An Improper Holiday (13 page)
Read An Improper Holiday Online
Authors: K.A. Mitchell
Ian offered his gratitude again and tried to school his face into something appropriate for Nicky’s
family before he tapped on the door.
Lord Carleigh’s deep voice invited him in, but since he addressed Ian as Simmons, Ian simply stuck in
his head. A blast of heat nearly knocked him back a pace.
“Ian, lad, come in.” Lord Carleigh launched himself from his chair and strode over to grip Ian’s hand
and shoulder, shaking both roughly. “Thank you. They told me you and Mr. Lewes pulled him out. That no one else would risk it.”
“Ni—Lord Amherst is the one deserving of praise. If he had not acted, I would have lost a sister.”
“Nonetheless, you have my gratitude. I knew when he first brought you to visit you would be good for
him. Just the sort of sober chap to keep him from getting in over his head.”
Ian looked down at the carpet. He had made up his mind to beg forgiveness from the man so still in
the middle of that big bed, to seize what they could of happiness between them, but Lord Carleigh’s words brought home the audacity of such a decision. They were not beholden to only each other. The bonds of
family were strong.
Lady Anna came around from the other side of the bed. Her greeting was less effusive, but still warm.
“Mr. Stanton, it seems we have made an even exchange, a sister for a brother. Thank you.”
“The praise is undeserved. Anyone would have done as much.”
“Anyone didn’t. Great lot of profligate scoundrels eating us out of house and home.” Lord Carleigh
stomped over to poke at the fire.
“Father…” Lady Anna turned back to Ian. “It has been a terrible strain. Father hates feeling helpless.”
Voice lowered to a whisper, she said, “I think he should rest. And he must have something to eat. Could we impose on you further and ask you to sit with him?” She nodded at the man under the pile of blankets. Her manner suggested she was more troubled than her father. Her hands kept twisting in front of her, and her brow remained furrowed.
“It would be no imposition at all, my lady.”
“Father, Mr. Stanton will stay with Nicholas. You need to take some dinner.”
“I am perfectly well as I am.”
“Of course you are. But a bit of dinner will elevate our spirits.”
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Her managing ways, though couched with a maternal air, reminded Ian of Nicky at his most high-
handed.
“If he wakes, if you need anything at all, just call,” she said as she shut the door behind them.
He had to say that Nicky’s color was much improved, skin back to its warm tones, cheeks and lips
regaining their cherubic pink. After five minutes, Ian was so warm he had to remove his coat, a feat
Simmons’ clever tailoring had made easier to perform for himself. He was definitely letting Timpet go. It would be too heart-wrenching to suffer such a falling off in quality.
After ten minutes, Ian unbuttoned his waistcoat. No wonder Lady Anna had been so eager to vacate
the stifling heat. He swung his chair around, availing himself of the chance to study the patient. Nicky’s breathing was even, and every so often the tip of his tongue flicked between his lips, an activity Ian found so amusing and endearing it made his breath catch each time he witnessed it.
The gold curls were glued to his forehead with sweat, so Ian reached out and brushed them back.
Nicky’s eyes opened. “Come to eulogize the remains?”
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Why are you half-dressed?”
Before Ian could answer, Nicky began shoving at the pile of quilts and blankets heaped on him.
“Christ. Get these bloody things off me before I suffocate.”
Ian helped him but insisted on leaving the last few. “You’ll thank me when the sweat starts to cool.”
“In this room?” Nicky glared at the fire as if it offered a personal affront.
“You were rather chilled.”
“I expect so. The ice broke. And Charlotte went in with it.”
He seemed to be asking Ian for confirmation so he gave it. “Yes.”
“I went after Charlotte and you got her out and then pulled me out with some fur scarf?”
“A tippet of mink. She says it should recover.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve those two extra stones on me.”
“I think rather my arm may never be the same.”
“Stretch out a few inches, did it?”
Ian lifted both his arms out straight. “Lacking a source for comparison it’s hard to say for certain.
Feels as if that might be the case.” He dropped his arms at his sides.
