Corbin's Fancy Read online

  One toasted-gold eyebrow arched in eloquent amusement. The muscles in Jeff’s furred chest rippled as he reached for a towel and began to dry himself. “Is that what it was, Frances? An indiscretion?”

  Fancy’s cheeks ached and burned. “Yes!”

  “That’s a pity—that you feel that way, I mean. Because I intend to have you again, first chance I get.” He paused and his maddening, handsome face was speculative, mischievous. “It’ll be in the carriage next time, I think—”

  Fancy swayed and groped her way to a chair at the table, falling gratefully into it. “The carriage!” she gasped, stunned at his audacity.

  He nodded. “You’re a tasty little morsel,” he reflected, ignoring the new surge of color in Fancy’s face, the trembling of her clasped hands. “I’d like to set you on the carriage seat and—”

  “Stop!” wailed Fancy, mortified.

  “It would be delicious,” he continued, “for you as well as for me.”

  “Nothing will be ‘delicious,’ Captain Corbin,” Fancy spouted. “I intend to leave this place immediately!”

  He came to stand disconcertingly near, the towel stretched taut between his hands. Fancy’s heart fluttered wildly for a moment, for she thought that he meant to choke her.

  As if to add credence to this idea, he caught the moist towel behind her neck and pulled until she was forced to stand, facing him, within inches of his conquering body.

  But Jeff did not strangle Fancy; he merely kissed her. His lips were soft upon hers, cool from his washing, tasting of spring water and a lingering trace of her own soaring joy.

  “Don’t leave me,” he muttered.

  Fancy broke away from him, but with difficulty. And she was still imprisoned by the towel he held. “I was not hired to serve your base instincts, Jeff Corbin,” she managed to say.

  He bent, caught her lower lip between gentle teeth, then tugged at it. A jolt of renewed need rocked Fancy. “Don’t go,” he repeated in a throaty voice. “Promise you won’t, or I swear I’ll carry you upstairs and demonstrate every single reason why you belong in my bed, Fancy Jordan.”

  “I d–don’t belong in your bed!”

  He let the towel go and bent as if to lift her. While Fancy knew that she could not permit such a thing, a part of her wished that Jeff would make good on his threat. “Oh, no?”

  “I’ll stay!” she burst out.

  His hands came up to brazenly cup her breasts. “Promise?”

  “I pr–promise!”

  “Good.” He plucked pert, woolen-covered nipples into prompt obedience. “Now, let’s try to look as though we’ve been good while the pastor was away, shall we?”

  “H–How?”

  In complete contrast to his own words, Jeff was unbuttoning Fancy’s prim gray dress at the bodice. “We’ll build a rabbit hutch,” he said. “But first, I want another taste of you. Nourish me, Fancy.”

  Fancy willed her hands to rise up and stop the steady baring of her breasts, but they would not. “You can’t mean—”

  “I want a breast,” he said, bending his head, closing his mouth over one camisole-sheltered nipple, leaving a moistness there to taunt the puckering treasure beneath. “Nothing more, but nothing less, either.”

  His voice was sleepy and compelling and Fancy ached to grant him what he asked. “N–Not here—” she argued, in a choked little voice.

  Jeff smiled and caught her hand in his; the towel was still draped over her shoulders and she arranged it to cover her gaping bodice. He led her into a small parlor off the kitchen, sat her down at the end of a long sofa, and then draped himself, on his side, across her lap.

  And Fancy bared one plump breast to nurse him, loving every thrilling moment, every gentle nip of his teeth, every greedy suckling, every flick of his tongue. At the same time, she hated Jeff Corbin for being able to make her do such an outrageous thing so willingly.

  Finally, when he’d had his fill, he calmly replaced her moistened camisole and buttoned her dress.

  Fancy was both relieved and disappointed. While it would certainly have been imprudent to let him take her again, her entire being ached for just that.

  Maddeningly, he knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling. He patted her cheek in a rather patronizing fashion and muttered, “You’ll be tender for a while.”

