by Anna Bradley
Finn couldn’t take his eyes off her. His lips parted when her breathing began to quicken, and her color deepened and rose higher in her cheeks.
“…he finds me sometimes asleep and sometimes awake, to lose no time he undresses himself, comes and lies down by me, when he begins to warm he lays his hands on my—”
“Damn you, I said stop!” He tore the book from her hands and threw it aside.
There was a long, tense pause, then she said, “Isn’t that what you wanted, my lord?” Her voice was quiet. “For me to read to you?”
Christ, was he shaking? “I didn’t think—” Finn grabbed the back of his neck, dug his fingernails into the hot skin there, his gaze on the floor.
I didn’t think you’d do it.
Now she had, he’d forever have those words, in her soft, breathless voice, whispering inside his head.
“You thought to teach me a lesson.” She gave an awkward little laugh. “Well, it was a good deal more interesting than the pianoforte lessons, at least. But allow me to ease your mind, Lord Huntington. Lord Wrexley didn’t recommend the book. He has nothing to do with this.”
Finn dragged both hands down his face. “If not him, then who? Please tell me the truth. I can’t be easy until I know you understand it’s not safe for you to trifle in this way with a man like Wrexley.”
Her face softened. “Lady Tallant. She and I have struck up a…friendship of sorts.”
A friendship? He couldn’t imagine what Miss Somerset and Lady Tallant had in common. He didn’t begrudge Lady Tallant her pleasures—from what he’d heard of her deceased husband, she’d earned them—but she wasn’t a proper choice of companion for an innocent young lady like Miss Somerset.
Then again, Miss Somerset wasn’t like most young ladies, unless every debutante in London had the courage to linger in a dark library and blithely read erotic passages from School of Venus to a dangerously aroused marquess. “Lady Tallant recommended you read that book? May I ask why?”
“She’s helping me with something.”
“With what? What sort of help could she be giving you that includes reading School of Venus? Unless…” Finn wrapped his hands around her shoulders. “Is she teaching you how to seduce a gentleman?”
“No!” She squirmed loose from his grip. “Not seduction. That is, not only seduction, but about gentlemen, and how to judge a man’s character, and engage his affections. About…well, about marriage, and love.”
“Love?” Family connections, compatibility, fortune—these were all things one considered when embarking on a marriage, but love? It only got in the way of making a wise choice, and in the end, the best one could say of it was it didn’t last. At worst, it ripped families apart and left nothing but pain and destruction in its wake.
She frowned at him. “Yes, Lord Huntington. Love.”
An awful thought occurred to Finn then. “Are you in love with Lord Wrexley?”
She tried to laugh, but it was a hopeless sound. “My situation is such that I no longer hope for love. I’ll have to make do with friendship and affection, but as our courtship clearly shows, I can be easily misled as to a gentleman’s true feelings. From the very first I suspected you lacked affection for me, but if I hadn’t overheard you with Lady Beaumont, I never would have trusted my own instincts. I don’t wish to repeat that mistake.”
She said it quietly, and without a trace of accusation, but her words landed with such painful impact Finn staggered under them.
I made her doubt herself.
When he spoke, his voice wasn’t quite steady. “Even if there isn’t a deep affection, a proper gentleman will always be kind and respectful to his wife, Iris.”
Her eyes widened at his use of her given name. “And if a lady should end up marrying a man who isn’t a proper gentleman, Lord Huntington? Young ladies aren’t trained to be discriminating. Look at poor Lady Honora. She hadn’t any idea she was betrothed to a cheat and a villain.”
“I don’t pretend to defend Harley, but Lady Honora’s is an unusual circumstance—”
“It is, my lord? You’ve spent the better part of a week trying to convince me Lord Wrexley is a similar kind of scoundrel.”
He wanted to argue with her, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Finn found he didn’t have a word to say that wasn’t an utter falsehood. The truth was, Wrexley was a scoundrel, and if he hadn’t intervened, it was doubtful Miss Somerset would have realized it before it was too late.
