A Well Pleasured Lady (8 page)

To his surprise, taking care of her had been a labor he enjoyed.

He frowned.

Perhaps he needed to acquire a pet. He obviously had some unfulfilled need to have a thing depend upon him.

Mary lifted the rounded silver cover off the tray. Neat as always, she placed the ornate cover on the table beside the bed and surveyed her repast. Baked bread pudding filled a small clay crock, and the aroma of sweetened cream and eggs, cinnamon and cloves, wafted into the air.

Sitting on the mattress beside her, he reached for the spoon.

Mary snatched it up and rapped his knuckles with it. “I'll feed myself.”

Using the spoon, she broke the buttery bronze crust and a fresh rush of steam rose from the liberated filling. Smooth yet firm, the pudding enveloped the bread. Her lips opened and took the pudding in, and her eyes closed in ecstasy. His gaze followed the custard's progress as she savored the taste, then as she swallowed, it slipped down her pale silken throat. Her breasts, already so full and round, expanded as she sighed. Her rosy tongue flicked out and took a crumb from her lip.

He could almost imagine the bread feeding her strength, giving a glow to her skin and a gloss to her hair. He could imagine how she would taste after she had finished the pudding, how she would rest, replete and satiated, until he had removed her clothes and pleasured her in a new way. In a way that fed her soul.

In a kind of wondrous surprise, he realized he was going to have to take her. He'd always wanted her; Lady Valéry had pointed that out. But at some point, he'd lost his choice in the matter. She was his. Perhaps not forever, but at least while they resided at Fairchild Manor.

As Mary's appetite revived, she relished the mixed textures and the spicy flavors ever more. The divine flavor of the pudding almost masked her sense that she was being watched.

It was
him,
looming over her. He always loomed, and she planned to break him of the habit. He was
only a man, after all. Lady Valéry swore they could be trained.

“That's a good offering for an invalid,” he said huskily.

“Would you like a taste?” she found herself asking.

He looked startled. “You're the one in need of sustenance.”

“Yes.” She didn't really want to share. Yet for a single moment, that wretched man's face had softened and grown misty with some tender emotion. Benevolence, perhaps. Or perhaps, knowing Sebastian as she did, it had simply been intestinal gas.

But his gaze followed as the spoon cut into the golden crust, then neared her mouth. He might pretend to be above the simple joys of a bread pudding, but she knew a hungry man when she saw one. She'd fed enough of them in her housekeeping days. “You're drooling,” she snapped.

He wasn't, of course, but when he looked into her face, his mouth was softly open and she could just see the tip of his tongue worrying the inside of his lower lip.

“I'll send for another spoon,” she offered.

“Oh, no. I'll eat out of yours.”

She tried to whip the spoon out of reach, but he caught her wrist and held it still. Opening his mouth, he took in the bread pudding. All expression smoothed from his face at the first taste. His nostrils flared and he greedily licked the bowl of the spoon.
Turning her wrist, he polished the back. Every remnant of pudding disappeared in his hedonistic relish.

Only a man could transform plain bread pudding into a passionate experience.

Hastily, to cover her reaction, she asked, “How did you get that scar on your hand?”

He glanced down. His four fingers had been slashed in a curve, and his index finger was slightly crooked. “As a boy, I worked with horses.” Still clutching her wrist, he coerced her into digging another bite out of the crock. “It hurts when one steps on you.”

She tried to release the spoon to him, but he didn't want it. He wanted to hold her wrist and force her to—she couldn't believe it—to feed herself. He put the spoon to her lips. She glared.

“Eat it,” he whispered, and with his thumb he massaged the tender skin above her pulse. “You will need the vigor it brings.”

True enough, although she wondered why he said it in that tone of voice. Deciding defiance was a foolish waste of energy, she accepted the bite.

Releasing the spoon into her control, he slid along the mattress so he rested at her feet, perpendicular to her body. He leaned on his elbow and smiled at her, using the grin she hated most. The one that said he knew something she didn't.

Jill noisily cleared her throat. “So many clothes to iron!” she fussed.

Sebastian just kept smiling, waiting for Mary to finish the bread pudding, and she ate and wondered what he had to tell her that he should assume such an intimate posture. Probably that he planned to ruin her reputation—as if she hadn't already figured that out.

Did she care? She didn't know. She'd committed murder once, and the weight of that great sin had changed her priorities. Then, too, the years as housekeeper had taught her to measure respectability with a new scale. The strictures of English society seemed foolish when viewed through the eyes of a woman, a servant…a criminal.

