Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Darien marveled at how easy it was. In the ballrooms of the elite, the daughters were hedged off by glowering mamas, and he couldn’t go on a ride without seeing parasols of the upper crust raised in guard. Here in Hines House, he was a fox set loose in the henhouse.
He had no sooner stepped with Henrietta out the door from the library to the quiet walk behind the house than he stopped and turned so she ran into his body.
She gasped and fell back, and when he moved toward her, she stumbled back again, plastering herself against the low stone wall.
He held her pinned there, his chest an inch away from hers.
“Rule number one,” he said. “Never, never let a rake get you alone. It only takes a moment to be compromised.”
Her eyes flared, and then her brows shot together. “You’re not—”
“Oh, yes, I am,” he said, leaning in so the lapels of his double-breasted coat brushed her breasts. A warm burst of air touched his neck as she exhaled in surprise. “I could do anything I wanted to you right now.”
There were several things he wanted to do to her right now. He was so close that the silk of her gown slid over his breeches when she shifted. All he had to do was move forward an inch, and—
“I could poke you in the eye with a pearl hairpin.” She pushed at his chest.
He smiled and stepped away. The tartness of her response showed her complete innocence, and her strong defenses. She was a woman well worth the wooing.
“Point to me,” he said, and his entire body warmed with pleasure as the light of battle entered those bottomless dark-gray eyes.
She wouldn’t be easy to conquer, and no man would ever break that fierce, bright spirit.
He’d never met a woman like her, a burning flame who fed everyone around her with warmth and light.
She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders with a huff of disapproval. “I wouldn’t expect such behavior from a guest in my father’s home.”
“You should,” he said. “You need be on your guard at all times in the company of a rake.”
They walked side by side through the warm enclosed garden, drenched in moonlight.
Vegetable beds and herb borders alternated with carefully pruned shrubbery and fruit trees, while vines climbed the wall in several places.
It was a lovely refuge, and the night air fell on his skin with a cool touch.
Here and there, Henrietta paused to inspect a branch or a young fruit.
“You look like a Grecian nymph wandering the forest,” he said. “Tending the things you have brought to life.”
Something hard and uncomfortable clenched in his gut at the pristine beauty of her. Unlike every other woman of his acquaintance, interested only in her own success, Henrietta focused outward, using her gifts to rescue others, right wrongs, and improve the world about her.
She paused before a vine studded with flowers as white and delicate as she was. “The moonflowers are blooming,” she said. She touched her fingertips to her red lips, then placed them gently on a blossom.
“Fanny’s favorite,” she explained, her eyes glossy with tears.
That old, familiar bolt of loss sheared through his chest, leaving cold air to rush in. He craved for her to touch him with such tenderness. He could not ruin her by association with him, and he could not have her; she was far, so far above his touch.
“Tell me, Lord Darien,” she said, walking on, “why you are interesting yourself with a tradesman’s family when your usual diversions, so I’ve heard, are to entertain female…admirers.”
The world applauded Lord Daring for his string of conquests, the many virginal females who had passed through his arms and, supposedly, his bed. Henrietta made the whole game feel tawdry.
Dairen debated how much to reveal. He didn’t wish her to know he had designs on her uncle. She had no notion of her own attractions, which he found absurdly endearing.
And he wanted her to know the truth behind his salacious reputation. She was the one person who could understand.
His voice sounded low and hoarse in the dusky light. “My brother and I were hellions. We were known for it even as boys.”
“Lord Daring?”
She drew her India shawl about her and walked beside him. He felt her listening with her whole body. It was rather alarming to be seen by her. Everyone else, man or woman, looked at him calculating how to get what they wanted. Henrietta watched him as if she wanted to learn who he was.
“And my brother Lucien was Lucifer. Horace, the eldest, was the steady one. We called him Horse.”
His throat tightened, and they walked in silence for a while. He pushed aside the occasional drooping branch so it would not tangle in her hair. The night air, thick with fragrance, calmed him.
“But my…reputation, shall we call it, began in university. My first conquest was Clothilde Canderley. A friend’s elder sister, forced into a betrothal she didn’t want. She was complaining of this one day, and I suggested she do something scandalous. Compromise herself, so her groom would cry off.”
Henrietta’s brow lifted. “And she chose you to ruin her?”
He nodded. “It was easy to arrange a damning tableau. My wildness helped. Lucien had a thought for his future, but I—didn’t.
” He paused. “Clothilde was sent away in disgrace, but eventually she was allowed to marry the man she did want, a penniless clerk whom she helped win a diplomatic post, then a barony. She now enjoys wealth, comfort, and much envy as a hostess of ton.”
Henrietta’s gray-green eyes widened. “Lady Ellesmere. My aunt wondered how you had secured an invitation.”
“Clothilde told her secret to a friend in similar circumstances, and demand for my services grew. You’d be surprised how many clever young women wish to escape marriages or want a reason to be pressed into one.”
“And now,” she said, shaking her head, “all you need do is pause with a girl on the street—take her for a turn on a balcony during a ball—” Her brow furrowed. “Forsythia Pennyroyal?”
He winced. “There is still the occasional ambitious maiden who would like to set her cap for the son of a marquess.”
“But you have not taken advantage of her.”
He turned to face her. “My character as a rakehell is exaggerated, but not undeserved.”
“So Lady Celeste—”
“That, I’m afraid, is entirely deserved.”
He’d erred gravely with Celeste. He’d thought her among the experienced women who regularly propositioned him, women who were confident and discreet.
Dumb with grief over the death of Lucretius, wallowing in misery, he hadn’t realized she was using him to make Havering cry off.
He’d had no idea of her designs until he came home from the Continent to encounter a challenge from Havering and learned that Celeste had been hiding a pregnancy, jilting her fiancé, and refusing to name the father of her babe.
