by Nancy Butler
Bryce had moved to the arm of the sofa, and now sat watching her, his eyes intent and his lips curled into a cryptic expression that was neither grin nor scowl.
“I…” Jemima opened her mouth, but had no idea of what to say. Take me, occurred to her. Have me, own me… But as much as she admitted to her desire for him, she knew she needed to set her own pace. She had no intention of being an easy conquest, only an ultimately willing one.
She drew a breath, seated herself beside him on the sofa, and said in an airy voice that would have done Lovelace proud, “I fear you will never succeed in luring me into dalliance, Bryce. I am too often amused or infuriated with you to ever take anything you say seriously.”
He swiveled around to face her, his mouth now relaxed into a genuine grin. “You know little of the matter, that’s clear,” he said. “Humor and anger are two of a libertine’s greatest tools—humor makes a woman lower her guard and think herself secure.”
“And anger?”
He cocked his head and said reflectively, “Anger heats the blood—which is the desired outcome when a man seeks to bed a woman.” His gaze slid to her. “Lord, Jem, you must think seduction a bland thing. How do you picture it? An oily cad whispering wet kisses up your arm, while he mouths pretty platitudes? If that’s been your experience of seduction, then I can only say you have put yourself in the hands of cawkers.”
“I have never intentionally put myself in any man’s hands,” she replied briskly, neatly disguising the fact that she wanted desperately to put herself in Bryce’s strong, tanned, and very experienced hands.
“Oh, women rarely acknowledge that they are accomplices to their own seduction—they pretend dismay, which allows them a clear conscience once they are enjoying the results of their acquiescence.”
“Perhaps they truly do feel dismay.” She added a bit sharply. “Would you even notice if they did?”
He shot her a withering look. “If you are implying that I have ever forced myself on a woman—”
“Why wouldn’t you? You are a tall man, fit and strong. I doubt a woman’s feeble protests could keep you from achieving your goal.”
His scowl softened. “It’s true there are those who enjoy forcing a woman to comply. There is an ugly word for such men. But I have never been remotely interested in coercion.” He reached down and lifted her hand from her lap, turning it over and flattening out her fingers. He then laid his hand directly over hers, less than an inch above the palm. “Here, what do you feel?”
She looked questioningly into his eyes, then down at their two hands.
“Nothing,” she said softly. “I feel nothing.”
“Relax,” he said. “And close your eyes.”
She did as he asked, more out of curiosity than in any faith that something magical was going to occur. Then she felt it, the subtle electric vibration arising from her palm. It quivered in the air between their two hands, and within seconds her own hand had raised to his. His fingers closed over it.
“That,” he breathed, tightening his grip, “is what I am interested in. The pull…the tug…the magnetic force that draws two people together. Not coercing a woman, Jemima. Never that.”
He dropped her hand abruptly, stood up, and crossed over to the nearest French window. “Enough for today. I’ve got to see to my horses.” He disappeared through the arched opening.
Jemima looked down at her hand, still raised before her. It was shaking—no longer from his touch, but from the intensity of the emotions that were flooding through her. The warm clasp of his fingers had sent a ripple of pleasure through her body, but more than that, she was reacting to the blinding surge of need that had erupted from her heart. Like Bryce, she longed to succumb to that fierce magnetic pull, but she knew there was much more that she wanted from him. Last night she had seen a glimpse of the real Bryce behind the libertine’s facade—a man who worried over his father, even though there were years of enmity between them. A man who mourned the death of his brother—a brother who would have deprived him of his own patrimony. She had a vision of Bryce as a young man, his idealism soured by the harsh response of the Church he aspired to serve—to what was nothing more than a youthful dalliance. The Church forgives us least, when we are most human. Those words had been laced with bitterness, even more than a decade after the fact.
And so he had turned from the light, given up his vocation, and become a reprobate—a man who allowed all his appetites free rein. And yet some traces of honor lingered; she was sure of it.
