A Perfect Gentleman (35 page)

Stony started to tug down the loosened stocking, but his hand had a will of its own—likely the same will that had him pressing kisses to her breasts—and moved higher, to the skin on the back of her knee, the inside of her thigh. So smooth, so soft, just as he'd imagined.

Now she groaned. And wriggled. Lud, his hand slipped higher than he'd intended, almost to…

“Oh hell, we cannot.” He took his hand away and cupped her face in his hands. “I work for you!”

“This is not part of the job.”

“But I swore never to dally with one of my charges. It's wrong, taking advantage of them. Of you. Men trust me with their innocent daughters. Gads, I cannot even trust myself with you!” His hands were pulling at the top of her gown to free her breasts. He almost cried at the sight of those perfect round globes with their rosy centers, knowing they could never be his to fondle, to suckle, to tease into hardness. Why, the merest touch of his lips on her nipple had it rigid and waiting. “Damnation!”

Ellianne was gasping. “So quit. No, do not quit that.”
Never that,
she prayed. “Quit my employ, so you won't have to suffer such qualms.”

“I think I have quit caring,” he murmured as his tongue found her other nipple, and his hand reached again to find nirvana. “I'll worry about it in the morning.”

“No, you'll only feel…remorse,” she said between labored breaths while her hands reached into the opening of his shirt to touch wiry curls and hard muscles. “So I'll get rid of your plaguey principals for you. You are fired.” She lowered one hand between them, to find the fastenings on his trousers.

“No, I am on fire.”

“I am, too. I have never felt this way, so heated, so consumed by burning need, as if my very soul were waiting to erupt like a volcano. There is fever in my blood and—”

“I really am on fire.” His arm had brushed against the candle, and the lace of his shirt sleeve was starting to smoke.

Ellianne screamed and pushed against him, jumping off the table, knocking over one of the wineglasses, the tin of ointment, and Stony. She grabbed up his neckcloth and knelt beside him on the floor where he'd landed. She started beating the length of fabric against his hand.

“Stop that, you goose.” He took the cloth from her and used it to smother the incipient fire. “You're just fanning the flames, which is no surprise. You've been doing it this past hour.”

“I? I did not have my hand up your…” She helped him shrug out of his jacket, then pull his shirt over his head.

“You were trying.”

“I was not.” She turned his wrist this way and that, to see if any skin had been burned. It hadn't, but she put her lips to the spot anyway, just to make sure it did not feel hot. It did, but not from the candle burn. She had to kiss his bare chest, to compare. He moaned, but not from the candle burn either.

This time she was on top, trying to touch every inch of naked skin while his hands were busy loosening the tapes at the back of her gown. Meanwhile they kissed, joining together in fevered anticipation of another joining.

This time he stopped uttering protests he did not mean.

This time the floor really did tremble…under the heavy pounding of running feet.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“He was on fire.”

“I'd wager he was,” Timms said with an old man's envy.

Aunt Lally picked up Ellianne's garter from the floor and waved it. “And what were you going to do with your skirts up and your stockings down, piss on him to put the fire out?”

The two had coming barreling into the butler's pantry. By then Stony had his shirt on, but no jacket, waistcoat, or cravat. Ellianne had the top of her gown pulled up, with her long hair covering the unfastened opening in the back. Timms, in nightcap and gown, had an ancient blunderbuss but not his false teeth or his spectacles. Aunt Lally's gray-streaked red hair was in a long braid, and her night rail had delicate violets embroidered on it, surprisingly. Less surprisingly, she had a long-handled copper warming pan in her hand and immediately started beating at Wellstone's head.

Ellianne shouted at her to stop, as soon as she took the blunderbuss from the old butler before he fired at one of them by mistake. “It is not his fault. Lord Wellstone has done nothing wrong, nothing I haven't asked him to do.”
So Aunt Lally started beating at Ellianne's head. She might have the language of a dockside laborer, but she had the morals of a vicar when it came to her family.

