The Trouble With Being Wicked (6 page)

It was months yet before he could hope for such a thing. His sister had spoken truthfully. He had no prospects. In a village as small as Brixcombe, genteel women were not standing about in assembly rooms, waiting to be whisked off their feet. For that he must go to London.

No hardship to his peers, perhaps. To them the city was exhilarating, with debauchery to be found on every corner. For himself, going to London had been enough to stop any further thought of marriage cold. London had destroyed his family almost a decade ago. He’d vowed not to set foot in it until he was absolutely certain he was stronger than its lures.

One of those lures had come to dangle before him, right here in his beloved Brixcombe. Not that he believed Miss Smythe precisely
loose
, though he continued to doubt Mrs. Inglewood’s situation. He preferred to leave his questions there unanswered, for his own sanity. But even if his premonition were wrong and Miss Smythe was without an untoward thought, he knew for a certain she wasn’t the paragon he sought for a wife. By extension, any attraction to her he felt was a distraction.

The thought of avoiding her completely left him curiously disheartened, as if he’d suited up in armor only to learn there was no fight. If he avoided seeing her again, what would it prove?

Perhaps instead, he ought to accept
her arrival as an opportunity to test himself before he actually needed to hold up. See what he was made of. He’d built walls around his fortress-like manor and walls around his heart. Invisible walls, but his defense nonetheless. Morally, he felt stronger than he ever had. How would he hold?

Realistically, he couldn’t put off London and its lures forever. Living with his sisters wasn’t getting easier. He’d finally saved enough to provide them with modest dowries, and so his last objection to the trip was overcome. He refused to remember how much of that money had come from the sale of the vicarage, which had inadvertently drawn Miss Smythe just outside his hedgerows.

He thrust her breasts from his mind as quickly as he could make himself. Nothing but a test. If he must think of a bosom, it should not be that kind of bosom. It should be the motherly kind that would suckle his children. Someone with a bit of passion in her veins, but not so much that he’d begin to feel lecherous. A comely young lady who’d understand his love of land and responsibility, who knew how to navigate the
ton
and could help his sisters find suitable husbands. He wasn’t asking much. Surely a woman existed who was saving herself for a man exactly like him.

Not the kind like Miss Smythe. She was the pretty kind, the type who enjoyed her effect on men and knew nothing of country life. The vain and selfish kind who thought only of her own amusement. Not the kind who would have a quieting effect on his sisters, and provide them entrée into Society. He didn’t need to know if Miss Smythe was who she claimed to be to be sure of her character. It was written all over her perfect, succubus face.

When the fire smoldered low in the grate and all that was left of his wine was the dry pucker of tannins, he took himself to bed.

He wasn’t to remain alone. When his consciousness dropped into slumber, she came to him. She rode him with wanton abandon, crying his name and scraping her nails and teeth against his feverish skin. He awoke at midnight gripping an aching erection. He came into the bedsheet, gasping at the bittersweet pleasure of spending his seed.

Damn her.

When every last drop had been wrung from his body and he began to relax into lethargy, he tore the bedsheet from the mattress and tossed it into a crumpled heap in the corner. Cursing his weakness, he crawled atop the coverlet and lay on his back. The room was cold but he was glad of the chill. God, how had she done it? How had she slipped into his head?

Not that he was entirely pure. It had been seven years since he’d lain with a woman. He accepted his body would seek release when his mind was least guarded against it. But the women he dreamed of had always been faceless.

Shame washed over him. Miss Smythe was naught but a victim of his innate licentiousness. With his first full look at her on the lawn, he’d felt a jolt so sensual it had taken a moment to recover himself, to remind himself that he didn’t allow desire to rule him. For just a moment, he’d slipped. Allowed his gaze to roam the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist. She was a voluptuous siren with a voice that scraped his back like a courtesan’s laugh.

Disgust churned in him. He was better than this. He had to be. He couldn’t fail his sisters or succumb to his father’s vice. He’d worked too hard to control his need for release. When he gave in completely, it would be with the right woman. With his wife. Only the woman he’d vowed to spend the rest of his life with would experience even a hint of the passion he kept bridled inside. For he’d witnessed the effects of that single-minded resolve unleashed without discernment. The squandered funds, disregarded duties and brokenhearted loved ones.

But hours later, he was still awake. He flexed his toes toward the ceiling in an attempt to ward off the tightness building again at the mere thought of her. No matter how hard he tried to forget it, the dream remained vivid. He could feel her naked breasts heavy in his hands. Her secret, swollen, sensitive place wet beneath his fingers. Her hips, so round and full, fitted perfectly against his.

Damn it, but he’d slipped. The bedsheet wadded in the corner proved it.

It would be the last time. How he wished she’d have accepted his offer to cancel the sale. If she wasn’t here, she couldn’t tempt him. Did that make him a coward? Would he sooner see her and Mrs. Inglewood become vagrants than have them tucked into the cottage where he had acquired so many fond memories as a child?

He was an ogre for wanting to say yes.

She wasn’t leaving. He may as well acclimate himself to it. Use her presence as a test—a test he’d already failed once tonight. But there would be other times. She’d realized that the thought of felling Fort Chestnut made him sentimental and it had all muddied from there. He recognized from that single exchange that she was unlikely to cower in the cottage merely because he’d been unwelcoming.

