Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction (15 page)

“It might change
me
.” Carver spread his fingers against her spine, urging her the last little distance closer. He needed her body against his. There was nothing else for it. “I
will
catch you, Mouse. I shall not give up. Let this be your warning.”

***

The scent of his shaving soap surrounded her, along with his strength, the potent masculinity he wore with such confident ease. “One kiss,” he whispered.

“Then you will release me?”

“Yes.” It was another fib, of course, like before, in his carriage. He wanted more than a kiss. So did she. So much more.

She went limply into this improper embrace, felt every hard, vital inch of muscle of his body against her, separated merely by a few garments that suddenly seemed only to heighten her desire rather than make any barrier between them.

Slowly his lips claimed hers, and he held her closer still. She sensed the latent power in his hands, but she was not fearful. Far from it. His kiss breathed new life into her and filled her with vigorous spirit.

Her fingertips inched up his chest and found his neck, then, tentatively, his jaw. Smooth tonight. Warm. Oh, she hadn’t meant to touch him, but she did. Molly ran her fingers along the sharp line and heard a low sound escape from somewhere deep inside his body. He’d almost lifted her off the ground; her toes barely touched earth.

As their lips parted, he whispered, “Come to me, Mouse.”

“I cannot. I will not be another of your conquests.”

“You are nothing”—his voice broke with frustration—“nothing like them.”

“But I would be treated just the same.” The words flowed out of her now as if his kiss had unlocked their chains. “I would soon become just what they are, and once you were bored with me, what then? What would I have left?”

“You will have anything else you desire, Margaret.”

But that was a lie too. He could not offer her what she truly needed. He could not give her all of him. The Earl of Everscham and a dressmaker? They would be laughed out of every Society drawing room. And even if that did not matter—even if they could somehow survive the ridicule and the scandal—how could she trust that his heart was hers? That in time his eye would not wander, along with his affections?

At Danforthe House there was glass case containing a perfect model of the naval ship
Victory
. It still had all its sailors, canons, barrels, and sails. Lady Mercy had told her that it once belonged to an elder brother who died in childhood. Carver was not allowed to play with it or even open the glass case, which is why all the pieces remained intact. As a boy, he could only look at it. She always thought how terribly sad that was.

But that was the way he had learned to keep his heart safe too. Away from the touch of anyone who might cause it harm.

So she must remain sensible. “Please let us walk on, your lordship. Folk will notice, and I’d rather not be seen cavorting in dark corners with a notorious rake who treats women with less concern than he treats his boots and no doubt leaves them just as worn down.”

“I see you have grown bold, Miss Robbins, since you left my employ. You are full of thorns with which to prick me.”

With an arch smile, she replied, “Thorns, indeed! Do you think it was a bed of roses working in your household, having to hold my tongue every day for twelve years? I have wounds of my own.”

“And now you have found your voice to retaliate.”

“Yes.”

“I see.” He released her hand. “No wonder you couldn’t wait to escape my house. Such a tyrant I must have been. I’m shocked you did not poison me with cyanide in the wine or smother me with a pillow while I slept.”

Molly laughed gently. “It was tempting on occasion.” How strange it was to be talking and teasing with him like this. A few months ago she could never have imagined herself to be this playful in his presence, but she liked it. There was no getting around the fact.

He was looking at her oddly. “How can I tempt you now, Margaret?”

Her heart thumped wildly, and the more she tried to ignore it the worse it became, more forceful and insistent. Just like him wanting her attention, her submission.

“They say the prize most worthwhile is hardest won,” he muttered.

Don’t look into his eyes
, she told herself frantically.
Don’t let him trap you again
. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever worked hard for anything,” she replied saucily, trying to lighten the mood.

“Until now.”

Pretending not to hear that last comment, she finally succeeded in leading him out of the niche and back into the striped light of the walk. “Don’t look so depressed, your lordship. We can still be friends—share conversation.” Yes, she wanted that. She wanted to keep talking to him now that she’d begun at last.

“Conversation?” he exclaimed, clearly horrified.

“Don’t you ever talk to women?”

He cursed under his breath and then grumbled, “Not upright.”

Torn between shock and amusement, she was still considering how to reply to that when a loud voice pierced their quiet moment.

“Is that you, Danforthe?”

***

Carver groaned inwardly.

Fletcher Covington, the Duke of Bloody Preston, marched toward them down Druid’s Walk—more commonly known as
Lover’s
Walk—swinging his cane over the gravel and making more noise than a coach-and-four. Carver was aware of Margaret slipping away, putting herself closer to Lady Anne, partially hiding in shadow. He didn’t look at her, guessing she would not care to be introduced to Covington, and not wanting to share her anyway. He was permitted too little of her company as it was.

