“How do you know I hate tea?” he asked.
“Every time you drink it, you take it differently.”
“Why should that mean I hate it?”
“You are searching for something that will make it palatable to you.”
Before he could respond the door opened. It was Beth, and she was carrying a tea tray.
They both burst out laughing.
“What is it?” Beth demanded, hesitating in the doorway. “Do I have a smudge on my nose?”
“You may put the tray on the table, Beth.” Elinor left the protection of her desk and took a seat on the low sofa beside the table as Beth left the room. She looked up and found him staring at her with a look that made every nerve in her body tingle.
“How would you like it today, Mr. Worth?”
“Stephen. I know you can say it.”
She set the teapot down with a thump. “Why? Just tell me why?”
He rose from his chair and moved to the settee so quickly she didn’t realize what he was doing until he was beside her. “Is it so hard for you to believe that I’ve come to love you?”
“Yes.”
He laughed, his green eyes dancing. What sort of man enjoyed rejection this much?
“Why?” he asked.
“I know myself, Mr. Worth. I am not that loveable. Certainly not enough to make you ignore the dozens of pretty, young girls who are flinging themselves at your head. I am a widow with no fortune, I am no beauty, I am lame, and I am two and thirty.”
“First, I have fortune enough for the two of us. Second, I’ll be the judge of who I find beautiful. Third, you do not appear to let your foot get in the way of much. Fourth, I will be two and thirty on my next birthday. And, fifth,” he said, cupping her jaw with one big, warm hand, “I never take no for an answer, Elinor.” He lowered his mouth over hers.
Layers of ice burnt away beneath his scorching, probing kiss. Her hands slid up his lapels and around his neck and her fingers wove themselves greedily into his hair, his cropped coppery locks far softer than she’d imagined. A deep purring noise emanated from his chest as she caressed the warm, hard lines of his jaw. She was frantic to feel every part of him—now—as if somebody—or something—might try and make her cease her explorations. He responded to her actions by pulling her against the impossibly hard contours of his broad chest while his lips worked across her cheek and nuzzled her neck.
He smelled divine; a hint of cologne mixed with the faint aroma of clean, slightly salty skin. She inhaled him, over and over, unable to take the intoxicating scent of him deeply enough.
His lips returned to her mouth and his tongue moved slowly but implacably between her lips. One of his hands was stroking the side of her body, inching ever closer to her breast, which had become oddly heavy. His fingers drifted over the unbearably sensitive side of her breast while his thumb flicked her already stiff nipple.
She gasped and her entire body shuddered.
“Shhhh, darling,” he murmured, his distracting tongue probing her mouth while his hand cupped her more firmly. Elinor was feverish and half-mad, her body unable to absorb the pleasure that flowed from his hands and seeped into her skin, firing her nerves until she felt as though she would combust.
She put her hands on his chest.
“Please. Don’t push me away, Elinor.” His voice was low and urgent, his breath hot against her skin while he ran kisses down her neck behind her ear.
Her hands balled into fists but stopped pushing.
“That’s better,” he murmured, his fingers stroking and stroking her aching nipple through her muslin gown until her body thrummed. “I want to make love to you.”
His words did what her mind couldn’t and jolted her from her trancelike state. She opened her eyes and stared directly into his.
“Wha—?” She spoke into his mouth, around his tongue, which had begun to rhythmically stroke into her, the motion leaving no doubt in her mind what he wanted.
She realized his other hand had shifted her skirts until they were almost at knee level. His green eyes were mere slits beneath his lowered lids. And she knew: he would take her right there if she let him.
Lust, desire, and fierce hunger pounded her with the brutal implacability of a breaker pounding the beach, in its wake it left . . . fear. All would be lost the next time the wave crashed into her and she shoved him back hard, her heart aching with the effort.
He released her and she knew it was not because of the force she used, but because he chose to. His chest was rising and falling rapidly; he was not untouched.
“No.”
His brows rose in comical confusion. “No?”
She pushed herself off the divan, backing toward her desk and the safety behind it. Safety she never should have left.
Stephen thrust a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. His expression was already settling into a lazy, insouciant smile. Only the hard ridge pushing against the placket of his breeches and his flushed cheekbones told her what his efforts cost him.
“No, you won’t let me seduce you? Or no, you won’t marry me?”
“No to both.”
“You don’t wish for any time to consider my offer?”
“No.”
His lips smiled, but the look in his eyes sent chills up her spine. This was not a man accustomed to taking no for an answer.
“I know it is not a question an English gentleman would ask, but may I know why you are rejecting me out of hand?”
Elinor frowned and looked down at her hands; they lay in her lap, tightly clasped, but that had not stopped their shaking. “I do not wish to marry again. Ever.”
“Fine. Then let me seduce you.”
Her head shot up. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“You can’t be serious.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, the motion causing his elegant coat to tighten and shift intriguingly across his fine shoulders. Her hands recalled the feel of his chest. His body was hard and hot and the memory of it against hers made her inner muscles clench. His eyes burned into her and the banked lust in them was enough to throw sparks.
