chapter Three
D
arius led his guest into the sturdy, unprepossessing manor house he called home, a little surprised Vivian hadn’t cried off. She was nervous, maybe still scared—as he was—and her discomfort sparked some sympathy for her.
A little sympathy, though she was even prettier by day than she had been in the candlelight of her husband’s townhouse. Or maybe she was prettier when her natural curiosity had her looking all around at new surroundings rather than listening for the sound of her husband’s tread on the floor above.
A long month awaited, for Darius and his guest.
“May I make you a toddy?” Darius asked when they reached his study.
“You burn wood.” She approached the hearth, sniffing the air as she pulled off her gloves and extended her hands toward the fire. “I don’t know what’s worse, the stench of London in winter or in summer. A toddy would be lovely, especially if you’ll join me.”
“Be happy to.” Darius started pouring and mixing at the sideboard, having made sure the fixings were to hand. “How did you leave Lord Longstreet?”
“Reluctantly.”
When Darius interrupted his concocting to approach her, she shrank back against the fire screen then turned her head to the side.
He frowned down at her, feeling a blend of amusement and exasperation. “I am not in the habit of pouncing on unwilling women.” He unfastened the frogs of her cloak, which she’d claimed to have kept on in deference to the cold. When he stepped back he heard her exhale and knew a moment’s consternation. With Lucy, Blanche, and their ilk, a man had to be the one to pull away, to long for a little more finesse and consideration.
“Do you prefer nutmeg, cloves, or cinnamon?” He laid her cloak on a chair and spoke to her over his shoulder.
“A little of all three?” He heard her rubbing her hands together near the fire.
“My own preference.” Darius poured his recipe into a pot and hung it on the pot swing to heat. Beside him, Vivian was staring at the fire as if she could divine the future in its depths.
He laid the backs of his fingers against his guest’s cheek. “You are chilled. Shall I order you a bath?”
She flinched at his touch then shook her head. “Mr. Lindsey.” She took in a breath and still didn’t face him. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“This?” He used a wooden spoon to stir the butter into the toddies, seeing no reason to give up his place right beside her before the fire.
“Spend this month with you, conceive a child. Doesn’t a woman have to be relaxed to conceive? My sister said…” She broke off and wrapped her arms around her middle, tightly, as if holding in words, emotions, everything.
Darius eyed her posture. “I am not undone by a woman’s tears. If you’d like to cry, I come fully equipped with monogrammed linen and a set of broad shoulders.”
“I don’t w… want to cry,” Vivian replied miserably. “Your toddies will boil off.”
He swung them off the fire, put the spoon in the pot, and turned her by her shoulders to face him.
“I seldom want to cry either.” He urged her against him. “The tears come anyway.”
She wasn’t very good at being comforted. Darius concluded this when she remained stiff against him for a long moment. Or perhaps she wasn’t used to being held, which he could understand better than she’d think.
“Maybe it’s your menses bothering you,” he suggested, resting his chin on her crown. “You started when, today?”
“Yesterday,” she muttered against his collarbone, and Darius felt her relax. “I hate that you know that.”
“It’s worth paying attention to, if you want a baby.” He let his hand trail in a slow caress over the bones of her back, pleased when she didn’t bristle further. “And it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I have two sisters, and they take great glee in informing a fellow when they’re crampy and blue and feeling unlovely.”
She stepped back, taking his proffered handkerchief. “It’s hard to think of you with sisters, cousins, aunts.”
“You’d rather I come with a sniveling leer, pinching the maids and telling bawdy jokes?”
“I don’t know what I’d rather,” she admitted, sinking down onto the raised hearth. “I’d rather William gave up on this whole ridiculous scheme.”
“I thought all women wanted children.” Darius sat beside her—which caused her another little startlement—and poured their toddies.
“I do want a baby.” She closed her eyes briefly. “When one takes vows, one assumes they mean the children resulting will be those of the husband and wife.”
