“I’ve been to nearly all the parks in London.”
Nolan took her on a winding trail through the grounds. The towering oaks throughout the park were barren but for the snow weighting their branches. “Not like this,” he muttered.
“Yes, just like this.” Her long-legged strides matched his with a bold confidence when ladies normally took gingerly, dainty steps. He far preferred Sybil’s boldness. It matched her spirit.
They continued on with Sybil falling into an unexpected and, more, uncharacteristic silence—until they reached the notorious clearing. “Do you know the rumors surrounding this place?”
He eyed the now snow-covered field. “It is a place of duels, once frequented by thieves and highwaymen.”
Did the lady shiver from fear or from cold? He pushed away the thought. Sybil wasn’t one to be afraid of a damned thing. “Indeed?” she asked, drifting closer, that familiar glitter of curiosity brightening her eyes. “I did not know that particular detail about the park.”
“And what stories have you heard?” he asked before he could call the question back. Despite the winter chill, Nolan’s neck heated. Outside of which gardens or rooms would a widow sneak away with him to, he didn’t ask ladies questions. Something about this woman prompted a need to know and speak of things that moved beyond the sexual. And there was a greater, more terrifying intimacy in that than all the naughty acts he’d performed with and on every woman before her.
“They say this is a burial ground.” Sybil dropped her voice and spoke in an eerie tone that broke through his tumult and pulled a laugh from him. “That lepers from the nearby hospitals were taken to the swampy ground, over…” Her words trailed off as they stepped into those once-swampy grounds. She gasped, touching a finger to her lips. “What is this?” she asked on a breathless whisper.
Nolan tweaked her nose. “Come, a lady who knows the origins of handshakes and the history of Green Park must have an inclination as to what it is,” he jested. But that teasing dissipated as she tugged her hand free and made for the plaid blanket laid out under an old juniper. Sybil trailed a path around the fabric, where a tray rested, filled with small crystal cups.
“It is a picnic,” she breathed, her voice carrying in the quiet.
“Of sorts.” He strolled over. For the first time in the whole of his life, he was properly abashed. Given the limited time they had and his own dismal finances, options had and would continue to be limited—in every regard. Including this task she’d put to him. A task that didn’t feel like much of a task when I set it in motion after her departure yesterday. “Yes,” he said, making a clearing noise with his throat. “You didn’t give me much time to properly plan the most thrilling—”
“It is perfect,” she whispered, wheeling around so quickly that she knocked her hood back. That same errant curl broke free of her familiar tight chignon, giving her the look of an ice princess who’d begun her beautiful thaw. With a wide smile that dimpled her plump cheeks, she reached for one of the crystal cups from Gunter’s.
“Ah-ah,” he called, staying her movements.
She stared questioningly back through her round, wired spectacles. He removed them and tucked them inside his jacket.
Reaching inside his cloak, Nolan withdrew a silk cravat. Curiosity darkened her eyes as he came forward. “They say being blindfolded heightens the senses.”
“Who says that?” she asked as he draped the cloth over her eyes.
There was never not a question on this one’s lips. He grinned. There would be time enough to wonder or worry after the ease with which she enchanted him. Nolan started. Enchanted? By God, where had that come from? He was a rake. Not a lad just out of university staring with dazed eyes at an enticing miss.
“I asked—”
“Scandalous people who’d rather not be named,” he supplied, bringing an immediate cessation to her words. The color in her cold-stained cheeks turned a crimson blush.
“You’re trying to shock me.”
“You don’t shock easily,” he murmured, closing his eyes briefly to draw in the whisper of jasmine that clung to her. Did she dab that fragrance behind her ears? Or place it in her bathwater and soak it into her cream white skin? Imaginings flooded him. Of her naked, her breasts bobbing above the surface of the water, revealing crimson tips. Or would they be pink? Or—
“Are you all right?” she worried aloud, reaching around to unfasten the blindfold.
“Fine,” his voice emerged garbled. When was the last time he’d had a bloody woman? That was the only accounting for this potent hungering.
