How To Vex A Viscount (6 page)

But Blanche La Tour would never do such a thing. A real courtesan would revel in allowing a man to look his fill, so Daisy tried not to shrink from his hot glances.

Instead she laughed. She teased. She said every outrageous thing that popped into her head. No one expected decorous behaviour from a courtesan, after all.

Being Blanche was gloriously liberating.

They completed the last turn in the minuet, and it was time for the prescribed kiss. She leaned toward him, lips slightly pursed, her eyes closed.

His mouth covered hers in a warm, heart-stopping moment. The kiss was supposed to be a mere peck, of no more import than any of the other steps in the minuet, but Lucian slanted his lips on hers and lingered.

His mouth tasted of sparkling champagne. An answering fizz of effervescence bubbled inside her, spreading warmly from her bosom downward. The tingle that settled between her legs surprised her.

Lucian Beaumont was kissing her! This moment was the embodiment of her girlish dreams. Even though he’d barely tolerated her when they were children, she’d always wondered what it would be like for that little Italian boy to take her in his arms and kiss her as she’d caught her Uncle Gabriel kissing Aunt Jacquelyn. When Lucian released her, an invisible fist compressed her heart.

“A very missish kiss,” he said with raised brows.

“A woman in my profession must be all things to all people,” Daisy replied, tamping down her disappointment at his evaluation of their kiss. She’d found it wonderful. “I assumed you would be more accustomed to kissing debutantes and governed myself accordingly. Besides, on the dance floor, we are but puppets of the dance master, and our kisses must be suitable for public viewing. If we were elsewhere, we could be our own masters.”

“Then by all means, let us take ourselves elsewhere.” He offered his arm.

She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, and Lucian led her into Lord Wexford’s fragrant garden, the scent of lavender and night-blooming narcissus heavy in the air. He was about to put her bold words to the test. Her belly jittered in anticipation.

The memoirs of the real Blanche La Tour had been very detailed on the art of the kiss. Daisy ran through the particulars in her mind. Placement of the lips, time between altering positions, taking care to inhale adequately prior to beginning the kiss—
Oh,
Jupiter!
There was so much to remember, Daisy only hoped she’d absorbed enough to fool him.

When they stopped by the splashing fountain, he took both her hands in his.

“Now, Blanche, we are our own masters.”

An idea leaped into her mind. She grabbed at it as her only means to escape detection. “Ah, I very much fear only one of us will be master in this situation.”

“How do you mean?”

“Men, you always wish to have control, do you not? You meet a woman like me and you think you may take whatever you like.”

“I assure you, I shall do nothing without your consent,” Lucian promised.

“Really? Then here is what I wish. Being a wanton sometimes palls. I am on holiday here in your country,” she said, extemporizing as she went. “I wish you to make love to me as if I were a young lady whom you were courting.”

His brows drew close in a puzzled frown.

“We make honey kisses together. Sweet kisses. Here, let me show you.” She leaned forward and kissed him, moulding her lips to his, careful to observe all the real Blanche’s directives. If he found her kiss “missish” again, now she had a perfect excuse. Her lips softened under his, and she curled her fingers around his lapels, pulling him closer.

Reading about kissing and actually doing it were two entirely different things, she decided. Her soft palate ached with the sweetness of his mouth on hers.

His hands found her waist and brought her snugly against him. Even through the heavy boning of her bodice and the yards of fabric, she felt the warmth of his body.

Especially where her skirts pressed against her naked sex. Usually, the fact that she wore nothing beneath the broad flare of skirts but the stockings that were gartered at her knees gave her a wonderful sense of freedom. Now she was acutely aware of the cool fabric against her freshly hairless mound.

And his hard maleness on the other side of the thin shield of tulle.

Then he shifted his mouth, her lips parted and the kiss changed. Deepened. Flared with heat. Her bones melted. She should have expected his tongue when it slipped into her mouth, but she was so distracted by the sudden gush of warmth at her groin, she lost track of the kiss for a moment in the rush of sensations. She jerked in surprise and pulled away.

“I did it wrong, didn’t I?” He let his hands drop from her waist.

