The truth of it was she couldn’t trust herself around him—alone with him. Nothing seemed to be able to change that. The kiss that morning had punctuated that point quite emphatically and her dress—the coffee stain raising not an eyebrow from Hélène—acted as a glaring reminder. She was no better than the women he’d taken to his bed. In actuality, she was worse, for hers hadn’t been a courting with the expected flowers, pretty words, or gestures of adoration. No, he had her succumbing when only two minutes before she would have gladly seen him hung, drawn, and quartered. Embarrassment didn’t come close to describing her feelings.
If only she could send the letter to Lord Clayborough by messenger as she had done in London. A story of a farmer who’d found two bags of letters near his barn—letters two years old—had circulated through London two months ago. Since then, Amelia hadn’t fully trusted the post. However, this wasn’t her house and these weren’t her servants to utilize at will. Moreover, she’d never be able to manage something like that with the viscount in residence.
The morning following, Amelia had been at her desk a full fifteen minutes before the viscount arrived. With yesterday’s kiss still vivid in her mind, Amelia kept her gaze focused on the papers in front of her, feigning a concentration that had all but abandoned her the moment he’d stepped foot in the study.
“Good morning, Amelia.”
The way her senses responded to his polite greeting—the words tripping over every nerve end—one would have thought there’d been an intimacy in his tone. Amelia sent him a quick glance and issued a brisk nod. Two things about his appearance registered immediately, the first of which she’d have done well not to notice: His dimples made him look ridiculously appealing. Secondly, he was wearing riding clothes, which suggested he would be spending most of the day down at the stables instead of in the study with her. Certainly a comforting prospect.
“Put away the contracts,” he said, striding over to his desk. “We are going riding this morning.”
Amelia’s head snapped up to stare at him wide-eyed. He gazed across at her, a mild smile shaping his mouth.
“I would rather not,” she said in lemon-tart tones, having recovered from her bewilderment.
He chuckled. “Think of this as part of your duties, although I thought you’d enjoy the fresh air. Your father spoke many times of your skill on a horse. I rather thought you’d be eager to take up the reins again.”
That her father had anything kind to say about her was preposterous. The viscount was fabricating things as usual.
“I do not recall going riding with you listed on the duties you presented me with when I arrived.”
He laughed again, the dimples in his cheeks deepening. “I believe I mentioned there would be additional tasks. Think of this as one of those.”
Amelia viewed the work on her desk and then the accursed filing drawers. This was like being asked to choose between strawberries and cream drizzled with chocolate and boiled mutton and potatoes; there was no question as to preference. “I’m hardly dressed to go riding.” She gestured at her flowered dress in a halfhearted protest.
The lucid, sane part of Thomas wished he hadn’t seen the reluctant yearning in her eyes. It added a dimension of vulnerability to her otherwise prickly disposition.
Quietly, he asked, “Will it help if I tell you this isn’t a request but an order given by the viscountess herself?”
Thomas, my dear, why don’t you take Lady Amelia riding? I can’t imagine the poor girl intended to be cooped up in the study for most of the day.
She stood, the movement as graceful as a ballerina. Apparently, a combination of his mother’s backing and the lure of the outdoors was an inducement she could not refuse.
“Well, as it’s under the viscountess’s directive, I shall go and change into something more suitable.”
The other part of him, the one that had him semi-hard watching the innocent provocation of hips and legs moving in feminine unity as she crossed the floor and exited the room, could have made a meal of her right then and greedily come back for more.
Lord, he was in trouble.
Nothing was turning out as he planned. Although her response to him was more than he’d hoped for, the ferocity of his response to her could have split the Rock of Gibraltar clean in two.
The answer to his dilemma was quite simple. Just stop kissing the damn woman as each kiss turned him inside out, upside down, the memories living on to torment him endlessly.
Stop kissing the woman. This time the command echoed in his head with more force. He’d just have to accomplish his ultimate goal without further physical intimacy. A rather novel idea and one he’d do his best to employ.
However, fifteen minutes later, Thomas began to seriously doubt whether he had the required restraint to follow through on his recent vow. The erection straining the brown wool of his riding breeches forced him to remain seated behind his desk.
She strode into the room, a mass of dark silken hair, long limbs, and pert breasts. Her attire was nothing short of scandalous. But for two slits in front and back running from hip to hem, what she was wearing resembled a skirt. And beneath the heavy, dark blue material, fitted leather breeches encased a pair of legs finer than any that had ever graced the Argyll rooms. A man had never envied a pair of breeches more than he did at that moment.
Now he understood why trousers on women were not permissible in society. Swallowing hard, he tried to keep his expression blank while lust, raw and primitive, accosted him from all sides.
“I am ready.” She had stopped just inside the room.
“Yes, most assuredly you are.” His words were an indiscernible utterance under his breath while he entertained lurid thoughts of spreading her out on his desk and taking her, driving into her body until she reached her peak, convulsing around him in a mass of quivering flesh and silken limbs. Then he’d find his own release in the tight, wet clasp of her body.
