The Care and Taming of a Rogue (20 page)

He liked riding through London at night. Most of his fellows avoided it—especially on their own—but he was quite familiar with the sense of danger coming from the shadows, the heightened awareness of smell and sound, and the heavy feel of darkness around him.

Carriages still rolled through the streets as the occupants finished their evening’s festivities, but the curtains were closed and the doors securely latched. And the few pedestrians outside hurried along, far more interested in their own concerns than in his. He wasn’t interested in them, either.

Two streets away from Eddison House he found a suitable clearing behind someone’s stable yard, and he tied Ares off in the shadows to wait for him. Then he walked the remaining distance, feeling a bit unbalanced without Kero on his shoulders. He’d left the monkey sleeping in Geoffrey’s room, though, with a selection of fruit and nuts available for the boy or the vervet to sort through if either should awake.

Silently he turned up the white house’s carriage drive to wait in the black shadows of the stable. By the distant sound of the church bells it was two o’clock. He’d said that he meant to be prompt, but one light still shone in an upstairs room.

Abruptly, though, it went out. As muffled excitement and arousal stirred through him, he wondered if it was Phillipa’s bedchamber, and if she was on her way down to wait for him in the morning room. There was one way to find out.

Crossing the carriage drive, he swiftly made his way through the shadows and shrubbery to the morning room. Four windows meant four chances for him to worry that she’d come to her senses and changed her mind, but he’d never been much for hesitation.

He touched the first windowpane, and it shifted beneath his fingers. Relief ran through him, heady and welcome. It might well have been a mistake, a latch the servants had missed, but he preferred to believe otherwise. Slipping his fingers around the frame, he pulled the window open. The light green curtains lifted, flowing into the room, as he hopped onto the sill, swung his legs over, and stepped down onto the Eddisons’ morning room floor.

The window couldn’t be seen from the street, but he reached back and closed it anyway. No sense risking being caught. Then he turned back again. The interior of the room was darker than the moonlit night outside, and for a moment he stood blinded, looking, listening, and inhaling for any trace of her. Above the sweet scent of the lilies in his hand, citrus touched his nostrils, stirring his blood. “Phillipa,” he murmured, facing the dark fireplace.

A match flared, blinding him all over again. “I knew it,” a female voice hissed.

Bennett took a half step back.
Damnation
. “Lady Olivia.”

Phillipa’s sister lowered the glass flute of the lamp, then stood up. “Are you here to ruin my sister, or have you already done so?” Only the barest quaver at the end of her question gave him a sense of how nervous she must be.

“Where is she?” he asked. Setting a trap didn’t seem in Phillipa’s nature; it was more likely that if she’d changed her mind, she would have sent him a note telling him precisely that. Of course he hadn’t returned to Howard House to look for a missive, but that clearly didn’t signify if she’d found a third option. One that he hadn’t considered.

“Don’t worry about Flip. Answer my question.”

Annoyance and frustration beginning to replace his surprise, he shook his head. “No. You answer
my
question. Now.”

This time
she
took a step back, but she kept her chin lifted in a gesture that reminded him of her younger sister. “I knew she was up to something when I found her in here. I told her to go up to her room or I would tell Mama and Papa. And then I sat down here to wait for you.”

She had meant to meet him there
. “And what do you intend to do now?”

“Tell you to leave. I won’t see Flip ruined simply because your unconventional ways appeal to her.”

“Mm hm. Her unconventional ways appeal to me, as well.”

“That doesn’t signify.” Olivia jabbed a finger toward the window. The appendage shook only a little. “You need to leave.”

Getting by her would be a simple matter, but that wouldn’t stop her from shrieking an alarm to rouse the household. And he had no intention of hurting her, so grabbing and gagging her was out of the question.

Actually, this little midnight confrontation had lifted her a few notches in his estimation. “So, Lady Olivia,” he ventured. “You think I’m no good for your sister?”

“You made a spectacle of yourself this evening. I’m certain you flatter her and say all sorts of lovely things, but she doesn’t fit in well as it is. Being ruined by a man whose only goal is to leave England with all possible speed couldn’t possibly do her any good.”

The damned chit made a good point. “Very well,” he growled. “For the sake of Phillipa’s reputation.” He took one sharp step forward, to let her know that he could have gotten past her—or
to
her—if he’d chosen to do so. “But just between you and me,” he continued, “since no one else seems to believe me, my aim here is not to ruin Phillipa. It never was. I’m not playing about.” He turned for the window.

“So you would ruin her and then marry her?”

“I meant the red roses.” Bennett set the now rather tightly squeezed lilies onto the nearest end table. “Please tell Phillipa these are for her.”

