At first. Then, with obvious reluctance, he drew back from their kiss.

“They’ll notice if we miss lunch.” He murmured the words against her lips—then resumed kissing them.

“Hmm,” was all Patience cared to say.

Three minutes later, he lifted his head. And looked down at her.

Patience studied his eyes, his face. Not the smallest hint of apology, of triumph, even of satisfaction, showed in the grey, in the hard, angular planes. Hunger was the dominant emotion—in him and in her. She could feel it deep within her, a primal craving stirred to life by their kiss but as yet unappeased. His hunger showed in the tension holding him, the control he’d never once eased.

His lips twisted wryly. “We’ll have to go.” Reluctantly, he released her.

Equally reluctant, Patience drew back, instantly regretting the loss of his heat and the sense of intimacy that, for the last uncounted moments, they’d shared.

There was, she discovered, nothing she wished to say. Vane offered his arm and she took it, and allowed him to lead her to the door.

A
fter his afternoon gallop with Gerrard, Vane strode determinedly back to the house.

He couldn’t get Patience out of his mind. The taste of her, the feel of her, the evocatively heady scent of her wreathed his senses and preyed on his attention. He hadn’t been this obsessed since he’d first lifted a woman’s skirts, yet he recognized the symptoms. He wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on anything else until he’d succeeded in putting Patience Debbington in her rightful place—on her back beneath him.

And he couldn’t do
that
until he’d said the words, asked the question he’d known had been inevitable since she’d first landed in his arms.

In the front hall, he encountered Masters. Purposefully, Vane stripped off his gloves. “Where’s Miss Debbington, Masters?”

“In the mistress’s parlor, sir. She usually sits with the mistress and Mrs. Timms most afternoons.”

One boot on the lowest stair, Vane considered the various excuses he could use to extract Patience from under Minnie’s wing. Not one was sufficient to escape attracting Minnie’s instant attention. Let alone Timms’s. “Hmm.” Lips setting, he swung about. “I’ll be in the billiard room.”

“Indeed, sir.”

Contrary to Masters’s belief, Patience wasn’t in Minnie’s parlor. Excusing herself from their usual sewing session, she’d taken refuge in the parlor on the floor below, where the daybed, now no longer needed, sat swathed in Holland covers.

So she could pace unrestricted, frowning, muttering distractedly, while she attempted to understand, to accurately comprehend, to justify and reconcile all that had happened in the music room that morning.

Her world had tilted. Abruptly. Without warning.

“That much,” she waspishly informed an imperturbable Myst, curled comfortably on a chair, “is impossible to deny.” That heated yet masterfully controlled kiss she and Vane had shared had been a revelation on more than one front.

Swinging about, Patience halted before the window. Folding her arms, she stared out, unseeing. The physical revelations, while unnerving enough, had been no real shock—they were, indeed, no more than her curiosity demanded. She wanted to know—he’d consented to teach her. That kiss had been her first lesson; that much was clear.

As for the rest—therein lay her problem.

“There was something else there.” An emotion she’d never thought to feel, never expected to feel. “At least”—grimacing, she resumed her restless pacing—“I
think
there was.”

The acute sense of loss she’d felt when they’d moved apart had not been simply a physical reaction—the separation had affected her on some other plane. And the compulsion to intimacy—to satisfy the hunger she sensed in him—
that
did not stem from curiosity.

“This is getting complicated.” Rubbing a finger across her forehead in a vain attempt to erase her frown, Patience struggled to come to grips with her emotions, to clarify what she truly felt. If her feelings for Vane went beyond the physical, did that mean what she thought it meant?

“How on earth can I tell?” Spreading her hands, she appealed to Myst. “I’ve never felt this way before.”

The thought suggested another possibility. Halting, Patience lifted her head, then, with returning confidence, drew herself up and glanced hopefully at Myst. “Perhaps I’m just imagining it?”

Myst stared, unblinking, through big blue eyes, then yawned, stretched, jumped down, and led the way to the door.

Patience sighed. And followed.

The telltale tension between them—there from the first—had intensified. Vane felt it as he held Patience’s chair while she settled her skirts at the dinner table that evening. Consciousness slid under his guard, like the brush of raw silk across his body, raising hairs, leaving every pore tingling.

Inwardly cursing, he took his seat—and forced his attention to Edith Swithins. Beside him, Patience chatted easily with Henry Chadwick, with no detectable sign of confusion. As the courses came and went, Vane struggled not to resent that fact. She appeared breezily unconscious of any change in the temperature between them, while he was fighting to keep the lid on a boiling pot.

Dessert was finally over, and the ladies withdrew. Vane kept the conversation over the port to a minimum, then led the gentlemen back to the drawing room. As usual, Patience was standing with Angela and Mrs. Chadwick halfway down the long room.

She saw him coming; the fleeting flare of awareness in her eyes as he drew near was a momentary sop to his male pride. Very momentary—the instant he stopped by her side, her perfume reached him, the warmth of her soft curves tugged at his senses. Decidedly stiff, Vane inclined his head fractionally to all three ladies.

“I was just telling Patience,” Angela blurted out, pouting sulkily, “that it’s beyond anything paltry. The thief has stolen my new comb!”

“Your comb?” Vane flicked a glance at Patience.

“The one I bought in Northampton,” Anglea wailed. “I didn’t even get to wear it!”

“It may still turn up.” Mrs. Chadwick tried to sound encouraging, but with her own, much more serious loss clearly in mind, she failed to soothe her daughter.

