The Scandal Before Christmas (7 page)

“It’s not wrong,” he countered. “We are nearly engaged, Anne. More than engaged. Say the word, and we shall be married upon the spot.”

That surprised a tiny huff of laughter—cynical perhaps, but still laughter—out of her. “I defy
even you,
lieutenant, to produce a parson who would marry anyone this late at night.”

“In the morning then. Say the word. Say at least that you shall think on it.”

“Of course I shall think on it.” Her whisper was only slightly defensive. “I’ve thought of almost nothing else. It is the only reason I’m here.”

Her candid reply surprised a laugh out of him. He ran a hand through his hair, in the hope that he could rub some better sense into his kiss-obsessed brain. “Fair enough.” But she had been so sweet and so fresh and so eager, in those few seconds, that he wanted nothing else but the taste of her lips, the way an opium eater wants his pipe.

Yet he controlled himself enough so that she quieted, and stopped resisting him quite so stiffly. But her voice was just as solemn. “Do you really think we can learn to love?”

“Certainly. I had to learn how to lust—learn how to kiss and—” Ian broke off the thought. Again, too much, too soon. “Let me just say I have faith we will learn.”

“And how did you learn?”

Since he had already admitted that he had not yet learned to love her, she must be talking about— “How to lust? And kiss?”

“Yes.”

Ian was vastly encouraged. So encouraged, the blood in his brain made a hasty descent to more interested parts of his anatomy. Practical application, he wanted to say, and a very great deal of practice.

But one didn’t say such things to one’s hopeful wife. “From books.”

It was a somewhat facetious answer, but there was enough truth in it to pass muster. His time as a lonely, lowly midshipman had been immeasurably lightened by his shipmate Marcus Beecham’s small but instructive collection of erotic
facetiae
.

She scrunched up her nose to suppress her amused disbelief. “What sort of books teach you to kiss?”

Ian hesitated for a very long moment, unsure of how exactly to sail across this particular shoal. His moral compass didn’t reliably point true north, but even he knew that showing a shy, gently bred, quiet girl like Anne Lesley his rather stunning collection of erotic books would not be the act of a gentleman.

But he was who he was. And he did own a rather marvelously stunning collection of erotic books. And the house would indeed be hers to explore without censure or governance once he was gone back to sea. Best she not come upon it by chance. Best for him to begin as he meant to go on. And best for her to know exactly who the man offering for her was, before she married him. For truly, once they were married, his true nature, like his books, could not be hid.

“Novels,” he said, to pave the way. “Full of the tempestuous emotions that come with things like kissing.”

“‘Things like’? Really? I’ve never read such novels.”

“Well, now you may.” He looked meaningfully at the shelves, hoping to tempt her into matrimony with the thought of such freedom. “And there are other books as well of instruction as well. Books … from other cultures, where the whys and wherefores of what goes on between a man and his wife are not so hidden, and frowned upon.”

She did not take his meaning. She looked around at the shelves with perfectly innocent curiosity. “May I see them?”

“I think not. I’m sure even a ramshackle, rapscallion fellow like me ought not let a sheltered, young, Englishwoman read a translation of an Indian marriage manual.”

“A
marriage
manual?”

“Yes.” He hitched his hip on the edge of the desk so he was not so much taller than she, and could see eye to eye. “It is meant to instruct young Indian men and women on how best to please their spouse.” He brought their enlaced fingers up to rest against his chest. “In the marriage bed.”

“How sensible that sounds,” she managed after a long moment. The fragile pulse at the base of her throat became thready.

“Eminently so.” He strove for an even, instructional tone, as if he were teaching a young untutored midshipman his maths. But she was only young and untutored, and not at all like a midshipman. She was not noisy and rollicking and brash and male. She was soft and quiet and female, and growing compliant under his hand, still enlaced with hers. “If I show them to you, I must warn you that they might be … shocking as well as instructional.”

