Pride & Passion (25 page)

Lucy smoothed her hand down his cheek. “You weren’t inept, Adrian. Besides, when our baby is about to be born, I hope you’ll stay by my side and whisper the same encouragement to me as you did to Rosie.”

He smiled then. “Men don’t attend their wives in labor, Lucy.”

“My man will,” she said, and she kissed him, only
to groan when a soft knock on the door was replaced by the sound of creaking hinges.

“Shall I clean up here, your grace?”

Lucy hid her face into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her back as the servants worked quickly to pick up the bloody clothes and blankets they had used.

“Ah,” the housekeeper cooed. “Look at the little loves.”

Both she and Sussex beamed with pride, as if they had had some hand in the whole matter.

“Well, you’ve been up the night through, yer graces. I’ll have breakfast ready for you and sent, and a fresh tub of hot water.”

“Will you draw a bath in here, please? My wife requires the tub, as well.”

Abigail curtsied, and it seemed within minutes that the tub was full of steaming water. Adrian pulled her gown over her head and helped her to step into the water. She groaned at the feel of the heat that soothed her muscles. She had been sitting on the floor for hours. But she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There was such a sense of accomplishment, she thought as she glanced over at Rosie and her contented, sleeping puppies.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he warned, and Lucy nodded.

“It feels nice, that’s all. I’m relaxing.” But she was sound asleep in seconds.

A
DRIAN CAUGHT HER
and stepped in behind her. Lowering himself into the tub, he brought Lucy back against him. Her head leaned back to cradle against his chin,
and he held her like that, just watching her, taking in every rise and fall of her chest. The way she smelled and felt beneath his hands was a balm to his soul.

Her breasts were small—perfect handfuls. Her nipples, God, he couldn’t get enough of them, the color, such a contrast to her skin. They beaded perfectly, and they were so responsive. He couldn’t help but stroke his thumb against one, watching as it puckered for him.

He shouldn’t be doing this, not after what he had done to her in that bed—what he had confessed. He was a bastard, a filthy urchin who had no right to touch her, but his hands wouldn’t listen to his brain, and he caressed her, needing to touch her, to watch his palm possessively roam over her body.

He was hard, and she was soft, her plump bottom cushioning against him, and he rocked, experimenting with the sensation. He was a wretch for doing this, but he couldn’t stop. He slipped inside her, stretching her wide, and she moaned, raised her arm and wrapped her hand around his neck as he slowly pushed inside her, her body awakening in slow increments with every thrust, every one of his breaths in her ear.

“Lucy.” It was a benediction the way he said her name. So full of awe and wonder. He couldn’t help it. He watched as he touched her, parted her sex and stroked her, his cock filling, hardening even more at the sight of her breasts, her pale body spread out along his.

There were no words, just the sound of the water lapping and sloshing against the copper tub. Occasionally Lucy would moan, and he would encourage her with a touch, or a different stroke to do it more, and louder.

“I want to see you,” she whispered, and she turned to the side, and dislodged him, and he felt…empty at the sensation. He noticed she did not use his name, and wondered at the omission, but thought of it no more as she straddled his hips and lowered her body onto his cock.

“I’ve never done it this way before,” she whispered as she kissed his lips in a slow drag and pull. “Teach me?”

Resting his head back on the lip of the tub, he let his hands roam over her breasts, the flat of her stomach, as he watched the water bead over her skin. He shook his head, denying her.

“Learn me,” he said simply. “Learn our rhythm.”

Slowly she rose and fell, and he watched, loving every nuance of her dance, how she made love to him.

“Take as much as you want, as fast or as slow as you want,” he encouraged. “Just don’t stop.”

“I won’t.” She captured his lips again. “I won’t give up until you cry out my name and stare into my eyes.”

Their loving was slow, close; she pressed against him, her breasts scraping against his chest, their lips constantly touching, their voices whispering, their fingers locking. She took her time, listened to his sighs, felt the way his body grew taut and insistent. And then she pulled back and watched him, their gazes focused on each other, and he wondered what she saw—a duke or an urchin from the slums. He wasn’t either, and it terrified him to think that perhaps the man he was did not please her. She was young when she had fancied her little urchin friend, and when he had returned to her, he was a duke—rich, cultured and successful. What did
she see when she looked at him, when she was taking him into her body and loving him?

Her eyes were misty as she loved him, and he reached for her, kissed her, felt her say against his mouth, “I want a place to belong.”

“You have a place to belong. Here with me, Lucy. As my duchess.”

“No!”

