Betina Krahn (19 page)

“If you insist upon thoroughness, I could also report on a costly water system that has yet to work, a garden in which the only thing growing seems to be a certain rock, and a fairly catastrophic mix-up regarding the materials you need for production. I would also be compelled to include an in-depth description of my examination of your ‘sample’ garments.” He paused and gave her a heated look that set her pulse fluttering. “And a detailed account of our midnight meeting … in a darkened kitchen … in our nightclothes.”

“Not true.” She shrank back on her stool, glowering at his evening trousers and rumpled dress shirt. “
I
am in nightclothes, but you aren’t.”

“Oh, but I am. Beneath these clothes I wear precisely what I sleep in.” He chuckled. “I can see you require proof.” He stood and began to unbutton his shirt.

“No, no—” She stood up as well, feeling both excited and appalled, unable to tear her eyes from the slice of bare skin appearing between the parting edges of his shirt. Smooth, hard flesh, dusted with dark hair, glowing with male heat. What on earth was he—good Lord—did he mean to imply he slept in nothing but his skin? When she jerked her head up, his eyes were gleaming in a way that made her knees weak
and her throat constrict. Her voice sounded hoarse and distant.

“Really, your lordship—”

“Don’t you think it’s time you called me Cole?” He reached for her hands. “Such formalities seem rather pointless when you’ve seen me in my … nightwear.”

She would have pulled away, but he pressed a soft kiss into one of her palms and brought the other to his chest, spreading it against his open shirt so that her fingertips rested on his bare chest. That contact, restrained as it was, sent a volley of shock waves through her.

And through him. The touch of a woman’s hand on his naked skin was more than familiar to him. But it hadn’t prepared him for the effects of her tentative, whisper-light touch. Heat and chill raced through his skin, and a sweet ache began around his heart and slid slowly down toward his loins.

From the moment he had stepped out of the dark hallway into the circle of her lamp, he’d felt desire for her, drawing him. After dinner, when he’d “escorted” her to bed, it had been by the narrowest of margins that he hadn’t taken advantage of her sweet vulnerability. He was spending altogether too much time thinking about her, watching her, arguing with her—and enjoying every bit of it.

Then he strolled into the kitchen and saw her curled up on that stool with her nightclothes swirled around her, her tousled hair gilded by lamplight, and her slender feet and ankles bare. The resolve he had been bolstering these last few hours in the library withered like a morning glory at midnight. He wanted nothing more than to take her into his arms.

Now she was there, in his embrace, soft and yielding, reminding him of things he knew spelled trouble. She was beguiling hope … sweet, deceptive dreams … a forbidden joy he had long since refused to seek. He ought to have known better—he
did
know better. She was a sure passage to despair. Pain just waiting to happen. And he was lowering his lips to hers, sinking into the lush comfort of her kiss, reclaiming
the temptations of a sensual passion that led to feeling, then to caring, then to living … perhaps loving.

From the moment his lips touched hers, all rational thought dissolved. She could recall nothing in all her life that resembled the power of feeling him against her, the raw pleasure of skin against skin, the mysterious sweetness of warmth seeking warmth in another’s being. His touch sent jolts of pleasure skittering along her muscles and racing through her nerves. Each motion, each nuance of texture and pressure, became a template for the one to follow. And each that followed added a wealth of new sensation to the storehouse of pleasures she was discovering inside her.

When the kiss ended, she staggered back. She could scarcely focus her eyes, but some inner compass turned her toward the door.

His grip on her hand halted her, and when she turned to him, he reeled her back and pulled her into his arms.

“Ah, St. Madeline, you’re a pure temptation, you are.”

Their second embrace was somehow softer, sweeter than the first. His lips raked hers ever so lightly, preparing her, provoking her response, holding the sweet completion of a full kiss just out of reach. He held her lightly, teasing and toying with her lips until she slid her arms around his ribs and rocked up onto her toes to meet him as an equal, responding as she had just been taught. They explored the feel of each other, kissing again and again—short, playful nips and soft, resonant strokes and slow, deep joining.

When he released her, she turned once again for the door, floating, unable to feel the floor beneath her feet. The boundaries of her body seemed to have dissolved. She was air and element, free, unencumbered—until she felt his hand on her wrist and realized he was going through the door ahead of her, pulling her into the darkness of the hallway with him.

This time, when his arms closed around her they bore her back against the wall and clasped her fiercely. His mouth came down on hers with full hunger, taking the sweetness of
her tongue, claiming the moist recesses of her, burning his need into her lips, her mind, her heart. This time, as his body pressed hers his hands moved feverishly over her shape, exploring her, learning her through her thin garments. He circled her waist, ran his hands up her ribs to cup her breasts, then slid them down her back to clasp her buttocks, murmuring approval of all he encountered.

She was suddenly on fire, trembling, learning the sleek skin and crisp hair of his chest, the strong column of his throat, the coarse rasp of beard on his jaw. He tasted the same salty-sweet as before, only now with mulberries and milk. She was suddenly ravenous with unrecognized need. Arching, thrusting toward his hands, she moaned softly when his fingers found the burning tips of her breasts. Pleasure washed through her in lush, drenching waves that drained slowly through her body, leaving a delicious heaviness, a longing in its wake. More. She wanted more.…

When he raised his head to search their surroundings for a more accommodating situation, he was surprised to realize they were in the hallway, coupled fiercely while pressed hard against the side of the stairs. It took only a moment for the surprise to mature into a recognition that things could go no further there. He stepped back enough to allow her to regain her balance, and she swayed against him.

Steadying her, he took a deep breath and struggled for control. With his eyes now adjusted to the darkness, he could see her plainly—glowing skin, a torrent of dark hair, a pale nightdress hanging askew on her shoulders. She was nothing short of adorable, especially now, looking love-warmed and rumpled, her eyes glistening with new passion. Passion.