She said nothing, and made no protest when he let go of her hand to choose his book—a large folio, but one of the tamest of his volumes—and returned to lay it before her. And then he moved away, and went back to stand next to the fire so she might have some semblance of privacy while she contemplated the shocking sight of erotica for the first time.

But she neither screamed nor fainted, and when he chanced a glance her way, he found her tipping her head and frowning, and turning the book for a better vantage. So he ventured closer.

“Do all married people,” she finally asked, “do … that?”

He glanced over at the book, and cleared his throat, and said in as normal a voice as he could possibly muster, “No, not all. I should think portly men would find
that
especially difficult.”

*   *   *

Lieutenant Ian Worth wasn’t portly at all. He was as long and lean as a wolfhound, and his relaxed, comfortable attitude did little to hide his whipcord strength.

“And if we marry”—she heard the question whisper past her lips—“will we do that? What the pictures…” Suitable vocabulary evaded her.

“Yes,” he said softly and kindly, but truthfully. He reached over, and pointed to the picture with his long, lean index finger. “Yes, Anne. You and I would do
that
.”

It felt as if his words vibrated through her, deep into her very bones.

“And”—he flipped a page over—“that. Especially that. And many other things as well.”

Her breath began to heat in a way that had nothing to do with her embarrassment, and everything to do with his nearness. Silence stretched between them until the air became as hot and smoldering as a Christmas fire. She could not keep herself from glancing down at the new image spread out in front of her. The picture showed a couple locked in an intimate, nude embrace, and each part of their private anatomy was showing. But the picture also depicted the man and the woman with pleasant, secret smiles upon their faces—much like the lieutenant’s smile a minute ago—which seemed extraordinarily far removed from her mama’s ridiculous instructions about honor and duty.

That book didn’t look like anyone was thinking of honor or duty.

“And could you make out any of the writing?” he asked in the same low voice that rumbled through her. “I don’t want to assume, with all your
pert intelligence,
you can’t read Hindi. No?” She shook her head, and he continued. “The words are more like poetry than instruction.”

“Oh,” she said for lack of a better thing to say. “I like poetry.”

“Hmm, good. This is erotic poetry.”

“Erotic?” The word was the shiver of a whisper.

“Erotic.” He repeated the word slowly, so that it tumbled around inside her, wearing itself down into something she could manage and understand. “Meant to soothe and enflame all at the same time. So that your breath comes short in your lungs, and you begin to feel warm and strange all over.”

It was exactly how she felt. Especially since he was looking at her quite intently, actually staring at her with those sail-away blue eyes across the top of the book. “And do you feel that way?”

His brows rose very slowly, but he did not smile that purposefully charming, amused smile. He merely nodded. “I daresay I do,” he murmured. “Now.”

Heat swept like a wind across Anne’s skin. Not just on her cheeks, but all over, amazing her with its strange intensity.

And then he reached out very slowly and took her hand, reeling her gently back toward the table. Anne didn’t resist. There was nothing to resist. He didn’t do anything else, merely touched her hand, holding her there.

His hands were quite nice. Long and lean, and beautifully articulated—her smaller hand seemed swallowed in his. And strong—though he held her hand very lightly, she could feel the strength in his muscles and bone.

He covered her hands completely with his, letting the warmth and strength flow into her skin. “Do you like that? The way it feels when our hands—our flesh—touches? The way I am making you feel?”

Anne held her tongue, almost literally—she found she was unconsciously biting down on her lower lip. She also found that her breath was coming fast and shallow in her chest, and that her breasts were rising and falling in rather rapid succession. And she felt all warm and quivery inside, as if her bones were turning to unbaked pudding.

The quivering intensified when his thumb slipped down, and began to graze along the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrists. Anne tried to hold herself very, very still, but she could not stop the surprising feeling of her breasts tightening inside her shift in reaction. And she could not stop from trying to pull away.

He held on. “Are you afraid?” he asked in the low, quiet voice.

His eyes were sober and intent upon her—no trace of the laughing, ready smile now—and she
was
afraid. Afraid of everything she did not know. Afraid that he still thought her as uninteresting and unappealing as a dishcloth.

