A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (5 page)

H
ELENA SAT WITH
Mr. Hendy and a few other guests after supper. The others mainly listened while the two of them exchanged stories and opinions about the land-crossing
from Switzerland to Italy. They both agreed that they were fortunate indeed to have lived to tell of it.

“I admire mountains,” Mr. Hendy said, “but more as a spectator than as a traveler crawling along a narrow icy track directly above a sheer precipice at least a mile high.”

“I do believe I could endure crawling with some equanimity,” Helena said. “It is riding on the back of one of those infernal mountain donkeys that had me gabbling my prayers with pious fervency.”

Their audience laughed.

Mr. Downes had left his group in order to cross to a sideboard to replenish the contents of his glass. There was no one else there. Helena got to her feet and excused herself. She strolled toward the sideboard, her own empty glass in hand.

“Mr. Downes,” she said when she was close, “do fill my glass with whatever is in that decanter, if you please. One becomes mortally sick of drinking ratafia merely because one is female. I would prefer even the lemonade at Almack’s.”

“Madeira, ma’am?” He looked uncertainly at the decanter and then at her with raised eyebrows.

“Madeira, sir,” she said, holding out her glass. “I suppose you do not know about the lemonade at Almack’s.”

“I have never been there, ma’am,” he said.

“You have not missed anything,” she told him. “It is an insipid place and the balls there are insipid occasions and the lemonade served there is insipid fare. Yet people would kill or do worse to acquire vouchers during the Season.”

He half filled her glass and looked into her eyes. She had the distinct feeling that if she ordered him to fill her glass he would refuse. She did not issue the order. He was a lawyer and a merchant. He had freely admitted as much. A prosperous merchant if her guess was correct.
But a cit for all that. If his sister had not had the good fortune to snare Lord Francis Kneller, he would never have gained entry to such a place as the Earl of Greenwald’s drawing room. But she understood now the aura of confidence and power he exuded. He was a wealthy, powerful, self-made man. She found the idea infinitely exciting. She found
him
exciting.

Sexually exciting.

“I am tired of this party, Mr. Downes,” she said. “But I am a single woman alone, alas. My aunt, my usual companion, is indisposed, my manservant and maid walked home rather than stay in the kitchen with my coachman, and will not return for another hour at the earliest. Yet I will be scolded by aunt and servants alike if I return unaccompanied.”

He was not sure he understood her. His eyes shrewdly regarding her told her that. She raised her eyebrows, half smiled at him, and sipped her madeira. It was a vast improvement on ratafia.

“I would offer my escort, ma’am, if I thought it would be welcomed,” he said.

“How kind you are, Mr. Downes,” she said, mocking him with her eyes. “It would be accepted.”

“Shall I have your carriage called around, then?” he asked. “Shall I have a maid accompany us?”

She allowed herself to laugh softly. “That will be quite unnecessary, Mr. Downes,” she said, “unless you are afraid of me. We are both adults.”

He inclined his head to her without removing his eyes from hers, set down his glass, and slipped quietly from the room.

She found flirtations exhilarating, Helena admitted to herself as she sipped from her glass and looked about the room without making any attempt to rejoin any group. She indulged in them whenever she felt so inclined—always in private. She scorned the appearance
of propriety for its own sake, but how could one conduct a satisfactory flirtation in the sight of others? She did not care if people noticed her disappearing alone with a certain gentleman and thought her promiscuous.

She was not. She had never desired the distastefulness of full physical intimacy—she had endured enough of that during her seven-year marriage. Though of course there had been a time during that marriage … no! She shuddered inwardly. She would not think of that now—or ever if she could help it.

She had never sought to enliven her widowhood with affairs—or even with
an
affair. But then she had rarely met a man with as great a physical appeal as Mr. Downes.

She would take him home and lure him up to her drawing room. She would find out more about him. She suspected that he might be a fascinating man—perhaps he could fascinate her for an hour or more of the night. Nights were always interminably long. She would flirt with him. Perhaps she would even allow him to steal a kiss—there was definite appeal in the thought, though she normally avoided even kisses.

