Leslie Lafoy (25 page)

Her stomach twisting into a cold knot and her throat tightening against the rising tide of tears, she shifted her legs and eased her hips away from the warm curve of his body.

His hand slid off her thigh and across her midriff. “And where do you think you’re going?” he asked softly as he tucked his hand under her side and drew her back against him.

“To my bed.”

“No,” he murmured, shifting and drawing her down onto the flat of her back. His arm still cradling her head, he lay on his side and smiled down at her as he brushed a loose curl from her cheek. “It’s a long way from dawn and I don’t want to sleep alone.”

And she did? She sighed and closed her eyes, hoping that it would be easier to hold on to her resolve if she couldn’t see the too handsome face of temptation. “This could so easily end in disaster. Either we exercise self-restraint, Drayton, or I’ll have to return to London.”

“Rather drastic measures, I think,” he countered, trailing a fingertip over her lips. “We could take the middle road, you know. You could agree to marry me.”

His fingertip glided over her chin and down the length of her throat. Her heartbeat quickened and her determination staggered. “We’ve been over this before,” she pointed out, wishing he would stop, hoping that he wouldn’t. “There’s no real financial gain in it for either one of us.”

“As has been pointed out by everyone with whom I’ve had any sort of conversation for the last month.”

She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed as his fingertip burned a trail over the swell of her breast. “And we don’t love each other.”

“True,” he allowed, drawing a slow circle around her peak. “But that adds a rather nice edge to the sex for both of us, don’t you think? A kind of a forbidden quality to it.”

“That would be lost if we were married,” she offered as her nipples hardened and her core began to pulse.

“Somehow, I don’t think that would make the least little difference.”

She could hear him smile. And, God, could she feel the wonderful friction of his thumb scrapping so deliberately
over her nipple. “Perhaps not in the short run,” she pointed out on an embarrassingly ragged breath, “but over time it would.”

“Ah,” he said quietly, shifting again. “I think you’ve hit on the central issue, Caroline.” His finger lazily trailed a straight path down over her midriff as he added, “Time is our fundamental problem. If we had six months for the passion to run its normal course and fade, we might be able to contemplate the Season with more open minds. At least,” he whispered, his finger slipping through her nest of curls, “with minds sated and bored enough to gladly consider other romantic opportunities.”

She was going to lose the contest; her body didn’t want to win, didn’t want to be sensible. Swallowing down a whimper of pleasure, she asked, “Are you suggesting that we be lovers until we go to London next spring?”

“Very discreetly, of course,” he said, kissing the hollow at the base of her throat.

“We’d be courting scandal.”

“Caroline, darling, we already are.”

He shifted again and she knew what he was going to do, knew that she should roll away and keep him from succeeding with the seduction. But she didn’t and shuddered with delight as he slowly dragged his tongue over her nipple.

“We should stop,” she moaned, obediently shifting her hips beneath the slow slide of his fingers.

“Can you honestly tell me that you don’t enjoy the risk?”

No, she couldn’t. Not honestly. And knowing that she should lie didn’t make any difference. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“I know. And I don’t care.”

As he kissed his way down across her midriff, across her abdomen, she threaded her fingers through his hair and accepted the fact that she was destined to be thoroughly, irredeemably wanton. At least until the sun came up and he had to face reality, too.

DRAYTON REACHED OUT GROGGILY. FINDING THE BED BE
-side him empty brought him wide awake. The sheets were still warm; she’d only been gone for a few moments. A quick glance out the window told him sunrise was a good hour away. He rolled out and headed for the sitting room door, determined to have the last hour no matter what. Why she persisted in creeping away while he slept . . . Was it asking all that much to wake up with her in his arms? Was it such a horrible way for her to begin the day?

The door from her sitting room to her bedroom was closed. Unpleasant possibilities stopped him just before he yanked it open. Dora might be up and preparing Caroline’s wardrobe for the day. He was naked. Just striding in . . . No, not exactly a discreet thing to do. He whirled about, stomped back to his room, found his dressing robe, put the damn thing on and went back to her door.

He’d knocked before it occurred to him that he’d need an explanation if Dora opened the panel. Something far less honest than “Please tell Lady Caroline that I’d like for her to come back to bed.” Maybe he could say that he’d decided that he wanted new curtains for his room. And of course Dora wouldn’t wonder why he felt the necessity to relay that information before dawn and wearing only—

The door opened and he tried not to sag with relief at the sight of Caroline and the empty room behind her, at the realization that he wasn’t going to have to be smooth
or particularly creative. That she was already dressed for the day registered in his brain just as he asked, “Why did you leave?”

She touched her tongue to her lower lip and drew an obviously fortifying breath before managing a strained smile and saying, “I didn’t want to wake you to make a formal announcement of it, but . . .” She moistened her lower lip again and drew another deep breath. “My monthly course has begun. I left because I didn’t want to stain your sheets and give the maids something to talk about.”

An odd and disconcerting torrent of emotions swept over him. “Well,” he drawled, feeling the need to say something, “I suppose that can be considered good news.”

“Most definitely.”

In some respects,
he silently, angrily added. He tamped down the rising wave of irritation and chivalrously asked, “Is there anything I can do for you at the moment?”

