“So you, yourself, do not garden.” Miss Tosten nodded, approving no doubt, as her prospective husband must not be in trade. “But I understand you are fond of horses?”
Fond of them? He’d supported himself very well buying, selling, and training them, thank you very much. He owed his life to horses many times over, and his passion for them eclipsed mere genteel fondness.
“I am,” he replied, vowing he’d not disgrace himself with unruly speech again.
“As am I.” She nodded again, gaining momentum. “They are so pretty and useful.”
“That they are,” he allowed, thinking of the emaciated, scarred, weary animals he’d seen littering countless battlefields. “But what are your other interests, Miss Tosten?” He most assuredly did not add “or may I call you Elizabeth?” because he could already see her beginning to plot in earnest: The earl is interested in my accomplishments, Mama!
“I play the pianoforte a little, of course.” She wrapped a second hand around his arm as they walked along. “I sing and have modest talent with watercolors. I have not yet been to Paris, but Mama says we shall go next spring before the Season for some fittings and to polish my French.”
“But what of the seasons other than spring, Miss Tosten? How do you fill the hours then?”
“One corresponds, of course.” She blinked and frowned as if in thought. “And we pay calls, and Mama is very active in local charities. I strive to learn from her example. Just this week, she motivated the Ladies Charitable Guild to investigate the state of widows and orphans here in the parish. Mama is a most charitable lady, and I hope to follow in her footsteps.”
“I wish you every success,” the earl said, his sarcasm apparently lost on her. Oh, Mama—he mentally winced—the earl was most enthusiastic about the Orphan’s Fund. How clever of you!
Miss Tosten would never come to him with a new recipe that needed perfecting. She would never tear across the gardens barefoot in pursuit of a laughing child. She would never make soft, yearning sounds when he kissed her.
“Rosecroft.” Douglas sauntered up behind them, Lady Tosten hanging on his arm. “I was just explaining to your guest we will not be able to attend their assembly, as I am going south in the next week or so, and you might well accompany me.”
“Just so.” The earl could have kissed Douglas on both cheeks. “My niece, Rose, is Lord Amery’s stepdaughter, and I have yet to make her acquaintance. I might have time to jaunt south and still be back here before harvest.”
“Oh, never say it.” Lady Tosten waved a hand. “Your niece has her entire life to make your acquaintance, but we have only the one summer assembly, your lordship. You must both stay.”
“In our family,” the earl said, gently disengaging Miss Tosten’s arm from his, “we do not take one another for granted. As Rose is only recently out of mourning for her own father, she needs her uncles, and I’m thinking she might enjoy making Winnie’s acquaintance, as they are already corresponding.”
He watched as Lady Tosten registered that Winnie would be introduced to the Duke and Duchess of Moreland and all their progeny. “For the present, ladies, I must beg you to excuse us. There was a deal of correspondence delivered with the morning post, and it does not answer itself.”
Lady Tosten almost hid it, but he saw her disappointment that again, no luncheon invitation would be forthcoming.
He’d no sooner dispensed with the Tostens, though, when Hadrian Bothwell presented himself, having arrived again on foot. Douglas excused himself, muttering something about drains and fall calves, so the earl rang for refreshments and wondered how anybody got anything done when the damned knocker was up.
***
“So will you really come south with me?” Douglas asked the earl over dinner. “Or was that merely an evasive tactic?”
Emmie glanced up at him sharply, as did Winnie.
“I don’t know.” The earl frowned at his soup. “It’s tempting, but I don’t want to ask one of my geldings for that effort again so soon… and I would miss my Winnie.” Winnie’s face creased into a bashful smile, but she said nothing. “Though I would be gone only for a few weeks, I suppose. Could you spare me, Win?”
“Would you come back?”
“I would come back. I give you my word I’d come back, and before winter, too.”
“You’d go to see Rose?” Winnie asked, brow knit. “I suppose that would be all right. She is your niece.”
