Betina Krahn (18 page)

Ripe-as-peaches lips. Long, curly lashes. Threads of gold in her auburn hair. Sweet, silky skin visible on the nape of her neck, beneath her small, sensible collar. She had an air of innocence about her, an angelic quality that would have made her perfect for a Rossetti painting—except that Rossetti’s women always seemed so aloof and untouchable. And Madeline Duncan was supremely touchable.

He swirled a fingertip around one of the silky wisps of hair that had escaped her chignon, watching with pleasure as it wrapped around his finger. His hand strayed to her temple, where he brushed stray hair back, then ran a knuckle across her cheek. She stirred lightly, and he feathered a soft stroke down her nose and across her lips. Roused by that touch, she ran her tongue over her lips.

Soft little tongue. Just then it would taste like a strawberry cordial.…

Perhaps it was the wine that led him to bend and gather her into his arms, lifting her against his chest. It was as if an electrical circuit had been completed in him; his blood began to hum at the contact. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, she was awake.

“What’s hap-pen-ing?” She rubbed her face, squinted up at him in the hall light, then began shoving. “Put me down—what on earth are you doing?”

“You’re exhausted and I am taking you to bed,” he said, setting her on her feet with genuine reluctance. He was quickly rewarded by the feel of her body swaying and finding support against his.

“I can take mysself … th-thank you,” she said, pulling away. Then she stumbled and went down on one knee when she attempted the next step up.

He caught her and hauled her to her feet with an arm around her waist. Over her objections he helped her climb the steps and led her down the hall to her bedroom. A single oil lamp had been left burning for her, casting a golden glow over the room. He led her to the bed, stood her against the foot post, and braced her there with his lower body as he unfastened the buttons of her voluminous blue smock.

“I … I can do that,” she said, trying to bring up her arms to take over.

“Let me,” he said dryly as he watched her arms flop back down her sides. “It will be my thrill for the evening.” As he peeled the dusty smock from her and tossed it aside, she started to sink, and he caught her against him with both arms. Looking down into her unfocused eyes, he felt something within his chest tighten. “A pity you don’t wear laces, St. Madeline.” He caught her face in his hand and tilted it to his. “I could offer to loosen them for you.”

“I c-can undo my own … boddie,” she said, doing her best to relieve him of the burden of her weight.

“I’m certain you can. But think of how interesting it would be to have someone else undo your ‘body’ for once.” He knew she meant bodice, but somehow the words registered in him just as they were spoken.
Body
. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to “undo” her entire body, bit by responsive bit, inch by voluptuous virgin inch. His arousal as he stood pressed against her was instant and urgent. Every sinew in his body was suddenly hot and primed.

He sat her down on the bed, wrapped her arms around the foot post—and quickly left the room.

At the sound of the door closing, she roused enough to know that she was on her own bed, safe, with delicious impressions of hard male warmth lingering all along her body. With a wistful smile no one could see and she wouldn’t remember, she climbed up into the middle of the bed and abandoned herself to a soft, enveloping cloud of sleep.

She awakened some hours later, her mouth dry, her eyes grainy, and her senses disoriented. When she sat up, she was relieved to recognize her own bed and the clothes she had worn the previous day. She felt thick and leaden as she crawled from the bed, shed her clothes down to the skin, and pulled a nightdress over her head. It caught on her chignon, and she freed it, then plopped down at her dressing table to loosen her hair and give it a few hasty strokes with the hairbrush.

Her head was pounding and her stomach was growling. What she needed was a megrim powder and something to eat. She glanced longingly at the bed, but knew she would only toss and turn if she went back to bed hungry and hurting. She pulled a dressing gown over her shoulders, then padded barefoot down the stairs.

In the kitchen she turned up the lamp that was left burning at night.

She rummaged about in Cook’s medicinals, assembled a
dose of headache remedy, and downed it. Minutes later she was perched on Cook’s tall stool with a slice of cold cottage pie in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. It took her back to the days when she used to sneak downstairs at night to the kitchen of their house in Bloomsbury. Aunt Olivia always seemed to know she was up and would come floating downstairs in an exotic Persian robe and night turban to supervise … or to join her.

