The Rake's Retreat

by Nancy Butler

  Her glance swung to the glass of port he was raising to his mouth. “As does your own,” she murmured.

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t snipe at me, Jem. Not because Troy’s gotten one past you.”

  She put her fists on the table. “You pander to him as much as I do. Perhaps even more. I feel like I am caught in the coils of some male conspiracy.”

  He grinned then, a slow twisting of his mouth. “Most ladies would relish such a situation. And Troy’s friends are not a bad lot. in fact, I know Kimble slightly—he and my brother were friends at Cambridge. I don’t mind offering them my hospitality, and if you were thinking clearly—”

  “Who says I am not?” she snapped.

  “If you were thinking clearly, you would see that a houseful of guests will help to ensure Lovelace’s safety. She’ll be surrounded by men, the pink of the ton…excepting myself, of course. And if that doesn’t make her feel safe, it will at least make her feel vastly admired.

  “And,” he continued as he refilled his glass, “they will furnish you with protection as well.”

  “Me?” She blinked twice.

  “Safety in numbers, pet. You’ll have all your familiar squires around you—and even a hardened rake has to admit defeat when faced with such daunting odds.”

  Jemima wanted to lay her head on the table and weep. Bryce was being so confoundedly logical. He couldn’t know that she feared the attentions of one of those men far more than his own.

  Instead, she put her head up and stated, “You are quite mistaken. Troy’s friends are not in the least interested in squiring a maiden lady. Their taste runs, as I am sure yours does, to women of another sort.”

  Bryce leaned his chin on his hand and observed her through his long lashes. She thought it was a wickedly provocative thing to do to a lady—maiden or otherwise.

  “You have no idea what my tastes are,” he murmured.

  “And I haven’t any desire to be edified on that score,” she said in her most quelling voice.

  He chuckled softly. “It’s the damnedest thing, Jemima. Most people mellow out after a good meal. You, on the other hand, turn waspish and bristly as a hedgehog. Three nights running, it’s been.”

  “I wasn’t waspish last night,” she protested. He was a fine one to be casting stones, in light of his own crusty mood. “I was…a bit quiet, is all.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” he mused, “if you came down to dinner tomorrow night with a pistol in your reticule and started taking potshots at my dinner guests.”

  Bryce could have no idea how much that notion appealed to her at that moment. She could at once rid the world of an impudent rake, a self-indulgent poet, and a loathsome, heavy-handed “pink of the ton.”

  “Maybe you need to take a stomach powder before dinner,” he continued in the same teasing voice. “I have heard that spinsters of a certain age often suffer complaints of their digestion…”

  Jemima rose to her feet and all but threw her napkin across the table. “I know I am not young, Bryce,” she bit out, feeling the angry color wash over her face. “I certainly don’t need you to point it out to me. Though I think it most unfair that you, who can give me only three or four years, are thought to be in your prime, while I… I am put on the shelf and considered an ape-leader.”

  Bryce had risen to face her, his eyes dark as granite. “Yes, I bait you, Jemima. But only so you will see how ridiculous it is to think of yourself in such a way.”

  “Oh, no,” she cried softly. “Not ridiculous…realistic. I am not blind. I saw how easily Lovelace won you over. Even Troy sits at her little lame feet. Her youth and beauty easily make up for any lack of intellect. Women of my age, on the other hand, have little to offer a man, saving the workings of their minds. A poor recompense, I think. But it doesn’t matter… I am well past the age where it is proper or fitting to have any illusions about myself, regardless of what I might feel inside.”

  “What do you feel, Jemima?” he asked as he came around the edge of the table toward her. “Tell me.”

  She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. And wondered what the devil had come over her, that she could be so pitifully maudlin in front of him. Whining about her illusions and revealing her creeping jealousy of Lovelace.

  “I must ask you to excuse me,” she whispered hoarsely as she turned and hurried across the room.

  “No, I will not!”

