Suddenly You Read online

  Gentlemen did not want wives with well-cultivated minds. They wanted attractive wives who never second-guessed or disagreed with them. And they certainly didn’t seek women with vibrant imaginations who daydreamed about fictional characters in books. Therefore, Amanda’s two prettier elder sisters had both caught husbands, and Amanda had resorted to novel-writing.

  Her unwelcome guest continued to stare at her with those keen blue eyes. “Tell me why a woman with your looks should have to hire a man for her bed.”

  His bluntness offended her. And yet…there was something unexpectedly entertaining about the prospect of talking with a man without any of the usual social restraints.

  “First of all,” Amanda said tartly, “there’s no need to patronize me by implying that I’m Helen of Troy when it’s clear that I’m no beauty.”

  That earned her another arrested stare. “But you are,” he said softly.

  Amanda gave a decisive shake of her head. “Evidently you think I’m a fool who will easily succumb to flattery, or else your standards are quite low. Either way, sir, you are wrong.”

  A smile tugged at one side of his mouth. “You don’t leave much open for discussion, do you? Are you this decided in all your opinions?”

  She answered his smile with a wry one of her own. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Why is it unfortunate to be opinionated?”

  “In a man, it’s an admirable quality. In a woman, it is considered a defect.”

  “Not by me.” He took a sip of wine and relaxed in his chair, studying her as he stretched out his long legs. Amanda didn’t like the way he seemed to be settling in for a lengthy conversation. “I won’t allow you to avoid my question, Amanda. Explain why you hired a man for the evening.” His lively gaze dared her to be forthcoming.

  Finding that she was gripping the stem of her wineglass too tightly, Amanda forced her fingers to unclench. “It’s my birthday.”

  “Tonight?” Jack laughed softly. “Happy birthday.”

  “I thank you. Will you leave now, please?”

  “Oh, no. Not if I’m your birthday present. I’m going to keep you company. You’re not going to stay alone on such an important evening. Let me guess—today began your thirtieth year of life.”

  “How did you know my age?”

  “Because women always react strangely to the thirtieth. I once knew a woman who draped all the mirrors in black cloth on that birthday, for all the world as if a death had occurred.”

  “She was mourning her lost youth,” Amanda said shortly, and downed a large swallow of wine until it sent a flush of heat through her chest. “She was reacting to the fact that she had become middle-aged.”

  “You’re not middle-aged. You’re ripe. Like a hothouse peach.”

  “Nonsense,” she muttered, annoyed by the fact that his flattery, empty as it was, had caused a faint stirring of pleasure in her. Perhaps it was the wine, or the knowledge that he was a stranger whom she would never see again after this evening, but she suddenly felt free enough to say anything she wanted to him. “I was ripe ten years ago. Now I’m merely preserved, and before long I’ll be buried back in the orchard with the other pits.”

  Jack laughed and set aside his wine, then stood to remove his coat. “Pardon,” he said, “but it’s like a furnace in here. Do you always keep the house so hot?”

  Amanda watched him warily. “It’s damp outside, and I’m always cold. Most days I wear a cap and a shawl indoors.”

  “I could suggest other methods to keep yourself warm.” Without asking for permission, he sat right beside her. Amanda huddled back against her side of the settee, clinging to the remnants of her composure.

  Inwardly she was alarmed by the solid male body so easily within reach, the unfamiliar experience of sitting next to a man in his shirtsleeves. His fragrance teased her nostrils, and she drew in the alluring smell…male skin, linen, a light pungent note of expensive cologne. She had never realized how nice a man could smell. Neither of her sisters’ husbands possessed this pleasing aroma. Unlike this fellow, they were both stodgy and respectable, one a professor at an exclusive school, the other a wealthy town merchant who had been raised to knighthood.

  “How many years have you?” Amanda asked impulsively, her brows drawing together.

  Jack hesitated a fraction of a second before replying. “Thirty-one. You’re rather preoccupied with numbers, aren’t you?”

