“Stop touching me. You handled me in that shop like I was some… prize hound, my conformation and coloring shown off for company.” And thank God the modiste had been French and not the least dismayed by his behavior.
“You’re not a hound, though you’re definitely a prize. A treasure, a gem of surpassing beauty. And I’ve about had it with your bun.”
“My bun? You’ve had it with my bun?” She drew herself up on the seat of the phaeton, prepared to reel with righteous exasperation, when a rut in the road pitched her against him. “Bother.”
Darius smiled over at her. “Did you even think of lingering there, leaning against my side before you pokered right up again?”
“Why would I lean against you when I can sit perfectly well unassisted?”
“Lean against me, Vivvie, just a little.”
She gave him a look intended to put him in his place—several counties distant.
“Come here, Viv-vie,” he singsonged. “Just a little lean on a deserted lane, as if you’re a touch cold or tired or in want of a cuddle.”
“You are ridiculous,” she spat, except she was cold and tired and maybe that other thing he’d said.
He slipped the reins into one hand and tucked an arm around her waist, drawing her closer to his side.
“Were you truly ambitious,” he murmured, “you’d allow me a hint of the side of your breast against my arm, just in passing.”
“Whyever would I do that?” But she stayed leaning against him, strictly because he was warm and solid.
He smiled at her, a charming, naughty smile. “To scramble my wits, sweetheart. Then you could slip in a little observation about how the green velvet walking dress might look just as fetching in a dark brown with green trim, and next thing you know, I’d be offering to order it for you in both green and brown. Given what William is paying me, I can afford to indulge you in one more frock.”
“You want me to… wheedle?”
“I want you to have what you want, however you have to exert yourself to get it,” he said, turning them up the lane to the manor. “You’re willing to disport with me to get a baby, Vivian. Why not a little wheedling to get something simpler?”
His version of reasoning would scramble her wits in short order. “I know nothing of this wheedling. It sounds tedious and demeaning.”
“What’s demeaning is having to depend on others to meet your every need, because you can’t use the strengths you have to do it yourself.”
Vivian kept her voice low by sheer self-discipline. “What strengths? I’m a married female. I have no rights, no property, no wealth. I can’t hire or fire my own staff, I can’t enter into business ventures unless I inherit them from family once I’m widowed. I can’t even name my own child, does my husband forbid it. What damned strengths?”
“That’s a start,” he said slowly, smiling over at her.
“You have me using foul language. Cursing is not an indication of strength, but just the opposite. And that reminds me, Mr. Lindsey, when am I to conceive this baby you’re always going on about? I’ve been here four days, and you’ve run me ragged to milliners and cobblers and modistes and had me reading all manner of scandalous tripe and riding the countryside in this weather, and none of that is in aid of conceiving a child.”
Let him argue that.
“Are you inviting me to your room tonight, Vivvie?”
He drew the vehicle to a halt in silence, jumped down, then came around to lift her off the seat. As the groom led the horse away, they stood in the stable yard, Darius’s hands on her waist.
His expression was no longer teasing, nor was it even flirtatious. He stood there, regarding her almost solemnly.
She bit her lip. “Maybe not tonight.”
He studied her expression for a moment then turned her under his arm and led her toward the house. “Still untidy?”
“Some.” She was blushing, drat it all to perdition. Drat him. “Not much longer.”
“I’ll come to you,” he said, holding the back door for her.
“But I thought…”
“Trust me.” He dipped his head to kiss her cheek as he untied the frogs of her cloak. “I won’t do anything you don’t agree to, and as much trouble as I’ve had convincing you to try a few fripperies on, we won’t get very far in a single night.”
“I don’t want…” She glanced around the deserted kitchen.
“What don’t you want?” He hung her cloak and his coat on pegs, then swung the kettle over the fire and began assembling a tea tray. “Tea?”
She moved to stand beside him. “I dread this.”
