Lady Belling's Secret (16 page)

“I’ve already had the poultice. It made me gag.” Thomas made a face. “It doesn’t hurt anyway.”

“Obviously.” She dripped irony.

“Are the others here with you?” Thomas steered the conversation to the subject he was really interested in.

“I have no idea where Christian is.” She waved her hand dismissively. “You know how he is. Have you checked White’s?”

He shook his head. He was relieved Christian wasn’t around. Convinced he could repair the rift between them, he still needed to come up with a plan before he saw his best friend again. Besides, space was what the man needed right now. “And the ladies?”

The duchess cast her eyes about the crowd until they landed on Anna dancing a cotillion. “Miss Sinclair is just there. Frankie stayed home ill, I’m afraid.”

“Ill?” Surely, Christian had already gotten to her before there had been a chance to alert her. The bastard probably terrified her, the hotheaded fool.

“It’s nice you’re concerned, dear. Just a headache. Nothing to fear.”

He dipped his head in an abbreviated bow. “I think I shall retire for the evening as well. As you may imagine, it’s been a rough day.” Although no one had been brave enough to bring up his injuries, nearly everyone in the ballroom had taken note of his appearance. “Please give Francesca my felicitations for a speedy recovery.”

“Nothing to worry about. She’ll be fine.” Instead of allowing him a smooth exit, she linked her arm through his and steered him towards the grand French doors. “I suspect she’s just feeling a little low. She doesn’t think I notice, or that I’ll understand.”

Thomas bent his head lower as not to miss her words in the cacophony of the ballroom. He sensed that whatever was coming next would be of very great interest.

“She’s had a successful season this year, which isn’t to say her previous ones were failures. On the contrary, she received many offers, it’s just that she refused them all. Imagine my surprise when she accepted Lord Dalton.”

Thomas suppressed a sneer.

The duchess continued, “Her brother and I think he’s an excellent match for her. He’s a fine man and the catch of the season. I’ll be happy with him as a son-in-law.” She lifted her eyes from the crowd and gave him a pointed look. “Still I wonder… Why did she finally accept an offer?”

Surely she didn’t expect an answer from him. He shrugged, and she continued their leisurely stroll around the room.

“Had Christian’s nagging finally worn her down? Was she simply tired of waiting?”

“I couldn’t say,” he said when she looked to him.

“Funny that you don’t ask what she was waiting for. Quite telling, I should think.” She turned them at the far end of the room and continued down the back wall. “You were such a sad, timid boy when we first met you. Do you remember?” She smiled at her memory. “I’m so sorry about what happened with your family. Not just the accident, but of course that. More, I’m sorry that they’ll never see the man you’ve become.”

“I’m touched,” he said and kissed her cheek again. They must make quite a vision—he bruised and beaten and beaming like an idiot, and the widely regarded Duchess of Morewether, serious and important, a bastion of propriety.

“You know the duke—Frankie’s father—and I loved each other to distraction. Not very fashionable, especially back then, but it was a wonderful and happy marriage. When he passed, well, it was horrible. I thought I’d never recover. I still miss him every day.” She paused in her speech to collect herself, and Thomas gave her a squeeze of support.

He had known of the duke and duchess’s abiding love for each other. Everyone who ever met them could see it. Their love and respect carried through all the family’s relationships. The first fortnight he spent with them when he was fourteen had been a revelation. He’d never known it possible that members of a family could be so attuned to the others, so much a part of each other’s lives. By the end of that school break, he and the Belling family had more or less adopted one another.

“I’ve always wanted that kind of love for all my children. I thought that was what Frankie was holding out for. What do you think?”

“Um, sure.” How could he agree without revealing too much? The conversation confused him, but at the same time he felt giddy, as if relief was just around the bend.

“I told the duke that first weekend that I was keeping you. Don’t disappoint me.”

Chapter Fourteen

Francesca looked out her bedroom window at the outlines of the trees and the path that led winding through the garden. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and peered out into the darkness, her breath making little puffs of fog on the windowpane. Just as she turned away, she saw something move outside. She squinted hard into the darkness, certain there was something darker than the inky blackness outside.

