The Earl Takes a Lover (3 page)

In four minutes on the stairs everything Pen had ever heard about kissing flew out the oriel window above their heads, to be supplanted by everything she was discovering for herself: the seamless joining of their mouths, the lovely suck and drag of his lips against hers and, when it came, the hot slide of his tongue that made her stomach muscles tighten in response and shivers run down her inner thighs. Under this onslaught, church was the least of what Pen forgot. She forgot her own name. She forgot every resolve she had made regarding her behavior where he was concerned.

Robin was suffering the torments of a man who had just discovered that not just any woman would do; that, in fact, only this one woman would suffice, who was neither wife possessed nor whore for the taking. A violent urge to subdue that knowledge made him lay her down on the stairs, made him press the full-length of his body against hers; made her, in instinctive answer, widen her thighs and hold him in the cradle of her hips. He ground his cock against her, thwarted by several layers of extraneous clothing, and ground his teeth at his own lack of finesse. Over the years he'd acquired some, but it was gone now. Perhaps only lacking the experience to know the difference, Pen offered no complaint and met him with equal urgency, lifting her hips to meet his grinding thrusts, her hands clenching at his flanks to bring him closer. He was heavy, but she did not care about breathing. She cared about the hot, wet joining of their mouths, and his hands rucking up the green-sprigged muslin of her dress to reach the flesh beneath.

Three steps above them Cedony, the above-floors chambermaid, coughed loudly into her hand.
Toffs,
she thought scornfully,
always in the way of a body's work.
Although it was of some interest to note that the girl under this particular toff was the lady's personal companion—a woman who, Tony had recently sworn, could not bear the sight of a man and had an unnatural feeling for her own sex. Well, Cedony thought, if the state of her dress was any indication, she looked to be bearing this man well enough, and she would tell Tony that at the first opportunity.

Scarlet faced and gasping, Pen scrambled out from under Robin and refused to meet his eyes as Cedony descended, giving the visible bulge in Robin's breeches an appreciative glance as she went by. “Pru upstairs left parasol, it getting,” Pen mumbled incoherently. Panting, Robin watched her go, his eyes fixed on the hand she trailed along at waist level to keep her balance. He leaned against the wall, waiting for his erection to subside. If that girl had not appeared, he would have taken Pen on her back, on the servants' stairs of her employer's house. Given their respective positions, it was a little low, even for him. Make no mistake, he'd had women on their backs on the stairs, some of them in their employer's houses, but that was the status quo. Pen was a different quantity, though how exactly he couldn't have said. And she wouldn't have stopped him: that was the hell of it. She might want to resist, but the inferno between them was strong enough to demolish it. In her body, when they lay together, there was little artifice and no resistance at all.

Pen sat through church and heard nothing of Reverend Dickon's sermon; just as well, as he had decided that morning to preach on the avoidance of the temptations of the flesh. She felt as if she had got more than she bargained for, and also as if what she had wanted had been kept tantalizingly out of her reach, and she did not know what to do next.

As it happened, she was not required to come to any decision about the Earl of Tufton. He avoided her. Formal in company, he made sure they were never alone. Worse still, all familiarity was abruptly sanctioned and she was left facing an impenetrable stranger. To have his regard and lose it was aggravating to the point of pain. Beneath that, covered over like a leper's spots, she felt certain it must be a flaw apparent to him alone that had turned him away.

 

Having avoided her usual haunts for several days, it took Robin a good hour to find Pen in the gazebo behind the oak trees at the foot of the south lawn. The day was fine and warm, a promise of the hotter days of summer. He took the shallow steps in a single bound, making the spacious interior seem suddenly cloistered. He was handsome, youthful and in the pitch of good health, and none of these attributes did anything to soothe Pen's simmering temper. “I heard Pen and Liza talking,” he said without preamble. “They said you haven't been yourself. Are you ill?”

“I'm fine,” she said shortly. “Please remove yourself.”

