It was bliss, sweet bliss—moist heat and hard pressure and a tingling fire sweeping from her head to her toes. Dillian inched forward until Effingham grabbed her waist and hauled her up against him. His mouth crushed even more firmly against hers, leaving her gasping for breath. When her lips parted, his tongue thrust in, and she melted.
She caught his shoulders to keep from sliding right through his grasp and down to the floor. She had no muscles at all, just liquid fiery heat racing through her veins and obliterating all else. He explored the insides of her mouth, creating a hollow in her insides. He tasted her lips, outlined them with his kisses, then drew her back for more, until she met his tongue with her own, and she nearly cried with desire.
She knew his hands took unspeakable liberties, but she ignored them as she stood on tiptoe and carried the kiss deeper, losing herself in the sensation of heat and moisture, the taste of brandy, the impossible pleasures his lips commanded.
Not until he caught her bottom in both hands and pulled her up against him did she fully connect what their tongues did with what their bodies wanted. When she felt the length of him pressed against her belly, panic raced down all the pathways the heat had left, and she wrenched her mouth away.
He didn’t release his hold on her buttocks. She still felt him intimately pressed against her through their clothing.
A hot flush of embarrassment flooding her cheeks, Dillian stared at the V of his neck exposed by the open shirt as his voice rumbled somewhere over her head. She had difficulty focusing on his words.
“I have no intention of marrying anyone,” he was saying, “so if that is your ploy, you’d best be gone now, Miss Whitnell.”
Dazed, still confused, Dillian let her gaze drift upward to meet his eyes. They didn’t seem as cold as his words. They looked as heated with desire as her own must.
“I hadn’t thought … Oh.” She could actually read his mind, she thought. Or perhaps she had been on the receiving end of this kind of proposition once too many times. She didn’t know why this one felt different, but she didn’t run from him as she had the others.
“Cleaning your rooms and mending your draperies isn’t enough, is it?” she forced herself to ask as coolly as she could.
This time, it was his turn to look startled. Perhaps she had read him wrong. Perhaps he hadn’t even realized what he asked until she pointed it out. His lips curled in a snarl, and then he thought better of it.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said gruffly, dropping his hands, waiting for her to step back. She did, only because she couldn’t keep her balance this close without falling against him.
“I think I do. If that’s what it costs to protect Blanche, I’m willing to pay the price.”
His shirt had opened even farther, revealing the dark hairs on his chest. The proximity of all that potent maleness made her belly churn. She didn’t debate whether with fear or desire. She said what she had to say without giving herself time to think about it.
“I have no wealth to support a mistress,” he said curtly.
Dillian glared at him. “I didn’t ask for money. You offer something I want. I offer something you want. It’s fair trade. It’s done all the time.”
“Not by innocent twenty-two-year-old misses.”
“I’m twenty-five, and what makes you think I’m innocent?”
That took his breath away. She saw him watch her warily now, with a hint of speculation. She drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches, and met his eyes boldly. “I’ll move into the big chamber upstairs. It’s up to you.”
She walked away while she still could. Her legs trembled like jelly. She feared she would fall on her face before she reached the door. He said nothing, did nothing to stop her. She opened the door and walked out, closing it carefully behind her. She still couldn’t stop trembling. She waited for a roar of rage, a smashing of glass. She heard nothing.
He must be considering it. Dillian forced her shaking legs up the front stairs to the main bedchamber, the lord’s chamber that occupied the better portion of the front hall in the older part of the house, where the ghosts walked. She felt like a ghost herself. She couldn’t believe she’d done this.
The chamber loomed dark and icy as she entered. A huge mahogany tester occupied the raised dais at the opposite end of the room. A fireplace filled the left wall, but no warm fire welcomed her. Perhaps she should start one. Perhaps she should run like hell and get out of here.
