The Rake's Retreat

by Nancy Butler

  If only because, he realized with a shock, he was thoroughly content to keep kissing her. For a millennium or two. Not that his body wasn’t aching to take her. But his mind, and more specifically his heart, were entranced by her tentative but wholly passionate unfurling. He’d never kissed a woman like Jemima, who was so unschooled and yet so utterly responsive.

  She stood now, quivering like a newborn foal in the circle of his arms, still a little afraid, but curious and full of wonder. And when he kissed her again, she would arch into him, her body liquid and supple. He didn’t know if he could stand to do more than kiss her. The thought of her slim body, naked beneath him, of her legs, drawing him into a sublime carnal embrace was more than he could bear.

  “Beech?” she coaxed, tugging at his shoulders. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No,” he said, shaking off his distracting thoughts. “Nothing wrong, sweetheart. Only right. Only ever right.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes brightened. “You made such an odd noise.”

  He shook his head, as he drew one hand from the small of her back and raised it to stroke his fingers over her velvety lower lip. Then he slid one long finger past her lips and into her mouth. She caught it between her teeth and bit down gently until he groaned again.

  “You see how easy it is, sweeting, to make me sigh for you. Say my name again…”

  “Beech,” she crooned. “Beecham…”

  He bent her back and laid his mouth on her throat, savoring the taste of her flesh, feeling less like predator than prey, as the scent of her perfume and her heated skin stole into his befuddled brain. He bit gently at the smooth white skin, wanting to mark her there, mark her as his own, so that any man, any festering pink of the ton, would know that she was his alone.

  But prudence restrained him. Lady Jemima would face her peers on the morrow without having to blush for her indiscretion. She sighed as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to the brocaded chaise that lay at the foot of his wide tester bed.

  The ideal piece of furniture for seduction, Jemima thought, still slightly irreverent even in the face of her imminent deflowering.

  No arms to impede access to a woman’s body and just wide enough to accommodate two, providing they were lying very close together. Or one on top of the other. Jemima nearly moaned—the thought of lying beneath that lean body was enough to send her heart reeling.

  He instantly busied himself at the back of her gown, undoing the myriad hooks, until the heavy satin fell away from her shoulders. Then he knelt beside her, one knee on the carpet, and lowered the bodice, drawing it down slowly, letting the fabric whisper over her skin. She watched his eyes darken, as he slid the lace sleeves of her chemise from her shoulders.

  “You’ve made me work for this,” he remarked.

  “You seem to be doing fine,” she answered boldly. “I fancy not all your conquests have come to you conveniently dressed in their night rails. You appear to know your way around a lady’s gown.”

  He sat back on his heels, a frown surfacing on his brow. “You’re not one of my conquests, Jemima.”

  “What then?”

  He leaned forward, bracing his arms on either side of her. “You are a woman…who is wise enough to recognize the attraction between us, and who is brave enough and honest enough to respond to it.”

  She touched his nose with the tip of her finger and then traced a path down to his chin, letting her finger linger a moment on the divine, sculpted arch of his upper lip. She wondered how she had ever thought him harsh featured. His face, ardent and full of earnest intensity, bore so much rugged beauty. And his eyes, deep-set and glistening like a lake of silver, were dazzling in their bright regard.

  “Is that what I am, Beech?” she asked softly. “I suppose I understand now what you meant about women being…accomplices to their own seduction. The truth is, I wanted you to…well, do this…for some time now. Not very ladylike, I’m afraid, but there you have it.”

  Bryce lowered his head and whispered a sustained kiss along the length of her throat. “Ah, Jem,” he sighed against her skin. “This isn’t a seduction… I… I’m not sure what it is.” He raised his head and met her eyes. “I almost wish that perishing poet of a brother of yours would come bursting in here and knock me about. But I’d still come after you. I think I’d always come after you.”

  Jemima closed her eyes. They were only pretty words, she knew, and whether or not Bryce wanted to name it a seduction, that’s exactly what it was. But it thrilled her beyond measure that he could say such heartstoppingly lovely things to her. As though he meant them.

