Betina Krahn (25 page)

“From Hannah and Davenport,” she said, sipping. “They used to allow me to hang about in the kitchen after my studies were finished for the day. I got to help Hannah do all sorts of things. I’ll have you know, I can bone fish, pluck and stuff geese, and make jellies and pickled preserves. And my tart pastry will someday be recognized as the Eighth Wonder of the World.” She flashed him a smile and he chuckled. “What about you? I imagine you did your share of hanging about the kitchen, angling for a bit of shortbread before supper. Didn’t you learn anything from the cook?”

He lowered his cup and his smile faded. “I … I learned a lot from the cook.”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess—how to lick bowls and trade flattery for sweets and sneak raisins out of the pantry.”

“That … and how to tie my shoes and make my letters and read a book and always tell the truth.”

“From the cook?” She puzzled over that. “You didn’t have a nurse or a governess?”

“Did you?” He seemed a bit defensive as he turned the question back on her.

“Heavens, no. Well, not in the usual sense. I believe I had a nurse of some sort when I was an infant. But we were in Africa, Sierra Leone, and my mother simply took me with her everywhere.”

“They were missionaries … your parents.”

“Yes. My father used to say he was bringing High Church to low places. And my mother used to laugh and say it was simply his excuse for escaping the clerical kowtowing required here in England. Aunt Livvy often said she thought he went to Africa because he believed that ‘low places’ were a lot more fun than ‘high churches.’ ” She shook her head with a wistful smile. “He wasn’t exactly a jot and tittle sort of reverend.”

“So, this altruistic mania of yours tends to run in the family.”

She saw the twinkle in his eye. “I suppose it does. That, and blue eyes and a bit of red in the hair—”

“And a stubborn streak a mile wide,” he inserted. “Must be a Scotsman in the line somewhere. Or an angel.” That slip of the tongue took him by surprise. “
A-Anglican
—a High-Church Anglican.” Fortunately for him, she was only half listening. Angel. It wasn’t the first time he’d called her that. When he first arrived in St. Crispin, he had used the term derisively, but, lately he’d caught himself thinking of her that way in earnest—which was appalling.

“What about you?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts. “What sort of family do you come from?”

He was still reeling from letting slip an inadvertent bit of
admiration. Perhaps it was that that made him suddenly want to tell her the truth. Or perhaps it was the warmth and darkness of the kitchen, the easy silence between them, and the tantalizing possibility of a unique bit of intimacy … and the idea that she might begin to understand.

“I come from a long line of boring, shallow, self-interested clods with a consuming passion for gambling, fox hunting, and boring, shallow, self-adoring women.” He said it with a determined insouciance that ironically conveyed just how serious a topic it was to him. She not only recognized that particular defense, she knew precisely how to disarm it.

“Well”—she leaned forward with a mischievous smile—“they do say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

He stiffened, searching her expression until he glimpsed the twinkle of humor in it. “Ah, if only I had been a bit more like them. That was always the trouble, you see. I was never quite enough ‘Mandeville’ to deal properly with my life.”

“And what was in the Mandeville line that you coveted so?” she asked.

“The ability to live in simple and uncompromising pursuit of one’s own interests. ‘Let the rest of the world go to hell in a handcart,’ ” he blustered in a bombastic voice, “ ‘just as long as I get my cigar and brandy after dinner.’ That’s my family motto, you see. To my knowledge, Mandeville blood has never suffered the slightest taint of idealism or altruism, nor been infected with even the commonest strains of decency or generosity.”

He studied the perceptiveness in her face and mentally wrestled with something. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and laced with tension.

“It was my misfortune to be the fourth of six male offspring in a noble household. I was not the eldest and Father’s treasured heir, nor the baby and Mama’s plaything. It was clear from the day I was born that I would never be of interest to either of my parents. The cook in our household had a brother, John Macmillan, who was a tenant on my family’s
lands. He had a son, Johnny, about my age. When I was old enough, Cook saw to it I spent my time with the Macmillans on their farm … being cared for, learning about farming, helping however I could. It wasn’t at all unusual for me to be there for a month at a time without anyone from the mansion bothering to check on me.”