She raised her hands to her face. “Don’t, Jemima,” she breathed into her palms. “Don’t look for redeeming qualities in him. He makes no excuses for his behavior—why then should you presume to make excuses for him?”
The answer rose up from deep inside her and shocked her in its clarity.
“No!” she said aloud in a trembling voice. “I won’t let it happen. I refuse to let it happen.”
Her decision that morning, to participate in her own seduction, began at once to falter. She couldn’t let Bryce get that close to her, not now. Not in light of the feelings that were currently making a whirlygig of her heart. How could she have been so blind to her own desires? She wanted Bryce all right. But not only as a skilled and accomplished bedmate. There was a world of things she wanted from him. He had only to touch her in the most casual way, for all her long suppressed yearnings to rise up.
She had lied to herself in the meadow that morning—merely being desired by a man was not enough. But she knew it would be a chilly day in hell before a man like Beecham Bryce would adore, worship, or esteem her. A very chilly day.
* * *
Bryce went to the stable and hid in the dark recesses of the tack room, idly buffing one of the bridles with a cloth, while he waited for his blood to cool.
Damn the woman! Sitting there demure and proper, like a sainted school mistress, gazing up at him with her bright, azure eyes. So innocent, so bloody trusting. Blithely announcing to him that she was not about to be led down the garden path. She’d almost made it sound like a challenge.
What he’d told her was true, at least in his experience—women were always accessories to their own seduction. Their protests were rarely more than lip service to convention. His theory had been validated on the rare occasions when he’d been turned down. Women who were not interested in dalliance said no. And then did not linger in range.
But Jemima Vale had confounded him. He’d made no secret of his interest in her, practically from the start, and she’d made it equally clear that she had no intention of letting him seduce her. But then she did not go away, as prudence would have dictated. It was true she was more or less trapped in his home until Lovelace was freed from threat of the unknown murderer. But the house was large—she could have easily kept away from him. Instead she made herself available to him at every turn. She had gone driving with him, and hadn’t fled from the library last night, even though it was highly improper for them to sit and talk in such an intimate setting. And she had willingly accompanied him on his ride over the estate that morning.
If he didn’t know better, he’d think she was throwing herself at him.
But as much as he wished that were true, he suspected Jemima sought him out only because, in her immeasurable naivete, she assumed he had accepted her rebuff and had subsequently lost all interest in pursuing her. When, in fact, just the opposite was the case.
Blind little fool! To believe she could discuss the techniques of seduction with a hardened libertine, as though they were chatting about archery, without making herself a target for his lust. It gave her a vicarious thrill, he saw quite clearly, to question him on such an indelicate topic. But she would learn, if she didn’t take care, that if you danced too close to the fire, you were bound to get scorched.
* * *
At dinner, any discussion of the murder was avoided as if by mutual accord. The conversation was restricted to commonplace topics—the merits of the various dishes that were carried to the t
able, the state of the nation, and that trusty standby, the weather. Each of the diners seemed preoccupied by his or her own thoughts. Lovelace was fretting with worry over the prolonged absence of her family, as well as the threat of the vengeful murderer. Jemima was trying, in vain, to tamp down her unruly and wholly irrational feelings for Bryce. By the end of the meal she had lapsed into an edgy silence.
Bryce was still reeling from the discovery he had made in the cave that afternoon. He chatted amiably enough with his guests, but his thoughts were drawn back to that limestone cavern. In spite of his insistence to Jemima that she was not at risk—and he truly believed that to be the case—until he knew exactly what sort of game his nighttime visitor was playing, he had no right to offer such a guarantee. For the first time since her advent into his home, he was rethinking Jemima’s presence there.
Bryce’s attention shifted to Troy, who seemed full of high spirits as he entertained the table with the tale of his first meeting with the Prince Regent. But then in a matter of minutes he became oddly deflated, picking listlessly at his salmon as though the weight of the world sat upon his immaculate shoulders.
