Rules of Engagement (18 page)

"You will stop quoting me."

Now she chuckled in real mirth. For the first time today, she had scored her point. "I'll go upstairs and change into dry clothing."

"You'll stay here and put on my robe."

"I must consider my reputation."

"Lady, if you don't get those clothes off, I promise to leave your reputation in shreds."

It was obvious by his lowered head and rapid-fire response he had lost all patience, and this time she opted for wisdom. "You kissed me before." She held out her hands, palm up. "You must promise that if I do this, you won't try and kiss me again."

"Miss Lockhart, the only thing I promise you is that I will get the truth from you one way or another." He pointed. "Now get back there and strip off."

She hadn't won anything. But he was on the verge of taking matters into his own hands, so she scurried behind the screen. Kerrich was right, the blackguard, she did want to be rid of her sopping clothes and most especially of her sodden leather shoes. And if she was going to obey his orders and her own wishes, she would have to be as quick as possible. She did not care to have him join her.

Twisting and squirming in the small recess behind the screen, she unfastened the buttons on the back of her gown. With a quick glance to make sure she was unobserved, she pulled it off over her head.

"You must have known you would be caught," he called.

"Why?" She judged his voice to be over by the fire, and relaxed her vigilance a little. Untying her petticoats, she let them drop and stepped out of them. "Once you had ascertained I was the proper female for the job, you never looked at me."

"I… did… too."

She paid him and his indignation no heed. There was no chair so, sitting on the floor, she slowly and painfully worked the buttons out of the leather of her shoes. "You wanted the job finished as quickly as possible, so I knew I wouldn't have to pretend for long."

"I saw you. I knew there was something about you." He paused, then with absolute relish said, "I kissed you."

"I needed the money."

"From kissing?" He sounded like he was laughing.

"No, my jesting lord. From the success of your plan." Reaching under her pantalettes, she untied her garters and peeled off her stockings. A shiver shook her as the air flowed over her moist skin, and she wrapped the blanket around her. "As you have so kindly pointed out, my lord, women will do anything for money."

He drew breath, then exhaled in slow, long consideration. "Except you." The rapid-fire fury of his speech had become lazy contemplation.
"You
will not marry for money."

She had not slowed. She had not gained reason. She was still as furious as she had been at the racetrack, and she yelled, "I will not marry at all." Then she heard herself. Shouting, like some chippy of her father's. Looking down at her trembling hands, she gained control of her voice and said softly, "But there's no question of that, is there?"

"Oh, I don't know. That might be the answer to my problems. You're clever, you're from a good family, and if you're as lovely as Colbrook claims, I would have myself a wife of whom even Queen Victoria would approve."

But he stood before the fire, absolutely nude.

Nude. Presenting her his profile. His arms upraised, the muscles bulging in his upper arms. A towel over his head as he dried his hair. A whisk of black hair lightly covered his clean, glowing skin, especially from his chest to his groin. Especially around the protrusion which…

She closed her eyes, then without her volition found them open again.

His legs. His legs arched with muscle, too, healthy and long, and all over, the fire's golden glow lovingly licked his flesh.

She shouldn't look. She should go back behind the screen. Why had she even come out here?

He must have found her silence suspect, for he whipped the towel off his head and faced her.

She would have thought curiosity, vulgar curiosity, would lead her to look again at his body, or that mortification would make her scamper away. But his force of will compelled her to look at his countenance. At his slow, crooked smile, the way his drying hair stood in spikes around his face, the hawklike nose and the faint shadow of a beard across his chin. And his eyes… brown was too pedestrian a word, but they were brown. Dark brown. Yet tawny threads wove compelling accents, and his dark lashes emphasized the authority of that admirable, persuasive gaze. If a color could be labeled
sin,
his eyes were that color.

"Miss Lockhart." He spread his arms wide. "Do you like what you see?"

"Lord Kerrich, you have no shame." She used her most implacable tone, but she clutched the blanket more tightly about her and her gaze slipped downward. She had seen the occasional naked boy. She was, after all, a governess. But this was so completely different. Kerrich's shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his proportions perfect for wearing clothes—or not. His fit figure, she surmised, was the result of much exercise on horseback and in the prizefighter's salon. But what exercise had he performed to bring himself to such… virile dimensions? Most men did not appear to have an excess in their trousers.

For that matter, he hadn't appeared to have such an excess in his trousers. Was that stirring of his manly parts the signal that she should run away, regardless of her dishabille?

