Kitabı oku: «Diamonds in the Rough»
When it comes to diamonds—like their men—some women prefer them rough
Thanks to her grandfather’s complicated will, Miss Adela Ruffington, along with her mother and sisters, is about to lose her home and income to a distant cousin, the closest male heir to the Millingford title. For Adela, nothing could be more insulting—being denied her rightful inheritance for a randy scoundrel like Wilson, the very man who broke her heart following a lusty youthful dalliance years ago.
Still smarting from the betrayal of his latest paramour, Wilson Ruffington never anticipates the intense desire Adela again stirs within him. Despite his wicked tongue and her haughty pride, their long-ago passion instantly reignites at a summer house party, the experience they’ve gained as adults only adding fuel to the flames.
Wilson and Adela are insatiable, but civility outside of the bedroom proves impossible. Determined to keep Adela in his bed, Wilson devises a ruse—a marriage of convenience that will provide her family with a generous settlement, as well as prevent scandalous whispers. Their plan works perfectly until family rivalries and intrigue threaten to destroy their arrangement…and the unspoken love blooming beneath it.
Praise for
Portia Da Costa
A Sunday Times Bestselling Author
2012 RITA® Award Nominee for In the Flesh
“Da Costa pens a highly titillating, tantalizing tale.…
Not for the faint of heart, but Susan Johnson, Bertrice Small
and Brenda Joyce fans will savor the delicious fantasies within.”
—RT Book Reviews
“It’s been so brilliantly written that you forget that you’re [not in]
Victorian England.… Excellent—can’t wait to read the next installment.”
—Erotica For All (U.K.)
“Portia Da Costa has an incredible talent for writing erotic romance.
She is particularly adept at creating dominant heroes
who push their lovers’ limits hard, but fall in love so sweetly.
She fills the pages with an unparalleled level of eroticism that singes.”
—Romance Novel News
“Forget about the rest and read the very best: Portia Da Costa.”
—Sensual Reads
Diamonds in the Rough
Portia Da Costa
Dedicated to Alice, a dear little feline friend.
Contents
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1
A Flash of Black
Rayworth Court,
Summer 1891
Wilson Ruffington was bored, bored, bored.
I shouldn’t have come here. I knew it would be tedious. These affairs always are.
He looked this way and that, up and down the landing. Rayworth Court was an ugly rambling pile, badly designed in the first place and made worse by haphazard additions. Even he was having trouble finding his way around, when usually he could create a floor plan of any building in his mind, hypothesizing from only a limited amount of data.
Frowning at a particularly hideous ancestral portrait, Wilson sighed. He’d come to this country house party for a change of scene, to shake off his ennui, but it wasn’t working. He’d never been a great one for the social scene at the best of times, but in the past two months or so, since the split from Coraline, he’d barely even left his house at all. With his mistress gone, what was the point? Work, study, writing, building things and tinkering with things, devising more things to build and tinker with, all this had occupied him. Technical commissions and consultations and his intense intellectual schedule had neatly allowed him to avoid the fact that the first woman in seven years that he’d actually considered proposing to had deserted him. Jiggered off with barely a “by your leave” in order to marry a seventy-five-year-old Italian duke.
“Bitch!”
He spat out the word, but without any real fire. Did he even care anymore? It was only his trivial male ego that was affected by her departure. The greater part of him, the compartment of Wilson Ruffington that contained his intellect, simply trundled on as normal. His sexual appetite was a bit put out by her absence, and he certainly missed a regular diet of plentiful, vigorous and inventive fucking and other carnal activities. That lack, and his wounded pride, were the only things really getting his spirits down.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. To feel insulted and frustrated, and let it bother him.
I’ll go home, back to my workroom and my workshop. The people here don’t interest me at all, and the women are ninnies.
Feeling more cheerful already, Wilson whipped his notebook out of the pocket of his dressing gown and scribbled down a quick list of readily available chemicals and other ingredients. During a brief foray into the kitchen gardens at the back of the house he’d noted an interesting form of blight on some of the vegetable varieties. If he gave this formulation to the earl’s head gardener, instructing the man to apply it as a soil dressing, it would at least go some way toward recompensing Lord Rayworth for his being such an abysmal guest.
