Any Wicked Thing (17 page)

A
shaft of bright sunlight penetrated the gap in the dusty red velvet curtains. He and Freddie had slept the morning away after a night filled with one surprise after another. Sebastian had thought himself incapable of surprise, but Freddie had proven him wrong again and again as she took him in her sweet mouth once more and submitted to him completely until dawn. She lay curled up against him now, her lovely bottom cushioning his hip, her streaky hair tangling down her back.

He wished he could see her face, count her freckles in the morning light, see how red her lips remained from his kisses. He had taken her from behind with ruthlessness and she hadn't objected, teased her from head to toe with the crop, tasted her honey as his tongue laved her cunt. He could not remember a time when one woman had satisfied him so completely or with such devastating innocence. It was as if the night banished the tart, grasping spinster Frederica Wells and left Delilah in her place.

Sebastian slipped out of bed and stretched. There would be no naked fencing today, but an alfresco picnic in the walled garden beneath the apple blossoms. Perhaps a walk on the moor if they didn't sink. Find a little stream where they could wade and splash and have sex. He would give Freddie a few hours of recovery time before he fucked her again. He'd chat her up, charm her, because that was what he did with women. He'd gotten good over the years at sensing what they wanted so he could get what he wanted. What he needed.

“What time is it?”

Freddie sat up, sweeping her tawny hair off her sleep-pink face. She clutched the sheet over her breasts, a rather futile effort since they were pink, too, from his love bites.

“Nearly noon. Did you sleep well?” Remarkably, he had. He rarely spent the entire night beside whichever woman he fucked, choosing instead to claim his own space once he'd taken his pleasure. It had not been much of a trial to have Freddie's soft little body near, however.

“Noon! I never sleep so late.”

“Well, my dear, we didn't get to sleep until well after dawn. Don't castigate yourself for a slugabed.”

She reached for her discarded night rail. “I have things I should see to.”

“No.” His voice brooked no disagreement. “You are mine for the day. Did you forget?”

“I thought after last night—”

“That I'd had my fill of you? Ah, no, Freddie. My days are precious to me. You'll not cheat me out of them.”

“You cheated me out of yesterday,” she muttered.

“For a mere half hour. Alas, perhaps I was even quicker. And as I recall, you were perfectly willing.”

She glared at him. “Wipe that smug smile off your face! You are not God's gift to womankind.”

“Have you complaints, Freddie?”

She flushed brick red and said nothing.

“I thought not. But do tell me where there's room for improvement. I do aim to please.”

She threw the night rail over her head and disappeared for a moment. Sebastian was fairly certain she cursed him underneath the cotton wrinkles. Her face popped out, looking less love-struck by the minute.

“How would I know what you should do? I've never even dreamed of most of the horrible things you've done.”

“
We've
done, Freddie. I was hardly alone. And what exactly has been so horrible?”

“Everything!” she cried.

Sebastian smiled and opened his trunk. He heard a hiss from the bed, but he merely pulled a clean pair of breeches from his belongings. “I'm going downstairs to get Mrs. Holloway to pack us a picnic lunch in the lady's garden. It will serve double duty as our breakfast. Say in half an hour? Shall I have coffee or tea sent up to you while you dress?”

“No. The staff has better things to do than climb the stairs for me.”

“Don't be absurd, Freddie. That's their job.”

“You forget they haven't been paid in eons.”

That brought Sebastian up short. Damn it, it would take him months to settle his entanglements and obligations, even with some of Freddie's fortune in his back pocket. She was welcome to the rest—he wouldn't make her wait until she was thirty. He'd release all her funds to her—it was up to the guardian's discretion. She'd have her assets, but at the moment her tongue was not one of them. He left her grumbling in his bed and wound his way into the kitchens. Alice skittered to a corner, but Mrs. Holloway seemed to be getting used to seeing a duke in her domain and barely looked up from rolling out dough.

“I was wondering if we would see you this morning, Your Grace. I can get breakfast up to the dining hall in a jiffy.”

“No need. From last year's harvest?” Sebastian picked up a shriveled apple from a wooden bowl and took a bite.

She waved a floury finger at him. “Oh, Your Grace, you shouldn't be taking that! I was going to make applesauce. Those there have gone by for eating. The good ones are in a barrel in the cellars.”

His mouth was filled with a combination of mush and wood. Once he swallowed, he asked, “Is the little orchard productive, then?”

Mrs, Holloway nodded. “It is, sir. Miss Frederica and the men have tended the trees faithfully. The yield's enough for the household. The castle grows all its own vegetables, too. What we don't grow, we barter for. Miss Frederica and Alice and I make fine soaps and lotions to sell locally. Much nicer than you'd get in any store.”

Sebastian recalled the neatly lined shelves in the bathing room, bottles glistening. Good—when his jar of cream ran out, Frederica could supply her own. He pictured her rubbing some concoction on his cock before she eased herself down upon it.

“Could you get together a simple basket lunch for us, Mrs. Holloway? I'm going to inspect the walled garden with Miss Frederica when she wakes up.”

The cook gave him a knowing look. The castle was large, but sounds echoed against the cold stone walls. He and Freddie had given the Archibald Walkers a run for their money what with the screaming and the moaning all through the night, but maybe their voices had blended with the usual castle caterwauling.

“I'll be happy to. Alice, fetch some pasties from the larder for the duke. A nice wedge of my cheese.”

“Some wine,” murmured Sebastian.

“For breakfast? Oh! Pardon my rudeness, Your Grace. I don't believe Miss Frederica enjoys spirits that much. Go right to her head, they do. I'll just pack a bottle of lemonade for her.”