"No, I have no shame," he said. "I have no reason to, and as your future husband—"

Now
she remembered.
That's
why she had come around the screen in a furor, and at his prompting her wrath rose again. "Marriage is not a humorous matter."

"I'll say."

"Nor a frivolous matter, to be decided by the shape of a woman's eyes."

From across the room, he flirted with her. A faint smile, a slow blink, a slumberous look. "I wasn't thinking of the shape of your
eyes
."

Exasperating! "You know full well I would never wed a man such as you."

He tossed his towel aside and paced toward her. He was so… big. Dark.
Big.
She debated whether it would be better to hit him with her fists or retain possession of the blanket. Then he went past her, behind the screen, and came out with one of her dry towels.

With no idea of his intent, she failed to take evasive action. The towel covered her head before she could step away, and his hands followed, rubbing ruthlessly at her hair.

"What's wrong with a man like me?"

He stood behind her, far too close for comfort, so close she could smell the fresh, rain-wash scent of his body and catch occasional hints of enveloping warmth. Using one hand to try to fend him off, she said, "You're a rake. You're proud of it."

"Better hang on to that blanket or it'll fall," he advised. "Yes, I like women."

"Too many women." She decided this scouring of her scalp couldn't in any way be called a seduction, and took his advice. She held the blanket.

"How many is too many?"

"More than one." Daringly, she said what she'd always thought. "If a man was meant to have more than one lover, he would have more than one organ."

He burst into laughter, a wholehearted, generous laughter that made her feel witty and sparkling at the same time. But his next words stole her gratification from her.

"At
a time."
he said. "One woman
at a time
."

"So if you ever wed—"

"You."

Why did he keep bringing that up? To plague her, she supposed, for making his foolishness obvious to everyone who knew their situation. But the thought of marriage to anyone frightened her, and the thought of marriage to him made her fingers clench and her chest tighten. A handsome rake, gifted in seduction and having no respect for fidelity? Kerrich was her worst nightmare.

Doggedly, she continued, "If you ever wed anyone, then following the philosophy you have just espoused, you will have to reserve your consummations for your wife. Which you've already told me you do not intend to do."

The towel slipped off her face as he used it to rub the long strands of her hair between his palms. "No. A woman given that kind of fidelity will squander the gift in benighted ignorance of its value."

"That value being more than the fidelity a woman gives her husband?"

"A man is more able to appreciate the rareness of the boon."

"You talk circles around the truth." She stared deep into the chamber, seeing only the shadows and not the light. "You are just like my father."

"Now there's a rare insult." But he didn't deny it. "I have to wed you. I can't have you around the house if I do not, and I hate to see you lose the money which you so covet."

"If I wed you, I wouldn't receive a salary at all—although that doesn't seem fair, either," she said reflectively. "I would deserve some sort of compensation for my suffering."

The towel dropped to her feet and his hands slid to her shoulders. "You wouldn't suffer except perhaps the first time, and I flatter myself that I could bring you pleasure even then."

She whirled around, breaking his grip and facing him.

She'd come to appreciate the man she thought him to be, she realized, for she noted the loss of respect. "So you will make me pay for the privilege of working for you by forcing me into your bed?"

He viewed her thoughtfully, then walked around her as if she were an obstacle in his path. "That seems an extreme way of phrasing it."

"But I've heard it so many times before." She followed him. "Do you know what it's like to have to watch your every word, to keep your eyes downcast, to be as plain as you can be and still be grabbed at and touched and kissed?"

Just in front of the fire he leaned down, right in front of her, his spine stretching, his backside tightening, as he picked up his robe. "I can honestly say I've never been in that position." He walked toward his desk, pulling the robe over his shoulders.

Leaving her standing, staring at the spot where she had seen—not glimpsed, but
seen
—his slim, taut buttocks.

"Miss Lockhart?"

Dazed, she glanced up and watched him do as he had done on that fateful day when she'd come for an interview.

Facing her, he slid onto the desk. A few loose papers were scattered on its surface. A few fat folders were stacked neatly before the chair. He sat on one edge, his bare feet dangling, his robe wrapped loosely around him, his gaze intent. "You were saying that men give you trouble?"

"Oh. Yes." A bare body part was nothing. Her resentment was immense. She followed him, stood right before him, confronted him. "Men. They grab and touch and then, when you object, you're told you're a flirt. You enticed them." With slow emphasis, she said, "It wasn't their fault."

He almost touched her chin. Almost, but she jerked her head back.

He nodded as if he comprehended her fierceness. "That's the worst of it. The noddy-pates always blame you."

