The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (10 page)

But there was no time for embroidering them, so Phoebe resorted to making little rosettes to adorn Alice’s gown. She stayed up half of one night making them, and was up again at dawn, sewing them along the hem.

She had no time for herself and dressed simply in a very plain gown, her hair braided and hanging down her back.

Mrs. Turner brought a hard-boiled egg and some hot chocolate for her. “You’ll waste to nothing if you don’t eat,” she’d chided her, but Phoebe had yet to touch it.

When she heard a knock at her door sometime after eleven o’clock that morning, she assumed it was Frieda. “Come!” she called, and heard the door open. “Ah, Frieda, I am so glad you have come. My fingers are numb and I’ve got four more of these bloody rosettes to attach.” She sat back on her heels and looked at her handiwork. Rather nice, actually.

When Frieda didn’t answer, she leaned to her right to peer around the dress.

Good Lord, it was Summerfield! With a gasp of surprise, Phoebe came awkwardly to her feet—but her feet had gone numb from sitting as she was, and she stumbled a bit. She quickly righted herself, dusted her knees, and tried vainly to smooth the wild bits of hair that had fallen from her braid. “I beg your pardon, my lord, I did not expect you,” she said anxiously, removing the long apron into which she’d stuck pins and needles and tossing it onto a chair.

“I have come to return your bonnet,” he said, and held out the bonnet she had forgotten three days ago. “You left it behind in the study.”

“Oh. Thank you.” How curious, she thought, that he would bring it to her instead of sending it with a servant. She started forward, but Summerfield suddenly moved deeper into the room, toward Jane’s gown, which was, at present, draped across the table.

He cocked his head thoughtfully. “Which of my sisters will wear it?” he asked.

“Jane…I hope,” Phoebe said with a quick glance heavenward. Yesterday, Jane had complained of the gown’s pale green color, even though Phoebe assured her it complemented her complexion very well.

Summerfield studied it a moment longer before turning back to Phoebe. His eyes flicked over her but seemed to linger on her lips. He held out the bonnet to her. “Your bonnet.”

“Thank you,” Phoebe said, and smiled self-consciously as she reached for the satin ribbons of her bonnet. “You are too kind.” She gave the ribbons a slight tug.

But Summerfield suddenly clenched the back of the bonnet in his hand and wouldn’t let go. His gaze drifted to the bodice of her gown. “Have you another name, Madame Dupree?”

She could feel the blood leave her face almost instantly, and she experienced a sick, sinking feeling of having been caught at her foolish game. How could he possibly know? Mrs. Ramsey, of course! That wretched woman had told him!

He waited for an answer.

“What do you mean?” she asked carefully, scrutinizing him for any sign that he might know who she was.

He smiled with surprise. “I mean only that ‘Madame Dupree’ seems so…formal. I thought perhaps there was another name by which I might address you.”

Phoebe tugged again at the bonnet, but he held fast. “Do you mean a…a given name?” she asked suspiciously.

His smile widened. “Are you always so contrary? A name, Madame Dupree. A given name, a nickname…a name by which your sister might call you.”

“Phoebe.”

“Phoebe,” he said, and nodded. “It suits you.”

What suited her was some distance between them. She was standing so close she could count the whiskers in his sideburns, could feel the heat of his body. She tugged at the bonnet again, but he stubbornly held on, his lips curved in a cocky, wicked smile.

“I confess, Phoebe, it is difficult to appreciate your work without seeing it on a feminine form.”

His eyes, Phoebe noticed, had turned a very warm green. She gripped the ribbons of the bonnet and gave it a harder tug. “Lady Alice’s dress is on a feminine form just behind you, sir.”

“That is not the dress I care to see,” he said, and stepped closer to her.

“All right,” Phoebe said. “If you will just give me my bonnet, my lord,” she said, pulling hard, “I shall fetch Lady Jane and you may see the gown on her.”

“Not Jane,” he said, clearly enjoying their little tug-of-war. “You.”

Phoebe almost let go. “But…but that gown is made to fit Lady Jane. Not me.”

“You seem similar in size to me,” he said, his gaze boldly wandering over her body.

“I assure you we are not, my lord. There are many differences.”

