He poured the now cold wash water from the large pitcher into the bowl on his washstand behind the screen in his office. His last clean shirt and pair of buckskins lay draped across his desk chair. With a bath towel wrapped around him and tucked in at the waist, he splashed the chilly water over his chest and arms, gave himself a quick scrub with a bar of Floris’s sandalwood soap, and used a soft wet flannel to wipe himself clean. For the last time this day or at least he hoped.
His office door creaked open. “Visitor, for yer, guv’.”
“Dammit, Ox, I told you no more surprise guests today. Neither my temper nor my wardrobe can take even a single interruption. One more incident and I’ll have to conduct business naked as the day I was born.” Daedalus stripped off the bath sheet and dried himself in several quick, rough motions.
“Yer said no more unless it were ’er.”
Daedalus whipped the bath towel around his hips and held it together with one clenched hand whilst he pulled the screen aside with the other. “Her who?” He stopped in his tracks. His shock was so great he nearly let go of the bath sheet. Ox, the great lumbering devil, tugged his forelock, bowed to the lady, and left the office at a deceptively swift pace for such a large man.
In the middle of his office, a diminutive lady, at least a foot shorter than he, stood with one hand fisted on her hip and the other tightly clutched around the ribbons of a somewhat large black velvet reticule. Indeed, her entire ensemble was black, including the small veiled bonnet she’d removed and deposited on his desk. The dress hugged her Venus-like figure in a lover’s embrace—every curve draped in shape-defining black satin.
Her hair, a deep brown so rich as to shine burnt umber in places, had been piled onto her head in thick artful curls and braids. Curls and braids that made his hands itch to take them down for the simple privilege of seeing how far along her body her hair might fall. She had the biggest dark brown eyes set in a face that was the perfect mix of graceful curves and sharp angles with lips plump and deep rose in color without the aid of paint of any kind.
“You’reLord Whitcombe?” She stared at him as if were some particularly odd specimen of insect. Her incredulity would be amusing if she didn’t keep moving her gaze over his body so hotly he imagined her hands on his flesh. Her expression flitted from fascinated to incendiary fury in rapid succession which caused her fine brown eyes to spark with flecks of gold.
“Mister Whitcombe. You are…An Insatiable Lady? I mean the authoress of—”
“I am the authoress who has made you a fortune, a fortune which you have deigned to hold for the ransom of learning my identity,LordWhitcombe. And…” She gave an exaggerated huff and threw up her hands. “Oh, for pity’s sakewillyou put on some clothes? You may be in the habit of conducting business in the nude, but I am not.” She dropped her reticule onto his desk next to her bonnet, seized his clothes from the back of his chair and tossed them at him.
Which would not have ended so badly had he not let go of the bath sheet in order to catch the flying garments. After which he turned, presenting his bare buttocks to the lady, stumbled into the screen, scrambled to set it aright whilst clasping his clothes over his suddenly hardening cock, and finally managed to organize himself and his makeshift dressing room so as not to offend her further. An utter waste of time as he vowed he heard her snorting and snickering at him from the moment the entire debacle ensued.
She wasn’t supposed to be so beautiful. Nor so young. She couldn’t be more than five and twenty. He’d never seen her before, but that was not surprising as he had not been out in society much even before he’d escaped his brother and gone into the naughty books business. London society made his skin crawl. From the age of sixteen he’d been fondled and fawned over by women of all ages because of his appearance. Some of them old enough to be his mother.
Daedalus shuddered and attempted to pull on his breeches and step into his top boots at the same time. “I do apologize for greeting you in such a stage of undress, but I wasn’t expecting you to respond to my request so soon. Shite!” He collapsed into a chair and struggled to wrestle into his buckskins. The screen teetered, but remained upright.
“I wasn’t expecting to respond to your summons at all, Lord Whitcombe. I am neither your servant nor one of your shop workers to come and go at your command.”
