London's Last True Scoundrel (14 page)

Davenport’s dark gaze took her in, from the top of her damp, piled-up curls to the toes of her slippers, and an expression that was half smile, half anticipation lit his eyes. Resting his elbow on the mantelpiece and setting the heel of his shoe on the fender, he rubbed his jaw with his thumb, contemplating her in silence as Mrs. Potter rattled on.

Heat rushed up Hilary’s throat to her cheeks.
Drat the man!
The way he looked at her made her feel giddy, as if rival flocks of butterflies staged a pitched battle in her stomach.

The meal, which had smelled so enticing before, hardly tempted her to sit down. She had that sick, excited feeling that she was coming to recognize as bound up with … with …

Desire.

The word, sinful, tantalizing, hovered at the edge of her mind.

Her eyes widened. She wanted to shove the notion aside, but it merely grew larger the harder she tried to block it out.

She wanted the Earl of Davenport. She wanted him in a way no gently bred, virtuous young lady of impeccable birth and breeding ought to want a man.

In this, she was far more like Trixie than the bloodless ideal into which she’d tried to mold her students at Miss Tollington’s.

Dear God, he hadn’t even touched her and she was burning up.

But his eyes … they smoldered now, as if he’d caught the scent of her desire on the wind and reacted to it instinctively.

The breath seized in her lungs. Her heart pounded. Mrs. Potter said something; Davenport took several moments to respond.

Then he broke the spell, cutting his gaze away. With a distant, charming smile, he started toward the table.

“By all means, ma’am. I confess, I find myself suddenly ravenous.”

*   *   *

Davenport’s mouth watered, but it was not for his hostess’s raised mutton pie.

Who would have thought Honey could look like that?

Hitherto, he’d seen her in dark, drab, unflattering colors and hard-wearing, serviceable fabrics. With the exception of the night rail she’d worn when his ceiling had fallen in, she’d been covered virtually from head to toe.

Now, gowned in borrowed muslin, she stole his breath.

The style of her dark gold hair, piled high on her head, seemed to emphasize the delicate turn of her features, the slender enticement of her throat.

And her bosom in that gown … Ah, how magnificent to be a man when sights like that were to be had. He could spend days lavishing attention on those sweet, plump little breasts.

He ached to see her nipples, to discover their color and shape. He wanted them in his hands, in his mouth. He wanted to see her breasts move as he moved with her, over her, inside her.

Fortunate for him that the table concealed his growing impatience to sling her over his shoulder and make for the stairs.

Thank God for this night. For the storm, for the circumstance that made it impossible for them to have separate rooms. For his own insistence that they were a married couple.

He hadn’t lied earlier when he’d told his host he could eat a horse; he had been famished. But that was before Honey had looked at him in such a way.

He hadn’t known. How could he have guessed? Even with his scientist’s insistence that women were creatures with sexual instincts just as men were—even the most repressed of them—the look she had given him when she came down to dine rocked his preconceived notions about this particular woman to the core.

Beneath that prim exterior beat the heart of a passionate, desirous woman. If only he could draw that woman out. If only Honey would let her escape from that prison of propriety in which she’d caged her.

Tonight.
Tonight was his chance to see if that female would come out and play.

The anticipation built until his stomach churned with it. He forced himself to do justice to his hostess’s cooking, but each mouthful was an effort. He took a long swallow of his host’s raw red claret and waited until they could decently retire for the evening.

A hand of cards was suggested. He said, more abruptly than he ought, “No, I thank you. It’s been a delightful evening, but my wife is fatigued. We ought to retire.”

He rose, giving Honey no chance to demur, and bowed to Mrs. Potter. “The best mutton pie I’ve ever tasted. Thank you, ma’am. Good night.”

He took Honey’s hand to help her rise.

Hot currents started where their fingers met and raced up his arm, arrowing south to pool deliciously in his loins.

He glanced down at her as they left the dining parlor. “What’s wrong?” he said a trifle testily. “You look like a lamb to the slaughter.”

“And you, my lord,” responded Honey, “look like a wolf who has just spied its dinner.”