Bitterness had crept into his voice, and he paused and took a deep breath to clear it. She watched in silence, knowing instinctively that this was a part of him he had shared with few others. Sipping her chocolate and lending him silent support, she waited for him to continue.

“For most of my boyhood I lived as a tenant farmer’s son on my family’s estate. I wore the clothing they gave me, ate the food they grew, learned my letters and my prayers at their table.” He halted and stared into his cup. “They were my family in every way that was important.”

“Were?”

Anger, long cooled and hardened, appeared in his eyes. “My noble father, the most Mandeville of all Mandevilles, gambled himself into financial straits and decided to sell off all the family’s unentailed lands to cover his debts. Part of the land he sold was the Macmillans’ holding. When I learned what had happened, I confronted my father and demanded that he nullify the sale. I was all of thirteen. He gave me a royal thrashing, called me an ungrateful ‘get’ and a ‘whelp gone feral,’ and packed me off to Harrow the very next day.” His mouth tightened into a grim line as he sorted both his feelings and his words. “I never saw John and Peg Macmillan again.”

“What happened to them?” she whispered, feeling his pain migrating into her.

“They went to Newcastle, seeking work. I swore that when I finished school I would set things right, and the day I left Harrow, I went to look for them.” His voice thickened. “By then, John and Peg had both died in an influenza outbreak. I finally located Johnny and two of the girls. I gave
them what money I could and vowed I would get their land back for them even if I had to go to the courts. Then I went to see my uncle, Sir William, in London, and learned there was nothing I could do.”

“Sir William is your uncle?”

“My mother’s brother.” He smiled sardonically. “A Rayburn, not a Mandeville. Before I knew it, I was at Oxford, preparing to read for the law. I was convinced it was a way—perhaps the only way—to have the power to right injustices and make the world a better place.” He rolled his shoulders and slid off the table. “I was wrong.”

He padded over to the stove, stirred the pot, and lifted it. “Another?”

“Please.”

She offered her cup. He poured. When their eyes met, she glimpsed the old desolation in him. She had to fight the impulse to pull him into her arms.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” she said.

He smiled wryly at her, not bothering to deny the guilt he felt. “No? My blood family reached out to destroy the people I loved, the very people who had cared for and nurtured me in their stead. All the Macmillans got for their love and generosity was ruin and heartache. There is no justice, St. Madeline. It took years in the law to finally convince me, but I learned.”

He stood looking down at her, then perched one hip and thigh on the table.

“Don’t expect the impossible of people, St. Madeline. They will do what they perceive to be for their comfort, for their pleasure, and for their own best interests … in precisely that order. If you expect anything more, you’re letting yourself in for a huge disappointment.”

“You must not be entirely cold and logical, Cole Mandeville,” she said softly, “if you are so concerned about me.”

“I don’t claim to be perfect.” He studied her face, then reached out to brush aside a wisp of her hair. She glanced at
his hand, wishing he would touch her hair again. That casual stroke was a tender and telling bit of contact. “Unlike you.”

“I have never once claimed to be perfect either, Cole Mandeville.”

“Haven’t you? Rescuing a whole village full of people, setting yourself up as nurturer of their souls and provider of their needs, their guardian angel.”

“Well”—she reddened—“who says guardian angels have to be perfect? They say that many people have ‘entertained angels unawares.’ If angels were perfect, they would stick out like sore thumbs and we’d recognize them instantly. My own personal theory is that angels are probably the most unlikely people we meet.”

He chuckled. “By that theory, the leading candidates in St. Crispin are those two ignoramuses digging infernal blazes out of your garden. Sorry, St. Madeline, but as far as I am concerned, the prime contender for ‘resident angel’ in this place is you.” As his gaze slid into those blue pools of her eyes, he couldn’t help adding: “You’re probably as close to perfect as a human being gets.”

Her heart gave a heavy thud and began to beat faster.

“I’m not even
close
to perfect,” she said, drawn to the warmth radiating from him, leaning slightly forward. His features were softening, his eyes darkening. She felt a delicious stirring all through her, heightening her awareness of her body.

“Ahhh, but your blue eyes are. And your soft chestnut hair. And your cream-sweet skin. Not to mention your lips. Although, in truth, they can be gloriously naughty when the occasion calls for it.”

