Rules of Engagement (15 page)

Her body knew the truth. That was no apology, it was provocation. She moved in the chair, a ripple from top to bottom, an inducement of its own.

And he, rake and roue, never resisted temptation. Still he held her head as he outlined the shell of her ear with his tongue and probed it and blew a light draft of air, but his other hand slid down to her bosom. In his mind he cursed the silk and ruffles that stood between him and his goal, but he pressed firmly and found a breast that pressed firmly back.

My God, she was perfect. Generously blessed, rounded, solid. The weight in his hand made him want to see and to taste, and the resulting tumult drove him from a gentle seduction toward a greater, more pressing desire. He needed to take this woman. Not just kiss her ear and caress her breast, but thrust himself inside and satisfy himself in her arching body.

Her hands slid toward his neck, and he stopped on an inhalation, waiting, waiting…

And she appeased him. She delved under the edge of his shirt and touched—oh, God—his bare skin. Then she stopped.

Why? Did she surmise how very much he had wished to put her hands elsewhere? On a place lower and of more interest to him?

Or was she shocked by her own temerity?

He wanted to direct her, to tell her to continue, but he wanted to kiss her more. He sought her lips and found them, opened them and discovered it was as if he'd never kissed her. He had appeased no appetite, conquered no desire. She tasted as new and delightful as she had before, and she kissed back with a charming spectacle of reserve and eagerness.

Curiosity drove him. He released her breast and explored lower, to her waist, bound by a corset yet agreeably small, and down further, to draw her hips to him… but damn, she wore petticoats and they got in the way.

He released her mouth. "Miss Lockhart." Vaguely he was aware that it was silly to call her that. "Pamela. Take off these clothes and let me—"

They opened their eyes at the same time.

They both jumped, and she gave a shriek.

She was ugly. What had he been thinking? She was ugly. Yes, he liked to talk to her. Yes, that overly pale complexion and those dark glasses had grown on him. Yes, she sported a grand body. Yes, the candlelight had softened her appalling coloring, but… she was ugly.

And from her expression, she thought no better of him.

"Miss Lockhart, I didn't mean—"

She placed her hands on his chest and pushed. "Get off."

But for some damned reason, he didn't want to. His knee crushed her skirt, his hand held her head, he prevailed over her physically if not mentally, and he liked it. This woman needed to be managed and commanded, made to do what was right for her, for now, and not live in some faraway dream that might never come.

Then he gained control of himself. When a man assumed authority over a woman, he was trapped forever, and the next thing along was love, and he would not love. Again he scrutinized Miss Lockhart.

In fact, she was the cure for love.

He stood up and stepped away, then for some damned reason bowed as if he could stick formality in front of him like a shield.

She stood, too, but painfully, like a woman who had been led to desire and abandoned.

No. He would not feel guilty.

She drew herself up in the stern motion he'd come to recognize as uniquely Miss Lockhart. But this time he saw pride enough to carry her through the door—but no farther. "I don't know why you did that, Lord Kerrich, but I think that to mock me with kisses is a cruelty I ill deserve."

"I didn't kiss you to be cruel. I did it because…" He scrambled for a reason that would save them both face. "Because I wanted to make sure you hadn't succumbed to my handsome face and elegant figure." Strutting toward the door, he did a fine imitation of a popinjay. "I feared you might be planning a visit to my bedchamber—"

"To your bedchamber? What have I done to make you think that?"

"Nothing. But you've been here over a week, and I find that is the length of time it takes most women to fall in love with me."

"In love with you!" Her raised voice and dubious tone were an affront. "You, sir, are a coxcomb."

"I only tell the truth." Not all the truth, but some of it. "I wanted to discourage your intentions."

Her eyes narrowed. "By kissing me?"

"I can tell a great deal by a kiss"—for instance, that you have never been well-kissed before—"and I now know that you, Miss Lockhart, might be tempted by the flesh but have a stalwart nature and will resist. You cannot be had by seduction."

"Certainly not!"

They stared at each other, and he chafed. There were lies in kisses, and greater lies in words, but they had told each other too much. They understood each other too well. None of this should have happened—and he was the instigator of it all. What
had
he been thinking? And why, even when he was looking at her, seeing all her faults, was he still plagued with curiosity about this frumpy, homely, outspoken female?

