Julia Justiss (21 page)

“But—you lied to me.”

He tensed immediately. “Lied to you? How?”

“You said we should taste pleasure together. This—” though her limbs still seemed boneless, she managed to tap one hand clumsily at the waistcoat concealing his chest “—does not seem like ‘together.’”

She felt the rumble of his laughter. “I suppose you are right, but I want you too badly to have risked finding pleasure together the first time. I’d never have lasted long enough.”

“I think ’tis time you got your due. And now, if you please, you will do
exactly
as I command.”

“I am hereafter always and ever yours, my lady.”

And command him she did. Though, as he’d predicted, by the time she had slowly, teasingly, removed his clothing, she had hardly begun sampling his chest and nipples and belly before his corded arms and gusty breathing warned her he was but a few moments from climax. And that, she wished for him to experience in the way she knew would make his pleasure most intense—her hands caressing the plump sacks while she enfolded and tasted his length.

His outcry and his collapse after he reached his peak was gratifyingly dramatic. But after giving him a short period to recover, she chided him that she had been cheated of her turn and commanded him to let her finish her exploration of his body.

A command he appeared entirely amenable to following. Positioned as she directed, in dusky candlelight, she indulged herself by making a reality of all the fantasies she’d dreamed about touching him. A deep feminine sat
isfaction filled her at using her training and instincts to determine what would please him most, letting the moans and sighs of his response guide her.

Ah, yes, the skin beneath his ears, at the backs of his knees and ankles, responded instantly to her touch. He rewarded with gasps the progress of her tongue along the ridges of his ribs, at the tender skin just beneath his arm. And his hands clutched her hair, pulling it down from its pins as she grazed her teeth lightly across the pebbled tips of his nipples.

She was surprised, however, after kissing her way across the flat planes of his abdomen to discover his cock already stiffening. A thrill darted through her body, hardening her nipples and warming the places his tongue had moistened at this evidence of his unexpected virility.

She immediately rewarded him by stroking and petting his steadily increasing length, then plying her tongue against the skin beneath the shaft where the roughness of those rounded sacks smoothed into the velvet skin of his erection. Far sooner than she’d imagined a man could recover, his fully erect length jutted upward.

The delectable tension that had been building in her body as she ministered to him tightened further. Before she could wonder whether he would satisfy her as he had before, he lifted her and set her astride his legs.

“This time we will go together, my love,” he murmured. Kissing her lips lightly as he drew her forward, he positioned her so the broad head of his erection barely parted the skin beneath which her hidden nub throbbed.

“Move as you wish, sweeting, whenever you wish.”

That near touch was so titillating, she automatically pushed forward to increase the connection. The slick contact of those two moistened surfaces sent a surge of pleasure through her and tightened still further the tension at her center. Smiling, he cupped her bottom, tilted so that she slid down, taking just a bit of his engorged penis within her.

’Twas different from the feel of his lips there—yet lush, exciting. Whimpering, she urged him a bit deeper, then deeper still. Then, when he bent to suckle one tight nipple, she rocked her hips, wanting all of him inside her.

Instead of what she’d previously experienced as an unpleasant stretching that approached pain, now the smooth, moist glide of his cock within her seemed to spread the pleasure up and down the length of the passage his member stroked. As the piercingly sweet tension coiled tighter, she rode him harder, faster, pressing toward a goal she was not even sure she could, in this fashion, achieve.

The pleasure that followed proved just as intense and even more satisfying than the first. For this time, Jack reached the pinnacle with her, his release shuddering through her as she collapsed against him, their bodies joined as deeply as flesh could be.

Truly one, just as he had promised.

For a long time they lay motionless. Finally he leaned up to kiss her. “Is it not beautiful?”

Tears started at her eyes for the wonder of a completeness more profound than any she had ever imagined. “Yes.”

“Good.” She felt his lips curving into a smile against her cheek. “And we’ve just begun.”

A
S
B
ELLE SAT
combing out her hair later that morning, she marveled at how, despite over six years of experience, she had proven to be so ignorant about the responses and the potential for pleasure of her own body.

And of Jack’s. They had dozed briefly, but soon after their first coupling, he’d awakened her to demonstrate that the promise she thought had been meant for the days to come, he intended to fulfill that very night. Twice more he brought them together to the shuddering peak of ecstasy before at last they fell into deeper, sated sleep.

