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… In sad corners of ballrooms we have recently found poor, lost little lamb, Lady S—, once a welcome member of the Pitiless Pretties of the ton, now exiled for sins we cannot imagine. We have high hopes for her restoration, however, as she was seen dancing with the Marquess of E—…
The gossip pages of the Weekly Courant, May 1, 1833
His house was massive, gilded and gorgeous, every inch of it appointed in the height of fashion. She stood in the main marble foyer, turning slowly, looking at the high ceilings and the wide, curving staircase that led to the upper floors of the house.
“This is beautiful,” she said, turning to face him. “I’ve never seen a home so perfectly designed.”
He leaned against a marble column nearby, arms crossed, gaze focused on her. “It keeps rain from our heads.”
She laughed. “It does more than that.”
“It’s a house.”
“Give me a tour.”
He waved an arm to the doors on the far end of the foyer. “Receiving room, receiving room, breakfast room.” And to the ones behind her. “Cynthia’s morning room, another receiving room.” He paused. “I don’t entirely know why we need so many.” He indicated a long hallway that led to the back of the house. “The kitchens and swimming pool are that way. The dining room and ballroom are one flight up.” He returned his attention to her. “The bedchambers are lovely. They deserve personal inspection.”
She laughed at his impatience. “Swimming pool?”
“Yes.”
“You realize that a swimming pool is not precisely a common addition to a London town house.”
“It’s not precisely a common addition to London,” he said, lifting one shoulder. “But I like being clean, so it makes for excellent sport.”
“So do any number of men. They take baths.”
He raised a brow. “I take baths, as well.”
“I’d like to see it.”
“You’d like to see me take a bath?” He looked positively thrilled by the idea.
She laughed. “No. I’d like to see your swimming pool.”
He considered refusing – she could see it in his eyes. After all, a tour of his home was not part of their agreed agenda for the evening. But she stood firm, until he took her hand in his – warm and large and rough from years of work – and led her through the house, down the dark hallway and through the kitchens.
He came to a closed door, and set his hand to the handle, turning back to meet her gaze, he opened the door, and indicated that she should pass into the dimly lit room beyond.
She stepped inside, first noting the barely-there light that came from a half-dozen fireplaces on the far side of the room, and then noticing how very warm it was in the room.
“Stay here,” he said softly at her ear, pushing past her. “I shall light the lamps.”
She stood in the warm darkness, watching as he put a match to a lamp nearby, casting a small sphere of golden light in the massive room. The light was at the edge of the swimming pool, still and dark, and utterly compelling. She moved without even noticing, drawn to the mysterious water as Duncan followed the edge of the pool, lighting more lamps, until the room came into view.
It was magnificent.
The walls and floor of the room was tiled in the most beautiful blue and white mosaic, like sky and surf coming together. The lamps sat on beautifully wrought marble columns, each light made manifest as a golden orb of glass. She looked up to where the ceiling gave way to what must have been a hundred panels of glass, revealing the sky above London, darkness and stars.
She could look at that ceiling forever.
And that was without the swimming pool, reflecting the stars and lamps on the water, wine dark, like Odysseus’s seas. She met Duncan’s gaze where he stood several yards away, adjusting the brightness of one of the lamps. No, not Odysseus. He was Poseidon, god of this place, strong enough to bend water to his will.
“This is…” She paused, not knowing how to describe the room. The way it called to her. “… stunning.”
He came toward her. “It is my vice.”
“I thought your vice was the card tables.”
He shook his head, reaching out for her, brushing one of her curls back from her face. “That’s work. This is play.”
Play.
The word curled around them, a promise in the darkness. She wondered at it, wondered how long it had been since she’d thought it. Since she’d had it.
Wondered if he would give it to her. She smiled up at him. “It seems like glorious play.”
“Glorious play,” he repeated the words, refusing to release her gaze. “It does seem like that.”
She did not think the room could get warmer, but it did. “There are so many fireplaces.”
He looked over his shoulder, toward the wall of hearths. “I like to swim year-round, and the water gets cold if not for the fires.”
The whole room, the whole experience, it must have cost him a fortune – the heating, the lamps, the extravagance. The Angel prided itself on having a half-dozen expansive, utterly unnecessary rooms designed purely for members’ whims, but there was nothing like this at the club.
There was nothing like this anywhere in London.
She looked to him. “Why?”
He looked away, to the water, black and tempting. “I told you. I like to swim.”
He hadn’t said that. He’d said he liked being clean. “There are other ways to swim.”
“It is best at night,” he said, ignoring the question. “When there is nothing but water and stars. Most of the time, I don’t light the lamps.”
“You feel your way,” she said.
He ran his hand down her arm, taking her hand in his. “Feeling is underrated.” He pulled her close and wrapped one arm around her waist. He kissed her, deep and lush, and she didn’t know if it was the heat of the room or the caress that made her lose thought.
