The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (23 page)

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I cannot believe anyone would actually want to toil for their living,” she said, and laughed again.

“If one is capable, one might,” he said a little defensively.

Grinning, she shook her head. “If you think the life of a country viscount is tiresome, you must try rising at dawn and working until sundown.”

Now Will laughed. “I’ve witnessed you working at dawn with your sketchbook, madam. That is hardly toiling.”

“But I am toiling!” she insisted, and thrust out her hand. “Look at my fingers!”

He took her hand in his and made a show of examining it. “This tiny bit of a callus is a hazard of your trade.”

“But I never had a callus until—” She caught herself before she said anything too revealing.

But not soon enough. “Until what?” he asked, looking at her curiously.

“Until you forced me to work so many of the day’s hours,” she said blithely. “If you find your life here so tedious, why do you not live in London?” she asked. “I am certain you would find many diversions there to suit your adventurous spirit.”

“My father’s illness makes that impossible, I’m afraid. Until I have seen my sisters married and my brothers engaged in proper occupations, and indeed, myself married and siring an heir, I am duty bound to Wentworth Hall.”

He smiled wryly, missing Phoebe’s look as he helped himself to more food.

“And what of you, Phoebe? What of your life’s adventures?”

Her heart ratcheted up a beat or two and she shrugged a little. “My life has been rather plain. I grew up as most, I married, I was widowed. And now I am a modiste. Hardly an adventurous life.”

“But you married a Frenchman,” he pressed. “You learned your trade in France, did you not? Tell me of your life there.”

“There is really very little of interest to tell,” she insisted.

He snorted. “That’s nonsense. I should think a woman as comely as you would have many invitations to adventure. Is love not an adventure?”

“Love?”

He laughed at her surprise. “I assumed, given your rather passionate speech to me on the virtues of love…that you found it to be quite an adventure.”

“Well…I suppose it is,” she said vaguely.

He popped a piece of chicken in his mouth and munched, watching her. “How did he die, if I may?”

“Who?” she asked.

“Your husband, madame.”

“A fever,” she said instantly, and imagined, had he really existed, it might have been the same sort of fever she was feeling at the moment, here in this private place with a man who made her heart take wing like no other ever had. She shook her head and glanced at her plate as if it pained her to speak of it.

“I beg your pardon. It is clear you mourn him still.”

Phoebe didn’t answer, but looked away, to the deepening shadows beyond the line of torches, counting all the moments since she had created this dead husband. “Why did you stay away so long?” she blurted, hoping desperately once more to change the subject.

“Do you know how long I was gone?” he asked, touching her knee, drawing her gaze back to him.

She nodded. “Mrs. Turner told me.”

“Then she surely told you I stayed away too long.” He casually reached up and stroked her hair.

“Why do you say that?”

“My father needed me, and I was not here.”

“Then…why stay away so long?” she asked again, confused by his answer.

“Shall I show you why?” he asked as he traced a line from the back of her hand up her bare arm.

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

He considered her a moment longer. Without a word, he shifted, reaching away from her, across the cushions, and withdrawing a worn leather book from beneath a cushion. He sat up, held it in his lap for a moment, studying the weathered cover. “I wanted to show you this after you admired my tattoo,” he said, glancing at his wrist. He gave her a sheepish look, then handed her the book.

Phoebe had no idea what to expect. She turned a little, so that she could see better by the light of a torch, and opened the book to the first page.

June 12, 1816

I departed this morning on a clipper bound for France. We set sail in a cold rain but with the trade winds at our back….

Next to the entry was a picture of the ship, drawn in ink, the detail remarkable. It was his travel journal. A thrill of excitement ran through her, and she eagerly turned the pages, reading a sampling of the entries, looking at the pictures he’d drawn. He’d made entries almost every day for six years, had drawn pictures of his adventures between the journal entries.

…in an unkind manner, and with a gun pointed at my head, the bloody scoundrel urged me off the road and divested me of my horse….

Next to the entry was a rendering of the bloody scoundrel, his face gaunt with several days’ growth of a beard on his chin. And his eyes were so well done that Phoebe felt he was looking directly at her.

