Secrets of a Gentleman Escort
Secrets of a Gentleman Escort
Bronwyn Scott
He's the talk of the ton–for all the wrong reasons!Society's most outrageous–and popular!–escort Nicholas D'Arcy is renowned for his utmost discretion. So when he suddenly finds himself named and shamed by a jealous husband, he reluctantly accepts a summons to the countryside…a fate worse than death!Annorah Price-Ellis isn't what Nick is used to–innocent, feisty and decidedly uncomfortable with the spontaneous heat between them! Suddenly, London's most audacious lover is out of his depth, and in danger of revealing the real man behind the polished facade….Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous Only London's best lovers need apply!
Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous
Only London’s best lovers need apply!
The League of Discreet Gentlemen has only one priority—providing the women of London with unimaginable pleasure. The secrecy demanded is expensive, but satisfaction is definitely guaranteed!
The League pride themselves on knowing everything about desire. But they’re about to discover that whilst seduction is easy falling in love can be very hard indeed…!
Don’t miss this incredible new quartet by dazzling Mills & Boon™ Historical Romance author
Bronwyn Scott!
SECRETS OF A GENTLEMAN ESCORT
January 2014
will be followed by two sexy stories in Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks with a further Mills & Boon™ Historical romance LONDON’S MOST WANTED RAKE coming in April 2014
AUTHOR NOTE
Meet the League of Discreet Gentlemen, a group of men who have dedicated themselves to women’s pleasure! The Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous mini-series is a collection of stories about Victorian male escorts who are exceptionally good at their jobs. These are not your standard petticoat-mongers—these are high-class, highly talented escorts, gifted at helping a woman remember her beauty and her value.
The League is headed by Channing Deveril, who has masterminded this group of men as a way of secretly thumbing his nose at matchmaking mamas and the marriage mart. But what started as an underground rake’s game has now evolved into something more organised and serious. Every woman in London knows all she has to do is drop a request in a certain mailbox in town and her wish will be granted. Every married man wishes he knew if the League was fact or fiction.
In Book One readers will meet Nicholas D’Arcy, a gentleman’s son down on his luck. The League is a chance for him to piece the family’s finances back together. He’s risen to the heights of notoriety for his skill as a lover in London Society—until one evening an assignment goes wrong and he’s packed off to the country, where he is forced to come to grips with who he is and face the demons of his past.
Books Two and Three are Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks, with stories about League members Jocelyn Eisley and Captain Grahame Westmore.
The series finale is Channing Deveril’s own story, in which he meets his match in Lady Alina Marliss. You may recall her as his special holiday guest in FINDING FOREVER AT CHRISTMAS. Will this signal the end of the League? Read the series and find out!
Stay tuned at my blog for updates and giveaways at www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com
Secrets of a
Gentleman
Escort
Bronwyn Scott
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Ro, because everyone should seize their day.
Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and is the proud mother of three wonderful children (one boy and two girls). When she’s not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travelling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages.
Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website,
www.bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog,
www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com—she loves to hear from readers.
Previous novels from Bronwyn Scott: PICKPOCKET COUNTESS NOTORIOUS RAKE, INNOCENT LADY THE VISCOUNT CLAIMS HIS BRIDE THE EARL’S FORBIDDEN WARD UNTAMED ROGUE, SCANDALOUS MISTRESS A THOROUGHLY COMPROMISED LADY SECRET LIFE OF A SCANDALOUS DEBUTANTE UNBEFITTING A LADY† (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO DISGRACE A LADY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO RUIN A REPUTATION* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO SIN SUCCESSFULLY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY RISKS ALL** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY DARES** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c)
And in Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks: LIBERTINE LORD, PICKPOCKET MISS PLEASURED BY THE ENGLISH SPY WICKED EARL, WANTON WIDOW ARABIAN NIGHTS WITH A RAKE AN ILLICIT INDISCRETION HOW TO LIVE INDECENTLY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY SEDUCES** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c)
† (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Castonbury Park Regency mini-series * (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Rakes Beyond Redemption ** (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Ladies of Impropriety
and as a Mills & Boon™ special release: PRINCE CHARMING IN DISGUISE (part of Royal Weddings Through the Ages)
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
Chapter One (#uddce9da0-7f44-5584-ae19-d97b305ec335)
Chapter Two (#u3e7ffd10-f3da-5f18-a6fd-c471dfaf3eea)
Chapter Three (#udd858584-604e-558a-bdb3-b77ebe25a8a8)
Chapter Four (#ufc270b3f-9a8b-5a5e-a4e1-c54cf74cbe21)
Chapter Five (#uc5b005af-8064-5c88-a98a-f5d6c581da5d)
Chapter Six (#ud665b588-28fc-54c9-b78b-06871d7d8599)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
London, June 1839
If Nicholas D’Arcy had been a less extraordinary lover and his partner, the lush red-headed Lady Alicia Burroughs, more discreet, her husband would not have discovered them. But ‘less’ had never been an adjective to describe Nick, any more than ‘discreet’ was an adjective one applied to Lady Burroughs, who was currently voicing her appreciation of his abilities with enough vocal skill to impress an opera diva.
Lucifer’s balls! The whole house could hear her. Why stop there? The whole neighbourhood probably could. It was only by a stroke of luck that Nick caught the rapid thump of angry bootsteps surging up into the hallway just as Lady Burroughs took a breath beneath him before she climaxed. The climax was beautifully done, one of his best, and all screaming aside, the stunning Lady Burroughs was worthy of it, laid out across the bed as she was. Her auburn locks cascaded over the bed’s edge, her head thrown back, throat exposed, neck and back arched as he thrust into her. She was breathing hard and, deuce take it, so was he. He’d managed to get fairly worked up about this, too. Lord Burroughs didn’t know what he was missing, but he was about to.
‘Alicia!’ the man’s voice boomed down the hallway.
‘It’s Burroughs!’ Alicia sat up with a gasp and a believable amount of panic, enough to make Nick start worrying in earnest. He had—what? Ten seconds? Maybe fifteen? Burroughs was heavily built and not the fastest runner. Maybe he wasn’t even running, just walking quickly. There’d be time for trousers, but nothing more.
Nick leapt from the bed and grabbed up the discarded trousers. He thrust in a leg, hopping around on one foot while he tried to simultaneously gather up his shirt and coats. ‘You said he was gone until Monday!’ Nick hissed, piling his shoes on top of the messy pile in his arms.
‘Oh, hush, will you? You don’t want him to hear you. Hurry.’ Alicia sat in the middle of the bed, a sheet drawn up modestly over those creamy breasts of hers.
Nick glanced around the room. There was no time for this window and her door was certainly out of the question. ‘Does the dressing room go through?’ If he was to be caught, it wasn’t going to be by a pompous ass of a man who couldn’t keep his wife in his own bed.
With a wink to Lady Burroughs, he was off, sliding through the dressing-room door with two seconds to spare and into the connecting room just in time to hear Lord Burroughs roar, ‘Where is he?’
In your room, you old windbag, Nick thought with a chuckle, but he had to think fast. This would be the first place Burroughs would look. Even Burroughs wasn’t dumb enough to realise the only way out was through the dressing room. Nick dashed into the hallway and opted for another room on the garden side of the house. He sidled in and closed the door softly behind him. He was safe for now. He set down his bundle of clothes and put on his shoes.
‘Millie, is that you?’ a voice called from the antechamber. Nick halted in midmotion, one shoe on, one shoe off. He grabbed his clothes and raced for the window. He was too slow. An older woman in a dressing gown emerged from the little room before he was halfway across. The dowager countess!
She was going to scream. Nick could practically see it climbing up her throat. He had to silence that scream and he had mere seconds to do it. He did the only thing he could think of. He strode two paces towards her, swept her into his arms and kissed her. Most soundly, too, and damn it all if she didn’t kiss him back with a little tongue. The dowager countess—who would have thought it? It was arguably the most pleasant surprise of the evening because afterwards, she cleared her throat and said, ‘Young man, you’ll want to use the window. I think you’ll find the trellis quite stable.’ Then she winked at him. ‘It’s been used before.’
Good Lord, did Burroughs have any idea what went on in his house? Nick thanked her and wasted no time. The last thing he needed was for Millie the maid to show up. He’d have to kiss her, too. But that would be better than Burroughs, who Nick could hear throwing doors open as he barrelled down the hall. Again it was down to a matter of seconds between discovery or escape. Nick tossed his clothes down first and stuck a leg out to test the rung.
‘Come back any time you like,’ the dowager countess called after him. ‘I have the gardener keep that trellis well maintained. He thinks it’s for the roses.’
Nick merely smiled and climbed into the darkness as Burroughs knocked on his mother’s door. The dowager would have to live with her disappointment, Nick decided. He wasn’t coming back to the Burroughs town house for quite a while.
The rest of the escape was easy after that. He found his way out of the garden and, after he’d travelled through the warren of back alleys, he stopped and finished dressing. He was safe for the time being, although safe was rather relative. Alicia Burroughs wasn’t exactly a soul of discretion, as he’d noted earlier. It would only be a matter of time before Burroughs knew it was him.
There was going to be hell to pay for this. Nick tucked his shirt tails into his trousers. His name would be all Burroughs would know, though. Responsibility for tonight’s débâcle began and ended with him. There must be no connection to the agency, no threat of exposure to the League of Discreet Gentlemen, the organisation to which he belonged and which, by virtue of its name, had to remain discreet at all costs. People didn’t mind doing business with a highly capable gentleman escort, but they did mind others knowing about it. If word of the organisation and what they did got out, every last one of them would be completely ostracised.
Nicholas began to walk. He wasn’t ready to go back to Argosy House, the league’s headquarters. What would he tell Channing? The league’s founder would be so very disappointed in him. Discretion was the code the league lived by. To break it meant the worst kind of ruin. It would be the end of the Gentlemen, the end of the very good money he made, the end of a lot of things, not the least being the end of him; Nicholas D’Arcy, London’s most outrageous lover. Women paid enormous sums for his skill in bed. They stuffed jewels in his pockets to find out just how outrageous he could be. And because he needed those jewels and those extraordinary sums of money, he encouraged it. Who was he if he wasn’t Outrageous Nick?
Nick kicked at a pebble on the pavement. To be fair, he probably encouraged the attention for darker reasons than money and the notoriety. Sex was about all he was good at. Thank goodness he’d been able to turn his one skill into a marketable talent. More than that, he thanked goodness he’d met Channing Deveril, who’d made his success possible. Otherwise, he’d probably still be bumbling around as a clerk in a shipping firm on the docks, making too little to offset his family’s financial needs.
Now, thanks to his reputation, he was able to send decent sums to his mother. He was able to write fabulous letters to his two sisters about the glittering parties he attended and all the latest fashions without making it up. Of course, they didn’t know what he did for a living, only that he was now a man of business. Thanks to his brother’s poor health, they would never know differently. There would be no chance for them to come up to London and see the reality, for which he was eternally grateful. A broken brother was bad enough. He couldn’t break his mother’s heart, too.
* * *
The milkmaids were starting their rounds when Nicholas climbed the front steps of Argosy House, nominally no different than any of the other houses along Jermyn Street quartering bachelor gentlemen of means. All the other windows on the street were dark, but lights still burned here. The boys would be up for another hour or so, reliving their evenings and then they would all retire.
A passing milkmaid gave him a flirty smile. ‘Good morning, Master Nick. You’ve been out all night again.’
Nick swept her a bow and blew her a kiss. ‘Good morning, Gracie.’ He knew all their names, every milkmaid, every vendor that claimed Jermyn Street as their venue. Women especially liked that sort of thing.
Gracie waved a scolding finger at him. ‘Don’t you try any of your gentleman’s tricks with me. I’m wise to all of them,’ she teased. ‘Besides, I’ve heard you’ve been up to no good.’
Nick was tempted to ask Gracie what she’d heard, but she’d already picked up her pails and moved down the street, her saucy hips swinging. Worry picked at him. Had his contretemps at Burroughs’s already made the rounds? He stepped inside Argosy House to the sound of raucous male laughter spilling from the drawing room. He smiled. There was comfort in knowing the routine, of having expectations about what one would find when one came home. This was the only home he had now, the only place where he felt comfortable. It had been a long time since he’d felt that way about his real home.
Inside the drawing room, seven men sprawled carelessly on the chairs and sofas. Cravats were undone, jackets were off, waistcoats unbuttoned. Snifters of brandy in varying states of emptiness sat at their elbows. These were his colleagues of the past four years, the fellow members of the secret league.
Jocelyn Eisley spotted him first. ‘Ho, ho, Nick my boy, you had a close call tonight. We were starting to worry.’
All heads turned towards him. Whistles and applause broke out. ‘You’ll be the talk of the broadsheets.’ Amery DeHart saluted him with a half-drunk snifter.
‘Three cheers for our man, Nick.’ Eisley cleared his throat and leapt up on to an ottoman in a graceful move for one so big. ‘I feel a poem coming on to commemorate the occasion. It’s not every night one of us pleasures a lady with her husband in the house.’
There was a collective, good-natured groan. Nick took a seat next to DeHart on the sofa. Eisley’s poems had become one of their traditions.
‘A limerick, Eisley,’ Miles Grafton called out. ‘A dirty deed requires a dirty poem.’
‘Here, here!’ the chorus went up.
‘All right then.’ The big blond called for attention. ‘I give you my latest creation.’ The big blond’s baritone resonated with enough dramatic flair for Drury Lane. ‘There once was a man named Nick who satisfied women with his prick. How women did swoon when Nick did moon. He was the envy of every man in the room.’ He gave an extravagant bow.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Amery put in more loudly than necessary. ‘We’re the rakes who make husbands jealous.’
‘And thank goodness for that,’ Captain Grahame Westmore said darkly from his corner by the fire. ‘If the men of the ton did their duty properly, we’d be out of a job.’ A former cavalry officer, Westmore was private, as private as Nick was himself. Of all the men present, Nick knew the least about him.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Eisley stepped off the ottoman. ‘Is it my best yet? I’ll recite it at White’s this afternoon and, by dinner, my little ditty will be repeated in every Mayfair drawing room—discreetly, of course. You’d better lay in another order for those French letters you like, Nick. Your popularity will soar. They’ll call it “Nick the Prick”.’
‘They’re calling it “In the Nick of Time”, in the papers, according to my sources,’ a sombre voice said from the doorway.
Nick winced. He didn’t have to look up to know Channing Deveril, the league’s founder, had heard the news already. It seemed quite a few people had heard if milkmaids and journalists knew. He’d hoped for a little more reprieve.
‘Close call tonight, eh, Nick?’ Channing’s blue eyes met his.
‘Only close, though.’ Nick shrugged. Maybe Channing wasn’t too upset. It was merely an occupational hazard. After all, it could happen to anyone.
Channing managed a half-grin. ‘We can all be grateful for that. Come to my office and we can speak of it more privately and decide what to do.’
Nick’s good spirits sank, replaced by a wary sense of caution. ‘What is there to decide?’ he asked, settling into the chair opposite Channing’s polished desk.
‘What do with you, of course.’ Channing eyed him as if he were an idiot. ‘You may have gone too far tonight.’
‘You can never go too far.’ Nicholas laughed, but Channing did not.
‘I’m serious, Nick, and you should be, too. This won’t blow over. Burroughs will know it was you.’
‘I prefer suspect. He doesn’t know it’s me, not for sure,’ Nicholas amended.
Channing cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘You’re deluding yourself. With limericks like “Nick the Prick” and drawings labelled “In the Nick of Time” floating around London like so much flotsam?’ Channing had a point there. ‘Besides, I don’t think Alicia Burroughs wins any awards for secret keeping.’
Another point in Channing’s favour. A rather valid one, too, given tonight’s display. ‘The agency won’t be implicated,’ Nick put in, hoping to soothe Channing’s feathers.
‘My worry is not for the agency alone. I worry for you, too, Nick. I don’t want there to be a duel.’ Channing opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. He pushed it across the desk. ‘That’s why I have a new assignment for you.’
Nick scanned the document inside with a frown. ‘Five nights of pleasure? In the countryside? Is such a thing even possible? It sounds like a unlikely juxtaposition to me.’ Nicholas D’Arcy pushed the letter back across the polished surface of the desk with obvious disdain, his dark brow arched in sceptical disapproval of such a proposition. He was a London man. The city was his preferred environ with its refined women. There was nothing quite as fascinating as a city woman with her fashions and perfumes, her sharply honed repartee on a myriad of cutting-edge subjects and her bold overtures. In sum, a London woman was someone who knew what she wanted on all accounts. But a country woman? Lord spare him. ‘It’s really not my speciality, Channing.’
Behind the desk, Channing quirked a blond brow in answer to his darker one. ‘And provoking duels with cuckolded husbands is not mine. If I may remind you, the league’s mission is a woman’s pleasure without the attendant scandal. Duels, my friend, do not fit our code of discretion. You need to get out of town and let the rumours settle. You know how London is this time of year. There will be another scandal within the fortnight to retire this one, but not if you’re here reminding everyone with your presence. Until then, I have no wish to see you on the receiving end of a jealous husband’s pistol.’
‘Nothing will come of it, I promise,’ Nicholas protested. ‘Burroughs has no proof.’ It had been a near-run thing though, getting out the window in time. ‘He couldn’t have seen more than a shadow.’
Channing played with a letter opener. ‘Yes, well, what he’d like to do to that shadow is all over London. Was anything left behind? A shirt stud? A boot? Anything that could link you to the scene?’
‘Nothing,’ Nicholas replied vehemently. ‘I never leave anything behind. It was a clean getaway, I swear.’ A getaway that involved kissing the dowager countess. Still, it had been clean in the end and that was all that mattered.
Channing gave a short laugh. ‘You and I have somewhat different interpretations of “clean getaway”.’
Nicholas put a dramatic hand to his heart in mock play. ‘You wound me.’ In truth, he was a bit insulted Channing even had to ask. He was one of the best Channing had when it came to the more carnal pursuits of their organisation. Not every woman came to them looking for physical pleasure—some came simply looking to make a splash in society, perhaps raise a little decent notoriety for themselves to win back a husband who had strayed too far or taken them for granted too long. But there were those who did come looking for the intimate pleasures that had eluded them thus far in life. That’s where he came in. Nick hoped Channing would overlook that aspect of the letter.
‘The potential scandal notwithstanding, I’d still send you.’ Channing set down the letter opener and fixed with him a stern blue-eyed stare. ‘The woman in question is looking for physical fulfilment and that is indeed your speciality.’ So much for overlooking it.
‘But not in the country,’ Nicholas argued. He was losing this fight and he knew it. He could feel his grounds for refusal slipping away. ‘It’s a poor time for me to be gone from the league.’ He gestured to the date on the letter. ‘Almost a whole week in the middle of June? That’s the height of the Season. We already have more requests than we can handle.’ It would absolutely kill him to miss the entertainments: the Marlborough Ball, the midsummer masquerade at Lady Hyde’s Richmond mansion, which was that week, to say nothing of the summer nights at Vauxhall with its fireworks.
Channing remained unfazed by his line of reasoning. ‘We’ll manage.’
Nicholas pressed onwards, running roughshod over the implied refusal. ‘You could send someone else. Jocelyn or Grahame? Miles or Amery? Didn’t DeHart say he enjoyed the country? He was an absolute hit at the last house party you sent him to.’ He was not going to the country. He avoided the country like a saint avoided sin.
‘Everyone is busy,’ Channing said with finality. ‘It has to be you.’ He gave a winning smile, the one that charmed men and women alike into doing whatever it was Channing required of them. ‘Don’t worry, Nicholas, the city will still be here when you get back.’
