Beauty and the Spy (28 page)

And all at once he could see that Caroline understood the assignment wouldn't be as simple or pleasant as it sounded. He could see her mulling it. She fussed with her gloves in silence. Looked about the pub, made a face at the quality of the clientele, returned her eyes to him.

"How would I do it? Gain the information you need?"

"Tell him you're frightened of me. You need his help. He won't be able to deny that sort of plea."

"Will you stop attempting to kill me if I agree to help you?" she asked.

"Will you stop giving me reasons to attempt to kill you?" he asked, almost whimsically.

She half-smiled, but didn't answer. He took it as an agreement.

"How… how is your leg these days?" she asked after a moment.

"Hurts. Talks to me during Commons sessions. Swears at me, more accurately. Drowns out the more boring speakers."

She laughed. "It's damp in those chambers. Perhaps the baths…"

"I may go when the Commons adjourns."

She nodded. "You really should. It helped before, did it not?"

She knew him so well. And suddenly it was strangely difficult to speak, so he simply nodded.

"All right, Thaddeus. I'll do it."

He cleared his throat. "Where are you staying this evening, Caroline?"

"With you?" she suggested lightly.

He took her hand, held it in the dark of the pub. Her fingers curled into his, and it was familiar, painfully sweet. "I'm old, Caroline."

"We shall see," she murmured.

Susannah stared out the window at her aunt's roses, many of which were beginning to wilt, at last defeated by the heat. Rather like her spirits.

He'd kept his conversation neutral and bland the entire long,
long
ride home from London. And when they'd arrived home, he'd helped her down from the carriage, a proper gentleman. And helped her with her trunk, a proper gentleman. And then he'd bowed, and touched his hat, and smiled pleasantly, and left her. Proper, proper, proper.

It was like being
assaulted
with manners. What was the
matter
with him?

"Susannah?"

They were brilliant manners, too, shiny and impeccable and as inviting as a suit of armor. He'd scrambled into them in order to keep her at arm's length from the moment they'd arrived in London. It was only in the dark she could get him to speak about himself. As though things said into the dark counted for nothing. He was like a child covering his face with his hands and thinking he could not be seen.

And he wouldn't touch her. No, he'd slept in a chair.

And she needed to know:
Why
wouldn't he touch her? Was it her questionable birth and decidedly unusual history? The fact that he was a viscount, and would never dream of marrying a woman of her status—or rather, lack of status? That she no longer held any appeal, now that he'd touched her once?

No appeal? Well,
that
much, she was certain, wasn't true.

He cared for her; she knew he cared for her. He desired her; she knew he desired her. She knew it as surely as she knew that female adders were shy, and that long-tailed voles were rare in this region, and that the insides of a horse were warm and wet.

But he wasn't being forthright, which was entirely unlike him. Which could only mean… he either didn't know what he intended to do about her, or he felt that telling her the truth of how he felt would be much too devastating for her, and he wanted to spare her feelings.

Odd, but her feelings at the moment did not feel
spared
. More raw, jangled, crowded, frustrated…

Perhaps he was simply afraid.

Kit Whitelaw?
Afraid
? Afraid of what?

"Susannah?"

She slowly turned her head to look at her aunt. "Mmmm?"

"Did you know that was the third time I'd said your name, my dear?" Her aunt's voice was gentle.

"Was it? I'm terribly sorry."

"Is aught amiss? You seem distracted. Was London unpleasant? Do you miss your friends?"

Startling to realize that she hadn't even given a thought to her "friends" while she was in London.

What would Aunt Frances say if she said,
Oh, Aunt Frances, something
is
amiss. I'm in love with the viscount, and he won't touch me, whereas the other day he touched me at length, with his hands and mouth, and I thoroughly enjoyed it
.

"No," she said softly. "Nothing is wrong."

Her aunt frowned a little then, and came to her, sat down next to her in the window.

"The viscount… he didn't…" She delicately trailed off, to give Susannah an opportunity to complete the sentence in any way she chose. Her aunt's face was taut with concern.

"No." Even she could hear the leaden disappointment in her voice.

Aunt Frances burst into merry laughter. "Oh, all right. As long as nothing is
wrong
then, my dear." The words were ironic. "What is this clinging to your skirt?" She plucked something from it. "It sparkles."

