Promise Me Heaven (7 page)

He was rewarded by an unaffected laugh from his guest.

“I admit that I, too, had certain reservations. But I agree. They are unique. Fielding, I believe, has taken your challenge personally. She is determined to make me à la mode.” Cat smiled broadly.

They had gotten along remarkably well throughout the meal. There had been a few moments at the onset of the evening when Thomas had wondered if he’d pushed her too far. But teasing Cat was simply too delicious to resist. He had even felt a twinge of guilt, which he had quickly smothered, at his cavalier treatment of her. It was obvious she had taken the bait and dressed to impress him with her sophistication.

She had removed the lace inset from the bodice of her gown. If the fabric’s straining seams were any indication, she was trussed so tightly into the thing that a deep breath threatened to spill her over the top. She had further abused the poor gown by liberating it of such niceties as sleeves and hauling what little material was left down around her shoulders, a blatant bow to his remarks about prudishness. Her heavy mane of her auburn hair fell mostly free down her back.

Thomas found himself wondering whether his restraint was meant to be tested by this sudden, overwhelming display of feminine attributes. But Cat’s manner, after that first triumphant assessment of his unprepared reaction, had been all that was pleasant and friendly. Her astute observations on the problems of Lord Eldon’s proposed Corn Bill had afforded some stimulating conversation. If her grasp of the French situation had been as learned, they may well have spent the entire evening arguing politics, for God’s sake! Instead, he had asked her to join him in his library for an afterdinner libation.

She was sitting in the small velvet chaise before the hearth, where a fire chased away an unseasonable chill, watching as he read Hecuba’s note explaining that the rigors of prayer, which had kept her at her knees all afternoon, had exhausted her.

“I’m afraid Aunt Hecuba is set on rewriting her history as one of virtuous restraint,” Cat said as he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fire.

Thomas lifted his gaze to her. “Why does she wear black? Surely if your family had lost a member, I would have been informed.”

“No, no one has died. We are a ridiculously robust lot,” Cat said, laughing. “I suspect that my great-aunt is in mourning for the very past misdeeds she now claims to abhor. Oh, the sermons we have heard on the evil nature of men and the foulness of base physical unions!”

Thomas grinned, infected by her good humor. “She’s accounted something of an expert on the subject.”

“It seems rather sad to me, her insistence to forget her past. Surely, she can’t have had so many… friendships without having at least some kind memories?”

“Perhaps they weren’t of a kind nature,” he murmured, shifting his long legs.

“I refuse to believe that,” Cat said with self-assured naiveté. “Then again, I am, as you have been at pains to point out, eminently unsuited to make such a judgment, being so woefully ignorant of feminine insight.”

“You put me in the unenviable position of either having to say only a tart would be qualified to make that judgment or agreeing with your unflattering opinion of yourself.”

She smiled innocently. “Oh, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I merely await your opinion as an expert on any matter of abandoned behavior.”

“I see,” he said. And he did. The pleasantries were over.

Rising, Cat went to stand a moment before the fire. She turned slowly, looking at him with soft eyes and a warm smile. “On with the lessons. First off, I have a few questions I would like answered, if I might.”

“Ask away,” Thomas said warily.

“If a woman is to capture the interest of a rake, I assume that subtlety is not her chief concern.”

“It depends on what one calls subtlety. If you mean scribbling frustrated longings in a diary, or whispering them to another country miss in the hopes that they will eventually reach the ear of the rake, you assume correctly. On the other hand, going about in red satin with your hair undone might be going a bit far.”

He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken, having honestly not considered that her hair was, indeed, undone. But she merely colored a bit, her gaze returning to the fire. The flesh of her shoulders glowed amber in the soft light. Thomas had never taken Giles Strand for a fool, but if he had overlooked this woman, he may well be.

“So it’s a matter of compromise? An attempt to capture the attention of this one man without the censorship of all others?”

“A fast pupil. That’s it exactly.”

“And as far as your discourse on titillation, how does one go about engendering this desire without being obvious?”

“You might make the availability of the goods known but leave doubt as to whom they are being offered.”

“Oh, surely that won’t do. Why, any female in London, unmarried and in society, is assumed to be available,” she protested. “We are reared with the express purpose of making ourselves available.”

“Yes, but available for what? That’s the key. True, most any female is available for the honorable estate of marriage. But is she obtainable for anything else? As I see it, it is your task to make a sufficiently vague offer to Lord Stand to pique his interest.” His voice sounded terse to his own ear.

“
Strand
,” Cat corrected him, her eyes narrowing suspiciously before continuing. “Yes, but how am I to do that?”

“Well, that’s what we’re here to do, isn’t it? Instructions in titillation.”

“Ah, yes. The art of making a man want something…”

“… without being sure he’s going to get it,” Thomas finished.

“I think I see.” She turned from her perusal of the flames, regarding him speculatively. She raised one arm above her head to draw her fingers through her hair in a seemingly unconscious gesture of concentration. Her pose threw her into a sculpted silhouette against the dying fire. He could see the rise and fall of her breath catch and release the light on the soft mounds of her breasts. His throat went dry. She stood thus for a long heartbeat before crossing the room to the sideboard and pouring a glass of sherry.

“Let me see if I can illustrate,” she said, starting towards him. Silently Thomas watched her.

“Let’s say you are a man who would like a drink of sherry.” She considered the wineglass in her hand. “And I have the only glass of sherry around.”

Cat drew a long, elegant forefinger in gentle circles around the rim of the crystal glass. “Let us say you have not had sherry in years. Madeira, ratafia, burgundy? Yes. But not sherry.”

