Gentlemen Prefer Mischief (21 page)

***

“I don’t want you to think I customarily use my desk in such a manner.” His head had been resting on her shoulder, and he turned it a little and pressed his lips to her neck.

He picked her up from the desk—one of his papers was stuck to her bottom with perspiration, and she brushed it away and let it fall to the floor with the other things they’d knocked off, and didn’t care about the disorder they’d created.

He carried her over to his bed and arranged her gently before stretching out behind her and pulling her against him. “Really, it’s just been the writing and reading and thinking.”

“Hmm,” she said, not ready to say anything. Lying in his arms was too wonderful.

So wonderful that it scared the wits out of her.

This was Lord Perfect lying beside her, a man who was experienced at all the things they’d just done, no matter how special and unique and wonder-worthy they’d been to her. He’d done all that before. Well, perhaps not exactly in that way. He seemed to want her to know that.

She’d thought, earlier, that he was going to say something unexpected. He’d said, “Let me love you,” and she’d thought for a moment that he meant something by it. He’d been so tender and beguiling, so attuned to her, that she’d felt cherished. Known.

But he hadn’t said anything more about love, and that was because he didn’t love her. And why should she want him to? How could she think of love with a charmer like Hal, when what she hoped for in the most hidden part of herself, the part she tried never to nourish or even look at, was the deepest possible connection of two souls understanding each other?

The stuff of girlish dreams. A fantasy, and definitely asking too much.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” he murmured, his breath stirring the hairs on the back of her neck.

“I’m not.”

“And so. Splendid, yes?”

A smile tugged the edge of her mouth even though some of the radiance of those exquisite moments was fading. “Is it customary to conduct a review afterward?”

“I don’t know about customary. But I’m interested in right now.”

“Splendid. Yes.”

But. Lying here in his arms was like teetering on the edge of a precipice over which it would be so easy to fall. And that made her afraid, because she’d never felt so good, so whole as she had tonight with him.

He was a rogue. A teaser. An enchanter who craved diversion. She was his diversion at the moment.

What
if
he
were
sincere
about
liking
her
so
much?

He’d been so attuned to her tonight, as if he really did care.

No.

Even if he were sincere, even if he liked her very much, even if he did speak to her of love and have pure intentions, she didn’t
believe
he could love her. Not for a lifetime. He was a butterfly, enchanting and insubstantial, drawn to the nectar of ever-new experiences. Not to be trusted with her heart.

Very well. She’d experienced what she’d wanted to try. It had been beautiful, but now that the rushing, yearning sensations had worn off a little, she had to be clear. What they’d just done had been a passing pleasure. She couldn’t build anything on it.

Each cruel, sobering thought made her feel heavier inside as it hustled away more of the glow from their lovemaking. But she was a practical woman, a woman who wanted to do something with her life, and she could not, like a drunkard, be led by her body and her emotions onto a path of need and wanting. She knew that pathetic path, of being at the mercy of urges as her father had been, and she would not take it.

And she remembered now that part of what had brought her here tonight had been concern that Hal might see Nate’s light.

The clock struck half past one. She needed to leave this cozy bed and this warm, witty man who was brushing his whiskery cheek playfully against her neck. Nate might well be gone now.

She sat up.

“Lil?” He propped himself on his elbow.

“I… have to go. It’s late.”

“Right,” he said agreeably. If he stood up and turned now, no longer distracted by her, with Nate still out there, it would be bad.

She moved to the window and discreetly pulled the curtain to cover more of it, checking as she did so for Nate’s light. She was relieved to see nothing.

“You surprise me,” he said, coming over to stand behind her as he knotted the ties on a silky burgundy dressing gown that made a rich contrast with his gold hair. She told herself halfheartedly that only a vain main would wear such a beautiful dressing gown.

“I wouldn’t have thought you likely to stand naked in front of a window.” He chuckled. “But perhaps, unleashed from the bonds of propriety as you have so recently been, you feel ready for experiences like displaying your bare body to the moon.”

