He pulled the last pin from her hair before gently massaging her scalp. Bridget never did that. Cleo sighed with pleasure and leaned her head back into his capable hands. If she wasn’t careful, the man would seduce her without as much as a kiss.
“Lean your head back into the water,” he ordered.
She obeyed, keeping her arms over her breasts and sliding forward in the tub. Thornton’s face hovered over her, impossibly handsome even upside down in the low light of the gas jets. Their eyes met, his fingers caressing her scalp, and somehow there had never been a more intimate moment in her life. She experienced the sudden, foreign urge to yank him into the tub and make love with him.
“You would make an exceptional lady’s maid,” she said instead.
“So I’ve been told.”
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you make a habit of accosting women while they’re at their baths and then washing their hair?”
Cleo was prying and she knew it was none of her affair what Alexander de Vere chose to do. She had jilted him long ago. She was a married woman. Trapped, it was true, by society’s refusal to allow a woman escape from a loathsome union. He could bed every woman in the house party if he wished. She had no claim on him, no reason to harbor the sudden, irrational longing for his touch.
“Up.”
Wondering if he would ignore this question as he had the last, she scooted backward, pulling her hair from the water. Silken strands clung to her back. His mere presence heightened her every sense.
She heard him lathering her shampoo in his hands before his fingers once more descended to her head. “You well know I’m only here because of your meddling sisters.”
His words stung a bit. “If it was such a hardship, why did you come?”
“I never said it was a hardship.” He chuckled again. “I merely pointed out that I ordinarily grace a lady’s chambers when I have been invited.”
Which she supposed happened with alarming frequency. No denying it, the thought galled her. She remained silent, listening to the sounds of shampoo and hands and wet hair. Perhaps he had not changed at all despite his sterling reputation.
“Lavender,” he murmured.
Her shampoo, like her soap, was of the finest French lavender. Her signature scent. He had noticed. A smile curved her lips. Cleo was feeling naughty.
She pursed her lips. “Do you like it?”
Thornton cleared his throat. “Indeed, yes, your hair is lovely. Longer than most ladies’ locks and singularly soft.”
A laugh escaped her. “I meant the lavender, though I do appreciate your commentary on my hair.”
“Of course.” Thornton’s voice was gruff, slightly pained. “Generally speaking, I find lavender to be an agreeable scent.”
“I am relieved.”
That earned her a sound dunking. She re-emerged from the water sputtering and dashing suds from her eyes. “Thornton!”
The object of her ire was having a difficult time producing ire of his own. In fact, he was currently preoccupied with the buoyant quality her breasts seemed to have taken on. Truly, she had no idea that he had an excellent view of her perfect pink nipples. Thornton knew he should be ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t summon up an inner admonishment.
“Well?” she demanded, magnificent in her anger. Her long dark hair was slung across her back and she had turned to face him—all the better to berate him, he supposed. Her green eyes spat fire and her ordinarily pale cheeks flushed with becoming color.
“How would you have me rinse your hair?” he asked, careful to keep his inwardly roiling emotions from his voice.
“A trifle more delicately than attempting to drown me.”
“Your nostrils are flaring again,” he pointed out because he knew it would peeve her. In truth, he found it adorable. Christ, he wanted to shed his clothes and hop into the bath with her. She shifted into a more decorous position and her breasts bobbed as if to tease him.
“I’ll splash you again,” she warned.
“If you do so, I shall be compelled to think you wish for me to join you in the bath.” God knew he certainly wished to do so. Could think of little else, in truth, other than the gleaming beauty of her bare skin in the low gas light.
“Insufferable man.”
“I fear we are back at the beginning of our conversation, and that you’ve run out of insults for me.”
“You are quite wrong.” Her chin went up a notch. “I called you horrid earlier, not insufferable.”
Hell. What was he doing here in her chamber where he didn’t belong, trading banter with her as if they stood in a drawing room, both fully and respectably clothed? He wanted her. But taking her…
Taking her would be folly.
