Not Wicked Enough

by Carolyn Jewel

  Her heart did a flip, but no one, including the duke, seemed to notice what he had called her. “More’s the pity, I say.”

  He glowered at her, actually, and she hadn’t done anything to merit such a glare. She gave him a quick smile. True, there had been a moment when the fire might have done more than singe the interior of the vase, but nothing worse had happened. He squeezed his coat, which he held in one hand. “Did you burn yourself?”

  She shook her head, flattered that he was worried on her behalf, yet cautious on account of his dark expression. “There was never any danger of that.”

  “Your phosphorus pencil was on fire.” Their relations since their encounter in the garden had been, if not warm, then at least distantly cordial. She understood the reason for his reserve. They had transgressed propriety that night. One could not help but expect a certain discomfort as a result. But that did not warrant his present behavior. His fingers tightened around the coat. If it were a living thing, the garment would be dead by now. With that happy thought, she was forced to look anywhere but at his hand lest she imagine him choking the life from some poor, innocent creature.

  “Well, yes, sir, it was on fire. A little.”

  “A little.”

  “You distracted me, and the tip dried out. If you hadn’t interrupted, we would still be writing out glowing words from the immortal bard. It was great fun. It’s a pity we didn’t finish.”

  “‘The weather is fine today’?” he said. At least his tone was milder. “‘Mountjoy has not smiled these seven years’?”

  “No one wrote those words.”

  He arched his eyebrows and glanced at the vase. “The proof of that is nothing but ashes.”

  “I don’t see that I need to prove anything.” She licked her lower lip. He didn’t seem to be any happier. “Would you like to try for yourself? There’s plenty more phosphorus.”

  “Where?”

  “Just here, your grace. We are fully outfitted for a lengthy experiment.” She was aware the man was angry, but she wasn’t about to let him get away with spoiling their afternoon. “This is excellent. Your participation in our adventure is most unexpected, I must say.” She half turned. “Lord Nigel, have you another quill?”

  Lord Nigel, pale as a sheet, gripped the back of the chair she’d been sitting on. His knuckles were white as bone. “No, Miss Wellstone, I haven’t.”

  She knew perfectly well he did, but Ginny was as ashen as her younger brother and Miss Kirk was far too somber. She herself, having never had relations of any degree who acknowledged her existence, did not know what it was like to have a brother. For all she knew, everyone feared one’s eldest brother. She doubted that, though.

  “I’m sure,” she said, turning back to the duke, “that we could send for another quill.” She walked toward the bellpull. She no longer permitted anyone to bully her, and that included noblemen of any rank. “Shall I do that?”

  “No,” the duke said in a pleasant voice that nevertheless frosted her ears. “You shall not. I meant, Wellstone, where is the phosphorus?”

  “On the table.” She pointed. His eyes darted that direction, and she knew instantly what he intended. She took a step back and to the side, placing herself in front of the table and between the duke and her phosphorus, arms outspread. “It’s mine, sir. I purchased it at the apothecary earlier today. I’m afraid I cannot allow you to take my property.”

  “Mountjoy—” his brother said.

  “And I”—the duke spoke with deceptive calmness— “cannot permit anyone to continue in possession of a substance capable of burning down my home.”

  Lord Nigel spoke up again, loudly. “See here, Mountjoy. You’ve no call to address her like that.”

  The duke could glower all he liked. She would march to her doom willingly and alone. Brave to the very end.

  “You and I will speak later,” Mountjoy said to Lord Nigel.

  Lily looked at Lord Nigel and then at Ginny and Miss Kirk. Lord Nigel was still pale, but his eyes were fiery. He’d taken a step toward Jane, and Lily silently applauded his instinct to protect the young woman and his sister. Ginny stood with her hands to her mouth and was blinking rapidly. Jane, very sensibly, sat quite still, but she was not holding up well either. There would be tears any moment, and Lily would not stand for that.

  “If there is blame to apportion, it belongs to me alone,” Lily said. “I proposed the experiment. I convinced the others. And I acquired all the necessary materials.” She picked up the container of phosphorus. “Might we discuss this in private, your grace?”

  “No.”

  She fixed him with a glower she hoped was every bit as intimidating as his. “But, your grace,” she said. There wasn’t enough sugar in the world to match her sweetness. “I require a word in private with you.” She walked to him and put her arm through his free arm—he still had his coat in a choke hold in the other—and headed for the door. “Ginny, I’ll meet you and Miss Kirk in the Oldenburg salon in a quarter of an hour. Twenty minutes, at the most.” She glanced at the duke and amended her estimate. “Perhaps half an hour. And you, as well, Lord Nigel. I expect tea will be as lovely as always.”

  She tightened her fingers on Mountjoy’s arm and said in a voice pitched low, “Do come along.”

