Vixen in Velvet (20 page)

She hurried toward the door, trying to stifle the sobs that wanted to tear her chest apart.

He caught her before she reached the door and swept her off her feet and into his arms.

“No!” She struck his chest and kicked wildly. “Put me down! Go away! I’m done with you!”

He carried her to the chaise longue, as though she were one of her ladies, about to faint from an excess of sensibility or delicacy, when it was the opposite, and she wanted to do something violent. He didn’t lay her down but sat holding her in his lap while she fought him and the grief that threatened to suffocate her.

“I hate you,” she choked out. “I hate you and your idiot cousin. You’ve ruined everyth-thing!”

Her head sank onto his shoulder and she gave up and wept. She was miserable—embarrassed, disheartened, angry. She had reason to weep. The life she’d so laboriously constructed was falling apart. She’d fallen in love with a Roman god, and everyone knew where that sort of thing led.

L
isburne couldn’t leave her here, alone, crying.

He couldn’t leave her in any event, could he?

Now she was in his lap and she was warm and weeping and disheveled, her hair coming undone, literally, the false braids slipping from their moorings. And so, to give himself something to do while he tried to decide what to do, he set about disassembling her coiffure.

He unpinned flowers and carefully detached a false braid wound with ribbons. He unpinned the Apollo knots at the top of her head, and gently loosened her hair, there and at the sides. The clusters of curls at her ears softened and loosened as well, tumbling to her shoulders.

While he worked, she quieted. By the time he’d removed the last pins, she’d lifted her head from his shoulder to sit, her eyes closed, her head turned away from him.

He looked at her smooth neck and he knew he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

You’ve succeeded
, she’d said, and he hadn’t known how to explain, because he wasn’t at all sure what had made him behave as he’d done. If he hadn’t taken her in his arms, he might have made sense of it. But he’d lost control and kissed her and held her close. Then, every time he tried to leave, it was far too difficult, and it seemed as though leaving made no sense whatsoever.

He couldn’t possibly think now. All the turbulence—the passion and anger and whatnot—seemed to be with them still, throbbing under the surface, and the turmoil kept his mind from clearing.

He held a beautiful woman in his arms, and she smelled so good and she was warm and shapely and he’d wanted her for what seemed an eternity and he’d undone her hair and it fell in glossy waves over her shoulders and down her back.

He wanted to see those garnet curls against her naked back.

He found the hook and eye at the back of the dress’s neckline and began unfastening the dress. She took in a quick breath and let it out, but said nothing. She sat so very still, waiting.

He said nothing, either. He couldn’t think well. The risk was too great of saying the wrong thing.

Concentrating on the hooks and eyes, he made his way down the back of the dress. He was aware of his breath coming faster as the dress’s two sides slid apart, and he could see the beautiful stitchery of her stays, the lines and swirls of thread cording the satiny cotton. Her fine linen chemise peeped out between the corset’s back lacing and at the very edge of the neckline.

He kissed the back of her neck above the necklace, then below it, and continued downward, making a path of soft kisses to the teasing bit of chemise.

He heard her draw in a breath and let it out, the exhale shaky.

He wasn’t altogether steady, either, as he unfastened the two larger hooks at the back of her waist. The dress fell open, well below the waist where a long slit had lain hidden under a fold of the skirt. Even with the extended opening, getting the dress’s upper half down was a complicated business, especially the sleeve puffs he needed to untie and extract. Yet he did it efficiently enough, considering that a man rarely took the time to deal with such details, or needed to. Experienced women found ways to arrange matters beforehand. More usually, one simply didn’t bother with shedding much clothing.

This was different, though he couldn’t have said why or how.

He simply made a plan, as he usually did. He had a general idea of how the parts went together. Moreover, he’d been studying her clothing and planning how to disassemble it this age.

