She raised an eyebrow in cool consideration. “And where does it end, may I ask?” He was going to have to do better than that if he thought to startle her.
He leaned against the stable door, making her conscious of just how little space there was between them, his eyes lingering ever so briefly on her mouth. His voice was low and private. She was going to have to re-think the whole premise that stables were safe places. “Wherever you want it to, princess. Haylofts, carriages, bedrooms. You decide.”
Her mouth went dry. He meant it. That was his plan. She gave voice to the one thought running through her mind. “Oh my lord, you’re serious.”
He gave a wicked grin. “I’m always serious about seduction.”
Chapter Six
“It’s the ideal solution for inserting me into your sphere of influence.” Hayden paced the short length of the stall door, make an effort not to smile. It was too much fun teasing her, just to get a reaction to his audacious statements. He never knew what he would get in return; a heated scold that made her eyes flash, or a cool, raised eyebrow and a taste of his own audacity thrown back in his face. If it starts with seduction, where does it end? It was a delicious comeback worthy of London’s finest courtesans.
“This way, if I’m viewed as your love interest I have a reason to follow you around and go to the mill. After today, it’s clear I cannot simply walk in and introduce myself as an investigator. I could if the foreman was our ally, but his behavior suggests otherwise. If I tell him I’m an investigator, I won’t get any information out of him.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you really think he’ll be more forthcoming with someone who professes feelings for me? Wouldn’t that person feel protective? Wouldn’t they want to defend me against any perceived harms?”
“Not necessarily if that person was moving on. I won’t be here long. I doubt he’d view me, a nomadic ice racer, as much of a threat.” Hayden gave her considering look. “Unless he fancies you for himself?”
She shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. He doesn’t care much for me.”
“Then we’re set. I’ll play your love interest.”
“Not my love interest, my suitor.” She interjected.
“No,” Hayden corrected. “Love interest.” Just the word ‘suitor’ could make his balls shrivel. It was so permanent. It implied a man armed with chocolates and flowers in pursuit of an end goal. What would he know of such activities? “No one would believe it.” Least of all himself. How could he convince others if he couldn’t convince himself? He pursued pleasure. Permanence wasn’t in his vocabulary. He followed the ice these days and nothing more.
Jenna remained staunch. One narrow, elegantly shaped chestnut eyebrow arched in stubborn determination. “Suitor. I have a reputation to protect. I cannot ride away when the ice melts.” She paused and gave him a considering look. “Of course, I am certain you want to ensure that you can ride away? Small towns can be a bit provincial in their views at times.”
The vixen! He chuckled. She’d rather neatly maneuvered him into conceding the point. One could be a love interest to a woman with a particular type of morals, or lack of them, and escape the entanglement without expectations. But one could not dally with a woman of good repute and expect society to turn a blind eye. To not give the appearance of pursuing the daughter of an upstanding town member with honest intentions might find him hauled to the altar.
Hayden leaned an arm against the stable wall, angling his body close to hers. He’d have had a looser woman in the hayloft by now enjoying the comforts of winter hay on a cold afternoon. “Alright,” he conceded with a smile, “Suitor it is. Any other conditions?” He meant the last as a joke.
“I have one more condition.” Her eyes held his, her body taut as she held her own against his invasion of her space. “I won’t be left behind to play the poor spinster with a broken a heart.” Was that how she saw herself? As a candidate for spinsterhood? With all that glorious hair? With that body? That wit? From his rather male perspective it was hard to imagine and yet she was in her mid-twenties, certainly past the age of a marriageable debutante by London standards. “When you leave, it is because I have rejected you, not the other way around.”
“You reject me?” Hayden mused with no small amount of incredulity. When had that ever happened? He couldn’t recall. But Logan would be laughing his ass off over it. He leaned close to catch the spicy cinnamon of her soap. “It wouldn’t be for real, though.” he murmured, his lips dangerously close to the column of her throat.