Dipping her finger into the amber fluid, she raised it to her mouth. Her tongue peeked out and slowly licked the moisture from the tip of her finger. A smile of appreciation curved her lips. He watched her in wry admiration, feeling his pulse quicken.

“And now, the sherry is within reach,” she whispered. “But you don’t know its price.”

Rewetting her finger, she slowly took it into her mouth and sucked gently on its tip. He was riveted by her performance.

The silk of her gown rustled and settled over his boots as she leaned so close he could see the blue veins in her breasts, feel the warmth emanating from her, the silken brush of her hair on his face as it swung over him. For a third time her forefinger dipped into the sherry. This time she raised it slowly to his mouth, brushing his lower lip with butterfly lightness. He felt the muscles tighten in his jaw, his cheeks, his chest.

Teasing his lower lip, she stroked the slick inner flesh with languid care. “And now you are tasting that sherry. But is a taste enough? Won’t a sip be more satisfying? Isn’t that what you really want?” Her voice had become a husky caress.

Raising the delicate crystal glass, Cat slowly took a small sip. The liquid shimmered on her lips, the firelight outlining their budding fullness.

She lifted her hand toward him again and he knew with awful certainty that her revenge was complete. His restraint had been pushed to its limits, and while he was no randy young buck lusting after his first maid, the sensation was startling in its intensity. He wanted her. It had been years since he had wanted a woman like this. Simply. Elementally. Without hidden motives.

The little fool did not even know how far she tested him. Like a kitten first unsheathing its claws, she was delighted they had drawn blood, unaware her prey might be dangerous when provoked. He would allow this to go no further. He caught her slender wrist inches from his face. For a second their eyes locked, his in hotness, hers in open triumph. A second later her gaze fell, confused before that heat. He drew in a ragged breath, mastering the desire that had exploded within him.

“Touché,” he congratulated her.

“Truce?” she whispered.

“Truce.”

Chapter 6

Brighton

C
at smiled fondly at her great-aunt, who was snoring softly away from her side of their coach. She looked like an untidy pile of clothes dumped into the corner. The trip to Brighton to procure suitable garb for Cat had been tiring for Hecuba, warranting, as it did, lengthy discourses on Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babylon. Conversely, her dire warnings about the road to perdition were littered with clumsily veiled, if pithy suggestions for Cat’s transformation into a temptress until her pose of vigilant suspicion had exhausted her.

“You two go on with your conversation,” she’d said, her eyes fluttering shut. “I shall just meditate a moment on the fate of fallen women. Women who pinch their cheeks to put color into them, moisten their lips with tallow, and don’t wear gloves when dancing.”

In the two weeks since their arrival at Thomas’s home, she’d revealed beneath the facade of religious zeal a still naughty wench with a weakness or two; she fell asleep anywhere, at any time, and she drank like a fish. Hecuba had “fortified” herself for their shopping excursion with liberal amounts of ratafia.

“I begin to suspect that your aunt’s reputation owed less to a natural wantonness than to a proclivity for the vine,” Thomas said. “Tell me, is she often in this state at Bellingcourt?”

“No, most often she’s berating some poor housemaid for her supposed moral laxness. But then, Bellingcourt hasn’t boasted a wine cellar since we moved there.”

“Sometimes these things seem to be hereditary. I suggest that you, m’dear, stay firmly away from the bottle lest you end up giving away your trump card before even playing the hand.”

Cat gave a companionable snort. “Not likely, sir. I shall guard my suspect tendencies till after Strand is firmly delivered to the altar. Then, no doubt, I shall fall into a perpetually disreputable state. Though a properly wedded one.”

“Just so,” Thomas answered with what seemed to Cat a degree of roughness. “But you will never reach that state unless you improve your skills. Now, don’t fly into the boughs, Cat. We’ve dealt well enough together these past weeks. Too well to ruin all the groundwork we’ve laid just so you might teach me another well-deserved lesson.”

It was true. Thomas treated Cat with a fond, if sometimes exasperated, familiarity. It was a course far more comfortable then the scene played out in his library. Cat
should
have been distinctly relieved. She had no desire to fall again into his dark, burning gaze. Having always prided herself on clear thinking, the not unpleasant but decidedly unfamiliar sense of imminent abandonment had shaken her. This friendship was far better, which made it hard to account for her feeling of dissatisfaction. It was ridiculous, particularly since they got along famously whether laughing over their shared taste in the absurd or discussing the various subjects in which they shared so many interests.

Thomas had become the perfect companion. She was surprised his declaration of truce had been earnest. No other man of her acquaintance, including any of her proud brothers, would have been capable of acknowledging a woman had bested him in a game of seduction. They would have sought to repair their damaged self-image, no matter what the cost. But Thomas was unlike any other man.

He had apparently had some sort of military or diplomatic career after his brief, though brilliant, one as a London rake. He spoke French with an accent indiscernible from the haughtiest Parisian aristocrat’s. He was willing to converse on any topic, from the inflammatory subject of Home Rule to the explicit one of animal husbandry. And he honestly appeared to take pleasure in her opinions and even more pleasure in their disagreements.

Once, after reviewing a treatise on rotating crops in a scientific publication he subscribed to, she had been so excited by the implications that she had hurried out to the field to enlighten him. She had found herself standing beside him, ankle deep in loamy soil, before realizing she was inappropriately dressed in a gauzy morning gown.

Thomas had not seemed to notice. He had listened to her excited litany with an earnest expression before swinging her high up in his great, powerful arms and striding with her back to the house. His embrace had been matter-of-fact though her heart had quickened at the knowledge of his unusual strength, of how carefully his arms held her.