“That’s implied but not spelled out,” Darius said, wondering how sheltered from the doings of titled society she’d been. “There’s that obeying part though, and it’s very explicit. I think that’s what you’re having trouble with.” Darius tasted the spoon. “I would too. Try your toddy. It might brighten your outlook.”
“You’re being charming,” she accused but sipped her drink. “Oh, my… winter just became a more bearable proposition.”
The hint of mischief graced her smile, which yielded Darius relief from the cold far greater than any toddy offered.
“I’ll write down my secret recipe for you.” Darius poured his drink and stirred the spices in briskly to encourage the soothing—expensive—aromas of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. “I came by it in Italy, got it off an old priest who said he got it from a gypsy witch.”
“You lived in Italy?”
They sat there, side by side on the hearth, and gradually, Lady Longstreet thawed. She smiled as Darius recounted being unable to keep up drink for drink with the local clergy, and some of his own more brilliant mix-ups with the Italian language. A maid brought in a tray of sandwiches, and those disappeared, and still they talked, until Darius’s guest had finished her second toddy.
She peered up at him. “So you’ve put me at my ease—or your toddies have. Now do we get to the pouncing part?”
“By no means.” Darius took her empty glass from her and set it on the sideboard, along with any notions he might have entertained involving pouncing in the immediate term. “You are indisposed, and will be for several more days. There will be no pouncing, unless it’s Waggles bothering the mice.”
“Waggles?”
“A younger relation lives with me here,” Darius said, gauging her reaction. “His cat is named Waggles. Don’t ask me why.”
“Is he your son?” She rose and moved away, starting on an inspection tour of the room. That she would conclude a man available for prurient purposes might have a by-blow shouldn’t have been a surprise, and it wasn’t—she thought exactly what Darius intended people to think.
Though it was a disappointment.
“He’s a relation,” Darius said, watching her perambulations. “He’s dear to me, though, and I’ll tolerate no insult to him.”
“I know.” Lady Longstreet nodded, even as she picked up a jade-handled letter opener and held it point-first toward her sternum. “It’s why I chose you.”
“Why is that?” He ambled over and took the letter opener from her hand.
“You will protect this child, if it comes to that,” she said, meeting his gaze.
“How could you know such a thing?” He didn’t like her reason. He’d rather she had picked him because he was a handsome toy, reliably discreet, naughty by reputation—not this other nonsense.
“I’m of an age with your sister, Lady Leah. I attended her come-out ball. Lord Amherst led her out for her first set, but you danced the supper waltz with her.”
“That had to be… eight years ago, at least. Why would you recall such a detail?”
“Because you and your brother Amherst weren’t dancing with her from duty. You were genuinely proud of her, and you hovered all evening and monitored her dance card and how much champagne she drank and so forth.”
He recalled Leah’s come out very clearly—she’d been so happy. How could he not? “I am no longer that man. I’m sorry if you think I am.”
“We all change. I am no longer that girl, either.”
“One hopes not.” Darius considered her, casually denouncing youth while beaming inexperience in every direction. “How would you like to proceed with me this month?”
“I’d like”—she subsided onto the couch—“to put a sack over my head, stuff cotton wool in my ears, and hum some good old Handel while you do the going on. You can let me know when I’ve conceived.”
“Interesting approach.” Darius couldn’t help a slight smile. “One surmises you’d be more comfortable in darkness then.”
“You’re going to get mortifyingly personal now, aren’t you?”
“A little personal. Not pouncingly personal.”
“When does that start?” She wrinkled up her nose, as if they were discussing liming the jakes. Nasty business, but necessary.
“It can start now.” Darius settled in beside her uninvited. “Except given your indisposition, that might be untidy. It’s up to you.”
“I didn’t know one could…” She let the observation trail off and turned her face away, though he could see the blush creep up the side of her neck.
“Copulation now isn’t likely to result in conception,” Darius said, wondering just how much of their bargain William had shared. “That can be part of its appeal.”
“How do you know these things?” She studied her hands where they lay in her lap. They were lady’s hands, fine-boned, clean, soft, the nails tidily manicured and free of color.