He told her to stand, which she did without looking at him. He knelt and untied her shoe ribbons and slid her feet out of the shoes. He rose, taking the hem of her dress with him. He reached under the dress and untied the corded petticoat that kept it puffed out. He slid the petticoat down and away. He lifted the dress over her head and dropped it onto the floor, where it subsided with a faint hiss.

He said, “I’ve been wanting to do that forever.”

She looked down at herself.

Layers remained. Corset, chemise, drawers, garters, stockings.

Then skin. The soft parts and pink parts.

He was growing very impatient.

He turned her so her back was to him, and reached under the chemise and untied her drawers. They slid to the floor. She closed her eyes and swallowed and stepped out of them.

His heart beat frantically, like a boy’s heart, the first time.

He drew her close again and bent his head and kissed her neck along the arc of her shoulder. She trembled. He trembled, too, his pulse at a gallop, his hands not as steady as they ought to be as he started on the corset strings. The ties lay over the slope of her beautifully shaped bottom. For all the artificiality of her dress, her shape was real, sweetly curved.

Perfect.

Her scent floated everywhere now. Lavender and Leonie imbued her undergarments, the fragrance so much richer because they lay so close to her skin. His heart drummed, fast and uneven.

He wanted to go fast, too. He made himself unlace her corset as steadily and soberly as he’d undone her hair and her dress. He wasn’t a boy but a man of the world, and he knew one didn’t hurry women unless they made it clear they wanted to be hurried.

The corset was falling open, and her hands came up, to hold it over her breasts. The gesture, so innocent, made his throat tighten.

He started kissing her back while he loosened the strings of her chemise. Still she held the corset, covering herself. He made paths of kisses along her upper arms, her naked arms, which he’d never seen before. He grasped them, his palms curving round warm, silky skin, while he kissed behind her ears, first one, then the other. She made a little sound, a laugh or a sob, he wasn’t sure.

He covered her hands with his, and lifted hers away from the corset. It slid downward. When she reached for it, he brought his hands over her breasts. She gasped. The fine linen was warm with the warmth of her skin. He cupped her breasts and squeezed them and “Oh,” she said.

He kissed her neck and her ears while he caressed her, and she let go of the stays, and let them fall. She was trembling again, her breath hitching.

If he had been thinking, he might have hesitated. He might have considered what her reactions meant. But he was beyond putting two and two together. The closest he came to thinking was pondering her clothing and skin and what he needed to do to get what he wanted. The difference between a girl of limited experience and a girl with none didn’t occur to him.

He turned her around and kissed her full on the mouth, and wrapped his arms about her, and this time there was no indecision or doubt. The armor was gone and she was so soft and warm and perfectly shaped in his arms, his Venus. There was no more deciding what was right or wrong or best or worst.

Deep kisses made him drunk. Her skin was velvet under his hands. He pulled off the chemise and threw it aside. He cupped her breasts and kissed and suckled them. He caressed her belly, and slid his hand down, to the feathery copper curls between her legs. When he touched her there, she gasped.

He paused. “Am I hurting you?”

“No.” She opened her eyes, so blue. “My stockings,” she said, her voice thick.

The sound sent heat surging through him, threatening to blast the last particles of his self-control. He managed to say, “I want to leave them on.”

She shivered. “And you?”

“I’ll take off my coat.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide and dark. “More,” she said. She lifted her hands to his neckcloth and clumsily untied it, her hands as unsteady as his. She unraveled it from his neck and let it drop to the floor. She hurriedly unbuttoned his waistcoat, then undid the button of his shirt. It fell open.

“There,” she whispered. And she kissed him, at the base of his throat. And more kisses, moving lower, the way he’d done to her.

If he didn’t act quickly, he’d disgrace himself.

He pushed her down onto the chaise longue.

He’d planned to take his time, but he’d done that, the endless time of undressing her, of caressing so gently, as though she were a bird he needed to tame. He’d reckoned without her voice and her eyes and her touch.

He shed the rest of his lower clothing—shoes, stockings, trousers—in a flurry, as though he hadn’t a moment to lose, as though the bird would fly away. His shirt concealed his breeding parts, but not his arousal, and he was dimly aware of her drawing back slightly, her eyes wide.

