by Anne Stuart
And she had, mostly. Those closed-mouthed, chaste salutes on her lips had been, on the whole, pleasant, though nothing had moved her to want more. At least, not until a few short hours ago, when Alexander Griffiths had pushed her up against the baize door and kissed her with a thoroughness that she could still feel imprinted on her mouth.
Damn the man.
“Never mind, Tim,” she said wearily, struggling to her feet. “I’m up now, and I may as well face the dratted man.”
“We don’t refer to our employer in that manner, Miss Sophie,” Dickens said reprovingly. “And I think it would be best if you kept your distance, particularly at this hour. One never knows if his lordship has been drinking—there are nights when the black moods are upon him and he imbibes a little too freely.”
“I assure you, Mr. Dickens, that I am more than adept at dealing with gentlemen who are a bit castaway,” she said briskly, assembling a tray of such sumptuous sweets that the man’s eyes would glaze over and he wouldn’t even notice who had brought them. “But I appreciate your concern.”
“Miss Sophie . . .” he continued, but she’d already started up the stairs to the main floor. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could seek her bed and sleep the sleep of the just. And she wouldn’t dream about that man at all. Not for a moment.
The halls were deserted. Not that they’d been teeming with servants before, she thought, but there was something almost eerie about the quiet that night. The moon was almost full, and it cast shadows through the French doors that lined the hallway to the viscount’s study. She could hear her skirts swish as she walked, a quiet rustle of cloth and the silken petticoats she’d managed to keep with her when she and her sisters had been thrown into the streets. All the rest was silence.
His door was ajar, and light spilled out into the hallway. Sophie paused, rethinking her impulsive gesture. She was returning to the presence of a man who had kissed her. Not just kissed her, but shaken her to her very core. For all that everyone kept insisting that he would never trifle with a servant, he’d done just that earlier in the day, and what made her think that in the dark of night he’d be any different? She’d been a fool to come out—his behavior, his mouth, earlier in the day should have been warning enough. She should have listened to Dickens, who seemed to know the viscount better than anyone, and stayed safely in the confines of the kitchen. But some wicked, dangerous part of her wanted to go, she realized ruefully.
It was then, and only then, that she recognized the other sound that had been missing from her precipitous trip up the back stairs to the Dark Viscount’s library—the sound of footsteps. She’d slipped off her sturdy black shoes when she’d dropped into the rocking chair in a state of exhaustion, and she’d been in such a hurry to get back to him that she’d completely forgotten to put them back on. Idiote! She cursed herself, mortification sweeping over her. How could she have been so stupid?
She started to back away from the half-open door, very slowly, like a young deer facing a hungry tiger. Not that tigers and deer lived together, she reminded herself with a trace of asperity, and as long as she was going to be so fanciful it served her right . . .
“Are you going to hover out there forever or are you coming in?” Alexander Griffiths’s caustic voice came from inside the room, and Sophie considered running for only the briefest moment. She had never been a coward, and she wasn’t going to let a saturnine creature like the Dark Viscount intimidate her, no matter how physically beautiful he might be.
Straightening her shoulders, she pushed open the door and then stopped, filled with misgivings. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to run.
CHAPTER NINE
HER EMPLOYER WAS SPRAWLED on the large sofa in front of the fire, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His hair was tousled, and it was much too long for fashion, but clearly that was of no consequence to him. Most men had some sort of facial hair, but he was clean-shaven as well, and he was watching her out of those dark gray eyes.
He’d discarded his coat and cravat, and his white shirt was partially unbuttoned. His smooth, tanned flesh should have come as no shock—she’d seen it any number of times as she’d watched him from her perch up on the tor. She eyed him warily as she approached, the tray clutched in her hands.
“I’ve brought you the dessert you requested,” she said stiffly. She looked around for a table to set it on, but the only one was across the room, so she moved in front of him, setting the tray down on the seat of a leather chair, planning to go and fetch the table for him.
