The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (22 page)

“I’ll ruin the little tart, and you too,” she spat.

“Setting aside, for a moment, the disrespectful reference to Miss Seaton, I’ll agree with part of your statement. You can ruin her. But me? I don’t think so. I shall be very slightly embarrassed, that is all. You don’t have the power to cause me any great harm. But you, you will suffer very greatly from
my
power.”

The parrot face was blotched puce with rage as she thought about it. Every word he’d spoken was true and his heart thudded with anxiety. He delivered the final argument and prayed his gamble paid off. “Is it really worth it, Duchess, to destroy a lady who means nothing to you? I’m the one you hate and there’s nothing you can do to harm me.”

But there was. He kept his face impassive and hoped she hadn’t guessed how much it meant to him to protect Celia.

She wavered between rational fear and bitter resentment of defeat. And Tarquin, who knew her so well, found the words to tip her over the edge. He lowered his voice almost to a whisper and spoke close to her ear. “What shall you do? Are you going to give me the very great pleasure of destroying
you
? I’m already sharpening my wits.”

She jerked back and shook off his hand. “Very well. I’ll say nothing. I don’t care if you marry her, or Countess Czerny, or no one. You are of no importance to me.”

“Excellent,” Tarquin said, disguising his relief. “I am enchanted to find us in perfect accord.”

Tense with anger, the duchess stood and surveyed the room, like a bird of prey seeking her next victim. Her glance settled on Celia, who must have taken leave of Hugo and Julia and now stood alone.

“Don’t even think of it,” Tarquin said.

“Truly,” the duchess said, in a tone quite mild for her. “I just wish to reassure Miss Seaton that I wish her well.”

“I’ll do it for you. If you even go near Miss Seaton my threats stand. Leave her alone.”

With a faint odor of brimstone, the duchess shook her ruffled feathers and stalked off to join her husband who, as usual, had managed to enter unnoticed.

Tarquin allowed himself a satisfied smile. Six years ago, when he finished Cambridge, he’d removed every one of his belongings from Amesbury House and moved into his own London rooms, never to return to the detested mansion except for the occasional family gathering. Since then he’d climbed to a paramount position in the
ton
, despite occasionally wondering whether his ascent had any point. Tonight he knew that it did. Finally he’d used his power in a worthwhile cause. Perhaps the only time.

Chapter 27

When attending a house party, the well-bred young woman stays in her own room at night.

C
elia couldn’t have pinpointed what awoke her. Perhaps the recent memory of the last such disturbance in a dark room penetrated her slumbering brain. Someone was in the chamber with her.

It hadn’t occurred to her to be nervous in the crowded Mandeville guest wing. Fearing her heart thumped loud enough to wake the dead, she lay still. She heard the intruder rooting through the things laid out on the dressing table, mostly the tools of Chantal’s trade and nothing of great value save some inexpensive amber beads and a silver chain lent her by Diana. He moved on to the chest and slid open a drawer. He wasn’t going to find anything of any value among her undergarments, not even a scrap of lace. She hadn’t wasted Diana’s funds on fripperies.

Even keeping her eyes shut, she gained the impression there was a light in the room, that the searcher carried a candle or a lamp. It was agonizing to both follow his movements and keep her anxious body from betraying her wakefulness. Something, a change in her breathing, an involuntary movement, must have given her away. As she snapped open her eyes a flame was extinguished without revealing a glimpse of her visitor. She lay under the covers, sensing him in the dark: still and waiting as she was. She took mental inventory of the bedside table and came up with no better weapons than her hairbrush and a candlestick.

Sitting up, she attempted to preempt assault.

“Leave,” she said loudly. “I have a heavy candlestick and a loud scream. I could make enough noise to summon help from the other rooms.” And prayed he didn’t know her immediate neighbors on either side were an elderly spinster cousin of the duchess and an empty room.

There followed a rustling, soft retreating footsteps, the opening and closing of the door. The momentary admission of light from the dimly lit passage wasn’t enough to give a clue to his identity. Gathering her courage Celia jumped out of bed and raced to the door. The broad corridor, stretching many yards in each direction, was deserted. The intruder had vanished into one of the dozen or so rooms, or around the corner.

Back in her room she groped for the candlestick, a puny thing that would have made a paltry weapon, and took it out to borrow a flame from one of the sconces illuminating the corridor. She hesitated before returning to bed. Suppose he came back? Suppose it was Constantine who had somehow inveigled himself into the house, posing as a member of the army of servants?