She broke eye contact. "If your experiment is over, then I will go to bed.
Alone
."

"Yes. Excellent. Sleep well." He was talking to her back, and when she had cleared the threshold he hurried to the pitcher and poured his mug full. He drank it in one long draft, then poured the last of the pitcher in his cup. It was only half-full, and feeling foolish, he emptied the half glass she'd left into his cup, too. He wanted it all. After what just passed, he needed it all, and he had no desire to look at Moulton or that footman what's-his-name or anyone else who would answer his call. They might see on his countenance his confusion, and he couldn't bear that.

Seating himself, he slouched in his chair and stared out into the street. All he could see was Miss Lockhart's upright, curvaceous body walking out the door, and remember how she had felt beneath his hands. And wonder… and wonder…

Beneath those frumpy clothes, she was hiding a magnificent body.

He sat straight up. She was hiding… her figure. She was hiding her age.

He had looked into her eyes. Tumultuous eyes, the color of the sky when hatching an autumn storm. Frightened eyes. Angry. Evasive.

She was hiding… what else was she hiding? Tomorrow, he would find out.

She meant to tell her friend everything; her pleasure in the conversations with Kerrich, her confession of her dreams, Kerrich's odd behavior—that kissing!—and her own feeble acquiescence.

How, when she'd opened her eyes and seen his face, so handsome, so odiously confident, it was as if she viewed her worst nightmare brought to life. She, Pamela Lockhart, had been kissing Lord Kerrich, a man whose sexual exploits no doubt put her father's to shame!

Oh, yes, she needed to confess to someone and have someone explain her own behavior.

But when she arrived at the Distinguished Academy of Governesses and Hannah greeted her with glad cries, Pamela found herself mute. Hannah's affection, her kind brown eyes, her keen wit and enduring friendship made her the perfect friend, and how did one tell a friend that one had run mad?

She used the servants as an excuse to gather her thoughts, greeting them and expressing her gratitude at their care of Hannah. She found herself carried along to the study and seated in the most comfortable chair right before the fire. Hannah presented a letter from Charlotte, and she read it with the sincere hope that Charlotte's new husband would somehow gain the wisdom to love her as she deserved. She found herself reluctant to put it down, and reread parts of it, but at last she could delay no longer. She looked up at Hannah with a smile.

"Take off that ridiculous powder and that abominable rouge." Hannah handed her a handkerchief. "I can't look at you that way."

Pamela laughed and went to the mirror, and with a basin of water provided by Cusheon, she cleaned her face until the Pamela she knew so well had emerged.

But she had changed. There was an anxiety about the eyes, a hopeful smile tugging at the mouth, and Pamela knew she had only to turn and say,
Lord Kerrich kissed me.
Instead she returned to her seat and said, "That feels wonderful."

"You are so beautiful, and to think you have been forced by that man's unreasonable demands to hide your beauty…" Hannah shook her head.

"Actually, it's quite enjoyable in an odd way. No one ever notices me."
Except Lord Kerrich, who kissed me.

Hannah leaned forward in her chair and demanded, "Tell me everything."

Lord Kerrich kissed me.
"My post is going well. Beth is a dear, not timid, and always willing to do anything we require of her just for the chance to remain in Kerrich's home." Cusheon brought the tea tray, and Pamela thanked him.

As Hannah poured, she frowned worriedly. "Will she be crushed if Lord I'm-so-conceited doesn't keep her?"

Lord I'm-so-conceited kissed me.
"I'm doing everything I can to teach her skills and at the same time encouraging him to spend time with her." Pamela laughed, and she flattered herself it sounded normal. "Believe it or not, they have much in common. They both adore horses." Accepting a plate, Pamela exclaimed, "Cusheon! My favorite tea-cakes. Thank you!"

"Pleased to have you back, miss." Cusheon bowed and began his slow retreat to the foyer.

Hannah leaned back and cocked her head as she teased, "Is he still heedless enough to believe you are an older, unattractive spinster?"

Yes, but he kissed me anyway.
"He's a man! Men see what's on the surface and no more."

Cusheon had gone only so far as the entrance, and he harrumphed.