“I think I must go,” he said softly, his gaze tangling in the lush mossy depths of hers.
“Do you?” He swore it was the closest she’d come to requesting him to stay.
“Yes.” He leaned across the tub and dropped a kiss on her damp cheek. She even tasted of lavender, sweet and seductive. “You and I are playing at a game that could be ruinous. Though we squabble like children, our desires are not infantile in the least. I overstepped my bounds in coming here tonight.”
She reached for him then, her wet hands snagging in his hair. Water droplets fell to his shoulders. Locking gazes, she pulled him to her, her mouth seeking and open. He allowed her to kiss him, groaning when it deepened and her tongue entered his mouth. He wanted desperately to sink into the warm water with her, test the silky weight of her breasts in his palms, make love in the tub with suds splashing across the floor. To wake up every last guest with their ruckus.
The guests. Damn. It took every last reserve of strength he had, but he somehow managed to tear his lips from hers. “Good night, sweet Cleo,” he whispered, wondering if Romeo & Juliet had made him maudlin. His conscience getting the better of him, he straightened, rolled down his sleeves and stalked from the room and her chamber before he could change his mind.
He was in such a tumult he stepped right into the corridor without bothering to check first and he could have bloody well kicked himself in the arse when he saw Hollins, his mother’s steel-haired maid, whisking around a corner. There would be hell to pay with the dowager if she had an inkling of this and he was afraid that Hollins had seen exactly which room he’d emerged from, half-naked, wet, and guilty as sin.
Chapter Six
A bitter taste pervaded the dowager marchioness’s mouth. Something was afoot between her son and Lady Scarbrough. She had it on good authority this very morning that Thornton had been seen exiting the countess’s chamber last night. Most unacceptable. As far as the dowager was concerned, the woman could take after her namesake and hold an asp to her bosom.
“Bella, do sit up straight,” she snapped at her only daughter, who was hunkered on a divan in the library like a washerwoman. “Slouching is common. Next you’ll be selling oranges in the street.”
Bella obliged, holding herself as a proper woman ought at last. The dowager despaired of ever finding a good match for the chit. She was too bookish, too prone toward frumpiness with her skirts always crushed to wrinkles and her wavy black hair forever coming undone. The dowager herself had been an ethereal blonde in her day, but both her children had inherited the dark looks of her husband. She still held it against him.
“Bella, put down the book. A man doesn’t seek a wife who hides in the pages of tawdry literature all day long. I shall have it destroyed.”
Her daughter blinked, making the dowager wonder if her excessive book reading was making her eyes go bad. “Maman, it is Lady Cosgrove’s book and it is merely an edition of Shakespeare.”
“Pooh, nobody reads Shakespeare these days. He was vulgar. Isn’t he the fellow who championed the eating of babies? Put it down.”
“This gathering revolves around a Shakespearean Theater, Maman. Besides, it was not Mr. Shakespeare who wrote about the babies but Jonathan Swift. It was satire.”
Thank heavens she’d convinced Lady Cosgrove to exempt herself and her daughter from those ninny plays. The dowager was of the same mind as her grandmother Hammond who had once decried dramas as coarse and common self-indulgences better suited to children and the poor than anyone of consequence. Moreover, Shakespeare’s ribaldry was far too fast for the tongues of innocent young ladies. Lady Cosgrove was a peacock who fluffed and preened and didn’t have a sensible thought in her head. If her house parties weren’t so famed, her balls not regal crushes, the dowager would never have consorted with a woman of her ilk. She had the look of trade about her.
Bella opened her mouth as if to argue.
The dowager smoothed her skirts and fixed her with a stern gaze. “Being argumentative is a most unbecoming trait in a lady.”
“I don’t wish to be a lady,” her hopeless daughter grumbled.
“Grumbling beneath one’s breath is only effective when it can’t be heard,” she said pointedly. “Do behave, Bella. We’ve important matters to discuss.”
“Oh?” Bella did not appear suitably impressed with the gravity of the situation.
