by Erica Ridley
It wasn’t just a matter of showing him a few tricks he didn’t know, but rather convincing him such skills were worth knowing.
Horses were delightful. Her farm was paradise. He should want this.
Duke jumped over the fence, and she slid from his back to allow him to mix with the other horses.
“Why even have a fence?” Elijah grumbled as he reached the barrier.
When he placed his hands on the topmost log, the knuckles were white. He took a visible breath and vaulted over the fence.
Olive frowned.
He didn’t want this.
Not the farm, not her lessons... he had no inclination to improve his proficiency with horses at all.
Elijah was plucking up and persevering for her, not for him.
Her heart gave a little flip. It felt as though he was courting her. Not with poetry and peonies but with the one thing she adored above all else: her horses.
It was working, blast him.
Each day when she came out to the stables, her first thoughts were of what she and Elijah might do together. Moments with him were better than moments without him. He had put in the effort and now felt like part of her world.
She had not spent half as much time seeing if she might fit into his.
“Forget the horses.” She walked up to meet Elijah at the fence.
He gaped as though he no longer recognized her. “Forget... horses?”
She gave him a peck on the cheek and climbed over the fence before one peck became twenty minutes of kissing.
“Let’s do something you like,” she told him. “You must have a botany book you can fascinate me with.”
“I do have fascinating botany books,” he agreed. “All botany books are fascinating. This is a very easy request.”
“Is it?” she said doubtfully.
He was over the fence in seconds. This time, his knuckles weren’t white, and his gait held a certain swagger.
She should not find overconfident botanists attractive.
She should not.
But when he caught her and claimed her mouth with his, she melted into his embrace willingly. Forget the horses. For three more days, she had Elijah.
Somehow, they managed to get through the house and into his guest chamber without bumping into her father. Tomorrow, the servants would return from their holiday, and the chances of sneaking about unnoticed would become far less likely.
Olive wasn’t certain if this was good news or bad.
“Botany first,” she informed him. “You must impress me if you want to earn more kisses.”
His response was the most arrogant, toe-curling grin she had ever seen.
“Prepare to be thoroughly kissed,” he assured her. “I shall be the one in desperate need of a chastity belt to fight off your amorous advances once I display my intimate knowledge of Nelumbo nucifera. And then, if you behave yourself, we’ll move on to Olea sylvestris.”
Olive had no idea what any of that meant, but anticipatory gooseflesh tickled along her skin all the same.
She pulled off her boots and coat, and settled cross-legged on one side of his bed rather than use the stool at his dressing table. Olive pretended she hadn’t done so just to make herself more available for the forthcoming kisses.
She gave her fingers a regal wave. “Ply me with botany.”
He surrounded her with illustrated texts, then removed his own boots and coat to join her atop the bed.
It felt a little bit like the picnic in the pavilion. Superficially innocent. Thrillingly dangerous.
Elijah launched into a passionate, surprisingly riveting explanation of the differences between botanical gardens, which were primarily for pleasure, and physic gardens, whose flora promoted healing.
He showed her illustration of plant after plant. The petals of this one were for this, the bark of that tree was for that. He explained the history of how each was discovered, as well as its dangers: some were poisonous if handled incorrectly, or might react adversely in certain situations.
She was impressed. “I assumed the sons of lords did little more than gorge on wine and play whist at gentlemen’s clubs.”
“It’s a courtesy title,” he grumbled. “We’re not special. I’m an ordinary gentleman who happens to be making promising progress into preventing childbirth infections caused by unexpelled placentae, by using compounds isolated from certain plants.”
“You sound extraordinary to me,” she said softly. “How does one become interested in… placentae?”
“My mother.” Elijah swallowed visibly and began stacking the books onto the side table next to the bed. “Many women die of childbed fever. That was the cause of hers. For the first time in years, we’re finally close to making those deaths preventable. Mothers like mine will live.” His expression was fierce. “I would do anything to prevent other women from meeting the same fate.”
Not just women, Olive realized. Their children suffered just as much.
She lay her hand on his leg. “I understand. I was lucky enough to have eight years with my mother before pneumonia took her. If there would have been any way to prevent her death, I would have done it, no matter the cost.”
His gaze snapped to hers, hot and intense.
“No matter the cost?” he repeated.
She nodded. “Of course. Who wouldn’t do the same?”
But his eyes still looked haunted.
“Very well,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose I can allow you... three kisses.”
His mouth fell open in scholarly outrage. “I show you cattleya mossiae, and it only earns three kisses?”
“I did like those,” she admitted. Who knew there were so many kinds of orchids? “Very well, ten kisses. In honor of our ten days together.”
“May I give them to you... anywhere I like?”
His masterful expression of angelic innocence was extremely suspicious.
It was also a temptation impossible to deny.
“Anywhere you like, as long as I like it, too.” She did not recognize the breathiness of her own voice. “Ten kisses, and only ten.”
He nodded. “Unless you ask for more.”
