To Charm a Naughty Countess Read online

  Michael stretched his mind back. “You ask me about the weather. Then I could say that it’s cold, but less so than Lancashire.”

  “Perfect.” Her sunbeam smile struck him in the solar plexus. “That sort of reply will do wonderfully. It is no social trespass to speak of what you like best, only to talk on for too long. Remember, we always want to make other people feel at ease.”

  “Ha.” Michael could not remember feeling less at ease in recent memory. This physical turmoil was as distracting as his usual headache, though in a different way. It was not a wish for pain to end, but a yearning for something wakeful and exotic to begin.

  Caroline talked on. “Do you take snuff? That’s another topic you could introduce. Gentlemen can easily spend hours talking about their favorite sort and why it’s the only one that’s worthwhile.”

  Michael stared at her lips. He wanted to rub his thumb over that mobile mouth, to see if it felt different from his own. He needed to touch her, to feel the skin of another human being against his. He needed to…

  He needed to answer the question. Snuff, wasn’t it? “Ah—no. I never have taken snuff. What is the pleasure in forcing oneself to sneeze?” As if his body didn’t grow agitated enough on its own without prompting from inhaled particles.

  It was growing agitated now. Not from a headache, nor from the tension that often corded his arms. Instead, his fingers tingled, as though wanting again to cast everything away and forget himself.

  “What is the pleasure in anything?” Caroline looked quite serious.

  “What do you mean?”

  Caroline spread her hands. “There’s no pleasure in snuff. There’s no pleasure in talking to the ton and forming everyday connections. You do not play cards or music. I have never known you to dance. In what, then, do you find pleasure?”

  It was not a question he was accustomed to hearing, much less asking himself. Possibly because there were indeed few pleasures in his life. His mother had died in his infancy, and thereafter, his youth had been a bitter war of opposing temperaments until his father abandoned the battle for the grave. Even the satisfaction Michael once got from resurrecting Wyverne had slid away from him as his plans burgeoned, as details and money slipped from him and never came back within his grasp.

  It was already more than he could keep within control, so there was no room for any other kind of pleasure.

  Though he could almost forget that as Caroline watched him, her lips parted. She smelled faintly of jasmine, like spring brought to life in the middle of the City. He could spring to life too, if she would show him how. For what other reason would he be here with her today?

  For Wyverne. Always, only, ever.

  For Wyverne, now, he wrestled with himself until he choked off his want, managing an acceptable reply. “There is pleasure in taking apart the clockwork mechanism of a Carcel lamp.”

  Caroline lifted one eyebrow. “So you say.” But the crimp of her mouth was, Michael thought, evidence of amusement rather than annoyance. “Let us try again, then, and we will seek a kernel of pleasure in the everyday. You have your introduction in a moderate discussion of the weather.”

  Michael sighed. “Yes. And no experiments.”

  “Quite right. What next should we vanquish, to increase your enjoyment of London life?”

  The answer came to mind at once. “Dancing. I know it is an inextricable part of courtship, though it is really nothing but an excuse for touching a lot of attractive strangers.”

  “And unattractive ones too. Sadly.” Caroline dusted biscuit crumbs from her fingertips. “I suspect you’re not the only man in London who has qualms about dancing. It is one of the most complex of our rituals, you know. Every step heavy with meaning, every gesture holding import.”

  “That is not a helpful observation.” Michael’s right leg began to bounce, agitated. “I thought dancing was intended to be diverting, but where is the diversion if every dance holds more significance than the average speech before Parliament?”

  “This.” Before he understood her meaning, she rose from her seat to flatten a palm on his chest. His heart thumped for her notice, but then her head bent close to his, and he felt the warmth of her breath on his ear. “This, Michael.”

  His scalp prickled; he had no idea whether his heart continued to beat. He only felt, wanted, craved as she took his hands, pulled him to his feet, then slid his hands around the curve of her waist.

  His fingers flexed. “The sphere is no longer my favorite shape.”

  Stupid brain.

  “You have a favorite shape?” She paused. “Never mind. Of course you do. Might I hope your favorite number is three? We’re going to waltz.”

  “What? Here?”

  “Here. Now. One, two, three,” she murmured. Then she tugged at his shoulders, humming tunelessly.

  His feet followed as they were bid, at first stumbling until he seized upon the pattern of the steps. Ticking off circle after circle, transporting him ever onward, to a place that was entirely distant from a morning room on a noisy street in London. They turned, silent and slow, deliberate as arithmetic, and there was nothing but the sum of their parts. Body and soul and the sweet feeling of Caroline in his arms.

  They fit together, hands and bodies, in every way. Two gears from the same wondrous machine, made to work together.

  The tuneless scratch of her hum died away, leaving them alone in a roaring silence.

  He had forgotten his body for a few minutes—a blessed gift. Now that it pressed upon his notice again, it was not as usual. Every fiber of his form felt taut, but the feeling was pure and bright, like feeling the sun on his skin for the first time after a long winter.

  At long last, he thought as he bent his head.

