Twice Tempted (14 page)

This time when he reared back, he was the only one to lose his balance.

Chapter 8

S
he couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She was tumbled like a rag doll on a pile of velvet and hard wood, her body on fire. Her skin felt as if were galvanized, her breasts were heavy and shivery, and she thought her bones might be melting. And he was…just…standing there, his back to her. Fiona couldn’t believe it. Lurching to her feet, she stumbled back from him. Her dress pulled oddly against her breasts. She looked down and blanched. How had it become so mussed? She knew, though. She could still feel his hand on her breast. His mouth on hers. His body…

Spinning around, she tugged her bodice back into place. She heard him move behind her and squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would block out the last few minutes.

And then he spoke.“I’m…”

She spun around and glared at his back. “If you say sorry,” she snapped, feeling wild, “I swear, I will gut you like a carp.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “That’s not the way I meant it.”

She recognized the look in his eyes. She’d seen it four years ago, the last time he’d kissed her. Shame, regret, shock. It made her want to strike out.

“I don’t regret the kiss,” he finally said. “I regret the locale.”

He was clenching his hands, as if grabbing on to control. For some reason, that made Fiona feel better. She didn’t know how to answer him, though. He was correct. The last thing she needed was for anyone to see her cavorting on the floor of her dining room, even though it had been the most wonderful moment of…well, the last four years.

She almost groaned. And she had a new parent due to arrive soon. Wouldn’t that have just put a period on her school?

Trembling like an ague victim, she bent to once more pick up her curtains. “You could at least turn around and face me,” she accused.

His laugh was sore. “No,” he said. “I really can’t. But I do think I should hang those curtains anyway.”

Fiona took a considered look at the heavy material bunched in her hands. “Fine,” she finally said. “If it will help me get done more quickly.”

Nodding briskly, he shoved the ladder back under the window and climbed. With Fiona feeding him the material, they were making quick work of it when they were interrupted yet again, this time by the slam of the front door.

“Wait until I tell the lads down at White’s,” came a voice from the dining room doorway.

“You will do no such thing, Chuffy,” Alex said, not even looking toward the door, “or I will tell your father exactly what you were doing last week instead of attending your mother’s soiree.”

There was a stricken silence. “You wouldn’t.”

Fiona looked over to see Chuffy standing there in curly brimmed beaver and caped coat, mouth agape, glasses halfway down his nose. Fiona desperately hoped he couldn’t see how hotly she was blushing.

“I would,” Alex promised, his focus on the curtains. “Hello, Lady Mairead. Did you see the Astronomer Royal?”

Fiona deserted her post to go help her sister out of the coat she seemed to be having trouble with.

“It’s not right,” Mairead was muttering. “It just isn’t. That’s all.”

Oh, no
, Fiona thought, seeing the agitation in her sister’s movements. “Weren’t you able to see him?” she asked.

Chuffy doffed his hat and unbuttoned his coat. “Did. Nice chap. Gave us tea.”

Mairead snorted and batted Fiona’s hand away. “He gave
you
tea,” she huffed.

“Did you get time on the great refractor?” Fiona asked, stepping back.

Mairead kept fumbling with her buttons. “Of course we did.” She looked up, jabbed a finger toward Chuffy. “
He
did. Not me.
Him
.”

“Can’t be angry about that,” Chuffy argued with a faint smile.

Mairead stopped her actions, her head snapping up and her eyes blazing. “Yes, I can. I can. I
can
.”

“But why?” Fiona asked.

And then she saw the tears in her sister’s eyes and ached for her. “Because
I
should have gotten it.
I
am the one measuring the orbits of the Cephei variables.
I
am the one calculating the parallax correction.”

“Actually, I am doing that,” Fiona said.

It was as if her sister hadn’t heard her. “I am the one who corrected his first assistant on his calculations. I am the one who knows the names of every one of the Messier objects and where to find them. Not
him
.”

Again she jabbed that accusatory finger at Chuffy, who just grinned. “I’m the one who knows the pater.”

Fiona would have been upset for the kind little man if he hadn’t been smiling at Fiona as if she were a Christmas gift.

“Think she’s upset cause it took a man to convince Pond,” he offered. “Especially that it took a man who don’t know a planet from a petunia.”

