“I’m not sure it matters now.” And truly, it didn’t. She loved Heath. She always would. It seemed she certainly had a knack for loving men whose hearts belonged to another.
“Lady Evelyn came to me because she was carrying another’s child,” he said baldly.
His revelation shocked her so badly that her tea spilled onto the saucer and her silk skirts. She paid it no heed. “But you told me the babe was yours.”
“I lied to you. The child belonged to my brother.”
His younger brother had died suddenly after a hunting accident. Tia hadn’t known him terribly well, but he’d been known as quite the rascal. Suddenly, it all began to make sense. “She came to you when he died?”
“Yes.” He deposited his tea on the tray spread before them, no longer pretending to indulge. “I didn’t want the child to be born a bastard. I felt I owed it to my brother to do our family’s duty by Lady Evelyn and the babe both.”
An awful clarity overtook her as she recalled the day he’d met with her to tell her he was wedding Lady Evelyn. She’d been so shocked by his abrupt change that she hadn’t noticed how somber he’d been. How distressed. How his smile when he’d proclaimed his feelings for Lady Evelyn had been fragile at best, insincere at most. She could see it now, without the cloud of hurt that had enveloped her then.
“You didn’t love her,” she said quietly, the realization hitting her. She wondered for the briefest of moments what she would have done, how she would have reacted, if she had known the truth then. Would she have begged him to stay with her? Run off to become his mistress? She supposed she’d never know, and in the end, that was a good thing indeed. For she hadn’t belonged with Denbigh. She hoped that she belonged with Heath, but after the way they’d left things, she couldn’t be certain any longer.
“I never loved my wife, Tia,” he told her, his tone equally soft. “Now that she is gone, I’m free to tell you the truth at last.”
“You’re a bit late in your confession.” She thought then of her miserable marriage to Lord Stokey. “I wed Lord Stokey because of you.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry for that.”
“I’m afraid an apology doesn’t quite erase it all.” She too deposited her teacup before her. “Why didn’t you simply tell me the truth when it would have made a difference?”
“It wouldn’t have done you any good. You would have wanted to follow me, and I couldn’t bear for you to ruin your life for me.”
Of course she knew he was right. She would have made quite a cake of herself, chasing after the grand love she’d thought they’d shared. But there remained a very salient question he’d yet to answer. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“You’ve arrived in good time, old boy,” Bingley, one of Tia’s three brothers, said cheerfully, thumping Heath on the back.
The Harringtons were an eccentric lot, he was discovering. He’d been greeted upon his arrival at Harrington House not by a butler or even a footman but by Tia’s evidently inebriated sibling. He was dressed as if prepared to go riding, but he held a half-empty glass of whiskey in his hand. Apparently, he hadn’t made it that far from the bottle.
Heath raised a brow, bemused by the younger man’s air of familiarity. He’d known Tia had three brothers—indeed, he was familiar with Lord Adrian Harrington, who was of an age with him as the eldest Harrington son. But Adrian was rather subdued compared to the raucous young fellow before him. “Oh?”
“We’ve a housheguesht,” Bingley elaborated, taking another swig of his whiskey. Before frowning and making another attempt at the word. “Er, houseguest.”
A houseguest? Heath prayed it wasn’t who he thought it was, that his wife had not come to Harrington House for an assignation with the blasted Earl of Denbigh. “Who might that be?” he asked, surprised at how calm his voice sounded, belying the rage and dread swirling in his gut.
“Why the Earl of Denbigh, of course,” Tia’s unwitting brother enlightened him. “He’s only jusht arrived.”
“Where the devil is he?” Heath bit out. He was going to thrash the bastard.
“I say, not a friend of his, are you?”
Heath had rather endured all he could of inebriated, foppish younger brothers. He caught Bingley by the shirt. “Where?” he demanded.
“Taking tea in the drawing room,” Bingley choked out. “With my sister.”
The hell he was. Heath released his brother-in-law and turned on his heel, not even bothering to offer an explanation. It was time he interrupted his wife’s tête-à-tête with her past.
