Lord Beast (28 page)

“And yet, somehow, he fell
hopelessly in love with you?”

“I don’t like your tone,” Vicky
told her darkly, absently smoothing down a wrinkle in the skirt of her gown.
“Now what’s this all about, anyway? Don’t tell me you need advice about how to
get Rhys to fall in love with you? The man is already besotted with you.”

Dani snorted. Unfortunately she
had just taken a sip of her hot tea when Victoria uttered those words and, as a
result, she began to choke and snort gracelessly.

“This is hardly a laughing
matter, Dani,” she chided, chuckling as she began to wallop the other woman on
the back. “I do wish you would take things more seriously.”

When most of the searing liquid
had been beaten from her lungs, Dani cast Vicky a withering glower. “You are
terrible,” she told her, “and you know that I was
not
laughing.”

“Yes, well,” Vicky continued
blithely, calmly and daintily taking an unperturbed sip of
her
tea, “you
were about to tell me what all this nonsense is about.”

In order to clear up some of the
burning in her throat, Dani tentatively raised the teacup to her lips again
before answering. “You are aware that Rhys and I are having some problems,” she
began. “I can’t seem to get him to show even the littlest affection for me.
I’ve followed my uncle’s advice about being honest with him, but that didn’t
work. I’m at a complete loss as to what to do, Vicky. He hasn’t even bothered
to see me since the wedding.” Finishing off on a miserable and petulant note,
Dani considered her friend sulkily, almost demanding an answer.

“Hmmm.” Vicky stared out the
window beside them, her face basking in the warm golden light of the day.
“Charming weather we’re having for this time of year.”

“Vicky!” Dani whined.

Vicky turned to her with a
beauteous smile. “Oh, alright,” she teased, “I think I can help you a little
but you should probably know that only he or you can really fix it and that’s
only if the other person really wants to fix it.”

“You’re babbling.”

Vicky gave her an irked glance.
“First, tell me,” she said in a straightforward, no-nonsense kind of manner,
“did you have a… wedding night?”

Dani looked at her incredulously.

“Don’t look at me like that,”
Vicky told her off snippily, “just answer the question please.”

“But I’m not sure I understand
what you mean.”

Vicky rolled her eyes impatiently
and made an indecipherable gesture with her hand. “You
know
,” she
gritted out. “Did you…er… be
intimate
with Rhys?”

Dani blushed and had to cover a
smile with her hand. Really, Victoria could be quite ridiculous when it came to
explaining some things. “No,” she squeaked, then cleared her throat before
reaffirming, “No, we didn’t. I think he intended to.”

Vicky’s eyes widened at that.
“You, uh, withheld certain rights from him, did you?”

“Oh, don’t look at me like I’m
some sort of beast, Victoria,” Dani reprimanded, hurt. “He was being the most
uncivilised barbarian I had ever had the misfortune to meet. Surely you
understand?”

At that, Vicky giggled and
stifled the sound by clapping her hand over her mouth, eyes apologetically
meeting Dani’s narrowed glower. “Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it,” she
amended quickly, but her eyes were grinning gleefully at the thought of Dani’s
predicament. “It is a little bit funny, though.”

“I really don’t see how.”

“Hmm. You might be right.” Vicky
idly tapped her finger against her cheek as she thought about the matter
silently. “So, no wedding night?”

“None.”

“Hmm.”

“Victoria!”

Vicky smiled at Dani, unaware or
untroubled by her impatience. “I think,” she said happily, “that I might just
know a way to help you.”

“Really?” Dani leaned forward
with anticipation, hoping and longing for her friend’s sure cure and fix for a
troublesome marriage, knowing that if anybody knew what to do, then Victoria
would be that person.

“Yes. I do.”

“Well? What is it?”

Victoria, like Dani, swayed
conspiratorially close to the other woman, a wicked glint gleaming in her eyes.
“Do you really,
really
, want to know what you can do to win your
husband’s affections?” she asked slyly.

“Yes! Yes, I do! Oh, yes!”

