Lady Derring Takes a Lover

by Julie Anne Long

  She nodded without lifting her head.

  “Would you like some brandy, some sherry, some tea, some—”

  She shook her head vigorously. “What did you do with him?”

  “I put him in a hack and paid them to drive him to the opposite side of London.” It was a slight adulteration of the truth.

  She didn’t acknowledge this information with so much as a sound.

  “It isn’t fair,” she said finally. The words were somewhat muffled, as she’d yet to take her face from her hands, as if to blot out the scene of assault and violence.

  “What isn’t fair?”

  “Dot hasn’t any skills at all. Or rather, she does, but she’s terrible at all of them. But Dot is just a lovely person who wants to help and I suppose the world needs more lovely people. And she let that man in after curfew. Out of the kindness of her heart.”

  “Because you are kind and she admires you and wants to be like you, no doubt.”

  She gave a short laugh. “I suppose I am. You’re right again, Captain Hardy. No, it’s not enough to be kind. Not here. Not near the docks. I’m foolish. Feel free to gloat.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything so frivolous as gloating.”

  He could have sworn that somewhere in her buried hands she was smiling.

  There passed a little silence.

  “Delilah . . .” His voice was tender. He heard the faint, desperate ache in it. He could stop a man from hurting her, but he could not stop the fear from reverberating. And in this, he suffered.

  “I am not weeping, you’ve no need to use that tone. I’m furious, is what I am.”

  “And you feel alone.”

  She went motionless. She slowly lifted her head from her hands and peered at him from across the tops of her fingertips.

  “I suppose I do,” she agreed crossly, surprised. Two eyebrows at slants. Eyes brilliant.

  He liked anger better than despair.

  Her eyes were actually a little red around the edges, however, and her lashes were clinging together in damp spikes. But those hot high spots on her cheeks were more representative of fury and frustration than devastation.

  She was, in fact, tougher than he’d credited her for. He realized, all at once, that it took a certain steely courage to commit to kindness.

  “Why did you say that? Do you feel alone, Captain Hardy? After all, there’s probably only one of your particular species. Then again, I don’t suppose you feel much of anything.”

  It was like taking a face full of tiny pebbles. The sting was negligible but shocking.

  He knew she was lashing out. The men under his command did, too. Men, he knew how to manage.

  But he was out of practice with this sort of thing. Things delicate and intricate. His impulse was to take her in his arms. Would she find this comforting, or would he be just one more man presuming what she wanted, and imposing himself upon her? Would he be doing it to comfort himself, or her?

  And what would happen next? The inevitable, no doubt. They wanted each other as much as they didn’t want to want each other.

  She gave a short, bitter laugh into his silence. “Oh, the stoic, brave Captain Hardy. For once he doesn’t have to answer a question. Doesn’t feel the need to expound. What turns a man into . . .” She waved a hand at him. “So hard, so brave, so cold, so dutiful—”

  “Enough.”

  He said it quietly. But it was a command. And underneath it was something raw and hurt.

  Hearing her punishingly recite a list of things he’d always thought of as his best qualities as though they were the very things that made him worth loathing.

  Something about his tone broke through her prickly shield.

  She studied him, curiously. Her expression had softened, just a little.

  “What I do have is this. I usually keep it next to my pistol in my coat pocket.”

  Cautiously he dipped a hand into the coat she was wearing.

  Then he extended his hand, handkerchief dangling from it.

  Her hand crept out. And she quirked the corner of her mouth and accepted it.

  She dabbed at the corners of her eyes. Then folded it neatly. She did have her standards. They weren’t going to begin being slovenly at The Grand Palace on the Thames.

  He was relieved to be of some service to her.

  “I’m sorry I was unkind to you just now,” she said.

  “I shall doubtless live through it, given that I’m hard, and cold, and dutiful.”

  For some reason this made her give a short, albeit bleak, laugh.

  The laugh was good, but the bleakness alarmed him.

  Silence settled like dust.

  He didn’t move, and neither did she.

  How had it never occurred to him the peril in which women walked every day, even the most pampered of them? How valiant the simple act of being a woman was in so many ways.

  “Do you know how we financed this place, Captain Hardy?” she said suddenly. “Angelique and I sold our jewelry to a man named Reeves on Bond Street so we could turn this building into a home. It seemed so tawdry. But it was so we wouldn’t need anyone else. Particularly any other men.”

  He was breathless. He’d longed to hear the truth about this, but he was shocked by the piercing regret that she was telling him now, because she was vulnerable, and she’d come to trust him.

  “It’s just . . . I want so very much not to need anyone.” Her voice cracked on that last word.

  He quirked the corner of his mouth. “That’s my very definition of Paradise.”

  She looked up at him. And gave another of those little ironic laughs. “Oh, you are a funny man, Captain Hardy. How did you get the way you are? I don’t suppose you’ll tell me, as doubtless it can’t be summed up in one word.”

  She sounded as though she were asking herself as much as him.

  Her new bitterness shortened his breath. She was innocent enough about people to share of herself openly. He partook of this generosity the way he would a breeze through an open window.

