At Your Pleasure

  He had meant to continue to speak lightly, to entice her into ease. But the message in her words pricked his temper. “You are no drone, Nora. And unthinking loyalty is no virtue by my account.”

  Her mouth flattened. She locked eyes with him for a hard second. “Do not imagine my loyalty is unthinking.”

  He did not pretend that she had misunderstood him. “You have weighed the costs of war, then? And the likelihood of victory as well? You have judged carefully the price of supporting your family?”

  She opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of argument. “Come,” she said. “Let me give this comb to Harrison.”

  Enough politics, he decided as he followed her out. Persuasion would not sway her. Let her believe as she liked; it would make no difference to his course. Though she did not know it yet, a private battle had begun between them. To win it, he would use every weapon at his disposal, of brain and body both. Her injured feelings, her brother’s life—none of it signified if victory ensured her survival.

  He would save her from David Colville’s folly—no matter what it took.

  11

  On the path back to the manor, Nora set a quick pace. A childish impulse had driven her to remove the honeycomb. She had wanted to surprise him—to impress him, even. A foolish whim! He was too skilled in turning such displays around on a woman. When he had brushed the bee from her arm, his touch had raced along her skin like a flame, unsettling her completely.

  But he would not overturn her so easily in matters concerning her family. Let him harangue her as he liked; she would not defend herself. To protest that she had scrutinized her family’s position would be an insult to them. It required no calculations to trust in her father and brother’s judgments.

  And yet . . . to trust her family without question was the very definition of unthinking loyalty, was it not?

  Her irritation sharpened, now divided neatly between Rivenham and herself. She walked faster. Why, to be near him was like to linger near a plague: one constantly risked the danger of infection.

  When he started to speak, she forestalled him. “You will not trick me into doubting my family!”

  “I never expected it,” he replied.

  She kept her eyes on their destination, the path along the lime trees at the edge of the field. It irked her that he did not sound breathless, though this pace was putting a stitch into her side.

  After another stubborn second, she slowed. No use in punishing herself if it did not trouble him.

  She could feel his attention focused on her like a ray of concentrated light. The cause for his amicable show this morning had come clear to her. He thought to disarm her—and then, no doubt, to persuade her to admit the secrets he had not managed to wrest from her by force.

  An even darker possibility occurred to her. You are no drone, he had said. “You pity me!” she blurted. Mortification made her face burn. After that intimate, dreadful conversation in her bedchamber, he felt badly for her, the way he might for an orphan or a beaten dog.

  “Pity, no,” he said evenly. “That would be very unwise.”

  She dared a glance at him. “Then what?”

  It emerged as a strident challenge. She realized she wanted to be convinced of the truth of his answer. Anything—contempt, hatred, disgust—anything was better than pity.

  “Puzzlement,” he said. “I am puzzled by you, Nora. The change in you in London was so profound. Now you’ve given me a piece of the cause, but I cannot make it fit.”

  They reached the lime trees. She drew to a stop to face him. The secret of six years ago had been shared, and its keeping no longer burdened her. But their conversation the other night had changed nothing else, and she would not let his company persuade her otherwise.

  Now, here, she would define how it would go between them.

  “I am no mystery.” She took a deep, bracing breath. “And you must not address me so familiarly.”

  The words seemed to surprise a smile from him. “The birds might object to it?”

  “I object to it.”

  He took one measured step toward her. She held her ground and hiked her chin to keep her stare steady and cold. No further intimacy must pass between them.

  She could not bear the false sweetness of it.

  “Do you remember,” he said, “the game we used to play? ‘Courage,’ I believe you called it.”

  The change of subject disconcerted her. Courage was a silly jape, a game of dares and questions, invented by David. She had taught it to Adrian that drowsy summer, and traded dares with him that no sister ever spoke to a brother. “Children’s nonsense,” she said. “We have gone well beyond that now.”