What could he say to that without saying too much? There were things about his life even Channing didn’t know. Nicholas drew a breath. ‘The letter says she’ll pay handsomely. How much?’ He knew the question signalled his concurrence. Still, better to retreat the field with polite acquiescence than to be routed from it with a direct order.
‘A thousand pounds,’ Channing announced quietly.
Nicholas gave a wry smile. He’d do just about anything for a thousand pounds. Even face his demons. There was no question of not going and they both knew it. That kind of money ensured his acceptance from the start. ‘Well, I guess that settles it.’ In a moment of insight, he appreciated Channing’s effort to at least let him think he could argue the situation.
‘I expect it does. Now, go pack your bags, I’ve arranged a post chaise for you. It leaves at eleven. You’ll be there in time for tea.’
Lovely, Nick thought with inward sarcasm, but he could see Channing was set on this. There’d be no getting out of it, so he played that old mental game: it could always be worse, although he wasn’t sure how it could be. Well, he supposed it could have been for longer, it could have been for the entire month.
Chapter Two
Sussex, England
Annorah Price-Ellis had a month to live. Really live. She could feel it in her bones and it wasn’t the first time. She’d been feeling it creep up on her since April and here at the last she was powerless to stop it. The inevitable was going to happen although for years she’d been in denial. Now it—even at this late point she couldn’t call it by its rightful name—stared her in the face, a big red date on her mental calendar.
Of course, she’d sought help. The experts she’d consulted all concurred with the same diagnosis. There was nothing left for her to do but accept it. Such news had forced her to make concessions and, along with concessions, preparations as well, which was why she sat in her sunny drawing room at Hartshaven on this beautiful June afternoon, prettily dressed in a fashionable new gown of jonquil muslin, looking her best and waiting, an odd occupation for someone for whom time was running out.
Annorah glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly four. He would arrive any minute and her nerves were entirely on edge. She’d never done anything as daring or as final as this. As that damnable red date approached, she’d thought long and hard about what her final acts would be, what pleasures she wanted one last time. She was rich. She had piles of money. She could afford anything she desired: Paris, the Continent, beautiful clothes. In the end, all that wealth wouldn’t save her. She couldn’t take it with her without condemning her soul to a certain hell. So the question had loomed. What did she want? In her heart, it hadn’t been that difficult a question to answer.
She was thirty-two, at least for another two weeks, and past her prime by at least a decade. She didn’t feel it. She hoped she didn’t look it. She had very little to show for the last ten years, at least not when it came to the things a woman should have at her age—a husband and children. She’d been close a few times. Once, she’d managed to get her heart broken and another time she’d cried off, unwilling to risk a second heartbreak, or maybe it had been the lack of such a risk. After that, she’d retreated to Hartshaven, withdrawing from society a little more each year until it had been ages since she’d set foot in London and longer still since she’d taken an interest in anyone or anyone in her.
It was a lonely way to live. What she did have, however, was a beautiful estate in the country and piles of money to keep her company. What she lacked in social currency, she more than made up for financially. In terms of creature comforts, she had everything a woman could want, except a man. That was about to change. In a few moments, a man was going to come down the drive. She’d ordered him from London much as one orders a gown, and if she had misgivings about such a process it was too late now.
Annorah mentally went over the carefully drafted letter she’d sent one last time, every word committed to memory.
Dear Sirs,
I am looking for a discreet association with a man of breeding and manners. Must be clean and well-kept, an informed conversationalist—in other words, educated—and enjoy the quiet of the countryside. Will pay handsomely for five nights of companionship.
She’d taken three days to draft those few lines. It seemed like the letter should be longer for her efforts. She hoped the agency would know exactly what she meant. The small advertisement she’d seen in a magazine suggested the agency was very good at reading between the lines and knowing precisely what was required in any given situation. Still, those meagre four lines were the most audacious words she’d ever written.
‘It’s time, Annorah. Stop being such a goose.’ She felt her courage start to flag. If not now, when? She knew the answer to that. Never. If she wanted to know the mysteries of passion before it was too late, she had to take matters into her own hands. So here she was, waiting for her birthday present to arrive; the perfect man—one who wouldn’t break her heart, who wouldn’t pretend to love her for her money, one who would understand what she wanted was a temporary liaison in which she could experience the joys of the flesh without the regrets.
Five nights of pleasure should be enough. Then she would reconcile herself to her fate, a fate the best of England’s legal minds had assured her she could not avoid: Marry by her thirty-third birthday and keep her estate and wealth intact, or should that fail and she remain single, the estate and much of her fortune was forfeit to the church and other charities. The house would become a school and she’d be left with a cottage and a comfortable portion to live simply, but not grandly. Gone would be the days of fine gowns and the option to do anything she wanted.
Either way, she stood to lose her life the way she knew it. Marriage meant her fabulous wealth went to her husband. Remaining unwed meant it went to the church. Last time she checked, neither of those parties was her. In response to her demise, she’d gone shopping and purchased an outrageous number of dresses and all the necessary accessories, including a man to go with them.
Gravel crunched on the drive and her pulse quickened. Out of the window, Annorah caught sight of a chaise pulling up in front of the steps before it was lost from view, blocked by the large semicircular stairs leading to the front door. One could only see the drive fully if one was standing at the window and Annorah did not want to be that obvious.
Her butler, Plumsby, appeared at the doorway. ‘Miss, your guest is here. May I say he is quite handsome for a librarian?’ She’d not been able to admit the truth to her staff for fear of disappointing them. Instead, she’d professed a desire to catalogue the library one last time, an inventory list of sorts should she opt to leave everything to the school.
‘Thank you, Plumsby. I will be right out to meet him.’ Her pulse began to race, her thoughts latching on to Plumsby’s last words: He was handsome. She played out how she wanted to greet him in her mind. She would be modern and sophisticated. Annorah took a final look in the mirror on the wall to make sure her hair was in place, her face free of any errant smudges. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall, suddenly feeling overly bright in her jonquil muslin against the muted blues and Italian marble of the hall. But there was no time to change now, no time to slip away on the backstairs unnoticed. He’d seen her.
Annorah smiled and swept forwards. ‘You’re here. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’ She clasped her hands tightly at her waist, hoping to hide her nerves, but she could feel a blush creeping up her cheeks. Handsome didn’t even begin to cover it and she was already at a loss for words. He’d think she was a bumbling idiot. One minute into their association and her power of speech had failed her.
Tea! Her mind grabbed the idea. ‘Plumbsby, have tea brought to the drawing room. I can see to our guest from here.’ As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she had erred. ‘Forgive me, I’m getting ahead of myself. Here I am ordering tea before we’ve even had introductions. I’m Annorah Price-Ellis.’
She stuck her hand out for him to shake in a businesslike manner, but he took that hand and bent over it instead, lips skimming knuckles, eyes holding hers as he took her gesture and turned it into something more than a greeting. Under his touch it became a prologue, a promise. ‘Nicholas D’Arcy at your service.’
At her service. Annorah swallowed hard. He was here and he was gorgeous! Dark-blue eyes looked up at her over her hand, riveting and intense in their regard; black hair roguishly pulled back to reveal high-set cheekbones and the most perfect mouth she’d ever seen on a man; a thin, strong upper lip, a slightly fuller lower lip, full enough to invoke a certain sensual quality, full enough to make a woman want to trace that mouth with her finger.
Good lord, her thoughts were running fast! They’d barely met and she was already tracing his mouth in her mind. Annorah recalled her manners soon enough to fumble through an awkward curtsy, only to wonder if that was the correct response. Did one curtsy to such a man? But that was just it. What sort of man was he? A gentleman down on his luck or a bounder in fine clothing merely apeing his betters? Perhaps she should curtsy simply to preserve the façade and why not? This was her fantasy. She could play it any way she wanted.
What she couldn’t do was stand around the hall, staring like a looby. Years of good breeding finally caught up with her in a single thought: now she could get them in to tea and everything would resolve itself. Tea would take some of the edge off her nerves. There would be a natural progression of questions to ask: Did he take cream? Did he prefer sugar? Would he like a cake or a sandwich? It would ease the transition into conversation and give her a sense of starting to know him.
Annorah gestured towards the wide doorway on her left and said in what she hoped were sophisticated tones, even if the message was slightly repetitious, ‘Plumsby will have tea set up for us in the drawing room. You can take refreshment and we can discuss business.’ Surely that was the appropriate next step. It would be best to get the particulars out of the way before things progressed much further.
Nicholas D’Arcy’s blue eyes twinkled, the edges crinkling up delightfully as he smiled. He leaned in with a conspiratorial air, his body close enough for her to catch the scent of him—the sweet hay of a fougère mixed with the tang of lemons, quintessential summer. ‘This is business?’
Suddenly it was hard to think. She was vaguely aware she was rambling on about clients and contractors and negotiating the parameters of association for both their sakes. A gentle finger pressed against her lips.
‘There’s a lovely summer day waiting for us outside, Annorah. Why don’t you show me the gardens? We can talk while we stroll.’
‘Will it be private enough?’ Annorah hedged politely. Talk about their arrangement outside where they might be overheard? She hadn’t exactly been truthful with the staff when she’d told them about her visitor.
‘We’ll put our heads together and whisper.’ His eyes were laughing again as he offered her his arm, a very firm arm encased in blue superfine, another reminder that his clothes and bearing were immaculate. His dark head lowered to hers until they were almost touching, his voice quiet at her ear. ‘Besides, I find the risk of discovery adds a certain spice to even the most mundane of outings, don’t you?’
‘I will have to take your word for that, Mr D’Arcy.’ A delicious tremor shivered through her at the very notion, tempered only slightly by the reality that the man dressed in expensive blue superfine, fashionable buff breeches and highly polished boots was definitely not a gentleman at all.
‘Please, call me Nicholas. My father was always Mr D’Arcy. Shall we?’
How quickly she’d lost control of the conversation. It was something of a marvel, really, how smoothly he’d taken over. He’d been standing in her hall for a handful of minutes and already he was assuming command. He didn’t even know where the gardens were and yet they were heading out of the bank of French doors as if he’d lived here his entire life. She’d not expected him to show such ease. She’d expected to have the upper hand. This arrangement was to be conducted entirely on her grounds, literally and figuratively. When she’d sent her letter, she’d assumed a modicum of security in knowing he was the guest and she the host. But now it was clear those roles could easily become blurred.
* * *
The gardens restored her sense of balance. He asked questions, pausing now and again at certain flowers to comment on their blooms, and she answered, feeling more in control, once more the host.
Nicholas halted at one flower. ‘Ah, this one is very rare indeed. A rainforest iris, if I’m not mistaken? Very wicked, is it not, with its stamen jutting straight up from the bloom?’
Annorah blushed furiously at his less-than-veiled reference to a man’s phallus. ‘All flowers have stamen, Mr D’Arcy.’
‘Yes, but not all of them have stamen that are so blatantly displayed. Take this delicate pink blossom over here. The stamen is neatly shielded by the petals closing around it. But not this fellow.’ He gestured back to the iris. ‘He’s a bold one, sticking straight out from the flat bowl of the blossom, tall and proud for all to see.’
‘Flowers are hardly sexual beings, Mr D’Arcy.’
‘You don’t think so? I must respectfully disagree. They are perhaps the most sexual, most promiscuous...’ he stopped here to arch a dark brow her direction, emphasising promiscuous ‘...creatures in the living kingdoms. Think about it—they pollinate and cross-pollinate with multiple different partners every day, all for the purpose of casting their errant seeds to the wind with nary a care for where they land.’
Social protocol demanded she put a stop to such ridiculous conversation, but she could not bring herself to do it. He had the most pleasant of voices, a sibilant tenor that caressed each word, creating decadent images with his sentences. If he could turn her legs to jelly with talk of botany of all things, chances were rather good that this voice of his could make any subject seductive. Still, she should try to maintain a civil face to their interactions. ‘Mr D’Arcy, this is hardly a decent subject for discussion.’
‘I insist again that you call me Nicholas,’ he chided her gently. ‘And to be blunt, you didn’t invite me here to be decent.’
It was a well-timed comment. There was no better opportunity to bring up the nature of their association. They’d begun walking again, leaving the phallic iris and the flower garden behind. They were further from the house now, wandering down a tree-lined alley towards a roman folly in the distance. Their privacy was complete. For a moment it crossed her mind he’d manoeuvred the conversation in that direction on purpose.
‘No, Nicholas, I didn’t bring you here to be decent. But neither did I bring you here to indulge in a sinful gluttony of an orgy either.’ This was where her directness ran out. She was no retiring wallflower afraid to speak her own mind. She’d charted her own course in life thus far, but this was new conversational territory. She’d never once expressed such feelings, such desires to anyone before, let alone a handsome man who stared at her with the full attention of his eyes.
Of course she had his full attention! She gave herself a stern admonishment. This was his job. She should be worried if she didn’t have it.
‘I understand,’ Nicholas answered solemnly, covering her hand in a comforting gesture where it lay on his arm. ‘What have you told the servants?’
‘I’ve put it about that you are here to assess my library collection. It’s quite extensive and it hasn’t been catalogued since my grandfather had it done half a century ago.’
The grin he flashed filled her with satisfaction. She’d thought long and hard about the ruse she’d use to welcome a visiting male into her household. ‘Very nice, Annorah. You painted me with the sheen of a scholar, a bookish sort, which will certainly allay suspicions that I have ulterior motives for your person. You’ve given me a project that requires me to closet myself away with you daily and, best of all, you’ve given me the perfect reason to be seen escorting you about the countryside. No one would expect you to keep your guest all to yourself.’ He winked. ‘I know how country folk work; a newcomer is cause for excitement and must be shared.’
Annorah felt herself blush under his praise. They turned away from the folly and headed back towards the house while he continued.
‘As for us, Annorah, we will not speak of such arrangements again. You and I are to dedicate ourselves to becoming friends. We cannot be bothered with anything as base as a business transaction.’ He wrinkled his nose in a show of humorous distaste that made her laugh.
‘All that aside, though, we must be serious for a moment.’ He turned and faced her, bringing them to a full stop, the house in view over his shoulder, a reminder that when they returned to it the ruse would begin in truth. The point of no return began at the garden’s edge and her body trembled with the knowledge of it.
He took both her hands in his, his grip warm and strong, his gaze sincere. ‘We are about to embark on a wondrous and intimate journey together, Annorah Price-Ellis. I am honoured to share that journey with you. It will change us both. You have no doubt given it much thought, but I must ask one last time—are you ready? Is this what you truly want? You’re not forced to it in any way either implied or explicit?’
This must be what it’s like to stand at the altar and look up into the eyes of the man you love, knowing he feels the same. The thought had come to her out of nowhere and without reason. She knew logically he must be compelled to ask for one last show of consent. She knew, too, that there was nothing about love or marriage or altars behind his request. But that knowledge did nothing to dispel the impression they were taking vows of a sort, pledging themselves to one another, even if only for a short time. After tonight, he would always belong to her, always be with her in a way no other person would. For the rest of her life, she would carry a piece of Nicholas D’Arcy in her soul, as her first and perhaps only true lover.
Annorah nodded, her voice quiet in the still of a summer’s late afternoon. ‘I am ready.’
Nicholas raised her hands to his lips. ‘I am, too.’ He gave her a reassuring smile. Perhaps he’d heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Rest assured, Annorah, I know exactly what you want.’
Chapter Three
She wanted the wedding night, the honeymoon; the pleasure of lovers learning one another for the first time, savouring one another in both body and mind. It was one of the more difficult scenarios to enact. The trick was to create an intimacy that went beyond the physical without exposing oneself to feelings. He dealt in sex, not intimacy, by preference.
Up in his room, Nicholas opened his valise, the one piece of luggage he’d not let the footman assigned to act as his valet unpack. Nicholas surveyed the tools of his trade with a contemplative sigh, laying them out on the dressing table in his room like a surgeon preparing his scalpels and saws: the tiny glass vials of scented oils, the expensive imported sheaths from France made of thinnest lambskin, the silk ribbons, the soft feathers. Often, he used them as much for him as his clients. All were designed with one goal in mind: physical pleasure. They were his insurance that he could please even when he wasn’t all that interested in a woman. With the right woman, though, they could be extraordinary.
There was no question of delivering the physical adventure Annorah sought. The other, the sharing of a mind, would be more difficult. He was a guarded person by nature. Drawing others out had been an early acquired skill of his. It had served double duty as a means of learning others and as a means of protecting himself. When people were busy talking about themselves, they had little time to wonder about him.
Nicholas tucked the items into a bureau drawer, carefully hidden among cravats. Librarians did not carry feathers and ribbons with them. He smiled. A librarian? That was a new one. He’d pretended to be a lot of things before, whatever his clients needed. In the process, he’d become an adept chameleon. In this line of work, a person did a lot of pretending, which wasn’t all bad especially when the fantasy was better than a reality full of debt and worry and even guilt.
There was no place for those feelings here. He pushed those thoughts away and shut the clasp firmly. His mental efforts would be better spent planning his strategy. He would not need these tools this evening. She was not ready in spite of her words to the contrary.
He’d sensed her nervousness from the start, as if she couldn’t believe someone had actually answered her letter. He’d touched her immediately and often after that, bowing over her hand with a kiss, keeping a hand on her at all times as they strolled. She’d been skittish and he’d feared she might change her mind, a prospect he could not afford now that the money had been mentally allocated in his mind by the time he left London.
He understood full well the power of touch to ensure acceptance. In his experience, people were far more likely to do what he wanted if he touched them while asking. By the time they’d returned to the house and he’d garnered her pledge, she’d started to thaw.
Not that she was cold or that she wasn’t pleasantly disposed towards him. He’d seen the race of her pulse when she’d sighted him in the hall. He’d noted the blush on her cheeks in the garden when they’d discussed the iris. She knew very well the way of things. But the codes of decency had been drilled into her head over the years and, as much as she wanted to cast them off ever so briefly, it was proving to be more difficult than she’d likely anticipated. Well, he could certainly help her with that. What he really wanted to know was why? Why had she written the letter?
Nicholas moved to the bed and stretched out his long form, tucking his hands behind his head. He had two hours before dinner and he needed to use them to think. He mapped the evening in his head like a general before battle. Tonight’s arena would be the dinner table. That was easy enough. There were myriad ways to stroke the stem of a goblet, to cup its bowl, to eat one’s food and drink one’s wine that stimulated sexual interest, all the while talking, drawing her out, getting her to relax, to think of him more as a man than a machine who’d been sent to fulfil a need.
His goal tonight was twofold. For her sake, he wanted to dispel any sense of artifice about their association. For his, he wanted to figure out what had driven Annorah to write such a letter. More than that, why had such a letter even been necessary?
A request of this nature was not made idly. He thought of the pistols packed in his bags and ran through the usual reasons. Was this an act of revenge on her part? Would there be people who would resent her decision? It would not be the first time a woman had tried to avoid an unwanted marriage in this way. These arrangements were seldom straightforward.
The letter itself had been unremarkable. He’d studied it line by meagre line on the way here. There had been little to offer in the way of clues. The line about enjoying the countryside had made him laugh at the irony. The word quiet was a bit more insightful. What did it signify? Was she a recluse? Did she actually prefer the solitude of the country, unimaginable as such a concept was? Simple deduction made that an easy scenario to discard. It was hard to imagine a recluse, someone who deliberately shunned the company of others, requiring a conversationalist. Upon arrival, he’d been proven correct. He had to discard that notion even if the logic hadn’t fallen short. She might have been nervous, but she wasn’t a recluse.
