Wren emerged from her bedroom before sunrise the following morning and ventured downstairs to break her fast. She shuddered involuntarily as she passed the rooms that were normally designated as the twin salons and the music room. The doors connecting those massive rooms had been folded back to form a ballroom. The furnishings in the music room, including the pianoforte and harp, had been removed to other parts of the house and nearly every inch of the polished wood floor that made up the area of the ballroom had been covered in thick carpets to muffle sound. The massive dining table was draped in black crepe and placed in the center of the room to form a bier for George’s coffin.
“You’re up early.”
Wren turned to her left and found Drew standing in the doorway of the breakfast room, a cup and saucer in hand.
“You said you usually rode early in the morning.”
He stepped back to allow her entrance and caught a whiff of her perfume. “So I did.” Drew refilled his cup from a silver pot on the buffet, then set it down and picked up another cup and saucer. “Coffee?”
“No, thank you.” Wren approached the buffet. “I don’t care for the taste. I prefer tea.” She glanced at him from beneath the cover of her lashes. “Unless I’m feeling wildly decadent—then I prefer hot chocolate with whipped cream in bed.”
Drew lifted a smaller silver pot from a warmer and filled the cup with steaming hot chocolate. He added a dollop of whipped cream, stirred it with a cinnamon stick, and handed it to her. He picked up his cup of coffee and raised it in salute. “Here’s to feeling decadent.”
“I’m impressed,” Wren murmured, “but you forgot the most important element of feeling decadent.”
“And that is… ?” He drank from his cup and returned it to the saucer sitting on the table beside his plate.
“Indulging in hot chocolate with whipped cream without leaving the comfort of one’s bed.” She savored the aroma, then took a sip of her chocolate.
“I didn’t forget,” he told her, the look in his eyes betraying a sudden smoldering surge of pure desire. “But I thought it best if we saved that particular form of indulgence for another morning.”
The expression he gave her sent a wave of heat through her body. Wren blushed and tried to cover her reaction by turning her attention to her drink. She gulped the liquid, her hands shaking so badly that she bumped the rim of the cup against her teeth, spilling chocolate down her chin and creating a whipped cream mustache on her upper lip. She lowered her cup, rattling it against the saucer as she placed it in the center depression.
“All done?” he asked.
Wren nodded.
“Then allow me.” He took her cup and saucer from her and set it aside before he stepped closer, ducked his head, and licked the drops of chocolate from her chin and the froth of creamy whipped cream from her top lip.
Wren felt the heat from his body, but it was nothing compared to the heat of his mouth. Her whole body quivered as he removed the last bit of cream from her lips before nipping at the bottom one, encouraging her to open her mouth. And when she complied, he deepened his kiss.
She marveled at the unique flavor of his kiss. It tasted of coffee—a taste she’d never learned to appreciate— and Drew Ramsey, a taste she appreciated more man any other. She felt the rasp of his tongue against her teeth as it slipped between her lips into her mouth. She understood the urgency of his mouth and echoed it, moving her lips under his, allowing him greater access.
Wren moved her own tongue, experiencing the jolt of unadulterated pleasure as it found, and mated with, Drew’s. She tightened her grip on his wide shoulders, drawing tiny circles against the fabric of his riding coat, and then trailed her fingers up the column of his neck, burying them in his thick salt-and-pepper hair.
Drew caressed her back. The cloth of her borrowed riding habit frustrated him. He wanted to feel the softness of her flesh beneath the layers of clothing. He wanted to move his hands over her, count her ribs, and test the weight of her wonderful, pear-shaped breasts, but all he could really feel was clothing. Too much clothing, masking the curves pressed against him. He moved his hand down her back, over one firm buttock, to the back of her thigh and back up again, resting the palm of his hand against the curve of her bottom while his mouth ate at hers. Over and over again.
Drew stopped kissing her mouth only long enough to press warm, wet kisses against her jawline, her neck, and beneath one ear.
Hot, breathless, and light-headed, Wren turned her face toward his and sought his mouth once more.
Drew took that as a sign of encouragement. He became bolder, his kisses more fervent.
“What are you doing?” she murmured against his lips.
“I want to touch you,” Drew groaned. “I want to undress you and spend the morning kissing you all over. Your lips, your eyes, your breasts.” Belatedly realizing that he was kissing Kathryn in the breakfast room in full view of anyone who happened to be up and about, Drew untangled her arms from around his neck and stepped back to look at her. His dark brown eyes lingered on each part of her he listed. “But I believe we have a date to go riding.”
His grin was so wickedly inviting Wren thought that she might agree to let him take her riding to the ends of the earth as long as he continued to kiss her.
He shuddered, fighting to regain control of raging desire while he sought a safer subject. “Did I tell you that you look as fetching this morning as you taste?”
Wren did her best to hide her disappointment that he had stopped kissing her. “Thank you for the compliment, my lord, but I think you rush to judgment.” She glanced at him from beneath her lashes, encouraging him to resume his kisses with a bit of flirtation. “For there are parts of me you’ve yet to taste.”
