Beyond Innocence (4 page)

A spindly chair had been pulled between two towers of jewel-bright satin. By gesture, the maid directed him to sit,
then
hushed his questions with a finger to her mouth.

Feeling somewhat ridiculous, Edward sat, then stiffened when her arm brushed his shoulder. People simply did not touch the earl of Greystowe without permission.

"Pardon,"
she murmured and pressed a latch that had been hidden among the birds and foliage of the wallpaper. A small aperture opened in the wall.

"Watch," she said. "You will see all you wish to know."

Edward blinked at the peephole, then at his guide, but the little maid was already slipping out the door. His heart beat hard with shock. Were Mowbry's other clients so jaded they could accept this sort of
offer without offense? Just how dissipated did the solicitor think he was, expecting him to spy on a half-dressed woman who might conceivably become his brother's bride?

His face warmed with anger, but then he calmed. He'd said he wanted to look the girl over without her knowledge. What better means than this? Besides, for all he knew, she and the dressmaker were merely talking in the other room, fully clothed, with none of their womanly attributes hanging out.

Despite this assurance, his mouth was dry as he pressed his eye against the wall.

The room into which he gazed was small and bright, the gloom outside cast away by the light of a dozen bull's-eye lamps. A tall cheval glass reflected the figures of two dark-haired women.

Heat flashed over his body. The dressmaker was clothed in a smart gold gown, but Miss Fairleigh wore only her chemise and drawers. She was everything Mowbry claimed: lush and rosy with a mass of
shining chestnut hair rolled and braided on the crown of her head. The dressmaker had just peeled away her corset. Even without the restraint, her waist dipped in like an hourglass.

Edward swallowed, but did not pull away. No more than medium height, the woman's legs seemed disproportionately long. He could see the shadow of her bottom through the fine linen drawers. A mended patch rested atop one shapely buttock, an endearing imperfection which could not detract from the charm of her derriere. Her flesh was full and well rifted. A man would find a pleasurable handhold should he coax this paragon beneath him. Indeed, he'd find many pleasurable grips. Her breasts were a bounty, her arms both soft and graceful. Her feet— He tugged a sudden tightness at his collar. Her feet were small and white, feet he'd thought only a painter could create, with tiny curled toes and ankles a man could circle with his hand.

A lucky man.

Edward shifted on the stingy padding of his chair. Mere seconds had passed since he'd first looked in
the room, but his cock stretched full within its skin. The tip pulsed tight against the placket of his
trousers, heavy and urgent, a creature with a mind of its own. The knowledge that what he was doing
was beyond the bounds of all propriety simply made the swollen
tissues pulse harder.

When he released his bated breath, he realized he could hear as well as see. What struck his ears first
was the rumbling purr of an orange cat that had curled adoringly at Miss Fairchild's feet. Clever cat, he thought, in total sympathy with its instincts.

"We must order three French corsets," the dressmaker was saying as she stretched a measuring tape around Miss Fairleigh's admirable waist. "Two for ordinary wear and one cut low for evening. With
one of the new spoon busks, I think. They are
tres elegante.
You will like them very much."

Miss Fairleigh opened her mouth,
then
blushed as the tape moved to circle her bosom. The dressmaker's fingers met at the center of her cleavage, pressing it slightly together. In the glow of the lamps, Edward watched as hectic color spread enchantingly over her chest.

Miss Fairleigh cleared her throat. "I really think one new corset would be enough—if, as you say, I must have a French one."

"As I say?" tutted the dressmaker, kneeling down to measure the length of Miss Fairleigh's legs.
The cat mewed with displeasure as she elbowed it aside.
"As I
know,
mademoiselle.
You must marshal your weapons. A good set of corsets is a powerful weapon indeed."

"But my finances..." said Miss Fairleigh, her voice faint. The dressmaker ignored her.

"Stop wiggling," she ordered. "You would think no one but me had ever seen your ankles." With a sigh
of satisfaction, she stood and wiped a single curl from her narrow forehead. "It is good. Your measurements are very close to a dress I have on hand today. A snip here, a tuck mere, and you shall
at once be decent."

Miss Fairleigh's dovelike hands fluttered to her trembling breast.
"Oh, no, Madame Victoire.
I can't take someone else's dress."

"Nonsense," said Madame. "This customer is late settling her account. Therefore, I will be late with her delivery." And, without giving further heed to Miss Fairleigh's protests, she called for someone named Marie to bring the claret-colored visiting dress.

"Claret?"
Miss Fairleigh's tone was rife with dread.

"
Non
, non,"
scolded the dressmaker, briskly lacing her into her reputedly inferior English corset. "Do
not worry yourself. Your father would want you to go on with your life, would he not?"

"Yes, but—"

"There are no buts. You do what you must. A man will not marry a crow!"

The exchange had Edward smiling, despite the pounding weight between his legs. This woman was so
shy and self-effacing that Madame Victoire's attempts to exhort her to femme-fatale-dom could only be amusing. Miss Fairleigh was a peach, he decided, a juicy country peach whose sweetness tempted one
to bite.

Of course, he reminded himself, his teeth would not be doing the biting.

