Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine (20 page)

“I'm in need of you,” he growled, standing as still as he could, letting her explore the shape of his cock. Even without his lips around it, her nipple hardened, protruding through the dampened patch on her gown. He longed to let his tongue sweep over it again. Instead, he rubbed it gently between his fingertips, trying to control his own savage need. She closed her eyes, her breath shuddered, and her hand pulled him closer. His sac ached, and blood rushed to his shaft. It certainly approved of her touch, he mused. Her hands were small, but thorough and curious. His fingers tight around her nipple, he bit down hard on his tongue, keeping another groan from spilling out.

Now he heard James stumbling across the flagged floor, demanding to know how long it took to find an apron. The door handle—an iron loop—shook and twisted, but the door wouldn't open.

“On damp, rainy days, the door sticks,” he murmured.

“I know.”

Of course she would know, he realized. But she hadn't stopped him when he shut the door.

His rival thumped hard on the old, scarred wood panels, cursing.

Lazarus swiftly made a decision, knowing he couldn't let her go without giving her something more than her apron. He lifted her onto the lowest shelf, which protruded a good few inches farther than the others, and then he crouched, sliding her skirt up to her hips. If she was going riding with James today, he'd make certain she thought of him the entire time. She was holding her breath again, as she often did in moments of excitement, but he knew he would soon make her expel a cry of pleasure.

And scant moments later he did. His mouth only had to touch her between her thighs, and she was gasping softly, her hand knocking a small jar of mustard from the shelf. He wished he had more time with her today, but this quick servicing would have to do. His hands held her thighs apart, and his tongue lapped at her almost roughly through the slit in her linen drawers. He brought her to a series of hard, trembling orgasms, pleasuring her diligently, while her gentlemanly suitor banged on that door. Her fingers gripped his hair and pulled hard. He laughed softly and drank from her as she trembled into his mouth and her thighs tensed under his hands. And when he felt the last of her stifled sighs, he finally looked up.

“Can he do that for you?” he demanded, his hands still on her thighs, his shoulders still holding her knees apart. “Has he?”

Flushed, Sophie pushed him back and slid down from the shelf. She adjusted her skirts and tried to get her breath back. “If I have splinters on my derriere now, it's your fault!”

The pantry door handle rattled frantically.

He grabbed her by the arms. “Does he?” He knew the answer but needed to hear it from her. If she confessed aloud that he, Lazarus, gave her something no one else did, perhaps then she'd be forced to realize it herself.

At least he knew she didn't wear her fancy lace for James Hartley.

She wiped a loose hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “He reads poetry and brings me flowers. Do you?”

Poetry
and
flowers?
Is that what she wanted? No. She thought she
ought
to want them. It was all “oughts” and “shoulds” with these people, he mused.

He wouldn't let her pass, but kissed her again. His lips caressed her mouth, taking greedily, giving generously, knowing she would taste herself on his tongue. Only when she began to struggle and fuss did he let her go, by which time James was cursing at Tuck, demanding he find some way to get the door open.

“You're a very brazen young man,” she reprimanded Lazarus in a low, breathy whisper as she glanced down at the creature straining in his breeches.

“Humble fellows like me have to be that way,” he whispered. “Otherwise, we'd never get what we want. Ma'am.” He tugged a pretend forelock.

She grabbed her apron, but he stood in her way again, his feet spread. “I look forward to our next lesson. You're coming on very well, Miss Valentine.”

Her prim little nose stuck in the air. “I'd like to go now.”

Still looking at her, he reached back and opened the door. Like everything else—including her—there was a trick to it.

She clutched the folded apron to her bosom and hurried out.

***

“What were you doing in there?” James demanded as he hobbled after her.

In reply, she held up her apron, still not quite composed enough to answer.

He fell back into the chair and eyed her folded apron as if he could read her guilt upon it.

Lazarus emerged from the pantry and went to fetch Doctor Swift from the village, who returned with him to examine the wounded man and diagnose a slight sprain. As Sophie suspected, his pride was hurt more than anything, but James was furious—almost as if he would rather have a broken leg.

Sophie was feeling guilty and finally agreed to attend the planned soiree at Lady Hartley's to placate him, even if it meant watching her family be publicly disparaged for his entertainment. She deserved it, she decided, for being wicked and allowing Lazarus to do those things to her—and relishing it thoroughly—while poor James stood only inches away. The chance, the recklessness of it made the encounter only that much more enjoyable. She couldn't imagine what came over her.

