To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) (8 page)

Chapter Thirteen

…a
hungry
wretched fool.

Grace had been abed for what felt like two straight days—two straight days of the night’s darkest hours.

It couldn’t have been so very long. It might not even have been far past midnight. Not that Grace was much given to objectivity under the current conditions. Sleep seemed like an entirely unknown way of existing—an exotic state that happened only to foreigners, the sort native to strange and distant lands.

After her conversation with Jane, with what choice was she left? She was going to marry the earl.

Instead of seething, however, her mind fixed on quite something else and wouldn’t relent. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the fullest implications of what would come with the union. Marital things.

She put her hand between her legs. What would it be like to have him there?

It was difficult not to admit, if only to herself, and only in these ungodly hours of darkness, that perhaps that side of the whole arrangement wouldn’t be so terrible. He didn’t seem the sort to make the prospect seem so very off-putting. A husband with personal appeal in delicate matters was an advantage to be counted well above his wealth and status.

She thought about it sometimes—those marital things. About what it would be like.

Actually, she thought about it quite a lot. And, because of Corbeau, more so over the past few weeks than perhaps ever before. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to know for herself. She wanted to know quite a lot, in fact, and, around him, with some urgency.

It was becoming easier to comprehend why couples could lose their heads and relent to certain feelings before they were well married.

Grace flipped over and stretched, bashing the pillow under her head into a supportive shape. It wasn’t healthy to slumber in such a position as this, perhaps, but any sleep she could possibly hope to attain at this juncture was sleep she wasn’t going to put any further demands upon.

Oh, what was the use? She might not be on the brink of unconsciousness, but there was another part of her with distinct ideas about what she should be doing.

Her belly.
That’s
what part of her had ideas—notions, really, perfectly normal ones that were so quotidian, good society had been structured around fulfilling the need before one had to pay any thought to it.

By which, of course, she meant the taking of meals.

It was only hunger she was experiencing. Nothing else, nothing untoward. Nothing unladylike that might involve the very man she did not want to marry. Just hunger.

Oh, whom was she trying to fool? She was hungry for something far different than simple sustenance. She was hungry for
him
, and in the most shocking, the most scandalous way possible.

She should have been thinking over her conversation with Jane. Instead Corbeau kept playing through her mind again and again.

Distraction—that’s what she needed. Distraction.

The way to cope with the situation—the hunger for food that was—would be to call a servant. That seemed horribly unfair, though. She could always venture down to the kitchens herself.

Although…considering her recent history with storerooms, perhaps she ought to simply pray the servant would forgive her for ringing the bell.

No.
She
would certainly not like being disturbed from her slumber after a long day of work.

Grace thrashed around to her front and tossed back the covers. How exceptionally unlikely was it that what had happened once while prowling a storeroom could happen a second time?

A stray thought sent a chill around her interior. What if it’d been someone other than the earl with whom she’d been caught?

With a silent prayer of thanksgiving that the man she’d been trapped with was Corbeau, she felt around in the dark for the tinderbox. Candle lit and the scent of the new flame lingering in her nose, she found a second pair of woolen stockings to roll up her legs, wrapped herself tight, and headed down.

…

The second time his eyes crept through all of the words on the page without making heads or tails of anything he was seeing, Corbeau closed his book, squeezed his eyes shut, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He was at his desk in the library, the room dimmed in the late hour to the light of only a few candles and a dying fire. He wasn’t so foolish to believe after what his evening had been that this night would bring any rest.

The conversations he’d had with Grace sounded through his mind for the hundredth time. It all seemed so much easier in retrospect, when he should have remained silent and when he should have spoken and what he should have said.

Maybe he should have left well enough alone. The whole notion of trying to win her wasn’t proving itself to be among his most inspired.

If he could be more like Max, he would rely on powers of seduction. He’d have kissed her. Because, truth be told, Max was probably correct on that score. Any man of sense would have done the same. What had he chosen to do? Tell her about one of the poor maids who’d gotten herself with child out of wedlock.

Great poets had, with good reason, avoided such fodder when writing verse to their beloveds.

Very well. If he was going to be precise about it, what he was doing now was little more than brooding, and exactly what good could come from that?

On the other hand, it might well give him a bit of common ground with the great poets, after all. Wasn’t that what they did? Brood? Hetty would know.

A rude noise emanated from within him, and his hand went to his stomach as if to silence the beast. It was a little late to realize he hadn’t eaten much today. And he’d entirely avoided the supper table laid out in the drawing room. There would be something stored away in the kitchens, but it seemed an awful lot of trouble.

If he felt any sorrier for himself, he’d be forced to demand the crown reclaim his title.

