He was regarding her with some peculiar light in his eyes. Maggie had the sense she wasn’t with Mr. Hazlit, the hired investigator, but perhaps with Benjamin Hazlit, the man. His expression wasn’t one of clinical inquiry but rather of faint worry.
For her.
A blasted lump rose in her throat, having something to do with that look in his eyes, and something to do with the babies she would never have to fuss over or love.
She snatched her hand back and stalked over to the window. “This is not a convenient time to indulge your notions of a sham connection between us, Mr. Hazlit.”
He eyed the door, warning her with one glance she’d broken the rules.
But then, so had he. With that soft, slightly anxious look in his dark eyes he’d broken rules and commandments and the equivalent of papal bulls issued by Maggie’s common sense and countersigned by her instinct for self-preservation.
She heard him building up the fire but kept her gaze on the back gardens. The flowers would like the rain, of course—
“Mr. Hazlit!” She kept her voice down with effort, but when a man sneaked up behind a lady and slid his arms around her waist, some exclamation was in order.
“Hush.” He turned her in his arms, though part of Maggie was strongly admonishing herself to wrestle free. He’d let her go. She trusted him that far, when a servant was likely to appear any moment with a tea tray. “Something has you in a dither. Tell me.”
His embrace was the most beguiling, irresistible mockery of a kindness. Gayle had offered her a hug a few days ago, a brusque, brotherly gesture as careful as it was brief. This was different.
This was… Benjamin Hazlit’s warm, strong male body, available for her comfort. No conditions, no awkwardness, no dissembling for the benefit of an audience.
She sighed and tucked her face against his throat, unwilling—or unable—to deny herself what he offered. For a few moments, she was going to pretend she wasn’t alone in a sea of trouble. She was going to pretend they were friends—cousins, maybe—and stealing this from him was permitted. She was going to hold on to the fiction that she was as entitled to dream of children and a husband to dote upon as the next woman.
“You are wound as tight as a fiddle string, Maggie Windham.” Hazlit’s hand settled on her neck, kneading gently. “Are the domestics feuding, or has Her Grace been hounding you?”
“She never hounds or scolds.” Maggie rested her forehead on his shoulder, her bones turning to butter at his touch. “She looks at us, disappointment in the prettiest green eyes you’ve ever seen, and you want to disappear into the ground, never to emerge until you can make her smile again. His Grace says it’s the same for him.”
When she was held like this, Maggie could detect a unique scent about Hazlit’s person: honeysuckle and spice, like an exotic incense. It clung to his clothing, and when she turned her head to rest her cheek on the wool of his coat, she caught the same fragrance rising from the exposed flesh of his neck.
That hand of his went wandering, over her shoulder blades, down her spine.
“You are tired,” he said, his voice resonating through her physically. “What is disturbing your sleep, Maggie? And don’t think I’ll be distracted by more hissing and arching your back.”
“I’m not a cat.”
“You’ve cat eyes.” He turned her so his arm was around her waist. “Let’s sit by the fire, and you can tell me your troubles.”
Such a tempting notion! It made her want to laugh—and to cry.
“My troubles are trifling.” And as often as she’d told herself the same thing, the words should have sounded far more convincing. “Perhaps you have troubles worth discussing?”
He’d no sooner settled her on the sofa than he went to open the door. A startled footman stood there, a tray in his hands.
“I’ll take that.” Hazlit appropriated the tray and nudged the door closed with his shoulder. “It’s chilly today. We’ll keep the heat in, shall we?”
He hadn’t used that voice on her before, low, pleasant… confiding. It wound through her senses and left her craving his proximity, which would not do.
He sat right beside her, nonetheless, and began fussing with the tea tray. “You like it with more cream than sugar, am I right? And my nose tells me the kitchen sent up a pekoe, which I’m guessing is more to your taste than Darjeeling. Here.” She watched bemused as he prepared her tea then passed her a cup and saucer.
