The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (21 page)

If he finished this letter, she might be gone in a week or two.

He reacted badly whenever he contemplated that. Fury gripped him, but something else drenched him too. Something akin to fear.

When she left he would not only lose the rarity of normal pleasure with a woman. He would also be alone again.

He would be left with only the dark center and its cousin escapes, where all perceptions of human nature had to be severed in order to avoid the insidious curse of knowing more than was decent or fair.

He would never again experience the less invasive
but ultimately deeper knowing that was growing with Leona, or explore the nuances of her character that fascinated him—

Mumbles broke through his concentration. They came from his dressing room. Someone was in there with Phippen, engaging in an argument.

He strode back to the bedchamber and opened the dressing room door. Phippen's eyes widened in dismay at his sudden appearance. He pointed an accusatory finger at a footman.

“I
told
him that you do not like being disturbed during your quiet hours. I said that nothing short of torture would induce me to bring the card in.” He grew three inches and scowled at the footman. “Now see what you have done?”

“My quiet hours? Phippen, that is the sort of thing one might say about an infirm person. Someone who has gone mad, for example.”

“My lord! I would never—”

“Give me the card.”

Tight-lipped and red-faced, like a man holding his breath, the footman gave it over.

Christian read it. Leona had called. What a pleasant surprise.

Perhaps she had come to thank him for the carriage full of flowers he had sent to her house yesterday. Maybe she would even scold him for not visiting himself.

His imagination allowed that scold to occur, then moved on to his response, which did not involve any words.

“Bring her to the drawing room. Then tell my aunt
and cousin that I require their attendance in the library. Once they are in there, lock the doors so they cannot get out.”

The footman smiled weakly, testing to see if the last command was a joke. His face fell when no one else laughed.

“And see that someone brings Miss Montgomery refreshment.”

The footman left to obey. Christian turned to Phippen. “In ten minutes I am going down to the drawing room. I expect to appear fit for the queen when I do.”

Phippen gazed down his length, from his unshaven face to his bare feet. With an expression of eternal suffering, Phippen opened the drawer that held the razor.

She appeared beautiful in the light of the north window. Her dark expressive eyes gazed at something in the garden but also something inside her soul.

The newer fashions, with their lower waists, complimented her voluptuous form. His mind saw her body stripped of the dark rose silk and her hair free of the cream hat and her eyes smoky with desire.

He noted the tray and cup that said refreshment had been brought. He assumed that his aunt and cousin had been locked away, but he secured the drawing room doors anyway.

She did not hear the sound of that, or notice his presence. What occupied her thoughts so thoroughly?

He just watched her for a while from the other side of the chamber. He could see all of her in that wash of
cool light. His body stirred at once, but so did an indescribable contentment. She had always incited that peace. The world was only normal, livable, in the oasis that formed around her person.

His body reacted as if he had been starved for years. Even the desire felt different with her. Wondrous. Mysterious. Clean. He did not fight it, but instead savored the tightening and the rising, pleasurable drive.

She subtly tightened too. Her back flexed and straightened. She looked over her shoulder, then turned to face him.

She knew. Her light flush said as much. A glimmer of dismay flickered in her eyes, but the lights of passion burned brighter. Desire was in the light and in the air, and in her.

The great conundrum suddenly did not matter very much.

Good heavens.

It had been a mistake to come here.

She should have swallowed her impatience to ask this favor and gone home and written a letter. She should have just waited until he called on her again. Now he thought—

He was at his worst right now. His dangerous, compelling, delicious worst. It was diabolical, really, how he could excite the most wicked titillations just by looking at her. He might actually be fondling her breasts and kissing her neck or stroking that—

“I came to ask a favor of you.” It came out a weak
stammer, as if her breath would not support an entire sentence.

“That is not the only reason why you are here.”

“It certainly is.”

“No, it is not. And the favor can wait.” He strode across the room and pulled her into his arms.

