Page 30 of How to Tempt An Earl
‘Did Mrs Hanson find the pearls for you?’ he asked.
‘No, they’re mine, from my mother. My father gave them to me for my sixteenth birthday.’ She smiled a little as she said it.
‘When is your birthday? It seems like something a fiancé ought to know.’ A small detail to add to his growing horde of facts and observations about this fascinating woman.
‘February.’ She gave him a meaningful look, willing him to put the pieces together without comment. He could do that now. In some ways, it was a testament to how much he knew of her. February—three months before her father’s death. They would have spent the birthday dreaming of their new home and their new life.
Trafton called them to dinner and Kieran leaned close to her ear. ‘Are you ready for Act Two?’ Perhaps it hadn’t been fair of him to require such a large commitment from her. He was only now beginning to see the extent of the ruse. They could not let their guard down, even in their own home.
Dinner was delicious, but it was public. He’d not realised how public a gentleman’s meal was until he was desperate for some privacy. Footmen stood nearby waiting to fill glasses, remove covers and hear every word. Everything he and Celeste said would be reported downstairs, so they filled their dinner conversation with a discussion of their day. While the steward had shown him the stables and the grounds, Mrs Hanson had toured her through the house, discussed linens and silvers and the need for more staff.
‘I’ll send enquiries to the town tomorrow and start the hiring process. I’ll want to see the stables as well, so I can choose a horse for riding,’ Celeste said from the other end of the table. The distance was ridiculous. He wanted her beside him, close enough to breathe her in.
‘It would be much appreciated.’ He felt caught in a limbo that was part reality and part make-believe. This was his home now; that part was very much real. But this taste of domestication, of discussing his day and handling the business of running a home with Celeste, was no less powerful for its pretence. They were pretending they were setting up house; that they would build a future here. That she would always be here. For better or for worse, this pretence would be finished within a month. And, when it was done, she would have stamped her mark all over it. He would sit in this room and imagine her in her blue silk. He would smell her scent in the countess’s suite. He would awake at night, reaching for her. He would spend his days wondering where she was and if she was safe.
By the end of the meal, he’d had enough of being on display, and perhaps she had too. Her hand kept drifting to her necklace, her fingers worrying a pearl.
Kieran turned to the butler. ‘Trafton, my compliments to Cook and to everyone who scrambled to make the meal possible. We’ll have help for you as soon as we can. For now, consider yourselves dismissed until morning. Miss Sharpton and I can finish in here on our own. Close the door behind you.’
When they were alone, Kieran offered a smile. ‘I am sorry I could not dismiss them sooner. It would have disappointed them not to serve on our first night.’ His staff saw this visit quite differently from the way they did. For the staff, this was the beginning of a new lord to serve and the chance to be active once more after a three-year hiatus. This visit was about hope and new possibilities.
Celeste straightened her shoulders and set aside her napkin as if she were setting aside her role as Miss Sharpton, the Earl’s fiancée. When she looked at him from the other end of the table, she was Celeste Sharpton, the keen-minded woman he’d met at St Luke’s who’d been desperate to protect herself and was intent on trusting no one. ‘I understand. You are playing a role and yet you’re not playing a role. You are beginning relationships that will last throughout your lifetime. You must establish yourself.’ Him. But not her. These were things that he, and only he, must do.
Kieran did not like the sound of that—how exclusionary it was, as if she’d already cut herself out of that future because she didn’t belong here and she was not part of that world. Unless…came the unbidden thought…he invited her in… Unless he made a space for her in this world. Would she accept a space even if he could find a way to make one? It would require breaking promises he’d made to himself.
Her statement struck him as accusatory too, as if he was changing; as if Lord Wrexham and Kieran Parkhurst were two different men. ‘I am still a Horseman.’ He defended himself.
‘Yes, and to that end we have business to conduct.’ She rose from her chair and came towards him, hips swaying beneath the blue silk, conjuring hot images of what he’d like that business to be. He’d like to sit her on the edge of this table, spread her legs wide, bury his face beneath her skirts and pleasure her until she moaned his name, his own mind devoid of any thought but delivering that pleasure. She reached him and her hand went to the bodice of her gown. His cock hardened.