She was shaking her head. “You see the trouble, my lord. Ladies are expected to find a suitor, someone with a fortune and a title, and once we’ve accomplished it, no one seems to care much about anything else. It’s almost as if we cease to exist once we become a wife.”
Finn’s chest went tight at the dejected look on her face, but before he could give in to the strange urge he had to press her head against his chest, the look was gone.
“None of this explains why Lady Tallant recommended you read School of Venus, Miss Somerset.”
She regarded him in silence for a moment, then reached behind him and retrieved the book from the table. “Those ladies you mentioned earlier—the ladies who don’t understand their own desires. What happens to them?”
Finn frowned. She was naïve, but she must understand at least the basics of what happened in the bedchamber. “They marry, and their husbands teach them.”
“I see. So once a gentleman marries, it’s his duty to attend to his wife’s desire and pleasure?”
“Yes.” It was his duty to get an heir on her, at least. That was nearly the same thing, wasn’t it?
“The gentlemen—husbands, that is—generally have a great deal more experience in those matters than their brides, I believe?”
“One hopes so, yes.”
“And their brides have less experience than courtesans and mistresses as well, I imagine? A lady of birth and connections in particular—the sort of lady who might marry a marquess, for instance—I think she must be among the most ignorant of brides when it comes to matters of the bedchamber.”
“If you’re asking if such a lady is a virgin when she first comes to her husband, then yes. That is, again, one hopes so.”
“But an experienced gentleman—the sort of gentleman with mysterious dark desires and handfuls of cravats—mightn’t he find such a lady quite dull? Predictable, that is.”
Finn couldn’t prevent a faint smile. She’d chosen that word deliberately. “Do you mock predictability, Miss Somerset? Some would say it’s a desirable quality in a wife.”
“Yes, I believe I’ve heard gentlemen say so, but as much as they pretend to want it, they scorn it, as well. One can’t blame them entirely for it, I suppose. Such a lady can’t be terribly exciting.”
No, but then neither was marriage, and it wasn’t meant to be. “As to excitement—”
“Exciting in the bedchamber, I mean. That’s what the mistresses are for, isn’t it, my lord?” A sly smile curved her lips. “For the gentleman with more exotic tastes, or those with insatiable appetites? I’ve heard such gentlemen can be most demanding.”
Was she flirting with him? She never had before, and he’d never encouraged her to, but it was a far more pleasant sensation than Finn would have anticipated, like having a playful kitten bat at his nose.
Unable to resist, he caught a loose lock of her hair between his fingers. “Tell me, Miss Somerset. What sort of tastes do you imagine a demanding gentleman indulges in the bedchamber? Now you’re so well read, I’m certain you can enlighten me as to the details of a gentleman’s satisfaction.”
“Me, enlighten you, my lord, on the matter of your satisfaction? No, I think not. I don’t like to bore you, and we can both agree I know very little about it.”
“Oh, I think you know more about it than you’re letting on. Please, explain it to me.”
“Well, I suppose it varies by the gentle
man. I imagine some are more determined to satisfy their desires than others, as dark as those desires might be. It must be rather difficult to please that kind of gentleman, but there are ways to do so, I’m sure.”
Finn blinked. It was midnight, she’d just read aloud to him from a book that would make a sailor blush, and now they were discussing the myriad ways in which a lady could please a demanding gentleman in the bedchamber. His cock was harder than he could ever remember it being, and they were alone in a dark library. He couldn’t imagine anything more improper.
Or more arousing.
He should put a stop to this at once, but he couldn’t imagine that, either. “Yes, I believe there are ways to please a more challenging gentleman. What do you suppose they are?”
If she had any notion of what this conversation was doing to him, she didn’t let on. She cast him a demure look from under her lashes, and then, without a trace of embarrassment in her voice, said, “Restraints, my lord. Blindfolds, perhaps, or a chase around the bedchamber?”
