“Now let me do the same for you?” She began to bend.
“Dear God, no,” he said, stopping her before her mouth came anywhere near his cock. “Save it for our marriage bed.”
“I want to give you the same pleasure you’ve given me.”
He made a sound she could only describe as a squeak and she pressed her hand to the hummock beneath his frontfall again. She wanted to see his cock, not just feel it. It seemed so robust, and yet velvety soft. The head, what she could feel of it through his shirttails, was rounded and split like a peach.
“Cora, please.”
Was that her taste upon his mouth as he leaned down and kissed her?
“Ho, ho, I think I smell Tink’s pomade around here.” Lord Swansbrooke’s booming voice intruded upon the moment.
Cora immediately stiffened.
“Try the buffet,” her cousin, Bennett interjected, his voice laced with the same sycophantic slime it always did when in the presence of anyone with more than half a crown to their name. “She always hid in such places as a child. She used to leave biscuit crumbs out for the elves to find.”
“Did it work?” Bran whispered into her ear.
“I fear it only encouraged the mice,” Cora murmured. His calmness soothed her a little. Suddenly, the dog-parlour filled with the sounds of raucous laughter, and the yowls and woofs of the woken dogs.
“Straighten your things.” Bran released his hold upon her.
Cora fussed with her bodice. He’d torn the stitching loose, so that it didn’t sit right, but she covered the damage as best she could with her fichu. She wondered if anyone had yet found Harriet.
The buffet door opened, and Harriet wasn’t among the crowd. Lord Swansbrooke and her cousin Bennett reached in and plucked them both out.
“Well now, Cora. I hope you and Mr. Locke weren’t getting too acquainted.”
Cora clucked. “Mr. Locke and I have known one another since birth, and if you hadn’t been so slow, cousin, then I wouldn’t have had to spend so long in there. Are we now done with this ridiculous game?”
“Well, by rights we should all squash in beside you.”
“I have been quite thoroughly squashed enough, Mr. Ashcroft. I think we may pass on that particular part. What is next? A drink, some dancing, perhaps?”
“There’s still Miss Cholmondeley to find.”
Cora gave Cousin Bennett a terse nod. “Where have you looked? I last saw her in the yellow drawing room. She won’t have gone far.” Then without a backward glance, though it killed her not to do so, Cora swept towards the door leading the revellers on their final hunt.
That was surely for the best, she thought. She didn’t want any more questions to be asked, and nor did she want to announce her engagement. They’d do that quietly to their families first, in their own time.
Besides, she really did mean for Harriet to win her hat. She’d have to make that quite clear to Bran.
Chapter Four
Misunderstanding & Misconduct
“You’ve not persuaded her then?”
Bran watched Cora’s rump sway as she disappeared out of the dog-parlour. “You’re timing’s appalling.” He scowled at Hugh, allowing his friend to believe he’d failed. Any announcements he’d make with Cora by his side, and he preferred not to have any speculation circulating beforehand. He rather hoped that was why Cora had run off too. They’d set their own pace with this, not have society dictate it to them because they’d been found together.
Swansbrooke settled himself before the hearth, with a dog or two piled around his feet. “I didn’t care for the speculation that had started brewing. Bennett has a vile tongue on him.” He drew his brows low over his beetle-black eyes. “I know you mean to do right by her, Tink, but you have to take care of a woman’s reputation. They have to be nurtured, because if there’s so much as a whiff of scandal they end up with as much respect as a barnacle’s whisker.”
“What was Bennett saying?”
“Only that it was curious you were the only ones not to be found, and that most likely we would find the three of you together, for Harriet and Cora are bosom friends, and you’re often known to collar a brace of ducks.”
“Little twit. What in heavens does he hope to achieve in insinuating that?”
“To ensure he gets a whiff at the inheritance, that’s what. By ruining her reputation and scaring all the good men off. He thinks like everyone else that your proposition earlier was mere jest. If Cora increases then Reeve’s more likely to leave it to his grandson than his clod of a nephew. But she can’t beget if her reputation is in tatters. No one will want her.”
