More Than a Mistress (4 page)

The tug on the bow of her garter was like a tug at her centre. Wicked sensations pulsed in her core. She felt naked, exposed, yet when she glanced down to watch, her hem had risen only on one side and not a fraction above the edge of her stocking. But he knelt so close, concentrated on his task with such focus, she could feel his warm breath brush her thigh through the layers of gown and chemise. It tickled unbearably.

He pulled the garter free and dangled it before her face. ‘Two,’ he said.

She swallowed. Resisted the urge to pull down her skirts. Ignored the fire she could feel burning on her face. She did not fear him doing anything she did not permit. She feared she might permit him to take liberties. But she would not be so cowardly as to go back on her word, not after his generosity. ‘Well, go on.’

He cast a swift glance upwards. ‘Your wish is my command.’

Oh, how she wanted to hit him. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and yawned instead. But as soon as he returned to his task, she lowered her lashes, pretending to close her eyes, and watched as he ran a finger beneath the edge of her stocking. A second finger joined the first. He made great play of stretching the fabric over her knee. Her insides turned liquid as if they had melted. Her limbs grew languid. She hauled in a deep breath.

He leaned down and placed a kiss on the bared skin. A swift brush of warm dry lips.

She gasped and gripped the chair arms tighter. ‘You go too far.’

‘Such beauty deserves worship.’

‘You tease me, sirrah.’

He looked up, his eyelids heavy, his lips sensual. ‘Not about something as lovely as this.’

A warm glow suffused her skin. Her body clamoured for more than a whisper of touch. She must not succumb to him. She’d sworn never to let a man take her for a fool. She was her own woman. Now and always. Only with him she seemed reckless. Dangerously so.

Was it reckless to keep one’s word?

She bit her lip. ‘Continue.’

He rolled the stocking, as neatly as any maid would, careful not to damage the cobwebby silk. Another inch of skin, another kiss. Thrills coursed through her blood. She held herself rigid against their temptation, but she couldn’t stop watching.

He continued to roll and kiss every inch until the stocking reached her ankle. He shaped her calf with his palm, lingering there as if he’d exposed a treasure. Her insides tightened with desire and longing.

He sighed, a waft of warm gentle air against her skin, then pulled the stocking off. He rubbed the ball of her foot with his thumb. Her body hummed with pleasure. He massaged her arch. She wanted to purr like a cat. Her back stretched. Her shoulders loosened. Dazed, she stared down at his broad naked shoulders, the curve of his back, the movement of muscle beneath. He was lovely.

She yearned to touch him. If only she dared.

Gently he lowered her hem, and rose to his full height, smiling down at her. Clearly waiting for sign from her as to where they would go next.

When she said nothing, he gave a slight nod. ‘I think it is time I bid you goodnight.’ He put on his ring, tucked the rest of his jewellery in his coat pocket and slung his discarded clothing over his shoulder.

He looked just like a pirate carrying off his booty.

She half-wished the booty included her.

Her heart knocked against her ribs. Her body trembled with the urge to join him in his chamber. To enjoy his beautiful body and the pleasure he would give.

It had been a long time since she’d known the pleasure of a man. But she never expected to be attracted to a man like him, a nobleman who no doubt would mock her in his clubs and to his friends. Blast it. Pricked by her pride, she’d let him push her too far and been tempted by his beautiful body. What a fool.

Thank goodness he’d be gone in the morning and leave her in peace.

‘I’ll collect the rest of my winnings tomorrow,’ he murmured.

Her heart lurched.

Money. He meant the money. ‘It will be waiting for you,’ she said with a calm she did not feel.

She acknowledged his sweeping bow with an inclination of her head.

He closed the door softly behind him. She sat still, imagining him climbing the stairs. Would he walk slowly? Lingering, hoping she might follow? Or would he run, glad of his escape? Or had it all been one great joke?

Did he know she was his for the taking had he persisted? Did he know she’d lie awake all night, reliving his touch on her flesh?