  She slid her hands to his face, then turned her head to breathe his name in his ear. “Michael. This. Let me show you the pleasure in it.”

  He had never known an ear was useful for anything but hearing. Yet as she breathed in it—as he could almost feel her lips upon its sensitive folds—pleasure arrowed through his body, sudden and startling.

  Surely she could feel his arousal through their clothing. Would she pull away? But no, she caught his shoulders again and pulled him closer.

  His hands framed her face, then tangled in her coiled hair. Delicately, he brushed her lips with his. So soft. So heated. She gave a little sigh and slid her arms down to encircle him.

  Why—she was embracing him.

  He had not been embraced since the last time he surrendered himself to her touch.

  Of reflex, he waited for the gut punch of chilly tension, the intrusive pounding of his headache. But she tugged his head downward, and her hot tongue found the rim of his ear, and his every rivet simply popped. He was steam, mindless and formless and boiling, and dimly he heard himself moan as she gently nipped his earlobe.

  He caught her mouth again, smothering it with his own, wanting to consume their every sound of need. This was a power both unprecedented and exhilarating: to please a woman with his body. He had never done such a thing before, never been so close or so passionate.

  But his own flesh understood things darker and deeper and hotter than anything Michael had ever studied in a book. He knew just how to press back when Caroline rubbed against him. He knew how to match her mouth with his, how to invite the delicious torment of her tongue. The taste of her was indefinable, like heat itself, and he sipped at it to understand it more fully. There was no understanding it, though, none at all. It was wildness for its own sake, and it was marvelous.

  His hands had their own will, stroking her back and pulling her more firmly against his body. He wanted her inside him; he wanted to be inside her. The touch of her was magical, more intoxicating than brandy could possibly be.

  No wonder he had resisted such closeness. It was unmaking him. He was drunk on it, and the realization made him shu
dder with thrilling force. This, this was why people danced and loved, and why they offered one another night after night of pleasure.

  But pleasure would not save Wyverne.

  The thought was as heavy and painful as hitting his thumb with a hammer.

  There was no reason to dance with Caroline, or to kiss her. The solution to his problems was the prosaic circle of a guinea, not the sinuous curve of the woman in his arms.

  He let his arms sink to his sides. They felt as weighty as if all the burdens of the world had been placed on them.

  Which was a ludicrous overstatement. It wasn’t the world. It was merely eighty thousand acres of it, scattered far away and sere, needing him more than he could ever need anything or anyone.

  “I…” He began, but had nothing to say next.

  That single syllable was enough, though. He could almost hear the fragile intimacy shatter as Caroline stepped away from him.

  “I can do without pleasure,” he made himself say. “It is not a requirement. Only money is a requirement.”

  “I am sorry to hear you say that.” She was still too close to him, close enough to touch, yet she did not touch him again. “For I think an appreciation of pleasure would help you greatly in your cause. Without feeling it, you can never give it.”

  “I said I felt pleasure in taking apart the lamp.”

  She gave a dismissive wave. “Purely intellectual. That type of pleasure is cold and solitary. Instead, I’m talking of the pleasure of the flesh and of the soul.”

  Michael felt himself on unsteady ground. “This cannot be relevant to my search for a wife.”

  “It is relevant to everything,” Caroline insisted. Now it was her turn to pace the room. With her hands tucked behind her back, the beaded bodice of her gown pulled tight over her rounded breasts. Michael knotted his fingers again, reminding them that they were not to touch. “Surely you want your wife to admire you, and one day even love you.”

  His mouth had gone dry. “That would be ideal, though it is not necessary.”

  She pivoted, faced him. “No? It should be. How much better would your inevitable marriage be if your wife smiled when she saw you each morning? If she caressed you because she loved the feel of your skin and knew that you loved her touch? How much better if you had someone to talk to who accepted everything odd that you said, because she admired the workings of your mind and trusted your judgment?”

  He stared at her. The idea of such a wife, such a life, was like riding the Catch Me Who Can locomotive across the Channel from Dover to Calais. In a word: impossible.

  “No one has such a marriage,” he said. This was not, he knew, a statement of fact. It was a theory that could be disproven by a single counterexample.

  “You’re wrong,” Caroline replied, “though that doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you want that for yourself, or whether you only want to discharge your debts and carry on as you have for the last eleven years.”

  “Business before pleasure,” he murmured. There was always business. There was never any time for pleasure.

  That was Michael’s choice. If he had wished, he could have hired himself an army of servants, left his estates in their charge, and gallivanted around London, whoring, drinking, gambling. Living as his father’s son, allowing his land to dwindle irretrievably into poverty.

  But he would not; he was not built to slough his responsibilities onto others. Such pastimes were meaningless and therefore worthless. Instead, Michael chose their opposite: the business of his dukedom. He devoted his considerable intellect and energy toward improving finances and land matters, and each year—until this one—had seen progress.

  Wyverne was his responsibility. And discharging his responsibilities fully and well held pleasures of its own.

  “Business before pleasure,” he repeated, catching Caroline’s eye. “That is the way it must be. Finding a wealthy wife is my business. If pleasure comes later, so be it.”

