How To Vex A Viscount (27 page)

And recognized a milliner’s shop.

“Stop, please,” she called, and the chair came to a chugging halt.

She’d almost forgotten the little hat she’d dropped off there at Mrs Heppleworth’s millinery to be refitted. It was the one she’d smashed hopelessly on Lucian’s square chin that day she ran into him at the Society of Antiquaries. The milliner had made
tsking
sounds when Daisy brought in the ruined
fontange
for her to examine, but the excellent craftswoman had promised to try to repair it.

In years to come, that cunning bit of feather-and-lace frippery might serve as a sweet reminder of her reunion with Lucian. Even though Miss Daisy Drake was supposed to be in Cornwall and therefore should
not
be seen larking about London, she had to retrieve that hat.

Daisy had managed to get in and out of the Society of Antiquaries without any problem. One more stop wouldn’t hurt. She glanced up and down the street from behind the safety of her chair’s curtain. She recognized no one, so she told her bearers she would be back in an instant and scurried into Mrs Heppleworth’s tidy establishment.

One other patron was in the shop, counting out coins into Mrs Heppleworth’s open palm, and Daisy stopped dead for a moment. The woman’s striped skirt was fashioned from sturdy, practical fabric, not some exotic silk, and the heels of her sensible shoes bespoke someone who was on her feet most of the day, not lounging on a fainting couch. She was someone’s lady’s maid, out and about on an errand for her mistress, and not one of Daisy’s many acquaintances. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Until the woman turned around to leave.

“Mam’selle!” Nanette said, her eyes wide. “
Quelle surprise!
We thought you had left the city.”

“I did.”

“But you missed the hustle and bustle of London there in the country, no?”

“No, I mean, yes,” Daisy stammered.
Why, by all that’s holy, did I not stay in the covered chair?

“Madame will be overjoyed to see you again,” Nanette gushed. “She was very sad for you to leave. But now you have returned. Wait until I tell her—”

Daisy stopped her with a hand to her forearm and drew her away from Mrs Heppleworth. The only thing that worthy merchant was more famous for than her clever hat designs was her unending font of gossip about those who wore them.

“Nanette, I must ask a favour of you.”

“Anything, mam’selle. You have only to name it and I will give. You know that.”

“Good,” Daisy said. “I must have your solemn promise that you will not tell a living soul you have seen me in London.”

“What?”

“I don’t intend to return to my great-aunt’s home just yet,” she said, turning her gaze in the shopkeeper’s direction.

Mrs Heppleworth was doing her level best to seem intent on deciding which satin trim to attach to the rim of a straw bonnet, but her ears were certainly perked to their conversation.

Daisy lowered her voice to a whisper. “I’m not in town as myself, you see.”

Nanette’s lips formed an
ooh
of understanding. “Mlle La Tour, I presume.”

“Naturally . . . I mean,
naturelement,”
she said, switching to French. With any luck at all, Mrs Heppleworth didn’t speak the language. “I’ve leased a house on Singletary Street so I can continue my work with Lord Rutland—”

“Please, mam’selle, tell me you do not regard making the love as work!” Her delicate sniff proclaimed that Nanette’s Gallic soul was insulted by the very idea.

Daisy’s cheeks burned. Nanette didn’t need to know everything.

“I’m speaking of his Roman treasure,” she said, willing her cheeks to stop betraying her. “We’ve discovered where to look for it. So you see why it is imperative that you tell no one you saw me here. We don’t want anyone else to know how close Lord Rutland and I are. To discovering the treasure, I mean.”

Was carnal experience something that others could sense? Was the loss of her maidenhead somehow stamped on her features, invisible yet clearly discernible to one who took the time to look closely?

As Nanette was doing now . . .

She cocked her head at Daisy and narrowed her gaze. “And when shall you be telling Madame you are not in Cornwall, as she supposes?”

“As soon as we’ve found the treasure, Nanette, I promise.”

“Very well,
cherie.”
Nanette smiled at her. “But only because I see that you are happy with your young man. A handsome devil, that one.”

Now Daisy smiled. Nanette didn’t know the half of it. “A handsome devil, indeed.” Then her brow furrowed. “I have your promise?”

“Oui, mam’selle, I promise. I will tell no living soul I have seen you.” Nanette winked. “Your heart may rest easy. After working for Madame for all these years, I have great experience in the keeping of the secrets. Yours, she is safe with me.”

Daisy wondered, as she returned later to her chair with her refurbished hat neatly boxed, if Nanette would have given her promise so willingly if she’d known what Daisy was planning.

Night settled over London like a heavy black shawl. One by one, the thousands of small lanterns required to be lit by householders began to wink on around Lucian, bathing the soot-choked city in a kindly, hazy light.

Lucian bounded up the steps to Daisy’s new residence, taking them two at a time. The day seemed long without her, but he suspected wanting only increased his joy in having. Not only was he looking forward to discovering new delights with her, but the old Oxford don he met with at White’s had not disappointed him. Lucian now had the name of the island on the Thames where he fully expected to find Caius Meritus’s Roman cache.

Braellafgwen.
The name sang in his ears and sent his blood surging hotly through his veins. He couldn’t wait to see the look on Daisy’s face when he told her.

He hammered the knocker on the bright red door and smiled warmly at the dour butler who admitted him.

Must be Witherspoon,
he decided. The man was just as briny as Daisy had described him when she told Lucian of her newly established household in London. Witherspoon might be sour-looking, she’d said, but he was the very devil for efficiency and, more important, discretion. In light of Lucian’s fortuitous news, his heart was brimming with goodwill, even for an old pickle like Witherspoon.

“You would be Lord Rutland, I presume. Mlle La Tour is expecting you,” the sticklike man said, his face a bland mask. “Allow me to escort you to her chamber.”

