Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
I n all the ways that Helen was ill-suited for Society life, her hatred of London modistes was high on the list.
If she heard one more seamstress from Sussex with a false French accent lament that her figure was “unfashionable,” Helen was truly going to stab the needlewoman with the tools of her own trade.
It wasn’t, after all, as though she didn’t know that her generous curves and heavy bosom weren’t a la mode . She was plump, not blind . And even if she thought there was something wrong with her plumpness—which, much to the shock of Madame Fleur, née Sally from Shropshire, she did not—she hadn’t the faintest idea what the modistes expected her to do about it.
They were just being snooty for the sake of it, and Helen found it deeply, profoundly irritating.
Which was really far too much to bear, as she already had about a dozen other things to be irritated about. After all, George simply would not shut up about this bloody dinner party. Patricia had somehow gotten ahold of something she insisted was a kitten but which Helen knew to be a small demon, and she’d not heard a word from the Duke of Godwin since their…encounter in the garden.
Therefore, when she had to say, “No more flounces,” for the umpteenth time, she was getting a bit snappish about it.
Madame Fleur looked mortally wounded by the comment.
“But miss,” she protested, her assumed accent slipping. “It will help the gown be a bit more…suited to you.”
It would make Helen look like a cream puff had gotten in an accident with a lace factory.
“No,” Helen repeated. “Just, no.”
Madame Fleur sniffed disdainfully, but she acquiesced. Helen felt a resounding flare of triumph. It might be a small victory, but it was a victory, nonetheless.
This bolstered her mood right up until she returned home to find another one of those accursed, peremptory notes.
Midnight. Back door unlocked. Tonight. Meet me where we struck our bargain.
Postscript—no urchin this time.
It was remarkable, she thought, indulging in her irritation to avoid feeling any trepidation about what he might want from her, that he managed to sound so very smug in so very few words.
The only way she could get through the remainder of the day was to get good and mad about it.
She did a proper job of it, too. She so successfully riled herself up that, by the time she arrived in the study shortly after midnight, she burst in without so much as a by-your-leave.
“No urchin this time?” she demanded archly.
The Duke of Godwin, damn his eyes, did not so much as bat an eyelash at her unconventionally abrupt entrance.
“Little rabbit,” he drawled from where he lounged, loose-limbed and louche, in an armchair in front of the fire. He idly shuffled a pack of cards between his hands in a manner that drew her attention to the elegant lines of his long fingers. “How good to see you again.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
He smiled a snake’s smile. “You do tell me so very many things, my darling girl,” he said mildly. “Don’t send urchins, stop calling you names. One might start to think that I was the one coming to you for favors, what with all these demands you have falling so readily from your pretty lips.”
There were so very many things to say to this deeply, intensely absurd series of comments. The pet names, calling her pretty. His overall…rakishness.
There was one point, however, on which he was indisputably accurate. Helen needed him. Which meant she had to at least try to play nice.
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Thank you for not sending such a noticeable messenger.”
“You are quite welcome,” he said so graciously that she wanted to punch him. She absolutely could not try to hit him again, however. Once was deserved. Twice, he might have deserved it. But a third time would just be embarrassing—especially if he stopped her again.
To distract herself, she cast a suspicious look around the room. It was much unchanged from the last time she’d been here, which was in and of itself curious. She hadn’t precisely expected that he’d have a line of grooms lined up for the choosing right here in his residence, but she thought he might have…something that indicated his purpose.
After all, the duke clearly had some motive for summoning her this evening. She could not for the life of her figure out what his motives were, but she had no doubt that he possessed them.
He waited patiently while she searched for some clue, looking perfectly content to wait the entire night, if necessary. It was infuriating, particularly as she eventually had to give in and ask, “Why did you call me here tonight, then?”
He stopped flipping the cards, neatened the deck into a single tidy stack, and then waved it in her direction.
“I thought we might play cards,” he said.
“Cards,” she echoed flatly. “You want to play cards.”