  He was a young-looking thirty-one, Amanda reflected. However, it was an unfair fact of life that men seldom showed their age as women did. “Tonight I am,” she admitted. “However, tomorrow my birthday will be over, and I shan’t give it another thought. I shall sail on into my remaining years, and try to enjoy them as I may.”

  Her pragmatic tone seemed to amuse him. “Good Lord, woman, you talk as if you’re teetering on the edge of the grave! You’re attractive, you’re a celebrated novelist, and you’re in your prime.”

  “I am not attractive,” she said with a sigh.

  Jack laid his forearm along the back of the settee, not seeming to care that he was occupying most of it and crowding her into the corner. His gaze swept over her with disconcerting thoroughness. “You have a beautiful complexion, a perfectly shaped mouth—”

  “It’s too large,” she informed him.

  He stared at her mouth for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was a bit gruffer than before. “Your mouth is well suited for what I have in mind.”

  “And I’m plump,” Amanda said, now determined to explain all her defects.

  “Perfectly so.” His gaze dropped to her breasts in the most ungentlemanly inspection she had ever been subjected to.

  “And my hair is wretchedly curly.”

  “Is it? Take it down and let me see.”

  “What?” His outrageous command caused her to laugh suddenly. She had never met such a presumptuous scoundrel in her life.

  He glanced around the cozy room, and then his devilish blue gaze returned to hers. “No one’s here to see,” he said softly. “Haven’t you ever taken your hair down for a man before?”

  The stillness of the parlor was underlaid with the gentle snapping of the fire in the hearth and the sounds of their breathing. Amanda had never felt this way before, actually fearful of what she might do. Her heart was beating so hard that it made her dizzy. She gave a stiff little shake of her head. He was a stranger. She was alone in the house with him, and she was more or less at his mercy. For the first time in a very long while, she was in a situation in which she had no control. And it was all of her own making.

  “Are you by chance trying to seduce me?” she whispered.

  “There’s no reason to fear me. I would never force myself on a lady.”

  Of course there would be no need. It seemed very likely that he had never heard the word “no” from a woman.

  This was without doubt the most interesting situation that Amanda had ever found herself in. Her life had been spectacularly uneventful, in which the characters of her novels said and did all the forbidden things she herself would never have dared.

  As if he could read her thoughts, her companion smiled lazily and leaned his chin on his hand. If he was indeed trying to seduce her, he was in no great hurry. “You’re exactly as I imagined,” he murmured. “I’ve read your novels…well, the last one, at least. Not many women write as you do.”

  Amanda never liked to discuss her work. She felt uncomfortable when she received effusive praise, and she was most definitely disgruntled by critics’ opinions. However, she was keenly curious about this man’s opinion of her work. “I wouldn’t have expected a pr—a man of your…a cicisbeo,” she said, “to read novels.”

  “Well, we have to do something in our spare hours,” he said reasonably. “We can’t spend all our time in bed. Incidentally, that’s not how you pronounce it.”

  Draining the last of her wine, Amanda glanced at the sideboard, wishing for another glass.

  “Not yet,” Jack said, taking th
e empty glass from her hand and setting it on the small table just behind her. The movement brought him directly over her, and Amanda shrank back until she was nearly reclining on the upholstered arm of the settee. “I won’t be able to seduce you if you have too much wine,” he murmured. His warm breath touched her cheek, and although his body didn’t quite meet hers, she sensed the solid, heavy weight of him poised over her.

  “I w-wouldn’t have thought you’d had such scruples,” she said unsteadily.

  “Oh, I have no scruples,” he assured her cheerfully, “it’s just that I like a bit of a challenge. And if you had any more wine, you would be too easy a conquest.”

  “You arrogant, vain—” Amanda began indignantly, until she saw from the rascally twinkle in his eyes that he was provoking her deliberately. She was both relieved and sorry when he moved away from her. A reluctant smile pulled at her lips. “Did you like my novel?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  “Yes, I did. At first I thought it would be typical silver-fork fare. But I liked the way your well-bred characters began to unravel. I liked the portrayal of decent people moved to deception, violence, betrayal…you don’t seem to shrink from anything in your writing.”