  Fancy colored richly but said nothing. The gauzy fabric of her camisole clung to her well-worked nipples, giving rise to a frantic and very unladylike urge to scratch.

  Jeff stood up, looking down at her, frowning slightly. “Why didn’t Temple make love to you?”

  It was too much. Fancy was already mortified by what she had done with this man, what she had allowed him to do to her. She shot to her feet and glared into his rugged, aristocratic face. “Temple Royce is a gentleman, unlike you!” she shouted, and the fact that she was lying through her teeth mattered not at all.

  To Fancy’s surprise, Jeff flung back his head and laughed a great, roaring, lion laugh. “Royce, a gentleman!”

  “What’s so funny about that? He wanted me to save myself for marriage.”

  Jeff continued to laugh.

  Fancy stomped one foot. “Well, he did!”

  Finally, Jeff’s amusement began to subside. Replacing it was something far more alarming—a glitter of dislike lurked in the dark blue eyes. “It’s far more likely that he was saving you for one of the backrooms on the Silver Shadow, Fancy, and we both know it.”

  Speechless with humiliation and impotent rage, Fancy tried to press past Jeff Corbin. She would pack her things, collect Hershel, and leave this wretched, wonderful place before anyone could change her mind.

  Except that Jeff caught her arm and pulled her back. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.

  She gazed up at him, unable to speak for the torrent of conflicting emotions washing over her. She despised this man and yet she needed him, too. Perhaps she even loved him.

  Fancy shuddered at the thought.

  He drew her close; she felt again the hard strength of his chest and thighs, the warmth of his bare flesh. “Cold?” he breathed.

  She pulled back. “Put on your shirt!” she scowled.

  He chuckled and, incredibly, did as he was told. By the time Keith and Alva returned from church, a lovely dark-haired woman perched on the buggyseat between them, Fancy and Jeff were kneeling in the side yard—industriously building a rabbit hutch.

  * * *

  Keith was both pleased and unsettled by the change in his brother. It was nothing short of a miracle that Jeff was out of his room, actually doing something constructive, and yet there was an elusive element in his bearing, and Fancy’s, too, that boded ill.

  With the softness of Amelie pressed so close to him, it was natural that Keith would consider the most unnerving possibility—that Jeff, with his legendary way with women, had seduced Fancy.

  He drew the buggy to a halt at the barn door, jumped down, and helped Amelie to alight. The turn his thoughts had just taken made him wonder how the devil he was going to last a full month until the wedding.

  The steady thwack-thwack of Jeff’s hammer ceased. Both he and Fancy had been kneeling on the grass, one on each side of whatever they were building, but they rose together, their faces watchful, wary.

  Oh, no, thought Keith with real despair.

  Jeff’s eyes met his brother’s squarely and held, though his words were directed to Amelie. “We have a guest,” he said, unnecessarily.

  Keith was diverted by the mention of the woman he loved, probably because he wanted to be. He felt a familiar thrill as her small, gloved hand slid through the crook of his arm and squeezed. She was a vision with her bright green eyes, her dark, glistening hair, her slight but womanly figure.

  “It’s so good to see you out and about, Captain,” she said sweetly, her gaze touching Fancy and then dismissing her. “I do hope you’re feeling better.”

  Jeff flung one look at Fancy—a look Keith knew as well as he knew the twenty-third Psalm�
��and then answered, “Much better.”

  Fancy’s furious blush told Keith all he needed to know. “I’d like to talk to you inside,” he told his brother, in a tightly controlled voice.

  Jeff agreed with a nod and dropped the hammer to the ground. “Anything you say,” he replied, with biting good humor.

  * * *

  Fancy stood nervously, taking in the compact beauty of the woman Keith had abandoned on the lawn. She was a wonder—her dark ringlets gleamed in the sun, her skin was flawness, her teeth were small and white and even.

  “That Keith!” the vision trilled, as Alva flung her one unseen and inscrutable look on the way into the house. “He was rude not to introduce us!” She extended one immaculately gloved hand and stepped toward Fancy. “My name is Amelie Rogers.”

  “Frances Gordon,” replied Fancy, accepting the offered hand and squeezing it firmly.

