To Charm a Naughty Countess (28 page)

“A lady’s request,” Michael said, “should not be gainsaid.”

“How well you have learned the lessons of society—and in fewer than six events too. Shall we credit my talents or yours?”

“Both,” he said. “We could only accomplish so much together.”

***

“I know we have all night,” Caroline said as she pushed closed the door to her bedchamber. “But there’s no reason why we should not get started right away, is there?”

“You want me to cut your corset strings again?” Strong hands slid around her waist and tugged her into the solid wall of his body.

“Do whatever you want to.” She pressed herself more closely against the support of his chest, belly, the ridge of his cock. “As long as you do it to me.”

His hands roamed over her back, teasing open the buttons at the back of her bodice. When he worked free the last button, he caught her gaze. His jaw was set in tight control, but his eyes showed his true feelings. Warm in the low lamplight of her bedchamber—still an Argand lamp; how had she not remedied that?—they looked so intently at her that they seemed to strip her bare in every way. The pupils were dilated, as though he must drink in the sight of her more fully. His lashes were sooty shadows every time he blinked.

How she loved him, this stubborn, loyal, determined man.

“This might be an excellent time to mention,” he said conversationally, “that I’ve devised a new area of study recently.”

“Does it have anything to do with removing your clothes?”

He gave her a tiny, wicked smile. “With yours, actually. If you’ll permit?”

Hooking a fingertip under the loosened edge of her bodice, he worked it down her shoulders, arms, torso. The silk slid, heavy and slow, into a puddle of rich fabric.

Michael bent and coaxed Caroline’s feet free, then laid the green gown carefully over the back of a chair. “I should hate for it to be spoiled,” he said as he turned back to her. “It’s the only one I’ve ever seen that comes close to matching your eyes.”

She melted.

Liquid, she allowed him to free her from her corset and shift, crouch to tug her garters from her legs and roll down her stockings. His hands were roughened, but his touch was gentle. Under his touch, every cell in her body fired into heated life. But he avoided her center of pleasure, her belly, her breasts. As he unfolded to his full height again, tugging at his cravat, she felt positively molten.

“Show me what you’ve been studying,” she said. “Show me.” And with swift, determined tugs, she hurried him through his own disrobing.

Never had he smiled so much, this carefully coiled man. Never had he seemed so playful, so joyous, so wickedly delighted.

The undressing seemed to go much more quickly this time. Uncertainty had vanished; now they both knew what came next, what they wanted, what they felt. His hot tongue found the hollow behind her ear lobe, just as he kicked free from the last of his clothing. Caroline shivered and clutched for him, and they toppled onto her coverlet in a tangle of bare limbs.

Michael made up for the swiftness with which they undressed by stroking Caroline’s body slowly. “Not everything I study is confined to theory,” he murmured, running the point of his tongue between her breasts before settling next to her. Raised on one elbow, his left hand played over her. “Some of it can be translated quite well into practice. For example, if I’ve figured this correctly, you ought to enjoy this very much.”

His head bent, teeth grazing her earlobe, just as his hand slipped over her breast and tugged lightly at the nipple.

“Ummm.” She swallowed. “Do that again.”

“Are you certain? Or would you rather I try something new?” His mouth replaced his fingers around her nipple, pulling hot and wet, sending liquid heat to her core. Those wicked fingers slipped down again, finding where she grew slick, and one, then two slid within her, filling her—almost perfect but teasingly different.

“You see,” he said between licks and tugs at the nipple, “touching two points of pleasure at once more than doubles the sensation.” His fingers slipped in her wetness, painting ecstasy through her body.

“How did you learn this? This couldn’t… couldn’t be from a book.” Caroline’s voice was unsteady, smoky from the fire within her.

“No.” He rested his head flat on her chest, short hair teasing her sensitive skin. “It’s billiards: identify the right angle for hitting two targets.”

“Billiards?” She had to laugh. “That is absurd. You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

“Not as pleased as you’re going to be.”

Caroline ran trembling hands over Michael’s back, pulling him atop her. He raised himself up on steady arms, caught her eye, and grinned again. “If one understands the capabilities of the equipment, one can calculate the preferred angle of thrust.” With a sleek movement of his hips, he slid into her. His eyes closed, and a shudder ran through his long body. “God, Caro.”

