Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

“You are not a common harlot,” he said tightly.

“Very well. An uncommon harlot.”

“Bathsheba,” he said.

The sound of her Christian name in that deep baritone surprised and moved her, but not as much as the anger that flared in his dark eyes.

“I should never allow anyone to say such a thing of you,” he said. “That includes you.”

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips and kissed each knuckle. “Stop talking nonsense,” he said. He returned her hand to his chest and lay his atop it.

His hand was warm and big, and the simple gesture calmed her. It was only then she realized that her hand no longer throbbed with pain.

“My hand is better,” she said.

“That is because your humors are in better balance now,” he said. He looked away, turning his head toward the bed. “How comfortable it looks.” He frowned. “How hard the floor is.”

“Was your bed not comfortable?” she said. “Where did you sleep?”

He loosened his hold, and she sat up. He sat up, too, and she let her gaze roam over him: miles and miles of naked, muscled male. For a time, he had been all hers. She ought to be content, but she was awash again in longing, exactly like a girl experiencing her first infatuation.

Oh, she would pay dearly for this.

“I slept,” he said. “I bathed.” He grimaced. “At least I did not come to you in all my dirt—not that I came here intending to ravish you—er, I mean, to be ravished.” His dark gaze slid over her, lingering upon her breasts, and a fire trail burned its way from there to the pit of her belly.

She rose hastily.

He turned away and reached for his shirt. “I thought you were still asleep,” he said. “I was planning to hide under the bed. But there you were, rising like Venus from the waves—and may I say that Botticelli’s Venus hasn’t a patch on you?” He pulled the shirt over his head and stood up.

You’d think she’d never heard a compliment before. It was no use reminding herself she was two and thirty years old and she’d borne a child, for she blushed, exactly like the innocent maiden she wasn’t, and something like pleasure danced in her heart.

The dancing stopped abruptly when he told her about the servants’ whispering in the corridor.

“Pray do not make yourself anxious,” he said. “The innkeeper did not see you.”

His countenance seldom told her anything. Hers, she realized, was an open book to him.

Her uneasiness grew. “She saw you,” she said. “We must not leave this place together.” She moved to the chair that held her clothes. She took her chemise and drawers from the top of the heap and eyed them unhappily. “I wish I had brought fresh undergarments at least,” she said.

He walked to the window and looked out. The shirt covered him too well, allowing a view only of the lower part of his long, muscled legs. Still, in the sunlight, the fine material was semitransparent. She could make herself miserable studying the planes and contours of his long, lean body . . . the narrow hip and taut bottom . . .

She swallowed a groan.

“The inn yard is busy,” he said. “Saturday is market day in Reading. I am sure your wish can be accommodated.”

“Are you mad?” she said. “You cannot go out in public to buy me underwear.”

“I can think of very few labors I should more enjoy,” he said, turning back to her, face sober, dark eyes glinting. “In the circumstances, however, I must assign the task to others. I shall let Thomas—”

“Not your footman!”

“I shall let Thomas choose a maidservant to attend to the matter.”

“If it comes to that, I can purchase my own underthings,” she said. “At least I am not known in Reading. But it is not necessary.”

She might as well have talked to the chair. He’d already found the bell. He rang it.

“You cannot go out like that,” he said. “And you do not wish to don the garments you were wearing.”

“It does not matter what I wish,” she said. “I am perfectly capable of making do.”

“Why on earth would you want to?”

She grew exasperated. “That is exactly what Jack used to—”

A rap at the door made her break off and dart behind the bed curtains.

“Ah, Thomas,” Rathbourne said, opening the door but a crack. The rest was conducted in whispers—a deep rumble on Rathbourne’s part—then he closed the door.

Bathsheba emerged from behind the bed curtains.

“It will take a while,” he said.

“You have taken leave of your senses!” she cried. “We have been too careless already. We have lost valuable time.”

“I think it is time we admit we have lost the children,” he said. “They might be behind us, ahead of us, beside us, or right under our noses, but we have not found them and are unlikely to do so in the immediate future. The more time passes, the more ways we might go astray. Our present course, for instance, will not serve us beyond Chippenham. We might continue making inquiries along the road to Bath—but from Chippenham there is a slightly shorter and more direct route to Bristol. We cannot investigate two routes simultaneously.”

Her heart beat, too hard. Even without being aware of the alternate route from Chippenham, she’d come to the same conclusion. She’d held the thought—and the accompanying despair—at bay.

No wonder she’d yielded so easily to desire. Deep in her heart she’d known the cause was lost. Scandal was inevitable.

“There is no need to look so stricken,” he said. “All is not lost. We simply need to look at the problem afresh.”

Bathsheba did not want to look at the problem. She wanted to sink to her knees and bawl like a child. She didn’t want to be a grown-up anymore. She didn’t want to be a mama anymore. She didn’t want to have to mend matters and clean up after others and make the best of things.

“Stop that,” he said, reading everything in her countenance. Yet he said it gently, and came to her, and wrapped his arms about her. She broke then, and wept.

Only a little storm, and it soon passed, but he held her. When she’d quieted, he said, “You are fatigued.”

“I am not fatigued,” she said. “I slept for hours.”

He let out a sigh. “You are behaving like a child who

needs her nap.”

“What do you know of children who need naps?” she said.

He muttered something, then picked her up and tossed her onto the bed.

She bounced up from the pillows. “I am not a child and I do not need a nap!”

“Well, I do,” he said, and swung up and onto the mattress beside her.

“Then sleep,” she said. She tried to scramble away, but one long arm hooked about her waist and drew her back.

“We cannot sleep together in the same bed,” she said. “That is asking for trouble.”

“I know,” he said.

He pulled her on top of him.

SHE HAD TRIED so hard to think, to be responsible.

But he had only to claim her, in that imperious, possessive way of his, and her defenses—what was left of them—shattered.

“It is not fair,” she said, lowering her head to within an inch of his mouth.

“No, it is not.” Their lips met and clung and she was young again, blood running hot. They kissed, deeply and wickedly, and she flung herself headlong into the pure wild pleasure of it: the taste of him, the feel of him, the scent of him, this big, beautiful male animal.

His long, warm hands moved over her, and she moved helplessly under them. His hands . . . his touch . . . she thought she would die when he touched her and then she wanted only to die of that touch and of the gladness that coursed through her, the tingling current that raced over her skin.

Besotted. Enslaved.

She didn’t care.

For this moment, he was hers. She broke the kiss and sat up and dragged his hands up over her belly to her breasts. She held them there and arched back, in pure animal pleasure.

“My God,” he growled. “My God. You will kill me, Bathsheba.” He pulled her down to him and kissed her. He ravished her mouth, then broke away to ravish her throat. She was impatient already to have him inside her, but before she could reach for him, he rolled her over and straddled her. He grasped her hands and held them flat on the bed on either side of her head. He gazed at her, dark eyes fathoms deep, his mouth hinting at a smile.

“You must let me kill you a little,” he said.

He bent then, and made a trail of kisses along her shoulder and along her arm to the hand he held. He licked her wrist, and sensation shot through her and swirled to the pit of her stomach to make her ache with need. She writhed helplessly, lust-crazed.