Not Wicked Enough (8 page)

She held his face between her hands, sweeping her thumbs underneath his eyes. His skin was warm and alive. She’d felt like this the first time Greer touched her. Shaky, full of anticipation, nervous, aroused, and completely without doubt that they were right to do this. To hold each other, to kiss, to enjoy the physical. Mountjoy’s arms tightened around her as the chasm that was her grief opened up and threatened to swallow her whole.

“You work for me now,” he told her in a gruff voice. “No one but me.”

“Yes.”

“I shan’t ask you to forget him. Never that.” His hands moved over her, caressing, sliding along her shoulders, over the curve of her breasts, her bottom, and everywhere else he could reach and in between he pressed kisses on her, and she melted a little at each one. “Eugenia is right. You can find happiness with another man.”

In her dream, she wondered for the first time if that might actually be possible for her.

M
OUNTJOY CAME HOME TO A QUIET HOUSE EVEN
though it was early afternoon. He thought nothing of it, supposing, erroneously as it turned out, that Nigel was visiting the Kirks again, and his sister and her friend were shopping or making calls. He admitted to a certain disappointment at the empty house because Lily Wellstone was a sensual pleasure to watch. She was his secret and guilty pleasure. Addicting, actually. She was in his thoughts too often and, lately, in his dreams, too.

They had succeeded, however, in putting aside that mad incident in the garden. He stayed away from home more than he might have otherwise, and if they happened to meet, they were cordial to each other and nothing more, whatever his private thoughts might be.

He nudged aside the guilty thought that he ought to take the opportunity to call on the Kirks himself. One day, Miss Jane Kirk would make him as suitable a wife as any woman of his acquaintance. Her father had made it clear an offer from him would be welcome, and most of High Tearing
behaved as if their marriage was inevitable. He should get the thing done and propose to her. As soon as the time was right. When he had a moment to breathe amid his duties. When more of his affairs were settled. When he did marry, he wanted the thing to be done right, with all the sincerity and sobriety the marriage deserved.

In his room, he put on fresh clothes, breaking his valet’s heart yet again by ignoring his suggestions as to alternate attire. The man took every opportunity to suggest, by deed or look or allusion—Mountjoy had forbidden overt remarks on the subject of his clothes—that his wardrobe was deficient. Why should he mind his clothes when he was in his own home and no one was here? He wasn’t one of those noblemen born into money and position, and he saw no reason to behave as if he had been.

Dressed in his most comfortable clothes, he left Elliot to his incipient despair and went downstairs in search of a bite to eat. He passed one of the salons on his way and heard voices and laughter, the deeper tones of a man and then a woman’s laugh. Two women, he thought.

The salon door was ajar, though not enough for him to see what was going on. His ability to keep the names and functions of the various rooms in the house straight wasn’t improving, in part because he didn’t care and in part because he’d grown to manhood in his aunt and uncle’s home, a house with two floors and seven rooms, including the kitchen and servants’ rooms.

Why did anyone need four salons? Or was it five? He could not recall if this salon had a particular use or name. The music room? He pushed open the door and looked in. He didn’t think he’d been in it more than a dozen times since he came to Bitterward with his sister and brother in tow.

He did not see musical instruments.

What he did see was Nigel standing by a table, his back to the door, one hand on the top rail of a chair occupied by Miss Lily Wellstone. A paisley shawl draped down her back. Nigel was bent over her shoulder, intently watching something.
Eugenia and Miss Jane Kirk were here, too, as intent as Nigel on the table. Jane sat enough to one side that if she were to look up, she’d see the door. And him. Her gloved hands were pressed together and her cheek rested on her uppermost hand. He was struck by what a pretty woman Jane was. He could not do better for his duchess. Like Nigel, Eugenia and Miss Kirk were absorbed in whatever Miss Wellstone was doing.

As best he could tell, Miss Wellstone appeared to be writing or perhaps drawing. Sketching the room as she liked to do? Her intention, she’d said, was to draw the entire house before she departed. Rather than continue in and interrupt them, he leaned against the door and drank in the sight of Lily. He remembered how she’d melted in his arms, the taste of her, the touch of her lips, the roar of passion through him.

She laughed in that heartfelt way of hers, and Eugenia leaned closer to look. His sister giggled. So did Jane, for that matter. Miss Wellstone reached forward with one hand, did something, then drew back. An action consistent with dipping a quill into ink. So. She was writing or drawing something.

“Have a care,” Nigel said.

Miss Wellstone spared his brother a quick glance. “I am being very careful. Honestly, Lord Nigel. Has disaster struck yet?”

“No. But you’re tipping it.”

She did something with whatever they were looking at. “That’s because you distracted me.” She wrote or drew something. “Don’t distract me, my dear young man, and all will be well.”

Eugenia propped her chin on a fist this time and said, “What are you going to write next?”

Jane craned her neck to look. Her dark hair contrasted with the blond of the others. She would do well as his duchess. Very well indeed. He wondered if they had decided to write a play. There were enough young people in the environs of High Tearing to put on a creditable production. Lord,
he hoped they did not intend to perform their creation at Bitterward. The house would be overrun, and he’d be forced to lock himself in his office to escape the agony.

“Something dramatic,” Miss Wellstone said. “Something to pull at our hearts. Unless anyone wants to compose an extempore poem, a line from Shakespeare I think.
Out damn spot!
” She made a flourish in the air then returned to her paper and wrote something down. “Out, out, you dreadful lout.”

