by Dare, Tessa
Chase clapped the man on the shoulder, as if in appreciation of a good joke. And then, turning his back to the room, he drove his fist into the leering blackguard’s gut.
Sir Winston’s hat skittered across the floor.
The man himself was doubled over and groaning. “What the devil was that for, Reynaud?”
“You owe Miss Mountbatten an apology.”
“An apology for what?”
“For insulting her today, to begin. And for taking liberties with her in the past.”
“In the past? For God’s sake, man. What are you on about? I’ve never laid eyes on the chit in my life.”
Alex ducked her head, evading the gaze of the other museum-goers. She murmured, “I told you he wouldn’t remember.”
“But since you mention it,” Sir Winston said jovially, “I wouldn’t mind knowing her. When you’re done with her, send her my way.”
The man reached to pick up his hat.
Chase stomped on it. He held the man’s gaze as he slowly and meaningfully lowered his boot, crushing the tower of felted beaver to a fuzzy burnt pancake.
There, you bastard. Try compensating with that.
“Apologize to Miss Mountbatten.” He growled the words through clenched teeth. “Or by the gods of the Egyptians, I will pull your brain out through your nose and stuff you in that sarcophagus for the next three thousand years.”
Sir Winston knew when he was bested. He straightened and bowed. “My apologies, Miss Montbarren.”
“Mountbatten.”
“Miss Mountbatten.”
Once they’d watched that bit of human refuse depart the gallery, they collected the girls and left the museum. Rosamund and Daisy protested the hasty departure. While they waited on the carriage, Chase bribed them with oranges from a boy selling them on the street.
At home, the girls raced upstairs to mummify Millicent. Chase strode into his study. Alexandra followed him, closing the door after her and turning the key.
“The nerve of that blackguard.” He jerked off his gloves and slapped them against the edge of the desk. “I’m sorry if he upset you.”
“Perhaps Sir Winston Harvey upset me, but what you did was more humiliating by far. You made me a spectacle.”
“Hold a moment. I’m not the villain here. That bastard deserved everything I gave him, and more. My only regret is that he had but one hat to crush.”
“It’s all about your pride, isn’t it? Did you pause to consider my feelings at all?”
“Your feelings were my foremost concern. How dare he speak to you in such a manner. As if you were my—”
“Mistress?” she supplied.
That was the kindest way of putting it, he supposed.
“Naturally he assumed I was your mistress.” She approached the other side of his desk and placed her hands flat on the top. “Do you know why? Because I am your mistress. And now that fact will be all over Mayfair by dinnertime.”
“First, you’re not my mistress,” he said. “Second, don’t worry about gossip. I highly doubt that Sir Winston Harvey will be eager to repeat the tale.”
“No, he won’t dare say a thing about you crushing his hat. He’ll save all his venom for describing me. Lord, you are so naïve.”
“Me. You’re calling me naïve?”
“Yes, you. Chase, you are a wealthy, well-placed man. The heir to a duke. Society will forgive you anything. Women in my position are not so fortunate. We work for our living at the pleasure of the upper classes. The tiniest hint of scandal, and we are ruined. Unemployable, forever. That’s the way English society works.”
“Then English society needs to do better.”
“Well, unless you intend to change it by the end of the summer, I’d thank you not to throw me under the wheels of a high-sprung phaeton.” She crossed her arms and paced back and forth. “What if word spreads that your governess is really your mistress—”
“You’re not my mistress.”
“—and then Rosamund and Daisy aren’t accepted to school? I’m counting on that extra two hundred pounds you promised me. I have to make a life for myself beyond this summer.”
As if he would let her wander off penniless to starve. “You needn’t worry about your wages. You know I’ll take care of you.”
“Really? How? You’ll set me up in a little house in the country somewhere, with an income and a companion, perhaps. Like a mistress.”
“For the last time.” He came around the desk and seized her by the arms. “You are not my mistress.”
“Then what am I?” Her voice quavered. “What am I to you?”
“You’re . . .”
Everything.
A bitter smile curved her lips. “Don’t strain yourself reaching for that answer.”
“Bloody hell, Alex. I don’t know what to call it.” He pulled her close, crushing her body to his. “I just know I’ll be damned if I’ll let you go.”
When Chase’s mouth crushed to hers, Alex crushed right back. Equal and opposite reactions.
The result was glorious.
In their time together, they had shared a great many kisses. Passionate kisses, tender kisses, stolen kisses, secret kisses . . . but if she’d known how thrilling an angry kiss could be, Alex would have started rows with him nightly.
They grappled and clutched, each punishing the other for unspoken sins. She’d missed his heat, his scent, his hunger for her. The way his hardness filled her hand, and the salt of his skin on her tongue.
It had been so long. Too long. His fault.
He gripped her bottom and lifted her, shoving her onto the desk. Papers and quills fell to the floor.
At some point they ceased fighting each other and began fighting the space between them. They became allies in the war on clothing. Buttons were battled; laces, conquered. Petticoats marched north. His shirt was the final white flag of surrender, fluttering to the ground.
When skin finally met skin, the heat was so searing, they gasped in unison.
