Seducing the Rake (Mad, Bad and Dangerous Heroes) (11 page)

Neither man moved.

Chessy’s brow furrowed. “Swithin, whatever have you got in that bag?” Her violet gaze shifted to the earl, whose forearms were dusty with flour. “And what are
you
doing with the last of my precious flour?”

Morland shrugged. He cracked a pair of eggs, and each smooth motion spoke of great practice.

Without a word, he attacked the mixture.

Chessy gave a startled laugh
“You?
It’s—it’s impossible—”

Morland cut her off with a look that was pure flashing sapphire. “I was under the
impression
that I was saving you from impending death by starvation. Clearly I was wrong, and my chivalry is wasted.” Once Swithin’s efforts with flint and tinder paid off in a tolerable flame, Morland slammed a cast iron skillet down over the fire and tossed in a lump of butter.

Scowling still, he tipped frothy beaten eggs into the sizzling butter.
“Someone
has to look after you, since you clearly haven’t the wit of a two-year-old.”

“
Just
one minute—”

Morland snorted and flipped the omelet deftly. Then he slammed a chipped but clean earthenware plate down and proceeded to fill it with a steaming omelet and a wedge of cheese that Swithin had produced from his bag. “
Eat.
”

The curt command made Chessy blink.

Morland shoved a fork into her hand and growled,
“Now,
woman! I won’t have good food going to waste!”

This time Chessy did as he ordered. In seconds every scrap of food had disappeared. She watched, amazed, as some sort of fried pancake, drenched in butter and dusted with sugar, dropped lightly onto her plate.

Chessy bit into the cloud-soft cake and sighed.

Every bite was better than the last. It had been
months
since she’d eaten so well. She had never learned how to cook, living as she had, moving from place to place with her father. Swithin was no better than she. As a result, their few cooking efforts in London had been appalling disasters. Since their arrival they had subsisted on bread and butter and whatever fruits Swithin had managed to procure.

Nothing like
this.

With another sigh, Chessy stared down at her empty plate, then carefully set down her fork. “That was wonderful. I had no idea you could cook.”

Morland was saved from offering a reply by Swithin carrying two steaming cups of tea.

“Begging your pardon, your lordship, but I reckoned as now you might care fer something to drink. No whiskey at hand, more’s the pity. But that there’s grade-A Amoy black what Miss Chessy brung all the way from Macao. Goes down fine, it does. Demned near as good as whiskey.”

After settling the two cups, the rangy servant busied himself opening the faded curtains. A moment later, the room filled with sunlight. “If you don’t mind, Miss Chessy, I’ll go and see to the rest of the provisions. Enough to feed a household fer a year out there, I shouldn’t wonder. Only wish we had somebody to cook it fer us.”

With a shrug he shouldered the unused flour and disappeared into the stillroom.

Neither Morland nor Chessy moved. Their eyes locked, wary and intent. The room seemed very small. Very quiet.

And blindingly intimate.

Morland was the first to break the spell. He took up his tea and slid into the chair opposite Chessy. “Are you always so pig-headed?”

“Are you always so rude and high-handed?”

“Your father might be a rogue and a vagabond, but I cannot believe he would tolerate such behavior in his daughter.”

“You know nothing about him! And what possible concern is my speech or my behavior to you?”

“None, thank God. Not as a rule. But someone needs to keep an eye on you.”

“By all means, let me be proper and docile. Let me simper and dress in silk. Only you men may swagger about, curse, and carouse. Or prowl for shameless creatures who positively plead for your touch!”

Chessy caught herself up with a low gasp. What demon had made her blurt
that
out?”

Morland’s eyes narrowed. “What in the devil do you mean?”

“N-nothing.”

“Come, come, my sweet. All that venom must have some source.”

Chessy sniffed. “I was simply speaking from general observation. All the English gentlemen I’ve seen here seem to carry on most despicably.”

“Indeed?” Morland settled back in his chair and sipped his tea. “I suppose you’ve seen so many.”

“I’ve seen enough,” came the grim reply.

 The earl’s sapphire eyes measured Chessy over the rim of his cup. “I mean to know exactly what you’re doing here in London, Chessy.”

She met him glare for glare. “That is none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is. Especially since we both know your father is
nowhere
within fifty miles of town.”

Chessy’s fingers tensed upon her teacup. “Of course he is! Well, perhaps not here in the house at the moment.” She gave a cool laugh. “You know how my father is. He never cares to stop long in one place. Right now he’s—busy. In fact, he is seeking funds for various new expeditions. I daresay you wouldn’t even recognize him, all stiff and respectable in a new frock coat and polished boots. Yes, out and about from dawn to dusk, he is. He would be useless with the day-to-day details of running the house anyway.”

Morland’s eyes were chips of sapphire. “You’re lying, Cricket. I always could see right through you.” His voice was low and husky. “And you know it too.” That soft, dark sound made Chessy shiver, as did the nickname that only
he
had ever used.

She stared down at her teacup. She realized, to her horror, that her fingers were trembling. Indeed, her whole body was unsettled.

She made a discovery then, a most unpleasant one. She had loved this man abjectly and blindly once, as a schoolgirl of fifteen. And it appeared that she hadn’t gotten over him yet.

But she couldn’t let
him
see that.