He blinked at her in a miserable attempt at innocence. Unlike someone else who was putting forward a poor act, the duke only seemed more powerful because he failed to look harmless. It was annoying. It would be nice if the man could fail properly at something.
“You’re welcome to come closer if you’re struggling to hear me, little rabbit,” he said magnanimously.
Helen was not amused, and she made sure her expression said as much. The duke, perverse man that he was, seemed entertained rather than bothered by this show of defiance.
“Oh, come along,” he said cajolingly, gesturing toward the chair across from him. “Surely you don’t object to a hand or two.”
She was not precisely the picture of well-tempered grace about it, but she crossed the room and sank into the chair. It was damnably comfortable, not a lump or a spring to be detected.
“Haven’t you got anyone else to play cards with?” she asked. “I confess I’m no expert in it, but isn’t that what gentlemen’s clubs are all about? Drinking, complaining about your wives, and losing absurd fortunes?”
He barked out a laugh. She’d apparently surprised him with that one. It filled her with pleasure.
“You’re not far off, little rabbit,” he said. “So, yes, I could go along to White’s if I wanted to play a round of whist or shoot dice and lose some of my family’s money. But for this game…” He started shuffling the cards again in a mesmerizing motion. “This, I can only play with you.”
It felt almost impossible to look away from the fluid motion of the crisp rectangles of decorated white paper. They looked new, and Helen had no doubt that they were directly out of the package. Nothing but the best for the Duke of Godwin, after all.
“Why is that?” she asked as he shuffled back and forth, back and forth, the motions as accomplished as those of any south London card sharp.
She knew he was herding her like a wolf herding a sheep, not with force but with trickery and nudges that put her right where he wanted her before he swept in for the kill. She knew that she was giving him all the opportunities he wished, that she was asking the questions he wanted her to ask.
The stubborn side of her wanted to resist for resistance’s sake. But the part of her that had been scheming and worrying for months now—for years, if one counted her efforts to keep the estate running during her father’s long absences—found it so temptingly easy to just give in to whatever machinations the duke had in mind.
It should feel like losing, but the idea of just giving in sounded so relaxing.
And maybe he realized that she was running out of fight, because she thought maybe his tone gentled, just a little, as he spoke next. It seemed less combative, more like he was a benevolent ruler than an apex predator. And yet, their roles were not in question. No, the way he spoke to her still left no doubt that he was in charge of things between them. Yet, maybe that authority was a bit softer.
Or maybe she was imagining things. She hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in days, after all.
“Tonight,” he said, voice smooth as silk, “we’re going to play piquet.”
She opened her mouth to say something—of course, they were going to play piquet, as they were only two players, or perhaps that he could certainly play piquet at his club—but he held up a quelling hand.
“With,” he went on pointedly, “an added rule.”
His gaze was a challenge, a probing tease.
She did not back down. Giving in simply wasn’t in her nature.
“What added rule?” she asked, chin high.
“Every time one of us loses a hand,” he said, in those same silken tones, “he or she shall remove an article of clothing.”
Perhaps it made her the worst country bumpkin in all the world, but Helen felt her jaw drop.
To say she was scandalized was the greatest understatement of the year. To her, piquet was something one played to while away the hours during an interminable winter, should one not have enough players for whist or loo. She supposed it could be flirtatious—she’d only been in Society a few months, but she’d already learned that nearly anything could be flirtatious if one put one’s mind to it—but this went far beyond flirtation.
But then again, wasn’t that what she’d bargained for?
However, being shocked was one thing, and seeming shocked—particularly in the face of the duke’s entirely nonchalant urbanity—was another. Helen thus hastily closed her open mouth, trying (unsuccessfully, she feared) to seem even one percent as calm about this prospect as the duke.
She did not feel she could be blamed for adopting this false front, not when she was about to lose a far more conventional form of armor.
“You know,” she said, pleased with herself when she sounded relatively unaffected, “you likely could play such a game at your club. Perhaps not White’s—but I’m sure a man like yourself has access to more…permissive establishments.”
His lips quirked into a smile. “Ah, yes, but those are men’s clubs. They only let gentlemen play. Which rather defeats the purpose.”
