Gareth: Lord of Rakes (10 page)

He was a rake; disappointing women was what he did best.

“I suppose you want to flaunt your wares?” she asked. She’d seen drawings of the male parts in Gareth’s library, and suffered through his lordship’s bored lecture about erections, testes, and other peculiar terms. Male anatomy had struck her as a collection of oddments, flesh affixed to the general scheme after the fact to accommodate procreation at the expense of aesthetics.

“Felicity…”

He might have been having second thoughts, while Felicity had no doubt she wanted this encounter behind them.

“We have plenty of time, Gareth,” she quoted him as she leaned over to inspect him intimately, “and I’ll do whatever you want me to.” She brought a hand up to stroke his
balls
—his term for them, though he spoke it rather like an endearment—and began teasing through the hair at the base of his shaft with her other.

The texture of his hair here was different from elsewhere on his body, both springy and soft. And his testes were soft too, while his shaft was hard as a lance.

Not that she’d ever stroked a lance before.

Gareth’s expression was both resigned and annoyed. “I am creating a Galatea of which few could approve.”

The very point of the undertaking, to Felicity’s thinking, though not very diplomatically phrased. While curiosity warred with an odd irritability, she brought her hand over his—over
him
, and gently began to explore the length of him.

The texture of his skin was smooth along his shaft, and smoother still on the crown—velvet smooth, petal smooth. Why did none of the clichés refer to being as smooth as a man’s parts?

She ran her fingertips over all the curious contours of him, tracing the indentation of the crown, then down to the sturdy base of his shaft. All the while, she listened for his breathing to change—Gareth professed a great enthusiasm for monitoring a lover’s breathing—and kept a hand on his naked thigh, attuned to the tension in the muscle there. Gareth’s hips began to rock, a small, slow motion, but one that thrust him through the sleeve of her palm and fingers.

That little movement, spontaneous and uninvited, sent a bolt of confidence through her, and something not far removed from vengeance. She circled her fingers around his shaft and kept the pressure firm with her hand—he’d prosed on at length about that too.

Gradually, the relaxed, rocking motion became more focused, more thrusting. Gareth tipped his head back, making the tendons in his neck stand out.

Felicity felt an urge to do something—kiss him, on the mouth,
there
, somewhere—but didn’t want to deprive herself of the sight of him in these unguarded moments. The eruption of a wet warmth over the back of her hand was a surprise, for Gareth had uttered not a sound. She eased the pressure on him, but didn’t turn loose of him entirely.

For reasons she surely did not fathom, she was reluctant to let him go. They remained thus for several moments, the only sounds the rasp of Gareth’s breathing and the clop of shod hooves on cobblestones.

“You can let me go, you know,” Gareth said, still not opening his eyes.

Her tutor didn’t sound happy now. Felicity sat up and fished a handkerchief out of her sleeve. She tidied him up then glanced over at him. In the dim light of the single lantern, he did not
look
happy either. He arranged his clothing then sat back, staring out the window, his expression bleak. Some of the sense of well-being and confidence Felicity felt ebbed away as she realized he wasn’t even going to take her hand.

The disappointment surged back, in herself, in him, in the entire outing. “Is something wrong?” she asked after several more minutes of silence and staring.

“Why do you ask?”

So blasted cool. At least his tone helped banish the temptation to cry. “Normally, when we are private, you hold my hand, Gareth. You put an arm around my shoulders, you offer me—at least—a token of physical affection. Normally, when we have been… in company with each other, you tidy my hair, you look over my clothing, you offer encouraging comments on my progress, you chatter. You don’t simply stare out the window, ignoring the fact that a woman has been intimate with you in your very coach, and that woman is wondering what the
bloody
hell
she could have done to provoke you thus.”

Men were sleepy and agreeable after finding sexual pleasure. He’d assured her of this, and Gareth’s promises were utterly reliable. And yet, she was using the most foul language she’d ever aspired to.

