‘Yes. Absolutely.’ Lyle slapped him upon the back.
‘Children?’
Emma bowed her head. She stared at her hands clasped tight around her teacup. Why did everyone have to pounce upon that particular subject as if breeding were the only possible purpose in taking a bride? Or one couldn’t possibly be happy without a dozen pale-faced imps running about one’s feet? She prayed they never had a child. Not a single blessed one. Her mother had carried fifteen of the little devils. See where it had got her – a cold box in a rat-infested cemetery, rained on and covered in moss.
Lyle, clearly noticing her distress, waved aside the question. ‘None yet. What about you?’ He cast her an encouraging smile. He might take ridiculous risks, but Lyle also worked hard to maintain at least the illusion of an affectionate marriage.
Darleston gave a vehement shake of his head. ‘Much to the Earl’s vexation.’
‘But there is a Lady Darleston?’ Emma ventured.
‘There is.’ His very abruptness explained all that was missing from his response. Likely he and his wife were not on intimate terms, assuming they tolerated each other’s company at all. Perhaps they even lived apart, occupying one grand house apiece.
Lyle slapped Darleston across the back again, as he finally relinquished his embrace. ‘I insist that we celebrate with something more spirited than over-stewed tea. You don’t mind, Emma, if I snatch him away, do you? It’s been … gracious, how many years?’
‘Nine,’ Darleston remarked dryly.
Emma gave a polite nod. What could she say? Foolish displays had never been her forte; she left such nonsense to Amelia, who would have stamped her foot and demanded a place in their conversation. ‘I’ll see to our other guests.’ She made to rise, but Lyle shooed her back into her seat.
‘No need to move, my sweet. Stay by the fire. We’ll walk. You don’t mind an evening stroll, do you, Darleston? You’re not afeared of the country vapours? I find it most beneficial to take a little wander before bed.’
‘Indeed, that sounds delightful. I’d appreciate the opportunity to stretch my legs. I’ve been stuck in a carriage for days.’
‘Where’ve you come from?’
‘Only from Shropshire today, but from London before that.’
‘Stopping in on the old family pile?’
The candlelight glowed bright copper among the fiery strands of Darleston’s hair as he shook his head. Lyle guided him towards the door.
‘I stayed the night at Pennerley. Do you know the marquis? I had intended a longer visit but he has business in Yorkshire to attend.’
‘And so you washed up here. How marvellous. How wonderful indeed.’
The door swung closed behind them. Emma stared at the abandoned cups of tea and poured herself another. A moment later she rang for Ada. ‘Could you ensure my sister’s bed is warmed, please?’ It was time she coaxed that little goose away from the ganders.
CHAPTER TWO
The proposed drink went forgotten. Darleston allowed Lyle to guide him across the hallway of Field House and down the front steps, eschewing overcoats and accoutrements. Twilight subsumed the last of the day as they crossed the lawn, stealing the colour from his vision. They didn’t really speak until they stood upon the bank of the Trent, well out of sight of the house amongst a copse of ancient sycamore trees.
‘I didn’t … I had no idea that you’d married Hill’s daughter,’ Darleston began. She’d told him her name and it hadn’t sparked a flicker of recognition. He’d met other Mrs Langleys before, but … ‘I mean, I knew you’d wed, but I’d really no idea there was a connection.’ Silence swallowed his words, which wasn’t such a surprise. What the hell did you say to someone you hadn’t seen for nine years and to whom you’d made promises you could never hope to keep? ‘Lyle.’ He put out his hand and touched the other man’s arm, making the briefest of connections. ‘If my presence is going to make things awkward, I can make my excuses.’ Hell only knows where he’d go when he left. He was fast running out of friends with country estates. The last place he wanted to end up was home, where Lucy could find him. Increasingly it looked as if he’d have to take a long, slow tour of the Scottish Highlands and grow a beard so that he’d blend in with the locals and not drawn undue attention.
Not drawing attention would be a damned fine strategy at this point.
The trickle of fear slowly running down his spine made him look about as if he might find spies perched within the tree bowers.
