One Forbidden Evening (Zebra Historical Romance)

by Jo Goodman

  “I was. Forgive me.”

  Cybelline noted there was nothing in his tone to indicate he was sorry for it. His roguish manner was not in all ways a fraud. “How is it that you came upon the idea that you must become a rake?”

  “Pose as one,” he said. “Not become one, although it is sometimes a fine line that separates the faker from the fact.” Rising, Ferrin crossed the room to a small, round table where the decanter of whisky was kept. He poured himself a drink. “It was not so much a plan that was designed and executed but a misapprehension that was never corrected. I told you that it is often easier not to resist society’s expectations. That is what I did. Being descended of libertines and gamers on both sides of the family, and having no enthusiasm for politics, it seemed the obvious road to take to protect my real interests.”

  He sipped his drink. “As it happened, I was caught in a…well, let us call it a compromising situation. She was a friend of my mother’s. I was the innocent. The catching out was done by her husband, and he chose to believe that his lady was the injured party. As she made no attempt to disabuse him of that notion, I was cast in the role of the seducer. I cannot honestly say that it was honor that kept me from relating the truth of the matter. Guilt and a giddy afterglow were the culprits.”

  Ferrin raised his glass in mock salute. “That is how a rake’s reputation is made, Cybelline. Managing it requires some effort but is not without reward.”

  She simply shook her head. “It is incredible.”

  He finished his drink and set down the glass. “Mother remarried when I was seventeen. Sir Geoffrey is very good to me, but his interests are political, and he is the first to admit he has no head for investments. He has always depended upon me to advise him as I did my mother before.”

  “Then he does not frequent the gaming hells.”

  “No, he frequents the Parliament.” He added dryly, “You will collect there is not much difference.”

  “You are too harsh.”

  “Perhaps. I do admire him. And he does me the immense favor of taking Mother in hand.”

  “But you have assumed financial responsibility for your family,” Cybelline said. “That is what Aunt Georgia meant in her letter, is it not?”

  “Yes, I imagine it is. My mother is happy to paint me as a generous scoundrel. She would not like it if people thought me cruel or callous. It’s a narrow path that I walk.” He returned to his chair but sat on the arm, not the cushion, and folded his arms against his chest. “The twins, Sir Geoffrey’s oldest children by his first wife, have made successful marriages and require little in the way of support from me. If I am right that Wynetta is the young woman who’s captured Wellsley’s eye, then it will be another coup. Wellsley is perfectly capable of providing for my stepsister. My sisters Hannah and Portia are years away from making matches, so that is for the future. Restell is the one complicating my life at present.”

  “You do not count Mr. Wellsley and Miss Wynetta as a complication?”

  “No. They are an amusement.” He added significantly, “Neither do I count you.”

  “It is so difficult to know whether to be affronted or relieved.” Cybelline raised her hand, staying his reply. “How is Mr. Gardner a complication?”

  “Restell has conceived the idea to fashion himself a life like mine, or rather as he supposes mine to be.”

  “Surely he knows of your inventions and accomplishments.”

  “He does. But he views my mind as a well that will never go dry, freeing him to imitate that part of my life he believes is enormously fascinating. I am not yet certain how to rein him in. He has not shown the least interest in tempering his pursuits.”

  “Perhaps if he thought you were tempering your own.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It seems to me that you might perpetuate another fraud since you excel at that sort of thing.”

  The cast of Ferrin’s features was wry. “It is so difficult to know whether to be affronted or relieved,” he said. “Tell me what you mean.”

  “If you were to marry, for instance, it might influence Mr. Gardner to consider a different course.”

  “You are the second person to suggest that my marrying could be the solution to a problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “Wellsley said the same when we were yet in London. He believes that his friendship with me will put him in a better light with his grandmama if I am married.”

  “That is an interesting perspective.”

  “He was foxed at the time. I do not know what accounts for your suggestion of the same. It is unnatural.”