She’d left Blanche’s silk robe upstairs. She wished for its protection now. What did one wear on an assignation? She had only this one gown, and she couldn’t afford to have it torn from her back if the marquess entered in a steaming rage. She didn’t think he would, but he had a temper she couldn’t predict. She’d caught him by surprise. He just hadn’t pieced together all the details yet. He would. Then she would see if he took it as insult or temptation.
With frozen fingers, Dillian unfastened her gown and hung it in the wardrobe. She had no corset or chemisette, just her chemise and stockings. The stockings were too fine to risk. She carefully unrolled them and looked around for somewhere to store them. She didn’t like leaving her undergarments lying about. They should be washed, but she didn’t want them dripping somewhere he could see.
She finally placed them in the wardrobe with the dress, then crawled into the immense bed and pulled the covers up around her. Perhaps she should find a flint and light a lamp. She couldn’t bear facing what she planned. She left the lamp dark.
Shivering in the damp air, Dillian waited for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The old house creaked and groaned as it settled down for the night. She thought she heard the wind sigh through the passage behind the walls. A faint light beat of rain pattered against the windowpane.
The spot where she lay grew warmer. Dillian tried imagining what the marquess would do to her, but the room held enough ghosts without creating more. She had never meant to marry anyway and had always been curious about what happened between a man and a woman. She could salve her curiosity and save Blanche at the same time.
Virginity was a dispensable commodity she couldn’t afford forever. She liked the idea of giving it to someone who made her feel like a woman and not an object. It was much better done this way, with desire on both sides. Far better than selling herself as wife for a thousand pounds a year and the respectability of a name to a man she couldn’t respect or admire much less desire. Once Blanche deeded her the Grange, she wouldn’t need a husband at all. This would work. She knew it would.
She was still trying to convince herself of that as she fell asleep with the tower clock on the landing wheezing midnight.
* * * *
In the room below, the marquess heard that same wheezing chime, only he could gain nothing so restful as slumber. With the heat of lust racing through his veins, he would find no sleep tonight, not even with the help of the brandy bottle at his side.
Just the image his mind conjured of chestnut curls spread across lacy pillows made his blood boil. He needn’t continue the torture any further by imagining the bedcover slipping off a creamy bare shoulder, revealing glimpses of those soft globes he longed to touch so much that his fingers actually tingled.
Tingling fingers didn’t compare to what happened to the rest of him. Gavin adjusted his position in the hard chair for the fiftieth time that evening, seeking some relief from the discomfort.
He’d been without a woman too long, his loins told him, but he’d quit listening to that part of himself long ago. Fingering the scar on the side of his face, he stared into the dying flame of the lamp. She’d grown up surrounded by randy young soldiers. She had as much as admitted that she was no longer innocent. She had offered herself. Why shouldn’t he take her up on the offer?
But it was just that offer holding him back. He’d seen the fear and courage, the determination to protect her young companion at any cost, even at the sacrifice of her reputation. Gavin wanted to believe that he scorned human sacr
ifice, but the truth was that he admired her courage too much to accept it. His admiration created this ridiculous urge to protect her, if only from herself.
He knew the urge to be ridiculous. Dillian Whitnell needed no man’s protection, certainly not his. But just for a little while, he pretended that she needed him, and him alone. Just for a little while. His better sense would return soon enough.
Chapter Eighteen
The sun streamed in Blanche’s window when Dillian finally made her appearance there the next morning.
Verity brushed her mistress’s hair, and the light shone like spun gold through it. Dillian felt a veritable dowd beside her cousin’s elegance, but then, that feeling was nothing new. The odd feeling that she fell beneath her cousin’s contempt, however, was completely alien to her.
Dillian looked around for any sign of the marquess or the odious O’Toole, but they had mysteriously absented themselves.
After she had soiled and humiliated herself by offering to become his mistress, the damnable marquess had not come to his room to accept her offer.
The worst part of it was that she would do it again.
