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CHAPTER SEVEN

Many more encounters with Rehobeth Ingersoll, and I will lose my wits and my hearing.

“Ready for another round?” the lady asked, stroking her hand over Offenbach’s belly.

Have mercy . He’d exerted himself for the sake of a larger plan, and desperately needed the solace of his own bed.

“Alas, my dear, I am billeted with young Lord Cargill. I can tell him I was enjoying Marche Hall’s library, but even he won’t believe I stayed up all night with the philosophers.” Offenbach kissed the lady to convey his supposed regret, which was a bad idea.

Beth Ingersoll was a much-neglected wife, and knew her way around male anatomy. Her touch was bold and intimate, and Offenbach was easily inspired.

“You can spend another quarter hour with the philosophers, Absalom. I believe your exertions in the saddle room didn’t last even half that long.”

Her bedroom had that musty, after-sex scent, the sheets no longer felt fresh, and too many days of too much drink had left Offenbach with a pounding headache. Then too, tomorrow weighed on him heavily.

He had a countess to ruin, else he would not be engaged in the current heroics.

“Intensity adds spice to an encounter,” he said. “I really must be going. You will do your bit tomorrow?”

“Do your bit now, and we’ll talk about tomorrow.” She swung a leg over him, and Offenbach wondered if this was how a trained hunt horse felt later in the season.

Not this again. Not with you, of the rough hands and incessant demands.

“My love,” Offenbach said. “I truly cannot tarry. I promise you, tomorrow night I will be entirely yours, provided all goes well during the scavenger hunt.”

“Very well,” she said, sitting back squarely on his sore and weary member. “But be prepared to acquit yourself well when next you’re in this bed. I’d like to remember you most fondly.”

While he’d like to forget he’d ever met her. “And I you, my dear.” He patted her bum, nearly desperate to get her off of him.

She rose slowly, as if she knew his true feelings, which she could not possibly. He felt sorry for her, to be honest, and he was utterly disgusted with himself. For Mr. Terrence Cargill he felt neither pity nor disgust, but rather, violent loathing.

Offenbach made himself dress slowly, made himself endure much petting and kissing and a few grating giggles, and then he was free, out into the cool shadows of the corridors.

He really ought to drop by the library. He had an incriminating note to write, and needed to do it when nobody else was about.

He descended to the floor below, only to meet young Lord Cargill on the landing.

“Offenbach, ready to call it a night?”

Cargill didn’t sniff, but Offenbach knew the reek of trysting was in the air. Perfume, sweat, despair…

And shame. “I suppose I am. I will be relieved when this gathering concludes, no insult intended to present company.”

“No insult taken.” Cargill started down the corridor and Offenbach wandered along with him. Bed—clean sheets all to himself, no giggling or passionate moaning—loomed like the greatest treasure on earth. He could write his note tomorrow morning, before anybody else was about.

Now, he needed his rest.

If Montmarche allowed the firelight to work its kind magic, he could envision Daphne Cargill as a younger woman.

Still petite, perhaps more vivacious, perhaps a bit slimmer.

Her gaze would not have held such depths of humor and wisdom though, nor the guarded self-possession a woman learned later in life.

He wanted that older, wiser, equally precious woman. He wanted a lover who wasn’t comparing him to all the strutting Adonises, who sought his company as much as she longed for the bodily pleasure he could give her.

“You want me,” he said, “and I desire you as well.” He rose, keeping her hand in his. “Shall I lock the door?”

Some things didn’t change, no matter how mature or self-confident a man became. Asking a woman to become his lover still took courage, and still left Lysander torn between joyous anticipation and anxious hope. The power was all hers in that instant, and he wouldn’t want it any other way.

She came up against him, laying her cheek against his heart. “Lock the door in a moment.”

Exactly. He wanted a woman who knew enough to savor the steps of the dance. Daphne rested against him, giving them both time to gather their courage—Montmarche could not have named the last woman with whom he’d been intimate—and to revel in thoughts of what was to come .

She untied the sash of his dressing gown and tucked in close, and what a delight, that they both wore only nightclothes, which were easily and quickly shed.

“So warm,” she said, slipping her arms around him. “So wonderfully warm.”

“So soft,” he replied, kissing her cheek. “So wonderfully soft.” And curved and feminine.

They smiled at each other, and Lysander drew back to lock the sitting room door. Daphne waited for him, and then he led her into his bedroom.

