My Lady Rival (28 page)

His hand touched her wrist. “You sound as if you’re still intending to leave.”

“I can’t stay.” She ached all over, her chest and belly. No, she was numb, her limbs heavy and almost unable to move. “Good-bye, A lex.” Tugging her wrist from his hand, she stepped back and shut the door.

As Alex stayed in Holcombe’s bedchamber, at first he thought the image at the foot of his bed was the dead earl’s ghost, finally come to fulfill all of Kat’s predictions and haunt him.

“A lex.”

He came fully awake at the ghost’s whisper, blinking against the shadows.

“Willa?”

She moved toward him, sliding her palms along the edge of the bed. “You screamed a little. A re you all right? I didn’t mean to scare you.” A lex snorted. “I didn’t scream. A nd what are you doing here? I’m not complaining, mind you; I’m just curious how you came to be in my house, in my bedchamber, in the middle of the night.”

“Thomas let me in,” she whispered, and A lex knew he loved her without a doubt when she didn’t say anything more about him screaming at a ghost.

“I think I like Thomas the best of all the servants.” A lex sat up and scrubbed his palms over his face, then looked at her again. “Holy God.” She smiled, smoothing one hand down the side of the chemise, its color the shadow-kissed pale gray of the night. A lex’s gaze followed the slide of her hand past her hip, then returned to the scalloped oval of her bodice where her breasts threatened to spill out.

“Thomas didn’t see you like this, did he?”

“No.”

“Good, because even if I liked him best, I’d have to dismiss him if he saw my wife dressed in nothing but her shift.”

She stilled, standing beside him. “You truly want to marry me?” He reached for her hand, pulled it to his lips. “More than anything, my love.” Her breath hitched. “Even though I’m not part of the ton?” He kissed the back of her hand, the valleys and hills of her knuckles, then turned her wrist over and kissed her palm. “You have to realize that you’d be accepting my family in addition to me. Even if the nonsaturation process failed now, even if I lost everything I had, even if your father burst through that door with a gun in his hand. You might not want me then, but I—”

“I love you, A lex.”

His throat got caught on the rest of his words, and he swallowed. She’d said it.

It must be true. She couldn’t take it back. “I love you, too, Willa.” They stared at each other in the shadows, her hand in his, until he finally laid his other hand upon her hip and leaned forward. “Come here,” he said, and pulled his other hand upon her hip and leaned forward. “Come here,” he said, and pulled her toward him.

She climbed onto the bed and leaned over him, the braid of her hair gleaming white over her shoulder. A lex lifted his hands to her face and stared. A tease of a smile played at the corners of her lips, and her eyes shone in the darkness. A lex released a long breath. “My God, Willa.”

Her smile widened. “What?”

“You’re beautiful.” He pulled her down to lie across his chest as he captured her mouth. His hands worked at her braid to loosen her hair. He’d only seen it unbound once before, and suddenly to see it that way again was all he wanted in the world.

That, and to stay like this with her, forever.

With a laugh he broke their kiss, then appeased her when she protested by placing brief kisses against the corners of her mouth, across her cheeks. “I’m afraid you’ve turned me into a hopeless creature who doesn’t want to live without you,” he murmured. “You won’t leave now, will you?”

“No,” she replied quietly. “I’ll never leave you.”

No other words were needed. The soft sound of sighs and gasps punctuated each movement as he helped her to remove the chemise and straddle his hips.

A lex arched beneath her and moaned at the brush of her hot wetness over his cock. She leaned over him, teasing his mouth with her breasts as she slid down his length, her spine warm and supple beneath his palm.

A low hiss, a long moan.

Her loose hair flowed down on either side of his vision until all he could see was Willa, rocking steadily above him, her head tilted back, shadowed with her own pleasure. He met her downward stroke with a push of his hips and she gasped.

“A lex.”

Willa paused, bowed over him, her body still vibrating from the sensation.

“A hhh.” She slid down again, a sinuous movement.

She loved this position, loved watching his face below her. Sometimes he stared up at her, his gaze locked with hers. Sometimes he watched her breasts hungrily and caught them in his hands, driving her pleasure higher. Other times he closed his eyes and pressed his lips together, as if he couldn’t handle any more.

