If the Viscount Falls (34 page)

Read If the Viscount Falls Online

Authors: Sabrina Jeffries

BOOK: If the Viscount Falls
10.09Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

J
ANE FELT LIMP
and sated and thoroughly wicked as she snuggled against Dom. They were still joined below, though he'd begun to soften inside her. Still, how naughty it was to be here like this, how deliciously carnal to have made love while they were both half-dressed. Why, Dom still even wore his cravat! She didn't know why that excited her, though it did.

But not as much as Dom saying “please” over and over. Letting her take control of their lovemaking. Even
encouraging
her to do it.

And not nearly as much as Dom asking her to marry him.

Well, he didn't really
ask,
exactly. He demanded it yet again. But he'd said “please,” and that made all the difference. Especially since he'd then asked her to love him.

Silly man. As if she had any choice in the matter.

“I do love you, you know,” she whispered. “I can't help myself. I fell in love with you practically from the moment we met, and I never stopped.”

“I love you, too, sweeting,” he murmured into her shoulder. “Always have, always will.”

Her heart thundered in her chest. She'd waited so long to hear those words again, she could scarcely believe them.

She pulled back to search his face. “Truly?”

“Truly.” With infinite tenderness, he brushed her fringe of curls from her eyes. “I tried so hard to forget you after we parted. But I couldn't. Not for one day.”

That earned him a long kiss . . . that, and the prospect of him as hers. Her very own
husband.
Oh, yes. She could let herself think it now. They could marry at once, or at least as soon as this business with Nancy was over.

Nancy! Oh, Lord, she'd forgotten all about her cousin.

Sliding off him, she frantically sought to put her clothing to rights. “You don't think that Meredith returned while we were . . . you know . . .”

“No.” A faint amusement lightened his tone as he tucked himself back into his drawers and buttoned them. “The man I spoke to said she and her family return at seven every night.” He pulled out his pocket watch. “It's only six now.”

“Thank heaven.” She tugged her skirts and petticoats into place and patted her hair. “I do wish that hackney coaches came with mirrors.”

Dom's eyes gleamed at her. “Be glad I didn't take your hair down completely, while I was mauling you with all the self-control of some half-grown lad.”

She shot him a teasing glance. “I didn't mind. You
maul very well. And making love in a carriage, with the world passing by unsuspecting, was rather . . . well . . . thrilling.”

“I can do without that kind of thrill, frankly. If anyone had discovered us . . .” He shuddered. “Next time we make love, it will be in a bed, and I will treat you with the tenderness you deserve.” He watched her smooth her stockings and retie her loosened garters. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“We went to your office, and your butler told us you had left to come here.” She laughed, remembering it. “Max said, ‘What, already?' and Mr. Shaw said, rather loftily, that you could ‘wait for no man's leisure' and ‘tend on no man's business.' I gather that the man is as fond of
Much Ado about Nothing
as we are.”

“Oh, he likes them all,” Dom said dryly. “Too many years spent as a bit player in the theater, I'm afraid. He keeps hoping that if he memorizes every play in existence, he will advance to a lead role.” He fastened his trousers. “But how did you even get away from your uncle and Blakeborough? They just let you ride off after me with Max and Lisette?”

“Well, Blakeborough had no choice since I had just jilted him.” She sighed. “Oh, Lord. I have once again jilted a fiancé, haven't I? I'm forever going to be known as the woman who jilted two men.” She made a face. “I should have calling cards made—‘Jane the Jilt,' to go along with ‘Dom the Almighty.' ”

“I will never carry a card with the appellation ‘Dom the Almighty,' so just put that right out of your head,”
he said irritably. “In any case, since you're marrying me, I'm no longer jilted.” He paused a moment to shoot her a wary glance. “You
are
marrying me, aren't you?”

That was even closer to asking. “Say ‘please,' ” she teased.

Though he eyed her askance, he pulled her close for a long, lingering kiss, then said, “Please, Jane, will you marry me?”

She beamed at him. “I do believe I will.”