Mairead actually shrieked at him. Stomping into the salon, she came back with the pillow, held against her breast like a baby. Then she did the oddest thing. Her movements strangely gentle, she reached over and shoved his glasses up. And Chuffy beamed at her.

“Use whatever means you need,” he told her with a shrug. “I’m means.”

Fiona clenched her own hands, suddenly unsure of her sister. “Sound logic, Mae,” she offered gently.

Mairead swung on her, shrieked again, and stalked off, her coat still half-buttoned, her face all but buried in the old pillow.

Fiona managed a grin. “Not the answer she was looking for, evidently. Thank you anyway, Chuffy. I truly appreciate the effort you went to for her.”

Chuffy bowed. “Pleasure. Help you hang, Alex?”

Alex kept shaking his head, as if it would help clear the confusion. “As a matter of fact, Chuffy, yes. Get over here.”

They had just gotten the last of the curtains hung when the front door knocker sounded. Fiona hurried the men along.

“Thank you for your help,” she said. “I know you have other places to be.”

“Sale at Tatt’s,” Chuffy said to his friend as they returned to the front hall and collected coats. “Come along? Carter has a luminato for sale.”

“Lusitano,” Alex corrected, looking at Fiona. She must have betrayed her distress because he smiled. “Perfect timing, Chuff. We can leave Lady Fiona to her work.”

Passing right past them, Mrs. Quick opened the front door. Fiona heard a soft woman’s voice answer, the accent strong.

“Good time for us to leave?” Chuffy asked, watching as a sylphlike woman in black stepped inside.

She wore widow’s weeds, even to a heavy veil obscuring her features. Fiona couldn’t take her eyes off the woman. She would give anything to be as delicate and graceful as her visitor.

“Welcome, madame,” she said, stepping forward. “If you would like to follow Mrs. Quick into the parlor, she will provide tea while I will see these gentlemen out.”

“Tea,” the widow answered, her voice musical and sweet. “’ow lovely.” She turned and dipped a curtsy toward Alex and Chuffy. “A pleasure,
messieurs
.”

She wasn’t exactly petite. Willowy, though, with the kind of lush breasts men seemed to favor. Standing next to her, Fiona felt like a plow horse. As the lady passed into the parlor, Fiona looked back at the men to see them staring at the retreating figure, their mouths just a bit slack.

Alex waited until the door to the parlor closed. “French?”

Fiona almost sighed. “Belgian, I believe. Or Swiss. A war widow. She is relocating here with her daughter.”

“Good for her.”

“Thank you for your help,” Fiona said, her hands still clenched at her waist. It was a safe place for them, she thought, especially when they seemed determined to brush Alex’s hair off his forehead. “Both of you.”

“Our pleasure,” Alex assured her with a placid smile as he slipped on his greatcoat.

Alongside him, Chuffy was standing at an odd attention, his head tilted, staring at nothing.

“Chuffy?”

Chuffy’s head jerked around. “Smell anything?” he asked.

Fiona immediately inhaled, afraid she would smell smoke. All she could smell was the faint spice of cologne.

“Oranges,” she said, eyebrow raised. “How lovely. It must be Madame’s. I certainly have no oranges.”

Chuffy kept frowning. Alex was staring at him, as if expecting some revelation. Fiona didn’t know what to do. She needed to get into that parlor, but she couldn’t go until the men left.

Suddenly Chuffy came to life and grinned. “Drives you mad, don’t it? Catch a whiff of something familiar, can’t place it.”

Alex chuckled. “If it’s oranges you smell,” he said, popping his curly brim atop his head, “odds are you’re thinking of Covent Garden. They sell oranges at intermission,” he told Fiona, as if she were a rube, which she supposed she was. “We’ll have to take you both to the opera some night so you can see for yourself.”

Fiona didn’t bother to answer. After all, what good would it do to tell Alex that neither she nor Mairead had the wardrobe for the opera? As precipitously as they had left Hawesworth Manor, they were lucky they had the wardrobe for teaching.

Fortunately, the thought seemed to be passing, and she was able to get them out the door without too much more fuss. Stopping before the small pier glass in the hallway, she quickly tidied her hair and made certain her dress was restored. Then, drawing a breath, she opened the door to the parlor.

Inside was one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen, well rounded, with flawless porcelain skin, great blue eyes, and honey-blond hair. Clad in unrelieved black, with her heavy veil lifted over the back of her mourning bonnet, she rose from Fiona’s one good chair with the grace of a dancer.

