Cheryl Holt (2 page)

How could she explain what she was doing, sitting by herself and obsessing over lewd drawings?

Gad! What if she’d wrecked her chance with the earl before the visit had even begun? Margaret would be driven to commit murder.

Terrified over what she’d wrought, she glanced up, and she flinched with shock and surprise.

For a bracing, mad instant, she was sure he was the knave in the book, having vaulted to life from the pages.

But no. Her imagination was merely agitated to a frenzy. He had many comparable features, but he wasn’t the same fellow.

He was beautiful, if a man could be described as
beautiful
, with black hair and blue eyes that glimmered in the dim light. His hair was neatly trimmed in the front, but the back was long and tied with a queue. He had high cheekbones, and a mouth ringed with dimples, as if he were carefree and prone to smiling, and he exuded masculine aromas like fresh air, tobacco, and horses.

A few years older than herself, he was tall, with broad shoulders, a thin waist, and lanky legs. As she was seated, he loomed over her, but she sensed no menace or intimidation. A disreputable cad could have taken advantage of her situation, but she didn’t perceive a hazard. While he appeared to be the sort who was capable of mischief, it wouldn’t be achieved at her expense; she was convinced of it.

She tried to deduce who he might be, but inference was difficult. He was attired as a laborer, in tan shirt and brown trousers, but the clothes were tailored and made of costly material, which verified he wasn’t a servant. He didn’t have the demeanor of a guest, either, and the earl had no relatives visiting.

If he wasn’t an employee, a guest, or kin, who was he? And how could she garner his promise that he’d never tell a soul what he’d seen her doing?

She was going to have a devil of a time worming her way out of the debacle, and she decided to seize the offensive.

“I beg your pardon?” she said. “Were you speaking to me?”

Casually, she closed the book, pretending that he’d witnessed nothing untoward. Exuding bravado, she glowered at him as if she were in the habit of confronting unknown men in the middle of the night, while scarcely dressed and perusing indecent art.

“I’d forgotten this book was here,” he replied. “I
haven’t picked it up since I was a lad just out of short pants. As you might surmise, I found it quite enlightening.”

He chuckled at the memory, a low, beguiling rumble that reverberated through her, rattling her.

“That’s not exactly information I’d share with others,” she retorted, as though she hadn’t just debased herself by greedily analyzing the drawings, too.

“Do you enjoy erotica?”

Erotica
. . .

She blinked, then blinked again. She hadn’t heard the term before. It sizzled through the room, like a novel flavor she’d never tasted, and she liked the sound of it. It connoted romance, intrigue, mystery—extreme wickedness!—and it conjured up notions of a bohemian life of gaiety and excitement.

What kind of scoundrel strutted up to a woman to whom he’d never been introduced and uttered such a scandalous, delicious word?

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she alleged.

“Erotica,” he repeated. He moved until he was behind her chair, blocking her in, and ruining any prospect she might have had to jump up and dash out. “I prefer the French style, but the Italian isn’t bad.”

He leaned forward, placing a palm on the table on either side of her, so that she was trapped. She’d never been so near to an unfamiliar man before. Hers was a sterile world, where contact was forbidden and avoided, so incidental and sporadic that she occasionally felt as if she were living in a bubble.

She didn’t know what to do. Though she knew she should leap up, shove him away, and stomp out, she didn’t want to give him the impression that she was apprehensive or unsophisticated, even though she was. And she couldn’t leave until she’d smoothed over the awkward encounter.

She
had
to marry the Earl of Salisbury. There was no alternative. They were in dire financial straits, with no options remaining, but she’d never wanted to wed. Her doting father had pampered her, letting her pursue her art by declining every proposal she’d received, a mistake about which Margaret never ceased to harangue.

If Olivia’s father had affianced her—Margaret liked to sharply contend—as any normal, sane parent should have done, Olivia would currently be joined with a wealthy, aristocratic husband who could support her family.

Absurdly, she suffered a ripple of irritation at both her father and brother for having had the gall to die, and thus abandoning a houseful of women who’d been alarmed to determine that they were on the verge of fiscal ruin.

