Darius: Lord of Pleasures

Eight

Able regarded his father, who sat in the stifling library swaddled in blankets and scarves. “I never should have put you up to riding out with me. You’ve been ailing ever since.”

“Ah, but it did me good, my boy.” William’s eyes held a twinkle. “To treat myself to a hot scone or two, a nip from the flask, a trot through the village. It reminds me what it’s all for, you know?”

“All what?”

“The scrapping about in the Lords, for one thing. You think it’s fun, to listen to the same old arguments over the Catholic question? To hear Prinny whining for yet still more money while the streets of London are littered with men who gave limbs and eyes in defense of King and Country?”

“You’re sounding suspiciously liberal, your lordship.” Able drew up a chair before the blazing fire, because it wasn’t often he and his father just talked.

“Not liberal, exactly. I believe the monarchy in the hands of a wise and just ruler is still government as God intended,” William said, setting aside some faded correspondence. “But the people aren’t sheep, and we’ve seen what they can do when they decide revolution is their only recourse.”

“England isn’t France.”

“Hunger is hunger,” William countered, sitting up straighter. “Bad harvests can happen anywhere, and Louis was ruling an abundantly blessed and happy nation, and then, in just a few decades, all is chaos and murder.”

“I suppose you’re in a better position to appreciate that than most. Not many have your perspective.”

William smiled thinly. “I’m too damned old, you mean. God knows I feel it.”

Able did not argue the point, for William was venerable indeed. “We should send word to Vivian that you’re ailing. I can put a note in the post tomorrow.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” William said with a touch of asperity. “She’ll be galloping down here, wielding vile concoctions, putting plasters on my feet, and clucking and fussing until a man can’t get any rest. I have a little cold, is all, and there’s no better place for me to be recovering than in the company of my family, at my ancestral home.”

Able smiled at the reference to family. It wasn’t much, but they weren’t demonstrative men. Coming from William Longstreet, it was something, to be called family—as clearly, whatever she was, Vivian wasn’t included in that designation.

Darius grinned down at Vivian. “I made it to Edward the Martyr that time.”

“I beg your pardon?” Vivian thought her tone was impressively crisp, but she spoiled the effect entirely by brushing his hair back from his forehead and slipping her fingers over the curve of his ear. She knew he liked her to touch his ears, and his hair, and his…

“You know, Alfred the Great, Edward the Elder, Athelstan, Edmund, Edred… when you tempt me to lose control, I recite them in my head.”

“And all the past kings of the realm help you withstand my charms. I’m impressed.” She was impressed that she could have this discussion—any discussion—when her body was still throbbing with the pleasure Darius visited upon her.

“I’ve never even gotten as far as Canute,” he confessed, still clearly pleased with himself. “You’re a siren, Vivvie.”

And didn’t that just prompt a woman to be pleased with herself, too? “I’m a hungry siren.” She stroked his ear again.

“It’s been a taxing week. Undo us, sweetheart.”

“Why is it my job?” she groused, but she carefully extricated his waning erection from her body, because he preferred she be the one to do it. Vivian suspected Darius just wanted her to become at ease handling him, as God knew, he was at ease handling her. In a week’s time, she’d learned all manner of naughty, wonderful things from him, and she suspected he was only bringing her along slowly so as not to shock her.

“You like having your hands on me,” Darius said as he shifted off of her. “I’m humoring you.”

“Of course, you are.” She pushed him to his back and rolled off the bed to fetch a damp cloth from the basin on the washstand. “Every proper English schoolboy learns the royal succession so he can humor the ladies.” She swabbed off his cock, comfortable now moving him this way and that. He hiked his knees and spread his legs so she could make a pass at the inside of his thighs, his belly, and groin, and then the part she suspected he liked best, when she’d carefully tend to his balls.

“You are like that tomcat.” She dabbed at herself, set the cloth aside, and climbed back on the bed. “Your physical pleasures are dear to you.”

