Dangerous 01 - Dangerous Works (16 page)

Shame forced him to look toward the fire. Those words–her anger at Richard–were for him also. He didn’t want to see the anguish in her eyes. He and Richard had done what was right. He refused to believe otherwise.

“You arranged it between you, didn’t you? You condemned me to solitary confinement at Helsington Cottage. Don’t even try to deny it! You knew that no one wanted me. Once you left, I was completely alone.”

“Don’t speak of yourself so,
that isn’t—”

“True? Isn’t it? Please, Andrew, let there be honesty between us.”

Her eyes burned blue fire, a cauldron of fury and need. He couldn’t hold against it.

“You deserved better,” he began, voice thick. “Your father wouldn’t have permitted it. We could have run, bolted for Scotland or the Continent, but what then? Poetry in a hovel? That kind of romance dies in a day.”

“‘Poetry in a hovel,’” she repeated. “If that’s what I escaped, what did I get in return? Glorious solitude? No one suitable, no one acceptable to the Duke of Sudbury wanted his eldest daughter, the daughter too tall, too lacking in grace, and too eccentric in her conversation to ornament an aristocrat’s home.”

“There is nothing wrong with your conversation, Georgiana. Don’t deride yourself.”

“No? I never learned to find a man’s waistcoat more fascinating
than his politics. I never learned to pepper my words with on-dits rather than the books I read. No man wanted me, not one. Even Lord Pfeil—old, bald, and smelling of horse—acted as if he had been asked to do a favor for my father, and a distasteful one at that.”

Her eyes burned into him. “That is one fear you can lay to rest,” she said.

The workings of her mind were complex tonight; she had lost him. “What do you mean ‘fear?’ What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t that what your ‘honor’ is about? An honorable man–and Andrew Mallet is a very honorable man–does not ‘ruin’ a woman because no respectable man will want her for a wife. You needn’t fear it because it’s too late. No man wants me.” Her eyes defied him to deny it. “Not even you.”

He thought he must not have heard her correctly. He wanted her with an intensity that bordered on lunacy.

“Not true.” His voice thickened. “I want you as I want air to breathe, Georgie. I have wanted you since I was seventeen years old, a foolish lovesick boy unable to sleep with the pain of it. I want you so badly that just being with you, working with you, has been a physical ache. You have no idea how badly I want you right at this moment.” He watched hope flare in her eyes, and he had to step sideways when she moved toward him. He raised his hands to fend her off.

“It won’t do, Georgiana. It’s impossible. Your family will never tolerate it.”

“My family?! What do they have to say about it? My family doesn’t care about me.”

“They would care if you attempted to marry someone unsuitable.”

“Did I mention marriage? I don’t remember discussing marriage.”

It appalled him that she valued herself so cheaply. “It’s the least you deserve—not some shabby affair.”

“Ah, nobility again. The noble man decides what I deserve, what I need. Take a look, please, at how little I actually have. I have wealth, or use of my father’s wealth. Since I have none of my own, I have none of the power that makes wealth worth having. I have status …”

The items she ticked off seemed to make a very familiar list.
How long has she brooded like this?

“But that status serves to isolate me from most of the human race and frighten away any ordinary man who might be interested in me. Shall I go on? I have an elegant home to enjoy in utter solitude.”

He couldn’t move, and didn’t speak, but she drew him like a moth to a flame.

“Touch me, Andrew. Hold me.”

He stood, head bowed, groping for strength to send her away.
Show me how to love her as she deserves,
he prayed
.

“I can’t bear being alone any longer. Not after time with you. Please, Andrew. Hold me.” The pleading in her eyes clawed at him.

“I could cause you to be with child, Georgie. Have you considered that?”

He recognized the flicker of surprise before a brief flash of joy took its place. Just as quickly her face folded with a terrible grief. She pressed her lips tightly together and swallowed with difficulty. Her voice filled with tears.

“I have you there, Andrew. I’m afraid I have you there. I can’t, you see. There will never be children for me. Mr. Peabody was quite, quite certain about that.”