Nicky shivered. “Perhaps one more of the quilts.”
Ian dragged up two and Nicky tucked them around him. “Charlotte is well. She was not in the water
as long as you were. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Nicky returned gravely.
Ian reached up and tugged at his cravat. He wished he dared untie it. At last he looked at Nicky. “You were right. I am an unmitigated ass.”
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“I heard you. In the sledge.”
“I thought you might have done.” For once, Nicky’s expressive features offered Ian no clue about
how to proceed. “Can you forgive me?”
Nicky didn’t speak, so Ian leaned down, pressing a kiss to his lips. They were both slick with sweat,
but Ian didn’t care. Nicky’s lips were warm, alive, and sliding open to the light pressure.
When Ian raised his head, Nicky’s expression was unchanged.
“Is this some wild gesture at a life and death moment? Will your behavior be once again explained
away by an excuse so that on the morrow you will claim duress?”
It was appalling to hear his actions described so, but at the moment, Ian could find no grounds for
disagreement. “No. You were in the right before you nearly died.”
“Comforting to know.”
“But as I am speaking the truth, what you ask—” At Nicky’s frown, Ian clarified, “What we both
want, can’t you see that it fills me with fear?”
“Of course I can. But if we were to ever let fear control us, how could any of us seek happiness, to
touch on the betterment you aspire to?”
“I know Phaedrus had the right of it with his army of lovers. You make me a better man, Nicky. You
make me feel whole.”
Nicky reached out and gripped Ian’s maimed arm, pulling him forward into an embrace. Ian exhaled
into Nicky’s skin. If only it were as easy to bury all cares, all fears and pain. Nicky’s hand fell on his head and held him tight against his neck.
Ian let out another long breath. What good did it serve, to cling to an ideal that excluded the person he most wanted to please? “I thought I had lost your regard.”
Nicky’s hand stroked through Ian’s hair, landing heavily on his neck as a soft laugh rumbled between
them. “Regard? Ian, only you could come home from war wounded in body and spirit and still sound like a classics scholar. You hold that always. And my honor and my passion and much more.”
Ian swallowed and lifted his head. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Who could?” Nicky began with a joke and then his face became serious. “But you do, Ian. You are
more deserving than most. Whose face did I see peering at me over the ice? Who was brave enough to risk his neck to save mine?”
“Julian Lewes came to your aid as well,” Ian admitted with scrupulous honesty.
“God, I am sure to hear of that. Is he no longer a disgusting bastard, then?”
“He remains so. But he also saved your life. I could not have done it alone.”
“You would have found a way.”
There was a tap at the door and Ian pulled free, sitting upright in his chair, dragging on his coat.
“Yes,” Nicky called in answer to a second tap.
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Simmons stepped in, carrying a tray. “My lord! It’s good to see you looking yourself.” He set the tray on the bed, and Nicky made a face at what was clearly sickroom fare. Thin soup and something steaming
and clotted, though how anything could steam against the heat of the room Ian could not say.
Simmons put the tray on the washstand. “I’ll let his lordship and Lady Anna knows you are awake
and see if I can find you something more hearty in the kitchen.” He nodded at Ian as he passed on his way to the door. “It will only be a minute, sir.”
Ian understood the warning. He buttoned his waistcoat, nursing a deep resentment that this interlude
should not end with them embracing through the night. It was unfair and it was maddening, but the one
thing it wasn’t was shameful. The notion came as such a surprise it must have shown on his face.
“What?”
Ian shook his head and looked at the door.
“Come to me tonight?” Nicky whispered.
“Your rest…?”
“I have had a sufficiency. And I assure you all parts are in working order. Besides, what could warm
me more?” Nicky made a salacious waggle of his eyebrows.
~ * ~
Ian had never been more anxious for nightfall in his life. Despite the events of the day, it seemed the house would not quiet enough for him to risk the quick trip across the hall. When at last he was certain he would not be observed, he darted into Nicky’s room and locked the door behind him.
The fire still blazed and lamps were lit on every surface. The room glowed, but for Ian all the warmth in the room was waiting in the bed.