For a few more short days, this marvel of loving him could be hers. Thank all the saints in heaven she’d had the courage to reach for it!

After washing her love-dampened body in a ritual of tenderness at dawn, with an equal display of concern for discretion, he’d insisted on returning to his chamber. As if the whole household, in the way servants had of discovering what their employers were up to, would not soon know they’d spent the night together.

Not that anyone in her employ was likely to feel, much less display, any moral indignation. Mae would be over the moon, sure her hopes for Belle’s future had been realized.

Belle refused to spoil what she planned to be a glorious day by recalling how soon Mae’s hopes would be disappointed.

She couldn’t wait to see Jack again. After deciding the days they had left were too valuable to waste a second in mundane household activities—and unwilling to have to mask her delight in him by maintaining a proper decorum before onlookers—Belle decided they would carry
their breakfast up to the heights. Being able—between kisses—to take her coffee and toast from Jack’s own hands would more than compensate for braving the early morning chill.

Despite her bravura, when Watson answered her call, she felt a guilty blush heating her cheeks. “Ask Cook to prepare a breakfast for myself and Captain Carrington, please. We will be driving out as soon as it is ready.”

As Watson rose from his bow, he surprised her by smiling broadly. “I hope you both be happy, my lady,” he said before he exited her chamber.

An hour later Belle sat with Jack on the bench under the arbor overlooking the fields of Bellehaven, leaning back against his chest with his arms around her as they sipped coffee from the same cup.

Lazy contentment filled her. “A most excellent day, is it not?”

“Most excellent,” he agreed. “Despite those gathering clouds—” he pointed to the western horizon “—that seem to indicate rain may shortly arrive.”

“What is a little rain to us on so splendid a day?”

He hugged her closer. “Or after so splendid a night.”

That reminder seemed to call for a kiss, which Belle willingly awarded him. A few moments later he broke the kiss, laughing, and leapt up, scattering the remains of the toast and ham and knocking the coffee cup off the bench.

“’Tis much too splendid to sit placidly about,” he exclaimed, dragging her up and swinging her in a circle.

“Stop, you’ll make me dizzy!” she protested.

“Not as dizzy as you make me. Giddy as a schoolboy on holiday!” he said, swinging her faster still.

“You are mad!” she cried, trying to pull away.

“If this be madness, I hope never again to be sane.”

“Enough!” she said, laughing as she broke free and lurched to the bench, one hand pressed against her temple. “My head is spinning so, I don’t know when it shall stop.”

“I don’t think mine ever shall.” His lowered tone, the look he fixed on her, turned the frivolous moment suddenly serious.

She already realized the few days they’d stolen would probably cost her years of misery. Did his words mean he, too, felt himself doomed to a life of desolate loneliness?

She didn’t dare ask, didn’t want to know. Fortunately, he broke the fraught moment by loping off to the wood’s edge where the remains of an old cottage stood. Along its broken front wall grew a mass of spring snowflakes, nodding their tiny, green-tipped white bells in the freshening breeze. While she watched in amusement, he picked a handful and trotted back.

“For my lady, sovereign of my heart and mistress of my future,” he said, dropping to one knee to extend the bouquet. “A gracious gift of nature’s bounty.”

“How lovely, Sir Knight,” she replied, charmed by his whimsical offering as she had never been by the elegant floral tributes with which Bellingham had presented her.

At that moment the wind picked up and a gust of chilly rain peppered them. Glancing at the clouds scudding overhead, Jack pulled her to her feet.

“Unless my lady wishes to experience a downpour, Sir Knight suggests we make haste to the castle.”

Disappointed, for returning to the manor meant she would probably have to share Jack with Mae for the rest of the day until the night—one of their last few nights—freed them to be alone again, nonetheless, for the sake of Jack’s recovering chest, she felt forced to comply. “Very well, Sir Knight. Your lady agrees.”

F
EELING A CLOCK
in his head inexorably ticking away the hours they had left, Jack wrapped Belle in his cloak and braced her against him as he drove them back through the steadily increasing rain to Bellehaven.

The lady he sheltered was so precious, the night they’d shared so wondrous beyond anything he’d previously experienced that he refused to let his thoughts leave the perfect, two-person universe they’d created here, far from the world’s censorious gaze. Soon enough both his thoughts and his person would be forced to return to that world.