“I want her.” Dear God, he still had the taste of her upon his lips. Those few stolen moments they’d shared weren’t nearly enough. He looked around the room at the tatty wall coverings and the overflowing grate full of ash, half hoping that if he waited a few moments she’d come back. Of course, she didn’t.
Squeals of laughter from across the hall suggested that Miss Cholmondeley had been found, and now the revellers were returning to their earlier pursuits, predominately drinking, with a bit of sociable chatter thrown in for good measure.
“I have to have more time alone with her, Hugh.”
Hugh shuffled his feet. Then he leaned forward to pet the head of the dog that he’d disturbed. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’ll look awkward you paying her that much attention in one night.”
“I don’t care if I raise suspicions. I’m planning on marrying her, for Lord’s sake.”
“Yes, but it’s not seemly to appear overly fond of one’s wife, even before the wedding. What you need to do is stay away from her for a bit. Allow your humours to settle, and offer her some space. If she’s genuinely interested, then she’ll come to you. Be the light, Tink, instead of the moth. That way you’ll not get burned.”
Bran put his hand to his mouth and plucked at his lips. The notion didn’t suit him at all. Why would he marry her if he didn’t want to spend every moment worshipping her? If he wanted a fair weather friend, then maintaining a mistress would be an altogether less expensive affair than supporting a wife.
“Are you describing Miss Reeve as a moth?” he asked, by way of a half-hearted attempted at humour. Clearly, he still sounded too peevish, because Lord Swansbrooke frowned.
“A butterfly,” he reassured, smacking Bran encouragingly across the back, “but a fair single-minded one. I’ll give you that you’ve not chosen a dainty being to offer up your heart to. However, you Tinker, are most definitely a moth. It’s all that brown and buff you favour that does it. I shouldn’t be surprised if Miss Reeve doesn’t find you a little fusty. You ought to think about that. Even your choice of seduction venue is of a similar bent. Now your dear, see she is quite the opposite of fusty.”
Bran scratched his head. The brightest article in his wardrobe was a peacock blue coat he wore to observe the races, for the primary purpose of standing out so that he could be seen by his friends in the crowd. Cora by comparison favoured deep Veronese green, or scarlet, mixed with rich, striking brocades. He expressed his flamboyance in his actions. Clothes served only to keep one warm. But if Hugh thought it mattered, he supposed he could try the peacock blue at breakfast. Assuming his man had packed it.
Meanwhile, if he meant to avoid drawing attention, then he ought to take himself to his chamber for the night, for if he saw the slightest opportunity to do so, he’d have Cora in a cupboard again in a trice.
* * *
Cora couldn’t understand it. Yes, she’d fronted the group to search for Harriet, but that had simply been to draw the attention away from the fact she’d been discovered in a broom closet with a man of non-filial acquaintance. That and she’d had to fake a fall to account for the situation with her dress. Bran had not only torn the stitching holding her bodice in place, he’d also knocked her stomacher skew-whiff and left a red mark upon her neck.
Despite her staged fall, her mama remained curiously po-faced. Cora didn’t think h
er convinced. No, her mama seemed deeply suspicious. Although by nature she was a twitchy little mouse. Actually, more of a shrew than a mouse. Only the presence of Aunt Tessa had prevented one of her horrid whispered attacks, in which she sounded utterly reasonable but dripped vitriol beneath her breath. As it was, she’d given Cora a vicious pinch—warning perhaps, not to further misbehave.
If only the opportunity for further unseemly conduct would present itself. Where the devil was the ridiculous man? For someone who’d been so recently driven to express his utmost regard for her person, he was now failing to instil a sense of confidence in his long-term loyalty.
She’d said yes and now he was nowhere to be found.
It wouldn’t suit, if Bran turned out to be the flighty sort. She wanted long term loyalty and faithfulness. Assuming such a thing did in fact exist. The whole world knew Aunt Tessa shared her father’s bed. Aunt Tessa had lived with him and mama for nigh on twenty years, which Cora supposed in part accounted for her mama’s frightfully spiteful nature.
Bran had understood that she’d said yes, hadn’t he? She’d said it to him as they kissed, and though she hadn’t replied when he’d asked her again, while he was nestled between her thighs, he surely must have known that she agreed.
