St. Raven (4 page)

She blinked at him. “You’d accept my word?”

“It is not binding?”

She wanted to rap out,
Of course
, but she wasn’t quite sure. No one had ever asked her for it before, and being practical…

“Clearly not,” he remarked, brows rising.

“If you were a villain, Your Grace, and I could escape by giving you my word, I’m afraid I would do it.”

He smiled. “Clever and honest.”

Her heart did a somersault. He was definitely the sort of man who drove women to make fools of themselves, and it wasn’t entirely because of his rank.

Not her, she resolved. Not her.

“So,” he said, “you must decide if I am a villain or not.”

Suddenly irked by her position, she scrambled off the bed. “You are a highwayman,” she pointed out, empowered by being vertical.

“Not true.”

“How can you say ‘not true’? You just held up a coach and kidnapped me!”

“Very well, somewhat true.”

Improperly, he sat while she was standing, sat on the bed, leaning back against one of the carved bedposts, his right arm around his raised knee. She didn’t think she’d ever in her life been with a man so casually— casually dressed, casually arranged, casually mannered.

And this was a duke! The Duke of St. Raven. She’d think she must be dreaming except that she could never conjure up anything so outrageous.

“But I was only playing at it for the one night.”

She remembered now that he was said to be wild. “You find being a thief amusing?”

“After a fashion. This consequence, after all, is certainly novel.”

“I think you’re mad.”

His lips twitched. “I wouldn’t if I were you. Quite alarming to be in the power of a madman.” He let that sink in for a moment, then added, “To return to the matter of your parole, I cannot allow you to go to Lord Crofton’s, so unless I’m sure that you will be here in the morning, I’ll have to take steps. Tie you up, perhaps. Or,” he added, “tie you to me.”

Those eyes swept to her breasts. She glanced down. Her too-large-for-fashion bosom was rising and falling with her agitated breaths. In the low evening dress that Crofton had insisted upon, they were highly exposed. She remembered the duke putting her earrings and the money down there. She raised her hand there to shield herself and felt the notes crackle.

She swallowed and met his eyes. “I am barefoot and heaven alone knows where, Your Grace. I will not leave until tomorrow.”

“It
is
tomorrow. You will not leave until we have breakfasted and discussed matters.”

She hated to be given orders, but she said, “Very well.”

“Your word of honor?”

She hesitated again, but only in awe of being asked for it. “My word of honor.”

“Come, then.” He stood, took his branch of candles, and led the way out of the room to the one next door. It was only then, eye-to-back, that Cressida realized that he might have sat down to give her the height advantage.

Could she believe he’d do something so understanding, so thoughtful?

The new bedroom was identical to his except that the hangings were a dull blue. Her sense of the house was that it was a modest country manor—strange for a duke. Borrowed for villainy?

He lit the single candle there. “The servants are all asleep. I’ll bring you what’s left of my washing water. The bed has not been aired, but it is summer.”

She almost giggled at his concern about these housewifely matters. For her part, she didn’t care. Sleep was creeping over her like an invader, dragging down her lids. “It will do.”

“I’m next door if you require anything.”

That was not housewifely. A quirk of mouth and brow gave it a naughty spice.

A rake, she remembered when alone. The Duke of St. Raven had the reputation not only of being wild, but of being a promiscuous lover, as well. Her friend Lavinia had a brother who gossiped to her, and of course, Lavinia shared the juicy stories.

The duke held wild parties. Parties for gentlemen and whores. Apparently there were Cyprian balls, and he was a notable attendee.

When he returned with his water jug and towel, she watched his every move. But he simply put the items down and returned to the door.

Ah well, she was hardly the sort to drive men wild with lust, and anyway, as she’d thought, the last thing the duke would do would be to assault a decent woman.

He paused at the door. “My servants are discreet, but not saints. What will happen if word gets out that you stayed the night here?”

Sheer mischief made her say, “We’d have to marry?”

She saw his eyes grow wary, and felt a barrier rise between them.

“I’m sorry. I assure you, I have no wish to trap you into marriage, Your Grace. In fact, the name I gave you is false, so there is no danger.”