If anything could have alerted him to the truth, that would have done it, but he was past that level of thinking.

He pulled the shirt over his head and threw it aside.

“Mon Dieu,”
she said.

The blood was pounding in his ears but he paused at that small, shocked sound. She was studying him, her wide-eyed gaze going up and down, lingering on his swollen cock.

Then she drew in a long breath and let it out, saying in French, her voice shaky, “You are very handsome. Come here.” And she put her arms up and he went to the chaise longue and into them.

L
eonie was terrified, but she wouldn’t stop.

Marcelline hadn’t explained a fraction of it: what a touch could do . . . the feel of his mouth on her skin . . . the shocking pleasure when he took her breasts in his hands and caressed them . . . and now, his long beautiful body arched over hers, his unruly curls tickling her chin as he showered kisses over her neck and downward . . . the shock of his lips closing over her nipples and suckling, and the way heat raced from there to the pit of her belly and made her squirm and arch her back and utter sounds she’d never made before.

There was no explaining this in words: the way one couldn’t keep still, couldn’t stop touching . . . the way she had to bury her face against his skin, because she couldn’t get enough of the way he felt, the way he smelled, the way he tasted.

No one could explain the need, the force that carried one along, like a raging current.

No one needed to explain anymore.

He slid his hand down over her belly and downward, to the place between her legs where he’d touched her before. She’d known he would, but it had surprised her all the same. Now he moved downward altogether, and then his mouth was where his hands had been, and he was kissing her there. Her body arched and twisted, and he added his thumb, and the pleasure was beyond anything. It built and built until she couldn’t bear it, yet she did, somehow, because she couldn’t stop, and if he stopped she’d die.

Then she lost any sense of what he was doing, because her body had taken charge. She could feel her blood rushing in her veins and pounding in her head. Everything was vibrating, her legs, too, until all the feelings shot upward, like an explosion inside, and she let out a little shriek, and dug her fingers into him, to hold on, to keep from flying into the ceiling.

Then she felt him rise, and in the instant she opened her eyes to see what he was doing, he pushed into her.

Ouch
.

She’d known it would hurt, at least a little, but that was when she had a brain and now she hadn’t, and she was surprised and unhappy and uncomfortable.

He said, “Dammit, Leonie.”

She looked up at him. The godlike being was sweating like a mortal, and looking dazed and wild.

“I didn’t know,” he said. His voice was hoarse.

She could barely find hers. When she spoke it sounded like a drunkard’s. “Didn’t know what?”

“This is your first time, isn’t it?” It was an accusation.

“I’ve been
busy
,” she said.

One long, pulsing moment. Then he let out a thick laugh and shook his head, and bent and kissed her.

“It’s pointless to stop now,” she said when he raised his head.

“I’m not stopping,” he said. “It’s too damned late for that.”

He settled back onto his haunches, and hooked her legs over his arms. She felt the place where he was wedged give way a degree, and the squeezed feeling eased. He moved inside her, and her muscles relaxed a little more. And soon the moment of disturbance passed. The feelings flooded back, and the heat and pleasure and excitement of having him inside her, of being joined, smothered qualms and fears.

He went on moving inside her, slowly, and her body gave way, accommodating him. The heat built, and she was vibrating again, the way she’d done before, only this was more feverish and powerful. He thrust into her again and again, and her body answered his rhythm. It was like dancing in a storm, like riding ocean waves. She forgot discomfort, forgot everything but him and this rapturous joining.

Once again, the feelings pulsed inside and seemed to carry her upward, as though some god carried her to Olympus. On and on, the mortal world hot and pulsing, and feelings, the great storm cloud of feelings, swirling about her and inside her. At last she reached her destination, a long, soaring moment of pure joy, and then release. Then he sank onto her and kissed her, and she drifted down to the world again, her hands tangled in his hair.