Restraints. Blindfolds. Chasing.
He swallowed back a moan as his entire body exploded with heat. “I…well, those would be very…but a gentleman doesn’t expect his wife to know—”
“Ah.” She looked up at him, the tiny smile still curving her lips. “That, Lord Huntington, is what the book is for.”
Finn didn’t often find himself speechless, but all he could do now was stare at her with his mouth open, like a fish dangling on a hook.
She went on before he could answer. “But most wives can’t provide such amusements, can they? I would think a gentleman accustomed to those things would much rather spend time with his mistress, and if a gentleman should be so preoccupied with his mistress he neglects his wife, what becomes of the wife’s desires then? I ask, my lord, because I imagine it happens all the time in aristocratic marriages. After all, a proper wife—and most gentlemen do want a proper wife—must look dull indeed in comparison to a mistress or a courtesan.”
Well. She’d paid close attention to the argument she’d overheard between him and Lady Beaumont, and she hadn’t forgotten one word of it. “I suppose a marriage like that might prove a lonely one for the wife. Is that what you wish to hear me say?”
“I don’t wish for anything at all from you.” She blew out a soft sigh. “You’re not to blame for this, Lord Huntington. You’ve only done what’s expected of you, just as I have. You found a proper lady, engaged in a respectful courtship, and became betrothed to her. Nearly every lady in London would have been delighted to receive your addresses and felt themselves amply compensated for any lack of affection in the marriage by the title of marchioness. You simply chose the wrong lady.”
Something inside Finn howled with rage at that. He tried to force it back, to shove it down into the deepest recesses of his chest, because she was the wrong lady. Everything about her was alive, and vibrant, and different. She was extraordinary, and extraordinary was dangerously unpredictable.
But the harder he shoved, the louder that part of him roared and clawed to get loose, and he was tired, so tired of keeping it down, holding it back—he’d never understood how tired, until he found her.
If I set it free for a moment, just a moment only…
“Tell me about your book, Miss Somerset,” he murmured, sliding his hands around her waist. “Tell me what you’ve learned about gentlemen.”
She stiffened slightly, but she didn’t move, or push him away. “I—what I’ve learned?”
“Yes.” He dragged his hands from her waist to her hips, then moved closer—close enough to feel the outline of her thighs through her skirts. “What do gentlemen like?”
She sunk her teeth into her lower lip, torturing the tender pink flesh, and he reached up and gently pulled it free. Did she know what it did to him when she bit her lip like that?
“Do gentlemen like to be touched?” he asked, his voice low, husky.
She slicked her tongue nervously over her lip where she’d nibbled on it. “Yes.”
Finn bit back a groan. “Where? Show me.”
His skin heated, every inch of it straining toward her, aching for her touch. It didn’t come for a long time—so long he thought she would deny him—but then she reached a trembling hand toward him, and brushed her fingertips against his lips. “Here.”
His eyes drifted closed. “Yes.”
Her fingers stroked lower, and she pressed the pad of her index finger into the dimple in his chin. “Here. Or maybe that’s more for me.”
He opened his eyes, gazed at her flushed face, her parted lips. “It’s for both of us.”
She dragged her fingertips down the length of his throat, slowly, torturing him with the light caress. “Here.”
This time Finn couldn’t hold back his soft moan. “Yes.”
She hesitated when she reached his cravat, as if unsure what to do, and he knew they should stop, that he should send her away before this went any farther, but he couldn’t bear to give up her sweet caresses and the innocent wonder on her face as she touched him.
He took both her hands in his and brought them up to the knot in his cravat. “Take it off.”
He didn’t move while her fingers worked on the knot, or when she loosened it at last, reached up, and pressed her warm hands on either side of his neck.
“Here,” she whispered.
