‘I meant every word,’ he interrupted. ‘It wasn’t a jest. Every word. All of it. I meant it, Jane, and you can’t make me take any of it back.’
‘You do?’ Her voice squeaked upwards with surprise, and two words were the sum of what she could manage. Perhaps she had misunderstood. Perhaps he didn’t mean to turn her out after all. And perhaps, perhaps, her heart would be safe. ‘You would—you would honour such a statement?’
‘I would,’ he said, ‘and I’ll swear to it in any fashion you please. I like your company. I like your conversation. I like listening to you, and teasing you and kissing you. I liked that very much. But most of all, Jane, I like you. Not as my daughters’ governess, but as a woman. There, I can speak no more plainly than that.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice quaking. In all the time she’d thrashed about last night and this morning, she’d never imagined him saying this. ‘I do not suppose you can.’
‘I can’t, so don’t hope that I will. I haven’t your way with words, you know. They’re not my friends, the way they seem to be with you.’
‘Oh, but that’s not true!’ she exclaimed. ‘I think you speak beautifully!’
‘Be that as it may.’ He sighed, and looked up at her beneath his brows. ‘At least this time you appear to have heard what I’ve said, so I won’t have to repeat myself again.’
‘No, no,’ she said slowly, trying to accept the magnitude of what he’d just told her. This time, there was no moonlight or wine. If he spoke this way to her when she was in such slovenly disarray, why, then he must mean it. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘Thank the heavens for small favours.’ He took her hand and pressed it briefly to his lips, his gaze never leaving her face. ‘You do realise, Jane, that, after the sort of speech I made to you, it’s considered customary for the other party to make some sort of reply in kind.’
‘In kind?’ she said, puzzled.
‘Do you in turn like me, Jane?’ he demanded, a demand that was endlessly sweetened by the gruff, unvarnished beseeching in his voice. ‘Do you find me tolerable company? Or am I nothing more than a hoary old tyrant, and was last night the most tedious and dreary of your entire life?’
‘Tedious?’ she exclaimed, horrified that he’d so wrongly misconstrued her response. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth! Last night was more beautiful, more perfect, than ever I could dream, and to call yourself a hoary old tyrant—that is simply not true!’
‘No?’ He smiled slyly up at her. ‘My dear, you give me hope.’
‘Hope!’ she cried indignantly. Now she did pull her hand free, and with it give his shoulder an impatient small shove. ‘Hope? I should offer you a great deal more than that hope if you weren’t so—so—’
She broke off abruptly, sputtering as she realised that all of the conclusions she might have used to complete that sentence were not suited for polite conversation. Richard might claim that words were her friends, but at this moment, she felt as if they’d betrayed her.
‘If I weren’t what?’ he asked. ‘Don’t leave me dangling like a villain from the gallows, Jane. If I weren’t what?’
His smile had become more amused than plaintive, and that was his undoing. She’d already learned how swiftly he could slip into teasing, and she’d no doubt he was teasing her now. She was not in the humour for teasing, not from him, not from anyone. If he wished to hear the words she’d held back, well then, he’d hear them now.
‘If you were not so provoking,’ she said with an extra furious poke at his shoulder for emphasis, ‘or so irritating, or so righteously puffed with your own—’
But before she could finish, he’d grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her over the cushioned arm of the chair and into his lap. She yelped with surprised protest, and he drew her closer, the coverlet slipping from her body as she struggled. His arm circled neatly around her waist, drawing her closer, and she realised he meant to kiss her.
Again.
But this kiss would be a far different creature from what they’d shared before. Last night there’d been the excuse of the wine and the moonlit bridge, and here in the chilly late-morning light of her bedchamber there’d be neither. Last night she’d been wrapped in many layers of warm clothing: a heavy cloak, plus a thick knitted tippet, a woollen gown, boned linen stays, a quilted petticoat and a shift. She’d been protected by her clothes, like armour on a warrior, and when Richard had held her, the embrace had been genteelly muffled by her dress and his as well.
