Noelle

by Diana Palmer

  “Well, if I need teaching—” She started to say something utterly unforgivable, thought first, and blushed angrily.

  He saw the words forming on her lips. “No,” he said curtly. “That I won’t teach you. If you want lessons in that area, get them from Andrew. He’s the object of this exercise, isn’t he?”

  His sarcastic tone made her angry. It wasn’t enough that he’d teased her into making an idiot of herself, now he was making her sound as if she’d flung herself at him!

  She glowered at him. “I can’t put a foot right with you, can I? And just what conceit made you think that I’d ask a decrepit old milksop like you to give me lessons in love?” she added furiously, pushing back her disheveled hair with a trembling hand.

  “Ah,” he said, with a wicked smile. “The truth at last.”

  “You stuffed shirt of a city lawyer!” she cried. “You lazy, spineless bookworm!”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You do have a nasty temper,” he pointed out, more amused than insulted.

  She stomped her foot. “I hate you!”

  He only looked at her, his pale eyes sparkling with humor…and something much deeper.

  “If I were a man, I’d strike you down!” she raged.

  “All this because I didn’t kiss you?” he asked outrageously.

  She went scarlet. “As if I would permit—as if I ever even thought of—as if—!”

  He moved closer, and her voice died away as she watched him approach. She didn’t move, her face flaming, almost in tears at the intensity of emotion that had her in its clutches. And despite her anger, she reacted as she always did to his nearness, with helpless delight.

  He stopped in front of her. His lean hands went up to cup her oval face. He tilted it up to his and searched her wet eyes.

  “Perhaps I’ve been too protective. We are, after all, kinfolk…of a sort,” he said as he bent. “Surely it isn’t indiscreet to exchange a chaste kiss with a distant cousin of my stepbrother’s.”

  She shivered at the sensuous note in his deep voice. Her fingers dug into the lapels of his jacket. Her eyes watched his hard, thin mouth come closer and begin to part. Then it hesitated, just hovering, so near that she could taste whiskey on his warm breath while he deliberated whether or not to take that final, irrevocable step.

  Her expression decided for him. She stared at him with rapt hunger. “Oh, Jared,” she whispered weakly. “Don’t stop. Please don’t tease me again. I think…that I…shall die if you stop now.”

  His hands contracted until they were almost painful. “I think that I would, too, Noelle,” he ground out.

  He coaxed her face up to his; he blurred in her sight as his warm mouth suddenly bit into hers, twisting, demanding, insistent. She’d never known a kiss from a man at all. Her dreams of it had been vague, tender ones. The reality was violent, even a little frightening. His mouth was hard and tasted of whiskey. It was very intimate to feel it almost inside her own, and she moaned and jerked with the starkness of its possession.

  He felt the movement and stopped at once, lifting his mouth from hers to search her face. Her soft lips were swollen and she was less hungry now than intimidated.

  “Did I frighten you?” he asked gently. “Forgive me. It’s been…a long time.” He bent again and now his hands were caressing, not imprisoning, on her face. And his mouth was soft, slow, sensuous as it traced and nibbled around her warm lips.

  She caught her breath. This was more like her dreams. But the face in them had been Andrew’s, not this stoic, mature man’s. Yet, she had no such pleasure from Andrew’s touch. It was disturbing to consider.

  She had no resistance to him. Her rigid posture relaxed more with each insistent brush of his mouth over hers and she melted into his body. Then, and only then, did his mouth open, pressing her soft lips apart, so that he could take full possession of it with his lips and his teeth and his tongue.

  She gasped at the things he did to her mouth. She should be shocked, outraged, indignant. She should slap him.

  His hands had gone to her hips and pulled them into his, and she felt something that she had never expected to experience. Her whole body felt breathless with delight. She was innocent, but what had happened to him was unmistakable, even to a green girl. She did, after all, have girlfriends who were married and told her the most shocking things.

  She stiffened, because it was unthinkable to permit him such a liberty, and her hands pushed at his chest.

