The Dangerous Viscount (7 page)

“Did you have a successful morning?” she asked.

“My efforts made no difference to the rabbit population of Shropshire,” he said.

“I should commiserate with you, I suppose, but I am glad. Bunnies are so sweet.”

Instead of treating this fatuous statement with the contempt it deserved, Sebastian felt himself smile back at her.

Marriage.
The word circled his brain like a gnat.
Marriage.
The most terrifying word in the English language. What was it doing in his head?

For once in his life he was pleased to see his cousin enter a room.

Blakeney came straight over to their corner. “Diana,” he said, “how beautiful you look this morning.” He took her hand and, most unnecessarily in Sebastian’s opinion, raised her knuckles to his lips. To his pleasure she appeared annoyed and retracted her hand quickly.

“I’ve just been hearing about your morning from your cousin,” she said, and gave Sebastian another dazzling smile.

Sebastian was getting used to the racing of his heart whenever Diana looked at him, but something
about his reaction was different this time, warmer, more powerful. Blakeney, he knew, had always been pursued by women. Yet here was a woman, just about the most beautiful woman Sebastian had ever seen, showing a distinct preference for his company over that of the popular, handsome future duke.

That word again, in his ear, whispered by the devil himself.
Marriage.

Mumbling horribly, he excused himself and fled to the library.

“This is ridiculous,” Diana complained an hour later. “I follow Mr. Iverley to the library and you follow me. How can he kiss me if you are always there?”

She would have been happier to have Blake interrupt Iverley’s lecture on early Venetian printers if his motive wasn’t so obvious. He’d put an end to a promising tête-à-tête and succeeded in driving Sebastian from the room again.

“I have only a few hours left,” she continued, “and you aren’t playing fair.”

“Perhaps I don’t want him to kiss you,” Blake said.

“I know you don’t. You have five hundred pounds resting on it.”

“Perhaps that’s not the only reason. Perhaps that isn’t the reason at all.” Blake leaned against the library table with folded arms, elegance and self-confidence personified. His clothing, striking the right note, was beautifully cut, yet not as formal as he’d wear in town. He epitomized the man of fashion dressed for rustication, perfect in his imperfection,
yet his neck cloth was pure white, crisp, tied in an intricate knot.

Blake’s neck cloth was always pristine. Diana sometimes thought it was why she’d fallen in love with him when she was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl and he a newly minted Oxford undergraduate, making his first visit back to Duke’s Mandeville after the Michaelmas term. He’d almost knocked her down outside the draper’s shop, probably, she realized now, because his starched shirt points were so absurdly high he couldn’t see properly.

Never mind, she’d thought him the handsomest man she’d ever seen then and her opinion hadn’t changed. He, of course, hadn’t recognized her and he’d barely noticed when she made her eagerly awaited bow in London. Settling for second best like a sensible girl, she’d married Fanshawe and been happy enough with her affectionate older husband. But on a deep, mostly unacknowledged, level she remained enamored with Blakeney, a hopeless tendre like a favorite book, sitting on a shelf next to her bed to be taken up, reread, and enjoyed whenever she had nothing better to do.

She looked at him now, drinking him in: firm chin shaved to the smoothness of planed oak, high cheekbones, a straight nose, forget-me-not eyes, golden hair that managed to look both arranged and rumpled at the same time, arched eyebrows several shades darker, and a mouth whose current sulky expression did nothing to diminish its beauty.

Poor Sebastian. There was no comparison. Yet that strange, oddly appealing man had succeeded in arousing Blake’s jealousy. For this alone Diana owed
him her gratitude. And before the night was over he would be rewarded with a kiss. Not that he would know why he was being so gifted. And if she felt a twinge of guilt at using him she dismissed it easily.

What was a little kiss, after all? He’d enjoy it.

“Why would you wish to kiss him, anyway?” Blake’s question sounded querulous. For goodness sake, it was his bet.

“Men kiss for many reasons,” she replied coolly. “Perhaps women do, too.”

“I hope there’s only one reason for you to kiss dear Cousin Sebastian.”

Diana shrugged.

“Very well. After dinner tonight I shall suggest we go out. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you. And my cousin.”