“I’m naughty,” Darius said, for once finding it useful, not merely expedient. “Women who disport with me are usually bent on not conceiving, as any childbirth is dangerous, and most are at least inconvenient.”
“Are there many women disporting with you?”
Some women knew how to wallop a man broadside with no warning—and Darius had the sense Vivian hadn’t even meant to.
“Right now, there’s only the one, and she has forbidden me to pounce.”
“I have.” She nodded, relief evident in the way her shoulders gave. “How do we manage for the next few days?”
“As we please.” Darius took one of those hands in his and laced his fingers with hers. “As I see it, I’m a stranger to you, and you to me. While I might be used to dealing intimately with strangers, you are not. I think you’d be better served were we to use the time to become acquainted.”
She frowned at their joined hands. “You make it sound logical, while I’m not sure this getting-acquainted business is wise. We’re going to have to get thoroughly unacquainted in thirty days, and stay that way.”
“I know, Vivian.” He patted her knuckles with his free hand. “You need have no fear I’ll appear at your balcony, spouting poetry. We have a month, and then, nothing.”
“Right. Nothing, except—possibly—a baby.”
***
William Longstreet regarded his son over the chess board, knowing the man was only pretending to consider his next move. Able wasn’t an intellectual giant, but he tried to observe the civilities, and he had common sense, for which a father could be grateful.
William stifled a delicate yawn. “My concentration is not what I’d wish it to be. Perhaps I’m still fatigued from traveling.”
“It’s too damned cold for a man of your dignified years to be shut up in that drafty old coach for hours.” Able straightened away from the board. With his lanky frame, brown eyes, and sandy hair, he could have been William forty years past, at least physically. “How about a nightcap?”
William glanced at the clock, wondering idly if Vivian were at that moment bouncing on the sheets with the handsome Mr. Lindsey. William did not envy young Lindsey the effort, which was a sad testament to the effects of great age.
“A drink is in order,” William said. “So tell me, Able, how fares my son?”
“I’m well.” Able poured them each a couple of fingers of brandy. “The estate had a better harvest this year than last, and as bad as this winter is, it hasn’t yet equaled the past two for sheer miserable cold.”
“Have you given any thought to running for the local seat?”
Able smiled thinly and resumed his place across the chessboard. “We’ve had that argument, your lordship. It’s generous of you to offer, but I’m not cut of the same parliamentary cloth as you are.”
“I wasn’t either, the first few years.” William held his drink without taking a sip. Not until Muriel had gotten hold of him had he really started to enjoy his parliamentary work. “But the Lords is going to have to cede some power to the Commons. It’s inevitable, and the longer they put it off, the worse the struggle will be.”
“You’re no doubt right.” Able usually agreed with his father. “I’m surprised Vivian didn’t join you here for the holidays this year.”
“She’ll be down in a few weeks.” William glanced at the clock again. “Her sister, Angela, is expecting a fourth child, and Vivian is a doting aunt. Then too, every couple needs a little breathing room if polite appearances are to be maintained.”
“Portia would have my head were I to suggest such a thing.” Able’s smile was more fatigued than humorous. His drink had disappeared in very short order.
“She seems in good health.” One could not say Portia Springer was in good spirits, ever. The woman had a decidedly pinched view of life despite the embonpoint quality of her frame.
“She’s sturdy, my Portia. How long can you stay?”
The question wasn’t really appropriate, since William owned the home and was technically the host, though Able lived at Longchamps a great deal more than William ever had. Still, the inquiry wasn’t mean, but more likely one Portia required an answer to and hadn’t had the nerve to put to William directly over dinner.
“I’m not sure.” William eyed his drink. “Depends some on Vivian’s preferences, since she doesn’t particularly like Town life.”
“She doesn’t?” Able seemed surprised by this. “All that entertaining, all those titles gathered around at her dinner parties, she doesn’t enjoy that?”