Other matters carried more weight, and if Sebastian chose to lounge on her bed and insinuate he was her lover, the only response she could work up—at least right now—was a weary shrug.

Jill marched to the side of the bed as soon as Mary had spooned the last of the pudding into her mouth, sipped her tea, and placed her napkin neatly on the tray. “Let me take that, Miss Fairchild.” She peered at Sebastian. “And, Lord Whitfield, you should leave so she can rest.”

She was a brave girl whose loyalty Mary had won, but she didn't stand a chance against Sebastian.

“Take it to the kitchen,” he commanded.

“But, my lord—”

“To the kitchen. And shut the door behind you.”

Mary looked at him as if insanity ran in Sebastian's family. “That is going too far, Lord Whitfield. The door must remain—”

He snapped his fingers at Jill.

“My lord, please, I can't leave you alone with my mistress.”

He eased himself to his feet. “She's my betrothed.”

“The proprieties!” Jill pleaded.

He ignored the maid and said to Mary as she struggled to sit erect, “Don't get off the bed. If you do, I will be obliged to chase you.”

Mary paused. In the early days of her duties to Lady Valéry, she had been chased. It had been humiliating, and she had learned that by running, she marked herself as prey. Always better to calmly face the aggressor down.

Sebastian marched toward the retreating Jill.

Jill chattered about duty as Sebastian herded her toward the door, but he got her out in the corridor. “I'm going to get Lady Valéry,” she threatened.

But he shut the door in her face with such an ominous thunk, Mary wondered—would her strategy for discouraging youths and aging libertines work with a mad nobleman called Sebastian Durant, Viscount Whitfield?

No key had been placed in the lock. Sebastian
cursed in frustration and disbelief. “Don't even try to tell me this is an oversight.” He glared at Mary as if it were her fault. “What do the Fairchilds hope to gain by having access to your room at any time?”

“Rescue?” she suggested briskly. “From a lecher such as you?”

His eyes narrowed, and he pulled a chair to the door and shoved the back under the handle.

Mary glanced around. She didn't think a simple bowl of bread pudding had given her enough strength to climb out on the ledge outside the upstairs window.

“Lord Whitfield, I can scarcely believe a man with your wealth and power needs to resort to such childish tactics.”

“I'm simply going to kiss you.” He made it sound as innocuous as a hand of whist.

“Then why bar the door?”

He peeled off his frock coat and waistcoat, and loosened his cravat. “You have the most amazing air of innocence about you. Something must be done to cure it.”

His linen shirt remained molded to his muscles, and she hurriedly dressed him in her imagination. “Innocence isn't a disease, my lord.”

The cravat fluttered to the ground as he bent one knee on the mattress. “It is when other men consider it a challenge. There isn't a male alive who could look at you, Mary Fairchild, and not want to show you the wonders that can exist between a man and a woman.”

“You don't need to come up here.” She hoped she sounded brisk and knowledgeable. She wished she could keep her gaze away from his bare throat. “I am familiar with what men and women do between them.”

He crouched over her like a wolf, and like a wolf he growled. “How do you know that, Mary?”

“Nobles are notorious for assuming a housekeeper is deaf and blind to their antics.” She spoke briskly and without showing a sign of the nervousness his pose caused. “Some of them, I suspect, even enjoyed having me see them in flagrante delicto.”

“We're going to have a talk someday.” He pulled two of the pillows out from behind her shoulders. “About the things you have seen and the problems you have had. You're going to tell me who insulted
you and who pursued you, and I will make them sorry.”

She sat rigid, so he grasped her arms and eased her backward. The pillows fluffed up around her, cutting her vision like a nun's cowl. She could see only Sebastian, and the sight of an amiable Sebastian was enough to make her both fascinated and afraid.

“Relax.” As always, he loomed over her. “Kissing is a pleasant exercise. Women like it, and I'm good at it.”

“So modest.”

He eased himself down, trapping her between him and the wall, and she struggled to control her acute discomfort. She hadn't thought it would be difficult to repel him; her sensible rebuffs had been a time-tested solution.

Only now, as he draped his leg over her thighs and his hands rubbed her sleeves, did she remember her prudence had never discouraged him before.

His habitual harshness had diminished, she didn't know why, and his lips seemed unusually full and soft as he formed the words, “I suppose you've been kissed before.”

It seemed best to keep it brief. “Yes.”

He stiffened. “Did you return the kiss?”

“No.” But she'd learned that an umbrella stand, skillfully applied, would discourage a lustful nobleman.

