He glanced over his shoulder, those striking clear blue eyes capturing hers in the candlelight of the foyer. “Are you asking me to kiss you?”
She gawked. “I… No. No. Why would I— All I was pointing out, and very respectably, mind you, was that you walked away without bidding me farewell.”
He slowly closed the door and faced her again. “I walked away for a reason.”
Her brow creased. “I hope I didn’t offend you in any way.”
Shifting his jaw, he strode back toward her, his coat billowing menacingly around his solid movements as if he were about to take flight and land on top of her.
Though she wanted to throw up her hands and dash up the stairs to find Henry, she knew that would only make her look the ninny that she was.
He paused half an arm away, blocking her view of the foyer. That crisp scent of leather, wood and coal drifted toward her again. He lowered his gaze to hers. “You didn’t offend.”
Everything about him was a bit too exciting. She almost couldn’t think. “I didn’t?”
“No.” He held her gaze. “My mind simply isn’t where it should be and I’m not one to take advantage of a clearly virginal woman.”
Her eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, now, you can’t be that naive. What do you think goes on between men and women when no one is looking? They don’t sit and play cards.”
She fisted her trembling hands, which had gone from damp cold to damp hot, realizing exactly what he meant. She knew about kissing. She also knew that when bedchamber doors closed at night, something happened that resulted in children. So did he mean to say he wanted both? “Are you offering on my hand?”
His mouth quirked. “Not in the way you think.” He edged in tauntingly. “This is probably where you should turn and run, tea cake. Before all this pent-up self-restraint you see…flies. Because I’m not known for restraint when it comes to women.”
She swallowed. He was teasing her. “If you doubted your self-restraint, you wouldn’t have told me.”
He eyed her. “I’m not always this nice to women.”
“If I felt in any way threatened by you or this situation,” she confided, “I would have screamed by now. I can scream, you know. I try not to, given Dr. Filbert insists I never strain my throat, but I can. I’m not as frail as everyone thinks I am.”
He hesitated. “Doctor? Is something wrong with you?”
She shrugged. “I have fainting spells and issues with my throat. There was an incident when I was younger. I could barely swallow without being in pain and lost almost a quarter of my body weight when I was seven.”
He stared, his features darkening. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
She shrugged. “I was rather fortunate. I could have died. Everyone was surprised I didn’t.”
He said nothing.
“My name is Imogene, by the by. Lady Imogene. But you can call me Gene.”
He stared at her in a way that resembled a panther gazing upon its prey. Then, suddenly, he edged back. “I really have to go.”
She tried not to panic. What if he didn’t take the offer? What if she had scared him away with all her stupid talk of doctors and death? “We should take tea sometime. Here at the house. Next week in the afternoon? Yes?”
He kept staring. “I’m not looking to be domesticated.”
“Oh. I… Well…tea is very informal. As long as I have a chaperone it would be very respectable. You and I can get to know each other and be friends.”
“Friends?” His gaze traced her eyes to her lips and back to her eyes again. “You’re a woman.”
Her cheeks grew hot. “Men and women can be friends.”
“Men and women aren’t meant to be friends. Trust me in this. Good night…Imogene.” He turned and strode for the entrance door and opened it. Glancing back at her one last time, he stepped into the darkness beyond, closing the door behind him with a thud.
Imogene hurried to the closed door and lingered, wishing he would come back. Everything about him was so beautifully raw and real. She didn’t realize a man could make a woman’s toes curl in her own slippers.
It was divine. He was divine.
Setting both hands on the door, she pretended for a breath it was him. Her pulse thrummed against the carved wood as she traced her fingertips against it. She smiled dreamily. Together, they would take that quarter of a million and rule the world.
She paused. Wait. She had just let him walk out the door without any guarantee. Scrambling to open the door, she threw it back and ran out into the night after the man she knew was going to change her life.
CHAPTER SIX
When Greek meets Greek, then’s the tug of war.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
NATHANIEL PRAYED FOR inner strength. He’d never met a woman who had actually made him want to do more than rip clothes off. Attraction to a woman was one thing. He’d had plenty of those since he was sixteen. But this fierce need to dig his two hands into each and every breath she took was beyond anything he’d ever known or touched.
Raking back his rain-dampened hair in disbelief, he trudged down the gravel path. How he had managed to escape her and that house without giving in to what he really wanted to do was beyond his own understanding.
The darting steps of slippers urgently running after him in the darkness made Nathaniel turn. His breath hitched as Imogene’s curvaceous figure, draped in that hand-bitingly clinging wet fabric, bustled toward him.
Despite the darkness, the row of glass lanterns hanging off the iron railing lit just enough to illuminate the seductive bounce of those well-outlined breasts as she jogged toward him.
He stiffened—everywhere. The woman clearly didn’t realize how much he could see.
She alighted before him, primly threw her long blond braid over her slim shoulder and glanced up, that quiet, oval face, flushed cheeks and those stunning bright hazel eyes meeting his gaze. “I couldn’t let you go quite yet. Not until you promise me you will take my brother’s offer.”
