Kitabı oku: «The Historical Collection», sayfa 7
Chapter Eleven
You are priceless.
Gabe’s heart kicked him in the ribs.
There were responses he’d prepared in his life—saved up for the day he might need them, no matter how unlikely. He had an acceptance speech ready for the London Business League award. He had his murderous threats well-rehearsed in case he crossed paths with that cruel bastard of a workhouse guardian someday.
Gabe even knew what he’d say to his mother, if she came back from the grave to hear it.
He had no idea how to respond to this. He couldn’t have possibly prepared. Nothing in his life had taught him to imagine those words.
You are priceless.
“Goodness, you needn’t look so panicked.” She smiled and gave his head a little shake. “It’s no more than I tell Bixby daily.”
Right. Of course it wasn’t. She was only exacting a bit of revenge after he’d mocked her for blushing and so on, and he likely deserved it. Gabe hated that he felt disappointed. Even betrayed.
He brushed her hands aside. “You’ve made your point. I’ll do my best not to swoon.”
“Gabriel, wait.”
He continued walking. “You needn’t worry about any further declarations from my quarter. We needn’t talk at all.”
At last, they reached the village and its lone inn.
“As you can see, we’ve had a traveling mishap,” Gabe told the wide-eyed innkeeper. “We’ll take your largest suite of rooms. My sister will need an attendant to help her undress and bathe.”
He could feel the questioning look Her Ladyship gave him. Sister?
“While she rests, her attire must be laundered and pressed dry. And we want dinner, as soon as it can be managed.”
“Have your choice, sir.” The innkeeper pointed toward a slate listing the kitchen’s daily offerings in muddled chalk.
Gabe skimmed the list. Kidney pie, stewed beef, leg of mutton, braised rabbit. Meat, meat, meat, and meat. Brilliant.
“One of each,” he said. “No, two of each.”
Lady Penelope nudged him in the side. “You needn’t order any for me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Beastly man.” She sighed under her breath.
“You’re not a child. You can read the board as well as I can, and you don’t need me to make choices for you.”
She sighed again. “Not-quite-so-beastly man.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Toast and butter, please,” she told the innkeeper. “A wedge of cheese and some preserves, if you have them.”
“One more thing,” Gabe said. “I require writing paper, pen, and ink. I need to send a letter. There’s a five-year-old boy in Buckinghamshire who’ll be heartbroken that he’s not getting his ferret.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she muttered. “He was never going to have a ferret.”
The innkeeper scribbled on a greasy bit of paper. “All together with the lodging … That’ll be six shillings, eight.”
“I don’t have the coin on me,” Gabe said. “I’ll pay you when my coach and driver arrive.”
“To be sure, you will. And I’ll feed you dinner when my Parisian chef arrives.”
Gabe cursed and pushed his hand through his hair. “Take my boots as collateral.”
The innkeeper peered down at the muddy, waterlogged boots. “Look as though they’ve been through a war.”
“I paid twelve pounds for them. They’re certainly worth six shillings, eight in any condition. Just hold them until I can pay you in coin.”
“Very well. I’ll hold the boots—and the lady’s washing. She can have her laundered and pressed frock once you’ve paid.”
Fair enough.
They took the largest suite of rooms the inn had on offer. A bedchamber for Her Ladyship to bathe and have a lie-down, a sitting room where he could eat and dash off a letter, and—most importantly—an antechamber between the two.
At the door to the suite, they parted ways. The serving girls brought hot water to her room; trays of food to his. All was as it should be. Completely separate.
Once alone, Gabe tugged his shirt over his head and draped it over a chair near the fireplace to dry. Once he’d finished a much-needed wash at the basin, he sat down to his dinner.
A proper dinner. Real, actual food, rather than falsehoods on a plate. No shmidney pie or braised crabbit or whatever fool name she would invent. He picked up a knife and speared a bit of stewed beef with a satisfying jab.
He was on his second plate of steaming-hot kidney pie by the time his chewing slowed. And that’s when he heard it. The faintest sounds escaping her room, sweeping across the antechamber, and sliding under the door to him.
The sounds of bathing.
A splash.
A trickle.
A faint series of drips.
It all added up to torture. Pure, liquid torture.
