Nick hadn’t meant to tell her anything, but he was damned tired of her sniffy disapproval. Miss Lawrence looked at him as if he had horns. While it was true his auburn hair grew in curly disarray, as far as he knew there was nothing lurking underneath to indicate he was a devil.
She sat there in judgment, her hands folded on her lap like a schoolgirl, her perfect nose in the air as if he stank. Well, he didn’t. He’d had two serious washups today—baths were prohibited because of the stitches on his thigh—and had perfumed himself with sandalwood. His nightshirt was fresh—hell, it was brand-new, as he never wore such a thing to sleep in. He wasn’t even sure where he’d come by it; it could even belong to Daniel Preble for all he knew. Mrs. Daughtry had been insistent that he cover himself up. She’d clucked when she’d seen the ouroboros on his bicep, called him a wicked heathen even after he explained its mythological significance. The nurse had no poetry in her soul, although she’d held his head gently when he cast up his accounts again sometime this afternoon.
Perhaps she wasn’t so bad after all, just boring. Nick was not used to boring women. He’d chosen to leave his dull upbringing behind, not that his parents had been especially conventional. They, like so many of their class, had left their three sons and a series of hapless governesses to fend for themselves at Raeburn Court while they found amusement elsewhere.
Nick’s mother hadn’t started off as a member of high society—she’d been the daughter of a tenant farmer on the Raeburn estate in the Highlands. But once she became Lady Raeburn there was not a woman around who could match her for self-consequence and propriety, except when she was tossing valuable objects at Nick’s father, who deserved the many direct hits he received. Nick had gotten tired of avoiding flying crockery, his older brothers’ fists, sheep, and snow-covered mountains, and had escaped as soon as he possibly could.
He was beginning to regret his return to London, for it was starting off in a most inauspicious manner. First poor Maria, the attack, and now this indisposition. He did not believe in Highland curses, but there were times he wondered what the Raeburns had done to displease the gods. His brother Alec had recently been under a cloud of suspicion for murdering his first wife—although, in Nick’s opinion, she more than deserved it—and his other brother Evan was doomed to toil in the family’s distillery like a sexless drone. Nick had tasted freedom, and he wasn’t going to let some little blond prude condemn him without knowing the facts.
She sat there, her cheeks flaming. Nay, flaming was not the right word. The blush flowed over her face like a pink watercolor wash. Nick preferred to work in oils, but Miss Lawrence’s looks cried for pastels, as he’d thought before, or watercolors, where the intensity could be adjusted. Muted. Yet even with her pale English-rose beauty, she was surprisingly attractive to him.
As long as he didn’t have to listen to her.
“I—I suppose you think I owe you an apology.”
“Far be it for me to put more words in your mouth.” It was a lovely mouth—lush, unenhanced by any artificial assistance. If he kissed her, those plump lips would darken and swell. No doubt she’d be surprised and grateful—a girl like Miss Lawrence probably did not come into contact with many men who would think to kiss her, the idiots. There she’d been, buried by briefs in that attorney’s office, then dealing with his sticky children, now at Nick’s sister-in-law’s reception desk. Drudge, drudge, drudge.
She deserved a bit of fun, didn’t she? It wasn’t as if she’d be underfoot here for very long—someone else would take her place soon and she could go back to her telephone and typewriter and files. Her proper, bloodless life.
“But I have an idea for a way to make up for your insult.” He leaned forward, spurred on by some maggot in his throbbing head. Nick could always chalk this up to fever or mild insanity, couldn’t he?
Her blue eyes widened in alarm, but he was too quick for her, even in his bed of pain. She was too far away at first, sitting in that chair like a plaster statue. Somehow he managed to slide her forward into his arms, right up against his chest. If only they were skin to skin, but Nick would have to accept the current circumstances, even if they were not ideal. He was doing her a service, was he not? Defrosting her ice queen persona. Teaching her a thing or two. He was a man of considerable experience, winner of hard-won skirmishes in several European countries. Ladies loved him and succumbed to a delightful degree, and he loved them right back.
Love was perhaps too extreme a word; let him just say that there was mutual affection between him and the several willing women who were participants in his amorous adventures. More than several, actually. He had not been entirely indiscriminate, was nothing like his brother Alec chasing after empty-headed actresses for the better part of a decade. Nay, Nick had pursued his art, and with it some of his models and those patrons who had supported him. That couldn’t be helped, could it? Propinquity. Opportunity. It was only natural. They had shared his vision, understood who he was.
But what a dog he was contemplating other women when he had a shocked Miss Lawrence in his arms, whose lashes batted fiercely at such close quarters, her mouth open, ready to protest. Perfect.
