Season For Desire Read online

  Giles decided it would be wiser not to say, Adjusting the what? “We won’t,” he said.

  Once Sophy had departed the library, Giles motioned toward the telescope. “After you, Lady Galileo.”

  Audrina smiled, then led him to the Pembroke table on which the telescope stood. Two of the table’s dropped leaves were opened, making of it a fattened semicircle much like the shape of the moon.

  The telescope itself was smaller than Giles had expected, considering it was the focus of Sophy’s life. Two feet in length, with a diameter about that of Giles’s fist, it perched on a graceful brass stand with ornamental curves and a sturdy trio of legs. The surface of the tube was brass, too, shining as though Sophy polished away every finger mark.

  If Giles loved something as much as Sophy loved her telescope, he would treat it with similar care.

  “So why are we here?” he asked as Audrina trailed her fingers up the tube, not quite touching its bright surface. “Do you want to look at something in particular?”

  “No, I just want to look. Without worrying that anyone will chase me away or tell me this is an unsuitable interest for a woman of my breeding.”

  “I would never tell you anything like that, and Sophy certainly wouldn’t either. Go on, you take the first look.”

  Audrina set down the papers and pencil; then stepping behind the telescope, she bent over its eyepiece. Several minutes followed in which she made nimble adjustments to a pair of skeletal brass keys below the telescope’s tube, checked the view, adjusted, checked, hmmmed.

  Giles didn’t mind her preoccupation at all. Because while her posture was bent, the bodice of her dress dipped to an intriguing shadow. Such a curve of pale skin, like reflected moonlight, and then hidden secrets like the night sky itself.

  He shook his head. Fanciful. He’d do much better to find himself a book about something useful. Like the peerage, upon whose whims his father hoped to build a new business. Or fashion plates to show him the sort of jewelry people were wearing these days.

  With a shudder, he moved away toward the hearth. Every window in this sprawling castle seemed designed to leak in as much cold air as possible, and each was taller than a normal story of a house.

  Though this room seemed warmer than the others in the stately home, maybe because the library was small. Or because it was insulated on all sides with massive bookshelves, with a heavy carpet underfoot. The draperies were pulled back, causing the room itself to feel like a telescope, all solid narrowness with a clear end, a beautiful view.

  The sky, of course. The sky was what he meant. Not the woman in a gown the color of emeralds.

  After a long interval of silence and staring—at the sky on her part, at her on Giles’s—Audrina stood. Stretching and rolling her shoulders, she squinted toward the firelight. “Giles?”

  He returned to her side at once. “Do you like what you see?” He could have bitten his tongue. Or not.

  Audrina blinked, then looked down at the telescope. “I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know the names of any of the stars, or how far away the planets are. But I finally got to see something. Saturn’s rings, and some stars that were almost red, and others I never knew were there at all.” She grabbed his forearm. “Take a look, Giles. Look at the moon. Did you know the moon was so dark and rough?”

  She yanked at his arm—which was fine with him, really, and it was also fine that she kept hold of it while he crouched before the eyepiece. Sky filled his sight, blue-black and spangled.

  “What do you see?” Audrina’s voice almost broke, as though she was swallowing her excitement. “Do you see the moon?”

  “Not yet.” Remembering the keys beneath the tube that Audrina had turned, he nudged each with his free hand. At his touch, the telescope edged up or down, left or right.

  He was aware, as he skimmed objects far away in space, how close Audrina stood to him. So close that he smelled the traces of evergreen that still clung to her from the needles they’d crushed earlier.

  The telescope found the moon, sudden and huge and glowing. He reared back in reflex, then pressed his eye to the eyepiece again and scanned it. What seemed silver from afar was dull and gray up close, a steely pockmarked half pie of scarred rock.

  Something within him gave a lurch of painful feeling. “It’s not the way I thought it would be.” He straightened, tugging his arm from her grasp. “Go ahead, look some more if you want to.”

