Beyond A Wicked Kiss (30 page)

Although West was gratified she was no longer using
fornication
to describe the intimate activities between men and women, he could not say so without losing the point he meant to make. "Has your thinking on marriage changed?"

"No."

"Then you will not engage in sexual intercourse with
any
man."

Ria gave this all the consideration she believed it deserved and answered without hesitation. "You mean to be perfectly tiresome about this, don't you?"

"And you mean to be deliberately provocative."

The smile she flashed him was rather smug. "Are you certain?"

He could admit to himself that he was certain of nothing where she was concerned, but he would suffer all the tortures of the damned before he'd admit the same to her. "Yes, quite certain. You take fair delight in needling me."

"Perhaps," she said. "But then again, I might only be getting a little of my own back."

"Touche."

The smile she offered him now was faintly rueful. She glanced down at his fingers circling her wrist, then spoke in soft, deliberate accents. "You don't think you're being unreasonable? Whether or not I invite another man to my bed is not something you can decide for me. How can you hope to enforce such a thing? In eight months you will discharge the last of your responsibilities for my welfare, and I will be independent of your influence." She slipped her wrist free of his fingers and teased him with his own words. "You have not developed a tendre for me, have you?"

"No."

"That is good, then. For both of us, I think."

It seemed to him there was but one way of answering, though he was no longer certain of the truth of it. "Of course."

"Then it is settled."

It wasn't, but he could think of nothing that would make it so. He chose to remind her that he could make his influence felt for the present. "There are still eight months remaining."

"A little less than that now, but I will not refine upon it."

"Naturally," he said dryly. "At the risk of winding you up again, are we done with your questions?"

"Almost. I should like to know if I had the knack of it."

It required a moment for him to understand what she was talking about, and when he did, another moment was required to recover himself. "God's truth, but you say the most astounding things. Do you never temper your tongue, or is your every thought made available to the public?"

She merely regarded him gravely, giving no inkling of the workings of her mind.

"Yes," he said at last. "You had the knack of it."

Ria nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "And at the end... what was it exactly that happened at the—"

West let his head fall back and thump the headboard. He closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath. It occurred to him that he would not be in this position if he had let her drown in the lake twenty years earlier.

"Perhaps you regret saving my life," said Ria.

Opening one eye, West regarded her carefully. The suspicion that she could read his mind was finally confirmed. "What happened exactly was that you milked me dry."

This description, both apt and astonishing, made Ria's head snap around. Her eyes were owlishly wide, and her mouth was parted on a quickly snatched breath. She managed to choke out a word. "Milk?"

"That was my seed." He bit off each word with a pause in between for emphasis. "I gave it to the sheets instead of you."

"Then there will be no child."

Sighing heavily, he grabbed the book and opened it. He jabbed his finger at the drawing of the couple on the bed. "This is how a woman is got with child."

Ria was relieved to hear it. "Then it is just the same for us as it is for other animals. I wasn't entirely certain."

"Well, now you can be." He snapped the book closed, almost catching the tip of his finger. This time instead of putting it on the tabletop, he opened the uppermost drawer, dropped it inside, and slammed it shut. When he turned back to Ria, he caught the narrowest glimpse of her smile. "Amused?" he asked.

"Only at your expense."

"Then it is a good thing I can afford it." He pointed to the door. "I swear I will put you out myself if you do not take your leave."

Ria threw off the covers and threw her legs over the side of the bed. She walked around to the other side, found her slippers, and stepped into them, then secured the belt of her robe again. "Good night, Your Grace."

West did not invite her again to address him with more familiarity. He simply nodded and kept his eyes on the direction he meant her to go. When the door closed behind her, he lay back in bed, dragged a pillow across his face, and held it there. His choices seemed clear: he could suffocate himself or die laughing.

* * *

West slept late and had breakfast in his room. Finch said nothing about his request for fresh bed linens, but West did not miss the slightly arch look that rose above him in the mirror. After he bathed and dressed he dismissed Finch and locked the door. From far beneath the bed he retrieved two rolled lengths of canvas and set them on the mattress. He was not satisfied with this hiding place, not with the maids coming soon to put his room in order, and certainly not with Ria inviting herself to visit as the whim struck her. Had she truly taken it in her head to dive under his bed, there was no doubt her curiosity about these items would have caused him considerably more trouble than the damnable book.

He removed the string on one of the canvas cylinders and carefully unrolled it. The colors of the painting were so vibrant as to make him blink. There was the deep sapphire blue of a damask-covered chaise longue and the brilliant metallic gold-and-platinum threads of a woman's hair lying resplendently across its curved back. Rich velvet drapes the color of rubies hung in the background and their heavy folds swept the floor. The woman had one slender arm extended toward them as if she might draw them back and let a narrow beam of sunshine enter. It reminded West that there was no source for the light in the room the artist had painted. No lamp. No candles. No fire.

Instead it was the woman herself who was the wellspring of radiance. She was stretched naked along the length of the chaise, one leg raised, an arm flung above her head. Her skin had the luster of mother-of-pearl. Her eyes, slumberously hooded, hinted at the dark glow of polished onyx. Her back was slightly arched, her moist lips parted. The tip of her pink tongue could be seen teasing the ridge of her teeth. Her pale breasts were raised, the nipples puckered. Between her thighs her pubis glistened with the evidence of her arousal and the spendings of the men who had already taken her.

She was not alone in the exotic, jewel-toned room. The artist had placed three men with her. Two stood at the edge of the room with only their naked backs presented to someone studying the painting. The third man stood at the foot of the chaise, his cock rampant, his knees slightly bent as he leaned forward. In the next moment he would grasp her ankles and pull her toward him, raising her hips just as he fell to his knees. Her long legs would wind around him and he would push himself into her. Hard. Grindingly hard.

