Page 62 of Second Chances
“Ah,” he said, apparently reading her mind, “you tell the blackest of lies without blinking an eyelid, Miss Melfort.”
“I suppose,” she said, hearing bitterness in her voice and trying to quell it, “you think it impossible for a woman to live in contentment without a man.”
“As impossible as it is for a man to live contentedly without a woman,” he said. “I wonder if having a brain instead of straw makes a mouth less kissable. I have a mind to put the matter to the test.”
Although he continued to gaze into her eyes for a few moments, she did not grasp the meaning of his words fast enough to escape. Perhaps escape would have been impossible anyway. Perhaps he would not have allowed her to escape. Or perhaps she would not have fought hard enough—or at all—to effect escape.
His mouth was warm and firm against hers. She could smell brandy and cologne, a heady combination that had her losing her knees for sure this time. The thighs and body she swayed against were muscled and quite distinctively masculine. And then she could taste the brandy. His lips had parted over hers, so that she felt heat and moistness, and the tip of his tongue was brushing over her mouth and pressing lightly across the seam so that it appeared she had no choice but to part her lips and allow him access to the sensitive flesh beyond. She was gripping something—two things. Her right hand clutched the book; her left hand held a fistful of shirt. The back of her hand was against chest hair and chest.
“No,” he said, “it does not. Interesting.”
She stared blankly up into his blue eyes, drowning, totally disoriented. The fact that she had a brain did not make her mouth less kissable. That was what he was talking about. She was curiously pleased.
She thought too late that a glare of outraged indignation and a “How dare you!” and perhaps even a crack across the face would have been far more in order than her blank, mindless, besotted stare. Belatedly she withdrew her hand from halfway inside his shirt and released her hold on its fine fabric.
“Go to bed, Miss Melfort,” the Earl of Dearborne said. “With Damon for company. He is not likely to you do you great harm as he will have his lady with him. You will discover her name within the pages of your book. If you remain here, I will be seducing you and breeding you. I make it a habit never to seduce my servants—or ladies who happen to be in my employ.”
She stared at him for a moment longer before turning to make her escape. But his voice stayed her when she had a hand on the doorknob.
“Miss Melfort,” he said, “I will not forbid you the library, but I must ask that in future you dress yourself with more propriety beyond the bounds of your own bedchamber. I will have a houseful of guests here within the week.”
It would have been mortifying in the extreme to have anyone tell her such a thing. But the Earl of Dearborne himself ... She turned cold, remembering her appearance.
“Besides,” he said, and it sounded as if he had walked closer, though she did not turn her head to look, “I am not made of iron, Miss Melfort. You will never know what a superhuman effort it has cost me tonight to keep to my usual habits.”
Laura turned the knob, jerked the door open, and fled.
It was certainly not a good time to be thinking of setting up a mistress. Or the time to be contemplating changing the habit of years—if “habit” was the right word. As a young boy he had been aware of his older brother taking dairymaids and chambermaids and laborers’ daughters with about as much frequency and carelessness as he would pluck apples from the orchard in the autumn. The present Earl of Dearborne was still honoring his dead brother’s obligations to two bastard children in the neighborhood—the two who had been begotten after his marriage. The others were all grown up and independent.
He himself had remained determinedly celibate through his boyhood. He had certainly made up for those years since, but only with women whose profession it was to give men all the pleasure they were willing to pay for.
It was not the time to be dreaming about what he would like to do to and with his niece’s governess. No time would he the right time, but now was the worst time of all.
He had decided to take a bride.
The Honorable Miss Alice Hopkins, daughter of Viscount Gleam. Someone of his own rank and background. Someone who had been out in Society for three years—she was one-and-twenty, ten years his junior—and knew the rules of polite living. She was pretty, accomplished, charming. She would suit him admirably. She would be a perfect hostess, an amiable companion, a suitable mother for his children. She would understand that he would want most of his life to himself—as she would want most of hers to herself.
And so they lived happily ever after. He wished he had not heard those words, spoken in the scornful voice of Beatrice’s governess, every time he congratulated himself on his choice.
He had invited Miss Hopkins and her parents and a number of other guests to spend a few weeks at Dearborne, his country home. Although he had made his choice, he had not made it so obvious that he could not honorably withdraw his attentions. He had not yet made an offer for her or even spoken with her father about his interest in her. Marriage was for life. It was not to be entered into lightly. He would see how they felt about each other in country surroundings, he had decided.
But his decision was made. Unless something quite unexpected happened, he would speak with Gleam before his guests left. He would marry Gleam’s daughter before Christmas.
He certainly did not want to be distracted by a prim bluestocking of a governess who just happened to have the most glorious red hair he had ever seen and who happened to look almost irresistibly beddable in a long, unadorned cotton nightgown and bare feet. And whose hand happened to feel like a firebrand when the back of it was set against his bare chest.
Damnation, he did not want to be distracted. And he would not be if the woman had not been cavorting about the house at midnight in a shocking state of undress. He had thought when he first opened the library door and caught a glimpse of her white-clad figure apparently floating up below the ceiling that she was some sort of ghost or angel. He had decided to tease and punish her for making him feel such a prize idiot, pretending not to notice her, keeping her trapped where she was for forty-five minutes—he had intended to make it a full hour, but had relented.
He should have barked at her as soon as he spotted her and sent her scurrying on her way.
But the damage was done. He had seen her on that first morning in the schoolroom as a youngish, prettyish, quiet, disciplined sort of woman—the typical governess, if there were such a thing. She looked exactly the same whenever he saw her after that night in the library. No one to upset his equilibrium.
Except that he had seen her hair loose down her back. Except that he had seen her clothed for bed. Except that he had kissed her and held the slim shapeliness of her body against his own. Except that the back of her hand had branded his chest somewhere in the region of his heart.
Except that he wanted her more than he could remember wanting a woman for a long time. Probably because he could not have her, he told himself firmly. She was forbidden fruit.
He had always been fond of Beatrice. He used to feel sorry for her, abandoned as a very young infant by her mother, who had run off with a lover, and largely ignored by her father. He himself used to spend a good deal of time in the nursery, playing with her, listening with amused indulgence to her chatter, sometimes taking her riding in the park about the house. She had always adored him.
So it was only right, he told himself during the days following his return home and even after the arrival of his guests, that he visit the schoolroom frequently to observe for himself the progress his niece was making toward becoming a young lady worthy of Society and the husband of high rank he would find for her when she was eighteen or so.
