Once Upon a Tartan

Five

“You two were gone most of the morning.” Hester watched while Fiona pitched off the big dark horse and into her uncle’s waiting arms. “I feared the rain might catch you.”

“Aunt Hester!” Fiona charged up and lashed her arms around Hester’s waist in the kind of spontaneous display of affection Hester still wasn’t accustomed to. “We jumped every stone wall between here and old Clooty MacIntyre’s, and Rowan was wonderful. We didn’t yodel, though Uncle Tye says there are foxes who yodel in Sweden.”

“Switzerland,” her uncle corrected, loosening the horse’s girth. He ran his stirrups up and brought the reins over the gelding’s neck. “And one might consider adopting a more decorous tone of voice, Fiona, lest you scare the hens off their boxes.”

Fiona let go of Hester’s waist and instead grabbed her hand. “The hens aren’t afraid of me. I pet them, and they let me take their eggs most mornings.”

Spathfoy passed Rowan’s reins off to a stable lad. “You’ve been petting Rowan, so why don’t you hie yourself to the house and wash your hands?”

If Hester had made the suggestion, Fiona would have argued that Rowan was a clean horse and wiping one’s hands on the grass would serve just fine and the house was too far away.

The girl pelted up the garden path, and Spathfoy watched her go.

“Fiona claims my horse enjoys hearing stories.”

Any animal with ears would enjoy hearing the man talk. “She can be about as subtle as a thunderstorm. My thanks for allowing us a morning of peace and quiet in her absence.”

His gaze shifted, taking a visual inventory of Hester. She wore an old high-waisted dress, a floppy straw hat, and gardening gloves.

“I was getting after some of the weeds. Mary Fran has high standards. Aunt Ariadne came out for a bit to supervise.”

“She came out to breathe the scent of heather, which I suspect is the secret to her happy old age. Might I hope luncheon will soon be served? Making up stories can leave a man hungry.”

He winged his arm at her as he spoke, and Hester took it.

“Now that our guest and the household princess have returned, luncheon will appear in not less than thirty minutes.”

They strolled past the very bench where Spathfoy had kissed her the night before. Kissed her and held her in his arms and heard all manner of difficult things from her.

“You should garden more often, Miss Daniels. It puts roses in your cheeks.”

She enjoyed the compliment. Didn’t look for innuendo in it, didn’t suspect it of having false motives. She let his words bring her a smile and then waft away on the gathering breeze.

“I like to dig in the dirt. I hadn’t realized this until my father died and I was practically immured in the Kentish countryside for months. Gardening let me escape my mother’s eye. Did you have to make up stories for Fiona?”

He gestured to a shady bench. “No, actually. Shall we sit?”

The ease of his invitation warmed Hester’s insides agreeably. The morning was still trying to be pretty, though overhead, the clouds were forming into increasingly massive gray banks between shafts of sunshine.

“I told Fiona of her father.”

She hadn’t expected him to say that. He took a seat beside her, the feel of him on the bench comfortable and comforting. “I’m not sure she knows very much about him, my lord. Mary Fran and Gordie were not well acquainted when Fiona was conceived.”

“Gordie wrote to me about Lady Mary Frances. Said he’d encountered a young Scottish goddess.”

This was perhaps a confidence, but more likely a reminiscence. “And did your younger brother encounter goddesses often?”

“He encountered women frequently, not goddesses. Mary Frances hasn’t tarnished his memory for the child. I’m grateful for that.”

And that was neither reminiscence nor confidence, but rather a revelation, probably to him too. “She’s very fair-minded, Mary Fran is. Fiona has some of the same quality.”

“I told her as many flattering stories about her papa as the time allowed. I’d forgotten some of them myself.”

“Was it difficult to speak of your brother?”

They weren’t talking about her, they were talking about him, his family, and his role as an uncle. His willingness to do so was intriguing and suggested a trust in her Hester tried to ignore.

“Yes and no. My parents separated shortly after Gordie’s death. My father’s manner of coping was the proverbial stiff upper lip. His drinking certainly picked up, though.”

She wanted to take his hand. “And how did you cope?”

“Not by writing letters to my only niece about her papa’s brave boyhood exploits. It was some time before I even knew of Fiona’s existence.”

A dodge. Hester was surprised he hadn’t dodged any sooner in this unusual conversation. “What did you do?”

“I managed my sisters. I dealt with the estates, since his lordship seemed disinclined to do aught but ride his hunters over the property at breakneck paces. The solicitors turned to me as well, and there is no putting those fellows off for long when the press of business is upon them. I suspect the year of mourning is very different for men than it is for women.”

“Maybe not. I’m sure Fiona will treasure the stories you gave her. She’ll tell them to her children and to her grandchildren.”

He was silent for a moment, while a fat bee assayed the roses one by one. “I have Gordie’s old journals. Someday, Fiona might want to read them.”

This was a purely selfless thought, one that confirmed Spathfoy was by no means as cool and indifferent to others as his English diction and uncompromising nose might suggest. Hester slipped off her glove, and between them, linked her fingers with his.

“You were good to give Fee those stories. No one else could have done that. They’re the kind of stories my sister will have to tell on me. My parents don’t know those stories, Matthew doesn’t know them.”

“I felt a little guilty for bringing them up.” He did not take his hand from hers, but his gaze was fixed on the distant purple hills and the tall crags beyond them.

“Guilty because you’d forgotten them?”

He gave her an odd look. “That too.” They remained thus, hands linked in a peculiar sort of quiet, until Hester felt a raindrop hit her cheek. Spathfoy dropped his coat around her shoulders and very properly escorted her into the house.

Tye was limited to writing letters, because the staff at the telegraph office in Ballater was unlikely to keep the contents of any wires confidential.

And because he was so easily distracted by the sound of Fiona’s little feet thumping down the corridors, or the slow tattoo of Lady Ariadne’s cane, he was limited to writing his letters late at night when the house had finally gone quiet—though even the quiet was a maddening kind of distraction.

