by Connie Lane
“It’s not what I meant, Willie.” Nick’s voice warmed with the emotions that flooded him. “When we scooped you up from the front of your father’s church we were looking for a virgin and I never thought to be the one who—”
“Would you rather some other man—”
“And that isn’t what I meant, either.” He could not help himself. He couldn’t wait a moment longer. Conversation or no conversation, crossed purposes or not, he had to kiss her. He spun her around and he kissed her slowly and thoroughly enough so that by the time he was done, she was a little more starry-eyed.
And a great deal more determined to carry on.
Willie ruffled Nick’s neckcloth, tugging at one end until it loosened. She untied it, pulled it off, tossed it over her shoulder. She would have gone right to work on his coat if he hadn’t stopped her, one hand on hers to still it.
“We must talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to do anything but let you kiss me.”
“But tomorrow—”
He saw her swallow hard but she did not look away. “Don’t you see, that’s why it is so important. We have tonight. And it’s all we have. And it’s all we will ever have. If you don’t want—”
“You. I want you.” He cupped her chin in his hand and smoothed his thumb back and forth across her jaw until he felt her vibrate with anticipation. “I want you more than my heart, Willie.”
Smiling, she turned in his arms. “Then you must help me out of this dress,” she told him, and again, she scooped up her hair and bent her head.
For a moment, Nick could do nothing at all but stare at the sweep of her freckled skin. It looked as delicate as porcelain against the black cloth of her gown. Just to be sure she was real—that this was fact and not some fantasy of a mind too long deprived of what it had so long wanted—he skimmed a hand over her skin. He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck and slid his mouth down her spine and still kissing her, he undid the buttons at the back of her gown, one by one. When he was finished, he put his hands on her shoulders and slid them down. The dark dress drifted to her hips, revealing a linen chemise that looked pristine against Willie’s rosy skin, and—
“Drawers!” Nick could hardly help himself. He had to smile. It was the only way he could keep his desire for her from choking the breath out of him. He glanced over the linen drawers, at the smooth sweep of her buttocks, and the length of bare leg exposed just below where the drawers buttoned below her knee. “Willie, I would not have thought you as progressive as all that. Imagine!”
She had the good grace to blush but even blushing, she was brazen enough to turn to give him a better look. “Do you like them?” she asked.
“I like you.” He skimmed a hand over the back of the drawers and over her nicely rounded backside and when she pulled in a breath and leaned back against him, Nick was lost.
“I like your fiery hair,” he whispered close to her ear. He skimmed a hand over the knee-length chemise that topped her drawers. “And your fiery personality. I only wish—”
“Enough!” She pressed a finger to his lips. “We said we wouldn’t talk, remember? So if you will allow me, m’lord…” She didn’t wait for his permission and she didn’t ask for his help. As expertly as one of Madame’s girls might have done, she undressed him. She worked with exquisite slowness, each touch of her hand, each brush of her breath against his skin designed, or so it seemed, to send him even closer to the brink. It wasn’t until she was done that she skimmed a look over him that heated Nick through to his soul.
Willie could not keep her hands from his body a moment longer. “You’re a fine specimen of a man,” she told him, gliding her hands over his chest and down farther still. And when he hauled in a breath and held it, she could not help but tease him further. She did it with a kiss to his breastbone. And another to the place where his heart pounded so hard, she swore she might be able to hear it if the blood rushing in her ears would allow it. She stood on tiptoe and nipped his earlobe and when he caught her in the crook of his arm and skimmed a hand under her linen chemise and over her bare breasts, she tipped her head and arched her back and wondered that anything could feel so good. Or so right.
When he raised her arms and tugged the chemise over her head, she did not stop him. Nor did she forget a word of the advice Madame had once given her. When she turned again to face him, she gave him little chance to look at her. Instead, she leaned close to Nick until her breasts brushed his bare chest.
“Oh Lord, Willie, you have been learning a thing or two from Madame.”
Willie grinned. “Are you telling me that I’m doing this the right way?”
“There is no wrong way. Not with you.” He bent and pressed a kiss between her breasts at the same time he loosened her drawers and skimmed them over her hips and when she stepped out of them, he followed the trail his hands had laid over her with a series of fiery kisses.
Willie’s yearning grew. A frightening craving pulsed through her until her whole being was focused on the sensations. The flick of his tongue against her skin. The tug of his mouth on her nipple. The touch of his bare skin to hers.
His tongue skimmed the valley between her breasts and Willie moaned. Impatient for more, she shuffled even closer, and he tucked one leg between hers and cupped her from behind and as if it were a pattern, like the steps of the waltz he’d taught her in this very room, she rotated her hips against his.
“Willie…” Nick kissed her again. Her lips and her eyelids and her breasts. “Willie, we need to—”
“Yes.” She led him to the sofa and when she lay down and pulled him down on top of her, she saw that Nick was smiling.
He moved into her slowly, watching her face, and when she caught her breath and groaned her pleasure, he quickened the pace to a rhythm as steady as the dance.
