But God help her, mayhap she was not so very honorable after all, because she didn’t care if this made her no different than the whores or actresses to come before. She wanted to know pleasure in William’s arms. She wanted to know the offer he’d made and lose herself in his embrace.
William worked her dress down past her shoulders, guiding it lower, taking her chemise along with it, gradually exposing her skin to the warm early summer sun—and then he stopped.
Elsie remained there, her breasts bared to him, exposed, as reality slipped in.
She looked up, and all the air was squeezed from her lungs.
Heat. It blazed from William’s eyes. A look that was a tangible touch, that radiated a hungering—for her. It was for her.
You’re a fool. It would be for any woman. He’s offered you nothing more. You are no different.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered, and slowly lowering his head, he caressed his lips around one of those pink tips.
She gasped and curled her fingertips in his hair, anchoring him close. William worshiped that peak, suckling it, laving it, until he pulled keening little moans from deep within her throat.
And then he shifted his attention to the previously neglected breast.
“William.” His name emerged as a moan, desperate and entreating.
His only response was to guide her back down upon the blanket until she lay beneath him. His hands were everywhere upon her, sliding her gown lower over her hips, along with her undergarments, until she was naked.
His breath coming hard and fast like one who’d run a great race, he drew back. A groan rumbled in his chest and lodged somewhere in his throat. “So beautiful,” he whispered and slipped a hand between her legs.
Elsie’s entire body stiffened. The air hissed between her teeth as she tightened her thighs about his palm.
“Relax, love,” he urged. “Lie back and let me love you.”
Panting, she slowly splayed her legs open.
William palmed the thatch of dark curls there, applying an exquisite pressure with his fingers in a touch that simultaneously tormented and eased that ache. Even as pressure built within her. A yearning to know… precisely the gift he’d offered.
He slipped a finger inside her wet channel.
“William,” she gasped his name, her hips shooting off the blanket.
He drew it out slowly and then continued a rhythmic stroke, until she was incapable of nothing more than feeling.
The pressure built within her like water behind a dam. Biting her lower lip, she lifted into his touch. Desperately seeking. Wanting. Needing.
She was so close. So—
Elsie cried out as he drew his hand back, and she was left with an empty void of unsated desire.
Passion darkened his gaze as he sat back on his haunches. Never taking his eyes from her, William shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside. His lawn shirt followed suit.
Riveted by the broad display of rippled muscles and coiled strength, Elsie shoved herself upright. “You are magnificent,” she breathed, stroking her fingertips through the light matting of dark, coiled hair upon his chest. She ran her palms down the silken fur.
He groaned, clenching his hands into tight fists at his sides.
Emboldened, Elsie circled the flat discs of his nipples, so different from her own. “Elsie,” he pleaded, reaching for her.
She went into his arms and lifted to reach his kiss. Her skin burned hot against his, her nipples pebbled against his chest. William palmed her breasts once more, lifting each to his mouth for one last, lingering kiss that stole the breath from her lungs.
William drew back. He yanked first one boot free and tossed it atop the slowly growing pile of their garments. His next boot followed, landing with a thump too close to Bear.
The dog lifted his head in affront, before lowering onto the ground once more. He emitted a loud snore.
Breathless laughs escaped Elsie and William, but instantly faded as he reached for the waistband of his breeches. Slowly, he pushed them down his hips, lower, and then he kicked them aside until he stood before her in all his masculine splendor.
Elsie went absolutely motionless. His manhood jutted long and thick from a thatch of black curls. It pressed against his flat stomach. “I’ve seen many men in a state of undress. Naked,” she corrected. She shook her head, unable to look away from that length. “Never like this.”
William chuckled, the expression more pained than amused as he reached for her. Drawing her into his arms, he claimed her mouth and brought them both back upon the blanket.
He slid his palm between her legs once again and stroked the nub hidden within her curls until she thrashed her head back and forth upon the blanket, garbled whimpers spilling from her.
Sweat beaded William’s brow as he slipped a knee between hers, urging them apart and then between her thighs. “Elsie,” he whispered against her brow. “I wish—”
“I know it hurts,” she breathed, moving her hips in little circles in a bid to alleviate the throbbing there. William continued to tease that nub of flesh. “I’ve read s-several journals about it and—” She bit her lip and arched into his touch. “What was… I… I can’t…” She closed her eyes. “Just make love to me,” she ordered.
With her name on his lips, William thrust inside.
He swallowed her sharp gasp with his mouth and went absolutely still.
Elsie’s pulse pounded in her ears as she considered the feel of him buried within her. His length throbbed and pulsed.
“I’m so sorry,” he said against the corner of her mouth.
“It did not hurt nearly as bad as I’d believed,” she said. “I’d expected more…” Elsie’s breath caught as he slowly moved.
“What was it you expected?” William’s lips teased at the tip of her right breast.
