She gasped. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t you simply ask me to help you?”
“Ask? Why would I do that?”
“I can’t believe you said that. You are so arrogant.”
“I don’t like to be beholden to anyone, my lady. Besides, if I had asked, you’d have said no.”
“How do you know?”
“Would you have said yes?”
“No.”
“See?”
She folded her arms again and glared at him. “So you think coercing me is an acceptable alternative?”
One of the puppies stirred. Esmeralda nudged it and looked at Luke and Lady Janice with worried eyes.
“Why not?” Luke pitched his voice lower so as not to disturb the dog. “If it works?”
“Well, it won’t,” Lady Janice whispered. But she was so adamant and agitated, her braid swung from one shoulder to the other.
“All right, then,” Luke said. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll tell Oscar that the duke is a dangerous man. You might be snowed in, but you can bet Oscar will find a way to get you to the village, even if it means he has to carry you over his shoulder.”
“Don’t you dare speak to Oscar!”
“You want to stay, don’t you?”
“Yes. As you well know.” She frowned at him. “So tell me what it is I’m looking for.”
“A journal. It belonged to my mother, Emily March.”
“Your mother?”
He nodded. “Why so shocked?”
“What’s your mother’s journal doing at Halsey House?”
Two puppies woke up and made little grunting noises. You’re too loud, Esmeralda’s expression seemed to say.
Luke gladly moved a few inches closer to the warm woman next to him. “She worked for the dowager duchess.”
Lady Janice leaned away. “Really?”
“Yes. Long ago, before I was born.” He couldn’t stop looking into the blue depths of her eyes for the secret to her attractiveness. It was something he couldn’t define. It went beyond standard good looks. She was very pretty, but he’d seen women who’d turn more heads. Yet none of them had ever captivated him the way she did.
He wondered if someone had put something in his tea. Some sort of potion.
“Stop staring at me that way,” she murmured.
“What way?”
“Like that.” She pushed on his chest. “And move back.”
He didn’t budge. “S-s-sh. You’ll wake more puppies.” He wanted very badly to kiss her, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. “Look at Esmeralda,” he said in a moment of inspiration. “She’s bothered.”
It took Lady Janice a good few seconds to drag her gaze away from his and look over her shoulder—a delay that tortured Luke. Her mouth was calling to him.
“Sorry,” she whispered to the dog.
Esmeralda thumped her tail.
But when Lady Janice turned back to him, Luke’s momentary reprieve from wanting to crush her to him and kiss her was over.
“Why can’t you just knock on the door and ask Halsey for this journal?” she asked.
“Because he might not want to give it to me.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Then I refuse to help.”
“You keep forgetting that I’m making you help.”
She was wrong for the job, Luke knew. All wrong. But deuce take it, she could be right. He could make her so. He’d been seeking a man to help him, had been waiting six weeks for just the right one, someone sympathetic and intelligent—a footman, perhaps—who’d have the guts to search Halsey House for the diary and who could be trusted not to stab him in the back.
He’d no idea that the best candidate would turn out to be a woman.
Lady Janice grabbed his coat collar. “Tell me why the duke wouldn’t want to give you the journal, Mr. Callahan. Or—or I’ll turn the tables on you.”
“Will you? How?” He pried her fingers loose from his coat.
“I need to think about it. But it will be devastating, I assure you.”
He was amused by her robust attacks upon his person. But he also admired her nerve, so he would reward her with a small piece of the whole truth. “My mother may have been mistreated here. And if so, she likely would have written about it in her diary. That’s why the occupants of the house might not want to hand it over.”
“Oh,” she said, seemingly pacified. “Did she tell you herself she might have been mistreated?”
“No, the nuns at St. Mungo’s Orphanage told me.”
“The nuns? And what’s this about an orphanage?”
“It was Sister Brigid in particular, and my mother and I lived at the orphanage. It’s a long story, and I’m not the sharing sort.”
Lady Janice shook her head. “You’ll have to get beyond that. If you want my help, I must know more. Why were you in the orphanage? And what happened to your mother?”
“Just go find the journal. There’s a chance, of course, that it’s no longer there. Perhaps someone found it long ago and threw it away. But on her deathbed, my mother confided in Sister Brigid that she hid it and wanted it found.”
“She didn’t say where it was?”
“No. She was practically incoherent. For all we know, this story was part of her delirium. But I want to find out for myself.”
And for the residents of St. Mungo’s. And for every person who’d had their happiness stolen away by Grayson or his father.
But Lady Janice didn’t have to know that part.
“You have to tell me more.” Lady Janice’s voice was trembling with intensity. “I can’t go looking for Emily March’s journal and not know why she was delirious, why you were with the nuns, and why she hid her journal.”
“Yes, you can. I’m coercing you.”
Lady Janice closed her eyes. “You’ve no tact.”
“No.” He picked up her braid and caressed its golden silkiness with his thumb. “Why should I? I’m a groom.”
