The Trouble With Virtue: A Comfortable Wife\A Lady by Day (35 page)

But she understood responsibility.

Duty.

The safety that came with meeting others’ expectations.

The only part of herself she ever dared give to the Mediterranean was the part she’d bestowed on Ahmet years ago, somewhere off the foggy coast of France, as they’d closed in on England and all that was left of the region she loved was the language on the tongues of the ship’s crew.

“What I can see—” she managed, looking up at him even though the very fact of standing this close to him made her feel practically on fire “—is its potential.”

Its potential to drive Elias to an early grave,
she could almost hear him thinking.

“You question my motives, but you would do well to look in the glass on that point. Here—here’s one that will do the job.” And then he was touching her— pressing his hand against the small of her back and steering her to the dressing table. His touch was a shock, burning through layers of fabric as though she wore nothing at all. He pushed her in front of the looking glass, and she saw herself with him standing behind her, standing a head taller, observing her closely. “What do you see, Lady Mareck?”

The sight of herself standing so intimately with Sir Noah left her momentarily speechless.

“Shall I tell you what I see?” he pressed, holding her gaze in the glass.

If she moved, they would touch. If she walked away, he would win. She reached deep and found her voice. “There’s no need for that, Sir Noah. You’ve already made it clear what you see—a bored lady amusing herself by dabbling in business.”

“You forgot high-handed.” Even in the dusty glass, he was so handsome she could spend a lifetime staring at him. “A woman whose experience ends at the edge of London, but who purports to know what’s best for others.” He filled every breath with a scent that spoke of ancient trade routes and warm desert nights.

“Some might frame my actions as helpful.”

“Or haughty.” He spoke so close that the rumble of his voice hummed against her ear.

“That covers
H.
Shall we move on to
I?
”

As if she were a spectator watching two other people, she stared as he raised his hand and traced a finger along the side of her neck. “Interfering,” he said.

Her skin came alive with a trail of fire. She needed to step away—
now
—but her feet were planted to the floor.

“Oh, yes.” Her voice was a strangled whisper, pushed from lungs that refused to work. “I pride myself on interfering.”

“Impenetrable.” His tone dropped. Roughened.

Her voice failed entirely. As she watched in the glass, he bent his head toward the curve where her neck met her shoulder. She felt his breath against her skin. Knew he was about to kiss her there, and that if he did, she would lean into him and be lost.

She forced herself to move away a hairbreadth before his lips met her skin.

“Sir Noah.” She bumped into the dressing table but managed to move out of arm’s reach. Her breath came too fast, and her skin felt much, much too alive. The spot he’d been aiming for on her neck keened with the need for his touch. “I shall not attempt to prove you wrong on that point.”

“What a shame.” He watched her with eyes that burned with desire.

She walked briskly to the door. “I’ve seen everything I need to. I shall return to the front and order the carriage around.” In truth she hadn’t seen nearly enough, but remaining alone in this house with Sir Noah a moment longer was out of the question. “Whatever my shortcomings, I have done nothing but act in service to Elias. Perhaps you should consider doing the same.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

H
E
WAS
LOSING
his mind.

Whatever this was that drove him to provoke Lady Mareck, it was going to end with him going mad—and not because it wasn’t working. No. Quite the opposite.

Yesterday, at Mays Abbey, he’d cracked her facade. He had seen it in her eyes. In the involuntary parting of her lips, the tension in her body when he’d touched her.

Touched
her.

In that single moment, what had started as a powerful desire exploded into a raging need. He needed more—her skin laid bare, her breasts in his hands, her legs wrapped around his hips.

Except that wasn’t what he needed at all. What he
needed
was to pique Elias’s interest in the Turkish shipyard and snuff out Lady Mareck’s resistance to the idea and be done with all this.

With
her.

As if on cue, Trowe appeared in the doorway of Elias’s sitting room and announced Lady Mareck—exactly as Noah had expected.

He wasn’t going to let up now. Not even if it killed him.

“Ah, Josephine!” Elias said, gesturing to her from where he and Noah sat at the table by the window. The exclamation made him cough. “Come and see Noah’s magnificent house.”

Noah stood, watching her approach, and that need snaked through him. She walked beautifully, as if floating on air. But she wasn’t an ethereal figment. She was real, flesh and blood, and yesterday he’d been playing with fire.

Ahmet’s Josephine. It was all but certain.

It should have repulsed him. Instead, it inflamed his curiosity. It made him imagine a woman very different from the one presented by Lady Mareck. A reckless, passionate woman. A woman open to a world of unknowns—who might appreciate the sparkle of sunlight on the waves and the haunting call of prayer from a mosque.

A woman who existed only in his imagination.

“This must be the villa you mentioned,” she said pleasantly, glancing over the large sheets spread across the table.

“It is.” Her soft, flowery perfume floated around him as he offered her his chair.

“How lovely.” She kissed Elias’s cheek. “I’m so pleased to see you up and about. How are you feeling?”

“Old,” he grumbled, and then, “Berwick! Have you brushed my new coat?”

