He pushed up on his hands and worked her harder, and she met him stroke for stroke and still they did not speak. She couldn’t. Though she’d already come, and not so long ago, pleasure rushed back, the quiver built and she hovered there at the edge, holding back because she did not want to come again so quickly when he’d hardly begun.
“Let go,” he said. His words were gruff. “Give yourself to me entirely.”
She raised her knees, and he thrust harder and she had to reach up toward the headboard to brace herself. “More,” she said.
“I oblige you, madam.”
Close, she was so close to a magnificent release, and she knew Mountjoy was close himself. She put a hand around his waist and then his hips, lifting to meet him. Once again, they had no words but the words of their bodies until he shifted the angle of his cock and she spiraled tight, so close, so close.
“Mountjoy.” She arched beneath him and there were words building in her too big to hold in and far too big to speak. He held her around her waist and rocked hard into her. Her breath hitched, and she forgot anything but her need to climax, her frustration that she had not reached that point yet. He must have been close himself because his thrusts came faster and faster.
And then she crested, and lost herself completely and utterly to his body, and at the last, she felt something inside her that wasn’t usual, but all that mattered was that he didn’t stop, that he was coming, too, and he was calling her name and she held him tight.
“Oh, Jesus, Lily.”
She opened her eyes. He wasn’t looking at her fondly but with eyes wide open, staring. “What’s wrong?”
He pushed back and slowly withdrew from her, looking at his member as if his cock had betrayed him, which it certainly had not, as far as she was concerned. He closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. “Lily.”
She put her weight on one elbow. “What?”
He did something with his sex, and when she looked, she saw the ribbon of his condom was still tied around the base of him, but she could see only part of the sheath. The rest of his member was bare. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The sheath broke.”
Lily licked her lips and remembered that moment when something had not felt right. “Just now?”
“No.” The rest of the sheath was in his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Didn’t realize.” He shut his eyes then opened them. “No, not just now. I came inside you, Lily.”
Chapter Thirty-three
MOUNTJOY FOCUSED ON THE LETTER BEFORE HIM. HE blinked. Was this the one about the declining output of one of the Mountjoy coal mines? Or was that the one before, and this one reported a threefold increase in sales of Mountjoy wool? There were other letters, too, all of them running about in his head without his knowing anything but that he’d read the subject matter at some point. There was a need to better fund the parish orphanage. The sheriff was concerned that the local smugglers were bold and getting bolder, and someone else had requested that he bring a pressing matter to the attention of the House of Lords during the next parliamentary session.
His concentration was broken by a disturbance somewhere in the house. The commotion appeared to be coming nearer. Footsteps thudded down the corridor—more than one man—and he heard Doyle saying very sternly, “Sir, I assure you his grace is not at home.”
“Get out of my way,” a man shouted. “I’ll have the bloody farmer’s head, see if I don’t.”
“Sir,” Doyle said, his voice nearer and nearer. “That is—”
“Mountjoy!” His name became a roar of agony.
He started for the door, but he didn’t get far before the door slammed open and Mr. Kirk burst in, his coat still on, his hat missing, and a riding whip clutched in one hand. Doyle dashed in after the man, two footmen behind him.
“Your grace,” Doyle said, wringing his hands. The two footmen stopped in the doorway when Mountjoy signaled them to leave.
Mr. Kirk’s eyes were wide and staring, his cheeks flus hed red, but every hair on his graying head was perfectly in place. He pointed at Mountjoy with a shaking arm. “You.”
“Sir.” He took a step toward the man. Lord, what could this be but that Mr. Kirk had found out about him and Lily?
“You—” Kirk said. That he’d been crying at some point was patently obvious.
“Doyle,” said Mountjoy. “Please bring Mr. Kirk a brandy.”
His butler bowed. “Your grace.”
“I don’t want a bloody brandy,” the man said.
“That will be all, Doyle. Thank you. I’ll call you if you’re needed.”
When they were alone, without servants in sight, Kirk took a step forward, whip hand raised. “I want what’s right.”
Mountjoy was thirty years younger and a good deal larger than Kirk. He had no difficulty taking the riding whip away. He kept a grip on the older man’s wrist and leaned over him to speak deliberately. “You will sit down. And you will tell me in a civilized manner what has brought you here to my house in such a state.”
“She’s my girl,” Mr. Kirk said. He stared past Mountjoy. “My firstborn. The best of the lot of them if you ask me. She’s ruined. Ruined!”
“Has something happened to Jane?” He lifted a hand palm out. “Choose your words carefully, sir.”
Kirk took a deep breath. “As if you don’t know, when she’s pregnant with your bastard.”
