Desperate Duchesses (14 page)

“She has to make an heir,” Damon said, “because Beaumont might drop dead at any moment. He col apsed in the House last fal , didn’t you hear? Fel to the ground and everyone thought he was dead. But he wasn’t. Stil , the prospect is not too pretty. Fainting is not a healthy man’s activity. His father stuck his spoon in the wal at thirty-four due to something wrong with his heart. Beaumont is living on borrowed time.”

“He looks healthy enough,” Roberta said.

“Doesn’t he? I’m hoping it was an aberration. I like the man, and I think that it’s better for Jemma to have him here to fight with, rather than buried, if you see what I mean. Did you meet the Duchess of Berrow, Jemma’s friend? She was here yesterday afternoon.”

Roberta shook her head.

“She used to be a smiling little thing, and then her husband died—kil ed himself in truth—and she’s like a little bird with a broken wing now. You can’t coax a smile for love or money.”

“How sad,” Roberta said softly.

“Jemma had to return from Paris and do her wifely duty.”

The words wouldn’t have meant much to Roberta before this, but now she could feel herself getting pink again.

Damon’s mouth curled into a wicked smile. “I don’t imagine Beaumont doing the business in the sitting room with his breeches at his ankles, do you? He’s far too proper.”

A mad choke of laughter came from Roberta’s chest. “No!” Now Vil iers…She felt almost feverish at the thought. Vil iers she could easily see dragging down his breeches and turning someone over the arm of a chair.

There was a touch on her cheek and she turned, to find Damon looking at her. “You’re not thinking about my brother-in-law,” he said, his eyes slightly narrowed. “So who, my dear Roberta, cousin and relative, are you thinking of?”

She gasped but said nothing.

“It’s Vil iers, isn’t it? I forgot that you’d already found the love of your life.”

He stil held her chin and it seemed to Roberta as if the world stopped spinning and froze, with the two of them but a hair’s breadth from each other.

“Of course I was thinking of Vil iers,” she said, pul ing backward. Pul ing herself together.

He raised his glass to hers. “To many lazy afternoons spent in the drawing room with your husband.”

“You shouldn’t say such things,” she scolded, taking another delicious sip from her glass.

“Why not?”

He had green eyes. She’d never realized that before; she thought they were blue, like those of his sister. But no, they were green, and beautiful y shaped, with a little turn upward at the corners. “Because I am a young lady,” she said, looking at the fire again.

“I suppose that young ladies don’t think about disreputable people tupping in drawing rooms?”

“Never.”

“But you, Roberta, aren’t you rather extraordinary among young women?” There was a thread of laughter in his voice.

She shook her head. “Not at al .” She almost choked when a large sip of fiery liquor went down the wrong way.

“I thought you were…For one thing, I thought you told the truth.”

“Wel , of course I tel the truth,” she said. She dared to look at him again. There was something different in his eyes, something daring and delicious and altogether not like the Damon of yesterday. She was shivering with excitement, and yet she hadn’t the faintest impulse to leave the room. Which she ought to.

“As to the truth,” he said, stretching out his legs again, “I found the whole scene rather arousing. Didn’t you?”

She couldn’t think what to say. One had to suppose that
arousing
covered feelings like the queer warmth in her legs.

“Look at that,” he said, obviously thinking the conversation was no more important than an exchange over muffins. “Lady Piddleton ran my stockings.”

There was a large snag running through the clocks splashed on the outside of his stocking. And then she noticed that higher up, where his tight breeches turned into a waistband, there was—

One had to pretend to be a virtuous young lady and not have even seen that.

“What was she doing in such a position as to scratch them?” Roberta asked, and then felt herself going purple as al sorts of thoughts as she’d never had before came to mind. She stared at the mantelpiece so that she wouldn’t accidental y gaze at his breeches again.

He let out a peal of laughter. “Lady Piddleton, Roberta! Coming into fifty years old, with a face like the back of a rusty saucepan?”

“I merely wondered how it came to pass,” she said with dignity.

“Jeweled heels,” he said. “Belying her age, she rubbed her shoe against my leg under the table at supper.”

