Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine (21 page)

“Because I once overheard a conversation about his debts your brother wishes I hadn't.” He tore off another lump of fruit and chewed it angrily. “I wish I never heard it either, since it set him against me from the start.”

Sophie understood then why Henry had taken such a fierce dislike to Lazarus. That dreadful pride would always be Henry's downfall. Her temper quelled for now, she searched the grass by her hand for a four-leaf clover. Despite the tone of their conversation, her body still leaned toward Lazarus. Like a flower toward the sun.

She decided she'd sat there long enough, suffering the closeness of his body and all the temptations that entailed, and leapt up and ran across the grass to organize the children in a dance.

***

Lazarus closed his eyes tight against the sun and leaned back on his elbows. Evidently, Henry or that arrogant peacock, James Hartley, had been whispering doubts in her ear. Well, they wouldn't chase him out, no matter what they threatened. Let them uncover every crime in his past. He'd face it. This was the end of the road for him; he was done with traveling, done with running. Now he'd do whatever it took to hold on to what he had, what he wanted more than anything in this world.

Sophie.

When it was time to return to the village, Aunt Finn had wandered off into the grove of trees and couldn't immediately be found. It was decided Tuck and Ellie should supervise the children in the cart while the others split up to look for her.

“I should have hidden your gin today,” Sophie muttered as she swung her bonnet by its long ribbons and stomped through the bracken. She was well aware of her aunt's love of games, particularly hide-and-seek.

She heard a twig snap behind her and stopped to look over her shoulder. There was Lazarus, just a few steps away, leading one of the cart horses and the little grey. “We were supposed to split up and search,” she exclaimed.

“I didn't want to lose you, too.”

She thought he looked remarkably handsome under the dappled shade of the trees, almost too much to take in. Their brief quarrel had changed something between them. She sensed it, read it in his face. Whether it was good or bad, she had yet to decide.

“Tuck has taken the children back to the village in the big cart. Chivers will find your aunt,” he said calmly as he came closer through the bracken. “He can track anything. Nose like a bloodhound.”

“Your friend is a gentle fellow.”

“Looks can be deceiving. Like yours.”

That made her smile…just a little.

“You ride sidesaddle, Sophie?”

Now she realized he'd saddled the little grey for her. So he did keep saddles! She felt nervous suddenly. “I…I haven't ridden in years.”

Without another word, he helped her up onto the horse, her right leg over the pommel, left foot in the stirrup.

“I've missed having a horse to ride,” she said. “We can't afford to keep animals unless they work on the land.”

“That's why she'll stay at Souls Dryft.” He smiled and flicked hair out of his eyes as he handed her the reins. “Come and ride her whenever you fancy.”

He
was
staying, then. Had he found a wife?

She dampened her lips and cleared her throat. “Miss Osborne will not be pleased you keep a horse for me to ride.”

“Is that all you ever worry about? Who will and will not be pleased?”

“I believe someone should be concerned about Miss Osborne.”

“But why should it be you?”

He was pushing her, she realized, trying to expose her jealousy. Apparently he thought he could flirt with every unmarried woman in the village and owe no one any explanation. Not even the woman he tutored privately in matters of the flesh. “Do you not dine often at the Osbornes?”

“To meet with Mr. Osborne,” he replied easily. “I like the old fellow.”

“Oh.”

“As for Miss Osborne, since Chivers arrived, she's kept her distance.”

She petted the horse's neck, drawing her fingers through the silver mane. “I'm sorry people can't accept your friend without judging on appearance.”

He swung himself up onto the other horse and sat well, at ease on the big mount even without a saddle. “Shows me the true colors of some folk. That's all.”

With a nudge of his heels, he steered his horse forward, ducking under the lower branches, and Sophie followed through the dappled sunlight. She couldn't remember the last time she'd ridden a horse. It must have been before she and Maria were sent away to that wretched ladies' academy. Back then, there was no greater pleasure than to ride out alone through the shady covert. In the spring, the ground was sprinkled with bluebells, as if little bits of sky had fallen to earth, and in the autumn, under the gilt-draped chestnuts, she and Henry once enjoyed mock sword-fights with sticks they found.