  Cybelline realized she was enjoying herself immensely. “Perhaps it is. But I was suggesting a humbug, not a real marriage.”

  “It seems like a further complication.”

  “Hmm. You may be right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “A betrothal would be just the thing. More easily arranged and more easily ended.”

  “Are you certain you do not know Wellsley? It might be that you are well suited.”

  She regarded Ferrin in a more serious vein. “Why are you not married, my lord?”

  “It has always seemed like something I could ill afford.”

  “You cannot be speaking of your financial obligations.”

  “No. But I imagine I would have to surrender the things that give me pleasure and purpose.”

  Cybelline glanced toward the voltaic pile on the table. “Your experiments? Oh, surely not.”

  “Would you tolerate a husband who spends hours in his library and absents himself in the middle of supper because he must record his observations?”

  It was a long time before Cybelline answered. “I did once,” she said quietly, gravely. “I cannot say if I would do so again.”

  Ferrin realized he had unwittingly exposed a wound. “I apologize. I quite forgot that Mr. Caldwell also made a study of things.”

  She nodded. “It is all right. I do not mind talking about it.”

  Ferrin suspected it was truer that Cybelline thought she should not mind. He vowed to tread carefully here. “Did he make a study only of artifacts?”

  “That was his primary interest. And law, of course. You know my husband was a barrister, do you not?”

  “Sir Richard Settle brought that to my attention, yes.”

  “Ah, yes. Sir Richard. The professor seemed to think a man could have but a single passion and encouraged Nicholas to choose one over the other. My husband could not do it. He loved both.” Hearing herself, Cybelline realized it was the same in Nicholas’s more private life. Had she known about her husband’s mistress she would have put the same choice to him. Could he have picked one over the other? she wondered. Perhaps he had loved her after a fashion and would not have been able to choose.

  A chill slipped under her skin and she shivered. Cybelline knew she did not want to be loved like that. She was selfish enough to want to occupy the whole of her husband’s romantic heart.

  “You’re cold?” asked Ferrin. He made to go the fire again, but Cybelline stopped him.

  “No, it’s nothing. The odd shiver. Do not trouble yourself.” In spite of her words, she shivered again.

  This time when Ferrin got to his feet he put himself directly in front of her. Without asking permission to do so, he placed the back of his hand against her forehead, then her cheek. His touch lingered in spite of his intention for it to be otherwise.

  “I told you it is nothing.” Cybelline’s skin tingled under his fingertips. She did not ask him to remove his hand. How was it possible that he could evoke such a response from her? The merest brush with him arrested her heart. She glanced upward and saw the dark centers of his eyes were wider than before. She suspected it was the same for her.

  “You feel it, don’t you, Cybelline?”

  She did not ask him to explain. She simply nodded.

  He took one of her hands in each of his and raised her up. “It is like completing a circuit.”

 
Cybelline remembered the shock Anna had felt when she touched together the leads of Ferrin’s voltaic pile. It was what Cybelline felt now. “Electricity,” she said softly.

  “Yes.”

  She wanted to wail. She closed her eyes instead and allowed herself to experience the current under her skin, the raised charge that slipped along her spine and lifted the downy hairs at the nape of her neck.

  His mouth was gentle on hers, the tug of his lips infinitely soft. Opposites. Attraction. His words came back to her as he nudged her lips apart. The kiss was long and slow and deep, and when he raised his head she felt herself being pulled toward him. She started to come upon tiptoe.

  Realizing what she was about, Cybelline dropped back to her heels. She opened her eyes and searched his face. Desire was stamped on his features in small ways: the heaviness of his eyelids; the slight flaring of his nostrils; the muscle that worked in his jaw. His eyes, though, were the singular feature that communicated his need. Still dark and wide at the center, they were also thoroughly alert and calculating, the eyes of a hungry predator who understood the value of patience.