“I have, sir,” Berwick said, lingering in the side doorway.

Elias grunted, and Lady Mareck seated herself, glancing up at Noah. She met his eyes briefly, directly, giving no sign that she was thinking of yesterday at all.

But he was bloody well thinking of it. Had thought of it half the night, in fact, as he’d lain awake wanting a damned sight more than a soft touch on her neck. His eyes went to the curve of her shoulder—to that spot he’d nearly kissed. He very definitely wanted more than that. He wanted hours and hours of hard and fast, punctuating several long nights of slow and deep.

“The architect drew these while the house was being built,” he told her, inhaling sharply, and took the chair opposite. “They’ve turned out to be an excellent likeness of the finished product.”

“Never seen anything like it,” Elias grunted.

“Yes, well... As soon as I saw the site, I knew it had...potential.” He met Lady Mareck’s eyes briefly across the table. “This is the main entrance.” He pointed to the pair of ornately carved wooden doors he’d designed himself.

Elias coughed and drank some water. “Excellent craftsmanship.”

Noah watched Lady Mareck survey the colored sketches of his sprawling, tile-roofed house with its stucco walls. The orange trees he’d insisted on everywhere there was space. The pomegranate shrubs and bright pink and orange flowering vines.

Oh, yes—his home was peaceful and comfortable and even beautiful. He looked at the drawing and wished suddenly, fiercely, that he could be there now, even though he hadn’t visited for nearly a year before he set sail for England.

He worried suddenly whether the caretaker he’d hired was doing his job, and whether the trees and bushes might have died and the place gone to ruin.

“The window sashes have the same design as the doors,” Lady Mareck commented.

His attention snapped from the drawing to her face. They did, but it was a detail that wasn’t immediately noticeable. “I decided to continue the theme.”

“Is it olive wood?”

“Yes.” He watched her more closely now.

“Excellent choice,” Elias said. “Strong, durable. Heavy, but hard. The ancients used it for joint work on their ships.”

“Lovely grain, as well,” Lady Mareck said. “The doors must be stunning.”

It took him a moment to realize there was no pretense in her voice. “They are, rather.” He watched her across the table, daring her to look him in the eye and say she preferred Mays Abbey to this.

“There’s a courtyard through here with a fountain where the four wings of the house are joined.” He turned the first drawing aside and revealed the next. There was his courtyard like something come to life out of antiquity, dotted with statuary and great urns from which spilled exotic plants. “These are some of the columns I told you about,” he told Lady Mareck. “The ones we unearthed during construction.”

“You incorporated them into the house,” she exclaimed, taking him by surprise.

He’d expected a reaction more along the lines of,
Mmm. Interesting.

“The discs had come apart, but we were able to fit them back together and build the columns into this east wall. The stone wall was built from the rubble, and the old foundation has become part of the floor inside the great room.” He turned the page to show her.

“Their floor has become yours.”

“Yes.”

His mind suddenly transported her there, and he saw her sitting by his fountain draped in exotic, flowing silks instead of the stiff casements of London. For one heart-stopping moment he could see her laughing and free, completing his villa with something he never expected it would have.

No. Bloody
devil
no. He hadn’t come to London seeking that kind of complication.

He took the conversation in a safer direction. “I had great plans to turn the north wing into a harem, but a stable of concubines sounds like a good deal more trouble than...” He gave Lady Mareck a calculated grin. “Well, I won’t say
than it’s worth.
”

“A harem!” Elias leaned forward, looking at the drawing more closely. “Berwick, pack my bags!” And then, reaching for his glass, “Apologies, Josephine. Good God, no need to look so alarmed. Noah was just having a bit of fun.” He chuckled. “Certainly does know what a man wants to hear.”

He didn’t suppose Elias wanted to hear that a man’s harem normally included, among others, his daughters, wives and even his mother. But there was no sense offering unsolicited facts if they didn’t work to his advantage.

He leaned back in his chair and raised a brow at Lady Mareck across the table. “A harem,” he mused. “It would require some
work—
” he paused to let her recall their conversation at Mays Abbey “—but I daresay it would make the guest quarters very...
comfortable.
”

She smiled, unmoved. “And here you allowed me to believe you disapproved of folly, Sir Noah.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been told it can be rather interesting.” He glanced at Elias, found the man watching them a little too closely. “But for now, it is simply the guest wing.” He reached to slide another drawing from the stack. “Here,” he said to Elias, “let me show you.”

He flipped through the drawings, yearning to see his home again more and more with each page. No, not only to see it. To
live
there. After it had been built, there had been little reason to move in. His life was at sea. He would have rattled around his giant villa alone.

But the more he spoke about it now, the more he began to imagine Elias there. To imagine finally, perhaps, calling the villa home.

And the more he glanced across the table, the more he wondered what it might be like to have a woman share that home with him.

* * *

T
HOUGHTS
OF
N
OAH
’
S
enchanting villa haunted Josephine that evening when she took the girls to the theater, and the following day during morning and afternoon visits. The villa haunted her this evening at yet another ball with the girls, where Sir Noah—as usual—just happened to be.

