He took her coffee, drained it, and set it down. “How long before it takes effect?”
Magdalene burst into laughter. “Oh, Daunt. You do amuse me.”
They went back to work shortly after that. At two o’clock, he looked over and saw Magdalene on a ladder, her forehead pressed against the books. He coughed loudly, and she came awake or out of whatever reverie had engaged her.
He descended his own ladder and walked to her, hand extended. “My dear. Perhaps it’s time we retired for the night.”
She looked down at him and blinked several times. He held his breath, for he saw quite clearly that she had momentarily mistaken his words for an invitation to retire together in the improper sense. He stayed as he was, hand extended, perfectly willing to have that misunderstanding in play.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
He assisted her to the floor and briefly enfolded her in his arms. “It does us no good to work until we are stupid with sleep.”
She laid her cheek on his shoulder. “When even coffee cannot refresh us, it’s clear that what we require is a potion to keep us awake and alert.”
“Without De Motibus, sleep must be our remedy.”
She took a step back. “As ever, you are correct. If only coffee were a more perfect potion. I am exhausted at the same time I am absolutely wide awake.”
“I won’t have you falling off a ladder. You might break your neck.”
The blue ribbon threaded through her hair caught the light from a nearby sconce. Daunt found himself once again in that peculiar space between all that he knew about seducing a woman he wanted as a lover and his inexperience with courting. He almost wished he did have a potion to relieve him of his misery.
He held out his arm. “I’ll see you safely to your room.”
Chapter Eight
‡
Magdalene put her hand on Daunt’s arm and allowed him to lead her along the corridor, leaving behind a locked door and the servants engaged to guard the library, one inside, two outside the door, and another three patrolling outdoors. At the top of the stairs, she glanced in the direction of the main section of the house and said, “I do believe your first Accession Day is a success.”
Daunt said, “Only if at least three people are asleep in one of the card rooms or dining rooms.”
“Does that happen often? People falling asleep here?”
“If you serve copious food and liquor and provide sufficient and diverse entertainment, someone is bound to be snoring in a corner somewhere. Shall we have a look?”
She nodded, because there, unlike at the ball, there was no one but them present. Daunt led her down the corridor that would take them to the main section of the house. He poked his head into one of the smaller parlors before the front one. In here, several tables had been used for various card games. On another table were two pairs of dice and a cup. A second cup had fallen on the floor. A chess game abandoned with white set to checkmate in five was on a table near the fireplace. In the back of the room stood a roulette wheel, and there a portly gentleman snored into the pillow of his folded arms. Chips and markers were scattered everywhere.
“You see?” Daunt said as they withdrew. They found two more gentlemen asleep in another parlor, one facedown on a sofa, the other underneath a table. “That’s three.”
“By your criteria, we must pronounce Accession Day a resounding success. But I must ask, was there any doubt?”
Daunt shook his head. “Always.”
The sincerity of his response struck to her soul. Daunt uncertain of his abilities or worried that he might not meet his father’s high standards was entirely new to her. “I had no doubt. I do mean that.”
“It’s kind of you to say so.” He said this with a smile that set off another flock of butterflies.
Their friendship did have a new shape, and it behooved her to discover what that meant for the two of them. In the previous version of their friendship, there had never been this sort of intimacy, nor the potential for it.
He had done so much for her. So much. Now she had the opportunity, perhaps, to be of some assistance to him. More than anything, she did not want him to be unhappy, and it seemed to her that he was. She stopped walking and clasped her hands behind her back to prevent herself from brushing his hair off his forehead. “Your father was a great and terrible man.”
“I am aware.”
“You are not him. You are kind and generous. Your soul blazes with all that is good and decent.” Every word she said was true. Every word felt to her as if she was discovering this truth only now. She had known without knowing that Harry Fordyce had been her friend. Not a friend because she had been married to Angus, but a friend in truth. If she stayed here, looking at him, she would cry, and he would expect an explanation for her tears, and all she had was this bundle of tension in her chest that she did not understand.
She took his arm again, and they ended up, she had no idea how, in the music room. Habit, perhaps, given that she had spent so much time here when she’d been nursing his father in his final days.
They separated, and for some time she felt the previous Lord Daunt’s presence so strongly, the tension in her resolved to the frustration and resentment that his caustic temperament inevitably had caused.
Daunt walked past the harp, a hand extended so that his finger sent a muffled, plaintive series of notes floating into the air. She stayed where she was as her emotions dissolved and reformed. She was grateful to have his friendship. He understood her, with all her flaws and oddities. He reached the piano and slid two fingers along the polished top. In this moment, he looked a good deal like his father. At rest, he had his father’s stern beauty.
“A beautiful instrument, no?” he said softly.
“It is, my lord.” The house was quiet; there was only the faint sound of the wind moving the shutters and the occasional settling of timbers. Like his late father, Daunt was a man of considerable presence. Doubtless he’d age just as beautifully, though, it was to be hoped, with a good deal more of his generosity intact. She imagined his hair turned from walnut to snow, nearly as thick as it was now with him in his prime.
