The Secret to Seduction (29 page)

He had taken charge so effortlessly, and his command had been quickly accepted by these men, who seemed to have no difficulty finding a sort of language that involved both bonhomie and deference for Rhys’s rank. Men always bemused her, the sort of effortlessness they found around a manly pastime. She watched her husband confer with Mr. Pike about the construction particulars, but he seemed to grasp the process quickly. He understood form and composition, after all, and his hands were efficient in so many other ways, so graceful and confident.

She dallied a minute over thoughts of those
other
ways in which Rhys’s hands were efficient and skilled and confident. Instantly she forgot about the cold.

He was so certain of himself. Sabrina knew he would feel certain of himself no matter the circumstances. Such were the privileges of his birth.

She wished she could make him understand that she would never be able to share that same certainty. She would only be able to throw the role of countess over her and button it up, like a pelisse. She didn’t know how to be a countess. She knew only how to be herself.

He must be terribly angry with her; since she’d taken his coat from him, he hadn’t glanced at her more than once. And then his blue eyes had flared enigmatically, and returned to the job at hand as if she’d been naught but a tree or a fence post.

Several hours later, a gratified cheer went up when the new sail was lifted up to the new windshaft and tested. It caught the wind beautifully, and the sails spun round and round.

They stopped it, as they wouldn’t be grinding today, and Mr. Pike made certain it was in the position that put the least strain on the sails, the Saint Andrew’s cross.

Rhys grinned and swiped the back of his hand against his brow. His hair, soaked through with sweat despite the chill, clung where he’d pushed it. They’d all worked hard.

“Can I offer ye some cider, the countess and yerself?” Mr. Pike seemed loath to relinquish the company of the earl.

“My thanks, Mr. Pike, but I best take the countess home.” Rhys spared Sabrina a glance then. There was nothing of reassurance in it.

“I thank you for your help, then, Lord Rawden. Will we see you atop Margo Bunfield’s roof?”

Rhys merely laughed. A noncommittal laugh.

And then he stood back with all of them and admired their collective handiwork one more time.

Rhys had watched in silence as Sabrina exchanged farewells with the men, and then he’d lifted her up into the saddle in silence, and nudged Gallegos forward. And he’d been silent the entire journey.

This was when Sabrina decided it was safe to assume that he was very angry. Either that or he was rehearsing the speech to end all speeches, and now that they’d returned to La Montagne, she was about to be the fortunate recipient of it.

“In here,” he said to her curtly when they returned to La Montagne. He motioned her with his chin into the library.

He didn’t invite her to sit once they were in the library.

“You like this room, don’t you?” he asked without preamble.

She studied him, found no clues in his face. “Yes,” she answered carefully.

“Why?”

“Why?” she repeated innocently, to give herself time to decide what he meant.

“Yes. That’s what I asked.
Why
do you like this room, Sabrina?”

“It’s unpre—” She stopped herself just in time from saying the word “unpretentious” as she saw his face darken. “It’s cozy. There are books here. I love books.”

He inhaled deeply, exhaled just as deeply. “You were about to say it was unpretentious.”

She refused to confirm or deny this, which of course was tantamount to confirming it.

“Sabrina…,” he began, his voice heavy with patience. “You’re a countess now. You will be a countess until the day you die. This house belongs to you, whether you like it or not, and you’ll be happier if you learn to like it. And I must insist that you
behave like a countess.
Surely you understand that countesses do not climb about on roofs.”

Of course she understood his point. Still, all of his “insisting” was rousing her stubborn streak. “You said we should live our lives as we wish.”

He shook his head roughly. “So sayeth the lawyer in you. Nevertheless, I’m afraid you cannot climb on roofs and confer with a miller like a
hired worker,
Sabrina.” His voice had risen a little; he paused to take a deep breath and lowered it. “In fact, this may come as a shock to you, but some women actually consider it an advantage to marry a wealthy earl, precisely
because
they’ll never have to labor again.” He said it ironically.

The absurdity of having to explain this struck both him and her at the same time, along with a slight sense of futility.

And there was a quiet.

And in the quiet Sabrina’s senses rallied, and she could smell him: his linen, the tang of something clean, with that tart edge like lime, a little sweat: he was still warm from his labor at the windmill. And perhaps from exasperation.

“And you could have been
hurt,
Sabrina. On the roof, on that ladder . . .” He trailed off.

She was inordinately pleased that her husband didn’t rejoice in the idea of her plummeting to her death.

“I have marvelous balance,” she reassured him. An attempt at a jest.

He made an impatient sound. “There must be other ways to help, Sabrina, that don’t compromise my family dignity or your life or give the village men an opportunity to peek up your skirts.”

Her mouth dropped open. “They wouldn’t!”

“They’re
men.
” He was thoroughly exasperated now. “And I wouldn’t blame them in the least. But then I’d have to shoot the lot of them, and
then
who on earth would grind the grain at Buckstead Heath?” He had given full rein to his sarcasm now; he was half enjoying himself, but he was fully angry. And just a little despairing.

And then Sabrina realized: his pride was again wounded. Everything here at La Montagne was something he had earned, won hard, unlike so many others of his station who had been born to it and never lost it. His own recklessness may have saddled him with a wife he hadn’t asked for, but now that he had her, he wanted to give her these things, too. Wanted her to appreciate them, to take pride in who she now was: a Gillray, and Rawden.

“It’s just . . .” She stopped. “I’ve so little to do, Rhys.”

“
Do?
”

“Do! I was ever busy at the vicarage. I felt needed. I…my days were full. And now . . .”

Rhys took this in silently.

Well, his days were full, too. With beauty and smoke and music and liquor and clever, bored people and expensive things and outrageous pastimes. He had plenty to “do.”

