Drew hastily removed his weapons and let her explore while he worked on her bodice. Just one touch, the imp controlling his primitive brain begged. Just one touch of bare flesh. . .
But when he held her breast in his hand and caressed the nipple, she whimpered and shivered and pressed into him in such a way that his brain snapped and his lower one took command. Without a thought to what he did, Drew swept her into his arms and carried her down to the suite he’d provided for her.
He lay her down on the bed in front of the bay window, recognizing the rightness of this placement. She belonged here, and he belonged with her. He bent and suckled at her breast, and she writhed in animal abandonment, pressing her hips upward as naturally as if they did this every day.
He pushed her nightgown upward so he could caress her bare thigh. He smothered her cries with his kisses and offered her the caresses her rocking hips demanded.
She grew silent as his fingers invaded her, and Drew froze. Was she a virgin? Was that possible for this reckless female who had no heed of propriety?
Fearing he’d gone too far, he reluctantly pulled back—until she moaned and lifted her hips to rub against him. With relief, he found the wet nub that needed only the slightest flick. She bit the fabric over his shoulder, clung to his arms, and surrendered sumptuously to the primitive urges possessing them.
He released his prick, letting it free to brush against her wet lower lips while his mouth aroused hers, and his fingers plied her nipples into sharp points again. She writhed and pushed into him, eager for more.
Sliding into tight bliss, he hit an obstacle. In the back of his brain, warnings flashed, but the imp had full possession. Nights of ecstasy beckoned, and he suckled hungrily on a soft breast, lavishing her with appreciation before he plunged deeper into heaven.
Mindless from the most exquisite pleasure she’d ever experienced, craving the strength of this man who seemed to know exactly what she needed, Phoebe tore at Andrew’s shirt until she could touch warm male flesh. Oh lordy, he was hard all over, with thick muscles that rippled when she caressed them and male nipples that responded when she tweaked them as he did hers.
His kisses were so hungry that she responded with eagerness, needing to offer him the same comfort as he’d given her. The urge to please fed her desire to feel useful. Fear had never been part of her constitution. Curiosity was. And denying herself basic human needs did not even come into consideration. She longed, she yearned, she craved to be filled in ways she could not comprehend but was willing to learn.
Until a thick hard part of him pushed between her legs and it all became momentously clear. But he distracted her from his invasion with kisses, caressed her breasts, and the longing ache in her lower body became part of the pain and she pushed upward, needing. . .
She muffled her scream in his shoulder as he ripped her asunder. The male animal above her halted his depredations to kiss her temple and her cheek, until she lifted her head, and her lips tentatively sought his for solace.
“Mo leannan,” he whispered reassuringly, brushing the tears from her cheek.
Then he caressed her tenderly between her legs, as he had earlier, and the need built, and this time. . . she wasn’t empty. She wasn’t alone. He was part of her as their bodies bucked and fought and he finally filled her so completely that she thought they were done. Then he moved again, raising her to a new frenzy ending in a physical explosion that consumed her thoroughly, leaving her in a state of pure bliss.
After the exertions of the day, she simply fell asleep in his muscled arms, feeling safe and shielded from the rest of the world for just this one moment in time, for perhaps the only moment in her life.
A dog slurping his hand woke Drew from his slumbers.
An unhappy feminine hum from beside him jarred him half out of the bed.
“Guard, Wolf,” the governess murmured beneath his arm, wriggling a little to free herself from his weight.
Drew didn’t want to move. He knew if he moved, his brain would return, and everything that had seemed so right a mere few hours ago would be all wrong. But the dog trotted away, and he had to roll to one side to release her.
“We have company,” she muttered, not sounding pleased. “I warned you, my mother is dangerous.”
That got him moving better than a splash of cold water. Drew rolled from the bed and looked down at his disheveled clothing in dismay. Then he watched the goddess rising from the sheets, her hair tumbled, her nightgown around her waist, and he simply could not regret what he’d done. He kneeled on the mattress and kissed her, stealing a feel of her bare breast to give him courage. She fit his hand so perfectly that his confidence rose still another notch.