Susannah looked at it. "Must be a mermaid scale," she murmured. Then frowned faintly and returned to gazing out of the window, her thoughts pulling her there like a magnet, her mind so powerfully full of other things that she forgot her aunt again.

"I
do
know a thing or two about the… difficult sex, Susannah," her aunt coaxed. "If you've a question or two. And by that, I do mean men, my dear."

Her aunt's voice registered as a low murmur beneath the insistent clamor of her thoughts, and the sudden clang of her decision.

He was afraid that someone was trying to kill her; he'd probably kill her for leaving the house alone, because "don't leave the house" were the last words he'd said to her as he left.

But finally she knew what she had to do. She stood up and seized her sketchbook.

"Susannah."

Her aunt said the word almost sharply, which made Susannah stop and turn around suddenly. Her aunt studied her quizzically, taking a moment before she spoke.

"My dear, I know I am not your aunt by blood… but I truly have no wish to see you… hurt."

Susannah paused, abashed.

"Oh, Aunt Frances…" she said impulsively. "Thank you for caring. I'm so sorry. I promise… well, you have my solemn vow that I will not… I will do my best not to ever disappoint or shame you."

"That wasn't my concern, dear," her aunt said gently. "I'm certain you won't. But I do thank you for the solemn vow."

Her aunt was a wry one.

Susannah smiled a little. "Well, it's my concern," she said simply. "And I do mean it."

Her aunt studied her for a moment, her brown eyes thoughtful. She was clearly searching for words.

"When I said I had no wish to see you hurt, Susannah," she ventured, "I didn't mean you should never… take a risk. And risks would not be called
risks
if there were not some chance of hurt. Nothing in life worth having is easy, Susannah. And—oh, never mind, my dear. You're young yet, but I know you are sensible, so I've no need to issue warnings and spout platitudes and the like. And, as you say, I have your solemn vow. Go enjoy… 'sketching.' But be home for dinner, if you would."

"
Do
you think I'm sensible?" For some reason this surprised Susannah.

"Yes." Her aunt sounded surprised that Susannah was surprised. "I do."

How about that? Among all of the other things she now knew she was… she was sensible, too.

Susannah smiled brilliantly at her aunt and pushed the door open, and all but raced down the path, despite the heat.

She was almost certain she knew where she'd find him.

He was on the pier, roughly whisking a towel over his bare chest. He'd already slipped into his trousers, but his feet were bare and the lowering late-afternoon sun gilded half of him, leaving the rest of him in shadow.

All the way there she'd rehearsed in her head what she might say to him, how she would ask it, what she might do if his answers broke her heart. But then he turned suddenly and saw her. And his face, unguarded, told her everything she needed to know, and questions were no longer necessary.

"Oh, Kit. It's all right," she said softly. "I love you, too."

He stared at her, caught. And then he laughed a short laugh, which was no doubt meant to sound incredulous or devil-may-care, but which failed miserably.

Susannah approached him as carefully as one would a deer or squirrel, and his eyes tracked her, never leaving her face. She stopped when she was close enough to feel the heat of his body, stopped just short of touching him.

And then she did touch him: slowly, very lightly, she placed one hand against his ribcage.

"Truly," she said gently. "And I'm not going anywhere. I do promise."

She could feel his heart jumping beneath her palm, in time with her own, feel the lift and rise of his ribs as his breathing quickened. Awe, and then a fierce longing, tightened his features. He slowly lifted his hand and dragged the back of it softly against her cheek, across her lips. She kissed his fingers. She saw his eyes go nearly black.

"You have me at a disadvantage once again, Miss Makepeace," he murmured. "I am only half-clothed."

"Well, then…" Her eyes never leaving his face, and with a bravado she didn't entirely feel, Susannah fumbled behind her neck for the laces of her gown.

"No," he said sharply.

The word seemed to stop her heart.

"That is," he said swiftly,"
I
want the pleasure of it, Susannah. That way, you can always blame me later, rather than yourself."

Her heart sputtered into life, into hope, again. And she lifted her eyes.

Kit was smiling down at her, but his smile was tense and rueful, his face more intent than she'd ever seen it.