“So you did,” he said lazily, his eyes drifting down her body in a manner that was both insulting and oddly exhilarating. “I find I’m quite . . . famished.”
She did her best to ignore him, bustling around with an efficient air. She still couldn’t get used to the fact that gentlemen didn’t rise when she came into a room; they simply lay sprawled on a sofa watching her out of predatory eyes. No man would appear in her presence without his jacket or cravat, but then, no man would have kissed her as he’d kissed her earlier in the day, no man . . .
Before she realized his intention she found herself yanked off her feet, falling onto his lap with a decided oomph. She struggled to get up, but he captured her flailing arms very quickly, holding her still so she could do little more than glare up into his face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded frostily.
“Having dessert.” Sliding his hand behind her neck, beneath her tangled hair, he drew her mouth to his, slanting his own over it.
Reaction spiked through her, though it wasn’t the outrage she expected. Her hands still shoved at him, uselessly, but everything inside her seemed to soften and flow, and she wanted to wrap her arms around him, she wanted to push her hands through his too-long hair, she wanted to kiss his mouth and his hard jaw and his eyelids.
He lifted his head, looking down at her, a little breathless. “Don’t be tiresome, Sophie,” he said in a voice that was too cool, given the circumstances. “It’s just a kiss.”
She would have disputed that if he hadn’t covered her mouth once more. This was a great deal more than a simple kiss. His hard, warm body seemed to surround her, and she found he no longer bound her hands, so that she was clinging to his arms, to the fine, soft linen of his shirt. She wanted to move closer, up against him; she wanted to kiss him back. Somewhere in the depths of her fuzzy brain she knew it would be a very bad idea. It had taken her far too long to realize it, but she’d been thinking about kissing Alexander Griffiths for weeks now. Whenever she lay on her stomach in the grass and watched his lean, beautiful body cut through the water that had decimated Bryony’s rose garden, she’d wondered what it would like to be kissed by him. To be held in his arms, against his bare chest. To feel his skin, smooth and warm beneath her fingertips.
He’d moved his mouth away from hers, trailing soft, biting kisses down her neck, and she was awash in a myriad of strange reactions. Her stomach knotted with longing, her chest ached, her . . . her breasts seemed to grow sensitive beneath the layers of garments, and worst of all, between her legs she was growing hot, damp. She wanted to rub against something, like a cat needing to be stroked, and even her shame couldn’t stop her.
“But I brought you dessert,” she said helplessly, then realized how stupid that sounded.
He laughed softly, the sound simply adding to her crazy mix of stimulation. “So you did,” he said, “and it’s delicious.” To her shock he leaned down and licked her lower lip with a slow, lascivious sweep of his tongue, and she heard a panicky little moan in the room that could only have come from her.
She wasn’t sure how he did it, but he somehow managed to shift her off his lap and onto the sofa, with his long, powerful body stretched out over her, his legs between hers, between the layers of skirts, one hand cradling her chin, holding her face still for his deep, tempting kisses, the other trailing down her bodice to the sensible row of buttons half-hidden by the apron she had yet to remove. S
he knew she ought to object, but the feather cushions were soft beneath her, and he was so warm and hard and strong above her, shielding her, cocooning her, that she didn’t want to move. She closed her eyes to the dim light and let him coax her mouth open, allowing his tongue to take possession of hers as his long fingers touched the skin of her throat and she burned, her hips rising against him of their own accord. He laughed that wicked, throaty laugh again.
“That’s right, sweetheart,” he murmured against her ear, his voice low and seductive. “You know what you want.” He was struggling with the next button down, but it was hidden by the apron. “Though why the hell you thought this was proper attire for the occasion is beyond me.”
She was actually feeling dizzy, she, who never fainted no matter how tightly she was laced. “What else would I wear?” she asked weakly.
He reached up behind her neck and with a short, brutal jerk he ripped the ties that held the apron at her neck, yanking the linen down to expose the front of her dress. “Preferably nothing at all.”