The accumulated losses in her life buried him in shared grief. The yearning to comfort her shredded the remains of his control. He took one step.

“So you see, there is nothing to ruin, nothing to protect, and no danger of fatherhood. Only
me. Here. Now. I need you. Hold me. Please.”

He reached out a hand and pulled her into his arms.

In the end, it was simple. She was his beloved Georgie, and she needed him. He couldn’t disappoint her.

One moment, she stood alone in a vast universe of darkness. The next, she sank into the warmth of his embrace. Strong arms enfolded her while he buried his face in her hair. She breathed in the musky male scent of linen and brandy and felt his mouth move over her ear and down her neck.

“Andrew,” she sighed.

He pulled back for a moment as if to search her eyes. She reached a tentative hand to touch his cheek.

“I won’t deny you now, you foolish man,” she said.

When he smiled, she did what she had longed to do for weeks—she ran her finger over his brow, down the long puckered scar, to rest at the corner of his mouth.

Andrew stood, still as stone, breathing heavily, but he didn’t object. Georgiana closed the distance between them and kissed the place her finger touched, the place his scars joined at the edge of his mouth. She felt the rough edges of it with her tongue.

A hoarse moan vibrated in his throat. He took control of the kiss from her, leaned her head back for better access, and covered her lips with exquisite care. His mouth slanted over hers, moved slowly back and forth, and sent ripples of pleasure through her.

When he began to press at the closed line of her lips, she anticipated him. She knew now that he urged her to open for him, and she savored it. His tongue slid slowly into her—exploring, tasting, caressing—and she rejoiced when heat spread up her thighs and into her belly. The weakness of desire no longer frightened her; she sought it.

She slid her hands up his chest and into his thick black hair, savoring the changes in texture of the softness of his linen, the rough skin of his mangled face, and the coarseness of his hair. She needed to touch him, to feel him. She felt him gasp when her hand slid down his neck to explore the front of his shirt.

When he pushed her slightly away, she groaned in protest. One arm held her securely, however, and his face hovered inches from hers. “Open it. Untie it.”

She had never unfastened a man’s clothes before. She tugged at the shirt with trembling hands and pulled it loose from his waist. She yanked the ties open and ran her hands under the linen and over his chest. Another glorious mix of textures—hard muscles, harder scars, soft hair, tight nipples, and silky skin met her eager hands. Each one fascinated her in its way. She tried to push his shirt up to see what her exploring hands felt, but he was too impatient. He yanked the shirt over his head and tossed it aside to give her better access.

She stood fixated, one hand on each side of his ribs, and traced the path of first one scar and then another with her eyes as though taking stock of the damage. Jamie said shrapnel had hit him.
Was shrapnel the reason for these small uneven gouges?
She found one long ridge.
This must be a saber cut,
she thought
, and not shrapnel
. His body was damaged but beautiful, the lines of muscle and bone even and strong beneath the scars.

A sudden instinct startled her. He might fear her reaction to his body. She looked up at him directly and willed him to see how beautiful he was to her, to know that his scars were precious. The black eyes were unreadable. She struggled for words to express what she meant but found none. She could only bend her head and kiss the damaged places one by one, allowing her mouth to linger on each.

His head dropped to hers, forehead resting on the top of her head. “Georgie. Oh my darling, Georgie, how you humble me.”

His hand cupped her chin to raise her face to his. He kissed her deeply again and again, moaning her name against her mouth. His hands restlessly massaged her back before sliding forward to undo the laces of her dress.

She marveled at his concentration, centered on his own hands, while he unlaced her dress and slid it off her shoulders. The fire in his black eyes engulfed her when he finally allowed the dress to drop to the floor. She wore neither petticoats nor corset, just a cotton shift and pantalets trimmed with simple lace put on in haste an hour ago.

Sudden shyness overwhelmed her. Her body had never been tiny, and it was no longer young. Her long frame had begun to thicken with age. A profound longing to be beautiful for him struck her and, yet, with her newly found wisdom, she knew she couldn’t shrink from his eyes any more than she allowed him to hide his damaged body from hers. She took a step into the circle of light next to the chair, stood before him, and forced her eyes to his face.

