The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  Remington managed two words. “Why not?”

  “That’s why not,” Cleo said, thrusting the figurine into his hands. He looked down at the birdcage and saw inside a bird with plumage a faded shade of pink. “He would have locked me up. I couldn’t live like that. Soon after, I met Fox Royal.” Her gnomelike grin softened into a heartbreaking smile of longing.

  “My Fox gave me a nest, not a cage. And when I wanted to fly, he flew with me.”

  She patted his arm and rambled off among her other memories, leaving him to stare at that dusty bit of porcelain in turmoil. He thought of his father’s penchant for choosing disastrous women and wondered what would have happened if old Cleo had said yes to Rutland’s first proposal and he had made her another, more permanent one. Rutland wouldn’t have been the first young nobleman to embarrass his family by bringing home an actress-bride. If it had been so, then perhaps Cleo would have been his mother. And his life, as well as his father’s, would have been vastly different.

  The insight struck: there were two different kinds of women in the world. Some women were Hermione’s and some were Hillary’s; some were Carlotta’s and some were Cleo’s. And how a man chose among them had a great deal to do with whether his life was broad and fulfilling or cramped and miserable.

  The question roiled up inside him with alarming urgency: just which kind of woman was Antonia Paxton? Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to fit her into his new classification scheme, and her defiance of his neat new categorization unsettled him.

  Antonia Paxton was the kind of woman who took on impossible challenges and somehow managed to come out on top. She was clever, determined, passionate about her causes, and entirely capable of employing deviousness and subterfuge in the service of her heartfelt convictions. Under duress she was cool and controlled and virtually never at a loss for words. She was a woman with a point of view and a plan of action to back it up. Aunt Hermione certainly had the right of it when she said Antonia had a very hard head.

  He felt an odd crowding in his chest as he remembered that in the same statement Hermione had also declared that Antonia had a very soft heart. One after another, his recent experiences with her played through his memory: the fond smile she reserved for her ladies, the gentleness of her touch on Cleo’s sleeping face, and the way her eyes lingered on him when she thought he couldn’t see. With a bend of thought he experienced a vivid recall of her lush passion and responsiveness as she lay beneath him … of the passion, wonder, and confusion that had swirled in her luminous eyes when he kissed her … and of the tender sense of discovery in her erotic touch. Hermione, he realized, was right again. She did have a remarkably tender side.

  She was a little bit Carlotta, a little bit Cleo … and a great deal more that was uniquely Antonia. She had a most desirable set of curves, a dry wit, and a wicked tongue that chose the most tantalizing times to turn sweet. She fascinated him. She annoyed him. She aroused him as no woman he had ever known. And now she had managed, with a bit of help, to make him see women in a different way.

  The fact that he was thinking of her in such terms—remarkable, passionate, desirable—jolted him. Apparently she had made him see her in a different light, too. He shook his head in disbelief. She had gotten exactly what she wanted.

  Now it was his turn. And what he wanted was Antonia Paxton—breathing her dragon’s fire into his blood.

  He wanted to reach into her very sinews and claim her responses. He wanted to bury himself in her softness and her strength, to rouse and luxuriate in the passionate and vulnerable woman at the core of her … the woman he had glimpsed so briefly and memorably that day in the upstairs parlor. He wanted to get under her skin the way she had gotten under his.

  As he strode through the servants’ hall, a thought occurred to him in a flash of male cunning. It was time to let Antonia know she had won.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next morning Antonia waited impatiently in the drawing room for Remington to arrive. Her face was pale and strained from her sleepless night, and her hands were icy in spite of the warmth of the room. More than once she had thought of fortifying herself for this meeting with a glass of sherry. Only the possibility that he might smell it on her breath and take credit for driving her to drink kept her from it.

  She intended to confront him and concede that their wager was pointless. It was painfully obvious that his dislike of women was too deeply rooted to reform in a mere fortnight, no matter how wonderful her ladies were. And in light of her wretched experiences with him, she was not likely to change her opinions of men in the near future. Therefore, the only result they could reasonably expect was that the wager would end in an acrimonious draw. And where was the point in prolonging that?