“Well, yes, you might see something a bit different,” she added, folding her hands demurely in front of her. “Perhaps it would be an education.”
To her surprise, the duke burst out into a laugh.
“Do you know what I like best about you?” he asked, which startled her even more. She’d not thought he really liked much of anything about her, save for her desperation. And here he was, sounding as though there were enough things to like about her that he got to choose between them. “You never once say what I think you’re going to say.”
Since she liked this vision of herself—an unpredictable element, one who was such an original that she could do what others could not—she shrugged. The nonchalance was coming to her more easily now.
“You’re the one who is always pointing out my Northern upbringing,” she said, examining her nails as though they were the most fascinating thing in the world. “How should I know what you do in the austere and virtuous south? Perhaps you’ve never seen a man before. Perhaps you even avert your gaze when you bathe. You are all so dreadfully prim down here.”
It felt good to turn the tables if only for a moment, to imagine a world in which Londoners were wrong for their adherence to manners—to make them the absurd ones with their strictures and obsessions. The relief of it was almost staggering in its intensity, and Helen realized with a jolt that a part of her had started to accept what they all thought of her—that she was wrong somehow.
His smile was a bit less free and open now, instead turning back toward its usual rakishness, but it was still a pleasure to look at—damn him and his handsome face!
“I assure you,” he said dryly, “no matter what you think of us virtuous city folk, I did spend time in the duck pond with my cousins as a boy—and no, before you ask, I do not avert my eyes in the bath, you dreadful little thing.”
Why did she like that more than some of the kind words others had bestowed upon her?
“I think rather,” he continued, “that it is more likely that you shall see something different this evening, that you shall gain that education of which you speak.”
“Oh, that’s what you think,” Helen said, delighted when another flicker of surprise crossed his features. She was even more pleased that it was only slightly a bluff. She had had, after all, a relatively unchaperoned childhood; she’d seen several of the local boys, at a distance, playing in a pond once before their mothers had arrived and boxed them soundly around the ears for getting wet and muddy, not to mention naked where anyone could see them.
Helen suspected that the duke would look rather different under his clothing than did a handful of farmer’s sons, the eldest no older than she’d been at ten or eleven, viewed from fifty paces.
Not that she felt compelled to mention such a thing.
“I see.” The duke tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And this great experience—it is why, I gather, you are doing everything in your power to delay? Are you frightened, little rabbit?”
She scowled. She’d preferred it when he was calling her dreadful.
“Certainly not,” she said primly. This was, alas, completely a bluff. Her heart was racing like the rabbit he named her. “Perhaps you simply aren’t as appealing as you think you are.”
He didn’t even bother to respond to that one which was, damn his eyes, fair enough. Stupid, handsome dukes with their stupid confidence!
She was furious with herself for being the one to break the silence, but she couldn’t help herself, not when another awful thought came over her. All the itchy discomfort of feeling the outsider returned as she thought of that awful modiste and the way she’d sneered at Helen’s curves.
Helen had been able to brush aside the woman’s scorn, but she didn’t know that she’d be able to do the same if the duke responded to her disrobing with an insult about her figure. That, she feared, would sting.
“Perhaps you’ll learn something after all,” she said, cringing inwardly when her bravado wavered. “I am not… I’m not quite like any of the other women you’ve likely known.”
Something horribly knowing passed through his eyes, though it vanished when he reached over and took a slow sip of his drink. She tried to sit as though she were unbothered, as if she didn’t feel stripped bare by this admission of her insecurity.
“Allow me to share with you, my sweet Northern lass, the learnings of a rake.”
Helen felt her shoulders unclench at that irksome nickname. She’d not have been able to handle it if he was cruel about this, but she wouldn’t have liked it if he suddenly dropped their little game and became overly kind, either. This dry teasing was familiar ground.
Irritating ground, but familiar.