“I don't like that wretched, insolent-eyed gypsy,” James exclaimed bitterly as they rode back up the lane in Doctor Swift's carriage. “I'll find out why he came here. I'll get to the bottom of it and expose the truth.”

“The truth? He was a soldier who fought for this country. What do you expect—?”

“I don't like the way he looks at you. He was an enlisted man. All manner of rogues enlist to escape debt or criminal punishment, or to abandon family obligations. He could have a wife and children somewhere. Or a dozen little bastards he refuses to acknowledge.”

Uneasy, she laughed and assured him he was worrying too much. Mr. Kane's presence at Souls Dryft mattered not one whit, she lied yet again.

“Why?” he demanded coldly. “Can you tell me he hasn't continued pressing his suit? I suppose it was coincidence that pantry door should stick with you both on the other side of it.”

She pressed her thighs together. “What does that matter?” she replied sharply. “I told you I turned him down when he came here. There can be no occasion for prying into his past.”

But James was moody, not easily put off the idea. “This former employer of Mrs. Dykes's—a judge's wife, is she not?”

“Sir Arthur Sadler is retired, I believe. Why?” Anxiety flipped and tumbled through her belly.

“I daresay he could help uncover that blackguard's true past.”

Things had got out of hand that day. For so long they'd managed to keep their relationship a secret, but if they continued along such a wayward, impetuous path, unable to keep their hands off each other, they could soon be exposed. From now on she must maintain a safer distance from Lazarus. For his sake.

But, as she suspected, this proved to be easier said than done.

Sun beamed brightly through the schoolhouse window, and the children were too restless for books and slates. She'd brought in her little caged linnet to teach them about clockwork mechanisms, but this, too, was beyond their attention span today, especially with the school term soon to end.

“It's a fine day for flying a kite,” Matthias Finchly announced suddenly, and his brothers joined in rowdy agreement. Lazarus recently helped them all make kites, and it was now the most popular thing to have. Long, heated discussions were held about the merits of one another's kites and whose might fly the highest.

She was just about to suggest a nature walk out to the oak at the crossroads, when the distant rumble of a cart drew the Finchly brothers to the window.

“'Tis ol' Tuck,” they shrieked in unison, having craned their necks around to see what lay at the head of the horse path, and the other children scrambled to see out, screaming delightedly. Someone knocked at the door, and Sophie quickly ordered the children back to their benches while she went to open it.

Lazarus Kane was on the doorstep, shirtsleeves rolled up, one brawny arm holding something behind his back.

“Mr. Kane!” Unfortunately, despite her plan to avoid him as much as possible in that small village, Sophie woke up each morning thinking of Lazarus and went to sleep every night with the same ideas running through her restless mind. As for her dreams, thinking of them now as he appeared at her door caused Sophie a great deal of discomposure. Like any habit, he was very difficult to give up.

He revealed what he'd kept behind his back, offering it with a flourish: a small posy of larkspur, pink germander, and white bellflowers. “I picked them along the lane,” he told her with an amusing amount of pride. “Many happy returns of the day, Miss Valentine.”

Somehow he'd learned it was her birthday. Did he also know it was her thirtieth, which officially made her an old lady?

“Thank you, Mr. Kane.” She accepted his flowers very formally, conscious of the children watching.

As he smiled at her, his arms braced in the frame of the door, one foot on the step, he appeared to be waiting for something. A kiss? Surely even he knew better than to expect one at that moment, surrounded by children.

Oh, but she wanted to kiss him.

Her heartbeat raced around a corner, out of her clutches. The moment she saw this tempting man under her chestnut tree two months ago, she swore she wouldn't throw herself onto the mercies of the unknown again. Yet she was falling. Now, in that moment, she knew it; she was falling over the edge again. He was no longer just a moving, breathing study of the illustrations in that naughty book. He was real. He was a real man. And when she couldn't see him, when something happened to prevent their lessons, she missed him terribly. If she never saw him again, she didn't know what she'd do.

It was the worst possible moment to lose her head like this, when she ought to keep her distance for his own good.

“Is there something else you wanted, Mr. Kane?” she uttered stiffly with a frown.

A slow grin worked across his lips. “Why, yes, Miss Valentine.” He paused. “I thought the children might enjoy a picnic today.”

No sooner did the children hear the word “picnic” than they were up again, pushing past her, tumbling out into the sun with kites carried overhead and ribbons streaming.

