With Seduction in Mind

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Desperate, he’d given up at dawn, and had scoured the library for a Bradshaw. Upon discovering there was a seven o’clock train from Dartmoor to Victoria, he’d woken Abercrombie and ordered his valet to pack his things. He’d left a note for Auntie and departed the house, deeming London far enough away from Daisy Merrick to keep the girl’s virtue intact.

  Sebastian had the vague idea that he could somehow transmute lust into pages and chapters, but he quickly discovered that without her sitting opposite him, writing was well nigh impossible. He found himself looking up from his typewriter countless times, thinking to ask her a question, gain her opinion, or solicit her advice, only to remember he was no longer with her at Avermore.

  Inevitably, he would have to stop and go in search of something, anything, to take his mind off of her. The bright side, if there was a bright side to hell, was that his need for Daisy, not his need for cocaine, was what had him abandoning his typewriter. Lusting for a woman, even if that lust remained perpetually unsatisfied, was preferable to a lust for cocaine. The problem, however, was that London in August wasn’t exciting enough to distract a man from much of anything, especially not from erotic imaginings of a pretty redhead with perfect breasts, long legs, and a luscious bum. Sebastian soon got in the habit of taking very long walks and very cold baths.

  But as the weeks passed and August gave way to September, he could not rid himself of his desire for her anywhere. Regardless of what he did or where he went, he found reminders of her. The leaves of the elms in Hyde Park, just beginning to turn, made him think of her flaming hair. An exhibition of Monet at the National Gallery brought images of her vivid blue-green eyes. Even a stroll along the shops of Bond Street couldn’t allow him to escape her.

  A glance in one particular shop window found Sebastian stopping in his tracks. He backed up a step, and one look at the window display caused him to groan in aggravation. Hell’s bells, couldn’t he even walk down a London street without being tormented by his craving for her?

  Sebastian flattened his palms against the glass, staring through the shop window, but he could no longer see the display that had stopped him here. He couldn’t see his own reflection in the window, nor the gilt letters naming the establishment that were painted on the glass. No, the only thing he could see was her face—her sweet, freckled, innocent face, flushed with the wonder and euphoria of her first orgasm. Christ almighty. He wanted to smash his head through the glass.

  Sebastian looked away, rubbing a hand over his eyes. This could only end badly, he reminded himself. He knew what he was toying with—her virtue, her innocence, possibly her heart. And yet, cad that he was, he didn’t care. Only because of her was he able to write again. He could not give that up. He couldn’t give her up. Not yet. Not when his need for her clawed at him day and night and wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Why fight it?

  With an oath, Sebastian jerked open the door of the shop and went inside.

  Daisy tried not to count the days since Sebastian’s departure, but she couldn’t help it. She missed him. Every night, she stared dismally at the empty place at the head of the dining table. Every morning, she came downstairs, hoping to find him at his desk only to be disappointed. Every afternoon, she walked the grounds of Avermore, going back to the places they had been.

  At the wishing well, she tossed in a ha’penny and wished for his return. At Osbourne’s Bend, she tried to understand why anyone would think yanking poor defenseless trout out of their home was entertaining. She went through the maze, the poetry he’d quoted to her ringing in her ears. She was tormented by memories of what had happened in the folly, and a month after his departure, she found herself back there. As she stared at the stone wall where he had touched her in that extraordinary way, all the hunger and desperate need she’d felt then came rushing back, and she longed for him to come back and do those wanton things to her again.

  The past month had seemed like an eternity, and there had been no hint of when he would come home. He might never return. Mathilda had received one letter from him, reporting that he had found new tenants for Avermore and requesting she be moved back into the summerhouse by the end of November, but Daisy received no word from him at all.

  Perhaps, she thought as she left the folly and returned to the house, she ought to write to him in town and ask him straight out when he intended to return. She could always mention his deadline, remind him he had fewer than thirty days left, and ask about his progress on the book. She had every right to inquire, she told herself as she crossed the terrace to the French doors that led into the library. After all, she was his editor.

