Lord Perfect (23 page)

"Look out for my fractured ribs, my love," he
said with a laugh.

"I am not your love, you overbearing, sarcastic
bully," she said, trying to wriggle free. "You are not my
lord and master. You will not—"

"You are making a scene," he said.

"I have not even begun to make a scene," she
said as they came to the door. "Take one more step and I—"

His mouth came down on hers.

THE WORLD TIPPED out of balance, went dark.

He slammed the door shut, fell back against it, his
mouth clamped on hers.

No! No
!
a voice inside Benedict's head roared.

Too late.

Her mouth instantly yielded and her hands came up and
curled tightly on his shoulders.

She took his kiss and gave him back more, laced with
defiance. The same defiance that had flashed in her blue eyes became
molten liquid in his mouth.

She squirmed in his arms until he eased his grasp and
let her down, but her mouth never left his. He drank liquid fire
while she slid down slowly, the friction of those soft curves against
his hard frame setting every fiber and cell of his body vibrating.

He had to let her go.
Now
.

All he had to do was unhook his arm from her waist. But
he didn't. He held her against him while the kiss became a wicked
game between them, taunting, daring, demanding.

Passion.

Passion was not allowed. Ever. Passion was madness,
chaos. He had scores of rules against it.

NO. Kick me. Step on my foot. You know how to fight.

She held on to him, one slim hand that might as well
have been a vise curled over his upper arm.

He heard the voices of Reason and Duty shrieking out
rules, but she drowned them out with the whisper touch of her fingers
gliding over the back of his hand, the hand he'd laid flat against
the door, to keep it still until he found the strength to draw the
other away from her, too.

Her fingers curled round his wrist and he couldn't help
but turn his hand to twine his fingers with hers. The intimacy of the
touch made him ache and the ache made him angry. She was made for
him. Why could he not have her?

He broke the kiss, burying his face in her neck. He
tasted her skin and drank in her scent, and it was all as he'd
remembered and remembered despite trying so determinedly to forget.

Then he could not keep his hands
still. He dragged them over her back and traced the curve of her
waist and the sweep of her hips. And it was as though he dared her,
or perhaps she felt it, too, the same mad need he felt, because her
hands moved, too, and made turmoil wherever they went. They slid
under his coat and inside his waistcoat and teased over the thin
shirt when she
knew
,
she had to know, he needed her hands on his skin.

He felt over the back of her dress, but the fastenings
weren't there. He found them in front instead, and it was a moment's
work to undo the tapes, to push away the thin fabric of her shift and
thrust his hand inside the top of her stays and clasp her breast,
skin to skin.

She sucked in her breath.

Tell me to stop don't tell me to stop.

She pulled away and tugged at the corset, loosening it,
and looked up at him, eyes dark and challenging. She brought her
hands up to his head and drew him down, and he heard her soft gasp of
pleasure when he trailed his lips over the smooth swell of her
breasts.

That was the end of thought.

After that was only mindless
I
want
and
must
have, must have
and
mine,
mine, mine
.

The beast in charge.

He dragged up her skirts, up and up, petticoats bunching
and whispering against his sleeve until at last his hand slid over
the top of her stocking, and then up, where there was soft, soft
skin, and up farther still, until he found the core of her, warm,
silky, slick.

He reached for his trouser buttons, but she was there
first, and when her palm brushed over his throbbing groin, he had to
sink his mouth onto her shoulder to keep from crying out, like the
merest boy learning pleasure for the first time.

He was impatient, mindless, but her hand was there and
that was too tormentingly pleasurable to push away, for all his
impatience. He felt one button come loose, then the next. His cock
thrust against the cloth toward her hand and he was reaching to help
her—to help himself—he couldn't wait—when she cried
out, and pulled away, then swore, low and fierce, in French.

ONE FEROCIOUS JAB of pain: That's what it took to bring
Bathsheba to her senses.

She pulled away from him, her hand throbbing. She turned
away, too, her face aflame.

"What?" he said, his deep voice thick. "What?"

She could have wept. She could have laughed. "My
hand," she said. "My hand, thank heaven. Damn you to hell,
Rathbourne. You know we cannot do this."

"Damn me to hell?" he said.
"Damn
me
to hell?" Then, more gently he said, "What is wrong with
your hand?"

"I think it broke somebody's nose," she said.
"And now it throbs like the very devil."

"Let me see."

She wanted to put distance between them while she put
her clothes back in order and gave him time to do the same. Her bosom
was falling out of her stays, part of her petticoat had bunched up
under her waistband, and her skirts were all twisted about.

But she had never learnt to be ashamed or shy about her
body, and at the moment she didn't care what he could see. She would
have let him see all he wanted and have all he wanted, and she'd have
done it happily, nay, eagerly.

Because she was besotted and it was
completely hopeless.
She
was completely hopeless, a DeLucey through and through, no matter
what she did.

She let him take her hand and look at it.

"Your fingers are swollen," he said. "Did
you say you punched somebody on the nose?"

"Yes," she said.

"Because of me," he said.

"Yes, certainly, because of you," she said. "I
was not going to let you fight them alone, Rathbourne. Not that you
should have fought them in the first place. It was ridiculous to make
such a fuss over that drunkard groping at my leg. I was perfectly
capable of kicking him if he became too annoying. Still, it was
lovely of you. Chivalrous."

