Lessons of Desire Read online

  “Lord Elliot, it is convenient that you speak of the days ahead, and that you have expressed your disapproval and scorn of me. As it happens my proposition has to do with both those attitudes.”

  “I neither disapprove nor hold scorn. I merely decided we should have a right understanding on one small point.” The most important one.

  “That you so badly misunderstand both my friendships with others and my interest in you indicates that we will not rub well together. Nor can you want the burden of a mere tourist as your companion. I will only be in your way, and your studies will only delay my plans. I propose that we separate once we leave Naples.”

  “That is not possible.”

  “Gentile Sansoni will never know.”

  “His reach extends beyond this city. Also, I gave my sworn word and that is one of the stupid social rules that I take very seriously.”

  “Sir—”

  “No, Miss Blair. The morning after next we will depart together. We will sail down to Positano first, then to Amalfi and journey back up by land.”

  “I want to go to Pompeii immediately.”

  “The delay will be brief. I promised to visit a friend in Positano and he expects me sooner rather than later. If you are here as a tourist you should welcome a few days visiting the coastline south of here. It is spectacular.”

  She did not appear to welcome it at all. He anticipated seeing that strained annoyance in her eyes for the next several weeks.

  They turned to retrace their paths. He almost stumbled over a young child who had been trailing them. Big black eyes looked up in the wordless hope one saw among the most impoverished of the city’s children. This one did not beg outright but her frail, little body and ragged dress made the plea for her, poignantly.

  He fished in his waistcoat pocket. By the time the coin emerged two more children had appeared by her side. More were coming, drawn by instinct to the Englishman who did not know better than to indulge the child beggars of Naples.

  He found more coin. Miss Blair did not seem frightened by the crush of anxious poverty the way most women did. She tried talking to the first little girl while her hand dove somewhere amidst the drapery at her hip.

  They waded together through a little lake of black eyes and sun-baked bodies, handing out coin until all they had was gone.

  They returned to the carriage without further arguments. She only spoke one more time before he left her at her apartment.

  “We leave in the morning, the day after tomorrow, you say? Then I suppose I have no choice but to prepare accordingly.”

  Her apparent submission did not fool him. He left to make his own preparations.

  Phaedra retrieved the cameo from the shawl. She wrapped it in a handkerchief and pinned the little bundle inside the pocket deep in the skirts of her dress. Then she draped the shawl itself over her head and tied it beneath her chin.

  She checked her valise, itemizing again the garments and items that she had stuffed inside it. She prided herself on an absence of feminine vanity but it still irritated her that she would be reduced to so little clothing for the next week.

  It was all Lord Elliot’s fault. Everyone knew that an oath sworn under duress did not count, and one sworn to save a woman from an uncertain fate qualified as duress to her mind. His insistence on keeping his word vexed her. Just her luck that the only person available to help her out of her dilemma had been a man with outmoded notions of strict honor.

  She would not allow him to force them both to be victims of his narrow-mindedness. He did not want her company any more than she wanted his. There would be nothing but trouble between them.

  One of those men who buzz around the queen. The man was incapable of understanding the honest and sincere friendships she had enjoyed with a few, rare, likeminded men. It would shock him to learn that some men could rise above the primitive urges of possession and dominance that had caused so much grief in history and in women’s lives. There were actually men for whom sensuality did not evoke the need to also take and conquer and require submission.

  Well, it was not her responsibility to explain it. Doing so would be a fruitless endeavor and would require that she spend more time with him.

  She left a note and some money on her portmanteau, to ensure Signora Cirillo understood she would soon return for it. Then she slipped out of her apartment and into the dark corridor. She felt her way to the stairs. Light of step, swathed in black, she eased down the stairs to the next landing.

  She felt her way blindly through the dark to the next set of stairs.

  Suddenly the shadows took on forms of bannister and doors and walls, as if someone had opened shutters to the moonlight.

  “Pietro is not waiting at the crossroad the way you think, Miss Blair.”

  Her heart fell at the calm, quiet voice behind her. She pivoted.

  Lord Elliot stood a yard behind her at an open door that gave in to the apartment directly beneath her own. He was naked to the waist and barefoot, as if he had been sleeping and thrown on trousers to investigate a disturbance. Dim lamplight from his chambers washed him in a golden glow.

  His presence heralded the destruction of her plan of escape. Despite the exasperation building fast, she could not help appreciating the body exposed to her gaze. He had a fine form, broad shouldered and lean. His body possessed the youthful tautness that blessed men for so long in life if they remained active. The dim light emphasized the hard muscles of his chest and stomach and arms.

  He took two strides, relieved her of the valise, grabbed her arm, and pushed her into his room. He closed the door.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. The lamplight really flattered the hard chest and alluring skin so close to her face. If his interference had not disheartened her she might enjoy looking at his beauty.

  “I took chambers here.”

  He did not move for a long count. She glanced at his face and found him watching her.

  He had noticed her looking at his body. A low arousal hummed in her blood. His eyes reflected the same reaction, only with cool consent, as if he controlled it in both himself and her.

