The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Anyone who knew the aging Victoria knew that the years had not dulled the sharpness of her ears any more than it had her tongue or her stubborn will. When she saw her daughters whispering over the paper that morning in her Buckingham House sitting room, she demanded to know what had them in a tither. Under her formidable gaze they read the article aloud.

  As the wager and its noteworthy participants were unfolded before her, she stilled, scowled, and reddened ominously. She sat for a moment after the reading was finished, smoothing the black silk of her gown with a methodical hand.

  “Landon … that hideous scapegrace,” she announced her opinion with a billow of royal and righteous ire. “The man has no sense of decency, morality, or duty. He’s a perfect example of what comes of too much education. We have always said all that intense brain work is unhealthy. It turns a man inward, makes him amoral and selfish.” She pushed up from her chair and began to pace.

  “Worse yet, he’s giving the old and honorable title of ‘Landon’ a royal drubbing. It’s unconscionable, unpardonable.” She paused halfway back from the window. “What was the name of the lady again?”

  Princess Beatrice glanced back at the newspaper. “Lady Antonia Paxton, Mama.”

  “Paxton? Yes, we remember it. A most honorable name. It was Sir John Paxton who built our Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition.”

  “It says here she is the widow of Sir Geoffrey Paxton,” Beatrice offered.

  “Widow?” The queen’s plump face knotted briefly with concentration, then eased. “Ah, yes. The late Sir Geoffrey’s wife. We thought the name sounded familiar. She is on the board of the Widows’ Assistance League. A fine woman, we are given to think.” She straightened her rounded shoulders and drew herself up to her full height. “If anyone can teach him the value of hearth and home, she can. Let us lend her our good thoughts and the sustenance of our own personal high regard.” Her eyes narrowed and her chin raised regally. “And let us pray she shows the wretch no mercy.”

  “What’s happened? What’s the matter, Auntie?” Antonia rushed into Hermione’s darkened room that same morning, and straight to the armless settee on which the old lady reclined. She turned with a questioning look to Prudence Quimby, who sat nearby. “Is she all right?”

  “I’m fine, Toni dear,” Hermione answered for herself. “Or at least I will be when I rid myself of this merciless headache.” She looked up with eyes that seemed frightfully worn and delicate.

  Anxiety washed through Antonia. “Are you certain?” she said, reaching for the old lady’s cool, dry hand and settling onto the edge of the fainting couch beside her. “I could send for Dr. Bigelow.”

  “That silly man?” Hermione harumphed softly. “He’d just give me one of his pacifying herbals and tell me to loosen my stays. No, my dear, you needn’t fret. I shall be fine.” She patted Antonia’s hand as it rested on her own, then recalled something. “Oh, but his lordship—I was to tutor him in menu planning this afternoon!” The thought clearly distressed her as much as her malady did.

  “Don’t worry, Auntie, I’ll see to it. I’ll—” She bit her lip and thought of whom she could get to replace Aunt Hermione. There was no one else. “I’ll just have to do it myself.” She tucked a knitted coverlet around Hermione and then tiptoed out.

  As the door clicked shut, Hermione’s eyes popped open and she raised up onto one elbow. “Well,” she said, meeting Prudence’s conspiratorial smile with one of her own, “that wasn’t too difficult.”

  * * *

  Silence fell over the sunlit dining room as old Hoskins shuffled out, carrying the last tray of breakfast dishes back to the kitchen. Antonia straightened a small stack of papers on the dining table, then picked them up and arranged and rearranged them, waiting for Remington to arrive.

  She had not counted on having to deal with him at close range. All evening and well into the night she had been haunted by the memory of their kiss yesterday in the service yard, and by her unprecedented paralysis in the face of his size and potent male heat. She had just stood there, letting him kiss her, unable either to rebuff him or to retreat, suffering all sorts of wild and pleasurable physical sensations and thinking all manner of dangerous thoughts. About kisses and intimate touches … and about what other pleasures they could lead to.

