by Stacy Reid
He used one of his thumbs to part her lips. Then Edmond took her lips in a kiss that was at once domineering and tender, with a seductive ruthlessness. Adel helplessly responded. She gasped, and he swallowed it as she sagged against him. His mouth settled more possessively over hers, his tongue urging her lips to part wider to his wonderful assault. On a moan she surrendered and he plundered.
Glorious heavens.
Pleasure dark and stormy filled her veins. His hands stroked her jaw, over to her collarbone, down to the underside of her breast and around to her back and down to her backside, which he gripped tightly in his large hands…and squeezed. His touch wasn’t considerate of her innocence, and Adel shivered in his embrace.
He drew her closer, and she gasped into his mouth at the hard length that pressed in through his trousers and branded her stomach.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he whispered harshly, pulling his lips from hers.
She tried to comply, but the length of the nightgown tangled her legs. With a muttered curse, he swung her into his arms, his rapid stride taking them over to the massive bed in the center of his chamber. What was happening? Was he forgoing all he’d just said?
Before she could foolishly question him, he took her lips once more, tumbling with her to the massive but lush bed, careful to keep his weight on his forearms.
Oh! Her heart jerked in trepidation and excitement. The drugging kisses he pressed to her mouth were scrambling her brain. Who knew kisses could feel this wonderful? She fisted her fingers through the thick strands of his hair, and melded her mouth to his. Their teeth clinked, and he pulled from her with a rough pained chuckle.
“Easy,” he whispered, dragging his lips roughly down her cheek, then neck, where he nibbled. The firestorm of sensations that peaked in the low of her stomach were surely unnatural, wanton, and gloriously unladylike.
She inhaled, trying to control the chaotic hunger that had erupted in her body, and the nerves determined to rear their head.
There was restrained power in the touch that gripped her nightgown and pushed it to her waist. His thumb dragged against the inside of her thighs creating little sparks of sensations that shot directly to the throbbing flesh between her legs.
Adel breathed raggedly. Edmond kept his face buried in her neck, his body tight with tension. What was he thinking?
The confusion bubbling inside her was enough to have tears prickling behind her lids. She parted her lips to speak and then he shifted, cupping the most intimate part of her. The breath puffed from her mouth in a painful burst and then she stilled.
It took her a few seconds to realize they were both frozen, and the furious pounding against her breastbone was not only her heart.
His hand moved and one finger slid through her alarming wetness.
He groaned, and she swallowed. Then with a virulent curse, he leapt from her. “Forgive my lapse in control, it will not happen again.” Then he turned to stride from the room.
Disappointment sliced through her. “Is this not your chamber?”
He halted but did not turn around. “You can sleep here for tonight or return to your chambers. The choice is yours.”
Heat stained her cheeks. He was so dismissive. Then he exited.
Adel scrambled from the bed, placing her foot onto thick soft carpeting as she stood in the center of the room, shaking. The pleasant masculine décor of the room with rich colors and dark wood furniture did nothing to ease her stormy emotions. With a great effort she calmed the racing of her heart. She inhaled, and his scent rushed into her lungs. Unable to stay any longer she hurried to the door, opened it, and rushed down the corridor to her chamber. She crawled onto the bed and buried herself in the mound of pillows.
What had just happened? With a frustrated sigh, she rolled on her back and stared at the canopy above her. She felt empty and bereft. Was this how her marriage would be? Should she accept the duke’s edicts, or wait to see how their lives unfolded? It would be useless for her to fervently hope he might come to love her, and while she would not fight for a love he was not willing to give her, she would not remain childless.
She needed to understand his demons, but she knew the maddening man would not allow her close. But…he’d just responded to her with such raw force, surely that must mean he desired her. Should she try and make him fall in love with her as surely as she knew, she would eventually love him? Why would she even want to waste her time, loving such a vexing man?
His empty eyes.
No one should look so lonely and bereft.
She crushed the thoughts with willpower she never knew she possessed and drew the coverlet to her chin, before closing her eyes. Eventually she would know what to do, and prayed she would not muck it up. She was now a mother…a wife, and there was no turning back the hands of time.
In this, she would not fail. Adel had failed in her season, and she had certainly failed to be an exemplary daughter with her conduct, but she was determined to succeed as a mother…and as Edmond’s wife and duchess. She lay on the bed and watched the embers dying on the hearth until she finally succumbed to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
It was most assuredly not the scotch, but the woman herself. Edmond had held on to the belief that without his drinking the night he visited Lord Gladstone, Adel climbing into his bed would not have had such an effect. It was not pleasant learning he was very wrong. It was not only love he was uninterested in…he wanted distance from this brutal punch of pleasure to his system from a simple whiff of her scent and taste.
He was a damned fool, God help him, for he had been unable to stop the madness of tasting her. When last had he felt such pleasure from a mere kiss? The front of his breeches tightened embarrassingly and instead of withdrawing, the vexing and bewitching lady had stretched up on her toes, lifted her hands, and wrapped them around his neck, her fingers combing through his hair. Her touch had been exploratory, definitely innocent, and it had allowed him to pull back from her when everything in him clamored to devour, to slake a need that had been too long denied.
