The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (36 page)

The three men rode to Camille Hall at nine o’clock on Friday night. It was just growing dark and the moon was full, the stars lush overhead. Ryder had never seen such a sight as this; it still made him stare.

They could see the lights of Camille Hall from a mile distant. There were carriages despite the condition of the main road, and at least three dozen horses, all tethered close to the great house and watched by a dozen small boys. The house glistened and shimmered. All the veranda doors were wide open.

Ryder saw her immediately. She was standing next to an older man at the very entrance. She was gowned in white, pure virginal white, her shoulders bare, her chestnut hair piled on top of her head with two thick tresses falling over her shoulder to lie on that bare white flesh. Ryder looked at her and smiled just as she looked up and saw him. He saw her go very still. He realized, of course, that there was something akin to contempt in that smile of his. He removed it. He relaxed. It didn’t matter if she slept with every man on the island. It simply didn’t matter.

But motives interested him. She interested him.

He walked beside a worshipful Samuel Grayson toward her. He saw upon closer inspection that she wasn’t the heavenly beauty that Grayson saw her to be. She looked much older than nineteen. Her eyes were a fine clear gray, her skin as white as her bare shoulders, too white. But she was wearing more makeup than a girl her age should wear. She looked more like a London actress or an opera girl than a young lady at a ball in her own home. Her lips were thick dark red, kohl lined her eyes and darkened her brows. There was rouge on her cheeks and a heavy layer of white powder. Why did her uncle allow her to look a harlot in his own house? And that damned white virginal gown she was wearing, it was the outside of too much. It was as if she were mocking her uncle, mocking all the people present, perhaps even mocking herself.

Ryder heard the introduction and took her hand, turning it over and lightly kissing her wrist. She jerked and he released her hand slowly, very slowly.

Theodore Burgess was of a different ilk. A tall man, thin as a stick, with a gentle face yet stubborn chin, he seemed inordinately diffident. He also seemed oblivious of the nineteen-year-old girl who flaunted herself beside him. He shook Ryder’s hand with little strength and said, “A pleasure, sir, a pleasure. Mr. Grayson has spoken often of the Sherbrookes and his esteem for the Sherbrooke family. You are most welcome here, sir, most welcome. You will dance, of course, with my sweet niece?”

Was the damned fellow an idiot? Was he blind?

The sweet niece looked like a painted hussy. Ryder turned politely and said, “Would you care to dance this minuet, Miss Stanton-Greville?”

She nodded, saying nothing, not smiling, and placed her hand lightly on his forearm.

He realized that she’d said nothing at all to Emile. She’d ignored him. More tangled and unexpected behavior. He became increasingly fascinated. His curiosity rose accordingly.

“I understand you and Emile have known each other since you were practically children,” he said, then released her to perform the steps in the minuet.

When they came together again, she said, “Yes.” Nothing more, just that flat, emotionless “yes.”

“One wonders,” he said when she was near him again, “why one would ignore one’s childhood friend when one reached adulthood. Yes, one wonders.”

It was several minutes before her hand was in his once more. She said, “I suppose one can wonder about many things.” Nothing more. Curse the chit.

The minuet ended. To Ryder’s relief, he wasn’t sweating by the end of it. Grayson hadn’t lied. The ballroom, brilliantly lit by myriad candelabras, was nonetheless fairly cool, what with the breeze coming from the sea from all the open doors, and the ever-swinging palm fronds waved by small boys all dressed in white trousers and white shirts, their feet bare.

Ryder returned her to her uncle. He said nothing more. He turned away, Grayson at his side, to be introduced to other planters. He looked back once to see her standing very straight, her shoulders squared. Her uncle was speaking to her. He frowned. Was the uncle berating her for wearing so many cosmetics on her face? He hoped so, but doubted it. Personally, if it were up to him, he’d hold her face in a bucket of water then scrub it with lye soap but good.

