Enchanting Pleasures (10 page)

“I have located Mrs. Emily Ewing,” he said abruptly.

“How splendid! Does she live in London?”

“Yes.”

“She must not have received the letter sent from India. I shall write her a note directly,” Gabby exclaimed. “We can’t simply appear at her doorstep with a child and such unwelcome news about her sister.”

Quill just nodded. “I should like to know where you plan to go this afternoon.”

Gabby was stubbornly silent.

Quill moved over and tipped up her chin. Standing this close to her, he could smell an enticing, drifting smell of jasmine flowers.

“Gabby.”

In his quiet voice was a command. Gabby realized that. And it was no use asking something as foolish as
Can I trust you?
Obviously she could trust Quill. Her large, silent, future brother-in-law was the very essence of trustworthiness.

“It’s a trifling errand only,” she said desperately.

“Gabby.”

“All right. I would like to visit Hoare’s Bank. My father gave me a letter—”

“Ladies do not enter Hoare’s Bank,” Quill explained. “The letter will be delivered, and a representative of the bank will visit our house.”

“My father told me to never trust minor associates,” Gabby insisted. “I should like to speak to Sir Richard Hoare myself. And I can hardly request that the director of the bank journey to our house.”

“Then I shall accompany you,” Quill said. “You must understand, Gabby, that a woman’s reputation is her most important asset—” He broke off. Gabby had clearly stopped listening.

“Gabby, are you attending me?”

Quill was standing just in front of her, delivering his little lecture. Gabby had the oddest wish that he would put his arms around her. She must be demented. Hoping for an embrace from her future brother-in-law? It was just that—Gabby’s common sense came to the rescue. Quill was an uncommonly handsome man. His eyes made her feel weak in the knees and warm in the belly.

The problem, Gabby rationalized, is that Father never allowed me to have anything to do with men. So now I am overcome by the species in general. And for the first time, she wished that Peter hadn’t traveled to Bath. Because she had never been kissed by a man.

Quill had paused and was waiting for her to reply.

Gabby nervously chewed on her lower lip. The look in his eyes couldn’t be described as amusement, precisely.

“Gabby,” Quill said, his voice dark with—with something.

She swayed a bit and his large hands steadied her shoulders. In a second she could be in his arms, Gabby realized.

“I…I …” She fell silent, struck by a fiery wave of rebellion. She
wanted
a kiss. She didn’t want to be an un-kissed person for one more second.

“My mother died at my birth, and my father is not a demonstrative man,” she said, looking at Quill’s lips.

“Yes?” Quill’s thumbs had begun a small massage just at the base of Gabby’s collarbone.

Gabby shivered.

Quill was well-aware that Gabby had not told him the truth about her afternoon’s errand. Hoare’s Bank indeed. There was something about Gabby’s eyes that gave her away when she was fibbing. Just now those beautiful eyes were looking at him in a way that made his blood rage in his veins. She couldn’t mean that look. It was not an innocent look.

And then she swayed toward him, and he smelled jasmine again. Without a second’s thought, Quill’s mouth came down on Gabby’s lips as softly as a dandelion clock floats to the ground, as sweetly as a mother’s lips brush the head of her babe.

Gabby closed her eyes and stood stock-still, arms at her sides.

She tasted better than she smelled. Quill pulled her closer. His hands slid down toward the magnificent curve of her bottom.

“Put your arms around my neck, Gabby,” he whispered.

“All right,” Gabby said, sounding surprised. “This is very enjoyable,” she whispered back.

“Be quiet, Gabby.” Quill’s deep voice sent a tremor down her spine. And when she opened her mouth to respond to him, he took advantage of her open lips. Tenderness was replaced by a fierce demand, by a craving, hungry request.

Gabby lost her impulse to speak. Her mind went utterly blank, replaced for the first time in her life by her body’s demands. A sigh passed between them. She wound her arms around Quill’s neck and held on, allowing his ravaging mouth to send flames up her back. She melted against his chest, pressing herself feverishly into the kiss, shamelessly reveling in the feeling of his hard body against hers.

Tenderness was a thing of the past. He crushed her mouth under his. Hips, hands, tongue made demands that sent liquid fire between her legs and stole the breath from her chest.

“Gabby, shall we—” The sounds of his own hoarse voice, strained with longing, woke Quill as if from a deep sleep. “Oh, my God.” He snatched his hands away from Gabby’s body. He lurched backward and then turned around, taking a deep breath. “I’ll summon a carriage.”

Gabby swayed a bit as Quill’s big, warm hands fell away. Her whole body raced with a fiery liquor.

“Need we leave…immediately?”

Gabby’s husky voice was more seductive than that of a practiced coquette. Quill turned around slowly, almost afraid to look at her again. “I should shoot myself.”

“Why? Don’t you enjoy kissing?”

Quill closed his eyes for a moment. Gabby was the only woman he’d ever met whose every emotion spoke in her eyes. Pleasure shot through his groin at what he read there: pure, unadulterated longing. Longing for him, for Quill.

She walked over and stood just before him again. Then she wound her arms around his neck and put her lips against his. She breathed against his lower lip, and Quill felt as if he must—
must
—bend her backward, sweep her forward, carry her outside. Anything to press that luscious body against his again.

God forgive him, the promise of her cherry-dark lips was too much. Quill pulled Gabby sharply against his body and took her mouth. It was different this time. Gabby knew something of kissing now. She opened those beautiful lips, strained toward him, uttered a little strangled moan in the back of her throat, met his tongue with her own.