He swallowed heavily before wrenching his eyes open and adding, “And the correct amount of force.”

Caroline’s toes curled. “This is all most logical,” she said in a husky voice.

“Logic is simply a means to an end,” Michael said. “The purpose is to make you scream with pleasure.”

“My dear future husband, I am a great admirer of your theories.” She wrenched herself up to press hungry lips against his. Then she curled back onto the bed and tugged at his hips, sinking him deeper and deeper within her. “Everything’s better with you, Michael.”

“It will get better still.” He sank onto his forearms and cradled her in his embrace. “For we have a lifetime to practice.”

At last, he began to move, and he was right, the clever man. He found the spots that made her quiver; he teased them until she cried out, aching and full and needy. The angle, the thrust, the force… he filled her with pleasure until every barrier came down. Oh, she could never have imagined the sharp joy of this
making
love
, melding the physical intimacy with emotional closeness just as deep. Never before had her heart and mind and body been so joined for one purpose.

“Together,” she gasped, and he unleashed himself within her.

That was the last word either of them spoke for some time.

Caroline Graves, the dowager Lady Stratton, was married to the Duke of Wyverne just as a bleak autumn gave way to a bitter winter. Those members of society who had remained in London agreed that it was a most unlikely pairing: such a sociable creature wedding that solitary, eccentric duke.

At least, that is what the polite world said at first.

The newly married pair remained in London through the end of the year, as His Grace met with seemingly everyone in the financial heart of the City. There was, it seemed, no topic under the sun that did not interest him, from coal to shipping to agriculture. A rumor even flitted that he was considering development of a new type of railroad track, perhaps one of wrought iron, smelted in the inexhaustible coal-fired furnaces of Lancashire.

This idea would have seemed quite mad indeed, but for two things: Her Grace, whose opinions were sacrosanct, seemed convinced of her husband’s good sense. And His Grace
did
behave fairly normally whenever the pair were out in public.

True, His Grace tended to hold his wife’s arm in a very determined grip. He was never seen to dance with any other lady. The pair never lingered long at a mad crush of a ball. But as they were always gracious, the polite world was at last forced to conclude that they were besotted with one another.

It was charming, of course, but hardly worth gossiping about.

When Their Graces departed London for Lancashire at the beginning of 1817, the impression of their marriage as a love match was confirmed. Dear Caro was known to adore City life, but the mad duke and the madly attractive duchess had made Persephone’s bargain: half the year spent up north and half in London. The new Duchess of Wyverne was, one heard, just as well loved in Lancashire as she was in the bosom of the polite world.

This was charming, of course. But hardly worth gossiping about.

In fact, news of the doings of Wyverne and his devoted bride garnered very little prurient interest from those in London, though the Marchioness of Applewood was seen several times to grow misty-eyed when someone mentioned the newlywed couple in passing.

By the time they returned to London for the season the following spring, the future duke—or perhaps a darling daughter—was expected. And His Grace had grown Her Grace a scrawny little red flower with which they both seemed delighted. Coquelicot, they called it.

They also professed themselves remarkably fond of billiards.

The year 1816 is sometimes nicknamed “the year without a summer.” Across most of the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures were far colder than the average. In Lancashire, home to Michael’s fictional dukedom, July 1816 is the coldest July recorded in more than two hundred years of weather record-keeping.

Modern climatologists think this odd weather was caused at least in part by the massive 1815 eruption of an Indonesian volcano, Tambora. Over the months that its ash cloud spread through the atmosphere, sunlight was blocked from reaching and warming the earth. Across Western Europe—especially in France, still reeling from military losses—agricultural failures and food shortages were common.

Apart from its unusual chilliness in 1816, Lancashire was a wonderful home for a Regency gadget guy such as Michael. As he informs Miss Cartwright, Preston was the first city to benefit from gas lighting besides London. Pioneers in the textile trade also hailed from Lancashire, introducing innovations like the flying shuttle, the spinning frame, and the spinning jenny to England’s mills.

As for Michael’s supposed madness: he has social anxiety, not that he would admit it. (He is, after all, a dratted duke.) Anxiety can manifest as headaches and—in the case of Michael’s fateful London encounters with Caroline—panic attacks. His stern control is an attempt to manage this condition, as is his isolation—which can actually increase anxiety and certainly didn’t do his reputation any good. To talk him through his concerns, Caroline uses the not-yet-invented methods of cognitive behavioral therapy, which to a social creature such as herself seem merely like common sense.