He pushed his plate away, propped his elbows on the table, and buried his face in his hands with a groan. Even plugging his ears didn’t help.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture her. Naked in a shallow tub. Her feet dangling over the lip at one end, and her head reclined against the other. And all that water embracing her with heat, lapping at her nakedness, pouring over her most secret curves and furrows.
He was immediately, startlingly hard.
Gabe drummed the table with his fingers. This would be the perfect time for a rainstorm. A riot, an explosion, a choir of tuneless schoolchildren. Something, anything loud.
Nothing.
Nothing but soft, devastating, erotic sounds.
Perhaps he could trick his mind. He might convince himself the sounds weren’t from bathing. Instead, he’d imagine her to be … making soup. Unappetizing soup. Workhouse soup. Watery broth with a few scattered lumps of—
She sighed a long, languid sigh.
Curse it. Strategy ruined. No one sighed languid sighs while making soup.
Christ alive, women took ridiculously long baths. Was it possible to die of priapism? Perhaps she’d volunteered him as some doctor’s investigatory case.
Make haste, he silently willed her. Be done with it.
In his mind’s eye, he saw her dipping a sponge beneath a blanket of soap bubbles, and then pressing it against the back of her neck—just beneath the frizzled golden curls at her nape. She gave the sponge a long, firm squeeze, sending a warm cascade down her back. One mischievous rivulet strayed, trickling over her collarbone, burrowing between her breasts, and sliding down to her navel before it disappeared into a tuft of honey-colored curls.
Enough.
He pushed back in his chair and unbuttoned his trousers. He took his cock in hand, spreading the moisture welling at the tip all the way down his shaft.
Closing his eyes, he pictured her naked. She was still in the bath, but now he was the water. Warming her. Caressing her. Licking her all over. He needn’t content himself with a single rosy-pink nipple. Not this time. He pushed her breasts together and feasted on both, nibbling and sucking. She moaned and bucked beneath him, gripping his hair and guiding him downward, where he ran his tongue along the seam of her sweet, wet—
He tightened his grip, stroking faster.
Now she was holding him in her arms. Wrapping her legs around him until her locked ankles dug into the small of his back, urging him forward. Inside. Deeper.
And as he thrust into her, again and again, she held him close to her. So close and so tight. She whispered his name.
Gabriel.
Gabriel.
“Gabriel?”
Gabe’s eyes snapped open. He nearly fell over in his chair. Grabbing the writing paper the inn had provided him, he launched to his feet, holding the paper strategically in front of his groin and praying like hell his loosened trousers didn’t slip to his ankles.
She’d opened the door just wide enough to angle her head around the edge and peek in.
“Nothing,” he declared.
She frowned in confusion. “Nothing what?”
“Nothing nothing.”
He was a fool, and his pounding heartbeat reminded him so, multiple times a second. You fool, you fool, you fool, you fool.
She looked at the paper. “Are you writing your letter?”
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I am writing my letter.” Writing it with the tip of his cock, apparently.
“It’s growing dark,” she said.
“I’d noticed that.”
“The carriage … Even if the driver and smith were to arrive soon, the horses will need to rest.”
“Yes, I know.” Gabe inwardly cursed. He had no money to pay the innkeeper, let alone hire another coach. Thanks to his lack of foresight, they would be confined in this suite until first light. “So long as we’re stuck here, you may as well sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Surely you’re fatigued.”
“Yes, but—” She bit her lip. “I need an animal in my bed.”
He could only stare at her.
“At home, I always have at least one in bed with me. Usually more. Bixby, of course, and a kitten or two. I can’t sleep alone.”
“What about the bird? Surely it can keep you company.”
“Delilah? She’s asleep in her cage. And even if she weren’t, one can’t exactly snuggle with a parrot.” Her eyes swept the sitting room. “I was hoping there might be a newspaper or book here, so I could pass the time.”
“Well, there isn’t.”
She pushed the door open further, revealing herself to be clad in nothing but a Grecian-inspired arrangement of draped bed linens. The graceful angles of her bared shoulders and arms stood bright against the darkness. Her knot of steam-dampened hair could be so easily undone. A flick of his wrist would send it spilling free, flowing like molten gold between his fingers.
