Human Error

by Eileen Wilks

  A tap on the door roused him.

  Irritated, he opened his eyes. “Come in.”

  She was there, wavering on the threshold, stepping out of his dreams, a mirage fashioned of lust and steam, summoned by the force of his longing.

  Aimée, small-breasted and slender, her eyes dark and startled in her pink face.

  He narrowed his gaze.

  Instead of vanishing, she stepped into his room and closed the door.

  Aimée moistened her lips. He was so very large. And naked. A big, golden, naked male, lapped in water and firelight.

  She didn’t know where to look, at his broad, bare, muscled chest or his narrowed, heavy-lidded eyes.

  Her heart thumped.

  “Forgive me if I don’t get up,” he drawled.

  Wild heat stormed her cheeks and flooded her insides. Resolutely, she focused her gaze on the top of his head. His damp hair had the sheen and color of honeycomb, carelessly blended strands of amber and gold.

  “I beg your pardon. I thought . . . While the other guests are downstairs . . .” She sounded like a stammering imbecile. She drew a deep breath and tried again. “I needed to see you.”

  “Well.” A corner of his mouth turned up. “You can certainly see me now.”

  She bit her lip on an inappropriate spurt of laughter. “Indeed. I did not realize you would be . . .” She waved her hand, as if a single gesture could encompass all those muscles, that bare expanse of flesh. There was gold hair on his chest, too, she noted, fascinated. Fine, crisp hair glinting in the firelight. His large, square knees rose like mountains from the surface of the water.

  “Bathing,” she finished weakly.

  “You should not be here,” he said softly.

  Her gaze collided with his. The air crackled with the warmth of the fire and the tension building between them. Flames licked along her veins and the insides of her thighs.

  She took a deep gulp of warm, soap-scented air. “You would never hurt me.”

  She spoke with absolute conviction borne in her heart, in her soul, in a place deeper than memory. This man was not Howard. He was nothing like Howard.

  Lucien shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, sweet. If you’re caught in my room, we’ll both be compromised.”

  Even to be seen alone with him was risky. That’s why she had sought him out here. But to be discovered alone with him naked in his bedchamber would be disaster. She would be hopelessly ruined.

  For the first time, it occurred to her that Lucien would be . . . Not ruined, precisely. Society forgave a man’s transgressions more readily than a woman’s. But even if Lucien did not feel honor bound to offer for Aimée, the scandal would destroy his chances with Julia.

  The thought of her cousin sent a trickle of cold down Aimée’s spine. She glanced around the empty room. “Where is your servant?”

  His brows rose. “He went to fetch a bandage. From the housekeeper, I imagine.”

  They did not have much time, then.

  She clasped her hands together. “You said you knew a woman in London who could help me find a position.”

  “Yes.” Lucien gripped the sides of the tub. “Turn around.”

  Distracted, she watched his muscles flex and bunch under his smooth, wet skin. “Why?”

  Foolish question.

  He pulled himself up, bath water streaming down the hard planes and ridges of his chest, his abdomen, his . . .

  Aimée whisked herself around, her face on fire, heat pooling low in her belly. Water sloshed and dripped.

  “Tell me what happened,” he said. “To make you change your mind. Did Basing bother you again?”

  “No, I . . . He . . .” She could hear him moving behind her with a rustle like bedclothes.

  Like clothes, she informed her imagination sternly. Obviously, he must dress.

  She had not known a man would look so, not like a statue at all, but large, dark, eager. She might never have known. She felt like a starving beggar standing at the kitchen door, glimpsing the meal inside. She was hungry for more than scraps. She would have liked to feast her eyes on him.

  “It’s all right.” Lucien’s voice was low and soothing and much closer.

  She made herself remember Finch. “It is not all right, he . . .”

  “I meant you can turn around now.”

  Oh. She swallowed and faced him.

  Not dressed. Not entirely.