Riding with Fiona had been intended to foster the child’s trust, to tantalize her with the pleasures she craved most, and it had likely achieved those ends. It had achieved other ends as well, inconvenient, complicated ends, like making Tye aware of Fiona not as a pawn in the ongoing chess match with his father, but as a child who missed her mother.

Tye’s sisters missed their mother.

Hell, he missed his mother.

Fiona’s shameless craving to know more of her father reminded Tye that he was also a man who missed his brother, flawed though the adult fraternal relationship had been. He rose from his desk and went to the window, where a full moon was casting the gardens in silvery shadows. A drink was in order, a nightcap.

Several nightcaps.

He passed through the darkened house quietly, but had to pause at the head of the stairs. A sound disturbed the peace of the old house, a sound from within the walls. He followed that sound into the family wing, pausing outside a closed door.

Lady Ariadne slept downstairs, Miss Hester slept in the guest wing. He tapped on the door. “Child, open this door.”

If anything, the weeping became more distinct. Tye pushed the door open and entered Fiona’s room. She should have been housed on the higher floor, near if not adjoined to the nursery, though with Lady Ariadne downstairs and Miss Daniels on the opposite side of the house, the family wing was almost as isolated as the nursery.

“Fiona, are you hurt?”

“Yes.” She hoo-hoo-hoo’d into her pillow, making Tye regret the impulse that brought him here.

“Is it your foot again?” Stupid question, but he’d ask her a hundred questions to stop her damned racket.

“It’s not my f-foot. I want my mama.”

She threw herself over on her side and sobbed afresh into her pillow. “I want my m-mama, and my papa, and they’re gone, and I don’t even know where Berlin or those other places are!”

“For God’s sake…” He took a seat on the bed. “See here, child. This won’t help.”

God help him, he sounded like his father. More than ever.

“Go away. You’re mean, and I don’t have to listen to you.”

Back to that. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and tugged one ratty red braid free from where it was creased along her neck. “Sending me away won’t make your parents come home sooner.”

She lifted her head off the pillow far enough glare at him in the moonlight. “I know that, but I miss them. They hardly ever write, and I’m stuck here. Uncle Ian and Aunt Augusta never come visit because of that stupid, stinky baby, and they’re supposed to help look after me.”

“Well, I’ve come to look after you. Move over.”

Fiona moved about two inches left. The little bed creaked under his weight as Tye shifted to lean back against the headboard.

He got out his handkerchief. “I went to public school when I was about your age, you know.”

“Is that where you learned to talk like the Wrath of God?”

She allowed him to wipe the tears from her face, then caught his hand and held the handkerchief to her nose while she honked.

“I do not speak like the Wrath of God.” He folded the handkerchief and set it aside. “One doesn’t dare cry in public school. All the fellows will make his life miserable if he does.”

They made the first formers’ lives miserable in any case.

She stirred around in her blankets until, after a sharp little elbow had dug into his ribs, she was budged against Tye’s side. “But you got to go and see things, you got to do more than collect eggs and ramble to the burn, and wait for your uncles to come visit.”

“I got to memorize more useless Latin than most children know English. I got my eyes blacked by the older boys. I was punished for things they did, and I missed my bro—”

“You missed my papa. I miss him too.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that she couldn’t possibly miss a man she’d never met, but Tye was beginning to get the knack of being not just an uncle, but her uncle.

“It’s all right to miss him, Fiona. He would have loved to have known you.”

“Mama says he was handsome.”

This observation held a plea.

“He was damned good looking, and you are not to tattle on me for swearing. I’m stating a simple truth.”

“Uncle Ian says it’s not swearing to call them the damned English or the damned taxes. What did my father look like?”

The same queer feeling he’d experienced out riding with her washed over him again. He knew what his father looked like. He knew what Quinworth sounded like, knew the scent of his cigars, the way he studied his wineglass while the blessing was said over the evening meal.

Fiona knew none of these things regarding her progenitor, and that was arguably Tye’s fault.

“I have a picture of him with me. I’ll show it to you in the morning.”

She bolted to a sitting position. “You have a painting of my papa? I want to see it now. I’ve never seen a picture of him. Does he look like me?”

She was scrambling across Tye as she spoke, digging knees into his shins and bringing to mind more swearing.

“It’s the middle of the night, child. This can wait until morning.”

“He’s my papa. I want to see him now.”

She stood there in her nightgown, a thick red braid coming undone over each shoulder, impending hysterics framing every line of her form. Her lips trembled with it, her shoulders quivered, and her tightly clenched little fists promised a great, noisy outburst in the very next instant.

“Come along then.” He rose off the bed and took her by the hand. “And don’t be complaining to me if you catch your very death, running about at all hours without your slippers.”

“My slippers are under the bed.” She wrenched free of his grasp, darted forth, and held them up.

“Give those to me.” He snatched them from her and knelt to put them on her feet. “You will return to bed when I’ve shown you the portrait, do you understand?”

“Yes, Uncle Tye.” She seized his hand and dragged him toward the door. “I’ll go right to bed, and I won’t bother you again tonight. I won’t bother anybody. In the morning, may I see the picture again?”

She didn’t require an answer. The entire length of the house, she blathered on about her good-looking, handsome papa, who was a brave soldier for Her Majesty and danced so very wonderfully at the regimental ball that Mama let him kiss her, and then they got married.

Kiss, indeed. But at least Fiona’s mother hadn’t burdened the child with less attractive truths—not yet.

Quinworth might not be so careful of the child’s sensibilities regarding his view of her mother. Tye paused outside his door and looked down at Fiona where she smiled up at him. Trust shone out of her eyes, trust and hope and all manner of things that had Tye dropping her hand and pushing the door open.

“The portrait is in my traveling satchel. Are your hands clean?”

“I took my bath. Aunt Hester would skin me alive if I got my sheets dirty because I skipped my bath.”