“You groaned.”
God, she let nothing go and questioned everything. “It was the wind.”
“Remember, my senses are heightened.” Damn him and his blasted plans for the lady. “I felt your chest rumble—”
“I said it was the wind, Sybil.” There was a faint entreaty that, with her cleverness, he’d wager she heard.
Fortunately, she let the matter rest and allowed him to guide her down upon the blanket. One of his few remaining footmen had set it out moments before Nolan had arrived with her. Then, collecting several of the crystal cups, he set them in the snow, holding them in place, and sat beside her.
He reached for the first one. “Open your mouth,” he urged. They were three words he’d uttered too many times to count in his thirty years. To wicked women. Whores. Lonely widows. Never, however, had he breathed them aloud to an innocent. Yet, speaking them to Sybil was oddly more erotic than all of those exchanges combined.
She formed a wide circle with her lips and he laughed, the expression full of mirth, real and foreign to his ears. He’d practiced the jaded chuckle for so many years he’d believed himself incapable of any other form of amusement.
Sybil promptly pressed her lips closed. “Are you making light of me?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he murmured, tucking a loose, golden strand behind her ear. “Now, open your mouth, again.”
“If you laugh at me, Noel Pratt, I’m going to—”
He dipped the ice-filled spoon inside her mouth, quelling that warning. Her lips automatically closed around it and all the air froze in his chest as the crimson, cold-kissed flesh surrounded that spoon. Giving thanks for her blindfold, Nolan closed his eyes for a long moment as a wave of lust ran through him. Who would have imagined a damned ice from Gunter’s could turn him hard?
“Nolan?”
He hastily scooped another spoonful. “What flavor do you taste?”
She sniffed the air and, again, warmth suffused his chest, distracting him from the hunger she inspired. “You’re supposed to taste it,” he reminded her, stuffing the spoon past her lips, once more. Except, with his prompting, he only drew forth further wicked musings of all the delicious joys to know with that mouth.
“I’m trying to use all my senses as you said,” she said around the mouthful. “Orange?” she ventured.
Nolan set aside the cup and gave a little clap. “Brava.”
From under the blindfold, she beamed. He grabbed the next and held the spoon close to her mouth. Sybil darted the tip of her tongue out and experimentally tasted the ice. His gaze devoured that erotic gesture. Imagining the satiny soft texture as he tangled his own with that delectable flesh. He suppressed a groan. Of all the rotted ideas, this was the one he’d come up with. A lesson in self-torture.
“Pineapple?”
“Yes,” he replied hoarsely, his answer coming without hesitation. She may have been tasting rhubarb and cinnamon for all he knew.
“May I blindfold you?”
Sybil’s words conjured a forbidden image. Her sprawled upon his bed, naked, with nothing more than a fire’s glow on her skin. Those long fingers of hers, holding out that scrap of cloth as she set out to seduce him. Nolan dropped the ice. God help him. He groaned.
“Are you sure you are all—?”
Cupping her about the nape, Nolan crushed her mouth under his, devouring her lips as he’d longed to si
nce she’d stepped inside his office. The lady froze in his arms. And then with the utter unrestraint she’d shown in their every exchange, she levered herself up, and met his kiss.
As she twined her arms about his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, he marveled at her abandon. Yanking off the blindfold, he tossed it aside. Needing to taste her, he parted her lips. Their tongues touched and it was like tinder being set to gunpowder. There was no hesitancy on her part. No reservations. She kissed with the bold curiosity and spirit she’d shown since their first meeting. He wanted to absorb all of her and lose himself in her forever. They mated with their mouths. Her moans blended with his groans in a symphony of passion. Fueled by the evidence of her desire, he caressed his hands over her generously curved frame, molding the fabric to her body in a bid to learn the feel of her.
“You are so beautiful,” he rasped, dragging a trail of kisses from the corner of her lips to her earlobe. He suckled the satiny soft flesh and she cried out. That sharp peal echoed in the quiet. She could have brought every last stern-faced dowager in London running with that cry and he couldn’t have stopped. Nolan nipped at the place where her pulse pounded.
