Gareth: Lord of Rakes (12 page)

The whole time he’d been issuing orders, he’d stood with his arms around Felicity, wrapping her close. His scent, expensive, masculine, and complicated, pushed the acrid smoke from her nose.

Lord Andrew followed Astrid toward the stairs, while the Crabbles, looking relieved to have somebody taking charge, bid Felicity good night and bustled out the back door with Brenner in tow.

Only when they were alone did Gareth kiss Felicity on the cheek and sit her back down at the table.

“I’ll freshen this up,” he offered, taking her mug of tea. While Felicity drank in the sight of him in her kitchen, he rummaged, finding the fixings and preparing two cups of hot tea; then he sat at Felicity’s elbow and pressed the mug into her hands.

“Can you tell me what happened?” He folded his hands around hers as she cradled the hot mug. His hands were warm and cherishing, his blue eyes full of concern.

Which he would not want her to see, much less acknowledge.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Felicity murmured, looking at their hands rather than at his eyes. “I came down to fix some warm milk, and I saw a kind of a glow from the back of the house. When I opened the kitchen door to investigate, I realized the back of the building was on fire. Fortunately, the cistern was full because we’ve had so much rain. The others heard me screaming, and we managed to beat it out by wetting the laundry Mrs. Crabble had left out to dry on the clothesline.”

She took a sip of her tea and saw her hands were shaking. She could not feel them shaking, but she could observe it.

Gareth pushed her hair back from her brow, a gentle caress that made her long for his arms. “Go on.”

“It was a near thing, Gareth, and Astrid was unbelievable. She can be far more fierce than I had realized. Her hands…” Felicity looked down, and Gareth squeezed her fingers. “We put some salve on them, but those burns are going to hurt like the very devil. She’ll have scars.”

Astrid’s hands were so pretty. Felicity knew she’d cry for her sister’s scars, but she couldn’t seem to cry just yet.

Gareth shifted closer, his arm coming around Felicity’s shoulders.

“I am angry,” he said in perfectly civil tones. “I am enraged that somebody would attempt to hurt
this
household—a couple of doddering servants and two helpless young women. There is no explaining or defending such an act.”

He added a second arm, so Felicity was cocooned in his embrace. “You cannot stay here tonight, my dear. It’s freezing, and the house reeks of smoke. Besides, you are in need of some cosseting, and my mother’s physician will see to Astrid’s hands.”

Felicity could barely make sense of his words, so comforting was the mere sound of them. He had a beautiful voice to go with his beautiful body and beautiful sandalwood scent. Why hadn’t she appreciated that about him before?

Andrew and Astrid returned to the kitchen, and Gareth did not withdraw his arms, sit back, or otherwise accommodate the proprieties.

Astrid at least seemed to be regaining a little color, perhaps as a function of Andrew Alexander’s company.

“We’ve retrieved a small mountain of necessities, each of which Miss Astrid assures me is indispensable to a lady on a visit, Heathgate. I’m prepared to escort the ladies to Mother’s, if you like.”

Gareth did shift away then. He stood before Astrid and took her hands in his.

“Ouch,” he said, surveying the burns across the backs of her fingers and knuckles. She nodded jerkily but didn’t withdraw her hands.

Felicity knew Astrid was making a heroic effort not to cry, but she suspected Gareth was equally challenged not to roar with outrage at Astrid’s red fingers and skinned knuckles.

“Because you are injured—and barefoot”—Gareth shot a look at his brother—“I will ask you to allow my brother to carry you to the coach. Felicity and I will join you shortly. You’ll find some spirits in the boot, Andrew. I think a medicinal tot for Miss Astrid is in order.”

Andrew wrapped his fingers around Astrid’s wrist, leading her from the kitchen. She put up about as much resistance as a whipped puppy and that, more than the reeking house, the ruined sheets, or the Crabbles’ dismay, broke Felicity’s heart.

“He’ll put her at ease,” Gareth said. “Are you barefoot too?”

Felicity looked down.

“Oh dear,” she muttered as the pain in her feet made itself known to the rest of her. “I forgot to put shoes on before I went outside, and then my feet were so cold, and I thought we were going to lose the house…”

And even with the income Gareth had insisted they be allowed from Callista’s solicitors, Felicity shuddered to think of replacing the ruined clothing, much less paying for repairs to the house itself.

“I cannot leave you unsupervised for a minute,” Gareth grumbled, pouring hot water from the kettle into a basin, then grabbing a towel and soap. “Give me that foot.”

Gareth washed her feet and the several small cuts she’d suffered trying to put out the fire. He’d certainly handled her feet before, and she’d seen him barefoot—feet were on his list of pedagogic topics—but having him
care
for her feet exceeded the intimacy of any of their previous dealings—even their odd, uncomfortable interlude in his coach.