Faster and faster, the cadence increased until Willie thought she would shatter. She did, finally, with a jolt that made her let go a tiny shriek of pleasure and surprise. Nick thrust against her, harder and faster. The next second his body shuddered and his mouth was on hers, drinking in the breaths she fought for.
Willie held him close and kissed him hard and lost herself in the taste of him and the warm afterglow of passion.
Once, she’d thought not making love to Nick would be the hardest thing she would ever do in her life.
Now she knew she was wrong.
It wasn’t not loving Nick that was difficult, it was loving him.
Especially when she knew that it could never happen again.
16
“Don’t be silly!” Nick kissed the tip of Willie’s nose. He kissed her cheek and her chin. He nuzzled her neck and he would have slid his mouth down farther still if she had not laughed and squirmed away. Still, he could not be so easily put off. He moved off the sofa and followed her over to where she stood near the fireplace.
“There’s no reason to be shy. Madame and Bess and Clover and the rest of them would be as happy as mice in malt to know what we’ve done.” He came up behind her and looped one arm around her waist. He tickled a hand up her ribs and brushed his palm over her breasts and the suggestion that vibrated through his voice was as tempting as his touch. “They would not mind in the least if they found us here in the morning.”
“Don’t you see? That is exactly the problem. They would not mind what we’ve done here tonight.” Willie’s voice skipped and jumped with each ragged breath she took. “They would be very happy for us. But happy people do tend to talk and a careless word to the greengrocer or to one of the girls from the nearby houses who Clover and Bess sometimes spend their idle time with—”
“Let them talk!” Nick gave a throaty laugh. He kissed her shoulder and her arm. He swept aside her hair and kissed the back of her neck. “Then everyone will know what a lucky man I am.”
Lucky?
It was such an impossible concept, Willie could do nothing but shake her head. Didn’t he realize that word had a way of traveling at a faster clip than any ho
rse of good bottom could run? This word did not need to travel to the Morrisons.
The very thought made her heart squeeze but Willie did not bother to tell Nick as much. He knew the truth as surely as she did.
“You must get to your own room so that Rooster finds you there in the morning,” she reminded him, though how she was able to think clearly when her entire being was focused on the way he was swirling his fingers across her bare skin, she was not at all sure. “And I must be getting to my own room.”
Nick had other ideas.
He rolled her nipple between two fingers and she pulled in a breath and caught her bottom lip with her teeth.
“Do you still want to scurry up to your own room?” he asked her.
“Yes.” Though her mind was made up, Willie’s voice was no louder than a whisper.
He slid his hand across her bare stomach, and she leaned back against him and groaned.
“Do you still want me to head off to mine and lie in my own bed, alone and aching for you with every breath I take?”
He made it sound so cruel, even if he was laughing. Even that did not change her answer. She nodded. “Yes.”
Chuckling deep in his throat, he pressed himself against her and she realized that he wanted her—again.
“Do you really want to say good night right now, Willie, my love?”
“Yes.” It was the wise thing to say, even if it wasn’t true.
“And now?” He glided his hand between her legs.
Willie’s voice caught on the end of a sound that was pure ecstasy. “Yes!”
“Very well.” He made a move to step away and she realized how foolish her protests were.
“No!” she spun to face him and saw that he was laughing.
He moved a step nearer. “You will not send me all alone to my bed?”
“Not yet.”
He nuzzled a kiss to her throat and skimmed his hand between her legs. “You will stay awhile and keep me company?”
“Yes.” Willie melted into his embrace. “Oh, yes!”
As tempting as it was to give in to Nick’s sweet persuasion—and it was very tempting indeed—Willie did not let herself get distracted. At least not another time. When they were done, they dressed hurriedly and outside in the passageway at the place where he would turn to go to his chambers and she would head toward the back stairway and to her own room, he kissed her gently and wished her a good night. Reluctant to let go of her, he held her tight and consoled himself with the fact that he would see her in just a few short hours.
He toyed with the buttons at the back of her dress, and she knew if she gave him even the slightest encouragement, he would have her out of the garment again in less time than it took for her heart to make one crashing thump against her ribs.
“You’ll have breakfast with me?” His voice tickled against her ear.
“Of course.” Willie kissed his cheek and his lips before she hurried away, offering a quick prayer of thanks as she did. Because the passageway was dark, he could not possibly have seen that when she told him she would see him again in the morning, she had her fingers crossed behind her back.
It was nearly dawn by the time she was ready.
Willie glanced around her room one last time. There was still much that needed to be packed but that could not be helped. Right now, there was no time. She would have to leave her books behind, and the straw bonnet Lynnette had insisted on buying for her the last time they shopped in Bond Street together. She would have to leave a great many things behind but she wasn’t worried; Madame would see that her things were sent. As soon as Willie contacted her. As soon as she determined what she was going to do and where she was going to go.
Moving quickly and quietly, she finished stowing her most essential possessions in her portmanteau, blew out the single candle she’d used to work by and hurried out of the room.
The sun had not yet climbed over the horizon and the city was shrouded in fog. At least it wasn’t raining. Bad enough that she was sneaking out of the house like a thief. Worse yet to have to do it in the rain.