  Mountjoy did. She wasn’t surprised. She’d found over the years that men responded to decisive action, perhaps especially from a woman. Nursemaids trained them to obedience from an early age.

  Lily strolled out of the room with Mountjoy at her side. “Which way?”

  “Left.”

  “Thank you.” She marched down the hall only to have him refuse to follow.

  He drawled, “The other left, Miss Wellstone.”

  “Never mind then.” She opened the nearest door. “This room will do.”

  Mountjoy reached around her in time to hold the door for her. When she’d swept in, he followed, holding out a hand after they ended up facing each other. He continued strangling his coat with the other.

  “The phosphorus, Wellstone.”

  “I told you, it’s mine.” She crossed her arms, but she was distracted by the breadth of his coatless shoulders. He wasn’t a huge man, but there was substance to his frame and none of it to spare. “You’ll think me bold and impertinent, your grace, and you will be right.”

  “I always am.” His voice was steel and smoke, but there was something else there, too. Something hungry that sent a frisson of anticipation racing down her spine.

  “Do please put on your coat,” she said. “I don’t think I can bear to look at your waistcoat another minute.”

  The duke drew in a long, slow breath. “Forgive me.”

  “Again?”

  He put on his coat and rapidly buttoned it. “An improvement, I hope.”

  “No.” She examined him from head to toe. “Your valet ought to be dismissed.”

  “So you’ve said, Wellstone.”

  “I don’t think I have.”

  “You have in my dreams.”

  She braced herself against showing how his remark startled her. “I swoon, your grace, to think I have been honored to appear in your dreams.”

  “Did I say dreams? I meant nightmares.”

  “Your coat, sir, is as atrocious as your waistcoat. But I did not ask for this interview to chastise you for your attire.”

  “No?” A note of something wild curled around the edges of his voice.

  She sat on a sofa with a large harp set at an angle to one end and gestured for him to take the chair across from her. As he did, she slid a finger over the strings of the harp. The instrument was out of tune. “For a time, in my extreme youth, I had harp lessons. I did not enjoy them.”

  “I thought all young ladies enjoyed their music lessons.”

  “Did you enjoy yours?”

  “Farmers do not have the luxury of a musical education.”

  “You’re not a farmer.”

  “Did you mean to ask me if I could play you a song o
n the harp? I can’t.”

  She set the phosphorus beside her. Mountjoy eyed the jar. “It’s tightly sealed, your grace.”

  “It had better be.”

  “It is. I assure you. But please. It’s your sister I wish to speak to you about. I knew her when her husband was alive, how happy and in love she was. I saw her in her grief when he died. When you came to take her home, I thought, thank goodness. She’ll have someone to look after her. Family upon whom to rely.”

  “She has that,” he said.

  Lily sniffed then glanced down and winced. The man was in need of a decent bootmaker, too. “My God,” she said in a low voice. “Those boots.” No amount of polish or oil could save his footwear. She shook her head. “Now that I am here, your grace, it is my particular aim to see your sister amused.” She folded her hands on her lap. “It’s something you and Lord Nigel have failed to do. You ought both of you to be ashamed. I intend to continue to encourage her to leave the house, make calls, and engage in divers recreation that will refresh her heart.”

  “Wellstone, please believe that I do not for a moment doubt your devotion to my sister—”

  “If writing sentences with a phosphorus pencil amuses your sister, and it did, sir, then how can you object to that?”

  His eyes widened. “Because it is dangerous.”

  “Oh, pshaw. We’d been writing for some time before you interrupted us. In fact, Lord Nigel, Miss Kirk, and your sister had already had their turn.”

  “I object to my house burning down.”

  She lifted her hands, palms up, and looked from side to side. “Your house has not burned down.”

  He spread his thighs and propped his hands on his knees as he leaned forward. “Pure luck.”

  “Hardly.”

  “The quill burst into flames. You might have brought the house down.”

  She snorted. “Tell me, do you come home every day and say to yourself, ‘Thank God, today I was not savaged by wolves’? Or ‘killed by a runaway carriage’?”

  He yanked on his cravat. There was at least no way to make it look any worse. He would be passionate in bed, she was certain. Capable of gentleness, but more than able to set tenderness aside if the moment called for more. “There are no wolves in England.”

  “Precisely my point.”

  “But there are runaway carriages, and when I am in the presence of one, yes, I am grateful to continue among the living.” He leaned back on his chair and raked his fingers through his hair. Such beautiful, thick hair. She wanted to run her fingers through his hair again. “Phosphorus is a dangerous substance.”

  “So is gunpowder. Have you removed every trace of it from your estate?”

  “Of course not. There are precautions, Miss Wellstone.”

  “Thank you for making my point.”