Nick considered another option. Had she been forced into seclusion? Was she someone who had been abandoned to anonymity? Someone craving human contact? Perhaps that was too extreme. Sussex was hardly the ends of the earth. It was a mere five hours from London. Surely a woman with a thousand pounds to spend on five nights of pleasure could afford to come to London if she so chose.
That was the other thing that niggled. Motive. London had its own plans for women possessed of a fortune. It was called the Marriage Mart and it would certainly resolve any penchant for intimacy by providing an heiress with a husband; especially London in June. The city was teeming with men looking for money and marriage. It called to mind the line from the Austen novel his female acquaintances were so fond of: ‘A single man in possession of a good fortune must also be in want of a wife’, or something like that. In this case, a woman in possession of a fortune was an odd thing indeed without a husband.
If she was not naturally reclusive or forced to seclusion, that left option three: she was in the country by choice. Of all the scenarios, this was the most mysterious. Why would anyone choose the countryside if they didn’t have to? Why would someone choose to engage in paid intimacies with a stranger when a potential marriage awaited just five hours down the road?
There were only so many reasons a rich woman would refuse London and none of them was good, especially when the major reason would have been looks and that was clearly not the case with Annorah. He could rule that out.
Ugly would have been a problem for him. It was a selfish, petty wish, he knew, but he was used to beautiful. Most of the women who could afford him hadn’t been ugly. They’d merely been curious about what should have been theirs by right of marriage, something a conscientious husband should have provided Fortunately, Annorah Price-Ellis had turned out to be attractive with a quiet, understated beauty. She’d drawn his eye immediately, a splash of colour amid the elegant austerity of the entry hall.
She had struck him as a nature goddess when they’d strolled in the garden. He’d used the time to take in her features: the soft curve of cheek giving her face a delicate cast, the sharp mossy green of her eyes, reminiscent of a rich field of summer grass, and the wheat blonde of her hair, which argued to be the colour of wild honey when wet, a hypothesis he wouldn’t mind testing. There’d been curves, too, beneath the muslin with long legs, narrow waist and a high, full bosom. No, Annorah Price-Ellis was definitely not a hag. Which only furthered the mystery. How did a lovely, rich woman arrive at this point?
There was only one way to find out. Nicholas rang for the valet. It was time to dress for dinner and tonight he wanted to give his toilette thorough consideration. The man assigned to him was a young fellow named Peter, who had some talent for the job, if not experience. If the valet thought it was odd for a librarian to linger over his toilette, then so be it. In the end, the two of them turned him out quite finely in a dark evening suit, paisley waistcoat of rich lavenders and blues and a well-tied osbaldeston knot in his cravat that had taken only two tries.
Nicholas dismissed Peter and took a final look in the mirror, checking to see that the diamond stick pin in his cravat was exposed enough to catch the light, that his coat was smooth across the shoulders, that his hair was neatly tied back with a subtle black ribbon. Longer hair might not be the trend preferred by society in the ballrooms, but it was amazing how many women loved it in the bedrooms.
Satisfied with his appearance, Nicholas closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Let the seduction begin. No matter what ghosts the country raised against him, he could do this. He would make love to Miss Price-Ellis as if everything depended on it. Because it did.
* * *
He was waiting for her in the drawing room, having followed the gentleman’s dictate that no lady should have to remain alone in anxious anticipation for a guest’s arrival. He was casually posed, elegantly dressed, the dark evening clothes a marked contrast to the white of the marble. A pre-prandial drink, partially consumed, dangled negligently in one hand, his gaze fixed on the windows and the display of green gardens beyond. He turned at the sound of her entrance, the quiet click of her low-heeled slippers and the soft whisper of skirts giving her away.
‘You have a lovely home. I was just admiring the view.’ The hand holding the glass gestured towards the long windows to indicate the gardens, but his eyes held hers, suggesting he was appreciating another view entirely.
A delicious shot of warmth spread through her at the frank assessment. She’d spent an hour agonising over which gown to wear before summoning her maid and deciding on the lavender chiffon. Apparently the effort had been worth it. ‘Thank you. Hartshaven was designed to be appreciated. It was meant to be a showcase for beauty.’
‘It certainly is.’ His smile deepened, exposing the dimple at the left corner of his mouth.
Good lord, could he turn every comment into a veiled compliment? What could she do but forge ahead and take it all in her stride? Annorah moved to the window and motioned for him to join her. She tried to redirect the conversation on to more neutral ground, ground that would be less likely to leave her feeling flushed and so focused on the night to come that her tongue was tied. ‘My great-grandfather had the initial gardens laid out by Kent and Bridgeman.’
‘I recognise the styling.’ He stood close at her shoulder. She could smell the faint undertones of his cologne; the lemon and fougère creating the scent of a summer fantasy, perfect for a night like this. She did not think a man had ever smelled this good. She was so intent on smelling him, discreetly of course, that she nearly missed his conversation.
‘I’ve had the good fortune of visiting at Chiswick House. Burlington’s gardens are exquisite, as are yours.’
Chiswick? That grabbed her wandering attention. Annorah couldn’t resist a sideways glance at her companion. Chiswick House was the domain of the Earl of Burlington. Nicholas D’Arcy, whoever he was, ran in vaunted circles if he was calling there.
He caught her glance before she could look away and smiled. ‘Surprised?’
‘I hardly know you. I think anything would count as a surprise at this point.’ Her tone was sharper than she had intended but she was grasping for any point of defence now. Hardly knowing him was not stopping her pulse from racing, or her mind’s apparent desire to hang on his every word. When she’d begun this, she’d counted on logic to protect her from any depth of emotional response. That strategy was clearly going to fail.
‘Touché.’ He reached for her hand and tucked it through his arm, his touch igniting little jolts. ‘We’ll rectify that over dinner.’ He nodded in a direction past her shoulder. ‘I think your butler is ready to announce the meal.’
Plumsby cleared his throat, drawing her attention for the first time. She’d been so riveted on Nicholas she hadn’t noticed his arrival. ‘Dinner is served.’
‘I’ve had Plumbsy lay the meal out in the informal dining room,’ Annorah said, glad to have something of proprietary to say. She was sounding less and less like a hostess with every minute, which was not how she’d imagined this interlude. When she’d pictured it, she’d cast herself in the role of the sophisticate, taking the lead in their encounters, commanding every social nuance. It was easy to see the flaw in her reasoning against the black-tie élan of his town bronze. She hadn’t half the polish he had. Annorah hoped her dining room did.
The room did not disappoint. It looked out on to the back veranda and the staff had set it to perfection. Of course, they thought it was a business dinner to discuss the library, but they still wanted their home to look its best. And it did. The rose shades of summer twilight filtered through the panes of the French doors, bathing the cream walls in dusky hues, but it was the table in the room’s centre that drew all eyes. Two tall white tapers stood like sentinels in their silver-candlestick holders atop pristine white linen, flames flickering an invitation. A bowl of yellow roses from the garden sat between them on the round table. In complement to the yellow roses, her favorite Wedgwood pattern of blue flowers was laid out in two place settings with slim goblets and silver. Cold champagne rested in a chilled bucket.
Two footmen seated them and Plumsby removed the covers, presenting the meal, but that would be all the service she required. She’d already made it clear to Plumsby they meant to dine casually, serving themselves from the dishes on the table. Plumsby had protested, but she’d argued all the fuss for one guest was hardly worth it. Since that guest was a ‘librarian’ there to do a job, Plumsby had eventually conceded the point.
‘Shall I?’ Nicholas reached for the bottle of champagne, uncorking it in a deft movement with the merest of pops. He poured the glasses and turned his attention to the chicken, applying the same dexterity to carving that he had to champagne. Effortlessly, he filled their plates with roasted chicken and salad greens. Gentleman born or not, he was skilled in the art of the dining room, offering her the best of everything the table had to offer. It made him all the more intriguing, all the more mysterious. What sort of man kept the company of Chiswick House, dined with the manners of a well-heeled peer and found himself at a socially retiring woman’s table under these circumstances? Goodness knew with looks and manners like his he would have been welcome anywhere.
‘A toast, Annorah.’ He raised his flute. ‘To summer evenings and new friendships.’
Their glasses touched in a satisfying chime of crystal against crystal. She sipped and let the cold liquid run down her throat. She loved champagne and could certainly afford to drink it every night, but it seemed a sin to drink alone—although in retrospect it seemed a very small sin compared to the one she’d commit tonight. She groped for something to say. Perhaps she should have spent as much time thinking of conversational topics as she had selecting a dress. She’d never learn anything about him at this rate. She had to try. Annorah settled on the one topic that came to mind.
‘Are you an aficionado of gardens, then?’
‘I’m an aficionado of many beautiful things, gardens among them.’ His hand slid idly up and down the stem of his goblet. On another man she might not have noticed the gesture. With him, she could hardly pull her eyes away.
‘What else do you admire?’
He smiled. ‘I admire you, Annorah.’
She looked down at her plate, flushing. She hadn’t blushed this much in years. Perhaps her social skills were more out of shape than she’d thought. ‘You are not required to say such things. Besides, you hardly know me well enough to come to any sort of conclusion.’
‘Do you think I don’t mean it? I assure you, I do. I’ve spent the afternoon being treated to this lovely home and I beg to differ with your assessment. An estate is often a reflection of its owner. You can tell a lot about a person by the state of his or her surroundings. I sense there is a story in you, Annorah, and I would love to hear it. How is it that you’ve come to be here?’
She met his gaze with a sharp look over her champagne. ‘Is that the polite way of asking how I’ve reached the august age of thirty-two alone?’
Nicholas laughed and leaned back in his chair. ‘What a prickly creature you are! Are you always this cynical? Since we’ve sat down to dine you’ve accused me of being insincere with my flattery and when I have sincerely enquired as to your history, you believe me rude. You present me with quite the conundrum.’
Oh, lord, she had. He was right. She’d been so worried about playing the decent hostess and at the first opportunity she’d performed poorly. She studied her half-eaten meal, gathering her thoughts. ‘I must apologise. I have little experience at this.’
He leaned forwards again, this time capturing her hand where it lay on the tablecloth. ‘No apology necessary. I find conundrums refreshing.’ He winked. ‘Have some more champagne. It will help and perhaps we’ll try again.’ He was tracing sensual circles in the palm of her hand that were both relaxing and stimulating.
No man had ever touched her as he did or so often. She’d been intimately aware of him since his arrival: the casual touch of her hand on his sleeve, the feel of his hand at her back, all of it legitimate. Gentlemen touched ladies like that all the time. She’d been touched like that, but not with these results, not with a pleasant warmth spreading through her, a tingling heat filling her belly and lower. Oh, no, most certainly never like this.
‘Now, Annorah, tell me your story. I want to know how you’ve come to be the queen of all this.’ He poured more champagne with his free hand.
‘I grew up here and I never left, not for long anyway.’ She took a sip from her glass. He was right—the champagne did help. She hardly ever talked about her family. It had been a good family once, but it had fallen due to time and circumstance, leaving her with a legacy that was about to end soon, a situation she was rather loath to recollect, a potent reminder that she was about to lose all this unless she sold her soul in marriage to a man she didn’t love.
‘Why?’ He coaxed with his voice, with his touch, with the sincerity of his gaze. Even the room conspired against her, the candlelight creating intimacy in the deepening darkness.
‘Because it was home, and the people I loved were here. Hartshaven hasn’t always been an empty house.’ She had not meant to talk of herself or to reveal so much that couldn’t possibly matter, that had no bearing on the job he’d come to do. But once started, she couldn’t help herself.
The stories fed upon themselves, encouraged by Nicholas’s laughter and the occasional nod of his head. She told him of her family: her grandfather and grandmother, her parents, her cousins who had come to visit in the summers. She did not tell him of her aunt. Her aunt had no place in happy stories.
Those summers had stories of their own: days of roaming the meadows, fishing in streams and endless games of hide and seek in the gardens. The memories leapt to life as she talked. Merry ghosts of the past peopled her stories: the laughter of her cousins shrieking as they ran through the gardens; the patience of her grandfather teaching them to fish in the cold river. Everything was alive again—messy and vivid, and she was alive with it, no longer sitting at dinner with a stranger, but with a man who’d become a friend in a very short time; a friend she didn’t know much about, but a friend none the less.
‘What happened?’ Nicholas poured the last of the champagne. Dear heavens had they drunk so much already or had they been at the table that long?
‘What always happens. We grew up and time moved on.’ The merry ghosts she’d conjured receded. The candles burned low. ‘I would give anything to have it all back. What about you? How have you arrived at this point?’ The question was bold. That was the champagne talking, but it had been talking all night.
‘I think the future holds infinite promise.’ Nicholas drained his glass and set it aside with a sense of finality. He rose and held out his hand to her. ‘Come with me.’
Annorah set her glass down slowly, all her thoughts coalescing around his words and what they meant. This was it! He would lead her upstairs and bed her. She rose and took his hand somewhat woodenly. Now that the moment was upon her, the impending act suddenly seemed an empty conclusion to the fullness of their conversation and the friend was a stranger once again, the spell broken.
Chapter Four
He was losing her. The intimate magic of champagne and candlelight had not enthralled her enough to let go of her reservations. It wasn’t that he had misjudged their effects, but rather the power of them. They hadn’t lasted very long. Already, Nick could see the magic strings starting to come undone, leaving her free to revisit her doubts, her choice in inviting him here. He had thought to take her upstairs, now he opted for the terrace, fresh air and starlight.
She fanned her cheeks with her hand and gave a little laugh once they were outside. ‘I fear I’ve broken one of the cardinal rules of socialising.’
Nicholas gave her a slow smile, enjoying the flush of her cheeks. ‘What rule is that?’
‘The one where I’m supposed to let the man do all the talking. More to the point, I’m supposed to let him talk about himself through skilfully questioning him and drawing him out. It’s the first rule a débutante learns. If a girl can’t flirt, at least she can listen.’
Nicholas threw back his head and laughed up into the night sky. Her candour was absolutely refreshing in the most surprising of ways. ‘Hardly! I enjoyed your stories. I think this is one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in years.’
‘Isn’t it, though?’ The sharp stab of cynicism brought Nick up short. She was watching him, her moss-green eyes narrowed in contemplation. The entire spell had come unravelled. He would have to weave a new one now from whole cloth.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Nick feigned a quizzical look, although he knew very well what she was asking. If she was going to be so bold, she’d have to own to it.
‘You know what I mean. Dinner, the stories—it was all meant to draw me out. I think it was very clever of you to use a simple débutante’s trick against me.’
She was far smarter than his usual client or else far less pliant. This was going to be a challenge. She had all but accused him of feeding her a generic line. Nick reached for her hand, tracing idle circles on the back of it. ‘Trick is a harsh word, Annorah. What makes you so sure it was a ploy rather than the truth? You’re a very enjoyable woman to be with.’
It was true. He’d liked watching her come alive as she told her stories, as she talked of her childhood. It was a childhood not unlike his own and he glimpsed wildness in her as she spoke. It was a wildness well contained and it made him wonder what had happened to see such a commodity so carefully fenced and penned. He wondered, too, what it would be like to see that commodity unleashed, the fences down.
‘I’m a very suspicious woman to be with,’ she rephrased. ‘Especially when it comes to someone taking an instant liking to me.’
That someone being male, Nick would wager. There was hurt behind her words. Omitted parts of the story told over dinner were starting to emerge. ‘Some people have a natural affinity for one another, do you doubt it?’
Annorah gave him a look that practically shouted her opinion on the subject. ‘Some, perhaps. Not all. Not most.’
She was challenging a lot of his assumptions tonight. He’d not expected his country conquest to be a prickly, worldly, beauty. He’d expected this to be easy. He could see it was not going to be that way. For a while at dinner she’d forgotten all that. He could make her forget again, but he was going to have to work for it.
Nick raised her hand to his lips and took a deductive stab in the dark. ‘I’m not a fortune hunter, Annorah. I’m safe and you’re safe with me. I’m not most.’
She shook her head. ‘I invited you here to fill my head with flattery that I knew would be false from the start. You might be worse, I think—’
‘Then don’t think,’ Nick interrupted swiftly. Her thoughts were not headed in a direction conducive to romance. He cupped her cheek, running a gentle thumb down the line of her jaw. ‘You didn’t bring me here to think. You brought me here for pleasure.’ He began to intersperse his words with kisses, starting at her jaw and moving to the slim column of her throat. ‘There’s no shame in pleasure, Annorah, no dishonour in desiring it. Pleasure is a human enough condition.’ His mouth was at the base of her throat, his lips over the pulse beat. She was starting to melt again. He caressed her with words, with kisses, feeling her body come alive as he intended.
He took her mouth then in a decadent dance of a kiss. Slow and savouring, his lips were in no hurry to leave hers and there was languorous exploration; there was tasting and teasing, duelling and heat. He brought her against him, letting her feel the planes of his body, hard and sure through his clothes. The press of his hand at her back urged her closer, coaxing her to meld into him, convincing her this was heaven and earth all in one.
Nick knew the moment he had compliance. Her arms went about his neck, she arched her head back and he murmured against her exposed throat. He asked once more, in husky tones redolent with desire, ‘Come with me.’
This time she came. He was careful to maintain contact, careful to keep her hand surrounded by the warm, comforting grip of his. It should have worked and it did up to a point. It worked all the way up the stairs, down the hall to the third door on the right, which he knew to be her room, and then it stopped working. For her at least.
His body was surprisingly primed for what should lie ahead. There would be no need for his usual ‘assists’, as he liked to call them. It was no small matter to call up stimulation at a whim. But tonight it had been easy, the only thing that had been, in fact. From the moment he’d seen her in the delectable lavender chiffon with its high waist and low-cut bodice gathered beneath her breasts with ribbons designed to maximise the effects of its cleavage, he’d had no problems in that regard. The gown fit her curves to perfection as had the candlelight, although she had not flaunted it as one of his London women would have.
He reached for the door handle, ready to usher her inside and follow, but she stalled him, her hand covering his, her eyes honest and perhaps a little sad when they met his. ‘I’m sorry, Nicholas. I don’t think I can tonight.’
He smiled softly and placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘Perhaps I could convince you. A massage by candlelight, perhaps? We have all night, we can go slowly.’ It would be a delight to linger with her, no fears of angry husbands bursting through the doors.
‘No,’ she said more firmly, stepping away from him to establish distance. ‘You’re a very attractive man, Nicholas D’Arcy, but you are still something of a stranger. I think anything else we do tonight would be nothing more than a mistake. I, for one, would rather wait and hope for better.’
She turned the knob and slipped inside, leaving him alone in the hall uncomfortably aroused and wondering how was he going to turn off what she had so unwittingly turned on. When he’d contemplated this evening earlier in his chambers and laid his strategy, he’d never envisioned he’d be spending it with only his own hand.
But here he was, aroused both physically and mentally. Nicholas undressed, not bothering with nightclothes or a light. With any luck he’d find relief and then sleep shortly afterwards. He lay down on the bed and took himself in a loose fist, running his hand the length of his cock in long fluid motions, starting slow and then increasing his speed as his need grew. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would and he did feel a measure of relief when it was over, but only a measure. He reached for a towel and waited for sleep to follow.
His mind would not cooperate. There in the darkness, his brain was alive with thoughts, darting here and there on tangents and considerations, all of them on the same subject: Miss Annorah Price-Ellis. Had she gone to bed unsatisfied as well? Even now was she rethinking her choice? She had not been immune to him. Had she gone to bed, too, forced to find her own satisfaction? Now that would be a perverse irony indeed, to have them both just doors away, pleasuring themselves instead of each other. It would have Channing and the boys in stitches if they knew. He would never live it down.