Aunt Hester would pat the girl on the head and murmur the mildest reproach. Tye rummaged in his bag and withdrew three small framed pictures. He passed the first one to her. “That’s your papa.”

She snatched it up and brought it to her face. “Why isn’t he smiling?”

“His eyes are smiling, but to have a photograph made, one must sit still for a very long time, and facial expressions are discouraged as a result.”

“You can’t move at all?”

“If you do, it makes the image blurry. I think you can see a resemblance between you and your papa, around the chin and jaw.”

She padded over to his dressing stand and peered at herself in the mirror, then back at the image of her father. “He is handsome. Mama wasn’t saying that just to be nice.”

Which suggested the girl suspected her mother had been diplomatic in some other regards. “I have two other pictures you might want to see.” He hadn’t planned to show these to her, but the moment seemed convenient.

“Is it a picture of you? I’d like a picture of you.” She kept her father’s portrait in her hand and came back to Tye’s side.

“These are your paternal aunts. That’s Dora, Mary Ellen, and Joan. Joan has red hair like you.”

“I like Joan. She looks like you.”

“She’s quite tall, too, and loves to be out-of-doors. She likes painting and designing dresses, of all things.”

She shot him a curious look. “Do you paint?”

“Not like she can. These are my parents, which makes them your grandparents.” It was the most flattering image Tye had of his father, either photographic or hand drawn. His lordship was standing with one hand on his seated wife’s shoulder. Their expressions showed a rare, congenial moment between them. Mama had insisted on being seated, lest her height be unnecessarily obvious, and his lordship had indulged her.

For once.

Fiona studied the image with the intensity she did everything else. “My grandda looks like you too. Grandmama is very pretty, but not as old as Aunt Ariadne.”

“Not nearly.” The older Tye got, the more aware he became that his mother was only eighteen years his senior.

He didn’t want to take the picture out of Fiona’s hand, but neither did he want her up half the night staring at it. “You may borrow the portrait of your father for the night. Do not put it under your pillow, or you’ll break the glass framing it.”

“I can keep it?”

“You may borrow it.”

She hunched up her shoulders and clutched the small picture to her skinny chest, her face suffused with joy. “I won’t break it, Uncle Tye. Not ever.”

He was about to point out to her that a loan until morning would afford no opportunities for “not ever,” but he became aware of movement by his open door.

“Fiona, are you keeping your uncle up past his bedtime?”

Miss Daniels stood in his doorway, clad in an elegantly embroidered green silk nightgown and wrapper. On her feet, incongruously, were a sturdy pair of gray wool socks, and her hair hung over her right shoulder in a single shiny plait.

“Aunt, I have seen the very best thing ever. Uncle Tye has a picture of my papa.” Fiona scampered over to her aunt and held out the miniature. She did not give it up to her aunt’s possession even temporarily.

“My, what a good-looking fellow he was.” Miss Daniels sank to her knees so she and the child could gaze at the good-looking fellow together. “I especially like the merriment in his eyes, as if he knew happy secrets he was just bursting to tell somebody.”

Tye closed his eyes, trying not to picture his brother’s expression of suppressed glee. Gordie had had charm, about that there was no dispute.

“I look like him,” Fiona announced. “Uncle Tye said.”

“Yes, I can see a resemblance. You must thank your uncle for showing you this. It was very considerate of him.”

“Uncle said I may have it until tomorrow morning.”

“I believe the term used was borrow, but as morning fast approaches, perhaps I’d better rethink my offer.”

Fiona turned her body half away from him, the portrait held out of his sight. “It’s hardly even nighttime, and the moon is still up. I’m going to bed now.”

She shot between the two adults, leaving her aunt kneeling on the floor and a silence where a child had stood a moment before. Tye crossed the room and extended a hand down to Miss Daniels.

“My apologies if we woke you.”

She came to her feet gracefully, her small, warm hand in his providing a curious blend of comfort and upset. To see her thus, ready for bed, her hair hanging in a gilded braid, those ugly socks on her feet… Tye’s heart sped up, and the blood began pooling in inconvenient, ungentlemanly locations.

Which would never do. “May I see you back to your door, Miss Daniels?”

And still, he did not release her hand.

Spathfoy looked tired and a little frazzled, probably from dealing with Fiona on a bad night. Unfortunately for Hester’s composure, the Earl of Spathfoy tired and a little frazzled had a particular appeal.

As did the Earl of Spathfoy holding forth at breakfast.

And the Earl of Spathfoy in a contemplative mood under the stars.

And the Earl of Spathfoy demonstrating casual equestrian mastery over his unruly young horse.

She went up on her toes and kissed him. He was tall enough that he might have evaded her sally, but instead he stood slightly bent toward her, though very still, as if he wasn’t sure if his brain had heard his mouth aright.

“I don’t especially like you sometimes,” she said. “Though other times, like when you’re being so kind to Fee, I more than like you. I am coming to realize that liking and attraction do not necessarily go hand in hand.”

Solemn green eyes blinked at her. “You are determined on more ill-advised behavior.”

“Not determined, perhaps spontaneously tempted.” She permitted herself to breathe in through her nose, to make an olfactory treat of his clean, floral fragrance. “I came over here to rescue you from Fiona, and now…”

“Who shall rescue me from you? Has it occurred to you, Miss Daniels, you might need rescuing from me?”

He was adorable when he tried to bluster. She added that to a growing list of things she had to admit she liked about him. “You would never force a woman.”

He wouldn’t have to.

“I might pick one up bodily and carry her back to her own room, then shut her door very firmly, return to my own chambers, and lock my door against her further invasions. My gentlemanly resolve goes only so far, Miss Daniels, and I’ve already told you that placing your trust in me is bound to end in disappointment.”

He thought disappointment was going to dissuade her?

“Duly noted, your lordship.” Was all this chatter on his part supposed to make her more determined? For that was the effect it had on her. She cupped his jaw, let the tension of it seep into her fingers. “I did not look for this attraction to you either, but ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Wasting it seems unthinkable.”