“Mademoiselle Ferguson,” she greeted Fiona with a gracious smile, her accent thick. “I ’ave ’ear so many good things about you.”

Smiling, Fiona approached. “Madame Fermont, how do you do?”

The two women exchanged curtsies and reclaimed seats.

“You ’ave the gentlemen here, I think?” Madame asked. “I am not sure, me, that this would be a good…mmm, ’ow you say, scenery for my Nanette.”

“Of course, madame. But please do not worry. They were friends of my brother, whom I recently lost, come to assure themselves of the welfare of myself and my sister.”

“Ah
non
, dear child. I am of the most sadness for you.”

Fiona dipped her head. “Thank you.”

Madame wagged a finger at her. “But most ’andsome men,
oui
?”

Fiona blinked, a bit startled by the woman’s playful tone. “Em, well…” Looking toward the door, as if she could better envision them, she shrugged. “I suppose. But they were being my brother’s good friends. Nothing more.”

Madame smiled. “’andsome men are rarely ‘nothing more,’
mademoiselle
.”

Suddenly Fiona wanted to go out and come back in again, as if that could help this conversation make more sense. “You said in your letters, madame, that your daughter is now eleven years.”

For the longest moment, Fiona wasn’t at all certain madame meant to answer. But then, with a knock Mrs. Quick shoved her way into the room with a full tea tray and set it down before Fiona. With a quick scowl at the Frenchwoman, she stalked back out.

“Tea, madame?” Fiona asked.

Madame watched the door close and then began to pull off her gloves. “
Oui. Merci.
A bit of sugar if you will. My Nanette is not yet eleven. Next month.”

Fiona poured tea and spent the next hour coaxing Madame Fermont into making a down payment on her daughter’s education. Fiona would have loved to say that Alex Knight was summarily forgotten. She had a feeling, though, that even Madame Fermont knew that he wasn’t.

*  *  *

Two nights later, everything changed. Fiona would never know what woke her. She had finally fallen into bed well after midnight, the complex calculations she had been doing for Mr. Pond still spread out over the dining table alongside Mairead’s precisely aligned stack and the night candle snuffed in the hallway. Fiona always slept hard, exhausted from the day’s toil and the burden of Mairead’s obsessions. She laid herself down on her third of the bed and did her best to avoid Mairead’s outflung arms.

Closing her eyes, she tried to stay awake long enough to plan the next day in her head, arranging her schedule like a chessboard with room for surprises. She got no further than the arrangements she needed to make for their science walk in the park.

It was odd, what woke her. It wouldn’t have on a normal night. Mairead was mumbling in her sleep, rolling in place with the pillow in the crook of her arm, as if trying to soothe herself over some unsolvable puzzle, like why the students weren’t held rapt by her stars. She nudged Fiona, but not hard enough to leave a bruise. But suddenly, with that little bump, Fiona was wide awake and staring into the darkness. Had she heard something? The clock downstairs? The charlies outside calling the hours?

A scrape. The tinkle of glass. An odd whooshing sound downstairs.

She sat straight up in bed. Downstairs? Someone was in the house. Mrs. Quick wouldn’t leave her little quarters behind the kitchen for a French invasion. Besides, Mrs. Quick wasn’t that heavy.

Fiona’s heart lurched. Her mouth went dry. What should she do? Wake Mairead? She looked over to see the frown on her sister’s face, the frilly nightcap half-off, and her braid draped over her shoulder.

Go downstairs? No. There was nothing down there worth stealing, but maybe the thieves would satisfy themselves with the ground floor. But if they didn’t, she would need a weapon. Sliding silently out of the bed, she looked wildly around the room. A poker. A warming pan full of cold coal.

Oh, well, beggars couldn’t be choosers. She hefted them both in one hand and crept toward the door. Then stopped. Exactly what good would that do? Wouldn’t it be better to lock the door?

Excellent. She set the weapons on the bed and turned the key, which squealed in the darkness. She caught her breath. She swore her heart was just going to tumble out of her chest. She hadn’t heard the intruder in the last few minutes. Could he be gone? Had he moved back toward Mrs. Quick’s lair? Oh, and if he had, could Fiona leave her unprotected? The woman might not even get as far as the kitchen and the skillets before she was set upon.