Secrets of Surrender (23 page)

Jean Pierre preferred
vingt-et-un
to the other options available in this gaming hell that they visited on occasion. He did not care for games of complete chance.

Neither did Kyle. He did not much care for this kind of gambling in any of its varieties, although he was not above losing or winning a few hundred. He frequented such places for other reasons.

Right now he watched the play while he conversed with his friend. The wins and losses did not interest him, but the players did. Not the ones who abandoned all rationality and played recklessly. His attention lingered on the men whose expressions revealed attention to the game, a weighing of options, and bold moves that could be justified as likely of success. It lingered even longer on the ones in that group whose clothes and demeanor marked them as gentlemen of wealth.

Kyle had met a good many future investors in his syndicates in gaming hells.

“I am free because my lady wife dines with her cousin,” he explained.

“Then tomorrow I will be adrift and alone again. It is always so sad when a friend is hobbled.”

“I am not hobbled. If I have not been available to go about town, it is because I prefer to spend my evenings with my bride.”

“Now you make me feel more sorry for myself. Although I am happy that you find pleasure in her company and—” Jean Pierre’s hand made an aimless gesture that managed to communicate the other things a husband might find pleasure in with his wife.

“From what I hear you have no reason to feel sorry for yourself. I do not think you would have been available most nights, either.”

“Ah, you speak of Henrietta.” Jean Pierre’s brow puckered. “Hen, they call her. Like a barnyard animal. Such a stupid pet name. It is only because they are too lazy to say it all. Sometimes I do not understand you English.” He shrugged in his vague, expressive way. “She is sweet if I keep her busy so she does not talk so much, but…” Another frown.

“Does the scent already fade,
mon ami
?” Jean Pierre rarely dallied long in any garden.

“No. Only…I think that I am being used most cleverly.”

Kyle had to laugh. “I have met this woman. She is not clever.”

“You do not understand. She too is being used.” Jean Pierre gestured a dismissal to the dealer and turned his back on the cards. He sipped some wine. “Two weeks ago, a messenger arrives with a little note. This little note mentions that a certain box at a certain theater will not be used by a certain party, and offers me its use if I escort Henrietta and her daughter. Like a fool, I am flattered by the offer, by the note itself. Such fine paper it was. Such an impressive crest. Such an elevated man. That it reveals the marquess knows of my little seduction was not a concern. He is a man of the world, his aunt is mature, I am harmless—all is well.”

“So you went, I assume.”

“Like a king I sit there. I play my part. I scowl at young men who come to flirt with the girl. I know what is expected.”

“How nice for you. And how generous of Easterbrook.”

“I know that tone. You are correct. I have swallowed a hook. Five times now, I have found myself escorting my flower and her daughter in this very public way at these expensive diversions. The world now knows I am her lover. When it must end, now it will be awkward, so of course it will last longer than I want. The marquess has been most careless, I think to myself. Then I think about it more, and wonder if he wants her embarrassed, or perhaps just seeks to avoid the duty himself. No, I decide it is not that. I am being hooked for another reason.”

“Easterbrook can be a very odd man. He may just want his aunt to enjoy her little affair. For a very long time.”

Jean Pierre shook his head. “If so, why the girl? Always the girl is with us. It is part of the arrangements. So, only one question remains for Jean Pierre now. I am curious why I am being so used. What reason do you think?”

Kyle gave it half his mind. The other half noticed the arrival of a group of men. Merrily foxed, they entered too loud, too flushed, too arrogant. They were the four aristocratic members of the “hang Longworth” committee. Norbury was among them, acting like the young blood he was supposed to have had the sense to stop being a few years ago.

This den of gambling catered to anyone who could afford to lose a good deal of money, which meant it was haunted by lords among others. It was not the first time Kyle had seen Norbury here.

He turned his attention fully on Jean Pierre and ignored the new arrivals so he would not catch Norbury’s eye. That could wait for another day.

“It sounds as if Easterbrook is indeed using you,” he said. “It sounds as if he has found a way to rid himself of his aunt and cousin’s presence in his house.”

“You are the shrewd one. It took me a long time to see it all. Are you not now curious too?”

“No.”

“Think. It is a very big house. If he does not want their company, he need only go to another chamber, another level, another wing. If he wants them completely gone…” A shrug.

Kyle shrugged back.

Jean Pierre tisked his tongue with exasperation. “He wants that big house empty for a reason. He is doing something there while they are gone that he does not want them to chance upon. There is a mystery here. I know it.”

