Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (21 page)

“Get off.” He pushed his brother away. “Calm yourself. Of course not. It’s not like that at all.”

To his knowledge, it was the first time he’d ever lied to Colin in his life.

Colin was still staring at him. “Because you know Genevieve will never forgive you. And the duke may
not
kill you, but you’ll always wonder, won’t you? What a fun way to go through life.”

He was about to say,
The duke’s not a murderer
. But then cuckolding a man really was a matter of honor, and Ian wasn’t certain he’d blame the duke for wanting to exact revenge . . . and if he should ever suspect that Miss Danforth had crawled into his bed last night . . .

“All right, then,” his brother said. “If you
are
worried about the duke with regards to that girl, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. After all, it’s what
everyone
sees when they look at her. I imagine you’re only now coming around to seeing it. And in time it’ll go the way of your other, shall we say, passing fancies, no doubt.”

“I see.” It almost sounded like sacrilege to hear it described that way. “Well, then.”

“And by passing fancies, I mean women.”

“Thank you. I knew what you meant.”

He was quiet.

Go away, Colin.

Colin regarded him with some sympathy.

“You know, marrying someone—anyone, practically—would solve the problem.”

“Of Miss Danforth?” For she needed solving, as far as Ian was concerned.

“Of you.”

He snorted.

“Don’t marry someone dull, though,” Colin hastened to add.

“Can’t marry someone dull if I never get married at all.”

“Forget what I said about family. Mother
will
murder you then,” he said easily. “Now, come with me.”

Ian sighed, and hurriedly slid
Native Flora of North America
back into place on the shelf. He would be back to study it later.

But he didn’t push it
all
the way in. And when the Duke of Falconbridge entered the library a little later, specifically because he’d seen Colin and Ian departing it, he scanned the room thoughtfully. When he noticed the spine of one book poking out from the otherwise neatly aligned books, he immediately aimed for it and pulled it from the shelf.

He read the title.

And he straightened slowly and stared after where Colin and Ian had disappeared.

Chapter 21

W
HEN SHE BOUNDED DOWNSTAIRS
for breakfast the following morning, Tansy was greeted by a footman who was just taking receipt of more bouquets! How she loved flowers.

“These arrived for you, Miss Danforth,” he said, smiling as she began to lunge forward enthusiastically.

But she stopped short.

And backed away two feet. As if instead of flowers, she’d been given one of the plants that eat animals, the sort that Miles Redmond had documented in his book.

At last she stretched out her hand for them, slowly, disbelieving, and the footman relinquished a colorful, casual bundle, tied with a blue ribbon.

And then her hand began to tremble as she took an inventory of the flowers:

Columbines. Asters. Marigolds. Wild roses. Bergamot. Lupine.

And the thing that stopped her breath: a trumpet-shaped flower called “shooting star.”

It was like looking across a spring meadow in bloom back home.

Shooting star!

They could only be the gift of one person. The person who claimed he never gave gifts. At least not to women.

How had he . . . how on earth . . .

“A message accompanied them, Miss Danforth.”

The message was sealed with a blob of wax but no press of a signet. She slid a finger beneath to crack the seal, and read:
I apologize if I’ve ever behaved like an ass.
It was the most romantic message she’d ever received.

All other messages would strive to live up to it for the rest of her days. She was convinced of that in the moment.

“And these have just arrived for you, too, miss, with the vase as well. Where would you like me to put them?”

He gestured to an exquisite alabaster vase stuffed with tasteful, towering, flawless, hothouse blooms. Roses, crimson and erect, looking like scepters, white lilies like trumpets. A triumphant arrangement only one man could have sent.

An arrangement, in fact, fit for a duchess.

Both arrangements stole her breath, for different reasons.

She opened the note that accompanied it.

These reminded me of you. I hope you don’t think me forward, but I would be honored if you and Falconbridge would join me for an afternoon picnic today.

“I think someone is smitten.” Genevieve was smiling.

Which someone?

And which one was scarier?

S
HE FOUND HIM
sitting in one of the parlors, perusing a book he tucked behind him the moment she entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Captain Eversea.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Danforth.”

He remained seated. His long legs were stretched out before him, his arms folded behind his head, and the sun was behind him, giving him a little corona of glowing auburn. Like the embers of a fire.

