Educating Caroline (20 page)

Braden Granville, however, was not about to let her escape that easily, and he hurried after her.

“Oh, Lord,” Caroline said, not very encouragingly, when she saw that he’d followed her. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, Caroline? I’m not doing anything. I was only joking when I said that about shooting your fiancé. I certainly didn’t mean—”

“No, not that,” she said, with an impatient stamp of a slippered foot. “Why are you here, talking to me? I know you think I’m nothing but a simpering schoolgirl. So why do you bother seeking me out?”

Braden hesitated, taken aback by the question. He ought to have expected it, of course. Caroline Linford was nothing if not direct. Braden knew he could not reply with anything like her candor, however. He couldn’t possibly tell her the truth—that he had been unable, since he’d first noticed those enormous brown eyes of hers, to get them completely out of his mind. That, unlikely as it might seem, he felt an odd sort of kinship with her—felt it since that night he’d held her head to her lap, and listened to her describe her utter lack of commitment to her friend Emily’s cause. And most of all, that he had found, during that highly erotic kiss they’d shared in his office— the first and only kiss, he was convinced, that she had ever had in her twenty-one years—that he wanted her in the worst way.

And so he replied, quietly, “The truth is, Caroline, that you . . . interest me. And when someone interests me, I make an effort to get to know her better.”

Caroline stared up at him in disbelief. “Interest you?” she echoed, her voice breaking. “I
interest
you?”

“Yes.” He nodded seriously. “You do.” But since he could tell by her expression that she did not believe him, he decided to prove it to her. And so he seated himself upon a nearby stone bench, and said, “Tell me about it.”

The clouds abruptly parted, and in the few brief seconds the moon was unobscured, he saw her expression in its light.

She looked confused.

“Tell you about what?” she asked.

“Your brother’s accident.”

Whatever it was she’d been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. He could tell by the way her mouth fell open. Then the moon disappeared again, and he could see only the outline of her, silhouetted against the balustrade that separated the promenade from the garden.

“His. . . .” Her voice was faint. “His accident?”

“Yes. You told me he was shot. At Oxford, wasn’t it?” He patted the empty seat beside him on the bench. “Sit here and tell me about it.”

She took a step toward him, and an arc of light, falling from one of the tall windows looking into the ballroom, fell across her. He could see that her look of confusion had deepened to one of suspicion.

“Why do you want to talk about what happened to my brother?” she asked, warily.

“Because,” he replied. “You
interest
me, remember? And though he seems to have a made a full recovery, I can tell that the earl’s accident—or any mention of it, or of guns in general—still seems to upset you. And I’d like to know why.”

“Because he nearly died,” she said, in a tone that suggested that this should have been obvious.

“Did he? Was it a single wound, or multiple shots?”

“Just the one,” she said. “Only the bullet went through here.” And she pointed to an area just below her heart.

Braden, though he wasn’t certain whether or not she could see him, sitting in the shadows, as he was, nodded. “Yes. I imagine that must have been very frightening.”

And then she was on the bench beside him, seated, if he wasn’t mistaken, with one foot tucked beneath her. She was so close that he could smell the lavender scent she wore. It mingled with the fragrance of rain and roses that hung so heavily in the air.

“They couldn’t move him,” she said. “And we had to stay in Oxford for several weeks—all through Christmas until past Candlemas—until he was finally strong enough to come home. Even then, we weren’t certain—we couldn’t be certain he’d live through the trip. But Ma only trusts London surgeons, and so she thought it worth the risk.”

The earl, Braden learned, survived the trip, in large part thanks to the efforts of the Marquis of Winchilsea, without whom, Caroline asserted, her small family would have been lost. Her mother sunk half the time in hysterics, the marquis had been a godsend, making all the necessary arrangements at inns along the way, seeing to the changing of the horses, everything, almost as if Thomas had been his own brother.

Never had there been such a devoted friend. The kindness of the marquis could never be repaid by Caroline and her family.

“And so,” Braden said, when she fell silent, her narrative complete, “you had no choice but to say yes when he asked you to marry him.”

He felt, rather than saw, the foot she’d tucked beneath her shift, until both her slippers were again on the ground.

“That isn’t how it was at all,” Caroline informed him, in a prim little voice. “I had been . . . fond of Lord Winchilsea for some time before he proposed. I was delighted to accept his offer of marriage.”

And he imagined she had been. It had undoubtedly been her first. He couldn’t help noticing that Slater’s proposal coincided rather neatly with Caroline’s first season out after inheriting her share of her father’s fortune.