“Even if I wanted to—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
She bit her lip. He was right; her desire for him must be as obvious as his for her. “I live in a small community. The code of behavior here is far stricter than in London.”
“Then come to London with me.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it, shaking her head. “You’re mad.”
He pounced on her brief hesitation. “I will arrange it. Nobody will ever know we have gone together.” His words were clipped but not rushed, as though he were making plans for one of his business transactions, a transaction of whose success he was already assured.
Elinor was terrified by the pull he exerted. He was a force of nature—a wild but inexorable tornado that crushed everyone and everything in his path, until nothing was left to oppose him.
She shook her head so hard it left her dizzy. “No, Mr. Worth. The answer is no and it will continue to be so for as long as I live.” The words were bald and brutal, like cold, hard lead from a pistol. The only way to fight his devastating pull was to strike out—to push back. To go on the offensive. “I would never marry you, sir, not for any reason. Your attentions are anathema to me and I have never done anything to encourage you—quite the reverse.” The hateful syllables tumbled out of her mouth on a wave of shame, fear, and fury—at herself. “I certainly do not deserve your insulting propositions, nor do I appreciate your insinuations that I would agree to your suggestions if circumstances were otherwise. I would never, ever consent to be your—”
“Lover?” He stood, brushing his hand casually across the front of his riding breeches. The motion drew her gaze to the unmistakable evidence of his desire for her. Pulse points all over her body exploded and it was all she could do not to launch her body at him and beg forgiveness for her hateful, untrue words.
But then she
looked into his eyes. Only moments before they’d been so hot they’d spit flames. They were now like the dark, cold green of a frozen lake. He was angry; coldly angry.
He bowed, the faint smile on his face unlike any other he’d ever given her. “Well, I guess there is nothing more to say. Please forgive my impertinence, my lady. I apologize for having disturbed you.” He was across the room and out the door in a heartbeat.
Elinor stared at the door and held her breath.
Not until the sound of carriage wheels on cobbles vibrated the silence did she truly understand he was not coming back.
Chapter Fourteen
Village of Trentham
1817
Stephen left Blackfriars two days later.
Elinor learned this from Mrs. Lewis.
“I cannot credit it,” the older woman said when they encountered one another at the dressmakers, which Elinor had hoped to pop in and out of quickly to pick up some ribbon Beth had ordered.
“Perhaps his business here is done,” Elinor said in her most repressive tone. She was examining a bolt of cambric but she saw Stephen’s face. It was strange how she’d only been able to think of him as ‘Stephen’ after he’d left.
“Rubbish. My husband says the earl just had two new hunters delivered. You know he could never have—” The older woman broke off, her biscuit-colored face turning red as she recalled to whom she was speaking.
So, Charles was spending money, was he?
Elinor ignored the other woman’s flaming face and fingered a bolt of sarsnet the same shade as a robin’s egg.
“Lord Trentham’s profligate tendencies have always outrun his pocket, ma’am. Just because he has new cattle is no reason to expect he has parted with Blackfriars.” Elinor’s tone was sharper than she’d intended, but the fact Charles had exposed himself—and her by extension—to such tittering and conjecture was infuriating. But not nearly as infuriating as the fact Elinor knew less about what went on at Blackfriars than Mrs. Lewis.
“Mama? Mama?” Laurel Lewis emerged from the fitting room, a vision in celestial blue. She saw Elinor and her delicate blond brows descended before she caught her pettish reaction. And then she smiled and dropped a curtsey, the creases on her seventeen-year-old forehead smoothing like ripples on a pond.
“Lady Trentham. How nice to see you.”
“You look lovely in that shade of blue, Laurel.”
The girl colored far more prettily than her mother.
“Thank you, my lady.” She paused. “Have you heard Mr. Worth has suddenly left us?”
Elinor almost smiled. So Stephen had become Mr. Worth again? She wondered what the girl and her mother would think if she told them of Stephen’s offers—both of them.
She stroked a hand down the bolt of soft fabric, recalling his eyes—before they went cold. She smiled at the pretty blonde. “Yes, that is what your mother tells me.”
“Oh, so you did not know?” Laurel became almost radiant at this evidence of Elinor’s ignorance where Stephen Worth was concerned.
“Oddly enough Mr. Worth makes his travel plans without consulting me.”
The shop was so quiet you could almost hear the sound of needles piercing fabric in the back room. Mrs. Lewis put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and steered her back into the dressing room.
Elinor turned to the hovering dressmaker. “Beth tells me you have some ribbon for her.”
∞∞∞
Elinor cursed her waspish tongue the entire way home. She’d exposed herself before the two people she would have least wished to. Well, perhaps Charles stood higher on that list than the Lewis females.
She’d just removed her bonnet when Beth bustled into the foyer.
“Oh, my lady, did you hear that—”
“Yes, I know, Mr. Worth is gone. Good riddance to him. I’ll take tea in my chambers. Here is the ribbon you requested.” Elinor left her open-mouthed servant standing in the foyer holding the parcel.
The pain in her chest would have been alarming if she’d not experienced it several times before in her life. It was the pain of profound disappointment, a sensation which had been her closest friend and constant companion all the years of her marriage. She’d mostly managed to avoid the feeling after Edward had died. The only two times it had resurfaced was immediately after his death and the time Marcus had been arrested.
