"Yes, all of us. Especially when people fall in love, of course. But that capacity for uncomplicated joy is within us all."
His gaze rested upon her thoughtfully. He couldn't recall the last time he had felt a lightness of heart. Except now, he thought, looking at her fiery hair and her long swan-like neck, the tops of her luxurious breasts bobbing even higher than usual due to the buoyancy of the water. She was a vision, and she was here with him. What about a bit more joy?
He put down the sponge and began to work on her back and shoulders with his bare hands. She leaned into them and sighed.
"Feeling better?"
"Very fine. I didn't feel too badly before, though."
"Still, you must be a bit sore and upset."
"Sore, a twinge or two. But you were a most considerate lover, thank you. I really have no cause to complain. And even if I did, it was my choice, remember?"
"But still--"
"You told me to please myself, and I did. I just hope I pleased you as well."
He nodded and smiled. "You most certainly did. It was all beyond compare."
She reached behind to take one of his hands, and squeezed it gently. "I am tired though, having travelled up from Surrey on the mail coach."
A swirl of emotions in his breast had him gaping at her. Her seeming warmth and tenderness were remarkable. Yet the other, more sensible and worldly half of him told him that she was a snake in the grass, that she had been part of a plot to... what?
He had a great number of suspicions, but only time would tell if he were right. He wanted to be harsh and angry with her, declare her a deceitful bitch, her father's daughter, and fling her out in disgrace.
The other part of him, his manly part, he had to admit, wanted her to stay, find out more about her.
She looked up at him now, her cornflower blue eyes gentle. "I'm glad you used a protector. At least you won't have to worry very much about an unwanted child from my foolishness."
His jaw dropped. "How did you-"
The corner of her mouth turned upwards slightly. "The clinic, remember? Dr. Herriot has told us about them and--"
"Then he should also have taught you how dangerous men can be!" he snapped.
She glared at him. "I've heard, believe me, from all the prostitutes we have to treat. But women can be equally dangerous if they set their mind to something. And they do have the power of refusal if a man importunes them, though they should of course be careful in the first place."
"But that was a power you didn't exercise. Nor any caution! Why on earth-"
She did not flinch away from his gaze. "It wasn't for the post, believe me, Randall, nor because you're an earl, though I imagine every woman in the world will throw herself at you now that you have a title, if they didn't before.
"No, it was what you said, about pleasing myself. About facing a few facts, and making a decision."
He stood up now to lean his back against the wall and give her his full attention. "Oh? And what facts are those."
"I'm nineteen. I've been engaged to Howell from the time I was ten. I've never had a beau, nor any freedom. No one ever even flirted with me, though that I think was as much about my own character as about being viewed as Howell's possession.
"Sharing your bed was me acting upon my own inclination for once in my life. Of having something for myself, some pleasure, a choice freely and willingly made. I might well end up a rich man's mistress because that's all I'm suited to""
"Nonsense--"
"--but if I was to give myself to anyone, I wanted it to be someone I could like and admire."
Randall's brows knit. "But you knew me for all of ten minutes. How could you-"
She shrugged one shoulder and leaned back into the warm, soapy water with a happy sigh. "When I came here to help in response to the advertisement, I expected you to be the older earl. When I saw who you were, I knew a great number of things about you from your correspondence, from the wording about the post. Plus some common gossip about you. Not all of it bad. Those things have only been confirmed since I've met you. And, well, I see things," she confessed, though she knew to most people it sounded like absurd, superstitious nonsense.
He stared for a moment. "What do you mean, see things?"
"I see things about people, I mean. General impressions. My grandmother was Irish, you see, and believed in the gift of the second sight. I lost it when Papa died, but there was something about you." She shrugged, trying to dismiss the topic and relieve the uneasy prickling shivering her back despite the warmth of the bath.
"Utter rubbish."
"Are you so sure?" she asked gently, her gaze never once leaving his face.
"Of course I am!" he said gruffly, but all the same he asked, "What did you see?"
She hesitated. It had all been so horrible, she wanted to be wrong.
"Tell me. What did you see?" he insisted.
She took a deep breath, trying to hold back her shivering. "A vision of a lovely raven-haired youth, a sandy-haired young man, a young woman with hair like spun flax and eyes like ice. Then a horse, screams, and blackness. I could hear the scream of the horse as it went over the embankment and..."
He was already striding out the door and toward the decanter of wine he had left by the bedside. He downed one glassful in a single gulp and poured another, drinking it more slowly to steady his hammering heart.
How did she know? Someone must have told her. "Second sight my foot," he muttered. Was that what this was about? Blackmail? Bloody Howell must have....