“You are undoubtedly the most obstinate servant to ever inhabit Wentworth Hall. You are close enough in size and I assure you, Phoebe, that I will appreciate that gown on you far more than I can ever hope to appreciate it on my sister Jane. Do please don the thing so that I may judge its suitability.”

Phoebe froze as fingers of indignation crawled up her spine. “Suitability?” she said, almost choking on the word. “It is made in the fashion of the latest styles from London—”

“I hardly care.” He shifted closer, smiling down at her in a way that made her feel like she was slowly roasting on the inside, and said softly, “I want to see you in that gown. Put it on.” He spoke like a man who was accustomed to ordering people about.

Phoebe glanced at the gown.

“Now.”

As accustomed as he was to issuing orders, Phoebe was unaccustomed to receiving them. “And if I don’t?” she asked boldly.

Summerfield cocked a brow. “Perhaps you want me to put it on you.”

Oh Lord! The suggestion made her heart leap. “You wouldn’t.”

He shrugged a little. “I’ve done worse.”

Her heart leapt again.

“You will put it on if you value your position here,” he added.

A million retorts skated through her mind—so many that she momentarily forgot she was a servant in this house, that she had no choice but to obey him. She forcibly swallowed down the words on the tip of her tongue and looked again at the gown.

Summerfield let go of the bonnet and stepped aside so that she could pick it up. Phoebe tossed the bonnet onto the table, and with a heated look for Summerfield, she snatched up the gown and went to the thin silk privacy screen one of the footmen had brought up yesterday and stepped behind it. She could hear him moving about the room as she unbuttoned her gown with shaking hands, slipped out of it, and laid it across a chair.

He paused somewhere nearby and asked, “From where do you hail, Phoebe?”

“Lon—Ah…Northumberland,” she responded, distracted.

“Any particular village?”

Phoebe paused and stared at the screen. A village? Blast Greer for her silly idea of the moors—Phoebe was hard-pressed at the moment to name one village in all of England! She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember the atlas she, Greer, and Ava had studied when they had concocted her false identity. “Berwick-upon-Tweed,” she said brightly as that name suddenly came to her.

“Berwick-upon-Tweed?” He sounded surprised. “Then your father was a…a fisherman, I suppose?”

Lord, a fisherman? Phoebe grabbed up Jane’s gown and pulled it over her head. “I…I scarcely remember him at all.” That was really rather close to the truth—her father had died when she was only seven years of age.

She buttoned the gown as best she could, but couldn’t reach the buttons in the middle of her back. It wouldn’t matter if she could, for her bosom was larger than Jane’s—substantially larger, by the look of it—and she doubted she could fit a button into its hole with a lever.

“Are you dressed?”

That question startled her because he was now standing just on the other side of the screen. “Ah…” She dropped her arms and looked down. The décolletage was far too tight for her—she was practically spilling out of the gown.

“Are you coming out, Madame Dupree?”

“It doesn’t fit,” she said, studying the décolletage of the gown. “Jane is smaller than I am.”

“Allow me to see it—”

“It really doesn’t fit—”

“Are you indecent?”

“No! But I really must—” She cried out with alarm when he suddenly pushed the screen aside, propped one arm on top of it, and brazenly studied her figure in the gown.

“My lord!” she cried in protest. “I beg your pardon!”

Summerfield ignored her. His gaze was devouring her, taking in every inch of her in that pale green gown. With a nod of approval, he finally stepped aside, motioning her forward.

Phoebe didn’t move.

“Come, come,” he said impatiently, gesturing for her to step forward.

With one hand holding the gown together at her back, she marched forward and came to a halt in the middle of the workroom.

“Yes,” he murmured, and walked a slow circle around her, taking in the gown from every conceivable angle while Phoebe’s face burned. When he at last moved around to stand before her, he looked into her eyes. “Beautiful,” he said. “A diamond of the first water.”

He was not referring to the gown. Phoebe could feel the pressure of him again, his masculine energy filling the room, pressing down on her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

“But I think there is one improvement that can be made when Jane wears it,” he added silkily.

“This gown is perfectly made,” she said, lifting her chin. “What could possibly be improved?”

“The bodice.” He casually touched his finger to the skin of her breast, just above the bias of the gown’s neckline, and traced a slow, tantalizing line across her flesh. “It is too low.”

