by Lynn Messina
His lips captured hers in a searing kiss, and that was all Vinnie could think—that she had somehow been taken captive. Huntly moaned softly in his throat as he gently held her head in his two strong hands, running his tongue smoothly over her lips until she opened them. Deepening the kiss, he pressed her back against the cushion, his movements wild but assured.
Vinnie, her arms climbing up Huntly’s arm…around his shoulders…into his hair, felt her heart slam into her chest as Huntly’s lips moved slowly from her cheek to her jaw to the cleft of her neck. The sensations he created with his tongue and his hands, which were now causing tingles up her arms, was beyond anything she’d imagined existed. She didn’t know she could feel like this. Indeed, she honestly didn’t know what this felt like. It was so blissful and heavenly, she didn’t quite believe it was real, although there was an element of discomfort, just a slight yet growing sense that she could never have enough. She and Huntly could sit on this settee engaged in the same activity for eons to come and she would never be satisfied.
Although her mind was lulled, there was just enough of sensible Vinnie still working to find the notion of an unquenchable hunger to be disturbing. Her need for Huntly felt like a deep, dark hole from which she might never return.
At this thought, her mind began to clear, though not enough to end the embrace, for the sensations were far too pleasurable. It was only when she felt Huntly’s hand touch her breast, which sent a marvelous new shot of need coursing through her body, that she had the strength to pull back.
Wild-eyed and trembling, Vinnie stared in shock at the damage she had wrought with her single kiss. The Marquess of Huntly was breathing heavily, his hair was tousled and a look of horror had replaced the amusement from only a few minutes before.
With a calm she was far from feeling, she swallowed her mortification—ah, yes, there it was—and resolved to apologize with all the dignity she could summon. She did not relish the further humiliation, but Miss Lavinia Harlow did not shirk her responsibilities and this debacle was entirely of her own making. Poor Lord Huntly had simply been sitting on a settee drinking tea and making polite conversation when she’d accosted him. She didn’t know much about men, but it seemed likely that even the best of them would have little resistance to the wiles of an unprincipled woman.
“Now I must apologize, my lord,” she began, grateful that her voice wasn’t weak or reedy, “It will sound like a feeble excuse to you, I’m sure, but I got swept up in the moment. I was so happy to be in this wonderful place and so grateful to you for arranging it that I behaved in an indecent and wholly unacceptable way. I hope you will accept my apology, which is heartfelt and sincere, but I will not hold it against you if you cannot.”
Midway through her speech, Huntly began to shake his head and as soon as she finished, he said, “Miss Harlow, I cannot let you—”
“No,” Vinnie said, her tone firm as she stood up, forcing the marquess to rise as well. “You must not feel compelled to do the so-called proper thing. I know you have beautiful manners and you think it’s your obligation to take responsibility for all disconcerting events. But this is my disconcerting event, and I beg you will please allow me the dignity of taking responsibility for it.”
Although the marquess looked like he very much wanted to argue further, he sighed and said, “Very well, Miss Harlow, I will abide by your request and will, if the offer still stands, accept your apology in the spirit with which it was offered.”
Relieved, Vinnie nodded and felt some of the anxiety leave her. Her heart was still beating wildly, but presumably even that would return to normal in a minute or two. “I’m grateful, my lord, and I genuinely hope that the…ah”—how to describe it?—“unpleasantness hasn’t marred your enjoyment of the visit. I assure you, it hasn’t ruined mine. It’s still one of the nicest days I’ve ever had and I remain indebted to you for making it possible.”
Huntly examined her for a long while before answering, and Vinnie began to worry about her appearance. Neither one of them was as kempt or as tidy as when they’d arrived, but she had straightened her dress and smoothed down her hair. At least she’d thought she had. Perhaps an unruly curl was sticking out of the side?
Finally, he spoke, “Nothing can ruin my enjoyment of this day, and if I may just add that I am humbled by your gallantry.”