  With his chin, he rucked down the bodice of her chemise, and before the cool evening air could assault her skin, he had covered her breast with his mouth. Any heat she had felt before was immediately supplanted by the searing fire that lanced through her as he drew on her nipple. Her low, wavering cry echoed up to the high ceiling. Bryce’s response was to increase the pressure of his mouth, until she was arching up from the chaise, fighting off the hands that pinioned her wrists to the cushions. She needed to touch him, his hair, his face, his lean, hard body. But still he held her down, heedless of her frustration, as he sated himself.

  When at last he raised his head, after leaving a tiny love bite just below the carmine crest, there was still no surcease for her. He caught her mouth in a fierce, ragged kiss, bruising her already tender lips. She was gasping now, her need for him blinding her to any trivial considerations, like breathing or thinking. The ache that had spiraled up from her belly was keening for resolution. When he did release her hands, she immediately brought them up to grasp his shoulders, holding him there against her, not ever wanting to let him go. She cried his name as he ran one hand along her torso, his fingers discovering every curve and plane of her trembling body.

  He gave a strange, stuttering moan against her mouth and then spun himself away from her. He sat there, crouched on the carpet, one hand still resting on the chaise. Jemima hiked herself up onto her elbows and watched him with anxious eyes, again fearful that she had done something wrong.

  Bryce’s heart felt like it was ramming its way out of his chest. His body was taut as a bowstring, and the heavy ache in his loins was a painful reminder that he would soon be beyond any coherent thought. But he needed to stop, needed desperately to think. Jemima was the first gently bred woman he had been within three years, and furthermore, she was untouched. He desired her with every fiber of his being, but something was stopping him from acting on that desire.

  He had marked her as he’d wanted to, in a place that only he could see. But he wanted to mark her in another manner, for all the world to see. He wanted to claim her, hold her, against any who would take her from him. And, sweet Jesus, he had never felt that way before. Not about any woman.

  He turned to her, saw how still she was as she watched him.

  There was confusion in her eyes, along with the fledgling fire of passion. He gave her an encouraging smile and raised his hand to touch her face.

  “Sweet Jemima,” he whispered. “I wanted to go slowly for you. And look at me, I’m having at you like a cow-handed stripling.”

  “No,” she said, covering his hand with her own. “It is…you are… I don’t know if there is even a word for the way you make me feel.”

  He rose to his feet, needing to remove himself from her potent lure while he sorted out his thoughts. He began to slowly untie his neckcloth. Very slowly. Jemima gave him an impatient frown.

  “What?” he asked, his fingers still twisted in the knot at his throat. “Hate to see me destroy all my valet’s hard work? I’ll leave it on, if you like…”

  She laughed outright.

  “One is not supposed to laugh during a seduction,” he uttered in mock affront.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, biting her lip as she tried to control her wayward humor. “I am only amazed that, along with everything else I am feeling, I have an overwhelming desire to grin.”

  “Grinning is allowe
d,” he said. He realized he too felt like grinning. He was very, very pleased. About something. About her. Because she was quaint and charming and surprisingly self-assured. And more lovely than a sonnet. When Jemima Vale stopped fleeing, she was something to behold.

  A little snippet of feeling stirred inside him then, like a salamander shifting beneath the fallen leaves of a forest. A tiny ripple of remorse. He tried to disregard it as he slid the length of muslin from his throat. She had come here, as he’d hoped she would on this last night before they were inundated by Troy’s pestilential cronies, of her own free will. Who was he to deny her any pleasure, merely because he had a passing concern for her honor? She had taken him up on his offer, and there was an end to it.

  And how could he face the cold, empty night alone? She was surely the warmest creature on God’s earth. He recalled how much he had wanted to hold her in his arms the night he’d found her in the library, how he’d longed to avail himself of that warmth. But it wasn’t the voice of passion that had so stirred him that night, it had been something far more tender.