  She hadn’t thought about kisses and caresses in a very long time, and had never spent time thinking about the deeper and more intimate pleasures they sometimes preceded. She had kissed and been caressed before. She was a widow, after all. But she had never actually anticipated it, longed for it!

  “Here I am, as instructed,” he declared, startling her. She whirled and found him standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and his head tilted at a provocative angle.

  “I didn’t hear the front door,” she said, blushing and pressing a hand delicately across her pounding heart.

  “That’s because I didn’t use it. There was a ravening pack of newshounds outside again, so I came down the alley and in through the kitchen door.”

  “Very enterprising of you.”

  “I have always been a rather enterprising fellow,” he said, glancing at the papers on the table. “And just what is it I am supposed to learn this morning?”

  “The rudiments of menu planning,” she said, lifting her chin and fixing her gaze on the door frame beside him. She intended to claim and retain control here. “If you’ll recall, we felt it important that you understand something of the effort and skill required in planning meals. So this morning I will endeavor to show you—”

  “You? I thought someone else was to tutor me, that you only oversaw the process,” he said, invading her vision as he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. When she glanced up at his face, he was giving her that insinuating smile that always generated such annoyance in her.

  “My aunt Hermione is not feeling well. I am merely taking her place.” She pointed to a chair at the end of the table. “Please be seated and we’ll begin.”

  He strolled slowly forward, spurning the chair she had assigned him, and came to stand face-to-face with her. “I prefer not to sit, thank you. I always think better on my feet.”

  Precisely what she was afraid of, she thought as he loomed beside her. “Suit yourself,” she said, snatching up her stack of papers and spreading them across the tabletop as a pretext for putting distance between her and him.

  “It must be noted,” she began, when she had finished both arranging papers and retreating a discreet step or two, “that the way we do things at Paxton House is not entirely regular. We have a rather unusual household.”

  “A prodigious understatement,” he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.

  “But virtually every woman in charge of a home is faced with the same task we face: planning meals to meet the needs of her family and household. Firstly, it is important to note that there are certain principles of proper nutrition that are vital to the welfare of body and mind. As you can see, I have outlined for you the foods that medical science has shown should be consumed in order to maintain health and vigor.”

  When he didn’t follow her pointing finger, she lifted a sheet of paper and held it up in his line of sight. “You can see … dairy goods, breads and grains, fruits and vegetables, and meats, fowl, and fish are all required.”

  “Are they indeed?” he said, letting his attention wander past the edge of the paper to her breasts.

  “They are,” she said irritably, feeling as much as seeing the drift of his concentration, watching him pondering whether or not she was wearing a corset today. She raised her list, using it to block his view. “A good part of women’s work deals with seeing to the needs of family members. While making selections from these necessary foods, there are additional considerations. There may be health requirements to take into account … and, of course, personal preferences.”

  “Personal preferences?”

  “Obviously, not everyone likes the same kinds of food. Some people have refined and particular
tastes, while others have more accommodating palates,” she said in her most authoritative tone, directing her gaze and her words into his cravat.

  “And what about you, Lady Antonia?” he asked, studying her with an intensity that made her feel all-too-familiar prickles along her shoulders. “Are you known to be particular? Or are you more the accommodating type?”

  He was at it again, she realized, feeling her heartbeat quicken in spite of her. He was turning every statement, every exchange into a personal and provocative encounter, and she couldn’t allow him to get by with it. She took a deep, fortifying breath and made herself look him square in the eye.

  “Particular. Most particular,” she declared, answering his multilayered question on every devious and suggestive level on which he intended it. “And I make no apologies for it. I am of that school of thought which says there is a wisdom contained within each person’s own physical constitution … which is expressed in preferences for certain foods. The body knows what it needs.” The instant she said it, she knew it was a mistake.

  “It does, does it?” he said, looking her over with a smile that contained an indecent amount of pleasure. “And what does your body need, Lady Antonia?”