“What makes you think I would ever—”
Kiss number one cut off her half-hearted haughtiness mid-sentence and proved her the eager wanton she’d long suspected she would be, if ever alone in a bedchamber with Elijah Weston.
She wrapped her arms about his neck and sank backward onto his pillow, pulling him with her. His weight felt solid and reassuring, as though their bodies were made to fit together. His arithmetic, however, was suspect. She was fairly certain they were already up to fifty individual kisses, but since they hadn’t stopped for breath, she was more than willing to count it as just one.
He tugged the hems of her shirts free from the waistband of her breeches.
“What are you doing?” she gasped against his lips.
“Preparing kiss number two.” Her linen shirt and cashmere overshirt bunched just above her navel. Cold air rippled across the newly exposed strip of her bare stomach. “Unless you’d rather I not?”
“You... Yes... I...” Was she making sense? Probably not. “Carry on. An agreement is an agreement.”
“In that case...” Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he lowered his mouth past her chin, past her neck, between her breasts, down her abdomen, to the thin strip of bare flesh between the raised shirts and the top of her breeches.
She hadn’t felt particularly like an irresistible siren this morning. Now that she found herself in the center of her childhood enemy’s bed without a single petticoat to obstruct his path, her choice of clothing felt far less practical and instead strangely seductive.
“This means nothing,” she remembered to blurt out just before his warm mouth touched her cool skin.
Her pulse pounded in her veins.
The wretched cheater was torturing her with a hundred sensuous kisses, but never quite fully lifted his lower lip from her skin before moving on to
the next unkissed morsel of flesh.
When he pushed her hems up to just beneath her breasts, she didn’t stop him. If he hadn’t done so himself, she’d have been tempted to rend the fabric in two to speed things along.
“Three,” he murmured huskily, before providing the same careful attention to the newest expanse of bare skin.
This time, as he feathered light kisses over her stomach, his cheek kept brushing against the underside of her breasts. Her nipples tightened in response, their interest starkly visible as they jutted up through the insufficient layers of thin linen and fine cashmere.
This was what she got for refusing to ride hindered by cumbersome stays. She got a devilishly handsome scoundrel peppering kisses over her bare flesh.
She might never wear stays again.
“I want to touch your nipples,” he murmured.
Did he just say...?
He did.
“Do it,” she stammered.
“No.” He shook a finger at her. “Kisses only. An agreement is an agreement.”
“Oh,” she said weakly.
Did that mean Elijah was going to kiss... her...
Up came her shirts. Slowly, torturously, giving her plenty of time to decide if she wanted to put a stop to this game.
She wished she’d allotted him unlimited kisses.
“Four.” The word was a breath of soft air against her left nipple, and then it disappeared into his warm mouth.
Olive’s entire body tightened with a familiar, delicious pressure. She wasn’t certain which was the more erotic: the feel of his wicked mouth and tongue on her shamelessly attentive nipple, or the fact that she was watching him do it. His pillow provided an absolutely phenomenal angle from which to ogle his wide shoulders and chiseled cheekbones. She could barely breathe from the headiness of such an erotic sight.
He lifted his mouth. “Five.”
And now it was her other nipple’s turn.
It couldn’t possibly be better than... Good heavens, was he using his teeth? The pressure was feather-light, with just a hint of danger, before his tongue and mouth resumed their play.
The pressure between her legs built higher. She wished he would touch her there, and knew he wouldn’t. She must console herself with kisses. Next time, she would suggest a much more flexible arrangement.
“Six,” he said, and covered her mouth with his.
He had kissed her a thousand times over the past week, but never like this. Him, fully clothed. Her, with her shirts hiked to her neck and her sensitized nipples rubbing against his cashmere-covered chest.
It felt licentious and luxurious; a sensual harbinger of impending ruin.
She hoped it never stopped.
“Seven,” he said, and lowered his mouth back to her breast.
This time, he teased by dancing around the nipple, rising up until his lips almost touched the peak, then falling back down the other side of her breast to rise again, until she was ready to grab him by the hair and force her nipple into his mouth herself.
He indulged her deepest desire for the briefest of moments before announcing, “Eight,” and performing the same dark magic on her other breast.
Every time he almost-but-not-quite reached her nipple, her breath caught and her spine arched, shamelessly tilting her tight peak into his waiting mouth.
She could have cried with frustrated passion when he said “nine” and lowered his kisses back to her stomach.
That was, until she felt the buttons slip away over her hipbones. The flaps of her breeches gapped open in the early evening air. One small tug, and she would be bare right down to her—
He tugged.
“Ten,” he said, and put his mouth exactly where she’d hoped he’d touch her.
Her eyes fluttered backward at the onslaught of sensation. Her wide-open breeches were just loose enough to allow his face between her thighs, yet just tight enough to restrict her from flinging her legs wide to offer him more access.
She was pinned in place by her own scandalous trousers, affording her no other possibility but to melt into his pillows and attempt vainly to breathe, whilst his mouth and tongue brought her right to the edge and... over.