“It’s no small wonder, then,” Braden observed, in a carefully neutral tone, “that you are so anxious to please your future husband.”

He could not tell for certain, but he thought from her silence that he had made her blush. It had been years, he realized, since he’d last been with a woman who blushed as easily as Caroline Linford seemed to.

“Now that I am fully aware of how very much you owe the marquis,” he went on, hardly knowing what he was saying, he was so conscious of her closeness, the warmth radiating from her, the sweet smell of her hair, “I think I’ll have a better idea what topics we ought to cover during your lessons.”

“About my lessons, Mr. Granville,” she said, without the slightest bit of rancor in her husky voice. “I truly do believe that what happened this afternoon was a mistake. A horrible, terrible mistake. I think we’d do better—far better—not to continue the, um, lessons.”

“I
don’t think it was a mistake,” he said.

And before she knew what he was about, he’d snaked an arm around her waist, and pulled her—not roughly, but emphatically—against him.

“I don’t think it was a mistake at all,” he said, and she could feel his deep voice reverberating through his chest.

Her face just inches below his, she stared up at him, into a pair of eyes every bit as dark as hers, only with little licks of flame in them that her own eyes, she knew, sadly lacked. Those firelit eyes were examining her as closely as she was studying him, only whereas there was nothing but resentment in her gaze—or so she told herself—Braden Granville’s seemed to be filled with something else entirely.

“Mr. Granville.” For some reason, she found herself whispering. Why, when she ought to have been shouting with fury? But all that came from her throat was the weakest of pleas. “I would really prefer it very much if you released me, sir.”

“No,” he said, and for once, his deep voice was a little unsteady, “I really don’t think you would.”

Caroline had been staring, with a sort of hypnotic wonder, at his lips as he spoke. They weren’t exactly nice lips. Far from it. Not that they were ugly. Not at all. What they were, she thought, were lips that had done
a lot
of kissing.

“Really, Mr. Granville,” she said, unable to drag her gaze from his mouth. “You simply cannot go around
grabbing
people like this—”

Then those lips, which a second before she’d been admiring, were on hers, and she couldn’t think of anything at all.

15

I
t was happening all over again. Just like before, only worse somehow now, because Caroline really ought to have known better this time. She knew, she
knew
how her body would react the second it came into contact with his! But instead of pushing him away, instead of screaming for all she was worth, anything,
anything
to keep it from happening again, she just sat there,
knowing
it was going to happen all over again, and letting it. Letting it!

And she’d thought Jacquelyn Seldon was bad. Why, she was no better.

But that knowledge didn’t stop her from feeling as if a flame had been lit inside her the moment his mouth touched hers. Nor did it keep her body from melting into his until it seemed as if she was only kept upright by his embrace alone. It didn’t do any good at all at keeping her arms from sliding up around his neck. Nor was she able to keep from sighing just a little . . . which left her lips open just enough for that questing tongue of his to launch another exploration of the inside of her mouth.

And this time, she met that thrust with a knowing flick of her own tongue, just to see what would happen. . . .

What happened was a lot more than Caroline had bargained for. Braden Granville let out a groan, muffled against her mouth, a sound she might have confused with a grunt of pain, except that he didn’t push her away. Far from it. Instead, he tightened his grip on her, drawing her so close to him with one hand, she was almost pulled into his lap, while his other hand rose, skimming the bodice of her gown, running up along the smooth skin of her arm, until his fingers came to rest on the place where her heart was drumming hard against her chest.

Caroline started as she felt the searing heat from his hand over the curve of her breast. She had never been touched there before, not by anyone. With his tongue still playing hide-and-seek with hers, she couldn’t say anything, though she tried to draw away from him reflexively, knowing that things were going too far, too fast.

He wouldn’t release her, however. He wouldn’t give an inch. Those taunting fingers startled her even further by dipping beneath the lace of her extremely modest decolletage, until he was cupping the soft firm flesh of her breast in his hand, her nipple already hard against the center of his palm.

At this, Caroline tore her mouth from his.

“What—?” she started to demand, then gasped as his fingers began to knead that sensitive part of her, exerting a gentle but inexorable pressure that almost had her crying out with wordless appreciation, as, she now realized, he had when she’d started kissing him back.

“Caroline.”

Just her name. That was all he said, just her name, and that barely recognizable, he’d uttered it so gutturally. His thumb moved over the hardened peak of her nipple, causing another wave of desire to slam through her. She was conscious that she’d gone damp everywhere, but mostly between her legs, where she felt the same tenderness she’d experienced that afternoon in his office.

