“Really?” He smiled then, really smiled, and rested his fists on his lean hips. “How so, Pippa? Are you also in the way of tossing out challenges? Have you come armed with a pistol?”
She laughed. “I would never need a pistol to guard myself against you, Calum.”
He turned his back on her so abruptly that she flinched.
“I think you are in much greater danger than you know, Lady Philipa.”
Something had entered his voice, something strange and still. And now she was Lady Philipa again, but perhaps that was as well.” The events of recent days lead me to believe you are in need of my advice, Mr. Innes.” It was only appropriate that she follow his example and address him formally.
He wore a black coat, and when he crossed his arms, as his movements suggested he had, the material stretched tight across large shoulders and a straight, powerful-looking back. Pippa stared at his back. Then she stared at his dark hair with its hint of red where it curled against the stark white of his linen collar.
“The matter of the duel was a very close call, sir,” she said, not liking the wobble in her voice. “If events had not gone exactly right, I am not at all certain we would be having this conversation tonight.”
“Because I would be dead? Dead at the hands of a superior opponent?”
She wished he would face her. She also wished she didn’t wish so terribly strongly to flatten her hands on his back, to rest her cheek there against his strong muscles, to close her eyes and simply feel him.
Pippa straightened her own spine. It was happening again, this unforgivable desire for evil, carnal things with a man who would doubtless be horrified if he could see inside her head. He would probably have her ejected from this house at once!
“I should not be discouraging you from leaving this house at once,” he said. “In fact, at this precise moment, I should open the door of this salon and order that you be dispatched forthwith.”
“Yes,” she said. “I expect you are right.”
“You do?”
“I certainly do, Mr. Innes.”
“I don’t intend to do so.”
“Oh.” Pippa fiddled with the gloves she held in one hand. She took a step toward him, and another, until all she could see was the expanse of his black-clad back—and his hair on his collar. “I have angered you, haven’t I?”
He didn’t respond.
Pippa raised a hand. She could touch him, very lightly, as if to draw his attention—or make a point. Carefully, she settled her fingertips on smooth kerseymere.
He did not move, did not say a word.
“There was a reason why I came this evening—Calum.” What point was there in pretending they had never taken a single step toward the small intimacy of first names? Why, they had kissed! More than once! Many more times than once. And they had done considerably more than kiss!
That heavy, hot sensation began inside Pippa, the one that burned low inside and pressed between her legs.
She flattened her palm on him and smoothed just a very little. “I don’t believe I am foolish to trust you.” Her action would be construed as forward. She removed her hand.
“Don’t,” he said sharply. “Please touch me, Pippa. Just as you were doing.”
With only the slightest hesitation, she did as he asked. He was warm—and tense. Pippa rubbed a ridge of muscle. If she could, she would ease whatever made his body so tight. She would soothe him, muscle by muscle, inch by inch of skin drawn tight over flesh and bone by whatever force she felt within the man.
“I should send you away,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“I am too weak, Pippa.”
Her second hand joined the first. And she rested her cheek, very carefully, between.
“You were right,” he said quietly. “I should definitely be afraid of you.”
She did not understand him. “If I could, and if you would allow it, I should like to look after you, Calum Innes.”
He laughed again, that short, sharp, amazed laugh that, again, she did not understand.
“I believe,” she told him, “that strong people often are more deeply in need of care than weak ones. You see, everyone knows weak people need to be looked after and so they are. The strong are supposed to be beyond the needs of mere mortals. They can be so alone in all that strength. At least that’s what I’ve often thought.”
He bowed his head and she ran her hands up to touch his hair. She found it thick and soft.
“Have you always been thought to be strong, Pippa? Is that where you come by so much wisdom for someone so young?”
She considered. “Perhaps. My mother died when I was still a child. My father has been exceedingly busy about important matters and he expected me to make him proud by accomplishing my own personal affairs. So I did.” Stroking, she gauged the texture of his shoulders, and then of his arms.
His hands found and covered hers. “And so you did. But how sad it would be if there were never to be anyone who found and cherished the real Pippa.”
What the intention of his words might be, Pippa could not be certain, but she felt a warmth and softness inside that was both incredibly sweet and achingly sad. “I think you are telling me that you wish…You do not know me, Calum.” She tried to pull away.
He held her fast. “What I wish is of no moment for now. But I do know you, sweet one.” He turned around and settled his hands loosely around her neck. “Only dire concern over something other than your own safety would bring you here tonight. The girl who risked herself to stop a duel the other morning thinks of others before herself.”
She thought of him—only him. “My life is not my own,” she told him, without intending to tell him any such thing. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she let him know the rest. “I am a simple woman, with simple needs and dreams. I do have dreams, of course. But they are that I shall be useful…and loved. I do want to be loved. I should like to have children of my own to teach, but until then, I should very much like to continue to teach children who would not otherwise learn.” She paused for breath.
“And why should you not be able to have these things?” His gaze traveled over her face to her hair, and he lifted down her hood. “Surely the duke intends for you to bear his children.”
