The Devil You Know (18 page)

husband’s horse failed to run when there was no sign of injury, and

the poor groom appears to have been beaten near to death. Although

Sir John would most readily attribute that to your husband’s wrath,

do you really suppose Lord Reggie would have done his lover such a

violence?”

Diana gasped and felt the blood leeching from her face. “You

know nothing of what you speak!”

“How salacious!” The duchess laughed, a shrill and grating

sound. “It was pure speculation on my part, but your priceless reac-

tion tells me everything I need to know. Poor darling, I understand

what a humiliating secret it is to bear, as my own Duke of Beauclerc

had unusually diverse sexual proclivities. He enjoyed both men and

women, you see, but his preference was for the former. He and my

brother were once lovers.”

Diana felt herself soften infinitesimally toward the duchess. “Is

that what drove you to DeVere’s bed?”

“Perhaps,” Caroline answered. “But I would have desired him re-

gardless. And I desire him still. You shall
not
take him from me.”

“I already told you I have no designs on Lord DeVere.”

“I don’t believe you. He has a voracious sexual appetite and never

would have dismissed me unless he had already acquired a replace-

ment mistress. DeVere would never lower himself to tupping cham-

bermaids. Even if I hadn’t seen the way he devours you with his eyes,

I would feel it safe to assume he would not cuckold his best friend.

Moreover, Annalee’s present condition makes her a less than suitable

candidate. So that leaves only you.”

Diana’s hackles rose. “Be good enough to leave now, duchess.

You have said quite enough.”

Caroline displayed her small, white teeth in a mockery of a smile.

“I am going nowhere, my dear, for I have only just begun. Whether

you choose to believe it or not, your liaison with DeVere has a most

significant bearing on your husband’s death.”

“If you will not leave on your own, I will have you removed.” Di-

ana crossed the room to the bell pull to summon a footman. “I refuse

to listen to another word of your poison.”

“Are you aware that DeVere holds the title to your estate? He
so

dislikes to lose anything unless by his own choice. And then the threat

of suit? That would surely have enraged him.

Diana’s hand froze. She
had
known, but she had given so little

thought to the matter with everything else, but now with Reggie’s

death, her thoughts reeled. Could DeVere have killed Reggie?

“DeVere is an utterly unpredictable and dangerous man who lets

nothing stands in his way when he wants something. Poor dear,” the

duchess said smugly. “I see the pieces are finally falling into place.

There are a number of things your lover has kept from you. Although

unparalleled in bed, he is not to be trusted at all.”

Chapter Thirteen

Finally alone with her thoughts, Diana considered what Caroline

had revealed. Although she knew the duchess to be jealous and vin-

dictive, Caroline seemed to know far too much about the circumstanc-

es surrounding Reggie’s death. Diana tried to dismiss her words, but

the facts remained. Reggie had gambled everything away. DeVere

held the deed to Palmerston Hall, yet had failed to tell her when she

came to him for help. Why had he kept this knowledge from her? It

was both galling and disconcerting.

Diana had looked to the race to solve her problems but now found

them only compounded. With Reggie’s death, she no longer had any

claim to the estate. It would either remain in DeVere’s hands or de-

volve onto Reggie’s nearest male relative
if
he was able to redeem it, or

it would end up in the Court of Chancery. In either case, Diana would

be homeless, and without the race winnings, near penniless with only

her meager jointure to subsist by.

Even more alarming was the fact that after threatening DeVere,

Reggie was dead. The duchess was right. Reggie would never have

assaulted Johnson under any circumstances. Someone didn’t want the

horse to run. Did Reggie perchance come upon the groom and his

assailant? Is that why he was murdered? Or was the race just meant

to deflect attention from the murderer’s true motive, which was not

related to the race at all? Who but DeVere would have reason to do

such a thing?

She recalled what Edward had revealed about his best friend,

namely that he followed his own code and suffered neither fools nor

blackguards. Reggie was surely a composite of both. And then the

duchess had pointed to the alarming enigma surrounding the condi-

tions of Ludovic’s DeVere’s own inheritance, that he had ruthlessly

usurped the title by locking his own father away.

Diana feared all paths pointed to DeVere. How could she have

indiscriminately placed her trust in such a man? Her mind tried rea-

son, yet her emotions would have no part of it. She still wanted him.

He had made her feel alive and beautiful and desired for the first time

in her life, and now she craved him like a drug. Diana looked to the

laudanum-laced tea to numb that same craving.

After having initially balked, she drank a few sips, knowing her

racing thoughts would never otherwise allow her any peace. Still, she

anticipated a restless night invaded by the kind of dreams she feared

would send her sleepwalking and fevered with lust to DeVere’s bed-

chamber. With that unsettling thought, she drank the rest of the cup

just for good measure.

***

He appeared to her in the darkest hours, his warm lips murmur-

ing against her skin. “You did not come to me.”

“I couldn’t. It would not have been decent,” she whispered.

His wicked mouth trailed over her neck, her breasts. “Then will

you turn me away?” His gaze was hypnotic, a flickering blue flame.

“You know I cannot,” she answered, opening her arms to him,

welcoming the only cure for the ceaseless ache.

He peeled back her night rail, giving his hot tongue access to the

valley between her breasts. “It was torture thinking of you in bed

alone and wanting, no,
needing
the feel of your body beneath mine,

engulfing myself in you as your sweet passage sheaths my cock. I

thought I would go mad.”

Diana thought she would also if he didn’t take her into his mouth.

Now.
With her fingers clenched in his silky hair, she urged him to a

swollen nipple. Yet the sultry heat of his mouth only stoked the flames

and made her burn all the hotter. She arched into him, craving the

abrasive feel of his flesh against her own. His hands found her gown.

