Beguiling the Beauty (10 page)

“You are so very tense again, my dear baroness who may or may not be a baroness.”

“You make me feel nervous.” And guilty, even though she’d yet to do anything more reprehensible than sleeping with a man she did not love—or like.

He lifted her and set her down at the edge of the bed. “Unforgivable on my part. Let me offer my recompenses.”

He undid the sash on her dressing gown. She fought a renewed surge of panic. “Why are you nice to me?”

“I like you. I’m never unpleasant to people I like.”

“You are a high-minded man, are you not?”

“I do have some exacting standards.”

“As a man of exacting standards, can you justify to yourself why you like me, beyond that I am a source of naked pleasures?”

“You turned me down, and that speaks well of you—a man who went about it with as little finesse and forethought as I did deserved to be rebuffed. Other than that, you are right; I don’t have any firm foundations for approving of you. All the same, when you changed your mind, I was terribly flattered. So I am going to be unscientific and call this simply an affinity.”

Affinity. When in real life, he had the greatest antipathy for her.

“There is something else about you that I like,” he continued. She didn’t know when he’d pressed her into bed, but she lay with him beside her, her dressing gown completely open. Lightly he ran his hand over her breasts and her abdomen. “I like that I can make you forget, however briefly, everything that agitates you.”

H
e made love to her again. Afterward, when she began to deliberately bring her breathing under control, Christian knew that she’d left her sweet oblivion behind. This time, when she told him that she must go, he pulled on his trousers and helped her dress. Then he went out to the parlor and brought back her hat.

“What about your hair?” He’d discarded the pins and combs that had held together her coiffure. “I’ve scant knowledge on the repair of ladies’ hair.”

“I’ve the veil,” she said. “I’ll manage.”

Once her face was safely obscured behind the veil, he turned on the lamps and shrugged into his shirt.

“It’s late. I’ll walk you back.”

The light danced upon the warp and woof of her veil, which rippled just perceptibly as she exhaled. He had the feeling she was about to turn down his offer, but she said, “All right, thank you.”

A sensible woman, for he’d have insisted.

He remained in the bedroom. She walked slowly about the parlor, taking in the coffered ceiling, the stack of books on the writing desk, and the vase of red and yellow tulips on the mantel. For some reason he’d thought her dinner gown
cream-colored, but it was apricot, the skirt spangled with beads and crystal drops.

He snapped his braces over his shoulders and tossed on a waistcoat and an evening coat. His cuff links, emblazoned with the Lexington coat of arms, were on the floor. He bent down and retrieved them.

As he straightened, he felt pinpricks upon his skin—the weight of her gaze. He glanced at her. She looked away immediately, even though he could see nothing but her faintly glimmering veil.

She did not trust him—or like him entirely, for that matter. And yet she’d let him seduce her—or was it the other way around?—twice. He could flatter himself and attribute the discrepancy to an intense attraction on her part, but years of training in objectivity made such delusions impossible.

He put on the cuff links. He even went to the trouble of a fresh necktie. If they were seen together at this hour, it might lead to certain suspicions, but he was not about to give concrete evidence by looking disheveled.

“Shall we?” He offered his arm.

She hesitated before laying her hand on his elbow. Still jittery, his baroness, almost as much as she’d been when she’d arrived in his suite. But questions to that regard set her on edge, so he refrained.

Instead, as they walked out of the suite, he asked, “Why were you celibate for so long? Clinging faithfully to the late baron’s memory?”

She made a sound that could only be termed snorting. “No.”

The
Rhodesia
was quiet except for the thrum of the mighty engine deep in its hull. The first-class passengers,
whether asleep, seasick, or vigorously plugging away at their spouses, kept up the courtesy of decorous silence. The lamplit corridors might well have been those of a ghost ship.

“If you weren’t still mourning the baron, then I can’t imagine going so long without.”

“It is hardly unheard of.”

“True, but you don’t seem like someone who would want to be deprived for years upon years.”

Her sigh was one of impatience. “As much as this might amaze you, sir, a woman doesn’t always need a man to satisfy her. She can see to it herself with great competence.”

He chortled, delighted. “And you are, no doubt, tremendously capable in this respect?”

“I daresay I am sufficiently skilled from all that practice,” she said, rather grumpily.

He laughed again.

Even across the veil he could feel the glance she shot at him. “Are you always this cheerful afterward?”

“No, not at all.” His mood usually turned somber, sometimes downright dark—the women he slept with were never the one he wanted, whose hold over him remained unbreakable. But tonight he’d thought not once of Mrs. Easterbrook. “Are you always this testy afterward?”

“Maybe. I can’t remember.”

“Was the late baron a clumsy lover?”

“You’d like him to be, wouldn’t you?”

He’d never known himself to care whether a woman had had better or worse lovers than he. But in this instance, he found that, yes, he did have a preference. “Indeed. I’d like him to be thoroughly useless—impotent, if possible.”

He
wanted to be the only one who’d ever brought her to peak after peak of shocking pleasure.

“Sorry to disappoint you. He might not have been Eros reborn, but he acquitted himself quite well.”

“How you thwart me, baroness.” A thought occurred to him. “So what
was
wrong with him?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was a decent lover, yet after his death, you resorted to your own … manual dexterity. And you did
not
dedicate your chastity to him. Was he unfaithful?”

