“Relax, Matilda. You own this house.” Ashton spoke metaphorically, but the warmth of his breath on her neck was very real.
Matilda did own the house, and her body, and her future, at least until Drexel found her. She did not own Ashton Fenwick and would see the last of him in mere days.
She scooted around until she was comfortable in his arms and kissed him back as if his departure were in the next hour, not the next week. He growled a happy, soft growl and gathered her close, and for the first time in six years—for the first time ever—Matilda said yes to her own pleasure.
* * *
“Uncle thinks I’m a fool,” Stephen said, tracing a fingernail around the inlay on a chased silver bottle of sand. By the candlelight in Basingstoke’s office, the pattern in the metal appeared to shimmer and dance. “I want you to find the missing heiress, the sooner the better. Step-mama would never go far from the girl, and Uncle ought to know that.”
Damon Basingstoke wasn’t like most other solicitors Stephen had come across. No prosperous paunch, no ostentatious side-whiskers, and what clerks he had were kept mostly out of sight in a back room, not arrayed about in a front room for clients to count or send out for coffee.
Basingstoke was the youngest exponent of a firm that had served the Derrick family for generations, and in Stephen’s opinion, he was very much a modern man, willing to meet even after hours if necessary to accommodate a client’s needs.
Stephen did his best thinking after hours. Always had. Any who doubted that could ask his mistresses.
“What is the urgency of this search?” Basingstoke replied, steepling his fingers. “While your step-mother—possibly your late step-mother—remains unaccounted for, you have the benefit of her portion of the inheritance as managed by your uncle. He’s not afraid to look after his own funds, which too many of his ilk think beneath them, and you stand to come by a significant sum in less than a year.”
Basingstoke was a bit rough around the edges, and his sense of fashion missed elegant by a few details. He had the gold watch—a man who billed clients for his time would need a reliable watch, after all. Nonetheless, his cuff links were onyx rather than gold, and he didn’t bother with a cravat pin.
A mistake, that. A cravat pin could make a man’s ensemble. Brummel had declared it so years ago, and nobody had dared contradict him just because his fashion sense had nearly landed him in debtors’ prison.
Basingstoke also lacked Stephen’s aristocratic Saxon coloring. The solicitor’s hair was dark, as were his eyes. He was on the tall side, an inch or two taller than Stephen. A bit too tall, in other words.
“What is the urgency?” Stephen snapped. “There’s the girl, for one thing. She’s costing me money. Uncle claims he’s using his own funds to look after her, but that’s a lie. He’s using Step-mama’s portion of the estate, and using it lavishly, which means he’s using money I stand to inherit. I suspect that governess is simply an overworked mistress. No governess should be that pretty or that happy.”
Basingstoke studied the chandelier above, which flickered in some stray night breeze.
“I am a family solicitor, Mr. Derrick,” he said. “My role is to advance the best interests of the family within the guidelines established by my father as owner of this firm. That means the earldom’s concerns take precedence over your own. Lord Drexel has instructed me to remain alert for any sign of your step-mother and professes concern for her. I can be particularly vigilant in that regard without a conflict of interest. If the family’s financial arrangements are not to your liking, you will have to take that up with your uncle.”
Stephen set the bottle of sand on the solicitor’s blotter and took a seat. The chairs lacked padding, another oversight a more genteel businessman would have noticed.
“I’m not asking you to set yourself against my uncle.” That was exactly Stephen’s agenda. “I’m asking you to find a well-born, wrongly accused, sheltered young lady who has been fending for herself for far too long. If she will accept the protection of her late husband’s family, we can clear up all that nonsense about Papa’s death, divide his estate, and get on with our lives.”
Get on with spending all that lovely money.
“I will continue to look diligently for your missing relation, Mr. Derrick. You do know that the law prohibits you from marrying your step-mother?”
Step-mama had been pretty six years ago. Stephen had considered marrying her, but there would be settlements, and settlements often resulted in trusts, and trustees. Uncle would circle like a vulture over a fresh carcass, and Stephen had had enough of Uncle’s interference.
