“Mama, this is between Miss Grant and me.” Pointedly, James reopened the door.
His mother pouted. Her lip wobbled, and her shawl slid to the floor. “I thought better of you, James. Truly I did! Pompeia was fine with the charade until you came along, so it’s all your fault!” She swept from the room, and James closed the door softly behind her.
Pompeia bent to pick up the shawl. “No, I wasn’t fine with it,” she said. “But I understood, you see.”
“Understood what?”
“What getting those vouchers means to Sally. I was a young girl once with the same hopes and dreams, but my parents wouldn’t permit me to have a London Season. I thought if I could help her get what she so desperately wanted…” She was becoming maudlin, which would never do. “I still can, if I go away, and I couldn’t bear it if there were other…unacceptable consequences, as well.” Now she was getting into dangerous territory, so she clamped her mouth shut. She laid the shawl on the sofa and began folding her remaining gown. Sir James stood by the door, saying nothing.
Pompeia was placing the gown in the valise when she remembered she was supposed to change into it. Not only was she behaving foolishly, but she wasn’t thinking straight, either. But apparently Sir James had finally accepted her decision, for he remained by the door, saying nothing. She opened her mouth to ask him once again to leave.
“Where the devil is the key?” he said. When she merely stared, he added, “To this blasted bedchamber. I’ve had enough of interruptions.”
Oh, so have I, purred the Wanton. “I haven’t seen one,” Pompeia said. Little fires sparked to life in her belly. Vainly, she tried to douse them. He didn’t want to lock himself in here with her. He merely wanted to keep his interfering family out.
Still, her heart quickened at the approach of his footsteps on the floorboards. “I don’t like lying to my grandmother,” he said.
Those lovely little fires flickered out. “Nor do I.”
“But since helping Sally matters so much to you, I’ll have to lie for a while whether or not you leave.”
After an astonished moment, she managed to say, “That’s very kind of you.”
“Selfish would be a more accurate description, and I don’t want to let you go.”
She forced herself to face him, still clutching the ugly gown. “But you must. I understand. The consequences are unacceptable.”
He strode quickly forward, took the gown and tossed it onto the bed. “What if there were no unacceptable consequences to your remaining?”
His grey eyes had darkened to charcoal; they gleamed with a light that stirred the Wanton Within, who scorned consequences.
Pompeia’s heart began to pound. “That’s not possible, Sir James.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “What if I make you a promise?”
“What promise?” He came closer, and the little fires flared, setting her veins alight, making her breathing quicken and catch.
“That the only consequences will be pleasurable,” he said.
Yes! the Wanton cried, and Pompeia moaned. Out loud.
Embarrassment flooded her, but desire swept it away. Her eyelids fluttered closed; her lips parted to receive his kiss.
The door opened. “To the devil with it all!” cried James, stepping back. That moan of Pompeia’s… His erection strained uncomfortably against his breeches. “What now?”
Simon strolled in. “Stop scolding the poor girl, brother dear. No one meant any harm. It’s a pity you arrived when you did, but we shall come about without your assistance, never fear.”
James had been sent to America to learn to control his temper. Apparently, the whole exercise had been a waste of time. A half hour with his family and he was ready to strangle them all.
Simon ran assessing eyes over the still-open valise. “Let Miss Grant finish packing. I’ll take her to the inn and see she has a room for the night and a ticket to wherever she wishes to go.”
“No!” said both James and Pompeia at the same instant. He tucked her hand in his arm, and she coloured deliciously. He added, “Miss Grant isn’t leaving tonight.”
“Is that so?” Simon tilted his head to one side, eyeing Pompeia. “Are you quite sure you wish to stay?”
“Yes, but thank you anyway, Mr. Carling,” Pompeia said in what she probably meant to be a prim voice. No wonder she’d been unsuccessful as a governess. “I feel that if I stay until your grandmother leaves, there is much a better chance Sally will get the vouchers.”
