Devil Takes A Bride (12 page)

“God, no more,” she gasped.

“Wait,” he pleaded.

“No, Devlin. We have to stop.”

He flinched and closed his eyes as if she had struck him, but he let her go without argument, steadying her by her elbow as she climbed off his lap.

“Have I upset you?” he whispered when she stood before him on shaky limbs.

“No.” Would that she could claim to be upset, insulted, scandalized, instead of craving more of him—much more. “It's late. My duties start early.”

He sent her a cynical half-smile, his eyes still glittering and heavy-lidded with passion. “Good girl.”

“You don't make it easy.”

He reached for her hand and held it gently. “You're all right?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him with a breathless laugh, for she was feeling a good deal better than merely “all right.”

“Good,” he whispered, caressing her hand with his thumb.

She gave his fingers a fond squeeze. “Good night, Devlin.”

“Good night, Lizzie.”

“See you in the morning?” she asked meaningfully.

He seemed to think it over for a second. “I'll be here.”

She nodded in approval and let her hand slide free of his light hold, walking resolutely across the library. She hesitated at the doorway, however, and glanced back, stealing one last look at him. Beautiful in the firelight as a visiting god, he was still sitting lazily on the couch, flushed and tousled and so tempting. His inviting gaze snared hers with magnetic power. Staring at the magnificent man, hers for the taking—at least for tonight—she let out a yearning sigh of virtuous self-denial; it roused a throaty chuckle from him.

“I am leaving now,” she announced firmly.

“Come back,” he called in soft beguilement.

“Devil,” she whispered, and shook her head at him with an arch smile. Before his silken charm could weaken her any further, she forced herself out of the room and hurried up to her bedchamber, still grinning from ear to ear.

 

Over the next few days, Lady Strathmore did what she could to nurse the spark between her nephew and companion into a scintillating little flame. She gave them ample opportunity to be together, requiring both of them to attend her the next day on a visit into Bath. They sampled the waters at the Pump Room, where she showed her handsome nephew off to all her aged friends and busied herself catching up on the local gossip, leaving Dev and Lizzie to join the other onlookers at the great window, watching the bathers sink into the healing pools. Afterwards, they went to Sally Lunn's and bought a few dozen of the famous Bath cakes sold there to bring back for the servants: Dev said he had to repay Mrs. Rowland for the floating island.

On the first evening, they played chess, bantering their way through the game, much to Augusta's amusement. Each seemed surprised by how well matched they were; no one ever beat Lizzie at chess unless she was letting one win, but Devlin had learned the game from his keen-witted father as a boy. The following afternoon it snowed again. Augusta looked out the parlor window in response to a tapping on the pane and laughed aloud to see the fat Napoléon snowman the two of them had built outside her window, complete with bicorne hat. Lizzie waved at her, pink cheeked in the cold, and then went on scattering seeds across the snow for the hungry birds.

That evening, over warm, mulled wine, her nephew had both women in such fits of laughter over a game of charades that tears rolled down their cheeks. No one in Society ever got to see this side of him. He felt at home here, she knew, and like a great lion at play, rolling in the tall grass, he left the dark jungles behind for now. Lizzie and she teased him for his ineptitude at the game, both secretly loving him for rising to the occasion when most males would rather not have risked their dignity to make an old lady laugh.

“What is
that
supposed to be?” Lizzie exclaimed, barely catching her breath from gales of laughter as he continued making some throwing gesture, his growing frustration apparent. “Throw?”

He tugged his ear with a look of exasperation.

“All right, sounds like
throw
. Go? Know? Show?”

He glared at her expectantly, hands on hips, but they eventually guessed his selection,
Le Nozze di Figaro
. Next it was Lizzie's turn, and Augusta smiled to herself at how Dev watched the girl's every silly move with a look of quiet delight.

The evening passed merrily.

On the third day, the sky was clear and blue, so Dev took the ladies out for a drive, intent on getting his aunt out of the house as much as possible before he was to leave on the morrow—all too soon, Augusta thought, but the past few days, in truth, were more than she had hoped for. She knew better than to ask him to stay.