And it was haunting her now, after the rest of the household had gone to bed and she sat alone in the library signing Joseph Bentley’s name to a letter, an invoice, a bank draft.

It was too easy to imagine Sir Noah at home at his magnificent villa. To imagine
herself
there, dipping her fingertips into the fountain’s cool water or sitting on one of the stone benches beneath an orange tree in the courtyard.

Or lying in his bed, feeling his languorous touch on her skin.

She shivered, remembering the way he’d touched her at Mays Abbey. The way he’d looked at her while she’d studied those drawings. The way he’d spoken to her tonight at the ball. Oh, they had shared the usual conversation—“Lovely to see you again. Elias appears in slightly improved spirits... I don’t suppose I could have a look at Joseph Bentley’s papers tomorrow?”—but the tone of his voice had communicated an entirely different message.

You do realize I was controlling myself at Mays Abbey, don’t you, Lady Mareck? And I am controlling myself now. Do you see me staring at your lips? It’s because I’m contemplating kissing you. Right now. Perhaps even right here, in front of everyone, because propriety bores me.
She could practically hear him saying it.

He had proposed an outing to the shipyard tomorrow and requested her company, and she had started to decline before deciding it might be a useful exercise. They had discussed whether to try to pique Elias’s interest in the outing, as well. And the whole time, Sir Noah’s eyes had burned with far more intimate ideas.

I haven’t forgotten that I watched you undress, Lady Mareck. In fact, I remember it every time I see you. I’m thinking of it right now.
Oh, yes. There was no doubt he’d been thinking of it.
Can you tell I’m not satisfied? I want to strip that gown away and see you entirely nude. I want to put my hands on you and make love to you, and I’d lay money that you would enjoy it, Lady Mareck, because I’ve a sneaking suspicion you’re not what you seem to be.

All that and more had been plainly readable in the way his eyes had wandered over her body, in the little half smile that played at the corners of his mouth, in the way he’d stood closer than he should have while they’d spoken.

The control she’d held with an iron grip then was nowhere to be found now, while she sat alone in the darkened library in her nightgown and wrapper, thinking of him. Imagining what would happen if he
did
kiss her. Touch her.

Make love to her.

Good God.

She dipped her pen and scribbled a few furious words in a ledger, but it was no use. Sensations came alive everywhere. She wanted to feel his touch again. Breathe his scent. Make a reality out of all of it.

It was a desire that had to be conquered. She had far, far too much to lose to abandon herself with him now the way she’d naively done with Matthew all those years ago.

If you have an affair with Sir Noah, all of London will know it,
she scolded herself, and dipped her pen once more.

Eyebrows will rise. People like Lady Orville will cut you in the street.
She scratched a few figures in the book.

Was not once enough to teach you the isolation of scandal?
It was enough. If she marred her carefully built reputation now, there wasn’t a soul who would forget. And she might have been fortunate enough to have found an unexpected friend in Elias back then, when she’d been a young bride in a family that despised her, but she had so much more to lose now.

A thought whispered that nearly all of London was having affairs, and she was a widow, and taking a lover was practically de rigueur
.

Oh, indeed—if she took a lover such as Lord Whatley or Camden or Osburton. But if she took Sir Noah Rutledge as a lover—

“Auntie Josephine?”

The soft words caught her by surprise and she stood abruptly, scooting from behind the desk. “Pauline. Is something the matter?”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Of course not.” Her cheeks felt hot, as if Pauline could read her mind and knew what she’d been thinking.

“I couldn’t sleep. Or, I confess, I was up reading. I’ve been reading old accounts of the late war in the Mediterranean.”

“Have you?” And dreaming, no doubt, of Sir Noah’s privateering exploits during that war.

Pauline gestured a little timidly to the chair opposite Josephine. “May I— Do you mind if I sit?”

She should suggest that they order tea and sit together on the settee by the fireplace, but suddenly Josephine wanted the safety of the desk between them, as if somehow it could shield her wicked thoughts from being discovered by her innocent niece.

“Of course,” she said. Already her mind raced for the perfect words, the exact right things to say that would steer Pauline in a different direction.

The direction of one Mr. Crumley, for example, who had begun to show a keen interest in Pauline.

Pauline seated herself and immediately looked at her hands. With her braid falling over her shoulder and her small, heart-shaped face set off by a froth of lace around the neckline of her nightgown, she reminded Josephine of herself so many years ago.

“Aunt Josephine, I don’t know what to do. I read of these exotic places and all their wonders, and I can see them in my mind as if I’m really there, and I want to be there so badly it’s as if I’m being strangled. Lettie says I’m being ridiculous. But you don’t think so, do you? You’ve
been
to exotic places.”

Her description was so terribly accurate that for a moment Josephine could hardly breathe herself. “The lure of faraway lands can be very...bewitching,” she allowed. “But surely there are other things that interest you just as much. Drawing, for example.” As if a simple pastime could ever cure a lust for adventure.