And the whole time, he kept up a soothing patter of male disgruntlement, muttering about unsupervised females, damned mischief, the blighted watch, and the realm going to the dogs.

“I don’t want to leave you down here alone, or I’d rifle your belongings for some slippers,” he said, taking off his boots and peeling off his thick wool socks. “These are clean,” he muttered as he put his socks over Felicity’s feet.

He sat back, surveyed her feet, put his boots on over his bare feet, then scowled at her.

“I don’t like this, Felicity. I don’t like this
at
all
,” was all he said before scooping her into his arms and walking with her out to the coach. There, they found Astrid cuddled up under Andrew’s arm, his handkerchief clutched in her hand.

“We’ve had a nice, ladylike little bout of the sniffles,” Andrew reported, patting Astrid’s shoulder. “We’ll be feeling much more the thing once we get some hot chocolate and raspberry scones under our belt.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Andrew,” Gareth snapped. He rapped on the roof, and soon the horses were trotting on. Felicity sat beside Gareth, realizing she was at long last warm. She’d been so cold and afraid sitting in the kitchen with Astrid, and then Gareth had arrived.

Later, later when they were alone, she’d ask him how a woman was supposed to cope when a man diligently planned his exit from her life, then showed up in her kitchen in the dark of night, poured tea down her throat, tended to her feet, and bundled her off to the safety and luxury of his very own mother’s household.

And later still, she’d ask him how she would have coped, how she would have ever managed, had he
not
come in the dead of night, growling, snapping orders, and fixing her tea.

***

Two days after the fire—by which time Gareth’s staff had already seen the damaged house repaired, painted, and aired—Gareth summoned Felicity from his mother’s house and introduced her to erotic literature by way of an edition of some rare volume of naughty woodcuts depicting people of foreign extraction in impossible poses. The images in the book provoked her curiosity, and she challenged Gareth to prove that, indeed, a man and woman could pleasure each other orally at the same time.

He’d offered to take her to a room in the Pleasure House where one could watch, unobserved, while the parties in the next room engaged in pleasuring each other.

She had declined.

His response was to treat Felicity to a particular expression, a single lifted eyebrow that conveyed a sardonic challenge—and made her want to kiss his arrogant mouth. “If you will not indulge in the pleasures enjoyed by a
voyeur
, then perhaps you’ll oblige me with a game of chess.”

Chess? “Do I get to keep my clothes on?”

He considered her, the eyebrow taking on a different significance. “Not entirely.”

“You are planning wickedness.” She hoped he was planning wickedness, and feared it as well. They were running out of time, and yet, the timing was such that if they were intimate that day, she might well conceive. Gareth had not broached the topic of her virginity since the fire, which had been a relief. He’d been full of orders for Mr. Brenner, about how footmen were to be awake on the Worthington premises round the clock, and arsonists deserved the hangman’s noose.

Felicity rather enjoyed those pronouncements, and had to wonder again how she’d manage when he wasn’t on hand to make them.

He stalked up to her, bringing the faint scent of horse with him, and memories of their first encounter.

“I am planning on getting out of my riding attire. Brenner ambushed me in the very mews this morning, we worked through luncheon, and now…” He sat and stuck out a booted foot. “I will teach you how to be a proper valet.”

In the privacy of his suite, he taught her how to be an
improper
valet. She could not tug his boot off unless she faced away from him while doing so. To untie his cravat, she was to stand close enough that he might catch her scent, but not close enough that her breasts touched his chest. Removing his sleeve buttons was an excuse to place the back of his wrist on her thighs, and while all this seduction appeared to have no impact on
him
, his gloriously naked body certainly affected Felicity.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to learn how to bathe a man today?” he asked, scratching his bare chest and cracking his jaw.

Did anything unnerve this man? Though, if nothing else, his display meant Felicity wasn’t fretting over arsonists or extra house staff.

“I’ve bathed babies. How different can it be?” Except babies were delightful little armfuls of humanity, not six feet plus of male beauty and frank sexuality.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror and dragged his fingers through his hair. “I need a trim. Perhaps I should bathe you.”

Felicity’s knees threatened to buckle. “Perhaps you should put on a dressing gown, lest you take a chill.”

A dressing gown, a loincloth,
anything
. His chest, shoulders, and belly might have been rendered by some master out of Carrara marble, so articulate were the muscles thereon, and his arms were the same. Corded, moving in layers of powerful muscle under smooth skin.

His legs were… they put Felicity in mind of paintings and myths, of charioteers and gods. No human male should be this well put together.

He prowled closer. “My dear, I am proud of you. You are staring at my cock.”

He was beautiful, true, but Felicity suspected every woman ever to see him thus told him as much. “You and your vocabulary, my lord, are tedious.”