“Drink up. If I’d thought to bring my pocket pistol, we could be adding a dollop of medicinal courage. That might put the roses back in your cheeks.”
He didn’t fix himself a cup; instead he studied her, which necessitated that she study her tea.
He didn’t chatter; he let her finish her tea in silence. It was the smallest, most mundane pleasure in the world, to sip a cup of tea fixed just for her, but it was a comfort.
“I am not myself today.” She set the empty cup and saucer back on the tray. “I apologize for the lack of roses in my cheeks.”
“You, my dear, are cranky.” He sounded amused. When he reached out and tucked a lock of Maggie’s hair behind one ear, she was not amused in the least.
“While I appreciate your solicitude, Mr. Hazlit, it isn’t necessary.”
And again she felt an urge to cry. To leave the room so she might have proper privacy to indulge inconvenient and unbecoming emotions. Benjamin Hazlit was not a bad man. She was coming to suspect he was at least a decent man, likely even a good man, and to inflict her tears on him wouldn’t be sporting.
“Are we always limited to what is necessary, Miss Windham? Is it necessary to visit the park on a pretty day? To add cream and sugar to your tea? Is it necessary to procreate?”
She blinked over at him where he sat beside her, but his tone was still mild.
“What if,” he went on, “I tell you a trouble of mine first? Perhaps that will set the proper conspiratorial mood, hmm?”
“Is this another gesture of trust?”
He frowned and reached forward to pour his first cup and her second. “Perhaps it is. Well, no matter. Can’t be helped. I’ve been asked to investigate somebody prior to his suit being considered by a girl’s parents.”
“Is this in your usual line?” She accepted her teacup from him, their hands brushing as she did. Gracious, even his hands were warm.
“If the client is well placed enough, or the gentleman in question is possessed of a particularly impressive title, I am often called upon. I am discreet, you see.” He stirred his tea, and Maggie couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“If this is in your usual line, how is this matter a trouble?” Despite herself, she was curious. He looked a bit troubled—around the eyes, the way he held his teacup a few inches above the saucer, as if he forgot he was supposed to drink his beverage.
“I am reluctant to take on the commission.” He set the tea down untasted. “More reluctant than I’d realized.”
Maggie heard her brother’s words from earlier in the week… It couldn’t be easy carrying secrets for others… It was hard enough for her to carry her own secrets, come to that.
“Don’t take on the job, then,” she said. “Unless you desperately need the coin?”
“I do not.” Most men would have been offended at the question. His answer was almost absentminded. “I can use money the same as the next person, but I’m no longer destitute.”
She returned a small favor he’d extended her earlier and let him consider his trouble in silence. Since he’d built up the fire and closed the door, the room had become a trifle less chilly, but he was sitting close enough that Maggie was also warmed by Hazlit’s simple nearness.
She ought to scoot away, though it would be marginally rude. And what did it matter where she sat, when she’d allowed him to close the door?
“I think the gentleman in question would consider it an affront, did I investigate him,” he said. “The inquiry would not be regarding just his finances, or else one might dismiss it as pur
ely business.”
“What else would it entail?” She took a tea cake from the tray and put it on his saucer.
“My thanks. When the question is matrimony, doting parents will want to know if the potential groom can provide, of course, but they’ll also want to know about wagering habits, any tendency to incontinent drinking, bad company, or insanity. They’ll want to know how the man treats his mistresses, if any he has. If there’s any risk of social diseases… I hope I’m not offending you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s a delicate business, and this fellow is at least a cordial acquaintance.”
“Deene might go so far as argue that he’s your friend.”
His mouth snapped shut with an audible click. “Has Westhaven taken to gossiping?”
“He has not, but like most men, you assume the only communications of significance pass between the males of the species. Evie is not one for keeping her disgruntlements to herself, not the trivial ones in any case.”
“This would be your sister, Lady Eve?”
