Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase
He had no idea how much she was concealing. Lust was but a fraction of it.
She lifted her chin. “That was before,” she said. “I experienced a momentary, aberrant emotion—”
“We shall see about that,” he said.
No, we shall not, she answered silently. In only two days she had let herself become too attached. He could easily become a habit. If she was to have a prayer of extricating herself, she must start now. She would be unhappy, yes, but she’d been a fool to imagine she and Olivia could ever be happy in England.
Where could she go that wasn’t haunted by the ghosts of her history?
He halted the carriage, and a pair of stable men stepped out into the well-lit yard.
“The Swan is far from fashionable,” Rathbourne said in a low voice as he helped her alight. “We shall be the only patrons here who are not commercial travelers. An ideal situation for us. A number of my elderly relatives reside in Bath, and a great many others visit from time to time. Regrettably, none are decrepit enough not to recognize me.”
Relatives, everywhere, she thought. Political allies and foes, everywhere. Every moment he spent with her put him at risk.
He ushered her inside.
While not as elegant as the inn in Reading, the Swan was by no means shabby or cramped. A neatly attired maid bobbed a quick curtsey before promising to summon the innkeeper.
“It may well be cleaner, drier, and better run than the fashionable establishments,” Rathbourne said. “Yet no one with any pretensions to fashion would dream of coming here. They would not wish to risk rubbing shoulders with tradesmen—if, that is, they know of its existence. But we are well out on the Bristol Road at the edge of town. I learnt my lesson, you see, in Reading.”
Bathsheba had learnt a great deal since then.
She had been unsure what to do until he confided in her about his wife.
Lord Perfect was not infallible. When he’d wed, he’d made an error of judgment that could have ruined forever his chances of finding true happiness.
She would not be another, worse error of judgment.
He would not see it that way, of course. Rathbourne was used to deciding and commanding and taking responsibility. He was chivalrous as well as imperious.
He would never let her act as she knew she must do.
The innkeeper approached and, as Rathbourne had predicted, proved a gracious host.
Yes, he had a suitable room for Mr. and Mrs. Dashwood. He would have the fire built up, to take off the damp. Perhaps the lady and gentleman would like to adjourn to a private dining parlor for refreshment meanwhile?
At that instant she saw the solution to her difficulty.
“I should like that very much,” she said. She looked up at Rathbourne. “I am famished—and perishing of thirst.”
BENEDICT HAD NOT meant the meal to go on for so long. He had meant to get her naked as soon as possible.
She distracted him, though, with stories about her life with her vagabond parents. At first he was vastly entertained, for she made their numerous misadventures into farces.
But as the anecdotes flowed, so did the wine. By degrees, as the wine loosened her tongue, the picture she painted of her girlhood grew darker, and he was no longer amused. Again and again he caught himself clenching his fists. Again and again he had to make himself unclench them.
“It is amazing you had any education at all,” he said at one point. “You seem never to have remained in one place long enough or had peace and quiet enough for books and lessons.”
It took all his self-control to keep his voice cool and steady. Her parents were despicable. Her childhood was a scandal. She might as well have lived in an orphanage for all the tender care she received.
“I realized at an early age that I couldn’t count on my parents for my education, academic or moral,” she said with a laugh. “I could always find a quiet corner, and there I would stay with a book. I learnt to make myself invisible. They would forget about me, and I’d be left in peace . . . unless they needed to soften somebody’s head or heart. Then they’d bring me out, all blue-eyed innocence, and enact a touching scene. They found me particularly useful with irate landlords. I hated it, but I learnt not to spoil the scene. Otherwise I’d have to endure copious weeping from my mother and the entire speech from King Lear about ungrateful children from my father.”
She pressed a fist to her forehead and declaimed, “ ‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child, / Than the sea monster.’ ” She lifted her glass and drank.
The method was not dissimilar to that employed by Peregrine’s parents. Still, however misguided, they at least had their son’s best interests at heart. Benedict very much doubted her parents considered anybody’s interests but their own.
He refilled the glass. “So that’s where you learnt your Shakespeare,” he said.
“I studied the bard in self-defense,” she said. “They chose only the bits that suited them. I chose the ones that suited me. They were always acting. Nothing was ever genuine. When they played the loving parents, it was a play.” She smiled at the glass in her hand. “My governess was real, though. My one and only model for proper behavior. Oh, and Jack was real. The genuine article.”
Benedict hoped Jack Wingate had appreciated her as she deserved. If he could not bring her riches, the man should at least have brought her love, devotion, kindness, gratitude. It would be so easy to give her these things.
Easy, that is, for everyone except the Earl of Hargate’s eldest son, who was allowed to do no more than bed her—and then only if he walked away soon after and forgot her.
She tipped her head to one side as though considering. “Perhaps I should not have appreciated my governess and Jack half so much had my previous life been . . . less imperfect.” She shrugged, then lifted the glass and drank.
Benedict drank, too, and ordered more.
Had he been less imperfect, he would not have ordered so much wine. While he was not an abstemious man, he rarely drank to excess.
