Excellent. One of his more useful pawns was back in the game. Having a man in the household should speed up those tedious matters of the heart. The valet knew the plan well for he’d helped devise it some weeks ago. Of course, it had been intended to be used on dear, departed Lord Walter, but now Walter’s sister could help him capture a king, instead of a mere knight.
How enjoyable it was, to watch the patterns flow and merge. Espionage was an art and a science combined.
And he was a master of both.
“My lord, if I may presume?”
Dane stopped in the inn hallway. As he was intent on the conversation he’d just had with Marcus—in which Marcus informed him that he had the nagging sensation they were being followed—it took Dane several moments to place the fair-haired man with the mournful expression. “Yes?”
The man bowed again. “Sumner, my lord. I only wish to thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve my lady. My prior connection to her family—”
Dane had almost forgotten about Sumner. He’d assigned the Liar’s Club to scrutinize the man’s history, then he’d put the fellow from his mind. “Yes, well, the choice was her ladyship’s.” He turned toward Olivia’s private dining room.
“I must extend my sincerest felicitations as well, my lord. You and Lady Greenleigh make a most handsome couple. It does my heart good to see her happy. Her brother spoke of her so fondly.” The valet smiled sadly. For the first time, Dane noticed that the man could be called handsome. He was tall, but not overly so, and lean like a whippet. Blue eyes, fair hair …
“Lady Cheltenham was a very busy woman, and I believe Lady Olivia was just the slightest bit … abandoned.”
Dane went very still. This he knew from personal experience. He certainly didn’t appreciate hearing it from a servant.
“Oh, there you are, Dane.” Olivia appeared before him in the hall, slightly mussed, with a long lock of fair hair having come down from her pins. Her bottom lip was swollen from being bumped in her fall.
She looked like a woman who had just been taken up against a wall. Dane wondered if she would like it that way, pressed high with her thighs wrapped about him—
The roar increased, drowning out every thought but one.
She belonged to him.
Olivia was greeting Sumner, asking him how he was bearing the trip. Sumner gazed at her moonily and said he wished it could go on forever.
“It is time to leave,” Dane blurted. They both turned to look at him, obviously surprised by his forcefulness.
He swept Olivia before him, moving quickly to the first carriage. He installed her with no more than a word or two, leaving her gazing after him curiously when he turned and walked away.
Marcus was readying his second horse, having tied his first to the back of the following wagon.
“You may ride inside now,” Dane told him, taking the horse’s reins.
Marcus blinked at him, then stared. “Are you unwell, Dane?”
“I need air,” Dane said shortly, and mounted Marcus’s horse. Thankfully, Marcus rode powerful animals much like Dane’s. He’d never have the patience to await the saddling of one of his own right now.
He rode ahead, leaving the servants scrambling for their seats as the carriages rolled out after him.
18
The inn at Huddersfield, midway between London and the Scottish border, was full. Dane moved the lot of them in anyway. Olivia could not get over what a Viking god with a pocketful of gold could accomplish in less than three minutes.
She felt terrible as she watched the farmers and merchants—and hastily dressed wives—rushed from their rooms to make way for Greenleigh and his staff. Dane seemed to expect nothing less.
He’d not spoken to her once since installing her in the carriage and riding away. Marcus had done his best to tease her out of her worrying mood, but Olivia just knew it was her fault.
She’d been a complete Bedlamite, climbing into his lap in the carriage. And then to blurt it out in front of everyone! She could never hold her tongue, especially not when it mattered.
Mother had been right all along. She was an embarrassment, a millstone, a country clod. She’d finally turned away from Marcus’s gentle teasing to gaze silently out onto the darkening fields.
Once in her room at the inn, she’d asked for the bath after all, for she felt chilled inside and out. Dane wouldn’t be coming to her tonight, she was sure. She left the case of rods in the carriage, tucked deep under her seat. She didn’t even think she could bear to look at the evocative carvings on it at this time.
At last, the bath was poured, her nightdress laid out, and Petty gone from the room. Olivia turned the key and slipped off her wrapper. At least if she cried in the bath, she could always tell herself she had soap in her eyes. She stepped one foot, then the other into the steaming water, then slid entirely into the comforting heat. The scent of jasmine rising with the steam almost made her smile. It seemed Petty had found the other bath scents after all. A thank-you for hiring Sumner, Olivia thought.
She only hoped Sumner returned the girl’s sentiment.
Dane spent far longer nursing his ale in the private dining room he’d hired than the mediocre libation deserved.
It was his plan to stay down here until Olivia was asleep. He’d not been able to bribe another room from the innkeeper. Apparently the rest of the guests were of sufficient rank to give the man pause.
If Olivia was asleep, then perhaps he could keep his senses long enough to get some rest. If she was awake, eager and agreeable and so convincingly adorable, he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to resist her.
Dane had always held his own position in the world with ease and power, untroubled by doubts. To find such possessiveness within himself was disturbing, to say the least. He ought to have found a servant’s infatuation with his wife scarcely worth noticing, or amusing at the most.
Instead, he had felt very much like sacking the smitten fellow. His playful threat to leave Sumner by the side of the road was beginning to sound like a very good option.