  “Gently,” he whispered. His hands moved up to her waist and he let her move away, but not very far. “Look at me, Noelle.”

  “Oh, I…can’t!” she moaned, embarrassed.

  But his hand came up to tip her chin, so that she was forced to meet his glittery eyes.

  “And now you know what can happen between a man and a woman, and how quickly.”

  She swallowed. “Was that…why you did it?”

  His thumb rubbed slowly over her swollen lower lip. He watched it. “We both wanted to know how it would feel,” he said finally. “Now we do. But such experiments are best not repeated. I told you before—I have nothing to give. There’s nothing of love left in me.”

  Her fingers reached up hesitantly to his face. He didn’t jerk back, so she explored the straight nose, the thick brows, the high cheekbones, the thin, hard mouth, the stubborn chin. There was a faint stubble there already, although she was certain that he had shaved only that morning. It was exciting to touch him. Her hand continued up into the thick, cool strands of his wavy black hair.

  “I’ll be twenty in December,” she said huskily. “And you’re thirty-six. Andrew told me.”

  His hand caught her wrist roughly. His eyes were dangerous. “My age is of no concern to you. And what happened is best forgotten.”

  She searched his cold eyes. “It was my first experience of a man,” she said gently. “It’s unlikely that I can forget it.”

  Not a muscle moved in his face. He let go of her. “And equally unlikely that I shall remember it.” He smiled cruelly. “You were not my first experience.”

  Inexplicably, her hand came up quickly. He caught it just in the instant before it collided with his hard cheek.

  Shocked at her own behavior, she jerked her hand back. “I…forgive me.”

  He didn’t say another word. The surprise he felt was only for a second visible in his pale eyes. He watched her, unspeaking, while she backed away from him.

  She was barely aware of the scratch of the Gramophone still going, very slowly, and of voices down the hall. She stared at Jared with her uncertainties in her face.

  He didn’t ask why she should be so offended that she wasn’t the first woman he’d kissed. He knew the answer, and so did she.

  “We met at the wrong time,” he said, in a clipped tone, deep with restraint.

  “I’ve asked you for nothing,” she whispered.

  “And that’s what I’ll give you,” he replied. “Nothing.” He laughed coldly. “Go and dress for dinner, Noelle. Tomorrow we’ll both have forgotten that this even happened.”

  She turned away, shaking. He made it sound inconsequential, yet her whole life had just changed. She paused in the doorway and looked back at him, standing there in his vested gray suit, looking faintly ruffled and sensuous—and more masculine than any man she’d ever known. He looked, in fact, dangerous. She wondered how she could ever have thought him a bookworm or a milksop. No man had such a physique and such strength when he only sat behind a desk, and that leg didn’t even slow him down.

  Her eyes searched his, sending a thrill of pleasure down to her toes. She opened the door quickly and went out into the hall. Her heart was beating so hard that it shook her, and she was grateful that she made it to her room before anyone could see her swollen lips and the turmoil in her eyes. She wondered how she was going to sit a
cross from Jared at the table and pretend that nothing had changed between them.

  Chapter Seven

  ANDREW RETURNED FROM his latest selling trip and promptly asked Noelle to the upcoming dance. She didn’t feel confident with only a few dance lessons under her belt, but she did have a nice dress and she was more confident about her parlor manners. She accepted with delight, although the invitation wasn’t as exciting as she had thought it would be. She liked Andrew very much. But he stirred no response in her in any physical way. She was infatuated with him, but it was only emotional. She couldn’t understand why Andrew left her cold and a man like Jared, his total opposite, could stir her to madness with the lightest touch.

  Not that Jared seemed interested in doing that. She hadn’t slept for days, remembering the warm passion of his hard mouth and her own hunger to know the taste and feel of it on her own. Her response had frightened her, and apparently it had alienated him, because he hadn’t spoken directly to her since it happened, during their ill-fated waltz.

