Thomas found himself wondering whether his restraint was meant to be tested by this sudden, overwhelming display of feminine attributes. But Cat’s manner, after that first triumphant assessment of his unprepared reaction, had been all that was pleasant and friendly. Her astute observations on the problems of Lord Eldon’s proposed Corn Bill had afforded some stimulating conversation. If her grasp of the French situation had been as learned, they may well have spent the entire evening arguing politics, for God’s sake! Instead, he had asked her to join him in his library for an afterdinner libation.
She was sitting in the small velvet chaise before the hearth, where a fire chased away an unseasonable chill, watching as he read Hecuba’s note explaining that the rigors of prayer, which had kept her at her knees all afternoon, had exhausted her.
“I’m afraid Aunt Hecuba is set on rewriting her history as one of virtuous restraint,” Cat said as he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the fire.
Thomas lifted his gaze to her. “Why does she wear black? Surely if your family had lost a member, I would have been informed.”
“No, no one has died. We are a ridiculously robust lot,” Cat said, laughing. “I suspect that my great-aunt is in mourning for the very past misdeeds she now claims to abhor. Oh, the sermons we have heard on the evil nature of men and the foulness of base physical unions!”
Thomas grinned, infected by her good humor. “She’s accounted something of an expert on the subject.”
“It seems rather sad to me, her insistence to forget her past. Surely, she can’t have had so many… friendships without having at least some kind memories?”
“Perhaps they weren’t of a kind nature,” he murmured, shifting his long legs.
“I refuse to believe that,” Cat said with self-assured naiveté. “Then again, I am, as you have been at pains to point out, eminently unsuited to make such a judgment, being so woefully ignorant of feminine insight.”
“You put me in the unenviable position of either having to say only a tart would be qualified to make that judgment or agreeing with your unflattering opinion of yourself.”
She smiled innocently. “Oh, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I merely await your opinion as an expert on any matter of abandoned behavior.”
“I see,” he said. And he did. The pleasantries were over.
Rising, Cat went to stand a moment before the fire. She turned slowly, looking at him with soft eyes and a warm smile. “On with the lessons. First off, I have a few questions I would like answered, if I might.”
“Ask away,” Thomas said warily.
“If a woman is to capture the interest of a rake, I assume that subtlety is not her chief concern.”
“It depends on what one calls subtlety. If you mean scribbling frustrated longings in a diary, or whispering them to another country miss in the hopes that they will eventually reach the ear of the rake, you assume correctly. On the other hand, going about in red satin with your hair undone might be going a bit far.”
He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken, having honestly not considered that her hair was, indeed, undone. But she merely colored a bit, her gaze returning to the fire. The flesh of her shoulders glowed amber in the soft light. Thomas had never taken Giles Strand for a fool, but if he had overlooked this woman, he may well be.
“So it’s a matter of compromise? An attempt to capture the attention of this one man without the censorship of all others?”
“A fast pupil. That’s it exactly.”
“And as far as your discourse on titillation, how does one go about engendering this desire without being obvious?”
“You might make the availability of the goods known but leave doubt as to whom they are being offered.”
“Oh, surely that won’t do. Why, any female in London, unmarried and in society, is assumed to be available,” she protested. “We are reared with the express purpose of making ourselves available.”
“Yes, but available for what? That’s the key. True, most any female is available for the honorable estate of marriage. But is she obtainable for anything else? As I see it, it is your task to make a sufficiently vague offer to Lord Stand to pique his interest.” His voice sounded terse to his own ear.
“Strand,” Cat corrected him, her eyes narrowing suspiciously before continuing. “Yes, but how am I to do that?”
“Well, that’s what we’re here to do, isn’t it? Instructions in titillation.”
“Ah, yes. The art of making a man want something…”
“… without being sure he’s going to get it,” Thomas finished.
