When His Kiss Is Wicked (14 page)

She regarded him intently, her gaze full of concern. “You needn’t tell me, if you don’t wish to.”

Something in her manner calmed him, and for the first time in his life Lucien wanted to share what happened to him that day when the world as he knew it ended. “For all the scandal it caused, it’s a very short story. Of course, I didn’t learn the truth until later. My mother ran off with another man when I was ten. One morning I woke up and my father told me she had gone away. We never saw her again. As I’m sure you can imagine, the social and emotional ramifications were horrendous.”

“Do you still miss her?” she asked quietly.

He sighed heavily, running his hand across his chin. “I used to. For years I used to pray for my mother to come home.” He paused thoughtfully. “Over the years I suppose I simply grew accustomed to life without her.”

Her eyes grew softer as she watched him. “Oh, Lucien, I’m sorry,” was all she said.

Her use of his first name almost undid him. The softness, the tenderness, the aching compassion in the way she whispered his name almost brought him to his knees.

“Let’s go upstairs now, shall we?” he suggested abruptly. The tightening sensation in his chest made him uncomfortable.

Colette seemed surprised by the sudden end to their conversation but nodded her assent. Lucien took her arm and led her from the library and down the corridor. Silently she followed him up the wide and curving front staircase and along the upstairs hallway until they reached the doors to his father’s suite of rooms.

Colette gave him a nervous glance and he squeezed her arm reassuringly before he guided her to where his father sat huddled in a large leather chair beside the mantel. In spite of the warm June weather, a blazing fire roared in the grate and a gray woolen blanket was wrapped around his thin shoulders. His rheumy eyes narrowed at the sight of Colette.

“Father, I have brought a visitor to meet you. This is Miss Colette Hamilton. She is the lady who has been choosing the books I’ve been reading to you. Colette, this is my father, Simon Sinclair, the Marquis of Stancliff.”

“Good afternoon, my lord,” Colette said warmly, taking his outstretched left hand in hers. “I’m honored to meet you, for your son has told me such wonderful things about you.”

His father nodded in greeting and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes as his gaze flicked in brief question to Lucien and then back to Colette.

“Miss Hamilton’s family owns a bookshop and she has graciously agreed to advise me on how to restock our library.”

“Oh, Lucien!” she cried suddenly, turning to him. “We left the Dickens books in the library. You were going to read one to your father!”

“I’ll go get them,” he said, grateful for a moment to himself to regain his footing. “I’ll be right back.”

As Lucien returned to the library to retrieve the books, he wondered how his world had suddenly turned upside down since the doorbell rang. How did he end up inviting Colette to restore his library? She would be visiting the house regularly. It was insanity. Then he confided in her about the day his mother left, when he had never discussed that with another soul. Now she was upstairs with his father! How had he allowed this to happen? He should have simply accepted the books and let her go on her merry way.

He knew the decisions he had just made regarding Colette were going to be grueling and thorough tests of his strength and self-control. He had just allowed the woman who tempted him above all others into his home.

Good God, what was he thinking?

When he returned to his father’s room, he stopped short at the scene before him. Colette had pulled up a small damask-covered chair beside her father and sat talking to him. The two looked rather comfortable together. Due to the extreme warmth in the room, Colette had removed her little yellow bonnet and her light summer shawl. The firelight glistened on her rich brown hair, and her creamy skin looked as if it were fine alabaster. The soft cadence of her voice drifted through the room as she spoke.

Lucien’s heart constricted strangely at the sight of Colette and his father together, but he stood silently so as not to interrupt them. Leaning against the door frame, he just watched. And listened to her as she spoke cheerfully about her beloved bookshop. Her face was animated as she described her work at Hamilton’s. Her warmth and charm brightened the dim room to which his father had been relegated these past months in a way he had never been able to lighten them, and he felt immensely grateful to Colette for doing so. His father smiled crookedly, but not disapprovingly, at the fact of her managing a business on her own. With a surprising sense of ease, she conducted a perfectly intelligible conversation with a man who could not speak clearly and whom she had just met.