Neither would he live down her comments in the hall. A mistake? She would wait and hope for better? Those were two things a woman never thought about sex with him. Nick fluffed his pillow and rolled to his side in search of a more conducive position for sleep. But it turned out to only be conducive to further examining the wonder that had struck him earlier. What had happened to tamp down her wildness?
He felt a surprising affinity for Annorah Price-Ellis. Her stories had struck a chord of memory in him. He, too, had such memories of country summers full of laughter and play. He, too, had felt their glaring absence when they’d come to an end. More than that, those stories offered him insight to her. He’d seen the reckless flame of her youth come back to her as she told those stories, a flame that was all but extinguished now. In that way they were alike as well.
She thought her life was over, that nothing would ever happen to her again. Life had occurred and the best days were behind her. The reasons for that conclusion were unclear. She had been careful to hold a little something back tonight even with his prodding. He understood, too, that she’d created a safe harbour inside that reality. There was comfort for her in knowing what to expect.
He knew that particular comfort. It was something of a shock to discover that beneath a surface of differences, he and Miss Price-Ellis shared a fundamental similarity. When he’d come to London and taken Channing’s offer to help with the agency, he’d known he was giving up certain hopes and expectations.
Channing did not ask him to give up those expectations. There was no official relinquishing, but he knew how society worked. Once he was committed as an escort, he’d have his own niche, but he’d never truly belong. He’d never be marriage material. What decent woman would want a man such as him for a husband? That meant no family of his own, something he’d taken for granted right up until the day his father died. Now, he had a brother, two sisters and a mother counting on him. There’d been no question of setting aside his dreams to support them through whatever means possible.
He wondered what Annorah had set aside that had brought her to this moment. What had happened in her life to make her think life as she’d expected it to be was over? Did she really believe it or was there a flicker of hope that somehow it could still be different? After all, he was here, a veritable wolf in the den of her security, poised to threaten that very fabric through her own invitation.
* * *
By the time the sun rose, Nicholas had decided this seduction could be going better. He had not slept well in spite of the excellent accommodations and the relief he’d provided himself. Annorah’s rejection had kept him up most of the night. Nicholas scrubbed at his face with his hands and took in the sunrise from the little balcony of his room. The east-facing room afforded a view of the rolling lawns leading to the stables and carriage house.
From here he could just make out the dark figures of grooms and horses going about their morning rituals. He had forgotten how early life began in the country. In London he’d just be getting to bed—his own bed anyway. Like as not, he’d have already been in someone else’s. That was another item bothering him this morning. He’d spent the entire night in his own bed.
Strategically, he had to admit Annorah had made a sound decision to defer coupling. She might have treated him as a welcomed guest, and for a time at dinner as a close friend, but it was still at the fore of her mind that he was actually a guest who was paid to be here. There would be no pleasure for her if she couldn’t get past that. She needed to see him as that close friend she had imagined at dinner, as a temporary but sincere companion, if she was to find the joy she was looking for.
She’d not been unaware of him. If anything, she’d been too aware: of what he was here to do and of her part in bringing him. She had to go through with it. He could see the internal debate he’d hoped to stem in the garden still being waged behind her hazel eyes. So he’d poured her more champagne, coaxed stories from her and to some extent it had worked. When he had kissed her, there had been moments when she’d forgotten he was a hired service. He’d felt her body come alive, felt her mouth move beneath his. He needed to create more moments like those. She was more than capable of them. How to do it?
Nicholas rested his elbows on the balcony railing. The day promised to be fair and warm, a perfect summer day. Summer. Pieces of Annorah’s stories from the evening flitted through his mind. The summertime, the stronghold of her wildness, perhaps the last preserve where what remained of it still roamed free. An idea started to take hold. Nick smiled to himself. He knew exactly what to do. It was time to get dressed and do a little rummaging.
Chapter Five
There was a man in her house! It was the first thought that came to Annorah upon waking and it stayed lodged in her brain while she dressed. How could it not? Apparently everyone was fixed on the idea of a male presence at Hartshaven. It was the first piece of news her maid imparted. Her guest had been up at first light, exploring the stables, looking for something and ordering the gig for a tour of the estate later.
Her maid, Lily, slid her a sly glance as she laid out one of Annorah’s pretty new morning dresses. ‘It seems odd a librarian would want to see the outside of an estate.’
‘It will help him understand the place,’ Annorah offered vaguely, suddenly thoroughly engrossed in the contents of her jewellery box. She didn’t need the staff questioning his presence too much.
‘Well...’ her maid went back to laying out the clothes ‘...he’s certainly a handsome one. We were all commenting on it last night. Don’t see too many handsome librarians.’
Annorah looked up from the box and gave her maid a polite but freezing smile, meant to halt the conversation. ‘There’s a first time for everything. I trust we won’t embarrass our guest with too much probing while he’s here.’
Now, if only she could live by those rules. There was a man in her house and she wanted to know everything about him. He was handsome and charming and when he looked at her, when he flirted with her, when he’d kissed her, it had become difficult to remember he didn’t really mean it, that he was just doing his job. Her inability to accept that had created a dilemma for her last night she’d been unable to resolve.
Part of her had clearly been ready to melt for him and engage the fantasy in full; those looks, those lines were for her alone, that he didn’t run all over London saying the same things to a different woman every night. You’re an enjoyable woman to be with... I think this is one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in years. She had been willing to believe his words, every last one of them. That scared her. Her feelings had been thoroughly engaged once before to disastrous results. She had to be careful. She didn’t want to walk down that road again—it was one of the reasons she’d hired Nicholas in the first place: physical pleasure without mental attachment. Now, that was being called into question. She could lose herself in him, the way she’d lost herself more than once before, only to be fooled by false affections in the end.
And yet that was the other side of the dilemma. If she kept her distance and reminded herself he was just doing a job, she didn’t know if she could go through with it. She was not a person who believed intimacy could be a job. Intimacy had to be more than a daily chore. It had never been work for her parents, who had lived and died together. She’d promised herself years ago it would never be work for her either.
Somewhere, there was a middle ground and she needed to find it. Perhaps seeing him in the morning light without the added benefit of moonlight and champagne would bring the balanced perspective she needed to let herself move forwards.
* * *
It only took a moment to realise the morning would bring no such thing. When she arrived downstairs, Nicholas D’Arcy sat at the head of the breakfast table, turned out in summer driving gear, carefully pressed trousers and polished boots, his linen pristine, looking as elegant as he had last night. He looked up from the two-day-old newspaper and smiled. ‘Good morning.’ It might possibly be the nicest good morning she’d ever heard. The only one better would be to hear those tones on the pillow beside her.
‘You’re an early riser.’ She caught herself too late. His sense of naughty innuendo was wearing off on her.
‘I can be.’ He gave her a wicked smile, not letting her ignore the implication. ‘I had a few things I wanted to take care of.’ He set aside the newspaper and gesture to the chair next to him, motioning for her to sit.
‘Missing town already?’ Annorah nodded towards the discarded newspaper. She seldom read the papers. It didn’t matter to her how out of date they were. It would matter to a man like him, though, yet another reminder of how different they were. She was a country mouse to his citified bronze. How was she ever to feel at ease with such a sophisticated man?
‘Just keeping up on the news.’ He rose and went to the sideboard. ‘Would you like eggs?’
She nodded, a bit amazed he was fixing her plate. ‘Sausage?’ he asked, keeping up a steady stream of conversation while he assembled her breakfast. ‘I explained to Cook we’d be touring the grounds and that we’d need a lunch. I made arrangements for the gig to be ready at ten. We’ll want to set out before it gets too hot.’
He presented her with breakfast and a sudden, unexpected rush of tears stung her eyes. It was perfect. She would have eaten whatever he served, even if it had been a plate full of eels, so touched was she by the simple gesture. Maybe there was no middle ground. Maybe she should just give over to the fantasy.
‘I could have done that,’ she managed to choke out. The plate, the picnic, the gig. She could have done all of it. She’d been making her own arrangements and decisions for years.
‘Of course you could have.’ He sat down again. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘You’re not here to wait on me,’ she protested between bites of shirred eggs. But it was a half-hearted protest at best. Had breakfast ever tasted this good? Her usual breakfast was more of a pro forma ritual, something she had to do. This morning, however, she was aware the eggs were hot, the sausage was spicy, the toast was warm and the butter was melted.
‘Let me worry about what I’m here to do and not do.’ Nicholas took his seat again.
‘I’ll change after breakfast so I don’t keep you waiting.’
He knit his dark brows together in exaggerated consternation. ‘Why change? You look lovely in what you’re wearing.’
‘It’s not a driving dress,’ she argued, but again with little heat. A carriage dress would be much warmer wear and less comfortable than her morning dress in cool white muslin sprigged with tiny pink flowers and who was there to see her?
He leaned forwards, resting his chin on his hand. ‘No one is likely to see us. Why don’t you send your maid for a hat and gloves and call it good?’ He rose and held out his hand, giving her no chance to refuse. She couldn’t very well go with him and go back upstairs to change. He’d left her no choice.
Nicholas had been a whirlwind of efficiency that morning, a fact she realised once he allowed her a moment to appreciate the details of their departure. He had her settled in the gig, hat, gloves, light wrap and all, within minutes, pointedly deflecting her questions about what was strapped to the maid’s seat in the back with a laugh, saying only, ‘You’ll see when we get there and not a moment sooner.’
He leapt up beside her on the narrow seat, a seat really made for one-and-a-half people instead of two, especially if one of them was a full-grown man with long legs. He picked up the ribbons and clucked to the horse, a sturdy chestnut she often used for short jaunts, and they were off, jouncing along at close quarters, an effect which was not lost on Annorah. She tried vainly to keep her thigh from touching his on the small seat, but the more she tried, the more he made sure his leg took up the space until she had no choice other than to let her body relax alongside his. Perhaps if she said something?
‘You’re doing that on purpose.’ He might truly be unaware of it after all. But her mind laughed at her. He knew very well what he was doing and so did she.
‘Doing what?’ They hit a bump in the road and his leg brushed hers.
‘That.’
Nicholas laughed, the sound filling the empty road around them. ‘It’s a small seat, Annorah, where do you propose I put my leg? Besides, I don’t think it’s an unpleasant sensation, merely a new one.’ One she feared she could get used to, like breakfast plates and just as easily.
Everything was easy with him. He hadn’t even been here a day and already he’d insinuated himself into the routine of her life. He’d done it so well, in fact, that there was an undeniable sense of rightness in having him beside her, almost as if they’d known each other for far longer.
‘It’s all right to like me, you know.’ Nicholas slid her a sidelong glance, his intuition catching her off guard with its accuracy. ‘It would be better if you did, actually.’
‘How did you know that’s what I was thinking? Do you read minds?’
‘I read bodies and lifestyles. You’ve been independent for a long time, too independent if you want my opinion. You aren’t used to having people look out for you.’
‘You’re wrong there. I have servants.’
‘It’s not the same. I mean someone who looks out for you voluntarily, without being asked.’
‘What does that have to do with liking you?’ Annorah shifted on the seat, wishing there was some way to put distance between herself and this interview.
‘Everything. Your independence has made you cautious of others.’ He guided the horse around a sunken spot in the road.
‘Stop thinking of me as another hired servant and start letting yourself like me, Annorah. There’s no harm in it.’
He might be right but it didn’t stop her from feeling defensive. ‘You are not my friend.’ She shot him a look to see how he’d take the pronouncement.
‘No, I’m not. I’m much, much better.’
‘I can trust my friends,’ Annorah said staunchly.
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Really? Then answer me this. Why have you been alone so long?’
Annorah fixed her eyes on the road. She was not going to answer that out loud. Because people hurt people. Intentionally or unintentionally, the result was still the same and she simply couldn’t go through it again. What her aunt and a long string of suitors had done to her for the sake of money was unforgivable.
‘We all have the lives we want, Annorah. Nothing will change that until we do,’ he said softly.
Nothing except calendars and legally binding documents. It was on the tip of her tongue to challenge that statement. No matter what she did, everything was going to change in a matter of weeks and she still hadn’t decided what to do. Annorah pushed the thought away with a hard mental shove. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t think about that while he was here. This was her last escape from reality. Her obligations weren’t supposed to intrude during these last days.
The cry of a hawk overhead broke the silence. Nicholas bumped her shoulder with his and pointed to the cloudless sky, impressed with the sudden intruder. ‘We don’t see many of them in London.’
Annorah looked up. ‘They live in the hills. There’s a whole family of them that have been here since I can remember.’ She smiled. ‘When I was little, we used to pretend to be hawks. We used to pretend we could fly.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘That’s silly, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. I had a kite when I was younger. I used to fly it and wish for the same thing.’ He smiled back at her, taking his eyes from the road long enough to meet her gaze, letting the sweetness of a childhood memory remembered pass between them.
‘I can hardly picture you as a little boy.’ It was difficult to think of this perfect man as a rambunctious scamp, running about the countryside in short trousers flying a kite.
‘Why not? I was adorable.’ He pretended mock hurt.
She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘It’s just that you’re so well put together; your clothes, your manners, you seem to always know what to do and what to say. I can’t imagine you not always having been this way.’
Nicholas laughed. ‘My mother wouldn’t describe me that way. I assure you, I had my share of scraped knees and less-than-pristine moments.’ He winked and said with exaggerated seriousness, ‘I had a mother, too, just think of it.’
* * *
The conversation had become easier after that. They talked of the plants they passed, the wildflowers that grew along the side of the road, the fields and the crops, until he turned off and brought the gig up beside the wide grey ribbon of river to a place where it pooled into a swimming hole beneath the shade of an old oak tree.
‘I haven’t been here in ages.’ She looked down at him, instantly suspicious as he came over to her side of the gig. ‘How did you know about this place?’
Nicholas shrugged and swung her down, letting his hands linger at her waist, his grip strong and confident as he held her. ‘I asked around. Your master of horse said this was a good spot for a picnic.’ Nicholas moved to the back of the gig and began to unpack, revealing at last what he’d stowed away. ‘I hear it’s a good place to fish.’
Fishing poles! Good heavens, she hadn’t seen the fishing poles for years, not since her grandfather had passed away actually. She hadn’t even been sure the poles were still around. Part of her assumed they’d simply found their way into other hands—perhaps a groom or two who’d gone fishing on a day off and had kept them, or perhaps some boys in the village had borrowed them. But here they were, looking as able as ever. He held out a pole. ‘Are you game?’
Annorah shot a quick glance at his boots, noting their high polish and expense. Water would ruin them. ‘You have to go in the water to fish.’
Nicholas gave her a wink. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret. I plan on taking them off. How about you? I don’t think those half-boots will fare any better.’ Nicholas sat down on a big boulder by the river and tugged at his boots. He tossed them aside. ‘Here’s another secret. I plan to take off a lot more than my boots.’
Dear lord, he meant it. Annorah’s mouth went dry as he pushed up his trousers and began rolling off his socks, revealing well-muscled calves. It was ridiculous to be aroused by a man’s legs, but she rather doubted most men had legs like his; so perfectly turned with a sculpted bulge of muscle and tanned, too, not a pasty white. It suggested extraordinarily good health. Here was a man who knew how to take care of himself, whose body was not padded and moulded into a false representation of its true physique. There was no artifice here.
No, absolutely none, she affirmed a moment later. Off came his jacket, just to reinforce the point. The thin linen of his shirt hugged the breadth of his shoulders and tapered into the waistband of his trousers, calling attention to the trim line of his hips.
‘Well? Stop dawdling, Annorah.’ Nicholas stepped into the river with his pole. ‘We don’t eat until we fish.’
Right, just as soon as I get my jaw shut. She was being ridiculous.
He tossed a fishing pole in her direction. ‘Unless you’re too scared?’
That did it. She’d been more than an able fisher in her day. Annorah set to her boots with a flurry of efficiency. Boots and stockings were off, the skirts of her dress hiked up with the help of a hair ribbon. ‘I can outfish a man about town like you any day of the week.’
Nicholas grinned. ‘Then get in here and do it.’
Chapter Six
Her toes touched the water and the years fell away. How quickly it all returned to her! Her body had not forgotten a single thing. Annorah cast her line with a fluid back-and-forwards movement, revelling in the thrill of the motion as the river took her fly and pulled it into the current. She revelled, too, in the knowledge that Nicholas was watching, approving.
‘I must have been thirteen the last time I did that!’ she called over the gurgle of the river, her self-consciousness slipping away with the water.
‘Very nice!’ he called back with a mischievous look that said he wasn’t to be outdone. No sooner had she thrown her line than he threw his in a side cast, the fly landing with a quiet plop on the water.
‘Show-off!’ Annorah retorted with good humour. ‘That’s not bad for a man about town.’ She caught a suspicious movement in the water to her left. Fish! She quickly reeled in her line. A basic cast would have been sufficient, but she couldn’t help a little showing off of her own. ‘Watch this.’ Annorah flicked the line back and forwards and back again for a sharply executed false cast.
It became a competition after that. He answered with a side cast. She came back with a roll out. He executed a double haul. She threw a flawless reverse. On it went until they were laughing and wet, their clothes far beyond damp.
A fierce tug on the line claimed her attention. ‘I’ve got one!’ Annorah shouted, the excitement of the catch seizing her. She began to reel in her line, but the current and the weight of the fish conspired against her. She took an involuntary step towards the centre of the river, planning on retrenching, but her fish had other ideas. He tugged. She slid. Her bare feet ploughed the soft mud of the river bed. Annorah wrestled with the rod. The pole began to bend. ‘You’re not getting away from me, you little bugger!’ She was going to need help.
No sooner had she thought it, than Nicholas was there, his hands closing over hers, his body coming up and around her from behind, lending her its strength. ‘Tut, tut, Annorah. Such language from a lady. I wouldn’t have guessed.’ He chuckled in her ear. She could feel the heat and muscle of him through his soaked shirt.
‘Pull with me, I think we’ve got him.’
They tugged and reeled, laughing and stumbling in the current, his body there to steady her. At last they landed that fish, a huge river trout. ‘Enough to feed two.’ Nick dragged the fish up on to the bank and flopped down beside it. ‘I say we save it for dinner.’
‘What about lunch?’
Nick grinned and pulled out a gutting knife. ‘You’ve shown yourself to be the better fisherman between us. You go get a pair of fish for lunch and I’ll see to this fellow here.’
‘I’ll race you!’ Annorah laughed and waded back in. Her dress was soaked. It hardly mattered how wet she got now. But it was a race she was happy to lose.
* * *
By the time she’d returned with her creel full of fish, Nicholas had a camp of sorts arranged. A blanket was spread out in front of a small fire, a spit already set up over the flames. The day was warm, but the heat was welcome against the chill of the river and the damp of her clothes.
Nick skewered the fish and she busied herself laying out the rest of the picnic items with one notable exception. ‘You meant it about no fish, no food, didn’t you?’
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Bronwyn Scott
He's the talk of the ton–for all the wrong reasons!Society's most outrageous–and popular!–escort Nicholas D'Arcy is renowned for his utmost discretion. So when he suddenly finds himself named and shamed by a jealous husband, he reluctantly accepts a summons to the countryside…a fate worse than death!Annorah Price-Ellis isn't what Nick is used to–innocent, feisty and decidedly uncomfortable with the spontaneous heat between them! Suddenly, London's most audacious lover is out of his depth, and in danger of revealing the real man behind the polished facade….Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous Only London's best lovers need apply!
Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous
Only London’s best lovers need apply!
The League of Discreet Gentlemen has only one priority—providing the women of London with unimaginable pleasure. The secrecy demanded is expensive, but satisfaction is definitely guaranteed!
The League pride themselves on knowing everything about desire. But they’re about to discover that whilst seduction is easy falling in love can be very hard indeed…!
Don’t miss this incredible new quartet by dazzling Mills & Boon™ Historical Romance author
Bronwyn Scott!
SECRETS OF A GENTLEMAN ESCORT
January 2014
will be followed by two sexy stories in Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks with a further Mills & Boon™ Historical romance LONDON’S MOST WANTED RAKE coming in April 2014
AUTHOR NOTE
Meet the League of Discreet Gentlemen, a group of men who have dedicated themselves to women’s pleasure! The Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous mini-series is a collection of stories about Victorian male escorts who are exceptionally good at their jobs. These are not your standard petticoat-mongers—these are high-class, highly talented escorts, gifted at helping a woman remember her beauty and her value.
The League is headed by Channing Deveril, who has masterminded this group of men as a way of secretly thumbing his nose at matchmaking mamas and the marriage mart. But what started as an underground rake’s game has now evolved into something more organised and serious. Every woman in London knows all she has to do is drop a request in a certain mailbox in town and her wish will be granted. Every married man wishes he knew if the League was fact or fiction.
In Book One readers will meet Nicholas D’Arcy, a gentleman’s son down on his luck. The League is a chance for him to piece the family’s finances back together. He’s risen to the heights of notoriety for his skill as a lover in London Society—until one evening an assignment goes wrong and he’s packed off to the country, where he is forced to come to grips with who he is and face the demons of his past.
Books Two and Three are Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks, with stories about League members Jocelyn Eisley and Captain Grahame Westmore.
The series finale is Channing Deveril’s own story, in which he meets his match in Lady Alina Marliss. You may recall her as his special holiday guest in FINDING FOREVER AT CHRISTMAS. Will this signal the end of the League? Read the series and find out!
Stay tuned at my blog for updates and giveaways at www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com
Secrets of a
Gentleman
Escort
Bronwyn Scott
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Ro, because everyone should seize their day.
Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and is the proud mother of three wonderful children (one boy and two girls). When she’s not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travelling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages.
Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website,
www.bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog,
www.bronwynswriting.blogspot.com—she loves to hear from readers.
Previous novels from Bronwyn Scott: PICKPOCKET COUNTESS NOTORIOUS RAKE, INNOCENT LADY THE VISCOUNT CLAIMS HIS BRIDE THE EARL’S FORBIDDEN WARD UNTAMED ROGUE, SCANDALOUS MISTRESS A THOROUGHLY COMPROMISED LADY SECRET LIFE OF A SCANDALOUS DEBUTANTE UNBEFITTING A LADY† (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO DISGRACE A LADY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO RUIN A REPUTATION* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) HOW TO SIN SUCCESSFULLY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY RISKS ALL** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY DARES** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c)
And in Mills & Boon™ Historical Undone! eBooks: LIBERTINE LORD, PICKPOCKET MISS PLEASURED BY THE ENGLISH SPY WICKED EARL, WANTON WIDOW ARABIAN NIGHTS WITH A RAKE AN ILLICIT INDISCRETION HOW TO LIVE INDECENTLY* (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c) A LADY SEDUCES** (#ulink_a69051d2-d7bf-5e75-a2c4-e358450a685c)
† (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Castonbury Park Regency mini-series * (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Rakes Beyond Redemption ** (#ulink_b0c56d3e-1d1f-5bc8-b4d4-9623f31e3dfb)Ladies of Impropriety
and as a Mills & Boon™ special release: PRINCE CHARMING IN DISGUISE (part of Royal Weddings Through the Ages)
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
Chapter One (#uddce9da0-7f44-5584-ae19-d97b305ec335)
Chapter Two (#u3e7ffd10-f3da-5f18-a6fd-c471dfaf3eea)
Chapter Three (#udd858584-604e-558a-bdb3-b77ebe25a8a8)
Chapter Four (#ufc270b3f-9a8b-5a5e-a4e1-c54cf74cbe21)
Chapter Five (#uc5b005af-8064-5c88-a98a-f5d6c581da5d)
Chapter Six (#ud665b588-28fc-54c9-b78b-06871d7d8599)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
London, June 1839
If Nicholas D’Arcy had been a less extraordinary lover and his partner, the lush red-headed Lady Alicia Burroughs, more discreet, her husband would not have discovered them. But ‘less’ had never been an adjective to describe Nick, any more than ‘discreet’ was an adjective one applied to Lady Burroughs, who was currently voicing her appreciation of his abilities with enough vocal skill to impress an opera diva.
Lucifer’s balls! The whole house could hear her. Why stop there? The whole neighbourhood probably could. It was only by a stroke of luck that Nick caught the rapid thump of angry bootsteps surging up into the hallway just as Lady Burroughs took a breath beneath him before she climaxed. The climax was beautifully done, one of his best, and all screaming aside, the stunning Lady Burroughs was worthy of it, laid out across the bed as she was. Her auburn locks cascaded over the bed’s edge, her head thrown back, throat exposed, neck and back arched as he thrust into her. She was breathing hard and, deuce take it, so was he. He’d managed to get fairly worked up about this, too. Lord Burroughs didn’t know what he was missing, but he was about to.
‘Alicia!’ the man’s voice boomed down the hallway.
‘It’s Burroughs!’ Alicia sat up with a gasp and a believable amount of panic, enough to make Nick start worrying in earnest. He had—what? Ten seconds? Maybe fifteen? Burroughs was heavily built and not the fastest runner. Maybe he wasn’t even running, just walking quickly. There’d be time for trousers, but nothing more.
Nick leapt from the bed and grabbed up the discarded trousers. He thrust in a leg, hopping around on one foot while he tried to simultaneously gather up his shirt and coats. ‘You said he was gone until Monday!’ Nick hissed, piling his shoes on top of the messy pile in his arms.
‘Oh, hush, will you? You don’t want him to hear you. Hurry.’ Alicia sat in the middle of the bed, a sheet drawn up modestly over those creamy breasts of hers.
Nick glanced around the room. There was no time for this window and her door was certainly out of the question. ‘Does the dressing room go through?’ If he was to be caught, it wasn’t going to be by a pompous ass of a man who couldn’t keep his wife in his own bed.
With a wink to Lady Burroughs, he was off, sliding through the dressing-room door with two seconds to spare and into the connecting room just in time to hear Lord Burroughs roar, ‘Where is he?’
In your room, you old windbag, Nick thought with a chuckle, but he had to think fast. This would be the first place Burroughs would look. Even Burroughs wasn’t dumb enough to realise the only way out was through the dressing room. Nick dashed into the hallway and opted for another room on the garden side of the house. He sidled in and closed the door softly behind him. He was safe for now. He set down his bundle of clothes and put on his shoes.
‘Millie, is that you?’ a voice called from the antechamber. Nick halted in midmotion, one shoe on, one shoe off. He grabbed his clothes and raced for the window. He was too slow. An older woman in a dressing gown emerged from the little room before he was halfway across. The dowager countess!
She was going to scream. Nick could practically see it climbing up her throat. He had to silence that scream and he had mere seconds to do it. He did the only thing he could think of. He strode two paces towards her, swept her into his arms and kissed her. Most soundly, too, and damn it all if she didn’t kiss him back with a little tongue. The dowager countess—who would have thought it? It was arguably the most pleasant surprise of the evening because afterwards, she cleared her throat and said, ‘Young man, you’ll want to use the window. I think you’ll find the trellis quite stable.’ Then she winked at him. ‘It’s been used before.’
Good Lord, did Burroughs have any idea what went on in his house? Nick thanked her and wasted no time. The last thing he needed was for Millie the maid to show up. He’d have to kiss her, too. But that would be better than Burroughs, who Nick could hear throwing doors open as he barrelled down the hall. Again it was down to a matter of seconds between discovery or escape. Nick tossed his clothes down first and stuck a leg out to test the rung.
‘Come back any time you like,’ the dowager countess called after him. ‘I have the gardener keep that trellis well maintained. He thinks it’s for the roses.’
Nick merely smiled and climbed into the darkness as Burroughs knocked on his mother’s door. The dowager would have to live with her disappointment, Nick decided. He wasn’t coming back to the Burroughs town house for quite a while.
The rest of the escape was easy after that. He found his way out of the garden and, after he’d travelled through the warren of back alleys, he stopped and finished dressing. He was safe for the time being, although safe was rather relative. Alicia Burroughs wasn’t exactly a soul of discretion, as he’d noted earlier. It would only be a matter of time before Burroughs knew it was him.
There was going to be hell to pay for this. Nick tucked his shirt tails into his trousers. His name would be all Burroughs would know, though. Responsibility for tonight’s débâcle began and ended with him. There must be no connection to the agency, no threat of exposure to the League of Discreet Gentlemen, the organisation to which he belonged and which, by virtue of its name, had to remain discreet at all costs. People didn’t mind doing business with a highly capable gentleman escort, but they did mind others knowing about it. If word of the organisation and what they did got out, every last one of them would be completely ostracised.
Nicholas began to walk. He wasn’t ready to go back to Argosy House, the league’s headquarters. What would he tell Channing? The league’s founder would be so very disappointed in him. Discretion was the code the league lived by. To break it meant the worst kind of ruin. It would be the end of the Gentlemen, the end of the very good money he made, the end of a lot of things, not the least being the end of him; Nicholas D’Arcy, London’s most outrageous lover. Women paid enormous sums for his skill in bed. They stuffed jewels in his pockets to find out just how outrageous he could be. And because he needed those jewels and those extraordinary sums of money, he encouraged it. Who was he if he wasn’t Outrageous Nick?
Nick kicked at a pebble on the pavement. To be fair, he probably encouraged the attention for darker reasons than money and the notoriety. Sex was about all he was good at. Thank goodness he’d been able to turn his one skill into a marketable talent. More than that, he thanked goodness he’d met Channing Deveril, who’d made his success possible. Otherwise, he’d probably still be bumbling around as a clerk in a shipping firm on the docks, making too little to offset his family’s financial needs.
Now, thanks to his reputation, he was able to send decent sums to his mother. He was able to write fabulous letters to his two sisters about the glittering parties he attended and all the latest fashions without making it up. Of course, they didn’t know what he did for a living, only that he was now a man of business. Thanks to his brother’s poor health, they would never know differently. There would be no chance for them to come up to London and see the reality, for which he was eternally grateful. A broken brother was bad enough. He couldn’t break his mother’s heart, too.
* * *
The milkmaids were starting their rounds when Nicholas climbed the front steps of Argosy House, nominally no different than any of the other houses along Jermyn Street quartering bachelor gentlemen of means. All the other windows on the street were dark, but lights still burned here. The boys would be up for another hour or so, reliving their evenings and then they would all retire.
A passing milkmaid gave him a flirty smile. ‘Good morning, Master Nick. You’ve been out all night again.’
Nick swept her a bow and blew her a kiss. ‘Good morning, Gracie.’ He knew all their names, every milkmaid, every vendor that claimed Jermyn Street as their venue. Women especially liked that sort of thing.
Gracie waved a scolding finger at him. ‘Don’t you try any of your gentleman’s tricks with me. I’m wise to all of them,’ she teased. ‘Besides, I’ve heard you’ve been up to no good.’
Nick was tempted to ask Gracie what she’d heard, but she’d already picked up her pails and moved down the street, her saucy hips swinging. Worry picked at him. Had his contretemps at Burroughs’s already made the rounds? He stepped inside Argosy House to the sound of raucous male laughter spilling from the drawing room. He smiled. There was comfort in knowing the routine, of having expectations about what one would find when one came home. This was the only home he had now, the only place where he felt comfortable. It had been a long time since he’d felt that way about his real home.
Inside the drawing room, seven men sprawled carelessly on the chairs and sofas. Cravats were undone, jackets were off, waistcoats unbuttoned. Snifters of brandy in varying states of emptiness sat at their elbows. These were his colleagues of the past four years, the fellow members of the secret league.
Jocelyn Eisley spotted him first. ‘Ho, ho, Nick my boy, you had a close call tonight. We were starting to worry.’
All heads turned towards him. Whistles and applause broke out. ‘You’ll be the talk of the broadsheets.’ Amery DeHart saluted him with a half-drunk snifter.
‘Three cheers for our man, Nick.’ Eisley cleared his throat and leapt up on to an ottoman in a graceful move for one so big. ‘I feel a poem coming on to commemorate the occasion. It’s not every night one of us pleasures a lady with her husband in the house.’
There was a collective, good-natured groan. Nick took a seat next to DeHart on the sofa. Eisley’s poems had become one of their traditions.
‘A limerick, Eisley,’ Miles Grafton called out. ‘A dirty deed requires a dirty poem.’
‘Here, here!’ the chorus went up.
‘All right then.’ The big blond called for attention. ‘I give you my latest creation.’ The big blond’s baritone resonated with enough dramatic flair for Drury Lane. ‘There once was a man named Nick who satisfied women with his prick. How women did swoon when Nick did moon. He was the envy of every man in the room.’ He gave an extravagant bow.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Amery put in more loudly than necessary. ‘We’re the rakes who make husbands jealous.’
‘And thank goodness for that,’ Captain Grahame Westmore said darkly from his corner by the fire. ‘If the men of the ton did their duty properly, we’d be out of a job.’ A former cavalry officer, Westmore was private, as private as Nick was himself. Of all the men present, Nick knew the least about him.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Eisley stepped off the ottoman. ‘Is it my best yet? I’ll recite it at White’s this afternoon and, by dinner, my little ditty will be repeated in every Mayfair drawing room—discreetly, of course. You’d better lay in another order for those French letters you like, Nick. Your popularity will soar. They’ll call it “Nick the Prick”.’
‘They’re calling it “In the Nick of Time”, in the papers, according to my sources,’ a sombre voice said from the doorway.
Nick winced. He didn’t have to look up to know Channing Deveril, the league’s founder, had heard the news already. It seemed quite a few people had heard if milkmaids and journalists knew. He’d hoped for a little more reprieve.
‘Close call tonight, eh, Nick?’ Channing’s blue eyes met his.
‘Only close, though.’ Nick shrugged. Maybe Channing wasn’t too upset. It was merely an occupational hazard. After all, it could happen to anyone.
Channing managed a half-grin. ‘We can all be grateful for that. Come to my office and we can speak of it more privately and decide what to do.’
Nick’s good spirits sank, replaced by a wary sense of caution. ‘What is there to decide?’ he asked, settling into the chair opposite Channing’s polished desk.
‘What do with you, of course.’ Channing eyed him as if he were an idiot. ‘You may have gone too far tonight.’
‘You can never go too far.’ Nicholas laughed, but Channing did not.
‘I’m serious, Nick, and you should be, too. This won’t blow over. Burroughs will know it was you.’
‘I prefer suspect. He doesn’t know it’s me, not for sure,’ Nicholas amended.
Channing cocked an eyebrow in disbelief. ‘You’re deluding yourself. With limericks like “Nick the Prick” and drawings labelled “In the Nick of Time” floating around London like so much flotsam?’ Channing had a point there. ‘Besides, I don’t think Alicia Burroughs wins any awards for secret keeping.’
Another point in Channing’s favour. A rather valid one, too, given tonight’s display. ‘The agency won’t be implicated,’ Nick put in, hoping to soothe Channing’s feathers.
‘My worry is not for the agency alone. I worry for you, too, Nick. I don’t want there to be a duel.’ Channing opened a drawer and pulled out a folder. He pushed it across the desk. ‘That’s why I have a new assignment for you.’
Nick scanned the document inside with a frown. ‘Five nights of pleasure? In the countryside? Is such a thing even possible? It sounds like a unlikely juxtaposition to me.’ Nicholas D’Arcy pushed the letter back across the polished surface of the desk with obvious disdain, his dark brow arched in sceptical disapproval of such a proposition. He was a London man. The city was his preferred environ with its refined women. There was nothing quite as fascinating as a city woman with her fashions and perfumes, her sharply honed repartee on a myriad of cutting-edge subjects and her bold overtures. In sum, a London woman was someone who knew what she wanted on all accounts. But a country woman? Lord spare him. ‘It’s really not my speciality, Channing.’
Behind the desk, Channing quirked a blond brow in answer to his darker one. ‘And provoking duels with cuckolded husbands is not mine. If I may remind you, the league’s mission is a woman’s pleasure without the attendant scandal. Duels, my friend, do not fit our code of discretion. You need to get out of town and let the rumours settle. You know how London is this time of year. There will be another scandal within the fortnight to retire this one, but not if you’re here reminding everyone with your presence. Until then, I have no wish to see you on the receiving end of a jealous husband’s pistol.’
‘Nothing will come of it, I promise,’ Nicholas protested. ‘Burroughs has no proof.’ It had been a near-run thing though, getting out the window in time. ‘He couldn’t have seen more than a shadow.’
Channing played with a letter opener. ‘Yes, well, what he’d like to do to that shadow is all over London. Was anything left behind? A shirt stud? A boot? Anything that could link you to the scene?’
‘Nothing,’ Nicholas replied vehemently. ‘I never leave anything behind. It was a clean getaway, I swear.’ A getaway that involved kissing the dowager countess. Still, it had been clean in the end and that was all that mattered.
Channing gave a short laugh. ‘You and I have somewhat different interpretations of “clean getaway”.’
Nicholas put a dramatic hand to his heart in mock play. ‘You wound me.’ In truth, he was a bit insulted Channing even had to ask. He was one of the best Channing had when it came to the more carnal pursuits of their organisation. Not every woman came to them looking for physical pleasure—some came simply looking to make a splash in society, perhaps raise a little decent notoriety for themselves to win back a husband who had strayed too far or taken them for granted too long. But there were those who did come looking for the intimate pleasures that had eluded them thus far in life. That’s where he came in. Nick hoped Channing would overlook that aspect of the letter.
‘The potential scandal notwithstanding, I’d still send you.’ Channing set down the letter opener and fixed with him a stern blue-eyed stare. ‘The woman in question is looking for physical fulfilment and that is indeed your speciality.’ So much for overlooking it.
‘But not in the country,’ Nicholas argued. He was losing this fight and he knew it. He could feel his grounds for refusal slipping away. ‘It’s a poor time for me to be gone from the league.’ He gestured to the date on the letter. ‘Almost a whole week in the middle of June? That’s the height of the Season. We already have more requests than we can handle.’ It would absolutely kill him to miss the entertainments: the Marlborough Ball, the midsummer masquerade at Lady Hyde’s Richmond mansion, which was that week, to say nothing of the summer nights at Vauxhall with its fireworks.
Channing remained unfazed by his line of reasoning. ‘We’ll manage.’
Nicholas pressed onwards, running roughshod over the implied refusal. ‘You could send someone else. Jocelyn or Grahame? Miles or Amery? Didn’t DeHart say he enjoyed the country? He was an absolute hit at the last house party you sent him to.’ He was not going to the country. He avoided the country like a saint avoided sin.
‘Everyone is busy,’ Channing said with finality. ‘It has to be you.’ He gave a winning smile, the one that charmed men and women alike into doing whatever it was Channing required of them. ‘Don’t worry, Nicholas, the city will still be here when you get back.’
What could he say to that without saying too much? There were things about his life even Channing didn’t know. Nicholas drew a breath. ‘The letter says she’ll pay handsomely. How much?’ He knew the question signalled his concurrence. Still, better to retreat the field with polite acquiescence than to be routed from it with a direct order.