Chapter Eleven

There is a most scandalous story about a certain English Mr. H. at Paris, and two orphan children of a German baron by an English wife: we shall wait to hear if it has reached our correspondent’s circle.

—
Lady’s Magazine & Museum
, March 1835

T
he chaise longue was narrow, not meant for two people. But when Lisburne moved to take his weight off Leonie, she turned in his arms and tangled her legs with his and fit herself against him as easily as though they’d practiced for years. Then they had room enough, all the room they needed, which was to say none at all between them, though he was no longer inside her.

He was cooling and calming, and a part of him was sliding into sleep, one hand resting so comfortably on her hip. Yet a fragment of his being clung to wakefulness. That was the part where his conscience was working itself into a frenzy—now, when it was too late, after it had lain about in a stupor during all the time when it might have made itself useful.

He said, “Are you all right?”

She had her face nestled against his shoulder, and the words came out slightly muffled. “Now I know why Venus wore that look. She was thinking, ‘What just happened? Am I all right? How can he sleep at a time like this?’ ”

It wasn’t remotely like any answer Lisburne had expected. Tears, shame, fear, guilt—weren’t those the usual reactions?

He should have known better. This was Leonie, who’d stood motionless for at least a quarter hour in front of his painting. She’d done it because, he now understood, she had been trying to organize and arrange it in her mental ledger.

“He sleeps,” he said, pushing aside his qualms for the moment, “because he feels as though he’s performed all the labors of Hercules in the space of a few minutes. In the most enjoyable way possible. But still . . .”

“It takes a lot out of a man,” she said. “I understand that now.”

Now
she understood. Thanks to him. Other men, he knew, delighted in virgins and paid high prices for them. Those men were not Simon Blair, the fourth Marquess of Lisburne. His father had told him that a true gentleman had intimate relations with only one virgin, and that was his bride, on the wedding night.

Lisburne had only himself to blame for what had happened. Leonie was a novice. No matter how sophisticated she seemed, she was inexperienced. Lisburne, who had abundant experience, was the one responsible. He ought to have known better. He ought to have seen. But he’d been willfully blind.

Now, when it was too late, he remembered the clues: the tentative way she’d first kissed him, the sense he’d had of her learning as she went along. Gad, hadn’t she told him?

I may be inexperienced but I learn very quickly, and whatever I learn to do, I am determined to do
extremely
well
.

Inexperienced
. He’d made the word mean what he wanted it to mean. He’d barely acknowledged the possibility she was an innocent. He’d dismissed it as highly improbable. She was one and twenty. She was a milliner who’d lived in Paris. She was sophisticated, and it was a deeper sophistication than the mere Town bronze debutantes acquired after a Season or two.

Yes, that made virginity unlikely. It didn’t make it impossible.

His intellect, in whose logic he took so much pride, must have logically allowed for the possibility. But he’d let desire and vanity overwhelm his judgment. He’d refused to see the clues.

“You’ve labored mightily, yet you’re not going to sleep,” she said.

“I’m thinking,” he said.

He felt her tense.

“That you made a mistake?” she said.

“That I did something I know is wrong,” he said.

“Oh, your
conscience
,” she said.

“My dear—”

“I don’t have one,” she said. “I only understand them theoretically. I don’t have morals, either. I’m not a lady.”

“It doesn’t matter. This was your first time.”

“My first time would have happened a long time ago, if I’d had more time—or made more time—for men,” she said. “If it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else, eventually. I wanted it to be you. I knew you’d make it pleasurable, and you did. It was . . . very nice. I can almost forgive you for ruining my life.”

He kissed her shoulder again. “I thought it was more than very nice.”

“I have no basis for comparison,” she said.

“I don’t, either.”

Her head came up and she drew back to give him a hard stare.

“You’re my first maiden,” he said, and in spite of his unhappiness with himself, he couldn’t help enjoying the view of lush curves and the creamy skin that made a perfect frame for her hair. Titian would have swooned. Botticelli, too.