  Yes, this man would be nothing but trouble.

  “Do not move. Do not attempt to leave.” He strode to the writing desk, picked up his discarded shirt, and drew it on.

  She did not watch. Not really. But out of the corner of her eye she saw the way his limbs moved and his torso stretched. That image from the afternoon invaded her head again, more vividly this time, of his face above her and those shoulders and that chest under her caress…

  She could see evidence of his inhabitation out of the corner of her eye too. The lamp stood on a writing table in this sitting room. A pile of papers did too. She noticed the ink stains of his fingers. He had been writing, not sleeping. She pictured him there, stripped to the cool night air, intent on his prose.

  Dressed, barely, and looking too rakish and romantic for safety in that loose shirt, he faced her.

  “Lord Elliot, did you move yourself here to spy on me?”

  “I left the spying to Signora Cirillo. I moved here to stop you from slipping away in the dead of night.”

  He had guessed her plan. That discouraged her. “Involving that harpy in my private affairs was inexcusable.”

  “It appears it was necessary. She relished her mission and performed with initiative. I merely asked her to inform me if you disobeyed and left the hostel. Instead, she followed you and intercepted that letter to your friend.” His expression turned critical. “That you tried to arrange this midnight assignation with a man is intolerable. Even worse, what if your Pietro had not waited at the crossroad? You would have been out there in the night, in this city of all cities, unprotected—”

  “Do not scold me. Do not dare. If he had not come I would have found a fast way to hire a carriage or a wagon or a donkey if need be, and I would be gone.” The full implications of this sorry episode had lined up in her mind. She resented every one of them.

 
“It appears that I have traded one gaoler for another,” she said.

  He lifted her valise. “Call it what you will.” He swung his arm to the door, inviting her to lead the way.

  Simmering with anger, she trudged back up the stairs to her apartment. To her horror he did not drop the valise inside the doorway, but carried it into her bedchamber. She did not follow. An intuitive caution, a very womanly one, kept her in the sitting room.

  “Come here, Miss Blair.”

  His command caused a rumbling in her that she did not recognize or like. The anger it contained was understandable, but it also held other pulses and throbs that dismayed her. She hated when men tried to dictate to her, when they presumed to be her master, and yet…

  She peered into the bedchamber. He stood there in dishabille, his white shirt open at the collar, his hair mussed and his expression set with resolve. He noticed her and that wordless acknowledgment passed between them. Tingles of thrills and danger scurried through her.

  He walked over and pulled her into the room. His hold on her arm, so firm and confident, so full of assumptions regarding his right to do as he pleased, stunned her. Never in her life had a man treated her like this. She tried to collect herself and form the words to put him in his place, but…

  He untied the knot of the shawl beneath her chin. It took far too long. It brought him much too close. Surely he was not such a rogue as to—she should stop him and do it herself. She should—

  He slid the shawl off her head and shoulders. It fell in a long, slow caress. His gaze followed the edge slipping over her body until it hung from his hand.

  Only moonlight from the open window lit the chamber, but she did not have to see his face clearly to know his thoughts. They were just there in the room, in the air, as they had been in the afternoon.

  A new reaction startled her. Another one that she had never experienced before. She was afraid. Not of him, and not of being forced. Of herself, and of the peculiar, shocking way her body responded to how he played her master.

  He gestured to the bed. “Remove your dress and lie down.”

  That almost snapped her back to her senses. Almost. An inexplicable excitement twinged low and scandalous at the order, however. Dear heavens—

  “You go too far.” Did she actually speak it? Had her mind finally dredged up some common sense and come to her rescue?

  “You leave me no choice. I cannot risk your stealing away again.”

  “You have my word I will not.”

  “A woman who expects me to break my word to Sansoni will not keep hers to me. Now cooperate unless you want me to force you to obey.”

  She reached behind her back and released her dress’s hooks. It only took a minute to drop it off and lay it on a chair. The light was not so dim as to cloak her. She actually wished she wore stupid stays. She suspected he could see more than he should beneath her simple chemise.

  She approached the bed and climbed onto it, trying not to expose too much, excited because she suspected that she did. She lay on her back and looked up at him. Silence hung in the air for a long pause.

  “What are your intentions, Lord Elliot?”

  He laughed again. Quietly. Darkly. “This is not a good moment to provoke and tease, Miss Blair.”

  Suddenly he was bending over her. Hovering. Her heart began racing. His shirt billowed near her face. His scent assaulted her. His size dominated her. A terrible, wonderful anticipation titillated her. Her breasts grew sensitive and—

  He took her left arm and moved it near the iron bars of the headboard.

  “What are you doing?”

  He threaded the shawl between the bars. “Making sure that you do not leave. I do not need much sleep but I cannot stay awake for two nights.”

  “This is excessive. Ignoble. I demand that you—”

  “This is necessary. It is either this or I sleep beside you. Would you prefer that?”

  She stared up at him. He paused in making the knots and looked down. Her heart rose to her throat.

  “Would you?” he repeated. It was a frank, sincere question. An invitation to allow the sensual pull to have its way.