There was no mystery other than a man who preferred isolation. Explaining that to Jean Pierre would have to wait, however. One of Norbury’s party had noticed Kyle, and the group sauntered over, beaming grins.

“We got him,” Sir Robert Lillingston announced.

“Him?” Kyle asked, although he knew the answer. It was written on Norbury’s smug face. No matter how Alexia’s dinner party went tonight, Rose would be grieving soon.

He wanted to thrash these men who took such delight in something that would create misery for Rose. He hated that he had ever been one of them, no matter whether his motives had been just or prideful.

He managed to hide his reaction from everyone except Jean Pierre, who watched him with careful attention.

“Longworth,” Norbury explained with relish. “You remember, don’t you? Your wife’s brother.”

Kyle did not move, but Jean Pierre’s hand came to rest on his arm anyway.

“Royds found him in Tuscany. It wasn’t even hard. The fool thought he could hide in a small town, when he only stuck out there like the foreigner he was,” Lillingston said.

“How long before he is brought back?” Kyle asked. How long before the worst part of this began.

“He is here now,” Norbury said. “Royds found him fast, hauled him to the coast, and has him in hand outside London even as we speak. We four laid down information with the magistrate this afternoon. He’ll be in Newgate soon.”

They had laid down information already. They were foxed because they had been celebrating.

“Come and join us, Bradwell,” Lillingston said.

“Yes, join us,” Norbury said. “You were as indignant as the rest about that scoundrel’s crimes. Raise a glass with us that he will finally pay, the way any poor miner would pay if he were a thief.”

His arm flexed before his brain could stop it. Jean Pierre’s hold tightened enough to restrain the impulse.

“My friend would never be so uncivilized as to toast the pending end of any man’s life, least of all the brother of his wife,” Jean Pierre said with scorn. “Go now, before I cease stopping him from smashing your drunken faces.”

“Who the hell are you?” Norbury snarled. “French, eh? A French peasant, if Bradwell here is your friend.”

Kyle stood for the fight that was coming, impatient for it, glad to have an excuse to release the horrible storm filling his head.

Jean Pierre stepped in front of him and faced Norbury. “Who am I? Let us just say that I am a man who knows all about chemicals. I can explain how there are poisons that cannot be detected, for example. Men much like you always find that topic most fascinating.”

Norbury’s sluggish mind slowly realized that he had just been threatened. Exuding disdain and hauteur as much as a foxed man could manage, he pivoted and walked away. His companions dragged after him.

Jean Pierre turned, but did not remove his body as a barrier. “
Merde.
Would you now please regain your rationality? It would have been four against one.”

Norbury’s departure had relieved the worst anger. Enough that the anticipation of Rose’s sorrow now drenched Kyle.

“Four against one? Fine friend you are.”

“This fine friend kept you from being most stupid tonight. And this fine friend will not break his hands defending the name of a man who is a thief. His sister is your wife, but if he stole money her goodness does not change the truth of his badness.”

No, it did not. Not for Jean Pierre. Not for anyone. Not even for Kyle Bradwell, when you got down to it.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

R
ose understood the goal of the dinner party. She did nothing to interfere with it. However, she had her own goals too, and left Alexia’s house believing they might also be realized.

The people sitting around that table had been among the most open-minded in society. Alexia had planned it that way. Rose had merely explored just what that meant while she conversed with them.

She did not hesitate to talk about Kyle. She waxed eloquent about his best qualities and his good character. Two of the gentlemen knew of Kyle’s syndicates and expressed interest in meeting him. One spoke in vague, admirable terms about Kyle’s honorable behavior toward her.

Three of the ladies mentioned that he was handsome in his way, and alluded to that compelling aura that he exuded. One of them expressed regrets that Kyle had not been able to attend the dinner.

While Rose rode home in her carriage, she assessed the night’s success. It had been a victory for herself, that was undeniable. However, she was convinced that having Kyle by her side would not slow down her redemption. In fact, she suspected that he would only help.

He was a player in that scandal, after all. She sat at the table only because her marriage raised question marks about that whole night. A few lids had lowered when one of the gentlemen clumsily mentioned Norbury in passing while telling a story.

She walked up to her chambers calculating which of those dinner guests would agree to a more direct connection. If she hosted her own dinner, one with a democratic mix, who might accept? Her abigail helped her undress while a tentative guest list formed. M’sieur Lacroix was an interesting man, an intellectual, and no one would object to his presence. Lord Elliot and Lady Phaedra would probably come.

She sat at her dressing table and her maid brushed out her hair. She gazed in the looking glass. Her face showed a slight flush from the night’s excitement.