“A man like myself learns,” he said, pontificating as though he were some sort of Oxford don, “that there is no such thing as types of women. You are each one of you different—and such is the pleasure in the thing.” He looked at her sharply. “What is more, I will ask that you do not insult me by suggesting that I am so wanting for company that I should seek pleasures with a woman whom I do not find attractive. I assure you that I am positively spoiled for choice. If I choose to spend my time with you, it is not because I am otherwise lacking.”
Much to Helen’s annoyance, this was a helpful thing to say. If she harbored such fears, she’d be insulting the duke, not herself. And even though part of her wanted to insult the wretched rake before her in every way she could imagine…
Well, this still helped.
Not that she wished to let him know that.
“Far be it from me to insult your ability to draw women to your door,” she said snappishly.
A flicker of a smile crossed his face, there and then gone again.
“I accept your apology. Now, enough prevaricating,” he ordered. “Accept or don’t, Miss Fletcher. I’ve told you before, I shan’t force your hand. But you know the terms. Take them or refuse them; the choice is yours.”
Helen hesitated only for a fraction of a second. She was good at piquet—she and Patricia had only played it a thousand times, as they lacked enough players for nearly any other game. She was not risking as much as the duke perhaps suspected she was.
She looked him dead in the eye.
“You deal first,” she said.
Little Miss Fletcher was good at cards, Xander would grant her that. She might even have been better than he was.
Or perhaps she would have been if he wasn’t cheating.
He hadn’t precisely gone into the thing planning to cheat. He was a dab hand at cards, though piquet wasn’t his usual game. And cheating was unsportsmanlike, as his grandfather Cornelius had lectured him strictly even as he’d taught his young grandson the sleight of hand tricks needed to do precisely that.
“I never taught your father, because it was my job to raise him right,” Cornelius had told Xander with a wink. “But a grandfather may do as he pleases; it’s your father’s job to fix you up afterward.”
Cornelius died not long after, and Xander never told his father about the skills. He’d not needed to; his father had fixed him up well enough that Xander knew he wouldn’t cheat when any form of honor was on the line. And it was one of his precious few memories of his formidable grandfather being anything other than the unshakeable Duke of Godwin.
And then his father died, too, and Xander took on his own responsibilities for the dukedom. His ability to flip secret cards without anyone else being the wiser had been something he used not for their intended purpose but as a way to calm his busy mind when he needed his hands otherwise occupied.
Tonight, though, Xander planned to put those long-abandoned talents to good use.
Because, tonight, the manner of honor wasn’t in playing fairly; it was working fairly with his winnings.
“Drat,” Miss Fletcher mumbled under her breath when he took the first hand neatly. She’d lost her glove for that one.
“Dam—drat,” she said hastily when he’d won her cloak off her.
By the time he’d gotten her out of her shoes and stockings—which she’d gotten rid of early on, the clever little thing—she wasn’t swearing so much as mumbling incoherently under her breath. Her next loss would leave her forced to remove the outer layer of her gown, forced to reveal her stays and chemise. Xander, meanwhile, had lost only his cravat and jacket.
She was the most intriguing little puzzle, his little rabbit. She was so often full of stubborn bravery and often acted as though she was unflappable in her boldness. And yet, just when it seemed that this was the only side of her, she would let these little flickers of innocence and doubt peek through, only to hastily hide them again. She surprised him so often—something almost nobody ever managed.
And perhaps he oughtn’t have been surprised about her appearance. The ton was quite restrictive about such things, of course—and dreadfully arbitrary. They’d decide that red hair was a disgrace or that a tall woman should be considered hideous for her height. Xander didn’t know what idiots made these rules. As if one couldn’t run one’s fingers through red locks as smoothly as golden or brown! As if a tall woman wasn’t all the easier to kiss!
But current fashions were not made for his lush Miss Fletcher, so she’d no doubt been criticized. He could have told her that such things were foolish, could have scandalized her with the way he’d heard men discuss, with naked longing, a woman with a generous chest. He could have told her, in explicit detail, all the ways that he found her exceedingly attractive.
But he had the sense that this would go much more smoothly if he showed her the way his body responded to hers.