He sobered. “Even if Nancy actually does turn out to be bearing George's son, and he inherits everything?”

“Of course. You're head of the Duke's Men. I would be a fool to pass up such a match.” When he scowled at her, she burst into laughter. “Max and Lisette told me all about how your agency got the name. I must say I found it vastly amusing.”

“You would,” he grumbled. “And you still haven't said why your uncle let you go off with them.” After she related her elaborate deception, he shook his head. “All this subterfuge in order to talk to me could have been prevented if you'd just ridden with me earlier today, when I asked.”

“Really?” She smoothed his disordered hair, which was sticking up at all angles. “You wouldn't have spent the entire trip detailing reasons why I ‘must' marry you?”

He flinched. “I'm sorry, Jane. Apparently, when I find myself with my back to the wall, I bark orders.”

“I know.” She straightened his cravat. “And in case you hadn't noticed, I don't do well with men who bark
orders or make plans for me. It makes me want to shove them off a cliff.”

“Or refuse to marry them?”

“That, too.”

“Then I can see it's a habit I shall have to break, if I am to keep you happy.” He glanced away. “Sometimes, it's just . . . I don't know . . . easier to bark orders than to ask. Safer. No one has a chance to say no.”

It hit her then. That was precisely why he felt more comfortable ordering people about, setting up plans, being in charge. Because when he wasn't in control, there was a chance he'd be left out in the cold. Left in a house with oblivious servants and a brother who despised him for taking his mother away by the simple fact of being born.

Left alone. Her poor, dear love.

Jane kept her eyes trained on his cravat. “But if you don't ever give people a chance to say no, you can never know if they will rise to the occasion or not.”

He tipped up her chin until she was staring into his eyes. “I wronged you terribly by not trusting you to rise to the occasion, didn't I? If I'd married you and carried you off to the garret, I daresay you would have stayed by my side. Loved me. Cherished me.”

Tears stung her eyes. “I like to think I would have. I certainly would have tried. It would have been worth it to be with you.”

“Leaving you was the biggest mistake I ever made,” he said earnestly. “I once told you I would do it again, given the chance. But I was lying, to myself as well as
you. I could never do it again. Certainly not now that I know what it's like to have you for my own. You have no idea how much I've missed you all these years.”

It was all she could do not to burst into tears right then and there. But that would only alarm him. So she choked them down enough to say, “No more than I missed you, I expect.”

With a groan, he kissed her, long and hot. It was a sweet promise of things to come, a portent of their future together.

When he was done, she wiped away tears. “To be fair, if we
had
married then, who knows what would have become of us? I doubt I would have liked your running about the country as a spy, leaving me alone for weeks at a time. And I daresay you would have had trouble concentrating on your work for worrying about me.”

His grateful smile showed that he appreciated her attempt to mitigate his betrayal.

She swallowed. “Of course, later you could have . . . well . . . come after me. Once you established your business. While I was still un-betrothed. Why didn't you?”

“I don't suppose you would accept rampant idiocy as a reason?”

“I would . . .
if
I really thought it were the reason.” When he stiffened, she added archly, “You aren't generally an idiot. Daft and a tad overbearing, yes, but not an idiot.”

A sigh escaped him. He leaned past her to pull the
curtain open just enough so he could keep an eye on the street.

When it looked as if he might not answer, she added, “Tristan thinks you didn't come after me because you were afraid that I
couldn't
love you.”

He cast her a startled glance. “You told Tristan the truth about us?”

She winced. “And Lisette and Max. Sorry. Tristan sort of . . . forced it out of me.”

“Well, that explains why Max and Lisette were willing to bring you here in the midst of such a crucial investigation. They've been pressing me for a long time to give you another chance. Because they thought
you
betrayed
me.

Grabbing her hands, he gazed down at them with a haunted look. “And I suppose there's some truth to my brother's words. But I also didn't come after you because that would have been a tacit admission that I'd made a mistake. That in so doing, I'd ruined our lives. I was afraid if I admitted I'd been wrong, then it had all been for nothing. I'd sacrificed my happiness—
your
happiness—for nothing.”