They watched the snow-kissed countryside pass by while the silver bells jangled on the harness of his high-stepping horses. They drove through the village past a crowd of playing children and looped back again to the house. The two of them helped Augusta back inside and into her Bath chair, but once Lizzie had helped the dowager get situated in the warmth of the parlor, Dev offered the girl a driving lesson in his flashy black traveling coach.

“I don't dare,” she vowed.

“Oh, come—”

“That thing is enormous! I've barely driven a one-horse gig, let alone a four-in-hand.”

“Then it's time for you to give it a go!” He seized her wrist with a pirate laugh and dragged her back out into the already darkening afternoon.

Sitting at her desk, Augusta watched them out the window for a long while, tapping her lip slowly in thought.

 

The grooms looked on in varying degrees of amusement and alarm as Devlin cajoled Lizzie into the driver's seat. He climbed up beside her, placed the whip in her right hand, and then showed her how to hold the double reins in her left.

“Let your arm lie loosely against your side. Bend your elbow to make a right angle with your forearm. Sit up nice and straight, there you are. You want to keep your hand even with the lowest button of your waistcoat.”

“My waistcoat?” she teased.

“This looks about right.” He reached over with a quick grin, grasping a waist-level button of her pelisse. “Use this as your marker. Now, bend your wrist inward slightly, like so.” She tamped down a frisson of awareness at his touch as he arranged her hand in the proper angle. “Your knuckles should face outward toward the horses. This creates an easy spring, as it were, from which you may keep a good feel on their mouths. They're very responsive, so there's no need to saw on the reins, but never allow the reins to lie slack, either, or the team won't know what you want them to do. As for the whip, you don't need to worry about it at this stage. A light tap now and then is enough to make sure they're still paying attention. Ready?”

When she gave him a resolute nod, he threw the hand-brake.

The first few yards felt a bit precarious, the tall, stately coach lurching across the courtyard in fits and starts; but when the steady team of black Fresian horses gained the long, flat stretch of drive, the coach's pace became steady, the ride smooth.

“I'm doing it!” she cried as the wind blew back her bonnet.

“Yes, you are,” Devlin murmured fondly to her. “Watch your pace, now. Easy through the turn.”

Pulling back gently on the reins, she executed a fine halt as they rolled up to the gate, giving no insult to the horses' soft mouths.

“Excellent, my dear. Now turn them to the right.” He coached her through the task, which felt precarious to her, but was old hat to the horses.

She gained confidence as the four black Fresians went steadily clip-clopping along. They were frightfully large beasts, but they seemed agreeable enough, willing to do as she asked—chiefly, she suspected, because they could smell and hear their master up on the driver's box with her. After a brief, easy jaunt of less than a mile down the road, they made use of a packed-dirt roundabout that encircled an ancient elm tree.

Not wishing to press her luck, she relinquished the reins to the expert whip Devlin and rode happily beside him, her bonnet trailing down her back by its ribbons and the cold wind nipping at her nose. In the west, the sun was already setting, though it was barely five; the larger stars began to glitter, brilliant and silver, in the crisp winter air. Rolling back into the cobbled courtyard, the grooms greeted them with broad smiles and teasing congratulations on her success. The team was unhitched; then Devlin and she accompanied the men and horses into the stable.

Hands in her coat pockets, Lizzie followed as the head groom led Devlin over to the stall of the tall, chocolate gelding he had ridden so hard on the last leg of his grueling journey to Bath.

“He favors it less today, my lord. The rest seems to have done him good.”

“Hm.” Devlin went into the gelding's stall and greeted the horse with a gentle scratch on his broad cheek, then made his way back to the animal's hindquarters, where he ran his hand down the left back leg, palpating the horse's hock down to his fetlock.

“Is he all right?” Lizzie asked, wincing guiltily to know that the animal had been injured due more to her lies than to Devlin's rough riding.