Wilson closed his eyes and called up his imaginary floor plan, which worked this time. Left it was, then left again, and he’d find himself at the main staircase. Then up one floor and to his left again, and finally, the blessed sanctuary of his room. Perhaps he’d order up some tea, and some of that delicious plum cake he’d purloined from the kitchen when he’d passed through on his way in from the garden. He would instruct his man Teale to make arrangements for his departure, and while he waited, he’d lie in bed and think about a thorny problem with the submarine plans that was taxing him. The project was a government secret, so he’d brought no papers along, but he could do the calculations in his head. There had to be a way to make those damned flanges marry up correctly in such a confined space.
And if the submarine wouldn’t behave, he might toss himself off instead, as a diversion.
Smiling, he opened his eyes again and turned to the left.
Only to swivel back instantly to his right.
What was that? A flash of black, barely glimpsed in the periphery of his vision, then gone again. He’d got the impression of a woman. A female in an inky-black gown, dashing purposefully along the landing at right angles to where he was standing. It’d been only a split second, but there was something...something familiar, and it grabbed at him. A fleeting recollection so astonishing that it made his heart leap.
No, surely not? Not her...
In stealth, he padded forward, sweeping back the panels of his open dressing gown, lest he create a flash of blue silk paisley that would attract her attention.
But if it wasn’t who he imagined it might be, who was she, this swift and graceful figure, this dark, beguiling wraith, moving at speed? He’d seen no female guests wearing black thus far. It was all showy summer gowns, lace and muslin confections of the sort in which Coraline looked so fine. Unless a person was in mourning, black was an illogical choice for swanning around playing croquet, watching impromptu cricket games and admiring the rose garden, because it didn’t reflect back the sun, and it made one hot. Even the dowager Lady Rayworth, she of the grim brow who’d frowned at his own sartorial choices, had been wearing light gray in response to the heat. All the fussing young belles were flouncing around in white or flower-sprigged pastels.
Wilson faltered. From somewhere in his memory storehouse, a compartment flipped open and the image of a white muslin frock rose up like a phantasmagoria, taking his breath away. White muslin against green willow. To his astonishment, his somnolent cock stiffened in his linen, firming so hard and so fast it made him grunt in pain.
Great God Almighty! Now there’s a turnup.
At the corner’s apex, Wilson flattened himself against the paneling and peered around the edge. He’d always enjoyed a spot of subterfuge, and hopefully, all this creeping around like an agent of secrecy might take his mind off his raging erection.
The woman in the black gown was standing with her back to him, trying the handle on a heavy, polished oak door. The hardware defied her, and as she twisted it this way and that, with prodigious force for one so slender, another memory escaped Wilson’s capacious storehouse.
It must be you. Nobody else would attack like that. No lady, at least.
The inner photograph displayed another locked door, in another great country house, with another, or perhaps the very same, determined woman grappling to gain entrance. Wilson didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. Both were appropriate.
What the hell are you doing here?
He’d seen no guest list, and made no inquiries. It’d been potluck. So there was nothing to say she couldn’t be here. Especially if her matchmaking mother had anything to do with anything.
Were parent and daughter both up to habits of old? The parent attempting to marry off the offspring; the child attempting to breach locked doors and gain access to dubious treasures. Plus ça change...
Or déjà vu, which I don’t believe in.
Calculating the precise distance he could advance without being seen, Wilson leaned a little farther around the corner, and his heart skipped when he saw something he hadn’t noticed before.
The mystery woman had been carrying a portfolio with her, what looked like a leather-bound sketchbook tied with ribbons. It was now lying on the carpet runner at her feet. She must have dropped it in order to apply two hands to the door handle.
Definitely you. Who else could it be?
There were too many similarities now for it not to be her, statistically. That slender female form was unmistakable, her shape indelibly branded into his memory. Likewise her glossy nut-brown hair, so thick and willful that it appeared ever in danger of escaping its coiffure. Even the black dress was right. Yes, she might well still be wearing mourning.
Do I want to see you?