Somehow, through the maze of desire, the words penetrated, just as she felt his hand on her leg, slowly lifting her heavy skirts, and with a shriek she shoved him, rolling off beneath him and landing hard on the parquet flooring.
It was sheer chance she’d been able to do it—he hadn’t been expecting anything but blind acquiescence, the bastard. Before he could gather his wits she’d scrambled away, racing for the door.
She expected he’d reach it first, catch her, hold her there, put those mesmerizing hands on her body, kiss her again. God, she wanted him to kiss her again! She wanted to lose herself in the heat of his mouth, his tongue. She didn’t want to behave herself, to think clearly—she needed his hands on her. But he simply stayed where he was on the sofa, watching her out of lazy, half-closed eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going down to my rooms, sir,” she said, her shaky voice sadly lacking in dignity. “I seem to have mistaken your appetites.”
“You know perfectly well what I’m hungry for. Are you coming back here?”
“No. This is . . . this is . . .” Words failed her. During their brief tussle on the sofa she hadn’t had the chance to touch his skin, or to kiss him back, or do the things she’d wanted to do. But she was most certainly not getting any closer to him right now. There was no telling what he might do, and she suspected that this time she wouldn’t stop him. “This is unacceptable,” she managed to say, and then her evil genius prompted her. “It goes against the terms of my contract with Mrs. Lefton.”
He frowned for a moment. “Perhaps you’d best acquaint me with the details of that contract. This is all very entertaining, but I begin to tire of the shy virgin act. If you enjoy games, let’s play something else. You can be the naughty governess and I’ll be the lecherous master.”
“You already are the lecherous master,” she snapped. For some reason his casual words hurt. “And someone else will have to be your naughty governess. I’m going to bed.”
“That was exactly what I was suggesting . . .” he began, when she whisked herself out the door and closed it none too gently behind her. She set off at a run, down the endless hallways, expecting him to materialize behind her, his breath at the back of her neck, his hands reaching for her, pulling her to him, but there was no sound of pursuit, and she told herself she was relieved. She practically fell down the narrow, circular stairs to the kitchen, which now lay deserted, no sign of Dickens or Tim, only the glow of the bright moon lighting the place.
She should have tried to lock the baize door, though most likely it locked only from the outside, assuming it locked at all. She stilled, taking a deep breath and looking around her. The trays had been set for the morning, the whole area was spotless, and while the windows had been opened to let the smells and the steam of the night’s cooking dissipate, she could still sense the lovely fragrance of apples and a hint of lamb.
Clearly everyone was entirely wrong, and the Dark Viscount had no qualms at all about putting his hands on his female servants. She should have known. She was doubtless just one of many, a novelty because she was new. Now she was going to have to spend her time avoiding him until he found someone else to lavish his attentions on.
For some reason the notion didn’t feel particularly comfortable. She didn’t want him doing that sort of thing with anyone else, kissing her, pulling her beneath him on the soft, old sofa.
She realized with sudden shock that there was one room that hadn’t been changed by what she assumed was Mrs. Griffiths’s doubtful taste. The library was the same, though the position of the desk had been moved so that its occupant would have a clear view of the lawns and what used to be the rose garden.
And the sofa he’d pressed her into had been the very same sofa where she’d curled up and read thrilling romances, and dreamed of being swept off her feet with the wonder of a chaste, worshipful kiss.
There had been nothing chaste or worshipful about Alexander’s kiss. It had been carnal, demanding, shocking, and she hugged herself, trying to force the longing out of her body. Curse the man! She didn’t need this kind of complication. She didn’t need the confusion that flooded her, the wicked thoughts that kept dancing in her mind. She needed her old life, where she’d been in control of her body and the men around her.
She had to remember that he was the enemy, or at least, close enough. He had taken Renwick away from them. It didn’t matter that it had legally belonged to him, the terms of her father’s possession broken by his death. Alexander had supposedly killed his first wife, threw her off the battlements of his other house. He was a villain, wasn’t he?
