From the Rakes and Rouges

by The Wrong Door (lit)

  Her hand nudged against his until he clasped it. "I am a dreadful novice, am I not?" she said. "I did not know that people kissed like that."

  "You are supposed to be a novice," he said. "That is what innocence is, Caroline."

  "Are you concerned for my innocence?" she asked, her voice curious. "Is that why you stopped? How very out of character."

  He surged over onto his side and looked into a flushed face. She had sand in one eyebrow. "Hardly," he said. "I have never corrupted innocence, Caroline. If I am a rake, I am not also a rogue. I have never deflowered a virgin. Yes, that is why I stopped."

  "How are you to make me fall in love with you, then?" she asked.

  He cupped her cheek with one hand and smoothed his thumb over the sandy eyebrow. "By making you want the rest of it—and me—for a lifetime," he said. He watched her swallow. "And how are you to make me fall in love with you, my innocent?"

  "By making you want innocence and virginity—and me—for the rest of your life," she said.

  His heart did a handstand. And he lost the battle he had been fighting with some success for several minutes. He felt the familiar tightening in his groin.

  And then her hand was cupping his cheek with exquisite lightness and her thumb was moving across his lips. "I know you are no rogue," she said, her voice a mere breath of sound. "I know that you want the one thing you have never had in your adult life—innocence."

  Lord God. Skilled courtesans had whispered marvelous eroticism into his ears to increase his pleasure. None of it had had one fraction of the power of her words. The witch! His body and his heart responded to them even as his mind knew that she was determinedly going about winning her wager.

  And then he was kissing her again—her mouth, her eyelids, her ears, her throat. And spreading a hand over her breast, feeling the peaked nipple against his palm. And lowering his head to it, spreading his mouth wide, taking her nipple between his teeth until she whimpered, then licking it with his tongue through the thin muslin of her dress. Her hands were in his hair and she lifted her head to bury her face against the top of his head.

  "Caroline." He rubbed a palm over the wettened peak of her breast and moved his mouth to the other. She was breathing in audible gasps.

  He could not wait. He could not take things slowly as he normally liked to do. Even the time it would take to raise her dress and remove undergarments and to release himself from his pantaloons was too long. He wanted to be able to thrust deeply inside her now. Inside Caroline. He wanted to touch her at her body's core. He wanted to be with her. Part of her. Joined to her. Once it had happened, of course, neither of them would be left with any choice at all. There would be just the special license and the rush to the altar.

  To hell with choice, he thought, sliding his hand down over her flat abdomen, curving his fingers into the increased warmth between her legs. He found her mouth with his again and was not sure which of them it was who moaned.

  Innocence. She was an innocent. He was no corrupter of innocence, he had just claimed, no rogue. He sat up hastily and scrambled to his feet, ran one hand through his hair, and turned without thinking to stoop over her and scoop her up into his arms. He began to stride away from their castle.

  "Alistair?" She looked and sounded bewildered. She looked tousled and thoroughly well kissed. And altogether as aroused as he. "Where are you taking me? Our things. We cannot just leave them there. Where are we going?"

  "To the only sensible place," he said grimly.

  She glanced over her shoulder. "Oh, no," she said, her arms clutching him more tightly about the neck. "No, Alistair, you wouldn't. Put me down. Put me down. "

  "We are doubly hot," he said, striding purposefully toward the sea, which was considerably closer than it had been when they had first set foot on the beach. "With sun and with desire. It is time to cool off."

  "But we have no towels," she said. "No change of clothes."

  His feet touched water. Cold water. He almost changed his mind. But he was still throbbing for her and her body was still heated with desire. It was either this or take her back to the dry sand and tumble her. His experiences of the last several years had not taught him a great deal of self-control. And clearly she had lost hers.

  She shrieked as she felt water splash against her bare arms and legs. And then laughed. And clung more tightly. And pleaded more desperately. He looked down into her face when he was waist deep in water and saw terror and laughter mingled there. He dropped her.

  She came up gasping and spluttering as he dived under.