Even with light she couldn’t face the rest the night alone in a room with a malfunctioning lock. Tarquin had brought her to Mandeville House on the assumption she would be safe here. He had been proven wrong and she wasn’t waiting till morning to tell him. She
needed
him, now.

The guest wing was actually a quadrangle and Mr. Tarquin Compton, though a commoner, had been placed in one of the better chambers facing the avenue, around the corner from hers. Celia wouldn’t have known her own comfortable room matched her lowly standing without Chantal’s explanation of the order of social precedence as reflected by the assigent of guest rooms. Much of the maid’s several tirades on the subject had slipped her mind, but one thing stuck: the exact location of Tarquin.

Tiptoeing down the passage, the emergence of a man from another room made her jump. Before he backed away and slammed the door she identified a portly middle-aged peer, visiting a chamber inhabited by a lady who was not, she believed, his own wife. Suppressing an impulse to giggle, she wondered if he’d recognized her and if so, where he thought she was headed. She reached her destination without further adventure, hesitated before the sturdy polished door, and softly knocked.

No response. He would be sleeping. As quietly as possible she turned the door handle and pushed. It wasn’t locked. Offering a quick prayer that she had the right room, she opened the door just far enough to let her slide in, and closed it behind her.

Soft air wafted in through open uncurtained windows, rendering the atmosphere deliciously cool after the stuffy passage. Starlight revealed the shadowy monochrome forms of the furnishings, dominated by a great bed from which emerged the sound of rhythmic breathing.

“Tarquin?” Celia whispered. No reaction. Depositing her candlestick on a chest, she crept to the side of the bed and repeated her call. He stirred but didn’t waken. In the gloom his dark head contrasted with the white bed linens. She leaned over and reached for his shoulder and found skin, hot to the touch over muscle that jumped beneath her palm. He slept without a shirt.

Was he naked? Her hands itched to investigate further, to explore the body she’d known for a short while, before it retreated beneath the armor of sartorial perfection. A jolt of desire fluttered through her abdomen and her brain felt fuzzy.

“Tarquin?” she asked for the third time and he came to life. Half sitting, he twisted over and hauled her up. She found herself sprawled over his chest, captured by steely arms. Her halfhearted remonstration was stifled by his lips and she surrendered without a fight.

The taste and texture of his mouth were immediately familiar and kindled the memory of pure happiness. Lovingly she framed his head, looped her fingers through the soft hair to the shapely skull, opened to welcome a deep kiss she wanted to last forever.

An eager moan rumbled in the back of his throat. He drew her closer and she arranged her body to align itself over his. One question was answered: he was indeed naked. Only a sheet and her own nightgown separated them. Every inch of her ached for him. She wanted his skin and muscle, his very soul and spirit to surround and possess her. His arousal pressed against her thigh and she willed the layers of linen and cotton to disappear. Maddeningly, cloth failed to dissolve into the ether so she dragged her lips away and struggled to her knees, straddling his hips. He groaned an incoherent protest.

Tarquin was having a wonderful dream in which finally, at long last, he was kissing Celia again. Better still, it wasn’t happening in a dirty hay loft or on the bare Yorkshire ground, but in a soft bed with sheets of lavender-scented linen. Then she withdrew, faded away.
Come back
, he spoke in his dream.
Don’t leave me alone.
And woke up.

His heart leaped with astonished joy to find her still there, in all her corporeal reality. Her magnificent corporeal reality, revealed when she pulled her nightgown over her head and tossed it away. Framed by a faint aura of distant candlelight, he could make out only a shadowy blur of her body so he stretched a trembling hand to trace a slender shoulder, down the silky arm, firm for a woman, around the gentle curve of trim waist and across the flat stomach to linger. She wriggled a little when his fingers tickled the indent of her navel. At the shake of her hips his swelling cock arose to make a tent of the sheet covering it, straining toward the curly entrance to her sex. Yes, she truly was in bed with him. Shuddering with desire, he raised both arms to cup the small breasts, feeling her hard nipples tickle his palms and kneading the firm flesh with his fingers.

Her own hands were busy, too, tugging the sheet out of the way until nothing separated their nakedness. He reached for her, planning to roll them over, when she pounced, wresting control of the encounter. She fell on him like a tiger, seizing his shoulders with strong fingers, devouring his chest with her hot mouth, and grinding her pelvis over his erection.

The unschooled fierceness of her loving assault was more exciting than the skill of a courtesan. The ferocious sincerity of her ministrations clawed at his heart. “Yes, like that.” He murmured encouragement, tilting his hips and grasping hers to better guide her gyrations. “Oh, Zeus, yes!” he hissed when she took his cock firmly in her hand and lowered herself onto it. It took a little trial and error on her part, but finally he was lodged inside her.

