Sarah meant to offer some mischievous reply. But before she could form the words, St. John’s mouth left her ear and began to trace a searing path down her throat, stopping at the edge of her high-necked gown to nip a bit of flesh between his teeth and then soothe the lover’s bite with the tip of his tongue.
His hands, meanwhile, journeyed along her shoulders and down her back before coming to rest on her buttocks and pulled her hard against him. His mouth covered hers in another urgent kiss as his fingers fisted in her skirt and inched it higher. She could feel the heat and weight of his erection where it pressed into her belly. Twisting in his embrace, she turned to face the window. This, surely, was the moment to pull away, to give them both time to come to their senses.
Then again, perhaps that moment had already passed.
Although she did not speak, he seemed to sense her uncertainty. “Let me, Sarah,” he urged. “Let me watch the play of moonlight across your skin. Let me touch you. Taste you.” He nipped impatiently at her earlobe. “Let me give you the pleasure I so stubbornly denied you—denied us both—years ago.”
Sarah thought back to the nights following their wedding and released a shivery breath. “There’s more?”
A low, knowing laugh. “Much more.”
His right arm encircled her body, drawing her against him, and his hand cupped her left breast. As his thumb stroked across her nipple, which peaked instantly at his touch, the other hand came around and began to unpin her bodice.
In a moment the dress gaped open to her waist and nothing stood between Sarah and the night air but a shift worn thin with age. She chanced a glance at his hand, which continued to stroke and fondle her breast, and she could see the dark shadow of her areola beneath the clinging fabric.
She had not imagined that simple touches—some tender, some firm—could produce such an effect. Her breathing grew shallow, and she was conscious of a slow ache building between her thighs. She fought to keep from thrusting out her chest, from urging herself shamelessly against his artful caress.
At least such tortures could not last long. A moment more, perhaps, and he would do what was necessary to bring things to their swift and inevitable conclusion.
She would always have the memory of his touch, the heat of his palms, the pleasing roughness of his fingertips against the soft fabric of her shift and the softer flesh beneath.
But in a moment, surely, she would be back on familiar ground.
As he turned her slowly to face him, however, her attempts at reassurance skittered away like droplets of water on a hot skillet. His mouth claimed hers in another searching kiss, and she opened to him eagerly, unable to hold back a gasp as he squeezed her nipple between his fingertip and thumb, sending a pulse of electricity through every fiber of her being.
When his mouth at long last left hers, he blazed a trail of kisses down her throat, over her collarbone, and into the valley between her breasts. Pausing only to untie her shift, he snagged one hardened bud between his lips and suckled her, alternating once again between gentle teasing and heated urgency. His tongue traced the puckered edges of her areola, then snaked along the outer curve of her breast, laving it with luscious strokes before turning to the other and beginning the delicious torture anew.
Uncertain what to do with her hands, Sarah curled them around the stone window ledge to steady herself; after a while, St. John found them there, gently coaxed them free, and lifted her arms to encircle his waist.
He backed into the room, drawing her with him in a dance unlike any that had ever graced a ballroom. Her dress hung loose, and impatiently he brushed it over her shoulders. As Sarah followed where he led, the dress slid down her body and over her hips until it pooled around her ankles and she could simply step through it and into his arms, naked but for her shift, stockings, and shoes.
St. John released her only long enough to shuck off his greatcoat.
“Cold?”
At the shake of her head, he turned and spread his coat on the ledge behind him and then scooped her up like the princess in some very naughty fairy tale and laid her atop it.
The coat formed a meager barrier against the damp, chilly stone, but Sarah was oblivious to discomfort. St. John knelt before her and removed her shoes. Then, trailing his fingers along her calves and over her knees, he untied each garter and rolled each dark stocking down her leg and over her foot.
She tipped her head back and closed her eyes as his hands closed around her foot and began to massage it, his knowing touch easing away the inevitable aches caused by scrambling up the bluff. When he’d done the same to the other foot, his fingertips slipped gently along her calf, tracing the contour of lean muscles developed by many such climbs.
