Leslie Lafoy (24 page)

The flash of boot soles was accompanied by the sound of the settee rolling over with a heavy thud into the carpet. Caroline turned away, shaking her head, as Drayton threw his head back and laughed outright.

“How on earth did you two become friends?” he asked a moment later, coming to stand at the base of the ladder.

“Quite by accident. We were both shopping for ribbon in the same store and I happened to notice the unique design of her dress and asked her about it.”

“Let me guess. It buttoned up the front.”

Congratulating him with a nod and a smile, she continued on, saying, “She’s taught me a great deal about the practical aspects of design and agreed to be my assistant when Mother passed away. Admittedly, Jane has her share of faults, but no one has a kinder and more generous heart.”

He glanced over to the parlor and then back up at her with a quirked smile. “Her generosity is obvious.”

“She’d do anything for me, Drayton.”

“I’m guessing she’d do—”

“Please don’t say it,” she insisted, holding out her hand for vellum and a pin. “I’d rather not be put in the position of having to defend her right to make the choices she does.”

He nodded and passed her what she required, saying, “Haywood is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. And it’s not as though he hasn’t encountered more than his fair share of Janes before. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“I know,” she allowed, setting the pin and then backing down the ladder a few rungs.

“Then what are you worried about?”

“Nothing.” She winced at the lie and gathered the folds of drapery. But how did one go about telling a man that you’d decided that you were willing to sleep with him? Just coming right out and saying so seemed so . . . so . . . well, businesslike. Almost as if the next words should be “for twenty quid.” Perhaps she should climb down off the ladder and just walk into his arms. What she wanted would be obvious; there wouldn’t be any need to say a single word.

“It occurs to me that I could easily play this to my immediate advantage,” he said softly, stepping closer to hand her the vellum and the pin without being asked.

“Play what?” she asked, distracted by the frantic hammering of her heart.

“But I won’t,” he went on as she placed the pin with trembling fingers. “When you come to my bed, Caroline, I’ll be alone in it. I promise.”

He thought . . . ? Of course he did. Haywood wasn’t the only man who had met his fair share of Jane Durbins. At some point she’d have to tell him that she wasn’t surrendering out of jealousy or fear or even a sense of possessiveness for having seen him first. Not that she knew, in any precise way, why she was surrendering, she admitted as she came down the ladder. It was simply something she wanted to do with every fiber of her being.

He held his hand out, not touching her, but clearly prepared to catch her if she stumbled and started to fall. He didn’t step back as she reached the floor. A bare handwidth separated them as she gazed up at him, savoring the scent of his shaving cologne, the heat of his body, the slow, deep cadence of his breathing. God, she wanted to lay her cheek against his chest and feel the beat of his heart, have him wrap her in his arms and hold her there.

“Lady Car-o-line?”

Mrs. Gladder,
supplied a small voice in the back of her mind.
Coming from the back of the house.
“It may be a while before I’m free,” she whispered, her stomach clenching in disappointment.

“Lady Car-o-line?”

Closer.

Drayton stepped back, putting a proper distance between them. “I understand,” he assured her, his gaze smoldering as one corner of his mouth lifted in a weak smile. “Duty before pleasure.”

“Unless,” she said on a sigh, “you’re Jane and Haywood.”

“I’m willing to wait,” he said softly, handing her the pincushion and the remaining vellum strips just as Mrs. Gladder came from the hall beneath the stairs.

“Oh, there you are, Lady Caroline. Good evening, Lord Ryland. If I’m intruding—”

“Not at all,” Drayton assured her, his manner easy and confident. “I was just telling Lady Caroline how very impressed I am with the new draperies. Allow me to extend my awed appreciation to you and your staff as well, Mrs. Gladder. You are all beyond amazing.”

The woman blushed and smiled broadly. With a bit of a bobbing curtsy, she said, “Thank you, your grace. I’ll convey the message to the others immediately. They’ll be so pleased to know that you’ve noticed their efforts.”

“And then, for heaven’s sake, let them go to bed,” Drayton countered, smiling as he eased away. “They’ve earned the rest. This will all be here tomorrow.”