“Rather dreads it.” How was it his wife and his son were no better acquainted? “She’s a good sport though, and now that she’s figured out most who vote their seat are more interested in the Catholic question than in gobbling her up, she’s gotten much better at it.” She’d never be quite the hostess Muriel was, but that comparison was hardly fair.
Able crossed back to the sideboard to refill his drink. “You’d think she’d be here, though, with you, instead of lingering in Town.”
“Meaning?”
Able shrugged. “She’s young and larking around Town without your supervision, but then, she’s not my wife.”
“She is mine.” William sipped his drink placidly, enjoying the heat more than the flavor. “I’ve never had reason to doubt her, Able. Not once, not in the use of her pin money, not in her consumption of spirits, not in her choice of social companions. Vivian is a lady.”
“Of course, she is.”
William saw the comparison with Portia hit its mark. He didn’t envy Able his wife. Nobody would.
“You can douse most of the candles,” William said, settling in a little more comfortably in his reading chair. “I’ll keep my nightcap company here for a bit in solitude.”
“If that’s your preference.” Able dutifully blew out the candelabrum on the table. “I’ll bid you good night, your lordship.”
William lifted a hand. “Thank you for the game, Able. I promise I’ll be in better form tomorrow night.”
Able left, no doubt to be interrogated by his wife, while William had to admit he truly missed Vivian. She would have had a lap robe tucked around him, her chess was interesting and sometimes brilliant, her conversation laced with humor, and her form easy to look upon.
Lindsey, to his credit, hadn’t even asked about her appearance, though he’d asked a damned lot of other questions—when were her menses due, had she ever miscarried, what had her sister’s deliveries been like, what about her mother’s? They were the questions of a surprisingly shrewd man, but also the questions of a man who cared about his womenfolk.
With any luck, that number would someday include Vivian. On that cheering thought, Lord Longstreet let himself doze off, because he hadn’t lied: he was utterly worn out.
***
Vivian looked up from her book—a volume of Byron, whom William declared a disgrace on countless levels—when a single knock landed on her door.
“You still awake?” Darius Lindsey strolled into her room, stopping a few feet from the bed. “Now, now, none of that. You look at me like I’m the invading French army. I brought you a nightcap.”
“Did you ever consider buying your colors?” Vivian asked, only a little alarmed when he sat on the end of her bed and lounged back against the bedpost. She accepted the drink he passed her, but didn’t sip it just yet.
“I did not.” He scooted to scratch a shoulder blade on the bedpost, an informality if ever there was one. “My father was not kindly disposed toward my sister Leah. If you’re of an age, you probably know that much, so I considered it my responsibility to stick close to her rather than defend King and Country. Then too, until my nephew Ford was born, I was the Wilton spare and obligated to keep body and soul together as a result. Don’t forget your drink.”
She dutifully sipped but couldn’t think of a thing to say to the handsome man regarding her from the foot of her bed.
“What are you reading?”
She eyed the book. “Byron. William would snort with derision.”
“Byron himself does a good job of deriding just about everything. Shall I read to you?” He picked up the book where it lay facedown on the counterpane and ran his finger down the page. When he started in reading, Vivian realized the poetry was better for being rendered in the voice of a young man, one jaded, but not quite bitter, and just as unimpressed with Polite Society as the poet was.
“You read well,” she offered between verses.
“Better than you finish a nightcap,” he said with a slight smile. Vivian took another sip. It was potent stuff, burning a trail down her throat to her innards.
She eyed the little glass dubiously. “What is this?”
“Cognac.” He set the book aside. “I favor it in winter. I had another purpose for coming up here.”
“You’re going to pounce?” She had to ask. He was without cravat or coat—in dishabille by polite standards—and by candlelight, at his ease on her bed, he looked even larger than he had at dinner.
Also… handsomer, plague take him.
“No pouncing for me, delightful as the prospect might be. I haven’t been given permission.”
“You don’t have to do this, you know.” She set the drink aside, only to have him move up the bed and take a sip of it himself—from the same place on the rim she’d just put her lips to.
“Do what?”
