Lisle’s cock was standing at attention, too, as though it hadn’t wasted enough energy in that way already.
“Go down and get me a glass of brandy,” he told Nichols. “No, better yet, a bottle. Make it three bottles.”
“I could prepare a posset for you, sir,” said Nichols. “Very quieting after so much agitation.”
“I don’t want quieting,” Lisle said. “I want oblivion. These cursed women.”
“Yes, sir.”
The valet left.
The door had scarcely closed behind him when the knocking started.
“Go away,” Lisle said. “Whoever you are.”
“I’m not going away. How dare you turn your back on me. How dare you scold me and order me about and—”
He pulled the door open.
She stood there, as inadequately dressed as previously, her arm upraised to knock again.
“Go back to your room,” he said. “What the devil is wrong with you?”
“You,” she said. “You haven’t been about for years. You come for a short time, then you go away.” She made sweeping motions that pulled the muslin tautly over her breasts. “You have no right to order me about or interfere. As you took such pains to point out, you’re not my brother. You are not related to me in any way. You have no rights over me.”
More dramatic gestures. Her hair tumbled in wild disarray about her shoulders. One of the ribbons tying her bodice was coming undone.
“If I wish to let ten women into my room, you have no right to stop me,” she railed on. “If I wish to let ten men into my room, you may not stop me. I am not your property, and I won’t be ordered about. I won’t be castigated for doing what I think is right. I won’t be—”
She broke off with a shriek as he grabbed one of her flailing arms, pulled her into the room, and shut the door.
She shook him off.
He let go and stepped back.
“This is very aggravating,” he said.
“On that we’re agreed,” she said. “I had completely forgotten how provoking you can be.”
“I had completely forgotten that you lose all sense of proportion—as well as all sense of where you are—when one of your—your moods—takes hold of you.”
“It isn’t a mood, you thickhead!”
“I don’t care what you call it,” he said. “You can’t go about barely dressed, making scenes in public. If that poor fellow hadn’t been besotted with his temperamental wife—or if it had been another sort of man—or a pair of them—when you opened the door, the consequences—No, I refuse to contemplate them. Devil take you, do you never think before you act? Do you never take a moment—an instant—to consider what might happen?”
“I know how to take care of myself,” she said, lifting her chin. “You of all people ought to know that.”
“Oh, do you?” he said. “Then take care of yourself, Olivia.”
He wrapped an arm about her and pulled her close.
“Oh, no, you—”
He grasped her chin and kissed her.
Olivia did know how to take care of herself. She reached up to dig her nails into his wrists. She had her leg poised to thrust her knee into his soft parts.
But something went wrong.
She couldn’t move her face because he was holding her chin, gently yet firmly. And that left her no way to escape the shocking feel of his lips and the pressure of his mouth, determined, demanding, insisting. He was stubborn to the core, and whatever he did, he gave it all his concentrated attention, leaving her unable to turn away or ignore it. She couldn’t not respond to it. She couldn’t not savor the feel of his mouth and the taste of him.
Then the evilly tantalizing male scent wafted into her nose and swam into her head and filled it with dreams and longings and heat. The ground beneath her feet fell away, as though she rose in a hot-air balloon.
She slid her hands up to his shoulders. Then her arms were around his neck, and she was holding on, as though she’d drop a hundred miles to the cold earth below if she didn’t.
She was supposed to kick him in the shins. Instead, her bare foot slid up along his leg. The hand not holding her chin slid down her back and down and grasped her bottom, and he pulled her close, against his groin. Only a few thin layers of muslin and silk came between them. They hid nothing, protected nothing. His arousal, hot and heavy, pushed against her belly.
She was no pure innocent. She’d felt a man’s arousal before, but the heat had not raced through her like a flame along a line of gunpowder. She’d been titillated and aroused before, but she hadn’t ached as she did now. She hadn’t felt this wild restlessness.
He fell back against the door, taking her with him, and everything she knew fell away. All her knowledge and guile passed into nothingness. All she could do was yearn, and it was no pretty romantic longing but a madness. She rubbed herself against him, and opened her mouth to draw him inside and taste him. It was hot and lewd, a kiss of tangled tongues and thrust and withdraw, like the coupling every instinct screamed for.
She heard the sound, but it meant nothing. A vague sound that could have been anything.
Something beating, somewhere. She didn’t know where. It could have been her heart, making every pulse point thump with physical awareness of every inch of masculine body pressed against hers. It could have been the beat of wanting, that seemed to have gone on forever.
There was a knocking, but her heart knocked against her rib cage, with heat and need . . . and fear, because what was happening was out of her control.
More knocking. A voice.
“Sir?”
A male voice. Familiar. On the other side of the door.
DeLucey survival instincts, refined over generations, yanked her from whatever mad universe her feelings had taken her to. She came back to the world: a chilly place, suddenly.
She felt Lisle stiffen and start to draw away.
She untangled herself from him.
She dared a glance at his face. It was perfectly composed. No danger of his feet leaving solid ground.
He calmly tugged her nightgown back into place.
Not to be outdone, she straightened his robe.
For good measure, she patted his chest in a friendly way. “Well, then, let that be a lesson to you,” she said.
She pulled the door open, gave Nichols a regal nod, and sailed out, head spinning and legs trembling, and hoped she didn’t crash into a wall or fall on her face.
&nbs
p; Half past six o’clock in the morning
Sunday 9 October
In the dream, Olivia wore a very thin piece of linen. She stood at the bottom of a set of stone steps, beckoning. Behind her was a deep darkness. “Come, see my hidden treasure,” she said.
Lisle started down the steps.
She smiled up at him. Then she glided through a door. It slammed shut behind her.
“Olivia!”
He beat on the door. He heard answering thunder. But no, it wasn’t thunder. He knew that sound. Rocks, rolling into place. A booby trap. He looked back. Darkness. Only the thunder of the great stones rolling into the entrance.
Crash. Crash. Against wood.
What was that noise?
Not stones. A door.
Someone pounding on the door.
Lisle came completely awake, as he’d trained himself to do years ago in Egypt, when being able to shake off sleep instantly could mean the difference between life and death.
He sat up. The dim light filtering through the window curtains told him the sun was rising.
Where the devil was Nichols? At this hour, on the point of rising from a maidservant’s bed, very likely—or had he found his way into one of the female guests’ bedchambers?
Cursing his valet, Lisle hauled himself out of bed, dragged on his dressing gown, shoved his feet into his slippers, and stomped to the door.
He pulled it open.
Olivia paused, hand upraised.
He shook his head. He was still dreaming.
But no. The passage behind her was filled with the same grey light as his bedroom.
She was fully dressed. His sleep-clogged mind slowly took it in: the over-decorated bonnet . . . the high neck of the carriage dress with its fashionably swollen sleeves . . . the slim half-boots. Traveling clothes, his sleepy mind informed him. But that made no sense.
“What?” he said. “What?”
“We’re ready to go,” she said. “The servants’ vehicles have gone ahead. The ladies are in the carriage.”
He had no idea what she was saying. His mind cast up images of last night: she, nearly naked . . . he, losing his mind. A blunder. A whopping, great, nearly fatal blunder.