Improper Advances

by Margaret Evans Porter

  “Exactly.”

  “I once asked Rush—a gentleman I know—why he belongs to White’s Club. Because it has the most comfortable chairs in London, he said.”

  Giving in to her womanly interest in the domestic regions, he took her down to the kitchen and pantry and scullery, the servants’ hall and their sleeping quarters. After leaving the cool, empty gloom of the cellars and other storerooms, they climbed the main staircase to view four bedchambers of various sizes and his dressing room.

  He saved his library, his masterpiece, for last.

  The balcony level, enclosed by a wooden rail, had benchlike seats positioned at each window.

  “Up here, I want glass-fronted cabinets and display tables for my collection of rocks and minerals.

  Down below, as you see, the bookcases are already in place.”

  Oriana began a gradual descent of the spiral stair, one hand trailing along the oaken banister rail. At the bottom lay a large bundle of canvas, the dustcover the painters had used to protect the floorboards.

  She sat down on the last step.

  Dare joined her there. “Fatigued?”

  “No,” she said, elbows on her knees, one palm supporting her chin. “I wanted to gaze upon your magnificent room and imagine how it will look when it’s filled with your books and collections.” After a moment, she added, “You are the most fortunate person I know.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You possess more money than you can count. You belong to a respected family. You’re well educated, your mind is capable of understanding—and explaining-important scientific theories and concepts. You designed this wonderful house. By anybody’s definition, yours is an enviable existence.”

  Her remarks probably held a few clues about those aspects of her life that she’d concealed from him.

  But at this moment, Dare didn’t want to probe her mysteries-he needed to take advantage of her proximity.

  “I haven’t felt at all fortunate lately,” he replied. “Just when we reached a friendly understanding, you changed. You’ve been avoiding me—don’t deny it. Am I the only man to receive such cool treatment, or do you freeze all who seek to know you better?”

  “Nearly all,” she admitted.

  “Not your Captain Julian. You eloped with him.”

  “I was sixteen, madly in love. Running away was the only way we could get ‘round my mother’s objections.”

  “Do your grand relatives oppose your latest suitor?”

  “I never asked their opinion. In some respects Matthew resembles Henry, but I didn’t care to wed him.”

  “You see something of your late husband in every man. Do I remind you of him?”

  Oriana, alert to the jealousy underlining his bitter observation, turned her head. That, she immediately realized, was a mistake. His face had tensed, his eyes blazed. He was drawing quick, shallow breaths.

  With Henry, she’d always felt safe. Dare Corlett posed some indefinable danger, and when he was near she must maintain her defenses. Especially when his hand was on her knee.

  “Answer me, Oriana.”

  “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known.” That was why she feared him so much.

  “Good.” His fingers traced an invisible line from her kneecap to her thigh. “You must concentrate on me, only me, when I touch you.” His arm hooked her waist, pulling her closer. “And hold you.” His mouth hovered over hers. “And most of all, when I kiss you.”

  The press of his lips pitched Oriana into violent turmoil. She wanted this contact with her whole being, there was no use pretending that she didn’t. The fire of longing flooded her veins, and she was dizzy with a need that would not be denied and could not go unanswered.

  His hands molded themselves against her face, even as her fingers sought the shape of his features—hard cheekbones, firm jaw. First their playful lips teased and taunted, and then their tongues. All the while they murmured blissfully—and with increasing desperation.

  “From the moment I met you,” he rasped, “I wanted this. I wanted you.” Palming her breast, he closed his eyes as if from the sheer agony of his hunger for her. His dark lashes cast small crescent shadows on his tanned skin.

  She responded to his delicious assault with a wild kiss that expressed the complex emotions he had roused in her: pent-up desire, contrition for every fact she withheld from him, and the joy of discovering that she could inflame him as he did her. And she communicated her willingness to do more.

  Dragging his lips from hers, he muttered, “Make me stop now, if stop I must. Or else I won’t be able to.”