  Well, he was too old for her and too stuffy, she kept telling herself. She didn’t want the attentions of such a man in the first place. But then her mouth would tingle and she would remember the way it had felt when his tongue eased into it. And she would go hot under her clothing.

  It embarrassed her to have such a physical reaction to Jared Dunn, who was certainly not romantically interested in her and had even told her so. Since their last encounter, he spoke to her only when necessary, and not in any way that could be construed as personal. He was polite, but remote.

  Andrew had never noticed any familiarity between the two of them, but he had questioned Jared’s intervention weeks before, about the cat. Later, he decided that he was being fanciful and it was likely the mice had prompted it. Not that he’d actually seen any mice.

  The cat, meanwhile, was thriving. Noelle had bathed and groomed him, and after he was properly fed, he’d turned into a neat and inoffensive house pet. Mrs. Pate kept him in the kitchen with her, where he had a comfortable wooden crate to sleep in at night and could be let out the back door when he needed to go outside.

  Like the cat, Noelle had gained a little weight and was content in her surroundings. She read to Mrs. Dunn and performed small services for her. When she wasn’t doing that, she was helping wherever she was needed—mostly doing Andrew’s paperwork. It became obvious to the family that she was no stranger to hard work, nor did she mind it.

  Even Andrew, who was growing more attracted by the day to young Jennifer Beale, had to admit that Noelle filled a gap in the household. If only he could keep her out of those overalls she wore when she worked in the vegetable garden and the flower beds! Her continued mode of dress there, despite Mrs. Dunn’s admonitions, was a source of worry to him. Neighbors occasionally caught glimpses of a dirt-stained Noelle in pants, rushing around with a hoe, and made sly mention of it to the lady of the house. Andrew found it embarrassing.

  “Those overalls fit her much too tightly—and she rolls them up to her knees,” he muttered to his grandmother. “It is so unladylike! You must speak with her about it.”

  “I have tried,” Mrs. Dunn said solemnly. “She smiles and nods in agreement, and then she rushes back out with the hoe the minute Henry gets a little behind in his weeding.”

  “Perhaps he would get less behind if he drank less whiskey,” Andrew said.

  She sighed. “Yes, I know. I had thought about having Jared speak to him.”

  “I shall speak to him,” Andrew said arrogantly. “I have, after all, been the man of the house for some time while my stepbrother was putting on airs in New York City!”

  Mrs. Dunn turned toward him. “If I were you,” she warned gently, “I wouldn’t take that tone of voice with him. There are many things you don’t know about Jared.”

  He scoffed. “He’s a city lawyer, a dandy. Why, I imagine that he did fall off a horse and that is the cause of his injury. Imagine that. I rode from the time I was a boy.”

  Mrs. Dunn had to bite down hard on a quick reply. She didn’t want to say anything to Andrew about Jared’s past. It would make things very difficult for him if accounts of his past sins caught up with him now.

  “Noelle is to accompany me to the Benevolent Society dance Friday evening,” Andrew said then. “Will you join us?”

  “I had planned to do so. I would like you to try and persuade Jared to come, also. He has had no recreation of any sort since he began his practice again, and he works much too hard. Imagine, we hardly ever see him at table.”

  Andrew started to remark that it suited him very well not to have that stoic, inhibiting presence at the head of the table, his table. But he only smiled. “He undoubtedly has much work to catch up on. And it will take time for him to gain a suitable practice here. He is used to a much bigger clientele.”

  “Well, Andrew, I’ve heard that he’s much in demand already,” she said. “His reputation in law has preceded him.”

  “No doubt it is exaggerated,” Andrew said shortly. He looked at his pocket watch and snapped it shut. “I must go. I have an appointment. Can I bring you anything back?”

  “No, dear boy.” She smiled. “You’re good to me, Andrew. I’m sorry that you and Jared are so dissimilar. It would have been better if you had things in common.”

  “I was a career soldier, with combat experience,” he reminded her. “Hardly in the same league with a civilized practitioner of law in a major city.” He laughed. “Jared and I get along well enough.”