She blinked up at him, her breath coming in quick, hiccuppy gasps.
Oh, Lord,
she thought.
I can’t breathe again.
She could feel something very hard indeed pressing through the front of his breeches and against her hip.

So this is what it’s like,
she thought, hazily.
What it was like for Hurst and Jackie. Well, that explains it, I suppose.

And then his fingers were tightening on her breast again, and his mouth lowered over hers once more. . . .

It wasn’t until she heard her name being called from inside the house that sanity returned. Bracing both of her hands against his hard chest, Caroline shoved with all of her might. Braden, who’d been so caught up in the embrace that he was taken completely unaware, would have fallen off the bench entirely, and into a potted hydrangea if he hadn’t righted himself at the last minute.

“What—” he started to demand, but broke off as the Marquis of Winchilsea stepped through the French doors, irritably calling Caroline’s name.

“Oh,
there
you are,” her fiancé cried in relief. “Your mother and I’ve been looking
everywhere
for you, darling.”

Caroline backpedaled until she came into contact with the rough stone balustrade that guarded the steps leading down to the gardens. Her guilty gaze was fastened on Hurst’s face, but it was apparently too dark for him to notice either the hectic color playing on her cheeks or the fact that her chest was rising and falling as rapidly as if she’d been running.

Nor did he seem to register the fact that there was a man standing a few feet away from her, flicking hydrangea petals from his coat and adjusting his trousers to accommodate that thing Caroline had felt but hadn’t quite been able to identify.

“Whatever are you doing out
here?”
Hurst demanded, going to Caroline’s side. “I had the devil of a time finding you. Where did that—” He finally noticed Braden, who’d straightened to his full height and was watching them with his arms folded across his chest, and an inscrutable expression upon his dark face.

“Oh,” Hurst said. The disappointment in his voice was so evident that Caroline would have burst out laughing if she hadn’t felt such mortification over what Hurst, if he’d been a few seconds sooner, might have seen. “It’s
you.”

“It is,” Braden agreed, tersely. What in God’s name did Caroline see in this annoying parasite? he was asking himself. He was going to have to do something to get rid of him, and fast. Braden wondered if pouring gunpowder into one or two of the man’s cigars would count, in Caroline’s mind, as extreme violence.

Caroline cleared her throat. “Hurst,” she said. “Mr. Granville and I were just . . . just. . . .”

“Discussing,” Braden said, calmly, “the situation in France.”

Hurst’s handsome face crumpled with perplexion— which was all right, because perplexion became the marquis.

“France?”
he echoed.

“Indeed,” Braden said, gravely. “They have such a unique way of—”

“Fighting the Prussians,” Caroline finished for him. “Really, quite revolutionary, those new guns they’ve been using.”

“New guns?” Hurst shook his head, clearly bewildered. “The two of you were out here, talking about
guns?”

“Well, what else? Mr. Granville is, after all, an expert on the subject.” Caroline slipped her hand through the crook of her fiancé’s arm and said, “I suppose Mother must be ready to go. Is that why you were looking for me, Hurst? Because Mother is ready to go?”

He said, “Er, yes. Yes, she is.”

“All right.” Caroline hugged his arm to her. “Well, Mr. Granville, I suppose this is good night, then.”

He only looked at her.

In a way, she supposed, that look was worse than anything he could have said. It was an enigmatic look, completely devoid of expression. And yet, seeing it, she suddenly felt that same queer little spurt of emotion that she’d experienced the night she’d looked at him at Dame Ashforth’s.

What was it she was feeling? Pity? For the great Braden Granville?

But that was ridiculous. He didn’t need her pity.

Or did he? After all, it wasn’t as if he really fit in anywhere. He was too wealthy now to remain in Seven Dials. But because he was only newly wealthy, he would never be accepted into the social circle in which Caroline traveled so easily. Even
she’d
had trouble getting invitations to certain events before her engagement. After all, her father had only been the
first
Earl of Bartlett, a title so new that most people sneered at it. Thomas, as the second earl of Bartlett, had an easier time of it. What people had made of Braden Granville, when he’d first started coming round, Caroline could not imagine, but she supposed that his engagement to Jacquelyn Seldon had helped gain him a good deal of social acceptance.

Truth be told, they were not so very different, Caroline Linford and Braden Granville. Was that why she felt this queer sort of kinship with him? She ought, she knew, to be angry with him for kissing her again—especially after she’d made it so clear to him that she did not welcome his advances. She had managed to work herself into a fine rage after he’d kissed her the first time in his offices. Why couldn’t she do it now?