Lyle’s response acted as a burr upon his senses. ‘Is that what you think – that I’m afraid of you exposing my past?’ Lightly, tentatively, Lyle’s fingers rested upon his shoulder. Darleston turned towards the touch, so that they stood face to face, far too close to be friends, not quite close enough for lovers.
They had been lovers – extraordinary lovers.
He wouldn’t cause trouble. He refused to bring trouble.
Lyle’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. The shadows and hopes writ within them were not so very different from those he’d seen years before. Yet Lyle had aged, as had he. Nine years didn’t pass without scoring a few lines, even if the overall composition remained largely unchanged: same wide-set eyes and aquiline nose, the widow’s peak – more prominent than it had once been – that drew the gaze. And that same wicked-as-sin grin he’d spent years trying to imitate.
It hardly seemed appropriate to stare, given that he’d just been enjoying a pleasant welcome from the fellow’s wife. It wasn’t often he was treated with grace and respect any more. Since February, comely hostesses magically vanished whenever he came within forty feet.
He risked a quick glance into Lyle’s eyes. Desire so familiar he could almost taste it swam in the inky depths of those pupils. For a moment, it was as if no time had passed at all.
‘You don’t want your name sullied alongside mine,’ he insisted, already recognising the brewing danger. The problem was that he didn’t actually want to move away. Rather he wanted to press close and find himself entwined in Lyle’s embrace. It took every ounce of self-restraint to take a single step backwards instead.
Lyle’s lips quirked. ‘I don’t need you to sully my name. I’m capable of that all by myself.’ He followed Darleston’s retreat and extended his arm past Darleston’s ear, neatly trapping him betwixt his body and the thick trunk of a tree.
Conflicted, Darleston froze. Their last parting had been untidy. It seemed wholly rational that this beginning would be messy and awkward too.
‘By all means practise your excuses, Robert, but don’t leave on my account. Of course, if you feel you need to run away –’
‘Ought I?’ Of course he ought. Given the current euphoria bubbling beneath his skin, he ought to call his carriage right now and not look back until he’d crossed the county border. In an act of further lunacy, he maintained the eye contact they’d already made.
That wicked gleam – damn! Lyle’s ability, with barely more than a slight upturning of his lips, to reduce him to an irrational, seething ball of desire had ever been his downfall. The scent of port lingered on the other man’s breath, mixed with a trace of aniseed.
‘Christ, Robert! I can still hardly get over the fact that you’re here. For the longest time I didn’t know what they’d done to you. I wasn’t sure … I wasn’t informed, merely packed off like a piece of baggage and told to toughen up. I spent the first eighteen months in that Indian hellhole living off the memory of you.’
Darleston almost imperceptibly shook his head, having no comparable sentence to relate. ‘Nothing happened to me.’ It smarted a little to admit it. Lyle had taken the brunt of the punishment, though he was pleased to see the army hadn’t broken him. Meanwhile, he had suffered little more than embarrassment and his mother’s reproachful looks, both of which were quickly forgotten. No, his penalty hadn’t come until much later, when he’d stupidly committed the same crime twice. Then his mother had found him ‘a nice young bride’ to keep him busy and ‘out of the second footman’
s underthings’. Not that it had worked. It’d been rather naïve of the countess to think it would. But then, she’d never been quite as bright as she liked to believe.
‘I sometimes imagined you’d write.’ Lyle’s words broke though his introspection.
Darleston gave a derisive little snort. ‘I sometimes imagined I’d write. But what the hell was there to say? What is there to say now?’ He couldn’t think of anything that would mend broken hearts and promises. Certainly nothing that would reverse the flow of time, or allow them to make that fateful day over.
‘Maybe you don’t need to say anything.’
His loins agreed, even if the rest of him didn’t. Words wouldn’t fix anything. Kisses might smooth away the awkward memories, but life had moved on from where they’d been. Nearly half his life had passed since then. He’d been married, acted the libertine and taken dozens of whores and other lovers to his bed. He’d been rejected by the one man he really wanted and laughed at by the only other that he admired. He really couldn’t stomach any more pain.