  His blunt but belated attempt at gallantry made her smile. If he wished to take her here and now, in this vacant, cavernous room smelling of oiled wood and fresh plaster, she wouldn’t prevent him. What she dared not do in London was safe to do here. No prying eyes, no wagging tongues—none of the publicity that had proved fatal to her reputation.

  Shakily she confessed, “I can’t let this end. I want more.” She craved all he could give her, having gone without for so very long.

  As his mouth roamed her neck, she reminded herself that he couldn’t break her heart because she hadn’t given it to him. His curiosity and his need would be satisfied, as hers would be. And he might succeed in obliterating so many hurtful memories from her past. By sharing her body with this man, she could cut the ties that still bound her to the dead husband he knew about and the living lover whose existence she’d never revealed.

  Seeking no additional justification for an act of impulse, she let her lips communicate her willingness, with kisses more eloquent than words.

  Dare stripped away his coat. With an impressive economy of action, he slid one arm beneath her legs and wrapped the other around her waist, scooping her up and setting her down on the softer canvas bundled on the floor. The tight fabric of his breeches revealed his intentions, and her breathing became even more erratic.

  He loosened the cord that laced her bodice and gained access to her breasts, spilling over the top of her corset. His lips traversed every inch of her exposed and heated flesh.

  “You’re exquisite. Too beautiful to be real.”

  She was a quivering mass of unrelieved lust. All her senses were alive, aroused by his caressing hands and mouth, the murmured endearments, the glow in his eyes, and the taste of him on her tongue. Inserting her fingers through the gap in his shirt, she felt crisp hair covering the solid muscles. She felt his powerful chest contract and expand. He slid his breeches down over his hips, revealing his erect and hardened shaft. Now his hands were moving up her legs, settling on her mound, making her writhe in anticipation.

  Boldly and seductively he stroked her inner flesh, already moist from wanting him.

  With a groan of pleasure, he pressed himself into her cleft.

  Oriana wrapped herself around him as he dived into her repeatedly. She’d assumed she could live without this, only to discover how wrong she’d been—and how bereft.

  No exchange of promises bound them, no expectations, only their physical craving for each other.

  She didn’t understand why this was happening, but this was not the time to make sense of it.

  Content to let him set the pace, she patterned her motions on his. Kissing when he kissed. Surging forward to meet his thrusts. Lying still when he paused to savor the intimate contact.

  Realizing how tightly she clutched his shoulders, she relaxed her fingers.

  Dare startled her by abruptly seizing her wrists and pushing her arms back toward the canvas that cushioned them, pinning her beneath him with a tender savagery. His half-lidded, possessive eyes stared down at her, and he increased the tempo of his surging hips, intensifying her delight but also frightening her. This was, she sensed, a deliberate attempt to fuse not only their bodies, but also their destinies. And it was disastrously effective—that mysterious yet highly sensitive bud of her anatomy burst into sudden, fiery bloom. Her joy was so intense that it drew a wild cry from her thro
at, immediately echoed by his ecstatic moan.

  He collapsed against her, panting, his cheek pressed against hers. His mouth found her earlobe and nibbled it.

  “Delectable,” he whispered. “I could feast upon you forever.”

  A glorious prospect, but impossible. Dare’s lovemaking—terrifying and exhausting in its thoroughness and intensity—had been no overture.

  It was a finale.

  Chapter 9

  Oriana’s wanderings often brought her to the edge of Liverpool’s docks. Pausing at the end of Red Cross Street, she gazed at a flotilla of ships, recently returned to port or preparing for the next voyage.

  Among them, she knew, were vessels that traveled to and from the Isle of Man. A fortnight past, she’d made her escape aboard the largest of them, The Duke of Athol, setting sail from Douglas. In a newspaper list of weekly arrivals, she’d spied the familiar names Belle Anne and Peggy and Eliza, which traded out of Ramsey. And the Dorrity, bringing lead ore from Sir Darius Corlett’s smelting house.

  She stopped a well-dressed merchant strolling in her direction. “Can you tell me where I might see the Manx trading ships?”