“Good, because I’m
going
to
tell you what you
have
to do.”

“Victoria, for God’s sake, what
must I do?”

A dark, elegantly shaped brow
cocked above an extremely mischievous blue eye and Victoria grinned lazily.
“Seduce him.”

Dani reared back, shocked. That
had been the
last
thing on her mind. It was inconceivable and
unthinkable that she, plain and innocent Danielle, would endeavour to seduce
her own husband. “Are you mad?” she exclaimed, loudly. “I can’t
seduce
him!
That’s obscene.”

Vicky frowned at her. “Are you
actually sitting there and telling me that lying with your husband is
obscene
?”

“No,” Dani huffed, “I’m telling
you that seducing my husband is obscene.”

Vicky snorted in disbelief and
folded her arms. “You have
much
to learn,” she told her wryly. “Why, you
cannot believe how much you can achieve by donning a pretty peignoir-”

“That’s just great,” Dani sulked,
“the man practically hates me because he thinks I’ve done something despicably
dishonest and now you think it’s a good idea to use my body to get what I want?
Oh, I can just imagine how that will work out!”

Vicky sighed, slowly expelling a
weary breath. “Look,” she began to explain patiently, “it’s not like that at
all. The two of you should have had your wedding night the way I see it, and
this silly little problem you are going through will be just that in a couple
of days. I have never seen you as happy as you have been with Rhys and Gabriel
has told me that Rhys is a changed man, a good man, because of you. I’m sure
that he loves you. In fact, I’m quite positive he does.”

“Hmmf.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Vicky
prodded. “Now, you see, from his point of view, you are the one denying him the
privilege of sharing your bed. You are the one who doesn’t want him.”

“That’s not true!”

Vicky quieted her with a stern
look. “
I
know it’s not, but
he
might not. I think you’ve got to
make him realise that you do want him in every possible way you know how, that
you want all of him, and you can prove it to him simply by going into to his
chambers, wearing a pretty peignoir, and
honestly
telling him why you
are there.”

Amid a furious blush that scoured
across Dani’s face, Gabriel chose that moment to enter the drawing room with
all the nonchalant grace of a man completely at ease in his environment and
home. “Lady Ashcroft,” he greeted Dani warmly, leaning down to impart a
brotherly kiss on her cheek, “a pleasure as usual.”

Both women stared up at him with
wide, guilty eyes, saying nothing. When the silence continued, Gabriel shifted
awkwardly on the balls of his feet before he remarked, “So, what have you
ladies been talking about?”

At once, they were animated,
waving hands energetically and glancing at each other, announcing at the
identical moment: “Pianoforte.”

“Embroidery.”

Silence reigned again.

Gabriel gave his wife a very
strange look. “Your sudden interest in music frightens me, darling,” he told
her dryly, “as I am well aware due to your past attempts that your musical ear
is the equivalent to that of partially deaf chimpanzee.”

Vicky gasped indignantly. “That
is a horrid thing to say!” she admonished, glaring at her husband. “Just for
that, I think I shall endeavour to try my hand at the violin!”

“Oh, God.”

Dani smothered a smile.

“I resent that,” Vicky was
telling Gabriel. “Are you quite done here? I find your presence offending.”

Leisurely, Gabriel snatched a couple
of biscuits from the tray on the service. “Maybe I’ll stay,” he murmured
thoughtfully, beginning to munch on the biscuits. “I say, this is a nice room
for you ladies. Much brighter than my plaintive study.”

“Why don’t you make a thorough
comparison by returning there, then?”

“Hmm.” Gabriel gave his wife a
petulant glance before ambling idly towards the door. “I acknowledge your hint,
madam. I can tell when I’m not wanted by my
own
wife.”

Dani watched Gabriel leave the
drawing room, a little envious of the ease his relationship with Victoria
unfolded. They made it seem perfectly normal to be perfectly
perfect
all
of the time, whereas Dani was finding it exceedingly difficult to remedy one
problem with a solitary stubborn man who she found impossible to read and
tedious to handle. If he wasn’t infuriated with her person, he was trying to
seduce her, which brought to mind the
next
issue. She didn’t have the
faintest clue about how to seduce a man.

