Darius: Lord of Pleasures (6 page)

Able shrugged. “She’s young and larking around Town without your supervision, but then, she’s not my wife.”

“She is mine.” William sipped his drink placidly, enjoying the heat more than the flavor. “I’ve never had reason to doubt her, Able. Not once, not in the use of her pin money, not in her consumption of spirits, not in her choice of social companions. Vivian is a lady.”

“Of course, she is.”

William saw the comparison with Portia hit its mark. He didn’t envy Able his wife. Nobody would.

“You can douse most of the candles,” William said, settling in a little more comfortably in his reading chair. “I’ll keep my nightcap company here for a bit in solitude.”

“If that’s your preference.” Able dutifully blew out the candelabrum on the table. “I’ll bid you good night, your lordship.”

William lifted a hand. “Thank you for the game, Able. I promise I’ll be in better form tomorrow night.”

Able left, no doubt to be interrogated by his wife, while William had to admit he truly missed Vivian. She would have had a lap robe tucked around him, her chess was interesting and sometimes brilliant, her conversation laced with humor, and her form easy to look upon.

Lindsey, to his credit, hadn’t even asked about her appearance, though he’d asked a damned lot of other questions—when were her menses due, had she ever miscarried, what had her sister’s deliveries been like, what about her mother’s? They were the questions of a surprisingly shrewd man, but also the questions of a man who cared about his womenfolk.

With any luck, that number would someday include Vivian. On that cheering thought, Lord Longstreet let himself doze off, because he hadn’t lied: he was utterly worn out.

***

Vivian looked up from her book—a volume of Byron, whom William declared a disgrace on countless levels—when a single knock landed on her door.

“You still awake?” Darius Lindsey strolled into her room, stopping a few feet from the bed. “Now, now, none of that. You look at me like I’m the invading French army. I brought you a nightcap.”

“Did you ever consider buying your colors?” Vivian asked, only a little alarmed when he sat on the end of her bed and lounged back against the bedpost. She accepted the drink he passed her, but didn’t sip it just yet.

“I did not.” He scooted to scratch a shoulder blade on the bedpost, an informality if ever there was one. “My father was not kindly disposed toward my sister Leah. If you’re of an age, you probably know that much, so I considered it my responsibility to stick close to her rather than defend King and Country. Then too, until my nephew Ford was born, I was the Wilton spare and obligated to keep body and soul together as a result. Don’t forget your drink.”

She dutifully sipped but couldn’t think of a thing to say to the handsome man regarding her from the foot of her bed.

“What are you reading?”

She eyed the book. “Byron. William would snort with derision.”

“Byron himself does a good job of deriding just about everything. Shall I read to you?” He picked up the book where it lay facedown on the counterpane and ran his finger down the page. When he started in reading, Vivian realized the poetry was better for being rendered in the voice of a young man, one jaded, but not quite bitter, and just as unimpressed with Polite Society as the poet was.

“You read well,” she offered between verses.

“Better than you finish a nightcap,” he said with a slight smile. Vivian took another sip. It was potent stuff, burning a trail down her throat to her innards.

She eyed the little glass dubiously. “What is this?”

“Cognac.” He set the book aside. “I favor it in winter. I had another purpose for coming up here.”

“You’re going to pounce?” She had to ask. He was without cravat or coat—in dishabille by polite standards—and by candlelight, at his ease on her bed, he looked even larger than he had at dinner.

Also… handsomer, plague take him.

“No pouncing for me, delightful as the prospect might be. I haven’t been given permission.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” She set the drink aside, only to have him move up the bed and take a sip of it himself—from the same place on the rim she’d just put her lips to.

“Do what?”

“Be so… considerate. I’ll manage. Earlier, downstairs, it was just a weak moment. If our good queen could bear fifteen children to a man she’d never met before her wedding day, I’ll manage.”

“I’m not offering a kingdom in return,” Darius said. “Not in the traditional sense.”

“What does that mean?”

“I can offer you pleasure, Vivian, or I can be as perfunctory and undemanding as you wish.”

“This is an increasingly uncomfortable discussion.” Vivian tucked the covers more tightly around her. “Not one I am prepared to have.”

