Educating Caroline (30 page)

“Yes,” he said, impatiently. They had so little time. This was not what he wanted to be doing during it, discussing his education—or lack thereof. He’d heard about that enough times from Jackie. “The man to whom I was apprenticed owned a dictionary. I used to read it at night, before I went to bed.”

“A dictionary,” Caroline said, as if for clarity.

“Yes.” He looked at her, and noted that her eyes were still abnormally wide. “You think that’s strange.” Jackie had certainly thought it strange—strange enough that he’d overheard her mention it once, in a mocking tone, at a dinner party.

“To read a whole dictionary?” she said. “And remember what was in it? Not so much strange as extraordinary.”

Feeling uncomfortable, he glanced out the back of the curricle, ostensibly to see whether or not the cart horse had stumbled yet, but really to escape the penetrating quality of her bright-eyed gaze. She looked admiring. He had done nothing worthy of her regard.

“That’s something that’s never been a problem for me,” he said, dismissively. “I’ve always remembered everything I’ve ever read.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“What did I say,” Caroline demanded, “in my note to you?”

“Which one?”

“The first one.”

“ ‘Mr. Granville,’” he said, quoting easily from memory. “ ‘Even if I wanted to meet you, which I am certain would not be at all wise, I could not, since my mother has locked me into my room as punishment for having gone into the garden with you last night at the Dalrymples’. C—’”

Caroline, stunned, held out a hand, laughing. “Stop!” she cried.

“ ‘—Linford.’”

“How can you do that?” she asked, bewilderedly. “How can you remember every single word?”

He shrugged. “How can anyone not? That’s what I’ve always wondered. How is it that anyone could miss hitting a target at which they’d aimed? It makes no sense to me. Unless, of course, the weapon’s faulty—”

“You,” Caroline said, “are a strange man, Mr. Granville. But a good one, I think.”

And then, before he had a chance to try to dissuade her of this notion—he could not be good, not where she was concerned—the curricle was pulling to a halt, and Mutt, on the driver’s seat, had announced, “We’re home, sir.”

26

“
Y
ou see,” Caroline said, looking extremely pleased. “I told you. A little warm bran and some poultices over those wounds. That was all she needed.”

Braden didn’t say anything. He particularly didn’t say what his groom had said, upon first spying the spindly-legged mare, which was, “What that horse needs is a bullet through the brain.”

Fortunately, Braden’s warning look had kept him from bringing up that particular idea—tempting though it was—again, and Hammer had done a fair enough job of following the Lady Caroline’s orders concerning the mare’s care, which seemed to consist primarily of providing the animal with food soft enough for its tender mouth to chew, and paste to keep the flies away from its oozing wounds. When they left it, Braden had to admit the mare did look a trifle better, though Hammer had still been eyeing it with something akin to horror, obviously wondering what this nag was doing in amongst the fine thoroughbreds and jumpers his master kept.

But the rescued horse’s ears had pricked forward, proving they were not bent back in permanent ill temper, as Braden had feared, when she’d accepted—with surprisingly ladylike delicacy—the sugar cube Caroline extracted from the depths of her reticule and offered to her in an outstretched hand.

It was this astonishing politeness that caused Caroline, as they were leaving the stables, to say, excitedly, “I was sure, when I saw her, that she had not always been a cart horse. I fancy she was probably once a lady’s mount, who got sold when her owner fell on hard times. Such a shame, how ill used she’s been since! I think you shall have to call her Lady, because that’s clearly what she once was.”

Braden, who hadn’t any intention of calling the horse anything, opened the garden gate, and gestured for Caroline to precede him through it. She did, clearly too caught up in her joy over the horse’s recovery to consider what she was doing . . .

. . . which was, Braden thought grimly to himself, walking straight into the spider’s lair.

He ought, he knew, to stop her. He ought to send her home at once, for her own good. If her fiancé and brother would not look out for her, he would have to do it.

But he knew that the one thing from which she needed protection the most was himself, and he could not send her away.

“So this is the home,” Caroline said, as she took in the back of his town house, rising four stories high against the twilit summer sky, “of the great Braden Granville.”

She didn’t say it at all mockingly. The startled glance he threw her revealed that, if her expression was any indication, she had meant it reverently, as if the place he lived was a sort of monument to something.

And, if he considered it impersonally, he supposed it was a bit astonishing, the fact that all of this—the nine bedroom house, the beautiful, high-walled garden with its fountain and gazebo, the fine stables containing the best horseflesh and fastest vehicles available—belonged to a man who had been born in such abject poverty, to parents such as his. The house was, he supposed, a monument to tenacity, more than anything else. Because to Braden, the most astonishing thing of all was that he had hung on to it all as long as he had.