“Inflammation seems to have gone down. A bit of strain to the flexor tendon and this suspensory ligament, here,” Devlin murmured. “Mac, have you got that liniment?”

“Aye, sir.” The groom went into the stall with a small brown bottle of some medicinal ointment and an old, soft rag with which to apply it.

“I'll do it.”

“You needn't trouble yourself—”

“I'm the one who hurt him,” Devlin murmured. He held out his hand for the supplies. The groom gave them to him without further comment, nodded his respects, and left to marshal up his trio of young stableboys to begin the busy process of feeding all the horses in the barn. It was their dinner time.

“Is there anything I can do?” Lizzie inquired, leaning uncertainly against the stall door.

“Pet his head to distract him. He's not sure whether he likes this stuff or not. It feels funny going on, doesn't it, boy? Camphor—hot and cold at the same time. Very strange!”

“I imagine so,” she murmured, smelling the sharp, pungent odor of the ointment when he opened the bottle.

He set the rag aside and took off his thick leather gloves while Lizzie held out her hand, luring the horse over. The chocolate gelding approached, shuffling its hooves through its bedding of fragrant hay.

“Does he have a name?” she asked as the horse investigated her hand with its soft muzzle, lipping at her palm with its velvety mouth.

“If he does, they didn't tell it to me when I bought him. Why don't you name him?”

“All right.” The gelding ambled closer, blowing a puff of breath against Lizzie's cheek. She laughed. “What would you like to be called, you handsome thing?”

Devlin poured the liniment oil into his hand and crouched down, massaging it into the gelding's hock and fetlock, the animal's knee and ankle joints, respectively. The gelding snuffled and swung his head around to see what Devlin was doing.

“Come here, boy. Let me have a look at you,” Lizzie said, doing her part to distract the animal from the treatment.

While Devlin picked up his back hoof and inspected its motion from the ankle, she got the horse's full attention by scratching behind the ears. It leaned its head into her hand. “Let's see. We could name you for your color. Chocolate. Brownie. He's got a bit of dappling on the rump there. Shadow?”

“This horse has the heart of a hero,” Devlin remarked, intent upon his task. “He took me at a full gallop through a snowstorm in the middle of the night. I refuse to let you call such a noble beast Brownie.”

“I'm so sorry, you dear thing,” she told the horse, smoothing his dark floppy forelock off to the side so she could see the expression in his big, soulful eyes. When she brushed the forelock aside, she noticed a small white star in the center of his forehead. “You are a hero, aren't you? A star! That's it. We'll call him Star, Devlin. See?” The gelding bobbed his refined head and snorted against her cheek a second time. “He approves!”

“Fine by me.” Devlin glanced at her, his sea-bright eyes twinkling. “
Star
it is.”

They fell into a companionable silence. A moment later, Devlin straightened up and moved to inspect the horse's left foreleg, keeping his hand planted reassuringly on the animal's flank. Pouring more liniment oil into his hand, he crouched down and began massaging it in, while Lizzie leaned on the half-door of the stall and continued petting Star, trying not to stare at the mesmerizing motion of Devlin's able hands gliding over the soft hide of the horse.

Devlin worked with his head down, and a few strands of his long, jet hair escaped the queue and trailed down gracefully alongside his square face, where a rosy flush still lingered in his wind-nipped cheeks.
Such long lashes,
she thought, gazing at him until another wave of sweet, sensual longing made her bite her lip and look away. What was this effect he had on her? It was indecent. She had never reacted this way to a man before. Not even to Alec.

He applied the ointment to Star's other foreleg, then the right hind leg in turn, working more slowly, as though turning something over in his mind. “I leave tomorrow,” he said after a long moment, as though he had been gathering himself to say it for some time.

“Yes,” she answered softly, leaning her cheek against Star's muzzle for a moment. “I know.” She had been avoiding the thought all day.

She supposed she ought to be glad he was leaving in the morning before she was tempted to do something rash, but the prospect of life returning to dull normal without him had reduced her to a state of misery. She paused, letting the horse escape her half-hug. “Will it be another seven months before you're back?”