‘Yes, but not all of them have stamen that are so blatantly displayed. Take this delicate pink blossom over here. The stamen is neatly shielded by the petals closing around it. But not this fellow.’ He gestured back to the iris. ‘He’s a bold one, sticking straight out from the flat bowl of the blossom, tall and proud for all to see.’
‘Flowers are hardly sexual beings, Mr D’Arcy.’
‘You don’t think so? I must respectfully disagree. They are perhaps the most sexual, most promiscuous...’ he stopped here to arch a dark brow her direction, emphasising promiscuous ‘...creatures in the living kingdoms. Think about it—they pollinate and cross-pollinate with multiple different partners every day, all for the purpose of casting their errant seeds to the wind with nary a care for where they land.’
Social protocol demanded she put a stop to such ridiculous conversation, but she could not bring herself to do it. He had the most pleasant of voices, a sibilant tenor that caressed each word, creating decadent images with his sentences. If he could turn her legs to jelly with talk of botany of all things, chances were rather good that this voice of his could make any subject seductive. Still, she should try to maintain a civil face to their interactions. ‘Mr D’Arcy, this is hardly a decent subject for discussion.’
‘I insist again that you call me Nicholas,’ he chided her gently. ‘And to be blunt, you didn’t invite me here to be decent.’
It was a well-timed comment. There was no better opportunity to bring up the nature of their association. They’d begun walking again, leaving the phallic iris and the flower garden behind. They were further from the house now, wandering down a tree-lined alley towards a roman folly in the distance. Their privacy was complete. For a moment it crossed her mind he’d manoeuvred the conversation in that direction on purpose.
‘No, Nicholas, I didn’t bring you here to be decent. But neither did I bring you here to indulge in a sinful gluttony of an orgy either.’ This was where her directness ran out. She was no retiring wallflower afraid to speak her own mind. She’d charted her own course in life thus far, but this was new conversational territory. She’d never once expressed such feelings, such desires to anyone before, let alone a handsome man who stared at her with the full attention of his eyes.
Of course she had his full attention! She gave herself a stern admonishment. This was his job. She should be worried if she didn’t have it.
‘I understand,’ Nicholas answered solemnly, covering her hand in a comforting gesture where it lay on his arm. ‘What have you told the servants?’
‘I’ve put it about that you are here to assess my library collection. It’s quite extensive and it hasn’t been catalogued since my grandfather had it done half a century ago.’
The grin he flashed filled her with satisfaction. She’d thought long and hard about the ruse she’d use to welcome a visiting male into her household. ‘Very nice, Annorah. You painted me with the sheen of a scholar, a bookish sort, which will certainly allay suspicions that I have ulterior motives for your person. You’ve given me a project that requires me to closet myself away with you daily and, best of all, you’ve given me the perfect reason to be seen escorting you about the countryside. No one would expect you to keep your guest all to yourself.’ He winked. ‘I know how country folk work; a newcomer is cause for excitement and must be shared.’
Annorah felt herself blush under his praise. They turned away from the folly and headed back towards the house while he continued.
‘As for us, Annorah, we will not speak of such arrangements again. You and I are to dedicate ourselves to becoming friends. We cannot be bothered with anything as base as a business transaction.’ He wrinkled his nose in a show of humorous distaste that made her laugh.
‘All that aside, though, we must be serious for a moment.’ He turned and faced her, bringing them to a full stop, the house in view over his shoulder, a reminder that when they returned to it the ruse would begin in truth. The point of no return began at the garden’s edge and her body trembled with the knowledge of it.
He took both her hands in his, his grip warm and strong, his gaze sincere. ‘We are about to embark on a wondrous and intimate journey together, Annorah Price-Ellis. I am honoured to share that journey with you. It will change us both. You have no doubt given it much thought, but I must ask one last time—are you ready? Is this what you truly want? You’re not forced to it in any way either implied or explicit?’
