A Wicked Pursuit (18 page)

Or perhaps it was simply Harry himself. During Sir Randolph’s last visit, Harry’s leg had been freed from the fracture-box, and was now propped up with pillows, which gave him more freedom to move about the bed. He was sitting on the edge now, able to reach the table, and she was intensely aware of how close he was to her, so close that she could smell the spicy scent of the soap he’d used for shaving. She remembered how he’d stroked her arm yesterday, and simultaneously wished he’d do it again and prayed that he wouldn’t.

“My father maintains that all men belong in the married state and are miserable otherwise,” he continued, fortunately unaware of her thoughts. “Quite naturally, he’s eager for me to marry and start siring sons of my own so he needn’t worry about the dukedom. He’s old enough himself that such matters concern him inordinately. Ah, here’s our supper now, just as the clock strikes the hour.”

She pulled away her hand as the door opened, not wishing to be observed by her servants. Earlier, she’d made a small speech belowstairs, repeating what she’d told Mary, and the last thing she needed was to have her words undermined by her own actions.

Led by Royce, the footmen brought in several dishes, presenting them to Harry, not her, before they set them on the table.

“Duck with oranges, my lord,” Royce murmured. “Mushrooms in cream. Fricassee of veal with pickled barberries. Parsnip pie. Rice Florentine with braised leeks.”

“Are you certain those are barberries, Royce?” Gus asked suspiciously, peering down at the plate. “I don’t recall that Mrs. Buchanan had any in the larder. Please send Price down to speak with her, and make certain that—”

“Gus, my dear, you are not in charge tonight,” Harry said mildly. “This evening I am the host, and the servants will answer to me, not you. All you must do is enjoy everything as my guest.”

“But how can I enjoy it if I suspect Mrs. Buchanan has substituted a false ingredient, and then served—”

“Hush,” he said. “You are my guest, Gus. No orders, no worries, no false ingredients.”

She sighed deeply, considering the dish with the food arranged elegantly upon it. Everything did look very good, she decided as she picked up her fork, and it all smelled even better. And no matter where they’d come from, the pickled barberries looked exactly as they should.

It was a novelty to be a guest in her own house. There were, in fact, many novelties about this evening already, not the least of which was dining with a ridiculously handsome earl who was in his bed. And his dogs. She must not forget Harry’s dogs, who were even now asleep on her feet. She sipped her wine, considering how wonderfully amusing all this was, and began to chuckle.

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, beginning to smile with her. “What’s so funny?”

She touched her fingertips lightly to her lips, as if that would be enough to keep back her amusement.

“Everything,” she said. “Nothing. Oh, Harry, I suppose I’m happy.”

“So am I,” he said, and laughed with her. “We are both of us extraordinarily happy.”

“Yes,” she said succinctly. “We are. Now, while I eat this excellent, excellent meal that you have ordered for me as your guest, I wish to hear you tell me more of your brothers. I wish that very, very much.”

He laughed again, his eyes bright with pleasure and amusement. Yet still he did as she bid, and began to tell her tales of his childhood, of being the privileged oldest son of a duke, of his vast yet close family of cousins with more dukes sprinkled throughout. Most of all he told stories of the bond he shared with his two brothers. She learned that at present both were out of the country, one off in the distant East Indies, and the other in Naples with their father—which, to Gus’s relief, explained why none of them had come to visit Harry. In fact he told her so much of those brothers, Rivers and Geoff, and the scrapes that they’d tumbled in and out of together, from London and Paris to Venice and Naples, that Gus soon felt as if she knew them herself.

In turn, Gus shared her past and family as well, from shrieking games of hide-and-seek through the abbey when she’d been little, to the raucous pantomimes that her mother had arranged and directed, and to the joy of learning to ride with her older brother, Andrew. She hadn’t had anyone to talk with like this for years, and as she and Harry exchanged stories and laughter, she realized it wasn’t just the wine. She truly was happy this night, happier than she’d been, really, since Mama had died.

Gradually the dusk outside the windows faded away to night and the footmen replaced the guttering stubs of candles for new ones, yet still she and Harry talked and talked. They drank, too, and by the time the lemon syllabub that was the meal’s last sweet had appeared and the servants had been sent away, they were well into the third bottle of Papa’s French wine.

“I have a confession to make, Gus,” Harry said as he took the slender glass of syllabub in one hand. “While I was ill with the fever, I dreamed not of my sins, but of syllabub. Lemon-laced syllabub, exactly like this.”

Dramatically he raised the flared glass as if it were another wineglass. “To syllabub, the supreme sweet of sweets!”

Gus grinned, and held her glass up, too. “To sweet, supreme, sweet, and silly-silly-syllabub!”

He frowned dramatically, lowering his glass. “I didn’t say silly, Gus.”

“No,” she said, delicately dipping her silver teaspoon into the top layer of whipped froth in her glass. “But I believe it needed saying.”

“You’re right, clever Gus,” he said. “It did need saying.” He dug his spoon deep along the side of the glass, through the froth on the top and into the blush-colored liquid in the bottom. But he misjudged the force with which he pulled the spoon back, and the bowl flipped forward and catapulted a large blotch of the blush-colored cream onto the front of his nightshirt.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Gus. “Look at you, Harry!”

At once she leaned forward with her napkin in her hand, ready to blot away the offending cream. She frowned with concentration, determined to tidy his shirt. Yet as she swayed toward him, she lifted her gaze from the front of his shirt. His smile faded as their eyes met, and he reached up to slip his fingers into her carefully pinned hair. Slowly he drew her forward and tipped his head to one side. His mouth found hers, and before she realized exactly how or what was happening, he was kissing her.

