'Twas the Night After Christmas (10 page)

“Ah. Why did you leave?”

“His grandmother died.” Camilla had been torn between dismay and relief. She hadn’t wanted to look for a new post, but neither had she wanted to continue with the miserly and highly critical Lady Stirling. “He wasn’t nearly as bad as the man who employed me next, as companion to his widowed sister.
He
wanted her to marry a rich marquess twice her age in order to gain him an entrée into White’s and further his political career.”

“And did he succeed?”

She smirked at him. “She ran off with his best friend. And he couldn’t blame
me
for it, since he was the one who’d thrown them together.” Her smile faded. “Unfortunately, he also no longer had any need for my services, which is how I ended up here.”

He drank more brandy. “I keep forgetting this isn’t your first post. Indeed, that’s why I was so surprised to see how young you are.”

“I’m not all
that
young. I’m nearly twenty-eight.”

“A greatly advanced age indeed,” he said sarcastically.

“Only three years younger than you,” she pointed out.

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “True. But it’s different for a man. We see more of the world in thirty-one years than a woman sees in a lifetime.”

“Trust me, I’ve seen plenty enough of the world at my age.”

He fell silent, his brow pursed in thought. “Twenty-seven. And you had two posts before this. You must have married very young.”

That observation put her on her guard. “I was old enough.”

“How old?”

“Why do you care?”

“You work for me. I have a right to know more about your circumstances.” When she bristled, he softened his tone a fraction. “Besides, why should your age at marrying be such a secret? Were you ten and sold off from the orphanage to a ninety-year-old fellow with gout?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was nineteen. And the orphanage was perfectly respectable. Indeed, I stayed there to work until I married.”

“Ah. So you met your husband there.”

“Yes,” she said warily, not sure she wanted to talk about Kenneth with
him
. “He used to perform religious services for the children, and I would help him.”

“And he fell in love.” His voice was almost snide. When she hesitated a bit too long in answering, he added, “Or not.”

Uncomfortable with his probing, she rose and went to the bookcase. “Perhaps you’d like me to read another book.”

Setting down his glass, he rose, too. “You don’t wish to talk about your marriage. I wonder why.”

She faced him with a frown. “Probably for the same reason you don’t wish to talk about your relationship with your mother. Because it’s private.”

He ignored that. “Did your husband mistreat you?” he asked in a hard voice. “Is that why you don’t wish to discuss him?”

“Certainly not!” she said, appalled at the very thought. “You always assume the worst of people, don’t you? He was a vicar, for pity’s sake.”

“That means nothing,” he said evenly. “Men who mistreat women exist in every corner of society, trust me.”

“Well, my husband didn’t mistreat anyone. He was a crusader for the poor and the sick.”

“Yet not in love with you?” Before she could answer, he added, “Let me guess. He saw you at the orphanage and determined that you would be the perfect helpmeet for him in his work.”

She shot him a startled glance. “How did you know?”

He shrugged. “The average crusader tends to see women only as an extension of his mission.”

“That’s a most astute comment for an overgrown child.”

He walked over to lean against a bedpost. “Children often pay better attention to their surroundings than adults give them credit for.”

“Another astute observation,” she said.

“I have my moments.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “So how did you end up married to this crusading vicar? You seem the kind of woman who would marry only for love.” His eyes glittered obsidian in the candlelight. “Did he tell you that he didn’t love
you? Or did he pretend to be enamored of you until after he got you leg-shackled for life?”

“You’re very nosy, aren’t you?”

“If you have nothing to hide, why should you care?”

Since she preferred to keep her most important secrets from him, she should probably fob him off with inconsequential ones. “If you must know, he never pretended anything. We’d been friends a few years when he made his proposal. He pointed out that he needed a woman of my skills, and I could use a home and a family. So he suggested—” She caught herself with a scowl. “I don’t know why I should tell you this. I haven’t even told your mother. Then again, she was never so rude as to pry.”

“No, Mother isn’t much interested in anyone’s situation but her own.”

She glared at him. “That’s not true! She’s kind and thoughtful and—”

“Don’t change the subject,” he bit out. “You were saying that your vicar gave you a most practical proposal. Go on. Didn’t he spout
any
romantic drivel to get you to accept him?”

A pox on him. He was going to push her until he knew it all, wasn’t he? And if she refused to tell him, she risked having him delve deeper into her past, which she couldn’t afford.

“Kenneth wasn’t the romantic sort,” she said tersely. “If he felt anything deeper than friendly affection for me, he didn’t say. For him, our marriage was more of a fair trade in services.”

“That sounds cold-blooded even to me, and I’m definitely not the ‘romantic sort.’ ”

“What a surprise,” she muttered.

“So, was it? A fair trade, I mean.”

She pushed up her spectacles. “Fair enough . . . until his heart failed him three years after we married, and he left me a widow.”

“Ah, now I understand. You married him because he was older, more mature—”

“I married him because he offered,” she said blandly, annoyed that he presumed to know so much when he knew so little. “And he was only a few years older than you. The doctor told me that it happens like that sometimes, even to young men in good health. One day Kenneth was well; the next he was gone.” Leaving her alone with an infant, very little money, and her grief.

Some of her distress must have showed on her face, for he said, “You loved him.”

The earl had misunderstood entirely, but she wasn’t about to explain how complicated even a loveless marriage became when there was a child involved. She’d sought to build a family; instead she’d gained a dissatisfying union with a man she barely knew. Turning on her heel, she headed for the bookcase again. “If we’re to do any more reading tonight, then you’ll have to choose another bo—”

“You were in love with your husband,” he persisted, pushing away from the bedpost to follow her. “It might have been a marriage of convenience for your vicar, but it wasn’t for you, was it?”