  He wore a robe of dark silk, belted at the waist, exposing a broad golden V of chest. The damp fabric clung to his belly, the muscles and bones of his thighs, before falling in folds to his calves. His feet were bare. Big, masculine feet, almost as much a revelation as the rest of him. Strong arches. Hairy toes. So different from hers.

  She felt another pang like hunger and jerked her gaze back up to his face.

  He watched her, his green eyes hot, amused, aware.

  “Aimée,” he murmured. A whisper of amusement, of frustration, of desire. “What are you doing here?”

  She barely remembered. She felt damp. Feverish. The heat of his body, the warmth of his breath, reached out to her. “I needed to speak with you. Alone.”

  She knew very well that she should move away.

  She was equally certain he would do nothing to stop her.

  But she might never have another opportunity to indulge her curiosity. Her desire. She stood her ground, motionless as a rabbit when the dogs were in sight, her heart beating, beating, beating.

  “Then you must tell me,” he said, a hint of laughter in his voice and in his eyes, “how I can be of service to you.”

  Despite herself, she felt her lips curve. She wanted this, to revel in this moment without fear or shame. She wanted him.

  She closed her eyes to the extreme foolishness of what she was doing and simply breathed him in, the scent of his soap, the flavor of his skin, as if she could store up enough sensations to last her for a lifetime.

  His fingers stroked the hair by her temple, a tiny, tugging pleasure. His hand cupped her cheek. With his thumb, he traced the shape of her smile, rubbing lightly on her lower lip. Languor invaded her limbs, weighted her eyelids.

  She was playing with fire. Inside, she was melting.

  She would stop him. In a minute. Not yet.

  She opened her mouth, tasting the rough, salty pad of his thumb.

  He inhaled sharply.

  The door at her back opened with a flood of cool air.

  “Cobs. I knew I should have knocked,” a male voice proclaimed in disgust.

  Aimée froze.

  Lucien stepped back unhurriedly, adjusting the front of his robe. “It’s all right, Martin. You can come back later,” he said over her head.

  He was sending his servant away.

  For a moment she was glad.

  She wanted Lucien to herself, wanted privacy and freedom to savor and explore. To slide her fingers under the silk of his robe. To touch his warm, hair-roughened chest. To gather up memories she could take out and treasure in the nights and years to come, like flowers pressed in the pages of a book.

  Only for a moment, before her brain, which had turned to mush as a result of all the lovely melty things going on inside her, reasserted itself and the reality of their situation rushed in.

  Finch. She had to think of Finch.

  Howard.

  Julia.

  Aimée’s throat tightened. She really could not bear it if Lucien married Julia now.

  She swallowed painfully and took a step back, away from temptation. “No. I will go.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “You wanted to talk.”

  “I need to speak with you alone, yes. But . . .”

  “Martin was just leaving,” Lucien said, without taking his eyes from her. “Weren’t you, Martin?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Aimée glanced at Lucien’s valet, a slim, handsome youth with an expressionless face and dark, knowing eyes. She had no doubt the servant would make himself scarce if ordered to do so. And t
hen what? Would he report in the kitchen on the goings-on upstairs?

  What would happen then? Aimée’s reputation would be ruined. The chance to help Finch would be lost.

  “No,” she said again, proud of the firmness of her voice. “I find I have miscalculated entirely the danger of being alone with a man in his bedchamber.”

  Lucien frowned. “Then you can both stay.”

  He truly did not understand. She shook her head.

  “You can trust Martin,” he said. “Trust me.”

  Did he realize how persuasive she found him? Almost she would agree to anything he suggested. It was very humiliating.

  “Perhaps it is myself I do not trust,” she admitted.

  Something shifted in his face, flared in his eyes. He took a step toward her. “Aimée.”

  She felt a flutter of panic, a quiver of desire. She forced herself to gather her scattered thoughts and emotions, to form a plan. “Lady Basing has asked me to supervise the decorations for the house and ballroom.”

  Lucien watched her carefully. “So?”

  “So”—she exhaled—“tomorrow after breakfast I will go into the woods to collect what I need.”

