Pretty Poison (14 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Nick paced the hall waiting for Emily to appear while the others gathered in the parlor waiting for luncheon to be announced.

“Damn.” He’d blundered again. He’d thought Emily had followed them all into the parlor, had turned to introduce her to Bernice only to find that she wasn’t there. He’d hurried out to the empty foyer, turned to the stairs in time to see her disappear into the shadows in the upper hall.

He’d have to be more careful of her. It wouldn’t do at all to have her think he’d turned his attentions to Lady Bernice, to prove she’d been right all along and he was a fickle, faithless man. That way lay disaster.

He heard a measured tapping from above and looked up to find Emily poised at the top of the curving staircase.

Nick sucked in a startled breath. She looked beautiful, other-worldly in a dress of deep dark green with long sleeves that hugged her arms like a second skin. Black ribbon banded the collar which rose high around her slim neck only to plunge down in a V that surely ended just above the jagged scar he knew was there, resting between her breasts. The waist was cinched tight, accentuating her tiny waist and flaring out over her trim hips to fall in a long fluid line.

As she started down the steps, he saw that the skirt was slit from hem to waist, the green silk shifting open to reveal a black under slip of some slinky material that caressed her legs.

She came down until she was eye level with him where he waited on the landing and he realized that she’d left her long burnished tresses flowing down her back in a riot of shining curls that almost reached her hips. Two black jeweled combs held the heavy mass away from her face. Her green eyes were shining, a small satisfied smile played over her lips.

She looked like a sultry witch, a beautiful sorceress come to earth expressly to enchant him, to drive him mad with the desire to claim her as his woman.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Avery,” she purred.

“Miss Calvert,” he replied, his voice scratchy. He cleared his throat, held out his hand to assist her down the remaining stairs. Her hand was bare, naked and warm in his. He entwined his fingers with hers and pulled her down the hall, past the parlor door.

“Nicholas,” she exclaimed with a huff of laughter. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, you know,” he growled as he opened the door to Lady Margaret’s study and pulled her inside. He turned to face her, backed her up against the closed door with his big hulking frame, leaned down and captured the startled smile upon her lips.

“You know exactly what you do to me,” he murmured against her lips.

“You must behave yourself,” she admonished primly then destroyed the effect by brushing her tongue along his bottom lip.

“Lord, woman, how you tempt me,” he whispered before he took her mouth in the hottest, wettest, wildest kiss he could manage. With his lips and his tongue and his teeth he showed her how tempting she was to him, how he desired her and only her.

He touched her nowhere but her lips, kept his hands firmly on the door beside her head as he nipped and laved and suckled her.

“Mmmm,” she hummed as she laid her hands on his shoulders, her fingers kneading and massaging him through his coat and shirt.

Nick drew back, took an unsteady step away from the temptation she presented.

“You’re a devil, you are Mr. Avery,” she drawled, her eyes alight and a smile playing about her lips.

“I’m sure I don’t know how you lured me in here,” he said, imitating her lilting voice.

“Huh, I did no such thing.”

“Bat your eyelashes and stick your nose in the air all you want, Emily Ann. You knew exactly what you were doing, how you would tempt me, when you donned that dress and left your curls free down your back.”

“And aren’t you the conceited one,” she proclaimed as she turned to open the door. “Thinking I dressed to tempt you.”

“Good God, woman, your hair.” He stepped up behind her in the open doorway, wrapped one arm around her waist, his hand spread low on her belly, and bent to bury his face in her fiery curls.

He felt her tremble beneath his hand, felt her suck in a quick breath and hold it. He was hard and aching, longed to pull her lush round bottom against his straining flesh. With a shaking hand he lifted the fall of her hair, brushed it to the side, over one dainty shoulder to fall across her breast. He followed the curls that drifted over her, slowly brushed his hand down from her neck, over the swell of her breast until he cupped her.

Emily leaned her head back against his chest, let her breath out in a whoosh of air and moaned low in her throat.

A door down the hall opened and laughing and chatting voices spilled out into the foyer. Emily jerked, her breast fitting more firmly into his hand. He gave her flesh a quick squeeze before releasing her to watch her walk slowly and carefully down the hall toward his father and Lady Margaret as they led the others into the dining room.