He looked at her then, as if he’d forgotten she was there—but at least he looked at her.

“I do not chatter.” He tugged on his gloves, beautiful white leather gloves that fit him like a second skin. “You have not provoked me.”

Felicity sat beside him in silence as he continued to regard the night beyond the coach window. Gareth would give nothing away. He kept his own counsel about every blessed thing, and told her only what he wanted her to know, when he wanted her to know it. Nonetheless, Felicity sensed in her bones that from Gareth’s perspective also, something wasn’t right, and that something related to what she’d just done with him.

Well, damn, to use his word. She had touched him, had learned intimate things about him, had learned how his breathing changed. His privy parts were fascinating in their contradictions: soft and hard; mighty and vulnerable… Gareth interrupted her musings by knocking three times on the carriage roof with his cane, with the result that the horses swung into a trot.

Still he did not touch her.

She fluffed her skirts and pulled on her own damned gloves.

“Do not be concerned, Felicity. I was not anticipating the direction of our dealings tonight, and I am merely reconsidering my plans.”

The coach turned left, the first left turn it had made since leaving the theatre. “You didn’t think I’d be willing, did you?”

“I wasn’t sure, no.” Still, he did not touch her, and she was determined not to touch him uninvited, even if he’d all but admitted she’d foiled whatever
direction
he’d had in mind.

“You found your pleasure.” The confines of coach bore the scent of his pleasure, and yet she’d asked a question nonetheless.

“I most assuredly did.”

They did not speak again. When they reached Felicity’s house, he helped her down from the coach, bowed over her hand, and climbed back in, tapping on the roof before the footman had the coach door closed.

***

“Your menses should arrive the end of next week?” Gareth asked as he consulted a calendar. He sat at his late grandfather’s massive desk, the fireplace crackling merrily, while Felicity wandered the room. She nodded her answer, no doubt thoroughly bored after spending almost two hours with him. He’d drilled her on everything from erotic Latin terms, to the price of a good bottle of claret.

She had answered every query accurately, though she had not, to use an apt term, cried off—damn her and bless her.

Still, she was subdued, and to his expert eye, pale, and that made him uncomfortable. But then, the whole bloody business was making him increasingly uncomfortable, so uncomfortable he’d left her in the cold and dark of night nearly a week ago, thought of nothing but her for the intervening days—and nights—and hardly knew what to say to her now.

Please
forgive
me
came to mind.
I
am
taking
coin
I
do
not
need
in
exchange
for
ruining
a
decent, good woman who is too stubborn to accept charity instead.

He rose from the desk, as if he could gain physical distance from that admission.

“We must eventually see that you are no longer a virgin, and you are almost ready to take that step. I will teach you the use of various contraceptives, but to minimize the risk of conception, we should be about our task either early next week or immediately at the end of your bleeding. That will leave us about ten days to meet with the solicitors and complete our dealings.”

With a few weeks to spare, and his wits possibly intact.

The state of his honor did not bear investigating.

Felicity looked up at him from some little red book of erotic poetry, her expression nonplussed, but as he watched, she roused herself to concentrate. “When is there the least risk of conceiving?” Her tone was admirably businesslike, just as brisk as his—damn it all.

“Immediately before you bleed, according to the midwives and ladies whose judgment I trust. The physicians debate the matter.” He crossed the room to where she was standing, the closest he’d come to her in a week. Some things shouldn’t be declaimed from twenty paces.

“Felicity, you must know that if there is a child, I will provide for you both, for so long as you live. I do not seek an heir, but I take my responsibilities seriously. You would want for nothing.” Much to his surprise, he’d never meant anything more.

Felicity smiled up at him, her expression wistful. “Oh, I know firsthand you do not avoid your duty, Heathgate.”

Heathgate.

She reached up to touch his face, but he flinched before her fingers reached his cheek, uncomfortable with a caress when she ought to slap some sense into him.

Felicity dropped her hand and stepped back. “What is
wrong
with you, my lord? Last week, you were stuck to me like a barnacle, and now you recoil as if I’m diseased. What did I do to displease you?”