In saving Blanche, she would lose her cousin forever. Dillian didn’t harbor any foolish illusions that she could hide the fact that she had become a man’s mistress. But she wouldn’t think about it now, in the bold morning light. He hadn’t come to her. Perhaps he had decided she wasn’t worth the invasion of his privacy. Perhaps she had misunderstood him entirely, and he didn’t desire her at all. In that case, she must find alternative plans.
“Where is everyone?” she asked as casually as she could, taking a seat at the table and helping herself to tea.
“O’Toole rode out early this morning. I haven’t seen the marquess.” Blanche turned her head in her cousin’s direction. She wore the scarf O’Toole had given her over her eyes, but Dillian saw it was thin enough to allow light and shadow. “What will we do, Dill?”
Dillian took a sip of tea and stared out at the lovely morning. Even the overgrown brambles seemed appealing in the sunlight. The hideous rows of towering evergreens hiding all traces of civilization beyond seemed more like a friendly hedge in this light. A patch of sunlight between drive and house beckoned for a bed of roses. She’d never been much of a gardener, but she found the idea appealing right now, more appealing than what she’d offered to turn herself into.
“Wait on the marquess and O’Toole,” she finally answered with a certain amount of gloom. “There must be some way of persuading them to let you stay here while I go into London. Did O’Toole give no hint of how we might manage it?”
Blanche rested her chin on her hand while Verity rolled her hair into an elegant knot on top of her head. “He gave no hint that we would have to leave. Do you really think the marquess will throw us out? He seems a little gruff, but not exactly heartless.”
“You haven’t seen him swing a sword capable of beheading three people at once,” Dillian grumbled. “Do you recall the vines beneath your windows at the Grange? He climbs them as if they’re a ship’s rigging. The man climbed down inside a burning house to rescue two children he didn’t know. He’s not heartless. He’s insane.”
Blanche’s mouth turned up in amusement. “And this is the man you think I should marry?”
Dillian shrugged. “He could certainly protect you, but no, you’re right. You ought to have someone aristocratic and sophisticated, someone who can stand up to Neville on his own ground, not just beat him into a pulp. Although the latter does hold some appeal.”
Blanche sat back and sipped at her cup of tea, an accomplishment she managed quite gracefully despite the blindfold. “I rather had an impression of the marquess as an aristocratic, extremely reserved gentleman. Do you tell me he’s a ruffian?”
Dillian stared out the window. She could see him now in gentleman’s waistcoat and frilled linen, again in open-necked shirt and trousers, or with a black cloak streaming behind him as he rode a massive— stolen—stallion. She shook her head in despair of ever describing him. “He’s not like anyone we’ve ever met.”
“Neither is Michael,” was Blanche’s surprising answer.
Dillian looked up sharply. “Michael is a conniving varlet and most likely a Captain Sharp as well.”
“He visits me every day and brings me roses that I can smell and touch. He thought of this scarf. He teaches me how to play cards and make coins disappear. Want to see a penny disappear?”
A purely rhetorical question, Dillian assumed, since Blanche promptly lifted the coin from the table, covered it with her fist, then opened her empty palm. A quite clever trick, one she might have questioned at another time, but not now, not with her impending doom hanging over her head. And Blanche’s, from the sounds of her praise of O’Toole.
Blanche was not easily impressed. Leaving her young cousin in the company of a charming rogue when she was extremely vulnerable had not been a wise thing to do. She would make O’Toole leave with her when she traveled to London. Better that Blanche fall for the man with a title than his wayward servant.
“Make Neville disappear like that, and the two of you will have accomplished something,” Dillian responded unhappily. “In the meantime, be sensible, Blanche. He’s a charmer, not an eligible suitor.”
Irritably, Blanche shoved away from the table. “I know that. Why can’t Neville be more like Mr. O’Toole? Why do all the nice men have to be unsuitable?”
Now, that was an interesting question. Because the suitable ones were spoiled rich boys? What did that make the marquess?