…houses reduced to ashes. In this general devastation were penned cattle….

Small cattle were drawn within the confines of a wooden fence.

…the Raja’s hospitality, for which he is celebrated throughout India….

A man with a happy countenance, a gap-toothed smile, and clever eyes wore a large, tubular hat.

…natives drink a concoction of goat’s milk and anise, which left me feeling rather numb in body. Every attention was shown me, and I shared in their meager bounty….

A drawing of a small and strange-looking cottage, a family of six standing before it.

When she reached the end of the written entries, she found pages upon pages of drawings. Some were of scenery, others of people he’d met. But what intrigued her most were the drawings of women in various stages of dress and evocative postures. They were, she realized, erotic drawings of women he’d known.

“Oh my,” she said, and looked up at him. “This…this is extraordinary.” She quickly looked down again.

“You are not offended?”

Offended? She was aroused by it. She ran her hand over the drawing of one beauty. She had posed nude for Will. Her skin had been darkened with charcoal. She lay on her side, one leg bent at the knee. Her head was propped onto one hand, and the other lay carelessly on her breast. Phoebe wasn’t offended, oh no.

She could picture him drawing this woman. She could picture him drawing her.

“I am not offended,” she said softly. “I am enchanted.”

“They are not as good as your sketches,” he said, studying the drawings on the page.

“No, you are wrong. They are better,” she said, and smiled up at him. “These drawings tell a story.”

Will smiled a little crookedly and took her hand, turning it palm up. He pressed a kiss into her palm. “Thank you.”

“Thank me?” she asked as he touched the tip of his tongue to her skin. Every touch was sending her closer to the brink of giving in to her desire.

“I’ve never shown it to anyone. Well, Addison, of course, but no one else.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, really.”

His eyes were dark and unfathomable. Phoebe was tumbling down a slippery slope, sliding into trouble. The day’s light had all but faded, and in the glow of the fire, his eyes seemed incomprehensibly bottomless. She watched the light flickering off the gold in his irises, saw a flash of deep light in them. The yearning for him swelled in her, filling every inch, every crevice, squeezing the breath from her. It felt as if another piece of desire that had lain dormant in her had broken off out of necessity and now floated free.

There it was again, that feeling of breathing underwater.

“Thank you for showing it to me,” she said, and closed the book, pressed it to her chest. “It’s beautiful.”

He said nothing, just quietly contemplated her face, her neck, and bosom, while the light in his eyes turned feverish. “It is amazing how one may travel the world and find the greatest beauty at home,” he said, and kissed the inside of her wrist. “An incomparable beauty,” he muttered, and kissed the inside of her elbow. “A treasure, discovered under my very own roof.”

Phoebe’s breathing turned shallow; she clutched his journal to her breast.

Will shifted closer, and slipped his arm around her waist. “To think I have traveled far and wide, and here you are,” he said, coaxing her down, onto her back. He kissed her neck, ran his hand up her rib cage to her breast, squeezing it, kneading it, as he nuzzled her neck.

The tension began to flow out of her body. Phoebe closed her eyes, allowed herself to enjoy his attention, and inadvertently dropped the journal. She was feeling the fever again, but it was more intent than ever before. She wanted Summerfield to have it all, all of the passionate feelings that were rising from deep within her, everything that made her who she was, that made her Phoebe.

“It was fate that brought me into service in your house,” she whispered as his hands caressed her body. It was fate—this was the man who could take her virginity and show her how to love, to live, to experience life.

But Summerfield did not take her. He swallowed hard and suddenly pushed up and away from her.

H e wished for a rope, something to bind his hands to restrain him from touching her.

Will’s desire for Phoebe was tremendous, but so was his respect for her, and when she reminded him that she was his servant, he was struck by what a cad he was and had acted reflexively.

He was no better than Mr. Hughes.

He pushed a hand through his hair as he sought to drag himself up from the depths of his physical desire. He fumbled for the scarab and angrily yanked it from his neck, tossing it on the ground. Phoebe pushed herself up and picked it up, staring at it. “Forgive me, Phoebe,” he said, hearing the disgust in his voice. “I have failed you.”

