St. Raven (13 page)

He put a hand under her knee to help her hold the pose. She hadn’t thought their kiss could be deeper, but he made it so. The ache grew almost to pain. She pressed harder for relief. He moved his other hand to the small of her back and held her there.

It wasn’t enough. She moaned…

He pulled his head back. “
Hell
.”

After a moment, he eased her leg down. She felt him suck in an enormous breath. “My apologies. That went entirely too far.”

Or not far enough
. She ached, she shook, in a horrid, stomach-churning way. She could almost burst into tears.

“Or not far enough,” he agreed, making her realize that she’d said it out loud.

He was rubbing her back again, but in a soothing way. “I’d do something about it, nymph, but not here. And we don’t dare risk leaving, for here’s Crofton again.”

He helped her replace her veil, then turned her in his arms so she could see the room. He kept his arms around her, however, kept her pressed to him. Even shattered, even shaking, Cressida felt wonderfully protected.

Crofton. She pinned her mind on the red devil, author of all her disasters. He had moved to the center of the room and was demanding attention.

“My friends, you have found my new treasures! Are they not intriguing? And direct from India. Product, along with this rather boring house, of a lucky evening at cards with an upstart merchant who thought he could mingle with his betters.”

Laughter and jeers. Cressida stiffened, but she felt St. Raven’s arms tighten. It could be control, but it was also sympathy and comfort.

A new ache beat inside her. Crofton’s words were a jagged reminder that she came from a different world. Once they left this event, she had no place in the intimate world of the Duke of St. Raven.

And I don’t want one
, she told herself, fearing it was a lie.

“Some of you have been attempting the poses,” Crofton said. “I have arranged a demonstration.”

He clapped his hands, and a dark-skinned couple entered the room dressed in a fashion similar to the statues. They bowed to the company and began to take up the poses, starting with the simplest, but bringing to them a grace that Cressida admired, even in her disordered state.

Then they moved into the one where they both had one leg on the ground, the other around the partner’s hips. Her intimate place began to throb again, but she could appreciate their graceful ease. All around, people applauded.

“Ah,” said Crofton, grinning, “but could they hold it when rutting? Could you? We will find out, eventually.”

Cressida didn’t think anyone could. Surely she and St. Raven would have tumbled to the floor if not supported by the wall.

But no, St. Raven hadn’t been affected as she had been. He had been stirring her lust. He had been seducing her, and so easily, too. His horror came when he remembered that she wasn’t a whore, but a lady he might have to marry after having his wicked way.

She blinked away tears as she watched the couple break their interlocked pose. Then the man went into the shoulder stand, legs crossed, as if it were the most simple and comfortable position in the world. “Two must lift and support my
sakhi
, my lord.”

Two guests leaped forward to lift the woman onto his thighs, facing backward. She steadied herself with a hand on each assistant’s shoulder, but as she and the man locked legs, she looked astonishingly comfortable. After a suitable pause for appreciation, she let the men lift her off.

Cressida watched as the two went through the horizontal poses, able to imagine all too vividly the way their bodies should connect. In the last pose, in which the woman was on her back with her legs over her head in a position that looked painful, the man moved his hips up and down, causing cheers and applause from the avid crowd.

Cressida remembered the couple up against the wall earlier and knew exactly what the man was simulating. Then she realized that she’d tightened her own muscles, moved her own hips…

Oh, heavens, she had to get out of here!

Crofton leered around. “Mahinal and Sohni are available for training sessions with generous guests. Or you may wish to practice with your chosen partner. I gather a similarity of height is useful. Alas, St. Raven”—he suddenly focused on them—“your little houri is too short.”

“You’re suggesting that you have a woman here of my height?”

Everyone laughed, and Crofton looked as if he’d like to spit hell’s flames. He turned away. “Drink, feast, and make merry! Explore. At midnight a gong will announce the beginning of the competition. Lord Lucifer—myself—will be the judge, and each victor will receive as prize the statue they have best imitated.”

