Bound with Passion Read online

  “The longer you put it off, the more put out she is going to be. You know how she is.”

  “Unfortunately, yes, I know exactly how she is.”

  “What’s all this?” James slowly swirled his glass of claret as the three of them sat around the fire after dinner. “I adore Vanessa. We should all be so lucky to have a mother of such open-mindedness.”

  “She’s not quite so open with her daughter.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Tell him, Trevor.” Georgie lifted her chin.

  “She loves you, that’s all. She—”

  “If love is a noose, then yes, that’s precisely true—”

  “Now, Georgie,” Trevor soothed. “She misses you terribly when you’re gone, and then she’s all nervous that everything has to be perfect for the short times you’re here. Try to see it from her point of view.”

  “Oh, enough! I’ll go tomorrow.” She looked at Trevor, then at James. “Will you two accompany me? It will be easier somehow.”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Plus, you need to announce your engagement!” James stood up and grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off the chair where she’d been curled up with her legs tucked beneath her. He twirled her around and then set her down with a quick kiss on the lips. She laughed and tried to ignore the spike of sexual awareness that accompanied the buss. She’d had a few blessed days of not being overly aware of the two men around her. They were her friends, damn it.

  She set herself away from him and caught Trevor looking longingly at James when she bade them goodnight. “Until tomorrow, then.”

  She raced up the stairs and tried not to imagine what the two of them were getting up to in the drawing room after she left. Once she’d undressed and changed into her night rail, she slipped into bed and gave up trying. She let her imagination run riot, picturing Trevor and James in every sordid, compromising position she could conjure, until her own climax overtook her and she needed to bite the edge of the heavy duvet to muffle her own pleasure.

  The next morning, feeling as if she were on her way to the gallows, Georgie chose one of the calmer horses and trotted from Mayfield to Camburton with James and Trevor beside her. They took the longest way round and still arrived sooner than she’d hoped. It was probably petulant or incendiary of her to do so, but she’d decided to wear buckskins for her first reunion with her mother. She was also wearing a jaunty hat with an outrageous lavender ostrich feather, so she couldn’t be accused of being entirely masculine. Begin as you mean to go on, she thought sullenly.

  It turned out Camburton was filled to the gills with more than the usual assortment of poets and painters and hangers-on, including a young Spanish woman named Anna de Montizon who turned out to be Nora’s long-lost daughter. Georgie was thrilled for Nora, her de facto stepmother, and thrilled to meet Anna—a new sister of sorts. Anna was an exuberant, confident woman, and Georgie was especially pleased to speak with her at length because their meeting distracted Vanessa from focusing so much negative attention on Georgie’s numerous shortcomings: the fact that she’d been staying at Mayfield instead of coming straightaway to Camburton; the fact that she’d cut of all of her beautiful blonde hair; the fact that she was, well, Georgie.

  “Why did you cut it so short? You used to be so pretty!” Vanessa cried at one point. Georgie wanted nothing more than to hurl her glass at the side of her mother’s thick skull.

  “Used to be?” she couldn’t resist taunting.

  “Oh, you know what I meant.”

  “I live in the desert, Mother. With sand.”

  There was no point in explaining anything to Vanessa because she knew everything already. Women, no matter how liberated, were supposed to be pretty, don’t you know. Georgie shrugged it off, like she shrugged off every other thinly veiled insult her mother tossed at her. It was endless. And tiresome. And soon enough she’d be back in Egypt.

  Why was she the only one who saw Vanessa for the calculating, manipulative matriarch she was? Everyone else was fooled by all of her great works and social reforms. Georgie sighed and looked away from her mother. No point in hoping the woman would ever change where she was concerned.

  Her sweet twin brother Archie, the Marquess of Camburton, swept in to repair the emotional damage, as he always did, but Vanessa still ended up making Georgie feel like she simply didn’t measure up. In light of Vanessa’s obvious disappointments, Georgie decided not to tell her just yet that she’d agreed to marry Trevor—having to explain the rather callous nature of their arrangement was beyond her at the moment.

