One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (14 page)

Pippa raised her chin in what he was coming to think of as her most frustrating stance. “I promised no questioning other
men
. There was nothing in the wager relating to women.”

He opened his mouth to reply. Closed it.

She nodded once, filled with self-satisfaction, and returned her attention to Sally. “Miss Tasser, I assume from what I witnessed that you are clearly skilled . . . at least, Mr. Cross seems to believe so.”

Was she out of her mind?

“Cross and I have, unfortunately, never . . . done business,” Sally said.

Pippa’s mouth fell into a perfect
O
. “I see,” she said, when she clearly didn’t. “You must be discreet of course. I appreciated that. And I would be happy to pay you for the instruction,” she added. “Would you be willing to visit me at my home?”

He had been wrong;
there
was the end of his tether.

She would learn nothing from Sally. Nor from Temple. Nor from Castleton, dammit—it didn’t matter that he was her fiancé.

Cross didn’t want anyone touching her.

Not if he couldn’t.

He reached for Pippa, taking her by the arm, pulling her away from Sally, away from whatever scandalous path she had been considering taking. He ignored her gasp of outrage and the way his fingers fairly rejoiced at their contact. “Sally, it is time for you to go.” He turned back to Pippa. “And you. Into my office, before someone discovers you here.”

“The club is closed. Who would discover me?”

“Your brother-in-law, perhaps?”

Pippa remained unmoved. “Bourne and Penelope are fishing today. They left for Falconwell this morning. Back tomorrow.”

“To fish.” If he had an eternity to try, he could not imagine Bourne lakeside, fishing.

“Yes. They’ve fished together for much of their life. I don’t see why it’s such a surprise.”

Sally shook her head. “Tragic when a rogue of Bourne’s caliber goes soft.”

Pippa met her gaze. “I suppose it is for most . . . but my sister seems happy with the results.”

“No doubt she is. Bourne has always been able to keep a lady happy.”

Pippa considered the words for a long moment. “Do you mean to say you have . . . with Bourne?”

“She means no such thing.” He gave Sally a pointed look. “Out.”

The prostitute tilted her head, a wicked gleam in her eye. “I’m afraid I can’t leave, Cross. Not without giving the lady the information she requests.”

Pippa seemed to forget her question about Bourne. Thank heaven. “It’s very kind of you to come to my defense.”

Sally Tasser had spent too long on the streets for kindness. The prostitute did nothing that would not advance her cause. The only reason she was willing to cross Knight was because the Angel offered to pay her triple the amount she received from her current benefactor.

Cross made sure she understood his thoughts with nothing more than a look.

“Sally is leaving, Lady Philippa.” The words came out more harshly than he’d intended. But a man could only be pushed so far.

For a moment, he thought both women would fight him. And then, Sally smiled, tilting her head and turning her coyest smile on him. “Well, someone should answer the lady’s questions.”

Pippa nodded. “It’s true. I will not leave without it.”

The words were out before he could stop them. “I shall answer them.”

Sally looked immensely pleased.

Shit.

There was nothing he wanted to do less than to answer the questions Philippa Marbury had collected in preparation for her lessons from a prostitute.

Pippa’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t know.”

“Cross is highly skilled,” Sally said, extracting herself from Pippa’s grasp, fairly purring the rest. “He knows all your answers, I’m sure.”

Pippa cut him a doubtful look that made him want to prove the prostitute right this very moment.

Sally noticed the exchange and turned a bright, knowing smile on him. “Isn’t that right, Cross? I’m certain you don’t need my help. Aren’t you?”

“I’m certain.” He felt as uncertain as Pippa looked.

“Excellent. I shall see you tomorrow, as planned, then.”

He nodded once.

She turned to Pippa. “It was wonderful meeting you, Lady Philippa. I hope we have the chance to meet again.”

Not if he had anything to say about it.

Once Sally had disappeared through a dark passageway to a rear entrance to the club, he rounded on Philippa. “What would possess you to lie in wait for a prostitute inside a casino?”