“You have such lovely legs, Sarah. Like polished marble. But,” he murmured, sliding his hands up her legs until he reached the hem of her shift, “no sculptor could hope to reproduce these curves.”
As her last remaining garment edged higher, baring her knees, panic and passion flared and mingled in Sarah’s chest. She could not possibly let him continue—not because she did not want him to touch her, but because she did. She had survived all these years, missing something she had never really known.
How could she expect to go on surviving once she knew?
The pad of one thumb swept across her thigh, while his other hand stayed at her knee, gently coaxing her legs apart, as if he sensed her hesitation but had no intention of allowing her to deny her own pleasure.
“Sarah?” Although the room was almost dark, she could still see the question in his eyes.
Daring to touch him, she speared her fingers into his hair and drew his head toward hers for another kiss and a wordless plea that he would leave at least a piece of her heart intact after this night.
Less demanding but no less hungry, the kiss, too, urged her to relent. She felt his hands slip beneath her shift, between her legs, ascending slowly until the tips of his fingers brushed the dark triangle of hair at the joining of her thighs.
And she opened to him, fearing and welcoming the madness that would follow.
As he stroked into her secret recesses, she felt unfamiliar wetness there, an ache that built and built. When she gasped into his mouth, he rewarded her with a firmer touch. His thumb nestled against the place that was the center of her pleasure and circled, slowly, until her hips were rising from the cold stone, lifting to meet his hand, begging for something, anything, everything.
Just when she was sure she could stand it no longer, St. John broke their kiss and lowered his head to her lap. His lips brushed the delicate skin of her inner thigh and she felt him inhale.
“Mmmm . . . bluebells.”
The tone was playful. So were his fingers. And his lips, which were nibbling up her leg to join them. Surely he did not mean to kiss her—
When his tongue touched the place where his thumb had been, she jerked back in surprise, nearly sliding off the makeshift bed, scraping one shoulder blade against the rough, damp stone.
One strong arm snaked around her hip, steadying her, holding her captive to a kiss more intimate than she could have imagined. But recognizing her uncertainty, his tongue gentled, moving to explore, to tease, to taste—just as he had promised.
At first it was more than she could bear. And then, as the torment built, it was not enough. She found herself curling her fingers in his hair and shamelessly urging him higher, back to the spot where he had begun. As his tongue stroked and then his lips suckled that secret spot, Sarah felt every muscle in her body contract, straining toward something, climbing to a place where the air was clear and thin. When at last she reached the summit of that uncharted mountain, the peak burst upon her like a sudden summer storm—a lightning strike, sharp and bright, followed by peals of thunder, echoing for miles.
She came back to earth after what seemed an eternity in that heady ether and found herself on his lap, wrapped in his arms, shivering although she was not cold. To her shock, she realized that he was still ful
ly clothed. Surely he meant to take his pleasure in return?
Her fingers slipped beneath his coat, intending to push it over his shoulders, but he reached up his hands to stay her. When she parted her lips to ask why, he laid one finger against them and looked past her, listening.
Once the thump of her own heartbeat began to fade from her ears, it was replaced by the sound of someone climbing the mud-slick path. A feeble patch of light bobbed across the ground in time with the careful footsteps.
“Mrs. Fairfax?” called a voice.
Sarah squeaked and jumped off St. John’s lap. With guilty fingers, she scrabbled about on the dirt floor for her dress, jerked it over her head, and then fumbled to secure it, the pins having scattered. Wordlessly, St. John rose and wrapped his greatcoat around her, shielding her from the intruder’s gaze.
“Mr. Norris,” she exclaimed. “Whatever brings you out on a night like this?”
“Mrs. Potts told me where to find you, Mrs. Fairfax. I’ve news you must hear,” he said, starting a bit when St. John emerged into the circle of light cast by the lantern. “Oh, Lieutenant, I didn’t see you there. Very glad you’re here, though. These are bad tidings, indeed, and I hate to have to deliver them.”
