“No, no. That’s all right.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt down. “I think I’ll go to bed early tonight. I’m a bit tired.”
Jane passed out of the room without looking at either of them, and a horrible feeling settled like a rock in Hannah’s stomach.
“Geoffrey Pembroke has a great deal to answer for,” Mathilda said with quiet malice.
“Geoffrey Pembroke?”
“He was Jane’s fiancé. His father and my brother were friends at Eton.”
“What happened?”
“Geoffrey broke it off when my brother lost his fortune.”
“Oh, that’s awful!”
“Not really. Geoff was a spiteful little boy, and I have strong suspicions he grew up to be a cruel man.” Mathilda took a deep swallow from her glass. “Freeing Jane from Geoffrey is the only good thing to come out of the whole mess.”
A thought that had been nagging at Hannah floated to the surface. “When you first arrived, she was always afraid Rhone would become violent with me if I displeased him.”
Mathilda nodded. “She used to be vivacious. Downright bubbly. Then Geoff started calling, in preparation for their marriage, and everything changed.”
The older woman downed the last of her whiskey, and Hannah rose to refill it along with her own. The idea of someone being cruel to Jane was incomprehensible. She was sweetness personified. Hannah’s knuckles whitened on the decanter.
“Didn’t someone realize?”
“Jane insisted everything was fine. She said it was just nerves.” Mathilda accepted her glass back with a nod. “But when he ended it, she was relieved. I should have known.”
They sat in silence for a while, both lost in thought. Hannah’s heart ached for Jane. It must have been miserable. She must have felt so alone.
Mathilda shook herself out of her reverie. “Have you considered actually marrying him?”
“Rhone? No.” Yes. But only in the farthest reaches of her imagination, and never with any real intention.
“Why not?”
“Rhone would never—”
Mathilda interrupted her. “Hogwash. That man is half in love with you, at the very least. Why not, really?”
Hannah hoped Mathilda was wrong. That would complicate things beyond measure. “This is the first time I’ve ever been free, and it’s wonderful. I can’t go back.”
“Rhone doesn’t seem like the type to—”
“Behave selfishly, with little to no concern for the effects of his actions?” Hannah raised an eyebrow.
“Fair enough. Still, you should consider it.” Mathilda’s expression turned sly. “I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
Hannah blushed. “All the more reason I can’t marry him.” She took a deep swallow of her whiskey, remembering the aftermath of her parents’ brush with love. “My father adored my mother, and it devastated him when she died. I never want to feel that way. Not ever.”
“I suppose this is the end of my career as a chaperone, then.”
“Oh no! Mathilda, I didn’t realize.” Hannah could hardly fault Rhone for selfishness when she was behaving no better. Must she make a mess of everything?
The older woman laughed; a full-throated, mirthful sound. “Hannah, the fact that I have had even one charge as a chaperone is an affront to every notion of propriety. Trust me, it’s entirely for the best.”
* * *
The clock chimed eleven as Gavan set down the last of his notes. He was finished. Every account was balanced, every tenant problem addressed, every outstanding correspondence seen to. There was nothing left to do.
Gavan felt the panic start to seep in, the darkness advancing on the edges of his vision. There had to be something left to do. He had to go discuss the solutions to the clan matters with Ewan! His cousin would want to know what he had come up with, and Gavan wouldn’t mind some praise over his industry. Excellent.
At this hour, Ewan would be in his room. Gavan scooped up the pages and left the study, ascending the stairs two at a time. He entered the room reserved for Ewan’s visits and stopped dead.
“Ewan.”
“Gavan.”
“Are you injured?” Gavan asked his cousin.
“Nae at the moment, why?”
Gavan gestured obliquely to Hannah’s maid, bent over Ewan’s lap. “I thought maybe Betsy was inspecting some sort of wound.”
Ewan’s mouth tilted up at the edge. “So much for yer reputation as a man o’ experience.”
“My experience is irrefutable. I am merely trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“It’s my fault, my lord. I seduced him.”
Gavan turned on Betsy. “I thought you were going to play piquet.”
“We did, my lord.” She glanced sideways and grinned. “He lost.”
They could at least try to seem contrite.
Gavan massaged his temple. “What happened to playing for money?”
“Aye, well, in retrospect that would have been fine. But I expected to win, and I dinnae think it would be right to take the lass’s money.”
“So instead you decided to subject her to this vulgar spectacle?” Gavan couldn’t stop the rising volume of his voice. Hannah was going to murder him when she found out.
Betsy rejoined the discussion. “Actually, my lord, the ‘vulgar spectacle’ was my idea.”
Gavan blinked at her.
“Your cousin doesn’t seem to mind.” She glanced at Ewan and grinned again.
“I dinnae mind at all, lass.” Ewan winked back at her, and Gavan felt his stomach turn over.
He had to put a stop to this. “Aren’t you supposed to be keeping an eye on me? What would Hannah think?”
“Oh no. She sent word a few hours back. Since it seemed like you were well, she told me to take the night off.”
