Lords of Scandal: The Beleaguered Lord Bourne / The Enterprising Lord Edward. Кейси МайклсЧитать онлайн книгу.
Please, she silently entreated any kind spirits who might have been listening, just let me get away from here without waking him.
Slowly, and with incredible stealth, she backed her body toward the side of the large bed and angled one foot toward the floor, which was maddeningly far away. Ducking her head, she slipped Kit’s right arm into position across his own chest and allowed her arms to trail behind her as her other foot hit the floor and she slid her body over the edge of the mattress. Another inch or two and she would be completely free of the bed. She held her breath as she slid closer and closer to the floor, releasing it in a long sigh only as her knees made contact with the rug. She’d made it! Now all she had to do was find her nightgown, wherever the dratted thing was, and steal across the room to the adjoining door. She gave a slight shiver—it was rather cold on the floor—and adjusted her plan. She could send Goldie to retrieve the nightgown later, even if it meant she’d have to listen to the maid’s sly jokes. She could not dare remaining in Kit’s chamber much longer, or else Leon might arrive to wake his master only to catch a glimpse of one hastily departing naked countess. Weighing her options in the twinkling of an eye, she chose Goldie as the lesser of two evils.
Jennie swiveled on the balls of her feet and prepared to creep across the wide expanse of carpeting that lay between her and safety, and had in fact begun to take a small step when her head was enveloped in a cloud of sheer white silk. Her nightgown! Where had that come from?
“Good morning, wife,” came a calm male voice. “Going somewhere? Surely you’ll wish your nightgown?”
Jennie looked over her shoulder and upward to see Kit’s leering face looking down at her from the edge of the mattress. That he was actually there looking down at her was bad enough, but to know that she could see him almost as clear as day through the nightgown still covering her head was enough to send her into an immediate attack of hysterics.
“Close your eyes, you lecher!” she yelped in a most unloverlike way. While Kit obligingly hid his eyes (though not his wide smile) behind his hand, Jennie struggled with the cursed nightgown, nearly ripping it as she fought her way through its folds to find the neck and arm openings hidden there.
“All right, you beast, you may open your eyes now,” she said as she laid her hand on the doorknob in anticipation of showing him nothing more than her rapidly departing skirts.
“Hey, kitten, wait a moment!” Kit called after her as she disappeared on the other side of the closed door. “You haven’t even given me my morning kiss. And after last night, too,” he ended on an exaggerated sigh of longing.
Jennie’s head reappeared through the partially opened door just long enough for her to say a highly colorful, definitely improper word and disappear again, leaving Kit to howl in delight at her display of temper.
Once safe in her own room and under the covers just as she had planned, Jennie bit down hard on the soft cushion of her thumb as she struggled with the memories that now crowded into her mind. Had she really allowed him to…encouraged him to…aided him in his desire to—oh, Lord above, she had! How could she ever hold her head up in his presence after her shameless behavior?
But it had seemed so right, felt so right at the time. She had been listening to his nightmare, comforting him. When had everything changed? How had she reverted from the comforter to the comforted, and when did the comforting turn into something deeper, something infinitely stronger than the mere wish to give each other ease? Somehow, without her knowledge, compassion had become passion, and that passion had led to…
Well, her common sense intruded, never mind now just where it had led. She poked her head out from under the covers to check the time on the mantel clock, planning to calculate how soon Goldie would be barging in with her morning chocolate, and came nose to nose with a smirking Lord Bourne.
“Up for air, are you?” he questioned cheekily before vaulting casually onto the mattress to lie at his ease on his side, one hand propping up his head as he gazed up at Jennie just as if he weren’t the most obnoxious, insufferable beast in creation. “You dashed off before I could claim a kiss from my dear bride. Tsk, tsk, how naughty you are, puss,” he said with a sad shake of his dark head. Reaching up, he snaked a hand around the back of her head, pulling her down to within an inch of his smiling mouth. “Pucker up now, sweetings, and give your husband his due.”
“I’ll give you a punch in the chops,” Jennie retorted, wrenching her head from his grasp.
Kit allowed his head to plop down onto the pillow. “Oh, woe is me,” he mourned in mock dejection, “the chit spurns me. And after all we were to each other. I believe I am cut to the quick.”
How dare he! Jennie thought, incensed. He has taken what had been a beautiful—although, perhaps, in the clear light of hindsight, unfortunate—interlude and turned it into an object of fun. Does he spare my blushes, even a little? He does not. Has he so much as the slightest consideration of my finer feelings? He has not. Does he show the least bit of shame for having taken such elaborate liberties with my person? Far from it. So what does he do? He crashes in here and tries to make a May game out of me, that’s what he does! Her fury getting the better of her, Jennie grabbed hold of her pillow and swung it square at Kit’s head.
“Hey, what’s all that about?” the laughing earl protested, grabbing the fluffy pillow and throwing it to the floor, where his prone body, having been the recipient of Jennie’s none too gentle shove, soon joined it.
“Get out of my chamber!” she ordered, hanging over the edge of the bed, the better to shout at him—a tactical mistake that soon had her body joining his on the rug. “At the risk of understatement, Lord Bourne,” she intoned crushingly, once she had caught the breath her ignominious fall had knocked out of her, “I loathe you!”
It had taken him a while—quite a good while, actually—but at last Kit realized that Jennie wasn’t just putting up a token show of anger. She really meant it—she hated the sight of him. How strange, thought the intelligent, but still rather young Earl of Bourne—so perhaps his confusion was excusable. How very strange. My recollections of last night are far from unpleasant. Surely she couldn’t be finding fault with my performance. After all, I know she has no way of comparing me to another, and even in the heat of the moment I can tell the difference between a cry of distress and a cry of passion. And that was passion last night, sure as check, he assured himself in self-defense.
Perhaps if Kit had been older, had a few more years of exposure to the gentler sex under his belt, he would have realized that Jennie was too shy, too inexperienced, to find any pleasure in verbally rehashing the events of the previous evening. An older man might have handled the “morning after” with a good deal more finesse than had Kit. But Kit was not older or more experienced. And he had bungled his role of loving husband—bungled it badly—and now he would have to pay the piper.
Or would he? As he fought to control Jennie’s flailing limbs without injuring her, Kit slowly began to get angry. What was the chit carrying on about, anyway? he reasoned with typical male logic. It wasn’t as if he had entered her chamber in the middle of the night dressed in next to nothing and hopped into her bed was it? No! And was it he who had cradled her in his arms and shed sweet tears for her? Again, no! And if he reacted in the same way any red-blooded male animal would react when put into the same circumstances, he’d be damned if he’d spend the rest of his life wearing sackcloth and ashes like some dreadful sinner. If there was blame to be placed in this whole business, then let it rest on the head that deserved it—Jennie’s!
“Here now!” he exclaimed, grabbing Jennie by the shoulders and pressing her back against the carpet. “Fun’s fun and all that, kitten, but me thinks thou dost protest too much. After all, it was you who seduced me, y’know.”
“Me! Seduce you!” Jennie screeched in disbelief, her body shocked into rigidity. “Well, if that isn’t above all things stupid. You ruin me, and then you have the gall—the absolute gall—to blame me for my own ruination?”
“Ruination, is it?” Kit retorted acidly. “That’s a bit strong, don’t you