  “Still…”

  He bent and kissed her cheek. “I’ll return soon.” He glanced toward the backyard. Through the window, he could see Noelle with her hoe, in those blasted overalls, in full view of the neighbors, and he grimaced. “Could you speak to Noelle?”

  “I shall.”

  “Thank you.”

  He went out the front, almost knocking into Jared. “Why…you’re home early,” he said, surprised.

  Jared glowered at him. “And you’re in a hurry, aren’t you?”

  He grimaced, glancing around. “Miss Beale asked me to drive her to a social appointment. Her father’s out of town and she detests a hired carriage.”

  Jared searched the younger man’s eyes, his level gaze unnerving. “I thought you found our Noelle more interesting.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, I do. But, frankly, Jared, she’s becoming an embarrassment.” The look on his stepbrother’s face made him uneasy. “Excuse me, I must hurry.”

  Jared hesitated. Then he stepped to one side and let the younger man pass, but not without a studious glare. Embarrassment, indeed! It was unjust, somehow, that such a lovely and tragic young woman should be so resistible to the one man she wanted.

  He walked into the living room, where his grandmother looked equally broody.

  “Andrew wishes me to speak to Noelle again,” she said grimly, “about the gardening. Jared, perhaps it would make more of an impression on her if you spoke to her. Really, he is correct. She should be more circumspect.”

  He tossed his hat onto the hat rack and shrugged. “I can hardly see that it matters if she gets pleasure from digging in the dirt.”

  “In overalls?” she muttered. “You’re far too unconventional yourself, my boy,” Mrs. Dunn said. “I know the penalties that can befall a woman. You don’t. One indiscretion can lead to another. I shouldn’t like there to be any question of Noelle’s reputation or character while she’s in our care.”

  “Very well.”

  He walked toward the back porch. The cane wasn’t really necessary. His leg was healing well, although he had a slight limp because it was sore. But he liked the feel of the cold silver wolf head in his lean hand and the security the black cane gave him. He didn’t wear a sidearm, but the cane would be a handy weapon if he required one. He laughed silently at his own whimsy. He was
a cautious man since New Mexico. Perhaps too cautious, especially where Noelle was concerned. Oddly, the more he avoided her, the more he was attracted to her.

  She was stooped over a tomato plant, weeding carefully around its base. She was sweating because it was late spring and warm, even in the overalls with their rolled-up legs. His eyes studied her slender calves with quiet appreciation. It was outrageous for a woman to display so much of her pretty legs, but he had to admit that he liked looking at them. Wisps of sleek auburn hair had escaped from her high coiffure. Her slender hands were dirt-streaked and there were smudges of fresh earth around the hem of her overalls. But to Jared, even with those flaws, she was lovely. He leaned on the cane and watched her intently, his pale eyes on the graceful way she moved, on the lovely curve of her body as she bent over the plants, on those white, elegant legs…

  Noelle paused in the midst of her labors, feeling eyes on her. She turned and caught her breath at the sight of Jared standing so close by. Her hand, unthinking, went to the lace at her throat and left a smudge on the white fabric.

  “Did I startle you?” he asked quietly. “Forgive me.”

  She let her hand fall, oblivious to the smudge. “Did you come to chastise me?”

  He lifted an eyebrow and smiled faintly. “Everyone seems to think that I should.”

  She grimaced. “I’m not ladylike,” she muttered. “It pleases me to work with my hands, to weed and plant and harvest, and skirts get in my way. Perhaps I am unconventional, but how can working God’s earth be shameful?”

  He couldn’t understand why himself, so it was impossible to give her an answer. He moved closer, resplendent in a navy blue suit and an immaculate shirt and tie. He eyed her overalls. “It isn’t what you’re doing so much as what you’re wearing, Noelle,” he remarked, touching the legs of the overalls with his cane. “You have dirt on your legs.”

  “They’ll wash,” she said, with soft belligerence.

  “Noelle, you’re a rebel,” he commented. “A renegade. Have you no concern for your reputation?”