Well, that was no help. Gavan sat on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. He needed to think.
Ewan cleared his throat. “Gavan. What are ye doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Can ye nae do it somewhere else?”
Could he do it somewhere else? This was his house! Since when was Gavan the morally responsible one? Aha! Morality. There was an idea.
“Betsy, what are your intentions toward my cousin?”
“Extremely dishonorable, my lord,” she said without a hint of shame. “I intend to have my way with him and cast him aside.”
For perhaps the first time in his life, Gavan was speechless. His reprobate of a cousin had the audacity to start laughing. Betsy shushed him and sat down next to Gavan.
She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Is it me you’re worried about, or him, my lord?”
“I’m worried about myself. If Hannah thinks you were mistreated or taken advantage of—” He couldn’t finish the thought, let alone the sentence.
The little maid’s eyebrows raised. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but were you planning on telling her? Because I’m certainly not.”
Gavan considered that. He supposed there really wasn’t any need for her to know. With that weight off his shoulders, Gavan felt infinitely better about the situation. “If yer quite finished, kindly go bother someone else,” Ewan declared.
Bother someone else. Yes. That was exactly what he would do. Gavan bid them pleasant evening and left with a plan forming in his mind.
Chapter 12
Hannah was startled out of the adventures of Robinson Crusoe by her window slamming up in its casement. A pair of boots swung themselves over the ledge and into her bedroom. If her mind weren’t still trying to pull itself back from the high seas, she would certainly have screamed. Fortunately, the upper half of an extremely drenched Rhone appeared before her good sense, saving the household from disruption. He pushed dripping hair off his forehead and gave her a toothy grin.
Hannah rushed to the window. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so.” Gavan grabbed the lap blanket she had dropped in her hurry and scrubbed some of the water from his hair.
“How did you even get up here?” She looked out to the ground below.
He sat down in the armchair she had vacated and pulled off a boot. “I crossed over from my window. There’s a ledge.”
Hannah stuck her head out the window, craning in the direction of his town house. “It’s not even a hand span wide! There’s nothing to hold on to!”
“I assure you, I have excellent balance.” His other boot thumped to the floor.
“It is pouring down rain out there. You could have fallen to your death.” Hannah turned to see his coat landing on top of his boots. “What are you doing?”
“Getting dry. As you cleverly pointed out, it is raining quite vigorously.” Rhone’s waistcoat joined the pile.
Hannah gaped as he stripped off his soaked shirt. Gavan was standing in her bedroom, divesting himself of his clothes. Perhaps she had fallen asleep while reading. It would make much more sense if this was an extremely vivid dream.
He wrapped the blanket around his waist, and his breeches dropped to the carpet with a soggy squelch. Definitely a dream.
He tousled his still-damp hair again, leaving it in disarray. “So. What were you doing?”
“Reading before bed,” she answered, distracted.
“What book?”
“The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” Hannah closed her eyes to block out his naked torso so she could think straight. “Why are you here?”
“I was bored. Ewan went to bed already.”
She heard rustling and opened her eyes to find him under the covers in her bed. He was bored? Oh, bloody hell. “I’m not dreaming, am I?”
“Of course not.” He stopped in the middle of fluffing the pillows he had piled up. “Do you usually dream about me?”
“No.”
“But if you did, I would be naked?” He raised his brow suggestively, before languidly stretching in her bed. His satisfied groan reverberated through the room. “Honestly, woman. Where do you buy your furniture?”
“My furniture? Switzerland.” Hannah’s entire thought process had fogged over when he put his arms behind his head. The corded muscles of his bicep and forearm had stolen what little reason she had managed to gather since he came through her window.
She stood there staring at his arms, for God knows how long, before she realized he had stopped asking her questions. She shifted her gaze up to his face and found him looking back at her with amusement.
“You’re naked. In my bed,” she said.
“Yes, I am,” he said gently.
“It’s distracting.”
“Would you like to join me?”
Would she like to join him? Of course she would. She wanted to strip off her own . . . Oh God. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“My nightgown is . . .”—Hannah considered how best to say it—“indecent.”
Amusement was replaced with overt interest. “You don’t say.”
Included in the delivery from Madame Baudette were nightgowns clearly intended for a marriage bed. They were beyond scandalous, but they were also gorgeous, and Hannah had been unable to resist them.
“You’re going to think I’m silly.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
Hannah sighed. She supposed it could hardly be worse than baring her backside to him in the Conduitts’ parlor. She took off her wrapper and laid it at the foot of her bed.
Unlike the voluminous nightdresses she grew up with, Madame Baudette’s creation was fashioned in the slimmer silhouette of a shift. Crafted in a fine silk charmeuse, it was nearly sheer and ever so soft. Sections of the silk had been replaced with delicate lace, the overall effect of which was extremely revealing.
Gavan blinked at her.
Hannah twisted the mass of her hair nervously, trying to arrange it over her breasts for some semblance of modesty. “It didn’t seem right to let it go to waste just because we won’t actually be married. It’s very soft.”
