Must Be Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Enough soaks in here, and he might scrub out all the tension and anguish of the past few years, even if he couldn’t scrub away the memories. Perhaps he could bottle this water. He would send a vial to his brothers for further study. The minerals might have some beneficial effect, like those in Bath were said to possess. In fact, this might be a related spring.

  He grasped for rationality rather than thinking of the woman splashing naked and free somewhere in the pool beside him. In here, she was a nameless, faceless female, with no confusing eyes or hair color to distract him. Her name no longer mattered.

  Standing again, Dunstan raked his dripping hair back from his face. Refreshed and invigorated, he glanced around the mossy chamber with interest, feeling more in control.

  Moonlight poured through the opening above. A silver glow illuminated the dangling greenery, and he thought he detected tiny white flowers like little stars peeking through the moss on the walls.

  Dunstan searched the darkness for the sorceress who’d brought him here. “Lily?”

  “I think I could live in here,” she called softly, much closer than before.

  A flash of white and green swung by, and he stepped backward in surprise.

  Laughter trilled out of the darkness, and the ghostly form swept by again. This time, he recognized the apparatus, and his eyes widened, studying the dangling vines. Someone had hung a swing from the roof.

  In the silvery light, he traced the vine-covered rope until it disappeared into the gloom over his head. It couldn’t be safe. He transferred his gaze back to the specter in white flitting back and forth on the swing. Lily, of course. Brazen woman.

  The wet gauze of her chemise trailed behind her as she swung. The breeze from her movement plastered it like a transparent skin to her body. Already drying, her black curls spilled in tendrils down her back and over the water when she leaned back to pump the swing higher.

  Dunstan tumbled through some hole in time to his youth, where all things were possible and each day presented one miracle after another for his pleasure. He could smell the grass he’d rolled in, feel the potency of adolescence. Years of cynicism dropped away, leaving him buoyant as he waded through the pool to her ridiculous swing.

  She laughed in delight when he caught the ropes and brought her to a halt. She didn’t fear him as others did, and that alone lightened his burden. She trusted him.

  She saw beyond his reputation and trusted what she saw. He could feel the realization cracking the rock-solid barrier he’d erected in self-defense against the cruelties of society. He’d never fully comprehended how much unswerving trust could mean.

  Holding the rope, Dunstan looked down into eyes of dancing mischief almost hidden behind a curtain of thick black lashes. The steam had turned her cheeks rosy, and her full lips glistened temptingly. He only meant to thank her, to push her swing as one would play with a child.

  Except she wasn’t a child.

  With the scent of burgeoning spring rising between them, Dunstan bent and cautiously placed his mouth across hers, prepared to retreat at the first sign of protest.

  Lightning struck and fire scorched his bones at her passionate response. The heat rising through his bare limbs was no longer derived from water. Full lips melted to lush invitation, and Dunstan released the rope to clasp female curves perfectly fitted to his wide hands. His fingers reveled in the touch of heated silk.

  She didn’t shove him away.

  Hundreds of lonely nights dissolved with the sigh of her desire. He could no more resist that sigh than the sun could resist rising in the morn.

  She moaned beneath the insistent slant of his mouth and opened to the command of his tongue. He dived deeper, exploring the taste of honey, wrapped in the intoxicating scent of wine and roses. He could do this without losing control. They didn’t have to go beyond kisses. He held her trapped and clinging to the ropes. He could stop at any time, he told himself, and no one the wiser. He just wanted one more little taste . . .

  Boldly, he slid his hands up to capture the full globes of her breasts beneath wet linen, relishing feminine roundness yielding against his rough hands. Once there, he couldn’t resist brushing his thumbs across the puckered crests.

  Instead of breaking the kiss, she murmured against his mouth and rocked closer. With that unspoken permission, Dunstan stepped between her thighs so she could not mistake the extent of his arousal. The musky heat of her beckoned the animal part of him that had overtaken his thinking. The swing was a perfect height. Only a scrap of gauze barred the gateway to heaven.

