Chapter 16
I understand Strathrannoch and his countess have begun sharing a bedchamber, and—cariad—you didn’t contrive this, did you? (Please take this query in the spirit of compliment it was meant!)
—from Huw to Bertie, posted from Kilbride House
Five days of cohabitation later, Arthur had begun to fear that proximity to Lydia Hope-Wallace was slowly ravaging his intellect.
She had certainly eroded his willpower. Wrecked his composure. Caused significant and irreversible damage to his heart.
But no. His heart was not the issue at hand.
The problem was in his brain, and in the fact that even after nearly a week’s concerted investigation, he had made no progress toward discovering who had ransacked Lydia’s room.
He had searched the library and found nothing but Jasper Hope-Wallace asleep on a chaise longue, a book open upon his chest. Arthur had made a god-awful racket whilst searching, but the man hadn’t moved an inch, which suggested he either had been knocked upon the head or was faking it. And why he would be feigning repose, Arthur could not imagine.
He briefly entertained a wild fantasy in which all the Hope-Wallace siblings were in league with his brother and Lydia had been sent ahead to seduce him into compliance. Then he recalled her flight among the zebras and discarded that notion.
Besides—he trusted her.
After Arthur’s failure of reconnaissance in the library, Georgiana had been tasked with gaining access to the chambers of the Thibodeaux and Valiquette couples. Once that was accomplished, Arthur and Lydia had surreptitiously searched, but they’d found nothing of interest.
Lydia, meanwhile, spent her time gathering intelligence directly from the other guests. Despite her manifest discomfort when forced into the drawing room or sitting room or wherever else the company happened to gather en masse, she was adept at listening and at putting together scraps of information from various conversations. Every evening, she consulted the index of notes she’d made back at Strathrannoch Castle. She was machinelike in her precision, matching points of reference from comments he’d scarcely perceived.
But thus far, it was no use. The de Younges, the Thibodeaux, the Valiquettes—all, at various points, made statements that could somehow be connected to Davis. Even Lydia’s brother Jasper—still in the guise of Joseph Eagermont—had once made an offhand remark about a grocer he’d encountered near the border who sold turnip paste molded into the shape of a cod’s head. Later, Lydia had shown Arthur the exact same story written in Davis’s hand.
That, at least, had not been something Davis had stolen from him. Arthur had never heard of such a thing in his life.
Lydia was dogged and persistent and clever as the devil. He could see that she hated the evenings of entertainment—he’d once caught her surreptitiously examining the pianoforte’s wires as though searching for a way to destroy them—but she kept throwing herself at the general assembly anyway. Most nights, he tried to draw her away from the small crowd and into the hallway or out to the gardens for relief, but she rarely allowed it.
“I want to help,” she’d said the previous night. “I know I can do this.” Her face was still pale and a little greenish after Mrs. Thibodeaux had asked her in thickly accented English to lift her angelic voice in song .
He did not know how to explain to her that she was already helping. That she did not always need to make herself uncomfortable because she thought it was what others wanted from her.
And when he tried, she did not seem persuaded.
In addition to their decidedly poor information-gathering, they also had not yet heard back from Belvoir’s, though Bertie had reiterated via letter his promise to forward any correspondence from London immediately.
At this point, Arthur had no clearer sense of Davis’s motivations than he’d had before they’d arrived at Kilbride House. Every time he began to think he’d made some headway—when Lord de Younge began to speak of new rifle craft over a brace of pheasant, for example—his suspicions soon faltered, faded, and snagged upon someone else. To wit: Monsieur de Valiquette had replied to Lord de Younge’s commentary on improved rifle design with a flurry of outraged French decrying the problem of poaching and the beneficence of aristocrats like himself and the Duchess of Sutherland, one of Davis’s benefactors.
Either everyone in Kilbride House knew something about Davis’s nefarious activities or no one did.
A third option presented itself: The solution to the mystery of Davis’s accomplice was obvious. Arthur simply could not think of it because his brains had been plundered by Lydia Hope-Wallace.
Every night in their shared bedchamber was torture. She was an argumentative wee thing, but he was obstinate enough to hold off one ginger Englishwoman. She hadn’t been able to talk him into sleeping in the bed.
At least, not the first evening. That night, he’d slept on a thin rug on the stone floor and woken to bollocks so chilled he feared they’d never be seen again. He had, in the cold— very cold—light of dawn, come to the conclusion that he was resolute enough to share the bed with her and still maintain some semblance of honor.
And he had. Sort of.
