A Man Above Reproach (18 page)

“Necessary, yes, good.”

She ran her hands across his chest, pulling the coat back. He moved his shoulders as helpfully as he could, as long as it did not inhibit his main goal at the moment, pinning her beneath him and stealing the exhales from her mouth. The remains of the laudanum still thrummed in his veins, making it easier to forget his conduct. He let his fingertips wander where only his eyes had before and grazed a thumb over her nipple before he even knew what he was doing. It was as if they had
wandered into one of his half-formed dreams, all glowing and unreal. The lazy circle he made earned him a low moan, a sound that cracked every bit of gentlemanly reserve he had been saving. His hands went everywhere, wanted to be everywhere on her body all at once.

“The door is not locked,” she said against his cheek, though she did not cease her own explorations of his torso.

“They will not be back so soon. They think you will convince me of my mistake.” He kept kissing her as he spoke, elongating the two sentences. His hands had stolen their way under her skirts and onto sturdy stockings unlike the ones she wore at the Dove. He flashed a wicked smile, teasing her released an outrageous feeling of happiness in him. “You are not wearing stays, how shameful.”

As he had hoped, she scowled close to his face. He could feel the expression against his skin.

“I am not going to a ball, this is a day dress and besides, I had not thought to be here more than a few minutes.”

“You must tire of being wrong,” he said, biting her earlobe. He ran a hand along the length of her leg, long and shapely. She trembled. If he had to go to Lord Frost’s ball tonight and end up engaged to be married, he would take all that Josephine would allow him now, for it would be the last time he could do it without disrespecting the both of them. If he could not take his pleasure, he wanted to at least give her something to remember him by. With a silent entreaty to any listening god that she would not slap him, he stole a hand under the rough fabric of her chemise.

She lost all of her breath in one whoosh when Elias’s fingers found the most sensitive spot on her body. She was shocked, coursed to the bone with pleasure, but shocked that he would be so bold. Neither of them
was in possession of their wits at the current moment, yet still—his sense of propriety had gone out of the window posthaste when faced with their imminent separation. Once he had pushed her chemise up, she was overwhelmed with wanting him—all of him. It was a sensation she did not feel often, being that her nights were spent surrounded by disgusting, licentious men who activated no lust in her. She had tried to rationalize her attraction to Elias, but as his fingers found their target, she finally knew for certain that there was no rationale.

He could ruin her, for all she cared.

She clung to his neck, feeling like she might faint, or no—just dizzy? Yes, dizzy, that was it. The room was spinning because her eyes were shut so tight. She thought her face must be bright red. She whimpered, feeling his finger move back and forth slowly on the core of her heat, made all the smoother by the sudden rush of slickness that had come with her excitement. These things that she had imagined him doing in her secret thoughts… he was doing all that and on a steady path toward more, his right hand between her legs firmly, working some sort of magic. It was nothing in comparison to the fumbling experimentation of her youth.

“Tell me to stop, love,” he said thickly.

“No, I mean, yes,” she managed. “Don’t. I can’t.”

Even though she could not speak in complete sentences, Elias understood her. He gave her another slow kiss as he stroked under her skirts, his lips in languid duet with his clever hands. He was half on top of her, half perched precariously on the settee, all single-minded. All she could do was weave her hands through his hair and attempt to kiss him back, but she kept getting distracted by what his fingers were doing.

All pretense of trying to keep up with him became moot when he slipped one long digit inside of her. She moaned and her head lolled
back. For the fleeting moment that her eyes flew open, she saw a rakish grin on his face.

“Unrepentant rogue,” he said in a voice darker than she had ever heard from him.

She squirmed.

“No one asked you to repent,” she exhaled, bucking slightly as his thumb caressed the soft, ecstatic center of her. Her barbed remark, so difficult to form, was lost in a murmur of sounds that she did not think were words. Her eyes fluttered shut again. She could not look at him; the sensation was so intense. He moved another digit inside her and she pushed her pelvis toward him, flooded with a swift and aching need.

“That look on your face,” he whispered. “Oh god.”

He pressed the hard length of himself against her in a desperate, involuntary way and cupped her breast. His desire for her increased the blinding white light that had been building behind her eyelids. She felt a distinct wish to hear her real name in his lust-colored tenor, so instead she just moaned his own over and over as her consciousness exploded. She shuddered into him, feeling the most connected to another person she had ever experienced and also curiously outside of herself. Detached from the walls that she had built around her heart.

After she had calmed, he withdrew his hand from the layers of her skirts carefully. She crawled back into his arms and he hugged her tight, anchoring her against his slim and tight torso. She didn’t have any words.

“I thought you could not be more beautiful, but in the throes of ecstasy… you are a goddess,” he said with sincere reverence. “To think that is the only time I will see—”

“Shhh, darling. None of that.”

She put an arm around his lithe frame and buried her face. Strangely, she felt as if she might weep. She was not the hysterical kind.
It also was not as if this was the first time a man had given her pleasure, but—it was distinctly different. Emotional. Horrifying, unwanted feelings surged to the forefront of her mind, unhinged by the climax.

She came crashing back into reality. What in the world had they done? Lost all control, and on Sally’s settee, at that. An unlocked door that could have been opened at any moment. She sat up and pulled at her wrinkled clothing. She felt a rush of embarrassment—what a wanton she was, allowing this to happen. The man was capable of making her lose herself completely.