“Nothing makes it go away.” He muttered this last a quarter inch from her mouth, so she could feel the way the words shaped his breath and taste the frustration in his voice.

“Nothing you’ve tried so far, in any case.” Hester put them both out of their respective miseries and pressed her mouth to his. She might have been content to explore him lazily, to let the kiss build as some of their previous kisses had built—slowly, wonderfully, terribly—but his arms came around her, mooring her tightly to his body. He widened his stance and growled as his mouth opened over hers.

And it was heaven, to be held and kissed by a man who knew exactly what he was about. A man sturdy enough in body and masculinity that Hester could let go of everything—propriety, thought, physical balance—and kiss him back.

“I love your hair.” She spoke against his neck, which tasted of soap and lavender. “I love your height.”

“Hush.” He loved her mouth on his, apparently, seeking his kisses and his tongue and every oral detail of him she could lap up. She arched into his embrace, reveling in his height, because it meant she had nearly to climb him to get closer.

“Miss—Hester, for God’s sake.” He trapped her hands behind her back and rested his forehead against hers. “Do you seek your own ruin?”

He was breathing heavily. So was she.

“I am ruined. Merriman has seen to this, but if I’m going to be ruined, I want to know.”

“One unfortunate encounter does not a lady ruin.”

She did not point out that by his reasoning, she should be entitled to at least one lapse with him, then. “Jasper has put it about that he was sampling used goods, and eager used goods. I did not understand how any woman could be eager for that… poking business, but with you, I think I could.”

“You could…?”

“Be eager. I can’t seem to be anything but eager.”

“For God’s—” He brought her hands up, kissed each palm, and looped her arms around his neck. “My dear woman, if you were any more eager, I’d be lying on the floor, thoroughly ravished. The male mind boggles to consider such a thing.”

The thread of amusement in his voice encouraged her.

“I apparently can’t help myself around you, Spathfoy. I find your attractiveness unlikely and inconvenient, but undeniable.”

This ought to have given him a little purchase on his lamentable resistance, ought to have put him a bit off. But no, Hester realized as he draped his arms around her shoulders and rested his chin on her crown. He was male, and that she was reluctant, even in theory, piqued his interest.

“How will you bear to look at me over breakfast, Hester? I’ve been to all the house parties. I know how to be cordial and flirtatious the next day without it meaning a thing. Despite what Merriman wants you to think of yourself, you are innocent.”

He was a good man, to try so hard to dissuade her. Hester had suspected this; she only hoped he wasn’t too good. “I managed breakfast this morning, didn’t I?”

He was quiet as he held her, and Hester could feel two things. First, she could feel his mind doing some sort of emotional gymnastics, vaulting between the dictates of traditional honor—which would have him tossing her bodily into her own room, as threatened—and the whispered suggestions of opportunity, lust, and maybe even of a different kind of honor.

“Here is our dilemma,” he said, his hands moving slowly over her back. Hester liked that it was our dilemma. “If I take you to bed and avail myself of your charms, I am a cad and a bounder, regardless that you endorse such behavior. Nonetheless, you are in the grip of misguided female notions about proving something to yourself, and one doesn’t speak reason to a lady on such a course. If I send you on your eager, misguided way, you will be disappointed and emboldened to try again, if not with me, then with some other man who might not be at all considerate of you.”

He fell silent while Hester focused her awareness on the second thing she could feel.

His erection, big, hard, and intriguing against her belly. Maybe he was allowing her to experience his arousal in an effort to bring her to her senses; maybe he was so wrapped up in his philosophical debate, he didn’t realize how closely he was holding her.

She rocked her hips forward.

He did not shift away.

“If you get into my bed, Hester, there will be no undoing it, no taking it back in the morning. You’ll know, and I’ll know, and I promise you, there will come a time when we’ll wish we hadn’t. We will both wish we hadn’t.”

“Stop talking.” She anchored her hand in his hair and went up on her toes again to kiss him. Men this size should come with a mounting block if they were going to be so shy about receiving kisses. “I live with regret well enough.”

When he kissed her back this time, it was different. Slower and hotter somehow. He’d reasoned his way to some conclusion that allowed him at least to kiss her, to insinuate his tongue into her mouth and his hands around her derriere.

“Spathfoy, I want—”

“Tye.”

“Tye.” She tried it out against his throat. “Tiberius Flynn.” He was going to be her lover, and he had a name, not just a title. It was a good, substantial name, imposing, like his kisses—and his erection.

She knew a moment of doubt, even as she subsided against him. “Blow out the candles, please.”

Laughter rumbled in his chest. “Don’t you want to see the prize you’ve captured, Hester?”

She did, but knowing him, that would mean he’d expect reciprocal privileges. She felt his chin on the top of her head again, a comforting weight that let her know exactly where he was in a way his arms around her did not.

“Now, she falls silent. Come.” He stepped back and encircled her wrist with one hand. They went on a short progress about the room, with him blowing out all the candles but the one nearest the bedside.

“Do you know, Hester, if you asked me to blow out this last candle, I would?”

She found she did not want him to, though his offer was consideration itself. “You’d proceed in complete darkness?”

“For your modesty, or your courage. And listen to me when I tell you, every man you seek to intimately accost should be willing to do likewise for you. He should let you bind him, blindfold him, or keep your clothes on while you remove his.”

His voice had gotten very stern, leaving Hester torn between pleasure that he was protective of her and irritation that he’d lecture her about future lovers when she hadn’t properly availed herself of him first.

And bindings? “You’ll let me undress you?”

He dropped her wrist and gave her a smile of such riveting sensuality Hester felt the heat of it on her skin. “I did imply that very thing, my dear, and I would love to undress you.”

The game was on, the game Hester had campaigned and pleaded for. She’d lain in wait for him, ambushed him in the garden, accosted him in his own room—his word was appropriate, she didn’t flinch from it—and now she had no idea what to do, didn’t know the rules, didn’t know what would constitute victory or defeat.

