Betina Krahn (28 page)

And Remington Carr had invaded it.

When she arrived breathless at her chamber door, she could see that the heavy brocades at the windows had been gathered back and the south-facing windows had been thrown open to catch the sultry breeze. Her hand-painted and gilded bed was mounded with bare ticking, and her linens, comforters, and counterpane were piled in heaps on the floor around the foot of the bed. It took a moment to locate Remington.

He stood by her dressing table with his back to her, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his vest, cravat, and collar missing. The sight of his long black-clad legs and his wide wedge-shaped back sent a distracting shiver through her.
When his head bent and his shoulder flexed, she leaned to one side to see what he was doing.

He was holding one of her short black gloves, and as she watched, he brought it to his nose, closed his eyes, and breathed in. A moment later he strolled to the nearby bench, where her shot-silk petticoat and French-cut corset—the purple satin one, covered with black Cluny lace—lay exactly as she had left them the evening before. She looked on, horrified, as he lifted and wiggled the frilly hem of her petticoat, watching the delicate flounces wrap around his wrist. Abandoning that, he ran a speculative hand over the molded cups at the top of her most elegant stays, then dragged his fingers down the front of them to toy with the suspenders that held up her stockings. She could see his smile in profile.

“No garters,” he murmured, just loud enough to hear in the quiet.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” she demanded, lurching forward a step before catching herself.

He turned sharply, then relaxed into a heart-stopping smile at the sight of her.

“Women’s work … what else?” he said in insufferably pleasant tones. “I’ve just given your featherbeds a sound thrashing, and I am waiting for the dust to clear so I can get on with turning your mattresses.”

“My mattresses don’t need turning, thank you,” she charged, her face reddening. “No more than my most personal belongings need plundering. How dare you invade my bedchamber and handle my things?” She was halfway across the room before she realized he wasn’t retreating, and that, in fact, the gleam in his eyes intensified as she approached, making it seem that he had been waiting for her. Warnings sounded in her better sense, and she halted in the middle of the thick carpet.

“Put those back”—she pointed to the gloves in his hand—“and leave at once.”

He raised one eyebrow, then glanced at the dainty black seven-button glove he held. “Only the best Swedish kid, I see. One can always tell Swedish glove leather by the musk that blends so nicely with a woman’s own scent. Your scent is roses, isn’t it?” He inhaled the glove’s scent again and gave her a desirous look. “I do love roses.”

He was teasing, flirting with her again—the handsome wretch. It was no good appealing to his sense of shame; where women were concerned, he didn’t seem to have one. Her only hope, she realized, was to maintain her distance and her composure and use deflating candor to put him in his place. And his place, she told her racing heart, was anywhere
except
the middle of her bedroom.

“You rush headlong from one outrage into another, don’t you, your lordship?” she declared, crossing her arms and resisting the hum of excitement rising in her blood. “You haven’t the slightest regard for decency or propriety—”

“I do wish you would call me Remington,” he said with exaggerated sincerity. “I don’t think a first-name basis would be considered too much familiarity with a man who is about to climb into your bed and turn it upside down.” Trailing that flagrant double entendre behind him, he tossed her glove aside and started for the bed.

“Into my …?” Before she could protest, he was indeed climbing into the middle of her bed, pushing the featherbed to the foot of the bed and seizing the corners of the mattress. As the ropes shifted and groaned and the thick mattress began to roll, she felt a weightless sensation in the pit of her stomach and understood that he was moving more than just a cotton-stuffed ticking. The sight of him in those vulnerable confines was turning
her
inside out, as well.

“Come down out of there this instant, Remington Carr!” She hurried to the edge of the bed, frantic to get him out of it.

“I have a better idea,” he said, shoving to his feet and bracing his legs to remain stable on the springy ropes. “Why don’t you come up here? There’s plenty of room.” He flicked a suggestive look around him, then pinned it on her. “You know, this is a very large bed for a woman who sleeps by herself. How long has it been, Antonia, since you’ve had your ticking turned?”

