But instead he was forced to sit in the dining room with Mansfield and his male guests. Thankfully, of the group he had only ever met Graughton, and that had been in passing on one drunken evening in Vienna. The man didn’t look twice at the tutor, Mr. Dore, and, after recovering from the cold sweat of the fear of discovery, Luc found that amusing. After all, it was not as if he were not on most occasions the tallest man in the room, a distinguishing feature that often attracted notice.
But luck was with him. Now if only thirty minutes would pass swiftly.
He listened to the conversations with half an ear, Mansfield’s assurance of a hunt later in the week, discussion of the merits of the countryside, of the port they drank. Finally Luc excused himself, to which no one paid any particular attention. As if he were invisible. It was an intriguing position to be in and one that, as a viscount, he had never experienced before.
One that he hoped to shed before the night was out. At least to Bianca.
He slipped into the library, which was draped in shadows by the setting sun. The room was empty. He waited by the window, looking out over the garden. The moments passed like hours and finally, impatient, he strode to the cupboard where Mansfield kept a cache of spirits for his guests. Considering he was expected to join the evening festivities as if he were a guest, Luc had few qualms about helping himself to a finger of whisky.
He took a sip and rolled the peaty drink on his tongue before swallowing. He’d developed a taste for it on his travels. A taste for all spirits, truly. For the pleasure of a good wine under the warm Mediterranean sun.
He heard the door open and he pivoted on his heel.
For an instant she was framed by the open door, the glow of candlelight from the hall sconce illuminating her hair and throwing her into silhouette.
“Close the door,” he said roughly, striding toward her even as he did.
She looked surprised but she did as he said. Then took a step toward him.
He stopped, slid his arm around her waist, and dragged her close to him. He could smell that delicious fragrance of skin and rose water. Forget the drink in his other hand, he was intoxicated by her scent, her nearness.
“Aren’t you the rogue?” she whispered, looking up at him. It was darker now, with the door closed and the sun below the horizon.
“You bewitch me.”
“Luc?”
His answer was his lips on hers, the shape of wordless communion. The need to taste her as deeply as he could, to know her this way.
Weeks ago he had fallen in love with her beauty. Then he had fallen in love with her in all the other ways that mattered, her wit, her humor, the way her mind progressed through ideas. And now, the undercurrent of desire had come to the fore. Every time he looked at her, his lips ached, not to speak of the rest of his body.
Now she was pressed close to him, lips, tongue, engaged with his, in the back halls of the manor house, where any servant or guest might stumble upon them. Reckless.
But her teeth nibbled at his lower lip, tongue sweeping in its wake, and sensation overpowered any rational thought. Perhaps that kiss in early August had been her first, but he felt as if he were the innocent, awakened to a sinful world of physical pleasure.
“Bea,” he said with a groan, pressing himself against her body in a fruitless search for relief.
They needed privacy, and he needed at last to tell her, to reveal his secret, pledge his love and his hand. And then . . . then perhaps a kiss not need to be just a kiss.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered, breaking away. But she took his hand and pulled him to the corner of the room, into the deepest shadows.
In an alcove, behind thick draperies, behind a substantial potted plant, they stopped, breathless with the exhilaration of needing to hide. But the door to the library didn’t open.
She snatched the drink from his hand and drank deeply. Her hair was loose and wild about her shoulders. Her lips still swollen from his. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to love her. He wanted . . .
She set the drink down on the windowsill and pressed herself up against him. She took his hand in her own and lifted it to the expanse of bare creamy skin swelling above the neckline of her gown.
“B—”
“Don’t speak, Luc. Don’t tell me we shouldn’t be doing this. That it’s wrong. That we’re not meant for each other. I don’t want to think of the future right now. Perhaps this shall ruin me, but inside”—she pressed her other fist against her chest—“I am ruined already.” She drank of the whisky again. A drop lingered on her bottom lip, tantalizingly, and for Luc, the future was the path of her tongue as she licked it away.
He followed, pulling the bottle from her grasp and placing it on the table before taking her in his arms once more. She didn’t wait for him to kiss her. Instead she lifted up on her toes, pressed herself against him again, mouth parted. She tasted of the whisky now and he drank deeply, losing himself in her.
But she broke the contact too quickly, her hot mouth moving to his cheek, his jaw, his neck, and he groaned at the feeling, at the tugging of her hand on his simply tied cravat. Her tongue trailed across his skin and he gasped, needing, wanting.
He had to taste her and he did, mimicking her actions, kissing, nipping, licking at the sensitive skin of her neck, at her earlobe, and then she demanded her turn again.
His hands roved over her body, down her spine to the roundness of her buttocks, studying their shape under the far too many layers of fabric that separated skin from skin.
He was not a pure innocent. The Continent had rid him of that distinction, but nothing had ever been like this, both beautiful and erotic all at once. His heart was full at the same time he throbbed hot with need. In all the years of his youth he had separated lust and love in his mind, one the nearly embarrassing desire and the other the realm of chivalry and purity. Now it all combined and he was astounded, devastated by the reality. That he felt such base lust for the woman he admired above all others. That he wanted nothing more but to lift her dress, part her thighs, and join himself to her with a thrust, to know how she felt inside, the ridges of her welcoming flesh.