There was a very good chance he had killed her father and stolen the liquid assets of Russell Shipping. He might be a very bad man indeed—all signs pointed to it. She needed to be extremely careful, ignore those random urges that were disgraceful, and remember who she was. She was Miss Sophia Russell, not some chippie to be taken by the first lecherous man to put his hands on her.
Except that other lecherous men had put their hands on her, or at least tried. Once the scandal had broken, she and her sisters had lost any claim to proper courtesy or etiquette. They had been fair game, and Maddy had left more than one importunate gentleman bent over and moaning with pain. Sophie hadn’t had to be quite so physical—she’d been able to slip away without anyone realizing she’d escaped.
Slipping away this time might be more difficult, when the truth was, she didn’t want to. She shook her head at her own foolishness. She had a lock on her bedroom door, and a chair to lodge beneath the knob, and she would use both. She stripped off her clothes and bathed in cool water, hoping to bring down the fever inside her. All it did was give her a chill. With a sigh she pulled on her lace-trimmed nightdress and crawled beneath the damp sheets. When she’d been a lady, someone had warmed her sheets for her with a warming pan. It might be that simple courtesy that she missed most of all. She needed a warm bed and warm covers to wrap around her. She needed to sleep, and forget what had happened in that too-familiar room.
All she could do was lie there, eyes open in the dark, and wait.
Damn the girl! What kind of game was she playing? Whatever it was, it grew extremely tedious. He needed sex; he needed to shove his cock into someplace tight and willing, and he wanted it to be Sophie. Again, he had to consider Mrs. Lefton’s surprising ability. She’d sent him someone the complete opposite of what he’d wanted, and it was exactly what he needed.
He’d grown bored with sex over the last year or so. Six years ago, after Jessamine had died and he’d faced the ignominy of a trial, he’d decided to go away, travel the world. Rufus had come with him, and his brother had been more than conversant with the ways of the world.
Rufus had called it a Whoreson’s Grand Tour, and they’d managed to sleep with Venetian courtesans and French aristocrats, though they were thin on the ground these days. Alexander had taken opera dancers and royalty and streetwalkers to his bed; he’d dabbled in a worl
d of bondage and pain for pleasure, and he was still bored. He’d ordered Miss Sophie as one might order a sack of flour, just for the convenience of it, and instead of taking care of his physical urges, it was starting to become an obsession. She was starting to become an obsession.
He’d played games before—women seemed to like them—though never with a hired partner. Some women couldn’t achieve their peak without being spanked, or pretending to be a captive princess or some such bollocks. That was the advantage of whores—one didn’t have to go through all that rigmarole. You snapped your fingers and they were there. It was up to them to do all the work to entertain, not him.
Though in fact, Sophie was doing just that. He couldn’t remember wanting a woman more in his life, not even when he was young and foolishly, desperately in love with Jessamine. Mrs. Lefton’s delicious morsel was a positive genius in building his desire to a dangerously explosive point, and he knew that when he had her, while he doubted it could be as gratifying as this pent-up frustration suggested, it would still be quite . . . satisfactory.
She was going to cost him a pretty penny, and she was worth every bit of it. She’d managed to distract him from his younger brother’s death, and his own, unthinkable guilt, guilt that came from relief that . . . no, he wasn’t going to let those thoughts in. When she was around he could think of nothing but her—the taste of her, the feel of her, the sheer, saucy effrontery of her.
This whole cooking business was a charade, he thought as he reached for the lemon torte. He was going to have to find someone to take her place once this game was played out. He certainly had no intention of arranging his desires around the demands of the kitchen, and there were at least two suitable houses on the estate that would do for her. He took a bite, and let the mélange of flavors dance against his tongue, and he closed his eyes and savored it. Well, perhaps he’d still allow her to bake. Only for him, of course.