She stopped. Not for long—she resumed her progress almost immediately, and at a faster pace. But he had his answer.

“He was a fool,” he declared.

She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“Not all men are philanderers.”

“I know that. I have chosen to stay away from men not because I have lost faith in all of them, but because I am no longer confident of my ability to choose well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Being unattached has its advantages.” Her face turned toward him. “At least I have been married. What is your excuse? Shouldn’t a man who holds a title as lofty as yours have produced an heir or two by now?”

He did not fail to notice she’d changed the subject. Deftly, too.

“Yes, he should. And I have no excuse, which is why I am on my way to a London Season, to do my duty.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. You’ve no love for the idea of marriage?”

“I’ve nothing against the institution, but I suspect I shan’t be happy in it.”

“Why not?”

Again, her anonymity made him speak freely of things he would not even consider mentioning before others. “There is no question that I must marry—and soon. But I have little hope of finding a girl who will suit me.”

“You mean, no woman is good enough for you.”

“Quite the opposite. Other than my inheritance, I have very little to offer a woman. I’m hardly a dazzling conversationalist. I’d rather be in the field or locked in my study. And even when I am willing to linger in the drawing room and make small talk, I am not particularly easy to be around.”

“These are faults many girls would be more than willing to overlook.”

“I don’t want my faults overlooked. Members of my staff are there to deal with my eccentricities whether they approve or not. My wife should have the mettle to tell me I’m behaving abominably—if that is the case.”

“So you do know you behave abominably at times,” she mused. “But if you’ve such stringent requirements for a wife, if she must possess intelligence, gravitas, and fearlessness in equal abundance, why did you not start your search sooner? Why limit yourself to one Season and one batch of debutantes? Hardly an astute way to go about it.”

No, it was not. He’d gone about it in the stupidest manner possible, all but assuring that his marriage would be a formal, stilted affair. But this was not something he could admit, no matter how anonymous the baroness was.

“I shall pay for it, no doubt.”

“You sound very British, full of manly forbearance and resignation.”

He adored her acerbic tone. “We are quite bloodless
when it comes to such matters. The pursuit of happiness we leave to Americans; romance we consider the specialty of the Continentals.”

She was quiet. The ship rose and fell gently, as if it lay upon the breast of a sleeping giant. The beads on her skirt slid and clicked against one another, like a distant rain of pearls.

They descended two flights of stairs and turned a corner. She stopped. “I’m home.”

He noted the number of her stateroom. “Will I have the pleasure of your company at breakfast?”

“You want to be seen in public with me?” There was an echo of surprise in her voice.

“Should I object to it?”

“You will be known as the man who accompanies the veiled woman.”

“That is more than acceptable to me.”

She stood with her back to the door, her hand on the knob—as if protecting the entrance from him. “And if I say no?”

“You will not be rid of me so easily now, baroness. If you say no to breakfast, I will ask whether you’d like to join me for a stroll after breakfast.”

“And if I say I will join you for breakfast, but won’t ever sleep with you again?”

“You are determined to make me weep, madam.”

He touched his fingers to the edge of her veil, which fell several inches past her chin. The netting slipped weightlessly upon his skin. She would probably have pulled away from him, but he already had her back against a wall—or a door, for that matter.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

It was vain to enjoy the slight tremors he caused in her voice, but how he relished them. “The bargain is the same,” he said. “I will do my best to seduce you, and you can walk away anytime you wish. Now, will you meet me for breakfast?”

“No.” Then, after an interminable beat, “I can’t eat with this veil on. I will meet you for a walk.”

He hadn’t really believed she would turn him down altogether. Why then did his heart pound with relief? “Name the time and the place.”

“Nine in the morning. The promenade deck.”

“Excellent.” He leaned in and kissed her lips through the veil. “Good night.”

She slipped inside her stateroom and closed the door gently but firmly in his face.

V
enetia leaned her back against the door, unable to take another step.

What had she done?

And what, in God’s name, had been done to
her
?

Revenge had seemed so simple. Lexington had injured her maliciously and unrepentantly. Therefore Lexington must pay. He dealt with fossils. She dealt with men. Ergo, she must have the upper hand in this very human struggle of theirs, even with her face covered.

Yet here she was, gingerly touching her lips, which still tingled from his chaste parting kiss.

She’d boarded the
Rhodesia
to punish a man, but he was not that man. He was someone else altogether.

After her marriage to Tony, it was not only her ability to choose a good man she doubted, it was also her ability
to make a man—any man—happy. But Lexington, that most severe judge of character, had been almost buoyant in her company. And he now numbered among the few men to whom her appearance truly did not matter.

It was as if she’d set off across the Atlantic to find a route to India, only to encounter a whole new continent.

Had she accosted him in New York, she could have disappeared into the city. But on the
Rhodesia
she could not hide. And … she did not want to. The duke was affirmation that there
was
more to her than the shape of her face and the juxtaposition of her features.

Slowly she discarded her clothes, feeling her way to her berth. Under the covers she said her prayers, exhorting the Almighty to watch over Helena and bring the girl back to her senses. She also prayed that on the far side of the Atlantic, Fitz would continue to be patient and discreet, and that back in America, when they found out, Millie and Helena would not worry too much over her second abrupt departure in as many days.