A noise startled her, and she whirled on her stool, half expecting to see the old lady come sailing through the door with that memorable light in her eyes. Instead, coming out of the hallway darkness was Cole Mandeville, in shirt-sleeves, no collar, and rumpled evening trousers. A lock of tousled hair hung over his forehead, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink.

There was just no getting rid of the man.

He paused inside the kitchen door to stare at her, and it was a measure of her surprise and confusion that she didn’t think to close her gaping robe or cover her bare legs, which were propped on the stool rungs and visible from the knees down.

“What are you doing up at this hour?” she demanded. She was beginning to recall how she had come to be sleeping in her clothes, on top of her bedcovers. A pink tinge crept into her cheeks.

“Much the same as you, I expect.” He studied her a moment longer, then headed for the pie safe. “Couldn’t sleep. Must be all this peace and quiet. A few nights at Netter’s establishment make a lasting impression on a body’s nocturnal routine.” He turned back with a slice of gooey mulberry pie in his hand. “I came downstairs to see if you had any reading material and found a rather cozy little library with an astonishing array of books. Yours?”

She nodded and swallowed a mouthful of her own pie. “Mine and my aunt Olivia’s. She loved books and taught me to love them too. Half of those volumes were gifts from her
to me or from me to her. There is another whole collection at our house in Bloomsbury.”

He had located a glass, poured some milk, and now came to sit at the worktable beside her. She watched him, strangely mesmerized. Odd that she hadn’t noticed his extraordinary grace of motion before. Just now he seemed so long and lean … every swing of his legs seemed to inscribe a flawless arc. His shoulders moved with a relaxed confidence, and, seeing him in shirt-sleeves, she made the discovery that the breadth of his coat shoulders owed nothing to padding after all. As he slid to a seat at the table, she watched his upper arms flex beneath the snug linen of his sleeves, and it took a moment for her to realize that he had said something.

“You changed clothes, I see.” He gave her thin nightdress an inquisitive look. “Your reform garments must live up to your expectations if they allowed you to undress yourself in the state you were in.” He took a bite of pie and washed it down with milk. “But, I must say, I am a bit surprised to find your choice of nightwear so conventional.”

She looked down at her robe, snatched the sides together, and reddened.

“No bloomers?” His eyes roamed over her. “No woolly combinations or leather leggings or health suits? Not even a hair shirt?”

She scowled. “There is nothing unhealthy or uncomfortable about a regular nightdress. If a garment is already well designed, I will happily wear it.”

“More’s the pity,” he said with insouciance. “I was rather looking forward to an entertaining episode with your nightwear.”

She paused with her nose in her glass, then lowered it without drinking. “You really are the limit. How would you feel if someone made free with your most intimate garments?”

He chuckled. “I think I could bear up.” He leaned toward her. “I might even come to like it—especially if I were wearing them at the time.”

She felt her skin heating under his amusement, but, never one to shrink from a challenge, she returned his scrutiny. “You are without a doubt the most outrageously self-possessed human I have ever encountered.”

“Don’t get around much, do you?” His eyes twinkled; he was obviously enjoying himself.

“I’ll wager you got by with murder as a child,” she said. “Mama’s favorite and Nanny’s darling … born with a silver spoon in your mouth, never denied a thing. Spoiled rotten. Now you think you have only to wish a thing and you make it happen.”

He stilled, and the light of amusement in his eyes became a focused gleam. Then he looked away with a wry twist of a smile. “Yes, that’s me … spoiled forever by too much attention from the women in my early life. My lady mother and dear old nanny loved me so slavishly that I now expect every woman I meet to feel the same.” He flashed her a look that was positively coquettish. “It’s quite a burden actually, being this adorable.”

She couldn’t prevent the smile that tugged up the corners of her mouth. But even as she gave in to a laugh, it struck her that everything he said seemed to carry with it another, quite opposite meaning. It made her feel a twinge of sadness. She couldn’t help recalling the pain she had glimpsed in him the other day.…

“But as to getting whatever I want just by wishing—you’re wrong there, St. Madeline,” he continued. “I’m afraid that getting what you want in life requires more than wishing, even for arrogant, overindulged aristo-brats.”