He was looking over her shoulder, and she felt the moment that the thought occurred to him.

“Unless there is some other reason you are standing before this window. Unless you are checking for an accomplice who prefers to do his work after midnight.”

She didn’t know what to say. Covering for Nate had been part of the reason she’d come to his room. And her doing that would be a good reason for Hal to forget about pursuing her any more after tonight, if he even wished to do so.

“Ah. I see by your silence that I’ve hit upon something. A pressing reason for your coming here tonight.” Something hard had come into the voice of her tender lover, and it tore at her. She wanted everything to go back to the way it had been ten minutes ago.

“Quite a sacrifice you were willing to make for your accomplice. Tell me, did you arrange it earlier in the day, or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?”

She couldn’t have him think it had been only that—it would be denying the sacredness of those moments they’d shared. She turned, wishing for the armor of clothes as she stood there naked before him. She crossed her arms over her breasts.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said softly. “I can’t talk about this, but—I came here tonight because I wanted to. Because I wanted to experience what you were offering.”

“What I was offering,” he repeated. The candlelight was growing dimmer since two of the candles had already guttered, but there was enough light that she could see his eyes, deeper and darker and different. “Take care, Lily. I’m not a plate of confections for you to sample at will.”

His words pricked her—there was some accusation behind them—and she felt confused again. Why was the ground always shifting under her now, so that she didn’t anymore know where to stand?

“I… liked what we did together,” she allowed herself to admit.

“Fulsome praise, coming from Miss Teagarden. Regretting it already, then?”

“It’s not like that!” A wave of heat rushed into her cheeks and the tops of her ears and made her glad for the darkness.

“Isn’t it?”

He held her eyes a moment, his gaze heavy-lidded and unreadable. Then he turned away and came back with her tattered chemise and nightgown, and looked into the empty hearth while she dressed. She felt so crushed, so bereft now of all the ease that had been between them. It was that which she’d miss the most.

She wished, foolishly, that he hadn’t guessed why she was looking out the window. But she reminded herself that she had been duplicitous and deserved what pains the discovery of it brought her.

He crossed his arms and leaned casually back against a bedpost. “Well, we had a pleasurable evening, Lily. I do enjoy initiating you into the world of sensual delights.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that way,” she said as she tugged the torn pieces of her gown together and tied a makeshift knot to hold it closed.

“Then how would you have me term it?” She had the sense that he actually wanted to know what she thought of it.

Wondrous. As amazing as the thin-air panorama of a just-climbed mountain. “It was… a splendid experience. Thank you,” she said.

One haughty viscount’s eyebrow drifted lazily upward. “Another
learning
experience perhaps?” He laughed.

How could he laugh so easily, just now? She’d described it stupidly, yes, but she hated that he was laughing at her. She’d been touched somewhere deep inside tonight by a man who was a spiritual lightweight, and she’d didn’t know how it had happened. She’d never felt less like laughing.

“Don’t think we are done, Lily Teagarden. Not by a long chalk.”

Her eyebrows slammed together. “Of course we are done. How can you think…” but her words drifted off as she struggled to phrase what it was he thought. Or what she thought he wanted from her.

She must always remember that he was a teaser. Was this all some elaborate game to him? She couldn’t think why he would want to engage in such a game—except that there was a powerful attraction between them. Lust had brought her here as surely as it had prompted him to invite her, and if her own desire was also underlain with true affection, well, more fool she.

He just looked steadily at her with a mocking tilt at one corner of his mouth that deepened to bring out the slash of a dimple in the hard plane of his cheek. A dizzying mixture of panic and glee warred within her.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, making it sound like a threat, and opened the door for her.

All the way down the corridor to her room, as she crept on bare feet in the darkness, all she could think about was what he meant by those last words and the tone of dark promise in which he’d said them.

***

Hal sat up in bed for a long time after Lily left, a glass of brandy resting against his bent knee. It was not something he’d done before, sitting in bed drinking liquor. There was something desperate and idiotic about it, but he didn’t care.