She had the oddest sensation of a new kind of loss, a future sadness over what would not be. Would she be near when Daunt was old? Would their friendship still thrive in the coming years? Whatever the answer, his future wife would be by his side, for it was inevitable that he would find a woman who returned his love, maybe even the woman he loved in such secret.
She too ran her finger along the top of the pianoforte. She wondered at the identity of Daunt’s love. She must be from London, a woman of the nobility, no doubt. “I wish we had a piano as fine as this at Plumwood.”
“I’ll send you this one.”
“Oh, heavens, no. You absolutely may not.”
“No one here plays half as well as you.”
“That’s not so.”
He gave her a look, and again she was completely off kilter. “Come play whenever you like.”
She pushed his arm. “Don’t be so awful.”
“You smiled.” He sat on the bench and held out his hand to her. She sat beside him and flipped through the music that had been left out.
“I happen to know you play beautifully.” She ignored the butterflies in her stomach at the two of them sitting so close. Apparently, the old saws about lonely widows were true. She was lonely. She did miss the companionship of marriage, and now she was nostalgic over a possible future in which she and Daunt were more than friends.
He placed his fingers on the keys and played a chord. “Thank you.”
The feelings were there, undeniable, unwelcome, and inappropriate. Not just that; they were inconvenient. He was in love with someone else. Whoever this woman was, he loved her with a rare passion.
“Before your father was too weak to be moved from his room, the servants would bring him here, and I’d play for him.” She glanced at him and saw his surprise. “I don’t suppose I ought to be surprise
d he did not tell you.”
“Nor did you in your letters.”
“I’m sure I did. I told you I was calling on him.”
“Yes, you did write that.”
“Toward the end, he lost his sight. It soothed him to listen to me play.”
“It was kind of you to visit him at all, let alone give him a private concert. He was not the easiest of men to like.”
She placed her hands on the keys and pressed one so gently there was but a whisper of sound. “I did not mind.”
“I was greatly relieved when I received your letter. I feared I would not arrive home in time, and I thought, thank God, Magdalene is there. She’ll manage everything.” He played another chord, and she played one on her side, answering his melancholy tone with a lighter trill from a tune popular with children.
“I did not recognize the servants when we arrived here,” she said. “Everyone I knew from your father’s days is gone.”
“After decades of service to the family, they deserved a pension.” He played two notes with thumb and forefinger, middle C and E. “He was not the kindest of employers.”
“No.” This was quite true.
“Gomes has been in my employ for some years now.” His voice was mellow, low and velvet-edged. “I’ve often thought he and my father would have got along.” Daunt removed his hands from the keyboard. His shoulder brushed hers. “Curmudgeons the both of them, through and through.”
“What shall we play?” She played a scale and then another, limbering her fingers. Better to concentrate on music than Daunt. Her state of mind just now was not conducive to being a good friend to him.
“Do you require sheet music?” His voice returned to that soft, silky tone. Lord, his voice alone was a tool of seduction, more effective than any potion.
“Let’s improvise.” She played another scale, and Daunt, who knew the game from so many evenings at Plumwood, played a complementary series of notes. “Variation on this. What do you say?”
For several minutes, they played four-handed, and it was just as delightful as it had always been. He was an inventive musician who followed her lead, and they were soon breathless with laughter and the exertion of overplaying all the motions.
As one, they stood, she slid her arms under his to take over his side of the piano, and she ducked while he lifted himself up, and they switched sides. Their concert ended on a series of trills and chords and him singing nonsense words.
“Oh, that was great fun.,” she said when she had her breath back. “I’m so glad we played.”
Daunt leaned an elbow atop the instrument and put his chin on his palm. He regarded her serenely. He was very good at disguising his thoughts, a fact that made it difficult to know whether he was at ease or pretending to be at ease. “Play something you enjoy. I’d love to hear you.” He laid a hand over hers. “You needn’t, if it pains you.”
“No. I don’t mind.” She chose a passage designed to challenge her fingers and her heart. Music Angus had loved to hear. “Something to lull us to sleep,” she said.
When she finished, Daunt said, “I might just lay my head down here.”
“Or you could sleep on the floor like that other poor man.”
“The servants will get him upstairs, never fear.”
For nearly ten years, she had lived happily as the wife of Angus Carter. Content and happy and in love. Daunt had been her friend, and they had got along famously. She appreciated his fine mind, his humor, and, if she were honest, his good looks. But now that she was a widow of nearly two years, there was a hole in the boundaries of their friendship, and she was passionately in fear of doing something that would upend the delicate balance of whatever their friendship was turning into.
She played Haydn, then Bach. Several times, Daunt let his head roll back, whether his eyes were open to gaze at the heavens painted on the ceiling overhead, she did not know. She had slipped into a state where there was no distinguishing between herself, the instrument, and the music. Notes, and tones, and themes, and all the beauty to be called forth came from her soul to translate with the touch of her fingers.