  “I fear not, madam,” he replied. “I’m an American, lately arrived from Boston, and haven’t yet got my bearings.”

  The innkeeper at the Legs of Man could tell her what she wanted to know. Many weeks ago, Mr.

  Radcliffe had arranged her passage to Ramsey. Not only could he recite the names and owners and tonnage and cargo of every Manx vessel, he knew when they departed and where they anchored. But the likelihood that he was in regular contact with a certain mine owner interested in her whereabouts had kept her away from his establishment.

  Within hours of the passionate interlude in Dare’s library, she had fled Glen Auldyn. By inviting him to make love to her, she’d shattered his illusions about her respectability, and the only way to salvage her pride was to hasten to Liverpool.

  She studied the fluttering pennants on each tall mast, searching for the Isle of Man’s distinctive three-legged emblem, as her treacherous mind carried her back to the hillside villa.

  After lying in Dare’s arms as long as she dared, she’d laced up her bodice. He had pelted her with questions: Was she angry, offended, regretful? Reassured by her denials, he had bestowed many more intoxicating kisses. She had insisted on returning alone to Glencroft. And by the time she reached the cottage, her decision was made.

  Forlornly waving Harriot Mellon’s letter, she had informed her housekeeper of her intention to sail for Liverpool as soon as possible. With efficiency acquired from years of travel, she packed up her belongings. While Donny Corkhill loaded them onto his father’s hay cart, she retreated to the parlor and sat down to compose a brief note for Dare, laden with apology but light on explanation. Never one to encourage false hopes, she stated that she would not return to the Isle of Man. To bid him farewell in writing rather than in person was preferable, for she’d convinced herself that a man so blunt would dislike an emotional parting scene.

  She presented Mrs. Stowell with a golden guinea and the fashionable feather-trimmed bonnet that had elicited so many admiring sighs, entrusting her with a handful of coins for Ned Crowe.

  No visitor could lawfully depart the island without the requisite pass signed by the Lieutenant Governor, which she purchased from the landlord of the King’s Head in Ramsey, for nine shillings. Mr.

  Hinde sent her off in his carriage to Douglas, where she had the best chance of finding swift transport to England. Throughout her southward journey she fingered the piece of quartz she carried in her reticule.

  Of the two dozen sparkling stones Dare had given her, she’d kept only one as a memento of her visit to the mine.

  In nine months’ time, she thought ruefully, she might have another keepsake. But this week her breasts felt tender, and her temper grew shorter by the day. On several occasions she’d snapped at Mr. Aickin, manager of the Theatre Royal. With the onset of these symptoms, her fear of pregnancy subsided.

  Turning her back upon the docks, she retraced her steps. By the time she reached Castle Street, the tower bells of St. George’s pealed the opening notes of a hymn, followed by two long booms to mark the hour.

  She was late for her rehearsal.

  Frantically, she searched the broad and busy thoroughfare for a hackney coach. There was none to be had, and she was a long way from Williamson Square. If she walked too quickly, she’d have no breath to sing with.

  While fighting her way through the crowd of clerks, servants, and wives belonging to the city’s prosperous merchants, she carried on a familiar debate with herself over the wisdom of writing to Dare.

  She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d treated him unkindly. In her last days on the island, he’d proved himself her friend. At another time, under different circumstances, he might have become much more. His ship was in Liverpool-surely she could prevail upon a mariner to deliver a letter for her. Or should she wait till she was safely back in London?

  Flushed and footsore, she arrived at the theater, and humbly begged the assembled musicians to forgive her. “The time slipped away from me,” she told them apologetically. “I shall sing as well as I can, so you can all go home early and have a long rest before tonight’s performance.” To her relief, none of the men appeared to be vexed—they returned her smile and bobbed their heads.

  The manager could fine her for tardiness, but wouldn’t. She was Ana St. Albans.