“Are you roasting me?” she said. “Not even when you were a boy?”

Except within the close bounds of his family, he disliked talking about his father. Even now, the sense of loss made it difficult to speak. Time had lessened the sorrow. It hadn’t erased it. No one but close family members understood how it was.

Yet he came up onto one elbow, like some ancient Roman settling to dinner conversation, and explained. The rules. What a gentleman did and didn’t do. The whys and wherefores. She listened, her blue eyes sharply focused, completely attentive. She was thinking it over and organizing it into neat files and marking it down in the columns of her private account book, he knew.

He felt
more
naked.

When he’d finished, she brought her hand to his cheek. He turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand.

She swallowed and said, “Not the clearest judgment either of us has ever exercised,” she said. “But to be fair, Lord Lisburne—”

“Simon,” he said. “I think when two people are naked, sharing a narrow piece of furniture, a degree of informality is permissible.”

She shook her head. “I’m not ready for informality. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. I think you should call me Miss Noirot when we’re naked. Especially when we’re naked. At a time like this, when . . .” She trailed off, her gaze turning inward, her eyes widening. “Oh, Gemini, what have I done?”

She was off the chaise longue in an instant, and hurrying away while he was still trying to find his balance and sit up. She scurried across the room, one of her stockings sliding down her leg. “What time is it? What have I done?”

“Leonie.”

She scrambled among the discarded clothing on the floor and various other surfaces where odds and ends of their attire had landed. She found her lacy handkerchief and hastily cleaned herself with it. She snatched up her chemise and pulled it on. “How could I be so stupid?”

“Leonie, there’s no need to—”

“You’d better go.” She disappeared behind a curtain—a dressing room, it seemed to be.

“I most certainly won’t,” he said. “I expected tears. And hysteria. But I expected that sooner. You said—”

He broke off as she burst through the curtain, now wearing a nearly transparent, completely obscene dressing gown over a chemise made of mist. “Of course I’m hysterical!” she said. “Tonight, of all nights, I forgot about Tom!”

She ran out of the room.

I
t took Lisburne a moment to find his shirt and throw it on. He was confused and alarmed, but preserved sufficient presence of mind to avoid shocking any innocent maidservants lurking about the place.

The thought of servants gave him pause. Gossip . . . yet more scandal spreading about Leonie and about her shop . . .

And if she bore a child . . .

A child, a child. Leonie carrying his child.

No, no, he wouldn’t think of that now. He’d enough to deal with at the present moment. One problem at a time, and right now, her panic was paramount.

Since she hadn’t closed the door behind her, he caught the muted sound of stockinged feet on the stairs. He hurried out of the room, looked down the stairwell then up. He caught a glimpse of the filmy dressing gown.

When he reached the passage on the second floor, he saw light spilling from the doorway of the sitting room. He found her there, placing foolscap and an inkstand on the table where they’d supped.

“I cannot believe that Tom—whoever he is—will expire of grief if you fail to write a love letter this night,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Who has time for love letters? It’s business, my lord—”

“Simon.”

“It’s business,
mon cher monsieur
.”

“Very well, I’ll accept
my dear sir
,” he said, “because you say it precisely like a Parisian.”

“I grew up mainly in Paris,” she said. “Being the youngest, I spent the greatest percentage of my life there. Please don’t make me think about anything else. This is hard enough as it is. Maybe you ought to go home. Or . . .” She sank into a chair and stared at the sheet of paper. “Or maybe you would fill a large glass of brandy for me. I hate this!”

He moved to the table and looked down at the empty page.

She looked up at him. “Have you any notion how difficult it is for a girl to think when a nearly naked man looms over her?”

It was hard to think while looming over a nearly naked woman who smelled and tasted and felt delicious. What he wanted to do was sweep the paper and inkstand and everything else from the table and lift her onto it, and teach her some new things.

He said, “What do you need to think about at this time of night? Midnight came and went ages ago.”