Which wasn’t to say that he wasn’t tempted. Lord, he was sorely tempted.
Lyle leaned closer still, damn near pressing their foreheads together. His lips parted, revealing a tiny hint of moisture upon their surface.
‘Wait!’ Darleston covered the temptation with his raised fingers. ‘Think. We’re not boys any more. Do you really want to be caught in a compromising position in your father-in-law’s house?’
‘Promises, promises …’ Lyle mused, eyes ablaze with salacious intent.
Dear God! That wasn’t the response he’d hoped to evoke. They needed to think seriously about this, about what they were doing and how drastically it could go wrong.
‘You were never so cautious in the past, Robert. Grown timid in your dotage?’
‘Look at what happened before. I can’t afford to cock things up. Things are dicey enough already.’
‘Give in to fear and they’ve got you anyway.’
That was true. And there really was comfort to be had in Lyle’s embrace.
It wasn’t really a kiss – not at all – being hesitant and whisper-light. Quite platonic really.
He wouldn’t fool anyone else.
They both stood stock still after their lips had parted, barely daring to move. They stared at one another, chests rising and falling, breath bated. Darleston’s heart hammered and hammered. It had been years and years and years. But he’d never forgotten. Hunger for everything he’d lost and for everything he needed gnawed beneath his skin. He couldn’t shake off the need to lose himself in the fantasy of love again. One could only fake numbness so long. The cracks in his façade grew wider every season. Lucy hadn’t driven him from London, he’d driven himself. That which he’d used for years to appease his appetites no longer sufficed as a balm. He needed something solid and real. Stability. Something to hold on to, to fight for and trust.
The message hadn’t entirely filtered down to his loins though. Lyle – incredible, beautiful, Lyle. The first man he’d swived; the first man he’d sucked. Lyle – who now had a pretty little wife and needed the stigma associated with sodomy like he needed toothache. He didn’t want to destroy everything the man had built for himself.
He didn’t want to pull back and walk away either.
‘Don’t brood, act,’ Lyle enticed him.
It was damned hard to resist when the offer was being dangled before him like that. Darleston grabbed the open front of Lyle’s dress coat and tugged him closer. He’d remained abstinent since the last time with Giles, save for the unmentionable mistake of the day before. Now his cock craved release like a drunkard longed for a bath of gin. He needed this. It was what he was. And it was easy. Oh, so very easy and real.
Why wouldn’t he risk everything when it felt this good?
Memories, sparked by Lyle’s scent, came flooding back as he reversed their positions and shoved Lyle hard up against the unforgiving bark of the tree. Good times and bad, the terrible pain of separation and the numbness that followed. Suddenly, he had to fill that empty void he’d been burdened with. He crushed Lyle to him, revelled in the hard press of muscle against his torso as they kissed again. Furious this time. He wanted to get closer, to rub up against the man’s bare skin. He inhaled Lyle’s scent like it was perfume; grew intoxicated on the musky aroma.
Dexterous fingers began to work open the buttons of his frontfall.
‘You’ve a wife now. Are you sure about this?’
The tip of Lyle’s tongue brushed the outer edge of Darleston’s earlobe, causing a waterfall of bliss to shoot through his veins. ‘I’ve a wife. You’ve a wife. Damn near entire population has a wife. And mine won’t mind. I need to have you, Robert. Do you realise you never allowed me that pleasure before?’
Was that true? He guessed it was. Pretty much everything about their relationship had been lopsided in those days. As an Earl’s son he’d taken precedence, and that had applied within the bedroom as well as without. Few men had topped him in any way since.
Lyle’s hot palm wrapped around his shaft. Vivid memories snapped sharply into focus, of things they’d done together and said. ‘You could kiss me first,’ he gasped.
Lyle chuckled. ‘I think I’ve forgotten how that works.’
A reminder seemed wholly inappropriate given the way that Lyle’s tongue stabbed between his parted lips. He held nothing back. Raw passion rolled off him in waves. It infused his breath and his grip, so that they clutched one another, fists closing around cloth and fingertips digging into the exposed flesh beneath, unable to break apart.
