Sinful in Satin (31 page)

“No one will enter this chamber in the morning, Celia. No one will find us together. Daphne sees more than you think with those gray eyes of hers. I think she put me in this chamber hoping that my friendship might succeed in helping you find yourself again, after she felt hers had failed.”

Had she arranged this? Possibly so. Daphne had a talent for comprehending human hearts well.

Celia did not sleep quickly, however. The gentle stimulation of pressing against Jonathan kept a hum in her blood, for one thing. His confidence and advice played in her head, for another. The more she thought about that, the more it troubled her.

“Jonathan, are you asleep?” she whispered.

“Mmm.”

“Jonathan, what you experienced when that boy died— Have you never felt it again? Have you never felt starkly alive since?” She thought that very sad.

He sighed. “I had intended to be a citadel of restraint with you tonight, for several reasons. However, since you refuse to sleep—” He flipped her onto her back, and settled his body so that his hips fit between her spread thighs.

Thoughts of his advice and revelations flew from her mind then. Warmth surrounded her and flowed inside, and pleasure’s light glistened in her spirit.

He kissed her sweetly, carefully, as if testing for unknown fragilities. He drew her into passion slowly, and the pleasure came like a gentle, fresh breeze. After he entered her, he did not move at first, but only filled her while he pressed slow kisses to her lips and neck.

“Yes, to your last question,” he said, while brushing her lips with his. “I have felt starkly alive since that night on the coast. The first time I kissed you, and the first time I had you. Right now, and every other time we have shared this. These affairs always have a story, you said, and that is mine.” He kissed her more firmly, as though he claimed more than her mouth. He began moving in her. “I will not give it up easily, Celia.”

She was in no condition to ask him to. His care made the pleasure touch her heart. Even the end came softly and poignantly in a mutual release that reconciled their passion, even if they had not buried the reasons for that row. The pleasure and excitement existed in its own world, apparently, or else her need for him ruled her more than she had guessed.

 

 

S
he woke to sunlight, and to a better prospect on the day before. The hurt and humiliation had become a dull ache overnight, one that could be contained. Daphne commented on how good it was to see her recovered.

After breakfast Jonathan hitched her mare to the front of the cabriolet, and his gelding to its rear, and they returned to London and her house. Marian said not one word when Jonathan entered through the garden door after taking the horses to the stable. She watched while he mounted the stairs to his chamber in the attic.

“Had a pleasant sojourn in the country, did you?” she asked once he had gone up.

“Partly pleasant. Partly not so at all.”

“I’m told the country air is beneficial for one’s blood. Refreshing, they say. It looks like it did you some good.”

“I am very refreshed.”

“I’d say Mr. Albrighton appears refreshed too, if I were asked.”

“He does, doesn’t he?”

Bella looked up from where she scrubbed the hearth-stones, confused. “He looked no healthier to me.”

Bella had not known why Jonathan had left, or for how long, so his return seemed normal to her.

Marian gazed at Bella’s perplexed expression, and sighed again. “Not healthier, Bella. Refreshed. Contented and relaxed, like.” She shook her head, and aimed for the front room, dusting feather in hand. “It is amazing how there’s some in the world who can’t smell what is right in front of their noses. I worry for you sometimes, Bella. I truly do.”

 

 

“I
am told that you dida great service to Miss Pennifold.” Hawkeswell’s casual observation came out of nowhere. It had absolutely nothing to do with the conversations being enjoyed in Castleford’s library.

It effectively ended all the others, however. Two other pairs of eyes joined Hawkeswell’s in settling on Jonathan.

Old friends could be a damned nuisance sometimes. “Hardly a great service. I extended a small help. That is all.”

“To hear my wife tell it, you probably saved her from dying of fever.”

Lights of curiosity danced in one glassy pair of eyes. “You saved a woman? You do your blood proud. Her name is familiar to me too. Do I know her?” Castleford’s brow furrowed while he pondered the matter.

