Some part of Tremaine—the prudent businessman or possibly the awkward suitor—did not want to join Lady Nita in bed unless and until she’d accepted him as a spouse.
“You are thorough about your campaign, Mr. St. Michael, but I cannot take a house to bed. I cannot, with any hope of enjoyment, kiss a house or hold its hand. I cannot fall asleep with the arms of a house about me, and a house cannot recite Scottish poetry about a shepherd boy’s heart breaking because he’s been banished for loving his shepherd girl.”
The “Broom of the Cowdenknowes.” Earlier in the evening, Tremaine had offered up a simple lament as an antidote to the indecipherable subtlety of old Shakespeare.
Tremaine’s heart would not break were he banished from Lady Nita’s boudoir, which pragmatism was part of why he could offer the lady marriage.
And yet…what she wanted was understandable.
“I can be those things you ask for, Lady Nita. I can be the man who holds you as you sleep, who gives you all the kisses you want, who indulges your appreciation for poetry, and whose hand is always yours to hold.”
Tremaine had Lady Nita’s attention now. The pamphlet lay forgotten in her lap, so Tremaine gathered his courage and leaped. “I can be the man who takes you to bed and indulges your every intimate passion as often and as wantonly as you please.”
* * *
Tremaine St. Michael had traveled the Continent in times of war, he moved nimbly between cultures, rattled off poetry in broad Scots and French, taught letters to children among the ashes, and turned pages for Kirsten as she raced through Scarlatti at the pianoforte.
Such a man commanded hordes and warehouses of aplomb—Nita’s bold proposition had failed utterly to scare him away—and yet something was off.
Nita considered the translation of Paracelsus sitting in her lap and made another grab for logic, reason, common sense, for anything that would keep her from dragging her visitor to her bed.
“How do you know I’m capable of wantonness?” she asked. Nita certainly suffered doubts.
Mr. St. Michael slid from his chair with the ease of a cat hopping to the carpet. He arranged himself before Nita, his arms loosely about her hips.
“Anybody who defies her family as easily as you do, who takes on the worst of winter’s weather, who challenges death itself, has a capacity for considerable passion. Stop diagnosing a simple case of attraction between healthy adults and kiss me.”
He moved closer, close enough that Nita caught a whiff of mint on his breath. She cupped his cheek, finding it shaved smooth. He’d prepared for his campaign while she’d read medical wisdom written hundreds of years ago.
Nita was tempted. Tempted by the flesh-and-blood man before her, tempted by his assurance that passion and pleasure could be hers. She set her pamphlet aside, leaned forward, and touched her lips to Mr. St. Michael’s. His shoulders relaxed, but he did not assume control of the kiss, a point in his favor.
For Nita would allow no man to assume control of her, marriage be damned, attraction be double damned.
“More,” he whispered. “Again.”
As she leaned forward and anchored her hands in his hair, Nita shifted, so Mr. St. Michael knelt between her legs. His arms snugged around her waist, and tension seemed to drain from him.
“I’m not saying yes,” she muttered against his mouth.
His reply was rendered with more kisses, delicate, entreating, fascinating kisses to which Nita most assuredly assented.
And then she wasn’t saying anything. She was kissing him back like a woman who might never have another kiss, who might die, with all her passion spent on other people’s colicky babies and gouty grandparents.
Mr. St. Michael shifted up so he embraced Nita as she sat before the fire. The contours of his body were more evident than in any of their previous encounters, because Nita wore only her nightgown and robe while he wore only breeches, waistcoat, and shirt.
Nita knew the names of the muscles—pectoralis, subclavius, serratus—but she was frantic to learn the feel of them, of him. Without breaking the kiss, Nita went after the buttons of Mr. St. Michael’s waistcoat.
“You will take me to bed,” she said as a button went flying.
“You like giving orders.” He smiled against her mouth and brushed her hands away. “Like being in charge. Maybe this is part of the appeal of the sickroom.”
Nita hated sickrooms. “How can you think of such matters at a time—?”