And those bed linens … a single tug, and they’d be a puddle on the floor.
She was trying to kill him. He was sure of it.
“What on earth are you wearing?”
“You told them to take all my clothes for laundering.”
“I didn’t think you’d give them your shift, as well.”
“It was all mud at the hem. I couldn’t wear it in that state.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve no garments at all?”
Don’t tell me that.
Please tell me that.
She stepped forward, trailing a swoop of white bedsheet behind her like the train of a bridal gown. “Are you certain there’s nothing to read? I thought I spied a quarterly of some sort on the mantel.”
“No.”
She shrank behind the door again, looking like a kicked puppy. “You needn’t shout at me.”
“Go back to your room. Cover yourself with something other than bedsheets.”
“I have a corset and I have stockings. Shall I wear those?”
Jesus God.
Holding his trousers closed with one hand, he lunged to one side and snagged his shirt from where it hung drying by the fire. He tossed it at her, and it hit her in the face.
As she slowly drew it downward, she gave him an offended look. “Was that truly necessary?”
“Yes. Go on, then. I’ll be in once I’ve finished my letter.”
Once she’d finally retreated and closed the door behind her, Gabe exhaled in relief. He tucked his now-softened cock back into his trousers. There was no way he could take up where he’d started. God only knew when she might decide to pop in again, and what she might be wearing—or not wearing—if she did.
Instead, he sat down and wrote his letter—with pen and ink. He took his time choosing every last word. His penmanship had never been so legible. But a few paragraphs simply refused to stretch into hours. Eventually, he ran out of excuses and crossed the antechamber. As he opened the door halfway, he sent up a prayer.
Please let her be asleep in bed.
She wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t in bed.
She was on the bed. Clad in his shirt, which he’d been a bloody fool to loan her.
Draped in bedsheets, she’d been a Grecian goddess. An aloof deity meant to be worshipped, adored, even feared—but never embraced.
Seeing her swimming in the billowing waves of his shirt, however, with her fair hair hanging loose about her shoulders … ? The intimacy of it shook him to his core.
She looked not only desirable, but necessary. A part of him. The better part, of course. The part where his redeeming qualities might be hiding, if indeed he possessed any. Gabe doubted he did, but he found himself longing to search her thoroughly, inside and out, just to be sure.
This was a dangerous situation. No otters. No carriage. No coachman. Just a man, a woman, and a bed.
“Gabriel?” Her voice was husky, sweet. “Aren’t you coming in?”
Don’t do it, he told himself. Let her be. She’s safer without you. Close the door, turn the latch, slide the bolt, and nail it shut for good measure. Leave.
Instead, he entered.
Chapter Twelve
When his silhouette appeared in the doorway, Penny gulped. Audibly.
This was an ancient coaching establishment, centuries old. The floorboards had worn to a dark, grooved polish, and the floors tipped at drunken angles where the walls had settled into the ground. The rooms had low ceilings and even lower door mantels.
When Gabriel entered the room, this all conspired to impressive effect. He filled the doorway, looming and large, and as he walked toward the bed, the floor groaned and creaked beneath his feet.
Out of an instinct of self-preservation, she wriggled to the far side of the mattress and drew the quilt up to her neck. Rationally, she knew she had nothing to fear. Not from him, that was. But as he slung his formidable, masculine body onto the other side of the bed, she was a tiny bit afraid of herself.
He was so warm, and so big. He smelled like soap and clear water, and when she stole a look at him, the hair lightly furring his bared chest was visible in the dim firelight. Her fingers ached to touch him.
“There.” He folded his arms over his chest and crossed his legs at the ankles. “You have an animal in your bed. Sleep.”
Sleep? Impossible.
How could she sleep with such a riot of noise? Her pulse pounded. Her whole body pounded. Her heart, her eardrums, her wrists, the hollows behind her knees—and, throbbing hardest of all, the secret, intimate pulse between her legs.
Falling in lust at first sight was bad enough. This afternoon she’d tumbled into a whole river of desire, all the way up to her neck. Now Penny was drowning in a sea of sensuality. She was confused by it, even a bit panicked—but drawn to him nevertheless.
Because he knew how to swim.
And he could teach her to swim, too.
She covered her face with her hands and groaned into them.
“What?”
