Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction (8 page)

It felt muggy on the landing suddenly, the air hot and heavy and thick.

Margaret
, he’d said, in that deep, firm, masterful voice as they argued in his drawing room the last time they had met. She’d expected no acknowledgement of her presence this time after her stern comments, but having dispensed with the formal greeting, he added, “And I believe the lady keeps some unflattering, uncalled-for ideas about me. How she came by them I couldn’t say.”

Molly could not retreat, for Lady Anne still gripped her hand. She felt cornered. To say nothing would look foolish. To simper and smile would be even worse. The young lady at her side ought to be shown how to handle arrogant gentlemen. So she gathered her courage to fight back. “I tend to have my eyes and ears open, your lordship. That is how I come by my ideas.”

Carver smoothly returned her parry. “The problem, Miss Robbins, is that a woman’s eyes and ears are generally receptive only to things that verify her ingrained opinions. A woman uses her senses selectively.”

“At least she puts them to some use. Unlike a gentleman who deadens his with brandy and port so he need not feel or know anything.”

Lady Anne exhaled a peal of tinkling laughter that vibrated even through her fingers where they gripped Molly’s. “It seems Miss Robbins can match you for cynicism, Danforthe.”

She caught his eye again, saw him raise a hand to his hair, fingers combing through it. “Miss Robbins is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Too clever for me, by far. Too upright and virtuous for an old devil like me.” A sly smile lifted one side of his mouth, and Molly’s heart almost ceased to drum its beat.

When the two gentlemen finally disappeared from view, Molly was able to coax Lady Anne back into her room, and spent the remainder of the visit desperately trying to coax her own mind likewise.

“Well, you put
him
in his place, Miss Robbins.” The young lady giggled. “I’ve never heard anyone stand up to him so boldly.”

Bold? No one had ever accused her of being bold before. “Perhaps you have not met his sister, your ladyship.”

“No, I have not. When Danforthe came to visit, she was busy elsewhere and, of course, I was too young to be of any interest to her. I had hoped to be formally introduced this Season.”

“She would, no doubt, make you one of her projects, Lady Anne. She would like you very much.” The two ladies had a great deal in common, Molly thought, for they’d both been raised mostly by a brother only. Many folk thought Carver a lackadaisical guardian of his little sister, and it was true that he really put his foot down and lost his temper with Mercy only when she was so very bad that other people knew and it couldn’t possibly be ignored. But Molly had seen his behavior as indulgence, not neglect. She’d witnessed how, when Mercy was young, he’d patted her on the head and laughed as she related some of her naughty deeds. He never entered the house after visiting friends in Brighton or Bath without bringing his sister a present. Any governess she didn’t like was immediately dispatched from the premises. Any treat she fancied for dinner was instantly procured. Not long after Molly first arrived to live with them, she’d discovered that Lady Mercy’s tales of how he spanked her with his shoe were all colorful fibs she made up for sympathy. The beastly Earl of Everscham was all bark. And far fonder of his sister than he liked anyone to know.

Later, while leaving the Rothespurs’ house, Molly heard Carver’s low voice in the drawing room to which the gentlemen had retreated and felt that same tempestuous beat overtaking her usually steady pulse. It was like the old days, she thought, when she worked in his house and heard him every day through walls and doors. She missed the sound of his voice, she realized with a sudden wrenching ache of nostalgia. She missed him.

No point dwelling upon that now. She had a new life and was no longer one of his minions. As he’d said, his life was his and hers was hers. Someone else would get his cordial water when he stumbled down to the kitchens in the small hours, forgetting to ring the bell.

But there was a delay in finding her coat. While the servants of the house were sent to find it and a footman was dispatched to ask the coachman for his patience, Molly waited for her coat with a growing sense of some mischief afoot. Sure enough, Carver soon appeared with her missing garment slung over his arm.

“Miss Robbins. Would this belong to you, by chance?”

She frowned, reaching for it.

He held the coat away from her fingers, swiftly moving it behind his back. She glanced up to the landing and was relieved to find they were not being observed. The butler was off searching for her coat, and Lady Anne’s brother was in the drawing room, out of sight. The footman holding the door had discreetly averted his gaze.

“I have a very busy day, your lordship,” she muttered.

“Then you’d better take your coat, Miss Robbins.” He finally held the coat out for her arms.

She didn’t want to feel his touch, for she knew already how it had the power to render her bones soft and her will compliant. She wanted to run as fast as her feet could carry her. Instead, she bravely turned, slipping her arms into the sleeves while he held the coat for her.

