Leslie Lafoy (26 page)

Ian grinned and winked. “Capes are the most marvelous things, darling. They hide so much.” At her arched brow he added, “I’m not in the mood to waste time, either.”

Her smile was sweetly, deliciously wicked. “Then I probably shouldn’t bother with putting my stockings and garters back on, should I?”

“You can if you want. They’re not going to be in my way.”

She laughed and reached down to pluck one of the white silk stockings from the floor of the carriage. With deliberate slowness she gathered it in her hands and then, watching him all the while, began the process of rolling it up the length of her leg.

“You’re torturing me, Fiona,” he said thickly, blindly pulling on his shirt.

“And you’re enjoying every moment of it,” she countered, wildly excited by the power she had over him. “Would you like to help me with my garter?”

Ian fastened his buttons. “Fiona,” he warned, unable to keep his gaze from the slow, sinuous progress of the lace garter.

“I suppose you’re planning to exact revenge for this, aren’t you, Ian?”

“Oh, yes.” He picked his coat up off the carriage floor. Laying it on the seat beside him, he warned, “And if you don’t stop, it’s likely to be all of a half meter inside the front door.”

She trailed her fingertips down her throat to the top of her cleavage. “Promise?”

Jesus. If only she had any real idea of what she was asking for. “I was thinking of taking just enough time to find a bed for us.”

“You think too much.”

“Apparently,” he admitted, sliding to the edge of the seat. “I’ll stop, if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

He undid the waistband button on his trousers and began to stuff in his shirt tail. “You actually think that you want to make love on the foyer floor?”

“On the front step if you’re so inclined.”

Still trying to get his shirt properly arranged, he chuckled and looked over at her. Watching as she twisted her hair into a knot atop her head and pinned her hat back into place, he shook his head in wonder and murmured, “You are the absolute light of my life.”

Her grin was pure wicked delight. “How long before we arrive at the house?”

“Not long enough to make love to you properly, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

“What about improperly?” she asked as she slid off the seat and onto her knees in front of him.

“Fiona,” he warned, his heart tripping in excitement, his hands shaking. “Darling, what are you thinking?”

“I’m not,” she blithely replied, reaching out and undoing the rest of the buttons of his trousers. “And you promised me that you’d stop.”

“I did, didn’t I?” he ground out as her fingertips brushed aside fabric. He swallowed a groan as she ever so deliberately traced the hardened length of him with a fingertip.

“Does that hurt?”

“Not at all.” He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, awash in brilliantly keen pleasure as her hand closed around him. How she knew … Hell, he didn’t care. It felt too good to care about anything else.

“Am I doing it right?”

“I don’t think there’s a wrong way,” he growled as his last remaining brain cells frantically told him to stop her before it was too late, before she drove him so close to the brink that all of London looking in the carriage door wouldn’t make a difference. But God Almighty, it felt so good and he was soaring so fast that—

“Oh, drat,” she whispered, her hand abruptly stilling. “We must be about there. The carriage is slowing.”

His mind reeled, desperation, desire and rationale twisting into one certainty in a single beat of his hammering heart. Reaching down, he wrapped his hand around hers and whispered, “Then we’ll have to hurry this, my wicked darling. If you don’t mind.”

Chapter Fourteen

Fiona snuggled against the warmth of Ian’s body and watched the dust motes dance in the sunlight spilling through the bedroom window. Almost two, she judged. Time to be thinking about returning to the world. Or at least going down to the foyer and rummaging through the picnic hamper.

“Are you cold?” he asked, drawing her closer and pulling the dust cover over her shoulders and hip. “I could try to find some real bed coverings, a blanket. They have to be here somewhere.”

Fiona pressed a kiss to his bare shoulder and drew her leg over his. “I’m quite comfortable,” she assured him. She wiggled closer and added, “Now, anyway.”

“I hope it didn’t hurt too badly.”

Lord. Her deflowering …
Again.
It mattered so much to him that she didn’t hate him for it. It was almost as though he thought that it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Or ever would happen to her. His sense of guilt and responsibility was endearingly sweet in a way. Thoroughly maddening in another. She’d already assured him—twice—that she didn’t loathe him and that she’d live without traumatic memories and emotional scars. Since words hadn’t soothed his conscience the least little bit, there was only one other course to take.