“You are beautiful,” she panted, anchoring his head close to her neck. “A-Although I expect it seems like an un-original compliment, given your…given your… You are touching my buttocks.” She arched her hips against his and his shaft swelled.
If he were capable of laughing, capable of anything other than feeding this raging desire for her, her prattling even through her desire would have been the cause of it. And he proved himself the rake the world saw for nothing could stop him from exploring all of her.
A cold blast of wet snow tumbled from the branch overhead. It landed on Nolan’s head, wringing a gasp from him. He jerked away from the temptress in his arms. He’d been wrong. There had been something to quell this molten hot fire burning through his veins.
Sybil remained on her knees, a dreamy smile on her lips as she fluttered her lashes open. “Th-that was quite an adequate f-first day,” she whispered. And there was no hesitation in her eyes. No regret. Only a dangerous desire to know more.
God help him.
What have I agreed to?
Chapter 8
Covent Garden…but take care not to judge before you meet me this time, love…
“Oh, Miss Cunning.”
It was the third time since Sybil’s carriage had arrived outside the Covent Garden theatre that Hannah had put that unspoken plea to her. The one that begged they go anywhere else but where they were now. Granted, her always-nervous maid was more than entitled to her reservations. Particularly given Sybil’s suspicious two-hour disappearance during her trip to Hatchards.
She, of three days ago, would have felt a modicum of shame for causing her maid worry. After all, Sybil was at all times practical, logical, and, above all else, not given to the dramatics. But that had been before. Before Nolan had shown her the wonder of a winter picnic with nothing more than Gunter’s ices for their treats.
And his kiss…do not forget his kiss.
Heat burned low in her belly, leaving an ache inside for more of his touch. “As if I could…”
“What was that, Miss Cunning?”
Sybil’s cheeks blazed hot. Studiously avoiding Hannah’s eyes, she made a show of looking out the window. “You needn’t worry. I’m merely conducting research, Hannah.” Which wasn’t wholly an untruth.
From the frosted windowpane, she detected Hannah tip her head. “Research?”
Sybil pushed her spectacles further up on her nose. When she trusted she was no longer a blushing mess, she plastered a serene, reassuring smile on her lips and glanced over at her maid. “Indeed. It was the reason for my lengthy trip to Hatchards yesterday and for my visit to Covent Garden.” In the early morn hours, when there was no performance scheduled. Not for the first time since Nolan’s daily note had been delivered to her via Hannah, her curiosity piqued.
All the tension left her maid’s frame. “Of course. Research.” She giggled, that expression full of relief that filled her eyes. “I thought the note that arrived this morn…” It would, of course, become decidedly difficult to explain away the notes that would continue to arrive over the next nine, eight after this one, exchanges with Nolan.
While her maid rambled on with talk of her own silliness, a pang of regret struck in Sybil’s chest; a dull throbbing very close to where her heart beat. Which was preposterous. With the exception of an apoplexy, a person couldn’t truly suffer pain inside one’s heart. And yet, how else was there to account for that aching hurt? For soon, he would collect his coin. And she would go off to the country and think with fond remembrance of Nolan Pratt, Baron Webb. Whereas he? Would he even think of her a day from tomorrow?
“…I knew it was silly to worry, miss…” her maid finished, momentarily diverting Sybil from that inner tumult and returning her to something vastly safer—Hannah’s worrying.
Yes, of course. Sybil Holly Cunning, the dutiful daughter who studied journals and periodicals, who helped with the running of the house and Father’s collections, would never dare do something outrageous…or even remotely fun. “Silly, indeed,” she murmured. Did the girl hear her frustrated annoyance? It was annoyance with not only Hannah and the whole of Society for seeing her in that dreary light, but herself for having been so consumed by logic that she’d lost sight of simply enjoying life.