There was a long silence, and Cross wondered if she might not reply, which wouldn’t be terrible, as he had had more than enough of her insanity.

But she did reply, eyes wide, voice strong, advancing on him, stalking him across the floor of the casino. “You don’t seem to understand my predicament, Mr. Cross. I have eleven days before I have to take vows before God and man relating to half a dozen things of which I have no knowledge. You and the rest of Christendom—including my sisters, apparently—would have no trouble at all with such an act, but I
do
have difficulty with it. How am I to take vows that I don’t understand? How am I to marry without knowing all of it? How am I to vow to be a sound wife to Castleton and a mother to his children when I lack the rudimentary understanding of the acts in question?”

She paused, adding as an aside, “Well, I do have the experience from the bull in Coldharbour, but . . . it’s not entirely relevant understanding, as Penelope and you have both pointed out. Can’t you see? I only have eleven days. And I
need every one of them.
”

He backed into the hazard table, and she kept coming. “I need them. I need the knowledge they can give me. The understanding they can afford. I need every bit of information I can glean—if not from you, then from Miss Tasser. Or others. I have promised to be a wife and mother. And I have a great deal of research to do on the subject.”

She was breathing heavily when she stopped, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, and the skin of her pale breasts straining against the edge of her rose-colored gown. He was transfixed by her, by her passionate concern and her commitment to her ridiculous solution—as though understanding the mechanics of sex would change everything. Would make the next eleven days easy, and the next eleven years even easier. Of course, it wouldn’t.

Knowledge wasn’t enough.

He knew that better than anyone.

“You can’t know everything, Pippa.”

“I can know more than I do,” she retorted.

He smiled at that, and she took a step back, staring up at him, then down at her widespread hands. There was something so vulnerable about her. Something he did not like.

When she returned her unblinking gaze to his and said, “I am going to be a wife,” he had the wicked urge to ferret her into one of the club’s secret rooms and keep her there.

Possibly forever.

A wife.
He hated the idea of her as a wife. As Castleton’s wife. As anyone’s.

“And a mother.”

A vision flashed, Pippa surrounded by children. Beaming, bespectacled children, each fascinated with some aspect of the world, listening carefully as she explained the science of the Earth and the heavens to them.

She would be a remarkable mother.

No. He wouldn’t think on that. He didn’t like to consider it.

“Most wives don’t frequent prostitutes to develop their skills. And you have time for maternal research.”

“She seemed as good a research partner as any, considering you’ve already cut my pool of possibilities in half. After all, you have not been helping. Is she your paramour?”

He ignored the question. “Prostitutes seemed a reasonable next step in your plan?”

“Interestingly enough, they didn’t until last night. But when Penelope suggested that there might be prostitutes here—”

“
Lady Bourne
knows about your ridiculous plans and hasn’t tied you to a chair?” Bourne’s wife or no, the lady deserved a sound thrashing for allowing her unmarried, unprotected sister to gallivant through London’s darker corners without purchase.

“No. She simply answered a few questions about the Angel.”

About him?
He wouldn’t ask. He did not wish to know.

“What kind of questions?”

She sighed. “The kind that ended with me knowing that there might be a prostitute or two here. Is she very skilled?”

The question was so forthright, his head spun. She did not need to know that Sally Tasser was perhaps the most skilled workingwoman this side of Montmartre.

“What do you want to know?”

She blinked up at him with those big blue eyes and said, as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing to say, “Everything.”

For one long, lush moment, he was lost to the vision of just what
everything
might entail. To the way her body might fit to his, the way she might taste, soft and sweet on his tongue, to the wicked, wonderful things she might allow him to do to her. To the lessons for which she did not even know she was asking.

He wanted to show her everything.

And he wanted to begin now.

“Do you think that Miss Tasser would be willing to provide a lesson of sorts?”

It was becoming difficult to breathe. “No.”

Pippa tilted her head. “Are you certain? As I said, I would be willing to pay her.”

