Secret Desires of a Gentleman Read online

  “So I did. Treacle for you and chocolate for Phillip. Every afternoon.” She laughed, feeling a pleasurable warmth at the memory of those days. “I can’t believe you remember.”

  “Of course I remember. Those days were—” Lawrence broke off, and the smile vanished from his face. He glanced at his brother, then back at her. He swallowed hard and lifted his cup, looking into her eyes over the rim. “Those were some of the happiest days of my life.”

  “Mine, too,” she admitted.

  “And Phillip’s as well, though he’d never admit it,” Lawrence told her with a wink.

  “On the contrary,” Phillip contradicted smoothly and took a sip of tea. “Those were happy times for all of us.”

  “But then we all went off to school.” Lawrence set aside his cup and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Remember when you found out your father was sending you to boarding school in Paris?”

  “How could I forget? Father insisted upon it, saying he hadn’t been saving his wages all these years to no purpose. But, oh, I didn’t want to go.”

  “I’ll say you didn’t! You were so put out about it, you refused to learn French. And to make you learn, Phillip insisted we speak only French for the rest of the summer. How that infuriated you! You finally became so angry with him, you declared you were never going to make him chocolate tarts again.”

  She glanced at Phillip to find him watching her. He seemed to take no pleasure in these nostalgic recollections, but what else he might be thinking, she couldn’t tell. Phillip had always been a difficult person to read. “I remember that,” she said, returning her attention to Lawrence. “And he said something back to me, something very snotty, I’m sure, though since it was in French, I didn’t understand it. And by the time I learned French, I couldn’t remember what it was he’d said.”

  Phillip stirred. “‘C’est pour le mieux,’” he quoted under his breath, set down his cup, and turned away from the table.

  “For the best, was it?” She considered that, watching his back as he walked away. “I suppose it was, though I hate to admit it.” She gave a little laugh. “How like you, Phillip, to know what’s best for everyone.”

  He stopped, and his wide shoulders flexed in his black evening jacket. He started to turn his head as if to reply, but then he changed his mind. Looking away again, he walked to the window by the door. His back to the room, he tilted his head and stared at the gaslit sidewalk above as if yearning to be gone.

  “That’s our Phillip all over, isn’t it?” Lawrence agreed with her. “But he is usually right, you know. That’s the infuriating part.”

  No, the infuriating part is how he meddles in everyone’s business, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. “I have some treacle tarts freshly made today,” she said instead. “Would you like some?”

  “What a smashing idea! I’m famished.”

  “You cannot possibly be hungry, Lawrence,” Phillip interjected over one shoulder. “Not after a full supper at the Savoy.”

  “But I’ve missed Maria’s treacle tarts,” the younger man answered. “Haven’t had them since we were children.” He flashed her a look of mock accusation. “After you came home from boarding school, you didn’t make them anymore.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” she told him and started for the larder in search of Lawrence’s favorite treat. “You can blame my father.”

  Along with the two treacle tarts, she also brought one of chocolate for Phillip, though she doubted he would eat it. “Papa said I had become a lady then,” she went on as she came back to the worktable, “and he wouldn’t let me work in the kitchen anymore.”

  “You did look quite the young lady when you came home,” Lawrence agreed. “Pretty as a picture, and all dressed up in ribbons and lace. Phillip and I hardly recognized you.” He began to laugh. “Speaking of ribbons, remember that hair ribbon you lost?”

  His words sparked her memory. “I do remember. It had belonged to my mother, and Papa gave it to me that summer I came home from France. It was pink, and it had white daisies embroidered on it.”

  “And when it went missing, you were so terribly upset. Nothing would do but that we had to turn the entire house upside down looking for it.” He picked up a tart and turned to his brother. “You remember that, don’t you, Phillip?”