West could admire the painting for the artist's talent, but the subject troubled him more than a little. He sat on the edge of the bed and rolled it up, then replaced the string. This was exactly the manner in which he had found it in Beckwith's study, not framed and mounted on the wall—for where could one properly display this art?—but residing in a stand made expressly for the purpose of holding this cylinder upright and a score of others like it. It was no way to store a valued painting, and hairline cracks were already appearing in the brushstrokes. A better method of storage would have been a map drawer, and West wondered what Beckwith would say if he suggested it.

His host of yesterday was probably yet unaware of the things West had taken from his home. With some luck, he would remain in ignorance until they could be returned. It had not been West's intent to remove anything from the private library when he entered it. The idea of actually playing sneaksman and investigating the room occurred to him only after Beckwith made excuses for himself and cut the interview short. Beckwith did not have the manner about him to accomplish the thing smoothly, but West pretended not to notice. He had bided his time, watching the manor from a distance, and observed Beckwith leaving his home on horseback. He had followed for a while, but it was a dangerous and tricky thing to do when he could be so easily spotted. He turned Draco around when he realized that Beckwith's route would take him to Gillhollow. Whether Miss Weaver's Academy was his destination, West could not know, but the man's business in that direction was certainly intriguing.

West had doubled back and patiently waited until nightfall, then let himself into the house and into Beckwith's inner sanctum. Having no clear thought as to what he was looking for, nor for what he might find, West's search was done in the most casual manner, unhurried but thorough, just as the colonel had taught him. He applied mathematical constructs to his work, seeking out the value for the unknown factor that was Beckwith and balancing the equation forming in his mind.

It did not take him long. The desk was a repository for uninteresting documents: letters, bills of sale, estate affairs, inventories, a character for a departing servant. West made short work of sifting through it. It was when he turned his attention to the bookshelves that he came across Beckwith's rather startling collection of erotic works.

It was not every book that contained such themes. Beckwith also collected the writings of Fielding, Jonson, Swift, Cervantes, and Marlowe. His library was remarkable for the breadth of the works he had acquired, though West had to wonder if part of it was to prove that his tastes were not confined only to things beyond the pale.

Choosing books at random, West had come across the Marquis de Sade's
La philosophie dans le boudoir.
Farther along the same row, he had stumbled upon de Sade's
Justine.
There were more writings of a similar nature by men less infamous than the marquis but with his same penchant for confusing sexual pleasure with blood sport.

West's final selection of the illustrated volume as the one to take was based on its relative uniqueness and the likelihood that it would not be missed. It was tucked away with other untitled books on the uppermost shelf and seemed an unlikely choice for Beckwith to make unless he was looking for it specifically.

The paintings, however, had been something else again. He had looked at three among a score and determined there was nothing that could be learned from them. As evidence of the artists' talents, they were of middling quality, something he might paint himself if he were so inclined. He could not say with any certainty what made him unwrap the string on the fourth.

The vibrant colors held his attention at first. There was a mysterious light that made the woman's nude body the focal point of the painting and drew his eye to her. She was in a cool and sterile place—a temple, perhaps. The graceful Ionic columns, the polished floor, and something that was probably an altar were all cut from the same green-veined marble. Her wrists were cuffed in gold chains, and she was stretched tautly between two pillars. Behind her was a man wearing nothing but the head of a great horned bull. The artist had rendered this mask with enough detail to show the fierce expression in its drawn mouth and flared nostrils. That the animal's head rested on the naked shoulders of a fully aroused male made the image as powerful as it was obscene. It might have been Hades come for Persephone, the very devil in want of his reluctant bride.

West's eyes strayed back to the woman held between the columns. Her pale, unbound hair was like a beacon of light. The fine strands formed a madonna's halo about her face and made her seem almost at peace with what was to be her fate.

At first glance he thought he was seeing Ria, and he was struck by such an urge for violence that it was painful to rein in. When that haze of blind emotion receded and he was able to think and see more clearly, he realized that he was mistaken. The woman was not Ria, but he knew her nonetheless.

She was India Parr.

The shock of it was a physical thing, pushing West down in the chair behind Beckwith's desk. Miss Parr was easily the best-known actress in London, famed as much for her sense of communicating the absurd as for her beauty. His own acquaintance with her had been brief, limited to the time he saw her on stage at the Drury Lane, then standing in the doorway of her dressing room afterward to witness her cuff South solidly on the chin for interrupting her performance with his ill-timed laughter.

There was gossip circulating in London that Miss Pan had come under the protection of a Lord M—, and the
on dit
was that she had gone abroad with her lover. Occupied by the problems that Ria served him, he had paid little attention to the particulars of Miss Parr's absence from the theatre, not even taking the time to place a wager in the betting books as to the identity of the enigmatic Lord M—.

Now he wondered if he should have learned more about her. Southerton was not far away, but West did not want to trouble him with this. It was unlikely that South would appreciate an interruption at the cottage when he was using it as a trysting place with his latest bit of muslin. The bit of muslin would probably not appreciate it either.

After finding Miss Parr was the centerpiece of one painting, he had to go through all of the others. He only found one more in which she was featured, and he decided he would take it also. These oils were vastly superior to all the others in Beckwith's collection. The artist had not signed his work, but West doubted it was because he did not deem the paintings worthy of a signature. It was an extraordinary talent that had put these brush strokes to canvas. What this master had chosen as his subject, however, suggested a mind that was dangerous with dark humors. It bore consideration that the artist himself was Miss Parr's mystery lover and protector, Lord M—.