  And he gave her back nothing.

  She might not, of course, be entirely innocent. She might, in fact, still be abetting a smuggler. Still he could not stop himself from giving her what she needed, right now, in this moment. Something raw and true, and of himself.

  “My origins,” he began carefully, “are not the sort of story you should hear before you attempt to sleep.”

  That was as much as he’d admitted to anyone. He had never supposed his story had any value to anyone apart from himself, until now.

  She went still. He could feel the change in her as surely as if she were indeed the weather.

  But she ought not look at him that way. As if his words made her ache. As if she could read the story of his life in the lines of his face. As if he’d just opened a door a mere inch and she could now peer in and see everything.

  And this was in part why he never said a word about it. He didn’t need or want comforting from anyone. It was as easy to extricate one’s self from comforting as it was to free a carriage wheel from a muddy rut. He didn’t need to be known. He liked moving through the world without the ballast of sympathy or judgment.

  No, she ought not look at him that way.

  And he ought not like it.

  What he needed—wanted—even in her moment of need—was to peel her night rail from her lithe body and bury his face in her throat, so he could feel her moan vibrate against his lips when his hands traveled lower and filled with her breasts.

  Even now. Men were basically animals.

  Doubtless she knew this all too well.

  She cleared her throat. “Well, then.” Her voice had gone a little thready. “Thank you, Captain Hardy, for the rescue. I suppose it’s off to sleep.”

  That was certainly the wisest thing that either of them could do.

  “Go on up, Lady Derring. No other unwelcome guests will enter tonight. I’ll stand guard for the evening, if you think that would be helpful.”
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br />   Delilah looked into his face, soft yet still implacable, his eyes hot but enigmatic, and loathed herself for how something in her immediately eased at the words. As though he alone had the answers. As though nothing could possibly go wrong while he was standing guard.

  She’d meant it: she didn’t want to need anyone. Let alone want anyone.

  The first step was the difficult task of taking herself out of his presence. Sitting there like a beautiful rugged wall she wanted nothing more than to climb all over.

  A wall that had let through a chink of light and she wanted to go toward it the way any moth goes toward light.

  She’d probably dash herself to pieces.

  Her words emerged in a rush. “I don’t think standing guard all night is necessary, but thank you. Good night.”

  She turned so swiftly her braid whistled through the air toward him like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  He caught it in his fist like a striking snake.

  They froze that way, absurdly for a moment, like one of Derring’s statues. The way Hardy moved took her breath away. The speed and precision. As if he was prepared for every single eventuality because he’d already encountered them in some form or another. She gave herself permission to be awed.

  He was, in fact, remarkable.

  His mouth was turned up at the corner. “However frustrating you find me, Lady Derring, I don’t believe I deserve the lash.” He whispered it.

  She gave a nervous little laugh. She opened her mouth to apologize.

  But something about his expression stopped her voice.

  Because now he was looking down at her braid with something very like wonder, maybe confusion. As if he’d stumbled across an exotic creature in a trap he’d set and he wasn’t certain whether he ought to free it or name it. As if he hadn’t the right to touch it at all.

  Her heart, for some reason, was beating exultantly.

  He gently drew the braid between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think I’ll return this,” he teased, softly. “It might be useful. I could use this to lower myself out of a castle, like Rapunzel. Or raise the mainsail.”

  He raised his eyes to hers. She felt the heat in them.

  “I’m not certain you’ve been telling the truth, Captain Hardy, about your facility for poetry.”

  She was whispering, too.

  He frowned faintly. “Not a bit of what I just said rhymed.”

  She realized she’d been leaning ever closer to him all this time.

  Tentatively, she laid her hand against his jaw. She wasn’t certain why. Except that she wanted to touch his face after seeing that raw, amazed expression. It had pulled her like gravity.

  His cheek was a little gritty with the start of his whiskers. Hard. Warm. She was close enough to see his scar, his lines, map the stern geometry of his face, his cheekbones, his chin.

  Yet she couldn’t quite read his eyes in the twilight of the parlor. Maybe that was all for the best. It made what she was about to do a little easier.

  She kissed him.

  Softly.

  Chastely.

  Fleetingly.

  And she raised her lips from his; she drew in a shuddering breath.

  He’d gone so motionless she’d warrant the blood had momentarily stopped moving in his veins.

  The pleasure of shocking him was almost as good as the kiss.

  She lifted her eyes to his face.

  His eyes were all pupil now.

  For a moment, it was hard to know who was breathing in and who was breathing out. It was a small storm contained between them.

  “I’m not certain you’re in your right mind at the moment, Lady Derring.” His voice lulled, nearly hoarse.

  “I’m not using my mind at all. You ought to take advantage of that.”

  The next two breaths he took and released were audible.

  “Delilah . . . don’t tease.”

  Ah. Stern Captain Hardy, issuing an order.

  But the words were ever-so-slightly frayed. She recognized that he was in truth asking for mercy, this man who had probably never begged for a thing.

  And they both knew the torment of wanting something out of reach.

  She was disinclined to torture him. One man had tried to take her against her will tonight.

