He did not pretend now that it had never happened, or that he had forgotten. “You can be forgiven that disappointment, no matter what your maturity, Miss Pennifold.”
“My mother had just spent a year teaching me to have no illusions, and scolded me for forgetting the most important lesson.”
“To have felt nothing would have meant you were already jaded. There is a lot of distance between a hardened heart and a child’s view of the world.”
“Do you still see that child sometimes when you look at me?”
He turned his head and looked at her quite directly. “Not at all. I only see a beautiful and desirable woman, who lights garden paths at night with her mere presence. The moon’s glow finds you, like it finds a white flower. Even when you were back near those shrubs, you remained very distinct in the night.”
“You were watching me the whole time, as you sat here? Why?”
“You know why.”
Yes, she did. His admission changed everything and immediately gave their intimate chat new depths. That delicious tension pulled, full of sensual allure and forbidden excitement.
“Perhaps you regret I was not planning a different sort of business,” she teased, to add lightness to what had suddenly become a mood pulsing with seductive potential. And yet, she still wondered if perhaps he had been waiting, to see how much of the legacy she would accept, the way he threatened that first night.
“Perhaps I do, somewhat.”
Well, there it was. She could not say she had not been warned. Although, right now, with her confidences binding them and his warmth against her side, the implications of that did not seem very significant. He was too compelling, as Verity had described him, for her to think about them much.
He turned his head toward her again and she saw his smile fade into a different expression, one that sent a wonderful shiver down her body. She savored the thrill, and all of the other little responses to the power arching between them. To her relief it had not been ruined after all by the day’s discoveries. There might be a social chasm between them, but that power seemed to bridge it for a while.
His hand began to move, hesitated, then reached toward her anyway. His palm rested on her cheek. His touch was warm and dry. Her breath caught at how this real connection intensified the enlivening, compelling invisible one.
Always make them ask. Never let them assume. Especially with the first kiss.
She ignored Mama’s lesson. She sensed the kiss coming, and she did not make him ask because she did not want words to interfere.
His mouth took hers. Her heart leapt and all the excitements collected together to shout a chorus through her body.
Heed your body’s stimulation. Savor the pleasure. Fight nothing, and it will not be a chore but the sweetest game.
She could not have fought or ignored any of it, even if she wanted to. She did not need to concentrate to find the pleasure. It inundated her.
A kiss. Long enough. Longer than it had to be, even for one stolen in a garden. One touch. That hand on her cheek, guiding and subtly controlling. A presence, dark and deep and unknown, but filling her and surrounding her and coaxing more response than it would ever exploit.
She knew that. Knew it would go no further, even though her body turned lusciously sensitive and hoped for more. Even while he mesmerized her, she knew this kiss had not been an impulsive accident, but a calculated step. A first step only, and perhaps there would be no more.
She was not surprised by what did and did not happen, by what he took and did not take. The kiss ended as it had begun, slowly and seductively, and without words. Finally that palm rested on her face and he only gazed in her eyes.
She was glad he did not speak. He did not say the required apologies that men say to proper women, as if those excuses make a difference. She was relieved he did not pretend she was other than who she was, and also did not act as if this kiss sealed her damnation.
He took his leave and left her there, sitting in the garden where he had sat. She held on to the happy warmth as long as she could, while she looked toward those black shrubs and wondered if the moonlight really did find her in the night.
J
onathan woke in an ill humor. That single kiss had tortured him long into the night.
He had heard Celia finally come in last night, and climb the back stairs. He had not moved while he listened to each footfall, his body urging her to continue on, to this level and his door. He knew she would not, but that had not prevented his jaw from clenching until long after her steps had faded in the direction of her own chamber at the front of the house.
That had been, he decided as morning broke, the most ill-advised kiss he had ever given a woman in his life. Only she had charmed him totally, sitting there in the night garden, telling him about that place where she had lived and her plans to sell plants from this house.
He admired how she was trying to create a world for herself here, and establish an income that would permit her independence. It spoke well of her, and she had shown honest joy in her scheme. And in response he had told his better judgment to go to hell and kissed her for the simple reason that he wanted to. Needed to.
She had undone him with her fresh, vivid pleasure in that simple kiss. He did not think he had ever kissed before and been so aware that the woman knew no guilt, no hesitation, no fear, no expectations, and no regrets. He doubted
she
had stayed awake half the night debating the wisdom of it. He was very sure that if she had, she had not concluded it was a mistake. She would not think that way. She had not been raised like other women.
He found tepid water waiting outside his chamber when he opened the door. While not ideal, it was better than drawing cold water from a well himself. He wondered if it heralded that at least Celia did not mind his being here now.
As he reached for the bucket, he glanced at another door across the passage. A good-size lock stared back. He had been debating whether to pick that lock after all.
Celia had absented herself from this house enough that he had looked through the chambers down below. He had discovered no caches of papers or accounts, or anything else to indicate Alessandra had left a history of her lovers. This chamber across from his in the attic, however, probably served as storage. His mission would not be complete until he saw what it contained.
Celia had the key. He did not think she had spent much time examining the contents of the chamber either, but she had probably at least used that key to see what lay within. Perhaps one day soon she would enter the room again, perhaps with her two new servants, to clean it out. He really should get in there before that happened.
Red-haired Marian stuck her head out her own chamber door at the other end of the passage. A damp rag hung from her hand.
“That water be a bit cooled by now, Mr. Albrighton. Will you be rising this hour most days, sir? It is hard to have warm water for a tenant if one does not know his habits.”
The water had not been Celia’s doing. Of course not. It had been only one kiss, after all.