He didn’t reply to that, just hauled her up the stairs with more haste than grace. “Which room? This one?”

He flung open the door, pulled her inside, and shut it behind them.

*   *   *

With a determined tug, Hilary slipped free of Davenport’s hold and hurried to the dressing table, saying breathlessly, “I am so tired. I think I shall go straight to bed.”

Her fingers trembled; she reached up to take the pins from her hair, but she couldn’t seem to steady her hands enough to accomplish the task.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind her. She whirled, to see Davenport land with a flying leap on his back on the big tester bed. He’d removed his shoes, but otherwise he was fully clad.

Thank goodness for small mercies.

He grinned at her and patted the space beside him. “Most comfortable bed I’ve slept in for days. Why don’t you come up here and try it?”

“No, thank you,” she said, placing two pins in a pretty little dish on the dressing table. “And I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are
not
sleeping in that bed with me tonight.”

“Oh, but I am,” said Davenport, clasping his hands behind his head with the air of a man who intended to stay put. “After two nights sleeping under what can only be described as primitive conditions, you cannot expect me to take the floor on this one.”

Despite her hard-hearted resolve, she saw the force of this argument. The memory of the night he’d spent at the Grange, of his ceiling falling in, still covered her with hot, prickly embarrassment.

She glanced around. “Very well, then. You take the bed. I’ll take that armchair by the fire.”

He looked outraged. “Don’t be ridiculous. A gentleman can’t let a lady sleep in an armchair while he takes his ease in a bed.”

“But you are not a gentleman,” she pointed out. “You are the greatest scoundrel in all the land.”

He tilted his head to consider that. “All right. You take the chair.”

She blinked at his quick acquiescence, but she was forced to say stiffly, “I’m sure it will be most comfortable.”

“Perhaps it will be if you’re accustomed to sleeping at the Grange,” he agreed, with less tact than truth. “I do wish you’d be sensible, though. This bed is big enough for four people. It’s a crime for you to get a crick in your neck sleeping upright.”

“My lord, I am so tired, I believe I could sleep standing up,” she said lightly.

And that was the truth, for besides the fatigue from an eventful day, not to mention rising at such an early hour, she’d drunk far too much of her hostess’s cowslip wine at dinner. If she didn’t keep her wits about her, she’d end by agreeing to one of Davenport’s outrageous suggestions. He was the sort of man who could beguile one into sin before one knew what was happening. She needed to be on her guard, but she was so very tired.…

She turned back to the looking glass mounted on the dressing table and took out the last pin from her hair. With fumbling fingers, she braided her tresses into one long tail.

She rummaged about the elegant little drawers in the dressing table, but there were no ribbons, so she was obliged to leave the braid loose.

“Shall I assist you to undress?” The voice came from directly behind her.

Hilary gave a nervous start. She hadn’t realized he’d risen from the bed. He’d moved as silently as a cat.

She lifted her chin. “That won’t be necessary.”

She’d sleep in Daisy’s corset if that’s what it took. However, it had been quite loose, so perhaps she could wiggle the garment around to the front somehow and unlace it from there.

She really ought to have had the presence of mind to ask Mrs. Potter to help her once more. But this man had addled her wits to such an extent, she was barely keeping her head above water.

He smiled at her. “Come now, Honey. It will be easier if I unlace your stays. You are not the first female I’ve seen in her shift, you know.”

Grimly aware of that fact, she said, “I’ll manage for myself. Thank you.”

“I can do it in the dark. With my eyes shut, if that would make you feel better.”

“I’ll just bet you can,” muttered Hilary. “Turn your back while I change.”

Mrs. Potter had laid out a pretty embroidered lawn night rail for her guest to wear. Hilary eyed it, wishing she could wave a wand and thereby transfer it to her magically unclad body. She had the feeling undressing with Davenport in the room would prove too much temptation to resist. For whom she did not know, precisely.

With a shrug, he turned and walked toward the fireplace. “If you don’t need assistance, you won’t mind if I get out of these wet things, will you?” And without waiting for an answer, he stripped off his shirt and spread it over a chair before the fire.