“What are you doing here?” the other man demanded, squinting and puffing as he drew near. “Not with the Baroness Schofield, tonight, I see. You should take care, Danforthe, or someone might steal the lovely lady away from you.”

He coughed sharply, swallowing another curse. “I am here to escort Lady Anne Rothespur. She wanted to attend the concert.”

Now Covington spied the young sister of their friend and bowed, pressing the tip of his cane into the gravel. “Charming! Charming! Of course, yes, I do remember Lady Anne.” Then his sly gaze slid to where Margaret stood by an arching yew tree. Her study was restricted to her shoes.

“This is my friend Miss Robbins,” Anne blurted and then went on to introduce Frederick Dawes, but Covington took no pains to hide his disinterest in the latter.

“Why, this must be the skilled dressmaker of whom I hear so much.” He grinned at Carver.

“Yes. Quite. I believe Miss Robbins is a very talented and successful designer and seamstress.” Carver put his hands behind his back and assumed a careless, casual pose with his feet apart.

“Interesting. Interesting! Yes, indeed.”

He didn’t like the way Covington was looking at her. Leering might be a more apt word.

“And here we all are on Lover’s Walk,” the duke pointed out, tapping his cane on the gravel. “Surely the ladies won’t mind if I join you. Or am I interrupting the cozy foursome?”

For a moment no one spoke, and then Margaret said, “I think we should go back toward the pavilion and find chairs, Lady Anne. You won’t want to miss the rest of the concert.” Taking the young girl’s arm, she led her back the way they’d already walked.

Carver was thwarted. His plan ruined, he could only watch and admire from a distance. It did nothing to diminish his growing desire for her. If this was indeed her scheme to seduce him, render him her slave, it was working.

For the Duke of Sutherland’s ball, Molly had six gowns to finish, and each one must be unique and charming. With only the well-meaning efforts but very poor skills of Mrs. Slater to cause more hindrance than help, she feared never being finished on time. And then a miracle occurred. Mr. Edward Hobbs sent his young nieces to her. Introduced as two parson’s daughters from Aylesbury, Emma and Kate were speedy, efficient, and tidy needlewomen. Arriving in London to visit their uncle, they were eager for a chance to make use of themselves.

“I did not know you had any family, Mr. Hobbs.” She’d never suspected it, because he devoted all his time working for the Danforthes, getting them out of various scrapes.

“I do hope the girls are adequate,” was his only reply.

Adequate? They were lifesavers.

They came to her lodgings early every afternoon and stayed often until past midnight. Mr. Hobbs sent a carriage to bring them to and fro. The extra hands meant that she required less from Mrs. Slater, but the lady still came up to help with the trimmings, bringing her noisy baby with her. Frederick called in some evenings, but she was too busy to stop work and chat with him. Sometimes he made sketches of the ladies at their work, surrounded by a flurry of muslin, silk, and taffeta.

Mrs. Lotterby braved the steep, crooked stairs at least once a day, bringing little treats for Molly and her assistants—hot chocolate and apple dumpling if it was cold out, lemonade and caraway seed cake if the weather was warm. Discovering that Molly shared her fondness for marzipan, the landlady bought some for her whenever she could. A pig being fattened for honorable slaughter at the harvest feast could not have been better cosseted.

Meanwhile, across the landing, Mrs. Bathurst’s haven of memories fed Molly’s mind with inspiration, just as heartily as Mrs. Lotterby fed her stomach. From the colors of her old moth-bitten ball gowns, to the tarnished gleam of her rings and chokers, Mrs. Bathurst provided Molly with a glimpse into another world, a place inhabited by lusty Hungarian princes, somber British Naval heroes, fiery-tempered Russian Cossacks, a tough-skinned Highland gillie, and two romantic Italian sculptors.

At night, Molly sat up with a few lit candle stumps and sketched creations that, come the next morning, would surprise even her. Mrs. Bathurst exclaimed that only a woman conversant with the skilled touch of an amorous lover could design gowns as she did, but Molly assured her that she simply had a very good imagination.

Danforthe and his contract amendment remained in her thoughts, hovering over her like a great black-haired bird of prey. Despite her own resolve and Mrs. Lotterby’s gentle warnings, Molly’s stubborn will had begun to pull in a wicked direction, stirred by his kiss and the touch of his hand around hers.

He had called her
Margaret
. For some reason that seemed more wickedly intimate than any other word he might have used.

***

In the last few days before the ball, Molly and her assistants spent their time traveling from house to house, making final fittings and discussing accessories for their clients. The very last scheduled fitting was that of Baroness Schofield, who, as she was hooked into a striking buttercup-yellow gown with short puffed sleeves, inspected her image in a long mirror and exclaimed crossly, “Yellow? But I never wear yellow in the evenings. Not since I was a girl.”

“Then it will be something fresh and unexpected, madam.”