This must be what it’s like to stand at the altar and look up into the eyes of the man you love, knowing he feels the same. The thought had come to her out of nowhere and without reason. She knew logically he must be compelled to ask for one last show of consent. She knew, too, that there was nothing about love or marriage or altars behind his request. But that knowledge did nothing to dispel the impression they were taking vows of a sort, pledging themselves to one another, even if only for a short time. After tonight, he would always belong to her, always be with her in a way no other person would. For the rest of her life, she would carry a piece of Nicholas D’Arcy in her soul, as her first and perhaps only true lover.
Annorah nodded, her voice quiet in the still of a summer’s late afternoon. ‘I am ready.’
Nicholas raised her hands to his lips. ‘I am, too.’ He gave her a reassuring smile. Perhaps he’d heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Rest assured, Annorah, I know exactly what you want.’
Chapter Three
She wanted the wedding night, the honeymoon; the pleasure of lovers learning one another for the first time, savouring one another in both body and mind. It was one of the more difficult scenarios to enact. The trick was to create an intimacy that went beyond the physical without exposing oneself to feelings. He dealt in sex, not intimacy, by preference.
Up in his room, Nicholas opened his valise, the one piece of luggage he’d not let the footman assigned to act as his valet unpack. Nicholas surveyed the tools of his trade with a contemplative sigh, laying them out on the dressing table in his room like a surgeon preparing his scalpels and saws: the tiny glass vials of scented oils, the expensive imported sheaths from France made of thinnest lambskin, the silk ribbons, the soft feathers. Often, he used them as much for him as his clients. All were designed with one goal in mind: physical pleasure. They were his insurance that he could please even when he wasn’t all that interested in a woman. With the right woman, though, they could be extraordinary.
There was no question of delivering the physical adventure Annorah sought. The other, the sharing of a mind, would be more difficult. He was a guarded person by nature. Drawing others out had been an early acquired skill of his. It had served double duty as a means of learning others and as a means of protecting himself. When people were busy talking about themselves, they had little time to wonder about him.
Nicholas tucked the items into a bureau drawer, carefully hidden among cravats. Librarians did not carry feathers and ribbons with them. He smiled. A librarian? That was a new one. He’d pretended to be a lot of things before, whatever his clients needed. In the process, he’d become an adept chameleon. In this line of work, a person did a lot of pretending, which wasn’t all bad especially when the fantasy was better than a reality full of debt and worry and even guilt.
There was no place for those feelings here. He pushed those thoughts away and shut the clasp firmly. His mental efforts would be better spent planning his strategy. He would not need these tools this evening. She was not ready in spite of her words to the contrary.
He’d sensed her nervousness from the start, as if she couldn’t believe someone had actually answered her letter. He’d touched her immediately and often after that, bowing over her hand with a kiss, keeping a hand on her at all times as they strolled. She’d been skittish and he’d feared she might change her mind, a prospect he could not afford now that the money had been mentally allocated in his mind by the time he left London
.
He understood full well the power of touch to ensure acceptance. In his experience, people were far more likely to do what he wanted if he touched them while asking. By the time they’d returned to the house and he’d garnered her pledge, she’d started to thaw.
Not that she was cold or that she wasn’t pleasantly disposed towards him. He’d seen the race of her pulse when she’d sighted him in the hall. He’d noted the blush on her cheeks in the garden when they’d discussed the iris. She knew very well the way of things. But the codes of decency had been drilled into her head over the years and, as much as she wanted to cast them off ever so briefly, it was proving to be more difficult than she’d likely anticipated. Well, he could certainly help her with that. What he really wanted to know was why? Why had she written the letter?
Nicholas moved to the bed and stretched out his long form, tucking his hands behind his head. He had two hours before dinner and he needed to use them to think. He mapped the evening in his head like a general before battle. Tonight’s arena would be the dinner table. That was easy enough. There were myriad ways to stroke the stem of a goblet, to cup its bowl, to eat one’s food and drink one’s wine that stimulated sexual interest, all the while talking, drawing her out, getting her to relax, to think of him more as a man than a machine who’d been sent to fulfil a need.