  Unable to move, Cybelline found her voice. “Anna is—”

  “Sleeping.”

  She swallowed. “I did not come here for—”

  “I know,” he said.

  Cybelline felt his fingers tighten where they laced with hers. It lasted only an instant, as though he anticipated she might bolt, then thought better of restraining her from doing so. It was this willingness to let her go that kept her precisely where she was.

  She asked, “Why have you not left Penwyckham?”

  “How can you not know?” Ferrin smiled faintly, shaking his head. “But you do not, do you? I can see that you don’t.” He raised one of her hands and brought it to his chest. “I want to make things right between us. I don’t know what that means entirely, or precisely what it entails, but I know one aspect is that we must be lovers again, and it most especially cannot be because you wish to punish yourself. I would have you let me take you to my bed this time and give you joy of it. I know you have had pleasure, but you have not had joy. I am not certain you know the difference.”

  Cybelline was quite certain she did not. What he was proposing frightened her, and he seemed to know that, too. This time when his fingers tightened around hers, she had the sense of one being reassured, not restrained.

  The nature of this man was better known to her now, and that had been his doing. She considered all that he’d told her this afternoon and understood it had been done of a purpose, not as a prelude to taking her to his bed—or not only that, she amended—but as a sign of good faith and proof that he meant to trust her. Ferrin was not invulnerable. He’d allowed her to know that, to see where his shield was battered and soft, where a direct blow might flatten him. Yet he stood there still, wanting her, but wanting her permission more.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Show me.”

  He nodded, releasing one of her hands but not the other. Turning, he led her toward the stairs. “Go on,” he said. “I will follow.”

  Cybelline raised the hem of her gown and started up the narrow steps, conscious that he was watching her. As she turned in the stairwell she heard him move away from the bottom of the steps. She could not imagine what he was doing until she heard the sound of the front door being barred. A sensible precaution, she supposed, against the early return of the Lowells. It made her smile.

  At the top of the stairs she stopped and listened at Anna’s door. It was not enough for her that she could hear nothing. She had to know that her child slept. Cybelline opened the door just enough to angle her view to Anna on the bed. Just as quietly, she closed it again and moved on.

  Not knowing quite what to do with herself in Ferrin’s room, Cybelline moved to the window and drew the curtains closed. She was absently smoothing their folds when she head Ferrin enter. Her hand stilled, and she turned.

  He was carrying a stack of logs across his forearms. She hurried toward him and relieved him of two. Until he laid the fire she’d been unaware of the chill in the room. When she would have stepped closer to the flames, he caught her elbow and applied the gentlest pressure to turn her toward him.

  Seeing Cybelline’s sliver of a smile, Ferrin asked, “What amuses you?”

  “I was thinking you must be an excellent rider.” Her smile deepened when she saw his confusion. “It is the way you nudge me in one direction or another. I always end up precisely where you want me.”

  Ferrin’s eyes darted toward the bed, then back to her. “Not yet.” He brushed aside a tendril of hair that lay across her cheek. “You observed that Anna is sleeping?”

  “Yes.” She realized what he had not quite said. “You observed the same?”

  “Yes.”

  She was glad he was not insensible to her daughter’s presence in the next room. “She sleeps soundly,” Cybelline said. “Still, I would not want to risk waking her.”

  Ferrin placed a kiss on her forehead. “Then I shall endeavor not to make you scream.”

  She went a little weak in the knees then and might have even moaned, but she wasn’t certain if the sound came from her or the updraft in the fireplace. When she saw his knowing smile, she knew that it hadn’t been the wind.

  His fingers found one tail of the ribbon in her hair and tugged. The knot came apart easily. He let the ribbon slip through his hand before threading his fingers in her hair. Even without benefit of the late afternoon light, her silky hair was like honey filtered by sunshine. He parted it at her back and brought it forward over her shoulders, sifting through the heavy waves with his fingertips.

