“No one will notice.”
“I have friends attending who certainly will. Some of them don’t believe my husband even exists.”
He pretended to understand, nodding in sympathy as she complained about the ruinous wrinkles he would put in her gown, about how long it would take to appear presentable again. Her hair lay in a braided knot upon her nape. Hypocrite that he was, he thought only of disarraying it, of how sensuous that heavy silk had felt against his groin.
Suddenly he needed air. No, no. He needed her, trusting again and uninhibited.
He needed not only to reassert his presence in her life, but to reassure her he would honor his vows.
He had always loved her.
He hadn’t always acted as though he did.
And as a man he knew that sexual capitulation didn’t necessarily mean commitment.
What a challenge this was.
“We are not going to the opera,” he said firmly. He pulled her down, between his legs, onto the bed.
She rolled onto one side, barely within his reach. Her elbow pressed into his lower back, an old injury that still ached.
“Yes, we are. I want to,” she added with a winsome smile clearly intended to persuade him. Which only strengthened his plans to amend the evening’s entertainment.
“I can’t go to the opera in this condition.”
She glanced down at the bulge in his trousers. “My goodness, Sebastien. Absence has certainly made your male parts grow stronger.”
He laughed.
“I don’t want to be a stranger anymore. Just your husband again.”
“Perhaps I want to go tonight to show you off,” she whispered.
“And I want to stay home to keep you to myself.” He pulled her back against him, lowering his head, and said, seconds before he kissed her, “I want you.”
And what a Boscastle wanted, he always got. Eleanor had overheard a governess at a dance sharing that caution to another lady many years ago in London. The lady had not appeared to listen. Nor, unfortunately, had Eleanor.
She was a Boscastle now herself, if only in name. An equal in passion, she would have dearly loved to rip off his muslin drawers and bend him to her will. He deserved it. And so did she. She could draw out her terms a little later. For now she demanded pleasure and lost herself with unabashed enthusiasm in his delicious kisses.
“Eleanor,” he said, and she heard the faint shearing of fabric through her dazed thoughts.
“My gown!” she cried as his warm hands forged upward beneath her silk overskirt.
“It’s not your gown,” he said soothingly. “It was my smalls.”
His smalls. She felt laughter form deep inside her, like the bubbles of a hidden brook. “Oh, Sebastien. You are—”
“What am I?” he asked, grinning.
He was fire and darkness. Her soul’s desire. “You’re my estranged husband.”
His breath chased a shiver down her neck. “Trust me?”
“Not really.”
“Do you want me?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
He groaned and finished undressing her with one hand, himself with the other. When they landed on the floor he wasn’t sure how it had happened, but as long as she seemed willing to continue, he did not care.
More than willing. She was eager. Ardent. His wife and yet someone else. What had she called him—her estranged husband? He didn’t like that one bit.
He reached up to the bed for a pillow to thrust beneath her bottom. He leaned to suckle the tips of her breasts. She brought her hand down firmly on his shoulder and gave him a good push onto his back. He fell back, laughing. Her hair broke from its knot and tumbled against his belly. He was breathing so hard he thought he would black out.
“Isn’t this better than the opera?” he whispered with a taunting smile. He lifted her by the waist and brought her down on his thick cock. The slick walls of her sheathe stretched to take him.
She sobbed, turning her head, bouncing gently on his curved shaft.
“My God,” he groaned. He caught her by her buttocks, gripping her soft flesh. “That’s good. Very nice. Do you want it harder?”
“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked feverishly.
“I can’t think at all.”
“Then harder.”
“Like this—”
He flexed, impaling her. Her back arched. She gave a low uninhibited moan. He groaned, lifting himself higher. She pushed down. He reared up, his eyes half-closed, his pulses quickening. Her knees dug into his hips. He increased the intensity of his strokes. She whimpered, her movements unbridled, her body meeting his thrust for thrust. Her cleft was soaking his groin. He would carry her delightful fragrance on his skin all night.
It took several minutes for both of them to recover. He felt like worshipping at her feet. Instead, he lay motionless on the floor, his mind drifting until she shook his arm. He jolted back into awareness.
“Don’t fall asleep,” she said.
“Asleep? I’ve never been more awake in my life.” He opened his eyes, studying her beautiful, unclad body in the candlelight. “And aware. Now tell me the truth, madam.”
“Not again!”
“You never answered properly in the first place.”
“Because there is nothing to say.”
“Then placate me. Put my mind at ease.”
She started to lean away. He sat up, his arm sliding around her waist. “I want to know,” he said fiercely. “I have to know. What is this Bellisant to you?”
She settled back against his arm. His body heated involuntarily and sought her closeness. He stroked his knuckles across her dusky nipples. “He is champagne,” she said after a silence that seemed to last forever.
“Champagne?” he said with an insulting laugh. “Isn’t that lovely?”
She turned her head and scattered kisses across his bare chest. “Champagne,” she whispered. “Pleasant enough at first, but its lightness is deceptive, an acquired taste.”
“Spare me,” he said, his anger rising as he sifted his hands through her heavy hair.