  Bryce vaulted away from the table and caught her halfway to the door, blocking her path with his body, as one hand clamped hard on her wrist—harder than he realized. The sherry he’d drunk in the drawing room, the quantity of wine he had consumed with his dinner, and the two glasses of port he had just finished, were making only slight inroads on his senses. His head for liquor was legendary, but his head for long-limbed, chestnut-haired women with hauntingly beautiful azure eyes was notoriously poor.

  Jemima glared at him. “What is this?” She raised her arm where his fingers still bit into the skin of her wrist. “Making your last stab at seduction before my squires appear tomorrow? Lord, Bryce, I’d have expected a defter touch from you.”

  He released her wrist slowly, his eyes full of heat. “They’ve had their chance with you, Jem—Troy’s friends. A parcel of blithering fools they must be if they never saw what was beneath their noses.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?” She took an involuntary step back from him. There was such intensity in his gaze, masculine power and raw hunger. The climate in the room had altered suddenly—she felt the air thinning out, so that her breath now came in tiny gasps.

  “You, Jemima,” he said. He drew her closer until his body was mere inches from her own. “I see you, even when you try to hide in your brother’s shadow…your intelligence, your humor…and your spirit. They shine from you as much as the beauty in your face or the light in your dazzling blue eyes—”

  “They’re green—” She sighed raggedly.

  “Green as the verdant, patchwork hills of Ireland,” he replied, never taking his eyes from hers.

  Something snapped inside her then. Roused her from the intoxicating haze that his voice had sent drifting over her like a seductive net. “Ireland,” she repeated sharply. “Yes, you’ve been to Ireland, haven’t you? To woo Harriet Travers, I believe.”

  Bryce’s mouth curled into the semblance of a grin. “You sound almost jealous, pet. I had other business in Ireland. Harriet was just a…pleasant diversion.”

  “As I’m sure all your conquests are to you. Now if you will let me pass…”

  She tried to negotiate her way around him. He stepped back and leaned against the door, splaying his fingers behind him on the carved oak. His eyes challenged her as much as his provocative posture. As his glance raked over her, his mouth widened into a knowing smile. “Gad, Jem. You are hungering for this down to the tips of your toes, but will be damned before you let me see it. Do you know how much that tempts me? To wonder what you’ll be like once I’ve broken through that icy disdain?”

  Her nails dug into her palms. “I am neither hungering nor icy, Mr. Bryce. I am extremely cross.”

  “Oh, no,” he said with infuriating calm. “I’ve seen you cross, Jemima. This is a whole different animal.”

  He reached out one hand and laid it for an instant on the skin above the low-cut bodice of her gown. She had to prevent herself from looking down to see if it had left behind a searing handprint, so fierce was the heat she had felt at that momentary touch.

  “No,” he said, “I take back icy. You’re warm. And so soft beneath my hand. And there is a pulse beating in your throat…trip-a-trip, like a tiny drum…do you feel it, sweetheart?”

  “I…” Her hand crept up to her throat of its own volition. Her body seemed to be floating now, held aloft by the soothing, melodic timbre of his words and the sensual promise in his smoky eyes.

  “Bryce,” she said with a catch in her voice, “I can’t do this.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, pet,” he said with an earnestnes
s that even Jemima, in her bemused state, had to acknowledge. “You do enough for everyone else, God knows. This time, let me do for you.”

  His raised hand drifted across the slight gap that separated them, his fingers spread wide as he sketched a light caress upon the peach-tinted flush that had colored her cheeks. His touch was swansdown soft and delicately arousing. Those strong, elegant fingers, that could control a team of high-bred horses or hold a pistol level in the face of outraged propriety, were now whispering over her face, coaxing, soothing, easing, and always with the gentlest hints of pressure.

  She felt the room spin; time and dimension skewed breathlessly as his fingers traced over her ear. He touched the lobe fleetingly with his thumb, before his hand came to rest on the rise of her collarbone. A bolt of pure desire lanced through her, and she nearly groaned at the unfamiliar sensation.

  “Let me, Jemima,” he coaxed as he brought his hand up to cup the soft underside of her jaw.