Sophie rode along at her own pace, and enjoyed a wondrous sense of freedom and independence—a very rare and precious gift, indeed. For a while, there was no conversation, just the shiver of a slight breeze through the leafy canopy, the sleepy coo of wood pigeons, and the steady thud of hooves. The sunlight was heavy today, thick and damp with nature's perfume, and the atmosphere heavily laden with pine from the tall evergreen columns that bordered her brother's property in the distance. But the air pooled here under the chestnut trees and lost its stinging heat.

She urged the mare forward in a quick trot, and as they came out into a wider lane, she drew alongside Lazarus. As she'd noted before, he was not a man who required noise and chatter to pass the time, but was perfectly content to ride along, admiring this beautiful day and sharing her company. They were riding back toward the lane and the cart, she realized, but they were traveling the long way round, and he was in no hurry. Neither was she.

She pulled ahead of his horse and turned left, leading the way off the path and back under the trees. He followed. Her breath quickened until there was almost no difference between the in and the out. Farther into the trees she took him, remembering the way she used to ride alone when she came here to get away from chores or hide from punishment. Once she'd called it her “emerald cave,” for it was jewel green from floor to sky, a mass of leaves and moss and soft grass that seemed to curl around her like an eggshell. Whatever possessed her to take him there, she didn't question it for long. The need to show him was too great, the desire to share that secret with him almost overwhelming.

They dismounted and walked down into the tranquil hollow where moss-garbed roots rose up out of the ground and reached around them with curiosity. The sky was barely visible now through the thick leaves and close branches, but where some sun trickled through, it painted slender columns of silver dust that hovered in the still air and dotted the ground with ghosts of fallen stars.

Sophie gathered her courage and turned to find him close behind her. She didn't have to say anything. Those strong arms were already around her, his mouth lowering to hers.

“Tell me what you want,” he whispered as he always did at the start of their “lessons.” He held her tightly, and his lips pressed to her hair, waiting.

She never knew what to ask for, because her entire body pleaded like a selfish child, wanting everything all at once.

“Sophie.” He spoke her name as if it were a plea for mercy. “We don't have forever.”

There it was again. What did it mean?

Her hands went to his arms tentatively; her fingers stroked the pleats of his rolled shirtsleeves, then higher to his broad shoulders. They sank slowly down into the moss, and she closed her eyes when she felt his stroking hand on her hip and the side of her thigh. Here at last was a man not afraid to touch her as a woman should be touched, not as if she were a child to be restrained or a girl to be mollified out of a temper tantrum. She lay back in the moss. His lips were on the swell of her bosom and moving lower, kissing her through her gown. He slowly lifted her skirt and chemise higher, until she felt the air on her stockings.

“Lazarus.” She whispered his name, her hand resting on his hair. She wanted to say she loved him, but she held it back, too afraid of leaving herself vulnerable, leaving her private thoughts as unguarded before him as her body.

Warm lips caressed her thigh, and then a damp, gentle tongue drifted across her skin.

Today there was no hurry. He took his time to tease and cajole. She held her breath, and her fingers tightened in his black hair where his exertions in the sun had left it hot and damp. He shifted his weight and slid farther down. Then his hands gently but firmly pressed her thighs apart.

Chapter
four: Arousal of the Female.
He was expert at it.

Oh, Lord, was he expert at it!

Of course, not being a reader, he would have learned from practice, but she pushed that thought aside hastily, not wanting to think of him pleasuring other women.

For too long it seemed to her he merely gazed upon her sex, as if in worship, making her wait until she burned inside. Then his mouth finally touched her where she yearned for it. At last she released a breath, a quivering, excitable sigh. His tongue moved over her, stroking gently. Then it was inside her, taking her intimately, and his trembling hands pressed on her thighs as she felt his excitement keeping pace with her own. She succumbed in the next gasp and arched against the sun-spattered ground, lifted herself to his mouth like an overeager strumpet, and then sprawled with that glorious, exultant weariness.

What was the word for it? Ah, yes. In her aunt's informative little book it was called a climax. He made it happen twice more for her after that, until she was a quivering, breathless puddle, and then he lay over her, his upper body supported on his forearms, and leaned down for a kiss. His tongue met hers and stroked it. She tasted herself on his mouth, a muskiness that mingled with the sweet plum he'd eaten earlier.

Feeling rejuvenated, she pushed him over and sat up. Her hair fell loose down her back. “My turn. It is my birthday, after all!” She gave him no time to argue but rolled him onto his back and stripped his shirt over his head.