He said nothing, but stood looking down at her, feeling something heavy and miserable in his guts.

“You must tell me, Heathgate. I cannot countenance the thought that in a week’s time I will be as intimate with you as a woman can be, and yet you cannot bear my touch. If the burden is so onerous to you, I would not ask it.”

She was near tears; he could sense it, feel it, hear it in her voice, felt something in his chest go tight with the knowledge of it.

Would she cry when he was inside her body? He could not ask her that, could not tolerate the thought of it, and could not bear another moment without her in his arms. He reached for her silently, and she folded herself into his embrace as the tears broke free.

“I have felt so awful,” she whispered, clinging to him. “I cannot stand to have you angry with me, Gareth. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what’s wrong…”

He walked her over to the reading chair before the fire and pulled her into his lap. As Felicity’s crying gradually subsided, Gareth came to an uncomfortable realization: the part of him that wanted their dealings concluded wanted her willing, but willing to swive in the general case, not willing to bed only
him,
specifically. Some other godforsaken part of him, though, had decided her exclusive attention was surpassingly to be treasured.

Damn, damn, damn the woman to hell and back.

He nuzzled her hair and tightened his arms around her. “Take my handkerchief.”

She complied but refused to look at him.

“Felicity, listen to me, please.”

That earned him a nod.

“I have hurt your feelings, and for that I am sorry.” Women were always grateful for an apology. “You must realize however, that thirty days from now, sooner if I can arrange it, we will once again be as strangers to each other. Should we meet in public, you would be well advised to give me the cut direct—you know that, don’t you?”

Another nod, and thank goodness she wasn’t going to scold him on that point.

“So you must not take on so when I approach you in a less personal fashion.” His logic was unassailable, and the wording both deft and direct.

No nod though.

“You take my point, don’t you?”

Felicity raised her head, and the anger he saw in her magnificent topaz eyes had him shifting back against the chair.

“You
hurt
me, Gareth Alexander. You hurt me and frightened me with your coldness and distance, when yours was the only reassurance I could possibly seek. You were avoidably cruel, and though I have apologized for offending you, I still don’t know what the problem is. It wasn’t well done of you, and you will not use me so ill again.”

She glared at him until, not knowing what else to do, he dipped his head to rest his cheek against her hair.

He fell back on the recitations of naughty schoolboys and inattentive husbands, neither of which he’d ever been. “I’m sorry. It will not happen again.” Unlike the schoolboys and husbands, he meant every word.

As he held her in his arms and watched the fire slowly die, Gareth told himself he couldn’t wait to see the last of Felicity Worthington.

Honestly could not wait.

***

David Holbrook was neither impatient nor indecisive, but as he sat before the hearth in his office, stroking the tabby cat in his lap, he was most assuredly frustrated. Yesterday, he’d waited in his coach, as he waited almost every morning—rain or shine—for the Worthington sisters to appear in the park.

To no avail.

He set the cat down, but the wretched beast sprang onto the desk and took itself on a tour of the surrounds.

Perhaps Miss Worthington’s appearance last week at the theatre with the Marquess of Heathgate was not the potential disaster Holbrook feared, but his men were bringing him reports of Heathgate’s coach in the Worthington mews, and that, Holbrook could not like.

A gold-handled letter opener clattered to the floor, while the cat ran its cheek over an arm of the wax jack.

“Wretched beast.” Holbrook tucked the letter opener into a drawer, and his abacus as well.

By all accounts, Heathgate had succeeded to the title under suspicious circumstances. No less than
five
family members had been killed in the same accident that had resulted in Heathgate becoming the marquess. Interestingly, Heathgate’s rumored intended, an ambitious, round-heeled little Society flirt named Julia Ponsonby, had also lost her life in the same mishap.

That had to be some kind of tragic record, and Holbrook did not envy the man who held it, assuming that man was not the author of those deaths.