The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  In short order he found himself apron clad once more and climbing up onto the ropes at the head of an old tester bed to haul the mattress up and flip it over. Afterward they went from one room to another, stripping beds and turning mattresses, and by the third room Eleanor’s nose was red and her eyes were full of tears.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, waving his expression of concern aside and dabbing at her watery eyes with a handkerchief. “This is Cleo’s room. She has one of the feather mattresses, and I cannot be around them without my eyes watering up.”

  He watched her blow her nose, then start to climb back up onto the foot of the bed. “Stay where you are,” he ordered. “I’ll manage this one myself.”

  Seizing the unwieldy bag of feathers by the edge, he hauled and twisted and strained. The stuffing kept sliding around inside the ticking, and as he jerked furiously on it, he smacked his head on the bed frame. He would have cursed roundly if he hadn’t heard Eleanor gasp, “Are you all right, your lordship?”

  “Fine,” he said through a clenched jaw. “Excellent. Never better.” From that moment his battle with that feather mattress became a matter of male honor; he was going to turn the cursed thing or die trying. After several minutes he succeeded, and while they were resettling and replumping the feathers, he asked Eleanor who usually did such work for her.

  “I do it myself,” she answered apologetically. “There is a trick to it, you know.”

  “A trick,” he said, running a hand back through his disheveled hair. “Of course. There would be.” There was a trick to every bloody thing in this house, he thought. And for the tenth time that day, Antonia waltzed into his thoughts with her blue eyes twinkling at the sight of him all rumpled and sweaty and irritable. He propped his fists on his hips and demanded, “Just what do you have planned for my next torture?”

  “Not quite a torture.” She smiled and patted him on the arm. “Just a good beating.”

  In short order they had rolled and trundled three large Persian rugs to the service yard at the back of the house, beside the kitchen. Eleanor handed him a woven cane rug beater, and after a few instructions, he flailed away until the puffs of dust subsided and Eleanor stepped in to rescue the rug. By the time he was through with the second rug, he was tiring, and the third one got a decidedly gentler thrashing.

  Antonia stood by the door into the small, high-fenced service yard, watching Remington put his back into every swing of the rug beater. His gentlemanly sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his tie and starched collar had been removed, and an apron was tied snugly around his narrow midsection. She had lost an argument with herself and had come to see how he was getting along. Now she found herself staring raptly at his broad shoulders and long arms … watching his trousers draw taut across his thighs … absorbing the singular and intriguing maleness of his movements … remembering the heat of his mouth on hers …

  He halted, straightened, and turned to who he thought was Eleanor. “I think this one’s finished. I can’t raise so much as a puff of—” He halted at the sight of Antonia, then straightened with a frown.

  “Slavery was outlawed long ago, you know,” he said. “I could report you.”

  “Oh?” The impact of his dark eyes shook her free from the trance, and she strolled down the steps and into the yard, giving the rug a thorough inspection. “And who reports it when thousands of women are forced to do this very work—for the very same wage you are receiving?” When his scowl deepened, she smiled. “Women’s work is harder than it seems, is it not? It requires a surprising amount of energy and stamina.”

  “For serving women, perhaps,” he countered. “That is what you have me doing, servant work.”

  She laughed softly. “Precisely what most aspiring, middle-class women would have the world believe, that this sort of thing is done entirely by their servants. But in fact, middle-class women, and often ladies as well, must don working clothes and pitch in themselves, managing, directing, and working right alongside whatever servants they can afford. Houses, you see, take a great deal of care. Even the most devoted of housekeepers can accomplish only so much. And good help is hard to find.”

  “Not, apparently, for you. You seem to have all the help you could possibly need.” He propped his arm on the end of the rug beater, scowling as he appraised her. “By the way, just what sort of work do you do, Lady Antonia?”

  For all his glowering countenance, his words were curiously free of anger.

  “I do what most women of substance do: keep the books, pay the bills, meet with financial advisers, oversee the rest of the work, and help wherever it is needed.”

