St. Raven (15 page)

“You won’t. I promise.” Despite her attempt to control him, he had another button loose.

She grasped the edges to keep her jacket closed. “Any rake would say that. Let me go!”

He stilled, but did not retreat. “You trust me, Cressida.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Then why are you here? Why are you so sure I won’t toss you to Crofton? Or obtain your jewels only to steal them?”

“You’re rich. They would mean nothing to you.”

He could feel her agitated breathing. To give her time, he surrendered the top of her jacket and slid his hand down and under the bottom edge. There he used his nails to tease the skin of her side. When she inhaled and shifted her hips against him, he knew it would only take patience. He could be very patient in pursuit of what he wanted.

“I don’t know how much the jewels are worth, but I could do with more money.”

“A duke?”

“Would you believe me if I explained?” He lowered his head and nuzzled her neck.

“Yes.”

“Because you trust me,” he stated, then licked around her ear, heard her catch her breath.

Waited.

“I suppose I do.”

He loved the grumpy reluctance of it when every movement of her body showed how much she wanted what he was doing, and more.

“So, trust me in this, sweetheart. Come explore with me. There are many things we can do without risking a child. Trust me…”

He eased aside her clutching hands, found one sweet, full breast, and tickled her nipple with his thumb.

A gasp escaped her, and she went up on her toes. He couldn’t stop a soft laugh of triumph. “See?”

“Yes…”

He slid his hands up to her shoulders, pushing the jacket away—

She put both hands to his chest and shoved.

He stepped back, shocked, his eyes adjusted enough to see how she had her jacket clutched shut again, how she was looking at him, eyes wide.

Frightened.

Frightened.

Dear God.

He raised his hands. “It’s all right. It’s all right. I won’t force you.” His heart pounded as if his life depended on her response.

She looked down and fumbled at the gilt buttons. He wanted to help but kept his distance. “Talk to me, love. I thought you were enjoying that.”

Her hands stilled. “I was,” she whispered.

Despite everything, he melted at her gallant honesty.

She made short work of the remaining three buttons and then looked at him. “But it would be wrong. You have to know it would be wrong.”

“I told you I wouldn’t get you with child.”

“That’s nothing to do with it! At least it is…” She stared at him. “I’m not sure we speak the same language.”

The chill he felt was quite steadying. She was right. Miss Mandeville of Matlock was absolutely right. Insane to imagine more than this quixotic quest.

“We have indeed been speaking in foreign tongues. I thought I heard you say that you trusted me.”

“I do, I do! But it’s
wrong
. Perhaps not in your world, in this world. But in mine. In mine, people—decent people—don’t do things like this.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He should be finding this laughable. Why was his heart pounding? Why did the gulf between them cause such pain?

“I think we have understanding now,” he said, with all the cool he could summon. “You are denying your body’s very natural desires, Miss Mandeville, because Matlock propriety has triumphed.”

“As it should!”

“Nonsense. Propriety is a straitjacket, but if you feel comfortable
locked
up in it, so be it.”

He meant the words to be cool, but hot anger flickered along the edge of his words like the flames along the blade of a dagger. Wisdom sword. God, he needed wisdom here. He needed to show her that this didn’t matter.

He looked away, looked at the clock. “It’s fifteen minutes to midnight. Time to retrieve your other treasure.” He looked around and saw the pale puddle of her discarded veils. Why had she shed them if not to invite him? He gathered them up and offered them to her.

Cressida snatched them. She wanted, she needed, to be angry at him—for sneering at her, for trying to make virtue seem like folly. She needed to gather her wits, but her dissatisfied body tangled her, suggesting that impossible things were still possible…

She was right. She knew it. She had to believe it.

But he was angry, and something more than angry. She wanted to go to him, surrender to him, as much for him as for herself.

It had to be another rake’s trick. It wasn’t her fault if she didn’t belong in his world, wasn’t willing to play his lewd games!

She had to put on the things in her trembling hands. She wasn’t sure she could. She must. She couldn’t, mustn’t, ask his help.

