A Season to Be Sinful (35 page)

He whispered against her ear, tickling her with his warm breath so that she actually shivered. We will also play the following day.

If you like.

And the day after that.

I did not realize your blood ran so hot for the game. She squealed as his teeth sank into her earlobe. Yes, Sherry, I am not leaving you. I will stay as long as you will have me, and I hope you will not regret pressing me to that rash promise.

J will not, he said, lifting his head so he could see her face. It was bathed in candlelight, no longer pale beneath a gold and orange glow but radiant in a way that made her appear the source of the light. Will you regret it?

No. I have never made regret my companion.

He believed her. It seemed to him that she could not have survived had it been otherwise. Will you allow me to spend the night?

She slipped her arms around his neck and began to draw him down to the bed. You misjudge my intent, my lord. I will not allow you to leave.

Lady Rivendale thwacked the crown of her soft-boiled egg loudly enough to secure her godsons attention. Did you not sleep well last night, Sherry?

Shaken, Sherry rattled the paper in his hand a bit, and he lowered it the few degrees necessary to view her across the length of the table. I did, he said. Why do you ask, Aunt?

Her ladyship carefully peeled back a bit of crushed shell and discarded it. Am I mistaken, then, and you have not been yawning behind that paper?

Perhaps once.

Four times by my count. Your jaw cracks.

Sighing, Sherry set his paper aside and picked up his fork. Is there nothing that passes your notice?

Still attending to her egg, Lady Rivendale shrugged. Something tried once, but I tripped it and wrestled it to the ground.

Sherrys shout of laughter brought his godmothers head up sharply.

Really, Sherry, you might cause me a fit of apoplexy when you bark like that.

Feigning contriteness, he reined in his laughter. Forgive me. He speared a slice of tomato and brought it to his mouth. Is there something you wish to discuss?

I wondered if you had spoken to Miss Rose.

I did. He glanced at the footman at the sideboard, then at the maid hovering near the fireplace. He dismissed them both and gestured to the footman to close the door. Once privacy was assured, he said, There is no part of Miss Roses past that can be talked about with others present.

Oh, surely you are She stopped, having been accosted by the full force of Sherrys implacable stare. As you wish.

I do wish. In fact, I must insist. It is a condition of beginning any discussion at all with you.

Really, Sherry, I am not insensible that you require my discretion. If I thought it were otherwise, I would have upbraided you in front of the servants for returning to your room at the unseemly hour of daybreak. I might have even mentioned I saw you wearing the same clothes you were wearing yesterday.

Sherry thought he should check himself for bruises, for he was certain he had just been tripped and wrestled to the ground. He did not ask her how she had seen him. This was no conversation he wished to have with a woman who knew him since he was in short pants.

That you can be discreet will never be called to question again, he said dryly. Setting down his fork, Sherry picked up his cup of coffee and allowed the heady aroma to finish the job of waking him. He looked over the rim of the cup and saw he had his godmothers full attention.

He began to speak.

Lady Rivendale did not interrupt his discourse with many questions. Those she asked brought him back to a salient point he had neglected to mention and kept him fixed on the most important aspects of Lilys story.

At the end, her egg was stone cold and almost as hard. Shed eaten a few bites of toast, a slice of tomato, and nothing at all of her porridge. Throughout Sherrys recitation her features had remained composed while her complexion had been gradually drained of color.

I believe I will have my coffee now, she said as he began to refill his own cup. And a touch of that whisky you keep in the sideboard, if you dont mind.

Sherry did not raise an eyebrow. He went to the sideboard, removed the decanter, and served his godmother her coffee exactly the way she wanted it.

It is something more than I expected to hear. There was a faint tremor to her hands as she raised the cup to her lips. She knows you have told me the whole of it?

I havent told you the whole of it, Aunt. Sherry returned to his seat. I doubt that shes told me everything. But, yes, she agreed that I should tell you whatever I believed was of import. She is afraid of you.

Afraid? Of me? That is a ridiculous notion.

No, he said. Its not. No one has ever recognized her connection to the Sterlings before. She understood better than I how reentering society, even one so small as mine is here at Granville, might bring about just this end.

It was like seeing a ghost, Sherry. You cannot appreciate how closely she resembles her mother. There is little enough of her father there, except perhaps for the color of her eyes, but she is Lillian in every other way. Her fathers people were from Warwickshire. You know that is not such a great distance. While she has no one left on that side of the family, it is not outside all possibility that someone might eventually be struck as I was by her looks. Lillian was a great favorite there, and she and Howard were married in the church at Middlestoke.

You are speaking of something that occurred more than a score of years ago.

And it is indecent of you to point it out. / recall it well enough.

I beg your pardon.

Lady Rivendale waved aside his wry apology. Who is he, Sherry? I should very much like to know that.

As I would. He noted her surprise. Did you think I knew? She wont tell me. I have stored every piece of information that she thought inconsequential enough to permit me to have, but I have only a list of possibilities.

Her ladyship was thoughtful. She is afraid you will do something impulsive.

She is afraid I will do something. I believe she knows me well enough to understand I will not be reckless.

You frighten me also, Sherry, when you speak that way.

There was nothing he could say to that. Her feelings were her own.

What are your intentions? she asked.

You do not want to know.

The look she gave him was a shade pointed and a bit rueful. I was not speaking of your intentions toward him. I can divine those well enough. I was inquiring about your intentions toward Miss Rose.

I love her.

Lady Rivendale rolled her eyes. Do you think I am in my dotage? On my first afternoon here I witnessed how besotted you were. However, it is good to know that you have arrived at last at a calmer place.

