Chapter 6 #2
Thumbs playing gently, shiveringly, he said, “I think I’m your love-slave. Captured on the wild moors to serve your wanton pleasure.”
The resonance with her own thoughts, with reality, shocked Rosamunde into really trying to pull away.
He kept her close, an arm tight around her waist. “Call it indentured servitude, then. Is not that the truth? I owe you a debt, and you require payment in service.”
“But you’ve—”
“Paid part of it. I bind myself to your service.” He turned her, lowering her breathless to the bed. “Until dawn tomorrow, I am yours. Command me, mistress. What do you want in the secret hours of the night?”
“Nothing!”
“Liar,” he whispered, shifting more heavily onto her.
She sucked in air. “I want to go and find you food.”
“Parts of you look very tasty.”
“Nourishing food!”
“Mistress commands that I don’t lose my strength?”
“No, I—”
“Mistress thinks I am too thin?”
Half laughing, Rosamunde pushed at his chest. “Stop it! You’re being ridiculous. You said you were hungry.”
“I will starve if it be your will.”
His warm eyes met hers, urging her to join in the game. Could men and women play games?
“Do you wish me to starve?” he asked.
She tried to wriggle sideways. “No, of course not.”
He stopped her. “I am grateful for your mercy, mistress. So, when I have my strength back, what will you want of me?”
“Nothing.” It was still a lie.
He knew it. A sparkle in his eyes said that, but he lowered his lids and managed to look downcast. “Alas. I have failed to give pleasure. Bring back the razor, mistress, and I will put an end to my miserable existence.”
“Never. From now on, you grow a beard.”
“Then it will have to be hanging. I will hang myself with the sheets.”
“Then I will take away all the sheets.”
Shining eyes met hers. “Ah-ha! You do want me naked!”
“No!” Laughing, Rosamunde tried again to squirm free of his body and his nonsense. “As your mistress, I command you to live. There!” It was only as she triumphantly exclaimed this, that she realized he’d lured her into his games.
She stared up at him, seeing that this, too, was part of his payment, his generous payment. How long had it been since she’d enjoyed such a lighthearted, playful moment?
Falling happily into the spirit of it, she wriggled out from under him and off the bed, and victorious, he let her go. “I know what you are, sir!” she declared.
“You’re a traveling mountebank, and your friends at Thirsk are your theater company!”
“Alas,” he said, sitting up again, hand on heart—or more devastatingly, on his gorgeous muscled chest. “I am a mere amateur. In acting, that it.”
“And in lovemaking, sirrah, I suppose you are a professional?”
He laughed aloud. “No, mistress mine. In that, too, I am an amateur. But not mere.”
An amateur. One who did things for love, not money.
He didn’t mean it that way, but it broke the spell.
There was no question of love here. It was for payment, payment for his life.
And she was not here for amusement, to be carried back to childish ways, but for a desperately needed child.
What’s more, she must never trust such a smooth-tongued rascal.
Oh, he was good-natured and charming, but he was undoubtedly a rascal.
He could be a highwayman, or a dissolute gamester, or the sort of man who slipped from place to place, breaking hearts and escaping creditors.
“What food do you want?” she asked, ruthlessly dragging matters back to the prosaic. She sidled around to find her shoes and put them on.
He placed his hands together and bowed over them. “Whatever my mistress desires.”
She deliberately listed the food she liked least. “Pease pudding? Eel? Tongue?”
He peeped up mischievously. “Tongue. I like tongue.”
Rosamunde blushed down to her toes. Oh, why could he do this to her?
“However,” he continued, “I will pass on the eels. Oh, and speaking of ’eels—not the local delicacy made of cow’s feet, I beg you.”
“Cow heels,” she said, struggling not to let him make her laugh again. “Pickled trotters, then. How would that be?”
“I confess, I have never met a foot I wished to eat.” Then his eyes flashed merrily. “Nibble, now …”
Rosamunde’s blushing toes—recognizing that they were being spoken about—curled. “Oh, don’t!”
“No? Your wish is my command, mistress. Until dawn tomorrow, I am yours. I will not touch you, top or toe, without your consent. And you, you are free….”
“Free?” she breathed.
“Free to do with me entirely as you wish.”
Rosamunde saw that he meant it and immediately had a vision of licking his naked body. Every inch of it. After a breathless moment, she stepped forward, and saw a welcoming, interested light in his eyes.
She was hovering on the brink, her mind filled with wicked longings of licking his naked body as he lay passive beneath her, she with all her clothes on, armored against him. Could she do to him what he’d done to her? Could she watch him dissolve?
His brows rose as if she’d spoken her wicked dream and a wave of heat flooded her. It really wouldn’t be that terribly dangerous to spend a little more time up here with him, would it? Millie and Jessie wouldn’t—
Then a sound broke through. Familiar, tinkling bells.
“Oh no!” she gasped, shocked right back to icy reality.
“What?” He surged from the bed, all fun discarded, immediately dangerous.
“My mother!”
He froze, then stared at her. “Your mother?”
“The bells on her pony’s harness. Butterflies and billhooks, I should have known!”
Racing to the window, she heard him echo, “‘Butterflies and billhooks’?”
She peeped around the corner of the curtain in time to see her mother’s one-horse chair jingle down the lane toward the front of the house. “She has someone with her, too!” She whirled to him. “What am I to do?”
He was almost helpless with laughter. “A mother. And a guilty daughter!”
“How could she know?”
He seized her shoulders. “Calm down, Lady Mystery. Perhaps she doesn’t.
If she does, I’m merely your sick patient.
” He looked her over quickly, even turning her to inspect the back, then pushed her toward the door.
“Go. She won’t be able to guess what you’ve been up to.
” But then he added, “Will she want to come up here?”
Rosamunde, already with the knob in her hand, gave a little moan. “If she knows about you … she can’t.” But Rosamunde wondered if Mrs. Yockenthwait might have thought a mother excluded from the secrecy. “If she knows I have a sick man here, she won’t think I’ve cared for you properly.”
“How little she knows you,” he said, with a toe-curling smile. “But if she’s going to come up, you need something to mask the smell.”
Rosamunde paused, absorbing the fact that the room smelled of sex. “Mercy!”
“Do you have any gin?”
“This is no time to get drunk!” But then she saw what he was about. “No. Wait!”
She ran into her own room, the one she and Diana had shared here since they were children, and pulled out a bottle of port. From a daring childhood pleasure, it had become a sweet tradition before bed.
Daring. They hadn’t known the meaning!
As she rushed back with it, the door knocker rapped.
Still naked, he’d opened the window wide and had clearly stirred the potpourri in the dish on the mantel. She didn’t know if it would be enough. She thrust the bottle into his hands, trying desperately to think of something to suggest.
He pushed her back out through the doorway. She ran down the stairs, then skidded to a halt at the bend and raced back up to lock the door. Her knees knocked and her heart thudded with all the panic she’d felt at twelve or so, involved in some terrible mischief, and about to be found out.
Terrible mischief, indeed. This capped them all!
What on earth would her mother say if she found out?
Rosamunde plunged down the stairs and into the drawing room just before poor overworked Jessie trotted through the hall to answer the door.
Sucking in huge breaths, she pulled off her mask and stuffed it in her pocket.
A glance in the mirror showed the pressure marks it couldn’t help but leave.
With a mutter, she pulled it out and put it on again.
She had just sat down and opened a book, when the door opened.
“Hello, Rosie,” said her dumpling mother, bright eyed and cheerful. “We heard you were stuck here with some mysterious half-dead stranger on your hands, so we had to pop over and see.”