Not Wicked Enough (33 page)

The electricity between them made him feel alive. He pulled at his cravat.

“Stop,” she said. “You’re making things worse.”

“The bloody thing is strangling me. Come with me, Lily, and fix it.”

She glanced at the door and then at him. “Is that all?”

“No.” He took a step toward her. “You know that’s not all.”

“Your sister has guests, Mountjoy. I can’t abandon her. Or them.” She put a hand on his sleeve. “Come back inside.”

“I’ve had enough, Wellstone.” A servant came out of the salon with a tray.

“Poor man.”

“You like all that. The people. The talk and noise.”

“I do.”

“I don’t.” He speared her with a look. “All I want is to be alone with you.”

She smiled, and he thought his heart would break at the sight. “Later, Mountjoy. I promise you.”

“Now,” he said.

“You know I can’t.”

“I won’t go back in there.”

She shrugged. “Then go, your grace. You’re no good to anyone scowling like that anyway.”

“I’ve done my duty to Eugenia.”

“You have.”

He checked the hall again and, seeing no one, risked a touch to her cheek. “Do what you must, then. Enjoy yourself.” They were so different, the two of them. “So long as you know I want you with me.”

She didn’t return his smile. “Your grace.”

He walked away, thinking he ought to have gone back inside, but equally aware that the crowd would have quickly worn away his civility. Some minutes later he ended up in his office, which, it happened, overlooked the same back lawns as the Oldenburg salon. The guests had moved outside, Lily among them. He gazed out the window, unable to
work, though there was a mountain of correspondence and ledgers awaiting his attention. He ignored it all.

She would leave him. Every minute that passed brought them closer to that moment. That had been the understanding from the beginning. If he were honest, that impermanence had, at the start, been a relief. It would eventually happen that they would go their separate ways. But not yet. Not just yet. Even from a distance one could tell Lily was the leader, the others followers, she the sun, everyone else planets in orbit around her. She was the light of any room. In a crowd, one noticed her. Exuberant and full of spirits. Passionate beyond belief. Beautiful in his arms.

He rested a hand on the sill and his forehead on the casement. He was endangering his good name and his family’s trust by thinking for even half a second that he could safely conduct an affair with Lily for the rest of the time she was here. Not with his blinding need for her. How long did they have? Two weeks. Three? Could he convince her to stay for a month? What about a year?

The rest of his life?

Today the sun shone bright, and the guests outside were laughing and gesturing and dashing about. Someone’s dog was barking, and the sound carried through the window. Two servants came out, each carrying a basket filled with what looked like apples.

Lily was now arm in arm with Eugenia and Jane, and Caroline Kirk, too. They looked well together, the four of them. Several of the gentlemen held tennis racquets. He grabbed the windowsill and stood there, staring at Lily in that pink frock that fit her like a dream. No other woman out there looked half as fine as she did.

Miss Caroline threw a stick for the dog, a spaniel of some sort. It dashed after its prize. The footmen set the baskets on an invisible line, with the guests gathered behind them. Lily began an animated explanation that involved gestures and pacing. Dr. Longfield stepped forward, a tennis racquet in hand. At a signal from Lily, he took an apple from one of the baskets.

The doctor threw the apple into the air, a wizened thing it was, and hit it a smashing serve. The fruit came off the racquet like an overstuffed Christmas goose. Bits split off and plummeted to the ground.

The demonstration appeared to have been successful, for the doctor bowed once, turned his racquet over to the next gentleman in line, and the rest of the guests lined up. Two at a time, they took turns throwing an apple or other unappetizing fruit into the air and hitting it with the racquets. From time to time one of the gentlemen would lob the fruit into the air for one of the ladies.

There were a great many misses and an indecent amount of mirth. Not everyone hit their target the first time. Whenever someone hit one of the apples particularly well, cheers and applause rose up. There was, he could see from his vantage, spirited betting going on among certain of the spectators.

His guests—Eugenia and Lily’s guests—were having a splendid time. The footmen retrieved any apples that hadn’t disintegrated upon being hit and that appeared as if they could be abused again. Lily stepped up to the line and accepted an apple from Jane Kirk. She tossed her missile into the air and
whack
! The fruit spiraled through the air, shedding bits until the entire thing came apart.

Mountjoy left the window. At his desk, he dashed off a quick line on a half sheet of paper and put the folded page into his coat pocket. By the time he reached the lawn, Lily had another apple and a racquet in hand. Everyone was laughing and smiling, even people who had failed to hit anything while he’d been watching.

Lily put her toe to the line again. As before, she threw her apple into the air. He could see that most of one side of the fruit was a discolored brown.

Thwack!

The apple shot into the air, split into several pieces, and whirled three different directions. Cheers went up.

“Good shot, Miss Wellstone!”

“Applesauce!”

Footmen ran out to retrieve what pieces of fruit they could.

He crossed the lawn, aware of a sudden silence. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jane Kirk, ashen, a hand over her mouth. Did they really think him as awful as that? “Miss Wellstone—” He held out his hand to Lily. What little conversation was still ongoing ceased.