As befit a devil.

“Thank you for your very kind gift,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“And for the apology.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That must have been torture for you to write. The apology.”

He was silent.

“I can just imagine you sitting there, beads of perspiration popping out all over your brow, your pride writhing in torment as you selected just the right words . . .”

He gave a short laugh. “Enough.”

She smiled at him.

“Aren’t you going to stand for me? Gentlemen generally do, when a lady enters the room.”

And at that he drew himself slowly to his feet, and somehow the unfurling of his great length and height effectively blotted out the sunlight pouring in the window. He took two steps toward her.

As usual she felt at a loss.

“Is that better?” he said softly.

It was and it wasn’t.

He was so very, very tall.

She was always so very tempted to allow him to engulf her.

“I remained sitting,” he said thoughtfully, “because I liked how the sunlight poured over you as you entered the room and lit you up, and I quite simply couldn’t move for enjoying it.”

Oh.

Now he’d done it. He’d stolen her breath completely.

She
was the arch flatterer, and she hadn’t the faintest idea what to say. Like his message accompanying the flowers, this particular observation meant more than every single compliment she’d ever received in her life. She knew it was sincere.

And she once again had a sense for how he could so easily captivate women.

She didn’t like the idea of him captivating women. Women.

And then she remembered: he never gave gifts.

“Thank you,” she said, almost timidly.

He smiled, a slow crooked smile that ended in a short laugh, because he knew, he knew, just what he did to her.

Beast.

“Aren’t you going to flatter me, Miss Danforth? Don’t I look manly, and so forth? Don’t I give the best compliments you’ve ever heard?”

“I’m certain you have that conversation with your mirror every morning.”

He laughed again, that surprised, delighted sound. “So what are you going to do today?” He flicked a glance over her striped muslin morning dress, and she felt the heat start up at the back of her neck and her arms, her nipples perk to attention, and she knew from now on every time she stood in a room with Ian Eversea she might as well be wearing nothing, because she’d feel naked regardless.

“I’ve been invited to a picnic with Lord Stanhope. And Genevieve and the duke.”

“Have you, now? Back to visit him so soon? And how did you find his lord, yesterday?”

“Amiable.”

“Amiable,” he said slowly, as if rolling an unfamiliar wine about in his mouth. “Now, given that I know you’re prone to hyperbole, ‘amiable’ sounds like a veritable indictment.”

“It’s not. Did you hope it was?”

“Of course not. Amiable is all anyone can hope to be. The absolute pinnacle of personal achievement.”

“And if
you
keep striving, I know one day you’ll reach that pinnacle, too, Ian,” she soothed.

He grinned at her.

A funny, soft little silence ensued.

“Ian . . . I’ve been wondering . . .”

“Yes?”

“Will you tell me more about lovemaking?”

He blinked. “Tansy. Mother of God. You have to stop
doing
that.”

“Doing what?”

“Ambushing me with questions of that nature, and the like.”

“It is the one way I get the better of you, and it’s very, very funny to alarm you, so no, I won’t.”

This amused him slightly. “I did have to at least ask.”

“But regarding my question . . . Don’t you think I ought to be educated before I take any risks?”

Truthfully, it was a deliberate provocation. A red cape shaken out in front of a bull. She wanted to hear him talk about it.

She knew he wanted her, and knew
all
the power lay in her hands.

Too late she realized he would of course know exactly what she was doing.

He didn’t like it.

His eyes went flinty. “I’m certain your husband will do it for you, when the time comes. It’s his duty . . .”

Husband.
She blinked. The word landed with a sort of thud between them. A funny little silence followed. She observed him through narrowed eyes.

She didn’t like the sound of the word “duty,” either, and suspected he knew it.

“. . .
and
it will be your duty to please him.”

She suppressed a wince. “Perhaps it will always feel like a pleasure, not a chore,” she said bravely.

“Perhaps,” he said idly. “You could very well be right. But it isn’t always a pleasure, you know. Not every man is a skilled lover. Not every man will make you feel as if your blood is on fire and your knees are water, and like you can’t breathe for wanting him.”

She froze.

Speaking
of ambush.

Interestingly, as if he were a conjurer, her blood was now on fire and her knees like water, and she’d stopped breathing.