“Yes, your lordship.”

He paused and gave them both a brief bow. “Again, ladies, I’ll wish you a good night.”

Caroline nodded at his departing back and then smiled at the housekeeper. “There’s a question awaiting me in the workroom?”

“Just a few, madam,” she answered, sounding sincerely apologetic. “But they can wait until morning.”

“Or they can be answered now,” Caroline countered, heading for the hallway, “so that we can sleep untroubled and start at a dead run at first light.”

IT HAD TAKEN THE BETTER PART OF AN HOUR TO MAKE
the decisions and be sure that everyone knew what task
they were to undertake first thing in the morning. It had taken another fifteen interminable minutes to try to dissuade Dora from her duties as lady’s maid, give up, and let her prepare her for bed. The clock on the mantel was striking half past eleven when the girl finally slipped into her own room and closed the door.

Caroline waited a few more minutes just to be sure that Dora was going to stay there, then climbed out from between the sheets. Pulling on her wrapper, she collected the pile of papers—her pretext in case she faltered or things became a bit awkward—from her dressing table, crossed the carpet, and quietly opened the door to her sitting room.

As he’d promised, Drayton waited for her. The light was pale and somewhere behind him as he leaned against the jamb of the doorway that led into his own sitting room. His jacket discarded, his shirttail out, the front half unbuttoned, and his feet bare . . . She smiled in appreciation for what he’d accomplished for her already.

“I must say,” he drawled as she pulled the door closed behind herself, “that, even unfinished, this room is a vast improvement.”

Whatever appraisal he’d done had to have been before she got there, she realized, warming as his gaze skimmed over the open front of her wrapper. “Thank you. These are for you,” she said, holding out the papers. “Although I’m not sure that this is the sort of reading you’d want to undertake just before retiring. It could well give you nightmares.”

“What is it?” he asked, taking them without so much as a glance at them.

“The receipts for what Jane bought.” She closed the distance to the same mere breath that had separated them in the foyer. “They’re huge sums, Drayton. Obscene.”

He slowly cocked a brow and the corner of his mouth tipped upward. “Are you happy with what she purchased? Is the house going to look the way you envision it?”

“Yes. On both counts.”

Holding her gaze, he held up the receipts and let go of them, saying as they fluttered to the floor around them, “Then I don’t care what it cost.”

Whatever her heart desired. And at the moment, he was all in the world that she did. “You make it very difficult to resist you,” she accused, reaching out to trail her fingertips along the front edge of his unbuttoned shirt.

“My intention is for you to find it impossible. Am I close to succeeding?”

“Yes,” she answered softly even as doubts began to niggle at her confidence.

He grinned and slipped his arm beneath her wrapper and around her waist, drawing her gently against the warmth and length of him. “I assume your maid has retired for the night?”

God, she was on the verge of committing what had the potential to be social suicide. She swallowed and tried to slow the beat of her heart by asking, “Do you have a valet somewhere?”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. He’s in London, looking for another employer.”

Intrigued by the smile she heard in his voice, she looked up at him. “Why?” she asked, wondering how many women before her had melted at his easy charm.

“I’ve been dressing and undressing myself—quite ably—since I can remember,” he replied, grinning down at her. “I’ve also managed to shave myself without slitting my throat or taking off my upper lip for the better
part of twenty years. I’ve never needed a valet and becoming a duke hasn’t made me suddenly helpless.”

“Aren’t they supposed to see your clothes laundered and all of that?”

He shrugged and nodded. “I leave them on the end of the bed in the morning and when I return at night, they’ve been cleaned and pressed and returned to the armoire. I assume one of the maids sees to it. Without the assistance of a valet.”

He cocked a brow and his eyes sparkled with amusement as he gazed down at her. “Any more questions?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” he teased. “We could talk about the weather. The farmers are hoping no storm blows in to delay the harvest.”

“No, I don’t want to talk about the weather,” she admitted. “Or the harvest.”

“Then we appear to have reached the crossroads of decision.”

“We actually reached it this afternoon and again in the foyer just a while ago,” she reminded him. And herself. “Now it’s simply a matter of which one of us is going to step across the line first.”

