Last Night's Scandal

  The writing he’d refused to help her decipher.

  Because he was an ass. He’d already worked that out. And he’d worked out the simple fact that he had a great deal to make up for, and he might have very little time in which to do it.

  He moved nearer to the window and studied the paper through the magnifying glass. “They look like numbers,” he said after a moment.

  He gave her the glass and paper. “What do you think?”

  “Numbers,” she said. “But not all of them. I don’t know what the other things are meant to be. Flowers? Sun? Stars? Some sort of symbol? Did you find any engravings in the walls when you were measuring?”

  “The usual decorations,” he said. “Ornamental work around doorways and such. Nothing on the stones of the wall, though. Nothing corresponding to these marks.” He held up the paper and compared it to the walls about him. “Except for the little numbers and symbols, this drawing looks rather like this wall.”

  She stared at the paper. “It could be any wall,” she said, “if it is a wall. But it does seem like one. Is that meant to be a window, do you think?”

  “Hard to say. Do you have my plans?”

  “I gave them to Herrick—but no, wait. He was done with them.” She pulled open the drawer of the table and took out the plans. “We thought it best to keep them where we could find them easily.”

  She took them out. His gaze slid to the ring again.

  He brought his attention to the plans. He stared at them until his mind fixed there, too. “If that number measures the bottom of the wall,” he said, pointing to the drawing, “it’s too wide for the room we’re in. The long side of this room isn’t quite nine feet. The number on the drawing is twelve. That could be approximate. How many rooms measure about twelve feet on one side? Most of the south tower rooms are about that. Herrick’s rooms, too.”

  “What about the height?” she said. “If that number is the height of the wall, it narrows things down. It eliminates most of the main-floor rooms.”

  “Herrick’s quarters don’t match, either.”

  “There,” she said. “Next to the broken stairway to the basement. The entresol over the well room. That’s it.”

  He turned his head to look at her.

  Her cheeks were flushed. Her shimmering blue gaze met his. His gaze slid down to her mouth, a breath away.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it. I can’t do this.”

  “What?” she said softly. “Do what?”

  “Pretend,” he said. “I’m no good at pretending.”

  And he lifted her straight off the floor and kissed her.

  It was hard and uncompromising, the determined way he did everything he determined to do. She kissed him back, with everything she had in her, and her legs simply wrapped themselves around his hips. His hands slid down to grasp her bottom.

  He set her on the table and broke the kiss and drew her hands away from his neck, and she thought, If you stop, I’ll strangle you.

  He turned away and walked to the door to the stairway, and she thought, You’re a dead man.

  He latched the door.

  Then he picked up the chair and carried it to the other door, and jammed it under the handle.

  He came back to stand in front of her.

  He said, “Here, let me get you out of those wet clothes.”

  She looked down at herself and said, “I’m not wet.”

  He said, his voice very low, “Then make believe.”

  She could feel his voice shivering down the back of her neck all the way down her spine. “Very well,” she said.

  He brought his hands up to her shoulders. He drew away her shawl and tossed it aside. Then he slid his hands to the back of her neck. He unfastened the first hook of her dress. Then the second. Then the third.

  They were tiny hooks, yet he undid them, one by one; all the while his gaze never left her face, and she couldn’t take hers from his, from the silver of his eyes.

  He undid the larger hooks at her waist. She felt the back of the dress fall open. He slid the neckline down and untied the tapes to the sleeve puffs. He bent his head and unbuttoned the tiny pearl buttons at her wrist. Right hand. Left hand.

  She stared like one mesmerized at the top of his head, the silken gold hair. Later, she’d drag her hands through it. Later, she’d run her hands all over him. For now, she’d let him have his way with her.

  He drew the top of the dress down to her waist. He tugged. She lifted her hips and he pulled the dress down and let it drop to the floor.

  He said nothing.

  She didn’t, either. Silence was perfect. No words between them. That was perfect. Only the sounds of their breathing and the sounds his hands made on her clothes and skin.

  He was so intent. Methodical. He untied the tapes of her petticoat and tugged it down and let it slide to the floor. He kicked it aside. He bent over her shoulder and loosened the ties of her corset.

  Her breath came and faster. So did his. She heard it. But no words. They didn’t need words, not now.

  He drew the corset away. Her chemise, released, slid down her shoulders, exposing one breast. She didn’t try to cover herself. He didn’t try to cover her. He left the chemise as it was, and started on her drawers.

  Shivery feelings, racing over her skin.

  He untied the tapes and pulled the drawers off her. They ended up on top of the other things. Her garters went next. Then her stockings. Then he pulled the chemise over her head.

  Then she was naked, sitting on the table, every inch of her body quivering.

  He had on all his clothes.

  In the pit of her belly, sensations skipped and squeezed. She kept very, very still.

  He looked at her, the silver gaze sliding over her skin like a caress. She felt it under her skin, skittering down to the place between her legs.