‘The first half of the list.’ She pulled out a slip of paper and his thoughts tumbled like the shards in a kaleidoscope, forming and reforming until the shape of them made sense. She was not seducing him; more was the pity. ‘I promised payment upon safe passage to Wrexham. I always pay my debts.’
The list—the damn list. Something angry and hot flared within him. The anger was for himself. He’d not been thinking of the list but perhaps he should have been. That list was the key to avenging Stepan. Vengeance might be the only recourse they had. But he’d been too carried away with imagining his life at Wrexham, imagining her here and then imagining her gone, and thinking about what the future might look like when he should have been thinking about the present—about his brother. Goodness knew, there was plenty in the here and now that demanded his attention. He’d thought he was beyond such distractions, that he’d learned his lesson from Sofia, and that he had his attraction under control. Apparently, not as well as he thought.
‘Put the list away.’ He reached for her hips and drew her to him. Celeste was not Sofia and tonight was not for reviewing lessons or lists. Remorse could wait for the morning.
‘Ialwayspay my debts,’ she repeated, putting the list on the table beside his plate, her tone challenging his command and her eyes like sharp shards. Her walls were going up. She, too, was aware of the magic this place was capable of. She, too, understood the lines between business and pleasure had been crossed in some irrevocable way. She was trying to hold back, trying not to take the next step over that line. He wouldn’t allow it. He would break them down before they had time to set. He wanted her with him in this madness completely.
‘Is that all this is to you—a balancing of the scales? Is that allIam to you?’ He would have the truth from her, and he would pleasure it out of her if needed. Her mouth might speak of business, but her body said she’d spent the meal struggling with the same dilemma that plagued him: how to balance personal want with worldly needs? And what happened when the thing, theperson, you wanted required you to go against all that you thought you believed in?
‘Don’t ask those questions, Kieran. I cannot answer them any better than you can.’
She reproached him but her eyes were soft now, the shards gone. She reached a hand out to his hair, running her fingers through the tangle of his curls. He turned into her caress, letting himself luxuriate in her touch. Usually, he was the one doing the touching, perhaps because he knew how good it felt to be touched, how much he loved being touched and how powerful touch could be to heal, console and arouse. Here and now, her touch was all three. He wanted her with a fierceness unrivalled.
He rose, desire riding him hard. ‘Close your eyes and make a wish.’
She did, a smile playing at her lips that said she guessed the direction of his thoughts and that she approved. ‘I wish we were on the road again…’ She breathed the words into reality. He wished that too. On the road, the world was simple. The road was not so much a place as it was a mindset. On the road, one could live in the moment.
‘Your wish is my command,’ he whispered against her ear. He lifted her to the table and knelt before her, pushing back her silken skirts.
This was his wish too—to lose himself in her pleasure and to forget for a while as he placed slow kisses up the length of her leg, listened to her gasp when he tongued a sensitive spot behind her knee and heard the passion unfurling in the moan that purled up her throat when his mouth found the epicentre of her pleasure.
He felt the ripple of languid waves move through her and felt them grow to quakes until her body shuddered and shook with them until each lick of his tongue turned her moans into uncontrolled gasps and her breath became ragged…until her body arched and something on the table above him crashed. Her legs clamped around him, holding him to her as her pleasure fully loosened, his thoughts of lists, payments and revenge forgotten and set aside.
For a short while, all was right with their world. If only they could hold on to it. But that was an impossible wish. These moments, this time here at Wrexham, would have to be given up. Their lives would demand it, vengeance for Stepan would demand it, even if their hearts might request it be otherwise.
Chapter Sixteen
Celeste held on to the days that followed with both hands, despite the knowledge they would inevitably slip through her grasp. She’d never be able to hold on tight enough. They were happy, heady days. The proof was everywhere. One just had to ask Mrs Hanson, who insisted all was right at Wrexham for the first time in years. One just had to see the contentment on her face, or walk around the Hall to note the happy signs of progress: the polished banisters, the dust-free tabletops; the vases full of fresh seasonal flora decorating those tabletops; the beaten carpets, the swept floors and the polished silver that decorated the supper table each night for meals that featured farm-grown produce and locally raised meats.
