The Butler Did It (24 page)

“Before we move on to other subjects, my lord, I want to say that you were quite magnificent today in the park. Very much the hero.”

Morgan kept his expression on the shady side of disinterest, but not without effort. “I only did what had to be done, Miss Clifford.”

“Yes, but you were the only one who seemed to understand what must be done.” She had to say it, give the man some credit, because credit was due him, and just hope he wouldn't gloat to the point where she'd long to box his ears.

Morgan caught the disapproving tone in her voice and liked it very much. “You're speaking of Mr. Rolin now?”

“I am, yes. It may please you no end, my lord, but there's no hope for it but to tell you that I don't much care for Mr. Rolin.”

He allowed himself a small smile, only a small smile.
Inside, he was doing that jig she'd spoken of earlier. “I did warn you to stay away from him, Miss Clifford,” he said, doing his best to sound properly guardianlike.

“No, my lord, you
ordered
me to stay away from him. And I will, henceforth, but now it is
my
decision,” she said. “But tell me, what did you say to that young idiot that had him so suddenly happy to have lost his phaeton and team?”

“Nothing too terrible, Miss Clifford. I merely told him that he was two short seconds from having both his legs broken, and his nose fed to him, unless he thanked me kindly and disappeared. Sometimes, Miss Clifford, a whisper is far more productive than a shout.”

“Oh, that's famous!” Emma exclaimed, then shifted her weight slightly. Her eyes went wide at the sharp stab of pain, she let out a most unladylike howl and leaped to her feet.

Morgan was on his own feet in an instant. “What? My God, Emma, what's wrong?”

Emma stood very still, her lips clamped between her teeth, and reached into her pocket. She located the hat pin and gave it a tug, pulling its tip free of her thigh, then sighed. “Oh, that's better.”

“What's better?” Morgan asked. “What happened? What—what's
that?
”

Emma felt her cheeks warming as she held up the hat pin, bent sideways about a half inch from its tip. She resisted the urge to rub at her thigh but not without supreme effort. “I'm fine. It only penetrated a little.”

Morgan looked at the pin and blinked. “You put a hatpin in your pocket and forgot about it?”

Emma considered this explanation for a moment, then shot him a very bright smile. “Yes, that's exactly what I must have done. Shame on me.”

She placed the pin on the table beside her and sat down once more, folded her hands in her lap and, looking at him inquiringly, said, “Your note said that we were to come up with matching answers if anyone should ask what we were discussing last night after our return from Almack's?”

But Morgan was still just standing there and staring at the bent hatpin. “That was meant for me, wasn't it? If I was to pounce on you again.”

“Nonsense,” Emma said, much too quickly.

He raked his fingers through his hair, an action that would have reduced Wycliff to racking sobs had he seen the result, and glared at her. “You're afraid of me, aren't you, Miss Clifford? Oh, you put on a brave face, and a smart mouth, but you're afraid of me.”

“I'm afraid of at least one of us, my lord,” Emma said, concentrating on her own fingers, noticing with just a small part of her mind how her knuckles had turned white.

Morgan sat down again with a bit of a thump, feeling completely deflated. “Miss Clifford…I apologize. I would apologize a thousand times, if I thought that would help.”

Emma brought up her chin, and he could see anger flashing in her eyes. God, he couldn't find his feet with this woman; she was constantly rocking him back on his heels, keeping him off his balance.

“And you should apologize, my lord,” Emma told him. “You all but ravaged me last night.” She held up her hand as he was about to speak, and added, “But that does not absolve me from what I did. Or, should I say, what I did not do. I did not scream, my lord. I did not go tattling to my family to tell them what happened. I said nothing. I said nothing, did nothing,” she repeated hollowly, and blinked back sudden tears. “What does that make
me,
my lord?”

“I…I hadn't thought about that,” Morgan said honestly. “You did rather…participate, didn't you? Even enjoy yourself?”

“Oh, my stars, look at him. The man's proud of himself!” Emma's tears dried before they could run down her cheeks. “You take unfair advantage of a…of a young lady, and you have the audacity to be
proud
of yourself?”