“The state of my …
ticking
… is no concern of yours,” she declared, feeling her resistance thinning. He was an incorrigible rogue, a professional bachelor who was insufferably sure of his sensual attraction. And he was still trying to seduce her. She jerked her gaze from the skin at the open neck of his shirt, only to have it catch on the way his trousers stretched taut over his thighs. And if she didn’t get him out of here soon, she realized, he stood a very good chance of succeeding.

“Well, well. What’s this?” He paused in the midst of his work and leaned over the mattress to pluck something from under the edge of the featherbed. With one finger he raised a garment that made her eyes widen. “Yours, I presume.”

“My nightdress.” She snatched at the tail of it, grabbing only air as he jerked it out of her reach.

“So this is what you sleep in,” he said smoothly, examining the rosette-rimmed neck, the long, flowing sleeves, and the play of light through the fabric. “Foulard, I believe. You do have interesting taste in nightclothes, Antonia. Most respectable matrons consider foulard too thin, too provocative for decent nightwear.” His eyes glowed as they settled on the row of mother-of-pearl fastenings down the front of the garment.

“And would you look at all those buttons?” He cocked
a rakish look at her and chuckled. “Trust me, Antonia, if a man ever gets his hands on you in this nightgown, a
million buttons
won’t keep it closed.”

Embarrassment burst through her control, drenching her with crimson and heat. “Give me that!” She lunged at the gown and this time succeeded in grabbing the hem. In a flash she had both hands on it and was pulling for all she was worth.

Caught off balance, he toppled onto his knees, but he managed to keep his grip on the gown. Each pulled with determination, but their tug-of-war soon settled into a seesawing stalemate. She ordered him to let go. He refused, claiming finder’s rights under the Common Law. After a lulling moment she gave a heroic tug, which he countered by sinking onto his rear and then using her grip on the gown to drag her onto the bed with him.

“Why, you—” She gasped as she fell on her front across a mound of feather ticking. And a moment later she found herself staring breathlessly into his eyes.

“I do love teasing you, Antonia Paxton,” he said, slackening his hold and giving her a warm chocolate look that made her suddenly crave a taste of him. “I’ve never seen a female out of schoolroom smocks who blushes the way you do.”

“I’m not responsible for my wretched skin,” she said, scrambling to hang on to her indignation as she wrestled up onto her arms.

“I know. That’s what makes it so appealing. It always tells the truth about what is happening inside you, whether you like it or not. And do you know what your skin is telling me now?” He inched closer and relinquished half of his grip on the nightgown, now that he held her by something more powerful. Trailing a finger down the side of her heated face, he felt her involuntary shiver.

“It’s saying that you like this. It’s saying you haven’t
forgotten what it felt like, skin against bare skin.” His finger drifted from her chin to the top of her bodice. “And it’s saying that you’re wearing far too many buttons.”

She was buffeted by waves of perception. His heat, his male scent, the promise in his eyes, the irresistible tenderness of his hand on her face … she was drowning in sensation. Her beleaguered better sense gave one last gasp, which produced a corresponding breath in the physical plane. That half-voluntary reaction was enough to raise her wits above the flood engulfing her senses.

“You have no right to do this.” She abandoned the nightgown to his hands and pulled back to the edge of the bed.

“To do what, Antonia?” He sobered instantly. “To make good my part of the wager? To do an average woman’s work and learn something from it? To change my mind about women?” His face filled with breathtaking intensity. “To want you … to make you want me?”

The playful, teasing rogue was gone. In his place was a forceful and penetrating man used to going against the “givens” of his world, a man who in a few short words had distilled the essence of their conflicts and poured it out between them: the wager, his opinion of women, and what lay unresolved between them as a man and a woman.

To want you. To make you want me.
The words echoed in her heart.

Everything that had gone before had prepared the way for this moment. She was afraid to seize it and yet terrified to lose it. Her mouth dried and her frame tensed as she felt him reaching for her without hands, without words, with only his desire. Temptation mounted as she searched his eyes, seeking in them the answers that could free her longing for him. She had to know.

“You say my ladies have taught you,” she whispered dryly. “Then what have you learned?” She held her breath,
not knowing exactly what she needed to hear. Some of the tension in his face drained as he searched her intensity and realized that his answers were important to her.