Though his heart would remain behind.

Since the first moment at Armaldi’s when a slender youth metamorphosed before his eyes into an enchanting woman, Lady Belle had fascinated him, excited him, surprised him and inspired him with an insatiable lust. But after last night he knew beyond doubt that he’d also fallen in love with her, so deeply he could no longer conceive of insulting her with an offer of carte blanche.

How to reconcile that fact with his duty to his family was a conundrum he would wrestle with for many a weary hour once he left this haven. But for now, he would con
centrate only on the joy of having Belle near, his nostrils filled with the scent of rain and lavender, the warmth of her body against his inspiring in him both desire and tenderness.

Ah, that these final two days might last forever!

Half an hour later, they turned the team over to a groom and ran up the entry stairs into the hall, laughing as they dashed the moisture off their dripping cloaks.

Watson appeared to relieve them of their sodden garments. “There’s a fire blazing in the parlor. Should I send you in some hot wine?”

“That would be excellent, thank you,” Belle said.

“And my lady—” Watson’s lowered voice stopped Belle as she was turning away. “You got a—a visitor.”

Before Jack could wonder who might have come to call, the parlor door opened and an elegantly dressed gentleman stepped out.

“Lady Belle.” Lord Rupert’s deep, unwelcome tones assaulted Jack’s ears. As Rupert’s gaze reached Jack, who was standing behind Belle, his eyebrows lifted. “And—Captain Carrington! How very…interesting.”

S
TIFFENING AUTOMATICALLY
as he recognized the baron, Jack returned Rupert’s unfriendly gaze.

Before he could speak, Belle said, “The captain accepted my invitation to rest here for a few days on his journey north.” Her tone indicated she thought Jack’s presence none of Rupert’s business. “What are you doing in the country?”

“My dear Lady Belle, your departure from London was so precipitous, I was worried about you. When some matter of business brought me to the vicinity, I felt compelled to call and make sure you were well.”

“How…thoughtful,” she replied, all traces of warmth and ease vanished from her face and voice. Jack could almost see her retreating within the reserved, wary shell of the Lady Belle he’d known before Bellehaven.

A Lady Belle abused by and mistrustful of men like Rupert. Instinctively Jack stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder.

His gray eyes narrowing, Rupert fixed his gaze on Jack’s hand—as if waiting to see whether Belle would shrug off that possessive gesture. Jack took it as a subtle victory when she did not.

Apparently Rupert did as well, for his jaw tightened and something like anger briefly crossed his face before he composed it back to his usual sardonic expression. “I had heard the captain might still be…in your company. I suppose congratulations are in order, Carrington? Will you return to London to claim your prize before going home?”

“Prize?” Belle angled a questioning glance at Jack.

In the flash of an instant, Jack recalled breakfast at the club after he’d first seen Belle fence. The wager the other men had proposed and he’d disdained, but that they’d nonetheless recorded in the betting book. A wager he’d completely forgotten—but which, the look of satisfaction on Rupert’s face warned Jack, the older man now intended to use to his maximum advantage.

Nausea slammed into his gut as he realized how Belle would likely respond to what Rupert was about to convey.

“Surely it’s not slipped your mind—the wager concerning you and our lovely Lady Belle?”

His heart and mind were already screaming a protest as he felt Belle tense, then move out from under his hand. Her voice iced even further. “There was a wager?”

Rupert chortled, so clearly enjoying Jack’s discomfiture that, praying the catastrophe about to overtake him would be redeemable, Jack had to clench his hands into fists to prevent himself from wrapping them around the baron’s neck and choking the life from him.

“I must apologize, my dear,” Rupert said with a notable lack of sincerity. “We men are such vulgar creatures. I was singing your praises at the club one morning, say
ing you were the one true, unattainable Beauty of the ton. The captain’s loyal friends took exception, touting his charms as sufficient to breach the stoutest of barricades. After some discussion, most of the men, myself included, wagered that you would remain indifferent to his blandishments.” He shook his head and sighed, a malicious grin lighting his features. “How grieved I am to find I underestimated the good captain’s resourcefulness.”

“They wagered he could…seduce me?” Belle asked stonily, refusing to look at Jack.