He took a step closer. “Or you can watch while I undress for your pleasure.”

Oh, God. She would stare him directly in the eye over breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but she was going to have to cover her ears.

That voice. It was the same beautiful, masculine voice, but grown naughty and lazy with innuendo, and so intimate it ricocheted through Hester’s body to land burning at the feet of her reason.

“Or,” she said, resisting mightily the urge to unbutton his shirt, “you can stand about listing possibilities all night.” And she could listen to him, too.

His smile shifted into a sweet, wicked curve of his lips that lit all manner of mischief in his eyes. And while he smiled, his elegant, nimble fingers went to the fastening of his trousers and stilled.

Hester’s mouth went dry, and she was unable to look away from his hands, hovering over the bulge in his trousers—the sizable bulge.

He caressed himself once, then set about taking off his shirt. She tried to swallow and managed to blink. “You’re teasing me.”

“Turnabout, my dear. If you’d like to get into bed, I won’t stop you.”

He was daring her, or perhaps giving her dignity and self-possession a reprieve. The bed was only a few steps away, though on her unsteady knees, it seemed a long journey indeed.

Spath—Tye—lifted her into his arms, carried her up the steps to the bed, and laid her on the mattress.

Such gallantry restored a measure of her confidence. The earl—Tye—would be kind in bed and generous, even in his arrogance. He would know exactly what to do when she knew nothing, and he’d share his knowledge without her having to ask. This was part of what she needed from him, and that he’d understood it better than she had was reassuring.

So reassuring, she shamelessly watched him when he moved to lock the bedroom door, shed his shirt, and crossed to the washstand.

She lay on the bed and watched while he washed his face and hands and then under his arms. He was unself-conscious about his ablutions, as if demonstrating for Hester exactly how intimate they would be. He used his tooth powder while she watched too, and though his behavior would have been the same if she hadn’t been sitting on the bed, she sensed he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him.

Which was very aware indeed.

“You might want to take off your wrapper and nightgown,” he said, crossing the room to sit on the bed. “Sometimes, delicate apparel can get torn when it comes between me and a lady in my bed.” His set his boots beside the bed, exposing big, stockinged feet.

Hester felt as if she were observing one revelation after another: the hair of his armpits, the way he leaned over the washbasin to rinse his mouth after brushing his teeth, the movement of skin over his rib cage as he prowled up to the bed.

All new, and all wonderful, if vaguely worrisome too.

He was allover defined muscle and sinew, a body sculpted by ceaseless activity, good nutrition, and masculine pursuits. As he bent forward to strip off his socks, Hester watched the play of muscle and bone along his spine.

She wanted to touch each knob and bump of his backbone, wanted to press her hand over his shoulder blades to feel what it meant bodily when all that power moved this way or that.

“Has the cat got your tongue, my girl, or are you planning my downfall?”

He stood, and without giving her a chance to reply, started unfastening his trousers. He shoved them off his hips, taking down trousers and underclothes in the same movement and stepping free of them as easily as Hester would have shoved a few pins into her hair.

He tossed his clothing onto a chair with unerring aim and then stood beside the bed, gazing down at her, his fists propped on his hips.

“Somebody has on more clothes than somebody else, far more clothes than the situation calls for. Are you having second thoughts, Hester?”

Naked, naked, naked. He spoke coherently even when naked. He managed a very credible taunt when naked. Hester wasn’t sure she could speak at all when he was without clothing. How on earth was she to manage when he had her in the same condition?

She reached out a hand to touch his torso. “You are… undressed.”

He was magnificent. The skin over his ribs was warm and smooth, with a trail of dark hair arrowing down from his chest to his groin. When she realized she was staring at that part of him, she jerked her gaze north, to the muscled expanse of his chest.

He leaned forward, over her. She thought—she hoped—he was going to kiss her.

“Shall I blow out the candle, Hester Daniels?”

He made it a dare, and though she was flat on her back, she tried for a taller posture. “You shall not. Get in this bed, Spath—Tiberius. I find your chatter boring.”

This amused him. His lips split into that wicked smile to reveal teeth and a good deal of masculine tolerance. He was going to humor her, which meant at some point he might stop humoring her. What on earth had she gotten herself into?

He climbed across her and lay on his back on top of the covers. “Mind you take care with my sensitive parts, but touch me. Touch me all you like. Never say I allowed a lady to be bored when I might amuse her.”

Resting there in her thick socks, nightgown, and wrapper, Hester felt sufficiently armored to take him at his word. She shifted to put the flat of her palms on the solid plane of his belly. His erection twitched, brushing the underside of her arm.

She closed her eyes, the better to focus on the warm, hair-dusted male skin beneath her hands. She leaned in and caught a whiff of him, paused and took a deliberate sniff, only to feel the palm of his hand come up to cradle the back of her head.

He didn’t move, didn’t direct her explorations in any manner, but for him to touch her like that closed a tactile circle between them. It put both of them in that bed, put both of them on this different and fascinating ground.

“There’s no rush, Hester. We have all night.”

A new note in his voice, not taunting, not pronouncing immutable truths, but offering something. More reassurance? Himself?

She rested her face against the hard shelf of his chest, took a swipe of him with her tongue. He tasted clean with a hint of lavender soap. She did it again and felt a tension leave his body. His hand was still palming her nape, so she rolled her head on her shoulders to feel his touch more intensely.

He captured her hand and moved it down to settle her fingers over the base of his erection. “Touch me, Hester. I certainly intend to touch you.”

Another warning, one that told her she was keeping her clothes on only at his sufferance, at his whim. She could be tied naked to this bed and blindfolded if he chose, but he was allowing her to do the choosing.

The enormity of the trust involved began to seep through her arousal. This wasn’t going to be some hurried, fumbling interlude with clothes pushed aside, the library door locked, and the curtains hastily closed on an otherwise lovely day.

This wasn’t going to be quickly over once she realized what a mistake she’d made.