She caressed his bristled jaw, reminding him that he wasn’t as civilized as he pretended, forcing him to back off.
“We’re betrothed,” he informed her. She’d been a virgin. There was no other honorable choice. “We simply anticipated the wedding night. It happens all the time. Bathe. Take your time. Let me be your fortress against the world for now.” He kissed her hair and stepped away to straighten himself.
She lifted her heavy hair, giving him a tempting glimpse of alabaster breasts that would suit a goddess, before she raked the mass down over her shoulder and pulled up a sheet against the room’s chill.
Drew hurriedly fastened his buttons, aware that sapphire eyes studied him as he did her. The situation was too fraught to care if she found him lacking in any way. They’d sealed their fates. It was all over but the shouting.
She remained so silent that he thought she might be communicating with her animals.
“I don’t think your cousin and your partner came home last night. Wolf is disappointed. I’ve sent him upstairs to the children. I suspect Abby is a little frantic, not knowing where to find you and afraid to go near Wolf.”
“He’s been guarding the door?” Drew considered a dog in the house more favorably if so.
“I believe so. You might save yourself if you can somehow pretend that you’re just arriving home after a night of carousing, but chances are good that my mother knows better.” She didn’t appear worried, just attuned to the creatures in her head as he fastened his buttons and tugged his jacket into place.
“You’ll never fool anyone looking like that,” she said with a hint of amusement. “There is not a place on you that isn’t wrinkled, and you’re looking a little too. . . smug and irritated at the same time. Perhaps you should change and go pound on a machine a bit, let me greet my mother.”
“How the devil do you know she’s down there?” he asked—definitely irritated but acknowledging satisfaction. Last night had rubbed off edges he hadn’t known he had. And the possibility that there might be more nights like it diluted the irritation considerably.
He was ready to put up a damned good fight for what he wanted.
“The creatures tell me there is a woman in the parlor, and the sun is barely up. Who else would it be? The question becomes, how did she arrive here so soon? My mother is a mystery.” Pulling up her nightgown to cover her bare shoulders, Phoebe slid her legs off the side of the bed.
Drew wanted to stay and see all of her. But he couldn’t promise he’d stop at just watching, so he headed for the door. He cast a look over his shoulder and was rewarded with a glimpse of long, narrow feet. “Don’t leave,” he told her, not knowing where that thought had come from.
She glanced up in surprise. “I’ll go nowhere without discussing it with you. I’m still your employee, and as far as I’m aware, the children still need me.”
He wanted to shout and fling things, but he didn’t have the leisure. “You are my wife in all ways but one, and I’ll rectify that one as quickly as possible. Don’t make me chase you to the ends of the earth.”
He walked out without seeing how she took that. He’d meant it in the best possible manner, but he didn’t have a way with words. He thought he might have sounded a little—intimidating. Which was fitting. He was feeling pretty damned
dangerous.
He grabbed his weapons off the stairs where he’d abandoned them last night in his fit of depravity.
Then Drew washed, donned his newest suit and stiffest collar, found a polished pair of shoes, and stalked down the stairs to confront a countess. The nobility had to pull on stockings one leg at a time just the same as everyone else, he reminded himself. He was a powerful, wealthy man and her equal.
Mostly, he had to remember she was a furious mother. That was enough to cause trepidation and a desire to disappear into his workshop.
Entering the parlor, he recalled Phoebe’s apt description of her mother as a dainty fairy. The countess had to rest her feet on a stool to prevent them dangling from his overlarge sofa. He’d bought the furniture to suit his own frame, perhaps a mistake, he supposed, but he didn’t often have female guests.
The countess didn’t sport wings, but her gauzy shawls had a similar effect. Pointed chin, wide eyes, and skin so translucent that it would put pearls to shame added to the impression. Her hair could have been spun gold for all he knew.
