Cheryl Holt (4 page)

The consequences, should they be discovered, were so precarious and so nasty, that he couldn’t fathom why she’d dawdle and risk so much. If they were caught, he had naught to lose, but she could forfeit everything. Her very future, the caliber of the rest of her life, was at stake, so she was either very courageous or very imprudent, and since she seemed to be very bright, he couldn’t decide what to make of her.

He wasn’t worth the peril she faced.

Sidling in, he let the toes of his boots slip under her
dress, the billowy fabric of her skirt tangling around his legs. The air between them came alive, their proximity generating an energy that sparked and sizzled.

He was immensely experienced with women. His handsome appearance, coupled with his father’s being an earl, and himself a bastard, was a combination that most couldn’t resist, so many an elegant beauty had graced his bed.

The exhilaration Lady Olivia evoked was a sign that they possessed a natural desire for one another, the type that only a few fortunate couples ever managed. If they recklessly became lovers, they would have a bond others never attained.

The notion terrified him. He didn’t want to suffer an attraction to her. He merely wanted to torment and plague her until she cried off with Edward. He had no more lofty or low designs on her than that.

Stepping away from her, he let the agitated atmosphere calm. He was determined to keep their interaction frivolous, to participate in flirtatious repartee and nothing more.

He mimicked a credible pout. “Are you positive you haven’t been pining away?”

“You are the most vain creature I’ve ever met.”

“Vanity is one of my most stellar qualities.”

“You’re right about that.”

Oh, and wasn’t she sassy? Alluring and adorable, and from their pithy banter, he liked her much more than was wise.

She reached for her satchel, ready to tuck it under her arm and waltz out, but he snatched it away before she could get a firm grip. Panicked, she lunged for it, but he held it out of her grasp.

“Give it to me!”

As she fought to recover it, they had a brief wrestling match, with her flailing and clawing at him. Before he could subdue her, she landed a kick to his shin, and a punch in the ribs that was severe enough to make him wince. Using his superior build, he pushed her to the wall, his torso flattened to hers all the way down.

He could feel her breasts, the flatness of her stomach, the curve of her thighs, and his body’s response was predictable. His phallus swelled and grew hard as stone. She was too unschooled to understand his physical volatility, and cad that he was, he leaned in, reveling in the forbidden contact.

Their breathing was labored, their tempers elevated, and she was glaring up at him, her sapphire eyes accusing, reproaching, denouncing, and he could deduce every emotion hidden in their depths. Fury. Apprehension. Dread. Mistrust. But also her increasing appreciation of himself as a man, and of herself as a woman. Of the intimacy their stance engendered, the excitement their adjacency induced.

Her brow furrowed in confusion, her bewilderment plain. She could sense the anatomical thrill and tumult just as he could, and while
he
knew it meant they were compatible in a corporeal way, she had no background that would help her to interpret the stimulation, or that would prepare her for how to deal with it.

Her lush, ruby lips were slightly parted, moist, and only inches away, and he was so very tempted to close the gap between them, to press his lips to her own. Suddenly, he was frantic to learn what it would be like to kiss her, and the power of his craving was so potent that it scared him. There was an ancient, primal beast lurking within, coveting her at any cost.

With stupendous strength, he pulled himself from the brink of his unruly hunger, forcing himself to focus on
their surroundings, to remember who he was and who
she
was, and he grappled to reassert the levity with which he wanted their assignations to progress.

Tucking her at his side, he pinned her arms so that she couldn’t deliver any blows. Then he placed her satchel on the table and, fumbling into it, extracted her sketches.

“Don’t, please,” she begged, but he was too much of an ass to heed her request. He spread them out, critically evaluating them. When she realized he wouldn’t desist, she slumped into him, seeming to deflate, as though her bones had melted, and he was propping her up, balancing her on his hip.

“You’re very talented,” he said after an extensive review.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

“You like to draw, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

She was lying. Her ability to capture nuance was clear and unmistakable, and he couldn’t comprehend why she’d deny her expertise. Tenaciously, he repeated, “You like to draw, don’t you?”