"It was not lovely of me," he said. "It
was ridiculous. If I had not behaved in that imbecile, Rupert-like
way, we should be well on our way by now, with none of us sporting
any injuries and none of us imagining the other had any injuries, and
most important, neither of us coming within a hairsbreadth of doing
what we both know perfectly well we must not do."

"Well, we didn't do it," she said. She didn't
try to sound cheerful about it. She hadn't even enough self-command
to not sound regretful.

"No, we did not." He stared at her hand. Then
he bent his head and brought it to his lips and gently touched them
to each knuckle. He released her hand and looked her up and down. He
let out a long sigh. "I was the one who took your clothes apart.
It seems I had better put them together again."

"I can do it," she said.

"The pain made you cry out when you were simply
trying to unfasten a trouser button," he said. "How do you
imagine you will be able to manage your tapes and corset strings?"

Good question.

As she'd predicted, there was a delayed reaction to the
fight. But she was the one in pain, not he. Too bad the pain had not
started some minutes sooner. Then she would not have had to face the
fact that she was another DeLucey harlot.

"I imagine it would take me several hours and a
good deal of cursing and screaming," she said. "Perhaps you
had better do it."

She stared at the notch of his collarbone while he
briskly pulled the corset back into place, arranged and smoothed her
shift, stuffed her breasts back where they belonged, and laced up the
stays.

While he tied her petticoat, she swallowed and said, "I
daresay proper ladies do not unbutton gentlemen's trousers."

"They do not do that," he said as he tugged
her frock straight, "nearly so often as one could wish."

THOUGH THEY HAD the fare to take them to Twyford,
Peregrine and Olivia did not get that far.

In Maidenhead, when the coach stopped to change horses,
Peregrine squeezed himself out from where he was wedged between two
fat and not overclean male passengers. They had been sleeping
soundly, mostly on him. He'd inhaled their stinking breath and been
deafened by their explosive snoring for the last five miles. He would
not have minded so much if he'd had something interesting to do or to
look at but he hadn't, and so he was bored and cross as well as tired
and hungry.

"I'm stopping here," he told Olivia. "You
can stay or you can go on. I really don't care."

He climbed out and walked out of the inn yard and into
the street and gulped in cool night air.

Then he looked about him. He had never before been out
so late at night, alone, in a strange town. Except for the bustle in
the inn yard, the place was quiet. It was very late, and everyone was
asleep.

He wanted to be quiet, too, so he could think. In fact,
he wanted to be asleep, like everyone else.

He'd spent the afternoon and night in a state of
tension, unsure what Olivia would do next, wondering when calamity
would strike.

Now he realized it had already struck. Running away with
Olivia Wingate, no matter how worthy his reasons, was going to bring
unpleasant consequences.

Had Lord Rathbourne caught up with them early on, as
Peregrine had hoped, matters might have been settled without a great
fuss. He had only to explain, and Uncle would understand why he'd
done what he'd done. Uncle Benedict was a reasonable and rational
man.

But it was tomorrow already. It was Saturday, the day
Peregrine was supposed to set out with his lordship for Scotland.
Even if Peregrine could afford to hire a post chaise—which he
couldn't—he doubted he could get back to London fast enough to
avert disaster. By now all of Uncle Benedict's servants would know
something was wrong. Once the servants knew, all the world would find
out.

Peregrine should have realized that anything to do with
Olivia Wingate spelled disaster. He should have let her go with Nat
Diggerby.

But then Peregrine would have missed the adventure.

And the truth was, he was not in any hurry to go to
Edinburgh and be bored and aggravated at yet another school, out of
which he would soon be chucked.

What troubled him was annoying Lord Rathbourne, who
might decide Peregrine was more trouble than he was worth, and
upsetting Mama and Papa because they might become hysterical enough
to forbid any more visits with his lordship. Otherwise Peregrine
wouldn't have minded continuing with Olivia on her mad Quest. For a
young man who planned to travel the Nile, traveling the road to
Bristol would be a useful experience.

But there was Lord Rathbourne to consider, and since he
hadn't caught them yet, Peregrine decided he must stop and wait to be
caught.

Meanwhile he wanted food. And a bed.

Maidenhead, a good-sized market town, boasted a number
of inns. He returned to the Bear, the largest and busiest. As he
neared the entrance, he saw Olivia there, waiting, her arms folded.
"You are supposed to be my squire," she said. "Squires
are steadfast and true. They don't abandon their knights."

"I'm hungry," he said. "I want to sleep."

"You can't do it
here"
she said. 'This is the biggest inn in Maidenhead. It will cost the
earth, and I know they'll never let us have one of their grand rooms
out of charity." She glanced appraisingly about her at her
surroundings. "You can't expect me to earn any money at this
time of night."

"Earn?" he said. "You
mean
bamboozle
."

She shrugged. "Your father gives you money. I have
to work for mine."

Peregrine was not sure that sharp
practices and outright deceit ought to be called
work
,
but he was too tired to debate semantics. "As a matter of fact,
my father does give me money," he said. "And I do have a
bit with me."

Her eyes narrowed.

"In the first place, it isn't very much," he
said. "In the second, it's no use looking at me that way because
I never lied to you about it."

"You never said you had money," she said.

"You never asked," he said. "Have you
asked once for my advice or help or opinion?" Without waiting
for an answer he went on, "I'll buy you supper and maybe a bed
if we're lucky, if you promise not to tell anybody else about our
dying mother—or any other people who don't exist."