Chapter Fifteen
Sherbourne liked pretty women, and he liked intelligent women. The former were a delight to look at, the latter were enjoyable conversationalists. A pretty, intelligent woman—as Charlotte Windham was pretty and intelligent—made him uneasy.
“Miss Charlotte,” he said, bowing. “We never did schedule our archery exhibition.”
She occupied a bench in the castle’s inner courtyard, an odd place decorated with topiary beasts and the infernal red and white flowers favored by the St. Davids. The courtyard was sheltered from the wind, though the windows on all sides made it a public space.
“I challenged you to a contest, Mr. Sherbourne, not an exhibition.”
She had yet to invite him to sit, and because the castle was crawling with gentlemen, or perhaps because Miss Charlotte would skewer him for any presumption, Sherbourne stayed on his feet.
“Why insist on a winner and loser, when you know I’m likely to best you?”
“If you show yourself to be the better marksman, you’ll lose.”
Ducal families were prone to eccentricity, which was to be expected after so many generations of inbreeding.
“If I am the superior archer, I lose? Please do explain.”
“You might as well have a seat,” the lady said, moving aside a parasol, quiver, and arrows. “If you best me at archery before all the assembled guests, you reveal yourself to be lacking in gentlemanly refinement, for you have used your superior strength—an accident of biology—to cast a lady’s talents in the shade. Then I win, because I will have warned all the young women of your true nature.”
Win the battle, lose the war. An old concept, and Sherbourne should have seen the trap she’d set—the trap he’d set for himself, rather.
He took a seat nonetheless, because Charlotte Windham was an exponent of the social strata he expected to marry into. Ducal spinsters didn’t wander into the wilds of Wales all that often.
“How would I win the challenge?” he asked. “If I display my marksmanship honestly, I’m castigated for using the strength God gave me. If I cheat and pretend to lose, I’ll be castigated for humoring a woman who should have known better than to challenge me.”
“That tears it. Come along.” She snatched up her bow, shoved her parasol at him, and marched off.
Nobody told Lucas Sherbourne to come along, and yet he was on his feet, frilly parasol in hand, walking beside Miss Charlotte as she headed for the archway that led to the back terrace. She wore a russet walking dress, and such was the vigor of her stride that with every step, Sherbourne got a peek at cream-colored petticoats with bright red embroidery about the hems.
“Even I know that accompanying you somewhere private is not wise, Miss Charlotte.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. We’re in full view of the castle, where we shall remain while I disabuse you of your manly arrogance. I ought not, in part because it’s rag-mannered of me to correct a relative stranger, even if he is long overdue for a setdown. I also ought not because my aunt will lecture me for being a hoyden, and I do not relish her tirades. You’ll want to remove your jacket.”
“Women don’t usually instruct me to disrobe.” Said the man toting a lacy parasol.
“Which admission suggests you need to work on your flirtation as well as your manners, for you aren’t all that bad-looking, despite your size, and you’re known to be wealthy.”
She’d escorted him to the formal garden, where an archery butt sat a significant distance away. For a man who knew what he was about, on a still day, the target was manageable. A woman would need considerable strength to match his performance.
A bow leaned against a stone bench, and a quiver had been slung on the back of the bench.
“Were you expecting me?” Or better still, waiting on his chance passing because he wasn’t all that bad-looking?
“I prefer to entertain myself with a variety of equipment.”
Good God, had Miss Charlotte’s innuendo been sexual? Her expression said not, but like the bright artistry winking from beneath her skirts, her retort bore hidden meaning.
“Am I allowed a few practice shots?”
“As many as you need.”
The bow was a solid, elegant weapon. Centuries ago, the Welsh longbowmen had trained for ten years before taking a place on the battlefield, where their arrows could pierce armor and chain mail.
“My middle name is Herne,” Sherbourne said, unbuttoning his jacket. Bond Street tailors sewed a jacket to fit a man like a glove, and Miss Charlotte’s assistance was necessary to get Sherbourne out of his.
“So you were named for a predator,” she said, folding his jacket over the back of the bench.
“I was named for a Celtic god of hunting, also for a gouty great-uncle.” And damned if it didn’t feel good to get out of that jacket, the better to show off an equally exquisite waistcoat to the lady. Doubtless, he was breaking some rule by removing his jacket, but Miss Charlotte had given him an order.
Never argue with a lady.