Maggie felt almost sorry for him. He’d tried hard to make the problem hypothetical, but for him it wasn’t a hypothetical at all. He sat in meetings with Deene for hour after hour. She’d seen them together socially, heading off for the card room at some ball, talking near the men’s punch bowl at a musicale.
“Eve is the baby of the family. She thinks this keeps her out of Her Grace’s matchmaking line of sight, but it does not. Evie and Deene would either drive each other to Bedlam or fall madly in love.”
“Or both?” There was rueful humor in his eyes.
“For a time, perhaps. Don’t think because my family asks, you must comply.”
His brow knit. “I realize as we discuss this that I really don’t want to pry into the man’s affairs.”
“Then don’t. There are enough things in this life we must do that are distasteful. Evie does not like Deene except as a flirt and an occasional dancing partner. Let somebody else have the pleasure of learning where the man has secreted his bastards—if any he has.”
He gave her a long, searching look. “I wasn’t going to mention that.”
She rose again, a little stiffly from having sat for so long. The rain had picked up, slapping down in gusts and sheets, while the wind tossed the greening trees this way and that. The weather mirrored her internal landscape: chilly, stormy, bleak.
“Maggie.”
He’d warned her this time a moment before he slid his arms around her. After a minute pause to discard the dictates of good sense, she turned to hide her face against his chest. For a long moment, she let him hold her, until words rose up in her aching throat.
“I want to cry.” Stupid words. Maybe he hadn’t heard them.
“I think it’s worse,” he said, his hand stroking across her back, “when you want to and you can’t. It’s an indignity to cry, a worse indignity when you can’t even cry.”
She nodded against his chest. Why did he know such a thing? Was it because his sisters had been through an ordeal? Because he knew half of the beau monde’s sins and mistakes?
“Stop thinking, Maggie Windham. Everybody is occasionally blue-deviled.”
His voice was very quiet, right near her ear. She liked the sound and feel of it, but he was wrong. Years and years of looking over her shoulder, dreading each day’s mail, pinching pennies and carrying secrets was not simply a case of the blue devils. And the worst, hardest, most difficult part was she could see the rest of her life falling into the same dismal pattern, with only death promising her any relief.
Hazlit’s hand went from tracing patterns on her back to cradling her jaw. He shifted his hold subtly, turning Maggie’s face up to his.
When his lips settled on hers, it was so softly Maggie wanted to groan with the pleasure of it. He tasted of the almond icing on the tea cake, his mouth sweet and warm against hers. She leaned into him, knowing he had the physical strength to support them both.
There was no hurry in his kiss, no fumbling or force. It dawned on her that it was a kiss of invitation, an offer for her to explore him intimately.
A gesture of trust.
She had never been kissed like this, and she found it tantalizing. How could a man’s mere mouth—a mouth capable of typical male inanities and profanities—be both soothing and arousing?
Or maybe that was the essence of seduction. The mind was lulled into somnolence while the body and spirit were brought more alive. She burrowed closer, one arm wrapped around his back, the other going higher so she could anchor her hand in his thick, silky hair.
She felt his feet shift, his stance widening to take her weight. And then, so lightly she almost didn’t comprehend what it was, his tongue grazed her bottom lip.
Oh, yes… Yes.
Somebody groaned softly. Maggie waited for Hazlit to repeat that slight, subtle caress, and when he did, a sinuous, languid hunger began to beat through her veins. It pulsed low in her belly, in her womb, in that place a lady never mentioned and a lonely woman never entirely forgot.
When he did it a third time, she parted her lips and took the same slow, sweet taste of him.
He went still. His hand stopped roving her back; his body stopped shifting even minutely.
Confusion welled up through the wanting singing in Maggie’s veins. Was it wrong for her to make such an overture? Did only men kiss in such a manner?
“Again.” His voice was a rasping whisper. “Do that again, Maggie.”
He bent his head but stopped when their mouths were a half inch apart.
She stretched up almost on her toes and closed the distance. He groaned this time, his mouth parting when she seamed his lips with her tongue.