His goal tonight was twofold. For her sake, he wanted to dispel any sense of artifice about their association. For his, he wanted to figure out what had driven Annorah to write such a letter. More than that, why had such a letter even been necessary?
A request of this nature was not made idly. He thought of the pistols packed in his bags and ran through the usual reasons. Was this an act of revenge on her part? Would there be people who would resent her decision? It would not be the first time a woman had tried to avoid an unwanted marriage in this way. These arrangements were seldom straightforward.
The letter itself had been unremarkable. He’d studied it line by meagre line on the way here. There had been little to offer in the way of clues. The line about enjoying the countryside had made him laugh at the irony. The word quiet was a bit more insightful. What did it signify? Was she a recluse? Did she actually prefer the solitude of the country, unimaginable as such a concept was? Simple deduction made that an easy scenario to discard. It was hard to imagine a recluse, someone who deliberately shunned the company of others, requiring a conversationalist. Upon arrival, he’d been proven correct. He had to discard that notion even if the logic hadn’t fallen short. She might have been nervous, but she wasn’t a recluse.
Nick considered another option. Had she been forced into seclusion? Was she someone who had been abandoned to anonymity? Someone craving human contact? Perhaps that was too extreme. Sussex was hardly the ends of the earth. It was a mere five hours from London. Surely a woman with a thousand pounds to spend on five nights of pleasure could afford to come to London if she so chose.
That was the other thing that niggled. Motive. London had its own plans for women possessed of a fortune. It was called the Marriage Mart and it would certainly resolve any penchant for intimacy by providing an heiress with a husband; especially London in June. The city was teeming with men looking for money and marriage. It called to mind the line from the Austen novel his female acquaintances were so fond of: ‘A single man in possession of a good fortune must also be in want of a wife’, or something like that. In this case, a woman in possession of a fortune was an odd thing indeed without a husband.
If she was not naturally reclusive or forced to seclusion, that left option three: she was in the country by choice. Of all the scenarios, this was the most mysterious. Why would anyone choose the countryside if they didn’t have to? Why would someone choose to engage in paid intimacies with a stranger when a potential marriage awaited just five hours down the road?
There were only so many reasons a rich woman would refuse London and none of them was good, especially when the major reason would have been looks and that was clearly not the case with Annorah. He could rule that out.
Ugly would have been a problem for him. It was a selfish, petty wish, he knew, but he was used to beautiful. Most of the women who could afford him hadn’t been ugly. They’d merely been curious about what should have been theirs by right of marriage, something a conscientious husband should have provided Fortunately, Annorah Price-Ellis had turned out to be attractive with a quiet, understated beauty. She’d drawn his eye immediately, a splash of colour amid the elegant austerity of the entry hall.
She had struck him as a nature goddess when they’d strolled in the garden. He’d used the time to take in her features: the soft curve of cheek giving her face a delicate cast, the sharp mossy green of her eyes, reminiscent of a rich field of summer grass, and the wheat blonde of her hair, which argued to be the colour of wild honey when wet, a hypothesis he wouldn’t mind testing. There’d been curves, too, beneath the muslin with long legs, narrow waist and a high, full bosom. No, Annorah Price-Ellis was definitely not a hag. Which only furthered the mystery. How did a lovely, rich woman arrive at this point?
There was only one way to find out. Nicholas rang for the valet. It was time to dress for dinner and tonight he wanted to give his toilette thorough consideration. The man assigned to him was a young fellow named Peter, who had some talent for the job, if not experience. If the valet thought it was odd for a librarian to linger over his toilette, then so be it. In the end, the two of them turned him out quite finely in a dark evening suit, paisley waistcoat of rich lavenders and blues and a well-tied osbaldeston knot in his cravat that had taken only two tries.
