Lord Perfect

by Loretta Chase

  It was torture, delicious torture.

  He tortured the other side, then slowly worked his way down, and she had no words for what he did with his lips and tongue. All she knew was sensation, thrill after thrill of it, strange and wonderful. Every caress of his mouth, his hands, sent lascivious messages straight to her groin, and she was shaking by the time he brought his mouth there.

  He had let go of her hands, and so she clung to the pillow, and tried to bury her cries there.

  Then, finally, when she had reached the very last thread of sanity, when she thought she must scream, or fly to pieces, he rose up again. He drew one of her hands away from the pillow and down to his rod. It was velvety smooth and hot and immense and shuddering at her touch. She grasped it, and smiling up at him, she pulled him into her, and nearly screamed with the relief of it.

  At last at last at last.

  “Yes,” she said as he drove into her, and yes and yes again because this was what she had been made for, born for: to possess him, to be possessed by him. No oughts and mustn’ts. No self-restraint and common sense. Only this: to be joined, to be one, to yield completely to passion.

  Yes, yes, yes, want you want you want you . . .

  And at last it came, the last, wild paroxysm, sparkling ecstasy, and yes, yes, yes . . . I love you.

  Chapter 12

  WHEN BENEDICT AWOKE, HE WAS AWASH IN HER scent. She lay tucked up against him, spoon style, her derrière pressed against his groin. His rod had taken notice even before he woke, for it was swelling in anticipation. His hand cupped one perfectly rounded breast. He buried his face in her neck.

  He was bad and selfish.

  The storm cloud hung over their heads.

  He was about to be engulfed in the scandal of the decade.

  He didn’t care.

  It was inevitable. They would both pay severely for the sin.

  They might as well sin thoroughly.

  She stirred, then, coming awake, too. “Rathbourne?” she said in a sleep-clogged voice.

  “Yes, that is me, holding your breast. Pray do not wriggle about. I am very comfortable.”

  “It must be noon at least,” she said.

  “Must it be?”

  “How long do you mean to pretend that nothing is wrong and we are not facing disaster?” she said.

  “Everything is wrong,” he said. “Disaster is nigh. All the more reason to enjoy these final moments. ‘Always at my back I hear / Time’s wingèd chariot drawing near.’ Let us heed the poet Marvell, and make the most of this time.”

  “I think we did, Rathbourne,” she said. “I am not sure there is any more ‘most’ to be made of it.”

  “For an artist, you have a shockingly limited imagination,” he said.

  “I am a mother as well,” she said. “I was hardly awake before I was fretting about Olivia and Lord Lisle.”

  Ah, well, time to come back to earth.

  He made no protest when she slipped out of his arms and sat up. It was more sensible to feast his eyes upon her naked body for as long as he could. She was certainly accommodating in that way. After they had made love the first time, she’d not tried to cover herself but moved about the bedchamber with no self-consciousness whatsoever—until Thomas came to the door. Benedict smiled.

  “You think I am being a silly female,” she said.

  “I was thinking of you darting behind the bed curtains when Thomas came,” he said.

  She let out a sigh. “Sometimes I wish I were an aristocratic male,” she said. “I wish I could leave it to someone else to do the worrying.”

  He sat up, too. He plumped up the pillows and reclined upon them, his arms folded under his head. “You were not so anxious before,” he said. “I was impressed by your philosophical detachment regarding your daughter’s disappearance.”

  “That was before,” she said. “That was when I believed we’d find them within a few miles of London. I was confident we’d catch up with them before they met with an accident or fell into the clutches of an unscrupulous person. At that point, I supposed the most unscrupulous person in the picture was Olivia.”

  “Is she really as bad as all that?” he said.

  “She has spent far too much time with people who don’t know what a moral principle is,” she said. “Such people are more agreeable company than a mama who is always lecturing and scolding. Jack at least had some influence with her.” She laughed a little. “I know it is hard to imagine feckless Jack Wingate teaching a child manners and moral principles. But he was a gentleman, and he lived by a gentleman’s code, and he knew how to scold in a way that—that . . .” She pressed her fist against her breast. “Olivia took it to heart. But it’s been three years and more, and she remembers only the exciting things her papa told her, like the story of the treasure. And I don’t know how to speak to her in the way he did.”

  I do, Benedict thought, and his heart squeezed, as though she held it in her fist.

  “Then you’ve one less reason to fret,” he said. “Whatever else she might be, Olivia does not seem to be a gullible child. Unscrupulous persons will not find it easy to deceive her. As to Peregrine, we both know he takes nothing and nobody on faith. This does not mean they face no risks. But it does put the odds in their favor.”

  There was a short silence. Then she gave an impatient huff and said, “Rathbourne, it is abominable of you to say something wise and reassuring when I had prepared myself to call you obtuse and start a quarrel.”

  “This is what I do,” he said. “I have been doing it for as long as I can remember. I spend half my days sorting out muddles and calming people and making them see reason. That is the way I have been trained. That is the way my father gets things done. That is the way I get things done.” He paused. “Not that I should object to quarreling with you. I find that most invigorating. I am almost sorry I did not prove sufficiently obtuse. But you must expect such disappointments when you deal with a man who is perfect.”