  “We went beyond it even then.” The light played over his face, shadows of leaves sliding over his green eyes like a mask, then lifting away again. “But that did not stop us from playing it very well, indeed.”

  “Are you . . . flirting?”

  His lips twitched. “Yes, I very well might be. As Lord John would point out, the country demands all number of pursuits to stave off tedium.”

  She swallowed. “Then find another one.”

  “Oh, but there’s no harm in games, I believe, if even children may play them.” His smile deepened, a vertical crease appearing aside his sculpted lips. “So here is your test of courage, Nora: admit that you doubt your brother’s cause.”

  Anger roughened her voice. “You have no right to ask it! I would never answer such.”

  “Then you are a coward,” he said softly.

  “I am a Colville. Do not think to make me forget it!”

  “Could I make you?” A speculative note now flavored his voice. “Is that what you fear of me?”

  “I do not fear you,” she said, though as his next step closed the distance between them, the quickening of her breath suggested something very near to fear. Only, to her horror, it felt too warm and drugging to be fear. It felt like . . . excitement.

  She hardened her voice in the hope that her senses would follow suit. “The great Lord Rivenham,” she said mockingly. “You flatter yourself if you think I fear that name.”

  “And his touch?” He lifted his hand, laying a single finger against the pulse in her throat as his green eyes captured hers. “Do you fear his touch, or does your heart beat faster from a different emotion?”

  She stared into his face and recognized that the slight curve of his lips signified triumph. Her pulses answered to him, not to her brain. Her heart was pounding now.

  Be as ice. Be untouchable! In London it had seemed so easy to produce an appearance of disinterest. She had been able to pass by him without so much as a sidelong glance. She strove now for the numbness that had allowed it. “I admit,” she said flatly, “that the brain does not govern the body as well as one might wish—else all men would be saints and hell would be empty of lechers.”

  He lifted a brow. “So I make you a lecher.” So casually he spoke, as though the possibility intrigued him only mildly.

  “I did not say that!” But, God above, he might be right. The mere press of his fingertip was collecting and concentrating all the force of her senses.

  “My touch will not disturb your dreams tonight, then?”

  “No. No.” She spoke as much to herself as him, desperate to believe these words. “For where wisdom has given us medicine, virtue gives us the will to partake. I will sleep very easily.” She caught his errant hand in her own, gratified by the flash of surprise on his face. He was not the only one bold enough to press a question. “And here is your test of courage, Lord Rivenham: did memories of me ever trouble your sleep, or did the painted ladies of the court keep you sufficiently occupied?”

  The barbed question did not seem to register the proper sting. “You are of two minds,” he replied easily. “You desire me to say I never thought of you, so you may sleep tonight without the aid of medicine, safe in the throes of your anger. But you also know that the ghost of you followed me to my bed every night—and now that I’ve adm
itted it, you will wish you’d never asked.”

  She threw his hand away from her. His honesty felt like a betrayal. “What are you about? Why must you taunt me—”

  She bit back the rest of her words and whirled. But he caught her by the elbow at her second step.

  Her temper broke open. She laid her hands on his chest and shoved him.

  He took a graceful step backward and laughed. “Now here,” he said, grinning, “is the hotheaded girl I once knew.”

  “The devil take you! Is it not enough that you come to hound my brother? Why must you trifle with me, too?”

  “Because you are no less of interest than your brother,” he said. “No drone, to do others’ bidding and never think of her own aims. No drone to be ignored and expected to carry on.”

  “Bold words! What do you propose me to do, then? Shall I once more play the strumpet with you? Such joy it brought me!”

  An inward part of her winced at these terrible words even as he visibly recoiled from them—but panic was driving her. He stood so close, and now, suddenly, it was clear what hidden intention had been directing him today. It showed plainly in his face as he recovered himself and stepped toward her.

  His hands captured hers, not gently. He held them when she would have yanked free, his grip as stern as his expression.