She stopped at the foot of his bed. “We should bind ourselves together at the wrist with the sash of your dressing gown, else I shall lose you in the vast reaches of this… slumbering earl park.”

“You shall not lose me,” Lysander said, closing the bedroom door. “I’ll remain in plain view at all times.” Within snuggling distance, to be exact.

Daphne took up the warming pan and shoveled coals into it. “If you’d like to disappear behind the privacy screen for a moment, I’ll tend to the sheets.”

He tarried to turn down the quilts with her, so she could warm the whole bed. Lysander usually ran the warmer over his half, then got a rude shock when he stuck a foot across the middle of the mattress.

No rude shocks tonight. Only pleasure.

“There,” she said, heaving the quilts back up to the pillows. “Be quick please. I have plans for you.”

Her plans, Lysander suspected, were plans for one night.

His were more ambitious. If she’d have him, he’d start a courtship in the next hour, and embark on a partnership that rested on more than a compunction to secure the earldom’s succession.

George was equal to that task, and the family would be financially secure regardless of the fate of the title.

If the past two weeks had shown Lysander one thing, it was that he was ready to risk his heart again, because the right woman had at last come along.

He tended to his ablutions, and paused a moment to regard the fellow in the mirror. Aging well, but aging, and what of it? Of all the men who’d ever panted at her heels, Daphne Cargill had chosen him to gift with her favors.

An echo of a younger man’s insouciance smiled back at him. Don’t muck this up, and do enjoy the hell out of it. When he returned to the bed, Daphne was already under the covers, her dressing gown draped across the foot of the bed, her nightgown atop it.

“Bed curtains open or closed?” Lysander asked.

“Open please. The night is mild.”

She wasn’t shy about the firelight. Lysander laid his dressing gown atop hers, and pulled his nightshirt off before climbing under the covers.

Because he wasn’t shy about the firelight either—not with her. She cuddled up against his side, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and a sense of sweetness and gratitude welled.

So comfortable, so easy, and so lovely. “Anything I need to know?” he asked, kissing her temple. “Your ribs are ticklish, you like to be whispered to in naughty French, that sort of thing?”

“I hardly remember.” A pause. “Perhaps I ought not to have said that, but it’s the truth. I have been a pattern card of widowed rectitude, lest Terrence have me sent to Yorkshire in disgrace. I also, to heap honesty on top of plain speaking, simply haven’t been tempted.”

How she flattered him. Lysander rolled to his side and wrapped her close. “To hell with Terrence, and Yorkshire, and for right now, rectitude. Can we agree on that?”

Daphne kissed him, smack on the mouth, no wandering around his cheeks or brow working up to it. “We are agreed. My ribs are not ticklish.” She ran her foot up his calf, or rather, her thick wool stocking. “My feet tend to be cold, in only the physical sense.”

I am in love. I am in love with a woman who wears her stockings to bed with me, because that’s who she is and she’s happy with herself .

“Thank God it’s only in the physical sense.” He kissed her back, taking his time, letting the warmth and wonder spread through him. Daphne was enthusiastic without being impatient, which was perfect.

And her hands… she had a wonderful touch, as if she listened with her fingers and palms as she shaped his shoulders, his hips, the muscles and contours of his back. Warm hands, and generous with the pleasure they conjured.

“You,” she said, patting his bum. “Now. Please.”

He smiled against her mouth. “I was hoping you’d ask.” He was aroused, and more than that, he was passionately eager to join with her. He wanted the great crescendo, the cascading pleasure, but he also wanted the quiet aftermath and the sweet touches.

With her, Lysander wanted the whole measure of joy. If he was lucky, she wanted that too, and not only for one night.

He shifted so he was over her, tucked close enough to nuzzle at the orange blossom scented join of her neck and shoulder. “I am tempted to make stirring declarations.”

She laughed, her belly bouncing against his. “You can dispense with the words and make the declarations with your body instead.”

Excellent suggestion. He sank into her slowly, his movements modest the better to make the joining pleasurable for her. A sigh fanning past his ear suggested he’d got this much right.

“Daphne?”

“Mmmm.”

“If you’re inclined to move with me, I’d like that.”

A sleeping queen awoke in his arms, fitting her rhythm to his so exquisitely he had to focus mentally on counting her breaths lest he hasten to completion. How wonderful—how marvelously, delightfully exquisite, to have that challenge again.

“Name,” she whispered, locking her ankles at the small of his back.

Name? Name? “Lysander.”