Heart of Honor (14 page)

“I will keep you safe,” Leif continued, “but in return, I ask a favor.”

Krista arched a brow. “What sort of favor?”

“Now that this man Jacobs has been caught, it is safe for you to go out in the evenings.”

Though she hadn’t given it much thought, she
had
been staying home a great deal. Since her engagement to Matthew, her grandfather had not pressed her to go out in society. Then Matthew had been away in the country, and though Coralee had invited her to several posh functions, Krista had declined, having no real desire to attend.

“Go on,” she said to Leif.

“I need to earn money. I have taken far too much from you and your father already. It is time I paid my way.”

“You’re being paid for the work you do at the gazette.”

“That is true, but I need enough for a ship. I must find a way to buy one so that I can return to my home.”

“What are you suggesting, Leif?”

“There is a thing in your country called
gambling.
I have been reading about it. It appears there is money to be made if a man knows well enough the game. I am particularly interested in this amusement you call cards.”

“Gambling is a good way to lose money, Leif, not earn it.”

“Do you know how to play, then?”

“I don’t gamble, but I play a little whist.”

“On Draugr we wager on any number of things, from tests of strength and skill to the racing of island horses. But I do not believe it is the same. There is a certain knowledge involved in your gaming. I have been practicing the skills I have read—how to remember the cards that have been dealt, how to figure the odds of which card will fall next. I would like to try this game, but I need you and your father to go with me.”

He did have a powerful memory. She had never seen anything like it. Still, winning at gambling would not be easy, even for a man with a memory like Leif’s.

“I would need you to loan me some money,” he continued, “but only enough for one night. If I fail, I will work more hours, enough to repay my debt.”

He was good at most anything he tried, so why not this? “That sounds fair enough.”

“There is a place called Crockford’s. I have read they have gaming tables there.”

Krista glanced to her father, asking the unspoken question,
Is he ready to go out in society?

“Are you certain you want to do this, Leif?” the professor asked. “Your manners will be put to the test, your speech, everything you’ve spent these past months learning. Do you think you are well enough prepared?”

“I will never be entirely a gentleman. Surely you must know this. But I will manage well enough. Will you grant me this favor I ask?”

“After all the hard work you’ve done to educate yourself, I think you deserve this chance.” Krista smiled. “Besides, I have never been to Crockford’s. It might be fun.”

With only a little help from Henry in selecting the proper garments, Leif dressed for the evening in a black frock coat, burgundy waistcoat and black trousers. He used the bristle brush to comb back his short blond hair, then turned to the mirror and straightened his white silk cravat.

He checked his appearance, thinking how different he looked from the shaggy, unkempt man who’d been locked in a cage. His jaw tightened. Mayhap the day would come that he would find justice against the men who had locked him away, though in truth, it no longer mattered. He had found what he had come for, seen and learned things that his people would find hard to believe.

He started for the door, glancing at his reflection one last time, thinking that he was actually growing used to the way he looked in the ridiculous English garments. His mind strayed to Krista and the clothes women here were forced to wear, the heavy gathered skirts and revealing bodices, though he much enjoyed the occasional glimpses of her pale, creamy skin and the plump mounds he had but briefly tasted.

His rod went instantly hard. He had been some months without a woman, but Krista was a woman worth waiting for. Adjusting himself inside his trousers, ignoring the faint, relentless throbbing, he started for the door, trying not to think of Krista and how much longer it would be before he could make love to her.

Still, her image haunted him, and as he imagined her dressing for the evening, a curious notion struck. He had read thousands of words, studied hundreds of pictures etched in books, but he had yet to see this thing women wore called a corset.

Instead of heading downstairs as he had intended, he walked down the hall to the bedroom that belonged to Krista. If he knocked, she would never let him in, so he simply turned the silver knob and pushed open the door. He expected to hear a gasp from her little maid, Priscilla Dobbs, but instead, Krista stood there completely alone.

Leif grinned. And she was only half-dressed, as he had hoped, and wearing the oddest assortment of clothing he could imagine.

“Leif! What are you doing in here? Get out of my room immediately.”

He simply walked toward her. “I came to see this thing you wear beneath your clothes.”

Her pretty face began to glow. She was beautiful, he thought, all smooth skin and high, full breasts, her golden hair curling in ringlets that fell onto her shoulders. Her eyes were the color of a meadow in spring, a rich, deep green that sparkled when she was angry, as she was now.

“A man is not supposed to see what is beneath a woman’s clothing—not unless she is his wife—and you, sir, are behaving very badly. You will leave this instant.”

His gaze ran over the thin white cotton garments that covered her hips and bottom. Some sort of drawers, he figured, the female version of the ones he refused to wear. And a contraption that thrust up her breasts and bit into her waist, the
corset
she had mentioned, the top of which he had glimpsed the day he had kissed her magnificent breasts.

“Get out of here, Leif Draugr—before Priscilla returns and finds you in here.”

“Turn around,” he commanded, standing right in front of her. “I wish to see how this device that squeezes you works.”

She clamped her full lips together, then blew out a breath. “You are insufferable!” With a frustrated sigh, she turned her back to him. “It laces from behind. The tighter someone pulls the laces, the smaller my waist appears.”

“What makes it so stiff?”

“It is made of whalebone. They are huge fish the size of a house that live in the sea.”

“I have seen them in the water near Draugr.”

“Some corsets use metal stays.”

“It looks like it hurts.”

“You get used to it.”

Used to it?
It was a contraption of torture unlike anything he could imagine.