Mr. St. Michael rose away from Nita and she wanted to roar at him to get back to their kissing, except he yanked his shirttails out of his waistband and hauled his shirt over his head, waistcoat and all.
Firelight turned his skin golden, and the dratted man must have had some sense of the picture he made, half-naked and all gloriously healthy male, dark hair whorling down the midline of his flat belly.
“I think to please you,” he said, extending a hand to Nita.
She regarded that callused, masculine hand, stretched across the marital equivalent of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
“I would not be a biddable wife. I would be headstrong and difficult. I am not very sociable. I do not hold my opinions lightly.”
“You will not hold your vows lightly either,” Mr. St. Michael said, his hand steady. “You would protect our children with your life, and you’d manage easily when I’m traveling for extended periods. You’d enjoy your independence, in fact, and be neither impressed with our wealth nor heedless of it.”
Our wealth. Her independence. Nita loved the sound of that, though as for Mr. St. Michael’s extended travel… Nita’s brothers had traveled. She’d tolerated their absence with an abundance of prayer and activity.
People would still fall ill, suffer injuries, and have babies, regardless of Mr. St. Michael’s traveling. She’d stay busy. Nita put her hand in his and let him draw her to her feet.
“You will give me time to consider your proposal, sir.”
He scooped her up against his chest. “You are magnificently stubborn, which only attracts me more. I will give you something to think about then, besides a few tame kisses.”
Tame kisses?
He settled Nita on the bed, and while she tried to decide if she liked being handled like a sack of flour—albeit a precious sack of flour—Mr. St. Michael toed off his boots and peeled away stockings and breeches.
“We didn’t bank the fire,” Nita said, gaze glued to the middle of his chest. Sternum, rectus abdominis. Do-not-look-down-imus.
Wearing nothing but a smile the likes of which would set every female heart in the shire pounding, Mr. St. Michael crossed the room and took up the poker.
Trapezius, latissimus dorsi, gluteus…
Gluteus God-help-me-us. A giggle threatened, a very pleased giggle as Mr. St. Michael returned to the bed.
“Do you typically wear your robe and stockings under the covers?” Mr. St. Michael asked. His voice was different in the lower light, maybe more French or more Scottish, but definitely less English.
And certainly more naughty. Nita shifted back, swinging her legs into the bed. “I do not. Aren’t you cold, sir?”
Mr. St. Michael took Nita’s foot in his hands and drew her stocking off slowly, so the soft wool caressed her calf, ankle, and arch. Nita gave him her other foot, assailed by the certainty that anatomical labels and stubbornness would not see her through what came next.
“Your robe, my lady?” He folded her stockings on the night table casually, as if women’s clothing were familiar to him—though they were wool stockings.
Nita shrugged out of her robe, an awkward undertaking that involved scooting her hips and rocking from side to side. Mr. St. Michael waited patiently, his nudity a visual lure immediately to Nita’s left.
“My guess is you’ve seen the male body before,” he said, folding the robe across the foot of the bed. “Are these maidenly vapors for my benefit?”
He sauntered around to the other side of the bed, the meager light of the banked fire
revealing only outlines and shadows.
“I’m not a maiden,” Nita said, flipping the covers back so he could join her between the sheets.
He stopped, one knee on the mattress. “Do I have a rival for your hand?”
His tone was merely curious, as if a rival might be an interesting twist to a tricky negotiation, though Nita also had the sense a wrong answer might send him right back into his boots and breeches.
“No rival. You’re not disappointed?” Had she hoped he would be?
He settled on the bed. “We have a word in English to describe a woman without sexual experience—she is a maiden. We have no word for a man in a similar untried state. The general term—virgin—sits awkwardly on the male, and he has no specific term of his own. I’ve found this curious.”
Mr. St. Michael was comfortable sharing a bed, lounging on his side as if he and Nita shared a blanket in a meadow.
“You’re curious about the terminology?” Nita was curious about his anatomy, but also about the passion he’d seen in her—and she sensed in him.
