The Dangerous Viscount (31 page)

“Damn it, woman,” he muttered as he pulled back
and got up on his knees the better to work. “What is this garment? Whose devilish idea was it to use a thousand buttons? Do you mind if I rip them?”

“I’d rather you didn’t because I like the robe. But I suppose it belongs to you and you can treat it as you wish.”

“Belongs to me?” he growled, not really caring. He managed to free a couple of the accursed little knotted silk spheres from their loops.

“It’s Indian. I found it in the attic. There’s another one that will fit you. Would you like to put it on?”

“No thank you. My goal is for you to wear less clothing, not me more.”

She gave that delighted laugh that always made him feel inexplicably happy. “Let me help. You start at the bottom and I’ll work from the top. Race you to the middle.”

The location of “the middle” wasn’t specified, neither was the reward for winning this race. It was understood that both would win and claim the same prize. Just as long as the blasted robe came off. In the end urgency lent him dexterity and Sebastian had passed the belly when they met and fought over the last button, somewhere in the region of her waist.

“May I?” he asked politely.

At her assent he pushed aside the two front halves of the garment and sucked in his breath. She wore not a stitch of underclothes. He’d never had the chance to examine Diana fully naked, nor any other woman, but it had been well worth the wait.

He looked. And he touched.

His fingers explored the etched line of the collarbone and the rounded right angles of her shoulders.
He filled his hands with her breasts and let the taut nipples tickle his palms. In a dream he kissed the spot between the twin mounds then worked up the side to take a pink nipple between his lips and explore its texture with his tongue. Some instinct told him to nip it, just lightly with his teeth and he read her reaction as happy surprise. A little surge of pride subdued his purely physical desire to cut short the preliminaries. Discovering how to give Diana pleasure was worth waiting for his own satisfaction.

While his mouth attended to her breasts his hands delineated the curve of waist and hips, a line unlike anything else and so unmistakably feminine. He felt her belly, still firm with only the softest swell but soon to grow with his child, and with one finger circled her navel. Diverted from his other task, he lowered his head and rubbed a cheek against the smooth skin, kissed the neat indentation.

He looked up the length of her body, between her breasts to find her returning his gaze with smiling eyes. Her pelvis gave a little wriggle, drawing his attention to the most interesting area of the female anatomy.

He had every intention of lasting long enough for her to achieve full pleasure from his thrusts, but a little insurance never went amiss.

Threading his fingers thorough her curls he found her already wet which meant, he knew, that she was prepared for the entry of his sex. He looked, he felt, and unable to resist, he pressed his nose to her mound, inhaling the unfamiliar, intoxicating scent of woman.

Then he remembered something else he’d read
about. He wanted to taste as well as smell. Without stopping to think or ask permission, he replaced his nose with his mouth, his questing fingers with his tongue. She shrieked.

“Oh Lord!” she cried at his slight hesitation. “Don’t stop whatever you do.”

Thankfully he didn’t. Diana hadn’t expected, when she decided to let Sebastian take the lead in their lovemaking, that he would introduce her to something new. Her first husband had never pleasured her with his mouth; her second did it wickedly well. Hot hard strokes hit just the right spot with such uncanny skill that she was at once in danger of dissolving into ecstasy. Wanting to make the bliss last, she breathed deeply, relishing every caress, and groaning her delight until she could resist no more and he sent her flying.

“Where did you learn that?” she gasped, collapsed among the cushions in a boneless state.

“I’m a well-read man.” She felt the movement of his lips against her ribs and his hair tickling the underside of her breasts.

She ran her fingers through the disarranged locks. “I’m beginning to see the advantages of a broad education.”

“Whatever I undertake, I strive for excellence.”

She became aware that a particular part of him was striving against her thigh. She tugged at his shoulders. “Show me what else you’ve learned.”

Without delay his body enveloped her, big and warm and firm. And when she spread her legs to welcome him, his member was too. The smoldering embers of her desire reignited to scorching flame
when she felt herself stretched and filled. Her hips tilted to meet him and she wished it could last all night. Her inner muscles clenched in time with Sebastian’s thrusts.