“It’s
unfair
!” Flags of color flew in Angela’s cheeks. She stamped her foot. “I want the thief caught!”

“Indeed.” The single word, uttered in Vane’s coolest, most bored drawl, succeeded in dousing Angela’s imminent hysterics. “We would all, I fancy, like to lay our hands on this elusive, light-fingered felon.”

“Light-fingered felon?” Edmond strolled up. “Has the thief struck again?”

Instantly, Angela reverted to her histrionic best; she poured out her tale to the rather more appreciative audience of Edmond, Gerrard, and Henry, all of whom joined the circle. Under cover of their exclamations, Vane glanced at Patience; she felt his gaze and looked up, meeting his eyes, a question forming in hers. Vane opened his lips, the details of an assignation on his tongue—he swallowed them as, to everyone’s surprise, Whitticombe joined the group.

The garrulous recitation of the thief’s latest exploit was instantly muted, but Whitticombe paid little heed. After a general nod to all, he leaned closer and murmured to Mrs. Chadwick. She immediately raised her head, looking across the room. “Thank you.” Reaching out, she took Angela’s arm. “Come, my dear.”

Angela’s face fell. “Oh, but . . .”

For once entirely deaf to her daughter’s remonstrances, Mrs. Chadwick towed Angela to the
chaise
where Minnie sat.

Both Vane and Patience followed Mrs. Chadwick’s progress, as did the others. Whitticombe’s quiet question had them turning back to him.

“Am I to understand that something else has gone missing?”

Entirely by chance, he was now facing the others, all arrayed in a semicircle, as if joined in league against him. It was not a felicitous social grouping, yet none of them—Vane, Patience, Gerrard, Edmond, or Henry—made any move to shift position, to include Whitticombe more definitely in their circle.

“Angela’s new comb.” Henry briefly recited Angela’s description.

“Diamonds?” Whitticombe’s brows rose.

“Paste,” Patience corrected. “It was a . . .
showy
piece.”

“Hmm.” Whitticombe frowned. “It really brings us back to our earlier question—what on earth would anyone want with a garish pincushion and a cheap, somewhat tawdry, comb?”

Henry’s jaw locked; Edmond shifted. Gerrard stared pugnaciously—directly at Whitticombe, who’d fixed his cold, transparently assessing gaze on him.

Beside Vane, Patience stiffened.

“Actually,” Whitticombe drawled, the instant before at least three others spoke, “I was wondering if it isn’t time we instituted a search?” He lifted a brow at Vane. “What do you think, Cynster?”

“I think,” Vane said, and paused, his chilly gaze fixed on Whitticombe’s face, until there wasn’t one of the company who did not know precisely what he truly thought, “that a search will prove fruitless. Aside from the fact that the thief will certainly hear of the search before it begins, and have time aplenty to secrete or remove his cache, there’s the not inconsiderable problem of our present location. The house is nothing short of a magpie’s paradise, let alone the grounds. Things hidden in the ruins might never be found.”

Whitticombe’s gaze momentarily blanked, then he blinked. “Ah . . . yes.” He nodded. “I daresay you’re right. Things might never be found. Quite true. Of course, a search would never do. If you’ll excuse me?” With a fleeting smile, he bowed and headed back across the room.

Puzzled to varying degrees, they all watched him go. And saw the small crowd gathered about the
chaise
. Timms waved. “Patience!”

“Excuse me.” With a fleeting touch on Vane’s arm, Patience crossed to the
chaise
, to join Mrs. Chadwick and Timms, gathered about Minnie. Then Mrs. Chadwick stood back; Patience stepped closer and helped Timms assist Minnie to her feet.

Vane watched as, her arm about Minnie, Patience helped her to the door.

Intending to follow, Mrs. Chadwick shooed Angela ahead of her, then detoured to inform the deserted group of males: “Minnie’s not well—Patience and Timms will put her to bed. I’ll go, too, in case they need help.”

So saying, she herded a reluctant Angela out of the room and closed the door behind them.

Vane stared at the closed door—and inwardly cursed. Fluently.

“Well.” Henry shrugged. “Left to our own devices, what?” He glanced at Vane. “Fancy a return match in the billiard room, Cynster?”

Edmond looked up; so did Gerrard. The suggestion obviously met with their approval. His gaze on the closed door beyond them, Vane slowly raised his brows. “Why not?” Lips firming to an uncompromising line, his eyes unusually dark, he waved to the door. “There seems little else to do tonight.”

The next morning, his expression tending grim, Vane descended the main stairs.

Henry Chadwick had beaten him at billiards.

If he’d needed any confirmation of how seriously the current impasse with Patience was affecting him,
that
had supplied it. Henry could barely sink a ball. Yet he’d been so distracted, he’d been even less able to sink anything, his mind totally engrossed with the where, the when, and the how—and the likely sensations—of sinking into Patience.

Striding across the front hall, his boots ringing on the tiles, he headed for the breakfast room. It was past time he and Patience talked.

And after that . . .

The table was half-full; the General, Whitticombe, and Edgar were all there, as was Henry, blithely gay with a wide grin on his face. Vane met it without expression. He helped himself to a large and varied breakfast, then took his seat to wait for Patience.

To his relief, Angela did not appear; Henry informed him that Gerrard and Edmond had already broken their fast and gone out to the ruins.

Vane nodded, and continued to eat—and wait.

Patience didn’t appear.

When Masters and his minions appeared to clear the table, Vane rose. Every muscle felt locked, every sinew taut and tight. “Masters—where is Miss Debbington?”

His accents, while even, held more than a hint of cold steel.