The idea of Pippa Marbury paying to learn Sally Tasser’s trade made Cross want to destroy someone. First Bourne, for allowing his sister-in-law to run untethered throughout London, and then the Marquess of Needham and Dolby, for raising a young woman who was completely lacking in sense, and then Castleton, for not keeping his fiancée properly occupied in the weeks leading up to their wedding.

Unaware of the direction of his rioting thoughts, she said, “Lord Castleton has never attempted to compromise me.”

The man was either idiot or saint.

If Cross were Castleton, he’d have had her a dozen different ways the moment she’d agreed to be his wife. In darkened hallways and dim alcoves, in long, stop-and-start carriage rides through the crush of midday traffic, and outside, quickly, against a strong, sturdy tree, with none but nature to hear her cries of pleasure.

To hear their
mutual
cries of pleasure.

But he was not Castleton.

He was Cross.

And this was thoroughly, completely wrong.

He took a step back, his thoughts making him guilty—making him look around the dim casino floor in sudden fear that someone might see them. Might hear them.

Why was it that she was always where ladies should never be?

“Last night, I attempted to indicate to him that I was happy for him to touch me. Kiss me, even.”

He hated the earl with a wicked, visceral intensity.

She was still talking. “But he didn’t even seem to notice me. Granted, it was just a touch on the hand, but . . .”

Cross would pay good money for her to touch him so simply.

Her big blue eyes were trained on him again. “Do you know why he hasn’t attempted to seduce me?”

“No.” Again, sainthood seemed the only logical answer.

“You needn’t feel that you must protect me from the truth.”

“I don’t.” Except he did. He didn’t want her to know the truth of his own thoughts. Their sordid nature.

“It’s because I am odd.” And then she looked up at him with those enormous blue eyes, and said, “I can’t help it.”

God help him, he wanted to kiss her senseless, odd or not. He wanted to kiss her senseless
because
she was odd.

“Pippa—” he said, knowing he shouldn’t speak.

She cut him off. “Don’t tell me it’s not true. I know it is. I’m strange.”

“You are.”

Her brows knit together. “Well, you don’t have to tell me it
is
true either.”

He couldn’t help it. He smiled. “It is not a bad thing.”

She looked at him as though it was he—and not she—who was mad. “Of course it is.”

“No. It’s not.”

“You’re a good man.”

He was nothing of the sort. And there were several key parts of his body that wanted to prove that to her. One of them in particular.

“It’s fine that he is not interested in seducing me,” she said, “but it cannot go on forever.”

“Perhaps he is trying to be a gentleman.”

She did not believe it. “That hasn’t stopped Tottenham.”

A thread of fire shot through him. “Tottenham has attempted to seduce you?” He’d murder him, next prime minister or not.

She looked at him as though he’d sprouted a second head. “No. Why would Tottenham seduce me?”

“You said it.”

“No. I said he’d tried to seduce Olivia.”

She hadn’t said any such thing, but he let it go.

“Not tried to,” she pressed on, “
did
. Has done.” She closed her eyes. “I’m the only Marbury daughter who has not been seduced.”

He could rectify this tragic wrong.

Except he couldn’t.

She looked up at him. “Can you believe it?”

He did not know what to say. So he said nothing.

“You can, I see.” She took a deep breath. “This is why I required your help from the beginning, Mr. Cross. I need you to show me how to do it.”

Yes.

He swallowed back the word. Surely he was misunderstanding. “How to do what?”

She sighed, frustrated. “How to attract him.”

“Whom?”

“Are you even listening? Castleton!” She turned away, heading for the nearest table, where a roulette wheel stood quiet in its thick oak seat. She spoke to the wheel. “I didn’t know that he should be attempting to seduce me now. Before our wedding. I didn’t know that was a part of it.”

“It’s not. He shouldn’t be doing any such thing.”

“Well, you’ve clearly never been engaged because it seems that this is precisely the kind of thing that happens between to-be-married couples. I thought I had two weeks. Apparently, I don’t.”

There was a roar in his ears that made it difficult to understand her, but when she turned to face him again, shoulders back, as though she were about to do battle, he knew he was done for. “My research must begin immediately.”