  Tossing her cloak onto a chair, she took her position at the front of the stage, careful to avoid the worst of the warped and uneven floorboards. This theater, she reflected, must be the shabbiest and most ill managed in all England, and she found her best friend’s enthusiasm for performing here incomprehensible. The empty seats of the pit, boxes, and gallery were tattered, faded, and stained. The air was foul, and there was a pervasive atmosphere of decay and gloom. But Harriot’s career had begun in provincial playhouses, in far worse conditions. She, on the other hand, had toured the elegant European opera houses, where crystal chandeliers illuminated gold painted panels and velvet hangings and satin upholstery. The ladies’ heads and gowns had glistened with jewels, and sparkling buttons and badges had encrusted their escorts’ dress coats.

  “Shall we start?” ask the harpsichordist, his hands poised above the keyboard.

  With sprightliness and verve, she sang, “No nymph that trips the verdant plains, with Sally can compare, she wins the hearts of all the swains, and rivals ladies fair . . .”

  One of the first tunes she’d learned, a tribute to her mother’s charms. Her father had never tired of it, and it was a great favorite with her Vauxhall audiences.

  She ran through her carefully selected repertoire of English ballads and Italian arias and French chansons.

  Francis Aickin didn’t care what she sang, or in which languages, so long as she filled his auditorium for the two nights he had engaged her. The absence of Drury Lane performers, Harriot Mellon among them, had inconvenienced him. Mr. Sheridan’s new play Pizarro was the greatest theatrical success in living memory, and he could spare none of his players until it ended its unprecedented run.

  While singing the melancholy verses of “The Disappointed Lover,” she thought about Dare Corlett.

  “Most affecting,” the harpsichordist commented when she finished. ” Ton my life, Madame St. Albans, you’ll have all the ladies sighing.”

  Oriana raced through a snippet from an opera, full of trills and vocal flourishes, the showy sort of song her audience would expect of a London performer. She was determined to give them their money’s worth.

  Nearly done. The musician brought forth the mournful notes he’d devised as a prelude to her final offering.

  Her lips parted, and she sang the words that Ned Crowe had taught her.

  “Te traa goll thie, as goll dy lhie

  Ta ‘n stoyllfoym greinnagh mee roym

  Shen cowrey dooid dy ghleashagh

  Te tayrn dys traa ny
liabbagh.

  My Ghuillyn vie, shegin dooin goll thie

  Ta ‘n dooie cheet er y chiollagh

  Te gignagh shin dy goll dy lhie

  Te bunnys tra dy ghraa, Oie vie.”

  The stringed instruments came in softly, adding texture to the accompaniment as she continued with the English version.

  “It’s time to go home and go to rest

  My stool is making me want to rise

  This is a sign that we should move

  Drawing us nearer to bedtime.

  Come, my good lads, for we must away

  Darkness draws in upon the hearth

  Telling us all that we must go to rest

  The time for saying good night.”

  Her accompanist beamed at her.

  Wouldn’t young Ned be amazed if he knew she would conclude her concert with his song? She had repeatedly sung it to the harpsichord player, who had recorded each note and composed an arrangement for the full orchestra. During their collaboration, he had admitted that she had defied the musicians’ expectation that the visiting vocalist would be a termagant and difficult to work with. The local performers resented the annual invasion of London players—all but Miss Mellon, who was universally adored. Their friendship, Oriana guessed, was responsible for her warm reception here. Hardly a day passed without someone sharing with her an amusing anecdote or fond reminiscence about Harriot.

  “Madame St. Albans.” Francis Aickin stood in the wings, beckoning. “I beg a moment or two—meet me in the box-keeper’s office.”

  She gathered up her cloak, wondering if he was going to fine her after all. Should she protest the punishment, or accept it?

  He invited her to take the only chair that could be crammed into the tiny space he’d chosen for this interview. “I was a little acquainted with Sally Vernon years ago,” he told her in his smooth, Irish-flavored voice, “when I performed at Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

  And during my brief career as a hosier in York Street, I was fortunate enough to secure the patronage of your father, the Duke of St. Albans.”

  Familiar with his manipulations, she perceived that he wanted something from her.