“Be so… considerate. I’ll manage. Earlier, downstairs, it was just a weak moment. If our good queen could bear fifteen children to a man she’d never met before her wedding day, I’ll manage.”
“I’m not offering a kingdom in return,” Darius said. “Not in the traditional sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can offer you pleasure, Vivian, or I can be as perfunctory and undemanding as you wish.”
“This is an increasingly uncomfortable discussion.” Vivian tucked the covers more tightly around her. “Not one I am prepared to have.”
“Consider this a discussion of how you want to be pounced upon. You need to decide whether pleasure and duty are mutually exclusive, Vivian. If they are, I’ll come to you only when the candles are out and you’re under the covers. We need not see each other, in fact, for the duration of this month.”
“And if pleasure and duty can coincide?” She knew she’d taken the bait, as he’d intended, but the question was exactly what had been bothering her. Where had her resolve not to socialize with him gone, and why had it seemed so important?
“If duty and pleasure are to coincide, then you have to trust me at least a little to make this a seduction, a pleasure for us both.”
“Which would you prefer?”
His eyebrows rose, and that caught her attention, suggesting he wasn’t used to being asked his preferences. She stored that realization away for later, and lengthy, consideration.
“My first reaction is to say it makes no difference to me,” he said. “I am being paid good coin to achieve a specific end, but I’d rather do that in the manner least upsetting to you. If I had to be honest though…”
“Yes?”
The look in his eyes changed, became slumberous in that instant before he lowered dark lashes and veiled his soul from her scrutiny.
“You are lovely, Vivian, and deserving of pleasure.”
He wasn’t telling her everything. A man who romped with society women as he did was capable of discretion, of keeping his own counsel. Silence crept up between them and expanded as Vivian considered him. He took another sip of her drink then raised his gaze to hers.
“I propose an experiment,” he said, putting her book on the night table. “To help you make up your mind.”
The look in his eyes was naughty and entrancing. “What kind of experiment?”
“A good-night kiss. I won’t touch you with anything other than my mouth, and you decide whether you like it or not.”
She scooted back against her pillows. “Kissing is very personal.”
“Just my mouth, Vivian. You simply turn your head and wish me good night if you don’t like it. Kissing is not pouncing, not by any stretch. I kiss Waggles.”
Surely she could keep up with the standard set by a fat, lazy tomcat?
“Here’s my dilemma.” She folded the edge of the counterpane into a precise one inch hem. “I don’t want you to laugh.”
“To laugh?” She could tell he was laughing already. “I just confessed to kissing a cat, and you think I’ll laugh at you? I thought we weren’t going to take any of this business too seriously.”
“You weren’t,” she corrected him. “You know what you’re about.”
“Vivian, all I’m proposing is a kiss,” he began, but she stopped him with an upraised hand, needing to get this part of the conversation behind them.
“William isn’t a… demanding husband.”
“I see.” The smile spreading across his face was at once beatific and diabolical.
“What do you think you see, Mr. Lindsey?”
“I’m sitting on your bed after dark sharing a drink with you. Don’t you think you could call me Darius?”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re not torn up with conflicted loyalty,” he accused, pleased as punch. “You’re afraid of yourself, afraid you’ll enjoy yourself just as old William so generously intended you to.”
“Afraid…” She narrowed her eyes at his hubris. “You’re likely afraid I won’t, and then where will your swaggering, pawing image of yourself be?”
“Good shot, Vivian.” He nodded, still grinning. “But best pucker up, as I’m still here.”
In contrast to the great good humor of his words, his kiss was serious. He just leaned in and laid his lips over hers, giving her a moment to startle and breathe and then settle in. When she’d managed all that, he moved his mouth softly over hers, pulling her lower lip between his teeth and sucking gently, then turning his head an inch and tracing his tongue along her lips.
She startled again and thought she heard him chuckle, so she retaliated by using her tongue the way he’d used his to… taste his lips. That earned her his sigh into her mouth, fruity and sweet from their nightcap. And then she felt herself being pressed back against the pillows, until she was lying on her back and Darius Lindsey was balanced over her, braced on his hands.