Shame sent more heat to her face. Her stomach fell away. Would she never learn? She inhaled a deep breath, pushed to her feet and looked up at Grandfather’s portrait beside the hearth. A gentler one than that in the other room. ‘I certainly made a pig’s ear of that, didn’t I?’ No doubt more scandal would attach to her name when he gossiped to his friends.

Thank God, he would be gone in the morning.

Chapter Four

V
oices. Female voices. As consciousness returned, Charlie lay still, eyes closed, his cold naked body rigid. One movement would be his downfall. A laugh chilled his soul.

‘Do you think he tupped the missus?’

‘Why else would she bring him home?’

Odd. Charlie cracked an eyelid. Peered at the two women at the end of a monstrous four-poster bed and remembered. He was in Yorkshire, not a war-torn field in Europe. He let go of his breath, relaxing his body.

The women were dressed modestly, like chambermaids, one a chubby young blonde with an inquisitive expression, the other a sallow-faced brunette past the first blush of youth. Their eyes perused his body as boldly as a farmer sizing up a bull at the market.

Flipping the sheet over his groin, Charlie sat up and smiled. ‘Good morning, ladies.’

The blonde one squeaked. The other put her hands on her hips. ‘Sorry, your lordship. We didn’t mean to wake you. Your fire is made up and we stopped to admire the view.’

‘You should draw t’curtain,’ the younger one said defensively, ‘if you don’t want us looking.’

He choked back a laugh. Miss Draycott had the most unusual of staff. But then there was nothing about Merry Draycott that was usual.

The dark one lowered her lashes a fraction and her gaze to the sheet, which hid little of the evidence of his morning arousal. ‘I could help you out with that for a shilling.’

‘I wouldn’t charge you at all,’ the blonde said, licking her lips and smiling. ‘I’d bounce on that any day of t’week.’

Good God, what sort of house was this? Charlie tried to keep his jaw off his chest. ‘Thank you, but no.’

The hopeful smile faded. ‘You won’t say nowt to missus, will you? About us waking you. We are supposed to be quiet.’

With a sense of unreality, Charlie shook his head. ‘Thank you for the fire.’

The older of the two narrowed her gaze. ‘How come you left all the candles burning? Not scared of the dark, are you?’

Scared didn’t come close to describing the insidious panic he felt in the hours before dawn. He grinned. ‘I fell asleep reading.’ He gestured to the book on the night table, placed there in case of such questions.

‘Waste of good beeswax, that is,’ she muttered and flounced out of the room.

The other girl followed, lugging the coal bucket and a dustpan and brush.

Charlie collapsed against the pillows and let out a laugh. There was no mistaking the sort of fires those women preferred to light and it had nothing to do with hearths and coals.

He should have guessed from the style of Merry’s dress and her lapses of speech that the damned woman was a brothel keeper.

An abbess. And one with enemies? Overnight he’d been thinking about that broken axle.

Another look at her carriage was required, but this latest piece of information added to his suspicions about her supposed accident. It wasn’t one.

He glanced around the room. The candles augmented by light from the window illuminated a carved and tapestry-hung nightmare of a room in every shade of green. It looked worse than it had the previous evening.

He threw back the covers and slipped from the bed. He strode to the window. He’d left the curtains open, too, as well as the bed curtains. Unending white accounted for the unnatural light. He frowned at the sky. While the clouds seemed less lowering, he doubted the roads would be passable.

And he was stuck in a house of ill repute. A joke Robert would have loved. Charlie didn’t find it in the least bit humorous. She should have told him last night instead of her pretending to be respectable—well, almost respectable.

A vision of Merry’s lovely slender leg in his hand popped into his brain. The arousal that had tormented him the previous evening, and upon awakening, started anew. He cursed. He’d behaved like a perfect gentleman with a woman who kept a bawdy house. What a quixotic fool she must have thought him.

He turned away from the window at the sound of the chamber door opening. Brian with boots in hand. The lad bowed deeply. ‘Good morning, my lord. Mr Gribble said to tell you the snow on the moors is really deep.’

‘I guessed as much. You don’t need to stay. I can manage.’

The lad looked so crestfallen at the dismissal, Charlie relented. ‘Brush my claret-coloured coat and then iron my cravat, if you wouldn’t mind.’

