Jo Beverley (19 page)

Damaris looked at her, her expression better controlled. “I think so,” she whispered pathetically, flexing arms and legs. “Just a little sore.”

Only when Genova rearranged the rumpled clothing did Fitz realize that he’d just watched the flexing of a lovely leg, a pale, slender, but smoothly muscled leg that was doing nothing to help him regain his wits.

The damned fool had thrown herself down the stairs to provide him with an escape. Had that sense he’d had earlier been awareness of her watching him?

Ash knelt beside Fitz. “You’re sure she’s all right?”

“As best I can tell.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear.”

Here came Thalia fluttering down the stairs, adding another candle to a collection of them. The hall probably hadn’t been this bright at nighttime in a generation. Most of the sparse household seemed to be here.

“Sleepwalking, were you, dear?” asked Thalia, in danger of falling herself with her collection of trailing shawls. Ash hurried to help her.

“I think so,” Damaris said in a tone of weak confusion, but she shot Fitz another wicked glance.
Throttle. Definitely.

“Be off with you!” the dowager barked to the gathering servants. “I’ll not accept poor service tomorrow because of this folly. Be off, be off!”

As they melted away, she turned her guns on Damaris. “Sleepwalking, indeed. Sneaking about, more likely. I awoke thinking something amiss.”

“Why would I be sneaking around?” Damaris demanded, perhaps a little too vigorously for her part. “Especially,” she added, sitting up and wincing, “as this house is so cold and damp.”

He wanted to applaud her spirit, but instead he shrugged out of his coat and put it around her shoulders.

“Now you’ll freeze,” she said with a sniff that he thought could well be real. Her feet were bare.

“Mr. Fitzroger,” the dowager demanded, “why are you fully dressed at gone midnight?”

Oh, damnation.
“I went for a walk, Lady Ashart.”

“Outside?”

She made it sound like proof of insanity. “I like fresh air.”

“What is that?” she asked, pointing.

He turned and saw his lantern lying on its side, the candle out. For the first time in years he felt close to panic, and the dowager was sniffing for a criminal like a terrier after a rat.

He picked up the lantern and opened one door. “My own design, Lady Ashart. Ideal for lighting the way along paths on a dark night.”

She glared at him, gave a thwarted snort, and marched back into her own rooms.

“Good thing,” Ash said, “she didn’t notice that you went for your midnight walk in your slippers. Which are remarkably unaffected by the adventure.”

Fitz glanced at the footwear. It was the final bloody straw. When had he last been caught in such an awkward situation and spun a tale so open to contradiction? And now Ash clearly had serious questions to ask.

“I need to stand up,” Damaris said, holding out a hand to him. Deflecting the conversation? What did she know? What did she suspect? Why the devil hadn’t she been virtuously asleep?

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he asked.

“Nothing to signify.”

“All the same, I’ll carry you back to your bed.” A touch of gold to come out of this debacle, he thought as he gathered her into his arms, every soft, slender, lissome, desirable inch of her.

“Very wise,” said Thalia, turning to go back upstairs. “You’ll probably be stiff tomorrow, dear. I took a tumble once and felt no injury at first, but oh, how I ached the next day! I have an effective liniment. Your maid can rub it into your legs and back.”

Fitz stifled a groan at the image. The very weight of Damaris was arousing. Carrying a woman upstairs was no easy task, but he loved having her so close to him, so dependent on him. Trusting him.

Genova hurried to where Ash was already escorting Lady Thalia, trying to avoid another casualty.

Fitz took the opportunity to say, “I would like to beat you.”

He’d like to do many other things, all a great deal more pleasant, but that could be part of the reason he felt so violently about this jape.

Her plait lay down her front, and he’d never guessed her hair was so long. It must hang past her waist when loose. He wanted to drown in that hair, to kiss down the arch and up the instep of her pale, elegant feet.

Yet her plait and simple clothing suggested schoolroom innocence. Devil take it, despite her twenty-one years, Damaris Myddleton could as well have been raised in a convent. He was a cad to be lusting after her.

“Why,” she whispered, “are you glowering at me? I just saved you.”

“By risking your life? I’m supposed to thank you?”

“As if I—”

“Damaris? Is something wrong?” Genova was coming back to them as Ash escorted Lady Thalia to bed.

Fitz wanted to protest that he could take care of Damaris, could put her to bed, then rub liniment over her injured body….

“He’s lecturing me about running into danger,” Damaris complained. “A person can hardly help sleepwalking.”

“Perhaps we should lock your door at night,” he said.

“Don’t you dare!”

“Damaris, Fitz,” Genova soothed. “Everyone’s nerves are on edge. Let’s get you to bed. Unless you would prefer to sleep with Thalia tonight?”

“No, I’ll be all right. Maisie shares my bed.”

“But clearly sleeps too soundly to be a warden,” Fitzroger muttered.

Genova was leading the way with her candle, and he followed, aggrieved that there would be no chance for even the slightest impropriety—even though he’d geld himself before he’d commit any.

At least he did get to put her to bed. He placed his burden on the sheets amid fussing from a wild-eyed Maisie in a mobcap and shawls. Damaris looked up at him, and it seemed strange that in the muted light from a dying fire and one candle he could see the dark line of her lashes and her smooth, pale skin so very, very clearly.

Her lips moved as if she might say something, but then she smiled in a rueful way before the maid shoved him out of the room and shut the door in his face.

Wise maid.

He definitely had to get away from here—because a girl didn’t throw herself downstairs to help a man unless she thought she loved him. And despite all his will and good intentions, he wasn’t sure he could resist if she threw herself into his arms.