She grabbed him by that appendage she could not name without blushing, and went up on her toes to kiss him. His surprise was palpable, but then—wicked, wretched, oddly dear man—Felicity felt him smile against her mouth.

“Naughty woman. Lovely, naughty woman. Are you sure you don’t want me to show you how that business in the little book works?”

Gareth’s smile said he wasn’t merely proud of her, he also approved of her, and for that, Felicity was almost willing to surrender her clothes.

Almost. “And what of our chess match?”

His smile faded from a grin—and a disconcertingly charming grin at that—to something horrendously tender. “I shall win, that’s what of our chess match. You will be too unnerved by your state of undress to concentrate on the game.”

Felicity’s command of the King’s English deserted her. Naked, Gareth resembled a lithe, relentless predator, one intent on making a meal of her wits. When he stalked right past her to snatch a blue velvet dressing gown from his wardrobe, she could not help but admire the view of him from the back.

“You’re allowed to look, you know,” he said as he shrugged into the dressing gown and straightened the collar and sleeves. “I enjoy you looking at me, particularly when your expression suggests you’d like to revisit that notion of getting your mouth on me.”

He stood by his vanity, fussing with the cuffs, turning them back, apparently inspecting his image, and then frowning at nothing Felicity could fathom.

And abruptly, the moment turned… sweet.

“You, my lord, are stalling.” He
was
—he was dithering, shilly-shallying, and generally not being about his stated business of undressing her, mostly or otherwise. Gracious heavens. The notion that Gareth Alexander might be reluctant to embarrass her warmed Felicity to her very toes.

She set about exposing those toes, appropriating his reading chair to unlace her half boots. “You need not be so delicate, Gareth. The naked female form is hardly novel to you, after all, and one anticipated that in the course of our dealings at some point one might be subjected to your—gracious!”

Between getting one boot off and bending to start on the second, Felicity found herself lifted from the chair and deposited on Gareth’s bed.

“Hush.” He growled this while climbing on the bed and getting to work on her remaining boot. “You chatter when you’re nervous.”

She chattered; he growled. They should share a cage at the menagerie.

Gareth tossed her boot in the general direction of the reading chair; her stockings followed.

Felicity hiked herself up on her elbows. “In case you’re interested, this is not how I’d imagined a gentleman bent on seduction would undress his lady.”

Gareth sat back on his heels. “A
gentleman
wouldn’t
be
bent on seduction.”

The exasperation in his tone was at such variance with the care in his touch that Felicity remained silent. He eased her garters off without comment—plain, dingy garters no madam would admit she owned—then tugged her to sitting so he might sit behind her and undo the hooks of her dress.

“What you said before…” He leaned in, and Felicity thought he was going to kiss her nape. Instead, he looped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder.

“I have it on good authority I was chattering, my lord.”

“You were.”

Felicity’s dress and jumps were undone, which meant she could breathe freely. Amid the soft press of his velvet robe and her disheveled clothing, she could also feel his bare chest against her naked back. The intimacy of it was stunning, and yet she had the sense Gareth remained draped around her so she might be denied the sight of his face as he spoke.

He kissed her shoulder, a lovely press of soft lips, followed by his hand skimming her hair aside. “You said the female form holds no novelty for me.”

“The naked female form.” For he must have seen dozens—hundreds, in fact. Scads and troupes and hordes of naked females. This thought ought to make her jealous, when mostly it made her sad, for him. Felicity covered Gareth’s hands where they linked at her waist, and did not chatter, though she was nervous.

“You were wrong, Felicity.”

Another kiss, while Felicity tried to review what, exactly, she’d said.

“You were wrong that the naked female form holds no novelty for me. For a long time, it hasn’t… I stopped seeing… What I’m trying to say…”

He dropped his forehead to her shoulder, and Felicity grasped what he could not admit.
Her
naked form held novelty for him.

He’d seen legions of naked women, but he’d never seen her naked, and this unnerved him.

“You are the only man I’ve seen as God made him,” Felicity said, rising from the bed. “I consider myself fortunate that if I’m only to see one man thus, it’s you, Gareth Alexander.”

She stood beside the bed, letting her dress sag down to her hips. Gareth said nothing, though even in her inexperience, she knew she had his attention. She had his complete, unblinking attention as she pushed her clothes to the floor and went to work on the bows of her chemise.

“Allow me.” Gareth’s voice was hoarse, and though he hadn’t phrased it as such, Felicity knew he’d asked her a question.

Asked her permission.

She let her hands fall to her sides. “Please. My fingers have become clumsy.”

And her heart had filled, because Gareth’s touch went from careful to reverent as he undid one small bow after another. He pushed the fabric off Felicity’s shoulders and closed his eyes, his hands settling on either side of Felicity’s neck.

Warmth coursed through her, from his touch, from the angle of his head as he learned the contour of her jaw with his fingertips. This was personal tutelage too, but Felicity was not the pupil.

