Page 16 of Dallying with the Diamond

“As my lady commands.” He placed her on the chaise longue he’d moved in front of the fireplace and swept her a bow. She snorted, no doubt in amusement at a naked man offering her such a salute with his cock on display, still wrapped in a French letter. He fetched his quilted banyan and draped it over her. She quickly slipped the warm garment on and tied the belt tightly. Then he snatched the French letter off and tossed it into the fire. Before he donned his other banyan, he retired behind the privacy screen in the corner long enough to wash his hands.

“French letters are expensive, Leo. Do you not reuse yours?” When he came from behind the screen, she was pouring tea into the two earthenware mugs he’d put out for them.

“I do not pay for mine,” he replied as he took the mug she handed him. “And I find the idea of reusing them distasteful. I do anatomy drawings for a professor at Guy’s Hospital. He provides me with French letters, a fair trade all things considered.” He took several sips of his tea and placed his mug on a rickety side table next to the chaise. She’d tucked her feet up onto the chaise beneath the length of his banyan. He reached for one of her feet and began to rub the delicate skin, quite cold from the time they’d spent on the roof. She sighed and offered him a grateful smile.

“I appreciate your scruples more than I can say. Is your enthusiasm for their use due to the situation with your late father?”

He paused in his comfort of chilly toes, but then continued. “The situation with the man I believed to be my father? No. The situation with my mother is my motive. I don’t wish to foist an unwanted child onto any woman or to force a child to grow up believing a lie.” The incredible and unfamiliar glow he’d felt as he shuddered to completion inside of her disappeared for the most part. Mention of his mother tended to do that.

“That is the reason you have not spoken to her in eight years? Because you believe she did not want you?” She sipped her tea and gazed over the rim of the coarse cup. He wanted to believe she mocked him, but her expression spoke of sincerity and real interest. Which confused the hell out of him.

“This is not precisely the sort of conversation I am accustomed to having after…” He waved his hand like a green boy and stuffed a piece of meat pie into his mouth.

“After pleasuring a woman to within an inch of her life?” She batted her eyes at him.

He choked and had to wash the meat pie down with half of his mug of tea. Honoria’s blue eyes lit with unspoken laughter. He shook his head and lurched to his feet. A quick look around and he spied the hairbrush CB had left on the mantel as a hint Ath needed to have a care for his appearance if he intended to successfullyengage with the Season’s most perfect example of feminine beauty.He picked up the brush and turned back to Honoria.

Dressed in his banyan, much too large for her, with the sleeves rolled up and her face aglow from the wind and rain she appeared remarkably different from his first sight of her across the ballroom. There she’d sparkled like theDiamondthey’d named her, bright and impervious to any flaw. Here, with her impossibly long hair in wet tendrils around her face and tousled down her body like some mythical mermaid, she was his idea of perfection. Her lips were swollen from passion. Her eyes evinced not boredom, but genuine interest. She was a sensual creature made for physical arousal and pleasure. She was—

“Do you hate your mother for taking a lover?” She broke off a piece of one of the meat pies and with delicate grace brought the morsel to her mouth, ate it, and licked her fingers. His cock twitched. Twice. He came to sit beside her and began to carefully brush her hair. He brought the strands over her shoulder as he freed them of tangles and knots so they might dry closer to the fire.

“I don’t blame any woman for taking a lover, especially if she is unmarried or has a husband who spends his nights with his mistress rather than his wife. I do blame a woman for lying. Especially when that lie festers for twenty years and comes out to ambush her son and destroy his life.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head into his hands as he brushed. “Is your life destroyed, Leonidas? Truly?”

He considered her question even as the strange place into which she’d drawn him made him uneasy. “Now, no. When I was twenty, had just sold out of the cavalry to marry the viscount’s pretty daughter I believed to be in love with me, and was suddenly branded a bastard and rejected by thetonand my betrothed? Without a doubt, and the worst part was not knowing. On the battlefield, one’s enemies are honest enough to show their intentions. In the ballrooms of London the cuts run just as deep, but one never sees them coming until there is blood on the floor. She lied to me my entire life.Thatis why I no longer speak to her. She lied to me about who I am. How can I trust her to speak the truth about anything else?”