  His breath stirred a tiny wisp of dark hair at the nape of her neck. Her expression was all shadow—and then she smiled, a slip of movement in the moonlight. “I’m not as proper as I pretend to be, you said.”

  And before Giles could say Yes or Right or I’d like to think so, she caught his hand again and tugged him down to sit on the floor. “If we had blankets, this would be like an indoor picnic.” Somehow she sounded as crisp and cultured as ever, each word a pearl.

  “Just a second.” Giles leapt to his feet and, striding to the fireplace, lit a branch of candles from a paper spill. He found a cast-off shawl by Sophy’s abandoned chair and returned to Audrina. “Sunshine and a blanket. Have your picnic, princess.”

  Within a minute, she had arranged the woven shawl on the floor and placed the candles at a safe distance. The shawl, Giles discovered when he seated himself on it, was laid in the perfect location to look out at the sky without craning one’s neck. And if one lay down on the floor and folded one’s arms behind one’s head—even better.

  Audrina hesitated, then settled herself at his side. Giles estimated the distance between them at one forearm, one wrist, one hand.

  He kept his hands to himself. The lady only wanted to look at the stars.

  “It’s Christmas in less than a fortnight,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I have never been away from my family on Christmas before.”

  Nor had he. Never since the births of his younger siblings had Giles been so long away from them.

  Next year at this time, Sarah would be married. If Richard’s plans for a London jewelry shop worked out, Christopher and Isaac would be running the Rutherford Paper Mill. Alfred seemed inclined to study law. And Rachel—Giles missed Rachel most of all. The closest to him in age, she had been born small and early following Lady Beatrix’s bout of measles. With her sight and hearing limited, her speech delayed, Giles had thought to protect her. Coddle her.

  And so, when she was four and he was six, she had thrashed him for telling her she shouldn’t or couldn’t. Giles never underestimated his sister again—though that didn’t keep him from keeping a close eye on her. On all of them. They were just beginning to build their lives; they had hardly gotten used to the absence of their mother. How would they get along this Christmas without Giles? Their third parent?

  How would he get along if they didn’t need him anymore?

  Giles didn’t think of Richard as someone on whom he needed to rely. Maybe the younger Rutherford siblings were feeling the same way about Giles himself.

  Now that was a thought that brought on that lurch again, a pain right below his breastbone.

  “Maybe you won’t be away from your family on Christmas,” he finally replied. “As you said, there’s plenty of time. Twelve days. By then, your father will have relented, and you’ll be—”

  “No,” she cut him off. “No, he will not relent. Not with the family’s reputation at stake.”

  At Giles’s side, she shifted. The nearby branch of candles cast warm gilt on her face; the moonlight left her skirts and neatly half-booted feet silvery-cold. “Never mind that. It’s all right. If I do not return to London, then I . . . then I will be somewhere else.”

  “Nicely reasoned,” Giles said.

  One of her feet kicked against his shin in what was surely not an accident.

  “As it is almost Christmas,” she said in a tone of frightening cheer, “shall we look for a special star in the sky?”

  “What, as though we’re Magi following it?” Giles shook his head, rockin
g it upon his folded-up forearms. “Sorry, princess. I wouldn’t know a special star from an ordinary one.”

  “But would you follow a star? Or—a dream? If you were permitted to have one?” Her laugh was low and a little bitter.

  Giles considered. “Following a star is no wilder than some of my father’s other schemes. He’s tried making paper not only from rags, but from wood pulp—what a disaster that was. And remember, we came to England solely because of a fortune that no one thinks exists anymore except for him. So if I’m willing to follow a whim that isn’t even my own, why shouldn’t I follow a star?”

  “Because you don’t believe in it.” Her voice was low and soft. “You wouldn’t follow a star on your own. You wouldn’t be here on your own.”

  Her words sounded like a criticism, echoing within his hollowness. There’s nothing you want. Those dreams are all borrowed from someone else. You don’t have any of your own.

