her. "What is it?" he said. Then he saw what Juliette intended, a long bare length of thigh,
poking out from between the folds of her gown, and a generous section of unharnessed
breast almost carelessly showing. A dark look flooded his eyes, an expression measuring
and furious and calculating at once.
Dryly, he said, "What have we here?"
"Whatever you like." She smiled her best smile and smoothed the silk over her
body suggestively. "Might I come in and share your port?"
He was shirtless, his hair loose, and Juliette didn t wonder that Madeline was
smitten. He wasn t Jonathan of course, but he was beautiful nonetheless. And the
darkness in him was exciting. Lazily, he leaned on the doorjamb, bottle in hand, and let
his gaze rove over her. Juliette inclined her head, but a flush began on her neck; she could
feel it creeping up her face, to her ears. Men did not consider her a bawdy in a
whorehouse, but leaped upon her as if she were the choicest morsel at a feast. His slow
reluctance shamed her deeply.
"It isn t that I wouldn t like to," he said at last, "but I value my friendship with
Jonathan."
Just then, a door opened down the hallway, and Jonathan stepped into the dim
corridor. Juliette bolted forward, shoving herself between Lucien and the doorway,
scraping her arm rather viciously as she did so. She plastered her back against the inner
wall and listened to see if she could tell where her love had gone. Silence echoed back.
"Where did he go?" Juliette whispered.
"Downstairs I believe," he said. "You ve time to get back to your room, I d guess,
or into his or even to the library."
He d seemed very drunk a moment ago, but Juliette thought he saw a lot for one
as inebriated as he seemed. She looked at him steadily. "Thank you for not giving me
away."
He took a breath and lifted the bottle, carelessly gulping it before he answered. If
things were different, Juliette, I d like nothing better than to devour that beautiful body of
yours." He pursed his lips. "But you only offer yourself as sacrifice to save your virgin
child, and I find that rather unarousing."
The heat in her neck crept higher. "Am I so transparent? I thought myself a good
deal better courtesan than that."
Lucien shook his head. "You needn t worry about Madeline, Juliette. She is only
a child, and although she is charming, I have no wish to bed a trembling virgin." He
examined the bottle in his hand a moment. "I d rather have Anna, I think. It would be a
pleasant diversion after so many years."
Juliette, flooded with a sense of relief, moved forward and took his hands. "Thank
you."
His eyes, dark pools in his haggard face, were unreadable. "Think nothing of it."
He gave her a little shove. "Now go find Jonathan before I am tempted to take you
myself."
With a brilliant smile, Juliette did just that. Grabbing her wrapper close, she ran
for Jonathan s room.
Chapter Eleven
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart.
John Fletcher
For several days, the workmen hammered and sawed and made noises all the day.
Madeline flung her attentions into repairing the damage to her garden, thankful in spite of
herself for the help of the men hired by Lord Esher.
To her surprise, Lucien even gave help himself, seeming to take great delight in
the tasks she assigned him. He worked harder than she would have expected, and came
back to the house in the afternoons as covered with grime as Madeline or any of the
workmen.
She could not help contemplating the motives of both Lord Esher and the
marquess. One wished to marry her and sent men to fix the windows of the house. The
other wanted to seduce her and sent men to mend her greenhouse, which, while not
practical, was the heart of her life. At low moments, Madeline wished Charles had been
the one to make the extravagant gesture.
Foolish. What point to repairing the greenhouse unless the house windows had
been replaced first? Charles, even more kind in the long run, had provided the necessities,
so that Madeline might use whatever other funds she could muster to fix the greenhouse
and gardens. Lucien, on the other hand Annoyed, she forced herself to stop allowing
the squirrels to chase themselves in her brain. One man was practical, the other was
pleasure seeking. Not such a difficult tangle.
In spite of everything, she did find herself liking Lucien better for the fact that he
was willing to come out to the garden, morning after morning, to work. His hands got as
torn and scratched as Madeline s own, and it would not be hard to mistake him from afar
as a village farmhand. The fine cut of clothes gave him away up close, of course, but he
worked as hard as anyone else. The men liked him as well, for he made jests all the day,
his enormous charm drawing them in, his good-natured teasing easing their hard labor.
One morning Madeline commented, "I believe you really enjoy yourself out here.
Lord Esher."
He grunted, struggling with a shovel in a stubborn bit of ground. "Yes, I think
you re right. Perhaps I ve missed my calling."
"It isn t too late. Surely you have estates to tend perhaps you could use your
newfound talent on them."
"There are no beautiful young ladies to seduce at my estates," he countered
quickly, a devilish shine in his blue eye. For an instant, Madeline thought that at last he
would claim the kiss he held in hock from her, that it would be over with and she could
stop wondering when it would come.
Instead, he only put his attention back on the shovel and Madeline drifted away,
feeling slightly vexed. She wanted the kiss done. She hated it hanging over her this way.
When they were not working together in the garden, she went to great lengths to avoid
him entirely.
A new party of guests had come in from London. Madeline finally realized
Juliette s genius at work once again. It was far less expensive to maintain this country
estate and life, even with the entertaining, than it was to live in London and indulge the
round of parties and dances and salons they would be expected to attend and present. By
snagging the rather juicy prize of London s most notorious rake in the body of Lucien
Harrow, presently under a cloud of great speculation, Juliette had assured a fashionable
flow of guests eager to be considered as bon ton as anyone else.
While she found the London set trying their idle chatter boring, their simpering
and flirting coy and unsettling she was thankful that Lucien was so very popular with
them, for it gave him less time to pursue her.
For pursue he did. Relentlessly, cheerfully. And Madeline, drawn to him for
reasons she could not name, resisted by hiding herself away.
And for once, Madeline could look for no help from Juliette, for it was plain to all
the woman had fallen in love. She and Jonathan were the buzz of the day. They did not
leave each other s side, there was a flushed and dewy glow to them, and they disappeared
at regular intervals. It was almost embarrassing, Madeline thought, and she heard the
mean, pointed comments about the disparity in their ages. Sooner or later, Jonathan
would tire of his aging mistress and move along to more supple prey, they said, and
fretted over what such an end to the thing would do to the countess.
It was not Madeline s concern. She thought her stepmother was a good sight more [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]