  She ducked under the clothesline and peered over the rug at him. “I’ve beaten my share of rugs, your lordship. And turned the crank of Eleanor’s dusting machine. And peeled quite a little number of potatoes. A woman in charge of a household has to be able and willing to do whatever is necessary to take care of her family.” She found her gaze migrating to his and jerked her head aside, patting the rug with her hand, testing his work.

  “Then, of course, there is charity work. I sit on the board of the Parish Council of St. Matthew’s diocese and on the board of the Widows’ Assistance League, of which the queen herself is a primary patroness. Being a widow herself, she has taken quite an interest in our work. I have had two personal letters from her.”

  He ducked under the clothesline as she spoke and came up beside her, tugging at her senses the way the slight breeze tugged at her hair.

  “Why do you do it?” he asked, looking down at her. There wasn’t a trace of condescension in his voice. “Why do you take these women in? There has to be a less drastic way of getting decent help.”

  “They aren’t help, they’re family,” she said, losing her internal battle and looking up into his dark-framed face. “My family. I’ve taken them in because I like them very much, and I think they’ve been handed a dismal and unfair lot. They are widows and I’m one, too. I know what they have faced in losing their husbands.”

  The breeze tugged at the neck of his shirt, and she couldn’t help the way her gaze drifted to it, couldn’t help thinking how completely different he looked without his collar and cravat: how male, how … accessible. She was fascinated by the way his shoulders seemed to grow as he propped his hands on his waist, the way he canted his head as he looked at her, and the way he spread his long legs as if bracing to take on the world. And just now she was achingly aware of the intensity of his gaze.

  “Where is your real family?” he asked.

  “If you mean my parents, they both passed away several years ago. My only close relative is my father’s brother, the Duke of Wentworth. But I have not seen him since I married Sir Geoffrey.” A curl from her temple blew across her cheek, and she pulled it from her eyelashes and flipped it back.

  “Your grandfather was Duke of Wentworth, then,” he mused, watching her trying to tame that flirtatious lock of hair. He edged closer. She stepped backward, straight into the heavy rug, which stopped her like a wall. He leaned still closer.

  “Y-your lordship!” Her hands came up between them, pressing against his ribs as he leaned into her.

  “Remington,” he corrected.

  “You’re … you’re …” How could she say what she was thinking? That he was warm and solid in a way she hadn’t quite expected? That touching him and kissing him were all she had thought about since that morning? That she found him compelling in a physically arousing way? How could she say that the feel of his ribs against her arms knocked every other thought from—His ribs.

  “You’re not wearing your corset,” she charged softly, looking up into his eyes.

  “I couldn’t breathe,” he said, dragging his gaze slowly over her face.

  “That was the idea.”

  “Was it?”

  He laughed softly, a low, chest-deep rumble. An instant later his hands slid around her waist, feeling her. She drew in a sharp breath she couldn’t seem to expel.

  “You aren�
��t wearing one either.” His smile broadened as his hands molded to her waist and began to move, exploring and claiming that sensitive curve. “Not entirely proper of you, Antonia. But entirely interesting of you. No corset. It gives a man pause to wonder just what other little hypocrisies you practice beneath those proper clothes.”

  He bent toward her, his eyes sliding over her upturned face as his hands glided down her back, exploring every curve and hollow of her through her clothing, melting her resistance and dissolving her determination. He had wanted to touch her, she could see it in his eyes. Before she quite realized how it happened, she was standing in the circle of his arms, pressed fully against his long frame.

  Her hands were caught between them, and to free them, she had to slide them along his stomach. His body felt taut and hard as her fingers splayed, covering as much of him as their span would allow. That firmness, that entrancing male symmetry was made for wielding a sort of raw physical power that was both foreign and forbidden … and all the more alluring for it.

