A Beginner's Guide to Rakes (28 page)

“I’m quite warm now, thank you,” she rasped shakily, digging her fingers into his scalp as he lowered his head to her again.

He chuckled, then had to close his eyes and conjure images of dustbins and gouty old men when she bucked against him. Teasing and licking at her dampness until he couldn’t stand not being inside her for a second longer, he slid up her body again.

Settling over her, Oliver kissed her again, relishing the way she pushed up, pressing her body close against his. She flung her ankles around his thighs and he angled his hips forward, pushing hard and hot into her. Everything became sensation: his mouth on hers, the slide of flesh around his, hands everywhere—time seemed to stop for those minutes, with nothing but the sound of breathing and moans and the slight, rhythmic creak of the low couch beneath them.

She climaxed around him, but he held on to his slipping control as best he could. Slowing his thrusts to prolong her shuddering, shivering pleasure, he watched those sparkling emerald eyes as she panted beneath him. He’d run away from this two years ago. What in God’s name had possessed him? When her breathing settled a little he sped his own rhythm, burying himself in her over and over, hard and fast and deep. With a grunt he came, emptying himself into her.

For several long minutes they lay where they were, still kissing as he rolled onto his side next to her. He didn’t wish to stop touching her, caressing her—and then he remembered.
That
was what had sent him fleeing. Not the very exceptional sex, but that need to be close to her that consumed him at every waking moment. That desire to please her, to shoulder all of her troubles, to see the concern and worry gone from her eyes.

But the oddest part of all this was that while he remembered his horror in those tangible memories, the idea of attachment didn’t … trouble him as it had before. He didn’t know whether it was the two years that had passed and everything that had happened in that time or the fact that he’d spent the past two years attempting to feel the pleasure without the need and had failed miserably.

“I have a question for you,” she murmured, still sounding out of breath.

“My mind’s not quite up to form, but I shall do my best to answer it,” Oliver returned, abruptly fascinated all over again by the soft curve of her throat. He placed a kiss over the soft, quick beat of her pulse there.

“You gave up your eight hours hoping that I would be grateful enough to end up in your bed anyway, did you not?”

“No.”

Diane lifted an eyebrow, looking up at him. He briefly wondered what she saw. “No?” she repeated. “You took some rather extreme measures to find me when I declined.”

“I wanted us to end up doing this,” he conceded, running his fingers in circles around her breasts. “But I wanted the odds to be even, so to speak.”

“You didn’t wish to force me, you mean?”

“I wouldn’t do that regardless, but yes, I wanted you to want to be here.” He was being very honest this evening; apparently whatever insanity had struck him when he’d decided that hacking through her ceiling would be the perfect way to get her attention hadn’t abated.

“Ah, Oliver,” she sighed, stretching in a way that made him hard all over again, “you and bed and I have always been very compatible. It’s everywhere else I have my doubts.”

“You know, living here is the closest to … domesticity I’ve had since I turned twelve. It may take me some time to become accustomed to it.”

She chuckled, running her hand along his hip. “If The Tantalus Club is your idea of domesticity, it
has
been quite some time for you.” Her smile faded. “Are you ever going to tell me why you fled Vienna? And not that nonsense about needing to reconcile with your uncle.”

Whatever this thing forming between them might be, a lie would ruin it. But it was very likely that the truth would as well—especially when he was still attempting to decipher his feelings, old and new, himself. “I’ll tell you,” he said slowly, “but not tonight.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Suffice it to say that I’m not running now.” He took a breath. “Nor do I intend to.”

Her emerald gaze held his for a long moment. “I will require some convincing, and a bit of proof.”

Oliver turned her onto her side, facing away from him, then reached around her to caress her breasts. “I shall do my utmost,” he murmured into her ear, and, propping up one of her knees, slowly pushed into her from behind. As long as the task involved sex with Diane Benchley, he was more than willing to make amends.

*   *   *

It had to be near dawn when he fell asleep on the couch, Diane lying across his chest and a thin blanket covering the two of them from the late-night chill. And it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after that when he jerked awake again at the sound of a female screech.

“Diane!”