  But even as her head told her it was the right thing to do, the rest of her felt increasingly desolate at the thought that in an hour or two he would walk out of her house and out of her life forever.

  Remington appeared well rested and abominably alert when he arrived an hour late, at ten o’clock. Through the drawing-room door she could see him handing off his dapper hat and walking stick to old Hoskins, who confined his opinion this morning to a silent wag of the head. When Remington stepped into the drawing room, Antonia pinned her gaze on his left shoulder and forged ahead.

  “You’re late, your lordship,” she said with the air of a displeased governess.

  “So I am.” He made a show of checking his pocket watch. “Not of my choosing, however. I do have business concerns: land and tenants, an office to direct, investments to tend, and a fortune to manage. Difficult work, I assure you.” He paused and let his gaze slide over her pale face and black-trimmed purple silk. “Not as grueling as cranking a dusting machine, beating rugs, or hand-waxing floors, perhaps.”

  He caught her gaze in his. “And it cannot compare with spending all day in a stifling kitchen tending fires, chopping, grinding, and peeling. Or with bargaining nose to nose with a twenty-stone Yorkshire-bred butcher. Or with bending over a thimble all day, going half-blind while stitching garments for a household. But in its own way, my work is taxing.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Antonia stared blankly at him, trying unsuccessfully to reconcile his manner this morning with his attitude of yesterday afternoon.

  He sauntered closer, crowding her senses. “Yesterday you asked what I have learned here at Paxton House. I am doing my best to answer you, Antonia.” Taking in her disbelief, he gave her a dangerously appealing smile. “Your ladies are most effective tutors.”

  “They are?” She stepped back, feeling unsteady on her feet and unable to trust her ears.

  “You know they are,” he charged quietly, cutting straight to the core of her confusion. “That is precisely why you insisted I work with them. You’re a diabolical woman, Antonia Paxton. The PM ought to give you a seat in the Cabinet. You’d have The Opposition on its knees inside of a fortnight.” His laugh had a husky, intimate quality. “Or perhaps even less. You certainly didn’t need that long with me.”

  Silence descended as she searched his face for some clue as to what was happening between them. His smile settled into a warm, thoughtful expression. His eyes were so clear that she felt she could see to the very center of him. And the fact that he didn’t flinch at so intimate an examination told her more than she wanted to know. She stepped back, breaking that disturbing contact and blushing furiously at what seemed to be a genuine compliment.

  “What do you have planned for my education today, Antonia?” His voice was low and caressing. Her skin responded for her—with gooseflesh.

  She hadn’t planned anything, since she had assumed he wouldn’t be staying, or returning to Paxton House. Desperately, she made herself think.

  “Eleanor has things for you to do.” Eleanor always had more work than three people could do, she reasoned. “I believe she and Pollyanna are airing beds today.”

  “Good enough,” he said in those same affecting tones. “I suppose I’ll see you at dinner, if not befo
re?”

  She nodded and he was gone before she could blink.

  What in heaven’s name had gotten into him? As she stared at the door where he had disappeared, she was gradually overcome by a powerful urge to kick something—anything—but preferably him. Vibrating with jumbled and confusing emotion, she snatched up two needlepoint pillows and hurled them at the door. How dare he just waltz into her drawing room as if nothing had happened yesterday, announce she had all but won their wager, and then look at her as if he wanted— She staunched that last dangerous thought before it was fully formed.

  The gall of him! Calling her ladies effective and herself diabolical, and declaring that she’d brought him to his—

  Knees. His clever male knees. He had just told her the very thing she had planned and schemed and longed to hear: her ladies had made such an impression on him that he was reevaluating his attitudes toward women’s work and just possibly toward women themselves!

