“I didn’t give you pleasure,” he said dully. His pride still revolted at the humiliating truth of what he’d done.
“No, but I wanted to give you pleasure. I’m sorry you found the experience so repellent.” Her sarcasm didn’t hide her coruscating hurt.
“You’re mad. You made me come like a damned torrent,” he said flatly. “For God’s sake, Olivia, did you sleep through what just happened?”
Her face remained pale and furious. And unconvinced. “Then why did you sound so revolted? Why did you want to take back what we’d just done?”
He sighed with impatience. “Because you’re right—I’m a swine. I lost control. I’ve wanted you too long, too much, and too desperately. I was a brute.”
The resistance seeped from her long, slender body, and he gentled his clasp on her wrists. Under his fingers, her pulse hammered with crazy speed. Her breath still emerged in uneven gasps and her eyes glittered with fierce distress.
“I wanted to give you something, and you threw the gift back in my face. As if it was worth nothing.” Her voice broke and tears began to pour down her white face.
Erith cursed himself for a bloody blundering idiot. He’d done this to her. He’d made her cry. Him and his masculine stupidity and his unending, unquenchable desire. Bitter remorse rose like nausea to choke him.
She’d abhor crying in front of him. He knew without being told that she rarely if ever cried. There had been too much control in the woman he’d met at Montjoy’s for tears to be an easy outlet.
Generally he ran a mile from a crying woman. But the sight of Olivia overcome by misery hurt his soul in a way he didn’t understand. All he knew was that her pain was his pain. He felt upset and terrified and guilty and helpless and confused. He’d happily slice off his right arm if only she’d smile again.
Waiting with sour certainty for a protest, he slid his arms around her. She remained silent apart from her harsh sobbing. He drew her into his body and pressed her wet face to his chest as gently as he’d picked up his children when they were babies. Before his life crashed into ruin and he couldn’t bear tenderness any longer.
“It’s all right, Olivia,” he whispered. The same meaningless words of comfort he’d offered the infant Roma and William. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right,” she said in a thick voice, making a halfhearted attempt to break free.
Still holding her, he drew himself up until his back met the bed head. Ignoring her resistance, he tugged her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. He curved one hand across her bare back to support her and buried his other in her mane of hair. Murmuring reassurance, he tightened his grip.
“I’m acting like a fool,” she choked out, her voice muffled against him.
“Everyone’s a fool, Olivia,” he said gently. “Sometime or other.”
Her hands formed trembling fists against his chest. “I never cry.”
“I can see that.”
She gave a watery laugh then followed it with more tears. He was painfully aware of her nakedness. With every sob, her breasts grazed his chest. He spread his hands over her bare skin. Her long legs splayed across his. It would be so easy to tip her down and take her again.
He already knew she wouldn’t say no.
And it would break his heart to thrust into that beautiful, passive body. Break his heart even as his animal self growled with ultimate pleasure.
He was indeed a swine.
He rested his chin on her disheveled mass of tawny hair. She fitted perfectly against him. She had fit perfectly lying under him too. Most women had trouble with his size but she’d taken him as if born for him. And she’d responded, at least before he’d pushed her onto her back. He couldn’t be mistaken that for a fleeting moment, she’d been as lost to blind pleasure as he was.
Erith stared into the shadowy room and felt a tiny bud of optimism shoot from his tumultuous regret. With patience and care he could make her respond again. He could feed that spark and turn it into a conflagration that would transform her world.
At first her lack of response had been a challenge. Now, awakening her sensual self had become an all-consuming quest. She’d lost so much in her life, and tragically, most of the damage was irreparable. But this was something he could restore to her. And perhaps in the process find his own salvation.
The fire in the grate had burned down from its welcoming blaze, and the guttering candles only provided dim light. He should get up and replenish the hearth. But he couldn’t bear to relinquish his hold on her. She’d fallen quiet in his arms. No more difficult, heartbreaking tears. He sensed a weary peace in her now that the storm of weeping had passed.