  Maybe he didn’t anymore. He’d let them go when his wrists grew painful; the first of many things that would inevitably slip from his grasp, just as illness had taken everything from his mother.

  But it wasn’t as though he’d done nothing with his life. He had made himself instead into the family’s valet, bootboy, governess—and Richard’s dutiful son, who could manage the accounts of a paper mill or design a new setting for an ancient jewel.

  “If,” he answered, “I am willing to come along so a person of conviction doesn’t have to be alone, isn’t that worth something?”

  “I suppose, if you do so for the sake of providing company.”

  Not if you do it out of mistrust. This remained unsaid. Did she think it, though? It was such a grimy thought that he shied from it himself. “If I can’t tell a special star from an ordinary one, maybe I’ll treat them all like they’re special. Or are we even talking about stars anymore?”

  “We were never talking about stars,” she sighed.

  They lay on the woven surface, simply looking at the moon. Now that he had seen it through the telescope, to Giles it seemed closer, the shape of a grin tipped sideways. Hanging just out of reach, as though if he stretched out his hand he could capture the whole of it. Appearing so much smoother and brighter from a distance than it did when one looked at it closely.

  Well. A lot of things were like that.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Audrina shiver. “Are you cold?” he asked.

  “I am fine.”

  “Liar. Your sleeves are like little puffy flowers. They can’t possibly be warm, especially when you’re lying on a library floor.”

  He rolled to a seated position and began the tedious process of easing off his coat. The snug cut made it difficult to accomplish on his own, but he succeeded by working one sleeve down over the heel of his hand, then sitting on sleeve and hand alike to pin them in place as he eased out of the rest.

  Throughout, Audrina watched him from her reclining position atop the shawl. The set of her mouth was grave—as though Giles was something to be looked at through a telescope, considered, then turned away from again.

  “Here you go.” He shook the coat out, ready to lay it over her like a blanket.

  But somehow, in reaching over to cover her, he forgot to draw back again. Somehow his eyes caught hers, dark in the low golden firelight, and he forgot to do anything at all.

  Poised on one elbow, his other arm spanning her body, he drank her with his eyes, with his breath, with a soft sigh of wanting.

  After a few long seconds during which he couldn’t quite seem to get himself to move, the solemn line of her mouth curved into a smile. And then she captured his face between her palms, pulling it to hers.

  Chapter Ten

  Wherein Moonlight Extracts the Truth

  Before Giles could think better of it, he had brushed his lips over hers, and they sank together to the floor, his coat trapped between their bodies in a rough bundle.

  Think better of it? What could be better than this?

  Resting his weight on one elbow, he devoted his full attention to her mouth. A taste, rubbing his lips over hers until her tongue brushed against them, until her teeth nipped at him lightly. Yes.

  A deeper kiss, then; one with mouth on mouth, opening for tongues to touch. She tasted of sugar and tea and—and who the hell cared, because he was kissing her, finally, finally. Hot as starlight, and her hair smelled so good, and that sound she made in the back of her throat—mmm, as if kissing him was delicious— was enough to make him instantly hard. Oh, he could kiss her for days.

  In a way, he had been. With every movement of his hands over the puzzle box, he’d wanted to trace the lines of her face and stroke his hands over her body. Every time she had made a note of a new attempt, then looked up at him with questioning brows, he’d wanted to shove aside the small table between them and wrap his arms around her. And the flecks of ink that spattered her hand as she wrote; he had envied the flecks of ink, for God’s sake.

  The hands that had cradled his face slid back to catch in his short hair, then down to grip at his shoulders. She tugged him until he was twisted, his torso atop her, his legs balancing at her side. Bracing himself with one boot against the legs of the Pembroke table—not hard enough to jostle it, for he owed this telescope a great deal of gratitude—he scooted closer, careful not to let his hard length brush against her body. Through his loose trousers, she could probably feel it. Would, if he pressed closer. And that would be so much more than a kiss, a quick burst of mutual passion.