He bowed when she glanced up from her teacup. “Lady Persephone, I presume?” He’d looked up the proper address some time ago and recalled Phoebe using the honorific instead of the late earl’s title. He didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot.
The countess graciously nodded in a way that reminded him of Phoebe. “Mister Blair, I assume?” she returned in the same tone.
“Have you had a chance to breakfast? Cook serves promptly at eight.” In an obnoxious gesture he’d learned from the stiff-rumped businessmen he dealt with on a daily basis, Drew removed his expensive pocket watch with its gold fobs and checked the time. “We’re only a few minutes early.”
“If that was disapproval at the hour of my arrival, please know your approval means nothing to me. Will my daughter dine with us?” She rose regally, without his aid.
Blood and thunder, Phoebe had never eaten with them. They’d barely cleaned the boxes from the table just the other day and had yet to sit down at it. Meals tended to be eaten wherever they carried their plates.
“She prefers to dine with the children, as is proper given our unusual household. I’ll send the maid up to fetch her, unless you wish to go up and meet my wards,” he added with only a hint of maliciousness.
“Send the maid,” she commanded dourly.
The countess’s hand was frail on his arm, and he remembered she’d been ill. “Have you traveled all night? Where are your trunks?” He wanted to ask if she needed to rest, but he’d left Phoebe looking tousled in an unmade bed. He couldn’t produce a fresh room like magic.
He’d almost believe the woman was a witch to arrive at so inconvenient a time.
“My trunks are with my servants, awaiting a coach.” She accepted his arm and did not enlighten him further.
Perhaps she’d flown from the port on fairy wings. Or a witch’s broom.
He checked the dining room with a degree of trepidation as they entered. No books or machine parts littered the carpet. A stack of china he didn’t know he possessed waited on the buffet, along with the usual hearty fare Cook prepared and left to congeal until he looked for it. He was on time for a change. The sausage smelled hot and tempting, and he had worked up a considerable appetite.
“We had a small fire in the coal cellar last night,” he said apologetically. “We may not be up to our usual standards this morning,” he added, lying through his teeth. He hadn’t an inkling of how the table should be prepared.
“I am not helpless,” the countess said stiffly. “I am capable of serving myself.”
Which told him that a servant should have been hovering to fill her plate.
After she chose a piece of toast and a spoon of marmalade, she took a seat. “You will tell me now what happened last night. I will know if you lie.”
Drew considering strangling himself with his cravat.
Twenty-one
Even though she hadn’t seen her in years, Phoebe knew her mother well. So she didn’t linger over her ablutions, much as she would have liked to do so. She was sore in places she’d never hurt before, even after a day on her bicycle. She longed for the luxury of sitting in a bath, reliving what had happened last night, exploring the implications of Andrew’s rash declaration, but time wasn’t on her side.
Throwing her ruined nightclothes in a rag bag and opening the window to freshen the air, she called Abby up to set the suite to rights. She sent Daisy to fetch breakfast for the nursery. Then taking a deep breath, she set out to rescue. . . Andrew. He was no longer simply her employer, but she could not quite call him her lover either. She hadn’t been raised that way.
She had been raised to believe what they’d done happened on a wedding night. She wasn’t at all certain that she wanted marriage, however.
Entering the dining room just as her mother played her family’s favorite “I know it all” card, Phoebe shook out the folds of her best wool skirt and swished her one good petticoat as she leaned over to kiss her mother’s cheek.
“Mr. Blair is a man of science, Mother. He won’t believe you know everything. That is an old Gypsy ploy and used by too many silly mediums to work anymore. It’s good to see you looking well.”
She curtsied at Andrew, who looked so strikingly handsome in his double-breasted suit and immaculate collar that she wished she dared kiss him too. Or wipe the tiny bit of soap lingering near his ear after his hasty shave. “Good morning, sir. Abby is otherwise engaged. Shall I pour your tea?”
She didn’t wait for a reply but set out cups and poured tea all around. It kept her hands steady and her mother occupied.
