NOT JUST A WALLFLOWER (10 page)

But finally, immeasurable minutes later, he gentled those stroking fingers between her thighs, softened his tongue against her now throbbing and aching breasts, placing one last lingering kiss against each swollen tip before he rolled to one side and moved up on his elbow to look down at her. ‘I did not hurt you, did I?’

The gruffness of his voice was a thrill in itself as it wound itself sinuously along Ellie’s already sensitive nerve-endings. Yet at the same time it broke the sensuous spell she had been under, allowing her to become aware of exactly what she had allowed to happen.

The Duke of Royston had just made love to her, touched her, more pleasurably, more intimately than any man had ever dared to attempt before now. More intimately than Ellie should have allowed any man to touch her before her wedding night!

Something that would never happen for her with the cynically arrogant Justin St Just, who wasn’t interested in loving his bride or having those feelings returned. And she had probably just added to that cynicism and arrogance, with her easy capitulation to his seduction!

She scrambled up into a sitting position, blushing as she drew her legs up beneath her defensively, to clutch her gaping gown against her to cover her now painfully aching breasts. It allowed her to see that he was still fully and impeccably dressed, necktie still in place, waistcoat still buttoned, his hair only slightly tousled, from where her fingers had entwined and clutched at that silkiness in the throes of her pleasure, whereas he had obviously remained unmoved throughout!

She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I asked you to leave some time ago.’

‘Eleanor—’

‘Get out!’ she instructed firmly as she averted her gaze from his, not wishing to see the disgust that must surely be in his eyes. Or perhaps it would be pity or triumph there and she knew she could not bear to suffer any of those emotions being directed towards her just now.

Dear lord, she was in love with this man. A love she could never, must never, allow him to find out about. It would destroy her utterly.

‘Whatever you are thinking, Eleanor, I wish you to stop it this minute!’

Her eyes glittered with unshed tears as she turned back to him. ‘Do not tell me what I should or should not think!’ she flared, falling back upon anger to hide her real emotions.

His eyes narrowed. ‘I could have stopped, should have stopped—indeed, I had thought of doing so—but you would not have thanked me for it if I had—’

‘I am not thanking you now!’

‘No,’ he accepted heavily before standing up and looking down at her bleakly. ‘Eleanor—’

‘You “could have stopped”? You “thought of doing so”?’ Ellie’s voice rose indignantly as she realised what he had just said, knowing that she’d had no will to call a halt, no strength to resist his caresses. But he had. Oh, yes, the arrogant Duke of Royston had remained completely in control of his own senses, whilst her feelings for him meant that she had melted at his first touch. How humiliating. ‘I told you to leave,’ she repeated woodenly.

‘Eleanor, listen to me, damn it!’ He frowned down at her in frustration. ‘If I had stopped you would now be berating me for leaving you in a state of dissatisfaction that would have clawed at you for hours, instead of which—’

‘Instead of which I can now claim to have been the latest recipient of the irresistible Duke of Royston’s expert lovemaking!’ she threw back.

He drew in a sharp breath. ‘I refuse to take offence at your insults. I realise that you are...upset.’ He ran agitated hands through his hair, those golden waves instantly falling back into their artfully dishevelled style. As if he had made the gesture a hundred times before and knew its effect. After making love to a hundred different women, no doubt!

It infuriated Ellie all over again to know that she was nothing more to this man than another notch on his bedpost. ‘Oh, by all means take offence,’ she invited scathingly. ‘For, I assure you, I am not so upset that I do not know exactly what I am saying when I warn you never to touch me ever again!’

‘We will talk of this when you are calmer—’

‘No, we will not,’ she insisted firmly.

Too late, Justin realised the seriousness of the error he had made. Damn it, he was a man known for his icy control. A man who maintained his calm no matter what the provocation. A legendary control that had come about because of those lonely childhood years when he had felt the pain of his parents’ exclusion and which he had eventually only been able to live with by learning and adopting that coolness of temperament for which he was now so well known. But Justin knew, had always known, that deep inside himself lay something else entirely, a heat, a quickness of emotions which he had no control over whatsoever. And it seemed Eleanor brought out that heat in him when no one else had managed it.