Wives. Sebastian knew what wives did.

Not from firsthand observation. His upbringing and education had been blessedly free of feminine interference. But he had numerous male acquaintances and sometimes he couldn’t help hearing about the female appendages that most of them had to endure.

Wives nagged. They demanded. They spent too much money. They wept when they didn’t get their way.

A wife was nothing but trouble.

But there was one other thing a wife did. A wife shared your bed. Sebastian ached at the thought of Diana Fanshawe between his sheets.

Marriage.
He couldn’t leave the idea alone. It had started as a single word rattling around in his brain
and grown into a full-blown concept that ousted every other thought. The vision took form. The days were a little vague. Not much would change. He’d still visit booksellers, attend auctions, meet his friends, enjoy stimulating intellectual and political conversations with his fellow men in London’s masculine haunts. During this time
she
would do whatever mysterious and probably nonsensical things women did.

But the nights. The nights! He’d come home and find her waiting for him, warm, soft, perfumed. Perhaps she’d be undressed. The thought of Diana naked made him slightly faint. And she’d be his, all night long. He’d do all the things to her he was imagining now and a good many more. He had the feeling that he hadn’t even begun to plumb the depths of his imagination when it came to sharing a bed with Diana Fanshawe.

Diana Iverley, he corrected. She’d be Diana Iverley.

His. Not Blake’s but his.

Keeping his promise, Blake suggested the whole party tour the park by moonlight. Dinner ended late and it was almost dark, a rising moon waxing in the fading twilight, as the party took to the graveled walk that began Mandeville’s carefully designed circuit of shrubbery, lake, bridge, temples, and grottos.

Diana looked for Sebastian and she believed that he looked for her. A summoning smile brought him to her side and she tucked her hand around his elbow. His arm hung awkwardly, as though unused to offering a lady support. They crossed the steep stone bridge that spanned the lake at the beginning of the
walk. A hundred feet past there was a diversion from the main path.

“Shall we …”

“… take the path to the Temple of Aphrodite?”

“You know the park well,” he said.

“I always took every opportunity to explore it.”

“Do you suppose we ever met when I visited Mandeville?” he asked.

“If we did, I was doubtless a small, untidy schoolgirl and of no interest to boys. You are about the same age as Blake, I think.”

“Exactly the same,” he said curtly.

“Were you friends back then?”

“I lived with my great-uncle in the north. My uncle the duke invited me to stay at Mandeville so that I could have company of my own age.”

“And that would be Blake.”

“That would be Blakeney,” he agreed without further elaboration.

Dusk fell fast now and the path was almost invisible. Silk slippers weren’t designed for the rougher terrain off the main walk. Sebastian guided her safely along the grassy trail through a thick group of azaleas and past a climbing rose, blooming wildly as it smothered a tree trunk, its scent intensified by the darkness. She clung to his arm and took every opportunity to brush her hip against him.

The trickle of running water recalled a forgotten feature of their chosen route. “The stream,” she said. “I wonder if I can find the stepping stones without getting my feet wet.”

Without a word he set one arm about her shoulders, the other beneath her knees. Diana was horribly
conscious that she was no feather, but she might have been made of gossamer the way he swung her up. Appearances were deceptive: clearly Sebastian was very strong. She put her arms about his neck and leaned her head against his chest, feeling and hearing the steady drum of his heartbeat. She braced herself to be dropped, half expecting a dunking in the shallow racing stream. But he picked his way sure-footed over the slippery stones that formed the path across the brook. She relaxed into his embrace, enjoying a sense of safety. In the fading light all his oddities—the old-fashioned garments, the floppy neck cloth, the spectacles, the communication-by-grunt—evaporated, leaving heat, hard muscle, and a subtle masculine scent that owed nothing to any perfumer. She had a fleeting thought that she was meeting the real Sebastian Iverley, a man of strength and dependability beneath the eccentric exterior.

Without a stumble he achieved the other side of the stream. The dome of the temple gleamed white over the dark foliage of the rhododendrons, up a shallow rise.

“Thank you,” she murmured, preparing to be set on her feet. But he held on to her, taking the slope in easy strides, his only comment one of those damned indecipherable grunts.

