“Are you sure about that, Brittany?”
“Pardon? Oh? Here. Don’t let me stop you.” She passed the fag back.
“Well.” Another drag. “If you say so. But, then I suppose you do have the servants to instruct.”
Bloody hell, was that a smoke ring wafting to the ceiling? She gave the cover a tug. “Oh don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have anything. Besides, if any of them come in here, they can only report that we are together to Christian. Isn’t that what you want?”
She longed to bury her face in the pillow but that might be admitting defeat. This was just a delay. Maybe the Time Lords, or Mutants, or whoever it was oversaw people zinging back and forth, with bar stools on their foot and things, had today off, or something? Maybe they hadn’t noticed she was here? Maybe there was something she was missing? Maybe she’d done something wrong? Maybe she was going to have to kiss him again? Had she kissed him too much? At all costs she needed to look calm, contained. Anything else would only arouse his suspicions. Then, what if he wouldn’t kiss her unless she drove him to the kind of distraction he wanted rid of?
He took another drag. A long one.
“You might be shocked at what I want.”
“Shocked? I don’t think so, darling. Unless it’s something beyond the pale, filthy salacious.”
“And that would shock you? Somehow I don’t think so.”
Her throat dried. It was a hazard of last night that he wouldn’t. It was also a hazard that he might want more. That he seemed more interested in the ceiling and her fag right now, didn’t mean a bloody thing. If he did what was she going to do? There was no denying he was the most adept lover she’d ever had. Not that that was saying a great deal when she couldn’t remember the half of them and those she could weren’t worth remembering. But she’d thought she was saying her goodbyes. She’d feel better about this when she arrived home. Right now she was doing her best not to think about it.
“Oh, you’d be surprised.”
“Promises, is it?” He shifted, stubbing out the cigarette. “No. What I want, what I’d like is to tell Christian where to put this place and this barrel she’s got me over. Exactly where.”
“I don’t blame you, darling.”
“And then just be with you like this.”
“Me? Darling, are you serious?”
He shifted again. “But, it’s not going to happen.”
He could say that again. She squeezed the breath to the back of her throat. While she wasn’t as assured as last night, she wasn’t as unguarded as to let him in, so why had she just felt that vain flicker, the stupid one that had gotten her into trouble with Mark?
Was she that desperate for things she didn’t need, when the things she did waited in her world? Fame, success, riches. If she was going to carry on like this maybe she shouldn’t sleep with him again? Her gaze widened.
“You don’t know that. I’m sure you’re serving yourself short.”
“Not really. I just can’t afford to tell her, it all comes back to that one thing.”
“Well, don’t beat yourself up about it. A class act like you.”
“That’s very nice of you to say, especially when I know you don’t mean a single, solitary sigh of it, although, I don’t mind saying . . .” He teased a long tangled strand of her hair over her shoulder. His mouth hovered inches from hers. “You’re different from any women I’ve ever met.”
Her lips froze, fortunately in a smile. If she didn’t have her fame, success and riches then she might feel a tad guiltier he felt this way and she didn’t. In fact she felt as if she was being stretched on barbed wire, waiting for the room to spin, her legs to feel as if they were shattering, herself to breathe the familiar air of home. But she managed to speak.
“Hardly a compliment, given the ones Christian says you’ve met. Fleming too.”
“I think it is. You’re bad.” His knuckles traced a soft path down her breast making her heart hammer. “The kind Christian and Clarence wouldn’t want me having in my bed.”
“Mitchell, do stop talking rubbish, darling.” She tried sticking a leg out of bed but he edged even closer, so she couldn’t. His breath skimmed her forehead, his fingers brushing her thigh.
“The kind that would make them expire on the spot if they knew just how bad.”
“I’m not bad. I’m—”
“Good. Very, very good actually.”
“What I was going to say was that I’m trying to get my foot out of bed actually. So if you don’t mind?”
“Not what you said yesterday.”
“I know darling, but that was then, this is—”
“Today. I know. And I can’t think of a better way to start it.” She could. Counting her money and sales, checking her Amazon rankings. Where were the Time Mutants when she needed them? Unless she’d to leave the bed, and him, first? Had she really turned up her nose about instructing the servants? She set her lips in her brightest smile.
“Me neither, darling. I promise. But I just need a moment to do what you asked. You know? The servants? I’ll be back in a jif, I promise. I’ll just get hold of Dainty and tell her to deal with it. That way we can be together. Why don’t you help yourself to another of my fags while I’m gone? Hmm?”
She pressed a kiss on his forehead and reached for the peignoir. As she fastened the clasp under her breasts he raised his chin.
“Don’t be too long.”
She wrote sex, about women who succumbed to the heat, the passion, the melting touch. In fact she had written every deviation going. What she hadn’t done was write about how one simple look could freeze her smile to her teeth, cage her breath so tightly it squeezed it into a derelict place. But it was all right. When she went into the corridor, that would be the end of this. If it wasn’t, she was on the pill. She didn’t have the pill here with her any more than she’d had the last time, which was stupid. So, if she had to sleep with him again to ensure she got home, this was the time to do it.
