Patricia Rice (20 page)

"Women everywhere swear, just most of them try not to let us know it. I'll take you up to the nursery if you'd like, but she won't go to the ball with you. I have to twist her arm and hold a knife to her back to make her come with me."

Alphonso's frown deepened until he realized Nicholas was speaking metaphorically. "I do not understand. I thought women liked dancing."

Nicholas shrugged. "She likes dancing. She hates men."

Alphonso's eyebrows raised. "But she is so easy to . .. how you say it? To be with? To get to know? None of the other ladies are the same."

Nicholas grinned and leaned his shoulder against the door jamb. "You're right there, but that's no doubt because she was raised in a house full of men. All the more reason to hate them, I suspect. I'd recommend you go slowly with the Widow Dupré, señor. She's not at all what you think."

"But you will let me see her," Alphonso responded sternly, drawing himself up in defiance.

Nicholas backed from the doorway and swung his hand in the direction of the stairs. "Anytime you wish, my friend. Just make certain the lady wishes to see you."

Considering the temper in which she departed, Alphonso gave that some consideration. "Perhaps another time. Even in my family it is wisest not to speak to the women when they are... indisposed."

Upstairs, Eavin heard Nicholas's laugh, followed by the slamming of the door. One more suitor bites the dust, she decided gloomily as she changed Jeannette's diaper. Who said she was afraid of men? She only meant to drive them all away.

Chapter 17

Lifting Jeannette to her shoulder, Eavin felt a prickle of warning at the back of her neck. Steeling herself, she swung around to find Nicholas in a characteristic pose, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. When she had arrived here little more than a year ago, she had thought him an enigmatic stranger she would never understand. Now she was beginning to understand him a little too well. He was waiting for her to speak.

When she did, it wasn't anything she had planned to say.

"Do you still wish to test your theory?"

Nicholas watched her through half-lowered eyes, making her nervously self-conscious that she was garbed in drab gray again. She had pinned her hair tightly against her head as always, but despite her severe appearance, Nicholas was staring at the full curve of a bosom.

"I do. I am ready anytime you are."

His tone was almost insolent, but Eavin was beyond blushing innocence. She needed to be able to sleep again, and she couldn't do that with his challenge hanging over her head. She would prove to him and to herself that she was incapable of finding anything pleasurable in a man's company, and that would be the end of the discussion.
 

When she didn't reply, Nicholas offered a self- deprecatory smile. "Would you prefer someone else, or will I be acceptable? Say, tonight after dinner?"

Jeannette struggled to get down, and Eavin let her loose on the floor. The infant crowed, and with wobbly steps, began a path toward her father. Eavin watched as Nicholas crouched down and held out his arms for the infant to catch.

"You are the expert," she said dryly, watching as Jeannette readily grabbed his strong hands and eagerly went into his arms. "I will leave the details to you."

He snuggled Jeannette against his chest, kissed her neck until she giggled with glee, then released her to toddle about the room. Eavin had given him this child as surely as Francine had. He looked up, and without smiling, replied, "Tonight, then."

* * *

After dinner, Eavin nervously patted her hair and straightened the folds of the rich emerald green of her gown. The servants were cleaning up the dining room, and she and Nicholas continued to behave as if this were any evening when they would retire to the salon to talk and read and sew.

But this wasn't just any night. Even Nicholas had dressed carefully. The frills on his shirt and cuffs were immaculate, without any sign that he had been down to the stable or out on the levee with one of the men. His cravat still remained tied, and his exquisitely embroidered white-on-white waistcoat was fastened. He looked every inch the gentleman tonight, and more distant from her than ever.

As the salon door shut behind them, Eavin jumped, and Nicholas touched a hand to the wisps of hair at her nape.

"I only eat naughty little girls. Stop behaving as if I'm an ogre, Eavin, or I will be forced to send you to Clyde Brown for your lessons."

Eavin winced. If she thought of any of the men around here as a potential suitor, it was Clyde Brown. She had more in common with him than with these elegant gentlemen with their stiff manners and arrogant tempers. But why should she settle for the local lawman if she could truly be made to feel like other women? If marriage was the only occupation suitable for a woman, then she ought to make the best marriage possible, for Jeannette's sake as well as her own. She could give Jeannette a wealthy uncle to protect her against the whims of fate and Nicholas.

Building up her courage, Eavin turned around to face him. Nicholas was a head taller than she, and she had to look up to meet his eyes. "You don't have to go through with this. We can dismiss it as a jest and go on as before."

"You really don't have any idea at all what a man sees when he looks at you, do you?" Looking down at her now, with the lamplight dancing over her hair and shadowing the cleft between her breasts, Nicholas had difficulty keeping his hands to himself. It seemed extraordinary that a woman with as much to offer as Eavin could not be aware of her charms. But he knew it was not that she wasn't aware of her charms, but that she thought them disadvantages, that gave her this lack of vanity.

Her gaze fell to the folds of his cravat. "I have the same assets as any other woman, I suppose."

"And a little something extra, something not so easily defined as the beauty of your hair or the purity of your skin or the loveliness of your figure. It's as if you have some perfume that draws men to you like bees to honey. We can't resist looking, touching. Not all women have it, Eavin. Some women have it only for a few men. Some women use it to their advantage. But you seem so totally unaware of your power that we succumb before we know what is happening. You're a dangerous lady. Even you should be aware of that by now."

'That is very lovely, Nicholas"—Eavin's lips formed a wry moue as she cupped her hands beneath her breasts— "but even I know this is what men see in me, nothing more. Please don't treat me as a complete innocent."

Nicholas caught his breath as she practically offered herself to him, and he gave a shaky laugh as his hand covered hers, resting where he had imagined it more than once. "If blunt is the way you prefer it, then yes, perhaps this is what we see first."
 

