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Authors: Sherry Thomas

Tags: #England - Social Life and Customs - 19th Century, #Man-Woman Relationships, #General, #Romance, #Marriage, #Historical, #Fiction, #Love Stories

Private Arrangements (5 page)

BOOK: Private Arrangements
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She probably should not have said it. It was too forward, too indelicate, even for her. In reaction, his gaze dipped briefly, encompassing all of her. And when he looked back at her, his irises darker than she remembered, the back of her mouth grew hot.

“I have a different view of marriage,” he said. “I do not think I'm the right person for what you have in mind.”

All that beauty and cleverness, why must he possess principles too? The depth of her disappointment was out of all proportion to the casualness of her proposal. “What if I choose to call in the debts, then?” she said churlishly.

“It would be a bad deal for you,” he said calmly. “Stripping us of everything we have will at most make up half of what my late cousin owed you. You know that.”

They resumed walking, but her mind was no longer on the finances of her social climbing. Instead, she entertained disturbingly angry thoughts about Miss von Schweppenburg. The woman was so insipid, so weak, what hold did she have on this remarkable man? What right did she have toward him, she who would have meekly accepted the proposal of any rich, powerful man who had caught her mother's fancy? Did beauty, elegance, and flawlessness at the pianoforte really count for
that
much?

He noted her sullen silence. “I have offended you.”

How could he offend her? She liked everything about him, except the woman he loved. “No. You are not obliged to marry me just because it would delight me.”

“I don't know if it is of any comfort to you, but I'm honored. No one has ever asked for my hand in marriage before.”

“I suspect it's because you are young and you used to be a bit of an impoverished nobody. Expect the proposals to fly fast and thick now.”

“But you'll always be my first,” he said.

Was he teasing her? “Well, the first one you turned down, to be sure,” she answered glumly.

He allowed her to sulk for the remainder of the trek. She stomped, her boots raucously crunching the snow underfoot. Despite his greater size and weight, his riding boots were as quiet on the snow as she imagined a Siberian tiger's paws must be.

Half a mile from the house, they were met by Mrs. Rowland and a trio of lantern-swinging servants.

“Gigi!” Mrs. Rowland cried. She picked up her skirts and came running.

Gigi could not prevent the mother-hen hug that swooped upon her. Mrs. Rowland kissed her on her forehead and cheeks. “Gigi. You foolish, foolish girl. Where have you been? Look at this weather! You could have frozen to your death out there.”

“Mother!” Gigi protested, embarrassed to be so fussed over before Lord Tremaine. “I was not out in Antarctica risking frostbite and gangrene.”

“I'm just worried because you haven't been yourself lately. Now, do let us—”

At last Mrs. Rowland noticed the stranger, and the very large horse, next to Gigi. She swung toward Gigi in alarm.

Gigi sighed. “Mother, may I present his lordship, the Marquess of Tremaine? Lord Tremaine, my mother, Mrs. Rowland. Lord Tremaine has graciously deigned to accompany me, to help me grope my way home in the midst of this veritable blizzard we are experiencing.”

Mrs. Rowland ignored her acerbic remarks. “Lord Tremaine! We thought you still in Paris.”

“My term ended a week ago, madam.” He bowed. “I hope you will forgive me. I trespassed onto your land without knowing and came upon Miss Rowland. She kindly permitted me to walk with her.”

He turned to Gigi and bowed also. “It's been a rare pleasure, Miss Rowland. I trust you are in good hands now.”

“But you cannot mean to go back the way you came!” Mrs. Rowland gasped in horror. “You will surely get lost in this darkness and this weather. You must come to our house instead.”

He protested. But Mrs. Rowland was convinced he would perish if he went ahead with his foolhardy plan to return to Twelve Pillars either on foot or on horseback. In the end he acquiesced to dinner and to being taken home in a warm, comfortable brougham afterward.

Gigi was unhappy about it. She was all for sending Lord Tremaine away, the sooner the better. It did not amuse her to see her mother's extremely favorable reaction upon viewing him for the first time in good light. And it hurt—a sharp pinch somewhere deep in her chest—watching Mrs. Rowland shower him with the kind of pampering attention reserved for prospective sons-in-law.

Yet Gigi put on her best dinner gown, a midnight-blue confection of silk and tulle, and had her hair re-coiffed three times. God help her, she wanted him to think her pretty and desirable.

Over dinner, Mrs. Rowland patiently, skillfully elicited details of Lord Tremaine's twenty-one years of life. He had led quite the cosmopolitan existence, it appeared, having sojourned in every major capital of Europe, plus quite a few of the Continent's favorite watering holes.