The trembling she could not control began deep inside Pippa. “Yes. He has told me so.” If she locked her knees, perhaps she would not shake so noticeably that Calum would feel it.
“There. So all is well,” he said. With light behind him, he was all shadows.
There was nothing more she could tell him. She had already said far too much. “Quite so.” Pippa smiled and straightened. “But none of this has anything to do with this visit that must seem so strange to you. It is strange. I’m afraid I am occasionally given to impulsive actions.”
“I had noticed.”
“Yes, well, this has been a most difficult day. A most difficult evening.”
His expression hardened. “I doubt if your evening was more difficult than mine.”
Pippa resolved to end the conversation and be on her way. “I wish to make a request, Calum. Do not come to Cornwall.” He stared at her.
“Heed me, please, and remain in London. Or go elsewhere. But do not come to Franchot Castle.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Trust me. I have a very good reason.”
“Then by all means, share this very good reason with me.”
Pippa attempted to draw away, only to discover that Calum’s hands, resting upon her shoulders, were exceedingly strong.
“Do not play with me further, my lady. Explain yourself.”
“I do not know how to explain.” Each word rose higher. “I am…I am bemused by myself. Afraid for you and afraid for…I know it would be disastrous for you to make this journey to Cornwall. Please, accept what I say and ask no more.”
He shook his head slowly.
Surely…surely she was mistaken in thinking his eyes had lost focus. “Oh—”
when he pulled the tie on her cloak undone, she clutched at his wrist. “No. I am definitely leaving.”
The cloak slipped from her shoulders to the floor.
“I do not approve of the colors you wear,” he said, and yes, he looked at her differently. “They are too muted. And your clothes are—”
“Too boring,” she said breathlessly. “I know. I dislike them also, but the dowager considers them appropriate and I must do as I am told. I have always done as—”
“As you are told?” Calum finished for her. “Because your father is a man who adheres to the proper order of things and you have always admired him for that?”
“Quite so.”
“And does the dowager instruct you in all things, Pippa? Does she speak to you of what will be required of you as the duke’s wife, perhaps?”
Heat flooded Pippa’s face and she knew she must be unbecomingly red. “She has bravely made my instruction in those unpleasant necessities her responsibility.”
He lifted her chin. “The dowager told you that marriage is an unpleasant thing?”
“Oh, yes. And I am truly reconciled to accept what must be.”
“Must be?” he repeated, as if musing. “The duke himself has shown you no sign of a gentler side of this arrangement?”
“There cannot be a gentler side!” What could Calum be thinking? That she was an addlepated girl who believed the stuff of fiction? “It is not intended to be so. Oh, no, I am aware that it is my responsibility to submit…to…That is…I am aware of the way of things, Calum.”
“Fools,” he muttered. “Criminal, wasteful fools.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Rather than answer, he framed her face and studied her with such concentration that she could not be certain he remembered she was there at all.
“Calum?”
“Franchot tried to kiss you. You said as much.”
“Yes.”
“That suggests he did not actually kiss you.”
To her disgust, she felt her eyes fill with tears. “His Grace probably did not particularly want to kiss me at all.” She swallowed. “In fact, I’m not certain he knew it was me he had encountered.”
Calum brushed the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “How could he not know? How could any man who ever saw you not feel his heart stop simply at the sight of you?”
He was telling her…She must not misconstrue. She must not, out of her need to feel loved, imagine what did not exist. “It was dark,” she told him. “He had returned very late and I happened to be standing in the red salon. I like it there, particularly at night if I cannot sleep. My mind is very active, you see—too active, so I’ve been told. I often cannot sleep.”
His short, sharp laugh sounded again before he said, “My life seems well fated to encounter brave spirits too busy about their imaginings to stay in their beds at night. Tell me more about your encounter with your betrothed—unless I am being too inquisitive.”
She would tell him anything—gladly. “There is little more, really. He had, I think, partaken of rather too much…well, he was not entirely himself. He stumbled upon me and tried to…I moved my face and…This is embarrassing.”
“Then do not make yourself repeat it, sweet one.” Calum brushed her cheek and brushed and brushed again, and tilted his head to smile into her eyes.
“He bit my ear!” She announced it so loudly she startled herself. “It was somewhat painful, and I’m afraid I failed badly in what the dowager told me is so imperative.”
“Which is?” he asked very ominously.
“That whatever is required by one’s husband must be endured in silence. But I screamed. Oh, dear, I should not be talking about this!”
His gaze centered on her mouth. “You did not scream when I kissed you.”
“You did not bite me.” Pippa looked at Calum’s mouth. “In fact, I have found your kisses…”
“You found them pleasant?”
“Mmm. Yes.” Much more than pleasant.