His greedy mouth and hands pushed her further onto the desk. He wanted her beneath him. Not this time. She shifted their positions, pushing and pulling and guiding, until he lay on his back atop the desk and she straddled his waist.
There. Much better.
She gazed down at his strong, defined torso, running her hands over muscle and sinew, then tracing all the same paths with her fingernails, lightly scraping over his skin. His hips bucked, and his arousal pushed against her belly. Aggressive. Impatient.
Not yet. Not just yet.
She bent to kiss him, running tongue and teeth down his neck, over his nipples, relishing every hiss of breath and strangled groan she could draw from his body. His hands went to her hair, yanking pins from her upsweep and gathering fistfuls of the unbound locks. The sharp tug on her scalp sent a thrill racing down to her toes.
He’d taken back some control, and he used it, dragging her up for a clash of tongues and teeth. And then pushing her back down his body, down and down, until there was no mistaking his intent.
Fine. She would let him have his way. But she was going to take her time.
She teased open the buttons of his trouser falls.
One . . .
By one . . .
By one.
Then she slipped her fingers inside, curling them about his cock.
One . . .
By one . . .
By one.
Until she drew him out, thick and ruddy and straining. And dropped light kisses down the underside of his shaft.
One . . .
By one . . .
By one.
He growled like a beast. A beast who was hers for the taming. He tightened his grip on her hair. “Alex, you’ll kill me.”
Well, they couldn’t have that.
Alex had never felt more powerful. To most of the world, she was small and slight and insignificant. Even invisible. But right here, right now, she had this man quivering at her slightest touch. Begging for her mouth.
She ran her tongue all the way from his root to the tip, and then took him into her mouth.
With a deep, yearning sigh, he released his grip on her hair. He arched his hips, pushing deeper. Take more of me, his body urged. And yet more.
She wanted more of him, too.
With a few last teasing licks, she raised her head. Hiking her skirts to her waist, she straddled his erection, trapping the rigid length between his belly and her cleft. She placed her hands flat on his chest and drew tall, rocking against him.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
His hands went to her hips, and he guided her into a faster rhythm. His hardness rubbed against her just where she needed it, pushing wave after wave of pleasure through her veins.
She locked eyes with him, riding his body with emboldened desire. Faster now. Her lips fell apart, and her breath rose and fell in her chest. The haze of pleasure descended on her, growing thicker and thicker until that one perfect, shimmering ray of light pierced the fog, pushing her over the edge.
She rode the climax to its sweet, sweet end, and then kept rolling her hips in pursuit of his pleasure.
His thighs went rigid. He was close.
“Chase,” she whispered. “Stay with me.”
There was no reply, spoken or otherwise. His head had fallen back. The tendons of his neck were strained. His eyes were closed tight. He clutched her hips and set his own tempo, dragging her over his length at a brisk pace until he shuddered with release.
All was quiet, save for his harsh breaths.
He pulled her down to him, clasping her to his chest. His spilled seed glued their bellies together. She laid her ear to his heartbeat.
“Where are you?” she asked.
He sounded befuddled. “Here. On the desk. Under you.”
“At the end, I mean. Every time we’re together, at the end you go somewhere else. I don’t know where you are, but it’s not with me.”
He stroked her hair. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m not, either.”
She slipped from his embrace and climbed off the desk in an ungainly fashion. Why was it that in the prelude to lovemaking she was made of breasts and hips and confident hands, and once the pleasure was over, everything was elbows and knees?
She pulled the sleeves of her frock up over her shoulders, anxious to make her escape. If he could go somewhere else, she could, too. “This has to be the last time. I can’t be your mistress, or whatever else you wish to call it.”
“And I can’t offer you anything more.”
“I never dreamed you would.”
Such a lie. She’d dreamed of it before she’d even known his name, and she’d dreamed of it as recently as five minutes ago. Foolishly, every time.
Because he was going to be a duke. And girls like Alex—part American, part Spanish, part island native, entirely orphaned, christened Catholic, and working class—did not become duchesses. Girls like Alex didn’t even get invited to schoolmates’ homes for the holidays. They were paid too little, worked too hard. Pinched in the corridor or overlooked entirely.
And they were forgotten, as soon as they left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chase sat at his desk with a tumbler of brandy, sorting through letters he’d received from the headmasters of England’s finest boarding schools for girls.
All acceptances, of course. The promise of a generous donation to the school worked wonders that way.
He was at a loss for the best criterion. Academic philosophy? Popularity with upper-crust families? Proximity to London or Belvoir?
By the time he’d sorted and re-sorted the letters four different ways, his quandary became clear. The question wasn’t how to choose where to send them.
The question was whether he could bear to send them at all.
He was drawn from his deliberation by footsteps pounding down the stairs. As he watched from his desk, a figure in white flew past, dark hair streaming behind it. The front door opened, and then banged shut. Either Alexandra had just bolted from the house, or a ghost was playing tricks.
Chase didn’t believe in ghosts.
He rose and followed her, walking out the door and into the brisk night air. “Alex?” He turned in every direction. No sight of her. He lifted his voice. “Alexandra.”