“Oh?” She thought that over for a moment. “And what does ‘getting what you want in life’ require?”

“A providential birth, a handsome face, an extroverted nature, and an exceedingly thick skin.” He assumed the pompous, faintly bored manner of an Oxford don. “One can survive a burden of intelligence if it is held closely in check. But scruples, ideals, sentiment”—he wagged his head—“those are
generally insurmountable obstacles. Many a promising young life has been ruined by them.”

“Including yours?” she asked, suddenly knowing the answer.

“Mine?” He hesitated, clearly trying to decide how much to say to her. “Very well. I make no secret of it. Shocking as it may seem, I was once a victim of idealism run amok myself. Against my family’s wishes I studied for the bar and joined a firm of barristers. Interesting business, the law. For every yea there’s a nay, for every absolute, an exception. One’s opinion need never ever be wrong. And there is always plenty of quid pro quo to go around.”

“Something for something,” she translated.

“Ahhh, an educated woman. Assets. Transactions. Compensation.
Gain.
” He took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, some of the tension in his shoulders eased. “I wasn’t especially quick to catch on to the way of things. Had those damned-fool ideals in my eyes. All I could think about was justice, equality, human dignity, making a difference in the world—that sort of nonsense.” He fixed her with a gaze that reminded her of her scalding remarks on the stairs. “So you see, you aren’t the first person ever to suffer delusions of a ‘greater good.’ ”

She resisted an impulse to squirm. A cynic, she had heard long ago, was an idealist disappointed. Before her sat living proof of that old saw. His behavior suddenly made a strange kind of sense. She felt foolish for not seeing it earlier, for having made the wrong assumptions about him.

“I had no idea,” she said gently.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He flashed a defiant grin.

She gave him a dark look. “What happened to dispel your ‘delusions’?”

He finished his milk and sat searching the white puddle at the bottom of his glass. “Nothing. Everything. Things I wanted to do. Things I couldn’t bear to do. The weight of a thousand little victories and a thousand little failures.” He set
his glass down and rubbed his hands down his thighs. “I simply woke up one day and realized that it wasn’t going to change. That nothing I did would make that much difference. I began to see the world the way it is instead of the way I wanted it to be.” Looking at her, he said quietly, “I strongly suggest you do the same.”

His opinion of her had not changed, but understanding something of where it had come from softened its grating effect.

“I see the world realistically enough,” she responded. “I know you think my workers are a shiftless lot looking for a soft bed and an easy meal. It’s true that so far they haven’t shown much initiative, but that is a quality that can be encouraged by example and opportunity. They have willing hearts and trainable hands and heads. That’s all I ask. And if they nip a bit too much or nap occasionally, well, they will outgrow old habits when production gets under way.”

He studied her. “I suppose you really believe that.”

“I do.”

“Then I’m afraid you’re headed for heartache, St. Madeline.”

She smiled. “Well, it is my heart after all. You do seem to keep forgetting that.”

“No, I don’t,” he responded, his voice lower. “It’s not possible to forget your heart for a moment.”

“It’s not?” She felt the organ under discussion beating erratically.

“It is always in plain sight.” His mouth crooked up ruefully on one side. “On your sleeve.”

The warmth in his voice sent a shiver along her shoulders. “If you are half as cynical as you’d like me to believe, why would you care what happens to my heart?”

His wry look smoothed into a sensual, teasing smile. “It is my duty, remember? I am required on penalty of imprisonment to report to the court regularly on the state of your
heart. And on the success or failure of its magnanimous impulses.”

“And what will you report this week?” She couldn’t seem to break the spell of his gaze.

“That you’re stubborn as hell, you work like a fiend, and you’re in more trouble than you know.”

No truer words were ever spoken, she realized, for she felt a delicious tingling in her lips even as he warned her to guard her heart.

“That is all? You won’t tell Sir William about the progress we’ve made in renovating the factory, that the sewing room is nearly ready, or that we’ll begin sample production next week?” She folded her arms and raised her chin. “That’s hardly fair.”