“You try to ensnare me,” he whispered in her ear, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders for the briefest of moments. “While your lips insult me, your eyes pull me closer. This is your design for my seduction, I think. You seek my attention, Mouse, by running under my feet at every opportunity.”

“I can assure you nothing is further from my intentions,” she replied hotly, tugging her collar out of his fingers and facing him again. Remembering the footman nearby, she lowered her voice. “Even if I should desire your attention, I couldn’t fathom how to begin.” Then she caught his smile and realized he merely teased her to get her temper up. “Have you no other woman to pester, sir?”

His eyes narrowed. “None like you.”

“Yes, I daresay hardworking women of ambition are in short supply in the places you frequent, your lordship.”

“As are virginal maids and determined spinsters.”

“You should widen your hunting grounds and find some nice girls for a change.”

“Good gracious, whatever would I want a nice girl for? I have a reputation to maintain.”

Molly studied his face for a moment, noting all the signs of his smothered amusement at her expense.

“How funny you look when you’re angry and trying to despise me,” he whispered. “But you know what they say…that there is only a slender leap between anger and desire.”

It was hopeless. If she stayed much longer in the presence of this wicked seducer, he would make her laugh, and that would never do.

Exasperated, she made for the door. He followed and walked with her to the fly waiting outside, as if it was an everyday occurrence for the Earl of Everscham to escort a dressmaker, or even know she existed. He offered his hand to help her up. To refuse would be pettish and another protest he would mock, so she laid her fingers lightly over his and stepped into the fly. He closed the door for her.

“Miss Robbins.”

“Your lordship.” She fixed her gaze directly ahead, and only when the horses finally pulled away from him did she relax.

It was not to be the last time she found him in her path. Arriving one afternoon soon after for a fitting at the Baroness Schofield’s house in Grosvenor Square, Molly was horrified to find her client entertaining a guest. Who else but the Earl of Everscham, busily maintaining his reputation.

He sprawled on a chaise lounge in the lady’s dressing room, hands behind his head, one booted foot on the floor, the other carelessly marking the silk cushions. As usual, his was a powerful presence, devouring the frilly room, swamping the light, feminine furnishings and darkening the space with his masculinity. At least he was not still in his evening clothes, Molly thought briskly when she walked in and saw him there. The fresh spring air clung to him as she walked by, so she guessed he had arrived not long before her.

Good. He had not spent the night there then. Although why she should care was anybody’s guess.
His
life
was
his, hers was hers
. They’d agreed. Molly set her sewing basket down and primly set to the task of ignoring his presence.

The baroness acted very differently on that day, with her lover in attendance. She was twittery and flirtatious, puffing out her bosom as she paraded around in her petticoats and corset, making Molly chase her back and forth with the measuring tape. Her lady’s maid stood nearby, looking bored and weary.

“Peters,” the baroness exclaimed at one point, “don’t just drip there against the wall leaving a stain, go and fetch the tea tray. His lordship must be parched. I know I am with all this dreadful standing about and being still so this woman doesn’t stick me with pins.”

Abruptly reminded of the time she poked Carver in the foot with a pin, Molly glanced up from her work very briefly and caught his eye. Saw a slight smile lift the corners of his mouth, a wicked gleam lighten his gaze. When he pressed two fingers to his lips, she recalled how those same two fingertips had stroked the side of her face. She supposed a cheek was nothing to him. He must be accustomed to touching a great deal more than a lady’s cheek.

Now it was as if she felt his lips travel the same course. Molly hurriedly went back to her pinning.

For all the Baroness Schofield’s complaints about the inconvenience of standing still, she did not trouble herself to do so for very long. Even her girlish, high-pitched laughter caused movement. She could not seem to do anything, even breathe, without exaggeration. Carver, on the other hand, was very still and mostly silent. Molly suspected he wasn’t even listening to his mistress as she chattered about other women of her acquaintance, happily disparaging their hair, their skin, their nails—anything she could. Did the baroness not know how little he was interested in gossip, how thin his patience for spiteful women?

Molly knew. But then she’d known him for twelve years. Had lived in his house all that time and seen him daily avoid the gossiping women who came to visit his sister. She’d heard all his muttered complaints as he stormed by her with his long stride, his coattails flapping like the wings of an angry blackbird.

She chanced another upward glance at the man on the chaise and saw him rub his brow with those fingers now in a quick, irritable manner. He must have a headache, she thought. Keeping up that reputation of his was taking its toll.