Normally after making love with a woman, he was happily sated and drowsy. And making love with Lily had been extraordinary.

But he’d been unprepared for the blow to his gut when he’d realized that the main thing which had brought her to him had been a desire to distract him from looking out his window. She’d needed the goal of sacrificing herself before she would allow herself to come to him.

How very Lily.

He refused to be anybody’s sacrificial altar.

He slung back the remaining brandy, put the glass on the nightstand, and blew out his candles.

Hal sat at the luncheon table, chatting up Hyacinth with a fraction of his attention while he watched Lily talk to Fforde at the other end of the table. Despite living but one mile away, the doctor had accepted Diana’s urging to join their meal. Diana felt that the poor man worked too hard and was in dire need of a break. Hal could find no drop of compassion in his own heart for the paragon of Highcross.

Lily gave Fforde a sweet smile, and the doctor received it with a smile of his own. Hal found he had to look away or he would be in danger of sprinting down to the other end of the table and escorting the good doctor out the window.

Any other woman who’d shared all that Lily had shared with him last night would have been saving all her sweetness for
him
, or at the very least giving him meaningful secret glances. But not Lily. She wouldn’t be coy or eager or even, he supposed as a tar-like gush of jealousy flowed through him, hopeful.

She hadn’t come to him last night purely out of need because she wasn’t ready to admit she needed him.

Yet.

***

Lily was standing in the foyer in front of Mayfield’s grand, curving double staircase later that morning with Delia and Eloise. Eloise couldn’t seem to say anything that did not contain the word “Donwell.” Apparently, the two of them were getting on very well all of a sudden. Lily was puzzled but happy for her, though she could barely pay attention to all the details of some sort of frog-hunting excursion the pair had engaged in, because her own thoughts were so occupied.

After she left Hal’s chamber the night before, she’d half expected to be struck by lightning, or to be found out or punished in some way. But nothing had happened, and she’d fallen asleep and woken up as usual. Surprisingly ordinary. And yet she felt changed.

Shame had tried to hound her this morning, but she simply hadn’t cared to listen to the voice of judgment, almost as though it had lost credibility with her. What she and Hal had shared had made her feel more open, more alive, and more human than she’d ever felt before. It had been real and untidy and good and true, and she wouldn’t let shame dirty it.

But, disastrously, now she wanted more time with him, more of what they’d shared last night, more of everything from a man who was wrong for her.

Through one of the tall windows, she saw a rider galloping profligately across the beautifully kept grass in front of the manor and knew instinctively who it was. She also knew that she was half in love with him. And if she was not to fall all the way, she
must
avoid him. It had to be possible—they were only to stay one more night at Mayfield.

Excusing herself, she quickly made her way up the grand staircase, intending to seek her bedchamber.

She was still moving through the endless corridor that led to her chamber when she heard assertive, pleased-with-themselves footsteps coming toward her. Quickening her pace, she made for the end of the corridor and the turn that would take her to her chamber—and away from temptation personified.

Temptation merely laughed, and with several long strides, caught her by the arm just outside her room.

He was wearing a mud-flecked old black coat with a pair of tan breeches and high, mud-spattered boots. His golden hair was windblown every which way and should have made him look disorderly, but he looked carelessly, deliciously handsome.

“Well, Lily. Here you are.”

“Don’t you need to tidy up, my lord? You must’ve left a muddy trail all through the house.”

“I used the boot scraper. But if you’d like to help me get my boots off, I won’t have to call my valet.”

“I’d be happy to ring for him,” she said, even as she drank in the way the green flecks in his eyes were glittering at her. “It would be a service to your guests. You look abominable.”

A calculating slanting of his eyes, a boyish quivering of his eyebrows, and a hint of that dimple in his taut cheek… something in her gave a little
huzzah
.

He reached a long arm toward her door handle. “Come here, woman, I want to show you something.” The huskiness in his voice sent an eager shiver across the back of her neck.