She came gracefully to her feet. “I thank you for your assistance, my lord. The meal was … quite tolerable, actually. But now I must—”

He was around the table in a second.

His hard hand gripped her waist, and he caught her against the wall. “You’re going
nowhere,
Chessy. Not until I have some answers. And this time try giving me something besides witless lies. Your father would
never
come to London to fawn at some merchant king’s coattails in the hope of raising funds for an expedition. Nor would he come to London without looking me up his first day here.”

His fingers tightened on the soft skin at Chessy’s wrist. Something dark and unreadable flashed in his eyes. “So begin explaining, my dear. Unless you’d rather I worked the answers out of you in a different way.”

Chessy went utterly still.

For a wild moment she considered giving him a quick chop to the collarbone. Fast and efficient, that. He would be howling on the floor in agony within seconds. Her skill was such that one blow would also leave him with residual pain and weakness for life.

Scowling, Chessy discarded the idea and focused on his legs. Yes, something swift and unexpected…

But the warm pressure of his thigh kept getting in the way of her planning, leaving her strangely light-headed.

He’s just a man, isn’t he? He is dangerous.

But he wasn’t just
any
man. He was Tony, the first man she had ever loved.

Suddenly all the wonder of those reckless, glorious weeks returned to her. She remembered Tony roaring with laughter, bronze-maned and bare-chested, trying to catch a fish with his bare hands. The sun had glistened in a haze of gold as he dove into the water from the edge of their junk moored above a five-hundred-year-old Chinese treasure trove.

Days of laughter had become nights of churning agony, as the girl with violet eyes perched on the edge of the dark abyss of womanhood.

With one kiss, with one searing touch, he had brought all those memories back to her and Chessy found herself no more prepared now than she had been ten years earlier.

Morland’s hands tightened and Chessy felt the hard outline of each finger, felt the tension that gripped his whole body.

And with it she felt a strange heat that seemed to center in her chest and squeeze through her lungs, leaving her giddy and blind.

Hungry to feel all the rest of him pressed against her so completely.

With a low cry she shoved her palms against his chest and tried to break free, only to find her hands caught at her sides.

“Where is he, Cricket? What sort of trouble is the old reprobate in now?”

Suddenly Chessy had to close her eyes to fight back tears. The sound of her old nickname, coupled with the rough note of concern in Morland’s voice, broke through ten years of defenses.

It was no good. She had never been able to hide
anything
from this man. If he didn’t leave soon, she would disgrace herself with tears—or she’d reveal everything.

Dragging in a raw breath, she opened her eyes. Her head eased back to meet his look, and the movement sent her midnight hair tumbling free. Like a cloud of black silk it spilled down her back and covered her hands where Morland held them against the wall.

Chessy saw a muscle flash at his jaw. As she struggled for some explanation to ward him off, her gaze fell to the bronzed skin at the collar of his shirt. He had removed his jacket and cravat while he worked. His shirt was open.

A fine layer of flour dusted the crisp bronze hairs at his chest.

Her breath caught. Mesmerized, she studied the dense, springy hairs, the same color as his skin.

Her tongue swept her dry lips. Suddenly all she could think of was how it would feel to run her fingers through that dense tangle where bronze hair met bronze skin…

With a choked sound she jerked her face upward, feeling heat flood her cheeks.

Morland’s eyes narrowed. His breath seemed to cease. “What’s wrong?”

Chessy’s chest rose and fell jerkily. She was caught somewhere between flying and fainting, and she couldn’t feel her feet.

Heavens, she couldn’t feel
anything
but the hot, aching inches where their bodies met at thigh and chest.

It was the end and the beginning of a thousand schoolgirl’s dreams, except this was
real
, and the man touching her was of keenest flesh and blood.

And
she
was a schoolgirl no longer. She knew where a touch could lead.

“L-let me go.” It was the merest whisper of sound.

But he did not. “Chessy,” he murmured. “You’ve grown up.” His fingers moved through the lustrous hair cascading over her shoulders. “You smell like sandalwood and orange blossoms. And your hair … so beautiful … It was
always
beautiful.”

Her breath caught in a whimper. She closed her eyes against the desire she read in his face.

“Let me go.”

“Where have you been for the last ten years of my life, Cricket? What sweet, wild things have you been learning without me?”

His hands slid through her thick hair and opened at her waist. His thighs were hard against her stomach.

Chessy blinked as she felt the telltale hardness, felt the heat and hunger of the man. And deep inside she welcomed those things, because in spite of all the time passed this was
Tony,
the only man she’d ever loved, the laughing English stranger whom she’d adored with a schoolgirl’s fever she’d never quite recovered from.

He had protected her, charmed her and encouraged her.

Her hands curved over his shoulders. Her fingers slid through the textured bronze of his hair.

“Chessy, we can’t.”

Then Morland groaned as she finally did what she’d been longing to do and combed her fingers through the flour-strewn hair at the open neck of his shirt.

He was warm. He was hard. He was everything she’d dreamed he would feel like. Ten years of forbidden fantasies had not prepared her for the reality of skin upon warm skin. A decade of dreams found their blazing culmination in that second, and Chessy felt a wild delirium sweep over her, freeing her from the past, parting her from her future, until there was nothing left but
now,
one sweet, trembling moment with too many dizzying textures of feeling.