And the problem that had nagged him since he’d taken her became paramount. He was grimly aware that what he said now would inevitably shatter this uneasy harmony between them.
“Olivia, I didn’t withdraw.”
He waited for a return of her anger. But her voice emerged toneless and scratchy with tears. “It’s not important.”
Puzzled, he angled his head to see her expression. Surely she knew what he meant. “I didn’t use a sheath. You didn’t use your unguent. Basically, I fucked you from here to Sunday. The consequences could be disastrous.”
Except his heart didn’t feel it was a disaster.
Good God, was he going mad? What did a man of nearly forty want with a pregnant mistress? He’d been a less than exemplary father to the children he had.
Her voice rang with bitter certainty. “Don’t worry. I won’t have a baby.”
“You don’t know that.”
She frowned and ineffectually tried to pull away. “Yes, I do.” Her voice firmed, became more familiar. But the tearstains on her cheeks belied her defiance. “I won’t present you with a bastard in nine months. You can leave without a care.”
Sadly, he already knew that would be far from the truth, whether she was pregnant or not.
Under her prickly response, he read a deep distress. A distress separate from any unhappiness he’d caused her tonight. A distress too deep for tears. “How can you be so sure?”
“I just am.”
With a shock he realized something that should have been clear much earlier. He could only blame his slowness on the spin this woman had put him in. “Is Leo your only child?”
“No, I’ve got offspring littered from John O’Groats to Land’s End,” she said sarcastically. She tried again to move but he trapped her in an uncompromising grip.
“Tell me about Leo.”
“Damn you, Erith!” Her eyes flared with temper.
“Tell me.”
Her mouth settled in a line of displeasure and her jaw took on a square set. Odd how each feature was almost masculine yet the whole combined into something utterly womanly and beguiling.
She spoke quickly and with a grim edge that indicated she only answered under extreme sufferance. “I’m not built for childbearing.”
With sharp force, she tugged away and slid off the bed. This time he made no attempt to stop her. Instead his mind processed the implications of that short, stark statement. She stalked across to the armoire, her hair tumbling down her back in untidy glory. She moved like a proud young horse. All long legs and straight back and easy elegant motion.
“There have been no more pregnancies?”
“You give me no peace!” With an angry flourish, she flung the armoire open. She ripped out the scarlet silk robe, which to his regret she flung around herself. With furious emphasis, she tied the belt at her narrow waist. She snatched out another robe and threw it in his direction. It hit the side of the bed and slithered to the floor.
His lips curved in a derisive smile as he pushed himself farther up against the heaped pillows. “Covering me up won’t stop the questions.”
She glared at him. Then her gaze flickered and fixed on his chest. Her inspection continued down to where his cock showed unmistakable signs of interest. She straightened abruptly as if awakening from a dream. “Stop
flaunting yourself. You’ll frighten the housemaids.”
“Do you find my body attractive?” he asked in genuine astonishment. And with genuine interest.
“Lord, but you’re a vain peacock, Erith.” Surprisingly, her clear olive skin darkened with a blush, and for an instant she looked vulnerable and young. This was the Olivia who tugged at his heart. The woman who’d had all innocence and joy stolen from her yet summoned the courage to triumph.
He laughed softly. “Which means yes.”
She cast him a dismissive glance, although her full mouth trembled on the brink of a smile. “You have no need to cadge for compliments.”
“For your compliments, I do, Olivia.” He bent down to snag the black silk robe and shrug it over his shoulders. He left it loose. He rather liked the idea of his bare skin tormenting her. After all, her bare skin tormented him.
“Then yes, on a visual level you appeal to me.” She spoke as precisely as an apothecary measuring some dusty drug into a jar.
Erith gave a short bark of laughter. “Thank you.” He took a risk that shouldn’t have been a risk and extended his hand to her.