He danced with every daughter of every Montego Bay merchant and every planter within a fifty-mile radius. He was fawned over, complimented on everything from the shine on his boots to the lovely blue of his eyes—this by a seventeen-year-old girl who could manage naught else but giggles—simpered at until he wanted to yawn with the boredom of it. His feet hurt. He wanted to go sit down and not move for a good hour. Finally, near to midnight, he managed to elude Grayson, three purposeful-looking planters, two more purposeful-looking wives with daughters in tow, and slip out onto the balcony. There were stone steps leading down into a quite lovely garden, redolent with the scent of roses, hibiscus, rhododendron, so many more brilliantly colored blossoms that he couldn’t identify. He breathed in deeply and walked into the garden. There were stone benches and he sat down on one and leaned back against a pink cassia tree. He closed his eyes.

“I watched you come out here.”

He nearly jumped off the bench, she startled him so badly. It was Sophia Stanton-Greville and she was standing very close to him.

He looked up at her, not changing expression, making no movement whatsoever now. “I wanted to rest. I am not yet accustomed to the heat and every girl in that bloody ballroom wanted to dance.”

“Yes. I understand that’s what one does at balls.”

She sounded cold, very aloof. She sounded as if she disliked him. Then why had she followed him out here? It made no sense.

He relaxed further, stretching his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, crossing his arms over his chest. His posture was insolent. Never in his adult life had he been so rude in the presence of a woman. He said in a voice that matched her coldness, “What do you wish of me, Miss Stanton-Greville? Another dance perhaps, since it is a ball, as you so graciously pointed out?”

She stiffened, and again he wondered why the hell she was even here. She looked out into the darkness. “You don’t behave as most men do, Mr. Sherbrooke,” she said at last.

“Ah, by that do you mean that I don’t drool on your slippers? I don’t stare at your very red mouth or your doubtless delightful breasts?”

“No!”

“Then what is it that I don’t do?”

She turned away. He saw her fingers pleating the soft muslin folds of her gown. She was very slender, and although her gown was cut high in the new fashion made popular by Josephine, he could tell that her waist was narrow. He wondered about her legs and hips.

She said, turning to face him, this time a ghost of a smile on her painted mouth, “You are brazen, sir. Gentlemen don’t speak so baldly, surely not even in England.”

“Not even to painted tarts?”

She sucked in her breath and he could have sworn that she actually reeled back in shock. She raised an unconscious hand to her cheek, and began to rub at the powder.

She stopped suddenly. She dropped her hand to her side. She smiled now, and the utter control of it made his eyes gleam. “No,” she said calmly, “not even to painted tarts. I had been told you had some wit. I had thought to hear it, but evidently gossip was mistaken. You are rude and a boor.”

He rose to stand over her, very close, but she didn’t move away from him. “Now you draw blood,” he said, “and you don’t do it too badly. But not all that well either.” He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and swiftly wiped it over her red mouth. She tried to jerk away, but he grabbed her about her throat and wiped her mouth yet again. He threw the handkerchief to the ground. “Now,” he said, leaned down and kissed her hard on her mouth. He kissed her for a very long time. After but a moment, he gentled, and she knew his expertise was great, greater than any she’d known before. His mouth was caressing hers, his tongue seeking entrance, but not demanding. She allowed him to continue, not moving, not reacting.

Suddenly his hands were cupping her breasts and she jumped, she couldn’t help it. “Shush,” he said, his breath warm and tart with the rum punch he’d drunk. “Let me feel you. Is your skin as soft and warm as I believe it to be?” Just as suddenly, as he spoke, his hands were down the front of her bodice and cupping her bare breasts. He paused a moment, lifting his head, and staring down at her. “Your heart was pounding, but not fast enough, I don’t think. Your breasts are nice, Miss Stanton-Greville. Is this why you came out here in search of me? You wanted me to fondle you? Perhaps you even wanted me to take you here in the garden? Perhaps right here beneath this beautiful cassia tree? The scent is strong; perhaps strong enough to cover the smell of sex.”

She said nothing, merely stood very quietly, allowing him to caress her breasts. He kissed her again, deepening the kiss this time, his open palm against her heart. The heartbeat quickened just a bit and he smiled into her mouth.

“Is that it? Do you think to compare me to your other men? You won’t, you know.”

