by Anne Gracie
“Of course.” Annoyed because she was right, dammit—and because he’d almost lost his temper and he never lost it—Cal gently pushed the girls inside and stood back to let their teacher enter before him.
She gave him a brisk nod and turned to leave.
Cal frowned. “You’re not coming in?”
“Thank you, but no.”
Cal turned to the butler. “See to the girls, Logan. Wake one of the maids to attend them. A slice of steak will help Miss Rose’s eye. Unguent and some ice for Miss Lily’s bruises—but apply some leeches first if you have any. They’ll stop the worst of the bruising.”
“Ugh! Not leeches!” Lily exclaimed.
Cal ignored her. “A hot bath for each of them, a cup of hot milk with honey and a little brandy, and then bed.” He looked at the girls. “I’ll speak to you two tomorrow.” Logan looked at him with a question in his eyes, and Cal added, ”I will escort Miss Westwind home.”
“Westwood. But there is no need—” she began.
He said tersely. “Shall we stand in the street discussing it, or . . . ?”
She gave him a look he couldn’t read, then shrugged. “If you insist, but there’s really no—”
“I insist.” He offered his arm.
* * *
To Cal’s surprise he didn’t have to adjust his pace to hers as he did with most ladies. She walked with a long-limbed elegance, an easy graceful stride. Their steps matched perfectly. She was tall for a lady; the top of her head was, under the ugly gray hat she wore, level with his eyes.
“Do you often attend political rallies?” he asked her.
She gave him a sidelong glance. “When they interest me.” She added after a pause, “Why? Are you the kind of man who thinks that it’s unfeminine for women—excuse me, ladies—to show an interest in politics?” It was a challenge.
“Not at all,” Cal said. “I don’t care what you’re interested in. I was just making conversation.”
They walked in silence for the next few minutes.
“I want to thank you for bringing my sisters home.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I was surprised that they thought a political talk worth sneaking out for.”
She glanced briefly at him. “I suspect it was less the subject of the talk as the adventure of being out on their own at night.” Her voice reminded him of a white wine he’d drunk in Alsace once; crisp, dry and a little astringent. But with unexpected depths and a fine, smooth aftertaste.
“They shouldn’t be out at night at all, let alone unescorted,” said Cal with feeling. “I have utterly forbidden it.”
“Which adds to the appeal of the adventure.”
Her calm acceptance of their misbehavior infuriated him. “You shouldn’t be out alone and unescorted at night, either,” he snapped. “Especially at a political rally.” There were riots everywhere in England these days. People got hurt.
“Lord Ashendon, I am a spinster of six-and-twenty and am quite my own mistress. I am not accountable to you or anyone else for my behavior.”
“I know that,” he growled. “But your foolishness encourages others to imitate you.” It was unfair and he knew it.
And of course, she wasn’t the kind of female to let it pass. She snatched her hand off his arm. “Do not try to put the blame on me! Your sisters had no idea I was planning to attend. I don’t believe they had any plan to attend the rally, either—they just saw the crowd and followed out of curiosity.”
She marched on a few steps in silence, but she was clearly building up a head of steam. “Their adventurousness has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the way they’ve been . . . oh, ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d’ for the last year—and for most of their lives!”
He might have known a teacher would resort to flinging Shakespeare around, as if it were the clincher to every argument.
She continued, “And it’s especially difficult for them to accept when they must dress entirely in black and are not allowed out because they’re in mourning for their father and their brother, and yet you can go out carousing, wearing whatever you like and—”
“Carousing?” he interrupted wrathfully. “I’ll give them carousing! I was dining quietly with a fellow officer, a friend I haven’t seen in y—” He broke off, noticing, in the light of the lamp overhead, a stain on her otherwise pale face. “Stand still,” he ordered, and when she glanced at him in surprise he caught her by the shoulders and turned her toward the light.
A bruise was forming on her cheekbone, and dried blood made a dark crust around one of her nostrils. And, now that he looked, drops of blood stained the front of her clothing.
“Dammit, you were injured too. Why didn’t you say something?”
Flustered, she tried to move away. “I’m perfectly all ri—”
“Don’t move, I said.” He cupped her face gently in his hands, the better to examine her injuries.
Or so he told himself.
He’d left his gloves at Galbraith’s hotel. His hands were bare but warm. Her skin was cool from the cold night air, silky and damp from the mist. Pale and soft as moonlight.
The darkening bruise on her cheekbone woke an anger in him that surprised him. He gently smoothed his thumb along her jawline. She stiffened.
He cradled her face in the lightest of holds and studied her. She stood motionless, expressionless: a trapped doe braced to flee.
She had only to pull away or say something and he would release her. He could feel the tension vibrating through her, but she said nothing.
Her eyes watched, wide and dark, twin pools of mystery, colorless in the night.
She made not a sound. He could feel her breath, soft and warm.
Her cool, silky skin was warming under his fingers.