  He stared at her. Lily stared back, and the heat between them had nothing to do with phosphorus pencils. “I’ve never covered a quill in the stuff and thrust it into the flames.”

  “What an absurd thing to say, your grace. Did you see me do that?”

  “Tell me, Wellstone.” He leaned back, arms crossed over his chest, legs apart. “If you were to survive a fall from a twenty-foot cliff, would you then presume you would be unharmed when you jumped the second time?”

  “Argument by analogy is hardly logically sound.”

  “Yes it is.” His eyes flashed. “But allow me to speak without resort to analogy. What I mean for you to understand is that this is my home, and I consider phosphorus to be an element so dangerous that I do not wish to have it present. With or without precautions. I don’t want Eugenia, Miss Kirk, or Nigel to be injured. Or you, Lily.” He spread his arms. “Is that unreasonable?”

  “No, sir. It’s not.” She tapped her chin. She was aware that she’d been outmaneuvered and could not help admiring him for it. “I cannot disagree it must have been alarming to you to enter upon such a scene.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Without knowing the various precautions we followed.”

  “They were not sufficient.”

  “I admit that phosphorus is volatile.” She fingered her medallion, smoothing a finger over the surface as was becoming a habit with her. “We followed the instructions almost without deviation. Lord Nigel was there, and if there had been any danger, I am confident he would have acted quickly to prevent harm from befalling anyone.” She gestured. “It was a lark, your grace. You must have seen your sister. Before our phosphorus pencil caught fire, that is.”

  He nodded.

  “She was laughing. How often have you seen her laugh since she came home? The entire project amused her, and that can only be good.”

  The duke relaxed a little on his chair, and Lily began to hope she’d brought him round to her point of view. He fell silent a moment. “I’ve not seen her laugh like that for far too long.”

  “You see?” She leaned over far enough to pat his knee, and it was no surprise that his attention followed her bosom. Or that she felt that shivery sense of anticipation. “We do agree on something. That’s lovely, isn’t it?”

  “It seems we do.” Mountjoy stared at his thigh. And then at her, turning the full force of his gaze on her. She’d kissed him, and she wanted to again even though he wasn’t Greer. She hadn’t in all this time thought of another man in that way. So intimately.

  “Can we not be friends?” she asked.

  He did not answer straightaway. “Would you be as loyal to me as you are to my sister?”

  Her heart tripped because his voice had gone softer. Not sweet so much as silky. It was the voice she heard in her dreams. That shivery sensation climbed inside her again, and she was hard-pressed not to melt in her seat. “If I find you deserving, yes, absolutely.”

  “I will endeavor to deserve your devotion, Wellstone.”

  Lily looked at him sideways. His face was perfectly bland. “You should not call me that.”

  “I would prefer, Wellstone,” he went on in a voice that was oh so slightly less silky, “that you give the phosphorus to me for safekeeping. I will return it to you when your visit has concluded.”

  “You were not present to see the care we took.”

  He kept his thighs spread. “You failed to keep the quill wet.”

  “Lord Nigel reminded me.” She reached for the jar and held it out to him. He had a point. This was his home and surely a man expected to make the rules in his own home. “Consider it a gift, your grace.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “A gift?”

  “You needn’t return it. I can always buy more when I am back at Syton House.”

  “I pray there is a local firefighting association.”

  “As a matter of fact there is. I donated the very newest engine.”

  He took the jar from her and slipped it into his pocket. She rose and he, too, stood. He offered her his arm. “Now that we have settled matters between us, may I escort you to the Oldenburg salon?”

  Lily tucked her hand under his upper arm so that her fingers rested lightly on his biceps. If she kissed him again, would it be as wonderful? “You’ll just have time to change before tea.”

  “I’ve already changed.”

  She very nearly laughed, but she had the good fortune to look at his face in time to stop herself. He was serious. “Do you mean to tell me, sir, that these are your best clothes?”

  They reached the door before he answered. “No. These are among my most comfortable clothes.”

  “You have the oddest notion that fashionable clothes are necessarily uncomfortable ones. You are wrong.” The duke reached for the knob. “A properly fitted suit not only makes the most of a man’s assets, and yours are considerable, but it is also comfortable. Because it fits.”

  “I am perfectly at ease in these clothes.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You really ought to hire me as your valet.”

  “Perhaps I ought.”

  She gestured at
him, and he took a step nearer her. Away from the door. “As bad as that?” he said in that silky voice.

  “Worse,” she said. She grabbed a handful of his cravat and pulled his head to hers. His lips caught at hers, slanted over her mouth, and he parted her lips or, perhaps, he didn’t have to.

  Not a kiss between friends. Not at all.

  Mountjoy’s arm snaked around her waist, and he pulled her close. She ended up with her back pressed against the door and his forearms on either side of her head while they kissed each other as madly as they had before. More.