Willa stroked a finger down his cheek. His eyes opened and met hers. Smiling, she rode him faster, harder, until only breathless staccato moans mingled with the creaking groan of the bed broke the night’s silence.

The first acute pinpoints of ecstasy fled to her fingertips, her toes, and Willa cried out, clutching his shoulders. He urged her on, his hands firm on her hips, and she shuddered over him, then collapsed onto his chest as he spilled his own release inside her.

Not on the bed or the sheets. Finally, he made her his.

He wrapped his arms tight around her back afterward. Willa breathed in the scent of his skin at his throat: warm, male, salty with sweat. She wondered at the scent of his skin at his throat: warm, male, salty with sweat. She wondered at the sweetness inside her chest, a fullness she couldn’t name. It had been building ever since she met him, but was only now complete.

“I love you, A lex Laurie,” she whispered.

“I love you, Willa, though we’re going to have to see about changing your surname very soon.”

“I agree.”

A few minutes later, she said it again: “I love you.” Then she sighed and mumbled, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to push me off. I don’t think I can ever move again.”

The low rumble of his laughter vibrated beneath her, and suddenly she knew: Joy.

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enchanting Victorian romance

from Ashley March

Romancing the Countess

Available now from Signet Eclipse

London, A pril 1849

As on most every other night, Leah lay in the center of the bed and watched the shadows cast from the firelight flicker across the canopy. The steady lash of rain and wind rattled the windows in their cases, a buffer against the usual silence.

Lightning flashed through the room, and her breath caught as she stared at the illumination of silver-threaded flowers overhead. Even if the bedchamber had been suffused in darkness, she still could have recited each detail of the bed’s rococo-style construction. The fluted mahogany posts with their serpentine cornices. The shallow frieze of interwoven palmettes and draperies of lush, midnight velvet. The feet fashioned as lion heads below and the domed canopy above. When the lightning came again, Leah measured her breath, anticipating the accompanying growl of thunder.

She imagined the women who had come before her: her husband’s mother, his grandmother. Had they, too, stared at the canopy so long that they began to dream of its embroidered ribbons and flower garlands, of shimmering, silvery threads and roses turned black by the shadows? Had hours and hours passed until they imagined they could see each impeccable stitch, counting them only to forget the number when a sound downstairs erupted from the silence, startling them into awareness?

With her heart pounding, Leah waited for the sound to transform into footsteps up the stairs, to distinguish itself into the pattern of Ian’s steady, swaggering gait.

How foolish she’d once been to admire the way he walked—to admire his easy grin, the golden shine of his sun-swept hair . . . anything about him. A nd how even greater a fool she was now to dread his arrival into her bedchamber, when she knew he would easily accept her plea of a headache. He might even be glad for the reprieve.

Still, as the echo of footsteps climbed within her hearing, she remained in the center of the bed. Neither on the left nor the right, but rigidly in the middle, as if the few feet on either side could serve to sufficiently delay the moment when he leaned across her and began stroking her breasts in solicitous, husbandly regard.

He could have spared her that, at least.

Leah’s breath hitched at the sound of footsteps in the corridor. Then, slowly, she sighed with relief. It wasn’t her husband. These footsteps were too hasty, the stride too short. Her gaze retreated from the door to the canopy overhead, her fingers released their stranglehold on the counterpane, and she began counting the stitches again.

One, two, three, four . . .

“Madam?”

Leah’s gaze stumbled over the width of the ribbon and flew toward the direction of the housekeeper’s voice.

“Mrs. George? I apologize for disturbing you . . .”

“No, no. Not at all,” Leah called. Tearing the covers aside, she hurried across the

“No, no. Not at all,” Leah called. Tearing the covers aside, she hurried across the room. A nything to leave the bed. She had already opened the hallway door and raised her arm to invite Mrs. Kemble inside when she froze, arrested by the housekeeper’s expression. Gone was the woman’s usual implacable cheerfulness; in its place was a face worn with time, each wrinkle sagging with the weight of her age. Her brows were lowered, her teeth buried in her upper lip, and the hands clasped at the front of her waist trembled as she met Leah’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, madam. There’s . . . there’s been an accident.” Leah blinked. The housekeeper’s mouth seemed to be moving at an extraordinarily slow pace, as if each syllable struggled to escape. “A n accident?” she repeated. A nd somehow, simply by saying the words, she knew that he was gone.