  After an hour or so in Vanessa’s drawing room, Georgie finally escaped with her dear Archie. James and Trevor took her horse and Archie walked her home—or rather back to Mayfield House—and he talked at length about his growing attraction for the novelist in residence, Selina Ashby.

  After she bid Archie farewell late that afternoon, she looked forward to relaxing with Trevor and James for a few hours before returning to Camburton for the dreaded family dinner to which they’d all been invited.

  Relaxation was the last thing Georgie got when she entered the drawing room at Mayfield that afternoon.

  “Why didn’t you tell them about our plans?” Trevor was the picture-perfect country gentleman. Quite literally. Nora White had painted his portrait so many times, he had become a sort of pastoral ideal in the picture galleries of London and drawing rooms across the continent. He was tall without being overbearing, elegant without being too feminine. His wide shoulders and muscled thighs were the result of constant sport and manual labor around his vast estate, not the work of fashionably deceptive cotton wadding. His dark hair curled carelessly around the folds of his collar—apparently bucks in London were already trying to imitate said carelessness, with great care.

  Georgie sighed and shook her head—she’d taken to staring at Trevor far too blatantly. “Unfortunately, after you two left, the absence of my hair caused a commotion, then Pia announced she was enceinte, and then it turns out Archie has fallen hopelessly in love with some writer named Selina Ashby, so he spent the entire walk back spilling his poor heart out to me, and well—” She threw up her hands. “There really wasn’t a spare moment.”

  “As bad as all that?” Rushford asked. Whereas Trevor was the picture of a vigorous country squire, James was more like a greyhound: whip thin, sinewy, quick-witted, and razor sharp. He set down the fabric trim he was working on and gave Georgie an assessing look. “You could have left your hat on and avoided the discussion about your hair altogether. It’s a fabulous hat.”

  “You and your damned hats!” she joked.

  Rushford laughed. “Women in London pay spectacular sums for those damned hats of mine, so you’d best keep your opinions to yourself.”

  Georgie flopped on the large sofa next to Trevor, tossing the aforementioned hat to Rushford, who caught it with a quick one-handed grab.

  “What am I to do?” she said on a moan, leaning her head back against the sofa cushion and looking at the angels across the ceiling. “I’ve only spent thirty minutes in her presence and already my mother’s driving me berserk. She willfully misconstrues everything I say or do.”

  Trevor reached for one of her hands and took it between both of his, massaging her knuckles and wrist. “Stop worrying. You’ll be back in Cairo in no time. Anonymous and living your Bedouin existence.”

  “Is that so wrong?” She shut her eyes and relaxed into his firm touch. “When you say it, I feel happy and free. When she says it . . . I feel as if I’m being irresponsible and running away. Why does she make me feel so wrong all the time?”

  “Maybe you make her feel wrong, did you ever think of it that way?” Trevor was always trying to see every side. “Maybe her idea of being a good mother means her children are always near.”

  She opened her eyes to look at him. He was so damnably perfect: the kind green eyes, never judgmental; the slight lift of his full mouth, always sympathetic, never sardonic. �
�Oh, Trevor. You must be understanding like that for all of us—I couldn’t possibly manage it.” She turned to James. “How can you bear it? All his kindness? It almost makes it worse. Now I feel heartless around my mother and heartless around Trevor for not being more understanding of my own heartlessness.”

  “Come, Georgie. It can’t be as bad as all that. Vanessa is so loving.” James abandoned his work and joined them on the sofa. He was watching the way Trevor’s hands worked on hers, probably thinking the massage was wasted on her.

  “I know!” Georgie exclaimed. “That’s why it’s so dispiriting. She’s so kind and open and generous and perfect, and then she looks at me and I can practically feel the disappointment roll off her in waves. Because I’m none of those things. I’m selfish and closed off and—”

  “Oh, do stop it. That’s simply not true.” Trevor finished squeezing her pinkie, then rested her hand back on her thigh. “You are always helping others, even if you are not effusive about it. Look what you’re willing to do for me.”