Gus didn’t pull away, but the shock of being kissed made her go perfectly still. She had never been kissed before, not like this, and never, ever by a gentleman who was as accomplished at it as Harry. At least she decided he must be accomplished, because he took his time and didn’t rush, gently wooing her with his lips, adding more pressure to make her relax.

Tentatively she began to press back, and discovered that the velvety friction of her lips against his was really very nice, and exciting, too, in a way she’d never expected. Without thinking, she rested her hands on his shoulders to keep herself steady, and he slanted his mouth over hers, coaxing her to part her lips. She did, only a little, yet to her surprise he thrust his tongue inside her mouth. She gasped, the sound caught vibrating between them as he deepened the kiss. He tasted of the wine, and the syllabub, and a certain indefinable quality that she recognized as purely male, and purely his. His tongue plunged deeper as his mouth ground over hers, so much that she almost feared he’d devour her.

Almost, but not quite: because the longer he kissed her, the more exciting she found it. Before this, she’d thought kissing was no more than the dry, dutiful pecks of pursed lips that she’d encountered beneath holiday mistletoe. But kissing Harry was like kissing fire, full of the heat and sensation that she now realized must be passion. She felt it through her entire body, making her knees grow wobbly and her heart race. She felt the heat coalesce low in her belly, a curious, delightful tension that made her only want to kiss him more.

When his hand left the back of her head to slide down her back and settle around her waist, she sighed with the pleasurable possession of it, of being desired by a gentleman. Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? That was the reason he was kissing her, wasn’t it? That he desired her?

It was a heady realization, made all the sweeter because she desired him, too. What a marvelous word that was—
desire
—to describe an even more marvelous feeling. She swayed unsteadily over the bed toward him and he pulled her closer, her breasts crushing shamelessly against his chest and directly onto the splotch of creamy syllabub. She didn’t care, not one whit. She slipped her fingers into the black silk of his hair and back over his sleekly shaven jaw, relishing every second of being kissed by Harry, and kissing him in return.

When at last their mouths parted, she was almost dizzy with pleasure. It was an excellent thing that she had his shoulders for support, because she wouldn’t have trusted her own legs to hold her. It pleased her no end that he seemed as affected as she was, his breathing ragged and his chest rising and falling beneath her.

“Goodness, Harry,” she whispered, gazing rapturously into his blue eyes and trying hard to keep his face from spinning before her. “I’ve never done that before.”

He smiled, and rubbed his thumb lightly across her cheek.

“Sweet Gus,” he said. “I haven’t, either.”

She frowned, for as fuddled as she might be, she knew perfectly well that he’d likely kissed other women by the score.

“Don’t tease me, Harry,” she said as firmly as she could, striving to enunciate for emphasis. “I am as serious as serious—as
serious
—can be.”

“So am I,” he said. “I have never before kissed you, Gus. But I find I’d like to do it again.”

“Oh, yes, Harry,” she whispered. “If you please, yes.”

But as she leaned forward to offer him her lips once more, she leaned too far. Slowly, slowly, she toppled to one side, slid from the edge of the bed, and landed on the carpet in an ignominious crush of silk petticoats.

Under ordinary circumstances,
Harry would have found the sight before him an enchanting one. A young woman sprawled on the carpet beside his bed, her skirts tossed up above her knees to display her neatly turned legs in pale blue stockings with rose-patterned red garters at the knee, and an enticing glimpse of her plump, pale thighs. From his spot on the bed above her, he also had an excellent view of her breasts, which now seemed to be spilling out of her red gown with more exuberance than he recalled from earlier in the evening. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips swollen and red from his kisses, and her hair was half unpinned and tumbling down around her shoulders.

In ordinary circumstances, he would have considered her the perfect picture of a young and willing wanton, and after a few seconds’ admiration he would have been on the carpet with her to enjoy what she was so blatantly offering.

But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. The young woman wasn’t a wanton, but Gus. She wasn’t blatantly offering anything, but sitting there dazed with inebriated astonishment while one of his dogs licked syllabub from her sleeve. And Harry wouldn’t be joining her, as much as he wished to, because he couldn’t, not with his infernal leg.

What he had done, however, was let them both drink too much, so much that they’d ended up kissing, and now—now he wasn’t sure what was going to happen next.

“Are you unharmed, Gus?” he asked solicitously, even though he was sure that she was. Only sober people hurt themselves when they fell.

“Oh, yes,” she said. She frowned down at her splayed legs, then swiftly yanked her skirts over them. She tried to stand by holding on to the chair, and when that didn’t work, she scrambled over onto her hands and knees, her taffeta-covered backside turned up toward Harry.

Oh, if only these
were
ordinary circumstances . . .

“My lord,” Tewkes said, cautiously entering the room. “Is everything well, my lord? I heard the crash, and—oh, Miss Augusta!”

He hurried forward to help her back to her feet.

“Miss Augusta has had a small mishap, Tewkes,” Harry explained unnecessarily as he watched Gus’s attempts to compose herself, smoothing her skirts and shoving the loose pins back into her hair. She didn’t have much success, and Harry didn’t care. He liked her like this, her usual tidiness a bit rumpled and disarrayed, and the more he studied her, the more he liked it.

The devil take him, but Gus really was a pretty creature. How had he not seen it before? He’d like to kiss her again; hell, he’d like to do a great many other things with her, too.

Still, as a gentleman, he knew what needed doing instead, and manfully he made himself say it.

“I believe Miss Augusta is ready to retire for the evening, Tewkes,” he said. “Would you see her safely back to her rooms and into her maid’s care?”

“You are mistaken, Harry,” Gus said. “I am not ready to retire. You promised me music with our supper, and I mean to stay until I hear it.”

Music. Harry had completely forgotten about that part of the evening, but now that he was reminded, he could see Vilotti and the others lurking in the hall with their instruments. If music was what she wished, then music she would have.