  It was her glorious right to give herself to another.

  So she kissed him again.

  This time he captured her face with his hands as her lips touched his. He tipped her head back into the cradle of them with such deliberate grace she fleetingly wondered how many times he’d done precisely that.

  And he plundered.

  But from that moment on there was no question about who was in command or what was about to happen. Anticipation and uncertainty and fear and joy were all distinct feelings, all at once, and nearly physical pleasures. She knew nearly nothing. She suspected he did indeed know everything.

  And everything was what she wanted.

  He drugged her with the heat and dark sweetness of his lips, his tongue, stroking and twining with hers, in so doing uncovering strata after strata of subtle pleasure that shivered through her bloodstream, lava, quicksilver, setting up camp between her legs, throbbing. She took hungrily, mesmerized, trembling, her hands clinging to his shirt hot from his skin.

  And then she began to give, and to demand, and she could feel his need ramping in tandem with hers, in the hoarse oath he whispered, the low moan of triumph. Their breath sawed, hot and sweet; their tongues dueled, and their lips clung and released and went for more. And when the air slipped into her night rail she realized that somehow, sneakily, in the midst of this, he’d eased her night robe away from her shoulders.

  He dragged his hands down over her throat, then with a tweak skillfully loosened the ribbon at its bodice so that the lawn confection collapsed like a scandalized maiden. And this, too, was eased from her shoulders, from her breasts, as she was in thrall to the things he was doing to her ear with his tongue. He filled his hands with her breasts, chafing his thumbs over her nipples, stroking. The shock of pleasure snagged the breath in her throat, and she choked an oath of her own as her head tipped backward. He buried his face in her throat, kissing the place where her heart was thundering. His lips, his tongue, his breath, laid a new trail of pleasure along her shoulder, a sensual Vasco da Gama, as his hands savored her breasts. She hadn’t known her own skin, her own senses, contained such magic, such potential for furious bliss.

  Desire was like claws sunk into her.

  “I need . . .” She choked. “I want . . .”

  She didn’t know what she was asking for precisely.

  “Anything,” he said, low and fiercely. “Name it.”

  If only she knew what to call the thing he’d done to the hollow beneath her ear that sent rivulets of quicksilver pleasure through her veins. She’d name that.

  “More,” is what she said.

  He knew. His grin was white in the gloomy light of the parlor.

  She hadn’t realized he’d already, through the magic of drugging her senses, levered her backward until she looked up and there was the water spot and the plaster rose on the chandelier. She’d lost a sense of where her body began and ended; she was a creature who accepted pleasure.

  And then Tristan caught hold of the hem of her night rail and tugged, and it became a caress as it slid down her legs. She felt like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon. A naked butterfly on a sagging velvet settee, which, when she shifted, caressed her bum. Everything in the entire world was making love to her.

  Egad, she was naked. She’d never been entirely naked in front of a man. The awareness burned a little of the sensual haze away, she nearly crossed her arms and legs out of nerves until Tristan made a sound, half sigh, half groan, like a man who beheld a feast, and then stretched alongside her and wrapped her with his arms, clothing her in heat and his singular smell, man and sweat and tobacco and the musk of desire. Maybe it was the smell of valor.

  She slid her hands beneath his s
hirt. He was indeed a wall. A hot, smooth one, satin stretched over stone. A little fuzzy with hair.

  He sighed something that sounded like “God, yes.”

  How lovely and erotic to make someone make those sounds.

  So she did it again, marveling at the warmth and strength of him.

  He shifted his body lower, ducked his head, and closed his mouth over her nipple. And sucked. Traced it with his tongue and sucked again. How extraordinary. How wicked.

  His lips reclaimed hers again and she sank into the refuge of long sultry kisses while his hands dropped below, and his fingertips like delicate marauders lit fires everywhere they touched as they traveled the curving road of her waist, her hip, her thigh. She was rippling with waves of pleasure by the time his fingers crested the curve of her buttocks and slid between her thighs, which, she realized when they arrived, was exactly where she wanted them to be all along.

  “I didn’t know . . . oh God.”

  Her body was wiser than she was, and her legs dropped open even wider.

  “Tell me what you want,” he murmured, his fingers circling, stroking, until her lungs labored with hot ragged breaths and she was wantonly undulating against his hand. She’d had no idea.

  “This . . . oh God, this . . .” Her voice was a rasp.

  “This?” And he stroked, hard, between her legs, where she was satiny and wet.

  She bucked upward into his hand, gasping a few words she was fairly certain she’d never said aloud before in her life.

  He did it again, and again, hard, deliberately.

  What was happening to her?

  She dragged her hand over the hard swell in his trousers and watched his breath hiss in, the tendons of his throat go taut.

  “Unfasten the buttons.” It was a rasped command, all urgency and need. And it was hopelessly erotic, but then everything suddenly was.

  Her fingers trembled, and it was all she could do not to use her teeth to tear the placket open, but even then she thought about the mending and freed each button in its own time.

  His cock sprang forth.

  He grasped one of her hands and closed it around the shaft, dragged it down. Clearly a demonstration of what she ought to do.