Being sarcastic in his thoughts was becoming quite a habit.

“You enjoyed yourself today,” she said suddenly, when he said nothing.

She was doing it again. Those sudden observations of hers stung like shrapnel. Surprised, he carefully answered: “Yes.”

“They enjoyed seeing you, Rhys. They’re your people. They’re good people.”

“Perhaps. But I can tell you that I don’t intend to make a habit of laboring, because, quite simply, I no longer need to. And I am telling you now, Sabrina, that
you shall not,
either.”

He’d issued an order.

Silence. He saw rebellion flicker over her face.

And yet…it did make her genuinely happy, he understood. Helping. It was her nature, at the very core of her.

She sighed her acceptance. “I’m sorry,” she said faintly, at last. “I just—”

“I know. Wanted to help. Can you find another way to help that doesn’t involve climbing on roofs, or giving away parts of the house?”

She smiled a little. “Yes, very likely, I can.”

She was ever apologizing, Rhys thought. And they were ever frustrated with each other. Two people never meant to be together, now linked for life.

His lovely, hopeless, stubborn, inconvenient wife. Lashes thick and dusky over those green eyes lit with her smile. The soft, soft mouth, pink as—

Well, he
was
a poet. Or had been. He should be able to think of some metaphor for her mouth. Except, at the moment, he could not.

Instead, on impulse, he took her hand in his, gently turned it palm side up, rubbed his thumb over it. A pretty hand, the fingers long and straight and slim, the nails short. But the palms weren’t satiny smooth. They weren’t tended hands. They’d been used a bit.

“Not the hand of a fragile woman,” he murmured.

“No,” she agreed softly, after a moment. The word a distracted-sounding little syllable.

And there was a silence. And as the silence stretched, it seemed to gather a charge.

He’d only meant to hold her hand, touch her, let it go. But he gazed down at her, and his thumb continued to move slowly over the mounds of her palm, tracing a feathery pattern. As if this were the map to Sabrina.

And what had begun almost absently became, as it did every time he touched her…intent.

As he watched the warm color rise in her cheeks, that nearly irrational want surged in him. Dear God. And he’d only
touched her hand.

He lifted her palm up to his lips and pressed a lingering, hot kiss in the center of it. Sabrina’s breath was shorter now, softly audible, her dusky-lashed lids growing heavier.

And then Rhys drew one of those slim fingers into his mouth, and gently sucked.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and stayed closed. “Oh.” It was a surprised, cracked whisper. All pleasure.

And he was hard, just like that, and he needed to take her
now.

Rhys moved his mouth farther down her wrist, his hand gliding below it. His thumb found her speeding pulse, and he pressed his lips there, the silky skin a tantalizing reminder of how silky the rest of her was, and he lingered there long enough to watch the gooseflesh stand the little golden hairs of her arm on end.

And then his mouth moved to land hard on hers, and she met him hungrily, stretching her arms up to wrap around his head, her mouth open and hot and sweet, taking his plunging tongue and twining it with her own. He pulled her tightly against his body, and lifted his mouth from hers briefly.

“Sabrina—too many clothes—” God, he could barely speak. He was choked with desire.

His hands fumbled desperately at her pelisse, her skirts, found practical woolen drawers; he swore colorfully and dragged them down, mercifully finding, at last, cool smooth skin, and his hands were on her thighs, stroking up them. She gasped her approval, and her fingers scrabbled at his trouser buttons. Together, half laughing, they worked to quickly free him, and when at last he sprang, painfully hard, into her hand, he swore softly with pleasure.

“Like this,” he said roughly, his voice a rasp. He turned her abruptly so that the wall braced her back, and he pushed his knee between her legs, lifting her smooth thigh in one hand, his other hand searching, testing the damp curls between her legs, and he found her as ready for him as he was for her. And this time she helped him guide himself in, gasping when he was seated.

Oh, God.

His hips took over instantly, plunging into her snug heat again and then again and again and…
so good.
He heard her frayed breathing in his ear as her arms went around him tightly, clasping behind his neck, her hips arching upward to meet his, and his mouth landed on hers again, his tongue imitating his swift deep thrusts.

His hand dragged down over to close hard over one breast, and she gasped, jerked her lips from his, hoarsely said his name.
“Rhys…yes . . .”

Again and again he drove into her, until the bliss was a white light exploding in his head, and he saw Sabrina throw her head back, the cords of her neck tense. Just in time he covered her mouth with his hand, gently, and she hoarsely sang out her release into his palm as his own tore through him. He buried his face against her throat, gasping, as his body convulsed from it.

Unthinkably good. Terrifyingly good.

He’d written a book on the art of seduction, a book composed of one feverishly, precisely chosen word after another, the process, in a way, a metaphor for the way he’d conducted all of his seductions.

And yet he’d just taken his countess against the wall in the library as though he’d had no choice at all in the matter, while one of his ancestors beamed down enigmatically from a mahogany frame. Looking smugly pleased. They were everywhere, those smugly pleased ancestors. Rhys glanced over at the clock.

Seven whole minutes had passed.

His lean, young, virile body felt as limp as a cotton rag.

“You
do
have marvelous balance,” he murmured at last, with some surprise.

Her laugh was muffled against his shirt. A wonderful sound, her laugh.

He didn’t understand this. It unnerved him. And so he didn’t speak, just held her quietly, spent, but still gently sheathed in her. They were both too worn to move just yet. He took the moment to breathe her in. The spice and lavender and female musk at the nape of her neck. The scent that said “Sabrina” to him now.

The clock chimed, a sound like fairies tapping a bell with tiny mallets. What a lot of bloody clocks there were at La Montagne.