“Miss Reeve, are you feeling well? You seem distracted.”
Cora steadied herself against the Chinois-style sideboard and then handed her companion her half-drunk glass. “I’m fine, Lord Egremont. I fear that it is just the hour grown late.”
“Aye, it is that. And many are weary. I’ve just seen Tinker Locke strolling about in his night cap. Seems Hulme has already found another soul to share the cot they were paired for, so he was seeking a berth with Lord Swansbrooke. Perhaps, we all ought to consider our beds. Meaning you no disrespect, my dear, of course.”
Meaning to assure her that he wasn’t thinking of her in her night-rail, or sprawled across his bed. If Bran had retired, were such images prominent in his thoughts?
“Indeed, I think you are right, and I shall do just that. Good night, Lord Egremont.”
Why hadn’t she considered that Bran might have retired? Perhaps because she’d been too distracted by her mother’s pinch. It was all too easy to suppose the frightful woman had somehow seen him off. She probably thought Bran too lowly to make her a good match, failing to see anything of significance besides status and wealth. Cora well understood her mother’s thoughts, hence Lord Egremont’s stint at her side tonight.
From the corner of her eye Cora spied Lord Swansbrooke. With that enormous beak of a nose he was rather hard to miss. He sat at the whist table with her father, Aunt Tessa, the Lovichs and Samuel de Motte, which meant Bran was all alone upstairs, and more importantly she now knew where to go to seek him out. While the allocation of the rooms was a fiercely guarded secret, she knew perfectly well that Lord Swansbrooke, as the highest ranking guest, had been given the very best room, namely, the Walnut Suite, which lay a mere hop across the corridor from her room.
“Goodnight, Papa. I’m going to retire now.” He gave her a rather significant look, as if he’d expected her to say something more insightful than that. Cora shook her head at him, whilst his stare tied her tongue in a knot.
“All right, my dear,” he said eventually. He gave a sigh and waved her off, laying down his card to show he had won both the trick and the rubber. So his discontent had to be directed at her and not his gambling fortune. Heavens, was he disappointed with her? Had he expected word of her engagement? Surely the news of Bran’s first proposal and her refusal had already reached him. Perhaps it was that her mother or Cousin Bennett brought tidings of her misdemeanour? The latter had probably elaborated upon her discovery in the buffet with a man she’d turned down only hours before.
No, if father had been concerned over her conduct, he’d have dragged Bran before him and made him reiterate that offer for her hand, or else had him ejected from the house. She clucked her tongue. Perhaps this once, Bennett had actually held his tongue.
That still didn’t allay her fears that Bran hadn’t understood her, and she did so very much want to see him again. Surely one grand gesture deserved another.
Cora veered right at the head of the stairs.
Hadn’t Aunt Tessa said at the start of the season that she ought to make absolutely sure her prospective life mate could satisfy her before she made a commitment, for there was no undoing it after the marriage act? She didn’t suppose Tessa had intended quite such an interpretation as this, but then knowing Tessa, mayhap she had.
She was going to find Bran and make sure he knew exactly how much she wanted him. He’d stopped her earlier, but she wouldn’t be thwarted now. She’d return the pleasure he’d given her. That’s how she wanted their marriage to be, based on at least some notion of equality.
Sex. Tupping. Fornication. The words ran through her head with accompanying pictures as she walked along the corridor. She’d do this so that he knew just how ardently she wished him to take her to wife.
Only the odd murmur seeped beneath of the doors of the chambers nearest the grand stairs. Further into the east wing, not even candlelight glowed beneath the doorframes. Cora put her hand on her dressing room door, but rather than enter and pass-through into the bedchamber beyond she hastily looked about. The door to the Walnut Suite lay only a few yards away, just down the step that led into the oldest part of the house. Quietly she crept along the edge of the carpet runner. Lord, this was probably a hopelessly bad idea, but she had to express to Bran how she felt.