Thomas surfaced from his reverie to find her staring expectantly at him. He came swiftly to his feet. A surreptitious glance down revealed no betraying bit of bulges marring the clean line of his jacket, though his erection still lingered about as if hoping for some form of appeasement.
“Will you require a sidesaddle for your mount?” Long strides carried him to her side.
“No, I ride astride.”
Her statement conjured up images of her atop him, her long legs straddling his hips in wanton abandon. He didn’t dare allow his gaze to venture below her neck. “Why is that?”
She paused and cleared her throat before she spoke again. “My mother believed sidesaddle to be unsafe.”
“A suffragette, was she?” he teased. It was either make light of it or take her where she stood.
“No!” Then as if she realized the sharpness of her tone, she continued mildly “Merely a sensible woman.”
Thomas detected in her an unspoken distress and knew there was something far deeper in her simply spoken words than Amelia would ever reveal.
“Come, let us walk down to the stables. It is not far from the house.” And a walk on a crisp, cool autumn day would do wonders for his unflagging libido—or so he hoped.
They completed the walk down to the stables in relative silence. They spoke nothing of the kiss—and again, would not. The viscount had said not a word about her attire. Again, it appeared that was not to be mentioned or discussed.
Minutes after the groom had left them with two of the finest horses she’d ever seen, Amelia stared up at a beautiful chestnut mare and a black thoroughbred. Now she and the viscount would ride the grounds together as if the kiss had already faded into the annals of time, and the practice of women parading about in leather breeches and riding a horse astride were a common enough occurrence.
While Lord Armstrong affectionately stroked the thoroughbred’s mane, the mare poked its mouth around the pockets of his riding jacket, as if hoping to find some kind of treat. “This is Lightning. You will be riding her today.” He nodded
at the mare.
Amelia reached up and gently rubbed the silky, brown hair just above her muzzle. “She’s beautiful,” she said, in a quiet soothing voice. The horse nickered softly, pawing at the dirt with her front hoof.
Securing the thoroughbred’s reins on a wooden post, Lord Armstrong retrieved the mare’s reins. “Lightning is eighteen hands. You’ll require some help to mount.”
“I can manage on my own.” Then she looked at the height of the foot strap for the saddle, which was a far cry higher than what she was accustomed to.
“Don’t be stubborn. I’ve had grown men unable to mount her on their own.”
“Well, I can,” she said her teeth gritted in determination. Jerking the reins from his hand, she raised her leg, and neatly inserted her booted foot into the stirrup, but found she lacked sufficient leg strength to pull herself up. Undaunted, she tried again, hoisting herself a little higher, but not enough to propel her onto the saddle.
Lightning remained perfectly still while she attempted to mount a third time, also to no avail. Amelia sent a fleeting glance in Lord Armstrong’s direction. His expression was blank save a knowing glimmer in his eyes.
He cleared his throat the last time she came back down on one leg, the other still propped in the stirrup, her breath heavy from her exertions. “Will you allow me to assist you or do you mean to waste away the morning struggling to prove you are more accomplished at this than most men?”
Amelia threw him a disgruntled glare over her shoulder and then jerked her head in an angry nod. “My horse is not quite this tall,” she muttered.
“Then should I locate a mount of a more appropriate height?” He appeared to be holding back a smile.
Why the blazes hadn’t he done that from the onset? Amelia emitted an indelicate snort. “Hardly.”
“Then let us get on with it.”
His assistance, however, consisted of his hands coming in contact in some form or another, with the entire length of her leg. When she finally sat atop the horse, her flesh was prickly hot and her composure somewhat shaken.
“How is that?” He watched her as he took his time removing his hand from her leather-clad leg. But she was too busy fighting the discomfiting sensations coursing through her body to slap his offensive hand away. Agitated, she hastily tried to adjust her skirt so it covered her leg. However, the movement sent her foot into the mare’s side and sent her off in a canter while she desperately fought to gain full control of the reins.
By the time she managed to halt her horse, Lord Armstrong atop his mount, had thundered up alongside her.
“What the blazes are you doing?” His eyes flashed with fury. “Trying to get yourself killed and maim my horse in the process?”
Amelia turned the mare until she faced the irate, red-faced lord. “There is no need to shout. My leg slipped, that is all.”
“You should have better sense than to jerk your leg like that while sitting atop a horse.”
“Well, if you’d removed your hand from my leg, there would have been no need for me to jerk it.” As soon as the statement was out, Amelia would have given anything to snatch it back. She’d just given him enough ammunition to arm an entire cavalry. And the lazy smile that replaced the anger on his face told her it was a fact he was well aware of.
“I will remember that for next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she growled.
His smile broadened. “Come, let’s commence our ride,” he said, edging his horse forward.
What followed was sure to be the highlight of her stay thus far at Stoneridge Hall. Lord Armstrong took her on a tour of the most picturesque acreage she had yet to see.