“Naughty?” She felt her skin warming and lips thickening under his increasingly hungry regard. “What sort of occasion calls for naughty lips?”

“This one.”

He caught her chin in his hand and leaned forward to press a hot, inquisitive kiss on her mouth. Before she knew
what was happening, she was on her feet and in his arms and returning that kiss with every bit of warmth and passion she possessed.

Pleasure soared and burst like fireworks inside her, drenching her body in a shower of hot, delicious sparks that could be extinguished only by contact with his. Instinctively, she pressed against him, seeking his warmth and hardness, wanting to explore the feel of him against her, mating his hard planes to her soft curves, covering her, sheltering her. Their kisses deepened, lush and wet, flavored with chocolate. Sweetness, underscored with a hint of ripeness and decadence. Naughty lips. She understood now.

He filled her senses—touch, taste, smell, sight—stretching their boundaries until they began to overlap and she could almost taste with her fingertips the salty heat of his neck, the silky anise of his hair, the wheatlike texture of his broad chest, and the faint musk of his sinewy arms. He was a sensory feast, a passage to wonder, and as she felt herself being turned and her bottom being guided up onto the table, it seemed somehow appropriate to be savoring him in the kitchen.

He poised above her, running his hands up her sides, conditioning her to his touch, reading in each sigh and shiver the pleasure he generated in her. Then with consummate tenderness he traced her features with his lips, absorbing each shape and storing every texture before sinking into her lush, responsive kiss once more.

Soon his caresses grew hotter and more urgent. Her buttons melted under his touch, leaving her tunic to slide helplessly apart, baring her silky bodice, then her sleek skin and tightly budded nipples. His eyes closed as he lavished hot kisses down her chest and across the cool, satiny mounds he had explored so briefly once and nightly in his mind thereafter. This time he explored her with unhurried pleasure, drawing lazy, slowly tightening circles over her breasts, then pouring hot breaths and soft, nipping kisses on their hardened tips.

The feel of his hands, his kisses, his breath on her body, was like long-awaited sun—warm and life-giving. Inside her, new tendrils of feeling were uncurling and reaching toward that sensual sustenance that would fill voids in her being. When his knee nudged hers apart and his weight shifted over her, she welcomed it, responding instinctively, molding herself against him, rubbing her bare breasts against the soft cotton of his shirt, filling her hands with the contours of his back and the thickness of his arms.

The focused pressure of his pelvis against hers wedged a rigid heat tightly against the tender burning in her woman’s cleft. A moan of surprise escaped her as his body flexed, raking that ridge along her sensitive hollow and producing a deep, penetrating quiver of response that resonated in every part of her body.

He lifted his head to hers and poured a sweet, lingering kiss over her mouth, sensing the shock in her response, wanting to reassure her. As he braced above her, he pushed up enough to see what he and passion had wrought together.

She was beautiful—fair skin dusted gold in the lamplight, a torrent of dark hair swirling around her smooth shoulders, her eyes dark and luminous with new and compelling desires, breasts voluptuous and nipples proud, her lips swollen like ripe berries. Her tunic lay crumpled about her like an artist’s drape, and amid the dark woolen of her trousers, buttons winked, beckoning, promising a quick surrender.

“Cole?” she whispered, running her hand up his arm and along his shoulder. The shy invitation in that touch said she was his now, there.

And when he shifted slightly, relieving his elbow against their hard support, the unyielding nature of that surface caused him to look up and around them. The realization jolted him; they were on the kitchen table.

He was poised on the brink of taking Madeline Duncan—
St. Bloody Perfect Madeline
—on the damned kitchen table!

He sat up and pulled her up with him. Reluctant to face the reproach in her eyes, he had to force himself to meet her gaze. But she was smiling at him with a roused and glowing warmth that sent a trill of guilty relief through him. He should be horsewhipped for putting that smile on her face.

Clutching her gaping tunic together, she swayed toward him and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. He looked down into the centers of her eyes, into the unshuttered feeling in the depths of them. There, in plain sight, were pleasure, surprise, joy, and—
good Lord
—adoration. Not a defense in sight … not a single bit of caution, indignation, or common sense.