“Do you,” Caroline asked, as she stood with her neck craned, gazing up at his house, “have a badminton set?”

He could not have been more surprised if she had asked him whether he kept monkeys in his cellar.

“Badminton?” he echoed. “Er . . .”

“Oh, you’ve heard of it, surely.” She spun around and made a serving motion, using her reticule as an impromptu racket. Though the sky was getting dark enough for the evening star to shine, Braden could see with perfect clarity the fact that when Caroline pulled her arm back, her crinoline swayed up enough to give him quite a good view of her slender ankles beneath the hem of her dress.

“The Duke of Beaufort invented it a few summers ago,” Caroline informed him, matter-of-factly. “Tommy and Emmy and I are mad for it. It’s like tennis, only with a little feathered—”

“I don’t have a badminton set,” Braden said. Then, noting her disappointed expression—he’d not been at all wrong, when he’d taken her for an outdoors sort of girl— added, “But I have a swing.”

“A swing?” Her interest, as he’d hoped, was piqued. “What sort of swing?”

“This sort,” he said, stepping toward it.

It was a garden swing, hanging from a thick bough of ancient oak by two stout ropes, with an ornately scrolled wooden back, and a wide and cushioned seat, long enough to hold several people. Caroline, seeing it, drew in her breath with delight.

“Why, that’s the biggest swing I’ve ever seen!” she cried.

“Indeed,” he said, giving the seat a push, and causing it to sway gently back and forth. “When I run into a snag on whatever design I’m working on, I find it quite beneficial to come out here with a cigar and a brandy and—”

Caroline plunked down onto the swing and ran her bare fingers—her gloves having been abandoned while preparing the poultices for the horse—over the cushioned seat appreciatively. “Oh, yes,” she said, though she had actually allowed Braden to finish his statement, “I could certainly see that. If I had this swing, I would never leave it. I’d spend all summer out here.”

He shouldn’t. He knew he shouldn’t. And yet, unbidden, the words came to his lips.

“It’s long enough to stretch out upon,” he said. “I enjoy gazing up at the pattern the leaves make against the sky. It’s like being in the countryside.”

And Caroline, as a part of him must have known she would, raised her feet and actually stretched out on the swing, apparently too caught up in her enthusiasm over it to be conscious of the fact that her crinoline had tilted up, giving him a highly rewarding view of her pantaloons, which at that moment were displaying her shapely calves and highly appealing thighs to an advantage, all the way up to the temptingly plump V where they joined.

“Oh, yes,” she said, gazing up at the leaves overhead, dark against the twilit sky. “I quite see what you mean. You wouldn’t think you were in the city at all. You can’t see any buildings, just trees and sky.”

What happened next was entirely his own fault. He had known it was going to happen almost from the moment he’d pointed the swing out to her. It had been in the back of his mind, he was certain, since he’d seen her brother that morning. Somehow, some way, he had to make Caroline Linford forget. Forget her family, forget her fiancé, forget her upcoming wedding and what would happen to her if she called it off.

And since he could not do that the way he’d have preferred to, by telling her what he suspected her marquis had done, Braden could only hope to prey upon her weakness, that weakness only he, in all the world, had managed to suss out.

And that was that Caroline Linford was as carnal a creature as he was, underneath all of that virtuous exterior, those white gloves, and lace-trimmed petticoats. He had known it, he thought now, from the first moment he’d kissed her, when he’d realized that here, at last, was what he had been searching for all his life: a good woman, a kind and honest woman, whose wide-eyed wonder at the world was coupled by a sensuality more rapacious than any he’d ever encountered, with the exception perhaps of his own.

But how to get her to admit it, to pull off those white gloves and accept the fact that the two of them belonged together? There was no way, except to show her.

And so he tried.

He did not, he would be the first to admit, do it with much finesse. He hadn’t time for that. Instead, he settled for getting straight to the point, and accordingly moved with all the speed his youth in Seven Dials had taught him. In the blink of an eye, he was on top of her, flattening the crinoline and imprisoning her hands— which she’d thrown up when she’d seen him coming— in his own.

“What,” she gasped, as his weight pinned her where she lay, “do you think you’re doing? You can’t—”

There really wasn’t any point in letting her finish. He’d found from experience that Caroline, while she usually put up a token resistance to his advances at first, soon lost all interest in denying either of them what, he was quite certain, they both wanted. And so he lowered his head and, finding her lips, silenced her on the matter.