The barrier thinned. “Wise woman. All the same, stay out of sight. I’ll bring your breakfast—giving due warning so you can dress, of course. Which reminds me…”

He left again. She waited, hugging herself against the special chill that comes in a sleepless night.

He returned and tossed a crimson-and-gold garment on the bed. “Sleep well, Miss Nymph. We’ll talk in the morning.”

The door closed, leaving her in the silent room lit only by the one, wavering candle. A key stuck out of the lock on her side of the door, but she resisted the urge to turn it. A locked door wouldn’t keep him out, and she was sure he wouldn’t invade.

She picked up the garment—heavy, sinuous silk. A man’s robe in a rich paisley pattern. She brought it to her face and smelled sandalwood again. She thought that sandalwood would remind her of this night all her life.

Now, alone, Cressida found it impossible to simply climb into the impersonal bed. Despite weariness itching at her eyes and aching in her joints, how could she surrender to sleep here in the rakish duke’s house? She was practical, however, and prided herself on it. Thus she must sleep so that tomorrow she would have all her wits and be able to find a way to fulfill her mission.

She pulled back the covers to expose clean linen, which drew her like a magnet. Perhaps sleep wasn’t impossible after all.

She pulled out the hairpins that held her turban in place and lifted it off, false curls and all. The fashion was for bubbling curls around the face, but she’d refused to have her long hair cut at the front. Anyway, her hair was heavy and straight and would need constant use of curling irons to achieve the look.

She dug out more pins, and her coiled hair slithered down her back. She didn’t have the energy to plait it for the night. She wanted only to collapse into the bed.

Then she found that she couldn’t unfasten her dress no matter how she stretched and twisted. Even if she managed that, she’d never get the corset off. With a sigh, she climbed into the bed as she was. She was surely tired enough to sleep anyway.

She tried. She tossed this way and that, seeking a comfortable position, but the bones of her corset dug into her, the shoulder straps bound, and her skirts tangled and trapped around her legs.

She rolled out of the bed and writhed again to get at the hooks. Impossible. There was nothing else for it. Huffing out a breath, she stalked out of her room and into his—

He turned from his wardrobe, naked from the waist up, breeches unfastened.

She had never seen a man’s body before, and stared at lean muscle and visible strength. Her eyes drifted down to lock on his undone buttons…

He moved. He refastened those buttons while walking toward her. “You should pay a forfeit for that, Miss Wemworthy.”

Through guilt or simple bedazzlement, Cressida didn’t fight when he pulled her into his arms. Perhaps some vague notion of struggle occurred, because she put her hands between them, but that only meant that they ended up pressed to his hot skin, to the muscles that moved as he lowered his head to meet her unresisting lips.

Honesty compelled her to accept that since their earlier conflicted kiss, she’d been longing for this, to have those fascinatingly tempting lips playing with hers, to taste that fire with leisure to absorb it.

And absorb it she did, or was absorbed. Encircled in strong arms, flesh to flesh, mouth to mouth, heat to heat.

Melted.

Swirled softly in sandalwood into delicious oblivion.

Only taste. Only touch. Only smell.

Blindfolded now by her own closed lids…

His lips left hers. The press of his body on her hands eased.

She blinked her eyes open to find him looking at her almost blankly. “Can I hope that you are a nymph of the night after all, come to pleasure me?”

His wonderful chest was rising and falling under her hands. She could feel his pounding heart.

To her astonishment, she said, “I wish I were.”

He laughed and rested his head against hers for a moment. But then he stepped back, though he kept his hands on her shoulders. “If you didn’t return to carry me to heaven, sweetheart, what brought you?”

The gap between them seemed chill, but she managed a slight, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I’m too tired to think. But I can’t get out of my dress and corset. Since you said the servants are asleep…”

“And all male.” He turned her and unhooked her dress. “This is Nun’s Chase, by the way,” he said as he parted the gown and began on the strings of her corset.

“Nun’s Chase?” she echoed, holding her dress up at the front. She couldn’t believe she was here doing this!