For the subsequent nights, he’d slept lengthwise across the foot of the bed, which meant everything from his calves down dangled off the edge. His personal discomfort was not nearly as much of a problem, however, as was the fact that he was obsessed with her.
He thought about her all day: her bravery and wit and fortitude, her nervous, busy fingers. And then he thought about her all night as well. He could sense her in the bed—God, he could not have been more aware of her if they were mid-coitus. He could feel every time she shifted or turned; he knew the weight of her body on the mattress. He could smell the warm vanilla scent that clung to her, and he wanted to taste it. Lick it. Lick her .
He knew that she had two night rails with her. He had not seen them; she wore her many-buttoned dressing gown to bed and then struggled out of it beneath the bedclothes and tossed it down onto the floor.
But he knew there were at least two. Some nights, he could see the spill of silky-soft cotton down by her feet. That was the first night rail: the one that went all the way to the floor.
Other nights, he could not see the edge of fabric, which meant she was wearing the second nightgown. The shorter one. He harbored a number of vivid and specific fantasies about where on her body the hem of the garment fell.
Her calves? Above her knees? Higher?
If he was not thinking about her legs or her smile or her bloody nightclothes, he was thinking about his brother, and her brother, and where the deceptions stopped and started. By the time the sun rose each morning, Arthur was an exhausted, aroused, deeply unpleasant shell of himself. Lydia now rang for tea before even greeting him.
All of which explained why, when he woke just before dawn on their sixth day at Kilbride House, it was with a fogged brain and a rampant erection.
“Arthur—wake up!”
Yes, it was Lydia’s urgent whisper that had roused him. He flipped over in the bed, trying simultaneously to protect her with his body and arm himself against an intruder.
“What’s wrong?” he murmured, pitching his voice as low as hers had been.
“I heard something. Not— ouch —not here in the bed, for heaven’s sake! At the door. I think there’s someone at the door.”
She scrambled out of bed and launched herself in the direction of the room’s entrance, the daft woman. He followed. She was small but quick, and in a moment she had herself pressed up against the crack between the door and the wooden jamb, evidently trying to peer through.
He came up behind her. “What—” he tried to hiss, but she gave him a forbidding glare and put her finger to her lips.
For Christ’s sake. The woman did not attract trouble, as he’d previously believed. She flung herself at it. He glowered at her and then put his eye to the crack as well, his chin above the top of her head.
If she’d heard someone at their door, there was no one there now. But from the tiny gap where the door’s iron hinge abutted the jamb, he could see someone across the hall, fiddling with the door to the room that had been Lydia’s.
It was not an intruder. It was a chambermaid. As he watched, a buxom woman in the navy-and-gold livery of the Kilbride House staff shifted the copper coal scuttle on her hip and tugged harder at the door handle, easing the door open with a heavy creak before slipping into the room.
“Oh,” Lydia whispered, “I’m so sorry. What an idiot I am.”
“You’re no idiot. Perhaps a reckless bampot for throwing yourself at the door when we didn’t know whether there was a primed pistol on the other side. But not an idiot.”
She shifted, still watching the empty hallway through the crack in the door, and Arthur was suddenly aware of her position: pressed against the surface of the door while he stood behind her, his hands braced on either side of her head.
He could smell the soft, sweet scent of her body. He would only have to bend his head to bury his face in the autumn-colored spill of her hair. He would barely have to move to be touching her.
Her voice, when she spoke, was still a whisper. “It’s only that—well, the chambermaid doesn’t usually come for hours yet. I was not expecting to hear anything, and when I did—”
“You did the right thing.” He hoped she attributed the sudden rasp in his voice to the remnants of sleep.
“Shall we wait until she comes back out? To be certain everything is as it should be?”
Say, “No,” he thought. Say, “Get back in bed. I’ll keep the watch.”
But he’d lost his brains and his willpower and other things he was not thinking about, because instead he said, “Aye. Let’s bide here a moment.”
And as Lydia pressed her face to the crack in the door again, he let himself look down at her.
There was only a glint of dawn light in the room. He could just make out the brilliant copper of her braid. Little wisps of curls escaped all along the length of that thick braid; his gaze skimmed down to the tail, tied off with a scrap of lace. It rested along the back of her night rail, which was—
He barely restrained a rough, greedy sound.
She wore the shorter night rail, and it clung to her decadent curves, mapping the contours of her body in a whisper of—blue? lavender?—silk. It was too dark to tell the precise color. It was too dark to make out all of her, but he tried anyway, his eyes falling upon the taut silk across her buttocks, the pale slide of her calf.