  She felt her face heating. The wretch. How dare he stand there, with his insolent eyes and presuming smirk, and torture her with her own verbal indiscretions? She quickly looked out over the table to find a sheet with her name printed on it and held it up beside the other list.

  “Roast fowl, steamed fish, and an occasional bit of lamb at Easter.”

  “That’s all?” He peered around that curtain of paper, looking quizzically down her elegantly rounded body and then back up. “Surely you eat more than that.”

  “Well … of course … I also require grains and vegetables and dairy foods.”

  “But no red meat? No red wine?”

  “Never.” She reddened, knowing what he insinuated. Such foods were widely known to incite the passions. “They don’t agree with me. They’re much too …”

  “Stimulating?” he offered, watching pink blooming in her cheeks.

  “Stultifying,” she countered, goaded to find the right word by his use of the wrong one. “They dull the palate and the senses.”

  “Ummm … but they also warm and enrich the blood.” His gaze slid over her. “And it appears to me your blood could use a bit of warming.”

  She felt him taking hold of the papers, pulling them down, down, to look at her and make her look at him. Abruptly, she surrendered them to his hands and sat down on the chair behind her, turning to face the table. She expelled a relieved breath, but stopped halfway through when she realized that he was dragging a chair down the table and settling on it beside her.

  “Cleo, for instance, can eat nothing but sops, and soft, bland dishes. Her stomach is very delicate.” She saw his hand moving toward her from the corner of her eye, and quickly stuffed the listing of Cleo’s dietary requirements in it.

  “And Eleanor will eat only dairy foods, vegetables, beans, and legumes … things like peas and beans and mustard greens. She has very strong convictions against killing warm-blooded creatures for food.” She located Eleanor’s sheet and thrust it into his handful of papers. “Whereas Molly—having lived all those years with a butcher—is very fond of ham, chops, and sausage. And then there is Aunt Hermione, who will eat most forms of fowl and fish, and Pollyanna, who has a taste for pickled foods …”

  As she called each woman’s name, she snatched up a sheet of paper listing her dietary requirements and preferences, read from it, and stuffed it into his hands. She refused to look at him, but some extra sense told her exactly how far he was from her shoulder—two inches—and exactly what he was doing—staring hotly at her. When she picked up a sheet, he pulled it from her hands before she had a chance to read it. She picked up another and he took it the same way … then another, and another.

  In that slow, inexorable slide of paper, she felt control of the situation passing from her hands to his. He was pulling it from her, little by little, and in the process gently stealing her attention. For some reason she couldn’t summon any outrage or even any resistance. She turned her head slowly and found him leaning close, his eyes clear and compelling, his features polished with an irresistible half smile.

  “I will not need your lists and charts, Antonia,” he said, tossing the lot of them onto the tabletop. “I am of that school of thought which says one can tell what a woman eats just by looking at her. Gertrude, for instance, has a passion for potatoes … and she looks like a dumpling. Old Esther, from your scullery, eats so many prunes she has turned into one, and Pollyanna’s pickled fare has soured her, from the inside out.” His head tilted and his gaze flowed appreciatively over her.

  “And you, Antonia,” his voice lowered to an intimate rumble, “I can tell you exactly what you eat.”

  She sat entranced, unable to move.

  “You love milk and cream.”

  “Gertrude told you that,” she said, her voice a dry whisper.

  “No.” One side of his mouth curled in a lazy, heart-stopping grin. “It is here, in your skin.” He trailed a finger down the side of her face and around her jaw. “It looks and feels like sumptuous cream.”

  She shivered at his touch, feeling the thick, tantalizing vibrations of his voice pouring through her with a warm, clinging richness … like cream themselves. When his hand withdrew, she released the breath she had been holding and felt those liquid sensations trickling down through her to pool in her middle.

  “And cherries. I can tell you love cherries.” His hand came back, gently tracing her lips with its fingertips, back and forth, with lingering and seductive strokes, coaxing them to part. “They are here in your lips … so red … and soft … and ripe. Sweet and tart all at once.”