His goal, after all, was to make her want him back. It was only fun that way. And, given what he now knew, he suspected that allaying her doubts would be the next step to setting her passions free.
Besides, he wanted to see more of her. He was only a man, after all.
“Your draw,” he told her.
She gave him a suspicious look; he gave her his most innocent smile in return, then had to bite back a laugh when she scowled ferociously at him.
Perhaps he’d been too hasty in nicknaming her; she was not a timid little rabbit at all. Instead, she was like a kitten, so certain that her teeny, tiny claws were lethally fierce.
She drew, as did he. They paused, each looking at their cards. She laid down her hand, and he his.
He’d won. As he’d known he would. He wasn’t going to leave something like this up to chance.
She gritted out a frustrated…something.
“Is that Gaelic?” he asked politely. “I thought you were Northern, not Scottish.”
She looked positively murderous. Xander worried he’d never enjoy playing cards with any other partner again.
“I only know the swears,” she said, not sounding ashamed in the least.
“You shock me, Miss Fletcher.”
She crossed her arms. This had the delicious effect of making her bosom swell all the higher over her neckline, which was an absolutely delightful glimpse of the vision he was about to enjoy.
“You’re cheating,” she accused.
“Prove it,” he returned.
She fumed.
He waited.
He was not going to remind her again that she had the option to leave. For one, he was not above stacking his hand—that much was evident in his conduct for the whole of this liaison with the beguiling Miss Fletcher, not just tonight’s game of cards. He’d given her the options before her; he was not planning to reiterate that she could take the one that he preferred she decide against. She was a smart woman. She knew her options.
Besides, something—and he wasn’t exactly sure what it was, some instinct, some flicker in the back of his mind—warned him against underestimating Miss Fletcher. He suspected that too many people did, to their own peril.
So, he waited, silent as a snake poised to strike.
This patience was rewarded when her hands reached behind her and, with impressive surety of motion, given that her eyes did not leave his for an instant, tugged loose the laces of her gown.
Her cheeks flushed pink, and his mouth went dry as the creamy tops of her breasts were revealed, inch by inch.
When the laces could go no further while she sat, she rose to her feet and shimmied her hips—Xander knew he would be thinking about that motion later when he was alone in his bed—so that the unlaced gown fell down to puddle at her feet.
And all the while, she stared, brazen, bold. He admired it all the more because it looked like it cost her something to hold his gaze like that. His little rabbit was not, after all, a skilled or practiced seductress. He knew women who were confident in their own allure; Miss Fletcher was not one such woman.
She doubted. But she was determined to be brave anyway and, for some twisted reason, that made him grow hard as stone.
In another version of this game, Xander might have hidden his arousal, might have crossed his legs, turned his head, thought about something distinctly unappealing—that time Jason had fallen into the pig pasture at their country estate as a child, perhaps, and the godawful stink of him as Xander had dragged his sobbing younger brother back home.
But in this version, with this woman, he let her see everything she did to him. He leaned back in his chair so that she could not mistake the physical effect of her form on his person, even sprawled his legs wide to draw her eye.
He knew he’d succeeded when she glanced down at his lap and instantly went twice as red in the cheeks. He couldn’t say he objected. He didn’t dislike having his ego stroked.
He’d prefer Miss Fletcher stroke other parts of him, but he’d settle for his pride. For now.
“Well?” she demanded. She was breathing quite heavily, which did a very pleasant thing to her overall person, clad so lightly as it was in stays and chemise. Xander wished he’d stoked the fire higher. If he had, perhaps he’d have been able to glimpse the rosy outline of a nipple through the thin fabric of her undergarments.
Alas, that was a lesson for next time. And there would be a next time. He was already determined to make certain that came to pass.
“Well?” he echoed innocently. His trousers were becoming uncomfortable; instead of bearing it, he reached down and brazenly adjusted himself. The pressure of his own hand felt impossibly good, but he pulled away after a single motion. He wanted Miss Fletcher to see him, after all.
Miss Fletcher’s eyes went wide as saucers, and it took her a moment to respond. He could practically see the thoughts whirling behind those expressive amber eyes as she reconciled her previous worries with this unimpeachable evidence that he was attracted to her.