Although gallantry was not something to which Vinnie aspired, she recognized when she had been paid the highest compliment possible. “Thank you, my lord. Now, shall we be on our way? You are far too courteous to let your impatience show, but I’m sure you have plenty of other things to accomplish today.”
The marquess opened the door and followed her out. “I’m happy to escort you home now, but to be completely honest, I’d much rather skulk around the factory to discover the meaning of a code red incident. I find the description so evocative of an emergency that I’m inclined to use it with my staff. Code red, Petrie, my Hessians have a scratch. Or code red, Mrs. Dundee, the tea is cold.”
Vinnie laughed at this nonsense, as the marquess had intended, and felt confident they were once again on solid footing. Whatever had sparked the…ah—well, she couldn’t really call it unpleasantness because that description was far from accurate—disconcerting event remained behind in Mr. Brill’s comfortable office. It did not follow them out the door, through the factory and onto the street—of that, Vinnie was certain. As she had said, her behavior was the product of a remarkable confluence of forces that would never occur again. For this reason, she felt perfectly composed as she climbed into Huntly’s conveyance and she was able to make polite conversation with him the whole way home. They talked about Mr. Brill and his associate Mr. Peale and code reds and turpentine and even exploding hoses.
The conversation was easy, with one topic leading naturally to the next, and Vinnie felt so entirely comfortable in his presence that she almost forgot the incident in Brill’s office. She could not erase completely the memory of his touch or his kiss or the desperate look in his aquamarine eyes from her thoughts, but she was able to push it to a corner of her mind, where it could do the least amount of damage. What she did forget about entirely was the invitation to apply to the British Horticultural Society, which was why, when Huntly brought it up, she was momentarily stunned.
If he noticed her surprised expression, he did not let it dissuade him from his course. “As you know, we must discuss it, for it looms large over both of us.”
Although the invitation certainly did hang over Vinnie in a particularly looming manner, she felt his choice of words rather overstated the case. “I wouldn’t say large, my lord. It looms small to middling.”
Huntly conceded this point with an absent nod and continued, “Although I cannot fathom your interest in joining an organization that is ill-suited to your person, I respect the fact that the choice is yours to make.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said wryly.
He was too intent on his purpose to observe the sarcasm. “Knowing you have a multitude of interests, I proposed today’s expedition in the hopes that it would provide you with an occupation sufficiently engrossing as to override your interest in the society,” he explained.
Vinnie felt her face grow hot and her heart thump, and she could have sworn the entire world turned red for a moment, so intense was her anger. She curled her fingers into fists but otherwise kept an outward calm. “Excuse me?” she asked coldly. She had heard him clearly the first time but felt a perverse desire to make him say it again.
“It’s my hope that our visit to Mr. Brill’s factory provided you with so much useful information that you won’t have time left over to apply for membership in the society,” he repeated helpfully and then added a smile to imply that he was thinking only of her welfare.
A smile!
Remarkably, nothing in her life had ever made her as furious as that smile—and, given that she had shot her murderous fiancé just as he was about to gut her with a fish knife, that was saying an awful lot.
The entire day had been a ruse to get her to withdraw her application. Every single thing Huntly had said and done had been carefully planned to draw a particular response from her. He had acted with chilling premeditation.
“Please bear with me as I struggle to understand exactly what you’re saying,” Vinnie requested, her soft tone a clear indication of her anger. “Far from being the restitution you described when proposing the trip—I believe the actual words you used were make amends—the expedition to the factory was in fact an exchange. You give me Mr. Brill and his improved method for waterproofing, and I give you my agreement not to apply. Is that correct?”
“No…well, not exactly,” he said, faltering a little as the carriage stopped in front of her house. “You make it sound rather calculated, and I assure you, my intentions were—”
But Vinnie didn’t want to hear about his intentions and cut him off. “Was it not a quid pro quo, my lord?”