She, however, was made for excess.
And he was not as free of flaw as he ought to be.
The more she told him, the more he wanted to know about her. This might be his last chance.
Not that intellectual enlightenment was his sole aim.
He was a man, after all, his motives as sordid as any other’s.
If getting her tipsy would quiet whatever qualms she felt about their recent lovemaking and would get her naked more quickly and easily, then he was not quite perfect enough not to order another bottle. And another.
And the stories continued. But as she was mimicking her parents’ rage and horror when they found out that Jack had been disinherited, Benedict became aware of wanting desperately to throw something against the wall. Somebody, actually. Her father as well as Wingate’s.
He told himself they’d had enough to drink, and the night was getting no younger. He wanted her relaxed, he reminded himself. He did not want her unconscious.
“That’s enough, Mrs. Dashwood,” he said, snatching the wineglass from her. He drained the contents and stood. The room tilted slightly. “Time for bed. Important day tomorrow. Decisions.” He set the empty glass down with a thunk.
She smiled the same smile Calypso must have used on Odysseus, to keep the hero ensnared for so many years.
“That is what I like about you, Mr. Dashwood,” she said. “You are so decisive. It saves me all the bother of thinking for myself.”
“That is what I like about you, Mrs. Dashwood,” he said. “You are so sarcastic. It saves me the bother of trying to be tactful and charming.”
She stood. And swayed.
“You’re drunk,” he said. “I knew I should have stopped at the last bottle.”
“I am a DeLucey,” she said. “I can hold my liquor.”
“That’s debatable,” he said. “But I can hold you, at any rate.” He rounded the table and gathered her up in his
As though she belonged there.
“Very well, but only for a moment, while I collect myself,” she said. “Our rooms are on the first floor, remember. If you carry me up the stairs, you could do yourself an injury.”
“I can carry you up a flight of stairs,” he said, “and have plenty of strength remaining for any other little tasks you need performed.”
“Hmmm,” she said. “Let me think of some tasks.”
He carried her out of the room—and nearly trod on Thomas, hovering in the corridor.
“Oh, there you are,” said Benedict. “Mrs. Dashwood is a trifle foxed, and I was worried she might fall into or onto somebody.” Recalling the way she’d so gracefully propelled herself into Constable Humber’s surprised but not unwilling arms, Benedict chuckled.
She nuzzled his neck. “The room,” she said in an undertone. “You promised to put me to bed.”
Ah, yes. To bed. Naked.
“The room,” Benedict said. “Where’s the blasted room?”
IT WAS NOT as large as the inn at Reading, and the bed held only two mattresses rather than three, but it was warm and dry and private. That was all Benedict cared about.
He set Bathsheba down, glanced about, and, seeing nothing out of order—except for the floor’s tendency to roll under his feet—told Thomas to go to bed. She closed the door after the footman, and locked it.
She advanced on Benedict.
“I want you,” she said.
“I told you so,” he said. “But you must natter on about temporary insanity and—”
“Stop talking,” she said. She grasped the lapels of his coat. “I have tasks for you to perform.”
She slid her hand down to the front of his trousers. His rod, already in readiness, sprang to rigid attention.
She smiled the siren’s smile up at him.
He grasped her waist and lifted her up and brought her wicked mouth level with his own. He kissed her, not delicately or seductively, but hotly. She grasped his shoulders and thrust her tongue against his, and the taste of her raced through him, more potent than any intoxicant.
She wriggled upward, her breasts rubbing his chest, and wrapped her legs about his waist. He staggered backward until he came against something solid. He braced himself there while his hands worked through layers of dress and petticoats and clasped her bottom, clad in the thin knitted silk of her drawers.
Still they kissed, deep, demanding kisses that turned him hot then cold then hot again. No enchantress’s brew could be so potent as her passion. She made him mad and reckless and glad to be so.
She worked his neckcloth loose, and undid the shirt buttons and slid her hand inside over his skin, and laid it over his heart, his desperately pumping heart.
She slid her hand lower, over his belly, to the waistband of his trousers, and he was helpless, holding her up, while she pulled the trouser buttons from their buttonholes and brought her hand down over his drawers to his swollen, throbbing cock.
He groaned against her mouth and she broke the kiss.
“Now,” she said. “I can’t wait. Now. Let me down.”
He wanted now, too, and he let her down, let her torture him with a slow easing down over his length.
She pushed him back, toward the bed, and he went, laughing and hot and addled, and fell onto it. She yanked up her skirts, untied her drawers, and let them fall to the floor. She stepped out of them and over them and climbed up onto him.
She tugged his trousers and drawers down to his knees.
He lifted his head and gazed down at himself. It was most undignified. His membrum virile stood up proudly, unconcerned with dignity. “My boots,” he said, laughing. “May I not at least—”
“Keep still,” she said, and straddled him. “Leave this to me.”
He never left anything to women—even this—but she was different and he couldn’t think and didn’t want to think.
Then her soft hand was curling round his rod, sliding up and down, and he thought he would die and knew he’d never last. “You will kill me, Bathsheba,” he said.
