Laura Kinsale (52 page)

“No,” she said. “No.”

“I don’t appear suitably awed?”

“You look as if you’re sitting through a remarkably tedious sermon. That’s not how you looked at Lady Caroline and the tiger.”

He dropped his gaze from a reverent contemplation of the mantelpiece. “Perhaps not,” he said, “but I’ll wager it’s a fair representation of some fellow appreciating the drapery about winged Nike’s bosom.”

She turned her face aside. “You looked at Lady Caroline as if—as if she was everything in life to you.”

He stood still. She felt him watching her. When she slanted a look at him, he had a new expression, one she had never seen before on his hard features—a faint, fond smile curving his lips as he contemplated her.

“I find you are remarkably naive, beloved,” he said. “I wonder how A Lady of Quality would advise me to explain this.”

She could not step back; the heat from the fire was already hot on her bared calves—but as he moved nearer she felt as if her feet were fixed to the carpet by some insensible force. He stood looking down at her, his smile fading into something else; a deeper attention.

It was as if she had been standing outside the prowling tiger’s cage, teasing it because it was bigger and wilder and more savage than she—because she could—and suddenly found the bars that imprisoned it had vanished.

He did not lower his eyes below her face, and yet she felt as if he explored and uncovered all of her—her skin, her shape, her heartbeat as it quickened. The center of his look was on her and far away at once, his black lashes lowered in concentration. His eyes seemed a profound blue.

“Is this how I was looking at Lady Caroline?” he murmured.

Lady Caroline had already been fading from her consciousness. But at the question, recognition and jealousy rushed through her. “Yes,” she said, drawing away slightly as she stared straight ahead at the open neck of his shirt.

He caught her hands, pulling them up against his chest, flattening her palms against him so that she could feel the taut curve of muscle beneath the linen. “As I recall, she was saying something about turning all the tigers loose.”

Zenia curled her fingers, but he held her hands entrapped. “She said the tiger longed to be free. That it knew what freedom was, and that was its element. And even if its life was savage struggle, anything else would be torture to it.”

“Ah, yes,” he said pensively. “I suspected it was a lot of high-minded discourse suitable to a Greco-Roman goddess. Shall I tell you what I was thinking?”

Zenia lowered her eyes. “Will you tell the truth?”

“Oh, nothing but the whole vulgar truth.” His hands tightened on hers. “I’m afraid you may be vastly disappointed to discover the true tenor of my character. Look at me.

She looked up. The dark energy was very strong and clear in his face.

“I was thinking of what I would do if you let me come into your house after the zoo. I was thinking that Mrs. Lamb would take Beth away for a nap, and you would probably be too modest and ladylike to ask me to go up to your bedroom to have one with you. So we would go into the parlor to talk a while. And naturally—” He shrugged. “—I would be a mesmerizing conversationalist, remarkably gallant, strikingly clever, never at a loss for the right thing to say—I daresay you don’t recognize me in this role, but nevertheless that’s where I cast myself. And you were to smile at me rather a lot.” His mouth curled sardonically. “This was all merely introductory, of course. A moment’s contemplation. I think I had the tea tray expelled and the parlor door locked well before Lady Caroline got to the part about wishing all the darling lions and tigers could be free.” He moved her hand, still clasped in his, and traced an upward curve on her cheek. “You were going to smile a lot. Perhaps you would smile at me now, for a realistic effect.”

In spite of herself, she felt the corner of her lips tilt upward a little. “You were thinking of me,” she said, “but you were looking at her.”

He turned her hand over and kissed her palm and her wrist. “She was considerably more often in my line of sight. I shall make no assays into the feminine mind, but every time I looked about for you, all I seemed to see were throngs—swarms—I might say floods—of matronly ladies schooling between us. In the army, I believe they call what you were doing ‘malingering,’ and you would be shot at sunrise for such cowardly and treasonous behavior.”

She bowed her head. “I suppose it was not very brave of me.”