  Georgie waved her hand in front of her face. “Oh, that’s nothing.”

  “Marrying me is nothing?” Trevor laughed and shook his head. “Saving this estate by fulfilling the outrageous demands of my father’s entail that I marry a woman. Emphasis his.”

  “Well.” Georgie smiled at the way he said it. “When you put it that way, I see what you mean. But you know, even that, Vanessa is going to be appalled—tormented that it’s not a love match. Because it’s obvious I’m not in love with you or any such foolishness.”

  She caught the glance that James and Trevor exchanged. “I mean, it would be foolish for me. I mean . . . See, when you two look at each other like that, that is love. Of course I love you as my dearest friends—I can tell you anything, say anything, do anything. But really? All that gooey emotion is just . . .” She shivered at the thought. “So cloying.”

  Both men laughed, and then James stood up to pour them all drinks. With his back still turned, he asked, “If you’re really able to tell us anything, Georgie, have you ever . . . you know . . . been with anyone?”

  Georgie smiled at his back and then looked at Trevor to see what he thought, if it was just a silly question. But his lips were quirked and he seemed genuinely interested.

  “Fine,” he admitted. “I’ve also wondered.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged adorably. “I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it. But you know, you’re fabulous and my closest friend, and you deserve to have a bit of fun like the rest of us.”

  “I’m so flattered you two have taken an interest in my physical needs.”

  “Oh, never mind.” James obviously sensed her sarcasm. He crossed the room and handed them each a glass of whiskey. “I shouldn’t be so crass, but I always think of you as one of the boys, so I figured I might as well ask what I’d feel comfortable asking . . . one of the boys.”

  Georgie loved that idea. Why shouldn’t she tell them about her rather blasé attitude toward her sexual activities? It was nothing more than a physical appetite she satisfied when the need arose, akin to eating or drinking. “Well, when you put it that way, as long as I’m one of the boys and all, I’ll tell you.”

  “Ooh, exotic stories from faraway lands!” Trevor settled more comfortably into his corner of the sofa.

  “So, I was in Egypt first. Lots of British expatriates and French soldiers and a lot of mayhem actually. I’ll tell you more about it, of course. But to get to the point, once you went behind the veil—pulled back the curtain, what have you—Egypt and Arabia were quite fantastic places as far as the sex was concerned.”

  James perked up. “Really?”

  “Yes. Of course, in some ways it was all very physical and matter-of-fact. When I was first there, for example, I met a slightly older British woman—a widow I think, but maybe an adventuress traveling under the guise of widowhood—who took me to a bathhouse, for women only of course. And oh, how the women take care of one another’s bodies, so tender and thorough. In an almost reverential fashion, they take hot baths, massage each other with splendid oils and fragrant extracts, and all that sort of thing, quite relaxing and luxurious. And trust me, there was nothing platonic about it. But I’m not really one for all that lounging, as you can imagine.” James and Trevor both smiled knowingly at the preposterous idea of her sitting still for longer than a few moments at a time. “So, after I had set up my own establishment, well, I guess you could say I pursued my own desires.” She sighed at the memories.

  “Truly?” Trevor teased. “You were quite the belle of the . . . Bedouins?”

  “Well, beau was more like it. All those men loved to treat me like their little British lad, to be played with, and used, you know, in all the ways men play with lads.”

  “What?” Trevor nearly spit out his drink. “I beg your pardon?”

  James’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “Pray tell!”

  “I mean, you certainly didn’t think I was allowed to attend the horse-breeding establishments and sales or visit the inner sanctums of the sheikhs while I was the upstanding Lady Georgiana Cambury, did you?” She leapt up from the sofa and struck a mannish pose, one trousered leg cast arrogantly in front of the other. “George Camden at your service.” With that, she sketched a perfectly masculine bow.

  James bellowed out a laugh. “You passed yourself off as a chap? I adore you!”