“All of God’s creatures like to feel cared for.” Darius ran a hand down the side of her face, a caress that had her nigh purring. “It’s how you show your appreciation for all the care I lavish on you.”

“Forcing me into new gowns, slippers, gloves, and bonnets isn’t care, Darius Lindsey, it’s your idea of entertainment.”

He wrapped her in his arms. “Ungrateful wench. You love it when I make you read Mrs. Radcliffe and dance with me in the library and try decadent desserts with each meal.”

“Except breakfast.”

“I just served you your breakfast dessert, unless you’d like to nibble on my parts? No? Well, perhaps another time.”

“You keep suggesting this. I can’t believe you’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.” He slid a hand over her breast. “Though you won’t let me nibble on you. I’m attempting to get a child on a spinster, and it’s trying, to say the least.”

He teased like this mercilessly, making Vivian wonder if all couples were so free and affectionate with each other.

“You’re trying to shock me, sir, but I need a nap, so hush and rub my back.” She rolled over, because in this at least she was in complete earnest. Sharing a bed with Darius Lindsey was exhausting.

Darius smiled and did as she ordered. As Vivian dozed off, he made a bet with himself that she’d be giving him more explicit orders long before their month was out. She was or soon would be fertile, and her natural sense of curiosity was making quick inroads on her inherent shyness.

Day by day, and night by night, she was shedding one inhibition after another. She now insisted the candles be kept burning when he made love to her; she didn’t gasp and stammer when he accosted her in the study or her own bed or the broad light of day. He’d jammed a saddle rack against the feed room door just the day before, and hiked her skirts for a little ride at midday in the chilly confines of the barn. His thighs still ached pleasantly from the exertion of thrusting at just the right height.

When Gracie tapped softly on the door, Darius quietly bid her to enter. The maid took one look at Vivian, thoroughly tousled and cuddled even in sleep against Darius’s side, and shook her head.

“You wore the poor thing out,” Gracie said, passing Darius a cup of tea. “Best be careful, Master Dare.”

“Of?”

“She’ll take a piece of you with her.”

“And leave thirty pieces of silver,” Darius replied. “Which we can use around here.” Though a child would be a piece of him—maybe the best piece.

“You know, when he’d got his silver, Judas hung himself from a tree.” Gracie poked at the logs on the hearth. “And what good will you be to any of us, swinging in the breeze that way?”

“She’s leaving, Gracie.” Darius’s hand passed gently over Vivian’s head. “She’ll be gone in two weeks, and then it won’t matter what happened between us. We’ll be strangers again, and my obligation will be met.”

Gracie rose from the fireplace and turned a pitying expression on him. “As if the woman who breaks your heart can ever be a stranger to you. Have a care, sir, or you’ll be picking out your tree.”

Darius offered her a lopsided smile. “Be gone with you, Gracie. When I’ve tired this one out, I’m coming after you.”

“I’ve got one good hand, Master Dare.” Gracie swept toward the door. “That’s plenty enough to paddle your naughty backside into next week for such foolish talk. Mind you order that woman a soaking bath, or she’ll be too sore to walk.”

Gracie closed the door softly on that whispered reminder, and Darius made a mental note to do just that. Were it not for the need to consider Vivian’s inexperience, he’d be going at her twice as often as he did, and twice as hard.

Just once, he’d treated her to a hard, fast coupling, and she’d come like a house afire before he’d even found his rhythm.

And then come again when he had.

But he hadn’t used her so hard since, aware that their goal was conception, and frequent coupling was conducive to that end. This kept him gentle with her, considerate, mindful of the need to savor and conserve when he might have otherwise plundered.

As he lay back on the pillows, sipping his tea and petting Vivian’s hair, he considered that with a woman like Vivian, marriage might not be the trap he’d envisioned it being. With Vivian intent on a child, they were having exactly the kind of unrestrained, frequent sex newlyweds might have.

And it was… overwhelmingly sweet, a backhanded gift from fate that he, a man who never allowed women the intimacy of intercourse, never allowed them to kiss him, should have all that given to him in such unstinting abundance—from a woman to whom he’d have to become, just as he’d said, a stranger in the new year.