“It was not your boldest hour, wolf cub. Nor mine. Let us agree that we were both overrun and soundly thrashed by the enemy.”

She looked up at him. “You were still staring at her. You were—you noticed her more frequently than her aunt or Lady Broxwood.”

“Zenia, my beloved, I am going to try to engage your pity.” He held her hands together between his, looking down at them. “I want you to imagine a fellow who has been two years and more leading an utterly celibate life. Who has the most beautiful, desirable, alluring woman sleeping in the room beside him, who sees her nurse his child, who lies awake thinking he’ll die if he can’t touch her again and dreams about her and imagines what he would do with her—who is in the midst of a most compelling daydream that takes place in her parlor—in a chair—did we arrive at the parlor chair yet?”

He drew her with him as he moved back a step, lowering himself onto one of the side chairs. With his hands at her waist, he spread his palms wide. His eyes were dark as he gazed up at her breasts, sliding his hands upward a little, pressing them together. Zenia drew in a breath. His lips parted.

“He’s dreaming, you see—he is sitting in a chair in this daydream, and she is before him, with very little on, only a shift, with the light behind so that he can see her body through it. If I lean toward her, if I—”

He kissed her skin at the top of her chemise, as light as breathing, warmth that made her tilt her head back and close her eyes. She should not let him; she should not, but in the dim room, the soft temptation, it was hard to summon resistance.

“Somewhere,” he murmured, “some person is talking about tigers.”

“Lady Caroline,” she whispered.

“I really have no notion who, and I think it’s a stupendously silly subject.” He skimmed his fingers beneath the shoulders of her shift, sliding the linen down onto her arms. “I’m far more interested in how one goes about removing this fascinating garment. Do these bows open, for instance? Little pink bows. Girls are such amazing, wonderful, delicate creatures. I think they must sew themselves into their shifts, but it is the most charming picture.” He ran his thumbs over her nipples, a sensation that made her arch toward him. He smiled in an abstracted way, watching her body as he did it again. “Beautiful plump breasts that make the cloth strain,” he said. “I vaguely recollect—very vaguely, mind you—that perhaps Lady Caroline’s buttons made a poor, a sadly poor, imitation of the same effect, and so it’s possible that I did, for lack of a better model—” He pulled a bow open, watching the result intently. “For a moment perhaps I glanced at the lesser star, as it was so insistently thrust before me.”

“More than once.”

“Zenia!” He buried his face between her breasts. “I only looked. It’s been two years!”

“It’s been the same time for me,” she said. “And I never thought of anyone else, or looked at anyone else, even for one moment.”

He took a deep breath against her skin and bowed his head, resting it against her. For a moment she felt the brush of his hair and the weight of him leaning on her. Then he sat back. “I’ve been led down the garden path, I see,” he said with a new hardness in his voice. “I thought we were speaking of my religious awe of Lady Caroline, and how I must marry her because she wants to unshackle imprisoned tigers—but now I find the topic is common jealousy, and I am one count down, being so ignoble as to notice a female bosom forced on my attention.” He flicked the second bow free, popping it entirely off with a sharp curl of his forefinger. “While you—pure as driven snow—merely arrange your wedding to another man, which I presume I am to accept with meek thanks for my deliverance.” He spread the shift apart with his thumbs, baring her skin. “Perhaps you will now take your turn, and explain yourself, because I find your logic so far entirely unconvincing.”

What he was doing hardly helped her tired mind to reason clearly. He had opened the bows to her waist, and though he did not kiss her, she could feel every breath warm her breasts. He touched her nipples again, and she arched shamelessly into his hands, asking for his mouth on her.

He pulled her closer, roughly. And it was like the sweet sensation of Elizabeth’s nursing transformed, deeper and heavier, a man’s demand to overtake her body. She leaned on him, her head thrown back, the breadth of his shoulders under her palms. He pushed her shift down her arms, baring her to her waist, and slid his hands beneath her skirt, dragging her down astride his lap.

