Like No Other Lover (6 page)

What on earth was he
doing
? He didn’t recognize himself in this…
maneuvering
. What did he hope to prove or gain, precisely, by kissing a woman who did not want to be kissed by him? When so many others
did
want to be kissed by him?

But given that he’d just proved that Cynthia Brightly was willing to use kisses as currency, backing away now perversely seemed dishonorable. Or so he told himself. He’d better do it, and quickly.

So he came at the kiss like diving into cold water and swiftly touched his lips to her.

Oh, God.

Soft
. Soft.
So soft
.

He was ashamed of how inadequate the word was.

His eyes closed against a breath-robbing spike of desire; his hands on her waist. His lips hovered against the undreamt of vulnerability of lips; her breath, soft and warm, rushed over his. He couldn’t lift his head again. Somehow this kiss had created its own gravity, and he was at its mercy.

Realization finally caught up with impulse: he thought of his father’s watch, and how the relief of conquering that mystery had been worth the consequences. He wanted to take Cynthia apart, to discover whether a woman’s heart ticked inside her. If he understood her, solved the mystery of her, then she would cease to torment him.

And he knew the power of a kiss to unravel a woman.

I don’t want to kiss you, Mr. Redmond.

She would forget even how to speak when he was done with her.

And so he took another kiss. His mouth was a feather, a mist, a whisper over hers; again, and softly, softly, he brushed it over hers. Showing her that a world of sensation could be had from just his lips meeting, caressing hers; implying a universe of sensation lay everywhere in her body. She sighed, that involuntary, irresistible sound that signaled the brink of surrender. Her lips slipped apart; her breath mingled with his. Her hazy blue eyes disappeared behind her lids.

Oh, God.

He wanted to devour her. He thought of softness, darkness, and wetness: her tongue twined in his, her wet, plum-sweet mouth, the musky damp gathering between her legs, the silk give of her breasts in his hands and the ruched silk of her nipples, her round thighs.
Take, take, take
. His hands were greedy; they wanted; they urged him. His cock swelled, ached. He was mad.

The one bit of sanity left to him somehow knew that way lay quicksand.

And though he wanted, wanted,
wanted
, he did nothing but softly kiss her.

Their lips danced and breath danced over each other; still, he did not breach hers with his tongue. His hands remained, just barely, within his control, resting at the nip of her waist.

But now no space remained between their bodies. She was all he breathed, all he felt; his world was soap, musk, female, heat, supple, soft. Her belly beneath the fragile muslin of her proper day dress brushed against the ferocious erection confined by his nankeen trousers. Bliss knifed him; her rib cage jumped; her gasp of pleasure met his. He heard himself, absurdly, between kisses, murmur her name:
Cynthia
. Insanity, insanity.

Her head tipped heavily back; his lips slid from her lips to the silk of her throat, where her pulse drummed. Her breath, hot, swift, rushed over his hair, his ear, and oh God, it began to seem sensible to take her now in the alcove, to hike her dress and plunge into her.

This was when Cynthia’s hands opened and hovered like butterflies between them for a second. Then landed flat, very lightly, against his shirt.

Undecided, it seemed, whether to touch him or push him away.

Doubt was an agony; it drove a stake into him. It tore him to the surface of sanity.

He yanked his head up, lifted his hands and kept them airborne as though she were a highwayman robbing him at pistol point, and stepped back until the wall of the alcove supported his back.

Slowly, he lowered his hands to his sides.

And breathed. In and out. In and out. Every new breath brought him closer to equilibrium and further away from oblivion. And this he both welcomed and resented.

He refused to look at her yet. It occurred to him then that minutes could have passed, or an eternity; he would not have known. Instead, with his instinct for order and sense, he sought out clues to the passage of time. Conversation still hummed in the room nearby. He craned his head and saw Lord Milthorpe looming like a solar eclipse against the salon window, still imprisoned by Lady Windermere’s monologue. Miles could see fragments of darkening blue sky through that lacy overhang of trees outside the window. Still daylight, then.

With a single practiced movement he managed to disguise the still formidable bulge in his trousers with a swing of his coat, and he retrieved his watch from his pocket. He fumbled it open with still-awkward hands, hands resentful that they were no longer touching Cynthia.

He stared at the dial as accusingly as he would a bold liar.

The hands and Roman numerals claimed less than a minute had passed.

He finally risked a look at Cynthia.

A faint puzzled frown made two little dents between her brows. Her eyes glittered between her lowered lashes as she turned her head toward the sounds of the gathering—deliberately avoiding his gaze. Her hands, moments just moments ago raised to either touch or push him, were now hidden, curled tightly in her skirt like bashful children.