Lucian was glad Daisy had been forward-thinking enough to lease the house and hire the servants in the guise of Blanche. That way, there was no need to hide their libertine activities from the servants. They already expected the worst from their employer. And if they spread tales, the fact that Daisy’s true identity was safe from evil gossip was icing on the cake.

There was no reason to hide his own identity. In certain circles, a man’s reputation was enhanced, not diminished, by association with a notorious woman of pleasure. An inequity, doubtless, but true all the same.

“No need, Witherspoon,” Lucian said as he mounted the wide stairs. “I can find my way.”

“Very good, milord. Second door on the left.”

Lucian smiled. Witherspoon was an unlikely prophet who had no idea he’d just announced the way to paradise.

Lucian climbed the stairs, his body thrumming with anticipation. Would she be wearing that naughty nipple-displaying red gown again, or maybe the elegant corselet with all those lovely lace ties? Perhaps this time he’d manage not to befoul the ribbons as he undid her.

But when he rapped sharply on her door and heard her call out, in French for the servants’ benefit, for him to enter, he discovered she was wearing neither of those delightful confections.

She was naked as a newborn babe.

“Bonsoir, Lucian,” she said from the burnished copper hip bath in the centre of the room.

She’d dispensed with Blanche’s mask and wig, her own blond curls piled on top of her head, just a couple of wayward locks teasing her slender neck. Her breasts were wreathed in bubbles on the surface of the bath. Where the froth of soap parted, the water was like molten gold in the glow of the candles.

He knew his mouth was opening and shutting, but no sound would come from his lips.

She laughed softly. “You might close the door behind you. The hall is drafty, you know.”

She leaned back and propped one foot on the end of the tub, water and soap bubbles slithering from her ankle, past her shapely calf and back into the bath. She sank into the tub up to her shoulders.

“I so enjoy a good soak, don’t you?”

“From this vantage point especially,” he finally managed to say as the latch clicked behind him. A bath had never seemed like anything other than a method for getting clean. Daisy Drake festooned with soap bubbles was as far removed from something next to godliness as anything he could imagine.

He wasn’t conscious of ordering his feet to move, but he found himself standing over her. The mysteries of her delectable flesh were hidden in the water’s shadows. His groin clenched anyway.

“A few more candles would not come amiss,” he said.

She laughed again, and this time, he thought he detected a little nervousness in the sound. He was a bit relieved by it. He knew she’d been a virgin when they made love in the Duke of Lammermoor’s library. But she played the wanton with such devastating conviction; he wondered where she’d learned the courtesan’s arts. True, her great-aunt was a famed paramour, but surely she wouldn’t initiate her innocent niece into those mysteries.

“No more candles.” She wagged a wet finger at him. “Blanche always says, ‘A man’s imagination is a woman’s best asset.’ It’s true, don’t you think?”

“Your assets need no enhancement.” He dropped to one knee beside the tub, letting a hand trail in the water. It was quite hot. No wonder her exposed skin was so flushed. “Blanche says? Then there really is a Blanche La Tour?”

“Indeed.”

Before he reached the soapy knee that was his goal, she found his fingers with hers and set his hand firmly back on the side of the tub. Evidently in this new game he was allowed to look, but not touch.

“I’ve never met her in person, of course,” Daisy said, lifting her arms in a languid stretch. Her breasts rose almost, but not quite from the water, their rosy tips visible for a blink before disappearing beneath the suds once again. Lucian’s breeches were becoming unbearably tight. “But I’ve read most of her memoirs, and believe me, she has plenty to remember. Blanche La Tour is a font of information.”

That explained much. “Ah! Bookishness has its reward.”

“Is that how I seem to you?” She sent a teasing splash his way. He recognized Daisy in the gesture instead of the courtesan and didn’t care that she was water-spotting his best and only remaining frock coat. “Bookish?”

“No. You seem . . .” He had no words to describe her. She was so much of everything—vixen and virgin, siren and saint, Eve and Jezebel at once. Dark and bright, she was a contradiction with feet. Lovely, soapy feet with delicately arched insteps. Lucian finally settled on “. . . womanly.”

She smiled, a satisfied feline smile, and he knew he was lost.

He didn’t care one whit.

Lucian fought to maintain eye contact with her, but it was a losing proposition. Her skin gleamed wetly, and where the bubbles parted on the surface of the bath, he was treated to tantalizing glimpses in the shimmering depths below. A curved waist here, a dimpled knee there, a quick peek at her belly with the tiny indentation of her navel winking at him—it was all he could do not to hoist her from the bath, throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to the waiting bed in the corner. The little minx was treasure begging to be discovered.

Lucian suddenly remembered the news he had for her. “Oh! I found the name of the island where—”

She put a wet finger to his mouth. “Later. Now we search for other riches.” She drew her thumb across his lower lip, then raised herself to her knees, her upper body rising from the bath like Venus rising from the waves.

She leaned to kiss him and her breasts fell forward into his waiting palms. Soft, full, just the right size for his hands. They were a perfect fit. Her nipples hardened against his palms.

Her skin was slick and smooth. As their kiss deepened, he slid his hands down her ribs, into the water to cup her sex. She was even softer there, and when he slipped a fingertip in the small crevice, she moaned into his mouth. Her legs parted in invitation.

She was wet, more than wet from the bath. Her intimate folds were heavy with the dew that meant she wanted him as much as he did her. He slid a finger into her opening, caressing and seeking.

She pulled away from their kiss. “Not yet,” she said breathily. “You haven’t had
your
bath, sir.”

“A man must hear a few no’s in order to fully appreciate a yes.”

—the journal of Blanche La Tour

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“My bath?” Lucian said with a hard blink.