  “Perhaps I shall throw things at you from time to time, simply on general principle,” she said. “Not because of anything in particular you’ve done or said, but because you need it.”

  He laughed then, and pulled her into his arms, and she kissed him, wickedly, but she soon wriggled free, and slipped out of the bed.

  Benedict swallowed his frustration, as his life had taught him to do, and turned his mind to the problem he couldn’t be wise or reassuring about.

  LUCKILY FOR HER, Rathbourne left the bed, too. To Bathsheba he looked far too inviting, lying there with his arms folded behind his head, the pale light from the window gilding the muscled planes of his upper body and glinting in his tousled hair. It did not matter that he was decently covered from the waist down. The tangled bedclothes made him look indecent . . . and too deliciously rumpled by half.

  If he had not left the bed, Bathsheba would have been in dire straits, for she doubted she possessed the moral character or willpower to resist the temptation to climb back in beside him . . . on top of him . . .

  She made herself look away while she washed . . . again.

  Then she faced her soiled clothes . . . again.

  “No, no,” he said, as she took up the dingy shift.

  She looked at him.

  He’d donned his shirt and trousers. For an aristocrat, he was remarkably efficient at looking after himself.

  He crossed to the bell and rang. “The servants will have found something for you to wear by now. Thomas is most conscientious. Yesterday, as I prepared to set out, I blithely assumed I would not need a change of clothes. He merely gave me an indulgent look—as one would a child, for to good servants we are all children, you know. Then he packed fresh linen and I don’t know what else.”

  “I wish he had packed for me,” she said.

  “He will see that you have what you need,” he said.

  She discovered a few minutes later that Thomas had more than seen to it.

  He passed a large heap of clothing through the par
tly open door. He would have sent a chambermaid through the narrow opening as well, but Rathbourne told him he was perfectly capable of dressing “Mrs. Bennett.”

  The footman and whomever he’d recruited had bought Bathsheba an entire change of clothes, including a frock. And a bonnet.

  “He could not have found these at the market,” Bathsheba said as Rathbourne held up two outer garments for her approval. “You sent him to a dressmaker—and I am afraid to think what it must have cost, because she would have had to sell something promised to another customer as well as make alterations in a hurry.”

  “Dressmakers always have orphan garments in their shops,” he said. “Their customers are women, and women are famous for changing their minds. She would be glad to do hurried alterations and at last be paid. But never mind that. Do you like it?”

  It was a simple white muslin round dress, but the bottom was prettily trimmed with flounces and puffings of fabric. Furthermore, Thomas or whatever maid he’d sent had bought a spencer as well, and this was a vivid blue and made of silk and satin. The bonnet matched.

  Bathsheba had not worn anything so pretty since the last time her father had been in funds, which had not lasted long.

  But she could not accept such a gift. To do so was to announce she was Rathbourne’s whore.

  “It’s lovely,” she said.

  He smiled, and his was so boyishly pleased a smile that it snatched away a piece of her heart and left an ache behind, fierce enough to steal her breath away.

  But that was a momentary feeling.

  She was not in love, not at all.

  She’d had one mad fancy at the height of passion but it was only that: a fancy, a wild thought.

  She was besotted, yes, infatuated, yes, and probably had been since the first moment she saw him in the Egyptian Hall.

  That was not love.

  “The only remaining question is whether it will fit,” he said. His dark gaze slid over her, as warm and wicked as his hands.

  Now was the time to say Thank you but no, I cannot accept this. Thank you, but I must make do with my own clothes . . . the ones I’ve taken apart and turned inside out and restitched . . . the ones I’ve mended and mended and mended until little remains of the original cloth . . . the ones I’ve washed and washed until nothing remains of the original color.

  Who was she trying to fool?

  She’d gone to bed with a man to whom she was not wed. She was a whore.

  She might as well be a happy one.

  She said, “I’ll make it fit.”

  She took the clothes from him and sorted out the underthings. She would have declined his assistance but Thomas had bought the type of garments women of the middle and upper classes wore, the kind one couldn’t manage single-handed. Her usual dresses and corsets fastened in the front. The new corset and frock fastened in the back.

  “I shall need your help with the stays,” she said after she’d donned drawers and chemise.

  “Then I had better fix my mind on sobering thoughts,” Rathbourne said. He flung aside the waistcoat he’d been about to put on, and came to her.

  “Will scandal do?” she said. “Or a pair of missing children? Or both?”

  He moved behind her and set to work. “Those will do admirably. Let us review in an orderly fashion our possible courses of action regarding the brats.”

  Orderly thinking was beyond her at present. She was too aware of his hands at her back, of the intimacy of this moment, the curious domesticity of it.

  Fortunately, Rathbourne did not need any more help with orderly thinking than he did with managing the intricacies of women’s attire.

  “Here is what comes to mind,” he said. “One, we continue to do what we’ve done thus far. Two, we turn back to the last place we had word of them. Three, we alert the authorities and assemble a formal search party.”

  “Good grief.”

  “Have I pulled the stays too tight?”