  It was considered bad luck to bring greenery into the house before Christmas Eve. But there were few flowers available in England in wintertime. She would need to store the boughs in the potting shed and bring them in to decorate the day before.

  “You want me to find you in the woods.” Disbelief edged his voice.

  In the cold, in the snow, where they could be private. Safe. Fully dressed.

  She nodded. “There are a number of fine holly trees in the oak-wood beyond the orchard. Near the gamekeeper’s cottage,” she added, in case he needed further direction.

  His gaze searched hers before he bowed curtly. “Until tomorrow, then.”

  She moistened her lips. “Tomorrow.”

  The word hung between them like a promise. She felt committed to far more than a mere meeting.

  Which was pure spinster foolishness, concocted of nothing more than loneliness and imagination. Surely by tomorrow she would be herself again. She had too much sense—didn’t she?—to lose her head or her heart or her virtue to a man who was courting her cousin.

  She met Lucien’s heavy-lidded gaze and flushed.

  However much she might want to.

  The door clicked shut behind her.

  “It’s not like you to have a woman in your room,” Martin observed.

  “I did not have her,” Lucien said.

  Damn it all. He didn’t know whether to curse his luck or bless his escape. He must have lost his mind. He knew better than to take advantage of a gently bred virgin in his bedchamber, no matter how lovely or willing.

  Aimée’s blue eyes, shining with trust and desire, seared his memory. You would never hurt me.

  God.

  If Martin had interrupted them only a few minutes later . . . Lucien broke into a cold sweat just thinking about what he had almost done.

  What he’d lost the chance to do.

  Martin snorted as he laid out scissors and gauze on the dressing table. “And I suppose you didn’t arrange to meet her for a little romp and tumble in the woods tomorrow, either. Let me see that hand.”

  Lucien scowled. The skate blade had cut from the fleshy side of his palm to the knuckle of his little finger. Not deep, but painful. “A proper servant would pretend not to have heard that.”

  Martin pressed a pad to the wound. “Likely so,” he agreed. “But a proper servant would be nagging for proper wages.”

  Guilt and frustration roiled inside Lucien. He gritted his teeth. “You know I cannot afford to pay you now. If you prefer to return to Maiden Lane—”

  “I’m not going back to that henhouse.” Martin wrapped the pad with gauze. “Anyways, you ain’t never abandoned us, and I’m not abandoning you. A gentleman needs a valet.”

  “I’m not a real gentleman,” Lucien reminded him. As far as this world was concerned, he was the Earl of Amherst’s bastard.

  “You’re as much a gentleman as I am a valet,” Martin retorted. “Pretend to be something long enough, and it comes true.”

  Lucien had never been any good at pretending. Perhaps that was why he had so much trouble feeling truly human.

  There was no pretense in Aimée at all. Circumstances may have forced her to play the drudge, yet her essential spirit was not dimmed by her role in her cousin’s house.

  Could he say the same about his life with Amherst?

  Lucien shut the thought away. “You could do better for yourself elsewhere.”

  Martin shrugged. “Maybe. But I got a bed and three squares a day now, which is more than I had before you pulled me out of that gutter.”

  Less than a year ago, Lucien had stumbled over Martin’s body in an alley behind Covent Garden, where he had been beaten half to death by a client who had used him thoroughly and then claimed outrage at being tricked into paying for a boy. After Fanny had nursed the boy back to health, Martin had attached himself to Lucien as his manservant.

  “But we’re running short of the ready,” Martin continued, tying the bandage into a neat knot. “Here and at Fanny’s place. This girl, she’s not the one we came for, is she? The rich one.”

  “No,” Lucien admitted.

  No money, no family, no other acquaintance in England, she had said.

  It didn’t matter. She was in his head and in his blood, a distraction he did not need, a temptation he could not avoid.

  “What do you want with her, then?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Lucien admitted. He had Fallen for her once. He was prepared to sacrifice for her again. But how much this time? “She wants my help.”