Nigel guffawed. “Oh, poetess!”

On the other hand, Mountjoy was convinced Miss Wellstone would prove an adept actress. It would be amusing to watch her in a dramatic role. If they were writing a play, he would not object to having the performance here despite the disruption to his schedule. So long as they did not disturb him with their rehearsals.

“‘Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?’” Miss Wellstone did a creditable Lady Macbeth, full of fearful lunacy.

Nigel said, “Write something else.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. ‘The weather is fine today’?”

“No,” Jane said. “Write, ‘Mountjoy has not smiled these seven years.’”

Nigel gave her a quick look. Miss Wellstone continued writing, pausing frequently to dip her pen in what Mountjoy presumed was an inkpot. “Why would I write that?”

“Because it’s true,” Jane said. “Isn’t it, Lord Nigel?”

“He has a great many duties, Miss Kirk, to occupy his thoughts. Though it’s true, he does not smile often,” Nigel said.

“Not unless he thinks he has to,” Jane said.

“I don’t think that’s so,” said Miss Wellstone. She kept writing.

Mountjoy pushed off the doorway and headed for the table. Best join them before they said something about him that would embarrass them all.

Jane looked up, and her eyes met Mountjoy’s. Her cheeks flushed pink. She stood and squeaked out a set of nonsense syllables he presumed was meant to be his name. Good God. Did he actually frighten her?

Nigel and Eugenia continued unaware, and Miss Wellstone was too absorbed in writing out her sentence to notice Jane’s reaction or the reason for it.

“I’m not going to write something that isn’t true,” Miss Wellstone was saying. She looked at Nigel instead of Eugenia or Jane. “How about ‘The Duke of Mountjoy is in dire need of a new wardrobe’?”

Eugenia saw him, and she started. She cleared her throat and got out the words that had stuck there. “Mountjoy. Whatever are
you
doing here?”

Miss Wellstone froze.

Nigel looked over his shoulder, saw him, and turned the color of old porridge. “You.”

“Good afternoon, Nigel,” he said as if he’d overheard nothing. “Eugenia. Miss Kirk.” He headed for the other side of Miss Wellstone’s chair so as to have a view of the table. There was no reason on earth for Jane Kirk to be afraid of him or believe he never smiled. None. “What has you four so occupied?” he asked. He was near enough now to see a sheet of paper on the table. Unlikely as it seemed, the words glowed a sickly yellow. He made out the lines from Macbeth. She had not, it appeared, gotten around to writing down Nigel’s little ditty about him nor her own suggestion. “What the devil?”

“Your grace,” Miss Wellstone said with a brilliant smile that left him momentarily witless. “Good afternoon.” She held a quill in her right hand and in her left a phial of water. There was a small pot on the table, capped. The tip of her quill appeared to be wet.

He was aware that Nigel, Eugenia, and Jane had gone quiet, but in that silence he forgot how to breathe. Because Lily Wellstone, when she smiled like that, was quite literally breathtaking.

“We are engaged in a scientific experiment.” She gestured with the hand that held the quill. He did not think he was mistaken that the point of the quill was emitting the same eerie yellowish light as the words on her sheet of paper.

“An experiment?”

“Indeed, your grace.” She lifted the paper. “Behold!”

He hadn’t been wrong. The words were glowing.

“If the room were dark,” she went on, “I’m sure the effect would be even more dramatic. I was about to ask Lord Nigel to draw the curtains. Do you mind if he does?”

“What is that?”

She used the quill to point to a book that had not yet been bound. The cover was still the ashy blue cardboard sheets. He could not read the label pasted on the spine. “A book I bought shortly before I left for Sheffieldshire.
The New Family Receipt Book.
It’s filled with the most fascinating information and advice. Invaluable to household management. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to provide your cook with a recipe for coffee made with acorns.”

“Acorns.” She kissed like an angel.

“Or potatoes.”

“Coffee from potatoes?” He shot a glance at Jane. She sat with her hands clasped on her lap, and she did look terrified. He smiled at her before returning his attention to Lily. “Forgive me, Miss Wellstone, but that’s vile.”

Her lips pressed together and she managed, somehow, to look down her nose at him even though she was sitting and he was standing.

“You think it’s not vile?”

“I think it’s narrow-minded of you to judge without evidence. It is an ingenious receipt.” She waved the quill again. “Think of the savings.”

He rocked back on his heels and smiled again. “The household can yet bear the expense of actual coffee. There’s no need for substitutes.”

“Perhaps you’d like to give your cook a better method of stuffing a goose.”

He gazed at her, torn between thoughts of kissing her senseless and informing her that his household ran perfectly well under his supervision and Doyle’s.

“No?” she said. “Another means of making excellent ink? There are several, and I mean to try them in any event so it’s no trouble at all.” She smiled again. “I’m happy to report the results to you and recommend the best.”

Nigel fidgeted and said, “Miss Wellstone?”

“What experiment are you performing?” Mountjoy asked. Some of his wits returned, and he realized everyone except Lily was wary.

“Ah. Yes.” She stopped waving the quill and held it up between them. “A phosphorus pencil.”

“Phosphorus?”

“Miss Wellstone!”

She turned on her chair. “How may I assist you, Lord Nigel?”