“Again, I must protest your characterization as a—”
“It is a simple yes-or-no question,” she pointed out stonily. “Was this expedition a tit for tat?”
He leaned against the back of the seat, his shoulders stiff, and said, “I suppose by some measure, yes.”
Vinnie felt no satisfaction at the concession, and yet she persisted. “So it was not a sincere attempt to make amends for sins committed against me, as you originally stated?”
Now the marquess’s smile was wry. “Can it not be both?”
Although her expression did not change, Vinnie felt something inside her crumble and die. The day—the wonderful, bizarre, remarkable, happy, unexpected day—had been a lie. What she thought was their first honest exchange, their first conversation without an agenda on either of their parts, had been simply another move around the chess board for him. He had been playing a game, while she had been in earnest.
And the kiss.
Ah, yes, the kiss.
Well, she had gotten exactly what she deserved for being so bold a hussy as to kiss a gentleman on the lips. She had known there was something unreal about it—the inexplicable passion, the even more puzzling confluence of forces that created it—and had already accepted that it didn’t exist outside Mr. Brill’s office. Naturally, she had assumed the unreality was the kiss itself and the wild tumult of emotion it created. She never once imagined that it was the man who was not real, but the Marquess of Huntly whom she’d felt compelled beyond all reason to kiss was merely a creature of her own making. He was a phantom.
Gutted by this realization—yes, fish knives could do a lot of internal damage but emotions certainly created their own brand of sharp, stinging pain—she acknowledged for the first time how much the experience had meant to her. It was not the kiss itself that was rife with meaning but the compulsion that produced it, for Miss Lavinia Harlow had never been compelled to kiss anyone before, least of all her fiancé.
What did it say about her that the one man she felt driven to kiss was a figment of her own imagination?
Unwilling to think about it further, Vinnie pulled her pelisse tight around her shoulders and thanked the marquess for his honesty. She wanted to add a snide comment about it being better late than never, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of a response, any response. It was better to be calm and indifferent, to simply leave the carriage on a high-minded dignified note, than to descend into petty insults.
But it cost her. Oh, did it cost her something fierce not to call Huntly a bounder and a villain and the worst human being she’d ever had the displeasure to meet.
Vinnie unlatched the carriage door and found Huntly’s coachman waiting patiently to help her down. She turned back to the marquess and gave him what she hoped was a cool, apathetic look. “Good day, sir,” she said.
She expected him to make another attempt to justify his actions, perhaps to explain how the expedition could have been both a means to an end and a way to make amends, but he simply responded in kind. “Good day, Miss Harlow.”
This, too, struck her as an insult, for surely after spending almost an entire day with her, he should thank her for the lovely company. It would be an empty gesture, of course, but their entire world was composed of polite nothings and she would have liked to be considered worth the effort.
One insult more or less didn’t make a difference, for she had already settled on a course of action. She wasn’t a schemer by nature and she certainly didn’t look at life as if it were a chess board full of pawns, but she knew one person who did and she did it better than anyone in the known world, and as soon as she handed her pelisse to Caruthers, she ran up the stairs to plot strategy with Emma.
Chapter Nine
The first Huntly heard of the dossiers was from Mr. Luther Townshend, who insisted upon seeing the marquess immediately, despite being told several times that he was interviewing candidates for the position of cataloging assistant—“to help him organize and classify flora from his voyage, sir”—and was not to be disturbed.
“Very well,” snapped Mr. Townshend, whose patience had been worn thin by the first five refusals, “I should like to put myself up for the position.”
Fleming, resentful of any attempt to circumvent his authority, kindly requested a résumé, an act that had the unfortunate affect of turning Townshend’s face purple.
“Devil take it, man, I’m the deputy director of Kew Gardens,” he all but screamed. “Now, tell the marquess I must see him at once.”
The butler was saved the trouble of interrupting Huntly’s interview, for as soon as Townshend had finishing making his demand, the study door opened and Huntly’s head stuck out. “What seems to be the trouble, Fleming?”