He groaned against her skin again, hands bunching up fabric, lifting though he hardly knew what he did.
She whimpered and the sound nearly undid him. Or maybe that was the soft flesh of her bare thigh under his fingers.
“Luc,” she said on a sigh. He had been indifferent to his name until that moment. Then, he wanted her to say it again and again.
But they were in the library of her father’s home. With a houseful of guests. And they were unmarried.
He had not yet confessed.
He stopped, rested his forehead against the top of her head, took in the rose-scented fragrance of her hair even as he tried to tame his need. Another moment and he would have ruined her. Without a sound of protest from her.
“Luc, please,” she whispered. “I need you.”
“Bianca.” He groaned. “Do you have any idea what you are saying? How close we are to . . .” There was no polite way to say it. Yet, how polite was it to have had his hands on her silken skin?
“Yes. Yes, I understand, and I don’t want you to stop.”
With another groan wrenched from deep in his throat, he moved, claimed her lips with his once more. Devoured her. No, he wouldn’t stop. Perhaps he could not have her the way he most wanted to, but he could give her pleasure.
Reckless. Dangerous. Ruination. She would not step away from this night unchanged, innocent. But what was innocence to the taste of this? Of Luc? Of his kisses—his mouth, his tongue. What was innocence and waiting for Kate to marry, waiting for a Season and a proper sort of husband that she might not care for at all, because while Kate could do as she might, that had never been the way for Bianca. She had had to be perfect. Do what everyone wanted. Stay out of trouble, not draw any attention. It was the only way she’d ever had any freedom. Back when anyone had paid any attention to her.
Living in
the shadow of a terror like Kate was enormously stressful. It made the little dramas of everyday life anathema.
But now, here was drama of a different sort. Passion. She reached up and took his face in her hands, stopping the kiss. Turned his head slightly, and pressed her lips to his skin, to the warmth of his cheek, then his jaw, then the sliver of skin above his casually tied cravat.
Tears sprung to her eyes as she touched that slightly worse for wear fabric. It signified so much. How his family was on the way down, genteelly impoverished, while her family was on the way up, only two generations from trade. How vast a difference. How strange this society that her family would look down upon such a match when truly Luc was matchless.
Luc’s hands rested over hers. “Your face is damp.”
“I’m just so happy,” she said, leaving her strange thoughts far behind and leaping back in to pure sensation.
“I’m happy, too,” he whispered, hands moving to her hips and lifting her up against him. She was not petite and slender like Kate, but he made her feel that way, little and fragile, and the perspective was wonderfully new.
Their heads moved around each other, mouths nibbling at skin, until he let her slide down his body and reached for the fastenings of her dress, loosening it so that the bodice gaped over her short stays.
She undid his cravat, his waistcoat, pulled at his shirt so that she could reach up under its long tails and feel the hot expanse of his chest. Her fingers tingled with the new experience.
He scooped her up again, made her dizzy with his touch, and then the soft carpet was beneath her. Pressing down beneath her to the floor that was firm, cool.
And he was above and hot. Kissing her, touching her. His hand on her thigh. Above her stockings! She gasped and shuddered.
Then his fingers were in a place that, despite what Lottie had told her of conjugal relations, she had never before imagined a man touching. She wriggled to get away.
“You shouldn’t— Is this . . . done?” she whispered.
He laughed softly. “It’s more than done. There are men who pride themselves on their technique of bringing women pleasure. I only hope I can do as much for you.”
Pleasure. She tried to relax, to focus on the soft searching of his touch, the way it—
She gasped as he hit a particularly sensitive place, his thumb circling about. And his fingers, how many did he have? It felt like hundreds with the way sensation was everywhere. Yet focused. And building and . . . it was such a strange feeling, like a tightness that wound tighter and tighter, as if drawing her toward some great height.
And then, she fell.
Pleasure scattering about like fairy dust, settling softly in her skin.
He drew his hand away and in the absence, her body pulsed. He rolled off of her, his breath ragged in the dark.
“What . . . Why are you stopping? I know there’s more. There’s—”
“Bianca, I can’t ruin you. What kind of man would I be?”
“The kind that desires me above all reason,” she insisted. “That would slay dragons for me.”
She could still feel him hard against her leg, the part of him that was meant to join with her.
“That would marry you,” he said softly. She stilled. Shocked.
Delighted. Her lips moved without will, curving into the sort of smile that held that secret kind of pleasure.
“Are you asking me?”
“God, no! I would never—”
The smile flattened. “You would never wish to ask me?”
“Never consider it a right until I had secured your father’s permission. I know, I’ve gone about this all wrong.” He looked down their bodies, a flush reddening his cheeks. She liked the way his cheeks would turn pink in large splotches with embarrassment. “Bianca, I would like nothing more than for you to be mine.”
“That’s better,” she said. “But of course, it’s impossible. My father will never say yes. Forget about your lack of fortune and family, until my sister, Kate, is married, he won’t even consider letting me have a suitor. Sometimes a woman needs to take matters into her own hands. Do you love me?”