  His face, lowering slowly toward hers, was all intriguing angles and arresting curves. Prominent cheekbones and strong chin, broad brow and finely sculptured nose; every part fit with every other in perfect balance. His lips were parted, his head tilted, and she instinctively turned her head to a complimentary angle, holding her breath, anticipating that surge of warmth, that first taste of him.

  Pleasure, thick and sweet, poured through her from the instant of contact. Oh Lord—it was exactly as she remembered, and more. Her senses opened, her lips parted under his, hungry for the taste of him. He toyed with her lips, licking, teasing her until she moaned softly and slid her arms around his waist, molding herself against him, coaxing from him the deeper, more intimate sensation she craved. She felt his hum of approval resonating through their joined mouths, and then felt his tongue … experienced the lush, erotic penetrations that seemed to reach into her passions, her emotion, down into her very—

  “Lemonade, your lordship!” Eleanor’s voice rang out cheerily over the small fenced yard.

  His head snapped up. Hers jerked aside. He stumbled back and she bolted away several steps. Both were red-faced and dark-eyed with embarrassment when Eleanor spotted his head above the rug—“There you are”—and carried her tray of refreshments around. “Oh, Lady Toni! I didn’t know you were here or I’d have brought you a glass as well.”

  “It’s just as well you didn’t,” Antonia said hoarsely, turning her face away from Eleanor, inspecting the rug behind her. Her lips felt hot and conspicuous. “I was just checking on his lordship’s progress.” She tossed him a turbulent look that she prayed would pass for indignation. “Be sure to keep him busy, Eleanor. Remember: idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  And idle lips are the devil’s playground, she realized as she sagged against the wall in the stairwell moments later. The proof was the way her lips were on fire this very moment. The wretch had done it again: caught her alone, cozened and tempted and kissed her to the ends of her endurance. Her heart was racing and her whole body was trembling. What was it about Remington Carr that seized her senses and turned her into a witless, libidinous creature bent on possessing his mouth?

  Once more, by the barest of margins, she had been saved from his baser impulses. And her own. As she recovered enough to proceed up the stairs to the small downstairs parlor, the thinness of that margin of safety became humiliating. He kissed her and had taken unthinkable liberties with her person. Sweet heaven—she could still feel the heat of his hands on her waist and rising up her back!

  She picked up her lap desk and carried it to the window seat, jamming it onto her lap when she was seated, pinning herself in place. A few calming breaths later, she told herself that she was at least making progress. He wasn’t as snappish and irritable as he had been at first. Perhaps her ladies were beginning to get to him. If she could just keep her distance and keep her wits about her, there was every reason to believe she might win her wager and change his abominable attitudes toward women. Twelve days … they had twelve days yet to go. Suddenly that seemed like forever.

  Remington helped carry the rugs back to their respective places, trying to behave as if nothing had happened. But it felt as if a great deal had happened, and he wasn’t sure he understood it all. For the second time in as many days, he had had her in his arms and had kissed her within an inch of her soul. And for the second time he felt rattled and hungry and unaccountably disturbed. What in blazes was wrong with him?

  Standing there with her in his arms, feeling her softness against him, and tasting her ripe-cherry mouth, he had felt something slipping inside him, something nameless and worrisome. It felt like control and it had nothing to do with mere events. His stomach slid lower, toward the source of that feeling—his loins.

  The fact that he was slipping deeper and deeper into lust for the woman who was his sworn enemy alarmed him. But a moment later he was vindicated by the thought that he hadn’t been the only one warmed and willing. Her arms around him and her sighs of pleasure had said she too was affected by their kiss. A wave of cool, restoring reason poured through him. He was making definite progress here.

  No more of this ridiculous trepidation, he decided as he washed for supper. At the very first opportunity Antonia Paxton was going to find herself on her back, being loved to the very end of her soul. And she was damn well going to like it.

  That night Remington dragged himself through his front door in much the same condition he had been in the previous night: frazzled, aching, and weary to the marrow of his bones. Phipps and Manley took one look at him, poured him a killer draft of brandy, and steered him straight into a steaming bath.