“The animals,” she lied. “They’ll have missed their dinner tonight. And unless Mrs. Robbins takes him out—which is unlikely—Bixby will have piddled on the carpet by the time we’re home.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it tonight. Save your strength. The otter was only one animal. We’ve still a dozen or more to get rid of. Not to mention, you have your wardrobe and social obligations to occupy you.”
She stared up at the blackened ceiling beams. “This will never work. Even if we manage to find homes for the animals—and you must admit, we’re not off to an auspicious start—I’ll never meet my aunt’s expectations when it comes to circulating in society.”
“Oh, yes, you will. I’ll make it happen. I’ve money and influence at my disposal.”
“I’ve no doubt you do. But all the money and influence in the world can’t change my nature.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your nature. Your nature is fine.”
For that sentence alone, she could have kissed him.
“I’m a wallflower,” she said. “No, I’m not even a wallflower. At a party, a wallflower stands against the wainscoting. I don’t even make it through the door.”
“Why not?” The bed creaked as he rolled onto his side. “That doesn’t make sense. Aside from the whole daughter-of-an-earl bit, you’re an amiable person. Far too amiable, in my estimation. Is it the crowds? The noise?”
“No, it’s …” Cringing, she turned to face him. “It’s the hedgehog.”
To that, he had no response other than a blank look. She supposed she shouldn’t have expected one.
“I was sixteen the year of my debut. I’d been dreading it for years. At finishing school, I hadn’t fit in with the other girls. I was always more comfortable with animals than people. While the rest of the pupils were painting flowers with their watercolors, I was returning fledglings to their nests. Making friends with hedgehogs. Like Freya.”
She picked at a loose thread on the quilt. “As you can imagine, the other pupils poked fun at me. Laughed at my expense. You know how girls are at that age.”
“Actually, I’m not certain I do.”
“It doesn’t matter. Eventually, I found truer friends. But when I first came to London, I felt rather alone and completely unprepared. My parents were in India, and my Aunt Caroline was—is—a formidable woman. She insisted I enter society. I didn’t want a formal debut, so we compromised, settling on an introduction at Almack’s.”
“Almack’s?” He pulled a face.
“I know, it’s horrid. Do you know they only serve lemonade and biscuits now? I hear they’re not even good. Anyhow, I was so nervous. I didn’t think I could face the ordeal on my own. So I tucked Freya into my pocket.”
“Your gown had pockets?”
“Every gown should have pockets. My Aunt Caroline always insisted, and it’s the one thing on which we agree.” She frowned in concentration. “Where was I?”
“At Almack’s for your grand social debut, eating dry biscuits and hiding a hedgehog in your pocket.”
“Yes. Well, there’s not much else to tell. My first dance was with Bernard Wendleby. He asked me out of family obligation, of course. He didn’t wish to be there any more than I did. Our steps crossed during the quadrille, and his hip collided with mine. I suppose you can see where this is going.”
He nodded slowly. “My mind is painting a picture.”
“Good,” she said brightly. “No need to describe it for you, then.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I want to hear every last detail.”
She’d feared he would say that. “Freya startled, pricking Bernard with her quills. Bernard jumped in alarm, stepping on my foot. I stumbled forward, sprawling onto the floor. And …”
“And … ?”
“And Freya fell out of my pocket. She rolled across the floor like a ball in lawn bowls. People scattered like pins.”
A low rumble started in his chest.
“Don’t laugh.” She buffeted him with a pillow. “It’s not kind.”
He wrenched the pillow from her grasp. “I never claimed to be kind.”
“I was humiliated. It wasn’t funny.”
“Not at the time, perhaps. Here and now? It is exceedingly funny, and you know it.”
Penny supposed it was. It had been years, hadn’t it?
At the time, her friends had attempted to console her. They’d told her that in time the mortification would fade and the episode would be an amusing story for dinner parties.
Except that she didn’t attend many parties after that.
Now, so removed from that world of Mayfair snobbery, Penny could look back on the scene and appreciate the absurd humor. Once she started giggling, she couldn’t stop.