Holding his weight on his elbows, he looked down at her face with fierce concentration. She read a determination to please her that warmed her racing heart. Murmuring incoherent words of encouragement and praise, she pulled his head down for a long wet kiss that went on and on as their bodies worked together, damp and slick. With almost casual ease she climaxed again and could feel by Sebastian’s intensified breathing and the tension in his muscles that he was ready to join her. Instead he held back, through some effort she didn’t understand, and resumed his steady rhythm. Not until she melted for the third time, with a force that made her cry out her joy, did he quicken his pace, throw back his head and spend himself explosively inside her.

It took at least five minutes before Diana was capable of moving. She propped herself up on one elbow. Sebastian lay on his back, still breathing hard and looking quite adorably pleased with himself.

“That was delicious.” She traced the straight slope of his handsome nose, then the outline of his mouth, and followed the passage of her forefinger with her lips.

“So I gather,” he said smugly, “judging by the noise you made.”

“Was I loud?”

“I doubt there’s man or beast still sleeping anywhere in the vicinity.” He fended off her indignant protest. “Not that I have any complaint.”

“There’s a certain advantage to being the sole inhabitant of an entire wing of a mansion. In London I might wake up the neighbors.”

“If you can’t learn to express yourself more quietly we’ll have to move to a ship in the middle of the Thames.”

Although the conversation was a joking one, he spoke as though they would continue to live together, and not in the frozen wasteland of Northumberland. Diana’s heart expanded and she snuggled up against his side, tucking her head in his shoulder. They lay together in peaceful satiation for some time until she involuntarily shivered.

“The fire needs building up,” he said.

While he added wood to restore the blaze, she pulled on her robe again, without buttoning it, and retrieved the quilted chintz banyan she’d found in the same box.

“Try this on,” she said.

The loose knee-length garment suited him, the dark red background providing a masculine contrast to the extravagant floral pattern.

“I like it,” he said. “I wonder how it came to be in the attic. Or any of the other things, either.” He walked over to the bed and examined one of the bed curtains.

Diane joined him. “That cloth was made for export to England. Do you see how the flowers are tulips, roses, and daisies? Not the lotuses and oriental flowers you see in some of the patterns.”

Sebastian showed more interest in the recent history of the fabrics. “How long have these stuffs been here at Saxton? Is there any way of knowing?”

“Hedley says fifty years.”

“In my great-uncle’s time. I never knew him to be concerned with such things. I can’t imagine why he would have ordered so much. But having bought it, why was it never used?”

“Hedley says the late Lord Iverley was engaged to be married and intended to put the house in order.”

“Engaged? I don’t believe it. He loathed women.”

“Did he ever tell you why?”

Sebastian hunched his shoulders and put his hands in the pockets of his robe. His expression shuttered. “He said you couldn’t trust them.”

Diana wanted to probe, but instinct told her to draw back. Yet she couldn’t quite leave the subject alone. “He was unfortunate in his choice,” she said lightly. “According to Hedley she jilted him for a man of higher rank. She preferred the heir to a dukedom.”

Even as she said it she knew her mistake. Although Sebastian would only have to question the butler to get the same information, she’d give anything to take it back. He made no response but she could sense that Blakeney wasn’t far from his thoughts.

As usual, he used concern for her health as an excuse to change the subject. “You should go to bed. I’m going to read in the library for a while before I sleep.”

“Fetch your book and bring it here.” She put her arms around his neck. “You could read me to sleep,” she whispered. “If you chose something interesting enough perhaps you’ll keep me awake.”

He politely but firmly withdrew from her embrace. “You need your sleep.”

Two hours later she lay awake in the dark. Physically she felt splendid, couldn’t imagine ever feeling unwell again for the rest of her life. Her teeming brain nagged her, asking if she’d ever make her husband see her as more than a representative of a despised sex whose bed he liked to share. She’d come to Saxton with the goal of finding a way to cohabit in a civil manner as their fortunes merged and their children were born. But her heart wasn’t content with such modest aspirations.