At the bottom of the stairway, Willie looked around one last time. She would miss Somerton House. Over the last months, the place had been more a home to her than any she had ever made with her family. She would miss the counterfeit paintings and the suit of armor that she had suspected all along was more spurious than it was historically important and without question, she would miss the people she worked with. As impossible as it might have seemed the night they arrived at the Church of Imperishable and Divine Justice with mischief in their hearts, she would also miss the Dashers. Especially Mr. Hexam and Mr. Palliston and the duke of Latimer. She would most assuredly miss Lynnette, for they had grown as close as sisters.
She refused to stop and consider how much she would miss Nick.
An errant tear trickled down her cheek and Willie wiped it away with the back of her hand. Though she did her best not to, she could not keep herself from looking up the stairway toward where she knew Nick was sleeping in his chambers. She had only to ask and she knew he would allow her to stay. She had only to knock at his door, and she knew he would welcome her with open arms and take her into his bed.
She had only to make love with him one more time and she knew she would never have the strength or the courage to leave him again.
Though her body advised otherwise and her heart reminded her that there would never be a place in it for anyone but Nick, her mind was made up. She put on her bonnet and tied it under her chin. She lifted her portmanteau and inched open the door, thinking in spite of herself of the night she’d left her father’s church and never looked back. Just like the door of the Church of Divine and Imperishable Justice, the door of Somerton House creaked, the sound as loud as rifle shot in the morning quiet.
She held her breath and a minute passed, and when there was no sign of Mr. Finch or Jem or Madame—who, in spite of the fact that she snored rather heavily, swore that she slept as lightly as a feather—Willie slipped out of the house and closed the door behind her. The morning air was damp and cold and she pulled her mantle closer around herself. The fog was as thick as Simon Marquand’s pea soup and narrowing her eyes the better to try and see through it, Willie started down the stairs.
She was almost all the way to the pavement when a shape stepped out from behind the shrubs that bordered the stairway.
It was impossible to see the man’s face but there was no mistaking who it was. Even in fog as thick as herrings, she would have recognized the long, greasy hair anywhere. The drab clothing. The two eyes that shone out at her through the gray morning mist, as cold and colorless as a dead cod.
“A bit early to be out and about, wouldn’t you say, Miss Culpepper?”
Willie sucked in a breath of surprise. She had not thought to meet anyone this early in the morning.
Most especially she had not thought—now or ever—to see the Reverend Childress Smithe.
“Word has it you’ll be headin’ out early this mornin’, my lord. Could it be you’ll be payin’ a certain sort of special call on a certain special young lady?”
Nick had to give Rooster O’Reilly credit. What the man lacked in subtlety, he made up for in enthusiasm. He bustled around Nick’s dressing room, getting his master’s things ready for the day, and if he noticed that the clothes Nick had worn to the ball the night before were not so much neatly put aside as they were dropped where he’d left them when he returned to his room, he neither commented nor criticized.
“Am I right in thinkin’ you’ll be wantin’ your buff trousers, sir? And the brown coat, I’m thinkin’ for an occasion such as this. You’ll cut a fine dash when you speak to the young lady’s father.”
“Her father? I wouldn’t speak to her bloody father if he were the last—” Nick caught himself at the brink of giving the Reverend Mr. Hannibal Culpepper the dressing down he so soundly deserved. It took him a moment to realize it was not the father—or the young lady—Rooster had in mind.<
br />
He forgave Rooster the blunder. But only because there was no way Rooster could have known about the remarkable events of the night before. More to the point, Nick was feeling particularly enthusiastic himself. He could hardly fault a man for being lively and inquisitive when it felt as if a whole new world had opened to him.
Thanks to Willie.
“Is Miss Culpepper…” Nick wondered if Rooster noticed the way his voice warmed over the name. “Is she down to breakfast yet?”
“I doubt it, my lord. It is a bit early, you’ll be beggin’ my pardon for mentionin’ it. Even for the likes of Willie.” He glanced out the window at the sky, which was just beginning to brighten behind a batting of fog. “Beggin’ your pardon again, sir, but a person can’t help but wonder, if you know what I mean, Your Lordship, sir. It’s not exactly like yourself to be up and about at this hour.”
“It isn’t, is it?” Grinning, Nick reached for the cup of coffee that Rooster had brought up on a silver tray. Every morning, Rooster brought up a cup of coffee. Most mornings, it had long gone cold by the time Nick was awake enough to drink it. He took a drink now and surprised at how good it tasted, he nodded his approval. “Damn, but it’s good when it’s hot! It looks as if I’ve been missing a great deal by spending so many of my mornings abed. Are things always this splendid at this time of day?”
Rooster looked uncertainly out the window. “It’s not exactly splendid, if you get my drift, Your Lordship, sir. Soupy, more like it. And not promisin’ to be the most glorious of days.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong.” Nick reached for his buff trousers and stepped into them. He shrugged into his shirt and though he tried not to think of how he’d shrugged out of just such a shirt only a few short hours earlier and how Willie had helped him do it and all that had happened after, he could not keep himself from smiling.
“Not the brown,” he said when Rooster presented the coat. “The green, I think. The better to contrast with that damned flaming hair of hers.”