Fascination -and- Charmed (80 page)

“Ooh,” Anabel said, her mouth remaining in a moist pout. “How
lovely.
I’m going to have such a lot of fun tonight.”

He fumbled with her clothes, only to be pushed away again.

Anabel opened the robe and revealed, not a gown, but black satin stays edged with lace below her breasts. Black satin drawers, of the kind he’d seen on Frenchwomen, parted beneath her fingers. “Now you can feel,” she told him.

He felt. She was wet. “I like these new possessions of yours,” he told her, applying the heel of his hand in the way he knew drove her to a frenzy, and anticipating watching his rod enter her between the black satin folds of the garment.

“Not these,” she said, her voice as satiny as the drawers. “What I have is not satin. It is this.” Leaning back, she retrieved something long and shining from the couch—a golden tube that glittered in the weak shafts of late sun through dusty windows.

Etienne frowned, then narrowed his eyes once more. “Where did you come by that?”

“From…It is said to have belonged to Nefertiti.”

He made a grab for the elegant toy, but she held it aloft. “I asked where you came by it,” he said and saw her breath quicken. She had good reason to be afraid of his anger. She’d tasted it before—and suffered before enjoying it, he thought darkly.

“A good friend gave it to me, Etienne. You aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Jealous?” He snorted and thrust his engorged rod toward the enticing gap in those black satin drawers. “What need have I of an Egyptian queen’s dildo?”

“Wait,” she told him. “And watch.”

Where he would have found his pleasure, she slowly inserted her cold, golden substitute. So very slowly, the shimmering thing passed inside her and she dropped her head back, panting aloud, her breasts heaving.

Fascinated, sweating, he watched her body easily take in the massive plaything until her fingers rested in the thicket of golden hair between her legs.

Ah, yes, she was inventive, his little nemesis. His penis throbbed and the ache was exquisite. “Finish your game, Annie,” he gasped, his eyes squeezing shut. Another moment and he’d have little need of her.

A cool hand surrounded him and he sagged forward.

“You are so beautiful,” a familiar and hated voice said.

Etienne opened his eyes and looked into the saturnine face of Henri St. Luc. He summoned enough alarm to mutter, “How long have you been here?”

“All the time, darling,” Anabel said with a bubbling chuckle. “Henri is our friend. And he is my insurance. He will look after my interests. Just as he will look after yours.”

“But of course,” Henri said, pressing his lips to the other man’s while his strong, clever fingers did their work. “It has been too long since you and I were together,
mon ami.
”

Even while some shred of him clung to loathing, Etienne’s body betrayed its voracious appetite for what Henri St. Luc offered.

“See?” Anabel said, withdrawing the golden rod and driving it in once more. “See?” Her voice rose and she fell to her knees.

Etienne felt Henri slip down the length of his body, felt his knees surrounded and held in a strong arm—felt himself drawn in, and milked.

“We will have it all!” Anabel shrieked, and collapsed, writhing in the throes of her self-made satisfaction.

They would have it all here, Etienne thought. They might have it all again and again—before
he
had it all for himself.

Then he fell through pulsing blackness, gave himself up to that which the world forbade yet he craved.

The evening’s entertainment had truly begun.

“Repeat after me,” Pippa said to Ella. “I am not happy to hear this.”

Ella settled herself gracefully in her straight-backed chair, pleated the skin between her brows in concentration and said, “I am not happy to ’ear this.”

“
Hear
this,” Pippa said, walking to the schoolroom windows to look down upon the stable yard far below.

“Hear this,” Ella said, her voice pleasing. “I am not happy to hear this. I’m gettin’ better, ain’t—am I not?”

Pippa smiled at the girl. “You are getting better so quickly, I can hardly believe it. Your mother will be so pleased,” she added before she could contain the urge to find out more about her mysterious pupils.

Ella’s dark eyes assumed their familiar shuttered expression. “How old is Saber?” she asked, the tilt of her chin declaring her determination to keep her secrets to herself.

“The earl is twenty-three,” Pippa said, pressing closer to the window to look down on top of two dark-haired men beside a single horse. “Lord Avenall is a man of the world, Ella.”

