Then, with a smile that said he knew the state he was leaving her in, he jumped back onto the gray and rode off.
Natasha’s hopes that she could calmly move through her day had been utterly annihilated.
One of the things Raymond had mentioned while they were walking was that he had an afternoon appointment with Rhys, on a legal matter. Natasha had visited Rhys in his offices more than once. She had Cook pack up some of her strawberry preserves in a basket and walked to Chancery Lane. There, she put the basket over her arm and sailed into Rhys’ office without knocking.
“Dear brother…” She stopped and glanced at Raymond, who had been sitting in the chair in front of Rhys’ big desk. “I’ve interrupted,” she added, as both men jumped to their feet.
Rhys looked from her to Raymond. “Yes, you have interrupted,” he said slowly. Suspiciously.
Natasha held the basket out to him. “For Anna. I know how she likes them. You should find a cool, dark place for them, so they don’t spoil.”
Rhys looked into the basket. “I didn’t think preserves could spoil.”
Raymond made no attempt to help Natasha with the bluff. He simply watched her.
Rhys cleared his throat. “I should find somewhere to put these,” he said, moving to the door. “It may take me a few minutes,” he said, looking at them.
“I’m happy to wait,” Raymond said blandly.
Rhys shut the door behind him.
The door had barely closed before Raymond pulled her to him and bent her over his arm. Natasha rested her hand against his chest. She could hear his heart beating. Then she slid her arm over his neck and kissed him.
By the time Rhys had returned, they were apart once more and Natasha had nearly recovered her breath.
The next kiss happened at the opera house, barely out of sight of any observers. Raymond pulled her out of her box and into the corridor beyond. He pressed her up against the wall, hidden only by the deep sweep of a fringed velvet swag. He kissed her, his hands roaming over her bodice, yet not quite reaching her breasts, which ached for his touch. When she had been reduced to a quivering, mindless wanton, he let her mouth go and dropped his lips to her décolletage.
Her whole body shuddered in delight as his heated lips pressed against her upper breast.
Each kiss seemed to grow more brazen, the risks they took rising to match Natasha’s growing frustration. Once, Raymond even kissed her right out in the open, on Berkeley Square, when a momentary lull in traffic gave him the opportunity. Only the fact that nearly everyone in society was at Cowes for the sailing regatta saved them from being observed by any of the number of people they knew who also lived in Berkeley Square.
There were two kisses in her dining room. Another that he stole in the front hall of Elisa’s townhouse, when everyone was moving from the dining room to the drawing room after dinner.
Many of the kisses arrived the same way as the second; Raymond would appear on her doorstep, sweep into the house, press her against whatever wall was nearest and kiss her into trembling helplessness, then with a small smile, he would leave again. Sometimes he said nothing at all.
When she went too long without a kiss, Natasha would take her own the same way. She would walk or take the carriage to Berkeley Square and step into the house with a nod to Thomsett, who would quietly tell her where to find Raymond. She would try to push Raymond against a wall. It was a gesture only. He was steady on his feet and disinclined to be moved around by anyone. The symbol was enough, though, for him to pick her up and kiss the breath from her.
Natasha’s sleep became a tortured wasteland. She refused to indulge herself as she had that moonlit night. Instead she would lie awake, wondering if she dared take the next, perfectly obvious step. They had already taken so many risks, it didn’t seem to be such a giant leap. Yet, to take the step would close a gate behind them. There would be no going back.
Her walks in Hyde Park each morning became more protracted, as she strove to exorcise some of the tension that never properly disappeared anymore, not even when Raymond’s kisses were more than a day apart.
When everyone had returned from Cowes and were preparing for the Glorious Twelfth, that marked the end of the London Season, the paths and rides filled up once more with all the usual people. On the tenth of August, though, Natasha ran into Morven, Lady Tachbrook. The dark haired woman smiled a wary greeting. “Lady Innesford.”