  “Critics say my work is lacking in decency.”

  “That’s because your underlying theme—that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things in their private lives—makes them uncomfortable.”

  “You actually have read my work,” Amanda said in surprise.

  “And it made me wonder what kind of private life the proper Miss Briars might lead.”

  “Now you know. I’m the kind of woman who hires a cicisbeo for her own birthday.”

  A smothered laugh greeted her rueful statement. “That’s not the way to pronounce it, either.” His shrewd blue gaze traveled over her, and when he spoke again, his voice changed. The amusement was tempered by a note that even in her inexperience, Amanda recognized as purely sexual. “Since you haven’t yet asked me to leave…take down your hair.”

  When Amanda didn’t move, only stared at him with round, unblinking eyes, he asked quietly, “Afraid?”

  Oh, yes. All of her life, she had feared this…the risk, the possible rejection and ridicule…she had even feared the disappointment of discovering that intimacy with a man was indeed as base and repulsive as both her sisters had assured her it was. However, she had lately come to discover that there was something she feared even more: not ever knowing about the great tantalizing mystery that everyone else in the world seemed to have experienced. She had described passion so well in her novels, the yearning and madness and ecstasy it inspired, all the feelings she herself would never experience. And why should that be so? She had lacked the good fortune of having been loved so greatly by a man that he would seek to join his life with hers. But did that mean she should forever be undesired, unwanted, unclaimed? There were perhaps twenty thousand nights in a woman’s lifetime. For at least one of them, she did not want to be alone.

  Her hand seemed to reach for her hairpins of its own accord. She had pinned her hair the same way for the past sixteen years. The neat topknot was made by twisting her curling locks into a heavy coil. It took exactly a half-dozen pins to secure it as tightly as she preferred. In the mornings, her hair stayed relatively smooth, but as the day progressed, tiny curls never failed to spring out all over her head, forming a fuzzy halo around her face.

  One pin, two, three…as she drew them out, she held them in her hand until the ends dug into the soft flesh of her palm. As the last pin came out, the coil dropped heavily, her long locks falling to one shoulder.

  The stranger’s blue eyes contained glints of fire. He began to reach for her hair, then checked the motion. “May I?” he asked gruffly.

  No man had ever asked permission to touch her before. “Yes,” she said, though it took two attempts before the word came out clearly. She closed her eyes, felt him move closer, and her scalp tingled as he sifted lightly through her hair, separating the coiled curls. His broad-tipped fingers moved amid the thick strands, brushing her scalp, spreading the mantle of curls over her shoulders.

  His hand drifted to hers, gently prying her fingers open, making her drop the wire pins. His thumb smoothed over the tiny red marks the pins had made on her palm, and he brought her hand to his face to kiss the little sore spots.

  His voice curled hotly inside her palm. “Your hand smells like lemons.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at him gravely. “I scrub my hands with lemon juice to remove the ink stains.”

  The information seemed to amuse him, and lights of humor mixed with the heat in his gaze. He released her hand and played with a lock of her hair, his knuckles brushing her shoulder and making her breath catch. “Tell me why you requested a man from Madam Bradshaw, instead of seducing one of your acquaintances.”

  “Three reasons,” she said, finding it difficult to speak while his hand was stroking through her hair. A flush of warmth came over her throat and cheeks. “First, I didn’t want to sleep with a man and then forever be faced with him in social situations. Second, I haven’t the skills to seduce anyone.”

  “Those skills are easily learned, peaches.”

  “What a ridiculous name,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “Don’t call me that.”

  “And third…” he prompted, recalling her to her explanation.

  “Third…I am not attracted to any of the gentlemen of my acquaintance. I tried to imagine what it might be like, but none of them appealed to me in that way.”

  “What kind of man appeals to you?”

  Amanda jumped a little as she felt his warm hand slide around the back of her neck. “Well…not a handsome one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because handsomeness is always accompanied by vanity.”