“No, no, your kiss was very—”

“Inexperienced,” he finished. “I rushed things, didn’t I? Well, there’s no hiding from you. No doubt you’ve guessed already.”

“Guessed what, Lucian?”

He sank onto the stone bench, pulling her down beside him. “That kiss was the pinnacle of my experience with the fair sex.”

What was he saying? That he had no more firsthand knowledge of physical love than she? Daisy was dumbfounded.

“Surely you jest,
Monsieur le Vicomte.
Young gentlemen of title and wealth are expected to have—”

“Ah! You’ve hit upon the problem squarely,” he said. “I’m a gentleman of title, but no wealth. I’ve no desire to court when I have nothing to offer a wife but my name. And lack of funds means I’m unable to pay for . . . well, to form a relationship with a woman for the sake of pleasure.”

“But surely there have been willing maidens in your past.” Tales of dalliances between the lord of the manor and his house servants were grist for the penny novelists’ mill. Daisy had read more of them than she probably should.

“Perhaps,” he conceded, “but however tempting it might be, it never seemed fair to take one of the upstairs maids to my bed.”

“Commendable,” Daisy said, liking him better by the moment. “Especially since those sorts of liaisons invariably end badly for the girl who hopes to raise herself through them and rarely does.”

He met her gaze directly. “Is that what happened to you?”

“Me? No, of course—” She remembered that he thought her a “soiled dove” and naturally wondered how she’d come to fall from society’s grace. Daisy lifted her chin and recalled Blanche’s defiant record of her own life. “I became a courtesan with my eyes wide open. I ask you, milord, would you be content to go through life being treated as if you were a child or an imbecile?”

“Of course not.”

“Yet such is the plight of a married woman. When a woman becomes a wife, she becomes a man’s property. I might have married, but I wished to retain ownership of myself,” Daisy said, understanding Blanche more as she allowed the courtesan’s words to flow out her mouth and into the garden’s fresh air. “So I pursued an education that I might converse wittily on all subjects and chose to take a lover in exchange for rich gifts instead of a husband. And in so doing, I retain control of my moneys and goods as well as my person.”

“And do you have a lover now?”

A trace of his old Italian accent crept back into his voice. Daisy doubted anyone who hadn’t known him as a boy would have even marked the slight Latin huskiness in his tone. But it made her pulse dance.

“I am without a patron at present and in need of nothing. My last protector was very generous,” she purred. “I will take another lover at a time of my choosing.”

“Well, then, it certainly sounds as if you’ve done well for yourself in your choice,” he said with a laugh. “Perhaps I should take a page from your book and hire myself out. That would be one way to fund my work.”

Daisy glanced up at him sharply. Sitting beside him might be a mistake, she realized quickly, for the difference in their heights was pronounced without her tall shoes. She rose and pulled him to his feet.

“Ah! But a gigolo must possess amatory skills that you confess you lack,” she said.

He came willingly and looked searchingly at her for a moment.

“Blanche.” His rumbling tone caressed her false name. “Please don’t confuse lack of skills with lack of interest.”

Then he moulded a hand to the column of her neck. She cocked her head reflexively into his touch as he drew his fingertips along her thin collarbone. When his fingertip met the fabric of her gown where it dipped off her shoulder, he traced the neckline on her dress as he had that morning at the Society of Antiquaries before he knew she was Daisy Drake.

Only this time, her décolletage was much more daring, and he slid his fingers beneath the thin fichu to skim her bare skin instead of just brushing the froth of lace.

As Daisy Drake, she should slap him soundly.

But what would Blanche do? Daisy wondered. A courtesan without need of a patron might still allow a gentleman such liberties simply because it pleased her.

And Lucian’s touch pleased her very much indeed.

When he reached her exposed nipple, he drew his fingertip around the tight little mound in a maddening circle. Daisy scarcely breathed. A dull ache throbbed between her legs.

“I confess I do not possess the wealth required to become your patron. Not yet, at any rate. But I would happily become your devoted pupil,” he suggested as he continued to massage her nipple with his thumb. “You could teach me those amatory skills.”