Morgan found he was liking this conversation. A lot. He was liking how her eyes flashed, how those twin spots of color appeared high on her cheeks, how her bosom heaved in her agitation. God, he was a bastard.

“You enjoyed it, didn't you, Miss Clifford? Come on, own up to the truth. You enjoyed it.”

“I slapped you,” Emma reminded him, wishing she'd never spoken, never met the marquis, never come to London at all.

“Yes, you did. But, as I recall, that came fairly late in the game, didn't it? Until Thornley's rude or opportune interruption—how do you see that, Miss Clifford, I wonder?—I think things were progressing quite nicely between us.”

“Ooh!” Emma sprang to her feet once more. “I loathe and detest you!” Then she winced. Now she sounded like one of those insipid heroines in a Pennypress novel.

Morgan also got to his feet, because he was a gentleman (although he might not fit that description at this precise moment), and because if Emma was going to bolt for the door he wanted to be ready to stop her.

He deliberately slipped a hurt expression onto his face. “Then you did not enjoy yourself?”

“I…no gentleman would ask such a…you
attacked
me, took me off guard, and…oh, never mind. I'm a terrible person, that's all,” she said, and sat down once more.

Feeling much like a jack-in-the-box, a favored toy in his nursery days, Morgan sat down again as well. “Let's discuss what happened last night, Miss Clifford. Calmly, rationally. I was angry with you, yes? And you were angry with me. Also yes? Yes. Our blood was running high. We mistook our tempers for something else. Why, looking back on it, I imagine what happened was inevitable, given our mutual agitation. But,” he added as she blinked at him, “I believe what happened to be an isolated reaction, one that would not strike at us so deeply had we not been angry with each other.”

“And our blood running high,” Emma said, nodding, eager to latch on to this interpretation, because it involved both of them, with equal amounts of blame. “Yes, perhaps that's it. It's certainly a more reassuring explanation than that I'm—” She shut her mouth and stared at her fingers once more.

“Fast, Miss Clifford?” Morgan asked, because he couldn't help himself.

She nodded, keeping her head down. Why was she still here, listening to him, discussing such an irrational act so rationally? Why wasn't she running away? Because she liked being here, no matter how embarrassing the situation, that's why, she told her naughty self. Naughty, naughty, naughty. There would appear to be more of her grandmama Clifford in her than she had previously suspected.

“There is a way to put this matter to rest, you know, if it was our tempers that were to blame.” Oh, he was evil, Morgan told himself silently. Not that the thought hadn't just hit him, rather like an inspiration; but although he hadn't planned for this, he was evil just the same. And enjoying himself.

She looked up at him, searching his expression, and finding nothing there but that same handsome face that had haunted her dreams last night. He looked, why, he actually looked
innocent.
“You aren't…you couldn't be suggesting that we…”

“Kiss?” Morgan stood up, took her hand and eased
her to her feet, not moving too quickly, because that might frighten her, but not lagging, either, because—well, because happy circumstance was about to get him what he wanted, wasn't it?

“Yes,” Emma said, liking the way her hand fit in his larger one. “That.”

“
That,
Miss Clifford, is precisely what I am suggesting. Think about it, if you will. One kiss, and then we'll know, won't we? For I will admit to being curious, and still rather shocked at my own behavior of last evening. My reaction had to be an isolated one, never to be repeated. Circumstances, Miss Clifford—we became victims of circumstances, the stress and strain of an exceedingly difficult day.”

“But now, now that we've settled everything, and another day has gone by, and cooler heads have seen that we can all coexist here for the Season—well, now those circumstances have ceased to be a problem? Yes, I can see that,” Emma said, then took a deep, steadying breath. “All right, my lord. I'm willing to try, if you are.”

And then she put her hands behind her, closed her eyes, lifted her head and pursed those nearly cherry-red lips.

Morgan grinned down at her for a moment, like a child finding his favorite present on Christmas morning, then realized that a moment was all he had. Putting his arms firmly behind his back, a sop to any bit of conscience he might have left, he leaned forward and lightly touched his lips to hers.