And for that reason, it wasn’t a mistake. She feathered her thumb over a flat male nipple—what an odd texture.

He arched into her hand. The movement was slight but telling.

“You, sir, like this.” She watched his face as his eyes opened, his gaze so alert it felt as if he’d been staring at her even with them closed. In addition to damnable quantities of English self-possession, a prodigious vocabulary, and an excellent seat when mounted, Tiberius Flynn had an ample store of hedonistic tendencies.

And—of all things—a well-hidden streak of generosity.

“More to the point, Hester Daniels, you like this.”

Not an accusation, but a restatement of his priority when she was in his bed. She smiled at him, knelt up at his hip, and used both thumbs on both nipples. “They change when I touch them.”

“As yours will when I touch you.”

Her puzzlement must have shown on her face. Her nipples puckered when cold; she’d casually observed this and decided it wasn’t unusual, though one could hardly ask anybody about such a thing.

He rested his hand on her thigh, giving her a moment to prepare, and then she watched while that big, knowing hand slid inside her wrapper and came to rest over her breast.

Through the cotton of her nightgown, she felt warmth from his touch and a coursing sort of lightness through her body. Jasper had been so rough, grabbing at her as if he were testing the ripeness of fruit at a shop of questionable quality. He’d hurt her dignity as well as her body, and for the first time, Hester could feel directly the residual anger his mistreatment of her had left behind.

Thoughts of Jasper evaporated as Spathfoy’s hand closed gently on her breast. “Breathe, love. If you faint, I want it to be from pleasure.”

His arrogance again, but what a lovely way to be arrogant. She wasn’t angry at that moment; she was instead grateful to share a bed with Spathfoy, grateful for his confidence and even his arrogance.

Hester put her hand over his, the better to experience the sensations he gave her. As she drew in an unsteady breath, their hands rode the lift and fall of her chest.

How… marvelous. She breathed again and let her head fall back, surrendering the timing of this education to him. He closed his free hand around the hand she’d let drift to her side and brought her palm to rest over his genitals.

Another circle, a circle of pleasure, trust, and desire. She did not open her eyes, but traced her fingers along the warm, smooth length of his member. Jasper hadn’t allowed her this either, not the luxury of time to explore, not the gracious sharing of bodily knowledge.

Another increment of Hester’s ire dissipated as Spathfoy drew her fingers over the crown of his erection, the skin so oddly smooth. “I’m most sensitive here,” he said, “but I can’t imagine a way you could touch me that wouldn’t bring pleasure.”

She was to pleasure him, which opened up universes of possibilities, wonderful, daring, bold… The trust went both ways. This was a revelation of such magnitude, Hester had to scoot down and hide her face against his chest. He let go of her breast and encircled her shoulders with his arms.

Hester straddled him, and between their bodies, closed her fingers around the hard shaft of his membrum virile. She knew the proper name for that part of him. Tye could probably tell her a dozen terms for it, each naughtier than the last.

“Hester?”

“I’m all right.” She was so much better than that. Edges inside her mind grown jagged with self-doubt and recrimination were being smoothed over; places in her body left aching with regret were easing.

And she still hadn’t even taken off her nightgown. She lifted off his chest and shrugged out of the wrapper, feeling the fabric fall down her bare arms in a sensuous caress.

He lay on his back, resplendently naked by candlelight, resplendently erect, simply watching her. His gaze on her body was another caress, but she lacked the courage to be as exposed as he was.

Spathfoy apparently understood this. “Come here.” He held up one arm, implying that she was to cuddle against his side. She went willingly, though when he hiked her knee across his thighs, she was taken a little aback. “For such a bold woman, you are surprisingly shy, Hester.”

He sounded puzzled rather than disapproving. Just when she thought they might get into a contest of vocabulary—comparing “shy” and “reserved” for example—he shifted so her leg was hiked up over his hip, and he was on his side, looming over her while she lay mostly on her back.

How had he done that?

He peered down at her. “But not too shy.”

She didn’t bother forming a reply. Instead she drew her fingers along the architecture of his jaw, caressed the strong bones and lean muscle that created a sense of resolution and strength in his countenance. He caught her hand, kissed her palm, and set her fingers on his chest.

And his mouth on hers.

Kissing him was a relief of tremendous magnitude. When he settled his lips over hers, Hester felt as if a current ran between them, everywhere they touched. A current that had been damming up inside her body since she’d first laid eyes on him.

And perhaps in his body as well.

He was good at this. He could kiss and go plundering with his hand at the same time. Into her hair, to anchor her head on the pillow, down her arm, to squeeze her fingers gently, and then up her rib cage to… there.

Through the fabric of her nightgown, he teased her nipple to an aching peak, then covered the fullness of her breast with his hand. She moved into the caress, used her leg around his hips to pull herself closer to him, confident in the knowledge that her desire was a precious, wonderful thing to him. On that liberating thought, she hitched closer still.

And felt his erection against her belly.

“Kiss me, Hester.”

She needed the reminder, because his intimate flesh was that distracting, that fascinating. She opened her mouth for him, welcoming his questing tongue, savoring him, and letting him tease her into exploring his mouth as well. When he pulled back and grazed his nose over her eyebrows, she fisted a hand in his hair and manually ordered him to resume his attentions to her mouth.

He smiled against her lips, a lovely sensation, but one that suggested he wasn’t as absorbed in what they were doing as she was. Hester ran her hand down his torso and closed her grip around his shaft.

Only to feel his hand on her bare torso.

“My nightgown—” Somehow, he’d untied the bows down the front.

“Hush. Kiss me.”

He plied her breast with exquisite focus, even as his mouth tried to distract her from those breathtaking sensations of pressure and want—and pleasure. She shifted her hold of him while he peeled her fingers loose from his member and set them on her own breast. Was the skin on the underside of her breast as soft as the crown of his male part? What that what he was showing her?