Lucy could no longer contain her thoughts, the emotions that filled her just as strongly as Adrian’s body did. She bit her lip against the sudden pain she felt searing her breast. She’d been bred for this duty. She could run his ancestral home, and the other three estates he owned as well. She could plan balls, and country house parties, and dinners for fifty people. But that wasn’t all she wanted. She wanted the sense of belonging—of being needed. Not her skills as a duchess and hostess, but as a woman. A wife. She didn’t want to be just a duchess. She wanted to belong as Adrian’s wife. Gabriel’s wife. Whoever he was, whatever he was, she wanted to belong to him in the most elemental way.

She trembled, her whole body quaking. “I…I want to belong—somewhere, to…someone…”

Blinded by tears, she saw him gazing up at her, and the ghosts in his eyes shone brighter. Through lips that trembled, she braved the fear she felt, reached for the center of her soul which he had slowly thawed to a warm liquid during the days of their marriage and weeks of their strange courtship. A fat, hot tear fell from her eye, falling onto her lip.

“I saw Fiona again today, adorable and chubby and squealing with laughter. Abigail looked at her with such
love, and I wanted that, Adrian,” she said, her voice breaking. “I wanted that sense of belonging, of warmth and acceptance. And I imagined it, what it would be like to sit in your library, with our children laughing around us, and I…I’m sorry for everything. For being cold and heartless.”

“What are you saying, Lucy?”

“That you’ve broken me,” she gasped through large gulps and sobs. “You’ve taken everything from me, my shields, my defenses, and broken them down until I can feel the rawness deep inside me. You have made me want this marriage. Made me want to be your wife in every way. I don’t care who you are, I only know that I cannot be as I once was with you, distant and cold. Even then, you drew me in.”

“You do belong somewhere, to someone, Lucy. You belong to me as my lover, my wife—my entire life.”

“Show me, then,” she whispered, “make me feel it.”

And he did, until she was gasping and crying and clinging to him, and he was whispering her name over and over, spilling inside her, realizing for once that he, too, had a place to belong.

F
INALLY THE ROADS
cleared and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made their goodbyes, with promises to return. Their servants had already headed north, and they both laughed at how well they had managed to get along without a lady’s maid and a valet. Of course, Lucy had taken to wearing her hair down. It seemed her husband had a fixation with brushing it and pressing his face into the silken mass.

Lucy discovered she rather enjoyed lounging in their marital bed, the sheets rumpled from their lovemaking as she watched him shave. It was fascinating to her, the intimacies of a marriage—outside the activities of the bedchamber. They had talked, had shared their meals together, and an evening drink by the fire. He had written correspondence, while she sewed a new sweater and bonnet for Fiona—and refashioned a cloak for Abigail. They had taken the puppies, all healthy and strong and bundled warmly along with Rosie for the ride home.

Waving to the gathered staff, Lucy watched as the stone inn disappeared into the horizon. When she glanced at her husband, it was to discover that he was watching her.

“We’ll come back—yearly,” he vowed as he lifted her hand and kissed it. “Do not cry, my love.”

“Silly, isn’t it? We barely know them, but I will have
such fond memories of that inn, and what happened there.”

“We found each other there, didn’t we?”

She smiled shyly. Yes, they had. They had discovered each other’s bodies, what pleasured them, what inflamed them with passion. They had made love so many times, and each time it was better, more intimate, because Lucy knew without a doubt that she loved him. He hadn’t said the words to her, but sometimes she would catch him looking at her, and she knew that his feelings were deep, every bit as deep as hers were, but he still held back—his love, and his secret.

“When will you tell me?” she asked in a quiet voice. “We have two days yet before we’ll reach Yorkshire.”

“I should never have spoken it to you, but when I saw you with that doll’s bed, and listened to you talk about the boy you knew, something inside me broke. I wanted to show you I was alive, and I was there, and that you only needed to reach out and I would be there whenever you needed me.”

“So how did it come to be, Adrian?”

He looked away, swallowed and remained silent as he watched the rolling countryside go by outside the carriage window. Just when she had given up all hope that he would tell her, he spoke.

“My mother was a Scottish maid in the ducal town house. Her name was Mairn and she was… Well, I hardly knew her. She died when I was about six. But from what I remember, she was conniving and ruthless. My father, drawn to her spirit so he could tame it, found her intriguing, and they began an affair. She became pregnant with me, and used the pregnancy to
bribe him.” He snorted with disbelief. “My father was not going to pay for her silence, so he packed her up, threw her out and forced her to find her way on the streets. I was, quite literally, born in a gutter. And I was called Gabriel.”

Her heart actually ached for him—for his mother forced to live in the streets, to deliver her child amongst the cruel elements. “Did your father know of you?”