  Amelie’s frown was pensive. “I thought Keith said your name was—Fancy.”

  Fancy blushed. “That’s my nickname.”

  “It’s really so—colorful.”

  Fancy did not know whether to thank the woman or be offended. Because of that quandary, she said nothing at all.

  Amelie caught her arm and ushered her along toward the house. Though her smile never waned, there was a certain challenge in its bright sparkle. “I hope that you and I can be friends, Fancy, but—”

  “But, what?” demanded Fancy, stopping cold in her tracks.

  Amelie had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Well, you are living here, with two unmarried men, and there is—well, there is some talk. Your being an actress—”

  Considering what had gone on in the barn and then on the parlor couch, Fancy had a degree of difficulty maintaining her righteous indignation. “I am not an actress. Furthermore, Mrs. Thompkins shares this house also!”

  Amelie bit her lower lip, regarding Fancy’s flushed face squarely. “I’ve made a miserable mess of this,” she murmured, after several moments of silence. A becoming blush moved up over her high, finely shaped cheekbones. “Oh, there’s nothing for it—I’ll just have to say what’s on my mind! I love Keith Corbin very much and we’re to be married next month and it’s obvious that he likes you—”

  Fancy was both annoyed and relieved. “I’ve no designs on your intended, Miss Rogers.” Your future brother-in-law, she added in rueful silence, is, unfortunately, another matter entirely.

  Amelie heaved a delicate sigh of relief and, not for the first time, Fancy wondered why women always saw her as a threat to their romantic interests. Not until that very morning had she ever behaved in any way that could have been called wanton. “We shall be friends, then—very good friends. Tell me—have you ever met the Corbin family?”

  Fancy shuddered. Jeff had not pursued her relationship with Temple Royce, but that was no guarantee that his family wouldn’t. Come to that, they probably wouldn’t approve of her in any case, given her brief career in show business. “No, I haven’t.” She didn’t add that she hoped she never would.

  “They’re all coming here for the wedding, you know,” Amelie reflected innocently, as they entered the house through the screened porch at the back. “I declare, I’m so nervous I could just perish! Mrs. Corbin is an important woman.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Fancy, feeling just as nervous. How stupid she’d been not to anticipate this, not to realize that the rest of the Corbins would attend Keith’s wedding! How in heaven’s name would she face them?

  But then, she thought, as she and Amelie trekked past a silent Alva on their way to the main parlor, she was little more than a servant in this house. She would not have to suffer formal introductions or take any real part in the celebration.

  Amelie sat down in a chair near a massive, white-rock fireplace and distractedly removed her gloves and then her fetching Sunday bonnet. “I’ll die if they don’t like me,” she said.

  Fancy was suddenly filled with sympathy for the bride-to-be; she could well imagine how Amelie felt. After all, the Corbins were an imposing group. “I don’t see why they wouldn’t,” she said honestly, sitting opposite Miss Rogers and folding her hands in her lap.

  The distant echo of angry masculine voices reached the parlor and disrupted Fancy’s train of thought. Amelie looked concerned.

  “What do you suppose they’re arguing about?”

  Fancy was afraid she knew—there had been an angry, knowing look in Keith’s eyes when he’d arrived. A new thought occurred to her: that the reverend, in righteous outrage, would send her away. She was amazed at how badly she wanted to stay.

  She lifted her chin and tried to look placid. “I think they just naturally argue a great deal,” she said.

  Amelie arched perfect, raven-black eyebrows. “You may be right.”

  In that moment, Fancy craved solitude more than she ever had in her life. Her thoughts were spinning and she needed to be alone to grapple with them. She did not know whether to stay or to go and worst of all, she had a nagging suspicion that she might be falling in love with Jeff Corbin. That, despite what had happened between them, would be disastrous.

  Furthermore, how was she going to face Keith from day to day? How was she going to live under the same roof with Jeff and escape having the events of that morning repeat themselves over and over again?

  She sighed. Keith and Amelie would soon be married, and she would be very much in the way when that happened. So, for that matter, would Jeff.