He blinked twice. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t deny what you’ve done. All these years you’ve kept her from meeting a man who will marry her. Leading her into sin. Seducing her.” Kirk scrubbed his hands over his face and when he looked up, he seemed to have collected himself. “Do you think we don’t know your reputation when you are in London? Opera girls and ballet dancers. Do you think a father can’t see his daughter’s weakness? Jane loves you. She loves you enough to do whatever you ask of her because you’re the bloody duke.”
Mountjoy pressed his lips together. “Has she actually accused me?”
Kirk set his jaw. “Who else would seduce her? To whom else would she give herself except to the man she believed would marry her?”
“Someone besides me,” Mountjoy said.
“You’ll marry her,” Kirk said. “You’ll marry her as quickly as you can. It’s only right when you’ve ruined her for anyone else. I’ll sue you for breach of promise if you don’t.”
“What promise would that be? I never asked permission of you to marry any one of your daughters.”
“You didn’t need to. Everyone knew you’d marry Jane. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you.”
“If you stand before a judge and swear that I promised any such thing, you’ll consign yourself to Hell.” Anger slipped into his voice because until now he’d considered Mr. Kirk a friend, and the man was here, sitting in his house, attempting to force him into a marriage he did not want. “Nor did I ever speak to Jane or any of her sisters about marriage. I won’t marry your daughter, Kirk.” He leaned over the man. “Drag this farmer’s name through the mud if you feel your reputation and your soul are worth the lies.”
Kirk blanched. “Agree to acknowledge her bastard as yours, then. The bastard son of a duke might do very well in life.”
“No.” He felt for Kirk’s pain, for the scandal and disgrace if it was true Jane was with child. Sadly he must consider the possibility that Kirk was lying in an attempt to force a marriage. “If it’s true, I am very sorry. But I am not the father. I will not marry a woman pregnant by another man any more than I would support another man’s bastard simply because a distraught father accuses me.”
“We are at an impasse.” Kirk lifted his head, eyes bleak. “It must be you. It can only be you.”
“There’s no impasse, sir. I am not the man responsible for your daughter’s misfortune.”
“Then she’s ruined and some rogue will not do right by her.”
“So long as we agree that the rogue is not me.” Mountjoy walked to the bellpull and called for Doyle. When he turne
d, Kirk was slumped on his chair, head down, hands clasped between his open knees. “Doyle will show you out.”
Still with his head in his hands, Kirk said, “What am I to do?”
He held out Kirk’s riding whip. “Go home to your family. Surely you or your wife can convince her to tell you who is responsible.”
The man shook his head. “If it were someone who was free to marry her, she would have told my wife.”
Doyle appeared, and Kirk, after a shaky sigh and a curt bow, left the room. Mountjoy returned to his desk, but he could not concentrate on the tasks at hand. He wished Doyle had brought a brandy.
Someone tapped on his door. “Come,” he said.
The door opened. Slowly. Too slowly for the efficient Doyle.
He knew it was Lily before he saw or heard her. “Mountjoy?”
This should not be happening to him, that a woman’s presence should make his heart pound and his body shiver with anticipation, with doubt, and with outright lust. Shouldn’t, but was. He stood, though he stayed behind his desk, fingertips resting on top. “Yes?”
Lily was so beautiful it hurt his heart to look at her, yet what he wanted to see from her wasn’t that angelic perfection but the impish smile that meant she had the measure of him and intended to make him pay. Mountjoy, still on his feet, carefully, very deliberately, capped the ink and placed his quill in the stand.
“May I come in?” She gripped the side of the door. “I understand you’re busy, but I’ll only bother you for a moment.” She put her other hand over her heart. “I promise.”
He made the same gesture to the near chair as he’d done for Mr. Kirk. “Please.”
She came in and sat on the chair, back straight, hands resting lightly on her lap. She wore a pale gray muslin with narrow vertical stripes of a darker gray. A fiery orange ribbon was threaded through her hair. The effect was, as ever, flattering to her, without there being any obvious reason why. “Sit down, your grace.”
The door was open. If he could have closed it with a look he would have. If he could have changed whatever thought or concern had made Lily choose to leave it open, he would have done that, too.
“You heard all that I suppose.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t sit down. “It isn’t true,” he said. “About Jane and me.”
She leaned forward. “It was impossible not to overhear. He was quite angry.” She met his eyes, and all he could think was how she’d looked in his arms last night, the sound of his name on her lips, the way she’d felt around him. “Is aught well with you?”
“I am not the father of her child.”
“I know you’re not.”
He came around from behind the desk and stood before her. “There will be gossip.”
“I fear Mr. Kirk intended that result.”