She opened her eyes again and took her braid back. “You’ve given me six days to find this journal?”
“Yes.” Was that pretty confusion in her voice? Was he distracting her somehow? Because he was certainly losing focus himself. The journal seemed less and less important. Touching Lady Janice—kissing her—seemed much more imperative a goal at the moment.
Could he give himself that moment? He knew the bigger picture. He did. But right now—near her—he wanted to stop thinking about it.
For a little while.
“If you expect me to have any luck at all”—she brushed a tendril of hair off her face—“I need to know everything you know about Emily March. I need to feel her as I’m searching. It’s got to do with feminine instinct.”
“I admire feminine instinct.”
“Do you?” Her voice was a little breathy.
“Yes.” He wanted—
Oh, dear God, he simply wanted.
Her.
It was stupid of him. Careless. It went against everything in him. But there she was, her concern for a woman she didn’t know—a woman who wasn’t even alive anymore—making a mockery of the rules of survival he lived by.
“There’s a male instinct, too, you know.” He picked up her hand and traced a circle over the back of it with his finger.
“Mr. Callahan—” The words were practically strangled in her throat.
He stopped tracing and looked up. “Yes?”
“I need my hand back.”
“Are you sure? I’d like to borrow it another few seconds.”
She shook her head. “That’s not a good idea.”
He lifted it to his mouth, palm up, and kissed its center. Her skin was sweet and warm. He couldn’t help closing his eyes, inhaling her scent, and pressing that hand against his jaw.
“No,” she whispered.
He opened his eyes. “Did you know that no means ‘yes’? Just for today?”
She giggled. “You’re outrageous, Luke Cal
lahan.”
He was, too. Still holding her fingers, but now cradling them in his lap, he leaned through the foot of air separating them, pulled her close, and kissed her lush mouth.
Chapter Twelve
The air in the stable stall smelled of straw, warm puppy, and virile man.
When Luke Callahan put his arm around Janice’s shoulder, pulled her close, and slanted his mouth across her own, she knew that she’d asked him to put a lantern in the window for that very reason—so she could kiss him again, feel his body pressed close to hers.
Yes, she cared about Esmeralda and the puppies, but the truth was, Janice was just as eager to see the man whose mouth covered hers so possessively that she whimpered aloud.
She was worse than one of those puppies craving Esmeralda’s maternal attention.
Janice craved this man. What was it about him that made her forget everything proper? She shouldn’t kiss a groom. Plain and simple.
But ladylike reservations went out the window when he pressed her back into the straw. She let it happen, just as she allowed him to keep kissing her, his tongue delving deep into her own mouth, seeking out her response, which she gave wholeheartedly.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured near her ear.
He kissed her jaw, caressed her temple, and ran his other hand over her coat near her hip.
As she had that afternoon on the long, snowy driveway, Janice felt adored. It was such a heady feeling that she let her head fall back even farther into the tickly straw so that the impossible-to-resist groom could continue exploring her neck.
He nipped her ear and brought his head up.
She had to focus her eyes. “Yes?”
“This isn’t working,” he said in such a rough, manly voice, she ached to pull him down and kiss him again.
And then she heard what he said, and a dark rush of embarrassment flooded her being. “You’re right,” she breathed. “What was I thinking? I’m sorry.”
She immediately pulled herself up onto her elbows and was struggling to get to a sitting position when he stood and held out a hand.
He didn’t grin, exactly. But his eyes twinkled with something like amusement while the corner of his mouth tilted upward. “That’s not what I meant. Here.”
She took his hand, and he pulled her to a standing position.
“Your coat’s in the way,” he said. “And the straw is, too.” He pulled four large pieces out of her hair.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “But now that I’m standing again, I can see that we really shouldn’t have—”
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her long and deep.
By the time the kiss was over, Janice’s knees were literally missing. At least it felt like they were. She was so wobbly that when he began to unbutton her coat she simply stood there and watched. And then she allowed him to turn her around while he removed it.
“There,” he said when he was done.
He looked her up and down. “You came out in a night rail?” His pupils were dilated with what could only be shock at how silly she appeared.
“I had no idea I’d be taking off my coat,” she said as primly as possible. “I should put it back on.”
He didn’t say a word. He merely took off his own coat, threw it in the straw, and advanced a step. A thrilling sort of fear shot through her, setting off shimmering sparks of desire at the juncture between her legs, which was moist and wanting.
Ready.
He’d made it so.
His eyes were half-lidded when he put a hand on either side of her face. Did his entire body feel as heavy as her own felt? When he kissed her again, his hands slowly descended to her shoulders, then her waist, and then her lower back and hips.
It was heaven. Absolute heaven.
And then he butted his masculine hardness against her belly.
Ah. So there was more to heaven, after all.
She pressed right back and moaned her wonder and pleasure into his mouth.
“Damn you,” he murmured as he pressed kisses against her neck.
And then he kissed her mouth again, but this time there was something different. Something fierce. He ran his hand liberally over her body. And when he cupped her breast in his hand she reveled in the sensation even as she was still shocked at his words.