“A happy outcome for all,” Simon purred. “In that case, Miss Grant, I’d be delighted to extend the same offer in a few more days.”
Black rage rose up inside James. “Has my brother been making improper advances to you? Because if he has…”
“No, not at all,” Pompeia said hurriedly, squeezing James’s arm. “Don’t break his nose like you did that other man’s. He’s been most polite.”
“I daresay,” James said, but subsided. “Simon, get out.”
“Dear me,” Simon said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you like this. Like a bear with a stolen honeycomb! Beware, old boy, or you may get stung.”
Pompeia stiffened and let go of James’s arm. He growled and advanced on his brother, the perfect person upon whom to begin his strangling spree.
Simon put up his hands in a placating gesture. “I’ll leave you to yourselves, but do get your stories straight. The old lady knows something’s wrong, and she’s on a mission to find out what.” He backed into the passage, pulling the door shut behind him.
Pompeia sucked in a breath.
“No,” James said flatly, before she could get a word out. “You’re not going anywhere.” He had two days to spend with her; two days to get to know his own mind.
Starting now.
He pulled her into his arms.
She gave up and gave in, closing her eyes as his lips touched hers. Gently, ever so gently, he kissed her, and when he would have drawn away, she grabbed his collar and clung to it to keep him there. Delight coursed through her in a torrent. She gave a helpless little moan of pleasure. He chuckled, deepening the kiss, and she ran a hand up into his hair and abandoned herself to the mutual, sinful exploration of lips and tongue.
When he broke the kiss, his breathing was rough, and dark, delicious fire burned in his eyes. “Gad, you excite me,” he said, “but Simon’s right. If we’re to keep up the charade, we should have our stories straight.”
She rested her forehead on his breast. They were both breathing rather fast. “I know.” She sighed and straightened. “But your grandmother has been kind to me, and I hate piling lies upon lies. Fortunately, I didn’t have to tell many, except for the one big one. What she really wanted was to hear about you. She loves you dearly, and she’s such a romantic at heart.”
“She is?” His old tartar of a grandmother terrified all and sundry. Most people thought she didn’t even possess a heart.
“Oh, yes. You should have seen her face when I told you how we met. It’s a good thing we had met before, because at least I could describe you reasonably well.”
He closed his arms around her and held her close. She subsided once more against his chest with a tiny whimper. “And how did you describe me?” he asked.
“Tall and good-looking, of course, and so strong and masculine.” Into his shirt, she said softly, “A young woman’s dream.”
“Good God.” His chest quivered as he laughed.
She raised her head. “It’s all true. You are strong and good-looking, and when I mentioned your grey eyes, I could have sworn she had tears in hers. She said you got them from your grandfather.”
“You had noticed the colour of my eyes?”
She shrugged to hide her embarrassment. A few kisses and a moment or two in his arms, and she was on the verge of utter folly. His hand came up to stroke her hair, almost undoing her. She strove for an amused tone. “Apart from describing you in rhapsodic terms, which wasn’t difficult, I explained that we
met in New York at the home of mutual friends and fell in love at first sight.”
There was a long, awkward pause. “How romantic,” he said.
“Sally thought so, for she’s an excessively romantic girl,” Pompeia went on in a hurry. “That may be the only thing she and your grandmother have in common. She practically swooned with delight when I described how you swept me off my feet.”
“Dashing of me.” He tightened his arms around her.
“Oh, it was,” she said gruffly. “My knight in shining armour.” After a pause to recover her voice, she went on briskly, “But I had promised to accompany a friend to England on the next ship, so after a hasty wedding, you sent me on my way and promised to follow as soon as you completed your business in America.”
“Very tidy,” he commented dryly. “You fit into my inventive family so well.”
But none of it was real, neither the sense of belonging nor the comfort of standing close in the circle of his arms, feeling safe and beloved. It was nothing but a sham.
He pushed up her chin and kissed her again, coaxing her lips apart, possessing her in open-mouthed plunder. The Wanton in her reveled and rejoiced.