“Ouch!” the baroness squealed, jerking away. “Do try to leave my skin unpierced, woman! You render me full of holes!” Before Molly could apologize, the customer walked over to the chaise, trailing the unfinished hem across the dressing-room carpet, careless of Molly’s efforts to follow on her knees. “Darling Carver, how bored you must be waiting for this clumsy girl to be done. Here, I shall give you a kiss to make up for it. I know how impatient you are.” She laughed, and it sounded like the hanging drops of crystal on a chandelier tinkling together as they met the caress of a housemaid’s feather duster.

Molly’s temperature rose another notch, and she jabbed a pin into the small cushion tied around her wrist.

“Not now, Maria,” she heard Carver exclaim gruffly.

“Why not?” Again she laughed, harder this time, shaking those crystals until they became chipped. “It’s only a servant.”

Whether there was eventually a kiss exchanged or not, Molly didn’t see or hear. She kept her sight trained upon her sewing basket, throwing her seamstress tools back inside it with increasing speed and venom.

Peters soon returned with the tea and set it up on a small table beside the chaise. There was a large silver urn, delicate china cups, and a three-tiered platter full of enticingly pretty cakes. Molly’s stomach rumbled, but she kept her head down. She was not invited to partake of the tea, naturally, and in any case, how could she have enjoyed it in that dreadful woman’s company?

“Madam,” she ventured, when it seemed her presence and her purpose there was forgotten, “if you are occupied with your guest, I will take my leave and return again another day.” How badly she wanted to add that the baroness was not her only customer, and other gowns awaited her work and her time.

“Heavens above, woman, I hardly knew you were still here.” The baroness was perched on the edge of the chaise, since Carver had not moved to make room for her ample buttocks. She stuck a slender, two-pronged fork into one of the little cakes. “Peters, I suppose you’d better tell the footman at the door to summon a hackney cab for the dressmaker. It seems she didn’t think to ask the one that brought her here to wait.”

“I could not ask the coach driver to wait for me, madam, especially not knowing how long the fitting would take.” She could not afford it, was what she meant, but it would not be seemly to mention money.

Not that “seemly” would matter much to a woman who walked about in her underthings in front of a gentleman in her dressing room.

The man on the chaise suddenly leapt to his feet, almost causing the baroness to lose her balance. “I must leave. I have an important engagement elsewhere this afternoon.” Molly saw his boots walk by with that forceful stride. But they stopped at the door of the dressing room and swiveled with their toes toward her. “Miss Robbins, perhaps you would care for a ride across Town, since you are done here?”

The silence that greeted this remark was in danger of stretching into uncomfortable territory, until the baroness exclaimed, “But she came in a hackney. She can leave the same way. I’m sure that’s good enough for a dressmaker.”

Molly snapped the lid of her sewing basket shut and scrambled upright. “Certainly, madam. It is no trouble to go back as I came, your lordship. Thank you for the offer.”

“Nonsense,” he growled. “You’ll come with me.”

Again, silence. She couldn’t even hear her heart beating.

“It looks like rain,” he added crossly, as if the bad weather might be her fault. “So you’d better let me take you home rather than wait for the footman to find you a hackney.”

Even his mistress knew not to argue when he used that tone of voice. Not that it stopped her from pouting.

A few moments later Molly was marched out to his carriage, where she sat very straight, knees together, sewing basket on her lap, the covered, unfinished gown carefully folded beside her. After shouting directions at the coachman, Carver dropped to the opposite seat.

“Here I am, doing you a favor again,” he muttered. “What can I be thinking? It’s surely a fool’s errand to expect gratitude from you.”

“Of course I am grateful, your lordship,” she replied stiffly, her fingers tightly gripping the basket, her knees pressed together so hard they hurt. “I just wish you wouldn’t.” She couldn’t resist adding, “I’m only a servant.”

“Believe me, I also wish I didn’t feel the urge to help you.” Then he grinned suddenly. “But I can’t seem to stop doing it. Servant or not.”

She pressed her knees even more firmly together, until they began to feel bruised.

“If it is not deemed meddling, Miss Robbins, may I ask how your business proceeds?”

“Very well, your lordship. I am kept busy with orders.”

“You are in good health?”

“I am,” she replied in a tone of tense civility. “And you are in health, your lordship?”

“As a matter of fact, I have not been feeling myself.” He stretched out his legs, hands on his thighs, looking like one of the healthiest male specimens she’d ever seen. “I am…perturbed by some illness I cannot identify. A fever of some sort.”

“Really?”

He leaned forward. “Feel my brow, Miss Robbins. See for yourself.”

She pursed her lips.

“Go on,” he urged, “touch me.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’ll never forgive yourself, madam, if something terrible happens and you dismissed me so callously.”