Tonight, with her, his control had been totally stripped away, his emotions so totally engaged in their lovemaking that his claim of thinking of stopping was an empty one. The unpalatable truth was, he could not have stopped kissing, caressing and making love to Eleanor if the devil himself had been at his back. That he had wanted,
ached,
to give her pleasure, as much as he had wanted to feel and see her in the throes of it, just because he had given it to her.

He sighed. ‘It is a little naïve of you to expect us never to refer to this incident again—’ He broke off as she gave a bitter laugh.

‘Thanks to you I am no longer in the least naïve!’

‘Oh, yes, Eleanor, in all the ways that matter you are still very much an innocent,’ Justin argued, hands clenching into fists at his sides. ‘Nor have we done anything this evening that in the least damages that innocence, or your reputation in society.’

She looked at him wordlessly for several long seconds before giving a slow shake of her head. ‘I have little or no regard for my reputation in society, sir, but my innocence is certainly now questionable.’

‘No—’

‘Yes,’ she hissed. ‘You, of all people, must know that I had no idea—no knowledge of—’ She stopped and gathered herself. ‘My maidenhead may indeed still be intact, but my innocence is not.’ Her cheeks were flushed. ‘Now, would you please, please leave me.’ Her voice finally wavered emotionally, the over-bright glitter in her eyes confirming that she was on the edge of tears.

Tears, which Justin knew with a certainty, she would not wish him to see fall. ‘I trust you understand how impossible it is for me to even attempt to explain to my grandmother why I have changed my mind about moving into Royston House?’

Eleanor’s shoulders straightened proudly. ‘I understand. Just as I am sure that the two of us are adult enough, and both have enough affection for the dowager duchess, if not for each other, to do everything in our power to be polite to one another whenever we are in her company or that of others.’

Telling Justin, more surely than anything else could have done, that Eleanor had no intention of being in the least polite to him when they were alone...

He breathed out his frustration. ‘Perhaps if you had listened to me when I advised you not to bait the tiger—’

‘Are you saying,’ Ellie interrupted with deceptive softness, ‘that you consider this as being just “another lesson” you felt the need to demonstrate?’

He was taken aback. ‘No, I am merely—Eleanor, put down that cup!’ he instructed sharply as she turned to grab it up from its saucer. ‘Eleanor!’

She did not so much as hesitate, drawing back her arm and launching the china cup across the bedchamber towards his arrogant head. Only to be thoroughly frustrated in that endeavour when he ducked at the last moment, allowing the cup to hit and smash against the door behind him.

He straightened, his face thunderous. ‘My grandmother is very fond of those cups—’

Determined not to be thwarted, Ellie immediately took up the saucer and threw that at him too, succeeding in giving him a glancing blow on the side of his arrogant head, at the same time as it dishevelled the fashionably styled hair that had so annoyed her just minutes ago. ‘How pleasant it is to know that my years of playing cricket with the local village children were not in vain!’ She smiled her satisfaction with her accuracy.

‘You are nothing but a damned hellion!’ Justin winced as he raised a hand to gently probe the spot where the saucer had hit him. ‘By all that’s holy, you deserve to have your backside soundly smacked!’

‘Lay so much as a finger more on me this evening, your Grace, and I assure you, I will scream until all the household comes running!’ Ellie warned him with icy pride; she might have allowed herself to be seduced by her feelings for this man, but that did not mean he would ever know of them.

He straightened, eyes glittering. ‘This is far from over, Eleanor.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ she insisted. ‘There will be no more “lessons” for me from you tonight. Or, indeed, any other night! Now please leave my bedchamber.’ She turned her face away to indicate an end to the conversation, her heart pounding in her chest as she waited to see if Justin would do as she asked. Having no idea what she would do if he did not!

There was deathly silence for several minutes, then Ellie heard the opening of the door, before it was gently closed again seconds later.

At which time she allowed the tears to fall as she began to cry as if her heart were breaking.

Which it was.

Chapter Eleven

‘I
s this a bad time, Royston...?’