“Jesus,” he growled, watching the enticing roll of her hips, the shimmy of her red curls down her slender back.

Emily found herself seated between Mr. Boone and Nicholas with the beautiful Lady Bernice on his other side. Mr. Boone seemed more interested in looking down Veronica’s shockingly low bodice to his left than conversing with Emily on his right. With no choice but to talk to Nicholas, she vowed she would find ordinary, mundane topics to discuss.

She managed to engage him in a deadly dull discussion of the unseasonably cold weather they’d been having and likely state of the roads.

He clearly knew what she was about but gentleman that he was, he followed her lead. Until Mr. Boone all but fell off his seat angling for a better view.

“Too bad Mr. Boone isn’t in need of a fortune,” she whispered to Nicholas, forgetting entirely her earlier vow to keep all conversation to the mundane.

“If things were reversed, and she was in need of his fortune, I’ve no doubt they’d be a match by morning,” Nicholas agreed.

“I think perhaps that arrangement leads to a happier match than the reverse,” she offered.

“Oh, this should be good,” he replied with a low chuckle.

“Women, as a whole, are raised to depend on a man for financial security,” she explained in her best school marm voice. “It is nothing to a lady to ask her father or brother or other male guardian for funds for this or that. And gentlemen, leastwise those who are not tightfisted, enjoy lavishing their female dependents with this or that. And a smart lady knows how to wheedle what she needs from even a stingy man, one way or another.”

“One would assume she would employ different tactics for her husband than her father,” Lady Bernice piped in, leaning forward to look past Nicholas and meet Emily’s startled gaze.

“Never having had a husband, I cannot speak to that with any expertise, but I am quite certain you are right,” Emily agreed.

“How do you cajole your father into giving you additional funds when you’ve spent your pin money before the quarter is up?” Nicholas asked.

“I don’t spend my pin money. I’ve saved every penny for years. Anything I want I charge to Da.”

“Then what’s the point of your receiving an allowance?” he asked in surprise.

Emily shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sure I don’t know. Some foolish notion men got into their heads. But if I do need to ask Da for funds I just do it in such a way that he thinks it was his idea.”

“I’ll tell you how you could entice the last shilling from my pockets, if I was your husband that is,” he offered softly.

“Oh, I know just how I would go about it,” she interrupted knowingly.

He waited expectantly for her to continue but she turned to her plate, carefully cutting her carrots into precise little bite sized morsels.

“You must enlighten us, Miss Calvert,” Lady Bernice prompted, a friendly smile upon her perfect little lips.

“It wouldn’t be proper,” she answered, peeping at Nicholas through her lashes.

“The telling or the enticing?” he asked with a wide grin.

“Well, now, Mr. Avery,” she drawled. “That’s a bit of a trick question. If the enticing is improper, wouldn’t it follow that the telling would be likewise?”

Nicholas leaned in close to whisper, “Would it include throwing off your gowns and running about bare—”

Emily’s elbow shot out, connecting with his midsection hard enough to surprise a soft, “oof” from him.

“You are a very wicked man, Nicholas Avery,” Emily said, biting her lower lip not to laugh.

“You like me wicked, Emily Calvert.”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” she replied with a negligent way of her hand.

“Oh, you do.”

“And aren’t you sure of yourself.”

“I love it when you do that,” he said, his voice husky.

“What?” she asked.

“That slow drawl. Not quite Irish brogue, it’s softer, sweeter and altogether too sultry.”

“Oh,” she breathed.

“Dangerous.”

Emily laughed softly, oddly embarrassed and pleased. No man had ever found her dangerous. She rather liked it.

She cleared her throat delicately, wondering how they’d gotten on such an intimate discussion. “As I was saying, before you sent this conversation into the realm of the improper, I’m not certain a lady of good fortune and a fortune hunting gentleman are likely to find contentment together.”

“Why’s that?” he asked, the teasing light in his eyes disappearing.

“Firstly, she turns over her fortune to her husband, who can share or withhold it as he pleases. Secondly, if he is a proud gentleman surely he must feel a certain amount of indignity in the knowledge that her funds have allowed him to continue in the lifestyle to which he is accustomed.”