“Consider this a discussion of how you want to be pounced upon. You need to decide whether pleasure and duty are mutually exclusive, Vivian. If they are, I’ll come to you only when the candles are out and you’re under the covers. We need not see each other, in fact, for the duration of this month.”

“And if pleasure and duty can coincide?” She knew she’d taken the bait, as he’d intended, but the question was exactly what had been bothering her. Where had her resolve not to socialize with him gone, and why had it seemed so important?

“If duty and pleasure are to coincide, then you have to trust me at least a little to make this a seduction, a pleasure for us both.”

“Which would you prefer?”

His eyebrows rose, and that caught her attention, suggesting he wasn’t used to being asked his preferences. She stored that realization away for later, and lengthy, consideration.

“My first reaction is to say it makes no difference to me,” he said. “I am being paid good coin to achieve a specific end, but I’d rather do that in the manner least upsetting to you. If I had to be honest though…”

“Yes?”

The look in his eyes changed, became slumberous in that instant before he lowered dark lashes and veiled his soul from her scrutiny.

“You are lovely, Vivian, and deserving of pleasure.”

He wasn’t telling her everything. A man who romped with society women as he did was capable of discretion, of keeping his own counsel. Silence crept up between them and expanded as Vivian considered him. He took another sip of her drink then raised his gaze to hers.

“I propose an experiment,” he said, putting her book on the night table. “To help you make up your mind.”

The look in his eyes was naughty and entrancing. “What kind of experiment?”

“A good-night kiss. I won’t touch you with anything other than my mouth, and you decide whether you like it or not.”

She scooted back against her pillows. “Kissing is very personal.”

“Just my mouth, Vivian. You simply turn your head and wish me good night if you don’t like it. Kissing is not pouncing, not by any stretch. I kiss Waggles.”

Surely she could keep up with the standard set by a fat, lazy tomcat?

“Here’s my dilemma.” She folded the edge of the counterpane into a precise one inch hem. “I don’t want you to laugh.”

“To laugh?” She could tell he was laughing already. “I just confessed to kissing a cat, and you think I’ll laugh at you? I thought we weren’t going to take any of this business too seriously.”

“
You
weren’t,” she corrected him. “You know what you’re about.”

“Vivian, all I’m proposing is a kiss,” he began, but she stopped him with an upraised hand, needing to get this part of the conversation behind them.

“William isn’t a… demanding husband.”

“I see.” The smile spreading across his face was at once beatific and diabolical.

“What do you think you see, Mr. Lindsey?”

“I’m sitting on your bed after dark sharing a drink with you. Don’t you think you could call me Darius?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You’re not torn up with conflicted loyalty,” he accused, pleased as punch. “You’re afraid of yourself, afraid you’ll enjoy yourself just as old William so generously intended you to.”

“Afraid…” She narrowed her eyes at his hubris. “You’re likely afraid I won’t, and then where will your swaggering, pawing image of yourself be?”

“Good shot, Vivian.” He nodded, still grinning. “But best pucker up, as I’m still here.”

In contrast to the great good humor of his words, his kiss was serious. He just leaned in and laid his lips over hers, giving her a moment to startle and breathe and then settle in. When she’d managed all that, he moved his mouth softly over hers, pulling her lower lip between his teeth and sucking gently, then turning his head an inch and tracing his tongue along her lips.

She startled again and thought she heard him chuckle, so she retaliated by using her tongue the way he’d used his to… taste his lips. That earned her his sigh into her mouth, fruity and sweet from their nightcap. And then she felt herself being pressed back against the pillows, until she was lying on her back and Darius Lindsey was balanced over her, braced on his hands.

And it was her turn to sigh, more slowly, more of a bodily sigh or relaxation of her defenses, because in this kiss, he would take care of her.

“Better,” he murmured, shifting to cruise his lips over her features. He nuzzled and nibbled and grazed and tasted, her jaw, her forehead, her chin, and then back to her mouth, until she was happily melting into the bedclothes, ready to concede that duty and pleasure could disguise each other thoroughly.