  Excitement crowded into her chest, shortening her breath. She had won! Wrapping herself with her arms, she whirled around the room in delirious spirals, laughing and giddy and light-headed. Staggering, she realized she had to share the good news with Aunt Hermione and the others. But she halted halfway to the door as her elation drained and caution born of woman’s intuition rose in its place.

  Had she really won? Had his attitudes really changed, or was this just a ruse to lull her into lowering her guard with him?

  She expelled a ragged breath and leaned her shoulder against the door frame, feeling drained by the wild swings of emotions he produced in her. This cursed wager could be over, he could declare his conversion to all of London, and she still would not be certain what was going on inside the man. Was he sincere about his change of heart or not? And how would she ever be sure?

  That was the problem with being clever and contriving, she thought, making her way to the kitchen stairs. You always expected the same thing of other people.

  The clock in the small parlor seemed infuriatingly slow as Antonia paced and waited, unable to concentrate on anything but the fact that Remington was somewhere on the floors above, working with her ladies and, by his own admission, undergoing a change of heart.

  Rubbing the back of her neck, she closed her eyes and saw again the speaking look he had given her as he left the drawing room. With the slightest surrender to her unruly impulses, she could imagine his long legs striding and bracing, his arms stretching and flexing as he worked. Her skin flushed and her body grew irritable with sensitivity. She wanted to see him, to talk with him, to satisfy her unresolved questions and anxieties. But she had no pretext for charging upstairs to confront him, except her distrust or her desire to see him. And she was not eager to admit either in his presence.

  When Eleanor’s and Pollyanna’s voices drifted through the open sitting-room door, she hurried into the hallway, expecting to see him as well and feeling embarrassed by her excitement. “Are you finished already?” The two women looked up from their conversation with surprise-pinked cheeks.

  “Oh, not yet. His lordship remembered how the feathers always give me sniffles and watery eyes.” Eleanor smiled affectionately. “He positively insisted on finishing your rooms by himself.”

  “My rooms?”

  “And a good thing, too,” Pollyanna added. “Dusty bed hangings, musty mattress and bolsters … your bed was very much in need of attention, Lady Toni.”

  “We were just going down to the kitchen for a cup of tea,” Eleanor said as they started off. “Care to join us?”

  “What?” Antonia started out of her swirling thoughts. “No, thank you. You go ahead.” She picked up her skirts and headed for the stairs.

  He was in her room this very minute, she thought, rushing up the steps. He was beating the dust from her bed curtains, stripping her linens, overturning her mattress … plumping her feathers, for heaven’s sake. Crimson crept into her cheeks at the thought of him lurking about in her most personal and private domain, the place where she slept and dressed … and lay awake at night thinking of him. He had something indecent in mind, she was sure of it.

  “She’s headed straight for him, of course,” Pollyanna said, watching her go.

  Eleanor chuckled. “What I wouldn’t give to be a mouse in the corner.”

  Antonia’s bedroom was a masterpiece of Louis XIV opulence, in shades of teal and seafoam and ecru, with touches of gilt, burnt umber, and apricot. Sir Geoffrey had spared no expense to see to her pleasure and her comfort: from the hand-tinted freizes on the ceilings, to the ornate floor-to-ceiling bed, to the thick Aubusson carpets, to the exquisite tile stove, hand-painted with spring flowers, that he had imported from Sweden to ensure the room would be evenly warm all winter. Every shape, every texture, was lush and feminine, meant to delight her eye and satisfy her touch—the way her youth and beauty and energy had delighted her aging husband. It was her personal retreat, a balm for her spirits, her sanctuary away from the world.

  And Remington Carr had invaded it.

  When she arrived breathless at her chamber door, she could see that the heavy brocades at the windows had been gathered back and the south-facing windows had been thrown open to catch the sultry breeze. Her hand-painted and gilded bed was mounded with bare ticking, and her linens, comforters, and counterpane were piled in heaps on the floor around the foot of the bed. It took a moment to locate Remington.

  He stood by her dressing table with his back to her, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his vest, cravat, and collar missing. The sight of his long black-clad legs and his wide wedge-shaped back sent a distracting shiver through her.