She glanced at his hand then into his face. Uncertainty danced in her topaz eyes. She made a fine show of overcoming the harrowing emotion that had reduced her to tears. But he knew that beneath her dry humor she was brittle as overheated glass.
Aching compassion rang in his voice as he said softly, “Come and sit with me.”
As if unsure whether to stay or run, she accepted his hand and perched gingerly beside him. He wanted her more than he’d wanted any woman. But what made him tremble like a young boy with his first love was what he felt when he was with her.
He felt hope.
Tenderly he tucked her under his arm and drew her close into his body. To his surprised satisfaction, she didn’t demur. She was warm curled up in his arms and smelled of sex and sleepy woman. The delicious scent seeped into his bones.
For a long time they maintained a strangely comfortable silence. The rain was a steady downpour, and the sound provided a pleasant backdrop to his sweet languor. His body was heavy with postcoital satisfaction. Whatever pangs his conscience suffered, his body had luxuriated in that explosive release.
“You looked ready to kill me when you thought I threatened your chick,” he said eventually. She sprawled against him but he knew she wasn’t asleep.
“Who’s taller than I am and not far off going to Oxford.”
He couldn’t stem a twinge of jealousy. There was such love in her voice. He knew she smiled as she spoke. That lovely soft smile he’d only seen once or twice, and never for him. Damn it.
“I felt like that when I saw Roma and William for the first time after so many years. Roma’s eighteen and marrying in June. William’s nineteen and up at Oxford.”
Their sons would soon move in the same milieu. Might even become friends. The idea was disturbing. As though his two worlds weren’t as separate as he imagined. As though the barrier he’d always believed impassable was in fact as fragile as the ruby Venetian glass vase on the mahogany chest.
“Tell me what happened when you had Leo.”
He felt rather than heard her sigh. “You won’t leave this alone, will you?”
A faint smile stretched his lips. “No.”
“I was too young and he was too big and I almost died.” She spoke quickly, as though she could hardly bear to say the words. “I’ve never conceived since. Even if I did, I doubt I’d carry a child to term. If Lord Farnsworth hadn’t paid for the best doctors, nothing would have saved me. I shouldn’t have lived. Leo shouldn’t have lived.”
Her pain and bravery gashed his heart. “Oh, Olivia,” he murmured, and held her closer.
“It’s a blessing for a courtesan to be barren.”
“No, it’s not.”
“No, it’s not.” She sounded tragically sad. When she looked up at him, anguish swam in her tawny eyes. “It’s a convenience. But it’s not a blessing.”
He tried to imagine what her life had been like when she had Leo. So young, and with a baby to care for. “What happened then?”
“Lord Farnsworth had no further use for a child who’d turned into a mother.” A world of weary rancor soured her tone.
“You can’t have regretted that.”
“I regretted losing the only home I had. I regretted leaving Perry and having to give up my child.”
His hold tightened on her while the vain urge to kill her first keeper ran like acid through his veins. Too late, damn it. “Farnsworth didn’t cast you out on the streets?”
“No, he sold me to one of his friends.” Her voice was flat, almost unemotional.
How the hell had she borne it? How had she emerged as the wonderful woman he knew? A young girl, sold as a commodity by a gambling-crazed brother to a man whose name was a byword for vice. Then discarded like a worn-out shoe when she was no longer of interest to her vicious keeper.
Erith had trouble speaking past the horror that jammed his throat. If there was any justice, that bastard Farnsworth would roast in the hottest corner of hell for eternity. “Dear heaven, Olivia, that’s barbarous.”
“I survived.” Her voice was flat.
He began to get an inkling of where her bone-deep pride originated. Pride was all she’d had to sustain her through the long nightmare.
“Farnsworth didn’t want Leo?”