So what if it wasn’t real? She wanted more. In the life of drudgery that stretched endlessly before her, she would get none at all.
Two days.
After which there would be nothing but more stagecoach rides, more accusations and insults, and more trudging in the rain with her valise.
Simon’s ugly words hovered like vultures in her mind. She mustn’t allow this charade to turn into a trap for James, but while she could, she would enjoy him with all her heart. She flung her arms around his neck and pressed herself recklessly against him, breasts, belly and thighs, to make sure he understood: for these two days, lock, stock and barrel, she was his.
She deserved two days as Sir James Carling’s wife.
James bathed hastily, scrubbing off all the dirt and sweat of travel, and was giving himself a close, careful shave when Simon came into his bedchamber.
“Well, well,” he said slyly. “Prettying yourself up for your oh-so-desirable wife?”
James scraped the last remnants of stubble from his chin and set the razor on the washstand. He refrained from slapping the lecherous grin off his brother’s face.
“Perhaps you did change some of your ways in America,” Simon drawled after James didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m disappointed in you, old boy.”
Deliberately, James misunderstood. “In America, I wasn’t surrounded by idiotic or insulting family members, so I had no need to control my temper.” He splashed the remaining soap from his face. “Pompeia tells me she was employed in Selham. By whom?”
“By the Bailiwick hag, to be a governess for those scrawny girls of hers.” He snickered, eyeing his fashionably untidy locks in the mirror. “Pompeia, a governess. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“It’s abominable.” James managed not to clench his teeth. “Why did Mrs. Bailiwick dismiss her?”
“For trying to lure her precious son into fornication.” Simon chuckled. “According to Pompeia, and I quote—‘I slapped that vile, disgusting Harold Bailiwick for pawing me in the corridor, after which I was shown the door.’ Not that I blame him for trying, but he should have known. With a woman of that calibre, he didn’t stand a chance.”
“I blame him.” James flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles. He rammed one tight fist into the other hand.
“Dear me,” Simon said. “Noble of you, and it would no doubt be satisfying to draw Harold Bailiwick’s cork, but what do you expect? Pompeia’s that sort of woman.”
James transferred his ire to a more convenient target.
Simon made a minute adjustment to his cravat. “And that delightfully decadent name! She may not have been born to the trade, but it’s her calling, dear brother. A man has but to take one look at her to get rock-hard. From what she told Sally, this isn’t the first time she was similarly accused, and it certainly won’t be the last. In my humble opinion, she should give in and do what she was created for.” His eyes went round, and he ducked just in time to take James’s fist on the shoulder instead of his chin.
James advanced on him. “You meant to do your best to persuade her, once this damned game was over, didn’t you?”
“I did indeed.” Simon backed away, laughing, hands upraised. “But now that you’ve so clearly set your sights on her, I’ll withdraw from the lists. She’s just a woman, after all.”
James took him by the cravat and yanked his brother close. Simon stopped laughing and started choking at the same instant, and got in one half-hearted punch before James threw him into the still-full bath.
Water went everywhere. James stepped back, a little wet, but it was well worth it. Simon stood, dripping from his hair to his yellow pantaloons. He fingered his ruined cravat and gaped at James as if he’d gone stark raving mad. “What’s got into you? Control yourself, dash it all!”
“If I weren’t in control,” James said, quite kindly under the circumstances, “you would have gone through the window and down three stories to the duck pond instead.” He rang for a footman to clean up the mess and told his sopping, flabbergasted brother, “You will treat Miss Grant with proper respect, or I will make you sorry you were born.”
After changing into another of Clarabelle’s fashionable gowns, Pompeia came downstairs for dinner to find the two Lady Carlings reorganizing the seating at the dinner table. “James must take his rightful place at the head of the table now,” his mother said, “and you, dear Pompeia, shall be at the foot.”
“Oh, no,” Pompeia blurted. “I mustn’t take your place, Lady Carling.”
