Well, that’s a stupid question, she thought. I’ve wanted to kiss him since I followed him into the alley.
And especially since he saved Teddy’s life.
Thank God, Mr. Courtland was here. She’d said the words, Rainsleigh had heard them, and the strange, intoxicating little dance between them was not allowed even the first steps. After today, they would likely never drift into that dance again, and good riddance. For her sanity, and her future, and the burgeoning stirrings in her naïve little heart.
“Well, you may tell him what you wish,” said Mr. Courtland now, “because I’m due in a meeting with Dunhip. Try not to worry about the voyage, Your Grace. I trust you to handle the Duke of Ticking in a manner most advantageous to your eventual departure but also to your daily survival. We will see you on the boat with the books. On this, you can rely.”
He glanced at his brother. “Have Sewell show the duchess out, will you, Beau? You know how Dunhip frets when I am detained.”
And then, while she watched, he turned and strode from the ballroom, closing the door behind him.
Emmaline blinked, held her breath, and turned to look at Lord Rainsleigh. They were alone together again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Beau turned his head at the sound of the ballroom door clicking shut. His brother had trapped him in a closed room with a woman so brimming with displaced gratitude her voice broke with the sound of it.
He’d done this on purpose, but why?
To torture him? Likely. Bryson viewed it as a brotherly obligation to torture him whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Only with Bryson, it was never torture for torture’s sake. There was always some sort of truth to be gleaned, a lesson learned, or a comeuppance to be taken between the eyes. And in this situation, with this woman, the possibilities for self-improvement were legion.
Beau already knew his brother thought he should grant the duchess her tearful gratefulness. He’d said as much. And his brother thought Beau should embark on the next heroic gesture to aid and abet her.
Do as I would do, was what Bryson really wanted. Be a man—be that man who stands up to the Duke of Ticking and his demands on her living arrangements or Teddy Holt’s sacked valet or any of the rest of it.
Sorry, Bryson, Beau thought, exhaling, it would take a lot more than being trapped alone in the ballroom to accomplish all of that.
Or any of it.
However, there were other ways to occupy oneself in a closed ballroom with a beautiful woman.
Beau glanced at her. This was unnecessary, considering he could bloody well feel every move she made. The rustle of her silks. The slide of her gloved hand across the wooden crates. He’d become somehow intimately attuned to her; his senses leapt with every blink and sigh.
“You’ve slept,” she said to his profile.
“Like the dead. And you?”
She nodded, paused a beat, and then said, “Lord Rainsleigh—”
“Please stop calling me that,” he said. “Not only do I detest the name, you and I are”—he leaned back against the crate of books behind him—“more personally acquainted, don’t you think?” He raised an eyebrow.
When all else failed, he could count on the tried and true. He had no wish to seduce her—no, that was wildly inaccurate; he had every wish to seduce her, but he could not, would not touch her. Still, some habits were ingrained. Especially when he was unsettled. And she, like no woman before her, unsettled him.
He finished, “Call me Beau, I beg.”
She laughed a little. “All right. Beau.” She looked at the floor and then back at him. “Elisabeth told me how you found Teddy. The priory in Hampstead.”
Beau shrugged. “And she told me how quickly and proficiently you laid out our map of prospects.”
“It was your tenacity that found him. You discovered the dancers who set you on the right path. He would have never been found otherwise—”
“Perhaps, but he would have had a very nice life as a papist in Hampstead.”
“I wanted him home with me, and you were the only one who understood my desperation. You did this.”
“My brother and Falcondale would have run him to ground eventually. You have a useful partner in Bryson—for all things. When he says he will get you and your books safely to New York, he will do it. Managing this is the larger, more complicated task. Save your gratitude for him. He actually revels in that sort of thing, the needy bastard.”
“Do not diminish what you have done for us.” She took a step toward him. He was torn between rolling from the crate and staying right where he was, leaning back, propping his arms wide on either side. He looked her up and down, another old habit, and she watched his perusal.