His touch made her feverish, but there was one thing Phoebe knew with all certainty—the décolletage of the gown was perfect. “It will fit Lady Jane properly, I assure you.”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “It is too low,” he said again, and brushed his knuckles across the swell of her breasts. “When a man sees a beautiful woman in a gown cut as low as this, his eye is drawn to her flesh, and he is overcome with the urge to touch her.” He repeated his caress over her breasts again, but his eyes remained locked on hers. “That will not do for Jane.”

Phoebe’s skin was sizzling and the pressure on her was unbearable. His touch was unlike anything she’d ever known—it branded her, left an indelible mark. She imagined his brown hand against the pale skin of her bare breast, his mouth on her nipple. Such thoughts normally would have disconcerted her, but for some inexplicable reason, they emboldened her—or rather, emboldened Madame Dupree, who had nothing to lose. Phoebe knew instinctively that if she did not stand up to his seduction, he would devour her like a confection.

She smiled warily. “If a man is so overcome by the sight of skin, then I’d wager that man is not a gentleman and will not be in your sister’s company.”

Summerfield gave her a roguish grin and casually stroked her flesh once more before fingering a curl of her hair at her sternum. “And what of your company? I’d wager you know that a gentleman is diffident with women…but that a man knows how to satisfy her. I suspect you have not forgotten the difference between a man and a gentleman in your bed.”

All right, then, no man had ever spoken to her so boldly, and certainly no man had ever caused something to fire so deep inside her and spread its damp heat to her arms and legs. It felt as if a part of her, deeply submerged, had broken off and was rising to the surface, a piece of unbridled desire bobbing about, seeking its way out.

Still, Phoebe held her ground. “Do you think you are the only man to speak so suggestively, my lord? That I am ignorant of the many ways a man might attempt to seduce me? Do you think I will tremble and wilt to your will?”

“Quite the contrary. I think you will blossom.”

A white-hot shiver shot through her. “A blossom picked from the vine will dry up and blow away with the slightest wind once it has seen its glory.”

He cocked a brow and smiled. “Not,” he said, “if it is properly tended.”

The abrupt sound of the door opening caused her heart to leap in her chest, and she instantly lurched backward, away from Summerfield. She heard Frieda’s gasp of surprise, and then, “I beg your pardon, my lord!”

For a moment, Phoebe feared she would collapse of sheer mortification. As it was, she could scarcely make herself look at the girl.

But when she did, Frieda was gaping at the two of them.

Summerfield merely smiled. “It’s quite all right, Frieda.” His hot gaze raked over Phoebe once more before he turned from her and walked to the door. “Madame Dupree needs your assistance.”

“Yes, sir,” Frieda said, dipping a curtsy.

Summerfield walked past Frieda without looking back.

The moment he’d left the workroom, Phoebe whirled around and stepped behind the screen. Frieda shut the door behind Summerfield and ran to the screen. She pushed it aside and gaped at Phoebe, bright-eyed and smiling broadly. “What in heaven?” she squealed.

“Just…just put it on the table,” Phoebe said irritably as she handed Jane’s gown to her. “And whatever you may think, it was not my choosing to don it.”

“No, of course not,” Frieda said with a snort. She took the gown from Phoebe and held it up to her own body, admiring it in a mirror. “Would that he’d look at me like that. Makes a lass want to fall on her back and cock her heels to the ceiling, eh? You’re awful pretty,” she added thoughtfully. “Pretty as a picture. I’m not the least surprised he’s taken a shine to you.” She put Jane’s gown onto the table and smoothed it out. “But I daresay Lady Jane would be fit for Bedlam if she knew you’d worn her gown. I’d have a care, were I you.”

Phoebe thought better advice had never been spoken.

T he strange pressure Summerfield had caused in her did not abate; Phoebe felt tense and tingly and on the brink of a breathtaking madness long after he’d gone.

Summerfield was no different from dozens of other gentlemen she’d met, yet she’d never been so drawn to a man as she was to him. Granted, she’d rarely been as direct with a man as she had been with Summerfield—it was not a luxury she could afford.

Lord Stanhope, her brother-in-law’s dear friend, had made her laugh one night over whist, for he was delightfully charming when he was of a mind, and the very next morning, Ava had, rather indiscreetly, blurted that she and Middleton thought Phoebe and Stanhope would make an excellent match.