“That,” her mother hissed into her ear, a few minutes later, after Hurst had led her back into the ballroom, “is the last time you are to speak to that man. Ever. Do you understand? It is unconscionable, a man like that, and a girl like you—an engaged woman—alone. In a garden. At night! Why, I’ve never in my life heard of such a thing. What must the marquis think of you? And the Dalrymples! They’re mortified! In the garden of people whom the Prince of Wales holds in such high esteem. How could you?”

Caroline pointed at her brother.
“He’s
the one who let him cut in,” she said.

Thomas held out both hands in a
Who, me?
gesture. “He asked,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Say no?”

“Really, Ma,” Caroline said. “That would only have caused an even bigger scene.”

“I . . . don’t . . . care.” When she was angry, the Dowager Lady Bartlett’s lips had a tendency to all but disappear, she pursed them so hard. They were nowhere to be seen at that moment. “You are never to dance with him again, Caroline. Not dance with him, nor speak to him, nor even be seen within a ten-foot radius of him. If it happens again, I’ll . . . I’ll send you to the country until your wedding. And as it is, you can plan on spending all day tomorrow locked in your room!”

Caroline and her brother exchanged glances, trying not to laugh out loud. Their mother’s wrath had always been a source of great amusement for them.

The Dowager Lady Bartlett, however, happened to catch this particular exchange, and, made even more furious by it, declared, “And not only that, young lady, but I shall sell off all your horses!”

Caroline felt no urge to laugh after that.

“You
wouldn’t!”
she cried.

“I would.” Lady Bartlett held her chin high. “All of them. The ones you keep here in London, as well the ones you think I don’t know about, those horrid cart horses you’ve been going about, buying up, and sending to Emily’s place in Shropshire.”

“Ma!” Caroline stamped her foot. “You can’t!”

“I can, and I will,” Lady Bartlett said, primly. Satisfied that she’d done her maternal duty, Lady Bartlett let out a little yawn. “Lord, it’s late. Where
is
Peters?”

Caroline, completely appalled by very nearly everything that had taken place in her life in the past twentyfour hours, was far too absorbed in her own self-pitying thoughts to object when her fiancé suddenly appeared, and begged for Lady Bartlett’s permission to take her son and daughter home. Lady Bartlett was only too happy to give it, undoubtedly because it meant she wouldn’t have to look at Caroline’s mutinous expression all the way home.

Caroline, for her part, couldn’t have cared less who took her home, so long as someone did. She wanted to get out of her tight corset and into a hot bath at once, where she could sit in absolute privacy and try to figure out how she felt about having had Braden Granville’s calloused hands on her most private parts. Well, maybe not her
most
private parts, but nevertheless, a place no one had ever touched before, but which he’d handled without the slightest compunction.

And she had let him! That was the most shocking thing of all. She had sat there and let him.

And
liked
it!

Oh, what was the matter with her? Braden Granville was a skirt chaser. Braden Granville was a man ruled by his temper. Braden Granville was responsible for the manufacture and distribution of thousands of firearms that could very well end up being used in violent crimes like the one committed against her brother. She shouldn’t
like
being touched by such a man.

And yet. . . .

And yet he’d been very kind in the garden, listening to her talk about Tommy. He had seemed genuinely to care. He had seemed genuinely interested—interested in her!

“Caroline.”

She looked up, and saw the Marquis of Winchilsea looking at her very seriously from where he sat beside her on the carriage seat.

“Are you all right, Caroline?” The marquis’s pretty blue eyes—so very unlike the dark, unsettling eyes of Braden Granville—were filled with concern. It might, for all Caroline knew, have even been heartfelt.

“Me?” Caroline blinked. Tommy had abandoned them as soon as they were safely out of Lady Bartlett’s line of vision, eschewing Hurst’s offer of a ride home for a more interesting one with the pretty daughters of a neighbor. Her chaperonless state did not worry Caroline, as the phaeton’s top was up, due to the threat of rain, and it wasn’t likely anyone would spot, much less comment upon, the Marquis of Winchilsea and his bride-to-be alone in a carriage together.

“Yes, you,” Hurst said. “You haven’t said a word since we started.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, I’m all right. Are you taking me home?”

“Of course I’m taking you home,” the marquis said. “Where else would I be taking you?”

Where indeed. Certainly not back to his rooms to ravish her, the way marquises were always doing to heroines in books.

But Caroline knew perfectly well she wasn’t anything like those heroines. In the first place, they didn’t have faithless fiancés, like hers. And in the second place, even if they did, they wouldn’t go around asking perfect strangers to teach them how to make love, so that they could win their fiancé back again. Instead, it all ended up being some dreadful misunderstanding, and everyone lived happily ever after in the end.