by Betina Krahn
Her eyes closed and shortly he felt her grip on his neck loosen. From the rhythm of her breathing, he could tell she had fallen asleep. He drew a deep breath, and for the first time felt the years creeping up his spine.
Antonia had stood in the doorway, hidden by the partially closed door, watching the exchange between Remington and Cleo. Cleo’s compensatingly loud voice had carried in the quiet house, and Antonia had arrived just in time to hear the last part of their conversation. Now she stood, transfixed by the sight of him holding old Cleo against him as she slept. She felt a sliding sensation in her middle as he shifted and freed one hand, then gently tucked wisps of white hair back into Cleo’s bedraggled lace cap. Swallowing hard, she stepped out from behind the door and into his vision.
He reddened at the sight of her, and she could see his shoulders straightening as he scrambled for an explanation of his compromising position.
“She … ummm … fainted, and I caught her,” he declared in a defensive whisper. “Then when I made to lay her down, she wouldn’t let go of me … demanded I hold her a while.”
“She did, did she?” Antonia said softly, gliding forward. She could read his embarrassment, could feel it as if it were her own. It was boyish and sincere, disarming in the extreme.
“You don’t believe me,” he charged.
“Oh, I believe you,” she said with a laugh that was dangerously warm, even in her own ears. “Cleo always has had an eye for a handsome man, and she’s perfectly shameless about taking advantage of an opportunity with one.” Halting beside the sofa, she bent and pressed the back of her hand against the old lady’s pale, downy cheek. She seemed warm enough, and Antonia straightened, searching his unexpected and utterly appealing chagrin.
“What I have trouble believing is that you honored her request.” She couldn’t help the bit of wonder that crept into her voice as she trained her eyes on his elegantly clad chest. “There must be a heart in there, after all.”
Their eyes met, and in the stillness of the library, seconds, minutes, or whole eons might have passed; she had no way of telling. The ache in her chest spread downward through her, weakening her knees. His expression was turbulent, but through that she glimpsed a calmer center, a hidden softer aspect to his keen-edged character. It was all she could do to keep from reaching out to try to take hold of that inner man.
A distant noise, the closing of a door, set reality rustling around them. His eyes darkened and lowered to Cleo, and the moment was past.
“Would you be willing to carry her upstairs and lay her on her bed?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice from betraying the turmoil inside her.
He nodded and slid to the edge of the sofa. Shifting the old lady in his arms, he thrust to his feet and carried her toward the door. Antonia led the way to Cleo’s room and they deposited her gently on her bed. For a moment they stood side by side, looking at her.
“She’s not well,” Antonia said quietly. “Of late she spends more and more time with her memories and less time with us.” She glanced up and found a surprising bit of understanding in his expression. “We’re worried about her.”
He nodded, and from his concerned expression she had the strangest feeling that he really did know what she meant. She turned for the door, and he kept pace with her. When she closed the door behind them, he was so close she could feel his warmth, could catch his dusky, sandalwood scent. Her heartbeat quickened. Against her better judgment she looked up. His eyes were again that warm-chocolate color.
“Thank you for being so kind to her.”
The air seemed to sweeten and thicken around them.
He was so close, she thought … with a whole world of warmth unexplored inside him.
She was so tempting, he thought … with those clear, bright eyes that seemed to shine their beguiling feminine light into his rawest and most tender emotions.
He was trembling, and the thought that she would see it was all that kept him from reaching for her there and then. After a moment she lowered her lashes and turned away.
He watched her walking down the hall toward the stairs and felt as if she had just unlocked the door of his heart and left it standing wide open. He turned in the opposite direction.
Minutes later he found himself breathing hard, standing in the linen room on the third floor. He ripped off his coat and seized a rag and a sooty lamp globe—anything to take his mind off the disturbing sense of connection he had just felt with Antonia Paxton, and off the rebellion occurring in his passion-starved loins.
Chapter Nine
That night, after Remington left, the ladies gathered in the main drawing room, as they usually did of an evening. Most knitted or worked on stitchery, though some wrote letters or played cards while they listened to Victoria play the pianoforte.
“You know what his lordship needs?” Prudence said, loudly enough to carry above the music. Every head in the room came up, including Antonia’s. “A wife.”
The words and the music died together on the air as Victoria ceased playing to stare at her. Several pairs of eyes darted Antonia’s way, then back to Prudence. “I think he needs a wife,” she repeated. “There he is—handsome, well-to-do, unattached. Perfect husband material. I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself, Lady Toni.”
“Perfect h-husband material?” Antonia said on a rising note.
“Truly, a wife might be just the thing for him,” Eleanor agreed earnestly.
“He can be quite a gen’lmun,” Gertrude offered. “All them nice manners, an’ that handsome smile o’ his. Now that we got him peelin’ a proper potato, he’d make some widow-woman a right sweet fellow to have around.”
A wave of consensus swelled around Antonia, forcing her to her feet in order to keep her head above it. “How could you even think such a thing, knowing his vile views on women?”
“Oh, I ain’t seen no vile stuff. Been right respec’ful, he ’as,” Maude put in.