There were plenty of reasons he deserved her. He’d be an upstanding husband. They’d have a good life. And if, as he suspected they might, they happened to enjoy each other in bed, all the better.

The rumble sounded again, seeming all the louder in the shadows. The whole house was asleep but for him.

No use in dwelling upon this any longer, most especially not on an empty stomach. Answers, shy things in general, were always more elusive when so relentlessly hunted. Perhaps one awaited him in a slice of ham.

A midnight meal beckoned. At least it’d be something else to do to pass the hours until it was time to head to the stables. Sitting upon the hard walnut of the chair was only giving him an ache. He pushed up, found a candle, snuffed out the rest of those in the room, and began making his way to the lower section of the house.

Before he’d made it beyond the library walls, Corbeau stopped at a window and pulled back the heavy green drapery. The cool air emanating through the single pane of glass hit the skin of his face like a nip from an icy badger. Beyond, the moon shone its gossamer light on the summer gardens hidden below fields of untouched snow. Hetty loved those gardens almost as much as their mother had. Could Grace come to love them, too?

Corbeau Park was one of the fiercest sources of his pride.

But it was still only a place.

The idea of having a wife, someone to share this with—having
Grace
to share this with—shed whole new meaning on his home. His life.

Him.

It was frightening, really. How much importance he’d already vested in her. How much he stood to lose.

…

Grace was partway down the steps leading to the gracious splendor that was the great hall of the manse when she stopped to touch the banister. The wood was cool to the touch, but not so much as stone or metal would have been. Only dim recollections of a childhood among such finery lingered in her head. Mostly impressions really, hazy ones at that. Who knew how many were accurate? Were she to visit the home of her youth, how much would she find herself in error, having forgotten or misremembered?

The last real home they’d had was in London, the Bennington House on St. Alphonse Square. It wasn’t entailed upon the new earl, and therefore had been free to be sold to pay some of her father’s debts upon his death. Quite before that, she hadn’t understood the implications of living there year-round. They had through most of her growing-up years, the countryseat at that time being let to ease some of the growing financial burden.

Afterward… Well, for herself, it didn’t matter. She could do without a home. She hadn’t given the matter a second thought for years.

But she should have. Not for her sake but for her mother and sisters.

She inhaled the smell of a century of the best polish money could buy. And…she sniffed. Freshly used tea leaves?

Were she to marry the earl, how long would it take for Corbeau Park to feel like a home? Would it be quickly, the conversion taking place without her notice? Or would it take years of reminding herself before the distant theoretical truth began to feel a true part of her existence?

Grace continued her descent, quietly, her head low, her mind weighted.

Until her conversation with Jane, she’d only ever thought of what material comforts she could provide her family. How blind she’d been. Material comforts were all well and good, but she’d overlooked the bigger absence in their lives.

A home.

In some ways, it spoke to her mother having been more right than Grace had known. She spent her time with her sisters. They even saw Isabel several times a year, which had made it so easy to overlook the obvious.

In the normal course of events, they’d have married and run homes of their own, with husbands and children.

Grace would give her family a place. A second chance at the lives they should have been leading would surely follow.

So long as she didn’t perish from the inability to ever sleep again.

She sighed as she came down at last. As all kitchens seemed to, the room held a cozy residual heat from the fires necessary to provide so many sumptuous offerings to a very full household of family, guests, and servants.

The food was stored in a closed pantry off the main cooking area, half a flight of steps down to take advantage of the natural coolness of low, dark places.

She tried the door. It stuck. Oh, blast. She shook it again, harder this time, almost growling in frustration. Of course it would be locked. No housekeeper worth her salt would—

It gave.

Oh.

The door hadn’t been shut properly when the lock had been thrown for the night. The bolt was shallow, and had worn a path through the doorframe, rendering it all the more inefficient. A convenient bit of luck, that.

Grace stepped within, held up the candle, and turned in place. Her appetite seemed to have dwindled.

Part of her that she didn’t care to acknowledge sunk a little for not finding Corbeau inside.

Oh, what had she been expecting? That they might have a second chance at being locked together in the storeroom? That they might actually have the chance to kiss?

Or maybe something more. Something wicked and wholly unthinkable. Until Corbeau, she never thought she’d question remaining a virgin. She wasn’t going to marry, so that’s just what good daughters of earls did. They remained chaste—no matter how disreputable their sires.

Maybe she wasn’t as good as she might have previously believed.

She bit her lip and sighed, ignoring her belly that was all but scowling disapprovingly at her for being told it was hungry when it was not. There had to be something among all this bounty that would tempt them both.