“I think I see.” She turned from her perusal of the flames, regarding him speculatively. She raised one arm above her head to draw her fingers through her hair in a seemingly unconscious gesture of concentration. Her pose threw her into a sculpted silhouette against the dying fire. He could see the rise and fall of her breath catch and release the light on the soft mounds of her breasts. His throat went dry. She stood thus for a long heartbeat before crossing the room to the sideboard and pouring a glass of sherry.
“Let me see if I can illustrate,” she said, starting towards him. Silently Thomas watched her.
“Let’s say you are a man who would like a drink of sherry.” She considered the wineglass in her hand. “And I have the only glass of sherry around.”
Cat drew a long, elegant forefinger in gentle circles around the rim of the crystal glass. “Let us say you have not had sherry in years. Madeira, ratafia, burgundy? Yes. But not sherry.”
Dipping her finger into the amber fluid, she raised it to her mouth. Her tongue peeked out and slowly licked the moisture from the tip of her finger. A smile of appreciation curved her lips. He watched her in wry admiration, feeling his pulse quicken.
“And now, the sherry is within reach,” she whispered. “But you don’t know its price.”
Rewetting her finger, she slowly took it into her mouth and sucked gently on its tip. He was riveted by her performance.
The silk of her gown rustled and settled over his boots as she leaned so close he could see the blue veins in her breasts, feel the warmth emanating from her, the silken brush of her hair on his face as it swung over him. For a third time her forefinger dipped into the sherry. This time she raised it slowly to his mouth, brushing his lower lip with butterfly lightness. He felt the muscles tighten in his jaw, his cheeks, his chest.
Teasing his lower lip, she stroked the slick inner flesh with languid care. “And now you are tasting that sherry. But is a taste enough? Won’t a sip be more satisfying? Isn’t that what you really want?” Her voice had become a husky caress.
Raising the delicate crystal glass, Cat slowly took a small sip. The liquid shimmered on her lips, the firelight outlining their budding fullness.
She lifted her hand toward him again and he knew with awful certainty that her revenge was complete. His restraint had been pushed to its limits, and while he was no randy young buck lusting after his first maid, the sensation was startling in its intensity. He wanted her. It had been years since he had wanted a woman like this. Simply. Elementally. Without hidden motives.
The little fool did not even know how far she tested him. Like a kitten first unsheathing its claws, she was delighted they had drawn blood, unaware her prey might be dangerous when provoked. He would allow this to go no further. He caught her slender wrist inches from his face. For a second their eyes locked, his in hotness, hers in open triumph. A second later her gaze fell, confused before that heat. He drew in a ragged breath, mastering the desire that had exploded within him.
“Touché,” he congratulated her.
“Truce?” she whispered.
“Truce.”
Chapter 6
Brighton
Cat smiled fondly at her great-aunt, who was snoring softly away from her side of their coach. She looked like an untidy pile of clothes dumped into the corner. The trip to Brighton to procure suitable garb for Cat had been tiring for Hecuba, warr
anting, as it did, lengthy discourses on Sodom, Gomorrah, and Babylon. Conversely, her dire warnings about the road to perdition were littered with clumsily veiled, if pithy suggestions for Cat’s transformation into a temptress until her pose of vigilant suspicion had exhausted her.
“You two go on with your conversation,” she’d said, her eyes fluttering shut. “I shall just meditate a moment on the fate of fallen women. Women who pinch their cheeks to put color into them, moisten their lips with tallow, and don’t wear gloves when dancing.”
In the two weeks since their arrival at Thomas’s home, she’d revealed beneath the facade of religious zeal a still naughty wench with a weakness or two; she fell asleep anywhere, at any time, and she drank like a fish. Hecuba had “fortified” herself for their shopping excursion with liberal amounts of ratafia.
“I begin to suspect that your aunt’s reputation owed less to a natural wantonness than to a proclivity for the vine,” Thomas said. “Tell me, is she often in this state at Bellingcourt?”
“No, most often she’s berating some poor housemaid for her supposed moral laxness. But then, Bellingcourt hasn’t boasted a wine cellar since we moved there.”