“As I recall, I stepped first the last time.”

He was daring her to make the final advance? “As I recall,” she countered, her doubts fading in the face of the challenge, “I pushed you.”

His smile faded. With a slow nod, he drawled, “Yes, now that you mention it . . . ” He leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead, then stepped back. She was standing on her own, stunned by having been released, when he bowed ever so slightly, said, “Good night, Caroline,” and walked away.

She stared after him, her heart pounding in her throat. Common sense told her to run for her room and be grateful that he had better judgment than she did. Pride and desire sent her after him. “Drayton!”

It took considerable effort not to grin, to keep himself from saying,
I knew you couldn’t run
. It took another hefty measure to calmly unbutton his cuffs and say regally, “If you don’t mind, madam. I’m trying to get undressed for bed.”

She arched a brow and the tiniest smile tickled the corners of her mouth. “Oh, really,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders and sending the silk wrapper to the floor. “What an interesting coincidence. So am I.”

“Hardly a fair contest,” he pointed out, opening the rest of his shirtfront, his heart pounding in anticipation. “You don’t have any buttons to undo.”

She made a little humming sound, stepped close, slipped her hands to the waistband of his trousers and pulled. The fabric tore and the buttons went sailing across the room. “There,” she announced, letting go and stepping away. “Now you don’t have buttons, either.”

“Or pants,” he observed, grinning and stepping out of what remained of them.

“You said that you wanted me to be happy.”

He didn’t remember saying those exact words, but at that moment, he wasn’t remembering much of anything except how wonderful she’d felt—he’d felt—the last time they’d been naked together. And then even those memories were gone, obliterated by the promise of now as the simple sheath of her nightgown glided down her body.

He managed to discard his shirt a scant half second before the gown puddled around her ankles. “I win,” he declared.

Laughing and stepping into his arms, she asked, “What’s the prize?”

“You,” he chuckled, lowering his head to lay gentle siege to her mouth.

The fact that he’d won her days ago flitted through her mind and then was gone, swept away by heady delight as he picked her up in his arms and carried her over to his bed.

CAROLINE NUZZLED HER CHEEK INTO HIS ARM, WIGGLED
her body closer into the curve of his, and smiled dreamily. Somewhere, no doubt carved in stone, there had to be laws against feeling as wonderful as she did. Not that she was going to go look for them. Aside from the fact that, at the moment, she simply didn’t have the physical strength to climb out of bed, she was too satisfied, too happy and content to be bothered by anything beyond her immediate reach. In fact, she decided on a sigh, she’d be perfectly content and happy to spend the rest of her life right where she was. If they ever got hungry, they could just ring a bell and—

Common sense plowed its way through the crack in her illusions, bringing with it the full light and force of reality. Sending down to the kitchen for food for two would be the beginning. Within minutes everyone in Ry-land Castle would know that Lord Ryland and his eldest ward were lovers. Within the hour, everyone in the village would know that the sheets had been shredded and thrown out the window for all the world to see. By nightfall, all of Norfolk would be talking about their penchant for making love on the dining room table. Within the week, the tales of sex on the chandelier would reach London and then shoot northward to be the subject of every conversation at
every house party from the Cotswolds to the Highlands of Scotland.

One mistake and they’d be branded forever immoral. There would be no recovering their reputations, no advantageous marriages, no money with which to lift the estate out of the morass into which it had been allowed to slide.

God, she hated reality, hated that she was sensible enough to know that she had to surrender to its requirements. If only she’d been sensible enough to have resisted the temptations in the first place. It was easy to give up the unknown, but incredibly difficult to walk away from what you knew was the greatest pleasure you were ever going to have.

The first time she could have blamed on the effects of good wine and the confusion of having her world so suddenly upended. This time, though . . . She’d been sober and feeling not only settled in her new world, but confident in her ability to manage it. Tonight she’d freely and deliberately chosen desire over common sense, passion over convention. It was impossible to regret the intense satisfaction Drayton had given her, but now, looking past it to the high price they might have to pay for it . . . God, one of them had to employ good judgment and find a measure of self-control.