“Yes, Mr. George . . .”

They stared at each other for what seemed an impossibly long time, until Leah was certain she could have counted at least a hundred canopy stitches.

Finally, she forced the words out. Not as a question, but a blunt, sure statement.

“He’s dead.”

Mrs. Kemble nodded, her chin quivering. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. If there is anything—”

Gone. Ian, her husband, was dead. Never again would she lie awake at night, waiting for him to return from his lover’s arms. Never again would she listen for his footsteps or count the stitching or bear his torturous, sensual lovemaking.

He was gone.

A nd Leah, who had vowed never to cry for him again, sank to her knees, her hands clutched in the housekeeper’s skirt, and wept.

“Rook to queen. Check.”

Sebastian nodded and considered the whimsical dance of the fire’s shadows as they played across what little remained of his ivory army. He slid a lonely pawn forward.

His brother uttered a low oath and planted his bishop near Sebastian’s king.

“Checkmate. Damnation, Seb, that’s four in a row. Do you even realize you’re losing?”

Lifting his gaze from the chessboard, Sebastian raised an idle brow. “Yes. A nd I thought you’d be happy.”

James swept aside the pieces and began arranging them anew. “I’d be happy if you found a new role. Something other than heartsick lover. A t least condescend enough to pretend to notice my presence. It’s only been half a day.”

“Fourteen hours.” Sebastian rolled the ivory queen between his thumb and forefinger.

Precisely fourteen hours had passed since A ngela left for their country estate in Hampshire, but already he was going mad without her. In three years of marriage, they’d spent only a few nights apart. Even though their lovemaking had been sporadic since she’d taken ill in the autumn, he was still accustomed to their usual domestic routine: sitting before the fire together as she brushed her hair, usual domestic routine: sitting before the fire together as she brushed her hair, discussing the day’s events. If she didn’t feel well, a kiss good night before they separated for their individual bedchambers.

James paused in the act of replacing the last ebony piece. “Fourteen hours . . .

A nd I suppose you also know exactly how many minutes and seconds?” With a small smile, Sebastian settled his queen upon her square and refused the urge to glance at the mantel clock over the sitting room hearth. Instead, his fingers reached below to the note he’d tucked away in the chair’s crevice. There was no need to unfold it; he’d already read the words a dozen times, enough to memorize the few short sentences she’d written.

If he breathed deeply enough, he imagined he could smell her perfume rising from the well-worn paper, the same blended scent she used for her bath.

Lavender and vanilla.

Memories wrapped around him, warm and soothing and arousing. It had been a long time since A ngela had allowed him to watch her bathe, but still he could remember the heady scent of lavender and vanilla upon her naked skin, the slosh of the bathwater over the sides of the tub as she bucked beneath his touch.

The corner of the note twisted between his fingers.

James nudged the first pawn into play. “I know you have Parliamentary duties to attend to, but surely they would understand if you made it a priority to see to your wife’s health first.”

“They’ll have to.” Sebastian led his own pawn out. “I’m traveling to Hampshire in a week, whether the bill’s resolved or not.”

One week. Compared to fourteen hours, it seemed a hellish eternity.

Still, he looked forward to surprising A ngela; she wasn’t expecting him to arrive with their son for at least a fortnight. He might bring her a gift as well, perhaps a little house spaniel to keep her company when the weather forced her to remain indoors. Something to cheer her, to keep her from her melancholy. Regardless of how much he tried to attend to her, she seemed so lonely at times.

Her health had never been the same after Henry’s birth, but recently she’d become more and more withdrawn. She continued to act the role of generous hostess while they were in Town, smiling and flirting as usual, but privately he could tell the London air was making matters worse. Sebastian could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. In the way the lightest touch of his fingers sometimes made her flinch, as if her skin was too fragile.