Justin arched a brow as he looked up at the man standing in front of him, stirring himself to sit up from his slouched position in his chair beside one of the unlit fireplaces at White’s, as he recognised Lord Adam Hawthorne, the grandson of one of his grandmother’s dearest friends.

And there had not been so much as a single ‘good time’ for anyone to approach and speak to Justin over the past three days, not since the evening he had made love with Eleanor and she had then so soundly routed him from her bedchamber.

Three days when he and Eleanor had, as agreed, maintained a perfectly civil, if stilted, front whenever they were in the company of his grandmother. Away from the old lady’s curious, shrewd gaze it was a different matter entirely; Eleanor avoided his company whenever she could, spending hours in another part of the house from him when she was at home, and other times out visiting, accompanied by her maid or the dowager. And, without Eleanor being aware of it, one of the footmen from Royston House, as extra protection from the threat Justin now considered Litchfield to be.

Not that Justin could blame Eleanor for that avoidance. No, despite that bump on his head from the blow of the saucer, and the headache that had followed, she was not the one to blame for the strain which now existed between them. The blame for that clearly lay entirely on Justin’s own shoulders. He had fully deserved her anger, her physical retribution, had seriously overstepped a line with her. One Justin, even with his nine more years of maturity and experience, had absolutely no idea how to cross back over. Eleanor’s frosty demeanour towards him certainly gave him the clear impression she had no wish for him to even try healing the breach between them!

Justin had spent the same three days trying to ascertain more about the events of twenty years ago, where Muriel Rosewood had gone to live once she returned to England, and what had become of her. Something which, without the help of Muriel herself, was not proving as easy as Justin had hoped it might. Many of the soldiers who had been in India at the same time as Litchfield, but later also returned to England, had died during the battles against Napoleon, and their widows, or the soldiers who had survived, were scattered all over England.

The Rosewood family had proved most unhelpful, too, the note of query Justin had delivered to their London home having only returned the information that they knew absolutely nothing about Henry’s widow, none of the family having so much as set eyes on her again after Henry’s death. And the widow’s allowance, paid to her by the family lawyer on behalf of the estate, had ceased the day she had married Frederick, severing all ties with that family.

Except for Eleanor...whom the Rosewoods seemed to have no knowledge of whatsoever. As further proof that she was definitely not Henry’s child?

The only other way of finding an answer as to where Muriel had settled on her return to England from India, would have been to question Eleanor about her childhood before her mother had married his cousin Frederick.

There were two very good reasons why Justin had not done so; for one, Eleanor was barely speaking to him any more, and secondly, he was trying to avoid telling her about any of this for as long as possible. There was, after all, still the possibility that Richmond could be completely wrong about this whole situation.

And yet, he mused, the coincidence of the earl’s concerns, coming so quickly on the heels of his grandmother’s request for Justin to try to discover who Eleanor’s real father was, as well as the Rosewood family’s lack of knowledge of Eleanor’s very existence, made that highly unlikely.

‘It would appear that it is,’ Hawthorne commented ruefully at Justin’s lack of reply to his query. ‘Sorry to have disturbed your reverie, Royston.’ He turned to leave.

‘No! No, really, Thorne,’ Justin repeated wearily as the other man turned to arch one dark, questioning brow. ‘Please, do excuse my rudeness and join me, by all means.’ He indicated the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

The same age as Justin, Adam Hawthorne had never been a particular friend of his until recently, despite their grandmothers’ lifelong friendship. But the two men had been involved together in a matter personal to Hawthorne just weeks ago. One, which, thankfully, had been resolved in a manner most satisfactory to Hawthorne and the woman to whom he was now betrothed.

Justin waited until the other man was seated before speaking again. ‘Was there something in particular you wished to discuss with me?’

‘As it happens, yes.’ Hawthorne, known in the past for his taciturn and prickly nature, hence the reasoning for that shortened version of his surname, now gave a boyish grin. ‘You are aware, no doubt, of my upcoming nuptials...?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Justin rolled his eyes. It was the announcement of Hawthorne’s betrothal, and forthcoming marriage, which had caused Edith to renew even more strongly her urgings that it was past time he chose a bride for himself.