He was desperately aroused. He could feel blood beating in his cock. He wanted to press into her body, spin her around, and push her up against the door. He wanted to see the blue of her eyes while he buried himself inside her.
He knew there was a reason he ought not do it, and yet he could not recall what it was.
“Arthur,” she whispered. She started to shift, to turn toward him in between his arms. “Do you think—”
He caught one of her hands in his and pressed it to the surface of the door.
“Don’t move,” he gritted out. “Don’t turn around.”
She made a surprised little gasp and turned her head, exposing the curve of her ear, the tender line of her throat.
“I cannot think if you turn around. I can—Christ, I cannot think as it is. You cloud my mind.”
Her breath was coming quickly. He could see the pulse beating hard at the base of her throat.
“I spend all day and night wanting to touch you,” he said hoarsely. “Wanting to have my hands on you again. My mouth.”
She swallowed and said nothing. He still held her hand pressed between his and the door, and she did not pull away, and he could not make himself stop talking.
“’Twould be so easy to slide my fingers under the fragile wee strap of this nightgown. Push it down. See you bare and lovely before me. Christ, when I think of you wearing this in the bed beside me, it makes me—”
He broke off. Her breasts rose and fell erratically as she breathed, and he thought of the sound she’d made, loud and wanting, when he’d touched her there.
“What?” she whispered. “It makes you what?”
In answer, he pressed into her, pushing his arousal into the generous swell of her buttocks, and groaned a little from the pleasure of it.
“Hard,” he said. “Desperate. Maddened.”
“Arthur,” she gasped, and her hand twitched under his, and for one crushing instant he thought she was trying to pull away, until—
“Touch me,” she said. “Please.”
Her head swam with want. Her skin was hot and sensitive, her nipples tight points that brushed against the silk of her night rail and sent shudders through her every time she breathed.
Arthur was behind her, his big hand closed over hers, pressing her fingers into the smooth wood grain of the door.
That was the only place his fingers touched her, and yet it was enough to send arousal spilling through her, a leap and slide in her lower belly, a throb between her legs. His hand was large, much larger than her own, and the contrast between his restrained strength and the small bones of her wrist aroused her further.
The muscles of his arms flexed beside her head, as though all the power in his body was held in check by the barest thread of his control.
She had done that. Power of a different sort mounted inside her, and it made her dizzy and reckless.
When would she have this chance again? When would she have this man—this man, whom she wanted beyond anything she’d imagined possible—trembling with desire before her?
“Please,” she said again. “I want your hands on me. On my skin.” It was easier to say the words this way, facing away from him, his body warm and solid behind her, her gaze on their linked hands.
There was a long, frozen moment of indecision. She could feel his body go tense, his fingers tightening on hers.
And then his hand landed, hot and heavy, on the curve of her waist.
“Christ,” he rasped. His hand was already moving, sliding forward to her lower belly, pulling her back against him with the barest pressure. She heard herself make a soft-voiced cry as her body came into firmer contact with his.
“Put your hands on the door,” he said. “Both hands. Don’t turn around. I cannot—I cannot swear to the endurance of my honor if you turn around.” His hand came higher on her body. His thumb traced the outer curve of her breast, and she whimpered, trying to press herself into his hand.
“Ah God,” he murmured. His head came down, his lips against her ear. “Lydia. Lydia.”
“I want you to do—what you said.” It was all she could think of. Her breasts felt ripe and swollen, and the slide of his thumb along one heavy curve only made her crave more. “Pull down my night rail. Touch me that way.”
“Aye,” he said against her ear. She felt the tickle of his breath there, and she shivered. She had not known that part of her body could be so sensitive. She had not known any of this. And she wanted—God, she did not want him to stop.
His right hand—the one that had captured hers—slid slowly up her arm. She felt the scratch of his calloused fingers against her skin. At her shoulder, he paused. He slid one finger beneath the strap of her night rail and toyed with it. She pressed back against him impatiently, and he made a rough sound. A hungry sound.
He set his teeth against her ear. “Dinna rush.”
“Don’t dally then—”
His arms flexed, quick and powerful, and he split the lace-edged neckline of her night rail down the front.
She gasped. Her breasts were bared to the cool night air, and Arthur’s hands were on her hips, and everything was spiky and uncertain until he cupped her breasts in his palms.
He groaned as he touched her. She made a sound too, a half-wild sound, and pressed her hands hard against the door.
He swore, soft and filthy, in her ear. His fingers found her nipples and rolled them, tugging slightly, and she felt an answering throb between her legs. The sensation was powerful, consuming, a wave that burst through her body and dragged her under.