She had enjoyed herself. She had laughed and talked and never felt out of place, or like a person tolerated for Alexia’s sake but not really welcome.

This campaign might work. It actually might. She had never truly believed that before tonight.

She had never really believed that she deserved redemption.

That admission popped into her head, unbidden and unexpected. She looked in her own eyes and knew that it was true, though. She had accepted that the sins of her family demanded penance and that it was left to her to atone for everyone’s, not only her own.

She drifted out of her reverie. Her maid was gone and the hairbrush rested on the dressing table.

“You were deep in thought, Rose. What absorbed you so much while you looked at yourself?”

She turned, startled. Kyle stood at the doorway that joined her dressing room to his. She could tell that he had been out tonight, but now his cravat was gone and his shirt opened at the neck.

“I was talking to myself,” she said. “I was learning things from my reflection.”

“Good things, I believe. You appeared content. Confident.”

“Yes, good things, I think.”

“I hope that means that the dinner was a success.” He held out his hand. “Come and tell me about it.”

She took his hand and he led her into his chamber. She sat on the bed and described the dinner while he lay on his side listening. His gaze reflected his total attention to her words.

The way that he shared her joy in the night touched her. Ever since their argument there had existed a subtle distance, a vague distraction. Right now, in their absorption with her little story, it disappeared.

That moved her to confide even further. “I truly did not expect such generosity from these guests. I did not believe they would be kind. Even with Alexia’s plan, even with the way our marriage might confuse the view and rumor about that auction, I did not really think that I would ever be allowed to hold my head high again.”

“I am glad that you realized that you were wrong. Is that what you were learning from your reflection tonight when I came upon you?”

“Yes. And more. I was realizing that I lost confidence in my right to hold my head up. My pride became a steel shell. It kept me standing, but inside was chaos and guilt about my family’s sins. Even that affair—looking back, I barely recognize the woman who deceived herself so. It was not the Roselyn Longworth of two years ago, and not the Roselyn of today. She was a stranger, that woman, who saw only bleak choices, and who believed she deserved no better.”

He turned thoughtful. His fingertips played at the hem of her nightdress where it flowed on the coverlet. “I took advantage in proposing when you had not yet reclaimed yourself.”

“That is not true. Do not say that.” He thought her last sentence referred to him too. His interpretation horrified her. “I had begun reclaiming myself before you proposed. Truly.”

“I think that perhaps you had. However, if not, I do not regret pressing my advantage even if it was wrong to do so. I never will, Roselyn.”

It was an odd declaration, and so honest that it flustered her. She decided to put off parsing through his words, and what they revealed about his motivations and calculations. Right now the look in his eyes commanded only the best interpretation.

She saw warmth in his gaze. It came from deep inside him and matched her own comfort and joy in this private moment of familial intimacy. Desire burned too, making her body thrill as surely as his hand did while it wandered up and down her bare leg. She saw something else too, however.

Pride. Not in himself, but in her. She had never noticed that before. Either it had not been in him, or she had been blind to it. “I am glad that you do not regret it, Kyle. I always thought your offer was a little foolish when you received little more than a pretty face in the bargain.”

“I will not lie and say that your beauty never weighed in my want of you, or my pride in my wife. However, it is really not on the scale anymore.” He seductively pulled the end of the ribbon that tied the top of her nightdress. “Which is not to say your beauty does not affect me anymore.”

She giggled and pushed his hand away. He laughed and boldly caressed up her leg to her bottom. She scooted out of reach and rose up on her knees.

Joy made her heady and bold. She might have been dragging a cart for a year and now been freed of its yoke.

This was not like that day on the hill, either. She was not escaping the burden with a fantasy of becoming a different person. She was Roselyn Longworth, and this interesting, intelligent man, this unusual husband, found her character worthy of pride.

He still lay on the bed watching her, his hand poised to grab her if she came close. Sentiment drenched her joy, filling her heart until her eyes brimmed with tears.

She might not have found her way back on her own. She might have never figured out how to shed that heavy cart. Fate had been kind to her by sending this man to interfere in her life.

She lifted her nightdress and pulled it off so that she was naked. He looked a long while, so long that her body wanted to sway from the way his gaze alone aroused her. He rose up on one arm and reached for her.

She took his hand and moved closer, then pushed him back down. She straddled his hips and sat back on his thighs.

“I have taken much from you, Kyle. And you have given much, besides the redemption promised. I promise that the woman I am reclaiming is not as selfish and self-absorbed as the one you married.”