Many guests swirled away to explore. Cressida ferociously focused her wits on one thing. She watched for a chance to slip the statue from its companions. Alas, enough people remained to study the statues to make the task impossible.

She had to do something.

Could she plunge the room into darkness? She couldn’t see a way. Fire? She could set Stokeley Manor on fire…

No, no, she couldn’t do that. She despised Crofton and his sort, but they didn’t deserve to perish in flames.

She turned in St. Raven’s arms to face him, refusing to let herself be distracted by her wanton body, even though the brush of silk against silk, of silk against skin, made her feel she was on fire. “What are we going to do?”

He looked thoughtful, too, and not the slightest bit affected by silk and skin. “It’s a pity we don’t have the one your father took. We could manage a straight switch with a momentary distraction.”

“I should have thought of that.”

“You expected to have a moment to extract the jewels.”

“True.” He shifted against the wall, sending that feverish sensation over her skin, tormenting her nose with warm sandalwood—and that something else. Deeper, mysterious…

She pulled her mind back from that abyss. “What do we do now?”

Lewd answers swelled in her mind, and she watched his face, irrationally longing to see the same needs there.

“Get out of here.” He put an arm around her and led her away from her treasure and out of the room.

There was no heavy crowd in the hall, and the front door was shut. A deep chime made her jump, every sense jangling. The staid hall clock—which must be quaking in horror at the display before it—was chiming eleven.

An hour to pass before the contest. Doing what? She no more wanted to be part of another lewd display than she wanted to plunge herself into a fire. And how were they going to get the statue? She knew she couldn’t take part in a public display to try to win it, but she wouldn’t let herself leave here without it. To have come so far and then turn back. Never!

For the moment, she went where St. Raven took her, which was toward the back of the house. If he was looking for privacy, he didn’t find it. People were everywhere, in couples and groups. In corridors and rooms, all engaged in debauchery.

Cressida was astonished at the number of people kissing, fondling, and even copulating in the corridors. She was even more astonished at the way her body twitched and yearned at every heaving, gasping glimpse.

She focused ferociously on St. Raven so as not to see anything, though that stirred all kinds of other undesirable thoughts. A woman cried out. A man grunted.

An ache shot right up her legs and into a place that burned.

Had that muttered curse come from St. Raven?

His arm tightened, and he hurried her down the corridor. They bumped into the group.

Group?

Such a tangle of bodies. One of those childish whores was on her knees kissing… Surely not! St. Raven forced her past at speed. Perhaps he was carrying her. Her legs felt as if they might fail, might stagger her. Or send her to the floor. Where he might…

He was a rake.

He would, wouldn’t he?

That place inside her throbbed, like an extra pulse, beating fast like her heart.

He paused in a quiet corner. “Can you think of anywhere in this house that might still be private? Cellars? Attics?”

He sounded desperate.

Excitement skittered down her disordered nerves, and up her heated body. He’d said he didn’t give public demonstrations, and now he was desperate for privacy.

“Not the kitchens. Servants.‘” she explained. “Attics— storage and maid’s bedrooms.” She couldn’t even make sentences anymore. “We could try them.”

“And hope others don’t have the same idea.”

“Or go outside.”

“Good idea. What’s the quickest way out?”

She led the way this time, as eager as he for privacy and what would come next, even though it would be a leap into hell.

When they stepped outside he gasped, “Thank God.”

A country-fresh breeze ran over Cressida’s hot, damp skin, clearing away some of the insanity. Wickedness still throbbed in her, tingled in her, seethed in her newly informed mind, but now she could fight it.

Maybe.

Remember
! she commanded herself, looking up at the pure white moon.
You don’t want to give your virtue to a rake at an orgy
!

“Lead the way,” he said. “You must know what’s here, and even with a full moon, the light’s chancy.”

“What are we looking for?”

“A place where we can wait until midnight without tripping over people.”

Midnight. The competition. “But you said we wouldn’t compete.”