Heat. Insanity. There was nothing gentle in the way he kissed her and nothing ladylike in the way she gripped him. Suddenly she was against his body, imprisoned by his arms, accepting his passion and returning her own.

“This is not why I came here,” she muttered between fevered, biting kisses.

“Of course it was.”

Was it? It did not matter.

Incredible sensations distracted her. A ravenous sensuality obliterated caution and shame.

She savored the taste of him. She relished his caress. Her body grew impatient for that pressing, claiming touch to venture further. She silently urged more boldness and he responded as if she spoke the words aloud. She wished he would tear off her clothes so she was naked in the abandon she felt, naked to his scorching kisses and dangerous gaze.

Her arousal became unbearable. Furious. Anticipation made her crazed. Impulsively she reached down and closed her fingers around his erection. His breath caught, then he responded with a savage kiss while she stroked him.

Her feet left the ground. The room whirled. Softness beneath her face now. A ledge beneath her stomach. The storm cleared slightly. She opened her eyes. The
ledge was the upholstered arm of a sofa. He had bent her over it and her face and arms hugged the cushion.

She felt him behind her, then his hands on her bottom, caressing the silk to her form. Her skirt and petticoat rose slowly. It took forever. She pressed her fist to her mouth to silence moans that wanted to escape.

She could not bear the anticipation. The awareness of what he would do and how badly she wanted it excited her more. Even the vulnerability of her position tortured her with the most wicked licks of pleasure.

Skin on skin now, as his hands smoothed over her bare bottom and down her thighs. The driving pulse so near his hands made her squirm. He responded with one sure, devastating touch.

“I think this is why you came here today.” Another touch defeated her and she cried out. “Was it, Leona?”

Too far gone to think or argue, too desperate to care, she nodded.

He caressed more purposefully, until she thought she would weep. She gasped when she felt the pressure that she waited for. Then he was in her, filling her so completely that she trembled around him.

He withdrew slowly, then entered again. “You will cry for me again, darling. You will admit that you want me as much as I want you.”

She cried for him. He made sure that she could not stop herself. He took her slowly, deliberately, so her need would just grow. Finally she lost all control. Her sounds would have rung off the walls if she did not smother them in the cushion.

Her submissive position gave his drive a primitive edge. Her bottom, round and raised and erotic, framed by the froth of her petticoat, rocked a little higher whenever he withdrew.

He watched himself enter her and his senses reeled from the way she surrounded and held him. It was too perfect, almost unendurable.

She climaxed first. Her wetness flowed and she tightened around him and she clawed at the cushion. A throaty cry accompanied her beautiful convulsion.

He grasped her hips and thrust harder, losing himself, relinquishing the restraint he had forced on himself. Darkness absorbed him until he knew only sublime sensation and a tightening force and the shuddering of a woman still frenzied even in her fulfillment.

He felt her peak again while his own climax burst in his head and loins. Her soft deep moans spoke in his head when the cataclysm tore sanity to shreds.

He floated in limbo for an exquisite time before his head cleared. When it mostly had, he opened his eyes. His hands gripped the armrest on either side of her hips while he found himself.

He fixed her garments and his own. When he lifted her she sagged limp in his arms. He settled them both on the sofa.

He did not hurry into conversation. In truth she had not come to him for pleasure, no matter what he had forced her to say. He did not expect to like the reason that she
had
come.

“You have need of a favor, I believe,” he finally said.

“Do I?” she muttered against his coat. She nodded, as if remembering now. “I need an introduction.”

“To whom?”

“To Lord Denningham.”

“Why do you want to meet him? He is not a trader. He isn't much of anything besides a lord.”

She stretched for her reticule, which had been discarded on the floor. She pulled it open and removed a piece of paper. “This was in
The Times
after my father died. Lord Denningham paid the writer to compose it.”

The death notice was brief, but alluded to the cause of death in a way that implied opium addiction. Leona would be incensed by that.