  She loosed a small cry of frustration and made her fingers into fists. He pried them open with gentle but intractable force, braiding his own fingers through them.

  “Stop it!” she said. “There is no use to it!” There could be no use to it. How could he not understand that? Why did he torment them both?

  He made no reply, still gripping her . . . waiting, it seemed. He held her there beneath the lime trees for a long moment, watching her, as though his only concern now was to see what she would do.

  She stopped struggling. If he was content only to hold her hands, she would wait until he had satisfied his appetite. She returned his regard with stony disinterest, putting all her effort into ignoring the feel of his hands pressed around hers.

  But as the moments passed, the sensation nagged at her. With her fingers pressed so firmly against his, the boundary between their flesh grew indistinct. His hand was large, tanned, a few golden hairs glinting on his knuckles. His skin was rough with hard use, accustomed to wrapping a sword hilt with this very surety. A nervous flutter, birthed low in her belly, shivered up her spine.

  What a queer thing—that holding hands, that most innocent of lovers’ pleasures, should seem strange, premonitory, fraught with veiled significance that any moment might be put into words and change . . . everything.

  She bit her tongue to keep it still. Let the pain act as an antidote to these stupid fancies as well!

  But the temptation rode her hard to ask what he was about. He wanted her to ask, no doubt. With his silence, with his steady, solemn gaze, he was wooing her into curiosity that she could ill afford.

  His thumb made a slow stroke across her knuckles. “Listen to me,” he murmured, his voice low and gentle as a song. “I know I have caused you suffering. How may I atone for it?”

  There was a trick at court among women, a wicked little laugh that communicated every shade of scorn. But she had never been skilled in it. Her laugh now sounded more like a sob. “You cannot.”

  He nodded once. “How, then, may I persuade you to let me try?”

  Oh, God. She pressed her lips together and shook her head. This was . . . inconceivable. Had an angel appeared, that night Rivenham had arrived in her house, to predict that the mighty earl would soon beg her to let him make amends, she would have called the creature a minion of Beelzebub.

  “You said we must coexist peaceably,” he continued. “I agree. Instruct me how.”

  “That was a lie,” she said, her voice choked. “I meant to trick you to my table. You know this!”

  “Truths sometimes appear in unbidden forms. I would make no strumpet of you, Leonora, but I would love you again, if you would have me.”

  Her astonishment seemed to take her out of her body. For a long moment, every inch of her skin prickling, she gaped at him.

  “What . . . What trick is this?”

  “No trick.”

  He was lying. This seduction was a stratagem. But his face looked so serious . . . “If not a trick, then perfect madness,” she whispered. “You do not know me now. Why should you care for me?”

  “I think it better said that you do not know yourself.” Once again his thumbs made their persuasive stroke. “You spent those years in London as a stranger—to yourself, I think, as much as me. What if it had gone differently? What if I had shown more care for you? What if I had contented myself only with caresses . . .”

  He leaned forward and placed his lips to her throat.

  She gasped. His mouth was hot, soft. Her eyes closed of their own will. The smell of his skin, and crushed grass and green leaves . . .

  His hands directed her own behind her back; he held her wrists at the base of her spine as his lips captured her ear, suckling the tender lobe.

  “Adrian,” she whispered. The darkness behind her eyes was dizzying. She opened them to stare into the verdant canopy of the lime tree, the bright pieces of sky that showed through. “We cannot. Simply because I was honest with you, two nights ago . . .”

  “You have said the past is done.” The words came softly into her ear. “Yet this desire never was. It lived even in the distance between us. When you passed me in London, your eyes downcast . . . you felt it then, and so did I. I did not require even to turn to know that you were near. But now, here, that distance is gone. It, too, is in the past. Who is to stop us now, Nora? What can touch us here?”

  His mouth tracked downward, to the join of her throat and shoulder, while his fingers whispered down her spine, light blessings, melting pleasure. She fought to breathe. Such touches seemed innocent, but she knew where they led. The liquid heat pooling in her loins had no business with chaste kisses. “There is also the future,” she said. “The future, and my brother’s return.”