In the moonlight, Henrietta’s skin looked as smooth as polished marble. The curve of her brow, her throat, her bosom beckoned for his touch. Darien took a deep, bracing breath of the chill night air and moved to a path on the opposite side of a flower bed.
“It’s a rather sad story, isn’t it?” she whispered.
He clenched his jaw. “Celeste’s?”
“Yours.” She faced him, her puzzled frown drawing his attention to the lush line of her mouth.
“You have helped any number of independent young women arrange their own futures, poking convention in the eye. And yet your name is drawn through the mud, to the point where mothers fall over themselves to remove their daughters from your path.”
He shrugged. “I have no need of society’s approval.”
She bit her lip. “But to let yourself be so judged, and never speak the truth? To allow yourself to be so used?”
“Henrietta.” He took the path that brought him around the flower bed, close to her. “I am no paragon.”
She blinked. “It seems to me that you have been reviled for doing someone a kindness, for preventing a wrong. I know a little something of what that is like.”
She stood facing him, so self-reliant, so utterly composed, and showing not the slightest sensual awareness of him. He couldn’t bear it when his every sense was so full of her that it nearly brought him to his knees.
Her coolness was a taunt, a defiance. He wanted to awaken her. He wanted her to know desire, that hot, liquid tide. He wanted her to feel that pull to him.
“Henrietta.” His voice was a low growl. “You have clearly never been kissed.”
“I, sir, am kissed daily. I have more than my fair share of kisses.”
“Not from children, you wet goose. The kiss of a man.”
“Oh, that. There was a boy who worked for Miss Gregoire who was always trying to kiss us. He made a game of it, whomever he could catch.”
“I said, the kiss of a man.” He moved closer, and she stepped away, giving him a wary look. Her skin had the same luster as her pearls.
“Of what possible interest could this subject be to you?” Her voice wavered.
“Now that you will have suitors, you should know how to kiss.”
“I do not intend to go about kissing my suitors.” She batted at the branch of a fruit tree that tangled in her hair as she backed into it.
“Ah, but they will try to kiss you. And you will want to kiss the man of your choice.”
“It cannot be all that difficult.” She went perfectly still as he reached up to free the budding branch from the pearls in her hair. Her breathing came fast and shallow. He smelled moonflowers, her.
“On the contrary, it takes some practice to kiss properly.” His hands itched to draw her to him. But he knew enough of seduction to know that she had to close that last inch. He wanted not just her mouth but her surrender.
She regarded him with a suspicious pinch to her lovely full lips. “And you are so gallantly offering to teach me.”
He lifted his shoulders. He was aware of the fine fabric against his chest, the cling of the pantaloons to his thighs. His skin had come alive with sensation. “I am in proximity and suited to the task. I have some experience.”
He could do this. He was good at it, expert. She would fall into his trap, yield to him, let him touch her. And then she could breathe some of her light and purity into him.
“I can only imagine that you do.” She tapped her finger against her lips, thinking. He watched the movement, entranced.
“I suppose I should know something of the skill,” she said after a while. “I would not wish for my husband to think me clumsy, should I have one.”
Her husband would wish to be the first and only man to kiss her. Any man would want to be the first to awaken Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines. To fix her complete attention upon himself and bask in the radiance of her desire.
Darien nodded as his throat closed. “Yes.”
“Very well.” She stepped close and lifted her chin. “You may show me how it is done, then. I prefer to learn from a skilled teacher.”
He looked down at her face, turned up to him like a flower blossom.
Her dark lashes feathered over the elegant curve of her cheeks.
A few locks of hair curled delicately at her temple.
From this vantage the slope of her nose looked graceful, and below that the broad mouth with its soft, inviting lips.
Darien took a firm grip on his instincts. If he kissed Henrietta with everything in him, he would go up in flames, and that would not do. He did not intend to lose his head over the girl, merely teach her a lesson.
He gathered every errant emotion and shoved the lot to the bottom of his mind.
This was a maneuver he had practiced a great deal.
Cool, calculated distance—that was the goal.
He throttled any excitement at the thought of kissing Henrietta Wardley-Hines and instead made his mind cold and empty. Now he was in a position to instruct.
He bent his head and placed his lips on her warm, pliant ones.
He brushed his mouth across hers, once, twice, like a painter preparing a canvas.
He paused a moment, and she waited, lips slightly parted, her whole body still.
He nudged her lips apart with his own, and she complied.
He repeated the gesture, pushing her lips open, and she dutifully followed suit.
Her mouth was warm and delicious, and the scent of her fogged his brain, but she was not yielding. He ran his tongue along her teeth, pressed his lips against hers in one last caress, and lifted his head, his breath ragged. His self-control held by the slenderest thread.
She blinked, then focused on him. Her eyes were deep and entirely clear, her brows divided by a small, furrowed line. She twisted her strawberry lips into a small grimace.
“Is that it?”
“That is the general idea, yes.” His voice felt two octaves lower than normal, gravel in his chest.
She sighed. “And that makes a woman want to…” The implication hung in the air.
He stared at her, flattened, gutted with surprise. “Typically, yes.”
She nodded. “You are indeed very practiced,” she said. “Like a set of fencing moves. It’s obvious you’ve done this dozens of times.”
Hundreds, you chit, he nearly blurted.
“I suppose there is something lacking in me. I suspected as much.” She held out her hand to shake. “Thank you for the lesson, Lord Daring.”
Darien didn’t shake her hand. He couldn’t move.
He simply stood there, rooted to the spot, about to go up in flames of mortification and rage.
Blithely, as if she had not just been kissed by the most practiced rakehell in the kingdom, Miss Henrietta Wardley-Hines rearranged her shawl, nodded politely, and strolled back into her house.