“I haven’t a clue. I didn’t know him until I was six. He already had Elizabeth, you see, and a son—his rightful heir, who was little more than a few months older than I was. I don’t know how I made it there,” he said, his gaze distant and fixed, and far, far away. “But when you grow up in the stews poor and hungry, you grow up fast and learn to make your way around. Somehow I found myself in a rainstorm knocking on his door. The butler slammed it in my face. So I waited in the cold and rain, and eventually he did come out, and when I stood before him, he froze, his cruel gaze narrowed on me.”

“So you’re alive, are you? Remarkable.”

“My mother is dead.”

“Is she?” he said, my father’s voice so cold and full of mockery. “Well, boy, the first thing you must learn is that whores have a very short life span—they’re only needed for so long, and then they become a nuisance—something to be tossed out when they become tiresome.”

“You’re my father.”

“No. I sired you, there’s a difference.” He laughed and came down the steps until he could touch me, and then he cruelly picked me up by my dirty coat collar
and lifted me so that he was looking into the same silver as his eyes. “Astonishing, you’ve none of her in you, that little Highland hussy that birthed you.”

Adrian remembered his father’s eyes…how they looked at him with pure repugnance.

“Pity that my wife couldn’t do the same. My children—the legitimate ones, that is, are the very image of their mother. French weaklings, both of them. There is no York blood in them.”

“What will you do for me?”

He dropped me then, and I landed on the steps.

“Do for you? Boy, I shall do nothing for you. Men make their own way in the world. Come to me when you make yourself into something that interests me.”

“And then he left,” Adrian finished, “but not before he tossed me a few coins, and laughed at me as I scrambled to find them in the dark.”

Lucy was crying, tears making tracks down her cheeks. She had thought herself miserable as a child, but her childhood was glorious compared to what her husband had endured. She thought of her father, the way he had hit him, scaring him, and she reached out to kiss his brow and give him comfort.

Straightening, he seemed to push away that memory, and forged on to the next. “A butcher—you recall Mr. Beecher? He caught me sleeping with his pigs the next morning. I thought I’d have my hide stripped from me, but he and his wife were childless and they took me in, fed me, clothed me and cared for me as best they could, and they taught me a trade.”

“I still remember the day I first saw you, standing
in the kitchen. You refused to talk, or take the tart I offered you.”

“I was fourteen and I was awed by you. You were pure and innocent, and I wanted to touch you, to see if you were real.”

“You didn’t even speak to me.”

“I had a Cockney accent, and when I heard you speak you reminded me of my father, that night I went to visit him. I felt inferior, and I didn’t want you to think of me like that. So I didn’t talk—not that first time, at least. I was content to watch. But then I couldn’t resist, you were such a chatterbox, and I realized how lonely and sad you were, yet how you were content and happy with the staff—and with me. I saw you sewing your dolls clothes and once I saw you in town looking in a toy store window at a fancy gilded bed with blue bed curtains. I wanted to buy it for you, but I knew that I would never be able to afford something like that. It just reinforced what I knew was the truth—I wasn’t good enough for you.

“So, I did my best to make you the bed—I cut myself so many times.” He laughed and shook his head. “It was all I could give you, and when your father took it away, when he called me those names…I was six all over again, chasing after those damn coins. I vowed when I turned away from you that I would find you again, and I would be someone worthy of you.”

The pain of his father’s words echoed in the carriage, and Lucy struggled not to sob. She could see the pain in his face. He didn’t need to comfort her—it was him that needed her comfort.

“To know you treasured it, you can’t believe what
that made me feel that day. It made everything worthwhile, every pain, this secret, the horrors of my father, it made it worth it, because I did it for you, Lucy. For a chance to be yours.”

“You did what, Adrian?”

“Took my brother’s place,” he whispered, and the darkness descended once again.

“Tell me, all of it. I need to know, and you need to unburden yourself of this secret.”

“I was working late. The butcher shop was across the street from a notorious bawdy house. The blokes from the West End used to come and cause trouble there, and one night, when I was cleaning the street of animal offal, I heard a commotion. A young aristocrat came out of the house, drunk as a lord.” He grinned and shook his head. “He
was
a lord. There was a fight, another man came out and the young man engaged him in a fight, despite the fact he was so drunk he couldn’t stand. The other man beat him to a bloody pulp and left him for dead in the gutters. When I went to him, he was barely alive, his face a bloody mess. I searched his clothes for any identification, and that’s when I noticed his ring—it was the ring of the heir to the Duke of Sussex, and as I looked down upon him, I realized he was my brother. I don’t know what possessed me, but I hailed a hackney and drove to my father’s house. He was alone, and the butler let me in. I can still see my father sitting at his desk as I walked in, his heir hung over my back like a sack of flour, his blood running down my clothes.