And then the real kissing began, as his tongue stole past her lips, into her mouth, and began to insinuate beautiful, naughty, wonderful, previously unimaginable notions. She tried to follow his lead, until she realized her hands were tangled in his thick, dark hair, pulling him down to her, and her body was…

“Merciful heavens.” She turned away by force of will but kept her hand wrapped around the back of his head, inviting him to rest his forehead on her collarbone.

“That is a little taste of option A,” Darius said, sitting up.

Why was any effort at all involved in letting him go? “And option B?”

He leaned in again, and when she’d inhaled in anticipation of another rousing, lingering, soul-stealing kiss, he put a brotherly peck on her forehead.

“Good night, Vivian.” He rose, took her glass from the night table, and turned to leave.

“That’s it?” She struggled up to her elbows. “Good night, Vivian?”

“Good night, Lady Longstreet?”

“Get out.” She tossed her book at him. “Just go, and I hope you sleep miserably.”

He stopped at the door to blow her a kiss, still smirking, and Vivian realized she was smiling too. Awful man—how was she supposed to sleep after that?

Which, she reflected, had likely been the point of his experiment.

***

Darius took himself to his bedroom, resisting the urge to stand outside the door and listen for the sounds of Vivian Longstreet going to bed. She’d be methodical: banking the coals, replacing the fireplace screen, snuffing each candle, and in all likelihood, locking her door. Her place in her book would be carefully marked with a bookmark—no dog-eared pages for her naughty Lord Byron—and she’d kneel beside the bed to say her prayers, no matter how drafty the floor, no matter how her knees might ache.

William Longstreet had taken a perfectly lovely young woman to wife and made her elderly, as well as deaf, dumb, and blind to her own appeal.

Darius had been more honest than she’d known, when he’d said she deserved pleasure. She deserved heaps and hoards of it, years of it, but instead she’d gotten duty. As he readied himself for bed, he had to wrestle with a question: Vivian deserved a romp, a frolic, a few weeks decadently rife with flirtation and sexual gratification. He was in a position to give her that, but as she’d said, then what? A virtual spinster, she’d be ill equipped to deal with the attachments that formed when two people were physically intimate.

Except, he could teach her that too. He could teach her to flirt and carry on and enjoy herself, and part with a sigh and wave before moving on to the next enjoyment. Clearly, Lord Longstreet had urged her in that direction, but Vivian had been too timid to dip her toe in the waters of dalliance.

Or maybe, she had been too wise.

By habit, he checked on John before turning in, finding the child fast asleep in his bed, the tomcat blinking slowly as Darius closed the door to the boy’s room.

He could fathom pleasuring Vivian, could imagine it all too easily, but far more difficult was the idea that she was eager to bear his child. He’d seen it in her eyes—she wanted a child, and to his surprise, he wanted that for her as well.

And this, he reasoned as he climbed between cold sheets, was why he didn’t allow other women the intimacy of coitus with him. It made a simple situation complicated and had him wishing all manner of impossible things, when he really should be too tired to give a damn.

Vivian Longstreet should be a means to put a new roof on his stable, a duty, a convenient source of revenue, and here he was, offering to escort her past reason into the land of sexual pleasure and harmless dalliance. Offering her a choice had been rash, and upon reflection, he wished he could recall his words and sneak into her bed of a night, pretending by day her body had been shared with some other man. That would be smarter—better, at least for him.

But by breakfast, Darius had come to a decision: if she allowed it, he was going to pleasure Vivian Longstreet out of her clever, nimble, ladylike mind.

The dress made up Darius’s mind, a shapeless, no doubt warm atrocity in a color that put him in mind of calf scours.

“Good morning, Mr. Lindsey.” Vivian smiled at him shyly when Darius seated her at the breakfast table.

“Good morning.” He let himself lean in for a little whiff of her, catching the scent of daffodils. Lemon verbena might have been more retiring, but only just. “I trust you and Lord Byron slept well?”

Her smile widened. “I wouldn’t presume to speak for him. I slept like the proverbial baby.”

“I’ve wondered where that phrase came from.” Darius poured her tea. “My experience with babies suggests they are better at waking entire households than sleeping. May I fix you a plate?”