She seemed to be holding her body very still. Gingerly. As though she no longer trusted or recognized it.

Cynthia turned back toward him then and blinked, as if the force of his gaze was physical. They stared. Miles raised the backs of his fingers to his face, absently showing her where hot color smudged her cheekbones.

Unconsciously she mirrored him, her hand drifting upward to touch her face. She frowned more deeply, as though the heat of it puzzled and shamed her.

His confusion made him say something ridiculous, and he said it politely and gravely.

“Thank you, Miss Brightly.”

Oh, for God’s sake.

Her eyes widened. But then…damned if his words didn’t little by little restore a certain amount of…
mischief?
…to her gaze.

It
had
been a ridiculous thing to say.

And for an unnerving, magical instant, they shared smiles, and in that moment Miles felt as though the ground beneath his feet had opened up, and below and above and everywhere was endless brilliance.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Redmond,” she finally said, softly.

Their smiles broadened. Some instinct made Miles look abruptly away. Because suddenly her smile was nearly a physical pain. And there was another silence.

“Well. I shall look forward to hearing information about the other…gentlemen…present this fortnight, Mr. Redmond.”

He watched her curtsy—and what an ironic curtsy it was—twitch her shoulders as if shaking off a scratchy cloak, and turn to rejoin the guests.

When she slipped out of sight once again, back into that room full of people with widely varying desires and agendas all disguised by polite conversation, he felt a strange, faint echo of the panic he’d felt when he watched her disappear into the ballroom proper the first time he saw her. As though something in him would be imperiled if he never saw her again.

He raised his knuckles and pressed them to his lips; they were still hot.

He’d meant to take her apart with a kiss. How, then, did
he
wind up in pieces?

Thoughtful, strangely weary, he remained in the alcove, knuckles against his lips, until every bit of the heat of that kiss had faded.

Violet looked up curiously, saw Cynthia’s fixed smile, gave her one of her own, returned to her conversation.

Breathing steady, heart steady, Cynthia directed her peripheral attention to Lord Milthorpe, the Earl of Blenheim, and studied him.

Lord Milthorpe was composed of stark lines: his shoulders a long vertical shelf, his spine midden-mast tense, his hair lank, steel gray, trained to stay behind his ears. The only soft thing about him was his belly, which was round and sat in his lap as though independent of his torso. His buttocks mistrustfully occupied the very edge of his spindly chair; he was quite sensibly poised to leap to safety should the spidery thing collapse into kindling beneath his bulk. One of his hands twitched atop his knee like a hairless creature in the throes of sleep; the other, curled into a loose cylinder, appeared to be gripping the stock of an invisible musket.

Cynthia felt certain he felt nude without a dog and a gun, and hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with his hands in the absence of them. She sympathetically imagined it would be difficult to converse casually when one felt nude.

She wondered what had become of his teacup. It was missing now. Perhaps a footman had taken it away, concerned for its safety.

Twenty thousand pounds
.

It was time to test Miles Redmond’s stinging, informative list of facts. She took a sustaining breath. Turned ever so slightly.

And resolutely glowed in Lord Milthorpe’s direction.

Lord Milthorpe froze as though a hunting horn sounded in the distance. He frowned faintly.

And then he cautiously rotated his head, scanning the chattering social forest for the source of whatever disturbed his awareness.

He gave a start when he found himself fixed in Cynthia’s beam of radiant interest.

Cynthia instantly cast her eyes down. She let a crucial suspense-building second pass before she demurely,
oh
so tentatively, cast her eyes up again—ah, but not all the way up: instead she aimed her gaze at him through the fluffy lowered awning of her lashes.

This look alone had in the past inspired three entire poems.

Lord Milthorpe’s frown vanished and his lips slipped apart.

He was officially transfixed.

Good, and good. What next? A blush, she thought quickly. A maidenly wash of color in the cheeks would not go amiss, Redmond had said. How to blush…

Miles Redmond slipped back into the room just then and showed no sign of noticing her at all. She watched his broad back proceed across the room toward his sister. She felt again Miles Redmond’s mouth hard on hers, the hard swell of his erection pressing against her belly, her nipples just brushing the buttons of his coat—

Whoosh
. Her entire body instantly caught flame. Heat roared along her limbs and into her cheeks. Her
eyes
actually felt scorched.

Well, that had obviously been a terrible mistake. No doubt she was scarlet and blotchy, which would more likely terrify Lord Milthorpe than charm him.

Lord Milthorpe did looked puzzled by her sudden and dramatic color change; his unruly brows dove.