As if he sensed something, he took another step away, freeing her to move into the center of the room without going near him. She walked to the big table and dropped the things in her hand there.

What order? Head veil. No, face veil first. Or mask? No, that held the head veil on. With shaking hands, she tried to tie the strings of the face veil at the back of her head.

“Let me help.” It sounded strangely like a plea.

Perhaps that was why she said, “Very well.”

His slippers were silent again, but she felt his approach. She was prepared and did not shiver when his hands touched hers as he took the strings, when his fingers stirred her hair, brushed it as he tied the knot.

The shiver was there, however, deep inside.

Painfully, she was aware of his care, aware that he stood not an inch nearer than he had to, when once he would have pressed close. When once he would have teased. Would have kissed her neck…

Ah, Cressida Mandeville of Matlock, you are a fool. But which part of this is the folly?

With her back to him, she picked up the blue veil, shook it, and draped it over her head, then let him tie the mask to hold it in place. She was Roxelana again, queen of the harem, wife to Suleiman…

He stepped away from her. She felt the space where once he had been. Now that she had been clear, he would not intrude again. It
had
been a case of different languages.

She turned to him. “I’m sorry.”

“It is I who should be sorry for upsetting you.”

“You didn’t upset me—” But she stopped that, for it was a lie, though perhaps they weren’t talking about the same upset.

She longed, against reason, for some scrap of the closeness they’d had before. She reached for an explanation. “I was not myself. I’m sure it seemed to you that I—” She bit her lip. “I think it was the spirits in that drink.”

“Crofton’s brew? But you hardly took a sip.”

She was glad the dimness concealed her red face. Intoxicated. She had been intoxicated! “I drank a cupful. One of the servants replaced my beaker with another.”

“Good Lord.” But then he laughed, even if it did sound a bit wild. “Poor Cressida! That, my dear, was a potent aphrodisiac. It’s what caused all that rutting in the corridors. Even at the wildest parties, people usually seek a bit more comfort than that.”

“Aphro—”

“
Aphrodisiakos
,” he said, and it had to be Greek. “From Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, or to be more precise, of sexual pleasure. Cressida, forgive me. I did not know—”

“It was my fault. How could you?”

Aphrodisiac. That burning lust came only from a drink? She remembered that time in the drawing room and the raw desperation she’d felt then. If he’d not stopped, would she have had the strength to?

“Thank you,” she said again.

“There is nothing here to thank me for,” he said flatly. “I should never have brought you, but having done so, I should have guarded you better. And I never should have even attempted what I did. I should have known it was not truly what a woman like you would want.”

A woman like you.

A lady of Matlock.

Locked in Matlock.

And this lady of Matlock
did
want, and she wasn’t sure it was all aphrodisiac anymore. Temptation flickered. She stamped on it.

“It is almost midnight,” she said in the most prosaic voice she could muster.

“Yes. We should go. As soon as someone wins that statue, we can get the jewels and this will all be over.”

Over.

“How strange that after all this, it will be so simple in the end.”

He laughed. “I’ll believe that after the event.”

“It will work, Your Grace.”

“St. Raven.”

Folly, but she surrendered. “St. Raven.”

“Tris.” It whispered on the air toward her like an invitation to sin.

She tightened her lips and would not give in. Did she seem foolish to be afraid of a name?

“It might slip out in public,” she offered as excuse. But that was foolish, too. “Not that I think we’re likely to meet in public.”

“I do attend the occasional ball and rout.”

She could have pointed out that during weeks of the London season and a surfeit of balls and routs, Miss Cressida Mandeville had not once been introduced to the Duke of St. Raven. Instead, she said, “But I will be returning to Matlock.”

“I assume even Matlock is not barred to outsiders.”

“You have need of the restorative waters?”

“After this, almost certainly.”

It was a joke, and it broke her heart. If only they could be friends. “It’s time to go, St. Raven,” she reminded him, “if we’re to know who wins my statue.”

