Her face heated and her heart pounded in her ears.
“I’m not sure.” They had chemistry, yes, but she still wasn’t sure she liked him. When they were together, just the two of them, she forgot how he was, the flirtatious looks he gave women and his ever-present thigh warmers. The man single-handedly fed the gossip columns a banquet. Every. Night.
“Tell me your concerns. Let me address them.” His face was sincere, serious and oh so handsome. He’d run his hand through his hair at some point and looked a little tousled.
“I don’t wish to offend you.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I think I have survived so far. Just tell me what’s bothering you about…me. Because we both know we have a compatible attraction.”
A compatible attraction.
Is that what all the sizzling heat, the pulsing in her sex and the aching in her breasts meant? She called it the sweetest of tortures.
Seph purposefully smoothed her skirts as she thought, then folded her hands in her lap. He had been honest. So would she.
“Well this compatible attraction must come very easily to you considering the number of women dripping off you already. I’m not sure I want to squeeze in amongst them.”
His jaw tightened fractionally but he nodded. “I do have women admirers. And that will continue. However, should we establish a liaison, I can sincerely promise to share intimacies only with you.”
The slight weight in her chest gave her the answer she knew she would give him.
“But you would still need your thigh warmers?”
“Thigh warmers?”
She smiled, a little sadly. “You always have a woman on your knee or curled into you on the sofa.”
“I do,” he said softly. “That doesn’t mean I share a compatible attraction with them. It is simply the way of things.”
The disappointment was surprising as it soaked through her.
Seph stood. Started to collect the books she wanted to purchase as well as the periodicals, and yes she did include The Women’s Herald. “I don’t think that’s my style. Perhaps we should leave the matter there.”
He stood, blocking her path to the counter.
“So, otherwise you would be interested?” The look in his eyes was not flirtatious. Serious. Intent. In fact, his whole face conveyed that her answer was important to him. That this wasn’t a flirtatious request that he would brush off.
She looked out the window then back at him. Would she have a tryst with a rake, with him, if the other women were all put on hold?
Seph drew herself up, throat a little tight but determined to be as brave as he.
“Yes. Yes, Ilya I think I would.”
A warm burnished look came into his eyes as he gazed at her, sending corresponding heat through her. What had she done? She thought she had politely turned him down and yet that wasn’t what the look in his eyes said. No, he looked as if he thought she had agreed.
“Allow me to see you home. I have a motorcar outside. A fur coat, blankets for your knees, you’ll stay warm.”
“A motorcar?” Seph peered out the window again to see a fine car parked near the entrance of the shop. “Where’s your driver?”
He smiled a smile she imagined he’d have worn as a young boy. A wholesome and genuinely heartfelt expression of pleasure that made her smile in return.
“Don’t tell me, I will have to put myself in your hands.”
And just like that the youth disappeared and was replaced by those dark hungry eyes. “I wish you would.”
Ilya carried her books to the counter and insisted on paying for them, waggling the periodical at her.
“Very important reading,” he said.
The humor was there but something else that was hard to read. He didn’t strike her as a man who needed her to see him in print, he was in the gossip columns every morning. And he was more than capable of telling her who he was without her having to read it. And yet the point was made. Read the article.
Outside he placed her purchases in a small boot.
“What make is she?”
Ilya took out another fur coat which he helped her slip over her own coat.
“A Phoenix Daimler, Mercedes won the Nice race in this model in March! I was exceptionally lucky to buy one.”
“So, it’s fast.”
“Very! I have yet to try it on the open road myself though.” He moved closer and lifted his hands to her hat. “If you’ll trust me.” He unpinned her hat and veil before she could answer and pressed a fur hat on her head, intimately tucking in stray locks. “The wind can be cold and unkind to hair fashions,” he explained. Then helped her into the roofless sporty red and white race motorcar.
Excitement coursed through her as she sat while Ilya settled her into the vehicle and tucked a fur-lined throw over her legs. Seph slipped her hand into her muff and in moments he had the engine started.
They drove down the street and around the park, where he jumped out and bought her roasted chestnuts, then over the London Bridge and back again, around Piccadilly Circus…three times because it made her laugh, and then he drove her home, motoring around the circular drive and parking under the portico.
“I had fun.” Even to her own ears her pleasure was evident in her voice. She was relaxed and happy.
“Good.” Her Russian smiled that same youthful smile as back in the Bookshop. It was the kind of expression she imagined he’d give to his family and one day a wife and children. A smile that was his pleasure in the moment and nothing more. Here in the car it was as if he was another man. He was energized and excited, a superb driver able to tell her all about the history of the car and its maker in entertaining detail. The hunter had taken a back seat to the man as he shared another of his passions.
Ilya stepped out of the car and came around to her side. Removed the warm fur-lined blanket then helped her out of the car. Seph reached up to remove the fur hat.
“No, no,” he said. “I will do that.”
“There is no need.” Her stomach suddenly tumbling with the delicious tension he created.
He clasped her hands as they reached up again.
