by Isobel Carr
Not in the common way.
That was how she’d been described when he’d first met her. It was as true today as it had been then, but for entirely different reasons.
George laughed off her father-in-law’s chastisement, calling back over her shoulder, ‘Pooh! You know Hazard here would never fail me.’
She glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes meeting Dauntry’s, inviting him to share her amusement. But he didn’t seem to. No smile answered. Not even a softening of the eyes. His mouth firmed, the lower lip thinning in disapproval. George turned her attention back to Hazard. She didn’t require Dauntry’s approval, but that look told her a world of things he probably had no idea he’d revealed. If she let him into her bed, gave him the vaguest rights to her body, her time, her person, she’d open the door to being ruled by his dictates.
She reined Hazard in as they approached a thicket and the dogs disappeared into it, letting their annoyance at having lost their quarry be loudly heard. The riders that were left gathered in a knot to watch and wait, steam rising off the horses. Everyone fidgeted in their saddles. Some adjusted their stirrup leathers, others retrieved flasks from pockets and passed them around. Their numbers had fallen off precipitously since they’d set off. Scores had dwindled to dozens.
St Audley swung down from his mount and tapped George on the knee. She kicked her foot free of the stirrup and pulled her leg up so he could check the girth.
‘All right and tight,’ he said, sliding his hand around her booted ankle and guiding her foot back into the stirrup.
George grinned. ‘Don’t trust my groom?’
‘Not at all. What I don’t trust is that saddle of yours.’ He gave Hazard a pat on the rump and swung back into his own saddle. George sucked one cheek in between her teeth, bit down on it lightly, and watched him, still unsure exactly what he was up to. He and Brimstone had both been behaving strangely. Was the attraction between her and Dauntry so obvious? It wasn’t as they weren’t aware of her past lovers; at least in some cases.
A hand, unfashionably large, encased in York tan leather and possessing a large, white handkerchief, appeared before her. She glanced at the snowy white piece of linen, and then over at Dauntry. Laughter worked its way up her throat. She caught her lower lip between her teeth to stop it.
‘Am I a mess?’
‘I wouldn’t go so far as—’
‘Dreadful mess,’ Bennett cut in. ‘Got splatters all over your face, makes you look like you’ve got spots or something.’
George glared at Bennett and accepted the handkerchief. She wiped her face, trying to ignore the fact that the neatly hemmed and monogrammed scrap of linen smelt of wool, tobacco, and bergamot. Of Dauntry. Her pulse sped. Her stomach gave a now familiar lurch as her senses strained towards him.
‘Better?’ she asked, batting her eyes at Bennett in imitation of the actresses at Drury Lane.
‘Not so I can see. Now they’re just sort of smeared.’ Bennett made a vague circular motion in front of his face with one hand.
She wiped again, scrubbing a bit harder. Why, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if any of them looked any different, but she suddenly felt like the two-headed girl who’d been on display in London last year. It was unsettling. Out here it didn’t matter how she looked. Or it never had in the past.
But today was different.
It was Dauntry looking at her with a slow boil behind his eyes. Brimstone treating her like a little girl, and St Audley glowering like someone had snatched the last sticky bun out from under his nose. They were all treating her like a woman, and suddenly she felt out of place.
Damn them.
After one last swipe at her face she returned Dauntry’s handkerchief. ‘Thank you, but I fear I’m beyond repair at the moment—’
She was interrupted by the sounding of the master’s horn, calling the hounds back.
‘They’ve lost him.’ She twisted in the saddle to look over her shoulder at the huntmaster. ‘Just as well. That’s Sweeney Hall just over the rise, so we’re not too far from the Turk’s Head. And I, for one, am starving.’
‘So, Georgie, had your eye out for any aspiring wives for us?’
George raised one brow and stared St Audley down as he took a seat beside her.
‘You should know, Dauntry,’ the viscount continued, ‘that George here picks out all our wives. Or at least is called upon to give tacit approval before we’re allowed to publish the banns.’