“You’ve yet to tell me how we’re to go about it,” he reminded her. “My brother favors Darjeeling, so I keep some around, but I’m more partial to a mild oolong. What about you?”
“What about me?” Tea and copulation in two consecutive sentences. She was going to end up in Bedlam. “I like mine with cream and sugar.”
“Vivvie.” He tucked an arm around her waist. “You are a disgrace.” He made it sound like an endearment though, and Vivian dropped her head to his shoulder.
“How we’re to go about what?” she asked, though she knew exactly what.
“Do I merely service you,” he asked, moving away to get down mugs, not teacups, “or will you let me pleasure you?” He retrieved the cream from the cold box at the window, apparently able to discuss one appetite while preparing to fulfill another.
“Is this how these things are decided?” She watched him moving around the kitchen. “Between trips to the pantry?”
“Come here.” He backed toward the dark confines of the pantry, tugging her with him. “I’ve been wanting to do this for days.”
“Do…?”
When she was sharing the small, orderly confines of the pantry with him, he settled his lips over hers and wrapped her close against the warmth of his larger body. The heat of him felt heavenly, and Vivian knew with a sudden certainty the weight of him would feel just as good.
She’d learned a little in their two previous kisses, and tasted his lips with her tongue before he got around to offering her the same gesture. She felt the pleasure and surprise go through him, felt it in the way he gathered her closer, and in the way his body seamed itself to hers.
“More.” He whispered it against her neck, and the sensation of his breath on her skin sent tendrils of pleasure curling through her vitals. His hand slid down her back and cupped her derriere, urging her more closely against him. “More, Vivvie, please…”
Vivvie… when had he started calling her that?
When had she decided she liked it?
She opened her mouth beneath his and invited him in for a taste, squirming against his chest when his tongue came calling. When she moved, her breasts pressed more snugly against him. This relieved some vague discomfort welling up from her middle, so she did it again, more slowly.
“That’s my girl…” His hand traveled around from her hip, up to her waist, then her side, and then, glancingly, along the side of her breast.
“You…” She broke the kiss to look up at him. “You’re wheedling.”
“Not yet.” He nuzzled her neck, and Vivian was abruptly aware of a different pressure, nuzzling against her abdomen. He rocked against her, ensuring she’d know what that rigid length was, setting up a slow, naughty rhythm that made her insides hum.
“Now.” He closed his eyes and kissed the side of her neck. “Now, I’m wheedling.” He kept up that slow rocking, until the teakettle whistled and Vivian stepped back, bumping into the shelves behind her.
“The tea…” She glanced out into the kitchen.
“Answer me first, Vivvie love.” He let his hand slide down her arm then trail away. “Pleasure or duty? You decide.”
She gave him a look, feeling undecided, torn, aroused, and miserable.
“Both.”
She bolted into the kitchen, having used up her entire store of courage in a single syllable, and didn’t see him grinnin
g like an idiot while he adjusted a raging erection behind his falls.
Bless her, she’d lit on the one and only correct answer.
Five
Several hours later, Vivian was debating her fate from the soapy, fragrant confines of a steaming-hot bath.
The bath Darius Lindsey had ordered for her.
The knowledge he had of women was… disquieting. Vivian considered his insistence that she join him here in Kent as her menses began, and realized from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, he’d known something more personal about her than her sister generally knew. More personal than William ever knew, except this once.
From the moment Darius had laid eyes on her, the exact cycle of her body had been shared between them. Such knowledge was appallingly intimate, the sort of thing Vivian suspected Jared and Angela might both know but never discuss.
With Darius Lindsey, whom Vivian had known less than a week, the topic had been discussed. Everlasting God.
She rinsed her hair a final time and stood, letting the water sluice off her body as she reached for a thick, warm bath sheet.
He understood a lady’s comforts, and the idea made her shiver in anticipation. She hadn’t known this about him when she’d chosen him. She’d known he was fierce, discreet, and in need of coin. William hadn’t questioned her choice though, and that had to mean something.