How did he do that? How did he know? It was desperately unfair that he knew so much more than she did. And he’d said it so easily. He stepped a little closer. Just an inch or so. She could breathe now. She was doing it admittedly faster, however.

He wasn’t finished.

“Not every man will make you want to do anything he wishes because the moment he touches you your body is his to command. Not every man is capable of making you scream with bliss in every imaginable position, or knows where to touch you, or listens to your breath and your sighs to know precisely
how
to touch you, so that the pleasure you experience is the most intense. Not every man will make you see stars every . . . single . . . time.”

With every word her temperature seemed to rise another degree. Her senses seemed to understand that he was calling to them, like a charmer coaxing a snake from a basket, and it was true . . . she couldn’t breathe for wanting him.

How in God’s name did he know exactly what he did to her?

More importantly, what on earth did he mean by “every imaginable position”?

“There are many positions?” was what she finally said, her voice a whisper.

“Yes.” A curt answer.

She was speechless.

“Is that what you wanted me to say, Tansy? Is that the sort of thing you want to know about lovemaking?”

Really, he was a relentlessly cruel bastard, and yet she’d asked for it and he’d quite turned the tables on her. It really was impossible to toy with the man. She could not maneuver him in any of the usual ways.

And then she had a suspicion, which blossomed into a realization, when she looked at his hands. They had curled, involuntarily, and his knuckles were white. As though he was digging his nails into his palms to maintain control.

He was able to describe it in such detail, but he was describing how it felt for him, too.

Not in general.

With her.

With
her
.

And this seemed immense.

Mainly because she thought it might even frighten him. The man with a bayonet scar across his abdomen who suffered over a life he couldn’t save while unthinkingly nearly sacrificing his own.

“Thank you for that. It was quite edifying.” Her voice was frayed, as though she’d been locked in a heated room. Which, metaphorically speaking, she was. “And
I . . .
well, I suspect that not every woman will turn your blood into lava, or haunt your every waking thought, or make you tremble when you kiss her, or lose your mind and do things you never dreamed you’d do. Like track down just the right hothouse so you could send her a bundle of wildflowers native to a very specific region. When you make rather a point of never giving gifts to women.”

He went utterly motionless. Like an animal caught by a predator in a clearing.

Something like reluctant admiration flickered across his face. It was chased by something else, too: fear, or hurt, there and gone. She almost reflexively reached out to touch him, to apologize . . . for what? For seeing through him? For angering him? For subjecting him to something new?

She didn’t want him to ever feel more hurt. She never wanted this brave man to be afraid of anything.

It wasn’t her
fault
. It wasn’t something she’d done to him deliberately, after all.

Well, not entirely.

His voice was steady. “I can assure you, some women never know that kind of pleasure. Take a survey of your friends. You’ll doubtless discover most of the married ones are mulling their household budgets whilst their husbands busy themselves on top with the act of getting an heir. And young spoiled heirs never need to learn how to pleasure a woman.”

This did make her instantly flush scarlet. “You’re awful.”

“You don’t know the half of it, I’m afraid. I’m no hero, Tansy.”

She suspected she knew at least part of it. She suspected he was at least partially wrong. He was allegedly an inveterate rogue, and she’d witnessed nothing to dispel the notion. She thought of a certain sloe-eyed brunette widow and exchanged glances, and about what Mrs. deWitt had said.

It ought to matter to her more than it did.

And that was the danger of kisses, and seeing stars on a balcony at night. Her senses suddenly seemed to have dominion over her brain.

“We can limit our conversation to the weather, if you prefer,” he said, when it seemed she would say nothing. “Wouldn’t that be more sensible?”

“It’s hot today,” she said instantly.

He smiled, a slow, delighted smile. Then shook his head.

Damnation, but she liked him.

The tension loosened.

“I meant every word I said the other night. Do not play roulette with me, Tansy.” He said this gently, almost apologetically. “It will be all. Or it will be nothing.”

She backed away two steps. Back into the sunlight, inadvertently.

And he stood and watched her. “Like watching an angel return to Heaven.”

She snorted at that. “Now
that
was blarney.”

He grinned.

“Comfort yourself with the knowledge that it’s all in your hands. But then, I know that’s precisely where you like men to be.”

He reached for his hat, lying next to him on the settee, and settled it on his head.