Then she stopped. “What now?” He smiled at the chagrin revealed in the two words. Her ignorance annoyed her. “I want to ride you.” She gave it a few seconds of thought then leaned forward to clasp his shoulders. Tentatively she raised herself off him and sank down again.

“You have the right idea,” he said through clenched teeth, and thrust back.

“I do, don’t I?” she said with a naïve pride that sent a little thrill of emotion through his chest.

In very little time they established their rhythm and worked in harmony, damp bodies burning against the cool linens, urgent hands caressing, hot breath mingling in consuming kisses and barely comprehensible words of bliss. He held back, waiting for her. He had to summon all his strength but it was no hardship; he’d happily spend all night drowning in Celia’s scent and skin, the music of her moans. Hell, he’d spend a lifetime doing this. With fierce satisfaction he felt her climb toward climax, reach for her own peak, and tumble over the top in a joyful orgasm. She collapsed on his chest and he drove to his own finish.

He retained just enough presence of mind to roll over in the last seconds, and pull out before he spilled his seed. Then he gathered her close in his arms and murmured her name as he dropped slow, grateful kisses all over her face. He hadn’t felt this good in years.

“Tarquin,” she said and nipped at his ear.

“Celia,” he muttered again, beginning to feel sleepy. “I think you’ve killed me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What a way to go.”

She snuggled closer and kissed his neck. “Riding St. George is fun.”

“Where did you hear that phrase?” He refrained from pointing out that it was whore’s cant.

“Er, I read it in a book.”

“Right. I think I know the volume in question. You shouldn’t have read it.”

“Oh? Yet it’s perfectly correct for you to own it?”

“I am a man. Ouch.” She’d punched him in the side, though not hard. “It’s not as though it’s much of a book. My collection contains volumes of far greater artistic value.”

She drew back to look at his face, her gray eyes huge and dark in the half-light. “You own many books about . . . this kind of activity?
Illustrated
?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“I should like to see them.”

If they gave her more ideas like “riding St. George” it was a notion with merit. He yawned. “We’ll talk about it later.”

He pulled her close and tugged the sheet half over them, though the night was warm enough without. She gave a little sigh and laid her head on his chest. He stroked the thick locks draped over her shoulders and felt her breath on his skin. As he prepared to drift into slumber he made a mental note to wake early so he could get back to his room before the servants stirred. Then he remembered. He
was
in his room.

He was in his room
and so was Celia.
Suddenly wide awake, he sat upright, drawing a grumble from her.

“What?” he almost shouted. “What are you doing here? What do you mean by visiting a man’s room in the middle of the night?”

She scrambled to kneel beside him, arms folded, lips pouting. “You didn’t seem to mind. I came to tell you something and you just grabbed me.”

“I was asleep. I had no idea what I was doing.”

“If your valet came in while you slept would you pull
him
into bed with you?”

Her comical indignation drew a smile. “No, of course not. What did you need to say to me that couldn’t wait till morning?”

“There was someone in my room, searching through my things.”

“My God! And you waited till now to tell me!”

“I was distracted.”

He could appreciate that. Kneeling in her naked glory, she looked beautiful enough to distract a saint. Grasping her elbows he peered at her face. He didn’t know whether to be relieved at her state of calm or worried by her lack of concern for her safety. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Celia was still distracted. The earlier events of the night seemed far off now and somehow unreal, compared with their lovemaking. She feared to ask what it meant for their future. After days of being treated with scant civility, his confidences that afternoon had given her hope he might forgive her, though no realistic expectation that his feelings would ever match hers. But now this. What did it mean? Did it mean anything to Tarquin, or had she been merely a convenient female body taking him unawares? If there was any truth in Featherbrain’s memoirs, men were not only capable of lying with women who meant nothing to them, they could do so when enamored of another. The existence of the beautiful, charming, and witty countess loomed large.

Her mouth watered at the sight of his lean, muscular chest set off against crisp, bright white linen. Irrationally, she had no wish to revisit the alarming matter of awaking to find an intruder in her room. What she wanted was to discuss their feelings for one another. But he was looking at her expectantly and she had no idea how to broach the topic.

He misunderstood her sigh. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.” His concerned tone and his touch on her shoulders felt like affection to her infatuated brain. Then he got down from the bed, retrieved her nightgown, which he handed to her, and fetched a dressing robe for himself.

The resumption of clothing diluted the sense of intimacy. Decently covered they sat on the bed, she with legs folded beneath her, he perched on the edge.