She took another step.
Beau’s heart began to pound.
“What I have done,” he told her, spreading his arms on the crate, “is nothing compared to what Elisabeth and Bryson will do. Please don’t confuse the two. Bryson is the solver of great problems. I am . . . I am . . . ”
She was upon him now, just a step away. His eyes locked on her lips, and he lost his train of thought.
“You are the one,” she said softly, closing the last step, “who came when I called.”
She leaned in. “You are the one who tore off into the night.”
She raised up on her toes. “You found him. And I will tell you thank you.”
And then she kissed him. One small, sweet swipe of her lips against his, just like he’d taught her. Beau held perfectly still, not taking his eyes from hers, even as she rose up to kiss him a second time, even as his vision swam with her closeness.
The last time, he kissed her back—no amount of control could prevent this—and she made a small noise, a little sound of triumph and relief. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she kissed him again, longer, slower, far more than a peck. How had she become so proficient at kissing quite so fast?
He’d kept his arms outstretched on the crate behind him, but now she stumbled, swaying on her tiptoes to reach him, and his hand shot out to steady her. Her own hands fell to his biceps, latching on, clinging to the muscle beneath the fabric of his shirt.
“We can’t, Duchess,” he breathed between kisses, his hands squeezing her arms to keep from hauling her against him.
“You . . . you do not want me,” she whispered back. She nodded a little, just to herself. This is what she believed, he realized. She actually believed this.
“No, Duchess. It’s the opposite.” He laughed, a hoarse, strangled sound, and shook his head. “I want you too much.”
Her head shot up. “Well, that makes no sense. You ‘want me too much.’ ”
Her hands slid from his arms, and she reached up to pull the pins from her hat. “Honestly, Rainsleigh—”
“Beau,” he corrected, staring at her mouth.
“Beau,” she said. “Either you enjoy me or you don’t, but I think I deserve more than the fraught, empty excuses with which you ply your other conquests. If my inexperience is unappealing to you, say it. I understand—”
He groaned and yanked her to him. She dropped her hat. “Your inexperience,” he hissed, “is bloody irresistible to me. Stop talking for five seconds and feel the evidence of how much I want you.” He kissed hard. “Even through the layers of that terrible gray skirt—”
“Your repeated insults of my attire are as rude as they are unnecessary. I’ve told you I have no choice in the mat—”
He cut her off with a roll of his hips, one quick, meaningful thrust, and she gasped. Her eyes flew to his face.
“Do not tell me I don’t want you, Emma,” he said quietly into her ear. “I have wanted you since the first time you lifted that bloody veil and blinked at me with those big brown eyes. I lie awake at night, fantasizing about all the ways I might possibly contrive to have you.” He rolled his hips again, and she sucked in a breath.
He swallowed hard. “You are wrong about the other women. I’ll tell you, and freely so,
that I love everything about the way you look and feel. Your hair, your mouth, your eyes. But I have known beautiful women before. With you, Emma . . . with you, there is more.” He paused, breathing in the scent of her hair. It smelled like vanilla and lemons and her.
She made a whimpering sound, and he dragged his beard across her jaw and kissed her again. When he came up for breath, he continued, forcing out the words. “I am not put off by your innocence. I am struggling to protect it.”
She opened her mouth to object, but he held up a hand. “Wait, listen. Your life is very complicated at the moment. You are consumed with the journey to New York, and with the Duke of Ticking, and these books—the whole lot. It is an enormous undertaking, steeped in worry, and your entire future hangs in the balance.”
She nodded and looked away. “And I should focus on it wholly. With no distractions.”
“No—hardly. By my count, you could stand for more distractions in your life, not fewer. I’m amazed you have not collapsed under the pressure of it. Your courage and foresight are staggering to me, Duchess—truly.”
“And I thought you only noticed my hair and mouth and body.”
It was a joke, but he was reminded again that Emmaline was not like other girls. Praising her beauty would not carry the same weight as praise for her proficiency at life in general. This was the girl who’d asked to be taught to fish.