Olivia had to work a swift miracle, by expeditiously snagging a husband, even though she had no dowry remaining. Their contrived solution rested with the widowed Lord Salisbury.

Margaret had events plotted out: Olivia would charm the earl, he would be smitten and offer for her, and she would accept. Then, Margaret would advise him of Olivia’s plundered dowry, certain that he was too much of a gentleman to recant after an overture had been tendered.

The stratagem bothered Olivia, and ordinarily, she would have stood firm against chicanery, but she was as frantic as Margaret. Not for herself, but for her niece, Helen. Helen was three, and the lone—though illicit—offspring sired by her brother before his death. The girl’s mother, a kitchen maid, had died in childbirth, so Helen had no one but Olivia to watch over her, and she definitely needed watching.

Though she was angelically pretty, she didn’t talk or interact as a healthy tot would. She was mute and distant. Margaret denounced her as a lunatic, the insanity a
symptom of her illegitimacy, so she was concealed in the nursery, with few people aware of her existence.

Helen was Olivia’s only kin, her only tie to what had once been a powerful and renowned British lineage, her only connection to the brother and father whom she’d loved.

Safe at home in London, Helen was another secret that would have to be revealed after wedding plans were in progress. After all, with Olivia flaunting herself as a bridal aspirant with an irreproachable ancestry, it wouldn’t do to alert her suitor that dementia ran in the family!

At all costs, Olivia would protect Helen, even if it meant she had to marry a mature, reserved stranger, and she couldn’t risk that the impertinent rascal with whom she was presently sequestered might spread stories about her midnight wanderings.

He reached for the book, flipped it open, and it fell to an illustration of an Arabian sheik, surrounded by his harem. A concubine straddled his lap, her bosom thrust toward him, and he suckled at her breast as a babe would its mother.

Olivia blushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.

“Really, sir . . .” she sputtered, unable to find sufficient vocabulary to characterize her outrage. “You presume too much.”

“He looks just like me, wouldn’t you say?” He was in her peripheral vision, his cheek all but pressed to her own. She could smell the soap with which he bathed, the starch in which his shirt was laundered, could see a nick where he’d cut himself shaving.

“He doesn’t look like you at all,” she remarked. “He’s handsome.”

The insult was a lie. He was the most elegant, attractive
man she’d ever met, and his proximity had her thoroughly flustered.

The vain rogue laughed. “Ah,
chérie
, I think you like me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She glared straight ahead, refusing to shift the smallest inch, or she’d be gazing into his mesmerizing blue eyes.

“Do you like the pictures of the women? Or the men? Which arouses you more?”

The disturbing inquiry baffled her. She could deliver no scathing rejoinder, and she dawdled, paralyzed and dumbstruck, as he touched the page and stroked the concubine’s breast, his thumb circling round and round the nipple. It produced a peculiar effect, as if he were caressing Olivia’s
own
breast, and her nipples wrenched in response.

Were a woman’s breasts so sensitive? She was twenty-three. How could she not have known what now seemed to be so vital? Did men regularly fondle women’s bodily parts? Was this a typical behavior?

The fevered queries raced by, and she suffered a feeling of unreality, as if she’d been thrust into a foreign country where she didn’t comprehend the language or the rules by which to conduct herself.

His motions on the courtesan’s nipple became more seductive, more tantalizing, and her embarrassment spiraled. She slapped his hand away, rammed the chair backward, and stood. As she’d suspected, he was a gentleman, and he stepped away, granting her space in which to collect herself, though scant composure could be located.

From the moment he’d entered the room, the meeting had disintegrated. Likely, he deemed her to be a harlot, or worse—though she was too inexperienced to know if there
was
something worse than a harlot. Numerous horrid scenarios careened through her mind, the main
one being that she might sustain the calamity of bumping into him the next day while in the earl’s company.

The recipe for disaster was fomenting and about to boil out of the pot.

She had to provide him with a viable explanation for her presence, then she had to depart with some amount of aplomb.