Momentarily thrust aside by the rush, Lazarus waited until they were all out in the lane, then he lunged forward, one boot crossing the threshold, and whispered, “You've been avoiding me.”

“I told you I've been busy these last few evenings and had no time for your tutoring.”

“Busy with Hartley?”

She wouldn't answer. In fact, she'd spent most of her time with Ellie Vyne, enjoying her friend's company while she had it.

“I don't know any poetry, but I did bring flowers,” he reminded her with a wink. “Come out and play with me, Miss Valentine.”

Again, she didn't know how to cope with the intensity of her feelings, so she was angry and snappish. “Did the children know about this picnic already, by chance?”

His grin widened. “I might have mentioned something…”

“How dare you interfere with my school day!”

“Tuck made sausage pies. Your favorite.”

“Oh.”

“They're still warm,” he added. “But if you don't want any…”

She muttered hastily, “I suppose we might enjoy an afternoon out. This once.”

“Yes. We don't have forever.”

It struck her as an odd thing for him to say, and it cast a shadow over his smile just before he turned away and walked off down the path toward the cart. But the sky was cloudless, a blushing expanse of pale blue. It was not the sort of day in which anyone could be morose for long. Besides…sausage pies…

As she grabbed her bonnet from the hook by the door and followed him down the lane, she wondered idly how he discovered her love for sausage pies. Tuck was already helping the children and their kites into the cart, and the ruckus was supervised by Ellie Vyne.

Of course, who else would tell Lazarus Kane all her deepest secrets?

Ellie saw her and waved jauntily, knowing full well she was a meddling menace. Sophie sighed and shook her head.

Soon the cart was full, the children piled in, Ellie attempting to keep some order over the proceedings and having little success. Molly Robbins ignored old Tuck's protests and frowns and climbed up to sit beside him at the front of the cart, where she made herself comfortable and chattered away happily about the joys she anticipated in the day ahead. Tuck, generally of the opinion that children should be seen and not heard, was about to toss her into the back of the cart with the other children, when she beamed up at him, showing off the large gap between her front teeth. He then showed her his own gap, and thus a bond was formed and the little girl permitted to stay at his side.

Sophie tied her bonnet ribbons under her chin and, still holding her posy, stepped up to the cart. Lazarus waited for her, his foot on the wheel. As she glanced left, she noticed a small grey mare tied behind the cart. Its silver mane gleamed, and its ears were pricked. It was the riding horse she'd heard about. Was this another of his schemes to tempt her into bad behavior?

“I can make my own way,” she said and lifted her skirt over one arm to climb up into the cart.

Without a word, he walked up to her, put his hands around her waist, and lifted her easily up over the side.

“Well, really!' she exclaimed, merely because she ought to complain, not because she was at all put out. He swung himself up beside little Molly, and the cart lurched forward into a bumpy, rattling journey up the lane. The grey mare trotted merrily behind.

“You put him up to this,” she accused her friend.

Ellie blinked innocently. “I cannot think what you mean. It was all his idea. Besides, no one should be shut inside on such a lovely day, even an old curmudgeon like you.” She wagged her finger. “Remember, we shall never be younger than we are today!”

Only a short while later, they rumbled to a slower pace and joined a second, smaller cart, this one holding two passengers and a large basket of provisions.

“Aunt Finn?” Sophie exclaimed in amazement. Her aunt seldom ventured so far from the fortress on hot days, but there she was, the lace lappets of her bonnet blowing in the playful breeze as she sat beside the giant Chivers and chattered excitedly.

The carts turned off the road and took a slender, bumpy, winding lane for about a mile before Lazarus climbed out to open the gate into his meadow. Once they arrived at a pleasant spot, strewn with daisies and buttercups, which overlooked the valley and the village below, the cart came to a halt and was unloaded. While Sophie and her friend spread out the blanket, Lazarus took the horses into the shady covert where a pleasant little brook rambled lazily by. She observed his quiet, gentle way with the horses and felt a sweet yearning deep inside. Perhaps his gentleness meant so much more because he was not soft by nature, and when he laid a kind, compassionate hand to anything, it was done with a true desire to show tenderness, not because it came easily to him. His rough, callused hands could be remarkably soothing, as she knew.

Once he was done with the horses, he gave the children their kite-flying instruction, but as the sun reached its peak, the breeze died away, and several kites came to a sad end, nose down in the tufted grass. Undaunted, Lazarus and his friend soon had other games underway to make up for the disappointment, and there was much shrieking, screaming, and tearing about. But even Tuck didn't seem to care about the noise. He sat under a tree and showed Molly Robbins how to make a good whistle through that gap in her teeth.