“Well,” she said again, voice less certain this time. She was still standing, her chemise fluttering minutely against her legs. “Aren’t you going to…do something?”
“Do something?” he again mimicked.
He couldn’t stop his smile this time, but it hardly mattered, as Miss Fletcher’s attention had become wholly engrossed in other parts of his person.
“I…” She didn’t look as though even she knew if she were relieved that he hadn’t pounced on her, angry that he was toying with her, or far too distracted by her own sexual interest to decide which emotion to feel. And she was interested; that much was obvious in the way her breaths were still rapid and shallow, in the way she almost subconsciously leaned toward him.
And even if none of those things were clear, matters would have become inarguable when Xavier hooked his booted foot around the small table where they’d been playing their hands and dragged it aside, and Miss Fletcher, as if entranced, took two stumbling steps forward.
Now that her gown was removed, he could see her soft feet where they peeked from beneath the hem of her calf-length chemise. They were positively tiny, those feet, and, for just a moment, looking at them felt like too bold an intimacy.
Hastily, Xavier raised his eyes to the swell of her hips instead.
He’d not spent enough time, he realized, thinking about what Miss Fletcher’s hips might look like. He’d been rather more preoccupied with thinking about her soft breasts—which was fair enough, as they looked so soft and round that he ached to get his hands and mouth on them.
Now, though, he could all too easily picture himself grabbing those hips, using them to orient her as he pleased, using them to hold her still as he drove her wild with endless pleasure. Her soft flesh would yield to his fingertips, would quiver as he thrust himself against her.
This time, when he ground the heel of his hand against the front of his trousers, it was not to alleviate discomfort but rather to generate it. He needed to remind his body that he intended to slow down. A hasty hunter would never snare his quarry.
Miss Fletcher gulped so hard it was almost audible.
“You’re—” He wondered if she’d be brave enough to say it. “—aroused.”
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “Unmercifully so.” He moved his hand aside again so she could look her fill. “It’s rather uncomfortable, I admit. I wish you’d played a few more successful hands. I’d be much more at my leisure if I’d lost my trousers in the game.”
This image was evidently too much for her. She sucked in a sharp inhale of breath and tore her gaze away, looking everywhere, nowhere, then settling back on his mouth.
“But…” She sounded so flustered; she looked practically mesmerized. “But you’re not doing anything!”
There was a distinct note of sulkiness to this observation. Xander smiled.
“No,” he agreed, voice gentle but firm. And then he dropped the axe. “Not until you ask me to.”
Her eyes flew back to his; she stumbled back a step or two, stopped only by the armchair where she’d been sitting previously.
Ah, he thought, not without some disappointment. Not quite ready yet, then.
“You—you—” she stammered. “Oh, you mock me .”
He narrowed his eyes. “I do not,” he retorted. “Tease? Yes. Toy a bit? Indeed. But not mock.” He gestured down at his lap, then watched as she struggled not to look. “This does not lie, rabbit. I hunger for you most vociferously. But, as I have said before, I have no interest in an unwilling woman. I want you eager. I want you wanting. You will come to me because you wish it or not at all. Until you are ready to admit your own desire as readily as I have admitted mine, I will wait.”
Her eyes were hot with rage, but she didn’t try to slap him again, which he considered a significant step forward in their interpersonal rapport.
She did, however, bundle up her clothing, not even bothering to redon her dress or put on her stockings before she shoved her feet into her half boots and threw her cloak over everything. He watched her sumptuous figure disappear behind the heavy fabric with a distinct note of regret.
Being patient really could be most dreadfully trying , he thought.
“If that’s what you’re waiting for, Your Grace,” her accent thicker than ever in her haste and anger, “you will go to your grave still waiting! Goodnight, sir!”
And then, with a snap of her cloak—Xander really had to give her points for the drama of it all—she whipped out the study door and was gone.
Leaving Xander alone with an ache in his groin and only his own hand for relief. Yet, despite that, she left him laughing, as well.