She pulled her arm back, keeping the decanter out of his reach. “I’ll get drunk if I want to,” she said in irritation. “What are you now? My chaperone?”
“Actually, I was going to pour one for myself.”
“Oh.” She eyed him with skepticism. “You were?”
“Yes.” After listening to Haye’s idiocy for half an hour anyone would need a drink.
She handed over the decanter, and he poured a brandy for himself, then took both the decanter and his glass over to his desk. He sat down and leaned back in his chair.
She followed him, sitting in her favorite place on his desk. He must be getting used to it, because he didn’t even care that she had plopped herself down on top of the letter he was composing to send to the Russian viceroy. The Russian viceroy was an even more pompous prig than Haye.
“My first impression of Haye was right,” she said. “He does have a weak chin. It fits a spineless character.”
“Hear, hear,” he concurred, leaning forward and lifting his glass for a toast to those sentiments. “We’ll find someone worthy of you.”
She nodded and touched her glass to his, but she did not meet his gaze. She drank her brandy and refilled her glass. She didn’t speak. The silence between them grew, lengthened into minutes, as she stared moodily into her glass, her countenance troubled.
She seemed disinclined to talk, an odd thing for her, and after a quarter hour had gone by without a word from her, he began to be concerned. “Are you all right?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Si.” She still didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze lowered.
He swallowed the last of his brandy. “You’re not pining after the fellow, are you, and putting on a show for my benefit?” Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer.
She shook her head. “No. I told you, I want a man who knows how to kiss, and Haye has a kiss most horrible.” She shuddered and took another drink. “It was like kissing a fish.”
Ian gave a shout of laughter. “Really?”
His laughter seemed to please her. She looked up, smiling. “Fishhh,” she repeated decidedly, slurring the word, a clear indication she was feeling the effects of her brandy. She gestured to him with her glass in an accusing manner. “You tried to persuade me to marry him anyway and teach him how to kiss.” She pressed her lips together and blew air between them to express her derision.
He grinned and poured himself another drink. “Forgive me. I don’t know what I was thinking to suggest such a thing.”
“Neither do I. You see, I kissed him because I knew that would decide my mind about marrying him, and it did. I knew in that instant he was not the right man for me. And tonight, he proved my sense…my impression…ah—” She broke off with a sound of exasperation. “My first feelings, thoughts—how do you say it?”
“Instincts?”
“Si. My instincts were right.” She leaned closer to Ian in a confiding way as if to impart a secret. “If he had been the right man for me, if he had loved me and respected me, I would have given him my heart and made him a good wife. I’d have been faithful, and given him sons, so many sons, he wouldn’t have known what to do with them all. I’d have made him glad his whole life he married me.”
Ian wanted to kill the earl for rejecting her. He wanted to thank him. He looked away, lifted his glass, and drank until it was empty. “Haye is an ass,” he muttered, his voice raspy from the liquor. He reached for the decanter, only to find they had emptied it. He walked to the liquor cabinet and fetched another bottle. He opened it, brought it to the desk, and refilled his glass.
“Sir Ian?”
He looked at her again as he sat down. “Hmm?”
“You were right about me, you know,” she said in a low voice. “You were right.”
“In what respect?”
She gave him a tipsy smile that made him suck in his breath. “I am a flirt and a tease.”
Ian glanced down at her pretty feet peeping from beneath the hem of her nightgown. He indulged in a long look upward, torturing himself with imaginings of what was underneath two thin layers of muslin fabric. He paused, his gaze riveted to where a few tiny pearl buttons had popped free of satiny loops to reveal the inner curves of her breasts. His throat went dry, and he opened his mouth to agree with her.
She reached out, pressing her fingers to his lips, making heat curl in his belly. “Don’t be all polite and gentlemanlike right now and apologize and say you didn’t mean it. You said I’m a flirt and a tease, and that I manipulate men to get my way, and you are absolutely right. I like having my way, and I use what I have. I have teased men, and kissed men, and made them want me.”