Sherbourne tested the tension on the bow, found it adequate, and nocked an arrow. Miss Charlotte moved behind him as he took aim, and his first arrow sank into the target a few inches left of center.
“Not bad,” he murmured, nocking a second arrow. “I can do better.” This time, Shebourne concentrated, or tried to. Charlotte Windham’s skirts swishing distracted him. His arrow hit the target, several inches right of center.
“Third time’s the charm,” he said, taking up another arrow. He focused, ignoring the lady’s attempts to distract him. The Sherbournes prided themselves on setting goals and achieving those goals, and just as Sherbourne would right the injustices of his personal world by thoroughly ruining Haverford—a necessary antecedent to bringing modern industry to the valley—so too would he show Charlotte Windham—
He let the arrow fly, certain in his bones that it was headed for the dead center of the target.
Except the arrow never reached the butt. Something knocked it from its path, so it fell to the grass several yards short of the target.
Charlotte Windham was lowering her bow by the time Sherbourne realized what had happened.
“You can’t do that again,” he said. “That was a lucky shot. Nobody can deflect one arrow with another twice in succession.”
“Surely, the gentleman always knows best. Nock your arrow, Mr. Sherbourne.”
She did it again.
“You are a prodigy,” he said, as impressed as he was intrigued. What drove a woman to perfect a huntsman’s skills?
“I am merely a lady about one of my pastimes.”
“Is Haldale one of your pastimes?” The question was ungentlemanly in the extreme, and Sherbourne didn’t care.
“If I distract Haldale from sniffing about my sister’s skirts, and amuse myself at the same time, who are you to say anything to it, besides an indifferent marksman who invites himself to parties on the strength of his riches?”
Her assessment was uncomfortably accurate. “I’m the man who’ll warn you that Haldale has two children, each by a different woman, and like many of his ilk, he’s a very indifferent father.”
He’d surprised her. At last, he’d done something to penetrate Charlotte Windham’s aristocratic self-possession.
“Thank you for the warning,” she said, crossing the grass in the direction of the target. “Few men would have disclosed that much to a woman.”
Sherbourne fell in step beside her. “Not gentlemanly of me, I suppose.” He didn’t give a hearty tallyho what the gentlemanly course was in this instance. Charlotte Windham was too rare a creature to be wasted on the likes of Haldale.
“To preserve a lady from serious peril is the act of a gentleman,” she said, yanking the two arrows from the target and passing them to Sherbourne. “And Haldale’s present mistress is rumored to be carrying.”
No lady should have known that information, much less disclosed that she knew. Sherbourne began to like Charlotte Windham, despite her blue blood, handsome appearance, and intelligence—or maybe, because of them.
“Are you in serious peril where his lordship is concerned?” Sherbourne asked.
“No, but you couldn’t know that. Haldale’s not in serous peril either, if you were concerned for him. I suspect Haldale is all but invisible to Elizabeth.”
Sherbourne knelt to slide his arrow free of the grass, and passed Miss Charlotte her arrow too. That observation regarding Elizabeth Windham bore the solid certainty of a lance flying to the mark.
Elizabeth Windham wasn’t distracted by Haldale because her attention was riveted elsewhere. Haverford had been with Miss Windham when Sherbourne had arrived. The duke had escorted her in from the kite flying. He’d been sitting with her on the day of the regatta. Those moments and a dozen others proved the accuracy of Miss Charlotte’s surmise.
Haverford, who needed desperately to marry for money, was smitten with Miss Elizabeth Windham, who doubtless had some money and endless familial connections to more money.
Sherbourne would have to do something about that situation. The duke was not to have his cake and eat it too.
The economic fortunes of the entire valley depended on Haverford’s ruin, for like every other titled family, the St. Davids were stuck in the past. Some baseborn ancestor had attracted the notice of an impoverished king or prince, and now the common man went without coin so that the aristocracy could cling to its drafty castles.
“Do you concede that my skill is the equal of yours?” Miss Charlotte asked as they turned their steps for the castle.
“At the risk of disagreeing with a lady, I do not. Your skill far eclipses mine, and I thank you for sparing me a public humiliation.”
Her smile was shy, which made her alarmingly attractive, not merely pretty. “I am a lady. Sometimes I wish I weren’t, but ladies don’t go about outshining others for the arrogance of it.”
“Losing to you was my pleasure, Miss Charlotte.”