She tried, she really did
try,
not to look at the play of his muscles as he moved.

His hands went to the buttons of his evening trousers and she gave a squawk of protest. “Do
not
remove your trousers.”

He sighed. “My dear Honey, they are soaked. If I take a chill we will never get to London.”

She saw the force of this argument—not that she was quite so heartless as to want him healthy only to further her own scheme. He must have been suffering all through dinner, wearing those sodden garments.

Compassion won over modesty. “We must extinguish the lights, then,” she said.

With a shrug that clearly stated she made far too much of the whole business of nudity, Davenport did as she asked, turning down lamps and snuffing candles with that schoolboy trick of pinching them out between finger and thumb. They went out with a sizzle and hiss—a sound that seemed to echo in her own body at the thought of him, bare skinned in the same room as she, once more.

At last, there was only the fire to light the chamber.

She turned her back and heard the rustle of fabric. Footsteps, and then another, lengthier bout of shushing of bedclothes.

“There,” he said. “I’m all covered up in bed now. Never fear.”

She could not help looking. True to his word, he lay under the bedcovers and they were pulled very properly up to his chin. He looked like the wickedest schoolboy she’d ever seen.

As she watched, the gleam in his eyes transformed to something altogether darker, smoky with intent.

“Your turn,” he said softly. “I’ll shut my eyes.” His tone was husky, like the scrape of a boot on gravel.

She narrowed her gaze. “I don’t trust you to keep your eyes closed.”

“Smart woman,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust me, either, if I were you.”

For some reason, it was an effort to drag her gaze away from his, but she summoned all of her flagging will and managed it.

In fulminating silence, she looked for something she could use as a screen. But of course. The tester bed had curtains. They were made of swathes of muslin, not as sheer as gauze but not opaque, either.

Still, with the lack of light, she didn’t think he’d be able to see anything. She drew the curtains all the way around the bed, ignoring his laughing protest.

“My dear Honey, you think of everything, don’t you?” He sighed. “I was so looking forward to watching.”

“My heart bleeds,” she said, swiftly unpinning her bodice.

*   *   *

Davenport chuckled to himself. What Honey did not know was that with the fire behind her, she was silhouetted quite magnificently against the curtains of the tester bed. He was quite content to lie back against the frilly pillows and watch the show.

She bent and fiddled with her bodice, then reached out to the dressing table. He heard the soft tap of pins dropped into a china dish.

Working more quickly than he liked, she shoved the puffed sleeves of the gown down her arms and pushed the rest of the dress down until she could step out of it.

Carefully, she laid the gown over a chair.

Then the awkward business of the corset. She tried to reach up over her head—slender arms silhouetted like a dancer’s against the bed curtains. Davenport felt a distinct twitch in his genitalia at the sight. But the shoulder straps of her corset restricted her movements too much to allow her to reach the ties at the back that way.

A muffled sound of frustration, then her hands dropped and came around behind her from the waist. She’d need to be a contortionist to reach the ties from there.

She even tried pulling her arms out of the straps, then gripping the corset at the top and twisting it around her torso. Davenport’s mouth watered at the way her body shimmied and strained.

His mind slid to the way her thumbs hooked inside the corset, brushing her breasts. He imagined putting his own thumbs there, lifting her breasts free from restraint, and his arousal ratcheted up another notch.

Another sound of frustration, an angry little feminine snort.

He waited for her to ask. Waited in the ticking silence. He could almost hear the violent debate that raged in her mind.

In the end, she didn’t ask at all.

Apparently giving up the struggle with her stays, she set one foot on the chair and rucked up her petticoat above her thigh, exposing her legs. Beautiful legs they were, if he was any judge—and of course he was. The shadows clearly delineated her delicate hands fumbling at the garter on her thigh, smoothing the stocking down, down, over her knee, down her shapely calf. Then, the other leg.

He all but groaned. He wanted to kiss along the path her hands traveled, down, down, and then up, up, up. His body ached for her and he wondered if he’d ever have such a grand opportunity to act on the promptings of his own sinful desires.