“Of course, it wouldn’t be. None of this is… ” She swallowed and he watched her throat work, watched her pulse give a leap. She was trying to deny this attraction, trying so hard to be good. Surely she knew it was a losing battle? He’d given up being good a long time ago. It was much more fun to be bad.
“No, because if it was real,” He let his eyes touch her face, a small knowing smile taking his lips, “I daresay the outcome would be slightly different.”
“I doubt it, Mr. Islington.”
Arousal stirred hard. Did she have any idea what her challenges did to him? They were genuine. She meant them, or at least she thought she did, unlike the other ladies of his acquaintance who said such things never thinking to truly uphold them. They were merely flirtatious tools to achieve a certain end. But Jenna Priess honestly believed she would refuse him. “I’m a competitive man by nature, Jenna.” he drawled. “Statements like that make me want to prove you wrong.” What a delicious game within a game that would be; pretending while pretending. He reached out to capture the curve of her jaw with his hand. “I could make you want me, Jenna. I assure you, you would never want to let me go.”
Hayden bent his mouth to hers, intending a long, sweet kiss, a slow kiss meant to ignite, meant to make her simmer, not burn, not yet. He wanted her to think about the potential of that kiss and more over dinner and long into the night.
“Hayden! There you are. Your afternoon lessons are here. They’re waiting in the stable yard.” Logan strode into the barn and Jenna took a defensive step back, her eyes flashing accusations at him. Damn the man’s timing. He had just gotten started.
“Is it that time already?” Hayden adjusted his greatcoat.
“Yes, it is.” Logan gave him a pointed look. He nodded at Jenna. “Miss Priess, good afternoon. Is that your carriage in the yard or do you need a ride home?”
Hayden noted the first signs of a blush began to creep up Jenna’s cheeks. She would not like being treated as if she were an errant schoolgirl. Hayden found he didn’t like it either. She was not one of his messes for Logan to clean up, not another light skirt to spirit off whenever he was finished with her. It was time to take charge. “Give me a moment, Logan. I’ll be right with them. If you could put them in the office, it would be most appreciated.”
He gave Logan a moment to get the young men settled in the office across the yard before escorting Jenna outside. He would see Jenna to her carriage and he would be damned if he’d let her be ogled by whatever local bloods had come for a lesson in recklessness. It would hardly be an appropriate debut of their fictional courtship.
He bowed gallantly over her gloved hand before handing her up. “Your carriage, Miss Priess,” Hayden said with all the seriousness of an intent swain.
She didn’t buy it. She’d not forgiven him yet for the interrupted kiss. “You didn’t need to see me out. I’m quite capable of getting into a carriage on my own.”
“I’m sure you are.” Hayden grinned as she settled into her seat. The intrepid Miss Priess probably gallivanted all over town on her own carrying out business for her father. “But it’s what a suitor would do.” He gave her a conspiratorial wink and the briefest hints of a smile played on her lips. Despite her chagrin, she couldn’t quite bring herself to resist his charm. He’d take that as a good sign.
He moved to shut the door, but she leaned forward and stalled the motion halfway with a hand. “You should know, you can kiss me all yo
u like, Mr. Islington, but you’re wrong. I’ve encountered men like you before and I will want to let you go when the job is done.”
Hayden stepped back from the carriage and swept her a bow. “Should I interpret that as a gauntlet, Miss Priess, or famous last words?” He sent the carriage off and watched it until it was out of sight. The afternoon seemed a little darker after that, but for a while, it had burned brightly indeed.
Gauntlet indeed! The man was infuriating and he had an incredibly fast postal service at his disposal. She’d been home no more than ten minutes when a note arrived. I’ll call for you at seven o’clock tomorrow night for the assembly. Yours, truly, Hayden Islington. The ‘truly’ was underlined. She could almost hear him laughing as he underscored it.
Jenna sighed and allowed herself a moment to sit down in the blue receiving room. The tea tray had been removed and the room restored to its usual state of neatness during her absence. The clock in the hall chimed five. She really should keep moving. There was much that needed to be done and the day was growing late. She should go up and see her father. There was the housekeeper to meet with, cook needed to discuss the shopping for tomorrow and now, thanks to Hayden, there was a dress to select for the assembly.