It was a kiss, just a kiss, and a mighty tame one at that. He might as well be kissing his mother good-night.

The devil it was! He wanted her, wanted her here, now, on the floor, any way he could get her, and he was going to hell for it. And he didn't care.

But he did care. So he had to control himself.

“There,” he said, standing straight once more, forcing a smile to his face. “See? Nothing. Nothing at all. Circumstances, temper. We're cured, Miss Clifford.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Then she smiled. “Oh, thank you, my lord. I can't tell you how very relieved I am.” She curtsied, picked up the bent hatpin and tossed it into the fire, then left the room before pausing in the foyer and touching her fingers to her lips.

He'd felt nothing? Her heart was still in her throat, and he'd felt nothing? She'd longed, crazily, to all but throw her arms around his neck, use them to pull herself up and wrap her legs around him and kiss him until the end of Time, and he'd felt nothing?
Nothing?

Emma looked at the footman lingering in the foyer, and the footman looked at his toes, and Emma turned, reentered the study and closed the door behind her.

“Nothing? You felt nothing?”

Morgan, who had been seriously contemplating getting himself well and truly drunk for the first time in over five years, turned from the drinks table to see Emma crossing the carpet toward him.

“And this is also nothing?” she asked, and before he knew it she had raised herself on tiptoe, clapped his face between her hands and pressed her mouth to his with more force than expertise.

Unleashing the demons of hell on an unwary populace could not have been met with more shock than Morgan felt as Emma ground her lips against his. But Morgan was made of stauncher self than a silly populace, and he recovered within an instant.

“No, pet,” he said, pulling slightly away from her. “Like this.”

He cupped his hands over hers and slid his mouth against hers once more, insinuating his tongue as he lightly stroked the backs of her hands. “And like this,” he breathed, biting her bottom lip gently, flicking his tongue across that pouty lip until her soft moan had him releasing her hands so that he could gather her close.

She allowed his kiss. She allowed his hands. She allowed the sensations that were still not familiar, but that pleased her in a way her senses had never been pleased before.

“Like this?” she asked on a sigh, then dipped her own tongue into his mouth, scraping it against his gums, dueling with his tongue before capturing it, sucking on it, because something inside her told her that what she felt was pleasurable, but this might please her even more.

It did.

He broke the kiss at last, burying his head against her
shoulder even as his hands cupped her buttocks and she felt herself pressed against his hardness, a hardness that unleashed a whole new flurry of sensations she did not understand and longed to investigate.

So she pushed him away, stepped back and tried to control her own breathing as he held his arms out, looking at her. He looked so adorable. The cad.

“I…I think we've just ruled out circumstances, my lord,” she said, then turned and ran from the room.

 

“A
H
, M
RS
. N
ORBERT
, just the person I'd hoped to see,” Sir Edgar said, allowing a footman to pull out a chair for him at the otherwise deserted breakfast table.

Olive Norbert, her mouth half-full of kippers, mumbled, “Me? What for would you want to see me?” She jammed a heaping spoonful of porridge in alongside the kippers, so that she could not say more, even if she wanted to, and just stared at Sir Edgar expectantly as she chewed, openmouthed.

The woman was a veritable eating machine, and her bulk had measurably increased since her arrival in Grosvenor Square. A few more good meals and she might have to step sideways through doorways. One more week, and she would be in danger of having the already strained seams of her gowns explode around her. No one close to her could possibly escape injury when all that flaccid flesh was released.

Still Sir Edgar smiled. He'd been smiling and lying
for decades, and he could do it again this morning, even if he had to go have a lie-down afterward. “Why, it should be obvious, Mrs. Norbert. It is a fine spring day, and I thought to myself, I thought, why not share it with dear Mrs. Norbert? You would like to take a ride in the park, wouldn't you, Mrs. Norbert? Smell some fine, fresh air?”

He didn't say that the fine, fresh air would improve her appetite, because, for Mrs. Norbert, blinking could increase her appetite.