The mysterious shadow moved out from under the oak tree and she knew it would materialize into Thomas. She could feel it deep in that warm, secret place he had awoken. Before realizing it, she had unlatched the hasp on the window and pushed it wide open. He hadn’t spoken, and she couldn’t see his face clearly, but it didn’t matter. She was hopelessly doomed.

Even as angry and afraid as she was, and as prepared as she had been to abandon any delusions she had about a future with him, her traitorous body came alive knowing he was there.. After the threats from her brother, she had resolved to take her desperate love for Thomas and fold it away into a secret box in her heart and do her best to forget about it. But there he was, standing in her garden in the middle of the night, looking up into her window, and her stupid heart just soared.

If she had an ounce of self-preservation, she would ignore him. She should turn away, all the better for them both. Eventually, he would leave.

But that was precisely what she was so terrified would happen. That eventually he would give up, or that Christian would scare him off, or that she wasn’t enough of a woman to keep him coming back.

She stuck her head out the window and called down in a loud whisper. “What are you doing down there?”

“You didn’t go out tonight and I was worried about you. Your mother said you were ill.”

“I’m fine. I just didn’t have the mental wherewithal to deal with society tonight.”

“What?” he called up to her. Maybe if she went down to the garden, to him, she could safely turn him away before Christian saw him.

“I said I’m fine. I didn’t feel like going out,” she explained.

He put a hand to one ear in the international symbol that he didn’t hear her. “What?”

“Shhhhhhh!” she chided him. “I said…oh never mind. I’m coming down.”

“No!” he nearly hollered. Funny he heard that well enough. “I’ll come up.”

Before she could stop him, he jumped and caught a tree limb, pulled himself up and swung over and caught the decorative stone under her window. Using his fingers, he hauled himself up and over the windowsill. Francesca watched the athletic display with amazement.

“You’ve done that before.”

“Well, I have had a rather notorious past,” Thomas said, giving her the heart-melting grin that sent her aflutter every time.

She knew how she must look in her night rail with her hair hanging wild down her back and over her shoulders, un-brushed and tangled. She smoothed a hand over her head, hoping to calm the rioting curls.

She closed the curtains behind him. That’s all she needed now, for a servant or neighbor to see a man standing in her room and tell her brother. There’d be no saving either of them then. When she turned back around, her room felt very small with the huge man in front of her and the bed looming large at the other end of the room.

“Now why didn’t you go want to go out tonight?” Thomas’s eyebrows sat high on his forehead in a questioning arch. He approached within a couple feet of her, the light from the oil lamp illuminating his face.

“Oh my God! Did Christian do this to you?” Her voice rose in building fury. She reached for his face, but he gently clasped both wrists before she touched him. “I’m going to kill him.”

“No,” he assured her. “I did this to myself, but your willingness to defend me is quite endearing.”

It was a few seconds before understanding dawned on her. “This is from boxing with Dalton today, isn’t it?” She tsked several times in disgust at the male species. Pulling a hand from his grip, she smoothed fingertips over his bruised cheek and his split and swollen lip.

When Thomas spoke, his voice was husky. “He looks worse.”

“Hmmm.”

“So why didn’t you go out tonight?” He pulled her closer with the wrist he still held in his grasp.

She steeled herself against his nearness. It took every ounce of control not to fall to pieces this time. This affair had to end. “I just didn’t feel like dealing with society tonight.”

“So you’re not ill?” he asked with genuine concern.

“I am not ill,” was all she said in reply. The electricity crackled in the space between them.

“So I take it Christian spoke to you today, too.”

Francesca sighed. “He didn’t speak, he dictated. My brother doesn’t converse; he makes proclamations, furious and loud proclamations. He’s right, of course. My path has been set, and there is no way out of it.”

“I’ll figure something out, Francesca,” he assured her.

Francesca shook her head. “Thomas, I’m to be married to Lord Dalton in a matter of days. Christian is furious. He’s forbidden me to ever see you again. Lord Dalton must suspect something. Mother would die rather than go through another scandal like what happened last time.”