“There is a catastrophe in our midst. I’m afraid that Scarbrough woman has set her cap after your brother.” Ordinarily, the dowager would not have lowered herself to discuss such unacceptable behavior with her daughter, but she did not underestimate Lady Scarbrough’s appeal for her son. She saw the looks they shared. She knew of his past infatuation. She knew too that indiscreet actions here would have dire recriminations elsewhere.
Miss Cuthbert would cry off, the dowager was certain of it, and ruin Thornton’s chances of acquiring the perfect wife to accompany him in his future career as the perfect statesman. Moreover, a scandal could well ruin him. While she frequently bemoaned his inattentiveness, the dowager was endlessly proud of her son. She expected him to one day become Prime Minister and lowering himself with a married woman of loose morals did not fit into that plan any more than his marrying a Covent Garden flower girl would.
Bella’s nose was still buried in her Shakespeare drivel. “How can she set her cap, Maman? Her cap has already been thrown away on that no-account Lord Scarbrough.”
“Pre-cise-ly!” She stretched out each syllable for emphasis. The dowager would have given her knuckles a stern rap on the mahogany arm of her chair as well but for the fact it was so dreadfully unladylike and would smart for a time afterward. She disliked pain of all sorts—her constitution was delicate as was only fitting for a lady of her circumstance—so much so she had barred the marquis from her chamber after Bella’s birth. An heir and no spare but she hadn’t cared.
Abruptly, she recalled what she had been about to say. “Precisely, my dear. However, some women, you will discover, do not allow matrimony to curb their…activities. You appear shocked, my innocent daughter. It is true, filthy but true, I assure you. I shudder to expose you to such a world as ours, but I must warn you in advance—”
“Maman,” Bella interrupted in a rude manner, “Do you think that Lady Scarbrough is Alex’s paramour?”
The dowager was certain her mouth was agape. “I’m sure I don’t know where you learned that vile word, Arabella de Vere.” She thought for a moment. “I can only surmise it must have been from that dreadful Beaumont chit. She is disgraceful and common. I forbid you from any contact with her from this moment forward. Yes, I can believe she would well know a word such as para…para… Well, you know, because she will end up wearing the dubious title one day soon if she continues to comport herself as a trollop.”
“Maman, I read it in a novel.”
“Your filthy novels!” She was having heart palpitations. This daughter would put her in an early grave. “Smelling salts?”
“I have none, mother,” Bella said calmly.
“A fan?” Was it too much for which to hope?
“Sadly not.” Her daughter’s eyes dropped to her book once more.
“Disrespectful girl,” she admonished in her sternest tone. “Have you no heart for your ailing mother?”
“Yes, of course, Maman.” Bella’s voice did not sound contrite in the least.
“Hollins witnessed your brother leaving the countess’s chamber last evening,” she snapped, frustrated beyond propriety.
“Oh dear.” Bella raised a hand to her throat. “I had not thought they would go so far.”
The dowager was instantly suspicious. “You had not thought? What do you speak of?”
Her daughter looked away, cheeks flushed with a telling cherry stain. “It is nothing.”
She snapped to attention, her favorite whalebone corset giving a creak. Though some ladies favored the modern steel dress improver, she knew it would only damage a lady’s inner being. “It is not nothing, Arabella. You must tell me at once.”
Bella squirmed on the divan and the dowager fought the urge to remind her to adjust her posture. “It is only that I wandered into the room off the library yesterday whilst Alex and the countess were practicing and I felt strongly that something untoward had happened.”
“Oh.” The dowager pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and gave it a dainty press to her forehead. “It is as I feared. She nearly ruined Thornton seven years ago and now she will do it again.”
Bella was sweetly concerned. “Do you think it so?”
“Of course. Of course it is so, daughter.” She fanned herself with the perfumed scrap of lace. “If Miss Cuthbert hears of Thornton’s indiscretions, she may well cry off. You know what a great match this is for him. Miss Cuthbert is the epitome of lovely womanhood and with her father’s connections in parliament, the alliance is perfection. It shall cement your brother’s good standing in the political realm.”