…

Corbeau didn’t much care to invade the servants’ area without their permission, least of all the upper servants who’d been with the family for so many dedicated years of service. However, he had so little use for keys—but for the odd occurrence every few years—he’d forgotten where his own set were kept.

A small shape in the dark bumped against his leg. The gray barn cat. Apparently Mrs. Larkin was still letting him inside at night to sleep by the banked cooking fires. It seemed nighttime would be prime hunting hours, but as the barns didn’t seem overrun with mice and other vermin, he could easily overlook the cook’s softhearted inclinations.

He gave the creature a quick scratch on the ears before stealing into the housekeeper’s office. The room was scented faintly of the dried summer flowers hanging upside down from where they were tied to the wall. It was pleasing to see a nod to pleasure in the sternly sparse and absurdly tidy space of an otherwise no-nonsense woman.

But this was so little his province. He found the spare ring and left quickly. The metal keys jingled against one another. He closed his hand around the cold little bodies to silence them.

Was that a slight glow ahead? Was there someone down there? Couldn’t be. Corbeau blinked and shook his muzzy head.

But as he drew closer to the kitchens, the light grew more distinct.

There was someone there—ahead, in the storeroom.

Corbeau turned the corner, poised on the edge of his nerves with the uncanny sureness quickening in his veins of what he was to find.

Oh, hell.

And there she was.

Chapter Fourteen

Corbeau had left the library with the distinct impression of wandering through a dream. All at once, he was immobilized and soaring the open skies above. This was it. His second chance to put right a certain omission.

A wrong, more like.

Because this time, there was no mistake. There would be a kiss.

Corbeau’s heart pounded as if giving chase to a runaway hare.

Lady Grace looked up at him where he stood above the shallow steps, her eyes huge. “I didn’t—I mean—I thought—”

The silly bits of rag tied in her hair enhanced the moment’s intimacy. The vision of a seductress, she was not. Blatantly alluring she remained. Her lips would taste the same however her hair appeared.

“I see I’m not the only one eluded by sleep.”

“My lord, I can’t begin to guess at what you might think of me.”

“Can’t you? I keep discovering you in storerooms. Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. What will the third time be?” The words came quick and easy, with clarity and firmness he didn’t know he felt until he heard the sound of his voice in his ears. He was in control.

Good.

For so many years, he’d stayed away from her, thinking she’d make him reveal what a fool he was for her. Turned out all he had to do was be near her and his inner world calmed to perfect stability.

And they were the only two here. Again.

What a puzzle that something so wrong could be so desperately right.

“My lord, I can’t begin to apologize…” She looked about her as if grasping for an explanation.

He descended and moved past her, careful not to brush against her. This was tricky business. A heightened awareness put him on edge against lending her the least suspicion she was trapped, even for a moment.

He ignored her in favor of a show of a careful examination of the shelves. He kept his focus trained forward, his brows low as if in deep deliberation.

Speaking, she dispelled his fear. “Are you going to have me brought before the magistrate as a thief?”

The tone made it clear she was making an attempt at lighthearted banter. It carried a little strain, but even that pointed to being an exceptionally good sign. She was making an effort to engage with him. She was not apologizing and running away.

All the same, he baited his hopes. “Well, I ought to. You broke into my food stores.”

“The door wasn’t properly locked.”

“A likely story.”

He rested the key ring on a shelf, the candle next to it. There was no way for the door to be locked from the outside without someone throwing the bolt with a key. “What do you have a taste for?” He still wasn’t looking at her.

“Oh, I don’t need much. Perhaps a little bread, a little cheese.”

“I believe I have something better.” Corbeau hoisted himself up on a three-legged stool to reach the top shelves and put his hands around a small earthenware bowl covered lightly in a bit of rumpled linen. He lowered the bowl down to Grace’s eye level and pulled away the cloth.

She gasped, looked up at him, then back at the prize. “Strawberries? In winter?”

“From the hothouse.”

“Oh, no.” Shaking her head, she took a step back, her eyes not leaving the plump fruit. “I couldn’t. I really—no, I couldn’t.”

He wasn’t going to ask “why not” because he didn’t care to hear her dissemble.

They were fragrant little things, the sweet perfume enough to make his mouth water. He stepped down.

If she beheld him with half as much longing as she did the strawberries, he would die a happy man. “I haven’t been receiving high marks as host these past few days.”

“So?”

“So don’t think I’m going to let you stand there and gape at me as I eat every last one of these right before your eyes.”

“I always thought you were an exceptionally cruel man.”

He held the bright red berries toward her. “It’s up to you to save me from my vice.”

“You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had a strawberry. A real strawberry, not preserves.”

He plucked one up by its little crown of leaves and offered it. “Well then?”