Her mouth—God help him—her mouth was dark and luscious and damp and enticing. Without thinking he bent to taste it, a light, swift kiss that somehow . . . lingered.
She stiffened a moment, then made a soft little sound and her mouth softened under his. She tasted of . . . oh, lord . . . rose petals and moonlight and innocence. And beneath it all lay heat, luscious womanly heat.
Ravenous hunger went spiraling through him. He drew her closer to deepen the kiss, but she resisted, pushing back at him with a little sound of anger. Or distress. He released her instantly.
She stumbled back a few unsteady paces. He put out a hand to support her, but she jerked away. One burning glance at him through wide, unreadable eyes and she turned her back on him, taking deep unsteady breaths that gradually calmed.
He watched her, pulling her composure back together like a suit of armor.
His own pulse was still pounding. His brain made no sense of what had just happened. He hadn’t intended to kiss her. He barely knew her. She was a respectable woman, a teacher in a girls’ school. Practically a nun.
Though that mouth didn’t belong on any nun. And now the taste of her was in his blood . . .
He should probably apologize, but he was damned if he would. He didn’t regret a thing, only that it hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. And that he’d been raised a gentleman.
The uncivilized part of him wanted nothing less than to possess her, to plunder her sweetness, to ravish that lithe, slender body until they were both sated and—
She turned back to face him, her expression smooth and calm as a pail of milk. “Shall we move on?”
—And to shatter that damnable ever-present composure. There was a passionate woman beneath it, he was sure; he’d tasted it in her. His blood had leapt in recognition.
But if that was how she wanted to play it, pretending the kiss had never happened, he would cooperate. He was, after all, a civilized man.
And dallying with innocents was playing with fire.
He offered his arm and, after the faintest of hes
itations, she took it. They walked on in silence.
Around them the city slept. In the distance a vixen screamed.
Overhead the clouds thickened, and the darkness intensified. They passed a house where lights still burned, and she glanced in as they passed. A woman bent over a writing desk, writing busily.
“She’s working late,” he commented, seeking an innocuous comment to break the tense silence.
“I shouldn’t look, I know. It feels as if I’m invading their privacy, but if people don’t draw their curtains . . .” After a moment she added, “I’m always curious about how other people live.”
As she would be, he reflected, seeing she had no home of her own. Or so he assumed. “Have you lived at the school long?”
“It feels like most of my life,” she said wryly. “I was a pupil there as a girl.”
“And you returned there to become a teacher?” There was a story there, he was sure, and he wanted to hear it.
But all she said was, “Yes.”
They walked on. “You should be proud of your sisters, you know,” she began, and seeing he was about to snap her nose off for that piece of impertinence, hurried on, “Oh, not because they sneaked out without permission—yes, they admitted that to me when I asked who was supposed to be escorting them. And that was very wrong of them. But the trouble wasn’t really their fault—”
“Political rallies are invariably violent,” he growled.
“Not necessarily, but be that as it may, when Lily was in trouble, Rose flew to her sister’s defense like a little wildcat. And then Lily tried to defend Rose. Of course, it’s not the most ladylike—”
“Ladylike!” he exploded. “No, it was not damned well ladylike! It was insane! What the devil kind of teacher are you anyway, praising them for brawling in public?”
She withdrew her hand and gave him a long cool look. “The kind of teacher who thinks for herself—and does not like to be cursed at,” she said calmly, and walked on. “As for brawling in public, the girls were defending themselves—and each other. Would you prefer that one of your sisters abandoned the other to preserve her own safety?”
She glanced at him and gave a little nod when she saw his expression. “Of course not. Should they have simply fainted, then, as society suggests is the proper ladylike response to upsets of various sorts?” Again she glanced at his face. “I agree. Had they been so foolish, they would have been trampled by the crowd milling around.”
“But if they hadn’t been so disobedient in the first place—”
“Of course, but having done so, what were they to do when faced with trouble? They acted with courage, and did their best with the limited skills and knowledge at their disposal,” she finished crisply. “Here we are at the school—no, no need to ring the bell. I have my own key.” She took it from her reticule and let herself in. “Thank you for your escort, Lord Ashendon. Good night.”
And before Cal could say a word, she shut the door gently in his face.
He stared at the door a moment, cursing under his breath. Blasted woman had an answer for everything.
Except a kiss. That she simply dismissed as if it had never happened. But he could still taste her.
As he made his way back home through the deserted streets, rain started, a light patter of drops at first, but turning swiftly into a downpour. Cal broke into a run, but even so, by the time he reached Aunt Dottie’s house he was drenched.
Of course. A perfect end to a perfect dratted night.
Chapter Five
Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.
—OVID
Emmaline Westwood shut the door on Lord Ashendon, took three steps toward the staircase, sank onto the steps and leaned against the carved wooden baluster.
That kiss . . .
She was still trembling inside from it, could still savor the dark, masculine taste of him. The heat that had streaked through her at the touch of his mouth, like rich, liquid lightning . . .
