Waking Up With a Rake (13 page)

Rhys shifted uncomfortably. Meaning, emotions, these were all things he’d avoided since returning from Maubeuge. He couldn’t afford the luxury of feelings. If he gave in to one, he suspected a flood of them would burst over the carefully crafted dam in his soul and he’d be swamped beyond reckoning.

“It meant satisfaction for us both.”

She arched a brow at him and chuckled. “I rather think I was the only one of us who was satisfied.”

“On the contrary, it pleases me to give you pleasure,” he said. Not as much as if the delectable pleasure was reciprocated, but that was another lesson altogether. “I hope by now I’ve convinced you that your body is beautiful.”

She smiled shyly. “It seems you found me so.”

“Any man would,” he assured her.

“Perhaps it’s enough that you do,” she said, cupping his cheek in her palm. “It’s not as if this is a theory I care to test with all and sundry.”

“I should hope not.” He covered her hand with his. A tightness formed in his chest. Surprisingly, he found the notion that some other man might see her in the glorious altogether unsettling. But if he kept in mind that once he’d ruined her she’d never have to submit to that old rogue, the Duke of Clarence, it might help him ease his conscience.

“And now what?” Olivia asked, her eyes enormous in the dim light. She moved her hand down and splayed her fingers over his chest, sliding a fingertip between two buttons to tease his skin through only his small clothes. “I suspect there is a good deal more you could teach me.”

Hell’s bells, yes.
There was an ocean of sensual experiences he’d love to give this neophyte. In fact, if he decided he wanted to finish Mr. Alcock’s commission and mount her this very night, he knew he could do it. All he’d have to do was kiss and tease and drive her to aching fury without release and she’d be begging him to take her.

But something checked within him.

It was the same subtle warning that told him to tread lightly on the hunt to keep from frightening away his quarry. It was the prickles on the back of his neck that advised him to take a different route through the backstreets of London to avoid cutthroats and thieves. It was the inner sense that he ought to hold back his company of cavalry until the opportune moment when their concentrated charge would win the day.

He’d always wondered why his sixth sense hadn’t warned him at Maubeuge that the entire company was walking into a trap. He hoped that meant the real traitor wasn’t someone close enough to him he ought to have sensed duplicity. But Alcock had said he had evidence to damn him and both his friends, so Rhys couldn’t be sure Nathaniel or Jonah were guiltless.

Looking down at Olivia’s freshly satisfied form, he knew he certainly wasn’t. There was probably a special chamber in hell reserved for men like him who took without even letting their victims know they’d been robbed. A bit of Olivia’s innocence was gone forever, but, for the moment at least, she didn’t seem to miss it.

In fact, she was all but inviting him to continue educating her, but he’d never regretted listening to the small inner voice that urged him to reconsider a course of action. And now he had a bothersome sense that he’d done all he ought and more with Olivia Symon for one night.

His body fought against the restraint like a blooded hound tugging at the leash, but he forced himself not to bound forward. If he took her tonight, his commission would be done and he could report back to Alcock. There’d be no more chances to instruct her in wickedness. She seemed to have an aptitude for it. The longer he kept her virginal, the longer he could dally with her. It was a selfish reason not to despoil her completely, but it worked.

“There are many more lessons in the art of lovemaking,” he said, rising from her side and tugging down the front of his waistcoat. Unfortunately, it was the cutaway sort and did nothing to disguise his aroused state. “That is enough for you to absorb now.”

“You still see this as a lesson?” She sat up, bunching the sheet over her breasts. “But I thought…” The languid, satisfied expression she’d been wearing vanished. “Never mind. Turn around so I can put my nightrail back on.”

He obeyed. “Not much point, you know. I’ve already seen you without a stitch.”

“Yes, well, in that case, you’ve had enough to absorb, haven’t you?” Her voice sounded tight and testy. She had forgotten her own injunction against raising her voice. “If you’re still determined to stay the night, you’ll have to sleep in a chair.”

Before he could warn her against speaking too loudly, he heard the rustle of linen and knew she’d climbed back into bed. As he settled back into one of the wing chairs, he also knew he’d been thoroughly dismissed.

He listened to her soft breathing and realized there was something he
didn’
t know—what their encounter had meant to her. He’d been so intent on avoiding her question, he’d neglected to ask any of his own.

Now the moment when he might have asked and learned was gone.

He tried to get comfortable in the chair, but it was built for someone much smaller than he. He scooted its mate close enough for him to prop up his feet, but even that didn’t bring him any closer to slipping into sleep.

Once he succumbed to slumber, nightmares of Maubeuge often invaded his dreams. He usually relied upon consuming sufficient quantities of liquor to keep them at bay, but he couldn’t be an efficient watchdog if he were foxed beyond thinking.

So now since he wasn’t going to sleep and hadn’t consumed enough alcohol to obscure his brain, his long dormant conscience reared its pointed little head. He didn’t regret goading Olivia into removing her clothing and discovering her own loveliness. She was beautiful and it was high time someone convinced her of it.

And he didn’t regret giving her the first sexual peak of her life. The way her brows had drawn together in need, the way her lips parted in a rictus of pleasurable agony, the way she glowed like a thousand candles when she came…no, he couldn’t regret revealing that part of her to herself. And he rather liked the fact that he’d be indelibly linked in her mind with her first climax.

But he did regret that he’d touched her with an ulterior motive, with the threats and promises of Fortesque Alcock urging him on like a dark angel on his shoulder.

She wanted it to mean something. What it meant was Rhys Warrington was worse than a dog.

Chapter 12

“Mademoiselle,” Babette’s cheery voice roused Olivia from a sound sleep. “Are you well,
chérie
? If you do not make to rise soon, you will be missing the breakfast.”