  She nodded and smiled and stood up a little straighter, feeling immediately comfortable in the confident, manly position. “Of course it was awkward at first. I felt so . . . oh, I don’t know, like an impostor I suppose. But when I gave myself over to it, really let it wash over me, it was quite wonderful. It was perhaps the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in my own skin. Not only for the places I could finally go without raising the eyebrows of the matrons in the British social clubs in Cairo, but the actual feeling of it, of walking with my arms swinging and my legs strong. Keeping my chin up and looking out at the world instead of that mincing female business of always avoiding eye contact and staring at my feet.”

  Trevor was still smiling after her revelation, but he obviously had other questions bubbling to the surface.

  “What else?” Georgie wanted to take all comers.

  “You were never a very mincing female to begin with, Georgie, so I don’t see how it was that much of a change.”

  “Really, Lord Mayson?” She raised a haughty brow and spoke in her deeper masculine tone. “You don’t think it would be that much of a change for you to put on a dress and walk down Bond Street? You don’t think you would feel powerfully aware of how people looked at you, how confining and distracting all the fabric and petticoats and delicate shoes would feel against your skin?”

  He flushed. “Well, when you put it that way, I’m powerfully interested.”

  “Oh, you are terrible!” Georgie collapsed back onto the couch between them, all three taking sips of their drinks and sighing happily.

  “He would, you know,” James remarked.

  “Would what?” Georgie asked, still flushed from her confession.

  “Walk down Bond Street dressed in the latest women’s fashions.” James leaned in front of Georgie and looked at Mayson. “Wouldn’t you, pet?”

  Trevor smiled agreeably. “For you, darling, anything.”

  “Stop it at once, you two. You’re far too affectionate. You know I can’t stand it.”

  “You’d best get used to it if we’re going to be married and all.” Trevor gave her a conspiratorial wink.

  “I shan’t be a member of your household for long. After we say our vows and the terms of your father’s will are met, I’ll be off soon after.”

  “Oh, I know, but you’re still here for now, and I don’t like having to behave in front of you.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing for the past week since I arrived? Behaving?” Georgie asked.

  “To be honest, yes.”

  “Really? Well, far be it from me to tamp
down your ardor. Feel free to do what you wish. I shan’t bat an eye.”

  “Oh, how delicious! An audience!” James set his glass down on the Louis XIV table to the left of the sofa and stood up. “Move over, young Master Camden. I’ve some business to attend to with the lord of the manor.”

  Georgie laughed and scooted to the far end of the sofa. “You’re terrible, James. As if you would do anything—” She gasped when James fisted his fingers into Trevor’s hair at the nape and tugged hard.

  “Have you missed me, pet?” James’s voice had lowered to a menacing growl.

  “Terribly,” Trevor panted.

  With that, James rested one knee provocatively between Trevor’s spread thighs and dipped his mouth to Trevor’s, teasing him with the lightest kisses. At first, Georgie tried to look away, but the moans of pleasure were rather . . . inviting, and after a few vain attempts to appear disinterested, she curled her legs up beneath her and turned to watch the two men with her full attention.

  James was a wicked, taunting beast. Giving Trevor little bits of suction here, a trail of his tongue there, a whisper of his lip along the edge of Trevor’s mouth, all the while tightening that mad grip at the base of the other man’s neck. Trevor’s entire huge body was coiled tight, broad shoulders and biceps flexing beneath the perfectly fitted wool of his riding jacket, hands fisted into the blue silk upholstery of the couch.

  “Why isn’t he touching you, James?” Georgie asked, as if watching two animals in the wild with a local guide there to answer her inquiries.

  When James took his attention away—reluctantly—from Trevor’s moist, swollen lips, he turned to answer her. “Because he’s not allowed to touch me today.”

  “Really? How divine.”

  “It is. Quite,” James agreed. “He has to sit there patiently and take it. And it makes him quite exercised, doesn’t it, darling?” James pressed the palm of his free hand into the straining crotch of Trevor’s buckskins as he spoke casually to Georgie. “He gets delightfully frustrated, as you can see. Barely able to reply.”