A knock on the door as Vivian shrugged into a dressing gown had her heart speeding up, but it was only Gracie, the maid of all work. She seemed to manage easily despite a slightly withered arm, balancing a tray on her hip while she pulled the door closed.
“Master Darius sent you up a toddy,” Gracie said. “I’m to brush out your hair so it dries before bedtime. If you’re decent enough, I’ll have the tub taken away.”
Vivian took a seat at the vanity, trying to recall the last time somebody else had brushed out her hair. Her lady’s maid—formerly Muriel’s maid and not a young woman—had never volunteered for the task. “Why do you call him Master Darius?”
“Habit,” Gracie said, turning down the sheets on the bed to warm, then going to the door. “Come on, you lot, and step quick, as there’s leftover toddy still on the hob in the kitchen.”
A procession of servants—the scullery maid, the boot boy, a footman, and the groom from the stables—made quick work of removing the tub, buckets, and screens, leaving Vivian to sip her toddy before the fire.
“Let’s get you seated,” Gracie said, pulling the dressing stool over by the fire. “And my heavens, you’ve more hair than I’ve seen in a while.”
“Are there footmen in this household?”
“Oh, sometimes.” Gracie started gently toweling Vivian’s hair dry. “Master Darius hires us and gives us coin for our labor. We don’t fret too much about who wears which jobs when the work piles up. The grooms will help out with the chimneys. The footmen will muck a stall come summer. We do pretty much as Pitt directs us.”
“Mr. Pitt is the butler?”
“On his good days.” Gracie switched to brushing, starting with the ends of Vivian’s hair. “Pitt used to work at Wilton Acres, but he got too old, and Lord Wilton turned him off, so here he is.”
The toddy was wonderful, another comfort, courtesy of her… of Darius Lindsey. “Wilton turned off a loyal retainer without a pension or character?”
“Wilton’s like that. We’re not to speak ill of our betters, but that Wilton is a scandal. Let’s turn you a bit, shall we?”
“What about the other brother, Lord Amherst?”
“Master Dare dotes on him,” Gracie said, expression brightening. “Loves those kiddies, too. A child never had a more devoted uncle than Master Dare.”
“John loves him,” Vivian said, sipping her toddy.
“And we all love our Master John. Turn again, milady.”
“Did you all work at Wilton Acres?” This was prying, shameless, unladylike prying, but no more personal than having to tell a man about the very rhythms of one’s body.
Gracie paused to work at a tangle. “We don’t all come from Wilton, but we worked somewhere, and most of us were let go through no fault of our own. Word gets out, though, when a man’s willing to take a chance on people. Master Dare puts us to work, and if we’ve a mind to move on, he writes the best characters and lets us know he appreciates our loyalty.”
This toddy had a particularly lovely mixture of spices—something blending the cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg together. Something subtle and exotic—cardamom? Allspice? An extravagance, surely, and one Darius Lindsey had expended on her. “How long have you worked here, Gracie?”
“Years. Most wouldn’t hire me, ’cause of me arm, but it hardly slows me down a’tall, and Master Dare knows that. Turn.”
Vivian sipped her drink in silence, considering what Gracie had said. It was true. Servants in the better homes were expected to be attractive—whole, fit, and comely. She’d not considered this before, because William’s residences had been fully staffed before she’d married him.
But in five years they’d had some turnover—and the butlers or house stewards had hired the men, while housekeepers hired the maids.
And the lady of the house did exactly… what?
“There you go.” Gracie stepped back. “Can I fetch your book, milady, so you can stay here by the fire while your hair finishes drying?”
“I’ll get it.” Vivian took one last, scrumptious whiff of the dregs in her glass and stifled a yawn. “Are there really leftover toddies in the kitchen?”
“Master Dare’s toddies are legendary. I had a taste as he was putting in the spices, to make sure he got it right.”