He looked surprised, as if the question was absurd or irrelevant. “Do I love you? I have adored you from the first moment I set eyes on you, before I even knew you.”
That secret tendril of pleasure began unfurling within her again.
“Good, then. We’ll elope.” The idea was a nascent one, spontaneous, born of the desire to take their passion to completion, to not have to wait for anyone, especially Kate, ever again. It wasn’t wise and it wouldn’t be easy. Luc would no longer have a position, naturally her father would be furious. As a married man, it might not be easy to find a similar position, or one traveling the world as a companion. She had little money of her own, enough for books and ribbons and sweets at the market.
Even knowing all of that, she didn’t care.
“Bea, your father will say yes.”
She laughed. “I love you, but you are hardly suitable.”
“I’m not a tutor.”
“I know.”
“You do?” He seemed so surprised it made her laugh. He was so strong and confident but at times so insecure and tentative.
“It doesn’t define you, Luc. You are so much more than the occupation you take out of necessity. I’d love you regardless of your employment and position.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You could be a Duke and I couldn’t love you more.”
He grabbed her face suddenly between his hands and kissed her. Such an impossibly sweet kiss. One that told her he loved her with his lips, with his breath.
That love wrapped around her, the way her mother’s arms had when she was still a child, the way she had yearned for an embrace ever since.
“We’ll leave, at the end of the week,” she murmured, thinking aloud. “In the confusion of all the guests taking off. But I’d better go before someone finds us here and ruins everything.”
“Bianca, wait!” His expression was so earnestly entreating that she almost did. But extending this sweet moment might jeopardize all their future ones.
“Till tomorrow, my love,” she whispered and then slipped out of his embrace and out of the curtained alcove. She crept across the now dark room, lit only by a waxing moon, and reached the library door, her heart at once full and light. For the first time that she could remember, everything was right with her world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
“Bianca, what is the matter with you? You can hardly lie abed all day with a house full of guests.”
Bianca moaned as Lottie’s strident voice cut through the delicious warmth of her dreams, dreams that had been full of Luc, full of his touch, his breath. She buried her head into her pillow and grinned at the reminiscence of last night’s pleasure.
So very wrong, but oh, so right.
The day brought more guests to the manor. Not only did Kate’s other two guests arrive but their neighbors also came for the festivities. Which this afternoon was a picnic with archery and cricket, and any other entertainment spontaneity desired.
She was walking across the lawn with Mr. Bagley, a sandy-haired man of average height with a kind smile, who had arrived only an hour earlier, when she spotted Luc and Thomas emerging from the house and approaching the party. To watch the archery competition, no doubt. Her heart leapt in her chest at the sight of Luc, even at this distance. Even though she wouldn’t be able to acknowledge him the way she would like.
“Do you mind stopping here a moment, Miss Mansfield?” Bagley said. “I do believe that’s my cousin. I had no idea he had been invited. Who is that young boy with him?”
She looked back at Mr. Bagley and saw that his gaze, too, was focused on Luc and Thomas.
“My brother,” Bianca answered slowly, trying to make sense of Mr. Bagley’s words. “But that gentleman accompanying him is his tutor.”
“His tutor?” Bagley turned to her agape. “What foo
lishness is this? Viscount Asquith, a tutor?”
Viscount? Bianca longed to ask if perhaps Bagley had forgotten his eyeglass, but she didn’t wish to be rude. However, clearly, there was some deficit with the man’s vision.
“Mr. Dore is hardly a viscount,” she said with a laugh. “My father hired him on the recommendation of our neighbors, the Colburns.”
“Lucian Dorlingsley,” Bagley said haughtily, “is the Viscount Asquith, and heir to the Earl of Finleigh. He has been good friends with the younger Colburn since Harrow. I assure you, that man is my cousin and I know not what scheme he is playing at, but he is no tutor. In fact, last I had heard he was still conducting a Grand Tour on the Continent.”
Luc Dore, Lucian Dorlingsley. A coincidence? A black fog settled over Bianca’s thoughts and heart. Why had he lied?
“Shall we go to him then?” she asked brightly. “It must be some lark, some wager, I suppose.”
It was a matter of steps before they were face to face with Luc. His expression seemed to shift swiftly from a happy anticipation to wariness.
“Bagley.”
“So it’s true!”
Luc’s ashen face nodded tightly, confirmation of the news that had already sent her emotions spiraling in dark confusion.
“What’s true?” Thomas asked.
She looked at her brother, who was looking back and forth between them with a furrowed brow. What was she supposed to tell him?
“I—”
“Bianca, let me explain.”
She shook her head. But she did want an explanation. So she followed him when he pulled her aside. And then looked past him blankly, at where Bagley and Thomas still stood, staring at them.
The moment he saw his cousin, the bottom had dropped out of Luc’s stomach. Then there was that look on Bianca’s face, wary and pleading, as if she hoped to hear anything but the truth. This was not how he had wanted to reveal himself to her, but he had waited too long and fate had stolen the moment from him.
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