  "Can you swim?" he asked, shaking his head to clear the water from his eyes.

  "My dress will be ruined," she yelled at him. "My favorite dress."

  "And you wore it just for me," he said, scooping water with both hands and dashing it into her face. "Caw you swim?"

  "Yes, I can swim," she said. "Can you?" And she dived at him, clasped both hands over the top of his head, and pressed him under.

  He caught at her legs on the way down and they came up coughing and laughing.

  "You idiot," she said. "You imbecile."

  "Guilty as charged," he said, catching her about the waist and dragging her beneath the surface of the waves again, setting his lips to hers as he did so. Which was a foolish thing to do when he considered the reason he had brought her there in the first place.

  Her hair was dark and sleek over her head and down her back when they came up once more and found the bottom with their feet. Her dress was molded to her so that she might as well have been wearing nothing. She was laughing, with water droplets dripping down her face. She looked healthy and vital and infinitely desirable.

  "You are crazy," she said.

  "Is that a new charge?" He caught her to him and kissed her again, a hearty smacking kiss followed by a grin. "How well do you swim? I'll wager you cannot keep up to me."

  "A new wager?" she said. "I'll accept it like an honorable gentleman. What is to be the prize?"

  "A kiss," he said.

  "Done," she said and she was off, swimming with all her energy and with considerable skill and grace parallel to the beach. He swam beside her, doing a lazy crawl, making no attempt to overtake her.

  She realized something after a few minutes. "Where does the race end?" she called to him, her voice breathless.

  He laughed and swam for a few more vigorous strokes until he was a body-length ahead of her. Then he turned and caught her in his arms. "Here," he said and claimed his prize without further delay. "Have you cooled off?"

  "Cooled off?" she said, panting. "After that swim?"

  "I mean," he said, "has the sexual heat gone?"

  "Oh," she said, her eyes sliding from his, "that."

  "Now," he said, "how are we to saunter back to the house and inside it as if we have been involved in nothing but the most decorous of walks? It is going to be tricky, Caroline."

  "I could have told you that," she said scornfully, "before you did anything as stupid as this. You did not think, did you?"

  "It was not stupid," he said. "If I had not done it, Caroline, you would have lost both the innocence and the virginity you spoke of earlier. We both know it."

  "Oh," she said again, turning to wade toward shore. "Am I to thank you for showing gallantry and restraint, then, Alistair? A rake showing restraint? It seems rather a contradiction in terms, does it not?"

  "Perhaps," he said, striding along beside her, "I am hoping to win your admiration and therefore your love."

  "Poppycock," she said. "It is cold."

  "You may wrap my coat about you," he said. "The sun will soon warm us. And dry us."

  "Oh," she wailed suddenly as they ran up the beach toward their castle and their belongings, "just look at me. No! Don't look. Oh, goodness me."

  But he could not be expected to have acquired all the gallantry in the world during the course of one short afternoon. He looked—and laughed and whistled. Her dress was clinging to her like a second skin.

  "
I have never been so mortified in my life," she said, pulling the muslin away from her in front and making a delicious contour of her derrière. "Stop laughing. And stop looking. I shall die!"

  He picked up his coat, swung it about her shoulders, and drew her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and stopped laughing. "I have never seen a more pretty form than yours, Caroline," he said. "But I promise not to tell anyone else that I have seen it with such clarity. This thin fabric will be almost dry by the time we approach the house. And my coat will cover most of you."

  "I have never in my life known a day like this," she said against his wet shirt. "I keep expecting to wake up. And all because you opened the wrong door last night."

  "I am becoming increasingly glad I did," he said. And listening to his own words and considering them, he was surprised—and not a little alarmed—to find that he meant them.

  By some miracle Caroline succeeded in regaining her room without being seen by anyone more threatening than a curious footman. Of course, he might decide to gossip belowstairs, but she would not think of that. And of course Letty saw her lank hair and her limp, damp dress when Caroline rang her bell to ask for bathwater.