“I can imagine.” He took a deep breath. “For the record, when I came through your window my intentions were purely conversational.”
She didn’t believe that for a second. “You came through my window and immediately started taking off your clothes.”
“I was wet. And cold.”
Hannah made a skeptical sound with her throat.
“I think you’d better get in bed now,” he said seriously.
“Because you’re cold?”
He smiled. “Obviously.”
* * *
Madame Baudette had the devil’s own imagination. Gavan thought it would be better once Hannah was out of sight under the covers. He could not have been more wrong.
The silk rubbed against his skin, warmed by Hannah’s own, as she scooted and wriggled into place beside him. The torture didn’t end when she finally settled against his side with her head on his chest. His senses were alert to every inch of her beneath that flimsy scrap of fabric.
“So,” he said, clearing his throat. “How about that rain?”
He felt, rather than saw, her smile.
“Are you still cold?” Her fingertips started wandering through the damp hairs on his chest.
“Not as much, no.”
She flattened her palm as her hand traveled lower, down the center of his rib cage. “Are you sure? You still feel a bit chilled to me.”
The muscles of his abdomen spasmed in anticipation. She traced them, smoothing and soothing them with her touch. He was in serious trouble.
“Hannah.”
“No,” she said firmly. “We’re in my bed. I get to decide.”
“I’m not sure you understand. There are certain realities—”
“I understand perfectly. Betsy told me it can be painful for a man to do the sort of things we’ve been doing without any release.”
Of course she did. Damn the intrepid Betsy straight to hell.
“We can’t make love, Hannah.” He was only a few crucial inches of hand movement from burning his promises to the ground.
“That’s fine,” she said with an alarming level of control. Her hand shifted closer to his complete downfall. “There are other ways, aren’t there?”
He breathed deep through his nose as his imagination provided him with vivid examples of Hannah performing them all. “Yes.”
When she finally touched his manhood, the contact seared through his entire body. His imaginings paled in comparison to the reality of her palm on his sensitive flesh. He struggled for control, for perspective, for anything to keep from losing himself right then and there.
“It’s so soft!”
Soft. What? “Hardly.”
“No, I mean, the skin is velvety. I didn’t expect that.”
“What were you expecting, scales?”
“Obviously not, but . . .” She wrapped her hand around him and squeezed experimentally. Her voice was drowned out as all of his senses failed him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that last part.”
“I said it’s so rigid. I would have thought it would feel more like marble does.”
“Ahh.” He took a firm grip on the mattress with either hand in an attempt to weather her curiosity.
Hannah’s fingers traced the length of him from base to tip, torturing him with their light exploration. They stroked over the orbs of his testicles, testing their weight.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said with a frown.
“What?” Gavan knew for a fact everything she was touching was in good order.
She ignored him in favor of pulling back the covers an
d sitting up on her heels. She rolled the fragile sack in her hand, watching the motion. “Oh! How interesting.”
Mother of God. “Hannah.”
She leaned over him, and her hair fell across his thighs. Gavan sucked in a breath.
“I’ve never seen a naked man before. I’m investigating.”
Of course she was. He was burning up with lust, and she was investigating.
She exhaled, and his cock jumped in response to her breath. “Fascinating!”
Bloody hell. Gavan closed his eyes and tried to think about starving orphans. He would not disgrace himself or hurry her endeavors. His feet arched, toes curling involuntarily, as she danced light touches across his thighs.
“Does it hurt? It looks like I’m hurting you.”
“It’s likely I will die very soon.” He heard and felt her pause as she considered that.
“I feel like you’re exaggerating,” she said after a moment.
“Well, I feel like—” His full-throated groan finished the sentence for him as she grasped him firmly and stroked.
“Betsy said men liked that, but it seems like it was painful.” Her misgivings would have been adorable under different circumstances.
“Betsy is a terrible influence. Do it again.”
He heard her soft chuckle and felt her firm grip follow it, moving down him in a slow, deliberate motion. Once, twice. He lost count when he dragged a pillow over his face to muffle his response. The last thing they needed was someone in Hannah’s household coming to inquire.
He was approaching the limits of his control when she stopped abruptly. Only a creature of devilish origin could torture a man so effortlessly. His fiancée was a hellcat in truth. Silky strands of hair drifted across his thighs, and once again he felt the warm whisper of her breath.
The inquisitive touch of her tongue sent white light searing through his entire body. When it was tentatively followed by the moist heat of her mouth, he jammed his fist against the pillow. A low litany of every curse he knew in five different languages was swallowed by the feathery blockade as she explored the taste and texture of him. She found a steady rhythm, and his heels dug into the mattress, bracing him against the rising tide. His hand tangled in her hair. To stop her? To encourage her? He couldn’t be sure. And suddenly the point of no return was upon him. He shoved the pillow aside as he hauled her up his body, holding her close to his side and burying his face in her hair as he finished himself with three quick strokes.
A Convenient Engagement Page 15