The sweetness of kitchen dainties lingered upon Lyle’s tongue mingled with the dark residue of after-dinner port. His touch, cradling at first, soon grew bolder and transformed into a sliding caress. Whole languages had surely been invented to describe this very act, but right now Darleston couldn’t recall a single word of any of them. All he knew was that he wanted – oh, God, how he’d missed – that touch.
With a few deft twists, he released the placket of Lyle’s breeches. There were times when he was all about taking, but this wasn’t one of them. He needed to give pleasure too. Following Lyle’s movements he curled his thumb over the tip of his cock and rubbed slow circles around the sensitive eye.
Not that finesse was really about to play a great part in this.
‘Together,’ Lyle hissed into his ear, before he pressed their cocks tight to one another and began stroking them as one.
Darleston’s hips rolled. He clung to Lyle, fingertips curled into one bicep, the other hand fast upon his hip, while the dual caress upon his cock worked him rapidly towards fever pitch. Strange that Lyle could bring him to this so quickly, when it was his legendary control that had wooed so many matrons in the bedroom.
He guessed the difference was desire. Not only his, but Lyle’s too. This wasn’t just about satisfying an itch, it was a physical need. The threat of climax loomed. It drew his balls up tight and set him walking a knife’s edge. It came as a shock when Lyle got there first, crying into his shoulder as his seed spilled. Darleston’s hips still rocked, but he was thrusting his cock against nothing but the cool night air. Bereft, he felt the sting of rejection in his cheeks. Then Lyle dropped to his knees and buried his fair head beneath the hem of Darleston’s shirt.
Warm heat surrounded him. Then months of stagnant tension finally ran out of his limbs. His arms fell momentarily limp by his sides. Lyle had always possessed outstanding skills and his ability to suck had only improved in the intervening years. Tricks he played with his tongue left Darleston breathless and grasping at handfuls of blond hair just to steady himself. He’d often wondered what it was about this man that made him so damn special. Well, maybe it was this. He simply had a knack, a certain way, of turning what was usually a pleasurable act into something monumental.
Darleston urged more of his prick into the wet enveloping heat, knowing he was being overly rough but quite unable to stop. Lyle’s little grunts of protest o
nly made the moment sweeter. Pain, pushing things to their limitations, had always gotten him off. This was going to be swift or he might have tested those limitations. Lyle’s fingers curled claw-like into his buttocks. Damn, his fingernails were sharp. He’d have half-moon-shaped bruises there tomorrow. The heat, the raw intensity of this … He couldn’t tolerate much more. He needed relief, not torture.
A week or two would give them plenty of time to draw things out.
Lyle’s fingers uncurled. He began to knead the tensed flesh, and then two digits speared into the channel between Darleston’s cheeks and headed straight for the sensitive hidden whorl of muscle. Just a tickle there, the very suggestion of a fingertip sliding within undid him completely.
His body gave up its gift in long shuddering rolls of bliss.
Legs, knees, arms – his limbs were jelly. Only Lyle’s hold kept him upright.
He heard him swallow.
‘Fuck!’
Lyle stood, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
‘Fuck!’
Lyle’s kisses tore at his mouth. The taste of his own arousal mingled upon their lips.
‘I mean to have you, Robert. I’m not going to let you run away from me. I need a lover, not a wife.’
‘Right.’ The thought sobered him somewhat. Emma – Lyle’s wife, who was sweet and charming and no doubt sitting up waiting for him. Field House wasn’t anywhere near large enough to host couples separately when there were this many guests.
‘Come on, the Orangery is this way.’ Lyle tugged him along in his wake. Darleston followed somewhat unsteadily, still trying to fasten his clothing so that he wasn’t walking around exposed. Had it been this chilly before? A shiver rolled through his limbs, and Lyle noticed. ‘There’s a stove in there. We can keep warm and we don’t need to worry about being overheard.’
Her Husband’s Lover Page 2