Castleford had wandered by the library and seen the rest of them by accident. It being a Friday, Summerhays and Hawkeswell had called on the duke’s guest, not the duke, but the duke had inserted himself anyway, despite being thoroughly foxed and half-undressed.

To make a complicated social situation worse, Jonathan was not really the duke’s guest anymore. He had come to inform Castleford of that, and to thank him for his generosity. Through the kind of coincidence cooked up by hell, however, Summerhays’s and Hawkeswell’s cards had arrived before he could do so.

Which had brought all four of them into this library, on an afternoon when Jonathan needed to be doing something else entirely.

“I only ensured that she returned to the house near Cumberworth safely. The ladies’ gossip has made it more than it was.”

“Pennifold. Pennifold ...” Castleford muttered, thinking hard.

“They say that delivery was in the earliest hours of the morning. I do not envy your sleeping in that inn in Cumberworth, even if only for a few hours,” Hawkeswell said. “Summerhays and I were stuck there one night and it was too rustic for me. The bedbugs like it, though.”

Summerhays smiled slyly. “As I hear it, he did not sleep in an inn.”

“No? Is it true? Were you allowed into the cloistered area of the convent?”

That caught Castleford’s attention. “Convent? Have you discovered a good country brothel and not told me, Albrighton?”

Silence fell. Everyone looked at him. Castleford smiled back at them, oblivious.

Hawkeswell’s lids lowered heavily over his blue eyes. “He is speaking of The Rarest Blooms, Castleford. The house where
my wife
lived for two years, and Summerhays’s wife for a spell as well.”

“Ah, you were using the word metaphorically, but not metaphorically in
that
way. My apologies, although my misunderstanding was not without cause. You should be more careful.”

Summerhays glanced at how Hawkeswell still glared. “Castleford, shouldn’t you be in your chambers? Whoever is there must be getting impatient for your attention.”

“No one is there. She who was there left hours ago.”

“Then should you not be resting up for tonight’s exertions?”

“You may have to rest before such things, Summerhays. I am always in fine form.” Castleford squinted at nothing while his mind drifted. “Haven’t I been to this place, The Rarest Blooms? I seem to remember, vaguely . . .” His eyes opened. “Now I remember. They allowed you to sleep there, Albrighton? Hell, I was not even allowed in the door.”

“That is because he aided and protected one of their members, and you would only seduce and abandon them all if given the chance,” Hawkeswell drawled. “And after you did, two of the men sitting here now would pay dearly with their domestic bliss.”

“Love has made you almost unbearable, Hawkeswell. What is more, we do not know for a fact that Albrighton did not seduce at least one of them while he was there. I don’t know why you assume I would be a scoundrel while he would be a saint.”

“Don’t you, indeed?”

Jonathan just looked at Castleford. Castleford looked right back, innocently.

“I am not saying that you did seduce any of them, of course,” Castleford explained. “I merely point out that they”—he gestured to the other two—“do not know for a fact that you did not.”

“Of course he did not,” Hawkeswell said. “He would not put two friends’ heads on their wives’ chopping blocks by misusing one of their dearest friends. Furthermore, Mrs. Joyes, the owner of that house, has a pistol that she is itching to use in just such a circumstance. He was good enough to help Miss Pennifold when a little quest of hers went awry, and we would have heard about it in the worst way if he had behaved badly.”

“Pennifold. There it is again. Why is that name nudging me so?” Castleford frowned.

Summerhays pointedly turned the conversation to an upcoming lecture at the Royal Society, but Jonathan suspected that Summerhays had noticed that the only man who could know the truth had not actually denied a seduction.

The two guests took their leave shortly thereafter. Summerhays offered to get Jonathan into that lecture, and Hawkeswell said an invitation to dinner would be forthcoming from his wife. After they departed, Jonathan sat down to take his own leave of the remaining person in the library.

He expressed his appreciation for the duke’s hospitality, and explained that he now had chambers to which he would move.