Cynthia studied the fetlocks of the horse in the painting, rendered in delicate, affectionate precision, and willed her face to cool.

When she glanced up again, Milthorpe’s mouth had parted a little again, as though he meant to speak. It stayed that way, like a transom opened to admit air. He closed it again. He leaned forward, toward her, and opened it again. Then closed it again.

Oh, for heaven’s sake.

She rescued him. She closed the distance between them in a few steps. Startled, he made as if to stand, but she gestured him back into his chair with a “please don’t bother!” little wave, and settled into the spindly chair next to him.

“I wondered, Lord Milthorpe,” she said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper, “if I might trouble you for an opinion.”

When she sat, he turned his head away from her. As if to look directly at her would singe his retinas. He seemed to be quivering the slightest bit.

“Of house parties?” He said finally, with such grimly humorous fatalism and disregard for the niceties usually considered necessary to the occasion that Cynthia began to like him.

She covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers to disguise a smile. “Oh! Do you find house parties…” She wrinkled her nose a little. “…
tedious
?” Her voice was a mischievous hush, the last word a whisper, an invitation to confidences. She leaned toward him; her bosom, at that angle, issued an invitation to ogle.

He bravely returned his eyes to her. His gaze bounced immediately to the pale generous swell of her breasts and was flung instantly back up into her face.

It was
his
turn to blotch beneath his ruddiness.

“Not any longer.” The words were graceless but delivered with a crooked smile. It made his meaning unmistakable and the moment triumphant:

Lord Milthorpe was officially
flirting
.

“
I
find house parties tolerable, as well. Now, that is.” Her eyes twinkled up at him.

Lord Milthorpe’s smile vanished. He looked stricken and bewitched.

“But of all the people present,” she added pragmatically, “I thought you might be able to advise me best on a particular matter. I hope you don’t mind if I beg a bit of practical advice from you, sir.”

“I should be delighted to be of any assistance in any regard, Miss Brightly,” he said with quiet fervor. His eyes crept downward again to her snowy bosom; he tugged them back up to her face again, like a dog on a lead.

“Well, it’s this, sir. I thought I might like to have a…well, I’d like to have a dog. And you struck me as the sort of gentleman who knows the country and knows dogs and might be able to suggest what sort of dog a girl such as myself should have.”

Lord Milthorpe’s narrow blue eyes flew open wide. Then he cast a brief look skyward, perhaps issuing a silent thanks for an answered prayer, sighed happily, and committed his buttocks emphatically to the chair by scooting back to claim the entire seat. The chair gave a long and frightened groan. Milthorpe didn’t seem to notice.

“A dog? Are
you
a country girl, then, Miss Brightly? Forgive me for saying so, but your manners are so fine and your skin so fair you look as though you’ve never set foot on the downs before or held a gun or a bow and arrow. Do you shoot?”

A throat was cleared near the window. She knew who it was even before she turned.

It seemed Miles Redmond had managed to separate Lady Georgina—she of the staggering fortune, shy smile, appropriate pedigree, and cornsilk worn in a plait around the top of her head like an accursed halo—from the other women, and maneuver her into the window, his head bent over hers attentively. Lady Georgina was animated, white hands fluttering in front of her, little pink mouth moving rapidly. Everything about Miles Redmond’s posture implied solicitous attention. Cynthia knew how Lady Georgina must be feeling: enclosed in the entirety of that attention. Light glanced from his sleek dark head. He raised his hand to gesture: in that instant she thought she could still feel a handprint of warmth on her waist, and her breath snagged.

It occurred to Cynthia that calling Miles Redmond “handsome” would not in fact be absurd. The realization struck her as trickery. As something unfair he’d perpetrated upon her, a power he could flex or sheath at will.

She forced herself to address Milthorpe’s question. She could not in truth have said what sort of girl she was anymore. She’d lived in the country; any bright memories of that time were limned in darker ones. She’d loved her time in the city: the giddy social whirl, the heady sense of her own power.

Mostly she wanted peace and certainty and permanence and a reticule that jingled healthily, and she’d take them wherever she found them.

“I’ve…I’ve spent a good deal of time in the country, Lord Milthorpe. But life finds me ever in London, and—London is ever crowded and noisy, wouldn’t you agree?” She darted a look about the room, as though she didn’t wish the others to overhear for fear of offending them. “I thought it would be a pleasure to have a fine dog as a companion.”

A tiny flash of light caught her eye: sunlight bouncing glare from spectacles. He
was
listening. Miles Redmond was. The angle of his shoulders had scarcely changed, but his spectacles had given him away. And the back of his head seemed peculiarly alert.