“You haven’t met all the nice men yet,” was all she said. “Give it time.”
Blanche’s slender fingers drifted to the raw burns upon her cheeks. “I’m not certain I have any time left,” she answered sadly.
* * * *
Blanche’s reply haunted Dillian’s thoughts the rest of the day. She had more than enough to think of while simultaneously trying to find the marquess and avoid him, without wondering what the wretched O’Toole was up to now. They were supposed to have had some discussion today on how to get those papers. Why couldn’t men keep promises? Probably because they weren’t as important to them as to herself.
Complaining didn’t make the day pass any faster. Dillian built card houses with Blanche and explored the manor further while Blanche napped. She listened for the sound of the marquess’s voice wherever she went but found no trace of him. She tried not to think about Blanche’s plaintive words, but they played over and over again in her head whenever she let her mind wander.
Blanche with all her wealth and beauty had been the target of every fortune hunter in the kingdom in the past. Scarred, she would still be no less a target, but also an object of pity. The thought revolted Dillian. Blanche had a brilliant mind, a sunny character, and impeccable morals. Any man would be blessed to have her without the wealth or looks. Maybe that’s what they should do, disguise Blanche as a poor woman.
Then she would go unmarried for the rest of her life, Dillian thought savagely. Any way she looked at it, Blanche must buy herself a husband. She ought to at least have the opportunity to buy one she liked. The ignoble thought did not make Dillian any happier with herself.
Frustrated at her impotence, Dillian cleaned the master chamber, added a few more paintings she scavenged from the rest of the house, and wandered into the walled garden in search of roses. She didn’t know if the servants could see her from here. From what she could tell, they primarily stayed in the kitchen on the other side of the house. At this point, she didn’t care what they thought.
Dillian helped Verity steal dinner from the pantry that evening, and they feasted royally on the meal neither man returned to eat. Perhaps the servants thought the marquess crept into the pantry at night to clean out the larder. Whatever the reason, the roast came to the table almost warm, and the potatoes melted in their mouths. They had even stolen a bottle of wine from the cellars and lifted their sagging spirits considerably by polishing it off between the two
of them. Verity rightfully refused to drink any. She would have to guard her mistress through the night.
Half a bottle of wine didn’t exactly make her foxed, but Dillian felt considerably better than she had all day when she traversed the dark halls to her room that night. Not until she reached the third floor and the bed where she had thrown the silken robe did it occur to her she had promised the marquess to sleep in the main chamber. What if he came home tonight looking for her?
That thought nearly paralyzed her into inaction. The wine soured in her stomach, and she glanced desperately around the candle-lit room to make certain he didn’t lurk in the shadows. She had made an offer, the only offer she could make considering her nearly penniless state. Could she renege on it? Could she afford to let any chance of saving Blanche get by?
She couldn’t. Blanche had ruined her life to save Dillian and the rest of her household. Blanche had delayed her marriage to promise her homeless cousin a future once she held her inheritance in her hands. Dillian simply couldn’t take and take and never give. She could do this one simple thing to ensure her cousin’s safety.
At least, it seemed simple the night before when Effingham had held her in his arms. Now with the cold light of another day shining upon it, her senses returned. She obviously hadn’t thought this through clearly. The consequences of surrendering her reputation loomed enormous, but not so enormous as the physical act itself. She didn’t know if she had enough courage to go through with it.
Theory was one thing, action, quite another. But Dillian had learned to take action at an early age. She had roughly trod over all odds, discarded all doubts, lied, cheated, and generally did whatever necessary to protect herself and her loved ones. She could do the same now. With determination, she picked up the robe and returned down the stairs in the direction of the main bedchamber.
She knew the instant she reached the second-floor hall that the chamber was occupied. She saw the flickering light beneath the closed door, sensed a warmth that hadn’t been there before. Wrapping the robe around her arms and holding it before her like a shield, she tiptoed closer, listening, hearing nothing.
The Marquess Page 18