“No,” she started to say, but he wasn’t listening, and he pulled her briskly into her chamber and shut the door behind them.

She reached for the door, but he ignored her and deftly propped a chair under the handle. She gave him a withering look and crossed her arms, but that only made her more aware of how they surrounded her breasts, which were suddenly more sensitive.
Now
that
he
was
here.

Dear God, what had happened to her?

“So, you have lost your mind,” she said.

He grinned darkly and pulled her against him. “I’ve been looking at you all morning in that gown,” he said against her temple. “What do you mean by showing so much bosom?” His thumb began to stroke the underside of her breast.

“It’s exactly the same amount of bosom every other woman is showing,” she said and tipped up her chin. No matter that it was
her
bedchamber, she ought to leave now, escape… but she didn’t want to. Apparently she’d turned into someone who simply did what she wanted. Perhaps next she would steal from a shop.

“But on you it’s more,” he said, burying his face in the crook of her neck. His lips shaped themselves softly to the curve and applied gentle suction.

She sighed as if she’d been waiting for him to do that, and bold as brass—truly, she’d ceased to shock herself—she lifted a hand and loosened his cravat and slid her hand into the slot beneath the ties at the neck of his shirt. The skin of his chest was the hard, warm flesh she’d been craving all morning, like an addiction that had hold of her.

But she didn’t have access for long, because he turned her away from him and pressed her toward the wall next to the window drapes. A burst of lavender met her as her nose came up against the edge of the fabric.

“Up with your skirts,” he ordered wickedly.

“Certainly not,” she said.

“Then I’ll have to rip downward,” he murmured, putting his hands on the fabric at her nape. She didn’t really believe he’d do it, but on the other hand, a terrible tease like Hal would love nothing more than to horrify her.

“Oh, very well,” she said, letting primness into her voice even though her eyes were already closed in anticipation of whatever wicked thing he was going to do. She reached down and gathered her skirts up to her knees.

A chuckle. Just the murmur of his voice behind her was making her warm and very tingly. “
Much
higher, and just the back portion.”

Surely he wasn’t planning anything strange? And yet she was dying to know what. She sighed dramatically and pulled up the back part of her skirts, letting the front portion fall back to her feet.

Cloth rustled behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw he was undoing the fastenings of his breeches. He sprang free, thick, bold, exactly
other
to every part of her body. Oh good.

“Is this—” she gasped as his wicked finger stroked the most hidden part of her, “allowed?”

“Allowed?” He reached around to rub the flat of his flexed palm against her nipple in teasing circles that made her sag against the wall, her forehead against her crossed arms.

“Darling,” he whispered in her ear, everything in her standing at attention to his voice and the sweep of his breath against her suddenly sensitive ear, “everything’s allowed in my book.”

He pressed himself against the naked skin of her bottom, and she pushed back against his hot flesh, desperate to feel more of him. He was fire against her in the hot pinch of his fingers on her nipple and the clever stroking of his hand between her legs. She moaned, helpless in his arms, wanting him to dictate everything.

He took his hands away briefly to pull something out of his pocket. She knew what it was, but she didn’t want to think about practical things. And then he pulled her hard against him, holding her hips to himself, and began to slide into her. He was moving slowly, just when she needed all of him, and she tipped her hips forward to take him, to let him have all he wanted from her.

He grunted, a sound of deep pleasure. “Teagarden, you minx.”

He drove into her, pounding with a masculine rhythm that overtook her, and she welcomed its sturdy force. Though they both kept silent to avoid discovery, with his mouth just above her ear she could hear his faint groans. Panting, her mouth pressed to her forearm, she rose to the heights with him and gasped into the curtain as she found her release. He pushed into her again and again, using her body for his needs, and she welcomed what he was doing. With a deep, final groan, he hugged her hard to him and sagged against her back.

