He turned his head to look at her. He had the same color eyes as his mother, but they seemed gentler even in that severe masculine face. Unlike his mother, his eyes didn’t pierce, they sparkled. He smiled, and those larkspur eyes danced. “What I need, Daisy,” he purred, “is not what I can have here and now.”
She stepped back and frowned at him.
“My dear,” he said softly, “I’d have to be two days dead not to say something like that to a woman like you. Actually,” he said in a different tone, “I feel like I am. She does that to me. She leaches the life from me. I suppose she can’t help it anymore than I can help the way I am, but I wonder how my father got me on her without dying of frostbite first. Sorry,” he said, seeing her expression of surprise, “I don’t mind my manners as I should.”
“It’s all right,” she said absently, taking one of his hands in hers, responding to the pain in his voice and not what he’d said. “I don’t mind. I’ve heard worse. Are you ill? I mean really sick, or is it just that she upset you?”
“Just?” he asked with a weary, tilted grin. “Lord, I wish there was a ‘just’ about it.” His hand clasped hers. She noted it was cold, and held it tightly. “You say your father didn’t care for you. But you cared for him, as he must have, in some way, for you, however ill advised or inept that care was. Because I’ve heard you quote him. That’s good, no matter how bad he was, because at least he never intentionally hurt you, did he?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“My mama never cared that she did. Oh, blast,” he said, wincing. “Listen to me. I must be sick. Here I am with a lovely woman inches away from me, and I’m blathering on like a schoolboy sent to bed early, whining about my parent. Forgive me again.”
She leaned down to pull a pillow up behind his head. She heard him take in a breath and looked down at him. They were very close.
“Did you know,” he asked with interest, his eyes on hers, “that you have the scent of heartsease in your hair? That’s rare. I didn’t know they could make perfume from them. You know, those pretty little flowers with tiny faces that smile up at you from the lawn. It’s a fragile scent, so vague it only reminds you of spring, never insisting on it. Of course you know; what a foolish question.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “You probably have a bottle labeled ‘heartsease’ on your dressing table, just to break the hearts of men.”
She shook her head, and slowly eased her hand from his. His words were lovely to hear, but they dismayed her. Or was it his tone? How could the tender tone of his voice soothe her even as it upset her?
He let her hand go. “Well, that’s so,” he said gently, using the hand she’d released to trace the edges of her cheek with his fingertips. “And did you know that you’ve the most damnably tempting mouth I’ve seen in many a day?”
But that she knew how to answer, though her voice didn’t have the bite she’d normally have used. “You find many mouths tempting, sir,” she said. “You’re famous for it.”
“So I am. So that makes me an expert, right? And I say yours is not only the most tempting, but the most impudent. I can resist beauty, but why couldn’t you be dim?” he asked in mock despair.
She smiled, though she’d meant to step away.
He slowly ran a finger along the outline of her cheek, and she felt his touch down every seam in her body. Her eyes widened.
He smiled, put his hand at the back of her neck, raised his head as he drew hers down, and gently touched her mouth with his.
She felt her body tingle even as her mouth did. She closed her eyes and bent toward him. She felt the easy strength of his clasp; she’d never known such gentleness at a man’s hands. His mouth was warm, soft velvet. She felt his lips part and the light tentative touch of his tongue. She opened her lips and tasted the dark sweetness of his mouth. Her hand went to his neck, and she felt his warm blood beating beneath her fingertips. His kiss set her own blood to humming, and she yearned and sighed into his mouth, drew closer still-and then suddenly remembered what a kiss led to.
All the sweet promise had only one end to it: sweating and pushing, grunting and shoving, and the pain of humiliation.
She pulled away, straightened her back, and stared down at him. “I don’t do that,” she said jerkily. “Please forget that. And don’t do that again. I must leave.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, but she was gone and out the door.
Leland scowled, angry at himself Wrong of him, of course, to try for a seduction here and now. But he hadn’t meant to. That was new. Her kiss had been so sweet. She’d ended it abruptly and run from him in fear. That was absurd. She wasn’t a schoolroom miss or an ingénue. He never attempted them. She was a warm, ripe woman, and her obvious sympathy and understanding made him behave rashly. But not that rashly! What could he have done to her, after all? Especially here, in the earl’s house. She should have known that; she’d been a married woman.
And yet she might have been right; who knew what he’d been trying to do? It was as much of a surprise to him as it had been to her. Her reaction hadn’t been anger so much as fear. But he hadn’t been attempting rape; surely she knew that. She must know there was nothing much in a kiss.
But there had been in this one. There’d been solace and understanding, desire-and terror, at the end, for her.
Leland lay back, frowning. Now, why should that be? He wanted to know as much as he wanted another kiss from her. No, he thought. There was nothing he wanted more than that.
Chapter Eleven
The earl paced his study. “So far as you know, then, Mrs. Tanner has no enemies?” he asked Helena.
“None,” Helena answered.
“There haven’t been any other visitors or incidents?”
“None,” Helena said again, then added quietly, “If there were, you’d know of them, because Daisy hasn’t gone many places without you.”
He looked up at that, because of the flat tone of her voice. “You disapprove?”
She lowered her gaze. “It’s not my place to approve or disapprove, my lord.”
“But you do or don’t. I’ve had to work for my supper in my time, and I know opinions are free to everyone, just not freely given to those we know can harm us. I wouldn’t harm you whatever you said, you must know that.”
“Yes,” she said, looking at him directly. “But I don’t know Mrs. Tanner or you well enough to make any judgments.”
He studied her. She seemed to be a sensible woman. She was not young, yet not in her middle years, and always looked neat and calm. Her hair was worn plainly, drawn back prim as a nun’s, but nothing could disguise the fact that it was a rich deep brown. Her face was sweet, and even in her modest gown, he could see she had a trim figure. She spoke well and behaved modestly, but he’d been in servitude once, and though he knew Daisy was a kind employer, he knew that no kind of service was as pleasant as being one’s own master.
“Nicely said, though I don’t believe it,” he said. “But let it be. You might well disapprove of her spending so much time with me. I’m not sure I don’t myself. She should be with lads her own age. I’m twice that. I feel it, most of the time. But not when I’m with her.”
Helena looked down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap. If he said too much, he might later regret it and tell Daisy to turn her out. But he’d already said too much for her to hear, and so she didn’t know what to say to him.
“My lord?” the butler said from the doorway. “Viscountess Haye wished to see you before she left.”
“Send her in,” the earl said.
The viscountess came in so quickly that Helena realized she must have been waiting in the hall. She ignored Helena and came right to the earl.