He laughed at the tart, formal propriety of it. Of all the mistakes he had made with her this proved, though inconsequential to his own way of thinking, to be the worst. “Look,” he began placatingly, still smiling, “I know it must seem—” But she cut him off.

“No,
you
look—don't look. I don't want to see you.
Go away
.” She was serious, and it dawned on him slowly as he advanced toward her, head cocked to one side, that she was not ill at all. He put one hand experimentally on her arm and she slapped it away, a sharp blow indicating, among other things, that she was stronger than she looked.

“Penelope,” he began again.

“Don't you say my name,” she said, on a rising intonation. “You aren't allowed. You can't just—”

He tried again. “I just want—” And she talked across him.

“—ignore me for a week and then waltz in here and ask me how I am, and if you th—”

“—to explain—”

“—that I have
one iota
of interest in anything you have to say, you are an insufferable, arrogant, delusional, pig-faced lout—” He stopped her words with his mouth. Instantly, all that anger was transmuted into a different kind of intensity. She kissed him ferociously, openmouthed and greedy, a week's worth of pent-up frustration goading her past her own lack of experience. Anger made her the aggressor. She bit his lower lip and sucked on his upper lip and tangled her tongue with his and held him to her mouth with hot fingers clamped to his face. Not that he needed to be held. He kissed her back, all resolve lost in the heady rush of passion. He backed her into a post, wrapping her legs around his hips, fighting with her dress, trying to lift the skirt up and drag the bodice down and hold her there and kiss her frantically, all at the same time. She was not ill. She was gloriously, passionately, violently angry and selfishly, he welcomed it: the only emotion able to snap the taut control he'd kept over himself for the last miserable week. He gave up on standing as a bad idea and sank with her in a tumble of arms and legs to the wooden floor of the gazebo. She took the opportunity to suck in great lungfuls of air. He let her mouth go, licking and biting her neck and shoulders instead. Control was hopeless with her. It was always this fast, hot explosion, this instant stiff cock and the liquefaction of everything else except the driving need to bury himself inside her and make her come, fast, so he could, too.

He searched for bare skin and found it high up under her drawers, a short, silky stretch of thigh between stockings and garters. He held to that place and abandoned her neck for her bodice, working one breast free, clamping his lips on the reddish nipple and sucking hard. She groaned and arched her back; he pressed her nipple to the roof of his mouth and held it there with the rough salve of his tongue. Her breathing disintegrated, every panting exhalation ending on a high, breathy note. This was going to happen. If he had stopped to think, control might have reasserted its shaky tenure. The same savage joy coursing through him was in her as well; he took possession of it and moved his hand in that instant to touch the hot, wet, open cleft of her body.

An explosion occurred, but it was not—grievously—either one of them. Pen went perfectly still beneath him, drawing away into herself. An irate male voice carried from the lawn. “For God's sake, Templeton, no shooting this close to the house. You're none so fine a shot as you think and Lady Dalrymple will not be amused if you shoot one of her swans—or one of her guests.” The answer was lost as the party of hunters moved away. Robin levered himself to his feet, half expecting Pen to run. She didn't. She climbed jerkily to her own feet, anger or passion making her movements awkward. She stuffed her breast—
his
breast, he thought possessively, with regret—back into her bodice with a ruthless efficiency that made him cringe.

“Either leave me alone—” she was shaking “—or finish what you start. This—” she waved a hand, encompassing the entire bloody situation in the gesture “—cannot go on.”

“No,” he agreed quietly, not far from shaking himself. “It can't. It's why I haven't spoken to you for a week. It's why we can't be alone. There isn't anything I want more, but I cannot do this.” He bowed to her and left.

When Pen came down for supper she was informed of Lord Tufton's regrets: his immediate presence was required in London. Pru told her, sharp-eyed. Pen couldn't tell if she suspected anything, and didn't care. Her body was one giant remorseless ache, and her mind was not in a much better state. Nonetheless, she composed herself, folded her hands in her lap and listened to Lord Payson-March describe all the things Lord Templeton had aimed at and failed to shoot that afternoon.

