Courting Chaos (Dunaway's Daughters Book 2)

by Lynne Barron

  More.

  More of his lips and tongue kissing her senseless just as he’d promised. More of his hands, sweeping down her back to clasp her bottom and tug her harder, impossibly, wonderfully harder, against him. More of the heat and pressure of his manhood. More of his earthy scent, of his whiskers burning her lips and cheeks. More of his silky hair in her fingers, of his rasping, minty breath, of his gravelly groans. More of his racing heart.

  More of everything that made him who he was, of all of the things he’d revealed to her in his passion, all of the things she’d never expected to have from him, to discover with him, to know about him. She’d never understood what it would mean, never imagined how it would make her feel to know the taste and scent and feel and sound of his desire.

  The knowledge was too much, and not nearly enough.

  Phineas broke their kiss to race his lips across her cheek, her jaw, his whiskers abrading her skin until he reached her ear. He nipped her lobe with his teeth, soothed the gentle bite with his tongue, sucked the sensitive flesh into his mouth.

  Harry let loose a moan, all the pleasure he’d drawn from her concentrating in a heated pool between her legs. She felt the pulse of her arousal like an echo of her heartbeat, heavy and insistent.

  “Harry,” Phineas whispered. “I didn’t… I hadn’t meant to… Not on the street… Jesus, I haven’t words.”

  Harry hadn’t words either. She hadn’t wits enough to form any, nor breath enough to utter them. Instead, she kissed his cheek, his jaw, his temple, wherever she could reach in her quest for more knowledge. His skin was warm and prickly against her lips, salty on her tongue. The hair at his temple was finer, softer than that still clenched in her fingers.

  Harry’s heart gave an odd thump as she realized intimacy did not need to walk up and swat her on the backside in order for her to recognize it, after all. Intimacy was knowing his kiss, his taste, his scent, the burn of his whiskers against her cheek, the texture of his hair slipping through her fingers, the feel of his arousal against her hip, the sound of his raspy breaths and rusty groans as passion sparked between them.

  “I had more than the one intention for today,” Phineas murmured against her neck, his lips and tongue trailing down to the juncture of her shoulder. “I’ve all sorts of intentions, love.”

  Harry released the fistful of hair clenched in her hand and sifted her fingers through the ebony locks, delighted to discover that the tresses curled and clung to her as if unwilling to relinquish the simple touch.

  “Not only do I have intentions,” Phineas continued, his breath warm against her neck, “I’ve made a decision, determined a course of action and expended no little effort to make it happen. Now all that remains is for me to see it through to the conclusion.”

  “Oh, Phineas,” Harry murmured on a little wisp of chagrined laughter. “I ought not to have spoken to you in so mean a fashion.”

  “You had the right of it.” Phineas pressed one final kiss to the underside of her jaw and raised his head to capture her gaze and hold it. “I have been content to go through life on a wave of mistakes, accidents, coincidences and luck.”

  Harry swallowed past the lump in her throat and lifted one hand to caress his bristly cheek.

  “It took quite a bit of pondering, contemplating and questioning on my part before I realized you aren’t the sort of woman a man can win by chance and happenstance.”

  Was Phineas… Surely he wasn’t saying… Could he mean…

  But before Harry could gather together all the notions flitting around in her brain and sort them into some semblance of order, Phineas continued. “I can’t see any way to recast the role I’ve been assigned in the tragedy that is my family drama, but I can rewrite the play. I intend to do so, Harry. I intend to rewrite it, to make of it a romance, with you cast as my leading lady.”

  Harry drew in a trembling breath and released it on a fractured sigh as her scattered wits coalesced with such sudden clarity she became dizzy with the nearest thing to happiness she’d ever experienced.

  Phineas released Harry from his embrace, his hands coming up to gently cradle her head, his fingers sifting through the hairs at her nape, his thumbs stroking the bones of her cheeks. His eyes were as dark as aged brandy and twice as potent to Harry’s heart. “Harry, my love, I wish I could promise you a life of luxury straightaway.”