Hawthorne gave a sympathetic smile. ‘The dowager still proving difficult?’

‘Well, your betrothal has certainly not helped my own desire not to marry as yet!’ Justin admitted.

‘I would imagine not.’ Hawthorne laughed. ‘I hear that you have once again taken up residence at Royston House.’

‘Yes.’ No need for Justin to ask from whom the other man had heard that snippet of information; the dowager duchess and Lady Cicely, along with Lady Jocelyn Ambrose, were, and always had been, as thick as thieves!

‘My grandmother mentioned how happy it has made the dowager duchess,’ Hawthorne confirmed Justin’s surmise.

Happy did not even begin to describe Edith’s jubilation in having Justin living with her at Royston House. Indeed, the dowager was so contented with the arrangement that her health seemed to have improved exponentially, to a degree that there had been no need for any further calls to Dr Franklyn.

A fact which relieved Justin tremendously. Although he couldn’t help being a touch suspicious of this rapid improvement in her health...

Cynical of him, perhaps even egotistical, but Justin found he could not help but wonder if the dowager’s recent ill health had been yet another ruse on her part, one that had succeeded in his agreement to reside at Royston House, at least, and as such put him another step closer to the idea of matrimony?

It would please him, of course, to know that his grandmother’s health was not as precarious as she had given him the impression it was, but it would irritate him immensely if he were to learn that he had fallen victim to her wily machinations.

Except Justin knew he wasn’t living with her solely out of concern for her health, that it was also concern for Eleanor—which she would likely not appreciate if she knew of it—that had been the main factor in his decision. He was only too well aware now of Litchfield’s viciousness of nature, which in turn made Eleanor, and Justin’s grandmother, both prime targets if the earl should decide to act upon that viciousness.

‘Royston...?’

Justin gave himself a mental shake as he returned his attention to Hawthorne. ‘You mentioned your upcoming nuptials...?’

The other man nodded. ‘You have made quite an impression on my darling Magdelena, you know.’

‘Indeed?’ He eyed the other man warily; Miss Matthews was a beautiful and charming young woman, and he had been pleased to assist Hawthorne in freeing her of the devil who had been so determined to ruin her life, but other than that he had no personal interest in her, and if Hawthorne thought otherwise—

‘So much so,’ Hawthorne continued, ‘that she will hear of nothing less than that you stand as one of the witnesses at our wedding.’

‘Me?’ Justin could not have been more shocked if Hawthorne had invited him to dance naked at Almack’s!

Hawthorne’s eyes gleamed with devilish laughter. ‘I realise how unpleasant that task must be to one as opposed to matrimony as you are, but Magdelena is set upon the idea.’ And he was obviously a man so much in love with his future bride that he would allow nothing and no one to deny her smallest desire.

Ordinarily Justin would have found it repugnant to witness such a change in character as he had seen in Hawthorne since he had fallen in love with Miss Matthews. But, for some inexplicable reason, Justin now found his main emotion to be curiosity.

An unhappy first marriage had soured Hawthorne to repeating the experience. Until he had met and fallen in love with Magdelena Matthews, an occurrence which Hawthorne did not at all seem to regret. Indeed, the very opposite was true; Justin had never seen the other man look happier than he had these past few weeks.

Where were Hawthorne’s feelings of resentment at the thought of conceding his freedom? Of being led about by his nose and his manhood for the next forty years? Of the possibility, unless he took a mistress, of sharing his bed with the same woman for decades? Also, Hawthorne had a young daughter from his first marriage—had he thought of her welfare in all of this—?

‘Magdelena and your ward, Miss Rosewood, have become such fast friends these past few days.’

Justin straightened abruptly as he realised he had once again allowed himself to become so distracted by his own thoughts, he had not been paying attention to Hawthorne’s conversation. ‘Did you say Miss Matthews and Eleanor are now friends?’

The other man nodded. ‘They have become inseparable since the night of the Royston Ball.’

Which explained why Eleanor had been accompanying the dowager on her visits to Lady Cicely’s home recently, as Miss Matthews was residing with Lady Cicely until after the wedding.