She was not aware of leaning against him, or of raising her face and closing her eyes—until Calum’s lips settled upon hers. His breath was fresh and clean, his mouth faintly salty in the way she’d remembered. And his tongue, when it touched the soft inside of her lips, tickled, just as she’d remembered. And this time when he reached his tongue a little further into her mouth, past her teeth, to flicker across the tip of her own tongue, her body became softly warm and intensely aware of every sensation.
When his mouth left hers and slipped across her cheek, she turned her face, following it, but he took her earlobe between his teeth and nibbled—and little muscles in Pippa’s stomach tightened with pure pleasure.
“There,” he said, breathing delicately on sensitive skin. “You see. Nothing has to be unpleasant, sweet.”
“No.” She arched her neck. “Oh, no.”
Calum spread his fingers over the soft rise of her breasts above the neckline of her bodice, and her eyes flew open.
He smiled down at her and kissed her lips again, more insistently this time. With his free hand he surrounded her waist and drew her against him.
That part of him was easily felt. Most interesting, Pippa decided through senses that seemed determined to float away on ripples of hot wanting. Really, her fascination with That did grow stronger with every encounter.
Again the wanting. What did she want?
His little finger slipped beneath her neckline and Pippa froze. She clutched at Calum’s shirtfront and stared at him with wide open eyes.
“What is it, sweeting?” His gaze was fervent. “You don’t want me to touch you—here?” A little further beneath the neckline went his stroking fingertips.
Pippa braced. “It—hurts.” Once more a fiery blush suffused her cheeks.
Calum’s eyes regained hard focus. “Did your good fiancé hurt you in that way also?”
She tried to hide her face, but he would not let her.
“He did? Well, it seems to me that I will be doing His Grace a favor if I prove to his future wife that she should not have to fear his touch.”
Pippa shook steadily. Calum swept his hand entirely inside her gown to surround and lift her breast.
“You should not,” she told him.
“I think I should,” he said through his teeth. White lines formed beside his mouth. “I should do this and a great deal more.”
He could be such a puzzle.
For an instant he released her, but only so that he could slip her small sleeves from her shoulders and push them down her arms. With them went her bodice and shift. She felt cool air on her bared breasts and turned her head sharply away in shame.
What she felt next was her final undoing. Calum’s mouth, fastening on a nipple while he tugged lightly on the other with his fingertips, rendered her legs useless.
“Oh, my sweet, untried one,” he murmured, catching her as she started to fall. Sweeping her up, he went with her to the little tapestry couch and set her down. He knelt before her and took the dress all the way to her waist.
“No,” Pippa said indistinctly. She fell against the back of the couch. “I want…I want.”
“Tell me what you want.” He pushed her skirts up, parted her legs and moved between her thighs so that he could kiss and suckle her breasts until she wanted to scream—this time with unbearable ecstasy.
Calum straightened long enough to work off his coat and throw it aside. He tore away his neckcloth and shirt and Pippa gasped afresh. His body was as powerfully muscled as she’d imagined—and she did want to touch all of it.
Before he could return to his lavish attention upon her, she released her arms from the constraining sleeves and began feeling him. He was rough where dark hair covered his chest and narrowed to a thin line that disappeared inside his trousers. Where skin shone over strongly muscled shoulders and arms, he was hard and toned. Skin at his sides felt softly firm and taut. Around his neck hung a talisman fashioned of worn leather with a gold inscription so faint she c
ould not read it.
Pippa touched the leather. “What is this?”
“Just something I have always worn,” he said, reaching for her. “My good-luck charm.”
Her eyes flew up to his and she found him smiling at her with the faintest hint of a question.
“You touch me as if it gives you pleasure, Pippa.”
“It does. Such great pleasure. I have never seen a man without his shirt before. I have never seen a man other than entirely dressed before.”
He cupped her breasts and she glanced down, blushing yet again. Against his tanned skin, her small breasts, pointed and uptilted to pale crowns, were white. While she watched, he slowly suckled first one, then the other. A strong pulsing began between her legs. This pulsing was something else she had never felt before.
“You and your good-luck charm must have cast a spell on me,” she said at last as her hips slid forward on the couch. “And I want to feel it forever.”
“Forever would be the end of both of us,” he said, dragging harder on her breasts with his mouth.
“No. Oh!” Just when she thought he could make her feel no more undone, he found that pulsing place between her legs and eased a thumb back and forth over a small bud of flesh. “I don’t think…” She couldn’t think. The bud became a throbbing thing that blazed with each burst of fire. Pippa grabbed Calum’s wrist—to keep him, not to thrust him away.
The fire broke over her and welled brighter and hotter. And then, slowly, it faded, flickering away in spreading ripples. And when it was gone and the man with hot black eyes stroked her breasts once more, kissed her lips once more, spoke to her of her beauty once more, she knew that if it was possible, she would come to him again and again.
“I do not think this is what the dowager meant,” she told him when she could speak.
“No?”
“Is it possible that allowing one’s husband to do what he will could mean this…what has just been between us?”
“Oh, yes. Between us it will…” He closed his mouth before continuing. “If you and I were husband and wife, it would be this and more.”
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