“Oh no,” Elias said. “I see what is happening. You are already analyzing again. I know many ways we can stop that process. Shall I take you back to the Paper Garden? We can steal an afternoon. Josie, it is possible.”

“That is not my name,” she said, terse with defensiveness.

“Do not snap at me,” he returned. “Not now.”

Josephine resolved to blame it all on the blasted laudanum and his lowered inhibitions, yet she still could not believe she had let her passion master her so.

“This is uncomfortable. We must get you dressed.”

He fixed her with his odd amber eyes commandingly.

“Very well. But you will not shut down on me. I will dress and we will talk—with not a wink involved and no lies. Judging by Alessandra’s whims, she will grow bored in ten more minutes. Talk to me without defending yourself with sarcasm for those ten minutes. You owe me that, at the least.”

She picked up his waistcoat.

“Always making bargains,” she muttered. “You really would do smashingly in the House of Lords.”

“I said no sarcasm.”

Elias bent down to retrieve his cravat, his pants still painfully tight. He had expected her idyllic state to carry them back to her house. Since that did not seem to be the case, he had to grasp to prolong their time together.

“I was not being sarcastic. You would do fine in Lords, but better back at Oxford, which is where you will end up.”

He walked to a mirror standing in the corner, snapping the creased cloth. He slung it around his neck and began tying it into a Mail Coach, the easiest knot he knew, though it still could look sharp. Josephine was smiling behind him, holding out his topcoat.

“Your Grace,” she prodded. He shrugged into the coat, enjoying the intimacy of it, as if she had come into his bedroom in the middle of his morning ritual. “You know, I assumed that you did not tie your own cravats, that such artistry could not be the work of a coddled duke.”

“Brummell tied his.”

Josephine rolled her eyes at the mention of the notorious dandy, who bore little resemblance to Elias in any manner, except perhaps that they both had excellent tailors.

“You are no dandy,” she said.

“I am impeccable, though,” he smiled fondly at her reflection. “Am I not?”

“Not at the moment,” she chided, flattening his hair though she had to stand on her tiptoes to do it.

Elias figured he should not delay telling her his feelings.

“I thought I was ready to be virtuous and dependable, but I am not.” He flipped one side of the tie in a skillful tug. “I cannot let you go.”

“Elias,” she sighed, so close that he felt it on the back of his neck. It did not help his unfulfilled desire for her. “You are expected to declare to Miss Francis. When you get home, your mother will be livid. She will browbeat you into proposing, am I wrong? Your silence answers
that. We both must do the right thing and that means going in different directions.”

“That has little to do with your pigheadedness. It is an excuse.” He finished the ends of the cravat and faced her. She began to button his coat without prompting and once again, the normally innocuous gesture was sexually charged. Her fingers on the cold metal of the buttons were too suggestive. He cleared his throat.

“What I am saying, Miss-Whomever-You-Are, is that you mustn’t forget that it is
you
who has not given
me
a chance. You refuse me information, using a vague scandal as a shield, though for all you know, my mother might adore you. I think that she would. You are both so stubborn and unruly.”

“Silliness, Eli. Your mother would not tolerate the presence of such a commoner.”

“Another assumption.” He smoothed his pants, tucking the bottom hems into his boots much neater than before. His head was beginning to clear, both from the medicine and the vehemence of his longing. “Tell me something truly. Why did you flee to Scotland with your mother? If your father was titled, as you say, he would have supported you monetarily no matter what. You could have enjoyed safety and security at the very least. Why get in the middle of a fight that is not yours?”

“My father was not a good man,” she stated baldly.

“Gambling? Drinking? Hell-raking?”

“All of the above.”

“Ah.” He studied her in the mirror. “Why come back to England, then?”

“I acquired the Paper Garden when he died. I told you.”

“Oh, did you? No—Josephine Grant did, and that is not your name, as you just barked at me.”

“Josephine Grant is the name on the lease, but I assure you it was my father’s shop. I am surprised that you did not find a history of transfers of the deed.”

“Curiously, the records office could not find them. It is as if they disappeared.”

“Curious indeed,” she said saucily, looking for a moment as if she was enjoying the questioning.

“Was the lease ever even in your real name?”

“Like a foxhound, you are,” she said with a sideways smile, unable to keep a proper amount of distance between them. They were again wrapped around each other, but now fully clothed. He was about as proper as he was going to get without access to his accoutrements back at Ashworth.

“Not that it will help you in finding my real name,” she continued, “but in the interest of your request for truth, the lease was under the name of my father’s mistress, which is how it could possibly come into my hands in the first place. It was the only piece of unentailed land, all the rest went to a male cousin.”

“A cousin still in Staffordshire?”

“I have no way of knowing that.”

He raised an eyebrow, doubting.

“It is the truth, if vague,” she said.

“Stay with me until they make me marry her,” he blurted, surprising himself. “We can drag the engagement out, see what happens.”

“Elias…” Her voice was melancholy now. “It is against my entire philosophy and besides, I cannot allow you to continue frequenting the Sleeping Dove. It is no place for an upright duke who is a rare credit to the nobility.”