“I suppose I do.”

Embarrassed, she shrugged him off, and he released her as he raised the issue that had vexed him ever since she’d entered the room. “Why the fascination with nudes?”

“I know next to nothing about the human body. It’s not as if I can have anyone pose naked.”

“No, you can’t.”

“When I chanced upon this book, I thought it might be a simple method to . . . to . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“To what?”

“To practice. I’m not permitted to draw, you see, and so I have limited opportunity.”

It was the strangest edict he’d ever heard. “Who said you shouldn’t draw?”

“My stepmother, Margaret.” He tensed, recalling the fussy, pompous older woman he’d witnessed from across the yard, and she hurried on. “It’s a long story,” she claimed, “but she doesn’t think Edward—that is, Lord Salisbury—would approve of my interest, and it’s so very important that he like me.”

This last was mouthed so quietly that it barely registered. He bent forward, striving to catch the utterance, just as she peered up and impaled him with her steady gaze.

“Swear to me that you won’t tell him.”

As if he could! Not with her beseeching him as though the fate of the entire universe depended on his silence.

“No, I never would.”

“How can I believe you?”

“I give you my word.”

She pondered him, delving and prying into the secret sections of his black heart where his pettiness and resentment fermented, and he endeavored to shield his true self from her keen assessment. While usually he didn’t care about others’ opinions, he wanted her to picture him as a better man, more kind and noble than he was.

Returning her stare, he tried to let her ascertain only the good and none of the bad. He yearned to have her perceive him as remarkable and heroic, loyal and reliable, someone she would consider a friend.

Scooping up her papers, he stuffed them into the satchel, secured the flap, then extended it to her. “Here,” he said. “I never saw them.”

Despondent and forlorn, she clutched the packet to her chest. She was desperate for Edward to fancy her, which indicated that she was in some sort of trouble, and in dire need of the protection that marriage would bring her.

He couldn’t bear it that she was distraught, that she’d
been afflicted by adversity, and he found himself stupidly disposed to assist her in any way he could. With the exception of his mother and sister, he’d never been a pantywaist for a woman in distress, but had it been five hundred years earlier, he imagined he’d be wearing the shining armor of a knight.

Apprehensively, she regarded the door, eager to rush out and be away, but he didn’t want her to go. He wanted to chat and babble, to query her as to why she’d traveled to Salisbury, about what problem was harrying her, and he endured a silly vision of himself, down on bended knee, imploring her to stay.

With no effort, she was transforming him into a gelding!

She inhaled, having made the weighty decision that he just might be trustworthy. How he hoped he wouldn’t disappoint!

“Might I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“How long have you known Lord Salisbury?”

“All my life,” he was able to truthfully state.

“Would you deem your acquaintance to be close?”

“Well . . . yes.” A complete explanation was much too complex, and he wasn’t convinced he could supply the correct answer if he had a week to devise it.

“You mentioned that he has a collection of this . . . this . . . erotica.”

“He does, but it’s not all his. The men in the Paxton family have a fondness for it and have purchased various rare volumes over many centuries.”

“I’m not very conversant with such things, and I was wondering . . . that is . . . if you . . . well . . .”

He was tickled by her reticence, and seized the informality of the moment to use her given name. “You can say it, Olivia. Go ahead. It’s all right.”

Bolstered by his coaxing, she blurted out, “Why would a man own such a book?”

A flippant retort was his habitual style, but she was so serious and so solemn that he couldn’t make light of her earnest inquiry. It was too sincere. Yet at the same juncture, he didn’t want to shock or startle her.

Cautiously, he clarified, “Men enjoy looking at nude women. It arouses them, in a manly way.”

“To what purpose?”

He actually blushed. The past few years, he’d spent so much time around soldiers and whores that he’d forgotten there were still naïve souls in the world. “For the types of behaviors that couples revel in in the marital bed.”

“They disrobe?”

“Aye.”