  Except: “This is already more than a kiss,” he murmured. Her throat was smooth, and she shivered when he kissed her there, down, down, to her collarbone.

  “Yes.” She stroked the cords of his neck, making him quiver with pent-up tension. That damned coat; it had turned into a wall separating them.

  She must have shared his eagerness to be rid of it. Skating her hands between them, she tugged the coat free and pushed it away. And then her hands slipped over him again, trailing down his back, then beneath the suspenders at his shoulders to claw him with delicious sensation.

  That blessed coat, to have been removed from his body.

  She arched upward, brushing her breasts against his chest. “You can . . .”

  “I can . . . ?” He could no longer count on his ears to hear anything but what they wanted to. One elbow supported his weight, leaving one hand completely free to roam her curves. When he laid his palm over one of her breasts, a tender sigh slipped from her lips.

  “Yes, whatever you like,” she murmured. Her hand covered his, guiding it beneath the edge of her bodice. Slipping beneath stays, the tight lacing eased by their prone position, to find the satin curve of her breast, the firm nub of her nipple. He caught it, pinching lightly between two fingers, until it hardened yet further and she moaned. Then with his thumb, he rubbed just the tip, that sensitive tip that made her twist under him. To still her, he hitched one leg over her hips, catching her in a cage of his own limbs. An embrace. Again he kissed her, his thumb teasing at one nipple, then the other. Her hips began to rock, to push against his leg.

  “Giles.” His name was a gasp on her lips as she broke the kiss. “More.” She worked her arms around his body, clutching tight first at his sides, then digging her nails into his buttocks. Unmistakable invitation. Instinct told him to cover her body with his, to push her down and grind his erection into her hip until her thighs parted.

  Good plan, that. Shifting his weight, he raised himself up over her. The tiny bones in his wrists popped and burned, but he ignored them. He notched one thigh between her legs, her long skirts a new barrier between them—but that hardly mattered, because good God, this woman could kiss. More than kiss. Oh, a mouth such as Audrina’s—one that uttered bitter truths, heated hopes, sharp desires—could fascinate a man forever.

  Yes. He would kiss her for days, for all the days until Christmas, until the calendar turned from the old year to the new. And she would kiss him back. Rub against him, just like this. Make sweet moaning s
ounds as he sipped at her lips . . .

  . . . but his wrists began to scream, blunting the pleasure of the moment. He tried sinking to his forearms, hoping the pain would fall silent. No, his arms had gone nerveless, biceps in a spasm. They shook, he teetered, and instead of holding up his weight they gave way, and he collapsed across Audrina.

  He went still, body at war with itself. Heaving for air, quaking with lust. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I—need to stop.” Wincing, he rolled off her. Flat. Ironed to the floor, his arms a mass of fire as he looked up into the dark heights of the ceiling.

  He had no right to touch her. He was a man without a future.

  “But why must you stop?” She curled upward, the smooth line of her throat corded with tension. “I am not a virgin. You guessed, surely, after gathering the tale of my past relationship with Llewellyn.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed, praying that the pressure of his squinting eyelids would distract him from her trailing fingers, from the delicate cadence of her voice. Her lips almost touching the lobe of his ear. “Are you thinking to watch out for my honor, Giles? There is no need.”

  Her hands, sliding, questing, stroking . . . oh, he could have surrendered to her. He wanted to.

  But he was not as improper as he pretended to be. He owed her the truth.

  Wrists still twingeing, he caught her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “As a matter of fact, princess, no. You’re a grown woman, so you’ll have to see to your own honor. I’m busy enough seeing to mine.”

  Sliding his free hand over his jaw, he considered. Such a familiar shape, for now. One day his hands would not be able to follow the form. “Look. Audrina. I’ve got nothing to offer you.”

  “Indeed?” She guided their linked hands to his erection, still stiff and needy.

  His face heated; good thing it was dark in the library. “All right, one thing. But if that’s all I can give you, that’s almost worse than nothing.”