The Scandal Before Christmas (12 page)

He had to kiss her then—he was helpless not to. Because she needed to be kissed. She needed to be reassured. And he needed to reassure her.

And tease her. “Your lips are cold.”

“I’m sorry,” she said in that strange solemn way that made him smile, and made him want to make her smile.

“Don’t be. Because if they weren’t”—he angled his head to take her bottom lip between his lips, and worry at it gently—“I wouldn’t have the pleasure of warming them.”

He teased the kiss out of her, gently nipping and sucking until she opened her mouth and let him into her rum-laced warmth. He moved along the line of her jaw, pressing his lips to her chilled cheeks, nosing his way to the sweet hollow beneath her ear, where he could take her lobe between his teeth.

“I need you, Anne,” he whispered. “I could not lie about that.”

She made a soft sigh of capitulation, before her hands stole around his neck, and she was kissing him back. Kissing him as if she, too, wanted and needed this—this closeness, this sharing of warmth and affection.

His head tipped into the cup of her hand, and he knew he was grinning like a boy, enjoying the fresh delight of the back of her hand grazing along the curve of his ear.

Ian was rewarded for his encouragement when she laid waste to his cravat, and, unshackled the buttons marching from his collar halfway down the front of his shirt. The air felt cool against the exposed vee of heated skin, and he was floating in the warm, swirling waters of anticipation, buoyed up by confidence and lust.

Confidence and lust and rum.

She plied her lips to the hollow of his throat, and then moved on, kissing along the line of his collarbone, nipping and worrying the sensitive, straining tendons there. He was dying by tiny degrees, shot through with painful pleasure. “My God. Let me touch you. Let me—”

In answer, her nimble fingers stole down over the buttons on his waistcoat, and in another moment her clever hands were inside, stroking over the linen of his shirt, kneading into the muscles of his chest. His flat male nipples tightened against the press of linen, and when her hands found the rumpled tips, she thumbed him through the thin fabric of his shirt.

“Devil take me. Anne.”

She kissed him, and Ian felt as if he were coming out of his skin, and he could only wonder at how she, with her untutored, tentative touch, could bring him to such a state of bloody, glorious arousal. He could feel himself slipping under her spell. Under the control of her fragile curiosity. Under the power of her delicate, clever hands, and soft lips, and cleverer teeth. Dragged under gladly, happy to drown in the ineffable pleasure.

It was all the permission he wanted to do the same to her. He parted the concealing curtain of her cloak to slide the dress off her shoulders. Her skin was a living pearl, smooth and luminous white in the silvered light from above.

Ian knew he had never seen anything so beautiful. But he had no time for spoken reverence. He could only worship her with his body—with his hands and mouth. He turned his attention to her exquisite breasts. Pale and pink and perfectly formed, they fit exactly into the curve of his palm. He drew his thumbs across the tightly furled peaks, and she gasped—a startled sound of keening delight. Thus encouraged, he tweaked the sweet tip, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, until she cried out with pleasure.

“Ian.”

He had never wanted to hear his name more. This was what he wanted—this unbridled response, this revelation of her hidden passion. He lowered his mouth to join his hand, taking her between his lips, sucking and lavishing her with every ounce of his skill and care.

She clutched at his head in response, and drew him nearer, fisting her hands in his hair, tugging and straining to find the pleasure. Learning the way of her own delight.

He arched her back over his hands, nipping and tonguing her until she closed her eyes, and threw back her head in submission and triumph—submission to the pleasure, triumph in her delight.

He returned his lips to her mouth, ravenous for more of the taste of her. Hungry for more of the untutored pleasure she was giving him. He held her close, and she all but wrapped herself around him, pressing her breasts into his chest in painful bliss.

It wasn’t until he thought of lowering her to the cold slate floor, or backing her into the icy glass walls that Ian realized he had to stop. She had never so much as kissed a boy until this day, and here he was thinking of taking her in the uncomfortable, freezing glasshouse. She needed a bed and care and soft words, not an animalistic coupling in the cold.

But Anne had other ideas. She took his lip between her teeth and bit him. “Now.”