“‘Good God,’” he said. “‘Are you still alive, after all this time? Ten years?’” His gaze never once strayed to
his injured son. ‘Ten years in the stews without a damn farthing, and here you are, alive and hearty—big as an ox.’

“I said nothing. I placed his son on the settee and told the duke what I had seen. His mouth sneered as he looked at his heir.

“‘Waste of a man,’ he said. ‘Effeminate, weak, I cannot believe he sprung from my loins.’

“‘He needs a doctor.’

“‘Does he? I don’t think so, he’s getting exactly what I told him he would get if he continued on in these unnatural ways.’”

Lucy knew not to question what unnatural ways he spoke of.

“You can imagine the duke’s disgust. He was quite willing to allow his son to die on the lounge as he studied me. And then, before I knew it I was ushered to a room and locked inside. I was left there for hours, until he came back for me, and then he snuck me out of the house by way of the servants’ staircase. I was brought to a house—my father’s mistress’s house.”

“Anastasia.”

He nodded. “My father allowed his son, the true Adrian, to die, and he wanted me, his
strapping bastard,
to play his part. It didn’t matter that my mother was poor, without a drop of blue blood. All that mattered was that I was hearty and I knew how to survive—and fight. He had admitted to worrying over how his son would handle the duties of a Brethren Guardian when he was weak in mind and body.”

“He stole your life from you.”

Shrugging, he smoothed his hand down his pants.
“It wasn’t much of one. As kind as the Beechers had been to me, I wasn’t their son. I worked for them and Mrs. Beecher fed me and washed my clothes.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

While she was flitting about Mayfair shopping and going from tea to tea, Adrian had been struggling to survive.

“My father thought it a grand plan, you know. He would see to educating me, to have me take on the role of an heir to an ancient dukedom. But I was an alley rat. Illiterate. Uncouth. I resisted the notion, but my father said that there would have been witnesses to his son’s beating, so he put it about that he was taking his son to convalesce in the north. We were of the same height, the same dark hair. He informed me then of his family’s legacy. How Adrian would never have been able to carry out the duties of a Brethren Guardian, but me, I survived the London rookeries with nothing but his scorn driving me! He was impressed by that. And I wanted to show him.” Lucy saw his fist curl. “I wanted to prove to the bastard that I was better than him, and better than his legitimate son.

“At first I was revolted by the suggestion, by his utter callousness for the loss of his child. But then I began to think. I had seen you, you know—had never forgotten you. I watched you from afar. Sometimes I would walk from St. Giles to Grosvenor Square and wait for a glimpse of you. I began to think of what I could have if I was the Sussex heir. I would be a peer, of your world and appropriate rank. I would be rich, educated, everything I thought you would want in a husband. And
it was for that reason, for you—and to show my father that bastards could succeed in his world with nothing—that I became Adrian York, the heir to the dukedom of Sussex. We left London, Ana accompanied us. Everyone believed that my father had finally decided to take his degenerate heir in hand and shake some sense into him. My father educated me in both reading and writing, and literature as well as math, and the ways of the Brethren Guardians. Ana taught me about the ton, and how to behave like a duke. It is my father’s model that I am fashioned after.”

“Adrian, I don’t know what to say…what to call you.”

He looked at her, and from the brim of his hat she could see those beautiful eyes watching her. “Adrian. Gabriel, the boy I was, is gone. I never really knew him, anyway. And what to say? Lucy, say I haven’t turned you away. Say you do not think me less of a man for what I was born into. I’m not a duke—”

“You are, and a rather well-respected one at that.”

“It’s a sham.”

“Adrian, you are everything the word
duke
conjures up. You have not turned me against you. How could you?”

“Because I’m a bastard.”

“I for one am glad your father kept you. You make an excellent duke, and you’re a wonderful loving brother to Elizabeth.”

“She was already losing her sight, you know. My father kept me up north for months while she stayed in London. When she was due to come up to Yorkshire my father took Ana and I to Europe, on the pretence of giving his son a grand tour—and I did have one—but
it was also where I began to learn more of the Brethren Guardians. In all, it took eight months to mold me into the heir. And when I finally met Elizabeth she was blind, and had thought me changed and matured after my tour.”

“Her brother had been a perfect toad to her, hadn’t he?”

“Indeed. She was shocked at the change in her brother. I had never had any family to speak of, and I cannot tell you, Lucy, how much I cared for Elizabeth. She was everything a boy could want in an elder sister. And it was not long before I saw how my father utterly ignored her. He was a hard man, cruel and cold. The only reason I was even allowed in his home was to continue the Brethren Guardian duties. He’d made it perfectly clear that I was useless to him otherwise.”