  She shivered. He did not mistake it for anything to do with a chill. “Will you turn around?” he asked. She did. The part he’d made in her hair gave him access to the back of her gown. He unfastened the satin belt that lent her gown its empire waist and allowed it to join the hair ribbon on the floor. “Raise your arms.”

  Cybelline obliged, taking his direction as if there were nothing at all peculiar about him playing the lady’s maid. She felt his fingers gathering in the folds of her gown at her waist and hip, then lifting it more slowly than Webb had ever done. It was only at the end, when she might have been smothered by the bombazine that he quickly pulled it out of the way. When his hands did not return to her immediately, she glanced over her shoulder. Ferrin was laying the gown carefully over the back of a chair.

  “You said you would endeavor not to make me scream,” she told him, watching him take his time to smooth the fabric much as she had done with the curtains.

  He feigned curiosity, but his eyes were knowing. “Oh? Do you want to?” Abandoning the gown, he stepped behind her again and placed his hands at the back of her neck. Her head immediately swiveled around and drooped forward to expose the length of her nape. He used his thumbs to massage the cords of tension there and at her shoulders. He kissed her just above the knob of her spine, then higher, then his hands were making fists in her muslin petticoat, and he was raising it just as he had her gown.

  He did not give it the same care but let it join the ribbon and belt. “I think I might indulge in a tantrum myself,” he said, eyeing her back-laced corselet. “Unless you have a knife at the ready to split this thing open.”

  In spite of her liquid limbs and thudding heart, Cybelline learned that she retained the wherewithal to laugh. “You do not like being thwarted.”

  “I certainly do not. And I cannot recall giving you any reason to think that I do.” He plucked at the lacings. Unlike the ribbon and the belt, they held fast. His subsequent attempt to pull the laces only tightened the knot. “Let us agree you will not wear one of these again.”

  “All right.” When her easy capitulation seemed to give him pause, she said, “I do not like to be thwarted, either.”

  That motivated him to inspiration. “A moment,” he said, leaving her side to disappear into the adjoining dressing room. When he returned, he was carrying the razor from his shaving kit. H
e held it up to show her. The finely honed blade gleamed orange in the firelight. “Don’t move.”

  Cybelline did not require this caution. She recalled the footman who had wanted to demonstrate the razor’s efficiency by splitting a hair plucked from his own head. She stood very still and waited. There was the smallest sound—sssnit—then the absence of pressure around her midriff and under her breasts. She did not move even when she heard him set the thing aside on the mantelpiece, nor did she move when he pulled the lacings free of the eyelets.

  “You can breathe,” he said, removing the corselet.

  It was true in every sense. Cybelline filled her lungs.

  “Better?”

  She nodded. When he tossed the corselet into the fire, she gave a start but did not protest. “Infinitely better.”

  Ferrin’s arms circled her from behind. He nuzzled her hair with his chin. The muslin shift she still wore was a flimsy barrier at best. He could feel the heat of her skin through the fabric. “Will you come to the bed with me?”

  His voice, husky and low, and so very close to her ear that she could feel the moist warmth of his breath, made Cybelline know the powerful ache of wanting. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.” She thought he might lift her in his arms as he had done before and carry her to the bed, but he was more clever than that, she realized, and more devious. Taking her to his bed would not be accomplished without her permission, and while she had never denied him, and certainly had initiated their first coupling, she understood that he wanted something different from her now.

  We must be lovers again, he’d said, and it most especially cannot be because you wish to punish yourself.

  Cybelline placed her hand in his and led him toward the bed. “Shall I undress you?”

  “Will you?”

  She’d had little enough experience with it. Nicholas had always come to bed in his nightshirt. The only time she’d touched a man’s breeches to unfasten the flies had been with this man, and he had been a pirate. “Yes,” she said. “Will I need the razor?”

  Cybelline had to place her hand over his mouth as he prepared to laugh. “I did not think you would find the prospect so diverting.”