“Poor devils,” he muttered against her fingers in acute self-pity.
Lucia pulled her hand back, much to his relief. “But since I was a girl of seventeen, I have known the truth about myself. All I want, all I have ever wanted, is one man. Just one. To love me just as I am, without being ashamed of me or wanting to change me. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Before he could answer, she spoke again. “I have much feeling in me, you see.” She looked past him, her dark eyes all dreamy—from female romanticism or alcoholic haze, he couldn’t be sure. “I have much to give, saved up all my life. I have passion and laughter and love and—” She paused to take a drink. “And myself,” she went on in a soft, confiding voice. “I know what Haye thinks, but he’s wrong about me.”
Ian had once regarded the earl as a decent fellow, a man of good character, but now he could not think of him with any opinion other than utter contempt. Soiled goods, he’d called her. God, the idiot couldn’t see something luscious right in front of his nose.
And she was luscious. Of course, she was also an exasperating, unpredictable femme fatale who was making some of England’s most well-bred gentlemen brawl like ruffians, and Ian didn’t know if he was going to live long enough to get her married off. “I told you, Haye is an ass.”
She bent her head, and coffee-black curls tumbled over her face. “I’ve done a lot of wicked things, you know. I’ve gambled at Parisian gaming hells, and I’ve smoked tobacco and eaten hashish and gotten drunk.” Without looking at him, she lifted her glass in a wobbly salute to her past escapades, then lowered it again and continued, “At the convent, I used to sneak into the kitchens and steal food—they gave us so little, and I was always hungry. They thought going without food would make me good.” She gave a little hiccup. “It didn’t.”
Ian smiled at that. No surprise there.
“Sometimes,” she went on, “I stole vinegar or olive oil the nuns made, and I would go into the village to sell it so I could buy tobacco to smoke. Whenever the nuns caught me stealing, they used a rod to beat me, and I shouted curses at them and spat at them.”
Ian felt another spark of rage, and his hand tightened around his glass. “Perfectly understandable of you, to my mind,” he murmured, thinking anyone who put a rod anywhere near Lucia’s pretty backside ought to be horsewhipped in return.
“When Cesare banished me and sent me to my cousins in Genoa,” she went on, “I stole two gold plates, sold them to a pawnbroker, and boarded a ship for London. I wanted to see my mother. Cesare hadn’t let me see her since the convent.”
“I’ve wondered how you’d managed to get yourself to England.”
“Yes, I’ve done a lot of bad things,” she said with a nod, her head bent, her voice low and contemplative. “Once or twice, I’ve even let a man I really liked touch me, but no more.”
Damn it all, he already knew she was a virgin. Did he have to listen to this?
“I’ve never done…I’ve never given a man that,” she went on. “Not even Armand.”
Ian felt himself coming apart. He wasn’t her priest, and he jolly well didn’t want to hear her confession. He set down his glass, stood up, and grabbed her chin. He lifted her face, intending to kiss her and shut her up.
“He wanted me to,” she said before Ian could carry out his inte
nt. “But I wouldn’t. I’ve saved myself for one special man who loves me, and I’m going to be the best wife in the world for him.”
Christ. Ian yanked his hand away and sat back down. He wanted to go pound his head into a wall. Instead, he took another drink.
“I used to sneak out and meet Armand at night because I loved him. He didn’t love me though. If he had, he’d have told my father to go to the devil and he’d have taken off with me somewhere and married me. Five thousand sous and a merchant’s daughter were more tempting than I was. But—” She shoved hair out of her face and looked at Ian. Her big brown eyes began to glisten. “I’m not soiled goods.”
Those words ignited something inside him, something he’d never felt before, something primal and savage, something he could not control. Before he knew it, his glass was out of his hand and flying across the room toward the fireplace where Haye had been standing earlier in the evening. It hit the marble mantel and shattered into bits.