  “No, it was only . . .” She sighed. “Never mind. It is foolish to worry about how much scandal we make.”

  “It is not at all foolish,” he said. “There are degrees of scandal. A formal search will assure us of the highest possible degree. It will be fact—published fact, no less—not mere gossip. Denial would be out of the question.” While he spoke, he wrestled her into her petticoat.

  “There is one more possibility,” he said. He tossed the frock over her head. “We might proceed to Bristol—to the end of the trail, in other words—and await them at the gates of Throgmorton Park.”

  It was like trying to choose the least of four evils.

  Stalling, she twitched the frock into place. “It fits remarkably well, considering I was not present to be fitted,” she said.

  “I advised Thomas to find a maidservant of a similar size,” Rathbourne said.

  “I am not sure I am altogether comfortable with the idea of Thomas’s taking such careful notice of my figure,” she said.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “Thomas is a servant, true. He is also a man. The only men who do not take careful notice of your figure are dead or blind. So long as they keep their hands off, no one will have to kill them, and you need not be uneasy.”

  Startled, she started to turn to read his expression.

  He gave the frock a tug. “Keep still,” he said. “I’m not done.”

  Ah, well, she had as good a chance of reading Sanskrit as she had of reading his thoughts from his face.

  She stood obediently still.

  He tied the last of the tapes and stepped away. He eyed her up and down and frowned.

  Uneasy, she moved to the dressing glass and studied her reflection. “It does not fit perfectly,” she said, smoothing the skirt. “Still, it fits well, indeed, considering the circumstances.”

  “Ah, yes, the circumstances,” he said. “The damned circumstances. We have neglected those long enough.” He pulled on his waistcoat and buttoned it. “What is your preference, madam, regarding our course of action?”

  LORD RATHBOURNE WAS not the only one who’d faced facts and decided to make the most of the remaining time.

  By ten o’clock that morning, Peregrine knew he’d never reach Edinburgh in time to avert catastrophe. He could only assume his uncle had somehow gone astray.

  Though the idea of Lord Rathbourne making an error was nearly unthinkable, Peregrine was obliged to think it. Had his lordship stopped in Maidenhead and made inquiries at the inns—the logical thing to do—he would have found them by now.

  Since, therefore, catastrophe was inevitable, Peregrine reviewed his situation while awaiting breakfast in the inn’s public dining room.

  He did not want to go to Edinburgh.

  He hated school and schoolteachers.

  Since his parents would bar further visits with Uncle Benedict, Peregrine’s life for the next several years would be disagreeable in the extreme.

  Therefore, he had better make the most of the present.

  Breakfast arrived as he reached this conclusion.

  His mind at ease, he attacked his food with gusto. The room and the meals had made enormous inroads into his limited funds, but he would not worry about that. An explorer must be resourceful.

  It might have taken him longer to achieve this state of mental equilibrium had Olivia not continued quiet.

  Peregrine was too busy thinking, then eating, to notice this. It was only after he’d cleaned his plate that it dawned on him. “You’ve hardly said a word since last night,” he said. “Are you unwell?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said.

  He had much rather Olivia didn’t think, but he had no idea how to stop her.

  He nodded and tried not to hold his breath.

  “How are we to get rides to Bristol if people don’t feel sorry for us?” she said, lowering her voice. “If it’s unsporting to have a dying mother, what are we to say? You can’t expect us to tell the truth. You know we’ll be taken straight back to London.”

  P
eregrine considered. Last night his goal had been London, not Bristol. This morning his goal had changed. But she didn’t know that.

  “It wouldn’t be unsporting to tell something like the truth,” he said. “We could say we’re going to Bristol to seek our fortune.”

  “That’s not unsporting?” She raised one pale eyebrow.

  “Well, it’s true of you, certainly,” he said. “And it won’t make people cry—the way that old lady did who gave us the money for Twyford. That was shameful. For all we knew, she needed the money worse than we did. How do we know she wasn’t poor, living on her widow’s mite? Maybe she’ll have to go without her bit of chop this week, because of us.”

  Olivia stared at him for a while. Then she looked at the table. Then she looked about the crowded dining room.

  “Oh, very well,” she said with a shrug. “We’ll seek our fortune. But you’d better leave the talking to me, your nibs. Your accent gives you away.”

  He couldn’t help his upper-class accent. Unlike her, he couldn’t change his speech at will, mimicking the style of whomever he spoke to. “You’d better come with me to settle up with the innkeeper, then,” he said.

  The innkeeper, who studied them more carefully than made Peregrine comfortable, asked whether they wanted a horse.

  Olivia looked at Peregrine. He shook his head.

  When they left the inn he said, “I’ve only three shillings left. I’d like to save it in case of an emergency.”

  She stood on the pavement, looking down the High Street. “It’s market day in Reading, I heard people say,” she said. “We might have some luck there. But it’s twelve miles. Have you ever walked twelve miles, m’lord?”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said, looking about him. But no one stood in hearing range. “I can walk twelve miles. Easily.” He’d never done so in his life, but he’d die before he admitted that to her.

  In any case, he didn’t have to prove his hardihood that day. Four miles down the road, a young couple in a dogcart offered them a ride.