“I don’t think so,” Ella said.

Calum and Struan were in the stable yard. Pippa watched Struan mount the horse, wave and spur the animal into a gallop. Through the open window she heard the distant clank of metal tack and the clatter of hoofs on cobbles.

“Hmm?” She glanced back at Ella. “What did you say?”

“I said that I don’t think Saber’s a man of the world. Not like some anyway.”

“Has he told you to call him by his given name?”

“Of course.”

Pippa frowned, not knowing exactly how to answer. “He is a great deal older than you, miss, and you’d do well not to entertain any romantical notions about him.”

“She is, y’know,” Max said, breaking the silence that invariably accompanied his labored efforts at penmanship.

“Shut your mouth, Max,” Ella snapped.

“Hush,” Pippa said. “She is what?”

“What you said. Soppy about that young lord.”

“I ain’t—am not,” Ella argued.

“Of course you aren’t,” Pippa said, smiling a little at the faint flush that showed on Ella’s honey-colored skin. The feeling of protectiveness and empathy she felt with the girl brought Pippa a secret joy. “Max, you are doing extremely well with your D’s. Clearly you are going to be a remarkable man of letters one day.”

Max, his tongue between his teeth, finished his latest letter with a cramped flourish. “Like Mr. Innes,” he said. “I think I’m going to do lots of things like him. Papa’s had to go to, er, Dorset. ’E’ll be back, though. ’E said so, didn’t ’e, Ella?”

“He,”
Ella said. “Of course he did.”

“Yes,” Max said. “I ’spect Mr. Innes would rescue us again if we ’ad t’be rescued, but—”

“Max,”
Ella said ominously.

Pippa stopped herself, not for the first time, from telling the children that she was well aware of their peculiar position. As long as she hadn’t been given permission to reveal that she knew their secret, her silence was a trust.

She returned to the window. Calum stood in the stable yard, staring into the empty spaces where Viscount Hunsingore had disappeared. Even at a distance, she felt a need in the man left behind.

Oh, what was to happen? None of this was as it should be. Surely Franchot would not suffer the presence of a man he despised much longer. Already a week had passed since the duke’s arrival, and tension sprang from him every time he as much as looked at Calum. Franchot didn’t look at Pippa at all, thank goodness.

“Ella,” Pippa said, “would you kindly attend to Max’s lessons until it’s time for your luncheon? That will be quite soon. And I’ll see you here tomorrow morning.”

Without waiting to hear more than Ella’s assent, Pippa left the schoolroom in its lofty tower perch and ran swiftly down the spiral stone staircase, past a succession of floors to the stark, undecorated hall at its base.

By the time she’d made her way through a corridor bordered on one side by storage used by the castle steward and on the other by the laundry, she was out of breath and convinced Calum would be long gone when she finally reached the stable yard.

A kitchen garden and a big herb patch, hemmed in by a high stone wall, led to the stables, and Pippa was fully running by the time her slippers hit the cobbles.

She’d been almost right. Calum, mounted on a bay hack, cantered from the yard and began to drop from sight even as she watched.

If she waited to find a mount, she’d never know which way he’d gone. Her feet flying, trying to ignore the stares of stableboys and grooms, she held her skirts above her ankles and dashed from the yard to the stony pathway that wound downward toward the castle’s great drive.

He was below her already. Heedless of who might hear, she called, “Calum! Wait!
Calum!
”

The bay continued to pick a path on slipping shale and Calum didn’t look back.

“Fie,” Pippa said. “Everything is such a
bother.”
And she launched herself in a reckless downhill flight, stumbling, catching her balance, only to slide again.

“Calum!” Her voice rose to a squeak and she began to fall. Pippa hit the ground with a thud that knocked out all her wind. She thumped, twisted sideways and slid—and heard a hard, rapid thrumming she knew were returning hoofbeats.

Ooh, she
hated
to be humiliated.

“Stay,” Calum called. “Do not move, Pippa. Stay exactly where you are.”

She shut her eyes tightly, then opened them a crack and saw the legs of a bay horse.

Then she saw the legs of a man.

