by Syrie James
Instinct led her to the far end of the lower floor, where she entered the vast, silent room, expecting to find it cold and dark. To her surprise, a small fire glowed in the enormous hearth, and several lamps were lit. Madeleine heard rustling from a room next door, which she presumed to be a pantry. She wondered if the cook was up late—or very early—preparing something for the morrow.
Hopefully, Mrs. Green wouldn’t object to Madeleine heating up some milk.
Madeleine selected a small copper saucepan from the row of pots hanging above the huge black stove. She was wondering if they kept the milk in the pantry, or had a separate cold cellar, when she heard approaching footsteps. A deep, masculine voice called out in surprise:
“Miss Atherton.”
She whirled. Her heart jolted.
Lord Saunders—casually dressed as he had been at his workshop, sans coat or tie—was standing halfway across the room. He held a bottle of wine in one hand and a plate of cold chicken in the other.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he said, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
Chapter Eighteen
Miss Atherton was clearly as surprised to see him as Charles was to see her. “My lord. I had no idea you were home.”
“Just got back.” Charles set the plate of chicken on the table in the center of the room. “I was hungry.” Hungry to see you. Had he said that aloud? He hoped not.
She was a vision, clad in a pale blue dressing gown that was tied over a white cotton nightdress, her hair billowing loosely about her shoulders. He ached to cross the room, take her in his arms, and kiss her senseless. Instead he just stood there, drinking her in.
“I was thirsty,” she volunteered, waving a saucepan at him. “I thought a glass of hot milk to help me sleep.”
“Excellent notion. That is, it would be, if there were any milk. I just checked and the jug is empty.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.” She replaced the saucepan on its hook. “Well, I suppose I should go.”
Yes, you should. If she stayed—especially half-dressed like that—only a monk would be able to resist her. And Charles was hardly a monk. But after thinking about her nonstop for far too many days, he couldn’t bring himself to send her away.
“Why go? There are plenty of other things on offer, besides milk, to help you sleep.” Charles gestured with the bottle of cabernet. “A good wine is always relaxing, and this is a fine vintage. Will you join me in a glass?”
She hesitated, glancing at the floor. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s advisable for us to . . .”
“. . . be alone together?” he finished for her.
She nodded.
It was a risk, to be sure—but a risk he was willing to take, if it meant spending a few more minutes in her company. He uncorked the bottle, trying to make light of the matter. “We did nothing the other day to be ashamed of.” He gave her a devilish look. “Unless you count typing as a disrespectable activity.”
She laughed. “Even so. We almost did. And at the cave . . .”
“We agreed to forget about the cave.”
“Yes. But . . .” She hesitated further.
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s set some ground rules. You can sit there.” He pointed to a stool that was drawn up to the table. “And I’ll sit here.” He indicated a second stool standing two feet away. “There will be no physical contact of any kind. Just two people enjoying a glass of wine. Are you up to the challenge?”
Her cheeks flushed. She was adorable when she blushed. “Challenge accepted.” She came forward.
“Excellent.” After retrieving two wineglasses from a shelf, Charles poured out the cabernet and offered her a glass.
She took it, careful that their hands didn’t touch. “To what shall we drink?”
He raised his own glass, far too conscious of the fact that she was standing before him, mere inches away, no doubt wearing nothing beneath that silk dressing gown other than a thin nightdress. “Let us drink to the Queen.”
“Everyone toasts the Queen. Can’t we be more original?”
“All right.” He spouted the first other toast that came to mind, one that reminded him of her. “To beauty without affectation, and virtue without deceit.”
Her smile fled, and a pained looked came into her blue eyes. “I’ve never heard that one.”
He immediately recognized his mistake. He should never have said deceit to this woman, who clearly felt guilty about . . . well, the kiss they had shared. “It’s an old British toast,” he explained quickly. “I have others.” He went for a safe one. “To the protectors of orphans and widows.”
“So old-fashioned,” she scoffed. Thinking for a moment, she raised her glass. “How about: May the tax-gatherer be forgiven in another world.”
“There is one I have never heard.”
“It’s a good one, right?”
“I prefer not to toast the tax man. How about: May an Englishman’s house be his castle forever.”
“Your house is nothing like a castle.”
“It is a turn of phrase.”
“How about: To our absent friends on land and sea,” she suggested.
“I’d rather drink to friends who are present.” He considered, then lifted his glass again. “Champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends.”
She laughed again. “I prefer to think that all my friends are real.”
“You are a difficult person to toast with,” he pointed out congenially. “At this rate, we will not taste a single drop of wine.”
“How about this: May we never want of a friend, nor a bottle to share with him. Or her.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Charles agreed.
“Cheers.”
They clinked glasses and each took a sip.
“Mmm. Delicious,” she purred.
The wine was delicious. So was she. He could not take his eyes off of her. It was killing him to stand a few feet away from her in this dimly lit room, and know that he couldn’t touch her. Now. Ever.
After a moment, she said, “Are you going to offer me any of that chicken?”
He choked back a laugh, then swallowed his mouthful of wine. “Be my guest. I did not realize you were hungry.”