‘Indeed,’ Hawthorne continued, ‘the two of them are out together now, in the company of our mutual grandmothers, deciding upon material for Magdelena’s wedding gown.’

Damn it, it appeared that Hawthorne knew more about Eleanor’s movements than he did! Which, given the circumstances of her complete aversion to his own company, was not so surprising...but was incredibly galling.

‘My young daughter, Amanda, who is to be a bridesmaid, is also with them,’ Hawthorne relaxed back in his chair. ‘A great concession on her part, believe me, as she would much rather be in the stable with her pony than shopping for dresses. I believe it was her deep affection for Magdelena and Magdelena’s for her—and, of course, the bribe of calling at Gunter’s for ice-cream, once the unpleasant task has been completed—which went a long way towards convincing Amanda otherwise!’

So it seemed that Hawthorne’s daughter from his first marriage had not been in the least excluded from her father’s happiness in his forthcoming marriage. Or, quite obviously, the time and affections of her future stepmother.

Hawthorne quirked a questioning brow. ‘Why are you looking at me so strangely?’

Justin’s jaw tightened; he had not realised he was being so obvious. ‘You appear—’ He stopped, gave a wave of his hand and then tried again. ‘You actually seem to be happily anticipating remarrying, Hawthorne.’

The other man grinned. ‘Incredible, is it not, considering our conversation on the subject just weeks prior to the announcement of my betrothal?’

A conversation in which both men had voiced their aversion to entering into the married state—Hawthorne ever again, Justin until some distant time when he could no longer avoid his duty of providing the heir—both men bemoaning their grandmothers’ machinations in trying to bring that unhappy event about for them.

‘Perhaps we are all to receive news of another betrothal quite soon...?’ Hawthorne suggested.

Justin stiffened warily. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Close as Eleanor’s friendship with Miss Matthews was purported to be, he could not imagine Eleanor confiding their lovemaking to the other woman. And even if she had, Eleanor’s aversion to his company did not in the least give him the impression that she hoped there would be more of the same, or that it would eventually lead to a proposal of marriage. The opposite, in fact! It was—

‘I am referring to Endicott and Miss Rosewood, of course.’ Hawthorne eyed him curiously.

Lord Charles Endicott and Eleanor?

That young pup Charles Endicott and
Eleanor!

What the devil was going on? He almost couldn’t think straight as lights seemed to explode behind his eyes.

‘It would be considered a good match for your young ward,’ Hawthorne continued conversationally, seemingly unaware of Justin’s sudden turmoil of emotions. ‘Endicott is both wealthy and second in line to a dukedom.’

Admittedly, Endicott was indeed as Hawthorne described, and at two and twenty, he was also considered charming and handsome by those society mamas looking for a suitable and wealthy son-in-law. But as far as Justin was aware Eleanor had only met the other man once, on the evening of the Royston Ball, when she stood up to dance a single set with him. Of course, he had noted that one of those dozens of bouquets of flowers, delivered the day after the ball, could have been sent from Endicott, but even so...

Justin gave a decisive shake of his head. ‘I have no idea how you have hit upon such a misconception, Hawthorne, but I assure you that Eleanor does not have any such ambitions where Endicott is concerned.’

‘Oh?’ Hawthorne looked surprised. ‘In that case, perhaps it might be kinder if she were to discourage his attentions, rather than appearing as if she enjoyed them.’

Justin looked confused. ‘I have absolutely no idea what the devil you are talking about!’

The other man gave him a speculative glance before replying slowly, ‘No, apparently you do not...’

* * *

‘What do you think, Ellie?’ Miss Magdelena Matthews prompted as their party stood outside Gunter’s confectioner’s shop in Berkeley Square. ‘Was that not the most delicious ice-cream you have ever tasted?’

Ellie returned the smile. ‘Most certainly.’ It was also the only ice-cream she had ever eaten; there had been no money for such extravagance as this during her childhood and she had never been to London during her years as Lord Frederick’s stepdaughter, nor had there been the time, or the money, to indulge in such things since she had become companion to Edith St Just.