  “No,” he answered without turning around. “I’m afraid not.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would, since the moment Maria started crying about it, you vanished from sight. I’m the one who had to go combing the grounds with her for hours and hours in search of the blasted thing. We never did find it.” He took half the treacle tart in one bite, and gave a groan of satisfaction at the taste. “Deuce take it, Maria, you still make the best tarts in the world. Absolutely smashing.”

  “Thank you, Lawrence.” She glanced his brother. “I have a chocolate one, too, Phillip,” she called to him, “if you want it.”

  She watched him square his shoulders and turn around. “Thank you, Miss Martingale. You are most kind, but I have already dined. And now, I truly must insist my brother and I take our leave. I would not wish our presence here to subject you to any further risk of unwarranted gossip. Lawrence, I am sure, would not wish it either,” he added with a pointed glance at his brother.

  The younger man gave a heavy sigh and straightened away from the worktable. “Oh, all right,” he mumbled, then grabbed the second treacle tart from the plate and ate it as he crossed the room to join his brother by the door. “But Maria said it didn’t matter, and if she isn’t worried about it, I don’t see why—”

  “If her reputation isn’t a sufficient reason, allow me to remind you Miss Martingale is preparing to open her pâtisserie in just a few days.” Phillip opened the door and waited for his brother to walk through. “No doubt, she’s been inundated with work and is far too tired to stand about all night reminiscing about our childhood.”

  His desire to be gone was so plain, his intention to keep Lawrence out of her immoral clutches so obvious, she couldn’t resist trying to delay their departure a bit longer. “Oh, but I’m not tired at all,” she protested as he moved to follow his brother out the door. “Do I look tired, Phillip?”

  He turned his head, and his cool blue gaze raked over her as if to determine an answer to her question, but if he formed an opinion about her appearance, he did not offer it.

  “Women are so unattractive when they’re tired,” she went on with merciless sweetness. “We have red, puffy eyes, and haggard lines in our faces.” She touched her fingertips to her face with a pretense of concern. “I hope I do not look so awful as that, my lord?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His chin rose a notch. “I did not mean to imply any such insult,” he said with dignity.

  “Of course he didn’t!” Lawrence assured, peeking past his brother’s shoulder to look at her. “Why, you’re the prettiest girl we know! You always have been.”

  “The prettiest girl you know?” she echoed, still looking at Phillip. “Indeed?”

  His mouth took on a wry curve, making it clear he knew she was twisting his tail. “There are no lines in your face, Miss Martingale,” he answered. “As for your eyes, they are neither red nor puffy.” He paused, then added, “They are, in fact, quite lovely.”

  She blinked at this unexpected pronouncement, but before she could truly assimilate that Phillip Hawthorne had just given her a compliment, he went on, “It’s true that you have smudges of flour on your face and smears of what look to be dried egg yolks on your apron. There is also a dollop of something on the kerchief over your hair that might perhaps be butter.” He turned and followed his brother out the door. “But let me assure you,” he added, pausing to give her one last glance as he reached for the door knob, “that you do not, in any way, look haggard.”

  “Thank you, Phillip,” she said as he began to pull the door closed. “You are such a silver-tongued devil.”

  She was such an impertinent wen
ch.

  Phillip stepped out of his bedroom onto the balcony and pulled a slim cheroot and a box of matches from the inside breast pocket of his favorite smoking jacket. What great delight she’d taken in teasing him tonight. But then, he reflected as he lit the cheroot, she always had enjoyed that particular pastime.

  He sat down in one of the painted wrought-iron chairs that overlooked the back garden and stared up at the moon, a dim orb amid the thick haze of London coal soot and wood smoke. Her teasing words echoed through his mind.

  You look as if you are paying a visit to the dentist.

  If that were true, he could hardly be blamed for it. Having Lawrence drag him down through the tradesmen’s entrance of a shop at midnight was bad enough, but to do so for the purpose of visiting the very woman he was taking great pains to keep his brother away from made things even worse. Then there were the social ramifications of the situation, which only he’d seemed to consider. Calling upon an unmarried woman who lived alone was unthinkable, and a presumption that, despite her words to the contrary, could not be excused by the fact that she was in trade. No bakery would ever be open at such an hour of the night.