“So,” Vicky grinned happily at
Dani, ensuring that her husband was well out of earshot before she continued to
speak. “What do you think of my advice? Will you see if it has any effect?”

Dani stifled the urge to roll her
eyes. “Not that I am agreeing with it,” she told her friend dryly, “but even if
I did think I could win him over through his own seduction, I wouldn’t have any
idea how to do it.”

Vicky pulled an odd, curious
face. “What do you mean?”

“I wouldn’t even begin to
understand the fundamentals of seduction, Vicky,” Dani said, irked. “I wouldn’t
even know how to start, having never been…um…”

“Intimate with a man?” Vicky
finished for her. She waved her hand about excitedly, grinning. “Oh, it’s no
bother at all, Dani. You’ll see. Just think about what Rhys does when he, er…
you
know
?” She made her eyes big and suggestive.

“What?”

“You
know
!”

“No, I don’t know.”

“You are being deliberately coy,”
Vicky told her off tartly and huffed a bereaved sigh. “Just think about what he
did in the gallery that may have constituted to your, er, becoming somewhat
overwhelmed.”

“And compromised?”

“Yes, and compromised.”

Vicky gave her a pointed look,
waiting expectantly for some sort of response. “You don’t really expect me to
tell you what he does, do you?” Dani retorted caustically.

“Oh, please! I shall simply die
if you don’t!”

“I most certainly will not!” Dani
protested, a scouring heat enflaming her neck and face at the simple thought of
sharing such intimate details with another person. It was inappropriate and
scandalous and, damn, Victoria had
sad
eyes…

“You will make my day!” she
whined pitifully, holding Dani’s arm as if she could squeeze the information
from the pores of her skin.

“There is nothing in all of
England that could make me divulge of that information,” she said firmly,
jerking her arm away from her friend’s urging fingers.

Vicky’s eyes glinted hopefully.
“I’ll tell you what Gabriel does-”

“Victoria, you are a ridiculous
human being,” Dani sniffed. “And I really would not care to know just how
Gabriel seduces you, thank you very much.”

“Ah,” said an infinitely deep
masculine voice from the doorway and both women watched in shock as Gabriel
chose that precise moment to re-enter the drawing room. He threw his wife a
wicked look. “Now
that
, Lady Ashcroft, is an astonishingly easy job to
complete on my part. It does help, however, if one does have a complacent wife
on hand with which to seduce.”

Before that day, Dani had thought
it humanly impossible for Victoria Sinclair to be embarrassed by something or
someone. It was, she noted with a wide smile, turning out to be
good
day.

Squaring her shoulders as if she
were about to face the marauding hordes of Genghis Khan, Dani inhaled
resiliently, stretched out her fingers until the tips brushed the brass knob of
the adjoining door, and then quickly snatched them back, shaking as if the
handle had scorched her very skin. “Oh, God! Oh, God, oh, God!”

“My lady?”

Dani turned around in surprise
and found the young maid, an armful of firewood cradled to her breast, staring
at her with wide, anxious brown eyes.

“Alice,” Dani breathed, rushing
over to her in a flurry of flimsy lace and extending her arms out to the
startled young woman, “let me help you with that!”

“N-no,” the maid stuttered,
nimbly lurching from Dani’s eager-to-assist hands. “I’m quite alright, my
lady.”

“No, truly, I insist. That’s a
lot of wood, you know.”

Beleaguered and probably fearful
of losing her position if she displeased the lady, Alice relinquished the
cumbersome pile of wood to her. Dani, now having received the logs, turned to the
fireplace that was already brimming with fresh logs. “Uh…” Happily, she just
dumped them on the rug next to the hearth, resulting in Alice’s flinch of
despair. “Is there
any
thing else I can assist you with?” Dani asked the
girl hopefully, wiping the splinters from her hands.