He was a man who enjoyed teasing.
The sensible part of her mind stirred. What did she mean to him beyond a temporary pleasure and a way to get to his precious journal?
Anything?
For that matter, how could he mean anything to her?
“Stop thinking.” He caressed her buttocks. “Just feel.”
She gasped in pleasure when he played with her nipple through the muslin of her night rail with his thumb and then ravished her neck with more kisses.
This was all about pleasure. About taking. Wanting. And having.
“But why is it so imperative that you have the diary now?” she managed to whisper.
He swung her up into his arms and kissed her hard before she could protest. “Because I don’t know when I’m going to have another chance to get it. Open that door. I’m taking you someplace more private.”
Something in her thrilled at the fact that he hadn’t asked her permission before whisking her away. She pulled open the stall door and craned her neck for one last glimpse of Esmeralda and the puppies. They were all sleeping peacefully.
“Our coats,” Janice reminded him.
“No one will come by. We’ll get them in a little while.”
A little while. What were they going to do in that little while? She had a suspicion that whatever it was, she’d like it very much.
“Why do you need me to help you?” she murmured in his ear, and enjoyed the steady rocking motion as he carried her in his arms. “And not someone else?”
“Because you’re the first person I’ve met here whom I can bend to my wishes,” he said.
She bristled. “I resent that.”
He stopped a moment. “Are you sure? I plan to do just that in the tack room.”
Bend me to his wishes?
Heat flooded Janice’s belly at the thought. And then he kissed her again. Against her better judgment, she wrapped her hands around his neck and kissed him back. He was a glorious treat of a man when he kissed her—and she forgot about everything else.
But the sensible part of her continued to wage war with the wanton in her.
Coming up for air, she said, “Is trusting a servant in the house out of the question? You couldn’t ask Cook? Or one of the footmen?”
“I’d have asked Cook or one of the footmen long ago if I’d had something I could use against them.”
She sighed. “My point is, don’t you have any friends to help you?”
“No.”
“That’s not good.”
“It’s not bad, either.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I work well alone.” He grinned, and his teeth were bright white, even in shadow. “It goes against my nature to get involved with anyone else.”
But here they were—involved. “Why didn’t you force one of the other girls who came down the drive to help you?”
“I never learned anything about them other than the fact that they were after the duke.”
“Wouldn’t that have been enough fodder with which to threaten them? That’s how you got me to do your bidding, after all.”
He made a lazy perusal of her open neckline. “Are you sure about that?”
“I am not so easily swayed, sir,” she protested. “This has nothing to do with that. They’re two entirely separate matters, and quite frankly, I don’t know why—”
She tried to wriggle out of his arms, but he held her fast. “Stop thinking,” he said again, and this time when he kissed her he slid his hand beneath her gown and up her calf.
She shivered with delight, then felt great disappointment when he stopped.
“I was ready to bend you to my wishes even before you confess
ed tonight that you were after the duke,” he said. “Remember? I put the lantern in the window. A ploy you didn’t care for.”
“True. So you were really calling me over for this. Not that.”
“I won’t deny that the thought crossed my mind.” He kissed her again, and this time when he ran his hand up her leg he went all the way to her lacy drawers and fingered the edge.
More, she thought. I want more.
And was appalled at how hungry she was for his touch.
“However”—he pulled back—“I deduced very quickly that you were using this place to hide out. You wanted to go back to London as much as you wanted a tooth pulled. You’d have done anything to stay.”
“You’re right, but how did you know? You’re rude. You’re bossy. You’ve all the sensitivity of a porcupine.”
“Open that door,” he said.
“See?” She reached out and turned a knob, and they walked into a small, dark room. “You don’t even care that I insulted you.”
“Your insults are like feathers tickling my cheek.” He laughed when he put her down and walked away. She heard the scratch of a tinderbox. A moment later, the glow from a small candle made a halo of light around him.
But when he turned she saw no angel but a handsome, strapping man, his face shrouded in shadow.
She had a sudden thought. “Are you even a groom? Or did you simply take that job to get here?”
“I’m many things,” he answered cryptically.
He came toward her again, and this time she froze. “Please.” She felt suddenly afraid. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” He took her elbows firmly. “Kiss you again? Bring you pleasure?”
“N-no,” she said. “I mean, yes. It’s too much. You’re too much.”
“Not for you.” He took her braid and unraveled it. And then he shook out her hair.
She closed her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m a good girl. I shouldn’t be here with you. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“Shush.” He walked her to a bench. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.” He straddled it and patted its surface.
She sat with her hands pressed between her knees and her feet together and felt herself trembling from relief. But the fear hadn’t left her, either—she was still afraid of the world she’d begun to explore with Mr. Callahan. It was nothing like the brief interlude she’d shared with Finn. This world was darker, primal. With the groom, she was not herself—at least as she knew herself to be. There were depths to her that she’d never broached.
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