The Secret to Seduction (12 page)

“Thank you, Lord Rawden,” she said quietly.

He merely nodded curtly. “And I should like to personally inform Geoffrey of my decision to do so, Miss Fairleigh, when and if I reach it. So if you would be so kind as to not speak of it to him until then?”

“As you wish. You’ve my word.”

The earl said nothing more. A moment later he seemed to have forgotten her. He wandered farther down the gallery, and appeared to lapse into a reverie before a portrait of a woman in a dress featuring an enormous bustle, a narrow-faced dog cavorting at her side.

Sabrina turned to leave.

“Yemen,” he said suddenly.

She paused, and turned slowly back to him.

“Yem—? Oh! It’s the…it’s the rhyme for lemon, isn’t it?” She smiled a little.

He turned to face her again. “One of the world’s oldest countries,” he said gravely.

“Part of the Ottoman Empire.”

“Ah, so you
do
read English well enough, Miss Fairleigh.” And then he smiled at her, an open smile. Genuinely, simply pleased.

Sabrina laughed, feeling a peculiar, breathless rush of delight.

The earl turned abruptly away from her then. Almost as if the sight of her bright face troubled him.

A little stung, she hovered a moment more in the gallery, uncertain.

And when his silence made it clear that he’d finished with her, she quickly left him, listening to her own footsteps echoing across the gallery. She wasn’t precisely fleeing. But she knew relief to be away from his restless games and daunting mind and the charm he seemed to ration—perhaps because it was so very, very potent.

Late that evening, after billiards and before he retired, Rhys made his way into the library and examined the shelves carefully. Mrs. Bailey and her staff were exemplary, but they were no match for a very observant earl. He could see by the slim line of dust remaining on the shelf between the books—it was a place that no amount of staff could ever hope to keep completely spotless at all times—that the volume of Greek myths had been disturbed ever so slightly. Pulled from its place and read and replaced again, no doubt, by a girl from Tinbury with misguided notions about her even temperament and practical ambitions.

She all but left a trail of clues for him. She had no idea that poetry and passion lived in her soul, or how open she left herself to sensual gambits because of it.

She would know in a day or so.

She was cleverer than he preferred her to be. She had an unnervingly direct gaze, when it was more fashionable for a woman to look sideways through lowered lashes, or cast eyes modestly down. Her view of the world was uncluttered by cynicism but clouded by naïveté. She didn’t know any better, he supposed, than to look a man in the eye and deliver stripping truths.

She’d managed against all odds…to surprise him. Again.

And it had been as exhilarating—and about as pleasant—as being pushed off a cliff.

He supposed it was surprise that caused him to offer to speak to Geoffrey about the living at Buckstead Heath. He in truth didn’t at all want his cousin to be consistently underfoot, or anywhere near La Montagne. He didn’t want his cousin formally beholden to him in the least; he’d in fact hoped to see Geoffrey very seldom for the rest of his days.

Surely he couldn’t have considered the idea simply to please Sabrina Fairleigh.

He’d turned to watch her walk away, admiring the elegant line of her body, the curves of her. Achingly pretty was Sabrina Fairleigh. But then, so were so many other women.

Having Geoffrey underfoot might very well mean having Sabrina Fairleigh underfoot as well, if Geoffrey did the honorable thing and married the girl he’d kissed. Rhys’s mouth quirked grimly. Then again, the Gillrays made rather a habit of avoiding the honorable thing. He reminded himself that he’d made no promises to anyone. He didn’t particularly need to speak to Geoffrey about anything at all when this house party ended.

He glanced down at the book in his hand. Below the shelf where Miss Fairleigh had plucked the volume of Greek myths was the shelf where the poetry resided.

He slid out the volume of Byron, and replaced it with a book bound in somber green leather:
The Secret to Seduction.

Usually Sabrina slid into slumber’s arms effortlessly, as the work of the day thoroughly spent her. When sleep eluded her—as it occasionally did, if the weather was restless—she would lie awake and dream about the future, or wonder about her mother; soon after Geoffrey had appeared in Tinbury, she’d sometimes dared to imagine a future including Geoffrey.

But tonight, rich food, too much leisure, and a controversial earl contrived to prevent her from sleeping, and she found herself wrestling with her blankets as she tossed and turned. At last Sabrina stilled, surrendering to one particular thought, and lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

She drew her hand out from beneath the blankets and lifted it up before her in the dark, studying it, turning it slowly this way and that.

And then hesitantly, lightly, slowly, she dragged the fingers of her other hand from the center of her palm, down the silky skin beneath her forearm, then turned them round to brush them up against the short hairs of her arm. She listened to her body as she did it, and felt her own touch echoing in her—a whisper of sensation at her spine, at the nape of her neck, at the crook of her legs—as though something in her had been gently awakened.

And like most things when just awakened…it had an appetite. Wanted more.

Why do you suppose a woman’s skin is so soft…so very, very soft…if it isn’t meant to…tempt?

And then she imagined other fingers on her skin, long, confident fingers, lightly, slowly tracing the very same path.

The thought of him, just the thought of him, was a bolt of lightning at the base of her spine. A conflagration of sensation swept through and stole her breath on its way.

Stunning. It was as though every part of her had leaped to heed a call it had been waiting for.

And if we aren’t meant to take pleasure in our own skin, Miss Fairleigh, why then can so very much pleasure be had from touching it…and from being touched?

She thrust her hand beneath her blankets again. Curled it into a fist.

There were other ways of being, she knew, just as there were other lands besides England, and one couldn’t experience all of them. Not every threshold was meant to be crossed, or every curiosity indulged.

And she did have a strong will. And so she willed her thoughts in other, more familiar directions, and they became more soothing. She drifted to sleep on thoughts of her future at Geoffrey’s side, the vicar’s wife at Buckstead Heath.