Nicholas dismissed Peter and took a final look in the mirror, checking to see that the diamond stick pin in his cravat was exposed enough to catch the light, that his coat was smooth across the shoulders, that his hair was neatly tied back with a subtle black ribbon. Longer hair might not be the trend preferred by society in the ballrooms, but it was amazing how many women loved it in the bedrooms.
Satisfied with his appearance, Nicholas closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Let the seduction begin. No matter what ghosts the country raised against him, he could do this. He would make love to Miss Price-Ellis as if everything depended on it. Because it did.
* * *
He was waiting for her in the drawing room, having followed the gentleman’s dictate that no lady should have to remain alone in anxious anticipation for a guest’s arrival. He was casually posed, elegantly dressed, the dark evening clothes a marked contrast to the white of the marble. A pre-prandial drink, partially consumed, dangled negligently in one hand, his gaze fixed on the windows and the display of green gardens beyond. He turned at the sound of her entrance, the quiet click of her low-heeled slippers and the soft whisper of skirts giving her away.
‘You have a lovely home. I was just admiring the view.’ The hand holding the glass gestured towards the long windows to indicate the gardens, but his eyes held hers, suggesting he was appreciating another view entirely.
A delicious shot of warmth spread through her at the frank assessment. She’d spent an hour agonising over which gown to wear before summoning her maid and deciding on the lavender chiffon. Apparently the effort had been worth it. ‘Thank you. Hartshaven was designed to be appreciated. It was meant to be a showcase for beauty.’
‘It certainly is.’ His smile deepened, exposing the dimple at the left corner of his mouth.
Good lord, could he turn every comment into a veiled compliment? What could she do but forge ahead and take it all in her stride? Annorah moved to the window and motioned for him to join her. She tried to redirect the conversation on to more neutral ground, ground that would be less likely to leave her feeling flushed and so focused on the night to come that her tongue was tied. ‘My great-grandfather had the initial gardens laid out by Kent and Bridgeman.’
‘I recognise the styling.’ He stood close at her shoulder. She
could smell the faint undertones of his cologne; the lemon and fougère creating the scent of a summer fantasy, perfect for a night like this. She did not think a man had ever smelled this good. She was so intent on smelling him, discreetly of course, that she nearly missed his conversation.
‘I’ve had the good fortune of visiting at Chiswick House. Burlington’s gardens are exquisite, as are yours.’
Chiswick? That grabbed her wandering attention. Annorah couldn’t resist a sideways glance at her companion. Chiswick House was the domain of the Earl of Burlington. Nicholas D’Arcy, whoever he was, ran in vaunted circles if he was calling there.
He caught her glance before she could look away and smiled. ‘Surprised?’
‘I hardly know you. I think anything would count as a surprise at this point.’ Her tone was sharper than she had intended but she was grasping for any point of defence now. Hardly knowing him was not stopping her pulse from racing, or her mind’s apparent desire to hang on his every word. When she’d begun this, she’d counted on logic to protect her from any depth of emotional response. That strategy was clearly going to fail.
‘Touché.’ He reached for her hand and tucked it through his arm, his touch igniting little jolts. ‘We’ll rectify that over dinner.’ He nodded in a direction past her shoulder. ‘I think your butler is ready to announce the meal.’
Plumsby cleared his throat, drawing her attention for the first time. She’d been so riveted on Nicholas she hadn’t noticed his arrival. ‘Dinner is served.’
‘I’ve had Plumbsy lay the meal out in the informal dining room,’ Annorah said, glad to have something of proprietary to say. She was sounding less and less like a hostess with every minute, which was not how she’d imagined this interlude. When she’d pictured it, she’d cast herself in the role of the sophisticate, taking the lead in their encounters, commanding every social nuance. It was easy to see the flaw in her reasoning against the black-tie élan of his town bronze. She hadn’t half the polish he had. Annorah hoped her dining room did.
Secrets of a Gentleman Escort Page 3