Denbigh stood, coming to Tia and dropping to his knees, taking her hands in his. “My feelings for you remain the same. I know you’ve married Devonshire, but I was hoping we might renew our acquaintance.”
Dear heavens. He wanted to become lovers. She stared at him, thinking that several months ago, she would have thrown herself into his arms. Marriages in the ton, after all, were built on alliances and not on love. Dalliances were commonplace as long as they were conducted in secret.
“Denbigh,” she began, not knowing what to say. Her emotions roiled within her, a wild tumult. “I’m in love with my husband.”
His grip on her tightened. “Have you no tender feelings for me?”
She thought she understood him then. He was a man who had lived for nine years with a wife he hadn’t loved. He’d been trapped by his own sense of duty. And now, he was finally free. But she wasn’t. “I cared for you then,” she admitted softly. “I care for you now. As a friend.”
He brought her hands to his lips again before rising. “I understand. I daresay it was too much to hope for. It would seem I’m too late.”
“Yes.” She stood as well, opening her arms to him for one last embrace. He accepted it, catching her against him, and it took her back, just for a breath, to a chapter that would now be forever closed. “Thank you for telling me. I’m glad to know you weren’t the awful cad I’ve always thought.”
Before he could respond, the door to the drawing room burst open. Tia started, peering around the earl’s shoulder to see which of her brothers had dared to intrude upon her privacy. Likely it was Bingley. He’d been in his cups for two days solid, the blighter. There’d been some sort of contretemps with an opera singer, according to Helen.
But it wasn’t one of her brothers.
It was her husband, and his blue gaze met hers. Disbelief settled over his features before his face became carefully blank. “Lord Denbigh,” he said grimly, “may I ask why you’re holding my wife in your arms?”
She disengaged herself hurriedly, aware of how the tableau must present itself. She was sure she appeared horribly guilty. “Heath,” she said, starting toward him. “Denbigh and I were having tea, and we were just now saying goodbye.”
“It’s good that you’ve exchanged your farewells,” he returned, looking past her to the earl, “for now I’m afraid I’m going to have to thrash him to within an inch of his life.”
“No.” She took hold of his arm, thinking she might restrain him. Images of him and Denbigh bruised and bloodied rose to her mind. “We were embracing. Nothing more.”
“You’re right to want to thrash me,” Denbigh said, stalking toward them. “I came here in the hopes of making your wife my mistress.”
A low, primal sound emerged from Heath’s throat. He shrugged Tia away and started for Denbigh, fists clenched and ready to pummel. He swung, his fist connecting with the earl’s jaw.
“I deserved that one,” Denbigh said, rubbing the reddening skin of his chin. “But not another. She wouldn’t have me, Devonshire. She’s in love with you.”
“Yes,” Heath scoffed. “And that’s why she ran to you the moment you sent her a bloody letter.”
Dear heavens. He’d found the letter. Tia had quite forgotten about it after tucking it away in the book Bella had sent her. “I didn’t run to see him,” she defended. “You pushed me away after I sent your paintings to the Grosvenor Gallery. I neede
d some time.”
“Time during which you plotted to meet your old lover.” His voice was cold.
“There was no plotting, you dullard,” Denbigh said, unwisely drawing Heath’s attention back to him. “I heard she was in the country from her brother and I asked if I might pay her a visit. She merely acquiesced.”
Tia took the opportunity to throw herself between the two warring men, staring up into the face of her irate husband as she braced her palms on his chest. “Please, Heath,” she pleaded. “Your quarrel is not with the earl. It’s with me.”
He stared down at her, fury swirling in the depths of his eyes. “From what little I’ve seen, it would appear that my quarrel is with the both of you.”
“Please,” she said again, not wanting any more violence on her account. “You mistook what you saw when you entered the room. None of this is as it seems.”
“You told me you wished to visit your sister,” he said, his tone accusatory. “You lied, damn you. How could you?”