She came apart beneath his hands, pressing her body into his face as her trapped legs tightened with each exhilarating contraction of pure pleasure.
He stopped only when she lay spent beneath him, no longer capable of rational thought.
She managed to mumble, “Means nothing...”
“Mm-hm.” He fastened up her buttons with care, then gently pulled down her shirts before wrapping her in his arms and cradling her to his chest.
He made her feel cherished, damn him. He made her feel desirable. Wanted. He made her feel as though he might one day come to love her just as much as she—
Heaven help her. Olive squeezed her eyes shut tight. She’d fallen in love with the wretched knave.
Her head bolted upright.
“This means nothing,” she announced, firmly this time.
He nodded. “You mentioned.”
“But I’m not opposed to doing it again.”
His eyes widened, then crinkled at the edges. It should have been arrogant, not seductive. It was both.
“Are you negotiating?” he asked.
“No one consulted my opinion before you first turned up,” she reminded him. “The arrangement was ten days, and those terms stand. But...”
He arched a brow. “But?”
“We can spend the remaining three days doing anything we want.” She took a deep breath, then added meaningfully, “Everything we want.”
His gaze was hot and his breath ragged. “You have no idea what I—”
“I want it, too.” She touched his face. “I want it with you.”
He took a shuddering breath as if her words alone were enough to endanger his thin grasp on control.
“I am a blackguard,” he began, “but even I shall not force you to the altar—”
“I’m not going to the altar,” she interrupted.
“—by deflowering you,” he finished firmly.
She loosened his cravat, barely recognizing the shameless temptress she’d become.
“You’re a botanist,” she teased. “Who else should deflower me?”
“No one else,” he growled and crushed her mouth to his.
When they finally broke apart, she asked, “Is that a yes?”
He groaned. “It’s a... ‘never make irreversible decisions using parts of your anatomy other than your brain.’ There is nothing I want more than to make love to you, here, now, tomorrow, the next day.” He rose from the bed and pulled her to her feet beside him. “But before that happens, I want you to be very, very sure.”
As much as her passion-drugged body begged to differ, he was probably right.
“That... was a very un-scoundrelly speech.”
“I have my moments,” he admitted. “You still shouldn’t trust me.”
“I don’t need to trust you,” she reminded him. “You’re leaving, and I’ll never see you again. When the ten days are finished, we will be, too.”
She expected the words to fill her with power, or at least relief.
Instead, all she had was an unfurling, unquenchable longing for more.
Chapter 11
The Eighth Day
Eli jotted a few technical observations in his notebook before turning his attention to the next poorly located plant in the castle conservatory. Well, most of his attention. The back of his mind never strayed from Olive.
It shouldn’t sting so much that she didn’t care for him the way he cared for her. It wasn’t even a surprise. Their history was fraught, and this was hardly a proper courtship. It wasn’t anything, as Olive kept pointing out.
Although she wasn’t interested in marrying him, for as long as he was in a position to do so, Eli was determined to give her everything he could.
He glanced down at his notebook. It was meant to contain observations from the c
astle conservatory, but over the past few days, it had grown to also include detailed suggestions for the Harper farm.
With a few slight changes in pasture rotation and maintenance, Eli could ensure better nutrition for the horses and lower risk of infections from the equine parasites that thrived in certain weeds and soil conditions.
There had been a marked improvement when Eli had implemented such modifications on his father’s farm. On that occasion, Father had considered Eli’s techniques a secret advantage over his competitors.
The marquess would kill Eli if he suspected him of aiding and abetting lifelong foes.
Eli was going to do it anyway.
In fact, now that he’d had an opportunity to inspect Cressmouth’s native foliage and pastures, he had several new ideas that would be even better for the Harpers. Their already famous horses would be even healthier and more valuable by springtime.
“There you are,” came a jolly voice Eli didn’t recognize at all. “I was hoping you’d return soon!”
Eli glanced up over the eschscholzia to find the castle solicitor beaming at him. What was his name? Ah, yes.
“Good day, Mr. Thompson. I couldn’t stay away. Your conservatory is...” An unmitigated disaster? “...fascinating.”
Mr. Thompson chuckled. “Is that the word you’d use? Miss Harper led me to believe you found it something of a disaster.”
“Er...” Eli shifted his weight. Lovely. Thank you, Olive.
“She also convinced me you were the best man to consult on a grand reorganization.”
Eli blinked. “She did what?”
“She said you are a brilliant botanist here on holiday for a limited time, and it would be remiss of the castle if we did not beg for your assistance.” Mr. Thompson gestured helplessly. “If you could sketch out a plan of what ought to be placed where, as well as anything else we ought to be doing, I will arrange for your suggestions to be implemented posthaste.”
“Oh.” Eli swallowed. “I see.”
Did he see? Eli wasn’t certain what was happening.
He was the amateur who consulted others. Eli had never been the one consulted before. He’d had to force his revolutionary ideas onto his father, who to this day believed botany to be frivolous.