Seven Minutes in Heaven

by Eloisa James

  “I can be challenging,” Ward said.

  The smile that blossomed on Eugenia’s face made lust rise in his body like a tidal wave. He wanted her with an absurd ferocity. The thought of bedding her was like a prickling spur that made his balls ache.

  Hell, he didn’t need a bed. The wall would do. The table.

  No.

  “In fact, you appear to be offering no challenge at all,” she said, eyes glinting mischievously.

  That was true.

  “I’m at your service,” he agreed. He leaned over and dropped a kiss on her mouth and the touch of her lip sang through his bones like fire.

  “Tell me more about your childhood,” Ward said. He twisted his wrist and the last bit of peel fell from his apple.

  “My mother died when I was very young, before I knew her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ward said, giving her the fruit. “I never knew my mother, either. My grandmother, the Duchess of Gilner, handed me over to my father when I was a mere infant.”

  She accepted the apple. “Why do I feel as if the Holy Cheese is actually the Garden of Eden, and you’re playing the role of serpent?”

  “Nonsense,” he said. Anything they did together wouldn’t be sinful.

  “The duchess gave you up because her daughter gave birth to you out of wedlock? I have known courtesans who would never do that, unless driven to it by the extremes of poverty.”

  “You are acquainted with courtesans? As in, ladies of the night?”

  “In my youth,” Eugenia said placidly. “My father is generously disposed toward those rejected by conventional society.”

  Not only rats, but strumpets as well? It was no wonder that Eugenia was determined to play the lady. “One might argue that the Duchess of Gilner saved my life. My mother was markedly unstable.” He cleared his throat. “Were the courtesans part of your father’s household, along with the rats?”

  “I would hate to think that you are implying any similarity,” Eugenia said, her voice clear and strong. “I was brought up not to disparage others, whether for their profession or their parents’ marital status.”

  Ward grinned. “A fair hit.”

  “In fact, my aunt runs Magdalene House, a home for women who wish to escape that life.”

  “That is charitable of her.”

  “Well, she—” Eugenia stopped. “Yes, she is a good woman. She taught me a great deal about what truly matters in life.” She rose from the table. “Surely your coach will be ready by now.”

  Eugenia couldn’t be implying that her aunt taught her the tricks of that particular trade. Ward couldn’t control the swirl of heat that went through him at the idea that the ladylike Eugenia might be adventuresome in the bedchamber.

  He pushed his chair back and came around the table to escort her. “What did your aunt teach you?”

  She turned and looked back at him over her shoulder. His breath caught at the pure sensual beauty of her sculpted cheekbones and peony-pink mouth. “The differences between the sexes, for one thing.”

  “What differences are those?”

  “Differences to do with bedding.”

  With one stride, Ward moved close enough to pin Eugenia against the wall, though their bodies didn’t touch. He braced a hand above her head.

  “Didn’t Mr. Snowe teach you about bedding?”

  Eugenia’s eyelashes lowered, dark against her cheek, and then she looked directly at him. Her eyes were as green as new leaves in springtime. “Of course he did.”

  Jealousy felt sour in his gut. “You’ve been faithful to his memory for how many years?”

  “I have been a widow for seven years,” she stated, chin up. Back straight.

  “He was a fortunate man,” Ward said. To kiss or not to kiss? He felt as if he might expire from pure lust. “Still, your husband couldn’t have taught you everything there is to know about intimacy. In fact, how do you know he was any good, if you’ve slept with only one man?”

  She broke into a peal of laughter. “If you don’t know the answer to that, my friend, nothing I can say will enlighten you. Perhaps I shall give your future wife a hint or two.”

  “My wife won’t need any hints,” Ward said, easing closer. He could smell her now, that sweet berry fragrance that was all her own.

  “Perhaps it’s you who needs advice,” she said merrily.

  “Your husband did not, I gather.”

  “He took me to heaven and back,” she said, her voice softening with the unmistakable ring of truth.

  Well, damn.

  Some shamefully envious part of Ward’s soul had hoped that the man had been less than accomplished.

  “It’s a tragedy you haven’t been with a man for years.”