Nick licked her lower lip and felt her go rigid, then covered her mouth with his own. He tasted tea and . . . butter? Nick was a sensualist, and even something so prosaic had its charms. She smelled of soap and lemons. No doubt the soap was scented—he couldn’t imagine Miss Lawrence squeezing lemon juice all over her naked skin, although that image had possibilities. He could follow the trail of liquid wherever it happened to drip, enjoying the sweet tartness of her body, breathing citrus and woman deep.
He inhaled now, clouded his aching head with Eau d’Eliza—that was her name, was it not? His tongue probed hers. If he’d thought she was shocked before, her sharp hiss told him she had no idea what he was doing. Had she never been kissed? What a bunch of slow-tops these Englishmen were.
He gentled her along, hoping she wouldn’t have the wits to bite any part of him. Well, someday perhaps a nip or two would be quite pleasant, depending—but he mustn’t get carried away. This was just their first kiss, after all, and it mightn’t lead to anything of significance, although his cock definitely was hopeful. He toyed with her tongue, coaxing it to curl and seek his. Her mouth shifted under his the merest fraction—she was kissing him back, her artlessness appealing, her hands no longer in her lap but pressed against his belly. Dear God, just a few inches lower, he prayed, but Eliza Lawrence was oblivious to his prayer. His own fingers were busy at her throat and in her tidy hair, feeling her throbbing pulse and pulling pins.
Her pulse quickened as her hair cascaded in a tumble. She groaned, and Nick was spurred to delve deeper. Darker. This was no kiss of innocence any longer, no education, for Miss Lawrence was as apt a pupil as he’d ever met and was about to surpass his wildest lesson. Perhaps he’d gone without a woman too long if he was about to be hoisted on his own petard by this inexperienced virgin.
And she was a virgin; of that Nick had no doubt. He didn’t deal in virgins. He had some shred of sense, though some might not think so.
What in hell was he doing? He had to stop before it all became too predictable. Ravishing the governess. That was worthy of some penny dreadful plot, and Nick was no villain waiting to be turned into a hero by the love of a good woman. Love didn’t exist—or if it did, it was fleeting. Look at his parents—a love match that ended in disaster.
Eliza was trembling beneath his hands, warm, breathless. With a final sweep of his tongue into the corner of her mouth, he pulled back with some regret.
And she punched him in the stomach. Hard. He was knocked back into the headboard. Good God, he could have used her last night against Phil Cross. With a bit of training she could be a lady fighter.
“What was that for?” Nick asked, checking to see if his lumps were expanding. All he needed now was to vomit again and the day would be complete.
“How dare you!”
She was all the way back on her chair now, flushed, her golden hair tangled.
“You seemed to like it well enough,” Nick said, casting around the pillows for his ice bag. It was probably all melted by now.
“I did not!”
“Oh, certainly you did,” Nick said dismissively. “Don’t lie to me or yourself. You bloomed just like a rose, one of those surprising white ones that unfurls to pink. I can’t remember the name. Sunny’s mother Barbara kept roses in her garden. It was a veritable Eden. An artist’s paradise.” He’d done some of his best work there.
“Do not speak to me of horticulture or your mistress!”
“I don’t really want to speak to you of anything. Kissing is much more fun.”
“You—you libertine!”
“Oh, come. This is not a West End melodrama with you as the wronged woman.” He shrugged, and heard ominous cracking in his neck. “We kissed, that’s all. You apologized in your fashion. I accepted. Case closed. Run along now. I’ll try not to sleep until midnight. After that, I can make no promises.”
“I don’t care if you fall asleep and lapse into an irreversible coma!” Her eyes had turned the color of the Mediterranean. Interesting. Eye colors were always changing in the bad novels he read—perhaps it was possible after all.
“You know you don’t mean such a vicious thing. Was that your first kiss? Well done. Except for the aftermath, of course.” He smiled. She was so very angry, much more stimulating to him than her usual state. Perhaps Nick had an unaccountable yen for his mother’s temper, though he devoutly hoped Miss Lawrence—Eliza—wouldn’t touch the ginger jars. He was sure they were worth something.
There was no point of thinking of her as Miss Lawrence anymore. She was Eliza to him now, Lizzie if she’d let him be so familiar.
He had a feeling she wouldn’t like it at all.
“I told Mrs. Daughtry that I would remain at my post. I know my duty, which is more than you do. Interfering with your staff is not gentlemanly,” Eliza said acidly.
“Rest assured Sue and Mrs. Quinn hold no allure for me,” Nick replied. “You, on the other hand, are beginning to grow on me. I don’t understand it. You are not my t—”
The alarm clock whizzed by his ear and bounced harmlessly against a pillow. Stricken, Eliza examined her guilty hand as if she’d never seen it before.
