by The Charmer
Well, she was simply going to continue to hide it. She could falsify friendship as well as enmity, couldn’t she? And really, what was the chance that they would ever go on a mission together again? Collis was destined to work the highest end of Society, while she was slotted to use her servitude skills to gather information from the other side of the silver salver. She’d get through this mission and—
Someone knocked on her door. Rose dried her eyes swiftly, then answered to find a girl in familiar black and white garb outside. Good heavens, even whores had housemaids?
The girl entered, her arms laden with a rainbow selection of gowns. She spread each one lovingly on the wide bed, then turned to smile brightly at Rose. “Madame said thank you so much for coming and bringing your friend. Madame said since your dress was ruined you was to take your pick. Aren’t they tremendous?”
“Ah…yes, tremendous.” Tremendously awful. There wasn’t one dress there that wasn’t cut down to there or up to there. And that one—yes, it was both. Rose held one up to her. The fabric was fine, oh yes, but there simply wasn’t enough of it. “I hate to trouble you further, but…do you think you might be able to find me something a bit more…demure?”
“What’s that mean?”
Well, she hadn’t known that word, either, until quite recently. “It means…seemly, or modest.”
Comprehension lit the plain maid’s face. “Oh, you is wantin’ a virgin’s dress!” She smiled brightly. “We have them, for when a new girl comes in. Them’s the finest, anyway. The gents do love their virgins.”
“Indeed,” Rose said faintly. “I don’t suppose you could locate one that hasn’t been…used?”
The girl gathered up her charges and trotted away, soon to return with a dress that was only virginal in the sense that it was white. Rose held it up to herself, relieved at least to find it cut decently across the bodice and with no revealing slits in the skirt. “Thank you,” she told the girl warmly. “This will do very well indeed.” Unless of course she ever wanted to leave the confines of her room. Or look at herself in a mirror.
Still, it was better than donning her river-soaked gabardine. She put the dress on, a little disconcerted to find the maid performing intimate tasks such as buttoning the back and then adjusting her breasts within the bodice with swift, efficient hands. “Er, thank you. I can manage on my own now.”
Except for one simple fact. How was she going to face Collis now?
Chapter Seventeen
By the time Collis returned with her meal, Rose was dressed and the maid was gone. When he uncovered the plate this time, with a typical Collis flourish, it was to reveal a savory feast worthy of George himself. “Oh, heaven,” Rose breathed, and fell to.
She was halfway to emptying the plate when she thought to ask him if he wanted any. She looked up to find him watching her with hooded eyes, one hand covering his mouth pensively. She put down her fork, abruptly aware of her manners or lack thereof. He must be appalled. After all, he was used to ladies, not trough-feeders.
She wiped her lips delicately with her napkin and straightened her spine. “How long do you think it will take for Lord Liverpool to come?”
Collis grunted. “He ought to have been here by now. Perhaps his attendants are giving Denny difficulty. Still, I gave him enough information to stop the shipments in good time. I don’t know about you, but I’m in no hurry to face Dalton and Simon.”
“So it’s over, then?” The next bite was cut small with precise movements of the knife and fork. Forcing herself to chew slowly was agony, for the beef was tender and nicely seasoned, nearly as good as Kurt’s.
“Seems so.”
“Do you think we’ll be in terrible trouble?”
His gaze didn’t so much as flicker. “Hmm-mm.”
It seemed nothing was going to distract Collis from watching her. Finally, tiny bite after tiny bite, she finished. With excruciating dignity, she refrained from licking her fingers to catch the last taste of that heavenly gravy. She looked at Collis again. His expression hadn’t changed.
Her patience snapped. “What is it? Have I turned green?”
“Where did you get that gown?”
She raised her chin defiantly. “It was the most decent thing I could find in this place.” She tightened the shawl over her shoulders and across her breasts. “Besides, I am well covered.”
She stood, then turned to stride from the table. Collis nearly swallowed his tongue. Her torso might be shielded by the wool, but there was nearly nothing standing between his gaze and the rest of her. When she began to pace before the fire, the sheer gown very nearly disappeared altogether.
He ought to say something. He truly ought to. A gentleman would never…
She turned to pass before the flames again. Oh, he was going to burn for this. His trousers tightened and he shifted unconsciously, never taking his gaze from the lithe figure before him. She was perfect. It no longer mattered to him that her curves were not generous. Seeing her lean, limber form in motion belied her femininity in a way he’d never had the pleasure to see before. She was as graceful as a dancer, as fluid as a huntress. She was as supple and strong as a feline. If she suddenly developed the ability to leap to high places he would not have been at all surprised.
Oh yes, he was in love all right.
She must have caught a hint of something in his gaze, for she halted. Luckily for him and only him, she halted directly before the fire.
“What is it? Why do you look at me so?”
With great effort, considering the breathless need roiling through him, Collis waved a negligent hand in the air. “Only staring into the fire, thinking. Don’t mind me.”
With a puzzled frown only slightly marred by suspicion, Rose returned to her pacing. Collis nearly went down on his knees in thanks.
“Is George still occupied with Mrs. Blythe?”