“I didn’t realize it either, until you put cold chicken in front of me.”
“Why stop at chicken? There is a larder full of food. I was just getting started raiding the pantry when you appeared.”
She grinned. “Let’s take a look.”
The pantry contained everything one could wish for a late-night snack. They took turns bringing out platter after platter of delicacies, from meats and cheeses to fruits and pies and other sweets. After setting out the feast on the kitchen table, Charles got plates and cutlery.
“So,” Miss Atherton said as they sat down beside each other on the stools and dug in, “what have you been working on? The miner’s lamp battery or the typewriter?”
“Typewriter.”
“Have you made any progress?”
He carved two slices from a smoked ham and flipped one onto her plate. “None whatsoever.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. These things take time and patience.”
She nodded, swallowing a forkful of leek pie. “‘Patience is a conquering virtue.’”
He glanced at her, recognizing the quote. “You have read Chaucer? Wait. Forget I said that. Of course you have.”
“The Canterbury Tales is a seminal piece of literature.” She sipped the wine.
“‘People can die of mere imagination,’” he pronounced with a flourish, before devouring a forkful of ham.
“‘The Miller’s Tale.’ That’s my favorite Chaucer quote.”
“And mine.”
She tried the potatoes au gratin. “Mmm. Good. Do you really think one can die from an overabundance of imagination?”
“Yes, at least where inventors are concerned. It has happened to two of your own countrymen, in fact.”
&
nbsp; “Who?”
“Horace Hunley developed a submarine for the Confederate army, but when he took command, it sank. William Bullock died at the hands of his own web rotary press.”
“Oh no. That’s horrible.”
“Imagine the peril involved were one to attempt to build a flying machine.”
“Do you think flying machines are possible?”
“Absolutely. In the meantime, I content myself with safer, more mundane inventions.”
“Your battery lamp is hardly mundane. I would call it brilliant. Oh look at that!” She speared a pickle with her fork. “I unintentionally made a pun.”
She sucked on the pickle, then bit into it. The movement of her lips on that item sent his mind in a direction it shouldn’t have gone. He blinked fast, struggling for a comeback.
“I . . . appreciate the compliment, Miss Atherton, and should like to return it. That play you wrote for the girls was brilliant.” Don’t look at her lips. Look anywhere but at her lips. He refilled their wineglasses. “The same play, were it to be performed by professional actors, would have been perfectly at home onstage in the West End.”
“That is high praise indeed.”
“And I mean it sincerely. You have quite a gift.” He picked up a chicken leg and determinedly bit into it. “How is your novel going?”
“Well, I think. Although I just hit a roadblock of sorts.”
“What kind of roadblock?”
“My story took a turn I didn’t expect.” She sipped more wine. “One of my heroes, an American banker, just discovered that his biggest investor is defrauding the public. If he reports the activity to the authorities, he’ll lose millions and his bank will go under. If he says nothing, however, his position at the bank is assured, and he can marry the woman he loves.”
“You say this a roadblock . . . why?”
“I feel as though I’ve given my hero an impossible choice.”
“Your hero’s course is clear. He must follow his conscience. All a man really has in life is his honor. Without that, he is nothing.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She frowned. “But that will put his romance in jeopardy. How am I to achieve a happy ending?”
“That, I cannot help you with. But I feel certain an answer will come to you in time.”
“I hope so.” She tackled the apple crumble now. “Mmm. This is absolutely wonderful. You have to try it.”
Charles leaned in and took a forkful from her plate. In such proximity, he couldn’t help but study her for a moment. His eyes treacherously returned to her lips. The way they moved when she chewed was so ridiculously arousing, it was all he could do to tear his gaze away, and return his thoughts to their discussion. “Writing . . . seems to me an arduous endeavor.”
“Nowhere near as difficult as inventing.”
“I disagree,” he replied. “The ability to create a story out of thin air, and the drive to keep at it when it proves difficult or seems to be going nowhere at all, this is the very definition of the inventor’s dilemma.”
She nodded slowly. “Do you ever find your work in progress invading your mind, when you are supposed to be thinking about something else?”
“All the time,” he acknowledged. “Once, in the middle of Christmas dinner with my family, a notion struck me about a way to create a refillable fountain pen that wouldn’t leak. I rode off to my workshop in a snowstorm to test my theory.”
“Did it work?”
“No.”
“How frustrating! I was at a ball in New York when I suddenly figured out why my heroine was averse to dancing. I fled the ballroom in search of pen and paper, but could find none. The thought vanished from my head.” As she spoke, she gestured dramatically, causing the belt of her dressing gown to loosen.
The garment fell open at the waist, revealing her creamy skin above the scooped neckline of her summer nightgown. Charles’s gaze moved lower, to where the shape of one breast was outlined beneath the thin fabric and the shadow of her nipple visible. The sight made his mouth go dry.
Charles drained his wineglass, struggling to look somewhere else. “Sometimes I get my best ideas in the middle of the night, and I have to get up and jot them down.” Sitting alone in the kitchen with her in the middle of the night was not one of my best ideas.