He relaxed again. All lazy and sensual, he blinked. “Let me show you how, then.” He brushed her lips with his.

She tensed at his touch, but it wasn't really a kiss. More of a fluttering, really, a hospitable invitation to explore should she chose to. She didn't, but she liked the warmth of his body sinking closer to hers. The experience seemed almost friendly, more comforting than threatening.

Then his rough-textured hands moved up past her sleeves, past the neckline of her dress, and settled onto the bare skin of her shoulders.

She shivered as panic flared.

Bare skin to bare skin.

Not friendly.

Excruciating intimacy.

She couldn't do this. She couldn't bear this. He'd lifted her, carried her, and she'd told herself the promised kiss could be no worse, but he took advantage. Each stroke of his fingertips reminded her of those moments in the study when he'd stripped away her glove in an elaborate charade to fool the Fairchilds.

Fool the Fairchilds. His goal was to fool the Fairchilds. He was merely rehearsing.

“Thank you,” the new-made heiress said. “I've enjoyed quite enough.”

His palms moved in slow circles. He lifted his head. “You have beautiful skin. When I press it”—he did—“the color seeps away, then rushes back in a rosy wave.” He watched as if such a pastime could actually occupy his devious mind.

Righteous, sure she could end this torture now, she said, “You said we would only kiss.”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

He leaned toward her, but she brought up her arm and put it at his throat. “We already kissed.”

Putting her palm to his mouth, he kissed again, and each nerve in her hand absorbed the heady sensation of him. As he trekked up her wrist and toward her inner elbow, the scent of him wafted toward her, and without volition, she relaxed.

At the end of each traveling day, he'd taken her from the carriage, and she'd laid her head on his shoulder and breathed in the scent of horses, fresh air, and soap. Right or wrong, that particular combination had come to mean solace and compassion to her, and she used it to reassure herself.

He was persistent, not dangerous. Not in this way. Not to her. She was a Fairchild.

She closed her eyes against the sight of him nuzzling her tender flesh. A Fairchild. Surely he could never forget that. God knew she couldn't.

“I watch you and watch you, and you guard your moods as if they were the rope that would hang you.”

Her eyes flew open. What did he mean?

“I feel sometimes I could ensure your complete cooperation in everything I demanded, if only I knew your secrets.”

He did know them, or at least the most important one. He knew about the murder.

Or perhaps he didn't. Perhaps she'd misinterpreted a simple phrase…but she didn't dare ask, did she?

As his mouth descended, she removed her arm's
barrier and did as he indirectly demanded. She kissed him.

Lips puckered, she tried to be as sophisticated as she had been years ago when she'd practiced nightly on her pillow.

Apparently she didn't succeed, for he chuckled, and his breath caressed her cheek. “Not like that. Let me show you.”

She tensed, waiting for another umbrella-stand event, but it didn't materialize. What did was another one of those feather-wing touches, so tender as to be almost kind. No brutality marred the act; did he always cherish murderesses with such sensitivity?

His fingers crept along her collarbone, feeling his way to her neck and throat, and he stroked the hollows. His hand was cool against her warm skin. He traced the length of her collarbone, and when he touched her so delicately, she had to struggle to remember he was blackmailing her.

His tongue soothed her lips, and she recognized his desire. He wanted to shove his way inside until she choked from his attentions. She tensed.

Massaging the cords of her neck, he said, “It's just a kiss.”

And William the Conqueror was just a bastard.

He touched his lips to hers again, deepening the pressure so her nerve endings sang—or at least hummed. Mary didn't recognize the tune, but if she wasn't careful, she would be learning the lyrics.

He touched her with his tongue again, probing to the depth of her teeth, and she tasted him. Tasted the
spices of the bread pudding and an indescribable flavor that must be him alone. Cautiously she eased her tongue toward his, enough to get the savor of him, and he met her halfway.

If he hadn't been lying on top of her, she would have flown from the mattress. As it was, only his mouth muffled the little chirp she gave, and her hands came up of their own volition to grab his arms and push him away.

He sat back obligingly. “What's wrong?”

“You did something to me. When our…” Trying to talk about it made her feel stupid. Why should she explain this to the very man who'd been there?

“When our…?”

“When our…tongues”—was she supposed to talk about tongues with a man?—“touched, it almost hurt.”

“Like…I bit you?”

“No! Like…” She tried to subdue her thought, but irrevocably it formed.
As if I caught a shooting star and put it in my mouth.

The two of them had created a spark.

No, wait. That wasn't right. The spark had always been there, but they had given it fuel to make a fire.