‘A thousand pounds,’ Channing announced quietly.
Nicholas gave a wry smile. He’d do just about anything for a thousand pounds. Even face his demons. There was no question of not going and they both knew it. That kind of money ensured his acceptance from the start. ‘Well, I guess that settles it.’ In a moment of insight, he appreciated Channing’s effort to at least let him think he could argue the situation.
‘I expect it does. Now, go pack your bags, I’ve arranged a post chaise for you. It leaves at eleven. You’ll be there in time for tea.’
Lovely, Nick thought with inward sarcasm, but he could see Channing was set on this. There’d be no getting out of it, so he played that old mental game: it could always be worse, although he wasn’t sure how it could be. Well, he supposed it could have been for longer, it could have been for the entire month.
Chapter Two
Sussex, England
Annorah Price-Ellis had a month to live. Really live. She could feel it in her bones and it wasn’t the first time. She’d been feeling it creep up on her since April and here at the last she was powerless to stop it. The inevitable was going to happen although for years she’d been in denial. Now it—even at this late point she couldn’t call it by its rightful name—stared her in the face, a big red date on her mental calendar.
Of course, she’d sought help. The experts she’d consulted all concurred with the same diagnosis. There was nothing left for her to do but accept it. Such news had forced her to make concessions and, along with concessions, preparations as well, which was why she sat in her sunny drawing room at Hartshaven on this beautiful June afternoon, prettily dressed in a fashionable new gown of jonquil muslin, looking her best and waiting, an odd occupation for someone for whom time was running out.
Annorah glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was nearly four. He would arrive any minute and her nerves were entirely on edge. She’d never done anything as daring or as final as this. As that damnable red date approached, she’d thought long and hard about what her final acts would be, what pleasures she wanted one last time. She was rich. She had piles of money. She could afford anything she desired: Paris, the Continent, beautiful clothes. In the end, all that wealth wouldn’t save her. She couldn’t take it with her without condemning her soul to a certain hell. So the question had loomed. What did she want? In her heart, it hadn’t been that difficult a question to answer.
She was thirty-two, at least for another two weeks, and past her prime by at least a decade. She didn’t feel it. She hoped she didn’t look it. She had very little to show for the last ten years, at least not when it came to the things a woman should have at her age—a husband and children. She’d been close a few times. Once, she’d managed to get her heart broken and another time she’d cried off, unwilling to risk a second heartbreak, or maybe it had been the lack of such a risk. After that, she’d retreated to Hartshaven, withdrawing from society a little more each year until it had been ages since she’d set foot in London and longer still since she’d taken an interest in anyone or anyone in her.
It was a lonely way to live. What she did have, however, was a beautiful estate in the country and piles of money to keep her company. What she lacked in social currency, she more than made up for financially. In terms of creature comforts, she had everything a woman could want, except a man. That was about to change. In a few moments, a man was going to come down the drive. She’d ordered him from London much as one orders a gown, and if she had misgivings about such a process it was too late now.
Annorah mentally went over the carefully drafted letter she’d sent one last time, every word committed to memory.
Dear Sirs,
I am looking for a discreet association with a man of breeding and manners. Must be clean and well-kept, an informed conversationalist—in other words, educated—and enjoy the quiet of the countryside. Will pay handsomely for five nights of companionship.
She’d taken three days to draft those few lines. It seemed like the letter should be longer for her efforts. She hoped the agency would know exactly what she meant. The small advertisement she’d seen in a magazine suggested the agency was very good at reading between the lines and knowing precisely what was required in any given situation. Still, those meagre four lines were the most audacious words she’d ever written.
‘It’s time, Annorah. Stop being such a goose.’ She felt her courage start to flag. If not now, when? She knew the answer to that. Never. If she wanted to know the mysteries of passion before it was too late, she had to take matters into her own hands. So here she was, waiting for her birthday present to arrive; the perfect man—one who wouldn’t break her heart, who wouldn’t pretend to love her for her money, one who would understand what she wanted was a temporary liaison in which she could experience the joys of the flesh without the regrets.
Five nights of pleasure should be enough. Then she would reconcile herself to her fate, a fate the best of England’s legal minds had assured her she could not avoid: Marry by her thirty-third birthday and keep her estate and wealth intact, or should that fail and she remain single, the estate and much of her fortune was forfeit to the church and other charities. The house would become a school and she’d be left with a cottage and a comfortable portion to live simply, but not grandly. Gone would be the days of fine gowns and the option to do anything she wanted.
Either way, she stood to lose her life the way she knew it. Marriage meant her fabulous wealth went to her husband. Remaining unwed meant it went to the church. Last time she checked, neither of those parties was her. In response to her demise, she’d gone shopping and purchased an outrageous number of dresses and all the necessary accessories, including a man to go with them.
Gravel crunched on the drive and her pulse quickened. Out of the window, Annorah caught sight of a chaise pulling up in front of the steps before it was lost from view, blocked by the large semicircular stairs leading to the front door. One could only see the drive fully if one was standing at the window and Annorah did not want to be that obvious.
Her butler, Plumsby, appeared at the doorway. ‘Miss, your guest is here. May I say he is quite handsome for a librarian?’ She’d not been able to admit the truth to her staff for fear of disappointing them. Instead, she’d professed a desire to catalogue the library one last time, an inventory list of sorts should she opt to leave everything to the school.
‘Thank you, Plumsby. I will be right out to meet him.’ Her pulse began to race, her thoughts latching on to Plumsby’s last words: He was handsome. She played out how she wanted to greet him in her mind. She would be modern and sophisticated. Annorah took a final look in the mirror on the wall to make sure her hair was in place, her face free of any errant smudges. She took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall, suddenly feeling overly bright in her jonquil muslin against the muted blues and Italian marble of the hall. But there was no time to change now, no time to slip away on the backstairs unnoticed. He’d seen her.
Annorah smiled and swept forwards. ‘You’re here. I trust you had a pleasant journey?’ She clasped her hands tightly at her waist, hoping to hide her nerves, but she could feel a blush creeping up her cheeks. Handsome didn’t even begin to cover it and she was already at a loss for words. He’d think she was a bumbling idiot. One minute into their association and her power of speech had failed her.
Tea! Her mind grabbed the idea. ‘Plumbsby, have tea brought to the drawing room. I can see to our guest from here.’ As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew she had erred. ‘Forgive me, I’m getting ahead of myself. Here I am ordering tea before we’ve even had introductions. I’m Annorah Price-Ellis.’
She stuck her hand out for him to shake in a businesslike manner, but he took that hand and bent over it instead, lips skimming knuckles, eyes holding hers as he took her gesture and turned it into something more than a greeting. Under his touch it became a prologue, a promise. ‘Nicholas D’Arcy at your service.’
At her service. Annorah swallowed hard. He was here and he was gorgeous! Dark-blue eyes looked up at her over her hand, riveting and intense in their regard; black hair roguishly pulled back to reveal high-set cheekbones and the most perfect mouth she’d ever seen on a man; a thin, strong upper lip, a slightly fuller lower lip, full enough to invoke a certain sensual quality, full enough to make a woman want to trace that mouth with her finger.
Good lord, her thoughts were running fast! They’d barely met and she was already tracing his mouth in her mind. Annorah recalled her manners soon enough to fumble through an awkward curtsy, only to wonder if that was the correct response. Did one curtsy to such a man? But that was just it. What sort of man was he? A gentleman down on his luck or a bounder in fine clothing merely apeing his betters? Perhaps she should curtsy simply to preserve the façade and why not? This was her fantasy. She could play it any way she wanted.
What she couldn’t do was stand around the hall, staring like a looby. Years of good breeding finally caught up with her in a single thought: now she could get them in to tea and everything would resolve itself. Tea would take some of the edge off her nerves. There would be a natural progression of questions to ask: Did he take cream? Did he prefer sugar? Would he like a cake or a sandwich? It would ease the transition into conversation and give her a sense of starting to know him.
Annorah gestured towards the wide doorway on her left and said in what she hoped were sophisticated tones, even if the message was slightly repetitious, ‘Plumsby will have tea set up for us in the drawing room. You can take refreshment and we can discuss business.’ Surely that was the appropriate next step. It would be best to get the particulars out of the way before things progressed much further.
Nicholas D’Arcy’s blue eyes twinkled, the edges crinkling up delightfully as he smiled. He leaned in with a conspiratorial air, his body close enough for her to catch the scent of him—the sweet hay of a fougère mixed with the tang of lemons, quintessential summer. ‘This is business?’
Suddenly it was hard to think. She was vaguely aware she was rambling on about clients and contractors and negotiating the parameters of association for both their sakes. A gentle finger pressed against her lips.
‘There’s a lovely summer day waiting for us outside, Annorah. Why don’t you show me the gardens? We can talk while we stroll.’
‘Will it be private enough?’ Annorah hedged politely. Talk about their arrangement outside where they might be overheard? She hadn’t exactly been truthful with the staff when she’d told them about her visitor.
‘We’ll put our heads together and whisper.’ His eyes were laughing again as he offered her his arm, a very firm arm encased in blue superfine, another reminder that his clothes and bearing were immaculate. His dark head lowered to hers until they were almost touching, his voice quiet at her ear. ‘Besides, I find the risk of discovery adds a certain spice to even the most mundane of outings, don’t you?’
‘I will have to take your word for that, Mr D’Arcy.’ A delicious tremor shivered through her at the very notion, tempered only slightly by the reality that the man dressed in expensive blue superfine, fashionable buff breeches and highly polished boots was definitely not a gentleman at all.
‘Please, call me Nicholas. My father was always Mr D’Arcy. Shall we?’
How quickly she’d lost control of the conversation. It was something of a marvel, really, how smoothly he’d taken over. He’d been standing in her hall for a handful of minutes and already he was assuming command. He didn’t even know where the gardens were and yet they were heading out of the bank of French doors as if he’d lived here his entire life. She’d not expected him to show such ease. She’d expected to have the upper hand. This arrangement was to be conducted entirely on her grounds, literally and figuratively. When she’d sent her letter, she’d assumed a modicum of security in knowing he was the guest and she the host. But now it was clear those roles could easily become blurred.
* * *
The gardens restored her sense of balance. He asked questions, pausing now and again at certain flowers to comment on their blooms, and she answered, feeling more in control, once more the host.
Nicholas halted at one flower. ‘Ah, this one is very rare indeed. A rainforest iris, if I’m not mistaken? Very wicked, is it not, with its stamen jutting straight up from the bloom?’
Annorah blushed furiously at his less-than-veiled reference to a man’s phallus. ‘All flowers have stamen, Mr D’Arcy.’
‘Yes, but not all of them have stamen that are so blatantly displayed. Take this delicate pink blossom over here. The stamen is neatly shielded by the petals closing around it. But not this fellow.’ He gestured back to the iris. ‘He’s a bold one, sticking straight out from the flat bowl of the blossom, tall and proud for all to see.’
‘Flowers are hardly sexual beings, Mr D’Arcy.’
‘You don’t think so? I must respectfully disagree. They are perhaps the most sexual, most promiscuous...’ he stopped here to arch a dark brow her direction, emphasising promiscuous ‘...creatures in the living kingdoms. Think about it—they pollinate and cross-pollinate with multiple different partners every day, all for the purpose of casting their errant seeds to the wind with nary a care for where they land.’
Social protocol demanded she put a stop to such ridiculous conversation, but she could not bring herself to do it. He had the most pleasant of voices, a sibilant tenor that caressed each word, creating decadent images with his sentences. If he could turn her legs to jelly with talk of botany of all things, chances were rather good that this voice of his could make any subject seductive. Still, she should try to maintain a civil face to their interactions. ‘Mr D’Arcy, this is hardly a decent subject for discussion.’
‘I insist again that you call me Nicholas,’ he chided her gently. ‘And to be blunt, you didn’t invite me here to be decent.’
It was a well-timed comment. There was no better opportunity to bring up the nature of their association. They’d begun walking again, leaving the phallic iris and the flower garden behind. They were further from the house now, wandering down a tree-lined alley towards a roman folly in the distance. Their privacy was complete. For a moment it crossed her mind he’d manoeuvred the conversation in that direction on purpose.
‘No, Nicholas, I didn’t bring you here to be decent. But neither did I bring you here to indulge in a sinful gluttony of an orgy either.’ This was where her directness ran out. She was no retiring wallflower afraid to speak her own mind. She’d charted her own course in life thus far, but this was new conversational territory. She’d never once expressed such feelings, such desires to anyone before, let alone a handsome man who stared at her with the full attention of his eyes.
Of course she had his full attention! She gave herself a stern admonishment. This was his job. She should be worried if she didn’t have it.
‘I understand,’ Nicholas answered solemnly, covering her hand in a comforting gesture where it lay on his arm. ‘What have you told the servants?’
‘I’ve put it about that you are here to assess my library collection. It’s quite extensive and it hasn’t been catalogued since my grandfather had it done half a century ago.’
The grin he flashed filled her with satisfaction. She’d thought long and hard about the ruse she’d use to welcome a visiting male into her household. ‘Very nice, Annorah. You painted me with the sheen of a scholar, a bookish sort, which will certainly allay suspicions that I have ulterior motives for your person. You’ve given me a project that requires me to closet myself away with you daily and, best of all, you’ve given me the perfect reason to be seen escorting you about the countryside. No one would expect you to keep your guest all to yourself.’ He winked. ‘I know how country folk work; a newcomer is cause for excitement and must be shared.’
Annorah felt herself blush under his praise. They turned away from the folly and headed back towards the house while he continued.
‘As for us, Annorah, we will not speak of such arrangements again. You and I are to dedicate ourselves to becoming friends. We cannot be bothered with anything as base as a business transaction.’ He wrinkled his nose in a show of humorous distaste that made her laugh.
‘All that aside, though, we must be serious for a moment.’ He turned and faced her, bringing them to a full stop, the house in view over his shoulder, a reminder that when they returned to it the ruse would begin in truth. The point of no return began at the garden’s edge and her body trembled with the knowledge of it.
He took both her hands in his, his grip warm and strong, his gaze sincere. ‘We are about to embark on a wondrous and intimate journey together, Annorah Price-Ellis. I am honoured to share that journey with you. It will change us both. You have no doubt given it much thought, but I must ask one last time—are you ready? Is this what you truly want? You’re not forced to it in any way either implied or explicit?’
This must be what it’s like to stand at the altar and look up into the eyes of the man you love, knowing he feels the same. The thought had come to her out of nowhere and without reason. She knew logically he must be compelled to ask for one last show of consent. She knew, too, that there was nothing about love or marriage or altars behind his request. But that knowledge did nothing to dispel the impression they were taking vows of a sort, pledging themselves to one another, even if only for a short time. After tonight, he would always belong to her, always be with her in a way no other person would. For the rest of her life, she would carry a piece of Nicholas D’Arcy in her soul, as her first and perhaps only true lover.
Annorah nodded, her voice quiet in the still of a summer’s late afternoon. ‘I am ready.’
Nicholas raised her hands to his lips. ‘I am, too.’ He gave her a reassuring smile. Perhaps he’d heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Rest assured, Annorah, I know exactly what you want.’
Chapter Three
She wanted the wedding night, the honeymoon; the pleasure of lovers learning one another for the first time, savouring one another in both body and mind. It was one of the more difficult scenarios to enact. The trick was to create an intimacy that went beyond the physical without exposing oneself to feelings. He dealt in sex, not intimacy, by preference.
Up in his room, Nicholas opened his valise, the one piece of luggage he’d not let the footman assigned to act as his valet unpack. Nicholas surveyed the tools of his trade with a contemplative sigh, laying them out on the dressing table in his room like a surgeon preparing his scalpels and saws: the tiny glass vials of scented oils, the expensive imported sheaths from France made of thinnest lambskin, the silk ribbons, the soft feathers. Often, he used them as much for him as his clients. All were designed with one goal in mind: physical pleasure. They were his insurance that he could please even when he wasn’t all that interested in a woman. With the right woman, though, they could be extraordinary.
There was no question of delivering the physical adventure Annorah sought. The other, the sharing of a mind, would be more difficult. He was a guarded person by nature. Drawing others out had been an early acquired skill of his. It had served double duty as a means of learning others and as a means of protecting himself. When people were busy talking about themselves, they had little time to wonder about him.
Nicholas tucked the items into a bureau drawer, carefully hidden among cravats. Librarians did not carry feathers and ribbons with them. He smiled. A librarian? That was a new one. He’d pretended to be a lot of things before, whatever his clients needed. In the process, he’d become an adept chameleon. In this line of work, a person did a lot of pretending, which wasn’t all bad especially when the fantasy was better than a reality full of debt and worry and even guilt.
There was no place for those feelings here. He pushed those thoughts away and shut the clasp firmly. His mental efforts would be better spent planning his strategy. He would not need these tools this evening. She was not ready in spite of her words to the contrary.
He’d sensed her nervousness from the start, as if she couldn’t believe someone had actually answered her letter. He’d touched her immediately and often after that, bowing over her hand with a kiss, keeping a hand on her at all times as they strolled. She’d been skittish and he’d feared she might change her mind, a prospect he could not afford now that the money had been mentally allocated in his mind by the time he left London.
He understood full well the power of touch to ensure acceptance. In his experience, people were far more likely to do what he wanted if he touched them while asking. By the time they’d returned to the house and he’d garnered her pledge, she’d started to thaw.
Not that she was cold or that she wasn’t pleasantly disposed towards him. He’d seen the race of her pulse when she’d sighted him in the hall. He’d noted the blush on her cheeks in the garden when they’d discussed the iris. She knew very well the way of things. But the codes of decency had been drilled into her head over the years and, as much as she wanted to cast them off ever so briefly, it was proving to be more difficult than she’d likely anticipated. Well, he could certainly help her with that. What he really wanted to know was why? Why had she written the letter?
Nicholas moved to the bed and stretched out his long form, tucking his hands behind his head. He had two hours before dinner and he needed to use them to think. He mapped the evening in his head like a general before battle. Tonight’s arena would be the dinner table. That was easy enough. There were myriad ways to stroke the stem of a goblet, to cup its bowl, to eat one’s food and drink one’s wine that stimulated sexual interest, all the while talking, drawing her out, getting her to relax, to think of him more as a man than a machine who’d been sent to fulfil a need.
His goal tonight was twofold. For her sake, he wanted to dispel any sense of artifice about their association. For his, he wanted to figure out what had driven Annorah to write such a letter. More than that, why had such a letter even been necessary?
A request of this nature was not made idly. He thought of the pistols packed in his bags and ran through the usual reasons. Was this an act of revenge on her part? Would there be people who would resent her decision? It would not be the first time a woman had tried to avoid an unwanted marriage in this way. These arrangements were seldom straightforward.
The letter itself had been unremarkable. He’d studied it line by meagre line on the way here. There had been little to offer in the way of clues. The line about enjoying the countryside had made him laugh at the irony. The word quiet was a bit more insightful. What did it signify? Was she a recluse? Did she actually prefer the solitude of the country, unimaginable as such a concept was? Simple deduction made that an easy scenario to discard. It was hard to imagine a recluse, someone who deliberately shunned the company of others, requiring a conversationalist. Upon arrival, he’d been proven correct. He had to discard that notion even if the logic hadn’t fallen short. She might have been nervous, but she wasn’t a recluse.