“The worst of it …” She wiped away tears of laughter. “The worst of it was, one of the patronesses—I can’t recall which one—fainted into the lemonade. She was standing behind me when I fell, and when she saw the hedgehog rolling across the floor …” She buried a giggle in her palm. “She thought it was my head. That I’d somehow decapitated myself when I hit the floor, and my head had gone rolling.”
He shook his head. “Astounding. I never dreamed I’d say this about Almack’s—but I wish I’d been there.”
“If you want to visit, you’ll have to find someone else to take you. My voucher was revoked,” she said proudly. “For life.”
“A pity.” He propped his head on his folded arm and regarded her intently. “So what’s the true reason?”
“The true reason for what?”
“Your retreat from society. Your life as a wallflower.”
“I just told you.”
“You told me a story about one embarrassing moment, years in the past. I’m to believe an earl’s daughter was exiled from the ton over a hedgehog?” He shook his head. “No. There must be more to it than that.”
A knot of panic rose in her throat. She didn’t have another story prepared. Everyone accepted the hedgehog incident as reason enough.
Everyone but him, it would seem.
“I believe it’s your turn,” she said, deflecting the question. “If you want to hear more about my tragic youth, you had better share a story from your own.”
“I don’t have any stories fit for a lady’s ears.”
“Come now, man of mystery. Tell me something. Anything. Your family, your schooling, where you were raised. Surely you have a scar somewhere with an interesting story behind it.” Smiling coyly, she poked him in the ribs. “Here, perhaps?”
He winced in indignation. “What do you think you’re—”
She ran a tickling stroke down the underside of his arm. “Or maybe it’s here?”
“Minx.”
He grabbed her wrist and ducked his head under her arm, lifting her over his shoulder. She shrieked with laughter as he dragged her out from under the quilts. For a moment, she managed to wrestle out of his grasp, but he yanked her back with a tug on her ankle, turning her over his knee. She tickled his belly, and when he cursed and flinched, she gained the advantage.
She straddled his thighs. When he reached for her, she caught his hands and tucked them firmly under her knees. She braced her hands on his torso.
There. She had him pinned to the bed at his hips, hands, and chest. He could easily overpower her once he caught his breath, but for the moment he was her captive.
Her hair hung loose about her neck, and her shirt—his shirt—tugged to the side, slipping down over her shoulder as she gloated in triumph. “Every creature has a soft underbelly. I’m going to find yours.”
“Search me if you like, Your Ladyship. I warn you, it’s not softness you’ll find.”
Search me if you like.
Penny couldn’t resist that invitation.
She trailed a light touch along his collarbone. Keeping his hands pinned with her knees, she ran her fingers over his chest, furrowing through the whorls of dark hair and tracing the contours of his muscles. She pressed her thumbs to his firm, flat nipples.
Years ago, Penny’s mother had brought her a clockwork music box from Austria. It had a scene of a shepherd and a maiden on a mountaintop, and there were levers and handles on all sides. Sliding one made the shepherd bow. Cranking another made the maiden twirl. Turning the key produced a tinkling, friendly tune.
As she explored his body, Gabriel did not bob or twirl. He certainly didn’t hum any tunes. He growled, moaned, winced, and cursed. Yet despite all these sounds of seeming displeasure, he made no effort to discourage her. He made his body hers to explore, just as she’d been longing to do ever since he’d come upon her that first night, draped in a towel and dripping wet.
With one finger, she drew a teasing line down the center of his chest, all the way down to his navel.
He bucked his hips. His erection grazed her sex, and she gasped at the sudden contact. Their bodies were separated by the fine lawn of his shirt and the wool of his trousers, but she could feel him—his length, his heat, his hardness.
His desire.
She’d felt triumphant in tackling him to the bed, but that was nothing compared to the surge of power rushing through her now. The thick, hot column of arousal wedged between her thighs—it was for her. All for her. Excitement rocketed through her body and came to settle in her sex, melting into a soft, throbbing ache.
Desperate to soothe that ache, she rocked against him. The friction sent a pulse of bliss through her body. Judging by his tortured groan, he felt it, too.
His head fell back against the mattress. “God. Yes. Again.”
“Ask nicely.” She levered her weight onto her knees, pressing his hands deeper into the straw-tick mattress and lifting her pelvis to break contact. “Ask me by my name.”
After a grumble of complaint, he gave in. “Lady Penel—”
“Penny,” she corrected. “Call me Penny.”