Stony wrested the warming pan away from her. “You are making more of this than need be,” he said, looking to see if any other servants had heard the commotion and were coming to find out if they were under attack. Luckily, the rest of the staff slept in the attics, far enough away to dampen the sounds. “Nothing happened.” By the grace of God and a single candle.

“More than need be?” Aunt Lally yelled, fighting him for the weapon. “By Saint Sylvester's stones, I'll give you what need be, you jackanapes.”

They all knew what needed to be done. Ellianne's aged butler and her widowed aunt waited for Stony to speak.

“I would be honored—” he began, resigned, relieved, almost in raptures that the decision was out of his hands.

But Ellianne interrupted. “Lord Wellstone would be honored if you shared a glass of wine with him before he leaves, in case we do not see him before we depart. We'll start packing tomorrow to return to Fairview.”

She could so calmly, so casually dismiss what had happened? Stony was almost as angry as Mrs. Goudge. Ellianne really had been using him to satisfy her curiosity, to scratch an itch, nothing more. Blanchard was correct, but misguided: Miss Kane was not cold; she was coldhearted. He poured wine into crystal glasses Timms took out of one of the cabinets.

He could so cheerfully, so unconcernedly accept her interruption? Ellianne's heart was breaking at Stony's cavalier behavior. The least he could have done was try a little harder to finish the proposal so she could have refused it in form. He did not even want to marry her enough to finish the blasted sentence. Well, she did not want to marry him either, she told herself, accepting the glass he handed her. If she drank enough, perhaps she would believe it. Wed a man who did not love her? Never. She should have listened to his pleas to go. He had not wanted her, Ellianne Kane, at all, only a physical release. Any woman would have done as well. Once she paid him his wages, he could pick his own woman, his own wife if he chose, a real lady this time, one of his own kind. She drank the wine and held out her glass for more.

By Jupiter, she was celebrating her escape, Stony thought, tucking in his shirt and putting on his coat. A man should get drunk in private.

By heaven, he couldn't wait to leave, Ellianne thought, mortified now that she'd urged him on when he was so unwilling. She handed him his crumpled cravat from the floor, hoping her cheeks weren't scarlet with shame that she'd help rip it off his neck.

Aunt Lally's mouth was clamped shut, as if she'd taken another vow of silence, or was too aggravated with the pair of ninnyhammers to speak.

The butler's mouth was shut too, because he was embarrassed by Mrs. Goudge's seeing him without his teeth.

Then they heard another sound, the scrabble of clawed feet on the bare floor in the hallway.

“Oh, no,” Ellianne cried, searching the pockets of her green cloak for a bonbon or a boiled carrot.

“That's just what this night needs to be complete.” Stony started for the door, thinking that if he could slam it shut, he'd rather spend the night in here with the bitch, the witch, and the butler than encounter the hound from hell. He bumped into Timms, though, who'd had the same intent. Stony almost knocked the old fellow off his slippered feet. By the time he'd pushed Timms into the chair, the bulldog was careening around the doorpost, into the room. His wrinkled head swung from side to side, until his bloodshot eyes focused on Wellstone, the intruder.

The dog started to gather itself for a leap, a snarl in his throat, but no teeth in his gaping jaws.

Stony leaped first, for the bottle of wine on the table.

“Don't hurt him!” Ellianne shouted.

“Damnation, what about me?” Stony shouted back. But he wasn't holding the bottle by the neck, like a club; he was showering wine out onto the wooden floor.

“My floor!” Timms whined.

“My wine!” Aunt Lally wailed.

“My word,” Ellianne whispered. “I think it's working.”

At first the dog skidded in the liquid; then he sniffed. Then he put his big, ugly head down and began to slurp. The nubbin of a tail on his rear end began to wag.

Ellianne let out the breath she'd been holding. “I wish we had thought of doing that before.”

“I wish we hadn't drunk so much,” Stony said, setting down the empty bottle and looking at Ellianne accusingly for having that second glass. He began to sidle toward the door, thinking to make his getaway before the floor was dry.