“Maybe…maybe just one.” Absently, she slid the metal base of her candle stand next to his on the shelf.

“Go on, Grace.”

“Then again.” She bit into her bottom lip. “I don’t know if I can restrain myself to only one.”

An unfortunate second interpretation of what it would be for Grace’s restraint to dissolve sent a rush of heat down to a place that needed no such coaxing.

His voice lowered, texture roughening. “I’m giving you every encouragement not to.”

“But if I start, I don’t think I can stop.”

“Funny. That’s precisely how I feel.” If he stroked her cheeks, he’d have to brush his mouth against hers. If he brushed his mouth against hers, he’d have to know the feel of the dip of her waist against his palm.

It all led to a single outcome.

He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this. As a gentleman of honor, he was bound to restrain himself.

He touched the end of the berry to the line between her lips. She opened. She bit. She closed and chewed slowly, eyelids drifting shut.

She made a sound like a woman pleasured.

With that, the fight was over. The battle lost. Corbeau resigned himself to the happy surrender of a very painful, very hard cock.

“Now you.” Her eyes were bright as she took a berry and offered it from the tips of her fingers.

“Grace.” His hand folded around hers, strawberry forgotten, and he kissed her palm.

“I know.” She reached for him.

Their bodies touched. Her breath was coming deep.

“Would it shock you to know I dream of kissing you in places I dare not name?” His voice was so rough. So full of need.

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”

“Am I?”

“Start with the places you can name, and then we’ll negotiate the rest.”

Heaven save him.

It was as he’d believed. This was his second chance. “I should have kissed you the first time.”

“Yes.”

What more invitation did a man need? He bent his head and leaned down to meet her where she strained upward to capture him.

The first touch of his lips to hers was the culmination of a thousand wishes. She brought him to life, this woman, body and soul.

Her skin was soft. Warm. Her mouth pliant. When she opened to him, he tasted her, the lingering sweetness of the berry intensifying the kiss.

God, never again would he be able to be near those little red bastards without being thrown back to this moment.

Grace clutched at him, ready and willing. Her hands began exploring him. Corbeau moaned.

She pulled away.

In the space where a heartbeat should have been, his hung suspended, prisoner of fear. It was too much. His need, his want, his desire. He’d frightened her.

“We can’t do it down here, my lord.”

Corbeau halted. Do
it
?

She wasn’t talking about… He searched the depths of her eyes. Save him. She was.

“Have you ever…” He pulled back enough for her to know what he was talking about by what she could read in his face, saving him having to find an appropriate term. “…before? It’ll make no difference if you have.”

“Of course not.”

Guilt palpated in his gut. He pulled his fingers through his hair. “Oh, Christ.”

“What?”

“Grace.” He braced himself for the confession, his insides stiff as if they’d been dipped in tar and left out on a February night. “There was a time before I knew you. Then, I did know you, and I didn’t…and then a time after, a long time after, when I thought I could never have you—”

“Shh.” Wearing a secretive little smile, she put a finger over his lips. “Don’t let that be any objection, my lord. I don’t care. I promise you I don’t.”

“You’re too good for me, my lady.”

“I’m keeping no score. Neither should you.”

“I think you just proved me right.”

Her hand grazed down the length of his arm. She laced her fingers with his and squeezed. “Where can we go?”

“Grace, you don’t know what you’re asking.”

“You’re wrong. I do.” Her whisper lowered and her chin dipped, but she kept her gaze upon him steady. “And I want to.”

“I wouldn’t have any honor if I let this go any further.”

“A kiss preserves your honor, but more wouldn’t?”

He shook his head. “Don’t try to outwit me with logic, I beg you.”

“That can only mean you’re susceptible to having your mind changed.”

If only she knew what a man suffered with a woman who made him burn with longing. “I’m trying to do what’s right.”

The right thing to do was tell her they’d wait. They’d get to soon enough, he should say, though it’d be a rank lie. Even if they married by first light tomorrow morning and he rushed her to the conjugal bed without so much as a wedding breakfast, it would not be soon enough.

But the question endured. She hadn’t agreed to marry him. And he couldn’t have that between them. Not here, not now. The uncertainty was there, a negative answer ready and waiting to poison this.

“You’re speaking from—well, you don’t really want this, believe me, and if we do, come morning, you’ll hate me.”

The end of her first finger was tracing lazily around the pattern of his ear. “I won’t. I do want this. I want you.”

His whole body screamed with desire. What did it matter, his inner voice demanded, as he was hardly likely to last much past a thrust or two? It’d not count for anything so far as she was concerned, so why the hesitation? “There are too many risks.”

“The only one I’m seeing is the regret we’ll harbor for not taking what we want while we can.”