Not the only pupil.

“So soft.” He tugged her closer, so she stood between his thighs. “A marvel of softness.” For long moments, Felicity reveled in the sensations he evoked with his hands. He traced her features, making her feel beautiful to herself—her eyes, her nose, her chin, her eyebrows, nothing escaped his tactile inventory.

He palmed her breasts, cherishingly, slowly, as if he’d never touched a woman’s breast before, then measured the span of her waist and the flare of her hips. His thumbs brushing over her nipples seemed to fascinate him—and nearly brought her to a swoon.

And then the daft man knelt at her feet. “Gareth, I thought we were going to play—”

He rose up, like an incoming wave climbs the cliffs that try to stand against it, and enveloped her in an embrace. “I concede. I goddamn concede.”

His concession included a hot, openmouthed kiss that didn’t stop until Felicity was naked on her back beneath him on the bed, his weight a glorious and strange comfort over her.

“Gareth, I want you now.”

He kissed that place where her neck and shoulder joined, the spot on her body where Felicity most wanted his mouth, though she’d gone a lifetime not realizing it. In retaliation, Felicity ran the soles of her feet up his hairy, muscular calves.

“Now, Gareth. I concede too.”

“Hush, love.” He got an arm under her neck to cradle her closer, and that was lovely. “You’ll tempt me past reason.”

“Hang reason.”

He raised up on his elbows, Felicity caged in his embrace, and laughed. The damned man laughed, though at least it was an unhappy laugh. “We cannot copulate now, Miss Worthington. I do not typically conduct my liaisons here, so certain accoutrements are not at hand. You will laugh to find it so, for I certainly find the humor ironic.” He dropped his head and nuzzled her ear. “I will not risk getting you with child any more than needs must.”

And he managed this, this prodigious feat of responsible thought, with his cock a hot, hard reality between their bodies.

He kissed her forehead, and Felicity realized that though they could indeed copulate now—her body regarded this as a capital notion, in fact—because Gareth was a gentleman whose quarters did not boast sheaths, vinegar, and sponges, they
would
not.

Or so he’d have her believe.

“Gareth, I want to cry.” The feeling was one not only of emotional upset, but also of real, physical torment. “I honestly do want to cry.”

“I cannot abide the thought that I’ve moved you to tears.”

When he shifted against her, the sensation was at first one of comfort. Welling up beneath the comfort, though, was that urge Felicity had voiced—a wanting that sought to murder reason, common sense, and all sane notions, until the only thought remaining was to join her body to his.

She rocked her hips against him and tucked herself more tightly beneath him. “Please, Gareth…”

He pressed harder, his cock slicking itself to Felicity’s damp sex so snugly she thought it must pain him.

“Must. Not.”

Must, must, must… Felicity directed that terrible, straining frustration to the place where their bodies were nearly joined. She poured it into a fusing of their mouths; she let him feel it where she sank her fingernails into his muscular buttocks.

A wet heat spread over her belly as Gareth held himself hard against her, and then, a mighty male sigh gusted past her ear.

They breathed in counterpoint, Gareth above her, Felicity pinned beneath him and running her nose over the soft skin of his inner arm. He eventually shifted, collapsing on the blankets beside her, to pant some more.

Just as Felicity would have dozed off, myriad questions fluttering in her brain like so many trapped moths, she felt the rim of a glass pressed to her lips.

“Drink.” She obeyed and heard him moving off, her eyes already drifting closed. Gareth had protected her, and he hadn’t exactly pleasured her, which pairing of decisions she could accept. The next thing she felt was a cool, wet cloth being pressed low on her belly, and that had her eyes flying open.

“Too cold?”

“No,” she managed. “It feels… comfortable, it’s simply…”

“Simply?”

“Odd.” She subsided against the blankets. “Most odd.” Her gaze glanced off his, and she knew they were feeling the same thing: surprise, physical upheaval, and emotional disorientation. He hadn’t shown her the greatest pleasure, but she’d been more aroused than at any point previously, and Gareth would certainly have divined that. Then too, she was fairly confident his own pleasure had been… noteworthy.

“Cuddle up, sweetheart.”

Now the idea that he’d been with legions of other women bothered her in a more predictable sense. Did he call them all sweetheart so he didn’t have to recall their names?

And yet, when he tugged her into his arms, she hiked a knee over his thighs and lay passively against him, eyes closed while his fingers roamed over her face.

“You don’t seem upset,” he commented softly.

She was beyond upset, in several directions at once, and also oddly at peace. “I am not upset, precisely, but maybe in awe of the magnitude of my own ignorance. Why should I be upset?”

Gareth kissed her temple and smoothed her hair back, then shifted them so they were on their sides with him spooned around her back.

“I am upset,” he said at last.