Sophie was the quietest of the group on that glorious, sunny afternoon. As she felt a great, heavy weight pressing on her chest, she stifled tears that hovered constantly on the brink and sat silently on the blanket, her face half-shaded by the brim of her straw bonnet, with no sign of the bubbling commotion within.

We
don't have forever
, he'd said to her. Did that mean he planned to leave after the harvest? He'd told James, in her hearing, he considered no place home for long.

Or it could mean he planned to marry that twittering ninny Jane Osborne. Any wife, it seemed, would do. After all, this was a man who came in answer to an advertisement, knowing almost nothing about the woman who wrote it. He was a well-traveled man with a mysterious past, a jack-of-all-trades, a trickster who knew how to play her like an instrument.

But he'd warned her that day when they picked mushrooms he wouldn't ask
her
to marry him again.
Once
a
man's been rejected, he should know better than to make a fool of himself and mention it again.

He was a man who never stayed anywhere for long, never set down roots, probably never formed deep attachments with women. He would leave her, just as the captain left Aunt Finn alone with her gin and her memories.

So many doubts and fears swirled about her mind, and she couldn't concentrate for long upon any; therefore, none were satisfactorily resolved. Some of the things James had said about enlisted men stuck in her thoughts like a spur of goosegrass. Lazarus could come and go with ease, leaving people behind as he went. Look how easily and quickly he settled in the village and won over its residents. Only a man accustomed to meeting new people in new places could adapt so smoothly.

Sophie had no appetite for the picnic. Her head ached, and she considered moving to sit under a tree, but when Lazarus trotted over and dropped to the blanket beside her, she no longer wanted the shade. He stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle, and leaned back on his elbows.

“On a day like this,” he said, “a man can almost forget his worries.”

“Do you have many of those, Mr. Kane?” He never seemed to let anything bother him unduly, or for long.

He must have caught the sharpness in her tone, for he squinted at her, nostrils flared slightly. “Just a small one that vexes me.”

“Only one? You're fortunate.”

“It's been avoiding me of late, a stubborn, secretive creature, but I'll get the better of it.”

She scowled and looked away. Chivers, Ellie, and Aunt Finn joined them on the blanket, chatting and laughing together.

“You ought to sit in the shade,” Lazarus said to her. “You look hot.”

“I'll do as I please!” she snapped. “I managed very well without your advice for thirty years, and I daresay I can manage again. When you're gone.”

“Why? Where am I going?”

“How should I know? You have the freedom to come and go as you please, unlike some of us.”

“Nothing stops you from taking flight, Miss Valentine, but your own cowardice.”

“How dare you!”

“Pity I didn't know you before you jumped off that balcony. Then, I daresay, things were different.” He leaned over to tickle her cheek with a long grass. “You lost your gumption.”

She batted the grass away and glared at him from the shadow of her bonnet brim. “At least I'm not an arrogant, thick-headed man who gets distracted by a passing butterfly and cannot sit still for five minutes together, or devote himself long to one idea.”

“
What
the
Devil…?
”

“I've heard you boast you're a jack-of-all-trades, always traveling and learning something new.” Her temper mounted under the midday heat. “I suppose you've never stayed long enough in one place to finish what you came there to do. I daresay, wherever you start a new life, you soon grow bored and abandon it.”

He studied her for a moment as he chewed on that long blade of grass. “What brought this on? Oh, I see—I'm not going anywhere. You can let your brother know that, and your fine and fancy dandy too. Whatever they try to dig up about me.”

“Do as you please. I'm sure I don't care and never did! Dreadful, impertinent man.”

Aunt Finn's eyebrows flew skyward, Ellie began to hum rather tunelessly as she poured out the cider, and Chivers fidgeted with his piecrust. Lazarus reached for a plum and bit into it with rather more savagery than necessary. Ha! She'd finally made him angry.

“Your brother not likely to join us today, ma'am?” Chivers asked.

“Henry Valentine would never approve of a picnic. He would think it uncivilized,” Lazarus muttered. “Henry Valentine prefers games with high stakes to kites and cricket.”

Chivers looked interested. “A sharp or a flatt?”

“A flatt. Definitely.”

“What do you mean?” Sophie demanded.

Chivers explained, “There's two kinds of gamblers, ma'am. A sharp what wins, and a flatt what always loses to a sharp.”

She glared at Lazarus. “How do you know my brother loses?”