“Natasha, please,” Natasha told her. After her conversation with Raymond about the sexual practices of people like Morven, all Natasha felt for the woman was pity. She had suffered through a lonely life, after all. Natasha knew what that sort of soul-empty loneliness felt like. “Walk with me,” she told Morven. “Just for a moment or two. How is it you are in London? I thought you did not wish to remain for the season?”
“I did go back to Inverness,” Morven admitted. “Social obligations forced me to return to London. If I can manage to avoid any further commitments while I am here, then I will be able to remain in Scotland after the twelfth.”
Natasha saw Raymond approaching from the corner of her eye. She could find him among the crowded footpaths with ease, now. He was walking this morning and took off his hat as he approached her, his gaze flicking toward Morven. “Lady Innesford,” he said, with formal politeness. There was almost a chill in his voice.
“Lord Marblethorpe, do you know Morven, Lady Tachbrook, of Inverness?”
Raymond gave Morven the shortened bow, that was very nearly a mere nod of the head, that was all that was required of a high-ranked gentleman meeting a lady of lesser rank. “Lady Tachbrook,” he murmured.
“A pleasure, my lord,” Morven replied. She smiled easily and prettily. “It is a lovely morning, isn’t it?”
“It was,” Raymond replied. He pulled out his watch and consulted it. “Unfortunately, I must return home at once. A matter has arisen. Lady Tachbrook, Lady Natasha.” He did bow, this time, and only to Natasha.
Puzzled, Natasha watched him stride away, moving fast and weaving between strollers. “How odd,” she murmured.
“Did I interrupt an assignation?” Morven asked, the same amused smile still in place.
Natasha regarded her coolly. The first time Morven had tried to shock her with her ribald conversation had worked only because Natasha had been ignorant. Now, she knew better. “There was no assignation,” she said blandly.
“You seem rather friendly with Marblethorpe.”
“We are family,” Natasha said, letting the chill creep into her voice. “Actually, I have an early appointment of my own to keep. Please excuse me, Lady Tachbrook.”
She hurried away, before Morven could even acknowledge her departure. They were at the far end of the park, while Natasha’s house was halfway along the length of it. She stepped out of the park and crossed Park Lane to walk along the footpath beside the houses that overlooked the park. It was not nearly as pleasant a walk as the park paths were, only she had lost interest in pleasing vistas.
Morven had reminded her that the risks she and Raymond were taking could have severe consequences. Morven was not the only person who understood the sexual underlayers of society, that hid behind propriety.
Natasha hurried up the steps and into the house. She caught Corcoran off guard for once—he was nowhere to be seen. That suited her mood. She hurried up the stairs to her bedroom before anyone could see her face.
She hurried into the bedroom, already unpinning her hair.
“How do you know that woman?” Raymond asked.
Natasha jumped and muffled her scream against her hands, spinning to look behind her.
Raymond had been sitting in the rocking chair in the corner. He got to his feet, making the room shrink.
“Oh, my dear sweet lord!” Natasha said, her voice muffled by her hands. Her voice wobbled. She had been badly frightened. She was shaking with it, her heart thrumming fast. “What on earth do you think you are doing here, Raymond?” She spoke quietly. The upstairs maids woul
d still be working on the bedrooms on this side of the house.
“It was the first place I could think of where we could talk and be guaranteed no interruptions.” He kept his voice down, too.
“Did Corcoran let you up here?” She pushed her loose hair over her shoulder. Her hands trembled and it took two tries.
“He doesn’t know I am here.” Raymond came toward her. She held up her shaking hand. He halted at the foot of the bed.
She grabbed the brass bed post on the other side and bent over, trying to draw a deep enough breath. Her stays were too tight.
“I have frightened you,” he said softly. “I apologize. That was not my intention.”
“You didn’t think I would be startled to find anyone in here?” she demanded. It took two breaths to say it.
“I barely thought beyond the need to speak to you about her.”
Natasha could at last draw a deep enough breath. She straightened and looked at him. “Morven Fortescue? What of her? She is barely an acquaintance.”