Sebastian filed away that interesting tidbit. If Freddie was so uninhibited without wine, what would she be willing to do when she was tipsy? He was determined to find out.

But perhaps he already had found out exactly what she was capable of. She'd come to him ten years ago, smelling of roses and apricot ratafia. He'd pressed the drinks on her himself. She was filled with Dutch courage so she could ruin his life while he ruined her.

When he returned to his room with a pitcher of wash water, all traces of Freddie had disappeared. Good little housekeeper that she was, she'd straightened the bed and plumped up the pillows. The window was open to the breeze, his robe folded over the trunk. If he had a farthing, he'd bet Freddie had taken advantage of his absence to snoop inside. He hoped she wasn't too shocked by what she found.

He stripped again and gave himself a rather thorough sponge bath, cleaned his teeth and brushed his longish hair into some semblance of order. Sebastian wondered if Freddie was as skilled in barbering as everything else, although if she truly were his Delilah, he'd not trust her an inch with a pair of scissors. He pulled a fresh lawn shirt over his head and donned his nankeens but skipped all the other constricting layers a gentleman wore. He was no gentleman.

Opening his trunk, he fished through his stockings until he found the slender leather-bound diary. A foolish affectation to be sure—he was no Boswell, either, but it amused him to keep track of his conquests. He had a drawerful of diaries at Roxbury Park dating back to his school days.

There was another diary he buried at the bottom of his trunk. He carried it with him at all times, written not as the events depicted within were happening, but after. The days covered by this diary's notations had not afforded him paper, or pens, or even the will or strength to write about them at the time. But once Sebastian was free of this particular past, he needed to write about it. He was still trying to make sense of the months he spent in Egypt, but wondered if he ever would.

Now was not the time to dwell on unpleasantness. He penned a few lines in his current journal praising Freddie's surprising effect upon him and left the page open to the air to dry, anchoring it on his father's desk with the chipped inkpot.

She was waiting for him on the round stone bench in the center of the garden. It was sheltered by some sort of flowering tree—he was no horticulturist—but she'd clapped on an absurdly outdated straw hat against the sun. She'd already unpacked the basket and was eating a hard-boiled egg with wolfish abandon.

“Starving, are you? A good tupping always makes me hungry, too.”

Freddie looked as if a bit of egg lodged in her throat. Sebastian patted her back with some force, then untied her bonnet and tossed it to the clipped grass.

“Ouch! I'm perfectly fine. And that's my best hat!”

“I don't believe it. When was the last time you went shopping?”

Freddie scrunched up her face. “A year or two before your father passed. He was very ill, you know—I couldn't leave him long enough to go to York to bother with shopping.”

“I almost wish you'd written.” Would he have come home? Possibly not. But his animus toward his father had abated over the years. As Sebastian himself experimented, he had realized just how trapped a man like his father had been in society, being forbidden from acknowledging what he was, being forced to live a lie. Sebastian could well forgive the sex, but the obsession with scholarship was still a thorn. Sebastian wondered how Phillip Goddard had torn himself away long enough from his books to fuck his unwanted wife and plant his seed thirty-one years and nine months ago. Sebastian's mother had died when Sebastian was ten, and Sebastian might as well have. The old duke was too preoccupied living in the distant past to notice that his only child existed in the present.

“The duke forbade me to write to you. And what good would it have done? You couldn't be found for almost a year as it was.”

Sebastian uncorked the wine and poured some into a goblet. He took a sip. Vinegar. His father had kept a very good cellar, but this was not a prime example. “I was in Egypt for several years. Signed on for an archaeological dig. There was a bit of a problem, so no mail reached me for months.”

“An historical venture? You did not!”

“I did indeed. Of course, they hired me more for my brawn than my brain. Did you think I was simply enjoying myself in a brothel in Budapest? I confess I did that, too.”

“Oh, you're impossible!”

He grinned at her. “Undoubtedly. But the pater would have been proud of me poking around
real
antiquities. I had to keep myself in blunt, Freddie, so I made myself useful where I could. There were benefits. The Egyptian dancing girls, for example. All those veils. The dusky skin, the liquid eyes—”

“That's quite enough,” Freddie snapped. She sliced a morsel of cheese from the wedge but did not put it to her lips. He took the knife from her and divided a warm beef pasty in half.

“For you,” he said pushing it toward her. “There seems to be only the one.”

“I ate mine already,” Freddie said, her eyes downcast. So she
was
a woman of uncontrollable appetites. He liked the idea of an undisciplined Freddie, who might eat dessert first or shake the Christmas present in impatience.

“Shall I tell you about Egypt?” He had many tales, though a few would remain his secret, only for the diary buried at the bottom of his trunk.

She gave an exaggerated sigh. “If you must.”

“I thought a scholar like you would appreciate expanding your knowledge of the world.”

“Only if you stick to decency. With that caveat, I expect your stories will be brief.”

Sebastian threw his head back and laughed. “I see my father did a thorough job convincing you of my sins, and what I tell you this afternoon will only confirm your opinion. I was factotum for a few months to the notorious Henry Kipp. You've heard of him?”

“The man who steals Egypt's treasures? Oh, Sebastian!” she said with dismay.

“The very same. And beds every female he meets, willing or unwilling. A friend of a friend of a friend got me the position, but between Kipp's dishonesty and his penchant for schoolgirls, I resigned as soon as I was able. But I should have stuck with him. He at least passed around enough baksheesh to keep us all safe. I threw my lot in with another company, and wound up spending a bit of time in prison. Filthy place.”