  She swallowed. “Of course not.”

  Even in the dim light, she saw his smile. He returned his attention to the knots.

  Finally he moved away and straightened. She yanked at the bond. There was no slack in the knots. She turned on her side and pried at the thick wad with her other hand.

  “Feel free to try and untie them. You will not be able to. You can sit. You can move. You can even stand. You can use the chamber pot. But you cannot get away. Better to use the time sleeping.”

  A note in his tone made her stop trying. She rolled onto her back and looked up at him. Her helplessness and his control shouted silently between them. Her mind screamed rebellious insults, but her body experienced a delicious warmth and anticipation. It appalled her that this subjugation provoked desire, and a very erotic desire at that.

  He knew, damn him. She could tell that he did.

  “You look very beautiful there, Miss Blair. Very lovely, and vulnerable, and, dare I add,…submissive?”

  “You bastard.”

  That quiet laugh again. Then he was gone, leaving her to argue with herself for the rest of the night over just how vulnerable and submissive he had made her.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Phaedra held the cameo up in the morning light flooding through her sitting room window. It had become a talisman the last two days while she crossed swords with a man too confident in his rights to control her.

  You should have warned me, Mother.

  Perhaps Artemis had not known and could not warn. Maybe she had so isolated herself from men like Elliot Rothwell that she never battled them.

  She pictured her mother, so beautiful it made one’s breath catch. So sweet of face that people never guessed the brilliant mind until she opened her mouth or leveled that perceptive gaze at them. She had indeed been a queen around whom many bees buzzed. Scholars and artists and men who admired her intelligence were among the friends who loved her and hoped for more. Their home had been full of the famous and the striving.

  Surely one of those men had tried to conquer. Certainly the famous Artemis Blair had experienced the primitive thrill of meeting her match in wits and power. She should have warned her daughter that such a man might come.

  Phaedra looked out the window. Down below Lord Elliot directed Signora Cirillo’s servants as they hoisted portmanteaus onto the coach that would take them to the harbor. Her eyes narrowed on her enemy’s head.

  At least he had not tied her down last night. She had promised five different ways not to leave. He had only relented when she swore, swore, it on her mother’s grave. He had made her plead like a supplicant to the lord.

  Her mother was probably turning in that grave now. Artemis Blair had never submitted to a man, even symbolically. She had never married, not even her lifelong lover, not even when she found herself with child by Richard Drury. She had never given up her freedom, her independence, and her right to love and bed whomever she chose, even when she discovered she only wanted to love and bed one man after all.

  The cameo warmed in Phaedra’s hand. She gazed at it. No, not only one man. There had been another.

  It had been a shock to read about that in her father’s memoirs. Just remembering his words made her a little sick. She had always thought her parents shared a perfect love, unfettered by obligation and laws, a true meeting of the souls that would last for eternity. Their friendship proved to the world that there was another, better way.

  It had been thus between them for years, but another man had finally interfered.

  This interloper was charming but at the heart of a scheme that is both brilliant and nefarious. That was what her father wrote. She remembered the words exactly. She had memorized them prior to sailing from England. He lured Artemis into an affair, used her most dishonorably in ways that would destroy her reputation, a
nd ultimately his actions led to her death. He sold her lies as surely as those fraudulent antiquities that he flogs. It is only a matter of time before he is exposed, however, because the objects are out there, visible, just like the one he sold to her, and eventually someone will reveal their suspect provenance and his thieving seductions will undo him.

  Her fingers closed tightly on the cameo. An antiquity of suspect provenance. A gem added late to a will, said to come from Pompeii. Phaedra was quite certain this was the object her father referred to, and her only link to the man he described.

  His actions ultimately led to her death. She had not been able to get those words out of her mind. They chanted at night while her dreams saw images of her mother those last weeks, too sober, too distracted. She had not even noticed at the time, because there were always smiles for her at least. But her mother’s decline had come too fast and her death had been a shock.

  Phaedra looked down again. Lord Elliot was gazing up at her. How long had he been watching her from the street?

  Maybe her mother had issued no warnings because she had not known herself. Maybe the interloper had been a man like this one below, who could thrill with his mere attention and who tempted one to forget every belief, every principle, that anchored one’s life.

  She could forgive her mother for neglecting this lesson. She could forgive Artemis anything, even leaving the world too soon. But if a man had indeed used her dishonorably, if his actions had led to her death, that was different. The daughter of Artemis Blair would never forgive him. If she learned that was true, she would see that man fall.

  She reached for her shawl and draped it over her hair. Lord Elliot would be an inconvenience, but she would not allow his company to interfere with the real reason she had come to Italy.

  Elliot returned to his apartment to retrieve the valise stuffed with his papers. He passed Miss Blair on the steps.

  “I will wait in the carriage.” Her crisp tone carried the chill that she always showed in his presence now.

  She would never forgive him for tying her to that bed, and not only because of the humiliation and lack of trust. They both knew it had excited her and she hated him for that and all it implied. They also both knew that if he had not done it she would have slipped away during the night in order to avoid all that it implied.