“And you are my Winnie,” the earl reminded her, but beside Winnie, Emmie was blinking hard at her soup.
“Emmie?” The earl turned his gaze on her. “Will it suit for me to make a short trip south?”
“Your roof and your stone walls are well under way,” she said, “and harvest is still some weeks off. I’m sure Rosecroft could manage without you for a few weeks.”
But what about you, the earl wanted to ask. He honestly could not tell if she was angry with him for contemplating this journey, or relieved or indifferent or… what?
“I will think about it,” the earl said, his eyes on Emmie. She’d been keeping her distance from him all week, and he’d been content to let her. They were together at meals, and he frequently crossed paths with Winnie during the day, and hence, with her cousin. What he had not sought—had not felt welcome to seek—was privacy with Emmie.
***
After the earl’s disconcerting announcement at dinner, Emmie successfully eluded him for the rest of the evening. She should have known her efforts were doomed. He breached all protocol that evening and knocked on her bedroom door once the house was quiet.
“My lord?” She opened the door halfway but did not invite him in.
“I’d like a word with you, if you’ve the time?”
“In the library?”
“This won’t take long,” he said, holding his ground. She took the hint and stepped back, closing the door behind him. When he turned to face her, Emmie saw his green eyes go wide at the sight of her hair loose around her shoulders. Down and unbound. Not braided, bunned, or otherwise confined.
“You were brushing your hair,” he guessed. “Which means you were almost ready for bed. I apologize for intruding.” He wandered to her vanity and picked up a brush inlaid with ivory.
“It was a gift from the old earl,” she said, watching him fingering her belongings. He ran his thumbnail down the teeth of her comb and picked up a blue ribbon coiled in a tray of hairpins.
“I have been considering how best to apologize to you,” he said, winding the ribbon around his finger, “but I’m not sure exactly what label to put on my transgression.”
Call it a kiss, Emmie silently rejoined.
“And was an apology the purpose of this conversation?” she asked, not knowing where in the room to put herself. She wasn’t about to sit on the bed, and not on the fainting couch by the cold hearth either. She also didn’t want to sit at her vanity, not with him standing there, acquainting his big, tanned hands with her belongings.
“I’m not just here to apologize.” He smiled a slow, lazy smile at her. Not one of his company smiles, not a smile he’d give to Winnie or Lord Amery either. “Come sit, Emmie.” He patted the low back of the chair at her vanity. “You are uneasy, wondering when I’ll say something uncouth or alienate another neighbor. I regret that.” He patted the back of the chair again, and on dragging feet, Emmie crossed the room.
She seated herself and expected the earl to take the end of the fainting couch or to slouch against the mantel. He caught her completely off guard by standing behind her and drawing her hair over her shoulders.
“I miss doing this for my sisters,” he said, running the brush down the length of her hair, “and even for Her Grace when I was very young.”
“She raised you?” Emmie asked, knowing she should grab the brush from him.
“From the age of five on. You have utterly glorious hair. Winnie will be the envy of her peers if she ends up with hair like this.” He drew a fat coil up to his nose and inhaled, th
en let it drop and resumed his brushing.
“You should not be doing this,” Emmie said, but even that weak admonition was an effort. “I should not be letting you do this.”
“I interrupted you. It’s only fair I should perform the task I disturbed. Besides, I wanted to talk to you about this trip Douglas has proposed.”
Emmie rolled her eyes. “The one he proposed at the dinner table. In front of Winnie. What was he thinking?”
“He was thinking”—the earl kept up a slow, steady sweep of the brush—“to alert you to the possibility and to give you a chance to comment on it. But you did not.”
“I said something.” Emmie frowned, trying to recall what. Her common sense told her she needed breathing room—right this moment she needed breathing room, and in the days and weeks to come. She’d been trying to keep her distance from him, to avoid the near occasion of sin, but she couldn’t keep him from her thoughts if he was always underfoot.
“You said nothing that told me what you think of the idea,” he remonstrated. “One braid or two?”