“You,” she went on, her voice completely even, “are water.”
“Water?” he said in disgust. “So I am ordinary—”
“—essential,” she corrected him. “One can survive without champagne. But not without water.”
She rose before he could stop her. “Water,” he said, his gaze cynical as he followed her movements across the room.
She looked back over her shoulder with a wistful smile that stole his breath. He gazed down at her arse before staring back up at her face. “Oh, all right. Water mixed with raw Scottish whiskey. That’s a little better, but not quite what I wanted to hear.”
She shook her head. “Why do I have a feeling that you’re going to get what you want?”
He smiled before rousing himself from the floor. “Why do I have the feeling the day will come when you can’t tell your wants from mine?”
“The day when the gates of hell are frozen shut?” she asked laughingly before disappearing into the closet again.
“Or when the flames of passion set them ablaze?” he retorted with a grin right before the door slammed.
Chapter Thirteen
Was her husband an accomplished schemer or sincere in his promise to make amends? She sat beside him in their opera box, contemplating his character. It was a challenge to feign absorption in the concert when his presence engrossed her every thought. She felt rather plain in his presence, dressed in her sweet lilac taffeta dress.
He wore black.
Undeniably he was the finest-looking lord in London, if an utter enigma to Eleanor.
No sooner had they set foot from the carriage than several old acquaintances rushed forth to welcome him into the shallows of the beau monde. One gentleman rather rudely inquired whether his return meant that offspring could be expected. Eleanor lifted her nose and pretended she had not heard the question.
The subject
of heirs seemed to be in the air.
She had headed toward the stairs, although not quickly enough to escape hearing Sebastien reply, “Soon. It is my primary objective. Eleanor, wait for me, darling. Don’t wander off in the dark alone.”
“Your primary objective?” she whispered on the stairs when he caught up with her. “You might have shown restraint instead of announcing your breeding intentions to a virtual stranger.”
He shrugged, his amused eyes searching her face. “What else could I say?”
“You should have just smiled in a lordly manner, and said nothing.”
And so he said nothing, in what he judged to be a lordly manner, until the opening aria ended. Then he slid his hand up her back, to her nape, a fleeting caress that left her trembling inside.
“You were right,” he said in an undertone. “I should have discussed my intentions with you first.”
“You really don’t like the opera, do you?”
He smiled, tugging a little curl at her nape. “I’d rather play than watch.”
She flashed him a look. He grinned back at her, tracing his fingers down her throat to where her pendant lay.
Her lips parted. She moistened the corners of her mouth with her pink tongue. He leaned forward, apparently keen to prove what a player he was, when someone called her name from another box.
They both ignored it.
“I don’t think the gentleman in the lobby meant to be vulgar,” he said reflectively. “Nor did I. I grew up in a large, boisterous family. It isn’t wrong to hope we will start one of our own. Didn’t we discuss this? We’ve been married for years.”
She snapped open her rose-scented fan, her face suddenly hot, and stared at the stage. “I’m glad you’ve noticed.”
“I’ve noticed nothing but you since I came home.”
She lowered her fan to her lap.
Another voice, young and male, shouted from an opposite box.
Sebastien came to his feet, scowling in the sap-skull’s direction. “This is very distracting. What kind of friends have you made while I was gone?”
“Impetuous ones, obviously. Sit down, Sebastien. They’ll stop if you act as if you can’t hear them.”
He settled back into his seat. “If this persists, I shall have him, them, thrown out of the theater.”
“No, you won’t.” She eyed his strong figure in secret delight. “We must appear to be a well-behaved man and wife. It doesn’t help our other cause to attract notice.”
“Our cause? Well, all right.”
Her words appeared to calm him. After a moment he laid his hand upon hers, a gesture of warm possession that she wished were not so pleasant. Clearly he had no idea that she was still grieving the child she’d lost. Did he even remember? She thought of how alone she had felt, of how angry that he hadn’t been there to comfort her, and tried unsuccessfully to pull her hand from his. He wouldn’t let go.
Her fan slid from her lap to the floor. They reached for it at the same moment, his clean-shaven cheek touching hers. The accidental intimacy, the scent of his mossy eau de cologne, disarmed her.
But not nearly as much as when he asked, softly, “Don’t you want a child, Elle? I thought you did once.”
“May I have my fan?” she asked instead of answering.
“I saw the christening gown in the drawer.”
“Oh,” she whispered, biting the inside of her cheek. “Then you do remember?”
He nodded. When he handed her the fan, she gave him a tremulous smile that went straight through his heart like an iron shard. The pain turned him inside out. But whether it would prove to be a necessary pain of healing or an irreparable break, he could not predict. Perhaps he should not have mentioned the baby. Until he’d seen that gown, he had not truly understood …
… how small a baby was.
He fidgeted. She gave him another look. Surreptitiously he lifted his opera glasses and scanned the other boxes for signs of her smitten admirers. At last he saw several pair of gloved hands waving in his direction.
He frowned, lowering the glasses, then raised them again.