Colette never ceased to amaze him.

Something made her glance back and spot him in the doorway. “Oh, hello, Lucien. I was just telling your father about my little shop. Come and join us.” She smiled invitingly.

Once again he felt an unusual sensation in his heart. “Would you care to read to him this afternoon?” he asked her. “I think my father is tired of hearing my voice and would enjoy a change, wouldn’t you, Father?”

Simon nodded as enthusiastically as he could, obviously agreeable to this suggestion.

“I would be honored to read to you, Lord Stancliff,” Colette answered graciously, looking into his eyes as she did.

Lucien handed her one of the books they had chosen. His fingers brushed hers lightly as she took it from him, sending a thrill through him. Their gaze held for a moment and he felt that special something pass between them again. That something that had been there from the very first. Something he could not describe. A feeling. A knowing. An understanding. An attraction. Shaken by the fact that he instinctively knew that she felt it too, Lucien held his breath. Colette quickly averted her eyes and settled back in to her chair, opening the leather-bound copy of
David Copperfield.

“Lucien tells me that you have never read any of Charles Dickens’s work before, my lord,” she said with a bright eagerness. When his father shook his head, she continued, “Well then, you are in for a wonderful treat, because Mr. Dickens was an amazingly gifted storyteller.”

Her eyes briefly glanced in Lucien’s direction over the rim of the open book and he smiled at her in encouragement. She then focused all her attention on the task at hand as if she read to his father every day. Without interrupting her, he took a seat near them and listened intently. As she read with genuine inflection and emotion, Lucien found himself caught up in the story, which he had never read either. Now he began to understand why Dickens was so popular. But perhaps it had more to do with the reader than the author who had him spellbound.

He could not keep his eyes off Colette.

Her graceful neck arched forward, and her full lips moved enticingly as she read the pages. Her lips fascinated him. Now that he knew the sweet taste of those lips, they tempted him all the more. He imagined them pressed heatedly against his mouth, nibbling along his jaw, leaving a trail of heavenly soft kisses across his chest, moving lower…

Good God! The woman is reading to my father!

Lucien forced his lustful thoughts to the back of his mind only by closing his eyes and losing himself in the story.

Colette read five chapters before Nurse Fiona, the capable and kind Scottish woman Lucien had hired to look after his father, entered the chamber. “It’s time for Lord Stancliff’s supper,” she announced, her soft Scottish burr evident in her speech.

Simon made an erratic motion to them with his good hand. “S-supper, supper.”

“Yes, it’s time for supper now.” Colette grinned at him, closing the book and placing it on the end table. “And it is time for me to be on my way.”

“S-stay for supper,” Simon Sinclair uttered rather clearly. Lucien was impressed.

“Oh, thank you very much for the invitation, Lord Stancliff, but I really ought to be going home now.” Colette began, rising to her feet. “I’ve intruded long enough.”

“Nonsense,” Lucien declared decisively. “We’ve taken advantage of your kindness this afternoon. The least we can do is offer you some refreshment. Please stay and have supper with us.”

“It’s rather late,” she said hesitantly, glancing between him and Simon. “I only meant to drop off the books, and here I am still, hours later. My sisters must be worried about me.”

It was oddly comforting having her there with his father and it surprised Lucien how much he wanted Colette to stay. He had already joined her family for dinner, and now he wanted her to spend time with his family. Such as it was. “That is easily remedied. I will have a footman send a message around to inform them. Surely you can have a light supper with us?” He gave her his most persuasive smile.

He saw the indecision on her face, and she clutched her bonnet and shawl tightly against her chest. “I don’t know…”

“Then it’s settled,” he said. “Nurse Fiona, please have Granger send a footman to Hamilton’s Book Shoppe, just off Bond Street, to let Mrs. Hamilton know that her daughter is dining here this evening with my father, and that I shall escort her home later. And please arrange to have supper for the three of us served up here in my father’s sitting room.”

“Very good, my lord.” The tall nurse exited the room to follow Lucien’s instructions.