He set his tea aside, slipped down into the covers beside Vivian, and drew her into his embrace. She went into his arms trustingly and gave him her warmth without even waking.

The weather moderated, and Vivian found herself riding out with her… with Darius. He loved his estate fiercely, and she concluded fierceness was a part of him, part of the boy who’d grown up between battling parents, finding his purpose befriending his brother and protecting their sisters.

As they rode over his muddy acres, Darius told her his plans for this field and that pond. Trout could be raised like a crop, she learned, and it would improve Darius’s crop yields if he set up a system of irrigation and flood control for the water on his property.

“Why not raise flowers? You don’t need a hothouse for them, much of the year, but you could easily sell them in Town.”

“Townhouses all have back gardens.”

“Bachelors buying flowers for the ladies do not have gardens,” Vivian said. “No single townhouse or mansion has enough flowers on hand to decorate for balls and entertaining. There is demand, and you could specialize.”

“In?” He was bringing the same focus to this topic that he brought to every topic, including how best to bring her pleasure. The notion left a lady somewhat breathless, even as her horse merely ambled along beside his.

“Fragrant flowers?” Vivian tossed out the idea. “Exotic flowers, I don’t know. It would be easy enough to see what’s in short supply and provide it.”

“And then when fashion dictated that fragrant flowers were no longer all the rage?”

“You diversify,” Vivian said as Bernice stepped around a puddle. “Just as you have already. You excel at it, with your chickens and sachets and… other things.”

“My whoring.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking pleased to have an opportunity to shock her with bad language.

“Your enterprise. I suspect you feel sorry for those women, Darius.”

“Vivian…”

“Don’t scold.” She kept her tone mild, but this aspect of his life bothered her increasingly. “No matter what they pay you, you have to feel a little something for them, or you’d just sell more chickens.”

“Chickens produce only so much income. The ladies pay very, very well, and they cost me nothing.”

“They cost you dearly.”

“I’ll race you to that stone wall.”

He nudged Skunk with his heels, so Bernice cantered more forward as well, and Vivian knew the point he was making: sexual pleasure, or pain, mattered only like a good gallop on a crisp day, nothing more. So she let the subject drop and let the mare have her head for the next half mile, but when she woke in Darius’s bed on Christmas morning and saw a small, wrapped box on the breakfast tray, the cost of Darius’s enterprises with the ladies came to mind again.

She nodded at the box. “Why is that there?” William gave her presents, on their anniversary or her birthday. Little things—a book of old verse, a pair of ear bobs, nothing unique to her, but thoughtful gestures nonetheless.

“Happy Christmas, Vivvie.” He poured her tea and passed it over to her, the same as he had every morning for more than a week. “Open your gift.”

“I thought you told me my gift was hiding under the covers on your side of the bed?”

“You’ve already enjoyed that gift.” He sipped his tea placidly, though there was something… grave about his demeanor, or watchful, so Vivian took a fortifying gulp of tea, passed the cup back to him, and reached for her present.

“This had better not be naughty, or I’ll leave it here, and you’ll be reminded of your…”

Inside the box was a small, elegantly cut glass bottle holding about four ounces of golden liquid. She lifted the stopper and sniffed delicately.

Her nose woke up, and she sniffed again, finding something that started off a little like the scent Darius himself wore—soft, soothing, a little sweet, a little spicy—but then the fragrance took off in a more mysterious direction, carrying notes both floral and spicy in a blend that intrigued and promised and drew interest on a purely sensual level.

“It’s lovely.” She sniffed again. “What is it?”

“I had it blended for you,” he said, watching as she continued to inhale through her nose and consider, then take another little whiff. “The recipe is under the lining, as is the name of the parfumier who blended it for you.”

“You had this made for me?” She was still trying to analyze the fragrance as she frowned and whiffed. “Did it turn out as you’d planned?”

“Scents are tricky.” He set the breakfast tray on the night table. “You think you know what will go together, but then the ingredients react with one another, and with the wearer, and sometimes it turns out better than you planned, but not always.”