“Careful. Don't tear it,” he warned. “It's the only one I've—”

She kissed his nipple, and he lay still, like a pagan sacrifice. Her tongue darted out and swept over the tiny point nestled among the soft fur of his chest. She closed her lips on it and suckled gently. His soft groan of approval encouraged her further. She climbed to sit astride his hips, and licked and nibbled at his bare chest, her hair falling over them both.

And when her fingers found that small bump over his heart, she finally found the courage to ask, “What is this?”

He held her finger. “A bit of broken knife lodges here. The surgeons can't remove it without killing me. So there it stays.”

“A broken knife?”

He looked away for a moment and then back at her, his eyes darkly penetrating. “It was a fight…six years ago. The other man died…a fellow soldier.”

Sophie reclaimed her finger. “He died?”

“He attacked me with that knife, but I had no weapon, only my hands.” He held the objects up for her perusal. “When I hit him, he fell back onto a stone hearth. He died later.”

After all these weeks of wondering, the truth came out so suddenly.

“They sent me to a prison hulk off the coast.”

As her aunt always said, some secrets were better off kept secret. She tore her gaze from his wound to his face and tried to keep her own countenance composed. “But you're here.”

“They thought I was dead one morning—sometimes it looks and feels as if my heart has stopped—so they threw me overboard with all the other corpses. Disease is rife in those damp, fetid prisons. Men die every day.” He reached for her hand again. “I swam to shore and promised myself if I lived long enough after that, I'd pay recompense for everything I ever did wrong, every mistake I made in my life.”

Lazarus resurrected. Of course.

“They tell me I should have died long since.” He laughed gently. “Yet here I am. The physicians say that bit of blade will move one day, and then I'll be dead”—he clicked his fingers—“just like that. Snuffed out like a candle.”

He spoke so casually, it shocked her. But now she knew why he was always so busy, moving on to another thing before he'd finished the one before. He didn't want to miss a moment of the life he had left. She understood that—oh, yes, she understood.
We
do
not
have
forever.

He folded his arms around her and held her against his wounded chest, her cheek on his shoulder. “Now I told you this, I don't want you to watch me with those big, panic-stricken eyes, expecting any moment might be my last. I believe in living for the moment, taking every chance that comes…without fear.” He slid his hand to the nape of her neck and then higher, under her hair, so he could pull her up and press his lips to hers.

She kissed him back, wanting to erase the sadness that ripped into her heart suddenly. But he didn't dwell on the darkness, and already he had turned to happier thoughts.

“When you tempt me like this, you bring out the worst in me,” he said, his voice hoarse, his hands running down her spine to her bottom. “You bring out the devil in me.”

She was thrilled to hear him confess the power she had. When she licked his chin, the stubble tickled the tip of her tongue.

“Whatever will you do to me next?” he whispered wearily, as if it were all so inconvenient.

“Whatever
you
would like,” she replied, smiling as she sat astride his body, her fingers trailing over his chest. She couldn't think about what he'd just told her. It was too much, too painful, and she wanted it gone, erased by those decadent sensations she'd discovered at his hands. As a child, whenever she was crying, her mother gave her toffee to chew. She soon found one could not cry and chew toffee at the same time. The pleasure replaced the hurt.

His hands tightened around her waist, and he lifted her down onto the grass beside him. Now propped up on one elbow again, he took her hand and led it slowly to that hard, ravenous creature now freed of his breeches. “Here is one new thing I can show you.” He'd never trusted her with this before.

She nibbled his lower lip with tender excitement. “Show me what to do,” she whispered.

He guided her hand to his manhood, showing her how to hold and caress it with a steady motion. Once she was confident enough to take over, he returned the favor. He slid his hand and fingers under her petticoat. When she gasped out his name, he covered her mouth with his and drank from her greedily. His hips bucked frantically, and he pushed his manhood into her hand until she thought she could feel it inside her, the friction of those warm, throbbing ridges against her inner walls, thrusting and withdrawing, taking her like a battering ram. His hand quickened between her thighs, and she heard the breath as it gushed out of him, escaping over his lower lip, as her body once again reached that joyous peak.

But he was still hot, rigid iron in her hand. Even as her tremors faded, he was pulling away, his fingers around her wrist to stop the motion, a fiercely intent expression on his face.