Lucien turned back to look at Colette, who had not moved an inch. A mix of emotions crossed her features, and he was thrilled to note that pleasure was one of them.

“There,” he declared with a wave of his hand. “You see? It’s all taken care of. You can stay for supper. And then I shall take you home in my carriage afterward.”

The early summer sun set with long golden rays that reached into Simon Sinclair’s sitting room, bathing the chamber with warm hues. A simple meal was served at a small but elegantly set table near the fire, so Simon would not get too chilled. They dined on roasted lamb and fresh green vegetables, Lucien having discovered early on that very rich meals had a deleterious effect upon his father. He poured a glass of wine for Colette and himself, and a small amount for Simon, whose eating skills had improved somewhat over time as he learned to use his left hand instead of his right. Simon still needed some assistance now and then, which Lucien provided.

Once she conceded to stay for supper, Colette immediately relaxed.

“Father,” Lucien began the conversation, “Colette is the oldest of five daughters.”

Simon’s lopsided grin appeared on his gaunt face. “A-all p-pretty, too?”

Lucien caught Colette’s embarrassed glance and enjoyed causing her more embarrassment. “They all look remarkably alike, and yes, they are more than pretty. In fact, they are beauties. And they all have French names as well. One day we must have the Hamilton sisters over for a visit, Father. I’d hazard to guess they would cheer up the place.”

Colette’s light laughter warmed him. “Or we would give your poor father a dreadful headache!”

“I recently had the good fortune to dine with Colette’s family. Their mother is from France.”

Simon’s eyes lit up. “Ah,” he sighed. “T-the F-french.”

“My father loves France and anything French,” Lucien added.

“My mother was born in Paris and came to London to visit her cousins when she was eighteen,” Colette told them. “She met and married my father and never went back to France.”

“She swept your father off his feet?” Lucien asked.

Colette remarked, “It seems that way.”

Simon grinned gleefully. “French women!”

Lucien and Colette exchanged amused glances.

“Do you all speak French?” Lucien asked her.

“
Bien sûr, je parle français de temps en temps lorsque je suis en famille,”
Colette uttered with flawless ease. “But my father did not speak a word of French. My mother still speaks French to us from time to time.”

“Father spent a year in France when he was younger, and he has never recovered,” Lucien explained for his father. “He fell in love with their language and culture. And I daresay the women, too.”

Simon surprised them both with a very hearty growl, leaving no doubt in their minds how he felt about the females in France.

Colette’s sweet laughter brightened the room. “Why, Lord Stancliff,” she said in mock innocence and gave him a sly wink, “I’m shocked!”

Simon actually winked back at her as Lucien watched the affectionate interplay between them with undisguised amusement. His father genuinely liked Colette, and Lucien couldn’t help the profound pride he had in her at that moment.

“Enough about my family,” Colette said. “Please tell me about Devon House.”

“It’s been in our family for years,” Lucien said. “It was designed and built by my father’s grandfather, Henry Sinclair, back in 1780.”

Over the years Devon House had become something of a local landmark, and many an aspiring artist, intrigued by the beautiful design, had sketched the magnificent home. Five stories high and almost a block long, the white Georgian-style building had tall Palladian windows on the first floor, leading up to gabled windows on the top floor, and possessed a grand and symmetrical sophistication. A black wrought-iron fence with intricate scrollwork intertwined with delicate vines and leaves outlined the perimeter of the house and a curved marble staircase led up to the front entrance of double doors of polished mahogany with a fan light window above them. The classic and well-designed structure graced the quiet lane with its elegant lines and columns. But to Lucien, it was simply his home.

“Why is it called Devon House?” she asked.

“Because it was named after Henry Sinclair’s mother, Margaret Devon.”

Simon interrupted, his eyes alight with amusement. “G-grandmother’s m-money!”

“Yes,” Lucien nodded, surprised at his father’s blatant honesty about a fact he usually liked to keep quiet. “It was Margaret Devon’s money that saved the Sinclair family from financial ruin years ago.”

“It was money well spent,” Colette remarked with un-abashed warmth. “It’s such a grand and lovely house.”