“Oh, Dom,” she whispered and squeezed his hands.

“A part of me also thought if I didn't approach you at all, there was still a chance we could be together again. But if I asked and you said no—or worse yet, said that you no longer cared about me—it would be over for good. As long as I didn't ask, there was always hope. And hope is what kept me going.”

A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Until you got engaged. That quashed my hope. It was what I'd told myself I wanted for you. Because it proved that I'd been right to put you aside.”

He lifted his gaze to hers. “Unfortunately, being right was cold comfort when it meant I'd lost you for good. By the time you came to me that day at Rathmoor Park, I was in a very dark state. I was resigning myself to a lifetime of loneliness, of wanting you and not having you.”

“You would have let me marry Edwin?” she said incredulously. “Even though you still loved me?”

“You were still going to marry
him,
weren't you?” he countered. “Knowing that you still loved
me
.”

“True.” She attempted a smile. “I would have done it just to bedevil you.”

“No doubt,” he said dryly.

“But it would have been a mistake, and I'd have been miserable.”

He pressed a kiss to their joined hands. “Then I suppose we should really thank Nancy for her shenanigans. Or else we'd still be separate and miserable.”

The mention of Nancy made her start. “What time is it?”

“It's early yet,” he said, but released her hands to pull the curtain aside once more. Then he froze. “Damn.”

“What?”

He nodded out the window. “Is that Meredith?”

She followed his gaze and caught her breath. “Yes. And she's with Samuel.”

“Hard to tell if she's pregnant when she's wearing that loose gown. And I don't see her family. She must have left them at the coaching inn where they work so she could come away with Barlow.”

Her heart sank. “There's someone else I don't see—my cousin, devil take it. Where's Nancy?”

The couple stood right in front of Meredith's home, engrossed in what appeared to be a heated conversation.

Dom opened the window, but the pair were too far away to be heard. When Meredith turned as if to go inside, Dom reached for the door handle.

Jane stayed his hand. “You can't go out there!”

“Why not? I have to catch Barlow before he runs off.”

“But we still don't know where Nancy is.”

Dom stared at her. “Once we have Barlow and Meredith, one of them will surely give us her location. For all we know, Victor and Tristan may already have learned where he's staying. I told them to come here if they couldn't find out anything. I've been here since three and they haven't shown up yet.”

Panic tightened her throat at the thought that he might depend on such uncertainties rather than go after Nancy. “But if they don't learn where he's been staying, and Samuel refuses to reveal it, then what?”

He shrugged. “She'll probably come to her father's herself, since she'll have nowhere else to go.”

“If she
can,
” Jane said, desperate to convince him. “Doesn't the fact that she's not with either of them alarm you? It certainly does me.”

His jaw tautened. “I suppose you have a point.” He searched her face. “But are you willing to risk the possibility that I—that
we
—could lose the estate? Because if you're wrong about Nancy, and if Barlow somehow escapes my grasp, then we might still lose everything. The two of them would just find another babe to take the place of Meredith's.”

She considered that. But she
wasn't
wrong about Nancy. She knew it in her heart. “You accused me last night of not trusting your instincts as an investigator,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But that's not true. I do trust them. So, if you're absolutely certain that Nancy is willingly participating in a scheme to defraud, then I will bow to whatever plan you implement.”

He eyed her skeptically.

“I mean that.” She cupped his cheek. “But if you have even a wisp of a doubt that she's involved, then I beg you to trust
my
instincts regarding her character. Because they're telling me she would never set out to steal your rightful inheritance.”

With a coarse oath, he shifted to look out the window. Then his gaze sharpened. “Barlow is leaving now that Meredith has gone inside. So exactly what do you want me to do?”

Other books

Disgusting Bliss by Lucian Randall
The Ragged Man by Lloyd, Tom
Into the Labyrinth by Weis, Margaret, Hickman, Tracy
Shattered by Mari Mancusi
Candleburn by Jack Hayes
Name Games by Michael Craft