  "It was such a warm day," she said with a winning smile just as if she owed her maid an explanation, "and the water looked so inviting, Letty."

  "Hmm," Letty said with a sniff. "If you was with him, mum, then enough said."

  Caroline gathered that he was not very high in Letty's favor.

  Cynthia arrived in her room when she was toweling her hair dry after her bath. Caroline was very thankful her sister-in-law had not come half an hour earlier.

  "Caroline," she said, "is it all now settled, then? Are you betrothed? This is all so very sudden that it is hard to digest. He is very handsome, and I do see how you were tempted. But oh, love, I do hope your rash behavior will not lead you to unhappiness."

  Caroline could not bear to have her sister-in-law think badly of her. "The only rash thing I did was lie to Royston," she said. "I thought he was going to challenge Lord Lyndon to a duel, Cynthia, and you know as well as I do who would have won."

  "You did not invite him to your room?" Cynthia asked.

  "Of course not," Caroline said scornfully. "He mistook my room for someone else's. Lady Plumtree's I would not doubt." The thought hurt.

  Cynthia looked dismayed. "You lied to Roy," she said, "when he was sending the man away, Caroline? He had ordered him to leave within the hour."

  "Oh, dear," Caroline said.

  "And you are now betrothed?" her sister-in-law said.

  Caroline set her towel down and picked up a brush. If she said no, she would be unable to spend the evening with Alistair. Or tomorrow morning. She could return to her usual wise, sensible self merely by speaking the word. It would be dangerous not to say no. Very dangerous. But there was an evening and a morning she could have if she lied. Or avoided telling the truth.

  "I am to give him my answer tomorrow morning," she said. "He has kindly given me a little time since we did not know each other at all, Cynthia." Oh, it was an outright lie. First Royston and now Cynthia. She never told lies.

  "Think wisely," Cynthia said, her hand on the doorknob. "Perhaps you were compromised, Caroline, but no one need know it but us and I cannot see that any useful purpose will be served by forcing you to spend the rest of your life with that man, handsome and charming as he undoubtedly is." She smiled suddenly. "Why are rakes so nearly irresistible?"

  "They probably would not be rakes if they were not," Caroline said. "No woman would oblige them and allow them to build the reputation."

  Cynthia laughed. "I am sure you are right," she said. "A load has been lifted from my shoulders. May I tell Roy the truth?"

  "After tomorrow morning," Caroline said and stared at the closed door after Cynthia had left.

  She should have taken the way out that had just been presented to her, she thought. She should not have prolonged matters. For she knew now that she was going to get hurt. Dreadfully hurt. She had been in love with him for months—in love with his looks and his reputation. And then for a brief spell this morning she had fallen out of love with him, having perceived him as a selfish and conceited man. Now—well, now she loved him. She had seen warmth and gaiety and charm and tenderness and even conscience in him. He was no longer the handsome rake to be sighed over in secret. He was a person now, someone she had talked with and laughed with and built a sand castle with and swum with. Someone with whom she had known the beginnings of passion.

  Someone with whom she would have made love on an open beach without benefit of clergy if he had not exercised unexpected restraint. Someone she still wanted despite the cold ducking in the sea.

  What was she going to say tomorrow morning? She was going to lie, that was what. She was going to behave with the utmost dishonor. But then she was not a man. Men had a different notion of honor from women. If she admitted the truth tomorrow morning, he would probably feel obliged to marry her after all. She could not bear to be married to him. Every day would be an agony.

  She could have avoided it all if she had told the truth to Cynthia and then gone and told it to Royston. She could have avoided the misery of tomorrow morning. And replaced it with the misery of now. There was to be no winning this battle. Caroline sighed and brushed harder in order to dry her wet hair in time for dinner. He was going to take her in to dinner. He had said so. She would have him to converse with all through the meal.

  No, she was not sorry she had told a lie. An evening and a morning were better than nothing.

