She was appalled by the realization. What would Thornley think to know her yearnings had careened toward a commoner, to someone other than him? But the reality was that as much as she had craved his attention, she’d never truly longed for him. Based upon the rather neutral friendship they’d developed over the years, she suspected he had yet to view her as a woman to be desired but still considered her a child, not yet capable of returning the unbridled passions a man of his years no doubt experienced. Besides, she very much suspected at this very moment he was showering those passions over a mistress. She was rather certain it was her brother’s need to pursue pleasure that had resulted in his gaining his own residence.
A lady on the other hand could have passions aplenty but was given neither the freedom nor the opportunity to experience them. And she certainly wasn’t given lodgings of her own, so she could do as she pleased. Therefore, Lavinia was not going to feel guilty for sneaking out of her parents’ residence in the dead of night or for having a young man she was quite keen to know better being intimately familiar with the shape and feel of her ankle.
Both shoes in place, he stood, reached down, took her bare hand—she’d long ago stopped wearing gloves when seeing him, much preferring the roughness of his palms to the supplest of leather—and pulled her to her feet. Then they were both racing toward the gate and his wagon.
They said not a word until they were well on their way. She no longer found fault with the swaying of the wagon, the way it jostled and made her brush up against him. Although not as much distance separated them now as it had when they’d first met. Now her hip and thigh rested against his.
“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming this year.” He always spoke calmly, quietly, without irritation as though she was one of the horses he needed to calm.
“My mother and I went to Paris first, so I could have some proper gowns made for my first Season. Paris is in France, across the Channel—”
“I know where Paris is.” His tone was curt, so unlike him.
“I meant no insult. I forget how much you know.” He’d told her once that he and his siblings had a membership in a lending library, so he was forever educating himself. Sometimes she wished he could see her family’s libraries at the London residence and the estate. Hundreds of books. She wanted him to have the opportunity to read every one of them.
“I wasn’t insulted. Just don’t see the point in talking about what I already know. Tell me something I don’t. What did you do while you were away?”
She sighed with the reality of how absolutely dull her life was. He, and he alone, provided the excitement. “The same as always. A few country parties, a lot of embroidery, some riding.” She’d never told him about Thornley or the arrangement their fathers had made. Finn possessed a moral character, and she rather feared if he knew she was promised to someone, he would bring a halt to their clandestine adventures, no matter how innocent they were. Once Thornley asked for her hand, she’d stop seeing Finn, of course. There was no question of that, but for now, where was the harm in their friendship?
Besides, he was only six years older than she compared with Thornley’s eleven, and she found him much easier to talk to. He had no expectations of her, didn’t look at her knowing a time would come when he would bed her. He didn’t treat her as though she were a child, but then he hadn’t known her the whole of his life. Thornley had no doubt seen her in nappies. This Season, when he saw her in her Paris gowns, he would realize she’d grown up. She should have been excited by the prospect. Instead she wished Finn would see her in the gowns. Perhaps she’d wear the green silk on one of their outings. She couldn’t get into it on her own, however, so she might have to let her maid in on her secrets. Surely, Miriam could be trusted. Although Lavinia knew she should address her lady’s maid by her surname, Watkins, the girl was only half a dozen years her senior and they’d become friends of a sort over the years. Miriam had held her as she’d wept when Sophie had been taken away, consoled her when Thorne was too busy for her and made her doubt her appeal, reassured her when her mother’s sharp tongue took her to task for not being ladylike enough. Miriam had even confided that she’d fallen for one of the footmen and hadn’t objected when he’d given her a kiss beneath the mistletoe last Christmas, so surely she could relate to her young mistress wanting some adventure before she finally settled into married life. She wouldn’t confess all the encounters she’d had with Finn but would merely explain the outing to be an innocent lark with someone she knew from long ago. With Miriam’s assistance, she could wear petticoats and have her hair properly styled. Her maid could help her sneak out. She’d probably enjoy that since she’d found glee in kissing a footman when she shouldn’t.
“Is that all?” Finn asked.
His words abruptly brought Lavinia from the scheming she’d been doing. “I beg your pardon?”
“Is that all you did these many months you were away?”
“I went on my first fox hunt. I didn’t much care for it.”
“Your heart is too soft for the killing of animals.”
“Yes, I rather think it is.” Thornley had been there and had looked disappointed in her when she’d refused to be blooded with the kill. Such an archaic ritual of smearing the prey’s blood on an initiate’s cheek. “I wanted the fox to get away.”
Putting his arm around her shoulders, he gave her a squeeze. “Sorry I asked. Don’t think about it.”
“What did you do while I was gone?” she asked, striving to throw off the somber thoughts, while her enthusiasm for the answer wasn’t feigned. She wanted to know everything he’d done. They didn’t write each other while they were separated for fear her parents might get hold of the letters and confront her about their relationship. It was agony going weeks and months without knowing what he was doing.
“Work. Drank. My sister’s tavern is doing quite well. If I don’t get there early enough I have a hard time finding a chair to sit in. I’d like to take you sometime.”