  Daisy entered the library and pulled off her straw boater and her gloves. It was an hour until teatime. She really must stop dawdling and set to work. Tossing her hat and gloves onto a nearby chair, she started toward her desk, then stopped, stunned by the sight of what was on top of her desk.

  It was a Crandall—a beautiful, shiny black, absolutely smashing Crandall.

  With a cry of delighted surprise, Daisy rushed to her desk, and she had to touch the typewriter to be wholly sure she wasn’t seeing things. But the solid metal beneath her fingers confirmed it was not a figment of her imagination. Obviously new, it was a far more elaborate model than Sebastian’s machine. Along with the mother-of-pearl inlay, there were painted red roses. It was beautiful.

  But where had it come from? Who had—

  Daisy looked up, noting that Sebastian’s battered old typewriter was once again in its rightful place. He was back.

  A burst of joy shot up inside her like a rocket. She took a step, thinking to go find him at once, but again, something she saw gave her cause to stop. Beside her new Crandall was a note with his coronet. She snatched it up, broke the seal, and opened it.

  Midnight. The summerhouse.

  S. G.

  Her heart lifted and soared. How would she endure all the hours until midnight? she wondered, as she folded the note and put it in her pocket. Surely it would be agony.

  And it was. The month without him seemed the blink of an eye compared to the eight hours that followed. Pleading a headache, she chose to forgo tea altogether, and she had dinner brought to her room on a tray, for she couldn’t bear to dine with him under her chaperone’s perceptive eye, knowing she was slipping out for a secret rendezvous with Sebastian under his aunt’s very nose.

  But the impropriety of the appointment did not prevent her from going, and the illicit aspect of their game only served to heighten her excitement.

  A few minutes before the appointed time, Daisy slipped out of the house through a little-used side door and went to the summerhouse. It was a good thing there was a full moon to light the path, for she ran the entire way.

  The cottage was dark when she arrived, but she mounted the steps to the veranda, yanking out the pins that caught up her hair. She thrust the pins in her pocket and opened the door. Shaking back her now loosened hair, she went inside and closed the door behind her.

  She blinked several times, for it was darker inside the cottage than the moonlit outdoors had been. She was in a foyer, and to her right was the parlor she’d seen through the windows the day she and Sebastian had come here, though she could discern little more now than she had on her previous visit. The sheeting had been removed from the furnishings, no doubt in preparation for Mathilda’s return here, but the darkness prevented her from seeing any details about the room. Ahead of her in the foyer, however, a faint light shone, spilling through a doorway on the left. “Sebastian?” she called softly. “Are you here?”

  He appeared in the doorway before she’d even finished the question. In his hand was a single candle in a holder, giving his white linen shirt a golden glow. “You came,” he said.

  That surprised her. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I didn’t know. A midnight rendezvous presents certain undeniable risks to a woman.”

  She didn’t want to think about risks. “I had to come. If nothing else, I had to
thank you for the typewriter. It’s the most perfect gift anyone’s ever given me.”

  He shifted his weight and looked away, seeming almost embarrassed. “Yes, well, a great writer needs a typewriter worthy of her.”

  Daisy’s breath caught. “Am I a great writer?”

  “You will be.”

  The certainty with which he said those words made Daisy’s spirits soar, but his next words sent them crashing back down.

  “I haven’t lived up to my part of our bargain, I fear, for I don’t have a hundred pages to give you.”

  She swallowed hard, working to keep the disappointment she felt out of her voice, but the moment she spoke, she knew she hadn’t succeeded. “If you don’t have the pages, I can’t kiss you,” she said, sounding dismal.

  But Sebastian gave an unexpected chuckle. “Strictly speaking, kissing isn’t necessary. Not for men, anyway.”

  She didn’t understand in the least what he meant. “Why are we here, then?”

  “Because I had to see you.” He lifted the candle as if to look at her, and though the light of the candle was dim, it was bright enough that she could see lines of weariness in his face.