He fisted both hands, fighting the two opposing voices raging in his head. One told him to go. And the other one told him to rake his hands down every inch of her wet robe before stripping it off. He couldn’t decide which voice he should listen to and had been mindlessly arguing with both ever since he first saw her. “Not to disappoint you, tea cake, but I’m going to need a few days to think about the offer. I’ve got people to talk to.” Mainly Matthew. He hadn’t been informing the poor bastard of much these days.
Her blond brows flickered as her voice dipped in concern. “Do you need a better offer?” She leaned in closer, bringing that lavish, crisp scent of lilies. “Was the money not generous enough?”
He drew in a ragged breath, wishing she wouldn’t lean in so damn close. Because all he could think about was the same thing he’d been thinking about when he had her up against the wall in her house. How he wanted to take those wrists into each hand, pull them up over her head and knot them into place with her own silk stockings. That way, he could have free rein over that luscious body and do whatever he wanted. “The sort of offer I’m thinking about, Imogene, probably isn’t going to suit you or your brother.” He was all about being honest.
She searched his face amongst the shadows. “I will make it suit us. What were you thinking?”
A gruff laugh escaped him. If she were any more naive, he’d have to pinch her adorable ass. “You really don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”
“But I do. I really do. I genuinely want to assure you that—” She blinked rapidly, her features momentarily blanking.
He hesitated, sensing something was wrong. “What is it?”
She staggered and then to his heart-pounding astonishment, swooned.
Jumping toward her, he grabbed hold of her slim body before she hit the gravel, the wet fabric of her robe and nightdress shifting against his bare hands. “Jesus.”
What the hell just happened?
Qu
ickly sliding his hands beneath her and with a single toss, he effortlessly hefted her up and into both arms, rolling her body toward his chest, and glanced down at her.
Her head rolled back, exposing the length of her throat and her full lips unconsciously parted in the shifting light and shadows of the lanterns.
He quickly leaned in toward her mouth, setting his ear against those lips. Relief trickled in at realizing she was still breathing.
Get her to Weston. That way, it’s off your hands and it’s not your fault. Tightening his hold on her, he jogged his way back toward the entrance and veered in through the entrance door she had left open.
Her small hands jumped up to the lapels on his great coat, tightening their hold.
He jerked to a halt and glanced down at her in the dim candlelight of the foyer, his pulse roaring in his ears. “What happened? Are you all right?”
She stared up at him, her hazel eyes unfocused. She momentarily closed her eyes before reopening them and half nodded. “Yes. I…I fainted, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” he breathed out.
She winced. “I do that.”
Not good. “Do you want me to call for your brother?”
“No. He…he would only call upon the doctor.”
He eyed her. “Don’t you want him to call the doctor?”
She slowly shook her head. “No. Dr. Filbert always puts me on bed rest. Then I’m not allowed to do anything for days. Not even read. I hate it.” She tightened her hold on the lapels of his coat and peered up at him. “Can you take me up to my room instead? Please?”
It was the softest and sweetest of pleas he had ever had the pleasure of hearing. It actually made his throat tighten. He searched that pretty, rain-dampened face. “Is that what you want?”
She half nodded and leaned her blond head against him as if she completely trusted him, which she must, considering she was asking him to take her up into her bedchamber. “’Tis up the stairs on the right. Keep to the right and turn two corners.” She sounded weak, her voice faint. “It will be the eighth door down. And please don’t tell Henry. He always makes a fuss whenever I faint. Promise me you won’t tell him.”
He couldn’t help but instinctively cradle her closer in response to that plea. “I promise.”
He made his way up the main stairwell. Once he was on the landing, he carried her, her slippered feet dangling, toward the direction she had given him, turning two corners. It was eerie wandering about such a lavish home. It had been thirty years since he’d found himself in an abode bigger than the peeling walls of a lone room he had leased from an ironmonger back in New York. Nathaniel eventually found the eighth door on the right in the vast corridor.
“Is this it?” he whispered down at her, so no one could hear him.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
The door was wide-open, candlelight glowing from within. He strode into a very feminine-looking bedchamber, with pale pink walls. On the right was a dressing table covered with a white lace runner and various crystal perfume bottles, painted pink tins and jewelry boxes. On the other side, against the far wall, was a large four-poster bed covered with white linens and an array of plush pillows.
The room personified her. Tranquil and pretty.
Striding over to the bed, he gently lowered her onto the linens, slipping his bare hands out from beneath her. He tried not to linger on the feel of those curves.
Holding his gaze from where she lay against the pillows, she smiled weakly. “Thank you.”
The way she looked up at him, so trustingly, made him lean down and gently kiss her smooth forehead. “You’re welcome,” he murmured against her skin. Something about that quiet, oval face and those stunning bright hazel eyes that had clearly seen so little of the world had made him want to swallow her whole and remember a time when all that mattered was skipping a stone across water.
He’d never kissed a woman on the forehead before. He’d licked it, and nipped it, but never kissed it for the sake of kissing it.