Thank Christ. A tiny sound of protest had caught in her throat as he withdrew and disappointment had glowed in her eyes. The lady was purported to be in love with another man. Why would she been yearning for his kisses, when her heart was engaged elsewhere?
But what was it about Adeline that made him loose the tether on his control? Edmond had almost taken her, and without an ounce of the tender consideration he had bestowed on his first wife on their wedding night. Though he’d only been eighteen when he had married Maryann, he’d had a few lovers. She had been the shy blushing virgin, and it had taken him almost an hour before he’d been able to convince her to shed her nightclothes. Then when he made love with her, it had been under the banner of darkness, communicating with touches, and soothing murmurs. They had gone so slow, sweat had beaded his brow and his arms had trembled from holding back.
It had been like that for the first few weeks, before she lost her shyness. A wry smile twisted Edmond’s lips. When he had received Adel’s summons, he’d only intended to put her at ease, and provide the relief he thought she would crave at the knowledge he would not expect marital relations when she still had love for another. Instead he’d been consumed with the need to pound his lust inside of her because of the visceral desire she elicited.
Bloody everlasting hell.
He wrenched opened the library door and slammed it with much more force than he’d anticipated. How it had all shot to hell so quickly, his muddled brain still had to figure out. Worse, not once had the dangers of bedding her entered his thoughts the second she had tumbled into him. What if he’d lost control, took her, and she’d fallen pregnant?
He swallowed down the sick feeling rising inside, stalked to the side mantle, and poured brandy into a glass. With three swallows he consumed the fiery drink. It did the job. The queasy feeling had been replaced with the harsh burn of the liquor.
Edmond strolled over to a wing-backed chai
r by the fire and sank into the chair’s plush depths. He needed to analyze their situation and find a way to resolve the raw emotions bubbling in his gut. Since his loss of control and his sense of self when Maryann died, he’d prided himself on his cool emotional state that he had worked with a ruthless will to attain.
He was now married. Fact.
He had no need for another child. Fact.
His new wife seemed to desire marital relations. A distressing fact.
And he could not get the taste and feel of her out of his head. A disturbing fact.
He had barely touched her and she had been so wet. An enticing fact.
Edmond scrubbed a hand over his face and laughed ruefully. He should have left the chit to her ruin and disgrace and wed lady Evelyn. He was certain that lady would have been thrilled with the knowledge she would not have to burden herself to fulfill any marital duties. But Lady Adel actually wanted him. Her hot and eager responses had almost bewitched him. His cock stirred, and he groaned.
A knock sounded on the door and he glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. “Yes?”
The door opened and in strolled his mother, Lady Harriet Rochester, the dowager duchess. She was dressed in the height of fashion in a Prussian blue silk gown with pale blue long satin gloves, with a matching turban on her head. The modest bodice trimmed with white silk roses and silver embroidery. A row of silver embroidery continued down the front of the dress and around the hem, which also had small clusters of white silk roses at regular intervals around the edges.
At forty-eight, his mother was still a ravishing woman with generous charms, and many men of the ton still pursued her in earnest. Diamonds dripped from her ears and throat, and her gray eyes, so much like his, found him unerringly in the darkened room.
“You are home early, madam.”
“I was forced to depart Lady Walcott’s soiree early after hearing the most alarming gossip,” she said, walking into the room.
Hell. She’d not received his note. “There is no doubt you are eager to tell me, and I, of course, must listen.”
She glared at him. “The ballroom was rife with talk that you visited Wiltshire and married your mistress,” his mother said with cool aplomb.
“You can rest assured that is a rumor.”
She wilted with visible relief.
“I did not marry my mistress. In fact, I’ve never had a mistress.”
Her spine snapped straight. “But you did marry?”
Her shocked tone settled into the room, and the alarm in it actually caused him to smile.
“You are smiling,” she said faintly, walking to sit on the sofa facing him. “I am not sure if that portends good fortune or something ominous.” Yet she looked hopeful and it twisted his heart to see it.
“I did marry Miss Adeline, Sir Archibald Hayes’s daughter. They are from Somerset.”
At first joy cascaded over his mother’s face, but it was quickly replaced by a frown. “Sir Archibald…Sir Archibald,” she muttered. “I do not believe I am familiar with the Hayes from Somerset.”
“I would think not, they do not move in your elevated circles.”
“Then the girl is without connections?”
He merely grunted.
“What happened to the list I created? Those young ladies were highly agreeable in wealth and connections. I cannot fathom why you would not have made any one of them your duchess, but this unknown…miss.”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. “The situation was of such, it was best I married Adeline with haste.”
“Good heavens.” Lady Harriet’s hand fluttered to her throat. “So the ghastly rumor of a compromising situation has merit? I never thought you had it in you, Edmond, after…” she glanced away into the fireplace.
After Maryann.
It was curious that the bracing pain he would normally feel when his mother had slipped and mentioned his departed wife was absent. “You can say her name, Mother.”