“You’ve mistaken my intent,” she declared. “I had selected this book because I’d supposed it contained recreations of Rembrandt’s paintings. I was stunned by its genuine content. Stunned, I tell you!”

He smirked. “Yes, I watched how
stunned
you were after you’d studied it for ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I did not!” Wild horses could drag her to her death, and she wouldn’t admit to doing any such a thing. “I was aghast—simply aghast!—and I was just about to put it away when you barged in.”

Shrewdly, he scrutinized her, recognizing her prevarication. After a lengthy pause, he gallantly replied, “Have it your way, milady. But in case you’re curious, Edward has an extensive assortment of erotica. I’d be more than happy to show you the rest of it.”

“The earl has more?” She gulped, dozens of turbulent considerations swamping her. The first was that Edward could only be the Earl of Salisbury, her potential betrothed, which meant this villain knew the nobleman well enough to refer to him by his given name.

The second was that the man she might wed hoarded a collection of the risqué. Why would he? What did it forebode?

The implications terrified her, and as she peered down the extensive shelves of the earl’s library, her stomach churned. Through the flicker of her candle, she estimated that there were hundreds of books, perhaps thousands, neatly grouped in rows from floor to ceiling.

What secrets were hidden in the dusty multitude? How many were licentious? What kind of person owned such lurid albums? What did that say about his morals and preferences?

The various titles appeared so innocent, so benign, but then so had the tome she’d retrieved. It had been deceptively placed with the others, and she’d assumed it would be in the same vein, a boring, uninspired series of replications that would hastily have her nodding off.

Well, she’d never get to sleep now. Not after this discovery!

“I’m not
curious
in the slightest,” she fibbed. “You needn’t indicate any more. In fact, I don’t need any reading material. I’m off to my bed. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

She started toward the door, but unfortunately, the path to freedom was past the wretch who was wedged between the table and the wall. She couldn’t walk by without brushing up against him; her conundrum amused him, and he didn’t budge.

As if daring her, he tried—with the force of his attention—to compel her to peek at him, but she wouldn’t.

Scowling, she advanced, determined to plow through, and just as she would have slipped by, he clasped her wrist. The gesture wasn’t threatening, but unexpected, intimate. She halted.

Their sides were merged. Arms, hips, thighs, feet, they were forged fast, and she fit perfectly. His fingers, where he clutched her wrist, were warm, electrifying. They singed through to the bone.

“I won’t tell him you were here,” he vowed in a whisper, his lips by her ear, his sweet breath rustling her hair.

“Swear it!” she pleaded.

She spun toward him. He was so near, and his eyes—luminous, enigmatic—gleamed at her with splendid intensity. She could lose herself in those eyes, could be
swallowed up into them, and there was something lusciously magnificent about having them focused on her.

“I swear it,” he said.

“Thank you.”

He confirmed her courtesy with an indifferent shrug. “You’re prettier than the others he’s invited.”

The statement induced another swirl of confused rumination. It was common knowledge that the earl had interviewed several candidates in his search for a bride, so she wasn’t surprised that others had visited. But she
was
surprised that her companion was adequately conversant with them to feel he could comment.

And he thought she was pretty.
Prettier
than the others.

The compliment settled deep inside, and her foolish heart skipped a beat. Though she knew she was fetching, no man had ever told her so. Especially not a man who looked like him, like a prince, or an angel fallen from heaven.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.” She waited, but maddeningly, he furnished no answer. “I have to go.”

She tugged her wrist from his grasp, and he released her. Almost at a run, she sped to the door. When she would have hurried into the hall, he spoke.

“I’ll be here tomorrow evening. Come again. At midnight.”

She didn’t turn around. “I never would.”

“I can’t see you in the day. Just here.”

“No . . . no . . .” She rushed out, wondering why she was thrilled by the suggestion, why her spirits soared, her emotions reeled. She bolted toward the stairs, glad to have escaped, but his chuckle followed her, echoing down the corridor with his certainty that she wouldn’t be able to resist.