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Page 13 of When the Marquess Needed Me (The Rake Chronicles #4)

Chapter Eleven

W hen the opera had ended, Lord Leith had escorted Beatrice down through the opera house. As he did so, she noticed the eyes of many finely attired gentlemen on her. Their gazes followed her as they wended their way to the exit.

“Well, the gentlemen have certainly noticed you,” Leith said, dryly. “No one could accuse you of not making an impression.”

She knew it was because of him, of course. They were interested in her because she was with him . And he had advised her to wear the green silk. And saved her interaction with Stratton and his friends.

She noticed the ladies glancing at her as well, albeit more discreetly. She wondered if she had won their begrudging admiration.

Once they were in the carriage, they barely spoke, the air between them growing taut. The companionable air of the opera box had dissipated. Instead, they glanced at each other with renewed wariness.

Now, Beatrice and Leith had arrived back at St. James’s, and she watched his back as he poured her a glass of wine at the sideboard.

They both knew what was to come—and it seemed they were both comfortable with putting it off a little bit longer.

“Do you much like wine, Miss Salisbury?”

He brought the glass towards her, and she reached for it. When she took it, her fingers grazed his own, the faint brush sending a shiver through her body. The act felt, for some reason, extremely intimate, but she couldn’t, for a moment, place why. Then, it occurred to her that she had never received such a simple, domestic gesture from anyone outside her own family or the servants at Parkhorne Hall.

The affairs that she had had with men were of the furtive, secretive variety, and they did little besides the physical act that drove them together.

Being a mistress, she was coming to see, was a different thing. It involved living with a man on quite intimate terms.

“I do,” she said. “I always have at least a glass in the evenings. Sometimes more. My father built up quite a collection before his death. I’ve been enjoying drinking it.”

Leith had settled himself next to her on the sofa. He sat a respectable distance away, no closer than if they were acquaintances perched on the same tearoom settee. And yet the air between them felt heavy with what they knew would come next.

“You do not speak well of your father.”

“I don’t. I am glad he is dead.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, I am certain,” she said, exasperated. She hated when people expressed condolences for the best thing that had ever happened to her. And she did not appreciate his intimation that she perhaps possessed a reserve of tenderness for the man who had tormented her.

“It is only that,” Leith said, taking a sip of his wine, “sometimes our feelings on such things change. My friend, John, he said for years that he wished his father would die. That he hated the man. Now, though, I think he feels differently.”

“What changed his mind?”

“I think he realized, once his father actually died, that he was not quite the blackguard he had often made him out to be.”

“Well, my father has been dead for six years, and I have had no change of heart. And I won’t. He was a bastard. With, admittedly, a very good wine collection.”

Leith gave a smile at that, but she could still see the tension around his shoulders.

“Of course,” he said, “John would probably say that he fell in love. And that is what had changed his opinion.”

“On his father?”

Leith nodded. “Some problem with his father’s will brought him and Catherine together. They are very happy. He loves her beyond all reason. All those years we were at Eton and Oxford, John had not one care for books. The other day, I called at his home, and I found him in his study reading his wife’s latest history of English ruins. A drier topic I cannot imagine! And I actually learnt a few things when we were in school.”

She couldn’t help but smile at his vexation. It was so sincere.

“Have all of your friends married?”

“Yes. My three best friends all said they would never marry. And, for years, everything was perfect. The four of us had not a real responsibility between us—at least when it came to women. And then for a reason that I will never understand, they started getting married. Falling in love, they claimed.”

“Lady Tremberley, she was John’s sister, before her marriage?”

“Yes. And when I say I was shocked beyond all telling that Trem fell in love with Henrietta …I still don’t think I have recovered.”

“Do you not care for Lady Tremberley?”

“No, no. Well, as John’s sister, she could be a vexing little thing. I never thought she would be Trem’s wife.”

“And Monty and Olivia?”

He looked away from her, then.

“He adores her.”

“And what of you, Lord Leith?” she teased. “Do you think you will ever marry?”

“Marry? Perhaps. I don’t know. But my friends, what they have done is more than marry .”

“They’ve fallen in love.”

“I suppose you believe in all of that bollocks.”

“Not at all.”

Leith’s eyebrows knit at that declaration.

“Truly? I thought all women…”

She rolled her eyes. “Surely, you did. But no. Not only do I not want to marry, but I don’t want to fall in love. Worse, I don’t think I can fall in love.”

“Why do you think that?”

She paused, wondering how honest she should be with Lord Leith. If she were truly his mistress, she would tell him whatever she thought would get the most coin from his pocket. Probably, in the near future, she would have to feign being in love. She suspected many an aristocratic man enjoyed such a performance. They wanted to pay for something that, on some level, they knew couldn’t be bought.

But with Lord Leith, it was different. They had an arrangement, but he had to keep her as his mistress. She didn’t have to lie. She didn’t have to pretend she felt things that she didn’t.

“Because I’ve had lovers. Lovers who have fallen in love with me. And I’ve felt—well, I won’t say nothing in return. But I haven’t loved them.”

“How do you know you didn’t love them?”

“Your friends—your mother, even—they disrupted their entire lives because of what they feel for another person. They changed. And I’ve never bedded anyone who has tempted me to change my life in the slightest.”

His eyes widened. “Miss Salisbury, that is my own feeling exactly. I have bedded hundreds of women. And while I have felt more fondness for some and less for others, I have never wanted a permanent attachment.”

“Me either.”

For a moment, Beatrice stared at Leith and Leith looked back at her. She felt that she was truly seeing him for the first time—and she had the sense he felt the same way. Previously, she had regarded him as an obstacle or a mark. At best, she needed to manage him. At worst, she needed to extract what she could.

He was regarding her now with an open, kindly expression. As if he looked at her and saw something like a friend.