“I…” Oh, goodness. Elsie closed her eyes. “I…” Cannot remember. Cannot think. She was incapable of anything but feeling. She lifted her hips slowly, tentatively at first, meeting each measured thrust of his until the faint throbbing pain there receded and only pleasure remained.
She panted. Nay, it was not only pleasure. It was an unsated yearning more agonizing than when that barrier of flesh had given way.
Wrapping her arms about him, Elsie lifted her hips. Seeking. Searching.
“That is it,” he urged, a like desperation in his own gruff voice matching that which dwelled within her. Her body climbed higher toward some unknown precipice. “Come for me, love.”
Love.
That was it.
Elsie hurtled over that edge and exploded into a schism of color, screaming her release to the London sky. Pleasure washed through her in waves. Lapping at reason and leaving raw nerve endings of feeling vibrantly alive.
William’s shout blended with the echo of her cries as he withdrew and spilled himself onto her belly.
A moment later, he collapsed atop her, catching his weight at his elbows.
Her heart hammered wildly in a cadence that could surely, after this, never return to normal. He… nay, they two together had been… “Magic,” she mouthed to the cloud-filled blue sky. She stroked his back, a sated smile upon her lips.
“Elsie,” he whispered against her ear.
Elsie stilled, wanting that which he’d already claimed he could not give.
Waiting for it anyway.
And as they lay there, with no words forthcoming, her smile faded.
She’d lied to him and to herself.
This was not enough.
She wanted more from him.
Elsie closed her eyes.
God help me—I love him.
Chapter 21
Three days later
The world as William knew it had resumed its natural course.
His desk had been tidied, with each file and ledger in its proper place. His hair had been trimmed and proper garments donned. The misery that had held him in an unrelenting snare had since lessened, leaving him
to feel again. William once again… lived.
At that given moment, he sat, scanning the folder in his hands.
“This isn’t the most recent,” he said, flipping to the next page.
“No, Your Grace,” Stone murmured.
When no additional information was forthcoming, William paused in his examination and glanced up. The spy who’d served in the role of assistant and butler—and whatever else William had needed him to be—shifted on his feet.
William arched a single brow.
Stone coughed into his fist. “It is my understanding that Lord Edward has been conducting interviews with those familiar with the case.”
The case.
William gripped the corners of the leather folio. Yes, not very long ago, that was all the Allenby family would have ever been. He’d have required no additional information outside the barest that had decreed Francis Allenby a traitor, and that would have been the end of it. He’d been blinded to humanity and ceased to see the people who were impacted by the Brethren. How narrow his world had been. How calculated his views of life and people and everything. I just failed to see it until Elsie.
Closing the folder, William rested it atop the stack before him. “And where is Lord Edward?”
Stone opened his mouth.
Rap-pause-rap-pause—rap-rap.
Of course, still punctual all these years later.
“Enter,” he boomed.
His brother and Cedric Bennett stepped inside. Still attired in their cloaks and hats, they strode forward.
Despite himself, and the familiarity of having spies report with whatever information they’d uncovered, William’s heart slowed and then knocked hard against his chest. For this information… was different. For it was about her. “You’re dismissed for now, Stone,” he said in carefully measured tones. Motioning to the leather winged chairs, William urged the pair to sit. He made his way over to the sideboard. “You are late,” he called, after the two men had taken their seats.
Edward scoffed. “By a handful of moments,” he pointed out, still very much the younger brother who delighted in tormenting his older brother, stuck in the ducal classrooms, while he himself had been running the countryside, reveling in the freedoms permitted the spare.
William reached for a decanter and froze with his fingers on the stopper.
I do expect you to give up liquor until you learn proper restraint over it… and yourself.
And he had. He’d found his way when, after Adeline’s passing, he’d believed himself eternally lost.
Once more, because of Elsie.
William splashed several fingers of spirits into a glass and turned to face his brother and Bennett. “What have you found?”
“I conducted interviews with every patient treated by Allenby,” Edward said as he withdrew a palm-sized leather diary from his jacket. “In his tenure, he provided some form of care or another to more than twenty-five of our men.”
“Thirty-five, if one counts the family members of those men,” Bennett interjected.
Edward nodded. “Some of those who were served by the doctor bore injuries related to their service. Some unrelated. Some took place during travels. Others, years after they’d served. Some illnesses.”
“And?” William stared intently over the rim of his untouched drink.
“And the opinions of him and his service”—Edward and Bennett exchanged a look—“were high. No one reported anything of less-than-stellar service. No man died while under his care.”
There was more.
It hung in the air, as real as if it had been spoken. He forced himself to take a small sip, collecting himself, fighting for restraint.
Bennett fished a small folded sheet of velum from his cloak.
Standing, he crossed over and held it out.
William made himself take another drink, and only after he’d swallowed did he accept that officious-looking scrap.
“He was a traitor,” Bennett said bluntly.
William struggled to keep from choking on his brandy. After all, Bennett’s was the expected statement, even as it didn’t fit with the optimistic accounting reported by his brother on the late doctor’s work and patients. It did not matter how many acts and actions one had done justly and honorably. The one that mattered most was the one in which one chose treachery.