When, at last, she had come to the point when her hands must be still, she looked at Daunt and said, “Tomorrow is two years to the day since Angus left me.”
Quiet lay upon the room like a shroud, and her heart shrank when she understood she’d said something wrong. She often did, but not with Daunt, and now she had.
He put a hand to the side of her face and left it there. “Magdalene. Dearest. Your grief pains me.”
She could not look away, and she got trapped in Daunt’s eyes, and the moment became inappropriate, and it continued with her loneliness and her regard for Daunt, and their friendship right here, in this very moment, hung in the balance. She leaned away. “Forgive me.” She shook her head. “Forgive me.”
His hand stayed on her cheek, warm and intimate, and her longing to be touched sprang back to life. “The only thing I shan’t forgive is you not doing what you’d like.”
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted the comfort of touch and the shivering anticipation of intimacy. But she did not dare.
He did, though. He dared.
Chapter Nine
‡
Daunt’s kiss was every bit as expert as she’d imagined. His lips were soft, but the pressure of his mouth was firm, cajoling rather than insistent, which she found charming and stirring both. She’d been married, for heaven’s sake, none of this was new to her, but Daunt’s reputation for mastery in the art of seduction made her worry he would find her deficient. She was not the woman he’d secretly loved for so many years. She could never measure up to that paragon.
He was so different from Angus, many years younger, of course, and, well, he was Daunt. His arms tightened around her. Lord, but his kisses were stupefying. Her body responded wholeheartedly. She was used to Angus, and Daunt was taller and broader through the shoulders, and everything was different. Her entire life was changed without Angus. He’d taken her heart with him, yet here she was in another man’s arms and glad to be feeling alive.
He pressed one hand to the side of her throat. His fingers curled up and around to the back of her head. She relaxed against him and granted space to the desire snaking through her. The heaviness in her breasts, the aching need to be touched there, the shivery damp between her legs, all that she’d thought she’d lost when Angus died.
Daunt’s tongue moved into her mouth, and she responded, oh, how she responded. In kind, and from there, she lost her ability to do much besides react and marvel at the discovery that it was possible to feel like this again. His hand on the side of her throat stayed there, but there was just the slightest pressure. Bringing her forward, toward him.
Then he moved his other hand to the side of her face, and the most astonishing need continued to build in her. What was left of her wits whispered a warning not to make more of this than was warranted. He was a rake, and very good at it, a master of seduction, and it was too easy to mistake physical longing for something else.
He drew back, eyes closed, head tilted back. She ran a finger along the curve of his lower lip as she studied his face, so familiar to her, yet not at all. She brushed her finger along the line of his cheek. “Look at you. Such a lovely man.”
He turned his head and nipped at her finger.
“Please don’t apologize or say it was a mistake,” she said. “Even if you think it was.”
He ran his hands down her back all the way to her bottom, and her head filled with images of him naked—her admittedly fevered state supplied an astounding level of detail. “I do not kiss indiscriminately or without intention.”
“Never?”
His eyes darkened. “In my wild youth, yes.” He shook his head. “I wish Angus had shared less about me on that point. My youth is firmly behind me.”
“He made the remark in passing.”
“I wish I had spent more time with you and Angus.”
“You would have bee
n welcome, you know that.”
“I know.” After several seconds, he said, “There are reasons I did not.”
“Oh?”
“Another time,” he said, still holding her close. “I’ll tell you another time.”
“It’s not as though I could not guess that ladies find you attractive and long to be in your embrace.”
“Do you? Long to be in my embrace?” Her stomach swooped away. He did know how this was done.
“Yes,” she said, because it was true.
“I am relieved,” he murmured. He bent his head and kissed the top of her shoulder, and that rocked her to her core.
His focus returned to her, and she melted against him. She didn’t care about tomorrow. As to the distant future when they were old and gray, well, she would have this memory to sustain her. “Kiss me again, please.”
He released her bottom and returned to kissing her, and she responded. Angus was gone, he was gone, she would give anything if he weren’t, but she wanted Daunt’s kisses. She wanted his arms around her, the warmth of his body, the shiver of increasing arousal. She’d been dead inside for too long, and he reminded her there was more than grief in her world. Being here, looking for the Dukes with him, had shown her that.
Presently, he leaned back. He toyed with the trim at the bodice of her gown. “I am between mistresses, by the way.”
“Am I to commend your abstinence or inquire whether the position is open?”
He kissed her on the mouth once, quickly. “You keep me honest.”
“Well, which is it?”
“Neither of us is an innocent. We are here in the midst of Accession Day at Vaincourt, the home of the Viscounts Daunt, where, I can assure you, all sorts of connections are made.”
“Do you mean to offer me the position on a temporary basis?”
How to Find a Duke in Ten Days Page 28