“I’m aware of the law, Mr. Basingstoke.” He was now, not that it mattered. “I’ve wondered if my uncle isn’t set upon marrying the woman.”
“The law would prohibit that union as well, else younger brothers would be motivated to conspire with unhappy wives to kill a wealthy, titled elder sibling, wouldn’t they?”
Basingstoke was making a point. Stephen couldn’t be bothered to decipher it. The hour was growing late enough that gentlemen all over Mayfair would be sitting down to cards, opening a second bottle of port, or climbing into their mistress’s bed.
“Having no older siblings, I can’t speak to that rather vulgar speculation, Mr. Basingstoke. Uncle said you had a bank draft for me?”
“I can write you a draft,” Basingstoke said. “Will ten pounds do?”
The question provoked in Stephen a rage so cold, so deep, so violent, he almost understood why his step-mother had committed murder.
“Fifty, Mr. Basingstoke.”
Basingstoke opened a drawer and drew forth the requisite form. He took his sweet, damned time filling it out, all tidy and legible. With a languid hand, he sprinkled sand over the ink and set the bank draft aside.
“You and your uncle would do well to have a thorough discussion of family finances,” Mr. Basingstoke said. “You refer to these disbursements as small advances, but your subsequent quarterly allowances are never reduced to reflect the sum already spent. Has your uncle told you how he’s accounting for them?”
Well, no, he hadn’t, and Stephen hadn’t asked. “That is none of your affair, sir.” Stephen stood and shook the sand from the bank draft onto the blotter. Some of it cascaded onto Mr. Basingstoke’s lap. “Do forgive my clumsiness.”
The solicitor rose, ignoring the mess Stephen had made. “Will there be anything more, Mr. Derrick? The hour grows late, and this draft could have been written in the morning.”
When all the world would have seen Stephen trotting around to the solicitor’s office two weeks shy of the quarterly disbursement?
“This evening was more convenient for me,” Stephen said. “Until next we meet, Mr. Basingstoke.”
Marceline would want to see the bank draft before she opened her door to Stephen. She was the most mercenary female Stephen had ever met, and who knew that greed in a woman could be an arousing quality? But then, everything about Marceline was arousing—her hands, her mouth, her vulgar words, her inventiveness.
Stephen let himself out of the offices of Basingstoke and Basingstoke and climbed into the carriage waiting for him at the corner.
The last question the solicitor had asked—where did Stephen’s advances come from?—had been insightful, despite its impertinence. Uncle was doubtless taking the coins from Stephen’s own pockets, and that just meant finding Step-mama had become all the more urgent.
Decent of Mr. Best Interests of The Earl Basingstoke to provide the reminder, though, or as decent as a solicitor could be.
* * *
Ashton had a theory, developed over many a tankard of ale and between many a pair of sheets. A woman responded to intimacies the same way she responded to life. A lady given to dramatics and impetuosity was easily set off into ecstasy. A female inclined to caution and shyness took more coaxing and patience, but then committed to her pleasures with an intensity that stole a man’s breath.
Women did not leave their person
alities at the bedroom door, no matter what the hellfire preachers spouted about Eve, temptation, and the weakness of the female mind.
Matilda Bryce had a slow fuse, but her fire burned hot and bright.
As Ashton added caresses to his kisses, the lady came alive in his arms, returning kiss for kiss and exploration for exploration.
She shaped his jaw, his ears, his neck and shoulders, as if she were blind and had never encountered the adult male before. Her touch was careful but curious, with an unhurried thoroughness that delighted Ashton.
Young men were idiots, all dash and fire, missing the best parts in their haste to find satisfaction. Ashton had taken much too long to grow up, but Matilda Bryce made him glad he was no longer a stripling.
By degrees, she relaxed, until only Ashton’s embrace supported her in his lap. They needed a damned bed, but if Ashton so much as spoke, she’d probably scamper off to her kitchen, and the opportunity would be forever lost.
That would be a regret. For him and also, he hoped, for her.