Sebastian hardly bothered to ask himself why he carried a full-grown woman up a hill she was quite capable of negotiating on her own. He’d surrendered to the fact that where Diana was concerned everything he’d ever defined as logic, reason, and common sense had fled. Her delectable body, the subject of
sleepless fantasies, clung to his own. His lips pressed against her hair, as glossy to the touch as to the eyes. Her fragrance, maddening, rich and beyond his knowledge to define, should have confused his senses like brandy. Instead his head felt clearer than it had ever been. He was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. The predictable outcome of attempting the slimy and uneven stepping stones so burdened was a cold bath for both of them. He never feared it for a moment. Tonight Sebastian was supremely powerful. He was Atlas, Julius Caesar, Columbus, and Shakespeare. If Deaver were here he’d sell him his collection in a flash.

But holding, conquering, or discovering the world, producing great works of literature, or even buying books, were not on Sebastian’s list of things to be done that night.

The path emerged into an open plateau where the little round temple stood on its square plinth. Sebastian climbed four steps and walked to the other side, which offered an open view down to the lake. A warm summer breeze carried the sounds of night. Brilliant moonlight reflected ripples of water and illuminated Diana’s face. Head tilted back, shadowed eyes delved into his then dropped to his mouth. He read the enigmatic curve of her own as an invitation to do, finally, at long last, what he’d ached to do for two interminable days.

He kissed her lips, hard.

His heart plunged when her movements told him she wanted to be put down. He hadn’t been disappointed at the desperately anticipated contact, but
had she? She almost certainly had a greater basis for comparison than he.

She slid to her feet, keeping her hands on his shoulders. He sensed her rise on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Not so fierce. Softly.”

The sibilants caressed him and soothed his anxiety. She offered herself again and he brought his mouth to hers, gently this time. He was rewarded by the sensation of warm satin and the sweet humidity of breath as she parted her lips beneath his. He followed her lead and shook with astonishment and delight when he felt her tongue flicker around the inner rim of his lips, kindling a sensitivity he’d never have suspected. He ventured to reciprocate and the clash of their tongues sent a bolt of lightning straight to his cock.

His arms went around her waist and tugged her against him, deepening a desire that had already reached scorching intensity. Satin-clad fingers burned the nape of his neck then cradled his skull and pulled him closer. Recalling her admonishment he tried to hold back, to emulate her own skill and give equal pleasure. Without conscious intention he brought one hand up to touch her silk-covered breast and lost any tenuous control over his own actions. Wilder and bolder, he obeyed the drive to devour and felt devoured in return. Beyond observation or analysis, he was swept into a maelstrom of wet heat and one overwhelming urge possessed him.

To make her his.

There was nothing wrong with his hearing so it must have reached his ears, but at first his mind refused to register the sound. He knew only when she
stiffened in his arms and her lips fell still against his.

“Di-a-na!” The repeated call wafted up the grassy slope from the lakeside.

God damn him to hell. Blakeney. In nearly twenty years of unwelcome appearances, his cousin had made his most inconvenient yet.

A
comfortable chair stood in the library gallery, invisible to anyone below who wasn’t looking and a perfect spot for a man who wanted to hide. There was only one person Sebastian wanted to see that morning and she wouldn’t be up for an hour or so.

That ladies preferred to rise late was just one of the oddities of the female race he’d discovered in the past day or two. While he waited, he looked over the small bundle of correspondence forwarded from his London house. Only two letters were of any importance. Viscount Iverley wrote that he was dying. Lord Deaver hinted that he might, finally, be prepared to discuss a price. These two communications summoned him to Northumberland and Kent respectively so he couldn’t combine the two journeys. Duty competed with inclination.

His great-uncle’s news didn’t alarm him. His former guardian had been dying on a regular basis for at least ten years and there was no reason he wouldn’t survive to do so for another decade. Yet Sebastian owed him a visit. He hadn’t faced the horrors of Saxton Iverley for over a year. As for Deaver,
at any other time Sebastian would be calling for his carriage and posting to Kent to reap the reward of years of careful courting.