Why Lords Lose Their Hearts (23 page)

“You shouldn’t have to live your life waiting for the next bad thing to happen, Perdita,” he said, kissing her. “And I brought you here because that is precisely what I wished to happen. That you would forget about that coward. I knew if there was one place in England where you’d be safe it would be here.”

She looked up into his eyes, took his face in her hands and stroked her thumbs over his cheeks. “You are such a dear man,” she said with a sad smile. “I wish that I could give as much to you as you’ve given to me.”

He leaned in and kissed her again. This time, more passionately. When they were both breathless, he pulled back and gave her a crooked smile. “You have. Don’t ever doubt it.”

“But I haven’t—” she began to say, but he put a finger over her lips.

“Hush,” he said. “Let us not discuss it now. I know how you feel. There is no need for apologies. I know.”

But she wasn’t sure he did. She was almost positive that she was very much in danger of falling in love with him. Or worse, that she already had. And knowing that, she felt doubly as unhappy about her need to marry elsewhere. She tried to tell herself that she was only worried about it because that was what her heart—her traitorous heart, which fell in love at the drop of a hat—wished her to feel. But she could not for the life of her think that Archer was hiding his real, cruel self behind a façade. It was impossible.

Even so, she let him silence her, and when he kissed her again, this time with a carnality that could mean only one thing, she let him lead her into an embrace that became more and more sensual by the minute.

When she pulled away to lead him to the bed, however, he shook his head and led her by the hand to stand before him, with their backs to the fire.

“What are you doing, you odd man?” she demanded, trying to turn in his arms.

“Not yet,” Archer said, slipping his hands down to grip her by the hips. “Look there.” He pointed with his head toward the wall before them. Perdita looked up to see that they were opposite a tall pier glass.

She looked at their reflection. His tall form, his arms, in bright white shirtsleeves, his dark hands gripping her through the lawn of her night rail. She watched appreciatively as his hair glinted gold in the firelight. She, herself, looked like a different woman altogether. Her hair cascaded in soft red-gold waves down over her shoulders. And with her eyes wide and her lips parted, she looked like a veritable wanton.

“Look at us together,” Archer said in a low, sensual voice. “Look at how well we fit.” As he spoke, he stroked his right hand up the curve of her hip, over the dip of her waist, and then up and over to take her breast—just visible through the fabric of her gown. “Watch me touch you, Perdita,” he whispered against her ear as he stroked his thumb over the tip of her dark nipple. It was as if she were looking at someone else. Some other man. Some other woman.

Immediately, she felt a jolt of warmth between her legs.

“Look at how your body responds to me,” he said, stroking a finger over her other breast as it hardened, as if he’d ordered it to do so on cue. “I’ll bet even now, your sweet crevice is readying itself for me. Is it, Perdita?”

Unable to form the words, she nodded, and saw the woman in the mirror nod, too. Behind her, she felt the stiffness of his own response pressing against her bottom. Unable to resist, she moved against him, and was pleased to hear him hiss in a breath.

“Naughty girl,” he said, stilling her movements with his hands. “You know just how to tease me, don’t you? I think that deserves a reward.” With a sharp tug, he began lifting her gown, gathering it in one hand, while he caressed her through it with the other. Once it had bared her legs and the triangle of red-gold at their juncture, he pulled her back against him again. She was tempted to move, but anticipating what was to come, she remained still for his hand, which she watched slide across her belly and down.

When he touched the center of her, Perdita all but purred. “Easy, now,” he said, his voice just a shade on the shaky side. “I’ll give you what you want.” He stroked a finger through the hot wetness at the heart of her. “There, is that it?” He stroked over and then into her and Perdita closed her eyes. “No,” he said in a firm voice, “don’t close your eyes. I want you to see us. See what I’m doing to you.” When she opened them, he kissed her ear and said, “This is us, Perdita. You with me. Archer. This is what we are together.” As he spoke, he stroked over her with his thumb while stroking into her with first one, then two fingers.

Unable to hold back, she began to move against his hand, faster and faster until she felt the earth shatter around her, and felt Archer mutter a curse and lower her to the carpet beneath them. Now, on her back, she opened her eyes to see him grip the neck of her night rail and tear it in one strong movement right down the middle.