“I know! And he must have it before five o’clock, if I hope to have any chance of its being inserted.”

“Madame, what, pray, are you talking about?”

She looked up at him. “Tom Foxe. The
Spectacle
. If I don’t send in my report about Vauxhall, the world will read only what the other correspondents have contributed, and they’re sure to make the shop and the Milliners’ Society look like swindlers and degenerates. But I don’t have the knack. Sophy has the knack. But she’s—she isn’t here!”

He drew a chair close to hers and sat down. He took the pen from her and replaced it on the inkstand. He took both her hands in his. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to take a moment to calm yourself. Then you’ll explain your problem to me in your usual orderly fashion. Then I’ll bring you drink or try to help or do whatever seems the most useful thing to do.”

L
eonie looked at their joined hands and told herself this was most unwise. She couldn’t confide in him merely because they’d had an extremely intimate interlude. She didn’t want to see him as someone she could turn to when she was in difficulties, because once he was gone, she would miss him all the more. Only look at the wreck she was without her sisters!

But she was in a great difficulty, and sometimes simply explaining a problem helped one discern the solution.

And he was practically naked. And the way the light fell on him made him look like a golden god, and he was holding her hands and it was very hard to be wise.

She explained that Maison Noirot was one of the
Spectacle
’s several Anonymous Correspondents. “Mainly we report what our customers wear to such and such an occasion. Tom combines that with whatever his gossip sources tell him happened at the event, to make as lively a story as possible. But Sophy had her own gossip sources, and she’d combine the stories and the clothes descriptions so beautifully to draw attention to our shop.”

Leonie paused. The world must never discover that Sophy visited these fashionable social gatherings in disguise, in order to spy on the beau monde and report what everybody did and said. She passed on to Tom Foxe exclusive gossip in exchange for prime real estate in his immensely popular scandal sheet. “Sophy would find a way to turn tonight’s fiasco to our advantage, or to make people think twice.”

“The way Gladys did?” Lisburne said.

She looked up. She could see
everything
through his shirt. It didn’t matter that she’d seen paintings, engravings, and sculptures of naked men. None of those images had made her blush from the top of her head all the way down to her toes.

“Gladys?” she said, and tried to remember who that was.

“The way she deflected her listeners from Swanton without obviously doing so,” he said. “She talked of Vauxhall attracting odd sorts, then obliged her listeners to turn their minds to pinning down the Ariel’s identity. Once she had their attention on his story, she went on to tell it. An interesting way of defending Swanton without seeming to be defending him. Instead of saying, ‘I don’t believe it’ or ‘It can’t be true’ as some of the besotted girls would do, she used a diversionary tactic.”

In spite of an extreme level of anxiety, Leonie smiled. She’d briefly referred to military strategy and the general’s daughter had taken hold of the idea brilliantly. Her ladyship had realized she didn’t need a complete metamorphosis. She’d discerned the way to make the most of her “good parts,” and to turn the less appealing aspects of her personality into assets. She was no longer at the mercy of the Lady Aldas of the world.

“I should describe Lady Gladys’s dress,” she said. “I should give it the most words, because it was splendid and because lately everybody’s curious about what she’s wearing.”

“We could say she was ‘overheard to mention’ the strange sorts who appear at Vauxhall,” Lisburne said. “Then we could say we’re awaiting further information from correspondents. That way, the scene everyone witnessed would appear to be a mystery needing solving, instead of a foregone conclusion.”

This sounded like something Sophy would do, though she tended to enhance the drama. Leonie nodded slowly. “That’s . . . very good.”

He released her hands.

She took up the pen. She stared at the paper.

He said, “Perhaps I could write it under your supervision. You provide the clothing details, and I tell the story. Or shall I dictate my part and you do the writing?”

She looked up at him. “I notice that you’ve offered two choices, both of which mean you’re involved.”

“The sooner we get this done,” he said, his voice deepening and darkening, “the sooner we can attend to less
mentally
strenuous matters.”