“I have been awake some hours already. I did not expect water to be brought, and did not check earlier.” He had grown accustomed to waiting until ten o’clock to go to the well himself, to allow Celia her privacy in the mornings.
“Then eight o’clock will do for you? I will be waking with the dawn myself. I am not used to all the light we have up here.” She walked down the passageway. “Bella and I will be doing the linens later today. We will come and get them and remake the bed if you want, or you can leave them outside the door if you won’t be wanting us in there. All the same to us.”
“Enter if you like, but do not touch the table, even to dust. I might lose something if it were misplaced.”
She peered around him and into the chamber, and at the table against the window piled high with booklets and papers. “One of them studious types, are you, then?”
“More curious than studious.”
She gave the chamber, and him, a critical inspection. “You’ve no manservant. I would have expected you to.”
“I travel often. A servant would slow me down.” A servant would have never accepted the conditions of some of that travel the last eight years either. Servants have standards.
“I expect you hire them as you go, then,” Marian said. “Bella and I can do for you while you are here, if you like. Washing clothes and such. Not so good as a manservant, of course. We won’t be helping you bathe and shave, but for ten pence we’ll scrub and iron those nice shirts of yours.”
“That is better than bringing them elsewhere.”
They struck a bargain on the laundry and other chores. As they finished, a commotion below broke the quiet in the house.
Marian draped her rag on the storage room’s latch, then wiped her hands on her apron. “The plants must have come. I need to see if Miss Pennifold requires help.”
P
lants. Plants everywhere. Celia gazed around her back sitting room, excited to see her plan coming to life most literally.
Pots holding globes of green on upright stems crowded the landing below the back stairs. A palm as tall as herself flanked the entry to the back sitting room. Verity, decked out in a most becoming scarlet ensemble that complemented her dark hair and snowy skin, was taking pots carried to her by Marian and judging their best placement on the shelves by the windows.
Daphne stood in the center of the chamber with a journal book propped open in her arm. She had accompanied the wagons on this first delivery, to make sure all went well. Tall, willowy, and pale like the light of a winter dawn, her gray eyes watched the plants find their homes while she made notations in her book.
Boots thudded on the floor. A workman carried in a lemon tree in a deep, wide pot, straining from its weight.
“We should deliver that at once,” Daphne said. “How will you ever remove it from here, Celia?”
“You said the Robertsons wanted it next week, not this one. I am going to have help, Daphne. I will not be carrying these plants myself.”
The man brushed off his hands. “That is the last, Mrs. Joyes. Just the flowers left now.”
“Put them in the front sitting room,” Celia said. “It is chilled enough in winter to keep them there for a day. In warmer weather we will make use of the cold storage near the kitchen below.”
The man trudged off to get the flowers.
Celia went back to moving pots onto the new shelves, all the while keeping one ear open and one eye on Daphne. Fate had conspired against her, and arranged for the wagons from The Rarest Blooms to arrive while Jonathan was in the house.
Verity caught Celia’s eye. She glanced meaningfully at Daphne, then up at the ceiling, and raised her eyebrows. Celia shook her head. No, she had not yet explained about her tenant to Daphne. It appeared she would be doing so today, though, unless Jonathan decided to remain in his chamber for the next hour or so. He did that sometimes. There were days he never left. Perhaps—
Boot steps began a descent on the stairs. So much for
perhaps
.
Verity increased the noise of her movements and chatter. Marian began a loud conversation asking about the dinner menu. Beneath the growing commotion, like a drum-beat getting louder, those boots thudded in a steady rhythm.
Within the chamber’s confusion, an island of stillness formed. Daphne was its center and its source. She looked up from her account book, to the doorway, and watched the stairwell, perplexed.
Jonathan stepped into view, dressed for riding, looking handsome as sin. Daphne just stared at him for a long count, then swung her inquisitive gaze to Celia.
“I fear that we have blocked your way with the topiaries, Mr. Albrighton,” Celia said.
“I promise not to knock any over.” Keeping his word meant a few awkward strides, but he emerged from the garden soon enough.
Celia asked him to join them. He entered, greeted Verity formally, and gazed around at their interior garden and the plants lined on his shelves.
“Daphne, this is Mr. Albrighton, a tenant. Mr. Albrighton, this is my dear friend Mrs. Joyes.”
“He is one of Hawkeswell’s friends,” Verity chimed in quickly. “Isn’t that a coincidence? My husband speaks very well of you, Mr. Albrighton.”
“Thank you, Madam. I am honored to hear that he does.”
Daphne smiled ever so graciously. Celia was not fooled. She saw her friend taking this man’s measure most thoroughly, and being a bit suspicious about what she saw, no matter which earl had befriended him.
“A tenant, Celia? How enterprising of you.”
“She inherited me with the house, unfortunately,” Jonathan said.
“And you chose to stay, I see. It is so inconvenient to make changes of abode, isn’t it? Although this is an odd location for a man such as you to have lodgings, Mr. Albrighton. Out of the way, and not especially fashionable. Would not the amenities of Albany suit you better?”
“I am not in London enough to own chambers, nor even to justify having them at a better address. This neighborhood suits my purposes, but thank you for your interest.”
“Quiet, obscure, and anonymous suits you?”
“It suits many people, Mrs. Joyes. Whether to a street west of Bedford Square, or to a small estate in Middlesex, there are many reasons why some of us prefer to retreat from society for a while.”
Daphne’s gaze sharpened. A touch of color rose on her cool white skin. He had surprised her with his own directness. Celia was sure she had never seen Daphne blush before.
“I am referring to Miss Pennifold, of course,” he added. “She and I have this in common, this desire to retreat.”
Daphne regained the fraction of composure that she had lost. “You also have this house in common now, it appears.”