  Then he leaned toward her. She thought he would kiss her, and she put her mouth up. But he kissed her cheek. Then he licked it lightly.

  She shivered.

  Not with cold. Her skin was on fire. Inside was hot and restless.

  He licked her. Everywhere. A flick of his tongue. The touch of his lips. Her ear. Her throat. Her breasts. Her arms. Her hands. He knelt and trailed his mouth and tongue over her legs. He kissed her feet, toe by toe. Methodically. With complete and utter attention.

  Low down in her belly was a maddening restlessness, an itch she couldn’t scratch.

  And good God, all the gods, Zeus and the rest and the angels and saints and martyrs and crocodiles and ibis-headed gods, too, he kissed up her leg again all the way to her quim.

  Then she shrieked—or it seemed so to her, a scream echoing in the small room.

  His hand came up to her belly and pushed, and down she went on the table, obediently, writhing and making mad little sounds, and words that made no sense and Oh my God oh my God oh my God.

  Little volcanoes erupted inside her, and she shuddered, and then it happened, the fierce, fiery wave that carried her up and up, and threw her up into the sky, then threw her down, shattered.

  “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

  His voice, then, low and thick. “You’re shivering. I’ll have to warm you from the inside.”

  “For God’s sake, Lisle, hurry!”

  She heard his short, choked laugh, and the rustling of clothing. Then he pushed into her. She jerked upward, eyes wide, catching hold of his arms.

  He stilled, his eyes wide, too. “Hurts?”

  “No, oh no. Opposite . . . of hurts. Oh, Lisle. My God.”

  It had hurt last night, and she’d felt a sting, even during the good part. But this time it was altogether different. He filled her and it was hot and—and wonderful. She reached for his shoulders, to get closer, to get mor
e of him. She moved her hips. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Like this.”

  She had not a stitch on and the only naked part of him was the throbbing shaft inside her, and it was wonderful. Wonderful to be naked. Wonderful to have him inside her.

  “This is so wrong,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s perfect,” she said.

  “Oh, Olivia.”

  That was the end of conversation. He kissed her, an endless clinging kiss while their bodies rocked together, faster and fiercer. Then the wave came and carried her up again, and again, higher and higher. It flung her up against the sky, and she saw stars, and laughed, and on a laugh said, “How I love you.”

  Then the wave came and gently took her down again. And she kissed his cheek and his neck and his lips. And, “Love you, love you,” she breathed.

  She fainted.

  Chapter 17

  Lisle felt her slump in his arms.

  Stunned, he looked down at her. She blinked and looked up at him, blue eyes wide and wondering.

  His heart lurched with relief. “I hope you swooned with ecstasy,” he said gruffly.

  “Yes,” she said dazedly. “My goodness.”

  She’d said I love you.

  He took her hand, the one wearing the single ring.

  “What is this? he said.

  “That is a ring,” she said.

  “The stone,” he said.

  “That is a scarab,” she said. “You sent it to me. You probably don’t remember.”

  He remembered. The scarab he’d sent with a letter, ages and ages ago.

  “I had it made into a ring,” she said.

  “When?”

  “Right after I decided not to set it in a necklace or a bracelet,” she said. “A ring, I thought, I might wear all the time.”

  He stared at the ring.

  All the time.

  For all this time.

  Dozens of broken engagements and Episodes ending in exile. How many letters had she written that began I am in DISGRACE again or They have sent me to Rusticate again until the Furor dies down.

  Olivia, careless and reckless and living by her own rules. But through it all, she was true, in her fashion, to him.

  “Were you wearing it at your great-grandmother’s party?” he said.

  “Of course I was wearing it,” she said. “I always wear it. It makes me feel you’re always . . . at hand.” She laughed.

  “Awful,” he said. “An awful pun at a time like this. There you are, stark naked—”

  “Yes, it’s amazing. I never sat naked in a window before. What a refreshing experience, in every way. You’re so inventive.”

  Only she would sit there laughing, naked in the window of a cold room in a cold castle. That was a sight to carry back with him . . . to Egypt.

  It was a sight, however, he’d rather not share with the world. Fortunately, the castle’s windows were in recesses. This one, though shallow, was small. Otherwise they’d have given the workers down in the courtyard a fine show.

  She probably wouldn’t mind that, either.

  “Yes, well, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he said. “The only thing, actually. That’s the trouble, you see, once one starts these things.” While he spoke he dug out her shawl from the heap on the floor and wrapped it about her. He tucked his shirt into his trousers and buttoned them.

  He gathered up her clothes, resisting the temptation to bury his face in them. He pulled her chemise over her head. “Try not to develop a lung fever,” he said.

  “It would be worth it,” she said. “Are you going to dress me?”

  “I took it off,” he said. “I can put it back on.”

  He went to work on her corset. “Would you turn around? It’s much easier to deal with these things face on.”