  When his head bent and his shoulder flexed, she leaned to one side to see what he was doing.

  He was holding one of her short black gloves, and as she watched, he brought it to his nose, closed his eyes, and breathed in. A moment later he strolled to the nearby bench, where her shot-silk petticoat and French-cut corset—the purple satin one, covered with black Cluny lace—lay exactly as she had left them the evening before. She looked on, horrified, as he lifted and wiggled the frilly hem of her petticoat, watching the delicate flounces wrap around his wrist. Abandoning that, he ran a speculative hand over the molded cups at the top of her most elegant stays, then dragged his fingers down the front of them to toy with the suspenders that held up her stockings. She could see his smile in profile.

  “No garters,” he murmured, just loud enough to hear in the quiet.

  “Just what do you think you are doing?” she demanded, lurching forward a step before catching herself.

  He turned sharply, then relaxed into a heart-stopping smile at the sight of her.

  “Women’s work … what else?” he said in insufferably pleasant tones. “I’ve just given your featherbeds a sound thrashing, and I am waiting for the dust to clear so I can get on with turning your mattresses.”

  “My mattresses don’t need turning, thank you,” she charged, her face reddening. “No more than my most personal belongings need plundering. How dare you invade my bedchamber and handle my things?” She was halfway across the room before she realized he wasn’t retreating, and that, in fact, the gleam in his eyes intensified as she approached, making it seem that he had been waiting for her. Warnings sounded in her better sense, and she halted in the middle of the thick carpet.

  “Put those back”—she pointed to the gloves in his hand—“and leave at once.”

  He raised one eyebrow, then glanced at the dainty black seven-button glove he held. “Only the best Swedish kid, I see. One can always tell Swedish glove leather by the musk that blends so nicely with a woman’s own scent. Your scent is roses, isn’t it?” He inhaled the glove’s scent again and gave her a desirous look. “I do love roses.”

  He was teasing, flirting with her again—the handsome wretch. It was no good appealing to his sense of shame; where women were concerned, he didn’t seem to have one. Her only hope, she realized, was to maintain her distance and her composure and use deflating candor to put him
in his place. And his place, she told her racing heart, was anywhere except the middle of her bedroom.

  “You rush headlong from one outrage into another, don’t you, your lordship?” she declared, crossing her arms and resisting the hum of excitement rising in her blood. “You haven’t the slightest regard for decency or propriety—”

  “I do wish you would call me Remington,” he said with exaggerated sincerity. “I don’t think a first-name basis would be considered too much familiarity with a man who is about to climb into your bed and turn it upside down.” Trailing that flagrant double entendre behind him, he tossed her glove aside and started for the bed.

  “Into my … ?” Before she could protest, he was indeed climbing into the middle of her bed, pushing the featherbed to the foot of the bed and seizing the corners of the mattress. As the ropes shifted and groaned and the thick mattress began to roll, she felt a weightless sensation in the pit of her stomach and understood that he was moving more than just a cotton-stuffed ticking. The sight of him in those vulnerable confines was turning her inside out, as well.

  “Come down out of there this instant, Remington Carr!” She hurried to the edge of the bed, frantic to get him out of it.

  “I have a better idea,” he said, shoving to his feet and bracing his legs to remain stable on the springy ropes. “Why don’t you come up here? There’s plenty of room.” He flicked a suggestive look around him, then pinned it on her. “You know, this is a very large bed for a woman who sleeps by herself. How long has it been, Antonia, since you’ve had your ticking turned?”

  “The state of my … ticking … is no concern of yours,” she declared, feeling her resistance thinning. He was an incorrigible rogue, a professional bachelor who was insufferably sure of his sensual attraction. And he was still trying to seduce her. She jerked her gaze from the skin at the open neck of his shirt, only to have it catch on the way his trousers stretched taut over his thighs. And if she didn’t get him out of here soon, she realized, he stood a very good chance of succeeding.