“I’m over here.”
The voice came from the green in the center of the square. It was only once he’d crossed the lane and run a fruitless scan of the garden that he pinpointed her location.
He found her by nearly tripping over her.
“Alex, what the hell are you doing lying in the grass in your night rail in the middle of the night?”
“The comet. This could be it.” She kicked at his boot. “Now kindly go back in the house. You’re blocking the sky.”
Instead, Chase lay down on his back beside her.
“I told you, go back in the house.”
“I’m not going to just leave you here.”
She shivered beside him. “As you like, then.”
“If this could be a comet, don’t you need the telescope?”
“Not for this part. It’s a definite smudge. It’s not among Messier’s objects, nor could I find it in my lists of identified comets. Now I need to watch it and see whether it moves in pace with the stars.”
“Which bit of sky are we watching?”
“Follow the line of my finger.” She leaned close and pointed her arm at the sky. “Do you see the three stars in a triangle? It’s that tiny blur just above the bottommost point. Do you see it?”
“I think so.”
In truth, Chase didn’t see anything other than the usual flurries of stars, but he didn’t want to disappoint her. He wanted to be part of this.
“How much time will it take for you to be certain?” he asked.
“A quarter hour, at least. Perhaps more.”
“I’ll make note of the time.” He opened the glass cover of his watch, gently skimming with his fingertips to take note of the hands’ positions.
They lay side by side in silence for what felt like an hour.
“How much time has elapsed?” she asked.
Chase consulted his timepiece, feeling around with his fingers. “I’m not certain. If I had to guess, I’d say . . . about three minutes.”
She moaned. “This is so nerve-racking.”
“You know what they say. A watched comet never moves.”
Another eternity passed. Perhaps they were up to five minutes now. He couldn’t bear the quiet tension.
“I have this nightmare,” he said. “It comes back again and again. It’s morning, and I’m standing in the nursery. All of us, looking down at the bed as usual. And I’m preparing to say something about the tragedy of pinworms, when I realize the hand in mine isn’t flesh and blood. It’s wood. Then I turn, and I realize I’m holding Millicent’s hand, and the body on the bed is Daisy’s.”
Alexandra’s hand slid into his, and he squeezed her fingers tight.
“She’s just lying there. Pale, unmoving. And there are buttons on her eyes. I start shouting at her. Shaking her little body. But I can’t move the buttons from her eyes to wake her, and then . . . Then the bed starts to change. Suddenly it’s gray and uneven. The paving stones of an alleyway. There’s blood pooling beneath her. I’m frantic to find the source, press my hand over the wound, but I can’t. It just keeps spreading. And then . . .”
“And then?”
“And then I wake up. Drenched in cold sweat.”
“Oh, Chase. I’m so sorry. That sounds terrifying.”
“It is terrifying. And even when I’ve awoken from it, and I know it’s only a dream, it doesn’t stop being terrifying. The fear only grows, and I know it’s because—” He paused to swallow hard. “I know it’s because I love them.”
She clasped his hand tight.
He swore. “I love those girls so damned much, Alex.”
“I know you do. I’ve known it for ages.”
>
“Yes, yes. You know everything.” He gave her a nudge. “The least you could do is wait until I’ve finished spilling the entirety of my heart on the grass. Then you can gloat over it.”
“I am duly chastened. Please continue.”
“Between the fear and the fondness, it keeps getting worse. One feeds the other. The very idea of seeing them hurt—not being able to help—scares the shite out of me.”
“I’m fairly certain that’s natural.”
“And it’s not only the accidents and illnesses. It’s everything. Rosamund’s ten. What do I do if she tells me she fancies a boy? Worse, what if a boy takes a fancy to her?” A fresh possibility struck him, and it was the most horrifying by far. “Good God, what the hell will I do the first time she gets her courses?”
Alex laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I’m being serious here. I don’t trust myself to be a competent guardian. How can I? If I were someone else, I wouldn’t trust me, either.”
“Well, I trust you to be an excellent guardian. That’s the honest truth. Because I love Rosamund and Daisy, too, and I couldn’t bear to leave them at summer’s end if I didn’t trust you completely. Does that help?”
“A bit.”
It would help a great deal more if she wasn’t going to leave at summer’s end. Or if she wasn’t going to leave at all.
“Chase.” She clutched his arm, as if she’d suddenly recalled the reason they were lying in the grass in the middle of the square at midnight. “Has it been a quarter hour, do you think?”
He felt for his timepiece. “More than that.”
“Oh, no. I’ve lost track of the smudge.”
“The sky’s only so big. It can’t have gone far.”
“Shush.” She held her breath, studying the darkness overhead. “Oh. There it is. Chasing Altair now.” She rose to her feet, leaving him sitting befuddled and alone in the grass.
“Wait,” he called after her. She was halfway back to the house already. “Is that good or bad? What does Altair mean?”
“In Arabic, it means ‘flying eagle.’” She reached the front door, and turned to answer him. “In practical terms at the moment? It means I must go to the Royal Observatory, at once.”