  Martin clipped the bandage ends. “Seems to me you got enough strays counting on you already.”

  “Then one more should make no difference.”

  But Aimée was different. She always had been.

  “Tell that to Fanny next time you give her the housekeeping money.”

  Lucien’s jaw tightened. “She asked for my help,” he repeated stubbornly.

  “Coming to your room with you starkers in the bath, she’s asking for something else. And you looked ready to give it to her.”

  Lucien chafed. But there was no point in being offended by the truth. No point in denying it, either, to Martin or himself. More than his own fate depended on his decisions now. He would not risk his future or theirs again.

  “I have nothing to offer Miss Blanchard,” Lucien said stiffly. “Except my assistance.”

  The manservant met his gaze, his own eyes dark with sympathy and understanding. “Best you remember that, then, sir. Next time you see the lady.”

  Chapter Six

  In his dream, Lucien struggled up and up a long, twisting stairwell, his pulse thudding, his face wet with perspiration. Cold seeped from the ancient stone. A draft rose from the depths of the tower.

  Aimée climbed ahead of him, around and around, her light flickering like a candle in the dark. She turned, her smile beckoning, her face glowing in the shadows. “This way. Follow me.”

  Reckless little fool, she wasn’t looking, she might slip, she might trip, she could fall and break her neck. His mouth dried as her slipper scraped stone. He lunged to save her.

  And missed. His reaching hands grasped at air, at nothing.

  For a moment he hung suspended, her cry echoing in his ears, before he fell.

  And woke in a tangle of sheets, his heart pounding and a headache pulsing behind his eyeballs.

  Gray sunlight slanted across the carpet of his room. Lucien swore and stumbled from his bed. It was late.

  By the time he made his way downstairs to breakfast, the room was full of far too many fellow guests, flapping and jabbering like crows in a winter landscape.

  No Aimée.

  Lucien blinked his bleary eyes, stupid with lack of sleep. Was she still in the house? Had he missed her?

  He struggled
against the remnants of his dream, sticky and persistent as cobwebs. Outside the windows, the snow lay thin and hard across the lawn. A line of footprints and the icy tracks of a cart led past the orchard and into the wood.

  Aimée.

  This way. Follow me.

  His head throbbed. His stomach growled.

  Julia lifted the teapot invitingly. “Will you have some tea, Mr. Hartfell? Or do you drink chocolate in the mornings?”

  He wanted coffee desperately.

  He glanced once at the sideboard set with pound cake, plum cake, breads, and rolls and then again out the window. Imagined facing Julia’s pert prettiness across the breakfast table every morning for the rest of his life and said, “Thank you, no. I have just remembered an errand that requires my attention.”

  “I haven’t had my tea yet,” Tom Whitmore announced beside her.

  Julia set the pot down with a little thump. “You might have taken breakfast at your own house rather than call on us so early in the morning.”

  “I can’t get what I want at home,” Whitmore said.

  Julia looked at him through her lashes. “And what is that, pray?”

  Whitmore grinned. “Plum cake,” he said, and reached for a slice.

  Lucien was heartily sick of Julia Basing and her games and her suitor. It was a relief to escape outside into the cold air and the quiet.

  He crunched across the frozen ground under the dark, straggling cover of the trees, trying to ignore his pounding head and empty stomach. Small outbuildings huddled under a thin blanket of snow. The cart had dug shallow ruts in the ice. He thought he could hear the squeak and rumble of its wheels through the trees.

  Lucien frowned. Of course Aimée would have servants with her to bring back decorations for the ballroom. He would have to find some way to speak with her alone. Last night she had refused to confide in him in front of Martin.

  His jaw set. Or perhaps she had simply used his manservant’s presence as an excuse to run away.

  Perhaps it is myself I do not trust.

  He expelled his breath in a cloud of frustration.

  Movement flashed through the trees, a bright spot in the barren landscape.

  Aimée, standing on tiptoe against a backdrop of dark holly to cut a cluster of red berries from a bough.