He’d obviously been spending too much time in Olivia’s company. His constant state of arousal was fair to making him obsessive. There was only one thing in his life Dane was willing to give that sort of devotion to—his duty.
So he’d exchanged places with Marcus on the journey. It ought to have been a relief to be alone with his thoughts, able to focus at last on his plans for Prince George.
Instead, his thoughts had been filled with Olivia. Olivia with her hair falling down. Olivia in his thrall, her eyes closed and her head thrown back. Olivia laughing at him, her gaze bright and fond. Olivia wanting him despite his problem.
She’d just been so damned … unexpected.
He gave up pretending to drink the ale and pushed it away. And in Dane’s line of work, unexpected could be a very bad thing.
He’d never expected his father to turn traitor, had he? He’d never had a moment of suspicion of Henry Calwell. Dane’s father had been his favorite person, and they had spent many hours happily debating the state of the union. Dane had relaxed his natural reserve, waxed political, even joked about Liverpool’s tightfisted rein on intelligence! He felt sick thinking what he had spilled unknowing to a traitor wearing his father’s face.
Dane’s one comfort was that he’d never breathed a word to his father about his appointment to the Royal Four. He’d told his father that the previous Lion was mentoring him in investments—the same pretext he now gave for Marcus. Since the Lion had been a visibly prosperous man, Dane’s father had approved heartily.
A clock chimed somewhere. Dane let his eyes close briefly. He was so bloody tired. Surely Olivia was asleep by now.
As he left the dining room and crossed the nearly deserted tavern, he felt that ever familiar twinge.
Marcus had said he felt watched. Dane felt it, too, a creeping sensation up the back of his neck. Unlike Marcus, however, Dane was fairly sure he knew who had his eye on him.
/> Blood will tell.
Certain members of the Four didn’t trust him. Not Nate. Reardon was besotted with his own lady and bound to see the best in everyone right now.
Wyndham, on the other hand …
Wyndham had been highly critical of the way Dane’s father had died before he could be questioned. It had been Stanton’s point that much useful information had died with Henry Calwell and had he been truly repentant, he would have given that information to England instead of taking it to his grave.
His grave on the grounds of Kirkall Hall. There’d been no well-attended funeral, no grand procession to their chapel in Greenleigh. Dane had buried his father quietly in his favorite place in the world. As the miles melted away, so seemed the distance that Dane had built between himself and his father’s memory.
Dane hadn’t been back since the day he’d found his father in the library, dead by his own hand and the bullet in his brain. A note, with a single line at the top of the page.
I never meant to hurt anyone.
And his signature, sans title. Henry Calwell. As if he were just an ordinary man, with feet of clay, not a peer of the realm. Not a privy adviser to the Prince Regent and the Prime Minister. Not an admired and trusted father.
Not that it mattered. He was dead and the whore who had sold herself for the French cause had disappeared like a puff of smoke. A good man, a learned and important man, lured with sex, bound by shame, then crushed like a bug under the bitch’s shoe.
He turned his key and opened the chamber door.
Oh, dear God. He was being punished.
Olivia was in the bath, her head tilted back on a rolled piece of toweling, her face damp and rosy in the rising steam. Dane crossed the room without willing a single step, his eyes glued to the tub.
The soap had subsided, leaving only a misty film that lay across her astounding breasts like a very low, very translucent bodice. With each deep sleeping breath, her nipples peeked from the water like curious mermaids, then submerged again when she exhaled.
Soapy, wet, glistening Olivia. His fantasy come to life.
Deep in his mind, barely heard above the pounding in his blood, was the thought that she’d arranged herself thus in order to captivate and distract him. Yet how could she have known it was the one thing he dreamed of above all others save the dream of losing himself in her sweet body?
Then again, he’d wager most men would be rather captivated right now.
He would test himself, he decided abruptly. He would command her to fulfill his darkest fantasy … and then he would walk away. He would prove to himself that she had no acute hold on his will.
He would try to make her bring about her orgasm by her own hand. While he watched.
He reached into the water and dampened his fingers. Then he let a single drop fall onto her upturned cheek. She twitched, then opened her eyes and blinked up at him.
“Will you do as you’re commanded?” he asked without preamble.
Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed. After a long moment, she nodded silently. Dane observed that her softened nipples were now rigid and crinkled, despite the heat of the water.
“Touch your breasts,” he ordered. “Soap them, then wash them clean.”
Without taking her pale moon eyes from his, she reached over her shoulder to dig her fingers into the porcelain container of soft soap. Slowly, she rubbed it between her two hands to make a lather.
He waited, betraying no expression. His interest here was purely experimental, nothing else.
She shivered the tiniest bit, then sat up slightly to raise her upper torso from the water. With both hands covered in bubbles, she began to run them over and around her two lush breasts, leaving gleaming trails of white to drip off her rigid nipples. Her flesh rose and fell, plumped and pressed, as her hands rotated around but not touching the points.
“Wash your nipples,” he said tonelessly. “Wash them very well.”
Her tongue came out to lick her lips. She was still gazing at him solemnly, even as she kneaded her rigid nipples.
“Pinch them.”