Jemima knew the reason behind Troy’s mercurial behavior, and when she took him aside in the drawing room, he merely smiled at her question. “Of course I’m working on a poem. When am I not? But this one is something different—not an epic tale, but rather a dark, shadowy piece. It’s this house, Jem. It puts me in mind of specters and hobgoblins.”
Troy’s creativity, she knew, had always been affected by his surroundings. After visiting Holyrood House, Mary Stuart’s castle in Edinburgh, he had been inspired to write one of his best short poems—“The Queen’s Consort.” And in Egypt and Greece, where Troy had steeped himself in the ancient, sun-burnished landscape of the Mediterranean, exquisite cantos had flowed nonstop from his pen.
“Yes,” she said, casting a quick glance at their host, “I do find this house to be full of shadows. Though I can’t say I find them particularly inspiring.”
“Ah, but then you don’t require inspiration,” he said in his offhand way. He excused himself then, and went off to the small parlor Bryce had given him to use as a study. In less than a day, Troy had filled it with books and papers, pens and ink pots, as well as his collection of talismans.
Jemima went to her own room shortly after Troy’s departure, eager to escape before Bryce could seek her out for conversation. She had not been alone with him since their tête-à-tête in the drawing room, an interlude that she still looked back on with great misgiving. She had left him playing at jackstraws with Lovelace. His gaze had followed her as she went from the room, showing puzzlement and a measure of unguarded hunger. As she went slowly up the stairs, Jemima was able to convince herself that the yearning she’d seen in those pale eyes was nothing more than a trick of the light.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Jemima breakfasted in her room and then decided to take advantage of the fair weather to practice her sketching in the garden. As she hurried from the house, her sketchbook tucked under one arm, it occurred to her that she was again fleeing from Bryce. The thought did not trouble her overmuch; the less she was in his company, the better for her ragged, newly breached heart.
She wandered along the curving brick pathways of the large garden, delighting in the hidden nooks and picturesque cul-de-sacs that each turning presented. The end of the garden near the dovecote was overhung by ornamental willows, but there were also stands of cedars, enclosing moss-encrusted stone benches, and groupings of lime trees, their slick green leaves shining above small urns of yew. Jemima had rarely seen such an inviting place.
At the center of the plantings lay an Elizabethan knot garden, with its characteristic boxwood hedge, neatly trimmed and pungent. Here the June sun was unrelieved by any shade, so Jemima continued along the path, passing colorful beds of primrose, dianthus, and foxglove, until she came to a small trickling fountain that lay in the shadow of a lone hemlock. It was surrounded by lilies and backed by a white trellis, which was covered with climbing vines, the tangled growth a charming combination of cultivated plants and opportunistic wildflowers. She sat down on the narrow stone bench opposite the fountain and began to draw, hoping to distract herself from her troubling thoughts of Bryce by discovering the true nature of a nasturtium vine with her pencil.
She was deeply immersed in her sketching, following her usual method of draw, smudge, erase, smudge, erase, draw, when an all-too-familiar voice said softly from behind her, “May I see?”
Jemima resisted the urge to clasp the sketchbook to her chest.
Bryce hunkered down beside her on one knee, and gently drew the book from her hands. He looked at the ungainly, smeared drawing and then at the gracefully twisting vine that she had attempted to reproduce.
“Mmm,” he said after a moment, “I think I see your problem.”
He opened the book to a clean page and, without so much as a by-your-leave, plucked the pencil from her fingers. Then, leaning one elbow on her lap—which nearly caused her to gasp aloud—he began to draw, holding the sketchbook upon his raised knee. Jemima watched with wide eyes as the nasturtium came to life on the page. With deft, sure strokes he captured the very essence of the vine, its twisted tendrils, its upthrust leaves and its wide-open blossoms.
“There,” he said, as he held the book up, without removing the pressure of his arm upon her thigh. “What do you think?”