Wilson braced himself. The last time he’d faced up to this determined cuss of a creature alone, just the two of them, it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. In fact, it’d been a disaster, and peculiarly disturbing. The juxtaposition of hurling insults at each other and him developing a raging erection had unnerved him. And he didn’t easily become unnerved. In fact, she was the only one in seven years who could make it so. Not even Coraline had produced quite the same effect.
Wilson debated turning away. There was no logic in courting unpleasantness. No advantage for either of them.
Oh, don’t be a whining coward, man! You’re not scared of her, are you? Ninny.
So he stayed where he was, watching, waiting for the right moment, waiting to see if she still had the nefarious skill he’d taught her once, that day long ago, when she’d wanted to get into a forbidden library and explore its exotic treasures.
Déjà vu indeed. The Earl of Rayworth was reputed to have a fine and very extensive collection of erotic books and scandalous works of art stashed away somewhere here at the court, a secret library of the proscribed and the profane. Wilson had a keen interest in all forms of esoterica, too, and the earl’s hoard was said to include choice items from all over Europe and Asia, rich in words and pictures both divine and disgusting.
“Stupid, dratted, wretched, provoking thing!”
Wilson edged forward again, suddenly enjoying the sight of his quarry kicking out at the oak with a slender foot clad in a black boot of glace kid. The thump of footwear against door and her sudden yelp of pain sent his memory spinning back again, retrieving hot, wild cries that weren’t stubborn or impatient in the slightest, but full of passion and joyous, sensual satisfaction.
About to wade into the fray, Wilson froze when a slender white hand reached up and prized first one substantial pin from her thickly coiled hair, then another. Crouching, her full skirt a black pool around her, the mysterious yet infinitely familiar woman applied her makeshift picklocks to the source of her frustration.
If any last specks of doubt had lingered, they dissolved now. This was the final conclusive echo of the past.
Cracking the secret library’s lock was precisely what he’d have done himself, and he always carried a set of picklocks and other miniature tools in his pockets. There were very often private cases in the many libraries he consulted, and he was too impatient to spend time parlaying with librarians who were overprotective of their scientific and literary treasures.
The graceful burglar beyond wasn’t quite as accomplished at breaking into strongholds as he was, but he was the one who’d shown her how to do it, in that different mansion, and it seemed she hadn’t lost the knack. After a few moments an audible click announced her success, and she straightened, her spine a shallow, exquisite arc as she reached up and jammed the pins back into her abundant hair, dislodging a few shiny, nut-brown strands in the process. The wayward tresses tumbled down against her neck, and absentmindedly she pushed at them. Wilson’s hand flexed in a physical memory—of running his fingers through that lush, silky fall as she clung to him, gasping.
Without a backward look, the slim felon swooped down again to snatch up her leather binder, then opened the door and passed swiftly into the room beyond, her skirts gliding and floating as she swirled them out of the way to shut the door behind her.
Wilson sped forward, experiencing a mix of curiosity, irrational happiness and an uncharacteristic apprehension as he went. Would they argue like cat and dog again? Would it be the more recent bones of contention they scrapped over...or the older ones?
What’s wrong with you, man? Surely you can meet her with equanimity? You’ve got the upper hand now.
How cold that sounded. He shook his head, focusing his attention on the moment rather than the larger picture of their tortuous familial complications.
With his fingers on the doorknob, he cocked his head, listening. What was she doing in there? Was she already perusing lewd Oriental etchings and obscene writings? He imagined her pale, narrow face flushing pink with the sly tickle of arousal.
Arousal? Good God, his own state was far more than a sly tickle now. He was up so hard that he was in agony, and if his hand could remember the touch of her, his damned cock had perfect recall. The throb in his rigid flesh was a direct conduit between past and present.
Stilling himself, Wilson set his ear against the thick door, but heard nothing. The only way to discover what she was up to was to throw open the door and surprise her. And quickly, because lurking here like a randy adolescent only laid him open to the danger of discovery. Not that he cared two pins for his reputation, but his presence would draw attention to hers, and she had enough problems already.
But even as Wilson prepared to make his move, a faint sound did issue through the thick door, and it wasn’t the languorous female sighs for which his libido had been hoping.