  Jack grinned suddenly. “And I suppose ugliness is accompanied by a wealth of virtues?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she protested. “It’s just that I would prefer a man’s looks to be ordinary.”

  “And his character?”

  “Pleasant, not boastful, intelligent but not conceited, and good-humored. But not foolish.”

  “I think, peaches, that your ideal man is a paragon of mediocrity. And I think you’re lying about what you really want.”

  Her eyes flew open, and she frowned in annoyance. “I’ll have you know that I am honest to a fault!”

  “Then tell me you don’t want to meet a man like one of the characters in your novels. Like the hero of the last one.”

  Amanda snorted derisively. “An unprincipled brute who brings himself and everyone around him to ruin? A man who behaves like a barbarian and conquers a woman with no respect for her wishes? He was not a hero, sir, and I used him to illustrate that no good can come of such behavior.” She warmed to the subject, recalling indignantly, “And readers dared to complain that there was no happy ending, when it was abundantly clear that he did not deserve one!”

  “Part of you liked him,” Jack said, giving her an intent stare. “I could see it in your writing.”

  She smiled uncomfortably. “Well, in the realm of fantasy, I suppose I did. But certainly not in reality.”

  The hand behind her neck closed in a gentle but secure grip. “Then here is your birthday present, Amanda. A night of fantasy.” He loomed over her, his head and broad shoulders obliterating the firelight as he bent to kiss her.

  Chapter 2

  “Wait,” Amanda said in a flash of panic, turning her head as Jack’s mouth approached hers. His lips pressed on her cheek, a brush of intimate heat that astonished her. “Wait,” she said again, her voice wobbling. Her face was turned full toward the fire, its yellow glow dazzling her eyes as she sought to avoid the stranger’s exploring kisses. His mouth moved gently over her cheek and toward her ear, tickling the tiny wisps of hair just above it.

  “Have you ever been kissed, Amanda?”

  “Of course I have,” she said with wary pride, but there seemed no way to explain th
at they hadn’t been anything remotely like this. A stolen kiss in a garden or a perfunctory embrace beneath the holiday mistletoe wasn’t at all comparable to being held in a man’s arms, breathing in his scent, feeling the heat of his skin through the linen of his shirt. “I—I suppose you’re very accomplished at it,” she said. “In light of your profession.”

  That drew a flashing grin from him. “Would you like to find out?”

  “First I want to ask you something. How…how long have you been doing this?”

  He understood her meaning at once. “Working for Mrs. Bradshaw? Not long at all.”

  Amanda wondered what would drive a man like this to prostitute himself. Perhaps he had lost his job, or been dismissed for making a mistake. Perhaps he had fallen into debt, and needed extra money. With his looks and wit and good bearing, there were many occupations he was well suited for. Either he was truly desperate, or he was lazy and dissolute.

  “Do you have a family?” she asked.

  “None to speak of. Do you?”

  Hearing the change in his tone, Amanda glanced up at him. His eyes were serious now, and his face was so austerely beautiful that the very sight of him made her chest ache with pleasure. “My parents are gone,” she told him, “but I have two older sisters, both married, and too many nephews and nieces to count.”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  “Why aren’t you?” she parried.

  “I like my independence too well to relinquish any part of it.”

  “That’s my reason, too,” she said. “Besides, anyone acquainted with me will confirm that I’m uncompromising and obstinate.”

  He smiled lazily. “You just require the proper handling.”

  “Handling,” she repeated tartly. “Perhaps you’d care to explain what you mean.”

  “I mean that a man who knows anything about women could have you purring like a kitten.”

  Annoyance and laughter billowed together in her chest…what a rogue he was! But she would not be deceived by his facade. Although his manner was playful, there was something underneath—a quality of patient watchfulness, a sense of restrained power—that made her nerves thrill in warning. He was no callow boy, but a fully mature man. And although she was not a worldly woman, she knew from the way he looked at her that he wanted something from her, whether it was her submission, her sexual favors, or simply her money.