Merciful God. What had he done?

A moment later she tried once again to withdraw gracefully. With her head up and her robe hanging precariously from only one shoulder, she glided down the hall, turned too early, and smacked straight into the thick, carved banister.
“Ohhh!” She recoiled, rubbing her head, and he lurched to her side to see if she was all right.

“Lord—let me see,” he demanded, prying her fingers from her head.

“It’s fine … it’s nothing … really.” Her voice was breathy and distracted, but he couldn’t feel a knot forming on her forehead. He tilted her chin to look into her eyes and she gave him a glowing, somewhat unfocused look that warmed into a dazed smile.

“Bloody hell,” he groaned, taking her hand and pulling her around the banister to the bottom of the stairs. “Come on, I’ll see you up the steps.”

But, in fact, he saw her to her door, into her room itself, and even pulled back the covers of her bed for her. Then he performed the alarmingly gallant act of turning on his heel and leaving her there, on her bed, alone.

She sat for a while with a radiant countenance, her eyes half closed, holding on to the sensations of his kisses. As they faded, she began to feel the cold floor and the soft bed beneath her. Reality gradually returned, and, shivering, she slid her legs between the bedclothes and lay back on the pillows. These were wonderfully contradictory feelings—cold and hot, aching and soothed, uncomfortable and yet oddly pleasant. Combined, they created a breathtaking sensual arousal. Desire.

Long ago she had read and thought about pleasure, and had sensibly consigned it to that region in her being where she kept unsolvable quandaries and irrelevancies. Sexual passion was a curious and confusing part of human life, a basic animal instinct that she had been grateful not to have to deal with. The destiny she had inherited and the path she had chosen both seemed to call her beyond such an expression of humanity’s most rudimentary nature. Her life was to be about service and giving and helping.

Just now, however, passion seemed anything but basic or animal or irrelevant. It was overwhelming and complex and
enthralling. And so very personal. Why, there must be millions of variations on just a kiss. And imagine the delight of discovering, of exploring every single one of them with—

Oh, dear
.

In London, Sir William sat in his chambers that same night, his gouty foot propped up on a stack of pillows on the ottoman and two oil lamps blazing on his desk. In the midst of a veritable deluge of legal papers, he held a pair of letters in one hand and wiped his eyes with the other.

“She’s a raving madwoman and he’s a bloody beast,” he said to his clerk Foglethorpe, then went off in another booming peal of laughter. When he sobered, he stared at the writing once more and sighed wistfully. “I would give my good foot to be a fly on the wall when those two go at it.”

The sun had been up for more than an hour when Rupert Fitch-cum-Fitzwater sauntered down the lane toward the tavern anticipating a breakfast of that juicy sausage and onion gallimaufry that was Hiram Netter’s morning specialty. He paused by the muddy trench that divided the village and stared at the lengths of pipe strewn about the bottom. A glint appeared in his eyes. He fished a small pad from one pocket, produced a pencil from another, and began to scribble a few notes. It wasn’t enough to base a newspaper exposé upon, but in his business every little bit helped.

He was still scribbling when the morning air brought him the sound of a door closing across the way. He looked up to witness Miss Madeline Duncan exiting her house in something of a hurry, her head down and her shawl pulled tightly about her. Since it wasn’t a particularly cool morning, her appearance and behavior struck him as odd. And “odd” always brought Rupert Fitch to attention and set his nose to the air for a whiff of scandal.

As he watched, the front door of her fine brick house opened and out stalked none other than his high-and-mightyship, Lord Mandeville, clad in riding breeches, boots, and a shirt that was scarcely half buttoned. Rupert Fitch had made a career out of creative arithmetic; in his tallying, one and one always made at least four. From Cole Mandeville’s tousled appearance, Fitch deduced that he was recently risen. And from the fact that he appeared half clothed in Madeline Duncan’s doorway, Fitch deduced just where the young lord had been abed. Those two conclusions, in the fetid slurry of Fitch’s mind, brought forth a vile third—about the source of the lord’s annoyance.

“So,” he muttered, his eyes lighting with prurient glee as he added some hasty scratching to his open and receptive pad, “she’s found a way to make his lordship come to heel, has she? Smart girl. A pity she ain’t learned to use the
back
door for such capers.”

After a few more strokes he looked at what he had written and smiled broadly, showing his yellowed teeth. “She’ll learn.” Folding the pad and tucking it securely away, he shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and strolled on toward Netter’s Tavern, whistling. “She’ll learn.”

By midmorning the sewing floor was again chaotic, filled with sounds of talk and movement and sawing and hammering mingled with the scent of oiled metal and the acrid smell of turpentine. While the place was being cleared of debris from the frenzy of unpacking on the day before, bleary-eyed Fritz and his newly arrived mechanic tried to concentrate on attaching sewing machines to the power takeoff, and the Ketchums worked to repair the steps and paint the windows. Adding to the confusion were Maple Thoroughgood and Charlotte, who were trying to outtalk the noise to instruct their seamstresses in the cleaning and preparation of the new sewing machines. Their job was made harder by the fact that
the sewing floor was overrun with new cutters and pressers, who hoisted a crate here and moved a table or a bit of packing material there but generally spent most of their time visiting with their new neighbors and distracting the seamstresses with their comments and laughter. Meanwhile, a harassed Daniel Steadman was steering cutter candidates, recently come down from London, in and out of the offices to be enrolled as new employees.

In the midst of it all Madeline was trying to keep both things and people moving in the right direction. Early that morning, before anyone else arrived, she had stood surveying the littered sewing floor and assessing the previous day’s work. In her mind she identified several key mistakes she had made in structuring the tasks and atmosphere, and she was determined not to repeat them.