Lord Milthorpe was talking. “…oh! But she’s a bonnie bitch spaniel—Eleanor, her name is. Named her for Eleanor of Aquitaine. The sire has gotten three fine litters on her, and I’ve two pups left of it. Both little bitches.”

He directed this to Cynthia’s earlobe. He still seemed to be acclimating to her startling loveliness only in fits and starts.

Which was just as well, as her mind had suddenly filled with disconcertingly vivid images of Lord Milthorpe’s spaniel “getting litters on” Eleanor of Aquitaine the spaniel. Her features had been entirely unprepared for it, and she froze.

A throat cleared again.

She’d recovered by the time Milthorpe looked at her again. “Puppies are delightful! I congratulate you, sir. How fortunate you are.”

He beamed at her. One of his front teeth was entirely gray, like a little headstone in the churchyard. She tried not to stare at it. At least he had a full
complement
of teeth.

His eyes retreated to the relative safety of her earlobe again.

“I should be…I should be pleased to give you a pup from Eleanor’s litter, Miss Brightly.”

“Oh, would you
do
that?” she breathed, then leaned the minutest amount toward him. She paused, reached a hand out as if to touch his arm, and pulled it back abruptly, because this caused him to go as motionless as a rabbit before a lunging wolf. His eyes flitted to her cleavage again then fled back to her face. “If you did—if you did—I should be pleased to name it for you. I could name it Lord Milthorpe.”

There was a pronounced cough over near the window. Cynthia cast a glance in the direction in time to see Miles Redmond put a fist discreetly to his mouth.

She knew it! The bloody man had stifled a
laugh
.

And hell’s teeth, she suddenly needed to stifle one of her own.

She kept her rapt attention on Milthorpe. Talk of dogs had him feeling comfortable, and her cleavage had made him cheerful, and now he was brave enough to look her full in the eyes. What a large face he has, she thought. As large and English as Gibraltar, and nearly as rectangular as his body.

He could not truthfully be described as homely. Nor was he handsome. He had kind eyes.

And twenty thousand pounds a year.

“Perhaps you’d consider naming a dog Monty, instead, Miss Brightly.” He’d lowered his voice for this bold and hopeful jest. “Monty is my given name.”

Good for Lord Milthorpe, she couldn’t help but think warmly. He was clearly out of practice, but he was doing a reasonable job of flirting. She approved.

“Oh! I’d happily name it…Monty…” She ducked her head shyly over the use of his given name. “As long as you don’t mind a—a—” The word did not trip as easily as she would have preferred from her tongue. “—b-bitch frolicking about with your name. For didn’t you say all the pups were bitches?”

Milthorpe seemed dumbstruck. And then he opened his mouth, and out came a rasping bark of a sound. It took a moment for Cynthia to recognize this as a laugh rusty from disuse.

“That’s right! By
George
, Miss Brightly. Only little bitches left!”

She giggled to encourage him, which caused every head to turn just a little their way, because she had an étude, a minuet, of a giggle, and it made everyone who heard it restless to be near her.

And as nothing essential ever escaped Cynthia’s notice, she saw that Lord Argosy’s gaze lingered upon her speculatively. And that Miles hadn’t turned to look at her at all, and Lady Georgina was still talking. But he’d gone very, very still.

Lord Milthorpe sighed with happiness. “Oh, Daisy will do, Miss Brightly. If you take away one of my pups, you can name the bitch Daisy or some such name. Perhaps one day soon you would honor me with a visit to Milthorpe Crest to see the pups.”

Ah. This was
very
bold of him. Very promising for her.

But here was where she was required to manage the situation like a conductor standing before an orchestra with a baton. It was not quite time to bring the violins to a swooning crescendo. It was time once again to retreat into stammering shyness.

“I…think I should like that…Monty.”

He went even ruddier when she used his name. His hands had gone a little quieter. He was less lonely when he was talking with her. For some reason this pleased her.

“We can get in a bit of shooting here at Redmond House in the parklands, if you like, Miss Brightly. I’ll speak with Miles and we’ll take a party out for target shooting. You do shoot, yes? Last year I took a party out and we shot so many grouse they heaped nearly as high as a haystack.”

Her smile froze. Men are so eager to shoot things, she thought. Grouse. Each other.

“As high as that? You must be a gifted hunter, indeed. Shooting would be a pleasure.” She cheerfully ignored the question of whether she
was
a shooter. One lifted, pointed, and pulled a trigger. How difficult could it be? She’d managed any number of tricky situations in her life. She would manage, should she be required to shoot in order to charm Lord Milthorpe.