“Thank you.” She accepted the tea. “You’ve had the raising of your… relation since infancy?”

“I’ve had exclusive responsibility for him since shortly after his birth.”

“How old is he now?”

“He’ll join us shortly.” Darius focused on sorting through the ham slices to find one he deemed thick enough for her. “You can ask him yourself, but be warned, he can talk nonstop for days.”

“Not a typical male.” Vivian frowned at the plate he set before her. “I can’t possibly eat all of this.”

“Especially”—Darius took a slice of bacon off her plate—“if you stare at it until it gets cold. You start, and when you’ve had your fill, you stop.”

“But that’s waste…” He stuffed a bite of bacon into her mouth between syllables, and finished the strip himself.

“I like it crisp like this,” she said. “William likes his thicker than I do, and oh, you’ve had cheese cooked in the eggs, you shameless man.”

Darius nodded complacently and sipped his tea. “That would be me.” Did Longstreet even realize what a treasure he shared breakfast with each morning? Did he see her or merely disappear behind
The
Times
and consume his soggy bacon?

“Is this the lady?” a small voice piped.

“Good morning, John.” Darius smiled at the lad who hovered in the doorway. “Make your bow.”

“Good morning, my lady. John Cowperthwaite Lindsey, at your service.” He bowed dramatically and came up grinning. “You’re our guest, so I’m on pro… I have to behave.”

“Probation.” Darius hoisted the child onto his lap. “If you’re on your best behavior, you can have breakfast with us, and perhaps we’ll go riding while Lady Vivian is here.”

Lady Vivian, not Lady Longstreet, because Darius intended to exercise as much discretion about her visit as he could.

“Do you like horses?” The look John aimed at Vivian suggested this was
the
pressing question of the day.

“Very much. Do you like bacon?” She held up a crispy slice.

“Darius?”

“You may.”

“Thank you!” John took the slice of bacon and was away from the verbal starting line at a gallop, waving his bacon around minus one bite as he spoke. “I have a pony. He’s old but sturdy, and his name is Hammond. He doesn’t like Waggles, because Waggles is sneaky and hard to see in the dark, which is good for hunting mice, though there aren’t any in my bedroom ’cause Wags sleeps with me. May I please have another piece of bacon?”

“I’ll fetch you a plate.” Darius rose and sat the child in his own seat as John went on about how cold weather made his pony harder to groom, but friskier, which was good.

“Would you like to go riding?” John raised brown eyes to Vivian, and Darius swore the boy was batting his lashes at her.

“It’s too cold for riding today,” Darius warned. “We can introduce Lady Vivian to Hammond, if she’s amenable.”

“What’s amendable?”

“Amenable,” Vivian corrected him. “Willing, which I am.” As he put a plate before the child, Darius shot her a naughty smile—the opportunity was too good to let pass. “Willing to meet your pony, that is.”

“Capital!” John started on his eggs. “I visit him every day before my lessons. Darius says the company of a horse starts a gentleman’s day off right, and I take care of him all by myself, except sometimes Dare helps. What’s your horse’s name?”

“I don’t have just one,” Vivian said. “When I want to ride, the lads tack up a mare and off I go.”

John frowned as Darius gestured to the child to put his serviette on his lap. “But what’s her
name
? You have to know your horse’s name, so you can say, ‘Whoa, Hammond,’ or ‘Good boy, Ham.’ You know, her name?”

“One of them is named Pansy, or I’ve heard the lads calling her that, so it’s probably her nickname.”

John devoured his breakfast, peppering Vivian with questions as his eggs, toast, and most of Vivian’s bacon disappeared, while Darius sat back and watched.

“John, you need to put on your boots and collect a carrot or two for your steed,” Darius said when the child’s plate was clean. “Lady Vivian needs another cup of tea, and then we’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

“Yes, sir.” John scooted off his seat then paused abruptly. “Sorry, I forgot. I am still on proba… Whatever that word was?”

“Probation,” Darius supplied. “You caught yourself, and having such a pretty lady at table is distracting, but let’s do it right, shall we?”