Roberta blinked at him. “In an invitation?”

“Are you so surprised? That’s a notable insult!” He made a mock scowl.

For a second, she saw him as Lady Piddleton undoubtedly did, a big muscled man who moved lazily but in perfect control, whose eyes had a wicked, laughing tilt to them.

“No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

“These are things you wil have to learn quickly if you wish to marry Vil iers—you do wish for marriage, don’t you?

Because—”

She was quite sure that Vil iers would do her quick honors in the sitting room as wel . “Marriage,” she said firmly.

“You’l have to trick him into it,” Damon said.

“I wil ?” She had been thinking the same thing.

“You’re beautiful, and you’re in a fair way to being the most delectable young lady on the market this year. But Vil iers isn’t
on
the market. He shows no sign of wanting a bride, not at al . And there’s al those children of his to take into account.”

Roberta nodded. “Four?”

“I think it’s only two,” Damon said. “But one of them was fathered on an unmarried girl, daughter of Lord Kil igrew. So it’s not as if you could just let him spring you a babe, and hope that would get him to the altar.”

She nodded.

“Seduction is out of the question, then,” Damon said, and she felt him turn toward him. “But you don’t know a thing about that business, do you? Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“Actual y, yes,” she said, enjoying the tiny shadow of surprise in his eyes. “I may not have seen anyone tupping before, but I have certainly been kissed.”

“And have you kissed, as wel ?”

“Of course,” she said, though frankly she wasn’t sure what the difference was.

He put down his glass of brandy on the floor next to the couch. “Being kissed is like this,” he said. His mouth came down on hers gently, persuasively.

“You shouldn’t be kissing me,” Roberta said a second later. Her heart was thudding in her chest over the impropriety of it al . “You’re my cousin—”

“Not real y,” he interjected.

“Wel , you know what I mean,” she said. “I’m in
love
! I’m real y in love, Damon. You have to understand that. Ladies don’t sit around and kiss other people when they’re in love!”

“Ah,” he said thoughtful y, “I’ve met so few people in love that I likely haven’t learned that particular lesson yet.”

“Wel , it’s true,” Roberta said, feeling rather regretful because he looked disconsolate. “I can’t kiss you. I’m supposed to be kissing Vil iers.”

“Did he offer?”

Roberta blinked at the intense green of his eyes. “Not yet. We just met and danced but one time.” She couldn’t help smiling. “He’s coming to the house to play a chess match with Jemma and he said he would see me as wel .”

“Ha,” Damon said. “I suppose you’ve heard about the dual chess matches?”

Roberta nodded.

“Trust my sister to add yet another utterly disreputable story to a long and checkered career in my family.”

Roberta thought it was very nice of Jemma to lure Vil iers to the house, but she kept her mouth shut.

“Now I kissed you,” Damon said, “so why don’t you kiss me? Because you’re going to have to understand kissing in order to catch Vil iers. The man has slept with most of the women in London.”

“Are you saying I need to practice?” she asked suspiciously.

“Something along those lines. And who better than with a family member?”

The glint in his eyes told her that his flimsy justification was nothing more than that. But there was nothing unpleasant about Damon, after al , and practice might be a good idea. So she leaned over to him and placed her lips on his, just as he had with her. And as Angus Pilfer had done, last year in the cow lane, and as the squire’s son had done at the vil age dance the year before that.

“Is that your best try?” he asked, pul ing back.

She looked at him. There was something dangerous about this, but it was fun, not nearly as unnerving as talking to Vil iers. “I gather you think my performance was inadequate?” she asked. “Then, sir, I defer to your teaching abilities.”

His eyes glinted at her. “Kisses are preludes. That couple we saw in the sitting room started with just a kiss, I’ve no doubt.

”

The image flashed back into Roberta’s mind and she shivered.

“They both enjoyed the kiss,” he went on, “and so things progressed.”

“Wel ,” Roberta said, not wanting to sit there silently like a little girl, “I could certainly see they were enjoying the progression!”

He laughed. “Who would have thought Lord Gordon had it in him?”

“Who is he?”

“A horse-loving, stout Englishman. Did you see how his wig was askew?”