“Of course not, but it will present opportunities. We’ll get the jewels if not before the contest then afterward. The winners will be a rare couple here if they’re sober enough to notice.”

So simple, and it could work. And in the meantime, they had an hour…

“So, where?” he prompted.

“The stables? No. The grooms will be there. The brewery?…”

“Not if we can help it. They stink.”

“Storage sheds… They might be locked. Laundry…” She ran through her memory of the house.

“The bakehouse!” she exclaimed. “Even if they used it earlier, I doubt anyone is baking bread now. There’s nothing unpleasant about the smell of baking.”

“Nothing at all. Lead on, Roxelana.”

He put his hand in hers, clearly expecting her to lead him, so she did so, relishing that slight, warm touch as a starving beggar might lick up crumbs. Heart pounding, mouth dry, she led him around the flaming, rowdy house.

Some of the guests had also ventured outside. The shadows and the shrubbery seemed alive with giggling, grunting misbehavior. Her naughty imagination tempted her to drag the Duke of St. Raven into the bushes. She made herself think of mud, twigs, and ants.

There were nettles near the stables.
Think of nettles, Cressida
. They would soon replace one itch with another.

The stables were almost as bad as the house as far as noise went. Coaches stood all around, shafts sagging to the ground; the nearby fields were packed with horses; and all the coachmen and grooms seemed to be in the stable block getting drunk in the company of a number of shrieking women.

“I see why you sent your coach to the village. But won’t your men feel deprived?”

“Not as deprived as they would if I summoned them and found them drunk. The bakehouse is next to the kitchen?”

At his sharp tone, she speeded past the kitchen window, then stopped at the plain wooden door to the bakehouse. Gingerly, she opened it.

Blessed quiet welcomed her, along with the warm smell of past baked bread. It swirled around her, antidote to the wicked madness that reigned everywhere else this night. This was too wholesome a place for sin. She released his hand and moved away, farther into the safety of the dark room.

“I thought your father had this place secured like the Tower?” he said, closing the door, sealing them in darkness cut only by moonlight through three high windows.

“There’s no door from here into the house.” She inched away from temptation.

“But still, things to steal.”

He moved. Away from her, toward the far side of the room. Relief collided with bitter disappointment. She prayed not to show either.

“There’s nothing of much value here. Bowls, bins of flour, rolling pins…”

“There are people desperate enough to steal anything.”

“True.” She turned her mind to that. “Perhaps my father is more afraid of murder in the night than of thievery. He doesn’t seem greatly concerned about possessions.”

“Obviously.”

It carried a sharp edge of condemnation, but she couldn’t argue about that now. She wasn’t sure there was an argument to make. She rubbed her arms, fighting a need to be rubbed elsewhere.

“From stories my father told, he won and lost a number of fortunes, though at trade, not cards. In India, he says, there is always more for a man of wit and courage.”

“And in England, even when wagering everything, he had the jewels to fall back on.”

She could just make out the silver-edged shape of him beneath the high windows. He was wandering the far side of the room, perhaps exploring by touch. Cressida watched him, using what she knew of the room from before. The large table for kneading, shaping, rolling. The sideboard holding rolling pins, bowls, and the smaller tins.

“Adventurous,” he remarked, “but not willing to risk everything. It makes me wonder why he made that mistake.”

“He is shortsighted like me.”

“Or wanted to lose everything.”

Cressida stared across darkness at shadow. “That’s absurd!”

“Is it? My observation is that people often get what they truly want, however undesirable it might seem on the surface. There are people who find calm so intolerable that they destroy it whenever it happens to them. Perhaps your father felt trapped by his tame English life and tried to escape in the only way he knew.”

“By making a new adventure a necessity?” She spoke in disbelief, but was chilled by a sense of truth. “But what of
us
? What of my mother?”

“Perhaps that’s why his mind is frozen. Perhaps he forgot… Ah, no. He went mad upon finding the jewels gone, did he not? They were for you and your mother. It must have been like teasing a tiger for fun, only to find that it has eaten his loved ones.”