“But you do not allow for the gentleman to be properly gratified by the gift his bride has bestowed upon him,” Lady Bernice said and it was Emily’s turn to lean forward to look upon the other lady. Nicholas dutifully leaned back in his chair so that the ladies need not crane their necks around his bulk.

“If the lady in question were smart,” Lady Bernice continued, a merry twinkle in her pale green eyes. “She would be cautious not to lord her gift over her husband, but instead to pander to his ego, to praise him for handling her funds so carefully, for growing her measly little fortune into a tidy sum. She might also be sure to remind him that those qualities he possesses that led her to choose him, the goods he brought to market, so to speak, are of value. That it was a fair trade.”

“Pander?” Nicholas asked with a surprised laugh.

“Fair trade?” Emily asked skeptically.

“Of course,” Lady Bernice replied airily. “Men, especially gentlemen of the
ton
, are simple creatures really. Boys, if you will. Little boys with great big egos. As such they must be assured that the stick they carry is larger than that of other boys, that their toys are better, newer, costlier, that their pony is coveted by all and sundry but will ride like the wind only for him.”

Emily found herself smiling at the other lady, at her wit and irreverent words. This was a lady deserving of Nicholas Avery. The thought jumped into her mind unbidden.

“Are you by any chance a collector of useless knowledge?” Emily asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Lady Bernice replied, lifting one perfectly arched brow.

Nicholas roared with laughter, causing heads to turn up and down the long table.

“What’s so funny down there?” Charles Calvert boomed from the end of the table where he sat to his sister’s right, a terrible breach of etiquette that. Beside him sat a pretty lady with strawberry-blonde hair and smiling blue eyes, Lady Bernice Sutton’s mother, the Duchess of Martindale, presumably.

“The ladies are educating me on the finer points of marriage to an heiress,” Nicholas replied boldly.

“Never mind the marriage, you need an education in getting one to the altar first,” Charles boomed.

“He’s got two pretty ladies hanging on his every word,” Viscount Talbot exclaimed from his seat on Aunt Margaret’s left. “I’d say my son is doing just fine.”

Emily looked away from the two jovial men at the end of the table to find Veronica Ogilvie glaring at her around Mr. Boone while the remaining guests laughed good-naturedly at the fathers’ antics.

When the ladies retired to the front parlor to while away the cold day at cards and music, Emily approached Lady Bernice Sutton where she stood with Adelaide Sanderson.

“Oh, Miss Calvert,” Lady Bernice said welcomingly. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”

“You’ve not met before?” Adelaide asked in surprise.

“I was not in London for the Season,” Lady Bernice reminded her with a soft smile.

“Oh, but of course,” Adelaide agreed. “Miss Calvert this is Lady Bernice, my dearest friend and neighbor.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Lady Bernice,” Emily replied with what she hoped was a serene smile.

“Oh but the pleasure is entirely mine, and you simply must call me Bernice,” the lady replied warmly. “From what Addie has been telling me we are sure to be friends.”

“Oh?” Emily asked in alarm. What tales could Adelaide Sanderson have been sharing?

“Any lady who can take on Ronnie O and come away unscathed is a lady I would like to call my friend.”

“Ronnie... Miss Ogilvie you mean?” Emily asked with a laugh.

“She attended Miss Smythe’s Academy for Young Ladies with us,” Adelaide explained. “We spent four years unable to escape her razor tongue.”

“Lucinda Davis, as well?” Emily asked.

“Lucy invariably got the brunt of Ronnie’s malice,” Bernice replied. “She just would not stand up for herself, poor girl.”

“I had no idea girls’ schools were so difficult.”

“You were not sent off to perfect your accomplishments, then?” Bernice asked.

“No, I studied with a governess at home.”

“Lucky you,” Bernice murmured. “What did you mean when you asked if I collected useless knowledge?”

“I find myself chock full of knowledge that never seems to have a use,” Emily replied with an embarrassed little laugh.

“I don’t know about that,” Adelaide said. “It would seem to me you find uses for all that knowledge at precisely the right time.”