“This is fascinating.” She passed him the bottle, and he took a cautious, glancing sniff, held the bottle away, and repeated the move several times.

“It’s what I wanted for you,” he decided, “maybe a little richer.” He tipped the bottle against his finger, then replaced the stopper and set the bottle aside. “Hold still.”

With his wet finger, he touched the sides of her neck then drew a line from her throat to her cleavage.

“We’ll see how it takes on you, assuming you like it?”

“I love it. Thank you very much.”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and drew her against his side, and for the moment, Vivian was content to lie against his warmth, the lovely scent subtly spreading over them as they drowsed together.

“I’ll miss you.” Vivian’s words came out without any warning, to her or him, and Vivian felt Darius stiffen beside her.

“Vivian…”

“Don’t Vivian me.” She hitched her leg over his thighs, as if he might toss back the covers to escape her. “I’ve been married five years, and never once has William given me a gift this thoughtful. This personal. I’ve known you two weeks, and you give me this… and frocks, gloves, and waltzes, and… I know, it means nothing to you, but to me…”

“To you?” His face was unreadable, but he wasn’t telling her to hush or to finish her tea, nor was he lecturing her about ices on hot days.

“I was a married spinster—you were right. Not so much in my dress and choice of reading material, but inside, where no one sees. Where no one cared to see.”

“It can’t mean anything,” he said sternly, as if he were reminding himself and hoping it was true.

“Too late, Darius.” She closed her eyes and relaxed against him. “What you think you mean, is that the sexual business means nothing. What you really mean, is you want Darius Lindsey to mean nothing to me. The two are not the same, and you won’t convince me they are.”

He kissed her into submission, gently, slowly, entrancingly, and she let him sweep her away again, because he’d at least let her have her say, and she owed him the fair hearing he was demanding with his hands and mouth and body.

But what was wrong with the man, that he’d try to convince them both such tenderness and caring meant nothing at all?

She bided her time and waited until the night before the New Year to counterattack. By tacit agreement, they now slept together in his bed, and on a few occasions, had fallen asleep without having intercourse. On those occasions, Vivian would wake up to find Darius making love to her sometime in the middle of the night. She had cuddled up with him and let sleep overcome her, because he’d exhausted her once again with final fittings, riding around the property, a rousing argument over the Catholic question, and a long chess match, which she’d won.

When she was sure he’d fallen asleep, she got up, built up the fire, and then gently eased the covers back to reveal Darius’s naked form.

Everlasting God, he was beautiful. The whip marks had faded, leaving only smooth, burnished skin over hard muscle and powerful bones. She knew his body now, knew the scents and textures, the sounds and touches. Tonight, she wanted to know the taste of him.

“Vivvie?”

“Here.” She curled down to rest her head on his stomach, and felt his hand stroking over her hair. Heaven help her, when did his touch create in her the desire to purr? Her hair, her hands, her shoulders, anywhere and everywhere on her body, she wanted his touch and missed it on some level when she didn’t have it.

She curled her fingers over his shaft, and his hand went still.

“Vivvie, no…”

“You hush,” she chided as she touched her tongue to the tip of his cock. “For once, Darius Lindsey, you hush, and you let me.”

His fingers laced through her hair, and Vivian was sure he was going to gently deny her this—deny himself this, more significantly—but then his palm cradled the back of her head, and she heard him sigh.

He said nothing, verbal surrender being too much to expect, and Vivian settled in to explore him with her mouth. He was religious about his personal hygiene and typically bathed before retiring. There was a lingering fragrance of lavender about his person, but something beneath that unique to him, and just as distinctive. Cautiously, Vivian used her tongue to wet the length of him, feeling his erection grow as she did.

When she concentrated her attention on the silky-smooth head of his cock, she felt the jump of arousal in his stomach where it lay under her cheek. She suckled gently, and his fingers tightened in her hair.