“She is the one who upset you with her frank talk about affairs and sex, is she not?” Raymond asked. “I understand far more clearly now I have seen her. You said she was a peer?”
“Her husband was Baronet Tachbrook, from northern Scotland.”
“She says that is who she is, only are you sure?” Raymond asked. “Has anyone vouched for her?”
“Lady Gaddesby, the President of the London Orphan Society, introduced Morven.” Natasha took another deep breath. Her trembling was subsiding. “Lady Gaddesby is not a fool. She would not open her arms to anyone who did not have a solid reference. Raymond, what is this? Why are you so suspicious of Morven Fortescue?”
Raymond looked away. “Then she is a true blue blood,” he murmured, almost to himself. He moved closer and his voice dropped even lower. “You cannot see or speak to her any further, Natasha. You must cut her dead.”
“Cut her… Raymond, why on earth must I be so rude? I do not understand.”
“I cannot explain it further. You must trust me on this. Do not speak to her.” His gaze met hers. “Promise me.”
“No,” Natasha said. “Not without reason. Not without good reason. Your mother went through eight years of purgatory because too many people were willing to act upon pure gossip. I refuse to do the same.”
Raymond grew still. “This is not the same thing at all. I have every good reason to insist upon this.”
“You…insist?” she repeated. Her chest grew hot and hard.
His eyes narrowed. “You will refuse me?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.
The curse rose to her lips without thought. “Until kangaroos fly and dingoes talk, mate.” Even the drawl was Seth’s, spoken with his dry, dry inflection.
She covered her mouth instantly, her eyes widening, and watched Raymond, certain his fury would be absolute.
Instead, he laughed. It burst out of him and he pressed his mouth into the crook of his arm to smother it. He shook with laughter. Taking short steps, he moved over to the rocking chair and sank into it, still wracked with tremors.
Natasha watched him, completely flummoxed. How could he find such outright defiance amusing?
Finally, he sat back with a sigh, one boot thrust out to stop himself from rocking violently on the chair. He looked up at the ceiling and gave out a gusty exhalation. Then he thrust himself to his feet once more and came over to her so he could speak quietly.
He rested his hand against hers where it gripped the bedpost and bent toward her. “It could have been Seth standing there, indignant and furious. I heard him say that many times, only never in polite company.” He smiled. “You even had the accent exactly right.” He waved his other hand, to take in her clothes. “Looking as you do, it was twice the surprise, yet you were perfectly correct to refuse me. I have no right to demand anything of you. You have earned your independence and I will abide by it.”
“Oh.” She suddenly felt light. Airy.
“I would only ask that you be especially wary when you are in the company of this Morven Fortescue. She hides more than she reveals, as her conversations with you in the past have hinted.”
“You will not tell me why you dislike her?”
“I do not dislike her,” Raymond said, surprising her. “I simply do not trust her, now I have seen her, for reasons I cannot explain right now.”
“I will be wary, then,” Natasha told him. She hesitated. “Actually, I do not like her very much. I had decided that I would not speak to her again, even before I abandoned her in the park.”
He considered her. “Yet you grew angry when I suggested the same.”
“You were telling me what to do,” she said. “I did not like it.”
“I can see that a life with you in it would be a challenging one,” he murmured.
Her heart squeezed. She stared at him, wondering if she had misheard.
Raymond kissed her. It was a raw, ragged press of his mouth against hers. It was as if he was trying to say something with his lips that he would not say aloud. There was a fervor in it that she had not felt in any of his previous seventeen kisses. Her grip on the bedpost was loosened as he drew her to him. His hand plunged into her hair, scattering more loosened clips onto the floor. She was pulled up onto her toes, his arm around her back keeping her upright.
Natasha moaned into his mouth. There was a recklessness to his kiss that shot her pulse into the sky. The weakening wave of longing was hotter. Wilder.