Scanning the Covent Garden Square, Sybil passed her gaze over the empty piazza with its low railings. There was no sight of him. But then, given the scandal they courted, no one should catch a glimpse of Nolan here. Knowing that, and understanding it with the same logic she’d lauded herself for over the years, still did not erase the fear that he’d abandoned their agreement. Do not be silly. He’d given no indication that he intended to or wanted to. His kiss certainly hadn’t hinted at a man eager to be free of her.
“I’ll return in a short while, Hannah,” she said and opened the door. The driver was immediately there to help hand her down.
“What?” Hannah squawked like one of those crows whose cries resonated in an early autumn quiet. “I cannot let you…go off on your own.”
Layering her hands on other side of the door, she blocked the girl from climbing out. “Hannah, you know I require silence when I’m conducting my research.” When the servant continued to protest, Sybil cut into her words. “No harm came to me yesterday and none will come to me now.”
“But, Miss—”
“I do not require an escort,” she said sharply and set her teeth. The whole of the world would believe a woman incapable of knowing her own mind and free movement. Even her father, who took pride in Sybil’s academic acumen, never truly granted her the freedoms that were afforded to men. At the stricken look in her maid’s expression, she softened her tone. “Thank you,” she said gently. “I assure you I’ll come to no harm.”
Tenacious in ways she’d never seen her, Hannah wrung her hands. “But, miss, the viscountess will sack me should any harm befall you.”
Ultimately, that is what it always came down to…responsibility. What tasks was Sybil responsible for and who was responsible for her. It was a juxtaposition that proved the mockery of a woman’s place. “No harm shall come to me. I’ll return shortly,” she pledged. And not encouraging a further debate on the merits of going off on her own, she crossed the street and strode through the square.
As she walked, she breathed in slow, steady breaths, taking in the winter air and letting it fill her lungs. Cleansing and empowering. All the while, she looked for Nolan.
When she had enlisted Baron Webb’s assistance, she’d neatly laid out her reasoning for selecting him as well as her expectations for his services. In all her dreams, wonderings, or musings, Sybil never considered she could feel so—alive. Not wicked or wanton, as her mother had professed a lady mingling with a rogue was wont to do. But alive.
Yet, it was not solely the memory of Nolan’s kiss that held her s
o transfixed but rather what she’d gleaned about the gentleman in the two days she’d known him. For Nolan was not the rake the world took him to be. He was far more.
…I’ve a brother who can’t marry because of my handling of the finances and a sister who can’t have a proper London Season for that very same reason…
Sybil chewed her lower lip. He was a troubled brother, with two siblings, and by his own admission, a largely friendless gentleman. How very much at odds that real image painted was than the one crafted by Society. Questions whirred through her mind. He’d neatly sidestepped her probing and then, with the lesson he’d shown her yesterday, killed all further talk of his life.
It hadn’t been until she’d returned home and sat reading a copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility that she’d allowed herself to wonder once more.
Her musings stopped as she reached the bottom of the steps leading up to the theatre and did a small turn around. Her breath left little puffs of white in the winter air that fogged the lenses of her spectacles. Hastily removing them, she dusted the glass along the front of her cloak. Putting them on, she continued looking. Where was he?
“Approximately thirty steps to the right and continue back.”
She jumped and did a quick search for Nolan, following the sound of the voice. “Noel?”
“Ah-ah, you’ll need to be more discreet than that, love.” His husky, teasing baritone sent another wave of excitement through her. Alive. I am alive whenever I am with him. With a spring in her step, she all but sprinted to the alley. Her maid would be staring out the carriage window even now, watching her every moment. The servant would wonder about the reason for her excitement. But Nolan, he was the recent joy she’d found in life. Oh, God. She may as well have been hit by a fast-moving carriage for all the enormity of that realization.
She couldn’t possibly find joy in him. This had never been about him. This had been about experiencing the thrill of things she’d never before done. I am a liar. Seeing him has brought me greater happiness than I’ve known in any of my lonely studies of books and periodicals.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 107