There was no such protection now. With the coverlet crumpled on the floor, Richard was holding her close with only her night shift over her body, the thinnest layer of linen so thriftily worn that it had become nearly translucent. Through it she could feel the muscles of Richard’s arm around her waist, the buttons of his shirt and waistcoat and his chest beneath pressing against her breasts, the legs sprawled over his and her bottom nestled against his, well, his lap; she could scarce make herself so much as put a word to that large manly part of him that was clearly lurking there. She was as good—or as bad—as naked and tumbled across him, and she felt shamed as well as embarrassed.
Shamed, and embarrassed, and yet oddly excited, too. Her heart raced with anticipation, not dread, and she realised to her surprise that her ungainly position was making her long to kiss Richard more, not less. She also realised she was tempting fate by tempting him like this. She knew the nature of that fate—she’d spent most of her life cautioning her young female charges against such perils, to little avail—though she’d little experience of her own. But now, with Richard, she could think of nothing else.
She stopped struggling, and instead went still. Slowly she brought his hand to her lips and kissed it, the same way he’d kissed hers, and looked up through her lashes to see his reaction.
It was an admirable reaction, too, well worth watching. The bluster left his face, and the teasing, too. His eyes filled with wonder and pleasure, and something darker, rougher, more excitingly male.
‘Ah, lass, you’ve a warm nature,’ he said gruffly, his breath quickening as he turned his hand to cup her cheek, caressing the side of her throat with his thumb.
‘There’s no fault to a warm nature on a cold day,’ she said, turning her head to rub against his thumb like a little cat. ‘I’d venture yours is warm as well. And it is January.’
‘Aye, it is.’ he said. ‘But I vow you won’t be burned by me, lass, even on this cold January day.’
‘Not burned, Richard, never that,’ she said, again echoing his gesture by touching her palm to his cheek, cradling his jaw as she threaded her fingers into his waving gold hair. ‘But I do need warming. We both do. We both could use the merry sun of my Venice to chase away the English chill from our souls.’
She meant it, too. Their pasts, their lost loves, the careful respectable shells that both of them had constructed around their hearts needed to be melted if either of them was ever to love again. And with each other, perhaps it was still possible.
‘Ahh, my Jane,’ he said, his voice so full of emotion that she knew he understood. ‘And you said you’d no gift for words!’
She wasn’t sure if she kissed him then, or if he was the one who kissed her first, but when their lips did meet it seemed the most natural, the most perfect thing in the world. This time, she wasn’t startled; this time she knew what to expect, what to anticipate, what to do.
Eagerly she answered his kiss, slanting her lips to accommodate his. Letting him coax hers apart, she relished the exciting sensation of having his tongue play against hers, the feel and the taste of him. She’d teased him about how they’d both needed warming, but there was nothing cold about how he kissed her, or the desire she felt simmering between them, the same as it had the first time he’d kissed her last night on the bridge.
But while she’d thought she known what to expect, she soon learned that, however passionate, that first kiss had been only the beginning. He had more to offer her, and much, much more for them to claim
together. Emotions and weariness and denial, too, had worn away at her earlier misgivings to a degree that she hadn’t realised until she felt his hand upon her hip, his fingers spread to caress her.
He shifted beneath her, making her aware of the hard heat of his arousal. He tugged the front of her night dress down and she arched against him, giving her wordless permission for him to slip his hand inside her shift to the bare skin beneath. She wriggled, weakly trying to protest more because she knew she should rather than from any real wish for him to stop.
How could she, when what he was doing was building such a delicious tension in her body, when every bit of it was what she wanted, what she craved, because he was the one doing it?
‘Oh, Richard, please,’ she whispered breathlessly, not even sure what she was asking for. ‘Please, oh, please.’
But instead of kissing her again, as she’d wished, he groaned, and drew back. ‘You are right, Jane. Damnation, but you are right.’
With the greatest care, he set her back on her feet. He reached down for the discarded coverlet, and slipped it over her shoulders, covering her entirely.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, bewildered. ‘If I have displeased you, why, then I beg—’
‘You pleased me too much,’ he said heavily. ‘I am the one who must apologise, Jane, for abusing your sweet nature in such a barbarous fashion.’