Finn let his head fall back, offering her his throat again. His lips opened on a guttural moan when she took his offer, and traced her fingers over his throat. She slid her hands under the opening of his shirt to caress his collarbones, then let them dip lower to stroke his chest.
“Yes. God, yes.”
He wanted her mouth, her beautiful pink mouth, hot and open, moving over every inch of his skin, biting at him, sucking and licking—
“Here.” Her warm hands slid lower on his chest, moved over his belly, then lower still to the waistband of his breeches, and he was so hard for her, and her hands were so close, and he wanted her hands on him everywhere, more than he’d ever wanted anything, but if she touched his erection he’d lose control, and he wouldn’t be able to stop…
He took her wrists in gentle fingers and moved them away from his body. “No, sweet.”
“But…” Her gaze darted down to where his cock was straining against his breeches. “I thought…don’t gentlemen liked to be touched there, too?”
A half-laugh, half-groan tore from his throat. “Yes. Too much.”
“Oh.” Her brows drew together, and he couldn’t help but kiss her then, softly, just the lightest touch of his mouth against her warm lips. Her body melted into his and her breath caught, but Finn didn’t let himself taste her deeply, because if he did, there was no way he’d leave her alone tonight, and that would make him no better than Wrexley.
“It’s late. I should let you go to bed.” He dragged his thumb across her lower lip one last time and then forced himself to back away, but he couldn’t keep from turning at the door to catch one last glimpse of her.
She was leaning against the bookshelf, watching him, one hand clutching the book to her chest, the fingers of the other pressed against her mouth.
Chapter Sixteen
As soon as Iris slid her foot into the stirrup and swung herself onto his back, she knew she’d been right about Chaos. She might have been wrong about everything else, but when she laid her hand on the horse’s sinewy neck, she felt as if she’d come home.
“Very pretty, Miss Somerset. I don’t know of any lady in London who is as skilled in the saddle, and your seat puts half the gentlemen of the ton to shame.”
Iris turned and blinked at Lord Wrexley, who cantered along beside her on his gray stallion. She’d nearly forgotten he was there.
“Thank you, my lord,” she called back with a quick smile, but she turned away from him to discourage more conversation. She only had time for
one gentleman this morning, and it wasn’t Lord Wrexley, or Lord Huntington.
It was Chaos.
Lord Huntington, of course, had no intention of allowing her to banish him from her thoughts. Just when she managed to forget him for a brief moment, he’d sneak past her defenses and batter his way back in. It was his hazel eyes that caused her the most trouble—his eyes, and those sensuous lips, and that delicious little—
No! For pity’s sake, not the dimple again.
She didn’t want to think about her former betrothed, or her future betrothed, or indeed about any gentleman at all this morning, so she’d simply have to ride harder and faster to dislodge Lord Huntington.
She tightened her knees and leaned forward in the saddle, just the tiniest shift of her body, but Chaos stretched his neck forward and lengthened his gait in response, as if he knew before she did what she wanted and had only been waiting for her to realize it and issue the command.
Oh, it was glorious to be running wild again, riding toward the glow of pale orange light just emerging over the horizon. It was early enough the dew was still fresh on the grass. The rising sun illuminated each tiny droplet of water, and it felt to Iris as if she were riding through a field of glittering diamonds.
She laughed aloud at the fanciful thought and lifted her face to the wind. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d ridden like this, with the rolling hills flying by her in a blur of spring green, on a horse who was so attuned to every twitch of her muscles his body was like an extension of her own. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like this, so filled with joy she thought her heart would burst out of her chest.
When was the last time I felt like myself?
Several years, ever since she’d left Surrey for London. Or had it been longer than that? Long enough to lose the girl she used to be, when she’d raced across the countryside on Typhon, with her father by her side shouting his encouragement, the wind teasing his fair hair, and his eyes, so like her own, alight with pride and love, and that joy he’d always known how to coax out of life, like coaxing a tender green shoot in the ground to blossom into a flower.