“Let me,” she whispered again, rubbing him against her cheek and easing off to stroke the wet length of him with her hand while she held the head of his cock in her mouth.

“You don’t owe me this,” Darius whispered, his voice oddly tight.

“Hush.” She emphasized her command by drifting her fingers over his balls, and he sighed and arched toward her. He liked her hands on him. He’d never said as much, but he’d told her nonetheless, and so she explored him with leisurely thoroughness, using her tongue and lips and fingers to map him over and over again.

His cock was magnificently hard, his hips moving in small, slow undulations when he again attempted to tug her away.

“Darius, no.” She returned to the spot under the tip of his cock and applied a hint of suction. “Let me, please.”

He went still, and she drew on him slowly, feeling arousal coil up more tightly in him, though his hips weren’t moving. She knew his struggle: This wasn’t merely an ice on a hot day, not merely a brisk gallop on a cool morning. There was nothing merely anything about letting himself have pleasure like this.

Holding him carefully in her mouth, Vivian reached over and found Darius’s free hand. She slid it up his torso until his fingers rested over his own nipple, and then she retrieved her hand and wrapped her fingers around the thick base of his shaft again.

The sound he made was low, pained, and soft, but when Vivian began to stroke him, he moved slightly in counterpoint. She caught the rhythm and gradually got her mouth, his hips, and her hand synchronized, until it was as if she could feel his arousal building in her own body.

“Vivvie…”

She neither paused nor sped up, but kept at him with the sort of determined patience he’d shown her time after time. His pleasure was the object of this exercise, and she would neither relent nor show him mercy. She’d learned that from him, that to pleasure another person took discipline and self-sacrifice and genuine caring. When she felt the tension in him drawing impossibly tight, she realized he was holding off, purposely, maybe trying to hold off altogether.

She drew on him, strongly, and when he would have pulled her away at the last moment, she held her ground and kept him in her mouth, where she could force pleasure upon him more, longer, deeper, than he’d intended to allow. His body had its revenge for all his discipline, and his release had him groaning as he bowed up, shook, and bucked against Vivian’s mouth and hand.

When he finally lay quiet on the mattress, breathing harshly, his hand loosely tangled in her hair, Vivian was still unwilling to relinquish him.

“God, Vivvie…” He sounded bewildered and spent. “Why?”

She closed her lips around his softening length, so he’d feel himself being drawn gently from her mouth, and got off the bed to fetch the wash cloth. As she tidied him up and offered him first crack at the water glass, she considered his question.

She’d done this because, in some regard, she’d come to love him. She’d wanted him to have something of her that was unique, something she’d never share with another. She had a need to give to him she couldn’t question at that moment, and it had felt right to do this with him.

But that answer would hardly serve, not with him already in full retreat. When she bundled in beside him, he obligingly wrapped an arm around her, but his touch was cautious and… withholding.

“Why?” He reiterated the question, sounding more in possession of himself and not particularly happy.

“I wanted to know I could,” she said, thinking it was a version of the truth. “I wanted to know what it was like.”

“Don’t do it again.” He kissed her temple; his tone was relieved. “Not with me. We’re supposed to be getting you a baby, if you’ll recall.”

She nodded, knowing if she didn’t do it with him, she wasn’t going to do it with anybody else. Not ever. Not because it was vulgar and base, as he no doubt thought, but because with Darius, it was sweet and lovely and unbearably intimate. She’d given this to him, but to demand one iota more would be more than his damaged image of himself could sustain.

Darius lay awake, his arms around Vivian, the weight of a thousand regrets on his heart.

Why on earth had he permitted this? None of them, not the laughing barmaids at Oxford, not the good-hearted ladies in Italy, not the scheming bitches he consorted with now—not one of them had been allowed what he’d just permitted with Vivian. Bad enough he was her stud, worse yet that he’d taken a hand in her wardrobe and appearance, worse still, he’d admitted to himself it was going to be hard to send her back to her William, but this…

He told himself he didn’t trust Lucy or Blanche not to harm him, did he allow them to French kiss him. Putting his cock between a woman’s teeth was an act of trust, no matter what else a man might say or boast or brag regarding the experience. With those two, it was unthinkable.