Looking into his dark, knowing eyes, she realized he had fathomed the attraction from the beginning.

“Let us test this.” He kissed her. The spark and light flared between them at once.

He drew away, but his hands still cupped her face. “Any pain? Or pleasure?”

What could she say? That she had now identified the source of her discomfort? He would be amused. Worse, he'd be pleased. So she stared into his heavily lashed eyes and nodded.

“A virgin mouth, too.” He smiled, all white teeth and rough, tanned skin, and she noted that his broad nose had been broken. That one feature had escaped his dominion. He couldn't control it as he did his smile and the expression in his eyes. His nose told plainly of his past, of the fights he'd been in, but his jaw said that he'd won every one. He was a fighter, was Sebastian Durant, and she resisted him at her peril.

He brought his mouth back to hers. His hands explored her chin, her cheeks, her ears, then delved into her hair, and he massaged her scalp with his fingertips. At the same time her hands tightened on his arms and her fingernails kneaded the muscles in sentient demand.

She had observed those muscles when he had lounged in his godmother's library. Now she experienced the ripple of their movement beneath her palms, and that stirring heightened the notion that this man was created for her, and her alone.

Then he moaned as if he experienced the painlike symptoms, also.

She shivered as he shared his breath, pouring himself into her in a primitive symbol of possession.

Where was her housekeeper's discipline? She willingly—no, eagerly—explored his mouth with her tongue and let his hands roam her ribs. Then his
fingers passed the high waist of her frock and nudged the underside of her breasts.

She should be shocked. She
was
shocked. She tried to get away, but not too hard, because she wanted…more.

“Shall I touch you?” he murmured. “Would you like that?”

He knew! How embarrassing that he knew that she wanted him to touch her bosom. All of her bosom. Most especially her nipples. They had clenched tightly. They ached. They needed to be soothed, and illogically she thought only he could soothe them.

“Like this,” he said, and engulfed each breast in his fingers.

Tears of forbidden craving rose in her eyes as he rubbed her, paying special attention the peaks. The lace of her chemise rasped her skin, but it didn't irritate, it aroused—not only her, but him.

His compulsive delicacy seemed driven, wild, insurgent, and a faint anxiety nudged her mind.

Was
he
in control? Yes, of course. He had to be. He was the mighty Lord Whitfield.

But his body spoke of urgency—his? hers? He shifted; she paid only passing heed. The delights of his hands on her breasts, his breath on her skin, masked her anxiety.

Then his knee moved her legs apart.

She shoved his head aside. “Wait!”

He waited until she eased the pressure, then impatient, imperious, he nuzzled her neck.

“My lord, you must stop.” She grabbed his hair, pulled his head back—and saw his face.

There would be no stopping. Passion had pulled the muscles taut. His gaze blazed so intensely, he shielded her from it by half shutting his eyes. Worst of all, he was smiling. Not his cutting smile. Not his too knowledgeable smile. But a smile that told her he was addicted to this pleasure.

He wasn't in control. His kiss had become a rampant creature. A dangerous creature.

But a housekeeper never panicks or shows anxiety.
“Lord Whitfield!” she said clearly.

He heard her, for he focused on her, and she saw clear to the seething depths of his soul.

“Sebastian.” His lips barely moved.

She shook him. “We've got to…You must halt immediately!”

Intently he watched her speak as if he could see the words. Could he hear her scent, and taste the feel of him on her hands?

“Sebastian,” he repeated.

“If I call you Sebastian, will you stop?”

“I'm not a fool. What kind of merchant would I be if I agreed to that pact?”

Did he know she trembled on the edge of succumbing? He touched her ear tenderly, then followed with his tongue.

She tried to scramble back, but he was heavy. She didn't have a chance, unless an umbrella stand stood nearby. Or unless the domed silver tray cover remained on the end table where she'd placed it.

But how could she hit him with that? She could hurt him.

He kissed her chest, and the sensation tickled. Tickled and made her want to press against him. She shuddered and clutched him, whimpering. Perspiration glowed on her skin as the heat of the shooting stars rained down on her.

Then he stopped, and she realized he'd used her neck as a distraction to accomplish his real objective. He'd worked her skirt up, and now his hand slid over her knee toward the edge of her stocking. Toward the place that had grown damp. The rough skin of his palm snagged at the silk. She tried to press her legs together, to hide her vulnerability, but he was there. Everywhere, he was there. If she didn't do something now, he would touch her bare skin again, and this time the shooting stars might turn to ashes. This time Mary Rottenson might totally lose her battle, and Guinevere Fairchild would take her place.