She’d not originally planned to go. She was going to use that evening to catch up on invoices and ledgers. But right now, before she tackled all that, she needed a minute. And a drink. Tea would take too long. Her gaze fell on the decanters arranged on the sideboard. Brandy it would be.
Brandy was a mistake. At least pouring it was. Hayden was everywhere in her thoughts; his long fingers on the decanter, pouring a splash into his tea with a gentleman’s casual elan, his hand against her cheek, his mouth against hers. There were other touches too, less gentle, less seductive ones; his hands gripping her, his arms pushing her into the carriage so she couldn’t lose her head publicly about Davenport’s perfidy.
She sipped the brandy and relaxed into the sofa. She’d been exonerated from his imposition of guilt but at what cost? Her foreman had betrayed her and what the Priess Company stood for. Workers had left — had it truly been because conditions had become intolerable and nothing more? Or was there crime afoot with real criminals behind it?
And what had she done about it? Jenna took a healthy swallow of brandy. In retrospect, her plan seemed extreme and reckless. She’d bound herself to a former investigator in a less than professional relationship in the hopes of uncovering the whereabouts of her worker. She’d found an old newspaper clipping about Islington and had decided to take her chances. With workers disappearing regularly, she couldn’t afford to wait until spring and hire an inspector from Lancaster or York.
It was some consolation, she told herself, that she would not have considered such drastic action if the disappearances hadn’t been quite so epidemic. But they were and she had. Now, she was pretending be courted by Hayden Islington. There would be an inescapable amount of notoriety no matter how properly they handled things. She held up her glass, astonished to find it empty so quickly. If this was any indication of how it was going to be, she was bound for trouble. He was already leading her to drink.
Be careful, Jenna, her conscience warned. You have been down this road before. Thanks to Adam Grantham, the second son of a Sussex baron, you know how these stories end. Adam was worth a second glass of brandy, as long as she didn’t fill it to the top. He’d been handsome, clever, full of wit and laughter. Everything was easy with him and for him. Women fell at his feet and he basked in their adoration. Not unlike a certain ice racer she knew.
She’d been four years younger than she was now and she’d fallen too, believing that his laugh, his smile, his easy touches were for her alone. And they might have been but his motivations weren’t. A second son of a baron was hardly better than gentry and he was looking for a fortune. He wasn’t bound by aspirations of a noble marriage. His freedom had made it all that much easier for her to believe he would marry her. Second sons of barons might be light in the pockets, but they could marry the daughters of rich cits without society looking too far down its nose at them.
Under those circumstances, she was perfect for him and he knew it. She’d thought she’d known it too right up until the night she’d caught him with the pretty barmaid. Adam had protested and apologized, groveled and begged. It didn’t change his desire to marry her. He’d said so in a thousand different words. The truth was, it probably didn’t change his desire to marry her and her money. But he would not be faithful to her. She could see the years of their marriage laid before her in a pattern of err, apology, and err again, no matter how glorious the apology that followed.
Too bad she’d discovered that truth after she’d slept with him, after she’d indulged in believing the fantasies he spun. Adam was fun to be with, and everyone knew it in the worst sense of the phrase. Jenna tossed back the last of her brandy. All clouds had silver linings. That mantra had sustained her after she’d broken things off with Adam. The disaster of him had become her armor now, the means by which she protected herself from other less-than-pure advances. Thanks to him, she could detect fortune hunters halfway across the assembly rooms.
That was the problem with Hayden. He wasn’t a fortune hunter and perhaps that’s why he’d been able to take her at unawares. She’d not yet met a man less interested in her money. He was interested in freedom, in roving, in his horses and his insane risks. It was still something of a mystery to her as to why he’d taken on her case. She wasn’t naïve, she understood part of it. He liked a challenge and she’d certainly played to that. The case was a chance to interact with her, to convince her she wanted him.