Andrew wasn’t looking at her face. The ravenous look of a starving man devoured her from her feet, still clothed in stockings, up her calves and thighs, to her belly. She thought she could feel the hunger in his eyes as they roamed to her breasts. She felt it there, across her shoulders to her neck. She flushed hotly when at last his eyes met hers. He must have seen her uncertainty then because he smiled his crooked smile and said, “You are the most beautiful sight I’ve ever beheld.” Just then, in that moment, she believed him.

He put out his hand. “Come,” he said. She did.

Chapter 17

“Come.” She took his hand. He hoped she didn’t feel how badly his shook. He pulled her toward the bedroom, needing to make her comfortable, hoping he didn’t lose control, wanting to love her as she deserved.

“Wait!” She removed her hand from his and darted across the room to retrieve the oil lamp. He watched her approach the table through a fog of desire. Lamplight, reflected through her shift, outlined her lush body. It drove all rational thought from his mind until she turned back to him and the impish expression on her face brought him back to earth. This earth goddess was his Georgie. She deserved his attentive control.

She smiled and followed him into the bedchamber, lamp in hand. He took it from her and placed it on a tall wardrobe where it could illumine the room safely. When he turned, he found her perched on the edge of the bed, watching with anticipation. He smiled down at her ruefully.

“It is a lot of light,” he said.

“I want to see and remember.” Her throaty voice, huskier than he remembered, drove him. He began to remove the remains of his clothing, achingly aware that she watched him avidly. “There is more to learn than Greek, my love.”
Ever curious about life,
he thought,
Georgie’s curiosity is insatiable.

He felt a surge of gratitude for the loose fitting Cossack trousers he had been forced to adopt to accommodate his injuries. He removed them along with his small-clothes in one fluid movement. When they slipped to the floor, he stood hard, erect, and ready for her. He searched Georgiana for any sign of distress. She didn’t shrink away, but she looked dazed by the sight. She stared for a moment and then glanced quickly up at his face and then down again, puzzlement clear on her face.

He let her look her fill until he could stand it no longer, and he knelt to remove her stockings. He tried to remove them with slow, sensuous movements, but amusement overcame him; and he dropped his brow on her knees, shaking with silent laughter.

“What?! You are laughing.” She sounded outraged.

“The look on your face.” He could feel his face expand in a smile of pure joy. “It does seem unlikely, but it works. You will have to trust me.”

Georgiana stilled. “I do.” Her trust sobered him; he prayed he didn’t disappoint.

One tug pulled her shift up over her head. A gentle gesture laid her back onto the pillow. The entire time he held her eyes, watching for distress or denial, hoping there was none. He put his hand under her knees and moved her legs around onto the bed, untied the ribbon fastening her pantalets at the waist, nudged her thighs up, and removed them slowly. He caressed her inner thighs as he did.

She lay completely naked before him. He couldn’t help but devour her with his eyes. Desire built in her eyes when he slid his hand up the inside of her thighs, over her pubic mound, over her belly, to caress her breasts before cupping her face in his long fingers and kissing her deeply.

She reached for him to pull him closer, shaking with eagerness.

“Easy, Love, not so fast. Let me love you as you should be.” With gentle care, he set out to do just that.

Desire warred with curiosity; desire won. Georgiana swiftly moved beyond analytical thought. Andrew’s hands were as nimble as his mind; they explored her relentlessly. They brought her pleasure in places she could scarcely have imagined capable of such sensation.

His mouth, soft but insistent, followed his questing hands until her entire body sang with delight, every nerve end alive and seeking.

She moved beyond action as well. In some distant part of her mind, she wished she could give as much as she received, but she couldn’t control her hands. Loss of control left her drifting without direction. Sensation rose, layer upon layer, heat upon heat, until she could no longer move but only whimper foolishly, begging him to stop, begging him not to.

His lips were on her neck then, his breath warm, his voice hoarse in her ear. “Almost, my love, almost.”