“One. You should do as you please,” she said, trying to rouse her brain to focus on the conversation.
“I hadn’t planned on traveling south again until spring, perhaps when Gayle and Anna’s child has arrived.” He fell silent when the brush found a knot in the heavy abundance of her hair.
“So why go now?” Emmie asked when she ought to be telling him to go and stay away until spring.
“I’m not sure.” He eased the brush through the knot. “I miss my family, for one thing. I didn’t think I would. I spent much of the spring in Westhaven’s household, and I saw a fair amount of Her Grace and my father then, too.”
“But not your sisters, and you have yet to meet Rose, and your father is recovering from a heart seizure.”
“He is. Easily, if my brothers’ missives can be trusted. But what of Winnie? She is my family now, too, and I won’t go if you think it would upset her too much. She’s had a great deal of upheaval in her life, and I would not add to it.”
“Winnie has given you her blessing.” Emmie steeled herself against a lassitude that was making it difficult to keep her eyes open. “And Winnie is not a creature who ignores her own preferences. Just for God’s sake do not fail to return, or I won’t answer for the consequences.”
“Will you miss me, Emmie Farnum?” He paused in his brushing, and Emmie felt his hands settle on her shoulders. She wanted to bolt to her feet and wrap her arms around him, to tell him not to go. She wanted to bolt to her feet and order him from her room, to tell him to go and not come back.
She sat in her chair, stock still, and watched in the mirror as he hunkered behind her chair and pushed her hair to the side, exposing the side of her neck.
“I told myself,” he murmured, his thumb caressing the spot just below her ear, “I could behave if I had to track you to your lair tonight. I told myself that lie, and I believed it.”
He leaned in slowly and pressed his open mouth to the juncture of her shoulder and her neck. His breath fanned over her skin, and Emmie had to close her eyes against the sight of him in her mirror. He rose, but only to let his hands drift down her arms and back up.
“You aren’t stopping me, Emmie,” he whispered.
“I will,” she said, hoping it was true. But his long fingers were busy with the ties at her throat, and she felt her wrapper fall open as he bit her earlobe. Soon, she thought, soon I will stop him, but not just…
A large, warm hand settled gently over one breast, and Emmie could not prevent a little whimper of pleasure. Through the sheer fabric of her nightgown, she could feel the heat of him. His thumb eased across her nipple, coaxing it to firmness, and Emmie felt what little resolve she could claim evaporating.
“Rosecroft…” she murmured.
“Devlin, or St. Just, or my love, but not the bloody damned title.” He shifted so he was kneeling before her and threaded his hand through her hair at her nape.
Another kiss, Emmie thought, her heart kicking into a gallop. Just this once more, and then I’ll be good.
He made it a feast, that one kiss, by grazing his nose all over her jaw, her cheeks, her brow. Everywhere, he inhaled her scent and teased her with his own. She tried to capture his mouth, but he evaded such headlong behavior. His hand remained on her breast, cupping, teasing, and learning the shape and heft of her.
“St. Just,” Emmie panted, “Devlin, please just kiss me.”
He growled, a sound that held amusement and satisfaction, but he didn’t capitulate to her demands until he’d undone the ties to her nightgown. Not until he fused his mouth to hers did he ease the material apart, though, and then he let his hand drop to her lap, leaving Emmie to focus on the way he plundered her mouth, stole her wits, and sent her best intentions and common sense begging down the lane.
***
Emmie opened for him immediately, her hands stealing around his shoulders, and those sexy little sounds starting up as soon as he touched his tongue to hers.
She wants it, he thought as his own lust spiked upward. She wants me.
And God knew he wanted her. His groin was throbbing with want, screaming with it, and demanding he make up for years of neglect in the next instant. Emmie’s hands were adding to the din, trailing up and down his arms then working at the buttons of his waistcoat. When she had those undone, she began to pull the hem of his shirt from his waistband.