Sherbourne meant the compliment sincerely, except he hadn’t lost. Oh, no, no, no. This interlude with Miss Charlotte had yielded information that Sherbourne would use to ensure that Haverford lost, though—lost very badly indeed.
* * *
For three days and three nights, Elizabeth wallowed in ancient tomes and small considerations. The first time she used her key to enjoy the duke’s private collection, she found a bouquet of roses waiting for her on the desk. Their fragrance filled the tower room, blending with the vanilla and leather scents of the books.
She’d fallen asleep with a Shakespeare quarto in her lap, unwilling to reshelve it when she might never hold its like again.
The next morning, a tea tray had awaited her complete with the best fresh, warm shortbread she’d ever sampled. That afternoon, a cashmere shawl had been draped over the chair behind the desk. The morning following—she slipped into the tower every chance she got—a merino afghan appeared on the chaise.
Pillows, a footstool, a lap desk, an old-fashioned painted fan, more flowers…hour by hour, Haverford wooed her with comforts and pleasures. The chamber transformed from a room full of old books to a bower of delights.
Elizabeth was engrossed in Milton’s Paradise Lost as published by Samuel Simmons in 1667. The library also had a later version, one revised by the poet to more closely resemble Virgil’s Aeneid, but Elizabeth was drawn to the earlier work.
Such excellent drama had been made of the tired tales of the Old Testament, and the archaic language served to render the story all the more compelling.
“I am intruding.” Haverford stood inside the closed door, looking handsome and harried. His hair needed combing, and his watch chain had snagged on a thread of the embroidery of his blue and silver waistcoat. Those details were precious to Elizabeth, for she doubted others saw him as anything other than the duke, the cordial host, the title.
“Come sit with me,” she said, swinging her feet to the floor. “How did Milton write this—conceive this—when he could not see to put words on a page? How did he create beauty, having lost both wife and child, his second wife? How does terrible sorrow—I’m babbling, but Haverford, you have such treasures here.”
And he’d given her the key to them all.
He took the place beside her, and all at once, Elizabeth realized she’d been missing him. He’d given her this time to cavort with the great minds of the past, to sniff pages, and caress old leather, but the longer she frolicked in the tower, the more she’d felt Haverford’s absence and had no name for it.
“I watched you reading for a good five minutes, Elizabeth. You didn’t even know I was in the room.”
“Such is the power of a good story, or you’re that good a spy. Has Miss Trelawny been awful?”
Haverford kissed her. “Yes. Some fool told her, over and over, that a woman who laughs at everything is sure to marry a duke, and she took the advice very much to heart. She’s sprained her eyelids batting her lashes at me.”
“You poor darling. Perhaps you’ve given her nervous affliction.”
“I have an affliction.” He slid to his knees and slipped his arms around Elizabeth’s waist. “How can I miss you when you’re a mere two floors above me, and I can envision exactly what you’re about? I do spy on you, you know.”
He laid his head in her lap, and Elizabeth’s heart ached. “You can’t spy on me. I’ve been shut in my tower, delighting in your collection.”
“You keep your dawn appointments with Griffin. Is he in love with you, Elizabeth?”
She stroked Haverford’s hair and traced the contour of his ear. “He’s in love with his oak tree. Did you know he gives all the village children acorns to plant?”
“My grandfather started that tradition, or perhaps his grandfather. Our neighborhood has a lot of respectable trees to show for it, though none rival Griffin’s tree. His oak appears on the surveyor’s maps of the estate from Good King Hal’s day. That feels good.”
This felt good, this idle chatter about family traditions in the middle of the afternoon, this privacy and affection.
“Did you come up here to nap, Haverford? I can leave you in peace if—”
He lifted his head, and the look in his eyes assured Elizabeth he had not come in search of a nap. In search of dreams, perhaps, but not sleep.
“You will leave me no peace,” he said, kissing her on the mouth. “You will torment me for the rest of my days. I have commenced doting upon you to the best of my feeble ability, Elizabeth. Has it been enough?”
He wasn’t asking about teapots or shawls, and the honest answer was that, no, a few days of stolen intimacy would never be enough. The kind answer lay in a different direction.
“Your efforts have been appreciated,” Elizabeth said, “but now I want more. Is the door locked?”
“Yes.”
Ah, well, then. Elizabeth set Milton on the table by the chaise, and scooted sideways, presenting Haverford with her back. She’d worn her green dress today, because it made her happy.