Her restless hands scraped his back when he moved over her. He paused to push her knees apart and pull them upward. A thought flitted on the edge of her consciousness, something she thought she should remember, but it wouldn’t come to her. Her awareness centered now on the hot, moist place between her thighs where he nudged against her gently, entering her slightly, and then withdrawing, once, twice, slowly.

He covered her mouth with his, and she felt one sharp thrust deep within her. A swift tearing pain preceded a sense of immense fullness as her body stretched to accommodate his. Pain, that was what she had forgotten, but it didn’t matter. The sense of closeness, of intimacy, overtook all other sensations. She felt her body relax on a sigh and allow him to slip even more deeply inside her.

He lay still, but she felt his entire body vibrate with tension.

“Try to relax, Georgie,” he whispered, “Don’t think. Let yourself feel it.”

He kissed her eyes, her mouth, her ears, and his actions banished all thought, until awareness of discomfort dissolved and only the sense that she was possessed and cherished by another remained. She felt the tension drain away, and he began to move inside her then with a slow rhythm. Her breath quickened with the rhythm, and she held on to him as though her very life depended on it.

A sharp sword of pleasure rose up inside her; his movements brought an unanticipated tension. It quickly became unbearable.

“Andrew, I can’t, I …”

His mouth silenced hers. She felt him reach down where their bodies joined and caress her intimately. That touch dissolved all thought. An utterly unexpected explosion of pleasure erupted. The immensity of it disconnected her body from her mind and shattered her consciousness. For a moment, she knew only sensation.

His moans brought her back toward reality, and the spasms of his body above her gave her a profound sense of completion.

He buried his face in her neck when he collapsed against her, fully spent, and kissed her once again. For the first time in her life, Georgiana knew perfect contentment. The experience of his pleasure left her with immeasurable peace. Her eyes drifted shut, and she slept.

Georgiana, burrowed deep
in Andrew’s bed, slept soundly. Her naked back, curled away from him, held him captive. Her arm caressed the place where he had been lying moments before, and it took all the tattered remnants of his self-control to keep from slipping back into bed to make love to her again.

He had just enough light before the lamp sputtered out completely to dress and grope in a drawer for his timepiece. The night was far gone, but he thought they had enough time to get her back to her own house before her staff stirred—assuming they hadn’t already been found her gone and sounded the alarm. It was too late to worry about that in any case. For now, he wanted to get her back where she belonged and quickly.

He caressed her with one last longing stroke and pulled the soft coverlet over her. He knew it would be a shock to her system to wake up naked in a man’s bed.

“Georgiana, my love, wake up,” he said softly.

“Mmm?”

“The night, I fear, is disappearing. We need to get you home.”

Her eyes blinked open, and confusion gradually gave way to awareness. Her lips parted a fraction, and she smiled up at him.

“She whom Aphrodite has loved.” She reached her arms up for him. There was no shock.

“Now you know why they are dangerous works,” he murmured as he surrendered to her kiss.

“Enough,” he said a moment later. He said it several times into her mouth. “Enough. We don’t have much time. You are going back where you belong.” It almost killed him to rise up, his body fully ready to take her again.

She started to protest, and he silenced her with a tender hand. “We can talk later. I have to hitch up the horse.”

“Yourself?”

“Do you think I’m some aristocratic fribble who can’t hitch his own chaise? Besides, Harley would be very unhappy if we woke him up.”

She looked skeptical but let go of him so he could put on his jacket.

“Quickly now. It will take me but a few minutes.”

Andrew walked round to the public mews behind the lane. The cool air made his bones ache; they were too old for sneaking around at night. And yet he felt more alive than he had in months, perhaps years. There was no going back, of course. That much was radiant in its simplicity; a clear path opened up before him. He had no idea how they would manage the thing, but family approval or not, they would marry. He needed her too much to live apart.
Eros—the longing of one soul for union with the other
. Quick sex in the dark would never be enough.