Without a backward glance he retreated out the window and into the well-groomed shrubbery. Damnation. He’d spent the evening conjuring Phillipa’s touch, her scent, and her warm body spread beneath his. Now he’d had a cold bucket of sisterly advice dumped over his head.

Bennett looked up at the row of second-floor windows. She was up there, but he had no more than a vague idea of where, precisely. “Bloody hell.”

“Giving up already?”

He whipped around, just barely keeping from yelping like a startled chit. Phillipa stood behind him, garbed in nothing but an excited grin and a flimsy-looking night rail. The seasoned explorer, nearly given an apoplexy by a slip of a female.

She hadn’t gone to her bedchamber to wait for her sister to dispose of him. She’d come looking for him. Her eyes dancing in the moonlight and her gown nearly as transparent as mist, she opened her mouth. “You look surprised,” she whispered, chuckling.

He put his hands on her shoulders, pushing her back against the wall and taking her mouth in a hungry kiss. He couldn’t get his fill of her. Five minutes ago he’d been contemplating taking himself into hand, so to speak. Damned poor substitute though it would have been, it might have allowed him to sleep.

Phillipa flung her arms up around his shoulders, pressing herself along his body. Hard arousal crashed into him. “Where can we go?” he murmured, leaving her mouth just long enough to utter the question.

“Mm.” She pushed him away, twisting her hands into his lapels so he couldn’t go very far, not that he had any intention of doing so. “This way,” she returned, pulling him toward the back of the house.

He’d half thought she’d climbed out of her window, but of course practical, logical Phillipa had found a better way. She opened the kitchen door, peered inside the dark room, then grabbed his hand and tugged him inside the house. Even if her sister had remained lurking about downstairs to see whether he would break down the front door, she wouldn’t have been able to hear them silently climbing the servants’ stairs at the back of the house.

On the second floor he followed her down a short hallway to a door on the east side of the house. “Here,” she breathed, opening the door and slipping inside.

His body had been on a bumpy ride tonight—the fury at seeing Langley, anger and frustration at being denied a fight, hope and anticipation, more frustration, and now the heated arousal as he followed her into her bedchamber and latched the door behind them. They’d best hope the house didn’t burn down tonight, because he was not going to be turned away now.

She faced him again. “I’m sorry about Liv—”

“Later.”

Bennett kissed her again, more slowly this time as he relished the soft warmth of her mouth. Thank God he’d stumbled into Jack’s reading club that first night, or he might never have gotten close enough to Phillipa to know her. And that would have been a damned shame for every reason he could conjure.

Shrugging out of his jacket, he sat her on the edge of her bed. Her hair was down, shimmering dark chestnut and gold in the light of the small fire in her hearth. Bennett strummed his fingers through it, breathing in the soft citrus scent of her.

He wanted to set her on her back, push up her skirt, and take her. A rogue would do that, or an animal. He tried to steady his breath. At her behest, with her assistance, he was attempting to be neither of those things. That was why he sat beside her now, enduring her amateurish attack on his waistcoat and cravat.

The thing he most marveled about, other than Phillipa, was the way she made his past fade away. Three years in Africa, when he’d thought to return to England with no family to cheer his success, when he thought he’d be off again before the end of the year. And all the years before that, when he’d gone from place to place, country to country, lover to lover, with never enough time or inclination to create a lasting bond with any but a select few acquaintances. He’d felt so damned hollow, sometimes. And now, with her, he didn’t.

Drawing the strap of her night rail down to her elbow, he kissed her shoulder up to her throat and around her jaw to her mouth again. She moaned, curving closer to him. When he pulled the other strap down, she slid her arms free to continue undressing him. The gown fell to her waist, and he leaned in to flick his tongue first against one pink nipple, then the other.

Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he pushed her hands away and finished unbuttoning his waistcoat himself. With her eager assistance he yanked it off along with his shirt. His boots and trousers followed. Then he pressed her backward, skimmed his hands from her shoulders past her breasts to her waist, and pulled her night rail off past her waist and down over her feet when she arched her hips for him.

“I want you,” he murmured, parting her knees and dipping down to taste her. She was wet, and from her strangled yelp she wanted this as much as he did.

“Now,” she breathed, grabbing him by the hair and yanking his face back up to hers. “Put that”— and she brushed her fingers against his cock—“inside me. Now.”

“This?” he whispered back, settling over her to rub the tip of his cock against her folds.

She threw back her head. “Yes. Oh, yes.”

He was not about to wait for a second invitation. With another deep kiss he pushed forward, entering her fully. The tight, hot slide was so exquisite that he nearly lost control.
Steady
, he ordered himself. He wouldn’t allow himself to let go until she did.