No, she knew. It was the caress.
He pulled back. “Do you know how?”
It took a moment for her to understand. “I do.”
He watched her for a long moment, as though gauging the response to his inevitable question. As though wondering if he should risk her saying no.
As though she would ever say no.
“Would you like to swim, my lady?”
The honorific swirled around her, soft and full of promise. How much did it tempt her? How much did it make her wish for a moment, for this night, that she was his lady?
More than it should.
“This evening is going quite differently than I expected,” she said.
“And I.” He kissed her, quick and rough. “Discard the damn wig.”
Her hands were doing his bidding even as he moved away, to the wall of fireplaces, crouching down to stoke the flames of first one, and then the next. His instructions followed, she calculated that it would take him several minutes to set fires blazing in each of the six hearths, and so she sat, removing her shoes, her stockings, her drawers, setting each neatly to the side, until all that was left was the dress.
The dress she wore was designed for Anna, not Georgiana, and it did not require a maid for removing. It was structured with hidden catches and ties and an interior corset, all designed for ease of donning and doffing.
Though she wondered if the dressmaker who had performed this feat of fashionable engineering had ever imagined this particular moment, when the dress would find itself at the side of a swimming pool.
If all went well.
He turned from the last fire, facing her across the massive room, and she stood, watching as he returned to her, thoroughly focused on her, hunting her. She noticed his bare feet, and realized he’d taken a moment to remove his boots while he stoked the fire. He removed his jacket on the way, tossing it to the side, forgotten as he worked on his cravat, unraveling the long length of linen and letting it fall away. He did not take his gaze from her, and she did feel like prey.
No prey had ever w
anted to be caught so well.
He reached her as he pulled his shirttails from his trousers, and she wondered at the comfort he had with the process. “Have you ever entertained here?” The question was out before she could stop it, and she wished to God she could have stopped it.
This night, it meant nothing. It was not forever. It was for now.
So she should not care if he had other women here. In this magnificent, extravagant, ridiculous room.
“I have not,” he said, and the pleasure that came with the words – with the knowledge that he told the truth – was acute.
He removed his shirt then, pulling it over his head, revealing a long, sinewed torso, all curves and crevices. Her mouth went dry. No man outside of classical sculpture should look this way. No man outside of classical sculpture did look this way.
Poseidon flashed again, and she resisted the silly thought.
But she did not stop looking.
Until he reached for the falls of his trousers, his fingers working the buttons there, and she could not look any longer. Her gaze found his face, his gaze all knowing, as though he was in her head. As though he knew she had compared him to Poseidon in her thoughts.
He was an insufferable man.
“You are overdressed.”
She willed the embarrassment away. She’d agreed to this moment, had she not? To this night? And she was Anna, was she not? Experienced in all things. In every way a woman should be.
It did not matter that the last was a slight fabrication.
Fine. A significant fabrication.
She had the dress to bear it out. And it was the clothes that made the man, was it not? In Duncan West’s case, it seemed the clothes did him a disservice, but that was not the point.
She took a deep breath. Shored up her courage.
And dropped the dress, baring everything to him.
Later, when she was not so embarrassed, she would laugh at the memory of his response – shocked to the core that she’d been able to undress without help and looking as though he’d received a very firm, very serious blow to the head.
But laughter was very far from her mind at the moment. Her mind was too occupied with embarrassment. And nervousness. And awareness of all the oddly shaped, strangely stretched bits that she usually kept under pretty, silk wraps. And the keen, unsettling combination of desire and terror.
So she did what any self-respecting nude woman would do in the same situation. She turned and dove into the dark pool.
She surfaced a handful of yards away from the edge, marveling at the temperature of the water, like a cool summer bath. She turned to face the spot where she’d entered, to find him there, watching her, hands at his hips.
Naked.
She tried not to look. She really did.
But it was rather difficult to miss.
She swam backward, grateful for the dim light. For the fact that he couldn’t be certain that she was staring at him, long and hard and utterly unsettling.
“Is it comfortable?”
She swallowed. Brazened through even as she continued to put distance between them. “Quite.”
“If you want to swim,” he said, “you should do it now.”
It was a strange thing to say, as it was a swimming pool, and she was already swimming. “Why?”
“Because once I get to you, swimming will be the last thing on your mind.”
The words shot through her like lightning, enhanced by the feel of the water all over her body, on places that should not be bared to this glorious place. She waited for a moment, watching him, taking in the beauty of him, all muscle and bone. Perfection, wrought here, in this water.
Where he would have her.
The thought made her bold, and she stopped moving backward. “I find I’ve lost my taste for swimming.”
He was beneath the water before she finished the sentence, and her heart pounded as she waited for him to surface, the silence that fell after he dove making her fairly tremble with anticipation. She watched the ink black surface of the water, wondering where he would emerge.
