One Day for a Valet

Chapter 13

Christopher sucked in a breath at the featherlight touch of her mouth against his lower lip. If lust was a strategy in warfare, Sofia had led the ambush. There was no question she had kissed him to silence his line of questions, so for several stunned seconds his conscience battled for higher ground with the desire coursing through his body. Then her fingers slipped to his nape, grazing the fine hairs on his neck. He let out a guttural moan before soundly taking her mouth with his.

Despite wanting Sofia from the moment he first saw her—and his increasingly provocative fantasies—there was never a question in Christopher’s mind that their courtship would require time and patience. And so Christopher had tried to adjust his ambitions accordingly. He anticipated moonlit strolls and intimate smiles that warmed gradually, like the soft sigh of winter into spring. In his mind, the first touch of their lips would be a mere kindling of feelings, without haste or urgency.

Instead, it felt like the first and last, all tangled together. Desperation pounded through his veins, and with it, the frantic need to convey all his emotions at once. Amidst the slide of their lips and their great heaving breaths, Christopher tried to absorb her touch into his skin. It was too much and not enough and he craved so much more. Cradling her face between his hands, he captured her lower lip, tasting with a gentle pull. When her fingers loosened their hold beneath his mangled cravat, he wondered if he had gone too far. But then her hands burrowed into his hair as she stretched on tiptoe to offer more of her mouth to him.

Somewhere in the cavernous sludgy depths of his mind, there must be a voice of reason. He knew he had one, as it often piped up at the most inopportune moments. Naturally, now, when he bloody well needed it the most, it seemed to have wandered off like a child at the market after a stray cat. The voice that remained was rioting to take whatever she would give him without the slightest consideration of her motives. Motives that felt suddenly very abstract and unimportant when compared to the pleasure that was gathering inside of him at the sensation of her nails raking through his hair.

Sofia opened against his mouth, pausing only for an instant at the rough slide of his tongue across hers before seizing control once again. With every teasing flick or gentle nip—elements of kissing he’d guess were new to her—she divested control only for a moment of guidance before enthusiastically applying her lessons to his body.

He was being quite thoroughly kissed. Plundered. And all at once, he was besieged by the instinct to slow things down. To soothe the rough carnality of her ruthless pursuit. His better angels had arrived, tardy but uncompromising. Sofia didn’t want this. She was upset and kissing was preferable to talking. Goddamn it.

Her hands travelled down his back, kneading into his waistcoat and the tense muscles beneath.

“Sofia,” he murmured against her mouth, trying to create a sliver of space between them. She ignored him, pressing deeper into his embrace, fitting her soft curves snugly against the length of him. Christopher drew in a breath at the sudden contact and all but growled her name a second time.

“Sofia, slow down. I’m not going anywhere. I won’t ask you any que—” She took his mouth again, the rhythmic caress of her tongue tangling up all his honourable intentions. Then, Christ above, her hand was on his backside.

“I offered him a job,” he blurted between kisses. “He doesn’t have to leave. I will help him. Sofia,” he moaned as her thigh grazed his cock. “Sofia, stop. Damn it all, I want to talk with you.” In one swift movement, he spun them around, pinning her back against the wall with his body, her wrists trapped gently within his hands. In a haze of lust and frustration, his eyes cut to hers… and he immediately released her. “Christ! Tell me I didn’t hurt you. Are you well?’ Too late, he remembered the bruise around her wrist.

“You didn’t hurt me.” Silent tears were coursing down her face.

At his bewildered expression, her hand lifted to her cheek, whimpering at the feel of the wetness beneath her fingers. She shook her head as if to deny their existance, her eyes darting to the door.

“Good God, it’s not the pox, sweetheart. You don’t have to hide your tears as if they’re contagious. You’re upset. Everyone cries.” He tucked a curl behind her ear, ruefully noting the abundance of chestnut spirals he had accidentally liberated. “The contagious bit may be correct, come to think of it. My tear ducts have always been oddly competitive. Last week, one of the scullery maids was having a difficult day and wound up sobbing on my shoulder over a broken serving dish. Damned if I didn’t find myself fighting the urge to turn into a watering pot right alongside her. A few tears and a handful of biscuits later, we both felt more the thing. Maybe you just need a good cry, love. There’s no shame in it.”

He urged her stiff body closer, his palm cupping her nape then sliding down to caress her back in a slow circular rhythm, but her arms remained limp at her sides. He chuckled into her hair. “There’s no use in being stubborn now. You know perfectly well that a good cuddle is exactly what you need.” She didn’t reply, but Sofia’s muscles gradually began to relax until, at last, she fell heavy and reassuring into his arms. “There. That’s not so bad, is it? You don’t have to think about your brother or tomorrow or anything else. Just rest your cheek on my shoulder and let me hold you.” She let out a contented sigh, and Christopher wanted to capture the sound and press it into the pages of a book like a favourite flower.