“That too. Come here, please. Some discussions are better undertaken in close quarters.”
Nita scooted under the covers—the room would soon grow chilled—and wished she’d kept a candle lit.
“What are we to discuss, sir?”
He arranged himself around her, so Nita was on her back, Tremaine St. Michael draped along her side.
“Were you disappointed, my lady?”
A lump rose in Nita’s throat, inappropriate, inconvenient, and unwelcome. The question was insightful and quietly tendered.
“I was young. He was a dashing fellow in his regimentals, handsome, charming, and newly down from university. I’d known him most of my life, but he’d gone away a boy and come back a man.”
Or so she’d thought. He’d gone away a boy and come back a scoundrel, in truth.
Mr. St. Michael pulled Nita closer and kissed her cheek. “Did your handsome cavalier have the bad grace to die in service to King and Country?”
Nita turned, tangling her legs with Mr. St. Michael’s. “He did, of dysentery. Disease carried off nearly as many soldiers as enemy fire on the Peninsula, and he was one of the casualties.”
How cozy and comforting to drop her forehead to Mr. St. Michael’s sturdy shoulder and share a regret with somebody who would not judge her for her indiscretion.
“Did his death inspire your campaign against illness and injury?” Mr. St. Michael’s hand settled on Nita’s nape, fingers massaging away tension, regret, and even self-consciousness.
“My mother trained me regarding herbs and nursing. That feels good.” Nita’s mother had also trained her to endure an unrelenting sense of responsibility. Would marriage offer a cure for that affliction or make it worse?
Mr. St. Michael said nothing for a long, sweet moment, while the sheets warmed, and Nita relaxed into the novel comfort of sharing a bed with a man who knew his way around the female body.
“Are you still in love with your young soldier?” Such was Mr. St. Michael’s sophistication that he wouldn’t have begrudged Nita a sprig of willow for a young man long dead.
“You are not as pragmatic and unsentimental as you want the world to think,” Nita said, kissing his shoulder. “I’ve since realized I was not in love with Norton. I was in love with romance, with the notion of my own household, of a place where my brothers weren’t always leaving and my mother’s ill health wasn’t increasingly obvious.”
Norton Nash would have made a very indifferent spouse. Nita had long since admitted that. He’d been shallow, vain, and without higher principles that might have inspired him to make something of himself. Part of her antipathy toward Edward was a result of the same attributes, allowed to flourish in expectation of a baronetcy.
“Gloomy talk,” Mr. St. Michael said, kissing Nita’s temple. “What say we relieve you of this shroud you’re wearing? Conversation will grow more cheerful as a result, I promise.”
This was how he teased, with a bit of a dare in his silliness. Nita hiked up on her elbows and reached beneath the bedclothes for the hem of her nightgown.
“A moment, please,” Mr. St. Michael said. He sat up, cross-legged, beside her, and untied the three bows holding the nightgown closed at Nita’s throat.
“You are very competent with ladies’ attire, Mr. St. Michael.”
“Do you know, when you scold me like that,” he replied, easing Nita’s nightgown over her head, “all vinegar and starch, it makes my cock twitch?”
However he might have ended his sentence, Nita could not have anticipated that. She ducked back under the covers, which had become agreeably toasty.
“You have a hidden streak of naughtiness,” she said. “I like that about you. As for the twitching, a tisane of valerian taken regularly might provide some relief.”
“More starch and vinegar,” he said. “You’re not helping. ‘First do no harm,’ isn’t that the highest canon of a physician? You’re dealing mortal blows to my self-restraint.”
“I’m not a—” Gracious saints. Without clothing, the business of cuddling beneath the blankets was an altogether less innocent undertaking. “You’re very warm, Mr. St. Michael.”
“If you don’t start calling me by my name, I’ll come before I’ve so much as kissed you.”
“But you’ve already kissed—”
He kissed Nita again, silencing her retort, pushing the warm, hair-dusted expanse of his chest against Nita’s breast and arm.