Townshend opened his mouth to reply, but the trusted retainer spoke more quickly and at a greater volume. “This gentleman—a Mr. Luther Townshend—would like to see you when you have a moment, my lord. He understands you are already engaged and is happy to wait in the drawing room with a pot of tea.”
Huntly, who knew Fleming well enough to realize that wasn’t quite true, nodded his head abruptly. “Very good. I’m almost done here, so I shall be in there directly.”
Realizing he had been outflanked, Townshend meekly followed Fleming to the drawing room, where he was offered not only a cup of perfectly brewed tea but a plate of warm scones as well. Given the oddness of the hour—after morning calls, not yet afternoon visits—he was impressed with the freshness of the pastry and comfortably finished the entire serving before the marquess came in to apologize.
“I would like to blame Fleming, for he does tend to get territorial, but in this case he was simply following my orders,” Huntly explained as he drew the doors closed behind him. “I’ve been home three weeks now and have yet to engage an assistant, which is unfortunate for everyone involved, as my study is practically consumed by trunks from my journey. Today was specifically set aside for interviews.”
Townshend, who had stood as soon as the marquess entered the room, nodded agreeably, his frayed temper considerably smoothed by the interval with the scones. “Of course, my lord. I apologize for my bellicosity. I am usually more temperate in my responses.”
Huntly nodded as if he knew this to be true, but in fact Townshend was the single most argumentative member of the British Horticultural Society. As the deputy director of the gardens, he was accustomed to ordering people around and had little patience when others did not bow to do his authority, even the equals who made up the membership of the society. He wasn’t unreasonable, of course, and inevitably apologized for his inappropriate outbursts only moments after he’d made them. For this reason, it was hardly remarkable to hear him shouting at poor Fleming in the hallway. No, the remarkable thing was his presence in the hallway. In all the years of their being in the society together, Townshend had never before visited Huntly at his home.
“No need to apologize,” the marquess said, taking a seat and indicating that his visitor should do the same. “I’m sure whatever has driven you to that e
xtremity is as dire as you perceive. Please tell me how I may be of assistance.”
Although Townshend spent several hours a day prowling the fields at Kew, his taste for sweets and his advanced age of sixty-six gave him a rather inflated middle, which he now rested his hands on. “It’s that woman you proposed for membership,” he said with distaste.
Of all the things the marquess expected him to say, this was absolutely the last and he bolted upright in his seat. “Miss Harlow?” he said.
“Yes, Miss Harlow,” he spat. “Her dossier on me is pure libel and certainly more denigrating than her dossier on Sir Charles.”
At the mention of Miss Harlow, the marquess felt his heart jump and in an instant he saw her as he always saw her—in Mr. Brill’s office, her breasts heaving, her eyes half shuttered, her lips swollen from his kisses. It was a potent image, and he repressed it now as he had done every day for the last week.
Instead, he called up the picture of Sir Charles Barton’s nose. There were few things less lascivious than the hairy mole on the end of that good gentleman’s hawklike beak.
It did the trick and gave Huntly the opportunity to respond to Townshend’s statement. “I’m sure you—” he began, fully intending to assure him that the situation could not be as dire as he thought. But then the words themselves penetrated. “I’m sorry, did you say Miss Harlow has a dossier on you?”
“On me, on Barton, on everyone,” he said, his voice rising again. “That wretched woman has compiled dossiers on the entire society and is using the information to coerce members into supporting her candidacy. I assure you, it’s the most damnable thing.”
Although Huntly heard him clearly, he still could not properly understand what he was saying. “Miss Lavinia Harlow has compiled dossiers on every member of the society?”
Townshend sighed heavily and snapped, “For God’s sake, man, keep up. This is very basic information. I’m surprised you don’t know it already. I can imagine the dossier on you is the most extensive by far, as you are the one who set her up for this humiliation.”