But for some reason, or no reason at all, she didn’t want him to stop.

“Don’t be afraid of this, Anne. Of these feelings. Or of me.”

She shook her head slowly, and just as slowly, he raised her hand up in his own between them, and brought it very carefully to his lips, while he looked down at her from under the fall of chestnut hair across his forehead. And then he pressed a slow kiss across her knuckles before he turned her hand, exposing her wrist to kiss that same sensitive spot on the inside of her wrist that he had been stroking.

Everything inside her furled and unfurled all at once. “Lieutenant Worth?” Her question was a mere whisper, and she was unsure of what she asked, or if she even asked anything.

He shook his head. “Ian.” His voice was low with gentle insistence. And he had very nice, soft-looking lips.

While she contemplated them, he was busy, slowly undoing each and every one of the small buttons on the cuff of her sleeve. As he freed each one in turn, he peeled back a little bit more of the woolen fabric, exposing more and more of her pale forearm to his gaze. When he had loosened the last one, he pulled her arm out straight before her, and bent his head to kiss it. But he didn’t just kiss. He nipped, just a little. Just enough to make her hunch her shoulders involuntarily, and squirm within the confines of the wool dress. And then with his free hand, he ran the backs of his fingers over the spot, soothing the hurt with a gentle caress. But his hand kept moving onward and upward, stroking up her arm, onto her shoulder and up the side of her neck, until he was stroking her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

His touch was feather light and exquisite. Exquisite because she could feel it travel everywhere under her skin, skittering down and around below the surface of her flesh. Her mouth opened instinctively, to assure the passage of the air she had forgotten to breathe into her strangled lungs, and she had to close her eyes, to concentrate on the exquisite feeling. She held herself completely still, nearly oblivious to everything else but the tumultuous, slippery feelings leaping around inside her.

She opened her eyes again when he slid nearer along the edge of the desk, until she felt the greater warmth of his body pressed tight to hers. His breath fanned gently across her cheeks. He smelled of spice and claret and fresh winter wind.

The lieutenant continued to hold her right hand with his left, while his other hand continued to roam. Up over her forehead to her hairline, and then down and around, over the sensitive whorl of her ear, and down again over the flushed skin on the side of her neck. She felt her head lean into his touch, tilting into the breath-stealing sensations.

He curled his hand inward, and let the backs of his fingers slide along the line of her collarbone, and then down very, very slowly across the top of her bodice. Beneath the layers of cotton and wool, her breasts tightened so suddenly, she let out an involuntary, but very audible gasp.

But he did not stop, nor did she ask him to. Nor did she move away from his touch.

His fingers traveled farther down, along the underside of her breast, and down to her waist before sliding behind to her back. He traced the line of her spine up through the soft wool of the dress until he reached her nape, all the while saying nothing, but watching her face, which she tried desperately to keep shuttered.

But she could not. Especially when he slid his hand up her side until his hand rested just below the curve of her aching breast. And whispered, “Well, damn me for a fool, Anne Lesley. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, plain or uninteresting about you now.”

Chapter Eight

Ian stopped with one hand just below the tempting curve of her breast, and the other resting momentarily on the wispy hair at the back of her neck while his mind luxuriated in the nearly perfect way she fit against him. Extraordinary. He was as hard as a carronade, and feeling dangerously intoxicated by her willingness to submit to his touch.

He brought his hand forward under the line of her jaw until his thumb was under her chin, lifting it so she was compelled to look directly into his eyes. “This is more than just lust, Anne. This is attraction—deep and abiding. This is the two of us and no one else.”

Anne was mere inches away—his breath was making the soft tendrils of hair along her temple flutter—and she held herself utterly, precisely still. No coy batting of lashes or dramatic sighs from her. No, nothing so overt or easy. With this one, he had to pay attention to the details.

To the delicate flush that warmed her skin, smooth as winter cream. To the leaping pulse that shuddered in the hollow at the base of her throat. To the shining golden eyes that went dark and dreamy as her lids slowly slid closed.