‘But it wasn’t barbarous,’ she said, daring to lay her hand on his arm as she searched his face. ‘It was fine, and good and honourable, such as you are yourself, Richard, and exactly what I wished.’
‘Then all the better that we stopped, and acted upon reason rather that passion alone,’ he said, with such deliberation that she realised he was convincing himself, too. ‘I’ve no wish to sully my regard for you, Jane. Not like that.’
She looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears of disappointment that stung her eyes.
‘Jane.’ He caught her arm, and turned her back towards him so she couldn’t hide. ‘Jane, my own. Mark what I said. Not now, here, with you tumbled like a tavern chit in my lap. That was all.’
She raised her chin. ‘I don’t wish to be so honourable that you won’t kiss me.’
He laughed softly, breaking the tension between them. ‘A lack of desire is not the problem, Jane, not, I’d wager, for either of us. Rather I wish us both to be certain of our regard, and not act in regrettable haste.’
‘I wouldn’t regret it,’ she said wistfully. ‘Not with you.’
‘Damnation, Jane, don’t tempt me again,’ he said, and circled his arms loosely around her shoulders. ‘I want you to be sure of me first.’
She tried to smile up at him. ‘We haven’t much time for such decisions, Richard.’
‘We’ve time enough, and more,’ he said, and kissed lightly on her forehead. ‘And more.’
But though Jane smiled in return, her heart wasn’t nearly as sure. Two weeks or less, a fortnight, a handful of days and nights—how could that be enough for what he was asking?
Day by day, she told herself fiercely, and slipped her arms around his waist as if she’d never let him go. Day by day by day.
Chapter Thirteen
‘So what is it you’d like to see this day, Richard?’ Jane asked as soon as the gondolier pushed them free of the steps before Ca’ Battista. ‘Shall we visit the Doge’s Palace, or view the mosaics at the Basilica San Marco? You can’t return to London without having seen San Marco, you know.’
‘We’ll save those for another day,’ Richard said cheerfully. He knew exactly what she was doing, hiding behind her efficient-governess mask so that she didn’t have to acknowledge what had happened earlier in her bedchamber.
‘I’d rather visit something less taxing than a palace, or a whatever-that-was.’
‘A basilica,’ she answered promptly, the way she always offered her endless bits of information. ‘That’s what the Roman church here in Venice calls its cathedrals, in the fashion of the Eastern Orthodox Christians. If you wish something less taxing, I suppose we could visit the Accademia di Belle Arti, to see the pictures.’
‘You know I haven’t much of an eye for pictures.’ Richard smiled down at her, nestled beside him in the gondola. She was bundled against the winter afternoon, a woolly shawl of some sort wrapped beneath the hood of her cloak and around her face. Her eyes were bright and her nose and cheeks already pink from the cold, and whatever ill effects had come from lack of sleep seemed to have disappeared.
He’d like to think that kissing her had helped her recovery, too. He hadn’t gone to her rooms intending to haul her into his lap like that, and he regretted behaving like a drunken soldier. That wasn’t the way he ordinarily was with women, especially not a woman as respectable as Jane Wood.
Yet there was something about her that seemed to spark him in a way that he’d almost forgotten. She’d said she’d wished to warm him clear to his English soul, and, oh, how she’d done that. She’d set a righteous fire in his blood, and he’d wager she felt the same for him, for all that he was just as certain she was a maid. She’d none of the tedious skittishness of young girls, but there was still an innocence to her that he found enchanting, and tempting, too.
No, he’d not come to her rooms intending to behave dishonourably, any more than he’d come to Venice intending to begin an intrigue, or a friendship, or whatever it might be with his daughters’ governess. But it had happened, and though he was glad that it had, the real challenge now would be what happened next between them.
For them—how many years had passed since he’d been a part of a ‘them’?
‘Of course you have an eye for pictures,’ she said, scandalised. ‘Only a blind man doesn’t. Taste can be taught and acquired, of course, but anyone can see a picture hung before them, and decide whether it pleases them or not. Why, Aston Hall is full of excellent pictures!’