“It was lovely,” Vivian said, handing over the glass. “No more for me, or I’ll be asleep on my feet.”
“Good night, then, milady. Pleasant dreams.”
“Thank you, but, Gracie?” Vivian hoped neither her tone nor her expression gave away the depth of her curiosity.
“Milady?”
“Does Mr. Lindsey have other guests here, other ladies?”
Gracie met her gaze for the merest instant. “Never overnight, milady. You’d best be asking him about that directly.”
Vivian nodded, understanding that Gracie had just passed along a tidbit, one woman to another, that came up against but did not cross the boundaries drawn by a devoted employee. Vivian was still sitting on the hearthstones, trying to puzzle out if she wanted to know of Darius’s other associations, when he knocked once and stood in her doorway.
“You’re letting in the cold air,” she said.
He pulled the door closed behind him. “Your hair is even more lovely than I’d imagined, and longer.”
“You’re not supposed to see it down,” she groused, stifling another yawn. “And the toddy was a masterful touch. Should I take my clothes off? I’d rather climb under the covers first.”
He smiled slightly as he prowled into the room. “Are you tipsy?”
“Maybe a little. I drank it quickly. I don’t do this sort of thing, ever, you see, and… what are you doing?”
He’d picked up the hairbrush and was advancing on her, but she kept scooting around to face him.
“Vivvie, I can’t brush your hair if you won’t give me your back.”
“Oh.” She angled slightly so he could sit behind her on the raised hearth.
“One braid or two?”
“One, over my left shoulder. How did you bathe if I had the use of the tub?”
“You can tell?” He smoothed her hair over her shoulders, and Vivian shuddered at his touch. He repeated the gesture, making it even more of a caress.
“Your hair is damp and you smell good,” she said. “Maybe I am tipsy.”
“You’re nervous.” His hands settled on her shoulders and kneaded slowly. “It’s too soon to be nervous, Vivvie. Nobody will be taking any clothes off tonight except possibly myself.”
“Why would you do that?”
“If you asked me to, I’d do it.” His thumbs traced circles
on her nape then up the sides of her neck.
“Do you do this to other women?”
“Massage their necks, no.” His hands disappeared, making Vivvie want to curse her tongue, but she felt a need to drive him off, to establish some breathing room. “Nor do I allow them coitus, but I do enjoy the company of the occasional understanding woman, and I’ve been known to allow ladies other privileges for sufficient consideration.”
“Allow them coitus.” Vivian said the words, frowning but not arguing, because she had to conclude that, very likely, coitus with Darius Lindsey would be a privilege.
An expensive privilege, and it hurt to think about that.
“I have many faults, Vivian.” His voice was tired as he put the brush to her hair. “I do not lie.”
“My stepfather lies,” she said, wondering where the words had come from. “He’s like a little boy, expecting me to believe he cares for my welfare, when in truth, it’s his purse he’s concerned about.”
“Which is how you ended up married to William?”
“Oh, that…” The rhythm of the brush was soothing, and Vivian closed her eyes, to rest them at the end of a trying day. “Muriel made me promise I’d look after him, and I suspect she extracted the same promise from William, and so there we were. That feels good. I loved Muriel. William did too. Still does.”
Behind her, Darius said nothing while his hands were in her hair, dividing it into three thick skeins.
“I think William misses Muriel more than he wants to live,” Vivian went on. “He thinks of death not as the end of life, but as the way he can be with her again. It’s sweet.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Darius countered softly. “William can be with you, and he’s pining for a dead woman.”
“They were married forever. Are you going to take your clothes off now?”
“What is this obsession you have with disrobing, Lady Longstreet?” He flipped a fat rope of brown hair over her shoulder. “Would you like me to take off my clothes?”
She shook her head but kept her back to him, and when the silence stretched and stretched, she felt her nerves humming.
“Darius?”
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