“Me, darling? Oh, don’t be silly. I’ll be right back.”
~ ~ ~
He just wished he could tell Christian where to shove Killaine House? Absolutely. Then he’d be out on his backside, begging in the street. All so he could dance some more with this exotic creature who lied through her teeth? Waltz shoeless through Eden to his doom?
Mitchell Killgower tossed aside the strange, very strange, tiny-sized tinderbox, he’d figured the workings of earlier when he’d scorched his finger, sat back against the bed rail.
Her bloody cigars were magic though. He wouldn’t mind waltzing to his doom with these.
Sex had always been his undoing, which was why he itched for her to come back. He wasn’t holding his breath though. He took another drag. The last time she went to instruct the servants she’d disappeared for three weeks. His gaze strayed upwards to the ceiling. The fact that couldn’t be disputed was her coming after him yesterday. The rest? Even he had been unprepared for the rest. But then, apart from that time three weeks ago, he hadn’t had sex in months. If she vanished again, he might not be having it for several months more.
Then there was the business of her remarks about lovers. He’d wanted to show her a thing, or two. He had. It wasn’t a trouble. Maybe Gabriella hadn’t thought so, but he was rather good in bed. He took another drag, considered the foot of the bed, through the fog of smoke.
Despite wracking his brains, he couldn’t remember a single lover who’d wanted to show him, though. Ridiculous. There must be one. Wasn’t he thinking hard enough? About things other than her ravishing mouth and astonishing body?
That same mouth hid secrets in the painted cracks, the crevices where another woman hid. If it didn’t, would he be in trouble here? Or would he be able to rely on the fact he’d never really cared about a woman in his life? The
fact she’d gone and might not come back?
As for the fact he was simply accepting everything that was wrong about her? Was that because she’d spurned his help, or just easier in terms of keeping a distance between them? He did have things to lose after all.
He leaned back on the pillows, blowing such a cloud of smoke the ornate ceiling roses were as vanished as the lands beneath a volcanic eruption.
One minute, two minutes. Ridiculous. What was he worrying for? He’d only be in marginal trouble if she did come back and she wasn’t exactly likely to. All things considered she was probably half way to the moon, or wherever the hell it was she came from, by now. That magical place, Sort of Newport, that didn’t exist. He might as well get up, washed and on with the day, before there was a further assault on his senses and defenses.
He bit down on the cigar, prepared to throw the sheet aside. The door opened. While he didn’t know whether or not to welcome the surprise that rippled, one thing was certain. He‘d sooner drink hemlock than be caught on the hop. Yesterday, at the Swan, enough sheets had been ripped off him. He spoke with the cigar dangling from his lower lip.
“Welcome back, Brittany. I see you never kept me waiting.”
Chapter 15
When she went into the corridor, that would be the end of this. Staring across the great divide that was the dining table, the words donged in Brittany’s head like the damned dinner gong had approximately a half hour ago to summon them to the table. So now she sat before a shining sea of silver—beautifully polished silver. Christian bestowed these servants upon them, after all. Brittany would be failing in her wifely duty, had she spared them from the duster, the broom, the elbow grease.
The reason she had performed that duty? Sitting on the edge of the spindle chair, clad in one of Gabriella’s hideous floral gowns, the woman had such a penchant for—grey with bright red roses climbing over every inch of it—it was obvious. Despite these other words, also donging in her head about sleeping with Mitchell Killgwoere again, the sex hadn’t worked.
It was what had happened next. All that had happened. She cast her gaze over the suave figure, in dove grey and crisp white, sitting opposite. By now, her heroines would be in such throes of an insane passion, examining the hero’s ungodly biceps and all, they wouldn’t care less if they went home or not. While she? It simply meant she’d have to do it all again.
There were worse men she could do it with. Sebastian for example, would have been out for the count, incapable of lifting his pinky never mind anything else. She’d be stuck here to the end of her days with Sebastian. The same went for Mark with his angst about how he’d taken her from Sebastian. Probably code for he couldn’t get it up in a month of Sundays.
Rab? She’d have to be out cold. Atholl? Her raising her voice in front of his poodle would be the perfect excuse for him to down another bottle of wine. Mitchell Killgower though? There were worse sacrifices a woman could make. What was more he kept meeting her gaze across the table. The words cake and piece of summed this up. She only needed to fix on her most beguiling expression, nail the claw that was squeezing heartbeats from her heart at a rate of knots and wait.
Fleming reached his arm, threadbare in a sleeve that was miles too short, in the direction of his long-stemmed crystal glass.
“May I just say—”
“Of course darling. Why not? So long as it’s decent, that is?”
“How very nice it is to see you back here again. Mother.”
She made a conscious attempt to cut her boiled potato, the one that sat on the plate next to the fatty mutton. Even if this show was for the benefit of the servants standing around the walls like stuffed kippers, mother wasn’t just a hideous consideration, it was a real possibility if she was stuck here.