Nick considered another option. Had she been forced into seclusion? Was she someone who had been abandoned to anonymity? Someone craving human contact? Perhaps that was too extreme. Sussex was hardly the ends of the earth. It was a mere five hours from London. Surely a woman with a thousand pounds to spend on five nights of pleasure could afford to come to London if she so chose.
That was the other thing that niggled. Motive. London had its own plans for women possessed of a fortune. It was called the Marriage Mart and it would certainly resolve any penchant for intimacy by providing an heiress with a husband; especially London in June. The city was teeming with men looking for money and marriage. It called to mind the line from the Austen novel his female acquaintances were so fond of: ‘A single man in possession of a good fortune must also be in want of a wife’, or something like that. In this case, a woman in possession of a fortune was an odd thing indeed without a husband.
If she was not naturally reclusive or forced to seclusion, that left option three: she was in the country by choice. Of all the scenarios, this was the most mysterious. Why would anyone choose the countryside if they didn’t have to? Why would someone choose to engage in paid intimacies with a stranger when a potential marriage awaited just five hours down the road?
There were only so many reasons a rich woman would refuse London and none of them was good, especially when the major reason would have been looks and that was clearly not the case with Annorah. He could rule that out.
Ugly would have been a problem for him. It was a selfish, petty wish, he knew, but he was used to beautiful. Most of the women who could afford him hadn’t been ugly. They’d merely been curious about what should have been theirs by right of marriage, something a conscientious husband should have provided Fortunately, Annorah Price-Ellis had turned out to be attractive with a quiet, understated beauty. She’d drawn his eye immediately, a splash of colour amid the elegant austerity of the entry hall.
She had struck him as a nature goddess when they’d strolled in the garden. He’d used the time to take in her features: the soft curve of cheek giving her face a delicate cast, the sharp mossy green of her eyes, reminiscent of a rich field of summer grass, and the wheat blonde of her hair, which argued to be the colour of wild honey when wet, a hypothesis he wouldn’t mind testing. There’d been curves, too, beneath the muslin with long legs, narrow waist and a high, full bosom. No, Annorah Price-Ellis was definitely not a hag. Which only furthered the mystery. How did a lovely, rich woman arrive at this point?
There was only one way to find out. Nicholas rang for the valet. It was time to dress for dinner and tonight he wanted to give his toilette thorough consideration. The man assigned to him was a young fellow named Peter, who had some talent for the job, if not experience. If the valet thought it was odd for a librarian to linger over his toilette, then so be it. In the end, the two of them turned him out quite finely in a dark evening suit, paisley waistcoat of rich lavenders and blues and a well-tied osbaldeston knot in his cravat that had taken only two tries.
Nicholas dismissed Peter and took a final look in the mirror, checking to see that the diamond stick pin in his cravat was exposed enough to catch the light, that his coat was smooth across the shoulders, that his hair was neatly tied back with a subtle black ribbon. Longer hair might not be the trend preferred by society in the ballrooms, but it was amazing how many women loved it in the bedrooms.
Satisfied with his appearance, Nicholas closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Let the seduction begin. No matter what ghosts the country raised against him, he could do this. He would make love to Miss Price-Ellis as if everything depended on it. Because it did.
* * *
He was waiting for her in the drawing room, having followed the gentleman’s dictate that no lady should have to remain alone in anxious anticipation for a guest’s arrival. He was casually posed, elegantly dressed, the dark evening clothes a marked contrast to the white of the marble. A pre-prandial drink, partially consumed, dangled negligently in one hand, his gaze fixed on the windows and the display of green gardens beyond. He turned at the sound of her entrance, the quiet click of her low-heeled slippers and the soft whisper of skirts giving her away.
‘You have a lovely home. I was just admiring the view.’ The hand holding the glass gestured towards the long windows to indicate the gardens, but his eyes held hers, suggesting he was appreciating another view entirely.
A delicious shot of warmth spread through her at the frank assessment. She’d spent an hour agonising over which gown to wear before summoning her maid and deciding on the lavender chiffon. Apparently the effort had been worth it. ‘Thank you. Hartshaven was designed to be appreciated. It was meant to be a showcase for beauty.’
‘It certainly is.’ His smile deepened, exposing the dimple at the left corner of his mouth.
Good lord, could he turn every comment into a veiled compliment? What could she do but forge ahead and take it all in her stride? Annorah moved to the window and motioned for him to join her. She tried to redirect the conversation on to more neutral ground, ground that would be less likely to leave her feeling flushed and so focused on the night to come that her tongue was tied. ‘My great-grandfather had the initial gardens laid out by Kent and Bridgeman.’
‘I recognise the styling.’ He stood close at her shoulder. She could smell the faint undertones of his cologne; the lemon and fougère creating the scent of a summer fantasy, perfect for a night like this. She did not think a man had ever smelled this good. She was so intent on smelling him, discreetly of course, that she nearly missed his conversation.
‘I’ve had the good fortune of visiting at Chiswick House. Burlington’s gardens are exquisite, as are yours.’
Chiswick? That grabbed her wandering attention. Annorah couldn’t resist a sideways glance at her companion. Chiswick House was the domain of the Earl of Burlington. Nicholas D’Arcy, whoever he was, ran in vaunted circles if he was calling there.
He caught her glance before she could look away and smiled. ‘Surprised?’
‘I hardly know you. I think anything would count as a surprise at this point.’ Her tone was sharper than she had intended but she was grasping for any point of defence now. Hardly knowing him was not stopping her pulse from racing, or her mind’s apparent desire to hang on his every word. When she’d begun this, she’d counted on logic to protect her from any depth of emotional response. That strategy was clearly going to fail.
‘Touché.’ He reached for her hand and tucked it through his arm, his touch igniting little jolts. ‘We’ll rectify that over dinner.’ He nodded in a direction past her shoulder. ‘I think your butler is ready to announce the meal.’
Plumsby cleared his throat, drawing her attention for the first time. She’d been so riveted on Nicholas she hadn’t noticed his arrival. ‘Dinner is served.’
‘I’ve had Plumbsy lay the meal out in the informal dining room,’ Annorah said, glad to have something of proprietary to say. She was sounding less and less like a hostess with every minute, which was not how she’d imagined this interlude. When she’d pictured it, she’d cast herself in the role of the sophisticate, taking the lead in their encounters, commanding every social nuance. It was easy to see the flaw in her reasoning against the black-tie élan of his town bronze. She hadn’t half the polish he had. Annorah hoped her dining room did.
The room did not disappoint. It looked out on to the back veranda and the staff had set it to perfection. Of course, they thought it was a business dinner to discuss the library, but they still wanted their home to look its best. And it did. The rose shades of summer twilight filtered through the panes of the French doors, bathing the cream walls in dusky hues, but it was the table in the room’s centre that drew all eyes. Two tall white tapers stood like sentinels in their silver-candlestick holders atop pristine white linen, flames flickering an invitation. A bowl of yellow roses from the garden sat between them on the round table. In complement to the yellow roses, her favorite Wedgwood pattern of blue flowers was laid out in two place settings with slim goblets and silver. Cold champagne rested in a chilled bucket.
Two footmen seated them and Plumsby removed the covers, presenting the meal, but that would be all the service she required. She’d already made it clear to Plumsby they meant to dine casually, serving themselves from the dishes on the table. Plumsby had protested, but she’d argued all the fuss for one guest was hardly worth it. Since that guest was a ‘librarian’ there to do a job, Plumsby had eventually conceded the point.
‘Shall I?’ Nicholas reached for the bottle of champagne, uncorking it in a deft movement with the merest of pops. He poured the glasses and turned his attention to the chicken, applying the same dexterity to carving that he had to champagne. Effortlessly, he filled their plates with roasted chicken and salad greens. Gentleman born or not, he was skilled in the art of the dining room, offering her the best of everything the table had to offer. It made him all the more intriguing, all the more mysterious. What sort of man kept the company of Chiswick House, dined with the manners of a well-heeled peer and found himself at a socially retiring woman’s table under these circumstances? Goodness knew with looks and manners like his he would have been welcome anywhere.
‘A toast, Annorah.’ He raised his flute. ‘To summer evenings and new friendships.’
Their glasses touched in a satisfying chime of crystal against crystal. She sipped and let the cold liquid run down her throat. She loved champagne and could certainly afford to drink it every night, but it seemed a sin to drink alone—although in retrospect it seemed a very small sin compared to the one she’d commit tonight. She groped for something to say. Perhaps she should have spent as much time thinking of conversational topics as she had selecting a dress. She’d never learn anything about him at this rate. She had to try. Annorah settled on the one topic that came to mind.
‘Are you an aficionado of gardens, then?’
‘I’m an aficionado of many beautiful things, gardens among them.’ His hand slid idly up and down the stem of his goblet. On another man she might not have noticed the gesture. With him, she could hardly pull her eyes away.
‘What else do you admire?’
He smiled. ‘I admire you, Annorah.’
She looked down at her plate, flushing. She hadn’t blushed this much in years. Perhaps her social skills were more out of shape than she’d thought. ‘You are not required to say such things. Besides, you hardly know me well enough to come to any sort of conclusion.’
‘Do you think I don’t mean it? I assure you, I do. I’ve spent the afternoon being treated to this lovely home and I beg to differ with your assessment. An estate is often a reflection of its owner. You can tell a lot about a person by the state of his or her surroundings. I sense there is a story in you, Annorah, and I would love to hear it. How is it that you’ve come to be here?’
She met his gaze with a sharp look over her champagne. ‘Is that the polite way of asking how I’ve reached the august age of thirty-two alone?’
Nicholas laughed and leaned back in his chair. ‘What a prickly creature you are! Are you always this cynical? Since we’ve sat down to dine you’ve accused me of being insincere with my flattery and when I have sincerely enquired as to your history, you believe me rude. You present me with quite the conundrum.’
Oh, lord, she had. He was right. She’d been so worried about playing the decent hostess and at the first opportunity she’d performed poorly. She studied her half-eaten meal, gathering her thoughts. ‘I must apologise. I have little experience at this.’
He leaned forwards again, this time capturing her hand where it lay on the tablecloth. ‘No apology necessary. I find conundrums refreshing.’ He winked. ‘Have some more champagne. It will help and perhaps we’ll try again.’ He was tracing sensual circles in the palm of her hand that were both relaxing and stimulating.
No man had ever touched her as he did or so often. She’d been intimately aware of him since his arrival: the casual touch of her hand on his sleeve, the feel of his hand at her back, all of it legitimate. Gentlemen touched ladies like that all the time. She’d been touched like that, but not with these results, not with a pleasant warmth spreading through her, a tingling heat filling her belly and lower. Oh, no, most certainly never like this.
‘Now, Annorah, tell me your story. I want to know how you’ve come to be the queen of all this.’ He poured more champagne with his free hand.
‘I grew up here and I never left, not for long anyway.’ She took a sip from her glass. He was right—the champagne did help. She hardly ever talked about her family. It had been a good family once, but it had fallen due to time and circumstance, leaving her with a legacy that was about to end soon, a situation she was rather loath to recollect, a potent reminder that she was about to lose all this unless she sold her soul in marriage to a man she didn’t love.
‘Why?’ He coaxed with his voice, with his touch, with the sincerity of his gaze. Even the room conspired against her, the candlelight creating intimacy in the deepening darkness.
‘Because it was home, and the people I loved were here. Hartshaven hasn’t always been an empty house.’ She had not meant to talk of herself or to reveal so much that couldn’t possibly matter, that had no bearing on the job he’d come to do. But once started, she couldn’t help herself.
The stories fed upon themselves, encouraged by Nicholas’s laughter and the occasional nod of his head. She told him of her family: her grandfather and grandmother, her parents, her cousins who had come to visit in the summers. She did not tell him of her aunt. Her aunt had no place in happy stories.
Those summers had stories of their own: days of roaming the meadows, fishing in streams and endless games of hide and seek in the gardens. The memories leapt to life as she talked. Merry ghosts of the past peopled her stories: the laughter of her cousins shrieking as they ran through the gardens; the patience of her grandfather teaching them to fish in the cold river. Everything was alive again—messy and vivid, and she was alive with it, no longer sitting at dinner with a stranger, but with a man who’d become a friend in a very short time; a friend she didn’t know much about, but a friend none the less.
‘What happened?’ Nicholas poured the last of the champagne. Dear heavens had they drunk so much already or had they been at the table that long?
‘What always happens. We grew up and time moved on.’ The merry ghosts she’d conjured receded. The candles burned low. ‘I would give anything to have it all back. What about you? How have you arrived at this point?’ The question was bold. That was the champagne talking, but it had been talking all night.
‘I think the future holds infinite promise.’ Nicholas drained his glass and set it aside with a sense of finality. He rose and held out his hand to her. ‘Come with me.’
Annorah set her glass down slowly, all her thoughts coalescing around his words and what they meant. This was it! He would lead her upstairs and bed her. She rose and took his hand somewhat woodenly. Now that the moment was upon her, the impending act suddenly seemed an empty conclusion to the fullness of their conversation and the friend was a stranger once again, the spell broken.
Chapter Four
He was losing her. The intimate magic of champagne and candlelight had not enthralled her enough to let go of her reservations. It wasn’t that he had misjudged their effects, but rather the power of them. They hadn’t lasted very long. Already, Nick could see the magic strings starting to come undone, leaving her free to revisit her doubts, her choice in inviting him here. He had thought to take her upstairs, now he opted for the terrace, fresh air and starlight.
She fanned her cheeks with her hand and gave a little laugh once they were outside. ‘I fear I’ve broken one of the cardinal rules of socialising.’
Nicholas gave her a slow smile, enjoying the flush of her cheeks. ‘What rule is that?’
‘The one where I’m supposed to let the man do all the talking. More to the point, I’m supposed to let him talk about himself through skilfully questioning him and drawing him out. It’s the first rule a débutante learns. If a girl can’t flirt, at least she can listen.’
Nicholas threw back his head and laughed up into the night sky. Her candour was absolutely refreshing in the most surprising of ways. ‘Hardly! I enjoyed your stories. I think this is one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in years.’
‘Isn’t it, though?’ The sharp stab of cynicism brought Nick up short. She was watching him, her moss-green eyes narrowed in contemplation. The entire spell had come unravelled. He would have to weave a new one now from whole cloth.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Nick feigned a quizzical look, although he knew very well what she was asking. If she was going to be so bold, she’d have to own to it.
‘You know what I mean. Dinner, the stories—it was all meant to draw me out. I think it was very clever of you to use a simple débutante’s trick against me.’
She was far smarter than his usual client or else far less pliant. This was going to be a challenge. She had all but accused him of feeding her a generic line. Nick reached for her hand, tracing idle circles on the back of it. ‘Trick is a harsh word, Annorah. What makes you so sure it was a ploy rather than the truth? You’re a very enjoyable woman to be with.’
It was true. He’d liked watching her come alive as she told her stories, as she talked of her childhood. It was a childhood not unlike his own and he glimpsed wildness in her as she spoke. It was a wildness well contained and it made him wonder what had happened to see such a commodity so carefully fenced and penned. He wondered, too, what it would be like to see that commodity unleashed, the fences down.
‘I’m a very suspicious woman to be with,’ she rephrased. ‘Especially when it comes to someone taking an instant liking to me.’
That someone being male, Nick would wager. There was hurt behind her words. Omitted parts of the story told over dinner were starting to emerge. ‘Some people have a natural affinity for one another, do you doubt it?’
Annorah gave him a look that practically shouted her opinion on the subject. ‘Some, perhaps. Not all. Not most.’
She was challenging a lot of his assumptions tonight. He’d not expected his country conquest to be a prickly, worldly, beauty. He’d expected this to be easy. He could see it was not going to be that way. For a while at dinner she’d forgotten all that. He could make her forget again, but he was going to have to work for it.
Nick raised her hand to his lips and took a deductive stab in the dark. ‘I’m not a fortune hunter, Annorah. I’m safe and you’re safe with me. I’m not most.’
She shook her head. ‘I invited you here to fill my head with flattery that I knew would be false from the start. You might be worse, I think—’
‘Then don’t think,’ Nick interrupted swiftly. Her thoughts were not headed in a direction conducive to romance. He cupped her cheek, running a gentle thumb down the line of her jaw. ‘You didn’t bring me here to think. You brought me here for pleasure.’ He began to intersperse his words with kisses, starting at her jaw and moving to the slim column of her throat. ‘There’s no shame in pleasure, Annorah, no dishonour in desiring it. Pleasure is a human enough condition.’ His mouth was at the base of her throat, his lips over the pulse beat. She was starting to melt again. He caressed her with words, with kisses, feeling her body come alive as he intended.
He took her mouth then in a decadent dance of a kiss. Slow and savouring, his lips were in no hurry to leave hers and there was languorous exploration; there was tasting and teasing, duelling and heat. He brought her against him, letting her feel the planes of his body, hard and sure through his clothes. The press of his hand at her back urged her closer, coaxing her to meld into him, convincing her this was heaven and earth all in one.
Nick knew the moment he had compliance. Her arms went about his neck, she arched her head back and he murmured against her exposed throat. He asked once more, in husky tones redolent with desire, ‘Come with me.’
This time she came. He was careful to maintain contact, careful to keep her hand surrounded by the warm, comforting grip of his. It should have worked and it did up to a point. It worked all the way up the stairs, down the hall to the third door on the right, which he knew to be her room, and then it stopped working. For her at least.
His body was surprisingly primed for what should lie ahead. There would be no need for his usual ‘assists’, as he liked to call them. It was no small matter to call up stimulation at a whim. But tonight it had been easy, the only thing that had been, in fact. From the moment he’d seen her in the delectable lavender chiffon with its high waist and low-cut bodice gathered beneath her breasts with ribbons designed to maximise the effects of its cleavage, he’d had no problems in that regard. The gown fit her curves to perfection as had the candlelight, although she had not flaunted it as one of his London women would have.
He reached for the door handle, ready to usher her inside and follow, but she stalled him, her hand covering his, her eyes honest and perhaps a little sad when they met his. ‘I’m sorry, Nicholas. I don’t think I can tonight.’
He smiled softly and placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘Perhaps I could convince you. A massage by candlelight, perhaps? We have all night, we can go slowly.’ It would be a delight to linger with her, no fears of angry husbands bursting through the doors.
‘No,’ she said more firmly, stepping away from him to establish distance. ‘You’re a very attractive man, Nicholas D’Arcy, but you are still something of a stranger. I think anything else we do tonight would be nothing more than a mistake. I, for one, would rather wait and hope for better.’
She turned the knob and slipped inside, leaving him alone in the hall uncomfortably aroused and wondering how was he going to turn off what she had so unwittingly turned on. When he’d contemplated this evening earlier in his chambers and laid his strategy, he’d never envisioned he’d be spending it with only his own hand.
But here he was, aroused both physically and mentally. Nicholas undressed, not bothering with nightclothes or a light. With any luck he’d find relief and then sleep shortly afterwards. He lay down on the bed and took himself in a loose fist, running his hand the length of his cock in long fluid motions, starting slow and then increasing his speed as his need grew. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would and he did feel a measure of relief when it was over, but only a measure. He reached for a towel and waited for sleep to follow.
His mind would not cooperate. There in the darkness, his brain was alive with thoughts, darting here and there on tangents and considerations, all of them on the same subject: Miss Annorah Price-Ellis. Had she gone to bed unsatisfied as well? Even now was she rethinking her choice? She had not been immune to him. Had she gone to bed, too, forced to find her own satisfaction? Now that would be a perverse irony indeed, to have them both just doors away, pleasuring themselves instead of each other. It would have Channing and the boys in stitches if they knew. He would never live it down.