It was a good thing she no longer sat at the very edge of the bench because she’d have fallen off the wagon. For two years, it had only ever been the two of them and Sophie. “What if someone sees us?”
He laughed. “Of course someone is going to see us. But it won’t be anyone you know, and the people I know won’t know who you are. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, about how I’d like to do something more with you than this.”
She wanted more than this as well, but what could it be? Crossing accidentally at the park would still raise eyebrows and have people asking questions, causing gossip and speculation. She couldn’t do anything that would bring embarrassment to her family or Thornley—nothing that would cause him to question the wisdom in following through on the contract. Her father would see her locked in her room for eternity. A ball was out of the question. Perhaps a darkened balcony at the theater . . . as though she would be allowed to attend a performance without a chaperone in tow. “It would be a risk.”
“This has been a risk.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “I don’t know, Finn. I’ll be so busy this Season with my coming out I’m not certain I’ll even be able to meet you every Tuesday.”
“Do you want to keep seeing me?” he asked.
“More than anything. You’re my dearest friend in all the world.”
He chuckled darkly, a sinister sound she’d never before heard emanating from him. She might have even heard him swear beneath his breath. He turned down the road that led to the factory. “I don’t want to be your friend, Vivi.”
He’d never called her that before. Vivi. In retrospect, after that first night, he’d never called her anything at all, not Lady Lavinia or Lavinia or m’lady. But Vivi coming off his tongue sounded almost like an endearment. No one had ever shortened her name, had given her any sort of pet name. She liked it, she liked it very much. But the words that had come before it confounded her. “I don’t understand, Finn. If you don’t want to be my friend, then why have we been doing this? Don’
t you like me?”
He brought the wagon to halt, set the brake, looped the reins around its handle so they were out of the way, and twisted around to face her, to cradle her cheek, to stroke his thumb along the corner of her mouth. “I like you far more than is wise for a man in my position.”
Abruptly, he released his hold on her and jumped off the wagon, leaving her wanting for something she couldn’t exactly identify. He came around and held his arms up to her. “Come on. Sophie’s waiting for you.”
Without thought to their earlier row or whatever it had been, she fell into a ritual in which they’d engaged too many times to count, placing her hands on his shoulders while he bracketed her waist, but this time it seemed as though he brought her down much more slowly, as though their eyes were locked while her body tingled. Her breasts came close to skimming over his chest. All she had to do was inhale deeply or push them forward and the nipples that had pearled would have brushed over him. And she imagined it would have felt as tantalizing as his roughened palm sliding over her hand.
Finally, her feet were on firm ground, but she couldn’t say the same of her imaginings. She was aware of him in ways she’d never been before. The breadth of his shoulders. She’d noticed them but had never considered how comforting it might be to lay her head in the hollow of one of them. With the nearly full moon, she could see there was a thickness to the stubble on his jaw that hadn’t been there before. He was no longer a lad on the cusp of manhood but had stepped over it in a most magnificent way.
Lord, help her. She wanted his hands on more than her waist. She wanted them on places that only her husband should ever have the privilege of touching.
She was grateful, and disappointed, when Sophie’s whinny broke the spell and Finn released her. Swinging around and walking toward the paddock, she came up short at the sight of her beloved horse. “She’s wearing a saddle.”
“You had a birthday while you were away, didn’t you?” he asked, coming up to stand beside her, and she could feel his gaze on her.
Turning her face toward him, she smiled, blinking back the tears that stung her eyes. Last year he’d given her a handful of flowers—picked himself from someone’s garden, she was rather certain. “It must have cost you a fortune.”
“You’re seventeen now, too old to be riding her bareback.”
“Finn, I’m so deeply touched that I don’t know what to say.”
He took a step nearer. “I don’t want to be your friend,” he said in a hushed, rough voice, repeating what he’d told her earlier, but this time there was an urgency to the words, in his tone. “I haven’t wanted to be your friend since I met you. But I’ve waited until you were old enough and now you are.”
She furrowed her brow, none of this making sense. “For what?”
“For this.”
Tossing aside his flat-cap, he very slowly began lowering his mouth to hers, giving her time to back away, to still his actions with a hand to his broad chest. But instead she merely parted her lips slightly and waited. What was a few more seconds after waiting for two years?
Although until that exact moment, she didn’t realize she’d been waiting for this, for him, for him to finally see her as more than a spoiled child who’d made the mistake of abusing her horse and then become petulant because her father wanted to protect her, had become angry at and dismissive of the man who would take the mare away. After taking it away, he’d brought her the gift of its partial return.
She would lose it again when her betrothal was announced in the Times, but not tonight, not for weeks yet, perhaps months, maybe even years. As long as nothing was official, she could claim no commitment to another. As long as Thornley didn’t look up at her from bended knee, as long as he didn’t proclaim her his, there was always a chance he never would and that chance, albeit a slim one, allowed her to consider herself untethered, gave her the permission she needed to simply wait.