With a heavy theatrical sigh, the baroness exclaimed, “I don’t like it, Robbins. It makes me look jaundiced.”

“But in candlelight the effect will be quite different.”

“I think I know what colors suit me, Robbins, and this does not. No, I cannot get used to it. Also the bosom is not cut low enough. These crisscross ribbons on the bodice crush my curves too severely. Ugh! I just cannot get beyond this dreadful color.”

Molly felt her assistants growing fidgety. The baroness had expressed no such doubts before this, and she’d had several fittings. There was only one day until the Sutherland’s ball, and while that left time for final adjustments, it did not leave much time for an entire new gown. Color was not something that could be altered with a few careful stitches.

“And these sleeves,” the woman gestured impatiently, “look childish.”

Childish?
Molly swallowed a hot spur of anger, but it smarted in her throat. Nothing she ever designed could be called childish. This was a gown she had specifically made thinking of Carver Danforthe and what he would like his mistress to wear. She politely suggested the lady might like to consider the gown a little longer.

“No. I don’t like it.” With one quick move, the woman tore the sleeve from the bodice. “You’ll have to start again. Nothing yellow, for pity’s sake, Robbins.” She dropped the ruined sleeve to the floor at Molly’s feet. “The entire world knows a woman over twenty should never wear yellow for a ball. Not in Town. Perhaps in the country dullard’s village that spawned you it was acceptable. Here it just won’t do.” Stepping down from her stool, she put her foot directly on the torn scrap and walked on with her lady’s maid. “Help me get out of this atrocity of a gown, Peters. I’m feeling quite nauseated by so much bile yellow.”

Molly stared at the woman’s back.

“Oh, and, Robbins”—the baroness turned to look over her shoulder—“I like to look young, but I’m not a girl. This does nothing for my figure. If anything, it hides the bosom, which is one of my best features. We’re not all flat across the top like you. A rare and expensive orchid would be more appropriate for me than a common buttercup.”

“But the Earl of Everscham approved the design. He prefers buttercups to cultivated flowers.” It came out of her before she could bite it down and force it back into that secret vault where she kept everything she knew about him, everything she’d stored away in her mind’s scrapbook.

The baroness had very sharp green eyes that never warmed, even when she smiled. Today they left Molly’s face with ice burns. “I think I know what
he
likes.”

She curtsied, her gaze lowered hastily to the torn scrap of sleeve. “Of course, madam.”

The other woman came back to where she stood. With one long finger she raised Molly’s chin until their eyes met. “What do you mean, he approved the design? When did he see it?”

“I meant to say that his lordship would approve it, madam. I feel certain of it.”

“Well, you’re wrong. You do not know him as I do. You never could.”

“Of course not, madam.”

The baroness made her voice soft and silky as the purr of a well-fed cat stretching on a sunny windowsill. “You’re so plain, Robbins, such a grim little face. Perhaps you ought to take this gown and make something out of it for yourself. Yellow might lift your features. If anything could. Not that you have any use for a ball gown, of course.” She sighed, her gaze drifting down to Molly’s small bosom. “Poor thing.” With that she walked away again, dismissing her with a pert, “Peters will see you to the door, once she’s helped me out of this disastrous creation.”

Leaving that house, Molly was seething and hurt, but by the time she arrived back at her lodgings, the feelings had mellowed somewhat. It could not be easy trying to keep the earl’s interest, she supposed. His mistress must be aware of the tenuous place she held in his life, and with a new batch of debutantes on her heels, that would draw anyone’s nerves thin.

“What shall we do?” Emma asked as they laid the rejected gown across the worktable and gathered around it like mourners at a funeral.

“I say we spit on it,” said Kate, “and tell that hussy to go to the ball in her drawers.”

Molly couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Come, girls, let’s not be downhearted.” She put her arms around them both. “We must look at this as a challenge.”

She told herself that not every design would be a success, not every client would love her work. Until then, she’d been fortunate, meeting praise at every turn. But the baroness had reminded her of how quickly favor could be lost as well as won. Favor in all its forms.

***

Carver attended the Sutherlands’ ball with Sinjun and Lady Anne, who, despite her annoying qualities, had become a useful conduit to the company of a certain frustrating dressmaker.

“May I say, Lady Anne, you look very lovely this evening,” he assured her while a liveried footman announced their names to the folk gathered in the ballroom.

“I know that’s what a gentleman is supposed to say, Danforthe,” she replied merrily, “but I also admit you are right on this occasion too. I have no qualms about confessing my loveliness, and it’s all due to the wonderful Miss Robbins.” She dropped his arm and gave an excited twirl in her blush-pink gown. “She is thoroughly brilliant. I only wish I could keep her all to myself.”

He knew the feeling.

Sinjun came up behind them. “I see the Baroness Schofield in fine fettle this evening. Covington seemed to think the two of you are on the verge of parting company.”