  “I don’t need a life of luxury,” Harry protested with a hiccupping giggle, nearly giddy with joy.

  “Maybe not, but I want to give you such a life, and I will,” he replied earnestly. “With the sum I ought to realize from the pawning of Mother’s jewels—”

  “You mean to pawn your mother’s family heirlooms?” Harry interrupted, surprised and touched and dismayed.

  “Coupled with what I received from the sale of that two hundred acres along the River Teme,” he continued with a rather crooked smile, “it ought to be enough to see us through until the wedding.”

  Harry stretched up on her toes to plant a kiss on that crooked smile, her heart so full it positively ached.

  “It won’t be easy at first,” Phineas whispered against her lips, “but I’ve funds enough to settle whatever debts you may have, pay off your modiste and millinery accounts, and relocate you to finer accommodations than cramped lodgings above a shop.”

  “Actually, my flat isn’t the least cramped.”

  “You’ll no longer need to run numbers and set odds for Mr. Prince.”

  That last bit brought Harry back down to earth so quickly she stumbled back a step, and Phineas’s hands fell to clasp her shoulders lest she topple over.

  She’d best do something regarding his misconceptions. “About Mr. Prince—”

  “Don’t worry about Mr. Prince.”

  “I’m not the least worried.”

  “You’ve only to be patient, my love,” Phineas said, pressing a quick, hard kiss to her lips. “Now that I’ve chosen a bride, it won’t be but a month or two until I have you installed in Mayfair.”

  There was something not quite right in the words, something that simply did not add up. Harry looked away, tapping her lower lip as she contemplated what was off about his pronouncement. Perhaps it was merely a slip of the tongue, purely accidental.

  As she considered the matter, she realized the rain had let up. What had been a downpour was now little more than a gentle shower. Phineas’s umbrella had rolled into the street, its momentum halted by the wheel of a hackney. A familiar hackney with an aging driver huddled into his coat on the bench.

  “I’ll spoil you with jewels and gowns and outlandish bonnets,” Phin continued. “After I marry, I’ll lavish you with all the luxury your life has thus far lacked.”

  There was nothing accidental in those particular words, and still she attempted to tally them in such a way that his intentions equaled a sum large enough to fill up all of the empty, cobweb-strewn corners of her heart. “Don’t you mean after we marry?”

  Phineas trailed his hands down her arms to clasp her fingers tight, drawing her attention inexorably back to him. “You are the only woman I can bear to be matched with in so cherished a pairing as we. My dearest, my darling, my beloved, the better half of every we I utter for the remainder of my life.”

  It occurred to Harry that this, too, was intimacy. This newfound ability to recognize the honest adoration shining in his eyes, the tenderness lacing his voice and the simple sincerity of his words.

  Why had no one ever made mention of the fact that intimacy was a cruel creature with a vicious sense of humor and no concept of proper timing whatsoever?

  “You intend to make me your mistress.” It wasn’t a question, but more of an unraveling of her twisted and tangled emotions. As Harry separated the various threads and followed them back to the beginning, she realized Phineas’s intentions couldn’t possibly tally to a sum great enough to fill the vast, empty void of her heart. For he needed only a meager sum to fill the cramped corners of his own. “This is the decision you made
, the course of action you determined upon. To woo me for your mistress while courting an heiress for your wife.”

  “I would marry you if I could, Harry,” Phin replied, squeezing her hands.

  “Instead you would set me up in a fine house and lavish me with fancy gowns, trinkets and baubles.” Harry couldn’t help the inelegant snort that tripped off her lips or the sharp crack of laughter that followed it. Truly, there was nothing for it but to find a bit of morbid amusement in the absurdity of the situation. “And allow your wife to pay for the privilege and pleasure of my company.”

  “I know it isn’t an ideal situation, but—” Phineas began.

  Harry slapped a hand over his lips, harder perhaps than was strictly required to halt whatever nonsensical argument he’d thought to make in favor of his convoluted scheme. “You ought to stick with what you do best, Phineas. You might well have pulled it off with a smattering of mistakes, a few coincidences and a dollop of old-fashioned luck.”