He grasped her hand firmly between his fingers and pulled it away from herself and to the crotch of his trousers. "But unless you are in the habit of judging all men by what you see here, you must understand that there are other factors involved."

The heat of him shocked her, and as if burned, Eavin jerked her hand away. She hadn't thought she was capable of blushing, but she could feel the warmth rise in her cheeks. "I should have known you would not hide behind gallant flattery."

"You are very perceptive." Before she had time to retreat, while the heat of awareness still flushed her face, Nicholas captured her in his arms and brought his mouth down to meet hers.

Eavin stiffened, but when he did no more than ply her lips with gentle kisses, she relaxed and tentatively allowed her hands to creep around the breadth of his back. His kiss deepened, and she could feel the flick of his tongue along the line of her lips. Something inside her stirred, something she had always denied and fought against, fearing the damnation to which it would lead. But she was determined to explore its depths this one night. For one night she would try to understand what it was that made women like her mother go to men, and then she would never have to wonder again.

Spreading his legs to brace himself, Nicholas pulled Eavin closer, crushing her to him so she could have no doubt as to the outcome of this evening. She resisted at first, but there was a fire in her kiss that needed quenching as much as his did. It had been an even longer drought for her, Nicholas surmised when she finally pressed against him, her hips already seeking his. The thought that he would be the first man to teach her the secrets of her body increased his excitement. Uncharted waters had always excited him.

Eavin was aware that she was crumpling the pleated frill of Nicholas's shirt as first she tried to push away, then grabbed it for support as her knees seemed to give out. She had never dreamed of clinging to this man's shirt as his tongue and lips claimed unspeakable intimacies, and she met and welcomed his every thrust. She felt as a drunk must do after too much brandy, and briefly she wondered if he'd given her too much wine at dinner.

Nicholas's kiss wandered to Eavin's cheek and upward, finding her ear and caressing it, giving her time to compose herself. He traced the curve of her breast and whispered, "If we continue like this, I'll take you right here on the floor. Do you think they're done in the other room? I want to see you naked in my bed."

He had taken her request for bluntness seriously. Eavin met his eyes with a measure of alarm, but she quivered with something better than fear at the heat of desire she read there. She wanted to call this all off, to tell him it was a mistake, that she wanted to live forever as his daughter's spinster aunt, but she couldn't speak if she tried.

 
At her wide-eyed alarm, Nicholas warmed her with a lingering kiss that brought her back into his embrace again. He briefly contemplated taking her here, on the rug in the room where they had spent so many nights together, but if he were to have only this one night, he wished it to be as close to perfection as he could make it. Once freed of this obsession and the memory of Francine, he could take himself into New Orleans and indulge as he liked. Tonight he would do things properly.

Deciding to risk the observation of lingering servants, Nicholas caught Eavin by the waist and led her toward the door leading onto the gallery. There was less chance of anyone seeing them in the dark outside than in the lighted hallway of the house.

Sweetened by the orange scent of magnolias, the musky air of a May night engulfed them as they hurried down the moonlit gallery toward the doorway of the master suite. It was here that Francine had died and Jeannette had been born. The house was tainted with memories, but the moonlight bathed them clean.

Nicholas threw open one of the double doors and pushed Eavin through before either one of them could change their minds. When she turned to protest, he caught her up in his arms and, kicking the door shut, proceeded to quiet her with his kisses.

Eavin succumbed willingly, greedily wrapping her arms around Nicholas's neck and drawing his head down so she could taste more fully the passion he had taught her earlier. She was barely aware of her surroundings, of the draped windows and delicate chairs mixed with the towering heaviness of old wardrobes and masculine accouterments silhouetted in the moon's light. She only knew the silky texture of his hair, the crush of a hard male body beneath satin and silk, and the intoxicating battle of their mouths as his tongue plunged between her teeth.

Her gown suddenly gaped open at the back, and the tiny bodice fell forward, but the fragile chemise beneath protected her from the actual touch of Nicholas's hands. Eavin felt the caress of warm palms as they slid up and down her spine, slipped briefly lower, then rose to span her waist. Her light corset came between them, and she breathed easier as the rest of her gown fall downward beneath his persistent pull. She was still securely covered. There was still time to retreat.

"Your hair. I want to see your hair down." Stepping back, Nicholas jerked a drapery to cover the door, then fumbled in the darkness for flints to light a candle. When the room flickered into view, he watched Eavin bury her hands in her thick tresses, searching for the pins. The sight of her in thin chemise and corset, her breasts arched as if for his touch, nearly took his breath away.

Nicholas knew then that one night would never be enough, but he didn't tell that to the woman quaking before his lust, obediently releasing her hair at his command. She was still worried and uncertain, but she was courageously keeping to the letter of their agreement. He wouldn't disillusion her just yet.

"Allow me." Nicholas drew the pins from her hands and released the rest in the abundant ebony masses. Carefully setting the pins aside, he drew the thick curls down over her shoulders, spreading them across her arms and breasts in a curtain of silk.

"Turn around," he ordered, and she did, although her eyes were wide and questioning. He unlaced the corset and dropped it on the floor before Eavin could react. He ran his hands up and down her unfettered sides, testing the smallness of her waist and the full curve of her hip. As he had suspected, she had no need of artificial contraptions to produce her womanly curves.

Impatiently, Nicholas threw off his coat. He was working on his waistcoat before Eavin had the courage to face him again. Watching his activities, she nibbled worriedly at her lower lip and covered her chemise-protected breasts with her arms.

"Don't," Nicholas warned as he flung his waistcoat to join her corset. He hurriedly pressed a kiss before she could speak. "Don't say a word," he whispered as his hands captured her waist. "Don't think. Don't do anything but what your body tells you. Let me do all the work."