Her sitting room door burst open, the swinging door closely followed by the French twist and two of the stouter-looking chits. This time Miss Martine was carrying a damned pistol—and it very much looked like she knew how to use it.

“I’m well, Jenny,” Diane said groggily, sitting up in front of him and taking most of the blanket to wrap around her. “I told Juliet I would be indisposed.”

“Yes, but that was when you were in his apartments. When you left, she assumed your plans had changed.” The chit scowled at him beyond Diane’s shoulder. “You know there’s a hole in the floor of the servants’ hallway upstairs. It looks directly down into your bedchamber.”

Diane cleared her throat. “Yes, I know,” she returned, humor touching her voice. “We’ll have to summon Mr. Dunlevy and have that repaired.”

“And that’s all you have to say?”

“At the moment, yes. That’s all I have to say. We can talk more later, my dear. But I would truly like to get some sleep first.”

“With him here?”

“Him would like to stay, yes,” Oliver put in, becoming a bit annoyed at being spoken about as if he weren’t there. “We can chat tomorrow as well, if you’d like.”

“Cochon,”
she snapped.

“It’s far too early to be calling me names,” he commented, lying down again and favoring her with his most porcine-like snort just to show that he understood the insult.

Diane elbowed him in the rib cage. “I will sit down to breakfast with you, Jenny,” she said. “At ten o’clock.”

“Yes, yes. I can see there is nothing to be done here now.”

It had already been done, but if he said that aloud, she would likely raise that pistol again. Once Genevieve and her female guards left the room and closed the door again, Diane sank back down onto the couch. “That might have gone better.”

“Considering that no one shot me this time, I have to disagree.”

He felt rather than heard her chuckle. “Perhaps things are looking up for you, after all.”

Oh, he definitely had to agree with that. And now he could begin to worry in earnest about what Cameron and Greaves might be planning.

*   *   *

“He wanted to get my attention,” Diane said, beginning to lose her patience. She rose from the breakfast table to fetch another slice of ham from the sideboard. “Which he did.”

“He smashed a hole into your bedchamber ceiling,” Jenny retorted. It was the fourth or fifth time she’d made that statement—apparently she didn’t think Diane actually understood what she was saying. “If he wanted your attention, he might have sent you flowers.”

“I made that same suggestion.” Sitting at the small table once more, she returned to her breakfast. When Jenny continued to glare at her, however, she set down her fork. “I’m not falling for him again, if that’s what’s troubling you. I don’t repeat my mistakes.”

“Then why have you been smiling all morning? You detest Lord Haybury—or have you forgotten?”

And that was the rub. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d ranted about Oliver to Jenny. The curses hadn’t been said to gain sympathy or to turn him into a villain simply because Diane felt she’d been wronged. She’d meant them all. But now was not then. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said aloud.

“Then what—”

“I do hope you’ve noticed how much more cooperative he’s been lately. And I’ve no complaints about his overnight performance.”
None at all.

Jenny scowled. “I only hope you aren’t being fooled in all of this. You may have caught him by surprise initially, but he is not a stupid man. And he does not like to lose. I can almost guarantee that he is making his own plans.”

“I don’t doubt it.” What those plans might be, though—given the way he’d been mentioning domesticity and not going anywhere—disconcerted her.

“And do you think the Duke of Greaves and Lord Larden were here because of you, or because of him? He’s bringing trouble.”

“He didn’t bring Anthony.”

“That, my dear, I will agree with. The new earl spent the evening touching the wallpaper and fingering the curtains and counting every penny the club took in last night.”

With a sigh, Diane set aside her fork. “Perhaps I’ve been a bit too clever at looking well-off. The costume might have convinced gentlemen to trust that I wouldn’t cheat them out of anything, but obviously Anthony thinks that either I or The Tantalus have a very fat purse.”

“And how do you propose we discourage his interest?”

For a moment Diane wasn’t certain whether Jenny was referring to Anthony or to the Marquis of Haybury.
One problem at a time,
she reminded herself. First she needed to protect the club, and then she could worry about her heart. “I’m not certain yet. I can keep Anthony from becoming a member of the club, but if a current member invites him as a guest…” She scowled. “This is so annoying! It’s
my
club, and he can’t have any part of it. I’ll see to that.”

