Vixen in Velvet

by Loretta Chase

  Her trouble was, she was tired, and the night had been difficult and discouraging, and she hadn’t eaten, and so yes, she was . . . emotional.

  She knew all that. She’d pulled herself together.

  Then he’d walked through the door, carrying sandwiches he’d made for her with his own aristocratic hands.

  At that moment, she gave up fighting and fell in love with him.

  “I hope you’re meaning to join me,” she said as crisply as she could. “You can’t possibly expect me to eat all that.”

  “I intended for you to invite me,” he said. “I’m famished. Unlike Swanton, I’m crudely lacking in delicate sensibilities and unable to live on feelings.” He transferred the plates and glasses and bottle to the table from the tray, leaned the tray against the nearest wall, and set about serving.

  He took Marcelline’s chair, not quite opposite, but not beside Leonie, either.

  “Eat,” he said. “I slaved over this meal.”

  “You’re obsessed with food,” she said.

  “You work too hard to skip meals,” he said. “You need your strength. The girls need your strength. I need your strength. We’ve a mystery to solve, and we need to do it quickly.” He raised his wineglass. “But not tonight. Tonight we calm our turbulent spirits and sustain our bodies with food and drink. Tomorrow we go on the hunt.”

  “We,” she said.

  “We both have a problem,” he said. “It’s in our best interests to solve it together. I’ll never solve it with Swanton. I need your brain. The one that narrowed our choices to two. That one. I love that brain.”

  Her heart skipped. Twice. She raised her glass. “To justice, then,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Tonight, just us.”

  Disturbingly enough, it was only the two of them. Disturbing because Lisburne could feel her sisters’ absence. He wasn’t a fanciful man. This feeling had nothing to do with sensing anybody’s spirit in the house. It was the little signs about the sitting room: an open notebook whose handwriting was feminine, but not hers . . . a sketchbook that must belong to the Duchess of Clevedon . . . three chairs at the table . . . odds and ends betokening other personalities. The room itself had been arranged for three people.

  This sense of somebody missing troubled him, but while they ate, he kept the talk to easy channels. Fenwick was a good choice. Leonie was teaching him, Lisburne learned, and the boy was a quick learner. His speech had already improved, she said, and he had learned the alphabet as well as how to write his name. He could recognize a fair number of words, especially on printed materials. He’d advanced remarkably, though she’d been able to work with him at odd times and only for a few weeks. But when he was tired or excited, she said, the Cockney consonants and vowels and slang crept back, and yes, it was difficult to discern his language’s relationship to English.

  “Have you any idea what possessed your sister to pluck him from the streets and bring him home?” he said.

  “Sophy decided that so much criminal intelligence would be far too dangerous let loose in the streets, and much more useful to us,” she said.

  “I’ve only ever seen him open doors for customers,” he said as he refilled their glasses.

  “He has a strong affinity for horses and an extensive knowledge of carriages,” she said. “He makes friends with all the grooms and coachmen and hackney drivers. We gain a great deal of useful information that way. His former associates and other connections have helped us more than once already with certain problems. And our ladies seem to like him. Some have made a pet of him. But no, as you seem to be wondering, we don’t make it a habit to rescue boys from the streets. We chose to put our efforts into women.”

  More than two years’ effort . . . which a pair of aristocrats had undone in minutes.

  He needed to make it right. Which meant he needed to get his head clear first. He needed to think.

  They’d finished eating, and he hadn’t any excuse for lingering. It was past time he left.

  He rose, meaning to make his adieus, but he put it off, again. Because she seemed so utterly alone, sitting at the table meant for three. He could so easily picture the three heads—brunette, blonde, and red—bent together to share confidences, complaints, jokes.

  And so he looked about him and said, “Please tell me you’ve someone living with you besides the servants.”

  “Selina Jeffreys has moved in, at Clevedon’s insistence,” she said. “You haven’t seen her because she’ll have gone to bed hours ago.”

  “I should have thought Matron would be more suitable,” he said. “An older woman.”

  “As a chaperon?” She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not a lady. Shopkeepers don’t require chaperons.”

  “Perhaps not, but most women have a man about the place, for safety, if nothing else.”

  “My sisters and I are not most women,” she said. “You sound like Clevedon. He wants me to move to Clevedon House. Can you imagine?”

  He could. It would be the proper, not to say wise, thing to do.

  It would be deuced inconvenient.

  “I should have a footman dogging my steps every time I left the house, as Marcelline does,” she said. “I don’t know how she tolerates it. But then, she’s been ill, and not entirely herself lately. In any case, I know it’s only a lure to get me away from here. He wants us to stop working at the shop. He has other plans for us. I’m not . . . ready.”

  Lisburne thought, and it took some thinking, because women in his world didn’t work, and he found it difficult to perceive her as a woman not of his world. Whoever had had charge of her upbringing had brought her up as ladies were brought up. She was a lady. It was there in her speech, her manner, her walk. It wasn’t acting. There was no mask to slip.

  Yet she wasn’t a lady.