‘My grandfather’s,’ Richard admitted. ‘They came with the place. Except for the portraits by Ramsey of the girls and Anne in the parlour. I paid for those. Oh, and the pictures of my chestnut hunters that that fellow Stubbs did for me, over the chimneypiece in the library. You could say I had an eye for those, couldn’t you?’
‘I suppose I must.’ Jane sighed mightily. ‘But to compare the portraits of horses with what we might see at the Accademia, where the masterpieces of Titian, Bellini and Tintoretto are!’
‘I like my horse pictures,’ Richard said defensively. ‘I liked the horses, too. That’s one of the faults of Venice, you know. There aren’t any horses.’
‘That’s because the Venetians believe horses bring bad luck,’ Jane said. ‘Historically, invaders from the north always came on horseback to attack the city, and thus horses aren’t particularly welcome. Excepting those huge gilded-bronze ones on the top of the basilica. Those were political plunder, seized centuries ago from the Hippodrome in Constantinople—’
‘Here we are,’ Richard said, already beginning to rise as the gondolier deftly guided them to the side. ‘Here now, let me help you ashore.’
Jane scanned the buildings along the water and frowned. ‘Are you certain? This is the Rio di San Salvador, isn’t it? An ancient neighbourhood, to be sure, but not one of an artistic note, Richard. There’s nothing here but costly shops.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, not waiting any longer to claim her hand. ‘It’s called the Mercerie, and we’re bound for the Merceria dell’Orologio. Signora della Battista assured me this was the proper place for quality shops.’
‘Shops,’ she repeated with a sigh of resignation. ‘Shops.’
She stepped up to the paved walkway, waiting while he paid the gondolier. He liked having her there with him, and not just because she was a handsome young woman, either. He felt comfortably at ease with her, without either of them putting on airs, as if they already were the oldest of friends. She was excellent company, even when she rattled on and on about the Venetian horses. In fact, it had occurred to him that her impromptu lessons might actually be her
way of teasing him, and he’d always had a weakness for clever, pretty women.
‘Yes, shops,’ he said as he rejoined her. ‘I thought this might be a good day to buy some things to have for the girls when they arrive. A few little baubles to show them their old father hadn’t forgotten them, eh?’
She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm without him asking, and that pleased him, too.
‘You spoil the young ladies outrageously,’ she said, though not with disapproval. ‘They will remember you well enough without showering them with gifts. Besides, anything you purchase in these shops will sorely tax even your pockets.’
‘My pockets are prodigiously deep where my girls are concerned,’ he said, patting her hand fondly as they began walking. He’d come here with another purpose, too, though he meant to keep that to himself a bit longer. ‘The signora told me that only Paris could rival these streets for ladies’ goods.’
Richard did, in fact, spoil his daughters, and he’d never returned to Aston Hall from London empty-handed. As a result, he was more familiar than most gentlemen with the best ladies’ shops in town, and they with him, and he was curious to see how the Venetian shops here in the Mercerie would compare.
From the curving bay windows alone, he could at once tell the differences. Clearly the wealthy Venetian ladies, even now bustling from shop to shop with their servants in tow, favoured the same rich luxury in their dress and ornament that seemed to permeate the entire city. Or rather, not Venetian ladies; though he’d say nothing to Jane, he suspected that most of the beautiful women here in this street were the courtesans for which the city was so famous, all of them eager to spend the largesse of their keepers.
While there’d be no mistaking his sensibly dressed Jane for any of the gaudy birds around them, Richard still took care to keep her protectively on his arm as they wandered through the crowded alleys and narrow streets from one shop window to another, with Jane marvelling and gasping with wonder. The goldsmiths’ displays featured pearls and precious stones in elaborately wrought pieces, the shoemakers’ delicate slippers of gilded kidskin with scarlet heels. The perfumeries wafted their rare fragrances into the air. There was even one shop that specialised in the oversize hats the Venetian ladies used to keep from the sun as they entertained on their rooftops, and another entirely devoted to the spangled costumes for Carnevale, and the curious white-and-black half-masks that were popular year round with both gentlemen and ladies alike.
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