“I could stay.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. They whispered, heads bent toward one another, while he walked his horse to the public thoroughfare as quietly as he could. He was hatless, his jacket thrown on haphazardly, his shirt fastened crookedly. She thought him altogether adorable.

“I could stay,” she repeated, “and—”

“No.” Her confidence didn’t matter. His “No” was immediate and emphatic.

At the turn, he reached to hand her up.

“I wish to stay with you.” This time she said it firmly, and he rewarded her with a smile.

“Good,” he said, and he climbed up next to her with some effort. He used strength in his arms to compensate for lack of it in his left hip and leg. She thought about those strong arms around her in the night and felt heat rising. “Good,” he repeated, but he didn’t look at her. He took up the reins. “I wish you to stay with me also.”

“That’s settled then.”

“I don’t think so. There is a good English name for what you want, Georgiana. It is called marriage.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Georgiana’s heart plunged in horror and began to beat in panic. The word marriage terrified her.

“Is the thought of marriage distasteful to you?” She could feel the tension in his body.

“Marriage is, it is … something arranged.”

“Dynastic contracts?”

She nodded so nervously she had to remind herself not
to be a ninny.

“The melding of lands? Compact of strangers? Cold conversation for dinner and separate bedrooms?”

“Yes, yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“My sisters—”

“Your sisters aren’t typical of anything, except perhaps Hayden family misery. Look around you, Love. Much of the population manages quite well with a little warmth and affection.”

She supposed he meant that she should look at the common run of man. Haydens never considered what was common when they thought of their own lives. The idea confused her.

“Think, Love,” he said. “You say you want to stay with me. I want that too. I want you there more than just this night. I want you there in the morning. I want you to share my house—the one in Little Saint Mary’s or another if you prefer. I want you in my bed, not occasionally and furtively, but every night and every morning. I want to belong to you and with you, and I want the world to know it.”

His seductive voice tantalized her, but his words made little sense. Her parents rarely spent a night under the same roof, and never in the same bedroom. She suspected they must have gone about the quick begetting of children for the estate before going off on their separate ways, but they were indeed separate. That would be worse, much worse than what she had now. She was sure of it.

He drove the chaise past the outskirts of Cambridge proper. The moon hung low in the sky and would soon be gone, leaving them in darkness.

“I want …” She couldn’t complete the sentence.

“What is it you want, Georgiana? Do you know?”

“This beautiful thing between us, this fragile, private thing—it is mine … ours. I don’t—”

“Don’t what? Don’t wish to marry me?”

The very word struck her with horror, and she could see by the look on his face that her horror hurt him deeply.

“I want you. I don’t want marriage.”

“Let’s look at this carefully,” he said.

How can he be reasonable and analytic at such a time?
She wanted to scream. The horse ambled on, oblivious to her churning emotion, carrying them relentlessly on under darkened skies, the moon having sunk beneath the clouds.

“You said you wish to stay with me. Do you think you could live in my house?” He was as relentless as the horse.

“Certainly not! I mean, yes, but that isn’t the point. Of course I would love to be there with you, or in a grand house, or in a one-room croft. It isn’t the house.” And it wasn’t. She would have happily followed him to Spain and lived in a tent. She wouldn’t have missed her golden cage.

“Well then. One barrier removed. You should know that, while I’m not a wealthy man in the sense that your father is wealthy, my service—and some opportunities it brought me—left me well fixed. Many would consider it wealth.”

He skillfully maneuvered the team around a rutted part of the road. When she didn’t speak, he continued.

“I can afford to feed you, to provide a few servants, and to keep you in muslin and writing paper, while living as a gentleman scholar.”

The hard seat of the chaise cut into her back while she struggled in vain for words. The picture he drew tempted her, but she shrunk from it. Marriage meant trading the control of one man for the control of another.

“He can’t ruin me.” Andrew’s voice came to her from far away. He had grown impatient waiting for her reply. “There is nothing he can do to me.”

He mistook her silence. She knew that he assumed that she worried about him instead of herself, and the realization shamed her. He offered to marry her, knowing the harm her father could do. He was more generous than she.