WidowsWickedWish (26 page)

She spun around and shot him a withering scowl. As he
watched two bright spots of color appeared on his wife’s otherwise pale cheeks.
Her eyes took on a fierce light, glittering silver, as she glared at him. The
strand of pearls shook as she sucked in a stuttering breath that pushed her
breasts up, up, up.

“There she is,” he said, hope and anticipation rushing
through him.

“There who is?” Belmont asked.

Olivia made a concerted effort to rein in her temper. Jack
could see it in the grimace that he supposed was meant to be a smile, in the
flare of her nostrils, in the trembling of her body as she expelled a soft,
hissing breath.

“Do you gentlemen know that my wife, Lady Bentley is
possessed of a remarkable temper?” he asked.

His question was met with laughter and denials all around.
Jack paid the gentlemen no mind, his attention focused on his wife whose mouth
had dropped open.

“Oh yes, quite remarkable,” he insisted. “She’s got quite a
mouth on her, my wife. I never know what’s going to come out of it.”

“If you gentlemen will excuse us.” Olivia dipped a quick
curtsy, her hands clenched in her skirts. “I believe Mr. Bentley has taken a
fever. He’s quite insensible.”

“Quite foxed more like,” the Duke of Ridgeway corrected in
his booming voice.

“Or what she might do with it,” Jack continued, ignoring her
attempt to smooth things over. He didn’t want smooth. He wanted bumpy and wild
and unpredictable. He wanted sassy and carnal and…

“Improper,” he said, undaunted by the sudden silence that
surrounded them. “Lady Bentley is an improper wife.”

“Jack,” Olivia warned as she took another step toward him,
her chin jutting in the air.

“She only pretends to be London’s Darling.” Jack matched her
step, took another and another until he was towering over her. “In truth she’s
a wicked woman with a penchant for carriage rides and tall towers. Sometimes
she even leaves off her—”

Olivia smacked a hand over his mouth, then added the other
just to make sure she’d silenced him. Her gloves were cool, just as they’d been
the night she’d seduced him senseless in her carriage.

She looked up at him with some unknown emotion shining in
her eyes and her forehead wrinkling.

Jack placed his hands on her waist, felt her shiver at the
touch.

“I am going to remove my hands,” she whispered so softly he
had to strain to hear her. “And when I do you will apologize to these
gentlemen. Then we are going to quickly and quietly remove ourselves from this
gathering before you make even more of an ass of yourself.”

With that she removed her hands, dropped into a flawless curtsy,
and without a word strode through the open doors and disappeared down the hall.

“My apologies, gentlemen,” Jack muttered, feeling like the
chastised boy he was.

“We’ve all been there,” the Duke of Ridgeway replied with a
grin that showed remarkably straight white teeth. “I can’t say as I ever
compared my duchess to a piece of fruit, though.”

“Actually that was me, Your Grace,” Belmont reminded his
grandfather before meeting Jack’s bleary gaze. “Please accept my sincerest
apology, Mr. Bentley.”

Jack nodded once.

“You’d best be after your lady,” the duke suggested. “Before
she goes running home to her mother.”

“Not bloody likely,” he replied before turning to follow in
his wife’s angry wake, a grin tugging at his lips.

“What were you thinking?” Olivia demanded the moment her
husband’s head cleared the door to their carriage.

“I wasn’t,” Jack admitted with a poor imitation of
contrition.

“How could you compare me to a peach?” she cried in
remembered mortification. “In front of half a dozen gentlemen no less?”

“You’re right,” he agreed as he settled onto the seat across
from her. “There is no comparison. You are infinitely sweeter.”

“Do not even attempt to turn me up…” she began before
realizing how ridiculous she would sound if she completed the thought.

“Sweet.” He flashed her with a boyish grin. “Ah, Livy, where
have you gone to?”

“I am right here,” she replied, leaning forward to wave her
hand in front of his face before falling back with a sigh. “Lord save me from
drunken idiots.”

“I seem to remember one night not so long ago when you were
deep in your cups,” he replied, tugging at his cravat. “In this carriage.”

“I hardly need a reminder,” she snapped.

“Don’t you?”

“I do not understand you,” she cried in frustration. “In one
night, in two minutes time, you have likely undone everything I have worked for
these last weeks. Lord Casterbury will share your comments with his wife who
will spread them about like jam on scones in every parlor she visits tomorrow.
By the end of the day everyone will know.”

“Know what?” Jack asked as he fumbled with the buttons on
his coat.

“That ours is not the love match I have taken such pains to
portray.”