  “Heavens,” she cried, moving closer, “you look exhausted. What have you been doing in London? You clearly haven’t been sleeping. Have you been—” She stopped, unable to ask, uncertain she wanted to know.

  “Living up to my reputation?” he finished for her as if reading her mind. “No.”

  She crossed the foyer to stand in front of him, eying his face with concern. “Sebastian, are you all right?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He lifted his free hand and touched her, brushing a tendril of hair back from her cheek. “I’m in the throes of a madness, petal. You’re right that I haven’t been sleeping, at least not very well. I can’t think. I certainly can’t write. That’s why I don’t have a hundred pages to give you. I have about ten at most.” He set the candle on the silver card tray, then reached for her, cupping her cheeks. “I came back hoping that you would take pity on me and give me more of your unique inspiration.”

  Just his palms touching her face was enough to have her shivering with excitement, and she suddenly didn’t care if he had lived up to his part of the bargain or not. He was back, and that was all that mattered. “You want to break the rules?”

  “Yes, and if you have any sense, you’ll tell me no and leave.” When she didn’t move, he bent his head closer to hers, but he did not kiss her.

  “I tried to get clear of you,” he said. “If I had stayed, I would not have been able to stop the inevitable from happening. But the past month has been hell, and I’ve given up the fight. Daisy, you have been like a ghost, haunting me. Everywhere I went, I found reminders of you. I tried to write, but without you near, I have been stymied at every turn. I became the man I was before I met you, uninspired and without purpose. I want you, and God help me, I cannot stop wanting you. That’s why I came home and asked you to meet me here.”

  His words thrilled her to the very core. “It has been the same for me,” she confessed. “That’s really why I came.”

  “Best if you hadn’t. If you stay…” He paused, his gaze roaming her face. “We’ll become lovers, Daisy,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “In every sense. No more kiss and run, no more games, no more rules.” His hands tightened, his fingers curling at her nape, his lips so close to hers. “Do you understand what that means?”

  She hadn’t, not really. Until this moment, she hadn’t appreciated just what this game they’d started was leading to. The extraordinary ways he’d touched her in the folly were as far as her imagination had gone. But now, here, in the middle of the night, alone in a house with him, she understood. This rendezvous was leading to what the ladies of Little Russell Street spoke of in whispered euphemisms, what in books was mentioned with such delicacy that one couldn’t be certain if the lovers were occupying a bed together or playing piquet.

  Daisy took a deep, steadying breath. “Yes, Sebastian, I understand what it means. You want—” Her voice failed her, and she strove to regain it, to say the words out loud. “You want to lie with me. Sleep with me.”

  His hands slid away. “It’s more than being horizontal on a bed together taking a nap.”

  “I know that.” At least, she was assuming that—although precisely what was involved, she couldn’t say.

  “You can’t know,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Not really. Not until it’s happened to you. And innocence, once it’s lost, is lost forever. You can’t get it back.”

  Mrs. Morris’s voice came to her, a low hiss of gossip to her friend Mrs. Inkberry about one of Daisy’s fellow lodgers at Little Russell Street. She says she’s working these long hours at the shop, but I know better. The little tart is sleeping with that man.

  Daisy looked up into the handsome face of the man before her, and she did not feel in the least like a tart at the prospect of sleeping with Sebastian. She felt happy, excited, exhilarated.

  “Everyone’s innocence has to be lost sometime, I suppose,” she said. “Sebastian, I’m twenty-eight years old, and until I met you, I’d never experienced romantic passion. I’ve tried to write about it, I’ve tried to understand it, but until you, it was impossible. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by women who have cosseted me and protected me and sheltered me from anything they thought might be carnal, or stimulating, or painful, or difficult. I’ve been spoiled by it, and I’ve been smothered.”

  “It’s been for your protection, no doubt.”

  “I understand that, and I’m not ungrateful for it. But every woman ought to know the thrill of romance in her life. And you said yourself that I don’t have suitors because I don’t know any men.”