It does not feel calmer.

Her smile was knowing. No, perhaps not quite yet. She sipped her coffee. You have not really answered my question. You cannot present her to society, Sherry, and I cannot like it that you would keep her as your mistress.

This is something I should discuss with Miss Rose first.

Sighing dramatically, Lady Rivendale agreed. I hope you will do so quickly, Sherry. I cannot abide being kept in the dark.

Pinch nudged Dash with his elbow, then jerked his chin in Lilys direction. He winked. Dash, in turn, did the same to Midge. That young worthy glanced up from his sums, regarded Lily for a moment, then turned to his friends and wiggled his eyebrows. This gesture signified he understood the import of what he was seeing.

All three boys bent their heads and continued their work, satisfying themselves with only the occasional sly glance in the direction of their teacher.

Lily was oblivious. She stood at the window, one shoulder resting against the corner niche it was set into, and stared out across the terraced gardens and expanse of lake. From the schoolroom, it was an angled view, but the perspective gave her an appreciation for the vastness of the park and the ribbon of road that first appeared miles in the distance.

She saw these things, but they were not what held her attention. Rather, she saw herself as she had been last night, lying across the bed, abandoned in her pose for him, one leg raised and an arm flung wide, his hands under her bottom, fingertips pressing, lifting, and his mouthhis beautiful mouthjoined to her at her thighs. This was not something that had ever been done to her before. All aspects of a womans pleasure were new to her, but this, this manner of lovemaking had been outside her imagining.

His humid breath had made her moist; his tongue had made her wet. He drew out such pleasure in her that shed screamed, and afterward, when shed buried her face in a pillow, too embarrassed to look at him, hed teased her from her hiding place with his hands and fingers and lips and made her come again. This time hed swallowed her cries, covering her mouth with his, accepting her pleasure as though it were a gift from her to him.

He made her forget there had been anyone before him, that she had been naught but a vessel for the dirty pleasures of another. In a way she could barely comprehend, yet knew it to be true, he made her clean again.

They had slept very little. Twice shed dozed and found herself being wakened on the brink of pleasures release, once because hed initiated their love play and once because she had.

He had invited her to touch him. She knew a mans body for what it could force on her, but Sherry asked that she learn it in a different way. Some things were already understood. He had a sensitive spot at the curve of his neck and shoulder that made him respond agreeably to the touch of her lips. His abdomen retracted when she let her fingertips glide across his skin from rib cage to groin. There was a peculiar rumbling sound that he made at the back of his throat each time her hand slid along the sensitive skin of his inner thigh.

What she had discovered last evening was how his body could make her so powerfully aware of her own. She lay beside him, the soft underside of her elbow curved against his waist, and was struck by the neat fit of arc and plane. Turning on her side, she drew up her knee and rested it on his thigh. Her belly was pressed flat to his hip, and the contour was so perfectly aligned that she did not so much as move later as peel herself away.

His hands formed a cup that held the full roundness of her breasts, and his thumbs were precisely positioned to sweep over the budding nipples. The sole of her foot could be arched the exact degree necessary to slide along the length of his calf as though joined to it. Where he was an angle, she was a curve. Where his body thrust, hers yielded.

She delighted in differences of texture: the crispness of the dark arrow of hair below his navel, the softness of the mat on his chest. At the nape of his neck, short strands the color of bittersweet chocolate wound easily around her fingertips. The puckered scar on his hip was surrounded by skin as soft as a babys bottom.

His belly was hard; his erection was harder. Her hand curved around him, ran the length of him. She cupped him and heard his deep, throaty response that was more growl than rumble. Even that seemed sweetly synchronous with the purr she harbored at the back of her own throat.

She had explored him with her hands, her fingertips, and finally her mouth. Afraid of his rejection, remembering all too well how he had thrust her from him in disgust once before, she had been cautious in these first intimate explorations.

In the end, it was yet another way he invited her to learn about him. She tested his patience, his tolerance for carnal frustration, his ability to stay inside his skin when she was bent on releasing him from it. She learned what he wanted, and more important. she learned what she was willing to give.

Standing at the window, Lily felt a small shiver slip along her spine. Hugging herself, she glanced back at the boys. Their heads were bent, each one of them working diligently on the tasks shed set for them. Mayhap too diligently. She suspected that shed almost caught them out at some bit of mischief.

Do you need help? she asked. When they shook their heads simultaneously and did not look up, her suspicions were confirmed. You are fortunate indeed that I am of so fine a temperament this morning. Turning back to the window, Lily did not chastise them when they giggled.

They must know her attention was not on their lessons this morning. How could it be? she wondered. Sherry had promised he would seek her out sometime today, and he had left no doubt about his purpose for doing so. It was unfair of him to plant that seed in her mind. She could still feel his hands on her breasts, the weight of his body on hers. Between her thighs there was a fullness, a sense that he was yet joined to her there, and the line of her mouth was still swollen from the pressure of his kisses. It was not difficult, then, to imagine the manner in which he might come upon her later, just as it was impossible to turn it from her mind.

Midge poked Dash and rolled his eyes toward the open doorway. Dash nodded and nudged Pinch under the table, making the same gesture with his eyes. Carefully swiveling his head to one side, Pinch saw that it was Sheridan on the threshold.

Sherry actually gave a small start when the scoundrels winked at him. Impudent rascals, every one of them, and too clever by half. He placed his index finger against his lips and secured their cooperation to remain quiet, then began to close the distance to Lilys side. In spite of the fact that his tread was near to soundless, she was turning around before he had covered half the room.