  “Please,” she murmured urgently against his mouth.

  He deepened the kiss, and indulged in the sensual pleasure of stroking a woman’s softness. Her equal excitement drew him on, one irresistible step after another.

  Pulling away from her honeyed mouth, Dunstan dipped his head to sample the heady liquor of her breast through the veil of her chemise. She gasped and leaned back, still clinging to the rope but offering herself more fully and freely than any woman in his life had ever done.

  The experience awoke in him a frightening urge to become part of her, to see where she could take him.

  Despite the warnings clamoring in the back of his mind, he couldn’t not step closer. Cupping her hips, Dunstan swung her into him, suckled deeper, and was rewarded with her shudders of pleasure. He could still escape. He could still walk off and end this madness. He was a man of formidable discipline, not one who must rut like a beast in the field. He would stop—as soon as he gave her pleasure in return for what she had given him.

  He slid his hand across her bare thigh, pushed aside the fine linen, and stroked her moist curls, locating the center of her sex.

  She almost slid off the swing at his caress. Hastily relinquishing temptation, Dunstan caught her waist to prevent her from falling away from him.

  Standing naked so close between her thighs, his hands occupied in keeping her seated, there seemed a simple means of providing the pleasure she craved. If he pushed inside, just a little, he could ease the tension pumping through them. The mystery of who or what she was outside of here was no longer as important as who they were together, right now.

  Pressing his fingers into the firm flesh of her waist and buttocks, Dunstan let the ecstasy of moist heat tempt him. Angling her hips and the swing, he rubbed cautiously against the nub that made her quiver.

  He hadn’t considered the danger of her long, shapely legs wrapping around his thighs, lifting her hips higher—until his short strokes combined with her strong pull drove him fully into her, and she cried out in delight.

  Sweat poured off his brow, and his blood surged to the place where they were joined. He’d learned how to draw back before release. It was only release he feared. He couldn’t afford to create any more babes. Holding perfectly still, he took her mouth and drank deeply.

  She licked his lips, sucked his tongue with eagerness, and fell back on the rope swing until the seat almost swung away. Dunstan grabbed her hips and supporting her weight, swung her back. Pure, intoxicating pleasure gripped him as he filled her to the hilt again, and her muscles tightened around him. He could feel her contractions, knew she was close, knew he need only—

  She flung her arms around his neck, held him with her thighs, and climaxed ecstatically, hips pumping, breasts crushing into his chest. With no more command than an adolescent youth, Dunstan lost control and filled her womb with the hot, intoxicating flood of his seed.

  Eleven

  Leila sighed rapturously as Dunstan’s brawny arms lifted her from the swing and lowered her into the heated waters. Every particle of her being glowed. She drank deeply of the scent of sex, and it smelled of pleasure. She wanted to do it again.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, knees still wobbly as she rested against his muscled chest. “I had no idea . . .”

  “Women seldom do,” he replied, reaching for the soap on the ledge. “If they’d just stop and think once in a while, half the world’s problems would be solved.
”

  Well, obviously the experience hadn’t been as soul-shattering for him as it had been for her. What was happening inside his dangerous head now?

  Warily, she glanced up at the tic in Dunstan’s jaw, but warm water and scented soap bubbled around them, and she could sense nothing else beyond his expression. This man said what he meant without dissimulation.

  With ecstasy, she forgot wariness to admire the wet mat of hair narrowing down his broad chest to an interesting region disguised by lapping water.

  Ignoring her sigh of delight, he gently lathered the soap into the place he’d bruised with his lustiness, and she relaxed and let the pleasure return. “Beasts in the field we are,” she agreed.

  She sensed his sharp look and didn’t care. Let him think she was whoever he wanted her to be.

  “I behaved as such,” he agreed. “Did I hurt you?”