And it was her turn to sigh, more slowly, more of a bodily sigh or relaxation of her defenses, because in this kiss, he would take care of her.
“Better,” he murmured, shifting to cruise his lips over her features. He nuzzled and nibbled and grazed and tasted, her jaw, her forehead, her chin, and then back to her mouth, until she was happily melting into the bedclothes, ready to concede that duty and pleasure could disguise each other thoroughly.
And then the real kissing began, as his tongue stole past her lips, into her mouth, and began to insinuate beautiful, naughty, wonderful, previously unimaginable notions. She tried to follow his lead, until she realized her hands were tangled in his thick, dark hair, pulling him down to her, and her body was…
“Merciful heavens.” She turned away by force of will but kept her hand wrapped around the back of his head, inviting him to rest his forehead on her collarbone.
“That is a little taste of option A,” Darius said, sitting up.
Why was any effort at all involved in letting him go? “And option B?”
He leaned in again, and when she’d inhaled in anticipation of another rousing, lingering, soul-stealing kiss, he put a brotherly peck on her forehead.
“Good night, Vivian.” He rose, took her glass from the night table, and turned to leave.
“That’s it?” She struggled up to her elbows. “Good night, Vivian?”
“Good night, Lady Longstreet?”
“Get out.” She tossed her book at him. “Just go, and I hope you sleep miserably.”
He stopped at the door to blow her a kiss, still smirking, and Vivian realized she was smiling too. Awful man—how was she supposed to sleep after that?
Which, she reflected, had likely been the point of his experiment.
***
Darius took himself to his bedroom, resisting the urge to stand outside the door and listen for the sounds of Vivian Longstreet going to bed. She’d be methodical: banking the coals, replacing the fireplace screen, snuffing each candle, and in all likelihood, locking her door. Her place in her book would be carefully marked with a bookmark—no dog-eared pages for her naughty Lord Byron—and she’d kneel beside the bed to say her prayers, no matter how drafty the floor, no matter how her knees might ache.
William Longstreet had taken a perfectly lovely young woman to wife and made her elderly, as well as deaf, dumb, and blind to her own appeal.
Darius had been more honest than she’d known, when he’d said she deserved pleasure. She deserved heaps and hoards of it, years of it, but instead she’d gotten duty. As he readied himself for bed, he had to wrestle with a question: Vivian deserved a romp, a frolic, a few weeks decadently rife with flirtation and sexual gratification. He was in a position to give her that, but as she’d said, then what? A virtual spinster, she’d be ill equipped to deal with the attachments that formed when two people were physically intimate.
Except, he could teach her that too. He could teach her to flirt and carry on and enjoy herself, and part with a sigh and wave before moving on to the next enjoyment. Clearly, Lord Longstreet had urged her in that direction, but Vivian had been too timid to dip her toe in the waters of dalliance.
Or maybe, she had been too wise.
By habit, he checked on John before turning in, finding the child fast asleep in his bed, the tomcat blinking slowly as Darius closed the door to the boy’s room.
He could fathom pleasuring Vivian, could imagine it all too easily, but far more difficult was the idea that she was eager to bear his child. He’d seen it in her eyes—she wanted a child, and to his surprise, he wanted that for her as well.
And this, he reasoned as he climbed between cold sheets, was why he didn’t allow other women the intimacy of coitus with him. It made a simple situation complicated and had him wishing all manner of impossible things, when he really should be too tired to give a damn.
Vivian Longstreet should be a means to put a new roof on his stable, a duty, a convenient source of revenue, and here he was, offering to escort her past reason into the land of sexual pleasure and harmless dalliance. Offering her a choice had been rash, and upon reflection, he wished he could recall his words and sneak into her bed of a night, pretending by day her body had been shared with some other man. That would be smarter—better, at least for him.
But by breakfast, Darius had come to a decision: if she allowed it, he was going to pleasure Vivian Longstreet out of her clever, nimble, ladylike mind.