  “That’s a woman’s lot,” she pointed out. “Either we marry, or we fend off unwelcome advances.”

  “Seven years without a moment’s pleasure,” he said musingly.

  Her eyes dropped, and pink rose in her cheeks again. Ward’s balls tightened and sent a throb through his lower body. Damn, but she was delicious.

  She’d pleasured herself.

  “Without a man’s touch,” he clarified.

  “This conversation has gone from improper to obscene,” she observed.

  He shook his head. “Haven’t you noticed, Eugenia, that almost all of our conversations start at improper?”

  “That speaks ill of both of us,” she retorted. “Would you please allow me to pass so that we can continue our journey?”

  “I’d rather discuss your experience of heaven.”

  She pushed at his shoulder. “Absolutely not!”

  Ward brushed the pretty curve of her ear with his lips. “Why not let me teach you my version of heaven? Your husband wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone for the rest of your life.”

  “No,” Eugenia agreed, giving Ward a clear-eyed look. “Andrew also wouldn’t want me to engage in any sort of unsavory relationship. I bear his name now, and that was very important to him.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about an unsavory relationship,” he clarified. “There’s nothing unsavory if a man were to give a woman pleasure, to make up for years of widowhood. No ‘relationship,’ so to speak, is required.”

  “The vicar would not approve.”

  “What about something so small that the vicar would never need know?”

  “Small?” She gave a naughty giggle.

  He leaned closer and breathed in that elusive scent of hers again. “She-devil.” If there was anything he needn’t worry about, it was the size of his rod. “What if I offered you one minute for every year since your husband’s death?”

  She burst out laughing, and brushed past him. “Only seven minutes? That is very like a man.”

  Ward watched her leave the room, an unwilling grin on his face.

  Ladies—that is to say, true ladies, with birth and titles and the rest of it—were tiresome; all the humor and life was bred out of them by the time they reached the age of twenty. Eugenia, on the other hand, was funny and wry, indisputably brave and intelligent—and wickedly sensual as well.

  He prowled behind her, riveted from head to toe.

  If she granted him only seven minutes, he wanted every one of them. If he could lure her to his bedchamber, seven minutes would turn into seven days.

  Just as Eugenia was about to leave the front door of the inn, he caught her waist and spun her to face him.

  She let out a sound between a squeak and a gasp, tipped back her head and gazed at him from under those lovely, curling lashes of hers. “Mr. Reeve,” she said. “Was there something I could help you with?”

  “Yes,” he said tightly, pulling her against him.

  Her eyes closed as their bodies came together, fitting like two spoons.

  “Give me seven minutes,” he breathed. Her mouth opened, her tongue met his, and lust shot up his spine. She tasted like fresh apples and spice and Eugenia.

  “Seven minutes,” he repeated hoarsely, when he could spe
ak again. “Please.”

  Her wide, gleaming smile made his pulse race even faster. “Seven minutes? I deserve more than that, Ward.” She leaned forward and put a finger on his lips, stopping his offer to turn seven into seventy. “No.”

  Denial was as heady as a kiss. His blood was pounding a litany that went something like, Mine, mine, mine.

  She turned her head with a flip that made her hair glow in the waning daylight like strands of fire, and walked outside with a swing in her hips that was enough to bring a man to his knees.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The private drive leading to Fawkes House was almost a mile long, and if Ward’s sumptuous traveling coach hadn’t already convinced Eugenia, his estate would have: he was as rich as Croesus.

  As rich as she, quite possibly.

  It was an interesting thought. She was used to suitors who had an eye to her fortune. But, of course, Ward was no suitor; he was a client.

  Client or no, as they entered the marbled entry hall, she half expected Ward to sweep her off her feet and carry her straight upstairs.

  But Ruby and Clothilde were just behind them; the second carriage had caught up and followed them closely the last few miles. So decorum was maintained.

  Ward introduced his butler, Gumwater, a man with extraordinary eyebrows that jerked up and down like furry caterpillars. He immediately sent a footman to escort Clothilde to Eugenia’s bedchamber, with her trunk to follow.

  “I would like to introduce you to the children,” Ward said to Eugenia. “Shall we accompany Ruby to the nursery?”