Outside, it began to rain, the soft patter against the window panes lending to the sense that it was just the two of them, together.

“I want him to stay, but he cannot.” Her voice was muffled against his chest. Christopher ran his hands up and down her arms, relishing the novelty of that small, intimate touch.

“Because of his drinking?” He didn’t want to let her go, but they needed to talk and she needed space to do so. Taking her hand in his, he led her to the settee and sat beside her.

“That, si,” she began. “And because he is trouble. He will be trouble for you. Trouble for the Ansons.”

He nuzzled her foot with his. Not a caress, really, but her shoulders relaxed just the same. “Let Gabriel and I handle our own troubles. If you want Oliver to stay, then stay he shall. I’ll find a way to help him with his drinking.”

She dropped her head into her hands, curls tumbling to obscure her face. “You make it sound so simple, but he won’t want your help.”

Christopher bumped his shoulder against hers. “How fortuitous then that I have some experience with prickly Lionis. I wonder how Oliver feels about pear trees?”

She glared at him, but the glare held only a fraction of its usual acerbity. As if she was simply regaining the equilibrium she’d lost through tears and lust and vulnerability. It had the feeling of putting on a rain slicker but leaving it open for some of the water to seep in. There was warmth in her eyes as well, and he nearly shuddered at what the combination of her warmth and sauciness did to his body. To provide an occupation for his hands, Christopher reached for her glass from the side table and sniffed its contents.

“Scotch?”

“Amongst other things. It’s everything in one glass. They go down well enough.”

He drank the small amount that remained in the snifter and stood to refill it from a pitcher of water.

“I do not want that.”

He smiled at her stubborn expression.

“One glass of water for every one of those grotesque beverages you’ve consumed.” He held out the glass.

Her shoulders straightened. “You cannot manage me, Christopher Keene.”

“Well, someone ought to care enough to try.”

Wars had begun with less inflammatory words and with less volatile generals than Sofia Lioni. She plucked the snifter from his fingers, sloshing the water onto his boots, and strode towards the sideboard, promptly dumping the remaining water into an ice pail. She filled her glass with a splash too much of God-knows-what, then stilled, her back turned to Christopher. The longcase clock ticked loudly, its steady rhythm at odds with the swish of rustling leaves and the ping of plump raindrops outside. She didn’t drink, just cradled the glass between her hands, head bowed, revealing the long expanse of skin down her nape.

“Sofi, I?—”

“No. You have been nothing but kind and I am being churlish. You said nothing that isn’t true. Things are… a mess. And I do need help. Your help. I should be thanking you instead of ruining your boots.” She shivered. “Ironic that I am drinking to combat my upset at Oliver’s drinking, no? But the difference is that tomorrow, I will rise with the sun, make a plan to help him out of this foul mess he’s in, teach the children, and resume living. Whereas he will likely stumble out of bed, leaving a trail of blood across the expensive rugs, and try to find another bottle.”

Sofia reclaimed her seat beside him and stared into her drink like there were tea leaves and answers lurking at the bottom. “There was a time when he was a good brother. A little self-indulgent maybe, but nothing like the man you met.”

Christopher settled back on the settee and crossed one ankle over his knee. “I’ve seen what too much alcohol can do to a man. No one I was especially close to, but close enough to witness the destruction first hand. If you say he used to be a decent sort, Sofia, I believe you.”

She stared at him without expression.

Before coming to Northam Hall, Sofia had lost everything good in her life. And from what he could tell, she’d had very little good to begin with. She’d had a neglectful father who’d tried to marry her off to advance his career, a mother she had never mentioned—that did not bode well—and a trusted brother who’d left her to deal with that steaming pile of shite all on her own. It was no wonder she couldn’t recognise his offer to help as honourable rather than suspicious.

His intentions were honourable … mostly. The fact that a part of him wished Oliver would slip in a pile of horse manure and drown in a water trough could not be held against him. What kind of a man would he be if he didn’t hope for some cosmic retribution against the blighter whose every decision during the past three years had inflicted pain upon Sofia? But she needed to feel like someone was on her side. And if that meant taking her at her word that Oliver was not beyond redemption, he could do that for her.

He watched her fidget under his sympathetic gaze. She drained the contents of her glass then tucked a curl behind the shell of her ear. “I know what you’re thinking, and I do not want your pity. No one’s life is perfect and mine is no Shakespearean tragedy. A matched set of reliable parents, money, and station may shelter a child from some perils, but there are as many paths to perdition as there are stars in the sky.” She sighed, and it may have been the saddest sound Christopher had ever heard. “Fairy tales are for children.”