“Denningham had nothing to do with this. You are aiming at the wrong man. I know him very well, since we were both boys. If he were in any way complicit in anything even slightly secret, I would know.”

“Mr. Nichols told me Lord Denningham paid him when I spoke with him this afternoon. So whatever you know about Lord Denningham, it is incomplete.”

Hardly. There were no hidden corners at all in Denningham's soul, let alone dark ones. “Mr. Nichols lied to you. If you confronted him about this, he would want to be free of you and your accusations. He could have chosen any name. He could have chosen mine.”

She glanced sharply at him. He realized the notion had entered her mind. She was not completely sure about him yet. That was part of the conundrum waiting to occupy him again, once his present contentment passed.

“I will not know if he lied unless I meet Lord Denningham, will I? Are you going to help me, or must I find another way?”

He imagined the other ways. All of them promised
embarrassment to Denningham and notoriety to Leona. “I will speak with him first. I am sure that he will be happy to see you. When he does you will understand immediately what I mean about how impossible this accusation is.”

She leaned close to him. Their noses almost touched. “Will you do it soon? Or will you put it off, so I continue to be within arm's reach of your scandalous designs for me?”

She was within reach now. He smoothed his hand over her breast so she would not think to move away. Her eyes darkened and desire rose in her.

He was reaching for her dress's fastenings when a commotion distracted him. Somewhere, not far away, loud thumps and thuds shook the house.

Leona stiffened. “What is that?”

A woman's voice punctuated the thuds. Furious yells sounded in the hallway. Anxiety and indignation flowed through the walls.

“That,” he said, “is Aunt Hen.”

He doubted the servants would stand against Hen if she made such a scene. Seeing Leona naked again would have to wait.

He went and unlatched the doors, then moved himself to a chair. Mumbles and shouts got louder. The drawing room doors flew open. Henrietta stood there in high dudgeon, with Caroline cowering in her wake.

“I was locked in!”

“That is terrible,” he said. “No doubt a servant accidentally threw the bolt, or a loose nail made it slide.”

“You were supposed to join us in the library,” she accused. “I was told to wait for you there.”

“Which you have not done, I see.”

“Did you expect me to wait for hours? If I had, I would have perished in that locked room if the house caught fire.”

“I was delayed because Miss Montgomery came to call. You remember Miss Montgomery, don't you, Caroline?”

Caroline greeted Leona with a curtsy. Aunt Hen cast a suspicious look and all but sniffed the air. Then abruptly she turned her full attention on Christian.

“Thank heavens you are dressed. We don't have much time. What a disaster if he had come and you were in that robe and we were locked in the library.…” She fretted while she paced into the room and inspected it. She called for a servant and told him to remove the tray with Leona's refreshments.

She eyed Leona again. Her gaze paused on one slightly skewed sleeve.

“If who had come, Aunt Hen? Are we expecting a visit from your very dear friend, M'sieur Lacroix?”

Mention of her lover made her blush. She snapped her attention away from Leona. “Someone else entirely. Caroline's admirer. I told you last night at supper. Do you never hear me?”

Not if he could help it. He vaguely remembered Hen chattering on, exuding anxiety, while he turned the conundrum over in his head.

Leona grabbed her reticule. “I must take my leave. It was a pleasure to see you, Lady Wallingford.”

Christian stepped to the door so Leona would have to pass closely while she left. There was much to say,
but with Hen's dramatic intrusion all of that would have to wait now.

“It was good of you to visit. I hope to see you again very soon, Miss Montgomery.”

“Thank you for agreeing to look into that matter for me, Lord Easterbrook.”

She made good her escape. He was not to be so fortunate. Hen turned and nailed him with a glare. “I would think that with Caroline in the house that you would.…would.….”

“Would behave as well as you do, Aunt Hen?” He trusted she did not want a row about their modes of indiscretion regarding their lovers with her daughter standing here.

She recovered admirably. “I think that you would want the best for her future. I hope that you will not do anything odd when he comes.”