  He’d never dreamt Lawrence would make a beeline for her shop the moment they arrived home tonight. His brother had been halfway down the steps to her door before Phillip had even stepped out of the carriage. But, there, that was Lawrence for you, all bounce and go, acting on the impulse of the moment with never a thought to appearances. And Maria was no less careless.

  How like you, Phillip, to know what’s best for everyone.

  The biting undertone in those words quite nettled him. It wasn’t that he always knew best. It was that she usually didn’t. Maria had always had more sauce than sense.

  No doubt she’d been pretending a cavalier disregard for her reputation just to needle him. He took another pull on the cigar in his fingers and exhaled the smoke with a sound of exasperation. Maria never had possessed any regard for propriety.

  His mind flashed back twenty-two years, to a pair of big hazel eyes staring down at him—and quite rudely, too—from amid the branches of a weeping willow tree. He’d been alone that afternoon, he remembered, for Lawrence had been confined to the nursery as punishment for stealing a tray of tarts behind the back of the new chef.

  He’d settled himself beneath the willow by the pond and had just begun to practice his Latin when a sound had made him glance up. He could still remember exactly how Maria had looked that afternoon—the rays of sunlight that filtered between the leaves and glinted off her long, gold curls, the gray dress and white apron she wore that told him she was a servant, the fat red apple, half eaten, in her hand.

  The apple, he reflected, had been quite metaphoric.

  “What’s veritas mean?” she’d asked him, taking a hefty bite of the fruit, making him realize that sound was what had called his attention to her presence. The crunching of an apple.

  He’d frowned at her question, rather taken aback. Servants weren’t supposed to speak to him unless he spoke to them first. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Veritas,” she repeated, not seeming to care that her mouth was full. Had the girl no manners at all? She chewed and swallowed, then waved the half-eaten apple toward the book in his hand. “You were saying it out loud. I don’t know that word. What’s it mean?”

  He glanced down at the thick text that was open in his lap, then looked back up at her. “It’s Latin for ‘truth.’ I’m studying Latin.”

  “Oh.” She considered that information for a moment, watching him, then she sunk her teeth into the apple, and with her hands free, she shimmied down the tree. Her descent obligated him to put aside his book and stand up.

  She hopped lightly to the ground in front of him and removed the fruit from between her teeth with her left hand. “I’m Maria,” she said, thrusting her right hand toward him as if actually expecting him to shake it.

  He’d bowed instead. “I am Viscount Leighton, eldest son of the Marquess of Kayne. At your service.”

  She didn’t seem suitably impressed. She didn’t even curtsy. She took another taste of her apple, then held the half-eaten piece of fruit out to him. “Want a bite? I’ll share.”

  Even after all these years, the delicate scent of apple under his nose and the sharp sting of saliva in his mouth as he’d taken a bite were still vivid in his mind, for from that moment on, his life had never been the same.

  “Studying Latin doesn’t sound like much fun,” she said as he chewed and swallowed the fruit. “Wouldn’t you rather play? If we had a rope, we could make a swing.”

  Tempting as that suggestion was, he shook his head. “Thank you, but I have to study.” He stood up a little straighter, his shoulders back, feeling quite proud of himself. “I’m going to go to Eton.”

  “We could tie the rope on that branch,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, turning to indicate a limb that stretched out over the pond.

  Curiosity got the better of him. “Why that one?”

  “It’s over the water, silly. If you swing out from the bank as far as you can and let go of the rope, you fall right into the pond. It’ll be great fun.”

  It sounded like fun, especially on a hot summer afternoon when the alternative was Latin. Resolutely, he shook his head. “Can’t. I have to study. Besides, I’m not allowed to play until three o’clock.”