“Give a man his small pleasures, Seraphina.” He winked and her heart summersaulted.
He gently removed the hat and set about smoothing her hair, small touches that ended with him tracing her lips before his hand lowered.
“I am glad you showed me this side of you,” she said as he brought her gloved fingers to his lips.
“You honored me by accepting my invitation.” Dark eyes filled with intensity pressed her to accept his other invitation.
The trepidation, the doubts…the afternoon in his car all but blew them away. She would be lying to say she didn’t want to get to know him better. To get to know him intimately.
“Will you reconsider my offer? We can try and work out the tigh…” He looked for the word.
“Thigh warmers,” she supplied, lips quirking.
“The thigh warmers!” His smile did wonderful things to her, the certainty at the bookshop that this would not work between them eroded by the simple charm of him. And she really did want to have a reason to leap, to dive into life, to live wildly for a change.
“Between us we could find a way. I am here for a few more weeks, possibly a month. Not even enough time for you to grow tired of me.”
Nerves stretched as she reconsidered.
It was just a month at most.
It was reckless.
Even in a few weeks she could still get hurt.
Yet a few weeks of fun like this afternoon, pleasure like he gave her in Hell’s Hall, what kind of woman would she be afterward? She would know more of the world, know more of herself. She would have lived with the courage that the men and women she so admired in literature had the courage to live.
Seraphina nodded and the shyest of smiles slipped over her face.
Ilya beamed.
He drew his arm around her, murmuring things in a voice thick
as melting chocolate and drew her against him. Then picked her up and kissed her as the front door opened. Seph tugged away from those divine lips and he lowered her gently to her feet but didn’t let go of her. “I will make you happy you chose me,” he rumbled.
“I don’t believe I said yes.” She smiled at him as he reached helped her out of the fur coat.
“Oh, but you did,” he purred, looking at her lips making her skin heat up all over again. He retrieved her hat and veil as well as her books from the small luggage compartment at the back and handed them to her butler who stood stoic at the door.
Over the next three hours deliveries arrived until the foyer was filled to overflowing with flowers that would have emptied a good many of London’s hot houses. Along with them was a colorful bird mask delivered with a request that she wear it to the Winter Ball tomorrow night, a little drawing of a wolf mask, and a promise written in bold script: ‘Beware the wolf, little bird, he will gobble you up.’
Chapter 9
The Marquis and Marchioness of Salisbury’s Winter Ball was themed as a Versailles Masquerade. Invitations to the Russian Princes were delivered by the host’s own footman given their recent and unexpected arrival in London. Dressmakers across town had a second rush, as clients hastily sought to make improvements and embellishments to their masquerade gowns.
The residence in Park Lane swung open its opulent doors to celebrate Christmas. Anyone who resided in the city rather than a country estate did what was necessary to scrounge an invitation. And predictably, nearly everyone came as either Marie Antoinette or King Louis XIV.
Ilya strolled around the edges of the crush, past the glossy pine Christmas tree that reached the ceiling. The tree was decorated in masks and small red and white candles, filling a third of the wall as it sat alongside the orchestra, yet it was still smaller than anything ever shown at the court at St Petersburg. Violins sang out Vivaldi’s Four Seasons creating a festive verve in the crowd as the piece grew in momentum. A lovely touch Ilya had to admit was the staff, dressed in white satin, who sported hats like pieces of cake, colorful jellies, or meat pies with birds breaking through the crusts. They appeared like a floating buffet as they wove through the throng with drink-laden trays.
‘Renowned epicureans’, Marsden had called their hosts while they raced around in Ilya’s new motorcar. Ilya knew about events where the dining was exquisite. It made for a night of decadent pleasures as food and wine warmed and seduced, opening the door to other delicious pleasures the body and its senses had to offer.
The event couldn’t be more perfect for what he planned for Seraphina.
Ilya had opted to go as a courtier, all in black. He wore the wolf mask, enjoying each step as he stalked around the throng seeking her out, thinking about what the night would hold. Around him the room was a sea of white breasts sporting little beauty spots here and there over the exposed flesh as they were pressed up and plumped out in low cut renaissance gowns. Every red-blooded man in the room wanted to press his face against them.
Oddly, he wasn’t as interested in the sight as he usually was, nor the prospect of pressing his face into random breasts. A strangely liberating state.
And then there were the wide panniers which he knew for a fact a man could crawl beneath. Like himself, men wore formfitting tights and satin knee length britches, coverings that would sport many an aroused cock before the night was out.
It was a good fifteen minutes before he saw her arrive. She glided into the room, her bearing heralding her before her face was visible. Yet there was not a moment of doubt as her form greeted those around her, it was as if the whole room changed as she crossed the threshold and he felt the shift in air currents that traveled in front of her. In that moment, all the frustration of peering over and around bobbing wigs and navigating panniers evaporated.
Seraphina sported the same lowcut court dress with panniers in a sumptuous salmon pink, and for him it was as if she was the only exotic woman in the room. The towering pink wig was filled with little birds which she wore along with the mask he’d sent her, a small kingfisher with wings outstretched to cover her eyes.