She gave a scornful laugh that held no genuine amusement. “Thank God, he didn’t. Farnsworth abused his children as well as his lovers. He was crueler to Perry than he ever was to me. He thought torture would turn Perry into a man. I gave Leo to my cousin Mary. She and Charles had no family, and he took up a new living at the other end of the country. Nobody needed to know the baby wasn’t theirs.”
“Including Leo.”
She lurched back on her knees, her eyes huge in her pale face. At that moment he had no difficulty picturing her as a vulnerable child forced to surrender her innocence to a foul old man. The repellent idea made his gorge rise.
“He can never know. Mary and Charles have loved him and educated him and brought him up to be a son I’m so proud of. Even if I’ll never be a mother he can be proud of.”
He spoke with utter sincerity. “You underestimate him. And yourself. You’re a woman anyone would be privileged to claim.”
Even a lost, hardened miscreant like the Earl of Erith.
Chapter 15
Olivia flinched as if he’d struck her. “Stop it,” she said sharply.
Erith frowned, not understanding. “Stop what?”
“This.” Her left hand performed a chopping gesture as if cutting the intimacy that slowly, surely curled around them like a spider’s silk around a trapped fly. “This…this attempt to understand. This attempt to get close.”
He sighed and leaned back against the bed head. Under the temper, she was frightened. After the horrors she’d been through, fear must be a constant companion.
“I can’t help it,” he said with complete honesty. She fascinated him. Every moment he spent with her brought him more deeply under her spell. He’d never known a woman like her.
Where would his bewitchment lead? To disaster or joy? Already the idea of saying good-bye in July made his gut clench in anguished denial.
“Good God, Erith, I thought I was taking on the big, bad terror of Vienna.” She surged to her feet and glared down at him. “What about the infamous womanizer? The man who tupped half a dozen trollops before his breakfast eggs every morning?”
Her disgust was so vehement that he burst out laughing. “I hope for the sake of their enjoyment that it was a late breakfast!”
No glimmer of amusement lightened her expression. Her brows lowered. She looked like a furious goddess. Beautiful beyond imagination. He clenched his hands at his sides to stop himself reaching for her.
Devil take it, he needed to get a grip on reality before his endless hunger for this woman drew him into doing something utterly reckless.
Something that put his family forever beyond his reach.
“I’m not trying to be funny, Erith.”
His humor evaporated in an instant. “I know you’re not. You’re not trying to insult me either, even if that’s the end result. I know what the bloody gossips say. Can’t you make up your own mind?”
She ignored his last question. “I asked Perry about you before I accepted your suit.”
“And of course Lord Peregrine is an expert on my life and habits,” he said tersely.
“He told me what he’d heard.”
“A lot of damned poppycock.”
“Do you deny you’ve killed men in duels?”
Old shame clenched his gut. Those men shouldn’t have died. “Good God, that was nearly twenty years ago. When I didn’t care if I lived into tomorrow. And I didn’t care if anyone else did either.”
It was the first time he’d admitted that, although he’d known it was true even as he accepted the challenges. Each matter of honor had concerned a woman. He remembered that much even if he couldn’t remember the actual women.
The bristling tension drained from her willowy form. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” He paused. “Don’t you want to know why I felt like that?”
“No.” She took a step back as if he physically threatened her, although he hadn’t moved. She bumped into the mahogany chest of drawers behind her.
“No?”
“You’re not the only one with eyes in your head, Erith.” She cast him an irritated glance under the thick fringe of dark gold lashes. But her voice, when she spoke, was grave. “You loved your wife, and her death left you devastated.”
The stark words fell between them like pebbles thrown over a cliff. Each sharp ping as they landed made him wince.
“How did you know?” he asked quietly after the silence had stretched into tension.
“I guessed. And when I did, so much made sense. The man I’d heard about didn’t match the man I started to know. You have a reputation as cold and heartless. Yet…” She looked toward the curtained window as if seeking inspiration. Then she turned back to him, her lovely face even more somber. “Yet you’ve been anything but heartless with me.”
Tempt the Devil Page 16