He conducted himself with the poise of a prince but without the arrogance so ingrained in most members of the aristocracy. Yet he was most certainly an aristocrat. Not only was he heir to an English ducal title, but through his mother, who'd been born a Wittelsbach, he was related to the House of Hapsburg, the House of Hohenzollern, and the House of Hanover itself, from cousinship with the dukes of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Worse, unlike Carrington, whose slack chin, wet lips, and vacant eyes became all too noticeable upon further acquaintance, Lord Tremaine's already handsome features, married to his graciousness and intelligence, grew more striking with each passing minute.

Mrs. Rowland was clearly in awe of him. She sent Gigi pointed looks.
Speak more. Enchant him. Don't you see he's perfect?
Gigi, however, was nose deep in misery, a desolation made more unbearable by every minute spent in his painfully enjoyable company.

Her torture did not end there. After dinner, Mrs. Rowland asked him to play for them, having heard from the duchess that he was a fine pianist. He did, with a born performer's flair. Gigi stared alternately at his flawless profile, his long, strong hands, and her lap, fighting a wretchedness that seemed to have seeped into her blood.

The final blow came when he rose to take his leave of them, only to discover that a blizzard had indeed arrived. Mrs. Rowland smugly informed him that in her great foresight, she had already sent off a messenger three hours ago to inform his parents that he'd stay the night because of the worsening weather.

Gigi had counted on his departure, on never seeing him again. How was she to get through the night with him under the same roof and almost within reach?

 

Camden had trouble falling asleep, but it had nothing to do with being in an unfamiliar bed. He was used to it, having never had a home of his own, always traveling to a different city, a different house, always sleeping in rooms that belonged to other people.

He hadn't lied to Mrs. Rowland. He'd indeed lived in some of the Continent's most glamorous locales. He'd simply omitted the less than glamorous reasons behind this peripatetic life: because his parents hadn't an ounce of money sense between them and could never afford a permanent residence.

So they moved in counterrhythm to the wealthier elites. In summer, when everyone was off to Biarritz and Aix-les-Bains, they occupied some relative's winter villa in Nice. In winter, the reverse. Occasionally, they stayed in one place for a while, when a house stood vacant because its owners had gone off on some wild adventure, such as when Cousin Konstantin left Athens for schemes in Argentina. Or when Cousin Nikolai went to China for two years.

At age thirteen, Camden had taken over the management of the household. By then he was already accustomed to dealing with creditors, handling servants, and learning new languages in an instant so he could haggle with local merchants in order to stretch his family's meager coins further. He didn't mind being poor, but he hated having to lie about it, to dissemble and feign, as he did tonight, so that his parents could continue on in their blissful ignorance of their financial precariousness.

It had been a relief to be with Theodora. They'd met in St. Petersburg, where their mothers shared the use of a troika. He'd been fifteen then, she sixteen. She was as poor as he and, like him, lived in fashionable places in unfashionable seasons. They understood each other's plight without ever needing to speak a word of it.

But it was not thoughts of Theodora that kept him awake. It was Miss Rowland.

Even before their accidental meeting, he had more or less expected Miss Rowland to propose a merger between his future title and her fortune. He had also expected a great deal of regret over turning down those sweet stacks of pounds sterling, after having lived in want of them his entire life.

What he emphatically did not expect was Miss Rowland herself. She was unsentimental, hardened, and cynical beyond her years—but her greatest cruelty was reserved for herself, in her insistence that she would be perfectly fine, thank you, if she could only cosh a duke senseless with his own ledgers and haul him to the altar.

For someone who was otherwise levelheaded and manipulative, there'd been an odd, poignant transparency to her this evening. She liked him. She liked him enough to be not just disappointed over his unavailability, but unhappy.

He liked her too, surprisingly. How could he not like a girl who called him an “impoverished nobody” to his face? Her frankness was refreshing and welcome after the nuanced subtlety and selective narratives that had characterized his exchanges, all his life, with people outside his immediate family.

But what caused his fidgeting at this witching hour was not her overly simplistic approach to things and people, but her brooding sexuality.

She'd wanted to touch him. That desire had been there in every full-on stare and every sideways glance all throughout the evening.
Once our marriage is consummated, you need only to come back to me when you need heirs.
The girl might be a virgin, but she was neither pure nor innocent. She knew about these things.

What she probably didn't know yet, but he already did, was that with her single-mindedness she would be a force of nature in bed. No man could roll out of her bed and walk away. His overriding objective, despite his exhaustion, would be how he could get her to lie with him again.

* * *

Camden dozed fitfully. Then suddenly he was awake. He had left the curtains and shutters open, out of years of habit, so that he could look out and recall in which country, which city he found himself. The blizzard must have passed; a shaft of silvery moonlight drifted through the window and lit the way clear to the door. A woman stood just inside, in a long nightgown, her back against the door. He couldn't see her face but he knew instinctively that it was Miss Rowland, she of the entirely unfitting, too-childish pet name Gigi.