“And you were saying only two weeks ago that it was time to choose another matrimonial project,” Prudence Quimby reminded her. “I know you usually choose the widow first, but since you already have a prime bachelor under your own roof, why not start with him?”
“Why not? I-I’ll tell you why not,” Antonia said hotly, then had to scramble to come up with a plausible reason. “The man is a sworn enemy of women and marriage.”
“Oh, that. Every man talks big when he’s a bachelor,” Pollyanna responded, with an authoritative nod that was echoed by others about the drawing room.
Antonia backed away from her chair to face them with her hands clenched at her sides and her stomach contracting into a knot. “Who on earth could I possibly hate enough to sentence to a lifetime of wedlock with Lord Carr?”
“She has a point there,” Prudence put in, taking that point in her own direction. “Who would we get for his lordship? What sort of woman would he like?”
Antonia felt whatever had such a grip on her stomach squeezing tighter. What sort of woman would Remington Carr want?
“More to the point,” she countered frantically, “what sort of woman would put up with him? He is arrogant, argumentative, amoral, and utterly without …” She was going to say decency and compassion, but after seeing him with Cleo that afternoon, her conscience rebelled furiously at such a lie. “Without …”
Apparently she couldn’t think of a thing he was utterly without; his flaws came exclusively from excesses. Too much determination, opinion, wit, experience, passion, and sensuality. Rampant, overwhelming sensuality. And nerve. The thought made her face catch fire as she stammered to a halt.
“He would need someone wellborn, gently reared.”
“And lovely, too. She should be young like him, and pretty as a picture.”
“And she should know about running a house—all the work involved. And how to deal with servants—his lordship undoubtedly has a whole raft of servants.”
The list they reeled off made Antonia unaccountably furious.
&nb
sp; “She should have a bit of music in her,” Victoria put in from the piano bench.
“Smart dressing, too—she would need a sense of style and taste,” Florence Sable added. “As a countess, she would have to carry herself with grace and dignity.”
“As his countess she would have to carry a club!” Antonia snapped, coming out of her embarrassment. “This is absurd. Listen to you.” He had condescended and patronized and somehow managed to charm the socks off the lot of them. The realization produced a sense of betrayal in her. She strode toward the door, but turned back briefly. “I won’t hear of saddling some poor, unsuspecting woman with his wretched attitudes and excesses. There will be no more talk of marrying him off!”
“Sorry, my dear,” Aunt Hermione said, tucking her chin. “We had no idea you would feel so strongly about it. He seems to be softening up nicely, and we thought it might be good to think about his future.”
“His future, auntie, is his problem. All I want is his present.”
They sat a moment in silence after she sailed out the door. Hermione turned to the others and let a wicked little smile bloom on her face. It was quickly matched by others. “That went well enough. Did you see how flushed and irritable she was at the thought of marrying him off?” She glanced at the door, then back at them, beaming.
“Excellent. Just excellent. I believe our Toni may have finally met her last bachelor.”
An hour later, lying in her bedchamber, swathed in silk and cocooned between cool linen sheets, Antonia felt the heat of her own remarks setting her conscience aflame. All she wanted was Remington Carr’s present, she had said; just enough of his time to teach him some respect for women and perhaps a gram of humility in the bargain. And it was a lie.
The heat of her burning conscience spread to her naked lips, then trickled down her body to warm her breasts and womanly core. She turned onto her side, then to her stomach, punching down the bolsters and searching for a position that could relieve the arousal she was feeling as memories of their encounters shuddered through her. Full, hot kisses … openmouthed and searingly sweet. Warm, masterful touches … deliciously penetrating and endlessly desirable. Those tactile remembrances were bad enough, but now she had another, more potent memory to contend with: the sight of him cradling old Cleo in his arms, stroking her hair, and the bared-soul look he had given her afterward. There was indeed a heart in him, and her ladies had managed to reach and to breach it.
The sheets and her nightgown tangled around her legs as she turned again and again, trying to squirm away from her own longings. Tonight there was no refuge from them, or from the fact that she couldn’t bear the thought of him spending his life and his passion with another woman. And the only possible reason for her deep, visceral reaction was that she wanted him herself. And the strength of that desire shook her to the marrow of her bones.
Her blood simmered in her veins, her skin felt naked and hungry, and her limbs ached with years of unspent embraces. As she tossed and turned, her garments rasped softly against her body. The sensitive tips of her breasts began to tingle, then to burn. Soon her loins were aching to feel the burden of his driving male weight.
It had been nearly five years since she had given herself to a man. Sir Geoffrey had ceased to visit her bed after the second year of their marriage, owing partly to his health and partly to his self-deprecating sensibility. He was an old man, he had told her, and she deserved better. He was a wonderful man, she had responded, and there was none better. He had smiled sadly, touched her face with heartbreaking tenderness, and turned away. And she had slept alone from that day to this.
Now Remington Carr was interrupting her sleep and making her want what she had consigned to the darkest, most forbidden regions of her being. She hadn’t thought of physical pleasures in a very long time. But since the other day, when he kissed her and boldly ran his hands over her body, pleasure was all she could think about. And tonight, in the fragrant darkness, in the rising warmth of the spring night, it was twice as bad. His presence, in her house and in her mind, was opening doors to desires that she sensed she might not be able to close again.