“Hmm? Who? Oh, yes. He’s having the time of his life, apparently.”
“He’ll be sorry to return to the palace, I imagine.”
“I won’t. George is having entirely too much fun with this mad gadabout. He’s even taken to regaling the wh—ladies with tales of our subterranean adventure.”
Rose laughed shortly. “Appropriately embellished, I’m sure. Or is he telling them about our near death in the Tyburn?”
“Why, Rose! Do you mean to say that you didn’t find the tunnels entertaining? I’m shocked.” Collis smiled at her. Once he’d managed to look away from her…assets, he found himself surprised by the rest of her. “What have you done with your hair?”
It was piled high, with curly bits on the side doing interesting things to her wide eyes and sharp cheekbones. Even her lips looked newly lush and pink, as if she’d been biting them. Or been thoroughly kissed….
“My hair?” She touched it self-consciously. “It was the maid they sent me. It didn’t seem wise to argue with her. She wielded a mean bristle brush.”
“You look…very well, indeed.” She looked confused. True, she wasn’t used to compliments from him. Perhaps he ought to change the subject. “How old are you?”
The question came out more abruptly than he intended. He’d always thought her his own age. Now she looked soft and dewy, and he was going to get himself in serious trouble if he didn’t think about something else. Now.
“I am four and twenty. How old are you?”
He was obscurely relieved. “Nine and twenty.”
She nodded. “Oh.” She sat in the purple chair, hands folded in her lap.
Silence fell, a silence in which Collis fancied he could hear her heart beating from halfway across the room. Or was that his own throbbing in his ears? Don’t think about throbbing, you fool! Think about snow, and wet rainy London winters that go on and on….
His blood cooled slightly. Excellent. Of course, he’d become a master of control in the last year, hadn’t he? He hadn’t been close to a woman in a long time.
None but Rose. She’d been close to him, had fought him
and learned with him and depended on him when in danger. Abruptly, he was very glad he’d exerted that self-control. There was no one else in the world who suited him so perfectly.
“Do you have any family?” The question came out of nowhere, spurred by panic, not curiosity. Yet he did want to know more about her. Maybe talking would work better than silence. If he was talking and listening, maybe he would be able to keep from saying what he was very sure she had no desire to hear.
I love you.
The time wasn’t right. She was used to seeing him as Collis the rival, Collis the flirt. Collis the charmer. Well then, he would attach her affections using the skills of a lifetime. He would charm her into falling in love with him.
She would never know what hit her.
Once she was wound up around his finger like the ladies at court—then he would declare his love. Pity she was far too sensible to faint. It would have put a nice finish on his fantasy. Oh, well. He wouldn’t want her any other way.
She was looking at him oddly but answered willingly enough. She must be as uncomfortable as he was, of course for entirely different reasons, he was sure.
“Not anymore. My parents passed on some years ago.” She played with the end fringe of her borrowed shawl, not looking at him.
“I don’t have any siblings,” he offered.
“I know.”
“You do?” Collis frowned. “What else do you know?”
“Well, quite a lot, actually.” She looked uncomfortable. “See here, Collis. I know more than I likely should. But people talk around me as if I’m not there, even his lordship and Milady Clara.”
Collis narrowed his eyes to hide his glee. She was curious about him. It was a good sign. “What’s my second name?”
“Clarence,” she replied promptly. Her nose wrinkled. “My sympathies.”
“What is my favorite pudding?”
“Blueberry Fool.”
“Hmph. Everyone at the club knows that. What color is my bedchamber at Etheridge House?”
“Cream and green.”
“What kind of dog did I have when I was a boy?”
“Wolfhound. Named ‘Wolfie.’ Not terribly original, you know.”
Collis covered his face with his hands. This was far too good to be true. “Who…was…my…mother’s…companion?”
“Hmm. That one I don’t know.”
“Ha!” Collis jumped up to point his finger at her playfully. “Gretchen! She was from—”
“Germany. I know. She came in Princess Caroline’s entourage when George was to be married, but she left court because she was so fond of your mother. But I never knew her name.”
Collis sank limply into his chair once more. She was perfect. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
Yes. Why was it that they kept finding themselves alone in rooms with beds in them? Rose kept her gaze from flicking to the great sinful nest of pillows and silk, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t loom large in her awareness.
No, the bleedin’ thing was like a magnet, pulling her mind to thoughts of happily sweaty exploration of every inch of Collis’s muscled body. She rubbed both hands over her face. Stop it. Stop playing out those thoughts in your head. Stop thinking about him kissing his way down your neck until he gets to your toes—
Stop it!
Collis watched Rose cover her face and sighed in disappointment that her pert bosom was hidden by her forearms. Ah, well, back to those long legs perfectly revealed by the firelight. Elegant legs, trim and traced with supple muscle like a high-blooded horse. Long, elegant legs that led up to a firm bottom he knew well from Rose’s many hours spent in boyish trousers.
Ah, those lovely, worn old trousers that had clung like the finest silk to her pert, curved rear. A man could learn to appreciate a less curvaceous form, it seemed. All it took was a bit of keen observation. An eye for the subtler signs of femininity—a taut, supple waist, a high, small bosom, and a pair of legs that went from here to Paris.