“My name is Tremaine. When I had more family, some of them referred to me as Maine. In spoken English, this likens me to a part of a horse. In French, I’m part of the human anatomy.”
La main, a feminine noun for the hand.
Nita ran her hand over the wondrous texture of his chest. “Are you babbling? I’d like it if you babbled a little.”
“I will sing ‘God Save the King’ in any one of five languages, if you’ll just keep touching me.” A heavily burred growl more than a babble. She liked that even better.
“I’ll enjoy your serenades some other time,” Nita said. “My brothers would kill you did they find you here, and my sisters would never allow me to live down my disgrace.”
“Dammit, Nita, if we’re to be married—”
She drew her fingertip around his nipple lightly, clockwise, counterclockwise. “Interesting.”
“Heaven defend me from an anatomist in siren’s clothing—or lack thereof.”
Tremaine had the ability to make Nita smile with his complaining, also to inspire her. She licked that same nipple and inhaled a hint of heather and flowers.
“Do that again at your peril,” he hissed, making no move to dodge out of licking range.
“Are you threatening me in my own bed, Mr. St—?”
He pinned Nita’s hands above her head, his grip loose but implacable. “You like my naughty streak, may God help you. I didn’t even know I possessed one, sober man of commerce that I am, but I hope you come to adore it.”
His mouth descended on Nita’s breast, a hot, delicate onslaught of sensations that made her want to both squirm and hold very, very still.
“She desists,” he muttered, his tongue moving in a slow circle. “And she tastes of lemon.”
He drew on Nita gently, but that single overture had Nita’s back arching and grip on his hands becoming desperate.
“I like that.” Assuming Mr. St. Michael did not slay Nita utterly with his attentions in the next five minutes, she’d thank Kirsten for the lemon soap. He moved to the second breast, and Nita did squirm.
“Shall I dose you with valerian?” he muttered against her heart.
“Dose me with your kisses, or I’ll scold you for the next hour straight. I have five brothers and three younger sisters. I am a prodigious scold when inspired.”
He left off tormenting Nita’s breasts and loomed over her, his dark hair in considerable disarray.
“For an hour straight?”
Straight, as in th
e hard column of flesh pressing against Nita’s hip. She wiggled a hand free of his grip and shifted, so she had room enough to grasp him. His shaft was surprisingly warm and, from what she could recall, of considerably more generous proportions than Norton had been so proud of.
“You are the boldest lady I’ve ever met.” His tone said he approved of her boldness.
Nita traced the contours of his arousal, from the thatch of down at the base, along the shaft, to the peculiar configuration of the business end.
“Why are you holding your breath, sir?”
He spoke through his teeth. “I’m trying not to spend, you lemon-scented witch.”
“I thought spending was the part men liked best.” Norton certainly had. All three times, he’d assured Nita he wouldn’t, and then… Had he thought she’d not grasped why her handkerchief had been needed while he’d done up his falls?
Mr. St—Tremaine nuzzled Nita’s throat. “I’ll show you the part this man likes best—with your permission.”
Nita let him go, because the time for teasing and giggling had passed. Maybe it had passed years ago, and she’d been too busy delivering babies and brewing tisanes to notice.
“Show me, then,” she said, giving him permission to become her lover.
But not her husband—not yet.
* * *
Tremaine enthusiastically immersed himself in the pleasures of trading in art, Holland bulbs, Italian wines, wool, and livestock. The pleasures of the flesh—when they intruded upon his immediate notice—usually struck him as a needlessly complicated road to comparable satisfaction.
He’d traveled that road many a time nonetheless.
Wooing Lady Nita was complicated indeed, involving pursuit of her intimate favors, appreciation for her tireless mind, and enticement of her trust.
What perplexed Tremaine, as he arranged himself over his intended, was how all that effort added up to fun.
“How long has it been since anybody tickled you, my lady?”
“Your chest hair might be said to be tickling me at this very moment.”
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