The Birthday Scandal (22 page)

He could not respect himself if he took that possibility away from her. But as long as he left her a virgin—no matter how tenuous the definition was—she would still have the choice.

Of course, there was the small difficulty that making love to her while leaving her a virgin was going to kill him.

Take it slowly.
He leaned over her to begin with a kiss. The gesture should have been simple, ordinary, for he had kissed her before. And this time he wasn’t even touching her, except for his lips against hers.

He didn’t quite know how he ended up half-lying on top of her, his thigh tucked tightly between hers, her arms around his neck.

She squirmed against him. “Oh, that’s lovely,” she whispered. “Kissing feels so different, lying down—and I don’t have to worry that I’ll fall over because my knees gave way.”

The ingenuous admission rocked him. As though his hand had a mind of its own, he checked out her knee. She bent it invitingly, and—slightly off balance—he slid a little closer, the head of his penis skimming along the silky skin of her thigh.

Time for a new approach. He backed off, ignoring her protest, and bent his head to her breast, focusing all his attention on the rosy, eager tip. If he concentrated on just two square inches of her at a time, he might maintain control.

She arched her back, pressing her nipple deeper into his mouth. Though her movements were unstudied, even a bit awkward sometimes, she was so responsive that she was driving him out of his mind.

He slipped his hand between her legs and discovered that she was wet, and eagerness jolted through him. Carefully he slid a finger inside her, then another. Her body gave a little jerk and squeezed around his hand, and Gavin’s mouth went dry.

He kissed her again, mimicking with his tongue the movements of his fingers. He could feel her tension rising, her body growing taut. She whimpered, and breathlessly he said, “Don’t be frightened. I’ve got you.”

As she came, he watched the dawning wonder in her eyes, and suddenly all his own urges were as nothing compared to the joy of satisfying her.

The linden grove at Mallowan was a landmark, but Lucien had seen it only from afar. He hadn’t realized that the grove stretched over a couple of acres, with graceful trees growing so close together that wending between them on horseback was difficult, at least for a man as tall as Lucien was. He finally gave up and slid down off the back of his roan, leading the animal and hoping that he wouldn’t miss Chloe Fletcher in the shadows.

After a while, he began to wonder if she had any intention of meeting him after all. Just as he started to suspect that she might be capable of repaying his sincere—though clumsy—interference in her marriage plans with some nasty or embarrassing surprise, or by letting him dangle there in the grove for hours, he heard the muted thump of a horse’s hooves against mossy ground. A beautiful chestnut picked its way through the trees opposite him and stopped in a small clearing. Chloe dismounted, landing on a small log with a grace that said she had done this many times before.

Her riding habit was almost the same green as the lindens’ leaves, and trimmed in black like the shadows between the trees. She might have blended into the grove if not for a stray beam of sunlight that found its way around the branches and lighted the mass of golden hair peeking out from the edges of the severe black bonnet. For an instant, she was surrounded by light—as though the sun had illuminated a halo. Lucien snorted at the thought of Chloe Fletcher as some kind of angel.

Chloe turned quickly at the sound, as wary as a cat. At the sight of him, she visibly relaxed. “I thought you might keep me waiting. But no matter, you’re here.” She tied her chestnut’s reins to a sapling and sat down on the fallen log, patting the spot beside her.

Lucien approached cautiously. She seemed awfully friendly this morning for a young lady who on the previous evening had had so little to say to him.

Her sudden approachability should make his task easier.
Woo her with sweet words,
Gavin had advised. All Lucien had to do was show her the contrast between Chiswick’s attitude and that of a real gentleman, and her dissatisfaction with her elderly lover would take care of the rest. But now that he was alone with her, groping for ways to carry out the plan, Lucien would have given anything to be elsewhere.

What had made him think that talking to her would be easier than outright seduction? It might be a trifle less dangerous—at least sweet words wouldn’t likely end with him standing by her side at an altar under the threat of her father’s favorite shotgun. And of course, a gentleman wouldn’t carry a seduction through—not with a lady, at any rate. He wondered idly how his friend Aubrey was progressing with that chorus girl he’d been chasing. It seemed to Lucien as if weeks had passed since they had gone to the theater together.

“Oh, do come and sit down,” Chloe said irritably. “It gives me a crick in the neck to look so far up at you. And if you’re worried about your virtue—you’re in no danger. You needn’t be in the least concerned about how you stand with me.”

Lucien’s pride tingled a little. There was nothing about him that made her even consider casting out a lure?

“We’re meeting alone in a very private spot,” Chloe went on. “Whether you are sitting next to me on this log or looming over me would hardly make a difference to my father, were he to discover us here. So you may as well stop trying to look like a Roman statue and sit down. Let’s get this conversation over with before there is any reason for someone to come looking for either of us.”

For a flighty young miss, Lucien thought, she suddenly showed a terrifying amount of common sense. He sat down gingerly, staying as far away from her as he could on the uneven log.

“Despite what you seem to think of me,” she began, “I don’t wish to marry the Earl of Chiswick.”

“Good judgment there,” Lucien muttered.

“But I cannot simply reject the offer.”

Lucien had to admit she was probably right on that count. Refusing any request of Chiswick’s was a dicey sort of task, and Chloe’s father would not be sympathetic to her reluctance.