Elinor had hoped she’d endured enough abject disappointment to last her a lifetime. Indeed, she wouldn’t have believed she was even capable of the sort of heartburn she was currently feeling. Her mood was swinging wildly between relief, disappointment, and anger: Stephen Worth had finally done what she asked. He had left her, and she hated him for it.
She paced from her sitting room through her bed chamber and into her dressing room. How much could he have truly cared for her if he’d left Trentham without a backward glance? She’d obviously been nothing more than a passing fancy.
What could he do after the horrid things you said to him? the nagging, persecutory part of her brain demanded.
Oh, shut up!
Elinor gritted her teeth against the memory of what she’d said. Besides, he’d looked angry rather than hurt.
She realized she was staring at her peach ball gown and scowled, turning her back and marching into her sitting room. She flung herself onto the padded window seat and stared sightlessly out the window. It was obvious the man was no more than a butterfly, a rake who indulged in mild flirtations wherever he was. No doubt he’d found her resistance to his charms the most fascinating part about her.
Movement caught her eye and she saw Mary, her day maid, leaving the stables. She glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was half-four and Mary usually left by three.
The girl paused in the stables doorway and something in her stance told Elinor she wasn’t alone. A giant shape emerged from the darkness and Elinor caught her breath. She’d never seen such a large man before—unless one counted corpulent men. But this man was anything but fat.
Mary played with a strand of her hair, which Elinor could see had come loose and was merely shoved beneath her cap. The giant took a half-stride toward her before dropping his hands to her waist and lifting her bodily for a kiss. He held her effortlessly and Mary was not a slight lass. He slid one hand beneath her bottom and brought her close to his body, which served to bunch Mary’s skirts up her legs, baring her to above the knees as she wrapped muscular legs around the big man’s waist and offered her mouth up for a kiss.
Elinor’s thighs tightened and heat slid from her belly to her sex as she imaged herself in a similar position, but with a different man. She jolted at the raw, sensual image and pulled back from the window. The man must have seen something because one of his big hands held Mary’s neck still while he looked up at Elinor’s window. Her mouth dropped in shock and she stepped away from the glass. He had the most hideously scarred face she’d ever seen. It was as if his face had been bisected. It was morbidly fascinating and she approached the window for a second look. But they were gone.
Elinor pulled the bell and calmed herself while she waited for Beth to appear. Just because the man looked like a villain did not mean he was one, she reasoned.
The door opened. “Yes, my lady?”
“I just saw a strange man by the stables. He was with Mary.”
Beth’s face settled into a scowl. “A huge man with a face like a one of them creatures on Blackfriars?”
Elinor frowned, and then realized she meant the gargoyles. “That is very unkind,” she chided, staring hard at Beth’s flushing face. “Who is he?”
“He’s Mr. Worth’s man. I would have thought he’d gone with him. He loiters around here often enough. Mayhap Mr. Worth finally gave him the sack.”
“You’ve seen him here before?”
“Aye, he’s been sniffing around Mary like a dog scenting a bitch in heat. I wouldn’t be surprised if she—” She stopped when she saw Elinor’s outraged expression.
“I will thank you not to
say such vulgar things in my hearing, ma’am.”
Beth froze. The color that had gathered in her cheeks drained away. In all the years they’d been together, Elinor had never spoken so harshly to her. Indeed, she did not know why she’d done so now. Was it because of the desperate need still throbbing in her womb—because she was behaving like a bitch in heat? She turned away from both that lowering thought and Beth’s crushed face.
“Send Mary to me if she is still here.”
The door closed softy and Elinor grimaced. Already she regretted taking out her sexual frustration on her servant. Beth was more than a servant; she was a loyal friend.
Elinor sighed. She would apologize later. She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher that always sat on the table, a habit she’d picked up from her mother. Lady Yarmouth had frequently needed to quench her temper being married to Elinor’s father. The viscount had driven his wife half-mad with his profligate habits, frittering away the money her mother had brought to the loveless union before Elinor was even ten. She’d heard her parents fight only a few times and the words they’d exchanged had cut all the more deeply for their coldness.
Her mother accused her father of wasting their daughter’s dowry on expensive mistresses, horses, and art.
Lady Yarmouth, her father had retorted more than once, was barely one step away from the shop and the smell of it on her sickened him.
And so forth.
When she’d been a girl, Elinor had thought the arguments terrible. After a few years of marriage to Edward and several vicious whippings, she’d envied her parents their cold, sterile battles.
“You wanted to see me, my lady?”
Elinor turned at the sound of Mary’s voice. It took her a moment to leave the past behind and remember why she’d summoned the girl.
“That man I saw you with. Who is he?”
Mary’s plump, pretty cheeks reddened like two apples. “He is Mr. John Fielding—Mr. Worth’s man, my lady.”
“What is he doing here? I thought Mr. Worth had gone?” Elinor ignored the sudden thudding in her chest and could only hope she wasn’t coloring as wildly as the girl before her.
The Footman (The Masqueraders Book 1) Page 12