What the devil is it?
A humming whir and an odd repetitive clacking noise were quickly followed by a delicious feminine chuckle.
Wilson turned the handle and pushed open the door to find his lady in black standing in front of a broad, leather-topped desk. On it stood what appeared to be a rather substantial but badly balanced praxinoscope, if he wasn’t mistaken, and as she whipped around, she snatched her hand back and the thing slowed to a halt.
“Oh! It’s you! I might have known.”
2
Cousin Dearest
The familiar low, well-modulated voice expressed only mild surprise, as if Adela had been expecting him.
Wilson scowled, even though he’d not meant to. An expression of displeasure at this stage only gave her the advantage. But then, she had that already. She’d probably known he was here somewhere. That dratted mother of hers had probably dragged her here precisely for that reason.
“Indeed it is me, cousin dearest. And I assume you’ve been expecting me? I’ll wager your mother, at least, knows I’m here.”
A pair of large, fine brown eyes, almost exactly the rich walnut hue of her sliding, disarranged hair, glared back at him, stormy with suspicion. She didn’t like their family situation any better than he. In fact, she had far more reason not to.
Adela didn’t like him, either, and in his heart of hearts, he didn’t blame her. He’d crushed her tender feelings underfoot on more than one occasion now. He had a God-given talent for saying the first stupid and often callous-sounding thing that came into his head, much to his self-disgust. Even if he didn’t always mean it. Well, even if he didn’t completely mean it.
“Indeed she does, cousin Wilson, indeed she does.” Adela’s emphasis on the word was a facetious rebuttal of any kind of endearment. They barely were cousins at all, when it came to it, their genealogy far more of a division than a bond. “Since Father died, one of her dearest wishes and perennial goals in life is to accidentally hurl the two of us together.” Adela straightened her spine, almost visibly squaring her firm but narrow shoulders, as if ready to gird on a heavy suit of armor. “But what with our mourning, and your famously clever knack of ignoring and/or regretting our very existence, opportunities for collision have been like hen’s teeth. When the countess took pity on us and invited us here, Mama nearly had an apoplexy, she was so thrilled to see you on the guest list.”
“And what did you have?” Irrational anger made his tongue sharp. Her clear lack of pleasure in seeing him again was no surprise, but it still made him want to break something. At least she could have feigned a smile for form’s sake.
And with a sweet, lush mouth like hers, even the faintest smile was a breathtaking phenomenon.
Dark eyes narrowed. “I experienced a distinct desire not to crash into you, yet now, despite my best efforts, here we are.”
“You could have declined Rayworth’s invitation.” It would have been easy enough to claim some unspecified female malady.
Her stare was a basilisk’s venomous dismissal, disdaining him, discarding him utterly. Did she feel no warmth at all? If not affection, then not even the slightest twinge of the baser, more animal emotions? “One can’t cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face. I had hoped that I could avoid you as much as possible, while still accepting. It would have broken Mama’s heart to deny her at least a shred of optimism. She’d rather live on hope than face the truth.”
Adela was steely, but for a few fractions of a second, the way she bit her full, pink lower lip betrayed her. Likewise her narrow white hand twisting a fold of her gown. The contrast between the creamy pallor of her skin and the dull sheen of the black fabric was intoxicating. Unable to stop himself, Wilson imagined her in the kind of black satin boudoir garments that Coraline had so favored, and his wayward cock kicked again, hard, in his trousers.
Anger kicked, too, but not at his cousin. He actually felt enraged at the memory of Coraline for distracting him, as if she’d stepped into the room and interrupted this sparring match. Yet her presence seemed strangely indistinct.... He should have felt regret over his former mistress, but her image was blurred, like an inexpertly developed photograph.
The vision of his second cousin twice removed, however, was sharp as a razor. And despite the fact that the real woman was still scowling at him, the mental image of Adela Felicia Ruffington clad in a black corset trimmed with red lace and ribbons was delectable, and made him want to touch himself. And her.
Yes, you’d look very handsome in a few scraps of expensive frou-frou, Della. Very handsome indeed.