“Of course, you aren’t,” he said as he stepped around the screen and adjusted his shirt and loosely tied neckcloth. “I assure you, Miss…My apologies, what is your name?” She had settled into the chair across from his so he took his seat and donned his spectacles. She was even more lovely now that he saw her clearly.
“I don’t see the necessity of your knowing my name, my lord. I am here to collect my money and to discuss when you might expect my next book. Our business dealings have progressed quite nicely without my name being brought into the discussion. I see no reason to alter our arrangement, do you?” She did not flinch. Her hard brown-eyed gaze did not falter. She might look the demure miss, but the woman who had penned two erotic and provocative accounts of her amorous adventures sat across from him a veritable queen. Not to be trifled with nor ignored by any man. Least of all himself.
“That depends on the nature of our arrangement.” He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “I have a…most unusual request to make of you. That is the reason I have gone to such lengths to meet you.” His heart hammered so hard against his ribs he decided the damned thing might burst out of his chest at any moment. He’d lost his wits. Nothing else could account for what he was about to ask.
“The nature of our arrangement?” For the first time since he’d set eyes on her she appeared uncertain. The presses pounded over their heads. The scent of ink still stirred the air but something more sweet and delicate came to Daedalus from across the desk, a heady mixture of orange blossom and woman. “What precisely is your request?” She sat up straight, perched on the edge of the serviceable wooden chair, her hands folded together tightly in her lap.
He leaned back in his chair, his elbows rested on the arms and his fingers steepled against his chest. “I wish you to tutor me in the art of pleasuring a woman.” Daedalus smiled ever so slightly. He’d actually managed to say the words without stammering. His voice hadn’t cracked once. He sat as still as possible and watched as every sort of thought and emotion possible traveled across her face.
“You want me to tutor you?” Her voice did crack. And rose half an octave.
“I want you to tutor me in the art of pleasuring a woman. I have read your books again and again. I want to learn from you so no woman will ever regret taking me to her bed.” Somehow he’d leaned forward and his hands were pressed into the top of his desk so firmly as to turn them white.
She grew so still he was uncertain if she even breathed. But her eyes, those fathomless dark brown orbs glimmered with outrage, yes, but also with the sort of understand that marked something she’d heard, but wanted to understand. He did not want her to understand.
“I realize this is an unusual request and—”
“Unusual?” She leapt from her chair her entire body aquiver with rage. “This is perhaps the most libertine, insulting request I have ever heard. Of all the…”
“I have my answer then.” Daedalus rose. His chair slammed into the bookcase behind him. He was mortified. After reading her work he believed he knew the lady. He opened his desk drawer and drew out a hefty leather money bag. “I meant no insult, madam. I admire your spirit and your ability to tell men what you want without bowing to society’s ridiculous ideas about women’s desires and pleasures when it comes to bedsport.” He tucked the bag into her reticule. “If it were up to me every unmarried miss upon leaving the schoolroom would receive a copy of your books so they might understand what goes on in the bedchamber and what they have every right to expect from a man.”
He came around the desk and offered her his hand. “I will not bother you again. Send your next book by your servant as before, and I look forward to reading it.” The words spilled from his lips like print blocks falling off a shelf. His stomach roiled, and he’d broken into a sweat. Yet another failed plan. What now?
She took his hand in hers. “I don’t understand,” she said softly.
He laughed. “That makes two of us.” She had to leave before he made a complete fool of himself.Too late.
“I mean, have you never…pleased a woman in bed?” She blinked up at him, those beautiful eyes suddenly full of such compassion she nearly broke him. He made her no answer, merely waited. After a moment or two her eyes widened. Her mouth formed a wordless oh of understanding. “Why have you not…How…How old are you?” She whispered her questions as if someone might be listening and he would be embarrassed. He would if anyone knew. It occurred to him she was the only person on earth who knew he’d never tupped a woman. The knowledge gave her power over him, but she did not strike him as the sort of lady to use that power.
“I will be thirty in September.” He held her delicate hand in his. Something passed between them, between the press of their palms and the flow of the blood in their veins, warm and slow.