“Thank you, Fleming, although I am probably not old enough to be your, or indeed—”
“You need to do the maths, son.” Mitchell Killgower dabbed his disingenuous mouth with his napkin, reached for the wine. “Unless there’s something she’s not telling us.”
The potato pinged clean off her plate and rolled over the floor. Had Mitchell Killgower worked out what these condoms were for? It wouldn’t surprise her. She carefully sliced her mutton in half instead.
“And what would that be?”
“You tell me.”
“And now, having said my piece . . .” Fleming set the glass down. “I’m going to go and leave you both to enjoy your supper.”
That was so harsh Brittany clung to her fork. “Oh, don’t mind us, darling. Married couples just sometimes seem to be having a little disagreement, when in fact they’re the very best of friends.”
“And that’s why your potato’s on the floor?” Mitchell Killgower gave the candlestick a dark look.
“It’s on the floor, Mitchell, because it is rock hard and it slid there.”
Fleming rose to his feet. “Well, good night anyway, Mother, Father.”
“Good night, Fleming.” She managed just to say. She’d no idea what was eating Mitchell Killgower but she’d more important things. “Pleasant dreams.”
“You too, Mother. Better than the other night anyway.”
She swallowed. Was he alluding to the other night when the chamber pot was her only friend, or some other night? Like the one spent with his father? She reached for her glass. Had she really thought the other night she would never drink again?
My God, was that perhaps, why she was still here?
Not the drink. Him. Mitchell Killgower.
She set the glass down. If she’d known last night was not to be her last night of unbridled passion and complete fulfilment would she have got in his bed without machination, depravity, enticement, responded to his every touch, caress? Probably. It wasn’t the point. The point was absorbing that fact and making sure it never happened again. It shouldn’t be difficult. He was plainly in a mood. She’d the distinct feeling he hadn’t expected her to come back this morning when she had. Perhaps he also wanted to take a step back?
Mitchell Killgower threw his napkin on the table.
“If Fleming’s going . . .”
“Oh, I am, Father. Good night.”
“Well then, her ladyship and I can manage, Dodson. We’re perfectly capable of cutting up and eating our own mutton. Why don’t you have the evening off? You look like you need it.”
“Sir, Her Grace the—”
“If you’re meaning my ex sister-in-law, Christian, she doesn’t live here and frankly, I don’t know about her ladyship here, but I’m getting tired of feeling I must mind my p’s and q’s in what is my place of residence, for the time being anyway. It’s all right we’re hardly going to steal the silver.”
“Sir!”
“Thank you. Take whatever their names are—”
“Eustace and Hopkins, Your Grace.”
“With you.”
Brittany’s heart sank. “Oh, they don’t have—”
Mitchell Killgower may have reached for a grape, his eyes were on her. Not on Dodson, not on Eustace, not even on the grape, or the glass pedestal that held them. She wasn’t going to be torn. Not between wanting to leap about and wave her panties in the air, except she wasn’t wearing any, that he wanted rid of the servants, and being left alone with him, in which case panties were a requisite. Already the grandfather clock in the corner ticked along with her heartbeat. What she was going to do was continue cutting her mutton, calmly.
“I mean, I’m sorry. Of course they can have the evening off.”
“Thank you for your kind permission.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her throat dried. The first time she’d kissed Mitchell Killgower she’d had no idea of the consequences. That was what she must somehow focus on. Letting this happen naturally. At all costs she needed to nail this tonight. Sh
e didn’t want to get pregnant. So, if this didn’t work then she would have to find someone else to kiss. It was hardly infidelity. Anything to get her nonexistent knickers in a twist about.
The door closed.
“You must excuse Fleming.” Another grape. Tossed into that sensuous mouth with the aplomb of a man tossing rings onto a spike. “Sometimes he gets carried away with himself.”
“And you don’t? I mean . . . don’t worry about it. I’m not. It’s just children for you. They just--” She broke off. How could she have said the word children?
“Although he does sometimes have his uses. Fill your glass if you want. Here.”
He stood, lifted the decanter. Was her name Brittany Carter and did she seek fame, success and riches? But, what if that was what he wanted? Her sozzled, and then, she sizzled? She placed her hand on her glass.
“How is your painting going?”
On a sliding scale, where one was pure genius and ten sheer idiocy, she spoke sheer idiocy. What if he choked on these damned grapes he’d been tossing to the back of his throat with such abandon? Kissing another man wasn’t possible and she was stuck here forever. Pregnant?
“My painting?”
“Yes. There is no need to look so astonished.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I feel you’re awfully good at it.”
“Is that so? Well then, one day I’ll show you my other works.”
She managed not to show her surprise. If the way he had shagged her was anything to go by, his efforts would put an X-rated movie to shame. And yet, if last night had been quite so simple, why was she making such a meal of this? Her heart thudding, her palms sweating. Was it because there weren’t worse sacrifices a woman could make, if there was the slightest ghost of an emotional connection?
“Oh you really don’t have to. I mean . . . I didn’t know you had others.”
The Writer and the Rake Page 20