One last note: near the end of the book, Caroline tells Stratton, “Publish and be damned.” She anticipates the Duke of Wellington, who, according to legend, made that response to a blackmail threat in 1824. Caroline has little else in common with the Iron Duke, but they share a confidence in their own reputations.

READ ON FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF

Secrets of a Scandalous Heiress

THERESA ROMAIN

From Sourcebooks Casablanca

One

March 1817

Most people hoped to spot familiar faces in a crowded ballroom. Augusta Meredith prayed to see only strangers.

For nearly a week, her prayers had been granted. In winter’s waning days, the
ton
kept its distance from Bath. The resort city’s fashionable years were in the past, and so it was to be avoided in favor of the rural delights of hunting or the sophisticated pleasures of London.

Not that Augusta had ever been part of the
ton
. But like a moth before an ever-closed window, she had fluttered around its fringes long enough that someone might recognize her.

Thus far, though, the crowds in Bath’s Upper Rooms presented her only with strangers. Merchants and cits and hangers-on. A lower social class; exactly the sort of person Augusta knew best. Exactly who she was. In Bath, she didn’t have to pretend to be someone else.

The ballroom yawned high and stretched long, a giant of a structure. Larger than any ballroom Augusta had seen in London, it was just as crowded, with slowly churning waves of people. But there was one great difference: here Augusta inhabited the center, not the edge.

“Mrs. Flowers, m’dear!”

The voice floated above the din in the high-ceilinged room, and Augusta turned toward it. “Mrs. Flowers!” The call came again; this time, the shouting man waved his arms too.

Augusta returned his wave with a graceful flicker of her fan, then flipped it open to hide her grin.

Well. Maybe she did pretend to be someone else, at that.

The shouting man was heavyset and young, probably less than her own twenty-five years. Every time he had spoken with Augusta, he had been tipsy; since she’d forgotten his name, she had mentally dubbed him Hiccuper. He shouldered toward her, making slow progress through the crowd. The pale-walled, elaborately plastered ballroom stretched high and long, yet babbling voices and dancing figures filled it brim-full, bouncing from the barrel-vaulted ceiling, raining from the wrought-iron faced walkway across the room’s end.

Oh, Bath was a city of carefully calculated comforts, from the regimented hours for bathing and taking the mineral waters to the location of the nightly assemblies. Everything was orchestrated to bring strangers together in harmony. And through this sort of artificial harmony, Augusta would slip into the escape she craved.

Hiccuper had almost reached her; no doubt he intended to escort her into the winding figures of the dance. When the steps brought them together, he would leer at her breasts; when the dance was over, he might try to persuade her to accompany him home.

All part of what she planned when she wrote a false name in Bath’s social registry—the Pump Room’s guest book. By writing “Mrs. John Flowers” instead of “Miss Augusta Meredith,” she became a widow instead of an unmarried woman, shedding the social manacles of an heiress who drew her fortune from trade.

And she didn’t intend to carry out her plan with someone like Hiccuper. Augusta Meredith might not hope for better, but Mrs. Flowers could.

Hiccuper was still feet away, swept into a conversation with friends, when another voice spoke in her ear. “Mrs. Flowers, what good fortune to encounter you here in Bath. Do you know, you greatly resemble a young lady of my acquaintance.”

A male voice. A
familiar
male voice.

Damn, damn. Her luck had just run out.

Still hiding behind her fan, Augusta turned toward the voice. From its cursed tone of humor, she knew it to belong to Josiah Everett—and here he stood, plainly dressed, handsome, and full of wicked glee. The worst sort of person she could have encountered: one who knew her too well to be fooled by her lie, but not well enough to take part in it.

“Mr. Everett.” She forced a smile. “How unexpectedly delightful to see you. I would have expected you to remain in London for business reasons.”

Like Augusta, Everett orbited society at a distance and had a few friends among the
beau monde
’s permissive fringes. Although of respectable birth, his means were straitened. He worked for his bread, serving as Baron Sutcliffe’s man of business.

This much, Augusta knew from a house party to which they had both been invited the previous autumn. She knew little else about him.