  He had, but only because it had been so long for her, and she was unused to a man of his size. She could learn to accommodate him, if he gave her the chance.

  Her growing desire as his fingers caressed her certainly proved her animal nature. It was a pity they couldn’t do it again. The scent of the soap washed around them, and she rocked provocatively against his hand. Whatever anyone said, Dunstan Ives was a gentle man. For all his gruffness, he was treating her with the tenderness and regard due a newly tried virgin.

  Devil take it, but he still concealed the gentle, funny Dunstan behind the thorny walls of the joyless, unfeeling one.

  Tentatively, she reached out to him, hoping he would let her—all of her—past his barriers now. “It’s as if I can only be myself with you,” she murmured, gifting him with a piece of her she had granted none other.

  “Not all of us have a problem being ourselves.” Abruptly, he lifted her from the water and set her on the mossy rocks.

  The shock of the cooler air against her heated skin didn’t numb Leila’s desire. “You do,” she argued, reaching for her petticoat. “You deliberately hide and deny your true feelings, shutting everyone out. Why can’t you just enjoy what we’ve found here together?”

  Standing in the water, Dunstan shrugged. “I am simply being rational. Once we start down this path, it is difficult to stop. It is better for all concerned if one of us practices restraint.”

  “I thought it was quite the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I have no desire to stop.” She tugged at the petticoat strings with irritation.

  “Aye, and pleasure is your only thought,” he mocked, climbing out after her. “Some of us have responsibilities to consider.”

  Leila’s eyes widened at the silhouette he presented in the light of the rising moon. He was engorged and ready for her again. Her husband had never accomplished that.

  But Dunstan Ives was in the full vigor of manhood. Not a skinny adolescent nor a flabby old man, but a firmly muscled male in the prime of life. She gulped when he turned his back on her, displaying the way those broad muscles worked. She wanted to make love again, in the full light of day. She hadn’t even begun to appreciate the power of the male body.

  He was pulling on his breeches. He intended to walk away. Every inch of her that was female cried out in protest.

  But she wouldn’t give him the gratification of knowing he’d brought her to such a state. “Why shouldn’t pleasure be the only consideration?” she inquired. “We’re neither of us married. We hurt no one.”

  He tugged his breeches flap closed and fastened it before turning. Leila thought she ought to be incinerated by the blast of fury from his eyes, but she was made of stern mettle and merely waited for his reply.

  He visibly softened at sight of her sitting nude upon the mossy bed, but his tone remained curt. “You might at least pay heed to the results of such sport.”

  The results? Beyond pleasure? She’d found none. She blinked and tried to gather her failing wits. It was difficult, with all that lovely naked chest looming over her. As if he understood her state, he grabbed his shirt and yanked it over his head.

  “Children,” he explained gruffly when his head emerged from the linen. “Every pleasure has its price.”

  Oh, children. Leila curled her lip and would have laughed, but she thought it would injure his Ives pride. Ives men never denied their reputation as prolific breeders, and gossip had it that they produced only sons—usually illegitimate ones, from what she heard.

  “I was married for seven years and never produced a child,” she said, knowing that most men assumed the woman was at fault in such cases. “And should a miracle occur, I would not make demands of you. You really think too much, you know.”

  She shouldn’t have added that last, but she couldn’t resist. She swallowed a giggle at the irritable way he shoved a hand through his hair and glared down at her, as if he had no idea what to make of her. Men seldom followed her advice, but at least this one listened. She supposed she ought to dress before he blamed her for tempting him again.

  “I’m not a fool, madam,” he said, recovering his place in their argument. “I have made it a point to study human breeding practices as thoroughly as those of sheep. The risk is high if proper precautions aren’t taken, which we did not, if you would take time to remember.”

  Well, she’d been warned that Ives were practical men. Pulling her petticoat over her wet chemise, she reached for her bodice. She heard his sharp intake of breath at the amount of flesh left revealed, and secretly gloating, she took an unnecessarily long time fastening the bodice hooks, starting with the bottom ones so he must watch her breasts until the very last minute. She noticed he didn’t turn away when she pushed them higher.