“Tiber—”

His touch delved lower, until he was teasing his fingers through the curls shielding her sex. She gave up on speech altogether, gave up on trying to figure out how she ought to touch him, gave up on thinking.

“Part your legs a little for me.”

She did not give up on listening, but had to push back a wave of self-consciousness to comply.

“Yes.” He set his palm over her sex, which should have been an act of dominion, except it wasn’t. His hand brought warmth and a vague sort of relief, but frustration too.

Even when she said not a word, he heard her body’s needs. This time when he kissed her, there was nothing coy or teasing about it. He consumed her with his mouth, using his tongue to set up a slow, sinuous rhythm Hester felt beneath the pit of her stomach.

“Move for me, Hester.”

He glossed his fingers over her sex, his touch delicate and yet assured. The touch came again, slightly different, higher. Jasper hadn’t touched her like this, hadn’t done more than pummel her body with his own while he told her to hold still and be quiet.

She could not hold still; she had to move against that knowing male hand. Her hips flexed, and Spathfoy growled into her mouth. “Yes, like that. Again.”

As he fell silent, Hester felt music start up in her body. With his hand and his mouth and even the pressure of his chest along her side, Spathfoy started a drumbeat of wanting in Hester’s veins that ran hotter and hotter while his fingers kept up the same steady, teasing caress.

She should be touching him; she should be asking him what all this was in aid of; she should be… breathing.

The last was all Hester could manage. Though she knew the bed was solid beneath her, she felt behind her closed eyes as if she were suspended over some great chasm, her balance no longer her own but entirely dependent on the man touching her so intimately.

“Let go, Hester. I’ve got you.”

Let…?

Her body understood. When pleasure coalesced into convulsions of soul-scorching ecstasy, she clung to him, flailed herself hard against his hand, and felt him slip two long, male fingers deep into her heat.

Bliss and bliss and more bliss deluged her, and he moved those fingers to ensure the flood did not recede until Hester was panting, her fingers manacled around his wrist, her body a foreign and thoroughly pleasured feminine territory she’d never inhabited before.

He understood about this part too, for which Hester nearly loved him. He did not slip his hand free of her body, wipe it on a handkerchief, and climb on top of her. She could not have protested if he had.

“Hush, now,” he murmured in her ear. He gathered her close, rested his chin on her temple, and trapped her leg between his two. When she pressed her cheek against his chest, she could hear his heart and feel it too. They lay like that, entwined, breathing in synchrony, as feelings rioted through Hester in silence.

Tiberius Flynn was arrogant, but also generous, kind, affectionate, considerate, attentive, and… two more words came to Hester’s mind as she panted against his throat. First, Tye was decent in a gentlemanly sense that one had to be naked with him to understand, and second, he was lovable in the sense that a woman could find many reasons to esteem and desire him greatly.

And the man who’d just given her such indescribable pleasure, and who was holding her so tenderly, was also himself yet unsated. According to Jasper, men needed to spend regularly if dire bad health wasn’t to result, but then, Jasper had apparently known next to nothing.

Oh, how that realization pleased her. She kissed Spathfoy’s breastbone, wishing she could tell him, but lacking the courage. Then, too, there was his male member, hard, warm, and lying between their bodies as a rampant reminder that she had not provided him the pleasure he’d showered on her.

“Spath—Tiberius?”

“Tye.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Tye silently chided himself for having graduated from dissembling to outright lying. “Just catch your breath, hmm?” He buried his nose in her silky hair and wondered when a plan to scare her back into possession of her common sense had transformed into a burning need to cover her naked body with his own.

And when had that plan—perhaps understandable, if not excusable under the circumstances—shifted to a craving to bring her pleasure and comfort?

“But this?” She brushed her fingers over the head of his erection. “It can’t be very comfortable.” She let go of his cock but smoothed her hand down his chest and lapped at his nipple—for God’s perishing sake.

He caught her hand in his own and brought her knuckles to his mouth for a lingering kiss. Where the resolve to leave the bed, pour himself a drink, and make light of the situation ought to be, he found a stubborn unwillingness to hurt her feelings to quite that degree.

She hadn’t been a virgin, and yet she was still an innocent.

A passionate innocent, and Tye was only a human man.

He wrapped her hand about his cock, and then set his hand around hers. “This way, nobody risks conception. Every schoolboy becomes proficient at it if he isn’t to lose his reason.”

He fell silent, the pleasure of her hand on him eclipsing his ability to explain. She wasn’t shy either, accepting the firmness of the grip he preferred and giving him the exact rhythm he demonstrated.

And she had the knack of slipping her hand over the head of his cock just loosely enough to make his breath catch in his throat. His hand fell away, and she didn’t falter. “Don’t stop.”

She didn’t. Of all times for her to turn up biddable, now Hester Daniels did exactly as he’d directed her. For long moments, he withstood the siren call of pleasure, hanging suspended over a cauldron of erotic sensations: Hester’s hand on his swollen cock, the warm weight of her body plastered to his side, her leg flung over his hips, and the way the scent of her winding into Tye’s brain became the scent of every pleasure he’d ever forbidden himself.

“Hester—” He’d meant to tug her hand away, to finish himself, but she gripped him tighter, wonderfully tighter, and it pushed him beyond the call of volition. Between their bodies his seed spurted, his body seizing with the force of his satisfaction. His ears roared, his mind went blank, and when he could next claim to have awareness of anything save pleasure, he was breathing like a bellows, his arm lashed around Hester, and his cock trapped between their naked bodies.

When he could recall how to form words, he tried to speak. “I’ve made quite a m—”

She didn’t lift her head from his shoulder, but she put her hand—bearing his intimate scent—over his mouth. “You hush. Catch your breath.”

How in the hell did a woman become so quickly attuned to the man who was supposed to be much more experienced than she was?

Who was much more experienced?

He shut up and subsided into her embrace. Yes, he’d made the predictable, inconvenient, indelicate mess on their bellies. Yes, he’d completely failed in his plan to shock Hester back to her own room, permanently cured of boldness where he was concerned. And yes again, he’d failed utterly to control his own attraction to her.