“You are killing me,” she said. She pushed herself onto his aching cock, surrounding him with hot, moist flesh . . . and muscles, wicked muscles, pressing against him.
He cried out something, not words but some mad, animal sound. She lifted herself, then pushed down again. She moved slowly at first, sending waves of voluptuous pleasure coursing through him. By degrees the rhythm built, faster, more ferocious.
He watched her beautiful face while she made his body hers. He saw her hunger, the mirror of his own, and her joy, unlike anything he’d ever known before. Harder and faster she rode him, and the joy was in his veins and pumping through his heart. She rode him, wild now, and he was a runaway, racing with her he knew not where and cared not where. They raced to the edge of the world and beyond, and soared for a while, free and joy-filled, then floated down and into sleep.
When he woke in the morning, she was gone.
So, he soon discovered, were his purse and his clothes.
Chapter 14
Throgmorton, Sunday 7 October
BATHSHEBA COULD GUESS WHAT THE BUTLER was thinking.
The name Wingate would not be unfamiliar to him.
The elderly Earl of Mandeville, lord of these domains and head of the DeLucey family, was on speaking terms—although just barely—with the Earl of Fosbury, Jack’s father.
A reasonable person could hardly hold the good DeLuceys responsible for what the dreadful ones did. However, Lord Fosbury had never been reasonable where his favorite son—whom he’d indulged to a shocking degree, and who in repayment had broken his heart—was concerned. In his opinion, Lord Mandeville should have prevented the marriage and arranged for Bathsheba to be taken somewhere far beyond Jack’s reach.
In Lord Mandeville’s opinion, Lord Fosbury was incapable of controlling his son.
Relations between the two families, therefore, were frosty.
Nonetheless, they were on speaking terms, which meant the butler dare not turn away any lady named Wingate . . . even though she had arrived on horseback, with neither maid nor groom in attendance.
Bathsheba might have made up a lie about an accident or some such, but she was aware that members of the upper orders did not explain themselves to anybody, especially servants.
She merely regarded the butler with the same bored-to-death expression she’d seen on Rathbourne’s face at times. She had learnt from her governess how to make that face. Rathbourne, however, had raised it to a form of high art.
Thinking of him caused her a twinge, which she ruthlessly crushed.
“Lord Mandeville is not at home,” the butler said.
“Lord Northwick, then,” she said. Northwick was the earl’s eldest son.
“Lord Northwick is not at home,” the butler said.
“I see,” she said. “Must I name each of the family members by turn, and do you mean to keep me standing upon the step throughout the exercise?”
That made him blink. He begged her pardon. He ushered her inside.
“My business is urgent,” she said crisply. “Are the family all at church, or is there a responsible adult at home to whom I might speak?”
“I shall ascertain whether anyone is at home, madam,” he said.
He led her into a large antechamber and left.
She had paced it for a few minutes when she heard footsteps. She halted and donned Rathbourne’s expression once again.
A young man hurried into the room. He was but a few inches taller than she and much younger—in his early twenties, she guessed. He was good-looking and well dressed, although it was clear he’d put on those fine clothes in great haste. He must have risen very recently. He—or his servant—had neglected to brush his thick brown hair. His eyes were the same intense blue as Olivia’s.
“Mrs. Wingate?” he said. “I am Peter DeLucey. I saw you ride up th
She glanced that way. Then she turned more fully and studied it: a full-length portrait of a naval officer in the style of wig popular early in the previous century. He could have been her father. In a black wig, he might have been
her.
“That can’t be Great-Grandpapa Edmund,” she said. “They burnt all his portraits, I was told.”
When she looked back, the young man was dragging his hand through his hair. “I say,” he said.
“I am Bathsheba Wingate,” she said.
None of the ancestors about her fell out of their frames, and the ceiling did not crash to the floor, which did not open up to admit Beelzebub, who did not try to drag Mr. DeLucey back down into the inferno with him.
But Peter DeLucey looked as though all these things had happened.
Then, “I say,” he managed to get out.
She silenced him with a wave of her hand. “Alas, we have no time for family reminiscences,” she said. “My wicked daughter has run away with Lord Atherton’s heir and sole offspring. She has entangled him in a harebrained scheme to unearth Edmund DeLucey’s treasure, which she believes is buried at the base of Throgmorton’s mausoleum.”
“T-treasure,” he said. “Mauso—”
“I have been chasing them since Friday afternoon,” she cut in impatiently, “but the brats have eluded me. Throgmorton is a large property. There is no predicting how or where they will get in. Once they get in, they will have numerous places to hide.”
“I say,” he said. “I can hardly take it in. Your daughter has eloped with Atherton’s son?”
“He is thirteen,” she said impatiently. “Olivia is twelve. It is not an elopement. They are children. Do attend. I have a plan for catching them, but I must have your help.”
At that moment, she heard from without the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels.
Bathsheba caught her breath. It could not be Rathbourne. He would not find her for hours, if ever. She had made sure of that—and that he’d hate her if and when he did find her.