“No, I—”

“You cannot deny it. My intentions have been less than honorable,” he said, meaning it, yet knowing that even as he spoke, he would give all of Wentworth Hall to taste her lips, to feel the softness of her body against his, to be inside her. “You are very beautiful, Phoebe, and I…I would have compromised you completely, given the opportunity.”

“Completely?” she repeated softly, sounding, he thought, oddly hopeful and remorseful at once.

He suddenly shifted forward and cupped her face. “I have struggled with my duty and my true feelings, I cannot deny it. I find you…”—God save him, but he found her intoxicating, mesmerizing—“extraordinarily beautiful. And bright, and clever, and impossibly talented. And I thought, given that we are two adults with opportunity—and what I hoped was mutual desire—that we might find satisfaction in one another. But I did not think of the consequences. I have behaved badly, you must forgive me.”

Phoebe blinked. Will frowned, feeling more despicable. He didn’t know what, precisely, he expected her to say. He supposed it was the chaos that raged beneath his placid exterior that had caused him to offer something so vile to this woman. Even looking at her now—so guileless, so arousing—he thought she should loathe him.

He did not expect her to rise up on her knees and place her hands against his chest. He caught one hand and pressed it tightly to his heart, which had begun to beat with the strength of ten men. With his other hand he cupped her face, splayed his fingers against her cheek, drinking her in, suddenly fearful of losing her, of losing this moment.

Phoebe slowly leaned forward and touched her lips to his before sinking into him, toppling them back onto the cushions. Will caught her in his arms—she felt almost weightless on him, a mere wisp of the scintillation that singed him deep within.

He had not kissed a woman like this in some time—at least not with such ardent devotion, with such fire in his belly. He rolled them over, onto their sides, dimly aware of a wine goblet tumbling over in his carelessness. He stroked her face and her hair as he slipped his tongue into her mouth.

Phoebe moaned with a woman’s pleasure and sent his blood racing through his veins. As he kissed her, the myriad things he’d been feeling about her suddenly consumed him. He lifted his head, looked down at her face in the soft glow of the candles. Her skin was luminous—she was luminous—her eyes were full of longing. Her chest rose and fell rapidly with her panting, the skin of her bosom was milky white, her body was swathed in the soft blue silk that made her eyes seem even larger.

“Dear God,” he whispered in reverence, and lowered his head to the flesh above her bodice and kissed her, pressing his hand to her breast. He dipped his fingers into her gown, closing around the peak of her breast, and felt it swell in his hand. Phoebe gasped and arched into him, and his desire for her swelled monstrously, pushing inside his chest and his trousers.

“I cannot resist you,” he murmured against her skin. “I cannot bear to be near you and not touch you.” Wildly, he kissed her neck, the hollow of her throat, and her lips, her luscious lips, before returning to her breast again.

Phoebe groaned and put her hands on his shoulders, kneading him through his coat. Desire roared like a violent river in his veins; he caught the edge of her gown and pushed it up, and slipped his hand around her ankle.

He moved up, his fingers whisper light on her skin, running over her knee, to the top of her stocking, and touching the bare flesh of her thigh. Phoebe gasped with titillation; her eyes flew open and she looked at him, wide-eyed. He should stop, he wanted to stop, but her flesh was too tempting, too soft, too warm, too fragrant.

“My lord—”

“Will,” he answered breathlessly, suddenly needing to hear her say his name. “Call me Will, I am Will.”

Phoebe rose up, caught his face in her hands. “Will.” As her hands flitted across his temples, his shoulders, and his neck, he caressed the inside of her thigh, moving higher. She made little gasping sounds, as if every stroke of his finger inflamed her. Her lips parted; she closed her eyes and gripped his shoulders.

Will slipped his fingers in between the slit of her drawers and brushed against the curls that covered her sex, spurred by her whimper of pleasure.

He caught her in the crook of his arm, drew her close so that he could kiss her at the same moment he parted her flesh with his finger. She cried into his mouth as he began to stroke her, lifting her leg and bending it at the knee.