  It was a revelation to discover just how many places he could stir to surface heat just by the touch of his fingers. But the surface heat wasn’t a patch on the growing fire that was licking through her insides. Jemima wanted to sink down into the blissful cocoon of pleasure that was curling all around her.

  She heard Bryce utter a soft, ragged sigh, heard herself moan slightly in reply as his hand drew away from her. Her eyes opened—which surprised her a little, since she hadn’t realized they were closed. Bryce was gazing at her intently, his expression a mixture of guarded expectation and open desire.

  “Yes?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” she breathed, at that moment willing to do anything at his bidding.

  He took her hand then and led her from the dining room. The paneled hallway was dimly lit, and she thought she saw a servant or two hovering back in the shadows. She spent an idle moment wondering if they would be shocked and decided she didn’t care. Bryce wanted her, and not because she was the sainted Troy’s sister, but because he thought her beautiful and clever, and even if those were the facile lies of a practiced rake, she needed for once in her life to believe they were true.

  She followed him up the wide staircase, her hand still enfolded in his. He stopped before the entrance to her bedroom and opened the door, coaxing her through with a hand at her back. When he didn’t follow, she turned and looked up at him in confusion.

  “Come to me, Jemima,” he said, bending low so that his voice purred against the side of her throat.

  “I don’t under—?”

  He raised one hand and placed it soft against her mouth. “No coercion,” he said gently. “Come to me freely. Or not at all.”

  He was gone then, his footfalls lost in the thick Persian carpet that ran the length of hall.

  Jemima leaned back against the door and stood unmoving for several seconds. He hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t so much as embraced her, and yet she was trembling as though he had made passionate love to her—with his warm hands, his silky voice, and his smoldering hawk’s eyes. She feared that any further demonstrations of his desire would send her over the brink of reason into a sort of honeyed madness.

  She drifted into the room in a daze, wondering what the protocol of seduction demanded. Was she to array herself in her most alluring bed gown and douse herself with French perfume before she made her way to his bedroom? Should she comb out her hair into glistening waves and smooth lotion over her body before she presented herself to him?

  It was too arch, she thought. Too calculated. Bryce could have taken her there on the floor of the dining room like a round-heeled housemaid, and she knew she wouldn’t have protested. But this enforced separation was giving her too much time to think. And that, she realized, as she sank down onto her vanity bench, was exactly what Bryce had intended. That she be an accomplice to her own deflowering. That she make up her own mind, without his compelling presence to sway her.

  Was she brave enough to do it? Brave enough to put her heart at risk so that she might ease the overwhelming physical longing he had awakened in her? Could she abandon all caution, let herself be his plaything for an hour or two, and then return to the staid strictures of her everyday life?

  A thought whispered through her brain, reminding her that she would never again have a chance to fulfill her fantasies with such a man. She had been sullied once, by a ham-handed lout, and perhaps she needed Bryce’s exquisite touch upon her skin to wipe away that wretched memory.

  But then she knew it for the rationalization it was. She didn’t need any reasons to go to him other than the sureness in her soul that he would not hurt her or be anything less than kind.

  Somehow that was enough.

  Nevertheless, she thought defiantly, I will not present myself to him like a concubine preening before a Turkish pasha. If Bryce wants me, he can dashed well deal with hooks and corsets and hose.

  * * *

  Bryce looked up from his chair beside the hearth as she entered his room. He was holding a glass of tawny liquor in one hand and there was another filled glass sitting on the small table at his elbow. He had removed his dinner coat and waistcoat, but aside from that, he was fully dressed. He eyed her satin gown and said with a mock leer, “You must be very eager, my lady, that you didn’t take the time to change.”

  “And you, sir, are very smug,” she said as she crossed over to the fireplace.

  He rose and after taking a quick swallow, he handed her his own glass. “Not smug,” he said as he watched her sip at the cordial from the spot where his lips had rested. “Just very, very relieved.”

  Her gaze darted to his face. In truth, he looked nearly giddy. “You didn’t think I would come?”

  With a graceful shrug he replied, “I never know what to expect from you, Lady J. It’s one of your greatest charms.”