He gave a dark laugh and gestured at his desk. “My responsibilities must be met. Every day. Every minute. I do meet them and have done so since the day I became Mountjoy. Duty to my family, my title, my tenants, the people who live in this parish, and those where I am an absentee property owner they know only by name. To those in my employ and to my king and country. But I do not owe Jane Kirk a father for her child.”
“No, I suppose you don’t.” She let out a breath. “What if you married her after the child comes?”
The world stopped. His heart no longer beat. “You can’t marry Fenris. Not now. No more than I can marry Jane. You know that. You know why.”
“Mountjoy, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Am I to do nothing while you marry a man you don’t love? Should I marry a woman I don’t love? For God’s sake, you can’t mean that.”
She stood, too, and he closed the distance between them and the hell with the open door, he thought. He kissed her, mouth open from the start, and twined an arm around her waist to bring her close. She moved with the forward impetus of his arm, melted against him and now, for this moment, he felt right. Whole. Her arms went around his shoulders, both of them so that she was pressed against him. She slid her fingers into his hair and brought his head down to hers and kissed him senseless.
They parted, eventually, each of them breathless. They’d ended up with her backed up to a tall and thankfully sturdy cabinet that stored various documents and supplies. Paper. Ink. Letters, deeds, the last will and testament of the third duke.
“I’m not going to marry Fenris,” she said.
“I’m not going to marry Jane.”
“Very well, then.”
“Have you made up your mind what you’ll do about me?” he said. When he made up his mind that he wanted thus and such a woman, he’d never had any difficulty getting her into his arms. He’d watched other men flirt and seduce and cajole, and he had never had to do that. Until now. Until Lily. He touched her shoulders, her low back, the sides of her throat.
She leaned against the cabinet. “I can’t think when you kiss me like that.”
“You do want me.” He wasn’t a man of sweet words. To his knowledge he had no particular way with women the way other men did, just good sense about them. “You couldn’t kiss me like that if you didn’t.”
Her impish smile flashed. “Perhaps you’re right.”
“I’m always right.” He kept her close. “Have you changed your mind about us?”
“No. Have you?”
“No,” he said. Relief blew through him, but it was followed by the unsettling conviction that he’d just made a serious mistake. Though, how could that be when Lily wasn’t leaving him?
Chapter Thirty-four
MOUNTJOY OPENED THE DOOR TO LILY’S ROOM AND slipped in as quickly and unobtrusively as he could. Lily was in bed, a single candle providing the light by which she’d been reading. She had a book in her hand, but it was facedown on her chest, and her eyes were closed.
She sat up, though, blinking when he turned from the door he’d just locked. “Mountjoy?”
He put a finger across his lips and whispered, “Don’t send me away.”
“I shan’t.” If she hadn’t been asleep, then she’d been near to it. Her hair was down, but braided so that it would not tangle while she slept. Half past six in the morning and she was only now falling asleep. “What is it?”
“Lord, where to start.” She was the first and only person he wanted to talk to, and he had taken a risk, coming here with the servants already up and about.
“In the middle, if you please.” The curtains were drawn, but her candle and a soft morning light kept the room from darkness.
“Nigel came home late last night.” He walked to her dressing room door and closed that, too. And locked it.
She set aside her book and sat with her legs curled underneath her. If he were a painter, he’d take her likeness posed like this. As if she were fresh from her lover’s embrace, even though she wasn’t. A frown creased her brow. “And?”
“He arrived home in possession of a special license. In order to marry Jane Kirk. Which he has done, I should add, without my prior knowledge or consent. In the middle of the night.”
“Don’t tell me you object.”
“It wouldn’t matter if I did. They are married and are even now sitting downstairs having come here to inform me I have a sister in law. I have just listened to my brother confess that he has been in love with Jane Kirk for months and that he is responsible for her inconvenient situation.”
“What does Mr. Kirk say? Does he know?”
“Not yet.” He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Directly he obtained the special license, Nigel went to Jane. Not here. He did not come home to consult the head of his family. He went to the Kirks’, got a ladder, put it up against Jane’s window, and carried her away.”
“He did?”
Mountjoy looked down and saw her eyes wide and, God help him, filling with tears. “For pity’s sake, don’t cry. There’s nothing to be done now. He did not consult a soul, the fool.”
She blinked, and two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “
I always cry when there’s a happy ending. I can’t help myself. A ladder, you say? It’s so romantic.”
“Romantic?” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Thank you, your grace. That’s simply the loveliest story. He adores her. Did he throw pebbles at her window, or was she waiting up for him?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” He resisted the impulse to kiss her. For now. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to climb the ladder and tap on the window?”
“I think he must have thrown pebbles.” She put her book on the bedside table. “It’s what all the heroes do when they carry away their ladyloves.”
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