Velvet Embrace (9 page)

Brie was growing extremely uncomfortable with the conversation. She took a nervous step backwards. "I'll tell Homer you were too busy to see him," she suggested, groping for the door handle at her back.

"Just a moment, Brie."

She stiffened at his command, but halted obediently, waiting. She remembered quite well what had happened that morning when she had tried to leave without his permission.

He watched her reflection as he scraped the last of the lather from his face. "Jacques is an expert at ferreting out information," he remarked in a cool voice, "but all he could learn was that your surname is
Carringdon
, that everyone calls you 'Miss Brie', and that you live in a big house not far from here."

Brie's eyes widened. She hadn't expected to keep her identity a secret from Stanton forever, but she was amazed at how quickly he had found her out, especially since the
Dawsons
had tried to protect her with their silence. His presumptuousness piqued her, though. The nerve of the man, sending his coachman to interrogate the servants about her! "People here don't care for strangers asking questions," she said, bridling.
"Especially
foreign
strangers."

Dominic ignored her gibe. "I once knew a Sir William
Carringdon
. Are you by any chance related?"

"Very distantly."
That wasn't quite a lie, Brie thought defiantly. Her father had been buried in the village churchyard for the past four years now, and if her reply stretched the truth, it was only because she resented Stanton's probing.

He seemed willing to drop the point, however. Wiping his face with the towel, Dominic turned to face her. His gaze swept down her slender body, studying her
measuringly
, lingering on the soft swell of her breasts. "Julian has a good eye," he said, using a different tack, "but I thought his taste generally ran to more voluptuous females."

"I am not Julian's mistress!" Brie snapped, before realizing she would have been better off not admitting it. Being one of Julian's light-skirts would have at least offered her some measure of protection from Stanton's advances. Now it looked as if she would have to find some other way of putting him off. He was walking toward her, his gray eyes holding a glint that clearly warned her to flee. She couldn't move, though. Her limbs refused to obey.

Dominic halted before her, gazing down at her face. "Then perhaps you are open to suggestion," he murmured speculatively.

Brie stared up at him, unable to speak. His nearness was doing strange things to her pulse again. Not only could she feel the warmth of his body, but the scent of his shaving soap was filling her senses, making her giddy. Her gaze fastened on his mouth as he slowly, slowly bent his head.

His kiss was not what Brie had imagined it would be like. She had expected his lips to be hard and demanding, like the man. Instead, they were cool and firm and incredibly gentle. She felt his tongue trace her lips slowly, as if he were memorizing the taste of her. Then unhurriedly, he delved into her mouth.

If he had tried to force her, Brie would have bolted. But his kiss was curious and exploring. Brie was conscious of a single, overwhelming sensation—she was melting. Her limbs were turning to warm, liquid heat. She parted her lips for him helplessly, opening to him as his tongue probed her mouth, not even realizing when her hands crept up to his shoulders.

It was a long moment before Dominic drew away, his eyes dark and unreadable as they skimmed her face. Brie gazed back at him, mesmerized. And then his mouth came down on hers again.

His lips were no longer cool this time. They were hot and fierce and passionate. And when his arms came around her possessively, pulling her full against his hard length, she was robbed of breath. For a moment Brie even responded to him,' pressing against him, clinging. But then the sharp wave of desire racing through her body alarmed her with its intensity. Moreover, a sudden memory of the physical violence she had once suffered at a man's hands made her panic.

Tearing her mouth away, she pushed frantically against Dominic's muscular chest. "No, please!" she cried, trying to get away and finding it impossible; the door was at her back, leaving nowhere to run.

Dominic was surprised by her sudden reversal. When he felt her struggling, though, he loosened his hold and tilted his head back to study her. "What is it,
chérie
?" he murmured soothingly, stroking her cheek.

Hearing the gentleness in his voice, the panic that had gripped her subsided and Brie came to her senses. "I . . . I can't," she said, biting her lip.

She felt his warm breath caress her temple before his lips followed, tenderly brushing the sensitive spot. "Why can't you?" he asked in a voice thick with passion. "Are you married? Can I expect to find myself challenged by a jealous husband?"

Brie closed her eyes, feeling her heart pound. "No, but
I . . .
I am . . ."

His eyebrow lifted inquiringly.
"Under some gentleman's protection?"

"Yes!" Brie latched onto that excuse with fervent haste.

"Then you can leave him."

"No! I mean, I don't want to leave him. I am happy with my current situation. He is kind to me, and . . . and I've been with him a long time, you see, and I don't want to—" Brie was aware that she was babbling, but she couldn't help herself. When Dominic pressed a finger to her lips to silence her, she was grateful.

He smiled at her then, the kind of smile that could lure a woman's soul from her body. "I can be quite generous," he said softly, persuasively. Brie swallowed hard. Her eyes were wide and shadowed when she finally shook her head.

Dominic deliberated a moment before releasing her. Then he stepped back. "Very well," he said lightly, his voice at odds with what he was feeling. "Tell Homer I will be up in a moment."

Brie felt relief flood through her. She fled, before he could change his mind.