He turned her around to face him. “What is the garment you wear over it?”

“It is a corset cover and a gentleman is not supposed to see it.”

Mentally, he untied the tiny pink bows that closed the garment in front, and stripped it away. He imagined dragging the thin cotton drawers down over her hips, leaving the soft blond curls of her womanhood exposed. His mouth began to water as he imagined kissing her there, tasting her.

Just yesterday, he had found three dusty novels on a partly hidden shelf of the library. On Draugr, he had never lacked for bedmates, but never had he given much thought to a woman’s pleasure. His partners had been satisfied with his lusty kisses and bold caresses, the feel of his heavy rod moving inside them.

Now he understood there were many more ways to please a woman, ways that also increased a man’s pleasure. He had already finished
On the Altar of Venus,
written, like the others, by a man called Anonymous, though Leif didn’t really know how to pronounce the name. By the time he finished
Miss Boots’ Confessions,
and
The Pearl of Passion,
he would be a master in the art of making love.

His rod stiffened, began to press painfully against the fly of his evening trousers. He looked down at Krista, wondered if what he was thinking was there in his eyes. Reaching out, he slid a finger between the soft, plump swells of her breasts, pushed together by the bones of a whale. He felt her tremble and wished he could jerk open the laces and toss the painful contraption away.

Instead, he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her against his chest.

“Leif, please, you cannot just walk into a lady’s boudoir and—”

He cut off her words with a kiss. She smelled of flowers. He wondered at the name. For an instant she stiffened and tried to pull away, but he just kept kissing her, sliding his hands into her hair, taking her mouth one way and then another until she softened in his arms. Coaxing her lips apart, he slid his tongue inside to taste her sweetness, moved his hands down to cup her bottom. The thin drawers were all that covered her there and he could feel the warmth of her skin through the light cotton fabric.

“Where is your maid?” he whispered against her ear.

“I—I sent her on an errand, but—”

He ended her speech with another scorching kiss, his hands roaming over her bottom, squeezing gently, testing the fullness, liking the way she filled his hands.

Krista moaned softly. He could feel her trembling as he lifted her against his hardness, let her feel how much he wanted her. He heard her little soft mew of pleasure, and slid his hand between the rounded globes of her buttocks, touching her more intimately, heightening her arousal. There was an odd split in the fabric of the drawers, and he realized in an instant its purpose.

It would serve his own purpose far better, he thought, sliding his fingers inside, pleased by the dampness he felt in the plump petals of her sex. Krista stiffened in shock, but he only tightened his hold.

“I will give you pleasure, Krista,” he whispered against her ear. “Greater than you ever dreamed.”

She made a faint sound in her throat as he claimed her mouth again, kissed her deeply and began to gently stroke her. She was wet and trembling, and the knowledge made him harden even more. He wanted to bring her to fulfillment, wanted to slake her desire and bury himself so deeply she would never think of another man.

Instead, he eased away.

Krista looked up at him with wide, green, uncertain eyes. “I never thought…I didn’t know that…that…it would feel so…”

“Good?” Leif suggested.

She flushed.

“When the time is right, I will show you how good it can be.” He stepped back, fighting to bring his own urgent need under control.

His gaze ran over her body. “This thing you call a corset. I do not like you wearing it. Once you are mine, I will forbid it.”

Her pretty mouth rounded in surprise. “Leif, please—you mustn’t say things like that. I—I know I should have stopped you. It is highly improper for a woman to allow a man to take…take those sorts of liberties. I can only imagine what you must think, but—”

“There is nothing wrong with what we do. Soon you will be mine and you will no longer feel guilty.”

Krista shook her head, moving the mass of heavy golden hair on her shoulders. “That can’t happen, Leif—you know it as well as I do. I can’t ever be yours and you can’t ever be mine. In time, you will be returning to Draugr and I will be staying right here. Nothing can change that. Not for either one of us.”

“You are wrong, Krista. You have been mine since the day you freed me from that cage. The gods sent you to me and that is what is not going to change.”

A squeak in the doorway announced that Priscilla Dobbs had arrived. Her eyes went even wider than Krista’s. “Oh, dear. I—I’m sorry, miss, I didn’t realize that you…that you…”

Krista cast Leif a dark glance. She managed to smile at her maid. “It’s all right, Priscilla. Mr. Draugr walked into the wrong room,
by accident.
” She grabbed her robe with a shaky hand and pulled it on over her garments of torture. “He was just leaving.”

Leif took his cue. He had pushed her far enough this night. “My apologies, Miss Hart,” he said in his best imitation of an English gentleman, making her a very proper bow. “I don’t know how I could have mistaken the room.”

Her mouth looked tight as he closed the door and walked off down the hall. He thought of what she had said, that she could never be his, words she had said before. He hadn’t believed her then and he didn’t now. She might be beautiful and intelligent, and he might admire her greatly, but she was only a woman, with little say in the matter.

First, he needed money. Then he would speak to her father. He believed the professor would accept his suit. Paxton Hart was a brilliant man and Leif believed he had long ago accepted the fact that one day his daughter would become Leif’s bride.

Leif thought of the books he was reading and smiled to himself. Krista was his, whether she believed it or not. Out of respect to her and her father, he had taken few liberties, but remembering her words of denial, he knew that would have to change.

His rod pulsed as he remembered the feel of her body opening to him, responding to the touch of his hand. Already she desired him. He would use the knowledge he found in these latest books to heighten that desire. She was his and he would have her. He would make her ache for him, make her beg him to take her. Once he had buried himself deep inside her, she would belong to him.