  When he came out of the tiled bathing room into his ornate Louis XIV bedchamber, Uncle Paddington was sitting on the armless divan, smoking his briarwood pipe and looking grave indeed. In his hand was a folded newspaper, and from the look on the old boy’s face, Remington knew it had to be a copy of Gaflinger’s.

  “What’s got into you, Remington?” Paddington Carr demanded, removing the pipe from his mouth. “Wearing corsets, and making wagers with women, and doing female labor …” He looked indignant in the extreme. “What next? A blistering case of housemaid’s knees?”

  “It’s a wager. A trifle,” Remington declared, shrugging and mopping his brow with the towel hanging about his neck. “Nothing for you to be concerned about.”

  “It is very much my concern.” Paddington tossed the paper aside and raised an admonishing finger. “Never said much about your yen for strange politics … that female emancipation, and other such nonsense. But things have finally got out of hand. As your father’s brother, I feel obliged to step in and do a father’s duty by you.” Rotund, ruddy-cheeked Uncle Paddington pushed to his feet and stood with his arms crossed over his ample chest.

  “See here, my boy, it is your duty to preserve both the family name and the family dignity. It’s high time you gave up this wretched shilly-shallying and settled down … married and established a nursery.” He shook a finger again. “You need an heir, my boy. Nothing like begetting heirs to steady and settle a fellow.”

  “To strangle a fellow,” Remington said into his towel as he wiped his face.

  “What was that?” his uncle said, scowling.

  “I said I’ll get around to ‘steady and settled’ soon enough,” Remington declared, louder and more sharply than he intended.

  “Better not wait too long,” Uncle Paddington said sagely, clamping his pipe back between his teeth and letting his gaze and thoughts drift. “All the good women will be snapped up. I should know, my boy. Happened to me. While I was dilly-dallying, the one true love of my life up and married another. Never found a woman half so pretty or clever or sweet-natured, ever again.” His voice and attention trailed off, as they often did, into events long stored in his mind.

  Remington watched the old boy’s shoulders round and felt a painful surge of protectiveness toward him. Disappointed in love and living
a life overshadowed by regret, the Carr men seemed to have an exceptionally bad time of it with women. His father had had too many, his uncle too few. And he had had—

  “A nursery.” Uncle Paddington roused enough to look at Remington with a smile that bore traces of transitory bewilderment and sadness. “Always liked babies. Never had any offshoots myself … you were the closest to it. Dem frisky little thing. Keen as a whip-crack. Used to make me your hobbledy horse, y’know.” He crossed that narrow boundary into reason’s twilight again. “Little blighter … you wrecked several of my best cravats. Never could stay angry with you, though. Still always tiptoed into the nursery at night … to hear your prayers …”

  Remington’s jaw clamped fiercely against the hot tide of feeling surging into his chest. In those precarious days Uncle Paddington had been far more of a father to him than his own self-absorbed and pleasure-seeking sire. He had no intention of spoiling the old boy’s dreams with the nasty jolt of his loathing for marriage. But shortly, Paddington himself roused to burst that fragile bubble of memory. He straightened, focused both his gaze and his mind once more, and leveled a firm look at Remington.

  “Babies require women. What we need to do, my boy, is get you a wife.”

  Remington groaned.

  The story of Remington and Antonia’s wager appeared in no less than nine newspapers the next morning, including The Times. Fully two thirds of London awakened to accounts of the wager, which were grandly embellished and embroidered—not the least of which was an imaginative description of Remington’s newly discovered aptitude for swinging a rug beater. One enterprising news writer had apparently scaled a neighboring fence to look down into the service yard for that scoop.

  From peers to shopkeepers, from household domestics to Liberal Party leaders, London tongues were awag with the juicy details of the earl’s latest outrage. And since The Times was one of two papers the queen permitted in her personal residence, the tale was soon rattling boxes there as well.