Those legs around him, wrapping tightly to his waist like heavenly bonds that no man in his right mind would try to escape…those lean thighs astride him, riding him athletically, tirelessly, forever…oh, dear God, he was in deep trouble here.
“There is one thing that I would like to know,” Rose said slowly. “What is it like to be in battle?”
Chapter Eighteen
Whatever Collis had been expecting, it wasn’t that. The question hit him like a blow in the belly. With all she knew, didn’t she also know about the silent agreement never to mention the war? Once he’d come home from Chelsea Hospital, no one in the Etheridge household had ever asked him about it.
But for Rose, of course. Too forthright by half. Perhaps it was time he acknowledged that last battle in his own mind. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find the words to explain.
“Did you hear about how I was wounded?”
“You fell from your horse?”
He laughed shortly. “I was blown from my horse.” He rubbed the shoulder of his numb arm with his good hand. “The battlefield isn’t like the stories, you know. It isn’t grand. It isn’t stirring. It isn’t anything but awful, loud, and dangerous. Cannon booming, muskets firing, horses and men screaming and screaming…” He put his hand over his face. Then he raised his head, blinking quickly. “The first time I went into battle, I was worried about losing my favorite horse. Five minutes into it, I was worried about losing my friends. Then I forgot to worry about anything but losing my life.”
“Yet you stayed and fought.”
“I did. I made it through that battle, and the next, and the next. I lost count really, with all the big battles and minor skirmishes…. I don’t even know how many weeks passed. I’m sure I was keeping count somehow, but I don’t remember. There was a great deal of drinking going on at that point.” He drew in his breath and tried to send her an impish grin. He was fairly sure it came out gruesome.
“And then the cannonball bounced this way instead of that—they bounce, you know. Just like great India rubber balls. They don’t even look all that dangerous, as if they were too slow to hurt anyone. Yet one cannonball can take out twenty men and horses before it comes still.” He sat up straighter and looked into Rose’s sympathetic hazel eyes. “I woke up in a tented wagon, jostling my way off the line. I remember the hospital tent, and the surgeon, and then they started giving me the poppy syrup and things were properly blurred after that. I tried to tell them my arm didn’t hurt, although my ribs were cracked and it hurt fiercely just to breathe. But I kept thinking, if my arm is broken, it ought to hurt.
“I woke up in the Chelsea Hospital, back in London, and the first thought I had was that they had cut it off, because I couldn’t feel a thing.” He laughed shortly. “Ironic, because when I spoke to a bloke who’d truly lost his arm, he claimed he could still feel his.”
Rose was watching him still, her hands gone quiet in her lap and her eyes shining damply. She opened her mouth to speak. “I—”
From the other side of the nearest wall came a great moan. Then another, louder. Rose pulled back, alarmed, as the moans multiplied and amplified, accompanied by a great rhythmic slamming of the bed to the wall, culminating in a thunderous orgasm that shook the very flames in the candles.
Sudden silence descended, leaving only the faint tinkling of the settling glassware behind. Rose’s expression was priceless. Her jaw hung open and her eyes were wide and a very hot flush had crept over her cheeks. Collis threw back his head to release a great shout of laughter, feeling suddenly freed from a black and choking darkness.
Rose put both palms to her hot cheeks. “I—I was going to say,” she raised her voice over his laughter, “that I’m sorry for asking so many questions. I must be making you feel like an insect under a quizzing glass.”
Collis let his laughter go with a relieved sigh and relaxed back into his chair. “Stop apologizing. You are damn clever at gathering information and putting together clues, and you’ve a memory like
a poacher’s trap, for God’s sake! These are valuable gifts and you should be proud to own them.”
“Gifts?”
He laughed. “Even that alleged invisibility of yours, if you like. Being ignored has definite advantages.” He looked her over with a puzzled air. “Damned if I know how anyone could ignore you, though.”
The remark was meant casually enough, in relation to his current state of semi-arousal, that he was surprised by the intense look of longing that came over her face. She looked so lost, so hungry—
He was on his feet in one beat of his heart. He was standing before her by the next one. “What is it?” Damn the betraying hoarseness of his voice. “What is wrong, my Briar Rose?”
She blinked once, hard, then again, but she was not able to fight back the sheen of tears in her eyes. “You never have, have you? You’ve never ignored me, not for a single moment.”
That surprised a low laugh from him. “Never.” Ignore that fire, that sizzling suppleness, that flash of shadowy rebellion within her that matched his own so well?
“Why you?”
“You and I—we are the same,” he whispered.
With a swift duck of his head, he kissed her. Her lips parted in surprise. He could feel his own breath invade her with her sharp gasp. He turned his hand free upon her. That hair—that skin—
He would never get enough.
Rose couldn’t breathe, didn’t care, couldn’t even remember the importance of breath—Collis. He pulled her close even as she stepped closer. She was quivering, still shocked into stillness under his assault. “Kiss me,” he murmured into her mouth. Please. Kiss me now. Kiss me back. Kiss me hard—