With Vivian, it had been impossible to deny her.

So she’d been curious, and he’d obliged her. That’s all it was. A small erotic experiment, quickly concluded and not to be repeated.

He dropped off into sleep on that thought, but when he woke and Vivian wasn’t with him, he was almost relieved.

Or so he told himself.

“So the smallest one, who could climb higher than any of the other kittens, went way, way, way up into the tree, until his brothers could see only his tail twitching among the branches, and from there he could tell them exactly in which direction the castle lay. All four kittens made it home by dark, and every other cat in the castle envied them their great adventure.”

“Did they live happily ever after?” John stifled a yawn, and it was clear he’d kept his eyes open by sheer determination.

“They did,” Vivian said, “although the smallest one grew up to become a great, lazy black tomcat who spent his time protecting his favorite little boy from mice.”

John smiled sleepily and scooted farther down under his covers. “Wags does that. Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

“Of course.” Vivian tucked the covers in more closely around the boy, kissed his forehead, and resumed her seat at the foot of his bed.

“Darius sings to me sometimes, when I’ve had a nightmare,” John said, eyes drifting closed. “I like the one about the lady with the green dress.”

Vivian took a moment to translate, but then she started in on a quiet version of the folk song “Greensleeves,” switching to a soft hum as John fell back to sleep. When she looked up, Darius was standing in the shadows by the door, arms crossed, regarding her from across the room. She rose, and he held out a hand. “Nightmare?”

Vivian tucked herself under his arm. “Gracie came to get you, but I heard her knocking, so I let you sleep. Does he get them often?”

“Yes.” Darius ran a free hand through his hair. “I think he dreams of his mother, of the few months of his life when she was extant, and then wakes up, and she’s not here, not anywhere.”

“But you’re here.” Vivian leaned up and kissed his cheek. “And he goes right back to sleep, the same as any child.”

“You think so?”

“I have two nephews and a niece. The boys are eight and five, and I can assure you they have had their share of nightmares, and their mother has never been farther away than the next hallway.”

He looked relieved, which made her realize how deeply he fretted for the boy.

“You’re doing a good job, Darius. John is a delight, and he loves you.”

Something shadowed crossed his features, but they’d reached Darius’s bedroom, and Vivian let him tug off her nightgown and bathrobe, then wrap himself around her in the middle of the bed.

“You love that child,” she said softly.

“I do.” Vivian couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she knew the admission cost him. “He wouldn’t love me, did he know all the circumstances of his situation here.”

“Yes, he would.” She laced her fingers through his where they splayed over her midriff. “Children can be very forgiving, and you’re doing the best you can for him.”

He gathered her closer and began to make excruciatingly tender love to her without saying a word.

That night marked the turning point in their dealings, with the date of Vivian’s scheduled departure drawing inexorably closer. They teased less, spoke less, and loved with a quiet desperation neither acknowledged. On the final night, Darius left her in peace to take her bath and tuck herself up in bed.

Near midnight, after much useless gazing into the fire in his study, he found her asleep in his bed for the last time and decided not to wake her. She’d become subdued these past few days, but so had he. When he’d found her tucking John in after a nightmare, something inside him had broken. Of all the burdens he carried, the burden of raising that child alone was the heaviest and the lightest. John was goodness, innocence, and all the hope and potential in the world.

John deserved to be loved and protected, and Darius died a thousand deaths every time Blanche tooled out in her coach and the servants hustled John up to the third floor, there to remain until Lady Cowell took herself off hours later, lighter in the pocket and none the wiser about the composition of Darius’s household.

He hated—hated—entertaining her under his roof and insisted on using a guest room at the back of the house to see her. Lucy, thank God, wasn’t inclined to stir so far from Town in search of her pleasures, but rather, delighted in demanding that Darius go always to her at the hour of her choosing.

“Darius?”