“Yes.” Still he didn’t move. Then he said, “Let me be your agent in this, Cressida. Let me deal with it while you stay here.”

Until relief unsteadied her, she hadn’t realized how desperately she didn’t want to return to the disgusting house.

“You should be safe. Everyone not mightily engaged elsewhere will be watching the contest.”

“But what if there’s a chance to grab the statue for only a moment?”

“Tell me how to open it.” He glanced at the ticking clock. “Quickly.”

She gathered her wits. “It’s not easy, but the statues are carved on all surfaces except the base. On the man’s back, you have to slip something thin—a strong fingernail or a fine blade—at the base of his belt, right at the middle. At the same time, you pull down at his heels. When you get it right, you’ll feel a slight movement, but only slight. Then you slide the back of his legs to the left. That opens the door to the cavity.”

“It sounds as if it won’t open by mistake. How long a fingernail?”

She remembered fingernails against her skin and managed not to shiver. “Longer than yours, I think. Your blade?”

“Is probably too thick. What of the blade in the study?”

“Yes, one of the points will work. I used that when my father showed me.”

“Let’s hope it’s not already been filched. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Not as long as you can detect the right one.”

“The hat and the belt. I remember.”

There seemed to be a smile in that, but it was still as if he was delaying. She stepped forward and pushed him. “Go!”

The touch shocked her. He seemed to be staring at her…

He grasped her shoulders and kissed her—short, hard, and hot. And then he was gone.

Cressida hugged herself. Without him, the gloomy room no longer seemed warm and comforting, and what had happened here had spoiled something sweet. Even good. How could anything about this place be good?

It must be the potion still disordering her mind, making her want what she would never normally want. She focused on the matter in hand. She had to trust him with the business in the house, but in the meantime she had to be safe here.

What if someone came—another couple looking for a private spot? She was tempted to go out, to hurry after her experienced guide, but she never wanted to step inside Stokeley Manor again.

Instead, she opened a drawer in the sideboard and felt around until she found a large wooden rolling pin. Thus armed, she sat where she could see the clock and prepared to wait.

Tris was astonished by his reluctance to return to the house. It was not the sort of event he enjoyed, but returning to it felt like jumping into a sewer. The noise had lessened, but it was probably stupor rather than calm.

A smell made him halt. Vomit. He detoured around it.

This disgusting affair was typical of Crofton. Excess as a substitute for excellence. But could he really say all his own parties had ended up more decorously?

Yes, but sometimes not by much. He didn’t serve the sort of brew Crofton had been ladling out, however. That had been a concoction designed to drive people to extremes as quickly as possible—a sure sign of a host uncertain of his success.

Tris wished Crofton to the devil he was impersonating, and regretted bringing Cressida here. He could have persuaded her to stay behind at Nun’s Chase, but it had seemed an amusing novelty at the time. He’d never given a thought to protecting her innocence of mind. He’d never thought that important. In fact, if asked, he’d have said that innocence was generally ignorance and dangerous.

It would seem he had overlooked questions of purity.

No, he thought, pausing by the door back into the house, that wasn’t the right word, either. It sounded so damn preachy.

Loveliness, perhaps. The loveliness of a flower at its peak, or a fresh summer morning, or a piece of fine, white linen. Something that should be treasured, not soiled.

He laughed at himself. Nature of itself faded the flower and wore out the morning, and linen was designed to be dirtied and then washed. It was all part of a natural order—but it shouldn’t be hastened by an event like this.

An event like this should never exist.

That was a strange thought, since it was probably his own successful events at Nun’s Chase that had put the idea into Crofton’s head. He shook away his wandering thoughts and went into the house.

Stink assailed him, and he almost tripped over the legs of a snoring gladiator. The gladiator was on top of an equally oblivious, half-naked, billowy fat woman. Tris heaved the man off her a bit to make sure she didn’t suffocate. He couldn’t see anything to cover her with. She was clearly a whore, so he didn’t suppose she’d care.