  The nursery was a large, pleasant chamber with tall windows. It had rained sometime earlier; the ivy that framed the windows held glistening drops caught in the warm glow of lamps set round the room.

  Eugenia’s attention went directly to the little girl across the room. She wore a dingy-looking black veil and stood on an overturned chamber pot, one arm flung out in fine declamatory style. Her audience was a cross-legged boy, his back to them.

  As they entered, Lizzie stopped in mid-sentence, and Otis twisted around to look before politely standing.

  “Down from the chamber pot, Lizzie,” Ward said. “I hope to God it was empty when you converted it to a stage?”

  “Of course it was!” she said, hopping down.

  “I’d like to introduce both of you to Mrs. Snowe,” Ward said. “She has kindly agreed to stay for a few days until we can arrange for a new governess.”

  Eugenia smiled at them. “How nice to meet you. Miss Darcy. Lord Darcy.”

  Otis jerked a bow and mumbled something. Lizzie didn’t curtsy, but proclaimed from behind her veil that she was positively enchanted. Clearly, there was a great deal to be done before the children could be introduced to society.

  “This is Ruby, who will be your nursery maid until a governess joins us,” Ward added.

  Ruby crossed the room, smiling with the brisk kindness that made her such an excellent housemaid for Snowe’s. “Do you ever remove that veil, Miss Lizzie?”

  “Not often,” Lizzie said.

  “As long as you wash your face and behind your ears, I suppose it’ll be all right,” Ruby said. “But if you don’t mind, I would like to give it a good wash tonight after you’re in bed.”

  Lizzie didn’t seem to mind.

  “And you, Lord Darcy, what have you got there?” Ruby asked.

  “My rat, Jarvis,” Otis reported, sitting back down on the floor. At this, Eugenia fell back a step, instinctively grabbing Ward’s arm.

  He leaned over and said in her ear, “Jarvis is a very well-mannered fellow.”

  “Jarvis, is it?” Ruby was saying. “What’s that he’s wearing?”

  “His opera cloak,” Otis explained. “We’re having a night at the theater.”

  Reminding herself that she was no coward, Eugenia forced herself to move a bit closer in order to see what an opera cloak made for a rat looked like. The tiny garment had been fashioned from a scrap of fine crimson velvet. It was fastened around the neck of a sleek little rat with golden fur and shiny black eyes.

  Jarvis was sitting on Otis’s knee, showing no inclination to leap at Eugenia and run up her skirts, so she eased closer still.

  “Does Jarvis mind wearing clothing?” she asked.

  Otis had the knobby knees and ruffled hair of all boys his age. He also had a disconcertingly direct gaze that she’d seen on another male, his brother. “Jarvis is agreeable,” he informed her. “He has four or five costumes for different occasions.”

  “But the red velvet is his favorite,” Lizzie said. “He didn’t take to breeches.”

  That seemed reasonable. “What play were you performing?” Eugenia asked, turning to Otis’s sister.

  Lizzie was extremely slender, too thin for a girl of nine. But her voice emerged from behind the veil with all the strength of a woman twice her age. “A scene from Congreve’s The Way of the World. It was one of our father’s favorites.”

  “I memorized that play when I was about your age!” Eugenia exclaimed.

  Lizzie gave a little squeal and threw back her veil, revealing a pale face with huge brown eyes. She pointed her finger directly at Eugenia. “‘Sirrah, Petulant, thou art an Epitomizer of Words!’”

  “‘Witwoud,’” Eugenia retorted, “‘you are an Annihilator of Sense.’”

  “I can’t imagine why you have both memorized that particular play,” Ward said with a touch of reproof in his voice. “If I remember it correctly, it is quite improper.”

  “My favorite is Etherege’s She Would If She Could,” Lizzie said, ignoring him. “Do you know it?”

  “Old Sir Oliver Cockwood?” Eugenia exclaimed. “Of course!”

  “‘Oliver Cockwood’?” Ward repeated, his brows knitting.