  The inevitable spill of curls lay tumbled over his forehead; Jemima reached up and smoothed them back, delighting in the sensation as the silky strands whispered through her fingers. Lord, she had been longing to do that very thing since she had first seen him in the wooded grove.

  He said almost sheepishly, “We Bryces are famous for our unruly hair. It’s a curse, I think, visited on the family for some ancestor’s misdeed.”

  “I like it,” she said, as she combed her fingers through the soft, springing curls that gathered along the nape of his neck. “It’s one of your greatest charms,” she added with an impish grin as she tugged playfully at the dark waves.

  She felt him tremble, a noticeable shiver that swept over his entire body. He knocked the glass from her hand, sent it crashing to the hearth, before he swung her back against the firebreast. His arms tightened around her swiftly, crushing her against his chest. She was overwhelmed by his power, by the tensile flex of his arms that revealed, she suspected, only a fraction of his true strength.

  No man had ever drawn her full against his body, so she wasn’t prepared for the thrill of contact. His chest was an expanse of supple steel beneath the fine cambric of his shirt, and as his lean belly and muscular thighs molded to her, aroused her, she became mindless with the need to return the pressure.

  He lowered his head, nudging aside the tendrils that danced along her throat, murmuring her name again and again. “Ah, Jemima,” he crooned. “Jemima. What a fine and lovely name. I whisper it each night before I sleep and hear it echoing back to me in my dreams.”

  She tipped her face up and wriggled in protest. “You said it was a useful sort of name,” she complained.

  His eyes danced down at her. “Did I really? I must have been out of my mind. Can you remember everything I’ve ever said to you, I wonder?”

  “No, only the truly wretched things. Sly comments about my advanced age and slighting references to my being a piece of luggage in my brother’s train. Beyond that, I’ve hardly taken any note of you at all.” She grinned.

  “Liar,” he said between his teeth. His mouth lowered at once and caught her still grinning. He curved his lips to match her smile and then when she gasped in surpr
ise, he coaxed her mouth open slightly and drew her into a proper kiss.

  Jemima hadn’t been expecting it—that one moment he could be bantering with her and the next be kissing her with such open-mouthed hunger. She had envisioned a more studied approach, not this sudden overtaking of her senses. But then he had never behaved in the unctuous manner commonly attributed to rakes. He was no perfumed coxcomb, but a man simmering with unbridled appetite.

  Bryce shifted her abruptly away from the marble hearth, leaned hard into her, forcing her head back as his mouth urgently explored her lips, murmuring soft sounds of pleasure all the while. She felt the room dip, as he teased his tongue against her teeth and then let it dart deeper into her mouth. It felt so strange, so powerful, so amazingly right.

  Her knees were warm toffee now, pliant and yielding. His strength alone was keeping her from melting onto the floor, his strong arms and the incredible seeking heat of his mouth, which she reached for, craning her head up and up, to find. The taste of him, all sweet wine and smoky port, the mind-numbing scent of him, a heady combination of sandalwood, tobacco, and potent, animal musk. Every particle of him invaded her senses, until she was shorn of any hesitation.

  She twined her fingers into his hair, cradling his head between her hands. “Ah, Beecham,” she cried softly. His response was to deepen his kisses, thrusting hard against her willing mouth, marking his possession of her with his lips and tongue, and with tiny, exquisitely painful bites.

  Jemima cursed her own lack of expertise—surely a man like Bryce required someone with more finesse, a woman who wasn’t awkward and unsure, with gangling arms and jellied legs. She made a tentative foray with her own tongue, thinking only to reciprocate the pleasure he was giving her, and she heard a deep groan erupt from the muscular cavern of his chest.

  “Oh,” she cried, pulling back. “Wasn’t I supposed to do that?”

  Bryce drew a breath to steady himself. He looked down at the woman in his arms, her face flushed with passion, her lips rose red and swollen from his kisses, and her eyes, her remarkable azure eyes, alive with light and quickening desire, and he knew he had strayed far into uncharted territory.