“I thought it would be morning before you were here.” In his nightgown, Nicky looked years younger.
He stripped it off, revealing the man beneath, then held the covers open for Ian.
“Are you certain you are well enough?”
“Come over here and ask again.”
Ian moved to the foot of the bed.
“I think you have mistaken this party for a masque. The invitation was to come in your finest.” Nicky
crawled forward and opened Ian’s dressing gown.
“It is my best nightshirt.”
“But your finest features—” Nicky gave a sharp tug to lift the long tails of Ian’s shirt. “Ahh. There
they are.”
Ian let Nicky finish pulling the nightshirt over his head. As it dropped behind him, Nicky’s palm
rubbed across Ian’s cheek.
“You’re freshly shaved.”
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“Simmons offered.” Ian felt the heat in his cheeks. “I think he sensed I was in great anticipation.”
“Of what, I wonder?”
“Now who’s an ass?” Ian shoved Nicky to his back and climbed on top of him.
Warm. So warm. Skin gold in the light. With Nicky spread out beneath him, Ian had never cursed his
missing arm more. He wanted both hands to cover that flesh, both thumbs to rub across the dark pink
nipples, wanted a double grip in those wild curls as he lifted Nicky up for a kiss.
“Don’t. Please, Ian.”
“What?”
“Glower.”
“I’m not—I just want—”
Nicky reached up and rolled him down onto the bed so they were on their sides, facing each other.
“Name it.”
Ian couldn’t put a name to all his wants, and he had precious little time. This was a farewell as much as it was a celebration. In two days, he and Charlotte would be southbound in their coach. A year would scarce be long enough to sate himself on all he wanted of Nicky.
Above all, he wanted to humble himself in worship. Let mouth and hand and body speak to his regret
at not recognizing the gift Nicky had offered sooner. To show he knew, even if in future all they shared were a few stolen moments, those moments could make life so much more than the passing of time in
service to one ideal or another.
He ran his hand over Nicky’s hip.
“You want my arse again?” Nicky’s smile held a warmth Ian felt in his bones.
“No. I want you to take mine.”
Nicky drew back as if to afford a better point of observation.
“Don’t do that.”
Nicky cocked a brow. “Do what?” But the amusement in his face was clear to read.
“Make me any more nervous, you bastard.”
Nicky rolled overtop of him, kissing the very taste from Ian’s mouth. When it seemed they would
have to part or suffer asphyxiation, Nicky dove back for more, the tingling pressure of lips and tongues making blood beat hot and thick in Ian’s prick.
Nicky’s own cock rubbed hard on Ian’s hip, and Ian bucked against him.
“This.” Nicky raised his body enough to make a deliberate thrust of his hips, prick sliding in the
groove of Ian’s thigh. Drawing back, Nicky made another surge forward, so that the head of his cock rutted into the skin beneath Ian’s balls. Ian’s eyes screwed shut in anticipation.
“This,” Nicky said again, and his prick pressed into the cleft below. “This is going inside you.”
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The knowledge was already sending pulses of readiness to dampen the head of Ian’s prick even as it
made his muscles tense. “Ah. Yes. But we will be using that oil again, yes?”
Nicky buried a chuckle in Ian’s shoulder. “Yes, indeed. Allow me to worry about the details. I believe you have enough on your mind.”
There was no question of trust, and Ian did not particularly fear pain on his own behalf. He worried
only that an undignified arrangement of limbs would provoke the sort of feelings antithetical to passion, such as the fit of unmanly giggles building in his throat.
Nicky straightened up and dropped his weight to the side. “Roll over.”
Ian complied with alacrity. Not having to see Nicky would go a long way to easing Ian’s mind.
When he felt Nicky loom, Ian tensed, awaiting an intrusion of oil, but Nicky’s hands merely stroked
Ian’s shoulders, fingers soothing the knots in the muscles under the skin, moving down each side of his spine until reaching the curve of his backside before starting at his shoulders again.
“You will send me to sleep,” Ian said.