“Built on the site of a convent back in the sixteenth century. I’m sure the Chase refers innocently enough to hunting land, but it was too suggestive to resist.”

Her wanton mind was fixed on his suggestive hands pulling the laces loose bottom to top, on the general loosening of that familiar constraint around her body. She felt as if more was loosening than mere laces…

“I hold gentlemen’s parties here,” he said, as if discussing the weather. “I don’t keep female servants, in case a guest is tempted to misbehave. There you are.”

She sensed him step back, and turned, aware of her clothes slipping from her skin. “You’re a rake.” She realized too late that she really shouldn’t fill her sight with him like this.

“What is a rake? I don’t drink to excess or game for disastrous stakes. I don’t rape serving wenches—or ladies, for that matter. But I enjoy women, both their company and their bodies.” His eyes on her reinforced that to an alarming degree. “I have a healthy appetite for women and for their pleasure. I love to give a woman pleasure, to watch her melt… You really should go, you know.”

He hadn’t moved. During that extraordinary speech, he hadn’t moved a muscle that she’d seen, but it was as if she could see herself through his eyes, in disorder, her long hair down her back, her gown sliding off her, clutched to her full breasts.

It was as if she could feel his hunger like the heat of a fire. She stepped back, but her foot tangled with her drooping skirt, and she stumbled.

He caught her in one arm. His other hand took possession of a breast, still covered by her loosened corset— but not well. He was looking at it almost as if a battle roared in him.

Then he removed his hand and turned her, somehow restoring her gown to her clutch. He steered her toward his open door and through it. “Good night, sweet nymph,” he said, and closed the door on her.

She staggered into her room thinking of
Hamlet: “Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered
.”

Sins. She should indeed be praying, for both of them. Instead, as she let her dress fall and then wriggled out of her corset, she acknowledged a shard of regret that he wasn’t a more sinful man and hadn’t tried to seduce her.

She noticed the earrings and banknotes, but couldn’t even be bothered to pick them up.
Tried to seduced her
? He’d only have had to sweep her to his bed and keep on doing what he’d been doing.

She clambered into the bed in her shift and pulled the covers up over herself, still trembling. She had to be grateful for his willpower, but all the same, all the same, a bit of her wept for an opportunity lost, an opportunity that was unlikely to ever come her way again.

Cressida woke to strangeness. She remembered the events of the previous evening and where she was, but that in itself was the strangeness.

The Duke of St. Raven, playing at being the highwayman
Le Corbeau
, had snatched her from Lord Crofton and carried her off to his scandalous house, Nun’s Chase. She could never have even dreamed such a scenario.

Now he was intent on saving her from ruin, and she’d given her word to stay here at least until they had breakfasted. She would keep her word, but she must complete her journey to Stokeley Manor. Everything depended on that.

Would her plan to outwit Crofton still work? It should, but if it failed, she would go through with the worst—she would become Lord Crofton’s mistress for a week. But then she stiffened with dismay. Her plan depended upon a small vial of liquid in her reticule, and her bag had been left in the carriage!

She pulled the covers over her head as if that might save her. Could she get more of the emetic? If she convinced the duke to let her go on to Stokeley, he might find more of it for her.

She pushed back the covers and sat, sweeping her hair off her face. Her life had become disaster after disaster, but she would not fail. She
had
to win.

A slit of light through the heavy curtains said it was day, and it was time for her to face it. She wriggled out of the bed and squinted around the edge of the curtains to find a pleasant garden edged by woodland. From the angle of light she guessed it was about nine or ten o’clock. She heard whistling, then a stocky man in shirt, breeches, gaiters, and boots appeared, strolling down a path with a hoe on his shoulder.

She turned back into the room, disturbed in some way by that ordinary sight. Servants. Her host had advised that she not be seen by the servants, and she agreed. It hadn’t seemed so terrible to go to Stokeley Manor and be seen there, especially as Lord Crofton had promised that she could wear a mask. To be seen here, however, in this ordinary house by ordinary servants, struck her as shocking.