Bared to the Viscount (The Rites of May Book 1) (6 page)

Just at the moment, she needed to move away from him. If she didn’t, the impulses battling inside her might split her straight down the middle.

She went to cupboard for saucers and cups, searching for the rare ones that had no cracks or chips. Tea might restore the man—might restore them
both—
to sanity. “Your offer is beyond decent, Lord Parkhurst,” she said, reminding him of who he was, and therefore how foolish he was being. “But you’re a peer of the realm! You need a wife appropriate to your station.”

“You’re a gentlewoman.”

“
Impoverished
gentlewoman. With a few minor lords in the family tree, mostly distant branches. London Society would not find my pedigree impressive.”

“Your mother had a baronet for an uncle.”

“Yes, on her father’s side. But on her mother’s, a bricklayer and a man with a Cheapside oyster shop.”

He shook his head impatiently. “You’re a virtuous woman. That’s all that matters.”

“But this is
unnecessary
. There will be no consequences to what we did. No one saw us. And it’s not like you could have gotten me with child.”

He gave a choked little laugh. “Always so practical, Mary.”

“Yes, practical.” Though her hands felt unsteady, they held the kettle firm as she lifted it from the hob and took it to the sink to pour hot water into her coarse earthenware teapot.

Tempting as his offer might be, he was speaking nonsense. Great heavens—what would all her neighbors think if Viscount Parkhurst suddenly married the vicar’s spinster sister? Everyone was expecting him to marry a Lawton girl. Any man in his right mind would
prefer
a Lawton girl. He could only end up with plain little Mary Wilkins if—if something
untoward
happened when they were alone together, something that forced his hand as a gentleman. Something quite outrageous.

Which is essentially what happened, of course, but in not quite as lurid a way as the townspeople would assume.

Or maybe what happened was
more
lurid than what the townspeople would think. It was certainly more lurid than what anyone thought prim and proper Mary Wilkins capable of. Herself included, at least up until this morning. Oh, she remembered the feel of his hands on her inner thighs, of his lips against her cleft, and his tongue pushing inside her. So much more sensual than anything she could have imagined beforehand.

She fumbled with the lock to her battered old tea-chest, and her fingers shook so much, half the precious leaves she spooned out scattered over the sink. “Can you imagine the scandal of what you’re suggesting?” she said, keeping her eyes averted from him. “It would be an outrage for you to spurn the Lawton girls. They’ve put off their Seasons waiting for you—Miss Lawton for three whole years! I know for a fact she’s turned down at least two very eligible suitors, both of whom have now married other girls. How many other chances has she wasted on your account? If you don’t marry her, people may think she’s on the shelf!”

John heaved a deep breath behind her. Clearly, he knew she was right to chide him.

“And then for you to go and marry the vicar’s sister?” she said. “A girl with no charms at all, when you had such pretty brides available to you? You know what everyone will assume.”

“I don’t care what anyone assumes.”

She turned to face him, and was instantly startled. John, who had been kneeling on the floor last she looked at him, now stood just inches away, towering over her. He must have got up without a sound, and now loomed so close, she could smell the wool of his coat. The spoon dropped from her fingers and clattered to the slate floor.

His eyes locked on hers, but with determination, not with passion. He was being very stiff-spined now. Dutiful. A soldier. “I only care about doing what’s right.”

“Well, I care what people assume! They’ll assume I seduced you, for why would a man like you seduce a girl like me? They’ll assume I used some shameless trickery. And they’ll assume we did….far worse than what we did.”

“What we did was enough.” The memory did not seem to please him. No, he looked utterly miserable, like a trapped animal.

“
Think
, John!” she pleaded. “If people think me a hussy, Thomas won’t be able to hold his head up in the pulpit. He may be asked to leave his position as vicar. He could be ruined.”

That at least made him avert his eyes for a moment, his expression abashed. But he gathered himself deliberately. “We still must do what’s right. I compromised you, Mary…in—in the sight of God.”

“God has seen far worse, believe me.”

“Not from me. Not from you.” He blinked suddenly. “Unless you’ve ever….”

“No! Certainly not! I’ve never done anything like that before!”

“Thank goodness.” The relief on his face was palpable.

Oh, dear. He was a good man. A very decent man. And he didn’t want to be in this position at all.

And why should he be? He hadn’t chosen it. A stand of vicious blackberry vines and an over-curious spinster had trapped him into it.

But he wasn’t backing down. His face looked dreadfully pale, but determined. “Your own brother is a man of God. If his household doesn’t do what’s right, whose will?”

“I’ll tell you what I know from being a clergyman’s daughter, and a clergyman’s sister. All my life, when people in this village have been in trouble, when they’ve transgressed, when they’ve done wrong by their marriage vows, they’ve come here. To this kitchen. Often in the middle of the night. You think I haven’t heard the confessions over the years? My bed chamber is just above this kitchen. What you and I have done is nothing compared to half of what I’ve heard.
Nothing
, John.”

He looked almost insulted. “That was nothing to you?”

A pang went through her heart. She didn’t want to think about what it had meant to her. She
couldn’t
think of that. All that mattered now was setting him free from the trap she’d inadvertently sprung on him.

She moved out from between him and the sink and went to the cupboard for her tea-strainer, setting it over the best teacup just as if they had nothing more to discuss than which workmen to hire for the school roof repair.

“Do you know Lady Ellerby, who’s leased Rosemere Cottage?” she said. “Did you know she had to leave London because she’d been having simultaneous affairs with the Prince Regent and the Duke of York, and the brothers nearly fought a duel over her? I’m not violating the sanctity of the confessional, either. She told me so herself, over tea. She seemed rather proud of it.”