And oh, afterward, the effort of holding her composure, of making rational conversation in the wake of . . . that.
Somehow, thank goodness, she had. It was as if there were two Emmaline Westwoods; the rational commonsensical Emm who was somehow able to walk and talk and sound perfectly composed, like a talking doll or one of those automatons she’d seen at a scientific exhibition once.
The other—the foolish, romantical, credulous Emm—was still reeling, dazed at her reaction to what she knew was just a simple kiss. The heat from it still echoed deep inside her.
What had made him do it? For a few magical, entrancing moments she’d felt . . . well, imagined . . . But no. It was a ridiculously foolish Cinderella imagining, and she’d do well to put that nonsense right out of her mind.
Rich handsome earls didn’t suddenly fall in love with plain spinster schoolteachers. Especially ones they’d met twice. And knew nothing about.
So why had he done it?
Did he imagine she was open to such attentions? Was her respectability not obvious to him? Had she given him some kind of unwitting encouragement?
Did he think because she went out at night by herself, attending political talks, getting involved in—
The brawl. Was that it? Did he think because she’d let herself get involved in such an unladylike contretemps that she was somehow fair game for casual masculine attentions of the improper sort?
And if so, then what did that make his sisters? Was it one rule for daughters of the aristocracy and another for poor unregarded schoolteachers?
Of course it was.
She ought to be insulted, ought to be angry.
Instead, she’d been . . . entranced. And a small, a very small, rebellious, uncommonsensical, foolish part of her wanted to stay that way.
She sat at the foot of the stairs for several minutes, hugging the smooth wood of the baluster, reliving and reexamining the kiss, asking herself questions she couldn’t answer—but answering them anyway. Eventually the icy drafts coming from under the door cooled her heated thoughts and returned her to rationality.
And the awareness that she had far more important things to worry about. If Miss Mallard was thinking about retiring—and it seemed as though the rumor was true after all—she’d probably hand the school over to her horrid nephew. Who no doubt would sack them all and sell the school.
That was something real to worry about.
The other was just a kiss. Lord Ashendon probably hadn’t given it another thought. Emm was overreacting, like an affection-deprived, overimaginative spinster. Which was exactly what she was.
She rose and walked quietly up the stairs, looked in on her students as she did each night to check that they were all in bed and sleeping soundly and then climbed the last narrow flight of stairs to her own small room.
If you didn’t count the basement, Miss Mallard’s Seminary was arranged in order of ascending . . . austerity, she supposed was the nicest way to put it.
The ground floor of the seminary set the tone of distinction Miss Mallard wanted the school to project. Her office, the parlor where prospective parents were wooed and given tea and biscuits and sometimes a glass of sherry, and the spacious and elegant saloon used mainly for concerts and musical performances—were all on the ground floor, and furnished in the first style of elegance.
The higher you went, however—the classrooms on the next floor up, the boarders’ bedchambers and sitting room above that—the plainer and more functional the surroundings until you reached, by increasingly narrow and steep stairs, the attic where Emm, and the two other teachers who had the misfortune to be without any other income, lodged, along with the servants.
Emm’s room was the smallest. It was cramped, freezing in winter and hot in summer, but she considered herself blessed, partly because it was too small to share, and she prized her privacy, but al
so because it was one of only two attic rooms with a window. The window was small and square and got grimy very quickly with the smoke from the town below, but it looked out over her own private kingdom—the world beyond Bath.
She loved that window, her own little eyrie, loved looking across the rooftops of Bath to the green rolling hills beyond. Gazing out that small window never failed to lift her spirits, no matter what the weather.
Right now there was no view, in the dark, with rain beating furiously down. She stripped off her gloves, watching the rain form silver rivulets across the glass and hearing it gurgle loudly down the drainpipes.
Lord Ashendon would have walked home in that rain. Good. Serve him right.
No, she didn’t mean that. It was good of him to walk her home. She folded her gloves one inside the other and remembered how he’d taken her hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of his arm.
Men didn’t usually notice her at all. Too old, too tall, too plain, too poor. Practically invisible.
And yet those piercing, dark-rimmed silvery eyes had noticed her, had scanned her face so intently, the breath had simply disappeared from her body. Warm, strong, bare hands had cupped her face as if she were some delicate creature.
Her heart had started galloping in her chest . . .
She’d told herself to be sensible, that it was nothing; simple good manners to show concern.
They’d stood so close she could see the fine-grained pores of his skin, the shadow of masculine bristles that darkened his jaw and a pale, almost invisible scar along the bottom of his chin—a saber cut? Or a bayonet injury from the war?
And then . . . when he’d slowly lowered his mouth to hers, gently, so lightly at first, and then . . . all thoughts had been driven from her brain. There was only his mouth, moving over hers, searching, tasting . . .
Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop dwelling on it, foolish woman. It was a whim, an impulse of the moment. He was probably a rake.