Perhaps he would not be satisfied with a mere kiss. But she was not afraid. She had never found herself unable to deal with amorous men, though she had known her fair share.

She smiled as her eyes found the Countess of Greenwald.

She set her glass down in order to go bid her hostess a good night.

And perhaps
she
would not be satisfied with a mere kiss, she thought a few minutes later as she allowed Mr. Downes to hand her into her carriage and climb in beside her.

She had never felt quite so tempted.

How would it
feel
with him?
she wondered, turning her head to smile half scornfully at her companion,
though he was not necessarily the object of her scorn. With a handsome, virile, powerful, doubtless very experienced man.

She felt a twinge of alarm at the direction her thoughts had taken. And more than a twinge of desire.

She would talk sense into herself before she arrived home, she told herself. She might even dismiss him on the pavement outside her door and send him back to the soirée.

But she knew she would not do that.

Sometimes loneliness was almost a tangible thing.

E
DGAR WAS NOT REALLY SURE HE UNDERSTOOD THE
situation. Or believed her story. Why would two servants have walked home after accompanying her to the Greenwalds’? And she did not seem the sort of person to tire early when she was at a party. She had been the center of attention in every group gathered about her all evening.

And why him?

He sat beside her as close to his side of her carriage as he could so that she would not think he was taking advantage of the situation. She sat with her back half across the corner at her side, looking at him in the near-darkness, talking easily and quite without malice about the people who had attended the party. She spoke in that low, velvety voice, the half smile of mockery or something else on her lips every time a street lamp lit her face.

He would help her to alight at her door, he thought, see her safely inside her home, and then walk back to Greenwald’s house. It was not very far. He would refuse the offer—if she made it—of a ride back in her carriage. He would go back to the soirée rather than straight home. He had not told Cora he was leaving.

But when the lady had stepped down from the carriage to the pavement and had removed her hand from his, she did not lift her skirt with it the more easily to
ascend the four steps to the front door. She slipped it through his arm.

“You must come inside, Mr. Downes,” she told him, “and have a drink before returning.”

Presumably the aunt she had mentioned was inside the house. But was it likely that an ailing lady would be out of her bed at this time of night—it must be well past midnight—and sitting in the drawing room with her embroidery on the chance that she would be called upon to play chaperone? He was not being naive. He was merely unwilling to accept the evidence of his own reasoning powers.

A manservant had opened the front door even before the steps of the carriage had been set down. He took Edgar’s hat and cloak from him, after favoring him with a level, measuring look—he was as tall as Edgar and even broader, and as bald as a polished egg. He looked more like a pugilist than a butler, an impression enhanced by his crooked, flattened nose.

“You need not wait up, Hobbes,” Lady Stapleton said, taking Edgar’s arm and turning him in the direction of the stairs.

“Very well, my lady,” the servant said in a voice one might expect a man to use if he had a handful of gravel lodged in his throat.

The lady paused on the first landing as if in thought, appeared to come to some decision, and climbed on to the second. Edgar would have had to be an innocent indeed if he had expected to find a drawing room beyond the door at which she stopped, indicating with an inclination of the head that he might open it. This was not the living floor of the house. Even so it was something of a shock to find himself entering a very cozy bedchamber. There was a soft carpet underfoot. The curtains were looped back from the large canopied bed. The bedcovers were neatly turned back. There were lit
candles on the dressing table and bedside table. A fire burned in the hearth.

Edgar closed the door behind his back and stayed where he was. It was a very feminine room, warm and comfortable and clean. That subtle perfume she wore clung to it. It was, he thought, the room of a very expensive courtesan. He found himself wondering if he would be presented later with a quite exorbitant bill. He did not much care.

“Well, Mr. Downes.” She had walked into the room and turned to him now, one hand resting on the dressing table. There was a look almost of defiance on her face. She raised one mocking eyebrow. “Shall I ring for tea?”