“I blush to have the matter stated so…indelicately, but yes. The interest in the affair, I regret to admit, was quite high, so I expect the payout will be substantial, Captain. Though, of course, what is mere money compared to the, ah, person of our incomparable Lady Belle? Still, ’twill be a fine addition to the treasure you bring to the wedding rumor says you are planning.”

“Rumor says many things, most of them untrue,” Jack shot back, in that moment loathing Rupert more than he’d ever despised anyone. It wasn’t like that, he wanted to shout at Belle. But she avoided his imploring glance.

He hated Rupert for trapping him in such a disadvantageous position, knowing that defending himself might make him appear even more guilty. He certainly didn’t want to try to explain this tangle in front of the gloating baron. But would it be worse to say nothing?

Unable to bear the thought that his relationship with Belle might be dying before his eyes, he stepped into her line of vision. “I swear to you, Belle,” he said urgently, his voice pitched low, “I did not participate in—”

“Is it true?” she interrupted, looking directly at him at last. “Was there a wager?”

Pain stabbed his chest and his heart contracted at the hurt in her eyes. “Having no interest in such a thing, I didn’t pay much attention—”

“Was. There. A. Wager?” she interrupted again, enunciating each word.

For a long moment Jack stared at her, willing her to understand, to trust him, to believe he would not be capable of such gross deception. But in the cold, shuttered look that took the place of the pain in her eyes, he saw the extermination of his hopes. “Yes,” he admitted.

She wheeled to face Rupert. “Thank you, my lord, for the concern which prompted your call. Regrettably, I have urgent tasks which must be completed today, so I cannot tarry. With the weather coming on, I know you’ll want to resume your journey while it is still full daylight. My staff will see you out. Good day.”

She curtsied and would have walked away, but Lord Rupert seized her hand and forced her fingers to his lips, kissing them at length before at last releasing them. “I shall leave you, my dear, to indulge in the quarrel that is obviously brewing. The end of an affair is so disillusioning, is it not? But I’ll expect to see you in town again shortly. Farewell, my sweet.”

She returned a glare in which there was not a trace of even false civility. “I am not your sweet, my lord, nor do I ever intend to be.” With a nod, she swept past him.

A triumphant smile on his face, Rupert made Jack a bow. “Sorry to have spoiled your charming idyll, Captain. But Belle will be mine in the end. You can count upon it.”

I’ll see you dead first
, the thought flashed through his head. Controlling with an effort the fury that urged him to mill down the earl in the middle of Belle’s entry hall, not bothering to force any hypocritical politenesses through his gritted teeth, Jack set off after Belle.

As soon as she made it out of the hallway, Belle broke into a run, barely conscious of where she was going. Her chest felt as if pierced by a blade, filled with an agony that made her want to beat her fists on the wall and shriek with anguish, each beat of her heart thrumming the refrain.

Betrayal…betrayal…betrayal.

Jack, the time they’d spent together these last few days, had seemed too good to be true. And so, of course, they were. Having learned from cruel experience, shouldn’t she have remembered not to trust in a man’s sweet words?

Still, knowing this fiasco was her own stupid, blind, self-deceiving fault didn’t ease the agony.

Dimly she heard footsteps behind her. “Belle—wait!”

Jack’s voice.

Nausea stirred in her stomach and her vision clouded with tears. Picking up her skirts, she hurried faster.

But with his longer legs unencumbered by petticoats, he soon caught up to her. “Please, Belle,” he said, seizing her shoulder. “At least give me a chance to explain without that viper Rupert distorting every word.”

Now that he’d caught her, she wouldn’t make this ignoble moment any more humiliating by struggling. Trying to summon the glacial calm that had sustained her through tragedies past, she let him turn her around.

Though she couldn’t yet bear to look at him. She knew if she gazed on his beloved, treacherous face and saw
guilt—or worse, continued protestations of innocence despite the glaring evidence of his duplicity, her tenuous control would falter and what was left of her heart and self-respect would explode in all directions like one of Congreve’s faulty rockets.

“I don’t see what else there is to say. Please be gone by tomorrow morning.”

“I won’t go until you hear me out.”

She glanced pointedly at his hand restraining her shoulder, and after a moment, he removed it.

“Very well. Give me your speech and go.”