“Such passion. Who would suspect?” He picked up the clock and returned it to the table. “I’d like to sketch you now, just as you are. Wild. Unprincipled. You look very fetching.”
She opened her mouth, but snapped it shut. Nick was pleased to see her lips were puffy and very pink. Her eyes blazed in what could only be called contempt. Gods, she was beautiful.
“Cat got your tongue? Lucky devil. Sweet and pink. All right, you don’t have to speak to me,” he said hurriedly when he caught the martial expression on her face. So she didn’t like compliments. He reached for his charcoal pencil and pad, and kept himself busy for the next quarter of an hour. Eliza refused to meet his eye, which gave her a rather mystical countenance as she stared off into a corner pretending he didn’t exist.
He didn’t need her cooperation—he could probably draw her with his eyes closed. Hell, he could still taste and feel her—the tea, the butter, the indignation.
She had tried to tame her hair after their little encounter, but the hairpins were somewhere in the sheets, a place she was avoiding like the plague. She had braided it over a shoulder, but in Nick’s sketch it was wavy and loose, just as he’d left it. It was the color of corn silk mixed with a darker gilt, not too common in an adult. Eliza was very fair, even to her eyebrows and the tips of her lashes, but somehow she didn’t have that rabbity appearance that some blondes possessed. Her eyes were bright blue and blinkless. She’d beat him in a staring contest if he was foolish enough to challenge her.
Nick decided her brown dress was nothing to brag about and eliminated it entirely from the image. He had a good imagination, and had good eyes as well. Her breasts were on the small side but generous enough to satisfy a discerning man, of which he certainly was one. She didn’t have that pouter pigeon look that was so inexplicably fashionable lately—some women looked as if they were about to topple over. Nay, she was trim, not too fleshy, not too scrawny. Just right, really. Nick grinned to himself as he altered the fairy tale to his liking. She was his Goldilocks.
As she sat Sphinx-like, he decided she’d have medium-sized nipples to go along with her general medium-ness. In a few strokes he had succeeded in bringing them to delicious, perfect peaks. Thinking about his lips upon them made him shift under the bedcovers. Eliza wouldn’t notice, would she? Hell, she wasn’t even looking at him. What could be so fascinating about that corner?
And then he glanced up at her again and noticed one silver tear sliding down her cheek. She was chewing on a lip to keep it steady, her adorable chin thrust out.
Damn.
“I say, you aren’t crying, are you? It was only a kiss!”
She turned to him, eyes filling. “It might have been ‘only a kiss’ to you, but as you suspected, it was my first. And what a waste it was to have given it to a man like you. I’ll never get my innocence back.”
“I haven’t taken your innocence,” Nick said, exasperated. “Believe me, you’d know it if I had, and like it well enough, to boot. I have a reputation, you know.”
“Exactly!” Eliza cried, balling her fists. Nick inched back on the bed and thrust his pad under the blanket.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m not sporting horns—I stopped kissing you.” They had been very faint, but Nick had heard those warning bells. He didn’t take advantage of unwilling girls.
Though she hadn’t been unwilling. Just unwise.
“And that makes it worse, don’t you see? What on earth came over me? I don’t even like you!”
“Thanks very much.” He didn’t really like her, either, but was too much of a gentleman to say so. But he did like beautiful things, and her looks were growing on him, as he’d so inadvisably said earlier. If only she wasn’t such a prunes and prisms miss. Priggishness was no virtue in his book.
“Just look upon it as a harmless experiment,” Nick suggested, tamping down his annoyance. “And if it makes you feel better, tell yourself I was simply off my onion and didn’t know what I was doing when I hauled you into the bed. That’s it, I was just delirious in my fevered brain. Mistook you for someone else. One of my many, many mistresses. You were so startled it took you a while—a long while—to pull yourself together and put me in my place.”
“But I didn’t put you in your place!”
“Aye, you did. A bed’s a favorite place of mine.” He gave her a cocky grin and hoped she wouldn’t punch him again.
“Are you never serious?”
Lord, she looked so miserable. It was only a kiss! Nick had been kissing since he was in short pants, and was inducted into the art by a housemaid who had made it her mission to bed all of the Raeburn brothers. Not at the same time, of course, and she was getting a little long in the tooth by the time Nick was ready to be seduced. Alec was seven years older than he, Evan four, but Nick had not minded her age or his lack of precedence.
He shook his head of the memory and was rewarded by a vicious throb. “Look, it meant nothing to either of us. Don’t go ordering any hair shirts just yet. In a day or two you’ll never see me again and you can go back to your boring old life.”
For the second time, the alarm clock flew through the air. This time, he forgot to duck.