“I see.” She sat up straight and pulled more of her hair over her shoulder for him to brush. Her manner was so calm, soothing even. Perhaps that was why he answered her questions, questions even his closest friends had never asked him. “Why did you join the cavalry? You were only seventeen, and the newspapers were full of the names of young men who died on the battlefield. You were at Waterloo. You could have been killed before you sold out to go home to the viscount’s pretty daughter.”

He stopped, the brush in one hand and a thick strand of her golden hair in the other. “Good God, woman, has Bow Street heard of you? How do you know—”

“For a man to desire to bed a woman she need only have a quim and perhaps a sizeable pair of tits. For a woman to desire a man to bed her he need have a sizeable cock and sometimes something more.”

“Indeed?” He found he liked Honoria more and more. Her plain manner of speaking made her a force with which to be reckoned, a force he wanted to test.

“For myself,” she said as she reached inside his banyan and caressed him. “I suspected your cock would be more than sizeable, but I wanted to know your character. And my maid, Esme, could teach Bow Street a thing or two.”

He leaned in and kissed her, not a kiss to stir passion, but a kiss because he couldn’tnotkiss her. Her lips were soft and sweet. She placed her palm against the side of his neck. Their lips clung together. She sighed against his mouth and he slowly drew away.

“Why did I join the cavalry? My mother lied to me all my life, but she did not lie to my father. He knew the day I was born that I was not his son. My mother told him, right after the physician and midwife told him my birth had rendered her incapable of having another child. From the time I was old enough to know he hated me I did everything I could to make him proud of me, to make him love me. Nothing was good enough. Especially not my skill as an artist.” His chest hurt. His throat ached. He’d never considered the pain revisited memories might bring. He wanted to be angry with her, but one look at her face sent the rage away like a brilliant sunrise after a hard rain.

“Your mother’s lover was an artist,” she said simply. “A French chevalier and painter escaped from the Terror.”

Leo smiled faintly. “I must introduce your maid to my friend, Col. Yes, my real father was a Frenchman, hence his death a year after my birth in a duel with a certain earl over the honor of said earl’s wife.”

He put down the brush and began to gather her hair into a simple braid. “I joined the cavalry after a brilliant finish at Cambridge to prove to the man I believed to be my father that I was a man. Not that it mattered. I am certain he prayed for me to fall in battle daily. I sold out and returned to England in time to sit at his deathbed and then witness my destruction. What Napoleon and his armies could not do in three years he did in his last three hours.”

“Hmm.” She sat very still save for one hand which stroked his thigh as he quickly worked her hair into one long braid down her back. He picked up a piece of bright blue ribbon from the table which like a siren summoned his large black tomcat from his perch on a chair in the shadows. “Oh, how lovely.” Honoria said. She abandoned Leo’s thigh for the cat’s soft fur as he arched his back into her strokes.

“Lady Honoria, may I make known to you Lord Lucifer. Lucifer, this is Lady Honoria. Be on your best behavior.” He tied the ribbon tightly around the end of Honoria’s hair which looked like a heavy rope of golden silk in the firelight.

She continued to pet the cat as she studied Leo’s face. “You have not forgiven your mother for eight years. Yet you spent twenty years and risked death in battle trying to win the love of a man whose last gift to you was to disown you and throw you to the wolves of theton. I confess that is the only flaw I find in your character, sir.” She gave Lucifer one last pat, picked up the lit oil lamp on the table, and rose elegantly to pad across the cold wooden floor of his studio toward the large paintings on easels and leaning against the walls.

“Oh, I am replete with flaws, Honoria. In time I suspect you will discover them all.”

“In time?” For a moment her practiced look of serene disdain faded. “As you say, Leonidas. These are beautiful portraits. Are they all the mistresses oftongentlemen?”

“For the most part. A few are the mistresses of wealthy nabobs and merchants.” He followed her as she gave careful attention to his paintings of what society called fallen women, in erotic poses and states of undress. She continued to wander around the large attic room. The storm still raged outside and the tremendous flashes of lightning intermittently made the night into day due to the line of floor-to-ceiling windows along two walls and the spectacular glass ceiling. The sound of a door slamming somewhere lured Leo to the heavy barred door of his studio. A quick check of the corridor allowed that the noise was from somewhere below them.