“I’ve learned I’m no match for a dozen charming old ladies,” he confessed, edging closer, watching her, ready to halt at the first sign of her withdrawal. “Or for one beautiful and devious younger one.”

“And?” she said, blushing, her pulse drumming faster.

“Lord, you are a bloodthirsty wench. You want the gory details, I see. You want to hear how Gertrude faced me down that first day and reduced me to something in short pants. And I suppose you won’t be content until I’ve confessed that Eleanor is one of the brightest and most inventive persons I’ve ever met, regardless of sex. She and your Molly have the constitution of a pair of prize Belgians … they worked me to the bone. And Molly has my vote for chancellor of the exchequer any day; the French wouldn’t stand a chance in tariff negotiations. Then there’s your aunt Hermione. I’m not convinced she’s quite mortal; I expect her to sprout wings and start sprinkling fairy dust about at any moment. It’s no wonder at all to me that she managed to snare four husbands.” He raised one brow. “Need I go on?”

“Yes,” she said softly, her eyes luminous. “Do.”

He expelled a long-suffering breath. “Well, Prudence isn’t the least bit prudent, and Pollyanna is practical to the point of either the ridiculous or the sublime … I haven’t yet decided which. But by far the worst of the lot is old Cleo. All that wizened charm and wisdom—and she reads minds, you know. It’s nothing short of terrifying.”

She bit her lip, watching him reveal a seldom-seen part of himself in his descriptions of them. They had indeed wormed their way past his smug male defenses, and from the deepening tenderness in his expression, she sensed that the lessons had reached all the way to the core of him. She
had never seen him quite like this: warm and open, honest and engaging. She could scarcely draw breath around the joy expanding in her heart.

“And women’s work?” she asked. “Do you still think women are all devoted to feathering their ‘pampered nests’?”

“We run whole government bureaus with less logic and organization than your ladies employ in your linen room,” he declared a bit sheepishly. “I’ve always believed women are more capable than they are credited with being, that with time and training they would be able to do most things men can do. It never occurred to me that they might already be doing it … only in a different venue.” He smiled wryly. “It’s disconcerting to learn you’ve been so right, and yet so wrong.”

He couldn’t have chosen more perfect words to answer the half-formed questions in her mind. She could only stare in wonder at him as he leaned forward and took her face between his hands. His angular face, his dark, caressing eyes, and his full, mobile mouth were suddenly all she could see.

“You know what this means,” she whispered softly, and he nodded.

“It means you’ve won, Antonia Paxton.”

His lips met hers and the warmth of his kiss billowed through her, thick and sweet, like applewood smoke. It filled her head, her lungs, and seeped into her blood, freeing her responses as it poured through her body. Its source was a now familiar flame in the very core of her, and the fuel of that flame was his touch.

She felt his body jerk and opened her eyes to find that he had kicked the mattress so that it unrolled beside him. In a moment she was wrapped in his arms and sinking back onto that soft expanse. She slid her arms around his
neck, luxuriating in the feel of him against her, and threading her fingers into his hair.

They were suddenly in the same position, feeling the same heady rise of passion as they had the other day in the upstairs parlor. It was as if the three intervening days, filled with doubts and conflicts and confrontations, hadn’t existed. Within moments her long-reined desires were straining at the bounds of her experience, hungry for every bit of sensation he could provide.

Hindered by the tiny buttons of her bodice, he impatiently pressed a kiss on the skin just revealed at the base of her throat. As the fastenings slowly yielded and her bodice parted, baring her chest, he trailed steamy kisses down her breast to the edge of her corset. Then either a stubborn button or perhaps the tremble of his hands halted his progress, and he raised his head with a laugh.

“Is this why you wear so many of the wretched things? To deter would-be ravishers? What I wouldn’t give for a good pair of scissors.”

The darkened-jewel glow of her eyes and the delectable reddening of her lips snared his gaze. Lying beneath him, she was the embodiment of womanliness in a way he had never experienced it—open, warm, and vulnerable. For the first time in his life he knew what it was to truly want a woman. With growing wonder he realized that the wanting involved every part of him, from the depths of his passions to the very heights of his pride. He wanted to touch every part of her with every part of him.