“Those are lovely too,” he said, giving her a quick, appreciative kiss, “but what I intended to say was that your life will not always be so full of struggle and strife and risk. Eventually, you will sell the books and earn the money to make your own way, just as you’ve said. Eventually, you will wish to marry again. I will not take the innocence that belongs to you and your future”—he struggled for the word—“life.”
“But I am a widow,” she said, “and no one expects me to be inno—”
He cut her off, “It’s not what will happen with our bodies, Emma. It’s what will happen to your heart.”
She laughed again, an explosion of sound with a bitter edge. “What about your heart?”
“Oh, Duchess. I have no heart.”
She squinted and pushed back from him, straining against his arms. “Congratulations,” she said, “you’ve managed to say something stupider than wanting me too much.”
“Joke if you will,” he said sadly, “but I have seen the whole world, several times over. We are playing with fire, Duchess, and God help you, the burden for keeping you unscathed has fallen to me. Remember . . . remember when you wanted me to kiss you? You did not wheedle or manipulate; you plainly asked me to do it. When you needed help finding your brother, you wrote to me and asked for it. Even now, you refuse to be put off with your bloody gratitude, despite my surliness. Do you see how open and honest you are? This is no small thing, Emma. Openness and honesty are rare and wonderful, but they veritably spell innocence. This is what I mean to protect by keeping myself as far away as possible.
“A passionate affair—and believe me, any affair between us could be no other kind—a passionate affair would gobble you up and then spit you out on the other side. Your heart would be left harder, less trusting. Do you see?”
She turned her eyes away and bit her lip. He could almost hear the wheels of thought turning in her head.
Carefully, he kissed the tip of her nose. “Perhaps I’m heartless, and perhaps I’m not. But whatever I am, I am not the type of man to use up innocent women and then leave them. For all of my failings to Bryson, he brought me up to be more than this.”
Emmaline breathed in deeply and then let it out, a resigned sigh. She looked up. “But I didn’t ask you for a passionate affair,” she said softly. “I . . . I only wanted a kiss.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and drew her to him, kissing the top of her head. “Oh, Duchess. It’s never only a kiss. Not with you, love. Not with you.”
He felt her burrow against his throat, and he squeezed her, breathing in. He brushed slow, tender kisses against her hair, again and again, until she raised her head, tilting her face to him.
He looked down at her, an eyebrow raised—Did you hear anything I’ve just said?—and she smiled. She rose up on her toes to kiss him.
The new position fitted their lower bodies more tightly together, tongue and groove, and he swallowed another groan. Almost too late, she realized this and wiggled again—a small, tentative bop of her own hips, just as he had done. Pleasure and need exploded behind Beau’s eyes.
“Hold still, Duchess, or I swear to God, you will lose the very innocence in contention right here on this cold, hard ballroom floor.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out more like a gasp.
He chuckled and kissed her back, running his hands from her back to her bottom, kissing her properly, kissing her as if this would be the last time, as if his life depended on it. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, matching fervor. He cupped her bottom and pressed her into his need, just once more, and she made the most intoxicating sound of pleasure and assent.
The vast ballroom shrunk to the fusion of her and him and the solid crate on which they leaned. He widened his stance, allowing her to fall even closer, and she sighed and worked her fingers at the collar of his shirt.
He was lost to the sensation and to her. He wanted to memorize the dips and swells of her body so he would not forget for a lifetime.
He had just begun to wind the fingers of his right hand into the thick fabric of her skirt, inching it up her leg, when he heard the faint sound of a dog barking in the distance. He ignored it and was walking his fingers down her leg, praying the silk would soon end and give way to stocking beneath, when he heard it again, louder this time. Barking. The clatter of claws on parquet floor. His hand went still. He forced himself to open his eyes.
Yes, there it was again. Barking, claws on wood, and now he felt urgent paws on his legs, whimpers, a large wet tongue.