“Very persuasive,” he said with a dark smile. They were both panting. He held his hands at her hips, her shift rucked up so that she was all but naked.

Zenia shook her head miserably. “I don’t want her to have you.” She clasped her hands about his face. “I don’t want to be there to see it.”

“Lady Caroline?” His jaw was taut beneath her fingers. “Do you genuinely suppose I want to tour the world with some female preaching to me about independence and hardship?” His lip curled, showing a white flash of his teeth. “While sipping lemonade and issuing orders from her padded elephant cushion, no doubt.”

“You say that now. But—”

“Christ, I know her sort, Zenia! I don’t dare go to a lecture in London; they’re lurking for me at the door.” He gave a short laugh. “There must be a debutante’s manual somewhere, with my name listed under ‘Belmaine.’ ‘Be certain to mention his adventures in a worshipful manner, and wax positively exuberant over the geography of Asia. Vow you just dote on camels and don’t forget to mention that you detest a waltz.’“ He made a wry face, lowering his lashes as he gazed at her. “I think they’ve added a new line: ‘Wear a tight dress and breathe deeply—he’s pitifully vulnerable at the moment.’“

She put her arms about his head and held him close, laughing sadly, rocking him. “I do love you, you know. I do love you.”

“I’m happy to hear it,” he said, muffled in her embrace. “This is a damnable thing to do to a man you only hold in mild esteem.”

She lifted his face between her hands, gazing down at him. He kissed the inside of her wrist, a faint scratchiness of his cheek against her skin. He slipped his hands down, pulling her closer, looking up steadily into her eyes.

“But you will go,” she whispered, a litany to herself as she felt her willpower succumb to his. “You will go. If not with Lady Caroline, then alone.”

“Zenia,” he said, “Zenia. I only want to go as far as that bed.” He moved his hand between them, breathing deeply. “Not even that far.”

She felt the hard release of his sex between her spread legs. He kissed her throat and her earlobe, his arm behind her waist, curving her against him.

“Whatever you want,” he muttered. “Whatever you like. I’ll never leave you.”

You will,
she cried silently, lost in the sensations of delight he was creating, pressing away from him with her arms while her body arched toward the sweet urgent demand of his. She shuddered as he sucked her breasts, his hands spreading her, lifting her—she thought wildly that this would be another child, another part of him to keep— and suddenly she was eager to take him into her.

“I want another baby from you,” she said, bending beside his ear.

“Oh God, yes,” he said fiercely, “Zenia, yes.”

She buried her face in his shoulder, brazenly touching his man’s part. He drew air sharply between his teeth, his fingers closing hard on her buttocks.

He stilled, his body holding a deep internal quiver as she stroked him and guided him with her own hand. With each slide of her fingers that found the length and shape of him, all his muscles seemed to coil.

“You want to kill me,” he whispered. “I know that’s what you want.”

She lifted her head. Her hair had fallen loose, drifting wantonly about them. She felt a strange giddy sense of domination as she caressed him; he was watching her face, but she could see the blue heat in his eyes lose focus, go distant and absorbed, as if when he looked at her he was looking at something far away and fascinating. He began to breathe roughly, his head tilted back over the chair, his hands gripping her.

Zenia’s chin lifted. She rose and took him into her in a single deep impalement, pushing herself down as he stretched her. His throat worked with an inarticulate sound, and then he made a strong arch to drive himself further in, his hands at her hips.

But Zenia’s position gave her control of him. It was when she moved, flexing her body and hips to find the source of her own pleasure, that he inhaled with swift ecstasy. She rocked against him, reveling in the deep ache of penetration. “You won’t leave me,” she said in a breathless hiss at the back of her throat. “You won’t, you won’t, you won’t.”

He opened his eyes. He frightened her with the fierce depth of his look. It was as if the djinni stared out at her, the wild djinni that she could never govern or resist, and her little chant was like a magic too small and weak to hold it.

But she could steal it. She could nurse his seed in her and take it with her and hold it to herself and keep it for her own, another child of his to love when he was gone.