  “I love you.” His words were garbled, what with her fingers mashed against his lips.

  “Perhaps you do, though it hardly signifies now. But, oh, what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when you discover how magnificently you’ve miscalculated.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As parting shots went, Miss Harry O’Connell’s was positively sublime.

  Phin had more sense than to steal it from her, so rather than hurrying after her when she walked away, hauling her back under their awning and kissing her into submission—or at the very least silence long enough that he could formulate an alternate means of claiming her—Phin allowed her to clamber up into the hired hack.

  He hadn’t needed Harry’s sublimely rendered words to know he’d miscalculated.

  He’d known it the moment he’d realized she’d misconstrued his proposition for a proposal. He had only to close his eyes to see again the emotions that had played over her features. Confusion, shock and surprise quickly followed by comprehension, acceptance and happiness so complete, so absolute, she had glowed with it.

  Phin had never in his life witnessed anything as beautiful as the smile she’d gifted him with when she’d believed that he intended to make her his wife. For the first time in their acquaintance, her smile had been undiminished by mockery, derision, sarcasm, chagrin or melancholy.

  It had been stupid to imagine that, because her mind worked in mysterious and mercenary ways, she would be beguiled by baubles and bonnets and a house in Mayfair. If that was all she wanted, she could have found it with any one of the admirers lined up to offer her a life of comfort and ease. Harry wanted more than a percentage of a man’s time and attention, more than an allotment of his affection and a portion of his heart. She wanted it all. Every spare moment, every scrap of attention, a full measure of affection and the entirety of a man’s heart.

  Harry was greedy that way. Avaricious and acquisitive, rapacious and ravenous for more. Whether it be three quid for a bonnet, knowledge enough to make a wise investment or kisses sufficient to render her senseless.

  Settling for less than she wanted, less than she needed or less than she deserved was quite simply not in Harry’s nature. And however briefly, she’d wanted to be Phin’s wife. She had wanted it, perhaps even needed it. Though, God knew, she deserved better.

  Hindsight was a harsh mistress, offering up the perfect opportunity to right a multitude of wrongs. That opportunity consisted of but a single different—though not vastly divergent—word.

  You are the only woman I can bear to be matched with in so intimate a pairing as we. My dearest, my darling, my wife.

  The single word plagued Phin the remainder of the day and long into the evening while he examined and reexamined his account books, desperately reckoning the numbers over and over again in hopes they would miraculously equate to something other than financial ruin should he not marry well, and soon.

  When the numbers refused to cooperate, he attempted to drown the word, along with the memory of her brilliant smile, in brandy, only to come to the conclusion there wasn’t enough brandy in all off of England. Both the word and the smile floated on the surface of his thoughts, and bobbed on the current of his consciousness when he fell into a drunken stupor with his head resting on an open ledger on his desk.

  Upon waking in the morning, he had only a pounding headache and smudged ink on his cheek to show for his efforts.

  A faint scratching at the door sounded mere moments before Maeve Dooley poked her head into his office. “M’lord, a messenger brought ‘round a missive for you.”

  Phin considered the likelihood he would topple over, or worse yet cast up his accounts, were he to stand, and wisely decided against making the attempt. Instead, he held out his hand.

  Maeve strolled into the room with a suggestive sway of her bountiful hips and a come hither smile. “He was riding atop a fancy carriage, though there wasn’t a crest on the door. Still, I thought as how it might be important enough to interrupt your figuring and what have you.”

  “Right you are, Maeve,” Phin agreed, eying the wax seal pressed to the thick, cream vellum.

  “Maeve, am I?” she asked with a practiced pout and a shake of her head that set her mobcap askew and released a dark ringlet to tease her temple. “When not so long ago I was your pretty pet?”

  “I’m to be married soon,” Phin pointed out as he took the missive from her.

  “I know you’re to be married,” she replied. “Everyone below stairs knows you’ve as good as proposed to one or the other of the Misses Hamilton.”

  “Actually, it isn’t either of the Misses Hamilton I intend to marry.”