She trailed her fingers over the sculpted planes of his bare chest. “The pain was fleeting, Ian. And ever so much smaller in measure than the satisfaction. Briefer in duration, too.” Pushing herself up onto her elbow, she leaned forward to feather a kiss over his lips. “But this time, you can dispense with the gentlemanly restraint. It tends to be frustrating.”

“This time?” he murmured, his hands skimming down her back. “I didn’t sate your hunger?”

“The deeper and more complete the sating, Ian, the greater the desire.”

“Really?” he drawled, his eyes twinkling.

She arched a brow. “It doesn’t work that way for men?”

Chuckling, the sound of his happiness rippling through and warming her blood, he drew her atop him and settled her across his hips. “Contrary to what all the decorum experts say, and a good many doctors claim as fact, the sexes are more alike in terms of desire than they are different.”

“I know,” she admitted, leaning down to nip at his chin.

He laughed again and nipped back. “And may I ask just how you know that? Have you been slipping into the racier medical lectures?”

“I have two happily married sisters. And, in case you haven’t noticed, neither one of them is inclined to be prudish or to mince words. All I’ve had to do was sit there, do my needlework, listen and make mental notes.”

“Bless Caroline and Simone.”

“Speaking of family…”

“Let’s not,” he countered, skimming his hands up her back. Twining his fingers in her hair, he drew her lips down to his. “Let’s pretend we’re all alone in the world.”

She could do that. Easily. Happily. For a while, anyway.

*   *   *

Life was good, Ian mused as he tossed the crust of his sandwich toward the open hamper on the carriage floor.

“You missed,” observed the delectable blond morsel lying on the seat between his outstretched legs, her back nestled against his chest.

He gave her a quick hug. “Only because I’m weak with exhaustion.”

She laughed and launched her own crust toward the basket. It hit the edge, flipped into the air, and then neatly dropped inside.

“You haven’t had enough wine,” he declared, grinning and nudging her half-full glass toward her lips. “I’ve downed my share and done my part to maintain the picnic charade. You can’t be a piker.”

“A lady never guzzles her way to the bottom of a glass.”

“Then sip purposefully,” he admonished, chuckling. “We don’t have all that much farther to go.” He glanced down into the basket. “And we have to do something about those tiny little cakes before we get there, too. They’ll think it odd that we didn’t eat them.”

“They’re called petit fours. Do you want me to get one for you?”

“That would require you to sit up, wouldn’t it?” he asked, lazily contemplating his options.

“I can manage sitting up, Ian.”

He tightened his arms around her and bent down to press a kiss into her hair and murmur, “Yes, but I can’t manage letting you go. I can live without cake.”

She shifted in his arms, half turning so that she could offer him her lips. He smiled, pleased to his marrow, and bent his head lower. His lips feathered over hers and whether he was the one who sighed or—

The movement was sudden, even more violent for being completely unexpected.
Can’t fall on her
, his mind barked as together they pitched forward and off the seat. In the split second of her startled cry, he pushed her down and away from him, twisting his body and grasping for something—anything—solid, for an anchor that would keep him from toppling down onto her.

His fingertips brushed the velvet of a seat cushion and he strained for a handful. For a heartbeat he had one, and then the carriage pitched hard to the side, flinging him away amidst the pelting hail of debris. He came to an abrupt halt, the door handle rammed into the center of his back and driving the air from his lungs.

“Fiona!” he gasped, struggling to get his feet under him and to make himself breathe.

“I’m all right, Ian,” she said, grabbing a seat cushion and trying to leverage herself up off the carriage floor. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he assured her, his senses overfilling with sights and sounds as he reached out and pulled her to the seat. Horses neighing in panic, the screams and shouts of men and women. And over it all rolled the rumbling and crashing and dust-laden belching of a giant going down. He turned and pushed open the door and froze as his heart slammed into his throat and his stomach filled with dread.

“Jesus. Aw, Jesus,” he muttered, trying to decide where he was likely to be needed most, where the greatest chance was of finding survivors. “Leon!”