He heard Eugenia whisper, “No, Mountjoy.”

“Give me the racquet, if you please.”

Lily handed it to him with only a slight tilt of her head. During the exchange, he shoved his note into the top of her glove. Racquet in hand, he turned to his left.

“We’re saving the pieces, Mountjoy,” Eugenia said. She held her hands to her mouth, then lowered them. “They’re to be fed to the chickens and the stoats.”

He stooped for an apple. It was discolored and soft. “Even this one?”

“Yes,” Ginny said. Behind her, Jane Kirk shook her head. Caroline looked at him as if she expected him to bite off someone’s head.

“It’s hardly fit for a pig.”

No one said anything.

Mountjoy tossed the apple into the air and hit it with all his strength. It shot through the air like a thing possessed, whirling and spinning and then disintegrating. Bits of apple rained down, yards and yards distant, he saw with some satisfaction, from where anyone else’s had landed.

Caroline Kirk leaned over to Eugenia and said, not too softly, “Applesauce.”

Jane shushed her.

Lily kept a straight face. “Well hit, your grace.”

He handed the racquet to Lily. “That’s how it’s done.”

“Indeed, your grace.”

“See that the scraps are fed to the livestock.” And then he stalked away like an ogre retreating to its lair.

M
OUNTJOY PACED WHILE HE WAITED
. H
IS REGULATED
life was falling to bits. Nothing was as it should be. He no longer knew how to behave toward Lily in public and it seemed whatever he did only made Jane’s opinion of him worse. People were noticing a difference in him, too. Since Lily’s arrival, the men he regularly met with had all remarked, in small ways and large, that he was a changed man. Eventually, he was going to say the wrong thing to Lily in front of someone, if he hadn’t already, or pay too much attention to her and not enough to Jane. He’d be caught staring at Lily, not Jane, and the rumors would start.

When the door to the tower room opened, Mountjoy stopped pacing and wondered at the way his heart beat so hard. He said nothing. His life came to a halt. She had a key. He’d given Lily the key to the tower room he considered his sanctuary.

Lily closed the door and leaned against it, hands behind her. She was…serene. “Are you angry?”

“Not angry,” he managed. He must break with her. Send
her home to Syton House now. He must say the words he had ready.

“Eugenia and Jane had nothing to do with it.”

He nodded.

“It was all in good fun. I didn’t think I needed your permission for a game. The new apples are already put by. We only hit the ones that no one would ever eat.”

“Close the door.” Heart sinking to his toes, he knew he wouldn’t say what he should. He was still enthralled. The boredom would come, and then he’d break with her. But not yet. Not while she was at Bitterward. Surely, he could manage until she left. Then his life would go back to the way it was.

She did, then faced him again. Patient. Lovely beyond his understanding. “I daresay the hens will thank me for saving them from eating all the really rotten bits.”

“It was your idea.” He sounded a bloody fool. Hadn’t she already told him so?

Her chin lifted. “Every part of it.”

“I’m not angry.”

“I am glad to know it.” Cool as ice, she brought her hands from behind her and drew his note from the sleeve of her glove. “You’ll want to burn this.”

“Come here.”

“I am here, your grace.” God, that inscrutable expression of hers, as if nothing he could do or say could ever touch her. “At your pleasure.”

“You should be here.” He glanced at his feet, well aware there was a crude interpretation to his words and action.

Her mouth curved, and the last of her wariness slid from her eyes. “Maybe you should be here.”

“Come here. To me.”

She leaned her head against the door. “I think I will be safer here.”

“Yes,” he said. “You would be. Much safer. Is that what you want? To be safe?”

She pushed off and walked toward him. He watched her approach. “Are you sure you’re not angry?”

“Quite.”

“Well then. If you’re not angry, why the imperial summons?” She waved his note.

“I thought I would go mad watching you. They admire you, all of them. Too much. Especially that damned Dr. Longfield.”

“Don’t be jealous,” she said when she reached him. He took back his note, the dratted thing. “It’s unbecoming a duke.”

He drew her into his arms and brushed his mouth over hers. They fell into a kiss so carnal his initial thought of indulging just in this, just the kissing, flew off with his good sense. He pulled away. “I have a sheath,” he said. “From Venice. I’m told they make the finest.”

At first she didn’t understand, and he felt a pang of guilt that she was innocent enough not to know what he meant. But then her expression cleared. “Oh. I see.” Her cheeks turned pink. “Have you?”

“Yes.”

“What of it, Mountjoy?” Her arms stayed around his shoulders. One of her hands played in his hair.

“I have it with me.” He patted his chest in the location of an interior pocket of his coat.

“Convenient.”

“I want to fuck you here.” The words sounded crude, not what he meant at all. “Right now. With you wearing that pretty frock.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Wicked man.”

He released her and walked to the sideboard to pull the salver from beneath the bottles there. He put an edge of his peremptory note to the flame of the lantern until it caught. When the fire licked down nearly to his fingers, he dropped what was left on the salver and waited until nothing remained but ashes. He also found some still water, thank God, and dropped his sheath into a glass of it so it would soften.