‘Audley.’ She gave her friend a stern, meaningful look, eager to defuse whatever confrontation he had in mind. ‘I’m not such a managing female as all that. You’re thinking of Lady Morpeth. She’s always swanning about with some little dab of a girl under her wing.’
George took another bite of the excellent meat pie that had been served up by the Turk’s Head and shook her head at her friend while she chewed and swallowed. Honestly. What was going on with Audley? He’d been shadowing her all day, and the hostility, cloaked in patently false friendliness, which was directed at Dauntry surprised her. She’d never seen the viscount behave like this. He’d even stood outside the door of the room the landlord had provided so she could wash her face. Clearly on guard.
‘I tell one man that the chit he’s just been dancing with is dumber than his spaniel, and I’m a managing matchmaker. Need I remind you that he did ask me what I thought of her? Just you wait,’ she added darkly. ‘When you fasten your attention on some hapless female, you’ll be panting after me to tell you all about her. You know that women know all sorts of things about each other that you could never hope to hear about. Just as you all know things about men that women never hear about.’
‘What sorts of things?’ Dauntry asked, his voice low, intent. George glanced over at him, a little flutter of awareness causing her stomach to turn over. She inhaled sharply and ignored it, even as her lips tingled with the memory of his.
Once. She repeated the word over and over in her head like a charm. Never more than once. And perhaps even that was too much a risk here.
‘Like that poor Mortley is in the basket again,’ she said, ‘though he’s trying to keep it quiet. Hoping the Peabody chit will come up to scratch before she gets wind of it. Or that Lawkes has had yet another chère amie decamp, leaving him with a scathing note attached, one hears, to a bawling brat. I think that makes three—brats, I mean—’
She was interrupted by Audley’s roar of laughter.
‘Where do you get your information?’ the viscount demanded. ‘And I think Dauntry was really fishing for you to let us in on some of the secrets of your sex.’
‘Oh…’ George smiled, trying to decide which bits of gossip to share. ‘You mean like that for all her prim and saintly ways, Miss Lydia Cross was caught in a compromising position with stupid but determined Ned Heath. Or that the notorious Mrs Sheldon is taking an extended trip abroad, not because she’s desolated by her husband’s death, but because she’s pregnant by her footman. Or Lord Jonathan Smythe, or the Prince of Wales. Which one is anyone’s guess.’
‘Unfair, I say,’ the Earl of Morpeth began as he wandered back from the tap, a fresh mug of home brew in his hand.
‘Unfair?’ George cocked her head, amused. ‘Unfair that I’m giving up my own sex, or that I’m doing so without you present?’
‘Both, quite frankly,’ the earl answered. ‘It’s unseemly for you to reveal the feminine mysteries to such unworthy persons as these,’ he added with mock severity, waving his hand at the younger men, flicking Brimstone with a bit of foam as he did so. Gabriel wiped his cheek with this sleeve and reached for his own glass menacingly.
George wrinkled her nose up at the earl, who tut-tutted in what George recognized as a fair imitation of his lady wife. He swallowed his pint in a single gulp, shoved his hat on, crushing the elegant arrangement of curls that made up his wig, and held out one hand imperiously.
‘If you’re finished enlightening the infantry, we should be on our way.’ He cocked his head towards th
e window. ‘It looks like rain.’
Back outside, George couldn’t but agree. Dark clouds were roiling on the horizon, coming on fast like the ranks of an approaching army. They even had their own drum and fife. A flash illuminated the sky in the far distance. Thunder rumbled. Away in the barn a dog barked, shrill and slightly hysterical.
In moments, everyone was mounted and cantering back towards the Court. Wind battered them, ripping hats from their heads, whipping George’s hair into a tangled mass of knots. Occasional spatters of rain accosted them, enough to make the road dangerous, to numb fingers and toes, to occasionally penetrate the bower of the arching oaks which lined the three-mile drive to the house. As they rode beneath the trees, man and beast’s breath fogging with each exhalation, George began to feel larger and more frequent drops.