“I almost believe your delight to be sincere.” Everett bowed. “At the present, a particular errand requires my attention in Bath. But what of you, Mrs. Flowers? Your name tells me you have been recently married. Permit me to congratulate you.”

Was that amusement in his dark eyes? Probably. Hmph. He always looked amused.

“Oh, I am not married at present, Mr. Everett.” A true statement in itself. She fluttered her fan, an elaborate affair of lace and ivory and painted silk, before her bosom. Earlier this evening, a certain Mr. Rowe had informed her the gesture looked sultry.

As though a woman with hair the color of a persimmon could ever truly be sultry. With unfashionably bright red hair—there was no point in calling it auburn—and no birth to recommend her, Augusta had grown used to enticing men with her figure instead.

Everett refused to be enticed; he only folded his arms in his plain black coat. “Dear me. Ought I instead to offer condolences? Has Mr. Flowers departed this earth?”

Augusta snapped her fan closed. “Is there something you require of me, sir?”

“Only a confirmation.” Everett’s dark features held a sardonic expression. “My condolences, then. I did suspect you to be a
widow
”—he paused over this final word—“since half the men in this ballroom are singing your praises.”

“Only half?” She arched a brow. “How sad. My popularity is declining.”

Everett’s smile grew. “I haven’t been present very long. It might be more.”

“And what are these men saying of me?”

He lifted his gaze to a chandelier, one of five elaborate gilt affairs that lit the stretching room and cast down as much heat as they did light. Outside, night hung like dark velvet over the clerestory windows. “I believe,” he drawled, “that someone said your bosom could launch a thousand ships. That seems a bit much to ask of a bosom, though. It is not a dockyard.”

“Certainly not for you,” she muttered. It was, however, her best feature. Her indigo silk’s low-cut bodice was trimmed in gold cord and lace, a fashion flattering to a young woman with more curves than elegance.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you what I’d overheard.” Everett was looking at her again, dark brows slightly lifted as though he were challenging her. “Then again, if you’re a widow, you can handle a bit of scandalous talk.”

“Mrs. Flowers!” Hiccuper had pushed his way through the crowd at last, panting boozily. “Mrs. Flowers, m’dear.”

“Ah, Mr…” She covered her uncertainty over his name with a titter. “How good to see you.”

“You must dance with me, Mrs. Flowers. They’re forming a cotillion.” The heavyset man leaned closer, the odor of perspiration and cheap sherry as sharp as a slap. When he breathed out, setting the curls at Augusta’s ears into a dance, she went stiff.

Avoiding Everett’s gaze, she simpered, “I’m sorry, dear sir, but I’ve just agreed to dance with this gentleman.” She waved her fan in Everett’s direction with languid disinterest, hoping he had manners enough not to give the lie to her words.

Indeed, Everett spoke up at once. “So sorry,
dear sir,
but perhaps you may have a later dance. Mrs. Flowers, shall we take our places in the set?” He held out a gray-gloved hand.

With a parting wave, she left a surprised Hiccuper behind and joined Everett in pressing through the crowd. “Thank you for covering my little falsehood—”

“One of several.”

“—but,” she added in a slightly louder tone, “you don’t really have to dance with me. I could develop an urgent requirement for tea. Or a rest.”

“I certainly
do
need to dance with you, if that’s the sort of man who follows you around discussing your bosom.” Everett frowned back at Hiccuper. “Your
dear sir
smelled as though he hadn’t washed for a week. Has he bothered you before?”

“No. No one bothers me.”

Everett slanted a sideways look at her, then set his jaw.

It was a rather nice jaw, clean and strong. As though his veins carried Mediterranean blood, his skin was a dark olive and his hair black and faintly curling. Within his gray gloves, his hands had a firm, pleasant grip.

How unfortunate that such a fine form belonged to such an unnerving man, with such a pestilent wit.

Though at the moment, his usual expression of humor had settled into solemn lines. “It is, of course, your business if you want to throw away your time on men who compare you to a dockyard.”

“
You
were the one who made that comparison.” She tried to tug her fingers from his grasp, but an elderly man with grizzled side-whiskers jostled against them just then. To steady her, Everett drew her closer against his side. Augusta took a startled breath; she caught a faint, spicy scent. Sandalwood?

Again, he looked at her sidelong. “Yes, well. I certainly wouldn’t deny you could find better company than me. Though at least I wash every day. That’s something, I suppose.”