And so they danced, a kissing dance. Until Quill realized that he had shaken all the pins out of Gabby’s coiffure, and that he was sliding his hands through the indescribable silk of her hair. Realized that his kisses had become a fierce possession, a sexual dance, and—rather more slowly—that Gabby’s hands were also tangled in his hair and that her body was matching the sinuous movement of his hips.

Worse.

The door handle leading to the hallway moved against his back.

He broke the kiss, pulled her arms from his neck, and barked, “Go away,” at the closed door.

Gabby looked up at him in wonder and smiled a glimmering, shining smile of discovery and pleasure.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“I had no idea that kisses were so…so much fun,” Gabby said, her voice still husky. “Fun is not the right word. Fun is pale compared to this. To kissing.” She moved toward him again and Quill held out his hand, stopping her. She smiled without resentment.

“Now I see why my father never let me spend any time with gentlemen. And I am truly sorry that Peter went to Bath with your mother!”

The world stilled for a moment.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Quill managed. How had Gabby managed to grow up with such ignorance of men and women?

“Gabby, you must
not
request kisses from men other than—than your future husband,” Quill said hoarsely. He couldn’t seem to mention Peter’s name.

Her eyes cleared and then danced. “I should never, never have guessed, Quill. About kissing, I mean.”

“Ah,” he said, rather faintly. He needed a brandy, although it was only early afternoon. “You’d best go upstairs and reorder your hair.” He wrenched open the door. “I will accompany you to Hoare’s Bank later this afternoon.”

Gabby watched him leave as if the Furies were after him, with a pang of regret. Obviously he was sorry he’d kissed her. With a sigh, she dismissed Quill from her mind.

She went upstairs, her eyes dreamy. Perhaps by the time Peter returned, she would have her new wardrobe from Madame Carême, and Peter would look at her with the same sort of fiery appreciation that she glimpsed in Quill. Sternly, she brought to mind the many sermons she had heard regarding the evils of lust.

But they had never conveyed to her how…how indescribably lovely kissing was. For some reason it was difficult to imagine Peter jerking her into his arms and almost devouring her as Quill had. No doubt kissing Peter would be a gentler business, Gabby thought.

Up in her chamber, she took out the miniature of Peter that his father had sent her. The sight of his smiling, sweet eyes and soft brown curls steadied her.

Gabby smiled. Marriage was going to be very enjoyable at this rate. She couldn’t wait for Peter to return!

L
ADY
S
YLVIA ARRIVED
an hour or so later. Gabby had just concluded a satisfactory interview with Codswallop. Not finding him in the front hallway, she had descended into the servants’ quarters to make absolutely certain that he was not injured by his tumble onto the parlor floor. And she had even swallowed her pride and apologized for fibbing about it.

“Quill knows everything,” she told Codswallop earnestly, “and he assures me that Viscount Dewland will never let you go.”

Codswallop gave a little half bow and an utterly understanding smile. There wasn’t a servant in the house who wasn’t aware of Peter’s finicky ways; he couldn’t blame the young lady for being taken aback. “Now, Miss Jerningham,” Codswallop said comfortingly. “We’ll think no more about it. As far as I’m concerned, ‘twas an angel that tripped me up and made me drop the teapot.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Gabby said penitently. “I’m a butterfingers, and I always have been.”

“An angel’s foot got in your way,” Codswallop said. “That’s what my mother used to tell us when we returned to the house with scrapes on our knees.”

Gabby smiled. “Your mother sounds very kind.”

By the time Codswallop ushered her back through the braise door into the main hallway, they were the best of friends.

As Gabby walked through the servants’ door, she realized immediately that her chaperone, Lady Sylvia, had arrived. And what a chaperone she was! Gabby’s mouth almost fell open and she paused with her back to the door.

Kitty’s cousin, Lady Sylvia, was as unlike Quill’s mournful, emotional mother as possible. At the moment she was guffawing in response to something Quill had said to her. She was wearing a bright pink, beribboned gown with a startlingly low bodice. And she was surrounded by three yapping dogs, all of whom had matching pink bows adorning their waving topknots.

Yet for all the femininity of her attire, Lady Sylvia’s face looked more like a man’s than a woman’s, to Gabby’s mind. And she was smoking a cheroot.

Then Quill looked over his shoulder at Gabby. “Here is Miss Jerningham now,” he announced. “Lady Sylvia, may I introduce my brother’s betrothed, Miss Gabrielle Jerningham? Miss Jerningham, this is Lady Sylvia Breaknettle.”

Lady Sylvia glanced at Gabby and then back at Quill. “What was the gel doin’ in the servants’ quarters, Dewland? You aren’t trying to make a purse out of a sow’s ear, are you? I don’t approve of associating with the help.” Her voice was a squawking, nasal bellow, although it had a shrewd note to it.

“Well? Cat got yer tongue, gel?”

Gabby suddenly got her bearings and bobbed a curtsy. “I was consulting with Mrs. Farsalter regarding the menus, my lady.”

“Got the air of a servant,” Lady Sylvia proclaimed.

Gabby felt pink creeping up the back of her neck.

“That the best curtsy you can do, gel?”

“My name is Gabrielle Jerningham,” Gabby said. “I was also taught
la révérence en arrière
.” She swept into a low curtsy. Then she straightened. “However, I was instructed to do so only in the presence of royalty.”