“Emmie.” He tried to catch her hands. “Emmie, love. Slow down.” To get her attention, he broke the kiss, resting his forehead on her collarbone. “Easy now. Just… easy.” She was breathing as hard as he was, gulping air, her hands coming to rest on his shoulders.
He lifted his head and peered around the room, then scooped her up and rose in one motion. “Bed,” he whispered to her, kissing her nose before he lowered her onto the mattress. While Emmie blinked in consternation, he pulled off his shirt and waistcoat, then sat on the bed to tug off his boots.
“You stay right there,” he muttered before rising and locking the door.
“I can’t do this,” she blurted out, rising up on her elbows. “I cannot… lie with you.” He stopped, midstride, and frowned at her.
“Is it your courses? Because that needn’t…”
Emmie shook her head. “No, it isn’t… that.” She blushed and turned her face away.
“I will not get a bastard on you, Emmie.” He took the few steps needed to bring him to the bed and sat at her hip, gazing down at her. “You should know that at least.”
“Are you God,” Emmie said in quiet misery, “to prevent conception at will?”
Her sternum was open to his view, but the froth of her night clothes hid her breasts. She was breathing hard, he could see, with arousal, but also…
“Emmie.” He reached out and brushed a lock of her hair back. “Let me pleasure you. You need it, I need it, and no one will be the wiser. I can ease your ache, and you can ease mine. It needn’t be more complicated than that.”
He trailed the back of his hand against the silky skin of her chest, moving her garments aside, baring a full breast to the candlelight. She closed her eyes, which he took for capitulation of a sort, so he leaned down and settled his mouth over her exposed nipple. He drew gently while his hand smoothed down over her ribs, over her belly, then back up.
Emmie’s hands cradled the back of his head then went still, giving him the sense she was absorbing these shocking new pleasures. He knew he’d crossed the line from persuasion to seduction, for she’d said she would not lie with him. Could not. And he could not promise her if they joined, no child would result.
So he’d settle for half measures but make them such unforgettable half measures for her that she’d have no recriminations. He eased himself full-length onto the bed beside her and let his weight rest against her hip. Even that simple contact brought him some relief as Emmie arched into him, her refusals and remonstrations forgotten.
He pushed up and settled more of his
weight against her. Her eyes flew open, and he met her panicked gaze, trailing a hand over her neck and sternum.
“I will not join with you tonight,” he said, holding her gaze, “but neither will I let either one of us go unsatisfied.”
Her eyes clouded with confusion even as he lowered his head to kiss her. Slowly, tentatively, he felt Emmie’s hands slide over his naked shoulders to join at his nape.
“That’s it,” he murmured, “we’ll take it easy.” His voice was a low rumble. He intended to reassure more than seduce and had no clue if he’d succeeded. He wanted his kiss, his voice, and his hand as it slowly explored her exposed breasts all to convey that there were eternities available for this pleasuring he offered her.
“Emmie,” he murmured against her mouth, “spread your legs for me, love.”
She startled when his hand settled on her mons. His fingers moved in lazy little circles across her pubic bone then back again, even while his tongue circled around hers. Then he shifted tactics, to comb his fingers through her curls, a slow caress intended to soothe as it aroused.
“Open,” he reminded her, smiling against her mouth. “Please.”
Tentatively, she let her knees ease apart two inches, but it was enough for his purposes. “That’s my lady.” He smiled again and began to move his hips, rocking his erection against her thigh. His hand moved in the same rhythm, but, oh the sweet places he touched…
Cautiously, he dipped a finger down the damp length of her sex. She flexed her hips to rub herself against his hand, then repeated the movement when he held his hand against her more firmly.
“Slowly,” he cautioned, shifting his weight to give his hand greater range of motion.
“Not slowly,” Emmie muttered in response. “Touch me, St. Just. You have to touch me.”
She comprehended that much, he saw, but exactly how experienced she had was hard to tell. She was experienced enough, he decided, finding the bud of her pleasure and circling on it gently.
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