  “To my way of thinking, it don’t much matter who you marry, so long as you marry. And when you do, you’ll catch up on my back wages, and we can be particular friends again.”

  A month previously, he might have agreed. Hell, three weeks ago he would have taken the cheeky chit for a tumble based solely upon the expectation of future funds to pay the wages she was due. Now the thought of taking any woman other than Harry to his bed left him feeling distinctly queasy. And not as a result of the prior night’s overindulgence.

  “I’ll catch up your wages soon enough, Maeve, but I’m afraid we’ll never again be particular friends.”

  “Crikey, you planning to be a faithful husband?” the maid asked around a gurgle of laughter. “You? The randiest fellow in London?”

  “I doubt I’m the randiest fellow in London,” Phin protested, amused despite the implied criticism regarding his ability to remain faithful to his marriage vows.

  “Maybe even in all of England, m’lord.”

  “Be that as it may, I will henceforth limit my randy attentions to one woman,” Phin said with all of the authority of a man who’d only just discovered it was the truth. “Now, off with you, Maeve.”

  “You know where to find me if you change your mind, m’lord,” she replied with a grin.

  As Phin watched her spin around and flounce out of his study, it occurred to him he would have to find her employment elsewhere when he married. Not because he would be tempted by her abundant charms, but because his wife would immediately realize they’d once been lovers.

  Miss Harry O’Connell was a connoisseur of humanity’s frailties, follies and foibles, after all. And Phin was going to marry the breathtakingly beautiful, marvelously mercenary and frightfully intelligent woman. Financial, familial and societal considerations be damned.

  They might not live a life of luxury, but with the tidy sum he’d garnered from the sale of his un-entailed land and the funds he expected to receive from pawning his mother’s jewels, along with the profit he would realize from the coming harvest, neither would they be poised on the brink of poverty.

  Harry would know how best to invest the funds in order to provide Evelyn and Eloise with a Season next year, as well as precisely how to reinvest any remaining dividends to see them through the lean years until his estate began to show a steady profit. Not only would she kn
ow how to go about it, she would be only too pleased to share that knowledge in economic terms he did not fully grasp but which never failed to arouse him to a fever pitch.

  Even as snippets of memories of such lectures fully formed and his cock twitched in accompaniment, Phin realized he knew precisely how to invest the sum already in his possession.

  Though he would still allow Harry to tell him how to square his profits twice over—and render him mad with lust while she went about it—the very next time he encountered her.

  Which, he decided as he broke the seal and opened the missive in his hands, might just be this very evening. After all, the penmanship on the invitation was identical to that on the note he’d found waiting for him upon his return from Wales. The very same note that had sent him out into the rain with his sisters in tow the day before. He wasn’t entirely certain, but he rather suspected he owed his good fortune to Lady Malleville.

  So it was, the third Viscount Knighton found himself standing in Mr. Withington’s ballroom, sipping from a flask of whiskey Gideon Remington had had the foresight to tuck into his pocket, and searching for a breathtakingly beautiful face in the crowd.

  The ballroom was massive, a huge rectangle of black-veined white marble from floor to ceiling. Immense pillars marched down the center of the space, clearly marking off the dance floor, which was swarming with couples young and old engaged in a lively reel. Gold glittered everywhere, from the sconces on the walls to the chains from which hung six large gold chandeliers, crystals swaying in the breeze from the row of French doors open at the end of the room. Spindly, gilded chairs lined one wall, refreshment tables lined another, each adorned with more gold. Candelabras, punch bowls, cup, plates and flatware.

  With all the gold glittering and glowing in the candlelight, it took Phin a moment to notice the red and black embellishments sprinkled about the room. Bouquets of scarlet roses sprouted from black vases on the tables. Poppies overflowed jet-studded gold urns. Strands of red gems, rubies or perhaps garnets, wrapped around the intricately wrought, gilded bannister and draped the balustrade of the gallery overlooking the ballroom. The jewels caught the light and splashed it about like drops of vermillion paint flicked across a canvas.