"Except you, Cusheon." Pamela smiled at him. "All the wisdom of the male gender resides in you."

He bowed again and went back to stand guard by the doorway.

"Is he cruel to you?" Hannah asked in an undertone.

"Kerrich? No, not at all. He's really not as awful as we first feared."
Not even when he kissed me. He did it well.
"He explained all the circumstances for this deception he is practicing."

Hannah was always curious. "What circumstances?"

"You know I can't tell you that. You'll just have to trust me. He has his reasons."
Why was she defending a man who had kissed her? And then told her he had done it as a test?
Looking around the slightly shabby study, Pamela deliberately relaxed. This was her home. She was speaking to one of her best friends. She
could
confess her actions here, and she would.

Instead she found herself saying, "Nevertheless, I'm so glad to be here where I can be myself."

"Pamela, I know you. You're not looking me in the eye. You're nervous and jittery." Hannah shook her finger at her. "You're not telling me something."

He kissed me
. "I'm not?" Her voice squeaked.

"You don't want to say it because to do so would force you to admit you were wrong." Hannah donned the stern expression of a governess. "You lack confidence that he will do right by the child when the deception is done."

"No! I know he'll do something for her. He's not a liar, he's just… unwilling to love. Possibly, or rather probably, he won't keep her as his own, but there was never much chance of that, was there?" And Pamela's heart ached for Beth. "But he seems to be fond of her, or as fond as that man can be of any female."
Except that he likes to kiss them, and he has recognized I'm a female. And I want to confess all
—
but I don't. I'm frightened by him and appalled at myself. Am I really as weak as my mother?

The thought horrified her. She had loved her mother. Her father had irrevocably wronged her mother. But her mother shouldn't have died for love. She should have lived for her daughter's sake and for life's sake.

"I suppose that dealing with such a man is enough reason for you to be consumed and weary." Hannah patted her hand. "You're doing the best you can in difficult circumstances."

"As to that, I am. I threw together a party in a week, and although Kerrich's servants are well trained, the burden of organization was on me. Naturally," Pamela said with complete immodesty, "the affair was a smashing success, and I wouldn't be surprised but the queen has already heard word of Kerrich's beneficence. We might have that final payment sooner than we anticipated." She rubbed her hands together in mock greed. Then she craftily brought up the subject dearest to Hannah's heart. "But I didn't come here to talk about me. You must tell me how the Governess School is progressing."
For it seems I can't tell you that Lord Kerrich kissed me.

Hannah's eyes glowed, and she launched into an exuberant detail of hiring out a trainee at a profitable rate.

It was the knowledge of the school's budding success that comforted Pamela as, two hours later, she pulled her plain woolen shawl around her shoulders and hurried back to her assignment. Hurried and suffered a vague anxiety— and a nebulous delight.

The anxiety she could explain. Although it was just past noon, the high overcast clouds allowed a watery summer light, and since that vile thief had robbed her she hadn't walked the London streets alone. Well… except that very morning when she had walked the same distance to the Governess School.

But to be so delighted to spy Hyde Park Gardens! To feel her heart jump when the tall, wide edifice of Kerrich's townhouse came into her sights. To feel comfort within the confines of her reapplied disguise. Ah, that was an anticipation that sincerely dismayed her. Kerrich was like her father. He was! And she feared she reacted to the dissolution and the charm as she had reacted to similar traits in her father; despising him for the dissolution, and trying to please for a glimpse of the charm. Had she changed not at all from that young, adolescent girl who had gone to meet the princess at Kensington Palace and stay there with her for a night?

She had tried so hard to make the princess like her, and the princess's mother, too. Not because they mattered to her. Oh, no. Because her father had told her to charm them. Because her father had decided that if his daughter could please them enough, they would wish to have her for a companion for the princess, and he would have influence on an important and a susceptibly female household.

She had failed, of course. The Duchess of Kent had allowed no one to influence her daughter except herself. Pamela's mission had been doomed from the start. Her father's displeasure had been a foregone conclusion. But she had tried anyway, tried so hard she had scarcely noticed the handsome, flirtatious young Kerrich.

Well, she noticed him now.

Oh, of course Kerrich wasn't totally like her father. He had no mistress as far as she could tell, and he seemed dedicated to his bank rather than the pursuit of loose women. Was it those feeble virtues that had won her around so thoroughly that she had kissed him?