The long, powerfully muscled legs of a man who wore doeskin breeches and top boots that clasped tight to strong calves.

“My dear,” Calum said. “My dear one.” He went to his knees beside her.

Pippa held her breath.

Gently, he stroked her freed hair back from her face. “Can you hear me, Pippa?”

She nodded a little.

“Thank God.” His sigh was audible. With careful hands, he felt first one of her arms, then the other. “Where do you hurt?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

After a small hesitation, he began to test her ankles, then her calves. When he reached her knees, Pippa could no longer bear to trick him.

“I am
so
clumsy,” she said. “Really, it is
such a
trial. My father always said so and—and—”

“And you did
not
admire him for it,” he suggested with such an odd note in his voice that Pippa opened her eyes and looked up into his. “Poor Pippa. You did not hear nearly enough praise for your virtues when you were a child, did you?”

She could not criticize Papa. “I did very well, thank you. I was a most fortunate child.”

He smiled down at her, slid one arm around her back and the other beneath her knees and lifted her easily into his arms. Back on his feet, he studied her face as if she were both interesting and a stranger.

“Did I hear you call my name just now?” he asked.

Pippa chewed the inside of her lip. A lady was not supposed to chase after a gentleman, particularly when the lady was already engaged, and not to the man after whom she chased.

“Did you?”

“Yes. And you can put me down. I am quite unhurt, except for my pride.”

He threw back his head and laughed. He laughed and showed marvelous, strong teeth and made his chest rumble against Pippa’s side.

“I cannot find any humor in my damaged pride, sir.”

“No,” he said, struggling for control. “But I find true wonder in your lack of coquetry and guile. I’ve never met another woman who would willingly point out her faults—even faults she does not have.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, unwilling to continue this examination of her character.

He studied her for a moment longer, then hoisted her sideways onto his saddle and leaped up behind. Settling her, he held her safe against his big body and urged the hack back on the path he’d been taking before Pippa had managed to make herself the fool.

Her hair had completely slipped its bonds and whipped madly about her face. The air was warm, the wind gusty. Pippa felt the warm, sweet wind. She thought only of the man who held her, of his strong, gentle arms—of the comfort he offered, if only for a little while.

They avoided the drive, going instead by way of a path through towering trees where sun wands pointed earthward through rare gaps in the dense growth. In those bright wands, sparkling fairy motes spun.

Pippa would have curled into Calum’s embrace, but the comfort she found with him, the sweet yearning to forget that there was any world outside the forest, was tinged with an ache in her heart. This could not be—not for more than a few stolen moments.

At last they were within sight of the edge of the trees. In the distance Pippa could see a meadow sweeping down to the castle walls, and the glitter of the sea beyond.

Calum drew his horse to a halt.

Pippa sat quite still, leaning against him, waiting.

His hands on the reins were long and tanned and capable. The hands of a poet or a farmer, a painter or a smith. Hands that had been used. They made her want to be touched by and to touch them.

As if he heard her thoughts, he crossed his arms around her and chafed her arms, rested his cheek atop her head and held her so tight she could scarcely breathe.

The silence stretched on and on.

Pippa could not bear it to end, yet she could not bear for it to continue. The time for confrontation had arrived.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said.

“Where is your private place?”

At first she didn’t understand; then she nodded. “I told you. At Cloudsmoor.”

“Will you show it to me?”

“Perhaps.” Somehow she must keep her head.

“When?”

“I only said perhaps. Even being together like this is a dangerous thing.”

“I am not afraid of Franchot.”

“I am. I’m afraid for you. He is a dangerous man.”

He found her face and felt its contours like a blind man. “Do not be afraid of him, Pippa. Trust and let me lead the way for both of us.”

Suddenly she could no longer contain the questions. Turning, sitting half on the saddle, half in his lap, she caught his coat with both hands and looked into his face.

Before she could speak, Calum bent to touch his parted lips to hers. She saw his eyes shut tightly and her own lids drifted down. The touch of his mouth was tough silk, commanding surrender.

Her grip moved to his shirt, where the heat of his body beat into her hands and coursed through her veins.