“You should be out in society, Della. Just because your mother’s prepared to sacrifice you to me in order to save her fortunes and those of your butterfly sisters, that shouldn’t stop you from having a little fun.”
Adela drew in a slow deep breath, clearly sifting through a selection of sarcastic words with which to lash him. The action made her bosom lift, pushing her delicate curves against the confines of her hidden corset. Wilson’s private fantasy of ribbons and black satin grew yet more agonizing in the area of his loins.
Adela was a slim woman, but she had a shape. A beautiful wood nymph’s shape, and just once, for one blessed idyllic afternoon, he’d had his eager hands on it.
“Well, I thank you for your sage opinions on the subject of my welfare, Wilson.” She inclined her head like some wily bird, assessing him. And not with favor. Wilson could see columns and tallies, and far too many negative ticks stacked up against him. Suddenly his own affected eccentricity, which usually secretly amused him, wasn’t quite as satisfying anymore. He clenched his fists in the folds of his dressing gown, to stop his fingers from raking through his unruly hair in an effort to tidy it. He wished he’d made an effort to conform, and that he could change his lurid waistcoat for something more elegant and sober, and his silk dressing gown for a well-cut frock coat. His maverick attire did not find favor with his cousin. Her perfectly arched eyebrows spoke volumes.
“But for my part,” she went on, her exquisite hauteur and proud deportment making her appear far more entitled to a deluxe life and aristocratic status than he’d ever be, “it’s not the end of the world if the Ruffington assets go to you on the Old Curmudgeon’s death. Grandfather has his reasons, and we’ll make the best of the hand we’ve been dealt. Mama and the girls and I will manage, even if we have to take in washing. And if the worse did come to the worst, I can’t believe that even you would throw us out on the street. Our parasitical status notwithstanding.”
Will I never be allowed to forget that?
Certain ill-thought remarks, made on the occasion of their last meeting, were impossible to expunge. Adela still hated him for them, and he couldn’t blame her. He had been nasty. With much on his mind at the time, a moment’s lapse of concentration had led him to say vile things about Mrs. Ruffington, and all subsequent halfhearted attempts to retract had only made things worse.
But being instructed—in a letter from her mother—that he really ought to marry Adela, because the assets and riches of her grandfather, Augustus Ruffington, Lord Millingford, were rightfully hers, had made him see red. In cooler moments, he knew that the Old Curmudgeon was being callous and cruel to his daughter-in-law and granddaughters. But receiving this commandment while Coraline was being particularly capricious, and with memories of his own mother’s emotional manipulations still keen, Wilson had lashed out at Adela when they’d encountered each other at the New Gallery not long after.
No, calling her mother “a presumptuous, overbearing parasite with ridiculous notions of entitlement” had not endeared him to Adela, making an already prickly relationship into a veritable porcupine of resentment and enmity.
Still, he opened his mouth, not knowing how, but hoping to make things better. “But that’s not quite what I meant, and you must admit I didn’t say it to her face. I—”
His cousin raised a hand and silenced him before he could get another word out.
My God, she’s impressive. Wilson’s cock lurched again, the weight of desire almost making him double over.
“No, you fobbed her off with some pretentious taradiddle of a reply. What was it...something about being ‘married to your work’?” Adela paused, her eyes narrowing, but still brilliant. “When we all know that your objection is to me, and that you were already involved in a romantic liaison elsewhere. How is the beauteous Coraline, by the way?”
For a hundredth of a second, Wilson reeled. Oh, how she wielded the knife. “Still beauteous, as far as I know,” he said, affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “And please don’t tell me you don’t know she’s split from me. I’m sure the jungle drums of society have thundered out all the juicy details.”
“Ah, yes, her duke. How does it feel to be thrown over for a seventy-five-year-old in a bath chair?”
Wilson wasn’t a violent man. In fact, strange as it seemed, considering his work for the War Office, he was a pacifist. But right now he wanted to box his cousin’s ears.
“How does it feel to be out for upward of four seasons and not snare a husband?”
Adela remained impressive. Even more so now. Yet there was a flash of pain in her eyes, and he half expected her to demand, “Whose fault is that?”