Randall was so furious and shaken he would not have gone back into the bathroom had it not been for the fact that he too needed a wash, the sticky cloying of their lovemaking lingering like a caress, but also making him long for a good soak himself, the better to savor the replete feeling in his body.
He returned several moments later, and avoided looking at her.
She said in an abject tone, "I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. It was obviously something very personal and I don't want to pry."
He gave an impatient wave of his hand. "There's nothing to pry into. You're wrong. There's nothing in my past like that!" he insisted, though his hands were still shaking.
"Very good," she said, glad she had not told him about the red and black aura which surrounded him. Whatever he had done certainly weighed heavily on his conscience....
"But you need to ask yourself one question, Randall. Did you really do something so terrible that you don't think you deserve to ever be loved?"
He clutched the lapels of the silk dressing gown together and shuddered. Lord in Heaven, how could she possibly know...
He hardly dared admit it to himself, that his raking was all a punishment rather than a pleasure, to prove to himself how foul and depraved he was.
Yet he had still had rigid rules. He had broken the greatest of them tonight when he had taken her to bed. For he had sworn after that first girl had lied to him that he would never ever have anything to do with virgins, dash their hopes, use them for one night and leave them ruined, hurt, confused.
Except as she rose from the tub like a Venus from an Italian masterpiece, all he could feel was pleasure. What had the dim Parkins muttered about sirens before he left? For her was a woman who could certainly lure men to their doom...
She stepped out of the tub onto the small piece of carpeting in front of it, and dried herself with the most unself-conscious ease in the world. Then she put on his velvet dressing gown once more, rolling up the sleeves to her elbows. As he watched her, his breath caught in his throat at her beauty, and he thought she looked anything but ruined or cowed.
He gazed at her, enthralled by her grace, as she walked past him and out into his chamber where the butler was laying out the food, and helped him with the tea tray.
No, most certainly not cowed. If anything, she looked as though she belonged there.
"Thank you so much, Hopkins. I'm sorry for the dreadful scene before. Mr. Howell is a most difficult man at times."
/> "That's quite all right, Miss. Not your fault at all. Will there be anything else?"
She looked at the repast and smiled. "No, indeed, I think we have everything we could wish for. Thank you."
Hopkins left as silently as he had come, and she shut the door at last.
She brought his glass of wine to the tub, and handed it to him. Then she held up the sponge.
He eyed her mistrustfully for a moment longer, but finally nodded. No one had done that to him since he was a lad and his brothers had come back in from a day out in the open air and...
Now he realised the delights of allowing someone to touch him without putting up a barrier to intimacy all the time. Or was it just her magical hands? The sharing of the bath was so suggestive of domestic bliss that he almost panicked. "Why don't you go eat and get into bed. You must be tired. So tired you've been seeing things," he added a trifle spitefully.
A lesser woman might have flounced off in a huff. She merely said quietly, "No, thank you, Randall, I prefer to wait for you."
"You don't have to--"
"I know. I'm enjoying it. Let yourself enjoy it too, why don't you."
She continued scrubbing him with her long strong fingers. She squeezed the wet sponge down over his back. The rivulets were like a caress all of their own, and he could feel himself hardening once more.
"Done this often, have you?" he asked, trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
"Not on too many men. My brother, though he's a bit more shy now he is older. We do get some at the clinic who can't struggle any further for help. Many dead people, of course."
He gaped and felt his spine go rigid. When he could find his tongue again he said, "I'm shocked that your father would permit-"
She gave a slight shrug. "He and Mama never asked, and I never offered the information."
"Go eat and get into bed," he insisted, resenting the cornered feeling she'd produced with all of her nonsense about the second sight, and his suspicions that she was involved in some sort of plot against his family.
She sensed the tension in his shoulders and tried to apologise again. "I'm sorry I've annoyed and upset you. It was never my intention. I'll gather my things and leave-"
He shot her an irritated look and snatched one wrist, looping his fingers around it like a manacle. "You're staying here with me tonight and every night until I'm sure no child has resulted from our liaison, and we can find a way to get you and your family back on their feet," he gritted out.
"No, really, I've presumed too much as it is-"
"And you seem to have a way with you so far a my mother is concerned."
"But there are other candidates coming tomorrow who might suit better."
"Plus I still haven't decided what to do about Howell. I personally think I should just kill him and rid the world of one large odious worm."
Observing her reaction, she was perfectly calm, indifferent even to the threat against the man he suspected of being in league with her to destroy him.
She simply said, "My, you really hate him, don't you."
"Let's just say he has been a thorn in my side for many years. Now that I'm the Earl, I can get my revenge."
"It must have been trouble over a woman, then. Or is it that he cheated you gambling?" she asked astutely.