“That’s something,” she repeated. Under the guise of stumbling against his arm, then catching her breath in the crowd, she inhaled again.
Yes
. Sandalwood. A faraway scent, as unusual as it was masculine. Because it had to be imported from afar, from sultry corners of the world like India or Hawai’i, the golden oil was costly.

As the heiress to a cosmetics fortune, Augusta knew fragrances as well as most women knew fashion. Sandalwood was an unusual choice for any Englishman, much less one of limited means.

Well. She had just learned something else about Josiah Everett: he was a man of at least one surprise.

Maybe he would hold one more, if she could persuade him. Rising to her toes, she whispered in his ear, “Mr. Everett. How can I convince you to keep my secret?”

***

Encountering Augusta Meredith was not the first surprise that had befallen Joss since his arrival in Bath three days before, though it was certainly more pleasant than the ones that had preceded it.

Hearing Augusta Meredith referred to as “Mrs. Flowers”? Another surprise; this one, less pleasant. For a dreadful swooping moment he thought she had finally got herself married off.

But no: it seemed the name and the widowhood were equally fictitious, part of some plan of hers. As, no doubt, was her warm breath in his ear. Her husky whisper. The faint floral scent she wore, so delicate and sweet he could almost taste it.

How can I convince you to keep my secret?

He ought to require no convincing at all; he ought simply to do a lady’s bidding. But as he knew quite well, secrets came at a great price. That was, after all, why he was in Bath to begin with.

“At the moment, my dear Mrs. Flowers, you need do nothing but dance with me.” He drew her to one side of a set. Throughout the enormous ballroom, couples were grouping, four by four, into the squares of the cotillion.

Joss hoped he remembered the steps. He hadn’t danced since he was a half-grown boy, filling in the sets with maids and servants to help his second cousin, Lord Sutcliffe, learn the figures he’d need to move in high society.

How many years had Joss spent helping Sutcliffe with figures? Though he was only thirty-one, it seemed the task of a lifetime. Now, though, they were figures of a different sort: amounts of money, curves of women.

But soon that would all be done, Joss’s long servitude at an end. If he could get a few damned people to speak with him. So far, “Mrs. Flowers” was the only person who had given him more than a curious glance, or a dismissive one. And though her smile had been polite, he was fortunate her eyes were incapable of firing bullets.

He had hoped the fluctuations of Bath society, always bidding
bonjour
and
adieu
to travelers, would allow him to conduct his business more efficiently than in London. But no; even here, gazes skated over him. Maybe because of his dark complexion or the plainness of his clothing. To them, Joss did not appear as though he had anything to offer.

At least he made a better dance partner than an unwashed sot.

He looked down at Miss Meredith, standing to his right, impatient and fidgety under her lush tangle of red curls threaded with amber beads. Her bosom—which might not truly launch a thousand ships, but which was certainly worthy of a flotilla—rose and fell with fascinating force within her purple silk gown. Maybe she intended to befuddle him into agreement with her pneumatic talents.

He was quite willing to let her try. “Take hands, my dear widow.”

With a filthy look quickly turned angelic, she let him draw her into the small circle of their dance.

“I wonder at your grimaces, Mrs. Flowers,” he murmured, sliding over the smooth wooden floor in some semblance of the correct balances and steps and
chassés
. “
You
invited
me
to dance, after all. Is not this cotillion the fulfillment of your ambition?”

Her light brown eyes opened wide, but a retort was arrested by the movement of the dance: the four women stepped inward, forming a cross with their joined hands. After they completed their steps and turns, the men did the same. Joss’s three companions bore a familiar look of determined concentration; one man was actually counting the steps to himself.

Bath in miniature: a polite grouping of strangers thrust into close proximity. Unwilling to give offense, but unsure whether they ought to have anything to do with one another. Yet the people, like the ballroom walls, were plastered and painted. Hoping to impress.

He was no different, was he? Except that plaster and paint were beyond his means. He had only ever seen the
ton
from the outside. Peering out from the corner of a ballroom, or down from a balcony’s dizzying height. This feeling of being melted and mixed into a crowd was unfamiliar and, thus, not entirely pleasant.

Miss Meredith had only a moment to hiss in his ear before the dance dragged them apart again. “I do find you preferable to being pawed by a drunkard.”