“Good.” Finally Jenny returned to her own breakfast. “By the way, as long as Mr. Dunlevy will be returning to repair your ceiling, have you considered giving some of your senior staff their own quarters?”

Diane nodded. “I don’t see the harm in taking one or two of the dormitory rooms and dividing them into individual bedchambers. I want my captains to feel secure here. And to be able to make a home of this place.”

For a long moment Jenny gazed at her. “I never expected to hear you say that.”

“I’ve read those idiotic pamphlets Lady Dashton and her stiff-spined cronies are publishing. I doubt they’d be calling my employees whores if they happened to have too many daughters and not enough money to support them. Not everyone wants to become a governess or a lady’s companion, for heaven’s sake.”

“Or to marry,” Genevieve put in feelingly. “The Tantalus Club is far more exciting than an embroidery circle.”

Laughing, Diane lifted her cup of tea in a toast. “Darling, you have no idea.”

“Then back to our starting point. Promise me you’ll continue to be careful about whom you … trust, no matter how pleasantly that devil is behaving.”

“I will. I promise.” A knock sounded at the half-open door, and she turned her head. “Come in, Sally.”

The footwoman sketched a quick curtsy. “My lady, Grace says you have a caller.”

Grace had proved to be a fair butler as well, if not quite as … formidable as Juliet. Poor Miss Langtree couldn’t be at the door for twenty-four hours each day, however. “Did she say who it was?”

“Oh, yes, my lady. I beg your pardon. It’s Lord Cameron.”

That ill feeling in the pit of her stomach, the same one that arose every time she thought of Anthony Benchley taking The Tantalus Club away from her, asserted itself again. “Have him brought to my office, if you please.”

“Right away, ma’am.”

“Damnation.” Diane pushed away from the table and stood. “Be close by; whatever he wants, I intend to see that he doesn’t get it.”

“Mais oui.”

Rather than go directly to her office, Diane detoured to her bedchamber and dressing room. Mr. Smith and Mr. Jacobs had cobbled together a patch for the hole in her ceiling, and she sat at her dressing table to remove the pearl necklace she’d donned when Oliver had left her for his own quarters. There were times when the appearance of wealth could do more good for her cause than actual wealth, but a meeting with Lord Cameron would not be one of those times. The pearl ear bobs went into the same drawer, and she put on a pair of green glass ones in their place and fastened a bracelet of matching glass beads around her wrist. Wearing no jewelry at all would be far too obvious.

At the same time, she couldn’t help thinking that she should have taken such care earlier, back when Anthony had first appeared on Adam House’s doorstep. She’d underestimated him, lumped him into the same category of uselessness where she’d relegated his brother.

In the strictest legal sense she’d stolen Adam House, and that tiny cottage in Vienna, from Anthony, because she felt she deserved … something for years of disappointment and deepening despair. The new Earl of Cameron still had a house in London and two ancestral—and entailed—estates. He had a roof over his head, and he always would. When Frederick had died, she’d carefully counted every penny remaining inside the house they’d shared. She’d had seven pounds and twopence with which to make do for the remainder of her life. And so she’d taken what she needed to survive. Anthony couldn’t have it back.

With that thought firmly in mind, she gazed at herself in her dressing mirror and took a deep breath. She wasn’t Miss Diane Hastings, granddaughter of the Marquis of Clansey, any longer. She wasn’t subservient to anyone, and she didn’t rely on anyone but herself for her survival.

When she’d kept the new Lord Cameron waiting for approximately fifteen minutes, she made her way to her neat, large-windowed office. Behind her desk Anthony sat hunched over, digging at one of the desk drawers with a knife blade.

The sight actually reassured her a little. If that was his tactic, she
hadn’t
underestimated him. “Good morning, Lord Cameron,” she said pointedly.

He straightened. “Diane. I thought we’d decided that you’re to call me Anthony.”

“Are we keeping up the pretense of civility, then?” She stayed where she was. “Is there a reason you were attempting to break into my desk, Anthony?”