Determined to ignore him, she ran her fingers over the books in the case. “There’s a novel by Henry Fielding here that I understand is very good,” she said firmly.

“Admit it!” He caught her arm and pulled her around to face him. “You loved your husband.”

“No, I did not!” She wrenched her arm free as he stood there gaping at her. “I grieved him, yes. But I did not love him.” That was the most embarrassing thing of all to admit. “I wanted to love him. I thought that once we were married, I would feel something, but I never . . . I couldn’t . . . ”

His gaze on her was intent, penetrating. “Don’t blame yourself for that. Romantic love isn’t for everyone.”

For some reason that sparked her temper even more. “You mean a woman like me is incapable of love.”

He scowled. “I didn’t say that.”

“You think that a woman with no resources is
always
on the hunt for a man with money,” she went on hotly.

He looked as if she’d punched him. “I don’t think any such thing!”

“Don’t you? I married to escape the orphanage and a future as a spinster.” To gain a family, though to say so would make her sound even more pitiful. “You said your mother married your father for money. Neither of us married for love. So I’m not much different from her.”

“That’s not true,” he gritted out. “You didn’t marry a man of means and rank whom you
knew
could aim higher. You came to a mutual agreement with a fellow who didn’t profess to love you—”

“How do you know that she didn’t do the same?” When he merely glowered at her, she thrust her face up in his. “You don’t know
what
she did, do you? You don’t even know the full circumstances of her situation, yet you pass judgment on her.”

She must have hit a nerve, for his face closed up. “I won’t talk about my mother.”

“Of course not. You might learn that you don’t know her as well as you think. That you might be wrong about—”

“Quiet!” he growled. “I won’t discuss her with
you
!”

“You’re ready to defend
me,
whom you barely know,” she persisted, heedless of how reckless she was being to provoke him, “yet you refuse to defend your own mother, who bore you and raised you.”

“She did not—” He caught himself. “You don’t know anything about it, damn you!”

“No, I don’t! So
tell
me! How else can I learn if you don’t?”

“If you don’t stop talking about her, I’ll—”

“What?” she pressed him. “You’ll dismiss me? Run back to London, where it’s safe? Except that it isn’t safe, is it? Because even I, a complete stranger, can see the noose that is choking you more and more with every day that you—”

“Damn you!” He grabbed her by the shoulders as if he meant to shake her. “Damn you to hell!”

She stared him down, daring him to do his worst.

Then he kissed her. Hard. Fiercely. On the lips.

It startled her so much that she jerked back to gape at him. “What in creation was that for?”

“To shut you up,” he said, eyes ablaze. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth, and the blaze became smoldering coals. He removed her spectacles and tossed them onto the nearby bed. “But this one, my dear, is for me.”

His second kiss was a revelation. The fact that he was kissing her at
all
was a revelation. Men just didn’t kiss her.

Of course Kenneth had done so whenever he’d come to her bed, but his kisses had always been brisk and no-nonsense, as if he was trying to get right to the point.

There was nothing brisk and no-nonsense about the
earl’s
kiss. It invaded and persuaded, inflamed and invigorated. His brandied breath intoxicated her, made her want to drink him up even as he was fogging her good sense. She could hardly think, with his hands sliding into her hair and his mouth possessing hers.

And when he deepened the kiss, delving between her lips with his tongue, she couldn’t prevent the moan that rose in her throat. She’d forgotten how good it felt to be held by a man, kissed by a man, even one who didn’t love her. But this was so much more even than that. It was heady, thrilling . . . magical.

She caught herself. Of course it was magical. Rogues built their reputations on magical kisses. Magical
seductions
.

The thought made her tear her mouth from his. “You probably shouldn’t . . . ”

“Damned right I shouldn’t.” He clasped her head in his hands, his eyes dark and fathomless as he gazed into hers. “Even I know better. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to. Or you from wanting me to.”

How had he guessed?

Probably because she’d just let him repeatedly thrust his tongue inside her mouth. And her hands now gripped his waist like those of a woman drowning.

She forced her hands to release him. “My lord—”

“Don’t call me that.” He bent his head, stopping his lips a breath away from hers. “In this room, we’re Pierce and Camilla, understood?”

For no reason she could explain, she nodded, and that was all the invitation he required. With a sharp intake of breath, he took her mouth again.

P
ierce knew what he was doing was unwise. He might be a scoundrel and a thousand other vile things, but he didn’t attack women in his employ. He didn’t pinch the maids or sneak a fondle from the housekeeper. And he did
not
kiss his mother’s paid companion.

Except that he
was
. And he couldn’t seem to stop.

It didn’t help that she was kissing him back. It didn’t help that he knew she was a widow, that he knew she hadn’t loved her husband, that he found her enticing and clever and all those things that made him desire a woman.

He certainly desired this one. Her fierce soul made him ache to lay her down on the bed and take her with slow, hot intent until she cried out her pleasure beneath him. She smelled of
honey water and tasted of cinnamon, and he’d have liked nothing more than to eat her up.

She broke the kiss again to stare up at him with that clear-eyed gaze that seemed to see deeper than she let on. “Is this how you always silence a woman?”

He brushed kisses over her cheek. “Never needed to before,” he murmured in her ear.

“So I’m the only woman who plagues you?” she asked skeptically, then gasped when he nipped her earlobe.

She was certainly the only one who’d ever plagued him about Mother. But then, he’d never let anyone else close enough to even know he
had
a mother.