He looked at Lucia and found her watching him, her eyes wide with shock at what he’d done, her fingers pressed to her mouth.
“You’re not soiled goods, damn it all,” he told her, “and it wouldn’t matter if you’d been with a man or not.” He stood up. “I think we’ve both had enough brandy. It’s time to go to bed.”
He took her glass and set it on the table, then seized her hands and hauled her off the desk. The moment her feet touched the floor and he let her go, she started sinking.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hooked the other behind her knees, lifting her. She curled an arm around his neck, gave another hiccup, and nestled into his shoulder. As he carried her out of the room, she nuzzled her face against his throat, and a shudder of pleasure rocked his body, pleasure so intense he almost dropped her on her gorgeous, shapely bum. With an oath he kept on, valiantly carrying her up two flights of stairs, thinking with every step that if he didn’t get her married off soon, he was going to go mad. Stark, raving mad.
He paused before her room, and it took him several seconds of maneuvering the handle before he could get the door open. When he succeeded, he used his shoulder to nudge the door wide. A maid had left a lamp burning, and Ian was able to see his way to the bed. Once there, he dropped Lucia onto the counterpane and started to turn away, but she grabbed for him, snagging one tail of his evening coat in her fist. “Sir Ian?”
He paused with a long-suffering sigh and turned toward her again, but he didn’t look at her. Instead, he stared at the wall. A stronger man might have been able to risk a glance at the bed and the delicious dollop of heaven in a lacy white nightgown who was lying there holding on to his coat. Ian was not a strong enough man to chance it. “What?”
“I want to tell you something.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, no. I’ll forget.”
No doubt of that. She was so sloshed, she probably wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow. She tugged at him again, more insistent this time. Telling himself he didn’t want her to tear his favorite evening coat, he sank to his knees beside the bed and reminded himself of stupid things like duty and honor. “What do you want to tell me?”
“I—” She shook her head, frowning with the effort of concentration. “Ooh, I feel dizzy.”
“I’ll just bet you do. Put one foot on the floor. It’ll help.”
She complied, her nightgown hiking up in the effort, and one long, shapely leg brushed against his belly. He stared at her bare thigh, feeling her skin burning him through the fabric of his clothes. He began to imagine what he’d be looking at if that nightdress had ridden up just a few inches higher.
Stark. Raving. Mad.
He forced himself to look back into her face. “What do you want to tell me?” he asked again, his voice harsh to his own ears.
“You’d better find me a husband who loves me.”
Aye, he’d better. Soon. “I shall do my best.”
“I know.” She smiled, and he wondered why whenever she smiled at him, it felt like a kick in the stomach. “I think you’re a wonderful chaperone.”
He wanted to tear her nightgown off. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Her eyes closed and her hand fell to her side. She was out cold.
He studied her in the lamplight, knowing he should leave, but he could not move. There was no reason to stay, but he could not stand up. In a minute, he promised himself. I’ll leave in a minute.
He glanced at the bare leg against his chest. Maybe two minutes.
He leaned in, the movement pressing her thigh to the side of the mattress. Before he could stop himself, he reached out and touched her cheek, brushing back the tendrils of hair that had fallen over her face. He tucked them behind her ear. “Foolish, foolish Lucia,” he chided in a voice too low to wake her. “You’re going to feel like hell tomorrow.”
He moved closer, and his lips brushed the skin of her earlobe. It was like kissing velvet. She smelled of apple blossoms and brandy and warm, sweet woman, and Ian knew that at some point in his life he must have done something truly heinous to deserve being saddled with her. Or he’d done something wonderful. He could never seem to decide which hand fate had dealt him.