I could make you want me. Even now, the words had the power to send a little thrill down her spine. He was so sure of himself. He couldn’t fathom a woman not wanting him and he wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t that she didn’t want him, it was that she couldn’t want him. Her reputation was all that sustained her and the company. As her father’s representative, her virtue was of the utmost importance. She must be circumspect in her personal dealings. It was hard enough for a woman to be taken seriously in business without every man she met thinking she could be had. She knew too that her reputation was already under some speculation. She did things no proper woman would do. She drove around town alone, went to parties without a chaperone.
She’d not been wrong to insist on him playing the proper suitor. But she had no illusions he would play by the rules. His abbreviated kiss in the stables today was proof enough of that.
Jenna absently ran her finger across her lips, tracing the trail of his kiss. There was no argument to make for having been coerced into it. She should have stepped away long before he’d had a chance to do it. She’d known it was coming. He’d given every signal possible in the closeness of his stance, in the tilt of his head, the gaze of his eyes lingering on her mouth.
She’d fallen into that kiss far too readily to give any credence to her words to the contrary. She’d once thought Adam’s kisses had been pleasure personified, but now she knew better and perhaps unfortunately so. Hayden didn’t simply kiss with his mouth, he made love with it. Expertly, exquisitely, leaving no doubt that he would be more than capable of providing pleasure in other ways too. Quite the calling card, were those kisses, preludes to other pleasures.
Jenna fanned herself and stood, a little wobbly at first. She should have eaten something with the brandy. She laid a hand on the back of the sofa to steady herself. Today had been full of should haves. She hoped her hard won armor would be enough. It would have to stand up not only to him but to her imagination as well.
Chapter Seven
She might be just the tiniest bit excited. But that was all Jenna was willing to admit as she gave herself a final look in the mirror. She let Edie, one of the girls who came in to clean and help with housework, arrange her hair and help her dress-another sign, she was excited about the prospect of an evening out. Jenna seldom let anyone fuss over her and certainly never for anything as frivolou
s as dressing. The Priesses were wealthy, but given to less pretension than some of the other industrial rich in Kendal.
“You look lovely, Miss.” Edie stepped back and cocked her head, critically surveying the piled mass of curls. “Hmm. Maybe a few more pins, we don’t want it all coming down.” She poked two more in, testing them for security and reached for another handful.
Jenna laughed and swatted her hand away. “Stop, Edie, it’s fine. I’ll be a pincushion of hairpins at this rate.” She turned her head to the right to take in the effect of the upsweep from the side. “It’s very pretty.” She did like the softer effect. The single long ringlet falling playfully on one side, the rest piled high in the illusion of being loosely assembled.
“Just a few more pins, to be sure, Miss.” Edie protested. “We can’t have it coming down too easily for Mr. Islington.”
“It won’t be coming down at all for Mr. Islington.” Jenna corrected.
“He’s a handsome man.” A little smile hovered on Edie’s lips as she maneuvered the last two hairpins in place. Like half the town, the female half, Edie was more than a little infatuated with the ice racer. “I wouldn’t mind him taking my hair down.” she added, a faint blush creeping up her cheeks at the confession. “His friends are easy on the eyes too, that Carrick Pierce is a fine one. The other is too stern for me, though.”
Logan Graeme was too stern for her as well. Jenna hadn’t appreciated the hard look he’d given her at the stable as if he’d judged and dismissed her as just another of Hayden’s women. The irony being, that she wasn’t Hayden’s woman at all, not in that sense, nor did she plan to be. There was too much heartbreak down that road. But there was also curiosity which was becoming harder to tamp down with each day.
What would it be like to be with Hayden Islington? A woman only had to look at him to wonder. Knowing she shouldn’t, didn’t stop Jenna from looking or wondering. Was it possible to find out without committing herself to heartbreak? If it was, might she risk it? She had no maidenhead or marital prospects to protect.
Reckless Rakes - Hayden Islington Page 6