  Eugenia gave her a wounded look as if Caroline had stolen the viscount away from her. Irene and all the other cousins looked at her with interest—and some envy on the part of the girls. Lady Plumtree pointedly and with haughty disdain did not look at her at all. Caroline did not care about any of it.

  "Did you escape notice after we parted at the top of the stairs?" she asked the viscount when they were seated at the dinner table.

  "Escape?" he said, raising his eyebrows and looking at her sidelong with very blue eyes. "You are joking, of course. After my valet had taken one glance at the state of my boots and clothes, I believe he would have bent me beneath his arm and given me a good walloping as my father used to do, if only he had been a foot taller and I had been a foot shorter. How about you?"

  "Similar treatment from Letty," she said.

  "The amazon who attacked me last night?" he said. "My sympathies, Caroline. I would guess she is quite large enough to take you over her knee even now for a thorough spanking. A dreadful breed, personal servants, are they not? One lives in fear and trembling of their wrath."

  Caroline laughed and won for herself a puzzled frown from her brother and a sniff from Lady Plumtree.

  "There is to be dancing in the drawing room afterward," the viscount said. "Special request of Colin, bless his heart. It is to be in the nature of a practice for the grand ball in two nights' time for the old lady's birthday. Will she dance, by the way?"

  "Great-Aunt Sabrina?" Caroline said. "Oh, assuredly. She will expect every male member of the family to lead her out."

  "Will she?" he asked. "Every male member of the family? Not every male in the ballroom?"

  She laughed again at the expression on his face. "Are you disappointed?" she asked. "Her card will doubtless be too full for such a lowly mortal as you to find a space."

  "Well," he said, "what about tonight, Caroline? One is not to be confined to only two dances with the same partner or any such absurdity as that, is one?"

  "It is not a formal ball," she said.

  "Good," he said. "You will reserve the first and last sets and every one in between for me if you please."

  If she pleased? She was absurdly pleased. "This is part of your campaign?" she said. "You are going to waltz me into love with you?"

  "Perhaps," he said. "But I was thinking more of taking you out for turns on the terrace or perhaps for strange disappearances into the gardens. What have
you told your brother?"

  She felt her cheeks grow hot. "That we are using today to get to know each other," she said. "That I am to give you my answer tomorrow morning."

  "Ah," he said. "That rather plays into my hands, does it not?"

  "Into mine," she said. "There is nothing like darkness and moonlight and music to arouse feelings of romance. I shall have you sleepless with love tonight, Alistair."

  "It sounds distinctly promising," he said, using that low seductive voice she was beginning to recognize.

  "I did not mean it quite like that," she said hastily, wishing fervently that she could recall the words and reframe them.

  "A pity," he said. "A great pity."

  Great-Aunt Sabrina was being helped slowly to her feet and the ladies followed her at snail's pace from the dining room, leaving the gentlemen to their port.

  Sleepless with love, Caroline thought, her knees feeling quite weak. What an unfortunate thing to say. And what a glorious thing to imagine. Oh dear, she was growing to like him so very much. She had never talked with anyone more amusing. And all she had left was part of an evening and a morning.

  "Caro," Irene said, taking her arm and squeezing it, "what is this? You lucky, lucky thing. He is quite smitten with you. Mama had a fit of the vapors when she knew that Lyndon was to be a guest here this week. So did I, but for a different reason."

  "We are merely friends," Caroline said.

  Irene laughed derisively.

  Dancing in a room full of eager, sweet young things and bright sparks and gossiping matrons and older, sober blades had never been Viscount Lyndon's idea of fun. But this evening was different. He was close to winning his wager, he believed, if it was not won already. She had glowed at dinner and had clearly enjoyed his company.

  As he had hers, of course. She was delightful and pretty and desirable. He rather wished that they had set the terms of the wager at one week instead of one day. But he had the evening left. He would make the most of it.

  "My country dance, I believe, ma'am," he said when one of the matrons finally sat down at the pianoforte and began to play sprightly scales to warm up her fingers. He bowed formally over Caroline's hand and won a dazzling smile from her and inquisitive looks from the young people surrounding her.