Carver pretended he didn’t hear and swept Anne off for the first minuet. Dancing had only one use in his mind. It was an excellent disguise, a meaningless exercise performed while one hatched the most fiendish plots of seduction. He’d never been a great dancer, but lessons forced upon him in boyhood ensured he did not make a complete ass of himself on these occasions. His sister had also done her best to chisel and carve him into a better dancing partner—all part of her campaign to get him married off. A pointless effort on her part, but she insisted on it.

As they joined the other couples, he noted all the usual faces, and thought to himself, not for the first time, what a strange ritual this was. Everyone gathered in one place to dress up, show off, and usually make sizeable fools of themselves before the end of the evening. For fifteen Seasons he’d walked this path, tolerated every tedious moment.

“Oh, lord!” Anne exclaimed. “I must have caught my sleeve on the carriage door. I thought I felt the stitches pulled! Now my lovely beads are coming unraveled.”

He followed her panicked gaze to where a few tiny pink drops scattered from her arm, down her skirt, and across the dance floor.

“Excuse me.” She released his hand. “I must find Miss Robbins and see what she can do.” Turning before she had even finished her sentence, she slipped away through the other dancers, and he watched her go.

Amazing what one could achieve with the ring on one’s little finger, while pretending to place a gauze shawl around a lady’s shoulders as she exited his carriage. Although Margaret must have sewn those beads on damn tight, for he’d expected them to start falling sooner.

Noting a few hopeful faces eyeing him eagerly above fluttering fans, he picked up the fallen beads and made a hasty retreat from the dance floor.

***

Molly had promised herself not to look for him, but as soon as she took her turn at the crack in the dressing-room door, her tired, misty gaze traversed the bright crowd for a certain tall figure with very dark hair.

Oh, there he was. She caught a tense breath. Carver Danforthe was always a fine sight in his evening clothes. While she watched, he steered a young lady in a minuet. Pink gown. Was it Lady Anne Rothespur? Her eyesight was not cooperating, so she fumbled for her spectacles—a new cross to bear, but sadly a necessary one—and put them on. A series of very bad headaches had sent her, at Mrs. Lotterby’s urging, to see a physician who insisted on the spectacles, much to her dismay.

Ah, yes. It was Lady Anne. A vast improvement on his usual partners. As she watched the couple dancing, it occurred to her that Carver Danforthe really ought to marry. Despite his oft-stated disdain for the institution, his estate needed an heir. Lady Anne was full of life and did not appear to have a single affectation or mean bone in her body. She would make him a charming wife. If Carver did marry, thought Molly, perhaps it would finally help her conquer these unsuitable feelings for him. Feelings that continued to grow inside her, despite determined neglect.

The couple had not danced long, when the young lady suddenly turned and headed directly for the annex room, which served as a dressing room for the ball, filled with lady’s maids waiting to fix the inevitable tears and stains their mistresses would soon bear. Molly quickly backed away from the door rather than be caught spying.

A few footsteps later, and Lady Anne dashed into the room. “My beads! I’m so dreadfully annoyed with myself, but I caught my sleeve on the carriage door, and now…see?”

“Don’t fret, your ladyship.” Molly assessed the damage through her spectacles. “We have some extra thread and beads in case of this very eventuality.”

“Thank the Lord! You are a treasure, Miss Robbins. It’s my first dance of the evening, and only with silly old Danforthe.”

She was just about to thread her needle when she heard someone else enter the room behind her, and the atmosphere suddenly had a new bite to it, like the taste of unexpected ginger spice in Mrs. Lotterby’s marmalade when one expected only sweet, bland orange.

“Oh, sir, you shouldn’t be in here,” someone exclaimed. “This is ladies only.”

“But I reclaimed Lady Anne’s beads. Will they not buy me admittance?”

Her heart raced at the clear, deep sound of his voice amid the cluster of females. Hastily removing her spectacles to slide them out of sight, Molly pricked her finger and silently cursed herself for that pathetic vanity. But she got on with her work, even with something closed tight around her heart, squeezing. Whatever it was—whatever she was tempted to call it—the feeling had no mercy, just like his kiss.

“Miss Robbins.” His hand was stretched out to her, palm up, showing her the fallen beads. “Will these help?”

“Danforthe, you shouldn’t be in here.” Lady Anne laughed. “Were you trying to see ladies in their petticoats?”

“Perhaps,” came the wicked reply.

No one dared make any move to throw him out. Instead, they surrounded him with a churning sea of agitated breathing—outraged sighs, nervous giggles, and heaving bosoms. At times like these, Molly despaired of her own gender. He’d be disappointed if he ever thought his nearness would corrupt
her
into a quivering trifle. Having assured herself of her own utter indifference, Molly resumed the struggle to thread her needle. A most problematical enterprise without spectacles.