The lad touched his forelock. ‘Reet gladly, my lord.’

In less than an hour, Charlie was hunching his shoulders against a wind stronger than the previous evening and holding fast to his hat brim. The drifting snow came close to the top of his boots as he slogged down a hill to the stables. Set around three sides of a square courtyard, the building offered welcome shelter from the gale. He entered through the first door he came to and almost bumped into a fellow coming out. Not a groom. Of course not. It was Miss Draycott in a man’s low-crowned hat and her mannish driving coat.

Charlie raised his hat and smiled. ‘Good morning. I didn’t expect to see you up and about at this early hour.’

After the startled look faded from her expression, she frowned. Not pleased to see him. ‘I didn’t think London dandies rose from their bed before noon.’

‘Mr Brummell has given us all a very bad reputation,’ Charlie said mournfully. He knocked the snow off his boots against the door frame. ‘I came to see how the horses were doing.’ No sense in alarming her, when he had nothing but vague suspicions.

‘Don’t you trust my servants to take proper care of your animals, my lord?’

My, her temper was ill today. ‘If I didn’t trust your servants, Miss Draycott, I would have come out here last night.’

She acknowledged the hit with a slight nod.

‘I also wondered about your team. How is that foreleg?’

Her shoulders slumped. ‘Not good. Jed poulticed it, but it is badly swollen.’

‘Do you mind if I look?’

‘Not at all.’ She sounded quite doubtful. Probably thought he wouldn’t know one end of the beast from the other. Nor would he indicate otherwise. The fact that he liked working with horses was no one’s business but his own.

They walked along the stable block. A single row of stalls built along each back wall, nice drainage, fresh straw and a surprising number of mounts, both riding and draught. He nodded his approval.

The carriage horses were in the middle block. The wrinkled wizened man who’d met them with the lantern the previous evening stood leaning on a broom, watching the injured horse eat.

‘Jed, this is Lord Tonbridge,’ Merry said.

He knuckled his forehead. ‘Aah. Yours are reet fine animals, yer lordship. Two stalls down they are.’

‘Thank you. Miss Draycott is concerned about this one. May I see?’

The old fellow ran a knowing eye down his person. ‘Well, if you don’t mind mucking in the midden, you’re reet welcome.’

Charlie inched in beside the horse and sank down on his haunches. The groom had packed a mixture of warm mash and liniment around the injured foreleg. ‘How bad do you think it is?’

‘No more’n a strain, I reckon.’

‘He got hooked up in the traces,’ Miss Draycott said. ‘I hope he didn’t do any permanent damage.’

So, she’d followed him back. That was going to make his questioning of the head groom difficult.

‘Have you tried packing it with snow?’ Charlie asked.

Jed scratched at the grey stubble on his chin. ‘Never heard of that for a strain.’

Charlie grinned. ‘Nor I. My groom discovered it takes the swelling down faster than warm mash, if you want to try it. Little else to be done apart from plenty of rest.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt to try, would it, Jed?’ Merry said quietly. ‘I feel so badly. Not once in my life have I ever injured one of my horses.’

She sounded dreadfully guilty. Charlie wanted to put an arm around her shoulders and offer her comfort, then press her up against the stable wall and offer a bit more than that, she looked so starkly beautiful with her hair tucked up under her ridiculous hat.

”T’was my fault,’ Jed said. ‘I should have seen somat were up wi’carriage. I should never have let you drive alone.’

‘No, you should not,’ Charlie said. ‘The carriage could have turned over. The horse’s legs might have been broken rather than strained. Not to mention Miss Draycott’s safety.’

The groom’s wrinkled face looked grim. ‘Aye.’

‘It was not Jed’s fault,’ Miss Draycott said. ‘And it is beside the point. That poor creature is in pain.’

‘Nowt to worry your head about, missy.’

‘I’ll check again later,’ she said, rubbing her upper arms.

He hadn’t thought her so sentimental a woman. Yet on their drive she had kept turning back to look at the injured beast. Perhaps, beneath her hard brittle shell, she’d a soft centre. Hopefully, the head groom wouldn’t let her rampage around the countryside alone in future. He’d have a word with him in private. Later. When Merry left.