“What is it, sir?” Sarah demanded.
“The old earl is dead,” Mr. Norris replied, looking from one face to another for some sign of reaction, oblivious to what he had interrupted.
St. John curved his arm around Sarah’s shoulders and shook his head. “A sad day for Haverhythe, I’m sure. But from what my wife has told me, not entirely unexpected.”
“No, no,” the vicar acknowledged with an impatient wave of his hand. “In fact, he’s apparently been gone some weeks already. His nephew, Mr. Harold Bessmer, has been invested with the title, and the new Lord and Lady Haverty are expected at the court tonight. But in advance of their arrival, his lordship sent this—”
Mr. Norris thrust a damp letter forward, and Sarah pulled one trembling hand from the depths of the coat to take it from him. With St. John looking over her shoulder, she read:
By order of the seventh Earl of Haverty and out of respect for the dead, the celebration planned for Michaelmas is hereby cancelled.
Chapter 13
Listening to the droplets of rain as they rolled from the brim of his hat and pattered onto the flagstone floor, St. John found it nigh impossible to believe that the weather would improve in time, even if permission to hold the festival could be restored. He had come on a fool’s errand, then.
Fitting, perhaps, for unless he had changed markedly in the years since St. John had seen him last, Harold Bessmer was a fool.
The footman who had opened the door had gone to fetch the butler, leaving St. John dripping where he stood, in the cold, dark, medieval hall of Haverty Court. Two massive fireplaces bracketed the room, but a fire had been lit in neither; the rugs were up and the tapestries down. On occasion, a servant scurried across the far end of the hall without glancing his way, as often out of livery as in it. He settled in for a long wait and allowed his mind to wander.
The earthy smell of dampness leached from the stone walls surrounding him. He had never found it a particularly erotic scent, until last night. With a shudder that had nothing to do with the chill in the air, he drew his greatcoat more tightly against him, but as he did, he could swear her scent rose from it—the sweetness of bluebells, overlaid now with a more sensual musk. Smell her, after so many hours had passed? Aye, and hear her, feel her, taste her, too.
He shifted awkwardly, adjusting himself. He was tempted to blame today’s lingering frustration on the vicar’s untimely arrival with a dose of chilly reality, preventing him from finishing what he had started.
Except that he had never intended to go so far. In the nights after their wedding, he had spilled his seed inside her body, but had otherwise ruthlessly held himself in check, as if he had known, instinctively, that to give anything more of himself to this woman would be to give her everything.
Last night, he had not meant to do even that much, imagining, he supposed, that by keeping his breeches buttoned, he had kept the most important part of himself secure. He had focused on Sarah’s pleasure quite deliberately, imagining somehow that such an act would be less intimate.
It hadn’t worked quite as well as he had imagined it would.
In giving her pleasure, he had got a great deal of his own. In baring her body to his gaze and his touch, he had also bared a part of himself to her, a part he had never meant to expose. Now he found himself plagued by a feeling that was equal parts unwelcome and unexpected.
Desire for the woman his father had coerced him into marrying.
Desire for a wife who had dishonored him.
Or had she?
Her reaction to his touch in the watchman’s hut had been all innocence—the innocence of a virgin bride on her wedding night. If she had indulged in a dalliance since their marriage, it had been a brief and—dare he say—unsatisfying one, long ago.
To his shock, the jealousy he had once felt at the thought of another man’s knowledge of her body now paled in comparison to the jealousy he felt at the possibility she might have shared something deeper with Brice. Something she had kept hidden from her husband three years ago, although he had caught tantalizing glimpses of it over the past few days.
Her soul, perhaps.
“Fairfax!” St. John’s musings scattered when the newly ennobled Earl of Haverty himself strode across the floor with hand outstretched.