As they stood there, linked together and absolutely undone, she realized she was unable—entirely
not
able—to resist the pleasure he brought her. And the closeness, too, the brilliant closeness of breathing in his skin, feeling his heat, feeling him with her.

Terrifying.

How was she ever going to not want him when he made her feel like this? When she had the time of her life in his company?

How could she dally like this when she wanted a future of purpose and meaning?

***

Hal was breathing hard as he stepped back and tidied up. Lily was still leaning against the wall, and he took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and reached around to hand it to her. Without turning, she took it and thanked him.

He stared at the tidy, simple knot of white-blond hair on the back of her head and thought about how he’d never known that he was lonely until he cared for her. He never
had
been, until she came along, with her Fiend and her journal and her astringent ways.

He put his hands on her small shoulders and gently turned her, letting his hands come to rest lightly against her neck. The wary look in her eyes that had fled when he dragged her into her chamber had already returned. But he was a soldier and a commander, and he wasn’t afraid of battle.

“
Now
will you agree that we are courting?”

A skittering look, as though she were ambushed prey, flitted across her features. She didn’t want to trust him, or even allow herself to like him too much, and he’d have to push her past that if they were to have a chance together.

“I beg your pardon?” she said in a cooling voice meant to remind him she might have surrendered her body, but she hadn’t surrendered her soul. He kept his tone light and brisk.

“Courting. You and I. We’ve been behaving like lovers—let’s call it what it is.”

She frowned. “Why talk about courting?”

“Because I want to. Because you need me. Who else is going to make you laugh, and make you stop taking yourself so seriously, and get you to say yes to all the things in life you say no to?”

“Those aren’t needs. And this is just you being a bossy viscount.”

“This is me making sense. Come, Lily. You value reason so much,” he said. “This is reasonable: we get along extremely well in many ways.”

Her eyes drifted over his shoulder, so different from her customary forthright way, and her hesitancy gave him a little hope.

“In scandalous, hidden ways,” she said.

“Exactly. And I’m suggesting that they not be hidden. That we allow others to see that we have an interest in each other.” It was taking everything he had to speak so blandly when that was not at all how he felt. She made him feel young, and free, though he wasn’t even certain what it was he felt free
of
. Being with her made his whole world new again, and he was old enough not to fool himself about why that was. And savvy enough to know that telling her how he felt wouldn’t be in the least helpful yet. If ever.

“Oh,” she said. “Well… I… mmm…” Her voice died out in a dry croak. She cleared her throat. “It’s not at all a good idea. Everything we’ve been doing together is not a good idea. We
must
, we have to stop.”

He crossed his arms and gave her the kind of stare he’d once reserved for misbehaving corporals. “You mean you’ve lost your nerve.”

Her chin lifted, all pride and starchiness. “I simply understand that it’s time to stop playing.”

She would refuse to see what had grown between them, how—damn him for sounding mawkish—but how precious and rare it was. She was refusing to see that what was between them would blossom, and he could feel himself rising to the challenge she’d unwittingly laid down for him.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

And before she could utter even one sensible syllable, he leaned forward and kissed her smartly on the cheek, whipped the chair away from the door handle, and left her standing there with an open mouth and an insubordinate look.

***

Lily found, as the day wore on and she caught herself repeatedly listening for Hal’s step in corridors and pricking her ears for his voice, that she was making no progress whatsoever in turning away from her desire for him.

Which was how she ended up in his bedchamber that night, being rendered senseless again with passion. She’d told herself she’d gone simply to keep him from looking out the window. She did still mean to provide whatever help she could for Nate. But she knew it was only an excuse.

Hal had greeted her at the door to his chamber at midnight. “Come to distract me, have you?”

And she’d smiled and said yes, and distracted him thoroughly. Twice.

She hadn’t returned to her room until the clock was striking four; she hadn’t wanted to leave his arms at all. But some modicum of sense had prevailed and carried her feet to her bedchamber, where her still-made bed accused her. Like a drunken youth arriving home to the scolds of a mother, she found herself quite able not to care.