‘You’d be better off staying warm by the fire,’ the groom said.

‘I’ll take a look at my cattle while I’m here, Jed.’

‘Sixteen mile an hour tits, I’m thinkin’, my lord,’ Jed said.

‘On a smooth road downhill.’ Charlie patted the injured horse’s rump and exited the stall. He exited further along the stable block.

‘I was going too fast,’ Merry said, following him. ‘I was angry and hurrying because of the weather. I must have hit a rut.’

He’d seen no signs of a rut large enough to damage an axle. ‘Fretting won’t change it.’

Her chin quivered. ‘No. It won’t. But that horse is in pain. I can see it in his eyes.’

Charlie didn’t quite know what to say, so said nothing. He strode along the block until he found his team. They huffed a greeting. He spent a moment or two going over their hooves and their limbs. Someone had brushed them and their brown coats shone.

‘You have a good man in Jed,’ he said.

‘He worked for my grandfather.’ She spoke as if the words answered all.

They walked side by side along the alley in front of the stalls.

‘It seems you are to be burdened by my company for a while longer,’ he said.

‘It is no burden,’ she said absently as if she had something else on her mind. ‘It won’t be the first time we are snowed in for a few days.’

‘Thank you for your hospitality.’

His voice must have sounded just a little dry, because her head turned, her eyes meeting his gaze.

She gave a rueful smile. ‘Did I sound dreadfully rude? I apologise. I meant to say that it will be an honour to have you stay as long as you wish.’

Somehow he preferred the earlier offhand invitation to this lavish courtesy, because the first was pure Merry and the second
pro forma
.

‘You must allow me to perform some service for you while I am here,’ he said just a little mischievously, thinking to test the waters.

Her eyes widened just a fraction as she considered his words. ‘What might you have in mind?’

He grinned, and the sparks were once more hovering in the air. Attraction and interest. Not the searing fire of the previous evening, but it wouldn’t take much to set it ablaze.

‘How about a sleigh ride?’ He pointed to the equipage stored behind her phaeton.

‘In this weather?’ She glanced out into the courtyard.

‘When it clears.’

‘All right.’

He hesitated. ‘Merry, I conversed with some unusual young women this morning. In my chamber.’

She frowned. And then gasped. ‘Beth and Jane.’

‘I didn’t get their names. However, they seemed very…obliging.’

‘They didn’t…’ She covered her mouth with her hand.

His lips wanted to smile. He held them in check. ‘No. They didn’t.’ But they would have, and she knew it.

‘Oh. Oh, dear. I must apologise. They are…housemaids in training. I should have told them to leave your room to Brian.’

Housemaids in training. A new twist on an old profession. She must have seen the disbelief in his face. ‘I will speak to them,’ she said stiffly. ‘And if the weather breaks, we will go for a sleigh ride. In the meantime, I have some business affairs needing attention.’

He imagined she did—but which business?

‘In the meantime,’ she said breathlessly, ‘please make free of the library where you will find books and a nice warm fire.’

They stood in the doorway, looking out at the world turned into a white desert, the house barely visible in a sudden flurry of snow. He inhaled. She was right, snow did have a scent all of its own. Why had he never noticed?

He took off his muffler and wrapped it around her neck and up over her mouth and nose. ‘Then at least let me escort you safely back to the house.’

Over the top of the scarf laughter spilled from her blue eyes. She looked like some Far Eastern princess, saucily peeping out from behind a veil. Or she would, if not for the manly driving coat and the man’s felt hat.

He grabbed her hand, tucked it beneath his arm and they began the trek up the hill. He liked the feel of her leaning on him for support. She wasn’t a fragile flower of a woman, but there was absolutely no denying her femininity.

And today she was acting with the propriety of a duchess. He had the strong urge to unravel the puzzle he’d found. And part of that was learning who might want to cause her harm.

He barely noticed the icy fingers of wind tearing at his coat, or the snow cold and wet on his face, because for the first time in a long time he was doing exactly as he pleased.