  “That’s all right,” she murmured, looking up at him, a smile curving her mouth. “I won’t tell on you.”

  Phillip still remembered that smile. Even then, it had held the power to tempt a fellow into doing things he really, really shouldn’t.

  He’d capitulated, pulled into forbidden fun by a slip of a maid who shouldn’t have even dared to speak to him. The result had been a snapped tree limb that had broken his arm, three weeks of punitive confinement in the nursery, and a sound thrashing from his father.

  Phillip smiled ruefully to himself. He’d suspected from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her that Maria Martingale was trouble. He’d known it for sure the summer she came home from France.

  He remembered that hair ribbon perfectly, though he’d denied it earlier tonight. A sudden tightness squeezed his chest. He also remembered watching her cry over the blasted thing.

  The door on the other side of the tall brick chimneystack opened, and he gave a silent groan into the darkness. Speak of the devil, he thought with chagrin.

  He straightened in his chair and looked over the low wall that separated his balcony from that of the house next door, confirming that the object of his thoughts had indeed come outside.

  She carried a small oil lamp in her hand, and by its soft yellow light, he could see that she no longer wore her kitchen apron. Instead, she was even more informally attired in a long white nightdress and wrapper. She’d also taken off that hideous kerchief, and her curly hair had been caught back into a braid down her back—a long, loosely woven plait of burnished gold that ended at her waist.

  She walked to the wrought-iron rail, pausing about half a dozen yards from where he sat. She placed the lamp on the floor nearby, then straightened and turned toward the rail, lifting one hand to her neck.

  Phillip tensed in his chair as she slid her fingertips beneath her braid and began to rub the nape of her neck. She was clearly unaware of his presence, and he knew that in such a situation, offering a slight cough was the appropriate thing for a gentleman to do.

  He did not do it.

  Instead, he remained perfectly still as she tilted her head to one side and began massaging the muscles of her shoulder and the side of her neck.

  She groaned, and with that tiny sound, lust washed over him, an inexorable wave of heat and hunger that was so powerful, he could not move.

  Between thin, curling ribbons of cigar smoke, he watched her, riveted, as she raised her arms above her head to stretch her aching muscles. The lamplight outlined the shape of her body through the gauzy layers of her nightclothes, and the dark silhouette of her shape called to so
mething inside him that was deeper, darker, and far more primitive than gentlemanly honor.

  Look away, he told himself, even as his gaze slid downward over the deep, inward curve of her waist, the undulating outward curve of her hips, the long, lithe shape of her legs. The lust in him deepened and spread, smothering him until he could not breathe.

  She let her arms fall to her sides and leaned forward, resting her forearms on the rail. He suspected the faint, anchor-shaped line that defined the shape of her buttocks was merely his fancy, but real or imaginary, it didn’t much matter. The effect on his body was the same.

  She moved as if to turn around, and he jerked his arm down so that if she looked in his direction, she would not see the glowing tip of his cheroot in the darkened corner, though he was sure this attempt to remain unnoticed would be in vain. The wood smoke and other pollution in the London air masked the scent of his cigar, but surely, she would sense his presence just the same. How could she not? His body burned with lust.

  To his surprise, however, she did not seem to perceive him sitting in the shadows. She bent and picked up the lamp, then crossed the balcony and went back into her rooms without even glancing in his direction.

  The door closed behind her, but Phillip did not move from his chair, for he knew that if he stood up, he would go after her. Like a compass needle compelled by magnetic force to veer toward true north, he would follow her. He would enter her rooms. He would touch her. He doubted he could stop himself.

  The realization that he had so little governance over his own body appalled and angered him.

  He closed his eyes, striving to remain where he was, while inside him, honor warred with lust. He sat there, eyes closed, taking slow, deep breaths, waiting for honor to win. He sat there for a very long time.

  Chapter 6

  Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown, some gave them plum cake and sent them out of town.