“Here, Your Grace!” his coachman called from a short distance up the street. “I’m right here with the horses!”

“What’s happened, Ian?”

“Stay in the carriage, Fiona,” he ordered, his gaze still sweeping the carnage. “Just sit there. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He had one foot on the step when Fiona caught his coat tail and tried to hold him back.

“What’s happened?” she demanded.

Pausing, turning back to meet her frightened gaze, he crisply explained, “A building’s collapsed into the street. There are serious injuries. Stay here where you’re safe.”

Fiona watched him vault down the steps, heard him call out, “Leon, stay with Her Ladyship! Don’t leave her for an instant!” and then the door was closed, leaving her with only the quick and fragmented images of dust swirls, mounds of brick and scrambling people.

There are serious injuries.
Yes, there would be. Cuts from the glass, crushing and contusions from the bricks. Choking from the dust. People would need help. No one who could offer aid should be sitting in a carriage.

She reached down, grabbed the picnic hamper and dumped the few remaining items out on the carriage floor. The big white linen table cloth was easy enough to find, and while it took a second to find the little knife Cook had packed for slicing the apples, once she had it in hand she made quick work of turning the fine Irish cloth into bandages.

Her ears ringing with the frantic cries of the injured, the precious seconds ticking away in her mind, Fiona stood, opened her shirt front at the waist, reached inside, and pulled the drawstring on her petticoat. Even as it pooled around her ankles, she dropped back down onto the seat, kicked it free of her hems and snatched up the knife again.

“No, Lady Fiona,” Leon said, moving to block her way as she started out of the carriage with the basket. “I heard what His Grace told you to do.”

Yes, well, Ian had been focused on the immediate needs of the the moment and not thinking past his own obligations to the injured. She gave his coachman the best smile she could muster. “I’m not going to sit in that dark little cocoon and do nothing more than listen to the screaming, Leon. Step aside, please.” When he didn’t move, she firmly added, “Now.”

“Your Ladyship, I beg you. Get back in the carriage as His Grace expects.”

Hoping that Ian was close enough to call off his dedicated and dutifully obedient employee, Fiona looked past the driver, searching among the rescuers for him. He was nowhere in sight. But what she could see … Her little basket of bandages would be empty within minutes. Still, better a few bandages than none at all.

Her mind raced along the course of what needed to be done and how best to do it. The first task was to get past Ian’s driver. “Are our horses injured?” she asked.

“Cal’s got a bad gash in his right front leg. Flying glass. Meg’s got a couple knicks and knocks from bouncing bricks, but nothing too bad. She can still pull. Not that we’re going anywhere for a while. Please get back in the carriage.”

“Here,” she said, taking linen strips from the basket and thrusting them into his hands. “Take care of Cal.”

“Only if you’ll get back in the carriage.”

“All right,” she agreed, vaulting up the step and inside. She turned back, grabbed the door handle, said crisply, “Now see to His Grace’s horse,” and yanked the door closed.

“Sit in the carriage,” she muttered as she silently counted to ten, her hand still wrapped around the door handle. “Why not just tell me to eat little cakes?”

She opened the door and stepped down, casting a quick glance toward the front of the carriage. Seeing Ian’s coachman fully occupied in tending his injured animal, Fiona adjusted her grip on the wicker handle, lifted her hems, and strode off into the destruction and mayhem, determined to do whatever she could to help.

*   *   *

People were really the most amazingly wonderful creatures, she mused as she tied a compress over an old man’s badly cut arm. The instant her fingers finished tying the knot, she stepped back and let two younger men carry him off toward one of the many wagons being quickly filled with other patients.

No one had had to issue orders. No one had had to make a plea for assistance. They had just come from everywhere, bringing wagons and blankets and anything that could be used to help strangers in desperate need. Lengths of wood from the collapsed building had been salvaged and piled for quick splinting of broken bones. Doors had been pulled from the wreckage to become stretchers.

Men climbed up and pawed through the rubble, clearing it away to bring out the injured they found. Women sacrificed their skirts and their petticoats for bandages and darted among the injured, rendering immediate aid to those with minor wounds and comforting those who cradled others beyond earthly help.