With her heart beating erratically as though she’d raced through London streets to get here, with her breath coming shallowly and slowly as though her lungs feared frightening the rest of her with their sudden need for air, she watched him slowly descending the few inches, his blond curls falling across his brow, his dark eyes—a brown she’d only ever once seen in daylight but with a richness to the shade that she would forever remember—intense, holding her captive as easily as the moonbeams that limned him.
Then his lips touched hers and the waiting that seemed to encompass a century suddenly seemed as though it had been no time at all. And the girl she had been suddenly found herself hovering on the cusp of womanhood and toppling off it.
Because what she had expected to be a gentle meeting of the mouths was nothing of the sort. Now that he had reached his destination, it was clear he’d arrived with a purpose, and as he cradled her head between his large hands, roughened by his labors, she could feel two years of yearning quivering through him, insisting, demanding, that the waiting not be in vain. His tongue outlined the rim, before traveling along the seam she’d prepared for him when she’d parted her lips in anticipation of his arrival. The opening gave way as he thrust his tongue inside, not sipping at her mouth, but drinking greedily, their tongues engaged in an ancient dance that sought to claim even as it granted freedom. A thrill shot through her with the knowledge, the evidence, that he desired her this desperately, that he more than wanted her, he needed her.
She recalled how careful he had always been to keep his distance, to not touch her except when necessary to seat her in the wagon or on Sophie. She’d thought his manners were reflecting a deference to her station in Society when compared with his, but as he lowered his hands, gliding them over her back, pressing her more firmly against him, closing his arms around her, she realized he’d been exercising tremendous restraint, had known what awaited them on the other side of his defenses once they were lowered.
He’d been striving to protect her from what he’d desperately wanted to deliver—until she was old enough to want it, accept it, and not be terrified by it. Although it did frighten her to realize that it seemed impossible to ever have enough of this, to know they would only have a short time together, a limited number of kisses, not nearly enough to last a lifetime.
Growling low in his throat, the vibrations in his chest thrumming against her breasts, he held her tighter until it was impossible for any moonlight, any light at all, to pass between their bodies. She wished he wasn’t wearing his jacket, considered asking him to take it off so she could experience a more encompassing warmth coming from him. She’d wound her arms around his neck and her fingers toyed with the ends of his silken hair. He smelled of man, not horses, and she knew he’d bathed before coming to her, always bathed before coming to her. His shirt carried the fragrance of fresh starch.
He dragged his mouth from hers, tasting her chin, her throat, and she wished she wore a ball gown that exposed her shoulders, a good bit of décolletage, and the upper swells of her breasts so his lips could travel over that skin as well, marking all of it as his. Even though it could never be, not for more than a brief amount of time.
Breathing as heavily as she, he pressed his forehead to hers. “I thought I would go mad waiting for you to grow up.”
A burst of laughter escaped her. “Had I known what awaited me, I’d have grown up more quickly.”
He moved back but took her hand as though he still needed the contact. “Come on. I want to see you have a proper ride on Sophie.”
He’d been a fool to kiss her, but he’d felt a need to demonstrate how much he didn’t want to be her friend, even though he knew he could never be anything more. No lord was going to give him leave to marry his daughter—not that he was considering marriage, but he certainly wouldn’t object to a few more kisses.
The taste of her was still on his tongue as he leaned against the fence, arms crossed over his chest, and watched her trot her mare up and down the road. The saddle had cost him a fortune, but it had been worth it to see the delight mirrored o
n her face, to know she was pleased with his gift. He’d considered saddling one of the bays in the paddock so he could ride beside her, but the geldings were built for hauling heavy loads, and while they were magnificent in their sturdiness, they weren’t made for prancing. He knew everything about all the different types of horses used throughout London. They were each bred for a particular purpose and at one time or another he’d spoken gently to every breed before wrapping a cloth about their heads, covering their eyes, so they wouldn’t see what was to come. They all left this earth with as much dignity as he had the power to grant them. After that . . . well, he’d never had much stomach for what came after: the hiding, the slicing off of the meat, the grinding of the bones for fertilizer, and so many other indignities. The one thing he knew for certain was that he’d never have horsehair furniture in his residence.
In the beginning he hadn’t put Sophie down because he wanted Vivi to see he wasn’t the coldhearted monster she’d claimed him to be. He had wanted to close himself off from the task that awaited him, as he did each time he had to swing the axe. He told himself he was showing mercy, but nothing ever made him feel quite as whole as she did, nothing ever made him believe he was meant for greater things, was capable of moving beyond his humble beginnings to something grander. But Vivi’s faith in him did.
Mick believed he could make something of himself, that with wealth and power he could shed the circumstances of his birth and find a place among the aristocracy. Finn had begun to wonder if the same might hold true for him, if with enough work and effort he could forge acceptability—in spite of being a bastard, in spite of knowing who his father was and still being labeled no man’s son. That was the lot of those born on the wrong side of the blanket. They weren’t even considered persons.
It had never bothered him before Vivi, before the kiss. He never should have taken that liberty, but how could he regret it when it had been the most fulfilling experience in all of his twenty-three years?
The Scoundrel in Her Bed (Sins for All Seasons #3) Page 5