She did so, finally closing her eyes at the pleasure /pain. It was relief, for now he could not be distracted by her yearning gaze.
He watched for a long while, curious how long she would continue.
As long as he wanted, apparently.
“Rinse the soap off now.”
She did so, cupping her hands and bringing the water to her throat, letting it wash away the film of white.
Her nipples were hard points, made deep red by her efforts to please him.
“Sweep the soap away so that I may see all of you.”
She opened her eyes and waved her arm, pushing the soap film to one side. The water was still cloudy, but he could see her belly, her navel, and her pudendum.
“Close your eyes.” She did so, instantly. “Slide your hands down your body.”
She spread her fingers wide and let her palms glide from beneath her breasts and over her belly, her fingers touching over the center line of her.
“Open your thighs.”
He saw her smile slightly, a tiny wave of relief crossing her features. She thought he was going to stroke her now. He turned away from her gladness to cast his gaze about the room. “Are the rods still with the baggage?”
She nodded, her smile becoming sensual. She thought he would trot right out into the cold to fetch them.
“Well then.” Dane crossed his arms and took a stance at the end of the tub. “You’ll just have to use your fingers, then.”
Her eyes flew open. “Wh—what?”
“You heard me,” he said cruelly. “Fuck yourself with your fingers.”
She flinched at the foul word and drew her hands away from her thighs. “I—”
Dane leaned over the tub, gripping the sides with both hands. His face was little more than a foot above hers. “Do as I say.”
She cringed away, against the slanting back of the tub. Her big gray eyes filled as she stared up at him. Her bottom lip quivered. Dane refused to relent. He needed to know she had no hold over him.
Then she blinked the moisture away and narrowed her gaze. “If you like soap so much—” She used both hands to lift a great wash of bathwater. It hit his open eyes and he spun away, cursing.
When he rubbed his stinging vision clear, she was out of the water and clad in her wrapper.
She glared at him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts—which, by the way, were completely revealed by the now-soaking wrapper. Her dripping hair only made matters worse.
“That wasn’t nice,” she said, her tone flat.
He wasn’t going to pass this test. From the furious, betrayed look in her eyes, he’d already failed. Her hurt tore at him.
Weariness struck him. He was so bloody tired of keeping his guard high. He let his shoulders drop and sank to sit on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, Livvie.”
He dropped his face into his hands and rubbed it, but the fatigue was bone deep. “I’m an ass. You’re quite correct. That wasn’t nice.”
“Well, as long as we’re in agreement—”
He held up his hand against her anger. “Please. I know. I’m so very sorry.”
He heard movement—and a good bit of dripping—across the floor. Her bare crinkled toes stopped just inches from his booted ones. “Well, it isn’t as if you’re not allowed to make a mistake or two,” she said slowly. “Who would I be to declare that?”
He shook his head. “I—”
“I mean, it isn’t as if you truly know what you’re about.”
He jerked his head up. She was gazing at him with … understanding? He frowned at her, then glanced away when she raised a brow. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said stiffly, although he was very much afraid he did.
She was wrong, of course. Well, about it being the reason he’d mangled this evening, anyway.
She knelt before him, her wrapper falling into her own puddle. She raised her hands to cradl
e his face, gently forcing him to look at her. “You made a mistake because beginners make mistakes. You’ve never … have you?”
His jaw hardened. “No.” He pulled away from her, rolling aside on the bed. “There’s never been a woman who—” He stared into the fire, then laughed darkly. “I don’t know why I thought I could keep that secret. It is rather the point, isn’t it?”
She clambered up on the bed behind him and wrapped her arms about him, pressing her wet wrapperclad breasts to his wet shirt-clad back. “I think it’s lovely. It is a gift we give only to each other.”
And just like that, he was forgiven. Understood and forgiven. Deep down, in a place he wasn’t ready to look, he knew that her assumption was quite correct. He’d tested himself, true—but he’d tried to fulfill his fantasy of her in the bath even while he told himself he was uninterested.
It isn’t as if you truly know what you’re about.
“Oh!” Olivia sat up from the circle of his arms. “I just remembered—” She scrambled off the bed and ran to the hook where she’d hung her traveling dress.
Dane found himself with a view of curvaceous woman through damp muslin, lit from behind by the fire. The vision struck him dry-mouthed with a sudden bolt of fresh lust. He scarcely noticed that Olivia was trying to work something out of the pocket of her dress.
Then she whirled, showing him a flash of pale thigh where her wrapper parted, and waved a familiar, blunt shape at him.
“I had Rod number four in my pocket!”
He blinked. “Why?”
She shrugged and looked away. “Ah, for emergencies?”
Dane fell back on the bed, chuckling helplessly. “Were you going to cosh a highwayman on the head with it if we were accosted?”
She moved to bed and crawled up his body until she sat astride his lap. Then she stroked the rod down her throat and smoldered at him. “We wouldn’t want to lose any of our lovely progress, would we?”
Dane closed his eyes against her playful, erotic pose and pulled her to him, holding her hard against his heart. “Where did you come from, sweet Olivia? You should mock me, a man of my age with so little experience.”
Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 02] Page 16