Haverford undid her hooks, then loosened her stays. He knew what he was about, and his attentions were aimed at getting her out of her clothes rather than initiating a seduction. This was fortunate, for Elizabeth very much wanted to be out of her clothes.
She untied his cravat, and undid the buttons of his shirt and waistcoat, taking care to free the watch chain from the embroidery. Haverford pushed to his feet and took the place beside her on the chaise.
“You’re sure, Elizabeth?”
The house party would soon be half over, and yes, Elizabeth was sure. She’d appeared regularly for meals, played piquet with Charlotte and Aunt Arabella, and turned pages for Radnor at the pianoforte, but all along—for all of her adult life—a part of her had been waiting for this moment.
She was desperately sure of what she needed from Haverford in the next hour. “Give me your clothes.”
He passed them over, article by article, and Elizabeth folded them on the desk. To move about the room with her hooks and stays undone felt decadent and delicious. She toed off her slippers and began a second pile of clothing on the desk—hers.
Her favorite dress would have a few wrinkles. Her petticoat came next, like a frothy icing folded over the dress. Wiggling free of her stays was an undignified undertaking, but she managed it while Haverford was yanking off his boots. When he looked up, his left boot in his hand, he went still.
“Turn around, please.”
Elizabeth gave him a slow pivot, her chemise still molded to her middle and very much wrinkled. “I want to leave my stockings on.”
Her garters were green satin, her stockings white silk.
“Because,” Haverford said, setting his boot down and starting on the second one, “to be not quite naked is more wanton than to be entirely nude. We can test your theory in all its variations. Should I put my shirt back on?”
“Please don’t.”
He was not pale and soft, as Elizabeth’s first two lovers had been. She’d never seen a man entirely naked, mostly because she hadn’t wanted to.
She wanted to now.
Haverford set his boots beside the desk, then unbuttoned his falls, and shoved off his breeches. Elizabeth took them and folded them, mostly for something to do with her hands.
“I shouldn’t be nervous,” she said, matching the legs of his breeches seam for seam. “I know exactly what to expect, and I’ve longed to be with you in this way, but—”
“Expect pleasure, Elizabeth. Expect consideration, affection, intimate joining, and joy, for I certainly do.”
He took her in his arms, so only the lawn of her chemise separated them. Haverford gave off heat, and his arousal rose between them, an unabashed testament to desire. Elizabeth tucked closer, and braced herself for the coming intimacy.
And for the sorrow, because this was stolen pleasure, and when the house party ended, the price for this indulgence would be one broken heart.
Or, more likely, two.
* * *
Julian marshalled his self-restraint as Elizabeth ran a silk-clad toe up his calf. He’d racked his brain for how to turn this dusty little room into her version of a pleasure dome, and his plan had apparently succeeded.
“You claim to know what to expect,” he said. “Have you ever made love in daylight?”
“I have not,” she said, doing that business with her toe again. “The first time was in an unused parlor at a soiree, and both chilly and dark. I was glad for the darkness, and I think he was too. The second time was at a ball. We found a settee in the conservatory. Somebody had recently fertilized the roses, so to speak. My imagination conjures the most inappropriate memories at the scent of a muck cart.”
Good God. “A cold parlor and a stinking conservatory. On behalf of my gender, I apologize, Elizabeth. My first time was in a saddle room at Marvin Jones’s coaching inn. We always stopped there, coming and going from London, and one of the maids decided to make a man of me when I came home on holiday from my first term at university. I got a splinter in my arse, which did my manly prowess no good whatsoever.”
Elizabeth snorted. “You did not.”
“I had to wait until I got home to find a mirror and tweezers, and could barely sit my horse for the rest of that week, though like the young fool that I was, I gloried in the wound passion had given me.”
Her next salvo was a soft stroke over his fundament. “I wish I’d met you sooner.”
“We have now, Elizabeth.” Lest she detail for him how inadequate now was, Julian cradled her jaw against his palm and kissed her. He refused to hurry, and not only because her previous experiences had been far less than they should have been.
Elizabeth inspired him to patience, to cherishing and cosseting, all the indulgences his too busy, too responsible life usually denied him.
And even better, Elizabeth cosseted Julian right back. She fondled and caressed every inch of him, lingering in odd locations—the turn of his hip, the soft indentation of his elbow, the arch of his eyebrows. Her touch was inquisitive, gentle, and luscious.