  He let his gaze linger on her—she had tugged her chemise up over her breasts, but her lovely, magnolia-petal shoulders were still bare, still flushed from his kisses. As he watched her he knew, with a sinking feeling of inevitably, that he couldn’t take her. Not like a doxy or a woman of easy virtue, in spite of her willingness to be so used. Not here in his boyhood home with all its lingering reminders of a younger and as-yet untarnished version of Beecham Bryce.

  But he couldn’t very well send her away, not without causing her a deal of pain. A man didn’t carry a woman to the brink of passion and then dismiss her out of hand. Especially not a woman like Jemima Vale, who would see his rejection as sure proof of her lack of feminine allure. But he had to think of some way to make her leave.

  Conscience was a bloody nuisance; and he knew now why he’d never cultivated one before this.

  She cocked her head at him, clearly puzzled by his long, silent scrutiny, and then said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Are you sure about this, Bryce?”

  So, he was back to being Bryce now. That boded well for his cause.

  “I only wonder that you should want me,” she continued hesitantly, “when you could have any woman in the ton.”

  He raised one brow devilishly and condemned himself to the torment of celibacy as he said archly, “I’ve had every woman in the ton, sweetheart.”

  With relief, he watched the shocked expression rise up in her eyes. Jemima Vale was about to experience the callous rake in action, and he prayed that such a display would send her fleeing back to bed. Her own bed.

  “And modest to boot,” she remarked. “I forget that I am merely the last in a long line of women.”

  “Hardly the last,” he observed with brutal honesty. “Let us say you are something new and fresh.” He might as well have called her useful again, so languid was his tone.

  “Fresh,” she echoed slowly, wincing at his words. She then said in a reedy voice, “May I ask you something, Bryce?”

  “You are chock full of questions tonight. Putting off the inevitable?”

  “No. Well, maybe just a bit.” He saw that she had twisted the skirt of her gown into a corkscrew of satin. “I need to know if the reason you want me…is b-because I’m a virgin.”

  He stopped unbuttoning his waistcoat, letting his hands fall to his sides. It was the last thing he’d expected her to ask. “I place no premium on that, Jem,” he said. “It would be the height of hypocrisy for someone like me to require that his paramours be untouched. I am hardly in a position to throw stones.” He gave a dry chuckle, but she did not respond, only sat gazing down at her lap. His voice lowered. “But then again, it would be the height of discourtesy not to acknowledge the rare gift you are offering me.”

  She looked up swiftly. Her face had paled, the glowing peach of her cheeks now gone a stark white. There was a vivid emotion in her eyes, but it was no longer passion. Unless Bryce missed his guess, it was something very like shame.

  He sat down beside her and took up her hand. “And in case you’re worried about unpleasant repercussions when it comes time for you to wed, let me reassure you that I am the soul of discretion.” He said the words with just a hint of practiced ease.

  Jemima tugged her hand back from his. “I… I do not intend to wed. Never. What occurs here tonight will make no difference to me.”

  He raised one hand melodramatically to his breast. “Ah, you wound me to the quick.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said with a stern frown. “The fact of the matter is, I have no ‘rare gift’ to offer you, Bryce. Whatever happens between us will not alter my state—because I have every reason to believe I am not a virgin.”

  His dark brows knit as he blew out a long breath. “Well, that’s possibly the oddest statement I’ve ever heard. And how, pray, could you be in doubt of something so…significant?”

  She cast him a look of entreaty and then turned her head away. “Don’t make light of it…oh, please don’t. It’s not something I look back on with anything but disgust.”

  “I take it you were not exactly a willing participant.” His tone was gentle now, all his feigned arrogance driven away by his concern for her.

  She shook her head slowly. “No, I was not.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” He purposely kept his voice remote as he rose and moved away from the chaise.

  “No. I’m sorry I even brought it up. It’s just that I thought you should know…in case it made a difference…”

  “Tell me,” he urged her softly. “Don’t hold back, sweetheart. You know I am the last man on the planet who would condemn you.”