“Don’t be so sure about your mother.” His free hand stroked her face, and heaven help her, she leaned into the caress.

“Thomas, this…what we’re doing…it’s a bad idea.” Francesca mustered up some untapped strength and pulled away from his loose embrace. “It is bound to end in nothing but heartache for me and disaster for my family. You need to go.”

Heat flashed through her, warming her from the inside out. She had loved this man for so long with an emotion she had always thought was all consuming, but those previous feelings were nothing compared to now. When Thomas had left, she had been but a child. Now she was a woman, and Thomas had awakened something in her that she had only suspected was there, lying dormant inside her like a pot just waiting to boil. As much as she knew what her responsibilities were and how she longed to do the right thing, Thomas had quickly become an addiction.

Just one more time. I’ll quit tomorrow,
she thought.

She was so magnificent with her simple beauty. There was no fine silk gown, and she wore no jewelry. Nor was her hair elaborately coifed and decorated with flowers or gold threads. Her face was scrubbed clean. Even without any of the artifice that ladies of the
ton
used to attract gentlemen, Thomas had never seen a more beautiful woman in all his life.

It was only one step before he had her back in his arms. She let out a little gasp of surprise, or maybe excitement. Perhaps it was resignation. It didn’t matter once his lips were on hers, his tongue caressing the inside of her tender mouth in a promise of what was to come. She clutched at his coat, holding him tight to her, and allowed him to mold her against him. His hands roamed her body, clutched the round globes of her bottom, spanned across her back, palmed and lifted her soft breasts. His mouth left hers to kiss and nibble at her ear and the tender area along her neck. When he reached her throat, she sighed sweetly and tilted her head back to give him greater access.

“Off with this.” Thomas was tugging at the buttons and ties from her wrapper, struggling to loosen it with her body pressed so tightly against his. He was loath to stand her away, but he wanted, needed, to touch her skin and to smell the elusive but scintillating perfume that was distinctly Francesca. The threat Christian had made to exile Thomas from her made him near desperate to possess her again.

Reluctantly he let her step away from him. She removed her wrapper, quickly tossing it to the floor, while Thomas tore out of his coat and loosened his cravat. His clothes landed in a heap next to hers. She undid the first of the buttons of her nightgown, and the next. He stripped his own shirt and shoes off while she still worked on the row of buttons. It was clear she was getting frustrated. In her hurry to shed her clothes, she couldn’t seem to get the ridiculously small buttons through the holes.

Thomas eyed her with amusement, a smile creeping across his face. She struggled, her teeth gritted and her forehead creased with concentration. She looked up to find him half naked, hands on his hips and a sly grin.

“Help me!” she demanded.

Thomas answered by laughing out loud, but he took her hands in his. He brought each finger to his mouth and tenderly kissed the tips on each one. Releasing her, he applied himself to the buttons, each slipping away with ease from their moorings. As an additional section of skin was exposed, he pressed his lips to the ever-increasing ivory triangle.

“Why in God’s name do women wear clothes with so many teeny little buttons?” Thomas wondered out loud.

“I believe it’s to teach us patience,” she answered, her eyes twinkling with her own teasing grin.

“I am all out of patience,” he declared. He pushed the gown from her shoulders, watched it glide down her breasts and reveal the curve of her hips as the material continued its way to the floor.

She slipped her fingers into the waistband of his black dress trousers where his arousal strained against the buttons. She tugged on the placket of closures with a couple of quick jerks, which caused his hips to arch into her stomach.

“See,” she teased. “It’s a form of fashion torture, these blasted buttons. There must be whole contingents of tailors giggling with glee at the thought of our difficulties.”

Thomas groaned as her fingertips grazed his swollen cock. “It’s not even a little funny.” He gritted his teeth against the stimulation and wrapped his fingers around her wrist to stay her from ending everything too soon. She withdrew her hand from inside his pants and started on the row of buttons until finally he sprang free and his pants slipped from his hips.