Unfortunately, this caution did not quell his fascination as the dressmaker arrayed Miss Fairleigh in the frock. Had he ever watched his mistresses being dressed? If he had, he could not recall it. Surely, few sights could be more seductive than that of a woman tying another woman's petticoats, or steadying a bustle, or dropping a rustling silk skirt over two submissively raised white arms.

Miss Fairleigh herself seemed conscious of the erotic charge. Edward doubted she'd ever had a lady's maid; doubted she'd ever been intimately touched by another human being. Her creamy, broad-boned cheeks were once again pink as Madame Victoire hooked the separate bodice. The fit over her breasts was snug, but the dressmaker seemed more satisfied than otherwise when she returned to consider her front.

"With a French corset," she said, "this would lie perfectly." As if in demonstration, she ran her hands from Miss Fairleigh's shoulders to her waist. Her palms swept the tips of her client's breasts. Edward
did not think Miss Fairleigh
could feel much pressure through the layers of cloth, but what she did feel had her ears turning scarlet.

He experienced a nearly uncontrollable urge to rush into the room and cuddle her against his chest. Madame Victoire should not tease the girl this way. She was an innocent. She deserved protection!

Which did not change the fact that watching the Frenchwoman touch
her
had aroused him. His hands were fisted on his thighs, sweat prickled his linen, and the wall beneath his cheek was growing damp.
He could not recall a desire this urgent His body shook with the force of it His breath came in long,
hard pulls. If he hadn't known the house was full of people, he'd have opened his trousers and eased himself. He wasn't prone to self-indulgence, but it would have been a business of moments. As it was,
he was heartbeats from exploding.

But Madame Victoire had finished arranging the pleated muslin fraise that framed the dress's neckline. She turned her client to face the mirror. Edward's jaw dropped at the same time Miss Fairleigh's did.

In her chemise and drawers, Miss Fairleigh had been a schoolboy's naughty dream. In the elegant claret dress, she stopped the heart.

She looked a grand
London
lady, every inch, from her stiff stand-up collar to the train of her polonaise. The complicated draping of her bustle seemed to echo the piquant flesh he knew it hid. Only her expression, wondering and unsure, betrayed her country roots.

"There," said Madame Victoire, her hands on Miss Fairleigh's shoulders. "How does that make you feel?"

Miss Fairleigh touched the waist of the figure-hugging gown as if the silk might burn. "I think it frightens me."

Madame smiled and smoothed a fallen lock into her customer's coiffure. Miss Fairleigh's hair was ruler straight and, if the dressmaker's expression was a guide, quite pleasant to touch. Again he felt that dark frisson of the forbidden. The girl did not know what Madame was doing. The girl could not guess what such gestures conveyed.

"You are seeing your feminine power," said the dressmaker, "without that ugly black dress to dim its light."

Miss Fairleigh lifted her chin in the first hint of stubbornness Edward had seen her display. "A woman shouldn't be powerful just because she's pretty."

"Shouldn't she?" The dressmaker clucked in her droll French way. "Why do you worry about 'shouldn't'? This is the way things are,
cherie
.
Women walk a hard road in this world. We must use our weapons where we find them. Just as you must use yours,
non
?
You must hunt the nice husband. If your beauty brings him close enough to see how nice he is, what is wrong with that?"

"I've never liked being stared at," Miss Fairleigh confessed.

"Oh, la!"
Madame trilled out a laugh. "I would tell you to get used to it, but I know your shyness is part of your charm. Like honey to the bee. When you quiver and blush, you make the men feel big and strong."

Without warning, Miss Fairleigh laughed, as if the absurdity of her complaint had just then struck her. The sound was an infectious warble that seemed to come from deep within her chest. "I shall stop!"
she declared between the merry bursts. "I shall never blush again."

And the dressmaker laughed, because her client's face was rosy even then.

* * *

Edward stalked to
the carriage without waiting for an escort. He was angry with himself for staying so long, angry for being attracted to the hapless country miss, angry at Alastair Mowbry for putting an innocent in that position. That the man had been right about Miss Fairleigh did not calm him in the
least, nor did the thought that, most likely, a wish for her well-being had played some part in the
solicitor's scheme.

Worst of all was his sense of violation. Edward was sweating with arousal, still half hard beneath his clothes. The minute Mowbry saw him he would guess what he was feeling—as Madame Victoire must have guessed, and the little maid, and perhaps even the seamstresses down the hall. This, to Edward,
was intolerable. As wrong as it had
been, his experience in that chamber should have been completely private.

His mood was as thunderous as the sky by the time he ducked into the waiting Greystowe brougham.
The coachman did not tarry for instructions, but snapped the horses sharply into motion.

Mowbry sat in the shadows of the opposite seat.
Silent.
Knowing.

"You will fill that peephole at once," Edward said in his coldest, darkest voice.

If the solicitor's expression changed, Edward did not see it.

"It is only for private use," he said.
"A game between myself and Madame Victoire.
You are the first outsider to have seen it."

His tone was entirely neutral, free of insinuation or censure. Edward forced his hands to unclench. Obviously, he was in no position to judge this man.

"She is all you said," he admitted gruffly.

Wisely, Mowbry didn't take this as an invitation to repeat his estimation of Miss Fairleigh's charms. Edward didn't think he could have borne that. Instead, the solicitor brushed a bit of lint from the
bowler he held in his lap. "Have you a sponsor in mind, my lord?"