 

Having given her card, Pen waited patiently in the foyer of the earl's London house. There were two outcomes: either he would see her or he would not. Presently, though, the black-clad butler returned, motioned her to precede him down the hall to the library, ushering her in with more solemnity, Pen thought, than her presence required.

Robin was in a chair by the fire. For weeks she had been reminding herself that he was only a man. He possessed a title, which put him above the touch of almost everyone, but no matter how splendid he looked in his velvet frock coats and nankeen breeches, driving his perfectly matched horses in his exquisitely sprung carriages, he was just a man. And here he finally was, in old doeskin breeches unbuttoned at the knee and a linen shirt, soft from many washings, open at the throat. He was barefooted. This fact, above all else, struck Pen as painfully intimate. His feet were large and bony and flat in the arches; Pen felt an immediate affection for them. He declined to stand, but waved her to a chair. “As you can see, I'm not receiving, but I was curious as to why you called. Have you been back in London for long?”

Pen shook her head. “The dowager is still at Cheyning Court. I came up to visit a sick friend at Holborn. If you mind I can go.” And she made an abbreviated motion to rise.

He motioned her back down. “Of course not. And it's raining. Stay until it stops.” He smiled. “I promise not to ravish you in the interim.”

Pen had little idea how to respond, as she hadn't objected overmuch to previous ravishment. But he had been clear enough in the gazebo at Cheyning Court; she could hardly press him for a different outcome in his own home. Robin sipped ale from a pewter tankard at his elbow. “Why did you come?” He sounded mildly curious.

Pen took a breath. It had to be now. Likely there would not be a better opportunity. She pulled a copy of
A Woman's Handbook
from her bag and offered it to him. “Have you seen this?”

He took it, unperturbed. “Hasn't all of London?” he asked drily.

“I don't know. It's for women. I think mainly women have read it.”

“Oh, no,” he assured her. “It's caused quite a stir among the gentlemen, as well.”

“I wrote it,” Pen said abruptly, tension knotting her belly as she watched him.

“I know you wrote it,” he replied calmly.

Pen turned purple, and didn't bother with a denial. “You know? No one
knows.
Oh, heaven and Mary.” The anxiety made her heart race. “Have you told anyone?”

“Of course not. I knew you wrote it because it sounds like you sound when you talk to me.” He shrugged at the inexactitude of his explanation, which did nothing to alter the color of her face.

“It sounds like me?” she repeated in growing alarm. “Then everyone could know as easily?”

He handed her the tankard of ale.
“Calme toi,”
he said reassuringly. “They won't. You and I talk differently.”

Pen swallowed a huge slug of ale, then closed her eyes and pressed her hot cheeks to the cool, damp metal. “You're certain? I don't think I could socially survive people knowing.”

He reached over and retrieved the ale pot. “Fairly certain. Is that why you've come? Something to do with this book? Which, by the way,” he added, amusement clear in his voice, “I enjoyed immensely.”

Pen ignored both the compliment and the teasing. “I'm writing another, a companion to this one. But instead of how to please women, it's how women—well, wives really—can please men. Only—” she pulled a face “—there aren't any men I can ask. You're the first.”

He regarded her in silence for so long that Pen grew restive. Robin pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I've not met a woman like you before, Pen. I don't think another exists.”

Pen wasn't sure whether this was meant as compliment or complaint, but pressed ahead nonetheless. “I have a publisher. I just need a man who will talk about it. Or several,” she added, thinking aloud. “But you'll do for a start.”

“Where did you get the information for the first book?”

Pen hesitated, but in for a penny, in for a pound. “From the ladies at Salamandre's.”

His eyes widened. “Salamandre Van Louenhock? At the Black Swan?”

Of course he'd heard of her. What man of wealth and reputation in London had not? She could practically see the wheels turning in Robin's head. The dull glimmer of curiosity began to shine more brightly.

“Please tell me,” he said beseechingly, “how you know Salamandre.”

“Because,” she replied, sudden asperity lacing her tone, “we certainly don't have to ask how you know her, do we?”