His breath was very warm, his tongue gentle and easy against hers. But she wasn’t kissing him back. She was passive. He didn’t understand her. He wanted a response from her and by God he was going to have it. He pulled his hands out of the bodice of her gown, grabbed the shoulders of the gown, and jerked it to her waist. In the pale moonlight her breasts showed soft and white. Not large breasts, but very nicely shaped, full and high, the nipples a pale pink. He leaned down and began kissing the warm flesh.

It was then that she laughed, a teasing, wicked laugh. He straightened from the sheer surprise of it and looked down at her. Graceful as a dancer, she spun away from him. However, she did nothing to cover herself.

“You are not bad, in the way of men,” she said, her voice light and caressing, her breasts pale in the moonlight, her shoulders back, thrusting them outward. “No, not bad at all. You are bold, arrogant, a man who doesn’t wait for a lady to issue an invitation. You should show more restraint, sir. Or perhaps it is an invitation you want, and you haven’t the patience to wait for it?”

“Perhaps,” he said, “perhaps. But I don’t share, Miss Stanton-Greville. When I take a woman I am the only man whose rod comes inside her. There will be no comparisons, at least no immediate ones.”

“I see,” she said, that damned voice of hers now lilting and more seductive than any woman’s voice he’d ever heard in his life. “For the moment then, you may admire me, sir,” she said, and he stared at her breasts as she slowly and with infinite fascination pulled the gown back to her shoulders, gently easing it into place. When her gown was straight and she looked as if she’d done nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary, she said, “No, Mr. Sherbrooke, you have moved too quickly. You have displeased me with your excesses. You demand, not ask. On the other hand, I do not dislike your arrogance. It is refreshing. You do not mince matters. You speak what you think. I will think about you, Mr. Sherbrooke. I have decided that I will ride with you in the morning. You will meet me here at eight o’clock. Do not be late. I dislike waiting for men.”

He wanted to tell her to take her riding habit and her horse and her damned orders and go to hell, but he didn’t. He was looking at her mouth, clean now of the damned red paint. A beautiful mouth, truly. And she was still a mystery. Ryder couldn’t resist a mystery.

He smiled at her as he reached out and lightly stroked his fingertips over her jaw. “An order for you. Do not paint your face. I don’t like it. You will excuse me now, Miss Stanton-Greville.”

He left her without a backward glance. He was whistling.

Sophie stared after him, unmoving, until he disappeared into the darkness. Her heart was pounding and she felt light-headed. She was terrified of him. She hadn’t lied, he was like no man she’d ever known. She sank down on the bench and put her face in her hands. What was she going to do?

RYDER SMILED AS he looked at the ormolu clock in the main salon of Kimberly Hall. It was now fully eight o’clock in the morning. She would be looking for him to arrive momentarily, yes, any minute now, and she would expect to see him riding up to the front of Camille Hall, just as Her Highness had bade him do.

Only he wouldn’t be there.

When it was eight-thirty, he rose and stretched and went into the small breakfast room that opened onto a side garden. Both Emile and his father were there. Two house slaves were serving them, one of them Samuel’s housekeeper, Mary, and she smiled at Ryder merrily, waving him to his seat as if he were her guest.

Ryder asked for fresh fruit and bread from the tall black man, James, who, like every black man, woman, and child on Jamaica, wore no shoes. It still disconcerted Ryder a bit. He downed the hot black coffee that tasted so rich here on Jamaica, saying nothing, for he was thinking about Sophia Stanton-Greville and trying to picture the look on her face now that she must realize he wasn’t coming. He smiled as he chewed on the bread.

“I heard it said last night that you were riding this morning with Miss Stanton-Greville.”

Ryder didn’t look up at Samuel Grayson. He was afraid that if he did, he’d grin like a sinner, for Samuel sounded jealous. How many men were besotted with the damned girl? And, how the devil did anyone know about the plans he and Miss Stanton-Greville had made? Rather, the supremely confident order she’d given him.

“I would say that the persons reporting the phenomenon were wrong, wouldn’t you? I’m here, eating my breakfast. James, please tell Cora the fresh bread is quite good.”

“It was her uncle who told me,” Samuel said. “He asked me if you could be trusted. He loves his niece very much and he is very anxious that no man take advantage of her.”

Emile choked on his coffee.