  He walked about the room, admiring the collection of prints hanging on the walls. A dozen beautifully colored French fashion plates. And, surprisingly, a set of Robert Cruikshank’s satirical prints. Each dealt with fashion excesses and absurdities.

  “You’d be bored, I suppose,” he said. “With nothing to do. When you didn’t grow up in that way, it must seem an empty life. Oh, this is brilliant.” He paused in front of a print titled A Dandy Fainting or—an Exquisite in Fits. Cruikshank had set the scene in an opera box. The images were hilarious, the speech balloons equally so. Lisburne couldn’t help laughing.

  She rose and moved to stand beside him. “I think the gentlemen are so sweet.”

  “ ‘Mind you don’t soil the dear’s linnen,’ ” he read. “Says another, ‘I dread the consequence! That last Air of Signeur Nonballences—has thrown him in such raptures’— Ha ha! I see myself. And Swanton, of course.”

  “You are exquisite, beyond a doubt,” she said. “We may blame Polcaire, yet the result is the same. The print pokes fun and makes them seem precious and effeminate. But it exaggerates greatly for comic effect. The reality is rather different. So many of the dandies I’ve encountered are manly men—quite as virile as Lord Swanton, certainly.”

  He looked at her. She was looking at the print and smiling.

  Her spirits had risen, clearly. He’d done the right thing in making her take food and drink. They’d cleared the plate of sandwiches and emptied the wine bottle.

  Now he must do the intelligent thing and go home.

  “It would seem I’ve done my job,” he said. “You no longer bear the smallest resemblance to the poor, fainting dandy. Still, you must get some sleep, else you won’t be much good to me tomorrow—and you ought to expect me first thing.”

  “Noonish, you mean,” she said.

  “Thereabouts, yes.” He looked about the room for his hat.

  “You can leave the tray and dirty dishes and cutlery for the maid to deal with,” she said. “I’m aware that gentlemen assemble their own sandwiches on special occasions. How
ever, I strongly doubt your aristocratic nerves can withstand the shock of clearing away and washing up.”

  “Hat,” he said. “Only looking for my hat. Now I recall. Downstairs. Left it on the table near the door.”

  “I’d better let you out,” she said. “If Fenwick was actually sleeping when we arrived, I’d rather not wake him again.”

  “Obviously you’re not a lady,” he said. “No lady would trouble herself with a servant’s lack of sleep.”

  Stop putting it off, he told himself.

  He walked to the door and opened it. She went past him, ribbons and lace trembling, silk whispering.

  He followed her down the stairs, relieved to see she was steadier on her feet now and more like her usual self.

  At the door, he found his hat. He said, “I meant this to be a perfect evening. I’m sorry it was the opposite.”

  “The first part went well,” she said. She gave a soft laugh. “And the supper, too. Thank you. It was very kind of you.”

  She drew near and rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

  He, surprised at her approach, turned his head at the exact instant her mouth was there. His mouth touched hers and the next he knew, he had one hand cupping the back of her head and the other drawing her close, and he was kissing her back with all the ferocity he’d been stifling all this long night.

  Chapter Ten

  Piety, integrity, fortitude, charity, obedience, consideration, sincerity, prudence, activity, and cheerfulness, with the dispositions which spring from, and the amiable qualities which rise out of them, may, we presume, nearly define those moral properties called for in the daily conduct and habitual deportment of young ladies.

  —The Young Lady’s Book, 1829

  She’d acted on impulse, that was all.

  There he stood, the hall’s lamplight casting a glow upon his curling dark gold hair. At that moment romantic fantasy simply overwhelmed reality and practicality and logic, and Leonie did what another girl would do, after a man had made her sandwiches and made her talk and laugh and stopped her from sinking into a slough of misery and self-pity. She kissed him.

  The trouble was, she wasn’t like other girls. Her impulses came from a deep and narrow place, where she’d stuffed years and years of secrets.

  At the first touch of his lips the vault’s trapdoor sprang open, like the lid of Pandora’s box. The secrets of her heart flew out, and swarmed over her sensible brain and swamped it, and she went into Lisburne’s crushing embrace without a second’s hesitation or the smallest qualm.

  She was the one with her feet on the ground. She was the logical, organized one, yet she fell headlong and recklessly, the way all her kind did.

  She threw her arms round his neck and arched her body to fit against his. She kissed him back with everything she had, and that seemed to be an eternity of pent-up longing.

  They had one tender meeting of lips before tenderness gave way to a wilder urge she hadn’t a name for, didn’t understand, and hadn’t the right armor or weapons to fight. Whatever it was, wherever it led, it was irresistible.

  She’d been kissed before, and not innocently, either, and she’d liked it. With him she entered another realm. To call what he did to her a kiss was to call the ocean water. She lost herself in it. She sank into the strange joy of it, and the wild sensual pleasure of it: his muscled torso’s warmth, his arms’ possessive pressure, the fine linen and wool softly brushing her face and neck. The erotic tangle of taste and scent and movement engulfed her.

  She wanted to stay in this place, this world within his arms, forever.

  A warning drummed at the edges of her awareness, but she refused to listen.