As she approached the townhouse, she straightened her shoulders. The edgy guise of Pamela had to be discarded. Each step up to the grand double doors brought her closer to Kerrich, to Beth and to the challenge they faced. She couldn't allow Kerrich to distract her with his need to conquer any woman he saw—and that could be the only reason for his inexplicable behavior—so she reminded herself it was up to her to support the Governess School until the time when it could totally support itself. Strengthening her resolve, she again became Miss Lockhart, governess of iron. For Beth, she had to be brave. To Lord Kerrich, she had to be unassailable. She would never again let him kiss her to satisfy his curiosity.

Grasping the grand brass knocker formed in the shape of an eagle claw, she pounded firmly.

Timothy answered the door and in tones of surprise— one might even call it horror—exclaimed, "Miss Lockhart!"

"What?" She swept inside the grand foyer and reached up to unpin her hat.

He stared at her, wide-eyed and uneasy.

She couldn't imagine what about her had created such dismay. She glanced in the mirror and started, then realized the pale, red-cheeked creature there was indeed
she,
and the
she
Timothy was used to seeing. "Am I late?" she asked.

"No!" He squirmed. "No, in fact, we had hoped that you would be…"

She lifted her eyebrows to him. "Be?"

"That will do, Timothy." Moulton walked into the foyer in his peculiarly smooth gait. "I will assist Miss Lockhart now."

"Y-yes," Timothy stammered. "Thank you, Mr. Moulton."

Pamela handed her hat to Moulton and waited for him to acquaint her with the progress of Beth's activities. She had left a full list of things Beth should do with the nursery maid, Corliss, although she expected they would have completed only a part. After all, there was no substitute for the discipline of a real governess.

However, Moulton inquired, "How was your half-day, Miss Lockhart?"

"Quite enjoyable." Indeed, she admitted she had greatly enjoyed the chance to sit with Hannah and for a few brief hours, be herself. Yet she couldn't lie to herself. All the time she was with Hannah, the thought of Lord Kerrich and kisses lingered in her mind. Perhaps he had kissed her because he felt sorry for her, or because he had to conquer every woman in his sphere, or out of curiosity—but she
would
stop thinking about it!

And she would take care to stay out of his grasp.

So she was glad to be back. "Did Beth give Corliss any trouble?"

"Not at all. Corliss is quite capable." He took Pamela's shawl as she slipped it off. "What did you do on your half-day?"

"I visited my friend and comrade at the Distinguished Academy of Governesses, Miss Hannah Setterington." She put her hand on the banister. "And now, I'll—"

He interrupted. "Is all going well with your venture there?"

Moulton was usually so proper and distant, a man who showed his competence in every way, and even as she answered she wondered at him. "Very well. Miss Setterington placed one of the governesses we have trained in quite a comfortable home."

"Jolly good. That must make you happy."

She wasn't imagining it. He
was
acting oddly. Trying to ease away, she took the first step up the stairs. "But it's time to go back and work with Beth. We have much to do before we can accept an invitation."

Snatching up the silver salver that sat in the foyer, he showed her a complement of sealed, formal sheets. "These came this afternoon. That must give you a sense of accomplishment."

"Yes, and they prove Lord Kerrich was right in demanding we give the party." A fact he had not hesitated to point out—not long before he kissed her.

But the next time they spoke, and Pamela did not at all worry about seeing him after those kisses, she would not hesitate to point out Beth was the kind of foundling the
ton
could embrace—polite, sunny, grateful and obedient. Only Pamela understood the pressure those expectations brought to bear, for she felt them, too. During their next outing, Beth dared not put a foot wrong, and that especially included knocking down little boys, regardless of the provocation. Oh, there was so much to teach the child, and so little time!

Again she took a step, and Moulton asked, "Which invitations are you going to accept?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him that he worked for Kerrich, as did she, and Kerrich would decide which invitations they would accept. But again she wondered at his chattiness, and again she remembered Timothy's dismay, and suddenly a great light shone in her mind. Shooting the question at him with all the lethal intent of a gunman, she asked, "Did Lord Kerrich take Beth for a ride this morning?"