Babette drew back the heavy damask curtains to allow long shafts of sunlight to stream into the room.

Olivia pulled up the sheets over her head to shield her eyes. She didn’t want to move. The linens were that perfect drowsy temperature they always assumed just before she had to leave them. She had sunken into the feather tick so deeply it curved around her in a warm embrace. And to make her bed even more enticing, her whole body still basked in an afterglow of the pleasure Rhys Warrington had introduced her to last—

Heart suddenly pounding, Olivia sat bolt upright in bed. There was no sign of Lord Rhys. Relief washed over her. He’d even reset the wing chairs over the indented spots on the carpet so no one would ever guess he’d passed the night in one of them. She suspected that awkward arrangement meant he didn’t get much sleep. She, on the other hand, had slept so soundly, she’d not been aware of when he slipped out of her chamber and back to his own.

She supposed she ought to thank him for that. Clearly there was something about sensual release that allowed a body to sink into slumber so deep, it was near oblivion. And he’d guarded her reputation by taking care not be caught there. He’d been more careful than she.

Of the two of them, she’d been the wanton one. He’d remained fully clothed while she stripped bare as a peeled twig. She’d allowed him to look at her, touch her, all of her, for pity’s sake! She’d let him take her to some dark, unfathomable place, a place that she never suspected existed inside her, and made her burst into glorious light.

How on earth had she outdone an admitted rake for scandalous behavior?

“And what shall mademoiselle wear this fine day?” Babette singsonged.

“I have my choice between black, black, or black,” Olivia said. “I’m sad about Princess Charlotte and her son, of course, and the proprieties must be observed, but I’m mortally sick of nothing but black to wear. Some women look pale and interesting in mourning. Miss Pinkerton, for example, positively blooms in it.”

“
Oui
, it is often the case with such dark hair and eyes,” Babette said. “An exotic air, that one, and only more mysterious when she is draped in black.”

Olivia would never be classed as mysterious. Her mourning clothes washed her complexion of all color and made her look as if she’d taken too many of her mother’s liver pills.

She shook her head to clear away these unaccustomed thoughts. Since when did she care so much how she looked?

“But mademoiselle does not have to choose black this day,” Babette said. “Only this morning, word has come from London that the mourning for your poor princess, it is lifted.
Alors
, you may choose whatever your heart desires.”

“Whatever my heart desires…” Rhys Warrington’s handsome face rose unbidden in her mind. He’d certainly introduced her to some new and bewildering desires. She glanced guiltily at the looking glass. Had she truly stood there, bare as an egg before it, while Rhys Warrington played his wicked games with her body?

The whole episode was tinged with a fuzzy echo of unreality. It smacked of the same ephemeral mistiness that dreams take on in the cold light of day. Surely it didn’t actually happen.

The disconcerting flutter in her belly confirmed that it actually had.

“Mademoiselle, does something vex you?”

Not something. Someone.

Everyone should have a safe inviolate place within themselves where their secret self dwells. Someplace to think outrageous thoughts without censure, to imagine things as one wished them to be without worrying about how things might turn out if they actually happened. Olivia used to have just such solitary place tucked away in her mind, but now that private enclave seemed to have a permanent resident besides her own vibrant imagination.

Rhys Warrington had insinuated himself into her secret life so deeply she doubted she’d ever be free of him.

“Mademoiselle Olivia.”

She startled and looked back at her maid. Babette was still waiting for her orders about a gown.

“The honey-gold wool, I think,” she said. “And lay out the green pelisse. I’ll go to the stables to see how Molly fares after I break my fast.”

“Alas, that will not be possible.” Babette’s rosebud mouth tightened into a brief moue of apology. “Your mother, she craves a word with you,
tout
de
suite
. She waits for you in her apartments.”

Mrs. Symon’s suite of rooms sprawled over the entire third floor of the north wing. In addition to a sumptuous boudoir that would probably put Princess Charlotte’s to shame, Beatrice Symon possessed a private bath with a large copper tub. A lumber room held all her trunks packed full to bursting with out-of-season clothing, hats, shoes, parasols, fans, and assorted frippery. There was also an elegant salon where Olivia’s mother frequently held court with her “intimate friends.” To be invited to Beatrice Symon’s apartments meant glittering entertainment for a chosen few, patronage for an artist or poet, and a healthy commission for a modiste or milliner.

For Olivia, it usually meant a tongue-lashing.

***

“Don’t slouch so,” her mother advised. “How shall Jean-Pierre fit you properly all slumped over like that?”

This time the tongue-lashing was accompanied by fittings with the French designer her mother had taken under her wing as soon as he landed on English soil. Jean-Pierre du Barry was an acknowledged genius in all things haute couture. In order to ensure his designs were available exclusively to the women of the Symon household, Jean-Pierre was in permanent residence at Barrowdell Manor with a half-dozen seamstresses at his command to bring his creations to life. In the Symon’s London townhouse, he had his own studio space, drawing and designing and ordering huge quantities of silks and lace to his heart’s content.

Like all Beatrice Symon’s fashion choices, this one was spot-on. Jean-Pierre du Barry was a terror with silk moiré. He produced miracles with a bit of lace, a little judicious ruching, and the occasional flounce. He was an engaging gossip, always knowledgeable about what transpired in every great house on both sides of the Channel. He also quietly rejoiced in his notorious lineage, claiming to be the grandson of the French king’s favorite mistress.

“Your mother is right, Miss Symon,” Jean-Pierre said, pronouncing her name as if it were “see-moan.” His speech was only slightly garbled due to the handful of pins bristling from between his lips. “You spoil the line of the gown when you hunch your shoulders so.”

“But the neckline is cut so low,” she protested. Her small breasts rose like half-moons from the froth of scarlet lace that scarcely concealed her pink nipples.