But she was right. He needed to catch his breath, to locate his reason, recollect his duty—honor being a sketchy concept under the circumstances—and to forget for all time the sensation of her soft wool sock brushing provocatively across his arse as he gave himself up to soul-deep pleasure in her arms.

“Where are you going?” Hester tightened her arms around Spathfoy. He was strong enough to break her hold, of course—he was strong enough to break her neck—but he paused in his flight from the bed.

“We are untidy, my dear.” He kissed her temple, and this time she let him go. They were untidy—sticky, at least, and there was musk hanging in the air Hester found more fascinating than unpleasant. Her body was still humming with the revelations she’d experienced in Spathfoy’s arms, leaving her both languorous and energized.

Pleased with herself—also pleased with him—and curious about what other aspects of the dealings between men and women she’d been kept in ignorance of.

“Lie back.” Spathfoy approached the bed, a damp cloth in his hand. “The only water to be had is cold. I do apologize.”

His torso glistened with dampness, and his skin was red where he’d scrubbed himself clean. He was gentle but brisk with her, swabbing her belly with no more sexual innuendo than if he’d been grooming his horse. And then he sat on the bed, regarding her where she lay in her opened nightgown and wool socks.

“What a picture I must make.” She tried to bring the side of the nightgown closed over her naked body, but his hands stopped her. He leaned down, pressing his face to her midriff.

“You are beautiful, Hester Daniels. Never doubt it. Never.” He kissed her sternum and laid his cheek over her heart, an oddly submissive posture from a man Hester wouldn’t think capable of such a gesture. She settled her hands in his hair, reflecting that she’d learned a great deal from him in the past hour, not the least of which related to the man himself.

“Is there a name for that messy business?”

He stayed where he was, though he might have smiled against her skin. She liked the weight of him on her chest, liked the feel of his hair in her fingers, his breath on her skin.

“Onanism, casting one seed’s upon the ground, to use the scriptural reference.”

“I’ve wondered what the passage meant. It made sense to me as a girl that seed should be cast upon the ground.”

“There are other names for it, some of them vulgar.”

He seemed in no hurry to leave her embrace, which was perfectly acceptable to her. Maybe he even sensed she needed this time to steady her nerves and appease her curiosity. “Is it the same term when you do it to me?”

He raised his head. “You can do it to, or for, yourself, madam. The more genteel term is masturbate, from the Latin masturbari, of the same meaning.”

“We’ve sinned in Latin. I’m impressed. Maybe that’s why it felt so marvelous.” Though she suspected it had felt so marvelous because he’d been the one responsible for her pleasure. “And what, if I may ask, is the proper term for—” She frowned and kissed his hair. “That lovely business, inside my body.”

“The French call it la petite mort, which will serve.”

“But there are less genteel terms?” She wanted to know them. Wanted to hear the less genteel terms from a man who could spout Latin when naked and make it sound beautiful and imposing.

“Coming. When pleasure overwhelms you, you come, or I bring you off. Move over.” He extricated himself from her arms and climbed onto the bed. She moved over, finally casting the nightgown to the bottom of the bed. This earned her a smile as Spathfoy lay back beside her.

She treated herself to the sensation of his lean, warm, naked length all along her body, then tucked her leg across his torso, which put her sex in close proximity to his hip.

“Comfy, Miss Daniels?”

“Not quite. I like it when you hold my foot.”

“You will not avail yourself of my nipples, if you please. They are overly appreciative of your touch.”

“Yes, your lordship.” She rubbed her cheek over one of these overly appreciative parts and sighed with the wonder of him. “How can you sound so unassailably proper when you’re not wearing a stitch and I’m not either?”

“You are proud of yourself for this accomplishment.” He took her foot in a lovely, firm grasp about the arch. “Well you should be.”

“Good. If you’d scolded me, I might have started laughing.”

“I need to scold myself. I have no business allowing you into my bed, Hester.”

She wanted to bite him, to grab him by his now-curiously-unassuming male member and make him shut up. “And yet, here I am. You can’t undo this, Tiberius Flynn, you can’t take it back. I have that on the very best, most certain authority.”

He fell silent, which was better than if he’d started spouting off about propriety, and gentlemanly deportment, and God knew what else. As his hand kneading her foot conjured a lovely bouquet of sensations, Hester realized that for all they’d been intimate, for all they’d been naked and trusting with each other, they hadn’t joined their bodies in the sexual act itself.

And yet, he was preparing to flagellate himself.

“Tiberius Flynn, I forbid you to fret over this. I accosted you in your room, demanded attention from you, and left you no alternative but to accommodate me. The male of the species is weak and easily led astray. There is biblical authority for this.”

He let her foot go and brought up his hand to stroke over her hair. “Even the devil can cite scripture for her own purpose.”

Maybe his lordship intended that they have a nap, and then they’d become lovers in truth. Hester was beginning to doubt it. She had allowed him to catch not just his breath, but his damned gentlemanly scruples.

“Go to sleep, Tiberius.” She kissed his jaw, which was now scratchy with an inchoate beard. “Whatever moral hammers you are using to beat yourself, set them aside. You can pick them up in the morning and resume your punishment.”

She hoped he’d be reassured by the implication that she wouldn’t demand further attentions from him, and she hoped he wouldn’t toss her out of his bed just yet.

“Hester?”

“Hmm?” She resisted the urge to wrap her hand around his flaccid member.

“This has been a mistake. I know you don’t agree with me, but you aren’t in possession of a proper perspective on the situation. When you do have that perspective, I hope you will recall that I am apologizing for taking liberties, and that I did not take every liberty you would have granted me, including those that ought to be reserved solely for your husband or a man committed to becoming your husband.”

“Go to sleep.” She brushed her hand over his eyes, bringing his lids down before the damned man said anything further to ruin what had been breathtakingly lovely, sweet, and precious.