“You are dismissed,” William managed to say, his voice steady, as if Bennett had delivered that pronouncement about any other subject of an investigation.
The spy let himself out, leaving the two brothers briefly alone.
Bennett was a cynic. The most jaded, field-hardened member of the Brethren. He’d have found the Lord himself guilty for having forged a relationship with the once-sin-free Lucifer. “Well?” he asked when the door had closed.
Edward pressed his gloved fingertips together and rested them under his chin. “Does it matter so much if he was?”
It did, but not for the reasons his brother surely thought or wondered after.
It mattered because Francis Allenby had been a saint in his daughter’s eyes and because she deserved more of a sire… and God help him, William didn’t wish to be the one to contradict her.
Abandoning all pretense of drinking, he set down his glass and swiped a hand over his face. “That wasn’t an answer, Edward,” he said impatiently. It was the deliberately vague shite one fed another whose response or reaction one feared.
“No.” Edward came to his feet. “I’d advise you read it yourself, but… yes, as Stone indicated, you’ll find the records in order, the interviews thorough, and a statement of guilt.”
That was what he’d been handed.
William glanced down at the faintly yellowing sheet.
It was a letter of guilt from the doctor himself. It was a note William could give to the man’s devoted daughter… and it would break her heart.
A dull ache throbbed in his chest, and he resisted the urge to rub at that misery. “That will be all,” he said quietly.
“Of course.” Edward dropped a bow and left.
After he’d gone, William stared at the page in his fingers. Not wanting to read the words there. Wanting to return to the way life had been these nearly three weeks with Elsie.
But there could be no them joined in any way. Not in the way he yearned for.
And so, with dread slithering around his gut, William unfolded the note… and began to read.
*
The small heels of Elsie’s boots clicked rhythmically upon the hardwood floors, and as she walked the corridors of William’s home, the butler cast sharp glances back her way.
As if her every action was to be watched.
As if he feared she’d bolt.
As if…
You are the daughter of a traitor.
Bitterness stung like vinegar upon her tongue. For, to the men who served the Brethren, that was all she was… or would ever be.
Only William hadn’t treated her thus. In the greatest irony, he, the leader of that noble organization, had never looked upon her with disdain or mistrust. She and William had forged a bond that had somehow defied even her father’s supposed sins.
And yet, even with that connection, she now strode these halls as more servant than anything. In fact, this moment might as well have been the first day of her arrival and not that of a woman who’d lived nearly three weeks with the head of this very household. That man had taught her to laugh again and find pride in the work she was capable of and had urged her to be more. And had made love to her.
Elsie fisted her hands in the fabric of her skirts. For William hadn’t given any hint that he felt anything for her. Not truly. Nothing beyond the stolen exchange in his gardens where they’d made love under the summer sun.
Sex he’d given to whores and actresses… and now her.
His heart? That gift had been buried with the wife who’d died.
Stone brought her to a stop outside William’s office. He knocked once.
This wasn’
t the rap of the Brethren, but rather, the polite scratch of a servant’s knuckles announcing a guest—or in this case, another servant.
“Enter,” William called out.
The butler pressed the handle and let her inside.
Elsie entered, taking several steps, and then stopped.
William sat before her, but not as he’d been almost three weeks earlier. Less gaunt. Less pale. His skin reflected an olive hue from the hours he’d spent in the gardens alongside her. That magnificent tangle of black curls had since been neatly trimmed and was drawn back at the nape of his neck.
This was a man in full command of himself and the empire he ruled.
As such… she didn’t know how to be around this newer version of William. Selfishly, she preferred him as he’d been in their intimate exchanges prior to this one: relaxed, no work or rank between them, and only a friendship existing there.
Friendship.
Is that truly what you want with him?
No. She wanted more. She wanted to be his partner in life, laughing with him and teasing him. Alas, that was not to be. Elsie stared at Bear resting at the foot of William’s desk, as content as one who’d found his rightful place and had no intention of relinquishing it. All the while, the gentleman who’d become Bear’s master attended whatever important reports lay open before him.
And I’m not even an afterthought. Elsie clenched and unclenched her hands. She would not, however, curtsy or announce herself.
William finally closed that book and glanced up. “Elsie,” he greeted.
He spoke with a somberness that conveyed formality and belied the use of her Christian name.
To hide the tremble in her hands, Elsie clasped them behind her. “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said by way of greeting.
William’s features immediately gave way to a smooth, unreadable mask. “I’ve been working.”
“Yes, but also avoiding me.” He’d given her only truths before this. She’d not accept his lies now.
Sitting back in his seat with a small chuckle, William rested his hands on the flat of his belly. “Has there ever been a woman more direct and forthright than you?” There was a wistful quality to that murmur that sent warning bells clamoring at the back of her brain. “Will you please sit?” he asked, finally standing.
Her Duke of Secrets Page 23