  She sat in silence for a moment and then said with a sigh, “Very well. I don’t suppose there’s any harm in telling you. It happened last summer while Troy and I were on our way to Scotland. We overnighted at a large, rambling country house. I couldn’t sleep, so I went looking for the servants’ staircase, to fetch up a glass of milk from the kitchen. One of Troy’s friends found me wandering lost in the hall. He…he was quite drunk. I thought he was only being playful at first—Troy’s friends sometimes flirt with me…in an innocent way. But then—” She choked slightly, and Bryce was glad he was no longer beside her—he’d have surely tugged her into his arms. “He…he dragged me into an empty bedroom. I fought back, but he was quite strong and…and I think he took me.” Her voice shook as she added weakly, “He didn’t even bother to lay me on the bed.”

  Bryce barely restrained an oath. “Who was it, Jem? Roncaster? Carruthers? Who did this to you?”

  She spoke from between her raised hands. “It doesn’t matter. He never mentioned it to anyone, thank God. And I hadn’t the heart to tell Troy. He thinks his friends are all such fine fellows.” She drew a steadying breath. “Now you see how impossible it would be for me to marry. Not after that.”

  Bryce was gazing away from her, his face grown taut. He would discover who had used her in such a way. He still had plenty of connections in the ton who could ferret out where Troy had stayed on his way to Scotland and who had made up the house party at each stopover. He’d find the man and bring him to his knees. At this moment, he knew he could do murder for Jemima’s lost honor. But since he was a civilized fellow, he’d settle for horsewhipping the wretch and leave it at that.

  And now, more than ever, he needed to end this charade. He saw how very fragile Jemima was, for one thing. And how misguided to think herself unfit for marriage. If Troy’s drunken friend hadn’t succeeded in taking her maidenhead, she could go to a husband untarnished. And if it was true that the lout had had his way with her, well, what man would hold that against a woman he loved? But in either case, Bryce was not going to make things worse by taking her virtue himself or, heaven forbid, by repeating the other man’s crime.

  “I see now that this has changed things,” she said quietly as he continued to keep his eyes trained on the wall behind his bed. “You on
ly wanted me because you thought I was untouched—fresh and new and ripe for deflowering.” She made an effort to sit up.

  He returned to her side and knelt down. Placing his hand on her chest, just above the neckline of her chemise, he gently forced her back against the cushion. His hand stayed there, warm and intimate against her skin. “No,” he remarked silkily, returning to his role of heartless libertine in spite of his overwhelming desire to comfort her. “You are ripe, all right. And virgins are tiresome. On the other hand, women who have been broken, but not yet schooled, are infinitely intriguing.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she said cuttingly, “Such as young wives whose husbands are off fighting Napoleon?”

  He looked at her and blinked slowly. Jemima knew how to get in a body blow, right enough. He wondered if she suspected how much that particular episode still troubled him.

  He forced an attitude of unconcern and shrugged negligently. “He also serves, who sits and waits.”

  Jemima gingerly removed his hand from her chest, let it drop to the cushion, and then sat up. “I’ve changed my mind, Bryce. I choose not to be party to my own seduction.” Her eyes met his squarely. “At least not at your hands.”

  He stood up at once. “I knew you weren’t hot-blooded enough for this sport,” he said under his breath. And then cursed himself for letting his wounded pride get the better of him.

  The sting of his reproof jolted through Jemima and she flung her head back. The candlelight played over the angular planes of his face, darkening a portion here, highlighting another there. His eyes, however, were totally obscured. Then he moved his head slightly and she saw something that twisted her heart. The jaded weariness in those hooded gray eyes had been replaced by an expression of regret. Her heated retort died on her lips.

  “And you are not cold-blooded enough,” she said evenly as she rose to her feet, “to take a woman for the wrong reason.”

  His glance shifted to her face. “There is never a wrong reason, Jemima. Only a wrong time.”