  She watched him for a long, unblinking moment. Michael felt as though she saw through his veneer of determination to the desperate longing within.

  “So be it,” she echoed. “Then we shall seek out Miss Meredith.”

  After spearing him with such a look, he wished she had not accepted his answer without demur.

  But why should she not? Theirs was only a tie of business, after all. No matter how pleasurable it might seem for a moment frail as crystal.

  Nine

  “Deuced cold, isn’t it, Your Grace?”

  Lord Kettleburn clapped Michael on the shoulder and grinned at him. With a fluffy crown of white hair and a fleshy nose webbed with burst capillaries, the elderly baron was as inelegant as he was jovial.

  “Deuced cold,” Michael agreed. At his side, Caroline coughed so much that he suspected her of covering a laugh.

  The Kettleburns made an unlikely pair: he, a rough-spoken pukka sahib who had made a fortune in shipping; she, a viscount’s daughter several decades his junior, whom he had purchased shortly after receiving his barony for economic services to the Crown.

  In other words, Kettleburn had started with money and used it to gild his way to a position in society. Precisely the reverse of what Michael intended to do.

  He only hoped his union proved more harmonious than the Kettleburns’. The baron’s money might have bought lobster patties and a large orchestra, but as far as Michael could tell, no one particularly wanted to talk with him.

  Except Caroline, who was clasping the old rogue’s hand. “I adore your new chandeliers, Lord Kettleburn. Such beautiful crystal. Are they Venetian prisms?”

  The baron cleared his throat. “Can’t say, honestly. M’wife’s picked out all the fripperies and furnishings. She does the choosing, and I do the paying. Suits us both, what?”

  The young baroness smiled tightly. Several inches taller than her husband, she reminded Michael of an icicle: thin and brittle in a frost-silver gown, with pale hair pulled back tightly from austere features.

  By contrast, Caroline was all warmth. Her gown was dark red, so velvety looking that it seemed to invite touch. In the candlelight, her upswept hair appeared as golden as a sodium flame—though somehow he had thought it prudent not to blurt out this comparison.

  “I admire your selections, Lady Kettleburn.” Caroline turned her smile to the young baroness. “And I congratulate you on your fortunate household arrangements. Not many women of my acquaintance enjoy such husbandly trust and indulgence.”

  The young woman relaxed visibly, and Caroline turned to their host again. “My lord, the punch is your own concoction, is it not? I’ve heard it’s the perfect complement to an evening of dancing and merriment. Wyverne, you must try it.”

  The baron blinked hazily. “Er… yes. I’d be honored, Your Grace. May I show you to the refreshments?”

  “No need, my lord.” Caroline waved him off. “Your other guests would miss the pleasure of your greeting. I’ll steer Wyverne in the right direction.”

  With a flurry of nods and smiles all around, they moved into the arcade of rooms their hosts had opened up for dancing.

  “Truly, I have no idea in which direction you are steering me,” Michael muttered. Like his own London residence, Kettleburn House was a stretching home in an elegant but not modish part of London. But as quiet and dim as Wyverne House was, this one was tumultuous, full of winking candles and babbling voices, the heavy scent of meats cooked in butter and lard, the bleat of oboes and thrum of strings. Already his head pounded in time with the country dancing; already he was tense from holding himself out of Caroline’s reach, from reminding himself not to reach for her.

  Tonight, he had another chance to show the world who the Duke of Wyverne was. And by God, he’d better not cock it up again.

  Caroline nodded at a gaggle of richly dressed women then waggled her fan at another group. “I am steering you into so
ciety,” she said. “Is it not obvious? Lord Kettleburn is now convinced that you are keen to try his punch, than which he can imagine no greater honor. And his lady wife is of better cheer knowing that her domestic arrangements are admired rather than scorned.”

  She turned to Michael, lovely as a wicked angel. “This is how we shall proceed. All you have to do is say ‘Deuced cold’ when the moment is right and think of something kind to say whenever you can. Just as we practiced last Saturday.”

  “Why need we waste such efforts on people such as the Kettleburns?” Michael asked. “They have money but no influence, no daughter for me to pursue. Surely our time would be better spent courting the favor of someone else.” Unkind, perhaps, but his reserves were finite. He already felt like a spring over-tightened, tense beyond bearing.

  “Spoken with a duke’s hauteur. Why waste your favor on your inferiors?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” The rhythmic headache added a brutal glissando. “I speak of time being limited, not favor. I am only conscious of the need for haste.”

  “Ah. So you wish to focus your attention on the best people.”

  “I—”

  “Aristocrats, you mean. Dukes such as yourself.”

  He wondered whether she was being deliberately obtuse. “If they have money and unmarried daughters.”

  Caroline snapped her fan closed. “Someone such as the fifth Duke of Devonshire, you mean? He was blessed with both daughters and deep pockets. A prince among men, to be sure. He made his wife’s life a hell by taking up with her closest friend under his own roof, yet when the duchess strayed, he had her exiled to France.”

  “I don’t mean—” Michael tried to break in, but Caroline continued ruthlessly.