“The bare facts of what Rupert reported were true. We were at the club, the members discussing your trouncing of poor Wexley. My erstwhile friends, proud of my prowess with a sword, proposed me as the challenger most likely to best you. Rupert, made jealous, I expect, by the thought of any man claiming the victor’s prize, stated that I might win a kiss, but I’d…I’d never win you to my bed. Although I refused to have anything to do with the matter, some of the so-called ‘gentlemen’ present recorded the statement as a wager. I never told you because it meant nothing to me. I had truly forgotten about it.”

“But you did challenge me to fence.”

“Yes. I was too intrigued by you to resist that. But you can’t believe I got myself injured to play upon your sensibilities, insinuated myself into your household and your affections simply to win a bet!”

“In my experience, men will do almost anything to win a wager. They put great credence in some ridiculous code which requires them to honor scraps of paper won in
games of chance or to duel to the death over some perceived insult, yet see nothing amiss in casually ruining any parlor maid or servant girl who takes their fancy.”

“Gentlemen worthy of the name do no such thing,” he countered. “Belle, I know you’re angry over what you see as my deception and I don’t blame you. But if you will put aside your outrage and calmly consider the time we’ve spent together, you must know Rupert’s allegations are untrue. Can you truly believe what we’ve shared, what we’ve felt for each other, was false?”

He was so smooth, so persuasive, so seemingly sincere. Just as Bellingham had been after Vauxhall. But when her former protector’s protestations of devotion had failed to move her, he’d found a new way to bend her to his will.

How could she trust this man she’d known for less than a month to be any better?

Don’t be twice a fool, her head urged her.

“I’ve heard you out. Now, you will be gone by morning, please.”

For a long moment he stared at her. Then he nodded. “I’ll not harangue you any longer,” he said quietly. “I love you, Belle. If you can’t believe that, if you think the joy we found together was just a sham, then no words of mine will make any difference.”

Oh, he was so convincing, she was almost tempted to waver. Until another thought occurred, sending revitalizing anger through her.

“So, even if I accept your explanation, how did you think this charming interlude was to end? Did you expect to persuade me to become your mistress?”

She waited, ready to counter the admission she expected with an acid refusal to ever again become any man’s whore.

“I was coming to think I must marry you.”

She was about to deliver her scathing rejoinder when his words penetrated, stealing the breath from her lungs. And then anger fiercer than any she’d felt for a very long time flamed through her.

How dare he mock her so!

She confined herself to a single, bitter laugh. “Oh yes, I’m sure you were. Let me inform you, then, that I have even less desire to give to anyone the control over my person, wealth and future a legal husband would gain than I have to become some man’s harlot!”

“Belle, that’s not what—”

“Please,” she interrupted, tears brimming in her eyes, dangerously close to spilling over. “I believe we’ve truly said enough now. Let us not further sully the end of what was an…agreeable interlude with any more brangling. As I shall doubtless be occupied when you leave, I’ll wish you a safe journey now.”

He held her eyes for a long time, his face unreadable. Belle damned herself again for the hope her weak, foolish heart still harbored that he would fall at her feet, beg forgiveness, refuse to leave her. Like a dying woman’s wishes for her daughter’s happiness, that hope was futile.

Instead, his face as shuttered as she hoped hers now was, he made her a bow. “I promised I would never force you to something you did not wish. But remember, my leaving like this was your desire—not mine.”

Standing motionless and resolute while she hemorrhaged within from ruined dreams and shattered hope, she watched him go. Leaving might not have been his wish at the moment, but now that she knew the truth, he would have departed soon enough. Once he discovered sweet words and falsely penitent apologies would not win him forgiveness, any more than they’d helped Bellingham after Vauxhall.

’Twas ironic, though, after more than six years among the gentlemen of the ton, she’d allowed herself once again to be so deceived. She swallowed a short, half-hysterical laugh. Who would have believed the notorious Lady Belle still had such innocence left to lose?

The false offer of marriage had been the cruelest blow of all. As if a respected member of the aristocracy would actually offer marriage to a woman known throughout the ton as another man’s whore! She wanted to skewer him with her sword, just recalling it.

So she would put it out of mind. Sometime later, when she could stand it, she would review what had happened and try to figure out just how she’d allowed herself to be so taken in—by the captain and the last remnants of her old childhood dreams.

Jack Carrington would be gone tomorrow. Since she intended to remain at Bellehaven indefinitely, she was, mercifully, unlikely ever to see him again.

She had more than enough work to occupy her here. Giving her eyes one last angry swipe, Belle set off for the kitchen.