“Sally hates it when I say that,” she said, with a laugh, feeling uncomfortable in the newfound fellowship she felt for the man.

“Your maid?”

She nodded, not wanting to explain the complicated nature of who Sally was to her.

“She is a romantic. She doesn’t understand how I can want to bed a gentleman—and then leave him.”

“I understand. My friends—they regard me now—well, I think, it’s absurd to say it, but I think they pity me. I am sure Monty thinks I am absolutely without feeling.”

Again, his expression changed, and he took a hasty sip from his wine. There was something there with Lord Montaigne.

But she wouldn’t press him on what it was. It hardly mattered to her.

“You can’t feel what you don’t.”

He looked at her again, but this time, his gaze felt warm on her face.

“No,” he said. “You can’t.” He looked down into his wineglass. “But I did feel something tonight. In the carriage. With you.”

She laughed. “No games, Lord Leith. I fell for that jape once.”

“I am not jesting. I am being honest. I liked how you spoke. Your hypothetical.”

Ah, so he had been aroused.

“I am glad that I do not begin my life as a courtesan without any ability to seduce.”

“Indeed.”

Beatrice studied him again. He had never looked so handsome. When he was warm and relaxed, his face was transformed. Whereas he had appeared handsome almost despite himself previously, now he had a dangerous appeal.

She had long finished her wine, but his glass was still partially full.

Beatrice took it out of his hand, her fingers grazing his as she did so. She downed the rest of the wine remaining in his cup.

“Mm,” she said. “Fortifying.”

And then she leaned forward and kissed him.

She wasn’t sure what made her do it.

Perhaps she merely wanted to keep control of a life that had spun far out of her grasp.

Perhaps she hoped to shock him, if a man like him could be shocked, into seeing her as something like an equal, if such a man could see her as an equal.

Or perhaps she just simply wanted to kiss him.

Because he was beautiful, and he had promised to bed her.

The kiss was as deep and rich as the wine they had been drinking. It tasted like it, too, sharp and savory and slightly drugging.

But it surprised her as well. His hand came up to her face, caressing her tenderly, and he parted her lips gently with his own.

It wasn’t the kiss she had expected.

She had expected him to be torrid and a bit selfish.

Instead, he kissed her as if he had all the time in the world to do so. As if their arrangement did not have the limit of a fortnight.

That tenderness made her flush. She felt warm all over. Her nipples hardened against the fine silk undergarments she had purchased at Mrs. Warburton’s.

It wouldn’t be a trial to bed this man. No matter what her future held, whatever keepers she would acquire and tire of and put up with for their coin, this first turn as a courtesan would not be a hardship.

It couldn’t be.

Not with the way her body was responding to his.

She squeezed her thighs together to stem the ache that had blossomed there. She could feel heat and moisture pooling in her core.

She thrilled at the prospect of what he would teach her.

With that thought, she drew back. “I think I am ready for my first lesson, Lord Leith.”

He stared back at her. He appeared slightly dazed. “Very well.” He swallowed.

The apartments at St. James’s had two adjoining bedchambers and she had grown quite partial to the one that had become her own. She stood, not bothering to wait for him, knowing he would follow her. She would rather this moment happen in her bedchamber. It gave her a greater feeling of control, and she needed that—when she felt so heady with lust.

When she walked into the bedchamber, it was dark, and she could hear his footsteps behind her.

She turned. “What should I do?”

“On the bed,” he said, his voice low. “Get on the bed.”

She did as she was told.

He followed her there and sat beside her.

He began kissing her again, which felt extraordinarily good. She felt very aroused, her skin hot and sensitive to the touch. She wanted him to touch her everywhere, to feel between her legs, to thrust his tongue inside of her and taste her wetness.

But she wouldn’t ask for any of those things because that was not the point of this exercise. He had to teach her.

She could feel his cockstand hard and insistent on her stomach, which delighted her. She wriggled against him, just to feel it better.

“Tell me what to do,” she said, burning with anticipation.

“You needn’t do anything,” he said, his voice almost annoyed.

He began raising up her skirts, pushing the fabric over her knees. She helped him, moving her skirts out of the way, glorying in what the movement suggested.

He touched her core, parting her vulva just slightly. He must feel how wet she was, but he said nothing and made no sound to indicate that he noticed. His touch made her head swim. She needed to explain to him, as she always did with her lovers.

“I spend very easily.”

“What?” he said, once more in that annoyed tone of voice.

“It’s a bit embarrassing—but it is very easy for me to spend. I understand it is unusual for a woman. If you touch me much more, I will—ah—”

Leith had grazed her clit with his fingers and it had her on the edge.

“It’s no matter,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “Don’t speak.”

Beatrice frowned. Was this some kind of tactic? To make her delay?

His irritated tone suggested otherwise.

In the dark, she couldn’t make out his facial expression. Usually, when she informed a man that she spent easily, he was delighted. Then I’ll make you come a thousand times, my beauty, the ditch digger had said.

With her first lover, it had embarrassed her, and he had told her that it wasn’t natural for a woman to be so pleased by the act. He had been with other women and he said that they didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. She had gotten the distinct impression that he had regarded it as unladylike.

But that man had been a blockhead. And her lovers since had reveled in her ability to enjoy their ministrations so thoroughly.

Leith didn’t seem pleased. Or offended. It seemed to mean nothing to him.

But perhaps that was how aristocratic men were.

While she would have appreciated the orgasm she had been about to have, she would surely have one in the course of things. She always did. It was an advantage of her individual anatomy. Even if the lovemaking was not to her particular tastes, she always found her pleasure.

She had asked him to teach her the ways of wealthy, aristocratic men and what they wanted in the bedchamber. He had spent his entire life within this milieu.

She needed to listen.

Surely, he would show her what she needed to learn.