“I might have an idea, along those lines,” he began. Perhaps his seduction notion wasn’t such a bad idea after all. She wasn’t in the least interested in him, which eliminated most of the danger. If she would agree to play along just a little—flirt a bit, giggle like a girl with a beau, whisper nonsense, send a melting look his way now and then—he was certain the Earl of Chiswick would not only notice, but he’d get on his high horse and break off the entire connection before Sir George knew what had hit him.

Chloe shook her head. “I have a perfectly good plan, and the last thing I need is another one to confuse the situation.”

Lucien was almost disappointed. Couldn’t she at least have let him explain his idea? “Let’s hear your plan, then. If I’m to be involved in this—”

“You’re a bigger wet goose than I thought if you believe I’d put myself in your power any more than I must. All I need is for you to do an errand for me.”

Lucien shrugged. “I imagine your father has grooms who would appreciate earning a few shillings by taking care of your personal requests.”

“Are you
trying
to sound like a dunderhead, Lord Hartford? I need a letter delivered, but it wouldn’t take much wit for a groom or a stable boy to realize he could earn a great deal more by taking it directly to my father for a reward, rather than seeking out the person it’s addressed to.”

“And then you would be in the suds.” He eyed her narrowly. This might be the answer to his quandary. If his father was to hear that his chosen bride was communicating secretly, with—now there was the question.
Who?
“It’s a letter to a lover, I gather?”

She tossed her head. “Of course not!” Then she bit her lip. “Well—I suppose you would say…”

“I had a suspicion you weren’t writing to tell your old governess about your betrothal. I think you’d better tell me all about this plan of yours, Miss Fletcher.”

“What is there to tell?” She had turned delightfully pink. “It’s a
letter
, that’s all.”

“If it’s so ordinary, send it by the mail coach.”

She looked him over as if she’d like to build a fire and turn him on a spit. Then she sighed and went over to her horse. From a saddlebag she took a folded page. “I need for you to hand this letter to…” Her voice dropped. “Captain Hopkins. Jason Hopkins. You must put this into his hands—and only his.”

Now Lucien knew what she’d sound like if she whispered nonsense into a man’s ear—because that order was just as lacking in wit as any feminine chatter he’d ever half-listened to. “Just as a matter of curiosity—because I haven’t officially agreed to be your errand boy, Miss Fletcher—I don’t suppose you’ve thought far enough ahead to tell me where I might find this paragon of the British Army?”

“Of course I have. He’s in the infantry, and his regiment is stationed now at Peterborough.”

At least a couple of hours’ ride, Lucien calculated. And then he would have to turn straight about and ride back. Of course, that assumed the captain was to be found in his quarters or nearby. If he happened to be off on maneuvers or delivering messages for some colonel, it might take days to run him down.

“It won’t work,” he said. “I can’t just disappear from the castle for the better part of a day. Everyone will ask uncomfortable questions about where I went and why.”

He thought for a moment she was going to cry, but Chloe Fletcher was made of sterner stuff than he’d expected. “How difficult can it possibly be for you to go for a long ride? All a gentleman must do to excuse himself is to announce that you need relief from your family’s constant company. Or you can make up a story. In fact, if you weren’t hen-hearted, you could simply go and make no explanation at all.”

Lucien’s jaw set hard. “Hen-hearted, am I?”

“It appears so. No wonder your father gives you no respect, if you never stand up to him!”

“You and my father have discussed this?” The polite edge to his voice could have peeled an apple.

“I’ve never discussed anything of the sort with him. We’ve barely exchanged words.”

“Then I hardly think you an expert on the subject of my dealings with my father.”

“But your sisters’ feelings on the matter are not difficult to read, and they coincide with my own observations.”

She was damnably slow to take a hint, Lucien noticed irritably. He nodded toward the folded page in her hand. “What is in this letter?”

“None of your business.”

“It is if I’m to be carrying it. Tell me, or I won’t help you.”

Chloe tilted her head to one side and narrowed her eyes. “Deliver it to Captain Hopkins,” she countered, “or I’ll do nothing more to stop the wedding. So what about it, Lord Hartford?—for it’s entirely up to you. Would you rather be my messenger this once, or my stepson forever?”

I
sabel didn’t come down to breakfast until late, but she was surprised to find the room crowded. Even the duke was in evidence; Isabel exclaimed in delight to see Uncle Josiah downstairs, with more healthy color in his face than she had seen since their arrival.

“Coming down to breakfast is nothing to make a fuss over,” he grumbled.

“He’s been growling at all of us,” Emily put in. “But I think he looks pleased nonetheless that we’re attempting to coddle him.”

Isabel noticed her sister’s full plate and helped herself to a sizeable pile of shirred eggs. She was considering the relative attractions of beef or ham when she realized that her husband was regarding her thoughtfully down the length of the sideboard, and she almost dropped the serving fork.

She felt her cheeks go as hot as the flame under the chafing dishes as she recalled their uninhibited behavior last night. It all felt like a dream now. Had she really shrieked as she took pleasure in what he was doing to her?—and then, afraid that the household would hear, bitten down hard on her hand to keep from shrieking again? Worse, she was very much afraid that at one point she had been so lost to good sense that she had begged…and then after he had finally done with her, she had tumbled into sleep so suddenly and so deeply that she didn’t even know when he had left her bed.