Even worse…he didn’t stop there. Nor could he. He gently kissed the side of her temple, then trailed his lips to her soft cheek and kissed that, and then trailed his lips to her chin and kissed that. She smelled like fresh rain and lilies. It reminded him of the dew-ridden fields outside of New York where he’d lie in the grass for hours whenever he wanted to escape the bustle of the city.
Though she drew in a notable breath that made her breasts rise up toward him, she didn’t move.
Nathaniel did everything he could to keep himself from burying himself into her and that scent. His chest tightened with the awareness he was overstepping his bounds given her innocence. He straightened and stepped away from the bed.
She stared, her cheeks flushed. With both hands still flat against the linens, she whispered up at him, “Why did you do that?”
He shifted his jaw, feeling like he had disrupted her peace. The peace he’d been trying to absorb, he realized. “It doesn’t matter.” He stepped back again. “I suggest you get out of those wet clothes.” He paused and added, “After I leave.”
He turned and strode out of the room, closing the door behind himself to ensure he didn’t look back. His pulse raced as he tried not to think about what he had just done, though it was rather tame given his nature and what he usually inflicted upon a woman. Nathaniel was infinitely relieved when he finally made it outside, closing the entrance door behind him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I could have done a great deal better, Sir,
but I was afraid I might hit you
too hard and you should be affronted.
—P. Egan, Boxiana (1823)
NATHANIEL GLANCED TOWARD the sky that was lightening at the edges of the darkness that had once been. He could hear the chirping of birds against the pulsing silence.
It was like the dawning of a new life.
He felt so oddly empowered after having kissed Imogene. Like he could face anything and do anything.
He set his jaw. Waiting be damned.
Now that he had had a chance to kiss heaven, it was as good a time as any to finally kiss hell. He was done waiting. Like Matthew kept telling him, he wouldn’t be able to move forward in his head or in his life until he did this.
Jogging down the wide stairs, he made his way down the gravel carriage path and out past the gates. He walked and walked and walked in jaw-tightening silence until—
Recognizing the square up ahead enclosed by wide, pristine roads and tall, stone houses, he slowed. It was exactly where Weston said it would be when he had asked if he knew where the Sumners held their residence.
Nathaniel crossed the cobblestone, splashing up water that reflected the morning sky brightening to yellow-pink against the rising sun.
The Sumner House.
His pulse roared. The brass lion knocker on the door was still there. The same brass lion he used to jump up and tap before walking through the door. The iron fence that quartered off the cobblestone road was still there, with the Sumner crest that he used to drag his father’s cane across. Thirty years had changed nothing, except for the size of the trees.
He lingered on the path, still staring at the door. Memories flooded his soul as the ghostly figure of his sister in a silk pleated bonnet and a pale pink gown bent toward the ghostly figure of himself as a boy. Trunks were being carried out of the Sumner house by footmen and strapped onto the large coach set to take them to Liverpool, where they would board a ship to New York. His father planned to invest in land for the purpose of leasing and making a profit, given funds were short. His mother insisted that they go as a family. Auggie had promised him that the trip would bring their family together.
How wrong she had been.
He slowly made his way up the set of stairs leading to the vast terrace home. Though he hesitated, he reached out and forced himself to twist the iron bell on the side of the entrance.
It was done. There was no going back.
Moments edged past, and with it
the occasional clattering of coach wheels and clumping of horses’ hooves from the cobblestone street behind. Leaning back, he eyed the vast windows, noting all of the curtains were open. His gut turned and he wondered if he should leave. Before he did something stupid. Before he—
A click vibrated the large entrance door and it swung open. A thin, grey-haired man in blue livery peered out.
Nathaniel’s throat tightened. By God. It was Wilkinson. He’d gotten old.
Wilkinson squinted. “What business have you to be calling this early?”
The man was as crusty as ever. It was surreal seeing him again. “Wilkinson. Is that you?”
“Do I know you, sir?”
Maybe he ought to ease into this. “Uh…we met. A long time ago.”
Wilkinson narrowed his gaze. “We did?”
Nathaniel tried to remain calm, even though he felt overwhelmed. It was like seeing all thirty years flit in a blink. “I’m…I’m actually here to speak to Lord Sumner.” He could do this. He could face his father, couldn’t he?
“At this hour, sir? Clearly the time means nothing to you. His lordship still sleeps.”
How was his father capable of ever closing his eyes? “His sleep just ended. I ask that you bid the man to rise. Tell him he has a visitor.”
The butler pulled in his wobbling chin. “I highly doubt, sir, that you have any business of such great import that would require—”
“Inform his lordship that his son is here to see him. I’m certain that will get him up.”
“His—” Wilkinson’s eyes widened. “Dearest God. I thought you looked eerily familiar but I— Master Atwood? Is it truly you? Have your own two feet finally brought you home?”
Sensing the man had, indeed, recognized him, a shaky breath escaped him. “Yes. Though I’m not much to look at anymore, am I?”
The butler stared, his thin shoulders deflating. His gaze traveled from Nathaniel’s hair to his boots and settled on his face. He stepped back. “I will admit your eyes are very much his. But how is it possible? After so many countless years of nothing surfacing how have you come to be?”
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