“My chemise—”
“Can stay on.” Or not. The material was so fine, leaving it on was as erotic as taking it off. Elizabeth couldn’t know that, not yet. “The decision is yours, Elizabeth.”
She graduated from running her toe up his calf to wrapping a leg around his hip. “I will think of you when I read Milton.”
Paradise Regained or Paradise Lost? Copies of both lay somewhere among the surrounding volumes.
“I will be incapable of thinking at all in about two minutes.”
She smiled against Julian’s mouth and took a step back. He followed and realized she was leading him to the chaise. He used the small space between them to shape her breasts, and Elizabeth arched into his touch.
“Do you like that, Elizabeth?”
“Exceedingly.”
He caught her up in his arms and laid her on the chaise, then knelt beside her and took a moment to admire the picture she made. Her hair was in a ladylike chignon, her chemise was hemmed with violets and greenery, and those damned silk stockings…
Julian retaliated for the stockings and the green garters by stroking Elizabeth’s breasts. She closed her eyes, her arms above her head, and let him use his hands and his mouth to pleasure her.
“You’re good at this,” she said, when Julian had eased her chemise aside to bare both breasts. “You have a sense of what’s almost unendurable. It isn’t fair.”
He wrapped her hand around his arousal. “You’re good at this. You sigh and move and mutter snippets of poetry I can’t decipher, and I’m in a state.”
She propped herself on one elbow and ran a fingertip around the crown of his cock. “We’re good at this.”
“Again, as slowly as you please.”
Julian wanted the moments to last, to organize themselves in a tidy, easily recalled order, like the books on the shelves. This touch, that sigh, the whiff of roses when he arranged himself over his lover, but all the impressions ran together in one long, slow crescendo of pleasure, the way a fire consumes old wood.
When he’d borne all the mutual treasuring he could, he positioned himself between her legs.
“Are you sure, Elizabeth?”
“I’m a living monument to certainty—and impatience.”
That was a yes. Julian sank slowly into her heat, the bliss rolling through him as Elizabeth wrapped her legs around his flanks. He was starved for the closeness she offered, starved for the wonder. Tears threatened, of gratitude and frustration, because all he could have with her were moments and not enough of those.
Elizabeth moved, a teasing undulation that inspired Julian to move with her. She’d been right—they were good at this. Beyond good, though Julian held off his own gratification for the near-equivalent of pleasuring Elizabeth.
She caught fire in no time, lacing her fingers with his and holding on tight.
“Julian…”
“I have you.” For her, he had reserves of restraint, enough to send her soaring above the parapets twice before giving her a moment to rest. Desire was enjoyable—nature had made it so—but so too was the sense of forming a two-person sanctuary against all the troubles and disappointments of the world.
“It’s wonderful when you’re with me,” Elizabeth said, brushing her thumb over Julian’s palm. “The other—on the battlements—was lovely too, but this…I have no words.”
She had kisses, though, and requests made with her hands, and suggestions that Julian dared not heed. When he could trust his self-discipline no more, he withdrew, and spent in silence on Elizabeth’s belly.
The physical sensations were stupendous in their intensity, shuddering through him until he was draped over Elizabeth, a blanket of replete masculinity.
“I am undone,” he murmured, kissing her ear.
She stroked his hair, which he took for confirmation of her own undone-ness.
They lay together, breathing in a reciprocal rhythm, bodies cooling. Julian eventually found the strength to sit back—dukes were a self-disciplined lot—and use a dampened handkerchief to wipe his seed from Elizabeth’s belly.
She watched him tending to her, and the moment became as intimate as any that had gone before. This too was cosseting.
He tossed the handkerchief to the floor, lay beside her, pulled her into his arms, and twitched the blanket over them.
“Sleep,” he said, kissing Elizabeth’s crown. “The door is locked, you’ve earned your rest, and we have time.”
She closed her eyes, her lashes tickling his shoulder.
He’d lied to her, of course, because in truth, they had only a few days. As Elizabeth’s breathing slowed, and quiet settled around them, Julian made a choice. He loved this woman, and while he hadn’t much to offer her, he had to at least try to secure a future with her.
He’d make the overtures to Elizabeth’s father and to the head of her family. He’d be honest about his situation, and if hard work and a sound plan could earn him Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, he’d spend the rest of his life devoted to her happiness.
On that thought, he let sleep claim him.