More deftly and quickly than she preferred to think about, he reached behind her neck and loosened her laces. She nearly smiled. She felt the dying breeze of the day wash over her bare back.

He supped his fingers inside her dress, touched her skin very gently and exhaled a soft shaky sigh, almost of relief. He combed his fingers over her shoulder blades, down either side of her spine, the rough pads of his fingertips and the exquisite lightness of his touch turning every cell of her skin to glowing cinders, her legs to liquid. Susannah closed her eyes, wanting only to feel, wanting to heighten the pure exquisite pleasure of his hands on her skin.

And then his mouth was warm against her ear. "
Susannah
," he breathed there, her own name as sensual as his fingers. It traveled along the fuse of her nerve endings and lit a furnace inside her. Her lungs labored to breathe. She flattened her hands against his chest, savoring, at last, at last, the warm strong beauty of it. His skin was satiny over the rigid planes of his muscle, and again, this softness juxtaposed with strength… this was Kit.

"I like that," he murmured against her throat, where his mouth had traveled from her ear. He opened his lips against the soft skin there, put a hot kiss there. "Touch me anywhere you please."

"If you insist," she said. She was trying for insouciance, but the words were a squeak.

And he laughed, bloody man.

She indulged all of her weeks of stored longings and dragged one finger around the contours of his muscled chest, tracing a broad figure eight, then drew it down between his ribs, down the pale line of hair that led to the bulge in his trousers, stopping short of it, and was rewarded when he sucked in his breath. She opened her hands then and clasped them around his slim waist, let them wander down to cup his firm buttocks through his trousers. He mumbled some unintelligibly pleasured sound.

"Do you think
it's fair
," Susannah managed to breathe, arching her neck so he could place another kiss at the base of her throat, "That I have seen all of
you
, and yet you have seen none of—"

"Oh, I'm
keenly
interested injustice, Miss Makepeace."

His hands left her back and found the sleeves of her gown, began to ease them down.

"No." She said it suddenly.

He stopped. The look in his eyes made her almost regret saying the word.

"
I
want to do it. That way I have only myself to blame."

He paused, and what he saw in her face made him slide his hands to her waist and rest them there. Honoring her need to make this decision for herself.

And before his eyes, with hands that trembled, Susannah tugged her bodice lower, slowly, slowly, until more breeze than muslin covered her skin, until at last the tops of her breasts were bare. Kit's eyes never left her face; they dared her, gave her strength. She took in a long unsteady breath and pushed the bodice of her dress with her hands until it drooped to her waist.

She watched his eyes slowly drop from her eyes to her lips… to her…

"
God"
he murmured with reverent enthusiasm.

She almost laughed, but he found her mouth again with his, and then his warm hands were on her bare waist, on her ribs, gliding up, up, up with torturous leisure, until his hands filled with her breasts, and his touch, his lips, became tender beyond words. She nearly sank to her knees. His thumbs traced her nipples into peaks, until at last she needed to take her lips from his and lean her head forward to touch his chest, shivering with helpless pleasure.

His hand moved to cup the back of her head then, so he could once more take a kiss as deeply as he could; his other hand pressed against the small of her back, bringing her into the heat of his chest. The sensation of his skin against the hard tips of her breasts was unlike anything she was sure heaven had to offer. She moved her hands down, felt the hard, thick length of his arousal beneath his trousers, dragged her hands over it. He muttered something like "
mmm
," which she took to mean to do it again. So she did it again, and again, until his hands went down to cup her buttocks and roughly pushed her up against him. She looped her arms around his neck and pushed herself closer still.

She wanted desperately to crawl inside him.

"Making love to you, Susannah," Kit murmured against her lips, as his hips moved against hers, "would be a rare honor and pleasure."

"I want you to make love to me." Her voice was shaking now.

"Do you know what that truly means?" His hands had slipped lower now inside her dress, and his finger had found the crease of her buttocks to delicately trace. He looked intently down into her eyes.

"Yes."

"You
do
know? You know that I will be inside you…" He kissed her, this one languid, thorough, incinerating. "And that I will move inside you…" He kissed her again, the same way, until her thoughts were glittering fragments. "… Until we are both mad from pleasure?"