That Sebastian could be a good lover she no longer doubted. Now he needed to learn to be a good husband. She wasn’t sure he possessed the same natural talent, or an equal drive for self-improvement.

Drifting on the edge of sleep, she felt a little better when he slid into bed and flung a heavy arm about her waist from behind. A soft kiss on her neck was gentle and undemanding but his naked body didn’t disguise his wishes. With a happy sigh she turned over and welcomed him.

T
he small dining room at breakfast time was now the only reliably woman-free place in the house. Diana took her morning meal in bed and waiting at table remained a footman’s job. Otherwise Saxton was infested with female servants, dusting, scrubbing, polishing, and doing whatever else was needed to bring the place to the degree of cleanliness deemed necessary by his wife.

At first Sebastian protested when she hired two maids, but she silenced him with the information that they were the daughters of one of the dead miners. Then another half dozen appeared.

“We don’t have enough staff in this huge house and it’s hard to find menservants. They earn more in the mines.” She was good at undercutting his arguments. “I think it our duty to offer employment to women so
they
don’t have to work underground.”

Diana had been shocked to learn that the collieries employed women as well as men for the dangerous and backbreaking labor. She’d lost her temper when she discovered children as young as four years old were put to work alongside the coal miners, crawling through tunnels too low and narrow for adults.

Sebastian agreed with her concerns; he’d already instituted measures to improve working conditions at the Saxton mine. The recently passed factory act ruled that no children under nine were to be employed in cotton mills and older children were limited to twelve-hour days. Though the law didn’t apply to mines, he felt it was the least he could do to voluntarily follow the same restrictions. He also liked Diana’s proposal to start a school for the younger children, and allow the older ones a few hours off each day for education.

But while the employment of maidservants might be good policy in the wider sense, he found their presence in the house unsettling. Since early childhood he’d never lived among women.

Diana’s French maid he didn’t mind. She always excused herself whenever he appeared and her approving glances told him why. The French had a reputation for enthusiasm when it came to the amatory arts, a well-deserved one if the contents of Tarquin’s library were anything to go by. The Frenchwoman—Chantal he believed was her name—knew exactly what he and her mistress got up to as soon as they were alone.

Which was ultimately the reason he tolerated the feminine invasion. He was beginning to fear he couldn’t live without its leader. He wanted Diana just about every moment of every day and night. The nights presented no difficulty. Her amorous eagerness equaled his own. Retiring early to the Rajah’s Court, as he now dubbed her bedchamber, he gave free reign to his passion. She welcomed every manifestation of his developing erotic fantasies with fervor.

But those same erotic fantasies didn’t vanish with
the coming of day. As the comfort and color of the Rajah’s Court extended, room by room, into the rest of the house, so did his desires. He’d retreated to the masculine sanity of the library yesterday and found curtains at the windows and a huge multi-hued carpet covering much of the floor. While he appreciated the added warmth, what he mostly wanted to do was summon his wife, strip her naked, and roll around on the rug with her.

That was not what libraries were for. And it wasn’t what days were for, either, he had to keep reminding himself. He found every excuse to leave the house and as a result the industrial and agricultural affairs of the Iverley estates received more attention from their owner than at any time in history. It was the only way to keep his thoughts rational. Even now, for God’s sake, as he replenished his energies with roast beef, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d been doing two hours earlier. Her scent haunted him as though imprinted on his skin. He tested the hypothesis by taking a deep sniff at his wrist.

“Good morning, my lord.”

He almost choked on a mouthful and dropped his arm to his side. Diana stood at the doorway. The tousled nymph of the dawn—warm, naked, dreamy-eyed—had given way to the Olympian goddess, dressed for Bond Street and polished to a high gloss.

“I’ll have some of that ham, please, George,” she said briskly, “and a couple of muffins.”

She showed no inclination for breakfast chatter but set about slathering her muffins with butter and honey.