John resumed his seat and met Darius’s eye. “Sir, the meal has been very good, but I’d like to visit my pony now. May I please be excused?”

Darius smiled. “Well done. You may.”

“Thanks for the bacon!” John dashed off, leaving the door to the breakfast parlor banging in his wake.

“What a delightful little boy,” Vivian said in the ensuing silence. “You must be very proud of him.”

“I am, and I’ll be just as proud of you if you finish your toast.”

“I told you I couldn’t possibly…”

He passed her a half slice, slathered with butter and jam. “It’s cold out, and you’ll need your sustenance.” He held it to her mouth, and her hand came up to cover his. She took a bite and sat back.

“Raspberry.” She munched away. “My favorite.”

“Let me guess.” Darius put the rest of the slice on her plate. “William prefers some bitter old marmalade, and you haven’t had raspberry jam since you married him.”

“Of course I’ve had it.” She picked up her toast. “At my sister’s I have it all the time. My brother-in-law knows I like it, so he keeps it on hand.”

“Your brother-in-law knows your favorite type of jam, but your husband does not,” Darius observed, pouring her another cup of tea. “Why aren’t I surprised?”

“What’s your favorite kind of jam?” Lady that she was, Vivian wasn’t going to argue with him, but Darius found it heartening she didn’t try to defend dear Lord Longstreet.

Darius added cream and sugar to her tea. “As of this moment, it’s raspberry.”

He switched their plates, finishing the last of her eggs without her permission as she enjoyed her toast and tea. When they’d made their way to the kitchen, Darius insisted on tying the fastenings of her cloak and winding a scarf around her neck.

“Bonnets might be fetching, but they aren’t warm, and they obscure a lady’s lovely face.”

“But this is your scarf,” Vivian protested as he led her across the back gardens.

“How can you tell?”

“It has your scent,” she said, then apparently realized what she’d admitted. “And what is your scent, by the way?”

“It’s Eastern and mixed to my order and used to scent my soaps, lotions, and linens, and that is one of the first things we’re going to address, Lady Vivian.”

She slipped her arm free of his. “Address?”

“You have been languishing in your husband’s care.” Darius opened the barn door for her. “It’s time you took yourself in hand.”

“I do not follow your meaning, Mr. Lindsey.”

“Take your dress.” Darius paused to remind John, gamboling ahead of them, not to run in the barn. “Who in his right mind made a dress out of that fabric?”

“It’s very practical.” Vivian glanced down at her skirts, expression puzzled. “I got a superior bargain on the entire bolt.”

“Because it’s the exact color of the results of a young bovine having intestinal distress,” Darius countered. “You should not be allowed in public in such a color, Vivian. Trust me on this.”

Her perfectly arched brows knitted. “Why should I trust you? You’re a man.”

“Who appreciates women with particular intensity. That dress is going to the maids, and you are going into the village with me, where we have a passable seamstress who no doubt is lacking for work this time of year.”

“You’re
dressing
me?” Vivian stopped, clearly bewildered at such a notion.

“And we’re going to find you a scent, play with your hair, experiment with cosmetics,” he went on. “And for God’s sake, why don’t you have a personal mount?”

“What are you going on about? I have as many horses to ride as I wish.”

Darius crossed the barn aisle to a loose box. “This is my personal mount. His name is Skunk, and he’s a good fellow.”

“Peculiar coloring.” Vivian held out a gloved hand to the horse whose black and white coat was reminiscent of a milch cow. The gelding left off eating his hay long enough to sniff delicately at her fingers.

“His plebeian coat pattern is why his steady disposition, perfect conformation, and good bone were overlooked,” Darius said. “He suits me and we get along and he’s
my
horse. Nobody else rides him, and he’s always available for me. You need a personal mount, a fetching steed who takes your welfare seriously and isn’t just anybody’s hack.”

He wasn’t merely talking about horses, and Vivian was astute enough to know it.

She held out her hand to John. “Introduce me to Hammond. And is that a cat I see?”

Darius watched as John explained in painful detail how he groomed his pony. Vivian asked the right questions, and was graciously granted a turn with the soft brush, while Darius wondered what it was he was feeling.