What she thought wasn’t the half of it. What she was feeling was a deal more to the point. The man had exceptional talent—she had spent enough time with artists to recognize a real gift when she saw it.
“Where did you learn to draw like that?” she asked, trying to disregard the fluttering of her pulse, which was caused by the heady combination of raw physical desire and genuine artistic admiration.
She felt him shrug as he replied, “I’ve always been a dab hand at it. Now you try.”
He uncovered a fresh page, but when Jemima took up the pencil his hand closed over hers. “Loosely, pet. You’re hanging on to it like a miser clutches a groat. Relax.”
That was fine for him to say, she thought crossly. His heart wasn’t spinning about in his chest as hers was. His breath wasn’t coming in painful gasps, when it was coming at all.
He turned to her, his fingers still splayed over her hand. “You’ve got to see the whole subject, Jem, not just one little patch. And then draw your line in a single motion.” He opened the book to her original drawing of the vine. “See…all these scratchy little marks. Much too crabbed and awkward.” He returned to the pristine page and guided her hand in a long sweeping line. “And don’t be so literal—you’ve got to hint…imply…suggest.”
“Sounds like more innuendo,” she muttered under her breath.
“Exactly,” he said with a grin. “You need to flatter your subject, not attack it like an enemy.”
He watched, his head bent below her shoulder, as she again attempted the nasty nasturtium. She could see the tiny strands of silver that laced his dark hair, and the tanned rise of one cheekbone.
There was a humming in the air between them that had nothing to do with bees. She realized she was observing Bryce far more than she was the nasturtium vine, yet somehow her drawing turned out surprisingly well.
He nodded as he traced his thumb over the edge of the page. “Much better, don’t you think?”
“Mmm. And I didn’t have to erase once.”
“Or smudge.”
He shifted away from her lap, and the loss of his warm weight on her thigh felt like a gaping hole in the universe.
“But tell me this, Jemima,” he said. “You hang about with artists in London; why hasn’t one of them taken you in hand? You clearly enjoy sketching, not like some ladies who only do it because it is expected of them. Why haven’t you gotten yourself a bit of professional guidance.”
She gnawed her lip. “It would be ridiculous to ask a real artist to waste their time teaching someone as untalen
ted as I am. A waste of both our time, I expect.”
He gave her a bearish look. “You can be the most exasperating woman. Who better to ask than someone who is talented? You won’t learn anything from a novice, sweeting. Only more ways to erase and smudge.”
He stood up and stretched his hands at the back of his waist. Then he looked down and gave her an easy smile. “Looks like I’m going to have to take you in hand, Lady J. Pass on my own smattering of technique. But not right now, unfortunately. I’ve got some business along the coast this afternoon. Actually I came out here to tell you the latest development in the case of the missing Minstrels. Tolliver rode over from the Tattie and Snip this morning with some news. It turns out one of his scullery maids has confessed.”
Jemima’s head snapped up. “To the murder?”
“No,” he said, laughing. “To sending Lovelace’s family off on a wild-goose chase.”
Her eyes widened in dismay. “When did that happen?”
“The same afternoon as the murder. It seems the Wellesleys had a look in on Lovelace about an hour after they left the inn. Young Charles needed to stop to…ah, well, you get my drift. As soon as they saw she wasn’t in the prop wagon, they came haring back to the inn and met Mary the maid in the front yard. She told them she had seen Lovelace ride off with a gentleman on a horse…. The girl must have seen me taking Lovelace back to the grove.”
Jemima put one hand over her mouth. “Her parents think she eloped with you?”
“No, someone named Randolph. Mary heard Mr. Wellesley say ‘It’s that blasted Randolph whelp who’s carried her off.’ ”
“Why didn’t Mary explain that Lovelace had merely gone off with you? And why didn’t she say anything to Tolliver about the Wellesleys returning here? Surely Mary knew we were all fretting over their disappearance.”