  “I’m not your suitor,” he said, his voice suddenly harsh. “I’m not that honorable.”

  She laid a hand on his cheek and smiled. “I don’t need to be protected from you.”

  “That, petal, is what’s known as famous last words. I’m the very thing they’ve been protecting you from.”

  “For someone who arranged this rendezvous, you certainly are doing your best to dissuade me from it.” She rose up on her toes, bringing her mouth within a hair’s breadth of his. “New rule,” she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck. “The muse is allowed to provide inspirations of her choice at her discretion.” With that, she pressed her lips to his.

  He didn’t move, but she felt a shudder run through his massive frame. “God damn us both for fools, then,” he muttered against her mouth. And then, his arms came around her, and he parted her lips with his.

  She closed her eyes, groaning into his mouth. How could she ever have thought to forget the pleasure of this? Why would she ever have wanted to forget it? Her arms tightened around his neck, and she tangled her fingers in the unruly strands of his hair, that hunger for his touch rising within her.

  He made a rough sound in response and deepened the kiss, tasting her with his tongue, driving all the air from her lungs and making her dizzy. This kiss was not like the others—this one was raw, powerful, almost savage.

  Without warning, he broke the kiss, pulling back to look at her, his breathing ragged. He started to speak, but he only got as far as her name, then he stopped and cupped her face in his hands. He kissed her again, more gently this time, a soft, slow, drugging kiss that spread aching warmth through her limbs. She felt weightless, boneless.

  His hands came down and he wrapped one arm around her waist. He bent, hooking his other arm beneath her knees, and he lifted her from the floor. “Grab the candle,” he told her as he turned toward the stairs with her in his arms.

  Daisy obeyed, taking up the candle with one hand as she wrapped her free arm around his neck. He carried her up the stairs—another romantic thrill for her to savor—and along a corridor to a bedchamber about halfway.

  As in the parlor downstairs, the wrappings had been removed from the furnishings, and when Sebastian set her on her feet, she cou
ld make out the gleaming brass of a bed to her right and the shadowy outlines of furnishings in other parts of the room. She set the candle on the piece of furniture nearest her—a marble-topped washstand.

  When she turned back around, he was standing before her.

  “You’re sure about this?” he asked.

  She smiled at the gravity of his expression. “Yes, Sebastian. I’m sure.”

  “All right, then.” He pushed her hair back from her shoulders and smiled a little. “As beautiful as you look in candlelight, my sweet, I can’t help wishing it was day. I love seeing the sunlight on your hair.”

  “A fact which never ceases to amaze me,” she whispered and reached out to touch his chest. The feel of his hard muscles beneath her palms stirred fires within her, fires that she’d never known existed until four weeks ago. The fires of arousal.

  He did not move, but she could feel his gaze on her face as she began to unbutton his shirt. Her hands were shaking with anticipation, excitement, and agonizing uncertainty, but when he moved as if to do it for her, she shook her head. “No, I want to do it.”

  “Very well.” He assisted her by slipping the straps of his braces off his shoulders, unfastening his cuffs and pulling his shirttails from the waistband of his trousers.

  When all the buttons were undone, she parted the edges and slipped the shirt from his shoulders. It fell behind him and she studied his chest in the glow of the candle, fascinated. She lifted one hand to touch him. “You’re beautiful,” she said in wonderment. “Like a statue.”

  He didn’t move as she explored his powerful chest and arms, as her fingers traced lines of muscle and sinew, circled the dark flat disks of his nipples and traveled down to the edge of his trousers.

  That was where he stopped her. “My turn,” he said, grasping her wrists and gently shoving her hands aside, then he began undressing her as he had that afternoon in the folly. His fingers worked swiftly, slipping buttons free in a far more efficient fashion than her shaking hands had unfastened his shirt. He unbuttoned her corset cover just as quickly and as he slid both garments off her shoulders, he leaned forward, pressing kisses to the bare skin he had exposed.