“I didn’t lie.” Tears of desperation pricked at her eyes. She had been wrong in leaving him, she realized now. Far from making the chasm between them bridgeable, it had only served to make it wider. Perhaps unsurpassable. “You must believe me.”
“This is a dialogue best reserved to husband and wife,” Denbigh intoned behind her. “I’ll take my leave of you both.”
Tia didn’t bother to watch him leave. She knew he was gone the moment the door clicked closed. There would have been a time in her life when nothing would have stopped her from following. But now, the man she loved stood before her, and he was all that mattered.
“What Denbigh said is the truth,” she said quietly. “He and I are not lovers. I didn’t run away from you to meet him here. I merely thought that some time and distance between us would give us both a new perspective. You were so angry with me, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“He is the man you loved, isn’t he?” Heath demanded. “The man you spoke of that day in the yellow drawing room at Penworth. It was Denbigh, wasn’t it?”
Part of her wanted to deny it, but the rational part of her mind knew that subterfuge would only lead to further ruin. “Yes,” she whispered. “It was him.”
His jaw tightened. “Tell me again that what transpired between you and him today was innocent.”
“It was.”
“I wish to God I could believe you.”
The raw bitterness in his tone struck her as cleanly as any slap could. He stood so stiff and so still, holding himself apart from her. The gap between them was indicative of so much. She wanted it gone. She wanted to touch him, to soften him. To remind him of what they shared. To bring him back to her.
She brushed her fingers over his whiskers, noting that they were long, not neatly trimmed as he usually wore them. Perhaps he too had suffered in their time apart. “You must believe me,” she said, refusing to allow him to break her gaze. “I hold no love in my heart for Denbigh. Indeed, I begin to think I never did. It was a mere girlish infatuation that became so much larger for my imaginings than it ever could have been. I’m not meant for him, nor he for me.”
“Then why did you agree to meet with him here?” he asked, his voice harsh, his expression grim and unyielding.
Why had she? Oh, it seemed such a foolish whim now. Not at all worthy of the trouble seeing Denbigh had caused. Knowing the truth was a small solace. Alienating Heath was an insurmountable obstacle. “He wanted to tell me the truth of why he threw me over all those years ago,” she admitted softly. “I was curious to hear it. I certainly had no intention of beginning where we left things off. You are my husband, not he.”
“And yet you ran from me, Tia. The first sight I have of you in days is you wrapped in another man’s arms. What am I to think, damn you?”
He was still angry. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. The tableau upon which he’d intruded had been suspicious indeed. If she had been in his place, and she had walked in upon Heath embracing Bess, she would have been jade-green with jealousy. She was already jealous enough of her predecessor without ever having even met the woman.
“Please, Heath,” she tried again. “It was as Denbigh said. He came here hoping to rekindle what we once shared, but I let him know that the time for such a thing was long past. We were saying goodbye. That is all.”
“I’ll not share you with him,” he vowed, his voice vehement. His hands clamped onto her waist in a possessive grip. “Do not ask it of me.”
How ironic that he could not bear to share her with another man when Tia had been forced to share him with Bess’s memory from the start. She longed to point out the disparity to him, but with his emotions so ragged after what he’d just thought he’d witnessed, she didn’t dare.
“I would never ask that of you, Heath. I’m yours.” She caressed his jaw, eager to touch him now that he was back in her life. The last few days had been interminable. She had missed him so very much.
He crushed her against him, his mouth swooping perilously near to hers. “Say it again.”
She knew instinctively what he wanted to hear. And it was true. There was no sense in denying him. He had her heart as surely as if he held it in his hands. “I’m yours.”
“You’re goddamn right you are.”
And then his lips crushed hers. At first, the kiss was punishing, but it quickly changed. His tongue slid inside to claim, and her knees nearly went weak. Suddenly, need coursed through her. She wanted him with a desperation that all but swallowed her whole. This was where she belonged.
He dragged his mouth from hers and down her throat, devouring her. His palms skimmed upward from her waist, cupping her breasts through the thick barrier of her garments and corset. Her nipples hardened instantly, pebbling against her chemise as he pressed against her. A moan escaped her. She longed for him to touch her everywhere, to take her right there in the drawing room.