  “What are you thinking?” Amelie asked, with gentle directness. “You look so sad.”

  Fancy was sad. Sad because she could no longer pull rabbits out of hats. Sad because her virginity was gone forever. Sad because there was such a vast difference between Amelie’s future and her own.

  “I’m only tired,” she lied.

  The future Mrs. Keith Corbin clearly didn’t believe her, but she didn’t press. When Keith strode abruptly into the room, Amelie’s face lit up and they might have been the only two people in the whole world.

  Fancy slipped out, unnoticed, and left the house by the front door. She walked around to the side yard, approaching the gazebo where she had been so roundly humiliated only the day before. She plopped despondently down on its top step.

  The grounds bore no trace of yesterday’s celebration, except for one: Ribbons, now forlorn-looking, trembled in the gentle spring breeze, hanging forgotten from the boughs of the apple tree that had looked so glorious during the lawn party.

  Suddenly, Fancy felt as denuded as that tree, and she lowered her forehead to her upraised knees in total despair.

  Chapter Four

  FANCY KNELT BEFORE HERSHEL’S CAGE AND PUSHED A dish of fresh water through the little door, along with a handful of lettuce leaves. She tried not to think about what had happened in this very barn only hours before, but the effort was useless. Never, no matter where she went, what she did, or how old she got, would she forget the magic that had been revealed to her here.

  One tear slid down her cheek and she wiped it away angrily, forcing herself to square her shoulders and lift her chin. She’d made a mistake, a terrible mistake, but sitting about crying over it would change nothing. No, the only thing she could do now was leave before matters got any worse.

  With a sigh, she latched Hershel’s cage door and rose to her feet, dusting straw from the skirts of her gray dress as she straightened. When she turned to leave the barn again, though, she found herself face to face with Jeff Corbin himself.

  Though she was distraught, Fancy’s heart leaped within her and then fell into place again, spinning. She glared at Jeff in despairing anger. Why hadn’t he left her alone? If he had, she would have been able to stay.

  But she was wrong to blame him completely, and she knew it. She had been every bit as selfish and irresponsible as he had.

  “What do you think of Amelie?” he asked, crossing his arms across his broad chest and leaning indolently against the gate of a nearby stall.

  Fancy’s shoulders lifted in
a deceptively nonchalant shrug. “Is my opinion important?” she countered.

  Jeff grinned. “I guess not. Still, I’d like to know what it is.”

  “I like Amelie,” Fancy said truthfully, trying to avoid those discerning indigo eyes.

  “So do I.”

  “But?” urged Fancy, though the answer really wouldn’t matter much to her, one way or the other. At the moment, she was feeling frazzled and just a bit sorry for herself.

  “I don’t think she has enough spirit for Keith,” Jeff observed. He’d brushed his hair and changed his clothes for dinner—the first meal he’d taken outside his room in months, according to Alva—and he looked so handsome that Fancy ached to touch him.

  Of course, she refrained. “How much ‘spirit’ does a minister’s wife need?” she replied, a little annoyed.

  “I have no idea,” Jeff responded, “but I know how much spirit a Corbin’s wife needs.”

  “Keith is different than you.”

  Jeff chuckled appreciatively. “You innocent. He’s a man, not a saint.”

  “He’s also a minister!”

  “That will be small comfort in his marriage bed. He should wait for some infuriating snippet to come crashing into his life—the way Banner came into Adam’s.” He paused, but when he went on, his voice was very soft. “The way you came into mine.”

  Color climbed up Fancy’s cheekbones. She stood still, her heart lodged in her throat and pounding there like a huge drum.

  Jeff came closer, tangled an index finger in a curled tendril at her temple.

  Fancy leaped backward as though burned by his touch. “Don’t—please—I can’t bear it—”

  He sighed and his hands came to rest gently on the sides of her waist. “Fancy, I’m sorry. Not for making love to you—I can’t say I regret that. But I do apologize for the way you’re feeling right now.”

  Fancy’s chin shot upward; pride was the only defense she had left. “And how is that?” she snapped.