  “Even Bailey can’t get it off without turning me about,” she said. “How amazing that you got all those hooks and tapes undone.”

  “I’ve been studying the construction of your clothing,” he said. “Your clothes have changed so much since the last time I was here. Every time I come home, they’re more complicated.”

  “And you need to solve them,” she said, “the way you need to solve a puzzling line of hieroglyphs.”

  “It’s not purely intellectual,” he said.

  He took up the stockings and garters.

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “I took them off,” he said. “I’m putting them back on.” He’d never before paid close attention to women’s clothes, and really, it was a lot to pay attention to, layers and layers with their complicated doing and undoing mechanisms. But hers had fascinated him. He’d been studying them without fully realizing it.

  He drew a stocking up over her slim foot and the delicate turn of her ankle and up the gentle swell of her calf and over her knee. Something pressed on his heart, squeezing, squeezing.

  He tied the garter. He followed the same ritual with the other leg.

  It was, perhaps, a kind of torture, but that was nothing to the pleasure of it, of undressing her and dressing her, as though she belonged to him.

  “You worked out my clothes in detail,” she said.

  “I’ve a knack for details.”

  “And you still had sufficient thinking ability to unlock the secret of the Mystery Paper,” she said.

  He paused in the act of retrieving her drawers. He’d forgotten about the paper.

  But it was only a bit of paper, an intellectual puzzle.

  She, though—the way she looked and the way she smelled and the color of her eyes and the way the pink washed up her cheeks and the way the faint freckles seemed like golden dust sprinkled over her skin. If he had been an ancient Egyptian, it was her image he’d have painted on the walls of his tomb, so that he could look at her for all eternity.

  She’d set the scarab in a ring and she wore it always.

  He lifted her down from the table and helped her into the drawers. He tied the fastenings. He got her into the petticoat and the dress, and tied and hooked and buttoned everything he’d untied and unhooked and unbuttoned.

  “There,” he said. Done, all done, everything as it ought to be—except for her hair, coming down, catching on her earring, dangling against her neck.

  She stepped close to him and put her hand on his chest. Then she slid it down, and down farther still. “Lisle,” she said, “That was unbearably exciting.”

  “I think,” he said. But he couldn’t. The palm of her hand rested over his cock, which was rising and swelling hopefully. The way she looked and smelled and the sound of her voice and her laughter.

  He didn’t wait to hear what his conscience had to say.

  He pushed her against the wall and lifted her skirts and found the slit of her drawers. This time he didn’t undo anything.

  Later

  Olivia pulled up the stocking that had worked itself loose during the frenzied lovemaking, and retied the garter. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Lisle button his trousers.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  “We do,” she said. “This is getting out of hand.”

  She might lack practical experience in Affairs of Passion, but she could calculate odds. The more often they did this, the greater the odds she’d conceive.

  Although the odds were always the same, when you came down to it. And if he did get a child on her—

  She looked at him, tall and strong and golden and not entirely civilized. If she became pregnant, she wouldn’t be sorry. She’d find a way to deal with it. She was good at that, at finding ways.

  He pulled the chair out from under the handle of the north-facing door.

  She looked out of the window. “We’re not goi
ng to have much daylight for investigating the entresol. The sun’s going down.”

  He paused in the act of unlatching the south tower door and followed her gaze. “How long have we been here?”

  “A good while,” she said. “There was all that unbuttoning and unhooking and untying, then all the buttoning and hooking and tying. Then the second time. That was more direct but I think we actually did it for longer—”

  “Yes.” He opened the door. “Time to go.” He made a shooing gesture.

  Yes, it’s time to get out of here.

  She was starting to question herself. Nagging questions:

  What will you do when he goes again?

  Is it so bad to be second—or third or fourth? Is it worse than being nothing at all, living continents apart, waiting for the letter telling you he’s found someone there, and married her, and he’s never coming back?

  Would it be so terrible—would it be the end of the world if you agreed to do what all the world believes is the Right Thing?

  It would be terrible for him, she told herself.

  She hurried through the door and started down the stairs. After a moment, she heard his footsteps behind her.

  “I wonder if tea is ready,” he said. “I’m famished.”

  She was, too, she realized. She’d eaten nothing since her late breakfast. “We can have tea served in the entresol,” she said. “I should hate to lose the daylight.”

  “We can’t investigate the room now, while the men are working,” he said. “If they see us peering at stones and waving an ancient piece of paper, they’ll wonder what we’re looking for, and it won’t take them long to put two and two together. Then it won’t be merely a few numskulls looking for treasure.”

  She hadn’t thought. How could she? “You’re right,” she said. “The whole village would hear about it—and the next one, and the next one.”

  “It’ll be all over Edinburgh in no time,” he said. “I’d rather not complicate matters.”

  “We’ll have to wait and do it in the dead of night.”

  “Ye gods, what goes on in that brain of yours?” he said.

  She turned and looked up at him.

  “The dead of night?”