There was no mistaking the urgency in that message. Or in his body’s ferociously hungry response.

Ian swallowed his moan of frustrated arousal. “Anne. Please. We can’t. I can’t—”

“Please,” she whispered low into his ear. “Pretend. Just pretend I’m not plain. Pretend you aren’t marrying me out of need, or some misguided notion of honor, or duty. Pretend you’ve never even seen me.”

*   *   *

She never should have said it. She never should have opened her mouth. Once words were said, there was no recalling them back. Never.

He froze. And then very carefully set her away from him.

She had revealed too much.

Anne pulled the arms of her dress back over her shoulders, gathered the edges of her cloak together, and tried to fasten the clasp. But her hands were shaking, from grief and anger and unaccustomed, unstoppable lust. No wonder he liked it so much. But unlike him, she had no experience in stopping the heedless surge of feelings and emotions sliding through her veins. Once loosed, she could not seem to recall herself.

He set his hand over hers to still them. “Why would I do that, Anne? There’s no need.”

“Oh, there is every need.” Her voice was less emphatic, but no less revealing. She had nowhere left to hide. She turned away from him, trying to protect herself with distance.

He would not let her go. “You’re wrong.” His voice followed her with calm insistence. “I want you for my wife, Anne, not just a groping tumble in a cold glasshouse. When I have you—when we have each other—I want you warm and comfortable and happy and mine, before God and all men. I want you. You. Quiet and composed. Solemn and pert. Lemons and snow.”

His words were both a balm and a rasp upon her soul. They were everything she wanted to hear. And everything she was afraid to believe. “You are only trying to be kind.”

He shoved his fingers through his hair in a gesture of rumpled, end-of-his-tether frustration. “I should hope I’m trying to be kind. I should hope you would expect me to be so. I want to marry you, Anne. To have and to hold from someday soon—someday very soon. As bloody damn well soon as I can manage it—forward, ’til death us do part. You should expect that I should care for you and take care of you, just as I can only hope that you will care for me. And I can also only hope you want to marry me.”

She did. She wanted it with all her body, and with all her soul. She wanted to believe him. She wanted everything he promised—warmth, and comfort, and companionship. And happiness.

Above all, the damn elusive happiness.

Chapter Twelve

Ian slept late, and woke late the following morning to the steady hush of falling snow. Which meant the storm had not abated. Outside the window the flat press of iron gray sky revealed a thick cover of snow blanketing the ground.

Which also meant his father could not have left, damn his probing eyes. And damn Ian’s own, because the snow that would prevent his father from leaving, would also prevent Ian from being able to fetch a parson. His wedding day would have to be put off at the same time he would have to pretend it had already happened.

He would have to ask Anne to pretend to be his wife after all.

If, in the light of day, and in the absence of potent “Christmas cheer” to influence her thinking, she agreed, there really was no way he was ever going to be able to deserve her.

Ian flung himself out of his warm bed and put himself to work. His next stop was the kitchens, to find Pinky and the Totts, and to inquire after both his invited and uninvited guests. But when he went looking, he found only Pinky and the Rainesford coachmen. The Totts, it seemed, had decamped.

“Left last night just before the storm. Gone down the footpath to the village like badgers gone to ground. With the snow coming on, they didn’t like being away from their own farm any longer,” Pinky explained. “Didn’t rightly know how I could stop ’em, them being women and all.”

Ian could only sympathize. “Indeed, Pinky, I understand entirely. Nothing could be done. As long as they left the larder stocked—it is well stocked, isn’t it? As long as both the larder and the coal scuttle are full, we should be able to survive even my father’s presence.”

Pinky shook his head, and shot a sideways glance at the coachmen. “Too deep, they say, for the horses. Don’t like to risk their animals, or their own necks overturning in a ditch. But, no need to worry about the coal, sir. If it comes to it, I’ve got a grand yule log all picked out near the edge of the wood. Should be able to fetch it up to the house, even in all the snow. And Christmas day is tomorrow. We ought to burn it then, regardless. Keeps the spirits bright, the yule log does.”

“Then burn it we shall, Pinky.”

If Ian did not first burn the house down around his ears with his lies.