Filling up her plate, Phoebe took the seat on Andrew’s right, across from her mother. “If you know all, then you know you have nowhere else to stay except with my aunts until Mr. Lithgow finds a place.” She willed her mother not to mention the shame of her homelessness.
“My sisters are idiots. I cannot believe they let you throw yourself away on this—” The countess gestured abruptly, belatedly realizing her host sat right next to her.
“Children were at risk, Mother.” Phoebe turned to Andrew, who seemed somewhat bemused, if not enthralled, by the conversation. Or the situation. A man who could withstand the tide of her strong-willed family was a rare gem. “Abby is preparing the suite. If you are sure you do not mind, we accept your kind offer of a bed for my mother until we find a new residence. I don’t suppose you have heard from Mr. Simon yet?”
He looked relieved to be given an easy question. “Hugh will have steered Simon from pursuing and beating up the men who hired our intruders. It will be difficult to convict wealthy men on the basis of what a couple of scoundrels tell the police. We’ll concoct a plan once my cousin’s temper has calmed.” He turned to her mother. “More toast, my lady?”
“More information, sir,” she said tartly. “Is my daughter in danger?”
“Does it look as if I am?” Phoebe asked in exasperation. They’d lived in a neighborhood of scoundrels and rogues for years, but she didn’t disturb Andrew with that knowledge. “Mr. Blair has provided luxurious accommodations. It is his cousin who has stirred trouble. You may rest easy.”
As long as no more varlets broke in the back door. She shuddered imagining her mother arriving in the midst of last night’s chaos.
“I welcome your presence, my lady,” Andrew said smoothly. “It will be good for Lady Phoebe to have someone here besides the servants.”
“Do not dissemble with me, sir,” the countess said frostily. “I felt the forces disturbed last night. I have arrived too late. I accept my failure to protect my daughter from you and from my sisters’ idiocy. I will not have Phoebe throwing her life away on a man. Life is too short, as I have learned. She will have her education now that I am well again.”
Phoebe opened her mouth to protest, but Andrew was better prepared and spoke first.
“I have already spoken with Drumsmoore. Lady Phoebe has won her way into my heart and home. We are t
o be wed as soon as the arrangements can be made.”
Heart and home, indeed. Bed was what he meant. Phoebe kicked him under the table. He merely removed his leg from her reach.
“I will not allow it.” The countess threw down her linen and rose. “Show me to my room, Phoebe. We’ll visit Mr. Lithgow after I’ve had a rest.”
That her mother allowed herself to be housed by the gentleman she’d just dismissed spoke of immense weariness or duplicity. Or both.
Maybe she could run away to France, Phoebe thought as she led the way upstairs. Or disguise herself as a man under a new name and become a student at the university where no one would ever find her.
“This is all my fault,” the countess muttered as they climbed the stairs. “I should never have left you alone.”
“I am fine, Mama. I know how to take care of myself. And I will marry—or not—as I choose. You and no one else can decide for me.”
“The choice will be made for you if a child is involved,” the countess said gloomily, surveying the newly freshened suite.
A child. She hadn’t had time to consider what would happen if a child came from what they’d so rashly done.
Drew debated shedding his suit and pounding on Phoebe’s bicycle for a while, but he had a meeting soon. He hoped he wouldn’t have to bail out Simon and Hugh.
They staggered in not much later—before Cook removed the breakfast plates. Snorting at their haggard appearance, Drew ordered Abby to bring up a pot of coffee, sat back, and waited.
“The bastards claimed they were just looking for blunt,” Hugh said in disgust.
Drew knew his assistant well enough to know Hugh hadn’t consumed an entire bottle of whisky last night, but pretending to keep up with Simon had taken its toll.
“I told the police they were stealing my children and molesting a lady, but they wish to come here to verify it. They wouldn’t take my word.” Simon slapped the table, then winced at the noise and reached for the coffee.
Lessons in Enchantment Page 19