Neither would he live down her comments in the hall. A mistake? She would wait and hope for better? Those were two things a woman never thought about sex with him. Nick fluffed his pillow and rolled to his side in search of a more conducive position for sleep. But it turned out to only be conducive to further examining the wonder that had struck him earlier. What had happened to tamp down her wildness?
He felt a surprising affinity for Annorah Price-Ellis. Her stories had struck a chord of memory in him. He, too, had such memories of country summers full of laughter and play. He, too, had felt their glaring absence when they’d come to an end. More than that, those stories offered him insight to her. He’d seen the reckless flame of her youth come back to her as she told those stories, a flame that was all but extinguished now. In that way they were alike as well.
She thought her life was over, that nothing would ever happen to her again. Life had occurred and the best days were behind her. The reasons for that conclusion were unclear. She had been careful to hold a little something back tonight even with his prodding. He understood, too, that she’d created a safe harbour inside that reality. There was comfort for her in knowing what to expect.
He knew that particular comfort. It was something of a shock to discover that beneath a surface of differences, he and Miss Price-Ellis shared a fundamental similarity. When he’d come to London and taken Channing’s offer to help with the agency, he’d known he was giving up certain hopes and expectations.
Channing did not ask him to give up those expectations. There was no official relinquishing, but he knew how society worked. Once he was committed as an escort, he’d have his own niche, but he’d never truly belong. He’d never be marriage material. What decent woman would want a man such as him for a husband? That meant no family of his own, something he’d taken for granted right up until the day his father died. Now, he had a brother, two sisters and a mother counting on him. There’d been no question of setting aside his dreams to support them through whatever means possible.
He wondered what Annorah had set aside that had brought her to this moment. What had happened in her life to make her think life as she’d expected it to be was over? Did she really believe it or was there a flicker of hope that somehow it could still be different? After all, he was here, a veritable wolf in the den of her security, poised to threaten that very fabric through her own invitation.
* * *
By the time the sun rose, Nicholas had decided this seduction could be going better. He had not slept well in spite of the excellent accommodations and the relief he’d provided himself. Annorah’s rejection had kept him up most of the night. Nicholas scrubbed at his face with his hands and took in the sunrise from the little balcony of his room. The east-facing room afforded a view of the rolling lawns leading to the stables and carriage house.
From here he could just make out the dark figures of grooms and horses going about their morning rituals. He had forgotten how early life began in the country. In London he’d just be getting to bed—his own bed anyway. Like as not, he’d have already been in someone else’s. That was another item bothering him this morning. He’d spent the entire night in his own bed.
Strategically, he had to admit Annorah had made a sound decision to defer coupling. She might have treated him as a welcomed guest, and for a time at dinner as a close friend, but it was still at the fore of her mind that he was actually a guest who was paid to be here. There would be no pleasure for her if she couldn’t get past that. She needed to see him as that close friend she had imagined at dinner, as a temporary but sincere companion, if she was to find the joy she was looking for.
She’d not been unaware of him. If anything, she’d been too aware: of what he was here to do and of her part in bringing him. She had to go through with it. He could see the internal debate he’d hoped to stem in the garden still being waged behind her hazel eyes. So he’d poured her more champagne, coaxed stories from her and to some extent it had worked. When he had kissed her, there had been moments when she’d forgotten he was a hired service. He’d felt her body come alive, felt her mouth move beneath his. He needed to create more moments like those. She was more than capable of them. How to do it?
Nicholas rested his elbows on the balcony railing. The day promised to be fair and warm, a perfect summer day. Summer. Pieces of Annorah’s stories from the evening flitted through his mind. The summertime, the stronghold of her wildness, perhaps the last preserve where what remained of it still roamed free. An idea started to take hold. Nick smiled to himself. He knew exactly what to do. It was time to get dressed and do a little rummaging.
Chapter Five
There was a man in her house! It was the first thought that came to Annorah upon waking and it stayed lodged in her brain while she dressed. How could it not? Apparently everyone was fixed on the idea of a male presence at Hartshaven. It was the first piece of news her maid imparted. Her guest had been up at first light, exploring the stables, looking for something and ordering the gig for a tour of the estate later.
Her maid, Lily, slid her a sly glance as she laid out one of Annorah’s pretty new morning dresses. ‘It seems odd a librarian would want to see the outside of an estate.’
‘It will help him understand the place,’ Annorah offered vaguely, suddenly thoroughly engrossed in the contents of her jewellery box. She didn’t need the staff questioning his presence too much.
‘Well...’ her maid went back to laying out the clothes ‘...he’s certainly a handsome one. We were all commenting on it last night. Don’t see too many handsome librarians.’
Annorah looked up from the box and gave her maid a polite but freezing smile, meant to halt the conversation. ‘There’s a first time for everything. I trust we won’t embarrass our guest with too much probing while he’s here.’
Now, if only she could live by those rules. There was a man in her house and she wanted to know everything about him. He was handsome and charming and when he looked at her, when he flirted with her, when he’d kissed her, it had become difficult to remember he didn’t really mean it, that he was just doing his job. Her inability to accept that had created a dilemma for her last night she’d been unable to resolve.
Part of her had clearly been ready to melt for him and engage the fantasy in full; those looks, those lines were for her alone, that he didn’t run all over London saying the same things to a different woman every night. You’re an enjoyable woman to be with... I think this is one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in years. She had been willing to believe his words, every last one of them. That scared her. Her feelings had been thoroughly engaged once before to disastrous results. She had to be careful. She didn’t want to walk down that road again—it was one of the reasons she’d hired Nicholas in the first place: physical pleasure without mental attachment. Now, that was being called into question. She could lose herself in him, the way she’d lost herself more than once before, only to be fooled by false affections in the end.
And yet that was the other side of the dilemma. If she kept her distance and reminded herself he was just doing a job, she didn’t know if she could go through with it. She was not a person who believed intimacy could be a job. Intimacy had to be more than a daily chore. It had never been work for her parents, who had lived and died together. She’d promised herself years ago it would never be work for her either.
Somewhere, there was a middle ground and she needed to find it. Perhaps seeing him in the morning light without the added benefit of moonlight and champagne would bring the balanced perspective she needed to let herself move forwards.
* * *
It only took a moment to realise the morning would bring no such thing. When she arrived downstairs, Nicholas D’Arcy sat at the head of the breakfast table, turned out in summer driving gear, carefully pressed trousers and polished boots, his linen pristine, looking as elegant as he had last night. He looked up from the two-day-old newspaper and smiled. ‘Good morning.’ It might possibly be the nicest good morning she’d ever heard. The only one better would be to hear those tones on the pillow beside her.
‘You’re an early riser.’ She caught herself too late. His sense of naughty innuendo was wearing off on her.
‘I can be.’ He gave her a wicked smile, not letting her ignore the implication. ‘I had a few things I wanted to take care of.’ He set aside the newspaper and gesture to the chair next to him, motioning for her to sit.
‘Missing town already?’ Annorah nodded towards the discarded newspaper. She seldom read the papers. It didn’t matter to her how out of date they were. It would matter to a man like him, though, yet another reminder of how different they were. She was a country mouse to his citified bronze. How was she ever to feel at ease with such a sophisticated man?
‘Just keeping up on the news.’ He rose and went to the sideboard. ‘Would you like eggs?’
She nodded, a bit amazed he was fixing her plate. ‘Sausage?’ he asked, keeping up a steady stream of conversation while he assembled her breakfast. ‘I explained to Cook we’d be touring the grounds and that we’d need a lunch. I made arrangements for the gig to be ready at ten. We’ll want to set out before it gets too hot.’
He presented her with breakfast and a sudden, unexpected rush of tears stung her eyes. It was perfect. She would have eaten whatever he served, even if it had been a plate full of eels, so touched was she by the simple gesture. Maybe there was no middle ground. Maybe she should just give over to the fantasy.
‘I could have done that,’ she managed to choke out. The plate, the picnic, the gig. She could have done all of it. She’d been making her own arrangements and decisions for years.
‘Of course you could have.’ He sat down again. ‘That’s not the point.’
‘You’re not here to wait on me,’ she protested between bites of shirred eggs. But it was a half-hearted protest at best. Had breakfast ever tasted this good? Her usual breakfast was more of a pro forma ritual, something she had to do. This morning, however, she was aware the eggs were hot, the sausage was spicy, the toast was warm and the butter was melted.
‘Let me worry about what I’m here to do and not do.’ Nicholas took his seat again.
‘I’ll change after breakfast so I don’t keep you waiting.’
He knit his dark brows together in exaggerated consternation. ‘Why change? You look lovely in what you’re wearing.’
‘It’s not a driving dress,’ she argued, but again with little heat. A carriage dress would be much warmer wear and less comfortable than her morning dress in cool white muslin sprigged with tiny pink flowers and who was there to see her?
He leaned forwards, resting his chin on his hand. ‘No one is likely to see us. Why don’t you send your maid for a hat and gloves and call it good?’ He rose and held out his hand, giving her no chance to refuse. She couldn’t very well go with him and go back upstairs to change. He’d left her no choice.
Nicholas had been a whirlwind of efficiency that morning, a fact she realised once he allowed her a moment to appreciate the details of their departure. He had her settled in the gig, hat, gloves, light wrap and all, within minutes, pointedly deflecting her questions about what was strapped to the maid’s seat in the back with a laugh, saying only, ‘You’ll see when we get there and not a moment sooner.’
He leapt up beside her on the narrow seat, a seat really made for one-and-a-half people instead of two, especially if one of them was a full-grown man with long legs. He picked up the ribbons and clucked to the horse, a sturdy chestnut she often used for short jaunts, and they were off, jouncing along at close quarters, an effect which was not lost on Annorah. She tried vainly to keep her thigh from touching his on the small seat, but the more she tried, the more he made sure his leg took up the space until she had no choice other than to let her body relax alongside his. Perhaps if she said something?
‘You’re doing that on purpose.’ He might truly be unaware of it after all. But her mind laughed at her. He knew very well what he was doing and so did she.
‘Doing what?’ They hit a bump in the road and his leg brushed hers.
‘That.’
Nicholas laughed, the sound filling the empty road around them. ‘It’s a small seat, Annorah, where do you propose I put my leg? Besides, I don’t think it’s an unpleasant sensation, merely a new one.’ One she feared she could get used to, like breakfast plates and just as easily.
Everything was easy with him. He hadn’t even been here a day and already he’d insinuated himself into the routine of her life. He’d done it so well, in fact, that there was an undeniable sense of rightness in having him beside her, almost as if they’d known each other for far longer.
‘It’s all right to like me, you know.’ Nicholas slid her a sidelong glance, his intuition catching her off guard with its accuracy. ‘It would be better if you did, actually.’
‘How did you know that’s what I was thinking? Do you read minds?’
‘I read bodies and lifestyles. You’ve been independent for a long time, too independent if you want my opinion. You aren’t used to having people look out for you.’
‘You’re wrong there. I have servants.’
‘It’s not the same. I mean someone who looks out for you voluntarily, without being asked.’
‘What does that have to do with liking you?’ Annorah shifted on the seat, wishing there was some way to put distance between herself and this interview.
‘Everything. Your independence has made you cautious of others.’ He guided the horse around a sunken spot in the road.
‘Stop thinking of me as another hired servant and start letting yourself like me, Annorah. There’s no harm in it.’
He might be right but it didn’t stop her from feeling defensive. ‘You are not my friend.’ She shot him a look to see how he’d take the pronouncement.
‘No, I’m not. I’m much, much better.’
‘I can trust my friends,’ Annorah said staunchly.
He arched an eyebrow. ‘Really? Then answer me this. Why have you been alone so long?’
Annorah fixed her eyes on the road. She was not going to answer that out loud. Because people hurt people. Intentionally or unintentionally, the result was still the same and she simply couldn’t go through it again. What her aunt and a long string of suitors had done to her for the sake of money was unforgivable.
‘We all have the lives we want, Annorah. Nothing will change that until we do,’ he said softly.
Nothing except calendars and legally binding documents. It was on the tip of her tongue to challenge that statement. No matter what she did, everything was going to change in a matter of weeks and she still hadn’t decided what to do. Annorah pushed the thought away with a hard mental shove. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t think about that while he was here. This was her last escape from reality. Her obligations weren’t supposed to intrude during these last days.
The cry of a hawk overhead broke the silence. Nicholas bumped her shoulder with his and pointed to the cloudless sky, impressed with the sudden intruder. ‘We don’t see many of them in London.’
Annorah looked up. ‘They live in the hills. There’s a whole family of them that have been here since I can remember.’ She smiled. ‘When I was little, we used to pretend to be hawks. We used to pretend we could fly.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘That’s silly, isn’t it?’
‘Not really. I had a kite when I was younger. I used to fly it and wish for the same thing.’ He smiled back at her, taking his eyes from the road long enough to meet her gaze, letting the sweetness of a childhood memory remembered pass between them.
‘I can hardly picture you as a little boy.’ It was difficult to think of this perfect man as a rambunctious scamp, running about the countryside in short trousers flying a kite.
‘Why not? I was adorable.’ He pretended mock hurt.
She gave a slight shake of her head. ‘It’s just that you’re so well put together; your clothes, your manners, you seem to always know what to do and what to say. I can’t imagine you not always having been this way.’
Nicholas laughed. ‘My mother wouldn’t describe me that way. I assure you, I had my share of scraped knees and less-than-pristine moments.’ He winked and said with exaggerated seriousness, ‘I had a mother, too, just think of it.’
* * *
The conversation had become easier after that. They talked of the plants they passed, the wildflowers that grew along the side of the road, the fields and the crops, until he turned off and brought the gig up beside the wide grey ribbon of river to a place where it pooled into a swimming hole beneath the shade of an old oak tree.
‘I haven’t been here in ages.’ She looked down at him, instantly suspicious as he came over to her side of the gig. ‘How did you know about this place?’
Nicholas shrugged and swung her down, letting his hands linger at her waist, his grip strong and confident as he held her. ‘I asked around. Your master of horse said this was a good spot for a picnic.’ Nicholas moved to the back of the gig and began to unpack, revealing at last what he’d stowed away. ‘I hear it’s a good place to fish.’
Fishing poles! Good heavens, she hadn’t seen the fishing poles for years, not since her grandfather had passed away actually. She hadn’t even been sure the poles were still around. Part of her assumed they’d simply found their way into other hands—perhaps a groom or two who’d gone fishing on a day off and had kept them, or perhaps some boys in the village had borrowed them. But here they were, looking as able as ever. He held out a pole. ‘Are you game?’
Annorah shot a quick glance at his boots, noting their high polish and expense. Water would ruin them. ‘You have to go in the water to fish.’
Nicholas gave her a wink. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret. I plan on taking them off. How about you? I don’t think those half-boots will fare any better.’ Nicholas sat down on a big boulder by the river and tugged at his boots. He tossed them aside. ‘Here’s another secret. I plan to take off a lot more than my boots.’
Dear lord, he meant it. Annorah’s mouth went dry as he pushed up his trousers and began rolling off his socks, revealing well-muscled calves. It was ridiculous to be aroused by a man’s legs, but she rather doubted most men had legs like his; so perfectly turned with a sculpted bulge of muscle and tanned, too, not a pasty white. It suggested extraordinarily good health. Here was a man who knew how to take care of himself, whose body was not padded and moulded into a false representation of its true physique. There was no artifice here.
No, absolutely none, she affirmed a moment later. Off came his jacket, just to reinforce the point. The thin linen of his shirt hugged the breadth of his shoulders and tapered into the waistband of his trousers, calling attention to the trim line of his hips.
‘Well? Stop dawdling, Annorah.’ Nicholas stepped into the river with his pole. ‘We don’t eat until we fish.’
Right, just as soon as I get my jaw shut. She was being ridiculous.
He tossed a fishing pole in her direction. ‘Unless you’re too scared?’
That did it. She’d been more than an able fisher in her day. Annorah set to her boots with a flurry of efficiency. Boots and stockings were off, the skirts of her dress hiked up with the help of a hair ribbon. ‘I can outfish a man about town like you any day of the week.’
Nicholas grinned. ‘Then get in here and do it.’
Chapter Six
Her toes touched the water and the years fell away. How quickly it all returned to her! Her body had not forgotten a single thing. Annorah cast her line with a fluid back-and-forwards movement, revelling in the thrill of the motion as the river took her fly and pulled it into the current. She revelled, too, in the knowledge that Nicholas was watching, approving.
‘I must have been thirteen the last time I did that!’ she called over the gurgle of the river, her self-consciousness slipping away with the water.
‘Very nice!’ he called back with a mischievous look that said he wasn’t to be outdone. No sooner had she thrown her line than he threw his in a side cast, the fly landing with a quiet plop on the water.
‘Show-off!’ Annorah retorted with good humour. ‘That’s not bad for a man about town.’ She caught a suspicious movement in the water to her left. Fish! She quickly reeled in her line. A basic cast would have been sufficient, but she couldn’t help a little showing off of her own. ‘Watch this.’ Annorah flicked the line back and forwards and back again for a sharply executed false cast.
It became a competition after that. He answered with a side cast. She came back with a roll out. He executed a double haul. She threw a flawless reverse. On it went until they were laughing and wet, their clothes far beyond damp.
A fierce tug on the line claimed her attention. ‘I’ve got one!’ Annorah shouted, the excitement of the catch seizing her. She began to reel in her line, but the current and the weight of the fish conspired against her. She took an involuntary step towards the centre of the river, planning on retrenching, but her fish had other ideas. He tugged. She slid. Her bare feet ploughed the soft mud of the river bed. Annorah wrestled with the rod. The pole began to bend. ‘You’re not getting away from me, you little bugger!’ She was going to need help.
No sooner had she thought it, than Nicholas was there, his hands closing over hers, his body coming up and around her from behind, lending her its strength. ‘Tut, tut, Annorah. Such language from a lady. I wouldn’t have guessed.’ He chuckled in her ear. She could feel the heat and muscle of him through his soaked shirt.
‘Pull with me, I think we’ve got him.’
They tugged and reeled, laughing and stumbling in the current, his body there to steady her. At last they landed that fish, a huge river trout. ‘Enough to feed two.’ Nick dragged the fish up on to the bank and flopped down beside it. ‘I say we save it for dinner.’
‘What about lunch?’
Nick grinned and pulled out a gutting knife. ‘You’ve shown yourself to be the better fisherman between us. You go get a pair of fish for lunch and I’ll see to this fellow here.’
‘I’ll race you!’ Annorah laughed and waded back in. Her dress was soaked. It hardly mattered how wet she got now. But it was a race she was happy to lose.
* * *
By the time she’d returned with her creel full of fish, Nicholas had a camp of sorts arranged. A blanket was spread out in front of a small fire, a spit already set up over the flames. The day was warm, but the heat was welcome against the chill of the river and the damp of her clothes.
Nick skewered the fish and she busied herself laying out the rest of the picnic items with one notable exception. ‘You meant it about no fish, no food, didn’t you?’
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Bronwyn Scott
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: He′s the talk of the ton–for all the wrong reasons!Society′s most outrageous–and popular!–escort Nicholas D′Arcy is renowned for his utmost discretion. So when he suddenly finds himself named and shamed by a jealous husband, he reluctantly accepts a summons to the countryside…a fate worse than death!Annorah Price-Ellis isn′t what Nick is used to–innocent, feisty and decidedly uncomfortable with the spontaneous heat between them! Suddenly, London′s most audacious lover is out of his depth, and in danger of revealing the real man behind the polished facade….Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous Only London′s best lovers need apply!