Because their survival—his and Anne’s, and their marriage—would hinge largely upon his skill with subterfuge. With the Totts gone, and only Pinky to shift for all of them, there was absolutely no way for his uninvited guests to stay out of the way of each other. It was going to be absolute hell to keep them apart—especially his probing father and garrulous Mrs. Lesley. Gull Cottage was only so big, and no larger—his father’s outsized sense of entitlement could barely be contained by the vastness of Ciren Castle.

Devil take them all. But clearly, not even the devil would take them in weather like this.

“Make them comfortable,” he told Pinky. “But country hours, and country food. And”—he had a marvelous moment of insight—“lock up all of the good liquor. Don’t give my father any reason to linger.”

“That’ll be all the good French brandy?” Pinky followed Ian across the kitchen with a sad, hang-dog countenance. “I was going to make her a Christmas pudding. Can’t light it afire without the brandy.”

No need to ask which “her” Pinky was trying to turn up sweet. But if Pinky could manage it where Ian could not, so much the better. He needed all the help he could get. “Just keep the brandy hidden in the kitchens, Pinky—I doubt my father has ever set foot in one in his life.”

It occurred to Ian to simply avail himself of that bottle of brandy, and drink his breakfast, sliding off into a happy stupor in the comfort of his own room, but that was hardly kind—it was in fact rather cowardly. Best to start as he meant to go on.

He found Anne at the top of the drafty kitchen stairs, coming down the corridor in a flattering claret-colored gown. She looked so different from his first impression of her that the change knocked him hard in the chest. She looked nothing like a drab little wren. In the claret, she looked like the perfect warm wine punch on a cold winter’s day. “Anne.”

She colored deeply at just his mention of her name—a vivid swath of apricot pink streaked up her cheeks, and disappeared down the front of the admirable claret-colored gown. But she smiled as if she were very much pleased to see him.

His body set up an interesting hum of anticipation that vibrated down into his bones. “Good morning. You’ve dimples, you know. Right there, in both cheeks. I never noticed them before.”

He knew the compliment warmed her, because her smile widened full across her mouth, though she only asked, “Is he gone?”

“No, damn me,” he answered. “I must apologize. Again. We are stuck with him. The weather is too severe for him to think of leaving.” He shoved his hand through his hair, as if he might pull a better idea out of his head. “I can control neither the weather—though in ten years at sea, I have often wished to God I could—nor my father. I shall endeavor to keep him well away from you. And from your parents as well.”

“You may certainly count on my assistance. I’ll go to my mother just as soon as she wakes, but that should not be for several hours yet.”

It seemed the whole house had kept late hours last night. “And your father?”

“I’m afraid I do not know his habits well enough to venture a guess.”

“From what I know of your father, I should think as a military man he’ll be afoot long before mine. Service to the King is a long habit to break, while the Viscount Rainesford serves no master but God—and God, only when it’s convenient to him. With luck, he’ll stay abed, or at least stay out of our way, for the rest of the day.”

“Then let us hope that we shall be lucky.”

We. Ian liked the sound of that. It sounded hopeful. It sounded promising. “Oh, I’m counting upon it.” He gathered his supple, almost-bride into his arms. “I’ve always had the devil’s own luck.” He kissed her sweet lips. “It’s brought me you.”

“Well, isn’t this cozy.” His father’s cold sneer took all the warmth out of the air. “At least you’ll have no trouble getting a brat on her. You’re too much my son to fail me on that score.”

*   *   *

The viscount’s tone was knowing and snide in a way that made Anne feel embarrassed and dirty. Twice now he had come upon her tangled in his son’s arms.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” he asked.

Ian’s quick rueful glance was an apology, but Anne was ready for the coming lie. There was no way around it. “My wife, Anne Worth. Anne, my father, the Viscount Rainesford.”

The viscount looked at her down the length of his imposing nose, as if she were a particularly pestilential insect. He did not speak, though his nostrils flared in disdain. But if he thought his silence was a punishment, he was wrong. Anne welcomed his not speaking to her, if it would save her the trouble of having to talk to such a man.

She took satisfaction in vexing him by smiling serenely.