He did it again, and again, and she felt her wits recede, the demands of her body taking over. She whimpered—desperate, almost feral—and squeezed her thighs together. She needed to soothe the ache there, but the ache fought back, rising with her frantic movements.
“Shh,” he murmured. “Ah God, Lydia, I don’t want you to stop making those sounds, but you have to be a little quieter.”
She didn’t know what he meant. His fingers did not stop their quick, sharp tugs and she felt herself being pulled higher, tighter, and tauter by the moment. Her hands flexed against the door, her hips bucking, seeking pressure, seeking something .
One of his hands was gone, suddenly, from her breast, and she felt dizzy with disappointment. Then it was back, large and hot on her hip, sliding up and down her silk-covered buttocks. The pressure felt lovely—so lovely, relief and pleasure in one—but it was not enough. Instinctively, she spread her legs, and then moaned as his tongue made a hot swipe down the side of her neck.
“Hush,” he said. She felt his fingers bunched in her night rail, the silk pulling tight across her hips, and then one hand was beneath, sliding up her inner thigh. “Lydia, my love, you cannot be so loud—ah God you feel—ah fuck —”
His fingers had found her, and she was slippery with her arousal. He circled her entrance with one thick finger, then drew her wetness slowly up to the sensitive place at the top of her sex. He stroked her there, quick light movements that matched the rhythm of his other hand at her breast. Pleasure—all she could think was pleasure, the pleasure of his hands, the pleasure eddying through her body.
Oh God , she thought wildly, oh yes, oh please —
And then his hand was gone, and he was spinning her about and pushing her back to the door.
“For quiet,” he said, and then kissed her.
It was a messy, frantic kiss, more raw and hectic than the first time. His tongue came hard into her mouth, and she found that she wanted it. She wanted everything he would give her. She wanted to take .
She could touch him now, and so she did. She licked and bit and sucked at his mouth, and her hands swept over all the parts of him she could reach. She wanted it all—his beautiful cheekbones, the back of his neck, his taut, powerful shoulders.
He caught her buttocks and pulled her up against him, pushing her body into the door and lifting her off the ground. Her legs went around him as though she’d done it a thousand times.
She could feel his erection through his trousers, shockingly large and hard, and he ground himself against her bare sex. He groaned helplessly into her mouth, and she tugged at his shoulders, trying to pull him against her even harder, even more.
She wanted him inside her body. She realized that with sudden clarity. She wanted to have all of him.
But the thought was swept away as he rocked against her. His cock thrust rhythmically against her clitoris, and in moments she was close to her peak again. She shuddered against him, digging her heels into his body. She did not ask—she demanded .
“What do you need?” he managed to say. His voice was fractured, and the rest of him was perfect, perfect—
“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
Then his mouth was on hers again. He kissed her as he moved against her, urging her on with his tongue and teeth, with the rhythmic stroke of his cock. He held her as her body convulsed, as her legs tensed and trembled, as the dawn light in the room burst into shards and she went blind with pleasure.
“Aye,” he was saying, kissing her mouth and her cheek and her neck, “aye, Lydia, my love, that’s so good. You’re so good. You feel—ah—”
He moved against her as she came, and as her climax began to recede, he did not stop. He rocked and thrust, his voice breaking, and she realized he too could find his release this way.
Yes— yes —God, she wanted that. She was desperate to see him undone with pleasure.
“Don’t stop,” she said again.
He swore and groaned and ground himself against her, and then she felt him shuddering. His fingers dug into her buttocks; his forehead pressed into her neck. He said her name, and jerked against her, once, twice, again.
And when he finally lifted his head, the room was bright enough to see his eyes. Gold and green and blue, circles in circles like the rings of a tree.
The sun was fully up. It was morning.
She waited. He held her still, his arms around her, her body pressed against the door. They did not move. She thought perhaps neither of them wanted to break the spell of this moment. His body fitted with hers, so close their edges blurred. His multihued eyes, serious and careful, on her face.
She reached up and touched the line of his jaw.
“Don’t regret it,” she said. “I don’t want you to regret it.”
He shifted at that, easing away from her. Slowly, he set her back on her feet, and she dropped her hand.
What a fool she was. She was softness and sentiment; her emotions ran too high. She knew this about herself. Her heart was easily bruised, and this man—
In the unequivocal light of day, he could devastate her.
Then he reached out with both hands and cupped her face. “Ah, Lydia,” he said. “Never.”