“So much for that,” she said with a half-smile.

His face was dead serious, however. “I’ll buy you another,” he said, pulling off his shirt then shucking off his breeches and smalls in one quick move. Almost as quickly as he’d left her, she felt him return, only this time, skin to skin. And without preamble, he thrust into her.

Perdita had thought she was finished for the night, but as he stroked into her body, it spasmed, inch by inch around him. When he was fully seated within her, they both sighed with completion.

Archer pressed a swift kiss to her mouth. “This is going to be rather quick, I’m afraid.” With that, he pulled both of her knees up to her chest, and went even deeper before pulling back out and setting a steady pace of strokes. As he moved in, Perdita thrust her hips up and as he pulled back away, she tightened her inner muscles around him. “God, that’s good,” he muttered as they moved together, faster and faster until they reached a point where Perdita could no longer stop herself from crying out. As the crisis overtook her she heard Archer give a hoarse shout as he pulled out of her and spilled himself onto her belly.

He flung himself onto his back beside her as they both tried to catch their breath.

Once they’d come back to themselves, he used her ripped night rail to remove the traces of his release from her stomach. When he came back from disposing of the thing, she had removed to the bed, the covers open as she waited for him to climb in. “Why did you do that?” she asked as he slid in beside her and pulled her back to spoon in front of him.

She felt him exhale onto her neck. “It’s another method of preventing conception,” he explained. “Though there is a name they call those who practice it.”

Oh, dear, she thought. Probably something lewd or awful because those who practiced it were guilty of fornication. “What is it?” she asked, hating for him to say, though her curiosity was great.

“Parents,” he said wryly. “I am rather angry with myself for forgetting the French letter, again. But I find myself having to have you, and it becomes impossible to think of anything else but being inside you.”

Perdita turned in his arms. “I am sorry,” she said, kissing him softly.

“No,” Archer said almost angrily. “This is not any failing of yours. It’s mine. I should be taking precautions. I wish to marry you, but not because you have to.”

She tucked her head into the crook of his neck. “I shouldn’t think it is something we need worry about,” she said softly. “After all, I was married to Gervase for some years and we never had a child.”

“I like to think that was because God knows better than to give men like Gervase progeny,” Archer said darkly. “Though I know that’s a bit of wishful thinking on my part.”

“I don’t think the problem was his,” Perdita said not daring to look at him. “There was one time, when I did conceive, but not too long after I discovered it, he became angry about something. I can’t recall what it was. Just that he was rather more violent than he had been before and…”

She felt him tense against her. She hated this. Having to reveal how and in which ways her late husband had made her life a living torment. When would she and Archer be able to just be happy together? Except, a little voice warned her, she would never be able to just be happy with Archer. Not if she went through with her plan to marry elsewhere.

“He made you lose the child, didn’t he?” Archer asked tightly. “I swear to you, Perdita, if it were possible to bring a man out of hell and kill him again, I would do it.”

“I lost the child, yes,” she said flatly. “And something else went wrong. The physician said that it was possible I’d never conceive again. And of course, I never did, so he must have been correct.”

She felt Archer kiss her eyelids and then her mouth. It wasn’t a kiss of passion or lust, but one of comfort. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It does you no good for me to express anger against him all the time, does it?”

“Not really,” she said with a sigh. “But I do like knowing how protective you are about me. It makes me feel safe.”

He laughed shortly. “For all the good it’s done you. First I worked in the same house with you for years without even realizing that he was beating you, and now I’ve let this unnamed person threaten you and in general terrorize you. If I were a much better protector, you’d be dead.”

“Hush,” she said sharply. “Do not speak about yourself in that way. You are a darling man and you’ve worked yourself silly trying to see to it that whoever it is that’s threatening me is kept away. I call that a hero. And I don’t wish to hear one more time about how you didn’t know about Gervase. That was by his own design. He’d been cruel like that his entire life. He’d fooled everyone around him, except those he brutalized. Why should you have been any different?”