And he half expected something else, too. The little gesture that more repercussions of his incautious tongue had initiated, the involuntary, yet graceful raising of her hand to her face, to shadow the slightly crooked bridge of her nose.
But she yielded to neither. She didn’t even say, “Touché.”
“I don’t think I care to discuss these matters any further, Wilson. I came here to enjoy a pleasant weekend in the country, and I’d be grateful if you’d kindly leave me alone now to do just that.”
No!
Irrationally, no, no, no! He couldn’t leave. Not with fire in Adela’s eyes and her blood up. Despite what she said and what he knew she felt, he’d never lusted for her harder than he did right now.
“Ah, but this is my pleasant weekend, too, Della. Can’t you enjoy your explorations while I’m here? This room interests me. And it must interest you, too, or you wouldn’t have employed the skills I taught you in order to gain entrance.”
He wasn’t lying when he said the room interested him. Under normal circumstances, he’d have been nose deep in one of the many, many choice volumes by now. But it was Adela he wanted to explore. After weeks of feeling sorry for himself, his cousin’s delicate flower scent and her determination to spar fired him up, too. Good Lord, he even felt cheerful. His libido surged when she nibbled her soft lower lip again, as if the sound of her pet name, and his discovery of her breaking and entering rendered her vulnerable.
Yet her head was up and her voice was smooth. “I’ll leave you to your studies and return later. You can be the one to explain how you gained entry without a key.” Abandoning the forgotten praxinoscope, she swept past him, reaching for her leather binder where it lay on the desk.
With barely a conscious thought, Wilson grabbed for her shoulder as she moved by, his every instinct commanding that she stay. They hadn’t seen each other in six months or so...and even then, when they’d flayed each other with insults, his blood had sung. More than that, it had been seven years since their fateful, carnal afternoon together. But he realized now he’d never forgotten a single second of it. While diverted by others, his memories of Adela had been haphazardly contained in one of his mental boxes, where he stored thoughts and notions for later review, or otherwise. But even during his bouts of exotic and protracted lovemaking with Coraline that box had still been there, radiant with golden, stolen moments once spent by a river with his distant cousin, its perturbations inchoate, but nagging.
Wilson held his breath. She had to stay, but she was struggling, shaking her arm wildly and jerking away from his grip. She even slapped him—hard—around the back and neck with her blessed leather portfolio.
You always were deliciously physical, cousin.
“Let me go, you insufferable oaf. Don’t paw me.” It was a low, controlled threat, not the squeal of a vexed miss. Resentment dripped from it. “You made it perfectly plain last time we conversed what you think of me, Wilson, and my family. Useless, you said, just sitting around waiting to be supported by a man or an inherited fortune, and myself, personally, neither accomplished nor beautiful enough to be worthy of either. Just as much a parasite as my mother.”
“I didn’t say that!”
Liar. Why was he denying his own bad behavior? He’d certainly implied she was no better than her mother, and just now, he’d attacked her with cutting words again. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t even blame Coraline this afternoon, because his former mistress was so faint to him now he could barely picture her.
What would it be like to go back and expunge his thoughtlessness? To be a different man? A man free to take Adela’s graceful body in his arms and gently comfort her. To kiss her and touch her... Maybe there was even some convenient river or brook nearby? A soft mossy bank where they could lie down and—
A sharp elbow gouging his ribs dissolved his wayward memories and urges. His grip loosened, and Adela raced for the door, clutching her leather folder while Wilson rubbed quickly at his rib cage, astonished at how viciously she’d jabbed him.
But he didn’t box and run and practice a little-known Oriental fighting art for nothing. He had reflexes like a panther, and he shot across the room after his cousin, catching her at the door. He grabbed her again in a light hold that wouldn’t hurt, but wouldn’t yield, either. Why didn’t he have the words to make her stay, without resorting to manhandling?
“Don’t go, Della. I know our last meeting was somewhat disastrous, and I shouldn’t have been so harsh....” He watched her face. Was she mellowing? “But let’s put that behind us, shall we? And start again... Perhaps we can investigate this ingenious toy of yours?” He nodded at the praxinoscope. “And then perhaps select a few exciting volumes from this hoard together? It seems a shame not to, now we’re here.”