  His fingers stilled for a moment, then rubbed a leisurely circle on the small of her back. “If I told you now that my heart knew no greater desire than to remove you from this bind, would you believe me?”

  The speech left her puzzled beyond words. She turned to look into his face and his mouth opened on hers.

  Alchemy. Their lips, pressed together, crushed reason.

  Some women would never know a touch like this. They would never know what they deserved.

  But she knew. Only the present, he’d said, and like a spell, the words repeated themselves in her mind, lulling her into quiescence as his mouth took hers. Yes, she would let him kiss her. But she would do nothing to encourage him. She would wait until he was through. She would fix this moment in her mind as a guide in the years to come: the sort of pleasure she deserved from a man.

  His hand smoothed up her back again, the track of his nails light but distinct. The sensation drew a shiver from her, the bliss a scratched cat must feel; she wanted to push against him, to rub into him to encourage him to scratch her again. His lips moved her own apart; his tongue touched hers and another honeyed shock rolled through her. Her hands, free now, rose to wind through his soft hair, holding him closer to her as he tasted her deeply.

  She had thought of seducing him. In a cooler moment, the prospect had merited consideration—not for her sake but for David’s. That calculation could be trusted, could it not? To trust it in retrospect would mean that she did not accept this pleasure recklessly, without thought.

  She stepped into him, giving him her tongue, urging him to plunder her. Not for herself, but for David she kissed him; the hot sweetness of his body against hers had nothing to do with it. How much safer for her brother to have this man intent on ravishing her rather than prying secrets from her brain. Was there not even a biblical precedent for it? Esther, that most virtuous queen, had seduced a king to save her people.

  His long fin
gers framed her face. Together they sank to the soft earth. She pushed his fustian coat off his shoulders, palming the strength of his upper arms, the bulge of muscle that flexed as though at her command. It was not enough. She reached for his waistcoat, yanking free the fastenings, and then tugged his soft wool shirt from his breeches. His sharp breath gave her a heady feeling, voluptuous triumph; beneath the hem of his shirt she discovered the hot skin of his abdomen, rippling planes of muscle distinct beneath her fingertips.

  What risk was there? Her body had proved, after so many years of a barren bed, that there would be no consequences to lying with a man. And did she not deserve such pleasure, just once more? Only once . . . and for her family’s sake, not her own.

  She pulled the shirt over his head.

  The sight of his bare upper body shocked her. It did not match her memories. Where his belly had once been smooth and hairless, solid shelves of muscle now strapped him, dividing his abdomen into striated ridges around the narrow trail of hair that led into his breeches.

  An ugly scar across his shoulder spoke of violence.

  Sobriety felt unpleasant and cold. What was she doing? Six years—

  He reached for her, those bands of muscle rippling as he moved. With his thumb he nudged up her chin, and another shock moved through her as she met his eyes, identical to those of the boy she had loved. But this was no boy. His body testified to a history unfamiliar to her.

  Whatever lessons it had taught him, he showed no hesitance or uncertainty to match her own. He cupped her nape and drew her mouth to his while his free hand trailed down her body, startling each inch of flesh it passed: her shoulders, her ribs, her hips. In turn, reminded of their due, they awakened; her very skin seemed to tighten and warm, flush with forgotten demands. He palmed her buttocks and pulled her closer yet, so her breasts crushed into his chest.

  Against her belly she felt his erection. As a girl, the sensation had embarrassed her . . . and then excited her. She pulled away the slightest inch and placed her hand over him, shaping his length. His groan parted their mouths, and then his teeth lightly closed on her throat. She tilted her head to allow him better access, then gasped when he took her by the arms and pulled her over him as he reclined. His pale hair spilled over the green grass like strands of sunlight. As he looked up at her, he smiled.