When his hand cupped her breasts through the jacket of her morning suit, she barely held back her cry of pleasure. The intense spike of lust seemed to arrow straight to her mound.
Yet it still wasn’t enough. Natasha stepped away from him and unbuttoned the jacket with trembling hands as Raymond watched her with hooded eyes. When the jacket was open, she picked up his hand and slid it inside, over her corset and camisole, so his fingertips brushed the mound of her breast. Her trembling intensified.
Raymond’s exhalation was as unsteady as hers.
Natasha reached for the fastening on her skirt. He gripped her arm and held her still. “Wait,” he said softly.
“Why?” she asked bluntly.
He closed her jacket and fastened one of the buttons so it would stay closed, then put his hands around her waist. His thumbs moved in restlessly little circles against her stomach. “You have claimed the right to make your own decisions and so you shall.” He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and she thought she could detect a fine trembling in his hand. “I am an interloper here today. When you invite me back into this room, I will know you are driven by more than the power of my kiss, that you have made a choice.”
Chapter Eleven
The new rail line from Falmouth to Truro made travelling by train to Innesford House far more convenient. However, as Natasha had left everyone behind in London to pack and follow her to Cornwall, there was no one at the house to meet her train. The house would still be closed up for summer as Natasha had sent no word on when she was to arrive.
Normally, a family who lived in one of the cottages tucked in around the cathedral prepared Innesford House for the end of the London season, when the family returned for the start of the hunting season and winter.
Natasha left her trunk and bags with the station porter, then walked from the new train station, which still smelled of paint and tar, to the Smith cottage. The walk was not taxing, for all her strenuous walking in Hyde Park over the last few weeks had improved her wind. She enjoyed the warm day, for while it was nearly September, summer still held its grip.
Harry Smith, the father, was startled but civil and roused his children with a great shout up the stairs, bringing them tumbling down in a hurry to fetch the cart, hitch the horse and gather supplies.
Mrs. Smith put together a basket of sandwiches and a flask of tea, for Natasha’s supper. Natasha sat up the front of the cart, on the hard wooden seat beside Mr. Smith, with the supper basket between them. The three nearly grown girls and
his oldest son Brian, who was already a man, sat in the back with the buckets and rags and Mr. Smith’s big box of tools.
Mr. Smith pulled the cart up to the front of the house. Natasha unlocked the door and stepped inside. The rooms didn’t quite echo as she walked through them, although they did feel empty.
Unlike many of the big country houses belonging to upper class families, Innesford House was shut down each March, when the family moved to London for the Season. Natasha could not bear the idea of leaving her children in the country for nearly half the year while she gallivanted around London. Seth had been apoplectic at the idea when he had first realized what was expected of them if they were to maintain their social standing. “We’ll take the bloody household with us,” he muttered. “They can hold their balls and their regattas and we’ll hold our family together, too.” Seth had gotten his way, even though it was one more ripple of notoriety among the ton for their family and their peculiarities.
The stigma faded somewhat the next year, when Elisa and Vaughn had brought their children with them to London, too, and leased one of the largest houses in St. James to accommodate them. Rhys and Annalies never left London except to travel to Cornwall for the Great Family Gathering. Their house was a roomy Georgian mansion at the northern end of Hyde Park, large enough to accommodate all seven of their adopted and natural off-spring.
Mr. Smith and his son moved off around the outside of the house to check shutters and windows to see how they had fared over summer, for some of the storms that raged across the Cornish coast were severe. For generations, ships had foundered on Cornish cliffs during storms, some of them deliberately enticed there by wreckers who would plunder the helpless ships for valuables.
While Mr. Smith inspected the gardens and the outside of the house, Natasha moved through the silent rooms. Everything was covered in white cloths, giving the rooms a ghostly, insubstantial feel. Natasha asked the girls to open the big doors onto the back terrace and some of the front windows, to encourage a cross-breeze, for it was musty and still.
Soul of Sin (Scandalous Scions Book 2) Page 12