Dominic stared thoughtfully at the closed portal. She was indeed a mystery—one he hadn't yet figured out. She was as skittish as a virgin, yet from the way she had responded to him, he would swear she was no stranger to a man's touch. But that flicker in her eyes had been fear. She was afraid of him for some reason. Perhaps he had been too harsh with her earlier. Or perhaps she was afraid of what her current protector would do to her if she were to accept the advances of another man.
If she even had a protector.
Brie's stammered excuses had given him reason to doubt that she was telling him the complete truth about that.

But why then had she not accepted his offer? He dismissed the possibility that she was merely being loyal to
whomever
had her in keeping. Women were never loyal where money was concerned. So who was she? She wasn't trained to be a servant, although he had already seen she didn't mind hard work. Jacques had liked her, which was surprising, considering the way she had ripped up at him at first. Normally Jacques didn't care for women, unless they were in his bed. In fact, the coachman was even more cynical about women than Dominic himself. Brie was lovely enough to attract a rich protector, so why was she dressed so poorly? She looked to be in her early twenties, meaning she was old enough to have had half a dozen protectors. . . .

Why that thought disturbed him, Dominic wasn't sure. But no matter, he reflected. He would just have to go slowly. Brie
Carringdon
couldn't be so far different from other women that she would continue to refuse the generous terms he would offer her. Nor so different that she could withstand a full-scale assault of her defenses.

Brie tried to avoid Dominic after that, but she found it impossible. In the first place, he wasn't the kind of man one could ignore. In the second, they were forced by necessity to spend several hours a day together.

Little of it was leisure time. Had they been guests at a
houseparty
, they would have occupied themselves with cards, chess, or billiards, or perhaps read poetry aloud, or entertained anyone who would listen to their musical talents. But there were no such activities. The only time Brie had a moment to rest was in the evening, after Mattie and Homer had gone to sleep.

Even then, she couldn't really relax. For when she retired to her room at the end of the day, Stanton followed her, just as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to drink his after-dinner brandy in a lady's bedroom. But then it probably
was
natural for him, Brie decided. More than likely he had spent a great deal of time in ladies' bedrooms. And she could hardly object to his presence without sounding oddly prudish. She couldn't be comfortable around him, though.

For one thing, he wouldn't give up his interest in her availability. Brie found her fabrication about having a protector becoming more and more complicated. During their first idle evening together when Dominic had probed her for information, she had felt a need to substantiate her story and had ended up describing an elderly gentleman who was very much like her head trainer, John Simms. John would have been horrified to learn he had been cast in such a role, but she had to tell Stanton something. As it was, Dominic looked at her with a mocking gleam in his eye and remarked that the man sounded old enough to be her father. The implication was, of course, that she would be better off with someone younger, more able to fill her nights with passion.

She did learn a bit more about him during those evening conversations, however, even though he was almost as reticent about his past as she was about her own. He had inherited his title from his maternal grandfather, she discovered, for his father had been French, his mother English. Her question about his parents obviously touched a sensitive nerve, though. Stanton's face darkened when he told her his father had been killed during the Revolution, and his lip curled in a sneer when he said his mother had remarried and was living in Hampshire.

Discomfited by the sudden charge of tension in the air, Brie had thought it best to change the subject. But Dominic's response, when she admitted that she was part French herself, disturbed her even more. His eyes swept leisurely down her body, and he asked, "Which part?" in a half-mocking, half- teasing tone of voice that made her well aware he was still interested in having her
become his mistress
.

He much preferred brandy over
port,
Brie discovered when he related a humorous tale about some smugglers of his acquaintance. She also learned that he had been involved in the war for several years, although in what capacity, she could only guess. She thought he might have been some kind of diplomat, since he mentioned the Foreign Office once, and also that he had met Julian in Vienna at the Congress.

That was really the extent of her discoveries about Dominic
Serrault
, Lord Stanton. Everything else was merely observation.

He had two very distinct kinds of smiles, she quickly realized. One was mocking and cynical, the other so sweetly devastating that it made her heart
melt
. In addition to his hard mouth, his mobile black brows were mainly responsible for giving his expression a sardonic cast. The left one had a habit of lifting nearly an inch higher than the right.

As for his character, he was arrogant and insufferable much of the time, but he could be delightfully, devilishly charming when he wanted to be. Occasionally he even showed traces of real warmth. Sarcasm had absolutely no effect on him, probably because he was such an expert at it himself. He tended to mock everything, unless he was genuinely amused, and his assumption of masculine superiority often angered Brie. His sheer male virility, on the other hand, made her nervous.

In fact, being confined in the same house with him was beginning to wear on her nerves. He did no more than touch her cheek as he left her each night, but that alone was enough to set her quivering. An urgent, inner voice warned her that she was starting to feel a permanent attraction for him. Yet she didn't see how she could change her situation until the snow melted. The regular household servants would return then, and she could go home to Greenwood and never see him again.

Her situation did change, however, the fourth night of their enforced intimacy. Brie had already gone to bed, but she
wasn
't
asleep. She was too busy pounding her pillow and trying to forget her annoyance with Stanton. She had waited two hours for him to join her, but when he hadn't come, she had finally prepared for bed.