He was rock hard in an instant. “That color suits you.”
“Thank you again for the compliment and for providing the riding dress.” She wore an old-fashioned riding dress in burgundy with gray velvet lapels, a high waist, a double plaiting of Valenciennes lace around the neck, and a row of tiny dyed-bone buttons in the front.
Drew had retrieved the garment from a cedar-lined trunk in his mother’s bedroom before he retired for the night. He’d had the garment aired and pressed and laid out for Wren to find when she awoke. The dress had included a pair of gray riding breeches to be worn under it and matching gloves and a pair of purple Spanish riding boots. Kathryn wasn’t wearing the gloves or the purple boots, having chosen her black half-boots instead, and Drew sincerely hoped she had forsaken the breeches as well.
“It’s years out of fashion,” Drew admitted, “but it was the only one of my mother’s habits that I could find that wasn’t black.” It was also one of the few that buttoned in the front instead of the back.
“Who cares how out of fashion it is?” she asked. “It’s burgundy. Oh, Drew, it’s so nice to wear something with color. I’ll destroy what’s left of my reputation and scandalize the county if anyone sees me, but it’s worth it.”
Privately, Drew thought that the color of her dress would cause less of a scandal than some of the things they’d already done. It would certainly cause less of a scandal than what he planned to do once he had her on his horse and in his arms. If he got her on his horse and in his arms. His current state of arousal made the idea of mounting a horse and sitting a saddle painful. “The reason I generally ride at the crack of dawn is because there are fewer people about. Riley will see you, of course, and perhaps one of the other grooms, but Riley’s an old friend and the soul of discretion and I’m sure the rest of the staff will prove just as close-mouthed.”
She smiled. “I’ve no regrets about agreeing to ride with you. I only regret the fact that the purple boots didn’t fit.” Wren held out her hands. “I thought my hands were small, but I feel like an Amazon compared to your mother. The gloves and boots were too small and the breeches were too big.”
“I don’t remember her being quite as slender of build as you are,” Drew said. “I can’t say I regret
the breeches, but I’m truly sorry about the boots because I’m afraid your boots will be ruined.”
“I’m sorry, too.” She had confined her hair into a slick chignon, but several unruly curls had escaped and fallen onto her forehead. Wren shoved her hair off her face and laughed. “You can’t imagine how much I looked forward to wearing those purple boots. I became enamored of them the moment I saw them.”
“Do that again,” Drew ordered suddenly.
“Do what?” She put her hand up to her forehead to check for more stray curls.
“Laugh,” he said. “I always loved the husky sound of your laughter and you don’t seem to do it as often as I recall.”
Wren was thoughtful. “No, I don’t guess I do, but the world is a different place now and I’m not the girl you knew. I’ve been in mourning for years and nearly everyone I cared about is gone. There wasn’t much for me to laugh about.” And no one to share it with.
“I’ve missed hearing it,” he admitted.
Wren favored him with a beautiful smile. “Then I promise to try to do it more often.”
“I promise to see that you do.” Drew leaned forward and brushed her lips with his, and then straightened and handed her a plate. “Eat up. You can’t ride or clean stalls on an empty stomach.”
Although Drew had hoped for rain so he’d have a reason to wear his sealskin cape and enjoy the cover it gave him to unbutton those burgundy buttons and take as many liberties with Kathryn’s person as possible, his hopes were dashed. The sky was clear and, despite the early hour, most of Drew’s tenants were going about their daily business.
The riding paths on Rotten Row would have been deserted at this time of morning but the tenant cottages on Swanslea Park were beehives of activity.
They rode across the same part of the estate they’d ridden the day before. Because he was denied the opportunity to take liberties with Kathryn’s person, Drew paid more attention to their surroundings and took care to maintain a safer distance from the more heavily populated regions of the estate. He held her close, but kept his hands in plain view and away from her breasts.
Drew had chosen a different horse for this morning’s ride. Wren leaned forward and carefully patted the horse’s neck. “She’s every bit as nice as Felicity.”
Drew laughed. “She’s a he.”
“Oh.”
“Anyone who’s working as hard as you are to produce a definitive illustrated edition of Flora and Fauna Native to Britain should know that.”
“Unlike a bird or a butterfly,” Wren said, “there’s no obvious difference in coloration between the male and female of the species.”
“That’s because there’s an even more obvious difference.” He laughed harder.
“Ladies are taught to avert their gazes from that part of a stallion’s anatomy,” she replied primly.
“Abelard thanks you for the compliment.” The horse flicked his ears at the sound of his name. “But he’s not a stallion.”
Kathryn wrinkled her nose. “Poor Abelard. Not a stallion and not native to Britain.” She didn’t say it, but the implication in her voice was that she’d have known of his gender and his altered state if he’d been a native of Britain.
Drew laughed even harder than before. “You didn’t know he wasn’t a she. So how do you know he isn’t native to Britain?”