Ashton let Matilda take the lead with the kissing, and though her forays into his mouth were delicate, her plundering took a toll on his self-restraint. Back in Scotland, opportunities for sexual congress had become fraught and few.
Opportunities for true intimacy rarer still.
Matilda sighed, signaling an intermission in the festivities. “You make me wish, Ashton Fenwick. I’d thought myself beyond wishing.”
“Nobody should be beyond wishing.” At the moment, Ashton wished they had more commodious accommodations than a hard bench upon which to further their acquaintance.
He grasped her ankle and, when she took no exception, lazily stroked her calf. She wore no stockings, no pantalets, nothing to deter skin-to-skin contact—or coitus.
“Your hands are warm,” she said, as if even that mundane fact were a revelation to her.
“Your legs are strong,” Ashton replied, hoping someday he could see the knees, calves, and thighs he was touching. “But if you could spread them just a little… another inch…”
Matilda accommodated him, one of her feet sliding to the paving stones.
Ashton had made love in gardens, haylofts, meadows, elegant boudoirs, and everywhere in between. This tiny crowded space behind Matilda Bryce’s home had to be the most humble location to date. It had privacy, by virtue of the darkness.
But that was all it had, and even that privacy wasn’t adequate for what Matilda deserved.
Ashton resigned himself to a compromise. Pleasure for the lady, frustration for himself—this time. He adjusted his hold and stroked up over the muscles of Matilda’s thighs.
“You’re certainly indirect about this,” she muttered.
Indirect? If he were any more headlong, Matilda’s skirts would be about her ears, and the bench would go up in flames.
“Matilda, has nobody ever pleasured you?”
Her harrumph became a sigh when Ashton trailed his fingers higher. He petted her, he teased, he was ready to curse her damned skirts when she scooted and gave him more leverage.
“That’s better,” he whispered. “Close your eyes and tell me what you like.”
“Not that,” she muttered. “It’s too… It’s vexing.”
Ashton eased the pressure of his thumb on a place other women had very much encouraged him to touch.
“It’s worse when you stop,” Matilda said. “I can’t hold still.”
“Then, for the love God, woman, move.” He was contemplating using his mouth, or carrying her up to bed, when she met his next caress with a small shift of her hips.
“Like that?” she asked.
Clearly, her husband had died of stupidity. “Move however you please, Matilda. Relax and see where it goes. We’re in no hurry.”
Ashton’s back had begun to ache, which was fortunate, because the pain distracted him from the pleasure stealing over Matilda as gradually as the rising sun spread over night-dark land. She became both more pliant and more restless, clinging to Ashton as he kept up a steady, relentless stroking.
She came apart in a silent, thrashing paroxysm of satisfaction that sent the bench scraping against the paving stones. The lady was possessed of more vigorous animal spirts than her prim demeanor would have suggested.
By the time she went still in Ashton’s embrace, his arms ached in addition to his back, and his breeding organs were paining him as well.
He’d never enjoyed bringing pleasure to a woman half so much. The experience reminded him that before he’d been an earl, and even now, when he was Kilkenney, he was Ashton Fenwick, a bachelor, and a man in his prime.
“Mr. Fenwick.” Offered in a breathless, bewildered whisper.
“Aye?”
Matilda hugged him, her arms snug about his neck. “Oh, Mr. Fenwick. Ashton. You…”
She was happy, possibly even delighted. Ashton felt the joy in her embrace, which was rife with enthusiastic affection, where previously she’d been shackled by caution. He heard the satisfaction in her voice and sensed it in her utter relaxation.
She was happy, and to his surprise, that was enough for him to be happy too. Despite the upcoming social Season, the damned English tenants, the looming ordeal of residence at the Albany, and the utter hell of wearing a title around his neck, Ashton Fenwick was happy.
* * *
“Mr. Fenwick, you are attending a court levee, not an execution,” Matilda said. “Most people would be overjoyed to make the acquaintance of the sovereign.”
Matilda had not been among their number, though she saw no need to tell Ashton that. She’d met the present George before he’d ascended to the throne, and he’d struck her as a sad, exceedingly well-fed man.