She gasped, and he understood. He’d not allowed any discourse in relation to Maryann since her funeral.
“Tell me about this young miss,” she finally said with a birdlike look of enquiry.
He surged to his feet and walked to the windows, tugging the curtains open, they overlooked the lake. The moonlight was reflected on the water in the ripples of a light breeze. The lights that remained still burning in the house sparkled in the surface of the water as an occasional trout surfaced to eat some nocturnal insect. “There is not much to tell. We just met.”
“Then at least tell me how you came to be married.”
“I visited Lord Gladstone to complete settlement negotiations for Lady Evelyn. She was averse to marrying me and arranged for her friend to enter my room.”
“And this Miss Adeline went along with such an outrageous plan?”
Sudden amusement curled through him at their antics. “Adeline thought she was climbing into another man’s bed.”
“Good Heavens,” his mother said faintly. “I cannot credit such assertions. And you took her, to be your wife?”
“She would have been ruined otherwise, and I was in need of a wife,” he said blandly.
His mother was silent for the longest time, and he was content to simply stand with his hands on the window frame, watching the glow of the moonlight shimmering over the lake and listening to the crackling in the fireplace. It was startling to realize he now felt calmness inside…one that had been missing for months.
“I have known you to be honorable and have good sense, Edmond, but marrying a young miss with such little acquaintance and nothing to recommend her, I simply cannot credit it.”
“According to Lady Gladstone, Miss Adeline is an extraordinary young lady in temper, intellect, and manners, at least until she entered my room,” he said wryly.
“And what is your opinion of Miss Adeline after she acted with such…wanton impropriety?”
“I think she is a woman to be admired.”
He did not turn at his mother’s soft gasp. Instead he analyzed his assessment. “She is not a mincing miss. She has courage and a good deal of audacity. Even with the threat of ruination hanging over her head like a sharpened sword, she resisted marrying me. My title and wealth held no appeal for her, and that more than anything showed me her character.” Edmond thought of the fire in Adel’s eyes earlier, the determination and fury that had flushed her cheeks transforming her from lovely to bewitching. “She is beautiful, bold, and not without charm. Her head barely reaches my chin, and her hair is raven, its thickness and beauty I have never seen, and her eyes…they are honest and exquisite.”
He thought of her interaction with his children, how she had strived to make them happy and at ease, despite her own turbulence and anxiety. “She is kind and thoughtful, fearless where she should be wary…and I can see her core of strength. Even if I had not married her, she would not have crumpled underneath society’s disdain.”
And he had hurt her with his thoughtlessness. A curiosity to know her filled his veins, yet he had no notion how to connect with her. He was not even sure he wanted to, despite the manner in which she tugged at him. How long could he truly avoid her for?
Edmond had done a good job on the ride from Wiltshire to Hampshire, making no effort to ride with her in the carriage. After introducing her to his daughters, he had been relieved when Rosa’s tea party dispersed. He had been filled with a vision of taking Adeline to his bed. He had ridden away, desperate to cool the ardor he would not act upon. Perhaps it was better to be in her presence and render himself immune to her sensuality, instead of staying away where whenever he glimpsed her, it would be like drowning in desire and desperation for her touches and kisses.
His mother said nothing. He turned and faced her. Wonderment had settled on her features, and if he was not mistaken, her cheeks were damp with tears. With only the light from the fireplace illuminating the library, it was hard for him to tell.
“She sounds lovely,” she finally said. “I am
quiet eager to introduce her to our society.”
“I am sure she will be happy for your patronage, not that she needs it, but she believes she lacks social polish.”
“Well I daresay she is correct, being the daughter of a baronet is a far cry from being a duchess.”
He said nothing to that assessment.
“Do you think her a young lady you might come to love?”
“Is there something in the air I am not aware of?”
His mother arched a brow. “Your new duchess has already spoken of love to you?” Shock and something suspiciously like amusement colored her tone. “I know you are adverse to loss, but I urge you to not be too cold with her. This can be an opportunity for you to be happy again.”
Would she ever stop her meddling ways? She’d had a list in her writing desk of women he could possibly marry before he had even asked. “I am content.”
“No, Edmond, you are simply existing. They’re quite different, I assure you. Your father died eighteen years ago, and sadly I only existed for you, now I am slowly awakening, and the difference is inescapable.”
“Have you met someone?” he asked, beyond curious as to who would have captured her fancy, after the ruthless way she had guarded her heart after his father’s death. He and his mother had more in common than she realized.
“I will arrange for the dowager house to be opened and staffed, and I will retire there by the end of the month.” With that she rose. “Good night, Edmond.”
“Good night, Mother.”
The soft snick of the latch indicated her exit, and Edmond turned his mind to his duchess. He had been harsh when he ordered her to never visit the chambers that by right belonged to her. But when he had spied her there, his reaction had been instinctive and without much thought. Since Maryann’s death he’d not been able to visit the chamber too often. Each instance in which he had crossed the threshold the intolerable memory of too much blood, its metallic scent and the taste, would fill every crevice of his being. Her wail that it had been his desire for an heir, why her life had been jeopardized always haunted him.