  It felt as if the underside of her skin were being stroked. Her whole body reacted by tightening: her throat, her clenched hands in her lap, her knees gripping the edge of the chair. That relentlessly gentle touch drifted down her chin and throat, teasing, rousing, caressing, then reversed, rising up her neck and broadening so that he cradled her face in his hand. She felt herself swaying on her seat.

  “But I admit that one thing does puzzle me, Antonia. Your eyes. What can you eat that makes them so blue? Robin’s eggs? Sapphires? Bits of morning sky? It must be something strange and exotic indeed, for I’ve never seen eyes like yours.”

  He was so close that his breath bathed her lips in a stream of warmth as he spoke. Then his face softened into the most heart-stopping expression she could imagine: part expectation, part pleasure.

  “Ahhh, you won’t tell.” He sent anticipation curling through her on a shared breath. “Then perhaps I can still taste it on your lips.”

  It took an eternity for his mouth to reach hers, but in the wait she never once thought of avoiding it. Warm—his lips were lavishly warm, and their heat quickly melted her, tilting her head, molding her mouth to his. It was like sinking naked into a hot tub of water on a cool autumn night; her skin tingled with a sharpness that was somehow both shocking and pleasurable. Her hand came up to brace against him, touching both the warm skin of his neck and the cool surface of his collar.

  Impressions crowded into her senses: scents of sandalwood and male heat, firm flesh beneath her hand, lips that tasted faintly of peppermint. His arms slid around her, pulling her hard against him, and her hands slid around his neck, pulling his mouth tighter against hers. The yearning that had simmered in her through the long night just past rose to the surface. She arched into him, seeking the feel of him against her. Every part of her came alive; her skin flushed, her limbs tingled.

  He drew back partway, raking her swollen, sensitive lips with his, arid tracing slow, delicate circles over them with his tongue. The sensations were tender, adoring—shattering to her. She had never imagined such fineness and subtlety of sensation in a kiss; it was like being stroked by butterfly wings. Then he took the next kiss deeper … claimed her lips
firmly, coaxing a response with the soft velvet rasp of his tongue against the sleek inner borders of her mouth. Then, exploring the range of the possibilities between them, he crushed her lips beneath his, plundering her mouth, demanding her passion, devouring her response.

  Icy-hot shivers of pleasure racked her as she felt him pulling her across his lap, pressing her tight against the hardening ridge in his lap. She felt his hands on her sides, her back, roaming her breasts, reaching for her through the stiff constraint of her garments, and suffered a wild and compelling urge to shed those barriers, to peel every stitch of her clothes away and feel his hot hands on her cool, bare flesh. The core of her grew strangely taut and molten … hungry in a way she’d never experienced. She wanted to touch him, too, to feel his body on hers … inside hers …

  “Beg pardon, ma’am,” came an age-brittled voice from the doorway.

  Antonia jolted back so hard that she nearly toppled from his lap, and as she lurched back onto her own chair, Remington whirled around in an instinctive crouch. Old Hoskins stood there with his shoulders bunched and his mouth drawn into a thin, disapproving line.

  “A female visitor, ma’am”—he gestured to Remington with an impatient hand—“calling for his earlship, there.”

  Antonia was frozen with horror; her heart was pounding, her eyes had trouble focusing, and her lips felt humiliatingly thick and wet. Remington quickly shuttered the need in his eyes and shoved to his feet, adjusting his coat front and cuffs and scowling. It took a moment for him to make sense of what the old butler had said. When it hit him, he blanched and the heat of his desire was channeled into the service of anger.

  “A female?” he choked out.

  “A tall, bossy female … hat like a pile of cowpats and bustle from here to Belgravia,” Hoskins snorted, waving his hand irritably in demonstration. “Lace and feathers everywhere”—his mumble trailed off—“looks like the floor of a damned haberdasher’s workroom …”