Lightning crackled overhead, illuminating the cloud-induced gloom in a startling flash. A thunderclap exploded overhead. Behind her someone else’s horse whinnied in protest. George flexed her frozen hands and blew the sodden feather that adorned her hat out of her eyes.
Dauntry was close on her right, spattered in mud, his coat already discoloured at the shoulders, red turning the deeper colour of dried blood as the rain soaked slowly downward.
As they clattered into the open stable yard, the heavens opened in an icy deluge. She shook her head, throwing wet hair back, her teeth beginning to chatter as the heavy rain soaked her to the skin. The yard was awash in running grooms, their shouts mingling with the sharp ring of metal shoes on stone and the deafening boom of thunder that George could feel vibrate through her whole body.
A groom took hold of Hazard’s bridle, causing him to shy slightly. George kicked herself free from stirrup and horn and turned to find Dauntry standing silently beside her. Rain sheeted down, as though they stood below a waterfall. His hands rose, waiting.
Her chest seized as his hands closed around her waist. He lifted her from the saddle, guided her down to her feet. His strength—in his arms, in his body—was clearly on display. He didn’t allow her to fall, prey to gravity, or even to slide. He was in perfect control. As though she weighed no more than a child.
Dauntry’s eyes met hers, storm-dark, pupils indistinguishable. He blinked, dashing rain from his eyes. Droplets spilling from his lashes. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t move.
Hazard bumped her as the groom led him away, knocking her into Dauntry. With a crack of laughter she spun and ran for the house. She was halfway up the second flight of servants’ stairs when Dauntry caught her. A hand latched onto her skirts, the sound of threads popping loud as the thunder outside. He took one last step, till he was even with her on the stairs, and held her pinned there.
George pressed herself back against the wall, overwhelmingly crowded in the narrow stairwell. Her wet skirts clung to her legs, weighing her down. Water flowed off them, rivulets becoming a stream as they joined and rushed down the stairs.
Dauntry was every bit as wet. His shirt and cravat were more than wilted. They drooped, revealing the strong column of his neck, the cluster of large freckles normally hidden there, like the secret birthmark of a fairy-tale prince.
George pushed back farther, denying the urge to lean in, set her lips to his bare throat. To leave her own brand there. Her own secret mark.
He let go of her skirts. Raised the hand that held her in place to brush the drooping feathers out of her eyes. He followed the line of her head, sliding his hand around to cup her nape. Held her securely, softly, as though she were fragile.
His lips captured hers in a kiss equally as gentle. Lips moulding to hers. Hot tongue easing apart her cold lips, questing inside for a response. His hand curled into her hair and the other slid up her rib cage to cup her breast, his thumb finding her nipple through layers of clinging wool and binding stays. It slid back and forth, sending jolt after jolt of pure need to lodge in her belly, to make her thighs strain, and the secret place between her legs throb.
His head tilted as he slanted his mouth over hers. She opened her own, tongue meeting his with all the fervour of desire denied, fobbed off, and ignored until it rises up like a swollen river and sweeps everything out of its way.
The sound of feet rushing up the lower stairs broke them apart. Brought her down with a lurch. George ducked under Dauntry’s arm and fled up the stairs.
Could she really settle for having him only once? And if she couldn’t, where would that leave her?
Safe in her room, she rang the bell for her maid and began to struggle out of her sopping clothes while she waited for the girl to appear. Wet wool pooled on the floor. Her hat appeared to melt into her dressing table. She stood in shift and stays, boots still on, unable to undress any further without assistance.
Her mastiff raised his head from where he lounged on her bed, his immense bulk taking up most of the available space.
‘’lo, Caesar. How’s my boy?’
His tail thumped, like a fist punching the bedding, but he didn’t move to join her by the fire. Lazy beast.
George combed her fingers through her hair, pulling at tangles, scattering hair pins onto the carpet. Even after a drenching, her hair smelt of horse, and she knew she had a fresh layer of mud on her face.
She rubbed at a streak of mud on her hand, then chuckled as her maid arrived and she was stripped and bundled into a warm, quilted wrapper. Quite a pretty state for seduction, soaking wet and muddied to the brow. She put her hands out towards the fire and waited for the bath to be filled.