Beneath him, Caroline struggled. Not because she didn’t like what he was doing to her—his lips mesmerized her, the way his words had mesmerized her maid— but because she liked it too much. She knew, now more than ever, that his kisses, divine as they were, were also dangerous. They drove home the truth of what Jacquelyn had accused her of that afternoon—that she loved him.

Which was why she couldn’t—shouldn’t—let him do the things he was doing to her. . . .

All she had to do, she knew, was ask him to stop. He would. She knew he would.

But it was so hard. It was so hard to say stop, especially when, for the first time in her life, Caroline was realizing what an absolutely incredible sensation it was, having the full force of a man’s weight on one. She didn’t feel in the least bit like he was squashing her, or that she couldn’t breathe. Instead, she felt a delicious warmth all over her body, but especially at certain points, points he wasn’t even touching—at least, not directly. Not yet.

But then he
was
touching them, very directly. She wasn’t certain how it came about—he was kissing her so deeply, so intrusively, that her thoughts became a jumble of brief, but incredibly intense sensations: how he tasted—of mint, how fiercely the bristles of his razor stubble scraped her face, and how likely there’d be burn marks all around her mouth, like that night after the Dalrymples’; how neatly he’d managed to pry her legs apart with his knees, and fit himself between them; how he murmured her name occasionally, in the deepest voice imaginable, whenever he lifted his head to draw a breath, before kissing her all over again.

And then, suddenly, through the fog his lips and tongue had cast over her senses, Caroline became aware that his fingers had found their way inside the bodice of her gown, and had even managed to dip beneath the lace cup of her corset. His calloused hand closed over first one burgeoning nipple, and then the next, and Caroline, beneath him, felt completely powerless to stop him— not because of his superior strength and weight, but because she didn’t
want
to stop him . . . not even when, with his other hand, Braden began removing her pantaloons.

That’s right, removing them. And Caroline didn’t care. Everything, everything else ceased to matter— Jacquelyn, Hurst, her mother, all of it. She didn’t care a whit, just kept kissing him, clinging to his enormous shoulders, and wondering how it was that she’d gone through twenty-one years of life and never felt this way before, never felt as truly alive as she did at that moment, beneath the stars on Braden Granville’s garden swing, which was swaying gently with the movement of their bodies.

And when he touched her,
there,
where he’d touched her the day before, well, she didn’t object to that, either. How could she, when it felt so good, so
right?
She
wanted
him to touch her there, wanted him to touch her there more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. She still gasped when he did it—it still felt so
strange,
having someone’s fingers there. Strange, but nevertheless, immensely satisfying. Though not quite as satisfying, she thought, in her desire-drenched haze, as if he pressed
down,
filling her with his fingers, the way he had in the carriage. And so she moved against his hand, to show him what she wanted . . .

But then something so perfectly astonishing happened that Caroline snapped out of her amorous state. Because when she moved against him, she felt something, hard and long, press up against her thigh, through the butter-soft fabric of his trousers. And suddenly, the immensity of what was happening came home to her. Why, all he had to do, she realized, was undo a few of his trouser buttons, and there would be nothing, nothing at all to keep them from doing precisely what she’d seen Jacquelyn and Hurst doing in that sitting room, not so many nights ago—

And they would be no different than Jacquelyn and Hurst, because there could be no future for them, only momentary pleasure. . . .

Followed by—in Caroline’s case, at least—a lifetime of guilt and regret.

With a ragged sob, she pushed away from him. “Oh, let me up,” she cried.

Braden, thinking he’d injured her, though he couldn’t imagine how, obeyed her at once. But when she’d sprung to her feet, it was clear that there was nothing wrong with the Lady Caroline—at least physically.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, hastening to re-fasten the garments from which he’d so recently liberated her. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. . . .”

Braden sat up, feeling light-headed. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he was breathing as hard and as fast as if he had been in a race. His erection throbbed, a painful reminder of his folly.

He would never get her. Not that way. He realized it now, too late.

Panting, he observed her as closely as he could in the half light. The sun had slipped entirely away, but a new moon had risen across the horizon, and turned the night sky a deep, velvet blue.

It was ignoble of him, but the words came out, nonetheless. “He doesn’t love you,” he said. “And you know you don’t love him. So why—”

“I
told
you why.” She strode forward and accompanied the word
told
with a fist to his shoulder. The blow didn’t hurt, but it certainly took his mind off his aching testicles.