The animal in him kept fighting to spill himself inside her, but he clenched his jaw and began a slow rhythm, in and out, in and out. With Phillipa panting beneath him, her eyes shining, he couldn’t imagine anything closer to perfection. Then she wrapped her ankles around his thighs, digging her fingers into his shoulders. God, she felt good.

As her muscles tightened around him, he deepened his stroke, gazing into her eyes, waiting for her to climax. Abruptly she shook, shivering inside and out. “Bennett,” she breathed, clutching him. “Bennett.”

Breathing harder, he increased his pace, pushing himself to the edge. He kissed her as he came, holding himself against her, deep inside, two joined as one. Finally, perfection.

Chapter Sixteen

“Oh, really?” Phillipa held her breath, trying not to giggle at the sensation.

“Mm hm. Ah, but wait.” The trail moved up the outside of her right breast, halting at its peak. “A plateau. And beyond, a deep valley.” He continued his tour across the dip of her breastbone and up the slope of her left breast. “Well, that’s unexpected,” he murmured. “I don’t remember this being here.” Slowly he bent down and closed his lips over her nipple.

“Oh, goodness. Is the expedition over, then?” she managed, as his fingers stroked in a lazy circle around her right breast. “Or are you looking for a route to the ocean?”

He chuckled, the sensation reverberating into her. “I’d planned on heading south.”

She would have enjoyed that, but despite her best efforts to halt time, the night continued to creep toward dawn. Phillipa pushed Bennett off his elbow and onto his back. Large and hard-muscled as he was, he gave in to her fairly easily. She had the distinct feeling that he didn’t give in often, or to just anyone. “What will happen in the morning? When you and Captain Langley meet with the Africa Association?”

Bennett slid an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. “We’ll shout at one another, I’ll point out the very close resemblance of the wording of my other books to his, and logically they’ll demand that he produce the journals in which he wrote his original observations. Which he won’t be able to do.”

“So you’ll win.”

“That’s the idea.”

She twisted her head to look up at him. Despite the…satisfaction she felt in his company, his own countenance was far from relaxed. Behind his vibrant green eyes, behind the whispers and secrets of the jungle and all the other exotic places he’d been, he wasn’t as confident as he claimed. “And if they don’t believe you?”

“They will.”

“But if they don’t?” she repeated.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to find employment in Northumbria. Sheep herding, perhaps.”

Phillipa sat up. “You shouldn’t jest.”

He tugged her back down beside him. “I’m not jesting. Without the support of the Africa Association, no one—not a private party, not the East India Company—will sponsor me to lead another expedition even as far as Cambridge.” Slowly he twined his fingers through her hair, the gentle tug and pull sending delighted goose bumps down her arms. “Tell me something, Phillipa. Would you be willing to be a shepherdess?”

For him, she thought she could be a fishmonger. “I like sheep,” she admitted with a slight smile, though at the moment she didn’t feel much like smiling.

Bennett being successful tomorrow would mean, without a doubt, Bennett gone. How was she supposed to wish him well? Being a shepherd, or an ordinary landowner, would undoubtedly make him miserable—but that was exactly the life she’d imagined for herself.

“I suppose,” he said quietly, “that I should wait to propose to you until I know for certain whether I’m a lion or a lamb. Or rather, which one I’ll be chasing after. What do you think about all this?”

Her heart skittered in an unsettling mix of joy and apprehension. “I think I admire you very much, and that if anyone deserved to have his dreams realized, it’s you.”

He chuckled. “So now you’re my dream, are you? You’re very sure of yourself.”

She hadn’t been referring to herself. “I meant—”

Before she could finish, he pulled her into his arms, kissing her until she decided it would be best to kiss him back. He’d said before that he meant to marry her, and the idea had at first seemed mad. Then she’d begun to believe that he meant it, and considering her own reaction to his presence, the realization had been heady and glorious. And now…

And now, she found her own courage being tested. Could she be selfish and marry him and ask him to remain in England? Could she somehow find the wherewithal to join him in his adventures? Or worst of all, could she watch him go while she remained behind?

With a groan she flung her arms around his shoulders, kissing him everywhere she could reach. Whether she could manage any courage or not when the time came, she had no intention of missing this moment. Not for anything.

Bennett chuckled against her mouth, rolling them both so that he lay on top of her, his growing arousal pressed deliciously against her inner thigh. “You
are
my dream, Phillipa,” he whispered, kissing her again, “and at moments like this I never want to wake.”

“Neither do I,” she said feelingly. Here in her bed, with him, everything was perfect.

Their waking circumstances, though, were rather different. As he slid deep inside her, daylight troubles faded away. Moving, shifting in and out, hard and warm and insistent, he made her forget what she’d been worrying over. She forgot everything but how very good it felt to be in Bennett Wolfe’s arms. And that was very good, indeed.