The hot water stung—nearly unbearable against frozen toes and fingers—as she climbed into the great marble tub in the adjoining room. It engulfed her in relaxing warmth as she sank below the waters, grateful for the current earl’s renovations which allowed such easy luxury. There was simply something sensual, almost sexual, about being immersed in hot water, especially in a tub big enough for two.
George ran a soapy sponge over her breasts, down her belly. What was the worst that could have happened if she’d invited Dauntry to join her? If it were Dauntry’s hand holding the sponge as it moved across her skin…George tossed the sponge away and sank below the water, rinsing her hair. That was not a safe fantasy.
She scrubbed the scent of horse out of her hair with jasmine soap and soaked until the water became tepid. Once out, her maid helped to dry her with towels warmed by the fire, then assisted her back into her wrapper. The slide of heavy silk felt wonderful against clean damp skin.
There was nothing planned for the rest of the day. The other guests were likely downstairs playing billiards, or attempting to cheat one another at cards.
Whatever they were up to, she wasn’t in the mood for it. So she simply sat in her window seat while her hair dried, absently reading a novel, watching the gardeners prepare the flowerbeds for winter. Running that surprising kiss over and over in her head.
It had been a long time since a man had truly surprised her. And this one inspired a need no other man ever had. Not even her husband had been able to make her flush with desire with no more than a softening of the eyes. She winced at the disloyalty of the thought, true as it was.
Finally the dinner bell rang. She shook off her daydreams and got up to change, choosing a gown of bronze tobine with an extremely low neckline. Tonight she’d leave the fichu off. Nothing but a sea of skin above the fly fringe edging of the bodice that barely concealed her areolas.
It would do perfectly.
Once she’d changed and allowed her maid to rearrange her now clean curls, she made her way down the hall to join the others.
She’d been placed in her usual suite of rooms on the first floor, at the end of the long gallery that housed the family portraits. On her way down the long hall she paused in front of the painting of Lyon and his older brother, Sydney, Viscount Layton, done when they were both in their teens. She’d teased them both unmercifully when their mother had proudly displayed it for the first time.
The brothers didn’t look all that much alike, for which she was pro
foundly grateful. She didn’t think she could stand to be constantly confronted with a living, breathing copy of Lyon. He might not have inspired the same wanton heat that Dauntry did, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t loved him. He’d been the boy all her childhood fancies had rested upon. A love like that was special, not something to be found twice in a lifetime. Hell, most of the world failed to find it even the once.
Sydney was a harmonious blend of his parents: his father’s sandy hair, his mother’s brown eyes, his profile clearly bearing the rather aquiline stamp of his mother’s family. Lyon, with his white-blond hair and his patrician nose, had been his paternal grandfather reborn.
George paused before old Simon Exley’s portrait, too. He’d sat for it at the height of his strength and power. His wig tumbled magnificently over his shoulders, past lavish embroidery and a fortune in lace. Here she could see the Lyon that could have been, should have been.
Tonight she simply stared up at the painting. A sudden constriction in her chest—a painful hollowness, like a bubble was forming inside her lungs—prevented her from drawing a full breath.
She wasn’t supposed to have to contend with romances and intrigues at her age. She was six-and-twenty, for pity’s sake! She was supposed to be living contentedly at Malvern Abbey with a bevy of rambunctious children and a doting, besotted husband. Instead, she was left with his doting family and a house in town constantly awash with rambunctious gentlemen and town beaux of every stamp.
She’d become one of the dowagers without ever having noticed. God, how had she come to this?
She frowned, pinching the bridge of her nose, blinking back tears. Disgusted with the morbid train of her thoughts, George turned away from the portraits and hurried down the hall.
With an ocean of wood, silver, and china between him and George, not to mention a large and extremely ugly epergne which almost entirely blocked his view of her, Ivo struggled to eat his dinner, to give the semblance of participating in the conversation taking place around him. Mostly he made do with monosyllabic replies and appropriately placed ‘Hmms.’