He retreated to his room and took refuge in drink, which was very unwise, because half an hour later his door opened, and Damaris slipped in. She was swathed in silvery fur and put a finger to her lips, which was ridiculous, because he’d lost all faculty of speech.

She hurried toward him, showing no sign of her recent flirtation with death. “We need to try again.”

“We?” he croaked from a dry mouth and tight throat.

Try what? He couldn’t even find strength to stand up.

She was a foot away now, a frowning cat in a frame of gray fur. “Are you drunk?”

He closed his eyes. “Of course not. Three glasses of brandy is nothing.”

He heard her hum in that skeptical way she had. “We’d better wait until tomorrow then, but we can plan. Tonight would have gone better if you’d confided in me.”

His eyes opened on their own from astonishment. “Why the devil should I do that?”

It wasn’t wise to look. She was standing almost knee-to-knee with him, her eyes steady and censorious, pushing back the hood of her cloak. Beneath it she would be wearing that plain robe over the pristine nightgown. Her hair was still in its plait, falling down her front. He could imagine all too well unweaving it so that it spread around her and down her, veiling her body.

Her pale, naked body.

In his bed.

“Why?” she echoed. “Because you need help. You know you do. You’d have been in a fine pickle if I hadn’t watched you and created a distraction.”

He needed to escape.

To escape he needed to stand.

Standing would put them in contact almost everywhere.

He scrambled for a way around this, but in the end resorted to bluntness. “Go away,” he said.

Her hurt expression stung, but he had to protect her and himself.

“You’re not showing much gratitude.”

“I didn’t ask you to risk your neck.”

“And I didn’t. I let out a shriek, thumped on some stairs, then arranged myself tragically at the bottom.”

“Showing your legs to the world!”

She leaned forward, brows almost meeting in the middle. “It would have looked rather suspicious, wouldn’t it, if my clothes had arranged themselves in perfect decency? Just as suspicious as your clean, dry slippers, which gave you away.”

Damned clever virago.
He grabbed her plait and pulled her close.

She resisted, gripping his wrist. “Let me go!”

“You came here of your own free will, didn’t you? What for, Damaris? What for?”

He saw sudden fear, but she needed to learn a lesson.

“So we could go back downstairs and find the papers,” she protested, but he knew better.

She was flirting with fire and needed to be singed so she wouldn’t do it again. He forced her closer, then captured her head with his other hand and forced a kiss on her. He meant it to be harsh, but if anyone was singed, it was him.

He tore free of her hot, sweet lips and erupted to his feet, pushing her out of his way so sharply that she staggered. She was staring at him, eyes shocked wide.

He turned away and dug his hands into his hair. “Now will you go?”

“Of course.” Her voice sounded small and tearful. “If you’re intent on being unkind.”

Oh, God.
He lowered his hands and turned. “Damaris, you know you shouldn’t be here.”

“No one will know. Maisie’s snoring again, and besides, she wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Servants always gossip.”

“Not when the gossip might force a marriage the servant doesn’t want to have happen. She wants me to marry a title.”

“Wise Maisie. But if anyone else found you here, you could end up at the altar with me. And you, too, want to marry a title.”

“Why would Ashart, Genova, or Lady Thalia come over from the other wing? But if they did, they wouldn’t make me marry you. Everyone agrees that you’re a completely unsuitable husband for me.”

“In which case Ashart would probably call me out. As you’re a guest in his house, he’d see you as under his protection. Do you want someone to die for your whims? Perhaps you knocked your head when you fell. That’s the only explanation for this.”

“I
didn’t
fall,” she protested, but his words seemed to have struck home. “I’m sorry, then. You’re right. But there’s no true danger—”

“No danger!”

He dragged her to him for another violent kiss.

He knew he shouldn’t, knew he was plunging into the heart of the fire, but he couldn’t stop himself. Desire overwhelmed every scrap of sense and control.

Thought fell away and he could only feel—feel pleasure and hunger for more. He swept her into his arms and carried her to his bed, where he flipped open the catch of her fur-lined cloak and spread it, framing her in silvery softness.

Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, but she showed neither dismay nor fear.

With unsteady hands he opened her robe, distantly aware of clamorous warnings, but more pressingly aware of imminent ecstasy.

He looked to those lovely cat’s eyes, perhaps hoping for something to rescue him, but they were dark with desire. She smiled, grabbed him, and dragged him down for more kisses, endless kisses, kisses more wonderful because of her body beneath his hands and the soft, warm scent of her.

Jasmine.

Ruin.

He couldn’t care. Not now. Not when she was kneading his back with hungry hands, surging beneath him with passion, opening her legs so he was nestled between her thighs. His left hand found the wonderful softness of her breast, and he felt her instant gasping response.

He was probably the first to touch her like that.

He shouldn’t touch her like that.

“Oh, yes!” she whispered, hooking a leg over him, locking him closer to her, arching against him. He pushed up her nightgown until he felt the silky heat of her thigh, then scrabbled for his buttons so close by.

And found a remnant of sense.

Her chest rose and fell, as did his. Her body vibrated with need, and she pressed harder against him, clutched tighter at his arms. Her eyes were shut, but he read the change in her expression.

She was beginning to think, too.

He kissed her lips the lightest possible way. “Damaris, look at me.”

Resentfully, she did so.

Oh, God, how he loved her for this quick and glorious passion on top of all her other gifts. But she wasn’t for him.

“Do you want to marry me?” he demanded.