But in dreams will has no jurisdiction. And so she dreamed of another man entirely.

CHAPTER NINE

T
HE NEXT MORNING Sabrina awoke with a grinding headache, a result of too much food and more wine than she was accustomed to, and perhaps too much opera singing; perhaps those grand notes were still ricocheting about in her head. It was the sort of headache that made her stomach roil, and when the maid came in to build the fire, shuffling and clanking things, Sabrina turned her face into her pillow to stifle a groan of pain. She wondered if this was how debauchers felt every morning, and wondered why they bothered with debauchery, if this was the case.

She staggered out of bed and peered out the curtains, but even the flat winter light stabbed through her eye into her skull. She didn’t like the looks of the sky. It looked full and resentful. Portentous.

The sky looked full and resentful? It was just the sort of impression that would have worried her father.

“Sabrina, why aren’t you—”

It was Mary, who had burst in to find Sabrina in her night rail, clutching the window frame.

“Speak softly, Mary,” Sabrina croaked. “I’ve a bad head.”

“Oh, dear!” Mary whispered worriedly. She approached Sabrina tentatively, as though the bad head might be contagious, and placed the back of her hand against Sabrina’s forehead.

“Well, you aren’t feverish,” she said briskly. “But do you think you can travel?”

“I am sorry, Mary, but I really don’t believe a carriage ride over rutted roads . . .” She closed her eyes, picturing it. And picturing it brought a fresh thump of pain and started a swirl of nausea in the pit of her stomach.

“Geoffrey and the Colberts will be so disappointed,” Mary said wistfully.

And then Sabrina recalled that a greater disappointment awaited Geoffrey when he returned, which was when she would tell him she’d failed to persuade the earl of his cause.

“You’ll return very soon?” she said to Mary.

“In a day or so. It’s only a few hours by carriage, and the earl has graciously allowed us the use of his. He’s soooo handsome, don’t you think, Sabrina? The earl? It’s difficult to believe he’s so very wicked, because his manners are so fine. Do you suppose Miss Licari and he…last night . . .” Mary whispered it.

“
Unnnnh
. . .” Sabrina moaned and put the flat of her own mercifully cool hands on her temples. She didn’t want to think of it.

“All right, all right,” Mary said gently, but she was clearly a bit disappointed they weren’t to have a bit of a gossip. “I’ll ask Mrs. Bailey to send up tea and a headache powder. I shall miss you, but I shall refrain from giving you a hug at the moment, as you look as though you might cast your accounts upon me.”

“My thanks,” Sabrina said wryly. “But, Mary, do be careful. I don’t like the look of the sky.”

Mary sighed. “Oh, Sabrina.” She said it almost pityingly. “Everything will be all right, and it’s
not an omen.
The earl will eventually need to do
something
to ensure a place in Heaven, and why shouldn’t the funding of Geoffrey’s venture be it?”

Ah, Mary. The optimist. Sabrina didn’t enlighten Mary about last night’s conversation, because it would only prolong the one she was having now.

“Let’s get you back into bed, now. I shall see you in a few days.”

And so Sabrina was settled back into her bed, and Mary turned the pillow so that the cool side would cradle Sabrina’s tender head.

Sometime later the solemn housekeeper brought in chocolate and a headache powder. Sabrina drifted into dreams that were astonishingly vivid, if not restful, as the powder took her headache away.

Later, Sabrina remembered the moment the blizzard struck. A clock somewhere in the vast house had chimed three times—could it really be three o’clock?—and shortly after that, a violent wind flung open the windows and roared through the room, dashing up the curtains and knocking over the fireplace poker.

Sabrina leaped out of bed and threw her weight against the window, struggling with the latch. It must have been open just a bit; perhaps the conscientious Mrs. Bailey had decided fresh air would revive Miss Fairleigh.

Once the burst of activity was over, Sabrina realized she was light-headed, no doubt from hunger, but no longer in pain. The headache powder had done its work.

It was cool near the windows, but the fit of them into their frames was gratifyingly snug, and when she held her hand up against the frame, she felt no breeze.

But a howling wind had filled the sky with a violent swirl of snow, and she could see nothing of the grounds. She pulled the heavy brocade curtains snugly closed, anyway, and wandered to the fire, snatching up her shawl on the way, to heat herself before it.

Part of her was a bit pleased she’d been correct: a blizzard! Early! The squirrels had it right all along.

Then she realized that she was alone in the house with the earl, and Mr. Wyndham, and Signora Licari.

Nausea of a sort returned again at the thought.

She prayed Mary and the others had arrived at the Colberts’ safely. They had left so very early this morning, and the Colberts were but a few miles away. In all likelihood they were now ensconced before a fire, chocolate in hands, chatting pleasantly.

Chocolate.
She was definitely feeling more herself if chocolate made her stomach growl.

It sounded like a splendid idea. Sabrina eyed the bell that would call for a servant, and wondered if she dared give it a pull. It seemed she hardly had the right. And yet the earl employed a battery of servants for this very reason, and Sabrina hated to think that one of them might be bored.

She gave the bell a pull.

But now another realization settled in: because of the blizzard, it was a certainty that it would be days before Mary and Geoffrey returned.

In moments, it seemed, Mrs. Bailey appeared.

She was carrying with her a tray topped with a pot that steamed a cocoa smell, and laid about it were lovely golden slices—bread and cheese, no doubt.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bailey. You are truly . . .”

She didn’t finish the compliment, as Mrs. Bailey fixed her with a mildly reproving look, as if to say she was already fully aware that she was a marvel, and found compliments condescending. She was only doing her job.

“Thank you,” Sabrina finished shyly.

“You are feeling more like yourself, Miss Fairleigh?”

No
was the answer to that question.