“Sometimes these things seem to be hereditary. I suggest that you, m’dear, stay firmly away from the bottle lest you end up giving away your trump card before even playing the hand.”
Cat gave a companionable snort. “Not likely, sir. I shall guard my suspect tendencies till after Strand is firmly delivered to the altar. Then, no doubt, I shall fall into a perpetually disreputable state. Though a properly wedded one.”
“Just so,” Thomas answered with what seemed to Cat a degree of roughness. “But you will never reach that state unless you improve your skills. Now, don’t fly into the boughs, Cat. We’ve dealt well enough together these past weeks. Too well to ruin all the groundwork we’ve laid just so you might teach me another well-deserved lesson.”
It was true. Thomas treated Cat with a fond, if sometimes exasperated, familiarity. It was a course far more comfortable then the scene played out in his library. Cat should have been distinctly relieved. She had no desire to fall again into his dark, burning gaze. Having always prided herself on clear thinking, the not unpleasant but decidedly unfamiliar sense of imminent abandonment had shaken her. This friendship was far better, which made it hard to account for her feeling of dissatisfaction. It was ridiculous, particularly since they got along famously whether laughing over their shared taste in the absurd or discussing the various subjects in which they shared so many interests.
Thomas had become the perfect companion. She was surprised his declaration of truce had been earnest. No other man of her acquaintance, including any of her proud brothers, would have been capable of acknowledging a woman had bested him in a game of seduction. They would have sought to repair their damaged self-image, no matter what the cost. But Thomas was unlike any other man.
He had apparently had some sort of military or diplomatic career after his brief, though brilliant, one as a London rake. He spoke French with an accent indiscernible from the haughtiest Parisian aristocrat’s. He was willing to converse on any topic, from the inflammatory subject of Home Rule to the explicit one of animal husbandry. And he honestly appeared to take pleasure in her opinions and even more pleasure in their disagreements.
Once, after reviewing a treatise on rotating crops in a scientific publication he subscribed to, she had been so excited by the implications that she had hurried out to the field to enlighten him. She had found herself standing beside him, ankle deep in loamy soil, before realizing she was inappropriately dressed in a gauzy morning gown.
Thomas had not seemed to notice. He had listened to her excited litany with an earnest expression before swinging her high up in his great, powerful arms and striding with her back to the house. His embrace had been matter-of-fact though her heart had quickened at the knowledge of his unusual strength, of how carefully his arms held her.
And then there were the “lessons.” Except for that one evening, their adopted roles were strictly as mentor and pupil. The art of seduction, Cat found, was ample ground for amusement when dissected in Thomas’s wry, sardonic manner. Even here, bumping along on the way to the famous modiste, Madame Feille, the lessons continued. Thomas was attempting to teach Cat how to flirt with her eyes.
“The idea, Cat, is to send out covert messages of invitation, not to appear as though a swarm of gnats have just pelted you in the face.”
“I was fluttering my eyelashes.”
“No. You were trying to dislodge a field of sand. All that rapid blinking and squinting. The only man you’ll attract with that behavior is one with an interest in ophthalmology who’ll offer you a salve.”
Cat fixed her mentor with a wicked grin. “Well then, if you’re so expert at it, why don’t you demonstrate?”
In reply, Montrose assumed a mask of weary. “Ungrateful baggage. It is only through a growing desire to see the population of London saved from your flirtatious exhibitions that I proceed with these lessons at all. However remote our connection, I do have family pride to consider, and the thought of you making those grimaces all over the city in an attempt to lure some poor fool to the altar pricks my conceit. To have it come out that we are related, however tangentially, is beyond enduring.”
“I understand, Thomas,” Cat said soberly, her eyes shining. “You wish to foster the notion that our entire extended family is irresistible.”
“Exactly. Now lower your eyes slightly. No. Don’t squint. That’s right. Now look at me without moving your lids. Better. Now, maintain eye contact a second longer than is seemly… No.” He sighed with disgust. “You don’t fix the poor swain with a basilisk stare. You dart a glance at him. Make him aware that your interest is piqued but not set. All right, we’ll continue later. We have arrived.”