“Here.” He curled around Vivian’s back, fitting his groin to her derriere and snugging his arm around her waist. “Go back to sleep, love.”

“Where were you?”

“Making sure you’re packed.” He kissed her nape. In truth, he’d been sitting among her things, touching them, lifting them to his nose and wishing. Pathetic, but after tomorrow, the opportunity to be pathetic wouldn’t be within reach, so he allowed it.

“Gracie helped me.” Vivian brought his hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Have you any advice?”

“Name the baby William,” Darius said on a sigh.

“My menses should have started by now. I’m not myself of late, so perhaps they’re just delayed.”

“You’ll be sure William tells me if there’s a child?”

“Yes.” She tucked his hand over her naked breast. “I won’t have to make him. William keeps his word.”

“Do you know what to look for?”

“Regarding?”

She wouldn’t just ask him. “Conception. You’ll be tender here.” He gently closed his hand over her breast. “You might be sleepy, queasy, or faint. Your sister can tell you more.”

“How do you know these things?”

“John’s mother was under my roof for much of her pregnancy. I became familiar with her various complaints.”

“I envy you that.” Vivian shifted to her back and hiked a leg over Darius’s hips. “You know more what to expect than I do. Will you write to me?”

“Of course not.”

“And I’m not to write to you?”

His finger traced down the side of her face. “You know we cannot, and it wouldn’t be kind, either. Neither to you, nor to me, nor to William. Mostly, it wouldn’t be smart.”

“Because this means nothing, you mean nothing, I mean nothing.”

“You’re learning.” Darius leaned over and kissed her mouth, but it wasn’t to shut her up; it was gratitude for not belaboring the miserable point.

“Darius, I really, really want you to stop dealing with those women.” She scooted so she was right up against his length, on her back and able to regard him by the firelight.

“You don’t get a say, love.” He kept his tone light. “It won’t be of any moment to you after tomorrow, because we’ll rarely see each other.”

“Rarely?”

“I’m to attend the christening if there’s a child, and I’ll be squiring my sister around this year’s Season, which means our paths might cross.”

“You don’t want me to say this, but I’ll look forward to that.”

“Vivvie.” He rose up over her and braced himself on his arms. “You can’t. You cannot. You should be relieved to be getting back to the safety of William’s arms. Relieved to be done with such a one as I. You can’t go… getting sentimental on me.”

“If you didn’t want me getting sentimental, then why create a perfume for me? Why let me meet John, why insist on sending Bernice along home with me? Why, Darius Lindsey?”

“Because you are a lady,” he said, lowering himself to his forearms and gathering her in his embrace. “You were supposed to be a damned new roof, and you turned out to be a lady. One doesn’t treat ladies with less than consideration.”

“And you are a gentleman.” Vivian stroked his hair. “And yet you let those infernal women beat you and humiliate you, and I cannot abide it, Darius.”

“It isn’t yours to abide or not,” he said softly, kissing the side of her neck. “I don’t want to argue with you, Vivvie.”

“Yes, you do. You want to insist coin alone is adequate justification for letting them abuse you. I could just shake you.”

“If you meet me at some Venetian breakfast, Vivvie, you’re to look down your lovely nose at me, as if I’m a bug on the walkway, and ignore me thereafter.”

“Ignore the father of my child?”

“Ignore the conniving bastard who took coin for swiving you,” he whispered, letting her feel his growing arousal. “The man who got a child on you and walked away without a backward glance. The idiot who…”

But he stopped himself by sealing his mouth over hers, and for the last time, sliding himself home into her body. He wanted to rush, wanted to pound into her so she’d recall him for the rest of her life, so she’d never make love again without remembering what it had felt like with him.

For her, he held himself back. For her, he went slowly and tenderly until she was begging and writhing and her nails digging into his back with a sharp, sweet little pain. When she was near tears, he let her come, joining her one last time in the sexual pleasure that he, love-struck idiot, had tried to insist was of no more moment than a cold ice on a hot day.

And when the tears came, he kissed them away and started all over again, but in the morning, he would send her away just the same.