  Lizzie jumped back onto the chamber pot and threw out her arm again. “‘Jealousy in a husband—Heaven defend me from it! It begets a thousand plagues to a poor woman, the loss of her honor, her quiet, and her—’”

  She paused dramatically. Eugenia sensed that Ward was not enjoying the performance—he was glowering—but she filled in the word obediently. “Pleasure.”

  “‘And what’s as bad almost, the loss of this town,’” Lizzie finished. “She’s sent to the country, which is what has happened to Otis and me, as a matter of fact.”

  “You have a fine declamatory style,” Eugenia said to Lizzie. “Didn’t those lines come from The Country Wife, not She Would if She Could?”

  “They get mixed up in my mind,” Lizzie said, stepping down from the chamber pot again. “It’s one of the reasons that Papa said I was an awful actress. Did you know my father, Mrs. Snowe?”

  “I regret to say that I did not,” Eugenia replied.

  “He was rotten on the stage too, so he managed the curtain.”

  “I shall have to ask the two of you to help me get you ready for bed,” Ruby intervened. “Does Jarvis sleep in the house?”

  Otis clutched the rat to his chest. “Yes!”

  Ruby didn’t bat an eyelash. “Does he sleep in a box? I don’t hold with animals in the same bed as people.”

  “He sleeps with me,” Otis said, his voice rising.

  “I have a little box I use for ribbons that would be just the right size,” Eugenia said. “It’s lined in soft green velvet, and I think a refined rat like Jarvis would find it most agreeable.”

  “That would be safer for him,” Ruby said. “What if you rolled over on him one night?”

  “I never would,” Otis stated.

  “I can’t say for certain that my maid will have packed my box, but we could quickly ask her, if Mr. Reeve would show me to my chamber,” Eugenia said.

  “I suppose,” Otis said reluctantly. “Jarvis and I will come along and see if he likes it.”

  “Jarvis travels outside the nursery in a canvas sack,” Ward said.

  “That’s for every day,” Otis said, popping Jarvis into a velvet bag with tasseled ribbons.

  They left Ruby behind to supe
rvise Lizzie’s bath. “Jarvis has a refined wardrobe,” Eugenia said.

  “Mother made his cloaks before she died,” Otis said.

  Surprised, Eugenia glanced at Ward, but she couldn’t grasp his expression. It was hard to imagine Lady Lisette sewing. It suggested a motherly side that Eugenia, for one, wouldn’t have predicted.

  “You are giving the boy your ribbon box, madame?” Clothilde whispered a few minutes later, disapproving. “It was a gift from your father, no?”

  “It’s just an old cigar box,” Eugenia said, tumbling out the ribbons and handing it to Otis. He inspected the green velvet lining carefully and declared that Jarvis would probably like to sleep there.

  Once Otis and Jarvis had been entrusted to Ruby’s capable hands, Ward ushered Eugenia out of the nursery. Her mind was whirling as they walked down the corridor back to the guest wing. “Lizzie is remarkable,” she told him.

  “For her capacity to memorize, albeit inaccurately, salacious dialogue?” he answered dryly.

  Eugenia squinted at him. “Surely you aren’t cross because she has learned a play, or at least parts of several plays, by heart?”

  “I was surprised that you encouraged her.”

  “Oh pooh,” Eugenia said lightly. “I was fascinated by plays at her age.”

  Ward looked down at her and shook his head. “Forgive me if I don’t find that reassuring. She has to become a lady, Eugenia. A proper lady.”

  “I promise you that the next governess we send will help.”

  “Just imagine if Lizzie were to quote a character named Oliver Cockwood in a ballroom. Perhaps it would be better to allow my grandmother to raise the children.” A note in his voice suggested he was truly considering it.

  Eugenia shook her head. “The duchess would crush her spirit, whereas you will nurture it.”

  They reached the door of her bedchamber and Ward leaned against the wall, looking down at her. “Now that Lizzie knows you too have a passion for the theater, she’ll be pestering you every time she sees you.”

  “Would you feel reassured if I were to steer her toward more acceptable plays?”

  “I would greatly appreciate it.”

  “Shakespeare is an obvious choice,” she said. But she couldn’t stop herself. “I could teach her Much Ado about Nothing.”