Peach.
Beau blinked and tried to end the kiss. Behind them, he heard the distinctive sound of a female voice insistently clearing her throat.
Beau coughed and pulled away, drawing Emma’s face against his throat.
“Forgive the intrusion,” said a female voice, “but this dog would not be put off.”
Elisabeth.
Beau breathed a sigh of relief and looked at the ceiling.
“Sorry to intrude,” Elisabeth continued, “but Bryson was insistent that we learn your intentions for this animal. She has eaten a raw steak from the cook’s counter and relieved herself on the drawing room rug. Bryse is not amused.”
Beau cursed and thanked God in the same breath. He nodded to the ceiling.
Emmaline had gone stiff and breathless in his arms, and he leaned down to press a chaste kiss on her head. “ ’Tis only Elisabeth,” he whispered, “and she will not judge.”
Peach continued to jump and claw at his leg, whining now, and Beau snapped, “Down, Peach, you infernal dog.” He squinted at Elisabeth and ran a hand through his hair. “Apologies.”
“ ’Tis nothing,” she assured him, keeping her voice light, “but you know how Bryson is. Especially about the rugs.”
To the duchess, Elisabeth said, “Would you come with me, Emmaline? Oh, I see you’ve lost your hat. I’m rubbish with millinery but perhaps more useful than Beau.” She glared at her brother-in-law. “You did mention when you arrived that it would be imprudent to stay too long.”
“Imprudent,” repeated Emmaline, turning to follow her, sweeping up her hat. “Yes. That is accurate.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jocelyn Breedlowe hurried home through Lady Frinfrock’s garden gate, anxious to outpace the threatening rain and reach the warm parlor before teatime. Teddy Holt had been a challenge today, distracted and listless, and only her most creative diversions had served to draw him out.
When the dowager duchess had returned, she was more fraught and harried than usual and in dire need of a friendly ear. Of course, Jocelyn could not leave unt
il she had obliged her.
She felt a responsibility, perhaps misplaced, to the duchess’s very complicated situation with the new viscount. Everyone adored Beau Courtland, but until Emmaline, no one had dared to love him.
Jocelyn felt more uncertain and worried for Emmaline than ever she had for Piety or Elisabeth. It was one thing to fall in love with a man who had no room for a woman in his life but quite another to fall in love with a man whose life had too many women already. But perhaps the viscount only wished everyone to believe he had too many women. Lord Rainsleigh, for the most part, was an enigma to Jocelyn—a lord who had no wish to be a lord, a skirt-chasing drunk who always seemed to be sober and alone.
She’d said nothing to the dowager duchess, save assurances, and certainly she did not suggest that Emmaline had fallen in love with the viscount. This was, after all, mere conjecture on Jocelyn’s part. Only when Emmaline was composed and able to face an afternoon of Teddy’s parrots (and even worse, an afternoon of the Duke of Ticking), Jocelyn bade her good-bye and finally hurried home.
She’d just rounded the corner to Lady Frinfrock’s garden door when she spotted Elisabeth Courtland pacing back and forth beneath the willow tree that shaded a stone bench.
“Oh, Jocelyn, thank God,” Elisabeth said, looking up. “I thought you’d never come home.”
“What’s wrong?” Jocelyn paused, immediately concerned. “Is it the ba—?”
“No, no, it’s nothing to do with me.” She stopped pacing and held out her hands, palms up. “I’m worried about Emmaline.”
“Because of the Duke of Ticking?” Jocelyn asked carefully.
Elisabeth waved her hands. “Of course His Grace is intolerable. But that is a separate worry. Because of my brother-in-law, Beau.”
“Oh, Lord Rainsleigh.” Jocelyn checked the darkening sky. This could take some time. “What of him?”
The story that followed was the same one she’d just heard from the duchess, albeit from a different point of view.
Jocelyn listened and then admitted, “I’m grateful that you finally know of their . . . friendship, because I am also worried for her.”
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