One fierce jerk rent the offending garment, freeing her bounty for his

full ministration. He feasted on her lush mounds as if he were raven-

ous, kissing, biting, laving until she writhed beneath him in desperate

need. “Kiss me, Ludovic,” she cried.

He took her mouth with slow deliberation, their hot breaths min-

gling, and tongues tangling, stroking, and sucking in mimicry of sex.

The pungent scent of her own desire permeated her senses, feeding

the hunger. She explored his body with her hands, clutching his head,

his shoulders, his taut buttocks, reveling in the masculine texture, the

solid feel of him. The throbbing in her belly intensified. Her passage

clenched, and her damp thighs trembled as he parted her nether lips

and stroked a finger through her wetness.

She reached for his erection, craving the paradoxical velvety hard

feel of it. “Please, Ludovic. I want you,” she moaned.

“How?” he asked. “Tell me how you want me.”

She answered in a voice that was strangely thick. “I want you in

my hands. In my mouth. In my sex.”

His heart slammed

***

against his chest. She had answered his most

decadent wishes aloud, and the words flooded him with a dark and

delicious desire that caused his lustful fever to spike another hundred

degrees. He emitted a husky laugh. “You are a greedy one. But how

could I ever deny you that which I also yearn for?”

He wanted to fill her in every possible way and be overwhelmed

by the sights, scents, and sounds of simultaneous pleasure. He with-

drew his hand from between her thighs and stroked the same damp

finger over her mouth, watching in fascination as her tongue darted

out to taste her own salty essence. He licked away the rest and kissed

her again, slow and deep. “The taste of your arousal is the sweetest

nectar to me. It fills me with the urge to pound my cock into you and

never stop.”

He skated down over her breasts, capturing a nipple, hard and

pink, pulling it between his lips and then suckling. He guided her

onto her side, exploring her hips and belly with his hands and mouth.

He repositioned himself, as well, to face the foot of the bed feet, and

moved in a worshipful caress down her body until reaching her mons.

Shifting also to his side, he wrapped her thighs over his shoulders and

directed her head to his straining cock. “Now,” he said, his tongue

thick with excitement and expectancy. “I’m going to love you with

my mouth and drink in the proof of your passion even as you swal-

low my own.”

Shuddering at the sublime sensation of her lips enfolding him,

he dipped his head into her mound, giving a long, lascivious stroke,

parting her dewy folds with his tongue, licking and lapping her juices

while she teased and suckled the head of his cock. He blazed a trail

with his tongue to the tight slit of her sheath, following with his fin-

gers. He plunged them into her, and she bucked wildly against his

mouth while he worked the sensitive bud of her clit.

He wished he could immerse himself in her like this forever, but

their time was too bloody short. There was only one answer to what

faced them on the morrow, but he forced it from his mind, refusing

to think of anything beyond the mindless ecstasy of mutual gratifi-

cation and the explosive release already tightening his bollocks. Her

wetness, her taste, her sounds of pleasure muffled by his cock in her

mouth combined with the slick friction and sultry, sucking sounds

was insanely erotic and sublime. With her first racking shudders came

a powerful, vibrating moan from her mouth through his shaft…and

he was lost.

Diana heard Polly enter
***

her bedchamber with a clatter of metal—

her customary pot of chocolate on a silver tray, and Diana’s stom-

ach roiled. She opened her eyes, momentarily disoriented to time and

place. They felt bleary and heavy-lidded and her body unusually le-

thargic.

Laudanum.
She never should have taken it.

The dreams. The things she had envisaged—so vivid.
So wicked
.

Polly pulled back the bed curtains and regarded her, mouth

agape. “Your night rail, my lady! What happened?” She retrieved the

shredded cotton gown from the floor, and Diana felt heat steal into

her cheeks. It couldn’t have been real. It was only a dream. She must

have torn it herself. “It must have been the laudanum,” she said. “It

causes such terrifying dreams. I thought I was being strangled!” She

latched onto the nearest thing to the truth.

“My poor lady,” the maid cried. “Anyone would be afeared after

all what’s passed with Johnson and Lord Reggie. But mayhap it was

the pearls what made you feel strangled?”

“My pearls?” Diana’s hand flew to her throat and felt the warm,

smooth strands.
Dear God! It wasn’t a dream!
He
had
come to her in the night, and she had welcomed him into her bed like some wanton

whore.

“You found them at last, my lady? Peculiar you should have worn

them to bed.”

“I found them last night,” she lied once more. “I feared losing

them again. After all, they are the only jewels I have left. Forgive me,

Polly, I am much distracted and have not been myself since before

yesterday.”

“’Tis no wonder! It has, indeed, been a nightmare. I only wish

t’were over milady, but Sir John Gooding has need to speak wi’ ye.

He asked if you was settled right enough to answer some questions.”

“Yes, Polly. Pray convey that I will speak with him.”

“Aye, my lady.”

“Now if you will only help me to dress, we can hope to bring this

all to a swift conclusion. My only wish is to return ho—” The words

froze in her throat when she realized she no longer knew where home

was.

“You hav

***

e my heartfelt condolences, Baroness. Such a damnable

end.” Sir John shook his head and then flushed in embarrassed real-

ization of his double entendre. He cleared his throat and continued.

“Pray accept my pardon in advance for the indelicacy of this inquest,

but there are a number of unanswered questions before we can confi-

dently lay the matter to rest.” He helped himself to a glass of port. “I

shall try to make this entire ordeal as easy on you as possible.”

Diana clutched her handkerchief, but her eyes were remarkably