“Tia,” he murmured against her skin, licking the frantically beating pulse at the hollow of her neck. “I need you so damn badly.”
An echoing hunger unfurled within her, moisture pooling between her legs, her sex aching for him, for his touch. But reason reminded her that they were, after all, in her father’s drawing room. Anyone could happen over the threshold at any moment, creating all manner of scandal. “Someone could walk in,” she reminded him breathlessly as he caught the line of buttons decorating the bodice of her tea gown and ripped without mercy.
Oh dear. Her bodice hung open in two shreds. Her husband’s eyes roamed over the skin he’d revealed. “I don’t give a damn.”
Tia knew she should be shocked. She should be horrified, really, to be in dishabille and cavorting with a man—husband or no—in the drawing room in which she’d grown up. Her brothers could intrude. Her sisters could intrude. A maid. The butler. Anyone. And yet, the desire between them was almost palpable, hot and heavy. Somehow, the notion of letting him take her right there in the middle of the day, of doing the forbidden, made her yearning increase tenfold.
She shrugged out of the sleeves of her gown and turned for him to loosen her corset. He nipped at first her neck, then her earlobe, sending a wicked shiver through her. His anger had burned into a roaring, raging fire of passion instead. Her laces came undone, and she opened her corset cover and undid all the closures she could reach. He spun her back around and peeled her chemise, the final barrier, down to her waist. When his mouth closed over a nipple, she arched into him, need blazing through her like a bolt of lightning cutting through the sky. As he sucked the other nipple, tugging at it with his teeth, his hands fisted in her silken skirts, raising them to her waist.
His trouser-covered leg pushed hers apart. Through the slit in her drawers, she could feel the fine fabric encasing his strong thigh directly against her. She arched, the delicious friction teasing her already swollen folds. Everything fell away but the man before her, the desire to become one. Their argument was forgotten. Their pasts ceased to matter. She rocked against him, wanti
ng more.
“Heath.” His name left her lips, half plea, half moan.
He flicked his tongue over one exquisitely sensitive nipple while rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger and pinching. “Tell me who you want, Tia. Tell me.”
She was worked into such a frenzy that she scarcely could manage a coherent thought. “You.”
Heath caught her up in his arms and hauled her against the nearest wall, trapping her so that she was suspended above the floor. With one hand, he untied the tapes that held her bustle in place. He shifted her just enough so that it fell away, no longer pressing uncomfortably into her bottom. His other hand sought out the slick flesh revealed by the slit in her drawers.
“My God,” he said on a groan. “You’re so wet for me.” He worked the tender button of her sex, exerting just enough pressure to make her mad. “Do you want me?”
“Yes.” He slipped a finger into her passage and she moaned, her head lolling back against the papered wall. “Please, yes.”
She found the fastening of his trousers and undid it, releasing his rigid length into her hand. Tia gripped him, thinking about the way he would feel in just a moment, buried to the hilt. “Now, Heath,” she demanded, unable to wait any longer.
In the next breath, he thrust into her, ramming home. She cried out, nearly finding her release. He kissed her as if he were ravenous for her, simultaneously driving deep and then withdrawing, only to sink inside her once more. Tia tried to hold onto her control, to stave off the wild unraveling that threatened to overtake her. But she was no match for the wicked sensation of her husband just where she wanted him. He pushed within her again, with so much force that her head hit the wall, but she didn’t mind. This time, she exploded, tightening on him, glorious pleasure whirling through her. Heath sank into her one more time, kissing her again, the sweet pulse of his seed mingling with the subsiding waves of her climax.
He tore his lips from hers, staring down at her with that intense blue stare. “You’re coming home with me tonight, Tia.”
Her wits were still befuddled by what they’d just shared. Indeed, she felt quite certain that were he to release her, she’d crumple into a puddle of ripped silk at his feet. “Tonight?” she repeated, trying to reawaken the rational portion of her brain.
Heart’s Temptation Books 1–3 Page 75