A ripple ran through him. Oddly not lust, although he felt that too. The dominant sensation was something else, something new. He had an inkling of what it meant, and he should be running like the wind.
But he didn’t.
He didn’t even want to.
No, he wanted what that feeling promised. More days like yesterday in the motorcar. Laughing, a sense of belonging. Just being with her made him think the plans and ideas he had were a real possibility. The very same ideas his family said were nothing but ill-conceived, bourgeois and a waste of funds. Seraphina had been enthusiastic, asking astute questions and encouraging him to deepen his investigations.
Ilya watched as Seraphina scanned the crowd, searching for him.
That new feeling, the one he was not ready to name, moved through him again.
He stood still in the crush, people talking and laughing, milling around him. It seemed natural that he imagined his face pressed against her plump breasts. And yes, he had immediately assessed whether her panniers were large enough for him to crawl under. This woman gave him a singularity of focus and interest which he’d not experienced before. And he liked it.
Ilya knew the moment she picked him out in the crowd. Her luscious mouth beamed a smile of recognition and his heart tumbled.
Ilya wove through the crowd toward her as Seraphina waited. It was a claiming march. Any man watching would know the walk, the communication emanating from him – she is mine, interfere and face my wrath.
“Little Bird.”
He bowed over her hand. Gave her palm a soft kiss as he looked at her through his mask and she through hers at him. Delicious.
“Wolf.” She smiled, ending with her even white teeth biting her lip.
Delectable.
Devourable.
He stepped away. Then, purposefully letting anyone who watched know yet again the focus of his interest, he slowly, step by step, stalked around her. Seraphina’s fan fluttered and her eyes held his. He didn’t care what others thought. Masquerade balls were designed for the theatrical. He circumambulated her, admired how her beautiful body was clasped and pressed into shapes that appealed to the eye as he rumbled appreciative words in Russian.
Around them people stopped and watched; fans beat faster.
It was the last time he would look at her and wonder how she would feel in his hands, on his fingers, against his body, under his mouth. By the end of the night he would know what she tasted like. What if felt like to have her sex pulse on his lips and tongue. What her satin sheath felt like around his fingers, perhaps even around his cock.
Ilya presented his arm and she slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow to rest on his forearm.
Ilya leaned down and whispered. “Before the night is out, along with your sweet words of poetry, you are going to scream my name, pant it, and fill my ears with it.”
He wanted dampness to pool between her legs at his words. He wanted her skin to feel too tight across her body. Her eyes glanced at his lips and he smiled. She knew what those lips were planning to do. Lips that would press against her sex before the night was out. She was wondering, wondering what it would feel like. It made his cock pulse, but tonight would be just for her.
Next time she looked at his lips she would be looking with knowledge and the hope he’d do it again…soon. The tension between them was electric, the unspoken words of seduction pounding in the air around them and would be tantalizing even those who simply watched.
More people turned to look at them.
The papers’ gossip columns would have their fodder for the night, Prince Vladimir Petroski stalks the delectable widow. But that’s not why he did what he did, it just meant that if he courted and flirted with her more openly he could do away with some of the more overt flirtations with others and thus keep both his family and Seraphina happy. If she were comf
ortable with the attention and the gossip, it would solve many a problem.
Ilya stopped in front of her and dipped into another deep courtly bow. “If I could have this dance.”
“I’ll have to check my card.” Little minx. The twitters of laughter around them indicated their audience approved.
She lifted an empty dance card and scanned it. Peered over it at him, her head moving up and down as she seemingly sized him up, causing more enjoyment from those around them.
“Well.” Her eyes mischievous behind the mask. “I usually only dance with handsome men.” Some laughter, a few more turned to listen. “But you seem to be in luck, I have an empty spot.”
“I will forever count my blessing,” he said, hand on heart, and she laughed, holding out her hand.
Ilya guided them through the crowd to the dance floor, a sea of pastels and towering wigs.
“Well played, little bird.”
“Who said I was playing?” she murmured.
“Careful, I have sharp teeth. You wouldn’t want me to use them later.”
She laughed as his arm came around her.
The music started and he cursed his luck as there was no waltz to hold her tight. Rather a minuet.
The courtly dance had them circling each other, holding hands and releasing, entwining between other couples, coming forward and moving back. Not the satisfaction of the waltz but the tension between them grew. It pulsed through him, he was thickening and proud to sport his ardor to the crowd.
And Seraphina…oh, that woman knew more about driving a man crazy than she realized. Bold glances, suggestive alluring looks while he couldn’t do anything. Broad smiles and soft laughter when the dance took her to another partner making his blood boil.
She was marvelous.
His gaze never left her.
He radiated a propriety that others would notice. If their greeting was sizzling, the dance was scorching. The pressing tension between courting her and his family’s need for him to be the rake and libertine now wrapped up into one. Just her. His focus, his regard, and his attentions.
The dance set came to an end.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1) Page 87