“I’m no’ attending the damned levee,” Ashton shot back as a pair of dancing slippers the size of small canoes went sailing into the wardrobe. “Hazelton can take his buggering idiot invitation and shove it—”
Helen snorted, and Ashton left off rummaging in his trunk, a pair of satin knee breeches in his hand. He’d been hurling items of apparel about his bedroom for the past twenty minutes, ever since Helen had brought the morning post from the Albany.
A roaring spate of Gaelic had ensued, so loud that Matilda had heard Ashton in the kitchen. Helen had summoned Matilda just as two porters had set down a large trunk in the middle of the bedroom.
Matilda’s lover from the night before, a knowing, subtle, toweringly competent man, had been replaced with a large Scot in a larger temper. The previous night, Ashton had held her as she’d drowsed in his arms, the rhythm of his heart lulling her to sleep. She’d wakened when he’d carried her into the house and deposited her on the sofa in the unlit parlor, then settled an afghan about her.
He’d not taken her to her bedroom, much less joined her there, and she was grateful. She’d had enough trouble meeting his gaze over apple tarts at breakfast, though all he’d done was wink and pronounce the morning the loveliest he’d seen in London.
Ashton Fenwick had good aim with a compliment and with a rolled-up pair of stockings, which he used to send Solomon scampering from the room.
“Hazelton has no business dragooning me into this outing,” Ashton said as the cat went yowling on his way. “I’ve made His Royal Majesty’s acquaintance, and I’m confident one encounter was enough for both of us. Somewhere in this trunk is a lap desk, and I’ll be penning his lordship a note declining his generous meddling.”
“I could go meet the king,” Helen said, hopping down from the windowsill and making an elaborate bow. “Tell the Earl of Hazelnuts you’re sending your general tote ’em.”
“Hazelnuts.” Ashton tossed the breeches into the open trunk. “I like that. One can’t send a minion to a court levee, though. I will kill Hazelton for this.”
“How?” Helen asked, tossing Matilda the ball of stockings. “Will you run him through with a sword? Blow out his feeble English brains? Strangle him with his own cravat?”
“Child,” Ashton said, “you will give me
nightmares, more than you already do.”
Matilda took the satin breeches from the disarray of the trunk and folded them, her hands lingering on the texture of the fabric. The stitches at the seams were exquisitely small and even, the gold embroidery at the knees a work of patient genius.
I miss this. Missed clothing that was beautiful to the touch and to the eye and made the wearer feel beautiful too. As a girl, she’d reveled in all things feminine. A new bonnet had occasioned joy. A reticule and shoes to match were cause for much strolling about in public.
What a fool she’d been, though she’d been a fool with lovely taste, which was part of the reason Althorpe had chosen her.
Matilda tucked the breeches into the clothes press and accepted another pair from Helen—cream rather than white. Ashton had a half-dozen pairs of formal knee breeches, each one more elegant than the last. His waistcoats were similarly breathtaking, though none approached ostentation.
Matilda wanted to press her face to the soft wool of his jackets and coats, wanted to gather up the lot and hug the heather and lavender scents close.
She blamed this yearning for long-lost luxuries on Ashton Fenwick. Her dreams the previous night had been marvelously sensual, and her awareness of her body was forever changed. By allowing Ashton to pleasure her—his deceptively tame term—she’d let loose a view of herself that was neither convenient nor familiar.
“Why don’t you want to go?” Helen asked him. “It’s only a morning in your good clothes. There won’t be preaching, will there?”
Ashton dragged the trunk over to the clothes press and passed Matilda a lawn shirt. The fabric was cool and light, so fine she might have seen through it but for all the minute tucks and billowing folds.
“There will be preaching,” Ashton said. “In ways subtle and overt, I’ll be pressured to contribute to this or that project, to perform favors for His Majesty, to support a business venture with no more chance of success than you, wee Helen, have of becoming queen.”
“Queens are old and fat,” Helen said. “They don’t get to wear breeches.”
Ashton: Lord of Truth (Lonely Lords Book 13) Page 12