Lucia Valenti was a menace to male sanity, a blight on heaven and earth. Even so, she could sin her whole life long, and when she got to the pearly gates, she’d have St. Peter on his knees begging her to come inside. She was manipulative and vulnerable and a pain in the arse, and she looked so damned beautiful that he wanted to move those few short inches closer and take another taste of her mouth—a long, long taste this time. He wanted to pull that nightgown the rest of the way apart, run his hands over the lush, exquisite curves she’d been flaunting in his face for weeks. He wanted to kiss her and caress her and take what could never be his. He wanted to sate the aching need that flared up every time she deigned to give him so much as a smile. He wanted those things more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
But there were rules about this sort of woman and this sort of situation, and Ian had always been a man who played by the rules.
He took a deep, long breath and stood up. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be loved, Lucia,” he murmured. “Not a damned thing.”
He turned out the lamp and left the room, his body in agony. Sometimes, it was absolute hell to be a gentleman.
Chapter 13
The only time Ian had ever stolen anything, he’d been five years old, and the consequences of eating the cook’s entire plum pudding two days before Christmas had been a four-day bellyache and a month of imprisonment in the nursery. When he was twelve, he’d gotten caught kissing Mary Welton from down at the farm and had learned by his father’s hand just how painful a riding crop could be. There was that trouble at Cambridge, of course, and Tess. It had taken him a year of intense study to make up for his failed examinations, and three years to get over his broken heart.
These, along with several similar events of his life, had taught Ian one important lesson. Whenever he did something stupid, he paid for it.
This fact was brought home to him yet again the morning after getting drunk on brandy with Lucia. When he awoke, the shaft of sunlight that filtered between two closed draperies hit him right in the eyes and sent intense, shattering pain through his skull. He was paying now. In spades.
Ian groaned and rolled over with a curse worthy of a Portsmouth sailor. His head was aching fit to split, his stomach felt like lead, and he was sure that during the night someone had stuffed a wad of cotton wool into his mouth. Deciding a day in bed sounded like an excellent plan, Ian went back to sleep.
Sometime later, the clattering of tea things awakened him again. He cautiously opened one eye to find Harper standing by the bedside table pouring him a cup of tea. After stirring sugar into the tea, the servant set down the teacup and turned toward the window. Before Ian’s dazed mind could appreciate his intent, Harper did the unthinkable. He opened the curtains.
“Hell’s bells, shut th
ose damn things!” Ian covered his face with a pillow, blocking out the light.
“Feeling a bit under the weather today, sir?”
He felt like death. His response was a grunt from beneath the pillow.
Harper seemed to understand that his answer was affirmative. “Miss Lucia said you might not be feeling quite the thing this morning, but she would like to see you as soon as you are able to come down. It’s important, she said.”
“Unless war has broken out between Bolgheri and England,” he mumbled, “nothing could be that important.”
He thought of the night before, of how much he’d had to drink. Lucia had consumed far more brandy than he, and if he felt this bad, she must be in dire condition. That thought cheered him somewhat.
She should feel bad, damn her. He remembered with vivid clarity the way she’d tormented him with that tipsy smile of hers and that half-opened nightgown, of how she’d sat there telling him about all the kissing she’d done in her life as if he was her goddamned priest. He thought of how she’d looked lying on that bed, all tousled and tempting, with that nightgown riding up her legs. He thought of how he’d done the honorable thing and walked away. It had nearly killed him. He hoped she felt wretched this morning. It would serve her right.
In fact, seeing Lucia in the misery of alcohol’s aftereffects was such an appealing notion, Ian deemed it worth getting out of bed. He took a deep breath, tossed aside the pillow, and pushed back the bedclothes. Slowly, carefully, he got up.
With Harper’s help, he managed to shave and dress. When he went downstairs, he found Lucia alone in the dining room having breakfast. As he came in, she glanced up, radiant and smiling in her butter-yellow dress, looking far too cheery for someone who by all rights should be suffering as much as he.
He sat down on the other side of the table from her. “Where is everyone this morning?”
“Isabel is upstairs with her governess doing her lessons. Grace is in the drawing room with the Duchess of Tremore, and Dylan just left for Covent Garden to supervise auditions for his new opera.”
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