"Aye, but now I've bought his vowels," Randall said, letting her wrist go, glad he did not have to answer the first part of the question.
Light dawned in her eyes. "THAT must be why he wants to duel you. If he kills you, he needn't pay you back. I had no idea, honestly. I'm not even sure how he knew I came a night early. He must have called at the house and found me gone, and hurried up here to Town. But why would he need a second if he didn't even know he was going to fight a duel?"
Randall nodded. "Ah, you noticed that too? Parkins always was a twit. No, my dear, I think Howell well and truly schemed against us both. You told me he was the one who urged you to apply. I'd know his writing anywhere. The only thing he didn't count on was not getting to you in time before I, er, had you," he said with an uncharacteristic blush, his concern over her being there to blackmail him fading fast.
"Let's try the word enjoyed?" she said softly. "If it's true, of course."
His tone and hard lapis eyes softened considerably. "I try to be an honest man wherever possible. It was no lie I told, Isolde. I've never met anyone like you. Enjoyed is a pathetically weak word to describe what I felt."
"Still, I ought to be pretty offended at all the things you said about me being a talented whore," she sniffed. "Really, that's a terribe double standard coming from a man like you, isn't it?"
He shook his head. "No, you don't understand. It was supposed to have been a bet at the club."
Now it was her turn to leap away from him as though scalded. "What?"
She flattened her back against the tiled wall, and clung onto the towel rail for support. "You mean Howell told everyone, and you went along with-"
"No, no, you misunderstand. Please, don't cry," he begged, standing up in the tub to try to reach her.
But she was already out the door and groping through the pile of discarding clothing on the floor, separating her things from his on the bed as quickly as she could considering she was practically blinded by tears.
He dragged a towel off the rail with a groan and flung it around his dripping loins.
"Please, Isolde, you don't understand," he said desperately.
"I know when I've been made a fool of!" she fired back, though her voice was more sob than shriek. "A laughingstock in front of the whole Town--"
"No, lass, not a fool. I'm talking about the blowsy woman who came after Howell and Parkins arrived. SHE was part of the bet. She was supposed to be an expert courtesan, able to feign being a virgin, to fulfill a male fantasy of deflowering something young and innocent. I bet my friend Tubby ten guineas I could detect the fraud. I would have some mild amusement out of the game, and that would be the end of it."
"Amusement," she sneered, before yanking her chemise over her head. "Is that what you so-called gentlemen at your clubs, as it's no more to you than a flutter at cards. Or is that futter," she added with a grim twist of her lips.
"Please, don't speak so. You're gently bred and reared-"
"As would many of those women like to be!" she pointed out, before stepping into her drawers and jerking them up angrily. As she tied the tapes, she said, "Most of them don't do it by choice, you know, the way I did tonight. It's bad enough having to earn their living in such a way, let alone to be mocked and jeered at, made sport of for a wager, or treated as less than human. At least have the decency to swive them without degrading them as well with your games."
"Isolde, really, you misunderstand," he protested, tying the belt of his robe tightly. "I never even wanted to bed her. I've had so much on my mind recently with my mother being ill, it was really the last thing on my list of things to do.
"I was just going to find a tell-tale clue to give away her act, and send her back to the club with a message that she had been discovered. You heard what I said to her! I told her to go back to Tubby to collect the payment and keep it herself. Well, you saw her. A less likely virgin never lived. How anyone could be duped by that, I have no idea." He shook his head.
"So that's why you.... With me? It was just a wager?" she said, stunned.
He fixed her with a gimlet stare. "Yes and no. I expected a woman, an available professional one, and made my move upon you thinking you were she and it was all a coy act. You didn't repulse my advances, for the reasons you've already said. Then when I got closer to you, well, I didn't care about proving Tubby wrong. I only wanted you."
She sniffed and said nothing, but her mistrustful gaze spoke volumes.
He gave a rueful laugh and shook his head. "How ironic. I was trying to spot the fraudulent virgin, and found a real one. I give you my word, I don't usually ravish every woman who walks through my front door," he said brusquely. "What kind of man do you take me fo
r?"
"One with a fearsome reputation, now that I know it's you who are the Earl and not your father," she said, staring at him over her shoulder as she stooped to pick up her gown.
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the post of the bed. "And like all reputations, based upon surface appearance, and a combination of lies and half-truths."
"You're trying to tell me YOU were the virgin?" she asked sarcastically.
He nodded and sighed. "Yes, in some senses. It was no lie I told you, Isolde. I've never experienced with anyone what we've shared together. I'm not sure what to do about it," he admitted.
He waved his hand around the snug chamber. "Or about any of this. There's much to consider, for both of us. All I know is I don't want to fight with you, sweetheart, and I don't want you to leave."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection #4 Page 10