“I had not thought of it in those terms. He assured me that nothing untoward would occur.”
“Pish.” The dowager scoffed. “He is a man, Bella. But we are very fortunate in that we, as women, know how to fix man’s every foible. There’s no hope for it. We must confront that woman at the nearest opportunity.”
“But maman, do you not think it hard of you to—”
“Silence. You will confront the countess, my daughter, and convince her to cast her wiles elsewhere.”
“Me?”
“Don’t play the meek mouse now, girl.” The dowager smiled cat-style. “Yes, it shall be you.”
At roughly the same time that morning, Cleo was, she acknowledged it, hiding from Thornton in the library after his mortifying rejection of her the previous night. She didn’t know what mad passion had come over her, but suddenly she wanted him despite all the impossibilities having him inevitably entailed. She wanted him, certainly not her rotten husband, not any other man. She wanted Thornton. And he had simply kissed her and then left her.
Three days and her life was in utter shambles. Every last shred of sanity she may have possessed had been tossed from the window like rancid water from a vase. She was attempting to distract herself with a volume of Tennyson, a poet she had never particularly cared for but had chosen for precisely that reason. If she was vexed with his form, perhaps she would not be stewing over Thornton. As it happened, her plan had yet to work.
And then, she found her solitude disrupted by the all too handsome Earl of Ravenscroft. He—unwisely, she thought—closed the library door at his back as he sauntered into the monstrous chamber. Though buffeted by a storm of unwanted emotions for Thornton, she nonetheless did not remain immune to the cagey sensuality and athletic grace of the man she’d grown to know a little and like quite a bit. He was a cipher, a clever wit and a dangerous Lothario. She should take her Tennyson volume and go.
She stayed put and watched him as brashly as he perused her, wishing herself more worldly. Truly, her life would be so much simpler if she were the average bored society wife willing to take pleasure where she could without losing her heart or her conscience. Thornton reentered her mind and she frowned.
R
avenscroft reached her, smiled with enough practiced seduction to melt a woman’s resistance and tipped up her chin. “A frown does not belong on so fair a face, my lady.”
His finger lingered on her skin and she drew away to break contact. “Trite flattery does not belong on the tongue of so clever a man,” she returned.
“Touché.” He drew her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her bare skin. “What does belong on this tongue is the sweet taste of your flesh, if I may be so bold.”
Cleo withdrew her hand. At times she wondered if he merely played a role society expected of him. “You may not. Please, Lord Ravenscroft, if it is dalliance you seek, I am not the woman for you.”
“You wound me.” He retreated and sank with leonine ease into a chair opposite her. “Perhaps I misunderstood our blossoming friendship?”
“You did not.”
“Then let us dispense with formalities.” His full mouth thinned and his features grew taut with uncharacteristic harshness. “As you are undoubtedly aware thanks to the gossips and the scandal rags, I whore myself for married ladies of a certain circumstance.”
His unvarnished words, free of the veneer polite society imposed upon speech, scandalized her. “I find your daring most distressing, Lord Ranvenscroft. Pray, let us steer the ship of our conversation into safer waters.”
Cleo couldn’t be certain who she wished to save from embarrassment more, herself or Lord Ravenscroft. Never before had a man uttered the word ‘whore’ in her presence and she felt her face heat.
“I prefer honesty and plain speaking, Lady Scarbrough. It is not my intention to offend, merely to elucidate. I am a kept man. A whore, by nature and definition. There can be little shame in truth, no?”
She swallowed, choosing her words with care. “I too prefer forthrightness to humbuggery. However, I cannot help but to think you do yourself a great disservice.”
“Humbuggery.” He laughed, appearing, if possible, even more handsome. “What an original you are. I haven’t heard that word since my governess, Miss Fitzhiggins, years and years ago.”
Heart’s Temptation Books 1–3 Page 7