"When I wouldn't have one of them." She drew herself up to her full height, grasping for dignity in a plaid woolen blanket.

"I can't claim to utterly understand. No one ever grabs at me."

She did. She didn't know where she got the brass, but she grasped his lapel and jerked it back so roughly her thumbnail scraped his skin.

Grabbing her hand, he said, "Ow."

"You're supposed to like it. Anything they do, you're supposed to like, because you're poor, young and worst of all, pretty."

"I am pretty, aren't I?" He rubbed her knuckles.

She didn't want his comfort. Wrestling her hand free, she thrust her head close to his and glared into his eyes. "They'll want to slobber on you."

"I don't slobber when I kiss."

"I know." Enfolding his head in her fingers, she pressed her mouth on his. The blanket fell to the floor, but it didn't matter because… because she was teaching him a lesson. Explaining her life through demonstration. She still wore her corset, her chemise and her pantalettes. It wasn't as if they hadn't kissed before.

Moreover, she knew what he was doing, the louse. He was letting her kiss him, urging her to take pleasure in the closeness between them and the softness of his lips in the hopes he could lure her into his bed.

Wrapping his fingers around her wrists, he held them while he pulled away. "You must stop."

Restraint? Good sense? She stared at him, into those brown and golden eyes, and found these new traits of his not in the least admirable.

Struggling, she freed her hands. "That's right. Protest."

Still he insisted on being wise. "You will be sorry if you don't stop."

This was about retribution, about revenge on all those other men who had tried to take advantage of their position to seduce her. Her anger at him, at the others, at this stupid masquerade and its ghastly unveiling still churned beneath the surface, but a judicious application of lust, she found, transformed that anger into pure, turbulent, dominating passion.

"You can't tell me what I feel," she said.

"I'm giving you a chance."

"Don't you see?" She brushed her palm along the muscles and sinews of his shoulder. "I'm showing you what it's like to be used like a woman."

"I'm a man." His voice had deepened.

"Yes." She opened the other side of his robe. "I saw."

She heard his intake of breath, a gasp of excitation as she looked at him, and she gasped herself. Things had changed. His body had changed.

In a strained voice, he said, "Men dream of a woman who will use them in just this manner."

Girls gossiped about men and the body part that could change size, but she'd never imagined the tales were true. Nor had she imagined, except in her worse nightmares, she would ever have the occasion to see the proof. But this was very curious, very gratifying… very naughty. His protrusion had lengthened, risen, grown in every way, thrusting forth from the nest of black, curling hair at his groin.

She stared. He wanted her. All the evidence was there, from the expanding dimensions to the drop of thick liquid that eased from the rosy end. If she wanted, she could make him suffer. Or she could use this rake, this man with the gift of seduction, to satisfy the old, nagging curiosity from her girlhood. She had never been tempted, but Kerrich tempted her, and when she contemplated him, he was perfect. He was guaranteed to bring her pleasure and then, like all rakes, he would be done with her. Kerrich wouldn't talk about forever. Not seriously. Not even his suggestion of marriage was serious.

Yet she could get a child.

Yet she would never have another, such exquisite opportunity.

What a choice.

"You're fulfilling my dreams," Kerrich warned her.

A choice that had to be made at once, with no time for wisdom or forethought.

Perhaps it was better this way. Because, with time and cool thought, temptation would be vanquished. There was no chance of that now.

With the tip of one finger she touched the drop of fluid at the end of his protrusion, dabbling in it, smoothing it over the satiny skin.

"Every dream I ever had." But his voice was almost inaudible. And, "All right, then. I did try."

Another drop seeped up. She slid her palm lightly over the head, gliding along on the liquid, exploring the groove, the cap, the ridges.

"Usually," he said hoarsely, "a woman touches a man in a less incendiary limb first."

She thought herself curious, but when she spoke, her voice sounded taunting. "Is that a rule?"

"Not if you don't want it to be." He'd dropped his robe off his shoulders.

"I've just never seen anything like this," she said.

He groaned.

She hadn't hurt him; she knew she hadn't, but she didn't understand what had caused such a sound of misery. "Lord Kerrich?"

"Just… keep touching me."

Ah… now she understood. She was tormenting him.

What satisfaction. Tentatively, she rested her palm on his hair-covered thigh, and when his muscles clenched she rubbed up and down. She closed her hand on his protrusion, holding it firmly, marveling at the skin so soft none of hers compared. "What do you call this?"

"Right now—I call it
master
."