  She dearly adored this business of being admired by an angry Ives. To have a man whose intelligence she respected admire her for other than her display of wealth gave her a new and welcome sense of power.

  Apparently physical intimacy made it easier to understand him. The thickheaded man saw Lady Leila in terms of the duplicitous Celia, so he preferred thinking of her as simple Lily—a woman he could control as easily as he did his horse.

  “Nevertheless,” she said, “I have no need of you or your support, so you may go about your business with a peaceful mind. I do not charge for the pleasure,” she added wryly.

  Grabbing her by the arm, Dunstan hauled her to her feet. “Sons need fathers.” The words came out as almost a curse. “I already have one son I neglect by being here. I’d rather not have two to feel guilty about. If you do not care about yourself, care about the child you might breed.”

  Leila rolled her eyes and tugged her gown into place. Ives pride went too far. She began tying her skirt to her bodice. “Women take care of children. Men don’t. It’s a fact of life. You’re simply angry because I made you lose your precious control.”

  That silenced him. Momentarily.

  “I’ll see you home.” Stiffly, he stepped back to retrieve his boots.

  The goddess in heaven, she railed inwardly, watching him through lowered lashes while she finished dressing. After today, they couldn’t continue pretending she was two different people. Or that they meant nothing to each other.

  Or perhaps he could. Men thought of sex as a simple act of survival, like eating.

  Irritated at the thought of being no more than a receptacle for grunting male appetites, and exasperated by Dunstan’s denial of who she really was, Leila swung around. He still had his broad back to her. With a final roll of her eyes, she put both hands against his back and shoved him into the pool.

  “You’re a churlish bigot, Dunstan Ives! Try seeing beyond your own damned self sometime.”

  While he shouted his protests, she stalked from the cave.

  Dripping from head to toe, Dunstan rode his gelding after the wretched female, following her to the mansion’s dairy door, where she slipped inside and out of sight without acknowledging his presence.

  Her disappearance left a gaping hole in the night.

  Damnation.

  Leaning against the horse’s neck, Dunstan stared
up at the lights of the big house, watching as kitchen candles and fires died, downstairs lamps were doused, and new ones appeared in upper-story windows.

  She’d said she could be herself only with him. Who the devil was she, then? The fair-haired witch who dominated society and ruled this household? Or the black-haired wench who cavorted in fields and pleaded for the lives of baby rabbits?

  Or both?

  A chill shivered through him that had nothing to do with his damp clothing. What had he just done?

  Watching a familiar female silhouette glide past an upstairs window, he suffered the terrible conviction that she was right. He was a bigot. His prejudice against society had blinded him to the truth. He detested the aristocracy because of his father’s neglect and the decadence of men like Wickham. He detested aristocratic women because of Celia’s betrayal and her abominable friends.

  He’d detested Lady Leila for all those reasons and because Malcolms were uncontrollable and unpredictable.

  If the knowledgeable, courageous lady who had hired him was really the wench who had taught him the true meaning of pleasure, then he’d denied the truth out of prejudice.

  The possibility that he could be so blind appalled him. He took pride in being a man of science—observant, open-minded, and aware of his surroundings.

  The slender figure lighting a candle in the window above taunted him with his failure. It was past time he opened his eyes and learned the truth, even if the truth had the power to destroy him.

  He turned his steed toward home. Once there, he hurriedly stripped off his sodden boots and changed into dry clothes.

  Scientific observation required that all theories be confirmed from as many sources as were available. Before contemplating further action, Dunstan walked back to the mansion, stalked up the front steps, and asked for the viscount.

  Staines seemed surprised by his appearance, but eager for companionship. He introduced Dunstan to the smoky male environs of the towering library and offered a brandy. “I’m leaving for Bath in the morning. Have you news for me?”