Christopher was beginning to think that Sofia had, in fact, never been a child. She had the kind of steel spine forged from a lifetime of carrying everyone else’s burdens. The kind that prevented the flexibility required to lean on another. In her mind, it was unreasonable to expect loyalty and protection from the people who were meant to love you. After all, if she started to believe in such fairy stories, she might come to believe in all manner of ridiculous things… things like love and commitment, for example. He imagined that a person denied such things might recoil at the mere possibility of their existence.

That realisation made sitting beside her listening to her share her woes feel like something fragile, almost miraculous. Never mind that it had required a minor catastrophe with a pint of blood loss and at least three glasses of… whatever it was in her snifter. And never mind that even with all that, still her initial impulse had been to distract him with lust rather than have a conversation. I won’t quibble over details.

Sofia’s body was beginning to list towards Christopher’s shoulder like a ship with too much cargo on one side. When he looked down, he found her studying his profile, her forehead creased as if she was working out a particularly complicated maths problem.

“You have pretty earlobes. I’ve never thought of ears as particularly attractive, but yours are. Sweet pink creases and soft curves.”

“And you, love, have officially had too much to drink.” He grinned and tried to rein in his body’s response to her uninhibited nearness.

When Christopher tried to remove the glass from her grasp, she giggled and raised the empty snifter to her lips, her tongue darting out to catch the last remaining drop. That lush, husky laugh went straight to his groin.

“I have had too much. But it’s nice. I feel like I might float away and all of my worries would be left behind. I feel like a cloud. No one can catch a cloud because it doesn’t really exist. It seems odd that there are things you can see but not touch. Clouds. Rainbows. I think I would like to be a cloud.” Her cheek landed heavily against his shoulder, snuggling into the fabric.

Christopher touched his ear, feeling oddly aware of his lobes.

“It looks velvety soft. Is it soft?” Before she had finished voicing the question, she was touching his ear, exploring the shape with her fingertip. Up and down the outside with featherlight strokes that had him grinding his teeth and clamping his eyes closed. Christ, have mercy. In seconds, he had gone from concerned about her intoxication to hard as stone and resisting the urge to tell her to use her tongue.

Her hand paused in place, a saucy grin pulling at her mouth. “Oh. You like that.”

“I do.” A puff of air escaped from between his lips. “Very much.” And then the little vixen smiled in earnest, a wide mischievous smile as her finger reconvened its lazy meandering.

“Sofia, love. As much as I am enjoying this, and I am vastly enjoying this, I think you should stop. You are in your cups and every second that—” He shuddered and clamped his hand on the arm of the settee. “Every second that you continue, I am having a more difficult time remembering what a terrible idea it is to allow you to go on fondling my ear.” Despite his words, he had melted into his seat and angled his head to allow her easier access.

“It can’t possibly feel that good.” Some of the starch was back in her voice now, and he chuckled that even her weight in whisky couldn’t completely change her disposition. “Do it to me,” she demanded, her chin rising imperiously. Christopher had never considered a crisp command to be an aphrodisiac, but his cock apparently did.

He shook his head. “Another night, darling, I will be happy to show you all the unremarkable places that come alive under the right touch.”

“You’re being ridiculous. It’s my ear. It’s out there for all the world to see. They exist to hold up your hat, not as a precursor for coitus. Next, you’ll tell me that you’d be aroused if I stroked your elbow.”

Christopher was not sure he would ever recover from Sofia’s frank use of the word “coitus,” but he needed to get her to a bed far away from his bed, as swiftly as possible. “How do you even know that word?” He hadn’t meant to ask the question.

“Coitus? Why wouldn’t I know that word? It’s not a secret. It’s in the dictionary. It can’t very well be a secret if it’s in the dictionary.”

He snorted a laugh then shook his head.

“Besides, I grew up with a brother and nearly all my playmates were boys. I learned all kinds of things in my formative years. Oliver used to leave books just laying around his room. Fascinating illustrated books with the most deliciously debauched things. And you are steering the conversation away. Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Christopher.”

When he made to stand, she grabbed his hand, placing his fingers against her ear.

“Touch me.” His cock leapt again at the decisive order, his fingers itching to follow her request. The first stroke of his fingertips brought a deep hum from her throat and he felt oddly victorious. Then that hum turned into a squeak and a giggle as she squirmed away.

“Stop it, that tickles! How can you tolerate that?”

He wasn’t sure what prompted him to move, whether arousal, or foolish pride, or some stubborn determination to prove this little hoyden wrong, but his arms were around her waist hauling her into his lap and his mouth was against her ear before his brain became involved in the situation. Sofia gasped and curled her fingers into his shoulders when he nipped her earlobe, then soothed her skin with his mouth and tongue.