“He’s not a pony. The only members of Equus callabus, in the family Equidae, native to Britain are ponies.” Her voice took on a professorial tone as she attempted to recover from her blunder on his horse’s gender by dazzling Drew with her knowledge of biological classification.
“Actually none of the large mammalian herbivores with an odd number of toes on each hoof who constitute the horse family are thought to be native to Britain.” Drew grinned at her obvious surprise. “I became a senior wrangler and matriculated from Cambridge, Kathryn. I even managed to acquire a working knowledge of biology, Greek, Latin, and practical anatomy while I was there.” He guided the horse onto the lane that circled the lower part of the estate.
“Touché,” Kathryn complimented him. “But of course you have the advantage of being the eldest son of a wealthy peer who saw to your advanced education by sending you to school and to university.”
“And you are the daughter of a forward-thinking, highly educated naturalist.”
“Who had me educated in the traditional ladies’ arts, which do not include biology, Greek, or Latin.” She frowned, suddenly uncomfortable criticizing her father’s belief that females required a far different education than men. “In all fairness to Papa, he never censored my reading material or barred me from the company of learned scholars and colleagues, but he refused to provide me with formal instruction in biology, Greek, and Latin until he needed my assistance with his definitive work.”
“Not to mention the fact that he apparently omitted practical anatomy lessons altogether,” Drew teased.
“I believe my naturalist father felt that since I’d been married and borne a child, I’d naturally received adequate instruction in practical anatomy.”
His breath tickled her ear and Drew leaned forward and nuzzled her neck with his chin. “That just proves my theory that your highly educated naturalist father wasn’t the most observant of men. Especially where his daughter was concerned.”
“You think my father was unobservant?” She couldn’t believe her ears. “He was one of the most revered naturalists in England.”
“He called you Wren.” Drew said those words as if no other explanation were necessary. “After a rather dull, common little bird, and you’ve never been dull or common. He couldn’t have been too observant or he’d have seen how beautiful and uncommon you are.”
“You’ve never called me Wren.” She marveled at the fact that Drew had discerned the truth about the way her father viewed her and the way she yearned to be from the moment they met. Wren was rather dull and ordinary, but Kathryn was refined and elegant.
“I’ve never thought his appellation suited you. You’ve always been a Kathryn, never a Wren.”
“Stop the horse,” she ordered.
“Why?”
“I want to kiss you.”
“Here? Now?” Drew’s mouth went dry. They were close enough to the village and to Swanslea Park to be seen and recognized. And while Kathryn claimed that she no longer cared what happened to what remained of her reputation, Drew realized that he did.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re in view of half the village.” They meandered through the copse of trees by the stream near the mill where he’d delivered Kathryn’s luncheon the day before, and Drew discovered the roaring in his ears wasn’t entirely due to Kathryn’s announcement. The mill was in operation. The waterwheel was turning. The miller and his apprentice were working. Several people from the village waited for flour and a man driving a horse and buggy turned onto the lane.
Wren looked over her shoulder. “No one is paying any attention to us.”
“They will if I stop to kiss you.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do,” he said softly. He surprised himself with his words, but after taking a moment to think about them he knew they were true. “Strangely enough I do. And I see no reason to court folly by giving anyone cause to gossip about either one of us or to cast aspersions on your good name.”
Wren sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful for your change of heart,” she said. “But all I can think about is how much I want to kiss you and how much I want you to kiss me—and to taste me.”
“Hell and damnation, Kathryn! If I don’t allow you to kiss me, I’m a fool and if I do allow it, I’m a bounder and an opportunist.”
Drew pulled Abelard to a halt and turned Wren in his arms to face him. Her face was so close to his he could feel her breath. He inhaled sharply.
“So,” she whispered, “to kiss or not to kiss. That is the question.”
At any other time Drew would have smiled at her interpretation of Hamle
t’s dilemma and would have promptly settled the question, but her sudden capitulation scared him. “One of us has to keep his head.” Drew released the breath he was holding. “And I may be the biggest fool of all time, but I’m not going to be the man who ruins your good name.”
“My good name has already been sullied,” she reminded him.
“Not by me,” he said. “And not here among the people who count.”
“Less than a week ago, you gave me a fortnight to get used to the idea of becoming your mistress.”
Wren leaned closer. “And I have.”
“I haven’t,” he pronounced.
“What?” Wren was truly surprised.
“Kathryn, I was wrong to try to coerce you. My only excuse is that I was hurt and angry,” he admitted. “I made that proposition in the heat of anger. Now, I’m not sure that it’s what I want.”
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do.” He reached up and brushed a lock of hair from her face and leaned forward and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead. “It doesn’t mean I don’t crave your kisses.” He managed a painful smile. “I do. Very much. It just means that I’m an idiot, not a cad. Now,” Drew said as he turned her back around in the saddle, “let’s get you home. You’ve a riding lesson to attend to this morning and a son who is eagerly looking forward to teaching you how to shovel horse dung.”
Chapter Twenty
Once a Mistress Page 23