touch all play a part? And what about the mind? Love songs and poetry, perhaps? Bel adjusted her head to the most comfortable angle she could find and resolutely closed her eyes.
She had not expected to sleep, but she must have dozed, for when a warm, moist pressure around her ear woke her, the room was already grey with the earliest dawn light. Something was nuzzling her ear. Bel froze, then remembered where she was and who it was. He was mouthing gently at the sensitive whorls, his tongue straying up and down them. It was bliss. Her eyelids drooped again. And then he nipped gently at the lobe.
‘Aah!’ Bel had never felt so agitated. It should have hurt; instead, she experienced a jolt of electrifying sensation in a most embarrassing place. Against the unyielding pressure of his chest her nipples hardened, aching.
The lips left her skin instantly and the deep voice murmured—with only a hint of a slur, ‘Mmm…you’re awake. Good morning, sweet.’ He settled himself more comfortably between her legs with a thrilling tilt of his pelvis and it was obvious that what she had felt before was as nothing to what was happening now. He was awake, he was amorously inclined and he thought she would be receptive to his advances.
For a mad moment Bel thought of simply throwing her arms around those broad shoulders and waiting to see what would happen. She wanted a lover—here he was. Then common sense and her upbringing came to the rescue. It was one thing to choose as a lover a man you knew and respected; it was quite another to lie with a complete stranger who appeared to have wandered in off the street, however deliciously tempting he was.
‘Yes, I am awake.’ She put her palms against his shoulders and shoved, even more annoyed with herself than with him. ‘And thank goodness you are, at long last. Now, sir, please get up this instant.’
He did not stand, but at least he rolled off her, landing with a thump on his back. He turned his head and gazed at her with startlingly blue eyes fringed with thick golden lashes. Periwinkles, lapis, the sun on the sea. Bel gazed back, drowning, then pulled herself together and sat up.
‘What, sir, are you doing in my house?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing, my sweet. I don’t remember ordering you. Don’t remember much, truth be told.’ He sat up and rubbed both hands through his hair, rumpling it worse than before. ‘God, have I got a hangover.’
‘Kindly do not blaspheme.’ Bel sat up. ‘And I am not in your house, you are in mine. And stop calling me sweet. My name is—’
He stood up with a sudden lurch, grabbed for the bedpost, missed and looked around, swaying back on his heels. ‘Who moved my bed? And what the dev…what on earth is that?’ He pointed at Horace.
‘A polar bear. You fell over him.’ Bel got to her feet, her cramped muscles protesting. ‘Who are you?’
‘Reynard.’ He ran a hand over his stubbled chin and grimaced.
‘A fox?’
‘No, not reynard.’ His French accent was good, she noted. ‘Reynard. Ashe Reynard. Major. Viscount Dereham. Didn’t I tell you when I hired you?’ He yawned mightily, displaying a healthy set of white teeth. ‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Dereham.’ Of course. It made sense now. ‘You sold this house. I live here now.’ She had purchased it through his agent, who had told her that Viscount Dereham was on the continent with Wellington’s army. That at least explained the way he had got in; she had not thought to change the locks.
‘Ah. I sold it, then?’ He swayed, sat down on the bed, and blinked at her. Then he looked down at the bearskin, the burnt-out candles, up at her nightgown. ‘So you are not a Drury Lane vestal? Not a little ladybird I hired for the night. You are a lady. Oh, hell.’ He drove both hands through the mane of golden hair as though to force some focus into his head. ‘Have I just spent the night pinning you to the floor?’
Chapter Two
Bel glanced at the mantel clock. ‘We have spent about two hours of the night on the rug.’ He—Lord Dereham, for goodness’ sake!—got up, hanging on firmly to the bedpost. His gaze appeared to be riveted on her body. She glanced down and realised all over again just what she was wearing and how the early light was streaming through it. She took two swift steps, caught up the négligé and pulled it on. Reynard rocked back on his heels as she brushed past. He looked as if he truly did have the most crashing hangover.
‘My…’ pologies…’ His eyes were beginning to cross now.
‘Come on.’ She tugged his arm. Goodness, he was solid. ‘Come and get some sleep in the spare bedroom.’
‘Haven’t got one. Remember that.’
‘You did not, I do. I expect it was your study. Come along.’ She closed both hands over his arm and tried to drag him like a reluctant child.
‘In a minute.’ Doggedly he turned round and walked off into her dressing room. Of course, he would know about the up-to-the-minute privy installed in a cupboard in the corner along with the innovative—and unreliable—shower bath. Bel left him to it and went across the landing to turn down the spare bed.
The little house had a basement with the kitchen, store rooms and the set of compact chambers occupied by Hedges and Mrs Hedges. Space on the ground floor was chiefly occupied by the dining room and a salon, with above them her bedchamber, dressing room and what had been a study, now transformed into her spare room by dint of adding a small canopied bed.
‘You moved my desk,’ Lord Dereham complained from the doorway.
‘Never mind that now.’ Bel took him by the sleeve again and towed him into the room. He was proving remarkably biddable for such a large man. ‘Take off your jacket and your neckcloth.’
‘A’right.’ The slur was coming back. Those garments shed on to the floor, she gave him a push and he tumbled on to the bed. Which left his boots. Bel seized one and tugged, then the other, and set them at the foot. Reynard was already asleep as she dragged the covers over him, the blue eyes shuttered, the ludicrously long lashes fanning his cheeks.
‘What am I doing?’ Bel wondered aloud, bending to retrieve the jacket and neckcloth from the floor. But what was the alternative? She could hardly push him downstairs and he would probably fall if she made him walk. Rousing Hedges to throw him out seemed unfair to the butler, who would be up and working soon enough, and she could hardly leave him in her own bedroom. ‘And I don’t expect you will stir until luncheon time either, will you?’ she asked the beautiful, unresponsive, profile.
His answer was a gentle snore. Bel hung his clothes over the chair back and took herself off back to bed, feeling that her eyes were beginning to cross quite as much as the major’s had.
She was awoken, far too soon, by a female shriek. It seemed to come from the landing. Bel sat up, rubbing her eyes. Silence. Goodness, she was tired. And there was something she should remember; she was puzzling over it as her door burst open. Millie, the housemaid, eyes wide with shocked excitement, rushed in, followed by Philpott, her dresser, and bringing up the rear, Mrs Hedges, red in the face with the effort of running up the stairs.
‘My lady,’ Philpott pronounced in tones of throbbing horror, ‘there is a man in the spare bed!’
A man in the spare bed? A man? Lord! Of course there was. Why had she not thought what her staff would find