“What terrible thing could happen to you?” She clawed her sewing basket a little tighter, glancing around the comfortable interior of his very new, well-sprung, draft-free carriage.

He pulled a somber face. “It may already have happened, Miss Robbins.” Raising a hand to his forehead, he sighed deeply. “With my sister gone off on one of her adventures, and your heartless desertion, who is there to witness my decline and ease my suffering?”

Again Molly felt the unfortunate desire to smile at him. His teasing words fumbled over her, looking for weak spots and ticklish places. Swiftly she removed one glove and, all business, reached over to place the back of her fingers against his brow. He was, in fact, slightly warmer than she expected. “I’m sure you’ll live, your lordship. If your head aches, Mrs. Jakes can make you a restorative potion with powders she gets from the apothecary.”

He looked up, his eyes searching her face, pausing a moment on her lips. Molly’s pulse quickened. She retrieved her hand, having felt enough of his heat.

Reaching inside his coat, he withdrew a little parcel made from his own silk handkerchief and held it out toward her.

She eyed the offering hesitantly. “What is this?”

“Something I know you wanted, Miss Robbins. Now if you refuse it, I have committed a crime for nothing.”

Eventually she took it and untied the knot. He had filched six small cakes for her from his mistress’s tea tray. Molly didn’t know what to say to this bounty. Her eyes felt sore, her palms sweaty inside her gloves.

“You may thank me,” he said, hitching forward on his seat.

She darted a shy glance at his face. “How might I do that?” Oh, dear. Oh, no.

He turned to offer his cheek and pointed to it with one long finger.

Her heart thumped away like the back foot of a distressed rabbit looking to warn the rest of his warren. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“We just left the house of your mistress.” What else might she expect from a rake like him?

“Why do you think I did not kiss her?”

She hadn’t seen, of course, so she didn’t know whether he spoke the truth or not. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter to me if you did.”

“I saved my kiss for you.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Please don’t neglect your mistress on my account, your lordship. Better you spend your kisses on a woman who needs them.”

“Ah, that’s right, Miss Robbins, you are a coldhearted mercenary in need only of my coin.”

“I was quite frank with you in that regard.”

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “At least the baroness doesn’t force me to beg for her kisses like a wet-nosed street urchin.”

“You make this very difficult, sir. Have you forgotten the contract we signed and your promise? No Tomfoolery. I cannot imagine what your purpose could be in—”

“Then give me the cakes back, and I’ll eat them, ingrate.” He reached across, swiped one, and stuffed it whole into his mouth. “Bloody women!” he exclaimed, spraying crumbs. “Why do I bother?”

Molly stared as he chewed viciously, his eyes gleaming.

The sweet almond scent of marzipan already tickled her nose and her taste buds. He was a devil, she decided, sent to tempt her from the rightful path. Her mother would despair.

He paused his chewing and swallowed hard. “You were very rude to me in front of my friend when we last met. Accusing me of deadening my feelings with brandy. When you are the one who has no feelings. Or denies them at least.”

Did he not understand how she had to be that way? Foolish question. Of course he didn’t. When he wanted something, he had it, regardless of any scruples or morals. He never had to work for anything, and he wouldn’t understand the strength of her ambition, the need to keep a focused direction on her career, undistracted by this intense attraction for a gentleman so unsuitable. Carver could never know that her “No Tomfoolery” clause was as much a warning for herself as it was for him.

But he had stolen cake for her and arranged things so she wasn’t forced to wait for a hackney. Was this his usual routine of seduction? Probably couldn’t stop himself, she mused.

“One tiny kiss,” he grumbled. “On the cheek. How much harm could there be in it?”

Molly said nothing, just looked at the spoiled boy. She wanted to kiss him; that was the sad truth of it. Despite all his faults, despite the fact that he’d just left his mistress, despite her desire to cause very little harm and never disappoint her mother.

She wanted to kiss him.

“One kiss, and I promise never to pester you again.” He gestured with his arms out, his shoulders shrugged. “We’re all alone here. No one will know.”

He wasn’t going to shut up otherwise, it seemed. So she slid forward on her seat, struggling to contain her awful excitement. One kiss was not an affair, was it?

“Oh, very well then…for pity’s sake.” She would get it over with, she decided. Once the mystique was gone, she could put the temptation behind her and, hopefully, so could he.

His eyelids lowered. “Only if you’re sure you can spare it.”

“Before I change my mind.”

He parted his knees farther still to make room for hers between them. She couldn’t breathe. To sit this close, this intimately, set her skin afire.

“Hurry, Miss Robbins, or
I
might change
my
mind and take the cakes back again.”