She was every bit as desperate as he was for more, but she couldn’t let the opportunity slip from her grasp. She’d been asking him to use her name for days now, and this might be her one chance to make him comply.
He gritted his teeth. “For the love of God, woman.”
“Penny.”
“Fine. Penny. There. Are you happy, Penny? How many times do you wish to hear it, Penny? Damn it, Penny. I’ve been craving this the whole cursed day, Penny. I’m going mad with lust, Penny. Penny, Penny, Pen—” She lowered her hips to his. “Christ.”
“That will do for now.”
“Thank God.”
She shifted gently, easing to and fro until his hardness nestled snug against her cleft.
Instinct took over. Penny braced herself on locked arms, hands flat against his chest, as she rubbed her body over his in a slow, steady rhythm.
“That’s it,” he murmured, rocking beneath her. “Just like that. It’s good?”
She nodded, too drunk on sensation to be missish or shy. “So good.”
“Go on, then.”
“Go on and what?”
“Ride me,” he whispered. “Use me. Take your pleasure.”
She hesitated.
“Have you never … ? Perhaps they don’t teach that at finishing school.” He moved as though he would free his arms. “I’ll show you.”
“No.” She clasped his biceps, holding him down. “I don’t need help.”
She had a big, beautiful man at her mercy, and she wasn’t going to relinquish control. Oh, she was under no illusions that she had him physically overpowered. He could have flipped their places at any instant.
She hadn’t taken the reins. He’d given her the reins. And that made it all the better.
She decided how to begin, when to stop. Whether to tease them both with grazing friction or grind her hips. She set the pace. It was hers to grant or deny him mercy when he pleaded in a whisper: “Faster.”
With every motion—slow or quick, firm or gentle—her pleasure spiraled higher. Her breathing grew uneven, and she flushed with heat.
She fell forward to kiss him, searching his mouth. Exploring. As their tongues tangled, his whiskers scraped her lips and chin. Her nipples puckered to knots, exquisitely sensitive. With every movement, they kissed the hard planes of his chest.
Bliss rushed at her from all sides, propelling her toward that distant promise of satisfaction. Her rhythm lost all elegance. Her hips jerked and bounced as her urgency grew.
“Yes.” His voice was strained. “Hold nothing back. I want to feel you come against me. I want to hear the sounds you make.”
His words of encouragement had the opposite effect. For the first time, she felt a moment’s trepidation. She’d never climaxed with another person. It had taken her years to feel comfortable with herself, let alone a man. When the pleasure broke, she would be bared to him. More naked than naked.
She let her brow fall against his shoulder, hiding her face. She whimpered against his skin. “Hold me.”
In an instant, he freed his hands and wrapped his arms around her, stroking her hair and caressing her back, giving her the safety she needed. “I have you, love. I have you.”
As she began to move once more, his hands slid down her back. He cupped and squeezed her bottom, guiding her. Urging her. Dragging her over his hard length again and again and again. Holding her through that last, unnerving moment of nothingness, and pushing her into the brightness on the other side.
Joy shivered over her skin and pulsed through her veins. She buried her cries of pleasure in the curve of his neck.
As the climax ebbed, the tension left her body, melting into his heat. A beautiful sense of peace drifted through her. As if she were sitting in a toasty room on a cold day, watching snowflakes land on the windowsill.
He didn’t share the same languor. His erection jutted against her belly, still fiercely hard and unsatisfied. He drove a hand between their bodies and tugged at his trouser buttons.
“Sorry,” he said. “Can’t wait any longer.”
Penny rolled to the side. Should she offer to help? It only seemed fair to repay him the favor. But then, she had no idea how to help. Perhaps her fumbling would do more harm than good.
As he slid his hand into his trousers, she came to one unwavering decision. Whether he desired her assistance or not, she was definitely going to watch.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see. Before her eyes could adjust to the firelight, he had his hand tightly wrapped around the object of her curiosity, and then he pumped his fist so quickly, she saw nothing but a shadowy blur. In a matter of moments, his body jerked and he made a low, guttural sound. With his free hand, he groped for a corner of tangled bedsheet. He drew it over his groin while he shuddered and finished with a few slower strokes.
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