  He slid his hand down her back over her bottom and pressed her against him. Too much stood in the way. The layers of her dress, its adornments, and all her undergarments were like a featherbed wedged between them. Her life was about clothes, but at this moment she wanted skin to skin.

  He broke the kiss, his breath coming fast. “I need to leave,” he said. “Now.”

  “Yes,” she said, and told herself to be sensible.

  In a corner of her brain, on a peaceful island amid the churning seas of feelings, her intellect went on working. It reminded her of what had happened earlier in the evening and all she stood to lose, and what those who depended on her and on her shop stood to lose. Lisburne’s brilliant plan had got her into trouble, and she had to get herself out, as usual. She hadn’t time for falling in love and breaking her heart.

  She stood for a moment, her head bowed, her forehead resting below the folds of his neckcloth, and fought with herself. She needed to find her well-ordered world again, the stable place where she could live in peace. She knew this. She tried to put the knowledge at the front of her mind, but his linen distracted her.

  So crisp and so painstakingly arranged and tied when the evening had begun, it now hung limp and creased. The last time she’d seen him rumpled was in Hyde Park. In the rain. When they’d kissed and when, she realized, he’d taught her to want more from him than kisses.

  She let her fingers creep up toward the knot. She wanted so much to untie it and touch her fingers to his naked throat.

  He covered her hand with his.

  “I need to leave,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. She twisted her hand to tangle her fingers with his. Skin to skin. His hands were warm. Their twined hands rested against his heart. She could feel it beating. Or maybe not. Her own was beating so hard, she couldn’t tell.

  “I’m going to leave now,” he said, gently disentangling her hand from his. “We’ll talk tomorrow, when we’re . . . calmer.”

  She didn’t want to be calm.

  “Yes,” she said, and made herself take one step back, away from him, away from the feel of linen and wool and the big, warm body, where she’d felt so safe when she wasn’t safe at all.

  He reached for her and pulled her back to him again, and kissed her again, raking his hands through her hair, demolishing her coiffure, scattering pins and flowers and ribbons.

  Some sensible part of his brain must have been working, because he let her go at last.

  She retreated a pace and told herself this was best. Somebody had to resist temptation, and she no longer had any idea how.

  He reached for the door handle.

  Then, “My hat,” he said. “Dammit. My hat.”

  She wanted to stamp her foot, preferably with the accursed hat under it. She had a rampaging horde of desires and disappointments to beat into submission. She had to shove them back into the narrow little strongbox in her heart. She needed to get away to a quiet place away from him, and stop being a fool.

  But no. She had to stay and pretend she was completely calm and sensible and only waiting to lock the door after him.

  Meanwhile, there he was, all elegant grace while he peered into the light and shadow of the entryway. There he was, in exactly the place where the lamplight could cast a halo-like glow upon the top of his head, highlighting the dark gold curls. Like the neckcloth, they weren’t in perfect order anymore, but tousled as though he’d risen from his bed moments ago. She remembered the feel of the thick curls when she’d pushed her fingers through them. She could almost feel them now, against her hands.

  Botticelli’s painting rose in her mind’s eye, and she saw the goddess of love putting her hands on the god of war, on naked skin. She saw Mars putting his hands on Venus, in places where some women didn’t even touch themselves.

  Leonie folded her hands at her waist and waited. She watched his head go still and the curls settle into place when he spotted his hat at last, on the floor where he’d dropped it.

  He swept it up and set it on his head and grasped the doorknob and opened the door and walked out.

  Not a minute later, before she’d had time to shake off disappointment and mortification an
d start for the stairs, in he walked again, slamming the door behind him, throwing his hat at the table and sweeping her into his arms, all in one storm of motion.

  He kissed her, raking his hands over her, along her arms, her back, and crushing her against him. She dug her fingers into his back and tried to get closer still.

  His mouth left hers and he drew back.

  She pushed him away and started to turn away, to let him go—to the devil, for all she cared. But he caught her arm, and the next she knew she was pressed against the wall and he was leaning over her and saying, his voice low and harsh, “Dammit, Leonie,” and she said, “I’m not Leonie to y—” and his mouth stifled her angry retort.

  She was supposed to stop him. She was supposed to injure him if necessary.

  She didn’t even pretend to struggle. The best she could do was remain as she was, the palms of her hands pressed against the wall while he dragged her into the dark place again, his mouth and tongue teasing and demanding by turns, until she teetered on the edge of what felt like a turbulent sea whose waves rushed to drag her under.

  She was aware of his hands pressing against the wall as well, on either side of her face. His long body hovered mere inches away, boxing her in, and his scent, spicier and darker than before, filled the narrow space. His taste was in her mouth and swirling in her head, mingling with the dizzying man-scent. She couldn’t find her balance, and her legs wanted to give way, and if she didn’t take hold of him, she’d slide down the wall.

  He broke the kiss.

  She was lifting her hand to strike him, because she was drowning, and he was toying with her, when he touched his lips to her cheek.

  She sucked in her breath.

  Then he was kissing her, all over her face, tender kisses that made her ache and want to weep.

  Lust she could cope with.