“When I’m writing, six hours can go by in a heartbeat,” she admitted eagerly.
“If Mrs. Smith did not leave food on my doorstep, I should probably never stop at all.”
“Who would have thought such diverse occupations could prove to be so similar?” She picked up a strawberry. “You have the best berries in Cornwall.”
He sensed she was a little tipsy. He watched as she savored the strawberry, taking the piece into her mouth and gently biting it off at the stem. His brain went to another place, just as it had with the pickle. Imagining those lips sucking on something else. A rush of blood infused that very organ.
He took an unsteady breath. He ought to call it a night. Leave the room this minute. Before she noticed the evidence of his arousal. Before they did something they would both regret.
Instead, he grabbed another strawberry, dipped it in the bowl of clotted cream, and leaned forward on his stool, offering it to her. “A berry is always better with cream.”
A soft laugh. “I never say no to a strawberry with cream.” She slanted toward him to accept the berry. Her dressing gown opened even wider now. She didn’t seem to notice. He couldn’t help but look. Beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown, her breasts were perfect globes, their protruding points mere inches from his hand.
Charles swallowed hard as he placed the berry into her open, waiting mouth. She chewed, a dollop of cream decorating her upper lip.
“You have a bit of cream, just there.” His voice sounded rough.
“Here?” She wiped at her mouth, missing it.
“No, there.” He tried to resist touching it. He couldn’t. His index fingertip traced the top of her lip, then moved to her mouth.
She sucked the foam from his finger. The sensation went straight to his groin like a thunderbolt.
“Did you get it?” she asked softly.
“Not . . . all of it.” A slight smudge of froth still clung to her mouth. He could no longer restrain himself. He had to taste it. In one fluid motion, Charles leapt from his seat, slipped one arm around her, pulled her to her feet, and pressed his lips to hers.
Madeleine knew she should stop him.
But she didn’t want to stop.
Her hands moved up to the back of his neck of their own volition, pulling him closer as they kissed. His tongue parted her lips, invading her mouth. He tasted luscious, like strawberries and cream and cabernet sauvignon.
For weeks now she’d been dreaming of this, wanting it, even though she knew it was wrong. Every word they’d exchanged had only made her feel closer to him, wanting it more. Through a dizzy, wine-induced haze, the familiar voice of warning was trying to make itself heard, but she didn’t want to listen. They kissed and kissed. Taking a ragged breath, his lips moved from her mouth to dance down the side of her neck, sending ripples of erotic sensation zinging through her body.
“Do you like this?” His voice was husky.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He kissed his way further down, to the top of her chest. His hand hovered at the side of her breast, a delicate touch like the brush of a feather. She was suddenly aware that her dressing gown had come open, that nothing stood between his palm and her naked breast but the thin fabric of her nightgown.
This was the moment to stop him. He’s not yours, that little voice insisted. She swept it away. His eyes met hers, dark and smoky. “Do you want me to touch you . . . here?”
She nodded.
His palm claimed her breast and gently kneaded it. The sensation was wondrous. Then his thumb and fingertips began doing even more wonderful things to her nipple. Uttering a moan, he gripped the fabric of her nightgown, pulling it up, until that same hand sl
ipped beneath it and smoothed its way up her naked body, seeking and finding her breast. Madeline gasped for breath as his ministrations continued on her breast and nipple. A bolt, like an electrical charge, zinged to her belly and lower still.
He brought his mouth back to hers and they met and clung in another impassioned kiss. He continued to manipulate her breast beneath her gown. Madeleine felt the hard length of his arousal pressing against her belly. She knew it meant that he wanted her, that he felt the same aching need that was taking over every part of her own body. A hot and heavy feeling began to build inside her core, as if she were reaching for something vital and primal yet still unimaginable.
Never, never had she felt sensations like these. Never had a man touched her like this. The kiss they’d shared in the cave had been wondrous, but this was far more sensuous, far more carnal. It made her feel powerful, feminine, to know that she could inspire this kind of passion in a man so remarkable, a man she so deeply admired.
He drew her even closer with his free arm as the kiss continued. Her hands ran up and down the expanse of his back. She wanted his hands to touch her other places, secret places that now ached to be stroked and molded. His legs tangled in her dressing gown and they bumped with wild abandon against the table.
Then came a sudden loud crash and the sound of breaking glass.
Chapter Nineteen
They stilled in each other’s embrace, both of them breathing hard.
“Save the pieces.” Saunders let out a low chuckle.
Madeleine gazed up at him, slowly becoming conscious of where she was and what was happening. “What are we doing?” she whispered.
“Enjoying a late-night feast.” He kissed her again.
“We have to stop,” she murmured against his lips.
“Oh no we don’t.” His voice was low and throaty.
“Oh yes we do.” Madeleine gently but firmly pulled herself out of his arms, drew her dressing gown closed, and tightened the soft belt around her waist.
She glanced at Lord Saunders. He ran one hand through his hair, and seemed to be trying to calm himself. She saw his arousal straining against his trousers, which made all the places in her own body that were still hot grow even hotter. How could I have let that happen? The question pummeled her brain as she also struggled to compose herself.