“That seems hardly necessary.” He walked toward her until he was a foot away from her. But why him? he wondered. Because of her discovery that he was not a gentleman? Would a gentleman have offered his escort? Would he have come inside the house with her? Ascended that second flight of stairs with her?

To hell with what gentlemen would have done or would do. She had made her choice. She would live with it for tonight. He set his hands on either side of her waist—not a slender waist, but an undeniably shapely one. He drew her against him, angled his head to one side, parted his lips, closed his eyes, and kissed her.

And felt that he had landed in the very midst of a fireworks display—not as a spectator but as one of the fireworks.

She moved against him. Not just to bring herself closer to him but to—move against him. He became hotly aware of everything—her warm and shapely thighs, her generous hips, her abdomen rubbing against his almost instant erection, her breasts, her shoulders. One of her arms had come about his waist, beneath his coat. The fingers of the other hand twined themselves in his hair. Her mouth opened beneath his own and moved against
it. He found himself doing what he had not done since his youth, having found it distasteful then. He pressed his tongue deep into her mouth.

And then she withdrew and he withdrew and they stood gazing at each other, still touching from the waist down, their breathing labored. That strange smile lingered about her lips. But her eyes were heavy with passion and excitement.

“I do hope you live up to early promise, Mr. Downes,” she said.

“I shall do my very best, ma’am,” he said.

And then she turned and presented him with a row of tiny pearl buttons down the back of her gown. He undid them one at a time while she lifted her arms and withdrew the pins from her hair. She held it up until he was finished and then let it fall, long and dark and wavy, with its enticing reddish tints. He nudged the gown off her shoulders with the straps of her shift and she let them fall to the floor before turning and removing her undergarments and her stockings while he watched.

She had a mature figure—firm, ample, voluptuous. She was incredibly beautiful. He felt his mouth go dry again as he shrugged out of his coat and reached for the button of his waistcoat.

“Ah, no,” she said, brushing his hands aside and laughing at him with that throaty laugh that now seemed to be in its proper setting. “You have had the pleasure of unclothing me, Mr. Downes. You will not deny me the pleasure of doing the like for you.”

She undressed him while he listened to his heartbeat hammering against his eardrums and concentrated on controlling and mastering the urge to tumble her back onto the bed so that he might the sooner explode into ease. She took her time. She was in no hurry at all.

Not until they were finally on the bed. Then she became passion unleashed. There was no shyness, no
shrinking, no ladylike modesty, no taboos. Her hands explored him with frank interest and wild demand while his did the like to her. Her mouth participated in the exploration, moving over him, kissing, licking, sucking, biting. He devoured her with his own mouth, tasting perfume and sweat and woman.

He had never been a man for rough sex. Perhaps because of his size he had always been careful to leash his passions, to touch gently, to mount slowly, to pump with control. But he had never before been with a woman whose passion could equal his own—and perhaps even outstrip it. When he rolled her nipples between his thumbs and the bases of his forefingers, she spoke to him.

“Harder,” she begged him. “Harder.”

And when he squeezed and she gasped with pain and he would have desisted, her hands came up to cover his, to press his thumbs and forefingers together again. She gasped with pain once more.

“Come to me,” she was saying then, her body in frenzied motion. “Give it to me. Give it to me.”

He moved between her thighs, felt her legs lift to twine about his, felt her hands spread hard over his buttocks, positioned himself, and thrust hard and deep. She cried out. He settled his weight on her—his full weight. He knew what she wanted and what he wanted. Neither of them would have it if he allowed her to buck and gyrate beneath him. And he was very aware that she had led the way thus far. It was not in his nature to allow a woman to dictate his every action and reaction.

She urged him on with frenzied words and clawing hands and with the muscles of her thighs and the muscles inside, where he worked. But he took her without frenzy, with deep, methodical, rhythmic strokes. His heart felt as if it must burst. With every inward thrust he
felt as if he must surely explode into release. But he would not let a woman master him.