Timms had unearthed another bottle, of even better vintage, from a different cabinet. He poured an inch of it into a gleaming silver finger bowl and set it on the floor. “I do believe Lady Augusta and the beast shared a libation now and again.”

“I wonder if dogs suffer from overindulgence,” Ellianne mused as the slurping continued. “And what they call the morning's remedy. The hair of the cat?”

“I'll leave you to find out. I deem it the better part of valor to depart while Atlas is imbibing,” Stony told the others, bowing slightly, trying to look dignified despite his disarray.

“I'll see you out,” Ellianne said, ignoring her aunt's glare and Timms's throat clearing. “I won't be long. A minute or two.”

Aunt Lally picked up the blunderbuss, not the warming pan. “I'll be counting.”

When they reached the front door, Ellianne told Stony that she would send a bank draft over in the morning.

Stony nodded. He could not afford to refuse her payment, the way his pride wanted. “All business as usual, Miss Kane?”

“Our business is concluded, Lord Wellstone.”

So he kissed her. Stony did not like being dismissed, did not like thinking that their heated exchange meant so little to Ellianne that she could brush him aside like a dog hair on her hem. He did not like thinking that the passionate interlude would never be repeated, either. So he kissed her with fervor and feeling and every fiber of his being.

She kissed him back. Heavens, she kissed him back as if she could sink into his skin, becoming part of him, a part that he could not simply walk away from. Let him take his freedom home, she thought, but let him take the memory of what could have been, if he had cared for her at all.

They kissed, and Ellianne could no longer feel her feet touch the floor. She was up in his arms, she realized with the two bits of her brain still working, off the ground. He was holding her so they touched everywhere. Everywhere they touched was another glowing ember about to catch on fire.

They kissed, and Stony was ready to burst, ready to lay her down on the marble tiles, or carry her up to her bedroom. He could not move, though. He could not breathe or think or do anything but what he was doing, kissing Ellianne—not like he'd ever kissed any other woman. Hell, there was no other woman but Ellianne.

They kissed and time stood still. Aunt Lally did not. She and her blunderbuss appeared in the hall.

Stony opened the door; then he raised one gold eyebrow in inquiry.

“I still will not marry you,” Ellianne said, understanding the question.

“I still have not asked.”

*

According to Gwen, Ellianne was not planning on leaving for two days. She was not going out except for her engagement with Sir John Thomasford, because of the gossip. Dear Ellianne could not like being stared at or whispered about, Gwen said, eyeing Stony with accusation, as if he could have prevented Blanchard's vile rant. He could not have foreseen the depth of the cad's hatred, any more than he could have foreseen the heights of his own folly afterward, of which, thank goodness, Gwen was ignorant.

He could, however, make certain neither happened again. He guaranteed Blanchard's departure from Town by having friends call in the dastard's markers. Blanchard could flee, or he could face debtor's prison. He'd never be welcome at the gentlemen's clubs or the polite drawing rooms again, not a loose screw who insulted women and, worse, reneged on debts of honor. Someone, perhaps Lord Charles, dropped a hint that the man might have cheated at cards. Blanchard wouldn't be showing his face, broken nose and all, at the gaming parlors, either.

As for Stony's lack of control where Miss Ellianne Kane was concerned, he solved the problem by staying away from her. He could not overstep the bounds of propriety if he did not step over her doorstop. He was not certain he could see her, otherwise, without making a worse fool of himself. Even knowing she was a heartless jade, he still wanted her. Desperately.

Of course, one word from her would have brought Lord Wellstone to Sloane Street before the ink on her note was dry. The note never came, though. The draft on Miss Kane's bank did, more generous than he deserved, considering, but not so high that he would be offended. No message was included. So be it: He no longer worked for her. He did not have to follow her dictates or cater to her whims. He could stop worrying over fortune hunters or her future in whatever narrow society she chose to live.