And then she felt him, his fingers brushing against her stomach, followed by his palms, sliding to her sides. She gasped at the touch as he rose up, inches from her, Poseidon rising from the sea.
In her surprise, she set her hands to his shoulders, and he took the opportunity to pull her tight against him, his arms like steel around her waist, his legs tangling with hers. She felt him hot and hard against her stomach. “I am very grateful,” he said at her ear, the words more breath than sound, sending a thrill of anticipation through her, “to whoever taught you to swim.”
She did not have to think of an appropriate answer to the words, because he was already kissing her, lifting her effortlessly in the water, his hands spreading down to cup her rear, to pull her close, to match them in that dark, secret place where they were so evenly matched.
He groaned at the sensation, and she sighed her reply as he moved her to the edge of the pool. It was coming, she thought. She wanted it, quite desperately, and he was going to give it to her. It had been years since she’d been this close to another person, to a man. A lifetime.
At the edge of the pool, he spread her arms wide, laying her open palms against the beautiful mosaic tile, holding her up in the water. His face was cast in the orange light of the fires behind her, fires that seemed to burn hot as the sun as he slid his hands down the length of her arms, entangling his fingers with hers, kissing down the side of her neck and across the bare skin of her shoulders and chest
“You didn’t give me a chance to look,” he whispered there, just above the place where the water lapped against her, teasing the tips of her breasts, hard and aching for him. “You shocked the hell out of me and ran away.”
“This does not feel like running,” she said as he released one of her hands and cupped a bare breast, lifting it above the waterline, running a thumb over the pebbled tip.
“No,” he said, “but here we are again, in the darkness. And once again, I can’t see you. I can’t see these.”
“Please.” She sighed as his thumb worried her nipple. He was killing her.
“Please what?” he said, placing little chaste kisses around it.
“You know what,” she said, and he laughed.
“I do. And I confess, I am grateful we are here, alone, because I’m finally going to taste you, and no one is going to stop me.”
He lowered his mouth and took her, and she nearly came out of her skin at the sensation, at the way he licked and sucked and sent pleasure curling through her, pooling in a dozen places she had forgotten she had. She moved to clasp his head to her, and lost her balance in the water. He caught her without effort, but she returned her hand to the edge of the pool, not knowing what else to do. Not knowing what else to say, except “Dear God, don’t stop.”
And he didn’t, worshipping first one breast and then the other, until she thought she might die here, drowned in this glorious place and in him. When he lifted his head after what seemed like at once an eternity and a heartbeat, she was sighing his name and eager for anything he wished to give her.
He took her lips, capturing her sighs, and pulled her close to him again, pressing all of him against all of her, so that there was no space for the water that lapped around them, in time to her writhing. When he ended the kiss, she pressed her hands to his shoulders, eager for something that would help her regain her power. Regain herself.
He gave her an infinitesimal amount of space, as though he understood what she wanted and understood, too, that she would hate it. Which she did. Because she simply wanted him again.
She took a breath. A second.
Cast about for something to say, something that would distance him even as it kept him close. Settled on, “Why a swimming pool?”
He stilled, quickly recovering his surprise. “You don’t want to know that,” he said, the words graveled and dark and making her utterly wanton.
“I do.”
<
br /> He lifted a long, wet lock of hair from her shoulder, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. “I was not a clean child.”
She smiled, imagining him, a blond boy with mischief in his eyes and intelligence beyond his ears. “Few children are.”
He did not return her smile. Did not meet her gaze. “I was not dirty from play.” He spoke to her hair, his words lacking emotion. “I did a number of jobs. Bricklaying. Tarring roads. Clearing chimneys.”
She went cold at that. None of the jobs was fit for children, but the chimneys – it was dangerous, brutal work, small boys sent up chimneys to clean them, the smaller the better. He would have been no more than three or four when he was a prime candidate for the torture. “Duncan,” she whispered, but he did not acknowledge her.
“It wasn’t so bad. It was only when it was hot, and the chimneys were too tight. There was another boy – my friend —” He trailed off, shaking his head as though exiling a memory. A thousand of them, she was certain, each more horrifying than the last. “I was lucky.”
No child with that life was lucky. “Were you in London?” He must have been. In a workhouse, no doubt – forced to suffer at the hands of this great, burgeoning city.
He did not answer. “At any rate. I wasn’t allowed to bathe afterwards, as I was destined to be dirty again the next day. The handful of times I was allowed to bathe, I was always last. The water was always cold. Never clean.”
Tears came, hot and unbidden, and she was grateful for the fires at her back, for the way they hid her face from him.
She reached for him, wrapping one arm around his neck, threading her fingers through his beautiful blond hair, gleaming and soft and clean even now. “No longer,” she whispered at his ear. “No longer,” she repeated, wanting to wrap herself around him.
Wanting to protect him. The boy he was. The man he had become.
Dear God.
What she felt…
No. She refused to think it.
And she certainly would not admit it.