“No, but it’s most kind of you to—” She glanced back over her shoulder and then turned to him, her eyes wide as she put her hand in the center of his chest, said, “Go!” and pushed him hard enough to rock him back on his heels. He’d barely taken a step back to catch his balance when she closed the door.

Drayton stood there, staring at the wooden panel for a long moment, stunned and feeling more acutely alone than he ever had in his life. And then it passed, evaporated in the heat of anger and . . . and . . .

He clenched his teeth, turned on his heel and stormed back to his room. All right, so it wasn’t the least bit rational to be angry and disappointed to learn that Caroline wasn’t pregnant. There wasn’t anything about his relationship with her that could be considered even marginally
explicable, so why should this aspect of it be any damned different?

He was lucky. He had recklessly sown his seed and he wasn’t going to have to pay for it. The world was full of men who were, at this very moment, down on their knees begging God and all the saints for his kind of good fortune. If he had half a brain in his head, he’d thank his heavenly benefactors for their mercy and swear to never touch Caroline again.

He cocked a brow and undid the sash on his dressing gown. Or, since it might be considered bad form to promise something you knew was impossible, it might just be best to swear that he’d try to be more responsible the next time he did.

  Thirteen  

THERE HAD TO BE A WATCHMAN POSTED ON THE ROOF
, Drayton decided, dismounting and handing the reins off to the waiting groomsman. It was the only explanation for how servants—like the groomsman—were precisely where they needed to be when they needed to be. The only other possibility was that the man had been standing at the base of the front steps since dawn, waiting for his return. Not that it was likely, he knew, taking the stairs two at a time. No one was allowed to stand around and do nothing at Ryland Castle; Caroline’s daily task list had achieved domestic renown days ago and had been heading steadily toward the stuff of legends ever since.

As he expected, the front door opened as if by magic. The footman had a new suit? Yes, and so did Winfield, who, quite predictably, stood waiting for him at the foyer table. “Good afternoon, Winfield. How goes the race on the home front?”

“Lord Aubrey sent word, sir. If all goes according to schedule, he and his mother will be arriving slightly before teatime.”

Damn, if he’d stayed out in the fields for just another
half hour, he could have missed it. “I assume that you advised Lady Caroline.”

“I did, sir.”

“To the staff’s exhausted regret?”

“She asks nothing of us, sir, that she is not willing to do herself.”

And they not only loved her for it, they’d do anything for her. “Where is she now?” he asked, noticing the butler’s quick glance at the floor around his feet. Belatedly, and with a wince, he realized that he should have thought to brush off the worst of the grain dust before he came inside. Now someone was going to have to follow behind him and clean up the debris trail before Lady Aubrey got there.

“I believe Lady Caroline has finally retired to her rooms to freshen herself for the imminent arrival of your guests.”

Well, as hints went, it wasn’t particularly subtle. Drayton smiled and headed for the stairs. “I should probably do the same thing, shouldn’t I?”

“Yes, sir,” Winfield assured him from behind. “With some degree of haste if at all possible.”

Chuckling, stripping off his coat and thinking that the stress of the past fortnight was finally getting to the unflappable Winfield, Drayton took the main stairs just as he had those outside. The newly recarpeted main stairs, he noted yet again. He was amazed every time he went up or down them, awed by how Caroline had managed to have it delivered and installed in the time she had, while doing all the other things she had.

If there was one good thing about Lady Aubrey being just minutes from darkening their doorway, he allowed,
opening his shirt buttons as he strode down the hall toward his room, it was that the frenetic activity in his house would come to an end and he’d get to see more of Caroline than the flash of her skirts as she dashed past him. Well, at night anyway. As his luck seemed to go, now that she was done in the house and could relax a bit, he needed to be out in the fields for the harvest.

He pushed open his bedroom doors, stepped across the threshold and shoved them closed behind him. Tossing his dusty coat on the floor at the foot of the bed with one hand, he yanked his shirttail free with the other and headed for his bathing room.

He flung that door open, too. And stopped dead in his tracks as the steam wafted over and around him. His timing wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough that he could make something of it.

“Well, hello,” he said, stepping in and closing the door as Caroline finished wrapping the bath sheet around her and tucked the end between her breasts. “What an unexpected delight to find you here. Although I distinctly recall you saying that you wouldn’t dare use my bath.”

She eyed the door behind him, moistened her lower lip with the tip of her sweet pink tongue, and said, “You weren’t ever to know.”

“Ah, but as chance would have it, I do,” he drawled, leaning back against the door. Balanced on one foot, he removed a boot and tossed it aside, asking, “Did I mention the fee?”

“No, you didn’t.”

He shifted his stance, pulled off the second boot and threw it down beside the other one. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure you won’t mind paying it.”

She sighed, shoved a damp curl up into the golden
mass piled atop her head, and said, “Aubrey and his mother will be here very shortly, Drayton.”

“Yes, I know,” he admitted, removing his shirt and tossing it aside. “But I sincerely doubt that he’d be ill-mannered enough to break down the door and bring her in here for introductions.”

Her gaze skimming over his chest, her breathing shallow, she softly countered, “It would be ill-mannered of us not be there to welcome her in the foyer.”