“The husband would
want
his wife unclothed?”

“He would.”

“So that her breasts and her . . .”

They were both stunned by her voicing of
breasts
in his presence. It produced an immediate, monumental shift in their relationship.

“Above all else, a man delights in observing and touching a naked woman. It’s a male curse, the beast in us.”

“If I marry Lord Salisbury, will he expect me to . . .?” Her cheeks flushed crimson, and just when he would have responded, she held up her hand, stopping him. “Never mind. I really, really don’t want to know.”

Frazzled, she circled around him, needing to be away.

“Livvie . . .” He shortened her name, liking how it sounded and finding it suited her far better than Olivia. “Tarry with me. We’ll talk about this and—”

“No. I must go.”

It was already evident that he couldn’t refuse her anything. Not even a mere plea that she be allowed to
depart unimpeded. How did she do that? Why did he let her? What phenomenon was luring him into her orbit, and why did he not wish to fight it?

“Then come tomorrow night.”

“I can’t!” she said.

“Do it for me.”

She shook her head and ran out, and long after her footsteps had faded, he stared at the spot where she’d been. He’d be waiting for her the next night, and if she didn’t show up, he couldn’t predict what he might do. But he
would
see her again. Of that much, he was certain.

Olivia sat at a table by the window in her room, gazing across the rear gardens of the estate. The July sun was shining, the sky blue, the grass green. She was supposed to be outside in the balmy weather, doing her best to socialize with and impress Lord Salisbury, but she couldn’t force herself downstairs.

She had managed to pen a letter to her niece, Helen, but that was all she’d accomplished. Her thoughts were in such disarray that she couldn’t concentrate beyond a simple task.

Her sketching pad lay before her, and she scowled at what her hand had inadvertently created. Naked women! Dozens and dozens of them. Frontal views, profiles, backs, and sides. Whenever her pencil met the page, she’d start out innocently, then her legitimate endeavor would turn lewd.

In an obsessive fashion, she’d fixated on the erotica in the library. No other topic could wedge itself into her mind. Her musings were filled with wanton themes, the scenes from the book clear and precise and disturbing her in an unexplainable, titillating way.

The women she’d depicted had their breasts prominently displayed, and in the past forty-eight hours, she’d drawn so many bosoms that she was becoming a veritable master at depicting shape and size.

Upon witnessing how many there were, she groaned
and pushed the drawings away. What was happening to her?

In each illustration, she’d posed a man in the middle, and she’d surrounded him with adoring, worshipful females. Disgracefully, he looked like that bounder Phillip, who was more handsome than any man she’d ever encountered, than any man had a right to be. She couldn’t keep from struggling over the details that made him so magnificent.

Disgustingly, she’d also fussed over the women, trying to produce the appropriate expressions of adulation, when it had occurred to her that all those nymphs and fairies resembled herself.

Glancing down, she couldn’t deny what she hadn’t wanted to recognize: She’d sketched herself over and over, bared, vulnerable, impish, and blatantly flaunted for Phillip’s male approval.

What did this mean?

She shivered, but not from the cold. If she was to wed Edward, he would count on her disrobing, on her parading in a naked condition.

She couldn’t exhibit such flagrant behavior for the older aristocrat. From the interactions they’d enjoyed so far, she’d describe him as reserved, polite, and much too stoic to be overcome by a passion that would cause them to undress and romp. Should she be required to strip for him, she’d expire from mortification.

But I could do it with Phillip
. . .

The audacious thought popped up out of nowhere, and was so twisted and so unconventional that she couldn’t fathom from where it might have sprung. Was there a bawdy side to her disposition of which she was unaware? Had she secretly been pining away for physical intimacy?

Phillip wanted her to meet with him that very night,
and though she’d been cosseted throughout her life, she grasped that he’d invited her with nefarious intent. There was nothing pure or harmless about his solicitation. He was a man, and she was a woman, and he wanted to engage in some of the licentious tomfoolery that was delineated in the erotic book.