Unlike their usual encounters, today they managed to surpass civility to venture cautiously into the unknown realm of mutual cordiality. Ever the efficient guide, the viscount pointed out the various crops growing on the leased properties. They passed through a meadow, rode by a valley, and skirted a pond well stocked with fish.
By the conclusion of the tour, the two hours had felt like a mere twenty minutes had passed. The groom met them upon their return to the stables.
With her inauspicious start with the horse still fresh in her memory, Amelia hurriedly dismounted before Lord Armstrong could offer a hand. She might have required aid in mounting, but she could get down fine on her own. His rueful smile told her he well understood her haste.
“I’ll take ‘em, milord,” the young man said, retrieving the reins from Lord Armstrong, one in each of his sunburned hands. Then he led the horses to the side of the building, where they drank from a large tub of water.
“Come, I imagine you’ll want to clean up some and eat before you resume your duties this afternoon.”
Amelia could only imagine the sight she made. Despite the cool temperatures, she was flushed hot and strands of hair lay wet against her forehead. She could think of nothing better than a long soak in a warm bath.
He, of course, looked no worse for the wear, his golden locks ruffled in a manner that only made his strikingly handsome visage all the more compelling. The light sheen coating his face didn’t make it shine in an unbecoming manner, but made it glow that golden hue that was so much a part of his Greek god image. It was really quite unfair that he managed to look good after several hours on horseback while she felt as attractive as a dairy maid milking a cow.
On their return to the main house, the viscount led her on a small detour to show her a shedding elm tree he claimed to have planted as a young child.
“Let me show you where I carved my initials.” He grasped her hand and led her toward the tree, their boots crunching the dried leaves around the thick, knotted trunk. Amelia tried to ignore the spread of heat where his hand lightly clasped her arm.
He didn’t release her when he stabbed his finger at the area on the trunk that clearly had the initials TPA etched in it.
Without thinking, Amelia asked, “What does the P stand for?” Then she could have kicked herself three times for expressing any interest in him whatsoever.
“Phillip. It is a family name,” he said.
Amelia knew, from her father, that his father had died when he had just reached his maturity, and he had carried his title and the responsibilities that went with it since he was only a young man. It was one of the things her father most admired about him. One of the many, she reminded herself, tamping down an acridness rising silently within her.
“We both lost a parent young,” he continued, holding her gaze.
Swallowing, Amelia could only nod while unobtrusively trying to ease her arm from his hold. She preferred it much better when they were either ignoring one another or shooting daggers at each other. When he was nice to her, she didn’t like how tongue-tied she became, or the way she tensed up at his proximity. And right now he was much too close for her equilibrium.
It was at that moment that Amelia realized that there were far more frightening things than being on his bad side. And that was being on his good side.
With her hand firmly back at her side, Amelia took a step back from beneath the branches of the towering tree, only to be brought up short when the viscount smoothly slid a small knife from inside his knee-high leather boot.
“Go ahead, carve your initials.” He extended the knife, the metal handle facing her.
“Why ever would I want to do that?” She gave the blade a pointed stare.
Teeth flashed white in his sun-darkened face, and her stomach plummeted in much the same manner as it did when he’d kissed her.
“Don’t you ever do anything just for the sheer enjoyment of it? Wouldn’t you like to know that there is something that will bear your mark for the rest of its life?” His eyes darkened to a forest green as his gaze focused on her mouth, sending an army of heat waves coursing through her.
“Not particularly,” she said, sounding and feeling slightly breathless.
“Then I shall do it for you.” He pulled back the proffered knife and then with great care, etch
ed the initials ARB below his. After he finished, he slid the blade back in his boot.
“How did you—”
“Your father. He’s spoken about you at length.”
Suddenly an unaccountable pain washed over her, as bitter as it was debilitating. In that same moment, Amelia recalled, with a clarity that had too often escaped her since her arrival at Stoneridge Hall, not only the reasons, but the intensity of her dislike for Thomas Armstrong, smashing the truce they had reached that morning into pieces no bigger than particles of dust.
Rose was her middle name—her mother’s name. Her father hadn’t a right to share such personal information with the viscount. Especially him of all people.
She found strength in her rage. “Yes, while he cannot recall my birthday, knows nothing of anything that is of the vaguest importance to me, and has now carted me off to be served up on a bride platter to a man I’d sooner bludgeon than marry, I’m exceedingly grateful he’s somehow managed to remember my full name.”
The viscount’s eyes widened as though he’d been ambushed. Slowly, all vestiges of amiability disappeared, and his expression shuttered to a mask of stone. “Marry you?”
Any other woman might have been insulted at the amount of distaste infused in those two words.
“I don’t know which half-witted jackass has imparted you with the notion that I would ever have you on a plate much less a platter, but I shall gladly disabuse you of it now.”
“Anyone with half a brain can see through my father’s machinations. You’re the son he never had, and if he can’t claim you by blood, then come hell or high water he’ll attempt to do so by marriage. And if you can’t see that, I can tell you right now who that half-witted jackass is.”
A vein throbbed in stark relief against his temple. He held his hands clenched tight at his side.
A Taste of Desire Page 13