“Certainly you must,” said the dowager. “When my dear son married, I gave up my place as hostess. Clarabelle must now give up hers. You are a most worthy replacement, my dear.”
Since she clearly implied that Clarabelle had been most unworthy, this made Pompeia feel even worse. Not only that, there was a smooth silkiness in the old lady’s tone that hadn’t been there before. “Perhaps later,” Pompeia suggested. “When I’ve come to know my way round a bit better.”
The dowager would brook no refusal. “Nonsense,” she said, while James’s mother’s droll look told Pompeia not to waste her time in expostulation.
“But I don’t feel right about it,” she said. It was one thing to borrow her hostess’s clothing, and another entirely to usurp a position in the household.
“Why not?” barked the old lady. “You’re his wife, aren’t you?”
“Of course she is,” retorted her daughter-in-law, saving Pompeia from a bald-faced lie. “I shan’t feel right if you don’t take my place.”
“Can we not wait a couple more days?” Pompeia said. “I’d much rather—that is, I’d prefer—”
“Don’t put Pompeia to the blush,” James said from behind her, and Pompeia slumped with relief at his timely arrival. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Dearest Grandmama, etiquette will have to wait a few more days. After so long apart, Pompeia and I wish to sit next to one another.”
The dowager’s cynically arched brow went from James to Pompeia and back. “I daresay you do.” If Pompeia hadn’t been blushing before, she certainly was now. “It is most inappropriate—do not imagine you will convince me otherwise—but since you are master in this house, I suppose I must concede.”
Everything as it should be, thought Pompeia in bittersweet relief. James desired her, but he would never let her supplant his mother, even for a day or two.
“Pompeia shows a very proper deference,” the old lady said, but then she tempered this approval with narrowed eyes and a muttered, “We shall see what we shall see.”
“We should have expected something like that,” James murmured to Pompeia once they were out of earshot of the others. “Grandmama doesn’t know what’s going on, so she’s shooting at random. You deflected her first bullets beautifully and left her as confused as before.” He smiled rue
fully down at her. “Don’t look so forlorn. Sooner or later, we’ll tell her the truth.”
Pompeia suppressed a shudder. She would be far away by then, hoping never to encounter old Lady Carling again.
Over dinner, James regaled them with stories of his adventures in the backwoods of America. Pompeia couldn’t help but be fascinated by this forceful man who had gone fur-trapping and bear-hunting and made friends among the native peoples. Who had been everywhere from Montreal to New Orleans and in between. Who, if she understood him correctly, would have been perfectly happy to remain there if the death of his father hadn’t obliged him to return to England.
She tried to analyze her attraction to James. Four years earlier, her youthful desires had drawn her to James Carling like a bee to clover. Right from the start, she’d wanted to taste him. To partake of him. It was dreadful of her, she supposed, to feel a tingling in her tongue—not only that, to salivate—at the mere thought of him, but she could at least admit the truth to herself. She wasn’t impervious to other men, but James had been…deliciously different. He still was. And it wasn’t merely sensuality that appealed to her; she was disastrously sensual herself, but she hadn’t been fatally attracted to James’s friend, Mr. Belfort. She’d merely been bereft and wanting, and judging by the baron her father had been pursuing, facing a future married to a man she found deathly dull. She’d only taken Mr. Belfort as second best, after being repudiated by James. A good sort of second best, but when Mr. Belfort had deflowered her and driven blithely away to London, she’d been perfectly content to see him go. She hadn’t been riven with guilt, as she was supposed to be. No, she was just…no longer innocent.
Oh, and hungrily aware that there must be endless possibilities for carnal delight.
Which only went to show what a hopelessly improper woman she was, and how unsuited to be anyone’s wife. She’d done her best to bury those desires, to acknowledge them to no one but herself, and that as rarely as possible. She recognized in Simon the same characteristics Mr. Belfort had possessed. Male, attractive, capable of arousing her lust, but…second best.
The Wanton Governess Page 3