“A love match?” he barked out around a rusty laugh.

Olivia looked away from the dark humor on her husband’s
face, from the sight of him shrugging out of his coat.

“Is that what you’ve told everyone? That the Countess of
Palmerton fell in love with a miner?”

“What would you have me tell them to explain our hasty
marriage?” she demanded as her tenuous control over her temper slipped. “That
our parents contracted the match? That I was left nearly penniless after
Palmerton’s death and married you to shore up my son’s estates?”

“You might tell them to mind their own business.” Jack
tossed his coat to the seat beside him. “Or how about the truth?”

“The truth?” she repeated, fisting her hands on the seat
beside her. “Why hadn’t I thought of that? When next I pay a call on the
Countess of Casterbury I shall simply tell her I was found on my knees with
your…your apparatus in my hand and your seed dribbling uselessly from the
corner of my mouth.”

Jack threw his head back and roared with laughter, his big
body shaking with it.

Olivia drew a ragged breath, held it while she attempted
with little success to rein in the rage that flowed through her veins.

It wasn’t enough he’d thrown her wanton behavior at her like
a sharp dart. He clearly found her and their entire marriage a great joke.

Needing something to do, some task to occupy her hands while
she tried to control the fury that roiled inside her, Olivia attacked the
buttons of her gloves, plucking at them so savagely two flew across the
carriage to land on the seat where Jack continued to shake with unrestrained
amusement.

Where had she gone wrong? She’d tried to be the proper wife
he wanted.

She pulled her left glove off and tossed it beside her.

She’d made Justine’s future her mission in life, pushing
everything else to the wayside, including her own children. From dawn until
dusk she strove to push the girl forward, calling in favors owed and placing
herself in debt to matrons who would expect favors in turn. She’d spent endless
hours drowning in idle chatter in every great house in Town.

And from dusk until dawn she’d attended one boring rout
after another, ensuring the Bentleys were invited to every entertainment of
importance and seen by every person of consequence. She’d allowed her feet to
be trampled upon and her breasts to be ogled by gentlemen who might, just might
invite her husband to join their club, to shoot their grouse, to join their box
at the theater.

Good God, she’d even invited a group of crass merchants to
Hastings House, to dine at the same table that had hosted peers, politicians
and even the prince regent on more than one occasion. She’d taken their wives
on a tour of the house, watched silently as one of them pocketed a small
miniature of Queen Elizabeth that was likely worth more than the two contracts
her husband had signed as a result of her endeavors.

And in return Jack watched her day in and day out with that
damn tic pulsing in his jaw, watched her as if only waiting for her to renege
on her part of their bargain. He hindered her at every turn, balking at
attending the theater to see the same play they’d seen the week before, refusing
to ride in the park at the fashionable hour, disappearing to the card room at
every ball they attended.

And finally tonight he drank himself stupid and insinuated
that she pleasured him with her mouth yet hadn’t a clue where his bed lay in
his too cramped, tacky house.

“I know where your bed is,” she growled low in her throat,
throwing her right glove to the floor between them.

“What?” he asked around the remnants of his mirth.

“You may have forgotten where my bed is, Mr. Bentley. But I
remember where yours is.”

“It hardly matters, does it? The results would be the same
whether in your bed or mine.”

Olivia lunged across the space that separated them, one hand
raised to smack the mocking smile from his chiseled face.

For all that her husband was three sheets to the wind, his
reflexes were unhindered.

Jack grabbed her wrist, his fingers curling around bare
skin, searing her flesh.

Not to be thwarted, she fisted her other hand and brought it
around in a clumsy arch aimed at his chin.

Jack ducked, her arm glancing uselessly off the top of his
head, and Olivia toppled onto his lap, her skirts twisting around her legs, her
shoulder hitting him square in the chest and her forehead landing with a soft
thud on his upper arm.

With a hiss of frustrated rage, she struggled to rise,
tugging against his grip on her wrist.

“Let go of me,” she snarled, throwing her head back in hopes
of connecting with his chin.

He dodged the blow with a chuckle. “Not a chance.”

Wrapping his arm around her waist he hauled her up and
twisted her until she was sprawled across his thighs, his hand splayed between
her shoulder blades, her stocking-clad legs draped over the carriage seat.

Again she pulled against the manacle of his fingers, the
movement setting her off balance so that she nearly fell off his lap. His arm
tightened around her, bringing her flush against his chest.

“Release me.”

“Do you promise to behave yourself if I do?” he drawled,
tucking her head against his shoulder.

“I do not,” she hissed, resisting the urge to lean in and bite
his neck. Hard.

