Vixen in Velvet (The Dressmakers 3)

The servant didn’t attempt to carry her young charge, but set her on her feet. Her ladyship promptly sat down in the footpath and kicked and screamed. When the nursemaid tried to lift her up, the girl wriggled, kicked, and punched, wailing all the while.

Lisburne was about to intervene—though he wasn’t sure how to control the child except by knocking her unconscious—when Madame spoke.

“That’s quite enough, young lady,” she said in French. “You are too big a girl to carry on like a baby. Furthermore, ladies do not scream at the top of their voices and pummel their elders. You will stand up—now—take your nursemaid’s hand, and go along with her. It’s past your teatime. Not that you deserve tea. If I were Nurse, I should send you straight to bed, you naughty child.”

At some point in the course of this speech, the little girl became quiet.

“Up,” Leonie said, gesturing. “Now.”

The child stared at her. Leonie regarded her expressionlessly.

Her ladyship rose and went to her nurse and took her hand.

They walked away.

Lisburne had no idea he was in a temper until it exploded. This happened as soon as the nurse and demon child were out of earshot.

He turned to Leonie, who was as wet and filthy as he was.

“What in blazes were you thinking?” he said. “You could have been trampled!”

She turned sharply toward him, and her blue eyes flashed. “So could she. In case you failed to notice, she fell—and she was out of her senses momentarily.”

“She is out of her senses permanently,” he said.

“She was terrified and she threw a fit,” she said. “Children don’t always behave logically. Mainly they behave illogically. Like some men I could mention.”

“Talk of illogical,” he said. “You’d already stopped the horses. They weren’t going anywhere. You’d only to hold them.”

“You said they didn’t like surprises!”

“And so you thought it was a good idea to run at their legs?”

“She’d already run in front of them! You were the one who told me horses have small brains. I was terrified they’d think something dangerous was at their feet. And they did! They became agitated—you saw!”

“They were a little nervous, that’s all.”

“They wouldn’t keep still, even for you!”

“Because you’d jumped out, you mad creature!”

“What would you have done, Lord Know-It-All?”

“Why didn’t you let me do it? You could have been killed! What if you’d been kicked in the head? No, come to think of it, that might improve matters. It would stop your calculating, for once.”

“A moment ago, you were accusing me of not using my head.”

“Because you didn’t.”

“Make up your mind what you want!” she shouted. And stormed away.

He caught up with her in two strides and moved to stand in her way. She tried to walk around him. He caught her by the wrist and stopped her.

“Don’t you manhandle me,” she said. “You have no rights over me. I am not your property and I’m not one of your servants. You have no power over me whatso—”

He pulled her up against him and wrapped his arms about her and kissed her.

Chapter Seven

Obedience is so much demanded in the female character, that many persons have conceived it was the one virtue called for in woman . . . If man, as the guide and head of woman, were himself a perfect creature, this would, unquestionably, be true; but as a being, accountable to her Creator, and endowed by him with reason—unqualified and implicit obedience to a creature like herself, liable to many errors, cannot, consistently, be required.

—The Young Lady’s Book, 1829

Maybe it wasn’t wise. Maybe, worse, it was the sort of clichéd male reaction Lisburne abhorred. He was too intelligent—not to mention inventive—to resort to such histrionics. But at the moment, it was all he could think of.

Then, once his lips met hers, he couldn’t think of anything else.

She tasted like rain.

She tasted, too, like nobody else on earth. He’d had only a hint yesterday, but it was enough to keep him sleepless for half the night. Now night seemed to have fallen on the universe, and he was half in a dream and half wildly awake.

She tasted sweet like innocence and sweet like sin. She was wet, and all her elegant frills and furbelows drooped. Yet she seemed so light and frothy in his arms and so full of life, making a struggle for a moment and then no struggle at all, but meeting him headlong, her mouth pressing to his and parting at the first urging. And when he deepened the kiss, she followed his lead. An instant’s hesitation, then her tongue was coiling with his in an erotic dance, and the taste of her deepened and heated.

Like the surprisingly fine brandy he’d sipped the first day he’d entered her lair, it was sweet and fiery. He’d marveled at her then: so delicate and feminine and apparently fragile even while he was aware, excitedly aware, of banked fires and danger.

He ought to be aware of danger now. He ought to realize he was falling into a place he might not easily get out of. But he wasn’t thinking, except in a dreamlike way. Only his senses were at work, telling him of the warmth of her body and the shape of it, and the way she fit under his hands and the way her mouth fit against his.

He was aware of damp muslin and lace fluttering about him and wet bonnet ribbons tickling his chin. He was aware of his hand at the back of her neck and the bonnet sliding downward, against his hand. He was aware of her hair, like silk, under his hand, and the velvety skin of her neck and the scent of her: lavender and Essence of Leonie. He couldn’t get enough of it. He wanted to drown in it.

He slid one hand downward, to her waist, and moved the other hand lower, to her hip, and pulled her closer.

In his dreamlike consciousness he was aware of fragility and innocence. A distant voice wailed something about trespassing, but he couldn’t make logical sense of it. What use was logic when he drank kisses like brandy, hot and sweet? What good could warnings do when he was already intoxicated? And besides, she’d reached up to grasp his shoulders and her body was pressed to his and stirring up trouble down below.

He drew her nearer still, and slid his leg between hers, pushing against layers of petticoats.

She gasped, and pulled her head back, and looked up at him, blue eyes wide and dazed. “No,” she said. She pushed him away, with force.

Taken unawares, he staggered. Or maybe he staggered because he was dizzy.

But that was absurd. Mere kisses had not made him dizzy since he was a boy, stealing one from the very first girl of his dreams.

Then he’d been so excited, he had to summon every iota of masculine pride not to swoon.

Now?

Well.

Exciting, yes. But that was . . . heat. Lust. Frustrated lust.

The blue eyes flashed at him. “That is so typical!” she said breathlessly. “You can’t win the argument logically, so you resort to seduction.”

“I wasn’t resorting,” he said, also breathless for some reason. Probably on account of lugging that raging child about, and having to exercise so much restraint not to toss her into the nearest shrubbery. “And don’t pretend you weren’t participating.”

“I was fighting you on your own ground,” she said. “You think you know everything.”

“That was a fight?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She untied her bonnet ribbons—not without a battle, for they were wet—planted the sagging bonnet back onto her head, and retied the ribbons with great energy. “I may be inexperienced but I learn very quickly, and whatever I learn to do, I am determined to do extremely well. You think you can distract me from my mission with your masculine wiles, but I have wiles you’ve never dreamed of. And how dare you do that,”

she added with a furious glance at the thigh he’d pressed, for one delicious instant, as close to her womanhood as eighty-five layers of petticoats and frock and whatnot would let him get. “Did you think to have me against a tree in Hyde Park? On a public footpath?”

“I was not exactly thinking,” he said. “And how could you expect me to, under the onslaught of you?”

She rolled her eyes and turned away and marched down the footpath. “I can’t believe you’re playing injured innocence. Did I throw myself at you, my lord?”