Untangling her legs from the covers, she threw back the sheets and squeezed her eyes shut against the ache growing in the core of her body.
She couldn’t wait to get him out of her house. But the darkness around her whispered that when he was gone, she would never be quite the same.
By the end of the first week, the number of news writers waiting outside Paxton House had dwindled by more than half. But those who were left were a tenacious lot indeed. They were there when he arrived in the morning and there when he departed of an evening. They began shinnying up streetlamps and climbing atop fences to peer into Paxton House for a glimpse of the earl in action.
Antonia and her ladies had been forced to draw the front curtains and keep them closed, for even the smallest detail made for juicy reading at their crassly inventive hands. One story reported that he was kept on his knees and forced to scrub floors, another told of him prancing around on beds wearing only an apron and a smile, and a third recounted his shopping trip, faithfully detailing every item he bought but speculating nastily on the quantity of prunes in his purchases.
With grist for their scandal mill so meager, their minds quickly turned from the reporting to the conjuring of events. The earl was closeted in a house, day after day, with a dozen women. Something had to be going on. Just what, they led all London to wonder, was the earl learning from all those females? Had women’s work begun to change his mind about women? Had the Bastion of Bachelorhood finally met his match in the Paxton household?
Remington had steadfastly refused to read the several papers that were dropped on his doorstep each morning. However, it was growing more and more difficult to ignore the news writers collected outside Antonia’s house. They quickly had learned of his backdoor arrivals and now both entries to Paxton House were haunted by scandal-hungry correspondents.
How did it feel to be the only cock in the hen house? they demanded. What was the big attraction at Paxton House? Surely he wasn’t coming there just to scrub floors and carry the ladies’ shopping baskets. Had he suddenly developed a taste for mutton dressed as lamb?
Low and disgusting as such insinuations were, he ignored them and continued on toward the house … until the odious Rupert Fitch heaved into his sights, hot-eyed and determined to get a rise from his imperturbable quarry.
“Or maybe that Lady Antonia’s been teachin’ you a few new twists on the ol’ crinkum-crankum, eh? She’s a mighty fine piece of—”
Fury erupted through Remington’s facade of indifference, and he went for Fitch with both hands, seizing him by the coat and collar and slamming him back against the gatepost.
“You putrid little slug—you print that filth and I’ll see you flayed alive—” When Fitch’s eyes bulged and he gasped for breath, Remington released him abruptly and strode for the front doors with his chest heaving.
He stood inside the door collecting himself and purging the crimson from his gaze, while Hoskins waited with outstretched hands for his hat and walking stick. The speed and violence of his reaction stunned him. He had acted out of raw passion and instinct, and it baffled him that he had allowed Fitch’s badgering to affect him so profoundly. What was happening to him? The sound of the butler muttering “Poor bastard” brought him back to his senses. He looked down to find Hoskins’s time-weathered face scowling up at him.
“You don’t like me very much, do you, Hoskins?” he said curtly, handing over his hat and gloves. The old boy tossed him a rueful look as he turned away.
“You ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell, your earlship.”
Remington’s jaw set as he watched the irreverent old retainer shuffle toward the kitchen. Hoskins obviously believed he was doomed to lose his wager with Antonia. Such skepticism from the only member of his own sex who shared the experience of working within this womanly conclave was unsettling.
He squared
his shoulders and strode into the drawing room, then stopped dead at the sight that greeted him. Antonia was standing by Aunt Hermione’s chair, helping to pin a day cap in place over the old lady’s spun-silver hair. She turned to greet him with a womanly smile, and he felt a sudden, powerful contraction in his chest.
“I am here,” he declared, hoping his distress wasn’t evident in his face. “To begin week two.” He stiffened as his eyes slid down her fawn-colored silk dress, noting the way it hugged her waist and draped gently around her hips. Her auburn hair was curled around her face and was swept up at the back into a mass of curls, high on her head. She looked so different—like rare, translucent porcelain set in sunlight—that he was momentarily undone. It took a moment for him to reassemble his wits and mark the reason for the difference in her; this was the first time he had seen her in anything besides mourning colors. She was radiant.
And he was in trouble.
“Eleanor will teach you about floors this morning,” she said, smiling as she approached. “And this afternoon Florence and Victoria will give you lessons in mending and sewing. You have a busy week ahead of you, your lordship. I hope you made wise use of your Sabbath.”
Remington hurried up the stairs to the linen room, tore off his coat, and slapped an apron around his gentlemanly vest and trousers. Shortly he was wielding a broom and mop as if they were the oars of a boat and he was hurtling downstream toward a roaring waterfall.
By afternoon he had regained his equilibrium and was able to report to the upstairs parlor for his sewing lesson with a modicum of male skepticism. Florence Sable and Victoria Bentley, he soon learned, were accomplished seamstresses who not only did mending, but designed and stitched garments for the ladies of Paxton House, even Antonia.
“She doesn’t have a modiste or dressmaker of her own?” Remington said, watching them laying out an assortment of sewing paraphernalia around him and thinking that all those sharp metal edges and points looked vaguely menacing.