As for buying her out, as much as he’d wanted her to agree to it, without her banknote he couldn’t afford to properly dower the girls. In all the years he’d tried to sell the cottage, she’d made the only offer. She was right, he’d been lucky she hadn’t looked at the property first.

He paused. When had he become certain she was the buyer, rather than Captain Inglewood?

She couldn’t be. He’d transacted the sale himself, through an agent in London. He was pinning offences on her again when he had no reason to. This was another attempt to vilify her simply because he couldn’t contemplate a lifetime of being tempted by the beauty next door any more than he could contemplate living with his sisters another year.

Good God, his sisters.
He could only imagine the disaster such a unity of females would cause.

Ash definitely did not sleep after that.

Chapter Four

Only an invitation from the Misses Lancester could have emboldened Celeste to approach Worston Heights. She shook out her dingy hem and regarded the twin line of trees growing unnaturally straight along its drive. Beyond their reach an imposing, domed edifice sprang from a rocky hill overlaid with emerald-colored grass, a subtle indication that the master of these moors valued perfection, no matter the implausibility. Her differences with him seemed larger than one awkward tea party, to say the least.

She eyed the onion dome, then her dust-caked hem. He would certainly find fault with her dishevelment. She never strolled farther than a few blocks in London, and while the crowded city wasn’t known for its sparkling boulevards, its cobbled streets easily surpassed the worn dirt footpaths crisscrossing Devon.

She’d walked to Worston so that she might leave her carriage with Elizabeth, who’d pled the headache. Now she looked as haggard as a tavern wench, despite the hours she’d spent before the miniscule mirror in her room at the Hound and Hen.

She could only hope
he
would not be in attendance to witness her disarray, for she couldn’t turn back now. Her all-consuming desire for Elizabeth’s baby to be born here, away from the depravity of London, was more important than her vanity. Receiving a nod of approval from the local gentry would go a long way toward presenting their little family as respectable.

Too, declining would be the height of rudeness and could give the Lancester family reason to look closer. Above all else, she couldn’t risk that.

To the house it was, then. The afternoon was blue and clear, with the occasional birdsong carrying on a salty breeze. The lightness of the day was at odds with the trepidation weighing her belly. Did she truly believe his sisters would take one look at her and declare themselves charmed?
He
certainly had not. Despite the warm sun she shivered, recalling how coldly he had tried to scare her away.

But she was no coward. She marched on, and a quarter hour later she arrived at curving granite stairs leading to Worston’s massive doors. A tangle of petticoats clung to her legs and her bodice felt at least three inches too tight. Seeing as how she had her mother’s porcelain coloring, her face undoubtedly resembled a battered tomato. It wasn’t the way she’d wanted to look crossing Lord Trestin’s threshold, even if she’d hoped that he wouldn’t be there to witness it.

She paused on the first step to retie her bonnet ribbons, which the wind had whipped into a jumble. Just as she finished plumping a wide satin bow gathered under her left ear, Lord Trestin materialized from the side of the house. She placed a hand over her heart as it slammed to a halt. Goodness, he was fine-looking. She’d almost forgotten how magnificently he wore his plain country garb.

He must have seen her, too, for he switched directions sharply and cut a path directly to her. She steeled herself as he stopped close enough to kiss. His shoulders blocked the sun, but she didn’t mind. Their interlude felt intimate, rather than intimidating.

Not that he betrayed a reciprocating sentiment, for his voice remained flat and his eyes dispassionate as he touched the brim of his beaver and drawled, “Miss Smythe, a surprise, to say the least.”

His skin was the color of caramelized sugar, speaking of time regularly spent out of doors. His wool coat was the pure black of a devil’s heart. An empty wicker basket hooked over each arm, just conspicuously enough that she wanted to ask what he was about. She didn’t. His face was closed, his intriguing eyes indifferent to her. He clearly had no wish for her to engage him in idle chatter.

But she couldn’t help admiring his form. She sucked in a breath before she could stop herself. Goodness! What she would have given for a prize like him in London. Even a single night would have capped her already infamous success, like a swirl of whipping cream on a decadent dessert. Yet his eyes didn’t widen at her sharp inhalation, nor did a telltale pulse of desire tick at his jaw. Beneath the brim of his beaver, his eyebrows didn’t lift with jaded interest. He was so clearly not intrigued by her, it almost pained her.

She smiled prettily at him, careful to mask her feelings. Nothing put a man off faster than a woman’s eagerness to engage him.

Not that she should be trying. Yet she couldn’t deny she was. The last few lovers who had slipped between her sheets had been acquaintances, connected to previous conquests through the weblike nature of London’s underworld. Though she’d been amused and pleasured, she’d been ambivalent. Realizing Lord Trestin awakened something within her that she had suppressed for years almost made her feel…giddy.

The smile that crept across her lips seemed to bubble from inside her. She couldn’t seduce him, of course, but if she could
feel
…if she could desire a man again…if she could
trust
…perhaps her life really could start anew.

She tugged at her cloying skirts as she bobbed a shallow curtsey. “A beautiful day, is it not?”

“Indeed,” he murmured, continuing to regard her with his unfathomable gaze. “Are you headed into the house?”

“I am,” she replied without a hint of the anxiety that plagued her at the thought of ensconcing herself with proper ladies. An invitation to the local estate was a customary gesture extended to newcomers, and had she been respectable, Celeste should have expected it. Instead she’d been astonished. She was convinced that tea at Worston would cement her respectability faster than merely living quietly.