“For goodness’ sake, what are you doing?” she whispered, trying to peer over his arm.
“There are three elderly women waving at us.”
“Well, wave back.”
He handed her the glasses. “I don’t know them—do I?”
“No, but I do. They’re agents for the duchess,” she confided, studying the enthusiastic trio who formed part of an elite spying network, comprised mostly of gentlewomen and street girls, that the duchess operated in London. On any given day one of them might be employed to spy on an unfaithful husband and report back to his wife. Another might sneak into a milliner’s shop and scrutinize the hats in progress so that the duchess would always appear in an original creation. Sometimes her grace wanted to know the inside odds on a racehorse. Her underground ladies took pride in their assignments. As did she.
“They must be in their seventies,” he said in disbelief. “And you say that they’re—”
“Lady Savile is ninety-three,” she murmured. “And still going strong.”
“Agents?” he said, blinking. “You don’t expect me to believe that an association of old ladies—”
“I’m hardly ancient.”
“—are agents?”
She glanced at Sebastien, restraining a smile at his astonishment. How naughty of her to enjoy unsettling his manly assumptions. “Underestimate us at your own peril.”
“I’m learning that.” His voice was resigned, but droll. “Do they know that you’re the Masquer?”
“They will if you announce it to the whole theater.
Dear heavens, I thought I was bad enough. Can’t you sit still?”
“I can if there’s nothing better to do.” He looked perplexed. “I sat for hours in cellars, in caves, in kegs, in coffins even. I didn’t move a muscle.”
“Men do have all the adventures,” she said with a sigh of envy.
“You haven’t done so badly yourself.”
A compliment. Why did his approval move her so deeply?
“Thank you.”
She stared at him.
He stared at her.
Then she stretched upward and kissed his cheek.
He blinked again, his nostrils tightening. “That was nice. I’d like more, please.”
“Wait until we get home,” she whispered against his chin.
“Why?” His heart was thundering. He placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her toward him. “I asked politely.”
“Sebastien,” she said, more breathless than reproachful.
“Isn’t this a private box?” He pressed hard, hot kisses down her neck. His finger circled the pendant, slipped inside her gown to twirl the tips of her breasts. “And you’re my wife.”
She gasped, then slowly lifted her hands to his chest. “People can see.”
He glanced up. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a footman hastening from his post to close the curtains on this acte d’amour. For this favor Sebastien would tip him excessively at the end of the performance—and make arrangements to attend the opera with Eleanor again soon.
“I can’t see anything,” he murmured. “Except you.”
She smiled, arching her neck as he kissed a particularly sensitive spot behind her ear. “You’d see the stage if you used the opera glasses properly,” she whispered rather weakly.
“No,” he said, his voice stubborn. “I’d still only see you.”
And there wasn’t any doubt in his mind that his powers of persuasion had taken effect and that presently she, seeing reason, would put aside her masquerade and concentrate on him.
She awoke two hours before daybreak and dressed in the dark. When she’d finished, she crept back to the bed to make certain Sebastien hadn’t roused. She studied his broad forehead, the strong cheekbones and spell-caster blue Boscastle eyes that, if opened, would shatter her concentration for several hours. Even though he w
as interfering in her duty, not to mention his scandalous behavior at the opera last night, she had to admit she liked awakening beside the handsome devil.
And a good thing she had awakened first. She spied his boots and a small case of house breaking utensils by the door. Subtle, wasn’t he? Or did he assume that all his delicious lovemaking had left her witless? Or … was it possible that she had exhausted him?
She sat down at her desk and scribbled a message to remind him that she would be breakfasting with the duchess. If he thought for a moment that he had diverted her from her duty, he had a surprise coming. He was still sleeping as she propped the note on her pillow and sneaked outside.
Even when she stopped to stare up at their window from the street, she did not see a figure behind the curtains.
What a relief. She still had a wit or two left that he hadn’t stolen.
She hadn’t thought it would be that easy to escape. He might not have stopped her, but it had been damned hard to leave his bed.
Shadows shifted in the street, some endearingly pathetic, some to be avoided. Scavengers scoured the gutters for treasures to sell at market. Bone-pickers poked sticks into mounds of pungent horse ordure, their bags already bulging. An errand boy rushed past her, breathless, his spectacles gleaming in the mist. She almost collided with an apprentice who was chasing a dog who’d stolen his master’s cane.
London. Dirty. Teeming. Lovely city.
She wiggled her fingers inside her black kidskin gloves. Will had parked in his customary place on the corner, her disguise hidden within the carriage. The Masquer would not be his dashing self this morning, but a mere servant girl instead, whom no one would look at twice. She hurried forward without looking back at her house again.
Not that she wasn’t tempted.
In fact, it was the first time since beginning her masquerade that the life of Lady Boscastle seemed more enticing than that of her other identity.
Chapter Fourteen
Tess Elliot had fallen upon hard times to judge by her current dwellings. Her lodging house occupied an unfashionable corner off Covent Garden near a pawnbroker’s establishment.
A Wicked Lord at the Wedding Page 10