The years had not changed Harold Bessmer. Of course, since he had had at seventeen the thinning hair, fleshy jowls, and sagging paunch of a man of middle age, this was not saying a great deal.
Clasping his hands behind his back, St. John jerked his chin in a polite but aloof bow. He could not very well despise Bessmer for having done what he himself had done—along with almost every other young man of his acquaintance: living well and gambling recklessly on the mere promise of an inheritance. Having been a few years behind him at Eton, however, St. John knew of several other very good reasons to despise him.
Haverty was not the sort of man of whom he wanted to ask a favor, but as he had come to do just that, he would have to do his best to swallow his disdain.
“Good God!” Haverty boomed, turning the spurned offer of a handshake into an awkward invitation to precede him down a corridor off the central hall. “How long has it been?”
“More than three years,” St. John replied as they negotiated a maze of twists and turns that led at last to a wood-paneled study. “I’ve been abroad.”
“Well, and what brings you here?”
An excellent question. He had told himself that it was in his own best interest for the festival to go on tomorrow. Otherwise, Sarah might hold him to his promise, insist on staying longer.
But he was beginning to fear that the truth was somewhat more complicated—as truths are wont to be.
“I had . . . family business in the area.” St. John bowed to Lady Haverty, who rose from her place near the hearth, where a meager fire did little to heat or light the room.
“Business. Figured as much—not a place to tempt a man like you, eh? You remember Fairfax, m’dear,” he said, turning to his wife.
“Of course. How pleasant to see you again, Lord Fairfax.” The countess curtsied with a mild smile. “I saw Lady Estley in town just as we were leaving,” she added. “And the lovely Miss Harrington was with her. It always struck me as a shame you did not marry Miss Harrington, you seemed so perfectly suited.”
St. John greeted the notion with an absent nod. Eliza knew, and at one time had claimed to share, his reservations about his stepmother. Now, however, it seemed the two had grown quite inseparable. Had something happened to inspire a change in Eliza’s feelings? Or was she merely acting the part of a good friend, attempting to keep his stepmother’s more extravagant tendencies in check?
“Of course, I understand that your late wife, God rest her soul, was a great heiress—
even if the fortune was made in trade,” Lady Haverty continued. She spoke with the air of one whose own fortune had been amassed in a far more suitable manner, even if it were far less substantial. “But perhaps, now that you’ve been given a second chance . . .” She cut him a sly glance, as if embarrassed by the forwardness of her own suggestion.
St. John could make no reply. He had been given a second chance, all right, just not quite in the way the countess imagined.
“Where are you staying, Fairfax?” Haverty interjected, clearly bored by the direction the conversation had taken.
“The Blue Herring. The rooms are”—he hesitated before deciding upon the most generous adjective he could safely apply—“dry. Mostly.”
Lady Haverty gave a theatrical shudder. “Oh dear. If only we’d known. I do wish we could offer you better hospitality, but things here are in such disarray. This drafty old pile . . .” she said, her eyes wandering about the room. “Really, had we realized the house was in such a state of disrepair.”
“I’ve half a mind to tear it down and start fresh,” proclaimed the earl. Whatever the years had given Harold Bessmer, good sense did not seem to be among the accretions. “Something in the modern style,” he added, “rather like you’ve done at Lynscombe, what?”
Simpering, Lady Haverty gave an eager nod of assent.
“My father would no doubt be honored to hear you express such approval,” St. John replied with the slightest of bows. After almost a lifetime spent away from his family home, Lynscombe was little more than a hazy memory to him. He wondered sometimes why he had given in to his father’s demand that he wed a fortune to save it. “But as the improvements of this century were made necessary by a fire in the last, I cannot recommend such extreme measures.”
His hosts laughed rather uncertainly, and after a glance at her husband, Lady Haverty seated herself again, freeing the gentlemen to follow.
After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, Lady Haverty asked, “How long do you mean to stay?”
To Kiss a Thief Page 13