He reached up to smooth down her body in two long, slow caresses. “Do not make me into a saint. I take at least as much as I give, I assure you.”

“I wonder if that is true. I think that I will find out tonight.” She began to unbutton his trousers.

He did not help while she undressed him. He allowed her to pull off his shirt before his cuffs had been loosened and only smiled with irresistible charm while she tried to rectify the problem.

“I expect that it gets easier with practice,” she said while she burrowed through linen to find his wrists.

“You can practice as often as you want, Rose.”

She already knew that. He enjoyed this, despite her clumsiness. It aroused him. A lot, from the evidence pressing against her cleft where she straddled him.

That pressure excited her too, and only impeded her progress. By the time she swung her leg away to strip off his lower garments, she throbbed down there with hot, vivid pulses.

She sat farther back on his legs once he was naked. He looked down his body at her, and at the engorged member rising so prominently between them.

“What now, Roselyn?”

She already wanted him, desperately. She wanted to move forward and rise up and take him into her body and experience that satisfying fullness and delicious climb to ecstasy.

“You tell me, Kyle.”

Desire always hardened all of him—his limbs and jaw and mouth and entire body. Now his eyes darkened, and his vague smile was hard too.

“Touch me. Kiss me.”

He did not mean his mouth or chest. Rose suddenly felt a tad less bold and a lot more ignorant.

He understood. There was no disappointment in how he smiled at her pause or in the way he reached to bring her up his body.

She leaned out of reach. She ran one finger up the length of his phallus, then circled the tip.

She had touched him before. There was no newness in this, except for the way she sat and looked at her hands and the way he reacted. She found that surprisingly exciting. The subtle flexes of his legs beneath her bottom and the astonishing sensitivity of his skin to her strokes sent pleasure spiraling down her body. She trembled and he had not even caressed her.

That more than anything made it easy to please him. He had been correct, that in giving pleasure he also took. She could not believe how much she took. So much that it seemed very natural, almost necessary to give him more. She did not even think much before she bent her head to kiss him.

She had heard of such things, but she did not know what she was supposed to do. She realized that her position was an awkward one and moved to kneel beside him. She could use her mouth more purposefully then. The low
yes
that whispered through his clenched teeth let her know when her explorations gave him special pleasure.

She almost reached a climax from the intense shudders that titillated her low and deep. When he lifted her she assumed it was so they would come together the way her body needed.

Instead he guided her high on the bed. “Kneel here.”

Here was by his shoulders. His fingers gently stroked the source of her craving. She clutched the headboard for support when his head slid down. New caresses and kisses, those of tongue and lips, sent shocks through her.

Pleasure took over. Pleasure and screaming hungers. The excruciating sensations left her weak and helpless. She heard herself crying out, begging for him to stop and go on all in the same breath.

He managed to do both, somehow. She hung on the headboard while he brought her to a shattering climax. She hung longer while he allowed her to retreat halfway to sanity. Then he sent her back into madness.

Three times he did that. The last time she thought she would faint. She possessed no strength after that. No sense of self other than her essence desiring and hungering and being obliterated in release.

He moved her down, lifted her body gently, and entered the only part of her that was still alive. He held her on top of his chest, his arms wrapping her while he filled her. She emerged from her sated vagueness when he moved in her.

She gasped. The warmth of his mouth nuzzled her head. “Too soon?”

“No. I thought I would be numb to more. It seems not.” She bent her knees under her body so she could feel him deeply.

He stroked slowly, fully, awakening yet again all the desire and need. More focused now. More physical and centered. The clouds closed in on her consciousness but she felt him clearly and totally. She tightened around him and moved in rhythm, joyed when his thrusts came harder.

It was different this time. The shudders centered on his pressure. They vibrated profoundly through her loins, increasing in pitch and speed but never leaving the spot where they joined. She could not bear it, could not believe the power of this pleasure. He grasped her hips and held her still so she would accept the ravishment of both her body and spirit.

The end was all darkness, all sensation. Even as she collapsed on him in exhaustion, the pleasure still flowed in perfect freedom, guiding her to another union, one of soulful peace.

When she woke the next day it was late. Mid-morning at least, from the light leaking through the drapes.

She sat up and saw Kyle sitting in a chair near the window, watching her. He had dressed already, but the chamber showed no signs of servants entering. No coffee or cleaning, no tending to the low embers of the fire.

His chair hugged the shadows. He noticed that she was awake and sat more upright, but did not speak.

“Why are you sitting there?” she asked.

“I was waiting for you to wake. I was enjoying watching you sleep.”