She nodded.

“An intel igent gentleman always removes his wig for a true kiss.”

She knew she was out of her depth; she knew it. He tossed his wig on a chair, and suddenly his hair swung forward, al bronzed brown and shining.

“So, kiss me,” he commanded.

She leaned toward him again. He smel ed clean and fresh, not like some men she’d danced with this evening who smel ed like lilac hair powder or, worse, sweaty locks. She put her lips onto his and kept them there for a moment. Was she supposed to do any different?

But then somehow his mouth yielded to hers, though she had not asked such a thing, had not understood such a thing.

The sweetness of it clanged through her body and she pul ed back. “What do you think?” he asked, as if they hadn’t—as if she hadn’t—

But Roberta’s mind was clashing with images. “
That’s
what you meant by a prelude,” she said, surprised to hear how very col ected her own voice sounded.

“Precisely,” he said, sounding pleased, as if she were a good student who had solved a difficult mathematics problem.

He curled a large hand around the back of her neck. “Let’s do that again, shal we?” he said. His head came toward hers.

She closed her eyes this time, smel ing the maleness of him and tasting him at the same time. He was holding her stil , and suddenly he was doing the kissing, rather than she, and this was different.

No prelude, this, she thought dimly, because he was part of her, he was inside her, he was tasting her—and how different it was. She had to stop kissing him. She was in love with someone else.

But somehow she leaned back against the sofa and he leaned toward her, and stil he kissed her. His mouth was madness, like cherry wine in midsummer: sweet, intoxicating, drugging.

He kept kissing her.

It made her feel restless, as if smal sparks danced between her legs, as if the pooling warmth she felt in her stomach after leaving the sitting room were turning into something altogether more embarrassing and more—more dangerous.

There was a dim question in her mind about the nature of kisses. And then, as if a curtain lifted, she realized that she was
being
kissed, and she rather thought she would like to
kiss
. So she curled her hands into the silky locks of his hair and pul ed him a bit closer and kissed him.

It al changed again.

His body felt heavier against hers, hotter, charged with a weight that made her feel achy where she had felt warm.

As if he could hear that drugged thought whisper through her mind, he pul ed back.

Roberta didn’t open her eyes immediately.

“Have I shocked you?” He didn’t sound in the least sorry, just curious.

She opened her eyes. “No,” she said, meaning to shock
him
for once. “I am interested in how kissing feels.”

His eyebrow flew up. “Feels?”

She smiled, and knew it was a siren’s smile, a gamester’s smile.

“You would appear to have learned something.”

“If not from you, from the sitting room,” she said. She stretched, knowing that the plumpness of her breasts above the stiff fabric of her bodice was tantalizingly close to his finger.

Being Damon, he did the unthinkable. He ran a long finger over the curve of her breast. “Very nice,” he said, and she heard the hitch in his voice with approval.

His finger burned a sweet trail. But she batted him away. “A salutary lesson, and I thank you for it,” she said, rising.

He rose too and she couldn’t help checking his breeches. But alas, the heavy line of his coat swung into place.

He caught her looking and laughed. “Wel -designed coats, aren’t they? Any number of women can caress my legs under the table and no one wil know if I respond. I hardly need say that I did not respond for Lady Piddleton, but if you stroke me under the table, it would be another story.”

Roberta walked over to a mirror on the wal rather than answer this nonsense. The glass was long enough to give her an excel ent view of the way her silk gown had been crushed when he leaned against her. There was nothing to be done about that, but she tucked an errant curl back into place.

Damon appeared in the mirror behind her, bewigged once more. He was so warm that she could feel his body just behind her. “’Twas a dangerous game we played tonight,” he said to her reflection. “I am no Vil iers, Roberta. If we ended up with a child, you’d have to marry me.”

“We were a long way from that!” she said.

“Not so very far. Trust me.”

She concentrated on repositioning a spray of apple blossoms that was hanging drunkenly over her ear. That ache low in her bel y told her that he was right. He leaned close to her ear.

“You know how we watched that couple?” he said to her.

She nodded and repressed a shiver.

“It’s possible to watch oneself make love in a glass,” he said.