“Please, Mary, I don’t care what other people—”

“Lord Parkhurst,” she insisted. “This morning was an aberration, for both of us. But I don’t regret it any more than Lady Ellerby regretted her affairs, and I’m not ashamed. It was something I needed, just once in my life, and you were kind enough to give it to me. But now it’s done. I won’t have it lead to any suffering.”

“
Suffering
? Good Lord, is that how you see it? Being married to me?”

Before she could say another word, he’d advanced on her again, wrapping an arm around her waist, spinning her to face him, and pushing her back against the cupboard.

His hips pressed to hers.

“Is this suffering?” he asked, and slipped his other hand inside her bodice, fitting his fingers around her breast.

Bright arcs of sensation shot out from where he touched her, radiating throughout her body, sending little starbursts everywhere. Her eyes squeezed shut. She only realized she’d been holding a teacup when it fell from her grip and shattered on the slate.

He ignored the crash.

His hand lifted her breast so the nipple peeked above the cloth, and he fitted his mouth where his palm had been. He suckled her as he’d done that morning, and the sensation sent a throb between her legs.

And he wasn’t stopping. His hands both went behind her and began tugging at the laces of her dress, even as his mouth continued drawing at her breast. Soon he had the top of her dress loosened enough to draw it down from her shoulders, baring her halfway down her rib cage. With hands and lips and tongue he pleasured her, moving from one nipple to the other, hungrily.

She leaned back against the cupboard, boneless, molten. She wanted to sink to the floor with him, broken china or no. The only good she could imagine in this world would be for him to lift her skirts and touch her down there as well, and undo his trousers and sink himself inside of her.

He was groaning now, his breathing grown frantic, and his hands reached down to grasp the fabric of her skirt. It would be so easy, so easy to surrender everything to him. To let him give himself to her, right here, right now, forever.

But it wasn’t what he wanted—not really. He was a man. He could take his pleasure with any woman, her as well as another, once he put his hands on her. But so much more was at stake here.

He thought he had to
marry
her. And he was a viscount, for pity’s sake. He needed a fashionable wife, a lovely creature who could run an aristocratic house and charm earls and waltz with dukes and host dinners for the Prince Regent himself. Not a little country mouse with a pale mouth and flat chest and no city manners.

She couldn’t let him ruin his whole life over a few minutes’ animal indiscretion.

Gathering all her strength, she pushed him away, hard.

He looked startled, half in his trance again, confusion on his face.

When he tried to move toward her again, she held out one hand to block him. She yanked her bodice back to a reasonable degree of modesty and drew herself up straight. The next question would be painful, for both of them, but he had to understand the point she was trying to make. “Do you love me?”

Now he was flustered. “Mary….”

She thought about the Miss Lawtons, with all their graces and physical charms.
They
were women designed to attract men’s love. She herself most certainly was not. “Listen to me,” she said. “There’s only one thing that matters here. Before this morning, before we went up on that hill, did you have the slightest thought in your head about asking me to marry you?”

Every muscle in his face seemed to tighten. He nearly spoke, then stopped himself. The only possible answer was
no
, and they both knew it. “But we did go up on that hill!” he insisted.

“
Before
that happened, John. Did you have the slightest thought of choosing me for a wife? Be honest with me.”

He stiffened his posture, pure gentleman and officer. “I have always liked and admired you.”

“But did you ever once think of
marrying
me?”

He glanced up, considering, and then an impish look crossed his face. “Well, I do seem to remember a scheme to run off and sail a pirate ship together.”

A short, pained laugh escaped her. She’d forgotten about that. Long ago, they’d given themselves bloodthirsty pirate names, made buccaneer hats out of paper, even drawn up maps of all the coastline they planned to terrorize. “That was when we were ten years old.”

“It counts.” His eyes twinkled, just for a moment—the first sign of light in them she’d seen all evening. A tender ache filled her heart.

Oh, he really wasn’t making this easier for her.

But she shook her head. “As I recall, our only concern about how we’d live together was which of us got to be captain.”

“Mary,” he whispered. His expression had gentled and grown sad. “Be sensible. This isn’t a game.”

“Precisely. It’s the rest of our
lives
we’re talking about. So I’ll ask you again: would you ever have asked me to marry you if we hadn’t gone out in the woods this morning? Tell the truth.” She did her best to smile at him, trying to keep her mouth from wobbling. “I know it already anyway.”

He looked down. “Well…no,” he admitted at last. “I can’t say that I did.”

“That’s all I need to hear.” She swung herself back into efficient action, moving past her erstwhile suitor to retrieve her dustpan and broom to sweep up the broken teacup. If she could just get the shattered bits cleaned up, she could put everything else back in order, too. Back the way it should be. “I will not saddle you with a wife for such a small indiscretion. Not a wife like me. We would be miserable together.” She looked up into the sudden shock in his eyes, and softened her words. “I would not do that to someone I call a friend.”

John drew in a slow, deep breath. There was resignation in it, but also pain. He was an honorable man, and she was forcing him to compromise what he saw as his honor. “This isn’t over,” he said. “You will be convinced.”

“That’s not possible.” The china shards tinkled as she swept them together and poured them into the bin beside the door. “I think things through carefully, and once I’ve come to a decision, I stick to it. I’m stubborn, and you know it.”

Setting down her broom, she picked up her lantern again and walked briskly to the front door, shepherding him along with her. “It’s time you left now. You are my friend, John, always. But it’s not proper for you to be here any longer, and we will not discuss this again.”