The Rowland manse, while not a cumbersome behemoth like the ducal manor at Twelve Pillars, still had some eighty, ninety rooms. He had been put to bed in a different wing from where his hosts had their bedchambers. She had not accidentally returned to the wrong room after using the water closet. She had to have walked a good two hundred feet to visit him.

And he was naked beneath the covers. The late Mr. Rowland's nightshirt, kindly supplied at bedtime, had been too restricting.

She stayed in that spot, unmoving, for a long time, until he was tempted to tell her either to get on with whatever in the blazes she had planned or leave him to his tossing and turning in peace. Abruptly, she moved, coming toward the bed in long, determined strides, her feet silent on the Persian carpet.

She knelt by the bed, her eyes even with his elbow. Her hair was loose, dark as the fabric of the night; her white nightgown almost glimmered. He could not see her features clearly, but he heard her uneven breaths, a long, slightly trembling inhalation, a few heartbeats of breath being held, and a short rush of exhalation. Repeat. Repeat.

But she remained still. What was she waiting for? Hadn't she yet satisfied herself that he was really, completely asleep? He squeezed his eyes shut, pretending she wasn't there. But her breaths tickled the hairs on his forearm, triggering seismic tremors along his nerves. And her scent, a fine blend of chamomile and cucumber, warm, powdery, and insidious, enfolded him.

What did she want?

She touched him, placing her hand over his curled fingers, straightening them so that they were palm to palm, then she interlaced her fingers with his. Her fingertips were icy. A silent, dangerous thrill coursed through him. He wanted to pull her atop him and show her what awaited a foolish young woman who slipped into a man's bedroom in the dead of the night after having devoured him all evening with those dark, intense eyes of hers, setting his blood to simmer over three long hours.

Her hand moved. Her fingers encircled his wrist, searing him with her cool skin. Two fingertips slowly trailed up his arm, barely touching him. She rose from her crouch to access more of him, and a strand of her hair caressed the inside of his upper arm. He bit his lower lip, nearly undone by the spike of pleasure.

At the top of his arm, her fingers spread out over his collarbone and his shoulder. She hesitated before sliding her palm up the side of his face. He heard an almost inaudible gasp as she snatched her hand away. His stubbles—they had surprised her. Her inexperience excited him almost as much as her audacity. She had not done this before.

Her hand returned, the back of it this time, smooth skin over strong bones, skimming along his jaw. Her thumb found his lips and traced over them. He fought the urge to lick her fingertip. God, but he burned, everywhere. On the side away from her, his fingers clawed into the counterpane. She had no idea what she was doing to him, or she would not dare continue.

She moved again, settling a hip on the bed. As her head bent forward, her hair cascaded, a skein of silk threads unspooling on his chest, all gossamer coolness and teasing chaos.

Suddenly it became too much. A violent upheaval of lust seized him. He grabbed the front of her nightgown and yanked her down. She gasped and flailed. But he subdued her easily, rolling them so that he ended above her, pinning her down with his weight and her fear.

Only her nightgown separated them. And Gigi Rowland was all outrageous femininity: full breasts, soft belly, and lusciously rounded hips. A moan of sweet, terrible pleasure escaped him. He kissed her, her ear, her cheek, her neck, and, through the soft flannel of her nightgown, her shoulder. His hand settled at the indentation of her waist, above the flare of her hips. His fingers dug into young, firm flesh. Other parts of him also wanted to dig in, hard, harder.

She was at his mercy here, having thoroughly compromised herself. There were so many wicked things he could do to her, and she would not dare make a sound—she would be biting her lips to suppress her moans and whimpers, because he'd make her as wild and ravenous as he.

It took all of his willpower and a large dose of shame—shame over his lack of control, his bad faith toward Theodora, and his harsh handling of a girl who was guilty of nothing more than being attracted to him—to let go. He rolled off her, turned his back, and emitted a few grunts, as if he'd been dreaming.

She scrambled off the bed. But she didn't scuttle out of the room. She panted, as if she had been running from a wolf, a werewolf. In the raspy sounds she made, there was both terror and arousal.

He prayed that she would see herself out. Because if she didn't, if she came to his bed again, he would not be able to stop.

She moved,
toward
the bed, her soft footfall as loud to his ear as a shot in the dark. His blood pounded thickly. His erection grew painfully hungry. She took one more step, until she was standing at the edge of the bed again. He balled his hands tight, digging his nails into his palms until he was sure he must be bleeding, afraid that if he didn't hold fast onto some shred of mastery, he'd—

She ran, slamming the door behind her. He listened as she sped down the corridor, feeling the vibration of the floor through the mattress beneath him.

When the house was once again silent, he rolled onto his back and let out the breath he had been holding. His cock stood straight up, hot and unsatisfied. He gave it a mean
thwack.
But it only bobbed, more famished and demanding than ever.

He let out a sigh, put his hand on it, and let his imagination run wild.

BOOK: Private Arrangements
9.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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