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“If Miss Martin has them, why not go to the front door?”
“She has company,” she answered in an impatient undertone. “A man. She didn’t expect me back so early. My clothes are in the dressing room. The window is open.” She pointed upward. “I only need to get in and out without disturbing the lovebirds.”
Vere’s gaze went to the window, then back to her. “That’s a goodish climb.”
“I can manage it,” she whispered indignantly.
His gaze slid down the pantaloons lovingly hugging her long, shapely legs.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Quicker that way.”
Some minutes and a short, furious argument later, the Duke of Ainswood was pulling Lydia through the dressing room window. She wouldn’t have needed to be pulled if it weren’t for the dratted corset, which made it impossible for her to heave herself up from the ledge below.
He slid his arms under her shoulders and hauled her none too gently over the sill, then let her tumble in a heap on the floor.
But Lydia did not break easily, and being pushed and pulled and dropped didn’t bother her. If she’d needed delicate treatment, she would not have become a journalist. If he really wanted to injure her, he could do much worse than this. He was cross, that was all, because she’d refused to do it his way.
He had expected her to wait in the garden. As though she had all night to wait while he bumbled about looking for her clothes in the dark, and collided with doors and knocked over furniture in the process, alerting everyone to the intrusion.
Besides, she didn’t trust him to try to be discreet. More likely, he’d think it a good joke to break in on Helena and her guest. Lydia could easily picture Ainswood wandering into the bedroom, carrying a handful of undergarments. “Sorry to interrupt, Miss Martin,” he’d say, “but could you tell me which of these drawers belong to Miss Grenville?”
The image made Lydia’s mouth twitch. Then, recalling who Helena’s guest was, she sobered. If Sellowby got a close look at her, a lot of dirty family linen would soon be displayed for the titillation of the public.
She scrambled up from the carpet, thanking heaven it was a thick one. Otherwise, the entire household would have heard the thump when she went down. She went to check the door to the bedroom.
“What the devil are you doing?” came Ainswood’s angry whisper. “Can’t you keep still?”
Ignoring him, Lydia listened at the door for a moment before cautiously cracking it open. Her anxiety easing, she quickly closed it again. “They’re not in the bedroom,” she softly informed Ainswood. “They’re in the sitting room.”
“How disappointing for you. If they’d been considerate enough to fornicate in the bedroom, you might have watched.”
“I wish you would be considerate enough to be quiet,” she returned. “Can’t you find things without all that rustling and snorting?”
“I can’t see a bleeding thing. Stay by the window, confound it, so I’ll know where you are. Do you want me to trip over you?”
“Why can’t you stay at the window and let me look for them?”
“I know what bombazine feels like—what it smells like, curse it. I’ve been to enough funerals.”
Lydia moved to the window, where a feeble shaft of moonlight made a narrow rectangle of visibility. Thickly draped and crammed with garments and furniture, the dressing room was several degrees darker than the outdoors.
She could just barely make out his form, one disturbingly large, blacker shape against the surrounding darkness. She saw him bend and snatch up something, heard him sniff it.
“Found ’em,” he whispered. He advanced and shoved them at her. “Let’s go.”
“You go first,” she said. “I’ll catch up in a minute. I have to…change.” And she preferred to do it here, where it was good and dark.
There was a silence.
She lifted her chin. “It will be easier to climb down once I get the corset off. I had the deuce of a time getting up, and it’ll be harder to climb down.” That certainly was true.
Another, longer pause ensued. She hoped the thick corset muffled the erratic thumping of her heart.
“Miss Grenville, you seem to have overlooked a minor detail.”
“I can climb in skirts,” she assured him. “I’ve done it many times.”
“The corset,” he hissed. “It fastens in back, remember? How do you propose to get it off?”
For an instant her mind went utterly blank. Then heat shot up her neck and suffused her face. She’d forgotten: Lacing and unlacing this corset was not a one-woman maneuver.
“I’ll jump from the ledge.” She turned to look down at the garden below. Very far below. And bathed in too much moonlight. “It isn’t so very far.”
He muttered something under his breath, which she doubted was a prayer. “You’re not going to jump,” he said evenly. “You are going to step away from the window. Then you will take off the shirt. In the dark. Can you manage that?”
“Of course I—”
“Good. Then I’ll undo the bleeding, damned corset—if you can contrive to keep still for two minutes.”
Lydia’s hands began to sweat.
“Thank you,” she said composedly. And very calmly she stepped away from the window and moved to the opposite—and very darkest—corner of the dressing room.
She heard him approach. Felt it.
Clutching the clothing tightly to her stomach, she murmured, “With your vast experience, I’m sure you can unlace a corset in a few seconds.” And she would not have time to do anything foolish, she told herself, as her mind dragged up a memory of wild sensations, of heat and power and large, sure hands. She would not listen to any inner devils. She would not make an error she’d spend the rest of her life paying for.
She forced her stiff fingers to relinquish the garments. As quickly as her rigid muscles would let her, she pulled off the shirt.
She swallowed a gasp as his fingers touched her shoulder.
He snatched them away almost in the same instant. “Jesus,” he hissed. “You’ve nothing underneath.”
“A man does not wear a chemise.”
“You’re not a man.”
She heard a faint grating sound, as though he was grinding his teeth.
“I have to find the lacing first,” he told her, his whisper rough.
He meant that he had to do it by touch, because he couldn’t see. She swallowed. “Down,” she directed. “Under my right shoulder blade.”
His fingers touched her shoulder again and trailed downward, leaving a burning trail of sensation.
He found the place quickly enough, yet even with his hands on the stays instead of her flesh, the heat continued to prickle. A thin thread of moisture trickled between her breasts.
She could feel his warm breath on her neck, on her taut spine, while he unlooped the lacing, systematically working his way down, and the confining garment loosened.
It should have been easier to breathe then, but it wasn’t.
When he was halfway down, the corset sagged to her hips, and she couldn’t stop herself from grabbing the front and holding it up to shield her breasts.
The hands at her back paused, and her breath jammed in her lungs.
The pause lasted but two pulsebeats before he returned to his work, which he completed with disconcerting efficiency.
He stepped away.
Then what Lydia felt was all too easy to identify, and shame scorched her from the top of her head to the ends of her toes. What had she expected him to do? Go mad with passion for her simply because she was half naked?
He was a rake, a champion libertine. He’d seen hundreds of women completely naked.
While she silently raged at her idiot self, she speedily donned her chemise and mannish shirt, and pulled her skirt up over the pantaloons. Not that there was any point in modesty when he couldn’t see and had made it plain that he wasn’t interested in seeing. All the same, she felt less vulnerable exposing her hindqu
arters under the shelter of her skirt.
She got her drawers on, then had to take them off again because she’d pulled them on backward. Swearing under her breath, she got them right—finally—and hastily pulled on and tied her petticoat.
She could hear him breathing—or snorting was more like it—while she continued dressing. The harsh expulsion of breath made it clear he was impatient to be gone.
She quickly shrugged into her spencer. “You can go,” she told him. “I have to find my boots.”