Rather suddenly Castleford did not appear very drunk at all. Sly intelligence showed in the gaze he settled on Jonathan.

“I just remembered where I had heard that name. Have you gotten yourself entangled with that Northrope woman’s daughter?”

“I have come to know her, obviously.”

“I think perhaps you know her very well, if you are playing white knight to her damsel in distress. I think she is the one who threw you over. If that left you without a bed—” He looked to the door. “Our good friends are going to be angry when they find out. Hawkeswell will thrash you soundly if his wife is the least distressed by this.”

“Then perhaps you should not share your unfounded and unproven suspicions with him.”

“I will try, but he goads me, and it would be a pleasure to rub his nose in how wrong he is.” He stood. “At least I now know why you have been so tediously virtuous. Enjoy whatever it is while you can, since it cannot last long.”

“That is not necessarily true.”

“With your ambitions, it is most definitely true. I am sure she knows it, and you will be spared a scene. Her mother would have taught her that, along with the rest.” He yawned, stretched, and strolled to the door, presumably to rest at last for the upcoming night’s games.

He stopped before leaving. “Speaking of your ambitions, Thornridge will be coming up to town soon. The Tory leadership requires his attendance at some meetings next week. He will not be able to avoid me once he is here, so gird your loins for whatever battle you think to fight.”

“T
he morning grows old. I mustgetup,” Celia said between giggles.

Jonathan ignored her and continued the tickling kisses along the curve of her side.

“Why must you rise? Are wagons of plants coming today?” he asked finally, not missing a spot from the effort.

“Not until Tuesday.”

“Then you can stay as long as you like.”

“It is too decadent, Jonathan. Bella and Marian have been up for hours already.”

“They will both understand, especially when they hear you moaning soon.”

They probably would understand. There no longer was any pretense about what was going on in this house. Marian even made bawdy jokes about it. That was one of several ways in which things had changed with Jonathan’s return.

“It will have to wait for tonight.” She threw back the covers. “I have matters to attend to today.”

“What matters?” The kisses had reached the side of her breast. His hand on her hip kept her in place.

“I do not only store plants. I also need to find sellers for the summer flowers we will have. I would rather not stand in a market and hawk them myself, so I need to find a man who will take them wholesale.” His hand moved off her hip, down to where he could do wicked things to her. She took the opportunity to slip away.

He caught her ankle before she made a total escape. She looked back at him while she balanced on one foot.

“Come back,” he cajoled, with a devastating smile. “You know you want to.”

Indeed she did, but they had hardly left this bed in the three days since returning from Cumberworth, and there were things she needed to do.

“Tonight, I promise.”

“You promise what?”

She laughed, and tried to squirm her ankle free. “Whatever you want. Now, allow me to wash and dress.”

He released her. She went to the door and opened it. Two buckets of water waited on the other side. Now, that was new. She could hardly blame Marian. Why carry Jonathan’s up to the attic when he woke right here? Still, those two buckets symbolized things that went beyond practical convenience.

She dipped her fingers, then carried both to the washstand. “They are warm. You should use it now, if you are wise.”

He swung to sit on the bed’s edge. “That is convenient.”

“Isn’t it? You can shave when you go abovestairs.”

“You go first. Cool water does not bother me.” He stood and came over. He poked at her cloths and smelled her soap.

She poured water into the basin. “I will tell Marian not to do this in the future. I do not know what she was thinking. It is silly for you to have to wait.”

“I do not mind. I think it will be charming to see you wash.” He stepped behind her and took the soap. “I can even help.”

“I don’t think—” But he was already wetting the cloth, his arms circling around to the basin. With languid strokes he wet down her arms, then squeezed the cloth so a drizzle sprayed on her shoulders and chest and formed rivulets down her curves.

He reached for the soap. “This is fun. I have never washed a woman before.”

“You are getting the floor all wet.”

“I will be more careful.” His voice and breath tickled her ear as he reached around to soap his hands. “Whatever I want tonight?” His slippery caresses ran up and down her arms.