No reply came in response to her tap. “Mr. Locke, Bran?” she hissed through the latch. Pray God he wasn’t asleep yet. She raised her hand again and knocked a little louder. “Bran, are you there? It’s Cora.” Oh, darn fiddlesticks with this, she raised the latch. The room lay in shadows broken only by the soft glowing embers in the grate. “Bran?” she hissed, not daring to raise her voice. She tiptoed right up to the bed, which owing to the curtains lay in total darkness. She reached out, seeking the wild tangle of his overlong forelock upon the pillow, but to her immense disappointment found only empty space. Perhaps, Lord Egremont had been wrong, and Bran wasn’t bedded here at all.
* * * * *
Bran emerged from the privy to a sight that had him so stumped he very nearly back stepped into the potty. “Cora?” She didn’t seem to hear him. Her slender apparition stood poised beside the bed, blond ringlets wreathed by the golden glow from the embers of the fire. Her body inclined over the bed, where she had one hand pressed to the pillow as if were stroking an imaginary head.
She was every inch lovely, and he wanted every bit of her in his bed. Dear Lord how he wanted her in his bed. His body responded at once. Heat rushed to his groin and his cock rose like mast drawn aloft.
She’d come to seek him out, he realised, which surely meant she felt the same way. Joy followed the flood of arousal, making him feel impossibly light, although the wild flutter of his pulse kept his tongue in check a moment longer. “Cora.”
She heard him that second time, for she turned so abruptly she had to put out a hand to steady herself. Bran met her where she stood, her hand clamped tight around the bed post. A myriad of questions flooded his thoughts. Why was she here? For what purpose? To seek him? For something else?
In the end, he asked only the most pertinent of the lot. “Are you looking for Lord Swansbrooke?” It would be typical of his god-awful luck if she turned out to be the one woman in all of old England that actually turned doe-eyed at the thought of caressing Hugh’s domineering snout.
“I was looking for you,” she said, clearly petted at his insinuation. “Why would I seek Lord Swansbrooke?”
“I thought only… This is his room.” He tried to keep the accusation from his voice.
“I know that.”
“But you’re here.”
She smiled, and the plumpness it added to her cheeks made the glow in his heart warm. “I overheard that you’d been forced to swap.” Yes, he’d been about
ready to murder Hulme for that about forty minutes ago, but now he thought he might actually shake his hand. There’d have been no Cora visiting his bedside if he’d been bedded down with that lecherous fox.
“Yes…um… I was.” Bran fanned his arms out, suddenly conscious that he stood before her only in his nightshirt, with nothing beneath and a full half of his legs on display down to the skin. His toes curled into the soft pile of the carpet. Egremont had definitely given Hugh his best room. He wasn’t accustomed to carpet underfoot, just the normal creaking, cold wooden boards.
The same observation regarding his near nakedness seemed to strike Cora at that moment too, for her gaze lingered over his body. “Why did you not wait for me, but chose instead to retire?”
He thought he detected a flush colouring her cheeks, but it was deuced impossible to be certain in this light. Bran found a spill and lit the candle by the bedstead, then another that he set upon the chest at the foot-end. “You were in such a rush to depart after we were found that it seemed best not to pursue you. Also, Lord Swansbrooke advised me against making another scene. Apparently more than one in a night smacks of desperation, which is not appealing I’m told.”
“Are you desperate for me?” The little romp grinned as if she already knew the answer was yes.
“I’m…” He was what exactly? What was he going to admit? That beneath this flimsy slip he was purse-proud at the prospect of having her lie in his arms? That he couldn’t get the thoughts of their earlier tête à tête out of his head? That he wanted her above all else, right now, here in this enormous beast of a bed? He’d been so sorely used this evening that he’d been contemplating an assignment with Miss Rosie and her four sisters tonight. “Cora, I’m besotted. I’ve asked you twice. Must I make that thrice before you’ll accept me?” He came to her and took her hands in his, raising them to press kisses to her knuckles.
“I’ve already said yes. Did you not hear me?”
“But you didn’t scream it out as I asked.”
“I’m afraid I was finding it a little difficult to stand, let alone to express any sort of coherent verbal response. I came looking for you because I want to return that favour.”
Capturing Cora Page 4