“Are you quite finished?” he asked, the surprise still there on his beautiful face.

“Yes,” she said meekly.

“Thank you for the defense,” he said with a wry smile. “I should quite like to hire you if I’m ever in the dock for murder.”

“I just feel … passionate about it, I suppose,” she said, laying her head down on his chest.

“Noted, my dear,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “Duly noted.”

Nineteen

Archer was awakened some time later by the sound of something very like pebbles hitting the window. When the noise sounded again, he eased away from Perdita, but she woke up anyway—as was the case with most women he’d known. Ladies seemed predisposed to light sleeping.

“What is it?” she asked, rubbing at her eyes and yawning. “Is something amiss?”

“I’m going to go find out,” he said, pulling on his breeches and stepping over to the window. “It looks as if there is a lit torch out there.”

The bedchamber faced the carefully designed wilderness of the gardens beyond the house, which included a folly resembling a Greek temple and an ornamental lake. Archer could remember house parties from when he was a boy, when it seemed like the whole of the estate was bathed in firelight. And for a moment, he felt the odd sensation of déjà vu, as if he’d been here looking out this same window before.

Once the window was open, however, he saw that he’d only been partially right about the light.

On the lawn below, two figures stood, one a young man, holding a torch.

He felt Perdita slip up beside him, into the circle of his arm. “Who is it?” she asked, watching the scene below. She shivered. Whether from the cold or from the eerie tableau Archer couldn’t tell. “One of your brothers?”

“It’s hard to tell,” he said, squinting. “Though the stature doesn’t look right. We’re all rather tall.”

“I know,” she said playfully. “I’ve noticed.”

“I don’t understand what this fellow is doing,” Archer said, his attention on the man below. There was something about him. Something familiar.

“Duchess Perdita,” the young man called, the torchlight reflecting on his face as if it were made of papier mâché like the puppets in a show Archer had seen as a boy. “Duchess Perdita, I have a message for you!”

At the mention of her name, Perdita stiffened, and Archer felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. The only messages she’d received of late had been of ill portent, and Archer suddenly wanted to shield her eyes from the sight below.

Before he could do anything, though, they watched horrified as the young man—whom he’d just realized was young Peter Gibbs, the simple-minded young lad who lived in the village with his grandmother—cried out, “See what you’ve made me do now!”

Then he touched the torch to the figure beside him.

“No!” Archer shouted, staring helplessly for a moment before his muscles could react. “Stay here,” he told Perdita, who nevertheless followed him as he raced out of her bedchamber and past his yawning brothers who stood in various stages of undress in the hallway.

In other circumstances, Archer might have been embarrassed to be caught coming out of Perdita’s room in his parents’ house, but all he could think was that he had to get outside. Whether to catch the man behind the display or to save the figure engulfed in flames, he couldn’t have said.

Finally, he reached doors leading from the ground floor hall into the garden beyond and raced through them.

But it was too late. He realized that as soon as he saw the form beside Peter dancing within the flames. Smelled the unmistakable stench of burning flesh.

“Did I do good, Lord Archer?” Peter asked, his eyes illuminated in the firelight. “I did just as mister said I should. Did I do good?”

Archer was at a loss for words, and was grateful when his father stepped forward, wearing breeches and a hastily donned shirt. “Aye, Peter. There’s a good lad. Come with me to the kitchens and we’ll see if cook has any biscuits for you.”

With the unknowing Peter off in search of a treat, Archer stared sightlessly at the flames. When Rhys and Frederick came forward and doused the flames with buckets of water from the fountain, he came to himself. “I should have thought of that,” he said woodenly.

“I rather think you were too shocked,” his mother said, draping a blanket over his shoulders. “Come, my dear, let’s go into the house and get you a strong drink.”

Wordlessly he followed her into the drawing room, where Perdita had lit the lamps and rung for tea. She was, he noticed, fully dressed in a morning gown, a shawl thrown over her shoulders. Putting two spoons of sugar into a cup she’d just poured, she handed it to him. “Drink this,” was all she said before giving up the pouring responsibility to his mother and sitting beside him. Her arm snaked around his back, with little regard for the way his brothers watched them.