She was good with John, and that solved a looming problem in itself. A month was too long to send the child off with the servants, and yet, Vivian might have resented sharing the household with a bastard child, particularly given the point of her stay at Averett Hill. She didn’t resent John, just the opposite.

She’d be a good mother, which was part of what had Darius’s insides unsettled.

“Let me introduce you to Bernice,” Darius said, interrupting John’s chatter.

“She’s a mare,” John provided helpfully. “So you can ride her.”

Vivian gave the pony’s shaggy neck a final pat. “She’s to be my mount?”

“If you’d like,” Darius said. “She’s very gentle, but she’ll take care of you. She’s not… passive, like some horses are. She’ll think of your welfare.”

“You’ve ridden her?” Bernice was a good-sized dapple gray with big eyes and an inelegant pink nose.

“I have,” Darius said. “I wouldn’t put a guest, much less a lady, on a horse I couldn’t speak for personally.”

Vivian frowned at him then turned to the mare, stepping into the horse’s stall for a closer introduction. “She’s larger than the horses I usually ride.”

“You’re taller than many women,” Darius replied, fishing a piece of carrot out of his pocket and passing it to Vivian. “You need a horse in proportion to your seat and leg. I thought Bernice would fit you.”

“She has a kind eye.” Vivian fed the horse the carrot. “Wonderful manners.”

“Consider her your personal mount for the duration,” Darius said. “John will offer to walk her out for you, and if you don’t mind, I’d allow it.”

“She’s that docile?”

“He’s that comfortable with horses, and Bernice is a lady, or I wouldn’t have paired her up with you.”

“You’re flirting somehow.”

“Stating a fact,” he said, leading Vivian from the stall. “John, if you groom that pony any longer, he’s going to fall asleep. Get you back up to the house, and I’ll expect to hear at least three perfect Latin verbs at teatime.”

“Will Lady Vivian hear my Latin?”

“I will,” Vivian said, “and I will be on my extra good manners at tea if I know there are to be two gentlemen present.” She shot an arch look at Darius. “We can all be on probation together.”

“Capital!”

***

Vivian missed her husband. Missed the steady, dependable, boring routine of their life together. Missed knowing the answers before the questions were asked. She’d fallen asleep the night before, secure in the conviction that the next day she could explain to Mr. Lindsey that she’d choose Option B. William had said she could limit her dealings with the man to fifteen minutes at the end of the day, and Mr. Lindsey himself had acknowledged as much.

That way would be safer for everybody. Simpler.

But then… that child had joined them at breakfast, and Vivian’s heart had started beating harder in her chest.

Darius Lindsey loved that boy. He’d die for a child who had clearly been cast off by his parents as an embarrassment. And Vivian wanted to see more of the man who’d taken in the boy and raised him to be such a charming little gentleman. The difficulty was, the man who noticed that a child’s manners needed praising was also a man who’d noticed Vivian’s husband didn’t know her favorite jam.

Vivian herself had nearly forgotten.

She glanced down at her dress, running her hand over the nappy, plain fabric. It was warm, sensible, durable, economical…

And
ugly
. The same color as calf… diarrhea, he’d said.

A metaphor for her life, maybe.

She wished her sister were on hand to talk with, wished she had anybody to parse with her the dilemma she faced. Darius Lindsey was dangerous, and not just because he loved the child in his care. Vivian glanced out her window to see it was already dark, nigh teatime, when a knock on the door interrupted her musings.

“Are you cavorting with Byron again?” Darius asked as he eyed her sitting on the bed.

“We’re through, Lord Byron and I. He’s fine for a passing amusement, but the man lacks depth.”

“Thus speaketh Polite Society about one of its own,” Darius replied as he lowered himself beside her. “Do you shrink away from me out of habit, or are you afraid I’ll end up sitting in your lap by accident?”

“I don’t…” She stopped and tried for honesty. “You’re very informal. I’m not used to it.”

“Doesn’t William touch you? I thought that was one of the blessings of marriage, that one had permission to touch and be touched, not just in bed.”