Ah, so this was kissing. She explored his lips and straight white teeth. She forged into the soft, hot recess between those two. When he touched his tongue to hers, she startled then felt him drawing on her tongue, gently, teasingly.
Gracious God. He was holding her to him, so their bodies were pressed tightly together, and still Maggie felt a frantic need to be closer. To touch more of him, to feel more of him, to taste and gather the scent of more of him. It was unbearable, the wanting and wanting and wanting…
“Maggie…” His voice was hoarse, strained. “Let me hold you.”
What was he saying? She felt drunk, like the time she and Bart had consumed the syrup from the brandied pears as children. If Hazlit’s arms hadn’t been around her, her knees might have buckled.
She sighed against his shoulder, the feel of his hand moving over her hair calming her physically even as she realized exactly the nature of the hard column of male flesh pressed against her belly.
He was aroused. He was aroused, and she was responsible. It ought to feel shameful, but it didn’t. She was aroused, too, and she heartily doubted he considered that a shameful thing, though he wasn’t crowing and smirking and strutting around. If anything, he seemed as disconcerted as she was. She felt him take a deep breath and let it out slowly, then do it twice more.
“It’s no good.” He dropped his arms but leaned in and kissed her nose. “As long as I’m holding you, I can think of cold eel pie, my old headmaster at Eton and his mildewed coats, the declension of hic, haec, hoc, and I’m still hard as a pikestaff. I consider myself a man of some self-discipline, my dear, but you…”
He cocked his head while Maggie tried to fathom his mood. Was he teasing? Did he regret this? How could he form complete sentences if he was half as rattled as she was?
“How are you, Maggie? And don’t poker up on me. I don’t think either of us was expecting this.”
“I am… I am…” She glanced around the room, anywhere but at his serious dark eyes. “You are very proficient at kissing.”
“With you, it seems I am. Enthusiastic, too.”
She sensed there was some hidden male meaning to his last comment. She did not like that she couldn’t puzzle it out. She felt heat creeping up her neck.
“And now I’ve made you blush.” He slung an arm a
round her shoulders and kissed her temple. “I didn’t intend it to become that kind of kiss, but I’m not sorry it did. If that makes me a cad and a bounder, so be it. That kiss was worth any invective you want to hurl at me.”
He stepped away, leaving Maggie only slightly less confused. “You liked it then?”
“Yes, Maggie Windham.” He looked her right in the eye. “I liked it. I liked it a lot.”
***
“Mama, you are glaring daggers at the Duchess of Moreland.” Bridget kept her voice down, even though the park wasn’t anywhere near as crowded as it would be later in the afternoon. Remonstrating dear Mama outright, much less in Hyde Park for all to see, could be sufficient folly to earn a girl a sound switching and several days of bread and water.
“When we’re abroad, that’s Cecily to you, dearest, for no one believes I’m old enough to have a daughter your age.”
When Mama spoke through clenched teeth that way, Bridget feared for the horses. They were a boisterous pair, which Mama seemed to enjoy for the most part. At the moment, the horses were twitching their short tails restively, likely in reaction to their driver’s ill will toward the lady in the passing landau.
“Esther Windham is too high in the instep for words,” Mama said, but she kept her voice down, too. One didn’t insult a duchess in public. “She parades around Town with those long-faced, empty-headed daughters of hers as if they weren’t every one of them approaching their last prayers.”
Bridget cast around desperately for something distracting to say. When Mama got in one of her moods, it could last for days and cost them every piece of Wedgewood in the china cabinet.
“Do you suppose we might see Lady Dandridge out and about today?”
That at least earned her a look.
“That old ape leader, sporting her fancy carriage. Mutton dressed up as lamb.”
This was an abiding theme with Mama, and if it was hypocritical of her, too, well, Bridget had learned the hard way to keep that observation to herself. Mama wasn’t old, precisely, and she had been very pretty, but Bridget did not for a moment think her mother was a contented woman.
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