“Still tickle?” His voice had dropped to a low purr against her ear and she squirmed, inadvertently pressing into his straining hardness. His thighs opened to settle her deeper into his lap, his hips angling ever so slightly into the inviting swell of her backside.

“No, it doesn’t tickle. It’s lovely. Just like that,” she said, breathy.

One hand slid down and cupped her lush thigh through the fabric of her dress. He squeezed. “How I’ve dreamt of filling my palms with all your delectable curves.”

Sofia sighed what might have been a response and angled her ear closer to his mouth.

He allowed himself one last, languorous kiss, then drew back. “And darling, for the record, there isn’t a place that you could stroke without my body responding. Including my elbow.” He brushed his lips against the hollow behind her ear, a pitiful fraction of what he longed to do with his mouth, and then angled her face to meet his eyes. “But now it’s time for you to go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of dragging your brother away from the clutches of sin and depravity, and such a task requires a solid”—he glanced up at the clock— “four hours of uninterrupted rest.”

Her mouth drew into an uncharacteristic pout, and then she stretched, exposing the curve of her neck. Rather like dangling a carrot in front of a reluctant pony. Christopher was far from reluctant, so he steeled himself against the urge to throw her bodily onto the settee.

“You are dangerous, Sofia.” He stood, taking her with him and placing her again on her unsteady feet. “And not just with a fencing sword. God help me, if you don’t find my ears this appealing when you are dead sober, I swear I’ll never make another virtuous choice. It will be all unscrupulous villainy, beginning with you. They’ll write about the notorious valet in the London scandal sheets and give me a ridiculous misnomer like Boot-Blackening Blackguard. And if, as the result of all my nefarious acts, my conscience prevents a good night’s sleep, at least I’ll be awake with the sound of your orgasm echoing in my ears.”

“It’s more a moaning, breathy sigh. No echoing. I try not to be dramatic, but there are so few genuine pleasures in life. There. Now you have the best of both worlds—you have both your principles and information about my orgasms.”

His arm fell bonelessly away from her waist. Apparently, it was the only thing holding her upright. He reached to catch her body against his before she had a chance to melt onto the floor.

“You are clearly trying to kill me,” he murmured into her curls.

“Don’t look so astounded. Surely you don’t believe that pleasuring oneself should be reserved exclusively for men. I never took you for a prude.”

He was already vibrating with unslaked lust, and the words ‘pleasuring oneself’ on her lips had solidified his plans for the evening. He would have his cock gripped in his hand and the image of Sofia, back arched, hand between her legs, burned into the backs of his eyelids. He could imagine the relief of his orgasm. Could almost feel it tingling deep in his balls.

“Besides, men have already appropriated all the best things in life for themselves. Riding astride, gaming hells, sexual congress with whomever they please and without concern for discretion, trousers, the ability to have political opinions… opinions at all, really. So that leaves what exactly for women? Needlepoint? Off-balance horseback riding? An occasional game of whist so long as we don’t play with actual money? No grazie. I’ll sacrifice my dreams of comfortable breeches, but you cannot take my orgasms.”

She ended her tirade with a prim nod of the head, her chin raised with an expression of hauteur worthy of any aristocrat.

Laughter had weaved its way into Christopher’s tightly coiled lust, and he gasped to regain his breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so hard. His sides hurt from the strain of it. “That may be a record-breaking number of times the word ‘orgasm’ has been used or implied in a conversation with me. Come along, my radical hellcat, before you start printing seditionist pamphlets.”

She grinned up at him, sweet and slightly sloppy.

Leaning down, he kissed the tip of her nose. “You’re welcome to wear my breeches any time it pleases you. The duchess has a pair as well. You can ride astride through the fields distributing your pamphlets to the local fishmongers and stonemasons. I would recommend skipping the milliner though as she’s a stuffy old prune.”

He pulled her tightly to his side as they made their way to her room.

“If you are to take up life as a rakehell, we’ll have to work on your moniker,” Sofia said. “Boot-Blackening Blackguard is a terrible name for the scandal sheets. How about Cravat-Coordinating Casanova? Oh! Or Wrinkle-Removing Rapscallion!”

He threw his head back, laughter bursting up from his chest.

“The Shaving Scallywag!” she added with an uncoordinated leap.

Amidst her excitement, she stumbled over her own feet, leaving Christopher to haul her up again. “Careful there, sweetheart. Alternate the left foot with the right.”

She glared, then giggled. “The Stickpin Scoundrel… Or Miscreant Manservant!”

Christopher could only shake his head as he settled her into her room and bid her goodnight.