His touch was hypnotic, and she leaned into it like a cat demanding a more thorough petting. Daisy’s lips parted, and she gasped at the zing that arced through her body, streaking from her breast to her womb. She gave herself a shake and rapped his knuckles with her closed fan.

“I think you already know much more than you admit,” she accused.

His eyes flared with sudden knowledge. “You liked that.”

“Of course I did.” Daisy dug through her memory for Blanche’s treatise on the care and titillation of a woman’s nipples. The shiver of sensation coursing through her effectively blocked her thoughts. She resorted to honesty. “I’m very sensitive there.”

“Are you?” he asked with surprise. “I’d have thought such a slight touch would be second nature to one in your line of work. A caress on your breast would seem of no more import than a handclasp.”

Daisy glared at him. “If you are intent on insulting me,
Monsieur le Vicomte,
I shall bid you adieu.”

“No, stay.” He grasped her wrist. “I meant no insult, truly. Blame it on my inexperience, not my manners. Believe me, Blanche, I hold you in the highest regard. Please don’t go.”

“You think to toy with me.”

“No, never.”

She turned back to him, a portion of Blanche’s wisdom sounding in her head. “It is a mistake to assume one can separate one’s body from the rest of oneself. Men may deceive themselves into thinking the life of the body has no bearing on their heart, but it is not so.”

He captured her hand and held it to his chest. “My heart is fully engaged, as you can feel for yourself.”

The great muscle in his chest pounded beneath her palm.

“You make sport of me. A physical heart will gallop so because one is merely aroused, monsieur. Your invisible heart may or may not be involved.”

“And that’s important to you,” he acknowledged.

“It is. I cannot enter an affair of the body without a corresponding affair of the heart. Perhaps a base harlot can manage such a feat, but only out of self-preservation. She lies with so many men, she must hold back her heart lest it shatter like a paste jewel beneath her patrons’ heels.” Daisy pressed her palm to his cheek. “So I do not take lovers lightly or often, for it means I must give away a portion of myself. If we become . . . involved, I cannot answer for the consequences.”

He covered her hand with his, then turned it up and pressed a hot kiss into her palm.

Her knees trembled.

“It’s a risk I’m prepared to bear.” His dark eyes flashed feral in the moonlight.

“But I am not.” She pulled her hand away and walked slowly along the torch-lit path. He fell into step with her. “At least, not yet. Though I like what I know of you, Lucian, I know very little. Tell me of your work.”

She listened with half an ear, since she’d already heard his lecture that morning. Steering the conversation to Lucian’s excavation gave Daisy much needed time to recoup. Every time Daisy glanced at Lucian from under her lashes, she felt a bone-deep tingle, as if she stood on the topmost battlements of her uncle’s Cornish castle.

Inches from certain annihilation and quiveringly alive.

“An ancient Roman treasure. How exciting! So all you need to complete your work is an investment from a partner?” she said when he was finished explaining about the Roman wax tablet. “Your search is at an end. I shall be pleased to join you in this endeavour.”

Lucian flashed a brilliant smile. “While I welcome your investment, the work that goes on at the site is grubby in the extreme. I hardly think an excavation is likely to interest you.”

“Bien sûr,”
she agreed with a sudden burst of inspiration. “I shall send an agent to represent me at the site. Someone who will bring the needed funds to you and possesses knowledge of Latin. Someone who can help with your work, no? Will that suffice?”

“Perfectly.” He went on to describe the location of the find and arrange for the time for her agent to join him on the morrow. “But I wonder if I might still call on you?”

“I shall count on it.” She allowed her voice to drift lower, as she’d heard her great-aunt do when she was in seductress mode. “Remember, you did promise to show me your naughty Roman art.”

“So I did.” He snapped his fingers. “I have it! What would you say to an exchange? Authentic Roman antiquities for lessons in love.”

“Not a love affair?”

“No, just lessons,” he said. “Teach me what I need to know to please a woman.”

Daisy’s heart sank to her toes. How could she teach something she knew precious little of herself?

“I am not in need of a lover at present,” she lied, trying to ignore the way her heart hammered against the whalebone prison of her bodice.

“Teach me what you know of kissing then,” he said. “That seems safe enough.”