“That’s my girl,” he answered and she could hear the smile
in his words, which only served to infuriate her further.

She bucked off his thighs, her feet scrambling uselessly on
the carriage door, and twisted about, trying to simultaneously wrench her wrist
from his grasp and shrug off the arm that was banded around her.

Jack grunted as her elbow made contact with his ribs and she
immediately subsided, her cheek falling to rest on his shoulder and her skirts
hiked up around her hips.

“You won’t injure me with your bony elbow,” he said around a
huff of breath.

Her heart was beating so hard she could barely hear his
words, but she suspected he was laughing at her again.

“I’d like to injure you,” she muttered.

“I know you would,” he agreed, his hand shifting to her
lower back.

“You deserve it.”

“That I do.”

“Fine, I’ll behave. Release me.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“You arrogant, infuriating brute!”

“Temper, temper,” he murmured, his lips pressed to her
forehead.

Olivia drew air into her lungs, striving to find a measure
of composure in the face of his obstinacy and her humiliation. When she felt
she could speak without shrieking like a madwoman she raised her head and
arched her back, putting just enough distance between them to evade his lips and
see his face.

She was not at all surprised to find him grinning at her,
the ridiculous man. She pulled forth the frostiest glare in her arsenal, one
that had sent debutants swooning and rakes running.

“Let me go, Mr. Bentley,” she demanded with all the
haughtiness bred into her through generations of countesses, duchesses and even
one queen.

Jack’s eyes drifted over her face, his grin slowly slipping
to a gentle smile before falling away altogether. He met her gaze, his blue
eyes as bright as the hottest flame.

“I’m afraid I cannot, love,” he said, his gravelly voice
sending a shiver down her spine.

“I am not your love,” she replied, fighting against the pull
of desire his words and his sinful voice brought forth. “Nor am I your girl.”

“You are my wife,” he answered.

“More’s the pity,” she replied without thinking.

Jack growled, his hand tightening on her back, pulling her
slowly to him. He released her wrist and clasped her jaw, tilting her head
back.

Olivia brought her hands to his chest, pushing with all her
might, knowing it was useless, knowing she was no match against his strength,
against his determination.

His mouth slammed onto hers with brutal force, his tongue
thrusting between her lips to be met with the barrier of her teeth.

He hissed out an angry breath and tightened his fingers on
her jaw, prying her teeth apart and driving his tongue deep within her mouth.

It wasn’t a kiss he forced on her. It was an invasion, a
breaching of her walls, a battle for domination.

Olivia couldn’t win in a battle of brute strength so she
chose weapons women had armed themselves with for thousands of years.

She relaxed in his hold, let her back curl under the
pressure of his hand, her shoulders droop and her hands to fall from his chest.
She loosened her jaw, opened her mouth wide and accepted his tongue.

Jack released her jaw and wrapped both arms around her,
pulling her tight against him as he angled his head, sealing their lips
together. Olivia did not fight him, she did not tense up, she did nothing to
avoid his marauding tongue.

She simply hung limp in his embrace, her hands dangling
beside her hips, and her mind filled with a bitter sorrow.

How had they come to this miserable pass? To the point where
they were armed with weapons and intent upon hurting one another?

Gradually Jack’s mouth upon hers gentled, losing the edge of
violence but none of the wildness. His tongue stroked over and beneath hers,
circling before thrusting deep. His hands swept over her back, pulling her
firmly against the hard wall of his chest, squeezing her breasts between them,
causing her nipples to harden beneath her stays and gown.

Unable to withstand the onslaught, Olivia sighed and lifted
her hands, needing something to cling to as desire overtook her.

Before she could wrap her arms around his neck, before she
could return his feverish kisses, Jack jerked his lips from hers, curled his
hands around her arms and pushed her back, nearly toppling her from his lap.

Olivia yelped in surprise, grappling for purchase, her
fingers circling his forearms.

“Holy mother of God,” he bellowed, his fingers flexing. “You
are the stubbornest woman I’ve ever encountered.”

“If that isn’t the black calling the kettle pot,” she
shouted back at him.

He barked out a laugh, his hands running up her arms to settle
gently on her shoulders. “You are driving me mad, you she-devil.”

“And stubbornest is not a word in the English language,” she
added for good measure.

“Enough,” he muttered. “We’re home.”

“We are?” she asked only just realizing the carriage had
come to a halt.

Jack lifted her from her precarious position on his knees
and deposited her in the opposite seat before sweeping her skirts down over her
legs.

“You can open the door!” he yelled out the carriage window.