Cat straightened, looking out of the coach’s small window. They were near the Steyne in a fashionable side street close to Prinny’s ongoing masterpiece, the Marine Pavilion.
“I do not feel right about this, Thomas.”
“Nonsense. I was, in fact, sincere in my estimation of your wardrobe, Cat. It simply is too ingenuous. Don’t worry, I have no intention of decking you out in wet muslin and red satin.”
“Of course not. I trust your taste in these matters implicitly.”
“How gratifying to know that I have a future as a lady’s maid should the crops fail,” he teased, but her answering smile was still a distracted one.
“I cannot help but feel that I presume too much in having you incur the cost of my clothing. It doesn’t seem… seemly,” she said, her gaze on his rough, outdated garb.
Apparently, Thomas couldn’t afford to purchase himself a simple wardrobe and yet here he was, planning to spend an immense amount on her clothing. She simply couldn’t allow his fields to lay fallow just so she could have an ermine-trimmed cloak or a satin petticoat. Loath to injure his pride, Cat cast about for some excuse he would accept. “Aunt Hecuba would simply convulse if she knew.”
“Aunt Hecuba, I’ll warrant, has a shrewd idea of how matters stand. She has chosen ignorance. I take that as a sign of concurrence. As to the money, I firmly intend to recoup my losses upon your marriage to whatever the confounded fellow’s name is or upon the return of your parent. Consider it by way of a loan.”
“I suppose.” Silently, she vowed she’d repay him with interest once she was a wealthy matron. Thomas would have his fields planted and a new coat. She had to start seeing his expenditures as an investment in not only her family’s future but his own as well. As Thomas handed her from the carriage she said, “And, Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“I am not at all averse to red satin.”
“Witch,” he replied equably.
Cat surveyed herself doubtfully in front of the long mirror. The gown she modeled was a pale green silk worked with deep claret embroidery. It nipped in tight beneath her breasts, falling in sheer folds to her ankles. Delicate pu
ffed sleeves capped her shoulders and the bodice had a high, prim neckline outlined with a simple band of claret beads. On the whole it was tasteful, elegant, nearly severe in the simplicity of its line. From the front. It was only when she turned to survey the back that she caught her breath. Because there was no back. The gown dipped so low it exposed the column of her spine to the waist. It was beyond daring; it was scandalous.
“Are you sure, Thomas?”
He had stretched his giant’s frame out in a ridiculously dainty love seat, causing the abused furniture to protest with an audible groan, a closed expression on his lean countenance.
“Sure of what? That it is as alluring a gown as you’re likely to find? Or that I would have you wear it?” he asked with maddening ambiguity.
“Are you sure I won’t reap the censure of all of London if I appear in public in it?”
“Vain little beast,” he murmured. “I assure you that ‘all of London’ isn’t likely to care what you wear as long as you publicly behave yourself. No, Cat. There are many fashionables clad in a good deal less cloth, displaying a great deal more flesh, who don’t excite the least comment. The appeal of this gown lies in its contradictory nature. So innocent from the front, so wanton from the back. Does the wearer know it is so? Which is she? That is the sort of contradiction that excites the mind, stimulates the jaded interest.” His smile seemed to her thin. “It will do quite well for your designs. We’ll take it.”
He nodded to Madame Feille, the proprietress. Immediately she started to pull the pins from the materials, all the while barking orders to her attendants to fetch other gowns.
Madame Fielle covertly studied the great handsome giant. When he had entered the shop, there had been a few moments she had thought she would have to refuse him entry; he was so clearly not representative of her usual clientele being dressed with fearsome disregard to fashion in dark worsted, white linen, and dull Hessians.
But then Madame Feille had seen the young beauty he escorted and mentally shrugged. She would make a quick sale of a cheap ready-made and this beauty would act as an advertisement all over town. Her assumptions had soon been proven false. The man’s bearing marked him for a nob.
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